REALISTIC DIFFICULTY CURVE?

author=GRS
max level is 8 with a harsh EXP curve and you lose EXP when you die which is often

Hahaha holy shit wow. Anyone claiming that level caps and anti-grinding measures are an awkward newfangled bastardization of good old fashioned RPG growth can officially suck it. Ultima 5 was released one year after Final Fantasy 1.

I kinda want to play it now.

author=GRS
Ultimately player growth is the wild card with difficulty curves. I don't have much to contribute on that point right now, maybe later (if I can think of anything intelligent to say).

I think it's definitely possible to control and predict, to an extent, player growth. You cannot predict a maximum amount of player skill but you can certainly predict a minimum amount and an expected amount. You can guide the player towards learning things at specific times with subtle cues, obvious cues, or even full-fledged tutorials if you're desperate. Some of them will already know it before then (because they experimented on their own, or because they've played other similar games) but you can at least make sure that they definitely learn how to stagger enemies by the end of chapter 6 at the latest.

Exception: The player only plays for an hour or two every weekend, and forgets most of what he or she learned by the next weekend. We call these people casual gamers. If you want to design your game with their learning curve in mind, go right ahead; I'll be over here.

In my game, Amulet of Fate, it is more or less a free-world exploration type of game style. Now off the bat, I do give the player a map (and a brief tour you can access any time you want) on the specified order you 'should' explore the continent. But by no means am I limiting you to that. By all means, head due north to the snowy wastelands and try your hand at some of the hardest monsters around!
I set up the world to have easy areas, moderate areas, and hard areas. (then of course the super-ultra-challenging optional areas) That way there is a general level of difficulty spread out across a variety of areas in specific groupings. You can choose to level up at a normal rate starting with easy areas moving onward to hard areas. Or you could go direct to the hard areas, level up insanely fast, get better loot and speed up your progress. (at the risk of dying easily)
The super-hard challenging optional areas are typically going to be too hard to complete even for players ready to tackle the final boss(es). But since I have a New Game + thing going on here, it really isn't a terribly big deal.
I'm choosing not to limit the player and let them explore the world at their pace and their comfort level with battles. I am building the difficulty curve itself based on my 'specified' order of exploring the continent, and I relay that to the player via the map tour event accessible any time. Let the player decide to go off the beaten path.

Another reason to start the game easy is that in RPGs, the option to be skilled just doesn't exist early on. The less skills or other commands the player has access to, the greater the chance that hard enemies can only be overcome with either grinding or luck.

IMO the reasons you guys posted for starting easy is what I consider cheap design.

I don't mean to come off as insulting but I have played lots of games where starting off easy just aggravated me more if the spike in challenge is off.

I also call it cheap because as GRS said, players don't know the world so suddenly making it easier means they would know it? No. The hardcore guys would probably figure it out but the hardcore guys are also those who would replay a game for a missable or love the challenge of calculating stuff in an ever difficult Rogue-like game.

This is only made more apparent when the designers admit that the option to be skilled doesn't exist early on. What this basically leads to more times than less is a guarantee that a character, no matter how well written, becomes a snowflake to a player who knows how to min-max and that again rewards hardcore experimental players more than it rewards reality.

In contrast, in a high spike beginning it gives you certain respect for even the average mooks. We see these all the time in real sports.

Sports in general is often used for building character precisely because you don't have to become an elite to learn the lessons of humility. This happens because players you normally don't respect ends up being worth that respect because the opportunity is there to be on par with the guy but the skill level is not as honed.

This is not only good practice but it also challenges the designer to think of ways to make the world more realistic in the later stages in the sense that a super powerful character can't get sloppy or maximize some spell slots or totally turn the games into a manner of who has the better gaming IQ/athleticism.

For example: in a world where a hook should be well timed but basic to do then even Muhammad Ali stays disciplined and the difficulty stays like a curve.

In a world where the best fighters are the ones who are great at fighting games, then the luster of the character disappears in favor of the "pvp" curve and therefore both preset difficulty curves and PC immersion suffers.

I think as far as questions of difficulty goes though, it's not so much difficult but there's little bland game design done on that part so there's no widely accepted stock concept that's spread around but as far as implementation goes, I think the difficulty is only as difficult as basic game design. I'm not a game designer though but I've played enough games where basic elements add to that factor and there wasn't a demand for an entire rule change.

Take for example, StarTraders RPG Elite for Android.

The basic spike happens early on simply because you don't have enough supplies to counter a better enemy and the ship doesn't have enough stats to match a better ship.

Nonetheless the design of that game allows a hardcore player to dominate early on simply because the opportunity is there and a non-hardcore player to quickly adapt to a higher difficulty simply because the opportunity is there all along once you learn it.

This holds true because the curve is more realistic. There's no sudden scroll you have to memorize or sudden spell that you learn from leveling up. There's simply a static world that understands, that if a PC learns a move, chances are they have to practice that.

If they have to practice that, chances are there was a greater threat and chances are their practice allows for a scene that shows the player when to time a move. It's a slippery slope. Once good difficulty curve is established then the rest of the curve follows by design.

But the opposite holds true too: Once cheap design is practiced then the game becomes more of a level up power fantasy where strategy comes from blind experimentations of what works and what doesn't. This satisfies most gamers as they are used to it but it doesn't mean that's good design. Such practice stagnates character development, legit emotional investment (think difference between a fanboy and someone who cries for a character they don't love), game balance and opens up the road for the oft joked "snowflake teens off to save the world".

The reality is if something is well designed then there's few fears to introduce players to a major difficult opponent because rather than the players feeling that they lost, the game gives hints to players on what a good ai is and from there it gives a sneak peek of how good the end game is. Of course players shouldn't die and be forced to restart again and again but few things can replace the "high" from defeating a difficult opponent from the get go especially in establishing underdog stories and developing balanced bosses that don't just throw high dmg spells after high dmg spells or require a trick to beat.

Right, I don't mind waiting a while for the harder challenges. Peaks and valleys and all that jazz. What I do mind is what Snodgrass suggested.

Snodgrass, the trouble with your reasoning is that the player needs time to learn how a game works - there are very few games where you can toss the player into a high-level challenge with little to no instruction and say "they'll figure it out". It's not fun and challenging, it's unfair and frustrating, and justifiably so.

You have to teach the player the rules of the game before you truly start to challenge them. Of course, you don't have to show them the best way to use those rules to their advantage - that's the fun in gaming and it comes subconciously during play - but they need to know the basics.

You don't sit down to a chess game with a new player and only tell them what the pawns do - why would you do the same in a video game?

I don't really understand your analogy or your points about chess at all :/

The whole point of RPGs is figuring out how to beat them. That's not "bad design." That's "game design." As a player, it's you versus the game, and your goal is to figure out a way to beat it.

author=Snodgrass
How can you teach players "the rules" when all an easier game is doing is making it easy for you "to find out the rules?"

This rhetorical question literally makes no sense at all to me. Like I don't even understand what point you're trying to make here. The rest of your post is apparently attempting to clarify it but I still don't get it.

Also the idea that "chess has become ruined" is dumb. Chess hasn't changed. As people get better at chess they realize that some strategies aren't worth doing, they start planning further ahead, they get the entire game in their mind and optimize their moves. That is the essence of chess, it's the whole point of the game, and every other purely mental game is built on that exact same premise. What's the problem with that? Do you just not like... being good at games? Sorry I am just having trouble deciphering your post.

As far as chess being ruined, take that up with Bobby Fischer. I'm just recalling a comment he made.

As far the essence of chess. It really depends on what you mean by essence.

Answering that question also has little to do with game design and more on game world architecture so for those who don't want to read much, just skip to part 2:

Part 1:

It's a common misconception to say anything hasn't changed in a static ruleset where players are competing at a high level. For example, if you have never been introduced to the idea of tanks, healers, etc. Rpgs can feel richer, more immersive and simply more about roleplaying. Once you know that, certain things become more like tropes. Can you still roleplay with them? Yes. But many of the complexities and the audience have change to adapt to the human realization of what those are. It's the primary reason why online can change many of the rules of offline gaming.

With deep strategic games like chess it's even more intricate and the legacy of the games means the speed of change becomes pulled forth further and further even though the basic definition sounds the same.

The three easiest strategic games to compare this subtle change is Chess vs. Go vs. No Limit Hold'em Poker.

Chess has very little middle game and end game. To this effect, it's like cheap design only slightly richer in depth.

Once you get past the first steps, chess is like two armies having crossed a river. Once you get past the river, it's pretty much two factors. One is breaking through your opponent's line to get to the king and the other is making enough small changes that your line doesn't get broken.

The premise of beating this game then is not to beat the game but to beat the beginning because after that there's little you can do. You can tweak it but you can't dodge a mistake. This comes closest to a linear rpg with easy difficulty curve at the beginning. Chess being longer than a typical rpg, things eventually wittle down to builds but not just builds but there's a certain growth pattern where everyone gets involved with the opening patterns that it's no longer a game of your move vs. my move unless you can counter those pre-meditated moves. It's like a race of instant noodles. You can't have a race involving the noodles until you cook it even though the beginning of the chess match kind of implies that the noodle must already be present.

Poker is different because psychology is not only involved but most importantly luck from having a poor hand and turning it into a great one by bluffing through it. In these types of games, attrition is the optimum way to survive. What this means is that the middle game is the optimum spot.

Unlike chess, you don't want to be immediately dominant or else you become a target (theoretically).

Generally given all skills of players, the difference seems slim and pedantic. Of course there's chess strategies and there's poker strategies. However when talking about design, this is important because it establishes the whole box.

It is what would make it possible to understand what a famous player is saying even if you have never played the game.

In this case, the focus from middle rather than the beginning moves changes what it really means to beat the game no more different than a boss that you need to wait out it's buff spells to expire is different from a boss whom you need to defend it if it has a tendency to cast death spells on the first turn except more major.

See by focusing on the middle, the value of survival vs. mounting offense is greater in Poker than in Chess by design. By having this element, it is possible to create a game tailored more towards comebacks in Poker even towards people who are not masters of the game where as the window of error in Chess is smaller and therefore comebacks have greater value but are almost impossible to pull off. If this were an rpg, chess trains players to grind because the base abilities are so important where as a poker based game comes much closer to a rpg with a trading card type of battle system where tactical setup becomes more important regardless of one's level.

Finally Go is the type of game that has three aspects but for the sake of over-simplicity let's say the end game is more important to Go. This is not true in terms of gameplay but in terms of optimum winning style: In Chess you can immediately end the game by capturing the king so the better you begin, the more optimal it is. In Poker you can still win the game by just sitting out so the better you stay alive, the more optimal it is.

In Go, scoring-wise, you need to balance between capturing (which is very hard to do) and optimal capturing as well as point scoring because it's impossible to capture one side totally given near equal skills.

For this reason, the way to beat the game is to eventually beat the game. In a rpg, this is more complicated because it's very hard for the ai to beat a human and too challenging of an ai takes the fun away and makes it more luck based.

For this reason, it would be much easier to show an Action RPG with instant kills. In these types of rpgs, buffing becomes more strategic but less powerful because there's no way to defend a kill. Instead buffing is more a way to speed up your initiative against your opponent.

In Go, this strategy is close to quickly putting your piece. Unlike Chess, being quick at Go can make you miss a spot and so a quick player is not so much putting pressure on his opponent to move faster but trying to keep the opponent from seeing the whole forest rather than the trees.

Then as the first instant kill hits, the next demand is that the player can align himself correctly to prepare for the next opponent. In this form, the design of beating the game is not so much to be the first one to kill or the one who can heal himself longest but the one who can play a Quick Time Event style of timing while surviving long enough to heal and then fight the next opponent.

This is where Go becomes deeper and where the end game becomes more of the focus. No matter how powerful, it's possible to lose in Go because it is a game where the power can be anywhere.

It is like a game that tricks you into thinking the boss is the one you are facing but turns out the final boss is someone who has poisoned your potions. It's much more suspenseful but it can also feel cheap but the point is, it's totally different from just beating the game. You have to not only know the game but know the faction and know the mystery. To this effect, it's pseudo-detective themed rpg except more combat oriented.

Add to the human vs. human factor then these games are simply ever-shifting. For example besides these rules I have read stories where certain Chess players in tournaments would tap the board to distract their opponent or suddenly give them a kick. In poker, tournaments are longer so it's not just an issue of talent but of composure. In Go, end game upsets happen more often than in chess because you have to take up so many variables that the best way to beat the game is not always to do the best academic move but like an unorthodox surprise punch angled in a different manner, it needs a setup that takes into account the human fatigue of your opponent plus factoring all the moves that you previously did with your opponent so the strategic pressure is more on par with a grandmaster playing multiple chess games at the same time with his opponent only he's facing an equally capable opponent all wrapped in one game.

These factors alone means depending on which premise you start with, it can totally change the design all together. Beating someone may not necessarily mean getting the win or optimum wins may not necessarily be total domination or close fights. Even rematches are not simply a form of re-beating a bigger and better boss.

As far as game design goes:

Part 2:

It's not a rhetorical question.

To make the analogy clearer, look no further than fighting games.

In fighting games, easier games turn players into button mashers. Normal -> challenging games often turn those disinterested into cheap move abusing players.

Only the hard human games train fighting gamers to be be more skilled.

Where the analogy fails of course is that fighting games have zero value in narratives. A powerful boss is more a fancy way of giving a game over screen rather than a way to present the "presence" of a dangerous threat that can only be beaten by the character you are playing.

At best you can have a fighting game where the first ai is uber skilled or a rpg hybrid like Starwish where the first boss is the hardest and a normal -> challenger level gamer may try to beat that boss in New Game+ sans cheats.

Rpgs though are more about stories, narratives, addictive plots than combat simulators.

For this reason, the prestige of a champion is that much more important.

It's like in sports. If the belt or the trophy has no meaning, then there's almost no storyline. If the holder of the belt is not a x time champion, there's less story.

Sports can regurgitate between different generic teams precisely because the position of the ultimate challenge has value both to the players and to the audience.

In rpgs that's the ultimate intent IMO. What use is big bad mega boss if years down the line people don't even remember him compared to a pretty boy like Sephiroth?

In game design, it's even more ambitious. How can the boss be realistic rather than "born to be strong" and how can the protagonist be worthy while still being the only one who can defeat that boss instead of being a snowflake?

To extend that, in game design how can you present the boss to be less of a pawn by the game designer and more of a king in terms of chess value to the player?

It's even more problematic if the narrative is that the protagonist is supposed to be lvl 1 but also an uber powerful character like in Disgaea. How can you present the narrative that yes this guy is powerful and has high potential but this is the obvious reason why he can't beat his opponent directly yet.

Only by implementing an answer to the above factors can a game designer create a deep realistic curve. First by showing why such creatures are powerful. Second by showing why such powerful creatures can finally be beaten.

Again I go back to a basic dungeon crawler like Monster's Den Book of Dread.

No matter how high the initial difficulty, the game eventually becomes normal to easy once you get an introduction to the rules. Yet the beginning is hardest because it forces you to stick to those rules + a little of luck. By doing so, the game can show it's depth both to players that have played the game to the very high levels and to people that haven't reached that high of a level. By also making the first level difficult, Den's first level is also good enough to prepare players for the later levels without softening up the later levels.

The design basically kills two birds. 1st is proper context of difficulty. 2nd is proper respect to builds as well as proper respect to the average enemies.

In contrast, a game that starts easy at the beginning might as well be a tutorial or a practice mode. Unfortunately even with tutorials, once you face a tough enemy, you're back to trying to learn the trick against the tough enemy because often times the initial design of ease trains makers to simply buff up the challenge and make unique opponents a rarity rather than a commonality. Long story short, the lack of difficulty is just an excuse to delay the challenge. The player learns nothing. The designer is invested less into an introduction. The curve does nothing to boost the game design except maybe make players play longer before they quit or force veteran players to play some time wasting introduction plot that does little to nothing except show that the PC is a snowflake and that the game is bound to be a power fantasy that occasionally rather than regularly hosts challenging and plot + value adding combat situations.

Um...no that's not my premise. I just brought up because that's the common strategy in many rpg games and many rpgs break if you try to get past that which is why the genre became bland and cheap not just in terms of game design but it infected plots too.

As far as difficulty goes, I was talking about gameplay.

I guess this is the problem when rpgs have devolved into something less than story related. I already tried to show this with the sports analogy. I'm sorry I just don't know how to make that any clearer. Sports can be said to be very combat-based. There's a winner and a loser but story is also interlaced with the combat. I was also looking at the fact that the subforum was called game design & theory.

I'll try one last time. The tanks, healers, etc. are primitive concepts in terms of realism, difficulty curves, gameplay, story, etc. No matter what you weave them as modern strategic difficulty curves do not hold one over the other.

In basketball for example, a guard can also take up the role of a tank by screening and it is not limited to a center.

This makes mastery of those games unique, more meaningful and better at teaching players by design because they are superior by virtue of scenarios surpassing gameplay min-maxing and combat based puzzle-style mystery/experiment solving. They are also superior because difficulty is irrelevant. Difficulty just "is". A college basketball like the anime Slam Dunk for example could give you the same high as watching a championship NBA game or even more simply through a tweak of design. A narrative like MJ losing to the Bird Celtics also makes him winning his 1st championship much sweeter. Something that can't be said for many "designed to lose" boss fights.

In most rpgs, there's no such thing as mastering those roles simply because those roles are cheap designs and also because they are closer to the cheap designs of earlier games when things such as choice and consequences were slim. At best you can say, you've now achieved a level of bad ass killing knowledge that normally needs a cheat device to achieve. In games like chess, even the cheap device serves only to motivate the master to beat it unless it is completely unbeatable (in contrast to rpgs where they are often very beatable even by non-masters). In athletic sports, even the masters can learn from the students and the students can learn from the masters because you never really perfect the game. In rpgs, no new threat arises unless it's an online game and even as online games goes it gets overruled by the newer online games as people leave.

On top of this, if you've played Monster's Den Book of Dread, you'd know how laughable far mastering such roles are on a basic rpg compared to how those games implement them. Even the most praised SRPGs fail because when it comes down to it, it rarely links itself to stories, narratives, addictive plots, etc. so it becomes a combat simulator not because it has combat but because the combat ultimately has no meaning and the mastery ultimately becomes a case of the player's own choices which then devolves into self-nerfing the more you master it (like Solo Characters or avoiding Overpowered Classes) as opposed to real life combat where no matter how strong you are, you don't handicap yourself because the stakes matter.

In game design (ideally), combat and narratives go hand in hand. To not do so you'll miss such opportunities as stealth, stat checks, background checks, multiple endings, balanced bosses, meaningful challenges, etc. etc. At the heart of it, a battle is an opportunity for you or characters you've emotionally invested in to expire. Not expire simply because there's bosses. Not expire simply because you didn't grind enough. Not expire simply because after a battle is over, there's no more threats and it's back to treasure hunting.

It's why knowledge of a powerful enemy in a powerful world is so exciting. You enable your players to think in such a way like "Oh if I was fighitng that actual boss, that wouldn't cut it" or as a designer you get to think "Oh eventually this boss maybe a victim of grinding so how do I buff him? ...but if the player faces this boss in the beginning he would come off cheap? But then wouldn't he still come off cheap in the end?"

...such thought process trains designers to love every character not just one character. Such combat simulators can potentially give more emotional investment that you don't see them less as "combat sims" before the boss or until the special hard boss and they end up becoming more "necessary fights" and from that route, it comes closer to realistic difficulty curve because bosses become less cheap and more "learned" to your game world and the more they reach this balance the more you could even insert such scenarios as bosses joining you without such bosses feeling like nerfed versions from their original boss status.