- Hello everyone, I want to talk about the game’s difficulties and make some suggestions. With the release of the Forgotten Gods DLC, we now have access to stones that allow us to switch between Elite, and Ultimate difficulties. We’ll discuss these difficulties in more detail later. I believe that most players, like myself, start playing on Normal/Veteran difficulty and, after completing the story, immediately switch to Ultimate difficulty, ignoring Elite difficulty. So, why don’t we consider adding the option to play the story on Elite difficulty without using stones to unlock it? I believe that with the release of the Fangs of Asterkarn, the difficulty unlock stones will become useless, as there will be a new Ascendant difficulty level that requires a minimum level of 100, and it is unlikely that anyone will use these stones to play on the normal Ultimate difficulty, especially with the first level.
as i recall
devs explained it’s to prevent “accidental” selfimposed frustration for beginners, similar like you already sometimes have some people complaining about Veteran hitting too hard (even tho they opted in to it voluntary)
Giving players the option to start a first run on Elite(or Ult) was then gated off on merits to not encourage beginners being braver than necessary (while not seeing their own error in picking too hard a difficulty/dismissing lowering difficulty back down)
people already do, i don’t see FoA or Ascendant mode changing that option for those that already prefer the tougher early Ult slog (Ascendant will be optional after all so regular masochists still have the option of regular Ult lvl as they used to)
*It’s possible that a lot has changed since then, and players’ builds have become more resilient. When I first started playing GD around 2020, I immediately started playing on Veteran difficulty and never switched to normal difficulty.
With the release of patch 1.3, a new interface design will be added, and each difficulty will be clearly explained in terms of its differences from the previous one.
sure, but you being a good player doesn’t mean all new players are right?
So even if it’s the minority the notion could still be valid, and if the intent is in part to prevent those gripes, it would still work regardless of amount affected.
*i can’t say if devs will open up difficulties without merits, just that it was mentioned in the past. - sometimes they change stance on one thing, and other times they don’t change on another, also despite the former (wind devils etc example 
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