Blogs Thoughts on Difficulty Settings

This thread needs more Goldeneye pimpage.

The first game to break the LOL MAKE THE ENEMIES FASTER LOL precedent.


Goldeneye.

It's a lot to ask of something like an RTS game, really. For a start you'd need to have a load of different levels of strategem. To be honest we're lucky if they can path the units to attack or defend, never mind organise hundreds of them to fight intelligently. I suppose that's why Starcraft is such a popular MP game, there's so much more a human can do in comparison to AI.

 

The other thing that somewhat bothers me with RTS AI is their completely inhuman ability to perform multiple actions simultaneously. Watch a round of Starcraft start, for example. All of the AI's worker units immediately get to gathering on separate mineral piles as the ComCenter/Hive/Nexus starts instantly producing another. Watch as multiple units activiate abilities at the same time yet with different targets, or battles are fought on two fronts with full attention to each. All within the natural limits of the game, human limitations and input devices are the only things stopping you from doing the same.

But like Rogan said, we're lucky to have any AI at all. It must be a huge hassle. Perhaps some day we'll actually have an AI 'playing' the game with simulated input devices, only advantage being superior intelligence.

I like Demon's Souls method of implementing difficulty methods: there are none, it is always hard

 

Well yes, that's my point, we're lucky if they're competent, let alone challenging. But RTS is a game where I would dearly like to see more intelligence. AI in general shoot em up's seems to be advancing. We see flanking, baiting, etc. on the more difficult levels. But RTS difficulty levels seem to have gotten lazy. When strategy is in the name, you expect to see a fair bit. Imagine if Chessmaster (people still play Chessmaster!) just started moving pieces wherever it wanted, ignoring the rules. The very point of the game is lost. It kind of feels like that to me.

 

I play on easy and still hide behind cover just for effect! LOL!

 

Quake 3 on Nightmare. Last Level against Xaero. Took me a couple of months to beat him. Loads of people (Gamers) don't beat him in a lifetime. Thats the hardest I know. Most fun... hmm probalby Swat 4 COOP on hardest setting. Recent most fun.. I'd say a tie between easy L4D2 COOP slaughterung and hardest difficulty MW2 COOP.

COOP games on hardest difficulty are nearly always fun, aslong as you have a nice bunch of peaple you play with.

 

Too hard is annoying, but too easy is boring.

 

To be fair, Deus Ex on Realistic is a lot of fun mainly because it levels the playing field. JC no longer has super health, but then again neither does the AI. Plus they aim appropriately for their rank

 

I skimmed but i'm surprised no one mentioned unreal tournament. It had an "adaptive" skill level where depending on how well you did the bots would either go up or down in skill. it meant that eventually it would level out so you would be challenged and not bored. of course you could "game" the system and turn every crushing victory into a close call, but that would be more time.

I'm surprised so few games have any type of adapative system where they get harder or easier depending on how well you play. fighting games sometimes have them still.

 

I believe the reason this isn't common is to prevent people from leaving the challenge level they enjoy. Some people just enjoy the challenge, or enjoy rolling through easily. A dynamic difficulty ruins this by forcing all players to play with the same relative difficulty. Also sucks that you'll all have to start out on the same level, some players will be forced to frustratingly die repeatedly while others will be bored until it gets tougher.

 

I play games for entertainment which, for me, does not constitute hours of frustration by dying all the time. I mainly play on regular but I have, on occasion, dropped it to easy.

 

My ideal difficulty setting is where i will have to try a couple of bits of the game over again, but get through the majority of it first time.

Dragon age seemed unfairly difficult the first time i played it, until i realised you did actually have to make use of the pause button, then it became much, much easier.


Stuntman still holds the record for most "ARGH DIE IN THE PITS OF HELL" level of difficulty, ignition wasn't quite as bad, but still, getting 5*'s was still tricky as hell.

 

Recently started Killzone 2 and decided that 'Veteran' was the appropriate difficulty. I have had my ass handed to me so many times! Tempting to start again on normal but I think I will stick it out.

 

difficulty is more of a subjective thing IMO, back when i was at college back in 2001 we were playing unreal tournament across networks that we built to test that the network was indeed working (it was my tutors idea - his stance is the best way to test a network is to run games across it) started as a 2 people playing against bots & we set the difficulty to auto, so the difficulty would change depending how many kills you got etc. I did custom a few bots to have full stats & behaviour that would make them 'bunny hop' all over the place which made them very very difficult to kill. but me & my friend were still **** scared of even 1 bot on godmode, we're not average players. weve been playing shooters for longtime. but this one bot on god mode would totally own both of us. after that people started getting more interested in what we were playing so we stopped fighting against bots. after a long while when everyone had dissapeard me & my mate went back to the game & set the bots back on godmode & for some reason god mode just didnt seem really scary anymore. & even though we didnt come top of the list at the end of the game. our scores were still quite good. but we did barricade ourselves in a small room & blasted anything that walked across the door so... its a subjective thing.