Difficulty in CoH: Community Discussion

[Dazl]

Oh another idea and simple change is to double the mission level difficulty and team size. Probably won't have many people claiming that a +8/16 mission was too easy.

[Wavicle]

Just now, Crimsonpyre said:

Oh another idea and simple change is to double the mission level difficulty and team size. Probably won't have many people claiming that a +8/16 mission was too easy.

The game prevents us from hurting mobs that high. This would require a significant coding change.

[eiynp]

just letting mobs scale to a higher +level compared to players isn't a very good solution either, because the way they scale isn't linear. +4s are pretty easy for built-out characters but +5s (or higher) remain pretty impossible to fight because of how much accuracy you need to hit them

[Redlynne]

For some people, it's only a "challenge" if it's hella frustrating.

 

Jack Emmert has his disciples on this point.

They're a minority, of course, but they do exist.

[ZeeHero]

The difficulty is just right due to the limitations of the engine. trying to make anything truly challenging would result in just awful content and an awful experience.

 

I would not mind the ability for +5 and +6 missions, and/or battallion with insane buffs and debuffs and high damage values to challenge us however.

[Snarky]

one of the things I do not enjoy about World of Warcraft is button mashing for 15 minutes with a huge league to bring down one AV.  then some person on the league starts posting the data he mined about people who weren't living up to enough damage for their AT and a lot of people start dps shaming them.  

 

I have no interest in that type of gaming.  spending a couple minutes per AV, when your league knows the mechanics, is sufficient.  no reason to stretch it out to a long drawn out affair to prove you are worthy of a cookie

[Elmyder]

Something to keep in mind regarding +5, +6, +7, etc. Purple patch has a very steep drop off after +4. Things very quickly go from easy to impossible. To see an extreme case of this, enter an Apex or Tin Mage tf without alpha slotted, and see how you fare against +8 enemies.

 

Harder content cannot be achieved by level shifts, but rather by enemies with unique combat mechanics and special buffs/debuffs.

[Troo]

1 hour ago, Snarky said:

one of the things I do not enjoy about World of Warcraft is button mashing for 15 minutes with a huge league to bring down one AV.  then some person on the league starts posting the data he mined about people who weren't living up to enough damage for their AT and a lot of people start dps shaming them.  

 

I have no interest in that type of gaming.  spending a couple minutes per AV, when your league knows the mechanics, is sufficient.  no reason to stretch it out to a long drawn out affair to prove you are worthy of a cookie

How about 8 minutes? 2 seems a bit quick..

[Elmyder]

5 minutes ago, Troo said:

How about 8 minutes? 2 seems a bit quick..

Going to go off this as well: It is a fact that with an optimized team, pretty much every single boss in the game can be killed in well under a minute. Moreover, most avs can be killed in about 10 seconds. This is the reason that you see all the best speed teams full of fire/fire blasters, because high front loaded damage ends up being better than debuffs, since the fights are so fast anyway. While I'm aware that this is a fairly specialized example, I do think it is a strong indication that the game lacks hard bosses. It would be nice if new bosses were introduced who were better balanced for existing min-maxed builds, so that such fast kill times were simply not possible and more elaborate strategy was necessary.

[MunkiLord]

14 minutes ago, Troo said:

How about 8 minutes? 2 seems a bit quick..

That's what she said

[Troo]

5 minutes ago, Elmyder said:

It would be nice if new bosses were introduced who were better balanced for existing min-maxed builds

Skewing the game for those pushing the envelope or taking advantage of the game mechanics.. it's just never going to be the spot the game is balanced around. Sorry.

 

Should there be challenges for those same player, sure.

 

Edited March 31, 2020 by Troo

[Elmyder]

2 minutes ago, Troo said:

Skewing the game for those pushing the envelope or taking advantage of the game mechanics.. it's just never going to be the spot the game is balanced around. Sorry.

 

Should there be challenges for those same player, sure.

 

Introducing specific new content is not the same as skewing the game. For example, consider Magisterium. This is already about the highest level content in the game. It's still very easy for an experienced league. Now, there is the Really Hard Way badge challenge. Certainly a lot harder than a normal Magisterium, and apparently it was supposed to be very hard, but turns out with the right strategy and team comp, it is also very easy. So the devs already attempted to create content that would challenge the most min-maxed players. I'd love to see new content like this, but a lot harder.

[Galaxy Brain]

Regarding health sponge bosses: I think everyone is against just having padded boss fights that last a while just because. If fights took longer due to different objectives that's a whole nother story! Boss dips halfway and becomes invincible to throw minions at you for a bit before returning. Fights like recluse where you cant all pig pile the boss and have to fight different things at once, etc.

 

Regarding difficulty and team comp: this is likely an impossible task tbh. There are so many team compositions that what might be hard for one is a breeze for another, and vice versa for the same teams in a different task. What we can do though is at least challenge the players a bit more and not so much the characters 

[Troo]

Taking the Hamidon Raid and simply changing up the Mitochondria weaknesses and providing some taunt resistance to the core would shoot the difficulty way up. (for a bit)

 

Having folks need to pay attention could be all that's needed to increase difficulty.

 

Edited March 31, 2020 by Troo

[Apparition]

2 hours ago, Snarky said:

one of the things I do not enjoy about World of Warcraft is button mashing for 15 minutes with a huge league to bring down one AV.  then some person on the league starts posting the data he mined about people who weren't living up to enough damage for their AT and a lot of people start dps shaming them.  

 

I have no interest in that type of gaming.  spending a couple minutes per AV, when your league knows the mechanics, is sufficient.  no reason to stretch it out to a long drawn out affair to prove you are worthy of a cookie

 

Yeah.  I loathe DPS meters.  The ones that let you see how others perform anyway, which is most of them.  Sure, they're helpful to see how you perform... but odds are very good that someone is just going to use it to try to shame others.  Not worth it, IMO.

[Jackanapesink]

I think the issue is team play.  Team play, for all its unique contribution to the fun of the game, also tends to level players up (too?) fast.  For example:

 

I love tank play.  It's more challenging than some would think, but easy enough to still be enjoyable while serving a purpose on a team.  That's pretty much gone, or at least seems to be to me lately.  The tank should be grabbing the aggro to protect the rest of the team, for example, but on so many high level runs lately, I find myself stuck behind seventeen robots, demons, or somesuch nonsense, basically placing me in cleanup, while my teammates in front either die on the regular, or rush through the mission.  I might as well be doorwatching.

 

I enjoy and appreciate my power levels for soloing some content, but I love this game for its teamwork aspect.  A good team is hard to find, but an amazing experience.

 

Could there be a way to balance team construction, so that you literally have to piece together a perfect combination?  Not sure.  I certainly don't think the game needs to be "fixed".  Those times I luck into the perfect team are why I play the game.  The rest is drudgery.

[ZeeHero]

+6 is possible. a mission once bugged and gave me and my friend +6 enemies, we were tanker and scrapper. my tanker could not really hurt them much, but with the scrappers help we eventually took them down.

[Galaxy Brain]

Hm, maybe not like a whole.mission of +5/+6, but what if bosses in spawns were?

[summers]

+5 and beyond is going to be just awful, the HP bloat, the way that the purple patch guts debuffs etc.

 

I like additional difficulty levels, but not in that direction.

[Elmyder]

Really Hard Way in Magisterium involves fighting Tyrant at +6 (+5 if you use ultimates, as you should). This gives you an idea of what +5 or +6 bosses would be like. (Technically, Tyrant also has a large max hp buff and regen that grows as you kill him, so he is still a bit harder than what a normal +5 or +6 av would be.) So not impossible. But the drop off is still pretty steep after +4.

[MunkiLord]

1 hour ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Regarding health sponge bosses: I think everyone is against just having padded boss fights that last a while just because.

This is what got me to move on from The Division 2 after the latest expansion. I hear the newest patch addresses the problem, but..........I've started a few new games. So I don't know when or if I'll make my way back to that game.

[golstat2003]

14 hours ago, Snarky said:

So you never did the Trial in the Hollows "Cavern of Transcendance" where you had to click 8 glowies at the exact same time.  (thankfully the Homecoming team changed that) Because that was both boring and annoying.  But that is what you want?

I actually found that as one of the least enjoyable Trials out of anything ever created in COH history. I did it once years ago on live and never again. Utter trash.

[Galaxy Brain]

The more I think of it, the more I like the idea of including +LvL as an advanced boss feature. Something popular in my older suggestions thread, and that @Infinitumand I have spoken about is the idea of adding difficulty via an "Advanced Enemy Spawns" option.

 

This could be an optional mode which beefs up enemy groups with new encounters that may require a bit different strategy to fight. As a baseline, if an advanced enemy spawns it could con as a ++ level to your current setting (at +0, it would show as a +2, and so on) and have other special powers that make them a dangerous target. We could simply apply this to bosses of existing factions and give them a very noticable aura or some other cue to make them stand out and indicate this will be an advanced spawn. They could be individually very strong, maybe copy player powers where they draw strength per NPC and player around them in a range, or the reverse where they buff the group around them, and so on. There is a lot of room for creativity with them.

 

For fun, make them worth a merit when defeated! Maybe scale so a boss is 1, an eb is 3, and an AV is 6. That way as you encounter them in missions you naturally have better merit gain. The advanced setting however would not just be "double HP" or whatever for all spawns, but rather a chance for special harder enemies to appear almost like Void Hunters.

 

Edited March 31, 2020 by Galaxy Brain

[golstat2003]

9 hours ago, eiynp said:

Repurposing hazard zones would not (imo) address this issue that well; we have one incarnate/hard zone already (DA) and it seems to barely see play.

 

maybe a good feature would be letting group leaders set the exemplar level of TFs at start? Then it would be easy to play level 50s but still run at a pre-incarnate level

The reason why it doesn't get that used is that a lot of newer players of this game probably don't even know it exists. Or the most of the vets would rather play this game as an action rpg for relaxation and not for challenge, so they just don't go there (plus the rewards unless you do the farming trick for the one for components, just aren't that great).. Or a combo of any of those.

Edited March 31, 2020 by golstat2003

[golstat2003]

11 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

The more I think of it, the more I like the idea of including +LvL as an advanced boss feature. Something popular in my older suggestions thread, and that @Infinitumand I have spoken about is the idea of adding difficulty via an "Advanced Enemy Spawns" option.

 

This could be an optional mode which beefs up enemy groups with new encounters that may require a bit different strategy to fight. As a baseline, if an advanced enemy spawns it could con as a ++ level to your current setting (at +0, it would show as a +2, and so on) and have other special powers that make them a dangerous target. We could simply apply this to bosses of existing factions and give them a very noticable aura or some other cue to make them stand out and indicate this will be an advanced spawn. They could be individually very strong, maybe copy player powers where they draw strength per NPC and player around them in a range, or the reverse where they buff the group around them, and so on. 

 

 

I'm always down for optional modes. This idea sounds interesting.