Difficulty settings, though. He mentions them only briefly (in this incredible article).
Normal varies so much.
As a "cozy" gamer, I want the standard setting to be something I can play without having to switch my context to to the internet for help or a guide. This was one of many triumps of Baldur's Gate 3: the difficulty settings make sense in how they translate to gameplay, and the default is fun.
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. Few things things in gaming piss me off more than a memory or Simon Says puzzle in an MMO or similar. If I wanted to play puzzle games, I’d be playing a puzzle game, not your game.
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 designers to really think what the experience should be, I think the gold standard should be no difficulty slider. Playing the game should be a self-consistent experience that gets more difficult as you get better at the game, and gating the final content with skills is very rewarding and makes the experience feel more "real" than if you just get a super configurable game where everything can be turned on/off.
I remember there were some complaints about the puzzle sections in a recent-ish God of War game where they had clearly tried to avoid this problem but by essentially having NPCs spontaneously tell you the solution to the puzzle at some point, which then just annoyed people who wanted to solve the puzzle themselves.
>Dynamically adjust the difficulty depending on how well the player is doing. <- This is actually magic sauce and could be the topic of a whole talk.
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.
"actual players" as opposed to other people who just, what? "use" the game?
Sorry, but it's hard to take this comment seriously when it reeks of "git gud".
So I'll just point out that a lot of people play games, and that there are well-documented instances of games with dynamic difficulty as early as the 80s.
My go-to example is Homeworld 2, where the dynamic difficulty scaling was IMO very poorly hidden. It was as if the player is being punished for doing the legwork to preserve and expand their fleet across missions even though the game's lore and mechanics encourage them to do so.
Crash Bandicoot did this well. In the original game, you needed to finish without dying and get all of the boxes to get the gem. In future games, some levels would have a “death path” that would only be available if you got to a certain point in the level without dying.
I like when your character or your party feels like superheroes for a little while after leveling up, then it gets harder to really test your new ability, then keep repeating that cycle.
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.
Well that depends it can be done well and it can be done extremely poorly.
When the increased enemy health means you need to find new effective strategies and explore the depths of your moveset, and making less mistakes from increased damage - it can be really fun. Dante Must Die mode in the Devil May Cry series, or Master Ninja in Ninja Gaiden, are basically the only difficulties I care to play in those games. But along with the extra damage and health the enemies also get new tactics, which keeps things fresh and engaging. The health caps in Quake are pretty ingenious too. You level up in this games by actually increasing your skill - not by arbitrary progression gates.
When your combat system has no depth and it basically boils down to just mashing attack and circling the enemy - it definitely sucks. Bandits with glass armor in Oblivion from the level scaling is difficulty done badly.
When I’m looking for a game that I really want to sink serious time into - I always look at games with in-depth scoring systems. Scoring is great because it’s an objective measure of how well you’re playing the game the way the developer intended. Bonus points if there are online leaderboards. The style/rank systems in DmC and NG are some of the best design scoring systems for action games IMO, they allow player expression but still give you a fairly objective measure of how well you’re playing the game.
I used to play a lot of Dark Souls and speedrunning or using arbitrary rules (level 1 runs, 1 weapon only, etc…) was how the community essentially created a scoring system for themselves - which is great it provides longevity to the games. But these days I look for something a bit more defined. So I eventually turned to old school shoot’em up, run’n gun and character action games for this. For shmup and gunners specifically, the mechanics are simple on the surface but the depth comes from figuring out how to best make use of them to overcome the difficulty. The simplicity also makes them some of the easiest pick up and play games, and don’t require as much comittment as something with 10 minutes cutscenes after every 30 minutes of play.
Sorry for the rant, hard games with in-depth scoring mechanics are my current obsession, and I don’t get much opportunity to really talk about it.
It sparks joy that you are so passionate about game difficulty, and that you have a way to enjoy that. I'm at the point where I'm leaving games that feel like a second job. The most interesting games for me are the ones that feel like an interactive story, not the ones that demand deep knowledge of mechanics, buffs, perks, weaknesses, etc., and tolerance to frustration, just to pass a checkpoint.
I still appreciate a well-designed boss that feels intelligent, not just extremely unfair.
I think it strongly depends on how it's done and how it plays into the feeling of the game. Certain kinds of level scaling can feel pretty cheap, for example, because they kind of work against the feeling of progression you get in the game. Similarly a game obviously making things easier for you can feel like it's cheapening the satisfaction of improving at the game, though how important this is varies from person to person.
But done well, it can much more reliably create the feeling of being just on the edge of failure but pulling through, which is really satisfying in a lot of games. L4D did this, but Helldivers 2 for example also has a lot of game design focused on creating this kind of feeling.
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.
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.
I've been watching a lot of let's play content on YouTube for incremental games (it's like an ASMR thing) and after watching a lot of these games it is clear that pacing a video game is a challenge. Sometimes the player finds a sneaky way to increase their progress that busts the game, other times they miss the correct path and get stuck in a painful grind. It is also very obvious when the game dev has targeted a play-time metric and forces the game into that metric. Incremental games really expose this dynamic since they are generally pure upgrade mechanic attached to some kind of dopamine generator (flashy lights, rhythmic sounds, etc.)
maybe i’m in the minority of gamers overall.. i much prefer when there’s no difficulty setting (like dark souls, for example) but rather an enormous amount of tools the game gives you to solve a problem.
i know there are problems with this approach, but games without a difficulty setting “feel” more like a game to me for whatever reason
Unrelated to the article, but keyboard scrolling is not working on this site. It seems to be deliberately disabled with a script called t1.js. I wonder why. Please, don't mess with keyboard navigation on a blog.
Relevant: I'm just sad that most turn-based JRPG's nowadays start off with you thinking about which move is appropriate for each situation, but halfway through they end up to making you use the same 3-4 moves over and over again.
Trails games are even worse because there's tons of them who feel like they never gotten properly play tested. Killing a level 120 boss with a level 60 squad because you can delay the opponent's turn just isn't satisfying, especially when the boss is meant to be (narration-wise) so much stronger than you.
I haven't seen this connection made, but difficulty curves in video games seem to resemble Campbell's Hero's Journey. There is an initial call to adventure, then some kind of mentor, then confronting the shadow, then a return of the shadow, etc.
If the game industry wasn't so myopic about recreating reality in graphics, the larger AAA titles could be exploring this more in depth. I think this would hit the jackpot of immersive experience as it could tap into the same psychological mechanisms.
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[ 0.22 ms ] story [ 12.7 ms ] threadNormal varies so much.
As a "cozy" gamer, I want the standard setting to be something I can play without having to switch my context to to the internet for help or a guide. This was one of many triumps of Baldur's Gate 3: the difficulty settings make sense in how they translate to gameplay, and the default is fun.
However, this article reminded me of this meme
https://imgur.com/gallery/eve-online-learning-curve-jj16ThL
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. Few things things in gaming piss me off more than a memory or Simon Says puzzle in an MMO or similar. If I wanted to play puzzle games, I’d be playing a puzzle game, not your game.
If a game can afford a designers to really think what the experience should be, I think the gold standard should be no difficulty slider. Playing the game should be a self-consistent experience that gets more difficult as you get better at the game, and gating the final content with skills is very rewarding and makes the experience feel more "real" than if you just get a super configurable game where everything can be turned on/off.
Multiplayer FPS, strategy games, and sport games are still very enjoyable without these mechanisms.
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 adage is that the customers never know what they want, and it's doubly true when it comes to video games.
Sorry, but it's hard to take this comment seriously when it reeks of "git gud". So I'll just point out that a lot of people play games, and that there are well-documented instances of games with dynamic difficulty as early as the 80s.
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.
When the increased enemy health means you need to find new effective strategies and explore the depths of your moveset, and making less mistakes from increased damage - it can be really fun. Dante Must Die mode in the Devil May Cry series, or Master Ninja in Ninja Gaiden, are basically the only difficulties I care to play in those games. But along with the extra damage and health the enemies also get new tactics, which keeps things fresh and engaging. The health caps in Quake are pretty ingenious too. You level up in this games by actually increasing your skill - not by arbitrary progression gates.
When your combat system has no depth and it basically boils down to just mashing attack and circling the enemy - it definitely sucks. Bandits with glass armor in Oblivion from the level scaling is difficulty done badly.
When I’m looking for a game that I really want to sink serious time into - I always look at games with in-depth scoring systems. Scoring is great because it’s an objective measure of how well you’re playing the game the way the developer intended. Bonus points if there are online leaderboards. The style/rank systems in DmC and NG are some of the best design scoring systems for action games IMO, they allow player expression but still give you a fairly objective measure of how well you’re playing the game.
I used to play a lot of Dark Souls and speedrunning or using arbitrary rules (level 1 runs, 1 weapon only, etc…) was how the community essentially created a scoring system for themselves - which is great it provides longevity to the games. But these days I look for something a bit more defined. So I eventually turned to old school shoot’em up, run’n gun and character action games for this. For shmup and gunners specifically, the mechanics are simple on the surface but the depth comes from figuring out how to best make use of them to overcome the difficulty. The simplicity also makes them some of the easiest pick up and play games, and don’t require as much comittment as something with 10 minutes cutscenes after every 30 minutes of play.
Sorry for the rant, hard games with in-depth scoring mechanics are my current obsession, and I don’t get much opportunity to really talk about it.
I still appreciate a well-designed boss that feels intelligent, not just extremely unfair.
For example, if I want friendlier lobbies in arc raiders, I will spawn in with no loadout and purposely surrender.. I can game my difficulty lower
But done well, it can much more reliably create the feeling of being just on the edge of failure but pulling through, which is really satisfying in a lot of games. L4D did this, but Helldivers 2 for example also has a lot of game design focused on creating this kind of feeling.
It's essentially punishing players for playing well, and often could be gamed by playing badly intentionally.
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.
i know there are problems with this approach, but games without a difficulty setting “feel” more like a game to me for whatever reason
Trails games are even worse because there's tons of them who feel like they never gotten properly play tested. Killing a level 120 boss with a level 60 squad because you can delay the opponent's turn just isn't satisfying, especially when the boss is meant to be (narration-wise) so much stronger than you.
If the game industry wasn't so myopic about recreating reality in graphics, the larger AAA titles could be exploring this more in depth. I think this would hit the jackpot of immersive experience as it could tap into the same psychological mechanisms.
As with most art forms, the very best and most interesting examples treat rules like these as starting points, not end points.