Solution for overland difficulty that will suit everyone

Jeremy

ZeroXFF wrote: »

I see discussions about overland being too difficult or too easy all the time, and both sides have valid arguments. So now I present to you a concept of a solution that will suit everyone (the exact numbers would of course have to be adjusted to be balanced).

A difficulty slider that does the following:
- increases damage taken by your char from overland/delve/public dungeon mobs by up to 20x
- reduces your damage done to those mobs by up to 20x on server side, on client side instead display up to 20x higher HP, so that the players have a consistent impression of their character's capabilities and see consistent damage numbers
- increases experience gained by up to 100% (to offset the time you would lose and make it worthwhile to level at higher difficulty if you're good enough)
- increases frequency and quality of gear and consumable drops (to aid dealing with the given difficulty level and provide incentives to use the higher difficulty). But don't add items that people at lower difficulty would not be able to get too, just for example make set and potion drops more likely.

Rules:
- the slider would affect all these settings proportionally so that everyone can pick their own "sweet spot" of risk vs. reward
- if people with a different difficulty setting were fighting the same mob, set rewards (XP and drops) for all those people to what the one with the lowest setting would get
- instead of doing population balancing among different shards randomly, try to group people with similar difficulty settings (make the range as small as you can while making the population look the same as it is now, dynamically adjusting ranges based on how many people there are in those given ranges), so that a random person who thinks that they are helping won't accidentally result in bad drops for the ones they are helping
- set quest rewards (gold and XP since adjusting the gear there would require a lot of work) to the equivalent of the lowest setting that you had since you picked up the quest

Doing it like this will provide incentives for people to get better without it preventing newbs from progressing and without making it boring for the pros who will be very unlikely to even encounter a newb in their travels (unless it's off-peak hours or such a newb ported to a friend/guildie who was at your setting).

I think this would be an optimal solution, because we won't have to find the "lowest common denominator", everyone would be able to pick whatever suits them, and due to the difficulty being adjusted procedurally, no game content would have to be changed at all, and it would be easy enough to implement within one DLC cycle without too much of a hassle. And should there be more power creep in the future, just increase the top end of the slider.

I"m not sure if a slider bar would work in the context of an MMORPG.

I think just adding a veteran version of the zone (like they already do with dungeons) would be an easier way to go about it.

mairwen85

Simple solution:

make it that players can apply a de-buff to their character that is automatically removed in group content -- >
player choice of de-buff in % damage taken or done (or both)
0 impact on other people or the content;

MikaHR

Jeremy wrote: »

Cortimi wrote: »

Vercingetorix wrote: »

Solution for overland difficulty that will suit everyone: Use CP150 white gear and go solo a world boss

There, you can waste time on that while the rest of us play the game in peace as it was designed all without wasting dev time on a pointless request.

Exactly. People can already adjust the difficulty by wearing crappier gear.

If you have to purposely make yourself suck more for a game to offer you enough challenge to be fun then there is a problem.

No offense meant - but this idea that players should just remove all their CP and wear crappy gear to make the game more challenging is absurd. That's one of the most ridiculous solutions to a problem I have ever read on any forum anywhere.

There is no problem whatsoever, it is SAME exact thing as buffing the opponents.

You can already adjust your difficulty however you like.

Jeremy wrote: »

I think just adding a veteran version of the zone (like they already do with dungeons) would be an easier way to go about it.

And you want to waste devs time to do something that you can very easily do yourself right now.

SoLooney

There is a solution for both

If it is too easy, take off your armor and pull out your fists

If it's too hard for you, make some friends

Wow, that was easy

Jeremy

MikaHR wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

Cortimi wrote: »

Vercingetorix wrote: »

Solution for overland difficulty that will suit everyone: Use CP150 white gear and go solo a world boss

There, you can waste time on that while the rest of us play the game in peace as it was designed all without wasting dev time on a pointless request.

Exactly. People can already adjust the difficulty by wearing crappier gear.

If you have to purposely make yourself suck more for a game to offer you enough challenge to be fun then there is a problem.

No offense meant - but this idea that players should just remove all their CP and wear crappy gear to make the game more challenging is absurd. That's one of the most ridiculous solutions to a problem I have ever read on any forum anywhere.

There is no problem whatsoever, it is SAME exact thing as buffing the opponents.

You can already adjust your difficulty however you like.

Jeremy wrote: »

I think just adding a veteran version of the zone (like they already do with dungeons) would be an easier way to go about it.

And you want to waste devs time to do something that you can very easily do yourself right now.

By that logic they shouldn't add more challenging content at all - because we could all just strip and use our fists to punch things and that could be the new endgame content. It's absurd.

The whole point of an MMORPG is to grow your character and make them more powerful. That is literally what an MMORPG is all about - and the content needs to embrace that. Not ignore it and expect us to purposely make ourselves weaker if we want an interesting challenge. I cannot believe that you are even treating this suggestion that we should all just start wearing crappy gear seriously.

ZeroXFF

Jeremy wrote: »

ZeroXFF wrote: »

I see discussions about overland being too difficult or too easy all the time, and both sides have valid arguments. So now I present to you a concept of a solution that will suit everyone (the exact numbers would of course have to be adjusted to be balanced).

A difficulty slider that does the following:
- increases damage taken by your char from overland/delve/public dungeon mobs by up to 20x
- reduces your damage done to those mobs by up to 20x on server side, on client side instead display up to 20x higher HP, so that the players have a consistent impression of their character's capabilities and see consistent damage numbers
- increases experience gained by up to 100% (to offset the time you would lose and make it worthwhile to level at higher difficulty if you're good enough)
- increases frequency and quality of gear and consumable drops (to aid dealing with the given difficulty level and provide incentives to use the higher difficulty). But don't add items that people at lower difficulty would not be able to get too, just for example make set and potion drops more likely.

Rules:
- the slider would affect all these settings proportionally so that everyone can pick their own "sweet spot" of risk vs. reward
- if people with a different difficulty setting were fighting the same mob, set rewards (XP and drops) for all those people to what the one with the lowest setting would get
- instead of doing population balancing among different shards randomly, try to group people with similar difficulty settings (make the range as small as you can while making the population look the same as it is now, dynamically adjusting ranges based on how many people there are in those given ranges), so that a random person who thinks that they are helping won't accidentally result in bad drops for the ones they are helping
- set quest rewards (gold and XP since adjusting the gear there would require a lot of work) to the equivalent of the lowest setting that you had since you picked up the quest

Doing it like this will provide incentives for people to get better without it preventing newbs from progressing and without making it boring for the pros who will be very unlikely to even encounter a newb in their travels (unless it's off-peak hours or such a newb ported to a friend/guildie who was at your setting).

I think this would be an optimal solution, because we won't have to find the "lowest common denominator", everyone would be able to pick whatever suits them, and due to the difficulty being adjusted procedurally, no game content would have to be changed at all, and it would be easy enough to implement within one DLC cycle without too much of a hassle. And should there be more power creep in the future, just increase the top end of the slider.

I"m not sure if a slider bar would work in the context of an MMORPG.

I think just adding a veteran version of the zone (like they already do with dungeons) would be an easier way to go about it.

The problem with just a veteran zone is that a lot of people will be caught in between who are bored in the normal version, but can't cope with the vet version, and some people to whom even the vet version is a joke. It's the situation we have with dungeons right now. If we take this approach, there would have to be more than 2 difficulty levels to suit everyone, and at that point it may as well be a slider.

Don't get me wrong, it would be a step in the right direction, but that will not get rid of threads complaining about questing being too easy or too hard. With a slider where the top end results in every regular mob turning into a raid boss, there at least won't be any complaints about it being too easy, and it will remain difficult for a long time despite any kind of power creep. The only people who could possibly complain there are those for whom the minimal difficulty is too hard already, which is something that the devs can then address without adverse effects for those who like a challenge.