Is there a chance to implement more difficulty levels as players choice?

Hey there,
Over the time and with every new content update we have had many discussions about difficulty in LE.

There are always people that find content to hard while others find it ok. Veterans may even be bored.

This is not all about the player skill in general. What also is relevant is how long you played the game and how familiar it is to go through the content.

EHG wants to please everybody with a difficulty level that makes it possible for new players to beat the game and not get frustrated. But not every new player likes cheesing content and people have very different learning curves. So the gaming experience changes with the time spent in this game.

An ok difficulty for a new player can get boring for the same player on his 4th character when he/she already has learned the basics of LE and is understanding classes and synergies.

My personal experience and view on this topic also has shifted a lot over the time, the longer I play LE.

The flat difficulty curve of monoliths and the difficulty increase by raising corruption can be ok for a new player experience. But I personally find it very tedious to get to higher corruption. I have many chars created all sitting at very different corruption levels. Some of them I just donā€™t play because they are so low in corruption that I donā€™t want to farm fir higher difficulty.

I think this is a problem.

In story, theres a lack of difficulty choices. Thereā€™s masochist, that can create a challenge. But imho there should be a difficulty inbetween and also below the current difficulty.

In Endgame theres the Corruption level on monoliths and the Echo modifiers. Both is nice and works well a a difficulty slider. But it is way to slow to adjust the slider. If I am a veteran and have a really good build and equip, I donā€™t want to waste hours and hours to just get to a challenge level where the game is fun for me. Especially with additional characters I create over the time.

The player experience and skill levels as well as expectations are so vastly different that I donā€™t think it will ever be possible to have a difficulty for everybody.

My suggestion is:

  • Add difficulty levels below and above the current difficulty for the story
  • Implement catch up mechanics for additional characters to speed up the process of difficulty increases in monos
    • Maybe implement a challenge echo where you can measure your current build power and enable an appropriate corruption level choice
  • share mono progression among your characters in the same mode

Cheers!

:v::rainbow:

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Approved.

This is basically POEā€™s private league.

Personally, I am not a fan of customisable difficulties as I feel it fragments the overall feel of the game among the player base. Also, EHG will need to have many more ladders for competitive mode at each difficulty tiers.

I think we could use difficulty levels for the campaign and maybe the Monoliths.
The Arena would stay a ā€œstandardizedā€ activity, with one unique difficulty level.

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This sounds very good. :+1:

I get what you are needingā€¦ mainly because I am 1k+ hours into the game and would like some shortcuts to bypass the tedium that comes from the lower easier levels that you have to churn through before you are challenged (new builds) or get to the point where what you are farming for has a decent chance of dropping.

Iā€™d quite a like a New Game + mode to give my higher level characters the option to redo the campaign at higher difficulty/drop chance etc instead of farming monos etc.

Iā€™d definitely like some way to set corruption levels rather than farm to get there - it adds a LOT of time just climbing to the level you want to farm at right nowā€¦ E.g. I have 30 minutes to play, but it could take just that building corruption for a mono sequenceā€¦ Right now, instead of only level 100 corruption - just chosing a starting corruption from a drop down at the very beginning of a mono set would be greatā€¦ and it could be set that a level 100 char could chose any corruption, a level 50 could be restricted to only double their levelā€¦ etc.

Yes, ecpecialy to challenge echoe idea

I donā€™t think it is a good idea to split resources to balance different difficulties. It will also split the player base in the trade league. In the future, maybe, when LE is more established.

Meanwhile, I think the core problems that LE has with regards to perspective on difficulty are:

  1. Spiky difficulty curve. Many bosses before Lagon are non-issue. All can be tanked with substandard equip. Some early area such as welryn has sudden spike in pack sizes.

  2. Non-intuitive upgrade for defense in campaign. It is hard to express this but in general:
    Ch1-4 enemies requires void resist.
    Ch 5 enemies requires necrotic and physical. Void damage did not appear anymore. Boss need lightning res suddenly when no other enemies in the ch need it.
    Ch 6 enemies requires fire, physical and necrotic. One area with void but the res not necessary due to low damage. Then the mid-boss use poison but poison res not necessary here. Ch boss suddenly requires lightning and cold.
    Ch 7 need cold and fire. Drop necrotic and lightning.
    Ch 8 need cold and lightning. Drop fire. Boss need nearly max lightning, cold and physical.
    Ch 9 sudden spike in poison(!), fire, lightning, and critical(!). Drop cold. Boss require +physical and movement speed.

The common theme here is that there is disconnect between the enemy damage type that is threathening the average build and the boss of the ch. There is also disconnect of damage type between each area. There are some mid-bosses here and there that requires different resist but in general the midbosses are not threathening enough to upgrade a resist type.

With the campaign drop that is not great, progressing campaign requires re-gear instead of upgrading incrementally and it excarbate the feeling of sudden spike in difficulty for inexperienced player.

  1. Mono grind. I agree with what @XLVI_carpo mentioned in the opening thread
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Me too! I see some movement in that direction with 0.83 and the catch-up in alternate timelines. Current system doesnā€™t go far enough to me, though.

Some people will say ā€œHey more endgame systems are coming.ā€ If anything, thatā€™d make you want to spend less time in boring low difficulty monolith settings.

No matter what other systems are added, Iā€™d guess this sense of wanting to calibrate the monolith systemā€™s corruption more quickly for your main and alts will persist for a good chunk of the playerbase. Itā€™s a lesson that has been learned in plenty of modern ARPGs; tedium for its own sake is not rewarding or engaging.

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I donā€™t think that it is necessary to devide players. It should be possible to just choose difficulty if you create a game or join a game of any difficulty.

In MP you will be able to play along other players in monolith, regardless of their corruption level.

There could be ways to scale stuff without locking characters into a chosen difficulty like with hardcore or solo mode.

The intention is not to have separate leagues. Just a difficulty slider for story.

You choose game mode like normal, hardcore or solo and thatā€™s it. In these mode you set your chosen difficulty level everytime you enter the game.

In Warhammer Chaosbane you can very smoothly adjust difficulty even when within a party.

For mono and arena theres only the one difficulty we have now. But here some options to also adjust a slider without corruption farming from 0 would be nice.

Arena can just stay as it is.

I think EHG should smooth the difficulty spikes some people encounter and thatā€™s it. Every difficulty will divide the playerbase. Look at TL3 if you havenā€™t played on the highest difficulty youā€™ve been treated like thrash.

Iā€™m against different difficulties as pleasing as they me be for a minority on each spectrum of the scale. This might be an unpopular oppinion but it is what it is ^^.

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Then whatā€™s the point of corruption? Youā€™re suggesting dropping it and allow people to freely choose difficulty and rewards?

Not much changes there.
ā†’ The corruption level is still (increasing) decisive for stronger enemies, higher loot probability and certain loot breakpoints (see Omnis and the like).

Only all the lower ranks can be skipped in one way or another, which EHG may (hopefully) implement in the future.

Personally, I would be happy to be able to skip at least the normal [non-empowered] monoliths with new characters.
ā†’ The time spent on these with characters that are far too heavily equipped for them is slightly annoying in the long run. Since nothing really resists anymore anyway.

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This is probably the only thing I can find common ground and agree with. A free and flexible difficulty sliderā€¦ not so much.

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No, Iā€™m not.
I suggested something lile this in my OP.

Iā€™m writing ā€œdifficulty sliderā€ several times, but this is not meant literally.

There are several possibilities how to restrict free and unlimited choice of corruption. Iā€™m just voting for a faster way to catch up with previous characters. Iā€™m not for freely being able to choose corruption 300 right from the start. But if you have a character at corruption 300 you should know what you do and be able to get there in a shorter amount of time with a new character than your first character needed.

As long as this only affects story playthrough, I donā€™t think this would be harmful. In monos and arena you would come together again. From this point there would be only one base difficulty adjustable with corruption and modifiers (and what else is coming with additional endgame content).

Are there any metrics that show what percentage of the player base actually participates in leagues/ladders vs casual players?

Currently each ladder shows 100 rankings. That has to represent a small fraction of the player base.

Standardize competitive league/ladder play and let the common masses have more difficulty settings.

Iā€™d be for something like that if it were feasible.

It wont. You might know it as well as anyone else ā€œLFG people who know the game and havenā€™t played babymode!ā€. Itā€™s like every other game call it item level, call it clear xyz achived, call it xyz dps. The devs donā€™t want to implement training dummys to see your real dps because it could lead to toxicity and I personaly think this will divide the community more then a certain damage number.

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I would rather they let us choose mono freely without the need to complete lower level mono. At least for an alt character once we have reach empowered with any character. 10+ hour to unlock empowered from normal mono for each alt is taking its toll on me.

Edit: another way to smoothen the difficulty in the campaign is to tune the item drops in each chapters so they tend towards the affixes that are needed for each area/chapter.

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