Based on replies from Mike before on this subject, it seems they have something planned for this, so might as well wait. It’s less than a month now.
Personally, I think being able to select difficulties is a good thing. Some will choose the easiest, some will choose the hardest, most will fall in between. But it should be noted that difficulty and mob density as it is right now is also because of performance issues which are being improved for 1.0.
To be clear: I’m not talking about the curent state of it because now it’s a pushover. I just think back to it when it was harder and messed up.
I would love a balanced game to begin with. Right now everything is all over the place and I think it’ll be for a very long time because “Balancing is an onging process” and whatnot. I think when the masteries are balanced the game can be balanced overall but right now it’s a dumpsterfire with to many op crap. Balancing mobs considering OP crap makes the game unplayable for many builds. Balancing the game arround UP masteries will make the game a walk in the park for the OP masteries.
From my point of view additional difficulties would be the worst thing they could implement right now when there is such a power difference in different masteries and their setups. EHG put all the stuff out there like it is and I think they should finaly deliver some balancing befor 1.0 because with the balancing we have right now it makes no sense to not use OP masteries if you want to have a good time with the game and if you want to run high end corruption. It makes me sad how terrible the balance is.
The entire campaign, and also standard monoliths, are stupidly easy, not just early campaign. The campaign I can accept as it is a glorified tutorial, but standard monos are an absolute drag as they are insultingly easy. (fair to add that when I level new chars they are VERY well equipped, but still…)
This. Absolutely.
I can’t believe a certain easy to acquire ladle hasn’t been nerfed to oblivion. The concept of balance is out the window while this thing exists in its current form.
Not sure we need to add to campaign grind artificially especially given the early game is not made for blasters but for people learning about ARPGs and I would hate to see LE become new player hostile like other games. I for one, with >1000hrs so far, am quite happy to blast through to more interesting things. I would like higher mob density - especially in monos. Traversal skills also leave much to be desired. For someone that has run the campaign countless times a way to short circuit the campaign by doing much higher risk/reward content would be appealing.
I’d just like to see Masochist Mode come back. Would have created so many more MM characters in offline mode had I known in advance I’d lose the ability to do so and it wouldn’t come back for so long.
??
Like what? The difficulty was the same long before online appeared, and brought all the servers performance issues…
I could be wrong, but I seem to recall Mike saying once that mob density is due to server performance issues and that they were working on increasing it gradually.
There could be a “veteran” mode, like grim dawn.
It would make the campaign harder, but not effect monos, and would be optional, a check box when you create the character.
I.E. give all monsters a bonus to health and damage.
This is, honestly, my biggest gripe with the campaign (and LE as a whole) – there’s no incentive for exploration. Unless something seriously changes with v1.0, the game will remain a rush to the finish line. The mini map already tells you which direction to go, the world map tells you what zones to go to, and any secret areas in the game have nothing to offer…and, as @Llama8 already pointed out, extraneous killing is actually counter-productive. I’m 1/2 surprised the main campaign zone maps aren’t completely linear, just for simplicity-sake.
I mean while not exactly wrong, the opposite is also terrible. PoE has the opposite problem, where each map has random layouts, and exploring is still pointless.
So you either have linear learned layouts where once you know where everything is, you rush to where you need to go.
or you have random maps where you still want to rush where you need to be, but you hit deadends because of random layout you dont know well enough.
I think the idea of exploring in a non open world game is just never going to work out. even if they add more to secret/side areas, once everyone has minmaxed and routed the campaign, everyone is just going to do whatever is fastest with most return.
I think monoliths offer enough incentive currently to explore aslong as you are not spending minutes backtracking.
I wouldnt be opposed to a system to reward going to lots of different parts of the campaign like boss souls or something that give you some small buffs. sorta like the campaigns version of blessings but without rng. But outside of that, I just dont see anyway to reward exploring that does not devolve into annoying random layouts deadends and frustration.
But that’s the problem: that it makes the game world feel pointless. Even monoliths… I never care about anything with them, other than the loot reward, and the mod it’s inflicting on me. I don’t care about the map (although Alpine Halls used to be complete ass), nor the mob selection. Monoliths don’t offer any incentive to explore, just not to skip past random trash, if you care about the stability bonus.
Grim Dawn has completely static maps, other than the positioning of a few path blockages, yet completely encourages exploration. Either with semi-random boss spawns (Nemesis and Bounty), worthwhile rare monster and chest loot, or the new(er) totems. Anytime I play Grim Dawn, it’s mostly running through the game world, and not Crucible or SR farming (about as boring to me as LE Arena).
This was definitely one of the first things that jumped out at me. I don’t have too much of an issue with burning through the early game solo, but it gets exacerbated when you start trying to play with friends. I found it’s extremely detrimental to multiplayer games as mobs just fall over to whomever hits them first, regardless of whatever scaling is applied. It ends up just being a race to hit first. Having something to aggressively scale the health if nothing else would be good. As far as one shots coming up too early, I don’t think you need to scale the health and damage by the same amount. If mobs weren’t getting killed by a light breeze, you’d naturally take more damage.
My suggestion is to have a hard path that has shortcuts. Have it be balanced so that it takes less time (i.e. you level faster and do less content), but all the content you encounter is more difficult. They could even use most of the same maps as long as the enemies and bosses are tuned up.
It is there already. Called dungeons.
Yikes, why would be punished (less content) for trying to have more fun?
For a shorter route to the endgame.
I think the players who don’t want to play the “game”, just rush to “endgame”, would want an easier campaign, not harder (to get rid of it faster).
While players happy to engage with the campaign, and asking for it to be more challenging, don’t mind it being longer.
The point is to add an incentive that’s baked into the structure of the content. You can level faster if you’re good enough and have a more polished build so you can play more difficult content without dying. You might think that there’s no need for an incentive to be added, but that’s not the way gamers think. Gamers think in terms of cost/benefit, risk/reward, and thinking that way is part of the fun.
For beginners and first time ARPG players (such as myself), the campaign is so good! I wouldn’t like to be harder because it makes learning the game more difficult, and in some times, makes you quit from dying over and over again. 
Good point. On top of it it leads to the PoE syndrome where everyone and their grandma is looking for builds before even touching the game. It’s a bit of a “shame” if people feel the need to do day long reasearches ahead of playing a game just to be sure not to pick a bad build or to know the fotm.