THE EROTICISM OF CHALLENGE

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So I picked up Fallout 4 a while back, right? And it's pretty fun, the gameplay is pretty cool. I'm a vet at the series so I cranked it up to it's hardest setting, Survival, pretty much from the jump. The difficulty was okay; I died easier, other things died harder. But it lacked a certain oommph. The difficulty felt artificial, as the numbers were just inflated.

Then a patch came out that revamped Survival mode and oh my god becky it totally switched it up. To start, the toughness of the player character and enemies were scaled parallel and damage was realistic; you took more damage, but enemies also took more damage; no more bullet sponges, and fights because mutual fights to the death as opposed to chipping away at a wall that could kill you instantly.

But that's not even the biggest part; you now have to regularly eat, drink (clean water, at that), get enough sleep, you can only save while sleeping (sort of like Dark Souls), you can't fast travel anymore, and you can get sick or ill if you don't take care of yourself. In addition, taking medication or stat buffing items has side effects, like making you thirsty or tired. Finally, your Carry Weight is heavily reduced and even Ammunition has weight. Long story short, every action has some counteraction, and you have to make smart choices.



At first glance some of these things may sound like arbitrary complications, but they're not, as I played, I realized, these restrictions and the concept of player choice and consequence they made the game far more fun and challenging. As I progressed through the game, it forced me to be careful, calculating, and to think, because the stakes were far higher, I got better at the game, played smarter, and I discovered far more about the game's mechanics and how to actually play the game because the game imposed these challenges on to me.

The game became less about numbers of weapons and armor and more about thinking and skill, and even then, the numbers still mattered, because now I had to think more about things like Damage Resistance, trading in one effect for another, and Carry Weight instead of just slapping on the highest rated gear and calling it a day.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is that this new optional mode for this game, via cranking up the difficulty and imposing challenges and curveballs, REALLY made the game far more enjoyable than it ever was before. I couldn't just throw infinite effort and resources around a problem and fix it; I had to think, strategize, adapt, and plan. My question and discussion to you is, what do you guys think about challenge and restrictions in games and in your projects? How do you encourage smart difficulty and making the player think and play smart?
There are loads of easy games that I like, some of which are personal favorites, but overall I consider challenge to be an important component in games. It's really hard to get right in RPGs because avatar power is so variable. I've thought about it considerably, but haven't really come to a concrete conclusion. I think a good strategy is to design around player knowledge, but you run the risk of Kaizo Mario or I Wanna Be the Guy.
LouisCyphre
can't make a bad game if you don't finish any games
4523
author=Feldschlact IV
you can only save while sleeping (sort of like Dark Souls)


If it were like Dark Souls, it would autosave whenever you defeat an enemy, find an item, make a dialogue choice, or every ten seconds.

Which would be pretty cool in a Bethesda game, all told!
Yeah but being a Bethesda game the constant saving would introduce a save corrupting bug and completely fry your only Survival mode save!



Bethesda potshots aside, ideally I try to avoid snowballing consequences of actions and try to stick to ones made in the scope of a gameplay segment such as a dungeon. I'd rather have the player fail because of a choice, such as maybe they didn't handle a miniboss well, ran low on resources, and didn't have enough resources to defeat the boss and have to retry the dungeon than because they used up too many resources five dungeons ago. I'd go more on making dungeons and the challenges in them harder (to my filthy casual standards) than try and balance for decisions the player made ages ago.

I won't contest that people find the long game fun, I just personally don't care for it at all. It's one of my issues with games like Civilization: There's a huge snowball effect in the early game and it's easy to see where shit'll land five hours later. I'd try to make the player succeed or fail over how the handled the immediate challenge.


Despite all I've said I've got a total soft spot for character builds though. One game I started in the past had a system where when a character leveled up you selected what template/class they would increase in level and they would gain stats and abilities based on how many levels they invested in that class. Build dudes and see how well they turn out in the game can be totally fun! The biggest concern is viability of builds and when you get a total lemon that can't do shit, but that's what respeccing is for!
To be fair guys, even though you have only one slot to save into, the game is (surprisingly) generous and it gives you several files to load from in case shit goes horribly awry.

I'll give more thoughts and replies on you guys a bit later.
Isrieri
"My father told me this would happen."
6155
"The Eroticism of Challenge." Now there's a thread title for you!

I played a little of Doom 4's new campaign and I really really enjoyed not just the challenge the game presented, but the way it was challenging. In your average shooter these days, I think most of the difficulty is learning how to play defensively and getting good at long-range target practice. Its all about aiming and precision with the enemies offering up some cursory offense you can recover from.

Doom is not like that. It is fast-paced hectic adrenaline action where there is no safe space to hide in or plan a defense around. The enemies don't stay behind cover or offer themselves up as targets to knock down: They come AFTER YOU. And the AI is good enough that different units can coordinate well enough that the bruisers pin you while the harassing units say in back. Your straggling has to be done in the moment and constantly on the move while trying to get a hang of the whole aiming thing. Plus you don't have regenerating health. Its health packs. You can die very easily, but you regain health for killing bad guys instead of waiting. Thus there is real tension and incentive to play your best; fast and aggressively.

I like games like that. The game presents it's challenges front and center and leave you to figure out the most optimal way of dealing with a problem. The level design never assaults you with too much at once, and gives you the right tools at the right time to deal with new threats. The main draw of this style of combat is that as a player, its more visceral and fun. I think the trick of Doom's campaign is that although it has no qualms about throwing you in the thick of things, it also never dogpiles you with unfair situations. The game assumes that you will find the right weapons, get the upgrades, and sufficient practice on the earlier enemies before they move you up to the hordes of bigger baddies.

On another level. Part of how well the game is designed has not only to do with the actual enemy and level design, but the aesthetic aspects too. Shooting people in a fake war isn't fun for me at all. Shooting aliens in a space war is pretty fun when you've got cool guns to use. Shooting demons on Mars? That's right up my ally. And you can carry more than two weapons at a time!! Let me repeat: YOU CAN CARRY MORE THAN TWO WEAPONS AT A TIME. Why did that convention vanish?!

That's not just player convenience. That opens up options for you. It opens up strategy and deeper possibilities for enemy combinations in a similar vein to how Zelda games can make more complicated dungeons as the tools you acquire upgrade your puzzle-solving arsenal. Doom does not restrict itself by needing to supply you with the right weapon for the right situation, for each situation as it occurs. It gives you all your tools in sequence, and then toward the end they can go balls to the walls and test how effective you are when fully armed. Mega Man X was like this too.
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
Jude
It's really hard to get right in RPGs because avatar power is so variable. I've thought about it considerably, but haven't really come to a concrete conclusion.


I've gone on about this in the past! The traditional/typical RPG tends to have way too many progression systems to gain power from. Even Ye Oldest games have Experience/Levels on top of Gold/Equipment, which seems damn pointless to me since you get both by doing the exact same thing (although Experience doesn't come from chests, I guess). Add on other stuff like skill trees via AP and skill upgrading and class mixing and ahhhhhhh. (Why do BD/FF5/etc. NOT tie class level to character level, or just get rid of character level altogether????) The design bites itself in its own ass, making it challenging to balance properly for all classifications of devs.

MOG
My question and discussion to you is, what do you guys think about challenge and restrictions in games and in your projects? How do you encourage smart difficulty and making the player think and play smart?


I think they're good when there are multiple paths to victory. This is something that made me absolutely love Shovel Knight, but come to loathe Ori and the Blind Forest. I've beat SK, but this week I put down Ori for good around the 70% mark.

In SK, most challenge is either optional (side-rooms to unlock new relics, get additional money, or find the collectable song pages) or has two methods of play. Bosses tend to fall in the second category, which is where SK excels at its design. For example, the Dark Knight boss does a lot of jumping and will react aggressively if you get in his space. A willing or confident player can just take him head-on, learning his jump pattern and getting the drop on him. OR, since you're still learning the game and might not have that confidence, you can figure out that his projectiles can be reflected! You can take the longer, less stressful route of countering his projectiles back onto him. Most of the bosses are like this: a long way, and a smart way. It works well. SK is also helped by having saves right before the really challenging bits, like bosses and minibosses, and then typically an "oh my god thank you" save right after. While there are some longer tough parts, generally the saves feel fair.

Ori, on the other hand, is arbitrary and doesn't have those multiple paths to victory. There is typically One Way to conquer each challenge, even when you have 10 or so tools at your disposal. And the "boss fights" (really environmental challenges) take away your ability to save anywhere. So, add "rocks that come out of nowhere" with "you can't save like you're used to" and "everything is really difficult suddenly" and aughaslbasunliihubhjnmkkuhbnmkjuh. Even the "open world" is very, very linear in how you explore it. Really obnoxious. Bad challenges, not good.

So, I guess that's my input for now: have multiple, fulfilling ways to get to victory, even if one way is the canon or "proper" way.



author=Craze
Even Ye Oldest games have Experience/Levels on top of Gold/Equipment, which seems damn pointless to me since you get both by doing the exact same thing (although Experience doesn't come from chests, I guess).

Well...sort of. You have to manage money, and you can lose it, but with levels you just gain strength, and most games do have alternate means of acquiring cash other than battles. The biggest difference is that money is a resource that must be allocated wisely, and strength is just strength. Even in real life, the ability to pay for something and the ability to do something may overlap sometimes, but it has very different angles.

I mean, too many progression systems? Experience and Gold are just two. Class systems and AP leave the players with four at most in many RPGs. That number complexity is part of what players pay for and expect from the genre. Even many FPS's have money/skill levels.

author=Craze
Why do BD/FF5/etc. NOT tie class level to character level, or just get rid of character level altogether????)

This is so the player actually has to invest in a class to see it grow and to get results. If you've been playing the game as a Knight and you hit level 50, and you decide to give a Mage a go, class levels come into play to get the player to actually invest in training to be a Mage if they want to be good at it.

This makes the player think; "Hmm, should I invest all of my training/time to be a good Knight, a good Mage, or both?", as opposed to character levels being tied to class levels and you're equally good at everything.
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
It's too many because they're both substantial. I mean, we're making a lot of assumptions, granted, but having both stats via level and stats via equipment add considerably to power means it's more difficult -- not impossible -- to create gates properly that feel good for all types of players.

There are a lot of ways to make this not awful for the developer. For example, if equipment only provides attack/defense values and modifiers (following attacks with an ice spell, giving the user Regen whenever they suffer a critical hit, whatever), and levels only provides skills and hp/mp caps, then it's much easier to balance. But... that's not how most games, indie or aaa, work. =/

In an FPS (again, assumptions here), buying weapons tend to offer gameplay differences, not power differences. There are tiered weapons in some games, but even in Mass Effect 3 the guns tend to be "do I want more accuracy or do I want to pierce armor". Borderlands just ruins everything by having too many stats and guns and aggravating options (endless, minutiae-based options are as bad as no options).

re: classes, I suggested the exact opposite of what you're saying. Get rid of the character level, or make it based on total class level (knight 3 + mage 5 = ricky level 8). I get why class levels matter ;V

author=Craze
re: classes, I suggested the exact opposite of what you're saying. Get rid of the character level, or make it based on total class level (knight 3 + mage 5 = ricky level 8). I get why class levels matter ;V

Tactics Ogre PSP basically did this and it actually turned out really awful. No one wants to go into a class that starts useless at level 1 in the middle of the game when they've already found their bread and butter. This is why class levels can also be problematic, they often disincentivize experimentation.
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
Tactics Ogre PSP had a lot more wrong with it than just class levels XD

Something like Bravely Second where you can have your really fleshed-out skillset equipped alongside a new one that you're training works well imo.
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
Challenge is sexy.

In RPGs, there is challenge both in the battle and in the planning, and different people find one sexier than the other. Most people who like RPGs lean more towards the planning side than fans of other types of games.

If you simplify the planning to a very small number of choices, you take all the challenge out of it. FF4's planning and long-term strategy is completely unsexy, even the equipment choices are almost nonexistant, it feels like watching my 90-year-old grandma trying to do a belly dance and accidentally dislocating her hip in the process. FF Tactics's planning and long-term strategy gets me so fucking rock hard that the blood vessels on the sides of my dick burst open, and I have to call an ambulance but all I can manage to say to the 911 operator is "oh god, ohhhh godddddddd" and they're like "sir are you all right?" and I'm like "yesssssss, I mean no, I'm not, but ffffffUCK YYYYEEESSSS"
author=Craze
It's too many because they're both substantial. I mean, we're making a lot of assumptions, granted, but having both stats via level and stats via equipment add considerably to power means it's more difficult -- not impossible -- to create gates properly that feel good for all types of players.

There are a lot of ways to make this not awful for the developer. For example, if equipment only provides attack/defense values and modifiers (following attacks with an ice spell, giving the user Regen whenever they suffer a critical hit, whatever), and levels only provides skills and hp/mp caps, then it's much easier to balance. But... that's not how most games, indie or aaa, work. =/

See, two things with this;

One of the biggest difference between levels/equipment is that oftentimes levels provide some sort of perk that you just cannot replicate with equipment. For example, in Fallout, levels often give Perks, special effects like being able to breathe underwater, increased efficiency with weapons, or special skills in combat, and equipment gives things like defensive bonuses, specifically protecting parts of your body from damage/crippling.

The thing to note here that in most RPGs, and the crux of equipment/gold/levels is that you can't buy your way out of or into things that levels give you, sure, in Fallout you can mitigate a lot of shit by finding/buying/talking your way into some Power Armor and fucking shit up (or insert any RPG with high level equipment), but you can't buy or find or stumble upon perks somewhere, you must earn them through sweat and blood. Again, in the Fallout example you can go kinda far with being unskilled and weak wearing Power Armor, but eventually you have to gain levels to actually learn more skills.

The biggest difference between levels/equipment in most RPGs, even with equipment and levels that give out the same thing (stats) is that equipment can be mixed, matched, bought, sold, lost, and gained, and gold to a lesser degree. Levels however are permanent and must be earned. From there, things usually branch out and differentiate.

author=Craze
buying weapons tend to offer gameplay differences, not power differences.

Yeah, and RPGs can do the same, or similar, see above.

author=Craze
Tactics Ogre PSP had a lot more wrong with it than just class levels XD

It's a shame because Tactics Ogre PSP was a very well polished game in pretty much everything but gameplay mechanics.

author=LockeZ
In RPGs, there is challenge both in the battle and in the planning, and different people find one sexier than the other. Most people who like RPGs lean more towards the planning side than fans of other types of games.

I agree with this, and this primarily is what draws me to RPGs, the planning, long term and short term. I love plotting out things to see how it will effect me down the road. I play Street Fighter for testing my quick, on the fly strategizing and planning, and that's mega fun! However, I play RPGs for the long game; I don't want to be locked out of finishing the game because of a choice I made, but I want my choices to matter one way or the other down the line.
slash
APATHY IS FOR COWARDS
4158
Going off of Craze's "multiple paths to victory" - I feel like this design method gives players a lot of choice and creativeness, as well as a self-managing difficulty level. Dark Souls, for example: there are a lot of parts in the game that are just straight up easier with a shield, or a bow, but trying to beat them with a dagger just because you like daggers is fun and gives the player a fun choice. Changing strategies shouldn't be too cumbersome, so that players can try their preferred method of attack, but if they get tired and just want to progress, they can switch easily.

That's not to say that you can get away without balancing your game, but giving the player a mixture of options can help spackle over the spots you miss.

Oh, and finally! The last thing I like as far as progression that doesn't scale out of control: instead of increasing the power level of items, gear, and skills, consider instead increasing the risk/reward factor. This means that as the player progresses and gets better at the game, they get wilder and riskier weapons to use. For example, RPG skills:

  • Tier 1 skills are simple and straightforward. They deal damage, they heal HP, maybe they inflict Poison. You start with these.
  • Tier 2 skills have an element of strategy and combination to them. A skill that inflicts Poison & deals extra damage to Poisoned characters. A skill that heals a lot, but slowly over time. A skill that deals more damage based on the caster's closeness to death. You get these over the course of the game.
  • Tier 3 skills are the weird ones, the convoluted but powerful combos, the riskiest tactics. Maybe they're only *slightly* stronger than Tier 1, but they're way more difficult, interesting, and fun to use. They involve multiple characters timing things perfectly or multiple turns of setup. We're talking Hedron Alignment complexity. Stuff like the Dr. Fetus in Binding of Isaac, which turns all of your attacks into bombs that can hurt you.

I'm experimenting with this for BOSSGAME! Your power level only goes up slightly over the course of the game - mainly due to a growing variety of options, but you get a lot of very different skills & gear. I want to start with low-to-medium complexity items and ramp it up for more creative players as the game goes on :D
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
mog i think you're trying to talk about wrpgs and i'm trying to talk about jrpgs and it isn't working too well, especially when i already gave my own examples of wrpgs getting equipment done fairly well.

also i hate xp but i already did a topic on that a few months ago ;V

slash, I'd switch that up a little. If you insist on doing a Firaga-style progression system, START the player with some wierder or utility ones, and end with the too-expensive-but-turn-efficient nuke. Do we really want to start a game with Attack, Fire and 20% Sleep? (Or give the Nuke 20% of the way through the game, so that you can waste all your MP if you really need an oh shit button! Or just don't do Firaga-style tiering ;V )

I'd rather do something like:
Pyre Call - 4 MP - Deal moderate Fire damage and Burn the enemy (-20% DEF, take low Fire damage each turn). Has a 25% chance to Burn the caster, but will also raise their Magic by 20% when doing so.
Ignition - 12 MP - Deal low Fire damage to all enemies. Burning enemies take double damage and refund 2 MP.
Baptism by Fire - 6 MP - Burn an ally, but cure all status ailments. The next time they are hit by an attack, the attacker takes moderate Fire damage.
Pyroclasm - 36 MP, 3-turn CD - Deal massive Fire damage to one enemy. If the user is Burning, the debuff is consumed and there is no cooldown.

This is actually pretty simple because there's no context for other characters and interactions, but I'd still rather prefer something like this on a pyromancer than "Fire/Meh Skill/Lategame weird skill".

edit: i guess this has nothing to do with erotic challenges but slash started it
author=Craze
mog i think you're trying to talk about wrpgs and i'm trying to talk about jrpgs and it isn't working too well, especially when i already gave my own examples of wrpgs getting equipment done fairly well.


But there are plenty of JRPGs that do what I outlined; equipment and levels giving fundamentally different bonuses to one another, and equipment changing gameplay aspects.

-In FFVI, Shields give the player a chance to 'block' attacks, which is fundamentally different than Evasion.
-In the later Suikoden games, equipping things in 'sets' gives unique bonuses such as more money earned after battle.
-In Romancing Saga for the PS2, weapons augment fighting styles towards the Attack/Defense/Trick disciplines.
-Vagrant Story's entire battle system revolves around picking the right weapons for the job, as all weapons are very fundamentally different from one another gameplay wise.

slash
APATHY IS FOR COWARDS
4158
Sorry, I s'pose "Tiers" was misleading: It's not actually a Fire-Fira-Firaga system, it's just the way I categorize the skills personally (by level of complexity). Each skill is totally independent from the others. But, I definitely prefer keeping things simple at the beginning while players are still having fun with the basic rules of combat, and introducing new twists as players get used to the rules. Pyre Call is something that seems very complex for the beginning of the game, especially if was alongside equally complex skills :P
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
MOG you're not helping fend off the "equipment is fundamentally more interesting than levels/xp" concept. ;V

Then again, games would ALSO be easier to balance if there wasn't the expectation of "lots of little mooks" in typical RPGs. Games where the battles take place on a separate screen have all those different progression systems and then have to make them interesting/balanced for BOTH "fighting 5 little guys" and "fighting a 20-minute boss." Which... usually turns out lame. Even games that got it kinda okay, like FF13, then negate all sense of battle acheivement by making you fight the exact same set of enemies a bunch more times, even though the "puzzle" hasn't changed.

I guess that's another part of monitoring difficulty in your game. If you're not presenting new challenges -- new sets of enemies that work together -- you're not giving the player any new experiences, and thus any "difficulty" is fake "they have high Defense" difficulty (hint: that's not difficulty, that's bullshit). That's just padding, and it's what makes AAA RPGs plodding, 80-hour awful affairs. ughslgkn,.sdgcxv the enemies in dynasty warriors have limited ai and no hp for a reason
author=Craze
MOG you're not helping fend off the "equipment is fundamentally more interesting than levels/xp" concept. ;V

The argument I'm trying to make is that equipment and levels/xp are different, and can be different, not better or worse. Whether RPGs implement that is on them!

Levels give you power and skills and options, and money/equipment gives also gives you power and skills and options. There's a million ways to make them different. Additionally, equipment/gold gives the player to 'buy/find' their way out of a jam or challenge that they normally wouldn't be powerful enough for. Additionally, you can mix and match equipment between characters.

author=Craze
Then again, games would ALSO be easier to balance if there wasn't the expectation of "lots of little mooks" in typical RPGs. Games where the battles take place on a separate screen have all those different progression systems and then have to make them interesting/balanced for BOTH "fighting 5 little guys" and "fighting a 20-minute boss." Which... usually turns out lame. Even games that got it kinda okay, like FF13, then negate all sense of battle acheivement by making you fight the exact same set of enemies a bunch more times, even though the "puzzle" hasn't changed.

I guess that's another part of monitoring difficulty in your game. If you're not presenting new challenges -- new sets of enemies that work together -- you're not giving the player any new experiences, and thus any "difficulty" is fake "they have high Defense" difficulty (hint: that's not difficulty, that's bullshit). That's just padding, and it's what makes AAA RPGs plodding, 80-hour awful affairs. ughslgkn,.sdgcxv the enemies in dynasty warriors have limited ai and no hp for a reason

Sort of. New challenges are great, but I also like recognizing different patterns throughout the game in new and interesting permutations when both me and my enemies are stronger, hence the concept of palette swaps. Seeing a wolf at the beginning of the game, and seeing a Red Wolf in the middle, and seeing a Black Wolf at the end can give the developers a lot of different opportunities to surprise the player and let them test their mettle against tougher variations of puzzles they thought they knew how to solve.

I don't mind new challenges, but I get a little disappointed when the entire game is full of entirely different things with no opportunities to revisit old gameplay questions I can answer with new solutions.
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
I have no problem with palette swaps. My concern is fighting literally the same group of enemies 5 times in the same dungeon, with no chance for meaningful progression between them. There's no eroticism there, not even sadism.
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