Re-implementation of the difficulty settings

[Ben1338]

Hey there.

I know the original OTTD difficulty settings https://wiki.openttd.org/Difficulty got unsupported a long time ago and I'm not sure how this would sound to you.

but I was wondering if it could be re-implemented but with a few things different:

Instead of the game specifying the difficulty you need, how about have it bound to the advanced settings and changing each setting impacts the difficulty of your game eg: limitations, slope steepness, economy settings, competitor settings.

So for example; It would work something like you have less competitors, but have a hilly terrain or the inverse, meaning they'd be approximately the same difficulty.

It's a concept and I'm not sure what you guys think of the idea.

[leifbk]

To me, it sounds like a lot of work of very dubious value

This is a game which allows for a very wide range of playing styles. I for one play mostly with ships and road vehicles, so for instance slope steepness is irrelevant. Some people like to play with AIs, and others don't. Some want inflation on, and some want it off. And so on.

I'd rather go in the opposite direction and remove the scoring system, which is daft, and potentially misleading new users into thinking that there is a specific hard-coded goal in this game, which it isn't. I think that the purpose of this game is to have a good time. Tuning the settings for your particular definition of "having a good time" is part of the game.

[planetmaker]

One of the main factors of the game which affects difficulty is the choice of NewGRF(s) and the choice of the game scripts. While scripts may offer a difficulty switch, NewGRFs often cannot - and even if they have, it would be impossible to gauge the difficulty of playing with one set against the difficulty of playing with another - especially as they might interact differently with eachother and also with terrain, map size etc.

Thus a coherent choice of difficulty settings would always be incomplete and completely rendered pointless by choosing these or those NewGRFs.

[Eddi]

the original difficulty settings basically had two problems that made them irrelevant:

• lots of new settings were added that affected difficulty, but none of them were represented
• changing any of the settings, especially some frequently changed map generator settings, would change the difficulty to "custom"

back when the new settings window was introduced and the difficulty settings were merged into the other settings, the concept of "presets" were discussed, but it was never actually implemented. and also, nobody could agree which settings belong in these presets and which don't

back then i had this thought on difficulty: each setting gets a difficulty multiplier, like 100% means "medium", 80% means "this makes the game easier", 120% "this makes the game harder", and if you multiply all of these up, then the final value defines the difficulty rating of the game. the problem with such a system is that everyone will have a different opinion how far a setting affects difficulty.


as for NewGRFs: technically, NewGRFs can read the difficulty of the game, and then provide different stats for their vehicles (or whatever the NewGRF does). however, this was never widely used, because most of the people who cared about NewGRFs would also have changed some of the difficulty settings, resulting in the meaningless "custom" value.

[Redirect Left]

I think some simplification of the settings, such as a basic normal/advance/hard would be good. I introduced a new player to openTTD (they still play it!) and one of their first thoughts was that the settings were really complicated, which for advanced players is good, but new players its a little daunting.

[Ben1338]

What I had in mind was there wouldn't really be a very defined 'hard' setting (though that wouldn't make hard settings irrelevant).

And it's entirely possible for others to interpret the various difficulty settings differently depending on their gameplay style since the definition of "Hard" and "Easy" are subjective.

Some GRFs alter the gameplay and therefore would be almost impossible to account for so there would inherently be some support difficulties, but the settings do influence the vehicle's base statistics so it would be partially implemented and accounted for.

As for a goal, wasn't the original goal of the game to make it to 2050 from 1950 (aka: 100 years)?

[Simons Mith]

I do like the idea of replacing the concept of a difficulty setting (which noone can agree on) with a *simplicity* setting.

[planetmaker]

I think some simplification of the settings, such as a basic normal/advance/hard would be good. I introduced a new player to openTTD (they still play it!) and one of their first thoughts was that the settings were really complicated, which for advanced players is good, but new players its a little daunting.

So... you mean something like what we have already for hte settings for a few years (basic / advanced / expert)?

[Transportman]

What I had in mind was there wouldn't really be a very defined 'hard' setting (though that wouldn't make hard settings irrelevant).

And it's entirely possible for others to interpret the various difficulty settings differently depending on their gameplay style since the definition of "Hard" and "Easy" are subjective.

Some GRFs alter the gameplay and therefore would be almost impossible to account for so there would inherently be some support difficulties, but the settings do influence the vehicle's base statistics so it would be partially implemented and accounted for.

As for a goal, wasn't the original goal of the game to make it to 2050 from 1950 (aka: 100 years)?

So basically what Eddi proposed, each setting gets a "difficulty multiplier", and the sum of all settings would then determine the appropriate difficulty level?

But then, what would the use of such a value be? I'm not aware of any NewGRF that checks for it, and for the players it has no use as it is a derived value, for which the derivation will not be clear to players.

[Redirect Left]

So... you mean something like what we have already for hte settings for a few years (basic / advanced / expert)?

Apparently even they are 'unintuitive and hard to tell where a setting will be', and the search apparently is hard to use unless you actually know what you're looking for.

[Simons Mith]

I think some simplification of the settings, such as a basic normal/advance/hard would be good. I introduced a new player to openTTD (they still play it!) and one of their first thoughts was that the settings were really complicated, which for advanced players is good, but new players its a little daunting.

So... you mean something like what we have already for hte settings for a few years (basic / advanced / expert)?

The existing 'basic settings' may let you access and alter basic settings, but they give very little indication of what you might want to alter. Nor do the advanced or expert settings.

To be of any use as a replacement for Easy/Difficult, complexity settings would actually need to provide some suggested values. Which I think we could agree on them reasonably easily, because they can still be customised afterwards. For example, 'simple' would probably include a x1 freight multiplier, permissive town settings, no aircraft noise, no cargodist, no station joins, no wagon or track speed limits, maybe no vehicle expiry?, fixed-sized catchment areas for stations, no inflation and so on. The point is to highlight the key settings amongst the sea of options that actually make the game simple, and set them to the 'simple' values.

'Advanced' is likely to include aircraft noise, station joins, hostile towns, a higher freight multiplier, wagon speed limits etc. i.e. the things that make a game more complicated. But the point is to provide a variety of presets, thus showing people new to the game which settings make a difference, not to just say, 'Here's access to all the settings, do what you like, but you're on your own.' It's the 'you're on your own' part that I object to. And I agree that the existing Easy/Difficult settings don't really cover enough of the game any more. However, as you can still have an easy game with advanced settings, it also looks like the difficulty settings shouldn't be called Easy/Difficult any more, they should be renamed Simple/Advanced