avoiding "difficulty mode abuse"

[Xonatron]

How do I keep gamers from playing my game in easy mode? How do you make your game 1) challenging to the elite players, 2) easy for those who lack skills and should play in easy, AND 3) avoid reviews like this:

"The game is short, and will probably take no more than one or two hours to finish, at least on the easier difficulties."
- http://www.brighthub.com/video-games/co ... 20448.aspx

I do not want a review like this, even thought the point was a *positive* as he continues:

"That brings me to one of the best features of the game, which is the ability to select one of seven different difficulty levels, ranging from a practice mode in which opponents don't even fire back at you to a very hard difficulty level that will challenge even the hardest of the hardcore shooter fans. Such customization options should be offered in all shooters, if you ask me."

We have done #1 and #2. How do you do #1, #2, and #3 alltogether? The problem I have is not offering enough difficulty modes. We have done that. The problem is someone, who should be playing the game in HARD or EXPERT mode, playing it in EASY or NORMAL mode and seeing the whole game first time out. Which makes everything in the game un-special. You see the whole game, all the enemies, all the bosses, all the stages, all the experiences, all at once, and spoil everything.

And then possibly having some reviewer saying your game is short and easy "in the easier difficulties".

It makes me want to rename my HARD mode as NORMAL (bump them all down a notch) and then remove everything below NORMAL.

One option is to cut the game off early for everyone not playing at a high enough difficulty mode. Is that really the answer? Should I even be concerned with what I could coin as "difficulty mode abuse"?

Please rant away with your opinions...

[robthebanks]

I like the idea of bumping them all down a notch, to make your game challenging, yet possible for people outside the limited hardcore. However, since you expressed a concern around the idea of beating the game on an easier level of difficulty and having the game feel 'un-special' afterward, have you thought about having an unlockable mode that is achievable only after beating some of the harder modes? Or perhaps some incentive for the harder levels, perhaps make the easy mode an incomplete version, perhaps only allowing you to get to say, the 3rd or 4th boss or something... Unlockable ships, items, mini-games, challenge modes are some good incentives...

[LtC]

Unlockables, second loop with increased difficulty, a true last boss, etc might always be nice.

Experienced players usually like playing for score. More casual players usually tend to ignore scoring completely. Make the game a lot harder if you wish to have as high score as possible with stuff like heavy penalty for bombing or medals that rise in value if you collect them but drop if you miss any. XOP Black is a good example. Even if you can beat it easily on normal with using bombs it's still interesting to go for scoring when you can't use any bombs at all or your point meter will drop to 1/3.

[dmauro]

Forget IGN.



Seriously though, I think if you make sure all of your achievements are actually achievements and not mile markers as you credit feed your way through on the default setting, you should be good. You have to let those guys know there is more game, more strategy, more fun to be had, and achievements is a good way to make that clear.

Make the easy mode "practice mode" and if you're worried about spoilage of the levels, make the last level only available on the real difficulties. Also, a second loop with different music and different backgrounds will probably go a long way.

[Guardians Knight]

make the easier modes have less levels or something, see raiden dx, practice was 1 special lvl, then normal was lvls 1-4 and expert was 1-7 iirc, therefore inexperienced players can enjoy the game whilst seeing also that they havent played all the game and to do so requires them to get better.

just my 2p

[Xonatron]

A) We have considered making the game end short on the easy modes.

B) We have what we call "challenges" which are like achievements in Xbox 360 (trophies in PS3). They are mile markers AND "real" achievements for pros. We want it all.

C) We do not have unlockables. We will probably not have them.

D) We will have online scoreboards, well displayed, for the top guys to show their skills. The higher the difficulty mode, the higher the score. So, the top scores will have to be played in harder modes. The scores across difficulty modes are compatible, so all the scores will comparible. (The scoring system ignores the difficutly mode, and analyzes each individual enemy with no knowledge of the mode you are in, and awards points based on it's toughness.)

Even with all that, I still want the original game to feel special, and not so easily beat, before we get into accomplishing all our extra challenges.

Sounds like the solution is A) to implement is a cut-off game. The others are good but do not solve the core problem of some reviewer blasting through the game on grandmother mode. So, maybe have EASY mode = only 4 of the 8 stages or something. If you have anything else, please fire it my way.

THANK YOU ALL.

[nash87]

first thing that popped into my head was to give the difficulties embaressing names like psikyo did: baby and child, and then very easy. It discouraged me from ever playing those difficulties.

[cools]

make the easier modes have less levels or something, see raiden dx, practice was 1 special lvl, then normal was lvls 1-4 and expert was 1-7 iirc, therefore inexperienced players can enjoy the game whilst seeing also that they havent played all the game and to do so requires them to get better.

just my 2p

Raiden DX is 3 sets of levels in one. Alpha loops to Bravo loops to Charlie.

Yeah - cutting off the game in lower difficulty levels will solve it.

And add a special ending to Easy mocking IGN

[MathU]

For God sakes, please don't do any of that second loop crap. I hate that stuff with a passion. It's incredibly lazy. Once you've mastered the first loop it becomes nothing more than a chore to go through to get to the challenge. Add difficulty modes if you're unable to keep the game challenging and appealing to everyone at the same time. Unlockable difficulty levels are a bad idea as well.

[Lloyd Mangram]

Unlockable difficulty levels are a bad idea as well.

I'm not so sure. You could have 'Normal' and 'Hard' as the only levels initially available. Then if after, say, two or three attempts at playing the game on 'Normal' the player is getting creamed by the game, it could offer up a special Easy mode.

Alternatively, you could have the Easy mode available from the outset, but be blunt about it. Like...

EASY - Only choose this if you generally suck at shooters.

[TodayIsForgotten]

Isn't raiden on default settings relatively easy vs raiden 1 and 2? Could have sworn i read that somewhere. I would love to find out but my disk is lost.

I don't know how difficult your game is on normal (default) but i could imagine that the majority of people who download it will not be dedicated shoot em players. So, that could be a positive in that aspect.

I like the idea of looping as i feel the game ends when i die, instead of beating a set amount of stages and then thats it. For scoring purposes i would rather prefer a loop such as gradius (more noteable gradius 5), but not many games do this.

The only thing that is unclear in his review is did he credit feed for 1-2 hours? That is usually the biggest problem with shmup reviews. They're too short (aka credit feeding).

[Dave_K.]

How do I keep gamers from playing my game in easy mode? How do you make your game 1) challenging to the elite players, 2) easy for those who lack skills and should play in easy

Ideally you want SCORE to be the motivator, and not completing the game. This is how modern shmups add depth while keeping the game accessible to newbies. Adding voluntary item collection, secret bonuses, chaining, looping, True Last Bosses, rank, etc. are all ways you can keep the challenge for the advanced players, while allowing newbies to ignore any/all that to enjoy the core game at a much easier pace. Keep the difficulty level to 3 max (easy, normal, hard). Each difficulty should have increased score potential outside the voluntary extras. Online ranking is obviously the best motivator to get your point across.

[God]

I'm starting to suspect the proper way to handle this is to exclude difficulty altogether. If you can't hack it then you can't see the end of the game, period. Just like in the NES days.

How do you make your game 1) challenging to the elite players, 2) easy for those who lack skills and should play in easy,

Scoring System. Look at the first level of Ikaruga. The bad guys don't even shoot at you really. Falling off a log easy to survive and the competent players try to chain.

credit feeding

Little off topic but there wont be cred feeding in DZF will there? (Because this isn't an arcade game you wont be earning quarters by letting people play wrong. )

[nimitz]

The fewer difficulty modes the better...like nash87 said the name you give to the modes can make a huge difference.

You could have something like this:
Squirrel (fewer levels)

Monkey

Human


This way people are aware that they are playing at VERY easy settings and that the game is meant to be played at higher level.

Also, if the game as something like 6 difficulty modes most people will play halfway (3) and possibly call the harder modes unfair or unbalanced. Less is more in that case.

[DJ Incompetent]

How do I keep gamers from playing my game in easy mode? How do you make your game 1) challenging to the elite players, 2) easy for those who lack skills and should play in easy, AND 3) avoid reviews like this:

"The game is short, and will probably take no more than one or two hours to finish, at least on the easier difficulties."

You make the lowest difficulty available for the main 5-stage game something tougher than "normal". You do not allow continues!! Disable the option permanently. This main game is the only place you allow cutscenes, endings, story, rewards, TLBs, hidden bosses, all that good stuff available for the players.

Leave an obvious message on the title screen, intro cutscene, wherever that the objective of your videogame is to complete the main game in one credit. That is considered 'beating it'.

Next, you have a training mode fully available from the very beginning. Every stage is unlocked. No story, no dialogue, no perks. This is where you add tooltips or other methods of telling your players how to beat certain areas, what weapons to recommend on parts, even make a tutorial on tap dodging and bullet hoarding. This training mode is where you can allow easier difficulties to be selected to run through the stage. The point you need to explain to your players is that they are supposed to use the training mode to build their ability up to the point where they can tackle the main game.
Furthermore you break up your stages into bite-sized [Gradius-esq] checkpoints where players can select any part of a stage and any powerup level to start as, this way players can replay trouble spots to their heart's content until they think they're ready. Include an in-game replay option if you can swing it.
You may even include a sort of Warioware mode where you string a bunch of random checkpoint stage sections together and see if the player can deal with them, or do the same checkpoint section multiple times in sequence with an increasing difficulty each time.



You want the main game to be balls hard and make the player feel "I'm ready" before thinking of attempting. Do not give the player the option to credit feed or cheat by jacking up default life counts in your main game.
You want to make your training mode known to the player and reviewer that THIS will be the primary part of the game for the first 10+ hours the player owns your title. But in the training mode, literally give the player the ability to customize anything he or she wants.


This is how you keep the carrot dangling in front of all these misinformed """journalists"""

Good luck Doucette



Oh yeah and people who write brighthub articles make a cash commission off the number of hits they receive. You may want to just disable that link and paste his article instead of rewarding his nonsense.

[nimitz]

Good point, you should disable continues completely or limit them to 1 or 2, with a separate training mode.

This adds an epic feel to the game, because people wont see the end unless they try hard.

That being said it is going to be very hard to make the game fun for everyone, either you put the focus on the more hardcore crowd and make a genuinely good game OR you try and make the game accessible to everyone. It seems your trying to do both, it is not impossible but you have to be careful of spreading too thin.

[orange]

just pull a gradius 1 ac and make it no continues straight up

seriously no bitches allowed

edit: damn son i can't type

[emphatic]

Risk & reward is a great thing for shmups. Award players higher scores when they take risks. Point blanking enemies for example should give a higher score (showing a little points animation as the enemy dies or "point blank bonus" is a very clear way of showing this). Also, if a rank system is triggered by a score vs. how far the player has gotten in the game.

About difficulty settings, have a look at Blue Wish Resurrection Plus. http://www004.upp.so-net.ne.jp/x_xgamer ... works.html

The game has three difficulty levels, and does allow for a few continues. If you play in "Heaven"/normal, you can finish the game quite easily (using continues) if you're an average player.

[EddyMRA]

I will echo what's said so far in this topic. If you will make an easy mode, make it go through only the first few levels of your game, then have it end with something like "Great job! However, you have experienced only a small sample of the true game. Challenge the Normal difficulty!"

Also, fairly recent SHMUPS like R-Type Final and Gradius V start you off with a handful of credits per play session. The number of credits increases with playtime, until you have an unlimited number of continues or Free Play unlocked.

Difficulty balancing is a very delicate art. I remember in the PSX version of Raiden DX, the absolute easiest difficulty setting is so low that no enemies shoot at you at all.

Another way to adjust difficulty if you have a game with multiple ship selections: you can make one ship an all-around average ship that both novices and experts can use comfortably. Another ship can be made generally hard-to-use or very specialized (i.e. all-homing weaponry, but with slow speed and low firepower), which expert players can use. Finally, you can have a ship that's considered so high-tier that even novices can use it effectively enough to make significant progress in the game with just the right amount of effort. An example of this is Raiden Fighters. In that game, the Aegis is an all-around average ship. The Judge Spear is a ship that is a favorite of novices because of its fast speed. The Raiden mk-II is a generally hard-to-use ship because of its slow speed, even with its lock-on beam and homing missiles.

[PROMETHEUS]

For God sakes, please don't do any of that second loop crap. I hate that stuff with a passion. It's incredibly lazy. Once you've mastered the first loop it becomes nothing more than a chore to go through to get to the challenge. Add difficulty modes if you're unable to keep the game challenging and appealing to everyone at the same time. Unlockable difficulty levels are a bad idea as well.

+10000. Seriously, a loop is a BAD idea. It's only there in arcade games to create an effect of addiction and waste more of the player's time and money. DON'T do that !

[RollingSkull]

Well, for what it's worth, I suck at shmups and the ones I keep coming back to these days are CS3 and a couple of the Touhous as well as Blue Wish now and then. CS3 I love replaying for the story combinations, the variety in characters, and to try to finally nail a run in under 9 credits. Touhou offers variety in shot types and the elaborate Spell Cards offer a sort of satisfaction for surviving a boss's pattern, but I do find the "Guitar Hero" style memorization of the Touhous a bit off-putting. I guess that is symptomatic of most shmups, but I've got literally two dozen other games sitting on the shelves... If the thrill of being a REAL LIFE GUITAR HERO doesn't make me grind GH songs, being a shmup legend isn't gonna make me grind your shmup.

Blue Wish and stuff like ESPrade just draw me back simply for being so engaging and satisfying gameplay and design-wise.

[Ixmucane2]

Ideally you want SCORE to be the motivator, and not completing the game. This is how modern shmups add depth while keeping the game accessible to newbies. Adding voluntary item collection, secret bonuses, chaining, looping, True Last Bosses, rank, etc. are all ways you can keep the challenge for the advanced players, while allowing newbies to ignore any/all that to enjoy the core game at a much easier pace. Keep the difficulty level to 3 max (easy, normal, hard).

I agree with the principle of scoring, not mere victory, as a motivator and discriminator; but the mentioned special features are only good for the hardcore players that expect them.
Things like a second loop or a special ending can fly over the head of less motivated players who don't set out to reach world-class scores or even to 1CC the game and don't even know they are present.

I suggest a complementary traditional technique: giving clear and insistent feedback that player performance is mediocre even if he's technically winning, to stimulate his obsessive side ("I got 98% kills instead of 100% because my finger slipped, let's try again") and his competitive side ("if I'm expected to make twice as many points maybe I'm not understanding the scoring system").

The most common vehicle for this kind of feedback is the scoring and bonus summary at the end of levels, where items like getting no bonus for wasted lives and bombs or for missed objectives are clear enough. Mutilated scores and bonuses in case of death are less obvious; being given a grade is usually too opaque ("I gave a great performance and I got a C! This game hates me!").
Indicating an explicit par score and/or a detail of missed objectives is less usual, but it would be very effective.

Performance feedback can take place in the game levels themselves. Apart from the obvious but harmless enemies that escape, there can be signs and notices to reinforce the message: "Missed!" (players don't like to be taunted), "Chain broken!" (which reminds the player that there was a chain in the first place), negative scores, or more subtle sound and graphical effects (e.g. the score display degrades from large and golden to small and silver or a multiplier display crumbles).

Each difficulty should have increased score potential outside the voluntary extras. Online ranking is obviously the best motivator to get your point across.

Increased score at higher difficulty is likely to be too subtle an incentive, especially for the masses who don't really play for score to begin with and for those that don't make apples to oranges comparisons between their scores in different game modes.
Ranking is a good idea, but it might not be obvious enough ("Where can I find those last 18500 points?") and scores are likely to be clustered together (near the top of the leaderboard) and dispersed between different game modes and difficulty levels.

[yyr]

First off I'll start by saying that I already released a game on Community Games intended to appeal to as many people as possible but designed to challenge hardcore arcade players. It looks like that's what you're trying to do here.

http://www.snake360.com

I have 5 difficulty levels (the upper 2 have to be unlocked first), 6 courses and each course consists of 10 stages. To play the last 2 stages ("extra stages") you need to complete the first 8 with no miss. If you die once on an extra stage the game is over. There are no continues. So anyway...total of 300 levels.

I recently ran three contests, and in one of them, I offered a prize worth $100 -- 4000 Microsoft points and a year of Live Gold -- to the first person to clear 90% of the game. Basically what's required there is clearing half the courses with no miss and reaching the extra stages on the other half. Mathematically that will do it for you. It took me about five hours. Here's a taste of what's involved:

Superplay of Course 1 on Expert

End result: even with $450 in prizes, no major gaming sites ran the story on my contests, and although I had some entries in the other 2 contests I ran, nobody got to 90% completion.

If you look at the Internet Ranking boards you'll see that Course 1 on Easy has quite a number of listings, but the Master level courses have virtually none, and Expert is similarly barren. I know that there are gamers out there with skills...

The bottom line: Community Games are not yet taken seriously by most people. The majority of folks -- even the folks that buy your game -- are only going to play on the easier difficulties before they move on to something else. The people who enjoy your game the most will play it more, but even then, it doesn't guarantee that they'll do everything that there is to do with it.

My greatest regret with Snake360 is that I designed 300 levels, and I think I'm the only one who will ever see them all. What was the point of all that work? Community Games seem to sell on the games themselves, not the amount of content included. Some games that have less than an hour of content have sold very well. My game gives you 5-10 and that didn't make a difference. And some people (like Jim Sterling of Destructoid, who "reviewed" the game...google Snake360 and you'll find it easily) can't even see past the fact that it's a Snake game, and don't look at it any further.

All of that said: if you truly intend to release this month, you're probably not going to make many changes from this point forward anyway, so good luck with what you have. I'll definitely check it out. I hope my advice is useful in some way.

Ideally you want SCORE to be the motivator, and not completing the game.

I can't speak for anywhere else. But: sadly, the vast majority of the North American audience doesn't play games that way any more.

[Aru-san]

Superplay of Course 1 on Expert

Who knew a game of Snake could feel so simple, yet so epic? I have to give kudos for that.

Ideally you want SCORE to be the motivator, and not completing the game.

I can't speak for anywhere else. But: sadly, the vast majority of the North American audience doesn't play games that way any more.

It just goes to show that we've given too much convenience to the point that most of the people here do not want to work for achievement anymore.

[kengou]

I think removing continues entirely or limiting them to one or two (and NEVER increasing that number) is the way to go. No one will possibly say it's a short or easy game to beat because credit feeding won't be possible. Also, each stage you reach on one credit will unlock that stage in a practice/stage select mode, much like Ikaruga. Practice mode in ikaruga was one of my favorite features of the game. If it took me a few hours to reach stage 3 on one credit but then couldn't beat stage 3, I could practice on it in practice mode until I was good enough to get through it to stage 4, etc. Maybe don't give the player the TLB in practice, though.

[Observer]

Indeed, remove infinite continues and set the limit to 2-3. That way, even if they find it easy, they know that enough mistakes can mean a permanent gameover yet there is a chance to continue if you had a lot of bad luck or something.

Also seconding the replay mode addition. People love to boast and inflate their egos and nothing like uploading your super-pro replay so everyone can wow at it. It'll encourage people to do their best and actually show it instead of saying "I beat the game" and call it a day.

When you beat Samidare's Extra Stage, the magical words "Save Replay" are priceless. As crappy as the run could've been, beating that stage is already something that deserves some praising.

You could also lock the final stage if the player continued more than once. That way you are still being forgiving with non-expert players and give them a slightly bigger margin of error.

Good luck with your projects and, by the way, did you guys thought about porting Duality for PC in the future? Would be killer to play this online considering Exception Conflict doesn't seem to work anywhere outside Japan.

[cools]

Agree with the limited continues. That's precisely how ports/older games without save states (or difficulty levels) worked and it was perfect.

[robthebanks]

This is a little off topic, but I took a look at the video on your website, looks interesting but I have a question. How the hell do you control two ships at once??

[Guardians Knight]

@ cools:

raiden Dx does indeed split it up into training which is one long training level, then novice which is lvl 1-5 and then expert that goes from 1-8 and then a special lvl at the end. talking about the ps1 jap ver like not sure if its different on the pcb

[Aru-san]

This is a little off topic, but I took a look at the video on your website, looks interesting but I have a question. How the hell do you control two ships at once??

From what I'm guessing, you use the two analog ships to move and the trigger buttons to fire, I guess.

As for the limited continues thing, I think that would be a good idea. The only thing about that is when a reviewer complains about not continuing after a while...but that's their own fault for just playing games for just a few seconds then trying to make a quick buck off a biased review.