1 réponse à ce sujet

[The Sapien]

Anybody else been spending much time on modding combat?

I've been tweaking the stats on everything from enemy shields recharging, to the number of targets ticketed, to individual weapons damage, etc. down the line, and I've noticed something.

Finding the right balance is hard work, as Garrus might say. I can totally see why Bioware took the brute linear approach by putting everything on a dial. Simply crank up enemy stats and dial down you and your henchmen. That's the easy way. But this has a problem, as we all know, and that's why it's called insanity. The problem is easiest to see if you just look at the combat between henchmen and enemies, ignoring Shep for a moment. On harder settings, a single mech can take out Miranda. Your bad-ass hit team just turned into costumed wannabes with bb-guns who can't fight without Shep holding their hands. Fortunately, the Normandy's itself isn't also downgraded to just a puddle jumper.

My alternative route to upping the difficulty feels more like the ME universe I imagine. It's not perfect, nor is it for everyone; just like Miranda. But, neither is insanity, yo.

What I did...

First, (working with insanity level as base for mod) I set all modifiers and multipliers for enemies, henchmen, and player to the same amounts. This goes for individual weapons damage as well as level type changes for things like shields, health, aim, etc. I also allow enemy shields to recharge. (okay, i do give enemies a shield bonus, too, maybe)

After this leveling of the playing field, I turn up the heat, though evenly across the board. All weapons damage is increased by a factor of about 4 for heavy weapons and 5 for everything else, including enemy exclusive weapons (which can be done via ai damage per weapon). Powers for both enemies and squad recharge in 1/5 the normal time, too.

In summary, Bioware's approach is about changing the balance of power, making Shep and henchmen weaker while making enemies stronger. It's the David and Goliath method. My approach attempts to balance power while instead increasing everyone's ability to punish mistakes and bad moves by both players and NPC's. My method of increasing weapons damage and decreasing power cooldowns does just that. Admittedly, after doing this, I realized my approach was also linear, it would just form an X if plotted on the same graph with Bioware's method.

The results? Things happen fast. Fights are decided pretty quickly, or rather, they can turn very quickly.

At times, some parts of some levels suddenly feel too easy, but then I realize, oh, that part should've been that easy in the first place since it was Shep, Jack, and Samara vs two part-time mercs. Other times, I'm dead before I saw it coming because, sure they were only frontline mercs and we even outnumbered them 3 to 2, but I got careless and both focused fire on me at once. It was awesome to me because it was realistic. I was between cover, full health and shields, bam, bam, dead, at the hands of two nobodies who just became famous because I got lazy for a second.

Those who play insanity may be wondering, big deal. I've died that suddeny before. But imagine playing where you, your henchmen, and your enemies all die that quickly by the same rules. This way, a mistake can still kill you, but you also get to punish others for their mistakes in equal measure. For me, this makes all the difference. So playing this as an alternative to insanity retains the skirting death feeling, but without making you wonder why everyone else has more powerful guns and armor.

I can't be the only who has really gotten into tweaking combat and loves the results, am I?

Does anyone know what changes are made to combat when selecting difficulty levels that are NOT in the editable ini file?

[The Sapien]

No bites?



What if I turned the heat up by saying,



Insanity, in this case, is not genius. If you want to play the genius level, then you'll have to mod it yourself. And, no, that does mean going the lame, uber-insanity route.