Author Topic: State of Difficulty: 11.2  (Read 13782 times)

Velgeder

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Re: State of Difficulty: 11.2
Reply #15 on: October 31, 2018, 03:59:46 PM
Hi guys,

The difficulty is something we tweak every weak (depending on your MMR) and it's always based on your feedback. The code you posted is dynamic and it changes almost everyday, so it makes no sense having it as a reference.

Please, remember our main objective is to make the game fun and challenging.

As always, thank you very much for your concerns :)

With all do respect, the game is not fun when you're wounded by every shot, or overwhelmed by the sheer number of enemies. If theres a hoarde of enemies, fine, but can the firing rate and damage be reduced?

Hiero_Glyph

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Re: State of Difficulty: 11.2
Reply #16 on: October 31, 2018, 04:18:55 PM
Hi guys,

The difficulty is something we tweak every weak (depending on your MMR) and it's always based on your feedback. The code you posted is dynamic and it changes almost everyday, so it makes no sense having it as a reference.

Please, remember our main objective is to make the game fun and challenging.

As always, thank you very much for your concerns :)

You have the player number data, how is "fun and challenging" working so far?

Players want to win. In ME3MP we grinded easier difficulties when we couldn't get a group together or when learning a new class because it was easier. We didn't want challenging because we had randoms and/or were trying to have fun playing a new character. Sometimes we were just trying to grind credits or experience. But again, we did not always play on the most challenging difficulty because sometimes when you are grinding it's nice to just have fun.

Anyway, you do what you want to do, and the players will do what they feel is best for them. Best of luck.

Ac3_f4ce

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Re: State of Difficulty: 11.2
Reply #17 on: October 31, 2018, 04:36:15 PM
Hi guys,

The difficulty is something we tweak every weak (depending on your MMR) and it's always based on your feedback. The code you posted is dynamic and it changes almost everyday, so it makes no sense having it as a reference.

Good to know.
Thanks for the Update Valeri--uh i mean Karen
*whispers* (I dont trust her) lol


Level9Drow

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Re: State of Difficulty: 11.2
Reply #18 on: October 31, 2018, 04:47:16 PM
Hi guys,

The difficulty is something we tweak every weak (depending on your MMR) and it's always based on your feedback. The code you posted is dynamic and it changes almost everyday, so it makes no sense having it as a reference.

Please, remember our main objective is to make the game fun and challenging.

As always, thank you very much for your concerns :)

Hello Karen!

I think what people want is consistency. Currently we don't know what to expect, a 30% could be filled with super mooks, or the next day 45% could be the old 45% we are all familiar with from pre Spacelord patch.

It's also dangerous to have this sort of randomness in the 30% bracket because of the spawn rate. And if you have random difficulty spikes then add a high spawn rate this makes for a disastrous situation.

Again, predictable consistency would be the most comfortable game style for most players. If you want hard challenge then do REALLY good and get your MMR up. If you want to relax you keep it at 30%, etc... But what you've told me makes me just feel like the most advantageous way to progress is to lower MMR all the way down to 10% because you never know. At least at really low levels the chances of having a normal game experience may be more possible.

Thanks for the response in any case. We appreciate it. :)

Deathprize

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Re: State of Difficulty: 11.2
Reply #19 on: October 31, 2018, 06:15:32 PM
Maybe the difficulty is being tweeked because people are lowering it, and the developers want it to be at a certain difficulty.

If a majority drop to say lower than 30% difficulty then it gets increased at the lower end to compensate. Either that or some people are skewing the figures at the difficulties at the high end above 60%.

If definitely seems to get harder with each update to the point I wonder why as I doubt the very high end of the scale at 90%+ difficulty is even being used. It would be nice to know what the highest someone has got the difficulty to since the most recent update though.

Level9Drow

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Re: State of Difficulty: 11.2
Reply #20 on: October 31, 2018, 07:03:03 PM
But we were kind of forced to lower our MMR because it often was too hard in the first place. When you hot 60+ it gets a bit absurd. So you had to lower it because if you didn't then the amount of losses would exceed the amount of wins in solo queue. It was counterproductive to progression to grind up MMR.

Id they're compensating for this and making lower difficulties harder and harder this will do two things. A) Make it so players will drive MMR even lower which ties into B) This will have a bad consequence for new players who don't have the passive stats or forged weapons to handle high difficulties, but since low difficulties are now hard but with a higher spawn rate this will mean not even they are safe at low percentages.

The developers have to ask themselves why players are even lowering their MMR in the first place. I can't speak for others, but my reasons are as follows...

Higher MMR doesn't increase rewards. The more harder it is the more of a chance of a lower score you will get or failure. Succeeding doesn't give more rewards than you could already get at a more moderate MMR. Too low and you CAN'T get a 9 point score, but the old 38% to 45% was a good "Goldilocks" zone that was easy enough that you could still get a 9 point score.

Secondly, it's not fun anymore. I don't mind elites being badass, I want them to be. But the mooks start to have 3 or 4 times more health than us and can one shot you. At a certain point you literally cannot kill them fast enough in relation to their spawn rate with MAX exterminator weapons. Simply no fun.

Challenge is fine as long it's not at the expense of progress. Once it becomes a hindrance to progress it no longer has a function. UNLESS...you are gating the players. I hope this isn't the case, and if so, they should find other methods to gate.

XjabberwockieX

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Re: State of Difficulty: 11.2
Reply #21 on: October 31, 2018, 08:43:32 PM
Dear MS,

If the regular enemies take 3 headshots from Iune's Wisdom to kill, you are still not understanding the game isnt just too challenging, its ridiculous. You can put the little numbers into your computers and rebalance mmr all you want but at the end of the day if a single hades division soldier has over 300 health and shotguns that can crit over 200 damage and drop me with one blast then...then...oh nevermind..

xXGigglesXx

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Re: State of Difficulty: 11.2
Reply #22 on: October 31, 2018, 10:41:09 PM
I agree. Consistency is key for a good game experience.

LordDraco3

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Re: State of Difficulty: 11.2
Reply #23 on: November 01, 2018, 09:41:43 PM
Hi guys,

The difficulty is something we tweak every weak (depending on your MMR) and it's always based on your feedback. The code you posted is dynamic and it changes almost everyday, so it makes no sense having it as a reference.

Please, remember our main objective is to make the game fun and challenging.

As always, thank you very much for your concerns :)

Thanks for the reply Karen!

It's good to know that it changes that often, at least. Most of us probably aren't comfortable with that fact, but I was HOPING my main takeaway from posting that was the summary I included at the end of my post: That it seems like difficulty doesn't necessarily modify enemy health and stats in the way that we would assume, but it modifies how numbers are calculated when a player and enemy do battle.

Like at max stats, a Raider punch should do 80 damage without boosts. At 0 MMR, this table looks like that enemy would technically be receiving x3.14 from that punch to their unknown health bar, so if they have 100 health, they are dead. But at 100 MMR, they only take x0.35 of that 80 punch damage, meaning it will take 4 hits to reduce them to 0 health. They always had 100 HP, but the user never sees how these numbers work, so we assume they have over 300 health. Which is kinda their effective health. But it differs depending on shooting vs. melee.

It also shows me that at really low MMR, shooting is more effective, and at high MMR, strikes deal more.

This is my takeaway from the table, at least. I'm not sure if I'm interpreting it correctly, but I know I've seen some posts here and there mentioning "Schleuder is lying about the damage it does because it's saying 500 damage and this grunt isn't dying but in another game they did" or something like that., and was hoping this might shed some light.

I am of the opinion that transparency to the player helps us understand why things happen and for what reason, and become less frustrated by it  ;D

Deathprize

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Re: State of Difficulty: 11.2
Reply #24 on: November 02, 2018, 09:31:03 AM
If that damage scaling table is true and the way you explained it correct Draco. Why do we even have damage numbers to begins with as they are completely misleading. If it says 500 but you are actually doing half that why bother displaying an incorrect number? I know it's mostly the same as the mooks just having higher health.

I wonder if this applies when fighting other players to some degree?

MSE_Jvela

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Re: State of Difficulty: 11.2
Reply #25 on: November 02, 2018, 10:30:58 AM
Hi guys!

As Karen said, it doesn't make sense to form a judgment through the screenshot, because those numbers are extracted from a local file which is not the real server-data file. However, I would like to shed some light on this matter:

Difficulty is, actually, tuned almost every day. Our goal is to maintain the game healthy, which we understand is a proper balance between fun and challenge. How we approach to that is not as simply as say "difficulty at % MMR is higher". MMR doesn't establish the difficulty by itself, MMR it's a system integrated in several systems iof the game. Every mission, game-mode (Co-op, vs Antagonist or Antagonist itself) or MMR have their own difficulties and so, their own balance; and besides all this, the fact that players are always getting better as you're improving your skill and/or have better weapons, cards, etc.

Nonetheless, we understand that some frustrating situations could happen, especially on High-MMR matches. We obviously work to achieve the best game experience for everyone, but it's on the ends (both highest and lowest) where the "rope" is more tense and where changes are more noticeable. We always try to be subtle on those points, but as I said before, the resulting difficulty does not depend on just one factor.

Hope this helps you to expand your vision of this topic. We'll keep working to bring you the best experience.

Thank you!
« Last Edit: November 02, 2018, 12:02:05 PM by MSE_Jvela »

B30

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Re: State of Difficulty: 11.2
Reply #26 on: November 02, 2018, 07:22:15 PM
… Nonetheless, we understand that some frustrating situations could happen, especially on High-MMR matches. …

Haha very funny! Since the last update, frustration is commonplace. My MMR is down at 36%. I just played "A Low Blow", we were three players (so a normal mentormatch-team, since the fourth player basically logs off). Two high level players and a level 1 player, the enemy spawn rate was so high that we were spawn-camped after the first few minutes. I mean the spawn rate was insane (3 elites, and a bunch of mooks right at the Raiders spawn-point, and more were closing in) and of course bazooka guys and snipers nearby.

No disrespect, but show me the fun in that, I could not discover it.

I have to say, lately I play less and less. And quess what, I am fed up for today.