[Sept 18] Difficulty and Level Progression

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Sickness wrote:

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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.

1) Actually, most people, given the chance to make friends and group, will. Playing in a small group or just partying up is more fun *except* when it comes time for loot. Improvements to the loot system will change that though.

2a) Ladders are not an epeen race. Nobody sits around bragging about them. They are a short lived competition for fun in a truly equal environment.
2b) As they are currently, ladders force you to play through the same content of everyone else, regardless of your kiting skills or choice of gems. If you want to play on Cruel difficulty, you still have to survive the run through normal. They don't just "Play whatever difficulty they want to".

3) and 4) You didn't even say anything worth replying to.

5) Because that accomplishes the exact opposite. The intent of the game is an experience in going through the stages. Sure, for some characters/builds it is easier than others. If you really want maximum challenge at every step, NEVER UPGRADE YOUR GEAR. Instead of expecting the devs/community to cater to your whims, make the game hard yourself.

6) Quest rewards are affected because using your difficulty settings would replace the current difficulty settings. Or do you propose 2 mini-settings on every difficulty setting? And why? See my point last question: If you are that intent on a more challenging experience, make it more challenging yourself.

I've seen nobody here that agrees with you, but you keep trying to push it, and fail to understand why anyone would disagree with you. I've got no interest in trying further, because I'm 100% confident that your idea won't go anywhere. Have fun, and remember YOU can play the game YOU want to.

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wyldmage wrote:

6) Quest rewards are affected because using your difficulty settings would replace the current difficulty settings.

I didn't bother responding to the other points because you wrote them without even understanding what I am talking about.

I am NOT asking them to remove the current "difficulty" levels.
Things would be so much easier if you would just read. If something is unclear then ask. Don't argue agaisnt something I never proposed in the first place.

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wyldmage wrote:

See my point last question: If you are that intent on a more challenging experience, make it more challenging yourself.

That is a very bad way to solve it. People like progressign their character and upgrade their gear. Asking people to tie one hand behind the back to make the game harder is silly.

Balancing the difficulty of the content is a problem for GGG, people complain that it is too hard and people complain that it is too easy every time they change it.
So to say that it's not a problem is extremely ignorant.


If you wish to continue discussing this then please make sure you actually understand what I am ssuggesting. You made it perfectly clear that you don't, so I advice you to read all my posts in this thread.

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Sickness wrote:

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

Which are?? What exactly are these 'big flaws' which nobody else is aware of? Which millions of Diablo 2 players for over 10 years have apparently willfully ignored???

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Sickness wrote:

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.

Why would it? Just cause you can add something to a game doesn't mean you should. If you want more challenge, for a start they are increasing the upper levels difficulty also its been suggested there will be Diablo 2 style resistance debuffs, these will change things considerably. But even as it is, why not just add a new playthrough called I dunno, impossible, which is the equivalent of your selectable 'hard mode'? Why does it have to be a selectable difficulty level? Why add a new mechanic when one isn't required?

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Sickness wrote:

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).

Yes they do, and yes it does.

Please name this game which is all instanced and is an MMO? Cause whatever it is, your wrong. Even Guild Wars 1 was not widely considered a true MMO. Its an online rpg, the only reason it was even called an mmo in any circles was its heavy PVP component. Without that its essentially just a group based online rpg.

And just to further push the point lets assume I agree that this game you are talking about is an MMO or at least an MMO-lite (many korean/asian mmo's fall into this category) the fact it has selectable difficulties proves absolutely nothing except that it works in a game which is nothing like this. This isn't an MMO, GGG don't even consider this an MMO. So why insist on shoehorning MMO mechanics into it?

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Sickness wrote:

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

But if you give them more ammunition in the form of 'hard modes' they will be ten times worse. Trust me, ive seen it many times.

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Sickness wrote:

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.

So why not just turn your 'hard' setting which you can only access once you've beaten merciless (or ruthless when they remove merciless) into a 4th playthrough? How in any real way does what your suggesting greatly differ from what we have now? Explain it to me cause honestly I dont fathom what on earth your going on about now...

And as far as im aware they have never said they planned to implement difficulty modes? I may be wrong, and if so Ill stand corrected but im not aware of it.

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Sickness wrote:

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.

What are you going on about? Thats the same for any game ever made, you cant legislate for the very worst and best players, you have to design a game made for lots of people round a default base setting, they have to assume on average most players at level XX will be at power level XX. You cant design a game based on the fact that a minority of people will min/max their toons to the tiniest degree and breeze through the game easily, just like you cant design it with the worst players in mind who dont pay any attention to skills and builds.

For arguments sake, lets say they implement a hard mode. All those people who are bored at the moment are probably bored cause they have played the game ALOT (not forgetting its an incomplete game which is much easier than it will be on release but ill let that slide) As soon as you implement hard mode they will play that to death for a week or two, upgrade their gear again and be bored, AGAIN. You cannot create infinite content for people who are like that, the reason ARPGs work and why so many people like them is the content and difficulty is almost incidental. This where true 'endgame' content kicks in an MMO, and I mean endgame in the original sense of the word. What happens in MMOs is when you have exhausted the scripted content (theres only so many times you can kills the same people for identical rewards/gear)
is then the endgame is made available, which usually involves heavily unscripted elements like PVP which dont rely on designers building it. Its usually a loose framework of PVP node capture games strung together in some way, thats why that exists, to keep people subbing every months when in reality there is nothing left for them to do in terms of scripted content.

Most people didnt play Diablo 2 for 10 odd years cause it was challenging, truth be told once you hit level 99 and had uber gear there was very little beyond freak deaths that could ever kill you, they added the uber world bosses and people learned to solo them within weeks. The reason ARPGs have such longevity is cause you never find perfect gear, no matter how powerful you become there is always gear to find, always.

Its your failure to understand this core concept of ARPGs that seems to be at the heart of most of your complaints.

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RodHull wrote:

Its your failure to understand this core concept of ARPGs that seems to be at the heart of most of your complaints.

Thank you Rod.
This is for you.

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wyldmage wrote:

Thank you Rod.
This is for you.

Your welcome :)

I feel a signature coming on...

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RodHull wrote:

Why would it? Just cause you can add something to a game doesn't mean you should.

Obvisouly not, which is why I devote so much time trying to explain why they should add it.

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RodHull wrote:

If you want more challenge, for a start they are increasing the upper levels difficulty also its been suggested there will be Diablo 2 style resistance debuffs, these will change things considerably. But even as it is, why not just add a new playthrough called I dunno, impossible, which is the equivalent of your selectable 'hard mode'? Why does it have to be a selectable difficulty level? Why add a new mechanic when one isn't required?

Hard mode is not supposed to be for higher level characters than normal.

How does lower resistances in merciless make my game harder on cruel?
Or in other words, how does making the game harder at high level make the game harder at lower levels?

The answer is that it doesn't. So no matter how many of the current type of "difficulty levels" (which should hereafter be called content levels) you add the problem will always remain. You cannot get around it.

You will find that there is a good reason to have my proposed system.

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RodHull wrote:

Yes they do, and yes it does.

Please name this game which is all instanced and is an MMO? Cause whatever it is, your wrong. Even Guild Wars 1 was not widely considered a true MMO. Its an online rpg, the only reason it was even called an mmo in any circles was its heavy PVP component. Without that its essentially just a group based online rpg.

And just to further push the point lets assume I agree that this game you are talking about is an MMO or at least an MMO-lite (many korean/asian mmo's fall into this category) the fact it has selectable difficulties proves absolutely nothing except that it works in a game which is nothing like this. This isn't an MMO, GGG don't even consider this an MMO. So why insist on shoehorning MMO mechanics into it?

I'll keep the MMO part for the other tread.

The game I am talking about is DDO. So yeah if I am trying to shoehorn MMO mechanics into PoE then you must surely see that DDO is an MMO.

Either way, saying that something is bad bechause it's a "MMO mechanic" is rediculous. First of all, you don't even understand what it is I am proposing, secondly you have to look at the mechanic itself, where the inspiration comes from is completely irrelevant.

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RodHull wrote:

So why not just turn your 'hard' setting which you can only access once you've beaten merciless (or ruthless when they remove merciless) into a 4th playthrough? How in any real way does what your suggesting greatly differ from what we have now? Explain it to me cause honestly I dont fathom what on earth your going on about now...

Okay, let me try to explain it in another way then, because you clearly are not getting it.
My proposed system would make it so that you can on any given level choose to do a zone on a harder difficulty. Not extremely much harder so that you need higher level characters, only harder so that it challenges good characters (build, gear and player skill) at that particular level.
So you see, this is nothing at all like adding another 'content level'.

If you have played DDO then you should know exactly what I am talking about.

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RodHull wrote:

And as far as im aware they have never said they planned to implement difficulty modes? I may be wrong, and if so Ill stand corrected but im not aware of it.

From the endgame thread:

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Chris wrote:

.....the new system will offer greater control of how challenging the players want it to be. Some players have built characters that have substantially higher damage output than other players, and we'll make sure that these characters have a challenging place to play.

Greater control over how challenging the players want it to be is exactly what I am talking about.

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RodHull wrote:

What are you going on about? Thats the same for any game ever made, you cant legislate for the very worst and best players, you have to design a game made for lots of people round a default base setting, they have to assume on average most players at level XX will be at power level XX. You cant design a game based on the fact that a minority of people will min/max their toons to the tiniest degree and breeze through the game easily, just like you cant design it with the worst players in mind who dont pay any attention to skills and builds.

Yes indeed, it's the same for every game. But does that mean they shouldn't do anything about it?? That's silly!

It doesn't have to be for the very worst and the very best, just the average in the lower half and the average in the upper half, or something like that.
There is no reason there must be one single default setting that everyone have to play on.

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RodHull wrote:

Its your failure to understand this core concept of ARPGs that seems to be at the heart of most of your complaints.

No I understand that perfectly well, it's just you who don't understand my suggestion. If you did you would see that it wouldn't change the core concept of PoE that you hold so precious (and rightfully so).


It would solve some of their problems.
Do you know why we have 4 content levels right now? It's because people complained that the game was too easy. But as I explained earlier, another content level does not make the previous ones any harder!
They made some content level harder, but then alot of people complained that it was too hard, so they had to make it easier. Ofcourse that made people complain that it was too easy.
They are still struggling to find the right balance. My suggestion would make that hell of a lot easier, and the resulting balance would be twice as satisfactory for the playerbase.

I am very pleased to hear that you are planning to do only three difficulties instead of four. It makes the game much more palatable, and I look forward to what I hope will be a more marked contrast between difficulties. Hopefully, then, there will be more of a sense of achievement and less a sense of repetition.

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Britannicus wrote:

I am very pleased to hear that you are planning to do only three difficulties instead of four.

As I always say: the difficult stages are there to replace other kind of content. By more linear gameplay a company is able to implement and offer (as a matter of efforts), the more replay/reuse could scale down - ideally lead to a huge world in which a single playthrough leads you to the top end of your char (this demands huge efforts in game design; area- and questwise; but that its possible is proved by the japanese D2-likeness: Shadowflare (even if it owns some strange issues and solutions compared to D2)

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Chris wrote:

Cruel difficulty in 0.9.6 only has nine monster levels allocated to it - which means that it's possible to basically run through and still be able to kill monsters at the end.

This problem can be solved with increasing size of levels in higher difficulties. I think, that levels at normal are OK, but on higher difficulties should be (much) bigger!

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NightElfik wrote:

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Chris wrote:

Cruel difficulty in 0.9.6 only has nine monster levels allocated to it - which means that it's possible to basically run through and still be able to kill monsters at the end.

This problem can be solved with increasing size of levels in higher difficulties. I think, that levels at normal are OK, but on higher difficulties should be (much) bigger!

He already adressed it by stating that they would increase the level range that is allocated to each difficulty.
(which is exactly what they need to do).

What exactly is a bigger area going to solve if the level range stays the same?
Skipping it by running straight to the end will take what, 1 minute longer?

They are trying to adress the problem that players are forced to skip content (because they already are too high level) or CAN skip content and still beat the difficulty level (because enemies will be 9 level higher at max, which is still doable right now).
Making the areas bigger doesnt help with the issue at hand at all.

The only thing left to do (difficulty wise) is spread out the progression of affixes through level progression.
The exact same problem applies there.
There are like 5 levels of progression per affix type, which isnt enough to properly balance out the numbers (and is bad for other areas of the game aswell).
I made a post about it on page nine of this thread:
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/18581/page/9

Basically the different affix type categories (rarity, str, int etc etc) need to have a lot more levels (allocated to a wider range of character level) and in exchange need to start with lower values, but end with much higher values.
That way you can balance difficulty not only through buffing/nerfing mobs, but also through item progression of characters.

Players will become stronger through level up, but also through each new item they discover, thus you can make enemies a lot harder.
Right now you can craft stuff at level 3 that is almost identical in terms of strength to level 53 stuff (except for sockets).