Poll About Game Difficulty

[Killrob]

Hey folks!

We thought it would be good to see how you experience the difficulty of the game. We are confronted by the brutal task of punching the learning curve of a 35-essential-parameters game into submission, and would like to know where we stand as is. The upcoming revamp will come with a reworking and rebalancing of the scenarios, so we can correct possible balancing errors without additional effort. This means your feedback is very important to us!

What is hugely helpful is if you describe your experience with difficulty here in this thread!
Cheers!
/Robert

[Fawlters]

Hallo thar!

Mostly I find the difficulty levels reflect how hard it actually is to achieve the goals, although sometimes it seems a bit random. This usually gets resolved by me trying something completely different from what I first thought, so I might just need to think more before throwing settings at it, but it can be quite frustrating barely getting to the bronze...

Having just started playing The Incredible Machine again, I've found the hints button quite good, as they aren't displayed until you specifically ask for them, and it's usually fairly easy to see what you're supposed to do, if not exactly how to do it. If there was a similar thing, hidden until after 15-20 attempts or something like that, it might be pretty useful. They needn't be big hints either, for instance "think about the balance of airflow and cost for the cylinder head" or something like that, depending on what the most important thing to get right is for a particular scenario.

I hope you find this useful, or at least interesting.

Code well and Prosper,

Fawlters

[Driver69]

Will there be an option to change difficulty level? If that is the case then anything you do is fine. Three is probably enough.

[Killrob]

Yes, in the finished game there will be several difficulty levels to choose from (not in the Engine and Car Designer scenarios though)... probably along the lines of:
Easy, Medium, Hard, Realistic, Insane

[MAC_HATER]

i find the current V8 ones pretty challenging - ive tried them all but failed all but the first easy one - and even then ive only gotten a bronze

then again im a bit thick and lack some patience - so its not the games fault!

[Kev2442]

Well, I don't find it equal. For example, I just finished the Weiron one with Bronze, whereas I got de V8 Bike at Platinum without real difficulty. I did not really see that Hints button, so I may give it a try.
Those scenarios are really super, but I wondered if there would be some like NASCAR V8 or Bike 600cc Inline 4
Keep up the good job, guys !

[Killrob]

Hmm yeah, the Weiron one is a one-trick Pony really, taking VVT+VVL @ 0, 50 profile (for example). This is due to an exploit that makes VVL much better than it should be :s (this will be fixed). So if you don't use the exploit in that scenario, you'll have a hard time... but we needed a modern V8 in there somewhere.

For the NASCAR... their engines are a bit too special to come out correctly: 9300 to 9600 RPM with pushrod technology, that's not possible in a non-racecar. (The game does not feature the options needed to produce such engines)

[Kev2442]

Yeah, and it needs the special Sunoco fuel...
I didn't know about the VVL, but I doubted about the VVT, because I optimised the valve timing, but it always dis better. I understand it can be useful, but I couldn't think it was that efficient besides getting the best timing...

EDIT : I forgot ! In Sandbox, are the factories coming from the scenarios ? Because I needed one and couldn't find it : I tried to make a F1 1.5L V8 back in 1965 just for the fun, but there was no factory before 1968, and 1968 was the ingame year injection appeared, whereas the Lotus had it for a while...
So I made a 1965 engine with 1968 injection in 1968... quite useless, 'cause we cannot have the 3-year inpact on the fuel system.

[WildKarrde]

I find the medium+ scenarios to be incredibly challenging. I could use help with specific ways to increase engine lifespan without losing massive amounts of power. Controlling emissions can be challenging too. I liked the hints and tips section of the tutorial projects.

[morgoth]

I find the difficulty level pretty perfect. I just put something together on the V8 challenges and made bronze on the first attempts. But struggled to make the Pt grade (still struggels with the propelling luxery and weirön)