Why we need a world difficulty slider

Community General Discussion
1

I’ve mentioned this before but I want to state it again. The game currently suffers from a challenge drought in too many areas making the content trivial, repetitive and boring.

While I understand we’re a very diverse group of players I also recognize the need for the MMO to fix this issue. It’s not healthy for the game to have people burn through years of content creation in a matter of weeks then spend months on end grinding out the min/max game on increasingly trivial and highly repetitive content.

How does a world difficulty slider fix all of these issues?

Well let’s start here. The biggest problem is the world itself.

  1. It’s trivial.
  2. It’s unrewarding.
  3. It’s very expensive to make.
  4. It does not prepare anyone for mythic dungeons and raids.
  5. It does not facilitate community growth nor personal growth as a person working with others.

The world does do some good though. Namely it unfolds the story through a series of quests that attune the player to dungeons and raids. The current method also allows people who aren’t interested in highly challenging content to login and do the story mode for a bit, alone if they prefer.

So how do you deal with this? It was already addressed in dungeons and raids with difficulty selectors. This way people who want story mode get it and people who want a big bad dangerous world full of opportunity get theirs.

Giving us an option to flip a world mythic difficulty switch:

  1. Stiffens progression in it slowing down the content consumption.
  2. Requires us to start the game right from the beginning in a trinity group.
  3. Requires us to work together, right off the bat.
  4. Requires us to know the world, its dangers and how to survive it increasing our engagement to it.
  5. Smooths out the gap between mythic dungeons and raids.

It would be different from regular play in that:

  1. Nothing is repetitive. You clear an encampment of bears and they’re gone permanently. A true progression model.
  2. There are no world quests.
  3. There are no dailies.
  4. When you do something major in the world you get geared right away.
  5. The path to completion should be comparable to say, 2 months of grinding but without the grind.
  6. Instead of allowing you to game the system (smashing a player 5 boss with 25 people) the world reacts increasing the resistance to the raid. Maybe it increases the boss powers, adds more bosses or both.

If it takes you a couple months on average to go from 200ilvl to 355ilvl grinding in BFA then the entire process start to finish in mythic difficulty should be a couple months. Meaning players in story mode and players in mythic mode pretty much finish around the same time. This goes for reputation too. Rep gains for completing quests in mythic mode would be far greater. Just like gear to compensate for the lack of repetition. Again there would be no world quests nor dailies.

I would also consider having players attune to mythic raids and dungeons by besting the mythic world. All achievements gained in the world through mythic deeds should be recognized as well in achievements and maybe slight modifications to the assets found in it.

Essentially what this allows the developers to do is to leverage all of this amazing art, story and world for a much longer period in a way that players will find engaging and more adventurous. It also ensures the person showing up to your mythic dungeon or raid is groomed for the task. I feel this would be the absolute best thing for the game right now.

It doesn’t have to be perfect right off the bat. Something of this magnitude would be a challenge for both the developer and the player. Personally however I feel the MMO genre needs it badly and Blizzard is in the best position to pull it off.

5 Likes
2

I admire your resolve but the world mechanics are the last of the devs to do list

4 Likes
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There is a gap between mythic dungeons and raids? Isn’t that gap called “mythic+ dungeons”?

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4

The concept of a world difficulty option if certainly a solid one. Scaling has really made the world feel like a chore, and an option to at least use that scaling for a decent purpose and make leveling engagingly challenging again would be a good option.

That said, I think your design for one is very very poor.

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5

Yay !!!we need more discrimination tools that will bring players together :slight_smile:

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6

get a roommate or family that hogs up the router and an ISP that never shows less than 207ms latency. then go fight the Greench and notice that the game says ‘your target is dead’ a full second before he does his death animation

then try to mount up to leave, but wait an extra second before the cast bar even shows up

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I’ve wanted a hard mode for leveling for years - I want to fight harder enemies for more XP and level faster at the expense of more risk.

War mode’s XP bonus is so close to giving me this. So close.

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8

I posted something along the same lines a day or two ago (Idea: Heroic and Mythic World Modes), but it didn’t go anywhere.

Needless to say I’d support this.

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9

Considering (until this thread anyway) 100% of the complaints I’ve seen about scaling have been about it making everything too hard, I’m not sure adding a slider to make it even harder would help at all.

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I don’t think making it harder is the problem, the issue is that it got harder AND slower.

Post-fix I think I’m the happiest with leveling I’ve ever been, it doesn’t feel totally mindless and it’s about as quick as it was before the XP nerfs. I’d love a way to make it even moreso.

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Pretty sure we were talking about post 120 ilvl scaling.
I’m totally on board with the new levelling requirements. They’re fine.

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i demand a torment difficulty system and a hardcore mode just like diablo!

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I wasn’t referring to scaling really but pacing of the content.

The issue with scaling you hit on exactly. The time gates and the grinds are there to prevent people from hitting exalted and 355 a week into launch. So everything feels slow AND trivial. The NPCs were not difficult just time consuming.

The kind of difficulty I’m talking about is where you can’t just go topple an enemy encampment alone. Regardless you will need a healer and tank. The entire purpose of this design would be to groom community and class understanding before dungeons and raids are attempted. The world becomes the trial rather than just a story delivery mechanism. It hits a lot of issues where people feel less engaged, bored and look at the grinds and time gates as chores. With all that gone and the game just demanding more from the player it feels more like an adventure.

1 Like