After a long time i decided to revisit the game, i chose hardcore mode and i jumped in.
Can i say that it has become too easy?
The first boss does absolutely nothing to me, i can take his hits without any problems.
So it has become a game for children. Please restore the original difficulty! Thanks
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Bro, play more than 1 hour before commenting on difficulty. While i also think that first boss was too easy, it is a fair introduction to new players that aren’t familiar with this type of game. Unless you follow advanced build advices and use some overtuned rune attacks, the game gets much more challenging shortly after the first boss. Update on how far did you get on your first hardcore try.
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my friend first launched the game a week ago, reached the first boss himself and killed him on the 3rd lvl on the first try.
But then another problem, after visiting the city, all the mobs become too high level, for a character of level 3.
I myself came to the sunflower zone at level 17, when it is designed for 21.
Was it difficult? A little, because there is a lot of HP, the damage is increased for me. But this is not an option for “complicating” the game, when you make a simple increase in health
you could try some self-imposed challenges as long as realm modifiers arent a thing 
I’m commenting on the ease of the first area — it’s not good; it’s too easy. In my opinion, if the game’s identity is meant to follow the Souls formula in terms of combat difficulty, it should respect that from the very beginning. That way, the player starts to absorb the game mechanics right away.
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Nah, riven and darak bosses will beat the s!@# out of you 
i slightly disagree. the first area and boss up to sacrament are somewhat of an extended tutorial. players learn to explore, use/open shortcuts, fight mobs and their first boss. and sometimes u just end up facing the first boss and had 0 good loot drops. so u stand there with a simple straight sword and fail at the boss until your mushroom soup runs out. that might be challenging for souls players, but might also deter others from even continuing. everyone has their own frustration resistance.
so having the first boss being as easy as he is now is easing people into the soulslike combat, without making them ragequit before they even reach sacrament.
what i noticed though was, that pretty much all the pre-breach content seems to be easier tan before, which would still be OK if it was somehow slightly getting harder as u get better at the game, but it feels like u do pre-breach while walking your dog at the beach and drinking cocktails uontil u reach breach areas and is suddenly feels like waterboarding 
the gap in difficulty or the difficulty spike when reaching the new areas is just weird.
It’s still my point of view, for me it was the perfect difficulty, lowering it a bit was legitimate. But it’s not possible that a boss does so little damage to you that it’s almost useless to dodge. I don’t even need to understand the mob animations, just shoot with your head down since they are all bad and I am very strong. This way it’s too unbalanced. Now I understand the amount of negative reviews, we are not there at all. No rest for the wicked absolutely needs to be rebalanced by increasing the difficulty and making it progressive with a fair level curve.
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Thomas promised realm tiers / custom realms, so we should hopefully get back to a game that actually feels like a game in due time.
For the time being P4+10 maps can still bring some entertainment.
the “funny” thing is, at the launch of the breach, a LOT of people said it was too difficult. so much so, that the review rating dropped significantly to “mixed”. so moon made it easier. now people complain its too easy. i guess u can never make it right
and everyone has their very own very subjective perception of difficulty.
that being said i personally think the only “issue” is, that the difficulty change in different areas seems a bit too steep. so either some areas are slightly too easy, or others are just slightly too high.
when from one extreme to another, it’s also not right.
Unfortunately, I didn’t catch the launch itself and started a week later. And I was very surprised why everything was so simple.
Extremely simple
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yeah i agreed with u guys, that the overall difficulty curve needs to be re-balanced, and the difficulty jump from pre-breach to breach content does not feel “natural”. if that makes sense.
but i actually like for new players or people who until now did never tough any “soulslike” because of the difficulty and frustration, that those players are now eased into it, by making stuff before sacrament easier.
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To be fair, I don’t think that was the real reason - never ending idiotic/woke/bs allegations against Moon were. The rest was just a useful noise. IMHO.
Hotfix2’s poise boost did immeasurable damage to the game, but other changes in 1-3 were also significant. In the end, we now have a mainstream pulp. You walk to a mob, start mashing attack button, and it’s dead. Few exceptions aside.
After the story, once people get their gear upgraded with reasonable effects (emphasis on word reasonable - I’m not even counting build abominations, like freeze everything around with 0 risk) - almost everything becomes meaningless. E.g. even P4+10 caps at 26 in early areas, feeling barely harder due to the level difference.
Hopefully realm tiers (and more detailed realm options later) will deliver. Otherwise I’ll change my review to negative, for a change …
Yeah I’d say the first boss is very anticlimatic, this is the players first introduction to a Big Bad. I’ve seen some streams of players beating it without any real thought and going “Oh, that was it?!” because they could for the most part ignore it’s damage and just plough damage into him and win.
It should feel impressive! I would say they need to increase the first bosses damage by 50% and health by 25%, but maybe do something so the attacks are even more predictable, add a tiny bit more of a delay or something.
The user should feel like they have to use the tools they’ve learned, either by good use of dodge, parry, block, whatever to overcome it.
You don’t even have to clear the first area of ​​the game to improve and face the boss, you just have to keep going like an idiot. This is a game for children to me, and I didn’t pay for it. If you follow the souls-like model it has to be from start to finish.
If they don’t fix this I’ll change my review to negative too.
but i think part of that is also that we do not have any more constant, the current lvl cap etc. same happened before breach with crucible. people were just like “i killed EK now what i am OP for everything”
thats something i am sure will fix itself naturally over time with more content and updates
Judging by the reviews, the people complaining about the game being too easy don’t matter.
It’s simple, really. The game was difficult, people did not like it, they left and left bad reviews.
The game got easier, and reviews are steadily going up.
It’s always been like this. The hardcore crowd has always been a loud minority. They complain on the forums and discord, but they don’t represent the general player population.
The hardcore crowd killed Wildstar. They are the crowd that pushed for 40 man raids, raid attunements, strict M±like timing requirements to be able to participate in content, and unforgiving medal systems. The game lost all its casual base and shuttered.
There’s a reason why Final Fantasy XIV did not mimic FFXI. There was no deleveling or xp loss on dying, you didn’t need premade groups to take down a single mob or two, it didn’t take months to reach max level or weeks to unlock a class. The move towards accessibility has always been a winning commercial strategy.
i agree. and i said it in multiple threads and in discord too. even tho i would consider myself to be part of the “hardcore” enjoyers, i actually do not mind making the first boss easier of the first few areas in general.
i am actually happy for people who were afraid of soulslikes before but can now enjoy it and be eased into it.
i just think the curve does not fit right now. pre-breach stuff is all super easy, breach stuff is alright, but since everything before is so easy, it feels super hard. get what i mean.
first boss being a pushover, fine. then twins and darrak should be more difficult, then woods and meadows should climb in difficulty again and so on. and crucible boss and endgame grind should actually not be nerfed or touched much, as it is entirely optional. and optional stuff should be more challenging than following the story.
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I wonder if the crucible we have is meant to be an early equivalent.
There are like 5 more altars where you can make blood offerings as you go up the spiral staircase in the room, so it might be different levels or, even cooler, 5 more different formats (one was roguelite, another might be an entirely different genre, like a metroidvania or whatever).
Winged Brood and Lost Huntress still seem like pain points for people. The problem I see with people that experience varying difficulty is their game knowledge and build-making.
Like I mentioned in another thread. Some people are smashing their faces somehow on River Twins and their Pestilence equivalent. I melt them at lv30 now with a fully exalted and optimized build. Hell, I still one shot River Twins and Darak pre-hotfixes (even before hotfix 1) on Breach.
There’s a huge swing between trivializing the content and it being seemingly insurmountable based on whether the player understands what builds work and what gear has dropped for them. I got lucky with a Band of Calmness and Runic Ring. I’m not even using the battlecry ring for Focus-less casting.
I imagine my experience would be drastically different if I were like Larry Puss or some other youtubers who have been unlucky with the rings.
I also think the build type makes a difference. If you’re a squishy or low poise melee build, I actually see the crucible placing a lot of disadvantage on certain melee builds because the rooms often have groups of bruisers and it’s impossible to attack cleanly while being attacked simultaneously while in melee range.
Just did a Pestilence lv4 Nameless Pass, you get to the end part before the Pestilence Boss where the River Twins are.
In the arena where you fight Winged Brood, I was met by 3 big stick colossus, 2 nith witches, a greatsword knight, and a caged abomination, all in close proximity and with linked aggro. If I had not been on my super strong, lv30 optimized frost build, I don’t know how anyone with a normal non-optimized build would have dealt with that short of running away from the rooms and trying to divide the mobs tediously through the hallway. I still ended up using lik 5-6 food items. Meanwhile the actual pestilence boss was Darak and he was easily stomped. Tuning is still somewhat off, they may get it right down the line.
But they really need to be careful to not backslide into pre-hotfix 3 territory aggravation of the casual playerbase.
Oh noes, we can’t have that in 2025. We are now expected to walk to a mob and start mashing attack button without care in the world.
Sarcasm aside, not much we can do besides waiting for patch1.
I can assure you they didn’t come back and fix those reviews, rare exceptions aside. And pre-Breach reviews were fine. So that should quickly point anyone to obvious “difficulty was never the underlying issue” in the first place. Moon not bending their ass to politics and co. was.
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