Increasing Difficulty without Undoing Things

[Steampunkette]

A lot of people have made suggestions, recently, about how to increase the difficulty of the game, and I respect that. The game -is- too easy once you've got full set bonuses and get your +4 total Level-Shift rolling and can easily steamroll any +4/x8 content pretty much on your own.

 

And there's invariably counterarguments that largely amount to "Nerf Yourself". 

 

I get it. No one wants global nerfs or self-nerfing (Well... a few of you do, but the vast majority don't seem to be). So how can we increase difficulty -without- nerfing everyone?

 

Well. I can think of a few options, actually.

 

1) Increase the Level Scaling Tables to a maximum of level 60. (+10x8, anyone?)

Right now the maximum is 54 with the different NPC ranks involved. Once you've got 4 level shifts under your belt, you're basically fighting even-con enemies. Letting players go to "+5" would be the same as fighting +1s. Not -super- helpful to increasing the overall difficulty. But if the highest powered enemies in the game were level 60 enemies, and the highest level players were essentially 54s, the game's purple patch comes back into play.

 

Enemy Attacks do more damage. At +10 players go from having a base 75% chance to hit to a base 20% chance to hit. They also do only 15% of their normal damage to the enemies. Debuffs take a similar hit to effectiveness, as does control duration. Oh. And Softcap goes from 45% to somewhere around 75% I think? Well out of the range of most characters.

 

+10 would basically become the "Masochist Setting" that no one ever really uses but is there to throw yourself against if you're willing to hang with a bunch of maxed out Support and Control characters. But +7? That'd be like a +3 for non-Incarnates. And +8 would be like a +4 for non-Incarnates.

 

It would use the game's already extant systems to allow players greater difficulty than they can currently find once they hit level 50+.

 

Bonus Points: This specific increase in difficulty -can- apply to literally any character at any level range! You'd be an absolute -fool- to fight +10 AV Vahzilok at the Faultline Dam, but the bragging rights if you ever succeeded would be LEGENDARY.

 

2) All Boss Spawning. (Disabled in the AE, for Inf's sake!)

We have the option to spawn solo fights with 0 bosses, so how about spawning nothing -but- bosses? It'd make Controllers gnash their teeth a bit as most of the enemies would still not be locked down, but at least it would be because they're more resistant and require stacking rather than instantly dead because the Blaster dropped a Nuke and Judgement.

 

Might need to tie an XP Nerf and Droprate Nerf to this difficulty setting, just to keep it from becoming the "New Farm" rather than being a difficulty increase.

 

3) Literal Self-Nerfing. (Yeah, I know I said no nerfing, sue me!)

The option to disable Level Shifts. This goes back to number 1 and bringing back the relevance of the Purple Patch. By allowing people to temporarily disable their Level Shifts they can fight at +4 difficulty and have it actually feel like +4, again. You still have your Incarnate Powers with all the wonderful buffs and neato judgements... but things are harder. Getting everyone on the team to agree to that difficulty setting might be a little difficult (see what I did, there?) but it's way better than any difficulty setting that just excises the entire Incarnate System or IO System with the flick of a switch.

Edited March 27, 2021 by Steampunkette

[Coyotedancer]

How are you getting four level shifts? The rest of us are topped out at +3 (One each from T3 Alpha, Destiny and Lore).

 

I call shenanigans! 😝

[Andreah]

13 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

How are you getting four level shifts? The rest of us are topped out at +3 (One each from T3 Alpha, Destiny and Lore).

And only the first one works in regular content.

[Doomguide2005]

1) Once you got 4 level shifts under your belt.  Wait, what?  I've been essentially unable to play for quite a while but fas as I know only 3 level shifts are possible, 2 of those being Incarnate content only.  Unless you're referring to Ultimate inspires (and no idea if they stack or work outside of Incarnate content).  Which afaik last 3 minutes a piece ... knock yourself out burning through those.  And with effective +7 foes the purple patch gets really really ugly

[Andreah]

On the whole, I approve.

 

It has the advantage of absolutely not changing anything at notoriety +4 or less. That wouldn't bother me so much, if it left +0 alone, but clearly it would bother a lot of others.

[Andreah]

17 minutes ago, Doomguide2005 said:

Unless you're referring to Ultimate inspires (and no idea if they stack or work outside of Incarnate content).

They work, and I use them often in regular content. They DO NOT STACK. Not ever. Once you use one, they're disabled (greyed out in the tray) and cannot be used again until the active one expires.

 

They are expensive, but let you do do certain tricks that are really fun, and imo, worth it situationally.

Edited March 27, 2021 by Andreah

[Coyotedancer]

You know, even after the things being around this long... I had no idea they stacked. I use them so rarely it just never came up.

'Learn something new every day. 

[Andreah]

4 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

You know, even after the things being around this long... I had no idea they stacked. I use them so rarely it just never came up.

'Learn something new every day. 

Oh wait, I see the mistake I made. I'll fix it! 

 

They do not stack, but they -work- in regular content. You can only have one active at a time.

 

If you are a 50+1 normally, and use one, you become a 50+2 for the time it's active. In incarnate content, you can shift to a 50+4 while it's active.

Edited March 27, 2021 by Andreah

[Doomguide2005]

So effectively you could get a +2 shift vs Doc V in Posi 2

 

Nevermind ... Incarnate foes do get a to hit boost which offsets plus a bit the effect of our level shift

Edited March 27, 2021 by Doomguide2005

[Coyotedancer]

Ah, yeah... That's the way I thought they worked. One at a time, to get an extra effective +1 when you needed it.

[Andreah]

4 minutes ago, Doomguide2005 said:

So effectively you could get a +2 shift vs Doc V in Posi 2

 

But yes shifted foes might be a good way to up the difficulty for Incarnate.  With respect to base to hit Incarnate foes are essentially already level shifted +1 

I don't think that works. You can become +1 vs him, but your normal +1 incarnate shift from alpha only works if you are at level 45 or higher. So when you are exemped down to the level for Posi-2, you can get, at most, a +1 shift out of an Ultimate. Still really useful.

Edited March 27, 2021 by Andreah

[Doomguide2005]

1 minute ago, Andreah said:

I don't think that works. You can become +1 vs him, but your normal +1 incarnate shift from alpha only works if you are at level 45 or higher. So when you are exemped down to the level for Posi-2, you can get, at most, a +1 shift out of an Ultimate. Still really useful.

Duh, quite right, fingers seem to be moving faster than brain atm

[Yomo Kimyata]

I don’t have a fundamental problem with lifting the cap of +4, but I would want to see preventative measures in place to minimize exploits.  Such as:

 

1.  Rewards are capped at +4/x8.  Level 60 critters drop xp, inf, and drops at level 54 rates.  This also keeps the x8 cap.
2.  Make it unlockable.  Make a difficult solo mission that you have to beat ( for. Badge?) to “prove” that standard +4/x8 content is “too easy”.

 

but at the end of the day, it’s probably simpler to announce you won the game with that character and it’s time to move onto another one, IMO.

[Steampunkette]

You're right about the +3. It's literally been over a year since I did anything with Incarnate Shifts, so my bad!

 

As far as reward capping on this one? I don't really see a reason to do it. The players are actually fighting an uphill battle against significantly stronger foes and should get the reward appropriate to that. 

 

That said, it could make Powerleveling -marginally- more effective, since you might be able to squeeze a +5 or +6 in, instead of a +4... but the difference shouldn't be significant enough for it to matter worth a spit.

 

Though another benefit of making the enemies scale to 60? If and when more incarnate stuff comes out, there'll already be a mechanical structure in place to put in more dangerous foes!

[Andreah]

If I was running a team at +6 or +7, or wherever the real knee in the curve ended up at, I'd think really hard about bringing significantly lower levels along for purposes of speed-leveling them. There might be slack to bring one or two, but the days of running "+4/x8 council radio farm all levels welcome" with one 50+1/T4 and a bunch of lowbies would be past. That's not necessarily bad; most likely a mixed blessing, but the downside would be there.

[Yomo Kimyata]

13 minutes ago, Steampunkette said:

 

 

As far as reward capping on this one? I don't really see a reason to do it. The players are actually fighting an uphill battle against significantly stronger foes and should get the reward appropriate to that. 

 

That said, it could make Powerleveling -marginally- more effective, since you might be able to squeeze a +5 or +6 in, instead of a +4... but the difference shouldn't be significant enough for it to matter worth a spit.

 

 

I firmly disagree with you on reward capping.  Like you said, it would make powerlevelling more effective, it would make farming more effective, and everyone would be fighting +10 Council but would skip +3 Carnies.  I think if your character is not challenged by +4/x8 content, you are so well built that should be well past the need for rewards.  Without serious restrictions to keep people from farming the easiest content at higher levels for more reward, my worthless vote would be heck no.

[golstat2003]

2 hours ago, Andreah said:

And only the first one works in regular content.

 

I've seen multiple people who complain about level shifts FAILING to mention this time and time again. Thanks for outright stating this again.

 

Let's see how many people continue to ignore it this time. LOL

Edited March 27, 2021 by golstat2003

[golstat2003]

1 hour ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

I don’t have a fundamental problem with lifting the cap of +4, but I would want to see preventative measures in place to minimize exploits.  Such as:

 

1.  Rewards are capped at +4/x8.  Level 60 critters drop xp, inf, and drops at level 54 rates.  This also keeps the x8 cap.
2.  Make it unlockable.  Make a difficult solo mission that you have to beat ( for. Badge?) to “prove” that standard +4/x8 content is “too easy”.

 

but at the end of the day, it’s probably simpler to announce you won the game with that character and it’s time to move onto another one, IMO.

 

Multiple people who say they want the game harder have also asked for rewards to match. Not sure how many you'll get to agree with you on number 1. just saying.

 

I agree with number 2, and for the record would be fine with number 1.

[Andreah]

1 minute ago, golstat2003 said:

I've seen multiple people who complain about level shifts FAILING to mention this time and time again. Thanks for outright stating this again.

There are folks who absolutely hate the incarnate system, probably on principle, and haven't used it at all, and these important nuances escape them. 

 

Not only does only the single level shift from Alpha work in normal content, it only works if your character is exemped to level 45 or higher. In fact, ALL the incarnate powers turn off if we are at level 44 or below.

 

I often see people in LFG asking for teams, and saying anything level 45+ is okay with them -- that's usually a sign they're a 50+1, and want to keep their incarnate powers.

[Doomguide2005]

I don't know.  First we'd need to be clear about nomenclature.  Is that +6 or +7 the effective level before or after shifts are applied.  Because no one is going to be power leveling anyone if that's after level shifts are applied.  1000 damage vs a +7 is 80 damage after the purple patch and that's before any resistance the foe has is applied.  And debuffs are going to be truly near meaningless.  

[golstat2003]

Just now, Andreah said:

There are folks who absolutely hate the incarnate system, probably on principle, and haven't used it at all, and these important nuances escape them. 

 

Not only does only the single level shift from Alpha work in normal content, it only works if your character is exemped to level 45 or higher. In fact, ALL the incarnate powers turn off if we are at level 44 or below.

 

I often see people in LFG asking for teams, and saying anything level 45+ is okay with them -- that's usually a sign they're a 50+1, and want to keep their incarnate powers.

 

Yeah some folks fail to mention that these incarnate powers TURN OFF also. Reading some of the posts on these forums you'd think that Judgement can be used all the way in down in the HOLLOWS if you exempt down. LMAO.

[Andreah]

3 minutes ago, golstat2003 said:

Multiple people who say they want the game harder have also asked for rewards to match. Not sure how many you'll get to agree with you on number 1. just saying.

 

I feel it's a general principle -- harder content should offer better rewards. 

 

I think there's room to make the case we don't have that set up well right now; especially by enemy group. 

 

And if we have higher difficulty, I feel it ought to reward on a sliding scale. Maybe the existing content at +4 rewards too well. I could see that being tuned down so there could be an upward slope straight to +10, but that would violate the OP's desire that nothing at +4/x8 and below be changed.

 

Maybe some other kind of rewards could be tied to these new difficulties.

[Andreah]

11 minutes ago, Doomguide2005 said:

I don't know.  First we'd need to be clear about nomenclature.  Is that +6 or +7 the effective level before or after shifts are applied.  Because no one is going to be power leveling anyone if that's after level shifts are applied.  1000 damage vs a +7 is 80 damage after the purple patch and that's before any resistance the foe has is applied.  And debuffs are going to be truly near meaningless.  

A level 50 +1 running normal content at Notoriety level +10 will be fighting combat level 60 bosses when they are themselves at combat level 51. That's +9 on the purple patch tables. I don't care how good your build is fighting +4 council, they'll destroy you. The softcap there will be 75%, they'll have a 1.5x accuracy multiplier, and you'll have an effective -56 to-hit. A team might swing it, but not if they're dragging lots of lowbies around to powerlevel. It only gets moderately better as you drop down to +6 or +7. They're going to be very hard to hit, hard to affect, and will hit us back a lot more often.

 

People sidekicked at 49 or non-level shifted 50 will be in some truly horrible pain fighting at +10 or worse.

Edited March 27, 2021 by Andreah

[Andreah]

The assertion that powerleveling would be a thing at such high difficulties is a hard one to sustain.

 

Even now, it's not uncommon for teams to drop difficulty to +3, or even +2, sometimes, to improve xp and inf gain rates. This is also something that's hard to convince people of now and then. Harder isn't always better, from a powerleveling or inf-gain perspective. 

 

Consider XP/Hour running radio missions. XP gained is the XP per kill, times kills per hour, plus mission rewards per hour. If you're doing content that's too easy, then even though you kill things fast, they don't give much per kill. And you can only do so many missions per hour, since it takes time to pick them, travel between them, and breeze through the insides.

 

At the harder end, if the team is struggling, that's many fewer kills per hour, and fewer mission rewards per hour. Possibly with a lot of debt being accumulated from repeat deaths.

 

So, for any given team, there's a sweet spot where they are killing fast and getting good rewards per kill. This is why council radios are so popular; not because they give more XP per kill, but because we can kill more of them per hour at any given XP/kill.

 

If we put in more difficulty levels, some teams might run at +5, +6, or even +7, but they are going to slow down. And they'll figure out that unless they're all already top-tier incarnates, they get less XP per hour. And if you are all already top-tier incarnates, who exactly are you powerleveling?

 

And let's think about inf gain.  I think, much, if not most of it, already comes from special purpose farms, not people doing normal content.

[Doomguide2005]

15 minutes ago, Andreah said:

A level 50 +1 running normal content at Notoriety level +10 will be fighting combat level 60 bosses when they are themselves at combat level 51. That's +9 on the purple patch tables. I don't care how good your build is fighting +4 council, they'll destroy you. The softcap there will be 75%, they'll have a 1.5x accuracy multiplier, and you'll have an effective -68 to-hit. A team might swing it, but not if they're dragging lots of lowbies around to powerlevel. It only gets moderately better as you drop down to +6 or +7. They're going to be very hard to hit, hard to affect, and will hit us back a lot more often.

 

People sidekicked at 49 or non-level shifted 50 will be in some truly horrible pain fighting at +10 or worse.

    No we're in complete agreement there.

 

     They'll be ineffective at best, dead almost for certain.  A 1000 damage attack vs +7's is 80 damage result after patch but before their resists.  A +10 is 30 damage.  I can easily put together a team that'll reliably hit +10's, hell I've played on such teams.  A full Green Machine team running SOs will put out a To Hit buff teamwide over 150% easily.  They might even survive the incoming damage if we're talking IO builds as I can see defenses going over 100% via stacked Forts etc. combined with Hardcapped regeneration and the existence of the one shot rule.  But that results in a draw at best.  They aren't going to even remotely hurt a +7 much less a +10 foe even if every single one is an Emp/Sonic