[SUGGESTION] - Make the Trogg levels less of a miserable chore.

They don't in your mind. You're thinking too narrowing in my opinion. They weren't always endgame material, and even if they stay as they are now they still play the same role of allowing for an additional challenge who want additional challenges. There are no restrictions on when that challenge has to become available.

Does the game currently have a normal mode? Yes.
Does the game currently have additional "hard" optional challenges? Yes.
Is it the way you are imagining them? No.

It's not becoming apparent to you so let me (try to) help. The people you are arguing against are suggesting to you that any change to tone down the game WILL make it easy. Thus, your view of what you want doesn't fit their paradigm and doesn't fit into 'their' game. Again, I don't think anyone would reject the suggestion of having an additional hard more on top of what the game already is. What they would not want is the game to be toned down.

But it *IS* about the loot. The entire campaign is a finite experience. Multiplayer is much more far reaching and is much more affected by loot drops and grinding. Thus, if you have a "normal" mode (that has been toned down from what it is currently) then everyone will just farm on this "normal" mode and be able to get more items more quickly than they can now. This is what is making people bristle.

I realize you say you've addressed this (and other issues). You've explained your point of view. Your point of view is looking at it differently than the readers and thus doesn't actually address their concerns.

Just as I, and others, have addressed things you have brought up but you don't feel we are correct/understanding/listening/whatever. Should we then just stop the discussion and brush aside your rebuttals with a "I've addressed this"? Perhaps we should. There really isn't any point in debating back and forth the same points if there isn't some kind of middle ground understanding and agreed upon view of what the game is currently -- which is the primary point of contention.

• Too easy and more hardcore people feel the campaign is just time-wasting busy work/grinding.
• Too easy makes the look gathering trivial and multiplayer experience less dynamic because everyone has pretty easy access to all the same stuff.

• Too hard makes the campaign bad for people who do not enjoy the challenge.
• Too hard and it makes the multiplayer experience more dynamic, but also gives a greater disparity in item power.

The problem you are running into here is inertia. Change resistance. The game is what it is already. The game has been tuned downward a few times to the level it's at now. It's unlikely to be tuned back up to be made "too hard". It may be tuned down further, but the ongoing changes will likely be exponentially minor as more changes in theory bring the game closer to proper equilibrium.

The things you suggest sound, to those who have seen the previous changes, like a drastic shift to what they consider too easy.

 

First off, I do agree with the OP. I found the Trogg levels to be kind of painful, mostly for the amount of time spent trying to get through them. They're not my least favorite stage (anything with dogs and guards) but they certainly make me want to avoid that part of the game.

That said: I don't have any real desire to weigh in on what constitutes a valid tactic here or not, but I thought I might share how I managed to get past this particular stage. My first party was an Elf Warrior, Human Cleric and Dwarf Wizard. Realizing early on that the bridge had no ground to maneuver I pulled back to force the Troggs to come to me. At that point the easiest way for me to deal with the Crude Plate was to pin a Trogg between my Warrior and Cleric, alternating back strikes.

The Warrior/Cleric would open with a weak strike to get the Trogg to face them. The Trogg would then usually either attack that character, or turn to attack the other. Either way the Trogg's back was to one of the two of them, leading to a strike. My gear at this point was passable, so mostly I was landing...I'm not good with the names, but 4 damage, 1 range bludgeoning attack or the 5 Damage chop. Each time one character struck the Trogg, he turned to face that character. If he moved out of the pin vice, I moved to put him back between them.

I wouldn't necessarily call it an easy tactic, but it was very viable and very effective. On a lucky draw I could bully one Trogg to death every round by bouncing him that way. Normal Draws was two rounds, and bad draws just necessitated cycling cards.

So yeah. Even if the basic idea of "attack from the rear" seems questionable in such limited terrain, it can be done with a minimum of movement and decent basic cards. I hope someone finds this useful.

 

You have indeed. My post was intended to explain that my gut reaction was that the loot system would need rebalancing if multiple difficulty settings were introduced. After reading your points I am convinced that (a) this wouldn't necessarily be the case and (b) due to my lack of multiplayer experience I therefore lack the knowledge to be able to make a sensible guess as to what the repercussions may be.

I meant both easier in comparison to the current difficulty of the game and the easier (or easiest) of whatever modes are available. In my last post I tried to avoid using the terminology "easy" and "normal" and switch to using "normal" and "hard" because this is undoubtedly a more sensible naming scheme.

On this we are in agreement. I'm sure nobody who plays the game wants it to be too easy. We also think that the normal mode should be "toned down a bit" in your words or "made easier" (not easy!) in mine compared to the current difficulty of the game. In fact it may be that only the adventures between levels 6 and 8 need toning down for a 'normal' mode and all the other modules should be beefed up for a 'hard' mode.

The other main challenge that I can see is that of actually implementing any changes. Making the changes themselves would probably be quite straight-forward. Judging if you have got them right so that the game is neither too easy nor too hard is, I would imagine, a very time-consuming process.

Of course all this is assuming that Blue Manchu themselves believe that the game is too difficult at the moment and even want to change it. I've not actually seen them post the win % for these battles anywhere, which is a shame because it means that there's no way of knowing whether the silent majority are also finding these levels much tougher than they should be or if they aren't having a problem with them.

 

Blindsight has surely set the "you need to be lucky with gear to progress" argument to rest above, by doing the supposedly impossible level without gear.

Of course we don't all have his skills, but nor will we develop them by hoping that super-gear will compensate for bad strategies and tactics. This game is designed so that gear only does so much anyway.

 

Yup. This is what it all comes down to. I'm confident some changes will be made, but what changes those will be is the question. I guess we'll just have to wait and see. All we know so far(well, AFAIK, anyway) is they're wanting to add more hints in the game.

 

I hadn't thought of this, but it's possible.

Also, for the record, when I approached the quest, I mostly relied on penetration and armor melting, not just attacking from the back.

Completely disagree. First of all, never said it was impossible, and I don't think anyone else did either, so you're straw manning there. Second of all, that's like saying, "because five of the best LoL players in the world can beat the devs with a pure support team, it's obvious anyone can win with a pure support team." Again, your protests strike me as the completely predictable internet response of "nah, dogg, you just suck. L2P." It might be an answer that makes you feel better about your skill and handily waves away complaints about difficulty, but it isn't an answer that's going to help the game retain players.

 

While it has been called impossible, I don't think they actually intended it to mean that it could never be done. Hard, punishing etc, yes. The intent is that it is unreasonably difficult for new players. Having run through it without any items does put a damper on the "you need to get lucky with gear" argument, but only slightly in my opinion when you deal with the actual intent of that statement. You still need to get lucky with gear to not feel as though the challenge is suddenly a lot more difficult than the rest of the game thus far. Because this is really the first module that, I feel, you may need to think about how to defeat it, it WILL be a barrier to people who have made expectations about the game based on the previous adventures alone. If they didn't struggle there at all previously, why is this one so hard?

Some people like to think and solve things, others just want to play a game. This adventure is a wake up call to those who do and a wall to those who don't.

 

While I understand what you are ultimately trying to say, let's keep from even inferring that people are straight-up lying when talking about their personal experiences concerning missions in the game.