Castle Paradox

[Clamps]

Open and vague question, because I'm kind of bored and want to get a conversation going.

So I'm playing through Darkmoor Dungeon. Not very well, but I'm playing, and I'm beginning to wonder what the best level of difficulty is for an RPG.

I know different RPGs should probably have different difficulties, but in general?

I'm personally a believer in semi-easy random battles, and fairly difficult bosses. Makes the bosses pop out a bit more, I think. I'm not a big fan of really hard RPGs. They tend to become really level-grindy RPGs pretty fast, at least for me.

Xenosaga Episode 1 (Link worksafe. Certain other articles on the site aren't.) would probably be the closest to how I'd set the difficulty (Not so much the sequels). The battles are challenging enough to be interesting, but not enough to really kill you a lot, and all the bosses save the last are really tough, and have an interesting gimmick.

What about you? Do you want a game you can relax to, or a highly challenging game that requires nigh-perfection to survive? Somewhere in-between?

[Rinku]

I prefer selectable or (better yet) adaptable difficulty levels. For instance, in the OHR game Wingedmene by Komera and I, the game adjusted itself to how well you were doing (invisibly), making the game easier if you did more poorly and harder if you did well.
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Tower Defense Game

[Newbie_Power]

In-between is a good option. FFIII DS is a good example. It isn't too hard, but it still manages to be twice as difficult as most modern FF games.

Just cut the fat and not give the player overpowered crap that ruins the game.

EDIT: Oh, and make sure your EXP gain is well adjusted. You don't want to be gaining levels too fast or too slow.
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TheGiz> Am I the only one who likes to imagine that Elijah Wood's character in Back to the Future 2, the kid at the Wild Gunman machine in the Cafe 80's, is some future descendant of the AVGN?

[Clamps]

[Rinku]

It doesn't have to be tested by dying, you can test it by how often they heal and revive characters, how well they do on 'boss' battles (such as how long it takes them to kill a boss), and there are a variety of other ways.

If you did want to test it by dying, you could do that by making an after battle-script which, if it detects that the party is dead, heals them and just returns them to their last save point or to the last town they were in, the way a lot of RPGs do.

And you don't have to do difficulty level through different formation sets (although you can), you can also do it by different character stats, fewer random battles, more experience points, different shops, or other differences.
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Tower Defense Game

[Rya.Reisender]

@Rinku
How does the difficulty adjustment work in Wingedmene?



To the question:
Well, there are some different types of RPGs and they need their different types of difficulties.


I personally like games that make every single battle a challenge and don't put too much stress on "Get to the next Inn before your MP runs out". Especially SaGaFrontier 1 is a very good example how difficulty should be in my opinion. You recover all HP at the end of a battle (but lose LP). Also the difficulty of the battles seems to get reduced if you die and do a quick continue (from personal experience). Another main factor of this system is that you can save at any time. It's very nice to be able to save after every battle, especially when each battle could mean your end. If you recover all your HP after each battle you can't really get stuck deep within a dungeon. It also opens more ways to let the story flow (you are not bound to having to put save points and resting spots in certain game intervals for the player). So yeah with this type of game I prefer challenging battles, so that each battle could mean your end, but you can also save after each battle.


On the other hand there are those RPGs where you don't recover HP/MP after each battle. There are only "Recovery Points" (usually called Inns) and "Save Points" and between them the challenge lies to get to the next one before your ressources (MP, Items, etc.) run out. These games can be enjoyable as well if done right. Of course normal battles shouldn't be too challenging, because if I player went deep into a dungeon and hasn't saved for 30 minutes and then a really unfair battle games as random encounter and he dies, that'd be really frustrating. If the battles are fairly easy, they'll still drain your ressources (like 5 MP each battle, or 1 healing item). In this case the player has the chance to notice "Oh I'm running out of ressources I should retreat for now" or "The battles are starting to get really tough now, maybe I should go back and level up and get better equip first". A very good idea in this type of RPG is a spell like "Escape" that brings you back to the last Recovery Point when used, so the player isn't forced to go all the way back (he'll have to walk into the dungeon again, though, but if the dungeon design is good then he'll be way faster on the second run, another possibility is to save the location where you used "Escape" and then make another spell that brings you back to that location). These games usually should have stronger boss battles, so that there are at least some really challenging battles.
Wingedmene and FUABMX are a very good examples on how the difficulty of these types of games should be. In professional game terms, I'd say Phantasy Star 2-4 are very good examples.



What I don't like are difficulties like these:
- you only can save a limited number of times
- the distance between save spots is greater than 30 minutes and you don't have any spells to return to a recovery / save spot
- the battles are no challenge at all and it's only about saving ressources, even the boss battles only test if you still have enough ressources left
- you fully recover after each battle, but the battles are no challenge to begin with
- games where you can get stuck at certain points without giving the not so skilled players any chance to continue

[Newbie_Power]

Going outside of examples and specific ways RPGs do things, though, I would say that the best way to balance difficulty is tweaking and testing until things feel and work right the way you want or need them too. This will apply to any type of game you want to make.
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TheGiz> Am I the only one who likes to imagine that Elijah Wood's character in Back to the Future 2, the kid at the Wild Gunman machine in the Cafe 80's, is some future descendant of the AVGN?

[Camdog]

[Newbie_Power]

[Rya.Reisender]

[Newbie_Power]

[Moogle1]

[Rya.Reisender]

Yes, and there's a reason why they work like that, because it works out. Well at least this lets all players finish a game, just that the bad ones might have to invest some more hours.

[Newbie_Power]

[Moogle1]