STATUS

author=Acra
It's probably fine if it's something like Final Fantasy II, where you're absolutely slaughtered in an encounter within seconds of starting. So long as it's abundantly clear 'you're not supposed to win this fight, at all', it's likely not an issue. The less clear that loss is, the worse it is, as until you die, the player'll probably feel like they're doing something wrong.

It's not the "fight you are meant to lose but don't really lose" trope nor is it the "those monsters killed us in one turn we'd better not go in this dungeon" trope either.

It's more like the protagonists (four man party of special forces from earth) just being forced into a tough-but-fair encounter with enemies neither they nor most likely the player know how to fight or what they're capable of (fairly typical but powerful fantasy enemies: harpies, will'o'the'wisps, what have you) while also having to work out what the party itself is capable of on the fly (unless the player happens to have been the type to check their skill and equipment menus before hand), you know working out during battle that this guy (Ryder) has the fully automatic assault rifle and grenade launcher, this guy (Simmons) can fire 5-round bursts with his SMG, throw smoke grenades, or hide in the shadows, this girl (O'Hara) is the medic, this girl (Watanabe) can scan enemies and steal their skills/spells.

I'm essentially trying to create the feeling of four well armed, well equipped, extremely competent people (US armed forces from Earth and a Japanese Physicist working for the U.N.) being thrown into an environment that they are TOTALLY unfamiliar with (a reasonably typical RTP dungeon). So the first time they encounter a mimic, they're like what is that, the first time they encounter these enemies, they're like what is that, the first time they encounter a save point they're like what the HELL is that, and they need to learn all this stuff on the fly while being complete badasses. While I did add an unskippable tutorial for Watanabe's Scan (what it sounds like)/Analyze (steal enemy skills) abilities, I'm trying to avoid any feeling of training wheels/baby steps. Like, these guys are well equipped and good at what they do, but they have stepped right into the middle of a living nightmare crazy town where nothing we take for granted about fantasy RPGs makes sense to them.

For Whatever 'Tis Worth:Time from the last available savepoint to the first fight is less than two minutes I would guess and contains less than ten dialogue boxes including a very short cutscene.

For Whatever 'Tis Worth: The next save is after these aforementioned 3-4 tough fights, when the PCs find the first save point and try to science it for a little while to figure out what it is and what it does.

"Punish" the player is never what I'm working towards. I just want games where you have to think about what you're going to do many or most turns, where you have to think about what the enemy can do in many battles, and where you have both moments of "What the fuck!? This enemy/boss can do THAT!?" and moments of "Holy shit! I can do THAT!?" when you level up and unlock new skills. I am essentially almost always aiming for a difficulty level of "Button Mashing Ain't Gonna Cut It Chief, But If You Think, You Can Win". (This one other game I'm working on with a real time ABS throws my whole paradigm out of whack: same principles, but very difficult to apply them when you've been thinking in "turns" your whole design career and now you need to think in "twitch".)

author=Liberty
No. A lot of people will only ever play the first 15 minutes of your game and if the first thing that happens is them running in to an encounter that is extremely hard, you're sending them the message that the rest of the game will be that way. If they get stuck at those first few encounters, they're not going to bother playing the rest of your game.


Ease your players in, don't slam them up against the wall of difficulty from the get-go, especially if the game gets easier from then onwards.

Definitely the conventional wisdom and I do essentially adhere to it in my own way.

Unintentionally, my process of 'achieving balance' almost always seems to be these 7 Golden Steps:

* Set the difficulty at a point where it's impossible for even me to beat.
* Refine the difficulty down to a point where it's very difficult for me to beat (i.e. Dark Souls).
* Refine the difficulty down to a point where it's somewhat challenging for me to beat (this is where I'm at now on this particular project).
* Refine the difficulty down again to a point where it's routine for me to beat.
* Refine the difficulty down AGAIN just in case.
* Refine the difficulty down AGAIN AGAIN just in case.
* Refine the difficulty down YET A THIRD TIME just in case.

author=Liberty
I kinda read it to mean "my first few battles are on-map event battles that you can win but are very very hard just cos lol". It probably wasn't meant that way, but there's a reason games usually wait before amping up the difficulty and that's so that people can learn how to play before they meet stuff that will challenge them to use all the various aspects of the system in order to win.

Yeah, I mean you didn't read it that wrong, they are in fact on-map encounters that you can run from on the map but not once you run into them, and they were at the time of my posting the status, very very hard (although, if above is tldr for you, emphatically NOT just cos lol). This wasn't really something I was seriously considering doing: I believe my game has a very fascinating story/premise and so I want to market it to a much wider, mainstream player base than the "masocore" set. It was just a moment of intellectual curiosity I had when I posted the status, at this point I personally was having a very fun and addictive time just trying to survive my own game. So I was idly wondering out loud if releasing it at that difficulty (I don't like difficulty settings tbh) would be fun for anyone else.

In general, it seems I've got my answer and will continue the process of refinement via the 7 Golden Steps.