ALTERNATE DIFFICULTY LEVELS: FEATURE TOGGLES

It's hard for me to imagine any justification for not putting difficulty settings in a game. Especially an RPG, where the player can screw themselves over difficulty-wise so easily just by doing all the tasks that the game asks of them, making the game way easier in the process and having no way to undo the change. Adding a hard mode to an easy game or an easy mode to a hard game is so little work for the developer, and adds so many players to your audience.

I've also considered adding a complexity setting to some of my games, making it so certain fiddly RPGish things are done automatically. For example, instead of the player being able to choose 8 abilities to "master" to boost their effects and change those masteries in the menu at any time, they would just automatically get that effect applied to 12 abilities that they can't choose. Instead of a talent tree, a certain bonus would just automatically be granted at each level up. Etc. I know lots of players who love having that much control and customization over their party, and I'm one of them, but I've watched too many Let's Plays of RPGs where people just skip all of it and suffer as a result, and heard too many people complain that a game requires a PhD to figure out how to play. The Dragon Age games do something similar to this when the player levels up, letting them choose between allocating their stats and skills manually or automatically, and it seems to work well for those games.

I've started putting in difficulty settings in some games, because I can make a game and have multiple people think the same game is too easy or too hard, so I really do want to try to tailor to as many people as I can in that area.

I also agree about being able to change the difficulty from a menu. Like Craze said, difficulty can range so much from game to game that selecting "Normal" can mean two wildly different difficulty levels from two different games.

I do really like the idea of toggling features, though I'm not sure of any I could use right now, thinking about it.

i mean final fantasy 1 did it so you can toooo

author=Craze
i mean final fantasy 1 did it so you can toooo

This is not a good decision-making paradigm in general

bahleted

I've definitely found myself doing those "emergent" challenges in jrpgs. Shadow Hearts 2 has a second disc that so ridiculously easy that I forced myself to end every boss fight with a physical attack from Anastasia -- the weakest physical attacker who telekinetically slammed painted eggs on enemies. (Considering my family is Slavic and I have lots of pysanky lying around the house, it felt kinda strange, but hey -- digital eggs don't break!)

I think FF6 probably has the most examples of people doing that -- CES runs (only using Celes/Edgar/Setzer in the World of Ruin), Natural Magic runs (either with or without esper stat-ups, only using the spells that Celes and Terra learn naturally), least steps runs...

The idea of basing a game around taking the least possible amount of steps is kinda interesting, actually. hmmm

I am absolutely in favor of difficulty levels for RPGs, and am really surprised more professional RPGs don't do it. Many RPGs (though definitely not all) have very interesting battle systems that never really get exploited because the game is so easy. While most players may enjoy NOT requiring a PHD in the game mechanics to survive, some players would.

I have to agree with what others have said, however. If we're going with different difficulty settings, how does one accomplish it? Here's my two cents on that issue: A standard RPG is based upon one's ability to heal faster than the enemy can deal damage. So long as healing > damage, "difficult" just means "long." Therefore, to create actual difficulty, one must ruin the formula. That could mean using status effects (which forces healing something other than HP), making it so that the enemy damage > healing, or making healing so expensive that one can quickly exhausts their resources.

In general, a lot of RPG difficulty problems tie into the constantly vertical progression from a lot of different sources. This wrecked about a third of FFXIII-2 for me because I got stuck in one of the major dungeons and wound up getting a lot of XP and steamed through the next few hours.

I'm just quoting this for truth. I find a lot of games are pretty light on critical information that can help one survive a rather difficult boss fight. I remember once practically giving up on a game only to GameFaqs the boss fight and discovering that some random item in the game prevents the attack that kept killing me. How I was expected to know that I have no idea, but once I learned that the battle was easy. Hiding information from the player is NOT "difficulty". If you're going to add difficulty settings, you should ensure there's transparency around the battles as well.

Most JRPGs don't have difficulty options because they aren't designed to support them. In action games, if enemies hits twice as hard, the player can compensate by getting hit half as often. This option exist for some moves in JRPG and doesn't for others.

Elemental moves can usually be mitigated by the right equipment. If you by normal difficulty don't assume the player equips the right elemental protection, but you do on hard, you can easily double the damage (assume elemental protections halves damage) on an elemental move on the hard difficulty. In the same game however, giving a non elemental move 1,5 times the damage can force even a skilled player to rely on luck or grinding because there simple isn't any good way to mitigate that damage.

It gets more complicated however. If the player is exploring a volcano, an ice cave or some other areas with a very obvious elemental theme, most likely even a less attentive player (one playing on normal that is) will get the respective elemental protection. Also, if there are areas where the player can encounter enemies who together have multiple different elemental types, the player may not be able to get protection for them all.

This is even just elements. There are other factors such as whether or not you can reliable prevent a certain nasty from even happening by killing the right enemy quickly enough or applying a status effect. Attacks that can be reliable prevented or mitigated can get a higher boost than attacks which cannot. On the defensive side, enemies who are designed so they become more dangerous as the battle goes on gains more from a defensive boost than those who aren't.

Of course, you can ignore all that and just give enemies a percentile boost by going by the worst case scenario, their attacks are assumed to lack a reliable counter. I don't think this method makes the harder difficulty very satisfying though.

Another problem is that earlier on, the player usually don't have that many options available, meaning the opportunity to play better is limited or non existing. Handle this wrong and you could make a game where the hard difficulty means the game is at it's hardest early on and then gradually gets easier and easier as you progress.

So, implementing different difficulty levels either takes a lot of work or you make it easy for you, but most likely end up with undesired consequences.

A feature toggle or customize-able difficulty may be fun. I wonder what it would do though in a JRPG though. Maybe you can turn on more accurate status effects for example? Turn it on if you like to use status enemies and keep it off if you don't. Maybe you can make it so that enemies hit harder, but also die faster? You get the same problems, if not even more, as you do with more limited difficulty option, but the player is maybe more likely to accept the responsibility for wacky balance her-/himself.

author=Craze
hedge: i suggest looking at/creating games with more levers than just "mp" and "hp". there are all sorts of things you can do -- add in an optional objective that takes damage from AoE attacks you use but rewards you if it stays alive; make the enemy debuff the party more intelligently; give the boss a healer mook that you have to clear first; make the boss go red at 30% hp so you need to burst it down or else you WILL die; add a rotating electic current under the party that 100%-for-sure stuns each character in order as the fight goes on...

just watch a lot of ffxiv videos or something. they design Extreme bosses and then design the Story/Hard versions.

You basically gave a bunch of examples of what I was talking about.

+ Optional objective that takes friendly AOE damage = can't heal something that must live.
+ Healer mook = give the enemies the same healing advantage.
+ Red at 30% = damage > healing at that point.
+ Electric current that stuns party members = stuns healer eventually, creating a "danger" turn where damage > healing.

As for "intelligent debuffs," they create damage > healing in one of two ways.
+ 1. You can debuff the healer or healers of the group, and therefore remove healing.
+ 2. Most debuff cures hit only one target at a time and don't restore HP. Therefore, a multi-target debuff (particularly one that also does damage) means damage > healing.

Related to debuffs are the instant death abilities that also can only be healed one at a time or knock out your dedicated healer for a few rounds. Early in the game, basic revives also tend to not full heal, meaning death takes two turns to heal, making it especially dangerous.

So it's still all about the enemy somehow doing more damage than your party can heal. And once that setup is in place, you have all sorts of possible strategies.
+ Jump right before the enemy turn to avoid damage.
+ Time your heals so that they occur right after the enemy attack, since if you waste a heal, you're going to die.
+ Protection against debuffs heading into battle ("free heals", basically).
+ Put your characters in the back-row to reduce damage (ie: boost healing).
+ Choose high agility characters to ensure you can run from problematic fights.
+ Actually run from problematic fights.
+ Have target-all spells that both do damage to the enemy and heal you.
+ Tanks that can defend weaker characters, or who self-heal, or have auto-immunity, or auto-revive.
+ Seeing high damage spells as a method to prevent damage, not kill enemies.

That whole list above is from actual, old school, JRPGs. We forget how complex and interesting these older games were because generally speaking, we never knew. Part of that, of course, is because the games were so easy it wasn't necessary. And part of that was because the games never told us. And both of those things are major faults that tend to force "difficulty" into the bad place it is today. One thing a lot of MMOs and MOBAs do better today is explain the mechanics of the game engine, whereas the games of old had to be hacked and analyzed before anyone understood many of their more ingenious qualities.

For example, expert FF6 players know "back-row" is basically broken in that game. Yet most people first beat the game exclusively in the front-row. I even watched a Let's Play of a guy playing a "challenge" hack of FF6 where he kept all of his characters in the front, then complained about taking too much damage and raged quit. In Lufia 2, Dekar is seen by many as the best character to bring into the Ancient Cave, but he's actually among the worst, and, if you do bring him, may be the sole reason for your failure to reach the top (on the flip side, he remains the best at taking down the "Master", making him newbie friendly).

In the end, if you use health and healing in your game, it'll never be a legitimate challenge so long as healing > possible enemy damage output. So for increased difficulty, somehow that basic fundamental premise needs to break down. And, if we're talking about scaling difficulty, it needs to incorporate that premise.

I'll definitely have to check out some FFXIV stuff. I'm always interested in battle systems.

EDIT: I want to note that I wrote the above BEFORE Craze's most recent post.