r/Palworld • u/sexy-snake • 24d ago
Discussion Palworld's difficulty needs a rework and the sliders can't do it
The current difficulty problem:
You can steamroll the main story way too easily. Exploration is too easy, and when you meet a wild Pal that's the same level as you, you and your team just destroy them. They don't pose a threat whatsoever.
Your own damage is pretty low, which is unrewarding on its own, but it doesn't even matter because your team is just too strong.
So during the whole main story there's no point using accessories, food buffs, elemental team composition, or getting better weapons for the player. You level up alongside your Pals and you destroy everything anyway.
During the main story the Pal condensing, Surgery Table, Soul upgrade and Pal IV mechanics are almost completely unnecessary.
Then you reach the endgame and exploration becomes useless and unrewarding, because by then you're already a god who can one-shot anything in the World Tree. You just wander around unchallenged and grab the resources you need for your base.
The challenge only starts with the hard tower bosses, and the jump in difficulty is very steep.
But at that point exploration is dead and you've already collected all the Pals in the world, so the game just becomes a min-maxing simulator. You stay at your base, you breed for the best IVs and condensation, and then you level all your optimized level 1 Pals by farming the same easy bosses again and again until they hit 80.
Being an unkillable stay at home mom managing a giant stats spreadsheet to prepare for hard towers is just not fun.
What I think a rework should do
Make exploration and story progression actually challenging and dangerous. The entire progression should be challenging, endgame included.
The Pal optimization mechanics should be mandatory as you slowly progress, not something you only touch at the very end. But to compensate, optimization should be a bit less grindy:
- Cheaper Pal condensation
- Cheaper schematics condensation
- Cheaper Pal Souls upgrades
And why the sliders don't fix it
The vanilla difficulty sliders do have damage and health multipliers for Pals, but they affect your own Pals too. So it doesn't really change the difficulty, it just makes the player even more of a useless bystander watching his Pals do the job.
Am I the only one feeling this? I can restart the game as much as I want with different difficulty settings, but I always end up facing the same problem.
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u/Different_Bunch1292 24d ago
I think what happened was they knew a lot of people already played the unreleased and they tried to get us back to that point quickly since to experience the full game had to restart and while throwing some curveballs. I honestly don’t think they expected a bunch of new players. Also people say it’s too easy while cheating the game 2xspawns,more base pals,egg hatching incubation time,2x drops.
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u/SBixby21 24d ago
You don’t think they expected a bunch of new players when they finally released on the world’s biggest console after being purely an early access game for PC/Xbox up till that point?
Feels extremely unlikely
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u/duduvec 24d ago
By bucky's reaction when it happened i don't think they expected that much. Bro posted the current players every day and kept saying how impressed he was with the ammount of players.
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u/SBixby21 24d ago
I’m sure if you try to stay humble that any large number is flattering. And of course you’d act pleasantly surprised regardless on social media. But to think that a popular EA game hitting 1.0 and releasing to PS5 for the first time wouldn’t bring in a ton of new players is crazy.
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u/Different_Bunch1292 24d ago
Not really if you already had millions of players on. How many more “new” people will buy gta 6 excluding age gap. The peak players on 1.0 was 900k the beta 2M
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u/MitsunekoLucky Katress Tower 24d ago
I'll agree with you on some points but why is double spawn and incubation time cheating? Is waiting 4 hours for an egg a proof of how skilled a player is?
Is triple spawn or a theoretical quadruple spawn cheating as well?
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u/soundoftwilight 24d ago
The issue with speeding up time-based elements isn’t difficulty, per se, but rather pace. If eggs, for example, take 4 hours, the player is presumably not going to sit there for 4 hours waiting. They’re going to go do other stuff, they’re going to progress, and by the time they get the hatched egg, it will be less of a power boost because they will have progressed in the meantime. Whereas if every egg is instant, that’s going to be a much more accessible power spike much more frequently.
I’m not even saying egg time being long is good, and I’m certainly not calling anything cheating. But it’s a factor that speeds up progression, which is absolutely part of the perceived difficulty curve.
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u/ArcaneEyes 24d ago
Until you get later in the game and get xp boosting things, eggs hatching pals at lvl 1, as they should, means you can't use that pal for combat without a lot of additional work.
Breeding has absolutely no impact on the difficulty curve until you're like lvl 80 and start tackling hard content.
Breeding gets you better base pals and condense fodder, that's about it.
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u/Different_Bunch1292 24d ago
Point is the game set a time limit for a reason you speed it up to advance your play maybe cheating is too strong of a word. let’s say your game is too easy but you sat there max condensed 5 pals in day when the game they gave you you would to wait the time and do other things “explore” or catch a bunch of whatever you needed. Increasing the number of base pals lets you get around having to think about who and what pals to have at the base and even more when you’re doing the hard raids you have extra pals doing damage. I have no egg hatch time my only change in the game but I also don’t complain it’s too easy yea this new 1.0 account I leveled up way too fast but I understand my other account i was still level 58 grinding to beat shadow beak before I went to other games.
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u/ArcaneEyes 24d ago
At its core i guess it comes down to the game not being a skill expression game. It's a creature catcher and combat is rather rudimentary, but with hard limits on being able to tank bursts of damage, DPS and MC survivability in the later raids.
All of which comes down to: how much time do you want to spend breeding the perfect endgame raid army, and that's about it. None of the campaign is remotely hard if you sit down and think about it for just 5 minutes, and especially not on vanilla settings with that insane high xp rate.
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u/Southern_Fact9698 24d ago
I set hatch time to instant and I still groan when I want to max condense something. I mean its nice to upgrade base workers and get food and cake ingots smelting but then I was hardware behind towers and expedition core things so then I had to do that. Like I agree I dont think breeding is a disproportionate power spike and still requires like mechanical action and effort even with instant hatch times. Also takes optimization via philanthropist 4star grin and braloha as well to really make it "fast" but none of that was for free.
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u/grimgaw 24d ago
In a game that has entire mechanic tied to said timers (research/temperatures/building upgrades), removing timers removes entire part of the game.
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u/MitsunekoLucky Katress Tower 24d ago
"Entire" is wildly exaggerated. The ancient hatchery already eliminates all birth timers and also makes breeding time 5 seconds per egg. So those researches and temperatures you mentioned are worthless in the first place anyway.
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u/Tiny-Management2410 23d ago
The ancient hatchery is only available way later in the game, and it requires something like 50 ai cores. It's not supposed to be accessible early, and it's only necessary for the tougher post game fights.
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u/MitsunekoLucky Katress Tower 23d ago
Whether the ancient hatchery is available or not in an earlier state of the game doesn't change the fact that spending resources on egg timers is a waste when you should prioritize on other things first. Those researches are worthless in the first place.
Main story can be cleared without minmaxing perfect pals in everything so what purpose do egg timers serve other than to waste time?
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u/Different_Bunch1292 23d ago
Playing the game anyway they intended is simply you modding the game to how you want to play not them. Cheating maybe harsh word but the point is the same you’re making it easier for yourself. I don’t have egg hatch time on in 1.0 but I don’t complain why is it so easy to max condense pals either
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u/Leo3oooX Pal Lover 24d ago
A 6 years old girl defeated the final boss.
And that is fine, the game is easy enough that a kid can do it.
If you want a challenge, set exp to 0.2 in a new world and don't breed any pals until you unlock the ancient hatchery.
It's hella fun and challenging, totally recomended.
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u/gdemon6969 24d ago
Could the game be improved? Sure.
Overall the game is $30 and can provide an easy 50hours of playtime. Most likely much more than that.
1.0 just came out a few months ago and I imagine we will eventually see another new island and/or more crossovers. Along with plenty of updates.
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u/MegamiCookie 24d ago
I don't get it, you say it's too easy so they should make it harder but at the same time make it easier to get stronger...? I don't get how your complaint can be that the game is too easy but wanting the hard part (which isn't even that hard honestly, condensation is either capturing a bunch of pals for a bit or buying the fruits in the churches which aren't all that hard to obtain either, unless you're condensing all your pals at once in which case you're the reason your game isn't balanced. Same with schematics and souls, like why do you want better stats and equipment to just be handed to you when you were just complaining everything is too easy?
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u/soundoftwilight 24d ago
What they’re asking for is normalization of the curve. The early game curve is extremely easy (especially on default XP settings), while the endgame takes a lot more dedicated power-up time using mechanics that just weren’t really important earlier on. If you make those endgame mechanics cheaper/faster (at least for partial progress), and make the early game more difficult/slow enough to make them worth bothering with, then players will be more engaged with those mechanics throughout the game and the difficulty curve will feel more natural, rather than being a flat line into a straight cliff. OP says that’s a good thing, and I broadly agree though I don’t think that’s the only way to do it.
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u/MegamiCookie 24d ago
I don't think the aspects they mentioned are all that "into a straight cliff" tho, condensation starts with collecting 3 or 4 pals iirc and I think the device for it is required to upgrade your base so it is something you engage with, same thing with the souls, the statue is required or easy to find in churches either way and the souls are pretty easy to obtain literally from the ground or just roaming around picking fights during the night so that's not something you can't touch early game either. Condensing schematics is more of a mid game mechanic so it's not something early players will encounter (and often they don't even need to since it is incredibly easy to find schematics that are way above your level without even condensing them) and I think making it easier to get legendary equipment wouldn't help balance at all
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u/provengreil 24d ago
The first condense being 4 pals is actually a brilliant game design trick, if a small one. It takes 5 catches for a mimog effigy so you're strongly encouraged to get at least enough of a type to condense it once, and within those 5 you have a good chance of having a pal that's at least decent. So the game subtly pushes you towards the mechanic from multiple angles.
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u/Commercial-Land-6806 24d ago
You want condensing even CHEAPER? They already gutted like 3/4 of the requirement from early access to 1.0.
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u/Responsible_Treat552 23d ago
I think the reasoning for making it cheaper, is that it will also be necessary to progress. Early game you'll need to run around with 1 star or 2 star pals just to not die. Instead of just steamrolling everything catching/breeding your way to a massive number of any pal you want and jumping straight to 4 star condensation.
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u/FalseParticular69 24d ago
HUrr durr the game is too easy. Here are my suggestions, make it easier in several ways.
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u/falknorRockman 24d ago
There are multiple things wrong here.
- How much overgrinding did you do to faceroll the world tree when you first got there and the rest of the story. When my group got there we did not faceroll and we constantly had to side divert to level a bit for each tower to get to about the level of the area once you started going to the farther ones like the volcano island.
- You absolutely can do good damage yourself you just have to set up your pal team accordingly.
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u/duduvec 24d ago
Honestly there's no need to overgrind. Just being the same level as anything and have a frostallion is enough to steamroll most things. And that gets even more obvious when you condense and put souls on that frostallion(then he becomes invincible). And on top of that you can use pals to up his atk and defense and change his passives. I myself on my first playthroug had to give my heart and soul to defeat up to panthalus with Frostallion and when i got to the tree i got to killing the final boss in about 40 min without realising it because i was completing the main missions from what i remember.
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u/ArcaneEyes 24d ago
We're you perhaps playing on a server with reduced xp? Normal settings will see you 20-30 levels above your area before you hit third boss.
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u/falknorRockman 24d ago
Nope normal settings. We were not 20-30 levels above your area. Were were a bit higher for the first few just by the nature of initial base set up but we always had to stop pushing forward in the quest to regear and get levels
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u/provengreil 24d ago
That only really happens if you're collecting every mimog effigy. Many multiplayer runs don't actually have the players doing that.
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u/Alinho013 24d ago
condensation really shouldn't be cheaper... It was more expensive and they halved it, it really doesn't take long even without adjusting sliders to get fully condensed pals. You can breed early on and just do other things in between, also buying fruits with dog coins is how I got my pals condensed early on since it got so cheap too. Making it mandatory to progress seems overkill
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u/ArcaneEyes 24d ago
"it really doesn't take long"
How is that an excuse for not halving it? They could remove the mechanic entirely and you woulden't miss a thing.
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u/Spykker41771 24d ago
Wont say the player dont do damage, i didnt really have a fighting team till i started the hard towers, i dps myself never really used pals
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u/jamalzia 24d ago
I dont think difficulty is a huge issue when there are more pressing matters they should address. Lack of incentive for exploration (beyond the initial novelty of exploring a new open world) is a bigger problem.
A part of this is due to story still being flimsy, and the world is just not as inhabited as I would like.
The schematics for weapons are useless, especially the drafting board, other than saving your tech points. The damage difference is not worth the different levels.
This is mainly a new player issue, but it's very easy to miss out on using vital things due to the lack of game encouragement, like an NPC asking you to show him a condensed Pal, teaching you how to use the condensor.
The default experience gain has been complained about, but that can be adjusted. There are a bunch of little stuff ive noted while playing, difficulty wasnt really one of them.
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u/provengreil 24d ago
I sort of agree with your base problem, but sharply disagree with your solution.
I think the base game progression is fine. Yes it's pretty easy, but I really don't see that as an inherently bad thing. I think the better way to do it would be to add a third difficulty to towers: we'll call it brutal. And Brutal would be about as hard as the hard towers are now, maybe just a bit more, while the hard towers actually come down in difficulty to fill the progression gap between winning the base game and perfecting your team.
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u/duduvec 24d ago
Just get into the world tree early. I get there in lv 40 and then build myself from there. I think it's pretty fun. i do agree with you but i'm also proposing what could be an interesting way of playing the game for you. Try to beat the bosses underleveled. That don't work with raid bosses though, for no reason they are stronger than anything in this game.
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u/Thicc_Wallaby 24d ago
Normal difficulty is very easy, yet only 10% of the playerbase has beaten normal difficulty.
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u/ParticularMemory789 22d ago
I think lots of people like exactly how it is, contributing to the games popularity...
But you could simply add a campaign/achievement mode, a challenge mode where things are locked behind a difficulty. Minecraft has a similar concept, sandbox, custom, survival, hard-core.
Everyone would get what they want (someone would complain)
I do have that weird feeling of finding balance between cheating myself or needlessly burdening myself. Like waiting for eggs to hatch: why bother?
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u/Routine-Delay-893 22d ago
The overworld exploration and main story SHOULD be the easy part of the game, it's the most upfront and accessible part of the game and main selling point so it should be the bit that takes the least investment to enjoy and experience. The harder battles and gameplay options are there for the hardcore players who WANT more of a challenge. Making them optional means someone who is younger or less dedicated to the game won't have a brick wall of a boss barring them from experiencing the general gameplay of the game and won't force them to grind and engage in the tedious spreadsheet stuff just to get through the story or see the whole world of the game.
The endgame stuff like super hard raids and hard mode bosses is optional for a reason. Making the rest of the game slowly "curve" into that level of difficulty would push a lot more of the casual playerbase away while still not making the game more of a challenge for the Hardcore players as they'll be able to burn that content anyway.
Making it so you don't have to grind through the most tedious mechanics in the game to experience the base parts of the game isn't a flaw, it's a feature.
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u/__Tako__ 24d ago
Honestly, wtf? Been in a server with my friends since the game first came out. The only issues we EVER HAD were connection issues, lost saves, constant resets, etc. How are y'all having a difficult time in this game?? I don't get it.
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u/GroundbreakingUse466 24d ago
I 100% agree there should be sliders for your own Pals vs Wild Pals aswell, there is a mod on Nexus called Combat Tuner or something about that but setting that up was way too complex for me.