Difficulty and balance in Video games.

[Gormongous]

I hate responding to the posts line by line, it makes me feel like a belligerent asshole, but you wrote a monster, so here goes.

This is an interesting thing, because my feeling is that making the game easier doesn't let you find effective tactics for playing the game.

If the reason for making it easier is simply so that you can use all of the tactics presented to you, the developer has failed in balancing their game.

For the experimentation angle, I think i've become a believer in RPG's letting players respec. I still feel like there needs to be some manner of permanence, but more as an atmospheric and experiential matter, feeling committed to and invested in your choices.

I think we're agreeing, maybe? For me, the purpose of well-tuned difficulty in games is to force a player to explore the game's systems in full as they seek out an optimal strategy. Otherwise, you get Bioshock, as mentioned earlier, where the first weapon you are given remains effective for 95% of combat encounters and can brute-force the other 5%. With Torchlight II, the skill system was maybe too balanced for to encourage experimentation? My starting skill combo never became ineffectual enough to write off all the points I'd invested in it, and brief forays into other combos just made me feel like I was wasting my time.

Respec systems leave me of such mixed mind. I've never found one that kept me from thinking, "This is bullshit, none of my choices mean anything," without making me think, "This is bullshit, I can't undo any of my mistakes." I don't have a solution.

The Halo:CE pistol probably isn't a fair point to be basing that argument around, because it's an issue of fumbled game balance. Bungie has been pretty open about the Halo:CE magnum as having not been meant to be that powerful. It was allegedly a bug that showed up so late in development that nobody knew about it before it shipped, and so It does something like twice the damage it was meant to.

"noob combo" tactics persist in later games, but not to the detriment of everything else, there they are the systems working as intended. Like, and that's the trick, you want a game that is both demanding enough and well balanced enough to encourage meaningful and interesting exploration of its systems.

And yet my Halo-playing friends in high school screamed bloody murder at Bungie for "dumbing down" the multiplayer balance when they fixed the pistol in the sequel. Player (especially fan) perception of balance and difficulty is perhaps the most unreliable epistemology in the universe.

Okay, but why are there traps in RPG's? That's the question here, then. I think it's generally to encourage careful thinking and cautious action while also creating tension. So what happens if traps aren't dangerous? You just run through them, you absorb the hit and never think twice about it, their reason for being there completely vanishes. I mean, so it's an arbitrary challenge and restriction with a purpose only evident to the designer. It's the kind of thing that you can't ever expect the audience to be sympathetic with, and you're never going to get good feedback on. (I'm always reminded of the sparse checkpoints in Dead Rising, why they exist, and how much the fans hated it.)

If I were to guess, I'd say it's just a blind holdover from the first Diablo, which got it from the harsher roguelike model it adapted. Even then, I was more afraid of the item durability loss, which was expensive, than the health loss, which was trivial, so good on the Torchlight devs for giving traps some bite and giving back the anticipation/tension loop some more thematic teeth.

God, remember how item durability worked in Diablo? It dropped so rapidly and if it hit zero the item was just gone, poof. Talk about a failure spiral.

[SecretAsianMan]

I hate responding to the posts line by line, it makes me feel like a belligerent asshole, but you wrote a monster, so here goes.

Same

Otherwise, you get Bioshock, as mentioned earlier, where the first weapon you are given remains effective for 95% of combat encounters and can brute-force the other 5%. With Torchlight II, the skill system was maybe too balanced for to encourage experimentation? My starting skill combo never became ineffectual enough to write off all the points I'd invested in it, and brief forays into other combos just made me feel like I was wasting my time.

Respec systems leave me of such mixed mind. I've never found one that kept me from thinking, "This is bullshit, none of my choices mean anything," without making me think, "This is bullshit, I can't undo any of my mistakes." I don't have a solution.

I find this interesting because I feel almost the exact opposite. I experimented a lot in Bioshock and found it to be one of the more rewarding parts of the combat. Granted, I wasn't ever forced to do it, but my personal preference in FPS games is to avoid melee at all costs, so I never used the wrench when I could avoid it. Halo, as you can imagine, took a lot of getting used to. With Torchlight II, I didn't feel as though the starting skills were becoming ineffective, but rather by the time you reach a high enough level to unlock another skill, that new skill isn't effective enough to use especially since you already put points into the lower tier skills. Both of these may be just be personal taste.

As for the respec, I wish that Torchlight II's limited respec worked in a different way. I'd like to be able to refund all the points in one specific skill rather than the last 3 points I spent. Maybe have the respec cost a lot of gold or require you to trade in uniques to do it. Getting back 3 points is usually useless to me because if I decide I don't like the way a particular skill is working, it's usually too late for me to undo it and now I'm stuck with it. I suppose it does give the decision more weight since you can't take it back easily, but I feel like there's a better solution than the existing one.

And yet my Halo-playing friends in high school screamed bloody murder at Bungie for "dumbing down" the multiplayer balance when they fixed the pistol in the sequel. Player (especially fan) perception of balance and difficulty is perhaps the most unreliable epistemology in the universe.

The Halo pistol probably wasn't the best example, but it's 3AM and I'm at the office posting this inbetween getting work done. Or not done depending on who you ask.

[Sno]

I hate responding to the posts line by line, it makes me feel like a belligerent asshole, but you wrote a monster, so here goes.

There's so much going on in these posts, this is just the easiest way to organize the thoughts.

I am probably not a belligerent asshole.

I think we're agreeing, maybe? For me, the purpose of well-tuned difficulty in games is to force a player to explore the game's systems in full as they seek out an optimal strategy. Otherwise, you get Bioshock, as mentioned earlier, where the first weapon you are given remains effective for 95% of combat encounters and can brute-force the other 5%. With Torchlight II, the skill system was maybe too balanced for to encourage experimentation? My starting skill combo never became ineffectual enough to write off all the points I'd invested in it, and brief forays into other combos just made me feel like I was wasting my time.

There shouldn't be a single optimal strategy to find if a game has been properly balanced, right? Everything should have a strength and a weakness, a time and a place. I mean, the other extreme isn't any good either, just having a set of very general tools that are always viable. At either extreme, you're not really making any choices.

Player (especially fan) perception of balance and difficulty is perhaps the most unreliable epistemology in the universe.

This is definitely true, and a whole huge conversation in and of itself.

I find this interesting because I feel almost the exact opposite. I experimented a lot in Bioshock and found it to be one of the more rewarding parts of the combat. Granted, I wasn't ever forced to do it, but my personal preference in FPS games is to avoid melee at all costs, so I never used the wrench when I could avoid it. Halo, as you can imagine, took a lot of getting used to.

For me at least, the issue with BioShock wasn't just the wrench, it's more the matter that everything works in every situation.

[Sno]

I don't feel like creating a new topic for this question because, in my mind at least, it's potentially a closely related conversation.

So how do you guys feel about slow-starts in games? I guess the two extremes being the so-called learning cliff or the gradual "stop helping me" wind-up.

How patient are you with a new game?

If you play a game that is complex and isn't explaining itself, do you make that concentrated effort to figure it out, or do you just give up?

Do you get bored with simple games that feel like they need to gradually, carefully build things up?

[Tanukitsune]

The more complex the game, the more patient I am with the "helping me" thing. I had to quit two games in a row because the tutorial was so minimal I had no knowledge or skills on how to deal with the game and died the moment the tutorial ended without knowing what I was doing wrong.

[youmeyou]

Easy to learn, difficult to master is a gaming adage that I think still holds true for 99% of what is out there.

Minecraft was an exception where it started as such a social and online experience that it didn't feel wrong to reference the wiki and youtube for how to do different things. Especially as there wasn't a traditional goal or scoring system in place to drive gameplay.

Valve is really good at putting tutorials in the game that don't feel like tutorials. Through lighting to lead the player, through careful, measured introduction of elements and so on. Dishonored also does this really well. Showing you what rats do right at the beginning was a really great way to establish their role in the world and their relationship to you and other NPCs.

[SecretAsianMan]

One thing I can't stand is a game that uses pretty standard controls/mechanics that most players are likely to have encountered in other games, and FORCES you to go through a tutorial. Ok, I get it, right trigger is shoot. Same as the last 2 games. Same as every other game of this type I've played. I understand that some players will be new to the game/genre, but when you make make a guided tutorial like this unskippable, it just frustrates me.

[Zeusthecat]

I have been playing COD World at War for the last few days now and decided play on Veteran difficulty since I managed to beat COD Modern Warfare on Veteran and even did the hostage airplane mission in under a minute. I usually play games on the default setting but every now and again I feel like challenging myself. Plus the Call of Duty games have achievements for beating each level on Veteran so it is enough incentive for me to give it a shot.

 

That being said I am really really really really really really really really really really fucking goddamn frustrated right now. I am on the tenth mission and have been stuck on a checkpoint in an underground metro for a few hours now. To make matters worse, bombs are dropping above ground which causes the whole screen to pretty much shake continuously and is going to give me a fucking stroke.

 

After being stuck for a few hours numerous times in this game, I am going to say that I think the way difficulty is done in these games is fucking terrible. Here are my gripes:

1. Call of Grenades Grenades at War - I am in a shower of grenades all the time. It is infuriating. There is literally nothing I can do when 4 grenades drop next to me when I'm in cover. I either sit there and take it or try to run and get shot 532 times as soon as I pop out of cover. I try to throw them back but there are just SO FUCKING MANY.
2. Teammate AI - I literally have to kill almost every enemy singlehandedly. Every now and then one of my teammates will kill a guy but for the most part they all just sit there shooting at the air. Or maybe they're killing invisible guys. I can't tell you how many times I am in cover and I have two teammates 10 feet ahead of me also in cover and an enemy runs right past them and rapes my face. He completely ignores my teammates and my teammates ignore him like there's some sort of secret truce where everyone agrees that I should be the first to die.
3. Infinite spawning enemies - I just plain hate this design. It makes no sense that once I reach a magical barrier the enemies stop spawning but until then it is a fucking onslaught. I hate that crap so much and I feel it encourages me to play stupidly. I pretty much have to run and pray sometimes in the hope that I can avoid getting shot and blown up just so I can get past that barrier.
4. Enemies have predator senses - I pop my head out of cover and before I can even begin to line up a shot I'm dead. The reaction times the enemies have is godlike and they always know exactly where my head is so they can shoot it the second they have line of sight. They are just too perfect. And yet my teammates can't seem to hit anything.

The one thing going for this game is the checkpoint placement. Every checkpoint I get is fucking glorious. But even so I feel like most of the time when I get through a section and get the next checkpoint it was mostly due to a lucky run. There is a certain level of trial and error where I eventually find the 'best' route to take but it still takes forever because I have to get lucky enough to not get grenades showered on me and not get shot.

 

Despite how much I hate the difficulty in this game and think it's done terribly I am going to keep going at it. I am pretty close to the end and I know I'll get past this checkpoint soon but I needed to vent a little. The sense of accomplishment is going to be huge when I finally beat this thing but dampened a little by the amount of luck that has been involved.

[Twig]

I almost always by default play video games on the hardest difficulty. Exceptions are strategy games, because I'm absolute garbage at them. But reflex-based games, I feel like, even if I'm not too great to start with, I can acclimate at a relatively decent pace.

 

And I never learn my lesson.

 

Max Payne 3 on the hardest (available) difficulty is a fucking atrocity BUT ONLY AT CERTAIN POINTS. It's like... they trick you into thinking you can handle your shit, and then throw some straight-up BRICK WALLS in your face. Moments where you've got to fight like fifty dudes within a single checkpoint, without any abundance of pills to restore health, and you have almost no cover to work with. Worst.

 

Then I unlocked two more difficulty levels.

 

While I'm here, unlockable difficulty levels are stupid. ):

[thestalkinghead]

when i first play a game, i don't want to be annoyingly frustrated by the hard parts, i want to play through the game and have the intended experience, i think normal setting of difficulty should be exactly as hard as the game was intended and harder difficulties should be there for the second playthrough when you know exactly what will happen, i think easter eggs and things like that are for the second playthrough of a game, because i want the first playthrough of a game to be a flowing narrative (even action games) and not a stop and start search every crevice and alleyway find every easter egg and click on everything ten times "game" unless that is the intended game experience

 

and Twig my biggest complaint about max payne 3 was its lack of quick saves (they used to have multiple quicksave slots), checkpoints are supposed to help you if you forget to save not punish you by forcing you to repeat the same actions over and over again, at least with that type of game anyway

[Zeusthecat]

I generally don't like how harder difficulty levels are implemented in games and typically stick to the default difficulty for similar reasons as thestalkinghead stated. I'm just having a weird mental episode right now where I want to see exactly how badass I am at video games and COD WAW happened to be the next game up to bat in my backlog and gave some extra incentive with the achievements. But damn it is frustrating when I feel like I've got my route and everything figured out and random events that I have limited control over keep stopping me in my tracks.

 

One game that I think does difficulty right is Rainbow Six Vegas. I cannot count how many hours I have spent doing Terrorist Hunt missions on the hardest difficulty with the max number of enemies possible. I think they did an excellent job with the AI and I have found many different loadouts that are all equally effective in different ways. Smoke grenades and breaching charges ended up being my favorite loadout but I had just as much success with grenades, flashbangs, and incendiary grenades.

[Twig]

Yeah "harder" typically means "more health, more damage", which is complete and utter bullshit.

 

But I can't stop myself. I like things being difficult in video games. ):

 

And, I mean, I enjoy cheesemints, but the difficulty-based ones, I typically never bother to chase after unless I really, really, really like a game. For example, I have no plans to play Max Payne 3 all over again on an even harder difficulty just to get dat cheese.

[Sno]

I don't really have anything significant to add to the conversation at this time, i'm just going to throw this out there, because i thought it was interesting, that the original Half-Life is significantly harder on its normal difficulty than Half-Life 2 is on its hard difficulty. (I just built a new PC, and whenever i reinstall Steam, i always see Half-Life sitting there and somehow i always end up playing through the games again.)

Also, i really, really loath how the CoD games are balanced at their higher difficulties, that shit is not fun. I don't much like or respect CoD to begin with, though.

Reading your posts, Zeus, i wonder if you're feeling a bit of the Treyarch/Infinity Ward divide, with your comparisons to the original Modern Warfare in there.

[Zeusthecat]

Also, i really, really loath how the CoD games are balanced at their higher difficulties, that shit is not fun. I don't much like or respect CoD to begin with, though.

 

Thank you. It feels good to have someone agree with me after the anguish this game has put me through on Veteran.

 

I am also not a big CoD fan but I do like how they control and the high frame rates are nice. Played MW through and enjoyed the rollercoaster ride campaign but didn't get anything more out of it after the credits rolled. Same with MW2. Spec Ops was a fun little diversion in that game but I never had anyone to play it with so I only did a few missions.

 

I told myself I was done with CoD games after MW2 but then saw WaW for $7 last black Friday and couldn't say no. I wish I would have. I can't ever bring myself to quit a game before finishing it and now that I've made it so far on Veteran difficulty I just have to finish it. Good thing my controller throwing/breaking days are behind me because I would be out of controllers by now.

[Sno]

When i've played CoD games on their higher difficulties, it really just felt like the only solution was to try harder. Hit your marks faster and more precisely, just go through those motions ad nauseum until you either luck through it or have tried sufficiently hard enough.

I don't think it's so much even an issue with how those games are balanced at their higher difficulties, but rather the higher difficulties shining a light on what is fundamentally wrong with those games.

There's no stepping back and re-evaluating the situation, no engineering a clever, risky solution to your combat dilemma. The situations you're thrown into are neither broad or dynamic enough to allow that, and any attempt to do so will simply lead you back to the same conclusion you had started at with no new insight beyond what you already assumed. Which is, simply put, that you need to try harder next time.

Fuck that shit.

Edit: Hey, there's a point to make in all of this. I feel a good, well-balanced difficult game should reward a player's inspection of and introspection about the challenges laid before them by the game's systems and spaces.

 

when i first play a game, i don't want to be annoyingly frustrated by the hard parts, i want to play through the game and have the intended experience, i think normal setting of difficulty should be exactly as hard as the game was intended and harder difficulties should be there for the second playthrough when you know exactly what will happen, i think easter eggs and things like that are for the second playthrough of a game, because i want the first playthrough of a game to be a flowing narrative (even action games) and not a stop and start search every crevice and alleyway find every easter egg and click on everything ten times "game" unless that is the intended game experience

 

It's interesting to me that you would assume that the "intended" experience must always be the one where you are able to stride through the narrative without any roadblocks.

Especially when many action games, of course, advertise to the player their higher difficulties as "the way it is meant to be played".

[thestalkinghead]

It's interesting to me that you would assume that the "intended" experience must always be the one where you are able to stride through the narrative without any roadblocks.

Especially when many action games, of course, advertise to the player their higher difficulties as "the way it is meant to be played".

 

well i think that is bullshit, the normal difficulty should be the difficulty it is meant to be played, hard mode should be hard mode not the secret intended difficulty, and i didn't say it should be easy (that's easy mode) or i should be "able to stride through the narrative without any roadblocks" i said "i don't want to be annoyingly frustrated by the hard parts" (i have completed COD 1,2, waw and MW on veteran difficulty and that can get annoyingly frustrating), meaning that while i still want a challenge it should be balanced and play tested so it isn't just irritatingly hard, that is what the harder difficulties are for.

[Zeusthecat]

Reading your posts, Zeus, i wonder if you're feeling a bit of the Treyarch/Infinity Ward divide, with your comparisons to the original Modern Warfare in there.

 

Just noticed your edit.

 

I think what you're saying is accurate. It's been several years since I played the original MW but I really don't remember it being quite as frustrating as WaW. The sniper mission was the only super bitch mission in that game that I remember having to retry a bunch of times (the end part where you have to wait for the chopper). And it probably took me somewhere between 60 and 90 attempts to beat the hostage mission at the end in under a minute but it didn't seem that bad because that was only around 1 1/2 hours of attempting it. I seem to remember the teammate AI being a bit better and nowhere near as many grenades getting rained upon me throughout that game. Plus the level design seemed better to me.

 

 

 

There's no stepping back and re-evaluating the situation, no engineering a clever, risky solution to your combat dilemma. The situations you're thrown into are neither broad or dynamic enough to allow that, and any attempt to do so will simply lead you back to the same conclusion you had started at with no new insight beyond what you already assumed. Which is, simply put, that you need to try harder next time.

 

Yes yes yes yes! 1000 times yes!

 

This perfectly describes my experience with almost every checkpoint. I attempt it and die. Restart, die. Do that a few more times and maybe get a little further but then hit a roadblock. Convince myself that I need to try a new route, die. Try again, die. Do that a few more times and maybe get a little further but then hit a roadblock. Convince myself that I need to go back to my original route, die. Die die die die. Oh my god, made it past that roadblock, oh wait, die. Make it past the roadblock one or two more times and am convinced I'm figuring it out, die each time. Then suddenly every attempt has me dying 30 seconds in. Now I can't even get to that first roadblock any more. What the fuck, I thought I had it figured out? Try several more times, get frustrated and throw all of my smoke grenades, run as far as I can, die. Do the same shit I've been doing this whole time and not even that well because I'm so worn out, get lucky, checkpoint reached!!! I'm elated. I've never been happier to see those two words, and I'm dead again. Then start the whole process over again for the next checkpoint.

 

AAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!

[thestalkinghead]

yeah that sniper mission in MW on veteran difficulty was ................ frustrating, at that level of difficulty i had to figure out how to break the game basically, i hid in a small hut thing near were the chopper lands and just threw every grenade that came near me away and then when the time came just threw all my grenades and hoped i didn't get killed before i got to da chopper

[Zeusthecat]

yeah that sniper mission in MW on veteran difficulty was ................ frustrating, at that level of difficulty i had to figure out how to break the game basically, i hid in a small hut thing near were the chopper lands and just threw every grenade that came near me away and then when the time came just threw all my grenades and hoped i didn't get killed before i got to da chopper

 

That... is exactly what I did. Found a little outcropping by a building behind enemy lines and just hid there until the chopper arrived. Then threw all my grenades at the line of enemies that had their backs to me, ran past them, picked up the dude and escaped.

[Professor Video Games]

There's no stepping back and re-evaluating the situation, no engineering a clever, risky solution to your combat dilemma. The situations you're thrown into are neither broad or dynamic enough to allow that, and any attempt to do so will simply lead you back to the same conclusion you had started at with no new insight beyond what you already assumed. Which is, simply put, that you need to try harder next time.

Fuck that shit.

 

Halo games go a long way towards getting this right. Legendary still has some of the common pitfalls of lazy higher difficulties ie health adjustments and level memorization requirements, but they get a lot right as well. Enemies don't just have more health, they are smarter and better armed. Advancing often requires intelligent weapon selection and movement through/use of the environment (which the level design usually encourages). I've heard the encounters referred to as "combat puzzles" and it's pretty apt, though it's important not to lose the emphasis on the combat part...you still have to be precise as hell to take down the tougher enemies before they get a bead on you. It's funny though that those skills don't translate at all to multiplayer. I made my way through Legendary in several of the games but online I was always a maximum scrub.

 

Also everything I said breaks down in any of the games when you have to fight the Flood. Then it's just shit and I generally give up.

[Sno]

You would, in fact, find that Halo has been cited frequently for a lot of the arguments i made in this thread.

I think they're great games.

The multiplayer definitely requires a different set of skills, you see the same pieces in different roles, and the strategy overall being much more about coordinated teamwork.

[SecretAsianMan]

It's a dumb statement to make, but I like it when games have 4 or more difficulty settings.  I'll usually play on the one just below the hardest difficulty, as that tends to be my personal Goldilocks point of being just hard enough to challenge me but not so hard that I feel like I'm beating my head against a wall.  When there are only 3 choices, I tend to find easy and normal too easy, and hard is too frustrating.  I might eventually be able to do it, but it's not fun or enjoyable.  I think I recall a similar statement being made on an older episode of the cast, but I forget which one and who said it.  My gut says Nick.

 

I'll also agree that making a game "harder" by adjusting numbers like health and damage is shit.  That seems like lazy design to me.  I much prefer games that make me change how I think about a situation rather than just how I act.

[Zeusthecat]

I read through the earlier posts and I agree with the Halo argument. Halo and Rainbow Six Vegas (although in a completely different way) are probably my top two games for how to do difficulty the right way. They're not perfect but they're leagues ahead of most other games in that department. And yeah, the health thing in Halo is a little bit of a bummer, especially with the knights in Halo 4. 

[Sno]

I would argue that Halo 4 is actually the easiest legendary playthrough in the series. The knights certainly do not feel like they have a ton of health once you realize what actually works.

 

There's a few things to consider: They're resistant to headshots, and the precision rifles are otherwise fairly low-damage weapons. (So no plasma pistol/DMR-style shenanigans.) The knights are also actually fairly slow to react at mid/close-range. (Very dangerous at melee range.)

So I found myself throwing myself into the middle of large fights, taking big risks with a scattershot and a suppressor.

A lot of the subtle rebalancing that goes on in the legendary difficulties of the Halo games seems centered around making the safest strategies less viable, trying to push players out of hanging back with the precision rifles.

[SecretAsianMan]

One thing I like about Halo difficulty is the skulls.  They add interesting challenges and some of them do genuinely make the game harder, but not in the same way as just making the enemies do more damage or have more health.  Plus, popping grunts in the head and hearing "Hooray!" never gets old.