[Sept 18] Difficulty and Level Progression

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Sickness wrote:

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wyldmage wrote:

At least not until someone has completed the game on all base difficulties with direct play-throughs.

Why not?

For the reason the dev's decided to play the game exactly the way they desired, at least once.

(maybe, to have some time between slashing, to look at and be impressed from the environment...)

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Mr_Cee wrote:

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Sickness wrote:

First of all, I'm not talking about boundless scaling. Two different settings would be enough, normal and hard.

Hm, so as a sort of the MXL "Hard Mode Charm"? imaginable.
But, at competetive multiplayer, it could have not much reward, for its influences on competition and economy.
And even so, it should not be available at the very start, maybe as wyldmage said, after completing the game with a char. (at least, like the restriction at D2's hardcore mode, with any char)

I'm not sure what MXL "hard mode charm" is.

Simply put, when you enter a zone you can choose to enter on normal or hard, where hard is designed for good players with good builds an/or good gear (I.E. players for whom the content otherwise is completely trivial).

Obviously the reward has to be balanced.

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Mr_Cee wrote:

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Sickness wrote:

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wyldmage wrote:

At least not until someone has completed the game on all base difficulties with direct play-throughs.

Why not?

For the reason the dev's decided to play the game exactly the way they desired, at least once.

(maybe, to have some time between slashing, to look at and be impressed from the environment...)

What do you even mean by that? It will still be the same game, just a more appropriate difficulty (if you find normal too easy and prefer it more challenging). What is the downside?

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Sickness wrote:

I'm not sure what MXL "hard mode charm" is.

An item which allows you to set up the life + damage values of the monsters according your needs in multiple steps.

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Sickness wrote:

Obviously the reward has to be balanced.

This.

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Sickness wrote:

It will still be the same game, just a more appropriate difficulty. What is the downside?

It influences the droprates (to add a reward) and also the experience curve to different values compared to unswitched play. (or it would be meaningless and people would complain about missing rewards)

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Mr_Cee wrote:

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Sickness wrote:

It will still be the same game, just a more appropriate difficulty. What is the downside?

It influences the droprates (to add a reward) and also the experience curve to different values compared to unswitched play. (or it would be meaningless and people would complain about missing rewards)

I still don't see the problem.

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Sickness wrote:

God forbid they do something differently...

Yeah god forbid it if its been tried and never succeeded before. God forbid it if the current system is perfectly good and even loved by most ARPG fans. Its almost like reinventing the wheel just for the sake of it when the current perfectly good round ones are working just fine.

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Sickness wrote:

There is no reason we can't have that and selectable difficulties.

Except that we dont need selectable difficulties

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Sickness wrote:

That is a load of crap. How are they easy to exploit??
What is problematic with them?

Just serve to segregate players? LOL so all you can see in selectable difficulties is that they segregate players? Then you don't undersand the first thing about it.

And yet again you stick to your ridiculous notion that ARPGS are somehow soo different from MMOs (this is an MMO, just not an EQ clone mmo) and that the world consists of MMO fans and ARPG fans,
It's getting very old.

And yet again you fail to see the difference (and they are many and HUGE) between this game and an MMO. For a start it doesnt have persistent game areas, even on cut-throat which is the closest it gets to being an MMO the areas themselves aren't persistent. That in itself prevents it being an MMO. By your definition Diablo 2 and COD are MMOs - and they just are not im afraid despite how wise you think you are.

So please explain to me how they dont segregate players? Cause all the MMOs and online games ive played with difficulty settings just had tons of chat spam about wanting groups for 'hard mode' only and then the inevitable elitism that goes with it, cause then people want to vet and interview potential team members to make sure they are 'hardcore' enough. Then you end up with a lot of casual players who never get to experience the best content cause its monopolised by a load of elitist pr**ks. This is fact, this will happen if they introduce it. It fosters an unhelpful and divided community whether you think it does or not, ive seen it in countless games.

And yes of course this game will be played by ARPG and MMO fans alike, but it is at its core and ARPG. I wouldnt go spamming the WOW boards about how they should add random loot tables/generators to rival a game like Diablo 2 cause it just wouldnt work in the framework of that game.

And they are easy to exploit for a number of reasons. But mainly cause you can select an area which is easy for you and then just uber build a toon (including gear) just to run that instance ad-infinitum at the highest level with no risk of failure. Take the areas with high zombie counts for instance, those are a cakewalk for archers and mages. But look if you cant see that then you clearly arent very experience at these sorts of games or any online game for that matter despite how you like to appear.

And bottom line is we just dont need them, what is wrong with the current system? And when they add Act 3 and then make the optional side areas much harder + implement all the leagues properly how is that not enough, why do you need selectable difficulty levels on top of that?

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RodHull wrote:

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Sickness wrote:

God forbid they do something differently...

Yeah god forbid it if its been tried and never succeeded before. God forbid it if the current system is perfectly good and even loved by most ARPG fans. Its almost like reinventing the wheel just for the sake of it when the current perfectly good round ones are working just fine.

The current system has big flaws. If you choose not to see them then that's your problem.

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RodHull wrote:

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Sickness wrote:

There is no reason we can't have that and selectable difficulties.

Except that we dont need selectable difficulties

Need? No, sure. But it would still be a very good addition. Finding good gear and having a good build makes most of the game trivial. I'd much rather play a more appropriately challenging game.

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RodHull wrote:

And yet again you fail to see the difference (and they are many and HUGE) between this game and an MMO. For a start it doesnt have persistent game areas, even on cut-throat which is the closest it gets to being an MMO the areas themselves aren't persistent. That in itself prevents it being an MMO. By your definition Diablo 2 and COD are MMOs - and they just are not im afraid despite how wise you think you are.

Not all MMOs have the WoW style open world areas. Just because everything except the towns are private instances doesn't mean it's not an MMO. I can name a game that works exactly like this, but is most definetly an MMO (it also has selectable difficulty settings, which works extremely well).

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RodHull wrote:

So please explain to me how they dont segregate players? Cause all the MMOs and online games ive played with difficulty settings just had tons of chat spam about wanting groups for 'hard mode' only and then the inevitable elitism that goes with it, cause then people want to vet and interview potential team members to make sure they are 'hardcore' enough. Then you end up with a lot of casual players who never get to experience the best content cause its monopolised by a load of elitist pr**ks. This is fact, this will happen if they introduce it. It fosters an unhelpful and divided community whether you think it does or not, ive seen it in countless games.

Elitist pr**ks will be elitist pr**ks with or without selectable difficlty settings.

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RodHull wrote:

And they are easy to exploit for a number of reasons. But mainly cause you can select an area which is easy for you and then just uber build a toon (including gear) just to run that instance ad-infinitum at the highest level with no risk of failure. Take the areas with high zombie counts for instance, those are a cakewalk for archers and mages. But look if you cant see that then you clearly arent very experience at these sorts of games or any online game for that matter despite how you like to appear.

As I said in a previous post, I'm not talking about boundless scaling. Two different settings would be enough, normal and hard.
But your point is moot anyways, pre-endgame it would be pointless to do what you say, and at endgame they are already planning this.

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RodHull wrote:

And bottom line is we just dont need them, what is wrong with the current system? And when they add Act 3 and then make the optional side areas much harder + implement all the leagues properly how is that not enough, why do you need selectable difficulty levels on top of that?

The problem with the current system is that there is a huge disparity in power between characters even at the same level. If there only is one difficulty setting then some people will have it way too easy and get bored, or some will have it way too hard and get bored.

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Sickness wrote:

As I said in a pervious post, I'm not talking about boundless scaling. Two different settings would be enough, normal and hard.
But your point is moot anyways, pre-endgame it would be pointless to do what you say, and at endgame they are already planning this.

If you agree that it is pointless to do this before endgame, then what's the harm of making a "hard mode" available ONLY after completing the game on the 4 (soon to be 3) difficulties?

That way you finish the game as its designed to be played, and then can play each stage on the special hard mode for slightly better rewards and much higher challenge.

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wyldmage wrote:

If you agree that it is pointless to do this before endgame, then what's the harm of making a "hard mode" available ONLY after completing the game on the 4 (soon to be 3) difficulties?

What? That has nothing to do with what I said was pointless.

The harm is that if you find the game too hard or too easy you might not enjoy it as much.

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wyldmage wrote:

That way you finish the game as its designed to be played, and then can play each stage on the special hard mode for slightly better rewards and much higher challenge.

Why can't it be designed to be played in either normal or hard mode? The hard mode doesn't have to be special, or much harder.

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Sickness wrote:

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wyldmage wrote:

If you agree that it is pointless to do this before endgame, then what's the harm of making a "hard mode" available ONLY after completing the game on the 4 (soon to be 3) difficulties?

What? That has nothing to do with what I said was pointless.

The harm is that if you find the game too hard or too easy you might not enjoy it as much.

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wyldmage wrote:

That way you finish the game as its designed to be played, and then can play each stage on the special hard mode for slightly better rewards and much higher challenge.

Why can't it be designed to be played in either normal or hard mode? The hard mode doesn't have to be special, or much harder.

You have a bunch of people explaining this to you, but you still don't get it.

1) it will create division between experienced and new players.
2) it will throw a wrench into any ladder races
3) it breaks the flow of the game when you have to select a difficulty every zone
4) it serves no real purpose, because the intent of the game is to experience it as the difficulty increases (not starting on Merciless)
5) the only time when most people want the "hard" difficulty is once they have finished the game
6) it throws another wrench into quest rewards (which are currently multiplied by difficulty completions, and you'd be reducing that

Need more reasons? I can keep going.

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wyldmage wrote:

1) it will create division between experienced and new players.

Not really. People generally only level alone or with friends anyways.

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wyldmage wrote:

2) it will throw a wrench into any ladder races

Why? People who are interested in the ladder epeen race will play on the difficulty that has best exp gain. What is it to them if there are other difficulties?

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wyldmage wrote:

3) it breaks the flow of the game when you have to select a difficulty every zone

That's trivial. Make it so that you choose a standard setting and will always enter zones on that unless you ctrl click and specificly select.

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wyldmage wrote:

4) it serves no real purpose, because the intent of the game is to experience it as the difficulty increases (not starting on Merciless)

Have you not been reading?

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wyldmage wrote:

5) the only time when most people want the "hard" difficulty is once they have finished the game

Why not just give every monster 1 hp and 1 damage then?

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wyldmage wrote:

6) it throws another wrench into quest rewards (which are currently multiplied by difficulty completions, and you'd be reducing that

What? How can anything about my suggestion possibly affect quest rewards?? That doesn't make any sense.

Just to be clear, I am not saying that the current way of playing through the content at a higher level should be removed.

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wyldmage wrote:

Need more reasons? I can keep going.

Before you do, make sure you actually understand my suggestion.