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"How Game Designers Protect Players From Themselves"

J1M

Arcane
Joined
May 14, 2008
Messages
14,616
There is nothing I hate more about modern game design than "choose your own difficulty", which is exactly what you are talking about when you hand the player something like a turn timer or a set of weapons of different objective quality levels. Rather than playing an interesting, well-designed challenge, the player is asked to try multiple difficulty levels in the hope of finding one that is fun.

Essentially, designers are abdicating their responsibility for properly balancing a game to the player.

Game too easy because you are using that good weapon you found? Maybe you should save it and use a weaker one! Would you like to invest a limited resource here? We won't tell you what it does! Do you want the stress of time pressure? Don't worry, I haven't provided any indication as to how much buffer room was added! Done our limited selection of content? Turn up the difficulty level and do it again!

I know it is a pillar of RPGs, but the treadmill of incremental power increases is stupid. I would much rather see character growth in the form of different, but not strictly better, options. For example, different elemental damage types with interesting situational usage.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2017
Messages
79
There is nothing I hate more about modern game design than "choose your own difficulty", which is exactly what you are talking about when you hand the player something like a turn timer or a set of weapons of different objective quality levels. Rather than playing an interesting, well-designed challenge, the player is asked to try multiple difficulty levels in the hope of finding one that is fun.

Essentially, designers are abdicating their responsibility for properly balancing a game to the player.

Game too easy because you are using that good weapon you found? Maybe you should save it and use a weaker one! Would you like to invest a limited resource here? We won't tell you what it does! Do you want the stress of time pressure? Don't worry, I haven't provided any indication as to how much buffer room was added! Done our limited selection of content? Turn up the difficulty level and do it again!

I know it is a pillar of RPGs, but the treadmill of incremental power increases is stupid. I would much rather see character growth in the form of different, but not strictly better, options. For example, different elemental damage types with interesting situational usage.

The worst part is how some games are designed for one difficulty only (e.g uncharted).
 

Zombra

An iron rock in the river of blood and evil
Patron
Joined
Jan 12, 2004
Messages
11,539
Location
Black Goat Woods !@#*%&^
Make the Codex Great Again! RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
The worst part is how some games are designed for one difficulty only (e.g uncharted).
In my mind that's to be preferred, as long as it's clear what level you're "supposed" to play at. One solid design, with "cheat modes" thrown in for those who demand them. Plenty of games say straight up in the difficulty selection screen "This is the intended experience."
 

Durandal

Arcane
Joined
May 13, 2015
Messages
2,117
Location
New Eden
My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit.
Question: what RPGs do actually alter combat encounters and enemy AI or other mechanics depending on the difficulty setting beyond health and damage bloat?
 

TheHeroOfTime

Arcane
Joined
Nov 3, 2014
Messages
2,879
Location
S-pain
Uncharteds (at least 2, 4 and Lost legacy) tend to adjust the AI an it's pattern depending on the difficulty, not only the damage you take and the damage you cause to enemies. They're probably the best popamoles games in that regard.

The fact that some studios goes thorugh the easy way of the stats overbloat (Bethesda's Skyrim difficulties for example) doesn't mean there's no others that decide to properly adjust and adapt the experience on each difficulty level. Super Castlevania IV for example has an unlockable difficulty that enhances the enemy placement of all the game.
 
Joined
Sep 22, 2015
Messages
1,020
Dungeon Rats increased the hit chance% of the player and decreased the % for enemies to hit you, and the highest difficulty just removed the bonuses altogether entirely.
 

Jaedar

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 5, 2009
Messages
9,838
Project: Eternity Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pathfinder: Kingmaker
Question: what RPGs do actually alter combat encounters and enemy AI or other mechanics depending on the difficulty setting beyond health and damage bloat?
I know this is cheating, but both TNM and GMDX mods for deus ex do this.

Logic artists games in general have custom difficulity settings.
 

Drakron

Arcane
Joined
May 19, 2005
Messages
6,326
The manner in which Breath of the Wild tried to prevent one bad player compulsion ended up creating another. Weapons were so fragile that many players were too afraid to actually use them, hoarding them throughout the entirety of the game.

And that weapons became comically overabundant so getting a new weapon was meaningless as it would break after a while.

Breath of the Wild just copied the "ARK" survival template but the survival template have a more i"n-depth" (busy work) crafting and the weapon breakage is there for resources usage, since you could not craft weapons in Breath of the Wild the whoe thing was entirely pointless, just disposable weapons all over the place of various strength that on a open world system creates far too much issues as players may end up having their progress reverted just became they lack the tools to progress forcing then to go around and waste time, that is padding gameplay time with busy work.
 
Joined
Jan 7, 2012
Messages
14,152
Question: what RPGs do actually alter combat encounters and enemy AI or other mechanics depending on the difficulty setting beyond health and damage bloat?
Most do in some fashion, it's just less noticeable. e.g. Fallout 1/2 makes AI more aggressive about doing aimed shots on higher difficulties.
 

Iznaliu

Arbiter
Joined
Apr 28, 2016
Messages
3,686
Most do in some fashion, it's just less noticeable. e.g. Fallout 1/2 makes AI more aggressive about doing aimed shots on higher difficulties.

A lot of the time this actually makes the AI worse, as it is overly aggressive to the point of ridiculousness.
 

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