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DIFFICULTY
Posts
ashriot
222
ashriot
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Closeauthor=kentona
When I play an RPG I want to play an RPG, not a twitch game. (This kind of mechanic is what made me not enjoy Super Mario RPG, Jade Empire, and Sabin in FFVI). For me, an RPG is more about strategic choices (both before and during a battle) - not about twitch reflexes or timing. Bleargh.
It's funny, Mario RPG one of my favorite SNES RPGs, and the timed hit mechanic has been something I've wanted in games since its inception. Final Fantasy VI is my favorite FF game of all time, and Sabin is my favorite character BECAUSE of his Blitz!
I LOVED Street Fighter as a kid and it felt like a cool mix of RPG and a little bit of Street Fighter skill. Honestly, I'm not really into fighters anymore even though I bought SFIV, the new MK, and MvC3. All three lost their appeal within a few days/weeks.
I personally really enjoy action elements in RPGs. I still enjoy standard, turn-based RPGs, but I feel like the action element brings the gameplay to life a little bit more. Sometimes, when you land a perfectly timed healing spell or crowd control ability, it's incredibly satisfying to see it pay off. Grandia is a great RPG because of this. It played out like an action RPG with movement and timing being important factors in the battles, but it was all still turned based when it came to commanding the units.
As an example, I've been playing Xenoblade recently, and it's an excellent game with an action RPG style. The biggest downside to games like this is that they are almost always mostly AI-controlled which takes away from the tactical aspect of RPGs. You just control your one character while the other two run around automatically. As fun as Xenoblade is, you really just pick commands when they're not recharging and hope your allies make good decisions. There is a little bit of strategy involved with the angle at which you attack your enemies and when you trigger chain attacks, but its mostly automated.
At least in Final Fantasy XII (my second favorite FF) the gambit system allowed you to create your own strategy so when a character automatically did something, it was because YOU set it up.
My current RPG making goals is to craft an action RPG where you are in full control of the party and nothing is left up to AI. It's making things a little hectic, but to me, that's part of the fun! I have a video in my games section that shows an old demo battle of what I'm talking about.
author=ashriot
My current RPG making goals is to craft an action RPG where you are in full control of the party and nothing is left up to AI.
That doesn't strike me as very fun, having to constantly switch around control of party members during a hectic clutch battle. If anything it sounds pretty infuriating.
Games with AI in control of other party members in an action oriented RPG offer more strategy than you give them credit for. Even if you're not manually inputting commands for AI controlled party members, you're still in control of the outcome and strategizing by things like setting AI behavior, formation, equipment, skills, and how certain party members 'synch' with other party members.
It's like saying that war has no strategy because a general can't literally control the actions of all of his soldiers. That's not true, there's more to strategy than micromanagement.
ashriot
222
author=Feldschlacht IV
That doesn't strike me as very fun, having to constantly switch around control of party members during a hectic clutch battle. If anything it sounds pretty infuriating.
Games with AI in control of other party members in an action oriented RPG offer more strategy than you give them credit for. Even if you're not manually inputting commands for AI controlled party members, you're still in control of the outcome and strategizing by things like setting AI behavior, formation, equipment, skills, and how certain party members 'synch' with other party members.
It's like saying that war has no strategy because a general can't literally control the actions of all of his soldiers. That's not true, there's more to strategy than micromanagement.
The demo battle I made really isn't infuriating, though I guess the creator isn't bound to dislike his own creation. Swapping characters is as simple as pressing a button. The control scheme is what will make or break a system like this. If the game played like FFXII with no gambits, it would be unwieldy and frustrating. But the control scheme I have works really well; the few people that have tried it really had fun with it. You should really give it a chance before you completely dismiss it as something unenjoyable.
Like I said, I don't mind AI controlled units (FFXII being my 2nd favorite FF), I just wanted to attempt to make a normal RPG with 3 or 4 playable characters in a battle, but in real time.
I didn't mean to say real time games don't have tactics, quite the opposite, actually! Like in FFXII, you did lots of managing of the behavior of your allies to give them instructions on how to respond to the various conditions in battle. I guess what I meant when I typed that was that you lose the turn-by-turn tactical feeling that you get in a regular, turn-based RPG (each round you get to decide exactly what a character will do.) That's what I was referring to, sorry about that.
Radnen
1806
Take a page from Molyneaux, easy difficulty means thousands of sales. :P
Anyways, difficulty is a feeling. It's hard to put a feeling into numbers, therefore you have playtesters. Playtesters are the best shot you got at defining difficulty in a game. But be careful because once your playtesters get good then you squandered the difficulty. So you need certain levels of playtesters, the off-the-street kind, the hard-core kind and the most-informed kind. Each one will have something different to say.
Juggling what they say makes a good developer, putting it to practice makes a good designer.
Anyways, difficulty is a feeling. It's hard to put a feeling into numbers, therefore you have playtesters. Playtesters are the best shot you got at defining difficulty in a game. But be careful because once your playtesters get good then you squandered the difficulty. So you need certain levels of playtesters, the off-the-street kind, the hard-core kind and the most-informed kind. Each one will have something different to say.
Juggling what they say makes a good developer, putting it to practice makes a good designer.
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=Radnen
Take a page from Molyneaux, easy difficulty means thousands of sales. :P
Yeah, it's not like anyone bought or liked Dragon Age! Heh.
I will definitely agree that most companies dumb down their games to appeal to an unskilled audience - they believe, for whatever reason, that it's better to make games for people who don't play many video games than for people who do. Now, granted, people who don't play many video games are a much bigger market. But they're also less likely to buy your game. Dragon Age proved that there's still absolutely a huge profit to be made with a modern, legitimately difficult RPG. (There are plenty of other modern difficult RPGs, but most of them tend to be low budget handheld games which make no real attempt at large-scale commercial success.) The easy games don't sell any worse than the hard games though, and are simpler to make, so I see where companies like Square-Enix and Nintendo are coming from.
There is definitely a place for easy games too, even among gamers. I think I've mostly grown out of it, but there was a time when I enjoyed games that I could zone out while playing. I can distinctly remember, in college, playing Pokemon on my game boy and Dungeon Siege on my computer at the same time because neither one actually required my attention. I won't deny anyone their super easy games. I do think we have too many of them compared to legitimately challenging games, though. So many commercial RPGs are pitifully easy. And it's not a new trend. There are probably only a dozen or less battles in Chrono Trigger that you can actually lose, once you understand the basics of how the battle system works and realize that you should heal every time you're less than three hits away from dying. And preparation in that game amounts to "pick any three party members at random, equip all new weapons and armor as you get them." Don't get me wrong, Chrono Trigger might be my favorite game of all time. But it's hella easy.
I agree with a lot of the opening post.
I'm beginning to grow more and more distasteful of today's systems that rely on Preparation for challenge, because the most difficult challenges require you to do try at least twice - and often, the first time is overly hard (challenge is unpredictable) and the second time is jokingly easy (challenge is known and properly planned for). That being said, if a game was built around this mechanic, it could be really cool - for example, maybe before a difficult boss fight you know is coming, you (optionally) gather lots of information on the boss, and thus you know to bring Holy Water or not to rely on Fire spells. If you skip this step, then you might be in trouble. IIRC, early editions of D&D used this mechanic in preparing for dungeon runs.
I also think there's overlap between Complexity and Problem-Solving, seeing that problem-solving is created by the amount of complexity within the game's mechanics. Chess is more complex than checkers because all of the pieces have different abilities, and using them all together properly along with analyzing your opponents' position requires problem-solving. You could incorporate the chess-like feel of constant analysis and creative problem-solving into an RPG in a boss fight with some simple scripting:
-Boss will use general attacks at first, but will preferably target the opponent's weak spots (party members that are low on HP)
-Boss will heal when he gets low on health (prompting you to silence him when he gets weaker)
-Boss will attempt to use combinations of effects of abilities, ex. "trapping" a healer by silencing him and then targeting a low-armor party member
(These are some basic examples. If both parties are presented with the same information it could create a high-strategy battle)
On another note, "twitch"-battle RPGs like Paper Mario never bothered me. It made the battles more interactive than a lot of other RPGs I've played, where mashing "A" through every battle works just fine if you're a high enough level.
I'd like to see an RPG where you are limited in your ability to overlevel, and your strategic ability decided your success or failure. Sometimes grinding levels can be cathartic, but often I just don't feel like it, and it's time I'd rather spend facing a challenge that requires constructive thought.
I'm beginning to grow more and more distasteful of today's systems that rely on Preparation for challenge, because the most difficult challenges require you to do try at least twice - and often, the first time is overly hard (challenge is unpredictable) and the second time is jokingly easy (challenge is known and properly planned for). That being said, if a game was built around this mechanic, it could be really cool - for example, maybe before a difficult boss fight you know is coming, you (optionally) gather lots of information on the boss, and thus you know to bring Holy Water or not to rely on Fire spells. If you skip this step, then you might be in trouble. IIRC, early editions of D&D used this mechanic in preparing for dungeon runs.
I also think there's overlap between Complexity and Problem-Solving, seeing that problem-solving is created by the amount of complexity within the game's mechanics. Chess is more complex than checkers because all of the pieces have different abilities, and using them all together properly along with analyzing your opponents' position requires problem-solving. You could incorporate the chess-like feel of constant analysis and creative problem-solving into an RPG in a boss fight with some simple scripting:
-Boss will use general attacks at first, but will preferably target the opponent's weak spots (party members that are low on HP)
-Boss will heal when he gets low on health (prompting you to silence him when he gets weaker)
-Boss will attempt to use combinations of effects of abilities, ex. "trapping" a healer by silencing him and then targeting a low-armor party member
(These are some basic examples. If both parties are presented with the same information it could create a high-strategy battle)
On another note, "twitch"-battle RPGs like Paper Mario never bothered me. It made the battles more interactive than a lot of other RPGs I've played, where mashing "A" through every battle works just fine if you're a high enough level.
I'd like to see an RPG where you are limited in your ability to overlevel, and your strategic ability decided your success or failure. Sometimes grinding levels can be cathartic, but often I just don't feel like it, and it's time I'd rather spend facing a challenge that requires constructive thought.
Crystalgate
694
author=slashphoenix
I also think there's overlap between Complexity and Problem-Solving, seeing that problem-solving is created by the amount of complexity within the game's mechanics. Chess is more complex than checkers because all of the pieces have different abilities, and using them all together properly along with analyzing your opponents' position requires problem-solving.
I would say that the problem solving is created by (or influenced by) the complexity, but I would not say it has to be within the game's mechanics specifically. You toke Chess and Checkers as an example, but try Chess and Go instead. All pieces in Go has the same ability, but Go is still considered more complex by various ways to calculate game complexity and it's harder to program an AI that plays Go well than one which plays chess well.
Now, Chess is played on an 8x8 grid while Go is played on a 19x19 grid. Having a bigger grid means more available moves which is what makes it even possible for Go to be more complex than Chess. Just the same, a game with simpler mechanics can in theory archive greater complexity by giving the player more available moves per turn, for example by having a bigger skill set.
In practice, only a fraction of the available moves will be considered. Sometimes the situation eliminates moves, such as healing not being even considered if everyone is healthy. Sometimes moves are permanently eliminated like Fira obsoleting Fire and enemies you'd actually want to use status moves on being immune against status effects. So, only complexity that's actually relevant ends up actually contributing to problem solving. I don't think a complex game mechanic really helps that much in this regard.
