I''m currently working on an RPG that has around 10 hours of gameplay and I want to add a difficulty level setting to bring players back for more. Is this a wise choice? Can RPGs have difficulty levels?

They can, but I find that it spoils the game pretty much. Why not go for the ADOM difficulty- level -solution (some classes are more powerful than others).

Bastardos The Great

quote: Original post by bastardos
They can, but I find that it spoils the game pretty much.

Why do they spoil the game?

In answer to the original question, RPGs can have difficulty levels, and many of them do. There are also a huge number of ways of implementing them.

e.g

Slowed/Harder progression: Reduced experience, or expensive 'training' required to increase level etc.

Reduced rewards: game rewards are smaller, making it harder to get that +40 Uber-Sword of Everything-Slaying

Increased opposition: More/meaner bad guys.

Stricter mission requirements: Something like the thief system whereby on harder difficulty levels, certain restrictions are placed on what the player is allowed to do. e.g

Easy: Rescue the princess from the goblin lair
Moderate: Rescue the princess from the goblin lair, without her getting injured
Hard: Rescue the princess from the goblin lair, without her getting injured and without killing any goblins (because doing so might provoke the goblin king into launching a counter offensive)

The problem with this idea is that you need some mechanism for coping with mission failure or the game can become impossible - the obvious one is to have the mission reset itself on failure, but I'm sure there are alternatives.


[edited by - Sandman on June 12, 2003 8:19:29 AM]

Learn a lesson from the Oregon Trail.

You can start as a banker from Boston and be loaded and have a pretty easy win.

Or you can start as a farmer from wherever and have a tough win with a lot of points.

Maybe alternate endings?

-- Steve --

Theres an alternative option which might seem a bit odd, but worked suprisingly well concidering how it was done.

In the PS2 game, Breath Of Fire: Dragon Quarter, the story on first play through was only enough to make the game work, I.E just showed what Ryu saw.
On second play, some extra scenes get inserted in, showing some of the events that happened before Ryu meets Odjn.
On third play, more scenes, and so on and so forth.

By the time you''ve pieced together all of the game''s scenes, a simple little story turns drastically complex with intertwining conspiracy.

Failing that idea, you could just do what Parasite Eva and Vangrant Story does, secret dungeon that opens up on newgame+.

quote: Original post by Kryptus
I''m currently working on an RPG that has around 10 hours of gameplay and I want to add a difficulty level setting to bring players back for more. Is this a wise choice? Can RPGs have difficulty levels?

Another thing you can do it have choices. My RPG has about 10 hours of play. BUT you can choose to be good or evil. It doesn''t affect play much, but then their is an extra quest if you''re good.

Originally, there was going to be 2 extra quests for good and for evil, but because I had a deadline, I switched it to just one extra quest for good.

Kryptus why not implement a diablo style system with the normal/nightmare/hell difficultys

If you haven''t played diablo before it basicly means that once you finish the whole game on normal you then have the option to go through with the /same/ character (keeps his gear and levels etc) but the monsters are harder etc.. and then once you finnish nightmare you get the option to go onto hell dificulty

I think its a better system because people normaly like keep their old characters and going in again.. it depends how your plot is for replayablity though - eg. one of the npcs makes a joke in the second town or something.. same joke would get a bit old the 50th time round

An alternative for replayability is to include lots of secrets and hidden extras, and give players the chance to access a list of secrets once they''ve won once (which is the approach I take nowadays with Final Fantasy games)

For actual difficulty levels, unless there are differences in plot between difficulty levels, or some form of continuity between games, then there''s not a lot of point replaying an essentially plot-driven game just for the sake of some harder game mechanics.