Feedback on Alliance difficulty

[Darien Tobias]

My friends and I have been playing Alliance and got in a good number of matches. So far we've lost every single match at Normal and won every match at Novice mode. I can't imagine what Hard and Hell is like!

We all play on Skype, and I feel we make a very good team. We've found the most success on the Stormbreaker so far.

At first we chose Normal difficulty, and got defeated handily. We chalked it up to inexperience at first and so started voting for Novice difficulty.
Once we got the hang of the new game modes in Alliance, we begun finding Novice too easy. After that we switched back to Normal and continued to be defeated over and over!

Novice feels fine, but I feel like the current settings for 'Normal' mode would be more fitting for Hard mode, and the actual Normal mode needs to be made easier to feel like a 'middle ground' difficulty.

It's hard to convince other players to vote Novice, as a common mentality is that you're not trying hard enough if you play on Novice, but we're just looking to have fun and atm we do not find Normal mode fun.

I know Muse is still tweaking things, and I hope others agree with our assessment.

[Unarmed Civilian]

I definitely agree. Novice is in a fine place, but Normal is far too difficult for the average player, and should be Hard. I think the issue is that their band of testers is a band of veteran, very experienced pilots who are simply too experienced to base difficulty on, but that's how they've based their difficulty.

From what I have seen, the major difference in all difficulties is the health of the ships you are fighting. If Normal health was slashed by 25-33% across the board, I think it would be in a better place.

Ideally, hard mode is the right difficulty for those closely involved in development (current Normal), and normal is something right for the average player. Also, I agree that Novice was more fun for me than Normal, despite being too easy for me as well. Normal missions are often done slowly and carefully due to how lethal getting ganged up on by more than 2 close-range ships is, making it a grind.

As for the difficulty bumps to Hard and Hell modes, it's just Normal with more health. That's really it. If you ever manage to get Normal down, you'll be able to handle Hard and Hell.

[GurasOguras]

Novice is way too crippled. If you play novice you're not experiencing full features the game has to offer. For me I would rather change the name of normal to easy as the opponent's health is greatly reduced in comparison to hard and hell. That would be more likely to resemble the level of PvP game, though no matter what the AI will always be doing same stupid mistakes. All they do is compensate their stupidity with higher stats.

[Daft Loon]

Novice is at 0.5x score compared to 1x for normal and the difficulty seems about the same proportions. Something at 0.75 score and difficulty would be a good bridge. (I would not be entirely surprised if the difficulty multiplier for score is equal to a multiplier for health already).

[Naoura]

I can agree with nerfing their health on Normal mode, but only if it comes at a reduced number of ships on Novice.

If you're playing Novice, you should have some semblance of punishment for it, balancing out the ease of playing it. This is the easiest mode. Hit your objectives. Hooray, you did it!

Normal should be challenging enough to be worth playing, but not as impossible as theyve made it. Difficulty modifier should still be x1.0, while the other difficulties need to have their modifiers adjusted as well. If you're running a survival on Hell mode, where two bosses, rather than one, spawn, you should be getting an x2 reward for attempting. That's some hard shit, and it rightly should be.

Normal mode needs the adjustment Unarmed was talking about: 25% nerf to their health and armor. That, of course, should come after nerfing the boss speed and maneuverability.

[Richard LeMoon]

Be sure to send this feedback directly to feedback@musegames.com. It gets missed on the forum a lot.

[Darien Tobias]

Be sure to send this feedback directly to feedback@musegames.com. It gets missed on the forum a lot.

I'll be sure to do that, it's a shame forum feedback gets missed