Normal, Hard, Elite

[Cowdenicus]

More and more recently I am getting aggravated not by quests themselves but by how Turbine has decided to make them more "difficult."

I believe part of the inflation that has been caused by monsters and then PC's is in part due to these elite settings.

Why on earth did Turbine decide that the way to increase the dificulty of all of these dungeons was to increase the hit dice of all of these monsters (and their CR by default).

There was an easier way for Turbine to increase the dificulty of a mission than by making enemy x go from having 500 hitpoints to 750. Have more and larger encounters.

I do happen to believe we are stuck with the current system for the rest of the game and that this would probably be too dificult to fix at this point, even if they wanted to, but in my opinion this just seems like the easy out. Oh we will boost every mobs CR by 4, that will make it more dificult.

Well yeah, that will make it more difficult, but now people are going to expect elite to be the standard point instead of normal.

I dunno, but as I am playing the game and nearing the elusive 2050 favor, certain things just make me wonder what the heck Turbine was thinking.

Yes we are stuck with the inflation we have now, but Turbine can fix this for the next 3 level bumps, and in turn make the end game a little more sane.

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The proceeding was strictly opinion and should be taken as such. No I do not have irrefutable evidence or screenshots to back up my opinions as they are only opinions. My opinions are mine alone and should not be construed as endorsed by anybody else. Thank you for reading.

[Shade]

Don't think turbine would agree that designing a dungeon 3 times over so they can have very different difficulty settings is "easier".. It would take way lnoger and result in us having allot less content.

Scaling the mob/trap/lock stats is quick and easy and does provide an increased challenge.

Having more easy mobs to grind thru doesnt provide more challenge, it just provides increased cost in resourcres used in a quest, more weapon damage, more wands used, etc... Not a fun way to make a quest more challenging imo.

I think ideally the way to make a game harder is to have the AI be smarter on harder levels and really use very different strategies on each level throwing you off. That would probably be the hardest to program tho.

[sirgog]

I think ideally the way to make a game harder is to have the AI be smarter on harder levels and really use very different strategies on each level throwing you off. That would probably be the hardest to program tho.

QFT. Would be great if on elite, the hobgoblins at Splinterskull went totally on-alert, set up 'elite' tactics, and did totally unpredictable things.

That said, it'd be a HUGE amount of extra programming.


My biggest gripe with the current system is that it's hard to create a group to do a quest on anything BUT elite, except for some quests (VON1-4, ADQ1) that are mostly done on normal. IMO Turbine should scale XP by difficulty level on an ad-hoc basis (not the current -50% solo, +7.5% for hard, +15% elite), depending upon how often each quest is run at each difficulty.

[AEschyl]

umm.. it's the same way in pnp

when you come to a "harder encounter" what "number" do you think increased in your opponent's make up? its CR.

i think fighting a CR 25 Earth Elemental (assuming it has 25HD) is MUCH harder than fighting a CR 21 Earth Elemental.. cuz all of a sudden... you can't banish it.

[Klattuu]

I believe part of the inflation that has been caused by monsters and then PC's is in part due to these elite settings.
...
Well yeah, that will make it more difficult, but now people are going to expect elite to be the standard point instead of normal.

I dunno, but as I am playing the game and nearing the elusive 2050 favor, certain things just make me wonder what the heck Turbine was thinking.



It is very simple really. You are supposed to run quests on Normal. This is the level the quests were written to give a reasonable challenge. Hard and Elite setting are given if you want something a bit out of the norm and a greater challenge - the rules are changed, the monsters are beefed up, immunities are granted.

As a reward for trying something a bit harder, you get some XP bonus and a few favor points.

The problem has become that the rewards for going above-and-beyond are so enticing that Elite is now the expectation. Normal and Hard are what you do to lower the difficulty to "just get through" a quest quickly. It is an unintended consequence.

Now the complaint is on how jacked-up the mobs are but they forget they are using the elite setting as a point of comparison. The mobs are jacked-up on purpose as this is supposed to be rediculous challenge mode.

[Uska]

umm.. it's the same way in pnp

when you come to a "harder encounter" what "number" do you think increased in your opponent's make up? its CR.

i think fighting a CR 25 Earth Elemental (assuming it has 25HD) is MUCH harder than fighting a CR 21 Earth Elemental.. cuz all of a sudden... you can't banish it.

cr doenst =hd by the way a cr 21 elemental may very well have 25hd

[AEschyl]

cr doenst =hd by the way a cr 21 elemental may very well have 25hd

i realize this, and i clarified that in my post that it probably isnt that way, i was simply using that as an example, since there is no way of telling what CR in ddo represents 25 HD for an earth elemental

i was just stating: at a certain CR, earth elementals will have 25 HD. at that point, they will be MUCH tougher than earth elementals that are 4 CR lower

[Stormanne]

The CR rating is the the average level a group of 4 would have to be to have an average fight against a monster. If a monster has a CR rating of 21, then a party of 4 would need to have an average group level of 21. Or that is the way it is supposed to work in theory. However, seeing that there are 5 man groups taking down Velah and Titan on elite all the time now, that theory has since been proven false. Seeing that the Titan is a CR 24 or 25 on elite and each additional person to the party would only reduce the monsters CR rating by one or two.

[Gennerik]

In general, once you’ve doubled a creature’s CR, you should closely watch any additional increases in its abilities. Adding Hit Dice to a creature improves several of its abilities, and radical increases might not follow this progression indefinitely. Compare the monster’s improved attack bonus, saving throw bonuses, and any DCs of its special abilities from the HD increase to typical characters of the appropriate level and adjust the CR accordingly.

From the SRD. The problem with just increasing the CRs of many monsters to the point that they do is that they may become more dangerous that they should be. Granted, I'm not entirely sure how Turbine does things such as monster creation, and it's possible that they look at this and mearly advance monsters just to save the art department from going out of their mind trying to create 15 million different creatures.

It is a lot easier to just increase the difficulty of monsters instead of redesign the quest 3 times with different monsters and such. It's a shame that Elite has become the setting of choice while Normal is the setting of design. Too much draw to get increased treasure tables (and XP when you're not capped).