Suggestion for improvements for POE 2: Difficulty Setting

Hi, it seems that POE is too tailored for the elite player, and casual players struggle and quit. I am familiar enough with online gaming to know that elite players make up a minority of the population, but a majority of the income spent, so I can understand how and why companies like GGG will design games for the elite players and let the casuals suffer and quit.

However, it doesn't have to be that way. Games for many decades have had something called a "difficulty setting". For example: Easy / Moderate / Hard / Difficult / Insanity. Along with this setting affecting monster strength, it also affects loot gained, with less/weaker loot on easier settings and more/stronger loot on higher settings.

A difficulty setting allows casual players to enjoy all of the content and play the game fully, up to their ability level, yet still provides that top tier, high-end, super-ridiculous challenge for the elite players to put their play skills and builds to the ultimate test.

What is interesting is that POE already has a sort of "1st draft" of this idea with the concept of Awakening Level. All GGG needs to do is expand that into a literal setting (under the Options screen), and have it apply to all content (story mode, maps, delve, etc.) across the board.

casual player here, NO, game isn't hard in the slightest, it IS deep but even the most basic player should manage to get to maps and end game with some time investment, that is all.

There should be no special exception to allow people to "see all the content", that is what WoW has done and it failed badly...people WANT to feel challenged, want to be rewarded for their work and feel good about their actual accomplishments and giving easy access to all content in a dumbed down form negates all that.

Map Tiers already exists.

Neither of those replies make any sense as to what I posted.

We already have Awakener Level so that you can run high tier maps "harder". Like, its literally already in the game right now.

All you have to do is move that to a toggle on the Options Screen, and then make it apply to the entire game, not just maps.

This isn't a difficult concept to understand.

diablos "/players x" command was asked for in closed beta already.

didn't make sense there since content was difficult enough already and ggg wanted players to group up to get further into endgame.

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with all the power creep it would make sense now.
but why make the life easier for those that already won the game somehow?

currently they need to look for opportunistic players that join their parties while not picking up loot to buff their item quantity, a /players command would turn poe even more into a single player game.

I'm ambivalent about a difficulty setting. On the one hand, it does allow players who have less time and less aptitude to progress further. On the other, it takes away one of the game's core strengths - that we are all playing the same game. Imagine watching a stream or a video build guide and having to wonder which level the guy is playing on. It becomes harder to compare yourself against others and assess achievements.

Personally, I've also found that having an easier setting results in me becoming a lesser player. The temptation is to put the setting just above what I can comfortably manage. That doesn't push me hard enough. It's like working out in gym. If you only push the weight you think you can manage, you never progress well. The key is to push weights that you think you can't manage.

I used to play a lot of racing games against AI. I'd set the difficulty lower so that I could win. Because that's what gaming is, a vanity project. But then my technique was sloppy. When I set the difficulty higher, and had to excel to even finish in the top six, it wasn't as flattering. But it cut two seconds off my lap times almost immediately.

So it comes down to what you want from gaming. Do you want to sit back after a session and bask in the warm glow of believing that you pwned the AI, or do you want to get better at it? That's not as rhetorical a question as it may seem. If someone just wants to play on the easiest setting and have the game affirm that they are highly skilled badasses who rekt everything, there is nothing wrong with that.

It's not a single player game. You can't just "make" difficulty levels.

They exist in form of map tiers and awakening levels. Previously they existed as a repeat of the same content in form of normal/cruel/merciless difficulties (in similar fashion to D2) - which was dropped the moment it was no longer needed, as GGG introduced a full 10-act story, mapping system and so on.

What you're asking for does not make sense in an online game.

Map tiers isn't a difficulty setting, though, any more than Hillock doing less damage than Kitava is a 'difficulty setting'. It's a natural element of character and story progression. A difficulty setting would be allowing you to choose whether you'll take a resistance pen hit of 10, 20, 30, 40 or 50% after killing Kitava. That you get a resistance penalty is not, of itself, a difficulty setting.

The ability to juice maps and Heist contracts is a faux difficulty setting, although it's a one-way thing. You can only make them harder, not easier, than in their default form. I think those arguing for a difficulty setting would want the option to de-tune, as well as juice up, the game.

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porous2 wrote:

Map tiers isn't a difficulty setting, though, any more than Hillock doing less damage than Kitava is a 'difficulty setting'. It's a natural element of character and story progression. A difficulty setting would be allowing you to choose whether you'll take a resistance pen hit of 10, 20, 30, 40 or 50% after killing Kitava. That you get a resistance penalty is not, of itself, a difficulty setting.

Map Tiers are difficulty setting though.
You could farm white maps just fine with almost any build, but you'll get less rewards than those who farm T16.

What is the difference between Map Tiers and Torment Level (IIRC) of Diablo 3? It's the same system. Higher tier -> more powerful monsters -> better rewards.

Progression setting = rewards get higher the further into the game you go, i.e. Merveil will drop better items than Hillock.

Difficulty setting = the same boss/area is easier and drops lower levels of loot.

T16 maps dropping better loot than T1 maps is not a difficulty setting, it's a progression setting. A difficulty setting would be Merveil (Nightmare mode) dropping better loot than Merveil (Don't Hurt Me mode).