Spiritual Assault Difficulty

[pastel osprey]

Would love to have a hard mode for Spiritual Assault (A la reincarnation difficulties). There are some builds that pop off so hard that by the time you get to gluttony he is a total joke

[sand laurel]

The community doesn't like challenging things

And spiritual assault becomes reincarnation later and later

starts at normal and difficulty ramps up over time to r8

[devout trench]

Is spiritual assault endless

[sand laurel]

No

And it shouldn't be endless

[devout trench]

K

Idk what it is

I play on console

[sand laurel]

If anything in this game were to be endless it would be ruined

[sand laurel]

Its basically waves of dozens of enemies coming at u for 30 minutes

then you fight a big boss

[devout trench]

Ohhh

That sound fun

[sand laurel]

Kinda like cod zombies

[devout trench]

I might get it on steam just for that

[sand laurel]

Go for it lmao

Duoyi deserves the support

[bronze junco]

"A LA spiritual assault"?
This one looks like a blend between Italian and English XD, ngl

[bronze junco]

It's a thing that still hasn't left my mind... How do you make runs last longer (not endless but longer) if player desires

-one shorter cycles of the 4 biomes that can be started right after the final boss and has an higher difficulty of the mountain?
-you make the player preserve 2 scrolls and one weapon and start the entire run again? (again with more and/or stronger enemies but probably i should come up with a more interesting modifier)

• a boss rush with enhanced elites and bosses and with random modifiers?
  ...

It may be true that the majority of the community doesn't want high difficulties, however what should stop the devs from putting few modifiers for an harder run?

[sand laurel]

The answer to your last question is the community

They'll go batshit crazy over a nerf/difficulty increase

[bronze junco]

its sad honestly
you (as a dev), you made a game with a very high potential with weapons scrolls etc, why not giving the player extreme challenges where i can to and have to use these tools (and combos) to my best to succeed? i dont want wanna build my char poorly to get a challenge from the game.

i mean, would people really complain if these challenges were meant to be an event, an extra, something niche and secondary instead of the main intended experience?
(at least in monster hunter, it's that way)

[pastel osprey]

Literally give me a toggle that says "this button means you will lose 90% of the time instead of win 90% of the time" and make it optional. I would LOVE a challenge where I feel like survival is the goal and not "how many elites can I farm in the last 4 minutes."

It doesnt have to impact the entire game mode/player base. Kinda like how you dont HAVE to play on nightmare 8, but the game has it as an option if you dont want it to be a snooze

[pastel osprey]

I actually think that the 40ish minute runs are a really good length for a single match. I'm kinda thinking like borderlands style where higher difficulties incur penalties when using the wrong type of weapon against a specific health type (granted BL lets you carry 4 weapons so thats a bit harder to balance in this game)

[obtuse remnant]

It doesnt have to impact the entire game mode/player base. Kinda like how you dont HAVE to play on nightmare 8, but the game has it as an option if you dont want it to be a snooze
Fun fact. Reincarnation 8 used to be harder.

It was added. It was completely optional and no one had to play it for any reason. People complained anyway. It got nerfed.

[sand laurel]

People want the satisfaction of playing on the "hardest difficulty" without playing on the hardest difficulty

[pastel osprey]

Well people are always going to complain; that being said, a difficulty toggle is less.... grating to the ego? than a scale is. An 8 scale gradient implies that if i beat 7 then 8 shouldn't be too far off. An I/O toggle with a steep difference doesn't have a reference point for how it "should" be scaling. Think Hardcore Leagues in Diablo or PoE - the button exists alongside the difficulty scaling.

[sand laurel]

To your first point: People don't care, their ego doesn't care either. They just see that the highest difficulty is the highest difficulty
To your second point: R7 is a bit easier than R8. There's no "steep difference"

However, there are games that do have a steep difference

Think cpu level 9 in old smash bros

its hell compared to cpu level 8

[pastel osprey]

That's the point. R7 is only SLIGHTLY easier than R8. Not being good enough to beat R8 is demoralizing if you can beat R7. But if your only 2 options are R1 and R8, there is less of a "well I should be able to do this because i was able to do the last one" and more of a "well i gotta step it up cuz this is a different game"

[sand laurel]

R1 and R8 are just the most popular for being the easiest and 8th easiest difficulties

You can play 2-7

its all just preference

[pastel osprey]

Yes, but what i am proposing is adding something to JUST spiritual assault that does not have 2-7. Your choices are the existing snoozefest, or "get wrecked" mode, and those are the 2 options. No gradient, nothing. I/O

[sand laurel]

Alr

[obtuse remnant]

Technically, Spiritual Assault was that already in a sense. It was a "difficulty toggle" of sorts that had you fighting against far more enemies for long periods of time, with few breaks, requiring fast reactions to rewards (especially in multiplayer) and the enemies scaled up faster than normal, all packaged in a new game mode that was completely optional, besides a couple achievements and if you wanted a new experience.

People still complained. Devs still listened. Spiritual Assault difficulty still got nerfed.

[pastel osprey]

which is why i am asking for multiple difficulties 🙂

[obtuse remnant]

Except new difficulty options will end up falling into the same thing that your R7 R8 example does.

People will expect that because they beat Spiritual Assault on a lower difficulty, they can beat it on a harder difficulty, then complain when it's too hard.

Then the devs will listen and the hard difficulty designed to be hard and where you lose will get nerfed so people win more.

It's an idea I support, but at this point in time an unrealistic one.

[pastel osprey]

then advertise it as the "kicking yourself in the balls would be more fun" mode rather than an arbitrary descriptive word lol

[obtuse remnant]

You really think that's going to stop people from complaining because they tried it out?

[pastel osprey]

As long as the sun rises people will complain, that is true

doesnt mean there shouldnt be difficulties anyways

[obtuse remnant]

One of the original R8 exclusive challenge events would give enemies you "killed" invincibility instead, and also increased their damage and speed to boot.

You only cleared the room when all enemies became invincible.

Now you would think that such a hellish challenge event would be a good indicator for people to git gud, because the difficulty was not messing around.

It got removed.

[pastel osprey]

Oh, i remember that and miss it lol

[obtuse remnant]

Yeah.

Same thing will likely happen to Spiritual Assault if it gets harder difficulties.

I want harder difficulties, but until the devs stop making the game easier and easier, it will be pointless.

Even if they don't nerf the difficulty directly, they'll buff player stuff until the hardest difficulty is the same as the current Spiritual Assault anyway.

[bronze junco]

devs making the game easier and easier cause of community whining... This sounds more like a terrible game design, theoretically the difficulty should grow with time as players get better, NOT following the desire of who wants to win without improving.. Just to make a comparison with other games, dark souls became legendary for the difficulty type, monster hunter with alatreon and fatalis moved people to collaborate with each other in order to overcome these menaces (the complains happened sure but they didn't prevailed)

Of course those are different kinds of games, environments and playerbase but man... "game getting easier cause of the community" is such a detrimental notion of what its main ideal is.. It doesn't look like a cooperative one but rather an egotistical one with the mentality of (game too hard, let me win)

Now, some modifiers like that one with "monsters becoming invincible after dying but all of them disappear once all enemies become invincible "... This one i can see why it was too much, it's probably unmanageable without a shield to take care of many enemies for a long period (since they don't stop shooting) so it kinda made sense removing... The sad part is that the devs directly removed it instead of reworking it oe nerfing it

Other things such as r8 and SA nerfs are just... Unnecessary, there isn't time for those players to get better and overcome that challenge... In this way instead of gatekeeping the most casual players, you kinda throw away the people that putted more interest into the game since they already beated the hardest challenge available so they might as well leave and look for other challenges somewhere else (in fact, i can't engage with gunfire that much recently, i can't find an hard challenge in the game outside of the enhanced elites in the first biome (cause of early lack of scrolls)
Im not joking, the elite spearman (maybe enhanced with armored or bleeding) is 10 times harder than the final boss

[sand laurel]

I will say tho, I think the devs like having their game easy

I once thanked boltgun for making the game easy because my monkey brain liked the game easy and he said he's the same way

[bronze junco]

sorry, i just cannot understand that point of view.
you wanna an easier game, lower the difficulty by yourself, dont ask to delete the harder difficulty that is there for other people

[bronze junco]

i just red the entire conversation again and,,, i get why some people Pretend that the hardest difficulty has to be manageable for everyone but this idea is objectively stupid, it's literally a content removal