Games that match their difficulty to the ability of the player.
Often we see adaptive difficulty being accidentally implemented and acting inversely, with the game becoming easier for good players.  You've really mastered the controls for a platformer and manage to get up into a hidden area with a 1-UP.  Well done, you're good at the game!  Here, have some resources to make it even less challenging for you.

I don't think this is a bad thing for platformers that the player is supposed to lose repeatedly before winning.  Games where you can save have an entirely different class of difficulty than ones where you can't, and they need to be balanced differently; they can't be compared.

For platformers where you may well get a game over on level 3 quite a few times and start over before advancing, the 1-up you grab on level 2 becomes a bigger deal.  Sure, it's suspended over some spikes in a place that is hazardous to go; a novice player should pass it by.  But an expert player will trust his skill and take that risk for a benefit much later in the game, when it gets REALLY hard.

I think that examples like that are a way of smearing out the difficulty throughout the entire length of a game.  If the end boss is really hard, and you have to play through the whole game to get to him, well, that can make the rest of the game boring.  However if there's all sorts of little challenges throughout the game that can give you a boost against that final boss (like scattered 1-ups), the game gets more interesting.

If you don't like games that can give a 'game over', well, this mechanic isn't worth anything.

The videos I saw made it look like it had the gameplay of those silly flash games you play for five minutes before you get bored...Good graphics, but that's it.

Woo!  That looks awesome!  I taught myself Allegro by trying to make a MoM clone but I didn't even get remotely that far.

Is it anything like playable?  The screenshots look good enough to use...

Of course, Stardock (I think) has the 'real' spiritual sequel on its way, going to a closed beta for preorderers real soon...

Ideally the whole game is a tutorial

I'm usually a little annoyed by this mechanic.  I mean, it WORKS--you can't actually go wrong with it.  But it kind of puts limits on what the game can throw at you, the player.  Early levels either stop posing a challenge to an experienced player, or they become terribly boring.  If an advanced mechanic can be used to skip an easy puzzle, then the puzzle stops being useful as a tutorial because the player might learn the hard and not the easy thing...  But if you can wall-jump for the whole game, but you never GET to because there's no point most of the time, well, that has its own problems.  And then you have issues where you get to the end of the game and you only have one or two levels at "full power"...just a few simple puzzles that use the game's full potential; that's no good.

I think Super Metroid is a good model in a lot of ways.  Some powers, you always have, and are unnecessary-but-helpful (wall jumping, triple bomb jumping).  Some powers, you gain over time, and don't need early on.  A skilled player can find creative solutions to the early levels, while a new player won't even bother looking for those.

Maybe what I'm trying to say is, easyish tutorials are good, but make it clear what the player is supposed to do, and then let them sequence break if they want.  Tutorials can have a 'hard' solution that only a skilled player will spot; this should also be a quick solution, but it shouldn't just be "perform the easy things rapidly".  Like, maybe there's an easy path that teaches you the basics of jumping, but up above there's all this horrible machinery that looks like part of the background--an expert can wall-jump to get up there and sneak through it, risking death, but complete the tutorial way faster.

Every platform has a real position and an intended position.

I like this idea because it implies some pretty sick sequence breaking, to me.  I wouldn't say that it doesn't break the level design.  But it sure would be fun to mess with.  Especially if platforms that are 'catching up' and moving faster do add their speed to a riding player's jumps.

I'm more interested in the "each server is 100 people with their own unique story" thing.  This is the same game, right?

There's a billion Worms clones out there, some are free, some cost money.  Show me one that has as well-polished graphics, as balanced gameplay, as smooth controls, as varied and good sounds, as full a singleplayer mode, and as competently implemented network play as Worms Armageddon, and you bet I'll pay Worms Armageddon prices for it.  I've barely seen one that has even three of those six criteria, so it's hard to say that indie games are priced unfairly.  If it takes a big studio and investors to really peg those things, then that's what it takes.  Does "indie" mean "not creatively controlled by EA", or does it mean "one guy working independently"?  Because if it's the former, there's tons of indie games out there that have sold well, and charged good prices.  Hell some of them find a big publisher when the game is nearly finished, so they don't LOOK indie, even though a little research will tell you they're only connected in the most vague and tangental ways.  These games are often the best games you can find!

I've seen very well polished indie games, I've seen pretty long indie games, but darned if I'm still waiting to see a little indie game that's got the time investment from a -large team- like you see in big successful commercial games.  A very few indie games blow the studio ones out of the water in graphics and gameplay, but they end up being like two hours worth of gameplay and that's hard to swallow.  Sometimes, buying indie games feels more like a donation than a purchase and I'm only kind of okay with that.

Cave Story ruled, it was great, I'd buy it, but it was still fundamentally pretty limited.  Chuck more game modes as it (Co-op?  Some weird Abuse-style deathmatch?), add good voice acting, and NOW it has risen to what I expect in a game I buy off the shelf for shelf-game prices.  Not saying that's a good idea, it's just for comparison.  Commercial games without that range of features, I get from the bargain bin instead.

Sorry, I just felt the urge to defend myself as a consumer...

When I see that a game was published by Sierra, I can trust it to not suck.  Does being published by a company not connected to the creative process make you stop being indie?

Yes, this is a game I am desperately hoping for.

On the note of indie game pricing I think that some indie games are outrageously under-priced. Look at Audiosurf, the game is a steal at $9.99, I would have paid twice that at the very least just because of the replay value alone.

I only played the demo of AudioSurf, and hey, maybe it's just me...but it seemed overpriced to me at $10.  I didn't see any deep or meaningful gameplay, anything to keep my interest longer than half an hour or so.  The fact that it has procedurally generated levels didn't mean a whole lot for me, it came off as a very basic arcade type game.  I'm honestly kind of surprised that people are paying for that game...which tells me that I clearly don't understand the game market, and that I'm way out of line as an average consumer. I guess you could put me down as a customer that wouldn't be lost if you doubled the price, or gained if you halved it, because I wouldn't have bought it anyway.  Interesting.

I lean towards #3, mostly because I'm used to Contra-style players' interactions with the world.  In other words, if it's not insta-death, the only interaction is "your feet" and "the top of the platform"; higher platforms are also a little bit further back, so you can always jump through them.

Besides, #3 gives you a little more latitude with placing enemies and other things that you might not want to push around.

Gahh.  When I try to actually make sense of Zelda's perspective by looking at it closely, it makes me claw my eyes out.  Especially if you picture a pillar, made of the same stuff as Mikademus's zelda pic's walls instead of a sprite, in the middle of the room.  That can turn into Lovecraftian geometric nightmare fuel.

The one thing levels are really good for, though, is giving an accurate idea of how powerful a character is.  Sure there's some variation based on skill, equipment, build choices etc, but in a well designed game it's fairly accurate.  If you do away with levels, you still need SOME way of determining in general how powerful someone is.  So many game mechanics require SOME estimate, however rough.  If you don't have any guess, it's hard to balance things, hard to manage rewards, etc.

I mean heck, that's the whole point of this topic.  Given two players of disparate powers, how do you let them cooperate while still maintaining that power disparity, not making the weak player entirely useless, not making the more-powerful character lose that sense of power?  Sometimes you do need artificial controls to make that sort of thing work out.  And those benefit from the kind of information that 'I'm level twenty-five' provides.

If you just look at skill %s, and try to figure out some estimate based on those...well, it's a lot harder to get that accurate.  And if you're talking about removing levels kind of like how Metroid does it, well, you're probably not playing a cooperative RPG.

Hmm.  Might be right; I was mostly thinking of plain old Knytt...but the fact is, I didn't really do anything with the community stuff.

It was pretty and it was very impressive.  But regardless of whether my stated amount is really what it's worth or not...I think that's still about what I'd pay for it, just me personally, as a consumer.  "What I'll pay for something" is often less than "What I think it's really worth", because there's a big market out there and I only have so many hours a day for playing stuff!

Eh, ok, I guess that works.  Multiple replays hoooo!

Think I'll have to get this.  o.o

What's this about a star you can only get your first time through on a given file?  Can someone spoil me as little as possible for what's required to get that one?

There ARE console games that are worth the 60 bucks (Fallout 3, GTA 4, and CoD: WaW come to mind) But... Most of the time, indie games are better. I would gladly drop $30 for Spelunky, Iji, La Mulana,or Knytt Stories.

Hmm.  I'm curious what price points other people would put for these.  I'd donate more than I'd pay, if any of these authors said "I'm making another game, I'm short on money"...  But for price, I'd pay $5 for Spelunky or Knytt Stories, and $10 for Iji or .  Maybe I'm cheap.  But at that price, I'd buy them...and I'd recommend my friends to buy them, and be very confident that they would appreciate the value at that price.  If I told my friends to buy Spelunky or Knytt Stories if they were priced at $10 or so, they might be a little irritated at me afterwards and not trust my opinion as much.

Specifically, if Iji was $10 or so, I'm pretty sure my circle of friends would be three or four sales, based purely on trailers and word-of-mouth...and then we would be almost definite sales on the next thing that author came out with.  For $20, it would probably be one or two sales--if that--and less likely purchase of the next game.

I'd say that as a 26-year-old software developer, with the decent income that brings with it, $10 games are firmly on my radar for "willing to take a chance", and $20 ones are really moving off that radar, even if there's rabid reviews.  For $5 I'm happy to buy things outside my normal genre (Spelunky) or games that are more like art pieces (Knytt Stories).

I've bought some indie games that charge in the $10-15 range, which were definitely not worth it.  At that price, I was PISSED at what I got.  If that particular publisher-to-remain-nameless charged $5 instead, I'd have simply been unhappy at the value and been wait-and-see on future titles, but with what they charged, I'll never buy a future product from them even if it's cheaper, and actively warn friends away...the quality was too low in the past.

I'm tempted to say that any indie game priced over $10-15 really needs me to say "that looks like a reliable, trustworthy publisher" to even think about it, what with not being in a box or on Steam probably.  So the Iji or Cave Story guys could probably put together a three person team and come out with a $20-30 game and I would possibly buy it.  I think it's also worth noting that I will seek out a $5 or $10 game to buy, even if I have to jump through hoops on their website.  More expensive, and the effort I'm willing to expend to buy it drops very fast.

Since L4D came up, even as a commercial game it wasn't on my radar due to the price and the fact that I just don't play games THAT much.  When I heard about the sale, somewhat after it happened, it made me research it.  Now I'm interested.  But the non-sale price is too high, and I'm going to end up buying it when it comes back down.  I don't even remember the last time I paid over $30 for a game...not in years.  But cheap stuff I will eat up and buy on a whim.

I just started watching BSG, so I saw "33" last night.  This is a really fun idea and I have to read those books apparently.

The game "Starflight" had "jump pods" that let you go a very long distance instantly, but were very inaccurate in a controlled way.  Turns out they were most accurate when your destination was near multiple gravitational bodies...in other words, an astute player would notice that you can most safely jump to places with a lot of dense stars, and if you wanted to get to a lone star it was best to jump to a nearby cluster and then fly there (or you'd end up way WAY off course).

So, "fun" involves decisions like "Do I chance going off-course?  Is that risk better than the guaranteed dangers of having to fly thirty sectors in hostile territory?"

For an idea like that, you have to look a little deeper and say "Where does the challenge come from?"  If it's other players your fort competes against, then you do have to keep up every day, otherwise you fall behind (and have whatever bad things are going to happen to you from losing fights, happen).

It would be very interesting to see a game like that that is NOT competitive, and where you actually don't impact the world beyond the extents of your fort...essentially you have your own little game for you and your friends.

MyMiniCity kinda did that.  But it was very very simple.

[The end-game players are then still threatened by early-game encounters, but new players still have to work their way up to end-game encounters]

There was a pretty good summary of a way to deal with this on another forum, in a discussion about armor. I'm just going to quote it here:

In general, I would avoid putting too much emphasis on the numerical properties of armor.  That leads to the arms race/rat wheel that almost every single RPG, MUD, and MMO suffers from.  If armor is just a stack of numbers, then players constantly need to upgrade, and once upgraded all of the "lower level" content becomes boring and unimportant.  Especially in a fantasy game you can make armor less about "how good it is" and more about "how widely applicable it is."  For example, the starting player class of armor might just be useful as a little bit of protection against common attacks.  The end-game armor might not be significantly better against regular attacks, but it might also protect against fire, lightning, magic, be quiet, have high endurance, be associated with a high-end guild or court, etc.  The end-game players are then still threatened by early-game encounters, but new players still have to work their way up to end-game encounters.  (The same approach can be applied to your skill system: instead of giving the player a ton of bonuses to combat, give him abilities that affect certain kinds of combat.  e.g., instead of getting +10 to hit, give him a skill that gives him +10 vs giants.  Getting that skill means that the player can now stand up against giants, but it offers him no advantage against an orc.  That means that earning the skill opens up new content without invalidating old content.)

That is pretty much where you're going with talking about customization. It's definitely more work than just adding to a character's hitroll and damroll with every level, but I think it's more interesting and more fun.

By the way Traveller, I saw your post at TMC...come over to Mudbytes, it's better there.


eta: I noticed I didn't specifically address your question about how two characters of widely different levels could group together if they wanted to -- I think it comes down to how you design your content. Maybe the low-level character can't take on the giant, but they can take on the wolf pack the giant runs with, while the high-level character deals with the giant. The wolves are still a threat to the high-level character, so the low-level character makes a real contribution.

Well, I've got a full rebuild of combat on my plate already, so why not...  

I find those ideas interesting.  Going to have to think about that.  I'm a little worried about anything that's too boolean like that...  If you can go directly from "dies to giants" to "kills giants fairly easily", then there's a very clear optimal path of going after the giants early while they give a pile of experience, then finding the next big group of baddies to squish.  It also seems like there's a danger of making player classes TOO distinct...like, oh, we need to take out some giants, let's just put together a party of four giant-killers.

Making your lower-level buddy take care of the wolves while you face off against the giant is almost exactly the gameplay I'm after, though.

I'm starting to think I'm on the right track with my idea of "a higher level guy can kill weak things twice as fast, but not any faster no matter how high level" idea.  Make weak enemies stop being a threat slowly, such that "more manpower" is a viable solution to the problem, and suddenly newbies are everyone's friends.  Just as long as the rewards for weak enemies drop off a tiny bit faster than their threat level...

Okay, so higher level fights require exotic damage types and techniques that low level characters can't stand up to, but low level fights are still threatening.  I like this a lot.  And I'll take a look at mudbytes, I just think TMC was the place I grew up with a decade and a half ago or so.    It's very slow there.

City of Heroes solved this through 'sidekicking' and 'reverse sidekicking'.  A higher level player could adopt a lower level character as a sidekick (henchman in a fantasy milieu) and that would temporarily boost the lower level character's stats to comparable levels.  Or the lower level character could 'exemplar' the higher level player for play in lower level areas.  Higher level players would only receive cash for doing this, not worthwhile (high level) treasure.

I don't think the correct approach is to make all encounters have low and high level opposition just to make sure there will always be something for low and high level characters to do.  This leads to everything feeling generic.  Instead, you should deal with this in the way that the characters interact with each other.

For instance, add special 'setup' moves the mentor can do which temporarily immobilizes the enemy and makes them vulnerable to low level attack.  The low level character does 'high level' (same as the mentor) damage against the enemy, and gains experience for taking advantage of the setup.  Setup moves can also boost a matching player's attack by a couple levels, a bonus for working with another player instead of playing solo.

Ah, I have played CoV and liked that system--I'm not quite sure it fits here, but it's good to be reminded that it's been used in PvE before and not just PvP like Warhammer Online etc.  I could certainly see some kind of skill or spell that lets you bring a lower level character up to speed in that way...  And the whole idea of "Your stats are higher, but you don't have all the shiny special abilities you could have" is still a driving force to advance.

The 'setup' you mention is already a plan...but it's a very good point to keep track of what level ranges it makes the critter vulnerable to!  Ideally, I want people to save their nastiest special abilities and spells for when the monster is vulnerable; if the critter is only vulnerable to higher level attacks, then you know it's just not a fight low level characters can help out with very much.

I'll think about the 'mentor' thing.  I'm leaning towards 3-4 person parties instead of 2 person ones when possible, so there's less 1-on-1 interaction, but I'll see if that still makes sens in a larger group environment.

Thanks for the ideas!

Hmm, good point.  It's important to have monsters that are 'totally out of reach, but I'll kill them someday', and it's important to have monsters that 'if we work together and try really hard, we can kill it'.  You need challenges that are too hard for you right now.  Otherwise, there's nothing to look forwards to.

I believe that the hard monsters shouldn't just be a 'being high level' thing.  Boss-type critters should be a challenge regardless.  I actually want to borrow from action games (Metroid style platformers, in fact) when I build my combat engine...very specifically, boss monsters should have a concept of state, there should be ideal times to blast them and times to defend, where having a good strategy and a cohesive team is important regardless of level.  If you can do triple damage by attacking at the right time, but the enemy can also make you vulnerable and force you to focus on defense, it gets more interesting.  I do believe that low-level people should be able to take bosses a fair distance above their level, if they play well and strategize a lot and are patient.

You have to define the player power curve by deciding how fast the player should feel like she can take on new challenges.  Otherwise it gets boring.  But now we're back to, "How do you slow down the high level people from blasting through the low level areas".

Here's one possibility...Let's say that enemies' armor and dodging ability can let them block, say, 25-50% of the damage from a same-level opponent.  If being higher level only lets you bypass that armor, instead of necessarily doing more damage...then a high level player still needs to take quite a few swings; they are limited to doing damage only a certain percent faster than an appropriate-level player.  With that system, as player levels go up, the damage you do to your enemies ramps up and then plateaus, while the damage enemies do to you probably starts out at a plateau and then ramps down.  Does that sound fun, or would you say that's pretty lame?  A level 10 character versus level 10 monster takes twenty rounds / sword swings to kill it, while a level 20, 30, 40, 50 character are all likely to take ten rounds (maybe as few as five at the highest levels)?

I really want to know if that sounds lame or if there are problems there, because I'm starting to like that idea.  Criticism good; even destructive criticism (because that's what potential players are likely to be slinging...)