Game difficulty design.

adent42

(% chance the player will die) X (Penalty for dying) = Difficulty.

http://kotaku.com/5519108/how-hard-should-a-video-game-be

Discuss.

quantumsheep

It really depends on the game, who the target audience is and how cruel you want to be :P

For example, at work I'm doing some level design on a DS game for Disney. The target audience is obviously much younger than me, and I have to take that into account. If I find a section challenging, I have to think 'well, either kids are going to be much better than me at this, OR, 'it's just too difficult - let's tone it down a little!'

In my own games I try and make the game easy and fun to play, but with challenges for 'the hardcore'. Bugzone, a very early QS iPhone shooter, had a time attack mode where the player couldn't die, and there was no penalty for bugs that got past you.

The challenge lay in getting a high score. I introduced a score multiplier, that would increase with every 5 bugs you shot by one, up to a maximum of 9 levels.

So,

Shoot bug = score = score x 1
Shoot 5 bugs, increase score multiplayer by 1

Which makes shoot bug = score x2

and so on.

If a bug got past you, the multiplier went down by 1 level.

So you could be shooting bugs, and getting a score multiplied by 9, then a bug would go past and you'd have a score now multiplied by 8.

You'd get less, essentially, so you tried not to let a bug slip past to keep your score gain as high as possible.

A simpler way of adjusting difficulty is by giving the player a different amount of lives based on their difficulty setting. My top down shooter (still awaiting a pause function!) does this. It also adjusts the score by difficulty.

If you elect to play on easy, you'll have seven lives but each enemy killed gives you a small score.

As you go up the difficulty ladder, you get less lives, but your scoring ratio goes up.

This allows people to hopefully see most of the game by playing on easy with lots of iives. Then as they learn the levels, and want to get high scores, they go for less lives, but higher score ratios.

Then *another* way if doing stuff that I sometimes use is 'helping the player when they need it'.

This can be tied in to the player's health. If player health is less than 10%, for example, don't make the next weapon upgrade a laser. Make it a health pack.

Anyway, those are just a few thoughts on the subject, something I think about with every game I design

I'm sure there are plenty of other methods out there too!

Cheers,

QS

quantumsheep

It's also important, I feel, to give the 'illusion' of difficulty.

It's very easy to make enemies the perfect shot. They can track the player's X and Y position and launch a projectile at you with pinpoint accuracy that will get you killed every time.

This is no fun.

Giving them a margin of error helps the player. Think of stormtroopers in Star Wars. If they were anywhere near a good shot, the film would be over pretty damn fast. Making them a bit incompetent means that yes, there's danger there (being shot at) but the heroes would usually get away (and they were always better shots!).

Another trick is to make the player hit box smaller. Games like Espgaluda II do this. The player feels like he's in huge danger thanks to the billions of bullets on screen (bullet hell) but the chances of getting hit are reduced because of a smaller hit box.

I'll stop there. Someone say something!

JGary321

something!

quantumsheep

JGary321 said:
something!

I knew you'd back me up, mate

Seriously though, why not mention what you did for Blighted Lands? The player progression and difficulty increases would surely be interesting to read about here, non?