Let's Talk: Game Difficulty

[Antheal]

...such as gywlans stand (10min quest), deleras part4 (3min quest), fathom the depths (2min quest), OoB (6min quest), maraud the mines (1 min quest), relic of a sov past (6min quest), trial by fire (3min quest)...

And for the other 95% of the player base...?

[zebidos]

I think raids should provide a challenge on normal, then more of a challenge at hard and elite.

For everything else I think you should look at it is: "is this quest annoying or not annoying"

I think that non-raids and non-epic content should be soloable by any well built class, I know this is supposed to be a social game but not everyone is on the same times as other people and getting a group going can be a pain, for e.g. at the moment I want to get all necro out of the way on my barbarian to get the silver flame pots.

To do this solo on a melee is, I dont want to say hard, just extremly annoying, while on a caster it would be alot less annoying. Same goes for quests like let sleeping dust lie, not a hard quest to solo just very annoying on a two handed barbarian, while easy on a caster.

And conversley I am sure that some quests are more melee friendly vs casters.

If it is all possible, some kind of scaling for solo play based on class, for e.g. if a melee solo's a certain quest make it less annoying for the melee.

[sweez]

I for one like mob AC being all over the place.

In theory, I agree. In the actual game, it however almost always means a longer, more boring beatdown. Mahlurat (the render in Sinister Storage) is almost completely harmless, even on elite, as long as you have some elec resistance. I was able to scroll heal myself through the whole fight using the cleric dilly with little difficulty. All it did was make the encounter boring, and resource intensive, without ever making it challenging. His AC is IIRC in the 60s-70s, even with a crafted +4 to-hit item, fighter passive past life, fighter active past life clicky, recitation scroll, haste clicky, gh clicky, +5 weapons, I had trouble hitting him. You might think there's some balance in that, but IMHO, seing 'miss miss miss' on a heavily twinked character just isn't fun.

A completely different matter (for melee) are vamp bosses, that are due to encounter mechanics (disappearing/reappearing, mirror image, wolf summons, DR) already much more challenging for melee than casters, having high AC making them even more of a pain.

An encounter in an Epic dungeon where the boss has 55 AC and 100% Fortification, but at a certain point 72 AC 0 Fort trash spawns gives different types of melee builds different opportunities to shine. Monks are excellent DPS against the heavy fort 55 AC boss but lacklustre against 72 AC; a Barbarian might pull less DPS than the monk on the 55 AC boss, but when the trash spawns, they are the god (well, among melees) of killing it.

Yes, an encounter in an epic dungeon, where toons are 20, have all their gear, enhancements, feats at disposal.

Likewise, I'm fine with elite requiring players to use all the tools at their disposal - Destruction weapons, Sunder/Imp Sunder, etc - to hit certain opponents reliably. Normal, OTOH, should see players in poor gear for the level hit on a 10 if not lower.

Here's the thing though - using all the tools at their disposal for a melee player means carrying a full inventory tab of weapons, another inventory tab full of clickies, another inventory tab full of potions/scrolls, not to mention having certain feats at certain levels (I usually take imp sunder as my last feat for example). Using all the tools at their disposal for a caster? 1-2 superior element clickies, displacement, 1-2 spells.

Note: I'm not, in any way, calling for a caster nerf. I think casters are currently insanely fun to play, and that more effort should be made to make melee similarly fun to play.

[somenewnoob]

I think difficulty for the most part is just about right.

There is a tendency towards balancing for people who are well geared, TR's etc. IMO in the newer content and some of the revamped content.

It's a hard thing to balance between too easy and too hard, elite Abbott.....lil too much......shroud blades on normal.....little too much.

Overall though I think the game difficulty is good, but then again I'm not a multi TR decked out in epic gear.

[sweez]

I think that non-raids and non-epic content should be soloable by any well built class, I know this is supposed to be a social game but not everyone is on the same times as other people and getting a group going can be a pain, for e.g. at the moment I want to get all necro out of the way on my barbarian to get the silver flame pots.

I absolutely agree with this. For me, when I log on, it looks like this:

a) I see an LFM up for something that I want to do - unless I see some no-no names in it, I'll join
b) I see no interesting LFMs up, so I go solo something
c) No LFMs up, and the stuff I want to solo is very solo-unfriendly, meaning I'll give it 2-3 more minutes for something to pop on the LFMs, if not I'll just shut down the game

If c) happens more than a) and b), I'll most likely eventually quit the game. Not everyone is a leader, I for example don't own a mic, am a horrible leader, and most importantly, even if I was good at leading, I still don't like leading. Soloing is a very important part of the game for me - I know I'm maybe not in the majority, but I'm sure there's a *lot* of people that have the same views.

Sure, some of these people have builds that are completely optimized for soloing, nearly unlimited resources and/or are just better at the game than I'll ever be, so they solo the seemingly 'impossible' stuff, but the thing is - I don't expect to solo raids, I'd just like most 6-man non-epic quests to be a bit more solo-melee friendly.

Sleeping dust is a good example of a quest that's Dungeons and Dragons Online on a caster, but Dungeons and Masochism Online on a melee.

[jsaving]

I do not think the overall difficulty of DDO is "too hard," but I do think specific design choices make particular aspects of each difficulty level more frustrating than they should be to the average player.

On normal, every player ability should have a shot at working on every monster -- no exceptions. There's nothing more frustrating than suddenly being told that the ability you've worked so hard to advance has a 0% chance of success on the foes you most need it to work on, whether that be an end-of-quest boss at level 7 or a swathe of raid foes at level 20.

On elite, quests and raids shouldn't be balanced by throwing umpteen hit points at bosses to compensate for questionable monster AI. "Wars of attrition" make people lose interest, and these huge enemy hit point pools significantly disadvantage classes that don't have reasonable sources of inexhaustible damage.

Thanks for listening.

[MRMechMan]

And for the other 95% of the player base...?

Well I am talking about TRs. Most Trs like to quest at a reasonable rate.

But, any way you slice it, TRed/unTRed/geared/ungeared/elite/casual/knowledgable/noobs/zerging/strolling...the Cannith quests XP/min is shockingly bad.

Given the 2million XP needed for levels 16-->20 for TRs, there is no reason to have all three of those quests be WAY worse XP per minute then almost any quest at level 5-15, that was the point I was trying to make.

[Targonis]

Since I wrote my previous response in this thread, the idea that equipment is such a driving force in the difficulty of a quest has gelled a bit in my thoughts, and I have come up with a solution. Make it so the difficulty is based on the equipment the characters have. Every item has a + rating on it, so what if characters get a "average" loot rating for what they have, both equipment as well as what they CAN equip in their inventory? This would now give a "current power" level that is a combination of class, level, and equipment.

So, a level 1 character that has equipment passed down from previous lives might be level 1, but TR would bump power by 1, equipment might bump the character by 3, leading to a power rating of 5. Quests then would be for a range, so quests would have a suggested power rating, and XP rewards would scale with that rating. Obviously this would require a bit of work, but when it comes to quest difficulty, dungeon scaling does not take equipment into account, and quests become trivial due to equipment from higher level adventures.

I remember quests that used to be horribly difficult(think VoN 3, Jungles of Khyber on elite) are now almost trivial due to how much more powerful characters are now. The entire game needs something to re-evaluate the level of quests, and being balanced around those with equipment gained from previous lives or other characters is the wrong approach. A re-normalization of difficulty, taking equipment into account would really help.

Note that a "naked" level 15 character might end up with the power level of a decently outfitted level 7 would also open up grouping options...just leave some of your equipment at home.

[Sarisa]

For normal quests:
Recent changes are (in most cases) very good. There is a good bit of difference between difficulties, with normal being accessible while elite is a decent challenge. A few quests, elite is a big challenge even for highly geared and experienced players and requires good coordination.

A few examples of well done quests are the entire Lordsmarch 2 chain, In the Flesh, and Sane Asylum. Acute Delirium may be a bit overtuned on elite, but otherwise is well balanced.

Environmental changes and traps, however, got a lot more dangerous in update 9. Many traps no longer match their animations, and thus are WAY more dangerous than you expect. You can be hit (sometimes many times) without even being anywhere close to the traps visual effect. Prime examples are: Jungle of Khyber (VoN3) electric trap at the Marut, Against the Demon Queen sonic traps in the Bat hallway and the fire blast when you approach the end chest, Acid jets in the black dragon fight in Gianthold Tor, and Shroud blades. At the very least, trap damage from these needs to match the visual effects.

In older quests, there are cases of "artificial difficulty" due to behaviour or settings of an NPC you have to protect. The prime example (mentioned many times already) is Coyle in Hold for Reinforcements.

Finally, I feel that reward needs to match the effort.

• Abbot NEEDS more chests. If you get one of the junk raid items (or are a melee and get one of the MANY caster items), you roll that off and you get absolutely nothing for your effort. You won't even make back your repair costs. There needs to be at least one vendor-loot chest on normal, and more on harder difficulties.
• Drop rates in the most difficult non-raid epics (Sands) are pathetic. Grinding for six months or more for a single niche item's shard or raid item seal is becoming unacceptable. The scroll trade-in helped a great deal, but there are still problems with the very low drop rates of shards (especially explorer area items), and the high degree of randomness of getting a specific seal. VoN, Desert, and to a lesser extent Sentinels are the most "grindy" of epics.
• Some epic dungeons (Haywire's Foundry and Spies in the House in particular) are much more difficult and time consuming than others, yet don't even give a complete dungeon token.
• In the Demon's Den, while F2P, has little incentive to run aside from doing it once to "experience hell". It's one of the more challenging quests around on elite, so it needs some sort of draw to get people to run it.
• SoS elite needs more reward, since it's among the most difficult of quests around.

Now raids:
My opinion is that raids need to be balanced around people AT level. Normal should be accessible to a full group of first life players with just basic gear (Heavy Fort, +4 to +6 stat items dependent on the raid's level, decent lootgen or common named weapons). Hard should be for twinked first lifers, or TR's, or at least those with enough metagaming experience. Elite should be difficult, but should NOT have some of the ridiculous changes that exist now.

VoN: Elite is WAY too much for a group of level 12's. Melee damage from the dragon is in the realm of 100-120 damage a swing, which is beyond the mass healing capability of players now. The addition of high fortification greatly harms damage capabilities. Velah also has massive regeneration, which can be tough to beat if you have to hide behind the rock for an Inferno. Elite VoN6 for Bravery is probably the most difficult quest in the game until you get to Elite SoS or maybe Elite Enter the Kobold. Normal is fair, and Hard is probably about right as well. Epic is perfect now. The eggs are an instance of making things challenging that works, unlike the huge HP boost she had in u11.

Titan: Fine as is. The pre-raid elemental guns are possibly a small bit too strong on elite, but otherwise the pre-raid is fine too.

DQ: Elite is a breeze for level 20's, but is quite difficult at level. This results in pretty much just kite strategies being effective, and multiple tries to try to complete. Lowering the elite damage and to-hit (so AC/hate tanking is effective) would make it much more fair. Epic is perfect now.

Reavers: The 500 point disintegrate needs to go. This is a raid with a penalty box, and getting unlucky with a dice roll is not fun for anyone. Since it's a level 16 raid on elite, the Disintegrate (if it's present at all) needs to be balanced according to what a "tanks" HP should be at that level, with decent gear. The elemental change doesn't add a lot of challenge, just a massive amount of frustration. This raid is simply not fun to run, especially as a "healer" or a melee.

HoX: Good as is. The added loot brought back some interest in the raid, and got more people attempting elite.

VoD: Good as is. See above for what I said about HoX.

Shroud: Normal is doable, but is a bit overtuned. The blades should NOT be more of a threat than the pit fiend. Graphical lag or client/server latency should NOT cause you to get hit 3-5 times before you even see a blade is near you, or get you hit by a blade that is not anywhere close to you on your screen. Blade damage should precisely match the animation. This is a penalty box raid, so on normal, the blades should NOT be so punishing. Hard could stand for a reduction in blade damage by about 10 points. The blades would still be a major threat, but they wouldn't be as much of a killer if you get any bit of latency or graphical lag. Elite is fine.

ToD: Aggro in part 1 seems to get a bit out of whack at times. I've had cases where both my caster and Cleric have gotten aggro of BOTH devils even though I have done NO damage at all to either devil. That happens every single time one of the devils teleports. This feels like an old "Wi-flag" type of issue. I've noticed it most on hard difficulty. Otherwise, the raid is fine. Especially now that more people are tanking rather than kiting the shadows, and there is more incentive to have AC tanks.

Chrono: At level, this is incredibly difficult. I did do a bravery streak elite at level on my Paladin's TR, in a 10-person group, but it was through guild/channel. It would not be effectively PUG'able. It should be difficult, but it should not be impossible for a PUG. The Cannith raid-scaling system would be a nice thing to have for normal-elite runs. Epic is fine as is in u12. u11 skewed the HP of the CAD way too high.

LoB: Right now, normal is what I feel hard should be. Epic is fine.

MA: No real opinion besides fixing that bloody graphical lag during the crystal bursts.

Abbot: This is the worst raid right now. This is a raid HEAVILY skewed in loot toward casters, but changes to the Abbot make casters a very poor choice to bring. Evasion, the Disintegration ward, and MASSIVE HP boost (almost 6 times what it was pre-u11), along with the difficulty of the puzzles and how sensitive they are to latency just marginalizes too many people. There is also the "sting" of having several items nerfed heavily (Vile Blasphemy, Noxious Embers, Enduring Conviction) in update 12. There is also the buggy reward list, and the lack of chest rewards in general.

[grodon9999]

In theory, I agree. In the actual game, it however almost always means a longer, more boring beatdown. Mahlurat (the render in Sinister Storage) is almost completely harmless, even on elite, as long as you have some elec resistance. I was able to scroll heal myself through the whole fight using the cleric dilly with little difficulty. All it did was make the encounter boring, and resource intensive, without ever making it challenging. His AC is IIRC in the 60s-70s, even with a crafted +4 to-hit item, fighter passive past life, fighter active past life clicky, recitation scroll, haste clicky, gh clicky, +5 weapons, I had trouble hitting him. You might think there's some balance in that, but IMHO, seing 'miss miss miss' on a heavily twinked character just isn't fun.

.

Especially since this doesn't effect casters, all high mob ACs do is marginalize melees in favor of casters.

[Ungood]

I swear, I must be missing something, I see all these posts about how:

• Oh yah, that is easy,
• It's just AFK&Autoattack
• Anyone can kite that.
• It's a Pike Fest

and you know, I have done these raids, and I have no idea what these people are talking about. It is like, it seems as if we are playing the same game but not even close to the same worlds here.

[avery61]

I'm quite happy with the blades on a normal shroud run but on elite it can be quite harry.. pun intended. It should be toned down a notch. I've recently had one member quit, in my static group, because he hated what had happened in shroud, and another is contemplating it. I can see their point, which is that the shroud is a raid you have to run to get the gear to run other high end raids/epic content.

[Targonis]

I would like to add that there is nothing wrong with the highest level quests having a requirement of power level 55 when your casual players at level 20 only hit power level 32(due to not having a lot of raid equipment). At least it won't mislead people into thinking they are ready for high end content when they really are not. The idea of "level 20 newbs" would be offset by power level being the key to grouping rather than pure class/level.

[Dandonk]

<snip>

Meh. Why can't I say things as well as that?

Anyway, well said and reasoned.

[Edyit76]

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? [red]Not usually no, though this may depend on the group i am in at the time[/red]

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? (there is a lot of inconsistency, a level 14 raid should not be harder than a level 20 raid when both are run on normal difficulty)

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 honestly dont expect to fail on normal. it should be challenging for any first life character but still completable with some strategy. also reward should scale with difficulty.

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.
indeed. spending time in anything in life only to fail is frustrating. failing due to stuttering server lag that all 12 members in the party are experiencing at the same time is even more 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!'
yes. i do find this to be the case. you have people that have multiple past lives and a ton of twink gear and knowledge of the game at their disposal. its going to be easier for them. thats why you grind gear, raise DC's learn which tactics work best. to make the game easier. i'm sorry if the game is "too easy" for those people, but its not for the vast majority of us that play. so yes i do believe that most of the people crying that the game is too easy are the players that already have all the gear and tactics to make it that way for them. the majority of players on DDO dont even look at the forums. hell the only reason i'm on them now is because the game is having down time on my day off.

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

[Niv-mizzet]

On raid difficulty:

I like difficulty. I do NOT like repeating said difficulty over and over to get whatever I'm looking for.

If I have to run something 20 times, any difficulty at all is just going to annoy me.

If I just have to run it once, then by all means I'd love to be really challenged.

At the very least, I believe that every raid should do what Shroud did and should offer +1 chest per each difficulty step WITH the possibility of raid loot in it. Also, 20th ER lists should be the whole list. Period. If you've run it 20 times (2 months!!!), you have proved that you deserve whatever elusive item you're looking for.

On bravery

Bravery bonus is good all around. GOTTA KEEP MAH STREAK is bad. When I'm on a healer, and I see 5 guys waiting on a healer at my level, and they're doing a quest I want to run, but they want to run it on hard....I just ignore it and look at other lfm's. Thankfully with a stable full of alts I can usually find SOMETHING to do, but the streak stopping a group from forming is silly.

Keep a static bravery bonus for first time hard/elite at level. Remove streak. Its just making me not group with people.

[grodon9999]

Can we actually expect some dialogue on this or is this just something posted to troll out our ideas and make us think you are taking in our feedback?

9 pages and no dev replies since the OP.

[Bogenbroom]

Just another 2c...

My biggest concern in terms of game difficulty is the variation from pack-to-pack at the same level. Lordsmark and Gianthold has been mentioned and is an excellent example. Newer content, especially on harder difficulties, is significantly more difficult. I don't have much problem with normal and hard on newer stuff, but elite seems to be a bit too elite.

Also, the ability to fail is not a bad thing, but all-or-nothing in those scenarios is better avoided. The best implementation of this I can think of is Stealer of Souls. That is a good solid quest all of the way through with good difficulty, but completing is perfectly do-able. Then the Sorjek fight is optional and is for non-critcal (but highly valuable) loot. I do dislike the idea of spending 45-60 minutes on something only to fail at the very end and get nothing out of it. Yes, the Boss fight *should* be at the end... only makes sense, but incremental rewards help with that sort of disappointment.

[Carpone]

From the perspective of someone who has completed 1300 raids and 10 TRs over the past two years, these are my opinions:

The most difficult part of this game to deal with is lag. On Orien where I play exclusively, raid lag makes me not want to log in. The recent lag fixes have helped, but it's far from solved. This week my guild wiped on epic Velah because of lag (everyone died to her breath, with people's soul stones located behind pillars). This is a quest we've run over 200 times on epic. It completely destroys morale and makes people want to go play SW:TOR over DDO. I certainly can't blame them for wanting to play another game that doesn't have soul crushing lag. No one likes spending their time only to have it wasted on something they have absolutely no control over.

The elite streak bonus is the best change ever for level 1-20 non-raid quests. The only improvement I'd like to see is a reason (XP bonus) for running the same quest multiple times on elite difficulty. The first time bonus and streak bonus is great, but after that there's little reason to run good XP/min quests on elite.

Ascension Chamber elite is overtuned. The combination of 100% fortification, 303k HP, lich immunities (lightning/cold/mantle) and DR is too much. The challenge in that raid should be the puzzles, not the Abbot. Wizards, Sorcerers, Artificers and Arcane Archers are mostly dead weight in this raid (arcanes don't spec fire typically since it doesn't work on devils/demons; piercing can't break DR). You only ever want one arcane for the invisible mobs; more arcanes than that is a complete waste of a raid spot. My guild completes it, but I've seen all of the Abbot pug raids dry up on Orien because of the U11-U12 changes. Artificers need a spell to break blunt DR.

I really dislike the amount of time it takes to get to The Lord of Blades and Master Artificer raids. There's way too many trash mobs on the way to the raid to kill with no benefit. There's no challenge in killing trash mobs, it's just boring. Kiting the hounds in the Lord of the Blades is more efficient than killing them, and given the length of the fight on harder difficulties, it's a snoozefest for the kiter. Add an optional to reward killing the hounds three times. Also, the drop rate on the Toven's Hammer parts is ridiculously low. I really hate the fact that the hammer parts and spirits are BtC; they should be BtA. Lastly, not having a shrine on elite/epic for TLOB is just silly. All it means is people will spend 10 minutes Torcing mana back on the 4 assassins right before the start of the end fight. Please stop wasting my time.

As for Shroud, elite is a great challenge. The blades are still a bit ridiculous though.

Epic Chains of Flame should reward two full epic dungeon tokens instead of the one full epic dungeon token it provides now. eCoF remains one of the most challenging epic quests. I love it.

The drop rate of seals for Ring of Elemental Essence, Mask of Comedy and Brawn's Spirits in A Small Problem is still too low. It's demoralizing to run these quests day after day to not get the seals you're after.

Ever since the last update to Big Top, I haven't run it. It used to be a great way to quickly get a full epic dungeon token daily, now it's not worth running. I'd rather spend my time running Epic Devil's Assault for two tokens, large mats and a chance for a devil's ruin crystal and silver threaded handwraps.

I absolutely love Epic Red Fens. Whoever created those quests needs to do more in the future.

[Postumus]

I don't think Normal difficulty should be increased.

I remember as a new player that normal difficulty was a good challenge as I learned the game mechanics, the classes, the builds, the enhancements, and the gear.

I think most players who have been playing for more than six months have a jaded view of normal because:

1- they know the quests and know what to expect
2- they have twinked their characters so they should have an easier time on normal
3- they know the game mechanics

I think the traps on hard could be boosted a bit.

I think Elite might be just about right. I like that traps are actually deadly and require a trapsmith or cautious play.

I think Epic is ridiculous.