Adaptive difficulty?

[Fr33k]

I too am not a fan of adaptive scaling. as others said, Obilivion did this, it was an awful idea.
Also, I worked/ground hard to get to the point where (if i want) I have little to fear unless I choose to put myself in a difficult situation, which is how I think it should be really (and what Oblivion didn't do. why to highmen have obsidian armour!!!)
That said, if I do what a tough fight, I'll take a viper or vulture into fight, or solo wing missions, but I choose to do rather than have it forced on me.
I certainly wouldn't be against certain instances of a harder difficulty, maybe an occasional 'extreme intensity' zone, or 'Elite Black' mission, or 'threat level 20', whatever.
The game has been designed around choice, so I think the retroactively making everything adaptive would certainly annoy me, and I'd guess others too, but I doubt people would complain about more choice.

edit: spelling

 

[TheDragon2001]

To some extent, but a wing assassination mission can still cause me problems even in a fully engineered combat ship. I have had to bug out on occasion even in those or only completed having taken a ton of damage.

I fly a B-A rated Cutter with G3-4 and Elite Wing Assassinations missions are easy and boring.

I would like better difficulty scaling but not adaptive. I would like to be able to go into the occasional High CZ and go out in the fighter for fun without having to worry about my crew letting the ship get blown to bits.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

I fly a B-A rated Cutter with G3-4 and Elite Wing Assassinations missions are easy and boring.

Bully for you!

 

[denispage]

After you upgrade the weapons and suit, it's extremely easy to solo any combat mission and conflict zones.
The AI it's dumb, and their weapons seems to not be engineered too.
I think Fdev knows that, and I'll fix in the future (hope).

 

[Jukelo]

Didn't like scaling mobs in Morrowind and Oblivion, and I certainly wont like them in ED.
One of the core concepts behind the game is that you're just a guy, not the chosen one. It would make no sense for the world at large to care about you. Any player based scaling should only happen in specific cases, as is the case already, when some NPCs are sent after you specifically.

BGS conditions should drive NPC scaling, such that a player would pick one system over another depending on how dangerous (and thus profitable) they want the experience to be.
That was the idea behind high and low sec of course, but in practice the idea of any kind of risk/reward balance was thrown out the window long ago starting with the Engineers powercreep, the constant nerfing of the NPCs' ability to interdict a player, no rework of highwaking, and the general lack of high end NPCs to actually threaten the player.

 

[Misty_Dark]

After you upgrade the weapons and suit, it's extremely easy to solo any combat mission and conflict zones.
The AI it's dumb, and their weapons seems to not be engineered too.
I think Fdev knows that, and I'll fix in the future (hope).

Well they did do it before. the backlash was huge. They beefed up the AI, and they got all the bad traits from facing off against overpowered AI, that most players felt was unfair, with very few misses with fixed weapons etc.


I do not think adaptive difficulty scaling is the solution.

We should start to leverage other things in the game, so that it actually matters. Like the security level of a system, now the player have a choice, to seek out danger. Just like how some missions spawns NPC that is scaled according to mission level, your combat level and what ship you are flying. And adding a route plot option to what security level you want to plot in, like no real danger, only high security, but you might have to make a longer journey. or do you dare to allow to pass through this anarchy system, and skip 10 jumps? Player choice for what risk level they are comfortably with. I know that this is a strange concept to some players, but there are many ways to play this game, and as many reasons for why people play this game.

That is why stuff like Thargoid battle is not pushed onto us. we can largely totally ignore Thargoids, unless you happens to have your home base be invaded, and those odds are not high...

So instead trying to add something very hard to get right, adaptive difficulty, give us more options, like more signal sources, with higher difficulty, that can contain tougher enemies, larger fleet of enemies, etc, etc. and also more variations of what the Enemies flies. It is boring to have the same FDL with 2-3 Vultures in a Wing when hunting a Wing Pirate Lord... The non Wing versions have them flying Corvettes, Pythons etc. more variations!

So this will allow players to choose their comfort level and those of us who like tough combat, can go and pick that Pirate Signal source threat level 10 etc and the same with Thargoids, just spam out higher level signal sources, to give the top level Xeno hunters something to work on..so if I struggle at Xeno threat level 8, The Xeno hunters, might be doing threat level 15 and trying to beat that level to unlock 16... and of course, in the end, these are highly unfair fights, but that is for the top 1% of combat players in this field to deal with, while all the regular combat players, can enjoy a more relaxed combat experience, and from time to time, go to a tougher level to push their own limit...

 

[Fake Newts]

I would rather the game just offer higher difficulty content and reward it appropriately. I agree with a lot of what you're saying, OP, and L4D is great, but while the AI director elevates that game, I don't think adaptive difficulty would be a good fit for Elite because of how the BGS works, mainly. You need to have content produce the same results for everyone because many players are engaging in this competitively-by-proxy.

I agree that Spec Ops often make CZs grindy rather than actually challenging for a seasoned player. Most of the veteran players in my group have transferred their expectations from "challenging space fights" to "maximising how quickly you can churn" so as to pump out the most war INF per hour, not that the latter can't be satisfying in its own way but it's not the same as the game actually presenting a threat. This issue is compounded by the fact that Spec Ops also don't give you a sizeable reward of any kind, so not only are they bullet-spongey-yet-anemic threat, they also don't have a big INF or cash reward waiting to make it seem worth it.

I also play a lot of FPS games and while I'm by no means an MLG pro gamer I am already extremely bored of ground combat because it's just plain bullying and unlike space zones I'm actually gated by how fast stuff spawns rather than how fast I can kill, so I can't even transfer my enjoyment to making small time gains. This means that I will probably just stop engaging in ground CZs altogether because I've got no room to grow.

The other side of this issue is that there are lots of players who are maybe less familiar with shooters who really struggle with this content and if they found themselves sharing a zone with someone who was pushing the adaptive difficulty up, they would suffer. Doesn't really work in a pseudo-MMO.

 

[denispage]

Well they did do it before. the backlash was huge. They beefed up the AI, and they got all the bad traits from facing off against overpowered AI, that most players felt was unfair, with very few misses with fixed weapons etc.


I do not think adaptive difficulty scaling is the solution.

We should start to leverage other things in the game, so that it actually matters. Like the security level of a system, now the player have a choice, to seek out danger. Just like how some missions spawns NPC that is scaled according to mission level, your combat level and what ship you are flying. And adding a route plot option to what security level you want to plot in, like no real danger, only high security, but you might have to make a longer journey. or do you dare to allow to pass through this anarchy system, and skip 10 jumps? Player choice for what risk level they are comfortably with. I know that this is a strange concept to some players, but there are many ways to play this game, and as many reasons for why people play this game.

That is why stuff like Thargoid battle is not pushed onto us. we can largely totally ignore Thargoids, unless you happens to have your home base be invaded, and those odds are not high...

So instead trying to add something very hard to get right, adaptive difficulty, give us more options, like more signal sources, with higher difficulty, that can contain tougher enemies, larger fleet of enemies, etc, etc. and also more variations of what the Enemies flies. It is boring to have the same FDL with 2-3 Vultures in a Wing when hunting a Wing Pirate Lord... The non Wing versions have them flying Corvettes, Pythons etc. more variations!

So this will allow players to choose their comfort level and those of us who like tough combat, can go and pick that Pirate Signal source threat level 10 etc and the same with Thargoids, just spam out higher level signal sources, to give the top level Xeno hunters something to work on..so if I struggle at Xeno threat level 8, The Xeno hunters, might be doing threat level 15 and trying to beat that level to unlock 16... and of course, in the end, these are highly unfair fights, but that is for the top 1% of combat players in this field to deal with, while all the regular combat players, can enjoy a more relaxed combat experience, and from time to time, go to a tougher level to push their own limit...

Players without proper equipment don't go in areas with high level npcs. As simple as that.
The game give you the option to (urgh) grind and get all upgraded.

 

[nemolomen]

I prefer to play the game with the minimum equipment I can barely get by on, or even not get by on at first, and then increase my skill level to get better and then move up to higher difficulty, rinse and repeat.

I would rather spend my effort making the game challenging than making it easy.

 

[denispage]

I prefer to play the game with the minimum equipment I can barely get by on, or even not get by on at first, and then increase my skill level to get better and then move up to higher difficulty, rinse and repeat.

I would rather spend my effort making the game challenging than making it easy.

And it's easier to implement since you can divide in area levels.
Like they do with 'Pirate Activity" and Thargoid non-human signals.

 

[Ambient.Impact]

It feels like maybe one or two of you get what I'm saying and lot aren't, or just hear the term "adaptive difficulty" and are talking about something else.

Implementing something like the AI Director from Left 4 Dead doesn't preclude player choice or varying levels of difficulty; that game had several difficulty levels you could choose from, so there were more variables at play than just the AI Director being a thing. This would augment threat levels and player choice, not do away with them.

Then there are people who seem to only remember games where it was implemented poorly. I can almost guarantee you that you've played games that had some form of it but you didn't notice it or think anything of it because it just worked. Played Half-Life 2 and its episodes? The episodes had some adaptive difficulty stuff, but you likely didn't notice because it just worked and felt natural.

To clarify what I mean when I say adaptive difficulty (or any other name you want to give it):
the game introduces mechanics/gameplay depending on various criteria to make it more challenging.

For example, if you're steamrolling a high intensity surface conflict zone:

• Your side doesn't send as many reinforcements or as quickly (since you're clearly able to handle things), while the enemy sends more reinforcements or more quickly to try to overwhelm you.
• The enemy sends in more sharpshooters or other things that force you to be more careful or tactical. Your side doesn't bother as much with these, because they're (lore-wise) more highly trained than the usual soldiers so why put your assets in danger when you don't need to.
• Enemies could be more aggressive, both with strikers charging at you (within reason), and with how much they try to flush you out of cover with grenades and by other means.

In all of these examples, your upgrades still very much matter, making one on one engagements easy enough but making the overall conflict zone more complex and challenging due to gameplay, not beefing up enemies' stats.

Similar concepts can be applied to combat in space.

What I don't mean: scale up a Sidewinder or on foot NPCs so that they can facetank a fully engineered Corvette or a fully engineered/upgraded suit. Not even close. Upgrades still matter and make a big difference.

 

[varonica]

Adaptive difficulty means adapting the difficulty of the game threats to players, this is the meaning of the term, it indocates nothing about the ability and skill of players. It requires that threats encountered by low level players in a given area pose the same threat to them as to a much higher level player. But adaptive difficulty can only work based on player stats, when you have a game where the player ability is mostly determined by their equipment it becomes hard.

I do recall in Atlantica Online with adaptive difficulty dungeons, scaling dungeons that scale to the level of the player. As a long time player at max level 130 with +10 weapons and armour I could single hit anything, a new player with basic armour and weapons, which is all they could afford, struggled to get through. If I went in with the same level armour and guns, say on level or the level previous +2's or similar I would also have to struggle.

Adaptive difficulty is hard to get right, I haven't really played any games that apply it 100% succesfully, and with Elites range of gear I can't see adaptive difficulty based on player stats being at all workable.

 

[Misty_Dark]

Players without proper equipment don't go in areas with high level npcs. As simple as that.
The game give you the option to (urgh) grind and get all upgraded.

and that is not adaptive difficulty...
And when they made NPC tougher, it was affecting all NPC's... so there was little choice for players to pick and choose difficulty, and it was definitely NOT adapting to the players skill and gear.

 

[Sysmon]

Adaptive difficulty is really only useful when the game board is limited in size. The ED universe is for all practical purposes unlimited.

S

 

[EdzUp]

What I would like to see is Elite 1's space where Anarchy systems were like Riedquat and high sec systems were like Leesti. In Riedquat we had everything, pirates turning up at all times a constant fight to get to the station it was "anarchy". Leesti on the other hand was just jumping to the station a walk in the park.

What we need is areas of space that are HOSTILE to newbs, once you get better at playing then you can tentatively venture in there. At present I can fly to EVERY system in the galaxy (yes all 400 billion of em) in a starting Sidey it shouldn't be that way there should be places I would fear to tread as a Harmless.

 

[Sellias]

Really not a fan of adaptive difficulty. I played couple of games with it and really invalitaded my effort after losing a couple times and the difficulty went down. Dropped those games immediately.

As others have mentioned difficulty would be best determined by BGS states system security states That's way more immersive.

The problem is (mentioned this in another thread) difficulty design overall in Elite is a
Spaghettified mess, that would require several major reworks in different areas. And it is extremely unlikely this will ever get reworked in a proper way sadly.

One can dream though

 

[Nomex_G]

Outside of Thargoid combat... How it usually goes:

First off, nice videos of slaying in game, keep up the good work.

I love your loadout, please feel free to share what your rocking in your equipment.

Second, I'm all for adaptive difficulty, in certain areas, maybe even in most... not sure, haven't put that much thought into it since each build seems to add some noticeable level of complexity for the CZs AI... I guess I am assuming that they will continue to do so.

As far as the CZs current difficulty level (I find myself in your shoes here, not enough challenge with good equipment), I have approached it in two ways.

1) I will use only level 1 (newb) equipment and armaments which makes me respect incoming fire, maximize my cover and accuracy to make it more challenging for myself. However, what I found was that it was taking a LONG time to win the CZ... and well, heck, I'm greedy... so that lead to 2) Me just accepting the current AI limitations (again, banking on the next build or one soon after, to bring more techniques, tactics, and strategies to updated AI behavior), and I now bring the best I have to harvest just as quickly as I can in order to maximize my 300k bonus while I harvest as many cherries to boost my $ per min.

Interested to see what the future brings, enjoying the game a lot right now as a new player, and I make plenty of money slaying cherries and running all kinds of missions.

Cheers!