[General Battuta]

heat seekers are great on insane because you don't have to wait for them to

LOCK      

inb4 this thread didn't need to be locked

[General Battuta]

okay I unlocked it because it felt a little hasty

Everyone be cool now, okay? Be cooool.

[wtf_cl0vvn]

heat seekers are great on insane because you don't have to wait for them to

LOCK      

inb4 this thread didn't need to be locked

I see what you did there...

[QuantumDelta]

*Sighs*.

You are not the only person that gets that impression from me Shivan Hunter, however, people who know me realise it's not really true.

My complaint, argument, and connotation simply goes as far as to be frustrated by fredders who ruin insane game play in favour of 'fun' very easy game play.
There is so very rarely any effort on behalf of the fredders to use difficulty-based sexps to address this either, and typically insane ends up being task-overload for what is a self-playing mission on very easy.
Hense, the complaint, because 80% plus HLP campaigns fall into this category, it's nothing to do with elitism, it's simply that people who enjoy fighting the AI on fair-terms get almost completely ignored by the majority of the community.

If this occurred in reverse there would be a god damn riot.

This leaves us "leet" people understandably slightly miffed, sarcy, and particularly unforgiving of **** -very easy players.

[Mongoose]

The thing is, though, it's all a question of audience.  How many of you "leet" players are out there in the first place?  You're certainly a small minority compared to those who generally play on Very Easy through Medium.  Hell, I'd be willing to bet that the majority of campaign authors don't ply on Insane, which would sort of explain why they don't balance for it...it's hard to test missions that you yourself can't complete.  I know I didn't move up from Easy to Medium until fairly recently, since I didn't want to subject myself to more mission failures than I already had to deal with.  It may be frustrating to someone of your skill level to play certain campaigns, but you have to keep in mind that you don't represent the general target player for campaign releases.

[Scourge of Ages]

Aye, there's the rub.
You can't balance a campaign/mission for insane if you can't play on insane. How will you know if is something is balanced for insane or just impossible?

Get QD to beta test everything?

[Kolgena]

Even if QD can beat it, it doesn't mean the rest of the community can. I've never seen videos of him playing seriously, but if the legends are true, his skillz are near-game breaking.

[QuantumDelta]

Speaking honestly, if you can complete WiH on medium you can probably manage most other campaigns that are balanced for insane - on insane, 'cept maybe WoD.

The only reason I might be any better than your typical insane player on HLP is because of multi, even very-easy players on single player tend to play multi on insane, and after a few tvts your skills go far beyond the AIs even on insane (though WiHs' AI with all the hard work by Fury and the others brings that back a bit).

Generally speaking I doubt the group of people who do play on insane is a statistically insignificant number on here but I sincerely doubt it's anything mindblowing.
Maybe a poll should be posted ;o

[MatthTheGeek]

QD, you're wrong. You know that, right ?

I managed to complete WiH, in Medium, with less than 5 fps, and I can't even go close to complete the retail FS2 campaign in Insane.

On the other hand, you can't really compare insane in campaigns with insane in multi because the lag makes for a totally different gameplay experience. You just can't play single the same way you play multi in FS, that just doesn't seem physically possible.

it's simply that people who enjoy fighting the AI on fair-terms get almost completely ignored by the majority of the community.
This leaves us "leet" people understandably slightly miffed, sarcy, and particularly unforgiving of **** -very easy players.

I love how you say "us" to talk about only one guy : yourself .

[BloodFleet]

I've tried hard and insane before but gave up almost instantly. Highest level AI I can fight and not get frustrated is medium. I've been playing this game since 2000-2001 too lol.

I use keyboard btw...numpad, a, z, tab etc... I'm aware this is not the best way to play games like this (Descent too) but I don't care.

[General Battuta]

I've tried hard and insane before but gave up almost instantly. Highest level AI I can fight and not get frustrated is medium. I've been playing this game since 2000-2001 too lol.

I use keyboard btw...numpad, a, z, tab etc... I'm aware this is not the best way to play games like this (Descent too) but I don't care.

No, keyboard is actually (in terms of raw performance, some would argue not immersion) the best way to fly. Good for turning.

[Shade]

I love how you say "us" to talk about only one guy : yourself .

QD isn't actually the only person around who enjoys playing on Insane, you know. I certainly don't play on it all the time (Hard tends to be my regular difficulty as Insane does tend to own my ass with alarming regularity), but I play it enough to see where he's coming from.

And he's right - Campaigns really should be balanced so as to be at least reasonably playable on all difficulties. And it isn't really that hard a thing to do, either. The difficulty based conditional SEXPs give a FREDder an amazing amount of control about how a mission will play on each difficulty, and even if you don't play on Insane yourself, it should still be possible to tell if the difficulty is completely over the top... usually from you getting blown out of the sky before the mission even starts to pick up its pace.

Finally, keep in mind that QD's original complaint was not against people who play on easier difficulties, but against those who release campaigns which are only playable on those difficulties. Admittedly he seems to have branched out a bit since then, but a page 1 misunderstanding on that particular bit seems to have caused the whole discussion that's now taking place.

[Kolgena]

I play on insane a lot of the time too. It does mean that sometimes I die more than 5 times before beating the mission, but that's the kind of gameplay I'm looking for.

Basically, if I want a fluid experience or just care about the story, I'll play at medium or hard. If I'm going through for an additional run, it's almost always on insane for shiz and gigz.

Oh, and I'm 100% mouse here for two reasons: My keyboard lacks a numpad (laptop) and I can't aim worth anything without the mouse. A full sweep gives me an arc of almost 180 degrees in a perseus, so turning rates are not a problem when I get a feel for the maximum speed you can move the mouse without "wasting" table space (this depends on what fighter you're flying, of course).

[terran_emperor]

Insane is like Haloverse's Legendary. You'll die 1000* times before completing a mission.

I generally stick to normal - challenging yet but not too easy

[X3N0-Life-Form]

I use keyboard btw...numpad, a, z, tab etc... I'm aware this is not the best way to play games like this (Descent too) but I don't care.

I tried that, then I switched to the mouse, it felt closer to a joystick.

More in relation to the topic : increasing the difficulty level was what kept me playing before I found HLP & FSO.
It takes a little time to get used to dodging missiles & canons, but once this is done, it is actually quite fun to play on insane.

[Dragon]

I prefer Insane, for challenge and realism.
On the other hand, I play most custom campaigns on Medium, because they are may not be balanced for Insane and have some sequences that rely on Medium difficulty level (beam refire rates are the usual cause).
When campaign is stated to work on Insane, I play it on Insane.

[Quanto]

Yeah, we're all complete n00bs unworthy of our Wings badge unless we cater to your 1337 sk1llz of killing Shivans while bragging like a prepubescent Halo gamer.

I think I'll copy this over here:


As someone who plays on Medium at most, you're honestly acting like that guy I played against in UT3, whose nickname was something involving farting, who always yelled in all caps and who spent more time complaining about his team being morons than playing UT3.

This post made my day.

This is Shivan Hunter to QD:

[QuantumDelta]

Anymore of your little clique want to try again? 

[The E]

Why didn't I lock this before....