Difficulty Settings

[Bonkleberry]

So, what am I missing here?

 

I generally run my missions on the lower end of difficulty settings. I set it to where I know I can clear my missions at a rate that I am happy with while getting good rewards.

 

I am starting to get my level shifts, so I have the potential to change up my difficulty strategy for more rewards without making things more difficult. However, before I did that, I decided that I needed more information.

 

I finally got around to looking up what upping mission difficulty actually does for my benefit and it looks like +1/8 with AVs turned off us the most efficient setting for earning recipes and salvage.

 

Am I missing something? Almost everyone seems to be running at +4/8 and I cannot figure out why. Like, I know you get higher exeprience and influence/infamy earnings, but veteran levels are meh to me and I earn WAY more influence from selling recipes and rare salvage.

 

I feel like there is some mechanic that I am missing here for rewards. From what I am reading online, mission difficulty does not affect mission/story arc rewards. Fighting higher level foes does not increase their chances of dropping stuff or change the pool of potential drops after level 51. AVs can have a higher chance of dropping recipes, but, unless you are sporting a build that can take on AVs well, you might save a substantial amount of time just killing them as an Elite Boss and moving on (AVs and Elite Bosses have the same loot tables as Minions, Lieutenants, and Bosses).

 

I suppose some players may also just want the challange that +4/8 provides. I cannot know for sure, but it seems fishy to me that a culture of "let's try and skip as much of the mission as possible" always wants to play at the hardest difficulty just because it is available.

[Seigmoraig]

You will get significantly more influence when playing a +4/8 difficulty.
For example, I AFK farm all day on my Brute while I work away on my office computer it's pretty laid back and I don't optimize my play time, sometimes I can just be sitting in an empty mission for 15-20 mins while I am on a roll at work. At the end of the day I usually make around 300million inf profit. Sales of recipes and materials are roughly around half of that total. It's totally worth it if you are able to run at +4/8.
That being said, if your clear speed is really slow at +4/8 it's not worth it to slow down and do it at that difficulty, you have to find the right balance for your build to get the most rewards possible

[Ukase]

Bonkleberry - you'll drive yourself crazy trying to saddle other people with your logic. It makes sense to them - even if it doesn't to you (or me). 

There are some that play at -1/1 to zip through content ASAP for the rewards at the end, all the way to those who play at +4/8 and clear every map. 

I'm just glad we have the option! 

[Bonkleberry]

19 minutes ago, Ukase said:

Bonkleberry - you'll drive yourself crazy trying to saddle other people with your logic. It makes sense to them - even if it doesn't to you (or me). 

There are some that play at -1/1 to zip through content ASAP for the rewards at the end, all the way to those who play at +4/8 and clear every map. 

I'm just glad we have the option! 

lol I am not trying to argue or control people. Things just seemed wierd to me and I was worried the information I have access to is wrong or incomplete. But thank you.

[ImpousVileTerror]

Nah, Bonkle', you hit the nail on the head.  A lot of people assume that "bigger number per enemy" is always the optimal play, but drop-rates paint a very different picture.  I am QUITE content to run at -1/x1 while solo, and about the only significant pain in the ass is the slower rate of accumulating the Inf-Earnt Badges.

[arcane]

Veteran levels are not meh to someone who wants their empyrean merits (flexibly without being too reliant on trials).

Edited June 22, 2020 by arcaneholocaust

[Bonkleberry]

33 minutes ago, arcaneholocaust said:

Veteran levels are not meh to someone who wants their empyrean merits (flexibly without being too reliant on trials).

I have more of those I can use at the moment from knocking out the Incarnate story arcs. I can finish an arc by myself with minimal effort. My Incarnate progression is actually being held back by earning threads, because it seems like such a waste to waste merits on thread conversion.

Edited June 22, 2020 by Bonkleberry

[Seigmoraig]

1 hour ago, ImpousVileTerror said:

I am QUITE content to run at -1/x1 while solo

When I do that sort of thing in solo I up the player count just to have bigger spawns because I like seeing the orange floating numbers all over the place. As long as I'm hitting my max targets with my AoEs it's almost the same clear time if there are 3 mobs in a spawn and if there are 7-8

[EmmySky]

I see teams at +4×8 and its just as fast as +0×8 solo.  People who solo +4×8 are prolly farmers or min-maxers.  My PB is currently running solo +0×8 because its fast and efficient.  I have no ego pushing me for bigger numbers or harder enemies lol

 

Find what you are comfy with and enjoy!

[Troo]

3 hours ago, Bonkleberry said:

Am I missing something? Almost everyone seems to be running at +4/8 and I cannot figure out why. Like, I know you get higher exeprience and influence/infamy earnings, but veteran levels are meh to me and I earn WAY more influence from selling recipes and rare salvage.

given your criteria you are correct for what you want to do.

 

while understand some may run +4/1 for.. reasons.

[Coyotedancer]

More INF is a useful thing... and as you already pointed out in the first post, sometimes it's just flat-out *FUN* to jump into a huge pile of red and purple goons. And that's as true solo or duo as it is when you're right in the middle of an eight member wrecking ball of a smash team.

[Sir Myshkin]

3 hours ago, Bonkleberry said:

Am I missing something? Almost everyone seems to be running at +4/8 and I cannot figure out why. Like, I know you get higher experience and influence/infamy earnings, but veteran levels are meh to me and I earn WAY more influence from selling recipes and rare salvage.

You're not necessarily missing anything, and I won't try and speak for the masses, or even try and justify their intent, but I can try and explain it so you'll see where they're coming from.

 

On Veteran Levels:

As a player "levels" beyond 50 they gain additional Incarnate materials all the way up to 100 which make it possible to T3 (at a minimum) if not T4 with some extra drops each of their Incarnate slots. With iTrials and Incarnate missions (and even general play with thread drops) one can achieve T4 status a lot faster. I think I got my Blaster and Scrapper kitted out before either broke Vet 25-30 with some lucky VR drops on iTrials. Once a character gets past the point of earning pieces from Vet rewards, XP doesn't have any real value anymore, but it's useful to get through them quickly to earn those extra parts.

 

On Incarnate Level Shifts, and what that means in +4/x8:

Typically +4/x8 play doesn't kick in for most until 45+ when builds are more (mostly) complete and it is possible to freely play at the harder difficulties in a team scenario. There are of course plenty who try this solo as well, but the same still applies that most builds won't work well without the slots that come from 40-50, but mostly 40-45 where it's harder to pull off. Once a character hits 50, they're complete and can dish out a lot. When you have a team of players with completed IO Builds they can be incredibly strong and plow through content at a rapid pace. When you have a group of individuals who can dish out AoE's that do 200 damage, and a minion melts at max 435ish HP, two players alone are clearing a spawn with minimal effort. As such we have to provide a more consistent experience cause it already moves incredibly quick.

 

The thing that really shifts the goal post is Incarnate Level Shifts. For all standard non-Incarnate content in the game, from levels 45-50, the Alpha Slot at T3 or T4 is providing a +1 shift, which means the game has now changed its max difficulty level to +3 so long as that is slotted. In order to actually get +3, the player must select +4 as their rating. Everything scales according to level, so now those 50+1's are slaughtering things in front of them even faster.

 

In regular content I can take my Ice/Atomic Blaster, who is T4'd in all categories, and carry a team through a level 50 mission at +4/x8 at a break neck speed. He is capable of nuking multiple spawns at a time and only slows down every three-ish groups to finish off the Bosses as they congregate after, barely hanging on. Ranged Blizzard, ranged Judgement, and dual AoE's mean I can effectively take out roughly 35 enemies within approximately 15 seconds. A spawn size can vary, but if we say 12-16, typically max 2 bosses, 4 lieuts, and the rest minions that leaves me 6-10 of them so 18-30 that fall simply because I sneezed.

 

Now multiply my one case of a Blaster into a team of 8.

 

As a side note:

The above can only help explain the generality of the mass, but there are some folks who play this game that just don't really understand the dynamic of playing harder content for anything other than their ego, and often struggle for it. For them there is no excuse and I can't help you there. Some folks just want to watch the world burn.

 

No matter what, play the game how you want to play it, in a manner that is enjoyable to your play style, and if anyone else tries to question it, move on and don't linger on it. If you want to enjoy face-stomping at +1 because it's a smoother ride, than you do you 🙂

[starro]

don't forget more defeated villains also equals more opportunities for salvage, recipes, threads and other drops too.

 

Depending on the villains and depending on the mission it's fun to play with.  If your butt is getting kicked bail and try new settings.

[MTeague]

I never run below +1/x1 with Bosses and EB's.  If my character cannot solo that, they are unworthy of appearing in my character roster.

As they get access to more power and more slots, I will crank that up. 

 

My Claws/SR scrapper and my Spines/Regen stalker are both currently at +2/x4, and I think they could probably go higher.

My Invuln/SS tank and my Plant/Psi Dominator are both currently at +2/x3.

My Mind/Kin controller is currently at +2/x2.  

 

In terms of drop rates, I believe @ImpousVileTerror is correct.

But I have pride issues, and I require my characters to fight harder groups when I feel that they can reasonably do so.  

 

EDIT:  Though I also tend to use the exact same settings regardless if I'm fighting in Night Ward or Shadow Shard or on a Malta-Centric story arc.

I do NOT adjust difficulty slider based on the type of enemy I'm fighting.

Edited June 22, 2020 by MTeague

[DSorrow]

To echo some other posters, I don't think you're missing much at all. As far as efficiency goes on any character / team with access to AoE damage, increasing spawn size is better than increasing enemy level. However, spawn sizes have a cap to them and once you can instantly delete a spawn at +0, +1 or even +4, why not play at +4? Then there are matters of personal preference when it comes to challenge level: some players want to breeze through with minimal effort and others want the opposite. Usually I like playing +2/x6-8 in while leveling and in smaller teams, but sometimes you get an abundance of support or just teammates powerful on their own that playing anything less than +4/x8 feels like the enemies are made of paper.

 

As far as recipe drops go, your best bet obviously is whatever method that lets you defeat as many enemies as quickly as possible, but for farming purposes I guess there are at least two other factors that have to be accounted for:

1. Target saturation: at lower difficulty levels you're potentially defeating enemies so quickly that new patrols don't reach you quickly enough to provide full target saturation at all times so your defeats / minute could be more or less the same regardless of playing at +0 or +4. 
2. Mission resets: the faster you clear a mission, the more time you spend in loading screens. Also in regards to AFK farming, it's not really AFK if you have to reset a mission every 5-10 mins.

Both of these can't really impact you significantly at the same time, but depending on whether you do a classic contact mission farm where you jump from one spawn to the other or an optimized AE farm, one of these could be meaningful.

[nihilii]

17 hours ago, Bonkleberry said:

I suppose some players may also just want the challange that +4/8 provides. I cannot know for sure, but it seems fishy to me that a culture of "let's try and skip as much of the mission as possible" always wants to play at the hardest difficulty just because it is available.

I like to run +4/x8 for challenge and skip to the objectives and see no logical contradiction between the two.

 

Fighting the same group 20 times in a row generally isn't more challenging than fighting it 3 or 4 times. On the flipside, clearing the objectives quickly while facing the strongest possible opposition is a challenge in itself; and running past most of the enemies can create new attack vectors for them, as in stacked ambushed or what have you.

You will see this trend in gaming all the way back to 90s speedrunning: in the original Doom from 1993, the preferred category is "Ultra-Violence Speed", going to the exit as quick as possible on the maximum difficulty.

[Peacemoon]

You get more influence for higher level mobs, but obviously they take longer to defeat. So find a sweet spot where they’re not taking too long but also stretching your character appropriately.

So it depends on what you’re trying to do. Also I don’t think everyone does do +4/x8, personally I tend to stick to +3 on my Defender, even though he can do +4, it just starts to slow down too much for him. 

[Yomo Kimyata]

16 hours ago, MTeague said:

I never run below +1/x1 with Bosses and EB's.  If my character cannot solo that, they are unworthy of appearing in my character roster.

As they get access to more power and more slots, I will crank that up. 

 

100%.  Any alt I start on blue side starts at +1/x1.  If it cannot beat Frostfire solo as an EB unslotted at around level 12, I would write it off.  But that hasn’t happened yet and I don’t think it will.

 

I usually get to +2 around 20 and +3 in the low 30s, and x3 to x8 whenever it adds challenge and depending on AT and power.  But I definitely prioritize + over x.

 

To OP, I do not consciously think of rewards, just challenge and pleasure of the play.  Well, unless I’m building out incarnate salvage.