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[Alevice]

I dislike difficulty settings, in general. I think it's better for a game to look for alternative design solutions for less skilled players (eg low scores, alternative routes) rather than hamfisted damage boosts or different AI behavior.

i agree with that. i also think each game has a "correct" difficulty that arises out of its design. very often in games with difficulty settings you have the problem that no setting feels exactly right.

this is something i think bastion did right, by choosing what factor you want the difficulty tonned up. basically a form of xcom second wave options feel better for me than stright diffuclty levels.

[mtarini]

[My design pet peeve is] world which automatically levels up with the player.

An attempt to fix bad design with worse design.

actually upgrades/leveling mechanics are one of my favorite things in games

I like them too, but the stress is on *automatically*. Like, monsters which are auto-buffed/nerfed, or made more/less numerous etc, according to the player's level.

Let me oversimplify with an extreme example, for the sake of clarity.

ok:
Lvl 1: you do barely fine in the Rats dungeon, but Dragons dungeon is out of your depths: go there and be squashed.
Lvl 100: Rats dungeon is boring/useless; Dragons dungeon is now your appropriate challenge.

not ok:
Lvl 1: Dragons dungeon seems to be populated by undernourished weaklings: they constitute an adequate challenge for you.
Lvl 100: Rats now come as fat as dragons: they constitute an adequate challenge for you.

Designer says: "Objective: 'give an adequate challenge to player': check!" [slow clap]

That's extreme, and anyone can see o how many different levels that is a design disaster; but less extreme examples abounds in real games (e.g. "errant monster" rolled according to player level, etc).
I claim this: any step taken in that direction, even a small one, is a serious mis-design.
Most of the times, it should be understood as a failed attempt at reaching the above stated objective by more legitimate means, badly patched it up with that sort of automatic buffing/nerfing.
 
Don't take me wrong: it's totally cool for the world become increasingly more hostile/difficult (so to more-or-less match player's increased power). This can be linked to anything: plain passage of time, the main character having moved to a different place, story-related events (war breaking out, whatever), or any other thing. But should never be automatically linked to the player's level (or equivalent). That's a convenient, but poor design choice (and I don't think I need to point out its many, many weaknesses).

If you are tempted to do that, think harder for an alternative smarter solution.

See for example the imaginative alternative taken by this little gem: There-Is-Only-Power. Disregarding the details, the core take-home idea is: your character grows in power (e.g. levels up...), but also in renown. There, renown is a bad thing for the player (contrary to traditions): the more (in)famous you are, the most prepared and dangerous your enemies will be in the future. It's a particularly fitting mechanism for the "you are the bad guy" scenario of that game but I think it can be reused.

[JWK5]

what if they like the way your penis feels?

They'll eventually leave you once they get a glimpse Artorias' sword.

[Tuba]

Romance is like playing the Souls games (Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne), everything you worked so hard for always hangs in peril and any moment you can lose it. Desperately trying to get it back makes you belligerent and puts you at risk for losing it for good, and if playing badly one of you is bound to rage-quit. Unless you have the patience of a saint you will lose it a few times while you learn to navigate all the potential peril, but if you navigate carefully you get through, you get farther, you grow stronger, and you have an amazing experience. If you ever get stuck, remember you have an ally all to willing to help should you summon them to your side.

And thus, the Souls games are the perfect romance games (especially when you play them co-op with your love-interest/partner).

That sums up pretty well, had some relationship problems recently and started thinking about how games could tackle romance, one of the ideas I had was something like that, an action RPG that serves as a metaphor for a relationships...

[Photon]

Rather than looking at it as "difficulty" at all, it is better to think of it as the overall "mental load" of your game, that is how much strain you will be putting on your player's reflexes, concentration, awareness, logical thinking, etc. collectively. Thinking of it as a "mental load" you can then find ways to either increase or decrease the load making the game more or less taxing on your player's mental resources.

That is another thing to consider, it is "mental resources", your player does not have infinite attention, reflexive energy, time, etc. so playing your game is costing them mentally (they essentially pay a mental upkeep as they play). The heavier the "mental load" the more "mental resources" your game is costing them meaning you can burn out your player very rapidly if you are constantly inflicting a heavy "mental load" on them. By periodically lightening and increasing the load you can create periods where they can recuperate some of those lost "mental resources" or at the very least stagger and slow the rate at which they might burn out (get tired of the game or just tired in general and need to take a break or do something else) while still keeping the pressure on and the engagement going.

I'd never really thought of it like that. That feels like a much more liberating way to think about it, even if there are a couple of other factors that could still be accounted for like physical execution. If a game were a little more upfront about what "easy" vs. "hard" meant in the context of game mechanics, then the player is more equipped to make that decision. A small example I can think of is Mega Man 10, which would display a mock level when choosing a difficulty level. If you set it to easy, for instance, it would cover the spike pits with floating platforms to give a visual representation of how things change.

To be more specific, I'm more against the difficulty choices that are nothing more than the words "easy" and "hard" on a screen, unless its something like unlocking a "super hard" after beating the game, in which case you already have a solid frame of reference. I probably got a little too stuck on that whole "invincibility mode" thing earlier, which does in fact make it fairly clear what kind of mental load you're getting. I suppose my concern with it is really something different from vague difficulty settings altogether, so I'll leave that alone for right now.

[s0]

LONG POST

yeah i can agree with that.

i'm playing grim dawn, a diablo-like, at the moment and i think it actually uses level scaling well (unlike bethesda games for instance). the game has a mostly linear progression but it has optional sidequests that take you back to older areas. and generally those areas scale with your level.

[zombieonion]

Most romance games are wish fulfillment fantasies for self proclaimed "lonely nice guys". Doesn't mean they can't still be enjoyed as long as u realize they depict romance about as realistically as call of dooty depicts war.

I've never been to war, but I've shot some guns. The gun simulation in a video game is ok. War I don't know about. But I have had relationships, and I can compare that to what games simulate. So imo, games don't even try to simulate a relationship. And that's just sad, especially when they're advertised as having some sort of relationship experience.

[Sik]

Games never explore what comes next, can't remember any games where the player is into a relationship from the beginning or that talk about the end of one.

Takeshi's Challenge has you divorcing your wife in order to reach your goal. Not like it's the most realistic game out there either...

[mtarini]

I dislike difficulty settings, in general. I think it's better for a game to look for alternative design solutions for less skilled players (eg low scores, alternative routes) rather than hamfisted damage boosts or different AI behavior.

Like many others around here, (Silbereisen, Photon...), could not agree more on this one.

Let me add one authoritative voice to our little chorus:

"One difficulty. Difficulty is part of a game's personality, like actors in a movie. There are no difficulty options in my games, just the one I carefully crafted for each level and situation. From a player's perspective, beating my games is just a question of mastering."

Locomalito (http://www.locomalito.com/info.php)

I remember once reading someone's review about playing "the last of us": one difficulty setting made it uninteresting against human NPCs, the other made it frustrating against (fungously-)zombified NPCs... he had to keep switching. Bad designer, bad. Not a first hand experience, but that sure sounds like a horrible thing to do to a game.

Also... "invincibility" mode to let any players "see" the game, regardless of skill level?
That's what "let's play" videos are for.
Beside, it sounds like a really bad idea:
 [game experience] minus [main character vulnerability] =/= [game experience]
Metaphor: who would watch "save private ryan" in a version where bullets are actually harmless, that would not be the same movie at all (and probably would make a hugely less emotional experience).

[Schoq]

Godmode is a perfect solution and I would quote myself arguing this elsewhere if I had a computer nearby.
What's good is it it's honest and straight forward and lets players who are bad or don't care or just want to mess around in a game a way to enjoy that's clearly separate from crafted, developer intended play  (it feels like cheating).
It's a million times better that easymodes or, worse yet, attempts at adaptive difficulty.

[Tuba]

I see this is a very divisive topic...

Also... "invincibility" mode to let any players "see" the game, regardless of skill level?
That's what "let's play" videos are for.

I don't see it as the same as a let's play video, cause even if you're invincible, you're still gonna react to the game, still gonna try to avoid damage and get a good score. So I see it more as a training mode where you can learn the basics for the real challenge after.

Pretty much all games from Platinum are built like this.

From Atsushi Inaba's recent talk at GDC:

"Core gamers aren't the only ones who play action games so it's necessary to make sure players of different levels can enjoy your game," Inaba cautioned. "It's important to widen the entry point of your game, but you also have to make sure that those who play straight through the path enjoy the experience." Depth, he said, is equally important.

...

"Games are supposed to be fun. That is the basis of the game," said Inaba. But many games force replay value (with padding, or grinding, or unlocking.)

"What is the replay value in action games? It's really about improving the player's skills. I'm not talking about unlocking skills in game, but actually improving his or her skills," he said.

But even with that in mind, always remember the players who will only play the game one time on the basic difficulty level: "it's important for those players to have the best experience," too, he said.

http://gamasutra.com/view/news/268401/Platinum_Games_guide_to_action_game_design.php

I think we're ignoring an important aspect when we compare Locomalito to Nintendo/Platinum which is the target audience. Locomalito's games are free and very niche, his audience is already expecting a hard game and no one will complain that it's too hard since, well, it's free! Platinum is targeting a big demographic, specially with Star Fox, and many people may dislike the game for being too hard.

[zombieonion]

Romance is like playing the Souls games (Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne), everything you worked so hard for always hangs in peril and any moment you can lose it. Desperately trying to get it back makes you belligerent and puts you at risk for losing it for good, and if playing badly one of you is bound to rage-quit. Unless you have the patience of a saint you will lose it a few times while you learn to navigate all the potential peril, but if you navigate carefully you get through, you get farther, you grow stronger, and you have an amazing experience. If you ever get stuck, remember you have an ally all to willing to help should you summon them to your side.

And thus, the Souls games are the perfect romance games (especially when you play them co-op with your love-interest/partner).

Playing Souls games with your partner is more like stressing your relationship because of shitty net code. Also everything you "lose" in Dark Souls is easily farmable, does this make Dark Souls a pick-up artist simulator?

[voidSkipper]

I want to add another one here to my earlier post:

Bosses with a "base damage output".

By which I mean, the boss has unavoidable moves that you simply have to bend over and take, and if you can't survive that, you need to go kill more rats.

Especially if the boss doesn't present much of a challenge beyond having enough HP/potions to tank the unavoidables.

[JWK5]

*Bosses (or game segments) won only by attrition. It's one of those cases where they can't figure out how to create something genuinely challenging and engaging so instead they just create a very long, drawn-out process that is only difficult because in all the tedium you might have a lapse of judgement and zig when you should zag.

*Collectibles that do nothing and serve no real in-game purpose. "Awesome, I've unlocked yet another concept art I already could've just googled at any time."

*Content unlocked out-of-game. A good example: Mortal Kombat X. There are a bunch of costumes you can only unlock in the game by playing some shitty freemium mobile/tablet version of MKX that requires you first to have a decent mobile/tablet in the first place and enough room to cram the monstrosity on there in the first place.

[luvial]

More than 8 words tutorials texts; no one want to "read tutorials" instead of "playing tutorials".
No... adding images won't do it.

[s0]

*Collectibles that do nothing and serve no real in-game purpose. "Awesome, I've unlocked yet another concept art I already could've just googled at any time."

i agree. before the age of fast internet that kinda shit had its purpose, now it just feels cheap.

[Alevice]

jpgs are pretty bad indeed. maybe if you could have custom spritesheets or model previewers.

[Tuba]

I think games cost so much nowadays that developers don't want to make stuff that only a few players might experience. Collectibles used to open extra levels, powerups and game modes. It seems to be that no one ones to go through the trouble of designing a whole new level for only a few people so they throw in concept arts, extra costume colors and other stuff that can be done quickly.

[JWK5]

Nobody but From Software, who hides a third of their game behind obscure secrets.

[luvial]

Letting the player in a situation that have no solutions (anymore) until he suicide to restart the level.

Hate it in puzzle games.