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Differences in Difficulty Levels - Page 2

Forum Index > StarCraft 2 HotS
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BrownBear
Profile Joined March 2010
United States6894 Posts
July 30 2010 06:32 GMT
#21
Hard kicks my ass a lot of the time (particularly the level where they introduce void rays). Normal is a total snoozefest, I just build up MMM and a-move to victory.

It's actually mildly frustrating that the difficulties have that sharp a difference in skill. Then I remember that getting my ass kicked in Hard mode will make me much better at the game, so it's alright
SUNSFANNED
CynanMachae
Profile Blog Joined September 2006
Canada1459 Posts
July 30 2010 07:27 GMT
#22
Other noticables differences are in the mission mechanics themselves. The mission with Night/Day you have longer nights/shorters days on higher difficulty, and the one with the rising lava you don't have a timer on brutal
Jang Yoon Chul hwaiting!
ArghUScaredMe
Profile Joined July 2010
United States712 Posts
July 30 2010 07:40 GMT
#23
I beat it in Hard.. had a mild amount of fun. I was irritated to unlock these time-race achievements, but now they're out of the way, I can just enjoy Brutal without any time limits.

I'm about 6 missions into Brutal. It's fun and extremely rewarding indeed. I gasped WTF when I actually saw AI pulling back low hp units.
[9]Months
Profile Joined May 2010
Netherlands30 Posts
July 30 2010 07:42 GMT
#24
the HP post is a damn lie!
The units dont get bigger HP, they start the game with +1 upgrades, attack in bigger waves, have more defences , ai is alot more in a figthting spirit.

I play on hard.. that is enough for me, meaby the second time i will do brutal
kzn
Profile Blog Joined June 2007
United States1218 Posts
July 30 2010 08:51 GMT
#25
On July 30 2010 15:22 SushiBoat wrote:
Brutal ai is brutal. Has anyone tried casual? lol


I went to casual for Haven's Fall first time around because I was fed up with getting zerged by broodlords once I had a force that could push out.

Its absolutely retarded. Slowest gamespeed makes it feel like I'm playing in slow motion, the AI never has upgrades, unit counts are halved or worse.

The only time I touch even normal now is when there's a stupid hard achievement that doesn't require hard or brutal (and once I'm on normal its not really a hard achievement anyway).
Like a G6
Vokasak
Profile Joined July 2010
United States388 Posts
July 30 2010 09:15 GMT
#26
On July 30 2010 17:51 kzn wrote:
Show nested quote +
On July 30 2010 15:22 SushiBoat wrote:
Brutal ai is brutal. Has anyone tried casual? lol


I went to casual for Haven's Fall first time around because I was fed up with getting zerged by broodlords once I had a force that could push out.

Its absolutely retarded. Slowest gamespeed makes it feel like I'm playing in slow motion, the AI never has upgrades, unit counts are halved or worse.

The only time I touch even normal now is when there's a stupid hard achievement that doesn't require hard or brutal (and once I'm on normal its not really a hard achievement anyway).


The gamespeed was jarring for me too when I re-did a mission on Normal.You can turn up the gamespeed in the options.
Practical wisdom is the combination of moral will and moral skill
SBelmont
Profile Joined August 2008
United States122 Posts
July 30 2010 09:20 GMT
#27
Another difference from Hard to Brutal (maybe some from Normal to Hard too), is that some units are replaced with their Merc counterpart. The most obvious of this is I found a LOT of Siege Tanks are replaced with Siege Breakers in many missions with pre-placed sieges for the enemy.
monterto
Profile Joined June 2010
Canada103 Posts
July 30 2010 09:22 GMT
#28
Played through half the missions on brutal so far. I've beaten them with tons of luck and infinite save points. Every mission is extremely unforgiving and will make you raaaage.

TLDR play on Hard
I'm pretty much Hyuk but white...
VonLego
Profile Joined June 2010
United States519 Posts
July 30 2010 11:26 GMT
#29
Brutal is pretty simple if you're methodical about it and know when to cut your losses. You won't be able to finish every side objective and/or achievement on brutal. I occasionally have to reload but with crazy stuff like self healing aoe 12 range vikings and such around.... proper application nets a win pretty reliably within a half hour.

The only mission I find mind blowing-ly hard/frustering is the final one (when fighting air).
eloyolo
Profile Joined August 2009
Mexico2 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-07-30 21:48:23
July 30 2010 21:41 GMT
#30
One difference I have noticed and think it has not been mentioned is how the speed of the game affects difficulty.

Not sure if its a spoiler i only mention the circumstances of a mission, nothing story related:

+ Show Spoiler +
I was playing on hard the drill mission in faster mode, I was overwhelmed by the number of drops made on me and my macro sucked so i had tons of minerals unspent. So I restarted the mission but on fast, there were almost no drops at all in my base!!
Is it just my imagination or has someone else experienced this?


Would it mean that in faster the AI produces more units than in fast? or that the waves are more constant depending on the speed of the game?
sevia
Profile Joined May 2010
United States954 Posts
July 30 2010 22:10 GMT
#31
Brutal AI is pretty irritating. Engine of Destruction was an absolute nightmare without science vessels, if you have any SCVs repairing the Odin while he's in combat, a wave of vultures and reapers will surge forward and one-shot them, guaranteed. It target fires medics and medivacs too. It's very careful with its detection, which makes using banshees a pain in the ass on zerg levels.
최지성 Bomber || 김동환 viOLet || 고병재 GuMiho
Thereisnosaurus
Profile Blog Joined February 2010
Australia1822 Posts
July 30 2010 22:32 GMT
#32
here's what I've noticed from playing all three difficulties

Brutal difficulty:
enemy target fires in general. prioritizes medics/medivacs/scvs repairing as noted, but also focus fires regular units. not perfectly, but they do seem to concentrate fire more

there are more packs of enemies and they are bigger. for example on normal you get 3 marines, on brutal it's 5 including a warpig and a medic. 5 lings becomes 7 lings a roach and a hydra.

Units get upgrades- speedlings on zero hour for example come out faster, enemies get +1 ups faster afaict

Not sure about health, all units so far have seemed to have around the same health

missions often have a slight difficulty increase in objectives- redstone has no timer for the lava surge, you can only let two trains go on train robbery mission etc.
Poisonous Sheep counter Hydras
Mindcrime
Profile Joined July 2004
United States6899 Posts
July 30 2010 22:49 GMT
#33
On July 30 2010 15:22 SushiBoat wrote:
Brutal ai is brutal. Has anyone tried casual? lol


I played media blitz again on casual because I missed the secret the first time. The Odin rapes that whole mission by itself on casual. :p
That wasn't any act of God. That was an act of pure human fuckery.
NeonFlare
Profile Blog Joined September 2008
Finland1307 Posts
July 30 2010 22:50 GMT
#34
I experimented to see the differences.

Casual: Enemies have half the health and it seems like your troops deal slightly more damage? (might be because of campaign upgrades that I had when testing this though).

Normal: Everything is pretty normal, less enemies than Hard has, for example I tested these things during the early hold out mission and they didn't seem to have any hydras, at least not burrowed where they were on hard.

Hard: Same as normal, but with more enemy units, can also be higher tier units in some places earlier compared to normal.

Brutal: Enemies have advantage in weapon and armor upgrades, probably also few more units compared to hard in a same way hard compares to normal, at least it seemed so.
Piski
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
Finland3461 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-07-31 00:24:06
July 31 2010 00:20 GMT
#35
On July 30 2010 09:24 Karliath wrote:
I'm probably going to go with hard then. Brutal is just...too brutal for me ><

I wish someone would upload Brutal replays (campaign replays do exist btw), but that's probably not gonna happen for a few months at the very least.


They do? :O

Edit: Brutal ftw. It's hard but very rewarding.
bodysnatcher21
Profile Joined June 2009
Australia147 Posts
July 31 2010 04:19 GMT
#36
On July 30 2010 08:39 Karliath wrote:
Show nested quote +
On July 30 2010 08:35 opiuman wrote:
The most obvious changes are HP values of enemies. Casual is 50%, normal is 100% and it goes up from there. Also, the amount of enemies/buildings also changes.


Wait, so the enemies on normal are the only ones with normal HP? Sigh, I don't mind them sending more waves of enemies at me, but I don't want enemies with more health on Brutal. Won't this mess up people's multiplayer senses?


Umm..I'm pretty sure peoples "multiplayer senses" are already messed up by the numerous single-player only upgrades and units.
DocSnyder
Profile Joined June 2010
Germany137 Posts
July 31 2010 05:23 GMT
#37
Almost done with brutal aswell,honesly most missions brutal feels just fine,its difficult and challenging,you need to keep up in micro and macro...

But what i dont like is some mission force you to abuse the AI.....
Mostly since the AI always a-move no focus fire,no clever abilities use,yet somehow they cast a mean storm.....

What mostly annoys me is that brutal forces you to specific builds and unit mixes,some missions force you to vikings ,others to tanks,where i might want marauders or wraiths....

Still i wanted a challenge i i got it,but on t to much,most missions only took me a second try,exception beeping the last toss one and the jungle one witch both took me 3...

Honesly once im done with brutal ill g to very hard and try some of the cuter units....
Damn i cant max this game:(
sikyon
Profile Joined June 2010
Canada1045 Posts
July 31 2010 06:32 GMT
#38
Just beat brutal. It's a very good difficulty level, I think blizz did a good job. The pressure is always on, you have to micro and macro especially. Comp has decent AI as well - it will pull units back like mutas and rengage after you stop targeting them like a real player will. It will spread out units when they get hit by storms (better than most players can do, most players just run them in a single direction like me to dodge storms). comp will always try to target medics or SCV's if convenient.

TheTuna
Profile Joined August 2009
United States286 Posts
July 31 2010 06:46 GMT
#39
Running brutal atm for the Kerrigan portrait <3. It's really tough but a hell of a lot of fun. The main difference seems to be that there's a TON of enemies. For example, on The Devil's Playground on normal I was attacked maybe once by the Zerg. On Brutal there would be heavy attacks two or three times a cycle; I only held them off by using all 12 warpigs and beat the mission by kiting the brutalisk with 4 reapers before staying about two feet ahead of 35 zerglings to grab the minerals lying around.

Brutal is super tough but it feels so good to clear any level on there.

I will note that Outbreak was an absolute breeze, once you get like 6 barracks up chugging out reapers it's a walk in the park. I was tooling around the map with something like 80+ reapers and even managed to blow up something like 30 buildings at night (although I did end up losing all my reapers due to carelessness ).

I highly recommend this mode, 6 missions in and loving it.
Bommes
Profile Joined June 2010
Germany1226 Posts
July 31 2010 07:10 GMT
#40
I finished brutal two days ago and I loved it. Most of the missions just feel like you are overwhelmed by the enemy and just have to mess up a single thing to lose everything immediately. But it's also a bit disappointing, because once you just save every little advantage you got it gets too easy and you can even do the last level "first try".
I wish there would be less scripted events and more general cool stuff going on by the AI, like not only a scripted attack on your base every 2 or 3 minutes but constant eco harassment or some neat drops. In missions that explicitely tell you to go air (like the banshee one with the fire wall or the wraith mission with the odin) storms or raven missiles can really destroy you and you have to be careful, I liked that really much

And overall, m&m early missions and science vessels late missions are ridiculously strong and let you a-click to victory too much.
Still, I had some epic moments while doing the campaign and usually I hate Singleplayer more than everything. I literally haven't played any Singleplayer for years (I think GTA 4 was the last one) and I devoured SC2 SP. If you think SP is alright but not that great, just try one or two difficulties above the one that you are currently playing. It just feels better. I started the first mission on hard, then I redid it on brutal and had way more fun. It's really not impossible to do even if you are not top A+-level
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