Difficulty

[krozman]

1. Difficulty. Horribly low. I took on Hardcore mode, and other than the monsters being more difficult, thus making it harder to get kill shot bonuses, it's still just too easy to consider threatening. The reason why it's so easy is because you let the mobs leash on you, and once you leash them away, you can sit and wait for full health and mana.

Because of this fact, Consider this ENTIRE GAME in a different way: Don't imagine each level as a whole, but a series of battles with monsters. The question is: Are there points inside each level that guarantee challenge to the player, i.e. possibility of death?

IF NOT, then monsters are a mere pretense to clicking on your walls and finishing the level.

IF SO, are there enough of these challenges to make any player feel a sense of accomplishment when done?


Here's my "exploit" way of survival. If I encounter a situation where I wont win by just charging in, I will run away, leash the mobs, and go get a drink of water while I regen health/mana. Is that really the intended way of playing the game, or should each battle MAKE the player choose powerups and kill selection in order to survive?

As far as solutions are concerned, there are a few I'd suggest. You could eliminate the leash mechanism, basically forcing you to kill the monster in order to rest. You can still kite them, but in order to fully feel safe each monster must die.

A possible second solution is to institute the LEGEND OF ZELDA PROGRAMMING. Sorry, Zelda did far too much in the mid 1980's that I wish people would implement. Considering the worldview of "each battle is it's own level" approach, make it so that when you go into certain areas, the doors close and FORCE you to defeat the monsters prior to being able to escape. When all mobs die, the doors open and you can freely explore, etc.

If you're old enough to remember, when you went into one of those rooms in Zelda you paid a lot more attention, and played your butt off to not die because the dealth penalty sucked.

yet another solution is to give players a POINT PENALTY for running away from any battle.

Yet another solution is to allow monsters to respawn if you run away, but that will cause people to farm monsters for powerups.

Anyway, I fear that if you don't take the difficulty of this game seriously, nobody else will either.

[Shadow]

I might be getting rid of the "leash" mechanism. In DoP it was kind of needed, but not as much in Kivi. I also might be making the monsters faster in the higher difficulty levels.

[Logorouge]

I must agree with Krozman, the difficulty of the beta version is very low. I'm no hardcore player, so I started my game on the Normal difficulty setting. But after a little while, I got bored because the fights were not challenging at all. Finding secrets and using the power-ups was fun, but the monsters were just a way to test the power-ups.

I deleted that game and started on Hard. This time, I couldn't just charge at the monsters without thinking. Still, I didn't fear for my life.
I still have a lot of missions to unlock, so the difficulty could improve over time. But so far, the settings seems way too easy.
(I can't even imagine what the Easy setting is like. )

It would be nice if all the difficulties could have a little boost or maybe lower the base HP of the characters.

make it so that when you go into certain areas, the doors close and FORCE you to defeat the monsters prior to being able to escape.

This is an excellent idea. If you could make ambushes and some boss encounters using this method, it would create some very challenging battles.

If you're old enough to remember, when you went into one of those rooms in Zelda you paid a lot more attention, and played your butt off to not die because the dealth penalty sucked.

Those were the good old days... Now I'm getting nostalgic.

[Delve]

Originally Posted by krozman

Yet another solution is to allow monsters to respawn if you run away, but that will cause people to farm monsters for powerups.

Anyway, I fear that if you don't take the difficulty of this game seriously, nobody else will either.

Not for powerups, as for the most part I haven't seen any single one that won't allow you to survive nearly any situation and you can only carry 3. No, they'll farm for points. Which is a careful distinction but still a valid one. Respawning is a good idea, I think, but it calls into question all sorts of other issues. Point values (maybe respawned creatures can be pointless?), and the end-of-level monster kill bonus immediately spring to mind. I'm sure there are others. One possibility would be to disable respawns on Easy, have 5 minute respawns on Normal, and 1 minute respawns on Hardcore. Or some similar scheme.