Why widening the gap between normal, dangerous, and brutal outposts would be healthy for the game
Currently it is incredibly easy to make a base that is brutal in difficulty. To the point where the brutal "difficulty" isn't actually difficult, it just means there are more people with more resources. There is nothing difficult about going against a first time builder who rolled and got a 4.5k points for building their base (I don't know if this even has a name, for now we'll call it points) who only has access to a few traps and a single guard, none of which have addons. I have been playing brutal constantly since release and the number of solid concrete hallways with the same spike trap/bolt shot trap spots is beginning to get old REAL fast. This also effects me as a builder as well. If my outpost is a brutal champion outpost or dangerous/normal outpost, I get tons of raids constantly. But if I try to make a base that is brutal at prestige one, sometimes my bases will get one maybe two raids in the life cycle. If feels especially bad because brutal outposts are (as a given) the bases people work the hardest on and put the most effort into. I'd like this discussion to be about various ways that the difficulty system could change. Traps/guards in the vicinity HRVs path is a great start don't get me wrong, but there needs to be more that goes into determining which difficulty a base gets.
I'll spout out a few I think are good:
>Variety of traps/guards = more difficulty, samey outposts = less difficulty.
Would allow people to have big outposts early on that attract newer players playing on the easier difficulties. The more stuff you unlock the more you use the more your difficulty goes up.
A problem I see with this is people cheesing difficulty by making difficult bases with the same, but very difficult traps/guards spammed all over.
>Increase the amount of points the current system uses to determine difficulty.
Basically increase the caps of normal and dangerous so it's easier to stay below the threashhold of brutal. Allowing people to use more options and still stay under the difficulty caps
A problem is determining exactly how to balance this
>Give some kind of indication to the player on how much more they can put down in a base before their base transitions to the next difficulty level. Could be something as simple as a bar that has current progress and before you would place something it would show you a graphic of how much that would add to the difficulty
Knowing when a base is going to flip to a different difficulty would be nice to have. It's frustrating to put something down and then have to wait for roughly 5 seconds before my difficulty updates. (This is more of a QOL thing but it would still be nice to have)
A problem might come where people min max super hard, getting close to brutal but never quite crossing the threshhold.
>When players prestige their base, up the difficulty caps along with it!
It feels so bad to prestige bases, only for me to not be able to upgrade them at all lest they get put in brutal and not seen by a single soul because I add one thing.
A problem I see with this is difficulty communicating this to the player.
All in all MYM is an incredibly fun game, I'm just frustrated that I put all this time and work into making outpost and no one plays them because the brutal base pool is so bloated at the moment it's hard to prestige a brutal base to 5. I really hope something is done about this, as at least for me, it's frustrating for BOTH builder and raider.
Thanks for reading and cant wait to discuss!
lought_the_not