Understanding/customizing SP difficulty settings

Hi

I have realized that one of the reasons I don't play too much SP missions/campaigns is because I just don't like the default difficulty/game settings I get to choose before each mission (Recruit, Regular, Veteran, Expert). I've only recently discovered I can modify/hack them somewhat withut digging up obscure text based config files. :rolleyes:

I really don't understand why players just can't make and save their own custom difficulty/game profile settings from the start start. Instead, the player seems limited to the 4 default difficulty level names (some of which have un-editable parameters). Modifying difficulty settings is carried out as follows:

-Pick the scenario/campaign, pick a difficulty setting (any), enter the game, press ESC, "Options", "Game Options", "Difficulty", pick either Recruit or Regular (if you pick Veteran and Expert, some settings are locked), then press "Edit" and manually adjust things there.

This actually ends up overwriting the default difficulty settings for whatever difficulty setting you picked to edit (you could essentially modify the parameters in "Recruit" setting to be identical to those in "Expert" and it would still be called "Recruit" :j:), so when you restart the game, the new settings will be used.

In considering the parameters, i see that there there are ones that seem to "globally" affect the "quality/skill" of both friendly units and enemy units. These parameters are friendly/Enemy Skill and Friendly/Enemy Accuracy. Does this mean that ALL friendly and enemy units have the same skill/accuracy as the ones set here? Or is this like a global multiplying factor affecting the "base" skill/accuracy of every unit?

I actually thought that there was a "base" quality/skill/accuracy assigned to each of the units involved in a scenario/campaign which could be adjusted by the scenario/campaign editor, so that you could have units on the same side having varying degrees of skill/accuracy.

I think I will wait for response to this before I go further and ask about how mods like Zeus AI change things considering much of what they would affect is determined by these difficulty setting.

Cheers

Bull

I've thought the same thing, why not have just one place where you can change all the settings, then have recruit, expert and the other settings as default buttons you can click at to change all settings to a certain level that you can then change if you want to.

It's really annoying if you, for instance, want to play at Veteran level but have the waypoints show up on screen. That setting can not be enabled for Veteran, so to get the settings you want you have to use Recruit and set everything up according to the Veteran level in order to get the waypoints on but everything else at Veteran level.

Can you edit the difficulty in multiplayer?

Can you edit the difficulty in multiplayer?

the host can ;)

or in the config file for the dedicated server

Can't you set up all settings within your own editor created missions? You can set up skill ratings for each individual soldier, can't you not???

Seems I am not the only one who has been wondering about this. Seems to be some confusion. Still waiting on someone with a better understanding for the game to answer these questions.

Still waiting on some answers.

Here is some explanation for each item in the Difficulty list: http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/server.armaprofile#Example_Configuration_File

You can edit those either in the ingame menu or in the My Documents\A2\Your Profile\YourProfile.A2Profile. Open that with a text editor and can also change the IA accuracy (which proper value seems to be be around 0.2-0.3).

Those values are multiplied (or taken on a equation) by the Skill value setted by the mission maker in the editor.

At least, I think is that...

Here is some explanation for each item in the Difficulty list: http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/server.armaprofile#Example_Configuration_File

You can edit those either in the ingame menu or in the My Documents\A2\Your Profile\YourProfile.A2Profile. Open that with a text editor and can also change the IA accuracy (which proper value seems to be be around 0.2-0.3).

Yeah thanks, I was aware of that.

Those values are multiplied (or taken on a equation) by the Skill value setted by the mission maker in the editor.

At least, I think is that...

Well that's what I would hope is the case.

Another question regarding the difficulty settings: Is it possible (common for some mission designers) to make SP missions that OVERRIDE any of the player Difficulty Settings, essentially forcing the player to play the mission using the settings the mission designer intended the scenario to be played? (in much the same way you can't alter the difficulty settings when joining a MP server)

There's still the command cadetMode, although I haven't used it really since OFP (when there were exactly two difficulties to choose between). I'm not sure at what point cadetMode triggers in Arma 2, maybe between Regular and Veteran?

Anyway, you could use that to make the mission not start (e.g. just show a black screen or whatever with the text "change to veteran and restart"), but what you're really asking for here is that people change their own personal preferences and try to adhere to what you perceive as the "optimal" settings. This, I'm afraid, is just folly and foolishness, since Arma is such an incredibly moddable game that trying to force people to play a certain way will just lead to disappointment. What you CAN do is recommend settings, and recommend certain mods be used/not used, and put in the disclaimer that the mission is only playtested using certain settings/mods and that it will not be bugfixed or otherwise tinkered with to accomodate other settings.

Trust, I believe, is better than force when it comes to these things :)

Regards,

Wolfrug

Good reading in this thread, thanks Bullman