In the middle of wrestling with what I am trying to establish as leisure time, I came to an objective realization:
I'm not good at video games.
Never have been, and I say that knowing full well that I still enjoy them. My friend Jason Emery, now a senior engineer at Griptonite, won about 80-90% of the games he played. I remember him beating the shooter Gradius, The Legend of Zelda and Metroid rather quickly.
The only game I beat that it took him a bit longer to win was Pro Wrestling, and that's because I owned it and he didn't have as much time as I did. I suppose the only title I can take credit for is Mike Tyson's Punch Out!!!. Oooh.
These days I've been delving back into playing an old faithful: Counterstrike and after playing at least 10-20 hours of it I'm no better than when I began, meaning that when I join a game I hardly ever make any kills and am almost always killed within 30 seconds. But let's examine why:
- Counterstrike is the most competitive multiplayer FPS title ever (well, okay, Left 4 Dead might have it beat at this point?)
- Counterstrike relies on certain techniques based in reality such as cover, knowing the ground, and firing in short bursts as well as requiring rock solid aim to succeed
- Some servers, even those that are VAC secured, have people who somehow manage to hack / cheat
Therefore if I play using my own server and bots on "Normal" difficulty the odds are much more in my favor.
Now let's take another game such as Nuclear War, a much older PC game. I never win that one. Ever. Period. Fortunately I've worked with Mark Caldwell at Midway (he also did code for Nuclear War) a few years ago, so I can bug him about it, but I keep wondering what the secret is to actually winning for folks like me? Just finishing what you can and being happy with that, or constantly trying new games? Well, yes... dynamic difficulty, but how often is that really used, and used effectively?
An older example of a game that had used dynamic difficulty would be Zanac for the NES. The more power ups you get, the more enemies appear and the more shots existing enemies might fire.
Pretty clever, most importantly it was tuned so that if you were at a high level of power you weren't overwhelmed as if you were the guy from Robotron 2084. ;)
No conclusion really, I suppose I find it interesting that difficulty still appears to be taking a backseat to quite a few other design mechanics, probably because dynamic difficult ain't that easy to do well.
I could never get into team fortress 2 cause there was no way for me to jump in an learn, I'd get dominated in like 5 seconds.
To your point about dynamic difficulty though, I don't really agree with it all that much on a few levels. The reward of getting good is getting better at the game, or in other words seeing better results. If I get more power-ups in a game I would expect to gain an advantage, not be penalized for picking them up. Also I hear God Hand brought up all the time related to dynamic difficulty, but I haven't played it myself. In God Hand I've heard that there is a bar somewhere on the screen that goes from easy to hard depending on how you perform. Again, if I get better as the game goes on and the AI just gets better with me then where is the sense of progression? Another example, Oblivion, as you level up the enemies in the game world level up with you. Where is the progression? There should be lower level areas then higher level areas and when I get strong enough I'm able to venture to those higher level areas otherwise there is no progression, there might as well not be any levels in the game. On a psychological level having a game tell you that you suck, and setting the difficulty for you takes all choice away from you the player. If you're a player that likes a challenge and you've reached a challenging part that you've died on three or so times and the game suddenly switches to easy for you so that you can overcome it, the sense of accomplishment wont' be there.
Now a discussion about improving AI in ways other than higher damage or more hit points is totally different, and I definitely would be all for that, but a dynamic sliding scale depending on player action isn't the right choice in my opinion.
And it would be nice if you did specify which genres you are talking about. Because one of the ways of players to pick difficulty is by buying the correct title ranging from call of duty 4\5 at the bottom as extremely simple up to complex titles such as Arma 2.
Though skill needed and wanted complexity level in a game is rather different. As CS is very simple compared to lets say Arma 2, it may require more skill in a few areas specifically areas as reaction speed, aiming and memory of maps. While in different areas Arma 2 requires a different set of skills. As let’s say a talent for handling big amounts of information, (acceptance for a high complexity level).
So what I am saying is that as the players need a dynamic difficulty, they have ended up in different buyer groups, and developers have made games for these different buyer groups.
And through making different games for each group the problem with dynamic difficulty has largely been overcome. And devs don’t see that big need to invest tons to make a game that can incorporate the very variable needs of the players.
If you struggle at a game even after a lot of training, pick a different game relative to your skill and how much complexity you can handle.
Also I must mention Wow and EvE online is some games that has been able to create a dynamic difficulty, as some players get a challenge in commanding other players around and managing communities. While others like to do stuff like quests.
In other games powerups can be a mediator for player skills like Blake expects: the skilled player can be the one that is good at getting powerups rather than directly at his main tasks (which might be too simple to allow for skill differences).
For example, in a firepower-limited shoot'em up no amount of aiming ability can let the player kill more enemies: only a weapon upgrade can, so hard to get powerups are the actual challenge.
Even if you could separate novices and experts, should you? Speaking as someone who's been on both sides of this, I have to say I prefer the heterogeneous mix of skill that is present in most servers. If the players you are against all improve as you do, you won't feel the benefit of your improvement as clearly, which I believe to be an important motivational factor for honing your skills.
Some games to mention is Team fortress 2 and the battlefield 2 games.
In TF2 you can play a different set of classes that got of course different gameplay but also different difficulty, like the engineer and medic class is not as demanding in terms of aiming skill and reaction time, compared to the sniper class that is very needy in those areas.
The BF2 got a different set of classes that got a somewhat different difficulty and gameplay to them, and of course one gets the option of playing the game in different ways due to big levels and open level design.
Some other way to make the player able to compete with super skilled players, is to give the illusion of that the player is doing it just as well as the better players, by giving people just as many points for supporting fellow players with ammo etc, as the better players get for doing objectives and killing.
But it all really boils down is to give the different kind of player’s different experiences and gameplay relative to their taste.
One can’t put handicaps on the other players, as that would remove the entire point with the game and that is competition, so the only way is to give every player a different “game” they are good at and make is as easy to get points for all the different playstyles\classes\games relative to each other. Then you get a dynamic difficulty.
It would completely change the type of game however. These features could never make their way into a competitive pro game, but it would help the more casual players have an equal experience. It may even enhance the experience of the more seasoned gamer since they are now more challenged by an otherwise weaker opponent.
Removing the competition removes the point behind the game, which is competition.
And anyway if you are going to create a “Fun” non competitive game for casuals the fps genre is not the genre to do it in.
Though you can of course give the illusion of competition and achievement like games as call of duty 4\5 does. But won’t go in-depth on that.
As you said, games can still give the illusion of competition, but my point is that the hardest of hardcore would not accept catch-up game rules for pro tournaments that are focused around all skill. You can still have an enjoyable time within a competitive environment that uses catch-up perks and game rules, just not in pro leagues, which is fine by me.
I find one of the best ways to scale multiplayer games is "squad level" play. The ability to play with friends is smaller groups than teams can really play out well.
In FPS games I tend to be a long range player (sniper or rifle type). I have friends who are much more into grunt work, sprinting and close combat Shotguns etc.)
This works in heavily class based games (TF2) and even gear based games (CoD, Vegas 2 etc.)
While many people are freelancing (soloing) a small squad of 2-3 people can cover weaknesses (and flankers).
It is always fun to have someone sneak up on my sniping butt and see them go down in a hail of bullets because they assume I am along (why would anyone guard a sniper.. you can't get 15 kills fast that way). This is true in games that do points for kills. But the secret is we trade off. because of death cams in many games, my cover is blown. SO for the trade off of a little slow time, my friend(s) gets to kill the flanker, and again when he comes back frop refenge, then the other gusy who come up because my position is shared to the other team.
He/they also get to lead on point when I move to a new spot, a mobile grinder. I often end up with less points then they do unless I go pistol crazy with assists.
I'm not talking about a full team, clan or whatever. I can almost never field more than 1 or 2 other people when I play, but even 1 other person can seriously cover each other's butts while most people are slamming into each other in a hail of lead, grenades, rockets and insults in the same 4 points on the map.
I agree with others it all depends on what you think is fun. I don't need to be #1 on the map, as long as I feel I did pretty well and contributed to whatever game mode we were playing (even team DM). I stay away from FFA 1 vs. everyone DM style games most of the time.
Not sure how to dynamically scale stuff, or even what... at least not fairly Things that I would scale to help my weak spots, would not be of use to to others here... and you can't scale it all for everyone.
On the other hand, many games are designed to actually punish new people. If you look at games like CoD MW/WaW The better/longer playing people have better guns and attachments! True that rolling over for prestige can let a poorer player with good guns (gained over a longer period of time than a hardcore player) have a chance to kill a hardcore player who is playing with new/stock guns... but a lot of people park at max level after a prestige or 2, and that possible balance goes away.
I do think people are taking a shot at addressing this a little, at least in their long term goals for titles. I'm not sure how anyone wil lbe able to do it fairly in a really comprehensive manner though.
now, if you try Unreal Tournament or Quake, i will agree with you these can easily become a one-sided slaughtery, but thats just how they are.
You just cant compare playing against bots to playing with other players. Bots can be very dumb, they can cheat, or do both!! there very few exceptions (actually one, Unreal Tournament bots, the best out there)
I'm a very hard fan of Epic Games, but I just don't agree how they're dealing with difficult levels last times. The UT3 bots really cheat, the harder ones can kill you with 2-3 enforcer shots, and you need to shoot 3-4 on their heads with this weapon. I'm not even talking about the GoW enemies health, they take three clips on their face to die, but at the half of the first clip you must hide to recorver your health.
That said, when you aren't yet comfortable with the basics of a game, you tend to feel very vulnerable. Multiplayer video games haven't really gotten down a way to encourage weak players to grow and for strong players to teach the weak, but I think that any step towards that will help the game succeed.
As it is right now, single player games are better positioned to match player skill, because they can vary the difficulty so precisely, but it's become easy to eschew classical difficulty progression in favor of high-reward mechanics.
I prefer Morrowind to Oblivion because Oblivion levels enemies which means both fighting the same guys wherever I go, and the feeling that my level doesn't mean much. Morrowind had a static level for its monsters which meant I could get my butt kicked in one location, level up, and be satisfied by coming back to whip that monster.
Unreal Tournament 2 did auto-skill pretty well IMO, the bots always levelled to a point where I felt challenged but not overwhelmed.
In terms of how do you balance there's also the issue of which balancing factors will actually make it easier for a player... do you make the enemies tougher, offer more or less aim assist, different number of enemies, more/less health/powerups ? Do you offer different paths (ala Gears) which might be more challenging on one side than the other so the player can pick his difficulty on the fly ?
In the PC single-player space you can make your own balance with trainers or other cheats (such as in a game like Stalker adjusting the accuracy on weapons to counter the punishing default settings).
The Halo series with its ability to set multiplayer options like health, available weapons, etc (Unreal did first with mutators in the PC arena) is a good step toward offering balance options in the multiplayer console space.
Perhaps for FPS we just need to go back to LAN parties where you can slap the other player upside the head when he's teabagging your corpse.
Lately, I've been trying to up my gaming skills in other genres of interest, such as platformers (my initial playthrough on Rocket Knight Adventures was...ambysal xD) and shmups. I'm not a FPS man so those can stay where they are, but my thing is we all just tend to have particular genres we excel in, and others where we aren't so go. It's a natural thing; doesn't mean we can't work on where we're weak at (we do so w/ everything else in our lives...most of us x3), but we should realize our strong suits, and the sooner the better. So...what does that mean for other games we may enjoy, and wish we were good at-but don't have the skill to compete adequately w/ others?!?
....Dynamic difficulty?.....*Maybe*....
See, this is where I begin having some conflicts of interest. While I think it's definitely more *time* efficient to justify dynamic difficulty in games these days-especially given that most of us have time-hogging priorities as it is-I'm personally not that much in favor of it. When I play a game, I like to get into it, *really* get into it. If this means I need to invest more energy into getting better, I'm willing to do that. I enjoy a good challenge, and maybe that has something to do w/ my very nature, I dunno. But for a game to not give me the chance to progress on my own and swipe it away from me leaves me feeling cold and brittle. It doesn't even take a plethora to time to get better; it just takes a mental focus and the ability to absorb everything going on as effectively as possible, and over time, you get better.
Come to think of it, my attitude on dynamic difficulty might just come from the fact that I'm not necessarily a "new" gamer; I got into the hobby on a Genesis, and little to no cheat codes. Some of the games in my stable were not the easiest of the bunch, so I pretty much had to wing it and try and try again to get better. But it's my personal belief that-if you have the endurance and the focus to cut down on the amount of time you have to endure, you can take yourself to that next level. If this sounds like some life advice, that's partly b/c it is, but it can apply just as well in the gaming space.
So my final take on dynamic difficulty is that I'm not personally for it (and the fact so many games now are being affected in their own enjoyment b/c of it's implementation further anchors that feeling), but if developers can find a way to include it in their titles w/o diluting the natural challenge for those of us that'd rather not have it around, then include it you can. If it equates to more people playing, then I'm (ultimately) all for it. Just don't deny my the opportunity to get better on my own is all I'm asking for.