08-15-2006, 08:30 PM
In the new Joystiq interview, Jeff Kaplan talks about a lot of things, but in particular goes into more detail on the "Dungeon Difficulty" thing.
http://www.joystiq.com/2006/08/11/exclusiv...ws-jeff-kaplan/
(Also, I wish Jeff Kaplan would do something like a monthly status report. The guy is obviously articulate, intelligent, and highly involved, and his interviews are always informative. I think "Jeff Kaplan Speaks to the People" would really go a long way to helping the communication gap between the players and developers.)
So it appears there will be two difficulty settings for every dungeon, Normal and Hard. I personally like this and think it's a clever way to extend content. The example they give is a bit like turning Blackrock Depths into an endgame dungeon, which would be cool as long as they don't simply increase numbers (hitpoints, DPS), but do stuff like throw on new abilities to make things more interesting. For example, taking pulls that start out as 4 bruiser melee guys and turning it into a nastier group of 2 bruisers, a healer, and a mage. A boss that starts summoning minions once he gets down to 20% health can summon minions immediately. That sort of thing.
The thing I'm still wondering about is what they're going to do with level 70 dungeons set to hard mode. It's not like they can just throw in level 75 mobs in there without making it glancing blow/crushing blow city, but if the "normal" level dungeons are difficult at all, the hardmode dungeons have the potential to be nightmarish. I'm thinking of the way they nerfed Stratholme and Scholomance to be much more do-able by a motley group of 5... now, instead of defanging the dungeons we'll have something like post-nerf Scholo and pre-nerf Scholo, complete with new loot tables.
I wonder if they'll have quests that can only be completed in the hard versions of dungeons...
http://www.joystiq.com/2006/08/11/exclusiv...ws-jeff-kaplan/
(Also, I wish Jeff Kaplan would do something like a monthly status report. The guy is obviously articulate, intelligent, and highly involved, and his interviews are always informative. I think "Jeff Kaplan Speaks to the People" would really go a long way to helping the communication gap between the players and developers.)
Quote:We will have a dungeon difficulty level setting. Party leaders for groups will have the ability to set the level with two different settings -- normal and hard. For example, a 60 to 62 dungeon on hard will turn into a level 70 dungeon with level 70 rewards in it. In a level 70 dungeon on hard, the enemies will be extremely dangerous but you will definitely be rewarded better for doing the harder difficulty mode.
So it appears there will be two difficulty settings for every dungeon, Normal and Hard. I personally like this and think it's a clever way to extend content. The example they give is a bit like turning Blackrock Depths into an endgame dungeon, which would be cool as long as they don't simply increase numbers (hitpoints, DPS), but do stuff like throw on new abilities to make things more interesting. For example, taking pulls that start out as 4 bruiser melee guys and turning it into a nastier group of 2 bruisers, a healer, and a mage. A boss that starts summoning minions once he gets down to 20% health can summon minions immediately. That sort of thing.
The thing I'm still wondering about is what they're going to do with level 70 dungeons set to hard mode. It's not like they can just throw in level 75 mobs in there without making it glancing blow/crushing blow city, but if the "normal" level dungeons are difficult at all, the hardmode dungeons have the potential to be nightmarish. I'm thinking of the way they nerfed Stratholme and Scholomance to be much more do-able by a motley group of 5... now, instead of defanging the dungeons we'll have something like post-nerf Scholo and pre-nerf Scholo, complete with new loot tables.
I wonder if they'll have quests that can only be completed in the hard versions of dungeons...
