Difficulty in games

If it's not ZDoom, it goes here.

How should difficulty be handled?

No difficulty settings, the game must be accessible to all. (casuals only)
2
5%
Difficulty should scale to player (Resident evil 4)
5
13%
Difficulty should have no other incentive asides challenge and achievements (X-COM)
9
24%
Difficulty gives incentives restricted to higher difficulties (more perks, more levels, better endings, etc.)
8
21%
No difficulty settings, the game must be for the skilled. (git gud)
2
5%
why not all (most) of these? (WildWeasel's suggestion)
12
32%
 
Total votes: 38

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insightguy
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Re: Difficulty in games

Post by insightguy »

Reactor wrote:It's all about balance I think. If you have only your pistol with little to no ammo, or just bare fists (without Berserker Pack), even Zombiemen can be a real nuisance.
This is what I like, power-scaling properly can really make it feel like you're getting better. Any normal monster can feel like a boss with the right weapons.

Though what's the weapon to monster scale here when it comes to doom?

Shotgun/Rocket Launcher/Chaingun = Barron of hell?

Plasma/BFG = Cyberdemon/mastermind?

What other monster-weapon combinations are there that make it a bossfight?
Shadelight wrote:Doesn't matter if it's tons of stuff being thrown at you with just a pistol. This is the case in most maps after death exits and it's just an exercise in frustration.
Why do some mappers rely on death exits rather than just rearranging the level order to suit the power-scaling? or just rework the level?
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Reactor
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Re: Difficulty in games

Post by Reactor »

Death exits are just plain frustration and trolling you at the same time - I shall never ever utilize them, that's for sure. There'll be many levels with "TakeInventory", but no death exits whatsoever. It's good for a quick laugh and exploiting a glitch if you're really low on health, but generally, using a game bug as a feature or a must-know solution for levels is greatly frowned upon, much like hiding a necessary key in a super-well-hidden secret area.

The weapon-monster balance can depend on a lot of things. In an average level with no special conditions, death-traps and other pleasantries, I'd say a pistol and a shotty is in par with Zombiemen, Shotgun guys, Imps, and Heavy Chaingun Dudes. Chaingun is in par with Cacodemons, Hell Knights, Pain Elementals and Lost souls. Rocket Launcher is a preferred choice against swarms of Cacodemons, Barons of Hell and Revenants. Plasmagun is essentially a slightly stronger Chaingun, so I guess it can be used against those beasties. As for the BFG, it does well against swarms of Barons, Mancubi, Arch-viles, and of course, the big bads, such as Spider Masterminds and Cybies.
Of course, this highly depends on the available ammo and the environment. If there is only 2 Energy Cells, you will probably conserve the two BFG shots, and use a chaingun or a shotgun instead. If the area you're in is cramped, and has short tunnels, using a Rocket Launcher is a very bad idea, even if you're up against Barons of Hell. If you're totally low on ammo, a Berserker Pack or the Chainsaw can be HUGE help. You must also take nearby traps, explosive barrels and monster infightings into account. If you're skillful enough, you can massacre 80% of the monsters on the level MAP18: The Courtyard without firing a single shot :) that map is friggin' easy even with a pistol-start. I didn't believe it until I actually tried it. I lost 42% health (a Revenant hit me from up above), but at the end, the only monster I had to finish off was a terribly weakened Hell Knight.

It is very possible to make a stage hard to complete even without placing a simple enemy. A huge variety of death-traps, lethal pitfalls, some sort of slalom-course in zero gravity, adding airstrikes a la Half-life, adding Miragia effect platforms, creating series of tricky jumps, creating a few challenging (but not impossible) puzzles, or adding a very strict time limit. I think it is a very nice addition of a game when the focus shifts from simple open door-grab ammo-kill monster routine :)
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Shadelight
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Re: Difficulty in games

Post by Shadelight »

insightguy wrote:
Shadelight wrote:Doesn't matter if it's tons of stuff being thrown at you with just a pistol. This is the case in most maps after death exits and it's just an exercise in frustration.
Why do some mappers rely on death exits rather than just rearranging the level order to suit the power-scaling? or just rework the level?
It's their way of making episodes in Doom 2 and a way to keep the SSG away from you. :P I like how Valiant and Ancient Aliens did it by providing a MAPINFO. More megawads with death exits need to do this.
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InsanityBringer
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Re: Difficulty in games

Post by InsanityBringer »

mappers probably do death exits and "episodes" because frankly doom is pretty terrible for continuous play. your firepower escalates pretty quickly, you can end up going into new levels with way too much stuff making it harder to balance, and the backpack is the absolute ruiner, allowing you to carry huge amounts of resources across levels, trivializing any challenge that isn't being balanced around starting with absurd amounts of ammo. It doesn't matter if you're pistol starting, but the resets are there to try to make continuous more interesting.
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Reactor
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Re: Difficulty in games

Post by Reactor »

This is true, I noticed that sooner or later, your stocks will max out because of the high abundance of ammunition, which makes the game a lot less challenging in the later levels, as you can pretty much annihilate any resistance. This is something which I desire to avoid at all costs for the first 20 levels of the game (the last level will require the players to scrunge up as many equipment as they could find, so if they improvidently use them up, there'll be hell to pay!), so me and the boys will be using lots of different methods to keep this phenomenon at bay without using death exits.
The easiest way of course is "TakeInventory". Secondly, ammunition will be given accordingly to the skill level - on "Normal" or "Hard", military supplies' quantities will be sparse, but still enough. On "Impossible" and "Rocket Scientist" skill level, there'll hardly be any ammunition. And thirdly, there shall be special enemies which could be damaged only by certain weapons, so having a huge supply of bullets or rockets will not help much with these.
Monster infighting will also be highly restricted (only projectile-shooting enemies can damage others), therefore the player will have to develop different tactics and solutions to pass the level instead of blasting everything in sight. This is where special Artifacts and items, like Knife Fury or Instant Wormhole will be extremely useful.
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Viscra Maelstrom
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Re: Difficulty in games

Post by Viscra Maelstrom »

as an avid player of gameplay mods, i kind of dislike death exits and using scripts to empty your inventory, because a lot of the mods i play have a slower rate of progression than the base game, and in the case of scripts, can outright break your inventory entirely.

i know that's the call of the modder to make whatever experience that they want to play, but it irks me if the core gameplay of the mapset isn't all that much different from vanilla Doom, but then forcibly takes all my stuff away at some point. i think that since gameplay mods are so prevalent in the Doom community now that this should at least be taken into consideration for those that plays gameplay mods.
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InsanityBringer
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Re: Difficulty in games

Post by InsanityBringer »

i'll be completely honest and admit i have absolutely no problem with the idea of a vanilla/boom mapper not considering how their work plays with gameplay mods, especially very tightly balanced things. when something's doing death exits, its very likely they intended the experience to be broken up into "episodes" just like id themselves did with the original doom. its just that you either pick having an episode menu or pick having the doom 2 extensions in vanilla and boom, not both. I guess doing what AA did and having episodes for ZDoom and Eternity is cleaner, though, and signals to those playing slower gameplay mods that they will have to consider it.

thoughts: most of my releases are single maps, usually about 10-15 minutes in length. my most recent one, Starlight Sanctuary, took me about 15 mins on average to beat running through the entire thing, and Legendary Sea of Stars is about the same length, maybe a little longer. what do I do about gameplay mod considerations here? With no long haul, mods that are designed for powering up over the long haul just don't work because there's no long haul to speak of.
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Reactor
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Re: Difficulty in games

Post by Reactor »

For a 10 level adventure, TakeInventory or death-exits are unnecessary, but for 30 levels, it is certainly a good addition. I never made a problem out of it when halfway thru the game, I lost all possessions. A good game with a good storyline can substantiate it well enough so the player won't feel he has been robbed.
TakeInventory can be spiced up - for instance, giving the player Chainsaw instead of having only bare fists, or giving him a Rocket Launcher with 20 rockets, but allowing no other weapon types on that level. Gives me kinda a "Lemmings" feeling, when you have to solve a level using only the given skills.
As Nash said, if the developers do it just right, it will not ruin gameplay and progressivity at all :)
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insightguy
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Re: Difficulty in games

Post by insightguy »

Mods Like doomRL actualy make playing long wads with no death exists more playable due to the upgrades nature, so doom itself may not be suited for long 30 megawad map wads, but most gameplay mods seem to rectify that.

The current consensus seems to be small but well designed level packs rather than megawads (unless it was a major colaboration) and I wonder if that's because doom's weapon load out was never designed for more than 9-15 levels.

Makes me think, how well would a "simple doom 2" TC flow? streamlined arsenal (4-5 weapons only, all are relatively equal in utility), compacted monster roster (Barrons will pretty much be the toughest thing in the mod and the doom 2 monsters would be replaced by variants of the doom 1 ones) and a reduced map set (around 9-12 maps, doom 2 maps being combined with each other).
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