Please, please, please make this game difficult in hard mode

[kreese12]

I've played, and play, a lot of games. Many of them now a days seem far too easy.

 

I really hope that combat in this game is tough. Primarily, I hope the enemy AI is decent. If it is just a bunch of dudes with guns shooting at you in open spaces, this game is going to be wrecked. I want the enemies to take cover; throwing grenades and stuff would be great.

 

If you can just turbo through the game with an assault rifle, and kill like 100 guys by going through the 'guns-blazing' direct route, this game will not be fun.

 

Please, please, please Obsidian make the hard mode really hard -- and please don't require that mode to be unlocked with a play through of the game on normal difficulty. I don't have a lot of time these days so I never want to play a game twice -- I should just be able to play it on the hardest setting off the bat if I want.

 

I would be thrilled if the enemy actually kicked my ass in the game. That way I'd have to get crafty to figure out to get the job done...and that's where the fun comes in. If there is no chance of me dying then the game immediately becomes just a waste of time for me.

 

I guess this was more like a blog post than a forum-type question...so I'll just end this by saying: What do you guys think? From the videos it looks like you are totally capable of just cappin' your way through legions of bad guys with a pistol without much worry. Which is really bad.

Edited June 16, 2009 by kreese12

[Pidesco]

The videos showed a maxed out/invincible Thorton running around for demoing purposes.

[Oblarg]

Seconded. The main problem with the demo footage was that it looked far too easy. I want to have to use cover and be smart about fighting to win.

[Humodour]

Thirded. Make normal as pissy as you want, but give me a challenge on hard.

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

And not just having enemies able to stand there while I empty a whole clip into their heads.

[Llyranor]

Is this a Mass Effect bashing thread or what?

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

Mass Effect and Fallout.

[kreese12]

Mass Effect was an awesome, A+ game but ya, I did think it was too easy.

 

Fortunately there were cheat codes that allowed you to unlock the achievement necessary to unlock the harder difficulty levels. Unfortunately for me however I didn't learn that until after my first play through, and by then I wasn't really up for playing the game again.

 

Fallout , of course --being the one of the best all-time PC RPGS games -- had a really good difficulty level, I'd say. The battles were all fair ('cept for maybe the final end battle), where the enemies had skills and equipment relative to yours. Sure the game was easy once you picked up the later weapons or made a combat specific character, but the the player had just as equal chance to make the game very difficult by say, playing as a diplomat character, or playing as a solely melee character, or the any other number of character permutations available in that fantastic and extraordinary RPG.

Edited June 17, 2009 by kreese12

[Llyranor]

He was talking about FO3.

[Morgoth]

More importantly, the actual skill increase should be perceptible. Nothing's worse than spending in your skill points and see only a neglectable difference.

But the obviously worst case of all would be if the game is so easy/unchallenging that upgrading your skills becomes obsolete. That's how the latest Bioware games often feel. No matter where you spend or how much I screw up my build, I always get through the game easily. Now we don't want that Obsidian! Just keep it tough when I want to play Bauer, punishment is welcome IF I learn from it and want to try again, as opposed to just get frustrated.

[kreese12]

He was talking about FO3.

 

Fallout 3? Oh man. That was another game that had serious difficulty issues. That game was so way too incredibly easy. It was retarded. Even if you made a gimp character, you could beat the entire security force of the Vault at the start of the game with your bare fists. It was pretty ridiculous.

 

You could get a rocket launcher or another heavy weapon in under an hour of playing... battles were way too easy. Honestly I don't even think they did the formulas correctly for the hit/accuracy shots in VATS.

 

Pretty much any battle you went to all you have to do is hit space bar and shoot the guy in the head and then he explodes. Whew. What a fun game. (/real heavy sarcasm.) There was hardly any challenge to be found in that game anywhere.

 

At least they did go with the cope-out level scaling though, like Bethesda used in Oblivion.

[Humodour]

You could get a rocket launcher or another heavy weapon in under an hour of playing...

 

So? You could do that in Fallout 1 and 2, as well. And Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 (super items).

 

But the game was still hard. Having those weapons didn't make you godlike. So it sounds like a balance issue in FO3 (I haven't played it yet).

[Oner]

The hunting rifle was enough to make you godlike.

[kreese12]

You could get a rocket launcher or another heavy weapon in under an hour of playing...

 

So? You could do that in Fallout 1 and 2, as well. And Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 (super items).

 

But the game was still hard. Having those weapons didn't make you godlike. So it sounds like a balance issue in FO3 (I haven't played it yet).

 

You could get a heavy weapon in Fallout 1 in under an hour but that wasn't exactly straight-forward. First off you'd have to have a specialty in heavy weapons, otherwise you wouldn't be able to use it effectively (in Fallout 3 weapon skills hardly have much affect.. you'll be able to hit something even with a really low heavy weapons skill.) Second, you had to know where to go. Third, defeating someone with heavy weapons within the first few levels of your character was pretty tricky -- you really had to know what you were doing. Fallout 3, for almost any monster, you just run up to it, hit space, blow it's head off. I can't be the only guy who found it lame. I could go on on; if you haven't played FO3 please just trust me when I say it isn't as well thought out and the game's difficulty isn't that high.

 

I really wasn't that big into Fallout 3 , I might as well say now. I'd say the game had really fairly weak RPG elements, and the FPS elements were so-so. I rather play a better RPG, or a straight FPS, than Fallout 3. I played the game about 10-12 hours and never felt compelled to finish it.

[alanschu]

More importantly, the actual skill increase should be perceptible. Nothing's worse than spending in your skill points and see only a neglectable difference.

But the obviously worst case of all would be if the game is so easy/unchallenging that upgrading your skills becomes obsolete. That's how the latest Bioware games often feel. No matter where you spend or how much I screw up my build, I always get through the game easily. Now we don't want that Obsidian! Just keep it tough when I want to play Bauer, punishment is welcome IF I learn from it and want to try again, as opposed to just get frustrated.

 

 

That's just it though, under no circumstances IMO should it be possible to "screw up" a build of a character.

[Cl_Flushentityhero]

While we're placing demands err making requests, I'd like a "realistic mode" a la Deus Ex where everything does lots of damage. High risk, high reward ftw.

[Mirren]

watching a walkthrough from last E3 Thorton's assault rifle and stats were so overpowered that at first i thought he was using a sniper rifle and getting headshots. if Obsidian want to provide a challenge to players they should try to replicate the AI from the Fear games, they managed to challenge using intelligence and squad tactics rather then just giving them a billion hitpoints, one thing i really liked from those games that i'd like to see in AP was the death gunfire and how sometimes an opponent would fire a burst of gunfire even once you had killed them as they were falling to the ground

[kreese12]

Totally. Ya FEAR was one of the rare games that actually had pretty good AI. It is surprisingly rare.

 

It is sort of interesting to imagine what games would be like in an alternate Earth dimension where they hired as many people to work on a game's AI as they do graphic artists. Can you image how crazy that would be? Enemies making battle plans against and you behaving intelligently...that would be so cool.

 

But ya back to the difficulty thing, if a dude jumps out at me from behind a box and unloads a shotgun on me from three feet away, I do NOT want to survive it.

Edited June 23, 2009 by kreese12

[Hell Kitty]

Does having more people work on AI make for better AI?

[kreese12]

Ya, I assume it would.

 

Obiviously if you had 8 guys it would be more effective than 1. If you had 8 you could get one guy just to work on path finding, one guy to work on grenade throwing and setting traps, one guy working on AI team strategy, one guy working on stealth player detection AI, one guy working on etc etc etc, instead of, uh, one guy working on AI.

Edited June 24, 2009 by kreese12

[Oner]

I once read an article that explains why more programmers don't make the programming faster, but can't really remember it. Something along the lines of them having to harmonize what they're doing.

 

Then again, we're on a dev forum, so maybe they have time to clarify.

[Mirren]

Totally. Ya FEAR was one of the rare games that actually had pretty good AI. It is surprisingly rare.

 

It is sort of interesting to imagine what games would be like in an alternate Earth dimension where they hired as many people to work on a game's AI as they do graphic artists. Can you image how crazy that would be? Enemies making battle plans against and you behaving intelligently...that would be so cool.

 

But ya back to the difficulty thing, if a dude jumps out at me from behind a box and unloads a shotgun on me from three feet away, I do NOT want to survive it.

 

imagine if there was a multiplayer mode in AP where instead of playing as Thorton or even a nameless superspy you were playing as a generic soldier but the twist being you were playing as a generic soldier in someone's single player game, playing as a cudgel going up against a rapier, like it was originally meant to be with Left 4 Dead and is meant to be with the forthcoming(?) The Crossing, in The Crossing single player you're playing as a Knights Templar super soldier but people playing multiplayer commandeer Matrix style one of the cannon fodder SWAT team members in your single player experience with the sole intention of killing you, 1UP preview of The Crossing by the infamous Shawn Elliott> http://gamevideos.1up.com/video/id/8605 . in the short term i'll be happy if developers just start giving NPCs access to all the things that the main character has, kinda tainted Oblivion for me that so many of the NPCs were so generic and that you so rarely encountered anyone that could seriously challenge you

[kreese12]

Not sure of all you said there but I understood the last bit about Oblivion!

 

Oblivion had enemies that scaled automatically to your level. Which is a really lame way of doing things, if you ask me. It would have completely wrecked the game for me if it wasn't for mods that fixed it.

[Mirren]

Not sure of all you said there but I understood the last bit about Oblivion!

 

Oblivion had enemies that scaled automatically to your level. Which is a really lame way of doing things, if you ask me. It would have completely wrecked the game for me if it wasn't for mods that fixed it.

 

essentialy the idea behind The Crossing is to fuse single player and multiplayer, to make it that instead of two separate modes that you'll instead have a multiplayer mode where you're playing as what would normally be a NPC in someone's single player experience, in short more ambitious then your average multiplayer game but more contained than a MMO

[Cl_Flushentityhero]

I think we'll have to stop the presses if I'm ever genuinely impressed by a game's AI.