Difficulty in single player games

[Don]

Recently I've been playing Diablo 3 and SWTOR some and it's pretty clear both game's single player difficulty was probably never actually tested by whoever designed it. I'm going to assume you're designing a game that is meant to be beaten in single player, so no Ninja Gaiden game where the purpose is to ensure nobody can actually beat the game.

I think the biggest way to design a good game is to set aside up to a week (40 hours) for a designer to attempt to beat his own single player game. If he can't do this fire him and redesign the game. Nobody on the Diablo 3 design team would've survived this if they have to do Inferno mode, and for a game like SWTOR some of those guys will need to be secretly doing overtime to ensure they don't get fired. Obviously you can skip some of the leveling up parts, though if you restrict to say only boss battles then you'd have to cut back the time limit appropriately. For example say 8 hours to beat all the boss encounters in a single character's story mode. You can easily use up your 8 hours on Lord Draggh or Darth Zash if you do not allow the character to be leveled beyond what's expected for the encounter.

I've come to realize a lot of real designers are just armchair developers like you and me, or you'd never see games that clearly makes no sense whatsoever. For example, Heroes of Might and Magic 4 on the impossible setting was actually impossible. You start the game and you immediately died on the first encounter and no amount of save/load can help you win because the first unit one shots your entire army and you cannot possibly build more units because you don't have a base yet. This isn't like Civilization series where on Deity you only have to load/save a stupid amount of times to get some totally improbably lucky start to win (though I doubt anyone actually play tested Deity mode either). You actually cannot win this at all. Now, there's nothing wrong with being an armchair developer since that's where ideas come from, but at some point the armchair guy has to be able to actually beat the game he designed. A game designer isn't a mathematician where you can merely be satisfied that a solution exist.

I think RIFT had the best single player design because the story mode bosses are actually sort of hard, as in they could actually beat you if you fight them straight up, but you can almost always beat them because there's always a trick involved. Although I don't play RIFT anymore, I think they really had a great team at developing everything. It's just for whatever reason the IP didn't seem to work out. I guess it's hard to beat Warcraft in fantasy and Star Wars in sci-fi.

[Julius Seeker]

If there is a flaw on a game with any significant budget, the company knows about it. It is almost inconceivable that they wouldn't.

It depends on the game, but often even small games have dozens of publisher QA taking the game through a test cycle at various stages of development; and they do follow test plans as well. Developer QA is typically running through the game between 35 and 60 hours a week, and there are typically between 2 and 12 people doing this from at least the beginning of Beta onward.

Designers, at the same time, are not just sitting there making a design document in the pre-Alpha stage and dropping the project. It is always A LOT more than 40 hours they spend on the game. Designers will be constantly playing through the game, rebancing elements, and often doing most of the scripting as well. A designer's job on a product ends when the work on the game is complete.

In addition, there are various levels of design examination - starting at other designers, but also goink on to producers on both the dev and publisher side who need to sign off on the dev phase (First playable, Alpha, Beta, etc... Although typically there are many sub-milestones in the development).

On many projects, the game will go through over a hundred QA with various focuses. They'll be looking for bugs as well as other more general feedback.

Now, whether they want to fix those flaws? Sometimes there looks to be some ridiculous stuff that passes, but everyone would have signed off on it, so it is viewed as acceptable - or even desired.

[Zeus]

You haven't tried Gears 3 on Insane, have you? It's unreal. I know Cliffy B was a little upset so many beat the others on Insane but this one's unfair. Three of us who have crushed the others on Insane (and two of us who have beaten every CoD on Veteran) couldn't get past Act 1 Part IV. Why? They took away downing. If you die, you die, period. That's actually changing the mechanics of the game. Not to mention how insanely overpowered everyone is and the dead-eye accuracy of the Gunkers (they were killing us all the way at the beginning of the area from the end....that's VERY far) and how insane the blast radius of their bombs are. If you dive out of the way, you actually die because of the blast radius and the fact that you often don't have the time to get up and run out of the way.

Gears 3 is a lot like CoD 2 except to the extreme. It's so hard for the wrong reasons it's insane. The only way you can get past it is to figure out how the programmers programmed the AI as opposed to just playing. The fact that they changed the actual mechanics of the game - and one of the signature mechanics in downing - just makes it that much worse.

[SineSwiper]

Isn't Insane supposed to be, you know, insane? I think there should be a difficulty level that is so goddamn challenging that it's almost impossible to beat. Not in a "AI cheating" way, but when somebody says "Insane", it should live up to its name. I'd love to see a properly designed fighting game AI that is pretty much impossible to beat.

[Don]

There are actually two kinds of designer issues. First is the guy whose worldview is completely different from the average guy. For example the developer of Ninja Gaiden has said it's his goal to see players die repeatedly. One of the developer for EQ1 has also publicly state that he believe what keeps people playing is dying repeatedly to encounters that takes an hour to prep, hours to execute, and can end with a single mistake from something no one really has any control. These guys are not 'aware' of the problem so to speak. It's impossible to reason with this guy which is why I sugggested the 'beat this game in 40 hours or get fired' because this is the only way to change their mind. These guys basically have a God complex since telling them their games suck you basically get a response equivalent of what you can expect from an Internet forum, i.e. L2P, keep QQing, etc.

Then there are the games that obviously are never tested by the guy who play it. Inferno mode on Diablo 3 was tuned at a level that is very difficult internally and then they doubled the difficulty of everything because they figure that must be 'about right'. Hence, none of the internal guys actually play tested the real Inferno mode. They took what they thought was pretty difficult and just doubled everything because that must be twice as good, and the result is you get a mode that is not beatable without exploiting. HOMM4's impossible setting is actually impossible, not merely just 'stupidly hard'. You can't capture the first town you need to build more units no matter what because the initial battle is impossible to win without having more units, but you don't have a town at this point. On the chaos campaign, I used some game exploits to max out my hero's XP on Impossible, and I still cannot capture the first town with a maxed out hero because the town has a unit that guaranteeds instant kill on your hero causing you to lose. Even a level 99 hero (and level 40 heroes are already godlike) cannot capture this town due to the fact that it's staffed by a unit with a guaranteed instant kill ability.

I'm okay if there are some fringe 'for totally hardcore' guys, like the Deity setting in Civilization game, though if you apply the same 'beat it or get fired' scenario then whoever designed it will see just how stupid the mode is where you basically have to just load/save for the best possible starting position and abuse the AI on every opportunity to have a shot, and hopefully they'll realize this is actually very dumb if you cannot legitmately beat it. For skill based game, I don't expect the designer to be able to beat the fringe hardcore difficulty. I.e. I don't expect ZUN to be able to beat Lunatic on any Touhou game, but he should be able to beat his own game on Normal (which I'm sure he can, since Normal is appropriately designed).

That said, there are very few truly 'totally hardcore' fringe games out there. The best example I can think of is Ninja Gaiden and that's not exactly a mainstream game. Even something like Hardcore in Diablo 2/3 is not as hardcore as people think it is, since perfectly average player can make pretty decent progress by playing conservatively. It's not like the average guy is dying at level 3 in Hardcore mode.

[Zeus]

Isn't Insane supposed to be, you know, insane? I think there should be a difficulty level that is so goddamn challenging that it's almost impossible to beat. Not in a "AI cheating" way, but when somebody says "Insane", it should live up to its name. I'd love to see a properly designed fighting game AI that is pretty much impossible to beat.

Didn't you read my post? They actually changed the game mechanics to make it harder (no downing) and gave cheating-level difficulty to their AI. Gunkers were tossing lobs the equivalent of half a mile with pin-point accuracy. We actually had it where they basically threw around a building a couple times, it was beyond ridiculous. I love a stiff challenge but not when it comes down to breakin' the rules of your own game

[Don]

Isn't Insane supposed to be, you know, insane? I think there should be a difficulty level that is so goddamn challenging that it's almost impossible to beat. Not in a "AI cheating" way, but when somebody says "Insane", it should live up to its name. I'd love to see a properly designed fighting game AI that is pretty much impossible to beat.

Didn't you read my post? They actually changed the game mechanics to make it harder (no downing) and gave cheating-level difficulty to their AI. Gunkers were tossing lobs the equivalent of half a mile with pin-point accuracy. We actually had it where they basically threw around a building a couple times, it was beyond ridiculous. I love a stiff challenge but not when it comes down to breakin' the rules of your own game

I remember quite a few fighting games where the computer can just react to any command you do and counter it immediatey, like say Mortal Kombat if you run up to a computer an hit them they'll immediately sweep because that has a higher priority than your punch. While one can debate what is fair and what is not, I think if you're forced to beat a cheating AI in 40 hours or get fired, it'd change your perspective on what is an enjoyable experience and what is not.

I actually don't mind the fighting games where the bosses have overpowering moves that just do way too much damage because it's really just like fighting an enemy with 3 or 5 lifebars instead of one. They will still make mistakes but of course the fact they do way more damage than you makes up for a lot of their mistakes, but it's not like you can't even hit them before you die.

I saw this article about a guy designing a pool game, he said on the highest difficult the AI does this:

1. Find the closest ball.
2. Pocket the ball.
3. Go to 1.

So basically if the AI ever got to shoot you lose the game. The funny thing is that for people felt the AI was too good at positioning its ball from every hit, and the dev said it never considered what happens after you pocketed the ball in terms of positioning, because the AI can pocket any ball from any position in the table. The guy who designed it later wisely patched the AI to have a small chance of missing up #2.

[Julius Seeker]

With Civilization it is not so much the stupidly hard difficulty that gets me - it is the fact that there are some fairly common-sense approaches to exploiting the game - such as Honor + archers currently - and allowing the player to have an easy time destroying any army the opponents can rally. I realize the AI is going to be fixed, but it really seems foolish that they would add range into the game and not have the opponents scrambling for large counter-range methods, such as scrambling for horsemen rushes, or even large range forces of their own (when they do use that they tend not to have an organized push and will sacrifice most of their forces on a hopeless push allowing) the player to gain lots of free xp.

[Don]

With Civilization it is not so much the stupidly hard difficulty that gets me - it is the fact that there are some fairly common-sense approaches to exploiting the game - such as Honor + archers currently - and allowing the player to have an easy time destroying any army the opponents can rally. I realize the AI is going to be fixed, but it really seems foolish that they would add range into the game and not have the opponents scrambling for large counter-range methods, such as scrambling for horsemen rushes, or even large range forces of their own (when they do use that they tend not to have an organized push and will sacrifice most of their forces on a hopeless push allowing) the player to gain lots of free xp.

Design issue is one thing but if you're forced to beat your own game under duress it'd be pretty obvious that the number of units the enemy has is overwhelming and they really have no idea how to use it even if you were able to beat them, and hopefully that'd tell you there's something wrong with the game.

Deity is beatable with extremely cheesy tactics but it'd be obvious if you had to play through it.

[bovine]

I like games with no difficulty choice.

Like...... I dunno

Dark Souls

[Eric]

Dark Souls is difficult but beatable. It's a fun type of difficult, not a cheap type of difficult, you can control the randomness.

[Shrinweck]

I thought Prince of Persia (the one where you can't die) made excellent use of not having a difficulty setting. I know this game gets a decent amount of hate, but the focus was on platforming in dreamy/nightmarish landscapes and it did it well. Her saving you was basically just a buttonless quick-save, which in theory is an idea I absolutely love. The combat was just to break things up, which is fine.

I don't know if anyone else here has ever played it, but Star Trek Online's difficulty settings are very useful in an MMORPG where player skill tends to go from 'pro' to 'guy in his 70s who just really likes the idea of a Star Trek MMORPG.' The difficulty settings aren't perfect, but allow mediocre players to experience the game, while rewarding 'pros' for being, well, pro with the best loot.

Civ 5 difficulty was indeed troublesome since if you didn't use tricks the harder difficulties would trounce you, but if you set it to be easier then the pace of its economics and research would make for an extremely boring game. My favorite me-not-going-for-a-conquer victory game had me in a peninsula with some kind of hill/mountain region at the edge of my territory, so if the AI wanted to come at me on land I could play with having a diverse army and not get my ass handed to me by twelve of the same unit (among others) versus my comparably paltry handful.

[Don]

In a MMORPG there might be some things that are more exclusive because they drop better rewards and that's a different issue here.

A game like Diablo 3, nobody really thinks of Inferno as an optional mode that you're not supposed to be able to beat without farming for months. Nobody plays SWTOR expecting to have to get a group or get massively geared to finish the story quests which are strictly soloable in quest gear at this point. Yet there are massive difficulty jumps that do exactly that. In fact a lot of the story bosses are borderline unbeatable if you're at the same level as they are when it happened. You can get around that since it's easy to XP but that obviously won't work at level 50, and it's a bad design anyway. Quite a few of the bosses in SWTOR you have to have Heroic Moment up if you're not speced optimally for that boss (20 minute refresh) so that's 20 minutes PER ATTEMPT for a single player game if you happen to die. Again, if a designer was forced under duress to defeat say Darth Thanaton as a DPS spec Assassin, he'd quickly realize that each time he die (and that's going to happen a lot) he has to wait 20 minutes to have another shot, and assuming you make gearing up not an option, it is quite possible to lose in an '8 hour to beat all story bosses or get fired' challenge in SWTOR. Now you don't notice this while you're playing because you're most likely a level or two ahead of the boss, and if you do lose you can always level up some more or buy/find/make better gear. And yet games like SWTOR is clearly designed to be played by character in quest greens, so it implies either someone didn't actually test these bosses while wearing greens, or if they did no one heeded their advice.

So far as Civ 5 goes, it's not just an issue of the AI being bad, though Civ 5's AI seems to be inexplicably bad when they'll embark land unit on water to try to get a flanking bonus. Games 15 years ago had better AI that can fight a human player straight up. In fact 15 year old strategy game will probably utterly crush the human given the advantage they have on Deity. I mean, Panzer General on Washington is already very hard to beat and you'll probably lose a lot of units, and here you're fighting quasi infinite resources (Americans can buy almost anything) but the total army unit size is equal (they can replace whatever unit they lost, but they can't have more) and your units are definitely all more advanced technologically and should have 5 stars. In Civ 5 terms that'd be having maxed out units that are half an era ahead against an equal sized Deity computer, but the computer can replace his army roughly every 3 turns. Given those odds you'd utterly stomp the computer and yet Panzer General's AI can already make you pay with these odds. Anyway, the issue is that Deity puts some utterly unreasonable style to gameplay. You take a game like ROTK or Nobunaga's Ambition and the AI isn't too great either, but if you handicap yourself greatly you have to fight them in the standard 'lure them into a great defensive area and kill them', and there's nothing wrong with the strategy itself so you can play the game and say okay we can't fight the computer head on at the beginning but we can lure them into a trap, that seems good enough. In Civ 5 you'd have to play in a completely degenerative method (i.e. defend until the AI sues for peace despite having no reason to given its resource advantage).