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CREATOR HANDICAP DURING PLAY TESTING
Posts
Luiishu535
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Close@LL2: Oh yeah, I've read about that in a review with him some time ago. That's a better phrase to use: if you're tired of something, make it less tiresome.
FF1 bosses were jokes IMO (I played the DoS version). Why even put them in the game if they can be killed so effortlessly?
That's nice. I guess everything comes down to what's "Normal" for a developer.
@Craze: That's pretty much what I am doing, except I'm making it easier for the normal mode as well. Stuff that feel cheap/tedious are mostly what I'm removing/dumbing down.
Maybe the wheels have turned yet again; since I'm playing with some extreme handicaps, it's possible that the game might be too easy for some players. While I don't think that will be the case for the majority of my players, I'd still love the challenge of making the game even harder/closer to my original vision.
FF1 bosses were jokes IMO (I played the DoS version). Why even put them in the game if they can be killed so effortlessly?
That's nice. I guess everything comes down to what's "Normal" for a developer.
@Craze: That's pretty much what I am doing, except I'm making it easier for the normal mode as well. Stuff that feel cheap/tedious are mostly what I'm removing/dumbing down.
Maybe the wheels have turned yet again; since I'm playing with some extreme handicaps, it's possible that the game might be too easy for some players. While I don't think that will be the case for the majority of my players, I'd still love the challenge of making the game even harder/closer to my original vision.
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=luiishu535
Just curious, how many times do you test run your games?
I usually test the bosses a few times at first when I make them. After everything's done, I start my first true run through the game. My second run (which is the one I'm at ATM) is mostly just a security run to check if everything's correct and nothing fishy's going on.
I test run my games somewhere on the order to 30 to 200 times, if you add together all of the mini-sessions where I test 5% of the game (counting twenty of them as 1 test). I usually test each boss about 10-15 times individually when I first make it just fine-tuning the damage and HP and speed and balance, more if it has complex stuff that causes bugs. I also go though each whole dungeon several times, and then redo those boss/dungeon tests many times later in developmemt as I continually change things that affect them, like character stats and combat formulas and new skills. And then test the whole game all the way through anywhere from 10 to 50 times depending on how many times I change things.
Wow, that's quite a lot of testing! How long are your usual games? The one I'm testing right now is about 20-30+ hours long.
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've got three 5-hour games, a 15-hour game, a 40-hour game, and one infinitely long MMORPG that I'm not counting for this purpose. Also a 30 hour one in progress. Longer games get more testing sessions since I go back and change things more times. Mostly though it's not testing to see if the game works, it's testing to try out lots of different strategies and fine tune the balance. This is why I don't worry too much about how much to handicap myself during testing - I just test every possibility.
That's clever. Of course lots of things can change when you make longer games, but would you say that you would make full test runs of a 40-hour game more than a 5 hour one? Wouldn't it take years to test a 40 hour game about 200 times?
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 mean, that game did take me eight years.
Aegix_Drakan
6037
I generally just make the version that requires all my designer knowledge be "hard mode", and then make things easier from there for the lower modes. And then if I feel like an ass, I make an even harder mode for the most hardcore of the hardcore that I may or may not playtest much.
This usually works for me.
This usually works for me.
@LockeZ: Dam Son. That makes sense then.
@Aegy: That's a clever way to tackle difficulties, I suppose. Looks like my testing and fine-tuning is lowering my game's difficulty from Hard to Normal. That's fine in this case though. If people think the game is too easy, then I'll simply give them hell aka Oblivion Mode. ;)
@Aegy: That's a clever way to tackle difficulties, I suppose. Looks like my testing and fine-tuning is lowering my game's difficulty from Hard to Normal. That's fine in this case though. If people think the game is too easy, then I'll simply give them hell aka Oblivion Mode. ;)
