Mike Ibeji
No. I get and support removing the DDA from Easy - because Easy should be Easy. But the whole point of playing on Hero/Legend is that you have to play like a Hero/Legend to survive. The DDA makes you do that by tracking how well you are doing and reacting to it - so that the game remains constantly challenging throughout its whole run, rather than the usual squad overkill you get at the end of most Xcom games [assuming you're not simply acing PP by exploiting the ludicrously OP Squad Skill combos you can abuse - Snapshot, are you going to fix these at any point?].
It's not: 'Do well and get punished,' it's 'adjust Panda difficulty to the level of your play.' And that's a good thing - though I am on record as stating that it's poorly implemented atmo.
That all being said, I'm all for dumping the DDA entirely and replacing it with PROPER Panda evolution, where they actually sprout different bodyparts to counter the way you usually deal with them, constantly forcing you to adapt.
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Michael Osborne
Mike Ibeji: Well that's why you balance the game to give a high level of challenge without the dynamic aspect. Evolution that responds to playstyle is completely legit though and indeed excellent.
Mike Ibeji
Michael Osborne: Problem is, as XCOM demonstrates, the balance increasingly switches in the player's favour as the game progresses, despite the new Nasties that appear.
The DDA was designed to deal with that, and if played with as envisaged, it does.
But I agree: it's no substitute for the real 'Pandoran Evolution' that was promised. If you like that idea, vote for 'Modify the way that Pandorans evolve' on Canny.
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Michael Osborne
Thanks for the response. Good to hear.
Vit Barta
under review
Dynamic difficulty influence was already significantly decreased in Leviathan patch released in March. And we are considering removing dynamic difficulty altogether.
Rogier van Vugt
Vit Barta: WoW once implemented a penalty for people who spent so many hours playing the game they thought that was unbalancing.
A huge uproar ensured.
So they changed it: in stead of a penalty after a number of xp points, they now give a bonus for the first number of xp points. This was welcomed as a great idea for more casual players!
Of course, the underlying mathematics was actually completely the same. And nowadays all MMO type games use this mechanic in some way or another.
Moral of the story: look carefully about what you consider to be the baseline, and what you consider the adjustment.
In this case, with the difficulty getting dynamically higher, missions became near impossible even in easy. And you rightfully fixed that.
I'd advocate for taking winning every battle optimally as a baseline, and only implementing dynamic difficulty downwards for people who suffer significant losses.
Of course, elsewhere I've advocated for compensating the loss of a soldier by granting a part of the accumulated skill points into the general pool.
The goal here should be to make it a more viable play not to simply reload or restart the map after a loss.
Other options there: adding a bleedout timer so soldiers reduced to 0 can still be saved and then merely require a longer downtime. (remember to allow them to be carried if they remain unconscious for the missions where you need to evac)
And/or voluntary soldiers that are free to recruit, maybe start out with fewer skillpoints and increase in number should soldiers die on missions.
Setokaiva
Rogier van Vugt: I agree completely with having a bleedout system & timer, I've asked for this repeatedly before. It would make it so much less punishing with having soldiers shot down in combat, but also you run the risk of the soldiers that would rescue them getting disabled or killed too. A worthy tradeoff.
Rogier van Vugt
Setokaiva: Not only that, but if you need a soldier carrying the wounded off the battlefield, one downed soldier means 2 soldiers out of action.
Alvaro Rodriguez Tajes
Vit Barta: why not allowing the players to enable it if they want to? the option is already implement it, it would be a shame to remove it, instead of disabling it by default, and allowing the player to have some ways to tune game difficulty.
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Michael Osborne
So apparently this is a feature. Do well and get punished. I kind of get that for keeping a first playthrough fun on a lower difficulty, but pease don't do this on legend. When you upgrade your soldiers and tech, you should feel an advantage until the enemy catches up - and vice versa. That's what makes it feel like a war. I want both my crushes and my valiant fightbacks to mean something.
nani Zab
Michael Osborne: i'd like it to be the other way around, you are trying to cantch up to them, and if you dont you will be at a disadvantage, but if you manage to get it out super early you should be rewarded with easier fights. imo firaxis did it almost perfectly on XCOM2, but then again tahts just my taste :)