Problem with Progressive Difficulty and Challenge Chasing | Forums

[Akuhdemiks]

This isn't true. In standard, theme park mmorpg's, progressive levelling enemies blunt or negate player progression. You have your dedicated "newbie" areas, all the way up to raids. This is the best way to structure an rpg, and enables the developer to curve the difficulty in a way that feels both accomplishing, and satisfying.

The downside is, you must leave those areas and not ever really return, in order to move forward. That works fine in a theme park, but not so much in an open world. Progressive leveling is decent, if the enemy follows a flat line of power, compared to an ever increasing upward curve of player power.

Up until WT4 hard and challenging content, the division handles this particular brand of progressive leveling pretty decently. Not perfectly, but pretty decently.

As a longtime player of both theme park, standard, and open world rpg's, I can tell you what I prefer, but flatly stating that everyone wants progressive leveling is objectively not true. It depends on the type of game you are playing.

"Every" was a poor choice of wording. Thats not what I ment. What we are seeing is a alot are adding in scaling in some form(be it full scaling or partial) or have plans for it. No not everyone wants it again a poor choice of words, however a vast majority seem to, the vocal majority at least. Can't speak for the none vocal player bases as they aren't vocal thus no one knows what they want.

[JerginsSoft]

True. Also, I just want to say that the very last thing people should be asking for is certain gear from certain areas. It worked out very poorly last time, and they did the right thing by opening all the loot pools, with the classifieds and stronger gear dropping from harder activities.

You DON'T want them restricting gear to certain activities. It doesn't work out in the end, for various reasons.

[Dwayne-Camacho]

My biggest problem with the scaling is that it's really only along one specific path for both sides.

Enemies scale in terms of health pools and damage. That's basically it. They don't get smarter or more effective, they simply take longer to kill and kill you faster.

But because of the amounts required to make it challenging enough, the only real way to remain viable is to pump up your weapon damage to handle the high HP, and just rely on mechanics for survivability.

Their health pool will always scale significantly higher than yours can. And weapon damage is really the only thing that you can boost to keep up. You can triple your survivability and it would have zero impact on the game. Zero. There's no benefit to it at all.

So many of the complaints about difficulty are centered on the fact that those people who understnad the meta and embrace it are having a much easier time than those that don't. If you focus on boosting weapon damage and understand the game, you can handle the high difficulty. If you do ANYTHING else, you will likely struggle.

[LANCERZzZz]

I think the issue remains that a lot of people seem to want to be able to just blast through challenging missions like in D1. No communication, no coordinating skills or timing attacks; just speedrun everything. That's the reason I stopped playing TD1 honestly, it just got way too boring being able to smash Heroic missions in 5 minutes with a bunch of people mindlessly sprinting in and healing themselves while melting everything. I don't think I will ever understand the appeal of this.

Challenging mode in TD2 feels like an actual challenge, and an actual accomplishment when it's finished. It definitely isn't meant to be solo'd, which makes the people who manage to solo it even more impressive. Even when I match with a group, the only time we're successful is of it a group of people that understands what they're doing; not just bunching up in the doorway and trying to let the enemies funnel in one by one (this plan goes to **** as soon as the first rusher comes in and kills everyone), but spreading out and taking control of the area with smart use of skills such as the flame turret for area denial. It's the groups that pay attention to their radar as well as the positions of their teammates, ready to teamshoot any mobs that get too close to the line, that I've been successful with.

That's what makes Endgame content fun for many of us. Not the ability to become an unstoppable killing machine, but rather the opposite; introduction of challenges that can't just be solved using the same tactics as you've been using 1-30. The creation of a goal to master my loadout and as many skills as possible so that I can use it efficiently to help my group. You can absolutely min-max your build still, and there's even more of a point to it now since challenging encounters often require a variety of builds to overcome. We might need that LMG user with high defense to keep the mobs suppressed. We might need that high skill power player to constantly harass the enemies with seekers and turrets.

If the enemies are the same level or weaker than me, why should I ever group up? Just to blast through the same content even faster? And if there's no point in grouping up, what's the point of this game requiring you to be online? There are many, many tactical shooters on the market for players who want an ultra realistic experience, and who want to essentially play Terrorist Hunt (which there's nothing wrong with, and I love those sort of games as well). The Division is different though, it's more of an RPG and an MMO. And while it's still tactical, it's not tactical in a realistic sense but rather in the player's ability with positioning and utilizing the right skill at the right time.

[Casughoul]

True. Also, I just want to say that the very last thing people should be asking for is certain gear from certain areas. It worked out very poorly last time, and they did the right thing by opening all the loot pools, with the classifieds and stronger gear dropping from harder activities.

You DON'T want them restricting gear to certain activities. It doesn't work out in the end, for various reasons.

I disagree. I think restricting gear to certain areas/events makes perfect sense if that gear is thematic. Also, you contradict yourself by saying that stronger gear in harder activities is a good thing, as that is restricting gear to specific activity.

I think the issue remains that a lot of people seem to want to be able to just blast through challenging missions like in D1.

If the enemies are the same level or weaker than me, why should I ever group up?

I disagree. The issue isn't so much that they they want to "blast through a challenge". People want the challenge to make sense and not be something as simple as having over-the-top health/armor pools and damage. It just doesn't make sense, that is explained extensively in this thread. We want tactics that make sense and for the enemy to be punished for making mistakes. It's not fair to allow the enemy to ignore cover and punish the player for doing the same.

Also, If you are solo, an enemy at the same level should be an even challenge. Now when you add more enemies to the fight you the fight becomes skewed to the opponent and that adds to the challenge. How can you not understand that?

The only reason why you should group up is if you feel the challenge of taking on multiple enemies is too much for you or you lack the ability to think tactically to take on the challenge of multiple enemies. Also, I do believe that if you add more players to an instance then the enemies should scale upward to deal with the team. Then, again, the reason you would group up is to take on the harder challenge and to play the game differently from you would if you were solo.

I think you question is more about the reward. Should you get a better reward for grouping up or being solo? Maybe there should be different but equal valued rewards. Some badge that gives a bonus to every member in the group that has it. Also, as a solo reward a badge that gives you a bonus for defeating an individual challenge.




Again, to reiterate my points:

I am not talking about removing challenge. I am talking about improving and balancing challenges in a meaningful way. Tactics of the AI should change based on Solo and Group play. They should be trying to split up the group. In solo, the enemies have an advantage of numbers and the player should have the advantage to punish the AI for making mistakes.


If the AI is rushing out of cover they should be at a disadvantage to the player. Currently, the AI has no disadvantage to leaving cover. It's like they are walking around with the cover attached to their bodies.


There is, also, the problem of scaling. What is the point? You increase one number then increase another number to match it, it's as if it never changed at all. The only problem that comes from it is that the players of lower gear score are at an artificial disadvantage. There shouldn't be any such disadvantage. Your advantages should come ONLY from your ability to play tactically and strategically. Your skill should matter more than your "score".


If you can't understand how tactics should matter more than artificially inflated "scores" then there is no point in making an argument against you as you will adamantly press your own fallacious opinion.


I will repeat it again: NPCs should be punished for making the same mistakes for which the player would be punished.

[markvrk]

I am so confused by people who claim this is an RPG and that a "challenge" is an NPC that doesn't behave any different than "usual" but can soak up 10x more damage at least while also having its damage output increased 10x.

Elites/Yellows don't flinch as much when you try to flank them or give them a shotgun facelift. They dodge grenades really well. Are way more aggresive in their flanking, rushing and overall use of their abilities, like throwing grenades to keep you from camping, or even using special ammo, healing themselves etc.

More of that is more of a challenge. The same NPCs but with steroids is not a challenge, it's a lazy way of making the content difficutly in the sense that it becomes a chore. It doesn't make you powerful to go through it, it makes you patient and somewhat lucky.

Give us waves of properly scaled Elites and Veterans on Challenging and only Elites on Heroic. By properly scaled i'd say something a bit more than what Elites are on Hard for Challenging, and what Elites are on Challenging for Heroic. Then our builds and game-skill will be put to the test, not our patience.

Again, it's not everything on Challenging, or even Heroic although it is more frequent on Heroic. Instead of having the same combinations of Red, Blue and Yellow NPCs, change it up like it was in Division 1.

[padukan666]

I will repeat it again: NPCs should be punished for making the same mistakes for which the player would be punished.

Agree. It wouldn’t be game breaking to implement this. Continue making the mobs flank intelligently, but if they’re caught out of cover they die fast, just as we do. It’s not a case of ‘git gud’ when an npc runs up to you when you’re suppressed behind cover and guns you down before you can empty an entire clip into him, often there’s more than one.

People often reference other games when talking about mobs with high HP and armour, but in most of these other games there is a tactic that needs to be mastered in order to defeat the bosses, from what I can tell so far there doesn’t seem to be a lot of that going on in D2, not necessarily a bad thing. In D1, Lexington for example, you knew where the next wave of mobs were going to spawn so standing on the stairs tossing grenades at doors made the whole thing too easy. We don’t have that now so there’s no need for the adds to be quite as tanks as they are, give them a small bonus to armour if they’re in cover, make players use tactical play to flush them out so they can be killed easily, but when they’re running around in the open they should die fast.

Another issue with scaling I had last night trying to put the daily challenge missions, DCD head quarters I think it was, I got grouped up with low gs players ( I swear one of them was under 400, although I can’t recall 100%) who obviously kept dying and quitting and I think I ended up in about 5 different groups in total. At one point, in the room with the two heavy sledgehammer dudes, we killed all the adds, after wiping about 5 times, then I was running about keeping one sledgehammer busy on my own while the other three were, I thought, taking care of the second. Next thing I knew I had both the heavies on me because the rest of the group was dead... Never had problems with challenging content up until then, but also never had to endure challenging content with group members that were that low either. I won’t solo challenging as I play on PlayStation and my aim isn’t good enough to get sixty consistent shots into the red bar’s face to kill him before he rushes my position and shoots me down. I’m guessing there’s no GS level for challenge missions? I seem to recall reading somewhere that the difficulty scales to the highest group member, unfortunately that is usually me (461), which could be why people post about what a terrible time they’re having. Either keep low level players out of challenge mission, or scale the enemies to somewhere in between the lowest and the highest level group members.

[SACAcidblood]

To add my 2 cents... I am not a fan of 'stat scaling' (i.e. higher player and enemy damage/HP values) as a means of 'progression'; it does nothing to change the challenge (outside of maybe the initial grind) nor the gameplay; it is hollow.

I do however understand that such progression is used as a carrot to keep players playing (or at least returning), but are there better options? Especially in the light of players considering the game ‘not worth playing’ until a higher tier of gear is released (which will presumably last long enough to be ‘worth the effort’).

I would like to propose instead that resources be spent first on 'fixing' (see below) than on actually expanding the game i.e. the range of options available to players and the range of situations in which they may find themselves. Specifically, this would mean more brand sets, more talents, more weapon variants, more enemy types (perhaps a new faction), and more varied enemy behaviour.

Unfortunately, one of the issues that gets in the way of this type of expansion in games is when the combat system doesn't have sufficient axis upon which it can be expanded. Put another way, if a player already has a ‘gear set’ that meets the needs of the game, and other ‘gear sets’ won’t provide a significant bonus, or a viable and fun change in gameplay, why should they keep playing / come back?

In the case of The Division 2, one such deficiency is in the viability and availability (if it were viable) of armour (more generally defence). Skills are also clunky (i.e. faster just to shoot the enemy), sometimes pointless (e.g. the firefly, pulse), or simply too weak (e.g. shields), and skill mods are an on / off system that kills any middle ground for a ‘skill build’.

This leaves only damage as a viable means for players to increasing their ‘power level’ (we are all seeing how that is working out in PvP :/) and leaves The Division 2 largely 1-dimensional in terms of combat balance. In short, The Division 2 needs to have its combat system rebalanced to be at least 3-dimensional (defence, offense, and skills), with each axis being equally viable (and at any measure; i.e. a 50/50 build, or 30/30/40 build); then the game can truly be expanded.

Please note: This does NOT mean I want the game to be made 'easier', I believe the current level of difficulty is good and I have successfully soloed everything up to and including the heroic bounty (yet to try a level 4 Control Point), I rather mean that The Division 2 is far too 1-dimensional in its combat balance (i.e. more damage!) and needs to be rebalanced to allow for much greater diversity of viable, but more importantly fun, builds.

[JerginsSoft]

"I disagree. I think restricting gear to certain areas/events makes perfect sense if that gear is thematic. Also, you contradict yourself by saying that stronger gear in harder activities is a good thing, as that is restricting gear to specific activity."

No, I didn't. It works, sorta, for a theme park rpg. This game is NOT that.

Also, they tried gating gear and restricting it to certain activities in the first game. There were multiple problems associated with it. The biggest problem was that if there was gear that was less desirable associated with the activity, that activity went dead. For example; Lone Star was one of the few classified pieces that dropped in bounties. Lone Star was not considered a really useful set at the time. Nobody did bounties. When they ran the statistics, they found that all the work they did to implement bounties was wasted, not to mention the work they did to create the gear set.

There was pretty good gear gated behind the Falcon incursion. Problem was, the incursion was so ridiculous at first, people were spending more time coming up with ways to cheat the whole thing, instead of playing it. Thus, only some people and Youtubers could ever get their hands on it.

Then there are the huge amounts of people who will feel slighted that they are now forced (or feel that way) to do activities they find unenjoyable, just to keep up with the meta. You think the NPC difficulty threads are overwhelming? I hope you read the forums back then, because the complaints about gear gating were at least twice as bad.

If you want targeted farming, I would suggest a voucher system. For every challenging mission you complete, you get a voucher to turn in for a gear set cache of your choice. Make classified sets require 2, if you want, but separate each cache according to manufacturer, and give a weapon cache too. That would probably solve a lot of problems.

One thing I know for sure, because I went through both types of systems; the targeted loot system is not popular, and in The Division DID NOT WORK. It just didn't. Take my word for it, or do a search history on those forums. Even on theme park mmo's, its spotty, at best. The open loot pool is infinitely better, even if the tradroff is a giant RNG grind. You want to gate the best gear behind the hardest stuff? Ok, but you should give people the best possible choices. The world events from the last game were the product of tried and tested experience based on real data, and playtesting. Even though the gear was limited, it gave you credits for buying what you wanted. Don't get lost in the weeds about Lexington runs because the point is that just about everything gave you those credits and if you didn't want to repeat Lexington, you didn't have to. You could buy what you wanted, after doing what you wanted.

I'll actually make a thread about that, actually...

[Casughoul]

To add my 2 cents... I am not a fan of 'stat scaling' (i.e. higher player and enemy damage/HP values) as a means of 'progression'; it does nothing to change the challenge (outside of maybe the initial grind) nor the gameplay; it is hollow.

I do however understand that such progression is used as a carrot to keep players playing (or at least returning), but are there better options? Especially in the light of players considering the game ‘not worth playing’ until a higher tier of gear is released (which will presumably last long enough to be ‘worth the effort’).
...
In short, The Division 2 needs to have its combat system rebalanced to be at least 3-dimensional (defence, offense, and skills), with each axis being equally viable (and at any measure; i.e. a 50/50 build, or 30/30/40 build); then the game can truly be expanded.

Players are considering the game not worth playing until the higher tiers are released BECAUSE they are going to release higher tiers and their is no point to grinding out gear that will be come useless in a few weeks.

I agree there needs to be a combat system rebalance. One of the points I am trying to make is that if some particular stat is a staple for all builds to become viable in the game then there is something wrong with the game. All things related to that staple stat should be readjusted to whatever that average was and the staple stat needs to be capped so that only a specific build would require it.

Builds should be about trying to fit into a class and not about just trying to survive the core.

The biggest problem was that if there was gear that was less desirable associated with the activity, that activity went dead.


Then there are the huge amounts of people who will feel slighted that they are now forced (or feel that way) to do activities they find unenjoyable, just to keep up with the meta.

I don't think that it should be completely gated but weighted would be better. Then people who want a specific set of gear could play a specific activity and have a better chance at finding specific gear. This could be tied to doing specific challenges.

Specific Gear only challenge = more specific gear drops

Also, if there is undesirable gear then there needs to be a rework of that gear to make it more desirable for specific builds. There shouldn't be any gear or modifier that can't be worked into a specific build where it would benefit from it. All builds should be viable.

To define builds: I mean specializations in a specific skill or weapon.

There should be gear that allows for every weapon to be able to be built up to a competitive level, every build should have strengths and weakness. The meta should be based on how common a specific build is and therefore all builds would be viable but if the meta says build A is the meta and it's strong against build B and weak against build B. Build B is strong against build C but weak against build A. Build C is strong against build A but weak against build B.

Of course in this game there would be many builds and trying to balance them all would be a challenge but as long as you have it something like.


Build : Strong | Weak

A : B/D/F | C/E/G
B : D/F/G | A/C/E
C : A/B/E | D/F/G

And so on...

How this can resolve is through some basic concepts such as range, speed, armor, tactics.. It's not easy but if you want to make something people can enjoy for long terms you have to find these balances and try to perfect them. MOBAs do this all the time and constantly rebalance to try to get the perfect medium.

I am not technically versed in this kind of field so my knowledge is limited and theoretical but it doesn't mean that it shouldn't be possible.


Anyway, that's how I see it. I am not sure if Division 2 is the place or game for this but maybe in the future we can get there.