Difficulty options in hard games
Youâre looking too deep into my lethal mode example. Point was enemies 1-2 hit kill you but you do the same to them plus timing is tighter, enemies more aggressive you get rewarded for being good at the game. You find it easy because maybe you have reached the peak and are good at the game which means you are rewarded for that. Only thing youâre rewarded for simple bullet sponge bosses is a realisation that you wasted so much time.
Bosses and enemies with stupid high health and high damage output are an absolute slog and show incompetent Devs not knowing how to make an actually good challenge and they take 0 skill to beat because all you have to do is learn the pattern, thatâs it. Way less challenging than being forced to constantly adapt your playstyle against a smart AI boss. Pretty sure there was a Mr. Freeze boss fight in an Arkham game (city?) That Iâve heard about that constantly changes how he attacks you because he adapts to your playstyle. Now thatâs how you do a boss fight. You make an AI that constantly adapts and isnât dumb, you make timing harder etc all this makes it challenging and is a lot more rewarding and satisfying. Biggest recent offender I can think of for lame bullet sponge boss was Mother Miranda on Village of Shadows difficulty from RE8. She was an absolute slog to beat. Stupidly high health and it made it so god damn boring. After learning her patterns she was easy as piss apart from draining 99% of my fucking ammo including ammo from some of the strongest fucking weapons in the game, all gone. I didnât feel rewarded for beating her as I wouldâve someone like Mr. Freeze if he is like Iâve heard (not played the game in years so maybe Iâm wrong about Mr. Freeze).
To each their own I guess, I just find bosses and enemies with stupidly high health bars and damage output to be lazy and boring. Give me a real challenge thatâll test me and force me to constantly change my playstyle.
This is why I like pvp since players can adapt to your playstyle which means you need to adapt aswell
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Yeah that is one of the strong points of PvP. Just wish it wasnât so fucking broken most of the time. Oh well, best continue finding that needle in the haystack for a perfect PvP game. Came close with Chivalry 2 to be fair. Not played it in a while though but Iâm expecting some spinning ballerina bullshit when I come back though.
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What would perfect pvp even look like, the closest Iâve seen to well balanced and functional pvp were the cod games but even they had alot of flaws
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Welp, it is hard to imagine something thatâs almost impossible.
But I would say a perfect PvP needs good netcode, perfect balancing and good matchmaking that doesnât put noobs against no lifers. But this stuff rarely happens all at once. Most of the time they crack one but not the other 2. Oh well a man can dream.
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Yeah sure, adapting enemies are cool.
But its the same as I told esh in a discussion we had not too long ago.
I like a bunch of different enemies and fights.
You say bosses with high health are boring, well no.
Its nowhere near as bad as youâre making it out to be.
You dont like long fights.
Thatâs the root of the problem.
Also, resident evil 7 and 8 just looked like shit.
Once it broke away from what 4 established it became lame.
The remake of 2 looked pretty good tho, just not my style.
Like I said tho, I just found it funny you thought lethal was a good example of high difficulty.
I love stealth games, and I love easily kling unaware enemies.
But lethal mode made SO many of the games mechanics pointless.
Like there was no point in leveling up your sword.
Also the challange from the enemies died down by a LOT, because now theyâre so easy to kill it stopped being a challenge.
A good fight isnt short.
Sorry man, you donât like long fights, but that doesnt inherently make them boring or bad.
Incompetent Devs would be most mmo devs.
Instead of creating an actual challenging boss fight that you can beat with actual Combat, you get stupid shit like one player has to stand in this spot, the other player goes and runs a puzzle while the others hold a spot.
All these fucking stupid ass gimmicks because they cant design a good fight.
My main example being destiny.
Vault of glass was an actual good raid.
Still Had to deal with gimmicks, but was actually fun.
A headache With noobs, but fun with a good team.
However, crota?
Kings fall?
The last one which I cant remember it cause it was that lame?
Those absolutely sucked.
Of course it depends on the game too.
DC universe Is the only mmo Iâve played that it actually Feels good to work together doing all those gimmicks.
But raids in general were you have to do a buncha gimmicks, those are the real pain the ass.
Cause it doesnât matter if youâre good at combat.
You gotta do other dumb shit.
What Iâm trying to say with lethal mode is thatâs the approach Devs should have when it comes to adjusting difficulty. Stuff like enemy placement, enemy intelligence, how many enemies etc is better than the difficulty just adjusting health and damage which is what so many devs do and itâs just lazy.
My problem with bullet sponge bosses isnât just the length they take, but also how almost all of them break down to the same way of beating them, learn pattern, dodge, attack, dodge, attack, dodge, attack. Itâs no where near as fun as being forced to swap between playstyles on the fly which imo is actually a lot more challenging because of the unpredictable nature of it. I will take the unpredictable nature of a Mr. Freeze boss fight that keeps you on your toes over a cop out boss that just has high health and damage out put. Shit is lame af.
Hereâs the way I look at it. Bullet sponge bosses are about as interesting as P:HG AI. Others like Mr. Freeze are as interesting as Alien Isolationâs AI (which is another perfect example of how difficultly should be).
Would you really rather go against a beefier version of P:HG AI or Alien Isolationâs AI? I know what Iâd rather play against.
Ya I feel you missed the part where I said I like both.
Problem is, for pve, you can only program so many moves, because of the limits on technology.
Also fighting game a.i. from old games kind of does that.
You literally have to psych the CPU out cause it reacts to your inputs right away lol.
Theres ways to exploit it, but it definitely is something that would be apart of what youâre talking about.
I would say what youâre talking About is just pvp, however, most ppl all do the same shit in games, mostly not their fault.
After all most games are developed with A few moves and mechanics.
So it becomes the same thing.
But I know theres quite a good number of ppl who feel like you do.
I just dont wanna lose long fights because ppl like you dont enjoy them.
Iâm tired of things I like in games being removed because of other people.
Iâve Lost enough throughout The years.
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Yeah PvP does the whole unpredictable nature thing better but most of the time PvP is so fucking broken that it doesnât matter anyway.
For me I just feel like giving them more health and high damage is a cheap cop out. I donât necessarily have a problem with long fights if theyâre done well but the problem is way too often are they long simply because of how much health the boss has. I donât mind boss fights where the boss transforms into a different phase and uses new attacks albeit a bit clichĂ©, it is at least more engaging for a long fight and can be fun. As long as it makes you play differently anyway. So I guess my problem isnât really the fight being long more so how they make it long.
Iâm fine with bosses having high health just not to the point where itâs Mother Miranda level.
I just wanna see more creative enemies like Mr. Freeze, Xeno etc. Because when you break it down most bullet sponge enemies/boss play out the same and itâs just boring and becomes too easy once youâve cracked the pattern imo.
I donât think limited tech is much of a problem anymore, weâve gotten some incredible AI in games before so to me it just feels like either incompetence or laziness when it comes to creative enemies. Like if we could get the Xeno AI in 2014 god knows what we could get now if devs were still innovative.
But these days it doesnât seem like games are made with passion anymore. Theyâre just slop pumped out with brands attached to them and everyone is eating them up. But thatâs a topic for another day.
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Oh no, the topic is here for today.
Lmao jk. But I do have a question.
I feel like the a.i. in alien isolation was good because it was because it was a horror game.
Do you think that could work in another genre?
What I mean by limited technology is, take predator HG for example.
Given that the game has nothing you can interact with, even with a smart a.i., I really donât see them being able to do anything too creative.
Itâs not like, say, we can shoot a tree with a plasma blast and have it collapse or shoot parts of a roof to make it smash an ft member.
Iâm all for what youâre saying.
Sadly on the level Iâd like I dont think were there yet.
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Flight sims unironically because most have some kind of flight assist that can be turned off and dramatically increase the skill ceiling and when you get baited into rolling into a missile & fail whats basically an internet joust its entirely your fault.
Its the grind and meta setups that cut into the balance in games now though. Games were different when everyone had the same setups but different skill levels.
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Battlefield has had Devolution on the Frostbite engine since like bf3 on ancient ps3 tech.
Games have spreadable fires.
Destructible buildings.
It wouldnât be necessarily hard for them to go make a couple maps with some The Forest traps you can toss down anywhere and blend well with the environment, used the FT downed animation to do a temporary knockdown like avp2010 etc etc.
I mean now it might be since theyâd be doing it retroactively and have to work backwards.
Its just hard to not make environmental traps feel like a gimmick or repetitive. Like FT walking into a shack would mean getting castered immediately everytime. Youâd be expecting the last man standing to have a bunch of traps laying around and already know what to look for unless you just make those traps invisible to pred. Ragdolls and physics are a lot of bug fixing and require a good netcode for the game itself.
The range of options would have to be huge and devs arent really making five year passion projects theyre just doing whats safe.
I would absolutely love what battlefield has.
But I meant more like on the level i wanna see.
Theres not a game out today that is advanced as I would like.
Add the easy mode but mock the player throughout for choosing it a la metal gears chicken hat
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Lmfao yooo I forgot about that.
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You know you donned the helm of poultry
I think I did it to see what it was, cause I was looking up how to unlock all the stuff in that game.
But sorry man, I dont suck at games like you do, so it wasnt on me long xD.
Depends on the kind of game theyâre making really. Iâm sure thereâs some things they can pull from that AI and some they canât. Just depends on how they go about it.
Oh yeah for games like Hunting Grounds we will never get anything on the level of Alien Isolation and tbh I donât think we need to since the game is primarily PvP focused. PvE is an afterthought in this game. So the AI can get away with being dumb. Though it would be nice to have them be at least a little bit smarter than Cyberpunkâs AI. Just a smidge plz.
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Never really dabbled in flight Sims. Closest I came to that was Star Wars Squadrons if that can even be counted as one.
It does feel like we have passed the golden age of gaming sometimes. God Iâm sounding old.
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