Winning on Impossible

[SymbolicFrank]

What I see/hear quite often:

"I bought this game, started it, selected the Impossible difficulty, and.... lost! That's unfair!"

And I think most game designers care. Simply because the few people who roar up and post endless posts about it are the most visible feedback.

Compare that to everything having to be multiplayer nowadays and you get that 0.1% of stupid, raving lunatics deciding policies:

"I played ... against ..., and he came up with ..., which is totally unfair and uncalled for! NERF!!!!"


Leaving the people who like a challenge and love to play on Impossible in the dust.

It's even that the game designers know what will happen and won't allocate more people to something they will have to scrap/revert anyway: a smart AI.

 

[octavius]

The games that really need strong AI are Strategy games.
The three types (mainly) I play are CRPGs, turn based Strategy and FPS'es. Of these Strategy games are the only ones I usually play on Impossible.
Conclusion: we need better AI. Sadly there's no money in it. The money is according to the suits in games played online that have microtransactions. And as long as enough idiots buy in-game stuff with real money the suits are right.

 

[DragoFireheart]

HP Bloat is not the same as challenging AI.

 

[octavius]

Did someone say it is?

 

[markec]

In the old times in a game like Warhammer Shadow of the Horned Rat, there was only one difficulty setting "You're Fucked". So either deal with it or play something else, end of the story.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

In the old times in a game like Warhammer Shadow of the Horned Rat, there was only one difficulty setting "You're Fucked". So either deal with it or play something else, end of the story.

This. Especially during the 80s on the home computers, it was rare if a game had variable difficulty levels. You had "You're Fucked" and only a handful of lives at best.

 

[iZerw]

In the old times in a game like Warhammer Shadow of the Horned Rat, there was only one difficulty setting "You're Fucked". So either deal with it or play something else, end of the story.

Even consoles had that back in the day. Castlevania and Battle Toads for example.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Every old games back in the days was Dark Souls, lolol.
Easy game on Highest difficulty setting? Except Torchligh2 I don't remember any at the moment.

Better AI? To piss of money source? Nah. Not to mention AI is CPU demand. welp

EDIT would replace that WHShoHR with some Wizardry game and would fit. Actually like I said any old game or whatever.

 

[Grimwulf]

The real question is, is there a single game, featuring truly Impossible difficulty? Except for platformers.

I can think of only Space Rangers 2. Them Reapers or what-was-their-name destroy the whole fucking universe in early game. All humans and aliens are helpless, and you don't get nearly enough time to get some money and xp. Other games I know are completable in any difficulty.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

The real question is, is there a single game, featuring truly Impossible difficulty? Except for platformers.

We'll have to start by eliminating all the games that are impossible to complete due to bugs.

I would possibly say Captive (read the Miscellaneous paragraph to get what I mean) though even I'd say that's a stretch.

 

[Grimwulf]

The real question is, is there a single game, featuring truly Impossible difficulty? Except for platformers.

We'll have to start by eliminating all the games that are impossible to complete due to bugs.

I would possibly say Captive (read the Miscellaneous paragraph to get what I mean) though even I'd say that's a stretch.

I would say that it's exactly the case of impossible-due-to-a-bug game. If you look at Captive at another angle, it's just a game without an end goal, like life sims. Either way, it's not the difficulty that prevents you from nailing it.

Spoiler

When does it end? How many planets are in the game?
The system generates random bases, so in theory, it never ends. In practice though, nothing last forever.
Each base is identified by a sequential number that indicates the shape of the base and other factors such as the level of difficulty and which encounters to allow. The number has a maximum value of 65535 and that is the number of available bases. If you divide this number by the number of bases per mission, which is 11 when we include the space station, that makes 5957 missions.

Unfortunately, a bug in the map generator locks up Captive on base #1 of mission 2316. Although the last possible base to be generated is 5957, it is impossible to go beyond mission 2316 unless cheating to skip this base.

Note that this is for the Atari ST and Amiga version. It has been said that the PC version of Captive doesn't have more than 256 mission as it loops back to mission 1 when reaching mission 257.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I didn't know about the PC version only having 256 missions. The PC version is inferior in many ways (it's so bad in fact that I recommend that people AVOID playing it) but I never knew that it was even worse.

Shame about that bug. I knew that there were maps where it was impossible to find the clipboard with the password, but clever users had managed to "hack" the maps and find those codes.

 

[Jick Magger]

The real question is, is there a single game, featuring truly Impossible difficulty? Except for platformers.

I can think of only Space Rangers 2. Them Reapers or what-was-their-name destroy the whole fucking universe in early game. All humans and aliens are helpless, and you don't get nearly enough time to get some money and xp. Other games I know are completable in any difficulty.

 

[Grimwulf]

The real question is, is there a single game, featuring truly Impossible difficulty? Except for platformers.

I can think of only Space Rangers 2. Them Reapers or what-was-their-name destroy the whole fucking universe in early game. All humans and aliens are helpless, and you don't get nearly enough time to get some money and xp. Other games I know are completable in any difficulty.

I wonder if there are people who actually find P&T funny.

 

[Jick Magger]

The real question is, is there a single game, featuring truly Impossible difficulty? Except for platformers.

I can think of only Space Rangers 2. Them Reapers or what-was-their-name destroy the whole fucking universe in early game. All humans and aliens are helpless, and you don't get nearly enough time to get some money and xp. Other games I know are completable in any difficulty.

I wonder if there are people who actually find P&T funny.

It's only video games bruh, why you haff to be mad?

 

[Grimwulf]

The real question is, is there a single game, featuring truly Impossible difficulty? Except for platformers.

I can think of only Space Rangers 2. Them Reapers or what-was-their-name destroy the whole fucking universe in early game. All humans and aliens are helpless, and you don't get nearly enough time to get some money and xp. Other games I know are completable in any difficulty.

I wonder if there are people who actually find P&T funny.

It's only video games bruh, why you haff to be mad?

Dunno. Coz I'm drunk. Coz I live in Russia. Coz I lost my last Dominions 4 pbem. On reason leads to another and so here I am.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Did someone say it is?

Generally the hardest difficult is just HP bloat.

 

[ZodoZ]

What I see/hear quite often:
EDITED smart AI.

I hear what you are saying.
I'll ask you this. How many PC games are we confronted with "game fog" anymore.
The old games were pre-internet speed of light google the answer to the puzzle so I can move on days.
Old games had a 900# hint line in the back of the users manual in case you get "stuck".
$1.99 per minute with no complimentary porn at the end.
The comparison is really apples to oranges.
Speed runner completes game. Posts walkthrough to gamefaqs.
Yeah, we could spend another 100 hours of our lives poking and prodding a game engine to give up it's fruit.
I don't know. Fuck. It's who you are and who people are being brought up to be. You either are taught to be a certain way, your not taught, or your not taught and you just ARE.
DNA is the culprit. At least, thats what I told the FBI.

 

[Ebonsword]

Better AI? To piss of money source? Nah. Not to mention AI is CPU demand. welp

What is a little strange, though, is that even strategy games don't seem to have much invested in AI. And that's a genre where I think people actually *do* care about it.

 

[Damned Registrations]

It's just not practical. The number of layers a game like Civ has, with resources, terrain, technology, units, trade, reputation, culture, wonders, improvements, city buildings, specialist citizens, great people... how the fuck do you make something that combines all of those factors each turn to choose the best path? Worst of all, probably the most important single variable in each match is predicting how your opponent will behave, which means the computer would need to learn what the player's habits are. At that point you've basically created true AI. And considering how long it takes to resolve a late game turn of Civ as is... yeah.

Of course, the way humans play these games (or do anything involving significant complexity) isn't by simultaneously cross referencing all the factors. We form a hierarchy of strategies within strategies.
- I started near metals and can use production better with units than building so I will be aggressive this game.
- I'm being aggressive this game so I will build archers instead of spearmen, and will attack my nearest neighbour.
- I'm at war so I will pick war technologies to pursue, and ignore culture and trade
and so forth.
You don't pick what technologies to pursue based on what resources you have (or maybe you do, but then you don't decide to be aggressive on that basis, but on the basis of your technology. The point is that it works like a flowchart rather than some sort of weighted equation of all variables at once.)

As far as impossible difficulty goes... I'd assume a sufficiently brutal combination of options on AI Wars would be impossible, or close enough.

 

[Xathrodox86]

In the old times in a game like Warhammer Shadow of the Horned Rat, there was only one difficulty setting "You're Fucked". So either deal with it or play something else, end of the story.

Christ that was a hard ass game. Only managed to reach mission 5 and then got stuck. With Dark Omen I had more luck and actually finished it, but got myself a couple of grey hair for my trouble. But even tough these games were merciless, I don't think that they were actually impossible. Remember that many older titles such as Civ 2 or JA series were hard, simply because the AI was a cheating fuck. It was especially jarring in Civilization. Hell even the HoMM series was guilty of that.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Yeah, about SotHR - didn't we just hear a while back that the game had "impossible" battles that were not meant to be beat? Some aspie player acutally beat one of these battles and found that there was no game content beyond it, the game didn't progress anywhere.

 

[Xathrodox86]

Yeah, about SotHR - didn't we just hear a while back that the game had "impossible" battles that were not meant to be beat? Some aspie player acutally beat one of these battles and found that there was no game content beyond it, the game didn't progress anywhere.

Optional battles that were not mean to be won? Sounds like Warhammer alright.

 

[CryptRat]

I remember spending a lot of time starting again the missions of SotHR. Losing some unit was instant reset and losing too much guys of a unit also led to start again the mission.
And even playing like that i was stucked at a mission.

 

[Xathrodox86]

I remember spending a lot of time starting again the missions of SotHR. Losing some unit was instant reset and losing too much guys of a unit also led to start again the mission.
And even playing like that i was stucked at a mission.

I've quit after the mission with hostages taken by the Orcs. I think I've tried that one at least 10 times...