Two Tiers of Group mission difficulty system

While I absolutely love the concept of creating more challenging content for those that want “hard mode,” it already exists for both missions and raids. The system is conquest achievements. While most are stupidly easy and gained simply by doing the mission as intended, some add quite a bit more challenge. Think of the Smoke trials in particular. Trial of Three — the “hard mode” achievement is killing all three mephits within a minute of each other. This system is also nice because it is available to highly skilled group geared players as well as raiders (although it will be easier for raiders on a relative basis).

The problem as I see it is that the reward is not currently substantial enough to warrant “hard mode,” and it isn’t repeatable (just need to do each achievement once). I believe TBM / EOK got this right, with powerful augs granted for completing these achievements - making them very much worth doing. TBL’s reward is nice as well (upgrading the damage augs).

Summary: The best way to implement “hard mode” is to introduce difficult achievements and make the rewards for them meaningful.

Bad. Bad. Bad.

If we had a larger dev team, sure. But we don't.

What is stopping any of you from removing armor to make things more difficult? Running a mission with 3 people instead of 6? Run through missions with a PUG? Invite some lower level toons to join you on the mission?

Nix this idea. It's terrible.

Aside from the testing aspect of testing multiple levels of difficulty I don't see the actual development side being any more time consuming but I am not a developer so I could be very wrong. If you start with easy as the templet for the expansion and then the next level or levels of difficulty just being tweeks to npc HP, mitigation, AC, damage and such this does not sound like a huge burden but as already stated I know nothing about development.

The one area I don't agree with is just having a base (easy) mode for group players and a tuned up (hard) version for raiders. The whole idea from a development and business perspective should be to cater to a variety of players based on playing time and ability with said time. Its for this reason I think having an easy, medium, and hard version would be best. I think some people are confusing LON or HA's with the design idea. It would not scale but simply easy would be the base value for the expansion and medium and hard would just be tuned up version with possibly extra mechanics for missions. To add I would make not just the missions but the actual zones have multiple versions. The reason for having all 3 version is to better cater to what I see this games population as being and that's casual players, your average/standard players, and your hardcore players.

Easy mode would cater to your casuals and even some of the average/standard players who are not very skilled. A lot of these players don't progress very far into new content if at all. The current design does not promote expansion sales amongst these players and it really does not promote a sense of belonging within the game. At a certain point a lot of these players go from current players to hopeful returning players in the future.

Medium mode would cater to your average players who don't mind a challenge but don't want raid level or hardcore level challenge. It would also cater to your casual raiders and casuals who were once more hardcore and mostly current within the game. These players usually lack ability or time to complete some of the more complex designs or beat some of the tougher mobs to actually "experience" an entire expansion before the next expansion is released.

Hard mode would be for your hardcore group players and raiders. By design it should present a challenge on par for someone with their skill and gear and keep them engaged for nearly an entire expansion cycle until the next expansion is released. Just like the casual group if you don't keep these players engaged they might find something better to do with their time until the next expansion and there are some that might not return at all.

As far as the rewards this could be debated. I don't think hardcore group players should be locked out of upgrades from hard mode just because casuals want nice things. For me this is not about wanting nice things its simply about paying for content and realistically as a casual being able to experience the content when current. If each player "class" can realistically beat what ever mode they play in and gear up over a year they realistically will have BIS gear for what ever difficulty level they are playing in. Casuals don't need raid level gear to beat easy content any more than raiders need raid level gear to beat easy content. What this game does need is engaged players buying content, playing the content, and in return paying for subs so we can all enjoy this game for many more years to come.

I stopped reading there. It is a HUGE burden, they don't just use a few drop downs and call it a day. It would take twice the time and effort to implement this correctly. It's also pointless as people would gravitate towards the harder mission and gear and all that time and effort would be spent for just a stepping stone.

If Anthem's tiered mission difficulty and rewards are any indication, what actually happens is no one does the Easy or Medium modes because the rewards are worthless, and so the people who can't do the Hard modes but before might have been able to find a group for them now just have no one to group with at all in modes they can do. It just segregates the playerbase needlessly.

If Group content cannot be completed by non-Raiders, then the problem is Group content is overtuned and needs to be adjusted to be less difficult.

If Raiders just want more challenging content than what Group content offers, that's the whole reason we have Raids.

I don't buy this concept for the fact that raiders don't just pay for raid content they pay for zones and missions also. The fact that it did not work in another game because the players will gravitate towards more powerful gear making the easy and medium versions pointless means the medium and hard versions are not tuned properly. The idea would be that someone without superior skill or gear would get curb stomped in the hard version making it pointless for these players to even go there until they have the skill, time, and gear to tackle this mode. This would mean the players who don't fit this criteria would be in the easy and medium versions so there would be people of their gear and skill level to group with.

This whole "fragment the playerbase" concept is just silly if implemented properly. The playerbase is already fragmented spanning across 20 years of content and with each year that passes more and more players fall further behind current content further fragmenting things. This design would promote people who are in old content to move into new content providing more grouping opportunities for everyone. Or we can just keep doing the same old thing where casuals quit because they cant keep up and hardcore players get bored because they have nothing to do.

I will advocate for the players at the opposite end of the spectrum from myself to have meaningful content for an entire year because their subs and expansion sales are important too and they deserve content that will keep them engaged outside of a few events a couple nights a week. Design choices should not say either you raid or you play in open world zones but not both and stay engaged and be challenged for an entire year.

The point of my idea is that the harder tier would not be connected to better group gear but would be used to improve or evolve raid gear. Either number of missions or certain mobs or drops available in the harder tier of missions would be used to improve raid gear. A coin type drop might be best it would let raiders collect them before they get their raid gear.

Group players are going to want to be able to get the best gear in the group game. This isn't a logical thing but more of an emotional one.

The challenge is to give raiders harder group content but NOT restrict the group players from progression or getting the best group gear in the game.

If the harder missions are only used to evolve raid items people would not gravitate to the harder missions. Raiders who want to improve their raid items would do the harder missions. Raiders who want to gear twinks would do the easier missions. Groupers would primarily do the easier missions as that is where they get their gear. Groupers who do open raids might do the harder missions to improve any raid drops they get. The benefit of this idea is that group players will feel emotionally satisfied for the main part because getting their best gear and getting progression done is not locked behind content meant to challenge raiders.

I think we need to hear from the Dev team in how hard it would be to create harder versions of missions. If it is an immense amount of work then it would be a no go.

As for your ideas of missions without armor or fewer folks to get a challenge it doesnt happen much. Human nature is to get the best advantage you can. Some players DO missions with fewer players but that doesn't satisfy the ones who want harder content AND to get something the easy content people don't get.

It all comes down to the fact that MOST of those who want harder content also want to get something out of it those who can't do the content don't get. My idea is to give the hard content folks something that doesn't impact the regular difficulty content folks.

Remember as much as people talk about a challenge being so important most of them won't do things JUST for a challenge there has to be some cheddar at the end.

You are just making the current situation even worse with the way you want this. We don't have enough players to add more tiers.

My approach gives the devs the ability to tune some content to just group players thereby being able to appeal to the largers number of group players. It also gives raiders or those who get some raid gear a reason to do these harder group missions.

And in the end it all only works IF the devs are able to create two tiers of difficulty without a lot of work. We may be at a point in the game where there simply isn;'t enough dev time to do anything like this.

You are trying to create a group game that is exclusive and cuts out some group players from the best group gear. I want to create something inclusive because I believe the more the game can appeal and reward a larger portion of the game population the better the game will do the more money Daybreak will make and the longer the game will keep going.

I understand what you are trying to accomplish but your reward system for the hard mode effectively gives the middle finger to hardcore group players who want a challenge but don't raid. Now they are stuck in easy mode bored out of their minds or they do the hard mode with no reward because they don't raid. If we do reward these group players with "group gear" people will complain that its to hard and they cant obtain BIS group gear and we are right back at square one. So unless you show how this segment of group gear players can also be included into the mix I don't like the whole reward idea you have presented. Fixing an issue for one part of the player population while creating an issue for another is not really making things better. It just makes it better for someone else.

Its not just the raiders who like harder missions, some of the group players do to who have maxed their chars out.

Personally when I group I do it with a mix of raiders and groupers this idea would segregate players, something I'm sure none of us want to do.

I'm fine with a hard and easy version of zones, with rewards of more coins for the harder version, but not a better version of gear. That way those that can do the hard version get their gear/augs quicker but it doesn't lock those who currently are not capable of doing the hard version of that mission from getting the gear, it just takes them a little longer.

IF we ever get evolving gear again, in my opinion it should work as it does now, all NPCs in the expansion it is released in give evolving exp. That way those who want to evolve can still gain it while helping others who need, missions, quests, named, collectables etc. Having a mission for evolving is just a horrid idea.....the same as Tempest Temple was.

the hard missions should just give the same loot as the easy mission.

I am not sugggestion my idea will satisfy everyone but I think it would satisfy a larger number of players. Group players who want to do the harder missions can do them for the achievements or to evolve raid gear they get from open raids.

When I speak of coins it would be coins used to evolve the raid gear not coins to buy group gear. In my opinon there should be one track for group gear and progression that is in range of the majority of group players. I guess your idea of more coins could work but not the best solution in my opinion but I could be wrong.

I agree harder missions should not give better gear.

As much as people claim they want a challenge, the number one rule of gaming is people will always, always, always follow the path of least resistance.

So now you're just wasting resources tuning a hard mode no one will ever play.

yeah there has to be some sort of carrot at the end the question is what. My believe is you give the raiders (the primary group of hardcore) a reason to do the hard missions.... ie evolving raid gear.

Really the problem is outside the whole scope of casual vs. hardcore and it is that there are no in-game rewards that don't increase player power. Other games solve this by your treadmills rewarding cosmetics, such that you have a goal you can work toward, but you don't have to balance all content around the fact that some people will grind through those rewards much more quickly than average.

If every reward must increase player power, you constantly have the problem of clashing between power bloat and lack of reward.

Many of the named in HA's were like raid mobs and were unkillable. All the trash was superior to RoS trash and no one in group gear could hunt in the missions. It was as I said, a complete debacle. I wouldn't be so self assured multiple versions of missions can be properly given the history. The single difficulty missions are already balanced as such that the vast majority of EQ can't hunt in TBL.

You can get into skill gap and all that - the fact remainds: they are losing subs and casuals are not buying TBL which is in fact bad for the game. I have zero confidence in DBG's ability to properly balance tiered missions. People that play the group game don't even bother to beta test anymore because over the years, their feedback is - not welcome? It certainly went ignored. Who's testing are they going to rely on? Raiders? Yeah, that's great for the casuals in this game. /head nod.

Again, who are they going to get to test this? DBG alienated their group players in BETA years ago. Those people don't beta test.

There is an easy way to implement this.

Counters:
- base the "rewards" on counters
- group counters "drop" the further you go thru the mission
- the faster you run the challenge, the more bonus group counters you collect
- finish it fast enough to get time varying raid counters as well
- the mission is exactly the same for all groups - hence near zero dev development time
(counters = coins, tickets, credits, beer barrels, etc. that are spent on upgrades)

Start the mission to be solo oriented where a few counters can be earned. Have the finish line be group oriented. The higher geared raid players can run it faster, which allows them to set their own difficulty level.

The further you go, the more you earn.
The faster you go, the more and better you earn.

The Devs only have to create one mission for all types of groups. They can spend time saved on different missions and/or content.

IF the time variable reward can't be implement, initially spawn mobs that despawn in time. The group has to race to those mobs to get the raid counters as an example. That requires a little more work by the devs, but pretty minimal still.