The Difficulty of Difficulty
I recently ran into an interesting article about the gaming skills of video game reviewers (http://www.joystickdivision.com/2011/08/doing_it_wrong_are_game_review.php, detailed info at http://insultswordfighting.blogspot.com/2011/08/are-game-reviewers-bad-at-games.html). It’s certainly an interesting question, how good should reviewers be at games? Usually, to become a game reviewer, you’ll be required to have a pretty broad interest in games, which means you’ll already have a skill set required by most games — that is reflexes and hand-eye coordination.
Another important thing is, of course, experience and the knowledge of conventions. There are probably dozens (hundreds?) of things so conventional in games that most gamers (and thus reviewers) don’t even realize they exist. Or that someone new to games might struggle with such conventions. A simple example is saving. If the game permits saving anywhere, gamers are used to saving quite often, and they also recognize common level patterns, like when they’re approaching a boss and should save before it.
The good news is that conventions can be taught and they very well should be if the game is aimed at a mass market audience. The problem is it’s hard to recognize the conventions. As such, a game with unexplained conventions may have a very variable difficulty across the players depending on how savvy they are with its genre.
Difficulty In Rimelands
We did notice a lot of variance with difficulty in the Hammer of Thor. Partly it was due to some balance issues, especially with the hybrid characters, but there were also other reasons. For one, some people struggled a lot with some puzzles which in turn were too easy for others. Puzzles are problematic in the sense that you really can’t have adjustable difficulty levels for puzzles (though you can include hints), but on the other hand to solve a puzzle you’ll just need to google the solution. If you’re stuck with a jump in a platformer, you can’t really pass the level without acquiring the necessary skill in the game (or, sometimes, with luck), which leads to frustration very easily.
Even if the game is easily adjusted for difficulty (games with lot of numerical values, such as RPGs often are), there are still problems with difficulty settings. How normal is normal, in any case? It varies greatly from game to game, often based on how skilled the game’s developers and testers have been. Because of that, it’s a very bad idea to ask the difficulty beforehand and not let the player change it. Another problem is that games tend not to be simple enough to have single metric for balance. Someone might find the platforming in a game easy (reflexes) but shooting very difficult (coordination).
Alternative Difficulty Settings
My proposed solution is to not have single difficulty setting, but several, preferably all of which very straight-forward. Some examples what this could mean in Rimelands’ case:
* Permanent death. A very hardcore setting, common in roguelikes, but in general not very fit for most players in Rimelands.
* No free regeneration. Usually you regenerate outside battle in Rimelands. This setting would heavily emphasize the importance of Healing Potions.
* Swift enemy regeneration. Enemies would regenerate quickly if you’re not close to them. This would make ’sniping’ impossible.
* Endless enemy mana. This would mean the enemies use a lot more talents, which would make defending against such talents more important.
* Timed turns. This would alter the game’s pacing dramatically, as you could’t think too long (maybe 30 seconds?) per a single turn. Having this kind of option would require the game’s interface to be fluent enough to use with timed turns.
There could be plenty of others, but too many options will make it too overwhelming. You could also combine this with the common difficulty levels, so it would resemble the quality levels used in many games. At least it would mean it’s more transparent what the difficulty settings mean.
To get back with the original topic, these kind of transparent difficulty settings could also help reviewers, as they could better judge how the difficulty varies between the settings. One could, in theory, write something along the lines of “the potions are abundant in the game, so for a good challenge turn on the ‘No free regeneration’ option.”
One problem with this is that many of the above options are still very much tied to the player’s knowledge about game and RPG conventions. For newcomer’s they’d probably seem way too unintelligible.
Could this solve (to some degree, at least) the problem with variable player skill? Also, the ‘permadeath’ difficulty setting is something that would work with a majority of games. Are there others? Or even ones that would work with majority of RPGs?
I recently ran into an interesting article about the gaming skills of video game reviewers (detailed answers here). It’s certainly an interesting question, how good should reviewers be at games? Usually, to become a game reviewer, you’ll be required to have a pretty broad interest in games, which means you’ll already have a skill set required by most games — that is reflexes and hand-eye coordination.
Another important thing is, of course, experience and the knowledge of conventions. There are probably dozens (hundreds?) of things so conventional in games that most gamers (and thus reviewers) don’t even realize they exist. Or that someone new to games might struggle with such conventions. A simple example is saving. If the game permits saving anywhere, gamers are used to saving quite often, and they also recognize common level patterns, like when they’re approaching a boss and should save before it.
The good news is that conventions can be taught and they very well should be if the game is aimed at a mass market audience. The problem is it’s hard to recognize the conventions. As such, a game with unexplained conventions may have a very variable difficulty across the players depending on how savvy they are with its genre.
Difficulty In Rimelands
We did notice a lot of variance per person with difficulty in the Hammer of Thor. Partly it was due to some balance issues, especially with the hybrid characters, but there were also other reasons. For one, some people struggled a lot with some puzzles which in turn were too easy for others. Puzzles are problematic in the sense that you really can’t have adjustable difficulty levels for puzzles (though you can include hints), but on the other hand to solve a puzzle you’ll just need to google the solution. If you’re stuck with a jump in a platformer, you can’t really pass the level without acquiring the necessary skill in the game (or, sometimes, with luck), which leads to frustration very easily.
Even if the game is easily adjusted for difficulty (games with lot of numerical values, such as RPGs often are), there are still problems with difficulty settings. How normal is normal, in any case? It varies greatly from game to game, often based on how skilled the game’s developers and testers have been. Because of that, it’s a very bad idea to ask the difficulty beforehand and not let the player change it. Another problem is that games tend not to be simple enough to have single metric for balance. Someone might find the platforming in a game easy (reflexes) but shooting very difficult (coordination).
Alternative Difficulty Settings
My proposed solution is to not have single difficulty setting, but several, preferably all of which very straight-forward. Some examples what this could mean in Rimelands’ case:
- Permanent death. A very hardcore setting, common in roguelikes, but in general not very fit for most players in Rimelands.
- No free regeneration. Usually you regenerate outside battle in Rimelands. This setting would heavily emphasize the importance of Healing Potions.
- Swift enemy regeneration. Enemies would regenerate quickly if you’re not close to them. This would make ’sniping’ impossible.
- Endless enemy mana. This would mean the enemies use a lot more talents, which would make defending against such talents more important.
- Timed turns. This would alter the game’s pacing dramatically, as you could’t think too long (maybe 30 seconds?) per a single turn. Having this kind of option would require the game’s interface to be fluent enough to use with timed turns.
There could be plenty of others, but too many options will make it too overwhelming. You could also combine this with the common difficulty levels, so it would resemble the quality levels used in many games. At least it would mean it’s more transparent what the difficulty settings mean.
To get back with the original topic, these kind of transparent difficulty settings could also help reviewers, as they could better judge how the difficulty varies between the settings. One could, in theory, write something along the lines of “the potions are abundant in the game, so for a good challenge turn on the ‘No free regeneration’ option.”
One problem with this is that many of the above options are still very much tied to the player’s knowledge about game and RPG conventions. For newcomer’s they’d probably seem way too unintelligible.
Could this solve (to some degree, at least) the problem with variable player skill? Also, the ‘permadeath’ difficulty setting is something that would work with a majority of games. Are there others? Or even ones that would work with majority of RPGs?
