Difficulty in user-made modules

[Legacy_MagicalMaster]

               

I think that the Very Difficult setting should be accompanied with a note informing the player that it's a setting which makes a difference only on lower levels, makes the game unbalanced and should only be turned on if Hardcore is really not good enough for you.

 

Except even on lower levels it could make no difference in many cases or a very small difference while in others it could be massive : /

 

What you're doing with actually altering the difficulty of creatures manually with different difficulty settings is light years better.

 

Interestingly, in the modules I've played, I didn't notice low level gameplay being particularly hard. But then, I don't think I've ever played modules aimed at very experienced in combat players.

 

Try Swordflight Chapter 1 or A Peremptory Summons.  Though the way I designed most things in APS means Very Difficult would have less of an impact (and if you're a capable player you likely won't find APS too difficult overall, the same is true to a smaller degree with Swordflight).

 

If it gets easier as levels increase, what's so bad about that?  The point is, I'm not a power gamer, and I don't use optimised builds or equipment when I do my tests, so playing and succeeding at even a slight handicap should mean that most players should be able to get through my content.  And if they can't, they should be able to do it by choosing to use a lower difficulty setting.

 

Two things are so bad about it:

 

1, people expect (and should get) a consistent difficulty.  If I play on Hard that I means I want the whole game to be hard...not for it to be twice as difficult as Easy initially and then 5% more difficult than Easy later on.

 

2, it doesn't do what it says it does.

 

And the second point addresses the second half of your quote.  Say you have a mage boss with sneak attacking rogues guarding him.  You barely get through it and think "Well, if I made it through on Very Difficult then it should be fine for others on Hardcore."  Wrong!  Because the difficulty of that fight barely changes at all on Very Difficult.

 

I'm sorry, but I can't understand your terminology here.  I can't tell if you mean that the combat uses poor AI or if you're using these words to mean "difficult".  In any case, it seems quite subjective, so I don't think there's much to discuss here.  (Note: I played DA:O on the hardest difficulty the whole time, and intentionally refused the patches that kept making the combat easier.)

 

I specifically did *NOT* use the word difficult because it was *NOT* difficult.  It was stupid.  Terrible.  Headache-inducing.  See below...

 

Hmm, I understand it is a matter of taste, but honestly Dragon Age: Origins combat is one of my favorite RPG combats (I played on Nightmare). By it being stupid, you probably mean incredibly high HP pools and enemy damage to create a challenge instead of the enemies being clever and resourceful? If so, I agree, it indeed was a rather poor design.

 

No, I don't mean that.  I can live with that style of difficulty because then it means you need to worry about optimizing your stats, abilities, and party composition.  What I mean by stupid would include the following:

 

1, armor reduces damage by a flat amount.  Which means enemies doing more damage is an even larger difference.  If Alistair has 50 armor and enemies do 60 damage, he takes 10 damage per hit.  Then let's say we bump the difficulty up and enemies do 33% more (80 per hit).  Well, Alistair is now going to take 30 damage per hit, *triple* the damage.  Even in full plate armor (the best available at the time) and using defensive abilities (including the sustained ones) he simply got wrecked by just about everything even with myself and Wynne spamming heals on him (Heal, Regen, Group Heal).

 

2, potential solution to #1 -- avoid the attacks rather than trying to minimize the damage taken.  How?  Well, focus on getting his Dexterity super high to let him dodge attacks (which requires sacrificing Heavy Armor as it requires strength -- note that Alistair is portrayed as a heavy armored warrior in general so this is weird to start).  Problem A -- you cannot respec in DA:O, so HAHAHAHA at you for thinking the game would make sense in that strength plus heavy armor would be good for tanking when that's how the character is presented.  Problem B -- some enemies will use Perfect Striking and just hit you every time.  Sucks to be you.

 

3, no problem, we'll just chain Force Field with two mages.  Send Alistair in, have him Taunt, them make him immune to all damage while enemies keep attacking him and AoE them all down (or just auto attack a boss because your spells are worthless against single big enemies for the most part).  When that invulnerability wears off, have him taunt and then just have a second mage recast Force Field.  Repeat until all enemies are dead.  Such deep combat.

 

4, enemy mage.  HAHAHAHA Mana Clash.  Oh, he randomly resisted it?  Well, that sucks.  SECOND MANA CLASH.  Oh, he resisted that too?  Crushing Prison.  Oh, he resisted that too?  SECOND CRUSHING PRISON!  Note that any of those are literally or effectively 1 hit kills and the odds of resisting all of those are pretty low.

 

5, if all else fails, just Blood Wound.

 

6, bows?  Ha, what are those, they suck.  Unless you're in Awakening then you deal like 5 times as much damage as anyone else.

 

Accuracy grants the following bonuses:

• +(Dexterity - 10) to attack,


• +(Dexterity - 10) to damage,


• +(Dexterity - 10) * 0.5% to ranged critical chance,


• +(Dexterity - 10) * 0.5% to ranged critical damage.

Yeah, letting people pump up single stats super high and then making those scale linearly (and exponentially within the talent itself) makes total sense.  If you have 20 Dex you get 10 attack, 10 damage, 5% crit, and 5% crit damage.  If you have 50 Dex you get 40 attack, 40 damage, 20% crit, and 20% crit damage.  And it only gets worse from there (you get 3 stat points per level and can usually hit level 30).  For plot reasons I had Sig at the end rather than Nath but she still had 130ish Dex even with Nath having the better stuff.  So my main and Vel are auto attacking for 60-70 every second as mages...Jus is meleeing for 80ish every second as a 1H + Shield tank...and Sig is shooting for 400 damage every second.  Oh, and Jus has 200 attack vs Sig's 280ish attack.  So it's even worse than it looks because Jus will miss a lot more too.

 

Yeah.

 

7, you're a warrior and want to use abilities rather than just auto attack?  Sucks to be you, many of them are actually DPS losses to use.  They sure sounded cool, though, right?

 

-----------------

 

I could go on but you get the picture, I hope.  The combat in DA:O was so horrible in so many ways.  Makes NWN look like the most balanced/fun/sensible game in existence.  Maybe it didn't really matter on Normal or whatever, flaws of the system weren't as obvious/problematic...but Nightmare was just...ugh.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tchos]

               

I specifically did *NOT* use the word difficult because it was *NOT* difficult.  It was stupid.  Terrible.  Headache-inducing.

 

Which could mean anything, being assessments of how they made you feel instead of descriptive of the mechanics, and so they mean nothing.  Thankfully you went into a little more detail about what you meant with MayCaesar.  However, I completely disagree with what you say, can't see where you're coming from, and really can't take anything away from your assessment of the DA:O combat.

 

You say it wasn't difficult, but you also say Alistair "got wrecked by just about everything" despite constant healing.  That's not my experience at all.  I use Alistair as my tank in heavy armour and a sword and shield.  He almost never dies with Wynne's effective heals and an occasional poultice.  No need for Force Field.  And this is all in Nightmare mode, as I said earlier, so I don't know why you keep implying it's only fun in Normal or lower.

 

No, I enjoyed DA:O's combat.

 

Two things are so bad about it:

1, people expect (and should get) a consistent difficulty.  If I play on Hard that I means I want the whole game to be hard...not for it to be twice as difficult as Easy initially and then 5% more difficult than Easy later on.

 

This person doesn't expect or want that.  That stinks of level scaling, and I hate level scaling.  I want progression, in that as I rise in power, I feel the effects of that power by common combat being easier, and only notable battles (named NPCs or bosses) presenting a real challenge.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MayCaesar]

               

No, I don't mean that.  I can live with that style of difficulty because then it means you need to worry about optimizing your stats, abilities, and party composition.  What I mean by stupid would include the following:

 

1, armor reduces damage by a flat amount.  Which means enemies doing more damage is an even larger difference.  If Alistair has 50 armor and enemies do 60 damage, he takes 10 damage per hit.  Then let's say we bump the difficulty up and enemies do 33% more (80 per hit).  Well, Alistair is now going to take 30 damage per hit, *triple* the damage.  Even in full plate armor (the best available at the time) and using defensive abilities (including the sustained ones) he simply got wrecked by just about everything even with myself and Wynne spamming heals on him (Heal, Regen, Group Heal).

 

2, potential solution to #1 -- avoid the attacks rather than trying to minimize the damage taken.  How?  Well, focus on getting his Dexterity super high to let him dodge attacks (which requires sacrificing Heavy Armor as it requires strength -- note that Alistair is portrayed as a heavy armored warrior in general so this is weird to start).  Problem A -- you cannot respec in DA:O, so HAHAHAHA at you for thinking the game would make sense in that strength plus heavy armor would be good for tanking when that's how the character is presented.  Problem B -- some enemies will use Perfect Striking and just hit you every time.  Sucks to be you.

 

3, no problem, we'll just chain Force Field with two mages.  Send Alistair in, have him Taunt, them make him immune to all damage while enemies keep attacking him and AoE them all down (or just auto attack a boss because your spells are worthless against single big enemies for the most part).  When that invulnerability wears off, have him taunt and then just have a second mage recast Force Field.  Repeat until all enemies are dead.  Such deep combat.

 

4, enemy mage.  HAHAHAHA Mana Clash.  Oh, he randomly resisted it?  Well, that sucks.  SECOND MANA CLASH.  Oh, he resisted that too?  Crushing Prison.  Oh, he resisted that too?  SECOND CRUSHING PRISON!  Note that any of those are literally or effectively 1 hit kills and the odds of resisting all of those are pretty low.

 

5, if all else fails, just Blood Wound.

 

6, bows?  Ha, what are those, they suck.  Unless you're in Awakening then you deal like 5 times as much damage as anyone else.

 

Accuracy grants the following bonuses:

• +(Dexterity - 10) to attack,


• +(Dexterity - 10) to damage,


• +(Dexterity - 10) * 0.5% to ranged critical chance,


• +(Dexterity - 10) * 0.5% to ranged critical damage.

Yeah, letting people pump up single stats super high and then making those scale linearly (and exponentially within the talent itself) makes total sense.  If you have 20 Dex you get 10 attack, 10 damage, 5% crit, and 5% crit damage.  If you have 50 Dex you get 40 attack, 40 damage, 20% crit, and 20% crit damage.  And it only gets worse from there (you get 3 stat points per level and can usually hit level 30).  For plot reasons I had Sig at the end rather than Nath but she still had 130ish Dex even with Nath having the better stuff.  So my main and Vel are auto attacking for 60-70 every second as mages...Jus is meleeing for 80ish every second as a 1H + Shield tank...and Sig is shooting for 400 damage every second.  Oh, and Jus has 200 attack vs Sig's 280ish attack.  So it's even worse than it looks because Jus will miss a lot more too.

 

Yeah.

 

7, you're a warrior and want to use abilities rather than just auto attack?  Sucks to be you, many of them are actually DPS losses to use.  They sure sounded cool, though, right?

 

-----------------

 

I could go on but you get the picture, I hope.  The combat in DA:O was so horrible in so many ways.  Makes NWN look like the most balanced/fun/sensible game in existence.  Maybe it didn't really matter on Normal or whatever, flaws of the system weren't as obvious/problematic...but Nightmare was just...ugh.

 

Hmm, I had a completely different experience in terms of what is useful and what is not. But nevertheless, regarding the armor notion, I actually think that DAO had a very good separation between difficulties. 33% more damage the enemies deal means that your build should be very well optimized, so the difference between the damage Alistair takes is as small as possible. It is reasonable, in my opinion, to expect from players playing on the hardest difficulty to use strong builds, accounting for such discrepancies, and severely punish them for using sub-standard builds. And it is still not like on Nightmare your Alistair is going to die constantly, it is just that you have to control him more, so he doesn't just stand there in the middle of the battlefield, tanking all the enemy damage, but runs around, trying to transfer some of the damage intake to other characters, while not transferring too much so they start being in trouble themselves. In this regard, I dislike NWN, where the tank takes all the damage, and if the tank falls, and you don't have other tanks in your group, then you are toast. I am playing Aielund Saga, act II currently, with a Sorcerer, and as soon as the tank dies or some enemies run past the tank to my Sorcerer, I might as well reload right away, since I die to 3-4 hits. In DAO, non-tank characters actually can take some beating.

 

Also, regarding the difficulty curve, I believe both NWN and DAO are seriously flawed. In NWN, as has already been told, Very Difficult simply leads to early fight being much tougher, while later fight are almost the same. In DAO, Very Difficult makes fights against large groups of enemies incomparably harder, while fights against small groups or bosses with little support are almost the same. The first battle in Lothering is often used as an example: on Easy-Hard it doesn't present any challenge whatsoever, since among those bandits only the leader is capable of dealing any significant damage, and it is just a matter of tanking him. But on Nightmare, each bandit does a lot of damage, and the leader actually isn't much tougher: as in your example, suppose Alistair has 50 armor, and on Hard regular bandits deal 45 damage and the leader deals 60. Suppose there are 9 regular bandits and one leader. On Hard, Alistair will take 10 damage per unit of time. But on Nightmare, he will take 10 damage from each regular bandit and 30 damage from the leader, so it is a whooping 120 damage, 12 times that. Whilst, if we fought the leader alone, then on Hard Alistair would take the same 10 damage, and on Nightmare 30 - much more, but still it is only 3 times the higher, not 12 times.

 

 

This person doesn't expect or want that.  That stinks of level scaling, and I hate level scaling.  I want progression, in that as I rise in power, I feel the effects of that power by common combat being easier, and only notable battles (named NPCs or bosses) presenting a real challenge.

 

 

Actually, this is an interesting question. Later combat being easier does give the feeling of progression - but to me personally it also creates a feeling of waste, in that I became stronger and, as such, I should be fighting stronger enemies than before, not killing the same enemies easier. The best feeling of progression, I believe, a person gets when they kill something they couldn't even touch before. Like, again, in Dragon Age: Origins: if you go after Flemeth at level 10 on Nightmare, you will be wiped out faster than you can say "whoa, a dragon!" - but if you then return at level 18, it will be a completely different story.

 

So what I would like to see in modules I play is optional bosses available for fight very early but impossible to beat at that point. Then, as you get stronger, you return to fight the boss and fail again. Eventually, you manage to beat it, and such moments give me the highest level of satisfaction, make me feel like I really became much stronger than before.

 

In modern games, unfortunately, it is a rarity. The developers streamline everything, and you rarely can meet anything you cannot kill at this point no matter what: usually the developer believes than, whatever you can encounter, you should be able to kill. Witcher 3 was a nice exemption of this rule, but, unfortunately, the game had so many other flaws that it didn't hold me for long.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tchos]

               

So what I would like to see in modules I play is optional bosses available for fight very early but impossible to beat at that point. Then, as you get stronger, you return to fight the boss and fail again. Eventually, you manage to beat it, and such moments give me the highest level of satisfaction, make me feel like I really became much stronger than before.

 

I agree; I like that kind of progression, too.  And one important point about it is that it's optional, in that you can avoid it when you're too weak and come back later when you're stronger.  The other kind that I mentioned doesn't need to be a waste of time either if you can avoid the low level combat, or choose to engage and wipe them out easily.  I just don't want every encounter to be exactly matched to the party's abilities, because it essentially makes levels meaningless.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Grani]

               

This person doesn't expect or want that.  That stinks of level scaling, and I hate level scaling.  I want progression, in that as I rise in power, I feel the effects of that power by common combat being easier, and only notable battles (named NPCs or bosses) presenting a real challenge.

 

I think I have a solution to the problem of level scaling taking away the feeling of progression.

I tend to have level-scaling from some point, but there's still a minimum level in a given area that the monsters will have.

So, let's say there's a forest with enemies at at least 8th level.

If you go there with a 3rd level toon, you'll get wrecked. If you go there with an 8th level toon, you'll be presented with a challenge. If you go there with a 12th level toon or even higher, the enemies will still be around your level, so the challenge will still be there.

 

So, in this case progression means more freedom of exploration. You won't be butchering through hordes of low-level enemies, but you'll gradually stop being afraid of every dark corner.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tchos]

               

It's not exactly what I prefer, but you can't please everyone.  It would be nicer if there were also a maximum as well as the minimum you propose, so that if you go back to a given level area at some point late in the game, the enemies there will be no match for you.  Enemies that once you avoided would now avoid you.

 

There are problems with that approach too, though.  Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning attempted ranged level-scaling with a minimum and maximum for zones based on the player level.  The only problem there was that combined with the extra XP from enemy respawning (which is hard to avoid sometimes, as they see you from a far distance), the world was also sufficiently large that I believe a typical player will outlevel even the maximum levels of entire zones before reaching them, based on my own experience.

 

I just prefer fixed level enemies.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MayCaesar]

               

Well, in Dragon Age: Inquisition main story quests had a scaling range: for example, if the range was 8-12, then:

- At level below 8, you fight the enemies of level 8.

- At level between 8 and 12, you fight the enemies of your level.

- At level above 12, you fight the enemies of level 12.

This system worked well, in my opinion, for instanced-based quests there, but I don't think it would work really well for Neverwinter Nights, where you can leave a zone, level up a bit, then come back to it and notice that you haven't become any stronger.

 

I believe, in single player games scaling will always take away the feeling of progression, at least a bit. Let the levels be fixed, but let the player also go to higher level zones early on, where they would get destroyed, so when they return there later and get a chance at fighting the enemies, they will feel stronger than before.

 

 

To my taste though, the level gap in Neverwinter Nights is too big. For example, in Mass Effect 3 Shepard of level 25 would perform just a little bit better than Shepard of level 20. In Neverwinter Nights, however, a level 25 Fighter will simply destroy a level 20 Fighter, the latter having no chance whatsoever. In a level 23 zone of original campaigns difficulty, the former will do quite well, while the latter will keep dying all over.

So, perhaps, a partial scaling (like in Guild Wars 2) would work. For example, when you level up, the Goblin in the zone will level up with you, however he will take only 80% of HP points he would take by a regular level up, his damage won't change as much too, and so on. Such a system isn't easy to implement, but I think it would provide both the feeling of progression and, yet, not make a well leveled character into immortal god in lower level zones.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tchos]

               

In Neverwinter Nights, however, a level 25 Fighter will simply destroy a level 20 Fighter, the latter having no chance whatsoever.

 

This is a matter of how the levels are scaled.  Level 25 is well into epic levels.  An epic character should destroy any non-epic character, as they're essentially demigods.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MayCaesar]

               

This is a matter of how the levels are scaled.  Level 25 is well into epic levels.  An epic character should destroy any non-epic character, as they're essentially demigods.

 

True, I might not have chosen the best example. But if we compare, say, level 15 Fighter to level 12 Fighter, the picture will be similar: the latter will be little more than a punching bag. In many other games the difference between levels is not as drastic as in D&D.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tchos]

               

Yes, but the games that immediately come to mind have levels that are scaled differently.  Where, for instance, the max level is 100 instead of 20-30.  In my games, epic levels aren't allowed, and you're expected to retire at level 20, rather than every adventurer going on to gain unimaginable power compared to mere mortals, so a difference of 1 level would be 5 times stronger in one of my D&D games compared to a game where the max level is 100.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MayCaesar]

               

I understand the reasoning, and this is actually why I don't like all these discrete systems, like system of levels. It doesn't make much sense from the logical point of view that a character jumps in power discretely, rather than gradually becoming stronger and stronger. I would prefer having floating point sliders which grow gradually with experience you get. But even so, in some games these jumps aren't very big, so a character may be just a bit stronger than another character of the same build. Like in Mass Effect 2: there are 30 levels, I believe, and the difference between, say, half the way (level 15) and all the way (level 30), if we ignore the differences in equipment, isn't too big. While in your example, where the player only is allowed to have levels from 1 to 20, the difference between, say, a Sorcerer of level 10 and level 20 is so big, the latter can basically go alone against 10 level 10 Sorcerers and still win.

 

In such a system, it is extremely hard to balance everything well without resorting to some kind of scaling. If you are going to get destroyed if you go somewhere at level 12, but at level 14 you will have an easy time there, then the module maker should either assure that you go there at level 13 (which can only be done by making the module extremely linear), or give up on tuning the difficulty of this part of the module. Of course, I am exaggerating, and the difference between these two levels isn't SO big - but it is still noticeable enough to be concerned.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tchos]

               

Indeed, a sudden jump between discrete power levels doesn't make sense from a realistic point of view, but it's a gameplay abstraction, and it's at least understandable as such. 

 

I think Oblivion works mostly with continuous power increase as you suggest, though, as skills steadily increase as you use them, and you gain the benefits of it immediately, without having to wait until you reach the next level.

 

However, they also included discrete levels, and level scaling was based around that, causing potential problems if you didn't focus your bonuses on level-up as everything got stronger all around you -- the result being leveling up making you weaker relative to the rest of the world.

 

I'd say that the large power difference between levels as levels increase in D&D is due to the arithmetic progression used to determine the required XP to advance.  It pretty much has to be!

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MayCaesar]

               

I totally agree that in context of D&D the power difference between levels is inevitable. And this I see as one of the limitations of the system (much as I like D&D computer games, I am not a vivid fan of the system itself to be used in video games). But we have digressed from the topic enough already. '>

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tchos]

               

True, but you're the OP, so I think it's your call whether to let things wander.  You seemed satisfied with the answers to the original question, earlier, so you could just as well let things digress.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MagicalMaster]

               

However, I completely disagree with what you say, can't see where you're coming from, and really can't take anything away from your assessment of the DA:O combat.

 

Given that *most* of the things I said were facts and not opinions, I am *rather* curious how you managed to disagree with facts.  I'm counting a minimum of eight concrete facts that have nothing to do with personal experience in that list.  So kindly explain your reasoning here.

 

You say it wasn't difficult, but you also say Alistair "got wrecked by just about everything" despite constant healing.  That's not my experience at all.  I use Alistair as my tank in heavy armour and a sword and shield.  He almost never dies with Wynne's effective heals and an occasional poultice.  No need for Force Field.  And this is all in Nightmare mode, as I said earlier, so I don't know why you keep implying it's only fun in Normal or lower.

 

Whether Alistair can effectively tank has nothing to do with difficulty.  To paint an extreme case, imagine that every enemy had 1 HP and did 1000 damage per hit.  Would having Alistair "tank" make any sense?  No, because the goal with such a game is to never get hit in the first place.  That doesn't mean said game is difficult, though, it could in fact be very easy.

 

Later in the campaign Alistair was generally able to tank, yes, but I'm referring to more like the first half of the game.  I had Alistair die quite a few times even with 2 mages pumping Heal into him, Group Heal when possible, and Regeneration ticking.  Just spiked from 100% to dead faster than the Heal cooldown.  Again, with the best armor that seemed available at the time and focusing on the defensive talents.

 

This person doesn't expect or want that.  That stinks of level scaling, and I hate level scaling.  I want progression, in that as I rise in power, I feel the effects of that power by common combat being easier, and only notable battles (named NPCs or bosses) presenting a real challenge.

 

I never once mentioned or even implied level scaling.

 

Hell, NWN's OC, SoU, and HotU had a consistent challenge without level scaling (note: I didn't say they were *hard*, I said they had a consistent challenge).  So did Aielund and Swordflight.  You go from fighting rats and goblins to trolls and giants to dragons and liches.

 

But nevertheless, regarding the armor notion, I actually think that DAO had a very good separation between difficulties. 33% more damage the enemies deal means that your build should be very well optimized, so the difference between the damage Alistair takes is as small as possible.

 

My build was pretty well optimized, and you're missing my point here.  Bioware said "Enemies on Nightmare do 50% more damage" (or some similar number, don't quote me on it).  Your mage with almost 0 armor takes like 60% more damage.  Your rogue with mild armor takes like 100% more damage.  Your tank in heavy armor takes 300% more damage.  This goes back to how armor was a flat reduction.  Ironically, this means your more vulnerable characters are impacted *less* by enemies doing more damage.

 

You'll note that in DA2 they switched to a percentage system (which *still* keeps the whole "your build should be very well optimized, so the difference between the damage Alistair takes is as small as possible" thing going) and in DA:I they have armor provide more protection on higher difficulties (so on normal the mob hits for 100 and you have 60 armor while on Nightmare the mob hits for 200 and you have 120 armor -- meaning you still need to optimize your build and improve your armor because you still take more damage but the damage increase is consistent for everyone).  Hint: they didn't switch systems from DA:O because they thought DA:O worked out well.

 

In this regard, I dislike NWN, where the tank takes all the damage, and if the tank falls, and you don't have other tanks in your group, then you are toast. I am playing Aielund Saga, act II currently, with a Sorcerer, and as soon as the tank dies or some enemies run past the tank to my Sorcerer, I might as well reload right away, since I die to 3-4 hits. In DAO, non-tank characters actually can take some beating.

 

Might I suggest getting more than 8 Constitution?  Mages in NWN are far tankier than mages in DA:O (unless Arcane Warrior) -- much easier to solo as a NWN mage (*without* a summon) than a DA:O mage.  Part of that is the defensive spells, to be sure, but you should not be dying in 3-4 hits regardless.

 

I'll even post a video of me soloing some stuff in Aielund Act II if you want as a Sorcerer -- plan would be to start at level 8 with the stuff provided (so I'd actually be worse off than if I did Act I properly and got more experience/gold/items).  Let me know which enemies are generally concerning you (not going to go to the Isle of the Dead at level 8, of course, I'd play through the Act and hit the designated zone when appropriate).

 

Also, regarding the difficulty curve, I believe both NWN and DAO are seriously flawed. In NWN, as has already been told, Very Difficult simply leads to early fight being much tougher, while later fight are almost the same. In DAO, Very Difficult makes fights against large groups of enemies incomparably harder, while fights against small groups or bosses with little support are almost the same. The first battle in Lothering is often used as an example

 

I don't consider Very Difficult to be relevant for the reasons already given by many people including me.  Hell, from my perspective NWN only has *one* difficulty (Hardcore Rules) unless the module specifically allows for more (see Sanctum of the Archmage as an example of a module with built in difficulty modifiers).  Maybe it's just my perspective but in most cases (except for certain AoE spells as a caster) I see very little difference between Normal and Hardcore in the official campaigns, at least.  Certainly nothing compared to the differences between "Easy/Normal/Hard" in most games.

 

And yes, the example you used is an excellent example of the problems with DA:O's system.  If Nightmare vs Hard means every enemy hits 50% harder and has 50% more health (meaning you need more optimized builds), fine, do it, let's go.  But it's not -- sometimes it makes no difference and sometimes you take twelve times the damage.

 

Actually, this is an interesting question. Later combat being easier does give the feeling of progression - but to me personally it also creates a feeling of waste, in that I became stronger and, as such, I should be fighting stronger enemies than before, not killing the same enemies easier. The best feeling of progression, I believe, a person gets when they kill something they couldn't even touch before. Like, again, in Dragon Age: Origins: if you go after Flemeth at level 10 on Nightmare, you will be wiped out faster than you can say "whoa, a dragon!" - but if you then return at level 18, it will be a completely different story.

 

Agreed on the "I should be fighting stronger enemies" -- which is exactly what NWN modules tend to do!

 

For the record, I'm pretty sure I went after Flemeth at level 10 (or maybe even sooner) -- only did Redcliffe and Circle first.  Given you end up at level 20ish at the end of the campaign I'm guessing I was 10ish or less.  Also, I killed Flemeth at that point after a few tries.  That was also an example of Alistair getting wrecked through two mages spamming heals on him so I just said "Screw it, this is stupid, Force Field time."  It never occurred to me that perhaps I wasn't meant to do the quest yet as *every other quest* could be done as soon as it was available.

 

So if that was the developer's intention (that specific quest was meant to be higher level unlike every other quest) I'd say they failed at communicating it.

 

To my taste though, the level gap in Neverwinter Nights is too big. For example, in Mass Effect 3 Shepard of level 25 would perform just a little bit better than Shepard of level 20. In Neverwinter Nights, however, a level 25 Fighter will simply destroy a level 20 Fighter, the latter having no chance whatsoever. In a level 23 zone of original campaigns difficulty, the former will do quite well, while the latter will keep dying all over.

 

How exactly are you coming to this conclusion?  For a typical fighter build the difference between a 25 Fighter and 20 Fighter is going to be 65 HP, 6 AB, 2 AC, and 1 damage.  That's significant, sure, but gear is going to matter far more.  Even just a few items being better on the 20 Fighter would be enough to tilt the battle in their favor (or even like 1-2 extra Heal potions).  Compared to ME3, levels matter a lot less in NWN except for spellcasters (and then only prior to level 9 spells).

 

Hell, if we're going by the original campaign's difficulty I could beat a level 23 zone with like a level 10-15 Fighter, frankly, with the right gear.

 

True, I might not have chosen the best example. But if we compare, say, level 15 Fighter to level 12 Fighter, the picture will be similar: the latter will be little more than a punching bag. In many other games the difference between levels is not as drastic as in D&D.

 

Difference there is 39 HP and 3 AB, realistically speaking.  Very, very easy for gear (or a potion or two) to outweigh.  This is actually something that people usually *complain* about -- that gear matters so much more than levels for non-spellcasters in D&D.