Preview RPG Codex Preview: Blackguards

[Mrowak]

Well, the right hand shouldn't start to wank if it hasn't asked the left hand whether it's about to open the door to the family dinner at the same time.

Point is that it isn't really relevant whether it was deliberate sugar-coating or an unfortunate misunderstanding; the end result is a loss of credibility. Because a) who's to say it won't happen again and b) maybe the community manager shouldn't be so cock-sure if he doesn't actually have the team's word for it.

I am merely stating the fact. I think we are exagerating with all the butthurt here.

 

[felipepepe]

Probably the designers were really against it, but since THE PRESS PEOPLE got frustrated, the higher ups intervened and send the nerf hammer.

That probably also explains why we still haven't seen any actual preview from the big websites, even though it has been almost a month since Early Access release... they couldn't get past Chapter 2, cried to the developers that the game was frustrating, and so Daedalic asked them to hold the preview, that they would make changes to it to please the whinny popamoles.

Otherwise, it would be "4/10 - Game's frustrating, I died twice before ragequitting!" all over IGN, RPS and the likes...

Io-Daedalic , can you give us any positions on what the team will do, if they will make the Hard difficulty similar to the press version difficulty, or if the whole game is permanently nerfed? If things stay as they are, I feel obliged to update our preview adding that the game's difficulty has been toned down since the press build, to warn readers that the challenge that we praised so much isn't there anymore.

 

[Infinitron]

Eh I'm not sure big websites even pay attention to "obscure Eurodev" releases. But maybe I'm wrong.

 

[felipepepe]

Wow, you're right. Their latest game, Chains of Satinav didn't get any review on any remotely known website.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Their latest game, Chains of Satinav

d00d, you are fairly behind the times. They've released 4 games since CoS, including 2 Deponias and Memoria, and all three of those were more or less widely acknowledged, especially Deponias. Hell, Goodbye Deponia even managed to get RPS butthurt.

 

[felipepepe]

True, my mistake. But if you look at IGN, they didn't review any of the Deponias...

 

[Robcat]

For the love of god, don't ruin your game Daedalic.

You need to address this, your credibility is indeed under question now. Tell us what's going on. It can't be that hard to provide a range of appropriate difficulty levels can it? famous last words

To answer your questions, I haven't purchased the early-access because I want wanted to experience the complete game, but also just in case something like this happened during development. I don't care about discounts, I care about quality. To make a better game for me you can simply reinstate its integrity. If there isn't at least one difficulty mode that offers genuine challenge then what is the point of a strategic turn-based battle game?

You've ripped out its soul, please put it back.

 

[DeepOcean]

What is the point of easy combat on game that only has combat in it?Fucking add difficulty modes and let the press morons play on easy so they can LARP doing something competent for once.

 

[Mrowak]

Can you guys clarify how those affected encounters got easier? Did they change encounter composition (i.e. who you face) or did they just tinker with the numbers (i.e. stats)?

 

[LivingOne]

Forgot to answer this:

If you didn't get into the Early Access already, what is keeping you from it?

Well,I wanted to,I just needed to have some more money being a poor student and all.But now I'm not so sure.Will wait for clarifications on dumbing down/difficulty settings.

 

[clemens]

Can you guys clarify how those affected encounters got easier? Did they change encounter composition (i.e. who you face) or did they just tinker with the numbers (i.e. stats)?

Well, I haven't played the press build, but I've just beaten Takate in the arena, on the first try (normal difficulty), and the fight was a joke. Dude didn't even hit once with his throwing weapons, and my only guy who wears any armor is Naurim...
Downed the mage in the first turn. Got through both of Takate health potions in the following two. Kited the two others with my archers/mages (Niam + mage main character with 12 in bows). They didn't even stand a chance. No need for particular tactics. Considering what felipepepe said about this fight in the press build, there must have been some MAJOR nerfing. Opponents didn't even use a single special ability. Zuabarran would defend/parry against the two-handed dude with 7 in staves... Lame.
So far, it's indeed easier than the final fights of the first chapter. Saving the Baroness and the crystal fights were more challenging (and fun, for that matter...) Shame.

Maybe the hard option is closer to what normal was in first chapter ? I'm gonna try this. But normal is now so easy that I'm not confident.

 

[Darth Roxor]

snip

That sounds troubling as fuck. I'll try going through the chapter some time later and post a comparison of how I remember its initial state.

And even more so, it sounds annoying as shit, too, because if anything, I found the original fight against Takate highly overrated, ESPECIALLY considering that one dude who found it "completely impossible after 20 tries" (and I wish I was joking). I also managed through it on first try, but I remember fairly clearly that at the very least it got my dudes down to low health.

 

[clemens]

snip

but I remember fairly clearly that at the very least it got my dudes down to low health.

In my case, no injuries, only Naurim lost some health, had to heal him once. Zubarran lost a couple hp and depleted his astral points. Niam and my main charcater finished with full health and half their astral points. I'm guessing that would not have been possible in the press build...

 

[felipepepe]

Such a shame... Takate was hard because he would always use wounding attacks, so even Naurim after a couple of hits would be no more than punching bag, easily killed.

Maybe the hard option is closer to what normal was in first chapter ? I'm gonna try this. But normal is now so easy that I'm not confident.

Difficulty settings aren't implemented yet, playing on Easy or Hard makes absolutely no difference ATM.

 

[DefJam101]

god fucking damnit

 

[Io-Daedalic]

Please, Daedalic, don't change the balance, your game is fine. Please do not make it easier. Pretty please.

We have no intentions to drop difficulty whatsoever. Actually, I'm quite curious how this discussion will develop when Chapter II is out .

Cheers,
Io

Io-Daedalic said:
Indeed, as the lead designer for Blackguards just confirmed to me, the difficulty of the chapter 2 fights has been tuned down since. Beta testers and the press people gave the feedback that the fights we're really tough and frustrating, so the team decreased difficulty quite a bit.

We have no intentions to drop difficulty whatsoever. Actually, I'm quite curious how this discussion will develop when Chapter II is out .

Cheers,
Io

Indeed, as the lead designer for Blackguards just confirmed to me, the difficulty of the chapter 2 fights has been tuned down since. Beta testers and the press people gave the feedback that the fights we're really tough and frustrating, so the team decreased difficulty quite a bit.

Yeah, your credibility was just thrown the fuck out of the window homes. Pretty shoddily handled. Ain't even that much time between the two quotes. What are you, a politician?

When I said earlier we would not drop difficulty we we're talking about overall game difficulty level, and not to drop that in general, e.g. to cater to the 'more casual' players. What I didn't mean by that is that we're not carefully re-balancing single fight difficulties as it has happened since the press version if we find single fights too frustrating. And only singular fights have been re-adjusted in chapter 2. I apologize for not making that clear enough. Our aim is not to dumb the game down as a whole, but rather keep it challenging for players who enjoy tactical planning. Even more so, at the moment the team thinks that the difficutly of the given battles is too low now and needs another re-adjustment up again.

Io-Daedalic A few things:

1. One major gripe i have with the story is that the characters aren't actually that dark, from the PR leading up to this beta i thought i would be playing with a motley crew of sociopaths, then coming into the game it's nowhere near that.

2. Default the post processing effects to off, that bloom is ridiculous.

3. AI, not very smart, especially how they just walk into the scenario traps, in some fights i just wait around and they end up killing themselves.

Io-Daedalic
Keep the press difficulty for hard/very hard. Keep a casual/easy mode for casuals who cannot into tactical RPGs.

For the love of god, don't ruin your game Daedalic.

You need to address this, your credibility is indeed under question now. Tell us what's going on. It can't be that hard to provide a range of appropriate difficulty levels can it? famous last words
To answer your questions, I haven't purchased the early-access because I want wanted to experience the complete game, but also just in case something like this happened during development. I don't care about discounts, I care about quality. To make a better game for me you can simply reinstate its integrity. If there isn't at least one difficulty mode that offers genuine challenge then what is the point of a strategic turn-based battle game?

You've ripped out its soul, please put it back.

Your feedback is much appreciated.
Keeping the game challenging is what ultimately the difficulty levels are for. They are still under development, however, and we can't say at the moment what exactly they will look like in the end. You'll understand that getting the content done is the number 1 priority, distinct difficulty levels will come after that. The team understands pretty well that you like the game for its toughness and challenge and would like to keep that up.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Keeping the game challenging is what ultimately the difficulty levels are for. They are still under development, however, and we can't say at the moment what exactly they will look like in the end. You'll understand that getting the content done is the number 1 priority, distinct difficulty levels will come after that. The team understands pretty well that you like the game for its toughness and challenge and would like to keep that up.

Sure sounds like the difficulty levels are just +50% damage type stuff. Why not just keep the "content" of the original fights as a hard mode?

 

[felipepepe]

I think the content was unchanged, they only reduced HP, Damage and skill use, IIRC.

 

[serch]

I hate that way of adjusting difficulty. Add or substract a couple of baddies in every battle as an easy but not retarded way of managing challenge.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

I hate that way of adjusting difficulty. Add or substract a couple of baddies in every battle as an easy but not retarded way of managing challenge.

Can add plenty of tactical challenge though.

An additional mage can make an easy encounter rapey...

 

[Roguey]

I hate that way of adjusting difficulty. Add or substract a couple of baddies in every battle as an easy but not retarded way of managing challenge.

I imagine this is the kind of thing they would have to engineer for in advance.

But there's nothing wrong with tuning hp and damage values. Sometimes they can be too low or too high, though it's not going to save boring content.

 

[Robcat]

Thanks for responding Io.

I hope you can understand the stridency of my earlier comment, it's just that I was really looking forward to this game. Not many of the sort of games I like have been made in recent years and modern difficulty levels in games have become a bit of a joke tbh. It's always a worry that in appealing to a broader audience, depth and challenge can be compromised. I'm sure you understand this. I simply get a bit upset when a rare game comes along that looks like I would really love it, like it was made for me or people like me, and then it becomes jeopardised.

Please forgive any cynicism, I'm sure that in light of the current state of the industry you can see how it is warranted. To be honest, I'm not sure I see the distinction you're making between overall difficulty and the difficulty of individual fights, as overall difficulty is comprised of individual fights - if you reduce the difficulty of the toughest fights you are reducing the overall difficulty. However I appreciate your assertion that you wish the game to remain challenging and hope that the difficulty levels once implemented will give the game substance.

It seems to me that upon reception of the game's release your company realised it was too difficult to maximise its appeal and so reduced its difficulty accordingly. Fair enough, that's sensible business frankly, if pragmatic and thus disappointing. I can appreciate the need, after all I hope to see Daedalic make lots of money from Blackguards to the effect of releasing another similar game but with a bigger, broader RPG scope. It could be truly glorious. And yes I appreciate you are still in development. All I ask is that the higher difficulty levels when implemented are genuinely challenging, like the press build sounded like it was. Ie they way it already was. I know I'm going on a bit here, it's just that I care. Let me simply restate that the difficulty of tactical combat is integral to its quality, regardless of one's skill or inclinations. Combat is by nature challenging and fun will diminish without it given time. The whys and hows of what makes for enjoyable challenging combat I hope your team understands. Judging from the codex's preview of the game it seems that they do.

This incident really only affirms to me my decision not to purchase early-access. I will wait for release and see what trusted sources have to say about it then. It looks really promising, good luck with your sales.

 

[Io-Daedalic]

Thanks for responding Io.

I hope you can understand the stridency of my earlier comment, it's just that I was really looking forward to this game. Not many of the sort of games I like have been made in recent years and modern difficulty levels in games have become a bit of a joke tbh. It's always a worry that in appealing to a broader audience, depth and challenge can be compromised. I'm sure you understand this. I simply get a bit upset when a rare game comes along that looks like I would really love it, like it was made for me or people like me, and then it becomes jeopardised.

Please forgive any cynicism, I'm sure that in light of the current state of the industry you can see how it is warranted. To be honest, I'm not sure I see the distinction you're making between overall difficulty and the difficulty of individual fights, as overall difficulty is comprised of individual fights - if you reduce the difficulty of the toughest fights you are reducing the overall difficulty. However I appreciate your assertion that you wish the game to remain challenging and hope that the difficulty levels once implemented will give the game substance.

It seems to me that upon reception of the game's release your company realised it was too difficult to maximise its appeal and so reduced its difficulty accordingly. Fair enough, that's sensible business frankly, if pragmatic and thus disappointing. I can appreciate the need, after all I hope to see Daedalic make lots of money from Blackguards to the effect of releasing another similar game but with a bigger, broader RPG scope. It could be truly glorious. And yes I appreciate you are still in development. All I ask is that the higher difficulty levels when implemented are genuinely challenging, like the press build sounded like it was. Ie they way it already was. I know I'm going on a bit here, it's just that I care. Let me simply restate that the difficulty of tactical combat is integral to its quality, regardless of one's skill or inclinations. Combat is by nature challenging and fun will diminish without it given time. The whys and hows of what makes for enjoyable challenging combat I hope your team understands. Judging from the codex's preview of the game it seems that they do.

This incident really only affirms to me my decision not to purchase early-access. I will wait for release and see what trusted sources have to say about it then. It looks really promising, good luck with your sales.

Hi Robcat,

first of all, I'm sorry I wasn't able to get back in time. I'd like you to know that I have no hard feelings questioning my credibility. I would probably do the same when I was in you place given two contradictionary statements like I gave you.

I understand that there are some quite dumbed down games out there and that the taste of many hardcore players is often ignored by contemporary game design and that it looks like we're trying to appeal to "the average player of today" whenever we tune something down. When our team wanted to make a tactical RPG, they had the attitude and the goal to make that kind of game that nowadays is being considered as "old-school" because it really confronts you with your choices to employ a challenge. As you said correctly, the game just doesn't work without being that challenge. Being a real challenge to the player is core to the vision for Blackguards (this also underlines the feeling of a dark, gritty and unfriendly world) and closely connected to what our designers think the overall difficulty level of the game should be. There is a mental concept like "what experience are we designing for". When I said that we're not changing the overall difficulty of Blackguards, I meant that this design goal remains unchanged.

You are perfectly right that the overall difficulty level is formed by how difficult individual fights are. So why did we tune down difficulty in comparison to the press version? Because we felt it was a bit too hard at that time, at least for what we though a fight in the second chapter should be, judging by the feedback we got. So some variables were adjusted:

Spoiler

How many pieces of meat have to be eaten by the kaimans to trigger the spear traps, for example.

Or sheer enemy numbers. We do internal testing, but it just isn't enough to completely verify that the game difficulty is as intended before we release it to Steam's Early Access. Thus as it turned out to be, we overshot the target and some fights are now below the intended difficulty in the current version.

So, the conclusion to this in short is, we're tuning up difficulty again in a future patch. No, we're not just resetting to the press release. It's not as simple as that. The reason is that items available earlier in the game have changed in terms of stats and avaiablility since the press build. So that influences difficulty in chapter 2 fights significantly. This is why, seen on an absolute scale, fights are probably getting even harder than in the press build. They will just be more managable than before if your party makes good use of available items, which is in turn again an aspect of tactical planning, isn't it ? This tune back is planned to ship some time after the release of chapter 3, NOT with the chapter 3 content patch.

Thanks for wishing us luck and being with us on our adventure into developing a new genre at our company! We really enjoy you all being enthusiastic about the game and still hope you like it, even if difficulty is not exactly matching your hopes at the moment.

Cheers,
Io

 

[Jack Dandy]

Well, I guess it's good to hear more about the way you're approaching this.

Can you tell me this, though- will the Hard difficuly mode have more than just stat tweaks? More enemies, better AI, maybe tougher challenges.. That'll be nice to know.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Sound good. I just hope "more manageable than before if your party makes good use of items" won't translate to health potion spam or something similar.