Increasing difficulty in casual content ≠ Savage

[BillyKaplan]

I wonder if stronger ilvl blocks are required. Because bringing savage gear or fully upgraded tome gear into most content is like bringing a nuke to a knife-fight. It trivializes the content and is unnecessary besides. Upgrading your gear should absolutely make content easier, just not to the point you can stand in all telegraphs and still clear.

[NolLacnala]

"Expert" Roulette

[MilanFrozen]

Really I understand the need for things to be easy, but it's going to cripple the game in the long run. You can make decently interesting encounters and still keep them easy, but the moment you slip outside the arenalike design and standardized attack indicators the fights tread into territory where you have to make them so easy that the mechanics are effectively worthless.

I just want interesting fights and less arena design mostly, but I'm totally down with fights being harder to achieve that. Then again I disagree with how overused one shot mechanics and hard enrages are.

[KisaiTenshi]

Alright…let’s talk about it. Been wanting to discuss this for some time, but of course, I had to go Kanye and run on tangents about other things – but here I am now. As the title suggests, I don’t feel that increasing difficulty in casual content equates to having Savage-level difficulty. I’ve made this point before, I’ll make it again – you can increase difficulty without touching Savage levels. But, naturally, some may disagree, so I wanted to start a discussion for the sole question of: why?

See, to me, I like "hard" content, but not "punishing" content. I will sit there are figure out how to solo the Extreme primals, or solo MSQ dungeons unsynced and not ask for a 30 second clear from a full unsynced party, because otherwise I don't see the mechanics. What I don't like is unforgiving punishing content that you have to spend weeks with a static, forget that noise, that is not a good use of your time. The only things in the game that have a competitive element to them are the PvP and the PotD score, the latter only two players have reached the top floor with a top score.

PotD to floor 200 is not my idea of good content, it's "punishing" content, because it's controlled by RNG, not skill. Even getting to the top of leaderboard is a question of how many mobs you can spawn intentionally without dying or running out of time. So just nope out of that nonsense.

To me difficulty has to be a predictable and, thus skill controls how you proceed, and the RNG just determines critical hits or target selection, not if that action happens at all.

I happened to like the original difficulty of Amdapor Keep and Steps of Faith, and it's really sad that they nerfed these. Bring back Steps of Faith as (hard) with the original difficulty and mechanics.

But that said, I've deferred playing the hardest content in the game because of the petty attitude of the players who play it. They use third party tools with impunity, and I won't have any of that.

I'd like to see something like the Hamlet defense return, I know there a few fates with some of these mechanics, but I'm thinking more along the lines of an actual "build the defenses, fight the monsters" thing that spans entire days, not an hour.

[Remedi]

Aurum Vale had the misfortune of being synced down to lvl 49. It also did not have a min ilvl. Both of those things probably could've helped. Aurum is not that tough, provided you are wearing at least lvl 47 gear and have players who have a basic idea of what their doing, and a tank who can control their pulls. I've never fought the original Demon Wall in the instance, so I'll have to concede that point to you.
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You may want to change the bolded part in your post since you wrote Pharos sirius and the phrase is about Aurum vale

[SieyaM]

I would be happy to have a little more difficulty in regular content but my problem is that the only way they seem to know how to increase the difficulty is to make DPS checks harder. So it would really only amount to bosses in dungeons having a larger HP pool and making their outgoing damage higher, but the design of dungeon and the boss would still be the same.

[Remedi]

Nah SE already said that now when they want to increase the difficulty of something they simply add more one shots mechanics instead of dps checks

[Nora_of_Mira]

I would be happy to have a little more difficulty in regular content but my problem is that the only way they seem to know how to increase the difficulty is to make DPS checks harder. So it would really only amount to bosses in dungeons having a larger HP pool and making their outgoing damage higher, but the design of dungeon and the boss would still be the same.

thats realistically how they would make it more difficult. that would force you to pay attention to mechanics as too much down time (either through death or some status effect) would cause you to miss that dps check. and now we're bordering savage, lol.

[Lilseph]

The problem with Pharos was mostly the difficulty vs reward, when the equivalent dungeon that was released at the same time, was way easier and would give you the exact same gear/tomes. I think Pharos was the first time I ever ran out of time when doing it. The first day was a struggle to get everyone in the same page.

Amdapor Keep... honestly, I don't remember anyone asking for a nerf, but the opposite: Many people complained about that (The removal of the bees in Demon Wall, the reduction of damage of Anantaboga's Catastrophe.) AK's gear was higher ilvl than Wanderer's Palace, and it also rewarded you with a lot of Tomestones of Mythology (which was the current end-game currency), so the jump on difficulty made sense.

Then we have Steps of Faith which, as mentioned by Kaiva above, had a huge design flaw. You could fail at the middle of the run, but you had to wait until the boss reached the gates for a "legal" wipe.

Overall, if I have to pick a mode of difficulty for "harder" dungeons, it would be like echo'd Coil or a bit harder than Pharos. Something that requires some degree of progression and potential failure. The only midcore content that meets the criteria is the Extreme Primals, which are Midcore at best. Same thing applies to the first floors of Savage. But, currently, we don't have any dungeon with such mechanics or dynamics. Trash pulls are just a bag of HP that gets burned down and bosses are things where you can ignore most of the mechanics and get away with it.

The ilvl increase plays a huge role into that difficulty decay, and that's why leveling dungeons are harder than actual "expert" dungeons. That's another point that must be taken into consideration.

[SieyaM]

Which is also a terrible way to go about it. It doesn't really increase difficulty just makes you run around more. I would like more that you actually have to do. Someone mentioned breaking away from the arena format they are using and that could be very interesting. All boss fights I can remember happen in either a round or square arena with no obstacles.