Difficulty scaling and end of level bosses

by yakaman, Tuesday, April 02, 2013, 10:15 (4034 days ago) @ Cody Miller

Probably some sort of scaling similar to what Diablo 2 did. The more players in the game, the tougher the monsters are. You could ramp up any number of things: unit designation, hit points, AI, etc.

A good motivation to gather more friends for a fight would be the scale of things, especially if it was a non-linear increase. For the general population, a certain battle might be difficult but manageable, but for those chasing the ridiculous, gathering 10+ people (or whatever) might be mythic, utterly insane and nigh-impossible.

Something like that could be used as a gateway to cool items without being grind-based. To continue along those lines, one could imagine other scenarios in which the reward matched the challenge of the feat:

• A solo run through something very difficult
  
• A speed run through a dungeon/maze in which failure is death
  
• An endurance challenge in which point X was held for 4 hours (or whatever)

There's a lot that could be done, here. I really don't like grinding, so boss battles or boss levels would be a great way to present (and reward) skill-based challenges, to bring the community together, and to create unique "legends".