Editorial Vogel on RPG Difficulty

[Jason]

Tags: Jeff Vogel; Spiderweb Software

<p>Spiderweb's Jeff Vogel offers his <a href="http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2011/02/three-rules-for-difficulty-in-rpgs.html" target="_blank">Three Rules for Difficulty in RPGs</a>.</p>
<blockquote>The trickier part is understanding the need for tough fights. Very often, players don't like to be seriously challenged. They hate to lose. They hate to lose repeatedly. Sometimes, the temptation to just give up and have every fight on the default difficulty be easy peasy is overwhelming.<br /><br />But you still need to have tough fights, for several reasons. A game full of only easy fights against trash is monotonous and dull. The suspension of disbelief in a role-playing game is delicate, and, if a dragon is only as tough as Goblin #0145, it just feels wrong. And because the adrenaline rush of achieving something difficult (be it slaying a demon lord of winning a game of solitaire) is one of the great pleasures of computer games, and you just can't lose that.</blockquote>
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[Forest Dweller]

Too bad he doesn't follow his own advice more often.

(I know I'm just speaking out of my ass and going on what I've heard from others, having never played any of Vogel's games.)

 

[Chinese Jetpilot]

The trickier part is understanding the need for tough fights. Very often, players don't like to be seriously challenged. They hate to lose.

I think its because gamers have become conditioned to dislike challenge. I come from the early coin-op generation where players loved the challenge. I make it a habit of setting newer games on their highest difficulty (Normal is the new Easy). But it's even affected me. When I go back to playing an old adventure game, it takes some readjustment to relearn how to actually "think" again when playing that type of game.

EDIT: Battery dying, cutting reply short.

 

[taxalot]

So, what's new Jeff ? You're telling us that games that are too easy are, well, too easy?

Wow, fuck.

 

[juggernaut]

Yes, that's all he's telling you, in his blog post called "Three Rules for Difficulty in RPGs", which you definitely read.

 

[zeitgeist]

By the way, along these lines, if you put any puzzle or riddle in a game, there is a percentage of users who will never figure it out. This is why I've drastically reduced the number of puzzles in my games.

Simply brilliant.

 

[shihonage]

His observations based on experience happen to align nicely with my suspicion based on speculation derived from anecdotal evidence.

I'm one of those people who abandons games when faced with an obvious puzzle. Puzzles shouldn't be recognizeable as such.

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

I'm one of those people who abandons games when faced with an obvious puzzle. Puzzles shouldn't be recognizeable as such.

Give me some examples of non-recogniseable puzzles, if you would.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

The Codex. It's really a great big puzzle.

Some people who reach your tough fight will [...] refuse to use the healing potions, or forget that they have healing potions, or never have realized that healing potions are potions you can drink that heal you.

Can't we just call these people idiots and mock them for their stupidity?

 

[PorkaMorka]

RPG fans expect a lot of trash to slaughter, so they can be a badass and Conan-like and so they can collect experience to get strong and get new spells and swords and stuff.

RPG fans may expect trash fights, but ego gratification aside, I'm not convinced they are necessary or beneficial to RPGs.

If you don't have any interesting decisions to make, the core gameplay mechanics (moving your pieces around on a board and clicking on menus) of most RPGs are not particularly fun. In fact, some decent games can become downright tedious when the interesting decisions are removed.

I think the real reasoning behind including so many trash fights is simple.

Quick and easy content for RPG designers. Designing challenging fights is tough. There is a very narrow "sweet spot" between "not hard enough" and "too hard", and it takes thought and playtesting to hit that range for a variety of players.

But trash encounters are supposed to be easy, so you can just populate a map with a bunch of encounters of 10 gibberlings and call it "content".

Trash fights are probably a big reason (but still only one of many) that RPGs as genre tend to continually disappoint. Wasting your time is a genre convention.

 

[Raapys]

By the way, along these lines, if you put any puzzle or riddle in a game, there is a percentage of users who will never figure it out. This is why I've drastically reduced the number of puzzles in my games.

Simply brilliant.

Well, he's right. Most people hate puzzles. That's why Riven, AKA Myst2, only sold 4.5 million units. Vogel's obviously aiming a fair bit higher than that.

 

[Mangoose]

Quick and easy content for RPG designers. Designing challenging fights is tough. There is a very narrow "sweet spot" between "not hard enough" and "too hard", and it takes thought and playtesting to hit that range for a variety of players.

But trash encounters are supposed to be easy, so you can just populate a map with a bunch of encounters of 10 gibberlings and call it "content".

That and wanting to pad the gameplay hours.

 

[Brotherman Bill]

The Codex. It's really a great big puzzle.

Some people who reach your tough fight will [...] refuse to use the healing potions, or forget that they have healing potions, or never have realized that healing potions are potions you can drink that heal you.

Can't we just call these people idiots and mock them for their stupidity?

Or make the game ship with a walkthrough.

 

[zeitgeist]

Some people who reach your tough fight will [...] refuse to use the healing potions, or forget that they have healing potions, or never have realized that healing potions are potions you can drink that heal you.

Can't we just call these people idiots and mock them for their stupidity?

One man's idiot is another man's faithful customer.

 

[The Wizard]

Can't we just call these people idiots and mock them for their stupidity?

i'd rather die over and over again then waste a healing potion.

what if i need it later.

 

[~*´¨¯¨`*·~-.¸-AIN'T]

snip

Completely agree. The best solution would be to make a game where all of the fights are challenging. And that doesn't mean DA's every monster takes 5 minutes to kill. It means actually forcing the character to use strategy/items/whatever so you don't have filler. Yes, you might have to get rid of a lot of the combat in the game because every battle being a challenge could get kind of boring due to combat taking a long time, but it shouldn't be a problem. Getting rid of filler is always a good thing, because filler is just the stuff that is there to pad gameplay hours without adding to the experience (and most often detracting from it). Killing trash mobs doesn't make me feel like some sort of golden god, it just makes me fucking bored.

 

[Scream Phoenix]

The Codex. It's really a great big puzzle.

Some people who reach your tough fight will [...] refuse to use the healing potions, or forget that they have healing potions, or never have realized that healing potions are potions you can drink that heal you.

Can't we just call these people idiots and mock them for their stupidity?

I don't even remember a single hard encounter in Avernum.

 

[Spectacle]

If resources such as healing and ammo are limited, even an easy fight you have no real chance of losing can be a challenge as you aim to win while minimizing resource expenditure.

 

[shihonage]

I'm one of those people who abandons games when faced with an obvious puzzle. Puzzles shouldn't be recognizeable as such.

Give me some examples of non-recogniseable puzzles, if you would.

Puzzles that are not mandatory, in-your-face gameplay stoppers, but are side-options that reward you for being clever. Such as blowing up the Radscorpion cave in Fallout.

Also, puzzles that are simply not puzzles, but just things that naturally flow from the nature of a game. When you need to figure something out to move forward, and yet it doesn't seem contrived or reveal itself like a blatant hard wall plonked down by developer. It doesn't bring your inertia to a dead halt. Better yet, when there are several approaches to solving it.

First major quest in Fallout was also a puzzle. Finding where the water chip is. But you weren't trapped in some stupid building in front of an impassable door while figuring out in which order to place some retarded gems, but moved through the world. That's how it should be.

 

[Baron]

I know doubling content is inefficient and impractical, particularly for a solo developer, but at key points like Boss monsters it would be worth giving the player a couple of options. Fight the dreaded two eyed cyclops, or take the path through the gnome villages whose inhabitants may try to pickpocket you. A combat option, and an RP option / or a puzzle option.

And maybe heap some NPC praise on the PC who chooses the hard option, whether combat or puzzle.

 

[SCO]

His observations based on experience happen to align nicely with my suspicion based on speculation derived from anecdotal evidence.

I'm one of those people who abandons games when faced with an obvious puzzle. Puzzles shouldn't be recognizeable as such.

metastasis of the cancer that is killing gaming

 

[shihonage]

Gesundheit.

 

[Forest Dweller]

I'm one of those people who abandons games when faced with an obvious puzzle. Puzzles shouldn't be recognizeable as such.

Give me some examples of non-recogniseable puzzles, if you would.

Puzzles that are not mandatory, in-your-face gameplay stoppers, but are side-options that reward you for being clever. Such as blowing up the Radscorpion cave in Fallout.

Also, puzzles that are simply not puzzles, but just things that naturally flow from the nature of a game. When you need to figure something out to move forward, and yet it doesn't seem contrived or reveal itself like a blatant hard wall plonked down by developer. It doesn't bring your inertia to a dead halt. Better yet, when there are several approaches to solving it.

First major quest in Fallout was also a puzzle. Finding where the water chip is. But you weren't trapped in some stupid building in front of an impassable door while figuring out in which order to place some retarded gems, but moved through the world. That's how it should be.

So basically, you're talking about realism. But what about games where realism is not a primary feature?

 

[Rogue]

When a game offers me no challenge I just lose interest fairly quickly. But people like for someone to hold their hand. I even noticed this when I played my first and only MMO - EVE online - for 2 months. There was a significant share of people that paid their montly fees and did basically nothing - they'd sit in a safe zone and mine ore. Me & my friends adopted the life of piracy, always at war with everyone, never knowing when we'll be blown to bits. And even that got boring eventually.

 

[shihonage]

So basically, you're talking about realism. But what about games where realism is not a primary feature?

We're still talking about RPG framework here, right? Realism doesn't matter, as long as the universe has semi-consistent laws as to whatever reality it creates.

Knowing those laws, player can find his way around its obstacles.