The game would be much better if ---

--- 1. Monsters of the same type were the same or similar difficulty anywhere. No level 1 wolves, vs. level 20 wolves. That would mean the difficulty of a monster is predictable based on its type. The only exception would be varieties of a single monster, but even that should be within a relatively tight range.

--- 2. Even as a high level character, you would still need tactics to defeat a low level monster, but you would just have a much easier time doing so because you have better skills. The biggest problem I see in the game preventing this is passive bonuses. Even though defensive skills are useful in the beginning of the game, they become less useful as you progress, since you get passive bonuses from better armor and from investing in innates in armor and shield skills. Increased stats boost your passive bonuses a lot also. Easy healing also makes defensive skills more redundant.

I'm posting this partly because of the recent discussion on the dev hangout about skulls on scenes marking difficulty levels. Right now, the biggest problem for adventuring and leveling is that a wolf in one scene is 20x more deadly than a wolf in another scene, and you don't know what you're going to get. Also, I think its a general problem that low-level monsters become tedious once you level up.

 

Unfortunately you need some measure of predictability. Players need to know they can find something they can manage. Otherwise.. I killed 5 grey wolves 5 minutes ago.. suddenly 1 slaughters me???? What the hell? Not fun.

 

Not sure I agree with the premise. Seems to me that monsters of the same type DO have pretty much a uniform level of difficulty. I mean, a timber wolf is a timber wolf. An elf fighter is an elf fighter. Am I missing something?

 

I haven't found that to be true (don't know if its just me). But I think even subtypes of wolves need to be in a tighter range of difference. Its fine for some subtypes to be more difficult than others, but the range feels unpredictable.

 

Personally, I feel that is more a "user learning curve" issue. Once you learn the "Restless Woods" contain higher level wolves than "West Perennial" then there is simply a matter of remembering that fact.

The biggest issue I find is that a "Restless Woods Timber Wolf" rewards you with the same resources as a "West Perennial Timber Wolf", even though one is 10x more difficult to kill.

There is no real reason to go to "Restless Woods" and deal with the more difficult creatures, if I can get the same reward 10x faster in a lower tier scene.

I'm sure that is simply an issue of the rarer drops not yet being in-game yet, but it is a little frustrating at the moment.

----

That being said : The dev team should consider a wider variety of names for the Wolves, to better differentiate their difficulty. Rename all the "Restless Woods" wolves to "Greater Timber Wolf" to distinguish it from the "Lesser Timber Wolf" in the lower tier scenes.

Having wolves named "Timber Wolf" in both scenes, but with varying difficulties, is indeed a big confusing.

 

Raas,

Even if its a learning curve, it needs to be intuitive. You shouldn't be judging creatures by their nameplates. The nameplates will be turned off for many players, to begin with. But its also not intuitive to judge creatures by their names.

There's a second issue here I don't like -- which is that seemingly similar woodland scenes with seemingly similar monsters are gated by player level. I don't like gating scenes by player level unless there's a clear reason why that should be the case -- ie this area has a dragon. But if two scenes just have wolves, they shouldn't be gated to two player levels --- its just a bad game design, bad world design, IMO.

 

It would be better if they had tons of unique monsters so you don't have tons of monsters repeated AND the places they did scaled versions of the monsters, it was more obvious. If one skeleton is more powerful than the next, give some sort of visual indication such as size, visible armor, glowing red eyes, whatever.

 

That would help. But I don't think arbitrary scaling of the same type of monster is good game design in the first place. It's okay to have subtypes, but don't use them as an excuse to cater to different player levels.

 

Unfortunately, that is the nature of budgets. Creating distinct new models costs significantly more than simply reusing an existing model.

Personally, I don't mind the use of recoloration to differentiate tiers of animals (Elder Wolves for instance are darker than regular Timber Wolves). Even then though, there is only a limited variety one can provide in that manner (without say having Neon Green Wolves for instance).

Maybe we should push for a new Stretch Goal : Addition of an Ark-load of creature models to use.

 

It takes time and effort to make tons of unique monsters. We have seen more added to the game which helps. In early releases it seems all we had were wolves and skeletons. I don't mind a few varieties of a monster, but we need greater variety overall. That just times said time and effort.

 

Yea, but its not intuitive judging monsters by color any more than it is judging them by names

I'd rather low-level monsters remain fun to fight even when you're high-level, making more monsters not an issue to begin with. See my point #2.

 

The game would be much better if we all got free Wookiees.

Why don't we have Wookiees? Why are they keeping them from us?

 

It basically is the same problem as with monsters that scale to your level. If you get beaten up by some rats no matter how high your level and no matter how pwerful you are you never get the sense of achieving something and become real powerful.

 

Richard has never liked that system. He thinks monsters should have a set scale. If you walk into an area above your level, that is on you.

 

Sure but if you encounter the same wolves in that "high-level" area that you defeated without problems in another "low-level" area but this time they beat you up, then it is a similar situation as with monsters that scale to your level. So in order to prevent this the wolves in the high-level area should look different, have a different color, be bigger etc.

 

Agreed, but I also see it as a problem from the completely opposite perspective -- and its a problem in most RPGs -- level matters too much, that's why combat against low-level monsters stops being fun.

You need a sense of progression, but putting too much of that progression in passive skills is what does this.

 

I'd rather areas didn't have "levels" to begin with, is part of what I'm saying. The need for monsters to always be leveled up to meet the player level should be avoided.

 

Maybe something like a description in front of their title. for example "Mangy Wolf" for level 1 wolfs and "Muscular Wolf" for level 20 wolfs?

 

I thought we wanted to get away from floating texts, bars and numbers and at some point only have visual feedbakc for everything (wounds visible on enemies, limping, staggering etc.).

 

If i should point the biggest flaws of the game from my perspective, the one redfish is pointing out would be on the list for sure. First point is matter of intuition... and as some pointed out not having enough models is a problem, but second is key. If i'm level 70 and got attacked by 10 enemies of level 30 i should be in trouble. That's part of the feeling of a world that's alive; even a peasant can hit the mighty warrior in the back of his head and kill him.

If SotA starts to move towards that kind of experience it could be awesome, and it may give an interesting twist to PVE experience (which at the moment is a bit similar to other MMORPG's from my perspective).