You shouldn’t be allowed behind a Pen and Paper RPG GM screen. Ever. Never ever. Ever.
Never.
This phrase gave me full body shudders.
Rock on, Brother…
With alacrity! I wish more would! Assuming I could turn it off and on at will. That would remove frustrating load/die/load boss fights which are always tedious.
It is a good question though. I like the interplay of game systems and mechanics, I like advancement primarily because it brings more toys for me to play with.
So in that way I am studying and learning the game just like someone who enjoys a challenge. but I diverge when it comes to the exam part of learning. I prefer to find my own goals, sometimes creative (I want to try a solo summoner / stealth character for example) sometimes exploration (I wonder if this combo works).
So I dont really care for the designer forcing me to pass the exam their way in a single player rpg. Thats not fun for me. I just enjoy cruising around, leveling up, getting cool gear with some interesting sights to see. Definitely not puzzles , combat or otherwise.
Now there are some games I like that enjoyable frustration part but RPG’s are not one of them.
If that makes sense?
Any game that used this as a description for anything, I would completely avoid.
Now I almost always play any game starting with Normal. If i don’t enjoy it because I find it way too easy or way too hard, I might shift, but usually I abandon games for reason that don’t always have to do with difficulty.
I am wondering though, why can’t we have dynamic difficulties. I mean some people might hate that idea and want to stick with the normal or hard difficulty, but the answer to an earlier questions… what do we do with people with different skill levels, well adjust as they go. I thought some of the action games claimed to do that, like ease up if you were struggling, push harder if you were doing really well… wouldn’t that be a better options. Of course that might require a lot more work, may not be entirely possible, but if someone started off at an “easy” level but actually got better as they played and, well, learned, it seems like it would be ideal if the game just recognized that and kicked it up a notch… you know, like what a good Game Master would do.
That brought a tear to my eye Armando and was magnificent!
Changing difficulty mid-game is available bit weird.
But in D&D, a GM would look at character optimization (or lack of), and player skill, and adjust combat appropriately. No developers can match that in setting the difficulty of encounters, so I understand having a button that says ‘hey, GM, you’re overcooking these encounters!’.
Sorry to derail this back into Pathfinder: Kingmaker, but the more I read the very elaborate descriptions of the base game, the more it seems it was a very poor pick to adapt into a computer game.
This seems like a cop out. Why not? Player skill maybe, but the game has access to all the other factors. I can see it being an issue story wise (quest sends you to kill a specific monster, party makeup is weak against said monster) but mechanically it can and has been done.
It’d probably require stripping the game of most of its combinations and ignite the ire of the players who pre-bought a game based on another game as an adaptation, I think?
If they did it, they’d have had to face “why did you pick this license” comments, is my guess.
Because it’s really hard! At least as the game currently stands.
Given you probably still want a difficulty setting (even chess computers have that), I can understand not investing huge amounts of time in ‘smart encounter tuning’.
Pathfinder is probably a terrible choice for a CRPG…but it’s the only way I’m ever gonna play this game seriously again, cuz I’ve got some serious PTSD from running it tabletop!
Dynamic encounter difficulty scaling seems like a very tractable problem from an engineering point of view. But it’s shit single-player game design. You know what I hate more than anything else in RPGs? Level scaling of enemies. It makes advancement a lot less interesting both mechanically and thematically. Why am I bothering with leveling up when the enemies just get stronger anyway? If there are level 50 bandits roving around this world, who are basically invulnerable and hit like gods, why didn’t they just conquer this whole world rather than living in a squalid three tent camp?
Adjusting the difficulty based on your party build and observed skill would be like level scaling, except more so. Congratulations, you found a great build. Now let’s even things out by applying a crippling penalty! Ultimately, nothing you do would matter.
(Dynamically adjusting the difficulty level of competitive multiplayer games of course works marvelously well, when done with a matchmaking rating. But that only works since a) each match is totally independent, unlike in a RPG campaign, b) climbing the rating ladder is an extrinsic motivation that doesn’t translate at all to single-player games).
And an increasing number of games that expect you to grind the same content over and over until you gain enough incremental unlocks to actually have fun and progress, which is a hell of a lot more lazy way to do it.
Looks at Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 6 and Trails in the Sky
A lot of challenge isn’t required to be a great RPG, a goodish story or breaking interesting systems is a reward of it’s own.
It’ll be forever before I play this game, but it doesn’t seem to force you to fine tune the difficulty - it’s just there if you want to, if you don’t just pick one of four. I don’t see how forcing everyone with a life to watch missing scenes and true endings on Youtube would be an improvement.
Totally anti-Tom on this topic.
If you want the ‘intended’ experience, pick normal, or hard, and don’t touch the settings again during playthrough.
If the only reward for greater difficulty settings is the sense of satisfaction, that’s great!
I could not care less about achievements. When I used to be good at video games, and challenged myself to complete Quake levels on Nightmare w/ 1 life, I didn’t get achievements. It was awesome in and of itself.
If devs want to allow micro-tweaking of difficulty levels on the fly, I’m all for it. There are times I want a challenge, and times I don’t.
No, you did.
The firewall around ruining the game for yourself is self-discipline. It’s like allowing a save anywhere option in a checkpoint game. If save anywhere ruins your experience, don’t flipping save, and wait for a checkpoint. Meanwhile, if I need to address RL and leave mid-level & want to save, or merely would not enjoy replaying a frustrating sequence, I’ll hit F5 without regret. Similarly if I’m digging a game, but in the mood to @Rod_Humble it for a while, I’ll tweak the settings down. The developers made me happier with that choice.
I’m not gonna fault them because they didn’t bundle a cat with every game to swat Tom’s fingers if he’s about to cheese out in easy mode.
At the end of the day, is there anything more frustrating than being stuck in a game that does NOT have difficulty options? That’s way worse from a developer point of view than going the other way around, I think.
Nope. I offer up the plane flying segment of San Andreas that made me quit the game (and the entire series for that matter) forever.
I’m glad you split it because I wasn’t tracking the other thread, but found this conversation fascinating.
Also I agree with Armando, vis a vis porting Pathfinder to video games.
@ShivaX then that plane segmen did you a favor. I really dislike the mission design philosophy of GTA. The best descriptor for it I’ve ever heard is ‘do it again, stupid’ where it’s set up with deliberate gotcha moments to punish you for not guessing the exact manner the designer wanted you to beat it. No getting clever using emergent properties of the game.
Why I loved RDR and never really liked GTA IV and stayed away from V. RDR went with a lighter touch on the Mission nonsense.