Difficulty levels and game modes

[doublebuck]

One problem with most arpg games I've played is that they are too easy, and I'm talking about single player/cooperative campaign mode now. Take TQ, for example. The legendary difficulty level occasionally offered some challenge, but most of the time it was just about running through the areas, beating the enemies, and moving on and on and on... This was the case with a "normal", sound build. With some of the ultimate builds it quickly became boring because you didn't even have to stop to beat the monsters, you could just run from mob to mob, spam some skills while doing so, and move on even faster (assuming you'd already explored the area a thousand times before). And the same goes for Torchlight, which is even worse in this respect.

So, one thing I'd like to see in GD is a difficulty level that makes you doubt if it's even possible to beat it. No need for fancy AI improvement, just stronger, tougher, overpowering enemies in great numbers. Make it so damn hard that completing a single area in the game feels like a victory in itself.

Another thing I'd like, probably not possible for the initial release but maybe later on, is a survival mode. Since gears of war and it's horde mode, surviving against increasingly difficult waves of enemies has become popular among shooters, but I don't think I've seen it in any rpg/arpg game. Would be really cool if GD had it. Just one, small map with a defensible position that has enough space for tactical movement, and maybe some potions/eq near the enemy spawning points. Increasing enemy stats from wave to wave, and maybe a reward if you get far enough.

Just to make things clear, I love games that are rich in story and character, scenery, explorable content etc., and I'll greatly appreciate any DLC GD will have. Even so, challenge is usually the one thing that keeps me playing a game over and over again after seeing everything there is to be seen.

[Scryer]

Here's the problem with TQ, TL, and D2 - They had a number of factors that made them too easy, even to begin with.

I'll make a partial list of some of the main causes of this lack of depth and difficulty.

- Health Potions - If you can spam infinite potions, why even have a health bar? TQ tried to solve thus, but the cool-down was way too short.

- Town Portals - What a cheap mechanic! This is the easiest way to exploit every single encounter, put up a portal, and enter it if you lose too much health. This does not add difficulty because you aren't forced to think critically.

- Lack of skill variety - This one is worse in some games more then others, but skill variety is very important when it comes to developing depth of play.

There's more... but this is a small list.


Health potions - put a longer cool down and add something else to supplement not chugging them constantly.

Town Portals - Implement a cool down, or get rid of them.

Lack of skill variety - Implement skills with unique and useful mechanics attached to them.

[yerkyerk]

Agreed with the difficulty. It's also to attract a more mainstream audience. The biggest problem with difficulty in TQ was that (especially) Epic and also Legendary were generally easier than normal. Grim Dawn's gonna change that though, the higher difficulties will be more aimed towards the hardcore audience.

As for the survival, I personally like an Arena type dlc, where you can duke it off against ever increasing waves of monsters (no need to restart, like in survival mode - and you can take your hard-earned character in the ring). It could double as a money sink, charging the player huge amounts of money for higher rounds. The reward the player would get would be mostly bragging rights (I made it to round 100!!! I'm uberleet!) and perhaps an insignifcantly small stat boost (like, +1 to all stats/a stat of choice every x number of rounds). The difficulty would have to be calculated according to a formulae and in the end would be impossible (say, in TQ at round 86, you'd have to face off 5 Typhon's with 300% attack/cast speed, +100% health, 500 health regen per second).

The survival mode would be neat, but I feel that's more modding territory.

[doublebuck]

Originally Posted by yerkyerk

As for the survival, I personally like an Arena type dlc, where you can duke it off against ever increasing waves of monsters (no need to restart, like in survival mode - and you can take your hard-earned character in the ring). It could double as a money sink, charging the player huge amounts of money for higher rounds. The reward the player would get would be mostly bragging rights (I made it to round 100!!! I'm uberleet!) and perhaps an insignifcantly small stat boost (like, +1 to all stats/a stat of choice every x number of rounds). The difficulty would have to be calculated according to a formulae and in the end would be impossible (say, in TQ at round 86, you'd have to face off 5 Typhon's with 300% attack/cast speed, +100% health, 500 health regen per second).

The survival mode would be neat, but I feel that's more modding territory.

Survival mode was probably bad wording, what I meant was exactly what you described, no need to restart from beginning, the round you last beat would be saved and you could continue from there the next time you play that mode.

[ASYLUM101]

- Town Portals - What a cheap mechanic! This is the easiest way to exploit every single encounter, put up a portal, and enter it if you lose too much health. This does not add difficulty because you aren't forced to think critically.

In TQ, it wasn't really that simple to just exploit and escape a battle. If you were in the midst of getting your ass kicked by a huge mob cause you had no (spammable overpowered) health potions, dropping a portalstone wasn't an option because

1) in TQ you have to click the floor for the portal to trigger, not the huge glowing circle thing like in D2.

2) it doesn't TP you instantly, it brings you up to the map menu, which can have a second or 2 delay as you're opening it up. If you're getting your ass kicked, having to worry about clicking your teleport location might prevent you from opening said portal, or even get you killed.


As for arenas - yeah, it would be pretty bad ass, but it would definitely be modded in, I think the devs already said they weren't gonna have the time for that. (for the initial release)

[Scryer]

I would agree that the TP component was much more broken in Diablo 2 then in TQ.

However, why is TP even necessary especially if you can create things that make them partially if not fully unnecessary?

Why do we go back to town? To sell items, to repair our equipment (if this is in the game that is), and to put items into our stashes / storage chests. Maybe to create items also.

- Create mechanics that eliminate the need to go back to town in the first place, by creating an item that sells other items - like a portal seller, create an item that sends items directly to your storage chest, and create an item for field repairs on-the-go.

Then just include portals that take you back to town every so often, and bam, what's the real use for TPs?

But, beyond that, lack of difficulty I would say comes more from depth of play then anything else... if you have the choice between 1 button that destroys almost everything and 4 buttons that need to be used strategically, I think the 4 button play schema wins out.

[Josho]

tl;dr summary: Adding hitpoints is simple, but is it really the best way? To be honest, I think it will be short term. But should Grim Dawn launch successfully and more time and resources are able to be devoted to it, then I think there are other means too.



A game doesn't have to do anything new to advance a genre, it can still be a good game if it does things better. Those words echo through my head; sometime ago that comment was made regarding Darksiders, and is true for any game to be honest. If you can't do anything new, then do it better.

I'm all for making things harder if it means monsters stunning the player goes away. One gripe with Titan Quest - being stunned in a mob and being unable to do anything except chug a potion and hoping that the health restored is enough to counter act the damage being done, or one hit KO from a boss (I'm looking at you Hades!)

Is it really a good move making the lowly monsters glorified meatsacks soaking up damage until they die? In an arena mode? Yes. In the extended difficulties where the player is still trying to get from A to B? Then no. It is not a better way of doing things, and while I am only speaking for myself, I would be critical if a game did that. If those damage sponges drop a mere lowly item for all the effort it takes to kill them, then what's the point? Harder shouldn't just mean making the mobs have higher health points. In TQ, part of the beauty of the latter difficulties was increasing the skills available to some of the enemies (except stun, screw stun. I hate those Centaur elders). Alright, so I am biased against stun, but that is mostly because it takes control away from the player. For an example of a damage sponge however, consider the Hydra. I can game the system with my hunter by equipping the Texan gear, and she can't even land a hit with my high defensive ability.... as a hunter, with a bow, standing next to her, plinking away.

There are ways to make an action game artificially harder I believe without simply adding extra health to a monster, or nerfing the elemental resistance of a player. Adding extra minibosses with a subset of skills not ordinarily available to most creatures works, and may in fact require the player to use more novel ways of killing them. Whether or not the AI programming could effectively use them is another thing.

With the main bosses, then why have a player basically attack one little area ad nauseum. Going back to the Hydra in TQ, and if it were possible within the game engine, couldn't there be effectively multiple targets to strike - each head is a target, plus the main body. Take a head down, it can either enrage the monster, or remove a skill (eg: poison breath) or both. Kill all the heads, monster dies. Or for an alternate, a player can attack the main body, destroy the body, boss dies. I won't elaborate too much more on the example, but the point is, and I know this would take a lot of work, if at all it were possible, there ought to be interesting ways to tackle a boss, not just whacking this series of pixels constantly, though that option is available if it were to fit the right character.

Back to the thing with skills changing, I should add that Hades had the potential to be the most satisfying boss fight - have three different forms, of which it meant three different ways to attack the player, making them respond differently to the new threats. Sadly, none of the boss fights in either Titan Quest, or Diablo felt satisfying, just keep on hitting away, then finish, get loot, rinse and repeat if farming.

If money and time weren't an issue, and the engine were capable of doing so, then having an AI routine ala Director style in Left4Dead would be yet another way of increasing difficulty - having a horde of skeletons burst from the ground, to swarm on the player as he/she is effortlessly mopping up a camp. Sadly, I envisage that won't be happening.

[myrmidon]

Originally Posted by Scryer

Here's the problem with TQ, TL, and D2 - They had a number of factors that made them too easy, even to begin with.

I'll make a partial list of some of the main causes of this lack of depth and difficulty.

- Health Potions - If you can spam infinite potions, why even have a health bar? TQ tried to solve thus, but the cool-down was way too short.

- Town Portals - What a cheap mechanic! This is the easiest way to exploit every single encounter, put up a portal, and enter it if you lose too much health. This does not add difficulty because you aren't forced to think critically.

- Lack of skill variety - This one is worse in some games more then others, but skill variety is very important when it comes to developing depth of play.

There's more... but this is a small list.


Health potions - put a longer cool down and add something else to supplement not chugging them constantly.

Town Portals - Implement a cool down, or get rid of them.

Lack of skill variety - Implement skills with unique and useful mechanics attached to them.

ok yeah lets get rid of portals that way when one of our teammates dies he will have to walk all the way back from where the re spawn point is to where we are! or that way when we have a full inventory we have to drop the stuff on the floor when we find good loot instead of going back to town and selling it. or just stay where you are when you have to go brb and get a bunch of monsters to come and kill you when your not looking. portal's aren't just a cheap escape method. who uses them to escape anyway? by the time the portal loads up and you click on where you want to teleport your dead. i think they should just keep the portals


and also about the health pots i would prefer to keep them but there not as vital to the game play as the portal. i would suggest what fallen earth does with there healing system. you have to buy bandages and then you can use the skill the skill takes 4 seconds to actually heal you if a monster hits you it cancels your healing. also that just gave me the idea of bandages instead of pots in gd

and about the skills what do you meen kinda like how sacred did there thing that you can upgrade the skill?

[Scryer]

Myrmidon, first, I respect your questions and your point of view. However, I will attempt to answer the best I can some of your concerns.

We're talking about difficulty and depth of play here. So, why not develop different mechanics that work in favor of this goal?

Originally Posted by myrmidon

ok yeah lets get rid of portals that way when one of our teammates dies he will have to walk all the way back from where the re spawn point is to where we are!

Alright, my teammate dies. In the past, in Diablo 2, or TQ, I would summon up a Town Portal, and bam they're right back with me. I would call this a flaw in mechanics. Why should a player be forced to summon a portal for their dead friend to begin with? That doesn't help depth of play in any way what so ever.

Then your saying that the Portal mechanic is meant for dead allies, but why can't reviving dead allies have its own seperate mechanic, and why can't getting back to one of your firends have its own mechanic?

I put it to you, that if one implemented a way to revive our friends in the midst of a battle, it would make the game much more fun. Place a cool-down on the revive mechanic so as to discourage its constant use. When a person is revived they come back to life with 70% health.

If a player dies and is sent back to town, they ought to respawn with less health then they could be revived for - and this is why - because when a player is in a town, they can portal to any of their friends. Only while in town can you portal to any one currently in the game with you, so people will not have to throw up a town portal, because being in a town will allow you to portal to anyone in the game. So this mechanic allows you to auto-port to a friend whenever you're in town.

Originally Posted by myrmidon

or that way when we have a full inventory we have to drop the stuff on the floor when we find good loot instead of going back to town and selling it.

I've already mentioned a fix for this, just try to understand what I'm saying. Lets pretend for a moment I have 4 items in my bag. I have 5 stacks of one item and three items I want to sell. The item with the 5 stacks is a portal-seller, it allows me to sell items out in the field. So, now why do I need to go to town to sell items if I have this portal-seller item out in the field? If I have items to sell I can just use the portal-seller and be on my way.

Originally Posted by myrmidon

or just stay where you are when you have to go brb and get a bunch of monsters to come and kill you when your not looking.

This is why I might suggest putting a cool-down on the Portal mechanic and making it only useable out of combat. In this way it would be even harder to exploit. But it would still allow players to "sit around in town" if they wanted to.

Originally Posted by myrmidon

portal's aren't just a cheap escape method. who uses them to escape anyway? by the time the portal loads up and you click on where you want to teleport your dead. i think they should just keep the portals

Portals can be a cheap escape method, they are very reliable also, because at least in TQ the option was always available to you. You just had to get far enough away from enemies to take the 4 seconds to use it. Putting limits on the portal mechanic might facilitate a more difficult game.

Originally Posted by myrmidon

and also about the health pots i would prefer to keep them but there not as vital to the game play as the portal. i would suggest what fallen earth does with there healing system. you have to buy bandages and then you can use the skill the skill takes 4 seconds to actually heal you if a monster hits you it cancels your healing. also that just gave me the idea of bandages instead of pots in gd

Health potions that have an instant cast and give you health is very important to a game like Grim Dawn, they give you health when you need it. However, with a longer cool-down on these potions I feel there should be some kind of supplemental health system to keep player's health bars at a healthy level.

Originally Posted by myrmidon

and about the skills what do you meen kinda like how sacred did there thing that you can upgrade the skill?

All I mean by this are skills that give the player options. An option to escape a crowd of zombies, an option to stun and deal damage to the crowd of zombies, an option to root or slow down the crowd of zombies, or the option to deal massive damage to the crowd of zombies, etc. Each one of these options gives the player a choice in combat. TQ did this way better then D2, but there's always room for improvement.

[ASYLUM101]

Remind me to never play with Scryer, lol. He won't bother dropping a portal for me and will probably ninja loot!