Diablo 3 difficulty system

[(XBOX)CancerInfantry]

Diablo 3 reaper of souls difficulty system would be awesome if they added that system to warframe. Call it tiers(torment) for now. Example:

Tier 1 would start at level 70 enemies on every planet node and you gain 20% increase resources drop and drop rate, and increase xp boost.

Tier 2 would be level 80 enemies and you gain 40% resources and xp boost

Tier 10 would be level 180-200 enemies and gain 200% resource and xp boost

Pick a tier that you can handle, and can unlock the tier system when you completed the star chart or a MR requirement, etc. 

[Loza03]

How many times does it need to be said that Levels =/= edited: Challenge

It just makes bullet sponges, untelegraphed insta-kills and limited options for gameplay.

Edited February 22, 2019 by Loza03
Swapped out incorrect word. Thank you Rikutatis!

[(XBOX)SweatyPick3L]

As long as the CL crew is a thing, and invisibility is the way it is. Level difficulty don't mean squat OP. 

[--END--Rikutatis]

53 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

How many times does it need to be said that Levels =/= difficulty.

It just makes bullet sponges, untelegraphed insta-kills and limited options for gameplay.

That's factually wrong. Higher levels is difficulty. It may not be the most interesting or sophisticated challenge, but it's still a challenge and certainly better than having no challenge whatsoever, which is WF's current state atm. 

Diablo 3, Borderlands, Division, Anthem, Path of Exile, all these games and many others use difficulty levels or similar systems of scaling enemy levels. Lvl 200-400 is totally feasible for the current level of power creep on our weapons and frames. And yet we keep fighting lvl 30s to farm new primes or whatnot... 

11 minutes ago, (XB1)RDeschain82 said:

As long as the CL crew is a thing, and invisibility is the way it is. Level difficulty don't mean squat OP. 

CL could be easily nerfed/revamped, hopefully Octavia would as well. Invis by itself without those two isn't so horrible or broken. 

[Loza03]

1 minute ago, --END--Rikutatis said:

That's factually wrong. Higher levels is difficulty. It may not be the most interesting or sophisticated challenge, but it's still a challenge and certainly better than having no challenge whatsoever, which is WF's current state atm. 

Alright, fair. I'll update my post.

That said, difficulty=/=challenge either, and making something more difficult doesn't usually make it more engaging or fun. Difficulty is how hard something is to accomplish. Challenge is something that tests a players skill.

For example, a boss fight in Kirby would rarely be said to be difficult, but could be challenging as they may still have a variety of attacks that require the players skills of evasion. Warframe rarely requires any skill, and in some cases actively removes possible cases it - enemies that have no telegraphing on CC for example.

[(XBOX)CancerInfantry]

24 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

Alright, fair. I'll update my post.

That said, difficulty=/=challenge either, and making something more difficult doesn't usually make it more engaging or fun. Difficulty is how hard something is to accomplish. Challenge is something that tests a players skill.

For example, a boss fight in Kirby would rarely be said to be difficult, but could be challenging as they may still have a variety of attacks that require the players skills of evasion. Warframe rarely requires any skill, and in some cases actively removes possible cases it - enemies that have no telegraphing on CC for example.

Dont need compilacated challenges for a shoot and looter game. Doing more unnecessary things(your kirby example) to get a mission done isn't fun either, maybe to some people. We try to farm fast as we can, adding those unnecessary things dont help. Yes it doesn't require skill for the star chart and sorties but people dont know takes a bit more knowledge and optimized builds to face 100+ enemies.

Theres people who have top tier builds collecting dust because they dont need to go beyond 100+. I'm sure people are willing to try out there gear in high level missions if this system is ever implemented. 

Well not really "try out" but to actually use your forma-ed weapons and warframes against high level enemies on regular exterminate mission like on earth, "E Prime".

Also what if I like the earth tile set but I dont like facing low level enemies. I could just use the "tier system" for high level enemies and more resources like neurodes

Edited February 22, 2019 by (XB1)CancerInfantry

[(XBOX)SweatyPick3L]

1 hour ago, --END--Rikutatis said:

CL could be easily nerfed/revamped, hopefully Octavia would as well. Invis by itself without those two isn't so horrible or broken. 

Even then there are still a number of WF abilities and stances that would need the Nerf-bat as well. Probably wouldn't go over vary well with lots of players. Not to mention daggers then becoming garbo. All and all probably not a good idea.

Edited February 22, 2019 by (XB1)RDeschain82

[LuckyCharm]

Tbh you could remove a zero off all the damage numbers in game and still end up with no challenge because we're that strong. As for the diablo difficulty system I'm gonna have to take a pass, i just found it more boring the higher difficultys i got just because even though I wasnt dying still enemies just took exponentially longer to kill, which just meant my gameplay slowed down rather than my challenge going up

[DerGreif2]

I played a good amount of D3 and even to the highest level. It's pretty similar to Warframe because with the right build you can do anything. The cool thing about D3 is that you farm legendary items to try out new stuff. They also have an endless level (paragon level) that also have a skill tree.

So first of I would love such a system. Yes people could cheese it but that is not the point not to implement is. I would gladly take a not OP to such a mission to test me personal.

Then I would not change invisible frames. Maybe make some seeker annoys that can see and attack invisible frames but pls give them time to react.

So all in all I would love to see that kind of system but it would be different than in D3. A normal level slider would also be not enough. Lets see if DE sees it.

[Xzorn]

Diablo3 in most ways shows how scaling can be done well though it's a bit extreme on the numbers.

It does not however show how Difficulty can also be added to scaling and we want both ideally.

There's no play difference between a Greater Rift 20 and a Greater Rift 120. It is more difficult but that's only because less mistakes can be made. Not because the enemies have added abilities or create more dangerous situations. It's a  gear press essentially. The enemies are taxing your stats which is a key part of any RPG system but it's not the whole deal. Even taken back to basic RPG standards you cant make players fight a high level Zombie. You make them fight a Dread Warrior. (essentially a zombie that retains it's combat knowledge and skills from it's former life). They're both zombies but one is creating more danger beyond taxing the player's increased stats from when Zombies were spooky.

[peterc3]

Let's shoehorn a system, from a game that was built with it in mind, into a game that was not designed around it being an option.

The D3 system does not directly translate to Warframe.

Tier 10 has the same modifiers as boosters you get from the Market. How is a high level worth DE giving away boosters? Also, this would completely destroy matchmaking.

[DerGreif2]

2 hours ago, peterc3 said:

Let's shoehorn a system, from a game that was built with it in mind, into a game that was not designed around it being an option.

The D3 system does not directly translate to Warframe.

Tier 10 has the same modifiers as boosters you get from the Market. How is a high level worth DE giving away boosters? Also, this would completely destroy matchmaking.

If you grind things you dont take a difficult level. Even with a bonus of 100% it would take longer to kill a bunch of enemies at level 150 than at level 30. So it would just even out the effort. The one kills more enemys with lower and the other just a few high level enemies. Like I said: a level slider would not work because of matchmaking. Make a hard, master and grandmaster mode like in anthem and work with that kind of stuff.

[(XBOX)CancerInfantry]

2 hours ago, DerGreif2 said:

If you grind things you dont take a difficult level. Even with a bonus of 100% it would take longer to kill a bunch of enemies at level 150 than at level 30. So it would just even out the effort. The one kills more enemys with lower and the other just a few high level enemies. Like I said: a level slider would not work because of matchmaking. Make a hard, master and grandmaster mode like in anthem and work with that kind of stuff.

Well make it higher than, 500% xp and resources, or even add material only obtainable in tier 10, that was just a example. It would be "optional" once you unlocked the system. The players base is already split up, yea I know this wont help but only hydron, PoE, and orb vallis needs matchmaking since they're pretty much the only popular nodes right now. 

Also, I said "Pick a tier you can handle" and comfortable playing with. Of course theres people with weak/poor gear who's gonna jump right into tier 10 and cry about it because they can't kill them. You would have to unlock this system far into the game, can't just give it too everybody. Once after a few months gone by, I'm sure there would be people playing in tier 10 all the time and you would find people in matchmaking. It would kind of make you play with other people too. Right now I solo everything in warframe, dont need a squad up to level 100.

Theres plenty of warframe buffs that can increase your damage and armor, if you have 3 solid teammates like rhino, trinity, etc.

Its for people who can kill 100+ enemies with there 7 forma-ed + riven tiberon prime and 6 forma mirage. I'm not saying that's the only build. 

 

Edited February 22, 2019 by (XB1)CancerInfantry

[--END--Rikutatis]

8 hours ago, (XB1)RDeschain82 said:

Even then there are still a number of WF abilities and stances that would need the Nerf-bat as well. Probably wouldn't go over vary well with lots of players. Not to mention daggers then becoming garbo. All and all probably not a good idea.

Personally I don't think anything else would need the nerf-bat. I mean, realistically, the whole combat system should ideally be revamped, we're too overpowered. But in the context of keeping the game the way it is, I don't think anything else outside of CL and arguably Octavia would need any adjustment. If you look at all those ridiculous "24 hours world record survival" every single one of them was done with Ivara + CL. But even if nothing gets nerfed, it's still fine. People cheese low level content for speed farming anyway, they'll still cheese high level content. This is just the nature of the game. At least those of us who want to test our builds, synergies and loadouts will have high level content accessible to us without having to spend 3 hours into a mission, and the extra rewards would be a plus. 

There is definitely a significant difference in the challenge levels of doing a lvl 50 vs a lvl 450 mission on a frame like excal umbra or khora for example. Some people may think the enemy one shots are cheap, but there's ways to build more tanky than we're used to, to increase our situational awareness to avoid the cheeky one shots, figure out enemy spawning details, improve our parkour skills, worry more about positioning and cover, etc. And sure, at some point you'll just get one shot and die. That's the point of scaling enemies. To see how far you can push it with any given loadout. Warframe is perfect for this, with its huge arsenal selection to test different builds. 

[Loza03]

9 hours ago, (XB1)CancerInfantry said:

Dont need compilacated challenges for a shoot and looter game. Doing more unnecessary things(your kirby example) to get a mission done isn't fun either, maybe to some people. 

Unnecessary and complicated challenges like dodging, prioritising targets and, y'know, playing the game? Right now, evasion is basically just 'run around like a headless chicken shooting things' since anything there is worth dodging either has no telegraphing to meaningfully evade it or aggressive homing, meaning that there's no reason to engage in interesting movement in the midst of a firefight. Nullifiers are basically the only targets fundamentally changing a fight meaning that for the rest of game, it basically doesn't matter what we're fighting making all of the enemies feel entirely insignificant no matter how much damage they do - making us feel less badass for overcoming them. And, lets be real, with the absence of good enemy design that prevents us from just being deity's the only reason to not be completely omnipotent is just saying 'Oh just don't use it'. Upping levels doesn't address this - if anything it makes it more necessary since fewer, more higher-action playstyles will be sustainable, leading to cheese meta strats being even more dominant than they are now.

The game isn't a clicker, it's an action game. There has to be action to remain engaging, and action requires challenge. Since upping levels doesn't create challenge, upping levels isn't enough.

[(XBOX)CancerInfantry]

6 hours ago, Loza03 said:

Unnecessary and complicated challenges like dodging, prioritising targets and, y'know, playing the game? Right now, evasion is basically just 'run around like a headless chicken shooting things' since anything there is worth dodging either has no telegraphing to meaningfully evade it or aggressive homing, meaning that there's no reason to engage in interesting movement in the midst of a firefight. Nullifiers are basically the only targets fundamentally changing a fight meaning that for the rest of game, it basically doesn't matter what we're fighting making all of the enemies feel entirely insignificant no matter how much damage they do - making us feel less badass for overcoming them. And, lets be real, with the absence of good enemy design that prevents us from just being deity's the only reason to not be completely omnipotent is just saying 'Oh just don't use it'. Upping levels doesn't address this - if anything it makes it more necessary since fewer, more higher-action playstyles will be sustainable, leading to cheese meta strats being even more dominant than they are now.

The game isn't a clicker, it's an action game. There has to be action to remain engaging, and action requires challenge. Since upping levels doesn't create challenge, upping levels isn't enough.

Look, I did not say anything about 'playing against higher difficulty enemies would mean a challenge' in my very first post at the top of the page in the first place. 

"Unnecessary and complicated challenges like dodging, prioritising targets and, y'know, playing the game?" I must of misread, I didnt know that's what you meant. 

You wouldn't run around like a headless chicken if enemies are more of a threat(higher level), you'd be more cautious. Use the cover around you, warframe abilities to protect you and squad, specters, gear wheel, priorities target that deals a lot of damage(gunner, juggernaut, etc.) and deal with the lesser enemies after, and yes dodging wouldn't be useful with the aggressive homing missiles and enemies, but something can be worked out. 

All I was suggesting is an option so you can choose any mission on high level enemies you can comfortably handle instead of facing beginner enemies. I like playing on the earth tileset but I'm too strong, it's boring and no point to get serious at all. I want the option to face enemies on my level.

Theres only few activities that get you high level enemies in game right now, like kuva floods, sorties, arbitration, ESO, index, sedna arena, and long endurance runs. I would like to play a normal mission like exterminate, void fissures, syndicate mission against enemies on my level of power/damage and damage resistance

 

 

 

 

 

[Tyreaus]

As long as we have the ability to nuke the sun yet keel over at a stiff breeze, it's going to fall flat in the vast majority of situations.

As Rikutatis pointed out, the gear we have could probably take out level 200+ without much problem. At the sorts of absurd levels where enemy defences start tanking minmaxed builds better, you're talking about a sizable majority of frames being downed from a stray Grineer bullet, and maximum player tankiness providing only a minute reprieve. Hiding in some corner spamming some kind of press-4-to-win ability or abusing stealth becomes more necessary as levels increase, instead of just the easy path.

You get to farm faster (maybe, if the boosts are high enough), and you're forced to cheese rather than it being an option, but...that's about it.

[(XBOX)CancerInfantry]

There also could be materials, mods, and cosmetics that drops in tier 5 and higher chance to drop in tier 10, etc. 

You can unlock it by completing X. Should be far into the game before touching it tho.  

Yes there would be a cap, level 200 would be pretty reasonable. Only way you would face level 200+ enemies if you play long endurance runs (defense, survival, interception), which you and your squad or just you, requires a specific build. Then yeah I agree that a player with regular descent gear will struggle with 200+ enemies if they dont know how to build for the mission and underestimated the level of enemies. 

[(XBOX)CancerInfantry]

It would be perfect to release it with New War update this year. Or maybe Wolf of Saturn but who knows if any DE staff will ever see this post and suggest it to the team. 

I put a lot of time in to the game so far, and also supported DE by buying prime access and accessories and platinum in this free to play game. I'm not saying my money will be enough to help them make this tier system but I'm sure they can take the idea and make it work. 

Maybe suggest this to your community and staff, DE. See what they say about this. Few guys on a forum thread isn't enough.

[Loza03]

20 hours ago, (XB1)CancerInfantry said:

Look, I did not say anything about 'playing against higher difficulty enemies would mean a challenge' in my very first post at the top of the page in the first place. 

"Unnecessary and complicated challenges like dodging, prioritising targets and, y'know, playing the game?" I must of misread, I didnt know that's what you meant. 

You wouldn't run around like a headless chicken if enemies are more of a threat(higher level), you'd be more cautious. Use the cover around you, warframe abilities to protect you and squad, specters, gear wheel, priorities target that deals a lot of damage(gunner, juggernaut, etc.) and deal with the lesser enemies after, and yes dodging wouldn't be useful with the aggressive homing missiles and enemies, but something can be worked out. 

All I was suggesting is an option so you can choose any mission on high level enemies you can comfortably handle instead of facing beginner enemies. I like playing on the earth tileset but I'm too strong, it's boring and no point to get serious at all. I want the option to face enemies on my level.

Theres only few activities that get you high level enemies in game right now, like kuva floods, sorties, arbitration, ESO, index, sedna arena, and long endurance runs. I would like to play a normal mission like exterminate, void fissures, syndicate mission against enemies on my level of power/damage and damage resistance

 

 

 

 

 

A challenge is what people really want. Without it, no amout of difficulty actually means anything. Challenge is what's fun for the majority of people. This is why Kaizo games have such a limited following, why Ninja Gaiden has such a spotty history and why Soulslike games still make bank despite the fact that a lot of fans have pointed out the games have become easier over time - the games still retain their challenge, even if that challenge is less difficult. 

Warframe does not have systems in place to facilitate what you suggest. Fully alerted enemies continue to track you in cover and start firing as soon as you break it, often with hitscan weaponry, massively limiting the effectiveness of cover. Warframe abilities can protect you somewhat, but DR only goes so far with continually upped levels. And what about Glass Cannon frames, anyway? If a frame's whole design relies on the ability to evade, and that ability is compromised by the core systems, well, that frame fundamentally becomes less useful. To demonstrate - this is part of Banshee's design. When was the last time you saw her run except for soundquake, despite having one of the most potent damage boosters in the entire game? Once you hit the point where enemies can consistently one-tap you, the only ways of preventing being oneshot is invulnerability (either directly or via barriers/invisibility) or lockdown by death or CC. That means that testing core players skills isn't done, and so the game isn't challenging, and it hurts the game. Increasing the levels exacerbates the problem, it doesn't make it better. And as I said before - the current enemy design makes enemies feel insignificant no matter how much damage they do. Even if the enemies are as powerful as you, it will not feel like they are.

'Something can be worked out' is what's needed, not just a level booster and it's not just as simple as it might sound - it requires fundamental changes to core systems of enemies. How they scale, their AI, their spawning behaviour, how they track players through the environment. Hell, even systems like damage in and of itself need addressing before actual challenge can be implemented. And it's needed badly, far more than raw difficulty.

[(XBOX)CancerInfantry]

1 hour ago, Loza03 said:

'Something can be worked out' is what's needed, not just a level booster and it's not just as simple as it might sound - it requires fundamental changes to core systems of enemies. How they scale, their AI, their spawning behaviour, how they track players through the environment. Hell, even systems like damage in and of itself need addressing before actual challenge can be implemented. And it's needed badly, far more than raw difficulty.

Yeah I agree that it would need changes to the enemies scaling at the moment right now if they just increase the level of enemies.

Right now level 140 Enemies does exponentially more damage and harder to kill than sortie 3 enemies. If they just touched the scaling between 100 and 200, just tone it down a bit. If it's still too hard, turn it down a bit again and see what people think. Yes there will be bs deaths but just point them out so DE can look in to it and see what they can do. 

I know DE dont want to change scaling right now beyond 100 because only endurance run players(defense, survival, interception) go beyond 100. Which is very few people go on endurance runs and also theres no point in endurance runs either since no scaling rewards. 

What you're saying is DE needs to change the core system of enemies to be more "challenging". They would have to go over every single enemy in the game right now. Would take as long as melee 3.0 lol, maybe. With just increasing level of enemies, DE would just have to look into scaling and all the bs death reports they will be getting. I just want increased enemies levels, never asked for a challenge.

I'm sure DE wouldn't just give us this system and just leave it as is. I know they've been doing that a lot lately, giving us content and never update it or patching it right away(arbitration, eso, other little things). 

Edited February 23, 2019 by (XB1)CancerInfantry

[Loza03]

Just now, (XB1)CancerInfantry said:

What you're saying is DE needs to change the core system of enemies to be more "challenging". They would have to go over every single enemy in the game right now. Would take as long as melee 3.0 lol, maybe. With just increasing level of enemies, DE would just have to look into scaling and all the bs death reports they will be getting. I just want increased enemies levels, never asked for a challenge.

I know it'd take more time than just adding a level slider and tweaking scaling (which, by the way, they are: it's been confirmed both on Steve's twitter and in devstream that Railjack will be implementing different damage and mod calculations as a trial run for full-game implementation). It'd take as much if not more time than Melee 3.0. But more than either of those it's more important than melee 3.0 - hell, it's probably one of the most important things for Warframe as whole. Without challenge, difficulty is meaningless. Without challenge, to a very real degree, the game itself is meaningless. Why get better gear if there's nothing to use it on? If there's no reason to get better gear, why play? To test your own skills? Well, that's what challenge is!

Enemies make a combat system equally as much as the player's own options do. I'd go so far as to contribute a good 25% of Minecraft's success (or at least its early success) as a survival game to the Creeper alone, just due to how much that one mob fundamentally adjusts how players approach nighttime combat and cave exploration, as whilst they behave the same, you'll tend towards encountering Creepers as part of a group fight at night, but as an independent obstacle in a cave. They inspire fear not just with their presence, but the thought of their presence - but can with skill be made into an asset. They alter the flow of a fight, and in turn your interactions with them will also alter it.

This is the kind of thing Warframe needs - albeit adjusted for the horde nature of the gameplay.

[Teridax68]

I played hundreds of hours of D3 and absolutely hated the "difficulty" system. It had nearly 20 difficulty settings and over a dozen of them felt the exact same, because it was nothing but multipliers to enemy health and damage to counter our own increases in health and damage. It was a thinly-disguised treadmill that did absolutely nothing to make the game more difficult, only more protracted. I personally feel D3's difficulty is one of the clearest examples of fake difficulty in video games, where the game raises the enemy's stats to match the players in a manner that adds zero additional gameplay. In this respect, I think the way to implement difficulty in Warframe should be to deflate our stats and give us more varied enemies, rather than raise enemy levels infinitely more (though that could certainly help in the short-term in high-end content like Arbitrations and ESO).

[Femuru]

We had been needing this system for the longest time. Some ppl just don't wanna spend 2-5 hours in a mission to get to the difficulty they are trying to reach. Now do I think this will solve the true "difficulty" search issue? Nope not really since after a certain point it's just the same thing but it would be a good start in the right direction. Atleast after this they could start improving the AI so they start thinking, moving, and shoot better rather than mindless walking. Then they would need to improve enemy mechanics from more blocking abilities/bullets, to more support units maybe revives, or even unique ones like a cloaking enemy that can detect cloaked frames. Conditions should also be a thing they need to pay attention to eventually as well such as in survival u need to keep up kills or life support will go out is a good example but maybe something where players are forced to run out of the corner of a room as well. I know scaling would need to be fixed some day but that's a big topic for another day. Either way it'll be good if they give us better options to find the difficulty we wanna play at.