Is it "okay" for different things in the same type of content to have drastically different difficulty?

So first to get this out of the way, I will try to address all types of gameplay and I am not saying things are too hard or too easy, just pointing out how wide the difficulty swings even in one type of content.

Starting with the simplest, most casual, world quests. Some are as simple as drop down, three shot a rare mob and move on. Some are like 10 minutes of time consuming chores like picking up items, moving them, etc.

In the same vein, dragonraces. Some take about 20 seconds and some even on gold take like a full minute for the same reward. It’s all easy but it is odd one is so much more efficient than another.

Let’s move up to delves, some delves are just harder and/or more annoying… let’s face it most people don’t like the water ones even if they are easy because of buggy Z axis stuff. But even in the same delve some stories are must-do and some are always-avoid. We’re talking about the stories ranging from “kill a bunch of stuff in 5 minutes” to “move items and trigger things it takes 15 minutes and gear doesn’t help.”

Then even when you get to the more hardcore M+ players some keys are so much harder or easier than others. Every season you will hear people say things like “Dungeon Y on a +10 is easier than Dungeon Z on a +7.” People are re-rolling away from or into certain keys constantly.

Clearly not everything can be balanced exactly even but when the difficulty or time variance can be as much as like 200% that seems to be poorly designed.

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What even is this post?

The only way for all of these to have the “same” difficulty (by your own logic) is for them to literally all be the same.

In what world is that fun? Do you really want all worls quests to be kill 10 boars? I dont think so.

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This is the problem with your post. You are assuming that there’s this wide MASSIVE delta of variance within certain activities that create a compounded difficulty when… this really isn’t the case. When folks say stuff like “Dungeon Y on a +10 is easier than Dungeon Z on a +7.” to use your example, that’s hyperbole.

The simple reality is that difficulty in WoW is pretty balanced for the most part, and it requires looking for edge cases to make these claims. But when those edge cases actually do exist, Blizzard fixes 'em. For most types of content, this variance isn’t that extreme and furthermore doesn’t even matter that much. Because some raid tiers can be easier or more difficult than others and that’s fine. Same thing applies to every type of content.


So yeah, in short… its fine, and when genuine problems comes up they typically get sorted out if they actually matter.

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no clue what the op is on about lol

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Basically they are … I don’t want to say complaining but their language is difficult to parse whether they are or aren’t. So… they are ‘something’ about how some stuff is easier than others.

Dungeon X is easier than Dungeon Y.
Delve X is easier than Delve Y.
Worldquest X is easier than Worldquest Y.

Afterward, you apply the title of the thread and you… sorta get what the OP is trying to get to… I think.

I think you’ll need to rethink this one OP.

For something like Dragonriding world quests, they are never long enough to really make someone feel worn out.

Delves also shouldn’t have mega-variance from what I’ve seen but I have seen a difference in player performance on some:

I have a friend who if it’s the ‘mushroom channel’ one in Fungal Folly will literally rage quit and do a bountiful another day. I’ve showed them over discord how to do it but they just can’t avoid the green puddles. I can see how this could impact player time.

Dungeons yes I think it can largely vary by player practice and general experience. I ack that Rookery ain’t exactly the same as a Priory.

If there was something like, people are timing most M+ in 15s but there’s one dungeon where even 11 is almost impossible, we would have a problem sure. But the dungeons are all within 1-2 keys of each other, that’s fine. OCD is the only thing that should get trigger when you can’t time all dungeons at the same key lvl, there is no rule to enforce this.

As for timing of anything like dungeons, fights, WQs, dragon races etc, it doesn’t matter at all and enforcing a specific time they should all follow would make the game more boring and limit creativity to the designers making those.

Variety is a good spice, and things will just naturally have various difficulty for everyone just based on how varied people are. Some people had trouble with the zelda water temple, some people find they’re there and their hard to distinguish, and others just need to get rid of that old box you aren’t returning it the box has been sitting in your closet for almost two years.

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Not only is it OK it’s good.

Do you want every quest, dungeon, dragon race, delve, to be just reskins of each other? Because trying to make everything be the same difficulty just leads to a homogenized boring AF game.

Variety is always good, it gives players agency over their own level of difficulty for their own game time.

Looking at Raider io and looking at the top teams they did +20 for some dungeons and +18 for some… okay I said a 3 key difference and it has been in the past, but even for the most recent season are you saying a 2 key level difference is okay?

Something like a 2 key level difference is around 20%. There is absolutely room for improvement there but then again, is that too crazy?

Or, at the end of the day, is it realistically something to be expected?

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Not the same difficulty but not so varied that people will actively say one world quest is a must do every time it is up and one is always avoided. A 10-20% variance is fine, a 200% variance is not

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Or, just pick what you want and ignore the others. Your least favorite is someone elses must do.

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Yes, it is okay.

Of course it’s ok, what kind of a question is this?

Unless what you actually mean is, should LOOT from different content be equal despite wildly varying difficulty. And that’s a hard no.

Variance within content isn’t nearly as much as people seem to make it out. Priory might be a harder dungeon than Rookery, but it’s not grossly out of line.

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If you are comparing the highest possible keys, you have to compare the greatest performances against each other. The best of the best will always optimize their stuff beyond what is normal, because that’s kinda the point of performing at those levels.

If your concern with this thread was about competitive PvE-play, then that’s a whole other shebang and none of this thread matters. At that point you aren’t “playing” the game, but rather you are competing and the game is the medium through people compete.

For competitive play, a +20 and +18 cannot be compared. Because they are essentially different categories. Compare it to speedrunners competing in different categories with some categories being more difficult and more optimized than other categories.

That’s what you are talking about. If your focus is on competitive play, your question essentially becomes “Is it okay to have different speedrunning categories for a single game” and the answer is a very simple: yes.

Is it “okay” for different things in the same type of content to have drastically different difficulty?

I don’t see it as a big issue. I like the variety.

I think you’re confusing monotonous and way too easy with “difficult”

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People fight over whose game community is the most toxic, but no one ever fights over which community is the dumbest because WoW wins that contest hands-down.

The number of posts that are the equivalent of an adult asking if the sun leaves the sky at night because it’s sleepy too is just mind-boggling.

Yeh when it comes to world quests especially I shouldn’t have called it difficult, just time consuming. For example one quest is to kill a rare, which takes like 10 seconds. Another is to gather 10 tools and 10 mobs which isn’t hard at all but still is going to take a few minutes just to walk around.

I’d be curious to see I bet they have stats on which quests get done and which don’t

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