New Difficulty and Scaling Concept

PC General Discussion
1

From an actual armchair developer, for what it’s worth (nothing) - here’s just an idea I had. This system solves the issue of dividing the player base and having to keep a low number of difficulties as a result.

First off: if any difficulty differences with (1-60) and (endgame) have to do with enemy AI or CC duration/chance or anything like that, let’s remove them. Make within each segment, the most difficult behavior default. The only thing scaling with difficulty is ingoing/outgoing damage, and rewards, which both scale to the player.

Secondly: Yes I am aware that in my shared difficulty model, a player could choose a high difficulty and another could choose an easy one, and power level the first. “Exploits” like this already exist, and power leveling is a staple of the genre, so I don’t see a problem with this.

1-60

Two modes:

Campaign 1-60

Monster level increases along the critical path from 1-60; nearby zones have similar monster levels. Monsters below the character’s level provide substantially reduced XP and those above provide substantially increased XP, allowing the player to take as much or as little time as they want.

Three difficulties: let’s call them Normal, Nightmare, and Hell.

Higher difficulties reward more loot and gold, but not more XP.

Players on any difficulty can party or coexist in shared environments, as monsters scale to them individually (a la Borderlands 3 and current 1-60 D4 content, regarding monster level.)

Upon beating the campaign, the world transitions to:

Non-Campaign 1-60

This mode can be chosen at character creation if the campaign has been beaten. No campaign quests exist. Monsters scale to the player’s level. Other than that, the same rules apply as Campaign 1-60, except higher difficulties also provide more XP. Designed for quick leveling.

Once a player is at level 60 in Non-Campaign, Pit opens. Beating pit #whatever opens Endgame and Torment Tiers

Endgame

Functions pretty much as we know it now in regard to torment difficulties. Solo pit clears of specific levels unlock the corresponding torment tier. Players of any individually chosen torment tier can coexist in the same manner as explained above.

If armor and resistance reduction have to be exist, this is where it happens.

2

I think the techniques shouldn’t be easy to keep characters of different difficulties together. People can’t be close enough to you and the game changes that. I don’t know, it just seems weird. People playing on easy destroying all my enemies while I’m sweating to kill enemies on hard. It seems the same as today, so instead of the meta we would have people on easy mode. I don’t know how that would be a solution.

3

What you’re seeing it as would be the same as if a player really strong for the tier level you were on came over and killed a monster in front of you. I’m talking about scaling ingoing and outgoing damage to each player’s torment level which, again, the game basically already does in pre-torment content, but to each player’s level.

Let’s say you were exactly times as strong as another player and on a difficulty 4 times harder than them. It would take both of you the same amount of time to kill the same monster, and an attack from that monster would take the same proportion of either of your hp.

4

What problem are you looking to solve,here? The best part of the campaign is that difficulty scales with you.

5

Yes…but someone by my side, at the easy level will kill all my enemies who are difficult for me. Even if there is a balance when we are close, soon my enemies would be easy even if I don’t want it. It seems bad.

6

First of all I fail to see how different this is from what we have now

Secondly => any solution based on scaling IMO is the wrong approach. Things should be less about scaling and more about… specializations, augmentations, events, and rare encounters IMO

For example:

T1 unlocks Aspect tree (link aspects to gain some partial bonuses extra if equipped specific 2 or 3 of them). Also perhaps reduce Aspect levels by default to say max out at 10 and then have some kind of choice/specialization mechanic to add more/extra levels to a few

T2 unlocks Beastiary to choose what kind of monsters you want to be more powerful against, but monsters also have a chance to gain augmentations

T3 unlocks rare types of elites that are upgraded version of a regular elite (meteor instead of mortar for ex.), you gain a new mechanic in sockets for Paragon (and perhaps a mechanic to increase potential capacity of those)

T4 unlocks rare temper manuals and events based on specific type of temper (fire temper from a horde tunnel, shadow temper from a roothold, lightning temper from a construct event, LH/OP temper from a Realm-of-hate event e.t.c.)

Something along those lines => could work

Key thing here is as levels go up and you progress things get harder. Not necessarily in scaling and stats or being overscaled, but rather in being met/tasked with more things to care for :thinking:

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7

I’m not going to laboriously explain to you how this mechanic is already in the game in one form, and the situations you’re describing are already happening in parts of the game that don’t have this mechanic due to the power gap between different players.

It feels bad because you don’t understand it. I’m not trying to be mean.

8

Tl;Dr

  • No More Difficulty-Based AI Behavior
    Enemy behavior remains consistent across difficulties. The only difference is the damage scaling and rewards (loot and gold), so there’s no need for more complex AI behavior changes between difficulty levels.
     
  • Flexible Co-op
    Players can join friends on different difficulty settings, with enemies scaling to match the each respective player in the party. For example, Suzy on Torment 1 can group up with Bob on Torment 4, and they can both participate in a Helltide event together, Suzy fighting her T1 enemies, Bob fighting his T4.
     
  • Hard Level Caps for Campaign Enemies
    Each campaign zone has a fixed enemy level range, such as level 1-20 in Kyovashad. As you progress through the zones, the level cap increases, giving a clearer sense of progression and player challenge.
     
  • No XP Boost for Higher Difficulty in Campaign
    Higher difficulties (Normal, Nightmare, Hell) increase loot and gold rewards but don’t offer more XP. However, this limitation doesn’t apply if you skip the campaign and move into Non-Campaign mode.
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