Hard Mode

[Nommy]

So, I've been thinking.

It's pretty obvious that we are a community of people who like challenges. From Maso and Heirloom to Futility Belt and other stunt runs, we tend to seek out challenges in the early game, instead of looking for trouble in the higher levels. As a community, we spend time trying to make the game harder because we've already sort of done the speedster thing. So why not embrace that?

What if we had a talisman that made you Human? Or maybe an item that gives you the intrinsic effect Filthy Hippy? With Heirloom, we have a whole new playing field for challenges like this and I think it could be really fun. And there are so many challenges that we could set up that would encourage players to interact more, it would be awesome.

Now I know that this would be a lot of work. But I, at least, would be way more interested in buying an item like this from the Wok instead of one that makes combat easier or item drops better.

Anyway, what do you guys think?

[Cristiona]

Hmm. Could be interesting. Perhaps something that blocks all skill use?

[Kinak]

It's a good idea. I certainly don't have any objections to hard mode (see: the futility belt). And it's super easy to make jokes about things being terrible

My concern with making them Items of the Month is that people will want to compete at it and making it an IotM will naturally limit that. I'd tend towards making it an item that's permanently present (like the avatar frame). Pandora's Box, probably, because that's perfect. Something like you can use it to unleash one apocalypse of your choice, so we can add more later and still have the old ones be available.

It's not on my agenda at the moment, but if people are excited about that, let me know and I'll see what I can whip up.

Cheers!
Kinak

[Satan]

The problem with hard modes is that in order for them to be both challenging and fun, it takes a lot of balancing work. And, for games like RPGs, this is even more difficult, because usually the only way to overcome the stronger enemies is to grind more, which most people hate (I'm not one of them). Basically, since there's not that much skill involved in a turn based versus action based game, hard mode would need to be extremely creative and new to be worth attempting. And I think that would take a lot of design time away from other important aspects of the game. But maybe put it on the back burner?

Some random ideas:

Every boss battle would need a special mechanic that makes it challenging regardless of stats.

At the beginning of all normal battles, a restriction/handicap is chosen at random. The severity of the handicap would be based on the 'difficulty' of the area. (e.g. things like enemy gains certain elemental resistances/immunities, your stats are cut down by percentages, or enemy attacks can be more vicious and do things like stunning)

Item/chip drop rates decreased across the board.

Probably a requirement that it must be a no pulls run, otherwise the challenge is ruined.

Flavor-wise, this could be built in after originally defeating the Mick. You find a machine they were working on that modulates the behavior of all the enemies in town and adversely affects you (due to your talisman).