D4 devs please rip a page out of Id Software book for difficulty tuning since you all Microsoft

PC General Discussion
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Modern game needs to have the flexibility and choices displayed in most modern iteration of Doom The Dark Ages. The game has had huge success and I can not seem to find anyone having anything negative to say about it.

Just learn what they did with the difficulty slider which applies to pretty much everything inside the game , without altering the rewards , so everyone will get the same rewards regardless of how they want to enjoy the game.

Put a difficulty slider like that in D4, you let those people that enjoy immunity phases and 1 shots have at it all day long. But you also let those who don’t enjoy immunity phases and 1 shot to turn it completely off.

Some people just want to blast and loot and play for the power fantasy and progression.

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Just lower the difficulty. There are 8 to choose from at the users control.

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I’m having a lot of fun with Doom the Dark Ages, but it’s definitely not a “huge success”, sales are down significantly more than Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal.

And as much as I like the difficulty settings in Dark Ages, that’s a single player game, an online game can’t be as flexible with difficulty.

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I mean don’t get this wrong but 70$ with a discount ?, come on… I’m buying a game, not a piece of furniture :stuck_out_tongue:

As for the rest ?, absolutely, in fact I think they better do something else => introduce SSF/ruthless mode where the entire game is harder and then reduce the Torments to only one

It would be much better to have the game feel “shorter” but better overall :slight_smile:

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It’s an online game, this is never happening. NEVER. There has to be parity across players, otherwise no achievement means anything. Oh, nice, you solo’d Liltih? Yeah, but you had the difficulty sliders turned down like a wuss.

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The problem with this genre is that difficulty is designed as part of the progression. So, in practice it’s not a difficulty scale/slider like most if not all games out there. I get why it was done this way but evidently, and especially in D4 this system doesn’t work.

I’d say it would be much preferable if they completely decoupled the difficulty system from progression. Only then people would be able to play the way they prefer. Until then, D4 will be an extremely easy game no matter the “difficulty”. Hell, even the game director said so like a month ago or so :confused:

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This is the most logical solution - I’ve been saying it for months.

It not only solves the “big knob” problem, where devs resort to adjusting something that affects multiple systems & they can’t even predict the impact to the game loop (b/c they don’t really play their own game & don’t have enough competent testers)… it would make the coming leaderboards much more flexible & rewarding/ stress-free for them if they have ruthless mode in place already.
…

It’s still an interesting idea - something like it could be fun - but that’s not a good example, right? Doom game sessions are effectively siloed. You’re not playing in a semi-persistent world shared by possibly hundreds of other players who are impacting that same world (ok fine - dozens?) without being in your group. Or is Dark Ages different?

That could pose a technical challenge that D4 devs can’t overcome due to crappy engine and/ or lack of experience. More importantly(?), leaderboards. I guess this system might dilute leaderboards or severely limit their scope.

Initially, I thought you meant this system would also enable party members to engage in the same content at different effective difficulties - but you’re describing solo experiences, so…

Yeah, I think a separate ruthless realm (at character creation) is the simplest middle-of-the-road option for devs, without them having to highly customize in-game encounters for each play style.

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I like the Dark Ages difficulty slider, I can customize the pace of game suit my style. We can fulfill the fantasy of slaying demons like god, yet the enemies still dangerous and I felt on the edge every time I fought them. Can’t say the same on fighting monster in D4

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You have access to all content in T1. Blast away.

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Bro, come close, secret:

Torment 1 gives the same stuff as Torment 4, just less of it.

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wait a min…we already have a slider.

normal - T4. Although rewards are not the same.

Your concept only work in a single stand alone game, not in an MOARPG.

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But there is a difficulty slider, it’s called T1, T2, T3, and T4

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The difficulty slider T1 to T4 is measured in mobs HP, not how difficult the enemies. The damage of the mobs are cap at certain level. The monster HP at T4 high pit has quadrillions HP which cant be defeated by any builds mathematically except those if infinite damage bugs. Spongy enemies is cheap design, it doesn’t make the game more difficult, it doesn’t make the players feel more dangerous and feel good to overcome it. It just make the content takes longer time to clear, or impossible to clear like Pit 140 above.

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Plus there was this part:

Which most (all?) critics ignored. OP is even suggesting including a toggle for certain boss mechanics. Completely distinct from typical “difficulty” settings.

Anyway… to repeat for this too: they could just add “ruthless” realm - a check box at character creation. This allows devs to add all sorts of peculiar “difficulty” mechanics & conditions, without interacting at all with their dumb, shortsighted T slider. ALL the tryhards would jump at the chance, and the 90% who just want a “traditional” range of difficulties can stick to “traditional” mechanics & conditions. So effing simple.

Make max Pit “attainable” by at least 1 non-bugged build from every class in T4… and put that other idea in “ruthless”. Neat separation of leaderboards, etc.

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To address this fairly it’s a package deal bad idea. When you create two distinct experiences you usually have to compensate for it. “Turbo mode” and “Challenge mode” mechanics are fundamentally dangerous and difficult to implement specifically because reward balance has to be a combination of physical and psychological. For example in a game you’re playing by yourself you might choose “Challenge mode” because you want the psychological satisfaction of doing the thing with the full understanding that it will pay you nothing to do so other than your own smug satisfaction. But that’s resources in development shunted to this 5%'er experience. Johnny Mc-Want-My-Staff-Now will never even consider it.

S20 when the game is doing great, no growing pains are present, and the Devs are all twiddling their thumbs or working on other games and this is something of a hobby to code for. Until then developing the game for the other 95% and just getting the damned thing to work should take priority.

Just so it’s clear “Max Pit” is a weird, worthless goal. It’s just a scaling system. They could make Pit 1,000 with a really low scaling multiplier and it’s the same system as if they made Pit only 7 levels with a really high scaling multiplier.

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Seasonal progress: In TORMENT THREE…

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If implicit in your take is that they should abandon the “difficulty ramp up” that’s marketed to the 10%… then ignore the following, which assumes they’re simply not going to do that. Great Wall of China text follows.

2nd part correct, and that’s by design. First part misleading. Generalizing across the industry isn’t necessary, this can be approached as a D4-specific problem.

They’ve cast their net very wide, and they have the “accessibility” market cornered.

Summary

S8 (& maybe S6) “difficulty” adjustments have shown visible results: in our small corner of the pie - the permanently-online - a record number of low-post accounts sprang up this month, logging in to express their distaste. I’ll trust my reading of who these people are (in Blizzard’s universe)… they’re the 90%.

Factor in the past 2 years, and what the existing player base has been trained to expect are ‘normal’ progression goals. Studio has tried to inculcate them with the new “aspiration” mantra, but it’s not catching. They’re very good at marketing the brand as product… they’re pretty terrible at all other forms of communication. Diablo combat & lore sell themselves… Irvine’s PR is plastic & lacks conviction. When they speak, they can’t even articulate what “aspirational” means, they never break it down. That’s b/c it’s a bullet-point, not a philosophy.

That knob is dumb & they don’t know how to fine-tune it. It impacts different loops - including Codex progression - in ways they aren’t able to predict b/c it’s clear they don’t test their settings enough - b/c that budget isn’t allotted to them.

Why are they committing to this route anyway? For the 10% of course. There’s your ‘resource expenditure’. That’s why it’s a misleading objection. They’re already investing dev time & effort to ‘spice it up’ for the 10%, who it seems are drifting from the game. They’ve made 2 u-turns so far (apparently in this effort) over 3 seasons. The fluctuating will continue for several seasons, that’s almost certain. Resources are in fact already being wasted trying to square a circle.

Two more reasons why the objection is invalid IMO. First, the game drew in $1 billion in revenue in year 1. Given the great growth potential in the target demo, I won’t discount that year 2 was impressive too. They pay notoriously low wages, even before considering California living expenses. They have the money to hire the staff (or pay in-house studios like Blizzard Albany to devote time to this) & the technical resources. I think the limitations are primarily:

Summary
  • managerial (Rod’s cost-cutting philosophy & misallocation of resources - ref. Ybarra),
  • institutional knowledge drain (incl. staff attrition from this & other development friction stemming from a poorly-planned launch & early cycle),
  • lack of a clear vision to this day (a recent PSA by the interim class lead who took over after Adam Jackson quit a couple months ago, shows them outsourcing a possible reimagining of the role of Aspects to the player base. …they have no idea what they want),
  • maybe a janky mobile-based engine they find hard to work with (would explain a lot of things)

Under such circumstances, invest now, invest early, and invest greedily… to correct this foundation. Straightening out the “difficulty ramp up” for the 10% is a small koi in this pond.

Second, which I should’ve mentioned at the top: at its core, it’s a perception tweak, nothing more. Take what’s intended for T4, and call it ruthless. Make it a separate check box. That’s the vast bulk of innovation right there:

Summary
  • it accommodates learned progression goals,
  • it ‘pleases’ the 90% and the 10% (the pretenders would adjust back to T4, it’s that simple)
  • it simplifies future leaderboards & sidesteps the studio’s anxiety over them (if you haven’t seen Brent Gibson wince at the thought of what they’ll have to do to introduce acceptable leaderboards for such a splintered base… I think you should, for necessary perspective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=az6Fe7ZwT8c …whatever they’re cooking rn is going to be a :poop:show)

What you’re saying is ‘necessary incentives’ is a mirage. The reason they think they’re losing the 10% is b/c of Diablo’s well-earned reputation as “not challenging”. The reward is the challenge. (I don’t agree that they’ve understood what “challenge” means, but the point stands.) A title is a reward. A “ruthless leaderboard” placement is a reward. A distinct panther mount with blazing accoutrements is a reward. They do not lack for cosmetics resources. This aspect of the sales pitch doesn’t need a lot of thought - it sells itself. Prove otherwise. (Again: pretenders bounce over to T4… it’s self-explanatory IMO.)

It’s about managing perceptions. That’s important to all 3 groups: the studio, the normals, and the tryhards. (Calling the goal ‘worthless’ is a non sequitur. It’s worthless only once you’ve learned to ignore it.) T4 “max Pit” is currently set to “aspirational”, whatever that means. Fragmenting transfers that philosophy to ruthless realm. That’s all… no subtlety. Just blunt perception management. (See above for how this improves player enjoyment & leaderboard planning.)

Leaderboards have been deliberately delayed, in part out of fear of this (uniquely?) fragmented player base. The base is huge, and wasn’t carefully cultivated… Blizzard threw a very wide net. A fragmented leaderboard system for a fragmented player base makes the most sense. And after settling in, neither silo would be aware of the other, sorta like SC/ HC.

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But not the same xp progress or rewards like obucite which make progressing even harder and more of a slog to get through. I have really disliked this season for just that reason.

I’m at 170 paragon but T3 feels like it takes so long to kill and it is so easy to die that it is not fun. So I lower down to T2 to run pits but get dinged by losing the chance to level up glyphs and maybe get some more power to do T3. I have two characters this season and not one of them has managed to get a glyph to level 46 yet. The slog is real and not fun.

I for one wish they would decouple rewards and progression from difficulty and have it be the same regardless of Torment level. Same with pits, get rid of percent chance and just have the base upgrade be 4 for the pit and if you beat it in a certain time frame you get extra glyphs upgrades. Like if you beat it in 15 minutes you’d get 5 upgrades instead of 4, 10 minutes 6 upgrades and 5 minutes and under 7 upgrades.

It is not that hard to make the game accessible for all skill levels and playstyles. They just have to be willing to do it.

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There’s no progression if you’re just 1 shotting every form of enemy from the start and end. You don’t need 1 shot a lord of hell as power fantasy. You can literally lower a torment tier if you want to do that. The health gaps between torment tiers are that big.

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I’ve thought about this for a while and I am not quite certain how to approach it.

I don’t really have a point of disagreement per se, so much as I think that what you’re saying is true but also too early to tell how it will shake out. I mean the one major contention I have is that they’re committing to the route for the 10%. I think it’s less about the 10% and more about marketing through the professional players. Showcasing, in a sense, rather than perhaps producing content with the intent to create something truly enthralling for the rare uberachiever.

The reason I think this is because the direction that the game has drifted to has been almost 100% an understanding that players no longer play these types of games by themselves. There’s a guide for it and you can literally be the showcase person by just copying them. Tier 4 no longer being inspirational is not because players got better but because the playerbase itself is no longer bound to their own wit. If you can’t figure out how to get to some ridiculous level by yourself you’re a few clicks away from the answer.

It’s evolved into a test with a clear set of real answers that you can just take. You can even know how far a build will go without so much as trying it out due to Maxroll etc. + have recorded demos on how to run the thing.

I mean I agree that the game is in disarray but I also understand why. What was released as 1.0 the majority of the playerbase rejected. What makes discussion about this particular game so hard is that 1.0 and 2.0 are so different. They are not the same game at all. In every sense of the word they’re not really comparable. They upended all equipment. They upended all items. They practically destroyed their original end-game and shoehorned in a new one. I can’t really see them having a vision after 2.0 because it proved that the original vision and path was just not going to ever work; they’re in development with us now because just 6 months ago they had to tear it all out and start again.

But the last thing I want to touch on is Leaderboards. Leaderboards are always toxic to a game, period. They never do anything but create rankings that are majorly flawed because the measurements themselves are unstable. However, setting aside the metrics of leaderboards being statistically useless one of the major flaws here is that in Diablo 4 specifically there’s no separating function for leaderboards to work.

What makes an iARPG leaderboard work is the rarity of the items and the difficulty of acquisition. Diablo 4 has no rare items and nothing is difficult to acquire. I think this is actually what is driving away this 10% if you will; it isn’t that the game is not challenging, because it doesn’t matter how challenging it is per se, but that there’s no edge in the competition itself. You and the idiot who couldn’t build something to get past level 20 by themselves are always on the same footing. Your build, no matter how original or brilliant you are, will be copied to the point where you may actually lose 1st place by someone getting fortunate and having a tenth of a second less than you on some random run.

Because there is no differentiation in the playerbase and there is no sufficient randomization in the pathing your leaderboards have zero value. I do play a number of these types of games that do have leaderboards and have in the past and the more deterministic (lower the rarity / better the odds) and higher the attrition (“perseverance > cleverness”) the more useless the metrics. I assure you that the only leaderboard value will be “First”. That’s it. The first person will be the only one worth discussing but otherwise there’s no movement value because as I said the people who can show up at the top can literally be bottom players who just copied a guide.

It’s also why I don’t really agree with rebranding T4 as anything. The gatekeeper is dead. Maxroll killed him.

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