I've got a comment regarding the difficulty of the game, not regards earlier player levels though, but rather for the more experienced characters, around player level 25 and up...
As I have experienced it, the monster difficulty and the abilities of your character, with some exceptions, increase at the same rate, with the consequence that largely, it is as difficult to complete the game with a level 20 character as it is with a level 30 character.
The exceptions: as some of the monsters progress they become much more effective in killing you in one strike. For me, first it was the Hobgoblin Maniacs (or was it the brawlers..?) that were able to end me with a single, sudden firey blow, and then, as my chacter gained some player levels, it was the Unstable Gaseous Balls that instant-poisoned me to death. (this is the experiences of a magician chacacter, so perhaps not that much on HP or a very heavy armour)
Personally, what I would wish for, is that the more passive difficulty of the monster would increase more, e.g. if their HP curve were steeper than the damage curve of your chatacter, and/or that the number of monster progessed more clearly as your player level progresses. In that way it is increasingly challenging to complete the game the more experienced your character is, but not only in the sense that the risk of getting insta-killed increases, but rather in the way that you have to fight the monster more, and/or fight more monster going through the dungeons.
As an exampel: when I first went up against the Tentacled Horror, guessing my character was player level 15 or so, it took an endless amount of fireballs to defeat it. 10 player levels later, having been able to max out on charge, cloth and staff in addition to the already maxed fire ball (and, I guess, having found better equipment to add even more to the magic stats) the TH went down after about five hits. So, in 10 player levels the amount of damage my character can deal has increased far more than the damage the monsters can withstand. Of course, in one sense this seems fair, it reflects that the character is becoming better and is better skilled and better equipped. Still, I think it could be worth considering balancing things differently, at least for characters approaching and beyond pl.lvl 30. I´m thinking that finding the best equippment, maxing your skills and so on need not to be a matter of being increasingly able to dominate the monsters, but rather to what you need to do to barely survive.
Thanks, hoping that the post is possible to follow OK |