Why Difficulty Is So Hard To Design
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- Опубліковано 14 бер 2024
- A deep dive into difficulty and I didn't even say Dark Souls. Well. Until now.
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Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi TED Talk "Flow, the secret to happiness"
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Razbuten “Gaming For A Non-Gamer”
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Hey, sorry, this comment is unrelated to the video, but I came here from the collab on BlackThorn, and I just need to say you are SO talented and SO handsome
you’re gonna make me blush !!
LITERALLY SO HANDSOME
Something I really like that I've only seen a handful of games do is that - rather than have a global Easy, Medium, Hard type difficulty mode - the player is given several finer options for tweaking difficulty. For instance, there might be an option that says "Enemy Count" with choices of "Many, Some, Few, None" or "World Size" with choices "Large, Medium, Small." Resource management games like ONI or Factorio tend to have this type of difficulty setting, but it could be applied across any genre similar to how Randomizer settings give you lots of flexibility in determining your run.
That’s kinda what I’m toying with for Lighthoof! I’ve noticed some testers don’t mind combat but really struggle with a platforming room, so it would be nice to give them the ability to turn on more frequent hazard respawns, or maybe even half-to-no-damage from hazards or something. I feel like that sorta thing wouldn’t be too terribly hard to implement!
@@LighthoofDryden You can also affect that diagetically with badges.
@MarushiaDark316 that’s a brilliant idea. I think Bug Fables’ hard mode is in the form of a badge?
I can’t believe you didn’t win the 10k game challenge, seriously what an incredible game you put together. Loved your implementation of the computer curveball seemed like something that was going to be tough to implement but you nailed it!
Thank you so much!! Believe me I was sweating hard when I got that one 😅 but now it’s one of my favorite parts!
Playground.... Sandbox? I guess not the same thing exactly.
Definitely super related concepts though in my mind!
Great work! I'm not a game designer myself but I love learning, so I really enjoyed hearing about this facet of video game design. I can see it also helping those who play games and want to provide feedback to the designers about the gameplay experience when beta testing or just patching down the road.
I didn’t even think about that angle! Quality of feedback is huge though-that’s an important group of people that could be helped by thinking about this too. Well-spotted 😄
If there was a TED talks for game dev, you'd be a popular speaker.
Wow, thank you! Maybe someday if I’m lucky I’ll get to do a GDC talk 😅
Hey, I just stumbled onto your video from the "100 DEVs" video and loved your contribution there. This is the first video I watch and I really enjoyed your perspective and presentation, this is great content, thank you so much.
(You forgot to link Razbuten's series, which is no big deal since it's easy to find, but I figure you'd want to know)
Oh NO. Thank you so much, I’ll fix that!
"a game for everyone is a game for no one"
Another modulator that you can't control but can train players to use is self-imposed challenges.
If I go through an old too-easy area of a game that would be boring to a younger version of me, I keep myself entertained by trying to no-hit or speedrun the area.
That was a habit I learned in Dead Cells. Which is why I believe that people can be primed to challenge themselves by offering them recurring rewards for succeeding at a more challenging style of play.
(Context: Dead Cells gave extra cells and bonus items for no-hit killchains and runs below a certain time, _every time_ you pulled it off. Its first levels are casually easy to an experienced player, but getting no-hit on them is still a challenge.)
Well-put! that was one of my favorite design choices in Dead Cells. When I started the game I was like “WHAT? There’s No Way I’m ever going to get in either one of those doors.” But then after a certain amount of runs I started being mad at myself when I didn’t get *both*
Excellent work as always my friend! I can’t wait for this demo!!
Ahh thanks my guy!! You and me both, haha
Well made and informative video! I'll have to watch this again when I'm at the stage where I'm balancing the systems in my game. I'm curious to know what methods/approaches you're looking at with Lighthoof!
For my own game, I haven't decided. Likely closer to the Hades route, where each boss is a skill check and if you've beaten the game, you can tweak some of its systems to your liking to unlock additional methods of progression and skill checks. I'm undecided on an equivalent to Godmode, however. Because one of the genres I'm working in (monster taming) skews a little younger / less experienced, I feel like it could be necessary, since the roguelite players are going to want a steadily increasing challenge they can sink their teeth into.
Actually, roguelites are an interesting design space on their own with the addition of meta progression. You're effectively making the game easier for yourself through skill gain and increasing powers, so it feels like the base difficulty needs to be on the higher end to accommodate satisfying growth.
I looove that “Pact of Punishment” style of hard mode (so much that I went up to 32 heat on Hades haha)
The whole Roguelite space is really interesting in that! There’s such a design tension between using power to motivate and reducing the need for skill. But maybe the expectation that you *will* fail (which would be overly frustrating/anxious in some designs) keeps you in flow because you still feel okay.
But clearly it’s still *possible* to succeed on your first run, too (if you’re a god)
Very helpful and insightful :) Definitely got lots from this and really appreciate this :)
I’m so glad!! Thanks for watching (again! Since I’ve seen you before!) 😊
@@LighthoofDryden Thank you for making great videos and really being helpful with your advice and for sharing your game development as well. Looking forward to seeing more of that to. God bless :)
Glad I decided to check the channel out after watching blackthorns video, super well made video man keep it up! :)
Hey thanks so much for stopping by!! Means a lot, I’m working on some new vids now :)
Balancing power ups gained fron skill vs difficulty is an interesring one. I can think of 2 solutions ive seen. One is where the player controls the dificulty by choosing when to move on to more difficult areas.
The other is that unlocking the power also comes with curses, I think about the binding of Issac for this.
Yess Rogue Legacy 2 also makes it kind of a trade off. You get a certain amount of “relic power” (can’t remember what they call it) before it starts reducing your health. I’m very much a fan of that kind.
Cant get enough of your videos! Also you have a great voice!
Hey thanks Tom!!! Appreciate that 😄
This is such a great video! Kudos on putting it together.
Thanks so much!! It was quite a lot of research and writing, but it was fun 😄
Very useful information and analysis, thank you 😊
Thank you Ibra!!
I've had to think about a lot of these concepts when designing difficulty in my own game. It's one of those things I get nervous about because I have seen how getting this wrong can impact a game's reception (imo Kingdom Hearts 3's combat is excellent and mainly got its somewhat poor reception from hardcore players due to the game initially releasing without a challenging difficulty mode).
One of the things I did for my difficulty selection screen is make sure that there is a bullet point list in the description that outlines the big-picture changes that each difficulty bring, which I'm hoping will somewhat alleviate the "How will the player know which difficulty mode suits them" problem, though I also recognize it's not a perfect solution given that it requires players to have context for certain features. I'm thinking I might add a sample combat scenario that the player can load into so they can determine how they feel about the difficulty, but we'll see. It's definitely been a struggle trying to figure all this out lol
I love the high communication strategy, I think that’s incredibly important!
Great video as always man! What’s your feelings on the Souls games from a difficulty perspective?That’s always a hot topic. I personally like how they’ve built it and it how you as the player grow and adapt to enemies and your build. A bit of grinding I guess but I like that. At least in that context.
Elden Ring is one of my fave games of all time, but I haven’t played other souls games unfortunately! I do think ER suffers a bit from the “what level am I supposed to face this at?” problem. You never really know if you’re getting the “intended experience” of an area or boss-I often felt like I could have been overleveled. So it really puts it on you to balance the game, just like selecting modes, but more diegetic. But I can also see how the game would be too hard for a lot of players even with summons/grinding runes/etc. It’s a tough one!! For the first part, maybe labeling the enemies with a level number would actually help a lot. For people who find the game too hard, an easy mode would certainly be a help and let more people experience it, which in my estimation would be a positive thing.
@@LighthoofDryden I can see that. I never played ER so I’m unfamiliar, but yea I do think some accessibility for difficulty for that game could be good for it. You should take a look at Dark Souls 1. When you get to your main shrine, there are 4 directions you can choose from. Obviously you can choose any of them, but there is an “intended” path for new players from a progression standpoint. Almost like a Metroid game that has the path for new players, but experienced ones can sequence break. I think DS1 has good balance overall.
Heyy brodie the video is great and we will be expecting more video's like this
I appreciate that!! I’ll be workin on em 💪
What drawing program do u use plz?????
It’s procreate! With the Inka brush specifically :)
Thank u so much! I'll check it out!@@LighthoofDryden