Hi there,

as some friends and I where talking about the game, we where wondering why it was so easy. It was fun, no question. But there was no challenge. When we did the urgent quests we tried to do them on hard. And there wasn't really a difference. We where around level 23-26 as most of the other players (some where even under level 10).

Two of us then did expeditions on hard. Enemies where at least 10 levels above us. But they died like flies.

Did they make it easier so you can progress faster to the endgame, or did they scale it down for the beta? And does it get more challenging in the end/newer content. Maybe someone, who plays the JP version can enlighten me

@JimmBimm last time i played JP in 2018 the early content did seem quite faster than 2013ish, but it does get harder as u get closer to endgame. Im guessing its to speed up the progression due to the increase in content and to make it slightly funner/less of a chore to lvl other classes?

@AnonMarc said in Balancing:

@JimmBimm last time i played JP in 2018 the early content did seem quite faster than 2013ish, but it does get harder as u get closer to endgame. Im guessing its to speed up the progression due to the increase in content and to make it slightly funner/less of a chore to lvl other classes?

I'm going to go on a limb and say that Normal and Hard, like in PSO, aren't terribly different from each other in terms of difficulty. As long as you keep your main stats and defense up as much as you can get them, things within a ten-level difference will drop fairly easily.

Bosses will still hit appropriately hard on Hard and higher, though. So don't think that running through all the rest with ease will make the game a cakewalk. It's always the people who know full well how to play their class at the fastest they can and know how to not get hit (unless they run a risk build that buffs damage at low HP, and then they soak a bit of pummeling to get that engine moving) that do best overall.

Are attacks from boss fights easy to read? Generally. Are some of us stupid enough to still eat those attacks? In my case, definitely. Greed is not a good thing to push for, especially if you find yourself not playing with others.

So, where you currently sound like you are is fine. If even Very Hard and higher offer no challenge or risk, then it might be time to address if things are balanced. Still, this isn't a game that has or uses PvP, so whether or not it's balanced isn't really a concern except for the "MUH METAZ" crowd.

Everything up to SH isn't very hard in the sense that you can kill most enemies pretty fast, but they will hit harder with each difficulty progression.

For the lower difficulties, all it takes is 1 out of 12 to be OP to annihilate the entire Urgent Quest (except Mining Defense, need at least who can carry the dead weight ideally)

When the full game is released you will get to experience the frustration if being OP on Super Hard and then suddenly being super weak on Extra Hard.

@John-Paul-RAGE said in Balancing:

Everything up to SH isn't very hard in the sense that you can kill most enemies pretty fast, but they will hit harder with each difficulty progression.

For the lower difficulties, all it takes is 1 out of 12 to be OP to annihilate the entire Urgent Quest (except Mining Defense, need at least who can carry the dead weight ideally)

When the full game is released you will get to experience the frustration if being OP on Super Hard and then suddenly being super weak on Extra Hard.

Or doing the required quest do be in expert rank. Last time they share how many player got Expert, its was like 20% or less player...

@Robsynclair64 Ive played PSO but not enough to get a feel for the difficultly curve. But sound somewhat like PSU its easy if u understand how things work but harder otherwise. Tho potentially even the highest difficulty could be made easy with the right build, gear and player skill.

As for PVP there is a mode for it but its not a crucial part of the game from what i understand. The PVP gear (char stats also?) is balanced specifically towards pvp and nothing else . Do take this info with a grain of salt as i did not play much of it due to the latency issues.

@I-UsagiTsuki-I I remember the Heaven and Hell expert block quest, but I am not sure what they did after that.

I barely managed to clear those as a Ranger main. Had to level up HU subclass to get the survival skill.

@John-Paul-RAGE said in Balancing:

@I-UsagiTsuki-I I remember the Heaven and Hell expert block quest, but I am not sure what they did after that.

I barely managed to clear those as a Ranger main. Had to level up HU subclass to get the survival skill.

Well now they took away the Extream quest 4 player and put only the solo one, and you have to clear the solo trigger Mother/Deus.

With the NA version using a modified version of JP's Episode 6 balance, a lot of the early game content can be easily blazed through on both the Normal and Hard difficulties. It was likely intended to bring new players into the endgame faster with the myriad of other catch up mechanics, although they have tried to buff the values of enemies on the Normal difficulty.

Very Hard is likely where enemies will start hurting quite a bit especially since we're all starting anew basically, and Super Hard and beyond is where you'll usually have to make just a little effort to get through. Then again this all depends if NA will also have the insane amount of endgame freebies that JP gave away to basically remove all challenge until up to their latest difficulty.

I know in some games I've seen people who hyper-optimize and min/max out the wazoo, then complain everything is too easy. "Try playing w/o the over optimizing, like most people" I say. They think it should be impossible for those who don't min/max, and hard for those that do. I say "meh" to them. If people feel they aren't being challenged enough, they should try leaving their best equipment at home, go out with starter stuff/no armor. switch to a skill tree with no skills, or something.

@Seedenator said in Balancing:

I know in some games I've seen people who hyper-optimize and min/max out the wazoo, then complain everything is too easy. "Try playing w/o the over optimizing, like most people" I say. They think it should be impossible for those who don't min/max, and hard for those that do. I say "meh" to them. If people feel they aren't being challenged enough, they should try leaving their best equipment at home, go out with starter stuff/no armor. switch to a skill tree with no skills, or something.

cool

PSO2 for awhile now has quite a hard time trying to balance the early game for awhile now, mostly due to the constant class buffs that even if you were to go in with 1* equipment you can still destroy everything without even looking really. At least if they don't go crazy with gearing players up Very Hard and above might normalize the difficulty a bit.

Very hard (40+) and above is when bosses start doing actual mechanics and can start one shotting you.

I died five times to a boss in very hard.

Agreed tho. Game was almost too easy up until that part.

Had a forest boss 1 shot me in zone 2. Was a capture with no one else around. Let it get a little close and it grabbed me and smashed into ground. GG

@JimmBimm said in Balancing:

Hi there,

as some friends and I where talking about the game, we where wondering why it was so easy. It was fun, no question. But there was no challenge. When we did the urgent quests we tried to do them on hard. And there wasn't really a difference. We where around level 23-26 as most of the other players (some where even under level 10).

Two of us then did expeditions on hard. Enemies where at least 10 levels above us. But they died like flies.

Did they make it easier so you can progress faster to the endgame, or did they scale it down for the beta? And does it get more challenging in the end/newer content. Maybe someone, who plays the JP version can enlighten me

So how it usually works is once you're around level 75 or so, that's when the game starts to present a challenge for some. Early difficulties aren't going to pose any difficulty for veteran MMORPG players. The difficulties goes as follows:

• Normal
• Hard Lv.20+
• Very Hard Lv.40+
• Super Hard Lv.50-55+
• Extra Hard Lv.75 (both main and subclass)
• Ultra Hard Lv.85 (both main and subclass)

Extra Hard is really where some players start struggling unless they build their character right. Either way, when in a full MPA (multi-party-area) you're never really going to have any trouble because carrying is very much a thing all the way until Lv.95

However, there are going to be challenges that only 4, 8, or 12 players can participate in. I'm not going to spoil anything for the new players, but just know that there are options for challenges later on in the game. I tend to enjoy running Alliance MPAs only. Aka MPAs with just my alliance. That way we have voice comms and proper communication for the quickest effective clear. Most of our alliance has been playing since beta jp. But we're going to have a group available for newer Alliances / players to chat in in-case they have any questions. It'll be a no-strings attached group so you don't feel the burden of having to choose between joining an Alliance with people you know vs playing with knowledgeable players. Best of both worlds