I actually mean to multiply atk and def by the smaller one of week factor and threat factor.
While the idea isn't bad offhand, I highly recommend a maximum cap on how nasty enemies can get via week factor. The only reason I cleared Hell mode in the first place was because I held out in mondstatd till like, turn 90 to breed the right hilichurls until I was capable of killing elites.
I'd really like to avoid a scenario where enemies just randomly one shot mitachurls/samachurls for no reason. I had that issue with Goblin burrow - where I had supposedly good units, and enemies just instakilled them for seemingly no reason.
Managing the threat bar is already a decent incentive to avoid getting too aggressive, but if the scaling on the damage boost gets too high, you end up with a damned if you do damned if you don't situation, as patience gets punished instead of rewarded. Part of what makes the game fun is the ability to build up your forces to eventually overcome the challenges of the city bulwarks.
I'm alright with enemies getting harder over time - it gives you a reason to bother breeding later units like lawachurls and samachurls, to say nothing of what will come from the whoppers/wolves/vishaps, but I'd like to avoid mitachurls becoming
entirely useless. As that just exacerbates the problem of lawachurls being the only thing you field after a while - using anything else just isn't worth the time because elites chew through them in like two hits.
With that said, if our enemies will be able to scale, I'm hoping our ability to scale will be able to match them over time. We have the training NPC's, so perhaps boosting their point scaling would be a thing so we have a response to enemies just suddenly being beefier? This would also mean stuff like breeding the basic girls when we get the city updates would have more of a purpose - get the training stats up so that way we don't get nuked by basic adventurers post week 100.
However, one thing I'd really like is that when this scaling arrives, for the information to be very clearly presented. I'd like to know
why my units are dying, rather than just having the enemy come in, whack us to death, and then have to wonder "Wait, that shield worked perfectly fine the last fight, why are they suddenly nuking us now?".
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As a personal note, not attached to sounding out the system above, I'm really not fond of pointless time limits that suddenly pop up for no other reason than to ensure you can't just slowly tank your way through a games system with decent gear and patience. I've had to watch the MMO scene grow addicted to things like rage timers and 20 minute "Welp, the boss just runs away, fuck you" results, which never feel like an interesting way to handle things to me. I'm the kind of person who likes to get as tanky as possible and win via death of a thousand cuts.
On top of this, there is also the problem that comes from the siren song of 'unlimited scaling', where devs go "Okay, they just endlessly get more powerful", with no way to match them. I much prefer hard-defined challenges to overcome, where there are eventual answers via either patience or creative use of game mechanics to sidestep things, of which to give an example from this game, samachurls - Elites can be managed via things like dendro mines and ice pillars in order to avoid damage entirely.
Thus far, this game has been pretty good about how it handles difficulty, and I've enjoyed myself immensely even during my stint in hell mode where all I could really do was wait for large periods of time. I'd really like to suggest a bit of caution in trying to jack up the difficulty too far too fast, because right now, I really like how the games difficulty is a matter of reactionary difficulty, rather than arbitrary "Do it by now or fail" standards. I can activate Alice whenever I please (...When Klee behaves, but managing her movements is part of the thrill.), I can manage the threat bar in order to avoid cases like Noel the Reaper smashing through my entire mitachurl line before I have anyone capable of dealing with her endless shields, I can choose not to pillage or destroy monuments to avoid pissing off mondstatd enough to send in elites...Everything thus far is a matter of "You can let them calm down until you are ready to face them, and then approach them ready to deal with their shenanigans with a properly built team with supporting casters and slimes to manage elemental damage".
Perhaps there are alternative ways to add difficulty without having to make it worse as a whole? Things like customizable settings to boost enemy stats that you can activate at your whim if you want to see crazy things, or even making it a risk reward system in of itself - higher stats means you have to manage fights more often, but in turn you get better and or more resources for your trouble? I've seen games where optional difficulty was attached to more payoff for the trouble, which makes it feel less like its hard for no reason and more like you are willingly subjecting yourself to something harder for the sake of either faster development or just getting fancier toys.
All in all, I hate to sound like I'm just whining here, but I simply want to avoid the game losing the strategic scope in favor of one prioritizing fast movement. Everything else I've seen in terms of development sneak peaks has looked really good, and this is the first time I feel...hesitant, in regards to a proposed system.
