Recommend Dialing Down Veteran Difficulty Level

[kschur]

First of all, great game. My suggestion is to reduce the difficulty of the Veteran skill level a bit because after playing the game for a good while I find myself in a continuous death spiral due to a lack of funds. I am unable to upgrade equipment other than through capturing gear in battle, and can only afford to hire the cheapest mercenaries, which die quickly. This leads to continuously re-fighting battles to avoid catastrophe, which I think goes against the spirit of the game, and leads to frustration. Perhaps an Normal difficulty level would be appropriate.

[Rahziel]

In difficulty settings Veteran equals Normal.
If it’s too difficult to stay afloat – try beginner level where you’ll have more funds, lower prices and fewer enemies.

[kschur]

Well I find the Beginner level modestly challenging, but the Veteran level to be exceedingly difficult and frustrating. So this tells me that the developer team should perhaps consider tweaking the game balance to add more cash to the Veteran level.

[Wargasm]

“Beginner” level was called “Normal” until quite recently. I’m not sure whether the actual difficulty has been altered since then. Whatever the difficulty level, there can always be points in the earlier part of the game where you’re very short on crowns and tools and in danger of being swarmed by a variety of enemies within a short space of time. It’s just that, on Normal/Beginner difficulty, you’ll have probably spent/wasted crowns on more recruits and equipment, and your enemies will be not quite so numerous and (towards the start) not so well-armed/protected, so that you’ll be more likely to come through and eventually reach the point where potential “ambush” parties run away from you and you always have (or can quickly acquire) an excess of crowns to spend on almost any single item/recruit you desire. Depending on the luck of map generation, resources/opportunities close to starting location, suitable/awkward contracts/enemies spawned, the actual difficulty of individual campaigns on the same difficulty setting can vary quite a bit.

[Ned Stark]

In my opinion, some games you simply need to start at a lower difficulty. I don’t think many people start playing X-COM on “Classic” difficulty. Also, FTL: Faster Than Light may be another example of this, if any of you have heard of this game (though FTL has a simple tutorial that lets you gain your bearings, and Battle Brothers just gives scenarios, then promptly drops you on your head).

Since I was more stubborn than a mule when I first started playing Battle Brothers, I did not ever start on Beginner, but instead had about 30 hours of death spiraling, as you mentioned above.

In short, once you learn how to play well, then I do not believe that Veteran is overwhelming so much as it is challenging.
I do believe that an actual tutorial should be added to the game though, hopefully with an option to enable/disable it.

"It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live." ~Marcus Aurelius

Game: "Characters with a height advantage against their opponents are harder to hit"
Me: "That's not true, and my short axeman is living proof!"

[RusBear]

Yes, I agree – need a tutorial and there should be the first line by big red letters : “this is a game where you have to think … it is desirable to use head for it. And only then post in Steam your cry – nerf goblins and orcs and all rest! ”

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