general difficulty of the game

[Oranisagu]

By now I'm more or less used to the fact that the game can't be made hard (without serious investment), so they made the maps just unpredictable in a way that often forces oneself to restart a mission after knowing what to expect. Its not a good way to offer a challenge but maybe the only one left with the limitations from the engine etc.

anyway. majesty would be a perfect 'casual' game. it doesn't need micromanagement, can easily be played slightly drunk and could be very relaxing. m1 had the sandbox, which allow one to pick a difficulty, so when I wanted a nice and easy game I just picked the easier enemies. usually I went for something between normal and hard, and had a moderately challenging game, which I nearly always won and had a good time with. This was great and the main reason I always went back to the game.

we've heard often enough how sandbox isn't possible, but allowing difficulty to be adjusted would offer at least some relieve. More often than not I like to play strategy games one level after another, winning every one without reloading too often -> casual. sometimes I like a bit of a challenge, so a few reloads are acceptable. I know there are people who want to be beaten 5 times before they finally crack the level - those gamers probably like majesty already, but Majesty could offer both of these extremes a good time by having adjustable difficulty.

I thought about this for a while now and concluded, that while there where so many possibilities to add a basic easy/normal/hard slider, most ideas would just take to much time.
so my simplest proposition to allow to adjust difficulties:
- lower the number of spawned creatures.
If I don't have to deal with 12 demons simultaneously earlygame, the game should be a lot easier (thats a reference to my problems with the second mission of MK)

I assume, this could be changed for the whole game, without having to touch every map again.

other possibilities would be to adjust the difficulty:
- enemy strength (just make them overall weaker)
- gold income
- hero survivability (get them to buy more health potions, run if life low and only 1 potion left)
- time-triggered events (sooner or later - maps would definitely have to be changed individually)

I know, the devs probably won't put in much effort anymore, but maybe some modder sees a way to accomplish the same?
The game just is frustrating atm for casual gamers who just like to play a map and have fun without having to worry about a perfect build order etc.

What does the rest think?

 

[Hapuga]

I assume, this could be changed for the whole game, without having to touch every map again.

This is wrong unfortunately, you would have to redo each map to adjust that.

other possibilities would be to adjust the difficulty:
- enemy strength (just make them overall weaker)
- gold income
- hero survivability (get them to buy more health potions, run if life low and only 1 potion left)
- time-triggered events (sooner or later - maps would definitely have to be changed individually)

This also requires adjusting every map.

The only way to change anything in the game is to alter all the maps.

It is not difficult, however it is very time consuming because lots of testing should be done to find a right balance. I wonder if there will be any people willing to work on such a task, I would gladly help them with providing information how on to do what.

I cannot do it myself, I have way too much on me already.

So yea, if you are interested in making the game harder/easier, I will show you what to adjust and you may do it. It is not rocket science, anyone can do it. It requires minimum level editing knowledge. It does require a lot of patience and time (going through every single map and testing them).

 

[Oranisagu]

damn *g* I hoped at least some of those values would be global and could be altered by a single mod. especially unit strengths, income etc.. I didn't yet pay much attention to the mapmaking since release but I remember maps store an insane amount of largely redundant information, but didn't actually look into it at the time.
balancing would be the hardest (or at least most timeconsuming) task of course, as it always is, but editing every single map will also take loads of time.

well, I'm not sure if I want to take on such a huge project, it might well be kind of a neverending story ;-) I'll think about it and analyze a few maps to see how much can easily be changed (meaning at least partially automated via scripting, as I'm a linux user I'm quite well versed in editing, replacing, etc of textfiles with commandline tools and regex and I seem to remember maps include lua or something similar for all the definitions). but please don't hold your breath, I've never had the patience to see a modding project through so I'll probably drop it halfway through =) I'm am thankful however for your offer of guidance and will gladly call upon you if I decide to follow through.

Thanks again for your reply

Ora

 

[Hapuga]

if you do that at your own it will frighten you and you will run away screaming. So let me tell you a few things to prevent this from happening =))

1. If you REALLY that badly want to alter the maps in 1 shot, you may make the enemies globally weaker. This will apply not to some 1 map, but to all maps. The downside - it makes creatures weak in every isntance, even when you do not want them to be weak. This is the shortest path to go.

What is needed:

gameData/units folder. You will have different .xml files there, these have values. You are particularly interested in RPGParams file and Unitactions maybe. Play around with those. You will see that many creatures do not have a set health value, this is because heroes for example, calculate a random value depending on their parameters (stamina 6 or 10 for example).

2. It is easy to change the balance. What you are looking for is a trigger that says SPAWN or something similar. You may:

1. adjust delays between spawns. the more delays are, the rarer the spawn occurs.
2. adjust creature spawn amount. This allows you to spawn, say, 2 or 3 wolves.
3. adjust creature type spawn. Dont want an elemental banging at your door at day 2? Remove him!

hope this helps. May you have any questions, PM or write here.