Difficulty curves in games

[railfan101 0]

Ok, another issue I've run into.  

 

One of my biggest problems in building games, (I've built more than one, but never finished any of them) other than mapping is figuring out the difficulty curve.  How do you guys do it?  Do you try to make the enemies gradually harder in such a way that the end user doesn't notice, or do you make the difficulty per area more noticeable?  What i'm trying to avoid in my game is sections of the game where enemies are relatively easy then an instant jump in difficulty so noticeable it's like being slapped in the face.

 

Any advice?  

 

BTW, I might be releasing a demo sometime next month, meaning May.  I'm trying to finish the maps so I can start work on the structure of the game.

[Marked 197]

One of my biggest problems in building games, (I've built more than one, but never finished any of them) other than mapping planning.

 

It's very difficult for the develop to judge the difficulty since you (are supposed to) know everything. That's essentially cheating, bro. You give it your best judgement, although there should be some reasoning behind your estimates  based on your players' expected stats. Then you need testers who are raw to come in and give feedback, and tweak stuff. You need to direct your testers to give exactly the feedback you want, or their issues will go unreported and undetected by you. 

[Ardaceus 21]

I personally like to look at what level the player should be at, then I look at the surroundings, and what kind of enemies are in the area. I tend to make their difficulty based on what they are, but at a fair level I intend it to be at.

 

Like for example, in the first forest of my game, I put small critters as weak things which aren't really powerful. You can take them out easily, but the foxes which are the odd one out, as they are not critters, are more powerful, since they are a canine, and they also have magical properties to make them a bit more stronger. But then when you get to a camp, I purposefully make the soldiers in the camp stronger because you wouldn't train a soldier for 5 years to be as stronger as this thing.

Like seriously? If I'm going to make you fight a soldier who has the same abilities as you, he is damn well going to kick your ass! But if the player has more skill, they can beat the soldier, it's more of just relying on the skills of the player.

 

But of course a difficulty curve is good, but think of it as a linear scatter plot.

It really should be pretty logical, or if you want to get funky:

 

Just try to make sense with your battle system.

Or you could just make all of your battles less needy of power and more on thought, like in Undertale's Pacifist route where you can beat the game just fine without needing to level up, but still has a good difficulty curve as the attacks don't get stronger, but become more difficult to dodge, and have new mechanics. Or in stealth/shooter games where you don't have to change to different equipment, and just use what you got to beat any foe, no matter how strong they are.

 

It's up to you.

[dolarmak 23]

my suggestion would be to take what levels you have now and get a few people to test it. Ask them to chart a few metrics for you which might help.

 

1. What level they were when they entered an area?

2. What level they were when they left that area?

3. Did the enemies seem easy or hard in each area?

4. Did they feel the need to grind to beat certain bosses or enemies?

5. How did they spend their money before each area, and did they need to return for more equipment?

6. Did they get all the treasures in a given area or did they skip any and why did they skip them?

 

The problem with trying to discern these things yourself as the designer is you know exactly where to go and what is the best path. Which skews the results of these questions. It doesn't hurt to run through the game a few times yourself to get a feel for it but it's harder to tell if how things are progressing.  

Edited April 2, 2016 by dolarmak

[railfan101 0]

Thank you everyone for your suggestions.  When i get closer to a beta I will take these into consideration.  For now, i just need to keep building.  My maps aren't anywhere near done yet.  I still have a lot to do, and I feel I'll never finish them at the rate I'm going.

[Marked 197]

One of my biggest problems in building games, (I've built more than one, but never finished any of them) other than mapping planning.

 

I should write a tutorial on project management. 

[railfan101 0]

I should write a tutorial on project management. 

I think that would help, although it's hard for me to get any work done when i work almost 13 hours a day for 6 days and i only get 11 hours for sleep in between those days.  im not trying to make excuses just in my line of work its hard for other activities when more than 50% of your day is work.