Original post by Kest You don't see the point in trying to define a meaning behind the genre name? If you don't define one, the name itself has no point. Would it be okay to call Thief a FPS? Would all FPS fans like Thief? Tight story, dialog, combat, several weapons. Every RPG element other than character development is used in nearly all games.
I think what he means is that rather than picking a genre and designing a game to slot into it, we should be designing a game and let the reviewers and marketing folks worry about which genre to pigeonhole it into.
Original post by Kest You don't see the point in trying to define a meaning behind the genre name? If you don't define one, the name itself has no point. Would it be okay to call Thief a FPS? Would all FPS fans like Thief? Tight story, dialog, combat, several weapons. Every RPG element other than character development is used in nearly all games.
I think what he means is that rather than picking a genre and designing a game to slot into it, we should be designing a game and let the reviewers and marketing folks worry about which genre to pigeonhole it into.
Oh, then yeah, that's pointless. And this is the last thread where it should matter. But I think the question started out as "why can't we remove stats from RPGs", and that was in regard to the difficulty being easier to balance without stats. And I turned that into "because it would no longer be an RPG".
Original post by Kest You don't see the point in trying to define a meaning behind the genre name? If you don't define one, the name itself has no point. Would it be okay to call Thief a FPS? Would all FPS fans like Thief? Tight story, dialog, combat, several weapons. Every RPG element other than character development is used in nearly all games.
I think what he means is that rather than picking a genre and designing a game to slot into it, we should be designing a game and let the reviewers and marketing folks worry about which genre to pigeonhole it into.
Oh, then yeah, that's pointless. And this is the last thread where it should matter. But I think the question started out as "why can't we remove stats from RPGs", and that was in regard to the difficulty being easier to balance without stats. And I turned that into "because it would no longer be an RPG".
Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It doesn't matter that it would no longer be classified as an RPG, as long as the game is fun.
[Edited by - Daniel Miller on July 3, 2006 9:29:00 AM]
My personal preference is to have a game just short of the point of 'unbeatable or too long to beat'. Personal feelings aside I think diffficulty could be reduced to a few items:
1. Length. This is especially pertinent in RPGs and free-form adventure games. How long is this thing going to take to beat? What emotional investment do I need for X number of hours? Is it good enough to waste X hours of my life?
2. 'Hardness'. Will it take 20 iron bullets of joy (ibj) to kill the Evil Knight of Zorg? What if I can only find 5 ibj, or 15? Do other people give up because of the complexity, or laud it as being 'an artistic masterpiece'?
3. Interest. If a game is well made, you will play harder, longer, and have more fun. I've played enough games to know this for a fact. I think most people here would agree with my point.
4.Experience. If your a grizzled vet to games, or a newbie, difficult will mean different things, regardless of your talent. If a game has an overwhelming number of tasks, it can seem hard, when it's just memorization and task processing. If a game is hard before playing, and easy afterwards, that's fine. However that's also low replay value.
I think my points were slightly obscured, but still clear enough to understand there.... it's night. Whatever.
You have just been PUNK'D!No. . . just your comments. They were totally, fully, and completely demolished. Nothing to do with MTV...
Has anyone here played system shock 2? I loved that game. The sounds, the ambience, the enemies, how the game was completely designed that you would constantly be on edge...
One of the ways how the game kept your nerves on edge was the difficulty: Although you had the traditional easy medium hard insane setup where you would use one difficulty throughout the game and where more difficult settings would make it more expensive to increase your RPG skills. It was further made more difficult that the skill increases required you to pickup certain chips, which were a limited resource.
Now I loved this game. I showed it to a friend. He hated it. But the only reason was that it was too difficult for him. A fantastic game, with fantastic sounds and some really creative design throughout, but it is too difficult.
In my circle of friends there are a number of gamers, but their skills vary wildly. If I see this friend play a game, I want to pull my hair out. He doesn't get half the nuances I see. But I enjoy it, because he's a friend and we're playing a game.
For him, a game like Fahrenheit is fantastic: although the button mash sequences can get old, it does challenge you in new creative ways: At one point you have to identify someone at the police station that you have seen frequently throughout the game. But it's harder to conjure his face out of nothing. This is a player adjusted challenge: If you look on the game box, it's easy. If you play fair, you realise how hard it is to get a police character sketch right
I liked that game, but my prefference goes to something alpha centauri or galactic civilization, where during play I peel down the rules until there's nothing you can tell me or in case of an action game, I try to find the quickest way through the game. These are challenges I set myself and they are more enjoyable than the challenges the game set for me.
In regards to self-set goals, it is surprising how a little design can facilitate plenty of goal setting. The more that is recorded, the more goals you can go after. Once you add a scoreboard to the game, you can aim to score the best possible. But rather than just having a points scoreboard you could have a varied scoreboard.
In a FPS, it could track bullets fired/ accuracy / damage-done-to-damage-taken-ratio / headshots.
My friend would actually go crazy and enjoy having the most bullets fired, while accuracy is something I'd go for. We'd still play the same shooter, but we'd play it differently. When the game gets harder, you are sometimes forced into a particular 'effective' technique, which would mean that my friend and I are forced down the same road again. This is the true danger of higher difficulty games.
Okay, not really on the topic or anything, but as I do more pondering than I do actual coding, I figured I'd throw my two cents in here, as the topic is "gaming philosophy" afterall.
Sometimes I like a really hard game, something that's next to impossible, it makes me challenged and determined and I will sit for hours and play the same sequence over and over again until I get it right, taking tremendous joy in finally surmounting the odds and advancing. While this same part might be harder or easier for other players, I don't really care about that. But at the same time, or perhaps, on the other foot, I also play games like minesweeper, solitaire and freecell that require little to no effort on my part because I have the knowledge to beat them time and again and even the minor variance of the starting position of 52 playing cards is enough to keep me going. So there's something to be said for doing it either way I suppose.
If you look at something like Yahoo! or MSN games, you won't find anything terribly complicated, but some of those stupid puzzle games can be near impossible to beat if the random number generator doesn't swing in your favor, but these games generally don't get me aggravated, I once again start over and try to beat it, that's the fun, winning.
However, what I really wanted to say is a while back I brainstormed and idea for a game. The project codename was "Survive". In my mad scheming I envisioned a game that came right out and told you the deck was stacked against you. Basically, you can take any environment you want, but what I envisioned was being stuck somewhere in the middle of nowhere, with nothing, about to die of thirst and hunger (these being your first two objectives before you die). From there, it only gets worse as the game throws everything it can in your direction in order to try and kill you and your wits and you dumb luck are the only factors you can count on for survival.
Most people would probably die really quickly, in my imagined scenario, just trying to locate a clean source of water before they died of dehydration, or trying to kill/find something to eat with nothing but their bare hands. But that was the entire point, make a game where all signs point to you losing, because if you do manage to win, the victory will be that much sweeter.
I think, in closing, that this can somewhat be summed up by my personal philosophy that there should be no varying levels of "difficulty" because no matter what, they always come off cheesy. If you are making a game that is supposed to be hard, supposed to challenge the players to be their best, then that is what it is, make them play harder, smarter and better. If you're designing a game that is supposed to be nice and relaxing, then sure, make it(hypothetically) a breeze to beat, or at least figure out the more subtle nuances of.
Like others here, I feel a tremendous feeling of disappointment with myself when I play a game and can't get past Part X in normal or hard mode, and have to resort to playing in easy mode to try and get there. I know that the game is supposed to be hard, but as a player, I will make full advantage of any edge that I can, whether it be an easier difficulty mode or a rocket launcher, if it helps me to win, I'm going to use it.
I see a lot of comments on what settings everyone likes and what makes a game good(and hard). Here's my thoughts, I don't play games a lot, once a week or so, difficulty comes in several ways, one is the complexity of the control. The need to memorize a 27 button move to beat the boss fight. Another is natural skills, the twitch factor also the the problem/puzzle solving variety and then you have the artificial construct, the need to be standing on the exact correct pixel to make the jump with out getting killed.
Players will be better in some areas and not so good in others. Lets look at HL2. it has both a twitch game and a puzzle game, if I select easy the twitch game gets easier but dose the puzzle game? If I suck at puzzles but have great twitch response what do I pick for a difficulty? Games that have just a single play mode are getting infrequent, I think everyone agrees variety within a game is usually a good thing but that makes setting a difficult level more.. well difficult.
This all comes down to what YOU and the PLAYER think is fun. You will not please everyone. So don't try make the game you want to play and there will be some others that will also enjoy it.
(pet peeve) There's the problem/puzzle solutions that are based on what the programer/delvloper thinks are correct and may not be the best answer the player comes up with. I have a big problem with this I find I end up not trying to solve the problem but trying to figure out what the progamer want me to use as the correct answer. I know it's hard to come up with all possible soloutions but all problems/puzzles should have multiple correct out comes.
Original post by Talroth Myself, I think a game should be fairly easy, I could almost walk through the game and see 'the end', but I shouldn't get the full rewards from the game if I do that.
Large group of baddies lounging around in this warehouse, which just happens to be packed with things like rockets, and shells for large cannons, that sort of high explosive things. Now, I could take the easy way out of that part, and drop something in to blow the whole place up, however that would cut off some extra part of the game, like getting some fun experimental weapon, or finding out an extra part of the game, where you can for example, stop some experiment where they are testing new drugs on humans or something, shut down the factory that is pumping out super soldiers that will make the game harder later on.
Give the player options for how they want to deal with problems. Do I want to solve this puzzle to open the door? Or do I want to blast the door open? maybe destorying something that could have been useful.
Give bonus awards for doing things the 'harder' way.
I have to get past this guard post. I could fight my way through, freeing captives, or I could slip down into the sewers and bypass it. Or maybe I could use stealth, taking out the guards one by one before they can raise the alarm. However, don't make the 'easy' part too easy, make it something I have to look for. Big signs with an arrow "Unguarded pass this way" doesn't cut it.
(this isn't actually about difficulty levels as such, but I wanted to respond to Talroths idea).
I think this could actually be a gameplay idea, you would have to "let the player know" that thats how the game works though, so theyed get to know for instance when they get to a new area there might be a bonus/ extra there or there might not be, this of course would make them want to attempt the challenge (or whatever), just to find out. I don't think you could (should) make a game with just this idea though.
