This question is not really answerable.
If you have nothing to do all day, retired, unemployed etc, you can play all day and get better gear to make the game easier.
Players with work commitments, care commitments and various other commitments who can only play a few hours a week will find the game hard and will not have the same level of gear as other players with no commitments. It's not really a question that has a defining answer due to too many situational variations.
This game is very casual friendly, with the exception of the Raid. While it has a matchmaking feature, there isn't any point as EB only drops in the regular raid, and let's face it, that's the only reason to Raid. I work insane hours, am married, and have lots of social obligations. I might play 1-2 hours every few days, and sometimes not at all all week. Weekends I can sometimes play for good stretches. I had decent gear within maybe a couple months of playing and could run Heroics. It took me all of a week to solo Challenging. Here I am now with almost the absolute best in slot for my build I like to run and full sets for any other one I can imagine.Originally Posted by Dyslexic-Snail Go to original post
Difficulty CAN be answered quite easily. Nobody is saying to make Normal mode harder (although it probably should be). As I stated upthread, there are meaningful ways to increase the difficulty and add fulfillment to players. Hard difficulty has no place as there isn't much of a difference between Challenging and Hard, or Normal and Hard.
Keep in mind by having more difficulties this means LESS PLAYERS available to queue overall. This is reason alone to remove Hard difficulty as the game is pretty much a ghost town a lot of the time. Targetted Loot has exacerbated this as it splits up players even further. Unless Ubisoft wants to add AI agent companions, they best fix this issue or players will leave in exponential droves. Wait around, can't get a group, quit. Quit, and it makes it harder for other people to get groups, so they quite and so on and so on. To top it off, for many grouping to get loot is also a means of progression so if they are unable to progress, they will leave.
It is, by its very nature, a highly subjective question. In your own personal experience of the game, how have you handled, approached, and thought of the game's overall difficulty? What difficulty do you typically play on? Do you enjoy that difficulty or is something where Challenging is a bit too easy and Heroic is a bit too hard? It's a very individualized question.Originally Posted by Dyslexic-Snail Go to original post![]()
solo players find heroic mode difficult, it's normal when playing solo but in a group of 4 it's very easy, ubisoft should release a new legendary difficulty and specify that you have to be in a group of 4 to succeed so people would be warned that this difficulty is for group players with experience
Dont need to change the difficulty, just Add new one harder than heroic and all players will be happy
It would be prudent to wait until after gear 2.0 and associated rebalancing takes effect before revisiting this discussion.
Another factor for consideration will be the playerbase. I don't know how many of you randomly queue into PUG missions, however, during this past week, apart from clearing invasions, heroic missions have been deserted. Also, challenging missions are predominantly populated by players who purchased the game during the 85% off firesale, and already have GS500 status, yet can't differentiate their butts from a hole in the ground. Some players have taken leave until the changes take effect, while others, outright. Therefore, it would also be prudent to wait until after the update to see how the playerbase reconstitutes itself, so as to not make survivability determinations on obsoleted data.
Thanks for all the replies so far which are interesting. I see a few like myself would like a new difficulty above heroic that would really challenge end game players and most agree to leave the existing difficulties as they are. I agree that it would be best to assess the difficulty of missions once ' loot 2.0 ' is in the game and has had a chance to establish itself as the gear changes may naturally increase the difficulty of missions and therefore negate the need to adjust them. All missions having the heroic setting and all factions as enemies will be interesting with the different classes in group set ups and I think that will be a good measuring stick as to whether or not end game difficulty is too easy or hard.
I also hope that ' loot 2.0 ' is released sooner than later because the player base really need something constant to work with and at the moment many are taking a break because they feel any effort put into the game right now is pointless. I will be interested to see how the new overhaul affects the over all difficulty of the game in relation to missions etc and hope the balance is better than it is currently.
I have 4 characters on about a 4-5 level steps below the one above it (top being 30). So, all I can answer for this part is that the leveling up feels about right. It is noticably easier for the 4th player than it was for the 1st since I have all the best handed-down gear.
I will say regarding the game being easy to some that some are better players, or better equipment, etc. If it is made too difficult it will drive some away. A player that finds something easy can always "self-impose" difficulties.
For instance, I am a hunter. When I first started, I used a rifle for the highest odds of getting one. Then, once my experience grew, it was getting easy. So, I started using a carbine (short barrel rifle for closer encounters). Later I went to muzzleloader. Then, I used only handguns. Finally, up to the point I had to have shoulder surgery, I used bows. My point is someone can always make things artificially harder if they desire.
I may modify my answer once I have spent some time at the end game. Though I was a day one player, I wasn't enjoying it so other than a time or two to see how the updates panned out, I just got back on last weekend. I am liking it better now. I really, really hated glass walls everywhere. They still exist, but so far it seems at a much less frequent occurrence. Now, if we could granularity turn off some of ISAC's chatter it would be even nicer.
I'd also like to throw out an old concept that seems to have fell out of favor but I really liked. I think it was an early "Serious Sam" game that used an interesting slider. The game had the default levels, but had a slider that could be adjusted. So, it starts at easy. Then, if it feels too easy, you can slide the slider all the way up. If that is too easy, then you could play on hard with the slider all the way down. Every time you switched overall difficulties, it changed the enemies and such. This really eased going from one level to the next. Normally, when you jump difficulties, not only is it harder, many times other elements change at the same time such as enemies, spawn points, activities, rewards, etc.
Looking back nearly 4 years to the release of TD1, I found the jump in mission difficulty quite steep. In TD2, I have all the 3500+ hours of experience in TD1 that helps with gameplay, tactics, etc. So, I think it will be easier this time through.
Demographics. From your youngest players to your oldest. I would like to see a age graph on participants, including levels, weapon choices. Personally I'm 60, WT5. They only thing I haven't beat is Kenley College and it keeps getting disabled. I've watched YouTube videos of freaking scientists with loadouts.
Currently, I find the content too easy with a mediocre build in solo play and group play. I find playing heroic story missions/stronghold in group play is too easy with the power creep of seekers. You can literally just stay in the back and let your teammates demolish everything with seekers. Although these changes with TU8 might shift things around. We shall see.