[Iain Baker]

(Trying to do this on my phone so fingers crossed this works)

I was playstesting an as yet unreleased campaign recently (I won’t say which one) and was having great difficulty even on medium skill setting, despite usually playing campaigns on Hard. Spoke to the devs who advised that it was ‘balanced for Easy’ which turns out to mean that it was deliberately made so hard that even veteran players would struggle if playing on Easy. This of course would make Normal too hard for veteran players, and Hard and Insane near impossible.

I questioned them about what should a novice player player do then, since even Very Easy would likely be too challenging and there is no easier setting than that. Their response was that ‘those players should practice more on easier campaigns then come back once they are good enough to play it.’

Note that this is one of most story-driven and lore-enhancing campaigns since Blue Planet. My view was that deliberately excluding novice or less-skilled players (not everyone can improve their skills by practice alone no matter how hard they try) from such world building wasn't fair. They disagreed. So now I’m throwing it out to the community at large to get their views.

[Shivan Hunter]

Hmm.

I think "It's too hard" or "It's irritatingly hard" (e.g. needing you to know the mission beforehand in order to win) is definitely a valid criticism of a campaign. It would sour my experience with the campaign, and I'm definitely not alone in that. I personally would caution a dev against this decision, as you're doing. But is it objectively incorrect, the way it would be if the campaign threw up 3942 error messages and invariably crashed in the first mission? Tbh I don't think so. I and others would give our feedback, and the devs could take it or leave it, as they could with any and all criticism. And there's always the www.freespace2.co.uk strategy if you need it

[deathspeed]

I agree with Shivan Hunter.  Like any art, the devs are free to make a campaign however they like, but deliberately limiting the audience does not seem to be a good success strategy.  I guess it depends on how they define "success."  It may be critically acclaimed by the elite, but they should be prepared for a lot of "this mod is broken" complaints from the masses.   

I have been playing FS and mods since 1999, and I still play most on Easy the first time because I am looking for fun and advancing through the storyline more than looking for a challenge.  If I find it enjoyable (or too easy - rare!) I may replay on Normal.  I'm also not ashamed to drop to Very Easy.   There are mods that I have read are difficult, and I have not ever tried them just based on their reputations.  This sounds like one I will read about but never download.

[Novachen]

I would say, yes.

Modding is not for everyone. It is already an experienced thing. User campaigns are always some kind of unofficial expansion pack. In most cases they are always for more experienced players. Look to Silent Threat for example. Most of its missions are definitively not for novice players.

If a campaign require the story of other campaigns, the player should played them first anyway, for example. There is no need for retail difficulty.

[Mobius]

This may be a rather inappropriate example from back in the day, but we have a classic named The Aeos Affair whose description states the following:

These missions were created to challenge elite players. The recommended difficulty setting is "Easy". Crazy people with suicidal tendencies may attempt the missions at higher levels, but be advised that your chances are slim. Note that all of the missions have been tested and all are winnable. On the "Very Easy" level, all objectives of all missions can be completed. Are you good enough?

In poor words, the campaign shifted difficulty levels by at least one place (Very Easy - Easy, Easy - Medium, etc., with Insane going off the scale and even Hard being pretty much unplayable). The creators specified it in their original release thread (which I was unable to find but I assume the source of the statement is indeed the release thread) and therefore "warned" all players about it. So yeah, I would guess certain difficulty levels that don't quite match the standard FreeSpace "meaning" fall in the greater umbrella of the degrees of variability custom campaign have come out with in the past 25 years.

[Assassin714]

Well for other games like Doom, many famous levels are considered good even though they are so hard that only the best players have a chance of beating them.

99% of players wouldn't be able to get past the first room in this map, for instance:

But it's still considered an impressively built and well-designed map.

[Iain Baker]

This may be a rather inappropriate example from back in the day, but we have a classic named The Aeos Affair whose description states the following:

These missions were created to challenge elite players. The recommended difficulty setting is "Easy". Crazy people with suicidal tendencies may attempt the missions at higher levels, but be advised that your chances are slim. Note that all of the missions have been tested and all are winnable. On the "Very Easy" level, all objectives of all missions can be completed. Are you good enough?

In poor words, the campaign shifted difficulty levels by at least one place (Very Easy - Easy, Easy - Medium, etc., with Insane going off the scale and even Hard being pretty much unplayable). The creators specified it in their original release thread (which I was unable to find but I assume the source of the statement is indeed the release thread) and therefore "warned" all players about it. So yeah, I would guess certain difficulty levels that don't quite match the standard FreeSpace "meaning" fall in the greater umbrella of the degrees of variability custom campaign have come out with in the past 25 years.

True, but Aeos affair isn’t actually that hard by today’s standards. I did it on Hard without too much trouble. But if I’m having trouble with a campaign on easy then it suggests something has gone wrong somewhere.

[CT27]

The last time I played Aeos Affair, I found it to be slightly above average in difficulty...but not nearly as hard as the description provided in this thread says it is.

I like the way Final Fantasy VII:  Remake handled difficulty.  "Hard" actually meant the game was hard and was very challenging.  On "Easy" the game was actually fairly easy.  I've played other games where "Easy" was relatively frustrating  but other games where it wasn't that difficult on "Hard".



Campaign designers can certainly design their mods/campaigns however they want.  However, IMO, if a campaign is super difficult on "Very Easy", that's not my preference and is probably a little too difficult for general accessibility.

[Shivan Hunter]

Well for other games like Doom, many famous levels are considered good even though they are so hard that only the best players have a chance of beating them.

99% of players wouldn't be able to get past the first room in this map, for instance:

(link)

But it's still considered an impressively built and well-designed map.

Doom's a good example that has many, many super-high-difficulty WADs (my example might have been Italo Doom) but also, Classic Doom doesn't have much in the way of plot. In this campaign's case, you'll miss out on some (apparently good) story if you can't play it. Which does change the calculus somewhat, I can understand people being upset that they're "excluded" from the story, but still it's entirely up to the devs. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Aeos Affair definitely seems like a campaign designed to be hard back when we still thought the Treb was an "anti-bomber" missile. Lots of debeam-this-Ravana challenges get trivialized by knowing how to use FS weapons effectively. (That's another issue: it's more reasonable to make campaigns hard if they use familiar FS weapons, compared to campaigns which add new ones and have to tutorialize them a bit.)

[ShivanSlayer]

Aeos Affair is mostly hard when you don't have a strategy figured out to win each mission.  Once you figure that out, it's not too hard, and the briefings give hints.

[mjn.mixael]

Well now you got me rather interested in what you're testing..

Whatever the case, it's certainly not a design strategy I would take. But what mostly bothers me is the attitude that you've conveyed. People are certainly free to make their game however they want but gatekeeping the audience with what seems to be a laissez-faire approach, suggesting they don't play if they aren't good enough bugs me. I feel that a good game, no matter the difficulty, offers the player the necessary tools to succeed. Whether that's difficulty settings or ways to learn the game itself is up to the designer.

[Grizzly]

Note that this is one of most story-driven and lore-enhancing campaigns since Blue Planet. My view was that deliberately excluding novice or less-skilled players (not everyone can improve their skills by practice alone no matter how hard they try) from such world building wasn't fair. They disagreed. So now I’m throwing it out to the community at large to get their views.

I'm somewhat hesitant to comment on this. It feels like I'm having only one side of the story.

So instead I'm just gonna talk about FS2 difficulty in general.

By default, FS2 selects "Easy". Lots of people assume that "Medium" is the baseline difficulty setting. This is wrong: Insane is the baseline.

On Insane, the player is on level footing with the AI. They fire as fast as you do. They turn as fast as you do. You take as much damage as they do. Your countermeasures last as long as theirs. There's only one exception to this: Even on Insane, the player has better weapon recharge then the others. Aside from that little caveat, everything and everyone on insane follows the rules of the game as put into the tables.

From hard downwards, everyone except you gets debuffs. All of these can be found in AI profiles.tbl. But there's a few key things that change the overal balance of the game itself:

The enemy AI turns slower with lower difficulties.
$AI Turn Time Scale:: 3, 2.2, 1.6, 1.3, 1

You can see what the problem here is no? Using default settings, on any setting other then insane, it's very likely that a ship that's designed to out-turn its opponent isn't able to do so when it is on the enemy team. The whole armor vs manouvrability paradigm shifts around quite a lot due to this. People who try FS2 on hard or insane for the first time will notice this with the Lokis in particular.

Ships are prevented from targeting another ship with too many turrets.
$Max Turret Target Ownage: 3, 4, 7, 12, 19
Yup! That's gonna be a problem for balancing your capship battles...

Both friendly and enemy AI fire slower.
$Friendly AI Fire Delay Scale: 2, 1.4, 1.25, 1.1, 1
$Hostile AI Fire Delay Scale: 4, 2.5, 1.75, 1.25, 1
$Friendly AI Secondary Fire Delay Scale: 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0, 1.2
$Hostile AI Secondary Fire Delay Scale: 1.4, 1.2, 1.0, 0.8, 0.6

On very easy, the friendly AI fires 2x slower then you. The enemy AI fires 2x slower then the friendly AI. On insane, everyone's equal. This affects stuff like beam fire too. A capship battle that's neatly balanced to work on medium can become impossible on hard or insane if this isn't taken into account. This setting in particular also means that the player's wingman become more effective on higher difficulties. After all, they can fire a lot faster! The gameplay itself shifts, moving from an ego shooter to a tactical shooter.

But these are not set in stone.
For example, BP's War In Heaven campaign changes this around quite a bit. Notably:

• The friendly AI always fires as fast as the player
• Hostile AI always fires as fast as the player from "Medium/Veteran" difficulty onwards
• Hostile AI turns as fast as tabled from "Medium/Veteran" onwards
• Any capship may target anything freely

To compensate for this, the player gets a few more buffs. A lot of the buffs that the player gets on difficulty levels other then insane are increased, so the player gets a little more energy, can take a bit more damage, etc. compared to the same FS2 vanilla settings.

By changing around the AI Profile settings like this, WiH missions play (almost) the same on any difficulty level. The player simply survives more easily on lower difficulty levels. This does make it significantly easier to balance the game across different difficulty settings without changing the overal feel or the story-as-told-through-gameplay.

And if you want to do something completely different from what WiH or FS2 vanilla are doing, that's also very possible through the AI_Profiles.tbl. You don't have to balance your campaign around a certain difficulty level. You can balance your difficulty levels around your campaign.

[Nightmare]

Well now you got me rather interested in what you're testing..

Whatever the case, it's certainly not a design strategy I would take. But what mostly bothers me is the attitude that you've conveyed. People are certainly free to make their game however they want but gatekeeping the audience with what seems to be a laissez-faire approach, suggesting they don't play if they aren't good enough bugs me. I feel that a good game, no matter the difficulty, offers the player the necessary tools to succeed. Whether that's difficulty settings or ways to learn the game itself is up to the designer.

The debate started around how a campaign that was mostly balanced around veteran-level difficulty preferences would/should be adjusted. I suggested to just add a note about the difficulty being higher in that case and have it say something like "optimized for Very Easy to Medium, everything else is at your own discretion" so that the entire campaign wouldnt have to be re-balanced, but could be kept as it is; but for reasons beyond my understanding people got very... entrenched in their positions instead.

[Grizzly]

I suggested to just add a note about the difficulty being higher in that case and have it say something like "optimized for Very Easy to Medium, everything else is at your own discretion" so that the entire campaign wouldnt have to be re-balanced, but could be kept as it is; but for reasons beyond my understanding people got very... entrenched in their positions instead.

Ultimately I don't feel it's that big of a deal. Cheatcodes exist, and AI_Profiles.tbl tweaking permits a modder to adjust difficulty level scaling without overhauling missions. Like buffing the player more on 'very easy' without touching the other settings.

You can also adjust strings.tbl and rename your difficulty levels to "medium" "hard" "insane" "nigthmare" "ultra nightmare!" or something like that to get the point across

[mjn.mixael]

Honestly I hate the way FSO difficulty works and when I'm feeling lazy I have often considered using SCPUI to remove the difficulty slider from BtA entirely and forcing everyone to play on medium (what we test on). BP's approach is a great approach but man that sounds like effort.

[Grizzly]

Honestly I hate the way FSO difficulty works and when I'm feeling lazy I have often considered using SCPUI to remove the difficulty slider from BtA entirely and forcing everyone to play on medium (what we test on). BP's approach is a great approach but man that sounds like effort.

When I look at BTA's -aip.tbm and ai.tbl, you're already using an enhanced version of the BP approach. At least in the release version, there's even less AI differences between very easy to medium.

You could take that further and make all the values identical to whatever BtA's medium is. But I'd at the very least make the player ship a little bit more sturdy on lower difficulty levels.

[0rph3u5]

By default, FS2 selects "Easy". Lots of people assume that "Medium" is the baseline difficulty setting. This is wrong: Insane is the baseline.

On Insane, the player is on level footing with the AI. They fire as fast as you do. They turn as fast as you do. You take as much damage as they do. Your countermeasures last as long as theirs. There's only one exception to this: Even on Insane, the player has better weapon recharge then the others. Aside from that little caveat, everything and everyone on insane follows the rules of the game as put into the tables.

Honestly I hate the way FSO difficulty works and when I'm feeling lazy I have often considered using SCPUI to remove the difficulty slider from BtA entirely

It would probably be more informative to change the displayed string to "AI Handicap", invert the how the increments are displayed and are rename the increments to

- Very Easy -> "Maximum" (Handicap)
- Easy -> "High" (Handicap)
- Medium -> "Intermediate" (Handicap)
- Hard -> "Low" (Handicap)
- Insame -> "Disabled"