Difficulty mode suggestion (Based on Interview information)

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Sickness wrote:

There are no difficulty settings.
Having a end game that is harder than early game does not constitute a difficulty setting.


Some people want a challenge, some people want it to be more relaxed.

If you want it relaxed, just play default. If you want more challenge, define your rules and make a league with it... (how they announced it there in the site; perhaps it will be possible to skip the first 3 runthroughs and start with merciless, or to complete rescale so that normal difficulty brings you to ~100)

LIehfonwaps,

I was not repplying to you specifically or addressing each and every point you made.

I was merely countering a general idea I often see repeated when the topic of "how to make the game genuinelly more difficulty" is discussed.

I spotted that when I read:
"Adding new content at these difficulty levels. As to what sorts, I'm not sure."

The problem is that you "spread" new content, as if they were seeds, through the character progression. Add one thing in low level, add another in mid level, add another in high level, add another in end game.

And the reason it cannot be, steam from a design principle: every time you waste development resources and man hours to make said new content, you want it to be experienced by everyone.

So when you suggest to add new content specifically for other difficulty levels or for players who have previously wasted hundreds of hours on previous content you are breaking that design principle, because you end up developing new content just for a piece of your player base.

Then I went ahead and aknowledged that even if you design the game expecting all your player base to go through low level, mid level, high level content. Or, in the case of Path of Exile, even if your player base go through Normal, Cruel, Ruthless, and Merciless.
Since they are still in full vertical character progression: gaining levels and upgrading gear to higher level with better affixes and stuff; the expectancy is that everyone experiences the game until they reach the vertical character progression soft cap, or "end game".

And then you add these genuine difficulty new content, like a monster that manulaly blocks your attacks in Cruel difficulty, but does not in normal, and then it goes and use a skill on you in Ruthless.

And in Merciless? oh boy, it not only blocks and use new skills, but use cover, do double backflips and roll to the sides when you attack, throw objects at your nuts, try to assassinate you in your sleep, hide and stalks you, set up traps and lure you into them, hire other players to gangbang you, try to bribe and convince you to join their cause and then finally enter in berserk mode start flying and shooting lasers from their eyes.

What happens? You have a genuinely more challenging game at each extra difficulty. Unless people experience the game in all difficulty levels, they will be missing on content. The highest difficulty level, wich is the hardest, because now the monsters became "self aware" will only be experienced by those who reach that content.

But the problem is still the same, you are wasting development resources into content that most people wont experience.

Then what they do? They go back to that same skeleton in normal difficulty and equip it with the "new content" that was supposed to be exclusive to the higher difficulty levels.

The thought process goes like this:
"Oh, we spent a lot of time and resources to develop manual block for monsters, skills for monsters, and that ludicrous merciless AI/behavior that totally brings the gameplay challenge to another level, but it all will go to waste if we just keep these only for those who have spent 200 hours playing the game already."

Then they go and add all "new content", i.e. the improvements to the monsters right away in Normal difficulty for every new player testing the game, but just tweak the numbers behind the hood: reduce the time frequency at wich the skeleton blocks, the precision, timing, area of effect, power and frequency at wich it uses skills and it got to keep all the awesome AI behavior intended for merciless, except that its reaction time makes it look its running away from the player and bang! its dead already... oh well...

Now the players took this for granted, because that is the standard now. And as they progress through the game, they do not notice anything genuinely new! See? For them it will be just numbers and stats, "oh, it blocks and uses skills more often now, but thats it".

And then you get back to the starting point. People complaining its not difficult enough.

The problem here is that if the new content is related to difficulty, then it cannot be scaled in such a way that its only experienced by a fraction of the player base: i.e. people who reach end game. Wasted development resources.
And if its applied flat to everyone from the start, then there is NO NEW CONTENT.


TLDR version.
You want the cake before or after you eat your veggies?



Yep, and thats why it sucks. Devs always give you the cake. Nobody wants the freaking veggies. And thats why the cake doesnt taste so good. And if you stick to your vision and force them into eating the veggies, people whine and cry. And go play Diablo 3.

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Llehfonwaps wrote:

I am aware there are no difficulty settings. That's what this idea is suggesting changes for.

No, you are just suggesting to expand on the current idea that early game = easy and late game = hard.

It's a really bad idea.

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Llehfonwaps wrote:

Just because everyone wants to play through does not entitle them a free ticket. Half the game could easily be designed as learning phases. By the time you hit ruthless you should know what you're doing. (with an exception to precise currency rates)

You are missing the point. Even people who knows what they are doing have differnet preferences regarding difficulty.

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Llehfonwaps wrote:

Who would want to replay a game that you can literally walk through? If you give players the option to just breeze through the game, they will do it. Very few people wish to increase difficulty for no reason other than a challenge. They expect better loot, or other rewards.

Now you are not making any sense. You just said that you wanted half the game to be easymode learning phase. How does that increase replay value? It doesn't. It makes the game boring to replay.

Higher difficulties could offer better loot and/or more experience.

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Llehfonwaps wrote:

if you give players the option to play it on easy mode, they will. They will also complain.

What do you even base this on? It's ridiculous.
I'd bet that you have never even played a game with difficulty settings.

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Llehfonwaps wrote:

As for your last comment, there are enough debates filled with your posts on optional difficulty settings. This thread is not about possible way to increase the difficulty to please everybody. What I'm looking for is why this said system could/could not work, ideas on how to avoid the massive complaints Chris received when this was initially implemented. Whether it was the wrong choice as it was decreed or if it was actually a diamond in the rough.

So I'd appreciate it if you could give feedback regarding the OP as opposed to your biased opinions on adjustable difficulty.

The current system of so called difficulties will always have the problem that some people will find it too hard and some will find it too easy.
That is why it gets massive complaints. GGG can't truly solve the problem just by balancing.

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Mr_Cee wrote:

If you want it relaxed, just play default. If you want more challenge, define your rules and make a league with it... (how they announced it there in the site; perhaps it will be possible to skip the first 3 runthroughs and start with merciless, or to complete rescale so that normal difficulty brings you to ~100)

Yeah hopefully there will be options to make the game harder.

Well, the idea of tweaking every monster at different difficulties never crossed my mind, and I agree it would be an incredibly tedious and wasteful thing to do, however effective it would be. By increasing the difficulty at different difficulties, I simply meant the standard "Numbers on the spreadsheet" (I like the term, I'm not mocking it.)

Even if it is just more hp, more damage. Adding skills and mechanics to creatures was never my intention with this post. By adding new content at different levels, I was thinking something closer to side quests, or small extra areas. Anything to occupy your time in order to ease the feel of a grind as you transition into different difficulties. Of course there will be players, veterans especially who will not need this downtime to progress, having already prepared equipment ahead of time via a stronger character.

When newer players advance to this point it should be difficult for them to progress, by adding new content, side quests for the purpose of this example. They can do these side quests as they prepare for the difficulty ahead of them. Or the player could take the time and trade with some of the equipment and/or orbs they've gathered up till this point.

Basically I wasn't suggesting something so large as to re work every creep in the game to be genuinely unique. Just an increase in difficulty (via spreadsheet) and content to ease the transitions.

I understand the logic behind not wanting to spread the content out, and make it readily and easily available to everyone who tries the game. For the most part, I agree, as well.

But I also feel in order to create a dedicated player base, some content needs to be exclusive to those who play through the entire game, as opposed to the first or second difficulty level.

Why?


I agree. Everyone has their preferences. Which is why there are so many games created. One game cannot satisfy everyone's preference. It's silly to even try.



Yes, I agree. The first part of the game would be tedious to players replaying it. But there is still the learning phase in this. IE: Getting the feel for a new class/build.

But for the most part, this is a valid point. The tedious learning phase of the game would not be very fun to replay, at least not in comparison. But there is still plenty replay value after this.



This is based on my own opinion and would hold absolutely no weight if this topic was relevant to the thread. But it is not.




So what do they do? Cave in, Turn it into a sandbox game?

I think they should hold to their own values. This was originally GGG's intent for the game. Due to complaints it was changed. As you said, the complaints are back.

I'm not trying to come up with a new system to please everybody. I'm simply showing my support for the previous one. Even with suggestions that could help solve problems GGG had found with it. (Specifically player complaints.)

The way I see it, there is already a planned system that will allow players to choose degrees of difficulty: leagues (as Mr_Cee said). The rule of thumb is that no league settings will make the game easier in any aspect, implying that there will be options to make it harder. Players can choose their league based on the amount and type of challenge they want. This also solves the problem of rankings among different difficulties.

The other suggestions about ways to vary challenge globally, such as enemies getting smarter each difficulty, are all well and good. They don't solve the personal preference issues like leagues can, though. Still, they are very good ideas, but they should only be implemented wisely, as Interesting pointed out.

On a similar subject, the repetitious progression we have now will change drastically with Act 3. There will be at least 50% more content than we have now, which will likely change our perceptions of how grindy the game feels. There might be some great enemy AI in store for us, which would make the simple-mediocre-good AI fit perfectly into the first 2 acts. In short, we should be thinking about how our propositions will fit into the release version, not just the beta version.

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Llehfonwaps wrote:

I agree. Everyone has their preferences. Which is why there are so many games created. One game cannot satisfy everyone's preference. It's silly to even try.

Just becasue you can't please everyone doesn't mean you shouldn't aim for it.

Something that is be equally silly would be to turn away all players who like the game except for the difficulty (be it too easy or too hard).

They already have mechanics for difficulty scaling, so it's not like it's a huge undertaking.

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Llehfonwaps wrote:

Yes, I agree. The first part of the game would be tedious to players replaying it. But there is still the learning phase in this. IE: Getting the feel for a new class/build.

But for the most part, this is a valid point. The tedious learning phase of the game would not be very fun to replay, at least not in comparison. But there is still plenty replay value after this

Instead of just accepting that it's tedious and boring why are you not interested in ways to fix it?

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Llehfonwaps wrote:

This is based on my own opinion and would hold absolutely no weight if this topic was relevant to the thread. But it is not.

Indeed it wouldn't, because it's wrong.

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Llehfonwaps wrote:

So what do they do? Cave in, Turn it into a sandbox game?

What? Using new ways to deal with a problem that their current way can't deal with and that they did not forsee is not "caving in".
The proper term is: "Improving the game"

Sandbox game? Now you lost me completely. Why should they turn it into a sandbox game??

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Llehfonwaps wrote:

I think they should hold to their own values. This was originally GGG's intent for the game. Due to complaints it was changed. As you said, the complaints are back.

Yes ofcourse the complaints are back, some people will always find it too easy and some too hard, no matter how they change it.

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Llehfonwaps wrote:

I'm not trying to come up with a new system to please everybody. I'm simply showing my support for the previous one. Even with suggestions that could help solve problems GGG had found with it. (Specifically player complaints.)

Perhaps you should.
The system is flawed and in your stalwart defense of it you are missing the elephant in the room.

Stop trolling my thread. You completely ignored the only comment I had a desire to answer. This IS NOT a thread about ways to improve the system. STOP pushing your biased opinions. There are enough threads out there for you to argue this point for hours. This is not a thread for you to push your biased ideas.

If you think just by going around and arguing in every thread even slightly related will get GGG to conform to your idea, you're wrong. Stop trolling. If you have no reasonable feed back for the OP, please don't respond.

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Llehfonwaps wrote:

Stop trolling my thread. You completely ignored the only comment I had a desire to answer. This IS NOT a thread about ways to improve the system. STOP pushing your biased opinions. There are enough threads out there for you to argue this point for hours. This is not a thread for you to push your biased ideas.

If you think just by going around and arguing in every thread even slightly related will get GGG to conform to your idea, you're wrong. Stop trolling. If you have no reasonable feed back for the OP, please don't respond.

So if I don't agree with you I am just trolling. Right.