Difficulty and challenge in game design

[marurun]

So, I definitely have thoughts on this, but I don't want to just bust this thread open right in the first post with a giant essay, so I'm opening the topic and maybe in smaller bits we can tease out some of the different ways developers make games harder or easier and what the implications of those different methods are.

To start of conversation, here are some various aspects of challenge to get the brain juices flowing:

Player health
Enemy heath
Player damage
Enemy damage
Environmental hazards
Jump distances
Hidden threats (deliberate or "accidental")
Player responsiveness and movement physics
General movement/control scheme
Skill teaching and lead-ins (tutorials and design-as-introduction)
Ammunition/health/energy economy

This list is far from exhaustive. What are some things that I've missed here? What are your thoughts on some of the items I've listed here?

I'll use a couple older games as examples.

Contra Hard Corps. In the Japanese version characters were given health instead of being taken out in a single hit. This was new to Contra. In most other Contra games it was one hit kill, but now you could withstand 3 hits before being taken out of the game. The developers definitely seem to have tuned many of the aspects of the game around that. It's much harder to avoid enemies and enemy shots in Hard Corps, and there are lots of mini-boss style enemies that take lots of damage. When the game was brought to the US, the life meter was eliminated and the game was set back to one hit kill. The end result is a game that feels a bit more like Contra hard mode that traditional Contra. I don't know how it compares to Contra III's hard mode, but Hard Corps is definitely harder than regular Contra III, and quite a bit so.

Another game I have in mind is Exile: Wicked Phenomenon. When Working Designs brought this title to the US they thought it was a little on the easy side, so they asked Telenet to make it harder. It's unknown how the game ended up in it's final state, but the end result is that the US version is titanically difficult as a result of enemies having much higher attack and defense values. Here's an article from The Cutting Room Floor about how much those stats changed and how damage is calculated, and how that combination become so disastrous.

[isiolia]

This list is far from exhaustive. What are some things that I've missed here? What are your thoughts on some of the items I've listed here?

For that list as it is, maybe things like patterns/consistency. Additionally, recovery mechanisms or similar iframe type things. Apologies if you already see them as part of the list.

In perhaps a different direction, many games also incorporate things like collecting loot or grinding up levels/skills to create a sense of progression or establish a challenge. There are pros and cons either way, but it's certainly something that can wind up excluding people that simply don't have the time to put in.

[Ack]

Also enemy amounts. For instance, in Payday 2, different difficulty modes change the types of enemies, the amount of health they have, and the amount of damage they do, but it also changes how many there are present and how many tougher varieties are strewn into the mix. Even with the increased health and damage, the baseline soldiers can be dropped if you're halfway competent, but the hordes of special enemies are really what brings on the difficulty. There are also varieties of specials that only appear on the highest difficulties, similar to lower level versions but with different kinds of firepower.

Killing Floor 2 is another game that does this, with certain special variations of enemies appearing on higher difficulties and in higher amounts. These upgraded varieties have more than increased health and damage; they also have new attacks, increased speed, have area denial methods, or can "rage" regular enemies into becoming faster and more dangerous.

[Exhuminator]

To start of conversation, here are some various aspects of challenge to get the brain juices flowing:

Player health
Enemy heath
Player damage
Enemy damage
Environmental hazards
Jump distances
Hidden threats (deliberate or "accidental")
Player responsiveness and movement physics
General movement/control scheme
Skill teaching and lead-ins (tutorials and design-as-introduction)
Ammunition/health/energy economy

All of these are important factors to consider in game difficulty. But they have a common thread (except tutorials perhaps), they pertain to action game difficulty. When it comes to things that drive me crazy with game design difficulty, the action portions are rarely the key factor. Rather, it's unintuitive progression difficulty that I hate.

A few examples of what I mean:

A player is playing a JRPG that has thus far given clear indications concerning direction. But suddenly halfway through, said JRPG ceases to give the player any indication of where to go whatsoever. No longer does the player understand how to progress the plot, and instead is expected to wander around incessantly, until they trigger the next plot element. Developers often use this difficulty method in order to disingenuously prolong the time it takes to finish their JRPG.

A player is playing an adventure game. The first dozen puzzles have had logical solutions. Suddenly the player finds themselves unable to progress through a particular puzzle. After becoming frustrated, the player looks up the solution. The solution is completely illogical, using highly irregular logic compared to prior puzzles. (Like say using a banana to start a car.) I suppose this is a form of difficulty developers sometimes used because their publisher wanted to sell strategy guides? I don't know.

Another form of inscrutable adventure game difficulty, concerns Japanese styled ones. A lot of Japanese adventure games are menu driven, with locations accessible via menu selection. Often times these games will expect the player to continuously visit areas over and over again, until a plot point triggers, with no clear representation as to why. Sometimes these Japanese adventure games will expect the player to do the same action on an object multiple times, until something triggers, for no apparent reason. An example would be like looking at a desk three times; "It's a desk." Look again; "It's a desk." Look again: "It's a desk, oh there's a drawer!" This form of puzzle difficulty is byzantine to the point of just being silly.

the end result is that the US version is titanically difficult as a result

For me it's a pet peeve when publishers change the difficulty during localization (be it easier or harder). A prime example is Elnard turning into The 7th Saga. What could have been a strange yet engaging experience, became instead a masochist's wet dream.

[pierrot]

Contra Hard Corps/Contra Spirits. In Spirits (the Japanese version)

Not to muck up your topic with confusing region titles, but Spirits is the Japanese version of Contra III. Hard Corps is just "The Hard Corps" in Japan.

Spirits still has some differences from III that make it a bit easier, though. Not the least of which being unlimited continues.

[marurun]

Contra Hard Corps/Contra Spirits. In Spirits (the Japanese version)

Not to muck up your topic with confusing region titles, but Spirits is the Japanese version of Contra III. Hard Corps is just "The Hard Corps" in Japan.

Spirits still has some differences from III that make it a bit easier, though. Not the least of which being unlimited continues.

Whoops, you're right. I'll go fix my write-up. I was going from memory and that clearly didn't serve me well.

[marurun]

All of these are important factors to consider in game difficulty. But they have a common thread (except tutorials perhaps), they pertain to action game difficulty. When it comes to things that drive me crazy with game design difficulty, the action portions are rarely the key factor. Rather, it's unintuitive progression difficulty that I hate.

This can actually apply to action gameplay as well. As much as R-Type and Gradius are praised, there are a couple points in the level where you simply have to know in advance whether to take the top or bottom path of a level. There are no clues to foreshadow your decision. Take the wrong bit and you die, period. If you haven't played that bit before and already memorized the right way, it's a guess. Flip a coin!

For me it's a pet peeve when publishers change the difficulty during localization (be it easier or harder). A prime example is Elnard turning into The 7th Saga. What could have been a strange yet engaging experience, became instead a masochist's wet dream.

I certainly hate this when it goes wrong, but it doesn't always go badly. When it's subtle or done well it may be seamless, or even improve the game. But it has a lot to do with the amount of care in the decision. Sometimes those changes were to increase rental revenue (making games harder), but sometimes they were a response to the feedback on the game from the original release territory, in which case they can be an improvement. Not every developer does enough testing or can foresee how all their design decisions play out. Back before games could be patched, a later release in a new territory was a great way to "patch" the game and fix some stuff that might have originally been a problem. And sometimes they were from Working Designs and nobody knows what the hell they were thinking.

[Gunstar Green]

And sometimes they were from Working Designs and nobody knows what the hell they were thinking.

*Shakes fist* VICTOR IRELAAAAND!!!

[Sarge]

I'm not going to weigh in on much outside of Contra: Hard Corps and Contra III, because they're fresh on my mind from this year.

Hard Corps may have the reputation of being harder, and that's true, but only compared to the NES entries and Contra III on Normal. Contra III on hard, however, is an absolutely brutal game. On top of that, having what felt like even more of a focus on boss encounters in Hard Corps made for an experience that relied less on randomness and twitchiness to get by and more on pattern recognition and exploitation of said patterns. Not that there isn't significant twitch factor, but when you learn most bosses' tells, the game is trivialized to a large degree. Contra III has enough random elements just in its stages and flood of enemies that you can get reamed by what amounts to bad RNG or not being proactive enough in threat management.

Hard Corps is also kind enough to supply four playable characters, one of which is rather dominant in my opinion (Browny). I will definitely revisit Hard Corps in the future. Contra III on Hard? I think once is enough...