How difficult should Halo 4’s legendary difficulty be in terms of other video games?
List a video game and translate the difficulty for those who haven’t played it. Ex:
Dark Souls (purty difficult)
there is, in my opinion, a difference between a game that is challenging and one that is simply silly in its skewed odds
it shouldn’t be too difficult, like enemies just respawning after you hide for a minute. the grunts should at least throw off a better fight, but the other species can stay the same. if anything, make the opponents with armor and shields be like spartans and elites, not like the brutes where they’re tough to kill with body shots, but pop their helmets off and one shot them. i guess that would be a big concern.
there needs to be a mythic difficulty above legendary
As hard as Halo 2’s Legendary.
Dark Souls has a good type of difficulty. It forces you to learn from your mistakes and change your strategy. Halo often falls into the unfortunate “Angry Birds” brand of insanity. In many Halo games if you tried to do the same thing but simply refined your aim slightly, it would get you through the encounter.
The idea that you can do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result is not a good thing to have in a video game like Halo, because Halo is a game that really should encourage creative and organic solutions instead of simply becoming a testament to how good your shot is.
> Dark Souls has a good type of difficulty. It forces you to learn from your mistakes and change your strategy. Halo often falls into the unfortunate “Angry Birds” brand of insanity. In many Halo games if you tried to do the same thing but simply refined your aim slightly, it would get you through the encounter.
>
> The idea that you can do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result is not a good thing to have in a video game like Halo, because Halo is a game that really should encourage creative and organic solutions instead of simply becoming a testament to how good your shot is.
it might just be the RPGer in me but when you decide that allowing for Weapon “X” to do Y damage in the hands of the player but Y times 2 in the hands of an enemy is a good way to add difficulty then you failed
I think the campaign should have a difficulty where you can kill an elite general by simply tapping him, and a difficulty where you melee a grunt twice, empty a clip into it and stick it with a plasma and it’s still standing, and everything in between.
> it might just be the RPGer in me but when you decide that allowing for Weapon “X” to do Y damage in the hands of the player but Y times 2 in the hands of an enemy is a good way to add difficulty then you failed
In both games, the idea is that you should feel inferior in some way at harder difficulties. Halo usually does this with both AI and health. Good, smart AI that isn’t easily taken advantage of is much more difficult to produce than changing the damage tables.
> > it might just be the RPGer in me but when you decide that allowing for Weapon “X” to do Y damage in the hands of the player but Y times 2 in the hands of an enemy is a good way to add difficulty then you failed
>
> In both games, the idea is that you should feel inferior in some way at harder difficulties. Halo usually does this with both AI and health. Good, smart AI that isn’t easily taken advantage of is much more difficult to produce than changing the damage tables.
feel inferior is OK…skewing values to just put you at a disadvantage is just cheap
> feel inferior is OK…skewing values to just put you at a disadvantage is just cheap
How else then? Number of enemies?
Like I said, AI can only be so good, so game developers need to be able to change the balance of power for both story and gameplay reasons. If Halo was about the Master Chief fighting cavemen, then you may be able to justify numbers. However, this being an alien race with superior technology, the fact that they have better shielding systems than you do makes sense within the context.
> As hard as Halo 2’s Legendary.
Needs to be hard for the right reasons.
H2 Legendary difficulty traits:
-enemies try to keep you in their sights, sometimes ruining or hindering the stealth aspect
-your location determines enemy movement. This can be used advantageously in some scenarios, for some easy assassinations
-sometimes, there are infinitely spawning waves, encouraging you to proceed asap
> Dark Souls has a good type of difficulty. It forces you to learn from your mistakes and change your strategy. Halo often falls into the unfortunate “Angry Birds” brand of insanity. In many Halo games if you tried to do the same thing but simply refined your aim slightly, it would get you through the encounter.
>
> The idea that you can do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result is not a good thing to have in a video game like Halo, because Halo is a game that really should encourage creative and organic solutions instead of simply becoming a testament to how good your shot is.
The conventional means of combat in Halo can become so boring that I often have to resort to extraneous methods, such as luring a sword Goldie or Hunters to deal with Flood, assembling an army of insert AI here, arming AI with weapons they normally wouldn’t be using or employing AI that normally don’t exist at a particular point of the level, and using gun fire to alter AI behavior.
Though usually, a single object or wall or vehicle is sufficient. Still, it’s quite gratifying and I didn’t like how Reach kept me confined to conventional tactics. Getting assassinations can be easy for the wrong reasons, stealth is rare, shooting your sniper gets everyone’s attention. Which is why I prefer CE combat.
> > feel inferior is OK…skewing values to just put you at a disadvantage is just cheap
>
> How else then? Number of enemies?
>
> Like I said, AI can only be so good, so game developers need to be able to change the balance of power for both story and gameplay reasons. If Halo was about the Master Chief fighting cavemen, then you may be able to justify numbers. However, this being an alien race with superior technology, the fact that they have better shielding systems than you do makes sense within the context.
number of enemies, class of enemies, weapons given to them…
> > feel inferior is OK…skewing values to just put you at a disadvantage is just cheap
>
> How else then? Number of enemies?
>
> Like I said, AI can only be so good, so game developers need to be able to change the balance of power for both story and gameplay reasons. If Halo was about the Master Chief fighting cavemen, then you may be able to justify numbers. However, this being an alien race with superior technology, the fact that they have better shielding systems than you do makes sense within the context.
Superior technology, where?
Last time I played Halo, their “superior shields” were easily dealt with using one of the worst weapons, plasma pistol (or any plasma weapon) ans a single shot to the head after that, with BR/DMR/pistol, an they were down.
Compared to Dark Souls or The Witcher 2 (blam! good games) it’s a joke. Instead of making the player thing twice, or try a new tactic, plasma + BR/DMR is always your best bet, and tactics are not even worth considering (maybe glitching, but no real tactics). An elite should “team play” more with lower units and give them orders, grunts should team up and give you everything, and shoot first, suicide later. Jackals should use their shields to cover more important allies (elites) or even try flanking. Hunters should be big, mean and watch each others back, and put up more of a fight then in previous games.
The AI should be active, smart, and rather then “46x over shield and 40x damage” for difficulty, I rather see 40x more enemies (spread out through the level). An invading force does not usually consist of 20-30 units, more like 200-300 units or more.
Firefight is a great example of how this “difficulty” is flawed to the core.
Try Reach vanilla Firefight, even on Legendary it’s no match to get invincible or survive 3 rounds since the AI is really dumb, strong but dumb, and plasma + DMR kills off even the strongest elite.
In my fileshare I got a modified Firefight, a Firefight created to deliver an ODST-like experience, more enemies but lower shields and damage amp, but instead improved AI. Try it out, even though an AR can rip through an elite, you won’t last for long since it’s difficult, for the right reason. The AI is smarter, teamplays more, and are plenty. They got no unfair advantages compared to vanilla, not even at high level, but still is more lethal.
> there needs to be a mythic difficulty above legendary
I agree.