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ALTERNATE DIFFICULTY LEVELS: FEATURE TOGGLES
Posts
Craze
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Closemy whole point was that you can have optional versions/objectives in fights to make it harder without actual difficulty options. sorry if i didn't word that well.
Crystalgate
694
author=Craze
While I agree with your analysis, Crystalgate, but I feel like a lot of old snes- to ps2-era RPGs would be far more interesting with double the enemy HP. That way, they'd stick around for more than a turn and you'd have to actually execute some sort of pattern or combo or whatever instead of just mashing attack before they hit you. A lot of the games in the latter half of that timespan have interesting mechanics but the games are so piss-easy that the lack of enemy stats completely undermines the cool battle systems. (Atelier Iris 3 and Suikoden V, I'm staring you directly in the eyes.)
I agree that longer battles would have helped a little in a lot of those games. When enemies can be killed too quickly, every other option becomes obsolete. However, I'd be very careful with assuming that harder enemies would make battles more interesting. Taking Suikoden V as an example, if enemies were harder, I suspect that while it would have encouraged players to dive a bit deeper into the mechanics, resolving the battles will boil down to finding one powerful tactic and then repeating it for almost every battle.
By making simple stat-up/down difficulty levels you don't enforce new strategies or playstyles, you simply give the player less margain of error which forces you to optimize better. This is IMO the simplest and best way to implement difficulty. That way all players get the same experience and less skilled players don't feel left out by adding hard-mode only bonuses/quirks etc.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
author=CrystalgateAs opposed to the existing difficulty, where resolving the battles boils down to only the second half of that? You don't have to find a powerful tactic, you just have to pick any tactic at random and then repeat it for every battle. If your game is balanced well, though, then there should be lots of "best" tactics that are about equally effective, and probably none of them should work all the time.
Taking Suikoden V as an example, if enemies were harder, I suspect that while it would have encouraged players to dive a bit deeper into the mechanics, resolving the battles will boil down to finding one powerful tactic and then repeating it for almost every battle.
Suikoden games have super terrible combat though. The real gameplay in Suikoden is in recruiting the characters, not beating the enemies. Harder combat would just draw more of the player's attention to the combat, revealing how utterly shallow it is. I would probably make any difficulty setting revolve around the recruiting aspect of the game rather than the combat. A hard mode could make more characters missable, give them more complex requirements, and possibly make some of them leave the team at certain story points and have to be re-recruited. An easy mode could add a checklist telling you who's currently recruitable, an objective tracker pointing you to where to find them, and possibly multiple ways to recruit the same character.
LightningLord2
230
LockeZ brings up an interesting point here - difficulty levels for non-combat aspects of the game.
A World Without Wind 2 has two different settings for difficulty, one for the turn-based base building gameplay and another for the platforming segments to unlock more plots to build on and such.
A World Without Wind 2 has two different settings for difficulty, one for the turn-based base building gameplay and another for the platforming segments to unlock more plots to build on and such.
FarkasUrdung
50
I find this topic rather interesting, for I, too, have been complementing difficulty myself. Five years ago I wanted to make enemies "smart", as in they don't just randomly choose moves against the player, but team up using beneficial abilities. For example: a group of 3 identical monster who can cause sleep put the whole party but one member to sleep and pick apart the player's team one by one.
Nowadays I am contemplating adding several difficulties. The regular game would feature enemies with different set strategies that are chosen either to suit the current situation or randomly and they would use the same strategy for the rest of the battle. An idea came to my mind that what if I made them randomly switch to another one of their set strategies each turn, giving the player the upper hand over a confused AI.
While reading this topic I also thought of designing different dungeons or adding in complications that force the player to take a different path previously optional for different difficulty settings.
In your opinion, how could the experience be balanced? I do not wish to make battles feel like trial and error, nor do I want the player trying out a higher difficulty setting feel annoyed due to the extra tasks.
Nowadays I am contemplating adding several difficulties. The regular game would feature enemies with different set strategies that are chosen either to suit the current situation or randomly and they would use the same strategy for the rest of the battle. An idea came to my mind that what if I made them randomly switch to another one of their set strategies each turn, giving the player the upper hand over a confused AI.
While reading this topic I also thought of designing different dungeons or adding in complications that force the player to take a different path previously optional for different difficulty settings.
In your opinion, how could the experience be balanced? I do not wish to make battles feel like trial and error, nor do I want the player trying out a higher difficulty setting feel annoyed due to the extra tasks.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
I don't actually think making better AI be part of the higher difficulty is a good idea. Generally you don't really want to build the enemy AI around making them as effective as possible at destroying the player - you want to build them around making them do things that the player can overcome. On a lower difficulty, the player should probably have more chances to get things wrong and still win, but the higher difficulty shouldn't really reduce the number of correct ways to play.
Your idea of making the enemy randomly change strategies doesn't force the player to play better - it actually removes their ability to play better. The pattern recognition that lets them win on normal difficulty is a very important part of the gameplay experience. It's one of the main skills that players develop to beat the game. The harder difficulty shouldn't make that skill worthless - it should make it mandatory. You would do this by increasing the punishment for not realizing what the enemy's doing, not by making the enemy's actions unpredictable.
For example, you might make it so on easy mode, status ailments cast by enemies have a random chance to fail, but on hard mode they always succeed. This would give a player playing on the easier mode more room for error. (Just don't ever use AOE status effects that prevent the player from acting! But that's good advice for any game, no matter what.)
Your idea of making the enemy randomly change strategies doesn't force the player to play better - it actually removes their ability to play better. The pattern recognition that lets them win on normal difficulty is a very important part of the gameplay experience. It's one of the main skills that players develop to beat the game. The harder difficulty shouldn't make that skill worthless - it should make it mandatory. You would do this by increasing the punishment for not realizing what the enemy's doing, not by making the enemy's actions unpredictable.
For example, you might make it so on easy mode, status ailments cast by enemies have a random chance to fail, but on hard mode they always succeed. This would give a player playing on the easier mode more room for error. (Just don't ever use AOE status effects that prevent the player from acting! But that's good advice for any game, no matter what.)
