Let's Talk: Game Difficulty

[MrWizard]

The easy button saying comes from those who have all the grinded gear and have taken the horrid amount of time to get it all...and there are those that short cutted by exploiting.
Now they have the best stuff and yes, for that toon the game is perhaps a bit easy and not as challenging.

However, for the rest of the people, especially the ones that do not play 8 hours a day, the thought of getting a fully geared toon is IMPOSSIBLE.

Think of it. To get a lot of gear for your toon.
You need a cleansing item to wear two shroud items. That's a minimum 2 months. Actually nowadays with the 'harder' shroud it may take longer. 4 Months if you want three items. 4 months at the least.

Items that can mean something to you may take hundreds of runs. I have played since 2006 and still waiting for a chattering ring. Really.
I have only seen a leviks shield drop twice and I do that raid a ton (or used too).

The difference is staggering between a well geared oldie and a less geared newbie, regardless of skills in playing.

You make it impossible to get gear. Then to go to epic you may take, as a casual player, a year and still not get your scroll for that one item....really.

The crafting is neat, but it would be better if you could craft items you actually needed that could group together items that fill slots (resist energy, hit points, deathward, etc)...but in a purely custom way...

But your crafting system is again something a new player could take forever to get up in level by standing at that machine and just pressing buttons for hours.

Again, the older player can easily outfit new toons, the newer player is stuck taking 6 months (as a casual player) to get crafting levels high enough..and that is if he/she works at it diligently.


Lastly, and most importantly, I think it is wonderful the work the people of the community do to figure out crafting, ac, to hit, attack, and loot lists. However I believe the devs could easily print out something much better with little work.

Leaving it to the players mean unless someone is a massive forum and wiki person they will not even know what to do or where to go and spend the first 6 months NOT advancing their character.

This 'mysterious' hiding of the information always seemed strange to me. Take for instance the shroud. Working as intended makes shroud crafting a completely random and unknown quality. The rarity of the drops and no actual dev or game information means that 'as intended' would result in 80% loss of materials and no gain, and 100% chance of just vendor trash loot.
It is only because some players sat there and wasted a huge amount of time and resources to mix all this stuff and wrote it down.

Something the devs could have done in a matter of minutes and put it in game or on the site.

AC stacking is only understood because players had to figure it out to help others. As is most of the mechanics of intim, feats, etc.

Now you can see where a new player is beyond lost, has no official place to go and read official instructions. It can take some players a very long time to understand basic stuff by word of mouth, months. Casual players checking it out are really lost.

I would suggest the game would be easier, attract more players, and allow for more fun play if the devs hired one manual writer...one. And put that writer in a room and made him read all the wiki stuff, crating stuff, ac threads, build threads, mechanics threads, etc...and then make him put it into a manual that others can understand.

Now, this may seem like a mighty big task... And now you know the task facing a new player.

One person putting all this together, updating it via devs, is better than 10,000 trying to piece it together on their own.


Edit: Last thought. Why not combine more ac stuff so us ac people can actually free some slots? all the dodge items, etc..I have no room for anything. Adding one epic item and I have to redo every single piece to adjust things..not worth it.

[Zzevel]

What it should be:

EPIC - A bit grindy, elite should have been the real elite, drop upgrade fragments at other difficulty levels or full tokens for upgrade on epic. The more optionals you complete in the quest, the better % you get a good drop. This should be Epic with more HP, more SR, more OOMPF, but not blanket immunities and DR. More thanwhat we see in Ellite, Groups Fail.. OFTEN (7/10 times), but it can be beat, no way this can be Solo'd, its a TOUGH TEAM EFFORT. You get rewarded with xp/loot for your risk (3x normal, double festival drops, epic upgrade materials)

Elite - Groups Fail.. OFTEN (5/10 times), but it can be beat, no way this can be Solo'd, its a TOUGH TEAM EFFORT. You get rewarded with xp/loot for your risk (3x normal, double festival drops, drop 3x upgrade fragments) *on your 20th completion on elite you get an end reward of all named loot in that quest, you have earned it.

Hard - Groups still fail (3/10 times), can be soloed by very good high level players on occasion, loot/xp is slightly better than normal (1.5x xp/loot than on normal, drop 2x upgrade fragments)

Normal - A group can fail but not often (1/10) can be soloed by higher level toons with a couple skills. Normal drops on XP, loot & fragments

Casual - No real chance to fail, just get it done, anyone at a higher level can solo it. (.25x the xp/loot from normal, no +1/+2 loot gems uesable or festival drops availible, no fragments)



High reward for the risk, but your never completly shut out on upgrading items if you choose to not run epic.. TODAY, after you upgrade a couple things, you may run it in the future. Note Fragments are generic upgrade materials, each item does not need it's own fragments as we have plenty ot cary around already. Kinda like the dragonsard pieces, you combine them up until you get the perfect upgrade material, then you upgrade any epic item one step to the next tier.

[hit_fido]

One more suggestion: Improve the pre-generated builds (IMO you should get the 'power gamer' community to design these, and award in-game prizes as an incentive), and also add to the DDO store level-appropriate 'equipment packs' for each of them (at 6, 12 and 18), that contain OK introductory-level equipment.

[example cut]

All of that is 'good stuff' without being uber. Veterans have far, far better, but it's a functional starting kit that will serve players well in at-level Hard dungeons, while not taking away the incentive to acquire more loot. Plus I think people would be more willing to spend real money on that than an individual +3 elemental burst weapon.

As for your 'once ever free respec' suggestion - a '75% off the first Lesser Heart purchased per account' offer would work too.

That's a great idea re: combining improved pre-built paths and the equipment packs. Partly because it would be such a big boon to new players and partly because it keeps an eye on Turbine's revenue motivation. A very reasonably priced newbie equipment pack available at certain levels would replace the absurd nickel and dime approach of trying to sell +2 acid shortswords for ~100 or so TP a pop and I agree with the assumption that it would sell better.

75% off is alright, it's going to depend on the brand new player. A one time use free safety hatch seems to me to be more likely to engender more interest and playtime, whereas I'm afraid that if that first get-out-of-gimp card costs (more) real money a player is more likely to blame the game and react with caution or rejection. Maybe another alternative is to provide this option only to vip/premium on the basis that they have sunk some real cash into the game to get started already.

Anyway to pull this back toward the theme of most responses, I see these ideas as a mechanism to help struggling new players tune themselves (up) to the content they want to play rather than Turbine tuning content (down) to the struggling new players who are having trouble overcoming first timer issues that this game's wonderful customization features can sometimes exacerbate.

[EvilI]

Wow, this subject is almost as popular as rogues with epic Sword of Shadows.

I haven't had time to play any of the artificer raids yet, so I won't comment on them beyond saying I think it's a poor idea to have loot that can *only* drop over a certain difficulty level. That strips a lot of players that dont have good gulid connections from the hope of ever getting that loot, and makes them less inclined to try the material at all.

I find the general difficulty level for quests level 1-19 to be pretty good. For most quests Normal was just the right challenge when learning the game, some Elites (mainly Reavers Refuge and parts of Amrath) can still be challenging in a group of TR:s. There are a few outliers where a specific part of the quest on elite just becomes vastly more difficult than the rest, such as the swim in Elite Crucible. But I'm told that some gamer-savy youngsters can do that without getting hit by the spikes at all so I guess it's OK.

I do have a few minor grievences. It's annoying to have long, tedious transports to some quests that are run repeteadly (or failed). Against the Demon Queen for one (there may be other examples) should have a teleporter �* la ToD for those who have completed the quest/explore point before.

Effects that leave you helpless repeatedly of for a long time with no realistic save are very punishing for soloers or small groups. Prime example would be the re-buffed air elementals.

And please dont let players who are unable to loot the raid or epic chest go on timer for that quest. Tie the completion to the clicking of the chest or something. This should just never be allowed to happen, period.

As for raids, Chronoscope normal at level is perfect, and the most entertaining raid or adventure there is in the game imo. If I could wish for one thing for christmas it would be for this raid to scale like Devil Assault, and not break bravery streak. I realise World Peace may be more realistic though.

Abbot is a joke, and I would be ignoring it even if there were PuGs coming up more than bi-weekly. I previously thought that the Abbot himself needed to be somewhat more challenging, but that was so that the whole focus of the raid would not be the inferno/deadly water. Now the lich is a Beast, the inferno is just as deadly as ever, and the goggles puzzle did not get any easier. I am sorry if this sounds harsh, but I can not think of any curteous way to put my feelings on this particular raid.

Number of deaths in Normal Shroud are going down, but the blades are still over the top. Despite what some posters would claim, I also find they make Hard difficulty inaccessible to PuGs at all because the risk of failure is so high, and the time invested to grind through the boring part 1-3 before you fail again is just not worth it. Maybe when you increased the difficulty for parts 4 & 5 you could have reduced the hitpoints for portals, or the number of portal spawns, in part 1? (Or better yet, let us climb a small rock, jump over a wall and go straight to the parts that really matter ;-)

VoD, ToD, HoX are all fine imo. DQ is hard to find groups for at level, which implies that it is probably a little to hard. Tempest Spine is great, and my vote for second most entertaining raid to run at level. It seems to lack some luster concerning loot, but is still well woth it for xp.

Epics definitely seem better to me, the way they are now. There are "Epics light" where you can learn the tricks, and there are some quite gear-demanding where I mostly feel like a piker after a year of steady playing. Like all high level content it is very dependant on having at least one good arcane caster in the group, and this may be something to look at - but I cant see removing mass instakills as being the solution to this, unless you at the same time remove the ability for Mass Hold Monster, Ottos Sphere of Dancing, Web and several other extremely powerful spells to affect multiple enemies in a similar manner.

[Furbitor]

QUOTE=MadFloyd What are your thoughts on the overall difficulty of DDO? Sure, we offer difficulty choices, but do you find yourself in a postion where even Normal difficulty feels too much like hard?

I have entered quests on normal that played too much like epic! And its random, the mobs seem to have much more punishment than usual. Wish I could give you more, but its rare enough.

If so, do you associate this with a given level in the game (e.g. 10+) or do you think there is just too much inconsistency throughout?

I think its a glitch in the scaling programming that causes the extra difficulty on the wrong setting. It just doesn't occur so often.

What's the right balance of challenge vs success for YOU? Do you expect to never fail when playing Normal - or would that simply bore you?

I consider failure on normal Okay until you know the quest. What Bores ME is the utter non-random mobs and linear design of most quests. Knowing exactly what mobs and how many are just around that corner takes a great deal of fun out.

I'm raising this subject for a few reasons. I think a lot of people expect that when it comes to an MMO, if you put time in you must get progress/reward out of it - and that failure is just plain bad. Spending 45 minutes into a quest only to fail can be very frustrating.

I disagree about failure being bad, you shouldn't get rewarded for not completing. But, 45 minute end boss fight with endless self healing boss(es) is ridiculous. I did a Foundation of Discord elite run and wound up swapping to lvl 20 toons to kill the end boss. Instant aggro of Ele's made the quest impossible for at level geared toons.

We have been accused (and perhaps there's truth to this) that we've been balancing the game for the uber-player. Are you finding this to be the case? It seems like a couple years ago the salient message from the community was 'enough with the easy button already!'

The purpose of better gear doesn't necessitate retooling every quest. It makes the quests easier for those that got them thru due effort. Wether or not players use that gear and blow through quest is up to them. New content also shouldn't require gear that only veterans have.

Would love to know your thoughts on this. Feel free to reference specific quests.

I would like to bring up the subject of difficulty. What exactly makes a quest difficult?

I would say:
a. Monster HP
b. Monster quantity
c. Monster type
d. dungeon path
e. dungeon environs
f. dungeon length
g. Traps
h. obstacles
i. puzzles


Any of those items above can be altered changed to give various level of difficulty. But while any of them alone can be dealt with, what makes a quest ridiculous is when the combination of these items are arranged to near impossible.

Like say, Abbot. Failure of any puzzle usually mean wipe of the quest. Spending time in party while one member tries to figure out the puzzle just to blow it (Litnany of the dead) over and over for months Made me sick to run it again. I thank God for the man that posted the answers. Instead of instant failure, we should have had the option of battling the black dragon (for failing his questions).
That more than anything is poor quest design. And Abbot has been retooled many times, still is a failure in my eyes.

My views are this... Having puzzles is great and dandy, brings fun and challenge, But it should never be a hard fail if a puzzle is lost or skipped. Like in the Abbot, if a puzzle is completed, it should make the quest that much easier to finish, and if a puzzle is skipped, it should be that much harder, but still able to complete.

So as it stands, the Abbot is Invulnerable until his Sarcophagi are destroyed. This means the puzzles are mandatory. Well, If the quest Had alternate routes to reach to the sarcophagi, the objective can still be met, with an alternate method. This would relieve the strain this quest has on many groups, yet still make them "earn" their loot. Those groups doing the puzzles would have a boon of doing it easier.

Wanna make quests more fun or challenging? Try these:

1. Random mobs in quests / adventure areas
2. random mob types at level in quests/ adventure areas
3. Random quest entrances in adventure areas (its more fun when you have to find the quest)
4. adding subterranean areas/pathing to existing Adventure areas desert, vale, etc.
5. Adding new random rares in old Adventure areas (mixed level mobs)
6. multiple path questing. giving choices.

[voodoogroves]

I play this game because it's close to D&D (not the D&D I played 20 years ago but close enough). I've never cared about any other MMO nor will I. Every "MMO" thing in DDO is what makes it stupid.

If this wasn't D&D many of us would never have bothered.

I may play the 40k one too ... but same deal

[Montoya]

I think that there should be options for getting decent gear that small groups or solo players can reasonable accomplish. The mindsunder quests are a good example of this, although mostly the gear is not worth it. Epics and end game are balanced for well geared toons but it feels like you need to be well geared to get the gear. Cannith crafting is a good option but still crafted items for the most part don't compare to most end game loot.

I agree that the best stuff should be in raids but it would be nice to have a preliminary step for those of us not inclined to get into big groups.

[voodoogroves]

The problem with "epic" is that once you hit 20, what do you do? How do you know "epic" quest A is tougher than quest B?

What should a player be doing in terms of progression?

1-19 makes sense ... do quests around your level, increasing as you level.

Once you hit 20, we really need some way to identify which ones are scaled to be entry-level accessible, and which are going to require more skill/gear/etc.

[dkyle]

I play this game because it's close to D&D (not the D&D I played 20 years ago but close enough). I've never cared about any other MMO nor will I. Every "MMO" thing in DDO is what makes it stupid.

If this wasn't D&D many of us would never have bothered.

My point of view is a bit different, but similar. I like DDO because it's not like other MMOs, which I also don't care for. I like it for the active combat, the variety of builds, and the interesting quests. I can't say I'm all that concerned about the "D&D" aspect of it, though. I don't really care how close or far the rules are from any PnP edition of DnD, as long as they're good rules, that produce a balanced game. Or how close or far it is to PnP's Eberron setting.

[GoldyGopher]

In skimming through 10 (plus) pages of posts I saw the word schizophrenic, while the true meaning of the disorder means something else, it is a good word to describe game difficulty in general.

To me the problem starts once a player enters the Harbor and starts doing quests and continues all the way through epic. Difficulty may not be the correct word, rather a time, risk and reward analysis, and the problem is Veteran Players know how to take advantage of it and new players do not.

In low level quests the disparity of risk, time, and reward is apparent in comparison of “Kobold’s New Ring Leader” and “Walk the Butcher’s Path”. The Butcher’s Path on Normal has a base XP Value of 1,148 while Kobold’s New Ring Leader bas XP value is 1244. The problem is there is so much less risk and less time needed to complete New Ring Leader Butcher’s Path is barely run in comparison. I with a well equipped toon solo can complete new Ring Leader, earn most of the XP bonuses and be in excess of 2200 XP on a first run in under two minutes, while a flat out sprint through Butcher’s Path takes six minutes and nets about 1800 XP unless a couple of rares pop than its 2000 to 2200 and eight to ten minutes. Which quest are people going to run?

The problem is it doesn’t matter which level quests you are talking about it there are clearly easier and quicker and quests to run. Pick a level it doesn’t matter, Halls of STK vs. Two Toe Tobais? Tangleroot vs. Necro 1? Gianthold vs. Necro 4?

The next problem is scaling works in a poor way, I am going to pick on the poor Kobolds because they are easy to see. In a full party (5 players or more) a Kobold Warrior has for instance 40 HP, solo it is 13 HP, yet a Kobold Shaman has 50 HP and drops to 40 HP? What huh? So Kobolds warriors die before they can do anything yet a Shaman can blast away, but there damaged is scaled so far down 1 to 3 points, whats the point? Again pick you level pick you monster damage and HP aren’t scaling correctly, or at least not as correctly as I can see.

When DDO was first released there was a clear difference in the difficulty levels, normal was a challenge to 4 characters at level, hard required a balanced party and Elite took a full party usually at level and people didn’t zerg. What changed, 32 point builds, twinkage, the monty hall show in Korthos, Scaling, player knowledge base, and the list could go on and on. The problem is quests got easier to complete, there is less risk, and in many cases more XP. What used to be a challenge for a group at level is now run three levels under. See Elite Stormcleave Outpost.

What I would do to fix these problems?
The first quick things I would look at are.
1) XP Normalization. If the quest is longer and has more risk it should get more XP.
2) Adjust Scaling. Right now it is too easy for a pair of Melees to cruise through most quests.
3) Delineate difficulty levels. Right now there is virtually no discernable difference between normal and hard. Something has to separate these levels of difficulty, be it spells casts by casters or special attacks by melees.
4) Drop scaling on Elite. Sorry making elite easier for small parties is stupid in my book, even when most people scarcely see the difference, one swing per mob however sure adds up.
Long Term adjustments
1) Relocate a number of quests to more appropriate locations based upon difficulty. Moving the Solo Quests (Miller, Arachnophobia, Havadaser, Et All) to Korthos would be a good start. Followed by moving Missing in Action and the Sunken Sewer to Harbor. Moving the Depths series to the Market Place. Replacing the Depth Series with a New Adventure Pack of Level 6 Quests.
2) Look at combining a number of the lower level quests into more of an adventure area with rare encounters. For example taking Warehouse quests (Baudry Trilogy, Kobold Ring Leader, Smuggler’s Warehouse, Stealthy Repossession) and combing them into one zone where each of those final items becomes an always present rare encounter (for the lack of better description at the moment) and mobs becomes Slayer and so on and so forth.
3) Can XP set based upon how Twinked a Character is? I mean the more twinked a character is the less XP they should earn. There are lots of things to consider here, like how you would let people in party know for example and requirements of LFMs. But it is at least something to consider.
4) Psuedo Random encounters. There should be a variety interchangeable mob encounters (A Kobold Shaman, two Kobold Sneaks, and Four Kobold Warriors vs Two Kobold Shamans and Six Warriors, vs Four Kobold Sneaks.) that could occur at many of the little fights. Yes I know the troubleshooting problems but it sounds exciting doesn’t it.

When we get to Raids, I shake my head. Difficulty does not equal MORE HP for one mob. While this isn’t always the case it seems to be the MO however of the current philosophy.
If "I" were going to redesign the Shroud end fight for example on Normal Arry calls the four LTs Back basks in the Power of the Eclipse and like the old version after they are defeated you bask Arry. In Hard when you start fighting Arry every 45 seconds or so he calls one of his LTs back, so a group has to go deal with them. On Elite it is every 30 seconds and he calls two LTs back. That would be scaling of challenge. Not that idea is completely though out but you get the idea.
I think all the Raids need help and some reworking, you need to have a Raid Zone Explorer zone for the Titan (think the Canath Factory) getting rid of the Teleport Zone. With worthwhile rares and treasure. Tempest Spine even needs an update (and an Epic Version) as I still think it is one of the funnest Raids to do.

[Aelonwy]

What are your thoughts on the overall difficulty of DDO? Sure, we offer difficulty choices, but do you find yourself in a postion where even Normal difficulty feels too much like hard?

If so, do you associate this with a given level in the game (e.g. 10+) or do you think there is just too much inconsistency throughout?

The overall difficulty of the quests seems to be fine. After level 12, the quests do get much more difficult, but with adequate gear and preparedness I've not come across any regular quest that was impossible on normal. Although I do have trouble with quests that lack useable ingame maps... like the Pit. The only inconsistency I've observed is that strange bump in difficulty between levels 10-12. I also don't do much on hard or elite, all of my alts being on their first life. I've only done a few raids... frankly, I'm too intimidated by the other players attitudes towards them to really feel incentive to run more. From what I understand about Shroud you may want to tune the Normal setting down just abit on the blades. Just a teensy bit. Or fix lag whichever comes first. And I will probably never run Abbot as its currently implemented. More on that later.

The overall difficulty of the game... eh... I would mention that there is a great deal of reading/research that feels necessary to build an adequate character, and to understand the game mechanics. This may be normal, I wouldn't know this is the only MMO I've given more than a week or two trial run. You should also know, your pre-generated character paths are more or less openly called a "new player trap" by long time players.... this should not be so.

What's the right balance of challenge vs success for YOU? Do you expect to never fail when playing Normal - or would that simply bore you?

I'm raising this subject for a few reasons. I think a lot of people expect that when it comes to an MMO, if you put time in you must get progress/reward out of it - and that failure is just plain bad. Spending 45 minutes into a quest only to fail can be very frustrating.

Casual - Always succeed.
Normal - Should succeed by third attempt at least, with adequate gear and preparedness, unless collassal incompetence, lag or a series of mischance 1's are rolled.
Hard - Should take caution, good skills, good equipment, good teamwork, preparedness, and should find success at least by fifth attempt. Failing lag of course.
Elite - Should never be a guarantee of success on elite, no matter what...

Yes failing after 45 mins or longer is extremely frustrating.... maybe some shorter quests at higher levels could help.

We have been accused (and perhaps there's truth to this) that we've been balancing the game for the uber-player. Are you finding this to be the case? It seems like a couple years ago the salient message from the community was 'enough with the easy button already!'

Would love to know your thoughts on this. Feel free to reference specific quests.

It does feel alittle like this is the case, and honestly as a casual player I don't have much against this except where you balance even the normal setting in their favor and make it very difficult and frustrating to get the gear, game knowledge and skills as a casual player that they have as elite players. By all means balance elite towards them, they want the challenge... so give it to them, in a big, mean, nasty and terrifying way. But leave normal setting alone please. I'm mostly looking at the raids here. Shroud normal, Abbot normal, Gianthold normal (500 dmg?! really?!), these should be doable by the right level players in gear that they can get with little trouble at their level... I'm not saying it shouldn't take a couple or even a handful of tries 2-4 for a first success but the fail rate should go to nil eventually with practice on NORMAL (unless lag kills you of course.)

Abbot has all kinds of problems... not sure how difficult they'll be to fix, no raid flagging mechanic should ever have been random... talk about frustrating, thats so frustrating its insulting. The pre-raid is weird. The raid puzzles are unforgiving. Abbot HP is way out there beyond reasonability on every difficulty, why is he immune or so higly resistant to soooooo much? If I might make a suggestion... would it be at all possible to have a casual-learning setting for some raids? Not the same casual setting that normal quests have, but a setting that perhaps gives no loot or XP and doesn't count towards raid completions, and exists solely for newer players to get a feel for the team work needed in the quest, and a time and place to learn the puzzles/minigames without the pressure of messing up and screwing 11 other players out of loot and/or a completion? This would greatly help for Abbot at least that has puzzles like nothing else in the game. Failing that, perhaps you could include a couple new Silver Flame quests that have very similiar puzzles as in Abbot for people to practice in prior to the raid.

As for easy buttons... I'm not sure how many casual players feel comfortable posting on the forums, mostly we haven't been around as long, we don't know the game as well, some of us who have been around awhile prefer to spend any and all free-time ingame rather than on forums because we have so little time to spend freely; not to mention contradiction and criticism can be swift and painful.

Overall, I think your quest design and stories are awesome, so keep up the good work.

[Cauthey]

It's fun to fail!
-FlimsyFirewood's signature

Actually, it's not fun to fail. But you are close- it's fun to almost fail.

Failing is frustrating, leading you to feel like you have wasted time and resources for no good reason. It can make you ragequit or just logoff and walk away.

There's another quote in a signature out there somewhere - don't remember who's it is:

"No Challenge, No Fun."

I don't agree with you. What is most frustrating is HUGE time committments; a quest dragging along right to the end and then failing miserably. Or, a 20 minute slag-fest that suddenly goes south when the boss at 10% HPs, only to have him fill back up to full when the creative "ditch/regroup" plan triggers his reset (or, a total reform is required).

I think that most well-adjusted players can deal with a fail after a 10-15 minute committment. But, if players have been at it for more than 45 minutes, and there is ZERO payout because of a fail in the last phase (no loot or XP along the way), then yes...ragequits and "I'm done for the night" logoffs are going to happen.

[Joseph]

Summary Paragraphs: - MMO games are based on time investment being equal to an acceptable reward. That reward in most cases is character advancement (whether through loot or experience gain). In DDO, if you fail a quest, you end up with no real experience gain. That equates to wasted time (and why should I risk wasting my time in a PUG that will fail, and cause me to waste hours for nothing).

To correct this, quest XP should be given in percentages (such as 15% xp at 25% completion, 15% more at 50% completion, 15% more at 75% completion, and the final 15% at 100% completion, plus the remaining 40% as a 'bonus' for completing the quest).

This is just an example, but one that would move DDO light years towards being more well received. One thing I prefer in LOTRO to DDO is that every kill my party makes gives us experience - and turning in the completed quest gives us considerably more - but if we do not complete the quest, we can start again, and did not lose all of that time.

What are your thoughts on the overall difficulty of DDO?

The overall difficulty of DDO is all over the place, and is very build dependent (compare Crucible, or other 'must-have' xyz build quests as an example).

Sure, we offer difficulty choices, but do you find yourself in a postion where even Normal difficulty feels too much like hard?

I honestly do not think that you are addressing the root issue from a player risk vs reward balance perspective in asking this question.

If so, do you associate this with a given level in the game (e.g. 10+) or do you think there is just too much inconsistency throughout?

The power creep begins around level 12 - when things just become stupidly difficult for certain builds, and trivial for others.

What's the right balance of challenge vs success for YOU? Do you expect to never fail when playing Normal - or would that simply bore you?

I expect to never fail when playing 'casual' - that should be easy button. I think that normal should have some challenge, hard should be more, and elite should be much harder.

I'm raising this subject for a few reasons. I think a lot of people expect that when it comes to an MMO, if you put time in you must get progress/reward out of it - and that failure is just plain bad. Spending 45 minutes into a quest only to fail can be very frustrating.

This is the single area where DDO 'fails' and every single other MMO on the planet succeeds. If I spend hours in a quest, and then I fail - I get more or less zero experience (let's use the example of The Pit - great quest - hours into it and we just do not have the jump skills - so we fail - no one gets anything - not a happy moment).

We have been accused (and perhaps there's truth to this) that we've been balancing the game for the uber-player. Are you finding this to be the case? It seems like a couple years ago the salient message from the community was 'enough with the easy button already!'

To a certain point, anything 'easy' is dictated as much by skill as experience. When my wife first started playing, I could take any character through any quest better than her. Now that she has some skill and experience, that is not the case - though I still have more experience and skill. She could never solo Korthos - but now she says it is too easy.

Would love to know your thoughts on this. Feel free to reference specific quests.

All quests are different, so you are asking a question that will really return no quantifiable value save a few specific quests that are usually a PITA (pain in the apple), or that are trivial for certain builds.

[GermanicusMaximus]

• Abbot - Not the puzzles, they're fine provided you have no server lag, no ISP lag.. whatever. ...snip...
• Quests where the trash/effects/etc end up becoming more of a threat than the boss mob - For example, Elite New Invasion. Barnzidu? I could care less about. But his traps, combined with the aforementioned Super-Air-Elemental? Different story. In this situation, you've got a relatively weak boss, to the point that he is on the back burner. The bigger concern is evading traps, getting a Power Word : Kill off the moment the Air Elemental spawns and hoping you don't get the "You are not facing..." Error that's been cropping up so much lately, and then you can deal with "the big bad". His Binding Chains are only scary and dangerous not because it allows him to close on you, but because it makes it very difficult to avoid the traps - again, the traps become the highlight, not the boss. Likewise, Shroud on Hard or Elite shares this issue - instead of the Boss, Arraetrikos, being the "difficult part", the new difficulty is instead the Blades, an "Effect". By Effect, of course, I mean that they do not follow the rules for either a Mob, or a Trap, or a Spell. They do not have AC, HP, and are immune to all player interactions attempting to stop them (Web, Dancing Ball, Massive Damage, Disable Boxes, other attempts to "Thwart" them.) They also do not have To-Hit, so player AC is irrelevant, and they do not have a standard Trap/Spell Save, so player Saves or status of Evasion is irrelevant. This is again where Turbine basically deviates dramatically from a D&D perspective. There really is no "Cure" for Blades, no resist, no buff, no offensive or defensive action aside from Large HP Pools, and Fast Response Healing. Different from that is Arraetrikos : He is an enemy mob with a To-Hit, spells with DCs and specific damage types, etc. He can be Debuffed, he can be destroyed, his spells can be saved or buffed against, etc. So... again, rather than the boss who intends to make Shavarath coterminus taking the spotlight... some "effect" of dead Barbazu becomes the focal point of Parts 3, 4, and 5.
  

I don't understand how you can consider the Abbot puzzles to be "fine", and then believe the blades even in Elite Shroud are a problem. A blade in Elite Shroud is not insta-kill. If damaged by a blade, you can be healed back to full health.

I suspect Turbine does data collection for stats like number of failed attempts and number of successful completions for each quest in the game. If so, I would further surmise that

1) the failure percentage on Abbot far exceeds that of Shroud

2) there are far more completions of Shroud than there are of Abbot, to a large extent because people have simply opted out of Abbot at this point

These are both level 17 raids, and they should have comparable difficulty.

MadFloyd, consider this my official request to nerf the puzzle damage in Abbot down to the same level of damage as a blade hit in Shroud. Oh, and let the damage be healable while still in the Abbot puzzle.

As an alternative, we could give a Shroud blade hit the same effect as a misstep in an Abbot puzzle, but really, I don't think you want to go there

[CaptainSpacePony]

Whew! Just finished reading all the posts so I can kick in my informed 2 cents.
I’ll be throwing some rep around shortly.

First direct answers to MF’s questions:
Does Normal difficulty feel too much like hard? Yes, but only because Hard is too easy. Normal is about right.

(Is this) associated with a given level in the game? No, but game play changes A LOT around level 10-14. At that point solo/casual styles of play often become untenable for novice players. PUGs and long quests become the norm.

What's the right balance of challenge vs. success for YOU? I will quote DDO:
“Casual is for easier solo play or those having trouble on normal.” Near auto success for a poorly built 28pt solo player.
“Normal is recommended for solo play and small parties.” A poorly built solo player should succeed about 60% of the time on 1st attempt at the quest. Experienced solo players should succeed nearly always. I’d personally prefer it harder than that, but that would make the game less accessible/inviting to new players, which is bad for everyone.
“Hard is for experienced soloers and large parties.” I am an “experienced soloer” with 32 builds, twink gear, and TR toons. I should FAIL 5-20% of solo hard runs.
“Elite is for veteran parties seeking a challenge.” Challenge implies a chance of failure. At this point, “veteran parties” could be targeted at 3 or more players like myself.

Now my general discussion:

Failure MUST be an option. Few like to fail, but without the risk/challenge, interest wanes.

As a near-uber player I like the more challenging stuff. As a player who frequently groups with newbs, I think most content on normal is about right. I don’t play much casual so can’t say much about that. Hard and elite, on the other hand, fall short of my expectations. Hard is WAY TOO EASY. I think hard should be just a little bit below where elite is now. Elite should be ratcheted up even more than it is now. Let hard be the play ground for veteran players to solo or breeze through with their guild buddies as they power level. Make elite live up to its label—a Challenge for veteran parties... which brings me to dungeon scaling based on party size: get rid of it! Make all scaling based solely on difficulty setting, not party size. There is nothing wrong (and a lot right) with making most content soloable—but not necessarily on hard, and certainly not on elite. IRL bringing my pals (even the flabby ones) to a fight, increases my odds of winning.

Many have already said it, but ship resist shrines should cap at your level (10 pts to lvl 6, 20 to lvl 10).

I have introduced several new players to this game, and for a 1st character, the game becomes a drag shortly after level 10. Poorly built 28pt toons struggle to complete quests and their xp bar barely moves. Many abandon their higher level toons and roll new ones so they can replay the lower lvl content. I recommend some zots be devoted to developing shorter content for levels 10-17. (5-15 minute quests). A cheaper heart of wood, or a quest that sold you 1 for like 10 TP (the old Korthos cake-trick) around level 15 would be good.

Difficulty, quest by quest is a bit all over the place. It would take little coding to adjust the level of some quests or you could merely update the “difficulty” rating on them. Outside of level 1 and 2 quests, are there any that say they are below average? Other than extreme challenge, are there any that say they are above average? Labeling goes a long way to managing expectations. The community could probably provide a good measure of what these levels or labels should be for each quest. This applies to quest length too. Just how long is a “long” quest anyway?

As a general guide, about 30-40% of a quest’s rewards (loot and XP) should come before the climax. This lessens the sting of failure while keeping players focused on succeeding. The Shroud is NOT the best example of this. Too much of the loot is pulled before finishing. Intentional non-completion farming should only be in the margins, and the Shroud missed that mark. (I would not change it though. This is more a point to consider for future content).

Pregen builds are gimp. Nice call for equipment packs, Sirgog!

Raids:
I think all at level raids, should have a real (5-15%) chance of failure.
Sirgog’s casual raid with a longer timer idea was intriguing and addresses a portion of the player base that can feel alienated at high levels. As mentioned, Chronoscope difficulty settings should mirror DA (6, 12, 18, epic). Because a lot if not most raids are ran by with a number of capped toons, all raids should scale to that. Elite VoN, DQ, Titan, Reaver’s etc should all be in the neighborhood of lvl 18-20. Hard somewhere between normal and elite (ie 17 for a hard Reaver’s). Btw, I personally think normal and hard shrouds are just about the correct difficulty. (Haven’t run post-update elite.)

Raids
To recap my recommended changes:
1. Increase the difficulty for hard and elite.
2. Eliminate party size scaling.
3. Cap ship resists at level.
4. Develop shorter mid-high level quests.
5. Offer a discount heart of wood.
6. Adjust quest levels or make use of the quest difficulty level (and update length).
7. Design content with 30-40% of the rewards given prior to completion.
8. Fix pregen builds, and sell them packages.
9. Scale Raids from Casual (with extended timer) to elite at lvl 20.

[noinfo]

What are your thoughts on the overall difficulty of DDO? Sure, we offer difficulty choices, but do you find yourself in a postion where even Normal difficulty feels too much like hard?

If so, do you associate this with a given level in the game (e.g. 10+) or do you think there is just too much inconsistency throughout?

What's the right balance of challenge vs success for YOU? Do you expect to never fail when playing Normal - or would that simply bore you?

I'm raising this subject for a few reasons. I think a lot of people expect that when it comes to an MMO, if you put time in you must get progress/reward out of it - and that failure is just plain bad. Spending 45 minutes into a quest only to fail can be very frustrating.

We have been accused (and perhaps there's truth to this) that we've been balancing the game for the uber-player. Are you finding this to be the case? It seems like a couple years ago the salient message from the community was 'enough with the easy button already!'

Would love to know your thoughts on this. Feel free to reference specific quests.

On the whole the normal-elite thing works quite well. I am not looking at it from a beginning player perspective but there are many things that make the whole thing reasonable on normal difficulty that most parties should be able to finish, dungeon scaling works strongly in the favour here.

I do agree that the newer quests seem to be significantly more difficult than older quests. Obviously due to the enhanced power of characters at that level now. Initially I had a problem with this but upon reflection the new quests tend to have better loot and a variety of difficulties at that level are good, however xp should be proportional to difficulty (I don't want old quest xp nerfed btw)

I have significant issues in the way AC works during the scaling of difficulties in quests and grazing hits can be a serious issue with this as well in higher difficulties for a particular subset of characters. Getting hit 1/3 of the time regardless of your AC is NOT fun and equates strongly to a DPS toon being told that 1/3 of their hits will be reduced to minimal damage. This subset get both ends of the stick with mobs too hit values going up, extra damage from attacks that hit AND automatic damage from 1/3. I will be saving most of this area for the AC thread, can't wait for it.

Epics are still a separate game. Changes to casters and epic ward have taken things in the right direction and given casters a use outside of buffing and holding however there are many builds that work fantastic out of epic that are far less useful in it due to the nature of its design. This will probably be more on class ballance issues and I look forward to those as well.

Raids are for the most part fine, I like the changes to elite on most of them, and normal is still pretty much a walk through (shroud blades evasion should be a given though) Epic RAIDs suffer the same issues as Epic quests with regards to difficulty for some builds.

The only Raid I have an issue with is Abbot. Instafail is what makes you feel like you are wasting your time. The buff in the boss was to put the focus back on him as it should be however everything else is still a PITA. Normal completions should be pretty much the same as the shroud in difficulty.

Have Abbot go back to the way it was intended. Puzzle fail does not mean RAID fail but makes the boss more powerful (as he is now) each puzzle finished removes part of ability or increases timer between its use in the case of inferno etc. Fighting to the last man in an epic battle to stop the rise of an insane god = fun, recalling because someone fell off a tile = waste of time.

[Meat-Head]

I know you guys are working on PrEs for next year. I assume there will be SOME level of power increase to toons. So, please be careful not to simultaneously buff PCs and nerf quests/raids.


I think the general feeling is that:

Casual= NEWB to quest and/or newb soloing

Norm= NON-vet players at level should NORMALLY be completing unless they do something stupid

Hard = At level should be challenging and/or require some gear/experience

Elite = TOUGH at level. Requires experience and/or gear.



***All diffs: SCALE LOOT and/or have ALL QUESTS have a 20th reward list- **INCLUDING EPICS for shards/seals etc**



Raids need a casual setting.

Shroud normal needs to be a little more forgiving.

[Cauthey]

Rather than looking at quest difficulty (casual, normal, hard, elite, and in some cases epic gives you plenty of opportunity to tune and re-tune to cater to the broadest possible spectrum of player skills and desires), I hope you consider another aspect of what can make DDO excessively difficult for some players.

This game's ability to customize character builds is one of its biggest strengths but also one of the most potentially punitive mechanics facing a new player. This game (and many of the players in it) do not forgive "build mistakes". What is a new player who makes their way to the mid upper levels faced with when they're told taking Power Critical or Acrobatic or Improved Mental Toughness were big mistakes, or that their mix of classes is 'gimp', etc? It wont be altogether clear to many new players just how useless some of the feats are or how bad of an idea mixing certain classes is until they've invested some chunk of playtime - and then said investment looks like a big loss in light of the harsh reality of their options:

- reroll: do you want new players to feel like they've wasted all that time?
- pay for lesser/greater reincarnation: expensive.
- pay for one-by-one feat swaps that may not even work given feat selection progressions: potentially expensive.

'Expensive' is subjective, sure, but when you guys shifted the capability of players to swap feats for siberys shards by a couple magnitudes you essentially made real money the only option for repairing bad leveling decisions.

Some ideas for reducing this hurdle:

- revert siberys feat swap 'costs' to their previous levels (i.e. 1,000,000 shards for the flawless needed to feat swap at level 17 is nuts)
- provide every character slot with a one-time usable Greater Heart of Wood +5. This one time use does not renew across True Reincarnations. This would basically function as a single use 'oops' button for, so to speak, un-gimping a character. Maybe tie this to a certain level or maybe a certain favor threshold, but not so high as to be a grind unto itself.
- improve the feat swap and lesser/greater reincarnation interfaces to be more intuitive and forgiving. Consider a two or four hour timer after changes are made: within that window of time there is an 'undo' option, because the only thing worse than making critical mistakes building your character is compounding them because you didn't change out the right class at the right level or so on.

I would just like to remark that the idea in orange is a fantastic one! And, it should be relatively easy to do with the DDO store and the coupon mechanics.

Offer a one-time, once per account, coupon code that allows for 1 free +3 Lesser Heart of Wood. I would suggest to not give away the whole farm - but a +3 Lesser can fix A LOT of newbie "first character" screw ups. Heck, make the coupon code "OOPS-REROLL." Veterans that take the time to take new players under their wings can tell them about the OOPS-REROLL code.

This might be a huge player retention tool for new players. Think about those that sign up, check it out, and then drop because so many people are "mean" to them telling them that the Snake Blood feat is worthless (my son really wanted this one, heh!) and CON is NOT a dump stat.

I'm out of +1's, but if I remember, I'll come back and hit you tomorrow.

[danotmano1998]

Overall, I enjoy the content and it's difficulty.
I love that you can choose what you want to run, and how hard it will be.

Here are my concerns from a regular player with a year experience:

1. Quest difficulties are all over the place.
Some normal quests are far more difficult than other elite quests at the same level. There is a high degree of randomness here, it feels like some were balanced in the past, some current, and others forgotten. I don't see a lot of linearity.

What I see for difficulties:
Normal: At quest level
Hard: usually feels like quest level +1 or maybe +2
Elite: usually twice as hard as the hard setting. Usually the quests feel like they are at least twice as hard as hard, but is supposedly only one level harder than hard, which I don't believe for a moment.

2. XP is all over the place.
A good balance that rewards xp equally for various quests is in order. Why some are so ridiculously good and some are equally poor seems sloppy to me. I get that the length of the quest factors in, but look at the stats. I'm willing to bet that Delera's and Von4/5 are run at least 10 times more than other quests of the same level, because the XP is THAT good. A balancing of the base quest xp is in order, IMO.

3. Raids should NOT count towards bravery bonuses. Ever.
I want to run them as soon as I can. Putting together a pug for an at-level elite raid is nearly impossible. I want to run raids on normal, as these are THE MOST DIFFICULT ASPECTS OF THE GAME. (and the most fun to me). Penalizing my bravery bonus on these seems silly.
Quests are one thing, raids are another.

[Chai]

What are your thoughts on the overall difficulty of DDO? Sure, we offer difficulty choices, but do you find yourself in a postion where even Normal difficulty feels too much like hard?

Normal difficulty is too easy. It was about right when hold person was autocrit, debuffs were semi perminent (lasted entire quest or until shrine, unless removed via spell or potion) but with dungeon scaling, debuff durations being shortened, and the helpless change, normal feels like players almost have to try to fail.

If so, do you associate this with a given level in the game (e.g. 10+) or do you think there is just too much inconsistency throughout?

As the levels increase, the quest difficulty increase somewhat in relation to how they are labeled. Running a level 3 quest on normal with a level 3 toon is not the same challenge as running a level 12 quest on normal with a level 12 toon.

What's the right balance of challenge vs success for YOU? Do you expect to never fail when playing Normal - or would that simply bore you?

75% success rate when running quests with toons that still need the gear from the quest being run, at level.

In the current state of the game I would never expect to fail a quest run on normal.

I'm raising this subject for a few reasons. I think a lot of people expect that when it comes to an MMO, if you put time in you must get progress/reward out of it - and that failure is just plain bad. Spending 45 minutes into a quest only to fail can be very frustrating.

Most MMOs are easy until max level, then super hard from then on in.

Questing and XPing in DDO is still more difficult than questing and leveling in most other MMOs.

While Xping and questing are still easy on normal in DDO, in most other MMOs its mindless to the point where players get a quest to kill 10 animals, bring back 5 of their pelts and 3 of their teeth to the quest giver, run 200 feet away, mass AOE a bunch of those mobs, loot em and bring back the goods to the quest giver and gain 1/3rd of a level for that work.

Raiding in DDO is still far easier than raiding in other MMOs. Raiding in other MMOs is usually done on a one week timer, where 25 people are needed to kill one boss that drops two items, and takes 90 minutes to clear trash and kill.

We have been accused (and perhaps there's truth to this) that we've been balancing the game for the uber-player. Are you finding this to be the case? It seems like a couple years ago the salient message from the community was 'enough with the easy button already!'

Would love to know your thoughts on this. Feel free to reference specific quests.

It seems ironic that the playerbase seems to have waffled on that issue until you consider the following.

When its the powergamers who are the ones complaining about the "easy button", and adjustments are made due to that feedback, it limits the options of everyone else. When people whose toons are decked in epic claw set, epic 5 item chronoscope set, and epic red scale armor are complaining that the Shroud is too easy, making it harder for them puts that raid off limits (for the time being) for people who were on the cusp of being able to run it gear wise and experience wise previous to the adjustment.

Seems those power gamers are the ones that get listened to the most when providing feedback. I have even seen specific people post feedback threads where Turbine employees responded with "we were hoping you specifically would provide us feedbak on this."

I also see several instances of where adjustments and nerfs are implemented due to feedback provided by power gamers, where the rest of the user base is largely ignored. The FvS wings nerf is a perfect example of this. It did not really resolve any issue or create a situation where FvS cannot do anything they could do before, so no power balance was corrected there. What DID happen there is the power gamers whose mains are not FvS complaints were sated, even though the conditions which they complained about did not change. The class is still powerful enough to solo raids on harder difficulties. The class is still outDPSing classes whose only real contribution is DPS, while still being able to keep the rest of the raid healed.