My Thoughts On Nightmare Mode Mechanics.

[ChaosBloodterfly]

Right now sometimes nightmare mode feels like a fun challenging difficulty that adds gameplay (like vampire), but sometimes it just feels like head-butting a brick wall (mini map gone was the worst, but its gone now, whew).

I also feel like the game-play modifiers should give a little of what they take (like vampire mode).

1. Energy Drain.

The numbers really need to be tuned. Right now it's effectively ban on abilities. What it should do is force the decision between "do I ult now, or use ability 1/2/3 later as my energy goes down". I think it needs a non-linear drain rate, increasing as energy goes up so you can't horde energy. Some other tweaks could be done too, like no drain until 3 seconds out of combat, killing enemies gives 1 energy (a la vampire mode).

Summary: Adds little gameplay, just artificial difficulty.

2. Rewards.

Give a small xp and credit (possibly resource?) bonus modifier like +50% to make midgame nightmare at least on par with endgame normal (it's a lot harder). Right now it feels like: grind them until you have the mod set, then go back to kappa/xini/void/etc for better loots.

Another thing could be to keep track of nightmare mode planets finished, for completion-ists out there. Though it would increase server load, but not by much I think.

3. Random ideas (numbers are really rough).

These are some ideas to change how the game plays to make it harder (like how energy drain was supposed to do, but just ended up being a ban on abilities). Unsure as to the coding/engine feasibilities of some.

-Unlimited ammo, but reload is on a 20 second cooldown.

-Abilities are free, but are on cooldown relative to their energy costs (affected by streamline?)

-Weapons and abilities draw from the stamina pool instead of the normal pool (balance need to be tweaked for stamina mods possibly).

-Enemies have 200% movement speed (this mostly affects infested gameplay).

-Enemies recover shields and health at noticeably fast rate.

-Clanmate suggestion: "zombie mode" Enemies can only be incapacitated and respawn after a set time (forces you to keep moving, xp and loot only awarded for first "kill", possible bad interactions with exterminate mode)

-25% damage reduction against ranged weapons. 25% bonus damage for melee weapons. (melee weapons are less powerful than ranged weapons and have more risk, so this is a net difficulty increase)

-Mist reduces visibility to about 20 meters. Enemy radar range decreased by half as well.

-Clip size halved, and reload speed reduced by 1/3rd to compensate slightly. (Because reloading more than you are shooting is sort of frustrating, but should encourage more cover seeking and less bullet spraying)

Edited August 8, 2013 by ChaosBloodterfly