[Trigger] RPG Difficulty Levels

[MojObi-Dos]

Hello all, I have a RPG map that can be played either Single Player, 2 Player or 3 Player.

I am trying to fix some game-difficulty issues.
When playing singleplayer/2player the bosses have a reasonable difficulty to defeat but when I start a game with 3 players they become too easy.

I have been trying to make some abilities that boost the bosses attack and defence. The bosses are computer controlled units owned by Player 9 Gray.
(the abilities are based upon Claws of attack and ring of protection, normal abilities)

So in terms of triggers I would like, at map initialization, to have these abilities initially disabled, then enabled when a unit owned by player 3 is created/enters the map.

For testing purposes I have made this trigger:

• Add player 3
  • Events
    • Player - Player 1 (Red) types a chat message containing -p3 as An exact match
  • Conditions
  • Actions
    • Set Point = (Center of Respawnatstartifdie <gen>)
    • Unit - Create 1 Footman for Player 3 (Teal) at Point facing Default building facing degrees
    • Custom script: call RemoveLocation(udg_Point)

I am having difficulty with getting this to work, as every time the map is loaded these bosses have their abilities already enabled (despite disabling them at map initialization).
1.Disable the ability

• Events
  • Map initialization
• Conditions
• Actions
  • Player - Disable Defence+20 for Player 9 (Gray)

2.Enable the ability

• Events
  • Unit - A unit enters (Entire map)
• Conditions
  • (Owner of (Entering unit)) Equal to Player 3 (Teal)
• Actions
  • Player - Enable Defence+20 for Player 9 (Gray)

Is there something I am doing wrong? Perhaps them abilities I have based them upon arn't supported for this sort of thing? (I couldn't find other abilities to try, while I know this section of the forum is for triggers, anyone got any alternatives I could use if this is the problem?)

Thanks

 

[MojObi-Dos]

I managed to get somewhere with Devotion Aura to raise the base defense of the bosses, I guess warcraft simply doesn't like them 2 abilities I based them upon, but I still need something about dealing more damage (melee damage).

 

[Zwiebelchen]

some item abilities won't work well with enable/disable.

However, you should think about adding more than just armor/damage for difficulty. Because difficulty is more than just the sum of stats... maybe also add a new skill for bosses at 3 players?

 

[Dr Super Good]

Generally you want EHP (toughness) to be linear with player number and damage to scale functionally as opposed to actually in magnitude.

The toughness scaling is so that it will take approximately the same time to kill no mater the player count. If players synergise well you can scale HP exponentially even however Diablo III showed that this only works for very well coordinated teams (so linear is better for a casual map).

Damage cannot really scale with player number as Diablo III proved early on after release. At high player numbers it becomes practically impossible to take any damage without dying. Even classes meant to take damage will become unable to take damage without dying quickly. The actual solution in this case is to give bosses mostly AoE abilities which hit many/all players at once for the same damage, this means that the moves scale with player number automatically so you do not need to raise damage (which also means that player's ability to take damage remains fair).

To encourage people to play as teams instead of soloing you do want the end result to be easier as a team than solo. The key is to make it only slightly easier as otherwise it would discourage people from soloing. It took Diablo III many revisions to get this right.