Idea: Difficulty Slider (make things harder for shiny!)

MrDerrikk · November 2015

I'm sure this has been posted a thousand times by now, but what if there was a difficulty slider which performed a small amount of battle-leveling anywhere to make things more difficult, but also gave you more XP? This way people who have already run through the game soloing everything and wanted to have things on hard-mode could benefit, wheras people still coming to grips with the mechanics of things could not suffer?

Edit: This would be a One Way difficulty slider, in that the easiest difficulty would be the current one that is already pretty easy, and then would just impede your stats but buff your XP-gain as above.
Sorry guys for not making it clearer!

pronkg · November 2015

MrDerrikk wrote: »

I'm sure this has been posted a thousand times by now, but what if there was a difficulty slider which performed a small amount of battle-leveling anywhere to make things more difficult, but also gave you more XP? This way people who have already run through the game soloing everything and wanted to have things on hard-mode could benefit, wheras people still coming to grips with the mechanics of things could not suffer?

I like the idea though I think this is undo able for an mmo. I'd just keep it as it is where you can do dungeons on normal/veteran and have the option of hard mode at final bosses.

MrDerrikk · November 2015

pronkg wrote: »

MrDerrikk wrote: »

I'm sure this has been posted a thousand times by now, but what if there was a difficulty slider which performed a small amount of battle-leveling anywhere to make things more difficult, but also gave you more XP? This way people who have already run through the game soloing everything and wanted to have things on hard-mode could benefit, wheras people still coming to grips with the mechanics of things could not suffer?

I like the idea though I think this is undo able for an mmo. I'd just keep it as it is where you can do dungeons on normal/veteran and have the option of hard mode at final bosses.

I meant this as an overall thing, not just in dungeons, as we already have the battle-scaling in place so why can't we just utilise it to make a character a bit weaker than they'd otherwise be and gain a bit more XP to make up for it? This is coming from someone who's personally tired of being able to solo most things, but there are people who certainly can't.

Volkodav · November 2015

The Witcher has three degrees of difficulty that you can choose from to play.Easy,normal,and hard.If they can do that,why cant ZOS?

anitajoneb17_ESO · November 2015

WhiskeyRiver.AZub17_ESO wrote: »

The Witcher has three degrees of difficulty that you can choose from to play.Easy,normal,and hard.If they can do that,why cant ZOS?

Because ESO is an MMO.

TheShadowScout · November 2015

It wouldn't be too hard to implement.
Just think of it less of an difficulty slider, and more of an handicap slider.

Want the game more difficult? Move the slider up a notch, and the game will shave off some of your effectiveness. Say, -5% to every derived stat per slider notch? Health, magica, stamina, armor, damage, whatever? Set your handicap, the game computes your stats as normal, then shaves off the handicap and lets you run out into the wilds.

Wouldn't even be that hard to code, I expect. Though like any new option added to a game with many, many, many interlocking parts (or rather, lines of code) it likely would spawn bugs to do, which then needed squishing.

Question is - do enough people -want- this for them to make the effort.

RAGUNAnoOne · November 2015

How would this work in PvP and trials? anything with a leaderboard would pose the question"did____really earn that or was____ running it on easy mode." I would however vote for separate veteran instances of public dungeons.

Brrrofski · November 2015

WhiskeyRiver.AZub17_ESO wrote: »

The Witcher has three degrees of difficulty that you can choose from to play.Easy,normal,and hard.If they can do that,why cant ZOS?

Because that's a single player game, where changes affect one person.

This is an mmo, how would it work with other players?

Why do people refuse to accept this is a MMO?

JD2013 · November 2015

That is not how things work in an MMO. There would need to be loads of instances created for different players for different difficulties, which frankly is a waste of dev time.

pronkg · November 2015

MrDerrikk wrote: »

pronkg wrote: »

MrDerrikk wrote: »

I'm sure this has been posted a thousand times by now, but what if there was a difficulty slider which performed a small amount of battle-leveling anywhere to make things more difficult, but also gave you more XP? This way people who have already run through the game soloing everything and wanted to have things on hard-mode could benefit, wheras people still coming to grips with the mechanics of things could not suffer?

I like the idea though I think this is undo able for an mmo. I'd just keep it as it is where you can do dungeons on normal/veteran and have the option of hard mode at final bosses.

I meant this as an overall thing, not just in dungeons, as we already have the battle-scaling in place so why can't we just utilise it to make a character a bit weaker than they'd otherwise be and gain a bit more XP to make up for it? This is coming from someone who's personally tired of being able to solo most things, but there are people who certainly can't.

I understood what you meant, just saying I don't think it will work. And I will most certainly not like an option to make my character weaker. I was saying we already have difficult stuff in that are instances like dung ones where you can choose to do a normal one or a veteran one and even a hard mode at the final boss. And as I'm v16 I don't get battleleveled except in pvp zones. So what you're suggestion would mean you can choose to debuff or weaken your character. Which I don't think many people would like.

Above that you think it wouldn't affect the game if you debuff someone, but what about your group m8s? They can set it to easy and kill for you while you get an XP buff. Sorry, but I don't think there's an easy solution to your problem and certainly not enough people who would actually want this if you ask me.

Maybe a tougher zone, but that would cause community to complain just as with veteran maelstrom and almost force zenimax to nerf it down so everyone has a chance.

Want a hard time try to do a vet dungeon with 3 people or compete in leaderboard of maelstrom arena. The game was much harder in the early days, but in general people don't like that.

Don't get me wrong, I'd set it to hard mode if possible, but I don't see it happening anywhere soon if at all

Elijah_Crow · November 2015

Though the thought of going into an area with a ton of people (like a group boss in Orsinium) and cranking up the difficulty slider while stealthed and watching everyone get owned is sort of appealing.

KewaG · November 2015

Been thinking about your idea and I like it but this is already kind of in place. I say kind of because of the obvious reason, CP. If you don't want to be able to solo most of the content you could just remove some or all of your CP. It's an expensive alternative for a difficulty slider but it's essentially what ZOS would need to do to make the game more difficult.(Lessen the effect CP has on your character)

Alternative to that you can play in broken low level gear to give yourself a handicap. The battle leveling only effects you so those are the only options I can think of to make things a little more difficult. I'm currently playing in level 1 gear on an alt but with champ points, it's still too easy.

RAGUNAnoOne · November 2015

play naked at least then you may get gold or other gifts sent at you.

MrDerrikk · November 2015

I'm wanting this not be just be a handicap, but a handicap that rewards people slightly for being in it. This way people can gain CP very slightly faster if they have trained their char so much that they know it back to front.

gilbegger · November 2015

I would put the difficulty slider to max when I played "kick the can".

But thats just me. (where is my pudding?)

Volkodav · November 2015

Yeah,guys,I remembered after I said it.The Witcher is a single player game.Sorry. OOPS! XD

Volkodav · November 2015

Brrrofski wrote: »

WhiskeyRiver.AZub17_ESO wrote: »

The Witcher has three degrees of difficulty that you can choose from to play.Easy,normal,and hard.If they can do that,why cant ZOS?

Because that's a single player game, where changes affect one person.

This is an mmo, how would it work with other players?

Why do people refuse to accept this is a MMO?

I dotn refuse to accept anything.I simply forgot that single player mechanics will not work for an MMO.Actually,I just forgot totally that the Witcher wasnt an MMO. Mind fart.

Gidorick · November 2015

Hmm.. could this be doable in an mmo? Harder end of the scale gets damage received multiplier and damage dealt divisor. Easier end is the opposite. Earn more xp for harder gameplay and less xp for easier gameplay.

The problem is when multiple players attack a target. What if one player is killing a target on easy and one on hard. The one attacking on easy will likely kill the target more quickly than the one on hard. So how does that get scored and XP distributed?

Groups would be easy... the group is set to the difficulty of the leader.

Point is, it could be done, but it would have to be tweaked so it can't be abused.

Gidorick · November 2015

Elijah_Crow wrote: »

Though the thought of going into an area with a ton of people (like a group boss in Orsinium) and cranking up the difficulty slider while stealthed and watching everyone get owned is sort of appealing.

It wouldn't work this way. Each player's damage dealt and received would be buffed and mitigated on a case by case basis. Not the mobs.

MeridianKnight · November 2015

+1 for this - City of Heroes had this option. You went to an NPC to set your mission difficulty from -2 levels to +2 levels. It scaled for your personal missions or if you were team leader. So people would shout out for missions +2 and people knew it would be 2 levels above the team leaders level. Their system was overly simple, but effective. Would be cool to see something like this.

pronkg · November 2015

[

Gidorick wrote: »

Hmm.. could this be doable in an mmo? Harder end of the scale gets damage received multiplier and damage dealt divisor. Easier end is the opposite. Earn more xp for harder gameplay and less xp for easier gameplay.

The problem is when multiple players attack a target. What if one player is killing a target on easy and one on hard. The one attacking on easy will likely kill the target more quickly than the one on hard. So how does that get scored and XP distributed?

Groups would be easy... the group is set to the difficulty of the leader.

Point is, it could be done, but it would have to be tweaked so it can't be abused.

You are also not the only group.

They would have to rebuild the entire game to do this, just let it be.

The reason you never see this in open world mmo is because it causes more problems than good things because only few people expect/want this

Gidorick · November 2015

pronkg wrote: »

[

Gidorick wrote: »

Hmm.. could this be doable in an mmo? Harder end of the scale gets damage received multiplier and damage dealt divisor. Easier end is the opposite. Earn more xp for harder gameplay and less xp for easier gameplay.

The problem is when multiple players attack a target. What if one player is killing a target on easy and one on hard. The one attacking on easy will likely kill the target more quickly than the one on hard. So how does that get scored and XP distributed?

Groups would be easy... the group is set to the difficulty of the leader.

Point is, it could be done, but it would have to be tweaked so it can't be abused.

You are also not the only group.

They would have to rebuild the entire game to do this, just let it be.

The reason you never see this in open world mmo is because it causes more problems than good things because only few people expect/want this

Honestly I'd just prefer to be able to level DOWN to old zones.

pronkg · November 2015

Gidorick wrote: »

pronkg wrote: »

[

Gidorick wrote: »

Hmm.. could this be doable in an mmo? Harder end of the scale gets damage received multiplier and damage dealt divisor. Easier end is the opposite. Earn more xp for harder gameplay and less xp for easier gameplay.

The problem is when multiple players attack a target. What if one player is killing a target on easy and one on hard. The one attacking on easy will likely kill the target more quickly than the one on hard. So how does that get scored and XP distributed?

Groups would be easy... the group is set to the difficulty of the leader.

Point is, it could be done, but it would have to be tweaked so it can't be abused.

You are also not the only group.

They would have to rebuild the entire game to do this, just let it be.

The reason you never see this in open world mmo is because it causes more problems than good things because only few people expect/want this

Honestly I'd just prefer to be able to level DOWN to old zones.

I'd love to replay my own factions story line on hardcore mode

ItsGlaive · November 2015

MrDerrikk wrote: »

I'm sure this has been posted a thousand times by now, but what if there was a difficulty slider which performed a small amount of battle-leveling anywhere to make things more difficult, but also gave you more XP? This way people who have already run through the game soloing everything and wanted to have things on hard-mode could benefit, wheras people still coming to grips with the mechanics of things could not suffer?

Incredibly tricky to implement in an mmo, because of the shared level of difficulty in the open world.

The only conceivable way I could see this working is if, instead of sliding the difficulty of the mobs, it adjusted your characters stats. So maybe hard/ultra reduced armour, damage and resource pools to give you a much greater challenge?

That said, you can already make it harder on yourself - use underlevelled gear and hold some of your attribute points back to give yourself a challenge. Doesn't grant you more exp though

MrDerrikk · November 2015

Xabien wrote: »

MrDerrikk wrote: »

I'm sure this has been posted a thousand times by now, but what if there was a difficulty slider which performed a small amount of battle-leveling anywhere to make things more difficult, but also gave you more XP? This way people who have already run through the game soloing everything and wanted to have things on hard-mode could benefit, wheras people still coming to grips with the mechanics of things could not suffer?

Incredibly tricky to implement in an mmo, because of the shared level of difficulty in the open world.

The only conceivable way I could see this working is if, instead of sliding the difficulty of the mobs, it adjusted your characters stats. So maybe hard/ultra reduced armour, damage and resource pools to give you a much greater challenge?

That said, you can already make it harder on yourself - use underlevelled gear and hold some of your attribute points back to give yourself a challenge. Doesn't grant you more exp though

This is pretty much exactly what I'm after; the lowering of your own personal stats akin to the opposite of the current battle-leveling effect we get in Wrothgar etc. where chars of all levels can have similar stats to each other.

ADarklore · November 2015

I always find these suggestions humorous because people love to think it would be easy to add single-player difficulty settings to an multi-player MMO, but if they took more time to think about all the situations of playing with other players, they'd see how this would NOT be feasible at ALL. There is absolutely NO MMO in existence that offers players the ability to change their difficulty- and there ARE reasons.

Imagine you going against a group boss, one player has their difficulty set low... another high... so while it would take the high difficulty player 50 hits or more to kill the boss, it would take the lower difficulty player 10-20 to do it. Imagine this game wide... yeah, definitely would never work.

TheShadowScout · November 2015

Like I mentioned... the easy way to do it was adding a "handicap" slider where players can voluntarily limit their character effectiveness to experience the game with a higher difficulty, while the game world itself reamains the same...

MrDerrikk · November 2015

The people who are saying it won't work seem to be assuming there'll be an easy mode on the slider. I'm sorry I didn't make it clearer (not sarcasm, I really didn't make it clear) but I see it as just a harder mode. It's still a slider, but the easiest mode is on the current difficulty.

Forestd16b14_ESO · November 2015

ADarklore wrote: »

I always find these suggestions humorous because people love to think it would be easy to add single-player difficulty settings to an multi-player MMO, but if they took more time to think about all the situations of playing with other players, they'd see how this would NOT be feasible at ALL. There is absolutely NO MMO in existence that offers players the ability to change their difficulty- and there ARE reasons.

Imagine you going against a group boss, one player has their difficulty set low... another high... so while it would take the high difficulty player 50 hits or more to kill the boss, it would take the lower difficulty player 10-20 to do it. Imagine this game wide... yeah, definitely would never work.

What this guy said.

Want a slider and easy enemies? Go play Morrowind, Oblivion, or Skyrim.

Necrelios · November 2015

This was mentioned a long while back, and someone (it might have been me) proposed Daedric Cursed Mundus Stones that gave you a stats debuff rather than the buffs we get now increasing the difficulty. I imagine something along the lines of "The Hermaeus Mora Sign will grant you an increase in learning and XP gain as a servant of this Daedric Prince, but be forewarned, knowledge does not come without a sacrifice!" I could see something like this being a thing.

MrDerrikk · November 2015

Necrelios wrote: »

This was mentioned a long while back, and someone (it might have been me) proposed Daedric Cursed Mundus Stones that gave you a stats debuff rather than the buffs we get now increasing the difficulty. I imagine something along the lines of "The Hermaeus Mora Sign will grant you an increase in learning and XP gain as a servant of this Daedric Prince, but be forewarned, knowledge does not come without a sacrifice!" I could see something like this being a thing.

Ah, an actual explanation way of doing it! This I could see being useful, and with it being a fixed "shrine" instead of a held item (which is what I thought you originally said) it'd be a lot cleaner. There would have to be a way to quickly clear the buff at any point however, so that people that join group content can get back to normal power without having to make the others wait as they seek out a shrine.