This week I was shaping modular difficulty system!
It took me many hours, but have managed to make mission overview into something I can tolerate.
Eight icons are modular difficulty system modules or challenges.
Enabling them changes image between challenges and mission description.
That image is difficulty map, it's a visual representation of modular difficulty system.
The (almost finished) mission overview
Enabling challenges is actually your hero deciding to take more dangerous paths, with anomalies and powerful enemies. Difficulty map shows those dangerous paths.
Here's the updated list of challenges:
Lethal Weapons
Minions will deal 50% more damage
Aberrant Armour
Minions will have 100% more armour
The Manifestations of Destruction
You will encounter dreadnoughts
The Assault of the Modified
You will encounter more modified minions
The Rain of Fire
You will be bombarded every 10 seconds until you will destroy bombardment station
Risk for Reward
Earned parts and experience will be lost if you will fail the mission
The Decision
Mission objective count will be increased by 100%
Flow Stagnation
Abilities will cost 100% more ether during this mission
Some of these challenges can be used more than once.
For example, you can use Aberrant Armour to make enemies have 500% more armour!
After making mission overview, I implemented rewards and began implementing challenges.
I have implemented four of the challenges already, four more to go.
When they will be implemented, I will be testing and balancing modular difficulty system to make sure it can't be exploited too much.
I will also increase power of some abilities!
I can now decrease difficulty of base game, those players who will want difficulty will be able to get more than enough of it through modular difficulty system.
I don't think anyone will ever will beat mission with 34 difficulty: +500% base enemy damage, +1000% base enemy armour, objective to kill 150 modified dreadnoughts, when abilities cost 500% more ether and missiles keeps falling from the sky randomly.
I did good!
Until next time!