[MODES] - How about a 5% experience bonus per difficulty mode?

[Director]

Should accrue a 5% XP penalty per difficulty mode enabled.

 

It's supposed to make things harder, after all.

[Azrayel]

Personally, I don't like the idea of being rewarded for taking on a higher challenge tier; if I'm leveling faster it's not going to be quite as hard, is it?

 

I guess 5% could be small enough though, honestly I'd have to play and see how it was before I think I could make a solid call on this but my inclination is no-- leave it as something to consider for Eternity 2 after we've helped make the series' starter a success and know more of the game's "character."

[Tamerlane]

Making the hardest difficulty settings easier?

 

That's a paddlin'.

[Shevek]

The challenge should be its own reward. No added xp. No added items. You get bragging rights. If thats not enough, just play regular. There is no need to balance difficulty settings.

[IcyDeadPeople]

BUT... How about attaching a 5% experience bonus to each of the game modes? It's not a straight up "You're missing out if you're not doing this" kind of thing, but it's an added incentive to face challenges one might otherwise not and surely preferable to the notion of giving people better equipment for playing a certain way. This is highly egotistical, since, as I said, I'll check Expert/Path of the Damned/Iron Man anyway, but 15% more EXP would make it SO much more rewarding.

 

I'd hate it. I don't play challenging modes to "grind" and level up fast or find phat lootz.

 

I really enjoy "survival" modes in games (or when added by mods) including location-specific injuries, blood loss, diseases, crippling injuries, wounds, infections, spoilage, food poisoning, etc., simply because that kind of gameplay is fun. I enjoy the process of crafting food, drink and medicinal items like bandages, splints, tourniquets, etc. I enjoy roleplaying a character who is struggling to survive in a harsh environnment. If I didn't enjoy it, there would be no point in playing that mode.

 

Getting experience faster would completely undermine the point of such a mode. Personally, I usually enjoy the lower levels the most in RPGs. I love that feeling when everything in the world is dangerous and you must struggle to scrounge and save up to buy a crappy iron sword. If I suddenly level up too fast, the game becomes boring.

 

I also tend to enjoy the kind of combat gameplay where the player dies and reloads often. Often this means the easy or "normal" combat difficulty setting might not be as fun as the harder setting. Why ruin it by forcing the player to level up faster? This is not WoW or Diablo, where people try to rush and level up as quickly as possible so they can do PvP at level 85,000 or whatever their cap is. In Project Eternity, there are going to be a lot of people like me who don't care about leveling up and just want to enjoy role playing a couple of interesting characters, considering that character's point of view and making choices according to what we think our character would want to do. We don't want to level up too fast, because if our character ever becomes too powerful or too wealthy, the game becomes boring.

[Kasoroth]

I think that in general harder difficulty levels should give less XP. In fact, since I tend to prefer slower advancement, my preference would be that the only thing changed by the base difficulty rating is XP: 75% for hard mode, 50% for really hard mode The game world remains the same, but you don't reach demi-god power levels so quickly, thus the game is harder. I also really like the idea of various modes that alter meta-game aspects rather than directly changing the difficulty of combats. Things like autosaving over a single save slot and erasing your saved game when you die (this one I'd probably wait until my second play through to try, I'm not totally insane) or more realistic inventory limits (weighty gold, please ), or starvation, or actual time limits with consequences for exceeding them (though not necessarily an instant game over) rather than having a storyline that pretends there's urgency while actually letting you take as long as you want.

 

I know many of these "realism" features annoy some players who are just playing for the story and/or hack and slash, but having the option to have these features would make me really happy. For me, a lot of the fun of an RPG is getting into the mind of the character, and trying to imagine what they would be thinking about and worrying about. While food supplies might seem mundane and boring compared to battling an evil warlord, failure to consider them could be just as deadly, so to me it makes sense that the character would worry about that. I like the idea of finding a huge treasure hoard, but not being able to take it because I need to travel light and fast right now. These sorts of details make the world seem much more real to me, and help me think from the character's point of view rather than as simply a game player, with all the simplifying gameplay conveniences that have become conventional for the genre.

 

I'm generally not a big fan of short term "you have 30 seconds until the bomb explodes" time limits (they're okay occasionally, but not too frequently), but I love longer term strategic time limits, like: You're injured and fatigued and could really use a good night's rest, but you only have two days before the enemy army seizes a strategic pass, so if you don't make a forced march to get through it now, you'll have to either fight or sneak your way through (a near impossibility), or find an alternate route, or accept being blocked from all the stuff on the other side for a while.

 

I like when you can make decisions that effect the story directly through game mechanics, not just in a conversation tree. I like the idea of significant plot-related NPCs being able to be killed outside of scripted death scenes, and having that death impact the story in some way. I don't want story and gameplay to be two separate entities that take turns with my attention, I want them to be merged as much as possible

 

-Kasoroth

[IcyDeadPeople]

I guess the thing is, if you like hard-core mode, typically the difficulty is the reward. Unless you're one of those people that likes to collect steam achievements (which I guess there's nothing wrong with that?). I personally love hard game modes after an initial playthrough because I love a good challenge and replaying a game in different ways. Making the hard-core mode easier in some way would turn me off a little bit.

 

It's OK to incentive-ize it somehow internally or externally, but it that incentive shouldn't make the game easier is all.

 

A Steam achievement could be fun, but any kind of in-game XP boost etc., would defeat the purpose of such a mode and make it less fun to play IMO.

Edited September 28, 2012 by IcyDeadPeople

[agewisdom]

I feel having a FEW trophy loot (like 5, one for each class) would be a better choice. That way, if you see your PC wielding an awesome weapon, you'll know how immediately that it was played on a hardcore mode.

[ogrezilla]

this really seems counterproductive to the point of these modes. Its too small to change the way the game is played, but its enough to give you a slight edge that you clearly aren't looking for when picking these modes.

Edited September 28, 2012 by ogrezilla

[Muzrub333]

So the point of this post was to rally support to add an EZ Mode exp bonus to the Hard Mode of the game? LOL Really?

 

You've been playing too many modern MMO's; those things will rot your brain.

[rjshae]

I feel having a FEW trophy loot (like 5, one for each class) would be a better choice. That way, if you see your PC wielding an awesome weapon, you'll know how immediately that it was played on a hardcore mode.

 

Yes, if you get tougher foes you could probably expect better loot, so your non-level-based abilities would increment a little faster. That should give you some additional satisfaction.

[Kage Tempest]

I am for an increase in experience due to higher difficulties only because getting actual items or content that are not attainable in lower difficulties is NOT what I want to see in this game. Consider this, Project Eternity is no where near an action RPG like lets say Borderlands or Diablo/Torchlight. What do these games have in common? They are Loot Driven games with simple plots that won't give your head a doozy if you seek something complicated with several large twists and turns that are not cliche. The higher difficulty modes will give you greater chances of finding insanely powerful/awesome/ridiculous gear, it IS the incentive for THOSE games to keep playing because the game is well... primarly loot driven.

 

Project Eternity will have much more emphasis on the plot than these games, do you think the devs would want to encourage a fast run through the game's main plot just so you could unlock harder modes to attain that certain piece of gear that spawns on a loot table ONLY on that hard mode? All content in the game should be accessible on the first run, otherwise I feel it cheapens the experience of playing the game, knowing that there is something significant you can't reach in your first playthrough.