Ways to go hardcore on our own...
- Thread starter Steel Warrior
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Don't worry, even if devs will not provide an official option for tweaking difficulty, some tech-savvy players will make a mod.
I like how old games handled this thing. Blazkowicz with a nipple in his mouth and reproof in his eyes will always follow me
Its hard to say. What little footage i saw had only light militia vehicles on hand. I know the OLD early gameplay footage had a heavier tank thay took a beating before it went down.
I imagine that wouldnt be very hard.
Somewhere in a file it would be a line in the turret code saying "init_track = 4", just change it to 5. **loose example. Lol**
Somewhere in a file it would be a line in the turret code saying "init_track = 4", just change it to 5. **loose example. Lol**
By volume, almost all of the missions with lots of vees were low-difficulty. The vees there were all pre-damaged (or poorly maintained, if you want to call it that), so they only had about 25% to 50% of their normal armor. That's why they exploded if you looked at them.
Id do the 'increased vehicle durability'. The 1-2 shotting them like they are no threat at all is kinda dorky.
I'm thinking about waiting for a couple of month for someone to make a pile of mods to make campaign at least slightly challenging, and sticking to multiplayer in the meantime. A shame that devs in the current year consider game journalists and letsplayers a more important target audience than gamers and adjust the game difficulty accordingly.
I sort of agree with the sentiment, but the game might get a lot harder soon. Part of the reason the streamers can't show the next mission might be that it is super cool and will absolutely destroy mere mortals.
I dont think its that black and white at all. There are many variables here. One, it needs to be accessible to a new target market, and building the game expecting everyone who plays it to know Battletech is a great way for commercial failure. The otherside of it is the partnership with Paradox. They would have expectations and demands HBS would need to honor, including which target markets their game needs to appeal to. I cant say im a big fan of them not self publishing as planned, but then again i imagine a 2 year, expensive as hell lawsuit demands compromise, and i doubt HBS could fight it in court and still afford marketting.
Ultimately the game appears easy to mod, i suspect the modding community will be ambitious and dedicated (aka mektek days of old), and the more copies this game sells the more chances we have af future installments that maybe tickle our particular tastes. If anything the only missed opportunity here is some sort of "battletrch elite" toggle at the games start to ramp up the challenge. But in every kickstarter game theres always schedule pressure.
Ultimately the game appears easy to mod, i suspect the modding community will be ambitious and dedicated (aka mektek days of old), and the more copies this game sells the more chances we have af future installments that maybe tickle our particular tastes. If anything the only missed opportunity here is some sort of "battletrch elite" toggle at the games start to ramp up the challenge. But in every kickstarter game theres always schedule pressure.
I don't understand this shaming of game journalists, streamers/letsplayers, and people who aren't extremely adept at video games (but enjoy them nonetheless). Not everyone who picks up a game is interested in, or capable of completing, a gruelling grind-fest that requires min-maxing and playing specific metas.
Getting a bit farther into the Cohh stream and it seems to me that the most blatant issue is really enemy units deploying with partial armor.
Even on his last video after about 10 hours into the campaign and going on what he called a 2.5 skull mission - he's running into Mechs with 50% of their armor shaved off before the shooting even starts.
This would be some seriously low hanging fruit for making things harder - it's almost surely a single line in the JSON files (or at least single lines affixed to a few variations of "cruddy armor").
Even on his last video after about 10 hours into the campaign and going on what he called a 2.5 skull mission - he's running into Mechs with 50% of their armor shaved off before the shooting even starts.
This would be some seriously low hanging fruit for making things harder - it's almost surely a single line in the JSON files (or at least single lines affixed to a few variations of "cruddy armor").
Yep this is the main issue with how easy it is. You dont even see a full armored mech until he gets the Argo. I am sure once you get into the meat of the game it should be better or it should be easy to mod it. I am sure this game will be like Xcom for me where I play it once as is and then mod to tailor to taste. I expect to play 100s of hours and hope it is a huge success.
Looking at Cohh stream the player can screw pretty badly for 10h and still be in very decent shape. The devs set the difficulty so low that for any competent player who has an average attention span I suspect it’s going to be smooth sailing. I think I’m going to wait for the official hard mode or some mods before buying the game. Alternatively, if it’s super easy I can try to make the adjustments myself.
It looks like the difficulty scales as the game progresses, so there should be one or more variables that could be adjusted to make this happen much sooner.
It will be quite easy to mod a number of files for difficulty. @HBS_Adarael noted a few officially endorsed toggles on difficulty were tucked into the JSONs which we could access on day 1 once we find them.
Indeed.
Most people want to be able to play the game and enjoy it, there is nothing wrong with that. I can understand it, even though I am looking for more challenging experience myself. Making game too niche is just as wrong as making it too bland. With the game being largely single-player oriented (let's not fool ourselves: "PvP multiplayer" is merely a skirmish mode and I doubt it becoming too popular, compared to what single-player can offer) I do hope there will be many easy to install mods - due to Battletech being "very modding-friendly" - to accomodate for everyone's taste, regardless of what their actual taste may be.
1. I plan to keep track of how many times each body part of each mech I own was destroyed, placing a perma-damage counter on the body part
2. And have a rule where the max armor of that body part is lowered by 5% for each perma-damage counter.
3. When I get a mech chassis part salvage that matches a mech I have I will sell it and roll a dice (not quite decided yet, but I am thinking D4) and that will be how many randomly selected perma-damage counters get removed. (simulating replacing permanently damaged chassis components) Also, the rule for using chassis parts will be to first use them to repair existing mechs when possible, rather than waiting to get a new one.
4.Heard there was a config setting in json to make cored mech be non-recoverable - plan to turn that on.
5. Restrict myself to always select hardest available mission, after filtering for roleplay alleigances. Only lowering the bar on that by 1 star if I lose a mission. Raise it back after 5 successful missions.
6. Only reload if there are clear bugs that broke a mission.
7. No firing pilots, and assign skill points randomly - do my best to adjust tactics to whatever I end up with. Only hire new pilots if I don't have 4 uninjured to run the next mission.
8. If 'chassis components' number to make a whole mech is moddable, I plan to set it at 9 - for each body part.
2. And have a rule where the max armor of that body part is lowered by 5% for each perma-damage counter.
3. When I get a mech chassis part salvage that matches a mech I have I will sell it and roll a dice (not quite decided yet, but I am thinking D4) and that will be how many randomly selected perma-damage counters get removed. (simulating replacing permanently damaged chassis components) Also, the rule for using chassis parts will be to first use them to repair existing mechs when possible, rather than waiting to get a new one.
4.Heard there was a config setting in json to make cored mech be non-recoverable - plan to turn that on.
5. Restrict myself to always select hardest available mission, after filtering for roleplay alleigances. Only lowering the bar on that by 1 star if I lose a mission. Raise it back after 5 successful missions.
6. Only reload if there are clear bugs that broke a mission.
7. No firing pilots, and assign skill points randomly - do my best to adjust tactics to whatever I end up with. Only hire new pilots if I don't have 4 uninjured to run the next mission.
8. If 'chassis components' number to make a whole mech is moddable, I plan to set it at 9 - for each body part.
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We haven't even seen missions past the halfway mark on the difficulty gauge. I think folks are reacting a little prematurely.
One thing to remember about why the streamers were chosen as they were is that they have a fairly decent audience. Most of that audience don't know the first thing about Battletech.
I still cringe when I hear people say things like "Oh is that the game based on MechWarrior?" who know only that series (if they even know it's a series, and only know MWO).
Streams like Cohhs are a quick and easy way to introduce them to the universe of BT, and it's fast enough that they'll pick up the general gist of it really easily. Hopefully they'll learn from mistakes Cohh makes early on, and not copy him verbatim, and maybe it'll be enough of a spark that they'll be interested in looking into the history of the universe which MWO severely lacks.
I hate to say it, but with the attention span of people today, they need a little hand holding to get into the meat of things, and Cohhs videos are a good way to do it.
They might see a little bit of themselves in him as he's learning on the fly, and can relate to his learning curve.
Those of us who are veteran TT players, who played the beta, and a host of other video games have a bit of a leg up on them, so we felt frustration at watching others play a game where what *should* be common knowledge (to us anyways) is something they have to learn the hard way.
I still cringe when I hear people say things like "Oh is that the game based on MechWarrior?" who know only that series (if they even know it's a series, and only know MWO).
Streams like Cohhs are a quick and easy way to introduce them to the universe of BT, and it's fast enough that they'll pick up the general gist of it really easily. Hopefully they'll learn from mistakes Cohh makes early on, and not copy him verbatim, and maybe it'll be enough of a spark that they'll be interested in looking into the history of the universe which MWO severely lacks.
I hate to say it, but with the attention span of people today, they need a little hand holding to get into the meat of things, and Cohhs videos are a good way to do it.
They might see a little bit of themselves in him as he's learning on the fly, and can relate to his learning curve.
Those of us who are veteran TT players, who played the beta, and a host of other video games have a bit of a leg up on them, so we felt frustration at watching others play a game where what *should* be common knowledge (to us anyways) is something they have to learn the hard way.