Challenge Mode - Any ideas?

[VileTerror]

Wise distinction to make, Grouchy.  Considering the prevalence of farming, I don't think any amount of the traditional in-game rewards can ever be "enough."  If people want more challenge just for more Exp/Inf/Incarnate/etc rewards, I think something would also need to change on a fundamental level to the mechanisms that provide those rewards.

[Troo]

Hmmm, I was purely thinking for fun and not increased rewards.

 

I'd guess normal rewards would apply. For infinite mode an increasing wave of enemies coming to the player or team without break could prove rewarding.

Maybe there could be something similar to a mission reward if a challenge is met to some degree and a bonus for doing something exceptional.

[FDR's Think Tank]

There should be more "Search and Rescue" type missions in the game. Whether you are rescuing drowning civilians, dealing with burning buildings, picking up helpless NPCs and running them out of a combat zone, or even getting cats down out of trees for little old ladies... the game has a lot of nooks and crannies it can fill in with mini games and team challenges. I love the firefighting/arson challenge in Steel Canyon... it's a shame there aren't more events like that.

 

A good example of the gameplay to add might be Sim Copter. You have a bounty board with all sorts of missions. Some are hospital transport, some are crowd/riot dispersal... and while these things are certainly represented in CoHs in limited ways at very specific locations, I think there is a way to make solo mini games ramp up into team effort games where each team member has a different designated role.

 

Villains, on the other hand, should be able to fight for gang territory and direct "non-combat" minions to commit crimes for profit. They are bad guys, duh.

 

 

[Galaxy Brain]

Well, the angle I'm looking at this is that more difficult content would ironically fix a lot of sets that underperform due to the ... I guess "power economy" we have now. Need more defenses? Suddenly FF is useful again! More hard bosses? ST specialists become relevant in a group, and so on.

 

That said, if this hard content is optional then it should be worth it else it go underutilized just like the current challenge settings in oro and tfs

[Lines]

20 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Well, the angle I'm looking at this is that more difficult content would ironically fix a lot of sets that underperform due to the ... I guess "power economy" we have now. Need more defenses? Suddenly FF is useful again! More hard bosses? ST specialists become relevant in a group, and so on.

 

That said, if this hard content is optional then it should be worth it else it go underutilized just like the current challenge settings in oro and tfs

 

This is exactly where my approach to all of this is at.

[Galaxy Brain]

8 hours ago, Lines said:

 

This is exactly where my approach to all of this is at.

Glad to see others have the same view! 🙂

 

Honestly, a lot of the meta revolves around how content has a certain speed limit when it comes to certain stats. You really can't go above 45% defense for mitigation in most content as that makes you effectively immortal anyways. Anything below that is magnitudes less safe and anything above that is essentially "wasted" most of the time. With so many ways to hover around that value thanks to IOs, certain powers (maneuvers... time... etc), it pushes out many other forms of play like soft control in favor of just maximizing damage / recharge given our safety is mostly secure. The value of controlling enemies diminishes if they dont threaten you to begin with, just grind em up!

 

Making legit challenge difficulty settings with appropriate rewards to be worth tackling would have a positive effect on the game IMO. It would def push longevity as there is another goal to tackle in the hard modes, and it would change the meta of whole ATs where they suddenly have value again.

[Chronicler J]

10 hours ago, Lines said:

 

This is exactly where my approach to all of this is at.

I solved that somewhat with my Progression Raid AE mission. I believe currently the AE is the best way to fairly challenge sets if you aren't worried about rewards. 

[Troo]

Okay, okay I'll go check it out.

[biostem]

Here's an idea - A truly hard mode that imposes a much lower defense and resistance cap on players, and a reduction in the value of debuffs that can be applied to enemies.  You'd probably also need to reduce the amount that healing powers & regen can benefit the player as well.

[krj12]

A few ideas I've seen in other MMOs:

1.   Very restrictive mission timer.

2.  Environmental Effects specific to the map.   ( i.e. a constant DOT or slow effect that hits the whole party,  I remember in GW1 a map effect that hit you with a DOT only when you moved)

3.  Certain types of powers are disabled until a certain boss is killed or an objective is met.

4.  Survivor (  having to survive increasingly larger and frequent ambushes at a certain spot on the map )

[Troo]

Above is a discussion on Hardcore or Master mode where players could participate in a higher risk / reward scenario.

One option - If a player is defeated they are deleted with all of their holdings.

 

Edited February 29, 2020 by Troo

[Troo]

On 1/12/2020 at 5:17 AM, Galaxy Brain said:

I think this is part of the issue right here. What incentive is there to run these hard modes if running the easier stuff is just as if not more lucrative?

Revisiting incentive: With the number of requests to increase difficulty, something like hard mode may be it's own incentive.

Besides, if there were more enemies the rewards would reflect that. If there was an endless stream of them, the rewards would reflect that.

[ShardWarrior]

STO has The Arena of Sompek.  Very fun queued event.  Essentially, it gets harder each wave as enemies will get stronger with more and more buffs.  It also includes scaling rewards, so the more waves you defeat, the greater the reward.  There are DPS leagues set up for this and bragging rights posts on Reddit and such.  Would be fun to have something like this here.  Definitely a challenge.

[golstat2003]

On 1/14/2020 at 4:12 PM, biostem said:

Here's an idea - A truly hard mode that imposes a much lower defense and resistance cap on players, and a reduction in the value of debuffs that can be applied to enemies.  You'd probably also need to reduce the amount that healing powers & regen can benefit the player as well.

That would be interesting . . . I would never play it , ever. . . but that would be interesting for folks who want that option.

[Troo]

The endless waves of enemies with increasing challenge is still the most appealing to me.

[Troo]

Bumping this as a number of 'raise difficulty' threads have popped up again. As an alternative to raising difficulty maybe providing some challenges that could scale could be a viable alternative.

[Galaxy Brain]

16 minutes ago, Troo said:

Bumping this as a number of 'raise difficulty' threads have popped up again. As an alternative to raising difficulty maybe providing some challenges that could scale could be a viable alternative.

@DougGraves has a good take on this, but it wont make people happy

[Bopper]

New Challenge Mode: Lasting Impact.

You enter this mode, there is no reverting back. You play as if the game had actual consequences. If you die, there is no rez, you are locked out of the character forever. However, for every badge you get while in this mode, you get a duplicate badge indicating you were in Lasting Impact mode. 

 

Why would people do this?  Vanity...those who like badges will get bragging rights for having the most badges, I suppose. Also, for those with Alt-itis, they have a legitimate excuse to make a new toon.

 

Is this a good idea? It's a great idea. 

 

But is it really? Nah, probably not.

 

[0th Power]

On 1/11/2020 at 10:50 AM, Tyrannical said:

 

 

- Friendly fire is enabled.

I suggested this as an option a while back, not many people seemed to like it, I think it would be awesome

[Chance Jackson]

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/19208-are-player-defenses-too-high/?do=findComment&comment=216091

 

I had a suggestion I'd like to post here as well 

[Zeraphia]

I think we are missing is both more incarnate content AND challenging content. I think a huge amount of what's going on right now is incarnate power creep. It really has made the game so easy sometimes :/...

 

I think creating new trials/incarnate specific content that is mechanically harder and more challenging than the content available right now, expanding upon story arcs, or actually fleshing out the Rikti homeworld zone would be excellent ideas! Imagine, going to a Rikti world and finding out more about the origins of Hero 1 and exploring the interesting civilization that the Rikti live in with more interesting/challenging Rikti enemies available to fight!

[ShardWarrior]

On 1/11/2020 at 11:50 AM, Tyrannical said:

Then I would propose adding more options to this, maybe stuff like;

 

- Players do not have natural regeneration (except Rest or with buffs)

 

- Enemies are all promoted (minions to lieutenants, lieutenants to bosses, etc)

 

- Incarnate powers are disabled.

 

- Enemy mez magnitude is higher.

 

- Friendly fire is enabled.

None of these make the game more of a challenge, just more tedious.

[ArchVileTerror]

I dunno.  Friendly Fire has some potential.

. . . but also the potential for grief.

 

And really, to program Friendly Fire, I don't know what approach they'd take.  Flag all entities in instances as universal targets?  Change AoEs so that they have a flag to hit both enemies and allies?  I see a lot of potential glitchiness in either method.

 

[Troo]

Friendly fire would be awesome if not for griefing.

 

The idea of needing to be aware of are of effect powers and teammates sounds great.

 

Would the same or reverse also apply to buffs? "Dude, you just speed boosted the AV!?"

[ArchVileTerror]

I mean, with the Periodic Random Unresistable Confuse proc idea I shared earlier, you'd have a much lower amount of Dev-time overhead, but still get the same general effect as Friendly Fire.   It would just be more of an all-or-nothing:  Did you trigger that PBAoE Nuke while confused?  Enemies are unharmed, but your team is pissed.