Difficulties Ahead - A Disciples: Liberation Dev Diary
In the following blog post FRIMA Studio is taking you into their developers’ den, granting you some rare insights about how the team is working on the feedback we’ve received for Disciples: Liberation so far – giving you a glance into the crystal ball regarding an upcoming update, including the hallowed difficulty options y’all are waiting for.
Disciples,
Since the launch of Disciples: Liberation, the community – you guys – has been very generous with constructive feedback. First and foremost, we want you to know that we read your feedback, and we can’t even tell you how much we appreciate it and how much this helps us in striving to provide the best possible game experience for you.
One thing that keeps being mentioned is that the game can be a little too easy – especially for more experienced tactical players. Well, we heard you loud and clear and the team dived deep into the backbone of Disciples: Liberation to find out how we can address this.
We discovered a few things we’d like to share with you, as we feel that those might be the reason for this feedback:
- The conquer function – which is meant to avoid trivial battles – is currently too generous and allows you to conquer battles that are not supposed to be that easy. On top of that, it has a snowball effect that allows you to gather XP fast, level up faster and conquer even more battles. This exploit seems convenient, but it can ruin the game by missing out on great battles and making it feel too easy.
- We balanced the game expecting players to play the main quests and some side quests. It turns out that the majority of you clear most of the regions completely by doing the main quest and all side quests. As expected, completing a lot of quests means levelling up faster.
- These two things put together lead to a situation where many players have a lot of power, especially towards mid and end game content. We intended to make this game very empowering and allow players to have very strong armies, especially as they reached the end. That being said, and based on your feedback, we came to the conclusion that the power level in real play might be too high and a little too fast to reach within the game balancing in place at launch.
So, here’s what we are currently working on and what you can expect in a future update:
- A broader difficulty range in each region for more diversified - yet still manageable – challenges.
- Conquer function will be made more selective, and battles against armies of equal level to Avyanna won’t be possible to conquer anymore. As intended, easier fights will still be conquerable.
- We will scale the general difficulty to make it more challenging, especially toward mid and end game content.
- We are taking the opportunity to improve the balancing of boss battles as well which will make them more tactical. Players can expect bosses to pack a punch, so you’ll need to be ready for it!
- City resources will be rebalanced and players can expect less trips to the city to gather resources as the vault's capacity will be increased!
- And, last but not least: We acknowledge that every player has different taste and expectations when it comes to game difficulty- so with the planned free update, Disciples: Liberation will soon feature four difficulty levels available for new and existing (save) games alike.
You will be able to choose how you want to play your game, from the Story mode (easiest) which is a smooth way to explore and enjoy the grim world of Nevendaar, to the Brutal mode (hardest) which is for experienced tactical players looking for challenges, with tougher and more powerful enemies and which will grant no healing at the end of turns and battles. 
We at Kalypso and FRIMA are dedicated to Disciples: Liberation and working with and for the community is a priority. We are grateful for the support, enthusiasm and constructive feedback we’ve received from you and we truly hope you’ll enjoy these upcoming improvements. We’re looking forward to hearing your continued feedback!
