[Suggestion] Difficulty Options

[Tan Nirali]

In X1 we had 4 difficulty options, which came with their own set of variables (like enemy health, damage, accuracy etc.), but i think X2 would benefit from a more advanced approach.

When selecting a new starting difficulty, it would be great if we could edit these variables independently (within reasonable limits), by selecting a custom difficulty option. For example:

Let's say you find the air combat is too hard and the ground combat is just fine. In X1 you had the only option to edit the gameconfig or download an "air combat cheat mod", which is both bad in my opinion.

There are other games with this feature and it works great. Players, who want to play on the difficulty presets can still do this, but everyone else can change some variables to make the game more enjoyable to them.

Here's a short list of variables that should be editable:

 

-Alien Health, Accuracy, Damage

-Psionics stenght

-Ufo Attributes (air combat is subject to change, so i don't know what is relevant here)

-Geoscape Aircraft speed and range

-Geoscape funding, monthly income, starting money

-Escalation speed and time between attacks

-Research rate and equipment build time 

 

What do you think about this?

[RustyNayle]

I would say if enough people are actually interested in this then maybe the devs could make it easy for a modder to code in these variables as editable in a simple menu screen for those that want to enable the mod, but it shouldn't be part of the vanilla game.

[Jesuvl]

I totally agree with this option. The game could be much more interesting to play once and again if you can adjust parameters to customize difficulty.

I think the options could be more generic. For instance:

Alien Toughness: Easy, Normal, Hard

Upkeep cost: Cheap, Normal, Expensive

And so on. It is not necessary to install a mod for this, and also is not necessary to know the structure of any config file.

[Sheepy]

I can think of another very interesting option.  It's just off or on.

 

Alien Weapon Self-Destruct

 

And if you set it to on, you better bring more stun batons!

[Ruggerman]

May be if there was a sliding scale on the hardness of the game, ranging from 1 to 10, that would give you a greater range of difficulty!!

[Whiskiz]

Could be cool, you could assign a value for each setting of each difficulty option then mix and match while being presented with an overall difficulty modifier. 

It'd be great for achievements (complete the game with an overall difficulty modifier of 150% or higher, complete the game with an overall difficulty modifier of 200% or more, then add in ironman etc) but i'm guessing X2 won't support achievements as X1 didn't. X2 seems to be all about taking things out and saving money, over expanding on them. =P

With that though at least you could customize the difficulty a little more personally while still potentially making it challenging - some give and take in different areas to make the best playthrough you can. 

Whether as part of the official game or a mod.

Edited November 9, 2018 by Whiskiz