Add Campaign new difficulty settings +, ++, +++

General
43

Corruption
=> More difficult Enemy
=> More T6/7 Affix
=> More LP
=> More gold etc.

–>Corruption as Difficulty sounds fun.
–>Affixes have a level requirement. And you can’t forge higher tier at low level.
–>Farming higher LP at the level where the unique actually matters sounds fun.
–>LP itself can give a level 1 weapon a tier 7 affix. It is possible to craft level 1 weapon with more than 1/3 of damage of max level weapons…
==> You can’t find high tier affixes below level 55, because it is broken. But you can craft low level Unique with high tier affixes :neutral_face:

How long is it fun to play low level character with full op gear? Maybe few hours? :thinking:

Weaver and LP Items might make a replayability not fun :confused:
How fun is droprate, when you already have full lp2+ with t7 affixes?

More difficulty for fresh starts (season, Solo self-found) is great though.

Now, Hardcore SSF +++ level 100 campaign would be a thing of beauty :slight_smile:

New game+ and you keep your level? Then there is no fun farming low level unique :cry:

How to implement better drops into mainline, while also giving difficulty?

44

How to implement better drops into mainline, while also giving difficulty?

Yesterday I got an Arena-Champ in a level 35 area. ‘It gives too much loot for that part of the game’ (Like every seasonal update)

→ Every season unbalances the main story further

1 Possibility is to add a new mode for every season.
You can play original mode, just balanced game.
Or added mode with seasonal content, but higher difficulty.

→ We already get more unique in main story, just like a higher diablo 3 difficulty.

This is just the start of an idea…
Is it fun to divide by content?
It is not fun to play in super-easy mode :expressionless:

45

you make a lot of good points

figuring out how to balance item drops in the campaign is complicated

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46

PoE used to do this properly. You’d have access to the seasonal mechanic from the start but it would mostly start by giving you that mechanic’s currency which you could then use later.
Lately the power creep got in and now you get way better things early on (I got 3 divs from a merc while still in the campaign, which shouldn’t really happen).

The main issue with LE is that new stuff got introduced that will give you a sizable power boost in the campaign from the start. Nemesis, lizards and now champions give you way better gear than you should be able to get at that point, so it trivializes it (not that it was that hard anyway before it).
If they had introduced these things later in the campaign, or if they were to heavily nerf their drops early on, then this wouldn’t be as big an issue (you’d still need to rebalance the campaign anyway, since it was never hard to begin with).

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47

I suspect that is exceptionally rare, I’ve gotten a 1-3 chaos at most.

48

I suspect it’s very rare as well and I got lucky. Even after dozens more encounters I never got more than a few chaos worth from them as well.

But my point is that this shouldn’t happen at all. It should be capped so these outliers don’t happen so soon in the game.
And likewise for LE. You shouldn’t be getting exalted gear from Nemesis or lizards when you’re still at level 30. It should be capped.

I suspect both games do have a sort of cap inbuilt into the formulas, but I think both games could benefit from a hard cap on this.

49

Why? Should it be impossible to get a unique in the starter zone? Should it be impossible to get a mirror dropped during the campaign?

50

If it’s a red ring/headhunter, yes.

Yes. Because it trivializes the rest of the game. A mirror dropping from Hillock is something that shouldn’t happen. It should be level capped to only start dropping at higher area levels.

51

i think this ship has sailed. a lot of d-like enjoyers come from a power fantasy background and many of them like to just turn off their brains and follow some build guide rather than ask for the devs to balance the game so that the gap between weak and good players are reduced.

52

At no point do any Devs need to worry about a gap between weak and good players. The Devs need to make a great game! Period! Good players will create their own challenges and challenge modes. This is how speed running was born, or beating the game with a grey weapon etc.

Devs need to realize that players aren’t looking for difficulty they are looking for a great game to have fun. The age of infinite scaling or +++ needs to go away and has destroyed game design, immersion and depth of games. It only has negatives and breeds toxicity.

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53

TBF, I agree, they need to worry about the disparity between weak & strong builds.

And yet beating a challenge is fun to a lot of players.

It does have some positives, but I think that they may be overshadowed by the negatives & the toxicity that infinite difficulty often engenders.

54

I would rather have a campaign skip ;D!

55

i guess i ll disagree with both of you as that simply funnels players to go meta.

its really ironic. GGG created poe 1 and 2 with a passive forest with hundreds of nodes, tons of different gear, tons of different skills and supports.

but if you try and explore the game yourself, you will be left so far behind other players. if you fail your build, you’ve wasted a lot of time and resources. the irony lies where people say d4 is a game with a skilltwig. but most players in poe just follow build guides and claim superiority.

56

That is certainly one choice, but not the only one, though the other one is much harder & possibly impossible. Though it was the one I was thinking about when I typed that.

Why is following a guide bad?

TBF, it is, though I accept your point about the illusion of choice.

57

i can justify why people should use guides. some people are busy working people. some people dont want to waste their time and resources “trying” to make something work and realizing that it sucked so bad that they might as well reroll a new character.

i get that.

but, when following guides is the optimal way to play, it directly punishes players who actually want to learn and explore the game.

take poe for an example. i can never recommend poe to anyone without recommending them to follow a build guide. there are way too many pitfalls and wrong choices that would make your character so weak that even if by some miracle they get to level 100 their dps could be 100k. starter builds are a thing in such games.

then we have games like GD. in the subreddit, we have a lot of newer players asking for build guides/suggestions. a huge lot of the community would tell them. JUST TRY GOING IN BLIND. and when they do, many enjoy the aspect of making their own build and making it work. this can only happen in games where the gaps are not too huge. for sure you could follow an OP build and do significantly more than most players, but it never feels like a requirement.

LE actually got to a nice spot where players were encouraged to do their own thing. to be honest the infinite scaling in LE was fine as it felt optional. you didnt NEED to get to C300. you didnt NEED to get to C100 even. and there was a time players were encouraged to just try their own thing as there was no need for doing so.

after abby/uber abby was introduced things were changed as players felt they NEEDED to kill him. after all the BIS relic is gated behind him. if you’re playing SSF. you might as well give up trying to make your own build if you want the relic.

making a game where using a build being the “best way to play” or the “minimum requirement” to play actively punishes the playerbase that wants to “do their own thing”.

if doing my own thing gives me 100 dps while following a build guide gives me 10K dps. i would heavily be discouraged from doing my own thing and i would in fact discourage people from doing their own thing.

this is what exactly is happening with poe. “tru melee” strike skills in poe can be very strong but players have to fix it by adding huge amount of range and require players to have mitigation or speed to make it work. why go thru all that hassle and just use any other skill that has built in aoe? but newer players would not know.

following a build guide is not inherently bad. but if following a build guide is significantly better than doing your own thing, then i would say the game is simply unbalanced.

on a side note, i personally feel that if you do follow a build guide, the game is playing you, instead of you playing the game. its like playing a puzzle game but with a walkthru/guide on how to exactly solve each and every puzzle. i do not find any enjoyment “playing someone elses build”.

i dont mind if i made a build and it turned out to be meta. thats me organically discovering a meta or a different way of putting it is different people coming to the same conclusion from their own effort and research.

to me i rather play survivorlikes rather than follow a build guide.

all that said, i personally detest following build guides BUT i dont look down on people who do.

58

It’s a technicality, but following guides is always the optimal way to play.
Take D4, a game that has no challenge in creating a build (like Rax said in his disappointed video, if you get 10 streamers to build a fireball sorc they will all create pretty much the same build). It’s not hard to create your own build. But it’s still much more optimal to use a guide because you just need to assign the points.
Especially because, if there’s some optimal respeccing to be done, the guide will also tell you about it.

So even in easy games with limited choices, using a build guide is always the optimal way to play.
It’s not the most fun way to play (for most players), but that is a different issue.

I have never felt the need to kill either Aby last season or Uby this season.
Much like I have never felt the need to use red rings or ravenous voids. Or even omnis.

I just have fun growing my build until it’s no longer fun, at which point I make another one. I don’t feel the need to min-max a character and if I did that would most likely cause me to drop the game (like I did with PoE for a few years).

I tend to use build guides, but that’s mostly because I don’t have much time to play, so when I do have some time available I don’t want to “waste” a chunk of it analyzing and making decisions.

If I had more time, I would likely try it on my own, but I would likely still switch to a guide in endgame. And this is mostly because it’s still the optimal way to play. Because the thing about theorycrafters is that they know all the corners of the game and they think outside the box and they know that if you add this node that seemingly does nothing and you also add this other node that seemingly does nothing they both synergize and give you 20% more damage overall.

If you have a good theorycrafter creating the guide, there isn’t, in theory, a way to improve the build because he already squeezed all the numbers out of it. You might get close enough that you don’t care about it, but it’s still not optimal.

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59

Now think about why that is. In regards to builds. It limits the builds u can do. There are alot of builds that need unquie boots to work properly. Regin og winter bow build is one. Majority of players want proper difficulty which the game had before but was removed and replaced with the boots.

All the boots do is gimp ur character and build. Gimpping players in that way isnt difficulty. Players have tried pointing out on all forms why this isnt a good design. Whether they like it hate it or dont care. Its been pointed out by those that like it even.

The boots was an easy way out rather than giving a proper difficulty.

60

lol i watched the exact video. his 1 million dps thing hits hard. d4 is badly balanced but ALL modern d-likes have this same balancing issue where the gap between optimized and non optimized builds are crazy wide.

i feel that not only blizz should take up his 1 million dps challenge. all other devs too. he’s exactly on a similar page to me where i feel modern d-likes are just severely unbalanced and the devs arent doing enough about it.

i m of the opinion that nerfs are better than creating harder content. i watched as my beloved game started off where players can do silly things like a melee witch and still be able to clear content. but the devs kept adding harder content to the point that playing the game without a build guide would give you a severely inferior experience.

tli copied poe and its power creep. as much as i like power fantasy, i prefer more deliberate playstyles and i prefer less gear checks but more skill checks.

thats good on you, but to others there can be a level of fomo. as for me, i’ve already played poe before. i’ve seen how poe’s aspirational content went. its started with the shaper/elder. then uber shaper/elder. then maven. sirus. then UBER versions. t17 RNG “who cares about balance” maps.

aspirational content that feels less optional makes me feel the game is not for me. its also a reason why i’ve stopped playing LE.

i used to do that too. that is a LOT of fun. but the harder content that the devs churn out. the more “random builds” we do will “no longer be fun” at an earlier level. personally i feel poe’s peak was pre maven. uber elder/shaper was difficult but it was something a random player could strive to clear without following a build. even my own build that i used for a decade. i can clear over 99% of the games content. but i m pretty sure i can have 100% clear if i just give up the notion of using my own build and just following a meta build. instead i chose to give up playing the game.

i would like to emphasize that if the gap between optimal and “doing your own thing” is smaller, then players dont feel forced to go optimal. which is my biggest issue. i always feel that players who use optimal or efficient builds should always be rewarded. but it should never be the requirement.

in modern d-likes optimization feels too much of a requirement rather than a bonus. for sure we need a baseline defence all resists and all that. and i think its important to have some level of a baseline. but beyond that. the more requirements you make, the more players are forced to optimize. the more important it is to follow a build guide.

i play nrftw without a build guide. its not the best build but it works. i’ve cleared everything in the game with it. if i used a OP build i would have a more easier time, but i dont need to.

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61

Well, tbf it was always like that since D1. The Sorc clearly dominated endgame vs the warrior which was much weaker. In D2 you had builds that could finish the game naked and builds that could barely finish the game at all.
Balance is very hard to achieve in a game that has so many interconnecting systems like these.

And it’s not even aRPGs. Pretty much all RPGs have this issue. Games like NwN, Baldur’s Gate, even old gems like Wizardry or Ultima. They all had builds that were much more effective than others and wiped whole screens.
We just noticed it less back then because there weren’t so many in-depth analysis of the game with tier lists, DPS, etc, like we have today.

This is tricky. On the one hand I agree, but there’s a big psychological factor involved. Players that had an easy time with their favorite build will not return to a game where they’re now struggling with the same build.

It’s also harder to balance a game when you keep introducing new stuff to it. GD managed a pretty good balance, but only after several years of constant tweaks. And when they introduce a new expansion, that balance is screwed up and they spend a bunch of time balancing things out again.
But when you introduce new content every 4 months, balance is being shifted again regularly. New stuff introduces new unforeseen interactions (that jungroan will use to break the game again :laughing:).

I kinda disagree with this. The build will still do the content it used to do. In fact, it will likely be able to do more than previously because of the power creep. It just doesn’t do the new content.
I understand what you mean in that your build used to do 90% of the content, because it did everything except the pinnacle boss (for example), and now it can only do 75% of the content because of all the new stuff added that you can’t complete either.

But the road you did before (like campaign, maps, etc) you can still do now. And to me that is still fun.

I totally agree with this. My argument was only a technicality. :slight_smile:

62

Well I guess it would be HARDER then…

And that’s fair but this would need some server changes I guess. People who want to play mode X need their own servers at least so there are no mix ups between difficultys.

Gimping players = game is harder. If EHG makes a new hardmode that reduces the possible rollranges of items by 25% then this would not be a hardmode for you because they gimped chars by making items worse?

And they did so in many places and last I heared EHG knows that people are unhappy with what is offered right now. Still I personaly think EHG has bigger construction sites then Hardmodes.

The boots are one of many bandaid fixes LE threw out instead of making something worthwhile that I would call “quality work”.

Then again there is what we have right now, while EHG already said they look into it when there is time, and what we have right now makes the game harder for a lot of reasons. So frankly speaking there is a hardmode.

On top of it people can do their own hardmodes and only equip rares and uniques and nothing else and all of the sudden things are harder ^^.

Personaly I would love it if enemys get more skills and not just raw numbers. More stuff to dodge, more CC if you mess up and stuff like this. Just scaling numbers is boring af.

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