Difficulty Level Naming

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Chris wrote:

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zeto wrote:

I would personally therefore expect some sort of significant difference between the interface (condemned/Banished) that wasn't there for the other interfaces.

Could you explain in more detail what you mean by interfaces in this context, please?

An interface here is a transition that a player would experience. In this case it would be going from condemned difficulty to banished difficulty.

Due to the meanings of the 4 words and their groupings, I personally find that they group linguistically as: (Outcast/Condemned) vs. (Banished/Exiled).

I might be over-thinking this, as I often do, however if you entertain the thought for a bit, it provides a 'reason' for gameplay to change based on a storyline arc change of your character from simply a social status (Outcast/Condemned) to a physical status of being (Banished/Exiled).

What this ends up meaning from a game standpoint is that you can translate linguistic meaning via game lore/story to a physical change in their play experience. Such things might include new enemy behavior, new town/waypoint behavior, new npc behavior, new enemy abilities, new expectations, even new locations or encounters, etc. Instead of being random they would exist along what I called the interface between the two status types (Outcast/Condemned) vs. (Banished/Exiled).

I feel its important to not just choose words for aesthetics, but also to incorporate meaning that players can tie into what they are actually doing. It might be subtle to some, but lots of players in the fantasy realm like these types of semantic nuances. Having a cohesive storyline will help drive development more easily and having difficulties have literal linguistic meaning to the storyline and player story arc will also help provide direction such that it fosters purpose and connection to the fantasy world...

Players will play regardless, because we like this genre; but I'm very very sure they'd rather play through an 'interactive story' than a totally mindless random-yet-repetitive ARPG lootfest.

Connecting transitions, names, places, events, symbols, etc. are all part of creating a 'great' game as opposed to a 'good' game imo. You didn't just want to slap easy/normal/hard on your game, so you should ask yourself why? It was to be unique... now you can ask, why did we choose these particular things and can we go a step further and give it actual meaning?

My tips is

Adventures


Slayer


Immortal


Hardcore

I'll vote c.

And as an aside having just read zeto's last post i think i can guess one person who's going to get in the first wave for beta. Nicely thought out and well presented reasonings imo.

Suggestions I like the most are:
Brutal
Merciless
Vicious
Sadistic

Vicious more so than the others. It goes well alongside the (Hard), Cruel, Ruthless. But sadistic sounds good as a final difficulty setting in terms what to expect from the game and from oneself.

I'll try to add to the discussion with:

Grievous
Ferocious

While I like outcast, banished, exiled, etc. I think its a bit of a stretch and uncreative.

I like ferocious, but i don't think i could play grievous with out thinking about Star Wars lol.

hmm... i thought a little bit about this thread.

i really dislike normal modes in games, like: EASY,NORMAL,HARD,VERY HARD..
It would be awesome to hear difficulties which fit with the games name as a identical information or something.
And yes, in the thread are some good ones;)

For example i mean something like that:
(They aren´t good but you see what i mean)

-It´s like home (EASY)
-It´s not easy to return (NORMAL)
-It´s hard to return (HARD)
-You can never return (VERY HARD)
Or
-The easy way (EASY)
-The way of exiled (NORMAL)
-The way of banished (HARD)
-The way of dead (VERY HARD)

innoruuk - good ones there.
How about change the words "way" to "path" ?

Those are kind of a mouthful. I prefer a single word that gets the point across but doesn't get in the way during conversation.

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obscenerainbow wrote:

innoruuk - good ones there.
How about change the words "way" to "path" ?

-Path of Hardness, Path of Cruelness, Path of Ruthless, Path of Dead

I had those before, but chris said:"But those are all our sequel names!" and yes it was a kind of a joke;)

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tpapp157 wrote:

Those are kind of a mouthful. I prefer a single word that gets the point across but doesn't get in the way during conversation.

i like single words too but why should PoE follow the mainstream? i think it would be more epic as "Easy, normal, Hard... or Banished, Exiled and so on"

its not necessary for me but it could be awesome with outstanding difficulties. its a kind of "something new"