Difficulty Boost -- Significant under-level XP bonus

[LuKaSu]

I've seen a lot of threads recently about difficulty levels not being right.

As long as bank space and personal inventory were no longer favor-gated (or at least relatively achievable without having to play the buffed-up elite difficulties), I would be just fine if everyone who wanted the game to be harder got their way.

But for the short term, I propose a solution that may help, that doesn't require retooling every single quest, as the other proposed ideas would.

Significant under-level XP bonus. If the highest level person in the quest is, say, two levels under the quest difficulty, get a big xp bonus. If the highest level person in the quest is three levels under, bigger bonus, all the way up to, like 5 or 6 levels under.

Playing under level, at least for many of us, gives a pretty decent challenge increase, while not forcing the difficulty increase on anyone else.

So at least until there is time to make more sweeping adjustments, this seems like it would be fairly easy to put in during the short term.

[Grosbeak07]

I've seen a lot of threads recently about difficulty levels not being right.

As long as bank space and personal inventory were no longer favor-gated (or at least relatively achievable without having to play the buffed-up elite difficulties), I would be just fine if everyone who wanted the game to be harder got their way.

But for the short term, I propose a solution that may help, that doesn't require retooling every single quest, as the other proposed ideas would.

Significant under-level XP bonus. If the highest level person in the quest is, say, two levels under the quest difficulty, get a big xp bonus. If the highest level person in the quest is three levels under, bigger bonus, all the way up to, like 5 or 6 levels under.

Playing under level, at least for many of us, gives a pretty decent challenge increase, while not forcing the difficulty increase on anyone else.

So at least until there is time to make more sweeping adjustments, this seems like it would be fairly easy to put in during the short term.

We used to have this, it was pretty much eliminated when they switched to Bravery Bonus.

Stormcleave at level 4... was a hoot.

[Krelar]

We used to have this, it was pretty much eliminated when they switched to Bravery Bonus.

Stormcleave at level 4... was a hoot.

It was gone a long time before bravery bonus. I'm pretty sure it was gone before I first started playing when they added F2P.

Edit:

According to ddowiki

The bonus for being underlevel was removed when they went f2p in 2009.

Bravery Bonus was added with update 11 (artificers) in 2011

[droid327]

I think the problem with the idea is twofold:

1) Running a Normal at +4 or 5 levels is still easier than running an Elite at +1 or 2 levels or a Hard at +3 or 4. The bonus would have to be so small as to be rather pointless, or else you're making Elite obsolete for anything except a favor run once when you're over-level.

2) On Epic, the level difference means a lot less. When you ETR and you're at L20 or 21 running L26-27 quests, it'll just be free extra XP without any significant challenge.

Plus, on a lesser scale, it also incentivizes you to camp at lower levels and bank XP rather than actually advance as you go. And you also have a problem of people not grouping because you're "too high level" for content if you're actually playing at-level and would kill their bonus. And, lastly, adding that kind of bonus to Normal content would make it way easy to farm up first-life chars for throwaway favor grinding, etc.; you're essentially circumventing the BB perk for VIPs and multi-lifers by creating a "BB alternative", letting them run under-level instead of running higher difficulties.