Bamzalot
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This is a topic that has crossed my mind a few times. DragonFable has been going on for many years and it has attracted a wide range of players for multiple reasons. On one hand, DragonFable can be a very casual experience. Going through the vast majority of older quest lines should pose little problem. On the other hand, there are some factors of the game that makes it pretty complicated. Sometimes abruptly so. This is the case with some of the newer quests and bosses in the story as was already mentioned with Bandit???, Verlyrus and the like. Now personally, I do not mind the increased difficult. I fully welcome DragonFable introducing tougher quests, more intricate boss battles, making stats a more strategic factor, or redesigning the gameplay to limit some of the player's more subtly overpowered abilities (swapping stat items on a guest's turn, for example.) That being said, I do not favor the more extreme challenges of the game. I find many of the Inn battles to be a nuisance to fight through. But that's okay. I don't always like these, some people love them, it is a part of the game segmented for a specific group of players. Similarly, I fully understand why some people don't like the increasing difficulty that story line quests have been leaning towards. If you think of it this way, there are 3 tiers to this game's difficulty: The simplistic early quests, the moderately difficult Verlyrus quests, and the max difficulty Inn challenges. The key is to find a way to allow everyone to enjoy the game in one of these tiers without making some weird conglomerate of difficulty drops and spikes throughout a single quest. This reminds me of the hard mode revamp that was mentioned a while back. Have we gotten any news about this recently? The latest information I can find about it on the design notes was back in 2018. I think that as DragonFable continues to develop and evolve, having a good Hard Mode toggle will be a great way to set a difficulty level suitable for all players. By default, quests should be designed around an easy mode that anyone can complete without too much trouble, even if they go in with no strategy and a weaker class. This is perfect for people like hpnerdghmk who would have less time to play but an interest on seeing how the story progresses. Hard mode could do away with the ridiculous HP and Damage scaling, replace it with the "STR, DEX, and INT stats will gain extra effects, and enemies will gain special skills, abilities and stat boosts based on their race, element, and more" that was mentioned, and then we have a suitable but not tedious increase in difficult that could bring these easily designed quests up to a level of challenge that requires more strategy to complete. As a bonus, this toggle would make the quests of the early years more interesting as well which would be fantastic for playing the game through with a fresh character. Meanwhile, the Inn gets a monthly update so the most challenge driven players have something to look forward to. So, in a nutshell, here is to hoping that the Hard Mode Revamp comes soon. And on a final note, I think that the trend of giving bosses a normal mode and an Extreme! battle mode is great, but could also be better utilized to improve the balance of the game. Maybe this can also be redesigned as a "Hardmode Revamp- Lite" before the actual Hardmode Revamp releases. I would encourage the developers to experiment with this a bit. In future quests, see about having the Extreme! mode unlock these more powerful and complicated skill rotations for bosses like Verlyrus while the normal battle option keeps the boss at an easy and straight forward level.
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