Designing several difficulty levels?

10Sep/095

Designing several difficulty levels?

I'll just post some thoughts and questions, as I'm not sure what the "right" answer is. Is there even is one?

I'm thinking about when games have several different difficulty levels for me, the player, to choose from.

Easy, Medium, Hard.

What does that really mean? It's impossible to know in advance. I usually play a game on normal or hard difficulty, since I consider myself a somewhat skilled gamer and it usually end well.

Knowing what difficulty to choose is a problem on its own, but even more, what's the difference more than "it's harder"? Some games tell the player "the enemies will do more damage", etc. That's nice, because I'm not left in the dark. However, stronger than what? That'll only say something to me if I've played the game already.

As a designer? How should we explain to the player how hard hard is?

And more importantly, how should we balance a game? A problem as I see it, is that changing difficulty also changes the feel of the gameplay tremendously! A game that comes to mind for me is GRIN's Bionic Commando: Rearmed.

I beat the game on normal. It wasn't all that hard. But after trying to play it on hard, I stopped. Not because it was too hard, but because it wasn't fun anymore. It was a whole lot less fun than the normal difficulty. That's because the flow of the game was completely gone. On normal difficulty I swing, I shoot, I swing, I shoot (simplified), while on hard the enemies can take a lot more damage and the game turns into a much slower game. This is because it takes a whole lot longer to defeat the enemeies, requiring me to stay, crouch, get several hits, etc. so the flow of progression I enjoyed on "normal" was gone.

I would like the game to be harder without making the enemies being able to take so much damage. Should the developers have made the game differently? I don't know.

One way to adress this problem, which is present in many games, is to make more settings "transparent", making it possible for me to increase the attack of the enemies, while leaving the health intact.

Okay, so we have a solution. Let the player create his own difficulty level. Right? Wrong!

We can't give the player too much options out of two big reasons.

A player wants to play the game, not tweak it. A big wall of settings is a turn off for most.

We can't expect the player to be able to handle all those settings. Of course, some would. But overall, a designers role is to create a fun experience for the player and its not something to be left for the player to figure out by himself. It's just like setting all the game rules when hosting a multiplayer game. Too much is too much.

Besides, it's damn hard to get the settings right the first time around before playing the game. So basically, it would be the same job as for the designer with tweaking, testing, tweaking, testing aaaand repeat!

Maybe it's good enough just having a few different difficulty levels and giving the player the option to change anytime during the game? Would that be enough?

Another way of adjusting the difficulty are all the games that try and adjust it on the fly, based on the player's performance. A system that I can bet is hard as hell to design, I actually haven't tried. But it's a very clever way of solving it, especially if executed good.

Okay, so I've typed what I was thinking, without actually reaching any conclusion:

Yay for me!

What are your thoughts?

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David Lundvall
September 11th, 2009 - 00:16

I don’t really like the idea of explaining each difficulty. I don’t want to know what is easier on a lower difficulty or harder on the upper difficulty. It kind of breaks the immersion, since I start to know the rules behind the scene.

I pretty much only play games on normal setting. I trust the developer about this setting being suited for me. I often have the feeling all games are designed with this setting, so I don’t want to fuck around with any settings. Makes my brain go funky.

The dream scenario for me, would be a difficulty system where I have no choice. The system is dynamic. It’s like a difficulty transition for a few levels, let’s say the first 3 levels are statistics for what the outcome should be. After those 3 levels you will have a nailed difficulty. You don’t know it, but its configured for you and no longer dynamic.

Not necessarily this way. This is just one example. It can still be broken (cheated), but pretty much everything can. If you want to break something, then you are obviously not caring about your experience. (Like idiots making stupid comments on a movie to an audience in the cinema)

I think Prey was designed with a dynamic difficulty, but I think it was constantly on. That’s a bit weird to me. Sure, I don’t know how it performs or how it’s setup. But the idea of having a system constantly changing and checking up on you means that it babysits me. I want to be punished again and again if I can’t manage to deal with something that others of same skill can. Or something that I should have learned, but fail to perform. I am missing something, I need the practice, I need to be punished and learn in order to progress and get rewarded. Don’t change anything. Don’t let me progress if I am not ready.

But the whole easy, medium, hard thing… I just don’t buy that. I think it’s bullshit. Games need to grow out of this template. (Let’s have scary movies with these choices. Easy would mean constant daylight and raining flowers.)
Finn
September 11th, 2009 - 11:35

Modern warfare had this short “boot camp” exercise before the game. It was also a tutorial for the controls. Just a simple scene where your skills and reaction time were also measured discretely. After this you get to select the difficulty, and the most suitable setting was suggested for the player based on the skills presented. I kinda prefer this way because you actually got to feel the actual gameplay, and learn the basic controls rather than having the gameplay change dynamically on the fly. And if it’s done correctly, it’ll actually be a fun part of the game rather than to be a standalone tutorial in the main menu.

One other thing I have always hated. Games which have stuff to be unlocked and rewards; You never know what difficulty setting affects what. This is really annoying with games where the difficulty really makes it to be not fun anymore. You’ve just wasted hours to play the game on hard mode to find out that it didn’t get you any more rewards. I prefer things like that to be embbed and hidden inside of the game levels disregarding the difficulty setting. Some parts could still be hard and extremely hardcore, but they would only be the “side quests” and bonus stuff not everyone plays.
Jesper
September 11th, 2009 - 11:57

Basically, designing difficulty and progression through the game is stupid. It doesn’t take into account that people play differently and learn at different rates.
The only sound solution is to make difficulty and progression variable and automatically tweak it during gameplay.
This is not an easy process. But the alternative is really to make the game frustrating for a large part of your paying customers.
To do this effectively we also need to design the game with this in mind from the start. RE4 is a perfect game for this since your progression and your difficulty is really based upon enemies. Tweaking their reactions, hitpoints, speed and the amount of “sticky” aim would create a perfect data layer for some perfect algorithm to tweak to players individual tastes.
Hard to do. But not impossible.
Arshak
September 11th, 2009 - 13:05

I agree with most of the above comments. I system that checks up on the player and changes difficulty on the fly is comes of as babysitting as david so nicely put ut. But its always better to win a game than not be able to finish it. Mainly because it is a game, a form of entertainment. If the babysitting system allows the player ample time and tries before changing the difficulty. But as all forms of illusion, not knowing that this is happening will give the player better sense of achievement.

Automatically setting a difficulty level after the first few levels and then keeping that until shit hits the fan sounds like a good idea,
Arcade
September 11th, 2009 - 20:41

Great comments, all of you.

It’s interesting to see that each individual knows somewhat how he likes it.

Arshak, I like you saying “But its always better to win a game than not be able to finish it.”. I guess, in a way, you’re absolutely right about that. But the question is just how easy should we make it? I mean, the player doesn’t necessarly have to be able to finish the game on the first try without dying. But then again, how many times is it “okay” for the player to die?

Great read everybody! Thank you.