As a novice player navigating the early levels, I often find the repetitive process of dispatching a mob with just two spell casts somewhat tedious. Additionally, the minimal damage inflicted by the mob upon me, a mere 2% of my character’s total health, fails to provide the engaging challenge I crave.
Drawing inspiration from classic single-player games, I propose a dynamic difficulty system:
- Easy: Mobs remain at their current level of damage and resistance.
- Normal: Mobs possess slightly elevated stats for both damage dealt and resisted.
- Hard: Mobs exhibit a substantial increase, equivalent to Nx2 stats, in both damage output and resistance.
- Very Hard: Mobs present a formidable challenge by incorporating Nx3 stats, along with unexpected and diverse skills.
This feature, aptly named “single-player experience difficulty,” “leveling difficulty,” or “world difficulty,” is tailored exclusively for players seeking a solitary player-versus-environment (PVE) adventure.
However, when it comes to cooperative play—whether in parties, bands, or with other players attacking the same mob—a nuanced approach is essential:
- Legacy: Opting for a difficulty level other than the default (easy) precludes shared loot when assisting fellow players.
- Auto-selection: Choosing a difficulty other than the default (easy) results in an automatic reset to the default setting, requiring manual readjustment.
Personally, I favor the simplicity of the first option.
For party and raid scenarios within the open world (distinct from formal raids or dungeons), two considerations emerge:
- No Difficulty Available: The default system prevails, maintaining the status quo.
- Leadership Adjustment: Leaders of parties and raids gain the ability to modify the world’s difficulty. This empowers players to tailor their farming experiences for reputation or items, injecting variety into routine encounters.
Given potential implementation challenges, I lean towards the first option.
To introduce players to this feature, an in-game prompt could appear during initial levels, inviting players to elevate the challenge with a simple query: “Feeling underwhelmed by your leveling experience? Select a new difficulty…”
TL;DR: Revitalizing the leveling experience in retail, akin to the classic video game style, offers a more engaging single-player journey. The emphasis lies on providing OPTIONAL challenges for individual players without detracting from the broader gaming community. My sincere hope is that this concept receives due consideration from Blizzard someday. That’s it feel free to spread toxicity.