Starting Expansions at Higher Difficulties

[Bissrok]

If the game's going to have several expansions added on to it, how will it work if you've already played through the original game at the highest difficulty? Will You be able to play straight through on the expansion's highest difficulty? And, if so, how will the player's level be taken into consideration?

For instance, if you passed through the original game (supposedly 1/3 of the total planned game), you could hypothetically be level 30 when you finish on Legendary. However, with an expansion you now have 2/3's of the game at your disposal. By playing through that on Normal and then Epic and then getting to the new content again on Legendary, you might be at level 40. But scaling enemies are never fun (and weren't present in Immortal Throne, if I remember correctly), so how would this situation be handled in Grim Dawn?

[Omega_K2]

I would like to know too...

If you are too high leveled, it is really boring to play though...
If you "have" to play though to get quest boni it would be very annoying as well...

In most games, only playing with an addon from start to finish seems viable (sadly)


Though... some interesting idea could be that the addons starts at Legendary. So basically if you are supposed to be 30 after Normal, 40 after Epic and 50 after Legendary, the addon would have lvl 50+ content on Normal, 58 on Epic and 65 on Legendary... the one after that could start at level 65 Normal mode.
The downside of that mechanism is that you are FORCED to play though the original game 3 times with your character and not everyone may like that.

Scaleing enemies would be probably the best solution I guess, as long it's not too absurd (maybe have them scale differently for each difficulty? Normal would be clvl - 5, epic clvl and legendary clvl + 5 ).

[Bissrok]

Originally Posted by Omega_K2

Scaleing enemies would be probably the best solution I guess, as long it's not too absurd (maybe have them scale differently for each difficulty? Normal would be clvl - 5, epic clvl and legendary clvl + 5 ).

Yeah, a small range would be nice. Otherwise, without limits, you never get to feel like a badass. And an ARPG that doesn't let you feel like a badass ain't worth playing.

[eisprinzessin]

Originally Posted by Omega_K2

Though... some interesting idea could be that the addons starts at Legendary.

I think this is a no go.

Originally Posted by medierra

Only a very small % of the audience will play through Epic and Legendary. I think a large portion of the audience would be incredibly frustrated if the game was paced out so that you had to play 40hrs and go through legendary difficulty to finish the main story.

_______

Originally Posted by Omega_K2

Scaleing enemies would be probably the best solution I guess, as long it's not too absurd

Something similar is already in place.

Originally Posted by medierra
Due to the way enemies were configured and the spawning system was set up in Titan Quest, we had to create spawners with a limited level range of possible enemies. On the road from Helios to Sparta, in TQ, Satyrs can only range from level 1-4 in the first half and 3-8 in the latter half.

For Grim Dawn we've created a much more powerful spawning system that allows us to spawn enemies in as large a range as we desire for any given area. [...]

The overall idea here is to give people much more flexibility in terms of how they progress through the game, pace enemies better for players who reach different areas at different levels and to provide a lot of replayability.

[mamba]

Originally Posted by Omega_K2

Though... some interesting idea could be that the addons starts at Legendary. So basically if you are supposed to be 30 after Normal, 40 after Epic and 50 after Legendary, the addon would have lvl 50+ content on Normal, 58 on Epic and 65 on Legendary... the one after that could start at level 65 Normal mode.
The downside of that mechanism is that you are FORCED to play though the original game 3 times with your character and not everyone may like that.

yes, that would mean you cannot get into the new areas before you have reached legendary, even with new chars.

I think it is safe to assume it works as in TQ. I.e. all monster spawns have some level range, so your exact level does not matter, but you essentially continue on in the difficulty you are in and skip ones you already finished.

As far as points from quests go, these should be easy to get since nothing in the lower difficulty will really be a danger. So you could simply run straight through if you really wanted those few skill / stat points.