An answer to many of the problems - Self imposed Handicapping

The devs have a problem that seems to be they need to satisfy a small number high end players with a billion XP, and players that don't want to spend their entire life grinding but would still like to get into most of the world.

Auto-difficulty isn't very popular because it makes the game very vanilla.

However, many people enjoy self imposed challenges, and thus here is the plan.

This also may do away with bot farming of loot as the challenging fights are the ones that now drop the most

• Flatten the monster difficulty curve out, there never will be a tier 50. A Tier 8 no longer needs to be instant death to a Tier 5 character because the devs don't have to make endless content for high end players.
  • Balance shifts toward skill over level when we don't have the one shots happening everywhere.
• Once the player gets past tier difficulty of a scene they can choose their handicap when entering that scene.
• Rewards are based on their self imposed handicap.
  • If the player handicaps themselves to significantly below the difficulty of the scene their loot is raised considerably.
  • Loot farmers will be better served by considerably challenging themselves instead of just whacking away at easy mobs all day
    • This also means if you are a lowbie going into a higher area, your loot is higher as you're "jumping the difficulty curve" which is the equivalent of handicapping a high level player
• Achievements (yes achievements) for finishing scenes well below power as well as doing so without dying (Ironman/Ironwoman)
• Groups could also choose their cap, with some discussion needing to happen on the edge cases this will bring.

Yes, this means you could go back and self select an Outskirts scene where you're doing piddling damage and getting hit a lot, but because of this the loot is much higher than a newb is getting there.

This also means you can still go solo the dragon and it will be challenging, but someone well below that level can't.

Finally, this means that the devs don't have to make Tier 50 zones as the high end players have endless content at this point, they can handicap in any zone and get rewarded for it.

Would this be acceptable to @Mac2 and @redfish (you got me thinking this way)? Would this be possible @Chris? Would this maybe solve the soft cap issue as well?

 

Soo let me get this straight

you are saying that in Ulfheim I choose to only be able to use level 50 skills, and therefore My loot since it is harder is better?

Sorry but this is just crazy

You are asking the devs to create each scene in a scalable method that the player chooses?

Do you not see how this will get gamed to the degree like no other game has been gamed before? You will force the devs to chase each and every skill in circles as players figure out that they can handicap one skill not the other and destroy certain places.

I admire your thought process but you really have to look from the side of players who game the system, this does nothing but open the door to them.

 

1) Can you pls answer me why low level character should get better loot than hi-end half god? If low level player cant go so high as hi-end player, or dont want to waste time or money, he should get less than a player who actually plays the game in EVERY scene with EVERY settings, its how things are done and they have done great.
2) Its much easier to make tier 20 scene or make one of tier 5 - tier 20 then implement this.

 

While I admire the creativity of this idea I can't help but feel that Port should be solving the problem "properly" by producing a better game that does away with these problems by amending and improving the game mechanics at long last (though sadly there is no sign of that happening hence more and more issues are emerging as time goes on)

 

They already have skill capping in place in OT and I think they are experimenting elsewhere.

You don't get to choose on a skill by skill level, you would have to set your whole skill tree to a certain level.

That also means they aren't messing with the scenes.

 

A low level character isn't getting more. A high level God choosing to play at a more difficult setting is. A God playing in Godmode in a low tier zone is just getting basic loot.

So hypothetical example of two players. Player A is Adventure Level 60. Player B is Adventure Level 120.

• Both players go into a Tier 4 Zone as their true adventure level.
  • Both players get equal, (normal) Tier 4 loot.
• Both players go into Tier 10 Zone as their true adventure level
  • Player A has a tough time, but if they both kill enemies they get the same (normal) Tier 10 loot
• Player A goes into Ulfheim as their true adventure level, player B goes in as a Tier 4 (significantly hampered)
  • Player A gets Tier 8 (normal) loot
  • Player B gets bonus loot for making the scene almost impossible for himself
• Both players go into a Tier 4 and set their AL to Tier 2
  • Both players get bonus loot for making the scene harder on themselves

One benefit I see to this approach is that Port doesn't have to keep making things harder by adding more HP, they can instead focus on making things more balanced such that the skill of play take more and more precedence over adventure level. The goal is to make it so, like the Troll fight, every fight starts to become about skill. Of course a Tier 2 handicapped character is going to have to fight a lot longer and make no mistakes in a Tier 6 scene, but eventually it becomes possible.

Why? Because they are focusing on a more limited spread instead of an infinite one. With more focus comes more fine tuning, more balance.

Perhaps, but perhaps not. Handicapping is already in place in the Obsidian Trials.

 

That is what I'm aiming for here. It's an aim at amending and improving the game mechanics that seem to be running out from under them. There are other suggestions of course, hard cap is a popular one. Self balancing difficulty is another one that is both liked and heavily hated. This is one improvement I haven't seen suggested, and I tried to look at it in a way that would be acceptable to both high end and low end players.

 

Completely agree, its pretty easy to do it I think too. BTW I prefer constant reapplied confusion from daemon for this type encounters

Seems I catch it, then np with it.

 

This is actually a very interesting idea @Vladamir Begemot

 

Unfortunately schemes like this remove your sense of accomplishment. When my wife and I first started going to the Rise, the mobs were a mix of red and orange. We could barely take down the Elves in one tiny passage. We slowly and steadily worked our way up to where we can wipe out major portions of the Rise just the two of us.

Similar with UT. Even now, the last wave carries a bit of risk. But to be able to see our steady and improved progress is what helps to bring a sense of satisfaction. You lose that when everything gets scaled or your character gets capped.

 

Stand by, your sense of accomplishment will be gone a month after you can solo that.

Which is when you start making hard on yourself to get the accomplishment back.

Legendary Ironman (xcom2) will always be an accomplishment, not because it became easy through grinding but because the player chooses to make it super hard on them self.

Think of this as self imposed hard mode for those who get past the difficulty curve.

 

I dunno, there's still a ton of content we can't get through. The Lost Vale, for example. We were able to do one memory fragment (at the basic level) just fine, and the second memory with about 20 deaths between us. But the 3rd memory fragment in the catapult siege? Nope, can't get past the second wave. And we haven't even been to the new re-done zones (Spectral whatever and the swap). There's a few giants in the Ruined Keep that we can't kill, either. Still plenty to do and feel accomplished about.

I actually didn't mind the idea of the soft wipe. We'd get double XP towards skills up to the total amount of XP we earned in episode 1, which means I could swiftly power up my character. Perhaps I'd have a fighter or a mage in Episode 2 vs the archer I have in episode 1. Kind of a neat concept.

 

In the above system nothing would be stopping you from doing the things you want at your power level. But once you overpower something, you have the option of ratcheting down your skill to make it more difficult, and get greater rewards.

 

I rather have the option like in the lost vale, where I can ratchet up the mob strength and get greater rewards.

 

I think its an interesting idea for sure. Perhaps start with a simpler implementation.
At the moment, scenes have a set 'tier'.
So Tier 1 is timber wolves, brown bears, and shoddy-bow dropping bandits and basic undead.. Tier 5 is usually elder wolves, bear patriarchs, and longbow-dropping bandits and 'hardened' undead.
Tier 6-7 you start getting obsidian creatures and higher hp humanoids and elite undead, and so on up.

Why not simply make it so in a given scene, you can select your tier on entry?
The "bonus" loot isn't really necessary in this case.

If I want to go into say, Crag Foothills and kill what's there at my current Alvl, I get a certain level of reward.
If I wanted to crank it up to tier 8, and fight rise-level elves and more obsidian/ferocious creatures, perhaps because I'm going with a few friends and the regular zone is too easy for me, then we could do that. The rewards would (well, should!) scale with the level of the mobs. I know that loot relevance/scaling still has a way to go, but this could be rolled out scene by scene, until you could go anywhere and choose the difficulty appropriate.

I'd personally love to try some of the less-mob dense scenes on higher tier, instead of ignoring them outright as non-lucrative.

I'd also like to see such scaling apply to harvestables in the scene.
All those empty Tier1,2,3 scenes suddenly became more interesting.

 

Yes, that would be a ton of fun.

 

Selecting difficulty on scenes would just make this seem a lot like 400 mini games that you play over and over again. Gets old quick, there are a few that like that and will try and beet every scene at the hardest difficulty level but capping skills even in scenes is making hours and outs of grinding just a waste of player time.

I really hope they only do this for PVP to help them balance the system but even then you are taking away a lot of time investment for PvP’ers who took the time to get so high. Seems like a lot of people would just start looking at this as no real progression and a waste of time.

They need to Fix the power curve on skill advancement so someone with 100 can be competitive with someone at 140.

Fix the impact that attunement has on power to lower the impact that armor and arties have on the outcome.

Split combat calculations for PVP and PVE so they can be balanced independently of each other.

Stop thinking that making something hit harder makes it harder. Hitting players for 1k plus removes the ability for low end players to attempt it and does boothing to slow the Hugh end players from beating it.

 

It's very interesting how things change...

The idea of scenes depending on Adv.lvl was brought in years before with no positive feedback if I remember right.

I am excited how @Chris thinks about this interesting idea and if it would be possible