Relax, there never will be difficulty slider.
Discuss the AI here!
- Thread starter Agony_Aunt
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PvP is just a side activity that happens when I get lucky, but don't tell anybody I said that, I have a reputation to keep up around here.
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There is no way in hell that selectable difficulties won't have an impact on NPC behavior. Right now, as you said, the AI is adaptive. It changes based upon what you're doing, what you're flying, where you're flying, who you're associated with, who you pinked off, etc....
The first characteristic of the AI that will be neutered if the AI is given difficulty levels is that adaptability. It will become a pale shadow of what it currently is, and that will just be the beginning of the changes.
Just stop and think about what it's going to take to make this feature work in the realm of FDev's abilities and you'll realize immediately that I'm not being overly dramatic in the least.
IMHO, there is no magic behind it. The 2.1 was online Thursday evening (European Time) and hardcore players and also long time players of Elite Dangerous immediately started to test it. Than the pool started Friday morning and those players started to put their votes. So, the result was more attracted to "Just right".
Friday evening, normal players who play the game only couple of hours during weekends started to test it and they started to vote too, probably on the "Too hard" side. And during Saturday and Sunday, there was more and more voters, maybe from players who simply play game and have no idea that there is a thing called "forum". Those players started dying in game, looked at the Internet/Google with something like "Elite Dangerous too hard today", found links to forum, started reading threads and voted too.
I would like to know the more in-depth analysis of votes. How many long term forum posters vote, what was the ratio of "Too hard"/"Just OK" between them, how many new registered forum users voted and how etc.
I just hope that those detailed results are available for FD for more in-depth analysis.
P.S. In the poll, there was 2056 voters. According to Steam, today peak was 5534 players online only through Steam. This does not count direct buyers, Xbox players etc. I do not know total number of players, but I think that it can be said that ALL long term forum users are a hardcore minority of total amount of players. And if from this small hardcore minority 47% voted "Too hard" against 41% "OK" votes, than the "OK" camp is really small. An average Elite player who has no idea what and where the forum is and is not actively discussing for a longer time here is most probably much worse pilot than we all are.
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Hello all,
I have played about a hundred hours of Elite Dangerous mainly because i don't really get out of my house anymore since i retired and am confined to a wheelchair and pensions nowadays do not take you very far.
I have enjoy just pottering around and making a little money here and there. The computer thing was my grandsons idea, and to be fair i am very selective when it comes to ship fighting and try to avoid it when i can when trading or doing missions - mainly because i'm terrible at fighting and can't afford all the flashy joystick's and gizmos you young players use. I probably don't have the dexterity in my hands anymore anyway to use them. I do remember the days of the original elite when i bought it for my son many years ago and i was impressed with it back then. This new elite is beautiful! and i have enjoyed it immensely, but lately since that big download i can no longer play. This has been a major disappointment for me as the difficulty has increased so much and even when trying to avoid the computer ships i seem to be killed even before i get a chance to run away. All of the money i have made has almost gone now and I fell that the last week has pretty much wrecked what was a great game. I can understand some of you want the computer players to be harder.. in my day i would of to, but you also have to understand that there are some of us that don't, and in fact NEED them to be easier!
I have been reading with interest on a few forums that there is obviously a mixed reaction to this particular update, and i can see why. Those players that are really good like the challenge. but it does leave the rest of us in the cold a we bit, the difficulty is just too hard, whether it is because of age, disability, lack of a joystick or the microphone for the talking thing, lack of money, it really doesn't matter, we will just say that there are different kinds of people some are going to find it easier and others will not.
If any of the people that made this game are reading this might i make a suggestion?
I understand that there is OPEN play, SINGLE play, and PRIVATE GROUP play? so why not make the SINGLE and PRIVATE GROUP play AI selective in difficulty, and in the OPEN play the AI on the current settings.
That way those of us that want to just potter around without being harassed by the stick jockeys (i think there called) and being killed at a drop of a hat by the AI can make a private group (as my grandson and i have done) or play on SINGLE play to hone their fighting skills in preparation to going into the OPEN play. i think it will appease most of your game fans. Why can't you cater to ALL players of your game.. not every player is a 'hard core fly by the seat of their pants' gamer, some of us just want to enjoy the space we are in and not lose all of our money which we worked hard to earn because the AI is so much better than us.
I would also like to thank my grandson for letting me put this message on this forum using his account as i couldn't work out your account setup thing.. sorry about that
All the best.
(Enopho's Grandfarther)
I have played about a hundred hours of Elite Dangerous mainly because i don't really get out of my house anymore since i retired and am confined to a wheelchair and pensions nowadays do not take you very far.
I have enjoy just pottering around and making a little money here and there. The computer thing was my grandsons idea, and to be fair i am very selective when it comes to ship fighting and try to avoid it when i can when trading or doing missions - mainly because i'm terrible at fighting and can't afford all the flashy joystick's and gizmos you young players use. I probably don't have the dexterity in my hands anymore anyway to use them. I do remember the days of the original elite when i bought it for my son many years ago and i was impressed with it back then. This new elite is beautiful! and i have enjoyed it immensely, but lately since that big download i can no longer play. This has been a major disappointment for me as the difficulty has increased so much and even when trying to avoid the computer ships i seem to be killed even before i get a chance to run away. All of the money i have made has almost gone now and I fell that the last week has pretty much wrecked what was a great game. I can understand some of you want the computer players to be harder.. in my day i would of to, but you also have to understand that there are some of us that don't, and in fact NEED them to be easier!
I have been reading with interest on a few forums that there is obviously a mixed reaction to this particular update, and i can see why. Those players that are really good like the challenge. but it does leave the rest of us in the cold a we bit, the difficulty is just too hard, whether it is because of age, disability, lack of a joystick or the microphone for the talking thing, lack of money, it really doesn't matter, we will just say that there are different kinds of people some are going to find it easier and others will not.
If any of the people that made this game are reading this might i make a suggestion?
I understand that there is OPEN play, SINGLE play, and PRIVATE GROUP play? so why not make the SINGLE and PRIVATE GROUP play AI selective in difficulty, and in the OPEN play the AI on the current settings.
That way those of us that want to just potter around without being harassed by the stick jockeys (i think there called) and being killed at a drop of a hat by the AI can make a private group (as my grandson and i have done) or play on SINGLE play to hone their fighting skills in preparation to going into the OPEN play. i think it will appease most of your game fans. Why can't you cater to ALL players of your game.. not every player is a 'hard core fly by the seat of their pants' gamer, some of us just want to enjoy the space we are in and not lose all of our money which we worked hard to earn because the AI is so much better than us.
I would also like to thank my grandson for letting me put this message on this forum using his account as i couldn't work out your account setup thing.. sorry about that
All the best.
(Enopho's Grandfarther)
I don't think we need a difficulty slider.
Players need to stop;
Taking high-paying missions, without the experience or equipment to complete them.
Taking pot-shots at every wanted ship, without thought for its allegiance.
Breaking the law.
Trucking expensive cargo manifests through dangerous territory.
Using NPC kills to push a combat rating with low-value kills.
There is your difficulty control. High-paying missions pay well precisely because they're difficult and risky. Don't take them, and it's much easier. It isn't a slider, it's choices you make within the game and it has a massive effect.
I'm clean. I don't whack innocents. I defend myself, but only to the necessary extent, I don't shoot without doing my homework first. I have very few combat problems. I don't fight ships aligned to the major powers, so when I'm up the Creek I - effectively - get my AI wingmen from police action.
It's all common sense. And in the Manual, too.
Players need to stop;
Taking high-paying missions, without the experience or equipment to complete them.
Taking pot-shots at every wanted ship, without thought for its allegiance.
Breaking the law.
Trucking expensive cargo manifests through dangerous territory.
Using NPC kills to push a combat rating with low-value kills.
There is your difficulty control. High-paying missions pay well precisely because they're difficult and risky. Don't take them, and it's much easier. It isn't a slider, it's choices you make within the game and it has a massive effect.
I'm clean. I don't whack innocents. I defend myself, but only to the necessary extent, I don't shoot without doing my homework first. I have very few combat problems. I don't fight ships aligned to the major powers, so when I'm up the Creek I - effectively - get my AI wingmen from police action.
It's all common sense. And in the Manual, too.
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"As hard as programmably possible" was never going to be the high end. SJA has already said in discussions months ago that she could easily program an AI no player could beat. The hard part about her job is to make them realistically difficult but not impossible.
Having said that, yes I think we do pretty much agree on the fact that their skill should scale based on their combat rank. It now does and while it might be slightly rebalanced in the future it's not going away.
In this release, however, there were a lot of OTHER things introduced that combined with the perfectly reasonable AI changes to create a problem. One was the prevalence of engineer mods on NPCs. Without the AI changes the level to which NPCs had modded weapons wouldn't have been an issue, it would have made them "harder" across the board, particularly at higher ranks. Another was the tweaks to spawn rates/ranks of NPCs. With all these three stacked, however, the overall changes induced in the game were orders of magnitude broader and stronger than FD intended. Few of us on here broke down the effects according to these three changes and hence averything was blamed on the most public change, the AI code.
Now FD are chopping the engineer mods off the AI so they can properly analyze data from the other changes without engineer mods muddying the waters, and we're getting folks screaming that the "AI is getting nerfed" when that's not the case at all.
However, the change does probably mean that the poll in this thread needs reset
And yet, people who have avoided all of those things are still getting bushwhacked. We've been over this in this thread many times.
That is possibly the most complete load of hogwash I have read over this entire situation. You show absolutely no understanding of statistics and make such amazingly blatant biased assumptions to try to bolster your viewpoint.
I suggest you take a chill pill - go have a break then come back here in a couple of days, read your post and be thoroughly embarrassed.
[rolleyes]
yikes pledge? i think notIf you dont take missions, dont have cargo, arent in powerplay and stay in high=sec you want get interdicted much at all anymore. But go in low-sec with a mission, cargo full of gold and registered to a power: interdiction carnage.
but i have seriously been considering getting a high value cargo and going to an anarchy and yelling all pirates are useless on local only i just got a mission update for a bonus if i could deliver in 6 m and as i drop out near the outpost destination i get jumped by a vicious viper mk iv. was a good fight i had 14k repairs 43k bounty on him in the sys and another 15k in alliance i need to collect.he opened fire as i was turning with beams and something that i dont know what it was. lots of sparkling dots all aimed in my direction in a sort of arrow pattern from across the bow of his ship. was so busy i didnt get the npc rank, but it was a good fight took about 4 or 5 minutes. he kept overshooting behind me so we wound up doing the jousting. then the federal rapid response team 'deployed' so i let them get his shields down and zapped him with my multis. had to do it that way because the only part of my canopy not cracked was dead ahead and my hud was all messed up too except the reticle.
tbh if i had had the same opponent in 2.0 it wouldnt have been so much damage i would probably got behind them and stayed there. i think the AI is intact. and im pretty sure this one wasnt dangerous or above rank.
The exact implementation would need to be thrashed out better. However, rank degredation on ship destruction would work on an ongoing basis for you but you'd have to accept occasional ship destruction as a part of the game. If you always win at a given combat level then you'll actually be ready to progress up the difficulty, remember that it won't be two stages (easy and hard) but a progression, so as you move to the next rank it wouldn't suddenly be "everything kills you" but it is harder and you either have to get better or a couple of deaths and you'll be back down in rank. Either way I don't think you can expect never to meet anything that is likely to kill you.
Nice, I want a Courier badly but I haven't worked up enough rank to get one yet. I do love taking my Imperial Eagle into combat though, I even prefer it over my Vulture. I just find it more fun to fight in.
Believe me or not, I have quite good understanding of statistics. And my understanding of statistics help me to know, that any forum vote (everywhere, not only in E-D related forums) is biased to more in-depth knowlege of the game, more hours in game etc. Simply, from the statistical point of view, the forum users are not a valid sample at all. The majority is much worse in playing skill and vote according to it. Everytime.
i put some ideas on suggestions in a thread about the combat ranks need redoing for npc geneation. those are the fully fleshed out options but it would have a decay and combat rank can be capped at a level if a player doesnt want to rise any higher or indeed wishes to drop back to a level.. it also proposes that all ranks above competent you have to earn them and then keep going to stay there - particularly i propose not only should people have to earn elite rank - they will need to earn the right to stay there as it will decay away very quickly without combat.
Thank you for being considerate in your request for us to be considerate to your wishes for the game. A nice change of pace from all of the ankle-biting and crying that everyone else has been doing.
The issue with making the difficulty selective in one mode and not the other, I.E. making Solo play variable in difficulty and Open the same difficulty for everyone, is that you only have one save shared between all of them.
This means that it's exploitable by people who don't want to work for their rewards, and they will use it to circumvent penalties in Open Play that wouldn't exist in Solo. I'll provide some examples.
First and most obvious: I play in Open but in Open money is harder to earn than in Solo since the theoretical new changes to Solo which have introduced an Easy difficulty. If I see something I want added to the game that's going to take me a significant amount of time to earn money for, I could go to Solo, set it to easy, and earn that reward in a fraction of the amount of time it would take me to earn it in Open, then skip back to Open and I would have an advantage over everyone who decided to stay and play in Open since I keep my rewards. This will result in a trend where everyone starts dropping out of Open to earn credits, reputation and materials at the faster rate because they don't want to be disadvantaged against anyone else who also does this.
Edit: I forgot to include more than one example... OOPS.
Secondly, I could do the same with reputation, earning it in Solo faster than in Open.
Thirdly, I could do it to fix my mistakes without having to worry about the penalties of those mistakes. Say I get a bad reputation with a faction and that faction becomes hostile, while I'm deep in their territory. I can log in to Solo, change the difficulty to easy and leave their territory much more easily than I could by staying in open, on top of being able to change my reputation back to friendly faster and easier by doing the required tasks in Solo.
The immediate response to this is to make Commander save files separate for each instance: Open, Solo and Private. Sadly this idea has been rejected by both the devs and the community, and for good reason. From a technical standpoint the game is not in a great position, and there are often times when Open play is not functioning. During these times Open players have to date been able to drop to Solo or Private to continue playing, but unique saves between all of the play modes would be a huge detriment to what has been a saving grace for many players in the face of FDev's continued technical problems with their server structure, especially in the United States.
There have been hundreds of pages of discussion on this topic scattered about, in different places and times. It is the proverbial dead horse. There are also significant issues that would arise with some of the game's core design choices regarding the implementation of any type of adjustable difficulty, mainly that it would require a complete rework of how the Non Player Characters work, and that those changes would be so significant that many of the game's other mechanics would have to be changed to fit with them.
Feel free to continue asking questions and making suggestions though. we always enjoy the input when it's well thought out and presented politely. Sadly this is almost never the case with the rest of the community.
On a final note I'd like to point out a maxim that has been true about game design since man decided to waste his time playing them, going back to skipping stones and rolling dice.
If you cater to everyone, you satisfy no one.
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+1 Enopho's Grandfather, you hit the nail on the head
Lol, I said that only to make the point that the upper limit can go as high as the hardcore player base want it to.
I actually meant that the AI scales with the player's combat rank. Mostly in what players get interdicted by rather than what they go hunting for. If someone goes hunting in a HazRes then they would still expect the hardest opponents regardless of their rank. So while Dangerous, Deadly and Elite CMDRs do get very hard AI with full engineer mods and a bit of AI cheating;harmless, mostly harmless and Novice pilots would be attacked in normal space by lower ranked AI. With a whole host of factors that could increase the rank of the AI that spawns for them.
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somebody please tell me wedding barges have some unique material i need for engineers so i have an exxcuse to massacre them. the inane drivel in local by them is driving me NUTS. get a private bloody channel for a private bloody wedding.
and the sun shining off the hud console plus the icy canopy is taking realism in a game too far...
and the sun shining off the hud console plus the icy canopy is taking realism in a game too far...
Wow... what a lot to read!
The answer to the poll (in my eyes) is yes to all. Could it be changed to please everyone? Perhaps...
"It's too easy!"
Moving forward, high ranks could use adaptive logic. This just means the harder you fought, the harder the AI could fight. Would hopefully mean a good challenge for skilled players.
"It's just right."
Perhaps, but I could take it down a notch and throw in more tactics to create a more enjoyable and less predictable experience.
"It's too hard!"
Adaptive logic could dynamically downgrade AI performance to give players a chance. E.g. player is fleeing... Pirate AI could downgrade its weapon accuracy and boosting ability, giving the player a good chance to escape.
Well, just some of my own personal thoughts.
* Tweak the low rank NPCs down for new players. + no engenier mods, no extra smart movement. Let them be the dumb training puppets like in 2.0
* Adjust low/mid ranks, make them not to out-turn a Vulture or FAS and not to crack python/conda/... shields within seconds. No extra firepower/engeneer mods plz. Just make them a tiny little bit smarter than in 2.0 to maneuver more efficient.
* Reduce higher rank NPCs usage of engeneer mods and keep the AI as smart as it is right now. (These mods are by design rare things. Kinda unrealisitc that 5 Engeneers in the Galaxy equip thousands of random NPCs)
* Make Elite NPC realy hard and with loads of engeneer mods. AND make them really really rare but with huge bounties on their heads. They should feel like real boss fights and reward the player for beeing brave (and skilled) enough to fight and kill them. This could be those extremly high valuable assasination missions. Just make Elite NPCs something special. And no "swing by party killer" in a High REZ zone.
Let the players decide if the want to make 2-3 mil. $ in a high rez zone, repeating over and over, or give then the opportunity of risk/real boss fights through assa. missions by hunting and killing an elite pirate leader for the same amount of money.
To force players to decide wether they all ahve to do all missions, or to force them into the opposite and let them grind is the worg way. Let us decide how we like to play. Just give us different opportunities, that are equaly woth our time spending.
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