So I was pondering if it was already discussed but I thought i'd start a topic about difficulty settings. A top difficulty setting shouldn't just increase the time it takes to kill/arrest badguys, but also increase aggression/tactical intelligence. It should also insult people for picking things lower then the "normal" setting, so without further adieu...
Before going to the difficulties, what I mean by ranks is that minions/lieutenants/bosses all have a normal and a harder rank. Harder rank enemies attack faster, debuff more and are a bit tougher, as well as being smarter. Hard ranked enemies are non-existent on the easiest settings, and utterly replace them 100% on the highest(kinda inspired by the game series marathon, "minor" rank enemies automatically upgraded to major rank on higher settings, major downgraded to minor on easier).
Lower difficulties
These are made for those trying to get into the game, but reward on a penalty. Enemies are made to be more predictable, easy to trick into fighting a trinity to plan, and enemies generally give less experience. The easiest setting is given an insulting name as to discourage picking it, additionally it gives very little experience and is meant only as a tutorial mode setting. Normal is a baseline, and is generally harder than the two lowest ones and should be a baseline experience.
Pre-Schooler mode;
Enemies do half damage, have half health, generally only charge and also are especially passive and slow in attacks(even just sitting there). Enemies give only 1/10th exp and all higher rank enemies are downgraded one rank.(in other words, you really, really suck and maybe should up the difficulty, not really being serious but hey, it's called pre-schooler mode for a reason. Yeah I remember those days of insulting names for easiest) Enemies have no debuff effects. Enemies are also stupid enough to ALWAYS attack the tank even if he is only inflicting minimal damage.
Easy Mode:
50% of higher rank enemies are downgraded one rank. Enemies do normal damage but have only 75% durability. Enemies attack at only 75% speeds. Enemies can launch some debuffs. Player takes an exp penalty of 35%(not as harsh as the above, but then you shouldn't be lowering it this much either unless you really need to in order to re-familiarize yourself with the game). Enemies still fall for the holy trinity very, very easily.
Normal: Default setting, enemies are neither downgraded nore upgraded in rank. Normal damage is done and enemies are at full health and attack at normal speeds. Enemies that have debuffs and crowd control have full use of them. No experience penalties or bonuses. Enemies flank around occasionally and make attempts to target non tank players who are in the open if tanks had not established a dangerous enough presence.
Higher difficulties; The two following should generally obliberate the trinity, as enemies are much smarter and far more aggressive and have significantly higher damage capabilities, enough so that healing by itself healing a tank wouldn't work as enemies won't fall for that so easily.
Super powered: Enemies do 50% more damage, have 35% more health and lower ranked enemies have a 50% chance to be increased in rank. Enemies use smarter tactics and try to flank more aggressively, call for reinforcements, as well as attacking while moving(and generally keep moving most the time). Enemies also attack 50% faster. Enemies give 50% more experience.
True Titan: Enemies do double damage, have double health, double attack rates. ALL enemies are upped a rank if they are lower ranks(meaning you won't encounter weaker rank enemies). Enemies use similar tactics to above, but in addition constantly attack when you are in view(and instantly when you come within view). This mode is meant to be suicide for all but the best players, and gives double experience. This mode and the above should also stomp holy trinities with ease if the team is not making good use of buffs/debuffs/crowd control in team settings. The three are important to ensure enemies cannot do what they want, because they will try and hit the weak spots in a team if allowed to(tanks will generally need to keep moving and in the way of the enemies).
Custom difficulties: Since a mission editor will be released later, I think it'd be nice to be able to customize the above difficulties, even rename them temporarily for the duration of the mission string.
So a small chart for the settings differences in damage/attack speed ect. Listed as Pre-schooler/easy/normal/Super Powered/True Titan
Damage: 50%/100%/100%/150%/200%
Attack speed: 50%/75%/100%/135%/200%
Health: 50%/75%/100%/100%/200%
Rankings:-100%/-50%/Unchanged/+50%/+100%(every 50% in either direction means weaker enemies are improved in rank on positive values, or stronger are weakened on negative values)
Intelligence: Excessively predictable/predictable/May change targets/Attempts to change/Moves constantly to change targets while launching attacks at all times.
So that brings up behavior. I'd think that, enemies would try to on higher difficulties move around such that they can get shots at more fragile teammates if a tank is in the way. If a tank is in the way sufficiently they'll focus on him, so ranged will want to keep behind the tank naturally. On higher settings, they'll flank more aggressively to attempt to allow themselves to get clear shots at squishies(enough so on normal to mean the tank has to move), on lower settings they'll generally remain predictable(with pre-schooler the AI always targets the most durable person).
On all difficulties except true titan enemies will not attack constantly when moving. But on True Titans, enemies will also run-and-gun, circle strafing as before but also keep a constant barrage out. Because True Titan and Super Powered enemies do more damage and already strike more often, damage mitigation becomes far more important and crowd control is important to keep enemies from trying to circle strafe/flank to much.
I realized something today(5/8/2014) that many MMORPG players, are not like us who enjoyed CoX. They enjoy repetitiveness and predictability, rather then unpredictability. We on the other hand enjoy unpredictability and variety.
With the lower than normal difficulties and reduced rewards the biggest concern I would have is not the XP per enemy rate, but how much can be made over time, such as XP/hour. It's hearsay, but I heard from several people that the best XP/hour (at least at one point in time) in CoH was to street sweep green conning minions. the XP/minion wasn't great, but you could drop them fast enough that it would add up. I've also heard comments during DXP weekends to not run at +4x8, but instead pick an easier difficulty and beat enemies and missions faster.
The inexperienced player for who those levels are meant is not the issue, but other players could abuse the system if they find the right sweet spot.
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I never set anything on fire accidentally!
The Titan Legacy - Defender of the Inner Flame
The one thing that I am worried about is "If at minimum difficulty can I run out of content before I hit level cap?"
Just asking this because THAT would be the worse case situation. Hell, even CoX had bit of problem with this at one point during the game, where the soloers (could well be due to hours that they work/having to drop stuff at a moments notice) were penalised enough that they ended up *having* to street sweep to get to the next contact unlock level.
There is *nothing* more annoying than having this happen. For me, I have no problem doing a bit of "street sweeping" as I level up. However I can see players avoiding "mobs in the wild", especially if travel powers are available at an early level, because they could be more of a annoyance rather than "MUST KILL FOR XP"
*edit* I just had a thought, I like this, however I can see this only working on *instanced* mob encounters and not the "open world" version of them, because then you start having the problem of "how should the mob react when 2 players with different difficulties start attacking it".
CoX had enough content to do (at least blueside) that I personally never really did all of it. I certainly didn't ever have a single toon that had done every mission in the game, but there were people who talked about that. I think this was one of the reasons they made the Abandoned Sewers, to give people at or near the level where you hit the wall on missions something to do to get decent XP. But teamed so much and did so many TFs that I never got to that point. I had several level 50 toons that had to go back and find someone doing the "rescue the fortune teller" mission after it was made public that you needed it for one of the Accolades.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Thats kind of why I made them disproportionately lower in exp, at least on the "Preschooler" difficulty. Basically if it's lower then normal it should be something that, once your a bit more familiar you should be upping it right away. If anything maybe easy should also be penalizing or something. But then I'd maybe shift rewards more at higher settings to. And make some difficulty settings made specifically for higher level characters.
At the same time, if say higher difficulties increased the chance of encountering enemies normally worth more exp on normal, with an exp bonus that'd also increase the appeal of it.
I realized something today(5/8/2014) that many MMORPG players, are not like us who enjoyed CoX. They enjoy repetitiveness and predictability, rather then unpredictability. We on the other hand enjoy unpredictability and variety.
You are right, someone should up the difficulty once they get the idea. The thing is, I'm not worried about that guy. I'm also not worried about the guy who just wants to play easy mode and be happy. I'm worried about a min maxed power-house making up for the reduced rewards by plowing through the content quickly with little to no risk of failure. If the exploit exists, it will be used.
Using your "Preschooler" difficulty for example. 1/10th the XP sounds all well and good, but if a player can mow them down x12 times as fast as "normal " there could be an issue. I'm not saying that it is going to happen, but you do have to look at rewards over time, not just per enemy.
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I never set anything on fire accidentally!
The Titan Legacy - Defender of the Inner Flame
20% faster doesn't sound like much of a problem to me, but then I'm of the opinion that if I'm gaining enough XP to be able to do the next bit of story at normal difficulty I'm fine. But however great a percentage increase in leveling speed the devs consider to be too much, they can hopefully find out before launch how to adjust the XP/enemy rate at each difficulty level to get an XP/hour rate that is lower than too much, but not too much lower than at normal difficulty. ^_^
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
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To be fair with this, CoX had the problem in that you had to find someone who was doing the content that you had missed out on and then team with them, to be able to experience the content.
Once they introduced the ability to "stop XP" and Oroborus, the problem went away... you could always run the content either whilst you were levelling up (and had no XP gain enabled) or via Oroborus if you had outlevelled it.
Which is different to how a lot of other MMO's deal with this: For them, as long as you exceed the minimum level to *start* the mission, you are free to run it whenever you want.