After playing through more vaults I thought of ways of how to potientially increase their replay and rewards. This is a retooling of a previous suggestion.
With the unique properties of Vaults, how they reset and respawn everything and they have the buttons that open doors, 2 Vault Shrines will be placed in the entry way of each Vault. Putting a Sigil of the Vault into the Shrine will cause it to reset, and become the Higher difficulty. Setting to the higher difficulty locks the dungeon from new players entering till it resets.
Difficulties and Changes:
Introduces Ambush Spawns that spawn in the hallway behind you primarily, or ahead of you in the room. These occur on Difficulty Medium and Hard. The spawns will use a similiar mechanic to Maelstrom lightning, but like smoke, or crawling from the ground, etc.
Base difficulty can be solo’d, current difficulty
Medium (1 Sigil) is meant for 2 people + 2 thralls
Ambush Enemy Spawns
2x Eldarium and 2x damage to Thralls.
Hard (2 Sigils) is meant for 3 people + 3 thralls
Ambush Enemy Spawns, Double Enemy Health
3x Eldarium and 3x damage to Thralls.
I like the idea, in general, but there’s one thing I don’t like about it:
I would really prefer if we didn’t frame the difficulty this way. Even though I sometimes play in a clan with some awesome people, I enjoy being able to solo everything.
Of course, I would also enjoy it if soloing the Vault at level 60 with the gear I have right now were more challenging, the way it was while I was still leveling up.
So perhaps you could frame it less in terms of people and their thralls, and more in terms of gear? For example, a medium difficulty could be as hard to do with epic gear as the base difficulty is with non-epic gear. Or medium could be as difficult for one person and one follower as base is for one person without a follower. You know, some definition that isn’t taken as “you’re sh*t out of luck if you’re not doing this with other people and their thralls”.
The only problem about basing it off of gear, is Stat Inflation is bound to happen. And anyone in decent gear and skill can solo even the strongest dungeons meant for multiple people, (like Wine Cellar)
If we base it purely off gear, it becomes a much smaller gap.
Like Medium would be Fresh Epics crafted at 60, Hard could be Legendaries… but the difference between the two is negligible.
Unfortunately, being able to Solo everything, easily, means No Group content. BUT if we base it off Players + Thralls, and not just stat increases, it becomes Soloable based on skill, thrall quality and kiting.
And in my opinion, its better to have Soloable Group Content, than Laughable Group content that can be solo’d.
I also specifically didn’t want it to be locked to only groups, if your a solo player and you put in your two sigils, its all yours! Locked for you to try to beat, dark souls style.
Yeah, I guess this might be one of those “agree to disagree” situations, because we have different playstyles and priorities
For me, it’s extremely important to be able to solo things. My definition of “solo” might be peculiar, because I consider followers (pets and thralls) to be weapons, rather than “group members”, so I’ll bring a follower with me unless I want additional challenge.
Having said all that, I have a hunch we don’t necessarily disagree, because of this:
Like I said, I don’t have anything against your ideas of ambush spawns, or sudden environmental hazards, or any of those. All I want is to make sure that the idea isn’t interpreted as “make the enemies so ridiculously strong that you can only beat them with multiple humans splitting aggro”.
In Conan Exiles, “designed for a group” typically means “make this boss hit you stupidly hard”. I guess that’s what I really want to avoid. Make it more challenging, more interesting. “Hit harder” isn’t either. It just punishes you for getting lag spikes, that’s all.
“make the enemies so ridiculously strong that you can only beat them with multiple humans splitting aggro”.
Gotcha, yeah we do agree then, as thats why my changes above included very little difficulty due to Stat Inflations, The only one is the Most difficult tier has double health, and increased damage to thralls. and the main difficulty comes from the Ambush spawns. So its still completely possible to complete solo, but going as a Group is the best way to safely do it.
I really dislike stat inflations = difficulty in games, tbh I like difficulty to come from mechanics.
Like if I was going to push this difficulty farther, the next difficulty would have enemies that don’t flinch as often, like the Large mobs.
I don’t see any issue with vault difficulty. They essentially serve as a replacement for NPC camps, with a fairly weak boss thrown in to give it a dungeon feel. The real issue is the relatively small number of them (compared to the amount of NPC camps we had in the Exiled Lands) combined with a ridiculous server-wide lockout to gate everyone’s access to summoned surges and thus T4 thralls. I’ve experienced developers blocking progression to conceal the absence of content in the past. I’m just surprised to see it done in such transparent fashion here.
