I would like to suggest varying difficulty levels for instanced content, both team and solo content.

As the difficulty levels rise, additional mechanics would come into play, and enemies would also hit harder and have higher defenses.

The difficulty levels could be named as follows:

Normal

Heroic

Super Heroic

Cosmic

Each level of difficulty above normal could introduce extra mechanics, this is important so its more than just enemies having more HP and doing more damage, but truly makes it more difficult objectively.

Higher difficulties would grant the same rewards as lower ones, but more of it.

I think all players should play the same content. If you beat this Dungeon/Trial/Taskforce etc, you beat it. Having varying amounts of difficulties invariably caters to the trolls, or the people obsessed with being in the top 1% of all the rankings. Oh...you only beat that TF on Super Heroic? Try Cosmic when you learn to play your class properly etc. It's too easy nowadays for people to just troll etc, especially when they are the top tier of players. Look at practically every other MMO that has settings like normal, heroic, mythic etc, and see how well that works for spreading a superhero like atmosphere in any of the general chats. PS...it doesn't.

I'm not opposed if difficulty settings allow you to intentionally make things more hard, like you mentioned, but I think if the game distinguishes that in some way, with special achievement or identifier, it can lead to toxicity in the game.

It's important the game have something for everyone. Not everyone has fun with the same content. If they make only one difficulty level it will invariably be too easy for some people and too hard for others. Multiple levels of difficulty are key to avoiding this.

There should probably be special achievements for beating something on higher difficulty, but they should be cosmetic only. the real reward for playing on high difficulty would be gaining higher amounts of currency than playing on normal would.

This way everyone can get the same non cosmetic rewards from all content, while still actually rewarding playing on a higher difficulty level. STO does a great job in this.

Nobody will play a higher difficulty if theres no reason to.

I'm going to disagree on your stance, as you have on mine.

Trying to please to many players will just leave all parties dissatisfied.

Speaking from my own experience, I would play on a higher difficulty level, even if the rewards were the same, simply because I would want to. The actual reward comes from the feeling of accomplishment on defeating the content, not in in-game currency or special badges.

If you want to increase the amount of whining, complaining in a game - add the difficulty achievements you suggested. After first wipe you will have the "omg! u suxxors" clowns leaving teams, spewing off the learn 2 play comments, - because they are only interested in one thing...to get rewards the most efficiently.

I don't know anyone from the old CoH who ever did a TF simply to get the reward roll at the end. We played it to defeat the bad guys. And whether that took 1 hour, or 4 hours, we stuck with it, and did it. That was the reward.

A lot of games today, no one cares about the content. They just want to blow through it as fast as they can to get the big shiny loot roll at the end. That was one thing that was refreshingly absent in CoH, and I hope remains so in Valiance Online.

Well I'm going to have to disagree with you and hope your inexperienced view on the subject is not taken seriously, becuase more difficulty levels means more to do and more fun for everyone as far as I've experienced in the many, many MMO's I've played.

Content does not dictate community. If theres community issues thats a problem with the players.

And honestly don't try and claim City of Heroes really had NO players such as you describe only interested in rewards and toxic towards those who make mistakes. Literally every game has those, some more than others.

CoH had difficulty levels, didn't notice any toxic communities

Kawless wrote:
Thank you for pointing this out.

COH had a system that you could set enemies from -1 levels to +4 to you. You could also spawn a mission for 1 hero or all the way to 8 heroes. If you entered with 6 and were set to 1 it would still spawn at 6. so you could set the difficulty to -1x1 all the way to +4x8. adding different mechanics would probably be a programming nightmare, but upping the levels of opponents would be relatively simple. It was a great system that let each of us decide our own difficulty.

ivanhedgehog wrote:
Actually many games add new mechanics on higher difficulty levels. It takes a little more work but it's worth it. Think of it as designing a new version of the content, instead of simply adding modifiers to existing content.

I'm aware of CoH's difficulty scaling. I played the game for 7 years, with over 1900 hours on my main, alone. If that makes me inexperienced, I'm sorry. Different view =/= inexperienced view. If you are going to assume everyone who doesn't like your ideas is an inexperienced moron who doesn't like a challenge, I pity you.

The difference between CoH's difficulty scaling, and ZeeHero's request is that he wants some form of visible recognition for beating things at higher than normal difficulty - whereas I feel that is not even warranted. Tying mission rewards to difficulty levels, achievements, time...breeds toxicity.

As for my limited view...it's my opinion, and is just as valid as yours.

ZeeHero wrote:
I can't speak with any certainty there absolutely wasn't, but I never ran into that type of player in 7 years of playing on Champion server. Maybe it was different on the higher population servers like Freedom and Virtue, etc...but I played exclusively on Champion. *shrug*

Yes to difficulties but does it need to be a specific menu with a few options like CoH originally had or CO? I rather the setup we saw in later CoH: Custom difficulties.

CoH had the -1 to +4 level adjustment, a enemy number adjustment and whether or not boss and Archvillain enemies remained as bosses/archvillains ect. I think there would be other settings to;

AI intelligence: How willing is the AI to scatter to any kind of AoE, how perceptive and general tactical awareness. Higher settings give some extra EXP.
AI damage: Self explainitory. I like high damage from enemies(though I also like my own damage to hit them hard, gives a tactical feel to games).
AI health: Some people like making enemies into tanks. I don't, but I guess we could have the option.
Enemy Respawn rate: For the insane.

Just some ideas. We could also have a classical menu:

Normal: Everything unchanged.
Heroic: More enemies and a slight level adjustment.
Rugged: Moderate level adjustment and slightly smarter AI, slight damage increase.
Unyielding: High level adjustment, more enemies, smarter AI and moderate damage increase.
Invincible: A lot of enemies, high damage, smartest AI, very high level increase.
PUNISHING!: Don't pick this. Mobs have triple health, max intelligence, max damage, regenerate super fast and out-right cheat, respawn, attack twice as fast and move twice as fast. This is a joke and dare difficulty and nothing more, there is no shame if you cannot beat it, even very very good players may find this impossible by design. This is a joke, do not take this last difficulty seriously. Inspired by Doom's "NIGHTMARE" difficulty.

Please, do, not, take that last one seriously lol. And note I did not throw in health increases save the last "cheater" difficulty by default; more health generally leads to punishing rather than challenging difficulty.

I didn't mean you were inexperienced with City of Heroes, but you seem to be inexperienced with the majority of MMOs out there, which are part of the market CoH had to compete in and the one VO will have to compete in (although its changed somewhat in 5 years)

ZeeHero wrote:
You're probably right with that assessment. I tend to stick with an MMO, and not jump around a lot. I don't usually stop playing an MMO to try one that just came out for example, if I am still enjoying the current one. I guess I am an example of the type of player who if an MMO gives me what I want, I'm reluctant to consider going elsewhere. I'm pretty loyal to games I like, and support them. As for which I've actually played...
CoH - a lot (7 years)
WoW - a lot (6 years)
SWToR - 2 years
Star Trek Online - 6 weeks
Champions Online - probably about 2 months, spread over three different times trying to give it a chance.
Rift - 2 days lol

I do understand your content and community argument in regards to toxicity. I agree to an extent. It is a problem that would likely be the communities fault, not the content. But humans are basically selfish, and if the content is designed to allow players to exercise that nature, then abuses generally follow, which is where the toxicity could come from. You never heard anyone complain about ninja looters in CoH, because the loot system was entirely random, and secret.

I do acknowledge that there are exceptions to that rule of players being selfish. I'm basing these comments on my own observations in my relatively small MMO playerbase behaviour samples.

Your difficulty ideas have merit, I just don't like the idea of there being special achievements tied to it.

ZeeHero wrote:
little more work? that shows your inexperience. making 5 or 6 version of every boss of every group in the game would be a huge amount of work. That level of challenge is great for giant monsters and tf bosses. The devs are already doing a huge amount of work just making the game(and doing a great job). They will target that kind of effort to specific bosses, not run of the mill in the street bosses.

ZeeHero wrote:
I also want to see difficulty settings in VO, but I do disagree with this statement. I play extra difficulty without rewards as a personal thrill, or basically to see if I can. For example, in CoX I tried to see how many TFs I could solo. (Answer: 3? I think? As long as there wasn't a simultaneous glowie mission, I gave it a shot.)

I'd be interested to hear more about the ideas of *different* mechanics. To me "different" means actually different, not just the same mechanics scaled. I don't have a good idea of what that would look like...everything that comes to mind just seems annoying. Also keep in mind that getting in the habit of soloing under different mechanics might make life more difficult/disruptive when teaming up for group play.

A few people have said the way CoX did it with team-size/level scaling was pretty good, and I'd agree with that. I'd also be a fan of opting for increased density (with lower rewards per mob) 'cause melting crowds gives me the superhero feels.

I completely agree with the ability to control (at some point of course) the difficulty level of any given instance / mission / task force / whatever something might be called in this game, similar to how CoX had it setup and other games have setup.

I do however hate with a passion 'leaderboards' that are game-wide. I really liked the Arena and Zone type solutions where you could PvP and be the best of the best and be top dog on the leaderboards all day long as much as you wanted, and it pretty much tends to stay there.

On a similar note: I really don't even mind open world PvP so long as it is strictly enforced by a voluntary flagging system. It is fun to watch and root for people sometimes. However, if I do not physically open a menu and choose an option, then there should be no way for me to ever be flagged / auto flagged for any reason whatsoever. Simply don't allow my toon to enter a PvP zone or something if there is such a thing at some point. Give me a 'You friggin' Pussy!' notice, and rebound me off the invisible wall. LOL

Anyway, in the end - I don't think that being able to control difficulty is a problem. I've never seen it be a problem in any game I've ever played that had it (including CoX). I also don't recall being able to check the arena and cage leaderboards as causing anything more than some good-natured ribbing.

Honestly, it is a sign of the times unfortunately, that the free to play model is the world we live in. Without the paywall - it is inevitable that there will be more jerks that just hop in to be jerks for whatever crazy reason that drives them to do it. The only thing we can do, is do our best to form our own community that is self-moderated as best as possible, and let the GMs deal with the trash as best as they can.

I don't think any amount of options or lack of options will prevent it better than our own vigilance. BUT, as many have already said - this is all just my own opinion.

Laters

I'm against public leaderboards too, I just think players should get SOMETHING special for harder difficulties, even if it's only faster progression and cosmetic titles. Otherwise theres no incentive.

What I meant by different mechanics, is instead of a difficulty slider like CO or CoH we'd have seperate VERSIONS of content, more similar to Final Fantasy XIV's Hard mode, Extreme mode, and Savage.

This requires more development time, but allows there to be truly different and more challenging mechanics in each version of the fight.

Ah, okay. Probably a semantics thing, but saying "different mechanics" and "different versions of content" are not equivalent to me. I thought the idea might have been something like a change from RNG hit chance to precision-based collision, where increased difficulty levels were more about individual skill than scaled mob stats.

Regardless, I'd probably be down for whatever, but my general feeling is that difficulty configuration should not be deferred until new content versions can be generated. I'd rather have sliders now and then maybe diversified content down the road. The way CoX did it would be quite simple to implement, relatively speaking; it's just a matter of spoofing the team size and level at mob spawn. So that could be a stop-gap until something more sophisticated could be addressed, more as a value-add after core development is complete.

After all, I can't remember exactly when CoX added difficulty, but it was in the mid-teens I'm pretty sure. I wouldn't expect any alphas or betas to have this--or even new releases. Difficulty as a concept matures with the game; you have to know what you're starting with before you can get a feel for how to augment it.