Let's Talk: Game Difficulty

[count_spicoli]

Madfloyd,

I decided this would be the most appropriate thread to leave my feedback on the new epic difficulties introduced with the expansion yesterday. First off, I ran a whole slew of epics on all difficulties (I didn't run epic casual at all, but most quests I ran multiple times on normal, hard and elite).

Here is my impression of each difficulty:

Epic normal: for organized, prepared players this difficulty is a joke. For players that are breaking into epics for the first time or are simply trying to do epics without a full group, the difficulty is very appropriate. I am happy to see how this turned out, an epic difficulty for casual players to enjoy the experience beyond level 20.

Epic hard: This is where the above average/experienced players will spend most of their time I imagine. Without a properly balanced group, I still managed to walk through most of these quests easily with a group of coordinated players. Considering I play with well-geared veterans, this isn't unexpected. The increase in difficulty from normal is very appropriate and will leave a nice challenge for those ready to move past epic normal.

Epic Elite: Wow. This difficulty is truly challenging. I imagine it was designed for a geared-out group of level 25's with epic destinies. going through some of these dungeons at level 20 was pretty rough. We spent nearly 2 hours in Beyond the Rift doing this on elite. The amount of damage some of these monsters are pushing out is truly 'epic', and having a tank and/or strong form of crowd control is essential here. Mob saves are very high, and I liked how blade barrier kiting/Dotting was rendered inefficient in most cases.

Over all, I am extremely impressed with the balance of the new difficulties. You guys really pulled it off well and I look forward to pushing my skills with the new insane epic elite content (and old content, hehe - I still have a soft spot for red fens and von series).

Hats off to turbine for getting this right.

Agreed and well said. Nice job devs

[Slimeball]

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.

this is a very difficult subject I think everything is where it should be for the most part. The problem I am seeing is with the bravery bonus thats what almost everyone wants to do. the problem is there are a lot of fail groups because they are not ready for the elite difficulty. My suggestion would be either to get rid of the bravery bonus or add a new bonus like a 15% bonus if you have a 1st lifer in party who has got at least 10kills. this would make it so the UBER trs wouldn't just kick the new guys from their parties.

I hear and see a lot of top end players booting people for asking for shares. bootting because too low health. booting because person has no wings. Declining because of no guild tag or because they know guild tag reprosence a casual guild theme. so these newer/casual players end up having a terrible time findign groups i have seen the same person in lfm for same quest on normal for 4 days in a row now. If I am level range i always join the normal runs even if it breaks my bravery bonus because I want to help out these newer players.

doing these normal runs with these newer/casual players we normally end up short manning the quests due to waiting forever to fill and having a very difficult time sense expansion normal traps are hitting very hard and by not having a trapper in group we end up failing. sometimes they will buy a rogue hire from store which i beg them not to. every single time the rogue cannot find box so I buff rogue heroism then it finds box only to blow it up. these players spend real dollors only to have a fail hireling.

so yes normal difficulty does feel to hard and the rogue hires are a waste of money and trying to get in a group has become insanely DIFFICULT. levels 9-15 especailly because everyone has used stone and because of level 25 not as many people are tring or leveling so a BRAND NEW player is going to go through HELL to make it past level 9. this new system is driving away costumers :'(. I think the quickest fix for this is the bonus for TR's to have a 1st lifer in party who has got at least 10kills. I put in the 10 kills because I can see this system being abused by someoen making a 2nd account and just piking their 1st lifer making it get at least 10 kills would prevent this.

2nd solution might be if a tr joins a 1st lifers group on normal it won't break trs bravery streak help the trs help newer players that is this games biggest flaw is no one wants to help anyone. I try but I can only do so much.

[Yehediah]

The difficulty in this game is schizophrenic. For example the Lordsmarch quest on elite are much harder than the GH quests on elite yet the GH quests are a higher level.

In the Flesh elite is harder than some epics

Generally, I'd agree - they are way out of wack in terms of balance. The hardest quests are mostly things that came in post Shroud update. But, that's not 100% consistent either.

VoD and ToD: are fine right now, U11 elite was stupid hard, this is just difficult but not terrible.
Shroud: The blades do too much damage, this needs a nerf in all settings. I cannot believe your intention is for Elite Shroud to be harder than Elite ToD.
Titan: the drop-rate suck, please increase so we don't have to run this tediously annoying content over and over again.
Reaver: A level 14 raid shouldn't throw a 500 point spell at people, other than that it's fine.
Abbot: The HP on hard/elite are insane, cut them in half. And evasion? Really?

Agreed on most of that. VoD was insanely stupid for a long time after U11 - even on normal the average pug failed well over 50% of the time from what I saw. Generally, I'd like to see it be easier to do these at level. Either remove them from Bravery Bonus altogether (so it doesn't effect your streak doing it on normal) OR tone them way down. Even with tweaked up TR's, it's a bit too rough at BB level IF you can even find a group willing to try.

Honestly, I know you have to have things challenge 900 hp barbarians, but having things like previously mentioned blades that poor casters and ranged attackers can't avoid is way too frustrating. Have stuff like that be less insane on low HP range characters. If you melee, then you can have that stuff be close to the boss - if you melee you have to find a way to have better HP.

And, I agree, those boss HP are just a bit too insane. The idea was good, but overboard - even on some non-nameds at times. It doesn't make it so much more challenging, just drudgery.

I don't think I want you touching Epic quests as I don't trust you not to make things worse.

Very negative, so I hate to concur and say, yep. Honestly, I'd prefer epic not to have changed to the N-H-E. It messes up streaks and most I'd hate to try on E the way so much new stuff seems to expect uber gear/past lives AND doggone great play and knowledge of the quest.

I know you have to balance a wide variety of play styles of different people. But, I'm not a kid and spending 45-over an hour in a quest to fail, well, that really gets my goat. Make new quests shorter to partly avoid that problem. I honestly believe that the average PUG should be able to run an Elite BB at level and succeed most of the time. Especially since BB had the unfortunate side effect of making BB the "norm" for most groups. Plus, many favor things make it so elites should be do-able. I know, some what that "uber" feeling, but short man it or figure some way that doesn't penalize the rest of us that don't have the time to waste regularly failing. This isn't to say failure should be impossible. Goofs happen, just not regularly. I can list half a dozen or so quests that the average TR will skip because the success rate is too low and too costly.

[Symphony88]

I agree that Game Difficulty is a difficult subject.
But, if you are truly interested in understanding game difficulty, then I suggest you take a look at the permadeath guilds. There are multiple permadeath guilds on all the servers last time I checked. They comprise a smaller but significant group of gamers in DDO and they challenge themselves in a way ordinary gamers and those who don't know any better do. The reason I suggest that you look at what these guilds are doing is that these guilds carefully consider what aspects of the game they permit their members to use in order to create a balanced yet challenging experience for their members. Despite the fact that they are permadeath, there are level 20+ players in the game and, yes, they do raids. Yes, questing is commonly done at the elite difficulty. For these players, failure means starting over at level 1 (even if you were playing a level 20+), so if something in the game is too hard, these players will know. If you do something that harms the balance of the game, these guilds will outlaw it. If you make an aspect of the game too easy, these guilds will outlaw it. This is why I suggest that you look at these guilds and see what they are doing: because their style of play provides interesting anecdotes on this issue.

[Machination]

Here is my advise:

For all content pre-U14, you don't need to change anything, here is a breakdown:

1. Normal is easy (even for a new player, yet probably still challenging for that player
2. Hard is a little more challenging
3. Elite is challenging for a new player. Elite is also really easy for a vet who knows the quest/tactics has a decent level guild ship, has a lot of gear, resources, crafting skills, and oh yeah probably between his 2nd and 13th life.

There are imbalances in this pre-U14 content yes, but don't mess with it (I will get to reasoning later)

Don't mess with bravery bonus, it is the risk/reward and if a new player wants it, let him risk it. My advise to new players is always, go run normal, get to know the quests, your build, the gear, etc. You don't really learn much blowing through level 1-20 with a bunch of TR grinders, you just get to 20 fast and don't understand the game much.

Now, here is a very important point Turbine: Just stop messing with all the pre-U14 quests, gear, crafting, etc. Stop it. There is so much content and things to learn for the new player already. And all of us vets are not interested in changes to THAT content that we've run for years. We've run it how many times already? Then you introduced True Reincarnation we ran it 100's more. Do you think slight changes to difficulty make it interesting to us? It does not. In fact, its irritating and insulting. Just fix the bugs. I will repeat for clarity JUST FIX THE BUGS. And don't waste your time and ours by messing with anything else in that pre-U14 content.

I very good friend quit because of the U14 nerfed the min lvl of Cannith crafted gear. He spent millions in plat and a lot of time grinding to get to lvl 150 in all schools. Completionist and many legend build TR's now, he came to this game from WoW years ago. Why did he quit? Well, he put it like this, "The game operator/developer is a steward entrusted with making the game pleasant for players. When a game company decides to take what people have invested in, and destroy/diminish stats on gear that players worked for, they can't be trusted anymore. I'm done". He then went on to say, "[COLOR="rgb(255, 140, 0)"]They have time to mess with low level gear that I spent a lot of time and resources on and now I am supposed to just accept it and make new gear? What for, they don't seem to understand that I've run that content 1000's of times now and am just grinding a life out now, what do they care if I'm overpowered I am playing and paying....well not anymore! They have time to mess with my low level junk and not fix bugs, well enough is enough.[/COLOR]" Now, everyone understands that new levels make old gear obsolete and [COLOR="rgb(255, 140, 0)"]nothing is wrong with that[/COLOR]. What is counter productive is messing with all of the old content, old gear, old crafting, old everything. Just let it go and move on. New players will enjoy it, old players will be forced to run it again for their past lives if they want those extra feats. Changing it accomplishes nothing and is a waste of your own resources.

Now, on to the second subject, which is U14 content:

Here are some points:

1. You made it easy for casual players to play Epic content with the "normal" difficulty on Epic. I think this was a very good move and will keep a larger player base as you focus on more new high level content.

2. You made it a challenge (but not over challenging) for hard difficulty to a newer player. For any of the gear'd and legend build vets hard difficulty is lacking any challenge straight out of the gates, the day of the update.

3. You made elite difficulty on these epic quests, only really more difficult due to mob stats. And I don't think it should be possible for 3 level 22 players to do all the evening star quests on Elite. I posted before that Elite Epic should be really only possible to complete (and I mean possible with a chance of failure) for level 25 full group (yes full group) with appropriate gear. What would be even more of a plus is if Elite difficulty included more or different objectives, similar to the difference between Von6 at lvl and Von6 Epic. Make things more difficult strategically not just extra HP, DC, damage, etc. Get a little bit more creative about objectives and strategies.

Now, all that being said above, I have heard players in PUGS in the new content say "its to easy" and others say "this is ridiculous they can't expect anyone to complete this", depending upon the situation. So it is true you can never please everyone, but you guys did a good job of giving yourself a real out with norm/hard/elite Epic difficulty options. I just think that you are not using it properly. Epic Elite should be that, Elite. There should be maybe one, two, Elite completions in total for each quest on each server from release date to today. It should be **** difficult and the best vet players should of had to go get to level 25 and grind out gear before being even able to complete the new Epic Elite. Instead, it was bravery bonus without failure for a lot of people on Elite (at lvl 22/23 ha). That's disappointing for a lot of players. You should of left the top tier for exactly that, the top tier players after they got to lvl 25..........

[Yehediah]

I've got pro and con views on a lot of your post.

For all content pre-U14, you don't need to change anything,

General agreement here. However, U-14 seems a strange cut-off to me. Stuff before the addition of Shroud, yes. There is some seriously wacked quests within U1-14.

Don't mess with bravery bonus, it is the risk/reward and if a new player wants it, let him risk it.

Generally agreed, though as I noted, it'd be nice for the raids (many of which are VERY VERY difficult at E BB and few attempt) were excluded from messing with streaks. It'd probably also be nice to have the high level quests that were designed for more "tweaked" toons to be excluded. For crying out loud, how many vets REFUSE to even attempt Lv 15 in the Flesh final chain quest on E for BB? If that's what players want (very challenging content), then drop that content from BB to let people finish it on a lower difficulty without ruining their streak.

Honestly, some raids have become VERY rare to see up simply because they are a pain and not worth the rewards except to a bunch of new people that are clearly unprepared for the raid challenge. So, giving vets a reason to go back in there would be nice even if they are pre-U14 raids.

Now, here is a very important point Turbine: Just stop messing with all the pre-U14 quests, gear, crafting, etc. Stop it. There is so much content and things to learn for the new player already. And all of us vets are not interested in changes to THAT content that we've run for years. We've run it how many times already? Then you introduced True Reincarnation we ran it 100's more. Do you think slight changes to difficulty make it interesting to us? It does not. In fact, its irritating and insulting. Just fix the bugs. I will repeat for clarity JUST FIX THE BUGS. And don't waste your time and ours by messing with anything else in that pre-U14 content.

Generally agreed with the above. However, I'd honestly rather see a "redo" of a quest pre Shroud era (that is lower than level 14 on Normal) than see a NEW quest in that level range - something like what was done with Korthos. But, I'd still much rather prefer bugs fixed. Way too many and it seems to be getting worse.

Now, all that being said above, I have heard players in PUGS in the new content say "its to easy" and others say "this is ridiculous they can't expect anyone to complete this", depending upon the situation. So it is true you can never please everyone, but you guys did a good job of giving yourself a real out with norm/hard/elite Epic difficulty options. I just think that you are not using it properly. Epic Elite should be that, Elite. There should be maybe one, two, Elite completions in total for each quest on each server from release date to today. It should be **** difficult and the best vet players should of had to go get to level 25 and grind out gear before being even able to complete the new Epic Elite. Instead, it was bravery bonus without failure for a lot of people on Elite (at lvl 22/23 ha). That's disappointing for a lot of players. You should of left the top tier for exactly that, the top tier players after they got to lvl 25..........

Here, I'd disagree alot. Yep, I always run into those (typically college age) players who think they are some kind of awesome and it's a status thing to think they can do what others can't (more often only because they have tons more time to run it over and over FAILING just to get that completion in). I work and don't have time to grind failures for that token feather. Further, I'm a VIP who pays alot to play (and a lot of those of the other view that I run into don't pay for it or uses their parents money to pay for it). Yes, you have to balance to attract all kinds of players - thus my reasoning for there being other "status" symbols for those people other than that they did an elite completion and few others did. Frankly, after the next update none of those types will care for running that old stuff again on E, so the rest of us are stuck with their leftover garbage.

Bravery streak is a major game effect now and Elite favor is also very helpful. Neither of those should be used as the trophy to distinguish supposed "uber" players from the norm.

[Machination]

Generally agreed, though as I noted, it'd be nice for the raids (many of which are VERY VERY difficult at E BB and few attempt) were excluded from messing with streaks. It'd probably also be nice to have the high level quests that were designed for more "tweaked" toons to be excluded. For crying out loud, how many vets REFUSE to even attempt Lv 15 in the Flesh final chain quest on E for BB? If that's what players want (very challenging content), then drop that content from BB to let people finish it on a lower difficulty without ruining their streak.

Honestly, some raids have become VERY rare to see up simply because they are a pain and not worth the rewards except to a bunch of new people that are clearly unprepared for the raid challenge. So, giving vets a reason to go back in there would be nice even if they are pre-U14 raids.

The reason the quests/raids category you are referring to do not get played by vets is because there is no motivation. Why do I want to go run a quest that has no unique loot, a lower xp per minute comparatively, and favor that is useless? Well, people just won't clamor to such quests, especially if they are mediocre fun and have a high risk of failure at level in a PUG. The fact is there is so much low/mid level content that its a no win situation to even bother trying to ever balance it, there will always be quests people don't run often (those that give the least xp/loot/favor etc. reward).

Generally agreed with the above. However, I'd honestly rather see a "redo" of a quest pre Shroud era (that is lower than level 14 on Normal) than see a NEW quest in that level range - something like what was done with Korthos. But, I'd still much rather prefer bugs fixed. Way too many and it seems to be getting worse.

I should qualify my statements about pre-U14 to be clear (but it is just my opinion, so take it as you may):

1. There is enough content between levels 1-20, period. There are enough quests, adventure areas, favor, carrots, bells whistles. Everything under level 20 I consider pre-U14. Enough is enough, we have enough. We don't need more content for levels 1-20.

2. Nothing pre-U14 should be tweaked, balanced, etc. Instead any and all resources applied to pre-U14 quests (and again I define that as lvl 20 or under) should be strictly focused on bug fixes. We don't need that content tweaked, it will not increase the attraction to that content in any way.

Here, I'd disagree alot. Yep, I always run into those (typically college age) players who think they are some kind of awesome and it's a status thing to think they can do what others can't (more often only because they have tons more time to run it over and over FAILING just to get that completion in). I work and don't have time to grind failures for that token feather. Further, I'm a VIP who pays alot to play (and a lot of those of the other view that I run into don't pay for it or uses their parents money to pay for it). Yes, you have to balance to attract all kinds of players - thus my reasoning for there being other "status" symbols for those people other than that they did an elite completion and few others did. Frankly, after the next update none of those types will care for running that old stuff again on E, so the rest of us are stuck with their leftover garbage.

Bravery streak is a major game effect now and Elite favor is also very helpful. Neither of those should be used as the trophy to distinguish supposed "uber" players from the norm.

Qualifying statements (again just my opinion, so take as you will):

1. Bravery bonus is a nice XP boost. Those who think it is a "status symbol" well there is that phrase "legend in your own mind". BB is just an XP boost you can choose to use and choose to drop on a whim. In fact, I've dropped it many times on different toons because the opportunity arose to get more XP per min doing something else. I've also kept it across multiple lives, it was after keeping it across multiple lives that I lost interest and just looked at the numbers. Its not a big deal to lose it and get back. When was the last time someone told you their bravery bonus count and you thought to yourself "that guy really is awesome"? I rest my case on that point.

2. There should be a tier of game play that is extremely challenging, which a small percentage of the player base are able to actually complete. There should be some reward for doing it. You can't have a top without a bottom. And you can't have a bottom without a top. I won't be in that tier. But I know people in that tier, and they will leave if that tier is not available, to other games. That difficulty and challenge need to be there.

Let me put it this way, are there people who play casual? I know there are. There are people that run casual. Do the masses run casual.....no. Do the masses call out for casual to be made more difficult....no. Just because everybody wants to run elite does not mean it should be made easier so that everyone can run it like it was normal. In the same vein if everyone was screaming for casual to be more difficult the answer is simple, tell them to run normal not casual.

I understand and partially agree with your comments about favor. Favor is a major incentive to run elite. And for the casual gamer limited on time unlocking that could be cumbersome at best. But, like everything there is a flip side, and there should be an incentive for the risk vs. reward of elite. Unfortunately, no one will ever be completely happy with the system

[Yehediah]

The reason the quests/raids category you are referring to do not get played by vets is because there is no motivation. Why do I want to go run a quest that has no unique loot, a lower xp per minute comparatively, and favor that is useless? Well, people just won't clamor to such quests, especially if they are mediocre fun and have a high risk of failure at level in a PUG. The fact is there is so much low/mid level content that its a no win situation to even bother trying to ever balance it, there will always be quests people don't run often (those that give the least xp/loot/favor etc. reward).

Actually, most quests do get ran (with a few noted exceptions - such as In the Flesh) with the BB. So, if one is willing to lead a group, you can get it done at level if desired - as I normally do. So, the exceptions to "fix" on this point would be relatively small - some raids as you noted being prime. Adding items to it or lowering the 20th run to something far less could help (as well as either excluding raids from BB streak altogether OR making them easier to complete at BB level).

1. There is enough content between levels 1-20, period. There are enough quests, adventure areas, favor, carrots, bells whistles. Everything under level 20 I consider pre-U14. Enough is enough, we have enough. We don't need more content for levels 1-20.

Still generally with you other than noted above. IF they really want to add content, should be stuff above level 16 (so, my level limit is slightly lower than yours) - and it should not be the pain in the butt stuff like some of the newer stuff that cannot be done by a normal fairly decent PUG on E for BB.

I'm all for post 20 stuff being harder as long as it doesn't mess with the BB streak for a later TR - as it currently seems to do.

2. Nothing pre-U14 should be tweaked, balanced, etc. Instead any and all resources applied to pre-U14 quests (and again I define that as lvl 20 or under) should be strictly focused on bug fixes. We don't need that content tweaked, it will not increase the attraction to that content in any way.

And, again, we are pretty close in view. And, even with my allowance of 16-20, I'd agree here that I'd MUCH rather see fixes to bugs, etc. Though, being an old PnP player, I'd really like to see them add gnomes - the only "core" race/class missing from the current offerings. I'd also like to see more "prestige classes" as enhancements to add more "core" PnP stuff to the game. But, I'd still agree with you on the focusing on FIXING all the crud they keep breaking.

Qualifying statements (again just my opinion, so take as you will):

Rest isn't quoted, but no real contention here, just a couple of differences. I'd note there are a good number of players who don't like breaking that BB streak and a good number of players who like running most every quest 1/life over maxing that XP/minute. Nothing against ya'll that prefer the XP/minute - just recognition of different preferences and neither is the "only" or "right" way to play - two different styles.

Now on the extreme challenge stuff, I'm more of an adventure/RP player over a PVP type. And, generally, we are not so much into that "extreme" challenge as the journey/character development. I'm all for giving something for them, but the reward has to be balanced more to bragging rights than something that most players really need. The favor point difference is therefore an annoyance to me for this. Premium raid loot would be even more of annoyance here - assuming they are "uber" as they think, part of their "uberness" is that they have the "uber" gear that if they are really that "uber" they don't need! (It's us not so "uber" that would need the gear to make it "easier"). Honestly, yep, the highly competitive need to be attracted to the game, but most of that "uber" is in their eyes rather than them really being anywhere near as great as they think they are. I've played with plenty of truly great players and seldom would they be one's I'd group here - it's those that believe it's some kind of status and keep trying to use it to belittle others and frankly, I could do without those players!

[slimkj]

Now, here is a very important point Turbine: Just stop messing with all the pre-U14 quests, gear, crafting, etc. Stop it. There is so much content and things to learn for the new player already. And all of us vets are not interested in changes to THAT content that we've run for years. We've run it how many times already? Then you introduced True Reincarnation we ran it 100's more. Do you think slight changes to difficulty make it interesting to us? It does not. In fact, its irritating and insulting. Just fix the bugs. I will repeat for clarity JUST FIX THE BUGS. And don't waste your time and ours by messing with anything else in that pre-U14 content.

Please don't think you speak for all vets. I would love to see some of the older content get an overhaul. There are some old quests that could do with visual makeovers, long standing issues fixed and some that need changing to be less painful. Not to mention I would like to see some old raids have better loot tables so they are run more.

[Machination]

I realize there are probably some vets out there who would like to see changes to the old content. Considering that what would your priority be considering the issues you just listed, if Turbine resources could only be applied in serial order one at a time:

1. Old quests get visual makeovers.
2. Long standing issues fixed (BUGS fixed)
3. Old raids have better loot tables

Well, I vote #2, which is exactly what I put in my post. If Turbine would fix all those issues, and they had extra resources with no idea how to deploy them, then and only then would I say move on to #1.

#3 does not actually require any resources, because it is a run time variable (or something like that). It does not actually require any coding its just a setting for the quest(s) in question. It is an operating decision more than anything, and not resource intensive.

Please don't think you speak for all vets. I would love to see some of the older content get an overhaul. There are some old quests that could do with visual makeovers, long standing issues fixed and some that need changing to be less painful. Not to mention I would like to see some old raids have better loot tables so they are run more.

[slimkj]

That's reasonable. I didn't just mean bugs by long standing issues though. Some quests/chains have popularity and playability issues that puts a lot of people off them. They could do with a revamp and I would class them under long standing issues.

[laurawilder]

Some people are just laughable. So the game as a whole for years has been getting easier and more content created to avoid even certain quests if you like for any reason. Now some of you want to biotch about elite being to hard for you to get a bb? Really?! Are you serious? BRAVERY bonus. Whining that something is too hard for you, is not the act of bravery. It's not a casual bonus or thanks for showing up bonus.

It has elite in the name for a reason and bb is not a right its a bonus. If you cannot do quest at elite tough luck to you. Learn from what you did wrong and try again. To hit the forums crying about In the Flesh being too hard and should be made easier at elite or excluded should be embarrassing to said posters.

Let me guess though you still want the loot tables to be the same or better so you look good running around in game. LOL.

[Ranncore]

This applies to Ebberon content, as I have not done enough in MoTU to talk about it.

Epic Casual - not even recognized as a difficulty setting by players, even casual players. This is problematic, as it seems the new difficulties cater to casual players.

Epic Normal and Hard are a complete joke, not even worth playing, not worth pugging because they are soloable.

Epic Elite is a challenge for well geared fresh twenties. I'm wondering about level 25s. It must vary from quest to quest.

I'm going to compare raids I'm familiar with and that are popular.

Normal Shroud vs Normal Echrono.
Not even a comparison. Every mob in shroud hits harder and has more hp, ESPECIALLY the bosses and red names. Level 16 vs level 21. So is the Shroud too hard, or is Normal Echrono too easy? In my pug Echrono, 1st day after updates, the whole team split up, healed themselves, no risk of every dying. We kited the abishai. There was absolutely no strategy involved. I later solod normal Echrono. I cannot solo a normal shroud.
Hard Echrono wasn't any different - we shortmanned it and a rogue tanked.
Let me just say that Hard Shroud is still challenging enough to be fun for a veteran player. Echrono is not.

Normal Tempest Spine vs Normal Demon Queen (preraid and raid)
This is a funny one. The traps in tempest spine hit harder than DQ. The boss in Tempest Spine takes strategy to defeat - the palemasters aura could have killed Lailat in DQ. What a joke.

[Phemt81]

Some people are just laughable.

It has elite in the name for a reason and bb is not a right its a bonus. If you cannot do quest at elite tough luck to you. Learn from what you did wrong and try again. To hit the forums crying about In the Flesh being too hard and should be made easier at elite or excluded should be embarrassing to said posters.

"Things made for an elite are never good".

Aside that "elite" should not mean hyper-enhanced-frustration or totally bugged cause devs can't add a real challenge instead of giving mobs 9001 hp and damage us for the same amount with a magic missile.

Elite is not intended for being for an "elite" group of people, let's face it. With the favor and xp system lately modified the game suggests us to do it, either if you are first life or not. And this is a good thing since you were forced to run 3 times the same quest to get all the favors/xp in the past.

This new bravery stuff improved a lot the basic mechanics of ddo. Don't pretend to not know it, or don't pretend others to. It's the way the game is designed.

[Machination]

It helps when you post a quote. As your comments stands I did not see anyone in this thread (recent posts) complain about elite BB being too difficult or needing change. What exactly are you referring to? This is an old thread with only a couple of recent new comments, maybe you read something from the past.

My argument is that after U14 Elite Epic is too easy, and Elite Epic be a lot more difficult.

Some people are just laughable. So the game as a whole for years has been getting easier and more content created to avoid even certain quests if you like for any reason. Now some of you want to biotch about elite being to hard for you to get a bb? Really?! Are you serious? BRAVERY bonus. Whining that something is too hard for you, is not the act of bravery. It's not a casual bonus or thanks for showing up bonus.

It has elite in the name for a reason and bb is not a right its a bonus. If you cannot do quest at elite tough luck to you. Learn from what you did wrong and try again. To hit the forums crying about In the Flesh being too hard and should be made easier at elite or excluded should be embarrassing to said posters.

Let me guess though you still want the loot tables to be the same or better so you look good running around in game. LOL.

[Yehediah]

Some people are just laughable. ...

It has elite in the name for a reason and bb is not a right its a bonus. If you cannot do quest at elite tough luck to you. Learn from what you did wrong and try again. To hit the forums crying about In the Flesh being too hard and should be made easier at elite or excluded should be embarrassing to said posters.

Actually, you are the laughable person. It IS a level 15 quest, 17 on elite. A very good hand-picked team has a hard time getting it completed at that level and likely will have a failure before doing so (and likely spend considerable resources doing so). It's WAY out of wack compared to level 17 quests.

Waiting to 20 and losing the BB is fine, but EVEN at 20, it's often hard to find a PUG that CAN do it at 20! Again, the quest is way out of wack compared to others of its level. Ergo, your defense of it is laughable.

[Chai]

Actually, you are the laughable person. It IS a level 15 quest, 17 on elite. A very good hand-picked team has a hard time getting it completed at that level and likely will have a failure before doing so (and likely spend considerable resources doing so). It's WAY out of wack compared to level 17 quests.

Waiting to 20 and losing the BB is fine, but EVEN at 20, it's often hard to find a PUG that CAN do it at 20! Again, the quest is way out of wack compared to others of its level. Ergo, your defense of it is laughable.

We did it in permadeath at level on elite.

And lived.

I dont buy the justification that all quests of the same level should be the same challenge. There have been quite a few examples in the game over the years where this has not been the case. It makes the game less vanilla and more fun.

The idea that elite should be accessible to everyone with no learning curve whatsoever is an entitlement issue. The real reason people ask for elite to be easier is they want the highest XP but they dont want to move slower or use tactics to play through elite - so they ask for quests to be nerfed to autocompletion so they can farm xp/min. The reason they want this is because if elite takes significantly longer than hard, then running hard is the best Xp/min. If they can run elite as fast as hard, thats 25% more Xp on a bravery bonus of 5 or more. If they run through elite and die, but do not die in hard, they are netting a 15% Xp bonus for running elite. If they die on elite but not hard, and elite still takes even slightly longer, the Xp/min becomes a wash. And of course, an epic failure = little to no XP - if they were farming Xp/min, shoulda ran hard.

Two TR lives ago, I ran all elites because I enjoy playing all content, wanted the challenge, and didnt mind less Xp/min because I was having fun. This last TR life, I wanted to get back to 20 to raid and experience the epic part of the game so I ran mostly hard. We were doing 4 and 5 minute completions of quests on hard that would have taken 20 or more minutes when using tactics and strategy on elite in the higher level content. There was still more than enough XP in the game where we could be selective and didnt have to run everything.

The complaints that elite should be accessible to everyone are unsubstantiated on all fronts, save for what I just pointed out.

[Xezrak]

Madfloyd,

I decided this would be the most appropriate thread to leave my feedback on the new epic difficulties introduced with the expansion yesterday. First off, I ran a whole slew of epics on all difficulties (I didn't run epic casual at all, but most quests I ran multiple times on normal, hard and elite).

Here is my impression of each difficulty:

Epic normal: for organized, prepared players this difficulty is a joke. For players that are breaking into epics for the first time or are simply trying to do epics without a full group, the difficulty is very appropriate. I am happy to see how this turned out, an epic difficulty for casual players to enjoy the experience beyond level 20.

Epic hard: This is where the above average/experienced players will spend most of their time I imagine. Without a properly balanced group, I still managed to walk through most of these quests easily with a group of coordinated players. Considering I play with well-geared veterans, this isn't unexpected. The increase in difficulty from normal is very appropriate and will leave a nice challenge for those ready to move past epic normal.

Epic Elite: Wow. This difficulty is truly challenging. I imagine it was designed for a geared-out group of level 25's with epic destinies. going through some of these dungeons at level 20 was pretty rough. We spent nearly 2 hours in Beyond the Rift doing this on elite. The amount of damage some of these monsters are pushing out is truly 'epic', and having a tank and/or strong form of crowd control is essential here. Mob saves are very high, and I liked how blade barrier kiting/Dotting was rendered inefficient in most cases.

Over all, I am extremely impressed with the balance of the new difficulties. You guys really pulled it off well and I look forward to pushing my skills with the new insane epic elite content (and old content, hehe - I still have a soft spot for red fens and von series).

Hats off to turbine for getting this right.

I think this sums it up perfectly.

Extremely well done turbine

Edit: the only changes needed are maybe tweaking some of the elites to be a little harder, leave norm/hard as is.

[Yehediah]

We did it in permadeath at level on elite.

And lived.

And your point is? Clearly you didn't read my postings. Yes, it CAN be done. As I noted, I've done it before. However, I've also seen it fail way more often than it succeeds and the average PUG won't even attempt it as a result. If you have a group that works really well together and have some people with very good timing and communication, yes, it's fairly easy. But, that doesn't describe the greatest majority of the PUGS. And, frankly, it's a RPG - so, that timing thing is highly annoying for those not into that style.

I dont buy the justification that all quests of the same level should be the same challenge. There have been quite a few examples in the game over the years where this has not been the case. It makes the game less vanilla and more fun.

Again, and your point is? Clearly you haven't read the posting, it's way out of whack comparatively. This sort of thing is easy enough for Turbine to monitor. See # of quest attempts at difficulty and see number of successes. They ought to be monitoring this, but sometimes I don't think they do. Having some quests more difficult than others at the level is fine - they have a variety of difficulties. But, when many 20's have a hard time with the level 17 quest (15 on norm, 17 on E), then that's a bit much on a game whose rewards are based at the level number. It means most won't do the quest.

The idea that elite should be accessible to everyone with no learning curve whatsoever is an entitlement issue. The real reason people ask for elite to be easier is they want the highest XP but they dont want to move slower or use tactics to play through elite - so they ask for quests to be nerfed to autocompletion so they can farm xp/min.

Uh, no - again, you make large assumptions that are not true. I seldom am concerned about XP/min - I like doing most of the quests 1x/life. I therefore hate quests like this because they are hard to get done because few want to do it - and if they are looking straight at XP and loot, yeah, it's not very worthwhile - especially with a higher chance of total wipe/failure.

There was still more than enough XP in the game where we could be selective and didnt have to run everything.

Well, that's kind of part of the point. Most won't because it is too hard and ain't worth it. Therefore those that do want to run it are usually out-of-luck because it is way out of whack for it's level difficulty.

The complaints that elite should be accessible to everyone are unsubstantiated on all fronts, save for what I just pointed out.

Clearly not Mr. Know-it-all, if you actually READ my complaints... only unsubstantiated for YOUR play style.

[phillymiket]

I don't think difficulty is too far off.

I've run some characters on F2P account with no gear recently.
Admittedly, one cannot simply turn off knowledge of the quests/game.

At level Elite quests solo, for me under those conditions, are challenging at times but easy to do.
There is a bit of a 'rocks/paper/scissors' thing with some quests seemingly undoable for some classes for me (like hold for reinforcements on a melee etc).

Normal and hard are Ok, I guess, but I feel Elite should be more difficult across the board.
I should have a very good chance of dieing on an ungeared 28pt build instead of dieing only when I get very unlucky or sloppy.
On a geared, main account TR soloing, death on Elite is a pretty rare thing.

Would amping up Elite make Elite unplayable for new players?

It might.
It would also increase the learning curve.
I don't recall being able to do Elite when I first started.
I also don't recall feeling left out of anything or feeling entitled to do every quest at the most difficult setting, either.

For Epics:
Normal seems good if you want to make them very accessible.
It's very easy on a 20.

Hard could be harder.
It should feel like more of a step up.
Only on certain aspects of E-H can you even notice a difference from E-N.
When a E-hard level trash mob hits you should think 'Oh, we're not on normal. Slow down'.

Elite is good like it is.

Long story short -
I have no problem making the game very easy for newer players.
Thats where Casual/Normal should be and pretty much is.

Hard, especially for Epics, could be harder. It's very easy on Epic and on Heroic it is very hard to predict how much of a step up it will be.
It should be where TRs can't just put it on auto-pilot but still not be too challenged.
New players should be at the edge of what they can do.

Elite, I feel, should be very hard.
On Elite, the game should be balanced for the top level players.
So for E-Epic things are good.
For E-Heroic you are way, way off.
.