I never got the chance to check this out while in Beta. Can anyone shine some light on how you change the difficulty?

Upped the difficulty in Black Talon, didn't notice anything, but that was during beta almost a month and a half to two months ago.

How did you up the difficulty. What is the process? Edited December 13, 2011 by FulcanMal

Didn't run this enough to know for sure. But it seemed they increased the strength of some of the mobs. The boss was definitely buffed up. Soloed it pretty well at 12 I think then was flat out owned by the boss.

I never got the chance to check this out while in Beta. Can anyone shine some light on how you change the difficulty?

 

This is not a single player game, so you cannot manually change the difficulty.

 

There are 2 classes of flashpoint (someone correct me if I am wrong there), and 2 classes of Operation: Normal Flashpoints, which are easier than Normal Operations (the "Normals" are the type that you do at "any" level), then Heroic Flashpoints which are harder than Normal Operations but easier than Heroic Operations.

 

As far as I know, the Heroic versions become available when you hit level 50.

But isn't there a way to set a given operation or Flashpoint from Normal to Heroic?

 

I was under the impression that that was the OP's question.

I don't think you can change the difficulty of flashpoints until L50. A lot of flashpoints like Black Talon have normal modes which you are supposed to do while levelling up, I don't think it'd make sense to have different difficulty modes at the lower levels, since people would just outlevel them fairly quickly, and completely negate any increase in difficulty by doing the same flashpoint 1 or 2 levels higher.

 

At 50 there's most likely a hard mode version of each of the levelling-up flashpoints, and they'd just be like the normal version tuned for L50 players - that would make more sense because people won't be able to out-level these.

 

I don't know if there's any normal-mode L50 flashpoints yet, but presumably those would have a L50 hard mode too, otherwise maybe those kinds of flashpoints are going to get added to the game in a future patch.

Edited December 13, 2011 by Tixall

This is not a single player game, so you cannot manually change the difficulty.

 

There are 2 classes of flashpoint (someone correct me if I am wrong there), and 2 classes of Operation: Normal Flashpoints, which are easier than Normal Operations (the "Normals" are the type that you do at "any" level), then Heroic Flashpoints which are harder than Normal Operations but easier than Heroic Operations.

 

As far as I know, the Heroic versions become available when you hit level 50.

BioWare announced 3 difficulty levels for Operations: Normal, Hard, Nightmare.

 

I also vaguely remember they announced the same 3 difficulty levels for flashpoints too (There were definitely 2), but maybe that was just wishful thinking and perhaps the 3rd "Nightmare" mode was only for operations.

 

 

But isn't there a way to set a given operation or Flashpoint from Normal to Heroic?

 

I was under the impression that that was the OP's question.

I don't know for sure, but if I were to take a wild guess, I would expect the group leader to have a "difficulty mode" setting in their right-click menu when they click on their portrait ... But the reason I expect that is because I've played WoW for too long

 

But in any case, the right-click portrait menu seemed fairly familiar to me from WoW when I tried Black Talon in beta (around L11-L12, I wasn't the party leader, just a groupie). There were all kinds of options such as "leave party" and marking mobs and players with icons like a yellow star.. Very familiar

Edited December 13, 2011 by Tixall

In order to do any Flashpoint you have to pick up the quest to enter it first as you all know.

 

Once you hit level 50 these flashpoint quest NPCs will have TWO quests instead of only one, both a Normal Mode and then a Hard Mode Quest for the FP. Whichever quest you pick up determines the difficulty of the FP when you enter it.

Well this seems rather absurd. Only able to change the difficulty of Flashpoints at max level?

Yes, the higher difficulty is meant for max level. It's the same as WoW heroic 5 mans. There would be no point to an increased difficulty mode of say Esseles, because if it was tuned to be extra difficult for level 10s and had awesome loot, everybody would just level to 15 and then go roll the hard mode for the better rewards.

 

The hard mode of the flashpoints is just there so there is small group end game content.

The point of having difficulty changes for The Esseles/Black Talon, is because their current difficulty is laughable to the point of being plain boring. I like challenges in my games. However, I have yet to run Hammer Station, so we'll see how that goes. Hopefully it will kick it up a notch.