The effect of difficulty level

[karadoc]

I've been thinking a bit about how different difficulty levels change the game, and how they don't just make it harder - but change which bits of it are hard; and how it distorts strategy and tactics a bit. In particular, I'm not sure that higher difficulty levels always make the game harder.

Changing to a higher difficulty improves the stats of enemies; so that they have more health, more action points, better accuracy, and more dangerous AI (better 'memory', etc). All that stuff makes the game more difficult, no doubt - however, higher difficulties also have more enemies; and in some ways that actually makes the game easier.

• More loot
• More slaves (and slaves are extremely valuable)
• More opportunities for high rank captures

Ultimately, those things are the reasons we choose to do missions in the first place. For example, we are never forced to do a landed ufo mission. We choose to do it because it will give us prisoners and loot. So we the number of enemies is increased, we're going to get more value from our missions. More enemies does make the mission harder in most cases; but the difficulty certainly isn't proportional to the number of enemies. Eg. a landed Extractor having a few extra enemies with low powered weapons does not make it harder. It just makes it more valuable.

In short, higher difficulty level makes the ground game more difficult, but it makes the economic game easier. It allows the player to expand faster and research faster; and gives the player a surplus of fancy weapons and ammo much faster than they'd otherwise get. On higher difficulty levels, ground tactics are more important, but base management is less important - because resources are more plentiful.

I'm interested in people's thoughts about this. In particular, do you agree with what I've said? And is this a good way for the game to be, or should the effects of difficulty be changed a bit? (I've got a few ideas for how it might be changed, but nothing that I'd like to advocate right now.)

[Absalom]

The battlescape is the heart of the game, the fulcum whereupon everything else happens

Superhuman (I have played it too much) is too much of an awful grind for any benefits to be appreciated

[CaptainCorkscrew]

My thoughts exactly karadoc. I am pretty sure that you will progress a lot faster on higher difficulties. I simply do not want to play three hours in a single mission and that's why I chose the second easiest one. Fewer enemies.. On the other hand, that means that I have to do more missions longer until I get the equivalent amount of gear and, more importantly, the equivalent kind of gear. I think that some enemies that might show up in regular mission on high difficulty will only show up in the most high profile missions (base defense, enemy base) on low difficulty. And those things are far less likely as well.

I think it would be hard to balance properly. Making the economy harsher by decreasing the worth of stuff by some factor would be one option. That would not affect the kind of gear one receives though. Not quite sure what could be done about that.

[Boltgun]

No pain no gain, and also more pain more gain.

Frankly in any vanilla game it also lead to more plasma/sonic, more corpses and in general more money. The higher stats of enemies, armor in particular cause the difficulty to outweigh the gains.

[stepbystep]

Difficulty in strategy games is always tricky.
A game AI cannot be a challange for a player when the two sides are matched in power. X-Com however is all about filling the gap between your and the enemy tech level, so imbalance at the start actually makes thematic sense. The end game is instead pretty much set in stone: when you get to the same level of the enemy you unlock the end scenario and win.

Following this line of reasoning I would be happier with a difficulty level that only changes starting conditions:
Easy: start with better weapons, more soldiers, better stats, more money, more structures.
Difficult: start with few soldiers, a few crappy weapons, not enough money to fully equip.

Maybe couple that with a different pace in progression of the alien races and tech level, if possible even have the AI accelerate its progression depending on how good the player is doing.

Changing number of enemy units per battle and their equipment makes almost no sense for all the reasons already mentioned. Changing players starting conditions instead would change the steepness of the first part of the difficulty curve.

[Ragshak]

I play on Superhuman. Missions like Monster Hunt and Mutant Pogrom becomes really annoying at some point. Hordes of animals with their improved stats are impossible to do without Hover armor. Even then they become just a grind with one or two Gals. Pogroms with forty+ enemies doesnt give much room for cover&tactics because enemies are everywhere and that reslults in heavy casulties on player side. Smoke granade spam is a must  but still there are enemies with high thermal vision.

Dont know if economics is easier because from time to time there are team wipes and player have to buy new Gals and train them from the beginning.

After reserhing Mutant Alliance tech player is somehow forced to react and go for that  mission. Otherwise 1k points penalty.

[karadoc]

Just to clarify, I'm not trying to say that Jack Sparrow is easier than John Silver or anything like that. I'm saying that increasing the difficulty only makes the tactical part of the game more difficult, and can in fact make other parts of the game easier. Obviously if you can't win the tactics side of the game, then you can't win the game at all - and so the difficulty on the battlescape obviously matters.

I'm also not saying that any parts of the game are too easy or too hard or anything like that. I'm only trying to say that increasing the difficulty setting can alter the balance of which _parts_ of the game are difficult.


By the way; after posting this and reading some of the replies, I took a look at the code and found something interesting.

From what I can tell, the following bit of code is what ultimately determines how many enemies there are on the map.

Code: [Select]

for (std::vector<DeploymentData>::const_iterator d = deployment->getDeploymentData()->begin(); d != deployment->getDeploymentData()->end(); ++d)
{
std::string alienName = race->getMember((*d).alienRank);

int quantity;

if (_game->getSavedGame()->getDifficulty() < DIFF_VETERAN)
quantity = (*d).lowQty + RNG::generate(0, (*d).dQty); https:// beginner/experienced
else if (_game->getSavedGame()->getDifficulty() < DIFF_SUPERHUMAN)
quantity = (*d).lowQty+(((*d).highQty-(*d).lowQty)/2) + RNG::generate(0, (*d).dQty); https:// veteran/genius
else
quantity = (*d).highQty + RNG::generate(0, (*d).dQty); https:// super (and beyond?)

quantity += RNG::generate(0, (*d).extraQty);
https:// ...

For me, the interesting thing is that the 'veteran' and 'genius' apparently spawn the same number of enemies. The numbers of enemies only increases when going from experience to veteran, and from genius to superhuman. (Unless there are some other effects elsewhere in the code that I haven't noticed.)


--

I also think it's interesting that the two people who have posted here about playing on superhuman both described it as a tedious grind rather than an exciting challenge...

[Dioxine]

It can be changed a bit by using TFTD difficulty levels, where enemy stat buff is really substantial on higher levels, so there is that insult added to the injury, and the stat buffs become more important vis-a-vis increased spawn sizes.

Also there is battlescape effect of difficulty: enemy craft fire faster, and crackdown missions are more likely to happen.

[stepbystep]

Would it be possible to set the number of a specific type of enemy in a mission?

For example the academy sentry drones are found in pairs at max difficulty but only one at a time in veteran (which I'm playing atm). This makes hover suits 100% more difficult to obtain since you have to wait for the lucky roll twice before being able to make one.

Another option could be making more items buyable at lower difficulty.
Now that I think about it, as the game revolves so much around money, a good way to set difficulty would be to adjust prices and availability of items.

Since I'm here I'll also throw this one:
Random market deals would fit piratez sooo much! "Hey gals, we came across a batch of defective grav drones while they were headed toward maintenance.  If you are interested come visit before the month ends."

[Absalom]

Would it be possible to set the number of a specific type of enemy in a mission?

For example the academy sentry drones are found in pairs at max difficulty but only one at a time in veteran (which I'm playing atm). This makes hover suits 100% more difficult to obtain since you have to wait for the lucky roll twice before being able to make one.

Another option could be making more items buyable at lower difficulty.
Now that I think about it, as the game revolves so much around money, a good way to set difficulty would be to adjust prices and availability of items.

Since I'm here I'll also throw this one:
Random market deals would fit piratez sooo much! "Hey gals, we came across a batch of defective grav drones while they were headed toward maintenance.  If you are interested come visit before the month ends."

Very special guests' also spawn in pairs at academy missions.

Really the problem is that there is too big a jump from Genius to Superhuman.  Genius is a mite too easy but superhuman is too tedious.  Also this is anecdotal but I swear Superhuman gives you different maps as well.