NPC Difficulty Option Needed

Ethromelb14_ESO

For some time now the war between "too hard" and "too easy" has waged on. I think the way to solving this problem is by implementing a game-play option for the general NPCS in the OPEN-WORLD. Maybe finally everyone can be happy. It would also prove that if your buddy is running around with that nice drop armor from the same mission you also were just doing, but you got armor that's better as a paper weight in correspondence to your very low level setting... the problem is not ZoS- it's you. So raise your skill level and stop complaining. I do, however, think dungeons and major boss fights should be off-limits with such an option. I'll let the devs debate that one.

Basically, if you're the type of player that prefers to need that assist taking down mobs, well then raise the difficulty option for yourself. As you struggle with every ounce of your being to win, achieving that much sought after death, perhaps someone will have arrived to help you overcome the threat; or better yet your teammate will have a real reason for needing to run with you.

As for the other type of player ... Well if the world is already too hard for you. Lower the difficulty to no-hands level, and watch your mob problems roll away like tumble weed.

Of course I believe that your rewards should also be scaled to your personal difficulty level. So if you call yourself being slick, fighting that delve boss on dry leaf mode ... you deserve to get a rock and lock pick as a consolation prize.

Btw, the difficulty level would affect the NPCs damage output - not the amount of health that they have, in case anyone is wondering how that would affect other players fighting along side you. You would either take more or less damage. There you go.

Nestor

Good idea, except, what about if I am running around near other players. Who's level of difficulty do the NPCs in the area or delve get? How are you going to have different mob levels of difficulty without creating an instance for each player? If you have an instance for each player or group, how will other players be able to interact with each other?

Ethromelb14_ESO

Nestor wrote: »

Good idea, except, what about if I am running around near other players. Who's level of difficulty do the NPCs in the area or delve get? How are you going to have different mob levels of difficulty without creating an instance for each player? If you have an instance for each player or group, how will other players be able to interact with each other?

Good question. Remember I was saying, the NPCs health would not be affected, so ultimately they need the same amount of beating to be defeated. However, their damage output for you and you alone will be affected, giving you a greater chance at survival.

So if we're in a delve and we get to the boss ... you may have your difficulty all the way up, therefore meaning you'll suffer more damage but the rewards will be greater too. Let's say I'm with you, but my difficulty is much lower than yours. It may look like I'm more of a bad*ss than you because I'm surviving longer, but what's really happening is that I'm taking less damage, and so my reward for the mission will be scaled to that difficulty. You and I both will still need to invest the same amount of time in defeating the NPC.

Also to note: This feature might seem exploitable, but it's not. Lets say you're a Vet 16 helping me and I'm level 30. I still need to have my difficulty set to a decent level in order to reap really good rewards; and you helping me kill the creature won't change that fact if I (MY CHARACTER) has to cause a certain amount of damage in order to even be recognized as having contributed to the fight. So if a vet 16 is killing the enemy too fast for you ... Well they're cheating you out of your drops. So that requires a player to still have skill, and stand up for themselves. You can only be carried so much.

The difficulty option should also be programmed to only allow a change every 30 minutes, so players aren't constantly going in to the options menu to manipulate every combat instance. I think that's fair.

Rune_Relic

Many have already suggested very similar ideas.
Your difficult level is simply a multiplier.
It multiplies incoming damage, it divides outgoing damage, it increases XP and/or....gives you white > gold rewards.
This means playing in hard mode levels quicker.
So you can take the long easy scenic option as one person put it..or...
take the quicker journey dragged through hell and back.

This doesn't have to be applied to 1-50 either.
They could have done the very same thing for all dungeons and group content.

Khaos_Bane

Nestor wrote: »

Good idea, except, what about if I am running around near other players. Who's level of difficulty do the NPCs in the area or delve get? How are you going to have different mob levels of difficulty without creating an instance for each player? If you have an instance for each player or group, how will other players be able to interact with each other?

Reduce the effectiveness of your character, no need to do anything to the surrounding NPCs.

bikerangelo

People think the term "difficulty" should revolve around enemies having higher health and higher damage. I disagree wholeheartedly.

If you notice, most mobs will group around you in an Assassin's Creed fashion and each take their turn between attacks to do anything to you. When they bunch up, it can be problematic, but if you're facing 1 enemy NPC he will light attack you, wait 2 seconds, then either light attack you again or charge up his "special attack" that does a bit more damage.

If the devs were to implement a difficulty setting, it would have to revolve around NPC aggro and the speed of their attacks. Currently, if enemy NPC's outrank you in levels, their dodge chance is increased significantly against your attacks and they do higher damage. This is a lazy way of increasing "difficulty" as it only makes it annoying for you to land any hits. In order to fundamentally increase the difficulty, as in what @Ethromelb14_ESO is suggesting, it should include some of these features:

• Your detection radius increases significantly
• NPC's will aggro much quicker upon discovering you
• NPC attack speed will increase
• NPC's will block your attacks (not passively dodge) more frequently
• Leave everything else as is, this will only change NPC behavior towards this specific player

Naturally, to reward this, an xp modifier will have to be added to each mob killed so that the higher difficulty means more than just a challenge for the individual player. This could help the people who grind mobs for levels by providing more of a challenge and being more rewarding in the long run.

Khaos_Bane

I agree with @bikerangelo 100%, what you describe would be fantastic. However, it would most likely require different rulesets for each type of mob, and like you said, engage the ruleset based on agro. You would also need to lock mobs once engaged to a player, or at least a players using that difficulty.

Rune_Relic

bikerangelo wrote: »

People think the term "difficulty" should revolve around enemies having higher health and higher damage. I disagree wholeheartedly.

If you notice, most mobs will group around you in an Assassin's Creed fashion and each take their turn between attacks to do anything to you. When they bunch up, it can be problematic, but if you're facing 1 enemy NPC he will light attack you, wait 2 seconds, then either light attack you again or charge up his "special attack" that does a bit more damage.

If the devs were to implement a difficulty setting, it would have to revolve around NPC aggro and the speed of their attacks. Currently, if enemy NPC's outrank you in levels, their dodge chance is increased significantly against your attacks and they do higher damage. This is a lazy way of increasing "difficulty" as it only makes it annoying for you to land any hits. In order to fundamentally increase the difficulty, as in what @Ethromelb14_ESO is suggesting, it should include some of these features:

• Your detection radius increases significantly
• NPC's will aggro much quicker upon discovering you
• NPC attack speed will increase
• NPC's will block your attacks (not passively dodge) more frequently
• Leave everything else as is, this will only change NPC behavior towards this specific player

Naturally, to reward this, an xp modifier will have to be added to each mob killed so that the higher difficulty means more than just a challenge for the individual player. This could help the people who grind mobs for levels by providing more of a challenge and being more rewarding in the long run.

The problem there is every NPC has to react to each player differently...surely you see the problem that the NPC cant react in two different ways at the same time.
Its a physical and logical impossibility in anything but a single player game.

You can only modify how each player is impacted by or impacts the environment when scaling.
Or alternatively.. how a fixed group of players is scaled

bikerangelo

Rune_Relic wrote: »

The problem there is every NPC has to react to each player differently...surely you see the problem that the NPC cant react in two different ways at the same time.
Its a physical and logical impossibility in anything but a single player game.

You can only modify how each player is impacted by or impacts the environment.

I'm assuming each NPC mob has a single if/then statement behind each aggro. If a player comes within range, begin attacking. I'm not proficient in coding, but I'm assuming that you can have more than 1 or even multiple responses to specific situations. That is the definition of AI, if I'm not mistaken.

If = player on normal mode / then = default aggro
if = player on hard mode / then = hard mode aggro

Once the NPC switches aggro to another player, the default rule set resets, which I believe is called a loop. Unless I'm way off, please let me know, but I think that still falls in line with how players are impacting the environment based upon a passive rule set.

Rune_Relic

The NPC no doubt has preset behaviour, maybe even RNG thrown in to vary the response.
And I believe healers are targeted now by some bosses etc.
Make an NPC react to every single player in a unique way is a whole other kettle of fish.
That without worrying about NPCs being hit by multiple players at once.
Does it constantly flip between rulesets depending on who hit last every millisecond?

Nothings impossible of course.....its a question of pain vs gain coding wise.
Its relatively painless to scale damage and spawn.

Voxicity

This is an MMO. Having a difficulty slider would give some players an advantage over others, which would defeat the purpose of an MMO.

bikerangelo

Rune_Relic wrote: »

The NPC no doubt has preset behaviour, maybe even RNG thrown in to vary the response.
And I believe healers are targeted now by some bosses etc.
Make an NPC react to every single player in a unique way is a whole other kettle of fish.
That without worrying about NPCs being hit by multiple players at once.
Does it constantly flip between rulesets depending on who hit last every millisecond?

Nothings impossible of course.....its a question of pain vs gain coding wise.
Its relatively painless to scale damage and spawn.

Without fully understanding the complexity of the AI in the game, I would agree with you that it would seem easier to maintain the current rule set and have a base scale for every player. But to properly suit the request of increasing difficulty, I'd still hold onto my initial proposition before disregarding it as too complex or painful. Like I said, from a design standpoint I'm approaching this pretty blindly, but I think it'd be interesting to change the idea of difficulty if it's possible. NPC's switching aggro every split second could be simple or incredibly problematic, that detail is reliant on the game's spaghetti coding and how easy it is to either modify or add on to it.
With ZOS' track record of pain vs. gain, I'm sure this won't be implemented if takes too many developers away from making more crown store products.

Taryf

I dont like this idea.
It will make more problems than solve.
And... Difficulty in MMO? Hard to imagine.

Tallowby

Nestor wrote: »

Good idea, except, what about if I am running around near other players. Who's level of difficulty do the NPCs in the area or delve get? How are you going to have different mob levels of difficulty without creating an instance for each player? If you have an instance for each player or group, how will other players be able to interact with each other?

They are already adding/ changing the game like in Orsinium... Auto scaling content after lv 50. All that would be needed is plus/minus off of the scaling. So mobs are not modified only your stats and damage...

No instance needed...

Ethromelb14_ESO

Rune_Relic wrote: »

Many have already suggested very similar ideas.
Your difficult level is simply a multiplier.
It multiplies incoming damage, it divides outgoing damage, it increases XP and/or....gives you white > gold rewards.
This means playing in hard mode levels quicker.
So you can take the long easy scenic option as one person put it..or...
take the quicker journey dragged through hell and back.

This doesn't have to be applied to 1-50 either.
They could have done the very same thing for all dungeons and group content.

It's close, but it's not the same idea. There is no express lane to xp. This is simply a vanity option for players that want a more challenging experience. How a player chooses to level up will be their prerogative, but your own damage will not be mitigated or increased. Altering a player's damage output will pose to many "free-will of character build" problems. The idea is exactly as I have typed it. I do, however, see why some might think they are similar.

Ethromelb14_ESO

Taryf wrote: »

I dont like this idea.
It will make more problems than solve.
And... Difficulty in MMO? Hard to imagine.

Explain a problem you can imagine and I will tell you why it WILL work.

Khaos_Bane

Rune_Relic wrote: »

bikerangelo wrote: »

People think the term "difficulty" should revolve around enemies having higher health and higher damage. I disagree wholeheartedly.

If you notice, most mobs will group around you in an Assassin's Creed fashion and each take their turn between attacks to do anything to you. When they bunch up, it can be problematic, but if you're facing 1 enemy NPC he will light attack you, wait 2 seconds, then either light attack you again or charge up his "special attack" that does a bit more damage.

If the devs were to implement a difficulty setting, it would have to revolve around NPC aggro and the speed of their attacks. Currently, if enemy NPC's outrank you in levels, their dodge chance is increased significantly against your attacks and they do higher damage. This is a lazy way of increasing "difficulty" as it only makes it annoying for you to land any hits. In order to fundamentally increase the difficulty, as in what @Ethromelb14_ESO is suggesting, it should include some of these features:

• Your detection radius increases significantly
• NPC's will aggro much quicker upon discovering you
• NPC attack speed will increase
• NPC's will block your attacks (not passively dodge) more frequently
• Leave everything else as is, this will only change NPC behavior towards this specific player

Naturally, to reward this, an xp modifier will have to be added to each mob killed so that the higher difficulty means more than just a challenge for the individual player. This could help the people who grind mobs for levels by providing more of a challenge and being more rewarding in the long run.

The problem there is every NPC has to react to each player differently...surely you see the problem that the NPC cant react in two different ways at the same time.
Its a physical and logical impossibility in anything but a single player game.

You can only modify how each player is impacted by or impacts the environment when scaling.
Or alternatively.. how a fixed group of players is scaled

No it's not impossible. Once mobs are engaged they use a particular ruleset based on that players difficulty setting.

TheShadowScout

Going for a "NPC difficults adjustment" is the stupid option - it would require a lot of coding, and create problems when "boosted" NPCs shift aggro to some lowbie.

A much better option would be leaving all the world NPCs as they are, and working on the character stats instead. Kinda like a... reverse battle levelling.
Have a "handicap slider" in your game options, so that people would be able to voluntarily set their "character efficiency" to a lower setting...
Game too easy? Play at 90% efficiency - using just 90% damage, 90% armor & spell resistance, 90% resource regenration. etc.
Still too easy? Reset it to 80%. And so on, until you are happy with the level of challenge YOU face!
But the world would remain the same for everyone else, no matter who or what, just your stats change (and can be reset at any time you feel like it).

Nestor

Tallowby wrote: »

Nestor wrote: »

Good idea, except, what about if I am running around near other players. Who's level of difficulty do the NPCs in the area or delve get? How are you going to have different mob levels of difficulty without creating an instance for each player? If you have an instance for each player or group, how will other players be able to interact with each other?

They are already adding/ changing the game like in Orsinium... Auto scaling content after lv 50. All that would be needed is plus/minus off of the scaling. So mobs are not modified only your stats and damage...

No instance needed...

Battle Leveling in Orsinium has already screwed up my Farming. I don't want to see that in any other zones. Unless they make nodes to scale to Craft Level or Character Level whichever is higher.

And, Battle Leveling has it's own issues. If I am puttering around in Grahtwood on my VR16 as I am chasing a Deadric General, then it would stand to reason that all mobs would be scaled to VR16, and all players would have to be scaled to that. Except, most players who are natively in Grahtwood just barely unlocked weapon swapping and have very little in the skill department.

Ethromelb14_ESO

There are too many non-believers for me to reply to each one individually; so I will type this. While many of you think you are fleshing out the details for the OP's proposed idea - you're off and making things more difficult (no pun intended) then they need be.

I understand there are underlying complexities that have to be taken in to consideration, similar to the scenario of simply going for a tetanus shot and still needing to know if there are any allergies to be concerned with; but the overall premise of the idea is very possible and a fixer for many present issues.

The problem with MMOs is not the building of them, it's the people that will be playing them. Why? Because most people would rather tell why something couldn't possibly work, instead of coming up with ideas to see the idea come to fruition... not realizing their contributing to the ideas lack of success.

Consider this: With all the many different diversified builds currently in the game ... how is the game able to determine who should be hit with a critical strike and not? Is anybody concerned about that? Do you get mad when you see your teammate wasn't hit as hard as you were? Or do you use the resources available to you to figure out what the problem is?

I've never claimed to be a tech head, and if I've missed a detail or more, then someone who is ... can be an optimist and figure out how it can work.

As I said before the only thing that would be affected in open-world combat and delves is the amount of damage a player receives. This does not pose a problem, because what do you think is already happening in the game? Does not a tank take less damage than players that are not tanks? The only difference is we currently have no control over how hard an NPC will be for us. If a player has a complaint about the mobs being too hard, well then fix it yourself so ZoS can focus on more pertinent issues finally leaving the difficulty issue alone for a while.