With today's patch it has been made clear that MMR Difficulty is no longer a viable "feature". MMR Difficulty has gone completely crazy to the point that players at every MMR range are getting destroyed by the AI, which is not something that can be tolerated on an already leaky ship.
The only true solution is dedicated difficulty settings similarly to how Solo mode has 4 settings. One of the controversial points of this is clearly the Antagonist System, which I will be addressing later in this post.
The difficulties in Solo are pretty much "Easy, Medium, Hard, Very Hard" despite their in-game names, so I will be referring to them as the 4 common difficulty names I just said for the remainder of this post.
Right now the difficulty of matches is the equivalent of RNG because you never know what difficulty a match will be until you've experienced it and the post-mission screen tells you directly. While this can add the element of surprise to each mission, it also makes it a total nightmare. Knowledge of a mission can only help you so much when against a horde of enemies that can be anywhere from extremely simple to deal with to straight up impossible to handle with no knowledge of which you'll get until you've experience it.
Having dedicated difficulty settings can remove that surprise factor of what you'll be walking into, but that in itself is a very healthy thing for any game. Games that allow the player to choose which difficulty to go into allows the player to experience the game how they wish for that moment in time. If you just want to relax after a trying day then an easier difficulty would be the best option, but if you want a direct challenge then you'll pick the higher difficulties instead.
How would the 4 difficulties be balanced for a multiplayer experience like this?
It's actually very simple, Easy and Very Hard would be gated.
Easy Difficulty would only be available to Tier 6 and No-Tier players, allowing them to learn the game in a more forgiving environment with No-Tier players only having access to Easy (which No-Tier players normally end up as Tier 6 after their first match anyways). To make up for the lack of higher tier players no longer being available to them in Easy, the Cortez Brothers would step in to assist if a queue is taking too much time to fill out the party.
Very Hard would only be accessible to players that have reached Tier 1 (level 100), however this gate will be somewhat flexible as it will be available to any party that has at least one Tier 1 player in it, similarly to how newer players can go into missions they have not yet unlocked as long as at least one of their party members has access to it.
This means that the majority of the Spacelords population will more than likely be in either Medium or Hard difficulties, even after unlocking Very Hard due to the level of challenge such a difficulty would provide if done correctly.
How would Antagonists operate?
Antagonists would have access to every difficulty except for Easy, as long as they have gained the requirement of Tier 1 for Very Hard. In essence Antagonist matches would feel somewhat similar as there would be fewer enemies spawned in for Raiders to deal with while fighting the antagonist, however AI effectiveness will mainly scale with the Antagonist's MMR, higher the MMR the stronger the AI for that difficulty setting up to a cap per-difficulty.
This means that in order for antagonists to be effective they need to get as good at PvP combat as possible. However, the AI enemies will not pass a threshold that makes them feel like they are a difficulty above or below their current setting, there will always be a distinct feeling of difference between Medium and Hard AI regardless of the Antagonist's presence as an example.
How would rewards look in this new system?
The "Match Difficulty" modifier would be based on which of the 4 difficulty settings you're playing on, the bar would fill +1/4th per-difficulty setting, (Easy 1/4 full, Medium 1/2 full, Hard 3/4 full, Very Hard completely full). It would still be possible to get 10.0 in Hard matches with Very Hard being the best chance of that rating, but Medium would be unable to reach that (capping out at around 9.0 - 9.5, which would also require a very good run). To give more incentive for players to play at higher difficulties, the gold and faction points players are given will also scale off of the chosen difficulty, so if you would get around say 2500 gold and 1200 faction points in Medium with a 7.5 mission rating, you would get around 3000 gold and close to 2000 faction points if you played on Hard instead and increased further for Very Hard. Antagonists would also follow the same scoring system so they would be more likely to play at higher difficulties for better rewards just like the Raiders, in addition the Antagonist's own MMR would up the end-match score up to a cap per-difficulty for themselves.
How would matchmaking work between multiple difficulties?
Players would be able to queue for up to 2 difficulties for missions at a time, and would be informed of the mission's difficulty before accepting the match. Timed rewards would remain a per-mission thing, remaining unchanged between difficulties. One-Time Gold and Faction points would also scale with the difficulty setting like normal gold and faction points as well, giving you the potential to gain a lot more gold and faction points than normal through these missions.
Why would dedicated difficulty settings be healthy for Spacelords?
The easiest answer is true balance. It is a lot easier to balance a game when AI are to react within fewer set parameters as opposed to an adapting system. As seen by many of the community, adapting AI difficulty can cause extremely unwarranted disruption to the game's ecosystem that can cause long term harm to the game as a whole. Reeling back AI to difficulty settings gives a lot more opportunity for the game to grow and evolve with a healthier playerbase to back it.
Thank you to anyone that took the time to read all of this post, and see you on the Broken Planet.
