Difficulty

I would like to see difficulties in this game just like there is in d2. Normal. Nightmare. Hell. Etc. A seperate ladder for each. And you must beat the game in normal before getting to play the harder difficulties. Each harder difficulties would also bring tougher bosses (with different affixes) could possibly make rarer idols only drop in nightmare and harder difficulties legendarues only drop in he’ll and so on. D2 was amazing because hell was the ultimate achievement and hard as hell

Oh dear god please no. Running through a game X times to reach end game is an abomination that needs to die.

Unless you mean having harder difficulties that can be started with a new character once your account has beaten the game on the easier difficulty (kinda like more grades of Masochist Mode but with an account-based entry requirement).

6 Likes

No each character would be different but you can still do endgame stuff all on normal. Thats why there would be a ladder for each difficulty. So game would be the exact same as now except when you log in a character thats already conpleted the story you habe an option to upfrade the difficulty to next 1 up

Just to reiterate I would not want it like poe had it woth 3 runs through the same content to get to maps. U would be able to complete the whole gane and do endgame all in normal mode, but if you yourself wanted a challenge you could go to nightmare and then he’ll just for an achievement and challenge

1 Like

I still don’t see the point in restricting the higher (highest?) difficulties to characters that have run through the story multiple times though. It would make sense for SSF characters, but (IMO) not for accounts that have access to the stash & better gear once they get to the appropriate level.

So, say my character can clear wave 500 which would be equivalent to difficulty 3, why would I have to run through the story 2 times to unlock the higher difficulty?

And how would that work with the arena/monolith? I don’t think having higher difficulties is a bad thing, just that being required to run through the story multiple times to unlock them is…

Having thought about it, Grim Dawn had a decent way around this, when a character gets to a higher difficulty (in the last expansion) there was a vendor that would sell an account bound consumable that would unlock that difficulty on a new character.

1 Like

Idk d2 pulled ot off well thats all im looking for ha

+1

I hate pass the same campaing 100+ times in all games
Especialy in Titan Quest and Grim Dawn

Want difficult? Play End-game
I hope end-game in Last Epoch would be nice

I think you both missed where you dont HAVE to do all the difficulties to get endgame. Harder difficulty would just be for those that wanna push it. Endgame would still be avaliable in just normal mode.

I am totally with @Llama8 regarding this topic. It would divide the player base. And nobody would be satisfied with only playing on normal. People want the best experience and the best rewards so they’d always aim for the highest difficulty. What’s likely to happen is that people rush through the content on the first difficulties and join games undergeared and underleveled so you have to carry them.

For twinks it also very boring to go through the content again even more if you already have good gear for them collected by your main char.

This would just be a mechanic to lengthen the time for players to min/max their gear without adding real content.

Ok what if whem you reached the endgame in normal you then could raise the difficulty but jist like d3 you dont have to redo story. It just makes mobs harder for more exp and better tier drops. Also things like arena that naturally scale to your level are unaffected?

1 Like

I think I’m having difficulty understanding the point in the higher difficulties then. Lets say you finish the campaign at lvl 45 on normal difficulty, you can then go and do end game (arena/monoliths/whatever) with (presumably) escalating difficulty. But you want harder content, so, what, you re-do the campaign (that’s balanced for lvls 1-45) again at a higher difficulty (presumably balanced for lvls 45-60 or whatever) then you can access a harder end game? Or you run through it again (at lvls 60-70 or whatever) for an even harder-er end game?

And if you’re an experienced player with a lot of mats/gear to twink your subsequent characters out in, you still have to run through the snooze-fest that is normal difficulty (since you have good gear, mad skillz & a decent build) to get to harder difficulty, then again to get to harder-er difficulty?

If people do enjoy running through the same campaign many times to get to the part of the game they want at the difficulty they want then more power to them. But I don’t & if I wanted a more challenging experience, why couldn’t I get that from lvl 1 (or at least lvl 1 of an alt)?

IMO, one of the things that D3 (eventually) did well was to add a user-selectable difficulty slider that the user could change at any time they wanted to get the difficulty they wanted when they wanted it.

I think this would be the best idea, anyone that wants harder stuff can up the difficulty whenever they want (or drop it if things get harder). IMO one doesn’t need to always re-invent the wheel.

1 Like

different difficulty will divide the community a lot. As soon as MP is a thing this would shrink the possible playerbase a lot. On top of that there are already things like masochist mode and stuff like that. I don’t think there is a need to further increase this. On top of it we are still in development and as far as it goes the balance of the game is a total mess, so I would wait untill we get in the late dev cycles to talk about this.
Is it easy right now? Yes sure but sooner or later you’ll face a wall you don’t outscale anymore.

While i get where you come from, i’d still say the comparison between Games like Diablo 2 and modern Game doesn’t work well anymore, because modern ARPG’s focus on Handcrafted World instead of random generated ones. In Diablo 2 it was bearable / cool, because each playthrough had a bit different world to explore, but if you have to run with every Character the same Campaign “three” times in a row, it gets pretty boring and stale very fast, and also don’t do the Campaign and Story justice.

There is a Reason why Blizzard got rid of this Difficulty System and even added an Adventure Mode as well Rifts / Grifts, and that’s exactly the Reason why, because with the Adventure Mode it gives you a Sandbox’ish mode where you can freely roam around, slay monsters and do bounty quests which feel more dynamic, with the new difficulty system you can adjust how challenging you want it to have, but also get better rewarded if you do so, and with rifts they brought back a bit of the randomized feel.

However, as someone which is a huge Grim Dawn Fan and also in my Top 3, where they sticked also the classic 3-Difficulty System, but if i’ve to point out one of the things which i like the least about it, it’s the 3-Difficulty system because it really bothers me that i’ve to do the Campaign three times over again. If you play atleast 5 characters you 've already saw the campaign for 15 times and that’s absolutely insane and boring. And well, they added with Forgotten Gods a Skip Token where you can straight skip to Ultimate, but often you tend to do Normal / Veteran or Elite anyway, because ultimate is pretty hard and slow to play as a fresh Level 1 Character.

So yeah. I’m also against this idea, even if you say for a extra Endgame-Challange for Ladder, because that would kinda encourage / force people to play it anyway, because it’s the endgame which you aim for. I rather would’ve the D3 Difficulty System, where you can freely lower / higher the difficulty and it’s more of an “risk vs reward” thing than a progress-concept.

1 Like

Like most posters here, I prefer difficulty to be built through a variety of endgame content and not a “slider bar” that says normal/nightmare/hell.

I think POE proved that doing multiple difficulties is not efficient for current ARPG market , thats why they switched from it.

1 Like

The difficulty increase from monolith with more and more modifiers stacking is already very good. There just could be a mechanic to add more than one modifier right away. Similar to what Wolcen does. There you can pay gold for adding more modifiers.

Hello Epochers,

Yes, of course, it’s cool to craft the best gear and have this ladder of waves as we see in many A-Rpg. And i’m sure that the devs will provide us this part of the game.

Nevertheless, i admit i’d like an old school way of playing too.

Maybe, a way to offer an alternative (without playing the story again and again) could be to open an alternative timeline of your life.

You’d open a series of random maps like if you’d do a mini-campaign with your alternative hero. You’d begin with the same mastery but with a very limited number of points available (but all the tree unlocked), a system of random gear to begin with (ssf system after, no craft, maybe draft) and 5 skills (with given points, don’t know how much, maybe draft). As soon as you finish a map, you go back to a special place in the end of time (don’t have to do all the map in one session).
If you die, you lose. If you stop, you have mini-rewards (cosmetic ones ?). If you finish it, you have a proportional reward to your perf’ (exploration, mobs killed that kind of stats).

It would be a little twist with a random system and you’d have to know how optimize your characters with limited options. It could allow you to try alternative gameplays/skills (some incompatibles with the classic endgame goal) without compromising your actual build/gear.

It’s just an idea (and probably a lot of adjustments would be needed) but i’d be curious to test something like that.

Have you read about the planned endgame modes?

Here’s the link to the official homepage
https://lastepochgame.com/end-game-systems/

Your suggestion sounds very similar to the description of “Lost Memories” and “Epochs Call”.

I am also very curious about new endgame modes. And I am also sure that every single one has a mechanic to adjust difficulty.

Yep i read it. But i understood that :

“Epoch’s Call” was more another era with more like high-level monsters (or D3-Uber-Like mode)
“Lost Memories” was like a lore-led mode to reward us with new abilities.

I imagined you just go on with your actual character like other MoF or Arena but we’ll see :).