71 réponses à ce sujet

[Bozorgmehr]

Barhador wrote...

I'm just hoping for customizable difficulty for ME3. I don't like the fact that you need to empty clip after clip on the same enemy on Insanity. I'd rather have high damage vs. enemies, but you can die just as easily if you don't take care.

If you're talking about ME1 you are right - Insanity was tedious (not difficult). In ME2 enemies die quickly on Insanity (SR and SG can still OSOK most enemies); you can, in fact, play Insanity at roughly the same speed as on Casual if you know what you're doing.

iOnlySignIn wrote...

Best example is perhaps Civilization IV: highest difficulty level (Deity) is almost impossible to beat without luck, but the second highest level (Immortal) is just as fun and much more doable.

Yeah, I loved Civ4's Deity level. It's insanely hard, almost impossible, but still doable. I would love Deity difficulty in ME3.

Modifié par Bozorgmehr, 11 avril 2011 - 07:43 .

[Ahglock]

Stardusk78 wrote...

Kronner wrote...

Stardusk78 wrote...

Kronner wrote...

This is such a weird question. Of course there is a point. Different players, different tastes.

That's like asking if there is any point in having neutral choices..why not just have Paragon and Renegade, right? ...

You only play on Insanity though...

Well yeah, but I understand why there are different difficulty settings.

Sure I understand...but imagine playing on Normal...as an Adept for example....probably so OP it's beyond comprehension!

No more so than other classes.  Think of how easy it is to run and gun as a soldier using AR on insanity.  Now make it so all enemies die much quicker, get nailed by ammo cc almost instantly since they don't have defenses, and their accuracy drops well below 100%.  It is just as much of a slaughter as what an adept would do assuming equal skilled players.  
      The thing is not everyone is equally as good at games, there are plenty of people who just are not good enough to play insanity within their comfort zone.  Yet at the same time the same person might find normal a bit too easy.  

[AK404]

Stardusk78 wrote...

I think if you like the story and don't like combat and/or shooters, Casual is fine but why have anything inbetween Insanity and Casual. Either or, right? Insanity makes the game rewarding...

Goldilocks Syndrome: too cold, too hot, just right.

For example, my preferred difficulty level is Hardcore: just hard enough to be challenging, but not so hard that I get frustrated.  Sure, it's just one level below Insanity, but there seems to be a huge drop-off point in difficulty between the two.

[AK404]

Bozorgmehr wrote...

Yeah, I loved Civ4's Deity level. It's insanely hard, almost impossible, but still doable. I would love Deity difficulty in ME3.

I'd love to see something along those lines as well, but what I don't want to see is an achievement that demands you beat the game on Deity.  Something like the LOTSB, where beating the game/expansion on Hardcore/Insanity would be nice, though.

[PrinceLionheart]

I tend to play on insanity, but I'll admit I drop the difficulty down on some parts of the game like the final boss. There's a difference between something being a challenge and something being tedious. Human reaper was just tedious.

[Golden Owl]

I'm far from a veteran gamer and have not gamed for long, just happen to have a love affair for the ME series. For myself, I find Hardcore tedious to get through, I play to relax and immerse myself in the game, I have played a Hardcore run, but didn't enjoy it...Most of the game on Veteran, though Veteran and Hardcore I find too easy for about 6-7 certain missions, they are a must on Insanity for me...or they just leave me flat and disappointed....I like having all the levels available and the ability to change them through out the game.

Modifié par Golden Owl, 12 avril 2011 - 12:17 .

[Iodine]

With enough playthroughs at any difficulty level, you get accustomed to everything about that difficulty. Unfortunately, most people don't commit to becoming acclimatized to Insanity. This may be a bit less true on the 360/PS3 versions due to controller limitations, but with keyboard+mouse your reaction time will improve, stripping defenses just becomes one more quick shortcut/keypress added on before killing an enemy (or group of enemies once your timing/prediction with AoE skills improves), your situational awareness (nearby cover, enemy positions, etc.) improves, and you learn to instinctively recognize how long you can be exposed, taking fire from x enemies, how many shots you can take before dying from various guns, etc.

That being said, I still think there needs to be a few intermediate difficulty levels, to both reduce the steepness of the learning curve and prevent casual/"average" players from getting bored of the cakewalk that is Casual. Realistically, Insanity isn't all that difficult once you get used to it, but as anyone who has made custom Insanity+ difficulty levels knows, Insanity's settings are about at their uppermost limit of difficulty without becoming overly tedious. Trying to just boost the basic SFXDifficultyLevel_5 settings makes the game more like ME1's Insanity, where it isn't actually harder, just incredibly tedious to spend 30 seconds whittling down the health/protections of each individual enemy. Basically, anyone CAN master any difficulty level, but not everyone wants to devote the time "practicing" when it is just a bit too frustrating to be fun, and the intermediate difficulty levels end up far more appealing to them. Another case of "it's a single player game, let people play however they want."

[termokanden]

Iodine wrote...

With enough playthroughs at any difficulty level, you get accustomed to everything about that difficulty. Unfortunately, most people don't commit to becoming acclimatized to Insanity. This may be a bit less true on the 360/PS3 versions due to controller limitations, but with keyboard+mouse your reaction time will improve, stripping defenses just becomes one more quick shortcut/keypress added on before killing an enemy (or group of enemies once your timing/prediction with AoE skills improves), your situational awareness (nearby cover, enemy positions, etc.) improves, and you learn to instinctively recognize how long you can be exposed, taking fire from x enemies, how many shots you can take before dying from various guns, etc.

I consider it slightly more difficult on consoles, but the difference is so small it's barely worth mentioning. Mostly it's just convenient to have more keybindings.

[Bozorgmehr]

Saphra Deden wrote...

If I could make my own custom difficulty (on 360) I'd set it up so that all the merc enemies had at least initial shields and a little armor.

That's how it should work! Every game has a default difficulty setting, de-/increasing difficulty always means enemies get more HP (or defenses), more enemies, enemies inflict more damage, have better accuracy, more aggressive etc etc. Why not give players the option to toggle these features on and off to play at their own customized difficulty level. (Basically a similar system like the Graphic Options where you can chose between presets, but also have the option to enable/disable effects manually).

This shouldn't be hard to implement imo. Normal is, well, normal, default preset, whatever. Insanity is everything toggled on (max challenge). Player can tweak the settings anyway they want to either gradually increase the challenge or simply by disabling certain features they don't like (I don't like friendly fire in DA2 much and would like to play on NM without FF active - for example).

[Kronner]

Personally, I really dislike difficulty settings, that allow you to turn on or off various stuff, it simply makes any attempts at achieving some kind of balance impossible. Especially in shooter like Mass Effect. There is no reason to add "disable shields" toggle for Insanity difficulty..if you want that (just an example), play on Veteran. If that toggle was present, Insanity could not be balanced at all. Casual players will not have any interest in hard difficulties anyway, and players who like to find out what works and what is effective on Insanity will have the goalposts set. No need to move the goalposts..please.

Modifié par Kronner, 12 avril 2011 - 05:15 .

[Bozorgmehr]

Kronner wrote...

Personally, I really dislike difficulty settings, that allow you to turn on or off various stuff, it simply makes any attempts at achieving some kind of balance impossible. Especially in shooter like Mass Effect. There is no reason to add "disable shields" toggle for Insanity difficulty..if you want that (just an example), play on Veteran. If that toggle was present, Insanity could not be balanced at all. Casual players will not have any interest in hard difficulties anyway, and players who like to find out what works and what is effective on Insanity will have the goalposts set. No need to move the goalposts..please.

It's basically the same thing with graphics; you can use the 'ultra' preset to toggle all effects, or 'medium' for a less demanding preset, but you can also manually adjust settings. I believe game balance, when it comes to difficulty, works exactly like it is with graphics. They don't design multiple games for every graphic preset, and they don't re-balance gameplay for the harder difficulty settings - effects are added to increase difficulty and improve the looks.

It's single player game after all, I don't care how anyone else plays their games.

[Sparrow44]

Custom settings for difficulties in games are fine if they affect things like "shields on or off". Messing around with the AI renders difficulties a little pointless.

Insanity difficulty shouldn't be judged by the defenses slapped on, its the enemies themselves that should challenge you.

[Kronner]

Bozorgmehr wrote...

...

It's single player game after all, I don't care how anyone else plays their games.

Yeah, me neither.
That's why I prefer predefined difficulty levels, so I can simply choose what is the most fun and just play that mode.

If users can define their own modes, it actually makes the experience worse for me, because the game modes will not have a given set of rules, which inevitably leads to a great imbalance. Just my opinion anyway.

To be honest I doubt BioWare will add anything beyond their standard ME difficulty modes..at least I hope so.

[chester013]

Stardusk78 wrote...

I think if you like the story and don't like combat and/or shooters, Casual is fine but why have anything inbetween Insanity and Casual. Either or, right? Insanity makes the game rewarding...

Your saying either have the far too easy setting or the setting some find too hard, I think thats the point I teased out of this nonsense. Didn't think this through too well did we? Insanity is "rewarding" if you consider those 50 gamer points rewarding, other than that who the hell cares and when has gaming been rewarding beyond entertaining you unless you play pro.

I play on Hardcore usually, sometimes I drop it down if I just want to chill and shoot some stuff in the face or I'm out of practice. I find insanity too much hassle to be having frun and pretty stupid in the amount of fire I have to lay down to drop someone, so no it's not rewarding it's just annoying.

[amcnow]

Setting the cruise control to enjoy the story is lame.  You can do that on any difficulty.  Insanity or GTFO!

Modifié par amcnow, 12 avril 2011 - 06:18 .

[termokanden]

amcnow wrote...

Setting the cruise control to enjoy the story is lame.  You can do that on any difficulty.

You should play on insanity if you think it's fun. After all, it's not like internet tough guys will show up at your door to point fingers. And if they did, I KNOW I'd laugh

[Stardusk78]

chester013 wrote...

Stardusk78 wrote...

I think if you like the story and don't like combat and/or shooters, Casual is fine but why have anything inbetween Insanity and Casual. Either or, right? Insanity makes the game rewarding...

Your saying either have the far too easy setting or the setting some find too hard, I think thats the point I teased out of this nonsense. Didn't think this through too well did we? Insanity is "rewarding" if you consider those 50 gamer points rewarding, other than that who the hell cares and when has gaming been rewarding beyond entertaining you unless you play pro.

I play on Hardcore usually, sometimes I drop it down if I just want to chill and shoot some stuff in the face or I'm out of practice. I find insanity too much hassle to be having frun and pretty stupid in the amount of fire I have to lay down to drop someone, so no it's not rewarding it's just annoying.

You are entitled to your opinion but many of us find Insanity rewarding, not annoying. Gaming is also about challenge not just entertainment.

[termokanden]

Insanity in ME is a funny concept. I played through on normal first and thought that worked fine. Then I switched to insanity for the achievements and still did fine. But since then I haven't really been able to enjoy anything less than insanity. I started up several normal playthroughs and never got anywhere with them. Insanity I can still enjoy though.

But still we should remember that some of us are very used to shooters (I have personally invested countless hours into those since well... Wolf3d and lately Gears and CoD). I can imagine that someone who doesn't play shooters that much in general would want to play at a different level. That's why it's important to have different settings between casual and insanity.

[Ahglock]

Saphra Deden wrote...

Bozorgmehr wrote...

Shepard and his/her squadies have shields - why should enemies not have them? That doesn't make sense.

If I could make my own custom difficulty (on 360) I'd set it up so that all the merc enemies had at least initial shields and a little armor.

This is going OT.  But despite my love of rock, paper, scissors I wish the system was not in the game.  Armor should not be abalative with 100% damage absorbtion until it is goine.  It should take off a certain ammount of damage per hit after your shields are down.  It should have no effect on biotics, tech powers, but virtualy every combatant should have a barrier or a shield up.(which would stop them)  Let people mod their armor with X number of slots.  You can increase the damage absorbtion(heavier plates maybe), increased power source for iotic amps or omnitools, increased strength, increased mobility(with rocket boots maybe jump packs as a slot).  Adepts might fill all slots with biotic boosters, or maybe they are satifsfied with their current biotic power and make themselves a tank, soldiers might go for armor and movement boosts.

I just don't think the rock, paper, scissors part really adds anything.  It isn't a deep enough tactical element for it to be worth keeping.  All you need to know hey I'm going against blood pack I should bring fire since they tote armor, and geez the blue suns have shields I better make sure one of my people has overload etc.  Keep protection that you need to deal with first sure, that is what shields are for.  But RPS does not add anything IMO.   

[termokanden]

I like how it makes weapon choice more important. ALL classes already have something against all defense types, and I think it's a mistake to think you must have Warp or Overload to survive. But you definitely benefit from using weapons of the right type.

It's not really RPS. But one of those letters is just going to work better, and you always have them all at your disposal. Maybe not as a power, but at least as a weapon.

[AK404]

Bozorgmehr wrote...

It's basically the same thing with graphics; you can use the 'ultra' preset to toggle all effects, or 'medium' for a less demanding preset, but you can also manually adjust settings. I believe game balance, when it comes to difficulty, works exactly like it is with graphics. They don't design multiple games for every graphic preset, and they don't re-balance gameplay for the harder difficulty settings - effects are added to increase difficulty and improve the looks.

However, your example is a purely cosmetic issue (or in the case of PCs, a performance tweak) that rests solely on hardware.  Outside of slowing down game performance, these tweaks do not affect player performance in any way.  Difficulty level has everything to do with player performance and nothing to do with hardware or software performance.

In other words, tweaking graphics and sound levels: testing the computer's hardware and software capabilities.  Tweaking difficulty: testing the player's hardware and software capabilities.

When it comes to difficulty levels, it's a "take it or leave it" proposition: you either deal with it, or you tone it down.  My understanding is that everyone finds certain aspects of the game challenging in combat: enemy aggressiveness, damage, shields, pacing.  Everyone finds something in the game to be challenging, and other parts simply annoying.  Additionally, if you can tone down one thing, you might as well tone down everything, and where's the fun in that?

If we're just talking about Insanity here, then you're signing up for everything the game designers can throw at you while still being fair: high damage, double-to-triple layer defenses, highly aggressive enemies, faster paced combat, etc.  If you can tweak something like defense barriers, the game is already easier, especially for people who have a hard time dealing with the aggressiveness of enemies, simply because enemies now die faster.  Even if you gave them larger life bars (which would make shredder ammo actually useful for once?), they'd still die faster.

Granted, Insanity still kicks my butt, and I can do at most one mission a night because I do it the first time just squeaking by, then keep on restarting that one mission until I get it right, but that's the reward: handling everything the designers can throw at me and finding a way to get past it.