As a new player used to ARPGs, I arrived with my first char in hard difficulty* at Sacrament where I quickly unlocked the Crucible and discovered Bounties.
tl;dr: Bounties and Crucible are way, way too hard for a lvl 6 new player.
Attempting the Crucible led me to get utterly destroyed by abominations I had never seen before in a dozen different maps with exotic traps. It is fine for XP, but the game up to this point has trained you to try and “complete” the map, to reach the end and get further (or at least finish the first round of Crucible). No can do at level 6 with my trusty paddle
The first bounty I tried was the weekly one in the only area I knew (Orban Glades): A Savage Pair. Savaged by the pair I was. I have tried over 3 days, each day with over 30 tries, and when I got lucky I could get one of the two. I’m pretty sure with a couple more dozen tries I could also get the second one. Much cash went into fixing my broken gear.
Thus I would argue that Bounties and Crucible do a poor job at advertising their difficulty at this level. They are either unlocked too soon, or they should do a better job at telling noobs like me what the expected challenge should be. I do not know the design process, but a simple “This is a challenging endeavor for your character, you may want to come back later” would probably have been enough. I would try once and then figure “yeah… I’ll come back later”, just like those higher danger level areas.
All in all this was a fairly frustrating time. Game’s a banger though.
*Yeah I know I was asking for it but not that bad.
After the discussion below (and finally beating the Savages at lvl 13!), here are some suggestions depending on the intended 1/ progression and 2/ balance:
Crucible and Bounties should 1/ unlock ASAP and 2/ be beatable
→ Dial difficulty down a LOT when under lvl 10 for new players
Crucible and Bounties should 1/ unlock once the player has more knowledge and 2/ be beatable
→ Gate these features somehow (min level? Quest progress?)
Crucible and Bounties should 1/ unlock ASAP and 2/ be way above the rest in terms of challenge
→ Warn players that these are difficult challenges
The savage pair is a weekly bounty. They reward plague ichor, so are meant to be tough. The first thing I do on every new character are the bounties, both daily and weekly, because the rewards can be very helpful, especially any gems. They are indeed tough. Considering it’s weekly, you have plenty of time to level up and get stronger to make the fight more feasible. Yes you can unlock the crucible immediately, and it is indeed challenging early on. Luckily none of these are required to advance the story or beat the game. I get being frustrated that you haven’t been able to conquer them, but I don’t think that’s a good reason to gatekeep them for everyone.
Souls games have trained me to accept that I don’t have to kill everything. They often put very strong enemies in the early game. The red eye enemies in Demon Souls are a great example. They are extremely dangerous and hard to kill. There is nothing wrong with moving on and coming back later.
i think they scale with your level so they’re always above ? not 100% sure.
treat them as a rite of passage for every new character. once you learn their moves and habits they’re not so bad.
most of the time if you line them up so one is in front of the other - they will accidentally hit each other with powerful swings and fire : D
it does show red bounty marker on the map, signaling this is hard…
p.s. my favourite is the goat guy who charges you and yells “more!” he’s so funny. his attacks are bugged though, you can’t parry them and they land without sfx/vfx so it can be tricky to see what happened. his crossbow hits like a tree trunk
p.p.s. i swear crucible mobs give you like 2-3 xp and you can’t level-up there ?
I agree with your replies, but imho the game still does a poor job at advertising the difficulty.
Some areas in the game are too hard and they clearly show it. Nothing was told for the crucible or the bounties. A simple warning would be more than enough, just like areas with a red danger level.
The map does indeed have a red marker but afaik there is no legend. At this point in the game the map is also very new and not immediately readable.
Isnt difficulty self explanatory? Like if you start on Easiest and think its too easy you go up one difficulty, and do that whenever you have gotten a feel for the combat.
ofc if you start on the hardest then you dont know the base difficulty so you dont have anything to compare it to?
Maybe i misinterpreted something?
A tip is that you focus on story quest to unlock more and sure indirectly focus on challenges alongside the quest, then do bounties as a round off of the day?
Kinda, but in most games you will have a very explicit “here be dragons“ sign alerting the player that a challenge should be beyond their reach. This game has danger level which clearly tells you: this place is lvl 15 and you are lvl 9. Good luck with that, expect a quick death.
When first unlocked, crucible and bounties and other quests were all at the same perceived level for me. AFAIK, there isn’t even anything at this point telling you what the main quest is: is it following the inquisition? Helping against the bandits? Or discovering the story of your people?
I don’t mind hard challenges but I do feel like the game should either gate these features until a bit later when a new player has better understanding of the basics, or clearly advertise that a swift death is coming.
In my understanding of “danger level”, its only function is to give the player a reminder to always stay alert as there can be some enemies who can be a bit difficult to deal with.
Its not saying that every enemy is of that level.
Its not a function that is there to keep you from exploring areas such as a restriction, its just a reminder.
But sure i could be wrong..
I’ve usually turned off such ui popups because i find them more to be a nuisance than a necessity.
(I already know the risk)
A new player however should probably have that on the easiest difficulty so its a good suggestion
I should probably say that this isn’t your “normal” ARPG that you are currently used to.
I do agree it could be missing a lot of those hints; the game being in EA, it is still a good thing for devs not to put those hints/warnings etc too early and see what players think about it, how many complain, how many like it, etc.
In a way, the hint is already here, but not as obvious as it could/should be for every player.
For HC realm players, those hints are in bright colors tho.
For softcore, on the other hand, there is actually no real downside to it; you can try as much as you want (and train!)—as long as you mentally stay up for the challenge. Which I find very, very nice; the game does not stop you, you can go check the Balaks as soon as you want, and that is a real plus to the game imo
Crucible is weird in how it scales. My first run was stupid easy up until the boss, the later ones I think suddenly adjusted to my level, which was ahead of the areas i was in, and my gear was behind my level, so it didn’t feel balanced until the late game.
The problem isn’t unlocking the crucible, though. The problem it should have various difficulties to ease you into the system.
Having a completely closed and separate gameplay loop like this is a little weird before you’ve finished the game, though. If they attached dailies to it, it would incentivize regularity over spamming runs, which makes more sense if you’re trying to balance regular play with story progress like they should.
The daily bounties I think are ok, although it’s a little more challenging, I think that makes it fun. The weekly, though, yeah, that can just block off an area. Should at least be able to suppress the bounties in case they cause frustration. I, personally, would be fine with the difficulty, granted I have a nearby respawn to cut down the time between attempts. I prioritize making the learning prossess smoother while maintaining challenge, rather than reducing challenge.
You can do that, abandon the bounty and get rid of it until you want to try again.
The difficulty depends vastly on playstyle, but overall it is a good reminder to approach fights with caution.
I strongly disagree with both.
Difficulty spikes come at different times depending on your playstyle and are a much-welcome challenge.
Too much linearity is notoriously boring in this specific aspect, it being a weekly challenge with an on/off switch and not your average mob along the path.
The game expects you, first and foremost, to be free, and also to be able to get through the storyline with only a little exploration; this difficulty is manageable by your personal choice to chain the quests or take more time to level up/explore/stuff and so on.
I agree, but for me to have freedom i also need to be informed on what I am facing. Is this challenge supposed to be tough? Am I in a difficult area? Should I conquer this quest?
Again this is from the perspective of a new level 6 player with their trusty paddle and very poor knowledge of most of the game.
Arriving at Sacra for the first time gets you a very large dump of information and characters and stories everywhere. Good guidance from the game is critical at this time.
Merely messages such as “Weekly challenges are harder encounters” or “The Crucible will be harder then the main game for now, you may want to proceed with other quests” (which everyone seems to agree reflects the current balance) would be enough imho.
I agree, and still do agree with the part i quoted from your post.
This is much probably on the way, the game still being in EA means a lot of thoses things are yet to come and to be re-tweaked. It’s a good feedback and should defenitly be said, i would simply not worry too much about it now.
I get that a lot of games come out in early access, but considering that 1.0 is going to more than double the content and add a ton of more end game and difficult content, I would say that balancing things like this will all get worked out in the wash.
Also, @fishypixels had it right when he mentioned about the weeklies being more difficult and not meant for your day 1 char.
That’s sad… Why do you feel the need for the game to hold your hand and tell you what to do, when to do it, or what not to do? Was the ass whooping you got from that savage pair not clear enough of a message?
I was a new player once, too. I also picked up every challenge and bounty the moment I’ve entered sacrament and rushed straight into them. I got my ass handed to me by the savage pair like six times in a row.
But at some point, I stopped and considered three possible explanations:
A) I’m not skilled enough - nah, I’m pretty decent at video games.
B) My build is weak - unlikely, the game had barely started.
C) This content is overtuned for this stage of progression - bingo!
I mean… A guy picked hard difficulty, proceeded to die 30 times without even getting close to winning the fight, and never once stopped to think whether he was even supposed to be fighting it that early. Then he goes to the forum and complains like it’s the game’s fault, suggesting it should either be gated off for everyone or redesigned to treat players like they’re incapable of basic reasoning.
At some point, personal responsibility has to enter the equation.
