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Killing AI with arrows--too easy


Springheel

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Great! Can you describe how it was fixed? With that info, we can finally close this thread, which is starting to repeat itself and spin out of control.

 

Discussions on improved AI toughness could go in its own thread?

 

I imagine he fixed the issue with difficulty levels dropping guards HP by the wrong amounts.

Which was the main issue with guards going down too easily.

 

Still I think the bow sway on load is the only option to fix sub-machine bow

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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Great! Can you describe how it was fixed? With that info, we can finally close this thread, which is starting to repeat itself and spin out of control.

 

 

Ok, I've uploaded some changes to SVN. I made the following adjustments:

 

The "drawing back" animation has been slowed to a rate of .7, which reduces the player's ability to quickfire somewhat.

 

The HP adjustments for the various Combat Difficulty Levels have been changed to:

Normal -- "0"

Hard -- "+20"

Expert -- "+40"

 

On all difficulty levels it now takes at least two headshots to take down an alert AI, but you can still drop them with one if they're taken by surprise.

 

We can test this out for a while and see how it feels, but it should go a long way to solving the original problem.

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It's certainly open for discussion whether HP should be part of Combat Difficulty, or its own slider, or just be left at the defaults for everyone. I can think of merits for all three.

 

Any real plans for this?

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Well, we'd have to come to some agreement on what is wanted as a first step.

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I think it is not good to have too many sliders. The TDM experience gets terribly fragmented. What I mean by fragmented is this: experience would shift from "I played the mission with expert difficulty and hard combat difficulty" into "I played the mission in expert difficulty, hard combat difficulty, weakling AI toughness, and moderate AI aquity, autoparry off."

 

If there are too many moving parts it is also horrible to the developers to make them balance out. It is better to offer a relatively simple option tuning and balance them well. Most people aren't probably interested in tuning one of the many difficulty parameters and testing it ingame and repeat until they find the perfect combination of settings to suit their desires. (People didn't even know about the combat difficulty slider!) They start with normal and increase difficulty if necessary.

 

Less is more. It is better to tune the whole combat experience with a single 'combat difficulty.' Autoparry could be included in this as well.

Easy - weak AI autoparry on

Normal - normal AI autoparry on

Advanced - normal AI autoparry off

Expert - tough AI autoparry off

 

The rationale is that of you increase difficulty, you want more challenge. No point in an option with tough AI and autoparry on, right?

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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I guess I've already mentioned it, but I think there is no need for any sliders at all.

 

As Sotha said, they fragment the game. Also people my not notice them or they do not change them. So no, no extra slider.

 

Personally I think that we could also use the both existing sliders and put wat is handled by them into the difficulty levels. So if you play on a higher difficulty level, fighting gets more difficult and lockpicking either.

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

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Huh? It is a bit harsh to say sliders dont make sense because some of you guys dont use them. Others do, and it makes perfect sense to be able to tune the experience as far as permitted by the game. That doesnt take anything away from the experience, in fact it is increases it. No one is suggesting a "million" extra sliders for combat, but only one more: adjusting health levels (I would definitely include the player's). Of course things come out of the box exactly tuned like the TDM team wants it, as default. The player can change things for themselves, even if some wont.

 

Lockpicking difficulty means an added challenge that has little to do with anything else, players might want to play a tough map without the hassle of all the trial and error and time consumption, that was a sensible design choice from the devs. Same for auto-parry, which might make melee more attractive to those who havent trained enough to be able to master blocking (I started like this myself).

 

If combat difficulty means higher speed and reaction time from ai, then it would make sense for players to want to set Damage levels (as opposed to health levels) to high (fast fights, player and ai die with one or two blows), normal and low (fights take longer).

 

Combat difficulties would carry their own default values, but you would be able to tweak between tough ai and ho brutal/fast the fights are.

Edited by RPGista
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Personally I think that we could also use the both existing sliders and put wat is handled by them into the difficulty levels. So if you play on a higher difficulty level, fighting gets more difficult and lockpicking either.

 

It's a difficult issue, because there are two different ways to make the game more challenging. One is through map difficulty, which generally affects things the player can see--more guards, more AI with lights, etc. The other is by changing mechanics that the player can't necessarily see, like the AI acuity, HP, chance of relighting lights, etc.

 

It's a bit iffy to change the second batch without letting the player know (even though I've done that myself). If AI are going to have enough HP that they can't be killed by an arrow to the head by surprise, that's something, as a player, that I want to know in advance. There are certain things I come to expect in the game, and I don't want that behaviour to change without my knowledge. That's why I would be more likely to support sliders for those things.

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I get your point, but didn't you say that the changes you've made only have the effect that alerted guards can not be one-shot killed. You never mentioned that they cannot be killed by one shot surprisingly on higher settings now. Or was this supposed to be an example for what a mapper could change on its own? :huh:

 

Anyways, I'm just not a big fan of sliders (except for graphics and sound settings :P ). I think if we add yet another slider, we will add a fourth after the next discussion and then a fifth ... I guess I just second what Sotha says, that we just keep the two sliders and make the combat difficulty slider effecting several settings (like HP, auto-block,...) as I will most certainly not be able to make you remove them :D (I don't mind)

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

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...And then there is the "best of the both worlds" -option, where there are core TDM experience easy, normal, hard, expert difficulty settings. In addition to these there would be a custom difficulty gui page that would have all the sliders a tweaker can ever dream of.

 

Of course, this solution needs someone to design and create the gui page and make the controls work, so it's probably not gonna happen. Not very soon anyhow. ;)

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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You never mentioned that they cannot be killed by one shot surprisingly on higher settings now. Or was this supposed to be an example for what a mapper could change on its own?

 

It was just an example of something a mapper could do that I wouldn't like (at least not without prior warning).

 

where there are core TDM experience easy, normal, hard, expert difficulty settings.

 

That might be worth considering. Some things, like combat and lockpicking, deserve their own sliders, but most other things could fall under the category of "general difficulty". That could include things like AI acuity, chances of AI noticing lights or other things, player HP, etc.

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I think the thing with combat difficulty slider is that people who play Thief aren't used to it.

 

In fact I'm not sure I've ever touched mine.

 

Auto-parry and the lock pick sliders are good and should stay as is. I like hard lock pick (as it's really not that hard to pick anyway), it gives a little more tension than autopick. I also like to choose whether or not I can parry on my own.

 

I do think however ai difficulty should be simple. Easy would be ai that go down easier, hardest would be ai that go down harder. I don't think dividing that up into 5 different selections is really necessary at all. Easy ai should be easier to out run /kill/ whatever.

 

Really more difficult ai would just be tougher and more skilled. More health and faster attack. It's a pretty simple equation.

 

It's great being able to customize to suit your needs but it doesn't need to be complicated.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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Ok, I think we need to step back a little bit. TDM melee and combat has been working ok ever since I started playing the mod, and I dont remember hearing any complaints. In fact, all criticism is directed at how hard it is/can be. A thread about it, in discussion at the time, receiced mostly praise, including mine. An issue was spotted and the dev team decided to solve it by increasing ai's overall health, this is understandable but would mean obvious gameplay changes, for all players (this, it seems, is a design choice and not really debatable). What was argued then is that, if possible, an option could exist that would let players decide by themselves the damage levels in the game, aside from any other characteristics - players would be able to choose how brutal/fast combat is.

 

Though I respect people's take on this issue, I dont know how this became about questioning the slider system itself.

Edited by RPGista
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An issue was spotted and the dev team decided to solve it by increasing ai's overall health,

 

The only change is that it is no longer is being cut in half...a mistake that should never have happened in the first place (and wasn't in the original release). Default is now actually the default.

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Lockpicking difficulty means an added challenge that has little to do with anything else, players might want to play a tough map without the hassle of all the trial and error and time consumption, that was a sensible design choice from the devs. Same for auto-parry, which might make melee more attractive to those who havent trained enough to be able to master blocking (I started like this myself).

 

I actually had to use the lockpicking slider in my playthrough, I was just having too much trouble picking that lock.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoncDtraPRw

 

@ 20 minutes.

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I always assumed I'd taste like boot leather.

 

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I've used the lockpick slider too, and maybe the parry one IIRC.

 

On this, I could lean towards a difficulty slider or a variable you can change in the config file. I sometimes like config options because they don't confuse or fragment the vanilla game, but if somebody really wants to tweak something, they have a way. And they understand it's now like a 'modded' version, so might mess with the balancing of the vanilla game... It kind of automatically communicates that idea.

 

But having a slider is probably ok too, since everybody already understands there aren't like official maps but FMs coming from fans that can be all over the place with balancing the gameplay, some will work with more options & others less, so it's better to have options in there to let the player decide.

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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A sudden though emerges.

 

Did someone test how this HP change affects undead and holy water arrows (HWA)? How many HWAs does it take to take down a zombie? A revenant? Will a HWA attack against unaware undead make any difference? Can the player drop a charging zombie with HWAs because of the delayed bow? Arrow spamming is the core tactic taking down the undead menace, so it might be a good idea that someone with access to the changes check that there are no side effects.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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Unfortunately using holy water was never a viable option in TDM. It took way to many arrows to kill 1 undead, and what with water arrows being so scarce and expensive, it just wasn't worth it. It takes already like 5 water arrows to kill 1 undead. It should be 2 at the most like in Thief 1.

I tried using holy water arrows on undead in Flakebridge, until I realized that the water arrows were much better used helping me ghost past the undead instead.

I always assumed I'd taste like boot leather.

 

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A revenant? Will a HWA attack against unaware undead make any difference? Can the player drop a charging zombie with HWAs because of the delayed bow? Arrow spamming is the core tactic taking down the undead menace, so it might be a good idea that someone with access to the changes check that there are no side effects.

 

I don't think it should affect zombies, since they don't have combat skill levels, but I'd have to check. It WILL affect revenants, and likely explains why revenants have been so ridiculously easy to kill lately. You're not supposed to be able to take a revenant out with one swing to the head, as I've seen done...they're supposed to be damn tough and scary, but have been having their HP cut in half like everyone else.

 

Whether the player has time to shoot enough arrows has more to do with the walk speed than the speed of the bow, both of which are being adjusted. It will require testing (I typically take out zombies with 2 HWA, so I don't know why AH thinks it takes 5).

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Is the amount of HWA's needed to take out a zombie dependent on where you hit him? Maybe this would serve as an explanation.

 

Or you've had your combat difficulty set higher then default.

 

EDIT: Actually I wouldn't mind it if it takes some arrows more to take out undead, as I never did that (and don't plan to). But I guess this is something noce to know for taking into consideration when making haunted missions.

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

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It does depend on where you hit them. I usually go for the head. You can take a zombie out with about 5 _regular_ arrows to the head.

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REALLY, didn't knew that. :o

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

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