TOPIC: Let's talk Difficulities

What about having stat caps for each difficulty level? If your build stats would have exceeded any of the caps, you'd received an extra treasure pull at the end of the run as a "thank you" for having your stats limited. This would make difficulty design much easier and ensure that each run is challenging.

Rob F wrote: What about having stat caps for each difficulty level? If your build stats would have exceeded any of the caps, you'd received an extra treasure pull at the end of the run as a "thank you" for having your stats limited. This would make difficulty design much easier and ensure that each run is challenging.

I see one of two things happening. Either the stat caps would be so high that people could still just walk through the monsters, in which case why bother. Or the stat caps would be set at some acceptable "level of challenge" to prevent parties from walking through the monsters to easily, in which case we are telling people how to have fun. It would also be a turn off to develop builds past the cap for your selected difficulty, which as much as I hate the argument could hurt sales.

Recommended stat levels sure, hard caps though I'm against. Given the number of over geared people I see knowingly choosing to down shift their difficulty to play on easy mode, I don't think limiting them would be popular.

Picc wrote:

Rob F wrote: What about having stat caps for each difficulty level? If your build stats would have exceeded any of the caps, you'd received an extra treasure pull at the end of the run as a "thank you" for having your stats limited. This would make difficulty design much easier and ensure that each run is challenging.

I see one of two things happening. Either the stat caps would be so high that people could still just walk through the monsters, in which case why bother. Or the stat caps would be set at some acceptable "level of challenge" to prevent parties from walking through the monsters to easily, in which case we are telling people how to have fun. It would also be a turn off to develop builds past the cap for your selected difficulty, which as much as I hate the argument could hurt sales.

Recommended stat levels sure, hard caps though I'm against. Given the number of over geared people I see knowingly choosing to down shift their difficulty to play on easy mode, I don't think limiting them would be popular.

People walk through monsters now without stat caps. And we tell people how to have fun already by slot limits.

Overgeared people shouldn't be playing easy mode and if they get stuck in Normal or Hardcore they should downshift. I used to do it all the time when I had a high end build and other new players did not. I'd gladly take a treasure pull to downshift as needed. A cap would also prevent the a__holes that don't down shift from ruining the run for other players. And the "I should be able to use all my Tokens if I want no matter what" argument is a bunch of BS if it negatively impacts a run with rookie players. TD doesn't need players like that, all businesses have customers they are better off without.

I don't see any other way to scale difficulty appropriately without caps. The stat spreads get worse every year. Maybe there is another way, but no one's found it yet..

Rules or not, a holes will always find way to behave badly. I fear its always going to be on the community at large to police that.

I get where you're coming from, I generally just don't like locking things down more then is absolutely needed because someone almost always gets negatively impacted by the rule.

Either way I respect your position since I don't have a better solution to offer.

Picc wrote:
Recommended stat levels sure, hard caps though I'm against. Given the number of over geared people I see knowingly choosing to down shift their difficulty to play on easy mode, I don't think limiting them would be popular.

Personally I'm in favor of hard caps for the default Normal difficulty, unless the party unanimously agrees to waive them (just like unanimously agreeing to choose a different difficulty).

That way, people who really want to ROFL-stomp Normal can still do if they find a like-minded party, but they can't do so in a random PUG at the expense of nine other players' enjoyment.

I don't see any reason to put hard caps on difficulties other than Normal.

I would think if there were caps on something like NM (as an example), and a player hit those caps, it would get them to think about what other abilities they should equip and have a little more diversity to standard builds. Should I add more damage reduction, equip things that give free action things, equip a quiver, add some ret, etc. It would allow future tokens to provide more features without having to focus on the core damage stats.

I see a drawback of when a run only has two or three people and they want to take on NM, it’s doable with full stats but would be a lot more difficult if they were capped. Which leads to a bunch of odd scenarios that make it difficult to handle quickly.

David Zych wrote:

Picc wrote:
Recommended stat levels sure, hard caps though I'm against. Given the number of over geared people I see knowingly choosing to down shift their difficulty to play on easy mode, I don't think limiting them would be popular.

Personally I'm in favor of hard caps for the default Normal difficulty, unless the party unanimously agrees to waive them (just like unanimously agreeing to choose a different difficulty).

That way, people who really want to ROFL-stomp Normal can still do if they find a like-minded party, but they can't do so in a random PUG at the expense of nine other players' enjoyment.

I don't see any reason to put hard caps on difficulties other than Normal.

The reason for the cap would be to make it easier for TD to balance the difficulty of the run. Maybe cap normal, hardcore and nightmare, let epic and mythic be capless?

Let's keep in mind we already have stat caps. Slot limits are stat caps. One could also argue that action limits are also stat caps. People that say they don't want caps, well, we already have them. It's all perception.

I don't see a reasonable way to force people to have appropriately builds for the party agreed to difficulty level.

I don't like the idea of rewarding someone that is not down shifting for whatever reason. This would just be rewarding bad behavior and is a bad way to go.

I like the idea of adding a Mythic difficulty, and don't even mind it having a gatekeeping mechanic. But as a newer player that has invested quite a bit to play, eliminating Epic would put me in a weird spot, and even more so if that would have been implemented when I began. My builds easily exceed NM difficulty, and have played many Epic DD. So if there was not an epic level, and I was locked out of being able to play Mythic, I'm pretty sure I would have been very frustrated with lack of difficulty access.

I'm not necessarily convinced that we need to make things easier on combat DMs. I think they do an incredible job and they are quite capable of learning their rooms and running one more difficulty level once or twice per con.

Plus, those playing on mythic are generally the most experienced, and hopefully the most understanding, players we have, right?

David Zych wrote:

Picc wrote:
Recommended stat levels sure, hard caps though I'm against. Given the number of over geared people I see knowingly choosing to down shift their difficulty to play on easy mode, I don't think limiting them would be popular.

Personally I'm in favor of hard caps for the default Normal difficulty, unless the party unanimously agrees to waive them (just like unanimously agreeing to choose a different difficulty).

That way, people who really want to ROFL-stomp Normal can still do if they find a like-minded party, but they can't do so in a random PUG at the expense of nine other players' enjoyment.

I don't see any reason to put hard caps on difficulties other than Normal.

That could be an issue for people who felt preasured not to speak out in the moment. It could also be seen as relying on the least experienced player to know when it is appropriate for the to police people who probably view themselves as more experienced.

In an idea world I would agree with you but IRL it feels like we'd be setting ourselves up for dedicated nightmare pugs again.