[General] widely varying difficulties at Heroic and Legendary

[mccrispy]

I've noticed that there's no moderation of difficulty at Legendary/Heroic. It seems that the wildcards are randomly picked and are not affected by the scenario power or what other wildcard (if any) picked. This means that sometimes a Legendary is easier than some Heroics. It also means that some Legendary are significantly harder than others.

 

Sometimes you can get a Legendary that is at the easy end (e.g. no pluses on Bane checks and no automatic damage taken) or a Heroic at the hard end (+ on Bane checks and + D4 Goblin/Undead), which seems harder than the Legendary.

 

It would be really great if some moderation was used instead of complete random, so difficulty would be more (but not completely) predictable.

 

It's there a list of wildcard and scenario powers that I can refer to in this sort of discussion?

Edited September 7, 2016 by mccrispy

[Hannibal_PJV]

Only player generated lists.

The complete random is not so bad at all. It is good that there Are harder and easier combinations.

In general legendary is harder than heroic. But as you said sometimes They Are not. But Also some heroic scenarios Are very, very easy to solve. I am not sure if all legendary options should be "And now you die!" Level difficulty even I like those From time to time.

I personally hope even more varioations just because They give variation to the game play.

Your idea is good, because it can sometimes be counter intuitive that Legendary can be easier than some heroic scenarios, but I personally don't see any problem in it, as long as legendary as a general is harder than heroic version.

Also the scenario power tends to scale with difficulty level Also so it will Remedy this "problem" somewhat.

 

I will try find some time to collect some difficulty wildcards to pathfinder wiki. I would not be surprices if someone already has put those there.

 

http://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Portal:PAD

 

Ps. Ok. I started the list in the wiki today. It is not complete, so be free to send me any new ones or any errors I made in the list in wiki, so I can update the list. Or be free to update the list on your own if you Are familiar with wiki page syntax.

Edited September 7, 2016 by Hannibal_PJV

[mccrispy]

The point that I'm trying to make is that Heroic should have a difficulty range of (arbitrary number scale here) 20-30, with Legendary being 31-40. At the moment it feels more like Heroic 20-30, Legendary 25-55. I'm happy with a high difficulty (otherwise I wouldn't countenance playing at Legendary), but I want a bit more predictability. I don't want to play on Legendary and have a cakewalk, neither do I want to know from the beginning of the scenario that I cannot possibly win. Variability is fine, but over a better controlled range. Currently it feels as though zero thought went into the scenario generator as it appears to be "pick one of those and two of those" with no thought for the balance of effect.

 

+3 on Bane checks, +2D4 on Goblin/Undead, Bury most Boons gained isn't Legendary, it's Nightmare! IMO

[Hannibal_PJV]

Yes, it is a nightmare and I personally enjoy it

It is very hard to make difficulty level to suit all. That is why I like the wide variety. You can get something really challenging or you can get something that you can deal with.

 

Same with the tabletop games. Some people think that Rice of the Runelords was the best considering the difficulty. Some think that Wrath of Rigteousnes was the best considering the difficulty and both team Are right in their own perspective.

 

We need easy ones and we need nightmare ones. My personal dream would be more cranual difficulty levels, but I Expect that the three we now have is the max. So my dream is quite close to your hopes.

It would require some tier system to wild cards. The problem is that for some team one wild card is a nightmare and another team it would be just an annoyance. So the balanging system would be very complicated. It would have to take in account what characters you have, what combinations of characters you have in the team, what powers and cards They have, what is the playing Style and strategy of spesific player and so on.

 

So at this moment I think that random combinations Are best, but when Obsidian start to get data of what combination Are the hardest and what Are the easiest... Maybe, we can always hope