Difficulty Slider Suggestion(Q/a#10 Tie In)

[LeucienWeaver]

Difficulty. It's a widely varied topic, in that various people think the game is both too hard, and too easy for various reasons. This makes adding content challenging in that the DEvs must value whether or not content should be hard enough to where only a select few can do it, which would lead to the newer or more inexperienced players hitting a skill/gear wall and ragequitting, or the older or more experienced players facerolling the content and getting bored.

My proposition is a trio of difficulty sliders, akin to what one would see in a Single Player game, such as Easy, Normal, Hard, and Very Hard. Now, some people might wonder why there would be a trio of them, rather than just a single one, and that's easy... There's more than one type of difficulty in the game.

The first of the trio would be a Level slider, where the planets, within a certain set range, can raise or lower in monster level. Obviously we don't want to see players running a Hades and fighting a lv 3 Ambulas, so we'd limit it so that the monsters have a -x for Easy, +0 for Normal, +x for Hard, and +x, +x for Very Hard. The rewards for this slider would be Affinity rates, as well as end credit/reward scaling.

The second of the trio would be a Density slider, where we can select the population of enemies in our missions. Like the Level slider, this wouldn't be sensible to set to 0 mobs in a mission, so we could see Easy as -25% mob density, Normal as 0% change, Hard as 50% change, and Very Hard as 100% change. Why would we want more mobs? Maybe the planet you're at has a certain resource that you want to farm, but you don't want to continuously run the same mission excessively; this would allow for you to have a challenge in the form of sheer swarms of enemies overtaking you, with the perk of more drops/affinity.

The third of the trio would be a 'Challenge' slider. It would in essence be Nightmare mode, but with a twist. There are a few other Challenges that can be added, such as 'Can't use powers, primary, melee, or secondary', to '2x spawn rate of Heavy units' to 'Randomly appearing boss units', and a multitude of others, and this slider would amplify the number of Challenges that we see. From Easy providing no Challenge, Normal providing one, Hard providing two, and Very Hard providing three, this could be the most interesting way to give players a...Challenge, cue rimshot. Unlike the current Nightmare mode, this would not affect Monster Level, or Monster Density, as the other two sliders affect those factors.

The Challenge slider would allow for a brief intermission between the cinematics of a mission opening, and actual gameplay, telling the players which challenges were selected, so that they don't have to find out as they're starting combat that they can't use powers or their secondaries... The rewards would be tiered, in that Normal gives one Dual mod, Hard would give one Dual mod and a decent amount of resources, and Very Hard would give one Dual mod, a decent amount of resources, and one of three things: A triple mod, a warframe part blueprint, or a forma/catalyst/reactor blueprint(Plus some of the resources to make them)

Edit: TL;DR: Allow for us to set game modes for Mob #, Mob Level, and # of Nightmare Challenges, using Easy, Normal, Hard, Very Hard standards.

Edited July 19, 2013 by LeucienWeaver

[Angius]

Great suggestion! Especially with ridiculously high difficulty on some planets now! Maybe I will survive longer than few seconds on Pluto....

[Strac_CRO]

I don't like "difficulty sliders", especially with just buffing (increasing) enemy's armour number [xx] making them a bullet spoonge

 

I would like to see higher levels with increased spawn rate of enemies including heavy units, new heavy units (like mech walkers), maybe less health drops, no spare lives (only revive by teammates) etc.

[gell]

I don't like the trio idea. DE can design your first 2 sliders into one. Density goes hand in hand with their level. It's also part of their aesthetic to choose that. They just need to find the balance.

 

The third slider is just nightmare mode. I know you said it's similar, but no, it's nightmare mode. Nightmare mode is just introduced, and it's supposed to be fleshed out later with more restrictions, more challenges, just like you suggested.

 

The only thing I think WF needs in terms of difficulty settings is to allow nightmare mode to be toggled on or off. Some people might want to farm a boss for drops, but if he's currently in nightmare mode, there's no proper way around it.

 

Most of these online game don't have multiple difficulties because where there's an easy route, most players will take it. Why is this bad? It changes the speed at which people finish content from how it was designed, it can trivialize designs that are supposed to be easy or difficult, and it gives farmers an option to dumb down the game even more just to bypass playing the game in favor of gaming the game.

 

Up to DE if they want that, but from what they've said, it doesn't sound like they'd want the above to happen.

[LeucienWeaver]

Right, it is Nightmare mode, but calling it that doesn't fit right with me, since all of the challenges that they have suggested officially aren't really that nightmarish. A single challenge isn't that tough, but if you are randomly restricted by several(After there's more than 3), then I could see it living up to its name. As for the former suggestion in your post, I could see how they could do it, I was just operating under the assumption that sometimes you want a very high level of mobs, and others you want a very large swarm of enemies, but not always both at the same time. Change it up, y'know?

Edit: As for people gaming the game, there's only so much you could game such a system. Easy modes would gimp you in that you don't get as much exp, drops, and no dual mods/other Nightmare rewards.

Edited July 16, 2013 by LeucienWeaver

[LeucienWeaver]

I don't like "difficulty sliders", especially with just buffing (increasing) enemy's armour number [xx] making them a bullet spoonge

 

I would like to see higher levels with increased spawn rate of enemies including heavy units, new heavy units (like mech walkers), maybe less health drops, no spare lives (only revive by teammates) etc.

Apparently you only read the Monster Level entry; The second one, mob density, takes care of your first point with more enemies in general, and as for new Heavy units, eventually we'll get them, but for now we have what we have. Fewer health orbs, no spare lives(And conversely no revives by teammates) are things that could come up in Nightmare mode eventually.

[Tr1ples1xer]

Monster density is something I would really like to manage because since U9 I think they overdid it it it is now more frustrating then fun , I have spent more time on the forums than ingame :(

Edited July 16, 2013 by Tr1ples1xer

[LeucienWeaver]

Indeed, though on the inverse, I want to see SWARMS of enemies!

[askaninja]

Well put; 2 sets of options should be implemented actually. I wouldn't mind a Normal and optional Hard mode (keep thinks simple).

 

Difficulty:

+ Normal mode should be U8 Difficulty

+ Hard Should be U9 difficulty.

 

And Mode. as for nightmare mode, that would be a special type of gameplay on defense missions only.

 

Defense Mode:

Standard (Endless)

Nightmare (15 waves)

 

For other missions such as capture DE could do something similair:

 

Capture Mode

Standard 1 Capture

Nightmare (10 Captures)

 

Spy Mode

Standard 4 Consoles

Nightmare (20 Consoles)

 

etc...

[LeucienWeaver]

Hmm... I guess this got flooded out for other ideas...

[Renairen]

Unfortunate that it did, I completely support difficulty as an option. I have no issue with people that find U9 'no problem' to keep the option to fight at that level, but being able to switch back to U8 difficulty would be a great improvement. I enjoyed the game at that point, as did my main co-op partner, and the five people I recommended the game to have all sworn off it since the U9 difficulty jump.

[LeucienWeaver]

Personally, as i've stated before, it'd be great to be able to pick what kind of difficulty, hence the different types. For instance, i'd love to run low base level, with 25-50% buffs to the spawn rate, and a few Challenges active, before venturing into the higher difficulties for the first two.

[LeucienWeaver]

Bumping for TL;DR addition.

[liavalenth]

I completely agree. But it may be harder to implement than is plausible. A single slider is all that is needed. More options are always good, but if we just get one slider I would be fine with it.