Input Complexity
Street Fighter was one of the first games to create a
risk-reward relationship between input complexity and onscreen actions. For
some time, Zangief's spinning piledriver was the holy grail of hand-eye
coordination, requiring a full circular movement of the joystick followed by a
punch in close range, which would reward the player by depleting almost a third
of the opponent's energy bar.
The Street Fighter series popularized complex button sequences as a risk/reward relationship in fighting games.
The risk was getting in close to the opponent, coupled with
the fast spin of the stick, which if done too slowly or out of range, would
cause Zangief to jump and leave him vulnerable. In comparison, Ryu and Ken's
fireball motions were simple, requiring only a quarter circle motion and press
of the punch at any distance.
The by-product of using input complexity as a
difficulty barrier is that it doubled additionally as an entry barrier for new
players, meaning an instantly limited audience, though culturally, its
relevance changed gaming for the next ten years.
Interestingly, David Sirlin, lead designer of Super Street
Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix has decided to change some of the move inputs from the
original game to be more accessible-and this includes Zangief's spinning
piledriver. Sirlin believes the difficulty should come from the
think-on-your-feet strategy aspect, rather than the player's ability to swirl
inputs.
"I think [Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix] is
much improved with the easier commands," says Sirlin. "Instead of
T.Hawk and Fei Long being practically non-characters [as they were in the
past], they are fairly easy to start playing and much more fun.
Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix has altered control input for ease of play.
The strategy in
Street Fighter is much better-not much worse-when both players can execute the
moves. It's not like being good at the game has gotten much easier just because
special move commands are more forgiving. It's more like being able to play it
at all in the first place is easier.
When the best players in the United
States play the in-development version of
this game, they say that it's more strategically interesting than before. The
new commands for moves are only a very small part of that. But what's more
important than any of that are the actual balance changes that allow the
previously weak characters to compete more fairly with everyone else. There are
several match-ups that were simply boring because one character had a very
dominant pattern to rely on. Most of these have been greatly toned down so that
new mind-games take the place of old, robotic patterns.
New Street Fighter players will, I hope, discover a much
more interesting path to improvement by focusing on these strategic match-ups,
rather than simple move execution."
Legends of Difficulty
Bungie's Halo series is often praised for its excellent
execution of difficult play in the form of its Legendary mode. Not
surprisingly, the team took a very well-thought out approach to introducing and
tuning difficult play. Halo 3 gameplay designer Francois Boucher-Genesse
explains that it's not just a case of one formula fits all.
"It's not like we just cranked every enemy's health by
200% and called it Legendary," he said. "There was a good amount of
custom changes made per mission as well. In that sense we encourage players
with previous Halo experience to play at least on Heroic, since they get to see
the game in its full scale."
"A really similar formula was used for every Halo
game," continued Boucher-Genesse. "What did make a difference was the
time spent tweaking and fixing issues to make the game fun on every difficulty
level. All titles had more bad guys, stronger and more accurate enemies with
faster projectiles. And they used similar numbers for each of these
parameters."
When your company budgets for tuning of difficulty levels,
the result is extended longevity for the game, and increased enjoyment for
players at all levels. It goes without saying that games should be appropriate
for their target players on all levels, providing challenges for each skillset.
One important thing to remember, which has been creeping into games recently,
is that players aren't often able to determine their own difficulty levels.
They may think their skill level is far above or far below the actuality.
In Metal Gear Solid 3, players are asked if they've played a
previous iteration of the series, and are assigned a difficulty level based on
this. This is a pretty good way to go, and Call of Duty 4 takes it further.
Players go through a training course in the beginning of the game, which also
gauges their ability, recommending a difficulty level at the end.
Most players
will take this recommendation when it's directly from the game universe, rather
than making a choice on a list before ever having touched the game. With all the
elements in place, the life of a game's single-player campaign is extended
enormously.
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One additional suggestion is to turn the problem of difficulty adjustment on its head: rather than designing the game to be relatively easy and increasing the challenge by adding problems or reducing resources, set the default balance to be "really hard" and provide dynamic tools that help the player overcome the challenges.
Some basic examples of such tools would be spawning more ammo and/or health powerups, reducing the number of enemy units, and degrading enemy AI. But a more interesting approach could be for the game to be able to detect when the player is having trouble with one section of the game -- perhaps they frequently die and reload in the same location. As this condition is detected, the game could begin to spawn friendly NPCs with ever-increasing abilities to support the player. "I'll cover you -- you take out that generator!"
The approach has the advantage of allowing the game to be tuned with a consistently difficult level of challenge throughout, while dynamically providing just enough help when and where it's needed to get players through sections they're having particular trouble with.
Another way to make "Simon Says" harder is to redefine the victory condition. The best example is Beatmania's "normal clear" and "hard clear". The evaluation of your success is very different depending on which lifebar you pick. With the normal lifebar you're immortal and victory is defined as a solid performance. But with the hard lifebar not only can you die, but you die easily. Mistakes are still allowed, but you'll lose as soon as the game catches you 'faking it'.
The particular example that comes to mind as an exemplification of this is the arcade shooting game Gunroar, by Kenta Cho (http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~cs8k-cyu/windows/gr_e.html freeware for download. There's also a Linux binary out there). The game always progresses forward AT LEAST at a certain rate and can never get below that. This is the bottom. However, at the player's option he or she might choose to proceed faster and thereby increase the game multiplier faster than it would otherwise do on its own autoscroll. This has two effects: The game gets harder and the score for downing an enemy ship is greater. This allows someone with no experience with the game to gradually come to understand what expectations to have, and allows an experienced player to jump right in and ramp up their personal difficulty in no time at all.
Another interesting facet of Gunroar (and many independent Japanese-made games, if I'm to be frank) is the ability of one to watch replay of one's own gameplay. Some games allow you to save them, but Cho's games tend to use the replay as the game's demo. That is, when you lose in Gunroar, the title screen will have your latest game in the background for you to watch at your leisure. While this doesn't provide the improved functionality of a saved file (you can't speed up, skip, or rewind), it does give immediate feedback on how you played. These games in particular tend to give one tunnel vision because the player's single-shot-death boat is much more important than destroying every enemy. The instant replay allows a wider view of the field while the experience is still fresh in their mind. This replay mechanic serves, then, two roles. One, to help improve the score of the player by giving them the opportunity to better understand where and how to take risks for score; and two, to offer some loss feedback-- know where the bullet originated from and how it moved and why you were there in the first place allowing you to possibly learn from the experience of loss.
I'm of a very strong mind that, with the right balance, dynamic difficulty could eliminate this concept of granular "levels" in the classic sense and we're starting to approach the point where it's computationally feasible to do so. I'm not at all certain that I WANT the concept to die, but that's a discussion for a different day.
One key I've always found is think about difficulty not as making the game more difficult but instead think about it as making the game more challenging.
This could implore ideas of tactics and strategy of AI and combat encounters. More flanking, more aggressive behaviors, AI can hear you better, they track you for a longer amount of time etc...
Yes I agree increasing the hitpoints in npc's is bad, but often used technique. Increasing accuracy can also be quirky. Inc the deadlies of each npc might be a better tuning strategy.
One technique for an action game, for example, might be to make enemies slower or leave longer openings between attacks or have less armour as you, the player, fail more. In sports games, decrease the stamina or some other attribute of the winner at halftime. Make the enemy guns less or more accurate in an FPS, make the enemies less aggressive in an adventuring title, increase the amount of wear on the opposition's tyres as you race about the circuit. There are multitudes of things that can be done to "help" the player surreptitiously without resorting to giving them more than they could have earned normally. Giving handouts in a game is rather irresponsible, in my opinion.
Some of these, at a glance, may seem rather drastic. Indeed, some of them, when hustled hard, could be game-breakingly terrible. But two factors should be considered here. First off, at the point where you're gaming the system like that, you're no longer playing the game you paid for-- you're playing a game of your own devising wherein you purposely attempt to break the core mechanics as thoroughly as possible. You're playing it like an MMO. Second, one iteration of change should have effects that are only noticeable if you know to look for them and then only barely. Subtlety is key in my theory, here (use your imagination. S'what you get paid for, no? :).
But Brad's ideas are still interesting, and I could see them as now being possible in certain genres (hell, you can do anything if you throw enough code at it. It might not be good, but you can do it). Dynamic difficulty, as Anonymous above me notes, is definitely a touchy subject, and one I've given a lot of thought to. I'll still say that I definitely think it's doable, and even a good idea to try. Using subtle gradations rather than large leaps should have a net effect of keeping the pressure on the player and actually nurturing their growth (we can count on powergaming munchkins existing, but if that's how they want to play...well, the customer is always right :/ ).
It's just another piece of the balancing formula, just as difficulty has always been.