View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0006079 | Valley 1 | Suggestion - Balancing Issues | Feb 22, 2012 10:34 pm | May 2, 2012 2:24 am | |
| Reporter | khadgar | Assigned To | Chris_McElligottPark | ||
| Severity | minor | ||||
| Status | assigned | Resolution | won't fix | ||
| Product Version | 0.579 | ||||
| Summary | 0006079: Global Difficulty Level versus Area Difficulty Level | ||||
| Description | I am relatively new to AVWW, but I did play a bit before the 0.562 Continental Drift update. One of the most vexing things to me as an end user is why the entire world gets more difficult as I complete missions. I understand the EP system and it's mechanics, but it is not fun. What I mean is, although I can change the difficulty at any time on the stone at the settlement, I can't go back to an easy zone, say, if I want to show off my new tier-3 fireball muscles to some enemies which previously gave me a hard time. Conversely, I can't go exploring into the deepest sections of the spooky lava pits if I want the challenge of my life. Where is the difficulty variance? It seems that it doesn't matter which zone I enter, it's going to be exactly the same difficulty. Pre-Continents, I actually felt a sense of dread walking through a zone 10 levels higher than me. I knew the monsters in that zone would move lightning-fast and destroy me if I wasn't on top of my game with the jumping and such. I felt safe in my level 1 Ice Age segment as well. Every once in a while I would go back to see how much stronger I had become with my latest spell, or test out tactics versus the 'easy' version of a monster type. In the current implementation, unless I am missing something critical, the difficulty is global and tied to the EP level. No one area is harder than any other area (with the exception of lieutenants, overlords, and the windy areas). I know there are places I could go to make it harder, like the dungeons, but it still is a global difficulty, and I don't understand why this is the case, from a gameplay perspective. Let me provide an example from The Elder Scrolls : Oblivion as to why this feels off. Early on in my playthrough of Oblivion, I had trouble fighting bandits. I was just barely able to defeat them in combat. After progressing quite a bit through the game, I came back to see how much better I was at slaying these puny bandits who troubled me so long ago. As it turned out, the bandits were now wearing enchanted demon armor and they were just as hard relative to my ability as they were at the beginning of the game. In summary, I don't feel that the player is provided with as much of a sense of progression when there is not a full spectrum of difficulties readily available for the player to test their skills upon. What is the point of getting tier-2 spells if ALL the enemies get tier-2 hitpoints to counteract it? EDIT: Oops, accidental edit while trying to copy some of this stuff. I don't know if I changed something by mistake. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | New | ||||
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There's a full spectrum: you _can_ dive into deep caverns for challenges up to tier 10 at any time. Each cave downward you go you get another tier higher. And the secret missions you find down there are also comparably harder. You are correct that there are no enemies that you can just cheese once you've beefed up, however. That said, that's a half-truth. If you've got an upgraded character that is majorly kitted out with enchants, and you get to your second continent, you're likely going to kick some major tier 1 butt. The main thing that is wrong with your comparison is that you're thinking of the progression as an RPG: it's not. It's got a lot more in common with a strategy game instead, and that's something that we've only started to explore. However, the system that we have has been much-discussed with players and us devs, and the general consensus is that this is the way to go for the time being. Hopefully that makes sense, but we aren't just being stupid about how to make an RPG -- if we were trying to make an RPG, all your commentary would be spot on. We're just not making an RPG, is all. |
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Since I tagged this as a suggestion, I guess I should actually make one. My suggestion would be to re-implement at least some form of "easy" and "hard" zones. Listed below are some possible ways to do this: -Wind: make it do something more than it does now. I would assume this has already been considered, but wind is a great way to make a tangible difference in the difficulty of zones. Perhaps light, medium, heavy, severe wind tiers? When a player ventures into a windless area, they feel it's going to be easy, and when they venture into a raging hellstorm, they know it's going to be hard. It could also be an opening to really lend more meaning to "A Valley Without Wind". -Missions: Perhaps a mission type that, when completed, reduces/increases (Temporarily? Permanently?) the level/number/type of enemies in the chunk? Not sure on the specifics, it's just an idea to add some variance. -Randomization: Maybe some chunks are just harder or easier than others for no real reason. Perhaps take a cue from the personality traits of NPCs and give some zones attributes. "Tranquil - This forest feels particularly peaceful:: -10% to # of enemies", "Arcane - An otherworldly aura permeates this area :: Defeated enemies don't drop health orbs", or even "Deadly - Enemies in this zone have a 20% chance to be 2 levels higher than normal". Again, these could be permanent or temporary depending on how you wanted to implement this sort of thing. Mission based? Time of day? Seasonal? Random Number Generator? The possibilities are really quite vast. |
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Hmmm, now _those_ are some interesting ideas. Not for this week, there's no time for that with all the polish stuff we have to do before beta phase 3. And we'll see about prior to 1.0, because I worry about balance implications. But simply having multiple tiers of windstorms alone might be an interesting way to make that more varied. Some of the big challenges are that we need the board to somewhat stay a bit open, so to speak -- we very much plan to have overlord armies and similar moving around the world map, and your having to mobilize your own civilization in order to beat them back. And so wanting to keep things free and clear to work on those features, which will mostly be post-1.0 I think, leads me to be hesitant to do too much in the way of changing world map flow. However, a lot of your ideas there are really cool and could be implemented in various ways, even off the world map. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 22, 2012 10:34 pm | khadgar | New Issue | |
| Feb 22, 2012 10:41 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Internal Weight | => New |
| Feb 22, 2012 10:41 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0019637 | |
| Feb 22, 2012 10:41 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | new => closed |
| Feb 22, 2012 10:41 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | => Chris_McElligottPark |
| Feb 22, 2012 10:41 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Resolution | open => won't fix |
| Feb 22, 2012 10:54 pm | khadgar | Note Added: 0019638 | |
| Feb 22, 2012 11:12 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0019639 | |
| Feb 22, 2012 11:12 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | closed => assigned |
| May 2, 2012 2:23 am | khadgar | Description Updated | |
| May 2, 2012 2:24 am | khadgar | Description Updated | |
| May 2, 2012 2:24 am | khadgar | Description Updated |
