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Making difficulty curves in games

davetech.co.uk

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Re: Making difficulty curves in games

#81

Post by pphysch »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #34
ryandrake wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally different when it comes to multiplayer matchmaking, though. There I wish games were even more aggressive and exact at matching you to players around your skill level. Nothing worse than casually sitting down after work for a quick multiplayer PVP game of any sort and getting totally annihilated by a streamer who plays 20 hours per day.

I used to really enjoy this aspect of older games like Warcraft 3 and TF2. You'd get the one guy on your server who was just in another league compared to everyone else, and it was so satisfying to get the kill on him. And sometimes, it would be you pubstomping. Then again, back then I don't think people cared as much about winning and losing.

Something definitely was lost with the addition of ranked ladders and global skill-based matchmaking systems. It was quite a long time, maybe 10y, before TF2 even got one.

And yet it had a healthy, if unhyped, competitive scene long before that.

Re: Making difficulty curves in games

#82

Post by nkrisc »

proc0 wrote: post #55
nkrisc wrote: post #6

This will depend on the game of course, but the best is when you can adjust the difficulty of mechanics individually. City builders do this a lot where you often have lots of difficulty settings you can adjust to tailor the game to your preferred playstyle. I’ll also say this: if you’re making a game and you add in a mechanic or mini-game that is not typical of the genre, make it optional or provide a way to skip it.…

This works for sandbox or simulation type games, but otherwise I think difficulty sliders are like going to a restaurant and getting all the cooked ingredients in separate plates for you to combine. While that can be fine and cater to the maximum number of people, it's a safe approach that wastes good opportunity cost of a great plate of food catered by someone with the skills to do it. If a game can afford a designe…

I’m not suggesting you hit a new player with a wall of configuration options. Guide them into the gameplay experience as you intended it, but also allow them to make changes to settings as relevant to the game.

I liked when games used to include cheat codes or debug commands. Let me trivialize the game if I want to. I paid for it and it’s my time I’m spending. Not once did I ever play The Sims as intended. And enjoyed it enough to buy another version or two. I used cheats all the time in WarCraft 2 and StarCraft single player.

And when games don’t include that, almost always someone will create a hack or mod that does do that, because there is a demand for it.

Re: Making difficulty curves in games

#83

Post by gs17 »

pibaker wrote: post #53
snailmailman wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This depends a lot on the game and the situation. If hidden well enough i suspect it can play well. I really enjoyed the difficulty of Half Life Alyx for instance. I was saving my resources carefully because they seemed very sparse. But then I noticed that the loot was entirely dynamic. I forget the exact items, but if you only use one grenade it will only generate one refill hidden around the next area. If you use a…

> But when asking my friends what they thought, none of them noticed that the game was doing this, and they all thought it was well balanced. Sounds like the design is working as intended?

The issue IMO is that there's a subset of gamers who really do not want games to try to balance things automatically, e.g. people who really hate skill-based matchmaking. Most people will enjoy the system, but this subset sees a balancing feedback loop as punishment for being "too good".

Re: Making difficulty curves in games

#84

Post by gs17 »

qwery wrote: post #58
snailmailman wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This depends a lot on the game and the situation. If hidden well enough i suspect it can play well. I really enjoyed the difficulty of Half Life Alyx for instance. I was saving my resources carefully because they seemed very sparse. But then I noticed that the loot was entirely dynamic. I forget the exact items, but if you only use one grenade it will only generate one refill hidden around the next area. If you use a…

The Alyx example is interesting, because I see that system as being designed to avoid breaking immersion. Specifically, to avoid entering an "unwinnable" state i.e. where the player restarts from a save/checkpoint. I do understand how noticing the underlying system can pull you out of the game though.

I think part of the issue is that Alyx doesn't really have any other options to fight besides guns that need ammo or however many grenades you're choosing to carry. They didn't have melee as a design decision, but it means they need to keep you topped up on ammo or you're defenseless.

Re: Making difficulty curves in games

#85

Post by gs17 »

namelosw wrote: post #76
orbital-decay wrote: post #8

>Dynamically adjust the difficulty depending on how well the player is doing. Please never do this. This deceptively looks smart to a game designer, but actual players read this like a book and then it feels cheap and massively unrewarding for them.

It's often a very bad idea. One example is The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Players are punished for leveling, and many players simply give up and have to do everything on level 1. It's essentially punishing players for playing well, and often could be gamed by playing badly intentionally.

Oblivion's problem is even worse than that. You can level up entirely from improving non-combat skills, so the enemies are harder and you're only better at jumping.

Re: Making difficulty curves in games

#86

Post by proc0 »

nkrisc wrote: post #82
proc0 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This works for sandbox or simulation type games, but otherwise I think difficulty sliders are like going to a restaurant and getting all the cooked ingredients in separate plates for you to combine. While that can be fine and cater to the maximum number of people, it's a safe approach that wastes good opportunity cost of a great plate of food catered by someone with the skills to do it. If a game can afford a designe…

I’m not suggesting you hit a new player with a wall of configuration options. Guide them into the gameplay experience as you intended it, but also allow them to make changes to settings as relevant to the game. I liked when games used to include cheat codes or debug commands. Let me trivialize the game if I want to. I paid for it and it’s my time I’m spending. Not once did I ever play The Sims as intended. And enjoye…

That's fair, but I think each difficulty level needs to be designed as its own challenge, as oppose to the developer exposing the internals of the game so you can turn all the nobs and make anything trivial.

In short, there needs to be intention and design, and not just exposing the developer tools, generally speaking.

Re: Making difficulty curves in games

#87

Post by LEDThereBeLight »

atoav wrote: post #47
orbital-decay wrote: post #8

>Dynamically adjust the difficulty depending on how well the player is doing. Please never do this. This deceptively looks smart to a game designer, but actual players read this like a book and then it feels cheap and massively unrewarding for them.

The good way of doing this is to ask the player if the difficulty shall be lowered temporarily just for that level of they keep dying. Then it is transparent and the choice is theirs.

“We’ve noticed you keep dying to this boss. Would you like to play on the difficulty intended for children instead?”

Re: Making difficulty curves in games

#88

Post by setr »

TGower wrote: post #59
lelanthran wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is why Diablo 4 was a complete flop. This is interesting to me; can you explain please?

Difficulty scaling is done to such an extent that even common enemies scale right along with you. In the opening scene, there is a bear you come across and at level 1 or 2, you are able to one shot it. Then the story takes you on a grand quest where ostensibly you go from a nobody to the savior of the world. However, due to difficulty scaling, if you run into the same bear halfway through the game, it will be harder…

That’s just how all Diablo clones work; basically consider it asset reuse…

Power fantasy during leveling / campaigning always comes from being “ahead of the curve” gear/build wise — the subject of your combat is rarely meaningful

Re: Making difficulty curves in games

#89

Post by ASalazarMX »

throwatdem12311 wrote: post #69
orbital-decay wrote: post #8

>Dynamically adjust the difficulty depending on how well the player is doing. Please never do this. This deceptively looks smart to a game designer, but actual players read this like a book and then it feels cheap and massively unrewarding for them.

Hard disagree. All of my favourite games of all time have dynamic difficulty systems. Not stupid stuff like levelling up enemies in Bethesda games - but actual skill based games that get harder depending on how good you are at it: Resident Evil 4, Battle Garegga to name a few. Games that unlock more content as you reach skill gates are the most memorable.

Completely agree here, scaling enemy stats is cheap and boring, "you are supposed to last 10 minutes in this fight, so the boss has 20x the damage and health because you overleveled" kind of boring.

Re: Making difficulty curves in games

#90

Post by deterministic »

orbital-decay wrote: post #8

>Dynamically adjust the difficulty depending on how well the player is doing. Please never do this. This deceptively looks smart to a game designer, but actual players read this like a book and then it feels cheap and massively unrewarding for them.

Nope. Ex-game developer here. There are plenty of situations where choosing a single difficulty level will make a game impossible for some players and too easy for others.

I worked on a commercial game where the only solution was to subtly adjust the difficulty to keep the experience enjoyable for everyone. The trick is to do it in a way that players don't notice.

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