Suggested changes to make EDFIA more fun

[KDR_11k]

I posted this before but in a thread where it probably got lost. No idea if we'll see any attempt at changing the game with patches as opposed to only bugfixing but I don't think EDFIA is as much fun as previous EDF games and the combat balance plays a massive part in that.

If I could change the game the changelog would read roughly like this:
- Introduce Harder and Hardest difficulties, Harder is the old Hard and the new Hard and Hardest difficulties are in between the old difficulties to provide a smoother difficulty curve.
- Decrease enemy HP across the board while increasing their damage.
- Shorten the time enemies need to perform a melee attack, a player should not be able to roll through a group of ants without taking hits.
- Make found weapons usable regardless of the player's tier, only locking purchaseable weapons away. Players can compensate for the increased firepower by playing on harder difficulties.
- Increase the simultaneous spawn limit for enemies so the enemy force is larger and there are fewer respawns.
- Increase enemy movement speed on higher difficulties.
- Make UFOs that die to their kamikaze attack give points to the player that triggered the kamikaze mode.
- Add some more steps to the Tactical's turret upgrades to make them more useful during the later normal difficulty tiers.
- Remove the need to hit weak points on the large hector and remove the weakpoint on the small hector. Large hectors would need an HP increase while small ones would need a decrease. Precision shooting is NOT what EDF is about, I wasn't even a fan of the shoot-the-hatch carriers in EDF2017.
- Make reviving a player restore them to 30% health instead of full.

Bigger changes that would probably go beyond the scope of a single patch:
- Break up longer missions into multiple shorter ones to reduce the frustration of dying late in a long mission.
- Add drawbacks to higher weapon tiers like increased reload times, smaller clips, decreased accuracy, ...
- Reduce the player damage/enemy HP growth between weapon tiers (to maybe +20% instead of +100%) and difficulties (to +100% instead of +1000%).

[senstaffsen]

Originally Posted by KDR_11k

I posted this before but in a thread where it probably got lost. No idea if we'll see any attempt at changing the game with patches as opposed to only bugfixing but I don't think EDFIA is as much fun as previous EDF games and the combat balance plays a massive part in that.

If I could change the game the changelog would read roughly like this:
- Introduce Harder and Hardest difficulties, Harder is the old Hard and the new Hard and Hardest difficulties are in between the old difficulties to provide a smoother difficulty curve.
- Decrease enemy HP across the board while increasing their damage.
- Shorten the time enemies need to perform a melee attack, a player should not be able to roll through a group of ants without taking hits.
- Make found weapons usable regardless of the player's tier, only locking purchaseable weapons away. Players can compensate for the increased firepower by playing on harder difficulties.
- Increase the simultaneous spawn limit for enemies so the enemy force is larger and there are fewer respawns.
- Increase enemy movement speed on higher difficulties.
- Make UFOs that die to their kamikaze attack give points to the player that triggered the kamikaze mode.
- Add some more steps to the Tactical's turret upgrades to make them more useful during the later normal difficulty tiers.
- Remove the need to hit weak points on the large hector and remove the weakpoint on the small hector. Large hectors would need an HP increase while small ones would need a decrease. Precision shooting is NOT what EDF is about, I wasn't even a fan of the shoot-the-hatch carriers in EDF2017.
- Make reviving a player restore them to 30% health instead of full.

Bigger changes that would probably go beyond the scope of a single patch:
- Break up longer missions into multiple shorter ones to reduce the frustration of dying late in a long mission.
- Add drawbacks to higher weapon tiers like increased reload times, smaller clips, decreased accuracy, ...
- Reduce the player damage/enemy HP growth between weapon tiers (to maybe +20% instead of +100%) and difficulties (to +100% instead of +1000%).

This is a wrong place to post this topic,
do not expect any changes.
Contact them by email and suggest this!

[rolandoftheeld]

Besides, I think most of those suggestions are bad ideas. I'm quite happy with the game the way it is.

[aerojet029]

here's my so called wish list for the game....

i've loved the 2017 on xbox.

wish #1) stop the bugs from disolving

at least right away. i understand the limitations of some machines (specifically refering to the xbox 360), but at least give me some options to change the setting to my liking (performance vs qualtiy)

wish #2) varied gun models

i find my self switching guns only to get a gun that uses the same model as the last.. not a big one though

wish #3) More random basic troops

in 2017, my favorite thing to do was to kill the leader guy and recruit his men to follow me and watch them drown in a sea of ants/spiders wtvr

wish #4) more varied missions

all the missions take place in the same setting.. a abandoned city with collapsable buildings.. Cool.. but what about in 2017 when you go into the ant's lair and take the fight to the queen!!... instead the queen comes out to fight you?? LAME!!..


it appears all the files are encrypted and i'm curoius about some tweaks.. but Graphics IS NOT my goal.. i LOVE the new ant/spider textures which feel more insidous (sp?) and the 30fps cap is no biggie, though don't get me wrong, it is noticable.



here are the things that they've added that i love them for
1)better textures
2)better performance
3)armor types (which makes me feel the normal soldier is useless)

[KDR_11k]

My big issue with the game is that it's too slow and easy. Picking a higher difficulty doesn't really work because all that does if you're underleveled is to make it take FOREVER to kill anything, it just gets tedious and boring. That's because the HP gap between Normal and Hard is huge (I'm estimating roughly ten times).

In previous EDF games the enemy HP doubled, enemies got faster and dealt more damage. Playing at difficulties beyond your gear becomes mostly about not letting a single ant near you because even one of them could take most of your health off with one point blank acid attack and that got really hard with their increasing speed. Also the whole wave of enemies spawned at once, in EDFIA they spawn about 10 enemies per type (and I've never seen more than 3 hectors, bombers or mantises) at once and spawn more as you kill the previous wave. As a result you'd easily fight 50+ ants plus air support, (about as many gunships or flying ants) artillery (10 hectors or so) and reinforcements (3 or more carrier UFOs). Mind you, they had numbers like that on the freaking PS2!

Also previous EDFs didn't give you squadmates that could revive you, that added a LOT more tension because if you die that's it. In EDFIA I've done underleveled runs where I died dozens of times and just didn't care.

[Merranvo]

Originally Posted by KDR_11k

- Decrease enemy HP across the board while increasing their damage.

Starting on normal, enemies die pretty easily...
But WEAPONS are rather broken.

Of course, starting on hard enemies seem to actually be worth a fight, but it only further reveals how broken the weapon selection is.

Originally Posted by KDR_11k

- Make found weapons usable regardless of the player's tier, only locking purchaseable weapons away. Players can compensate for the increased firepower by playing on harder difficulties.

I think this is just a throw back to "the weapon selection sucks".

Originally Posted by KDR_11k

- Add drawbacks to higher weapon tiers like increased reload times, smaller clips, decreased accuracy, ...

- Reduce the player damage/enemy HP growth between weapon tiers (to maybe +20% instead of +100%) and difficulties (to +100% instead of +1000%).

Just say it with me "the weapons are crud"

And it's not even like "ammo" means anything as the "magic-reload" times are only a few seconds. Let alone there is a lack of "distinction" between weapon types. (By which I mean the decision to use a missile, rocket, or grenade launcher over "calculating the damage").

There really isn't much problem with generating ammo, if you have it happening in the background. But if when you "reload" you're drawing from nothing... then it becomes harder to "game balance" weapons.

Which is kind of the problem. The weapons are very "damage balanced", instead of "game balanced" based on how players will use them. And STILL, not giving "overkill" (i.e. 500 damage with 0.333 rps), or unique class attributes (i.e. grenades having bloody big (15m, more?) blast radius at lesser damage, missiles being the only ones with locking).

Originally Posted by KDR_11k

- Increase the simultaneous spawn limit for enemies so the enemy force is larger and there are fewer respawns.

Blame the pixel shaders and all of the graphical effects that have been crammed into (but are not very visible) the title. God, I hate PC Gamers.

In short: Excessive graphics ruin gameplay.
PC Gamers preach that "buying top of the line systems" should counter this... but then insist that the graphical quality match what the system is capable of rather than make the gameplay better.

I mean, to call something like THIS "poor graphical quality" and refuse to buy it because it is "dated"... seriously! Does everything have to look AS BAD as Modern Warfare (yes, it looks BAD)? Can we not have games that have COLOUR? That are FUN to PLAY, rather than look at?

HL2's pathetic closed (and boxy) environments vs Halo's wide ranging warfare. The 30 odd active AI's of Halo vs the 10 or less AI's for Halflife (lots of spawning happens here)). The changing enemy load-outs AND AI for different difficulty levels VS just "giving them more health and SOMETIMES more damage".


Either way, I only mean to say that people (especially PC Gamers) just don't understand that it's give or take. Thinking it's that the developers were too lazy or something and THAT is why so in so couldn't be added.

Mix and matching parts from other games just doesn't work... and with people concentrating so hard on MINOR graphical improvements (well, except for making everything the same colour)... ugg.

Originally Posted by KDR_11k

- Increase enemy movement speed on higher difficulties.

But Gamers voted that the only changes between difficulty levels should be damage and health! Changing anything else would confuse and infuriate them.

Though, I'd rather there be "selective difficulties"
Meaning, you choose if you want more spawns, more speed, more health, more damage, faster melee, health drops, weaker AI's... etc.

If the difference between difficulties is only going to be variables, I'd rather change those myself.

Originally Posted by KDR_11k

- Remove the need to hit weak points on the large hector and remove the weakpoint on the small hector. Large hectors would need an HP increase while small ones would need a decrease. Precision shooting is NOT what EDF is about, I wasn't even a fan of the shoot-the-hatch carriers in EDF2017.

Well, weakpoints really comes down to game-balancing... but so long as you aren't FORCED into targeting weakpoints, or if said weakpoints don't offer an absurdly major advantage (re: forced into targeting).

It'll be more like "good for you for managing a shot there, but it's unlikely you'll get another in a row"

Originally Posted by KDR_11k

- Make reviving a player restore them to 30% health instead of full.

The health system is entirely broken though... health items drop sporadically and are rather undependable, yet you have no way of recovering health other than to grab them.

While yes, we've seen far too much of "regenerating hp" now-a-days... and what's worse is that the WRONG games are picking it up... or even fully removing the health bar. But the variants really aren't that bad.

Partial Recovery either based on health "sections" or damage taken makes reviving less of a requirement. It adds forgiveness for the occasional "hit" and still punishes recklessness.

* Should also note that as you're forced to kill each and every enemy, it isn't especially practical to rely on random drops when you can't rush the enemy.

[Kiljoy66]

Those all sound freaking horrible.

[Metal_Izanagi]

If you hate PC gamers so much, why are you on a PC gaming forum, IhavenoideawhatI'mtalkingabout, er, I mean Merranvo.

[KDR_11k]

I'm pretty sure the reduced enemy numbers are for the netcode, not the graphics. EDF fans aren't exactly demanding a perfect framerate, EDF2 slowed to a crawl in many missions and it's still considered the best of the bunch. Vicious Cycle did admit that they had to sacrifice a lot in order to get the online multiplayer working. Then again Sandlot did online multiplayer in Zangeki no Reginleiv which is basically EDF (with crazy medieval/magical weapons like spears that can stab with a 120 meter range) on the Wii.

Limited ammo isn't necessary, Sandlot EDF games manage weapon variety without needing ammo limits (except for a rare few weapons that are insanely powerful in exchange for limited ammo). Sandlot's weapons include far more edge cases like weapons that can deliver insane spike damage but take forever to reload (and the air tortoise is actually one of the WEAKER spike weapons in Sandlot EDFs! How about a 100x grenade launcher?). The bullet spongy enemies probably play a part, hectors have 2000 HP in the old EDFs (a 9999 damage air tortoise doesn't kill a hector in EDFIA) while ants have roughly the same (100 HP, I think they're something like 50 in EDFIA). Much more feasible to have a gun that can one-shot a hector in Sandlot EDFs (also helps that one hector isn't much in Sandlot EDF, they come in groups of ten or so).

Previous EDFs had no revives at all, you made do with the drops you got and that's it. Suicide was a very big cause of death as weapons did full damage to you and those 2000 damage grenades would usually kill you in one failed attack. That may not be terribly fair but it adds a lot of tension and you kill enough enemies that the random chance of drops doesn't come into play that much (especially since most large enemies have guaranteed drops). EDF used to be a very high tension affair where mistakes could lead to a swift death. That made victories all the sweeter.

[Alexandra]

KDR_11k, if you had a newsletter I would subscribe to it. After playing IA a bit (and EDF2 & 2017 a ton) your suggestions sound spot-on.

[Amiculi]

Originally Posted by KDR_11k

Previous EDFs had no revives at all, you made do with the drops you got and that's it. Suicide was a very big cause of death as weapons did full damage to you and those 2000 damage grenades would usually kill you in one failed attack. That may not be terribly fair but it adds a lot of tension and you kill enough enemies that the random chance of drops doesn't come into play that much (especially since most large enemies have guaranteed drops). EDF used to be a very high tension affair where mistakes could lead to a swift death. That made victories all the sweeter.

Oh how I loved the other EDF's (and Zangeki no Revenleiv for that matter). The wonderful tactics taken up for handling some of the rougher stages on Inferno, like equipping a 50 damage missile launcher and like 50,000 damage remote mines (I forget the numbers, my 360 died like 3 years ago. Still have EDF2017 though), placing bombs in the path of the enemies, shooting the rocket into the ground to knock yourself into invulnerability and detonate the bombs. Good, hilarious fun.

EDF:IA isn't terrible, it's basically just "What we got" on PC. I do wish they would've added more options to help emulate the original games though, modern PC's have no trouble with the game at all, no reason to not allow us to jack up enemy counts and such at the very least.

Supposedly Sandlot's current project is another EDF though, assuming EDF:IA's lead developer's comment about Sandlot's forthcoming EDF wasn't just referring to the PSP remake. So hopefully we'll be seeing the good stuff again soon.

[Edit: Based on this article ( http://www.siliconera.com/2011/07/01...-for-the-west/ ) published July 1st, a few months after the PSP EDF release, I have to assume that they are working on another full EDF title with his comment of " I am personally really excited to see what Sandlot comes up with in their forthcoming EDF game, but until then I’ll be online blasting bugs in EDF: Insect Armageddon."

Their team worked closely with Sandlot to try and keep the game in line with the main series, so I guess if anyone would know they would.]

[Sablicious]

Make the game more like (a LOT more like) EDF 2017.

[otaviox5]

- Remove the need to hit weak points on the large hector and remove the weakpoint on the small hector. Large hectors would need an HP increase while small ones would need a decrease. Precision shooting is NOT what EDF is about, I wasn't even a fan of the shoot-the-hatch carriers in EDF2017.

+1 like