What about; locked difficulties till completing the previous one?!

Hey, community..
today i want to discuss about the threads name;) what do you think?

i really like it, because you have to do something to get in a new difficult. games like baldurs gate dark alliance, diablo etc. had something like that too and it was good this way;) "blocking some noobs to get in a extreme difficult"

another point is that if you have access to new difficulties you have to be rewarded for that.
I mean you´ll get new items, uniques, better enchantments etc. in every new difficulty (its bad if you can rush a easy difficult level with a level 100 char. and get the same loot as someone who plays the highest difficult)
"difficult only items"

maybe it could look like this:

1.normal (hard) difficult: max. item/unique/enchantment level = ~30
2.hard (cruel) difficult: max. item/unique/enchantment level = ~50
3.very hard (ruthless) difficult: max. item/unique/enchantment level = ~70
4.extreme (x) difficult: max. item/unique/enchantment level = ~100

I'm not sure exactly what you mean. But, like other ARPGs, you can't get to a higher difficulty without beating the previous one.

Even if you could start off at the highest difficulty, your level would be so low, you'd just get destroyed.

in some games you can choose all difficulties at the beginning and that is boring;)
alright oasis that means that PoE already have such a system how i like it^^

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innoruuk wrote:

in some games you can choose all difficulties at the beginning and that is boring;)
alright oasis that means that PoE already have such a system how i like it^^

OK, I just put 2 and 2 together. You were thinking it might be like TorchLight where you choose one difficulty and stay there. I always just assumed the difficulties were structured like Diablo/TQ so I got confused by your question.

Hopefully my previous post wasn't an accidental big info reveal :P

Locking difficulties is plain stupid. If a game is balanced properly there will be less incentive to skip an area or difficulty, however better skilled gameplay should be able to skip to harder zones with better gear.

I see no value to locking difficulty unless the storyline is progressively increased via difficulty.

Forcing someone skilled to plod through the boring easy zones to unlock the portion they want to play is just bad game design.

i like locked difficulties, simple as that

i always expected that PoE would be like D2 in that part.
U start in normal, and after u beat the endboss there u go into the next.
and while playing through all the difficult levels ur enemys get higher lvl => drop higher lvl loot etc

I know torchlight made this diffrent with choosing 1 difficulty at the beginning.
But thats a whole diffrent system, it doesnt realy change much besides giving the player a bigger challange.
D2 system is an easy way to give the player more to play through without having to build so many more zones :)

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Narfi wrote:

D2 system is an easy way to give the player more to play through without having to build so many more zones :)

Yeah, it's brilliant. Does anyone know the first game to structure their difficulty progression like this?

This sort of difficulty structure was definitely confirmed by Chris long ago. I guess no one ever made a big deal out of explicitly stating because it was assumed. I'm perfectly fine with locking higher difficulties until you beat the previous ones.

bah that's horrible. The game itself and your play skill should determine your optimal difficulty, not the game itself hamstringing you into playing some easy peasy boring difficulty you would rather skip.

What value does that actually have? The game itself is just a small set of zones that are played over and over... why force players to slog through it on easy mode if they want to jump in at some other difficulty... it's not like you're jumping zones... yer still playing the same zones.

I ask that as a serious question to GGG, simply because they've logic'd out why a lot of other structures in MMOs are needlessly perpetuated... I'm unsure why they didn't identify this as such.