Shadows of the Empire on N64 wouldn’t let you see the true ending unless you beat the game on harder difficulties. And I sucked at that game.
Okay what is the drive to do this from a developer’s point of view? They want a fraction of the players who complete the game, and we know it’s a fraction because so many don’t even finish, the first time, to get even smaller for… bragging rights? I mean most people don’t even finish a game, on any difficulty so why screw them out of an ending, especially when you can just jump over to YouTube and Twitch to see the others. It kind seems like a middle finger to the people who actually made it to the end.
Keep in mind that most of these examples are ‘80s and ‘90s games, or direct follow-ups to franchises from that era. A lot of games from the 8-bit and 16-bit era used “anti-rental” design techniques to counteract Blockbuster and the like and get more unit sales, so games were largely very difficult and encouraged players to get better at them to be able to see everything, something that’s much harder to do with a three-day rental than when you own the game.
Frankly, I have no problem with a game telling you “you don’t get to see everything on easy mode,” as long as the games in question aren’t overly long (so, uh, arcade games, mostly) and they’re clear about it, like how the Touhou games tell you how many stages you get to play in each difficulty (you’re blocked from stage six in most of them if you play on easy mode, as well as being prevented from unlocking the extra-difficult Extra Stage). I do agree that games should be better about counting a win on hard as a win on easy and normal, at least where achievements are concerned - there are enough games where the difficulty levels are balanced around the player already knowing what they’re doing and possibly having some unlocks under their belt that it’s hard to apply a universal “playing on hard should unlock everything on normal,” especially when we start getting into games with hidden difficulty-specific unlocks.
Also, I don’t think developers had access to those kind of metrics, stuff like “percentage of players who start the game and actually finish” at the time. I feel like that’s the kind of thing Steam pioneered - I remember a story of them tweaking difficulty in Half Life 2 from metrics of things like how long it took players to get through sections of the game.
This should be something they tell you up front though. I typically start on normal and usually go up, occasionally go down from there. I base that solely on how the first 20-30 minutes go though. Not really how I think the ending will be or achievements. If I like the game at that difficulty, it stays.
I still believe that if someone says they don’t like games, they just haven’t experienced the right game yet, but boy would there be no bigger turn-off for a new game then to get to an end of a game and see something like that, today.
I’m confused as to what you mean by this: is there some reason one would get something out of going back and beating a game on normal when you can already handle hard? Like, I think it’s probably fair to put in unlocks that require a second playthrough or at least the sort of challenges that would typically need the player to have a full run under their belt already, but it doesn’t seem sensible to make them do it on a lower difficulty than they’re capable of.
I was thinking of Bayonetta, where the unlocks in question are in the form of specific upgrades or weapon parts in specific locations, and the same location would hold a different item (or nothing at all) on a different difficulty. When the game is rewarding you for exploring, it feels weird to say “hey, you didn’t find this, but you beat the game so you can have it anyway,” and even weirder (but in a different way) to just go back and award items for other difficulties when the player finally does explore.
That said, this is closer to the example of the Earth Defense Force games tying specific weapon drops to specific stages on specific difficulties but having a wide-open stage-select system than it is to being told “go play the entire game again because you missed something.”
I guess that makes some sense but it still feels weird to make someone go back to something easier just for a particular drop. IDK.
I don’t mind locking content through difficulty selection. In a way, since mechanics are content, you are already doing that by default (you don’t get to see the more complex dynamics of play in easier difficulties, if the game difficulty is well designed and not just a hit point buff). So by choosing a lower difficulty by default you are agreeing to not see some content, it’s just that people who choose not to be challenged tend to not care about that content anyway.
But it needs to be very clearly communicated from the get go.
It’s the same as giving extra rewards, XP, loot or any other incentives to play in a higher difficulties. The difference is that players who don’t care about challenge care more about this type of reward (normally) so it’s both a better incentive but also a more infuriating one. Needs to be done very carefully or in very challenge-centric genres only, where the player base is going to receive the incentive better (shmups do this a lot, my favorite example being Battle Bakkraid, which I only 1CCed in the middle length route).
I agree with a lot of what you say, but this would drive me nuts. Convenience please, this is a game not a school exam.
I love how the original Thief did difficulty - choosing a harder difficulty forced you to be a better Thief. Some of it was very cleary communicated in the pre-mission objectives - you’d get higher loot objectives, extra unique items you’d need to steel. You also get barred from killing non-guards, or any humans at all.
Other stuff was pretty sneaky though, stuff you wouldn’t notice until a replay. It’d remove convenient shortcuts from the levels, and most memorably in the level Assassins, add exta objectives. The mission ends when you get back to the city streets if you’re playing on normal. On higher difficulties though, if you’d previously triggered an alert in the level, you’d have to sneak back to home territory while guards hunt you through the streets.
I think Twisted Metal 2 was one where if you played on lower difficulty you didn’t get to see everything.
I don’t know if it warned you or not, but I remember playing coop with a friend and being so disappointed when it just ended and told us to play on hard instead.
I was thinking today playing ac odyssey that I sorta wish they had a button to prevent the scaling mechanic. I mean quests actually move UP in difficulty on your list as you level. Then I thought: Am I being a traitor to Tom’s initial supposition? (which I initially agreed with) Should I ever adjust difficulty?
I need to re-review the thread again to get the basic principles. But I wanted a button to stop scaling. Grr.
I dislike leveling in a game and have 80 percent of the quests in my log leveling up as well. Why even level then? (and yes I know gear and skills) (scaling)
(that said K in a dress? that was great!)
I reinforce my opinion: I dislike scaling. I recognize this makes the game content relevant BUT… it minimizes my effort.
Long old argument. But it does suck to level and then have every quest in you hatch to level as well.
But Tom is wrong about Odyssey, it does give you an incentive for playing on harder difficulty levels, the loot and quest rewards scale to closer to your current level.
I don’t understand the need for incentive to play at a harder level. Why wouldn’t anyone just play at the level that makes the game challenging enough to be fun for them?
Citation needed! There’s no information in the game about such a thing!
You and about a thousand other people who actually make games.
-Tom
This isn’t the thread about the state of documentation in modern videogames.
Can we talk about DRM then?
But seriously, where are you seeing that difficulty level affects loot drops and quest xp? I’d love to know if there’s some incentive to boot the difficulty up to hard. If it means faster leveling and better gear, it’s a shame they don’t tell you that when they ask you to pick a difficulty level.
-Tom
The items and what-not you get will be the ‘level’ of the thing (quest, enemy, area) that you got them from. On normal, that can be as much as four levels below you, on hard only one level below. Making those drops/rewards much more useful on hard. I assume on the hardest difficulty, everything in the game is your level or higher.
I think Normal is two levels up.
I am going to go on a limb and say “normal should just be normal without scaling” . Grrr. I actually do hate scaling. I was scrambling in th ac odyssey thread to be politic … but really I hate scaling in rpgs. In any shape or form. If the developers just made the game a game we wouldn’t have to scale.
No really I hate scaling … it makes NO sense in a rpg progression.