Focused Feedback: Advanced Difficulty Options and Challenge Mode

[golstat2003]

6 hours ago, aethereal said:

Enemy buffs to hit seem not that big a deal to me?  Every time I'm on an 8-person team at level 50, my defense scores end up being like 80-100 from stacked maneuvers and other stuff.  It seems unlikely that people will really get super exercised about the difference between Shield and SR given that.

 

What I think the static enemy bonuses do do is put yet more emphasis on Leadership pool.

Yeah I can imagine seeing even more rows of leadership toggles underneath my endurance bar soon 🤣🤣🤣

[macskull]

2 hours ago, ShardWarrior said:

Referring to the below linked post and this sentence in specific... "Hard mode enemies will have higher baselines stats, but nothing unfair and no absolutes. Nothing like big special damage types or auto-hits."

 

Having just run the new Aeon SF at Vicious level difficulty, this statement is not at all accurate.  There were plenty of special auto-hit un-resistable damage 1 shot kill you powers being used.  Are these part of the new difficulty or just native to the new SF at normal difficulty?

A lot of the AV's really big attacks scale based on HP, so if you're at full HP you'll take way more damage than if you're at 10% HP.

[Excraft]

Ran it this evening.  Overall I enjoyed it.  We had a pretty well balanced team with regard to melee/damage/control.  Whomever designed the new maps needs commending.  Very beautiful work. 

 

As far as the difficulty settings go, I do like that it's encouraging a more mixed team without being overly punitive about it.  The higher stats on bosses and AVs is nice.  Not sure I would say that they are tougher, just last longer/more tedious.  Overall nice job on it.

 

6 hours ago, ShardWarrior said:

Referring to the below linked post and this sentence in specific... "Hard mode enemies will have higher baselines stats, but nothing unfair and no absolutes. Nothing like big special damage types or auto-hits."

 

Having just run the new Aeon SF at Vicious level difficulty, this statement is not at all accurate.  There were plenty of special auto-hit un-resistable damage 1 shot kill you powers being used.  Are these part of the new difficulty or just native to the new SF at normal difficulty?

 

Definitely seems like a rather large fib to me as well.

 

6 hours ago, AerialAssault said:

As far as I can tell, the hard mode enemies don't have auto-hit powers, but what they have is stacking +To-Hit, +Acc and +Dam powers as auras, and the base damage of their powers is increased. So they can, and will, hit very hard. Coupled with the heaps of debuff they get, anyone who isn't an active tank will probably be destroyed in a single salvo. That's why you need support to bring in debuffs & buffs to make sure your team doesn't immediately get stopped. 

 

There are definitely some 1 hit wonder auto kill you powers in there either as part of the higher difficulty or baked into the NPC design.

[Ruin Mage]

Relentless #3 completed.

I cannot stress strategy and team composition enough, ahaha.

I'm having fun but holy shit does Relentless get dicey if you make one slight mistake.

On OHKO powers; Those are almost always telegraphed. Brickernauts glow, Incandescent glows.
Stuff also just hurts a lot more. No more relying on softcap defense.

[Excraft]

11 hours ago, shaggy said:

This will breathe so much life into the support classes that have been left behind by the usual damage steamroll.

 

This assumes there will be a large group of people who want to run higher difficulty settings.  If it's going to add significant time to ordinary TFs/SFs without the reward table being increased significantly, personally I see this being more for bragging rights than anything else.

[Albion]

43 minutes ago, Shadeknight said:

Relentless #3 completed.

I cannot stress strategy and team composition enough, ahaha.

I'm having fun but holy shit does Relentless get dicey if you make one slight mistake.

On OHKO powers; Those are almost always telegraphed. Brickernauts glow, Incandescent glows.
Stuff also just hurts a lot more. No more relying on softcap defense.

Man, why you got to give me flashbacks when I enter the forums, my favorite part "Be careful with the pulls" *EVERYTHING COMES AT US* it has been a long time since I had this mix of laughing my arse off and anxiety.

[shaggy]

2 hours ago, Excraft said:

 

This assumes there will be a large group of people who want to run higher difficulty settings.  If it's going to add significant time to ordinary TFs/SFs without the reward table being increased significantly, personally I see this being more for bragging rights than anything else.

How about fun? Personally, I hate watching the fully IO'd Blaster nuke every mob while I'm sitting in the back on my arse waiting to clean up the one minion he missed. I think there will be folks who would run this content not because of the rewards, but just for the fact that they get to actually feel useful and have a sense of challenge. Granted, I'd like there to be meaningful rewards too, but it sounds like the devs are looking into that already.

Edited November 7, 2021 by shaggy

[Excraft]

7 hours ago, shaggy said:

How about fun? Personally, I hate watching the fully IO'd Blaster nuke every mob while I'm sitting in the back on my arse waiting to clean up the one minion he missed. I think there will be folks who would run this content not because of the rewards, but just for the fact that they get to actually feel useful and have a sense of challenge. Granted, I'd like there to be meaningful rewards too, but it sounds like the devs are looking into that already.

 

I don't disagree with you at all.  The AD settings are going to be more about this than increased in game rewards is what I was getting at.

[Ruin Mage]

10 hours ago, Excraft said:

If it's going to add significant time to ordinary TFs/SFs without the reward table being increased significantly, personally I see this being more for bragging rights than anything else.

The time taken to complete will drop once more people are used to Relentless (or the other difficulties) - which also comes with the adjustment period to having to stick together and play it safe. It comes with having to adjust to telegraphed attacks, actually do mechanics, and not just keep moving/keep pulling. The maps are generally tightly packed with mobs and closed spaces. Things are actually a threat.

The reward table has been said to be temperory - at least the 40 completion merits. However, Relentless also offers a slew of Astral/Empyrean merits that can be converted.

The real bragging right will be getting Relentless done with less than 50 deaths.

[ShardWarrior]

7 minutes ago, Shadeknight said:

The time taken to complete will drop once more people are used to Relentless (or the other difficulties) - which also comes with the adjustment period to having to stick together and play it safe.

 

You keep repeating this in a lot of different threads.  Again, I am only speaking from my personal experience but the overwhelming majority of the time people do stick together when teaming.  The lone wolves who want to run off and do their own thing are the exception, not the rule,  I really wish people would stop making sweeping generalizations about the entire player base.

[Ruin Mage]

To each their own on what they've experienced, and on different Shards as well.

It still stands that the game prior to the ADO/Challenge Mode stuff of P3 was strikingly easy and that had its profound effect on things.

 

[ShardWarrior]

2 hours ago, Shadeknight said:

To each their own on what they've experienced, and on different Shards as well.

It still stands that the game prior to the ADO/Challenge Mode stuff of P3 was strikingly easy and that had its profound effect on things.

 

For fully decked out with Incarnates loaded with IO set bonuses running content never designed or balanced for them in mind, yes.  For everything else, I would disagree.

[Ruin Mage]

Mind you, the difficulty settings were intended - as far as I am aware - to tackle the current 'endgame' meta of Incarnate'd/IO'd characters and what things that has produced. This, as it stands, does not (yet? Who knows!) proliferate outside of that sphere. 

Incarnates/IO'd builds are a vast difference in breeze-y versus doing, say, Synapse at level.
Or insert any TF needed pre-50.

I will admit I'm now lost on the original point of what you were saying, but I am a simple forum cop.

Edited November 7, 2021 by Shadeknight

[arcane]

40 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

 

For fully decked out with Incarnates loaded with IO set bonuses running content never designed or balanced for them in mind, yes.  For everything else, I would disagree.

Yeah nothing easy about the state of the game if you ignore the state of the game.

 

I haven’t slotted an SO in at least 10 years.

[Triumphant]

I don't get the complaints.  This is an optional difficulty level for incarnate level players that want to enjoy challenging team play that requires a balanced team.  You can literally play ALL other content in the game at the usual difficulty levels.  Can you not allow us to have this one thing while you continue to enjoy the other, huge variety of content, as usual?  🤷‍♂️

[Andreah]

3 minutes ago, arcane said:

I haven’t slotted an SO in at least 10 years.

There are still players who prefer to play the game on SO's and equivalent; and the normal setting and run at +0/x1 is still there.

[arcane]

36 minutes ago, Andreah said:

There are still players who prefer to play the game on SO's and equivalent; and the normal setting and run at +0/x1 is still there.

By choice, sure. The devs themselves have said over and over how very accessible IO’s are nowadays. But self-gimping is not a popular means of creating challenges. Some players want to be challenged on maxed out characters, and good MMO’s provide an outlet for this, like HC is working towards here.

Edited November 7, 2021 by arcane

[Andreah]

1 minute ago, arcane said:

By choice, sure. But self-gimping is not a popular means of creating challenges. Some players want to be challenged on maxed out characters, and good MMO’s provide an outlet for this, like HC is working towards here.

Oh, I agree in principle. I don't even like the idea of system-gimping to create challenge, such as disabling temp powers or inspirations. I'd much rather counters to those were developed and made available to the NPC opponents on new settings intended for higher difficulty; or that those systems, if they're truly creating problems, need some deeper redesign.

[ShardWarrior]

1 hour ago, arcane said:

Yeah nothing easy about the state of the game if you ignore the state of the game.

 

I haven’t slotted an SO in at least 10 years.

 

Neither have I, however that does not mean running a +1 or +2 Posi or Synapse TF at level with only a few slots and SOs is not a challenge. 

[Andreah]

I'm going to presume, from the wording in the patch notes that one needs to be level 50 to select the higher difficulty settings from this system, that it would not apply to content one runs exemped down to lower levels, such as Synapse. 

[arcane]

34 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

 

Neither have I, however that does not mean running a +1 or +2 Posi or Synapse TF at level with only a few slots and SOs is not a challenge. 

Many will have IO’s of some kind already unless the team is for all noobs or all psychos 🙂

[Albion]

So to bring back the topic from other thread, and trying to keep it nice, hard mode is not a monster that will force you to slot this way or play that other way, it is just an optional challenge setting, that you yourself decide to participate in, and so should abide by some mechanics like in any game that has you facing oponents who would love to see you hug the floor while you rather return that to them; it has been tested already at large that can be done with any at build and any type of team origin (even a pug), it is going to be a hardship if you are unprepared and just fool around or don't listen to leads and do your work?, well yes but that's on you, if you are having fun though and all on the team go with that vibe, cheers, there is not a single thing being enforced or railroading you this way or the other, there is even optional ways to avoid the worse engagements (more options inside an optional feature!, madness). In my personal experience, I have gotten used to a certain way to go in runs, and had to rewire my brain the first three times in, which was great, it is never good to entrench oneself on "what works best".

[ShardWarrior]

1 hour ago, arcane said:

Many will have IO’s of some kind already unless the team is for all noobs or all psychos 🙂

Very large assumption you are making here.  I just ran both parts of a Posi TF and no one had set bonuses of any kind. 

[macskull]

33 minutes ago, ShardWarrior said:

Very large assumption you are making here.  I just ran both parts of a Posi TF and no one had set bonuses of any kind. 

• Positron TF: available at level 8, at which point many characters won't have any enhancements, period, let alone IOs, unless they're exemplared.
• Aeon SF: available at level 35, with the advanced difficulty modes specifically intended to be a challenge for fully-IO'd, fully-Incarnated level 50s. Would also like to point out that there were challenge mode runs completed during closed beta where the leader was level 50 and the entire rest of the team was SK'd just to see if it is possible. Turns out it is.

Edited November 7, 2021 by macskull

[KaizenSoze]

On 11/6/2021 at 10:14 AM, aethereal said:

Enemy buffs to hit seem not that big a deal to me?  Every time I'm on an 8-person team at level 50, my defense scores end up being like 80-100 from stacked maneuvers and other stuff.  It seems unlikely that people will really get super exercised about the difference between Shield and SR given that.

 

What I think the static enemy bonuses do do is put yet more emphasis on Leadership pool.

Two things that really help with Super Reflexes. 95% DDR and double stacked mez protection.

 

Not sure what if any -def Goldbrickers do in ASF. They do at high difficultly have +20 toHit and run tactics. 

 

Arachnos can drop -25% def on you for each Tarantula Mistress. Accounting for the level difference, it's usually -33.  

 

Combine the -def with +toHit and you'll want all the DDR and defense you can get. At least at relentless. Then toss in massive -resist.

 

On relentless my SR/DM tanker was running with 100%+ positional defense. Not sure about the rest as I didn't have those monitored.

 

I would routinely seem -9-20% resists in s/l, from a base of 66. Energy resists would be even worse, -20-30%, with a base of 44%.

 

I was very happy with ever scrap of defense I was getting from my teammates. 🙂