One Simple Solution for Difficulty Balancing

[zilbest]

Seeing the forum and Steam discussion, I think it's just funny how people will keep complaining over anything.

 

Maybe most of you didn't realize this but balancing is the greatest challenge for any game developer. It doesn't care whether it's singleplayer, MMO, or MOBA since each person has their own taste and capabilities.

 

No matter any kind of balancing done, buff and nerf in every part of the game, it will not satisfy everyone.

 

Thus, one simple solution is MODDING TOOLS (okay, maybe not that simple). But easier and friendly access to modding will ensure everyone gets their sweetspot of balancing.

 

In Skyrim or other modding-friendly games, I think no one complaint about difficulty balancing anymore. If it's too easy, there are dozens of hardcore mods. If it's too hard, jusy install mods to make it easier.

 

Right now, modding access is really tedious or complicated. For example, in version 1.02, you have to edit every single enemy to change their HP. Editing level scaling is also tedious.

 

Another sample, making new weapons or armor is also stupidly tedious since you have to make new entries if you want the stat doesn't influence vanilla items.

 

You have to make new arbitrary ID for ItemMods, StatusEffect, Attack, etc.

 

If you want a weapon, for example, to have a 30% Instant Recovery Stat, you have to make 2 status effects ID: One with StatusEffectApplyOnEvent (or something like that) and the StatusEffect itself.

 

The arbitary ID thing is, for me, also making it really confusing and tedious. Why can't we just put the DebugName to call so it's easier to track?

 

I played a lot of modding in many games like, D:OS2, Torchlight 2, Skyrim, etc and most of them are so much straightforward.

 

I'm not sure if it's because of Unity engine or not since I'm not a programmer.

 

But still, an official modding tool so that it is so much faster and simpler is definitely a one stop solution for a neverending difficulty balancing problem.

[NCR75]

I completely agree.  Mod friendly games are the best games.  For difficulty balancing and so, so much more.

[acbatchelor]

https://www.fig.co/campaigns/deadfire/updates/692

 

In their latest update on Fig, they mentioned that they are working on some tools for modding. I'm not sure how good its going to be, but it is something.

[zilbest]

Yes, I read that too... The latest beta patch also makes it easier to modify difficulty setting.

 

But I still want to emphasize the importance of modding... :3

[PizzaSHARK]

Firaxis figured this one out with XCOM 2.  The end result is that they made a ****ing stellar tool in ModBuddy, give players unrestricted access to assets (ModBuddy alone is like 50GB because of all the sounds, textures, models, etc it includes), and the files themselves are all written in "regular English" - there are basically tutorial files included with comments that explain what different strings and values mean, so you can mod the game even without ModBuddy (useful if you don't want a glorified Notepad++ hoovering up 50GB of space on your drive when you're just going to be editing some text files.)

 

This meant that Firaxis could create the game they wanted to play, and if players felt it was too easy or too hard or lacking something - they can do it themselves.  Darkest Dungeon is another game, this time by an indie dev, that makes modding fairly easy and therefore puts a lot of control in the hands of the players.

 

Especially given how much modding improved BG2, I think that making a strong modding tool and making the game accessible to modders should be Priority 1 for long-term Deadfire plans.

[zilbest]

Firaxis figured this one out with XCOM 2. The end result is that they made a ****ing stellar tool in ModBuddy, give players unrestricted access to assets (ModBuddy alone is like 50GB because of all the sounds, textures, models, etc it includes), and the files themselves are all written in "regular English" - there are basically tutorial files included with comments that explain what different strings and values mean, so you can mod the game even without ModBuddy (useful if you don't want a glorified Notepad++ hoovering up 50GB of space on your drive when you're just going to be editing some text files.)

 

This meant that Firaxis could create the game they wanted to play, and if players felt it was too easy or too hard or lacking something - they can do it themselves. Darkest Dungeon is another game, this time by an indie dev, that makes modding fairly easy and therefore puts a lot of control in the hands of the players.

 

Especially given how much modding improved BG2, I think that making a strong modding tool and making the game accessible to modders should be Priority 1 for long-term Deadfire plans.

Yeah, I totally forgot bout XCOM2... Thanks for reminding.. it is indeed easy and straightforward to mod.

 

We even have dozens of appearance mods there for a turn-based tactical RPG.

 

Furthermore, as you said, modding tools and easy access could also make the game live longer. D:OS2 is also short for a cRPG but it's quite fun still to mess around with the Game Master Mode.

 

And don't get me started for Skyrim which becomes the golden egg of Bethesda. I bet they plan to release Skyrim again at least for the next 2 console generations