Difficulty Level Naming

Hard

Cruel

Ruthless

You seem to be going in a general direction of increasing the viscous and unforgiving qualities in the words (difficulties) as to show that the more daunting difficulties are well daunting, chew you up, spit you out.

The issue at hand here is that at your third defined difficulty you've already tapped the dictionary for words that come with greater amounts of those qualities.

I recommend for the fourth and (possibly final?) difficulty that you go a different route, but keep on the same path.

Hard, more viscous more unforgiving -->

Cruel, more viscous more unforgiving -->

Ruthless, all your efforts are futile, the path ahead seems unfruitful, hope is gone, -->

Hopeless

-Edit to show I realize it's been suggested before, just wanted to put some logic behind the concept

"

Vuso wrote:

Hopeless

-Edit to show I realize it's been suggested before, just wanted to put some logic behind the concept

I agree, Many of us have said Hopeless in our posts, I think thats the most popular one.

I would be happy if they picked that one

exiled or hopeless both are great

I wouldn't mind having a ladder called "God Forsaken"
no skill gems :| but you would have to make something to balance the absence of the main skills but still making It the most harder ladder

and also Insanity It's cool

You know, when I think of exiles, the place they can't go, unless they're well and truly prepared is where ever their home is.

So 'Homecoming'

It's a bit cheesy and possibly out of place. OTOH I'd find that pretty creepy if it followed Hard, Cruel & Ruthless.

I'll edit/post again if I think of something more solid.

Oh and Hopeless is pretty good.

"

Hard, Cruel and Ruthless ...

I'd say you kinda backed yourself into a corner there as there isn't a natural progression in English along those lines. It's pretty arbitrary, so one difficulty is that people will have a harder time remembering/knowing which is the harder difficulty.

Which is the problem with the 'Hopeless' suggestion, besides the part where a 'Hopeless Situation' is way, way overused and watered down. That, and 'Hopeless' doesn't fit the theme.

I'd echo 'Merciless' but how would someone know if 'Ruthless' or 'Merciless' was harder? Unless we're color coding this stuff, it's just not gonna work well.

I can think of one trick that might help, and that's using more and more colorful language, which is sorta in your progression - Generic(Hard), Interesting(Cruel), Expansive(Ruthless). The trick is to up the ante then.

So I suggest 'Soul Crushing'.

Which isn't great, but is kinda on the right track.

Or we could go with something that everyone understands..

"Very Very Very Hard"

:P

"

Vuso wrote:

Hard

Cruel

Ruthless

You seem to be going in a general direction of increasing the viscous and unforgiving qualities in the words (difficulties) as to show that the more daunting difficulties are well daunting, chew you up, spit you out.

The issue at hand here is that at your third defined difficulty you've already tapped the dictionary for words that come with greater amounts of those qualities.

I recommend for the fourth and (possibly final?) difficulty that you go a different route, but keep on the same path.

Hard, more viscous more unforgiving -->

Cruel, more viscous more unforgiving -->

Ruthless, all your efforts are futile, the path ahead seems unfruitful, hope is gone, -->

Hopeless

-Edit to show I realize it's been suggested before, just wanted to put some logic behind the concept

Well I can think of one more word that is worse than Ruthless: Machiavellian. There is also Merciless which I think is a strong choice. Heartless and Inhumane are also good.

Merciless is essentially the same word as ruthless, by way of definition, :P

Pedestrian.