Late game on insane dif is far to easy. (may contain spoilers)

[Avitus12]

In my opinion late game on insane difficulty is far to easy.

 

I soloed the final boss in a few min, its dps...

 

 

I have spent roughly 323 hours in Avorion now and know the game quiet well.

 

Judging from what I see so far late game damage on enemy ships needs to be buffed by around 500% and health 400%... even then I'm confident I could build a ship with enough punch to take out an entire alien/pirate fleet with ease.

 

At the moment its hard to find a ship that I cant one shot...

 

Now I realize not every one has a behemoth mass of a ship like mine, some people prefer smaller, weaker, faster ships, and that's fine, though I feel they would have at least two options if enemies where far harder to deal with, option one, they could bug bite the larger ships and wear them down or play on an easier difficulty.

 

A ship that is large enough to have all 15 slots unlocked with as many high level Avorion turrets as say ten slots will allow, lets say around 25 turrets, with that you could easily breach 100k Omicron damage, you might even hit 200k not sure, Health and shields by this point have also become stupidly powerful, to the point where nothing is a challenge.

 

Thoughts?

[Fidtz]

I know this does not apply directly to a game with changeable difficultly in single player but it does apply to the non-PvP aspects of multiplayer so it is worth bearing in mind:

 

http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/early-access-difficulty-fetishests-and.html

 

 

[Ghadmar]

I cant say how much stats should be adjusted by. however I will say that playing on insane does not feel insane. I would say it feels like hard so I would like to see a buff to these difficulties in the future or maybe even harder difficulties.

[cy414]

nobody is going to agree on this. and in a game like avorion, player mileage will vary vastly due to their own ship design ideas.

 

the best of both worlds would be an adaptive system upon which the current difficulty systems operate, which will change npc ship designs, strength and numbers based on the players ship or fleet, using the difficulty as a modifier for speed and severity of adaption.

 

eg,

-the player uses a single huge ship, with high rof/dps weapons to devastate a few sectors, the game gradually adapts the npcs to use long range artillery and agile ships to avoid getting hit.

-the player uses a fleet of corvettes to devastate a few sectors, the game adapts to use fewer and larger ships with flack burst weapons that are better for killing these threats.

[Avitus12]

nobody is going to agree on this. and in a game like avorion, player mileage will vary vastly due to their own ship design ideas.

 

the best of both worlds would be an adaptive system upon which the current difficulty systems operate, which will change npc ship designs, strength and numbers based on the players ship or fleet, using the difficulty as a modifier for speed and severity of adaption.

 

eg,

-the player uses a single huge ship, with high rof/dps weapons to devastate a few sectors, the game gradually adapts the npcs to use long range artillery and agile ships to avoid getting hit.

-the player uses a fleet of corvettes to devastate a few sectors, the game adapts to use fewer and larger ships with flack burst weapons that are better for killing these threats.

 

We will most likely never see a difficulty boost of the 500% that I have asked that would make the game much more enjoyable for large ships, however I think the dev's can clearly see the case I am making and understand that the game is completely broken in some arias now.

 

An adaptive system would be a nice solution but a lot of work to implement, it can also feel unnatural and unrealistic if not done well.

 

The dev's have asked to give feedback on weather we think the game is to easy so hear I am saying it is.

 

At the moment I will take any solution to make the game harder, I don't mind what it is.

 

Content that will provide additional challenges has been mentioned such as more bosses, but who knows how tough they will be...

 

I am a game developer myself and I take balance VERY seriously, I'm experienced with balancing how hard the enemy is and it can be a tough job finding the sweet spot, especially in a game like this where there is so much to take into equation.

[Avitus12]

I know this does not apply directly to a game with changeable difficultly in single player but it does apply to the non-PvP aspects of multiplayer so it is worth bearing in mind:

 

http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/early-access-difficulty-fetishests-and.html

 

I'm not quiet sure I'm getting the right idea from the blog you linked, but if you are referring to "The Most Dangerous Form of Feedback" section, all I can say is I understand the consequences of what I'm asking, and I know it will lock a large amount of players out of late game on insane difficulty maybe for ever, and I think that is acceptable, there are 7 difficulty's, with that many you SHOULD be able to please everyone.

[SageThe13th]

Well to be fair insane difficulty is misnamed.  After all it's the difficultly level in which NPCs start doing 100% damage.  That sounds more like the normal difficulty level to me.

 

My suggestion was to use multiple difficulty settings so players can make the game not just harder, but challenging in the way they find most interesting.

Suggestion topic here: http://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,2350.0.html

 

Another problem is the game isn't really designed to handle 15 system ships right now.  I consider this something of a soft cap on ship size.  Yet when you get to this point nothing can really stand up to you.  The game should really account for the fact that people are going to build these monsters.

[Avitus12]

Well to be fair insane difficulty is misnamed.  After all it's the difficultly level in which NPCs start doing 100% damage.  That sounds more like the normal difficulty level to me.

 

My suggestion was to use multiple difficulty settings so players can make the game not just harder, but challenging in the way they find most interesting.

Suggestion topic here: http://www.avorion.net/forum/index.php/topic,2350.0.html

 

Another problem is the game isn't really designed to handle 15 system ships right now.  I consider this something of a soft cap on ship size.  Yet when you get to this point nothing can really stand up to you.  The game should really account for the fact that people are going to build these monsters.

 

Yeah, I would be down for that sort of a system.

[MrVorgra]

I know this does not apply directly to a game with changeable difficultly in single player but it does apply to the non-PvP aspects of multiplayer so it is worth bearing in mind:

 

http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/early-access-difficulty-fetishests-and.html

 

Wow, Ive never seen an example on this scale, this has always been the baine of indy developers, more so since the advent of the early access business model, A similar thing happened with the thrusters for this game, the Developers had an idea that large ships should be slow, a subset of players abused a flaw in the developers design, so once the developers patched this, certain players became very, very vocal.

 

I fear this will be the case with the difficulty late game, the minority abusing mechanics to become absurdly powerful, consequently complaining without offering anything worthwhile.

 

[Fidtz]

there are 7 difficulty's, with that many you SHOULD be able to please everyone.

 

There is only 1 difficulty on a multiplayer server. Fortunately at the moment, there are multiple viable servers but they are of course small. For a server (or a large community of players that play on multiple servers) to grow, the difficulty is important, not everyone is hardcore etc. etc. . This is hardly a new problem of course.

 

I would suggest that it is the very flat difficulty curve between the edge of the galaxy and the centre that is the problem. Some of that is AI weakness, some is basic numbers.

[Enzo Matrix]

For me I have made my own game much harder than original insane mode. Much tougher aliens, harder pirates, 3x-4x guns on their ships. My own personal alien spawns. Some really nasty alien types. Go in a guns blazing against 14 alien ships with over 30k fire power by outer ring and over 1million hp. Turret power also was buffed. It's a massive difference since my last game.

 

Drops are even more interesting. Up to 60 tech level, items have more potentials, this actually made enemies harder because of this to lol.

 

People may view my way of giving myself a much harder game as a oh just build a bigger ship.. yet my one ship that costed 900k minerals which took quite awhile to build is not good enough anymore and I can't imagine how hard the core will get! I also buffed the end boss quite a bit. No idea what to expect lol.

 

I also do not build from turret factories and play with found only. My game is very challenging :)

 

My ship btw had 5 million hp. I had to engage carefully or else I was getting blown up! I really enjoy having no idea what I'm about to fight with all my new alien spawns lol.. could be scouts.. could be a planet harvester with battleships.. rip sector

[koonschi]

Even when upping HP and DPS of enemy ships, there will always be one problem remaining: You build your own ship. You define how beefy your ship is. This means you also define how long you can take enemy fire, and that means that there is no possible buff to enemy DPS or HP that will make you happy long-term.

 

If I up the DPS by 500%, you can just build a ship that has 5 times more HP and we're in the same situation again.

If I up the HP of enemies by 400% combat will take a lot longer and will be extremely boring if you don't have enough firepower, but enough HP.

 

I'd rather add other, more meaningful changes to the game combat. I've got some changes to shields in mind, as well as changes to weapons that can penetrate shields or disable ships (including yours) or parts of them. These are just thoughts, not promises.

[Ohm is Futile]

Even when upping HP and DPS of enemy ships, there will always be one problem remaining: You build your own ship. You define how beefy your ship is. This means you also define how long you can take enemy fire, and that means that there is no possible buff to enemy DPS or HP that will make you happy long-term.

 

If I up the DPS by 500%, you can just build a ship that has 5 times more HP and we're in the same situation again.

If I up the HP of enemies by 400% combat will take a lot longer and will be extremely boring if you don't have enough firepower, but enough HP.

 

I'd rather add other, more meaningful changes to the game combat. I've got some changes to shields in mind, as well as changes to weapons that can penetrate shields or disable ships (including yours) or parts of them. These are just thoughts, not promises.

Agree 100%.

 

Something that would be nice would be new procedural generation patterns for ships to produce ships with specific qualities and new AIs to take advantage of these qualities, creating diversity and new possibilities beyond bigger = better.

[cy414]

An adaptive system would be a nice solution but a lot of work to implement, it can also feel unnatural and unrealistic if not done well.

 

The dev's have asked to give feedback on weather we think the game is to easy so hear I am saying it is.

 

At the moment I will take any solution to make the game harder, I don't mind what it is.

 

Content that will provide additional challenges has been mentioned such as more bosses, but who knows how tough they will be...

 

I am a game developer myself and I take balance VERY seriously, I'm experienced with balancing how hard the enemy is and it can be a tough job finding the sweet spot, especially in a game like this where there is so much to take into equation.

couldnt it be simplified?

game spawns x number of ships,

expecting them to take x amount of time to kill,

you beat them in 20% of that time,

game spawns next wave of ships with counters to specific weapon types.

 

the foundation of this seems to already be there in avorion with the holo/shiny/armour vs plasma/laser/kinetic.

no idea if they are used that way yet though.

 

I'd rather add other, more meaningful changes to the game combat. I've got some changes to shields in mind, as well as changes to weapons that can penetrate shields or disable ships (including yours) or parts of them. These are just thoughts, not promises.

is my idea of an adaptive system possible? if not i know to drop it and try to think of something else.

[Ohm is Futile]

[...]

couldnt it be simplified?

game spawns x number of ships,

expecting them to take x amount of time to kill,

you beat them in 20% of that time,

game spawns next wave of ships with counters to specific weapon types.

 

the foundation of this seems to already be there in avorion with the holo/shiny/armour vs plasma/laser/kinetic.

no idea if they are used that way yet though.

 

[...]

is my idea of an adaptive system possible? if not i know to drop it and try to think of something else.

 

The problems are:

 

- With an adaptive system, the player may not feel like he or she is progressing in the game. This can be very boring.

- What do you base your adaptations on? If the player upgrades his ship and enemies scale with that upgrade, what happens to ships that were already generated? Everything in the system but the player gets wiped out by the next Xsotan attack?

- What if the player uses captains to command smaller ships and whatnot? Do things scale only based upon the player-controlled ship? The sum of his assets? What if the player leaves some ships behind, does the scale change?

- What if the player has a huge freighter with little weaponry? Do enemies scale off his volume? His mass? His omicrons? If the player has a tiny ship with lots of good weapons, do enemies scale off his volume/mass/omicrons?

 

It's impossible to work with. You have to stick with more radical options, such as a difficulty slider and such. You can implement variety in combat styles, though. This can create a different challenge for the player as one ship design may be suitable for one situation, but not another, even if the baseline difficulty is the same as right now.

[cy414]

[...]

couldnt it be simplified?

game spawns x number of ships,

expecting them to take x amount of time to kill,

you beat them in 20% of that time,

game spawns next wave of ships with counters to specific weapon types.

 

the foundation of this seems to already be there in avorion with the holo/shiny/armour vs plasma/laser/kinetic.

no idea if they are used that way yet though.

 

[...]

is my idea of an adaptive system possible? if not i know to drop it and try to think of something else.

 

The problems are:

 

- With an adaptive system, the player may not feel like he or she is progressing in the game. This can be very boring.

- What do you base your adaptations on? If the player upgrades his ship and enemies scale with that upgrade, what happens to ships that were already generated? Everything in the system but the player gets wiped out by the next Xsotan attack?

- What if the player uses captains to command smaller ships and whatnot? Do things scale only based upon the player-controlled ship? The sum of his assets? What if the player leaves some ships behind, does the scale change?

- What if the player has a huge freighter with little weaponry? Do enemies scale off his volume? His mass? His omicrons? If the player has a tiny ship with lots of good weapons, do enemies scale off his volume/mass/omicrons?

 

It's impossible to work with. You have to stick with more radical options, such as a difficulty slider and such. You can implement variety in combat styles, though. This can create a different challenge for the player as one ship design may be suitable for one situation, but not another, even if the baseline difficulty is the same as right now.

those are/would be dependent on the situation. any of the above.

at the moment the ai just isnt smart enough one way or the other, BUT the game does need some way to adapt to the player beyond a difficulty setting, since the players ship design essentially is a unique difficulty setting.

single large ships could be countered with swarms of torpedo bombers rather than just trying to match brute force. or visa-versa.

 

i suspect elements of RTS type ai behaviours will be needed eventually though.

[Two]

I agree with the OP that the end-game is far too easy right now, and I also agree with Koonschi that just buffing HP/DPS will not solve the problem for the reasons he mentioned.

 

However: an occasional boss outside of stories would be a nice thing to have. Just have like a rare pirate event with a ship that scales 50x larger and you occasionally have some change to the otherwise boring fights.

[Enzo Matrix]

Holy hell.. I am currently at core distance 316 with 250k hp ship with 17 turrets almost at 3k fire power from found only.

Stage 1 aliens not to bad.. stage 2 actually need help... stage 3 was suicide lmao. I have 6 stages of spawns, further in the harder they get.

They even had up to 3k fire power and 100k+ hp and at 10 ships.. my shields got melted! I had to run fast haha. Going from 395 distance to 316 these guys got like 8x harder!

 

Getting some really nice drops though from winning, almost 400dps tech 24 chainguns! Really enjoying this! I am actually scared to open fire on xsotans lmao

[Enzo Matrix]

I agree with the OP that the end-game is far too easy right now, and I also agree with Koonschi that just buffing HP/DPS will not solve the problem for the reasons he mentioned.

 

However: an occasional boss outside of stories would be a nice thing to have. Just have like a rare pirate event with a ship that scales 50x larger and you occasionally have some change to the otherwise boring fights.

 

 

Yeah.... I kinda already know what it feels like to go up against 8 monster sized pirates that took over an hour and half to kill them all, everyone died in the sector lol.

 

 

It was a moment of silence for the dying sector

 

 

 

For sure something not to do alone!

[Avitus12]

Holy hell.. I am currently at core distance 316 with 250k hp ship with 17 turrets almost at 3k fire power from found only.

Stage 1 aliens not to bad.. stage 2 actually need help... stage 3 was suicide lmao. I have 6 stages of spawns, further in the harder they get.

They even had up to 3k fire power and 100k+ hp and at 10 ships.. my shields got melted! I had to run fast haha. Going from 395 distance to 316 these guys got like 8x harder!

 

Getting some really nice drops though from winning, almost 400dps tech 24 chainguns! Really enjoying this! I am actually scared to open fire on xsotans lmao

 

I did say late game... tech 24 is barely scratching mid game...

I'm glad your having fun ;)

 

[Ohm is Futile]

those are/would be dependent on the situation. any of the above.

at the moment the ai just isnt smart enough one way or the other, BUT the game does need some way to adapt to the player beyond a difficulty setting, since the players ship design essentially is a unique difficulty setting.

single large ships could be countered with swarms of torpedo bombers rather than just trying to match brute force. or visa-versa.

 

i suspect elements of RTS type ai behaviours will be needed eventually though.

Assuming eventual balance changes to turrets and such, different factions may have different ship generation patterns along with distinct, matching combat AIs and weapon preferences which would bring variety and potentially different challenges for which just getting a bigger ship may not always be the answer.

 

For example, a faction may favour smaller, faster ships with powerful short-ranged lasers. One may field large, slow ships with long range cannons. Others could be dodgy with independent targeting/seeking missiles. Some could favour shields, others hull, or a balance. Maybe some factions could simply use long range weapons and fast ships and actually kite you.

 

With a better balance for weapons and proper AIs, I feel the game could be made a lot harder without actually touching HP or DPS directly.

[Enzo Matrix]

Holy hell.. I am currently at core distance 316 with 250k hp ship with 17 turrets almost at 3k fire power from found only.

Stage 1 aliens not to bad.. stage 2 actually need help... stage 3 was suicide lmao. I have 6 stages of spawns, further in the harder they get.

They even had up to 3k fire power and 100k+ hp and at 10 ships.. my shields got melted! I had to run fast haha. Going from 395 distance to 316 these guys got like 8x harder!

 

Getting some really nice drops though from winning, almost 400dps tech 24 chainguns! Really enjoying this! I am actually scared to open fire on xsotans lmao

 

I did say late game... tech 24 is barely scratching mid game...

I'm glad your having fun ;)

 

Yes I know lol. I was in late game before and game was no where near this level of danger in just 316 distance. The difficulty ramps up quite a lot as you get closer and I also modded the end boss. I'm expecting extreme results by outer core lol. The fun part is not knowing what to expect all over again :)

 

This guy had like 110k hp and this had around 10 ships spawn, the others were fighters and such. Its a good space battle thats for sure. Still very early in my game. My last one before modding they maybe had 10k hp and 200 fire power by this point. They have had over 3k omnicron spawns. Pretty wild love it.

 

 

 

First one of these to show up.. I was way outgunned, they had 2-4.5k omnicron to my 3.7k lol.. needed a lot of help

 

 

 

Nvm 5.5k fire power. At this rate gonna be 30k+ by xanion lol... I was actually afraid to open fire on this guy haha

 

 

[Axe Coldon]

nobody is going to agree on this. and in a game like avorion, player mileage will vary vastly due to their own ship design ideas.

 

the best of both worlds would be an adaptive system upon which the current difficulty systems operate, which will change npc ship designs, strength and numbers based on the players ship or fleet, using the difficulty as a modifier for speed and severity of adaption.

 

eg,

-the player uses a single huge ship, with high rof/dps weapons to devastate a few sectors, the game gradually adapts the npcs to use long range artillery and agile ships to avoid getting hit.

-the player uses a fleet of corvettes to devastate a few sectors, the game adapts to use fewer and larger ships with flack burst weapons that are better for killing these threats.

 

We will most likely never see a difficulty boost of the 500% that I have asked that would make the game much more enjoyable for large ships, however I think the dev's can clearly see the case I am making and understand that the game is completely broken in some arias now.

 

An adaptive system would be a nice solution but a lot of work to implement, it can also feel unnatural and unrealistic if not done well.

 

The dev's have asked to give feedback on weather we think the game is to easy so hear I am saying it is.

 

At the moment I will take any solution to make the game harder, I don't mind what it is.

 

Content that will provide additional challenges has been mentioned such as more bosses, but who knows how tough they will be...

 

I am a game developer myself and I take balance VERY seriously, I'm experienced with balancing how hard the enemy is and it can be a tough job finding the sweet spot, especially in a game like this where there is so much to take into equation.

 

What if they came up with a way to limit the size of the ship. Or just reduced the max slots from much less then 15 so that kind of dps isn't possible.  You can balance damage too ways. increase npc's or nerf players.  Players always scream when being nerfed but the game isn't released yet.

[Avitus12]

nobody is going to agree on this. and in a game like avorion, player mileage will vary vastly due to their own ship design ideas.

 

the best of both worlds would be an adaptive system upon which the current difficulty systems operate, which will change npc ship designs, strength and numbers based on the players ship or fleet, using the difficulty as a modifier for speed and severity of adaption.

 

eg,

-the player uses a single huge ship, with high rof/dps weapons to devastate a few sectors, the game gradually adapts the npcs to use long range artillery and agile ships to avoid getting hit.

-the player uses a fleet of corvettes to devastate a few sectors, the game adapts to use fewer and larger ships with flack burst weapons that are better for killing these threats.

 

We will most likely never see a difficulty boost of the 500% that I have asked that would make the game much more enjoyable for large ships, however I think the dev's can clearly see the case I am making and understand that the game is completely broken in some arias now.

 

An adaptive system would be a nice solution but a lot of work to implement, it can also feel unnatural and unrealistic if not done well.

 

The dev's have asked to give feedback on weather we think the game is to easy so hear I am saying it is.

 

At the moment I will take any solution to make the game harder, I don't mind what it is.

 

Content that will provide additional challenges has been mentioned such as more bosses, but who knows how tough they will be...

 

I am a game developer myself and I take balance VERY seriously, I'm experienced with balancing how hard the enemy is and it can be a tough job finding the sweet spot, especially in a game like this where there is so much to take into equation.

 

What if they came up with a way to limit the size of the ship. Or just reduced the max slots from much less then 15 so that kind of dps isn't possible.  You can balance damage too ways. increase npc's or nerf players.  Players always scream when being nerfed but the game isn't released yet.

 

IMO its not the number of slots, its the power of the turrets and how many a player can have in comparison to the AI the AI needs to be equipped with better turrets and more of them, there is a soft cap on how large you can build your ship, and its how much your crew pay is, maybe bumping up the cost of the generals and lieutenants and other ones like them would slow progression and make larger ships less economically viable.

 

Another way of putting a soft cap on late game ship power for the player would be to make higher level turrets much larger and heavier, this wouldn't do much but it all adds up.

 

Adding a feature that makes more mass harder to cover with shields would be very effective also, I mean if you think about it, at the moment shielding is a constant for a very small ship to a very large ship, when the large ship might have 1000% more surface aria for the same amount of shielding to cover.  Another way of putting this is a shield block that gives you 10k shields on your small ship would give you 1k on a ship ten times the size.

 

I feel there are many solutions to be found if we look... in fact I'm going to add this shielding idea into the suggestions thread XD

[Tsunamik]

Well its currently hard to balance anything, with such wild RNG deviations we have in game now...

Balancing crew cost and such won´t work, because when you find one or two good trade routes, money will not present any problem for you in game (and it can be done so early, that you don´t have to care for them whole game).

Balancing DPS by turret slots also won´t work, because its not possible to balance anything in game, when one lvl30 trinium turret gives you 300dps on 5km range, and another lvl30 trinium turret gives you 1000dps on 5km range. There is no way to balance this, unless rng spreads are cut down HARD. I mean, those deviations should be more like 30% max for same tech, not 300%...

Same for trade routes, one gives you 200k per trip, another in neighbourhood sector gives you 10mil per trip... what the f***