AmperCamper wrote: Thu Jun 01, 2023 1:56 pm
Curious to hear everyone's thoughts on this.
The game punishes carelessness, and mistakes are going to cost you (and perhaps the whole team). But, it's not impossible. There's a unique balancing act that we're navigating. Of course, this can always be tuned.
Nerfing the lethality of the AI should be the last resort for balancing imo. Your core audience bought into this title precisely because of the brutal experience this game provides. It's a way for us POGs to experience Fallujah for what it is without compromise, and I think that's the key there, we wanted to experience the brutality of the battle with full authenticity and without compromise.
However, and undoubtedly, there are certain AI tweaks that are still needed.
Allow me to explain:
The A.I. as a whole is one of the best I've seen in any video games. But they are not impossible to overcome, and in due time, the SDIF community will come up with a meta gameplay style that works. Take Killing Floor 1 for example, the community unanimously agreed (over time) that on certain maps, the whole team should defend this room/area. And that was the meta.
In SDIF, I've come up with certain "metas" of my own, which will evolve and be more streamlined. For example,
- Follow the AAV as it provides extra cover but at the risk of it blowing up and us losing reinforcements and ammo resupply.
- Automatic Rifleman holds position near the street and AAV (outside the breaching point) to pick off flanking/exiting enemies. So, Entry team knows their rear is covered
- Team Lead to use his 40 mike mikes to bombard hostile mortar/sniper teams to prevent them for operating
- and more that I am not going to list out
What I am trying to say is, these problems are not impossible to work through. The satisfaction of completing a mission is heightened because we know victory didn't come easily, and that the whole team carried their weight to see through the mission's success. On the flip side, the stinging feeling of being a TL and not having a full extract is also heightened. But it pushes TLs to make better decisions and to communicate to the team clearly what their tasks are
As for the AI Tweaks, and I briefly mentioned this in the forums as well, the AI's ability to see you in dark places, or in tiny murder holes needs looking at.
But I can't speak on this matter too much because I've never had this issue. I don't know if it's because I always turn off my flashlight when peeking outside from a window.
Or if the person who mentions this was just unlucky as I am aware that the AI will shoot randomly into windows to suppress as well. Heck, I do that all the time too when closing the gap between myself and a breach point. Or it could simply be because he had his flashlights on. But I have been shot by insurgents in darkness with no flashlights on indoors before, but I chalked it up to them knowing where I was and me talking on the mic. No idea how the AI works, but it seems fair from my standpoint.
As for the tiny murder holes, I have never been hit when I am perched up on the roof and shooting at insurgents attacking the convoy. Is it because I don't stick my head out any longer than 5s between shots or what it is. I've taken fire, yes. But never been shot dead on the roof, unless by an enemy sniper. But the fact that they seem to always miss their first shot, makes it so that I know to keep my head down if i want to keep it.
So, as you can tell, I am torn on this matter. If authentically this was the kind of insane difficulty marines faced back then, then so be it. No tweaks needed.
Edit: I wanted to make a counter-argument to the stance that real heroes are dying in this game... There isn't a 1:1 skill conversion between operating a firearm and a mouse and keyboard. Sometimes you just get outgunned, or outlucked. It shouldn't be used as the measursing system of difficulty...
