Difficulty scaling making waves easier? No, just no

[Hatesandwich]

To all the ppl saying that players are jumping the gun with opinions before seeing it in action...


What if TWI suddenly announced next WWAUT that all default gun skins would start having MLP themed decals on them?
Would it be okay for players to voice their negative opinions?
Or would you then say, hey you can't make that opinion yet because you haven't seen exactly what shade of blue they're using for twilight sparkle.


The extreme aesthetic example aside...yeah certainly there's a variety of ways they could approach this, and perhaps the end result may not be something that stands out or is particularly offensive. But I think it's fair for players (both for and against) to be speaking up right now at the first mention of it so that TWI at least has some community feedback right from the start as they're designing it.

I mean, do we really want TWI to introduce a massive gameplay tweak that half of 'us' don't like, and then we argue for months before they even incorporate some community ideas.

This is good. For instance, it's already interesting that different forum-goers have raised the idea of diff-up vs diff-down.

Someone mentioning some awful scenarios from L4D2 (which was my first thought when I read the update news).

Someone mentioning the issue of hard potentially becoming weak suicidal when all you want is to play hard while drunk (okay, that drunk comment is from me).

Again, esp regarding that last example, we don't have the exact details yet, and maybe it wouldn't become a weak suicidal. But, I think it's helpful for TWI to know these sentiments now as opposed to later.

Here's the issue with your comparison:
If tripwire said they were adding MLP skins, we'd know exactly what that means. It means they're adding MLP skins; skins with MLP decals, etc.
The difference is that when tripwire says they're thinking of adding dynamic difficulty, you don't know what that encompasses. There's a difference, don't distill the argument down to a false comparison; the issue isn't that people are complaining about something, the issue is that they don't even know what in the hell they're complaining about; it's not in yet, we don't even know in what way it'd change things. We know what an MLP skin would do, it's a skin. We don't know what "Dynamic Difficulty" encompasses. Again, don't distill things down with these inaccurate comparisons.

 

[Shambler]

When I read that part of the WWAUT I actually had to do a double take and read it again.

Why?

Whhhyyyyyyyyyy?

How am I supposed to feel accomplished for finishing a game if I know (edit: Or just think) that the game was rigged to let me win?

 

[Hatesandwich]

This is obviously something to help the poor console players in the future. I mean, how are they otherwise supposed to beat Hell on Earth with a gamepad?

I see huge problems both with the difficulty scaling up and it scaling down. However you look at it, this "feature" will encourage ****ty gameplay. If you play ****ty, the game will be easier for you, so people will just go around letting themselves get hit and stuff, in order for the final waves to become easier. It's literally the worst idea yet.

Pretty sure the worst idea yet was letting you out of the box to make an unsolicited "lol console sucks if you use a controller you suck" post.
Please, remain in the box until such a time as you can have a civil discussion.

When I read that part of the WWAUT I actually had to do a double take and read it again.

Why?

Whhhyyyyyyyyyy?

How am I supposed to feel accomplished for finishing a game if I know (edit: Or just think) that the game was rigged to let me win?

Counter: If you do well, the game gets rigged against you, and you'll feel like a hardass. (Presumably, we still have no clue)

 

[Shambler]

Counter: If you do well, the game gets rigged against you, and you'll feel like a hardass. (Presumably, we still have no clue)

How will I be able to tell between if I'm doing badly and the game is getting easier or if I'm doing well and the game is getting harder?

This just seems so sterile, it's a feeling which made me unable to enjoy L4D. I really really don't want this.

 

[oldmidget]

i dont see why they'd make it a necessity. if they just kept the regular options as well then that would be good.

the way i see it is it will allow the people who only play normal/hard a way to step up difficulties.

 

[Difficulty]

Pretty sure the worst idea yet was letting you out of the box to make an unsolicited "lol console sucks if you use a controller you suck" post.
Please, remain in the box until such a time as you can have a civil discussion.

You mean to tell me it's not a lot harder to play this game with a controller than with a keyboard and a mouse?

 

[random]

Regardless if this could be implemented in a "good way", i dont think i could ever like it and it seems very possible for it to bring more problems than solutions since it would be even harder to tweak than the current system.

-it can make the game harder overall not because of the difficulty itself but the unpredictability to the average player.
-then there will be people that will predict it and hold back and do not so good on purpose.

 

[Ydiss]

I agree because it reminds of the "director" from L4D2 - do fine and you will see 3 tanks, 5 hunters, 3 smokers, 2 jokeys, 3 chargers and 2 spitters at the same time.
Seriously, this have nothing to do with how good you are doing. The game doesn't see it this way, its just numbers, you "pass" certain value and you get ****ed, thats bs.
I still have nightmares about one time in L4D2 when we were doing great, killing swarms, one-two special infected occasionally and then suddenly 2 tanks appear at once, we try to run n gun but in the same exact time 3 of us get caught by 3 smokers, the 4th guy gets dragged by 4th smoker but a hunter jumps on him and I saw 2 more hunters jumping around. Wtf was that? Good balancing? No, thats just the game thinking "the players are doing alright because they know what they are doing - lets **** THEM UP FOR SURE!"

I call this FORCED LOSS. Because its not your team who screwed up its the game who decided that you HAVE to die. No matter how good you are, the game throws everything on you and you simply can't keep up managing to kill all enemies.

Actually, the director wasn't there to make the difficulty scale higher if you did too well. And it didn't actually do that.

The reason the director was required is because L4D didn't have waves and spawn locations weren't fixed. Valve quite rightly feel that a positive game experience requires peaks and troughs of intensity, not constantly intense for too long (causes gaming fatigue) and not too quiet for too long (causes boredom). All of the director's coding was based on how intense it thought the players felt based on various factors (damage taken, shots fired, movement etc) and it would only reduce the intensity after a certain time frame had passed. Then the counters worked in reverse until it was time to ramp it up.

What it didn't do, ever, was make the difficulty setting change. Hard never got worse than hard could ever be. In fact, the difficulty setting directly impacted the various thresholds that controlled the director, if I recall correctly. If the survivors played in Easy mode and absolutely aced it, because they were skilled enough to handle Hard, the game never got harder than Easy... They just aced it.

There's a significant difference between the way the director worked and difficulty scaling (what this thread is discussing). KF2 has waves. It doesn't need a director algorithm to measure intensity because the waves and the midwave delay already give us intensity and breaks.

I tend to agree that difficulty variables should not change just because someone is playing in the wrong difficulty setting.

But I see nothing wrong with a new mode that has upward scaling (and it should start on the highest difficulty). This would give the very best players, who have maxed everything out, a mode that will scale to their skills and (theoretically) always provide them with a challenge.

But default skill scaling isn't a good idea. I just wanted to point out that L4D didn't have this. The director was a pretty damned good piece of coding and was very well executed.

 

[Shadaaaa]

I'd rather have a endless wave mode where I can challenge to the limit, instead of having this dynamic difficulty thing. Seems pointless when we can choose the difficulty ourselves already.

 

[xmrmeow]

Ye I think difficulty of the game is in a pretty good spot in terms of waves of zeds and how strong the zeds are. I think if anything drastic is to be changed, it should be put in a new difficulty or kept as a mod.

E.g. If I'm doing really well on HOE and it's too easy, just make a new difficulty. If HOE is too hard, but suicidal is too easy, put a difficulty between them.

 

[oldmidget]

in general i think people are assuming too much.

i think we all should at least try what tripwire designs as opposed to telling them to stop it.

 

[Ydiss]

Ye I think difficulty of the game is in a pretty good spot in terms of waves of zeds and how strong the zeds are. I think if anything drastic is to be changed, it should be put in a new difficulty or kept as a mod.

E.g. If I'm doing really well on HOE and it's too easy, just make a new difficulty. If HOE is too hard, but suicidal is too easy, put a difficulty between them.

If anything, I think that new mode should be the only one that scales. Then, the theory is, there won't be a need to constantly add new modes to keep the very best players challenged.

 

[tijolol]

First, try it out. THEN condemn it. As Hatesandwich has already covered.

 

[Shambler]

I just want to know why.

Why suddenly decide to add this thing that half the players already hate and the other half don't care about?

Edit: Why??? What for?? For what purpose??

 

[Nenga]

I dont know I think it could be nice. I'll have to see how it's implemented.

Think of how it is currently, if your entire squad wipes and you survive alone, unless you're on normal then you just die. That's something people (myself included) have been complaining about for awhile.

Also think about L4D's director. If you're doing bad it might not spawn a tank, or might give you a health kit where pills might be. That could solve ammo problems if you're running low on ammo and it tells the game to spawn more ammo in. Or a new player joins on a later wave so it spawns a few more weapons around the map.

This seems like it could solve problems people have been complaining about for awhile without changing the base balance of the game. Also there's quite a gap to bridge when moving up the difficulty ladder. New AI, new attacks, zeds being more tanky, it could also help the newer players get used to a difficulty so they're not as bad as they're famous for. We're seeing in the game that if a person dies they leave the server, they don't stay and watch and learn how to play the game better. Yeah it could be done poorly but this could also be a really good thing.

 

[random]

First, try it out. THEN condemn it. As Hatesandwich has already covered.

I'm not saying this is necessarily the case, but could be. Since the base system isnt balanced yet, it would seem like a lot of work to implement it properly and for it to not just be a patchwork solution to current balance issues, and it could be that such amount of work might not be worth it if a high number of the playerbase is against the very concept of the idea.

All that said i think it could be interesting as a separate difficulty or gamemode, but to force all players to such a drastic change this late in the game has a lot of potential for discontent.

 

[Angry Hillbilly]

How about we stop speculating and getting out the pitch forks and torches and bloomin wait until we actually see what this director or whatever they call it actually works.

 

[M1_Account]

This thread was made yesterday evening. I'm so happy to see it. Since I gave my initial reaction in the WWAUT thread and on Reddit, I was wondering if I was the only one who cared. Where were y'all in the WWAUT thread? ;p

Anyway, I'm glad to see some feedback from other people here.
As I mentioned, I think having a wave's "intensity" possibly scale down if a team isn't doing so hot really defeats the purpose of playing on HoE. Furthermore, it flies in the face of some of the major design decisions behind Killing Floor, both 1 and 2. The way the economy of a game ties in with player performance over the course of the entire game in KF is a subject I could go on for many paragraphs, and a "conductor" comparable to L4D's "director" is totally counter to this.

I wanna address a few specific posts ITT
Hatesandwich's original post, oldmidgets's, and tijolol's

You all have a good point in noting that we know almost no details of the conductor system. I mentioned this myself twice in my initial response in the WWAUT thread.
But there is no harm in letting TW know what we think about the very premise they seem to be suggesting. The idea of letting a game's difficulty scale up or down depending on player performance is itself something I'm critical of. I don't need to see it implemented in the game to take issue with it. The exact numbers that might be tweaked, for example, are irrelevant to me when I don't think it should be happenning at all.
Of course, there are probably various ways TW could put this in that I'd be fine with (such as making it optional, something I also already mentioned). Someone earlier ITT mentioned that it might only affect weapon/ammo appearance rates, which would probably also be fine. And that could very well be all the system is meant to affect.

But regardless of the details, the game is in EA for a reason, and the WWAUT posts are there for a reason. TW wants feedback, ideas, etc. We're telling them what we think about this idea. That's it, no harm done.

Anyway, I've actually been thinking about this a lot lately. I think it's a much bigger deal than any temporary Demo nerf or potential future Demo buff. I really can't wait to see how this is gonna be implemented, even if (or perhaps especially if) it ends up being in a disappointing way.

 

[xrider84]

I hope TW reads these. It seems obvious the majority of players don't want this system.

If you suck, get better. Plain and simple. Here's another idea! Quit leveling up using the script or cheat maps, then maybe you might get a clue how to play and survive.

I don't want this implemented. I don't know who came up with this idea, but it needs to be tossed out. Continue working on developing the game TW. You're doing really great work. All the maps are fun and unique. The perks are all awesome. The gameplay is solid as it is. No need to try and fix something that isn't broken. I say toss this goofy idea out the window and concentrate on finishing the product at hand.

 

[Shambler]

Why wont TW just refine and polish the good mechanics and design they already have instead of ham-fisting in poorly thought out additions?

They haven't even sorted out the half arsed perk skills, like why give each perk 10 skills when you clearly couldn't think of that many? Is there some idea guy who is really good at selling ideas but gives no details? Are the team just bored of their own game?

Why would this possibly add to the game? Best case scenario of a director like this is that the players don't notice it messing with the game so why even add it!? It will either be un-noticed or it will be another broken and buggy novelty that gets in the way.

Most the difficultly complaints are around how hard some individual zeds are, not about volume or timing (other than end of wave but that has a far easier fix) so how could you ever come up with this as a solution?!