How can we make this game more challenging?
By
aasjkydiu,
Posted on: 2009-07-01 13:23 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
Whenever I want more challenge I just up my Challenge Level. Its challenging enough for my threshold on challenge 3.
I don't have any AE experience to know how challenging or easy it can be. I do know it could vary greatly depending on how the mobs are layed out, and what skills the custom critters are given.
I think the AE content was intended as filler for more difficult challenges. They also just implemented the new TF, that is sure to bring new challenges to the game.
The real challenge in the game I think still lies in the higher TFs. I'm sure there are lots of groups that have a hard time still completing them.
We don't know yet what kind of content diversification the expansion is going to have but I'm pretty sure there will be new challenges especially since they will be adding the new enhancement system.
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Crank up your difficulty and play arc #1178 Coulrophobia (Fear of Clowns).
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The new enhancement system? I haven't heard anything about that. Care to elaborate or point me in the right direction to find out?
Change your own settings.
Don't try changing mine, thanks. I like my level of difficulty and challenge exactly the way I have it. So, if you don't want it "easy" try this:
Don't use any enhancements. Don't take primary powers. Delete after defeat.
The game itself is exactly as challenging as most of us want it to be, and already has a difficulty slider - now admittedly I'd like the slider to be able to produce more customized results (I want more x or y instead of a and b) but the outright challenge? Is fine how it is. If you're not challenged by the game, don't do all those things that make it easier to play, eh?
Please read my FEAR/Portal/HalfLife Fan Fiction!
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As someone recently mentioned to me, a problem with this game is that its "easy in all the wrong ways". That is, cahracter design and play strategy is complicated and hard compared to other class-based games. It is painfully easy to make a gimpomatic character and, and similalry, if you invest the research and time, its possible to make very, very powerful characters. The range of ability between the two extremes is simply too great. To compensate, the actual content was made painfully easy, such that even with a gimped character or a terrible team you can still accomplish it.
All of that rant being by way of saying that this represents a problem in creating more challenging content since a certain number of people wont be able to do it.
The best you're realisticly likely o get is the occasional end-game task-force with more difficult bad guys (harder hitting, more mezz protection, more self-buffs, ECT), and with more OF them - wave upon wave of endless ambush, and higher-than-50 base levle archvillains seem to be the way things are going. It does a decent job, but I dont know if it will really give you waht you're going for. I suggest turning to the mission architect. Mobs that can stack debuffs; mobs that can stack holds; mobs that have seldom resisted effects (confuse is the prime example); mobs that have seldom resisted damage types; mobs that have pets; mobs that have mezz resistance; mobs that have ninjitsu and a good mele damage set; mobs that justplain hit like a truck; mobs that have all their powersets turned up to extreme - these things are challenging, believe me, and there are people out there who design missions to incorporate them (Im one of them).
My difficulty slider stays at Invincible/lvl5 after I hit lvl 22-32, depending on the toon, so I don't think that is necessarily the response I was looking for.
What other ways can we make the game more challenging?
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Change your own settings.
Don't try changing mine, thanks. I like my level of difficulty and challenge exactly the way I have it. So, if you don't want it "easy" try this:
Don't use any enhancements. Don't take primary powers. Delete after defeat.
The game itself is exactly as challenging as most of us want it to be, and already has a difficulty slider - now admittedly I'd like the slider to be able to produce more customized results (I want more x or y instead of a and b) but the outright challenge? Is fine how it is. If you're not challenged by the game, don't do all those things that make it easier to play, eh?
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That philosophy is roughly equivalent to practiing golf 6 days a week, and then breaking your wrist to "give yourself a challenge". Its a way to go, I guess, but not a fun one. The smart plan is to find a more challenging course - one worthy of your improved skills. Video-games are the same way. Deliberatley gimping yourself will certainly make things harder, but it obviates a lot of the point of game-play - get better (whether better means more skilled at playing your character or designing your character's build, or simply earning cash to buy uber-er gear) so you can meet harder and more impossible challenges succesfully.
The game is not challenging because you already exceed its capabilities to entertain you.
The game is far TOO challenging for ME at even the 2nd or 3rd difficulty level.
Change what YOU put on YOUR character. The game is fine the way it is.
Please read my FEAR/Portal/HalfLife Fan Fiction!
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Go back to AE. You can make obscenely hard enemies with that... even more so now that you can give custom critters extra powers from their sets.
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Originally Posted by ShadowNate
;_; ?!?! What the heck is wrong with you, my god, I have never been so confused in my life!
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Change buffs so that defense and resistance buffs (and debuffs) work similarly to recharge reduction buffs, in that they asymptotically approach their limit rather than linearly approach their limit.
Or, to put another way, two 50% defense buffs would be as good as one 75% buff, rather than one 100% buff. Thus, individual unenhanced buffs can become more powerful, and maximally buffed characters are not orders of magnitude (1000x) stronger than those without buffs.
(a.k.a. diminishing returns).
I see. So sicne our perceptions (and, evidently, abilities) differ, you are automaticaly right, and we should do it your way?
Well, as much as I respect your bluntness, how is it any less legitimate to say that it should be MY way, and YOU should have to suffer instead? Why shouldn't YOU hae to change what you put into YOUR character (see, I can use capslock too), in order to play the game at my level instead of the other way around?
At any rate, the point I was trying to make is that through the miracle of Architect Entertainment, we can ALL get wehat we want, since not all missions have to be tailored to fit all people. The mision full of levle 54 archvillains and ninjitsu scrappers is fun for me, but not so much for you... and thats perfectly fine! More than rapid levleing; more even than roleplaying and storytelling; THIS to me is the real beauty of MA: the ability to play exactly the content you want to play without the developers having had to screw someone else to give it to you.
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Change buffs so that defense and resistance buffs (and debuffs) work similarly to recharge reduction buffs, in that they asymptotically approach their limit rather than linearly approach their limit.
Or, to put another way, two 50% defense buffs would be as good as one 75% buff, rather than one 100% buff. Thus, individual unenhanced buffs can become more powerful, and maximally buffed characters are not orders of magnitude (1000x) stronger than those without buffs.
(a.k.a. diminishing returns).
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Because thats a solution that has had nothing but positive impact on PvP?
Just sayin'
Click "Enemies Buffed" when starting a Task Force.
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Click "Enemies Buffed" when starting a Task Force.
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Also true! It can be hard to get a team together for an invicible taskforce with buffed bad guys, but if you do, its fun!
I'm saying: why change the entire game to suit a "but it's not HARD enough" mentality? When 90% of the player base comes along and says "my god this game is ridiculously easy, do something about it" then I'll say yeah, that's time to think broad changes.
When one person finds it too easy, it's that one's responsibility to understand what THEY can do in their game play experience, to make THEIR game more challenging.
I solo - I have soloed since I started 5 years ago this month. I don't need to rush through anything, I enjoy playing to read the missions, and I enjoy *well made* AE missions as well. I do not play PVP and I don't need to trick out my toons with purples and such.
I am, in a nutshell, the core of the game's player base, not a hardcore anything - not a rush to 50, not a where's the endgame, not a I can't find the Hollows nub either. So yeah, any kinds of changes to the basic "challenge" level of the game would DIRECTLY change how I *have* to play it. So I don't advocate any kind of game-wide changes - I advocate players making their own decisions about what THEY can do to make THEIR game challenging.
You have to remember that the default needs to be "average". Not "hard" for a game like this, in order to keep and attract players. This game has never espoused itself to the hardcore crowd of any bent, and I don't expect ever to do so.
I absolutely agree with you about the MA - that's what it's there for. So, any individual who finds themselves lacking a challenge should consider doing something there, or gimp their character (which is a common thing for some groups, witness the ironman type threads) or just moving on to a more outright difficult game.
Please read my FEAR/Portal/HalfLife Fan Fiction!
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If you've never tried for Flashback badges in Ouroboros, and played through the different setting options on arcs (like Smurphy's recommendation for "enemies buffed"), then you have no idea how to make the game more challenging. But you can make it much more challenging than you realize.
And if you say, "I'm not using those cheap tricks," then you're a hypocrite and have no more say here.
--NT
They all laughed at me when I said I wanted to be a comedian.
But I showed them, and nobody's laughing at me now!
If I became a red name, I would be all "and what would you mere mortals like to entertain me with today, mu hu ha ha ha!" ~Arcanaville
The thing about this game is that it uses typical diceroll combat. Making it more 'difficult' wouldn't make it more 'challenging', it would just change the numbers in the computer's favor, thus making both combat and downtime longer and more tedious. To make it more challenging would be to rebuild the combat engine into something more skill based, which would be ideal but is not likely to happen. Ever.
I do so love it when people claim to represent tha majority without any actual evidence to support the supposed representativeness of their ideas.
That being said, you do have a point - the game has always been marketed as a casual gaming product. Thus, you have to be careful not to make it TOO hard. I think there's a little room for upwards mobility myself, that might hurt some of the real "I cant find the Hollows" noobs, to borrow your own turn of phrase, but not average players. Still, there isn't MUCH room, I admit, particularly when consider soloability of certain builds.
At the end of the day, I agree with you - although there is some room for improvement (a fact I believe the develoeprs ahve realized given the higher challenge of task-forces, and even enemy groups introduced recently) a massive upgrade to the over-all powerlevel of the game's content would not be a good idea. That is not to say, however, that we can't have SOME challenging content.
I also agree with you about one other thing: this is NOT a game for the hardcore gamer, PvE or otherwise. And I do, in fact, play another game like that - its called Ultima Online and Ims till not bored of it, 2d graphics not withstanding. I would have loved to see a game with open character creation, open (balanced) PvP, and a dynamic world in a superhero setting. I would have even settled for something more WoW like where the realy highest of the high level raids simply can't be done without the best gear and builds available. But instead I got this, and unfortunatley there IS no other superhero MMO to move to. For now.
One reason I am thrilld to deatha bou the immanent arrival of Champions and after that DCUO is that wiht 3 superhero MMOs competing to domiante the genre, At least one of them is sure to be, or to eventually become, more "hardcore' (one again, to borrow your terminology) than this one is now in order to find its niche. CO is already going that way with frequent harping of their extensive end-game, and a non-class-based character system. It will mot certainly not be dynamic-world (though it will ahv emore open-world content), nor, from what I hear, will the PvP be significantly better than here, but you can't have everything. For the next 61 days, however, I'm afraid you're stuck with me.
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The thing about this game is that it uses typical diceroll combat. Making it more 'difficult' wouldn't make it more 'challenging', it would just change the numbers in the computer's favor, thus making both combat and downtime longer and more tedious. To make it more challenging would be to rebuild the combat engine into something more skill based, which would be ideal but is not likely to happen. Ever.
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Yuo could always go the Darkfall online route, and make targeting FPS-like, rather thanb ased on an internal dice mechanic. I've never been sold on this idea though, since I've always felt my character's performance should have more to dow ith my ability to do with build than reflexes, but thats just me, and I do see the appeal of the other way of doing things (I had actually planned to buy DFO when it came out, but due to the uselessness of Adventurine studios, I was literally unable to do so - I was trying to give them money, but their website refused to sell me their product).
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Because thats a solution that has had nothing but positive impact on PvP?
Just sayin'
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What I described had nothing to do with what was put into PvP.
Just sayin'
The idea you first stated - of putting defence and resistance into the same formula as recharge - doesn't, no. But the example you were taling aobut - where-by each buff is half as effective as the one that preceeded it - and the system you anmed "Diminishing Returns" bare a striking similarity to the changes of the same name that recently struck out big-time with the PvP crowd (the formula wasnt the same, but the principal was - the more you get buffed in a particular way, the more that subsequent buffs on you are diminished.
Deminishing returns at veyr high levels would be a net effect of using the recharge formula so if thats what you were trying to describe I appologie, but thats not the what your example illistrates.
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Deminishing returns at veyr high levels would be a net effect of using the recharge formula so if thats what you were trying to describe I appologie, but thats not the what your example illistrates.
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That's exactly the effect it describes, but you seemed to have in mind the manhandled system put into PvP and applied it's monstrously inelegant and akward mechanics onto the system I briefly described. The concept of diminishing returns has been discussed long before it was put into PvP.
In PvP, individual def/res buffs of all magnitudes, from what limited experience with it I've subjected myself to, are themselves curtailed ontop of diminished effects of additional buffs, instead of the buffs being individually increased to justify the reduced effectiveness of their stacking (and only their stacking) compared to current mechanics. As well, PvP buffs don't diminish in the fashion I described. (I popped several large purples on my forcefield defender in Siren's Call to see... 20.xx% defense...).
What I described would allow SO-slotted super reflex scrappers to maintain their current survivability, their lower levels would see improvements, and even the stronges min/max'd character wouldn't make elude obsolete. Set bonuses and pool powers wouldn't have to be so ridiculously weak by themselves (1.88% defense?), and odd situations like having multiple forcefield defenders wouldn't make the 2nd character's buffs irrelevant, just less meaningful.
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but the principal was - the more you get buffed in a particular way, the more that subsequent buffs on you are diminished
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Unfortunately, the mechnaics used were not only horribly implemented by themselves, they were implemented with other actions deserving their own expletives, such as healing suppression, a (imo failed) rework of PvP status protection, and complete readjustments of power damage that ignores nearly everything a power has historically depended upon to justify its damage.
I suggest making a 5% tohit debuff reduce the opponents chance to hit by 5% in magnitude, not 5% in aboslute value.
I hope that's a bit clearer 
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But the example you were taling aobut - where-by each buff is half as effective as the one that preceeded it
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The 2nd buff was half as effective because each buff is 50%. I used it because it was mathematically simple, as opposed to using 25% and 25% to get 43.75% (I think)
Maybe I wrongly stated what I was trying to accomplish here. I don't necessarily think making the mobs harder to defeat is a way to make the game more challenging. Perhaps the devs could make missions that aren't just:
1. Enter building
2. Find group of enemies
3. Kill...err...arrest group of enemies
4. Rinse and repeat
5. Find boss, arrest boss, mission over
Maybe the devs could develop something within the current framework of the game that challenges the player base without making the mobs harder to kill.
Example: Make a mission where you have to rescue Mr. ? from the enemy in a certain time. Timer could start when first member enters mission. If you don't rescue him in time, you attacked by huge ambushes of mobs. If the mobs defeat you, you get transported to the basement of the room, where your party is in jail. Once in jail, you have to do the requisite break out, find Mr. ? and rescue him still. This could all be avoided if you beat the mission under the clock as well. Maybe just having more dynamic missions with different possible outcomes could make the game a little more challenging.
Is it possible? I don't know.
What you want is more *variety* in missions, and more complicated story telling, and I'm all for that. 
Branching outcomes I think are supposedly in the works - that's what Harlick hinted at in interviews I recall seeing with him. So, maybe we'll be getting way more of that with GR already, who knows! But yeah, more variety to things and more options to complete missions would be great.
Please read my FEAR/Portal/HalfLife Fan Fiction!
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See title.
The reason I ask this is because I see AE mission teams mowing down groups of lvl 54 bosses with very little trouble. With the exception of EB's and AV's, these are the hardest mobs in the game and random PuG's can kill them in groups now.
With I9 and the invention system, the game has gotten easier than ever. What can be done to make it more challenging? Is the current linear mission system holding it back? Do missions need to be more dynamic in some way? Do mobs need to be harder to kill? More damaging? More CC?
What do you think needs to be done? Or do you think nothing should be done?