New Game Plus - How do you want it to work?

Above all else, I definitely want it understood by the devs that many/most of us don't want "New Game+" to end with the second playthrough.

I've mentioned this before in less-focused threads, but I would be happy if they took cues from Diablo 3, Sacred 2, Dark Souls, etc., and made New Game+ work like this:

Increase the level cap, increase the difficulty, increase the quality of drops (perhaps using the "+1" system from Harmony of Despair).  Maybe add one or two things to make the new game slightly fresher than just a flat repeat.  Obviously keep all of your prior experience, items, etc.  When you win, you can start New Game+2.  And this repeats a half dozen times.  And then, if you manage to beat New Game+6, just to make sure it doesn't end there, permit the player to start a brand new, regular "New Game" from scratch, but with some sort of "prestige" difference, such as slightly elevated stats, slightly elevated difficulty, whatever - something that carries over into New Game+2 etc. and followup prestige transitions.  Be sure the player can reference their progress in a non-ambiguous way, such as by noting the NG+/prestige level in the menu somewhere.

If it worked like that, I would be absolutely thrilled.

i would Diffinently be on board with what Asterras idea of New game plus, i really want more enemy placement above all else. i really wish SOTN had something like that because the Castle felt empty. im a fan of diablo 3 and i really like the lv cap idea i feel like that would be really awesome. also increase crystals shard cap for potency.

I think that NG+ should be separate from difficulty modes. I want to be in charge of the difficulty level myself. The increased level cap is something I can stand behind though. I'm not one to play through dozens of NG+ playthrough so don't overdo it though. I think something like three normal NG+ playthroughs should be enough to get 100% of what there is to get in NG+.
Also I never had the impression of SotN's castle being "empty". For me that was maybe more of a problem with Harmony of Dissonance which had some straight up empty rooms. Large ones, too.

Here's my two cents

I think you guys are making a confusion, between New Game+ And Arrangeed Mode. 

You just finished the game and unlocked the New Game Plus. What happens?


New Game +

---

You can play the game again from the beginning with these features:

• Carry over most shards and equipment (except key, progression and plot-relevant ones).
• Level is reset to 1.
• New hidden equipment.

Nope, have you played diablo 3 and the souls series? It's just a different 'way' of doing ng+... though I don't like using diablo 3 as an example because it's not really a ng+ thing so much as a 'enemies scale to your level regardless of it being ng+ or not' thing, which I dislike in general.

Valkyrie profile 2 does a weird version of this, where it actually does NOT allow you to carry over levels and equipment, but it will up the difficulty a little, this is kinda cool by itself but I would very much rather me have the option to just outright say "difficulty level 4" right from the getgo if I wanted to rather than have to play the entire darn game 3 times first.

The benefit of adding difficulty perks to an ng+ is that it allows you to keep all the goodies like you mentioned, without it killing the enjoyment of the game making it feel like you just entered in a bunch of cheat codes and can face-mash your way past everything.

Also, I'd like to point out that I like it when a game gives players the options of what ng+ things they get to 'keep'. one game I like asks me if I want to keep my levels, equipment, items, and characters... I love saying no to everything but characters, so that I can play the game with a party that I like for the entire game rather than have to 'unlock' them, but not trivialize the game by being over-level for everything but the final dungeon.

I would like to be able to choose which things carry over by groups such as stats, shards, weapons, armor, bestiary, map(s?), things of that nature. I'm also assuming that we'll be able to choose level caps and difficulty, i also believe it was mentioned that enemies would probably change attack patterns and maybe positioning in ng+ which i really like for higher level play. All in all regardless of what they do it already sounds pretty graat.

yeah I'm not trying to argue if you should like or dislike those features. just saying I don't think anyone is confused here =P

I think making a souls game esque new game plus+ could be interesting, increasing enemies HP and damage each time you beat the game could as well could work, also as many people have mentioned, adding harder enemies in early stages of the game is interesting. The only problem I have with increasing the difficulty with new game+ is that it makes nightmare difficulty mode somewhat irrelevant.


A realistic solution for this could be that once you start a new game plus+ you start in nightmare mode, and if you beat it then it would be something like nightmare mode+ which involves enemies dealing even more damage but no more special enemy placement for the sake of making developers work easier, it would look something like this:

normal game starts with no special items	-
nightmare mode (aka new game +) you keeping all your items enemies deal more damage and have more health harder enemies in earlier areas hard mode exclusive items like in Aria of Sorrow.	nightmare mode start with no special items. enemies deal more damage and have more health harder enemies in earlier areas hard mode exclusive items like in Aria of Sorrow.
nightmare mode+ you keep all your items enemies deal MORE damage and have MORE health	nightmare mode+ you keep all your items enemies deal MORE damage and have MORE health
Nightmare mode++ you keep all your items enemies deal EVEN MORE damage and have EVEN MORE health	Nightmare mode++ you keep all your items enemies deal EVEN MORE damage and have EVEN MORE health

and so on... like the souls series when things can get to +9 if im not mistaken.

Basically the only difference is that you could start nightmare mode with items collected after a normal game, or without items if you start with nightmare mode right off the bat, and developers shouldn't have to worry coding even more stuff into the game for each different "+" besides the first new game +, just amping up the enemies damage and health after each run.

I'm not so crazy about shards carrying over to a new game on hard difficulty.

One thing that I hated about DoS was that if you did new game plus you HAD to carry over all of your souls. You couldn't start again from scratch.