Difficulty levels -- where hast thou gone?

[V_K]

I think the problem with "make the AI smarter" is that it means you're designing multiple AI systems -- the real one and the dipshit one. Which as was pointed out above, is a resource sink that will inevitably take away from other areas of the game.

Voidspire Tactics has settings for AI sophistication, and the enemies do act much smarter on higher ones. We could ask Eldiran how he did it.

 

[Neanderthal]

Pretty impossible to cater to everyone innit? I mean me and your lot'll read manual, formulate builds, strategies and tactics and experiment wi systems. Try, fail, alter and fiddle wi stuff until we begin to understand systems and are on path to mastering em. We play in an optimal manner, fuck we even nerf ussens for roleplaying purposes ocassionally, and we play like this because we understand that this is a game and like any game you have to understand rules and practise until you can play your best.

On other extreme you've got players who want game to play itsen, who are only there for story because they've only read and watched shit, and think Bioware melodrama is quality. These fuckers don't want to do anything but boot up and be held by hand, given a power fantasy where they can never lose and want the escapism of being special. Working for stuff just dunt enter equation, they think that's bad design and games are not about strategy, tactics, improvement and learning, they should be about emotions, feelings and some blatant moral preaching, mmmkay. Basically if they sat down at a chess board they'd want to win every game wi'out learning ow one o pieces moves or game rules.

Try and cover them two poles, well that sounds like a fucking ell o a job to me.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Difficulty setting in cRPG? Hm, I only remember Gorasul: Legacy of the Dragon, which have similiar options like System Shock1 - differend difficulty for puzzles and combat.
Not sure if that helps in combat because magic users are OP as hell in this game anyway, especially when you use bigger team than 1.

Also - Underrail difficulty change HP of your character only, plus power of the healing items. You might steamroll with HP bloated character this way, but still there are things that kick your ass hard. It force your character to rely on sneaking, making it basically Skyrim in isometric, whre shooting arrows from the shadows one hit kill living shit out of the enemies.

 

[Dedup]

I've never been a big fan of messing around with hp and damage to adjust difficulty. I would prefer a game just change the number of enemies and the enemy types according to level.

While changing A.I. behavior based on difficulty would be optimal, I doubt that most developers are willing/able to invest the time and effort to do such a thing well.

 

[Shin]

I hate difficulty levels in most RPG's; they always give me this nagging feeling in the back of my mind that my difficulty isn't 'how it should be played'. Especially new 'open world' games such as Skyrim and The Witcher 3 really did a bad fucking job at that. I remember at both games having to raise the difficulty level a few times throughout the game just to keep somewhat of a challenge, but not so much that muh 'progression' felt off. Either way, I guess that also ties into the level scaling thing these games also use.

 

[Celerity]

The problem generally lies in the fact that gaming companies stopped evolving AI about 20 years ago or something. They just probably decided that better AI would make players not want to play their game because its too hard.

Seriously it's about time we get a shift of focus in that direction. It's 2016 ffs, the Japanese probably have mechs with AI already

Actually AI has devolved over the years. Look at something like Nethack. Enemies will grab loot off the ground and use it against you with the most imfamous example being Gnome with Wand of Death. Compare that with most modern AI that just charges you or uses random skills on random targets without even focusing fire.

Hell, even Final Fantasy 6 had really good AI (but the enemies were so hilariously undertuned you'd never know this without seeing some difficulty mods).

 

[Mozg]

easy - I want to lean on the controls
medium - I have never played this genre before
hard - I have played this genre
more hard - I have played this game before

 

[Celerity]

So here's why Casual difficulties do not work in games:

It's very simple. Anyone who would select such a difficulty is not looking for an easier game, or even a more forgiving game. They're looking for (in this case) the RPG equivilent of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsEpB4Ro57U

In most cases the easier difficulties don't provide this. They might make the game so mindless that you can just spam damage and ignore all other mechanics, but that's still one button you must hold. And they're not interested in that, that's still interactivity and doing something. They'd much rather do things like negative review a game after getting completely rekt by a level 30 enemy at level 1 because they thought running over there and hugging it was a good idea.

*Immediately renames the Deepest Dark road Ogre "Noob Check"*

 

[C.H.A.R.L.I.E]

Can anyone name some CRPGs where having difficulty settings led to a more fun game?

HoF mode in IWD 1 and 2

POTD mode in PoE

 

[likaq]

HoF mode in IWD 1 and 2

Nope.

hof mode in iwd 1 =

Heart of Fury (HoF) mode does the following two things:
All monsters get 80 + 3x their normal HP.
A 8hp monster would have 80 + 3 * 8 = 104hp in HoF mode
A 30hp monster would have 80 + 3 * 30 = 170hp in HoF mode

 

[Baron Dupek]

Heart of Fury mode in Icewind Dale 1/2 have good potential but the XP income is even more insane. Beat the goblins at the begining, restart few times => profit.
Oh and HP is not that bad, increased AC is where madness start. Good luck hitting anything with lvl1 characters.

 

[likaq]

Etreme hp bloat is not that bad?

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Yeah, I don't like the concept of difficulty settings in games. It almost always ends up being implemented in some half-assed unnatural way. Whenever you design any kind of a game world (or levels, or whatever), a lot of decisions and balancing go into that, and that's very difficult to do even once, but once you start coming up with multiple such states, one for each difficulty setting, it just becomes a total clusterfuck.

I think game designers should just figure out what kind of game they want to make and focus on making it true to that vision, instead of having to dilute their efforts on a bunch of "flavors" of it.

If you do decide to implement a difficulty level system, then make them affect something important in an intelligent way. I really hate the way RPGs just change hitpoints and damage, or sports games change it so that defenders on higher difficulty settings stick to your player like glue. These approaches are just stupid and annoying.

 

[Dorateen]

I hate the overtly telegraphed and over-the-top names of challenge levels adjusted for difficulty. Things like Path of the Damned and Nightmare mode, just scream gimmicks and shenanigans such as the dreaded creature hit point bloat and stat manipulation.

Personally, I would rather play on a core setting that adheres to the rules, especially in a rules-based system. An ogre that has 5 hit dice, ought to have 5 hit dice, and not become artificially inflated. It's unfortunate that these days a core setting is still not good enough.

And then a cRPG like Might & Magic: Legacy offered only two modes: Adventurer and Warrior. The former explicitly designed to give the player an smoother path through the adventure. Which left no other option for a veteran of the series but to go Warrior, even with the grossly inflated hit point numbers.

 

[C.H.A.R.L.I.E]

Good luck hitting anything with lvl1 characters.

Dont need luck, need summons.

But this is what i mean, in HoF monster summons lvl 1,2,3 are very important. Midgame, spells like chant, bless, bane and defensive harmony are required to hit anything and staying alive. CC spells like grease, web, entangle and stinking cloud is actually useful. I would never use these spells on normal mode.

 

[Zanzoken]

Yeah, I don't like the concept of difficulty settings in games. It almost always ends up being implemented in some half-assed unnatural way. Whenever you design any kind of a game world (or levels, or whatever), a lot of decisions and balancing go into that, and that's very difficult to do even once, but once you start coming up with multiple such states, one for each difficulty setting, it just becomes a total clusterfuck.

I think game designers should just figure out what kind of game they want to make and focus on making it true to that vision, instead of having to dilute their efforts on a bunch of "flavors" of it.

If you do decide to implement a difficulty level system, then make them affect something important in an intelligent way. I really hate the way RPGs just change hitpoints and damage, or sports games change it so that defenders on higher difficulty settings stick to your player like glue. These approaches are just stupid and annoying.

That's basically the point of the thread though -- if you're a cRPG dev who is only going to design one difficulty level, which audience are you going to cater to? The 10% of people who actually enjoy systems and want a challenge, or the 90% of casuals that just want to LARP a hero who steamrolls monsters and bangs waifus?

If you're trying to make a living off of the 10% then you better have a small team and be able to keep within a realistic budget. Otherwise your only choice is to dumb down, because if you don't then the casuals are going to play your game for about 0.3 hours then rush to Steam to shit on it because they couldn't get through the tutorial fight.

Difficulty levels provide an opportunity to have the best of both worlds, at least in part. I really think the simplest answer lies in labeling.

 

[Norfleet]

But this is what i mean, in HoF monster summons lvl 1,2,3 are very important. Midgame, spells like chant, bless, bane and defensive harmony are required to hit anything and staying alive. CC spells like grease, web, entangle and stinking cloud is actually useful. I would never use these spells on normal mode.

You seem to have done this far differently than I did. I simply use that Resilient Sphere-generating thing and then when I had gathered the enemy around my one visible party member, mass-unloaded fireballs. Fireballs don't give a shit about AC.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

That's basically the point of the thread though -- if you're a cRPG dev who is only going to design one difficulty level, which audience are you going to cater to? The 10% of people who actually enjoy systems and want a challenge, or the 90% of casuals that just want to LARP a hero who steamrolls monsters and bangs waifus?

I don't think it's that black-and-white though. cRPG players don't just break down into hardcore vs casual players. There are players who might not give a damn about good writing or well designed quests, but they might love challenging combat, and there might be very sophisticated players who don't like combat, and prefer it to be easy so they can focus on dialogue and exploration and C&C. So challenging combat could appeal to a lot of people out there depending on how you implement it (see Dark Souls).

Ultimately though, a good designer shouldn't think about it like this, in my opinion. This is what corporations do, market research, analysis, etc. True artists don't think about their audience that much, they just think of something beautiful that appeals to them, and try to create it. So as a dev, think of what your game is, and what kind of difficulty would best fit into that. That difficulty will become a part of what your game is. You are not going to have different levels of difficulty for dialogue or exploration, so why do it for anything?

 

[vonAchdorf]

Some of the success Dark Souls had, can be attributed to the fact, that it had only one difficulty level, which was better for community building, because everyone had the same experience. But that's an ARPG, so it's probably different with turn-based RPGs.