You're right, most missions in general at the moment are indeed too easy for me; it's not just the Lion's Den. But as for the Lion's Den missions in particular, they end up being pretty much the same difficulty as the other ones because they're the same in most aspects. The only true difference is that when you finish them, it affects the bot levels of the bots selected for the final battle.... but other than that, these are EXACTLY the same as any other mission. There's nothing about them that makes them harder.
The sight lines are much more open in those missions, and the bot density can be much greater, which should make a difference. However, with bot ranges being as they are, I think that maybe it doesn't make as much of a difference as one might hope. Bot ranges can't be increased too much, but perhaps making a few longer-ranged would be good. Still, that then devalues the ninja and so forth almost to the point of uselessness, is my worry.
I'm on Normal difficulty currently. In my current game I have 29 days left. As a rule, it doesnt matter overmuch what bot types I encounter, chances are they're going to get wrecked. I have ALOT of shielding on every Exo, though alot of that is just the x4 bonus from Normal mode. Not actually using many shield-increasing items. Even without that though, it wouldnt make too much difference as I dont take much damage during missions. Part of it might be my playstyle; I tend to take things slowly... or what passes as "slowly" for me anyway... and think through every move before I make it, and as I have so very many different available weapons and gizmos and things, I make use of all of them. But I dont even need the stuff like sentries or mines or stealth much to get through these, unless I'm facing a huge ton of bots at once, as many rooms dont have that many bots in them, and the lower their shielding, the easier it is to pop them all before they can even come close to being in range of firing.
Knowing you, Normal difficulty simply isn't going to be enough. You probably want at least Hard, if not Expert. Normal is pretty substantially buffed in terms of your health versus what the "real" balance of the game is supposed to be -- I think you have 4x the health, IIRC. That makes an enormous difference at all levels, honestly.
I could make it so that there are some sort of range-buffing effects on bots in the Lion's Den missions to make that more unique, but frankly... well, I'm not sure about that. You playing the game on Normal difficulty is definitely
not something I should balance around, unless I want a lot of other people ragequitting. So I'm going to have to kind of keep your current balance feedback in mind, but really can't act on that until I see what you think on higher difficulties, which I then can balance around. Honestly I feel like if you're not playing on Expert, then the game
should be too easy for you. Again, knowing you.
I balance Hard around myself, I think I should balance Expert around you, Easy is around anyone new to the game and struggling, and Normal is around people who play it kind of casually but are not new to it. It's just fun on normal, not getting into the stress modes. I may need to add an Insane mode at some point, for people who are better than you, or for you once you graduate from Expert, I don't know.
As it stands right now, though, I feel like you're playing the kind of casual difficulty level while playing it in a hardcore intensive fashion, and... yeah, that's not going to be hard enough.
Some of it is sheer power as well. I'm the sort that pokes at the customization stuff until it's as good as it can be based on current resources, so my Exos are strong as heck right now. Which also affects the boss difficulty; I've got multiple weapons that do well over 1000 damage per hit, things like the Kinetic Burst, Rocket Launcher, Shadow Torpedo, with the Plasma Cannon being the most absurd at over 4000 damage (though that one makes sense, since you get ONE shot and that's it). Even the Science bot can dish out 1000+ damage between enemy bot turns with the mighty Chaingun, which hits for 500-ish right now. Most of the time though I'm actually firing either the Light Machine Guns or the Laser Rifles, both of which hit within the 200-300 range; enough to kill a great many bots in one hit. I usually only pull out the other weapons when I see a need to. Range for most weapons is anywhere from 8 to 12. And the Rocket Launcher in particular got so absurd that I actually had to dampen it a bit because the giant explosion was so huge I couldnt fire it and NOT hit my own Siege guy.
I'm not claiming the parts balance is perfect by any stretch, either, don't get me wrong. But your base shields are so high on Normal, and the overall bot severity and number of bots are so much lower, that I think you'd find it a different situation on Expert. There you'd be facing roughly 30-50% more bots at all times, with the same amount of ammo, with 1/5.3th the shields.
Probably the range of some of the enemies still needs to be adjusted up a point or two here and there, though. But I don't know if that should span all difficulties or not, honestly. Maybe just on Hard and Expert.
Thoughts?
