Game difficulty seems set for a revamp in Reaper of Souls, with datastrings pointing to big changes and a new interface image that drives it home visually.

The relevant data strings:

DifficultySelector_Description_0 – At this difficulty enemies are weaker and have less health. — Recommended for players with either little or no experience with dungeon crawlers (point and click RPG’s) or for players more interested in story than a challenge. DifficultySelector_Description_1 – This is the baseline Diablo III experience. — Select this difficulty if you are familiar with dungeon crawlers (point and click RPG’s). DifficultySelector_Description_2 – Enemies are slightly more powerful and have a little more health. — This level is intended for players with experience playing dungeon crawlers and want a little challenge. DifficultySelector_Description_3 – Enemies are more powerful and have more health. There is also an increase to experience and item drops. — This level is intended for players who are looking for a challenge and have a healthy amount of gear to back them up in combat. DifficultySelector_Description_4 – Enemies are more powerful and have more health. There is also an increase to experience and item drops. — This level is only recommended to players who have aquired a good deal of gear and are seeking a much greater challenge. DifficultySelector_Description_5 – Enemies are much more powerful and are very difficult to kill. There is also a significant increase to experience and item drops.. — Only adventurers with the highest level of skill and gear should consider this difficulty..

It sounds like you’d need to move up to level 3 to see any boost to MF/GF/EXP and monster density? Here’s a slightly scrambled look at the new interface, with cute little demonic skull and crossed-swords icons in another image below. (As pointed out in comments, there are not 12 different icons, but 6 different with an on/off graphic for each.)

If you’re wondering, this is *not* the same as the modified Monster Power system seen on the console. Click through for details on that and hit comments to explain why this is a terrible change meant to punish casuals and preserve all the good bonus stuffs for players who are rich already. Or vice versa; your choice.

This system sounds a bit like what we see on the Diablo 3 console today… Here’s the console version of Monster Power:

Easy = Equivalent to Monster Power 0 Normal = Equivalent to Monster Power 2 Hard = Equivalent to Monster Power 4 Master I: +60% Magic Find, +60% Gold Find, +120% XP Bonus (Equivalent to Monster Power 6) Master II: +70% Magic Find, +70% Gold Find, +140% XP Bonus (Equivalent to Monster Power 7) Master III: +80% Magic Find, +80% Gold Find, +160% XP Bonus (Equivalent to Monster Power 8) Master IV: +90% Magic Find, +90% Gold Find, +180% XP Bonus (Equivalent to Monster Power 9) Master V: +100% Magic Find, +100% Gold Find, +200% XP Bonus (Equivalent to Monster Power 10)

The console system requires higher MP levels to gain rewards, but that’s fair enough since the console is easier in a variety of ways. Loot 1.5 means more drops of higher quality, items roll much higher stats, Paragon levels are shared across all your Inferno characters, Elites only get 3 random affixes on Inferno, etc.

It’s not known how RoS will tweak the overall difficulty, and the whole system is still under heavy development, as recent posts by Wyatt Cheng have stressed. Presumably we’ll find a lot better gear in RoS with Loot 2.0, and Paragon 2.0 will make characters stronger in Inferno. Hence perhaps it’ll be fair to make players turn up the MP more in order to gain added Experience and Magic find?

It’ll be interesting to see how this translates into Hardcore. Modestly geared chars in softcore can happily run MP3-MP5, especially in multiplayer games, since dying once in a while (or more often than that) is no biggie. In Hardcore that’s not the case, because forever. Hardcore chars can pretty cheaply gear up to farm MP1, but going higher than that gets quite expensive, and many players don’t bother since the added bonuses don’t really scale with the increased risk.

Besides, there’s not a huge need to go higher than MP1, since that’s all you need to get the full monster density increases. Above that just adds marginally to your bonus EXP/MF/GF, and that’s optional. If the RoS system changes that, and requires players to deal with the equivalent of MP4 or MP5 to get the monster density boosts and other bonuses, it’s going to be a real issue for Hardcore chars.

Or perhaps not, if Loot 2.0 really does make it rain…