Gear Power is a huge issue with regards to balancing difficulty settings and I’m tired of people pretending it’s not.
It makes balancing difficulty modes difficult, it’s affecting the way people play the game in a negative manner and it’s breeding toxicity and a callous mindset with regards to player skill.
In Vermintide 2, I know a lot of people who’d run Screaming Bell on Recruit over and over. A mind-numbing, meaningless grind leading to zero actual improvement in play just to then jump directly into Legend games.
20 hours of unstimulating non-gameplay just for being the most efficient way of getting to the point where you’re no longer kicked for having lower stats.
I’m already seeing this exact behavior in Darktide. Players grinding to level 30 through easy missions, then chastising others for not doing the same and daring to join the Quick Play queue for Malice with a level 5 character.
The gap in power also leads to a different problem, of obsoleting lower difficulties with regards to playability. A high level character entering a low difficulty game will find absolutely no challenge, capable of killing bosses in two hits. At that point you’re no longer partaking in intended gameplay, and it’s actively ruining the experience of everyone else in the lobby.
And as on higher levels you get more enemies, more spawns, better equipment from drops and the access to new challenges, it leads to power rating entirely obsoleting the lower difficulty modes.
The ability to play the game for fun on a difficulty setting fit for you is rendered nonexistent as you get pushed up the ladder.
I don’t want higher difficulties to be the end all be all, completing the game on more difficult modes should be the culmination of your own skills as a player, not a test of your patience to grind up your equipment until you’ve capable of clearing them.
My solution?
Flatten the power curve.
It’s directly leading into a lot of problems the game has with gameplay, community, difficulty balancing and perception of efficiency.
Flatten the curve, so that between difficulties you’re only gaining a maximum of 1-2 hits to kill depending on weapon and enemy.
That way you can, as a player, compensate for a lower level with skill on higher difficulties, and high level players will no longer simply mulch through lower difficulty missions while still feeling considerably more powerful for upgrading themselves.
Then as you level up, the majority of gains to the actual strength of your character will come from new weapon types, talents and traits rather than the arbitrary “power” number.
If something is then added to push players to complete higher difficulty missions, for example improved crafting materials, you will no longer be incentivized to grind easy missions just for XP.
It’ll make it easier to balance the modes for player skill rather than both skill and equipment, and bring players closer together rather than fueling hard segregation by willingness to grind.
Oh, and make the weekly quest system accountwide. It’s incredibly punishing for players who like to play multiple characters but not dedicate an exorbitant amount time to grind them out individually.