Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The FRED Workshop => Topic started by: Goober5000 on August 31, 2006, 08:45:47 pm
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This is a perennial problem in the FSPort internal. Typically, I upload a mission with what I think is an appropriate level of difficulty. Galemp says it's too hard, so I tone it down a bit. Then kv1at3485 comes along and says it's not hard enough. I'm left unsure of what to do.
Of the released campaigns out there, what do you think are appropriate? The main campaign? Derelict? Warzone? Aeos Affair? Shrouding the Light?
I've noticed certain approaches in campaign mission design. Some people like to make campaigns where you really have to work to beat each mission. Other people make campaigns where you can usually beat every mission on the first try. My personal strategy is to set a medium level of difficulty for the overall campaign, but make every third mission or so harder than usual. I also like to make climactic missions (such as important plot twists and the final battle) harder than usual so that the pilot feels an appropriate sense of accomplishment after beating them. (Awarding a medal usually helps, too. :))
Further complications arise when you take into account the different level of skill among pilots in the FS community. I've been playing for quite a while, so what I think is medium difficulty may be quite hard for a newbie. Conversely, what I think is difficult may be easy for a multiplayer pilot who flies on a regular basis.
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I very much enjoyed Derelict's level of difficulty. The first time through there were some missions that left me scratching my head as to how to beat them. But they weren't overly difficult, just difficult enough.
Examples of Derelict missions I found challenging:
-Escorting the Haulian from Tau Sigma Station to the jump node, and being attacked by who knows how many wings of Loki drones....
-Defending all the ships and staying alive while doing so during the battle at Luxor Station.
-The final mission.
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The difficulty of a mission is very dependant on what type of mission it is, where in the campaign it is, and how much "mood" you want in it.
The first few missions shouldn't be hard, at all. That's when you explain the story, give it a base. I don't wanna be running around trying not to die only to miss what actually happened.
Escpecially if you're not voice acting and I have to actually read everything someone says.
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If it kills me roughly 50% of the time on medium, that seems to be what other people consider "balanced".
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Bit plot twists or story developments should definintely be none-too-hard, as the impact of said twist or development is undoubtedly diluted somewhat if the player must replay the mission several times to advance past it. Personally i'm still settling into my own FREDing niche regarding gameplay, but I try to make the harder missions the more menail storywise, while the big missions in regards to the overall plot I tend to make damn-near impossible to fail.
But then, that's just me.
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I really like that strategy. Nothing frustrates me more than having to see the same large chunk of dialogue ten times before I manage to beat a mission; by the end of it, the whole impact is completely gone. I'm personally a fan of the campaigns where I don't have to repeatedly replay missions to complete them. Perhaps the main reason I play campaigns is to see how their stories evolve; getting stuck on one mission (a la Bearbaiting [when trying to kill all 4 cannons], Proving Grounds, or the first two SOC missions) really annoys me. :p That being said, there are times when more challenge is required; of the missions I listed above, I'd say that Bearbaiting was one that fits that classification. Overall, I really liked the difficulty level of the main FS2 campaign and of Derelict, though in the latter, the mission where you have to defend 12 escape pods against waves of Shivans sticks out as a mission that came across as too hard.
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I generally aim for the same level of difficulty as some of the harder missions in the main campaign (stuff like sm3-01 or sm3-06). As Blue Lion said though, it depends on what the actual mission plot is and where it comes in the campaign; some end up significantly easier or harder. Many of my missions aren't all that hard but require a specific strategy that may take a few playthroughs to figure out.
If a mission has story-critical parts where the player is mostly just an observer, like long dialogue, I make it easy so the player doesn't have to keep sitting through it repeatedly.
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As Blue Lion said though, it depends on what the actual mission plot is and where it comes in the campaign; some end up significantly easier or harder.
It's also worth noting that it should depend on the campaign, too. I mean, it really hinges on whether you're going for a plot-centric or gameplay-centric campaign. Sure, we all know of those awesome campaigns that balance both plot and gameplay perfectly, but we're not all Blaise- or Ransom-esque FREDers now are we?
Gameplay-centric; go for a good challenge to test the player's skills. Story-centric; make it a nice, scenic ride with none-too-hard gameplay to create ambience, but not really render a stone-wall challenge.
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If it kills me roughly 50% of the time on medium, that seems to be what other people consider "balanced".
I really ought to elaborate on this, since it makes balancing quite difficult to be honest. It means I am only able to judge on my own mission testing whether it's balanced in terms of threat to the player, not to the mission objectives. I seem to be more singleminded about escort then most people, though, so I don't really know where I stand on that subject.
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First of I think campaigns should be made to primarily support Medium difficult level (the one set in options). Second I think there's 3 types of campaigns. First are ones, in which intresting, developing storyline are is most important (Homesick, Sync, Transcend and comedies: JAD and Deus Ex Machina). These ones should have medium difficulty with few hard missions (and hardness depends mostly on tactic, if you use wrong, you lose, if you use right one, you win, also there should be small problem with completing mission objectives, but larger in surviving). Second type are ones like Derelict, Neo-Terra or Raider Wars. Both intresting story and skill level are important there. It should be something like Goober said: one hard mission for three medium ones. Hardness should depend mostly on tactic, but also little on luck. Third type are ones like Inferno or RR. No developing, intresting story, just flying and destroying with small background story. :P Difficult level should be high, but not too much. Anyway every second mission should be hard one (of course on Medium Skill Level) and the same as in second type: much on tactic, little on luck.
I assume that this disscusion was about second-type campaign, so your strategy was good IMHO. Maybe Galemp has to try few times. :p
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I'm always a little worried about balance. I'm generally more inclined towards writing story waffle than creating a unique and challenging gaming experience using exciting and dynamic FREDding tricks to accomplish something really special.
Sometimes I do make something which I think has a nice gameplay dynamic (for example, the undercover recon mission at the HOL base in STL, where I first used variables as the core mechanic of a mission) but other times, I fear I compensate with LOTS AND LOTS of Shivans or whatever, and it becomes too hard, despite testing, despite my being a keyboard pilot.
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i think that a "Revelation"mission isn't supposed to be hard.
Revelation=when you discover important things about the storyline.Start the mission thinking X,in the middle you think Y,then you lose and you must try it another time.This will make the first part of the mission...ugly...
Of course any other missions aren't supposed to be easy.If you can complete an escort mission without firing,well...
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Too easy = one can complete the mission without paying too much attention to the tactics used
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My personal pain in the *** mission was that ITDoH one where you escort (sorta) a hippocrates, (Which has a anti fighter and some Green beam), and you sped 10 minutes floating along, killing about 20 shivans in the process.
Then, you find these passenger ships, you blow 6 azrael, marines come in, and you spend 10 minutes fighting off perpetual waves of 12 shivan fighters (mara/astaroth).
Generally on that, I fought the fighters, and died. Later, I hid by some big flak cannons, and watched them shred shivans.
It took way too long to wait through the first bit, then you died. Then you tried again... :mad: :mad:
And inferno has a demi-interesting plot... Though if it doesn't, at least it has lots of shiny ships :D
Sooo.... make your missions beatable on med, but make some harder, some easier, and make the ones with big plotline easy, and the others harder. Make the long ones not to boring anywhere, but not too hard. Make the short ones hard :drevil:
The major plotline-centric derelict was the one where you get the newscast, and you fly to drop off a nav-buoy, that's five clicks out... boring, but interesting plotline.
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Well...
I don't like trying to complete a mission for umpteenth time and to lose the mission just because one fracking enemy bomber gets through the intercept screen and demolishes that pesky shoebox of a transport that they call Elysium.
I generally don't like escort missions. They would be great if the wingmen actually had a clue, but as they don't I end up having to kill every bomber wave with myself. There's too big a margin of error, and these missions are usually those I have to try a few times.
<Possible Spoiler>
Another thing is that some missions can only be completed if you have tried it before and know excactly where to go and what to do, and that doesn't feel right to me. One mission of this kind is the last mission of the Raider Wars. I usually get Eris killed with no big difficulties, but then the Medusa carrier jumps in and out before I get near enough to disable her. I have to try and head for the direction where I think the ship will emerge from hyperspace, because otherwise I just can't reach it. The mission *should* be possible to complete on first try, even without blind lucky strike. And if you haven't tried before, you just don't know what's going to happen, and then the Medusa is going to escape.
</Possible spoiler>
Heavy Assault missions are perhaps my favourite, either in assault or space superiority role. Much targets to choose from, none of the own craft are in themselves critical for mission goals. There might be strong opposition, but at least as long as you live you can complete the mission.
Nothing is more frustrating than having to re-fly the mission after you finished it with 98% Hull just because some pesky ship managed to escape just because you didn't know where it was going to appear, or one of your own defenceless rice cup ships got destroyed because your own missiles were out and the wingmen were dead/otherwise useless. :rolleyes:
In general, I like missions where there is tough resistance and lots of targets to select from, but I'd rather skip missions where you have to try to defend some escape pod or Elysium transport against multiple enemy wings and with just one wing of wingmen who have no clue of how to really effectively protect a target.
The protect mode is in my experience only effective against bomber runs, fighter attacks get too near and when they start launching their Hornets/Tornadoes to an Elysium, it's dead very soon. I've seen my wingmen buzzing around their protection target and let a wing of Basilisks close up to missile range. Only after they attaced, they turned and started pounding the first one of the Shivans, letting two others continue their attack runs. ::)
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In general, I like missions where there is tough resistance and lots of targets to select from, but I'd rather skip missions where you have to try to defend some escape pod or Elysium transport against multiple enemy wings and with just one wing of wingmen who have no clue of how to really effectively protect a target.
The protect mode is in my experience only effective against bomber runs, fighter attacks get too near and when they start launching their Hornets/Tornadoes to an Elysium, it's dead very soon. I've seen my wingmen buzzing around their protection target and let a wing of Basilisks close up to missile range. Only after they attaced, they turned and started pounding the first one of the Shivans, letting two others continue their attack runs. ::)
In a way I have to say this is your own damn fault. Yes, the engagement radius is too short for transports, but you ought to have compensated for it the first time you realized that by issuing a C-3-9 so your ships would attack the enemy on entry. If you're really worried you can make them get back next to the transport again when the other guys are dead by telling them to escort it again, then order them to engage again when the enemy shows up.
This isn't the mission designer's fault. If you're going to be tossing about blame on this one you need start with the code for the short engagement radius and then move on to yourself for not figuring out how to make effective use of your wingmen.
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I don't really blame mission designer for things like that. I think I expressed myself a little unclearly.
Generally, I'm not blaming the mission designer if my escort dies on a mission. I know that usually the missions are made so that it's very well possible to complete the goals.
Actually, I gave it more of a thought and came to a conclusion that escort missions in themselves are not bad at all, I just said them to be because I dislike them. :rolleyes: Probably I dislike them because I'm not as good in them as I'm in other mission types, or perhaps I'm not as good in them because I dislike them... whatever. In that particular regard my last post was a bit off and not very well thought.
The more general annoying thing about some rare missions is that they just require the player for example to reach some ship and disable/destroy/save it in a very short interval of time... If that interval is too short, the player either has to hit the right spot by blind luck (unlikely if there's some other things to do too far away), or alternatively the player has to know what's going to happen and fly to right spot in advance.
Surprizes in mission are a good thing, yes... but in some rare missions the situation is as described above. If the mentioned surprize is impossible to complete at the first time without mad luck of hitting the right spot at right time, it usually requres the player to fly the mission again, and this time the player knows what's going to happen, and he or she probably will try and go to the right location this time... and that kind of negates the idea of having a surprize in the mission in the first place.
As for ideas of using wingmen better in escort mission... Well, have you seen Star Wreck 6? If you have, do you remember the part when Pirk fires all remaining light balls right behind Excavator? Well, this is a similar thing to me... :lol:
"Protect-Engage-Protect!? What? When I command wingmen to protect the ship, then it must be protected! That's what the wingmen are there for! Goddamnit!" :mad2: :hopping: :lol:
I realize it's foolish and the AI only does what it is told to do, and whether it does it poorly or well is definitely not mission designer's fault. I also realize that I made myself at least half an arse cheek in my last post, blabbering about the escort missions when it was not really related to the actual subject... Oh well, that happens sometimes. ;)
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Snail and I are currently working on a campaign. They way I figured I should do it was set difficulty to Normal, and if the mission was challenging, but beatable withing the first try or two, then it's good. If it's plausable to beat on hard, but not without much difficulty, then it's perfect. I don't even waste my time on insane. :D Is that kinda similar to what you guys do?
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I test my missions on Medium and make adjustments accordingly. I don't think I've changed difficulty level in FS2 for years now.
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I've seen my share of difficult missions, but the true insanity has to be the Battle of Earth mission of Inferno mod R1. If my memory serves me, it was roughly fifteen minutes of hell. I always lost one of the task force destroyers halfway through, or the enemy fighters shredded me, and last but not least the GTVA supercarrier got blown up at the end because I couldn't get through the fighter cover, because all my wingmen were dead. I had to replay it at least 20 times, which translates into over 300 minutes -- at LEAST 5 hours, just on one mission. Probably even longer than that considering I remember it took me over a day to complete. A mission of that difficulty, thankfully, is (and should continue to be) reserved for absolute final missions. As a finale, a 15 minute apocalyptic mission works.
Still, whoever designed that mission, I both love them, and want a Vasudan to sever their head.
That mission should be the benchmark for The Ridiculously Hard Mission(TM). If your mission is more difficult/repetitive (more opportunity to sit through dialogue and then get blown up 10 minutes later) than the finale of Inferno R1, it's too hard, lol.
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Yep, I always lost the Independance there, so I eventually just whipped out some random beams (though not USilvs) and shredded the stupid Nemisis beams.
Oh yeah, and made the ships I was supposed to be escorting invulnerable.
And me invulnerable.
I can just see trying to beat that mission fairly on insane. :mad: :ick: :mad: :mad: :mad: :shaking:
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This is a perennial problem in the FSPort internal. Typically, I upload a mission with what I think is an appropriate level of difficulty. Galemp says it's too hard, so I tone it down a bit. Then kv1at3485 comes along and says it's not hard enough. I'm left unsure of what to do.
:lol:. Been there with Fury and Darkblade.
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I've seen my share of difficult missions, but the true insanity has to be the Battle of Earth mission of Inferno mod R1. If my memory serves me, it was roughly fifteen minutes of hell. I always lost one of the task force destroyers halfway through, or the enemy fighters shredded me, and last but not least the GTVA supercarrier got blown up at the end because I couldn't get through the fighter cover, because all my wingmen were dead. I had to replay it at least 20 times, which translates into over 300 minutes -- at LEAST 5 hours, just on one mission. Probably even longer than that considering I remember it took me over a day to complete. A mission of that difficulty, thankfully, is (and should continue to be) reserved for absolute final missions. As a finale, a 15 minute apocalyptic mission works.
Still, whoever designed that mission, I both love them, and want a Vasudan to sever their head.
That mission should be the benchmark for The Ridiculously Hard Mission(TM). If your mission is more difficult/repetitive (more opportunity to sit through dialogue and then get blown up 10 minutes later) than the finale of Inferno R1, it's too hard, lol.
hahahaha.
I totally know what you are talking about man. For that same mission I got sick of losing on it so I put it on easy instead to beat it.
All in all, That was still my favorite mission anyway.
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That's why I play on Easy all the time. All the great story, with a minimum of the frustration. :p
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It surprises me that you guys have been playing the game for years yet you still have trouble completing a lot of the missions. The challenge in Freespace is using your head- "skills" like marksmanship, coordination, etc. don't matter very much. Every mission is a puzzle, so you should have no difficulty completing the game on Insane difficulty if you've already found the solution to each mission.
I think that the campaign's difficulty should depend on how good the player is. You can do this by branching, having an "easy" campaign path and a "hard" campaign path (if a player looses a mission, he switches to the easy path, if he wins, he goes to the hard one). You might be thinking, "well, then I'll need to make twice the number of missions", but you can just make some minor tweaks to each mission (adding or deleting a few fighter wings, for example) to adjust difficulty and have two slightly modified versions of the same mission. Also, you can set more fighter wings to arrive if the player won the last mission- you can use "is-previous-goal-true" sexps as arrival ques.
But my way of adjusting difficulty is by using secondary and bonus goals. The primary goal should be easy to accomplish- it's just there for people who want to buzz through the campaign and get the storyline. The secondary and bonus goals should be challenging. They're the ones that give you medals and promotions, while the primary goals allow you to advance in the campaign.
I don't give a solid answer to "how hard should a campaign be?" I like to make the difficulty adjustable, the way I said.
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That's an awful method of doing things. If you're simply going to alter missions based on difficulty settings you should use the SEXPs and do it all within one mission rather than creating a branching campaign with multiple missions all requiring maintainence based just on what difficulty the user set.
For one thing if the user comes across a mission that is too hard, dropping the difficulty will not help them anywhere near as much as expected as they'll be on the wrong campaign path.
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I don't create branching missions, I just base arrival ques on whether a previous goal was completed or not. There's a few examples of this in the main FS campaigns (FS1 and probably 2).
And you don't get my idea about the campaign path. Have you ever played Microsoft Close Combat? Here's how it works:
/* = mission failed
/- = mission accomplished
Start mission
/* \-
easy mission hard mission
\* /*\- \-
easy mission hard mission
If you can't understand that diagram, it's hard to explain. If you win a mission, you go to the hard branch, if you loose THAT mission, you go the easy branch, and you just keep going back and forth. If you keep winning missions, you stay on the hard branch, if you keep loosing, you stay on the easy. It wouldn't be hard to change a mission's difficulty, just add a few more fighters here or there or increase AI skill, or give the player a time limit somehow. You're not making two whole different branches, you're just slighlty modifying missions for difficulty purposes. The real advantage of this system is that the player dosen't have to replay any missions, although you may have to make him repeat key storyline missions if he misses them.
But my favorite way of adjusting difficulty is by using secondary and bonus goals like I said before.
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I don't create branching missions, I just base arrival ques on whether a previous goal was completed or not. There's a few examples of this in the main FS campaigns (FS1 and probably 2).
That's fine. It's basically what I said you should do. Use SEXPs (or in this case arrival cues) rather than mission branching to determine what goes on in a mission.
And you don't get my idea about the campaign path.
Oh I got it. I just hate it. :D
You're not making two whole different branches, you're just slighlty modifying missions for difficulty purposes. The real advantage of this system is that the player dosen't have to replay any missions, although you may have to make him repeat key storyline missions if he misses them.
Now you see if you were making two different branches depending on how well the player did in a mission I'd be all for it. If the missions were very different then you have an interesting branching campaiugn and I'm all for that.
But having two copies of a mission that differ only in difficulty is a maintainence nightmare. If someone finds a bug in one mission it's almost certainly present in the other one meaning that you have to fix and playtest both missions to see if bug is gone. Maybe it's the programmer in me that hates duplication of code like this but as far as I'm concerned you should only have one mission that adjusts itself depending on previous events and the player's choosen difficulty level. That way you can have a graduated and even adaptive level of difficulty not simply hard mission\easy mission branches.
For instance by using persisent variables you can have the mission actually get easier if the player has failed it a couple of times.
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I don't create branching missions, I just base arrival ques on whether a previous goal was completed or not. There's a few examples of this in the main FS campaigns (FS1 and probably 2).
And you don't get my idea about the campaign path. Have you ever played Microsoft Close Combat? Here's how it works:
I think the real problem with what you're suggesting is that it essentially rewards poor performance. There would be no incentive to do well in a mission if it's only going to make things harder later on. It makes more sense to have it go the other way (a good performance makes a later mission easier) or to just leave the difficulty of each mission independent of any others. The best way to do things is to use the difficulty level settings, which are under the player's control, to make slight adjustments to the mission. As far as having separate missions goes, you can do it but it wouldn't really be necessary given how much small things like having an extra enemy wing (on a higher difficulty) can completely alter the balance and difficulty of the mission.
Although I certainly agree with you that missions should provide some sort of a challenge. Missions that are too easy are frankly no better than ones too hard.
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"Incentive?" It confuses me how so many people want their game to be as easy as possible.
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Because some of us don't want to be frustrated by games to the point where we wind up breaking expensive peripherals. :p
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"Incentive?" It confuses me how so many people want their game to be as easy as possible.
I never said that. I said I want some reward for completing a particularly hard mission, which likely took several tries and some time commitment. That could come in the form of points or medals, but I don't want to see increased difficulty in a future mission for my work unless I'm getting compensated in some other way for it.
In fact, even the built-in difficulty system works like this. You get a lot more points for getting kills on insane than on medium and can go through promotions much more often.
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If its difficult at normal, easy to beat at easy, very easy to beat at very ease, and hard to beat at hard... its good
It should be as difficult as the missions of act 3 of the campaign, and then increasing difficulty