Let's Talk: Game Difficulty

[Ivan_Milic]

Regarding Epic levels, EC should be dropped, no one uses that level. I think EN should become EC. EH should become EN. The new EH should be easier than EE. And EE mobs should have there HP doubled, but have their damage and saves decreased. That would still make it a challenge but, it would make non optimal builds feel useful as well. The mobs would be annoying but because of the reduced saving and damage they could be dealt with using strategy instead of exploits.

Give mobs more hp?
You should work for turbine, would fit right in.

[Vanhooger]

Most EE are easy(not on my build ), or very easy if you run with veteran that are running monkcher or shiradi/wiz/sorc. Any other build still quite challenging when doing EE.

I reckon on my 20 sorc fleshy, that I do kill stuff easy enough, but as a trade off my save, hp, prr, dodge and ac suck, so I can get intakilled, my self healing is just cocoon and scroll, that mean i need to be very careful, but i cant....if I want to make my sp last till end of the quest I need to aggro a bunch of mob and rely on my cc + hold and nuke to not get killed.

For me still a good challenge, not for shiradi infinite sp, sla reconstruct + reconstruct spell, no additional cost for maximize, +evasion, +high save and the delirium of joy and arcane supremacy, or monkcher on evasion dodge, manyshot+adrenaline+arrow of slaying and kite fest.

Fix those build, EE is already challenging enough.

[dydzio0614]

While EE might be challenging enough for most of the players, veterans who already did EE stuff have kinda nothing interesting to do in the game. Because DDO lacks some challenging content 'not for average player' that should be difficult for experienced group on EN difficulty. And it was previously implemented in DDO. Before Menace of the Underdark there were raids such as ToD / LoB / Master Artificer and on hard or elite they were very demanding, causing over 50% of the tries to be wipes. There were shiny rewards (only when doing LoB on hardest difficulties you could get ingredients to finish alchemical weapon and it was probably harder at that time than deathwyrm on EE currently). If you make some raid that is hard only on EE then there will be no reason to do EE as loot will be available on lower difficulties (unless you make most of loot drop only on EE). Stop giving DDO a 'casual player mode' because everybody wants to be instantly able to do everything on EH. Give it a challenge. As far as I know nobody was able to solo ToD on hard/elite before MotU and after The Fall of Truth was introduced then after few days some good builds started to show their EE solo completions. And we had some 'imbalanced' builds before MotU as well, they were called FvS with SP regen items. Another funny thing about The Lord of Blades raid is that the boss himself still seems to be more difficult to me than Truthful One.

But giving players a challenge is not enough to be done, it should go in pair with character rebalancing, CC casting looks so useless for me now and it is very complex system with many interesting spells, missing the times when people were looking for some web spell caster for golems in Master Artificer raid. I do not think that so many things should be replaced with equivalent Epic Destiny stuff.

Also missing the times when The Chamber of Raiyum on Epic was easily 120 minutes run when pugging, and epic shards / seals were really looking valuable, epic items were hard to get, now if you have one good character you can get half of the endgame gear for some new character within a month and without big effort as some of good gear parts arent even bound at all (thanks to Shadowsight / Guardian's Ring / Goatskin Boots / Ring of Shadows / Purple Dragon Gloves and similar). And such character if played by somebody who knows the game becomes fairly good and is often enough for running EE content and some EE raids (will not be the strongest of party members but still).

[pHo3nix]

Most EE are easy(not on my build ), or very easy if you run with veteran that are running monkcher or shiradi/wiz/sorc. Any other build still quite challenging when doing EE.

Most EE are quite easy as long as you have good defense, decent self-healing and good DPS: there are way more builds than just monkchers or shiradi that make EE easy, it's just that shiradi requires no PLs and just basic gear.

[Grimlock]

game is way too easy, especially at EE content.

I agree with this part if your statement. If I was a developer at Turbine and was reading the Achievement thread one to two days after rolling out the Thunderholme or FoT content and saw people soloing the content on EE I had just worked on I would be extremely embarrassed.

Under no circumstances should any build in this game be able to solo a raid. Period. DDO was supposed to be centered around groups and parties to complete content with a small portion of quests available for soloing. Now, nearly every quest in the entire game with the exception of what maybe 4-5 quests can be done via solo EE. This is a problem.

*EDIT*

And I would go on to say that the answer is not adding more hit points. Like the Kuldjargh - which was a dumb idea. 300,000+ hit point red names? Seriously?

[pHo3nix]

Under no circumstances should any build in this game be able to solo a raid. Period. DDO was supposed to be centered around groups and parties to complete content with a small portion of quests available for soloing. Now, nearly every quest in the entire game with the exception of what maybe 4-5 quests can be done via solo EE. This is a problem.

So what's your idea? Add random levers here and there to be pulled at the same time so a single player can't do it? If someone is good let them solo raids, why would you care?

[moo_cow]

I remember when you use to need cc and healers for epics..... Epics are way to easy compared to the good old days. The 2 new raids on ee aren't a walk in the park but 6 man quests are way to easy. I regularly pug ee's with byoh's and I take the first people to hit the lfm and every time we steam roll the content. (even with the people that don't byoh) People say that we shouldn't make the game challenging for the 1% of people who have no problems steam rolling ee's in group but honestly I generally never run into pugs that can't steam roll content. 90% of the time I'm in a random pug with people I have never played with and the content is still a walk in the park. So ya, it's a lot more than 1% of people who are looking for more of a challenge people. Game is to easy and you all know it.

[Grimlock]

So what's your idea? Add random levers here and there to be pulled at the same time so a single player can't do it? If someone is good let them solo raids, why would you care?

The difficulty of the creatures you fight should require that the raid party is equipped properly with a variety of classes. Roles can overlap through multiclassing, but it is utterly ridiculous to look at the achievement thread on these forums and see nearly every epic quest in the game with a 10 minute completion time on EE solo. If I was an exec at Turbine and looked at that thread, then opened up my Microsoft Project file for Fall of Truth and looked at the logged labor hours associated with that project heads would roll.

Putting in levers or making it impossible for one person to do a quest (ie- VON doors) is one approach. Another would be aggro management and monster UI/abilities that cripple movement. Game designers need to watch people running these raids on Lam and have the players find the ledges monkchers love to look for so they can sit pretty and plink plink their way to a solo completion.

Prevent kiting.

I will say this again so there is no confusion.

Prevent kiting.

Little hopalong monkcher running around in giant circles shooting Pinion at things until they die on Epic Elite does not require any skill just as standing on a ledge shooting things until they die does. One developer had a novel idea that is used in Shroud part 5 - Harry's teleportation ability. This prevents people from kiting, or hiding on a ledge avoiding a beat down. Another tactic developers could use is to apply a chains like effect like in VoD to hinder movement. By removing the kiting technique for raids and assigning other necessary objectives like pulling levers, destroying an object within a certain time frame, solving puzzles, defeating another enemy in an entirely separate part of the raid you are ensuring it is necessary for more than one person to solo a raid.

These are just a few ideas off the top of my head. The point is we have ideas in game now that we can draw upon and simply apply them to future content. The development team needs to try harder. EE solo completions should be a freaking miracle. EE raid solo's should never exist - even for monkchers/shiradi builds.

The game is sad when not only are EE quests/raids doable by yourself, but some of you guys have this down to 10 minutes or less. The game is no longer about "how do we defeat this as a group", but who can solo it in the fastest time possible, which is usually done within the first week of release.

Pathetic.

[moo_cow]

I agree with this part if your statement. If I was a developer at Turbine and was reading the Achievement thread one to two days after rolling out the Thunderholme or FoT content and saw people soloing the content on EE I had just worked on I would be extremely embarrassed.

Under no circumstances should any build in this game be able to solo a raid. Period. DDO was supposed to be centered around groups and parties to complete content with a small portion of quests available for soloing. Now, nearly every quest in the entire game with the exception of what maybe 4-5 quests can be done via solo EE. This is a problem.

*EDIT*

And I would go on to say that the answer is not adding more hit points. Like the Kuldjargh - which was a dumb idea. 300,000+ hit point red names? Seriously?

Are you talking 4-5 quests or raids?

[Grimlock]

Are you talking 4-5 quests or raids?

Both. Like my quote said - in the entire game we have maybe 4-5 quests that require more than one person/hireling assists in order to get a completion.

[moo_cow]

The difficulty of the creatures you fight should require that the raid party is equipped properly with a variety of classes. Roles can overlap through multiclassing, but it is utterly ridiculous to look at the achievement thread on these forums and see nearly every epic quest in the game with a 10 minute completion time on EE solo. If I was an exec at Turbine and looked at that thread, then opened up my Microsoft Project file for Fall of Truth and looked at the logged labor hours associated with that project heads would roll.

Putting in levers or making it impossible for one person to do a quest (ie- VON doors) is one approach. Another would be aggro management and monster UI/abilities that cripple movement. Game designers need to watch people running these raids on Lam and have the players find the ledges monkchers love to look for so they can sit pretty and plink plink their way to a solo completion.

Prevent kiting.

I will say this again so there is no confusion.

Prevent kiting.

Little hopalong monkcher running around in giant circles shooting Pinion at things until they die on Epic Elite does not require any skill just as standing on a ledge shooting things until they die does. One developer had a novel idea that is used in Shroud part 5 - Harry's teleportation ability. This prevents people from kiting, or hiding on a ledge avoiding a beat down. Another tactic developers could use is to apply a chains like effect like in VoD to hinder movement. By removing the kiting technique for raids and assigning other necessary objectives like pulling levers, destroying an object within a certain time frame, solving puzzles, defeating another enemy in an entirely separate part of the raid you are ensuring it is necessary for more than one person to solo a raid.

These are just a few ideas off the top of my head. The point is we have ideas in game now that we can draw upon and simply apply them to future content. The development team needs to try harder. EE solo completions should be a freaking miracle. EE raid solo's should never exist - even for monkchers/shiradi builds.

The game is sad when not only are EE quests/raids doable by yourself, but some of you guys have this down to 10 minutes or less. The game is no longer about "how do we defeat this as a group", but who can solo it in the fastest time possible, which is usually done within the first week of release.

Pathetic.

I am definitely in agreement that the game is to easy at this point. One of the things I liked about the game back when the cap was 20 was that there may have only been groups of 5-6 mobs at a time but you couldn't cut the mobs down in less than 2 seconds like you can to 10 mobs at a time now. Damage has become to high on most characters and mobs get slaughtered like nobody's business. This made people actually have balance parties of casters/healers/melees(groups of divines and casters were very good groups as well but that is for static groups and not really pugs). Also when people did solo's it took them a long long time and was a lot more difficulty. For example fastest solos- eDA (59 minutes), eCoF (167 minutes). Some of the quests were done fast but those were the already really really fast and easy quests.

[capsela]

I think one problem with game difficulty is that you made epics so difficult that only a few strategies are viable. That leads to the same builds for everyone and the same spells and the same attacks. That is boring. Everyone doing the same thing. You wonder what's the point? Why do we have 13 classes if only a few combinations can succeed in EE?

[Ivan_Milic]

I am definitely in agreement that the game is to easy at this point. One of the things I liked about the game back when the cap was 20 was that there may have only been groups of 5-6 mobs at a time but you couldn't cut the mobs down in less than 2 seconds like you can to 10 mobs at a time now. Damage has become to high on most characters and mobs get slaughtered like nobody's business. This made people actually have balance parties of casters/healers/melees(groups of divines and casters were very good groups as well but that is for static groups and not really pugs). Also when people did solo's it took them a long long time and was a lot more difficulty. For example fastest solos- eDA (59 minutes), eCoF (167 minutes). Some of the quests were done fast but those were the already really really fast and easy quests.

Did epics scale then?

[pHo3nix]

The difficulty of the creatures you fight should require that the raid party is equipped properly with a variety of classes. Roles can overlap through multiclassing, but it is utterly ridiculous to look at the achievement thread on these forums and see nearly every epic quest in the game with a 10 minute completion time on EE solo. If I was an exec at Turbine and looked at that thread, then opened up my Microsoft Project file for Fall of Truth and looked at the logged labor hours associated with that project heads would roll.

Putting in levers or making it impossible for one person to do a quest (ie- VON doors) is one approach. Another would be aggro management and monster UI/abilities that cripple movement. Game designers need to watch people running these raids on Lam and have the players find the ledges monkchers love to look for so they can sit pretty and plink plink their way to a solo completion.

Prevent kiting.

I will say this again so there is no confusion.

Prevent kiting.

Little hopalong monkcher running around in giant circles shooting Pinion at things until they die on Epic Elite does not require any skill just as standing on a ledge shooting things until they die does. One developer had a novel idea that is used in Shroud part 5 - Harry's teleportation ability. This prevents people from kiting, or hiding on a ledge avoiding a beat down. Another tactic developers could use is to apply a chains like effect like in VoD to hinder movement. By removing the kiting technique for raids and assigning other necessary objectives like pulling levers, destroying an object within a certain time frame, solving puzzles, defeating another enemy in an entirely separate part of the raid you are ensuring it is necessary for more than one person to solo a raid.

These are just a few ideas off the top of my head. The point is we have ideas in game now that we can draw upon and simply apply them to future content. The development team needs to try harder. EE solo completions should be a freaking miracle. EE raid solo's should never exist - even for monkchers/shiradi builds.

The game is sad when not only are EE quests/raids doable by yourself, but some of you guys have this down to 10 minutes or less. The game is no longer about "how do we defeat this as a group", but who can solo it in the fastest time possible, which is usually done within the first week of release.

Pathetic.

Kiting is just the best solution to handle EEs as they currently are: if trash mobs hit for 250-300+ non crits, got 10k+ hp and sky high saves, the best solution to handle them is avoid getting hit at all and kill them as fast as possible, even better if you can use no save abilities. You can still melee them if you got enough displacement clickies(if they haven't TS, otherwise good luck ), incorporeal, high dodge and PRR, but it surely is harder than the ranged/kiting option. There are still options, but they are way less than the ones we got when the lvl cap was 20 and we got no EDs.

Movement and the FPS gameplay are probably the only few things that still distinguish DDO from other average MMO and keep it "alive": prevent people from using their mobility to avoid danger and the combat becomes boring and unimpressive.

[capsela]

Kiting is just the best solution to handle EEs as they currently are: if trash mobs hit for 250-300+ non crits, got 10k+ hp and sky high saves, the best solution to handle them is avoid getting hit at all and kill them as fast as possible, even better if you can use no save abilities. You can still melee them if you got enough displacement clickies(if they haven't TS, otherwise good luck ), incorporeal, high dodge and PRR, but it surely is harder than the ranged/kiting option. There are still options, but they are way less than the ones we got when the lvl cap was 20 and we got no EDs.

Movement and the FPS gameplay are probably the only few things that still distinguish DDO from other average MMO and keep it "alive": prevent people from using their mobility to avoid danger and the combat becomes boring and unimpressive.

So jumping on a perch shooting a boss who can't hit you is exciting and impressive to you? To me that is boring and unimpressive and I can't believe I spent so much money on this game OMG I'm an idiot.

[nayozz]

Kiting is just the best solution to handle EEs as they currently are: if trash mobs hit for 250-300+ non crits, got 10k+ hp and sky high saves, the best solution to handle them is avoid getting hit at all and kill them as fast as possible, even better if you can use no save abilities. You can still melee them if you got enough displacement clickies(if they haven't TS, otherwise good luck ), incorporeal, high dodge and PRR, but it surely is harder than the ranged/kiting option. There are still options, but they are way less than the ones we got when the lvl cap was 20 and we got no EDs.

Movement and the FPS gameplay are probably the only few things that still distinguish DDO from other average MMO and keep it "alive": prevent people from using their mobility to avoid danger and the combat becomes boring and unimpressive.

/signed, i luv the fps style

[Nestroy]

Guys (and Gals ^^), you beat the game, you won. Get over it!

If EE is too easy, then you did something right. You beat the game, you won. You are the 1% of players that did it.

As long as any Joe Average cannot even remotely think of beating down EE easily the EE difficulty is OK. It´s not the difficulty, it´s you. You have grown out of the game.

Then again, you play Monkcher, Shiradi Sorc or BF anything, or BF Monkcher or BF Sorc? Well, you well deserved your "EE is too easy"!

EE does not need more power creep. If anything, the mobs and bosses need something to kill your kiters. And no, that does not mean more mobs. It means earth eles accompanied by casters, archers and whatever else can hit you from afar. The overall powercreep level of EE mobs is too high already - it only makes some few very specialized builds viable in that content. No one else can do this in the same time at the same few losses your highly specialized builds can do. Many others can do play EE - in groups, taking longer time, whatever. You alone can solo in a few minutes. You won, you beat the game! Hail to your builds geared to kick a** in EE! But then please stop complaining that the game is too easy. Your opponents cannot use tactics to reach you kiting them around. That´s the reason you feel the game to be too easy. And at the same time there are "Nerf Adrenaline Proc on Shiradi" threads in the general forum.

To make the game in EE better for everybody, I would suggest the devs to give better ranged / anti kite strategies to the mobs and bosses. Perhaps some tactic sets where they actually react to what is brought against them. A flexible script where they analyse the build in front of them and react accordingly. Ranger / Monk? OK, range and nuke. Sorc or Wiz in Shiradi? Defense up and range. Use debuffs. Then use CCs. It´s all a question of AI. But this is the long and hard way for devs. It´s easier to give another 100k hit points to mobs that should have about 2k only like the players. If current mobs with current EE hit points and saves would get only a few nice strategies to hit your kiters, like debuffs followed by CC and nukes, you will find yourself grilled crispy and fine like on a barbecue grill within seconds and you will cry out loud how infamously hard EE is.

Get over it. As long as the devs take the easy road of more hit points, damage output and saves instead of better AI, you are save, you won DDO.

[pHo3nix]

So jumping on a perch shooting a boss who can't hit you is exciting and impressive to you? To me that is boring and unimpressive and I can't believe I spent so much money on this game OMG I'm an idiot.

Who said jumping on a perch? I said kiting and moving to avoid danger, it works on melee as well, unless you stand still with autoattack on.

[capsela]

Talk about the haves and the have nots! Did you expect players to make 15 greensteel displacement clickies? Almost a half hour of the most powerful defensive spell ever? A spell that was nerfed to be self only!

There is your game imbalancer right there. Nerf that garbage! Make it exclusive. That's what you do when you have an item that is too powerful when it's stacked. You do it with everything else! Why is this any different?

How does a new player feel to be so far behind the power curve? So far behind, it would take years to grind the mats to make that many clickies. And meanwhile they are a bloody stain on the ground til they grind those mats.

Lol, nice balance.

[Powerhungry]

Talk about the haves and the have nots! Did you expect players to make 15 greensteel displacement clickies? Almost a half hour of the most powerful defensive spell ever? A spell that was nerfed to be self only!

There is your game imbalancer right there. Nerf that garbage! Make it exclusive. That's what you do when you have an item that is too powerful when it's stacked. You do it with everything else! Why is this any different?

How does a new player feel to be so far behind the power curve? So far behind, it would take years to grind the mats to make that many clickies. And meanwhile they are a bloody stain on the ground til they grind those mats.

Lol, nice balance.

Darn, my GS (displacement) goggles are exclusive, guess I'll have to make a cloak, helm, boots, bracers, one of each weapon type, etc...