Determining if the Game is Too Easy

[Snarky]

1 minute ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

I think you're looking at it the wrong way. I'm betting that no one on your 64 minute Synapse was eating inspirations stored in email or cranking 8 hours of all 3 amplifiers.

 

All I want to do is remove the cheats from the game. Cuz cheaters suck and make everything worse for everyone.

My 50 rad/brute was opening AH between each mission to restock half insp tray with medium purps oranges reds and blues. What did i win in that bet?

[Bill Z Bubba]

4 minutes ago, Snarky said:

My 50 rad/brute was opening AH between each mission to restock half insp tray with medium purps oranges reds and blues. What did i win in that bet?

 

My undying disappointment.

[PeregrineFalcon]

4 minutes ago, Snarky said:

But it really boils down to a bunch of people want the game HARD MODE for EVERYONE all the time.  

I don't usually agree with Snarky, but when I do it's because he's right.

 

If you all want to play HARD MODE then ask the devs to do something to give you all a HARD MODE. Me, and a lot of other folks, just want to have a beer and sail through some easy content while chatting with our friends on Discord. Enjoy your HARD MODE. But please, stop trying to convince the devs to FORCE the rest of us to also play on HARD MODE.

 

Us scrubs playing the game on super-easy baby wipe mode DOES NOT ruin the game for you. It literally does not affect you at all. Please stop trying to force the rest of us to "gEt gUd N00b!!!!!1111eleventyoneoneone111!!!!"

 

I'm old and I'm slow and I'm half-blind and I like the game as is. Now F-OFF with your trying to force me to play your version of the game at +6 x16 with no inspirations or enhancements. Play the game the way you like and stop trying to force me to play the game the way you want me to.

[Yomo Kimyata]

2 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

 

 

Us scrubs playing the game on super-easy baby wipe mode DOES NOT ruin the game for you. It literally does not affect you at all. Please stop trying to force the rest of us to "gEt gUd N00b!!!!!1111eleventyoneoneone111!!!!"

 

 

I feel like I touched a very sensitive nerve when I asked for HC to stop dumbing things down.

 

Someone playing on -1/x1 has no effect on me other than it making it much easier for you to accumulate inf and goods and otherwise affect the player-run economy.  I'm fine with that.  HC changing the basic rules (like offering lvl 5 SOs at the vendor, instead of buying them from some other player who got them on a DFB) does.  

 

I've used this metaphor before, but this game is a chessboard.  You want to play chess?  Great.  You want to play checkers?  Also great.  You want to move horsies around the board and whinny?  Also great.

 

It's when people say "The chessboard is too big!!!  I want it smaller!" and the devs make it smaller.  That's what bugs me.  It's harder to challenge myself on a 4x4 chessboard.

 

This goes back to my initial post in this thread.  If the powers-that-be feel that dumbing things down is the right path for them to go, great!  Please give me an option to opt into that will enable me to play on an 8x8 board according to the game engine, and that will enable people who join my team to play on an 8x8 board, if we so choose.  Give me an extrinsic set of constraints.  That's my wish list.

[Bill Z Bubba]

28 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

But please, stop trying to convince the devs to FORCE the rest of us to also play on HARD MODE.

 

Hard mode is already available through turning off insps, temps, buffing enemies and nerfing players. Hell, you can even turn off enhancements.

[oedipus_tex]

 

26 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

I'm old and I'm slow and I'm half-blind and I like the game as is. Now F-OFF with your trying to force me to play your version of the game at +6 x16 with no inspirations or enhancements. Play the game the way you like and stop trying to force me to play the game the way you want me to.

 

 

It makes it very difficult to communicate when reasonable points of view are distorted and mischaracterized. Let's have this discussion without making the opposition seem like unreasonable cartoon characters.

 

No one has asked for an across the board pedal to the metal difficulty spike. What folks have mostly asked for is a game closer to what has existed at various points in the past. There are many possible paths there. It sounds like the team has some ideas in play that would make the curve more enjoyable.

[oedipus_tex]

11 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

Hard mode is already available through turning off insps, temps, buffing enemies and nerfing players. Hell, you can even turn off enhancements.

 

 

Real "hard mode" would be revealed if they released a new difficult setting that allowed you to run missions at +4 + 1, like a few folks have asked for. Everyone level shifted to 50 +1 would be fighting +4s, which is fine. The rest of the team would be fighting +6s. 😄

 

That's the balance problem the current limit on difficulty is masking. The spread in teammate levels at the hands of level shifts doesn't sustain as you scale upward, so for now we're kinda locked at +4.

[Monos King]

I'd like to remind that there are two points of this thread,  and neither are to find ways to "force difficulty on others" but to try to elucidate what people mean by "difficult", which I divided into matters of progression, challenge, and difficulty. Progression is the big one.

 

The other is to find ways that might make progression more thoughtful (not necessarily more "difficult") in ways both game is fine and game is too easy folks could agree on. Any talk of adding level shifts or buffing enemies and such like that isn't really the point, and has already been discussed elsewhere. It's pretty clear "game is fine" folks dont really want that anyhow.

[skoryy]

[Yomo Kimyata]

6 minutes ago, Monos King said:

 

 

The other is to find ways that might make progression more thoughtful (not necessarily more "difficult") in ways both game is fine and game is too easy folks could agree on. Any talk of adding level shifts or buffing enemies and such like that isn't really the point, and has already been discussed elsewhere. It's pretty clear "game is fine" folks dont really want that anyhow.

 

Something to keep in mind is that some people view progression as the end game.  Not everyone is rushing to 50.  Some people like to take their time getting there.

 

I think it *is* too easy to level to 50 quickly and it *is* too easy to equip yourself with top of the line gear, if you take that path.  That said, that doesn't hurt me in the slightest except indirectly.

 

I just don't want that path paved and equipped with scooters, because that affects my sub-50 play.

 

[Bill Z Bubba]

40 minutes ago, oedipus_tex said:

Real "hard mode" would be revealed if they released a new difficult setting that allowed you to run missions at +4 + 1, like a few folks have asked for. Everyone level shifted to 50 +1 would be fighting +4s, which is fine. The rest of the team would be fighting +6s. 😄

 

That's the balance problem the current limit on difficulty is masking. The spread in teammate levels at the hands of level shifts doesn't sustain as you scale upward, so for now we're kinda locked at +4.

 

Yea, that's not an issue when you're solo. Adding teammates already greatly lessens difficulty as it is and that's actually a good part of the design.

 

A lvl 35 on the ITF fighting +5s isn't an issue when he's being spammed with leadership toggles, fulcrum shift or whatever other buffs are flying around.

[oedipus_tex]

1 minute ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

Yea, that's not an issue when you're solo. Adding teammates already greatly lessens difficulty as it is and that's actually a good part of the design.

 

A lvl 35 on the ITF fighting +5s isn't an issue when he's being spammed with leadership toggles, fulcrum shift or whatever other buffs are flying around.

 

 

It's the thing I really don't like about level shifts on teams. The lowbies are fighting +5s, the level shifted members are fighting +3s and doing most of the work. They would be anyway, just from having more powers available and slotting, but the game is tilting the board heavily. If we went up a difficulty notch to +4s and +6s it would be even more extreme.

 

I think the sidekick system is fascinating and well designed overall, minus that one part.

 

What I find strange about Level Shifts more than anything is how they show up at the end of the game right as players hit the ceiling. But we don't have them at any other point in the gameplay, so we know exactly how the game would play without them. The team is closer to each other in level and more cohesive. Level Shifts were invented as a marketing gimmick to keep people paying their subscriptions. If they want to bump rewards for enemies up a tier to compensate for removing the shift, I'd be fine with that, so that you'd still get identical reward. It's the level spread and inability to encounter +4 enemies that populate the rest of the game that rubs me wrong.

[Monos King]

21 minutes ago, skoryy said:

I haven't. I don't think it needs to be a debate, either.

 

What unfortunately seems prone to devolve into extreme defensiveness over the status quo masks a meaningful discussion about why some players are discontent with the state of things, and possible additions that could remedy that. On that path, we currently see some options being explored as Cobalt noted. Why shouldn't we continue to do that?

[Luminara]

1 hour ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

My undying disappointment.

 

You promised that to me...  After everything we haven't shared, all we've never been through together, the good times and memories that don't exist, you betray me like this?!

 

I feel so dirty.

 

Do it again.

[ILIWAPCT]

11 hours ago, ZemX said:

 

Enemies like this already exist and most people actively avoid them if they can.  I once asked why it was so much more common for people to run radio teams than tips teams, given the tip missions seemed so much more interesting to me.  The answer I got?  "It's not as easy to control what enemies you get."
 

And that tracks my experience.  I see plenty of people advertising for "Council PI Radio" teams.   About nobody saying, "Come join my Carnie radio team!  Find out which of your teammates has no psi protection!"

 

As far as I can tell, the problem with your whole proposition here is that this sort of challenge is not what people are seeking.  Pre-50, people seem to be looking for one thing only: Getting to 50.  The only place new and interesting challenge content will be welcomed by all is at the Incarnate level, I'm afraid.

I can't understand why people want post-50 content. Thematically I'm now god-like there shouldn't be minions able to challenge me. If my hard work doesn't results in me reaching the top of the mountain then I might as well turn off XP and stay at level 1 forever.

 

I enjoy the journey to 50.  I though I knew everything but trying different alts and different play styles continually unlocks insights  that fit my play style better and better. In theory, my level 50 build I imagine at level 1 should be nearly the same when I reach level 50. In practice it's always been radically different by the time I reach 50.

 

New content is exhausted 5 minutes after the developers released it. I'd rather the developers NOT rejoin this Sisyphean effort.  

[Monos King]

11 minutes ago, ILIWAPCT said:

I can't understand why people want post-50 content

Because pretty much the first page of this thread, for context. Of what's explained,  the biggest is probably that if the strongest characters are occupied elsewhere,  they don't trickle into lower content and reduce the efficacy of individuals in teams. That's the theory, anyway. 

 

You can see it ring true in some genres, and it had some degree of impact here while trials were being released as I recall. But also, some of us enjoy that end game challenge. Overcoming what is only now feasible once you've gained ridiculous power can be fun. OPness as a prerequisite was pretty much narratively and mechanically the idea with the intended incarnate arcs, for instance.

Edited July 10, 2021 by Monos King

[skoryy]

30 minutes ago, Monos King said:

Why shouldn't we continue to do that?

 

No one's saying you can't.

 

What I am saying is that, we've been repeatedly over this topic for the past two years.  The battle lines are drawn, the trenches are dug, and the barbed wire is set up.   Y'all can lob artillery shells over No Man's Land at each other all you want.

 

And, I mean, we even had a dev come in earlier today and say "Yeah, we're got things in the works that should help appease a lot of people"  and nobody picked it up for discussion.  Everyone went back to their trenches.

 

11 hours ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

I'm happy to say that with the next batch of new content, we're aiming to do just this using some new methods of dynamic enemy definitions and power assignment.

The new content should be able to be played sub-50 (under enhanced), 50+0 (SOs), or 50+ (IO incarnates) and will change to accommodate and challenge the players depending on their preference for the game. This should enable all player types to enjoy it how they prefer, be it leveling an alt, feeling powerful on their built character, or facing an intense challenge.

Reading a lot of what's being said I think people will be happy with what's coming.

This is controlled via the levels at which the enemies spawn, with enemies at 52+ being given additional powers to make them more dangerous to built incarnate players; Players who wish to play the content at max level and not deal with challenge or the additional mechanics will be able to simply set the difficulty to +0.

That being said, there are currently no plans to retroactively adjust or change previously-existing content's difficulty; But we're always evaluating based on the feedback.

 

[skoryy]

12 hours ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

I'm happy to say that with the next batch of new content, we're aiming to do just this using some new methods of dynamic enemy definitions and power assignment.

The new content should be able to be played sub-50 (under enhanced), 50+0 (SOs), or 50+ (IO incarnates) and will change to accommodate and challenge the players depending on their preference for the game. This should enable all player types to enjoy it how they prefer, be it leveling an alt, feeling powerful on their built character, or facing an intense challenge.

Reading a lot of what's being said I think people will be happy with what's coming.

This is controlled via the levels at which the enemies spawn, with enemies at 52+ being given additional powers to make them more dangerous to built incarnate players; Players who wish to play the content at max level and not deal with challenge or the additional mechanics will be able to simply set the difficulty to +0.

That being said, there are currently no plans to retroactively adjust or change previously-existing content's difficulty; But we're always evaluating based on the feedback.

 

(To practice what I preach...)

 

As someone who's been re-discovering the joys of living la vida blapper, I'm intrigued how much more thus would ramp up the difficulty.  I can do reasonably well at +3/x6 on the DP/Fire I have at IO incarnated 50.  I do think this is a step in the right direction.  

 

Also, will this also apply to AE and if so do you have your castle walls ready for those pitchforks and torches?

[Snarky]

2 hours ago, skoryy said:

No we have not

 

look i pointed out that having SOs available at level 2 from vendor means squat.  I gave details why.  No one hears.  Might as well be a homeless person standing by the freeway with a sign that says obey the speed limit. 
 

also i can point out that limiting merits and other rewards from content will do squat.  Will also fall on deaf ears.  People seem to think that reducing rewards will make everyone happy.  Does not matter that earning rewards that way is already the LEAST efficient way to earn in the game

 

we are dreadfully pitiful at this discussion.  Which is why we are doomed to repeat it endlessly

[Monos King]

2 hours ago, skoryy said:

And, I mean, we even had a dev come in earlier today and say "Yeah, we're got things in the works that should help appease a lot of people"  and nobody picked it up for discussion.  Everyone went back to their trenches

Right, this is the kind of conversation is sort of the goal. I don't think we've had this discussion a billion times, or even once, because people just regress into one everyone is sick of. 

 

1 hour ago, Snarky said:

also i can point out that limiting merits and other rewards from content will do squat.  Will also fall on deaf ears.  People seem to think that reducing rewards will make everyone happy.  Does not matter that earning rewards that way is already the LEAST efficient way to earn in the game

 

we are dreadfully pitiful at this discussion.  Which is why we are doomed to repeat it endlessly

Case in point. I don't want rewards reduced, and I've expressed disagreements with those that have. Yet those opinions leak in, or people immediately assume that's what is being suggested because the words "easy" and "difficulty" are mentioned. We all need to relax and pay attention to each other.

 

One of what I briefed discussed with Lines back at page 1 was an incarnate alternative. The idea of something more versatile, thematic, and appealing than incarnates (but not as strong) was something I want to see how people feel about.

[InfamousBrad]

Five pages into this discussion and nobody has brought up the real reason why the content in this game is so easy for some of us, maybe most of us:

 

We've been playing this game for over 10 years, elapsed time. We're that good at it.

 

I've had noobs in text (and on rare occasion, voice) chat and let me tell you that they were struggling to finish Atlas Park. The fact that we all have in muscle memory how close we can get to a mob without aggroing it, the fact that we all have the combat formulas memorized, the fact that we all know this combat system so thoroughly that we know which powers to pick first and which ones to slot heavily first, none of these things are obvious. Once you know them, the game does get a lot easier. How could it not?

 

I mean for crying out loud, throw even ONE new unexpected game mechanic at people (like the zoombies, for example) and watch how fast half of us stop feeling overpowered. This game isn't too easy. We're just too good at it.

[Monos King]

42 minutes ago, InfamousBrad said:

We've been playing this game for over 10 years, elapsed time. We're that good at it.

Actually, a few people have discussed how this game has been practiced and that contributes to overcoming content easily, but that just had little to do with the idea of progression being easy. 

 

Edit: Couple things that definitely made an impact though.

1) Higher accessibility of IOs (I don't just mean prices, I mean like PvP IOs dropping in not PvP content)

2) The very existence of attuned enhancements

3) Event IOs

 

And other matters discussed earlier. And then of course there is the fact we've gotten the game down to a formula. That formulaic feel is one of the reasons I like the idea of tactical enemy groups and mechanics. In my opinion, it would be fun.

Edited July 10, 2021 by Monos King
Extra Info

[golstat2003]

18 hours ago, Monos King said:

City of Heroes is practically timeless because of all of its content and devoted community. I think no matter what happens, there will be a lot of people that are totally happy to just be playing. Even so, that isn't the case for everyone. If there were a way to continue to appeal to both those who enjoy things the way they are, while also creating a reinvigorated route for progress that both could appreciate, I'd like to find it. Unfortunately, not everyone feels as though things are fine as they are now. That's why I'm entertaining the discussion, and trying to define the divide.

 

The way to do that is to build optional difficulty that anyone can take on while leaving the base game as is. Something I think you alluded to earlier.

[golstat2003]

18 hours ago, Monos King said:

What do you think of the idea of revamping certain NPCs to encourage different group tactics?

 

At higher difficulty levels that players can OPTIONALLY choose? Sure.

[golstat2003]

8 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

Yes please.  Also cut the merit / converter rate to something reasonable.  You can send the angry mobs after me.  After all, I *am* overpowered.

 

Yeah no. The merit / Converter system was one of the key improvements over live. Completely and vehemently DISAGREE with this suggestion.