17 replies to this topic

[IMG News]

On his blog, The Bottom Feeder, Spiderweb Software's Jeff Vogel has focused his thoughts on game difficulty. The veteran indie RPG developer discussed his conclusion that it is best to design a game's default difficulty setting with an eye toward easier gameplay.

I tend to like hard games. I am perfectly happy if any given title has 3 or 4 fights that requires 3 or 4 tries each to beat. But I am increasingly recognizing that this makes me a bit of a mutant. I am also realizing that while I like (or at least don't mind) the occasional repeated failure, I don't require it. I blasted through Brutal Legend with ease and I still had a great time. Plants vs. Zombies is easy, and it is also terrific. On the other hand, a game like Ninja Gaiden 2, which would happily make me refight bosses ten times on the easiest difficulty level ... Well, that was just stupid. Never again.

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.

Visit the blog page below to read more.

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[rhywun]

I couldn't agree more. I consider myself an "average" gamer. But I'm pushing middle age and I no longer have the patience of a 12-year-old. My hard drive and my console shelf are littered with games that I have not even come close to completing. I think the reason developers do this is because (a) they think that's what people want, (b) they haven't tested their game on "normal" people, and © they have a somewhat understandable desire to add "value" to the game by making it impossible for mere mortals to finish. Then there's (d): gamers are too afraid to complain about it because it makes them feel somehow inadequate to admit the game is too hard. Well, I DID complain once after purchasing a particularly punishing game, and the developer's reply was essentially, "well, this is supposed to be a hard game". Thanks but no thanks. If you can't be bothered to at least add a second difficulty level for "normal" people, your game will remain about 5% completed, I will never touch it again, and I will never purchase anything from you again. Because it all comes down to FUN. For a large segment of the population, repeating the same content over and over and over just isn't fun.

[the Battle Cat]

rhywun, on November 25th 2009, 02:16 PM, said:

Because it all comes down to FUN. For a large segment of the population, repeating the same content over and over and over just isn't fun.

This is why I despise checkpoint save systems.

[DaveyJJ]

There was some very well thought out responses to Jeff's blog post. Part of the argument he was making about making Normal difficulties being accessible to "normal" gamers made sense to me. I am not the fastest or best player around, by any means, but I really really dislike setting a game, let's say a linear RPG type thing, on Normal level and dying a half dozen times against a tough boss. Once, OK, but lots of times?

That sort of thing makes the whole punishment-reward mechanism in games something I don't want to overcome. It's why casual games like Peggle and Peggle Nights, Professor Fizzwhizzle, Plants vs. Zomibes and their ilk are finding more and more roo mon my hard drive, at the expensive of the deeper, richer, tougher gaming experiences.

Could it partly be, as rhywun has suggested, an age thing? For me, probably. I just don't have the time anymore to deal with repeatedly having to try to overcome a stumbling point in a game. I don't want work, I do that full-time, I want enjoyment and a sense of winning from my games (or at least enough winning that I feel rewarded and successful).

I've even found that in my board game collection. Years ago Advanced Squad Leader was a given for me. No problem digesting endless rules and playing games that lasted 10 or 15 hours. Now, in that vein, Combat Commander with it's great card system is about as high-end as I can take. And even so, I'll still pull out Ticket to Ride or Smallworld before Settlers of Catan, simply due to time. Same with RPGs. My son's growing 4th ed. D&D books look like encyclopedias to me. I'd rather skim a much much shorter indie RPG to satisfy that itch.

And take Peggle Nights, for example. 60 levels of pure simplicity. Learn the rules and strategy in minutes and then fun, fun, fun. Sure in those 60 levels I failed a few times on a particular level. But never more than a few times at most before I'd gotten lucky or figured out the first thing to bounce towards. And the reward of hearing Ode to Joy was enough that I even bought the iPod version as well.

So, I know different strokes for different folks. But in one of Jeff's games I'd personally like to see Easy (my eight year old could play and usually triumph), Normal (for me and the 12 year old), Difficult (for my 12 year old when he wants a tough challenege) and Hardcore mode for all the people who like their difficulty served raw.

My $0.02 anyway.

[Endymion]

the Battle Cat, on November 25th 2009, 07:17 PM, said:

This is why I despise checkpoint save systems.

I'm unclear on your meaning, do checkpoint saves make games too difficult or too easy?

On that note, a much more thorough study on this effect is here. It would seem that most RPG titles are tailored to easiness, and that easier games cater to or attract a certain personality.

[nagromme]

I agree too—especially since he’s only talking about the default. The gaming pros can easily find the setting to change things

I’d suggest CALLING the mode something like “easy” rather than “normal” even if it’s the default—just for the sake of communicating clearly to those who will want to up the challenge to be an “old-style normal” (meaning difficult).

As for checkpoints—depending on how they’re done they can make a game EITHER too easy or too hard. One of those things that isn’t bad in itself, but must be done right.

[rhywun]

Interesting point about RPG's. Back in the day when I played 'em with pencil and paper, the point certainly didn't seem to be to make the game get harder and harder as you progressed. The point was the story, and the "camaraderie", if you will. Now I'm no longer much of a fan of RPG's--more puzzle and adventure games. And platform games--which are the biggest offender in the "too hard" genre. And Metroidvania games--can't get enough of those--even though I suck at boss battles without a walkthrough handy. I guess the point--and this is what the author was getting at--is that game developers need to find the "sweet spot" of difficulty and the way it gradually ramps up, or at least offer a range of difficulties.

[morback]

Endymion, on November 26th 2009, 12:28 AM, said:

I'm unclear on your meaning, do checkpoint saves make games too difficult or too easy?

On that note, a much more thorough study on this effect is here. It would seem that most RPG titles are tailored to easiness, and that easier games cater to or attract a certain personality.

Great article on Pixelpopper!

I for one detest easy games and especially those where you can't even fail/die (Soulbringer comes to mind). What's the point? Might as well watch a movie, at least there there is no pretense of interaction.

Maybe it's time for me to get back into FPS...

[the Battle Cat]

Endymion, on November 25th 2009, 09:28 PM, said:

I'm unclear on your meaning, do checkpoint saves make games too difficult or too easy?

Perhaps too difficult if I were forced to chose one of your options.  I was responding to this:

rhywun, on November 25th 2009, 02:16 PM, said:

Because it all comes down to FUN. For a large segment of the population, repeating the same content over and over and over just isn't fun.

It makes them less fun by way of unwanted repetition.  But because you asked, I'll unload a little more on checkpoint saves.  The unwanted repetition comes from not only fighting the same fight over and over, it's from running back to swap to the weapon you wanted to fight with, locating that power up, running down to the proper spot in a conversation tree, locating that health pack, etc, then running all the way back to fight the boss and die again only to repeat all the boring un-fun stuff yet again.  With a user initiated save, you do all of that stuff once.  I can die fighting a hundred times more than I can spend 3 minutes getting to the fight then dying.  

Plus checkpoint saves discourage experimentation and exploration, 2 of the things that make games fun for me.  Nothing is worse to me than to see if I can lift myself up to a ledge with an explosion only to have it saved where I have one leg, a shard of smoking pig iron through my neck, and a hairline of health.  I'm looking at you Halo!!  It wouldn't be so bad if checkpoint saves could be initiated by a user such as was the case in Marathon, but invisible areas that save once make me crazy.  Especially those that don't take into consideration that there is a rocket with my name on it already en-route to my face at the time of the save.

[Frost]

^ Hear hear.

I don't mind checkpoint saves, but I'd rather have a system like Quake 4 or Fallout 3, just to name two examples. They keep rolling autosaves going just so you don't get on a roll, forget to save, die, and go back 2 hours while cursing madly; however the primary save system is to let you save any time you like. This is great because I don't need Halo to save three times as I'm driving down a beach, and then decide to not save until I've cleared all seven fights with three enraged hunters at a time.

If they want to add to the tension through not being able to save anytime anywhere I can understand that, but I'd rather have either: 1) a limited number of use-anywhere saves, 2) unlimited use saves, but only at specific points a la Marathon

[PeopleLikeFrank]

Thoroughly agreeing with tBC on checkpoints. Another big beef with this sort of thing is the plot exposition/dialogue/voiceover that occurs right before a tough fight, but right after a checkpoint. Hearing some character (who, given the usual quality of writing and acting in the average game, I probably find irritating and am trying to ignore anyway) explain some nonsense to me for the Nth time before I go in and get my ass handed to me again loses its appeal rather quickly.

And that wouldn't be as big a deal, but difficulty is often used as an artificial game lengthening device these days. So OK, your game was expensive to produce, and you could only make 8 hours worth of campaign (more like 4 these days). Sticking in some unreasonable chokepoints and calling it 10 because I'll have to restart these bits 20 times isn't the way to go. And they are more often than not unreasonable - breaking the game play rules that the rest of the game has been establishing, or otherwise forcing progression through a difficult spot while denying you the tools you're relying on in the game to do so.

[Frost]

PeopleLikeFrank, on November 26th 2009, 02:19 PM, said:

And that wouldn't be as big a deal, but difficulty is often used as an artificial game lengthening device these days. So OK, your game was expensive to produce, and you could only make 8 hours worth of campaign (more like 4 these days). Sticking in some unreasonable chokepoints and calling it 10 because I'll have to restart these bits 20 times isn't the way to go. And they are more often than not unreasonable - breaking the game play rules that the rest of the game has been establishing, or otherwise forcing progression through a difficult spot while denying you the tools you're relying on in the game to do so.

^ Case study in what you just said there.

[bobbob]

PeopleLikeFrank, on November 26th 2009, 02:19 PM, said:

plot exposition/dialogue/voiceover that occurs right before a tough fight, but right after a checkpoint

But then you wouldn't know what to do! You might even try going off the rails, and we all know the devs wouldn't know how to handle that. You'd fall through a clipping bug and be lost in the void!

Quote

Sticking in some unreasonable chokepoints and calling it 10 because I'll have to restart these bits 20 times isn't the way to go

As we all know, historical battles have all been fought over infinite spawn points. Anything else would be unrealistic.

[the Battle Cat]

bobbob, on November 27th 2009, 12:22 PM, said:

As we all know, historical battles have all been fought over infinite spawn points. Anything else would be unrealistic.

He is right you know.  This bit the Japanese in the butt big time.  Pearl Harbor should have been over and won in a couple hours but they had no idea that Pearl Harbor was an infinite American spawn point.  At least it extended the game for them from two hours to 4 years, but on the down side, by the end of it everybody had to pee like fire hoses.  You ever see the fireboats welcoming in a ship to New York harbor by firing off all their hoses into the air over the side?  It was just like that on the Battleship Missouri 2 seconds after the surrender was signed.  MacArthur was heard to mumble, "Frickin' geez!" through gritted teeth.

[Rev-O]

I'm with Rhywun and DaveyJJ: I expect it is an age thing for me as well. That, and I have a boat load of responsibilities and obligations your average teenage gamer doesn't have. Gaming (I'm hesitant to admit) is not my life. Accordingly, I would rather spend my money on a game that erred on the side of easiness than on the side of difficulty. I play games to relax, escape, and have a good time. I've got little time for gaming and so I'd like to maximize my satisfaction for that time. If I get to spend a couple hours late at night playing a game, I'd rather make a couple of hours of progress in a long less demanding game instead of replaying a boss battle a dozen times trying to figure out what cryptic strategy to use or instead of spending a couple of hours making a handful of minutes progress through some arbitrary trial and error choke point in a more (idiotically) challenging game.

[Frost]

the Battle Cat, on November 27th 2009, 06:05 PM, said:

He is right you know.  This bit the Japanese in the butt big time.  Pearl Harbor should have been over and won in a couple hours but they had no idea that Pearl Harbor was an infinite American spawn point.  At least it extended the game for them from two hours to 4 years, but on the down side, by the end of it everybody had to pee like fire hoses.  You ever see the fireboats welcoming in a ship to New York harbor by firing off all their hoses into the air over the side?  It was just like that on the Battleship Missouri 2 seconds after the surrender was signed.  MacArthur was heard to mumble, "Frickin' geez!" through gritted teeth.

Don't forget they neglected to check the strategy guide beforehand as well, or they'd have known that the Pearl Harbor infinite spawn point was also scripted to activate the infinite ship spawns on the east coast. At the absolute height of the game [USA]Roosevelt was launching a new ship of one class or another every thirty minutes. Especially after the Philippine Sea level, [JPN]Yamamoto was seen with his head in his hands and his hands between his knees, while [JPN]tOjO was screaming, "This unbalanced fire trucking map fire trucking sucks!"

Strangely, [JPN]HIROHITO was still claiming he knew a way to use the cheats from the single-player campaign in multiplayer, which he continued to state until [USA]Roosevelt had to leave the game and [USA]Truman took over, and shortly thereafter completed teching up through the "Superweapon" research tree that [USA]Roosevelt had started.

Naturally, right before the end, [CCCP]stalin started a border skirmish in order to get his assist points on the scoreboard and then claimed victory was all his doing.

[badger2d]

Interesting.  Game difficulty is a subject I've mused over before, and I came up with this distinction between when a game should be easy and when it's okay for it to be hard (the first sounds very much like what the designer in the article said):

A game should be easy if it is long, mechanically complex, and has a lot of story in it.  Dying a lot breaks immersion in a story game, and breaks it hard when it sends you through the same scenes over and over again.  And a complex game, meaning one in which there are a lot of available choices, provides a ton of opportunity for the player to make bad choices and in general misunderstand the game, which can make it very hard to figure out what exactly is wrong if a given challenge can't be completed, leading to that head-bang-against-wall feeling that causes games to be tossed aside forever.

A game can be hard when it is short, mechanically simple, and gameplay-focused.  This pretty much describes every platformer ever made, where you control one character with few and easily-grasped abilities.  There's a minimal number of choices about what you can do in any given situation, which makes it possible to quickly pinpoint the nature of each challenge you're presented with.  It's much more psychologically acceptable to fail repeatedly at a tough challenge when you're sure that the difficulty is in the precision of your performance, and not due to you approaching it in completely the wrong way.  And the immersion factor is no problem at all when the game isn't really trying to immerse you in a story in the first place.

[PeopleLikeFrank]

^^ Yeah, good points here.

There was a post on RPS recently where one of the writers felt a little bad for cheating in order to respec his character in Dragon Age. Apparently the game doesn't make the implications of the character skill/spell choices clear, and it had rendered the game unplayable for him, since he couldn't get through the fights later on in the game. So he had the choice of playing again through the entire game's content just to progress past his current point, or hacking the game. He only changed something like one or two spells that the character had, and ended up having way more fun.