Let's Talk: Game Difficulty

[oradafu]

Now, when it comes to high level content, we have a bit of an issue in terms of raid content vs. normal adventures. A raid will ALWAYS be seen as a challenge for that level, and when you look at content releases, four quests plus one raid means that 20 percent of new content will end up being raid material(1/5). If you have only three quests and two raids, that really makes it seem that the real focus is on the high level raid community.

This comment reminded me of something that I've been meaning to bring up in the forums. Since Raids are much different than quests (as they should be), why not allow raids to played at a lower difficulty without breaking the Bravery Bonus streak, especially since the changes to raids have made the quests a bit more challenging at level? I'm sure alot of people won't like this change, but I think it would be a change that will help grouping the raids at level.

[ArcaneMelee]

Challenge for me or a new player starting the game? There is a big difference. Setting in stone difficulty (even 4 levels per quest) is going to net different experiences depending on character.

I may get shot for this but I think scaling was a good idea that needs more work. Quests should scale up, not just down. Scaling should not just take into consideration number of players but also character level, gear, guild buffs, party composition etc...

I think the players are far better judges of how much challenge they want than the game could ever be. I would rather specify how much of a challenge I want to experience than have the game try to read my mind.

[Enoach]

Before anything else I'm going to put out there that I've been playing Since October 2006 - Previewing for 10 Days during the Summer of 2006. I also limit myself to only 5 characters so I'm not an altoholic.

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

I like the direction of the difficulty that the Amrath and Cannieth Quests (U11 and not U12) brought but these were geared towards Level 17+

Quests on normal should still be set to a difficulty where four level appropriate geared players can complete and be challenged by the completion.

Raids should be geared towards 10 members

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?

Of the quest levels that have the biggest inconsistency in difficulty I find the majority are between levels 8 and 14. VoN 3 is more difficult then Eyes of Stone which is more difficult than Crucible/Madstone/Prison of the Planes

Why is a Level 9 Elite tougher than a Level 12 Elite which is tougher than Level 14 Elites?

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?

The only time a party should fail on normal is if they are totally unprepared for what lies within, and I'm not talking 100 Spell point potions unprepared, I'm talking wrong gear/spells to use. And if they refuse to work together.

Not failing on normal would only bore me if there was absolutely no way for me to fail - Go in naked, no spells and 1 HP and can still win. Please don't go to that point.

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.

One of the points I would like to make is DDO did a good thing with the Optional XP. The XP you get even if you don't complete the quest. Maybe a thought would be to put more optional components - Even mandatory optional components that distribute XP. Not so much that you could Farm an Optional and keep on leveling, but enough that even if you fail the quest you could get some percentage of reward possibly no less then 10% of the base XP.

Currently the only quests with the 45+ minutes and then failure that brings up frustration are Raids - Specifically Abbot and way back (haven't run this Raid in a long time) Titan.

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!'

I find the issue to be that I don't want a quest I can't complete unless I empty my Coin purse and TP cache, I don't want a quest that you need specific Class Abilities to complete (optional paths to victory) - Don't mind if those abilities can make aspects easier.

The problem is that there are those of us that have been around for years that have gathered some pretty nice stuff which makes things easier, there are those have tons of time to dedicate to playing giving them many more hours of play time, then there are those that have time to play on more a casual level.

Keep the idea that you don't need a full Party/Raid Group to be able to complete. Obviously the more you have the easier the challenge is made but only because you have more resources.

If I were to suggest a target I would suggest using the 28 point build. Quests should be able to be completed by a party of only 28 point builds on Normal - doing so should be not be a cake walk and should require some excursion and effort.

Hard/Elite geared towards 32 point builds as a base

34 and 36 point builds should still have enough difficulty on Elite to make these quests challenging.

I'm not advocating excluding 28 and 32 point builds from Epic content, just that it should be difficult - Not because of starting build points but lack of Raid level Gear/Completions.

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

Just another thought - Why choose blades to make Shroud harder? Why that much of a boost in Damage? Make them mean something, but don't make them a way to kill off 700+ full HP characters.

[sephiroth1084]

.

Encounters that are done well:
Demon of the Frenzied Blood
High Priestess of the Depths
Raiyum
VON2 final fight (really dangerous until you neutralize the adds)

I kind of disagree here. The big thing these fights all have in common is that they have kiteable adds that, if left to their own devices, will wipe a party. That's a decent solution some of the time, but it seems like it is the default solution to too many fights in the game.

As a caster in the Demon of Frenzied Blood encounter I kite a bunch of trash around the room and try to keep a DoT and Ice Storm up on the boss.
As a caster in the Raiyum encounter...I kite a bunch of trash around the room and try to tag the boss with a Meteor Swarm when I can.
As a caster in the final fight of VoN 2...I kite a bunch of trash around the room and try to tag the boss with some DoTs or something when I can.

The DoFB encounter at least has the option of destroying the portals as an alternative to kiting, but the general idea is to distract the party caster from participating in the boss' destruction. And if you don't have an arcane caster in the party, the task falls to the party divine who replaces "try to DoT the boss" with "continue to heal the party." If you don't have a divine capable of that, you need someone with some decent ranged ability, or the party simply fails the encounter, and even a decent archer-specialized character is only mediocre in some of those encounters due to the slowness of archery, facing, limited space, and difficulty in healing both the party and someone else running around the room.

We need more encounters that incorporate everyone without devolving into this ring-around-the-rosy fest.

.. and ones that aren't:

Crateos
Malicia

...because they have too much HP, pose too little threat to the party, and have basically no way of manipulating players (knockdown, knockback, stun, dispel, etc...). Malicia also has too much AC for someone with so much HP and so little danger.

What I feel is missing from high level:
Difficult 6-person content that has loot incentives to repeat. For all their faults pre-U9, Epics were this, but they aren't now.

I agree with this sentiment, mostly. I think the level of repetition necessary in epics is a bit egregious, and is tied up largely in token attrition, but also in seal, shard and scroll droprates. I think making epics more difficult to Wail through would help things a lot, but I don't want to see everything become immune to Wail again, or see Wail get nerfed, because it remains an interesting tool.

[Zephea]

Starting the game is too hard. There is so much information it is hard to choose what is important. It takes a long time to get gear and money. It takes a long time to work out how to lay out your chacter with some of the more non-intuitive features. The forums are established players. If you are going to grow and attract players to DDO and retain them, then maybe you need to get the opinions of a focus group of truly brand new players as part of this dicussion.

Good to see small changes like clean information re sharp and blunt weapons in Heyton's. And changing the cats for wolves in Cereleuan Hills. And upping the loot values in Korthos.

[badbob117]

Well for me and my friends what has gotten under our skin as far as difficulty goes is the Dungeon scaling! We like to run stuff together with a full party a lot of the times and not every run do we want a challenge. Some runs we are helping out one player to get a certain item. Just plain old farming.

Will use Amrath as a example but it can be applied to almost any non raid and challenge. We have all ran the Amrath content on every level, solo and with parties. What really gets our gripe is when we are farming for a certain item on normal with a party of 6 and it feels way harder then elite content. The scaling seems to have gone through the roof lately with a full party. Almost to the point where everyone i know wants to keep it below 4 players so it is not insane. Bare in mind i am talking about farming missions and challenges. This is stuff we all do. We all do it tons of times. The Challenges on epic with a full party are so crazy That i honestly do not know why anyone would bother aside from actually challenging themselves!. You can two man em no problem. 3 man em with ease. Bring that 4th man in and your in for a whole different game. Every hit you take is big pink enhanced damage. Every enemy has their hp bumped up dramatically. In the challenges The bosses almost quadruple in hp.

I think when we initially choose Normal it shows we are not after a insane challenge. We just want to get it done. If we wanted a challenge we would have taken elite.

Bear in mind i love challenging myself. But I have to be in the right mind frame. Sometimes i just want to help some guildies get some item they have been after for months. I agree it should be somewhat ramped up when we have a full party so its not a bore fest, but I also think that the scaling needs to be toned down a tiny bit so a normal 6 man party is not harder then a 3 man elite party. It really makes no sense!

This almost encourages players to run with less people if we want to farm stuff fast and efficiently. I have soloed Every elite amrath quest alone and it was not half as bad as normal with 6 players. I have also done it with 6 on elite and that was a war to remember but we all knew it was gonna be like that. We want to be able to group with 6 players and still be able to have fun . Not do a epic battle to the death on normal! Every enemy hitting for epic damage! If we wanted that and some do, we would take elite... But for normal 6 man, tone it down a bit.

My only real concern with difficulty is the scaling. Raids are alright right now . Most are pretty good and scale properly depending on what difficulty you choose. . Abbott Has some issues that may need to be tweaked but most of the raids are pretty straight forward. The blades in shroud on normal still in my opinion need to be toned down a tiny bit. Not a ton just a wee bit so a lag spike is still recoverable for the healers. One lag spike at the wrong time often spells a party wipe in there now.

If you want to talk about the difference in difficulty between running a melee compared to a caster i think everyone knows that melee has the raw end of the deal. That is a whole different balance issue that you guys need to weigh a bit as well.

[sweez]

Some random thoughts:

• I love what you've done with eDragon and eDQ2 in U12. If you're attentive to the environment, they're easier than ever before, yet having to pay attention is what, in a way, makes them harder than before. This is way superior to just increasing bosses' HP and fort and calling it a day - U11 raid changes were just horrible.
• Make hard/long quests more rewarding. I'm fine with all level 6 quests not being equally difficult, but it's often the case that the longer and more difficult quest offers not only the same, but less xp than a shorter quest of similar level. You can choose to pretend that most people that play DDO in 2011 are dungeon crawlers that play for exploration/roleplaying/whatever, but the fact is that xp/min crowd is a pretty big one, and that grinding same quests over and over and over again gets mind numbing, but is still preferable to doing quests that offer horrible rewards vs. time spent ratio. Bravery bonus was, indirectly however, something that *kinda* fixed this a bit, but there are still quests that have such horrible xp that they're not worth running even with full bravery bonus. Long quests in particular should have more 'checkpoints', in the form of (relevant) optional xp/chests (someone mentioned Shroud which is a great example of that).
• Mob AC. Some mobs have AC that is completely out of whack - having to roll a crit to hit a mob isn't fun. There are a few older quests which are particularly guilty of this, mostly quests with vampires (which are already heavily skewed towards casters), but I remember having horrible to-hit issues in elite Fear Factory on a heavily geared third life melee toon (that even had fighter active PL clicky going) fighting the end-boss. He literally had more AC than a lot of epic mobs, which is just ridiculous.
• Dungeon scaling. You say it helps with server load - we can't really contradict you on that, since we have no data. Anyway, whether DA, when working as intended, is a good or a bad thing is a discussion for some other time, however, there are some quests where DA is completely out of whack due (I'm assuming) visibility/spawning issues (namely, Bastion of Power), making quests much more difficult than they should be, even when not zerging at all.
• Vamp form light damage vulnerability. This is just too punishing imho - getting hit for over 350 points of damage in normal level 12 quests is pointless - it doesn't matter if PMs get super-ubber-mega at 20, fact is 350 points is more than most epic traps hit for, yet you're getting hit for that much in low-mid teen level quests.
• Guard the NPC quests. These can be horridly difficult, due to the fact that a lot of NPCs' hit points don't seem to scale with difficulty. Can easily be fixed by upping their hit points, these quests would still be very annoying and most likely have bad xp/min, but they at least wouldn't be as punishing as they are now.
• Time != difficulty (as a general rule). Sometimes, indeed, time can equal difficulty - staying concentrated is harder for extended periods of time. However, for example, removing the shrine from eLoB and (basically) forcing people to torc off trash doesn't make the raid harder in any way - standing and shieldblocking requires no concentration or skill at all.

[Calebro]

I haven't read through the five pages of responses, so much of this may have been covered already (and I expect that it has).

The last few updates have amped up the difficulty of the quests in relation to prior tendencies. Many people feel that this is a good thing. Some people feel that this is a bad thing.
I'm in the former group. I like that things have become tougher.

There are two major problems in my opinion.
AC and SP potions.

Player AC is simply broken. Or should I say that mobs' to-hit scores are broken? I feel that these problems are one and the same. The standard d20 system works fine for PnP, but in this game it doesn't. The power level of players is far beyond anything you'd ever see in a PnP game, which means that the mobs have to be adjusted to compensate. Adding more ways to raise AC via dodge bonuses and PrEs doesn't actually help the issue. In fact, it magnifies the problem.
There have been many upon many suggestions to fix the AC and to-hit problems this game has. I would like some action to be taken on this front. Search the forums, or start a Let's Talk to address this problem separately.

The second major problem this game has in regards to difficulty is SP potions in my opinion. You can simply drink your way to success. They need to have a cooldown timer beyond that of a normal potion.
I realize that this is a HUGE cash shop item, and that a cooldown will lower sales. But the fact is that this small loss in sales will make for a better game.

You will always have players that have been here for years telling you that the game is too easy. This is true of almost any game. You will always have new players that feel some things are simly too hard. This is also true of almost any game.
So I suppose that my opinion on the subject of the game's difficulty is that in and of itself it's fine. Newer players can be challenged on normal or hard difficulty. Players who have been around for a while can be challenged on higher difficulty settings. Continue to build content similar to what we've seen throughout this year and we'll be happy. But address the real issues that make the game too easy or too challenging, which are AC/mob-to-hit and Drinking your way to victory.
Once those two issues are addressed I believe we'll see a much more balanced game, as far as difficulty is concerned.

*edit:
Oh, yeah. And ship buffs. Ship buffs only magnify the problem. Things that might be difficult after a death are trivial if you haven't died. Ship buffs ruin the game's attempt at balance. Nothing you could do could possibly be balanced evenly for two players if one has ship buffs and one doesn't.
If you seriously want to have a discussion about what is and is not too easy or too difficult, then ship buffs need to be removed from the game.
Sorry kids, but it's true.

[sweez]

I kind of disagree here. The big thing these fights all have in common is that they have kiteable adds that, if left to their own devices, will wipe a party. That's a decent solution some of the time, but it seems like it is the default solution to too many fights in the game.

As a caster in the Demon of Frenzied Blood encounter I kite a bunch of trash around the room and try to keep a DoT and Ice Storm up on the boss.
As a caster in the Raiyum encounter...I kite a bunch of trash around the room and try to tag the boss with a Meteor Swarm when I can.
As a caster in the final fight of VoN 2...I kite a bunch of trash around the room and try to tag the boss with some DoTs or something when I can.

The DoFB encounter at least has the option of destroying the portals as an alternative to kiting, but the general idea is to distract the party caster from participating in the boss' destruction. And if you don't have an arcane caster in the party, the task falls to the party divine who replaces "try to DoT the boss" with "continue to heal the party." If you don't have a divine capable of that, you need someone with some decent ranged ability, or the party simply fails the encounter, and even a decent archer-specialized character is only mediocre in some of those encounters due to the slowness of archery, facing, limited space, and difficulty in healing both the party and someone else running around the room.

Absolutely agree with this. Seems like devs can't escape integrating kiting in large majority of the end-game content. What really interests me, what was the devs idea behind these encounters? Did they really design them to be kited or do they just have no idea what the actual live gameplay/metagaming looks like?

[B0ltdrag0n]

The real issues in my mind when it comes go the games difficulty come in a couple forms.

1st It seems when you release a new pack that it is much more difficult on normal, than existing quests of its level range that already existed on their hardest settings. Examples Sentinels of Stormreach is much harder than Von for the same party. And The Lordsmarch Chain on Normal, is gnerally as difficult if not harder than Gianthold walk ups. To be frank here the newer stuff is too much harder.

2nd Compounded to this the newer quests (with few exceptions such as Sane Asylum, Eyes of Stone, Blockade Buster) have such terrible Xp for the time invested, and although the loot from these quests is nice and thematic it just isnt enough reason to run these quests when leveling up. I find that if you want TR's to buy and run your content you have to make the xp better, and to get newer players to buy and run the content you have to make it of equivilant difficulty/length as to other packs.

3rd Raids
Most raids are fine as they are...though I question a few design decisions. 1st Titan. No one runs this raid. Look at your internal records...reference the pct of f2p players with the pack with a % of characters that have EVER run the raid and look only at account created after F2P. I have personally seen a total of 5 Titan runs in LFM or guild runs in two years. Five. Make this pack attractive. Overhaul and/or get rid of that terrible preraid. Add a couple more quests. Give the explorer area a map. Change its favor to House Cannith.

Reaver- Get rid of that 500 pt disintegrate. Just no. Otherwise the raid is fine.

Shroud-blade damage. It makes playing a melee annoying. If your intent was to harm casters then instead of making the blades circle like they do now...Perhaps make the blades roam randomly OUTSIDE of melee range of Harry...make it so the healers/casters can choose to eat melee/meteor damage or take their chances with the blades.

TOD/Hound - fine

VOD - I just dont like this raid so Im pretty biased and cant make accurate opinions. Though those 'paladin' items you made I really hope are the beginning of a true Holy Avenger cause otherwise they are pretty terrible.

MA - The flash on the crystals causes visual lag across the raid...please remove it. Otherwise its not bad.

LOB - I don't know what to say here. The problem is the final trash waves. Please consider making it a single wave of quori OR beef up the red names and get rid of the multiple spawns of the trash quori. If you did this it would be a manageable raid for any team with teamwork and coordination as opposed to now where its either use questionable tactics/exploit (dont care what people call it.) or suck pots. And kill the LOB with the broken glass shards.

Lastly is epics. What you have done with the challenges needs be considered with all epic item construction. I want to feel as though I made progress toward an item, via gain x/xxxx collectables needed for item...than how it is now. I want to feel accomplishment in measured intervals.

This is all I can think of for now. If I think of more I will post again.

[jkm]

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.

I don't think there is any question that even normal quests now are being balanced for TRs and not for new players. The difference between Tear of Dhakaan on Normal and Bargain of Blood on Normal is very noticeable. The hobs have more hit points, more AC, and do more damage. When you move to elite the differences become a chasm. The traps hit 2x as hard, have +10 more search/disable DC and the mobs scale much more difficult.

And this has been happening long enough that it has become a trend. New paid content is much more difficult than pre-DDO:EU free content across the board on all difficulties. I'm not saying you should make them easier, but they need to be comparable.

Also at some point, you need to address why the XP gets abyssmally bad in the level 18+ quests.

[hit_fido]

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

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

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

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

Some ideas for reducing this hurdle:

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

[AZgreentea]

Let me give you a little of my background so you can quantify my response.

I began playing Dec 24th, 2009. That's two years ago this Saturday. In that two years I have purchased or unlocked all content except the Challenge packs and Artificer. I purchased WF and Monk. I have unlocked Drow, Vet, 32 points, and FvS. Since I purchased all of that content, I thought I would get the most of my money by unlocking the unlockable content and spending my TP only on things that were on sale. I do not have artificer because I have not unlocked it (see below) or the challenge pack because it has not been on sale. I will buy things like Supreme tomes, hirelings, and cosmetic items when they are on sale if I need/want them.

I consider myself a casual player. That means if I get a chance to play during the week its only about 30-60 min. I only get an average of 1-2 times a week to play. When I can play on the weekends, I can play for about 2-3 hours total. If the wife has something to do that day then I can get in several hours. Even then its not more than 6-8 all weekend. I can normally get my 2-3 hours in on the weekend. I spend more time on the forums because I can browse them on my phone or at work. When I browse the forums I try to poke my head in technical assistance threads and more community oriented stuff. I find most of the DPS calculation and optimal build/gear threads to be slightly bewildering. That, and I dont enjoy trying to do complicated math when I am trying to take a break from work.

I have 13 characters. Most are lvl 5-8, after I made an effort to get all past lvl 4. I tried to roll a character of every race and class, so I can log in and play just about any role I like when I have the time to play. I have a 14th slot waiting for my Artificer. I have one capped character. Otsegolation reached cap shortly after I unlocked FvS, and that was this last November. She was only 3 ranks away so I finished her off. She has not run any content above lvl 15, and she has no good gear. My goal for 2012 is to get her decently geared so I can work on TRing her in 2013. Yes, I expect it to take me that long.

I normally PUG or run with hireling(s). I love my guild but considering how little gametime I have and how many alts I have, I find I get left behind in the lvls by any characters I encounter in a PUG or in the guild. Otsegolation ran all those favor quests with a full army of gold seal hirelings.

Ok, enough about me, on to my opinion of game difficulty.

There are a few area's I want to touch on.

Firstly, Artificer. With only one capped and badly geared character that cant run the House C quests, and how difficult it can be to get favor with the Challenges, I dont expect to unlock Artie unless Turbine releases more House C favor that is more easily obtained. Its unattainable at this time.

Second, there is definitely a disconnect between the old and the new game. The content built when the level cap was 10 or 12 plays much differently than the content built when it was 20. I know I didnt focus on my gear when grinding favor, but I find that I am completely unprepared for the end game on my untwinked characters. Unless I spend the time grinding greensteel and other gears in the lvl 15+ quests, I will not be good for endgame, and it will be even longer before I can touch Epics. It will be very difficult even for my untwinked lvl 20 character to contribute even in a PUG unless I completely redo my gear. Basically, what I am saying is, I wish there was more middle game content (lvl 10-15) that reliably gave you gear to make it to end game and more low mid content (lvl 8-12) that prepared you for the difficulties of the second half of the game.

Third are the quests and raids I cant touch. I cant run Titan because the raid is not appealing enough for PUG's, and the flagging quest with the "Do not kill's" is very difficult for a person using hirelings. I wish the less loved quests in the game got some love to make them more appealing for pugs. I wish I could have run more quests leveling up on my non-favor grinders without having to do them over level or wait for a second or third TR so I dont blow past them. I hate the idea that to run them at level I would have to hold off on leveling for a while. I dont get a lot of time to play, and I worked hard for that xp!

To answer your question more directly, I love it when things go badly, at any difficulty. For better or worse, PUGs are more difficult now with the bravery bonus. Everyone wants to run quests that are sometimes more challenging than the players or characters can handle. I have run the lvl 1-8 content many times, and the near failures mean I really have to work and think to keep the quest going. I do not take my gametime seriously. I love laughing at my failures and joking with my fellow PUGers at how stupidly we handled a situation. I love the comradeship I feel when we pull off a quest that has particularly challenged our party.

I hope that input helps. I also hope it dosent give you the impression I hate the game. I love DDO and look forward to upsetting my wife by playing it for years to come.

[Ungood]

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?

In many ways, this is contingent on the build, and the dungeon type. And to be fair, not all 5th level mobs need to be same, equally so, not all 5th level dungeons should be the same either. The type of mob, their strengths and weakness play into the strengths and weakness of the various classes.

So, in that regard, there are some quests that when compared to other quests of their level, and in their own chain/pack do not equal out to where they should be.

The first and Foremost to me: Abbot.

Not only has this quest been messed with, and I will openly say the revisions to it have not been good in any way in my mind, it falls out of sync to the rest of the necro 4 pack. Currently the way it is working is that we as players can flag for Abbot at level (IE: doing elites at 16th level for Bravery, and 17th for Litany), and if luck favors us, some somewhat fun loot items, but then we need to wait till cap to do the actual raid.

And as many others have said and seem to agree, this is not a well received revision to the raid. Tone it back. In fact, tone it down to be realistic for 16th to 19th level range.

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?

Yah, this is another thing. There seem to be jumps in difficulty, and just hard "Level" areas for some players and some builds, I personally noticed my first time up, that 10th was the hardest time for me, but I was also F2P at that point, and I will say this, after expanding into the F2P quests, that made getting past 10th a lot easier. But also,11th is a huge "gear" step as well, as once a player makes 11th, they should be taking a substantial step up in gear, if they know what they are doing. I did not my first time up, so rightfully so, it was hard on me to level in the 10+ range until I was explained things like Heavy Fort.

Now I would say, it might be because the older content was designed for a capped 10th level, but while Tempest Spine seems to be a great raid, at it's level, even Vault of Night is viable at level on elite, However, Plane of Night is not.

In that regard, yes, there is a serious inconsistency issue with the amping of the difficulty of the quests namely at this point the Raids and "chain end" quests.

And to be honest, it really makes no sense for this to happen, that a group can do a quest series, and pretty much work their way though it with good challenge and just get owned at the end fight of the series (In the Flesh is an example of the Boss Fight being way out of proportion to the rest of zone it is in, as well as the rest of the series it is a part of)

Other quests that seem out of wack are:

The Dead Shall Rise. (The lich at the end with the falling floor makes this quest very annoying)

The Keepers Sanctuary. This is a really long drawn out quest that gives surprisingly poor EXP for the time sink that it is.

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 hate to be blunt but, I expect Normal to be easy. Normal in my mind is designed for first time players who may or may not have a clue what is good gear and what is a good build. Normal is the "Lets learn this quest" difficulty.

Because lets be honest about this, wiping on Normal (barring some act of stupidity) is a bit discouraging.

I hate to say it, but, if you are wiping on Normal, what is left? Re-roll? Give up?

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

This depends on how they lost. If you spend 40 min to get the boss fight, only to have it so that 5 min later, the party is wiped out the the boss is only down 20% that is outright discouraging if not totally disheartening.

If a group "Just looses by the skin of their teeth" the fight, they can ponder tactics, or maybe "If I had this extra guard on" or "If only the cleric did not die at the start" or some other issue.

Players Can only overcome hurdles by two means: Skill and Gear.

After any fail, I always ask myself what could I have done better, and first think about could I have been better prepared? IE: Did I break DR, did I use the best weapons on them: IE: They are ice mobs, was I using Fire to do max damage, etc.

Then I ask: What could I have done better: Did I not engage the fight fast enough, too fast, what could I have done differently?

If at the end of the fight, I realize there was nothing I could have done differently to turn that fight around, It becomes a hopeless quest.

I remember a Post U12 Abbot, going in on Normal, after we did the Puzzles, we had the boss beat down. We got him to about 50% life, when I saw that the healers were out of Spell Points (all three of them), only one person down. I realize that there was no way we were going to win this. And that really turned me off to the whole thing. Just realizing that "This is hopeless".

I have not been back to Abbot since. I just don't see the point in it.

So, while I do not expect to win every fight, I don't enjoy a hopelessly overpowering encounter either.

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!'

It is my personal feeling that, yes you have been catering to the "Uber Players" and it has not made me happy at all, in fact it has made me feel very excluded. The reality is, people will always scream easy button, as it is a standing joke that the best drop rate is when I have it and no one else does. But the truth is, players will run an easy quest, just like they grind optimal exp quests.

However, if the quest is too hard, it discourages others from playing it. Take a guess how it feels to feel excluded from content because, quite simply it requires a better guild/gear/team then you have.

Like needing to be in the right circles or have the right connections to run quests. Take some time to ponder how enjoyable that makes a game.

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

Well I have expressed my thoughts a bit.

[Rawel_San]

TlDr; Too dificult? No.
EVelah,eDQ2, elite VoD, LoB, hard/elite Shroud,In the flesh end fight Grrreat.
Abbot,normal Shroud. Tweak.
Elite scaling--- Get rid of.
Hard scaling--- Lower.
Tie drops more closely to difficulty.
The fact that hard vs. elite is a different ball game fine by me.



Hmm don't have the energy to read the whole thread so will mostly respond to OP.

Fast answer: No.

Having just completed a TR with the bravery streak first time elite everything very few things while leveling were
particularly challenging.

I keep hearing about In the flesh elite as incredibly hard I realize it's a fairly low level quest but even so elite on a lvl 20 it was a cake walk and in no way harder then even easy epics (ran on a 20 monk with mediocre gear). In a
reasonably balanced and capable party at level this should not be an issue even if the end fight is nice in not just
being stand there and hit boss. Which btw I think is awesome if you have tactics and know what you are doing it's
easy if you run around like a headless chicken you get slaughtered that in my opinion is exactly how all elite and
epic quests should be.

1-2 years back soloing quests on elite at level was a big achievement now people seem to
expect that to be the norm. A large part of the reason for that in my opinion is that few people run quests
at a reasonable pace due to the leveling grind of tr1/tr2 lives. I find myself completely guilty of that no way
will I wait 10 mins to fill a group especially since doing so means I will most probably have to wait for a cleric
since the other players that join will expect one. Much easier to put "IP,BYOH,zerg" in the LFM and not wait,
that way you get going fast and whoever joins knows to not need a healer.

A lot of this could be fixed by actually removing scaling from elite altogether (as it should be imo) and
by lowering the scaling on hard. Scaling at this moment is one of the biggest hurdles to grouping along with the
party wide 10% death penalty.

I realize that adding end fights of the type you see in In the Flesh to most quests is extremely non trivial but on
the other hand it really brings out the team spirit/tactics approach which is often very much lacking in the
game due to brute force being the answer to so many challenges.

I do agree with gordon and other people though that the difficulty level of quests from different eras
is hugely out of whack. Gianthold is a joke compared to many of the new packs which are lower level. I'm slightly
confused about why that is since I don't think anyone was ever really whining about there being too many easy
buttons for leveling yet you seem to have increased the difficulty of the new content at low levels while
decreasing the difficulty of epics. That seems extremely counter intuitive to me.

In conclusion I would like to applaud the changes made to Velah, VoD, DQ2 and the two new raids with LoB in
particular. That in my opinion is the type of challenge we want to see more of. On the other hand Abbot
and normal shroud could use some tweaking (hard/elite shroud is just fine imo). MA in my opinion is great
but could use some incentive to run on anything other then normal and even then past 10 completions or so.

One remaining thing: Please tie drop rates more closely to difficulty. Something more along the house C quests (1 chest norm 7 elite) works better even
if the 5 chests on hard make elite a waste of time but at least there is something useful going on there.

[Meat-Head]

Instead of add a bunch of blah blah blah to a thread filled with it.. I'll just say that I pretty much like the stuff that Sirgog said.


I like the new mechanics on Shroud and Weapons Shipment that reward higher diffs with more loot/more loot chances. We need more of that all around. Fun is fun. Grind is not fun.

BTW, Thanks for doing this.

[Hafeal]

This game's abilrity to customize character builds is one of its biggest strengths but also one of the most potentially punitive mechanics facing a new player.

I have to agree with this wholeheartedly. You can see in this thread and in the game, the discrepancy between players who 'stick it out' for a year or more and those who don't and just give up. When you've stuck it out, run (and re-run) content and, if you are a heavy player, really ground for your gear, your game experience is a world away different from new players.

I said in another thread, ironically today:

I love the character planner (ty Ron).

That being said, I think it borders on criminal that a game as complex as DDO did not come with this type of tool or has not implemented a similar feature in 5 years. Having an 'official' resource would go a long way to helping players get accurate information for their builds. Relying on user created tools at the beginning has lost its luster and excuse. Further, it is unfair to expect users to continually keep these tools accurately up-to-date.

I think the time has long passed for DDO to step-up and give us a character planner as well as a way to get the data printed on paper or into data files. Many players derive enjoyment in reading and analyzing their character sheets.

[AmatsukaIncarnate]

As far as normal day to day questing is concerned, the difficulty seems fine despite the discrepancies between newer content elites and older content elites. Normal/Casual are very accessible to the average player at level and elite is still difficult with a prepared party.

For raids, however, the difficulty is all over the place. While elite ADQ/VON6/Chrono are trivial to level 20s, elite abbot and shroud is very difficult even for moderately geared level 20s. Another problem is that most raid completions are done at level 20 since all other levels go by to quickly to gain raid completions even on a TR. Therefore the raid is rather trivial for the most part.

To quote myself from a different thread, I came up with an idea that would address these issues for players.

Many of the lower level raids are never run at level for many different reasons, primarily because loot is the only objective and doesn't change from your level and losing out on a bit of XP is not killer by any means. Also, loot from these lower level raids are usually not pertinent at higher levels. (few exceptions, but most level 20s will not get too excited about Belt of the Mroranon and ect)

But how about making all raids like Devil Assault where the difficulty is scaled to a different set of levels?

For example Chronoscope...
On normal, make it accessible to 5-7 level characters. On hard, 10-13 level characters. On elite, 16-19. And keep epic for level 20s.

And with each of these "tiers", you have a chance at a raid loot upgrade seal/token instead of the base item. So in essence, the base items drop on normal, and hard drops the first tier upgrade, and elite drops the second tier upgrade, and finally epic can drop a shard/seal/scroll for the final upgrade if applicable.

Each upgrade would make the item useful to that new level tier...
For example, Helm of Frost....

BASE ITEM ----------> First upgrade--------------> Second upgrade--------->Epic
Min lvl 5 -------------> min lvl 10-----------------> min lvl 16---------------->min lvl 20
Frost Lance----------> Cone of Cold--------------> Otiluke's Freezing Sphere->blah
Cold Resistance------> Cold Resistance (20)-------> Cold Resistance (30)----->blah
Might of the Abishai--> Strong Might of the Abishai-> ect. :P ----------------->blah
Charisma +3---------> Cha +5--------------------> Cha +6 (+1 exceptional)-->blah

So in essence, these are the positives
1.) Raid loot from all raids can be pertinent at end game if upgraded.
2.) All raids can be challenging to all characters and can be fun at all levels even at endgame!
3.) More incentive to run raids at level (more like disincentive for higher level characters and not entirely convincing but it will keep some higher level characters away from trivializing a raid of much lower level)
4.) Some of the trash raid loot that exists right now can be made useful without having to change the base item.

[2x4]

The Uber player and the casual player does not have to be in any kind of conflict.

For me the answer already exists in the 12. when anyone goes to Amrath they see 2 choices that don't yet exist. There are plains on the list we can't access ( Lammania and Dolhurr)

It is perhaps a point of intepretation. The Uber player is always looking upward. He/She wants to progress and build on existing achievements because of the exhaustive and rewarding path taken. So these people want to keep moving forward. Invest in these people heavily but not at the cost of the path they travelled.

Also, there are those who enjoy the comfort of what we have now. The comfort of these people is the key. They are the ones who get the grind and ride out the grind without complaint. because they don't mind the gradual upgrade of the uber dudes who blaze the trail. In fact this group doesn't notice or will ever acknowledege it. And that is in fact OK.

So the simple advice on this issue is don't change what alreay exists, the community will have done something you never contemplated and have completely asjusted to.

However, this is where the standard increases exponentially. What is next? House C, IMO absolutely right on course. But all the time spent touching what already has been (Very Bad)

Big caveat is fix bugs but don't fix bugs to the point of re-writing the game.

It is so very important to take a step back and look at the big picture. keep the content moving forward, and in many cases forward isn't only about more quests it's about more class develeopment.

So moving forward doesn't mean reinvent what we got (Only players see that. Dev's should never judge on what we have but where we are going)

Distilled my 2 cents is always move forward (new content) fix the bugs and leave the rest alone (existing content)

[Solmage]

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.

The problem is that you guys essentially painted yourselves into a corner by sabotaging the old model of normal hard and elite.

What you need IS four difficulties, but they need to be different than they are now:

- Normal: Full dungeon scaling, easy completion for anyone, reusable shrines, etc.
- Hardcore: ZERO dungeon scaling, maybe even exp penalties on death, full complement of enemies (as opposed to the watered-downed normal), no mercy. Twice the chance at named loot than normal in the form of an extra chest appearing on quest completion(!!) at the end with a chance at any named item present inside the quest. (to prevent zerging to the chest only)

- "Epic" Light: Ideal for the people who want end-game content and items, but who aren't hard-core. The folks who currently love house D and P "epics" but who wouldn't run an old-style-pre-epic-nerf offering of blood if their lives depended on it.
- "Epic" Hardcore: Best of the best only need apply, twice the chance (or more?) to get the named items as epic light. F.ex 2 x warded chest, or more where appropriate.


And lastly, the absolutely most important thing the game is missing: A change in loot mechanics so that if you do run something that may even be very challenging, that you do end up 1 small step closer to getting your desired item. With this in mind, I think ALL epics and ALL epic raids need to track completions and once you reach 20 completions you get raid-like list of items, once you reach 40 you get a fuller list of items, and once you reach 60 you get a complete list of items.

If we tie the above with the difficulty settings suggested above, we could even make it so that completing something in 'hard core' would count twice for this completion count, which provides a good motivation to 'kick it up a notch' for those who can without shutting people down from content and loot for those who can't.

A sad reality I've noticed is that no matter how hard a raid is (f.ex epic DQ is not that easy anymore unless you have some key players) completely undergeared and frankly unskilled people will still try it, and still whine when they all fail horribly. Why? Well, because it's there, and because they too want the neato shiney they saw on the one uber-geared player who ate that content for breakfast.

This is the basis for my proposal: to provide two paths to power/content, one shorter, harder, and one longer, easier.

Incidentally, since many folks only run raids and epics, it would help out enormously if TRs were allowed to enter epics at levels 18+...