Suggestion: a difficulty selector for open word; a different approach to difficulty | Forums

[ThatFranc]

So, before I say anything, I want to remind you about a type of games called "getting over it": rage games that are designed to test player's patience, and determination. It's a good example because of how differently people react to this kind of thing: some of them uninstall the game, and ask for a refund when they get stuck, or fall down to the beginning, some spend countless hours before finally getting to the top. In other words, different people look for different things in games, some of them enjoy the challenge, some (and probably the majority) are there for the gameplay, or just to have some fun with friends.

If the retention of the player base is what you're after, there is one obvious thing that both described groups of people would really appreciate: a difficulty selector. Now, obviously there is a difficulty selector in The Division 2 that lets you choose roughly how many times you want to die in a mission, but the open world is massive, and it's likely that most people spend more time there than they do playing through the same missions again and again. But where is the difficulty selector for the open world?

I'm not saying we should have the same selection of tiers as we did in Division 1, because obviously everyone wants to be getting at least somewhat relevant loot, but why not allow people to choose between "Story", "Normal", "Hard", "Challenge", and "Heroic" globally? This is a perfect solution that, of course, will take some time to implement, but it will satisfy everyone's needs: the needs of those people that are actively quitting the game because of its insane difficulty, and the needs of those who don't want the game to be "a walk in the park".

That way, we can transition to the second part of my proposal: a reworked approach to difficulty.
The current situation where it takes a ridiculous amount of time to kill one NPC can be avoided by cutting their health in half, and increasing the amount of NPCs instead. That way, by increasing or decreasing their amount you can regulate how much players have to suffer, and how many gear and material drops players are getting on every difficulty level; it will also arguably make for a much more satisfying gameplay without actually making it any more easy.

Not all of this are my ideas: I've been reading these forums, and seeing what different people want. "Less sponge" seems to be a universal request, "decrease NPC health and armor, and spawn more of them" is a clever suggestion I saw in a patch notes topic, and a global difficulty selector is something that exists in most PvE games, coop or solo.

[Zodiak667]

Sure, if the loot is adjusted to the level of difficulty too. Story=blue, Normal=purple, Hard and above=Yellow.

[ThatFranc]

Sure, if the loot is adjusted to the level of difficulty too. Story=blue, Normal=purple, Hard and above=Yellow.

As I said, everyone wants relevant loot. It will be better if the drops remain the same - higher amounts of enemies will drop more gear and materials, while on lower difficulties players would have to spend significantly more time to get the same sort of result. Locking enjoyment behind difficulty is a crappy tactic: we've already got plenty of that in the real world.

[ThatFranc]

In other words, playing on higher difficulties should be an equivalent of driving a quick car in a fast lane: you put more effort in, you progress quicker. If you don't want to put as much effort in - you'll still get there eventually, just a lot later.

[Zodiak667]

As I said, everyone wants relevant loot. It will be better if the drops remain the same - higher amounts of enemies will drop more gear and materials, while on lower difficulties players would have to spend significantly more time to get the same sort of result. Locking enjoyment behind difficulty is a crappy tactic: we've already got plenty of that in the real world.

Sorry, that´s not a crappy tactic, that´s how loot based games usually work. You want the best gear then you have to do the difficult content. Division 2 is already giving out way too much high end loot for nothing. And the Open world is already pretty easy, if you stay away from hard and above bounties and CP 3.

[ThatFranc]

Sorry, that´s not a crappy tactic, that´s how loot based games usually work. You want the best gear then you have to do the difficult content. Division 2 is already giving out way too much high end loot for nothing. And the Open world is already pretty easy, if you stay away from hard and above bounties and CP 3.

"Easy" is very much a relative term. Feedback from a lot of people here suggests that most of them would enjoy the game more if there was a way to make it less hardcore. If you find it easy - well, good for you, but don't expect everyone to have time or interest to build that kind of skill.

[Zodiak667]

If you have time to play the game then you also have time to improve your skill. Just play the game, and you can learn how to use the environment to your advantage, how your enemies act, where weak points on enemies are, ect. You don´t have to become the best of the best, but there is always room for improvement.
And if you don´t want to learn things yourself there are plenty of youtube videos and guides out there that can help you.

[KAEFR]

You say that a difficulty selector would serve players who are "actively quitting the game" ... as if all the paying customers who don't mind these kind of RPG bullet-sponge Coop games are trumped by the people who didn't know what they were buying and who have already decided to leave the game. So your idea there is, change the game drastically to woo these players who aren't interested after playing. Is that about right?
... You should be more clear and objective with you suggestions.

Keep in mind that - in the last State of the Game (which you really should be watching if you want to make good suggestions) - Yannick finally told us about a bug in enemy AI, where they just push yolo style and smash you - because they "know" they can win the fight based on their HP/AP and player's stats... This is a very very big problem and makes for some very unreasonable fights - but I try not to rage when it happens since no true Division player wants a "shooting gallery" either. How would this information effect your suggestion?

I will stand behind your idea of lowering enemy HP a little while increasing the number of them. In fact, lowering enemy HP / implementing a true scaling of HP based on players in the party (something people say is there, and another thing that I believe if present now is bugged most of the time) would be very welcome imo.

Perhaps most important is the TRUE labeling of enemies. As it stands we have reds who get destroyed in open world, and then reds who spawn in more difficult missions and events. They aren't the same and I think a lot of us are on to that, red enemies who spawn in a challenging mission are tougher. Something I haven't been able to test, but something many of my friends seem to understand is there, and it is the same for veterans and elites. The devs are making a HUGE mistake if this is even kind of true - it BREAKS our connection with the world through the stats of our character. In a game like this - where we are forced to put hundreds of shots from top tier weapons using builds which "synergize" with those weapons - on one target to take them down - what happens when they only indicators of what effect we can expect are made meaningless?
If this ISN'T the case, which it might not be - as I said I haven't tested... Some other changes to empower players might have the same effect.
Examples would be:
1) Showing weapon base damage in the inventory, and indicating the bonuses on the weapon from the build, attachments, specialization etc...
2) Creating a true PVP and PVE delineation of damage so that the special 50 cal sniper actually kills with headshots in PVE where as in PVE it just does what ... it... does.... now?
3) Giving us true RNG on weapons and gear - without the developer designed and heavily manipulated "SR1 can never have the same base damage as a 700, because it's a SR1" or "CTAR can't possibly have the same base damage as P416 because it's a CTAR" ... "Oh, this vest has more damage attributes so we aon't allow others to drop with more armor - because players need to choose, armor or damage"

All these things would go a long way to help the disconnection I feel - which I believe a lot of people experience as well - when the developers are behind the scenes, governing our game play in unreasonable ways (*COUGH* GEAR SCORE), WITHOUT communicating with us about what they are doing.

What'dya think OP?

[ThatFranc]

You say that a difficulty selector would serve players who are "actively quitting the game" ... as if all the paying customers who don't mind these kind of RPG bullet-sponge Coop games are trumped by the people who didn't know what they were buying and who have already decided to leave the game. So your idea there is, change the game drastically to woo these players who aren't interested after playing. Is that about right?
... You should be more clear and objective with you suggestions.

Keep in mind that - in the last State of the Game (which you really should be watching if you want to make good suggestions) - Yannick finally told us about a bug in enemy AI, where they just push yolo style and smash you - because they "know" they can win the fight based on their HP/AP and player's stats... This is a very very big problem and makes for some very unreasonable fights - but I try not to rage when it happens since no true Division player wants a "shooting gallery" either. How would this information effect your suggestion?

I will stand behind your idea of lowering enemy HP a little while increasing the number of them. In fact, lowering enemy HP / implementing a true scaling of HP based on players in the party (something people say is there, and another thing that I believe if present now is bugged most of the time) would be very welcome imo.

Perhaps most important is the TRUE labeling of enemies. As it stands we have reds who get destroyed in open world, and then reds who spawn in more difficult missions and events. They aren't the same and I think a lot of us are on to that, red enemies who spawn in a challenging mission are tougher. Something I haven't been able to test, but something many of my friends seem to understand is there, and it is the same for veterans and elites. The devs are making a HUGE mistake if this is even kind of true - it BREAKS our connection with the world through the stats of our character. In a game like this - where we are forced to put hundreds of shots from top tier weapons using builds which "synergize" with those weapons - on one target to take them down - what happens when they only indicators of what effect we can expect are made meaningless?
If this ISN'T the case, which it might not be - as I said I haven't tested... Some other changes to empower players might have the same effect.
Examples would be:
1) Showing weapon base damage in the inventory, and indicating the bonuses on the weapon from the build, attachments, specialization etc...
2) Creating a true PVP and PVE delineation of damage so that the special 50 cal sniper actually kills with headshots in PVE where as in PVE it just does what ... it... does.... now?
3) Giving us true RNG on weapons and gear - without the developer designed and heavily manipulated "SR1 can never have the same base damage as a 700, because it's a SR1" or "CTAR can't possibly have the same base damage as P416 because it's a CTAR" ... "Oh, this vest has more damage attributes so we aon't allow others to drop with more armor - because players need to choose, armor or damage"

All these things would go a long way to help the disconnection I feel - which I believe a lot of people experience as well - when the developers are behind the scenes, governing our game play in unreasonable ways (*COUGH* GEAR SCORE), WITHOUT communicating with us about what they are doing.

What'dya think OP?

A lot of that does sound reasonable. My idea really was to make the open world difficulty adjustable so that everyone gets what they want from the game, including hardcore players. Most solo games let you select the difficulty, most looter-shooters (like Warframe, for instance) make high difficulty optional while still lettng players achieve decent results, just not nearly as quickly. And I don't want that for myself: I think the community as a whole will benefit from such changes.

I personally don't have much trouble traversing the open world in solo, or dealing with checkpoints, or soloing hard missions, but tanky enemies (especially the veterans, because with my current build even elites die much quicker than veterans) in large quantities make no sense to me whatsoever. Even if just the health/armor gets halved along with an increase in quantity of enemies, I'll be fine with it, but I don't think it will be enough for everyone: there will still be people saying it's too hard, and there will always be people saying it's too easy.