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Gameplay Differences

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scar3crow Inside3D Staff Joined: 18 Jan 2005 Posts: 837 Location: Las Vegas, NV

Posted: Sun Jul 09, 2006 9:30 pm Post subject: Gameplay Differences |

Obviously you have the gameplay of a map, which is easy to measure and weigh... skill, pace, but what about a mod? In an unestablished form how do you decide the skill and pace and other factors going into what could very well be a blank slate (ala TAoV and Prydon's).
How do you decide upon a base difficulty, without maps, and how do you do so if its a PC and still contains existing Quake gameplay aspects ?

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Lardarse Joined: 05 Nov 2005 Posts: 243 Location: Bristol, UK |

Posted: Sun Jul 09, 2006 10:16 pm Post subject: |

I think that difficulty should be relative to the original difficulty settings for Quake, although not necessarily the same. I do think, however, that Mindcrime went a little too far in making Nehahra 2 skill levels higher than Quake. 1 skill level is a nice increase, though...

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FrikaC Site Admin Joined: 08 Oct 2004 Posts: 947 |

Posted: Mon Jul 10, 2006 4:15 am Post subject: |

Quote:
In an unestablished form how do you decide the skill and pace and other factors going into what could very well be a blank slate (ala TAoV and Prydon's).

A lot of this goes toward good game design and/or extensive tweaking. Basically when making the game and testing you get a feel if it's difficult or easy and adjust what you throw at the player or have the player able to do.

Quote:
How do you decide upon a base difficulty, without maps, and how do you do so if its a PC and still contains existing Quake gameplay aspects ?

The base difficulty comes from the programmer's own skill at playing his mod generally, then he tweaks based on general feedback. Actually it kind of helps if the modder kinda sucks at Quake in this regard, it helps avoid making it too hard for the general public.
Edit: typos
Last edited by FrikaC on Mon Jul 10, 2006 6:15 am; edited 1 time in total

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scar3crow Inside3D Staff Joined: 18 Jan 2005 Posts: 837 Location: Las Vegas, NV

Posted: Mon Jul 10, 2006 4:59 am Post subject: |

Heh, and thus I have a hard time with TAoV because RenegadeC is insane with sidescrollers and beat em ups. Id like to also discuss the playtesting and difficulty of single player unmodded maps, but that might go more in the Mapping section...
A friend of mine once said regarding Diablo2's difficulty "Im not high enough level for the region if I need a potion to get by"

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RenegadeC Joined: 15 Oct 2004 Posts: 370 Location: The freezing hell; Canada |

Posted: Mon Jul 10, 2006 7:58 am Post subject: |

scar3crow wrote:
Heh, and thus I have a hard time with TAoV because RenegadeC is insane with sidescrollers and beat em ups. Id like to also discuss the playtesting and difficulty of single player unmodded maps, but that might go more in the Mapping section...
A friend of mine once said regarding Diablo2's difficulty "Im not high enough level for the region if I need a potion to get by"

I admit I like hard games, but not in a cheap sense. (Think Ninja Gaiden, especially the XBox one)
TAoV is balanced in the sense of allowing the player to take advantage of or get out of a sticky situation based entirely on your skill level; in earlier versions I could get Vigil through Castle.BSP on Skill 2 (HARD) with almost full health and that was totally unacceptable to me. I find it fun to have basic enemies almost being as lethal as the character you control (Hello Skill 2 Barons!) but using your crazy calculating brain to defeat them! Roar.
Try skill 0 scar3crow, enemies rarely block/attack and are generally non-aggressive. After you're used to kicking their collective asses you can kick it up a notch to skill 1! Once you're really good and you're blocking enemy attacks, dishing out huge combos and using magic wisely then skill 2 is recommended.
In conclusion, that's my own weird way of balancing my mods I suppose.

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Sajt Joined: 16 Oct 2004 Posts: 1026 |

Posted: Mon Jul 10, 2006 8:44 am Post subject: |

I like it when skill adjusts enemy behaviour rather than number of enemies. Even if I sucked, I would never want to play Quake on skill 0 because it simply empties the world out. Terrible. _________________ F. A. Špork, an enlightened nobleman and a great patron of art, had a stately Baroque spa complex built on the banks of the River Labe.

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Dr. Shadowborg Inside3D Staff Joined: 16 Oct 2004 Posts: 726 |

Posted: Mon Jul 10, 2006 3:33 pm Post subject: |

I agree totally with everything FrikaC said. _________________ "Roboto suggests Plasma Bazooka."

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leileilol Joined: 15 Oct 2004 Posts: 1321 |

Posted: Mon Jul 10, 2006 3:42 pm Post subject: |

I usually do a quick episode 1 run while testing a mod _________________

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Quake Matt Joined: 05 Jun 2005 Posts: 129 |

Posted: Mon Jul 10, 2006 5:49 pm Post subject: |

Quote:
I admit I like hard games, but not in a cheap sense. (Think Ninja Gaiden, especially the XBox one)

Yeah, I kept meaning to ask if you'd played that! I've managed to do hard mode on NG Black, and I'm going to tackle very hard soon too. I love me the flails!
In general, I prefer hard games, but only if you can beat them by getting better. Halo 2 on legendary's all very well and good, until you meet the 99% accurate, 1-shot-kill snipers. Quake's original difficulty levels were quite good I thought, but I'd have liked a bit more challenge at the high-end, but that's mostly limited by monster AI. Still, it could have been worse.
Really though, why make a game all-easy or all-hard? That's what difficulty levels are for!

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spamalam Joined: 10 Jul 2006 Posts: 30 |

Posted: Sun Jul 16, 2006 8:36 am Post subject: |

Sajt wrote:
I like it when skill adjusts enemy behaviour rather than number of enemies. Even if I sucked, I would never want to play Quake on skill 0 because it simply empties the world out. Terrible.

I like auto-adjusting difficulty, I think it is always the best option. When your met with a normal, easy, difficult option, how are you supposed to know what to choose until after you've completed it?
By default, i imagine most gamers won't crank the game up to hard since they don't want to get stuck later on in the game and have to restart from scratch... however, if the setting is then at normal and the gamer is being far too modest, at least the game will pose a bit of a challenge as the game develops if the difficulty of the game adjusts itself.
I think Prey does this, and I'm sure other do too (F.E.A.R?)

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HeadThump Joined: 14 May 2006 Posts: 74 Location: Zin |

Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2006 8:27 pm Post subject: |

I've never seen an auto adjustiment work very well in a game. As Lunaran pointed out in a game he was working on that had auto adjustment, while play testing, every time he killed a monster it would just happen to drop what ever he was running low on at the time. These kind of implementations take the control out of the hands of mappers and into the circuits of artless algorithms.
Players need to be told that if you find the game too hard, it is time to put down the glass of Merlot and play with both hands.

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INU Joined: 26 Aug 2006 Posts: 3 |

Posted: Sat Aug 26, 2006 11:52 am Post subject: |

Well, if a mod/game had a checkpoint system (Resident Evil 4 will be used as an example) then the auto-adjusting difficulty could work out great. If any of you have played RE4, who remembers the room in the dining hall of Salazar's mansion where a cage drops down around a treasure chest (with the Hourglass inside), and you're surrounded by enemies while fighting the Berserker inside? I thought the situation was impossible until I died the second time and continued, the Berserker was gone and replaced by another religious fanatic. It might've been random, but I think it was auto-adjusting for skill. Though, I didn't get any pesetas out of it, I was relieved that I could move on.
I heard on some interview with Bungie about Halo 1/2 about difficulty and such... A question about difficulty of the game popped up. They said that if the difficulty isn't right when the enemies were changed, change where the enemies are within the level for that difficulty.

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