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Jeff Vogel on RPG difficulty

entertainer

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yo niggas you need a little respect for the man who wants to bring THE RPG to yo mammas
 

Kaanyrvhok

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Emotional Vampire said:
Kaanyrvhok said:
I dont understand the double standard between RPGs and other genres. The 2D Ninja Gaidens were near impossible but the last two weren't that tough. There was one boss in the first one that required close to 10 mulligans but I have seen worse. If you compare the mainstream multi platform RPGs do other genres the RPGs are much easier. They are easier than platformers, shooters, whatever sports too. Who doesnt expect to die a bunch of times playing a Mario game? I dont know how you could possibly think that we have anything close to too many deaths in RPGs.

It comes from the fact that RPGs are half skill and half pure fucking luck you slack-jawed junkslut.

When you get killed in Ninja Gaiden, or Mario, or Modern Warfare 3 you get killed because you suck. You either press the wrong buttons, or you press them at the wrong times. You would live if you blocked, used weaker but faster attack, jumped, saw the mushroom, shoot the guy with the RPG first, or hide your stupid ass and not try to be a cool guy. Either way, the fault is 100% on your side.

When you get killed in an RPG, it's not. If you have 50% chance to hit a monster, you have a 50% chance to hit a monster. You might hit him ten times in a row, or you could critical fucking miss and impale yourself on your own dick. So with your 50% hit chance, monster's 25% hit chance, your damage being 1-4 and monster's damage being 2-19 you get a shitload of possible outcomes ranging from flawless victory to death in first turn, all of them completely unrelated to how good of a player you are.

Being "good" in an RPG is just using as many mechanic elements to your advantage as you can: blessing yourself, using a ranged weapon, taking high ground which adds +6 to your dex, grinding till you outlevel enemies 2:1, whatever. But no matter what you do, all you're doing is simply altering a virtual die roll. You're merely decreasing your chance of failure. When it comes to results, everything still depends on a script generating pseudo-random numbers.

That's why I always laugh at people praising "hard" RPGs like Wizardry(A ninja did a sneak attack crit and killed my healer instantly! And half of my group was already poisoned so I got wiped out! AWESOME!) or SMT(I had to try this boss fight seventeen times, but finally, after completely remaking my party setup and grinding for few hours for some elemental equips and potions, I did it with only the main hero left standing with 17HP! AWESOME!). Essentially, these "Hard" games are no different from level-scalling bullshit, these are also designed to "keep you on your toes, always"... hm, did I discover another Codex hypocrisy?

Then why are Action RPGs so damn easy :lol: ? They are the easiest of the easy and we have the most direct control. Besides that smidgen I think you are right. Pen and paper RPGs are designed with Jeff Vogel's rule in mind.
 
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Obviously it depends on the system too. Like that flawed Blackadder examples - you could completely protect from insta-death spells with potions/counterspells, and in Fallout once you're wearing Power Armor enemy has to do a crit to damage you AT ALL(usually).
 

Castanova

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Raghar said:
Story is important in RPG, either implicit or as a strong narrative. A RPG without story, or/and consistent game world, would be much more closer a hack and slash game, than a properly done interactive art.

Sorry, but as has been pointed out a million times by a million people, there are plenty of examples of RPGs without virtually any story beyond the bare minimum necessary to get your character(s) into the dungeon. Furthermore, plenty of these RPGs don't have some nerd spending 10,000 hours inventing lore behind the world. Just because something isn't your subjective version of "interactive art" doesn't mean it's not an RPG.

You cannot remove stats from an RPG but you can very easily remove story. I understand you and EV feel the need to denigrate hack and slash RPGs for whatever reason but claiming they're not RPGs at all is the wrong way to go about it.
 

Kaanyrvhok

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Castanova said:
You cannot remove stats from an RPG but you can very easily remove story. I understand you and EV feel the need to denigrate hack and slash RPGs for whatever reason but claiming they're not RPGs at all is the wrong way to go about it.

Shouldnt there be more than just stats and a dungeon? If thats all it takes then Madden, Total War, and Ninja Gaiden are RPGs too. Its not stats that make the RPG its stores. Lots of genres have stats but you cant buy stuff. So Ninja Gaiden is an RPG but Total War and Madden arent.
 

Trash

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Vault Dweller said:
http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2009/11/make-your-game-easy-then-make-it-easier.html

My worst instinct has to do with game difficulty. I'm a hardcore nerd of the old school, and I'm not truly satisfied unless a game is really difficult. Other people, also known as "regular humans," do not, in fact, want this.

I used to succinctly describe my views about game difficulty thus:

People will forgive a game for being too hard. They will never forgive it for being too easy.

No. This is, in fact, completely, 100% opposite from the truth. A better summary of reality would be:

People will happily forgive a game for being too easy, because it makes them feel badass. If a game is too hard, they will get angry, ragequit, hold a grudge, and never buy your games again.

Video games are leisure time expressions of adolescent power fantasies. They should only be hard if players specifically request that they be hard.


After long reflection, here is my new rule for RPGs I write:

When a player is on the default difficult level, has built his or her characters poorly, and is playing straight through the main storyline with mediocre tactics, that player should almost never be killed.



I can almost hear the heads of hardcore gamers imploding with impotent nerdrage. But seriously. If you have a problem with this, I think you're getting a lot of your fun from making other people have less fun.

Of course, a game should have harder difficulty levels. And, if a player chooses to opt-in on higher difficulty, they should be seriously nasty. But, when played on the default difficulty, the game should be accessible to your mom or average eight-year old.

I'm about to release my next game, Avernum 6. And it doesn't live up to what I have learned. In fact, in parts, it gets downright tricky. But then I'm going to write an all-new game series, and I promise that it will be pretty easy on Normal difficulty.

And if you turn the difficulty up to Torment, well, I'll be gunning for you.

Oh, and one parting thought.

If your game is actually fun, killing the player won't make it more fun. But nothing sucks all of the fun out of a good game faster than repeated failure.
This does not bode well.

So he basically promises to make normal easier and hard harder? Then why not just include an easy setting and be done with it?
 

mondblut

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Blackadder said:
BG example: "Beholder/Basalisk turns you to stone/disintegrates you!"

There were basilisks in Pool of Radiance too, I think.

And being a subject of a successful "hold person" spell (which every hostile cleric in every GB game casts all the time) is pretty much instadeath too, as long as there is a couple more enemies on the field.
 

mondblut

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Trash said:
So he basically promises to make normal easier and hard harder? Then why not just include an easy setting and be done with it?

Because the intellectual majority would feel butthurt from having to give up a "the way it is intended" setting and pick an "i am a pathetic pussy" one. No, the intended difficulty level for them should be named "perfectly normal, for real men", while the rest are "unnecessarily hard, for nerd losers" and "idiotically hard, for autist aspies". And be default, of course :D
 

roll-a-die

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I like games where if I die it feels like "Oh well I learned something." SMT is good for that if you face a boss it will generally have a weakness that you can discover and exploit. Like a water boss being weak to a lightning attack but strong to fire and absorbs water. Then I have a clear goal to farm for lightning creatures that are strong against water. Then farm some more to level up some. This creates a clear sense of progression to the right player. To others they find it anywhere from boring to inane.

Can't speak for wizardry but it's probably a similar sense of "YES I FIGURED IT OUT! I PWN!" that you get just knowing you survived the battle.
 
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So he wants to make his games easier on default. Who cares? As long as he gets some graphics that don't look like ass. Phantasy Star 2 made in 1989 for the fucking Sega Genesis (which was basically an upgraded Amiga 1000 without a keyboard..) looks better than Vogel's games do.

The problem is difficulty is TOTALLY FUCKING SUBJECTIVE.

I am sure there is someone out there who utterly adores Wizardry the Return of Werdna, which is one of the most abusive, cruel, and unfair RPGs ever made.

People like Nethack and the Shiren series.

But more RPG players actually enjoy an easier and more relaxed game. Shit, they NEED them otherwise they will never make it to a harder one. Not requiring a lot of skill is one of the foundations of console RPGs.

And for some reason Dragon Quest is about a bazillion times more popular than Werdna. I WONDER WHY.

You don't give a novice an M60 machinegun as their first firearm. You give them a bb gun or maybe a 22.

They need to learn how to do what they do.

Shit, just look at Guitar Hero and its ilk. Would it have ever been popular if it started at Hard or Expert? No fucking way. It would have been unenjoyable and too much. I spent a couple years playing on Easy and now I am in Medium though I could handle Hard.

If I was playing to be all dickwavy and manly instead of PLAYING GAMES FOR FUN AND RELAXATION.

For some folks super abusive is fun. There are fuckers who can play bullet hell SHMUPS without ever dying. AND CONTROLLING 2 PLAYERS AT ONCE.

Most people are lucky if they can handle Galaga.

It doesn't help many hard games are in fact CHEAP and its not because as a player you feel "Ah, that was my fault" or "Damn. Bad luck with the RNG that time! Lets try it again and hope I win initiative", but because of shit like ever spawning birds, too much life points in an enemy, unavoidable hits, ect, ect, ect.

Its why Contra and Castlevania are beloved, but Battletoads is so abusive its a fucking meme. Contra was FAIR. The more you kept at it the better you get. Castlevania was similar, though it was edging towards the cheap end of the scale in the original. But you could still get through it with a lot of patience and memorization.

And different people find different games hard, especially if they come into a style late, and all the existing players are a bunch of snooty elitist fuckwits.

I've been playing Advance Wars and its subgenre of easy to get into, pretty, and easily accessible while still being pretty deep turn based wargame since 01-02 when Advance Wars 1 had the misfortune of coming out on 9/11. (I didn't get it till Christmas or so when I got a GBA.)

I've played all 4 of the English released titles to death. I've played similar games like Nectaris, Field Commander, High Seize, and such.

The games are pretty easy for me now and outside of the few levels its more like a puzzle than an actual strategy game, I pretty much curbstomp the storyline missions in these games. The few times I played fanmade play by email sort of versions all I got was players quitting on turn 2 or so because my strategies were so good and I have the genre's number down pat.

But if you have never played that style of game or not much, its gonna be hard and challenging till you master it.

And I don't much mind if the game is trying to get new players too. I play games to be ENGAGED not challenged or beat up on. I don't want Babby's First RPG/SHMUP/TBS, but I don't want bullet hell SHMUP, or fucking Return of Werdna: Enjoy your Herpes! either.

But getting players eased in so they can choose higher challenge or complexity is a good thing.

I play tabletop RPGs. Minis games. Hex and chit wargames.

I wouldn't even fucking DARE bring Advanced Squad Leader to most gaming outings. Its too dense and complicated for all but the most hardcore of gamers.

Yet a rules light battle game like Wings of War? I can teach it in MINUTES and we are all having a fun fast game of WW1 air combat. And its got a few expansions and increased levels of difficulty should folks want more.

They got eased into it!

Then maybe they are ready for a light wargame like Ogre/GEV (still my favorite hex n chit wargame ever made. Even if I use miniatures and Heroscape hex terrain).

If they grok to that perhaps Gettysburg 125 anniversary edition, or perhaps BattleLore.

Maybe now they want some more detail and LocknLoad or Panzer Grenadier are in the cards.

NOW some of them might be ready for Advanced Squad Leader. (Though probably not. Its not for everyone, even hardcore gamers. I stick to the Starter Kit level and still can't find willing players. But I can get Wings of War players no problem.)

To summarize: Not everyone plays games to be a form of dickwaving. Some folks like games easier for whatever reason be it their first experience in the genre, or just why they play games.

Harder difficulties and more complex titles are welcome, but you have to learn to crawl before you can walk, and walk before you can run.
 
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Captain rufus post reminds me of this.

mmossuck.jpg
 

Martin

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Personally I think regardeless of how hard the "normal" difficulty level is the player should have more to guide his choice than a word like "easy" or "hard", there should be at least a small text describing in reasonable detail but at the same time in an acessible way what concrete differences the player may expect in terms of game mechanics, gameplay and rules.
Also if necessary these rules need to be explained in acessible terms right there on the screen in which you select your difficulty.

A few games did this and I think its an important consideration, you can also add a more personal statement suggesting a level based on the players level of "experience" with the type of game in question, again also done on a few games.
 

Joe Krow

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It would be nice if the scaling focused on the player skill rather then character level. Difficulty and scaling are already linked, just to the wrong things. The game should set the difficulty based on the player's tactical performance. If you're the min/max master the game acknowledges your skill and cranks up the difficulty (in various ways). If you're clueless it puts you on toddler mode. You could even put the difficulty on a numeric scale that the player can check to see how well he's doing. You would have to earn the highest difficulty level.
 

Damned Registrations

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That was actually my favourite part of Godhand. I couldn't touch the highest difficulty stuff, but I'd always be trying for it. Gives you something to yearn for and keep playing towards.
 

spectre

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After reading all this, what is the point of having an "easy" difficulty then?

Again, no one's saying bad AI is a good plan. But all other things equal, not changing the AI at all, giving German divisions twice as much staying power or killing power certainly would provide a greater challenge, wouldn't it? What's wrong with that, if people are clamouring a game's too easy?
The problem with it is that the player now sees that the computer is blatantly cheating. As in, there's a slight difference between: you sly motherlover, how did you just do that, and: yeah yeah, so your basic unit is now 2x strong than it used to?
 

GarfunkeL

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C.O.R.E-mod for HoI1 fixed the problem where AI was pathetically unable to use fighters to escort their bombers, meaning that Allies were unable to ever run a strategic bombing campaign, by modifying the stats of strategic bombers to invincible levels where they had combined stats of escort fighters and strat bombers but without the fuel, supply and industrial costs. They also made AI-only events for Soviet Union where when German player occupies certain provinces, other places in SU get magically lvl 10 forts and the AI gets more supplies and fresh divisions from thin air.

Fucking stupid and gamebreaking but only way to challenge veteran players who were able to do a world conquest easily before 1945. Still, to once get an AI that actually knowns how to use their tools properly instead of just cheating. Oh well, I guess that's why we have MP.
 

Black Cat

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@ Joe Krow

Some japanese shooting games actually do that thingie with adjusting the dificulty to how well you are, like, doing. It doesn't work really well, i think: If you are doing bad the game down the rank thingie, and then the stage becomes easy and the bullets slow and stuffy stuff. Then you start doing well and the game ranks up the dificulty again, and you die screaming because you were thinking in easy modo. Or even if your ranking gets lower during a small segment because you got careless all your playthrough stops, like, being important because you already messed up, there is a part of the game that wasn't on the hardest possible setting, so your playthrough is tainted and no longer matters in the eyes of the really good players.

And then people stops, like, trying once they made the first mistake instead of, like, doing a last effort and overcoming and stuff, because even if you overcome the fight now it is already easier. It is no longer the situation you were going to actually face, and stuff.

And then is the oposite, like, thingie. You want to play in the worse level there is to maximise how much better you become in a given time. But you, like, are bound to die. And when you do the game reverts to an easier setting intead of letting you keep practicing and stuff and thingies, when practicing that battle in the hardest setting is what you actually need to do, nya.

So, like, i think dificulty is one of those things that doesn't need fixing: Leave it like a choice at the begining and stuff. You shouldn't be thinking about where dying is better to lower the dificulty of a hard fight, nor fearing geting distracted and thus messing up your rank and invalidating your playthrough. And it always becomes like that instead of forcing you to become better to surpass that one challenge thingie, at least as far as i have seen that kind of system and stuff.

Edit:

-_-U Keep the trolling to the other thread, please. Or keep it to yourself if you, like, don't mind. I'm doing nothing to you.
 
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Black Cat said:
That thingie with, like, doing. The rank thingie and stuffy stuff. Your playthrough stops, like, being important.

And then people stops, like, instead of, like, overcoming and stuff, and stuff.

And then is the oposite, like, thingie. But you, like, keep practicing and stuff and thingies, nya.

So, like, and stuff. That one challenge thingie, and stuff.

I feel you
 

Trithne

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There's an Ikaruga clone that does that. If you die it drops difficulty, if you live a certain length of time it raises the difficulty. Which can get annoying. But can be disabled.
 

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