Open world content difficulty - Open World Tiers? 10 years on

[Mistwraithe.3106]

I think it would be great. I enjoyed playing through the core maps but was disappointed at how easy the content was and once you reach level 80 (but are still exploring core maps) you don't have the option of going to higher level maps were you are underleveled.

But I wouldn't change difficulty by changing the mob strength, by far the better way to do it is to scale the players strength. Different difficulty levels could reduce all your stats by 10%, 20%, etc. That way you could have a player who is set to easy mod right beside a player set to hard mode and it's fine, you don't need different maps or splitting the player base, etc.

[Solvar.7953]

Dropping stats is sort of the same thing as boosting HP.  If you do 30% less damage, that is basically the same effect as the monster having 30% more HP.

Now if debuffed players are playing alongside non debuffed ones, I don't think that would have much difference.  Pretty much every champion can be defeated with just a few players (and good players can solo them).  So if you are debuffed and go to kill a champion and there are 2 other players there, whether debuffed or not, it is still going to be an easy battle.

World bosses can not be soloed, but there are so many players on those, that one player being debuffed really makes no difference.

And the usual followup to this is that those going for hard mode should get more loot, which then messes up with group composition, etc.  If those in hard mode doing world events get more loot, then everyone would do that.  If everything doing world bosses in hard mode actually resulted in failures, then you would get players complaining about that "I'm just trying to do this boss in normal mode, 90% of the people doing it are trying in hard mode and it fails".  Magic find had an issue like this when first released - it wasn't a dedicated slot not like, so players would equip sigils/runes/whatever that gave magic find to give themselves more treasure, but this meant that the group as a whole was less effective.

 

[Danikat.8537]

7 hours ago, Solvar.7953 said:

Dropping stats is sort of the same thing as boosting HP.  If you do 30% less damage, that is basically the same effect as the monster having 30% more HP.

Now if debuffed players are playing alongside non debuffed ones, I don't think that would have much difference.  Pretty much every champion can be defeated with just a few players (and good players can solo them).  So if you are debuffed and go to kill a champion and there are 2 other players there, whether debuffed or not, it is still going to be an easy battle.

World bosses can not be soloed, but there are so many players on those, that one player being debuffed really makes no difference.

And the usual followup to this is that those going for hard mode should get more loot, which then messes up with group composition, etc.  If those in hard mode doing world events get more loot, then everyone would do that.  If everything doing world bosses in hard mode actually resulted in failures, then you would get players complaining about that "I'm just trying to do this boss in normal mode, 90% of the people doing it are trying in hard mode and it fails".  Magic find had an issue like this when first released - it wasn't a dedicated slot not like, so players would equip sigils/runes/whatever that gave magic find to give themselves more treasure, but this meant that the group as a whole was less effective.

 

I have a 'challenge mode' character who is only allowed to use white equipment (blue for trinkets, because there is no white tier) and this is part of the reason I usually avoid doing world bosses and group events with them. I can't do as much damage as other players and don't want to cause anyone problems as a result.

Although the main reason is they're a perma-death character so I try not to take unnecessary risks, I don't want to be in a situation where I can't see attacks coming or where I'm surrounded by enemies. Also I can't rush in to revive anyone who gets downed like I normally would, unless I'm sure it's safe.

[BlindChance.3678]

16 hours ago, Khisanth.2948 said:

Well there is the trivial way which is to simply split your playerbase. For that approach ANet already has most if not all the tools necessary to implement it.

I don't think ANet would have to do this, after all we have already a certain level of level scaling in the game, right? This all fits fairly seemlessly around the open / shared with other players world. All they would have to do is to take that extra step.

I hear you guys with all the suggestion (use trash gear, go to higher level zones, play specific content), BUT as I already stated I would like have that experience level 1, without constatly micromanaging where I'm at and restricting myself to specific expansions/group missions. This would be an option for those who seek that experience.

[Shuzuru.3651]

1 hour ago, BlindChance.3678 said:

I don't think ANet would have to do this, after all we have already a certain level of level scaling in the game, right? This all fits fairly seemlessly around the open / shared with other players world. All they would have to do is to take that extra step.

I hear you guys with all the suggestion (use trash gear, go to higher level zones, play specific content), BUT as I already stated I would like have that experience level 1, without constatly micromanaging where I'm at and restricting myself to specific expansions/group missions. This would be an option for those who seek that experience.

But what you want won't work with the game. 

It may work with other MMO as everything is either personal or group based. You can't have this work in this game, where multiple stranger with different difficulty settings would be fighting the same mob. 

If your solution is to say that the ones on higher difficulty then do less damage and took more, for higher rewards, then it became griefing, similar to Magic find equipment back in the days. 

[Khisanth.2948]

3 hours ago, BlindChance.3678 said:

I don't think ANet would have to do this, after all we have already a certain level of level scaling in the game, right? This all fits fairly seemlessly around the open / shared with other players world. All they would have to do is to take that extra step.

I hear you guys with all the suggestion (use trash gear, go to higher level zones, play specific content), BUT as I already stated I would like have that experience level 1, without constatly micromanaging where I'm at and restricting myself to specific expansions/group missions. This would be an option for those who seek that experience.

As already mentioned multiple times, not splitting the playerbase is just repeating the same mistake from when the game had magic find gear. Repeating past mistakes is not something anyone should try to do.

Edited August 3, 2023 by Khisanth.2948

[Linken.6345]

3 hours ago, BlindChance.3678 said:

I don't think ANet would have to do this, after all we have already a certain level of level scaling in the game, right? This all fits fairly seemlessly around the open / shared with other players world. All they would have to do is to take that extra step.

I hear you guys with all the suggestion (use trash gear, go to higher level zones, play specific content), BUT as I already stated I would like have that experience level 1, without constatly micromanaging where I'm at and restricting myself to specific expansions/group missions. This would be an option for those who seek that experience.

So people on normal mode have to work harder so the people in hard mode can get more items to drop.

No thanks they have to split the playerbase and 90% would go for harder mode since more lewt.

So the few % that like normal mode would be like dead game and either quit or go hardmode to find more people.

And toxisity would rise since players would fail world bosses like octovine more often.

[Khisanth.2948]

7 hours ago, Linken.6345 said:

So people on normal mode have to work harder so the people in hard mode can get more items to drop.

No thanks they have to split the playerbase and 90% would go for harder mode since more lewt.

So the few % that like normal mode would be like dead game and either quit or go hardmode to find more people.

And toxisity would rise since players would fail world bosses like octovine more often.

Well we don't know what sort of split it is between the different groups. Although in my opinion the "hard mode" is more likely to fail mainly due to the people with overly inflated egos. People who believe themselves to be the best player around while actually being awful. That is the sort of burden the hard mode crowd will have to carry. IMO there would be a lot more people who overestimate themselves than the other way around.

Then there is the more immediate problem. How much better is actually enough anyway? 900% MF while fighting random mobs was still pretty unimpressive and now that it is capped at 750% even if hard mode gave the 750% MF cap it will still be similarly unimpressive ....

[Mistwraithe.3106]

As mentioned I'm a proponent of having difficulty modes (which adjust your own power, nothing else, so not splitting map populations etc) but I also don't think there should be any change in rewards for playing in a more difficult mode.

My reason for wanting difficulty settings is purely to make the game more of a challenge. It isn't to receive more rewards and I wouldn't want people to feel like they need to play on a harder difficulty level than they are comfortable to maximize their rewards.

[Solvar.7953]

I suspect you would be in the minority of players who want to make the game more difficult for themselves without any greater rewards.

I'm sure Anet could program that in, but that maybe targets 5% of the population?  And then there will be some saying "this isn't hard enough" and others saying "this is too difficult".

And as others have stated, you can already make the game more difficult by using less than optimum gear.

 

[Mistwraithe.3106]

1 hour ago, Solvar.7953 said:

And as others have stated, you can already make the game more difficult by using less than optimum gear.

 

True, but having to fill equipment slots with duplicate sets of gear depending on how much you want to ramp up difficulty (eg I don't want to ramp it up at all when I'm doing a fractal or dungeon in a party of two) is pretty awkward compared to having 3 or 4 difficulty levels to choose between.

And it also feels pretty poor when leveling and equipping a new character (which is when I most wanted to be able to increase difficulty), it means ignoring all the loot that drops and the level up gear. Can be done but it guts that joy of seeing whether any loot you got is better than what you are currently wearing, or of crafting yourself new equipment. All white gear might be fine for an experienced player who has done it all before, and finds loot drops boring, has heaps of character and equipment slots, etc, but that's not really my target.

I am thinking a lot of new players here. Introducing friends to GW2 (pretty experienced at gaming but not MMOs) I had this complaint that it was too easy and hence a bit boring, particularly as we liked playing as a group (which made open world even more trivial). A difficulty setting would have been great in that situation.

[BlindChance.3678]

This feature is already here as if you enter a low level zone with high level character you are scaled down. It does not split the playerbase, in fact it allows for more player interactions. There is no extra reward or punishment. What I'm asking for, and what clearly some people would like to see also, is an extension of that system. You would switch it on, which would adjust how your character, no one elses, is iteracting with the world. Anyway just food for thought.

[Debesyla.7102]

Imagine the uproar from the people who would feel "forced" to play a bit better... 🙃

[Shuzuru.3651]

4 hours ago, BlindChance.3678 said:

This feature is already here as if you enter a low level zone with high level character you are scaled down. It does not split the playerbase, in fact it allows for more player interactions. There is no extra reward or punishment. What I'm asking for, and what clearly some people would like to see also, is an extension of that system. You would switch it on, which would adjust how your character, no one elses, is iteracting with the world. Anyway just food for thought.

Well, the downscaling is different, as it affects everyone except those who are already at that power level. 

In your case, it's a choice but you're not alone. 

How would you handle this situation? 

Player 1 attacked a mob, he is set on Extreme difficulty. 

Then Player 2 attack the same mob, he is on Super Easy difficulty. 

If you adjust the mob in one or the other difficulty, either Player 1 will be bored or Player 2 will suffer. 

If you ajust the players, Player 1 will be useless in the fight while Player 2 will be super useful. 

[BlindChance.3678]

On 8/4/2023 at 3:10 PM, Shuzuru.3651 said:

How would you handle this situation? 

It's player based debuff in LOTRO and yes its a personal choice, so you will kill things slower than someone on normal difficulty. Another approach is probably what Diablo is doing: with world tiers. GW2 uses zone instances, there is no reason why we couldn't have higher difficulty copies of all game world zones you get connected to when you adjust difficulty.

Edited August 6, 2023 by BlindChance.3678

[Infinity.2876]

I usually dislike ideas of increasing difficulty on the game's terms.

But could this be a new way to kill afker's

[Freya.9075]

2 hours ago, BlindChance.3678 said:

It's player based debuff in LOTRO and yes its a personal choice, so you will kill things slower than someone on normal difficulty. Another approach is probably what Diablo is doing: with world tiers. GW2 uses zone instances, there is no reason why we couldn't have higher difficulty copies of all game world zones you get connected to when you adjust difficulty.

This did not answer their questions. This works if other players do not join your fight. Other players join your fights a lot in gw2 due to various reasons. Not sure about these other games you’re talking about, but If you’re on higher difficulty and another player joins you with normal or easy difficulty, how would this work? And what if this is an event or world boss? I don’t think it’s as easy as you think. At least not in a game like gw2 with all the different events in the maps. 

[Solvar.7953]

While GW2 could add different zones (instances) with different difficulties, already for a lot of maps with all the players on them, the map is basically dead unless it is a LWS map and in the daily cycle.

Even adding a second hard mode would halve the population of already dead maps.  The result would either be hard mode players going to the normal mode map hoping there are enough players there for whatever content, or normal mode players being forced to the hard mode map to have enough players for the content.  Neither of which is likely to make those players who are forced to play on the map they don't want to play on happy.  And I think this player dilution will just continue to get worse - as more and more maps are added, presuming the player population is constant (big assumption), it means on average each map has fewer players.  In reality what happens right now is there are a few maps with good populations because they have good metas/good rewards, but not clear if even those would support 2 instances.

Hard mode worked in GW1 because you always had your own private instance - as long as everyone in the party (usually heroes & henchmen with no say) were happy to go in hard mode, you could do so.  GW2 is a much different game in that regard.

 

[jokke.6239]

On 8/2/2023 at 11:02 PM, Danikat.8537 said:

How would this work in practice? How does LOTRO do it?

Guild Wars 1 was able to have seperate hard mode and normal versions of each map because everything was instanced for just your group. But GW2 uses persistent maps and generally tries to avoid segregating players more than necessary so the only way I can see to make this work is making the player weaker, and I'm not sure that would be popular. (Also it's already possible by using less or worse equipment.) It certainly wouldn't be as interesting as enemies with more and better abilities.

 

[starlinvf.1358]

17 hours ago, BlindChance.3678 said:

It's player based debuff in LOTRO and yes its a personal choice, so you will kill things slower than someone on normal difficulty. Another approach is probably what Diablo is doing: with world tiers. GW2 uses zone instances, there is no reason why we couldn't have higher difficulty copies of all game world zones you get connected to when you adjust difficulty.

Diablo is an instance based game from the ground up.  Same with POE.  They are not designed to have upwards of a 200+ players roaming around, much less make sure the space can handle multiple stat blocks at the same time.  The GW2's server allocation system is designed to maximize density, so the group events can function at all.     I already know what you're suggesting with zones won't work, because we saw what happened to maps in the old Overflow system.   Without a minimum amount of players, many group events aren't doable if a fail condition exists.

This is also why Fractals and Dungeons are explicitly limited to small groups of 5.  The resources are allocated to be more efficient, since the activity follows the group around, and aren't spawned until trigger conditions are met.  It can also easily be reset due to things like wipes, etc, which isn't an option in the open world scenario where player movement can't be reliably controlled.

From everything I've gathered over the years about game design methods for MP, any situation where numerical stats are of significance to progression systems will utterly prevent other vectors of difficulty control form working properly.  To even begin to remotely pull off what you want in an open world environment, you have to invert the difficulty sources.  IE: you have to make classes harder to play, but increase their power ceiling to compensate.  Because altering the environment alters EVERYONE's encounter difficulty.  And in that same vein, handicapping a class via external means inevitably leads to needing greater compensation in rewards; eventually becoming the new anchor point for rewards.  

By designing classes with inherent mechanical difficulty, but raising their power cap if executed well, leaves the entire onus on the players.  Most games don't do it, because its hard to balance.  Tera conceptually ran on this idea in the early versions, as certain types of playstyles are more effective or useful than others.   But it too suffered from players being players, and eventually lead to power creep in order to drive monetization.    As for GW2, its currently too casual to make this work.  All classes are expected to have low barriers for entry with at least one build, so the lowest common denominator isn't pushed out of their comfort zone. 

[Khisanth.2948]

8 hours ago, starlinvf.1358 said:

To even begin to remotely pull off what you want in an open world environment, you have to invert the difficulty sources.  IE: you have to make classes harder to play, but increase their power ceiling to compensate. 

 Ele was like that  until ANet gave in to players complaining about the damage it was doing while ignoring how fragile and the difficulty of achieving those results.

[Biziut.3594]

You are fine OP. A-Net sacrifice players to their cats only after stacking more than eight.

[BlindChance.3678]

On 8/6/2023 at 4:24 PM, Freya.9075 said:

This did not answer their questions. This works if other players do not join your fight. Other players join your fights a lot in gw2 due to various reasons. Not sure about these other games you’re talking about, but If you’re on higher difficulty and another player joins you with normal or easy difficulty, how would this work? And what if this is an event or world boss? I don’t think it’s as easy as you think. At least not in a game like gw2 with all the different events in the maps. 

The second option addresses that issue. AFAIK every zone is an instance of that zone, after all you get a prompt which says something about few players in your instance and if you would like to phase to another more populated instance. Switch a button at a NPC, you get phases to Tier 1 to x difficulty zone where everyone is affected by that difficulty. As seemless as it gets. I've given LOTRO a try over those last few weeks, and increased the landscape difficulty. Whilst the system is far from a perfect (there is no level scaling for example in the open world) they are onto something there.

[Solvar.7953]

Different instances would fix the problem if players of different difficulty joining the events.  In creates the new problem of maps which already are fairly deserted now getting split into even more instances.  If the population/demand was high enough, this would work out, but GW2 is constantly spreading what I presume is a stable (or shrinking) playerbase among more and more maps.

This could be a real problem for new players who find the maps they are on empty and unable to do group events, as the experience players are playing on the higher tier of difficulty maps.

 

[Freya.9075]

9 hours ago, BlindChance.3678 said:

The second option addresses that issue. AFAIK every zone is an instance of that zone, after all you get a prompt which says something about few players in your instance and if you would like to phase to another more populated instance. Switch a button at a NPC, you get phases to Tier 1 to x difficulty zone where everyone is affected by that difficulty. As seemless as it gets. I've given LOTRO a try over those last few weeks, and increased the landscape difficulty. Whilst the system is far from a perfect (there is no level scaling for example in the open world) they are onto something there.

So it will be splitting the players then. Not a good idea really. And how would this work in metas and world bosses? And other events? Where people taxi to their commander to join their instance? Would they have to interact with this npc to change their difficulty so they can join their squad? I have not played lotro myself so I may be wrong here, but based on what I read about the game, it does not have open world events and meta events like gw2 has. 

I understand the reasoning behind wanting a system like this, but I don’t really think it would work well in a game like this.