TOPIC: Proposal: New Dungeon Difficulty Level

Legion wrote:

Kirk Bauer wrote: As I understand it the difficulties were traditionally more linear (don't have the modules in front of me), so Hardcore is twice as hard as Normal and Nightmare is 2 times harder than hardcore. This is why 4 or fewer people can survive a Nightmare run. If on the scale above Nightmare was a 4 in 2014, then two well-equipped players who ran together in 2014 would need to be at least 8 well-equipped players to run Hell in 2015. That seems like a good scale.

The levels pretty much scaled like that. Push damage was 4/8/12 for normal/hardcore/nightmare. Monster HP and AC increased also, but not a doubling like that.

That's exactly the problem. If the very best player (equipment and skill) can run Nightmare solo, and quite a few great players can run Nightmare with just two people, then the Hell level should be about 5 times harder for those players.

Imagine a player with all common tokens, this would be the scale for them (these would be the base difficulties, relative to Normal, with no scale modifier for tokens):

Normal: 1
Hardcore: 2
Nightmare: 4
Hell: 8

Now, let's say that I have a moderately equipped party (Rares and URs). Using my points system they might have say 8 "points". If we apply 25%, 50%, and 75% of that to each level as in increase, we get this:

Normal: 1
Hardcore: 4
Nightmare: 8
Hell: 14

Then a UR/Relic/Legendary party might have "16 points". Applying the same scale makes it:

Normal: 1
Hardcore: 6
Nightmare: 12
Hell: 20

In other words it changes the meaning of the levels to the following:
Normal: a decently talented party who works together can make it with starter tokens.
Hardcode: a decently talented party who works together has about a 50/50 chance of somebody surviving. For parties with good rares they should have a good chance to make it through.
Nightmare: newbies are virtually guaranteed a TPK, very hard for parties with great rares, challenging for UR/Relic, easy but not trivial for Relic/Legendary.
Hell: Hard for UR/Relic, do-able for Relic/Legendary.

The important thing is that since "UR/Relic" covers a big span of possibilities, as does "Relic/Legendary", and even "rare/UR" this will sort of scale automatically within each difficulty.

I can live with that Kirk...

I'll bust out a module when I get home tonight and make a Google Docs spreadsheet showing how this would actually work out with various parties.

I hope it would not put too much math on the coach, but I think we could make it work, possibly with a cheap calculator to assist for those who aren't great at math in their head.

I'd love to make it a total for the party rather than an average (to avoid the division), but then you'd have two people running Hell mode alone because their total is much lower than 10 moderately-equipped players.

Another idea: what if instead of a party total or party average we calculate a score for each player and the adventure scales based on the player with the highest score? The big problem I could see is if a tokened-out player wanted to run with some newbies. This would force the player to actually downgrade their build to rares or the like in order to not over-increase the difficulty. That might be unacceptable so the average (with more math) is really best if the coaches could handle it.

(the math could be done in the training room instead of the coaching room, but I'm not sure which room is more time-constrained).

I'm gonna be an old curmudgeon here, and post my opinion before I go chase kids off my lawn with a stick.

I don't like the idea of a "Hell" level.
I don't like the name, in particular. It implies punishment. Hell is a place you go when you are bad. Hell is damnation. Hell is retribution for wrongs you have done.

The concept of providing a more difficult level and calling it "Hell" implies many things to me, including:

* People with high-end builds need to be punished for wanting to play with high stats.
* It is bad to play on a setting which is "too easy" for you.
* We've done something wrong as players, and DMs have to be meaner, to compensate.
* The player base's support of statements like "Make them cry" or "Abandon hope" leans more and more towards an adversarial approach to people who become too powerful. The "token elite" are seen more and more as an enemy. Hell is meant for them. We shouldn't let them survive, because "they were asking for it, walking around with all those Legendaries and Artifacts."

I am against a "scaling the dungeon" model.

It makes things harder for Coaches.
It makes things harder for DMs
It makes things harder for players who now have to min-max their stats to find the "sweet spot" where their build lets them play at a level which feels challenging, but doesn't leave them frustrated.
And it STILL doesn't take good teamwork into account.

If you've got a great team, but lousy equipment/stats, then the scaling could actually make the dungeon even easier for you.
If you've got great equipment to compensate for the fact that you play in PUGs with folks who you barely know , you might get screwed over (or screw your party!) - by bumping the stats into a higher difficulty bracket than your group can handle.

Please. No "Hell" level.

Make Nightmare Harder. Make it a Nightmare again (something like True Grind's "Hardcore" level where even groups who work well together have to push themselves, and/or expend consumables to make it through alive.)

And then? Let players pick their level.

Maybe some folks prefer a cakewalk. Maybe some folks want to experience the thrill of a TPK. Maybe people who paid for their Legendaries and Artifacts don't want to be punished by the dungeon automatically becoming harder for them.

The way I see it, TD doesn't HAVE to make things even harder. Players can make things harder for themselves, if they want to. They can choose to leave their fancy sword in their backpack if they want. They can do a run where all they use for a weapon is a Turkey Leg, and count on their insane Strength bonuses to compensate for the lack of weapon damage. They can do a 5-man run. They can run with a group of newbies and pretend to be a patron deity.

Whatever.

Or maybe - just maybe - if the Dungeon doesn't keep scaling up again every time the players shout "it's too easy!" then we won't have people who feel the need to push for more & more powerful tokens, just to keep up with the challenge. We can focus, instead, on variety in builds, and creativity, and teamwork.

I understand your view people have view of Nightmare as being bad too. /shrugs

I don't think gear requirement needs to be there to get into Hell difficulty or any other difficulty.

If increased in Nightmare difficulty then hardcore should be increased too. Same XP for way easier difficulty? I think not.

Make Hardcore only 1500 XP since it's in between Normal and Nightmare would be a good idea too.

Raven wrote: I'm gonna be an old curmudgeon here, and post my opinion before I go chase kids off my lawn with a stick.

I don't like the idea of a "Hell" level.
I don't like the name, in particular. It implies punishment. Hell is a place you go when you are bad. Hell is damnation. Hell is retribution for wrongs you have done.

The concept of providing a more difficult level and calling it "Hell" implies many things to me, including:

* People with high-end builds need to be punished for wanting to play with high stats.
* It is bad to play on a setting which is "too easy" for you.
* We've done something wrong as players, and DMs have to be meaner, to compensate.
* The player base's support of statements like "Make them cry" or "Abandon hope" leans more and more towards an adversarial approach to people who become too powerful. The "token elite" are seen more and more as an enemy. Hell is meant for them. We shouldn't let them survive, because "they were asking for it, walking around with all those Legendaries and Artifacts."

I am against a "scaling the dungeon" model.

It makes things harder for Coaches.
It makes things harder for DMs
It makes things harder for players who now have to min-max their stats to find the "sweet spot" where their build lets them play at a level which feels challenging, but doesn't leave them frustrated.
And it STILL doesn't take good teamwork into account.

If you've got a great team, but lousy equipment/stats, then the scaling could actually make the dungeon even easier for you.
If you've got great equipment to compensate for the fact that you play in PUGs with folks who you barely know , you might get screwed over (or screw your party!) - by bumping the stats into a higher difficulty bracket than your group can handle.

Please. No "Hell" level.

Make Nightmare Harder. Make it a Nightmare again (something like True Grind's "Hardcore" level where even groups who work well together have to push themselves, and/or expend consumables to make it through alive.)

And then? Let players pick their level.

Maybe some folks prefer a cakewalk. Maybe some folks want to experience the thrill of a TPK. Maybe people who paid for their Legendaries and Artifacts don't want to be punished by the dungeon automatically becoming harder for them.

The way I see it, TD doesn't HAVE to make things even harder. Players can make things harder for themselves, if they want to. They can choose to leave their fancy sword in their backpack if they want. They can do a run where all they use for a weapon is a Turkey Leg, and count on their insane Strength bonuses to compensate for the lack of weapon damage. They can do a 5-man run. They can run with a group of newbies and pretend to be a patron deity.

Whatever.

Or maybe - just maybe - if the Dungeon doesn't keep scaling up again every time the players shout "it's too easy!" then we won't have people who feel the need to push for more & more powerful tokens, just to keep up with the challenge. We can focus, instead, on variety in builds, and creativity, and teamwork.

+1

bpsymington wrote:

Raven wrote: I'm gonna be an old curmudgeon here, and post my opinion before I go chase kids off my lawn with a stick.

I don't like the idea of a "Hell" level.
I don't like the name, in particular. It implies punishment. Hell is a place you go when you are bad. Hell is damnation. Hell is retribution for wrongs you have done.

The concept of providing a more difficult level and calling it "Hell" implies many things to me, including:

* People with high-end builds need to be punished for wanting to play with high stats.
* It is bad to play on a setting which is "too easy" for you.
* We've done something wrong as players, and DMs have to be meaner, to compensate.
* The player base's support of statements like "Make them cry" or "Abandon hope" leans more and more towards an adversarial approach to people who become too powerful. The "token elite" are seen more and more as an enemy. Hell is meant for them. We shouldn't let them survive, because "they were asking for it, walking around with all those Legendaries and Artifacts."

I am against a "scaling the dungeon" model.

It makes things harder for Coaches.
It makes things harder for DMs
It makes things harder for players who now have to min-max their stats to find the "sweet spot" where their build lets them play at a level which feels challenging, but doesn't leave them frustrated.
And it STILL doesn't take good teamwork into account.

If you've got a great team, but lousy equipment/stats, then the scaling could actually make the dungeon even easier for you.
If you've got great equipment to compensate for the fact that you play in PUGs with folks who you barely know , you might get screwed over (or screw your party!) - by bumping the stats into a higher difficulty bracket than your group can handle.

Please. No "Hell" level.

Make Nightmare Harder. Make it a Nightmare again (something like True Grind's "Hardcore" level where even groups who work well together have to push themselves, and/or expend consumables to make it through alive.)

And then? Let players pick their level.

Maybe some folks prefer a cakewalk. Maybe some folks want to experience the thrill of a TPK. Maybe people who paid for their Legendaries and Artifacts don't want to be punished by the dungeon automatically becoming harder for them.

The way I see it, TD doesn't HAVE to make things even harder. Players can make things harder for themselves, if they want to. They can choose to leave their fancy sword in their backpack if they want. They can do a run where all they use for a weapon is a Turkey Leg, and count on their insane Strength bonuses to compensate for the lack of weapon damage. They can do a 5-man run. They can run with a group of newbies and pretend to be a patron deity.

Whatever.

Or maybe - just maybe - if the Dungeon doesn't keep scaling up again every time the players shout "it's too easy!" then we won't have people who feel the need to push for more & more powerful tokens, just to keep up with the challenge. We can focus, instead, on variety in builds, and creativity, and teamwork.

+1

+2

Picc wrote:

bpsymington wrote:

Raven wrote: I'm gonna be an old curmudgeon here, and post my opinion before I go chase kids off my lawn with a stick.

I don't like the idea of a "Hell" level.
I don't like the name, in particular. It implies punishment. Hell is a place you go when you are bad. Hell is damnation. Hell is retribution for wrongs you have done.

The concept of providing a more difficult level and calling it "Hell" implies many things to me, including:

* People with high-end builds need to be punished for wanting to play with high stats.
* It is bad to play on a setting which is "too easy" for you.
* We've done something wrong as players, and DMs have to be meaner, to compensate.
* The player base's support of statements like "Make them cry" or "Abandon hope" leans more and more towards an adversarial approach to people who become too powerful. The "token elite" are seen more and more as an enemy. Hell is meant for them. We shouldn't let them survive, because "they were asking for it, walking around with all those Legendaries and Artifacts."

I am against a "scaling the dungeon" model.

It makes things harder for Coaches.
It makes things harder for DMs
It makes things harder for players who now have to min-max their stats to find the "sweet spot" where their build lets them play at a level which feels challenging, but doesn't leave them frustrated.
And it STILL doesn't take good teamwork into account.

If you've got a great team, but lousy equipment/stats, then the scaling could actually make the dungeon even easier for you.
If you've got great equipment to compensate for the fact that you play in PUGs with folks who you barely know , you might get screwed over (or screw your party!) - by bumping the stats into a higher difficulty bracket than your group can handle.

Please. No "Hell" level.

Make Nightmare Harder. Make it a Nightmare again (something like True Grind's "Hardcore" level where even groups who work well together have to push themselves, and/or expend consumables to make it through alive.)

And then? Let players pick their level.

Maybe some folks prefer a cakewalk. Maybe some folks want to experience the thrill of a TPK. Maybe people who paid for their Legendaries and Artifacts don't want to be punished by the dungeon automatically becoming harder for them.

The way I see it, TD doesn't HAVE to make things even harder. Players can make things harder for themselves, if they want to. They can choose to leave their fancy sword in their backpack if they want. They can do a run where all they use for a weapon is a Turkey Leg, and count on their insane Strength bonuses to compensate for the lack of weapon damage. They can do a 5-man run. They can run with a group of newbies and pretend to be a patron deity.

Whatever.

Or maybe - just maybe - if the Dungeon doesn't keep scaling up again every time the players shout "it's too easy!" then we won't have people who feel the need to push for more & more powerful tokens, just to keep up with the challenge. We can focus, instead, on variety in builds, and creativity, and teamwork.

+1

+2

+3

JOSEPH ADLESICK wrote:

Picc wrote:

bpsymington wrote:

Raven wrote: I'm gonna be an old curmudgeon here, and post my opinion before I go chase kids off my lawn with a stick.

I don't like the idea of a "Hell" level.
I don't like the name, in particular. It implies punishment. Hell is a place you go when you are bad. Hell is damnation. Hell is retribution for wrongs you have done.

The concept of providing a more difficult level and calling it "Hell" implies many things to me, including:

* People with high-end builds need to be punished for wanting to play with high stats.
* It is bad to play on a setting which is "too easy" for you.
* We've done something wrong as players, and DMs have to be meaner, to compensate.
* The player base's support of statements like "Make them cry" or "Abandon hope" leans more and more towards an adversarial approach to people who become too powerful. The "token elite" are seen more and more as an enemy. Hell is meant for them. We shouldn't let them survive, because "they were asking for it, walking around with all those Legendaries and Artifacts."

I am against a "scaling the dungeon" model.

It makes things harder for Coaches.
It makes things harder for DMs
It makes things harder for players who now have to min-max their stats to find the "sweet spot" where their build lets them play at a level which feels challenging, but doesn't leave them frustrated.
And it STILL doesn't take good teamwork into account.

If you've got a great team, but lousy equipment/stats, then the scaling could actually make the dungeon even easier for you.
If you've got great equipment to compensate for the fact that you play in PUGs with folks who you barely know , you might get screwed over (or screw your party!) - by bumping the stats into a higher difficulty bracket than your group can handle.

Please. No "Hell" level.

Make Nightmare Harder. Make it a Nightmare again (something like True Grind's "Hardcore" level where even groups who work well together have to push themselves, and/or expend consumables to make it through alive.)

And then? Let players pick their level.

Maybe some folks prefer a cakewalk. Maybe some folks want to experience the thrill of a TPK. Maybe people who paid for their Legendaries and Artifacts don't want to be punished by the dungeon automatically becoming harder for them.

The way I see it, TD doesn't HAVE to make things even harder. Players can make things harder for themselves, if they want to. They can choose to leave their fancy sword in their backpack if they want. They can do a run where all they use for a weapon is a Turkey Leg, and count on their insane Strength bonuses to compensate for the lack of weapon damage. They can do a 5-man run. They can run with a group of newbies and pretend to be a patron deity.

Whatever.

Or maybe - just maybe - if the Dungeon doesn't keep scaling up again every time the players shout "it's too easy!" then we won't have people who feel the need to push for more & more powerful tokens, just to keep up with the challenge. We can focus, instead, on variety in builds, and creativity, and teamwork.

+1

+2

+3

+4

Kaledor wrote: If increased in Nightmare difficulty then hardcore should be increased too.

Maybe it should. Just a bit. But I don't think Hardcore should be put out of reach of the average player.

Keep in mind: we have NO dedicated "Nightmare" slots anymore. If people want to run for max XP and they don't have a regular group, they need to be able to do it with a PUG... which means being able to do it (theoretically at least) with basic starting tokens, and good teamwork.

However, since the tokens themselves have been slowly ramping up, I think a little bit of "difficulty inflation" is not out of the question.

Same XP for way easier difficulty? I think not.

YES. Same XP for people who have $48 and want a challenge, as for people who have $4800 and want a challenge! Otherwise you're just buying XP with money.

Raven wrote: I'm gonna be an old curmudgeon here, and post my opinion before I go chase kids off my lawn with a stick.

I very much am interested in and respect your thoughts on it!

Raven wrote: I don't like the name, in particular. It implies punishment. Hell is a place you go when you are bad. Hell is damnation. Hell is retribution for wrongs you have done.

The original suggestion was "Hellish" I believe which is better, it implies it is very very difficult but not actually Hell. Not sure if that makes a difference.

Raven wrote: And it STILL doesn't take good teamwork into account.

Well, I do disagree a bit. The idea is that somebody with a Rare/UR build will do fine in Normal with no teamwork, will need some teamwork for Hardcore, and really good teamwork in Nightmare. So the expectation is that you should choose your difficulty based on your team, your skill, and your equipment.

The scaling within each level will help alleviate the problem of the vast range of players in a category. You can have two players with full Rare builds with very different stats based on which rares they have. Or two players with all rare and a few Relics... but which relics?

Raven wrote: If you've got a great team, but lousy equipment/stats, then the scaling could actually make the dungeon even easier for you.

Yup, but perhaps the best teamwork and best skilled players with a mix of common/uncommon/rare can barely pull off Nightmare. If you think your teamwork is so good that Hardcore will be too easy then you have that option.

Raven wrote: If you've got great equipment to compensate for the fact that you play in PUGs with folks who you barely know , you might get screwed over (or screw your party!) - by bumping the stats into a higher difficulty bracket than your group can handle.

Today Lazlo and a bunch of newbies might be able to get through Nightmare just because of his individual skill and powers. But with this proposal (making the base for Nightmare harder and scaling due to Lazlo's gear) he probably couldn't. Again, if you have no teamwork, even with great tokens, then you'd better drop down a difficulty.

Today, if I decide I can't do Nightmare because of my poor team, so I do Hardcore, but me and a few others are really "leveled up", then Hardcore will be too easy. In this scenario Hardcore will still be harder than it would be for a group of newbies which seems more appropriate.

Raven wrote: Please. No "Hell" level.

Make Nightmare Harder. Make it a Nightmare again (something like True Grind's "Hardcore" level where even groups who work well together have to push themselves, and/or expend consumables to make it through alive.)

I think the scaling idea works regardless of whether we add a Hellish level. In fact, it might be the only way we could keep up the difficulty without adding a Hellish level.

With only three difficulties and no scaling and the continuing power creep I don't see how we can keep the game challenging for every player.

Here is an example with the Ranger:
Base Lv4: 1 / 1/13, 3 /2/13, 24HP
Purp Lv4: 11/ 7/23, 8 /2/24, 24HP (UR when possible, or rare, 2013-2014 only)
2014 Max: 14/12/34, 15/6/35, 34HP (focus on AC, max treasure)
2015 Max: 18/16/36, 15/6/39, 34HP (focus on AC, max treasure)

So a basic Lv4 Ranger will do about 10 melee damage per round (if both hit) with +1 to-hit and an AC of 13. In 2015 a maxed-out ranger will do 56 damage per round with +12 to-hit and an AC of 36.

So, completely ignoring skill and teamwork and to-hit bonus (which are all very big), the maxed-out Ranger is doing almost 6 times the damage each round, and is much harder to be hit.

So if you make the Nightmare monsters have 6 times as much HP as Normal, then what do you do with Hardcore? Three times as hard as Normal? A Rare/UR Ranger with recent tokens can do 28 damage each round, and 23 AC, so that sort of works. But then a Rare-only player is stuck at Normal, and a UR+Relic player is stuck at Hardcore.

Raven wrote: The way I see it, TD doesn't HAVE to make things even harder. Players can make things harder for themselves, if they want to. They can choose to leave their fancy sword in their backpack if they want. They can do a run where all they use for a weapon is a Turkey Leg, and count on their insane Strength bonuses to compensate for the lack of weapon damage. They can do a 5-man run. They can run with a group of newbies and pretend to be a patron deity.

If True Dungeon wants to keep selling tokens, especially to the veteran players, then I think they need to. Otherwise players will just max out and stop getting new tokens. By my math Jeff makes at least as much on tokens as he does on ticket sales, and I'd guess that the top 10-15 buyers account for about half of those token sales.

Raven wrote: Please. No "Hell" level.

Agreed

Make Nightmare Harder. Make it a Nightmare again (something like True Grind's "Hardcore" level where even groups who work well together have to push themselves, and/or expend consumables to make it through alive.)

And then? Let players pick their level.

Maybe some folks prefer a cakewalk. Maybe some folks want to experience the thrill of a TPK. Maybe people who paid for their Legendaries and Artifacts don't want to be punished by the dungeon automatically becoming harder for them.

Agreed, again.

The way I see it, TD doesn't HAVE to make things even harder. Players can make things harder for themselves, if they want to. They can choose to leave their fancy sword in their backpack if they want. They can do a run where all they use for a weapon is a Turkey Leg, and count on their insane Strength bonuses to compensate for the lack of weapon damage. They can do a 5-man run. They can run with a group of newbies and pretend to be a patron deity.

This is where I start to disagree. I touted the same lines a couple of years ago. Then Relics and Legendaries came along. TD wants to sell us tokens. In order for me to buy more tokens, I need a use for them.
If Nightmare does not increase in difficulty, I have no use for them, and will not buy them.

Whatever.

Or maybe - just maybe - if the Dungeon doesn't keep scaling up again every time the players shout "it's too easy!" then we won't have people who feel the need to push for more & more powerful tokens, just to keep up with the challenge. We can focus, instead, on variety in builds, and creativity, and teamwork.

We should be doing this anyway. The tokens drive TD. It is important that they be varied, interesting and fun. Currently there is no need to increase power levels in the tokens. A single player walked through Nightmare this year.