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Would this game benefit from a difficulty slider?


Moggie

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I'd like to start off by saying, this isn't a complaint thread, rather just an analysis of the current state of the game.

 

So, I've been playing just about since the January launch, and have 3 level 45's now. I usually play at least an hour each day and am fairly comfortable with my classes. That being said, I couldn't tell you what one of the bosses from the blue moonwater dungeons looks like, as I've never seen one. I've taken the time to upgrade my equipment up to the point where I need something from one of the blue dungeons to go further. I don't remember everything but I do remember trying to go into Brightstone and not even being able to make it past the first room's miniboss and dying in just a few seconds. I know it's meant for a party but that seems a bit extreme. Even with 6 of me, I probably couldn't get past him. All of these problems simply get worse with purple dungeons.

 

Another example is Mushin's tower. The quest giver says the first 4 floors or so are supposed to be easy, yet I was barely able to get past floor 2 and die immediately to the floor 3 boss. The worst part is that here, finding a party isn't even an option (oddly enough, I don't think even a full party of people with my skill level could get past floor 3). Same problem with the final boss of Dreadtide Arena, which is also mandatory solo.

 

So what I am wondering is, would it be good for the game if there was a way to change the difficulty of the dungeons? I know some games like Vindictus have this option. If I had to guess I would say at the moment they've effectively locked at least 75% of the population out of clearing solo dungeons and roughly the same amount from enjoying moonwater party dungeons as their only option is to be carried or, like myself, refuse to be carried and simply not do them. It seems like a common trap that mmo's fall into where they aren't sure how to scale difficulty, so they just put random high numbers for the enemies' stats and hope it works itself out. 

 

Again, this isn't an attack on BnS or anything, just my experience so far with the game. I do plan on continuing to play and hopefully find ways to improve. At the moment I've just been leveling other characters to pass as content, but I wonder what I will find to do once I have 8 45's.

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I think this would be a great idea. Some of my friends say certain things are too hard while some thinks its too easy. Personally im fine with the diff atm but this would still be good as both the casual and elitist could benefit from this.

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The existing dungeon difficulties serve as very necessary skill and gear checks. If you're unable to clear them as is, you're simply not ready to progress in the game - you either need better gear or more practice.

 

Allowing a player to turn down the difficulty would result in players gaining gear they didn't earn and moving on to content they're not ready for. This means unskilled players flooding into dungeons they simply can't handle where they'll either be carried or cause their parties to fail. Not a good situation.

 

The game does a fairly good job of keeping players where they belong as-is. If you're getting stuck you need to start gearing up, learning your class, watching videos, asking clan members for advice, etc. etc.

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By the time you hit fresh 45, you are severely undergeared for the Moonwater dungeons. Unlike earlier in the game, there's not much transition at all.

 

One of the problems also lies with gear powercreep/treadmill in the game. If you compare some of the BIS/best in slot soul shields from before the update (i.e. Bloodshade/Endless Tower - not to mention how much BSH shields powercreeped Blackram Supply shields), there is as much as a 100+ crit/5000+ HP difference in stats. However, those stats do matter in zones like Mushin Tower - gear is 50%, skill is the other 50%.

 

Furthermore, hitting level 45 doesn't exactly give you a clear indicator of what you need to progress. Probably the 24-man East Fleet/Nightshade would be your best bets.

 

 

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6 minutes ago, Lurkios said:

The existing dungeon difficulties serve as very necessary skill and gear checks. If you're unable to clear them as is, you're simply not ready to progress in the game - you either need better gear or more practice.

 

Allowing a player to turn down the difficulty would result in players gaining gear they didn't earn and moving on to content they're not ready for. This means unskilled players flooding into dungeons they simply can't handle where they'll either be carried or cause their parties to fail. Not a good situation.

 

The game does a fairly good job of keeping players where they belong as-is. If you're getting stuck you need to start gearing up, learning your class, watching videos, asking clan members for advice, etc. etc.

Not really. How would players being able to do Naryu at a lower difficulty and experience the content be a bad thing? By having bosses with slightly different tactics at lower difficulties it helps to prepare players for doing them in a more difficult setting. You do realize that we already have that in the form of 6 man vs 4 man right? 6 man has aoe indicators, the attacks don't hit as hard, and enrage timers are shorter. Allowing players to experience them at different levels would expand the available content as a whole.

 

That said, I don't know that it would be plausible because of how the game is built, but if it can be done it wouldn't be a bad thing.

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They could do it the same way other instanced dungeon MMOs do difficulty sliders like in Dragon Nest, Vindictus and PSO2.

 

Obviously, picking easy will give you the barebones experience of the dungeon. It simply gives you an idea of what to expect inside and how the leve design is. But on max difficulty (Extreme, Hell, Abyss etc.) you get the top tier loot that almost always require a full party. 

 

The bad example of this model would be TERA's where the story quests require you to play the party dungeons, and considering how dead that game is, it would be impossible to advance the quest line until you find a good samaritan that will carry you through it. A good example is PSO2's, where story quests are delegated to easy mode so that players experience the story for leisure and at their own pace, and then play the harder difficulties later on with friends or solo if you need a challenge.

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Not really. If you notice on instanced dungeon MMOs, most people still play on the hardest difficulties to get the best loot. The easy mode is just an option, and more options is always best. Not having this option will only to bite newer players in the ass once the game's population dies down with only the elite players are left, no body will be playing on those dungeons that they need.

 

This is what happened to me on Tera EU at least.

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New Idea to add to yours.

 

God Mod difficulty - You cannot be harmed and you one shot every boss and monster.

 

Impossible difficulty - you cannot kill any boss or enemy and they one shot you with any attack.

 

I believe this would help the casuals and elitist.

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36 minutes ago, Lurkios said:

The existing dungeon difficulties serve as very necessary skill and gear checks. If you're unable to clear them as is, you're simply not ready to progress in the game - you either need better gear or more practice.

 

Allowing a player to turn down the difficulty would result in players gaining gear they didn't earn and moving on to content they're not ready for. This means unskilled players flooding into dungeons they simply can't handle where they'll either be carried or cause their parties to fail. Not a good situation.

 

The game does a fairly good job of keeping players where they belong as-is. If you're getting stuck you need to start gearing up, learning your class, watching videos, asking clan members for advice, etc. etc.

But if they moved on to the easy difficulty versions of the next dungeons, how would that not prepare them for it? As I said before, I have all my gear upgraded to the point that now I need to do one of these dungeons to get the next breakthrough items. So now it becomes a matter of "I need to pass this dungeon to get my next item, but I need my next item to be able to pass this dungeon". As I also said, I've been playing since launch, so not sure how much more "learning my class" there is able to be done.

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Since you needed something from one of the blue dungeon to upgrade your gear, I assume you are talking about the Forgotten Brightstone weapon and not the blue weapon, means your gear should puts you at Awakened Profane, which is more than enough for those blue dungeon, at least when doing it in a group but definitely not solo. You could just F8 for those dungeons and you should be able to get through them easily with 6 people, you are not suppose to do them solo unless you are pretty well geared. So I am not sure what's the problem you are having, don't tell me that you couldn't get into a group for those blue dungeons even by using F8.

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31 minutes ago, vita said:

Since you needed something from one of the blue dungeon to upgrade your gear, I assume you are talking about the Forgotten Brightstone weapon and not the blue weapon, means your gear should puts you at Awakened Profane, which is more than enough for those blue dungeon, at least when doing it in a group but definitely not solo. You could just F8 for those dungeons and you should be able to get through them easily with 6 people, you are not suppose to do them solo unless you are pretty well geared. So I am not sure what's the problem you are having, don't tell me that you couldn't get into a group for those blue dungeons even by using F8.

Yes, I am at the brightstone weapon point on all 3 characters. As I said, I understand that it's meant for parties, however I found it odd that I couldn't even take 10% of the first miniboss's hp without dying. That makes me think that if I do party, I will need to be carried, which I'm not too fond of.

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Just now, Moggie said:

Yes, I am at the brightstone weapon point on all 3 characters. As I said, I understand that it's meant for parties, however I found it odd that I couldn't even take 10% of the first miniboss's hp without dying. That makes me think that if I do party, I will need to be carried, which I'm not too fond of.

 

To be honest yes Brightstone mini bosses are a tad too powerful compare to others, but in a party you will be fine and won't be carried much, I have done it myself with only Awakened Profane, and I was tanking the mini boss with my cat since I keep getting agro, so don't think that you will be carried because you might be the one to carry them. As long as the team work together, it will go through fine.

 

It's good that you would think this way, that you might not contribute much to the group, but then it's also holding you back in terms of content clear and upgrade, so I would say just go do it, with experience you will find that even with less than stellar gear the dungeon becomes easier. So really go F8 for it and try your best, you will contribute more than those lazy bum that goes afk, others will welcome you more than bots and afker, and most parties don't really care about gear in the big 4.

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If they have a difficulty slider of any sorts, then the loot must be proportional to it. If they at 100% difficulty (default) then their loot table will be at 100%, 80% difficulty will probably yield 60% of possible loot, 50% difficulty will have no loot at all, etc. I'm in no way saying that unskillful players should not be able to get loot, but if loot isn't affected, even I wouldn't care for a challenge anymore; would just change difficulty to minimum, so I can farm (exploit) for drops all day.

 

And not being able to solo blue dungeons (which I believe recommend 4+ players) is... not uncommon. And dying in a few seconds? Remember that B&S is action combat, to say the least. If you don't stand there and face tank everything like in classic mmo, you should not die so quickly. Also, having 2 players instead of one does not simply mean you will survive twice as long and deal double the damage. 2 players would be able to make blue dungeons much much much easier than just doing it alone. You won't have everyone targeting you and killing you in seconds. I would think that 6 of you vs 6 enemies would do much better than 1 of you vs 6 enemies. And practice, don't stand there and trade blows like in runescape.

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It will get easier the more you play and the more you upgrade your gears.

 

The 4 blue dungeons aren't hard at all but quite a few ppl just don't know what they should be doing there. For brightstone ruin mini boss, you just need to CC the boss and kill the adds. Separate them if you can so that you all won't get hit by aoe. 

 

Mushin was the same. You just don't know how to do it so you fail. 2nd? Use more healing/i-frame skills and you will do well. 3rd was a joke once you learn how to put the main mini unconscious for 30s. You make the mini take a long nap while you kill all the adds. It was that simple. You shouldn't have any gear issues in all floor except for 5 7 and 8 since those do have dps/time-check.

 

75% is absurd. Pls stop making sh7t up. Yes some enemy stats are somewhat off the scale at first so you have to top that out with proper soul shields/upgrade.

 

Don't fret too much about getting carried and go play more since you need both the mats/exp to get better. If you stuck somewhere just watch guide vids. That is it.

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3 hours ago, Lurkios said:

The existing dungeon difficulties serve as very necessary skill and gear checks. If you're unable to clear them as is, you're simply not ready to progress in the game - you either need better gear or more practice.

 

Allowing a player to turn down the difficulty would result in players gaining gear they didn't earn and moving on to content they're not ready for. This means unskilled players flooding into dungeons they simply can't handle where they'll either be carried or cause their parties to fail. Not a good situation.

 

The game does a fairly good job of keeping players where they belong as-is. If you're getting stuck you need to start gearing up, learning your class, watching videos, asking clan members for advice, etc. etc.

 

This is classic nay-saying without much rational thought behind it. If they can make a difficulty slider, they can also make less powerful loot drop from the easy-mode dungeons.

 

That being said, I feel the 24-6-4 man option is already a kind of difficulty slider. In 24 man you get notifications about the bosses' moves and they do less damage. In 6 man, you still get notifications, but they do more damage and you have less DPS, so you have to apply what you learned about the mechanics. In 4 man, the training wheels come off, and you're on your own.

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Let me get this straight. Because you cant solo mushins tower or 6-man dungeons easily there has to be an option to make it more easy?

As for mushins tower.. the only advice is to get good. This sounds harsh, but it's the truth. If you got troubles with anything under the sevenths floor you have serious understanding problems with your own class. Sit down, read your skills, learn to survive, learn the patterns of the bosses (not really hard until 7th floor) and maintain decent damage while surviving.

As for soloing dungeons.. you do realise that these are 6 man dungeons on purpose, right? They are not intended to be soloed. Every class is able to solo them, however that does not mean that it should be easy lol.

 

And basically there are different difficulties. There are 4-man dungeon versions for the bigger 6-man dungeons which is waaay harder. Mobs hit like 3 times as hard and the telegraphs on the ground arent there anymore in some cases. The 6-man dungeons are the easy versions. They are just not designed to be soloed. 

 

Also i'm not sure what you'd do with loot. Playing on easy mode should give less loot obviously. But if every bob could solo 6-man dungeons there wouldnt just have to be reduced drops, there would have to be like a 20% chance to drop normally-guaranteed items at all, with a quantity of 1 lol. 

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7 hours ago, Moggie said:

Yes, I am at the brightstone weapon point on all 3 characters. As I said, I understand that it's meant for parties, however I found it odd that I couldn't even take 10% of the first miniboss's hp without dying. That makes me think that if I do party, I will need to be carried, which I'm not too fond of.

You need to consider that in a party, enemy boss/add attacks aren't necessarily focused on you (unless taunting), which allows you to live longer and output more damage. Being able to solo (or the lack thereof) is not an absolute indicator of your ability to function in a party.

 

 

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MMO difficulty slider...

Everybody would run that stuff with minimum diff slider, just to progress faster.

 

I would rather have better crosserver criteria for joining.

Something like minimum level, gear, classes, if you want fast run or you do not mind waiting, etc.

Both for joining party and for seeking more members.

Nothing annoys me more than getting into party to see some idiot charging forward, killing half of party in flames then dying to golem, and then blaming me for not helping him with that golem. All while his rush killed remaining 4 members.

Or those "I can solo it all" level 45s rushing forward, messing up every trash mob which makes it very hard for low levels (that dungeon was designed for) to go past them.

 

I would love to have option to run only with appropriate levels.

 

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I would be more worried about how multiple difficulties would affect the playerbase a few years down the road.  I dont play any of those games mentioned above like Vindictus or whatever.  I raided in WoW but that was back when it was just 10 and 25 man versions.  Now they have LFR, Flex, 10 normal/heroic/mythic and 25 normal/heroic/mythic.  Look at WoW and how the players and dev was initially when all those difficulties, gear and raid mechanics was first released.  Then compare that to how the players, devs, gear and raid mechanics are now.

 

How did the changes affect casual players/guilds?

How did the changes affect guilds that were average/above average (in terms of progression pace)?

How did the changes affect your average server first guilds?

How did the changes affect your average world first guilds? (or top 10% or whatever)

 

I mean right now you guys are just requesting this for the casual players right? well in WoW having multiple difficulties meant multiple chances at loot too if raid locks werent shared.  And that kind of stuff *did* affect non-casual guilds from what i hear.  When a BiS trinket or set piece didnt drop in their heroic 25m heroic/mythic i heard that people would then run it on normal mode or even LFR just for a chance at a lesser version of the trinket or set piece because the trinket stats or procs and the set bonuses were *that* good.  In fact i think because of that Blizzard changed how loot will work in future raids.  Even though non of it was mandatory guilds and their players felt compelled to run the other difficulties.  Casual oriented players felt compelled to run all the difficulties but even elite guilds or their players felt compelled to run the lower difficulties.

 

Thats the kind of stuff you have to be careful of.  And i'm sure there are people who want what the OP posted who will dismiss everything i've said and say "meh i dont see any of that happening".

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12 hours ago, Yamyatos said:

Let me get this straight. Because you cant solo mushins tower or 6-man dungeons easily there has to be an option to make it more easy?

As for mushins tower.. the only advice is to get good. This sounds harsh, but it's the truth. If you got troubles with anything under the sevenths floor you have serious understanding problems with your own class. Sit down, read your skills, learn to survive, learn the patterns of the bosses (not really hard until 7th floor) and maintain decent damage while surviving.

As for soloing dungeons.. you do realise that these are 6 man dungeons on purpose, right? They are not intended to be soloed. Every class is able to solo them, however that does not mean that it should be easy lol.

 

And basically there are different difficulties. There are 4-man dungeon versions for the bigger 6-man dungeons which is waaay harder. Mobs hit like 3 times as hard and the telegraphs on the ground arent there anymore in some cases. The 6-man dungeons are the easy versions. They are just not designed to be soloed. 

 

Also i'm not sure what you'd do with loot. Playing on easy mode should give less loot obviously. But if every bob could solo 6-man dungeons there wouldnt just have to be reduced drops, there would have to be like a 20% chance to drop normally-guaranteed items at all, with a quantity of 1 lol. 

Well, I have been playing usually every day for almost 2 months now. If that's not enough time to learn my class enough to do a basic blue dungeon, I feel like there's a possible balance problem. Not accusing them of anything, just an observation. Maybe they could just have the enemies' hp tied to the number of people in the party. For example, if there are 3 people in the party, the enemies will have 75% of the hp they would have in a 6 person party. With 1 person they would have 50%. That makes it more balanced regardless of the party size, instead of it being directly geared towards a 6-man party 100% of the time. At the same time it does not discourage party play, as even though with 6 people the enemies will have 2x the hp they would have with 1 person, you have 6x the damage output.

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But you are not meant to do these Dungeons solo (you CAB do it with good equipment and good understanding of your class, but they still are meant for 6 players). And don't worry about getting carried. 6 players really make a difference. When somebody aggros the Adds and tanks them, you will be able to concentrate on dealing damage and killing to bosses.

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