how mean/tough should one be with the player?
I am just about done with an AI system for playing the player. It has a number of settings that have built in variables for monitoring the player response and varying the machine's 'fight back' based on their choice of level of play and how well they are doing and I am now playing with the settings for the final game. I can tweek them almost as hard or soft as I like and adjust the variation within each setting and escalation or decline of difficulty over time (decline perhaps for those who drink as they play..).
What I wonder about is easy, medium, and hard and what devilish settings to hide behind them... A mate of mine who is a cognitive psychologist was very interesting on cognitive overload and how one should just show people to the edge of it, but pace the frustration and pay offs. The way I have things set up I can slap the player if they get cocky with a few looses, reward with wins or not over time, but overall I am more interested in making an entertaining experience.
thoughts?
kipper
What I wonder about is easy, medium, and hard and what devilish settings to hide behind them... A mate of mine who is a cognitive psychologist was very interesting on cognitive overload and how one should just show people to the edge of it, but pace the frustration and pay offs. The way I have things set up I can slap the player if they get cocky with a few looses, reward with wins or not over time, but overall I am more interested in making an entertaining experience.
thoughts?
kipper
Comments
Cheers.
The battle with Gray Fox in the first Metal Gear Solid on PlayStation is a great example of this.
The video's a playthrough by someone that's obviously reasonably good at the game - but try and imagine playing this for the first time!
Notice how much bigger the enemy's health bar is, and how much damage is done to Snake with just one hit (especially around the 2:24 mark). It looks like the odds are stacked against you.
BUT
You'll notice Snake has 3 rations, that will each replenish his health bar - so really, his health bar is 3 times the size it looks on screen
Also, boxes around the level have extra ration packs in them. When you pick one up, it disappears. But then it'll reappear if you're dangerously low on health.
This is not by accident
Overall, I'd make sure the game was 'fair'. No one hit kills. No 'trickery'. Just fair. Then, if the player's in trouble (say health is less than 25%) make sure the next spawning pickup is a health boost or something.
It all depends on the kind of game of course. Other ways of building difficulty can be found in Mario, for example.
On the first level, there's one Goomba (low threat)- you jump on his shell and he's defeated. It's important that there's just one. You're teaching the player as they play, essentially, with a low risk on first encounter.
So when two Goombas appear, having already dispatched one, the player knows what to do with the increased threat.
Then it's adding levels of complexity. Teaching the player the mechanics first with low risk scenarios, then adding to the threat level.
Hope that's relevant/of use. I've rambled quite a bit there! Sorry!
QS
i do agree about leading them in, teaching, low risk encounters, then stepping it up, honing skills, and then really pushing. I am seriously considering putting together a 'developer' test version with a pause screen that brings up adjusters as it is a pain to tweek while testing down the pub. And even this has made me question the settings controls accessible by the player.
You need to find that balance between too easy and too hard. If you skew to either side too much, players will finish the game too quickly or quit out of frustration. In either case, they aren't playing your game anymore. Unless you instinctively have your finger on the pulse of your target audience, you'll need real feedback to find that sweet spot.
On my first game, Pot of Gold, I showed it to my 11 year old son. He tried moving the pot by tilting the iOS device then tapping all over the screen. Then I knew what seemed so obvious to me (since I had created the game) was not obvious or intuitive to a new player. I ended up adding an instruction page that explains that you have to touch the pot with your finger and drag it side to side. Moral of the story: your experience developing the game gives you insight into the game that a new player will not have. What you may think is too easy or too hard may not match up with your target audience.
I think having multiple difficulty settings like you have is probably the best solution as it lets the player tailor the experience to their gaming needs.
- Jeff
It is a simple game and really just a test bed for more things I have on the go, but I actually think it is not that dreadful...
kipper
You're certainly thinking about it a lot more than most people!
I think playtesting is key.
On Kraken, it forced me to offer different control schemes, as people weren't getting on with the one I thought was clever and perfect!
On Air Supply, I took the average scores for stars, distance, kills and air from a number of players to work out when the unlocks came.
It's always useful to get user feedback *before* you publish your game! People will mention stuff you'd never have thought of, and which are usually easy fixes/modifications.
QS