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Pyro wrote:I believe that some maps are hard even in lower difficulties because the people making them want the maps to be a challenge. After testing their own creations and changes, they likely know how and when to use their units. So when others play them, it seems harder to them because they don't have the mapmaker's map design in their minds. Maybe they are over doing it and not know it. Or the players aren't playing the maps enough to get used to them the way the default maps were to some degree back in the day. Or the mapmakers did not do enough testing to balance out the differences from different difficulties.

It's just... isn't that why we have difficulty selections? Isn't the entire purpose of "Easy, Normal, Heroic, Legendary" so that we have a choice?

This isn't about "Casuals vs Hardcore", but when you look at any Bungie map, they all had degrees of difficulty. For instance in Down a Broken Path, each difficulty level focuses on 1) The Army of Thrall chasing you, 2) How many bad guys are there to ambush you, 3) Adding in new enemies to pressure you in certain key spots, 4) Changing the terrain in minor ways to make things tougher.

This is a great example of difficulty.

Well, I meant they likely made it harder when you compare Legendary to other map's Legendary. Maybe instead of having it equally proportionally spaced out they just spaced them out using the hardest settings as the legendary and toned it down from there. Finding the right balance is often not always easy. They aren't trying to copy Bungie, they are trying to use some of that and expand on it in their own creative (or uncreative) ways.

When I used to try and make maps, I'd always make them so that they were basically impossible for me. I'm very realistic about my Myth playing ability - just because it's impossible for me, doesn't mean the average Myth player will have a hard time beating it. Hehe.

William Wallet wrote:When I used to try and make maps, I'd always make them so that they were basically impossible for me. I'm very realistic about my Myth playing ability - just because it's impossible for me, doesn't mean the average Myth player will have a hard time beating it. Hehe.

Fair enough. And you should feel bad for making me waste so much time to beat your campaigns when they were almost impossible.

It's pretty hard to balance a campaign based on how difficult other people are going to find it. The biggest problem was that we had virtually no testers outside of the dev team, in spite of repeated requests for more--there aren't a whole lot of people around in the first place, and few are interested in beta testing. I played all levels on timid, normal, and at least a little on heroic and leg, and found that they felt about right to me. Short of a lot more feedback, I really don't see how else to do it.

That said, you can certainly give me feedback. I need to make a version 1.1 at some point to fix a progression bug, and I can use that opportunity to tweak the difficulty levels, both individually and overall. The guarding force at the bridge on Deluge is definitely getting toned down. Give me some other specific spots you have found too difficult.

A-Red wrote:...The guarding force at the bridge on Deluge is definitely getting toned down. Give me some other specific spots you have found too difficult.

Are you talking about just toning down the bridge guarding force on Legendary? Or all the difficulties? Having played the bridge level WAY more times than I would care to admit before finally getting over the bridge on NORMAL diff, I wouldn't say normal needed to be toned down. It's tough for a sloppy player like myself because it requires a lot of planning and really knowing how fast and tough the different enemies are and good micro skills, but I don't think it's unreasonably difficult.

It's the one spot in the whole campaign that drives me nuts. I'm going to remove the Elites entirely, except possibly the extra two on Leg. They'll probably be replaced with Sergeants, which are the tougher soldiers with golden armor--pretty easy for a pair of dwarves to handle. This change will be made to all difficulties.

Oh God, if you had done that before, then maybe I would have beaten it on Normal

Hehe. I managed to get past the bridge on Normal a couple of times using saves, which is probably why I didn't bother to change it. It really needs to be changed though.

Judging from the number of complaints I've gotten about difficulty, that can't be the only part people find too hard...?

The first 2 levels are done without casualties by me, on legendary.

Just learn to play!


Because I know you wouldn't believe me: http://hl.udogs.net/files/Uploads/%20Us ... 00%25).zip

Hmm, I dunno if the difficulty needs to be reduced that much. I managed to do it a second time around, I think what would be better would be if it were more obvious what's going to happen.

First time I tried I found I had almost no warning before being completely overwhelmed. The first level as well I had no idea that what I had wasn't a regular mortar dwarf, so I was expecting him to fire right over my wall of melee units and instead he let rip into the back of them

I know new units are time-consuming to do, but I don't remember there even being a comment in the hints section? Something at the start would maybe have helped there.

I think these things would make it easier; the difficulty itself is fine once I had an idea what I was doing, and I'm fairly rusty at playing Myth.

The first 3 levels are doable without casualties, on legendary and without saved games, but the level with the invisible dwarf? I can't even find a way WITH saved games on how to do kill all that stuff with just the units from the teleporter on legendary... Am I missing out something?

I'll be sure to check and update all the hints sections while I'm at it. I'll also look into the pathfinder level--to be honest, I'm not sure if I've gotten very far on that one on Leg either, but I always sort of assume that there are better players than me, and aim to be able to fairly easily beat Normal as a way of determining difficulty balance. Is it the enemy mages that are the main problem, or are the more common soldiers too numerous as well?

To much enemies.

Maybe you should give the player some more time to set up, so he can block the spots at the wooden stakes with the arquebrusquers. Or however you spell that.

The biggest problem regarding difficulty is that there's some things that just aren't all that intuitive.

It's little things that snow ball. Take Defense Maps that Bungie made. They always gave the player a good deal of warning most of the time about when a wave would come. Enemy waves in Urbarahz just sort of swamp you, especially in that epic sized defense map at the Gates in the snow. I had no idea which way the scripting was supposed to go, or where I should be moving my units around (at least, as a solo). The scale and detail were great... It just eventually got overwhelming like a 1-man game of Mazz.

Then there's the Goblins. I love the Goblin Units in TSG, but since they're faster than the player units, they force a dramatic shift from the flexible "Attack, Make a mistake, retreat, try again, maybe." strategy of Myth, and turn it into a lot more "Prepare for a trap, or battle plan that will kill a ton of Goblins with minimal damage to your forces. Fuck up. Hit reload."


But this is just random bitching, so I'm done.