What are your thoughts on the 5 difficulty levels?

Personally I think 5 is too many, we could have settled for 3, the player base is already divided between steam and xbox gamepass (correct it me if they added cross play), alternatively, adding the option to queue up for multiple difficulties would nullify my point, since my biggest gripe with the 5 difficulties is the fact they worsen the queue times and the ability to find players to play with, I haven’t played a single heresy or damnation mission since the beta, since i never found any players to play with, and the bots are more or less glorified meat shields.

Share your thoughts if you wish, remember no one has a right or wrong opinion on the matter.

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The first two levels are basically training levels.

Main thing keeping the higher difficulty sparse right now is the mission system, you may have better luck later in the week when people are done with the weeklies.

Heresy may build up to a decent enough population over time, unlikely damnation really gets a large enough base.

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They… exist. T1/2 are essentially a tutorial and could probably be consolidated. Malice and up are… fine? I guess? Damnation might actually need a bit of a bump difficulty wise (I know, I’m crazy for thinking that), as it’s pretty underwhelming after heresy. (The jump isn’t that noticeable) Particularly once I get better gear.

The biggest issue is the fact that mission board is a terrible system.

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Sedition: Babbys first mission. It’s okay.

Uprising: Too little difference compared to Sedition, could get a tiny bump. The jump between this and Malice is too big.

Malice: In a good place honestly.

Heresy: Significant jump in difficulty again, but it’s in a good place nonetheless.

Damnation: Deserves a bump in difficulty, but only if the chip damage is undone. Otherwise fine, a good challenge.

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Tiers 1 and 2 offer nothing unique from each other. 3 is okay I think and 4 might be a bit of a jarring jump from 3? and I feel 5 isn’t too much different from 4.

Only thing I can say for certain is that I wouldn’t care if 1 or 2 was fused together.

No no… Damnation is not much different from Heresy really… About same spread of enemy types, slightly denser hordes, main thing is really jsut that… Damnation ups the HP a teeny tiny tad… But nothing that stands out with good weapons.

Tier 1 is always vanilla maps. Tier 2 introduces special conditions and secondary objectives - endless horde > or < makes a big difference (pretty much like an in-between difficulty).

If you can get through a game of Heresy without any real trouble, you’re ready for Damnation.

The first three difficulties aren’t difficulty levels at all, they’re gear checks. Once you’re equipped with Oranges, Malice isn’t that hard. Even if you have to babysit 2/4 players.

That being said I don’t mind them existing.

That’s basically a completely arbitrary distinction that would be gone if we had a proper mission/condition selector. I see what you mean but I don’t think that justifies them existing, especially since they’re both available from level 1 and give a nearly identical amount of XP.

I’m not defending (or complaining about) the difficulties here, just pointing out the main difference. That there aren’t any modifiers in level 1 could be a good design choice, at least on paper.

At first (second aand third) glance, I think the difficulties and especially map selection leaves a lot to desire, generally speaking, but I don’t have any finalized opinions on the matter.

Needed, maybe 4 if you want to scrap the first one, the rest are fine the way they are.

2 is a good entry level when you have literally nothing or you are getting your first weapons out of the store.

3 is a good place to practice for harder difficulties and provides an average challenge when you are not geared yet.

4 is where most people will probably settle, there weren’t that many players playing cata on VT2 either (cata was the hardest difficulty in VT2 if you haven’t played), good challenge, not a TON of communication needed, good difficulty for pugs.

5 is the challenge for geared builds, decent communication, premades and the like.

Just 3 settings as you suggest are simply not enough, you are overlapping difficulties, 4 could be fine too, but the one that goes away is 1, none of the others.

EDIT: I tried to use their names, but I forgot mid-post lol.

Ehhhhhhhh… 5 is a bit too easy right now to be considered on that level IMO.

If they bump it up some maybe.

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I’m just saying the idea behind them and why they exist, the particular balance of each difficulty, is a different thing.

Same.
T4 adds 5 difficulties compared to T3

  1. Base wound reduction to 2
  2. increqse in HP of enemies (pox hounds are tanks)
  3. swarms with ragers and maulers also have 4 ogryns (crusher/bulwark)
  4. you can meet up to 4 reapers backed by gunners pinning you down in a spot
  5. due to being pinned by reapers and gunners, it gets hard to take out bombers.

Now T5 compared to T4 is just 4 distinct changes

  1. up to 3 bombers at the same time !
  2. trappers spawn faster
  3. More gunners
  4. you get so mich meat wall, chasing bomber or dealing with sniper/gunner/reaper becomes difficult.

But generally if you know how to deal with ogryns and have good cleavers, T5 and T4 are easy.

Damnation is just missing the rest of the gear quality that’s been left out of the game. When the ability to get items to 100% comes out, each mode will shift down one in difficulty.

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That’s a good point. I think a lot of people (myself included) started Heresy without optimal Curios, but as you get increased defensive stats from those the difficulty plummets.

And then we’ll need a 6th that gives us the beating we crave. OR they scale difficulties up.

1 and 2 are like the same even enemy composition wise. Ogryns are rarer enemies than bosses.

I think the game needs a proper difficulty 5, cataclysm is tough because it actually changes the base gameplay. Hordes are always experienced 2 waves at a time, always surrounding the player and elites form the vanguard of those horde waves. There’s also an additional special slot and the base cooldown on specials is shorter.

Here damnation just feels like heresy with spongy damage, like 4000 HP mutants. Heresy is actually harder since its bugged with horde spawning, I never see as many random rooms of shooters appear in Damnation.

Across the board damage sponges have always been my least favorite difficulty hike in gaming. It not only reduces the amount of viable weapons, but it doesn’t really make it harder when you have the fundamentals down. It’s just more time consuming.