Scene Difficulty Settings

Hello Groovy Cats, Chris, Dark Star Richard & everyone else from development, I hope you read this.


One of the issues in SoTA I noticed that is slowly beginning to brew is how to balance the Zones & Bosses Vs. Characters. Of course this job is harder in SoTA than in most MMO’s cause of the fact that a certain Few can become VERY powerful. This level of power is done by 3 things, TIME invested in toon, CORRECT distribution of XP to skills so that all benefit Dps & dmg mitigation and of course GEAR. So how to make this game more balanced in PvE by NOT punishing players who have put in the Time and Brains into better character development and of course God forbid putting Artificial caps on skills, as in max 120 of something silly like that.

Just a reminder all skills can be takes to “200” and I do not think anyone has surpassed 150 as the XP requirements become close to impossible. So there is a cap that it’s soft and very, very unique and one of the reasons MANY hack away.. =)



I think the answer is VERY simple folks.


Scrap the 1–5 Skull Difficulty measure & introduce (Scene Difficulty Settings) when entering. This would accomplish many beneficial outcomes. When entering any Scene other than Towns a Selection Menu pops up asking if you would like to enter on:

• Normal Difficulty
• Hard Difficulty
• Elite Difficulty
• Epic Difficulty

Yup 4 settings for now and a “Legendary” one can be added in future and Possibly a “Mythic” one in episode 3 or something. Each setting would determine an increase in monster HP, superior use of their abilities and starting on ELITE setting players could expect to see “Mini bosses” and on Epic Setting, “Bosses” roaming the area. Of course with risk comes reward, the higher the difficulty the better chance to get Gold, Items, XP and Artifacts & Certain Artifacts would ONLY come from Epic Difficulty.


Benefits besides the above:

1. All Zones can NOW be enjoyed by ALL players of ALL Strengths.
2. A much Greater incentive to group and promote social structures, friendships.
3. A almost magical way to Inc. game content by 10 fold without creating new scenes.

Your thoughts ….

 

I like the idea of this, there are a lot of really cool zones that are both interesting and/or have an efficient mob density/resource density but sadly if they are 2-3 skull they really aren't worth the time due to the low xp.
I feel like a lot of the lower level zones get completely overlooked because after a month or so playing, particularly if you're in a guild that helps you out, well, anything that isn't 5 skull isn't worth bothering with for grinding. The above suggestion could let players play the zones that they found aesthetically appealing/interesting instead of the entire population always being in the same handful of zones and the rest remaining empty.

 

1) All zones can already be enjoyed by all players. Of course, not solo. But, nothing is stopping a group of mid-high level players bring along a freshly minted Avatar. There are also many zones that have "safe areas" that can easily be experience while avoiding the boss(s).

2) From what I have seen, my first point has been the greatest incentive to groups. There are very few places that are extremely difficult for a group of 8 low-mid level players.

3) "A almost magical way to Inc. game content" to me, sounds like you're trying to say it's zero effort. I'm sure that's not what you mean though. In any case, the absence of gated content, in my opinion, is one of the big differentiators of SotA.

I do think some adjustments need to be made to add some difficulty around solo boss farming, etc. But, I am not yet convinced that current system needs to be scrapped. I also don't see a reason to try and keep every zone populated with XP bonuses. There more reason to go into a zone than just XP.

Thanks for starting this discussion.

 

I think that allowing scenes to be played on different difficulties would be good. However, I think allowing you to select the difficulty in every scene is not the right approach. Here are some criticisms I can think of:

* Open multiplayer and scene splitting - there would be 4x the amount of scenes to go look for people in. Imagine trying to coordinate with a new guild member which version of which map to find you in. "Oops I am in MO Elite difficulty" "Oh I am in FO Epic difficulty"
* Scaling of bosses - would a 1 skull version of Souther Grunvald Barrens have a baby dragon?
* Immersion - this goes back to having 4x the amount of scenes, but also having a menu that pops up asking what you mode you want to be in makes every scene the same and accessible.

My suggestion:
* Have random overworld encounter "Fallen Shards" that add 5 skulls to the difficulty of a scene that it falls near.
* Basically, the celestial mechanics would dictate where shards would fall over periods of time and the shards would cause the scenes nearby to be "Obsidian Corrupted" and everything gets bumped up 5 tiers.
* Entering these scenes would be optional (and possibly forced open PvP). You could still go to the uncorrupted scene if you wanted.

This wouldn't do anything for lower level players, but it would make a 1 skull scene into a 6 skull scene, which would give more replay value to early scenes for mid/high level players.

 

Kor, here let me solve those issues for you.

1. Hit (F) would tell me ur in Crag on (Hard). Boom ur done, if ya want me come to me with teleport - not sure what the issues here is at all
2. This is a open suggestion Draft so Guess what YES, maybe on Norman a Young Wyvern would be in Grunvald & on hard a regular Dragon and so on... Of course the Young Wyvern would have a VERY miniscule chance of dropping meaning full items or Artifacts ... but It would allow young players of 2 weeks or so to gather up a party and go kill it so they can practice fighting this thing called a Dragon as to get better and move up in difficulty ..
3. The scenes would be the same for the most part unless the development Teams would want to add certain things for Elite +, if your having a problem with a Menu - not sure what to say.

ALSO, hey AT 1st maybe NOT all scenes would qualify for this, so some may be left alone for now ..

 

they would have to write a system to handle the spawning of mobs and nodes for the various tiers.

they would have to go through each and every scene and replace all the current nodes with the new nodes.


a few months of work for a system that might be ok I have nothing against it could be interesting. but it would take a lot of work.

 

would you make 4 different scenes wit 4 different sets of nodes? that's a lot of busy work replacing and placing nodes.

would you make a new node system that would change what was spawned based on the tier that was selected? that's a lot of coding?

 

Guys I'm not saying that this would be implemented over a weekend & a 6 pack. Yes work would need to go into this, but I feel the outcome would be VERY beneficial to the game. They of course can do 1 scene at a time.

 

yeah it could be fun.

I got into how would I do it mode where I just ramble to myself or write stream of thought notes. didn't mean anything

 

yeah I don't really know how they currently handle their node logic.

will use a copper node as an example. is every copper node in every scene no matter the tier the same. do they pull the xp per harvest or % rates out of a setting from the scene or are there different nodes for different scenes?

if its actually pulled based on the tier of the scene or some other setting it would make it much easier than having different tier nodes that would have to be placed.

the same with mob spawns I don't know how they get the settings for them. are they generic mob spawners that get info from tier placement or are they some thing else?

I just don't pay enough attention to the telethons and dev talks to really know, I just like to think about this stuff as I pretend to make games and how I could work it into one of my projects.

its really easy to say just do this then that then follow that with this and its done. but its never that easy for me lol.