Difficulty - what do you think?

[MoCo]

I'm curious about your experiences of the game difficulty.

Please rate only after you have gained at least a little experience on the map (heroes, monsters, spells).

 

[louj3580]

I think kill faster strong monsters before inflict big damage.

 

[Isobar]

I was able to solo the ranger up to the 5th wave. Had I gotten a bit better luck with the drops, I may have been able to get further. I got enough crystals to buy a weapon from the merchant after the first wave.

The increase to drop rates in the barrels definitely helps get you rolling. I wasn't aware that all gold/crystals were shared when picked up, so that takes away my concern about not being enough to share with others.

 

[MoCo]

Sounds good so far.
I guess the bosses are very hard to solo - I won't say impossible, but very hard..

 

[ELECTROLYTE]

Got to about wave 14 or 15. Had 4 players at the start and it ended up two just borgo and gotrek. Teamwork does really help, when the group split up or ventured too far out is when people died the most. When it came down to just two of us it was pretty easy. Gotrek did all of the work and I just kept him healed. During boss fights it was simple hit and run with no fatalities. Eventually the groups got the better of us. The earlier bosses seemed a little slow with there movement speed. I also didn't see an option to set a game mode so I'm not sure what difficulty it was on. I assume normal.

 

[MoCo]

Your feedback is interesting to read. Maybe you can give me some clues how to change some things. It seems, that the bosses are to easily beatable due to hit and run. This is definitely a point I put on my list.

The difficulty should be displayed in the multiboard, but only the first player in the game (usually the host) gets the option to choose the difficulty. Or maybe you've played an older version, because difficulty has been first added in 0.84.

 

[ELECTROLYTE]

Yeah I realized now it was an older version. Just got done playing .086 and I beat it with two heroes. Just myself (borgo) and alrik. Easy combo with heals and one dps. Still have to try a higher difficulty and more players would be better to see how hard it gets but people never stick around the full game.

 

[MoCo]

I guess you've played on normal?

 

[DestoryeR]

Well i just soloed the skeleton king boss in insane difficulty took me 50 minutes with the healer. I needed to Kite him around the map that was the easy part. But the hard part was his bloodlust with the extra speed. the difficulty of the game is really good is hard with the kiting on solo. But cant imagine a full game on insane and also Really nice map love it. Also i really think the mobs in barrels can be used to stop spawn of other mobs like the maggots you can just have 14 maggots and let 1 mob spawn and let the wave pass like that i think removing the mobs from barrels would be nice.
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EDIT
well i beat the game in insane solo dunno if i saw a bug but i fought the last boss and i died and the 15th wave reseted but when i fought the boss again she didn't have the same move speed it was slow first time 2nd attempt she had fast move speed i don't know if that is a bug.

Final score was 177402

 

[MoCo]

Thanks for your feedback. However, I could use some more details for balance tweaking. So you beat the game on insane. I guess map version was 0.87 and you played as the priest? How about your equip?

The different movement really was a bug - very good attention.

 

[DestoryeR]

Well the map version was 0.86 will try to do the same on 0.87 yes I played as the priest. My equips were all legendary: Dragon spine (Staff 42% and 15 mana), Sun orb (orb), Whisperforest (120 hp and hp regeneration), Claws of the Demon Hunter (15% atpd and 6% crit), Ring of the Dwarf King (4 all stats), and i got Cape of Isinghar on wave 10 (item only usable by Borgo gives 50 hp and 15 mana).

Another bug that Roryn had a debuff weakness that said that its only in easy mode while i was playing in insane don't know if it is a bug or is it only to maybe lower the dmg his shield takes.

The dmg of the mobs in chapter 1 is balanced by what i saw every mob deals good dmg but can be avoided if kited. Also the tarantulas in spider wave don't hit you when you move the opposite side of them the start to show the attack but it like misses or they just start walking again so it interrupt's the attack. I noticed that the spider mini boss at the end of the wave cant drop egg's if there were 15 mobs in the map. I saw in an old version that the spider mini boss drop's egg's so i don't know if in new version does it drop egg's.

Chapter 2 i couldn't stay in circle if 6 mobs were attacking me also when a big monster comes i couldn't stay in circle with the monster with 3 more mobs so that looked to be the just right dmg even if i had heal in the circle the only time i could do that if i had one of the heals crit than i could just sit there and dmg.
The other thing i saw is that the Reaper of souls didn't even hit me but at end of chapter 2 i didn't get the achievement but while i was kiting near the heroes and the wisp's i saw that his black beams hit the wisp's so i guess that counted as dmg to player.

In chapter 3 the mobs are really deadly needed to avoid the bigger mobs to stay alive could circle only the lesser mobs the standard mob (can't remember name) the fire elemental mob (cant remember name) and the centaur creature mob the others i couldn't they do too much dmg even with circle and heal with 1.1k hp so chapter 3 is hard as it should be. The centaur creature mob is so deadly with the charge that i need to use divine intervention to get hp back but they can miss if you are far enough but if hit just right it ends bad a lot of the times.

 

[DestoryeR]

OK me and my friend we played an insane game (0.87 ver) he was a Slayer (SHBlade) and i played the priest again. The game was really easy we didn't wipe at all only SHBlade died once i didn't die at all dunno how it is in a 5 group but this game was really easy we needed to just fall back a little till cd's were ready and just take another stand i don't know but when i soloed it it took me 4 hours but with the two of us it was downed to 1 hour or more. At bosses it was pretty much the same deal we just stand and dmg the boss even the last one. Me and SHBlade we played a lot of rpg-s just the two of us so i don't know if that was it or the mobs being too low on hp or dmg i saw that the hp of last boss was the same when i played in insane on 0.86 the boss had 44.6k and in 0.87 same hp but with another player maybe adding more dmg and hp to the mobs will make it harder or making the heroes less powerfull. In single the mobs were strong but i still don't think a full game will have any changes the mobs will only have 2x hp and will be 27 max spawns but that also may just make them easy to mass aoe on them. It also can be the gear giving so much dmg we had legendary items i was full: Dragon spine (Staff 42% and 15 mana), Sun orb (35% spell healing), Whisperforest (120 hp and hp regeneration), Claws of the Demon Hunter (15% aspd and 6% crit), Ring of the Dwarf King (4 all stats), and Cape of Isinghar (item only usable by Borgo gives 50 hp and 15 mana) SHBlade had: World eater (50% axe), Gloves of the herald (30% aspd and 3% crit), gorefest orb (10% crit), ring of the dwarv king (4 all stats), Whisperforest (120 hp and hp regeneration).

I don't know what happened here i played another game this time 3 people it was a lot harder than when there were 2 people might just be the bigger spawn the hp wasn't the problem with the mobs but the difficulty with 2 players and 3 players is really visible.

Also another boss was increasing and decreasing movement speed that i saw skeleton king has slow movement speed at some point he went to average then when bloodlust happened he goes to fast but it drops really fast from fast movement speed to average.

 

[ELECTROLYTE]

Just played a 2 hour game on hard and it felt just right. Monsters were doing enough damage to keep players on the move and to use teamwork. The damage bonus felt like it was at a good place. In normal it was a lot easier and you could camp for longer. Do monsters and bosses have any spell resistance? It might not be a bad idea for bosses or on harder difficulties. Started with 5 people and ended up with three. I play Borgo and have 4 legendaries. Game is easier with gear and a good healer.

 

[MoCo]

Thanks for the precious report DestoryeR. This leads me to the question, weather either priest/slayer are too strong, or just the insane difficulty is too easy with high end gear..

There are no particular spell resistances yet. This might be an interesting idea though.

 

[DestoryeR]

Well i also saw this while I was playing with SHBlade when i was soloing in insane on ver 0.86 and when we did duo on 0.87 the mobs and bosses had the same hp in 0.87 dunno if 0.87 reduced hp of mobs and bosses on insane mode. And if it didn't reduce the hp then I see why the game was easy when we duoed.

 

[MoCo]

I guess I don't quite get your point here. Anyways, difficulty modifiers haven't really changed between 0.86 and 0.87, just the movement thing is new.
I think monsters running faster on higher difficulty is a cool addition that really makes things harder. However, as you can see, I was kinda careful here since the differences in speed aren't that big as in the other areas.

For example, let's assume a monster with basically 1000 HP in normal mode with 1 hero. With 3 heroes, the monster has 1500 HP, with 5 heroes 2000 HP.
Now, if we change difficulty to insane, the monster has 1600 HP with 1 hero up to 3200 HP with 5 heroes. (also see attached example)

Maybe, 160% is still too low for insane, or, maybe the hero factors needs improvement.

 

[DestoryeR]

Yes i know the hp scale i saw it. I was saying that in 0.86 when i was soloing insane mobs and bosses had the same hp in 0.87 with 2 players and i think that made it easy when we were playing. The last boss had 44.6k hp when i soloed insane and when me and SHBlade duoed but when we played with 3 players the boss had +66k hp so the scale worked but i don't get this why was it the same hp in duo and solo.

Actually by adding all of the hp that hp thing looked like a small bug but it really looks like slayer and the priest together make a strong combo because he can tank those mobs easy and also his aoe dmg is huge with cleave killing mobs on groups really easy and on bosses a crit bandage heal can keep him up and with heals from priest he makes a duo easy class with trio its the same deal as i found the two classes may be a bit op if you look at it correctly

 

[MoCo]

Ah ok.. Well, in one of the updates I added a separate scaling for bosses. Maybe it has something to do with this. While normal monsters get +0.25% more health per player, bosses now get 100% more health per player. This is something I've probably changed in 0.87. Dunno..

Next update will make things a little harder btw.

 

[Jack Of Hearts]

Bored bump.
I think that in comparison, the bosses tend to be vastly easier than the actual waves themselves. The final wave preceding the last boss is a prime example, giving my party a huge struggle that nearly caused a player or two to leave. (We were already down a few at the point)
The next boss in comparison was almost laughable, despite the interesting abilities used.

 

[MoCo]

You mean the final boss? Yeah, I agree that the bosses can use further work. I'll keep it in mind for later updates, right now some other things need to go first..

 

[MoCo]

I re-opened this thread and I want to invite everyone to report on the difficulty. Many things have changed from the first versions to the current version, especially concerning difficulty. Feel free to post your honest opinion here.

 

[ELECTROLYTE]

Normal difficulty plays as it should. The damage to life ratio seems appropriate and you can't always camp in one spot all game. I haven't tested the other two difficulties yet but I will when I get more gear and other players to load.

 

[MoCo]

I've uploaded a pic of the table I've used for difficulty calculations in v0.93 so you can get an idea how the difficulties work.

As you can see, playing on level 1 with no gear has a value of 1.0 on Normal difficulty. This value represents the hero power; a higher values means a stronger hero = an easier game. A level 10 hero with epic equip has a power of 3.04 in Normal, so he is about 3 times as strong as a lv1 hero with no equip.

It can also be noted, that a lvl10 hero with fully epiq equip has only a value of 0.95 in Insane. So, in v0.93, Insane is a challenge even for high geared and leveled heroes.

I don't know - maybe I should smoothen up the difficulties a bit, or, which might be even better, just add one more stage. So we got 5 stages instead of 4, like: Easy, Normal, Hard, Insane, Legendary.

What do you think?

 

[ELECTROLYTE]

I think those numbers look fine since you wanted players to have appropriate gear to balance out harder difficulties. If you did plan on adding a 5th how would that factor in?

 

[savinguptobebroke]

Is there a drop chance for legendary on any difficulties if so how much , or can you only get them through presents ?

 

[MoCo]

Here are the drop chances for v0.93

As you can see, legendaries are quite rare, but there are ways to get them aside from presents. But I'm open to suggestions concerning the drop rates since I do not find the time to test enough here. Do you think legendaries are too hard to farm right now?

 

[ELECTROLYTE]

Legendaries are fine as they are. You already calculated the difficulty with full epics, so it works well. Legendaries should take time to get like any other rpg.