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Dungeon and Raid Content Difficulty
CaptnChuck
Member
We know that the difficulty of dungeon and raid content is determined by your performance as a group. Since I had nothing much to do, I came up with an alternate idea to this, and would love to hear your opinions on it.
So here's how it goes. There are 4 modes of difficulty for dungeon and raid content. Normal, Hard, Challenging, and Impossible.
Normal Mode - The bosses have a moderate amount of mechanics. Dodging is not a must, as getting hit by these abilities will only half health you. Essentially like Normal Mode in WoW. The gear you get from this type of dungeon/raid will be of grade C. (Skill Required: B, Knowledge Required: B )
Hard Mode - Similar to normal mode, but this time dodging is more heavily emphasized. Standing in telegraphed abilities will one-shot you. Bosses in this mode will have more mechanics, and its a must to play around them or it will be deadly to your group. This is similar to Heroic Mode in WoW. The gear you get from this type of dungeon/raid will be of grade B, which is about 15% better than grade C gear. (Skill Required: A, Knowledge Required: A)
Challenging Mode- The mechanical skill required from the player, in this mode, will be the same as Hard Mode. However this time, alongside bosses, the environment and individual mobs will have additional mechanics that you need to know and react to. To give you an example, consider an evil Alchemist's dungeon. One mechanic of the dungeon would be that the Alchemist will release different colored chemicals into the air at different times. Mobs and some plants/items in the environment, will react differently to the different chemicals. Mobs might gain specific attributes or mechanics depending on the chemical used and in what order it may be used in. Plants may grow in size and root your team. They may also cause damage to the dungeon/raid, resulting in rocks and other debris falling on your group etc. etc. Some of the different chemicals could also be poisonous to you or affect your group in different ways. So essentially, you will need to have knowledge of a TON of different mechanics in that particular dungeon/raid. The gear you get from this type of dungeon/raid will be of grade A, which is about 10% better than grade B gear. (Skill Required: A, Knowledge Required: S)
Impossible Mode - Combine the knowledge required in Challenging Mode with solid mechanical skill, and you will get Impossible Mode. In this mode, everything hits harder and dodging is of EXTREME importance. A single person failing to dodge or react to a key ability, can wipe your whole group. The gear you get from this type of dungeon/raid will be of grade S, which is about 8% better than grade A gear. (Skill Required: S, Knowledge Required: S)
So now that I've explained the different difficulties, I'll move on to how to implement this into the game.
Essentially, there are going to be things called Morph Potions. When a dungeon/raid opens, it will spawn in Normal Mode. You can perform a ritual with one of these potions, that morphs the dungeon/raid into Hard, Challenging, or Impossible Mode. The time and resources taken to brew Morph Potions for different modes will be different. Hard morph potions can be made in 1 day, Challenging morph potions can be made in about 4 days, and Impossible morph potions can be made in about 8 days.
The resources taken to make each of these morph potions will also vary. Hard morph potions require moderate amount of resources, challenging morph potions require a high amount, and impossible morph potions require a very large amount. These resources will also be highly varied, hence requiring the assistance of a number of different professions in the game.
Also, If a group performs a hard morph ritual on a dungeon/raid, a challenging morph ritual can overwrite this. Similarly, an impossible morph ritual can overwrite challenging and hard morph rituals. However, both of this can only happen before 30% of the dungeon has been cleared.
So, what do you guys think? I honestly think I spent way too much time on this lol. But I thought it was a cool idea and that it would be interesting to talk about.
EDIT - Significantly lowered the difference in quality between different gear types, as it was a bit much.
So here's how it goes. There are 4 modes of difficulty for dungeon and raid content. Normal, Hard, Challenging, and Impossible.
Normal Mode - The bosses have a moderate amount of mechanics. Dodging is not a must, as getting hit by these abilities will only half health you. Essentially like Normal Mode in WoW. The gear you get from this type of dungeon/raid will be of grade C. (Skill Required: B, Knowledge Required: B )
Hard Mode - Similar to normal mode, but this time dodging is more heavily emphasized. Standing in telegraphed abilities will one-shot you. Bosses in this mode will have more mechanics, and its a must to play around them or it will be deadly to your group. This is similar to Heroic Mode in WoW. The gear you get from this type of dungeon/raid will be of grade B, which is about 15% better than grade C gear. (Skill Required: A, Knowledge Required: A)
Challenging Mode- The mechanical skill required from the player, in this mode, will be the same as Hard Mode. However this time, alongside bosses, the environment and individual mobs will have additional mechanics that you need to know and react to. To give you an example, consider an evil Alchemist's dungeon. One mechanic of the dungeon would be that the Alchemist will release different colored chemicals into the air at different times. Mobs and some plants/items in the environment, will react differently to the different chemicals. Mobs might gain specific attributes or mechanics depending on the chemical used and in what order it may be used in. Plants may grow in size and root your team. They may also cause damage to the dungeon/raid, resulting in rocks and other debris falling on your group etc. etc. Some of the different chemicals could also be poisonous to you or affect your group in different ways. So essentially, you will need to have knowledge of a TON of different mechanics in that particular dungeon/raid. The gear you get from this type of dungeon/raid will be of grade A, which is about 10% better than grade B gear. (Skill Required: A, Knowledge Required: S)
Impossible Mode - Combine the knowledge required in Challenging Mode with solid mechanical skill, and you will get Impossible Mode. In this mode, everything hits harder and dodging is of EXTREME importance. A single person failing to dodge or react to a key ability, can wipe your whole group. The gear you get from this type of dungeon/raid will be of grade S, which is about 8% better than grade A gear. (Skill Required: S, Knowledge Required: S)
So now that I've explained the different difficulties, I'll move on to how to implement this into the game.
Essentially, there are going to be things called Morph Potions. When a dungeon/raid opens, it will spawn in Normal Mode. You can perform a ritual with one of these potions, that morphs the dungeon/raid into Hard, Challenging, or Impossible Mode. The time and resources taken to brew Morph Potions for different modes will be different. Hard morph potions can be made in 1 day, Challenging morph potions can be made in about 4 days, and Impossible morph potions can be made in about 8 days.
The resources taken to make each of these morph potions will also vary. Hard morph potions require moderate amount of resources, challenging morph potions require a high amount, and impossible morph potions require a very large amount. These resources will also be highly varied, hence requiring the assistance of a number of different professions in the game.
Also, If a group performs a hard morph ritual on a dungeon/raid, a challenging morph ritual can overwrite this. Similarly, an impossible morph ritual can overwrite challenging and hard morph rituals. However, both of this can only happen before 30% of the dungeon has been cleared.
So, what do you guys think? I honestly think I spent way too much time on this lol. But I thought it was a cool idea and that it would be interesting to talk about.
EDIT - Significantly lowered the difference in quality between different gear types, as it was a bit much.
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Comments
Your suggestion puts on the players unnecessary choice to opt into a certain difficulty. Having the game dynamically reward you based on how good you've killed stuff is much better.
If anything the question should be how difficult the absolute hardest version of raids can be.
― Plato
Yea but that limits it so that only the bosses towards the end of that dungeon/raid will be that difficult. What I suggested lets you run the content at a difficulty that you want, right from the start.
Also these difficulty categories label guilds by the difficulty setting they raid. Not to say that the lowest difficulty will always be under pressure to be more inclusive.
Also at this moment we have no idea if the better loot tables are going to give more resources or straight up higher quality resources. This is an important qualification, because the first option rewards in short "riches" and the second "power". Also we have no idea whether the worst loot tables will be able to cover the gear upkeep of all raiders. We know that repairing will be a big thing, but we do not know if in order to repair raid gear we will have to get resources found only in raids.
― Plato
Yea I worry about this too. Not sure how they are going to solve this problem though. Maybe they could have a mode similar to the IMPOSSIBLE mode that I suggested, be instanced. Since 99% of players won't be able to do it, maybe it might not change much but idk.
Not everyone is equally skilled. You need content for every type of player. Besides, the principal behind my idea isn't that different from what is going to exist in AoC. If you're good enough, you get better gear.
So? Why would it not work?
You need to take into account player interference into scaling of difficulty. You can't have a boss that requires full focus and mechanical awareness whilst taking into account a random player running up to your healers and ganking them.
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(and I expect some people to disagree and that's ok)
But I do like a tiered progression overall as you move from lower tier dungeons to hard and more complex ones, getting more gear as you go and laying down natural building blocks to becoming better.
And by that I mean I like clearly defined, and scaling progression. I like when mmo's have at least a few raids that take awhile to get through, and maybe a few that are possibly too tough for all but the most coordinated groups (if even).
The reason I believe this is because many modern MMO's often go for an 'accessible to all' approach to raiding. They don't want any content to not be available (at least in some form) to the casual player. And it's a *huge* mistake, people immediately binge through the endgame and then burnout or immediately want the dev team to churn out more. Because withholding that content by making it progressively difficult actually plays an important role in our enjoyment of the game - it spaces it out, it gives guilds reasons to stick together and meet up each week, build connections, and the prize at the end of that tunnel is not just a shiny weapon skin but the experience of knowing you've mastered the mechanics, and of seeing a new boss or a new corner of the dungeon that many others wouldn't. Some of my best moments are in raiding, and it dilutes it a little bit imo if the experience is just beating the same dragon everyone' s fighting but on a different difficulty (which may not even be clearly broadcasted) rather than just slaying a cool new dragon the first time.
The issue that I'm having with these kind of multi difficulty designs is that it creates a much larger barrier between the groups of different skilled players, that it becomes very uneven very fast. And this isn't coming from someone crying "grief me free loot pliz" but someone who really loves to push content. Yes, not everyone should have the best items, but everyone should within a reasonable level be able to participate in obtaining said items.
And that's the exact problem that @Aardvark told. This is something people will have to deal with even with the current system. The time you take to clear the boss will be greater if you spend time dealing with contesters. This will give you worse gear even if you can perform much better. So its not something that is just prevalent with my idea.
I get some people aren't on par with others, but dumbing down content to cater to those needing a handicap, is only going to hamper their progression.
"Don't complain the lava is to hot. Quit standing in the lava."
There should be a clear barrier between people who can't dodge a single telegraphed skillshot, and the people that take every single thing about a boss into account when fighting it. The difference in gear between these types of players must be small but significant. That's why if you read my post, you'll notice that the difference in the quality of the gear keeps decreasing the higher you go. You could lower it even further. The numbers are just make do, I think the difference should be more like this:
Grade B should be about 15% better than Grade C gear. Grade A should be about 10% better than Grade B gear. And finally Grade S gear should be about 8% better than Grade A gear.
Yea that can be a problem.