It's no secret that the difficulty settings in Spiral Knights don't really do much in the way of difficulty. This is mainly because it's just giving monsters more health and giving you more rewards on all fronts. The issue here is that, while it makes it less punishing on new players, the game is basically just 1-2 extra hits for veterans who play on elite, so the difficulty setting is basically just barring faster progress from lower tiered knights while letting veterans get everything faster.
While this isn't necessarily bad, it makes starting the game on normal more punishing on player psyche than starting the game on elite. It also bends the economy in the direction of the elite difficulty, where if you're on any lower difficulty it will take more runs to get the same amount of crowns.
Basically, the difficulty levels don't have a direct impact on gameplay, and hurt the game's economy and starting areas more than it helps.
With that introduction out of the way, here's some changes I would make to each difficulty.
NOTE: when referring to difficulties, changes that reference other difficulties mean their current values, not their potential values. If needed, the "new" values will be indicated with a "New" in front of the name.
Normal Difficulty
- Increase Orb of Alchemy drop rates to the same as the Elite difficulty
- Increase Fire Crystal drop rates to be about 5% less than the Elite difficulty
- Increase Spark of Life drop rate by 33% of the Elite difficulty
- Set crown rates to be 10% less than the Elite difficulty
- Set heat rates to be 10% less than the Elite difficulty
- Increase consumable item drop rate from boxes by 25%
- Increase heart drop rates by 10%
- Increase vitapod drop rate by 5%
With these changes, normal becomes less punishing for players seeking rewards, but not overly rewarding. It does its job as a "normal" difficulty well in this case.
Advanced Difficulty
- Increase Orb of Alchemy drop rates to the same as the Elite difficulty
- Increase Fire Crystal drop rates to be the same as the Elite difficulty
- Increase the Spark of Life drop rate to be the same as the Elite difficulty
- Set crown rates to be the same as the Elite difficulty
- Set heat rates to be the same as the Elite difficulty
- Increase monster health values by 5%
- Lower the "natural" defense values of the knight by 15% - doesn't affect defense values from equipped gear
... Yeah that's about it. Make the advanced difficulty the new "default" difficulty, where it doesn't do anything special, but make it slightly more punishing if you get hit than it currently is if you didn't bring defense gear.
Elite Difficulty
- Increase Fire Crystal drop rates by 5%
- Decrease the Spark of Life drop rate by 25%
- Increase the crown rates by 5%
- Increase heat rates by 15%
- Decrease heart drop rates by 5%
- Decrease vitapod drop rate by 40%
- Decrease consumable drop rate from boxes by 33%
- Lower enemy health values to be 20% more than the Advanced difficulty
- Increase equipment drop rate by 1%
- Introduce "Status Swarms" as an elite exclusive level hazard
- Introduce "Dangerous Progression" rooms as elite exclusive level generation
- Introduce "Medal of Accomplishment" as an elite exclusive reward
- Have monsters have a chance to spawn with a random "boost". Boosts can be: attack up, defense up, movement speed up, attack speed up
Basically, what this does is tone down some of the Elite difficulty's reliance of having damage boosts and instead forces the players to adapt to a more random environment. The rewards for elite aren't tremendously more than other difficulties, but the increased rate for equipment drops along with some exclusive content/rewards are sure to draw the attention of the end game players.
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Now that we have that out of the way, I can explain the new things introduced into the new elite difficulty.
Status Swarms
Status Swarms would be a new type of level hazard that is slightly different when compared to other hazards. This hazard can appear at any time in the level, and will overwhelm knights with a flurry of status. The status swarms will be themed after the level's status, with statusless levels either gaining a random status, or a "stun" status.
During Status Storms, souls for the corresponding status type will spawn and float over towards the players. Golden wisps and/or shankles will also spawn during the storm around each player, spreading even more chaos. A phantasmal spike trap may appear in the corresponding status color as well, but instead of damaging will purely inflict a minor status.
Once a storm subsides, there's a 25% chance for a "Medal of Accomplishment" to drop close to the player.
The point of Status Swarms is to put a much heavier emphasis on status resistance. Most end-game players will use status-weak gear sets, so these storms would punish glass cannons while not particularly phasing those who brought proper status resistances.
Status Swarms are summoned after a party of players has dealt a certain damage threshold in a level. The Status Storm itself will dissipate after 30 to 60 seconds, but the threshold can either be random for the level or have a set chance.
Dangerous Progression
These are best described as rooms in the clockworks that are generated that act like a forced danger room. These Dangerous Progression rooms will not require any energy to enter, but they must be completed to continue the level. These rooms will always drop a "Medal of Accomplishment" upon completing the room, but will not have any treasure room attached to it.
The goal for these rooms is to force a player to take on tougher challenges. While monsters may be easy to fight, being forced into difficult rooms are sure to spice up the elite difficulty.
Medal of Accomplishment
The Medal of Accomplishment would be a new token or rarity item that would drop exclusively on the new elite difficulty. These medals would be able to drop from certain enemies (1% chance from "brute" and "giant" tier enemies, 0.25% from "healer" tier enemies, 0.01% from grunt tier enemies), rarely from boxes (1% from green boxes, 2% from red boxes), and upon clearing the new elite exclusive challenges.
There medals can be exchanged for a variety of rewards. Here is a few of the redeemable items you can receive: fire crystals, orbs of alchemy, spark of life, unique variant ticket, golden slime coin, weapon slot upgrades, trinket slot upgrades, surprise box.
Additionally, Medals of Accomplishment could be used as a "filler" token for all token types. So long as you have half the required tokens, you can use Medals of Accomplishment to fill in the rest of the token you're after for an exchange. This applies for all token types, event and non-event alike.
The goal of these are to create a reward that is exclusive and sought after, while also always being useful for everyone in all states of the game. Early tier players can play on elite to work towards an ensured orb of alchemy, end game players can try to collect them for fire crystals or orbs to continue their arsenal, or even just save up the medals to use on cosmetics via the surprise box. Despite this, the medals need to be scarce enough that it's usually better to obtain items the other way, but acts as a guaranteed method to get something that you want via the efforts you've put forth.
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So that's it! A rehaul of the difficulty system to make normal less punishing, make advanced the new normal, and make elite more geared towards actual experienced players looking for a challenge instead of just being the default to get more crowns.