I was playing around with the difficulty cause I’m planning on doing a full tournament run at some point and wondered how fast the NPCs were on difficulty 4 instead of 1.
I didn’t realise that difficulty significantly affects car handling (way less traction) and now I’m understanding why my dad and I used to avoid the chariot.
Just wondered if you guys had noticed this and whether it might be cool to try level runs on higher difficulties.
That is interesting, are there any advantage to running on a higher difficulty? I purposely set the rules to let players choose whichever difficulty they wanted, as I was hoping one day there would be tactics around the choice. Could this be that moment?
Hmm. As much as that would be cool, I don’t know that there could be any, and if there are, I can’t imagine they could possibly make up for the time loss. On maps like Great Wall following the optimised route might be impossible. On Glaciers you slide around all over the place.
The reason I had it set at 1 was to avoid traffic at the start line and more importantly because it stops NPCs using weapons. But now thinking handling is the most importantly element.
Actually, after trying out a few different levels with it, perhaps I overstated the handling penalty, but it does feel like there is a greater tendency to spin out.
I haven't found a use for running on higher difficulties--the changes only seem to be negative. Here's the source code section for changing the car stats based on difficulty:
void SetTractionPhysics(CarStatsType *carStats, float p)
{
if (gGamePrefs.difficulty == DIFFICULTY_SIMPLISTIC)
{
p += .8f;
}
else
if (gGamePrefs.difficulty == DIFFICULTY_EASY) // easy mode has easy traction
p += .5f;
else
if (gGamePrefs.difficulty == DIFFICULTY_MEDIUM)
p += .3f;
So you get progressively lower traction (there's similar code to suspension, but no one cares about suspension) as you move up in difficulty. I've raced on simplistic for everything other than the Great Wall. Easy still has good enough traction, and the better CPUs caused me less trouble on the beginning of the last lap. On simplistic, they typically get stuck all together at the beginning, which makes it hard when you are zooming through on nitro. They're normally more spread out on the final lap when racing on easy, and its pretty frustrating to lose a great run to running into a CPU at the end. There might be more opportunities, but I haven't found them yet.
The main problem I've found with changing difficulties is that it changes the CPUs initial movements as the race starts, and I have such muscle memory of knowing exactly where their carts are going to be that I hit them immediately on anything other than simplistic lol. It's why I change to going far left at the beginning of GW (playing on easy), cause the CPU in the turtle car makes a sharp turn into you if you keep going straight (she doesn't turn on simplistic, so this used to be my line).
Do the CPUs not use weapons on easy though? Isn't there a reasonable chance one could use a roman candle on you on GW?
They don’t use items on easy, thankfully. (I’m pretty sure that’s right?)
