Difficulty levels

[EGO_Aut]

There is no need for difficult levels in a sandbox game.

There are already 2 difficult levels:

Noob: just a sidekick in X4

Pro: Master of the Universe

[Y-llian]

Do not forget, there are many evil factions to tune (for example, the next DLC adds the Terrans).

Wait... What in the what, what??

The Terrans are not evil! They are only evil to AI! Others can do as they please - providing they don't create more AI in which case it's these AI creators, not the Terrans, that are evil! Please stop spreading FAKE NEWS about the Terrans... The only "real" good guys in the X-verse! And please don't respond that this is a "game" world. I've heard enough of that - this isn't the Matrix. Jeez guyz..

Disclaimer: I'm probably in a minority (and separate minority from the rage-quite-and-delete-on-first-try population) for there will be no "next time" for me. I'll play this game through exactly once. I do already know that the "end game" will be far more challenging than the brief start phase. Not because it would be difficult, but because it is "easy". With that background it should be obvious why development resources diverted to "next starts" will not benefit me in any way. However, I'm not bovvered if Egosoft does allocate time for the majority's needs.

I have over 1000 hours (a number I sometimes worry is healthy) invested in X4 and do reply X-games. I too wouldn't mind if Ego concentrate on more pressing needs and as CBJ notes, having difficulty variations isn't as easy or clear cut as we might assume.

[taztaz502]

But I'm not sure they have to be balanced.

Believe me, they do. If you missed the previous discussion of difficulty levels, you probably also missed the... we'll call it "strongly worded feedback"... from players unhappy with the balancing in the early versions of the game.

Even if there is a risk, I think it would be worth a try to start with very few, select, changes (say to the Xenon only) and to let people test it out with a strong disclaimer that the difficulty level is experimental and might lead to broken plots. Possibly as part of a beta. But it also depends on how much demand there is for such a change, of course.

It's not a risk, it's fact. And broken plots are another issue about which there are strong opinions! Anyway, my point was not to say "oh no, it's totally impossible", but to debunk the notion that it was somehow "easy" and would "require very little development time". Like everything else that takes time, it has to be balanced against all the other things that developer time could be used for. With regard to demand, while there have been a few people who have, like you, suggested it, our assessment based on overall feedback is that it's not a high priority for most players, at least when compared with other possible features and improvements.

You say that like the current game is balanced.... it's utter faceroll no challenge in the slightest, everything just seems a copout with egosoft lately.

Too much effort, won't bother to make the game half decent, ooo look shaders can change the visual effects of a planet, lets do that for no reason whatsoever.

[phrozen1]

There is no need for difficult levels in a sandbox game.

There are already 2 difficult levels:

Noob: just a sidekick in X4

Pro: Master of the Universe

No. Every noob will be master of the universe and he doesn't have to do much but wait...

I too miss a challenge in X4 but i don't know if difficulty levels will do it.
I really miss the "universe" reacting on player-actions. Factions which hunt you and similar stuff...
And i also miss a more dynamic univeres. Some more RNG when starting a game would also be great.

[-=SiR KiLLaLoT=-]

There is no need for difficult levels in a sandbox game.

You hit the spot.

The difficulty level in a sandbox like X4 can be managed through more or less difficult starts. What do i mean?

Start game example:

Universe totally invaded by Xenon, with only ten or fewer free sectors where your goal is to repel the invasion and give the other factions the chance to be reborn and conquer their territories.

A totally free universe where at the beginning of the game there is no Xenon presence and the sectors are all free. Each single faction would have its main sector with nascent economy and everything must be created (kind of like X3-XTM). Xenons would only build after a certain number of sectors conquered by NPCs or any other similar parameter.

A normal universe (as it is now) with a preliminary phase where the only thing you can buy are mining ships or transports. An entire first phase of the game where there are no military fleets and the gameplay is solely based on "trade war", pirates and so on.

A space suit start where you have zero credits and the only thing you can do is pick up junk in the universe and sell it to merchants' corners.

This is what could be done to create some sort of challenge.

While if a difficulty is based on a better AI, in that case X4 must be seen as an RTS, where the AI ​​is capable of making much more complex decisions (we are talking about gameplay similar to Stellaris), an AI that knows how to counteract YOUR actions or something like that. Here this kind of development is something much more complicated, where elaborate artificial intelligence scripts are needed. Balancing all this for every single unit and making sure that everything doesn't break at endgame is one of the biggest development challenges.

It is clear that in this way there is a risk of completely changing the type of gameplay. In that case on the one hand there will be complaints from those players who want a quiet X4, where you can have all the time you need to do your thing, where you want to interact with all the factions, or have the maximum reputation with each of them.
On the other hand you will find complaints from those players who are looking for the challenge and want to play faster, not caring about what happens in the universe so in the end I will conquer everything.

Maybe when the game is 100% complete we can have something more complex based on both types of gameplay (which would be a dream).

[LandogarX4]

A good way to implement difficulty would be to make changes that affect only the player. That would involve adjusting mission rewards, prices traders pay for inventory items such as crystals, spacefly eggs, programmable field arrays etc. Maybe this will also invlove a nerf to Nividium prices, or make it harder to find nividium

Another way to adjust difficulty would be changes in reputation, where if a player trades with the enemy of faction A for example, you get a rep hit with faction B which is enemies to faction A. Make this an optional checkbox in starting up the game. It would only affect player reputation.

Taxes for player owned stations in sectors would only affect the player, because as far as things stand now, the AI is not limited by credits in any way. Make this an option at game start.

Another way to increase difficulty would be to make it so that for player mining ships, they cannot find resources at all unless they have a player owned resource probe pointing them to where the resources are located.

Good suggestions. Changes to the player faction only would get around the balancing issues. And since such changes would be controversial among the player base, it's best to make them optional via difficulty levels. That was the main point I wanted to express in this thread. There are many interesting ideas to make the game more challenging and to spice up the end game. But often the responses are divided between those that would love and those that would hate the changes. Difficulty levels are the best way to implement changes without pissing off large amounts of the player base that like to stick to the status quo.

[pref]

The good way to provide increased difficulty would be localised events that would affect a small region, only military assets - and depending on player choices would reduce themselves to a more interesting background show while increasing trade opportunities (extra offers could be allocated as prep or a consequence related to these events).
If player decides so they would upscale in strength (involved assets) but not spread out.

The stalemates that can occur in faction AI warfare could be good opportunity and link to real gameplay effects/consequences.

A new feature is anyways better then just changing stats, as increased stats are usually boring and requires heavy balancing.

Made a suggestion earlier in this thread.

[furirkeeper]

I have never made a "real" game and I am not claiming that I know how to.
If I made a space game like X4 where small changes to some mechanic of the universe very often resulted in an unstable system, for example Xenon too powerful or too weak, I would most likely have a universe configuration file where every balancing aspect of the game was represented. If I were to guess I would say that X4 probably has such a file or a group of such files, either human readable or not where Egosoft tweak the balance.

My suggestion is the following, make this/these files (or a subset of them) available to the player to change per save game via some UI. This could be associated by Egosoft marking such a save game as "customized" much like the way the mark save games as "modified". There really is no reason why the player should not be able to tweak these values back and forth throughout their game creating more challenge at will. For example if Xenon is perceived as too weak their ships could be made 0.01% faster to build, cheaper, more agressive or whatever parameter is available that tilts the universe in their favor. There could be a default setting for everything that is easy to revert to if things get out of control. These things should be considered experimental and could potentially ruin a universe, to be used at own risk.

Consequently Egosoft should refuse to support save games that has the "customized" marking to not waste time trying to fix things that the players broke themselves.

Again, I do not claim to know how X4 works. Maybe this is all completely impossible in which case I am sorry I wasted your time.

[X2-Illuminatus]

Besides having everything available from one single file by modding X4 you can achieve what you are asking for: customising your game to your likings. (*Modified* games are also usually not supported.) Feel free to check out the scripts and modding forums and X4 wiki for tools, guides and available mods.

[furirkeeper]

Besides having everything available from one single file, which is not really practical, by modding X4 you can achieve what you are asking for: customising your game to your likings. (*Modified* games are also usually not supported.) Feel free to check out the scripts and modding forums and X4 wiki for tools, guides and available mods.

Thanks, yes I assumed that modding would be an alternative. Though because of Egosoft shutting modded games out of ventures I do not want to go that route.
I was not only suggesting this for myself but also for the wider group of players that every now and then post on these forums wanting a more difficult game, more wars in their game or a more peaceful game.
I will probably mod my game at some point, but I want to stay unmodded for now and see what happens to the ventures feature.

[jlehtone]

Though because of Egosoft shutting modded games out of ventures I do not want to go that route.

What do you get from venture that you can't get in modded game?

[taztaz502]

Though because of Egosoft shutting modded games out of ventures I do not want to go that route.

What do you get from venture that you can't get in modded game?

Paint jobs, Visitors with funny names and events with unique paint jobs to name a few.

Relying on modders to fix your game is just another copout.

[pref]

Paint jobs, ... unique paint jobs to name a few.

Thought you can get that in modded games as well, there is a venture mod or such.

[taztaz502]

Paint jobs, ... unique paint jobs to name a few.

Thought you can get that in modded games as well, there is a venture mod or such.

*Shrug*

I don't like using mods on games that are still getting updated, My games are 100s of hours long and i'm not about to lose all my progress when the next update rolls out breaking whichever mods i have installed.

I'll mod the game at the end of it's development.

[joshish]

Just make a button in game at PHQ that sends "a signal to bring the Xenons out of the shadows". - Double Xenon production. That should satisfy this request. Also a chair to sit down and SETA would be great!

[jlehtone]

My games are 100s of hours long

Isn't that (like my "never restart") a case, where it is not really feasible to:

If the chosen difficulty is too high or low, he/she can adjust the difficulty for the next time.

I.e. to try to find "comfy difficulty settings" implies relatively short games.


There is a claim that "endgame" is too easy. A suggested remedy is to make everything more expensive. That has no effect on the endgame, but it does affect the start. Isn't the definition of endgame: "Money is not an issue"?

Or, what is the definition of "endgame"?

[furirkeeper]

Though because of Egosoft shutting modded games out of ventures I do not want to go that route.

What do you get from venture that you can't get in modded game?

Today ventures are not of much use, I agree, but nobody knows what Egosoft decides to do with it in the future. And I don't want to start over with a new save game if ventures become interresting.

[pref]

Isn't the definition of endgame: "Money is not an issue"?

More like the possibility to play (conveniently) on larger scale.
Huge corps should be able to go bankrupt as well in an ideal gameworld imo.

[EGO_Aut]

Though because of Egosoft shutting modded games out of ventures I do not want to go that route.

What do you get from venture that you can't get in modded game?

Today ventures are not of much use, I agree, but nobody knows what Egosoft decides to do with it in the future. And I don't want to start over with a new save game if ventures become interresting.

Starting a new game ventures can give you cheap a lot of money and goodies.

[LandogarX4]

Just make a button in game at PHQ that sends "a signal to bring the Xenons out of the shadows". - Double Xenon production. That should satisfy this request. Also a chair to sit down and SETA would be great!

Well, or this could be part of a short end-game quest by Dal to wake up the Xenon. I like the idea in that it would clearly be the player's fault to make the simulation unstable, so less risk of people complaining. Note that I would like to see much more changes than increasing the Xenon threat, it's just that it's a simple example with somewhat predictable outcomes.

Here's another idea for a change that would, ideally, only impact the player faction and thereby avoid instability issues: Decrease resource amounts in all sectors to such a level that only the faction that owns it can reliably satisfy their resource needs from it. This way, the player would feel more need to spread out his factories and actually have to expand and explore the universe in the quest for more building materials. So if you want to dominate the universe, you have to hold a good chunk of it to actually maintain the war machine. This also would make things more difficult by spreading your forces more thinly.

A good example would be the resources in Family Nhuut. Enough to sustain ZYA, but not a sizable player complex on top.

Clearly, such a change would not be to the liking of many players who suffer from severe loss aversion. Hence, why it should be optional as part of a higher difficulty.