Spiral Knights - Difficulty Toggle: Hero Mode

Difficulty Toggle: Hero Mode

3 replies [Last post]

Tue, 11/10/2015 - 20:56

Sintag

So we have the three difficulty levels, but there should be a button that enables Hero Mode.

In Hero Mode, the health and damage of all enemies is set to Expert, plus one party member, and five additional risks happen.

1. Hearts no longer drop from fallen enemies. Heart Attack forces out Tier 1 hearts, and Heart boxes drop only one Capsule.
2. No more 'tells'. You see that colored aura that appears before an attack? Gone. Disabled. You need to look at your foe and read their next attack out.
3. Enemies will regain some of their older AI patterns that were once in-game, but lost to the passing of time.
4. Enemies will now begin to analyze a player's strategy and move to counteract it. Charge-spamming with that Brandish? They'll split up, attemot to flank you as you charge up, smack you, or otherwise move to nullify it, for one example.
5. Your shield takes slightly longer to recharge and must face enemies to block all damage. You'll still block some if you face away, but you'll take, say, 20% of the damage. After doubling it.

At the same time, for those brave (or mad) enough to tackle this mode, four rewards happen.

1. All Crown and Heat gains are tripled.
2. Rarities drop far more often, on an almost 1:1 ratio.
3. High-level Materials drop more often.
4. Clearing a Mission in Hero Mode adds a crown to the icon, and doubles Prestige gained (Or, if you beat a mission once before activating Hero Mode, then ran it again and beat it under Hero, you would gain the Prestige from Hero Mode only).

So that's my suggestion, made rather hurriedly. Like it? Hate it? Have any constructive criticism? Please reply. Thanks!

-11/12/2015 12:38 AM EST: EDIT!

I've been reading your feedback. Thanks for offering ideas! Here's a few more tweaks to Hero Mode, some I had to think ahead of, others you guys suggested.

Vanaduke-Destroyer: Enemies will now move 1.5x faster, and enemy attack speed is given a 1.25x multiplier.

The crown will be it's own thing, added below the mission complete icon.

Equipment drops are given a small raise.

Adaptive AI may not actually be a possibility, but one can always hope.

Fangel: So, basically, enemies become tankier, but I feel like doubling the damage, or at least giving it a 1.5 multiplier, would add some more difficulty by making your mistakes punished far more harshly.

Heart Attack...Yeah, what you said there. Same with Heart Boxes, although I feel as though the Capsule should be scaled slightly. Maybe a T2 Capsule in T3?

Phantom teleportation - So basically, if you try to run away, the enemies will be all like, "You will not run from us!" ...This'd prevent a lot of the potential run away to farm-type players. Maybe have them show up in front of or at the player's side. As for the Mender shuffling...I'm honestly not sure how I feel about this. I want Hero Mode to be a challenge, not outright sadistic. Maybe at T3, have more Menders show up or something per encounter (coding in like 2 to 3 more of them wouldn't be too much added effort, right?)

Shield 2.0 as you suggest probably is a better idea than what I had in mind. I dunno. I'll revisit the idea of 'Actually face the attack to block it' when I'm not operating past midnight.

Stratum drop rates - All right. Sure. As for rarities, maybe a 1:2 ratio would work instead? I want Hero Mode players to really get their effort's worth.

And as for the limit - Yes, this will work.

Tue, 11/10/2015 - 21:57

Umbra-Lunatis

Sounds pretty cool

Can't really think of much to expand on it. Lot of AI coding would be required, of course, but it seems feasible.
There was something similar called a "danger indicator" that was added and then removed a while back. It basically made the level more difficult if a higher-up rank joined a low rank party.

Tue, 11/10/2015 - 22:09

Falminar

...

"Analyzing a players strategy" would probably be difficult for the devs. Not sure, but probably. Still, they can probably know your weapon's attack style and try to avoid it (e.g. staying away and/or using mostly/only ranged attacks if you're charging a Calibur-type weapon).

Do equipment items drop more often too?

Does the crown from completion overlap the original shield, or is it separate? Are the swords still there? (mission completion difficulty icon)

Also, increase enemy speed or something, as mentioned in a different suggestion, players could just skip all the enemies and go straight to the treasure boxes.

Wed, 11/11/2015 - 16:14

Fangel

Hmm.

Hero mode huh? That sounds interesting.

I would say it locks the game into elite mode in terms of damage and enemy health, but adds one additional "party" member to your current one, making enemies a bit more tanky. Damage isn't doubled - however heart drops are still disabled.
Heart attack would still drop hearts, but only drop tier 1 hearts. Across all tiers.
If you break open a heart box, if it would have dropped hearts, it will instead drop a tier 1 health capsule.

Older AI patterns, if we still have them laying around yes please. If not, then no sweat. We can probably add general additions to AI such as having them path to a certain spot and then attack the player from there (aggro'd to a spot behind the player, then switch it back to the player.).
One new thing I would add would be phantom teleportation - that is, if an enemy gets out of range and is not on an exception list (shankle, respawn pad enemies), then it would be teleported over to players, similar to how phantoms teleport to players.
Speaking of which, an ironclaw mender per team member would be teleported around in this fashion in every level, with about the same respawn rate as a phantom. In tier 1 they only have a longer respawn time, and won't respawn after the third time they're killed per depth. In tier 3 these become darkfang menders, making a 4-person party much more difficult.

If you add that shield bit to the game, you need to make it a damage reduction in general. 100% reduction from the front, 90% reduction from the sides, 80% reduction from the back. Statuses are blocked normally.

Finally, drop rates should be increased by whatever stratum you're in divided by 2. Stratum 1 would have an additional 50% rewards, stratum 2 100% more rewards, stratum 3 150% more rewards, etc. Maximum reward increase would be shadow lairs at 350%, but if you're doing shadow lairs on Hero mode then you deserve it. Rarities shouldn't be a 1:1 ratio, however at 3x the drop rate it might work out just fine.

One last thing I would say would be to make Hero mode be something where you can only start a Hero mission once per mission per day. This means you can't farm FSC on Hero mode - if you're the one making the lobby at least. You can still join or be invited to a Hero mission you've started that day (started means you've gone beyond the ready room), but you can't solo farm it. Essentially, they're making danger missions out of any mission. You can, however, farm arcade gates to your heart content on Hero mode.

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Difficulty Toggle: Hero Mode