Methods used to increase/decrease difficulty in a campaign

[Lord Esdin]

Things I have used:

giving a re-occuring income bonus that increases as difficulty goes from hard to easy

more re-occuring reinforcements on easier difficulty

more upgrades availiable/researched on easier difficulty

AI is less aggressive on easier difficulty (This can work very well)

you have to take a much longer/tougher path on hard as opposed to normal or easy)

An additional hero comes to your aid once you finish 75% of the mission on hard vs just 50% on medium or 25% on easy

More food availiable on an easier difficulty

What are some of yours and how effective are they?

 

[cleavinghammer]

One of the most infuriating things to face are AIs that attack at the same time.

Having only one entrance/exit to the base makes things a lot easier for the defending player.

Instead of mere numerical difficulty, e.g. +1 units per attack wave per difficulty or the enemy starting with more upgrades, try something like replacing one unit with a caster, or a unit with different abilities, as this requires more effort to beat than simply spamming defenses.

 

[Daffa]

It depends on the campaign. Mine uses upgrade difference and tougher challenges on higher difficulties. A chapter also has story seal (preventing a portion from being playable at lower diff). A chapter is locked under highest difficulty level.

Some of these are bad design choices, I know.

 

[:Elite:]

a cheap but effective way to do is is to give the enemy more heroes with each difficulty increase, also you could give the enemy heros items that have some overpowered abilities like a commandy aura that gives 50 percent extra dmg to each units attack

 

[Lord Esdin]

a cheap but effective way to do is is to give the enemy more heroes with each difficulty increase, also you could give the enemy heros items that have some overpowered abilities like a commandy aura that gives 50 percent extra dmg to each units attack

This reminds me of a time I was creating a campiagn with a few others, we had arguments about the difficulty issues, one of them decided that the best way to solve it would be to give airship (which the player could not build) to the player

2 - ships on easy
1 - ship on medium
no ships on hard

All this did was allow the player to bypass all of the enemies defenses on easy and score a simply victory by destroying his castle and barrack, this was not a good solution

 

[:Elite:]

U may be right

I wanted to ask about the specifics of what you did when you had a new hero join you when u fi wished 50% or 75% of the map, would you just introduce a new hero st the starting location once a certain base was leveled ? What exactly did you do?

 

[Lord Esdin]

No it wasn't like that at all

The basic layout of the mission was that you start at the left (west) and had to fight all the way to the right (east) now there are 6 enemy bases in the way, your goal in this mission was to reach the sixth and final base and destroy it

So lets number the bases 1,2,3,4,5 & 6

1 being the leftest and closest to you and 6 being the final base

depending on the difficulty the heroes would be kept in cages in different bases

there were 3 heroes that you could get

on easy the additional heroes were kept in bases 1, 2, 3 (once you set them free they're yourse plus they cost 0 food)

on medium the additional heroes were kept in bases 2,3,4

on hard additional heroes were kept in bases 3,4,5 plus they were capped at level 7 to make it even harder (the cappiing was not my idea)

 

[Lord Esdin]

the strategy was effective btw

 

[:Elite:]

What make it so effective in your opinion?

 

[Lord Esdin]

Well - it has to do with base 3, base 3 was located in some hills, was extremely difficult to attack both of its location and because of its defenses

attacking and defeating it with your forces and only one hero make it a very difficult thing, I was not the one testing this, but the tester mentioned this several time, it gets easier 2 with 2 or 3 heroes, but its really hard to do with one

 

[:Elite:]

So was it along the way or you had to pass thru it to advance to the next base?

 

[Lord Esdin]

You had to pass though it and and there was only 1 entance in and 1 exit out, the base was on a hill, and very fortified (cannon towers + guard towes + heavy units), basically it was bad unless youre good at micromanaging the units well, but like I said it gets easier with each additional hero

 

[:Elite:]

Since u know lots about changing difficulty could u plz name a few easy methods to do this?

 

[Lord Esdin]

Know alot? that's why I made this topic

 

[:Elite:]

Can u just then plz name some easy way, I am working on a campaign type map and this could really help

 

[Lord Esdin]

Ok here are some:

In one map on easy the player starts off with a map with only 1 entrance, the other ones are blocked by rocks and debris\
On hard and normal an earthquake suddently occurs that destroy the debree and leaves the player with 2 entrances to guard, the base was constructed on a higher elevation then the ground below it, so on easy that entrance is the pinch point

A had a map where if you are playing on hard the enemy comes like 1min into the game and levels most of your structures forcing you to start from scratch

Another map used the resource thing from above

buff up enemy melee hero with a strong vampiric aura and lots of hp

take a map which is like twilight of the gods, except with you starting off where the undead were with no archimonde, and adust difficulty by giving re-occuring reinforcements, aggresiveness of the enemy and upgrades that are available, or number of allies you get

make the enemy have a really strong hero, and give him ressurection as the 2nd ultimate on hard - this will frustrate the hell out of the player if done right

 

[Reon]

Ok here are some:

In one map on easy the player starts off with a map with only 1 entrance, the other ones are blocked by rocks and debris\
On hard and normal an earthquake suddently occurs that destroy the debree and leaves the player with 2 entrances to guard, the base was constructed on a higher elevation then the ground below it, so on easy that entrance is the pinch point

i have witnessed something very similar in a map i had once played, on easy you get good start location, on medium you get an ok one. on hard your gold mine is basically on low ground with no cover from any side - this works well imo but its not an ideal technique

 

[Lord Esdin]

@Reon what would you consider an ideal technique then?

 

[Reon]

Something that alters the gameplay causing the player to improve

Like in a mission I've played certain bosses would drop ahkans of reincarnation, the would do this frequently on easy, sometimes on medium, and rarely on hard

Another example is in a completely different scenario the player gets 100 food on easy, 85 on medium and 70 on hard (i believe this is an ideal method)

another thing that comes to mind is Ive played this campaign mission long ago, and you have these advanced foot soldiers called swiftblades, I think they had 900health, critical strike and resistant skin, but their damage output and overall usefulness were outstanding. Now on easy you were capped to having 6 of these, on normal the cap was just 3 - which to me seems like the perfect amount, but on hard you could only have 2, which made thngs really difficult

What are some of yours??

 

[Lord Esdin]

Here are some good ones:

Player gets send reinforcements every 60/120/180 seconds depending on difficulty (easy/medium/hard)

Player gets a 150/100/50 gold bonus every 120 seconds (easy/medium/hard)

Player gets better reinforcements on easy than on medium than on hard (3 knights 2 footman on easy, 2 knights 3 footsman on medium, 4 footman on hard)

Enemy Ai is more aggresive on hard than on medium and on medium than on easy <---this works great

Locations such as gold mines, outposts, shops, etc. are easy to capture on easy while harder on hard (Ex. No neutral hostile units surrounding said location on easy, a few troll trappers on medium, and forest troll trappers, forest troll Berserkers and a forest troll warlord on hard

On easy a player is either neutral with you or completely missing, on medium a player is hostile towards you but only if you invade or come close to them, on hard this player will openly attack you.

Items are dropped depending on the difficulty

The restock time for a particular unit bought at at mercenary camp is increased based on difficulty

Upgrades you start with differ depending on the difficulty, some upgrades may be unavailable, also the upgrades the enemies start with can vary depending on difficulty

The route you have to take to win the mission can change when playing on different difficulties

Starfall effect - a starfall is created over the map every 3/6/9 minutes depending on difficulty (hard/medium/easy)

that's it for now, I'm tired of typing.

 

[:Elite:]

I know this is OT but how do u keep the player from running out of income besides large gold mines in missions?

 

[Lord Esdin]

Well its normally not a problem because there was usually 120,000+ gold in the player's mine when I was creating chapters, but besides this there were missions where there was a trigger that gave the player a certain amount of gold every half minute or so as long as his town hall was alive, a similar trigger was used to give the player gold if he captured a specific structure and kept it alive.

For this to work you need to set up a trigger that checks: whether a structure exists on the map, whether the structure is alive, and whether the player is the owner of the structure, then for the action you have to set the player's gold to his current gold + (whatever amount of gold you want to give him) This needs to be set up as a re-occuring trigger.

 

[:Elite:]

Wait so its sorta of a salary system

 

[Lord Esdin]

Never thought of it like that. But yes essentially

 

[Reon]

Since you were in the process of making a campaign; did you have any missions where you had to complete the quest(s) in a certain amount of time, and this time limit would change depending on the difficulty? Im curious because I thought about doing this myself

 

[Lord Esdin]

I never liked timed mission, but a buddy of mine was working on a chapter where you have to invade and destroy all the enemy bases before the enemy’s main army arrives on the scene. You were given exactly two hours to do this after you assaulted the first base. If you didn’t destroy all the bases before then it was game over. But the time on that mission was never dependent on difficulty. It was always 2 hours….it was a damn hard mission nevertheless.

 

[Reon]

:/ always assumed giving a player less time will harden any chapter

 

[Lord Esdin]

Like I said I never liked timed missions, why put the players of your campaign through something you don't like being put through yourself ?

 

[Reon]

ur right

 

[Lord Esdin]

I feel like fun is really what playing any campaign/game is all about. Why take away from that by adding a time limit (I mean unless it's absolutely necessary)

 

[Spear]

Just give the enemy more units including heroes -that should do it

 

[Lord Esdin]

Just give the enemy more units including heroes -that should do it

it works but changes the gameplay, for instance I call working on a map. On normal you play against a heavy fortified based with just a human paladin as the only hero, on hard the enemy is given an additional mountain king hero, not does this only increase the difficulty of the map, but it totally alters the gameplay

 

[Spear]

it works but changes the gameplay, for instance I call working on a map. On normal you play against a heavy fortified based with just a human paladin as the only hero, on hard the enemy is given an additional mountain king hero, not does this only increase the difficulty of the map, but it totally alters the gameplay

That totally depends on how you implement it