Wierd quesiton about difficulty levels.

[SerialCarpens]

As you guys (and girls) have gotten older, and become better gamers I hope, have you knocked the difficulty levels up to hard in most games? I tend to do that now, and HL2 definitely deserves a "hard". I wanna see this AI go nuts!

 

[LoneDeranger]

No, not unless I find it too easy.

 

[jAkUp]

eh.. usually when you notch up the difficulty, it just makes the ai give more damage to you...

 

[Ridic]

i think the best way to complete a game is one stage at a time. I always start at easy, and after i beat that i go to medium...then just keep going up. Sometimes the difficulty levels are crazy though, like in MGS2 the hardest difficulty level you fail if your seen.

 

[A2597]

sheesh...

thats insane...
JK2s was cheap though...lowered your max health to 50 AND more damage...

 

[jAkUp]

i remember when doom had the nightmare setting:flame:

 

[LoneDeranger]

You know what would be cool? If HL2 had some kind of auto-adjusting difficulty setting. So if you're doing all headhots and generally running around like Rambo, the next time you turn a corner you'll be faced with 10 combine soldiers instead of 1. Just a thought ..

 

[Marauder]

Originally posted by [Hunter]Ridic
i think the best way to complete a game is one stage at a time. I always start at easy, and after i beat that i go to medium...then just keep going up. Sometimes the difficulty levels are crazy though, like in MGS2 the hardest difficulty level you fail if your seen.

My god man, it took me 43 game hours to beat MGS2 on Extreme or whatever the highest is. It was worth it though, I have the infinite ammo headband thingy. Some parts will take you hours of just sitting waiting for a guard to pass before anything else can happen...

 

[0zz0]

Well i just recently beat op4 on difficult and i noticed that the female black ops people disapear like turn totally invisible at times and they do way more damage.

 

[Hudson]

Halo is pretty damn hard on Legendary dificulty, im gonna play HL2 on hard or medium to start

 

[tokin]

ozzo, totally true, it was really damn hard, i beat hl again a few months ago on hard...

 

[0zz0]

Yes, veryhard and extremely annoying i used every single damn explosive device i had cause those damn things would not go away. Then it gets u all paranoid b/c now u dont even know if an enemy is there or not. I remember the first time i saw teh thing turn invisible i thought i was going crazy then i got hit from no where and died. From then on i was scared shitless to go into a room.

 

[crabcakes66]

I usaully play a new game on easy or medium......

imo its cheesy to just make enemys do more damage and give you less health....

im guessing hl2 will be a little better than that...like incerasing the overall abilitys of the AI or something.

 

[reever2]

Originally posted by SerialCarpens
As you guys (and girls) have gotten older, and become better gamers I hope, have you knocked the difficulty levels up to hard in most games? I tend to do that now, and HL2 definitely deserves a "hard". I wanna see this AI go nuts!

If the AI is stupid and has 100% accuracy like they do in HL1, i wouldnt attempt to put the game on hard because the game would just be annoying

 

[Ridic]

yea in some games the AI is just too stupid. Like JK2 and JK3(leaked).
in those you could enter a room with 5 guys, kill 3 of the guys wit ha thermal detonater grenade and the other 2 guys would still have thier back turned working on the computers.

 

[CommieX]

Originally posted by crabcakes66
I usaully play a new game on easy or medium......

imo its cheesy to just make enemys do more damage and give you less health....

im guessing hl2 will be a little better than that...like incerasing the overall abilitys of the AI or something.

What else can they do to make it harder besides increasing the accuracy/damage that enemies do? If they dumb down the AI it would detract from the game. I don't think they want their hard work on the AI wasted because you are playing on Easy. And I hope that enemies are just as intelligent on easy as on hard, but maybe a little harder to kill.

 

[crabcakes66]

Originally posted by CommieX
What else can they do to make it harder besides increasing the accuracy/damage that enemies do? If they dumb down the AI it would detract from the game. I don't think they want their hard work on the AI wasted because you are playing on Easy. And I hope that enemies are just as intelligent on easy as on hard, but maybe a little harder to kill.

hmm..well thats your opinion....


...alot can be done with tweaking the ai to make things more or less difficult

and it really isnt dumbing down the AI

for example..the range at witch the ai can see and hear you......
differant responses in differant situtations....how likly would the ai be the run away from you for?


little things like that can make a big differance......other than simply making the bad guys do more damage....

 

[eediot]

[AI]: also teamwork. you could have more enemies be heaps more aggressive, and use teamwork... i.e in hl2 vid in the trap town, they shoot through window so the teammate can kick open the door... but more lethal... i.e throw a nailbomb in and that forces u back onto the stairs, where there are two guys waiting [and i dont mean just outside the window]

in fact, exactly like hl2. damn.

haha this will own

 

[Dsty2001]

Hmm....

Easy Settings: Normal setting (Start out with 100% Health, take minimum damage from bullets, AI is less accurate and doesn't work together

Medium: Medium Setting (Start out with 100% Health, take medium damage from bullets, AI is accurate at times depending on situation, AI works together but doesnt employ full strategies

Hard: Hard Settings (Start out with 100% Health, you take medium damage from bullets, AI is very accurate depending on situation, AI employs new strategies and works together

Realistic: Realistic Settings (Start out with 100% Health, if wounded in the leg, you start limping, if wounded in the arm, your aim is less effective, all head shots instant death. AI employs strategies based upon your normal movements, AI works together and organises more troops before attacking. No place is safe from AI

 

[crabcakes66]

yeah ..it would be cool if groups of AI would actaully search for you

 

[CommieX]

My point is, I don't think they should change the AI with the different difficulty levels because if someone plays on Easy then they will miss out. The enemies should "work together" on every setting. If I play on easy I don't want to see enemies standing in one spot and spinning in circles just because that makes the game easier.

 

[Flynn]

hehehehehe, ive beat both Quake III and DOOM on Nightmare!

 

[AH_Viper]

The AI in far cry should make some interesting gameplay. It activly seeks you out, lays down cover fire, and advances on your postions using real life army training techqnieuwqqweqws (oh yeah baby i can speel graet )

I always play games on medium to start of with and if its too easy i just cranck it up. If its a good game i dont mind stopping half way thourgh just to turn up the beef a little and start from scratch again.

 

[Chris D]

"The AI in far cry should make some interesting gameplay. It activly seeks you out, lays down cover fire"

Viper can I remind you that once upon a time, Valve pretty much quoted that line there about HL1 :O

 

[AH_Viper]

Originally posted by Chris_D
"The AI in far cry should make some interesting gameplay. It activly seeks you out, lays down cover fire"

Viper can I remind you that once upon a time, Valve pretty much quoted that line there about HL1 :O

No you cant

 

[Archangel]

the ai should work together any time, but they should increase the aggressiveness and number of it. so on easy, they advance very carefully, covering each other, but are a little dumb (don't look in every corner, so you can shoot them quite easily). On medium settings, they advance aggressivly, storm into rooms, don't wait for you, always close in. On hard, the go rambo. Lets put it into the scene in traptown. You are in the room and have blocked the door. AI 1 starts shoot ing through the window, calls for reinforcements. no.2 starts kicking in the door, but they already have brought two mor combines into the area, who advance into the room as soon as the door is open. Additiv, the combine soldier upstairs is informed and charges around the corner as soon as the two come through the door. basiclly, you are on the run all the time.

 

[Mr.Magnetichead]

Ive always played on hard.

 

[el Chi]

Originally posted by Archangel
On medium settings, they advance aggressivly, storm into rooms...On hard, the go rambo.

That's not clever unless you're TRYING to get yourself killed. The I in AI stands for intelligence, not idiocy. Bad pun, I know but it illustrates the point.

Originally posted by Archangel
basiclly, you are on the run all the time.

That's cool, though - them giving you a scary, adrenal ride.

 

[Xei]

I think the best I've seen a game deal with difficulty settings is still probably Goldeneye 007 on the N64, as well as the usual stuff like less available health and more damage from the enemies it added extra objectives to the mission, kinda made it worth trying it on easy or normal and then going back to do it on hard, the way you progressed through the game was pretty well done too.

I'd like to see some AI changes in HL2 depending on difficulty, mabye they could work together in more effective ways or more often but yeah it would kinda suck if they were just boring targets on the lower difficulty levels either. Also, wouldn't accuracy be a better thing to increase rather than damage done, just seem to make more sense IMO

 

[[Matt]]

I will be playing HL2 on the hardest setting... i dont want to ruin the gaming experience by finishing it in one sitting. (I can complete HL1 now in 4 hours straight!)

 

[marksmanHL2 :)]

Yeah, i have always gone to easy settings without thinking before now. But i think your right. Hardest all the way this time. I seem to do fine online so it shouldent be a problem. Mind you i love to explore. I hope it aint so fast paced i miss the scenery

 

[Spiffae]

I've found that in some cases, hard dificulty throws off the balance of the game. I'm not saying HL2 will do thins, but in Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, the game was a fun hollywood style intense action game full of run and gun action, hundreds of enemies spilling out of houses, alleyways, etc, but on hard, the enemies would be so hard that you would have to hide after every enemy popped out and then wait for him to come find you...it really killed the game for me. Easy was the same way, the hordes of enemies were gone, losing the feel of a war going on.

I think that games are designed to be played on Medium. If it's as good as it's supposed to be, i'll play it again on hard.

 

[PLas]

It would be nice to be able to change the difficulty setting halfway through the game. I emailed Gabe about this exact topic and I got no reply. It’s not nice to go as far as you can through the game on hard and have to restart again halfway through because you keep getting cained. But anyway, I’m fairly sure we can trust value anyway to be fair with difficulty. Going on that video interview they seem to have everything in this regard under control.

 

[Typhon]

The best AI difference (though not the best AI) I ever saw was in the original Descent. Higher difficulty added more enemy bots, and made them fire faster, but the real difference was their movement. On easy they would kinda float towards you, but on hard they would pop around corners and stuff and circle-strafe you close in.

As far as other ways to effect AI...this may or may not apply to HL2 but some AI algorithms work with something called a horizon...its how far ahead the AI looks in predicting what will happen and what the rewards will be (since the AI is trying to act in such a way as to optimize rewards, i.e. kill you and don't die). If the AI had a close horizon, it would only consider simple things like there's gordon shoot him or I'm getting shot at...hide! But with a longer horizon (and enough pre-calculated training) the AI might think: ok there's gordon...attack head on will be suicide, but he'll probably attack me head on...so if I let him see me then runaround this box he'll chase me but I can run around behind him and kill him.

Obviously thats a rough description of the thought process, because what's actually happening is the AI is considering every possible action and calculating the most propable consequence (and given that consequence, the best option to take then, and so forth until the horizon is reached). This kind of AI requires a lot of training and such so the AI can learn how gordon tends to move and what actions are good and what actions are bad, but it can have pretty cool effects.

 

[AmishSlayer]

I'm gonna play the game on the hardest setting if they do change the way the AI acts for each step of difficulty. If they just do things like damage and health, then I'm gonna play medium. I figure it'll be pretty easy to play the first 10 min of the game twice and gague the AI then.

 

[Unique]

Well in HL1 on hard im pretty sure parts of the level where diferent.. maybe they whernt but you could make certain doors be locked on hard (so u have do crawl around threw and vent and into a new area for example)

On most RTS games on easy & medium settings they just dumb down the AI to make it less of a challenge.. in FPS they seem to just make them hurt you more.. and somtimes be more of them (which i like better)

I think given the semi-dynamic levels of HL2 they will change on harder settings even if its just because you have to hide in a warehouse or down a vent.. or what ever