Author Topic: Difficulty level way off  (Read 2424 times)

Offline adam

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Difficulty level way off
« on: December 20, 2019, 07:59:26 am »
So, I played openxcom a bunch 4-5 years ago (I think), and enjoyed it. It felt a lot like the original, but with improvements.

There have obviously been improvements since then, but the difficulty level seems way off to me -- "Beginner" is *much* harder than vanilla X-COM. (Which I have also played a ton.)

No, I'm not being affected by the difficulty bug -- I always played on Beginner, and still do. That's plenty stressful enough. I don't like losing soldiers.

I'm finding the current version more frustrating than fun. Back to the original, I guess, but I wanted to call it out in case you've kind of lost track of it, what with all the grognards playing on superhuman and whatnot.

Offline Meridian

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Re: Difficulty level way off
« Reply #1 on: December 20, 2019, 10:26:24 am »
There were no significant changes in the AI or in the accuracy calculations in the last 4-5 years.

As far as I can say (and I feel quite qualified), both are 98% identical even compared to original xcom.

Unless you can bring some solid evidence/comparison, it's just your one word against many words from other players who don't see any difference.

Offline cptelerium

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Re: Difficulty level way off
« Reply #2 on: December 22, 2019, 01:33:32 am »

I'm finding the current version more frustrating than fun. Back to the original, I guess, but I wanted to call it out in case you've kind of lost track of it, what with all the grognards playing on superhuman and whatnot.

It could be that you just had a bad luck.

I started a new game on the 2nd lowest difficulty, and bam in 2 fist missions I got plasma guns , ethereals, base raid - and game over of course.

Restarted and all was ok.

Apparently there is a chance of above happening (just very small) even back in original UFO for DOS.

Offline Meridian

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Re: Difficulty level way off
« Reply #3 on: December 22, 2019, 10:06:17 am »
Apparently there is a chance of above happening (just very small) even back in original UFO for DOS.

No, there isn't, you cannot meet Ethereals in January.

There is:
- 100% chance to fight against plasma guns (aliens don't have anything else)
- 0% to meet ethereals
- variable chance for a base raid (depending on difficulty and how many UFOs you shoot down)... not shooting down any UFOs in January (basically all of them land anyway) is recommended and gives you a nice 0% chance to face a base raid

Offline cptelerium

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Re: Difficulty level way off
« Reply #4 on: December 27, 2019, 02:52:18 am »
Indeed, I was mistaken - found my previous post - https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,7539.msg118814.html#msg118814

So I got heavy plasmas and then base raid as my 2 first missions - and game over :)

OP, just start over.

And in the original UFO on DOS that I played back in the day, dying of large part of my team was very common (and still is, slows down as you get power armor but still no one is fully safe, not even counting the mind control)