Game is too easy to me and others.

As a character gets better with:
* playing exp
* good build
* better gear

There is no doubt it will be easier, but that is when you go into gear grind mode and that is a different game all together, At that point it is not "high-five" worthy to simply not be killed and to kill... rather, it is how much of the pie can you eat at one time.

How fast can you cut through a big group of mobs? cause your gonna need to beat down an ocean of them to find what you need.

and if you can cut them down fast, then how much Item Quality and Item Quantity do you currently have? If your a bad ass with your current non Item Quality gear, then big deal.. see if you can be a cow-boy with each piece having a heavy Quality/Quantity rocking.

So its not: "Look at me, I can make it through!" it is: "Look at me, I can group up ten mobs at a time and mow them down quick while maintaining 200% I.Q.

Few players are real farming machines and the difficulty is just right.

I think an issue that most ARPGS these days have, is the balance of ‘gear check vs player skill check’, most ARPG games are not hard – they are mostly about spending time to get the gear to defeat the content, which gives you better gear to defeat the content faster before moving onto the next difficulty. These days, I think this is something that more players are becoming less satisfied with – and they want to have more room for ‘player skill’ when it comes to describing the difficulty of an encounter.

Grinding easily farmable content for 100 hours to get the gear to progress is not hard – it’s time consuming.

Being an ARPG like this – there will always be a gear-check aspect, however should difficulty only come from ‘X build + Y gear = Win’, or should there be a larger element of player skill? Personally, I’m in the camp of finding ways to make player-skill matter a bit more. So it’s more of ‘player skill matters, with gear/build increasing the margin of error allowed’.

In a game like this, the player-skill component largely comes down to strategic use of skills, and manually dodging attacks. The boss in A2 is a good example of this – the boss attacks are strong, but they are also telegraphed so you know to get out of the way. If you have crap gear – being on your toes, you can still take him out. With good gear – you can withstand a few hits from his stronger attacks without instantly dying. I think this type of game play needs to find its way into other encounters somehow.

To try and increase the game difficulty by simply cranking up enemy damage is a rather uninspired way of making things harder – it just means that you grind for gear longer to progress, but does not require you to be a better player.

One way to increase difficulty without just cranking up damage numbers, is improving enemy AI, adding new enemy types, new environmental hazzards/etc to each new difficulty.

For example, maybe take Brutus as a 'boss getting harder'.

Normal: Leave as is
Cruel: Floor is now rigged with traps that go off in a pattern, it's a slow/easy to learn pattern, and if you get caught - does damage, but not loads
Ruthless: The traps now trigger faster, and if you get caught in one - you best have good gear or it will be a quick death. The 'player skill' element is learning/recognizing the pattern that the traps fire and avoiding them, the 'gear check' is having gear to survive getting trapped in one.

Then maybe an 'AI Gets harder' for normal enemies.

Normal: The enemies in Act 1 act as-is, no major change
Cruel: The enemies now flank you from behind , need more situational awareness of your level/etc to avoid getting boxed in too often
Ruthless: The enemies now use an ability to create a wall around you to restrict where you can move - as the wall is forming there is a telegraph (ground crumbling around you) that if you pay attention to - you can move out of it's way before you are boxed in.

Maybe enemies start having weak-spots - big-baddy has a giant shield and heavy hammer, when he does a swing - it leaves him in a vulnerable state - need to try and 'bait' the swing out of him to land your hits (think Havel from Dark Souls). In lower difficulties the opening is a long one, and if the hit connects - not so big of a deal. In the final difficulty - the opening is smaller, maybe the pattern changes a bit to keep you on your toes.

That said, you are going to have some stat-driven RPG purists that will decry a bigger focus on player-skill and would rather see everything be purely stat/gear driven -- but personally, I think that is starting to become an outdated way to approach building ARPG games.

its a fucking arpg, the pve shouldn't be so mind numblingly difficult, the fact that you died at all means it obviously wasn't too easy because you wouldn't have lasted in hardcore.

"

TiltedAxis wrote:

its a fucking arpg, the pve shouldn't be so mind numblingly difficult, the fact that you died at all means it obviously wasn't too easy because you wouldn't have lasted in hardcore.

Every aRPG I've ever played has been down right brutal in the final difficulty, so I'm not sure what you're talking about. Merciless just wasn't quite as merciless as I was expecting. That's all. No need to be rude about it.

I have changed the topic to better reflect OP's sentiments.

"

Charan wrote:

I have changed the topic to better reflect OP's sentiments.

Why are you a moderator? What's with the censorship? If he wants a certain title why not let him? Who cares if this one is more fitting? I don't get it.

"

BrecMadak wrote:

Stop advicing OP to play in HC. HC offers nothing any different mechanics in terms of difficulty than Default League, and you know this !

What it only gives you not to die at all costs, and play very carefully.

You could continue playing on default league if you die, i wouldn't even call it as "hardcore" as it must had been, but that's different story.

Most importantly when "Nerf this ! Nerf that !" whinny threads are created no one gets surprised but very few persons only. On the other hand some people could even think that OP may be a troll or a worse one, as happened in this topic. Why is that big difference ? Why one could not state his/her opinion regarding game was easy, just because some could not manage to overcome ?

It is a known fact that difficulty levels are not true and are totally out of place and don't imply their names as they should be.

For these reasons i concur with OP.

I find it funny in most posts you make you complain about people whining yet you seem to cry the hardest. If the game is to easy why not try another game or perhaps something that really is a challenge...like real life.

"

Stop advicing OP to play in HC. HC offers nothing any different mechanics in terms of difficulty than Default League, and you know this !

I, for one, would drive very differently irl if i couldn't die.

Even with the same world rules, mechanics change if death is permanent.

I felt like normal was harder than cruel and whatever was after cruel, but about the same as merciless. That was mainly my poor choice in early passive choices. I had an end build in mind, which I followed to conclusion and am quit happy with, but I took the harder earlier paths and as a result normal was more difficult than it could have been.

I still found it pretty easy. All in all I think the game has a nice, nearly flat difficulty curve. The higher difficulties aren't so much about actually being harder--just playing through and continuously becoming a stronger character and better geared.

"

RavenousRaven wrote:

"

Stop advicing OP to play in HC. HC offers nothing any different mechanics in terms of difficulty than Default League, and you know this !

I, for one, would drive very differently irl if i couldn't die.

Even with the same world rules, mechanics change if death is permanent.

You would probably just drive like you were 16 again? I would :)