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[DJFloppyFish]

How do you design the most extreme challenges of your game if you're not a skilled gamer? Do you carefully balance the challenges so that you can beat them but just barely? Or do you extensively test them with good players and see how they handle things? Or should you (the designer) always be able to beat your own challenges since you have the most knowledge of your own mechanics and it's the mark of good design for that knowledge to translate into success?

For clarification, I'm talking about content that has a definite win/lose scenario, not highscores. Although, I guess the same questions apply to the later levels of arcade games. Hopefully this sparks a bit of discussion, as I'm very curious about everyone's approaches to this.

 

[s0]

if you really want balance, you pretty much need playtesters, regardless of how good you are at your own game.

[SirNiko]

Playtesters are also important because it's possible to be better at your game than the players simply by virtue of knowing exactly what is happening under the hood.

I've seen some games that make a hardest difficulty level that isn't properly playtested, with the intent to provide an infinite challenge to players. Diablo III's hardest difficulty was playtested, approved, and then doubled before release (then later tweaked back down). Kingdom of Loathing introduced at least one superboss that had a rare drop that could only be acquired by fighting him in his hardest configuration, which at the time the developers didn't know if it was possible to beat. You could consider one extremely hard difficulty level that isn't well balanced so long as you're transparent that it isn't intended for anyone but the most obsessive.

Do you have a particular genre of game that you're working on that might be good fodder for discussion?

[Photon]

I would caution you not to think so much about "how close can I get to unbeatable?" as much as "how rewarding is the process of winning the challenge?" where difficulty is more of a (driving) factor rather than the heart of everything. Higher difficulty does not always equal higher reward.

[Sik]

You could consider one extremely hard difficulty level that isn't well balanced so long as you're transparent that it isn't intended for anyone but the most obsessive.

Much like how the Doom games warn you if you choose the hardest difficulty level? (it explicitly states there aren't any guarantees that it's beatable - and of course

)

[baconman]

Carefully calculated margins of error, that's how.

http://kayin.moe/iwbtg/faq.php

[Netsu]

Find playtesters that play and enjoy high difficulty games and watch them try. If they quit it's probably because the game feels unfair (not the same as too difficult), if they're doing something wrong it's probably because it wasn't exaplained well enough, if they are not making any progress on something no matter how many times they try then it's too difficult.

[baconman]

Play some of those games, and see where the "fair" margin is, yourself. I recommend: I Wanna Be The Guy, You Have To Win The Game, 1,001 Spikes, La Mulana, Rogue Legacy, Spelunky, Spelunker HD, and Syoban Action.

Also, keep in mind, if your game is going to be killing the player a lot, find new, novel, and entertaining ways of killing the player!!

[Graham-]

Open field I imagine. Know your audience. There's no magic wand here.

There is no way you can know you are doing the right thing. If you can beat your own game, after much practice, with difficulty, then often that difficulty you are playing at is a very hard difficulty. Designers, who regularly play their own work - as they should - often are very skilled at their own game, as the common knowledge goes.

Nothing beats play-testing, and collecting statistics: nothing. There's just nothing better than real-world feedback, in any kind of software, especially something as "soft" as games. Experience trumps all.

Here's a better question. Why do you want such a hard difficulty if you yourself are not a, self-described, "skilled gamer?" Normally the wisdom among novel authors is to, "write what you know." I think it is fair to say that you should build games that give experiences, "that you understand." So why make a game with a difficulty level that you yourself cannot appreciate? What is the point of that? You are making the world unnecessarily difficult I think.

Or maybe you are more skilled than you are saying, and are just being humble?

--

edit:

Naturally you will want to make games slightly broader than your own tastes. When you go slightly past your knowledge, you are left with the same general problem everyone else is, whenever we push ourselves in the same way.

[DJFloppyFish]

I'm talking more about those extra bits of content that are there just for a challenge. Obviously it's not about making it absolutely impossible. I think it's actually very easy to end up designing something overly hard when you're attempting give the players a real challenge. I guess a better way of phrasing what I'm thinking is: how do you ensure that the most difficult parts of your game are still fun? What really constitutes "fair but challenging"? for my money, its about as sticking close to the original mechanics as possible and not introducing too many new exceptions to the rules of your game. That's why fighting a bunch of dudes in the Arkham games is fun and the bosses in those game usually blow. But I feel like it's deeper than just that.   

[Graham-]

We're talking about the same thing.

"Sticking to the fundamentals" is probably the most important point here. I'm glad you said it, and not me.

[baconman]

Making sure everything calculates at a fair exchange rate? I mean, games like 1,001 Spikes and You Have To Win The Game have some challenging sections, but 99% of the time they're completely designed with object speeds and jumping dimensions that work WITH the character physics naturally, rather than against them. Sure, you can beat any challenge the HARD way. But you can also beat it with style and grace by simply figuring out or knowing what's up, too.