Additional Difficulty Mode

[Infinitum]

Basically Additional Difficulty Mode would be a selectable option to increase difficulty by enemy groups with increased abilities, aggressiveness and also frequent, random EB spawns.

 

It would also include new badge opportunities.

 

It would entirely be optional and directed at the need to fully explore the capabilities of top end builds.

Edited May 21, 2020 by Infinitum

[MTeague]

I'm not sure it needs increased rewards.  CoH has historically not given a dam if you go for easymode or +4/x8 Night Ward when you choose what level of challenge you want. 

So I would vote against THAT.

 

But additional options in the quantity and kind of foes you face, are fine with me.

 

[Infinitum]

6 minutes ago, MTeague said:

I'm not sure it needs increased rewards.  CoH has historically not given a dam if you go for easymode or +4/x8 Night Ward when you choose what level of challenge you want. 

So I would vote against THAT.

 

But additional options in the quantity and kind of foes you face, are fine with me.

 

But in general would you be for or against an additional mode?

[Infinitum]

I'll strike the influence comment because that is another can of worms entirely for another discussion.

[ArchVileTerror]

As proposed, not particularly.   However, I am in favour of https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/11876-new-difficulty-mechanic-advanced-enemies/

[Infinitum]

9 minutes ago, ArchVileTerror said:

As proposed, not particularly.   However, I am in favour of https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/11876-new-difficulty-mechanic-advanced-enemies/

I probably didn't convey that in the description well enough but I would like to see that in elite mode also.

Edited May 21, 2020 by Infinitum

[MTeague]

37 minutes ago, Infinitum said:

But in general would you be for or against an additional mode?

minus the rewards difference, I am in favor and would change my vote from No to Yes.  I dont' see a way to recast it though.

[Infinitum]

1 minute ago, MTeague said:

minus the rewards difference, I am in favor and would change my vote from No to Yes.  I dont' see a way to recast it though.

Its ok, in the grand scheme of things its not all important either way.

 

I think it would be interesting to have that option.

[ArchVileTerror]

Thing is, I don't think a "mode" (particularly one named "Elite") is the way to approach this.   A difficulty setting, on the other hand, is.   And while it might not appear to be too fundamentally different, it comes down to presentation and player expectation.  Elitism is implicitly against the spirit of Homecoming, as mentioned in the mission statement.  It might seem like splitting hairs, but a decade and a half in the industry has taught me that these things really do matter.  

So brand it or package it as "optional difficult settings" rather than "Elite Mode," and I think you're pretty well on target.

[Infinitum]

2 minutes ago, ArchVileTerror said:

Thing is, I don't think a "mode" (particularly one named "Elite") is the way to approach this.   A difficulty setting, on the other hand, is.   And while it might not appear to be too fundamentally different, it comes down to presentation and player expectation.  Elitism is implicitly against the spirit of Homecoming, as mentioned in the mission statement.  It might seem like splitting hairs, but a decade and a half in the industry has taught me that these things really do matter.  

So brand it or package it as "optional difficult settings" rather than "Elite Mode," and I think you're pretty well on target.

Yeah thats fine too, and I get what you are saying, we are actually saying the same thing.

 

Elite was just the first thing that popped into my head, but it can literally be named anything.

[MTeague]

Proposed difficulty setting name:   "What Just Happened?"

[Infinitum]

Just now, MTeague said:

Proposed difficulty setting name:   "What Just Happened?"

lol I like it

[Oubliette_Red]

1 hour ago, MTeague said:

Proposed difficulty setting name:   "What Just Happened?"

How about:  "Hold my beer."

 

Edited May 22, 2020 by Oubliette_Red

[Crysis]

I don’t want to see a single second of development time wasted on additional difficulty settings.  We have entire zones of tougher critters that are almost entirely empty of players.  Night Ward, DA, etc.  The player base wants easy, casual play sessions or they’d be flocking to this harder content already.  They aren’t.  Stop wishing for useless things.

[Doomguide2005]

1 hour ago, Oubliette_Red said:

How about:  "Hold my beer."

 

aka "Where's Leroy Going?"

[Oubliette_Red]

35 minutes ago, Crysis said:

I don’t want to see a single second of development time wasted on additional difficulty settings.  We have entire zones of tougher critters that are almost entirely empty of players.  Night Ward, DA, etc.  The player base wants easy, casual play sessions or they’d be flocking to this harder content already.  They aren’t.  Stop wishing for useless things.

Except there are plenty of players that can +4/*8 nearly all the content in the game.  Allowing them additional difficulty options would be a good option. The player base wants: entertaining, fun, engaging, stories, challenges, roflstomping, face-planting, hair on fire play sessions and the player base will choose any or all of these as they see fit. Options are good.

 

Personally, I'd like to see the Ouroboros options added to all content.

 

Edited May 22, 2020 by Oubliette_Red

[ILIWAPCT]

43 minutes ago, Crysis said:

I don’t want to see a single second of development time wasted on additional difficulty settings.  We have entire zones of tougher critters that are almost entirely empty of players.  Night Ward, DA, etc.  The player base wants easy, casual play sessions or they’d be flocking to this harder content already.  They aren’t.  Stop wishing for useless things.

Agreed.

 

My first thought is that they must be playing brutes. If their looking for a challenge just look at the Alt disparity the developers put out. Start at the bottom and work you way up back to your brute. 

 

Second. Challenging content takes a lot of time and effort to develop, the player base will have it nurtured within a day to a week at most. 

 

In closing, I'd also guess that AE farms and farming in general has people "miss the game". It's great that we all have options to play the game the way we want to play. 

[Infinitum]

12 minutes ago, ILIWAPCT said:

Agreed.

 

My first thought is that they must be playing brutes. If their looking for a challenge just look at the Alt disparity the developers put out. Start at the bottom and work you way up back to your brute. 

 

Second. Challenging content takes a lot of time and effort to develop, the player base will have it nurtured within a day to a week at most. 

 

In closing, I'd also guess that AE farms and farming in general has people "miss the game". It's great that we all have options to play the game the way we want to play. 

this has nothing to do with any of that.

[ILIWAPCT]

2 minutes ago, Infinitum said:

this has nothing to do with any of that.

Developer effort has nothing to do with any of that.

[Infinitum]

24 minutes ago, ILIWAPCT said:

Developer effort has nothing to do with any of that.

ok again, just because something would take effort doesnt exclude it from being attempted.

[Yoru-hime]

"Looking for DPS for Elite Lady Grey, TW only pst"

 

I'm being a little tongue-in-cheek, but it's not just the social inertia of the playerbase that you're going to have to overcome to make something like this work. In a way, I see hardmode much like PvP; you can bolt it on, but it's not what CoH was really designed to do, so it probably won't work as well as you'd really want. CoH is a casual game and it's both built and balanced like one. If you try to turn the difficulty up to 11, or let's be honest, even 8, a lot of problems with the game that most people just ignore are going to start demanding real attention in a hurry and some of those problems run quite a bit deeper than the power set imbalances we're perpetually quarrelling about here on the forums.

 

The badges, in particular, would create a lethal dilemma. Really, any sort of unique reward would, but badges would in particular. If you really try to make this to challenge elite well-synced teams, badgers who are using sub-optimal power sets for their dedicated badge characters will be left out and be incensed. On the other hand, if you're lax enough to make sure that anyone can get them even with a low-end powerset, the truly top end characters will declare your Elite Mode boring within a few days and be back here clamoring for a "real" hardmode.

 

If this is something as easy as tacking on a few new options to the difficulty menu, then *shrug* why not, but in general, I don't really feel like we're getting so much new content that new work explicitly designed to be exclusionary should rate very high at all on the development priority list.

[Galaxy Brain]

You all need to stop being so exclusionary towards people who want to push the game and make their characters extra heroic. 

 

People respond to rewards. Look at this week with all the lady grey's being run for extra merits. Imagine if Difficulty  Mode+ added even more + Bonus drop chance all for the price of being a bit more cognizant of play. I think a much bigger chunk of the game would be willing to play ball if the incentive were there for sure.

[Troo]

Isn't the incentive the challenge?

 

Sometimes it seems folks just want a way to abuse the reward systems by having the most expensive min/maxed characters. I'm not judging, just stating how it seems from time to time.

 

Edited May 22, 2020 by Troo

[Galaxy Brain]

On top of this, there is a large chunk of players who are aware of the meta in a negative way. The example of force fields often comes up, but for real the way the game is, the people who I've talked to often feel like their bubblers/etc are not contributing and that is not fun. If new content, which could include difficulty modes that makes all content  "new" retroactively, gives them some extra value, or ST specialists value, and all sorts of other "fallen off the current meta" players have value then that is a great thing IMO.

[Greycat]

So why not just take advantage of what you already have? Ouro it and buff the enemies, debuff yourself. Drop your IO build. You can already *make* things more difficult for yourself. Heck, the Ouro options even give the requested for rewards, at least badges, as I recall.

 

I don't care if it's made or not, but to me it's like putting in a godmode code on another game then complaining everything's too easy. You *have the power now* to make things more difficult.