Difficulty Updates
Good morning Torchlight community!
We have some updates to share with you about difficulty settings and party play. While not all of the updates will be turned on and available in the upcoming patch, they should be rolled out within the next few weeks.
We received feedback that grouping with players of varying difficulty settings can cause a lot of confusion; it’s not always clear what difficulty an instance is set to, how to reset or change it, or how it affects other players in the group. After deliberating on potential solutions, we decided to update how the difficulty settings work in order to make the party experience more cohesive and clean.
First off, players can no longer change their difficulty on the fly, they will need to return to the main menu in order to change that character’s difficulty setting. We made this change to better streamline instance difficulty and it ensures that all instances are set to the correct difficulty when created.
In addition to this change, players will now be adorned with a badge that displays the character’s level and lowest difficulty setting played. The badge will reflect the lowest difficulty level your character has played on, making it a shiny beacon of accomplishment and pride for you ‘painful’ players. Max Schaefer, Echtra’s CEO has been championing this update for some time, “Beating the game on a higher difficulty level, without ever lowering it, is an accomplishment worth celebrating and admiring. We want to recognize players who do this with a literal badge of honor."
Because of this, party members will no longer be able to play together if they are not set to the same difficulty level. Once the update is fully implemented you will receive an error if you attempt to party with someone in a different difficulty setting. Players will need to switch their character to the same difficulty level in order to party together. This will create a more unified experience for all party members and avoid situations where the instance difficulty setting is unclear or unspecified. This will not change how towns interact with people. Everyone, regardless of your difficulty level can mingle in towns and shared spaces.
We are excited to share more updates and features coming to Torchlight 3 soon. Stay tuned for additional updates and thank you again for all of your bug reports, feedback, and support!
See you in-game!
- Echtra Bean
We have some updates to share with you about difficulty settings and party play. While not all of the updates will be turned on and available in the upcoming patch, they should be rolled out within the next few weeks.
We received feedback that grouping with players of varying difficulty settings can cause a lot of confusion; it’s not always clear what difficulty an instance is set to, how to reset or change it, or how it affects other players in the group. After deliberating on potential solutions, we decided to update how the difficulty settings work in order to make the party experience more cohesive and clean.
First off, players can no longer change their difficulty on the fly, they will need to return to the main menu in order to change that character’s difficulty setting. We made this change to better streamline instance difficulty and it ensures that all instances are set to the correct difficulty when created.
In addition to this change, players will now be adorned with a badge that displays the character’s level and lowest difficulty setting played. The badge will reflect the lowest difficulty level your character has played on, making it a shiny beacon of accomplishment and pride for you ‘painful’ players. Max Schaefer, Echtra’s CEO has been championing this update for some time, “Beating the game on a higher difficulty level, without ever lowering it, is an accomplishment worth celebrating and admiring. We want to recognize players who do this with a literal badge of honor."
Because of this, party members will no longer be able to play together if they are not set to the same difficulty level. Once the update is fully implemented you will receive an error if you attempt to party with someone in a different difficulty setting. Players will need to switch their character to the same difficulty level in order to party together. This will create a more unified experience for all party members and avoid situations where the instance difficulty setting is unclear or unspecified. This will not change how towns interact with people. Everyone, regardless of your difficulty level can mingle in towns and shared spaces.
We are excited to share more updates and features coming to Torchlight 3 soon. Stay tuned for additional updates and thank you again for all of your bug reports, feedback, and support!
See you in-game!
- Echtra Bean