I played only four scenarios so far. I played the first scenario (Cycle of Eternity) solo controlling 3 investigators two times and won both. Then I played the second scenario (Escape from Innsmouth) solo controlling 3 investigators two times and lost both. So, I don't have much experience with that game until now, but I think the difficulty of this game is high. I am a game geek. But if I would play this game with gamers who are not playing that often, I suspect that we will have no chance at all to win a scenario.

Therefore I think it would be a good idea, if the difficulty could be adjusted at the beginning of a scenario by the players like in a video game, for example Easy, Normal, or Hard. If this were possible, every scenario would be playable for every kind of gaming group. You could play a scenario like Escape from Innsmouth in Easy mode with non-regular gamers and You will have fun and a chance to win this. Of course, You can play it on Hard mode with your skilled geeks. It would be Your choice.

In Easy mode there would be less monsters, less suffering of horror and damage in tests and the monsters would have less hit points. Something like that.

I think the possibility to adjust the difficulty by the players before a scenario would increase the value of the game. Because much more kind of gamers could enjoy the game.

Hi,

I've found that a simple way to lower the difficulty is to give your investigators an additional action per turn, so 3 actions in total. Or you could just decide to allow 1 investigator per turn to take 3 actions. This doesn't require any changing of monsters or gameplay elements and the app is nun the wiser that you've taken an extra action or two.

Happy Gaming ?

First of all, it's a Lovecraft Mythos game. It's supposed to crush you.

Cycle is - supposedly - one of the easier scenarios, yet out of the five
times I have played with different people, we've only managed to win once.
The other four times were - for the most part - pretty hard loses.

Escape from Innsmouth - despite its difficulty rating - (I don't have SoA yet,
so I can't talk about those scenarios.) is easily the hardest and meanest of all
the scenarios. It's practically designed to make you lose the first time you play
and even a second time, knowing what you have to do to win, it's no walk in
the park.

Generally speaking - this is not a video game. How would you propose to handle
different standard difficulties?

Monsters? - Fine, but that won't work for all the scenarios and is either not possible
to vary that greatly for some or would require more content and therefor make the
scenario(/-s) much longer.

Puzzles? - Some people like them, some don't, some hate them passionately.
Sometimes, you have to do them - but this doesn't seem like a good approach for a
somewhat healthy, yet still fun game play.

Complexity? - Seems like an overkill and would probably require all scenarios to have
like 10 different starting stories and much more content in general. Unlikely to happen.

Honestly, with the way the scenarios are done here I can't think of any "fair" way on
top of my head for what you are proposing. Technically speaking, you can always add
something to make everything harder, but the other way round and in between...

I don't know. Certainly no easy answer here.

I think the monsters health go up with the number of investigators. An easy form of difficulty rating system would be to count the number of investigators as one less than what is playing for a "easy" game, and one more for a "hard" game.
Whenever the app specifies a player at random, just roll a die for yourself instead to see who is affected.

Done, and quite easy. On easy Monsters will be dealt with faster, which means players health and sanity will remain a bit longer, and the players will have more actions over for other non-fighting activities. On hard it would be the other way around.

I think that is all that would be needed, and it's also easy to do with your own group without any real modification. If you want to play with 3 friends (so four players in total), but it's too difficult, just start the game with only three investigators selected in the app, and have a dice ready for random events.

Have you tried playing with 3 actions instead of 2? Works fine without making it too easy imho.

To give the investigators more actions than 2 is an idea I had myself yesterday after posting.

To select less investigators at the beginning of a scenario than to play with is another good advice.

I will try these things out.

7 hours ago, Bjbu said:

To select less investigators at the beginning of a scenario than to play with is another good advice.

The one downfall to this is that the game uses random mechanics that sometimes affect a certain investigator. This would leave one of the characters out of the random pool of possible events. Like several of the others have said, this is not meant to be a game where you are breezing through to the end. You can expect to have a few loses out there, otherwise what would be the point of having a co-op game like this?

Good luck with figuring it all out though!

7 minutes ago, LordPyrex said:

You can expect to have a few loses out there, otherwise what would be the point of having a co-op game like this?

This is exactly right. There's no quicker way for our group to become bored with a game than for it to be too easy. I've had co-op games that we've easily won the first few times we played, and it becomes impossible to get it to the table after that. While we almost never "lose" MoM, we fairly often get the "bad" endings on our first time or two through a scenario, which makes everyone want to go back and try again to get a better ending.

First let me say that I speak about an option to adjust the difficulty. I don't speak about to lower the difficulty of the game generally. So, if there were such an option, You guys can select the Hard mode. Then You can play Your multiple attempts until You win the "Escape from Innsmouth" the first time. That's okay. But I don't see a problem here at all when another group select the Easy mode. Again: It would be an option, not the lowering of the difficulty per se. Therefore I can't follow the argument not to include such an option.

Second let me say that I speak about non-regular gamers. People who don't play board games usually or at all. If I get them to the table and we decide to play a scenario of MoM, then the guys should at least have the option to expect that they could win the scenario in the first and only try.

A co-op game is not a good game, because it is hard to win.

5 hours ago, Bjbu said:

First let me say that I speak about an option to adjust the difficulty. I don't speak about to lower the difficulty of the game generally. So, if there were such an option, You guys can select the Hard mode. Then You can play Your multiple attempts until You win the "Escape from Innsmouth" the first time. That's okay. But I don't see a problem here at all when another group select the Easy mode. Again: It would be an option, not the lowering of the difficulty per se. Therefore I can't follow the argument not to include such an option.

Second let me say that I speak about non-regular gamers. People who don't play board games usually or at all. If I get them to the table and we decide to play a scenario of MoM, then the guys should at least have the option to expect that they could win the scenario in the first and only try.

A co-op game is not a good game, because it is hard to win.

You brought up the idea... we're just telling you what we think of it.

People should absolutely play the game the way they want to play it ( especially co-op games). That said, I personally would just rather see any options for adjusting difficulty be done outside of the app. I'd rather the programmers focus on creating new scenarios, finishing localisations, and fixing bugs rather than adding a difficulty adjustment that many (myself included) feel is unnecessary.

(...and I disagree. All good co-op games are difficult to win.)