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

Feedback and Suggestions
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This is basically my sentiment, Let EHG balance what we have right now then come back and see if we need difficulty sliders latter.
Corruption is part of building a character similar to how blessings are also apart of your character. Having it tied to the amount of time played is a representation of that character’s progression which is a good thing imo.
There are issues when you let a player select any difficulty both for a scaling rewards and constant rewards.

  • For constant rewards, the optimal case all the time is to pick the easiest difficulty. For the campaign many would pick the easiest just get to endgame faster so it becomes the new default difficulty.
  • For difficulty that scales the rewards you could end up with what Chris Wilson called the Malestrom of Chaos problem where people complain about the highest difficulty being too hard because they have access to it and expect they can do it. I don’t think this is as much of a problem but it does mean you need to sift through worse feedback. The more important to me is the loss of character progression that you would loose by just being able to select the difficulty.
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I think game difficulty is always an interesting topic of conversation, because it can be scaled in a variety of ways, each with its own pros and cons. Some examples I can think of:

  1. Additional mechanics (eg. monsters can spawn with additional abilities/skills). For example, Siren’s could spawn with an additional ability that allows them to summon a group of enemies. This is something you can see more in MMO’s, with “elite” versions of dungeons/raids having additional mechanics to overcome.
    a. Some pros I can think of: added interest, new mechanics to learn, and more flavor.
    b. Some cons I can think of: added visual noise, more graphically intensive.

  2. Increased mob density. This is something that Grim Dawn did, which I quite liked, with the “Veteran” difficulty option. I really enjoyed this mode as it felt like it gave me additional challenge, with a proportionate reward. I do feel like mob density in general (particularly in some mono generations) are really sparse, and could use a boost.
    a. Some pros I can think of: makes AoE clear builds extremely satisfying.
    b. Some cons I can think of: discourages single target builds, reducing build variety (though let’s be honest, every build is already either AoE, or AoE + single target skill, rest is buffs).

  3. Increasing mob health/damage/stats. This is the much hated “bullet sponge” phenomenon that so many people hate, myself included. Just adding more HP or stats to an enemy doesn’t really create challenge, just tedium in the end.
    a. Some pros I can think of: Encourages builds that focus on higher dps, while also requiring at least a degree of survivability.
    b. Some cons I can think of: Discourages glass cannon builds, which reduces build variety. Makes it take significantly longer to clear, and can add tedium. Makes the game feel like it’s purely a “gear check” rather than skill based. “Can you kill this? Yes? Okay, move on then.”

So that aside, a few points brought up, and my thoughts on them:
1. Separate difficulties create cliques, aka “LFG min. 50K dps”, etc.
This one is tricky because these things will end up happening, regardless. For example, recent game that comes to mind is Outriders. There is no way to find groups, or to “filter” who joins your party. This ended with people playing “tank” classes being immediately booted from games the moment they join them, because the game emphasizes dps and clear speed in its endgame, and tanks don’t contribute enough dps. It is BETTER to allow players to break off into their own groups and filter party composition prior to joining. It will happen, regardless, whether in chat or whether by booting people. Some people will emphasize movement and clear speed. Others will emphasize survivability. Some will want to play on the highest possible difficulty, others just to chill. For example, with the current system, what will very likely happen is that there will be messages such as “LFG 300 corruption monos, 50% move speed and 100Kdps min, pst”. That’s just an example, of course. It could even be more specific, such as specific classes and builds. You see that in D3 and PoE already. You also get a lot of “… no necros” because they typically tank framerates with minion spams.

2. Game difficulty and multiplayer.
I think this is a particularly key point to talk about. Should the game be balanced with multiplayer in mind, or is it a primarily single player game with a multiplayer option? I know a lot of people seem to be looking forward to multiplayer, but I honestly hate playing ARPGs in multiplayer, even with friends. There’s always one person who moves 2-3 times as fast as everyone else in the party, and clears the whole thing before anyone else catches up. I personally will be playing this purely single player, permanently, even after MP is introduced. I just don’t enjoy these games in MP. I get that I am possibly in the minority on that, but that’s how I feel. I also think that there is a wide variety of games already on the market that emphasize multiplayer, such as PoE (it’s just about impossible not to mention it) or other upcoming games such as the NA release of Lost Arch.
I really don’t like having my games balanced around MP, and especially around PVP (if that ever happens), because that totally ruins the feeling of outrageous builds. The whole point of these games is the power fantasy and loot grind. Take that away with trading and nerfed builds balanced around MP, and you really lose a lot of the fun of it.
Either way, with ARPGs, as with any game, it’s virtually impossible to balance around both MP and SP, and devs really have to pick their poison.

So, final thoughts on current difficulty, and thoughts for future potential:

Currently, difficulty is really entirely the 3rd option that I mentioned above, where enemies just have more hp, more damage, etc. This means that essentially, it’s just a gear check. Can you dish enough damage and have a minimum level of survivability? Check, you can move up. You don’t? Grind away! It’s really not skill based at all, or if it is, it’s at a minimum. Dodging projectiles and such is a certain level of skill, but is only an option to some builds (in other words, ranged builds). In melee it’s even more “gear check”.
Whether EHG wants to continue with that model, or become more interesting with it, remains to be seen.
Personally, I still think back fondly on HC characters in D2 getting 1 shot by LE/MS mobs, or getting chased around by LE/MS mobs around the level till I manage to shake them. I liked that feeling of “there are going to be enemies that you just can’t kill”. I think that adding different special abilities to rare mobs would go a long way to improving variety. This is definitely something I enjoy about the Diablo franchise (even though I despise what Blizzard has become and refuse to buy their games anymore). I would definitely be in favor of rare enemies having more interesting enchants and abilities. One of the things that I think is leading to boredom right now is a lack of random/variety. The game is essentially one of 3 archetypes - melee, ranged, mage. But they all do essentially the same thing, regardless of character model, without any real variety. Once you get used to them, you’re used to them and that’s it. You don’t really grow or learn any past that.

Another interesting option that TQ (titan quest) did, was that humanoid enemies actually USED the weapons that they dropped. This meant that an enemy that dropped a unique/set item actually used that weapon, with all its effects and abilities being used. This added a LOT of flavor, and is something I haven’t really seen since (it didn’t seem to happen in GD, sadly). It was also kind of fun to see a skeleton walking around with a big glowing spear or shield.

Lastly, on the subject of “redoing monos on new characters”, I absolutely agree on the tedium of it. I would be strongly in favor of monos being SHARED between characters, so that over time, as your gear “library” builds up, your corruption on both base monos and empowered monos continually increases, so that you still have some challenge to them. The balance that needs to be struck is to continue a sense of progression and growth/achievement, while avoiding boredom or tedium. These games are about grinding, let’s be honest about it. Literally every mechanic is tied to grinding. The trick is to give a sense of “meta progression” between characters. Shared stash is definitely one option, but I think a “shared endgame” is another valid one. The shared stash makes it easier, currently, without anything to counter-balance to make it harder. This is what leads people to find it “too easy”. A “veteran” option, such as I mentioned GD having, that spawns 1.5x or 2x the mob density, is a great option as well, and will make the campaign a lot more fun too.

Anyway, those are some of my thoughts on this subject. It’s an interesting thing to talk about, because there are a lot of different ways of approaching it.

1 Like
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I’m not sure multiple difficulties are a good idea, or necessary. With the exception of the Majasa fight, I’ve found all boss encounters including endgame Mono fights to be exceptionally well tuned. None are mechanically overwhelming or unfair in my opinion, if players are getting oneshot or not dealing enough damage it will usually be because of bad build setup/gear or due to nasty mods in Monos. Ergo, learning experiences.

I don’t really see the need for easier difficulties than bosses having very obvious and visually clean telegraphs to move out of, many of them with rather forgiving grace periods too.
What is the point in dumbing these down to turn them into essentially dps dummies?

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This would be the high quality way of scaling. Although it would need the most work to implement and balance. But also the recent features of chapter 9 mobs using different attacks depending on if the player approaches them in melee range or from distance, already is a comparable mechanic.

As for Multiplayer, you defenitely need that increased spongy-ness of mobs. Else they would die too fast for any mechanical changes to have impact.

To be honest, I started this topic with MP balance in mind. Things work differently in MP so the difficulty scaling of single player content might not always work in an MP environment (like the “add new enemy mechanics” example above).

Yeah, this is a very good example of a massive design flaw. There’s no need for a tank class in Outriders. Having time trials that solely focus on clearspeed and DPS makes tanks obsolete.

I’m happy that LE did not went this route. Every class in LE can dish out massive damage.

But I get your argument with the “requirements” people will set up for others to join their game. But currently theres nothing that enables others to measure your stats. And I hope it stays this way. So people could post “LFM 50k dps” but they cannot check if you meet the requirements. Hopefully this results in less user generated requirements.

When I remember the good old day of my Diablo 2 time, I enjoyed the opportunity to being able to be carried and carry others myself.

When starting a new toon, you tried to get through the story as fast as possible. Your gear was crap, your character under leveled. But there wasn’t a problem for higher level players to carry you. And if people struggled to carry a bunch of lowies, I left by myself to join another party where the lead player was more powerful and would get me through the content faster.

At a certain point I was the guy who carried others through the game, showing off my powerful character and how fast I could carry lowies through stuff.

Nowadays everything gets exploited by RMT. So that’s a problem that has also to be considered.

Will it be possible to carry lowies? Or will it be restricted to prevent “carry service for real money”?

Personally I think multiplayer is also an opportunity for casual players to see the higher tier content. They lack of skill and knowledge can be compensated by their party members. Also it allows for more extraordinary builds. I see it as an opportunity to be able to play meme builds or “bad” or niche builds and still discover all the stuff LE offers.

I see that stuff like this could be exploited by “lazy” people that let others do the work for them. Hopefully there are ways to prevent this but also give the weaker player the chance to be carried by a friend.

I’m not talking about letting everybody play 300 corruption monos. For my understanding content is discovered by beating it on the lowest difficulty. Higher difficulty with all the additional rewards should be exclusive for the kind of players that are able to handle it on their own.

For example there could be a change when you unlock empowered timelines. Before you can join any game and participate everywhere to a max of 50 corruption (cap for non empowered monos). If you want to play empowered you need to unlock first. And then you are restricted to only join games that are below or equal to your own maximum corruption level. Maybe have a threshold to join games that are 50 corruption above your max corruption level

There are people that still are of the opinion that the difficulty is too hard. Not only chapter 9 and the bossfight, but also in other story chapters. In addition, it’s not only about decreasing difficulty, but also have harder game modes.

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