Game Difficulty Settings

I talk about my thoughts on game difficulty settings and how they should be implemented.
Videos I reference:
Enemy Progression: • Enemy Progression
Skill Design in RPGs: • Skill Design in RPGs

[@utuberz123456789]

Tim you kick so much ass. You almost always have good takes, and when I disagree I at least understand where you're coming from because you explain your stance. But this whole uploading daily, sharing your insight about games, engaging with the community kicks so much ass

[@kingofank]

I find your idea on level scaling (locking regions to what the players level was when they first discovered it) interesting, and I'm sure it can work in some games, but it also feels a bit silly. I really liked the way the Oblivion mod Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul (OOO) handled it. Every level range in the game was changed so that areas and dungeons had a max and min level. Some areas were level 10-15, so if you came there at level 1 it was scaled as if you were level 10, if you came at level 12 it was scaled to level 12, but if you came at level 20 then it was scaled to level 15. This helped you feel like things leveled with you, but also that some enemies weren't worth fighting anymore (nothing more annoying than being level 50 and getting killed by a pixie), and that there are some things in the world you're not prepared for yet (imagine if Zelda: Breath of the Wild scaled Hyrule Castle to match if you snuck in there right after the tutorial).

[@VK-sz4it]

Wow, that's great idea.

[@Joltzz1985]

Oscuro's Overhaul was absolutely the best way to play Oblivion and for that reason right there. Though, I do think Bethesda finally figured out a pretty good system with Skyrim. As you level/get stronger, you run into new tiers of bandits/monsters/dragons etc etc, but you also still run into the lower-tier enemies so you still manage to feel that 'challenge' but also like you have gotten stronger too.

[@kingofank]

@@Joltzz1985 I didn't realize that's how it worked in Skyrim, that makes a little sense. What NEVER made sense in Skyrim is that you run into random bandits wearing Daedric and Dragonbone armor. That was pretty nonsense and made me feel very much NOT like the super special savior of the world. At least it was better than how Fallout 4 did things though...

[@Minastir1]

I'm not a professional game designer but a long time game player and done small game projects as a programmer. I think the main issue with difficulty settings is that the player can't know what is the appropriate challenge level as they don't know how the game works. I've been burned countless times with rpgs that get too easy 10h in because I picked the too easy option or poorly balanced hard modes that are just number tweaks but have unintended consequences thanks to being less thoroughly tested than the standard difficulty. Also constantly fiddling with difficulty sliders feels like I'm doing the devs job for him, good examples of this would be games like Diablo 3.

[@mr.cauliflower3536]

I feel like difficulty sliders are ok, but there should be difficulty presets too, which set some sliders to certain values. This way you can let the player decide, but they don't *need* to go into the nitty gritty, but can if that's something they want.

[@vast634]

I liked the old Idea of a tutorial level, as in the original Half Life. The player can (does not need to) learn the mechanics of the game. This could also include some encounters that are scaled by the difficulty. It would be a quick showcase of how tough enemies can be at this setting.

[@Constellasian]

One interesting thing I remembered about difficulty and progression was from Earthbound. This game is from 1994, but is still loved by fans and even some younger generations who love retro games. Weaker enemies would actually begin running away from your character if you're certain levels above them. This is something I haven't seen in modern adventure games and RPGs.

[@zonelore]

Bioshock has a similar situation, if you use the big daddy costume and return to the very first locations, the opponents will run away from you. 🤣

[@snegglepuss6669]

On the no quest marker idea, I've thought for years that open-world games should be designed for no quest marker, no fast travel, as if that's the base state. So all quests need intelligible directions, or at least ones the testers manage to parse, and moving across the map should be interesting. Then add the magic arrows and map back in for the final build and leave the option to turn it off

[@hwyeles9032]

One of the worst things they did in Minecraft was add the hunger bar, I remember when everyone thought it would be like 3d dwarf fortress. Instead it's just the most annoying part of the game. If you have to make people maintain their body, then it should also buff them when they do eat, probably half as much as not eating is to their detriment. Having a good meal and a sleep before a dungeon or an encounter to hedge your stats--or the opposite. In most of the games I played growing up it was really just a timer you had to reset. Think rads in fallout, the perks that buff you for having high rads, you could have the same for going awhile without sleeping or eating. Seems like an interesting concept.

[@proydoha8730]

I love this topic because I usually have problems with difficulty selection screen. When I as a player see: "Choose you difficulty: easy, normal, hard" And none of them are explained I get mad. Sometimes it is possible to find information about difficulties in manuals or wikis for a game but why isn't it in the game in the first place? The other thing that I as a player want to see in games is line:"This is intended difficulty" If I see that line know I instantly what difficulty I want to choose - this one. Configurable difficulty is the best option but can be scary when you run the game for the first time and it gives you 15 different toggles and switches to customize your experience. I don't know what any of this means yet! I love it when difficulty does not just change enemy hitpoints and damage they deal but also unlock additional tricks for them to use against the player. I feel like there was an era where raising the difficulty in games resulted in very long health bars that are just tedious to deal with. Makes playing the game a chore instead of challenge.

[@raathh]

The last part you described is similar to the new game + in Dark Souls 2, not only increasing enemy health and damage output, but also increasing the difficultly by spawning the red phantom enemies.

[@vast634]

I usually just choose "normal", assuming the game was balanced around this difficulty. Often harder modes are just a simplistic Health Point boost to enemies, that gets slapped on.

[@VirulentWalrus]

I really like how customizable the difficulty is in Owlcat's games, especially the Pathfinder 1e based ones.

[@nemozinioux]

I personally believe making enemies tougher on higher difficulties is the worst way to increase difficulty, because it just means you're spending more time and resources on every single enemy. Enemies aren't necessarily more dangerous, they're just more annoying to kill. Increasing enemy damage, accuracy, reducing player health like you suggested sound like much better difficulty tweaks because they increase tension and skill requirement. The one situation where I can understand making enemies tougher makes sense is when you're in a game where resource management is important and as such, picking fights is a choice and not a requirement, and tougher enemies would make this choice even more important. Thanks for this video, all others before and all the next ones!

[@whiteegretx]

Excellent points!

[@The_Endless_Now]

Or in games where you "unlock" game mechanics as the battle progresses. Like 30 seconds in, you'll be able to perform a special move. *_Higher difficulties_* mean longer battle durations, meaning you'll be able to use more of those special moves per battle. *_While on lower difficulties_* you'll rarely have to engage with these mechanics, and maybe you don't even want to.

[@psykomancer4420]

Breath of the Wild on Master Mode is a good example of the latter. That game shines when you're forced to be scrappy.

[@TheYoungtrust]

#cancleBulletSponges

[@froggin-zp4nr]

I like it when higher difficulties introduce new mechanics or require you to change your approach. Bigger numbers doesn't equal satisfaction.

[@mohawklogan]

I really agree with Tim on level scaling one of the really cool things that happens in dark souls is some bosses become regular enemies in the late game and that's such an INCREDIBLE feeling

[@TrippyScarecrow]

I think accessibility and difficulty sliders are a MUST for modern games. As an adult with a full time job, in a serious relationship, and errands to run I only have so much time in a day to enjoy a game. The last thing I want is to burn up all my free time trying to beat one specific part of a game. I like steady forward progress in my gaming experience, not replaying the same boss fight a dozen times

[@hiybbprqag]

I really liked the way Kingdom Come Deliverance handled the map on its hardcore mode, where you have a map but no "you are here" indicator. You can figure out where you are on the map but it requires paying attention to your surroundings. I found myself relying on landmarks like roads or rivers as a reference point and a guide for traveling, or even the time of day and position of the sun, as opposed to a simple compass marker telling me "go this way." I find it much more fun. I turn off the compass in Skyrim entirely for the same reason.

[@vast634]

In Gothic, the player started without any map. But it was possible to steal or buy a (sometimes incomplete) paper map of the world. The hero would actually pull out this map when looking at it. That was quite immersive too.

[@davorbrijacak]

@@vast634 How Gothic handles the map and world navigation is still my favorite to this day.

[@bonchachan6061]

In some games the difficulty gets adjusted kind of naturally by allowing players to take on the challenge at their own pace which keeps the game fun for people of all skill levels. Great example would be Terraria where you progress by killing bosses and a newbie player will take a lot of time gathering resources and items while an experienced player will rush easier bosses. Heroes of might and magic is another good example, the game consists mostly of clearing the map of neutral armies and weaker players will take a lot of time amassing armies while good players will take on the hardest battles very early. I find this kind of difficulty scaling the most fun though I recognise that for some games it might be hard to implement it

[@VK-sz4it]

Newby in HOMM3 - level done in 1h (or 3 months, 2 weeks, 3 days). Pro in HOMM3 after 1 h - finished his first week Just kidding

[@hyperbolicechochamber]

This is a great topic. Thanks for covering it. I always loved the concept implemented in Godhand (and in Resident Evil 4) where the difficulty is dynamic based on the player's performance. When normal mode is selected one can see the difficulty meter change in the left hand corner. In RE4 it was a hidden mechanic.

[@devforfun5618]

i dont like hidden difficult changes, it keeps you guessing "did i win or did the game let me win " and you cant even keep the game in a normal difficult if you want, let the player decide if they want adaptive difficult

[@The_Endless_Now]

Customizable difficulty made Xenoblade 2 *_so much fun_* on a first playthrough. Being able to make the game exactly as challenging as I want was great, hitting that perfect balance. The Expansion had its custom difficulty locked behind New Game+, so I enjoyed that one far less on a first playthrough. Or maybe it'd be more accurate to say I didn't enjoy it.

[@morgonburke263]

Thief and Goldeneye both both kind of took an interesting approach to this. They both changed the objectives for a mission depending on difficulties. So at higher difficulties you had to explore deeper and put yourself in riskier positions. For stealth focused games I always thought this was a great way to do it. You could also open or close different pathways to the player. It helped alot with replayability too.

[@BlueSquareInWhiteCircle]

Game difficulty is a really interesting topic from a narrative / UX pov aswell. The story you want to play out in the players mind with the matching story tension - difficulty friction. This in relation to the game with all the various markers setting player expectation (tone, marketing, genre) vs delivering on thoose expectations when the range of player mental frameworks are so wide. How games tailored with a certain playing experience for a target audience in contrast to accessibility are seemingly at odds and how “game litteracy” plays into this mix. The influx of videos of non gamers, disabled gamers and elderly gamers explaining their gameplay experiences is eyeopening to the complexity of design challenges in taking this medium to the next level.

[@iWishmaster]

Very well explained Tim! Unavoidably, higher difficulty will mean increased time spent on the game. The trick is to increase the time spent on things people enjoy doing, and that's different for most people. Most souls-like games are not my cup of tea because of the way they implement difficulty; when a game forces me to re-do a level/boss over and over and over because of having to do perfect mechanics / timing / reflexes, I just get annoyed when I miss-click once and have to reset hours of prep work. And I love it when I can use planning, strategy and getting my character to be better/stronger by leveling, gearing and finding enemy weaknesses. Even better when there are alternate ways to beat aspects of a game, like stealth, dialog, quests, puzzles instead of combat being the only option.

[@4G12]

More difficult should mean more realistic, better approximate realistic logistical/tactical/strategic challenges. Difficulty via unrealistic things like making human infantry into bullet sponges despite obviously NOT being heavily armoured is ludicrous, annoying, immersion breaking and ultimately, counterproductive.

[@TyrellGames]

hey Tim. Just now playing fallout 1 for the first time after playing New Vegas recently. For the first hour or so I had to get used to it and then before i knew it i had been playing for 5+ hours. I think it nails the feeling of constantly being on the edge of death and barely getting through the fights. The difficulty is really well balanced, imo (on normal at least, thats what im playing on) and i think you guys made it thematically appropriate to the setting. Fantastic game 25+ years later.

[@Gregorovitch144]

Really nice video and I loved Outer Wolds btw. Not FO:NV but a nice, colourful and very fun game. Couple of points from playing RPGs since 1993 (Ultima Underworld, System Shock, Ultima 7 etc): 1. I absolutely loath level scaling. My overwhelming preference is for sequential areas with fixed enemy levels (as opposed to attempts to make full open world games work). So I like PoE1 a lot more than PoE2 for example. Level scaling is samey, boring and grindy for me and I sometimes enjoy taking on a difficult encounter early to figure out how to do it and get my grubby mits on the juicy loot (i.e. loot scaling to fixed levels > level scaling for me). 2. The most difficult part of any RPG (I played them all on max difficulty since early 2000's except Owlcat's Pathfinder games where Unfair is ridiculous and not very fun for me) is almost always the first serious early game encounters. This is because I will have limited tools at my disposal early game, fewer spells and abilities. Because I've played a lot of RPGs I'm reasonably good at understanding rule sets and can build strong characters as I level up so that by mid-game it's getting easier and easier and by the end I'm often like a God since I've now got so many cool tools to use in various combinations. I recognise that point 2 is not easy to remedy since if difficulty scaling was ramped up towards end game to cater for the likes of me then less experienced folks who can often make a series of sub-optimal build decision over the course of game, thus accumulating a significant power deficit, can easily hit a brick wall. I think this is the big difficulty challenge that hasn't really been totally solved yet.

[@darkengine5931]

I also thoroughly dislike level scaling. To me, one of the big appeals of a nonlinear game is that I can set my own difficulty based on the path I choose to take without difficulty settings. In FO 2, I can directly go south from Arroyo and almost certainly get my butt handed to me by Enclave patrols and get killed even faster than I can run in the opposite direction. I actually like that. If I'm a better player and have a great build, I can take note of that dangerous area and risk it at earlier levels. If not, avoid that for a while and carve a safer path through the world. It's making these risk assessments as part of the decision of where to venture next that makes where to venture next an always interesting decision. We actually lose the ability to tailor the difficulty to our own liking in such an intuitive way if the game is dynamically adjusting difficulty based on the paths we take throughout the game. It's not just about being able to come back to the same areas earlier and be able to kick butt when we struggled. That does fix the lack of power fantasy with level scaling but that's not even the biggest problem to me with level scaling. It's about world-building. It doesn't make sense to me if D&D stated how strong a dragon is in terms relative to the player/party level when we first encounter a dragon in that area, like "If you first encounter a red dragon at level 1, it has this much HP and does this much DMG, at level 2, this much, etc" [show table]. That lacks the grounded sense of a carefully-preconceived world. It becomes a "whatever" world. It starts to feel like the metaphorical dungeon master is just making stuff up to suit us without any preconception of the world as it is, and which areas are more dangerous than others. That's a horrible dungeon master to me; they're improvising a bit too much there (improvisation is a good and very desirable quality for a DM, but not one who is improvising so much that he/she seemed like they never even planned out a detailed world in advance). "If Harry Potter encounters Valdemort at level 1, Valdemort cannot cast spells and will just hit Harry over the head with his wand. If Harry Potter encounters Valdemort at level 99, Valdemort can machine gun Avada Kedavra spells which instantly kill anything it touches at 300 times a minute." It's boring and too variable, too improvised.

[@NeroMattsss]

I just wanted to mention an idea you gave me for difficulty outside of combat: "More evidence". It wouldn't work in every game, for sure, but taking the Master's example you used, if we follow the Three Clue Rule (Leave, at least, three equally important pieces of evidence for the next step), maybe on easy a simple observation (high perception or something) could be enough to convince the Master. Maybe we could have the studies of the Brotherhood of Steel as one piece of evidence and a scout's report on the mutants' army saying he never saw mutant children anywhere (two extra pieces of evidence, for a higher difficulty). If we give the players enough margin to gather information without missing out on it through a skill check, maybe we could make difficult persuation checks that don't require random numbers or higher skill values!!

[@KreationKills]

very interesting video Tim, as someone that loves challenges in games this was a great watch :) recently i've personally started to see difficulty not as a single axis that goes from "easy" to "hard", but as a two dimensional chart, where one axis tells you how easy/accessible the game is or can be, and the other tells you how hard/challenging the game can be. the game that did this for me is Elden Ring: as the most recent FromSoft game, the gameplay became way more accessible: there are dozens of spells, special moves that can be changed for each weapon, you can summon not only other players but npcs and creatures to help you, and virtually anything you level up will help you deal more damage; at the same time, the challenge hasn't really changed that _much_, some endgame bosses are still very challenging for the average player, even with all those options, and it's still common for a very powerful build to still get clobbered if the player isn't paying any attention to combat. not sure this is the most accurate way of describing difficulty, but it certainly has helped me become more familiar with game mechanics as a whole, and (i feel) a better player: "what are the tools the game is offering me and what are the problems it's expecting me to solve with them?" if the game only gives me a hammer to pound a nail, then thats a pretty logical and balanced challenge; if the game only gives me a hammer to pound an ant, that's probably too easy; if it only gives me a hammer to kill a god, thats gonna be challenging (but possibly annoying for a lot of people) finding out the nuances between the tools a game offers me has been the fun part of my last gaming experiences: if the game feels too hard, i'll probably use a better weapon to make it easier, and if the game is too easy, i'll probably use something to make it a bit harder; it's pretty much "player-defined dynamic difficulty" lol

[@Baraz_Red]

- Agreed optional settings is ideal, like what Owlcat does (Pathfinder Kingmaker and Pathfinder WotR). - "HP bloat" (adding hit points) tends to not be fun, even for players who like challenge or more difficulty. Also, for systems like D&D and Pathfinder, that have a certain attempted balanced in their designs, more or less AC or To Hit can be problematic. For BG3, the Tactician difficulty seems to be the more usual tabletop challenge, while the normal is a bit easier as most players may not know the system as well.

[@brianviktor8212]

The design problem is this: You have player skill and power progression, and you want to provide a challenge that can be overcome by players. The expectation is that players will try (or do something else to get power) until they manage to overcome it. If you allow the option to lower the difficulty instead, you create a bad incentive, a way to continue while admitting defeat. Also many games offer very fine-grained increases in difficulty, and bosses become defeatable in an "easy mode", both of which ruins immersion. That said, I am a fan of reusing the same assets, and having an option to raise difficulty and to progress that way. For me however it's rather a way to increase difficulty from a (hopefully) moderate-high difficulty level as baseline. But that's just for a relative few players who want even more challenge (and rewards). Let's say you have 5 zones/dungeons/whatever, and if you determine 2 easy, 2 moderate and 1 hard, it means players have to progress up to the hard one. The disadvantage is that you could also say all 5 are available in easy, medium and hard - and thus reuse the map and the assets. I am not sure it's a good solution though, but a consideration that has to be made, as doing the latter is cheaper/easier.

[@mat9h1]

I'm generally anti-level scaling, and would even push back on the approach of locking a region when you first join there. My pushback is for two reasons. 1. Games in which both you and your opponents advance at the same rate, end up giving the impression of each encounter being static. If I now have a +3 sword, but the bandits all are given +3 armor then they way that I engage with them is going to be about the same through the entire adventure. I think where it works the best is where the increased difficulty reflects a more fundamental change in how you engage in the encounter. Now there is magic, or psionics, or group tactics which didn't exist previously. 2. I am perfectly happy reaching a point where I'm not challenged all of the time. The Ultima series was set up this way, where once you were moderately developed you could pretty much go between all of the towns in the "civilized area" without issue. The dungeons and unique locations could still be scary, but these were places that you had to seek out and usually visited with some intention. This really helped with world building; since the towns could not exist if there are level 80 bandits and wolves just outside the city limits.

[@rewpertcone8243]

I like difficulty options in certain games, story based games, rpg's, turn based games etc. But there's also something special about only having one difficultly. When I get into a tough fight in elden ring, if I had the option to go onto easy mode, I 100% would have. But since I didn't have the option, I explored the world, found a new spell came back and kicked the bosses ass.

[@mdog86]

I'm always happy when there are multiple difficulty options. Especially as I get older, I'm almost 40, I honestly just don't have the patience nor desire to suffer through difficult games like I once did when I was younger. Easy mode all the way for me now, and that's perfectly fine to me. I play for story and escapism. Nowadays if I see a game that doesn't have multiple difficulty settings, I'm way less likely to even give it a try. Cause there's absolutely nothing worse than enjoying a game but getting completely roadblocked by a massive difficulty spike. I've bought and wasted money multiple times on games like that and it sucks.

[@rewpertcone8243]

Difficultly options for story based games are a must. But I also think that not including them in certain games (like dark souls) enhance the experience.

[@635574]

I like when there is something that identifies the games difficulty or the menu straight up says what is changed, pretty common but not all games explain it. Also if you scale too many things in the difficulty scale it quickly compounds and becomes unbalanceable. 1 maximum 2 variables work.

[@Skaro11]

I think modular difficulty is the way to go for most RPGs with separate sliders for different areas. For example you can lower the combat difficulty but increase stealth difficulty and get rid of quest markers. That way you tailor the experience to whatever you want instead of having what the developer decided belongs in the "hard" setting.

[@lhfirex]

For RPG difficulty settings, it sounds like I'm just sucking up to Tim, but the Fallout 1 and 2 difficulty settings are still among the best I've seen. I really enjoy being able to split your difficulty between combat and out of combat. And even though it's basically just a skill penalty at higher levels, it's a great starting point/forces you to really specialize in some skills if you want to use them. I'm playing Expeditions: Rome, which is like a light RPG with some strategy elements mixed in (kinda like Firaxis XCOM games, but more heavy on the RPG side) and it actually has really good difficulty options as well. You get four overall difficulty settings, and also get death options, so you have to stabilize/revive main characters if they get KOed in fights, or you can turn on Iron Man mode so you have a single save file. I like these difficulty settings as these are independent of the overall difficulty. Another classic PC game with top tier difficulty settings is System Shock 2. Thief and Thief 2 also, same developers. But it's funny how SS2 mostly adjusts the numbers of health/psi points, how many upgrade modules you find in the game, and the cost of upgrading abilities, and that's the big determinant in difficulty. Despite the hardest difficulty being called Impossible, I actually find it the most fun to play. It's mostly because your health feels like it matches the enemies' health in that mode, so in a way it feels more immersive. Thief and Thief 2 add more mission objectives on higher difficulties, instead of making enemies tougher, and that also makes sense.

[@HerrDoktorWeberMD]

There are cases where I firmly believe a game should not have bespoke difficulty options in a menu, and those cases tend to be games that give you options to modulate that difficulty. Boss just has a bit too much HP? There's damage bonus items. Need more room for error? Level up your health and get heavier armor. Just can't get that fast guy? Here's a bunch of throwable pots that'll slow him down. When the difficulty is mitigated by items/progression/alternate routes present within the game world itself, an "easy mode" can really just be whatever build or strategy you employ that makes the game easier for you personally. (for the record, NOT elitist, I beat Elden Ring by cheesing the shit out of it with summons and dragon's breath before getting lucky with the final boss's movement pattern so I only really had to stand next to him and mash attack) In many other cases, yes, I can agree with having a bespoke 'easy' or 'hard' mode, but the problem I have in many such cases is that developers simply make numbers bigger or smaller, or they'll have fewer enemies, or what have you, and it'll be difficulty adjustments that disappoint me. Sometimes 'easy' is TOO easy and disappointing, but then normal feels weirdly too hard, or something to that effect. Personally I really wanna go for the more 'granular' approach where I can with my own game. I just wanna try to do a decent job communicating a "best tool for the job" mentality so that 'easy mode' is just about being prepared.

[@LDiCesare]

Colony Ship is a game you can beat with no skill, just talking your way through it. So it's a game that, according to your point, falls into the "other build" can solve it. Yet, the devs, while initially they didn't want to add difficulty settings, had to add an easy mode, and eventually a custom difficulty mode. I think players want that. Sometimes, it's fun to play a suboptimal build. Why would you be preventing a player from doing that?

[@HerrDoktorWeberMD]

@@LDiCesare The key is that suboptimal builds should still be able to clear the game. I mean, there's someone out there who can beat Dark Souls without leveling up, blindfolded, using a DDR dance pad as a controller. If you want your game to have challenge options, you don't need a bespoke "easy mode" or "hard mode" for that either. It's all about the type of game you're trying to make. In Pathologic, the game is about struggling against disempowerment, starvation, and poverty to cure a plague. A bespoke easy mode would undermine those themes, I think. I don't consider it a hard and fast rule, it's just an opinion I have that proper organic difficulty modulation is always better than "menu -> options -> difficulty -> easy"

[@LDiCesare]

@@HerrDoktorWeberMD In that game I mentioned, people managed to beat the game without ever taking a perk on levelling up (which is the only thing levelling up does) and leaving all the stats at the bare minimum. However, the devs still had to add the easy mode due to popular demand and the fact they just wouldn't sell wihtout it. Most of the feedback they get is that combat is too hard. The easy mode in that game also goes against the setting, and it has ways to win with any build, including doing combat. Still, players demanded it. It would have been a suicide from an economy point of view for the developers not to provide it.

[@HerrDoktorWeberMD]

@@LDiCesare Turn-based games are one of my exceptions due to the fact that one bad roll of the die can often ruin an otherwise perfectly executed plan or frustratingly end a fight with a sudden difficulty spike. I still think balancing encounters and providing means of attaining some measure of control over the RPG organically within the game world is better, but when the experience relies heavily on RNG and many deaths and hardships come with the roll of a die, I would say that a bespoke "easy" mode can, indeed, modulate the difficulty without sacrificing the themes. As an example, Fallout is turn-based. I've beaten it by lowering combat difficulty, and I've beaten it on higher difficulty with a more durable build just to see if I could handle myself. The world is still desolate, super mutants are still deadly, but at the very least, I don't get instakilled by high-level machine gun fire for opening a door after mowing down a hallway of easy mole rats. When easy mode means less severe random punishments, as long as the game isn't "about" being being random, I think that's a good thing. I've always been against story-driven games punishing the player for rolling the wrong number on a D20 when they were doing so to get from A to B. But when the punishment comes from making a poor choice in combat or choosing to stand your ground and fight something clearly too strong for you, then that's fair IMO. Point is, as I've said, I will always consider organic difficulty modulation to be better than a bespoke "easy mode" in a menu. However, there are circumstances in which bespoke difficulty selection is beneficial to the experience of a game, even if it may go against themes, and RNG-based outcomes to player actions are one of those circumstances.

[@deadfishy666]

Modders always provide a ton of customization, not to mention that by choosing mods you want allows you to tailor the game for yourself already. Then you can further customize the mods you chose with the options they provide. I know, kind of off topic, but you see my point. I think choices are great.

[@jansidlo]

Hello Tim. You are great inspiration. Can you please tell how to work with own ego as team leader? How to work with other people and their ideas, how to comunicate in the right way when you don't like their ideas, or what to say when you know their arguments are right but goes somewhat against what was intended, how not to be and feel like a jerk.... Or better asked: what do you think is the best to do to not be too driven by emotions during the game development when something goes wrong ... Maybe this is not good question at all. Thank you anyway.

[@CainOnGames]

You might like my “Ego And Game Directors” video kzbin.info/www/bejne/bmbXo6CqprdgqZo

[@CainOnGames]

Also this one: “Giving Good Feedback” kzbin.info/www/bejne/Y2iVk6edp9x-sKM

[@jansidlo]

Thank you very much for your kind reply and pation. I watch you almost every day, but somehow missed those vids. Now I am one of those who asks first before search... I'll try better next time 😊 greetings from europe

[@phunkracy]

Honestly, the only way I'd imagine that "no quest log" difficulty setting working in fantasy RPG is if I'm able to instantly load the game to a point before the information was presented. Games often bombard us with exposition and expect us to remember the weird names, lore and locations. Sorry, but I just started the game and these names means nothing to me. I wont remember them because I cant connect the name to an event or character. Its way worse when the names are either completely foreign and/or similiar. To a japanese person a difference between Shimazu and Shimano is obvious, but not for me. If you namedrop both within 1st hour I'm not going to tell which is which. Game of Thrones is especially guilty of that with billion of guys named Jon or John who also look a lot like each other (long hair, beard, handsome).

[@pelicano1987]

Numerical changes are an easy way, but as you said, Tim, can be seem as friction. I would prefer a more deep difference. In the end it *is* a numerical difference, but having more enemies make the combat harder since the extra enemy adds more decision-making moments. Maybe even make it appear in some non-orthodox place, like flanking the player. This won't even need to mess with enemy AI. Just make normal difficulty (for example, take a "corridor-map" FPS) about facing one enemy up ahead, hard difficulty about facing two enemies up ahead, harder about facing one enemy up ahead and other coming from behind the player. Make normal about facing 3 goblins, hard about 2 goblins + 1 goblin shaman, and so on. The old way of removing quest markers feel less about "difficulty" and more about immersion.

[@darkengine5931]

I'm admittedly in the diehard camp that, like some of the devs you worked with, would insist that most options (especially difficulty options) might be indicative of a lack of a very firm design decision and prefer to err on the side of much fewer than more. I wouldn't say I'm right but just that this deeply resonates with my personal taste; I prefer the French deli with a very small menu and no ability to customize our sandwiches over Subway Sandwiches, if you will, in this context, and even if it means none of my favorite sandwiches are on the menu. The problem I've always found is that I've never found a game with difficulty options that didn't give me at least some suspicion that one or more difficulty modes (very often all of them) suffered in quality in exchange for the quantity, as with the case of Subway Sandwiches. It can appeal to more people with more options but not as deeply to any of them. There are often janky difficulty spikes in those that seem like the playtesting and balancing efforts were not multiplied to account for all possible combinations of difficulty options and with care to distribute the playtesting and finessing across all of them equally. Some feel more neglected in playtesting than others (especially at the extremities), and often all of them feel at least somewhat neglected. Meanwhile with games absent difficulty settings whether they're as easy as Super Mario World or as difficult as Dark Souls, there's a sense -- regardless of whether it's too easy or too difficult for my taste -- that the difficulty curves were playtested and finessed to near perfection, and I prefer that to a game that allows me to set the "perfect difficulty" for myself but with very janky spikes. Besides, with games that are a tad easy for my taste like SMW, I can set my own challenges like speed-running the whole game without dying once or with ones that started off being a bit difficult for my taste like Dark Souls, endure the game long enough to grow substantially better in skill thanks to the feeling that the game is so carefully finessed and fair despite its difficulty. That finessed quality is more appealing to me than being able to adjust things to my tastes absent the finesse. Yet another analogy I like to use is the PG-13 horror film. I dislike most of them not because I need more adult content in my horror films but because the PG-13 rating often seemed to come about at a cost to quality; chosen not to appeal more deeply to a select audience but to appeal to a wider audience at the cost of deeper appeal, at the cost of quality. I prefer products that don't mind excluding a wider audience in favor of more deeply appealing to a narrower one, even if that excludes me in the demographic; I'll still tend to find the products like this for which I am not the intended audience to be more appealing than products which try to please everyone. Another reason I like the absence of difficulty settings (as well as absence of level scaling) is that it cements the idea of the "vanilla/canonical" game experience. I adore Fallout 1&2 but, for example, I've devised multiple build guides where, despite carefully noting that I'm playing on the hardest difficulty (and ironman on top), I confuse so many players who play on easier modes asking me things like, "Why do you have negative skill stats on your build? Do you have a bug?" We also end up arguing on what the optimal builds are when I think it's because we're playing on different difficulty settings; we're basically playing different video games in a sense and talking across each other since we're not on the same page and not playing with the same settings. Even with the level scaling of the sort you mentioned (which is at least preferable to me over Oblivion), how can we talk about how risky it is to encounter Enclave patrols in FO2 if their difficulty is established on first encountering them in the area around Navarro? We can't talk about it like it's a constant. It becomes a variable based on how strong the player was when they first set foot around Navarro, which for some people might be level 2 heading straight south from Arroyo from the start of the game claiming Enclave patrols or Super Mutants are easy, e.g., because they encountered them at level 2 while I encountered them for the first time at level 30. Everyone is playing such a different video game. So it makes it very difficult to discuss the game and how to potentially play it optimally when everyone is using different settings. We end up with a scenario like someone says a steak restaurant is horrible because they ordered their steaks well-done while I thought it was one of the best steaks I ever had since I ordered mine medium rare. Especially for something as complex to discuss and share our appreciation towards as video games, it makes it very difficult to be even remotely on the same page if we're all playing on radically different difficulty settings.

[@colin-campbell]

I’d be really keen to hear your thoughts on how the Soulsborne games tackle difficulty. There’s no difficulty option per se however you do choose your own difficulty with the given game mechanics e.g. summoning, weapon buffs, levelling up. Is this, in your opinion, better or worse than traditional game difficulty settings?

[@LemonMoon]

I like survival needs in rpgs, though I think it should be something you can turn off or on separate from difficulty because I want to deal with difficulty but not companion perma death

[@ButtorsGaming]

Such an insightful talk I like that you mention playing in Easy to play the game and not just get stuck. I’m interested to know your thoughts on skill checks. Do you think there is a time and a place for skill checks besides a select few skills. Think something like an agility skill check in something like a fallout type RPG. Idk how or if that would be something doable/worth doing unless it was to access as Easter egg with a way to make you jump further. Idk . Also really interested in knowing if you have played any game that has been released in the recent years that don’t have quest logs or markers. Not remakes but new games.

[@Kindlesmith70]

1:04 The decision is there, to put an option in the game. Games are for people to enjoy regardless how they like to enjoy them. The "conform to this or get lost" mentality is a rather pathetic one to hold these days given there aren't limitations like there used to be on older hardware (floppy discs, dial up modems, processing power, etc.). Balancing aspect is always a tricky affair, but one that if players are allowed to modify can increase the enjoyment of the game. People who want it easy, can do all kinds of creative stuff, while masochists can enjoy their frustraions, and triumphs. Both make for video good content. The devs can create a recommended mode to demonstrate what their vision is of the default game they had in mind so players could just go with that. I feel anyone who disagrees that various game settings are a great aspect doesn't understand the purpose of entertainment; the ever varied, and mutable 'have fun'. 1:41 sounds like me on some occasions. I cheated Dark Souls, and Demons Souls after spending far too much time being limited to where I was up to repeating the same stuff again and again without any progress. While I don't mind improving at games, I also don't want to spend days doing it when there is so much else to do in life. Games of this type have so much more to offer than just a difficult combat for the sake of difficulty, and it's those other aspects I want to engage with. I did plough through Nioh legitemately, as well as Bloodborne, and the rather mediocre experience that was Elden Ring (oh how bad this game was designed for open world co-op, full co-op being the only reason why I got it).

[@nathandanner4030]

Speaking of 'Friction' i wish that more games would give the player the ability to 'Opt Out' of what I like to call the 'inventory Management Mini Game' the Older I get the less I enjoy spending time moving things between containers and staring at inventory screens. I'd rather be playing the actual game then 'Excel Spread Sheet the Game'.

[@Tryhardblackguy]

I’m really digging the dynamic difficulty in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. It’s definitely more difficult as you go on.

[@HiddenAdept]

I loved how one of my favourite games of all time, Shin Megami Tensei IV, handled difficulty. You don't get to choose a difficulty at the start, and it is pretty difficult. Very easy to get party wiped in the first dungeon if your not careful. If you get party wiped your sent to the River Styx at the end of a MASSIVE line up waiting to cross the river. The ferryman of the river Styx, Charon, is so overwhelmed with how many people are waiting to cross the river he lets you bribe him to return to the land of the living. If you get party wiped too many times though, you'll be sent to the Styx when just his assistants are there and they feel sorry for you. They say "keep this on the down low" and unlock the easy difficulty for you. The game is a little cheeky about it lol I actually played through the game on the "easy" difficulty cause it still required you to be strategic and learn the game for sure.

[@robtibbetts890]

Non-numerical difficulty increases are the most interesting to me - requiring me to actually think harder instead of just building a player character with better numbers. Specifically having situations occur at higher difficulty that just aren’t there on easier difficulties, like new enemies with new abilities, giving enemies more bodies to use for tactics, or having the enemies use more effective tactics and powers. I get that all of this is design, but my thinking is that it’s worth designing for difficulty and then scaling that difficulty down for easier play, rather than vice Verda.

[@giovanniamore7532]

negative example "cýberpunk 2077 verý hard difficultý" : ýou beeing chromed up get shot from a street bum with 2 shots, while street bum needs 2 mags in the face... makes ZERO sense

[@exessqd100]

Things will get easier as you go through the game if you have skill based game. True implementation of the level system in my opinion is how the ranks implemented in pvp game, you kill something big - you achieved higher skill - game will award you with higher rank / level. Mobs doesn’t get easier by themselves you get more skilled that’s why they are easier

[@kingVibe111]

So I’ve thought a lot about difficulty in the last decade and believe a modular system is the best, effectively a variety of sliders, but the problem is that requires you think about it from the very beginning and design around that. If you make a game where a boss is designed around one strategy and suddenly you change the game so that doesn’t work it can mess up the game more than being a challenge. If you haven’t designed around players needing to eat food and suddenly you just add hunger mechanics the balance of that can be way off. So I think games should have all the systems built in from the start then allow willing players to personalize their experience. It’s also important to be able to have “buffs” in there as well, like maybe you lower how much gold you accrue but also lower shop prices some because maybe having to constantly buy food and gear is too punishing for some players and they want to practice at playing a more difficult challenge and figure out techniques and strategies before going for the full low-gold run. But I imagine a lot of games don’t really think of this when they begin development and see a lot of these things as features they can just scrap and wait for modders to add in for them. But I think modular difficulty and randomizers are the solution to a lot of modern gaming’s problems making expensive games you only play once then forget forever, or that need 12 years of development to reach a super-replayable state. BG3 is great but the resources that went into that title must have been huge.

[@vast634]

A simple but very impactful change to increase the difficulty of a game: add limits to saving. Stages would be: not in combat , not out of town/base/ship, only in rented/owned beds, only at specific trigger points, or even no saving at all (except when exiting the game). The same game, with the same balancing can suddenly get quite a bit more difficult, and requires more careful and planned actions.

[@rebecca99994]

This is a bastard of a mechanic for people with commitments that mean they can't just keep playing until they reach a save point, though. I've played games like this where I've basically given up because the amount of times I couldn't play when I felt like it because I didn't necessarily have time to play through to the next save point.

[@vast634]

@@rebecca99994 I mentioned several mechanics, do you mean fixed savepoints? Btw, any online game does not have saving. Either you keep nothing (games with short sessions) apart from a score, or they basically work like an exit save, where you can continue but never jump back in time at will. And people are completely fine with that. That can also work in singleplayer games.

[@mellit6630]

Good morning, Tim! I have a question about testing things like difficulty. How do you test these “soft” or qualitative aspects of the game and remove yourself/perspective as a designer/director? How do you direct QA for testing something qualitative/feeling driven? I feel like it’s difficult to remove myself and my high-level perspective when testing a project. Is it possible for a designer/creative to perform QA to the level of a separate QA person? Thank you for the great insight as usual, awesome and helpful vid!

[@SirDougDimmadome]

I'd say it depends more on the game's content. If it's story focused, there doesn't need to be a high difficulty bar to contest with. Otherwise, for a game like Elden Ring, where the entire game is the combat, having a fixed difficulty is best for the play and story.

[@YogBaal]

I understand why people don’t want an easy mode on Souls games. But they are so hard for me, I just wish there were an “Explorer” mode, where you are a ghost, or something, who can’t be killed, just able to wander around the magnificent game and see everything.

[@BlackMasterRoshi]

This Automap/nomap business reminds me of Etrian Odyssey. Hours of map-drawing fun!

[@BlackMasterRoshi]

@@Xiado better than the 🟠 that comes and kills you for sitting around too long in the dungeon in Recettear

[@imo098765]

I've been playing Persona 3 Reloaded and I noticed going back to the series that earlier in the game, your skills are single target which makes it harder to find weaknesses, heal and mange buffs/debuffs When you get stronger with the aoe abilities it makes defeating the smaller mobs more trivial and allows you to focus more on the fight The game made the mechanics easier to deal with as your characters gets stronger but then gives us the player harder enemies to beat.

[@rudysmith1552]

Have you defeated the reaper yet

[@imo098765]

@@rudysmith1552 nah, not yet. Been taking it rather slow. Only have a few hrs per day to play and still finishing other games. I have a problem starting and not finishing games

[@Tryhardblackguy]

Yeah the first game was a pain, you couldn’t even control party member actions.

[@Anubis1101]

I've become a fan of semi-dynamic scaling, where for example it scales players down to JUST above local difficulty, so that it's still easier without feeling like you've become a walking god. I've seen it used in MMOs to keep things engaging for players of varying levels, and there might be room to explore its use in single-player games as well.

[@devforfun5618]

i like the idea of enemies of diferent levels in the same area, so as a new player you avoid certain enemies and fight others, then later you can comeback to that same area to kill the stronger enemies, in mmos that allows players of different levels to meet and keep all the areas relevant

[@Anubis1101]

@@devforfun5618 absolutely, not enough games make players run away. Dragon's Dogma and Dark Souls both used this, and Ragnarok Online did it a bunch Pre-Renewal update. I think making the player face enemies stronger than them early on reinforces the late-game power fantasy, and improves immersion.

[@BasicWorldbuilder]

As someone who has beat every FromSoft game, I unironically think their bespoke difficulty is the worst of all worlds, especially in Elden Ring. You can just feel the arbitrary number sliders go up in the later areas. Suddenly the same type of enemy you have fought all game has four times the health, takes 50% damage from you and deals double damage. I love a challenging combat, but when I can tell a dev just went x4 x.5 x2 and took a break for lunch it is annoying and somewhat spoils the immersion. Ghosts of Tsushimas Lethal mode and Ubisofts Difficulty sliders really shine in direct comparison. On lethal almost every hit is a kill for you AND your enemies and the Ubi sliders allow you to tweak the experience so you are challenged to the limit of your ability without enemies being damage sponges. not that any FromSoft enjoyer would agree. Despite beating all of the games, I'll just be told to git gud 😄

[@renaigh]

I love Fallout 4's Survival Difficulty for a lot of reasons, but primarily because it utilises the fluid nature of the Numerical values of stat buffs especially with the Adrenaline perk that scales Damage the longer you go without sleep and the more enemies you kill effectively making the game easier the longer you *survive*

[@gilgamecha]

Even better, the "easier" is a tricky tradeoff between increasing debuffs and disease risks vs the extra damage, plus the meta-risk of losing your progress because you only save when you sleep.

[@whiteegretx]

I like to, in addition to survival mode, increase the amount of damage that enemies do and the amount of damage that my character does. Combat ends much more quickly... For both sides. Gets my heart racing in almost every situation and makes me think tactically about what I bring and what about enemies I chose to engage. Plus, lowering your carry weight to increase the importance of tactical choices.

[@oliorogue]

Same I love it.

[@austinglueck2554]

Survival mode was so awesome, that and the difficulty mods that are made for their other games really goes to show how much changing some numerical values in a game can radically change the feel of it if the base is solid.

[@Broski_Nation]

What are your thoughts on "Perma-Death" for player companions? I know playing F: NV I loved how your companions wouldnt die on normal difficulty. After combat, they get right back up from being unconious if the lost to an enemy. YET, in hard difficulty, yeah, if they died in battle, they were gone. Thats why i dont play with companions in Fallout 3, becuase perma-death is on, reguardless of difficulty.Not a fan of perma-death in games, but i love having it as an option.

[@ozancobanoglu812]

Hi, Tim! I love your videos and recently while re-watching your old videos I saw your one of your Carbine video. You said that "Carbine broke you and you put a gold to cover the hole now it's better but it was still there like in the Japanesse saying" so it really got me because I'm going through similiar times In 2023 I was working on my game and we had a BIG earthquake. Not one but two. I lost my relatives some of them. About 50.000 people died.(real number is about 6 more times than that we think) Since then it kinda "broke me" too and my Asperger's was kinda hyperfixated on that and I couldn't really function that much. I'm going to the theraphy about 6 to 7 months now and it's doing wonders for me. If that's not so personal have you considered trying that? While you're on your "semi retirement" that can help you if you like. Sorry if I crossed some boundries or some sort. Thank you for your time in advance(or who ever reads this :))!

[@OpenGL4ever]

11:27 I have a question about this from a developer's perspective. When a new area with enemies should be created. Did you instruct the level editors to assign a higher difficulty level to each enemy placed there, or did you do it in a way that allowed you to divide the map into zones in the level editor, which then determined the difficulty level of the enemies that respawned there automatically? The former option is likely to involve more manual work, while the latter can be automated once the zones have been defined on the map. This could potentially save development time and also make it easier to adjust later if balancing requires it. So how did you solve this?

[@CainOnGames]

We used both ways, actually. A map has a difficulty level assigned to it, and hand placed creatures are set to that difficulty, while spawned creatures inherit the difficulty level.

[@OpenGL4ever]

@@CainOnGames Thank you very much for answering my question.

[@mina7572]

My favorite difficulty is when the enemy is smarter and more dynamic. If they have a higher health stat or defence, its for a reason like they are a mutant or have armor. But otherwise they shouldn't really have any more of a pattern than the player and should try to adjust to what you are doing.

[@driver3899]

Does this mean that it would be good to have individual check poxes or sliders for aspects of the game like Map markers, Quest log, Save only on rest, Food heals health, Food and drink needed frequently/sometimes/never ect that the player can tweak, instead of binding those together yourself into a single difficulty slider of what you think they will feel as being easy/normal/hard? I have often installed mods to make these kinds of small individual changes and wonder why they are not just in the settings menus.

[@isaacfullerton]

No quest log would be fun if you never take a break from the game. As soon as you put the game down for an extended period of time, coming back to it would be a nightmare.

[@disky01]

As a player, If I'm playing a game in which there is character progression/leveling, I never want to enter a situation in which I feel godlike. I always want to struggle and feel challenged, and instead of overwhelming power, I want developers to provide me with more tools that I can use to address a challenge. If anything I want the game to become more challenging from start to end. I recognize that I'm in the minority, but I wish more games were like this, and I end up modding a lot of games in order to get them closer to that struggle I love. Not to throw shade on anyone who likes easier games, this is just my quiet plea to developers. People like me exist!

[@PenneyBack]

Any thoughts on games (such as Dark Souls) where there's a set difficultly, but have optional mechanics that assist players (summoning others to help) or have a low skill floor (high armour/ magic characters)?

[@Biomancy]

I prefer when survival modes are separate from difficulty such as in Fallout New Vegas where you could still play on easy or normal difficulty but still toggle on hardcore mode for food, water and sleep requirements.

[@leoncca]

I don't mind if there's an easy-to-code easy mode for accesibility reasons. But multiple difficulties are an absolute NIGHTMARE to both design and play. I like playing harder games, but sometimes they make the harder difficulty feel unfair, more egregious case is making enemies very spongy. Oftentimes having three or more difficulties means all but normal difficulty isn't tested enough. Not necessarily of course! But many games are already under very tight time constraints to focus on that. I like the souls games philosophy of just having a well designed one with a moderate challenge and let people figure it out.

[@NympoGaming]

One of my favourite types of increasing or decreasing difficulty in games is for example how they did it in Don't Starve. Basically you can remove certain enemies that bother you. The same goes for environmental hazards. You can also set the season and the length of the day, because there are seasons where survival is harder in comparison to others and night kills you, granted you don't have a light source. Such a genius peace of entertainment.

[@declan.wmcmeans5902]

I have a question why was eating drinking and sleeping locked behind supernova mode in outer worlds I like thos game mechanics but do not want to play on the hardest difficultly. why was it not like fallout new Vegas where you could be on normal difficulty but could have hardcore turned on so you had to eat sleep and drink ? still to this day I have not beat outer worlds as i want to play with the supernova mechanics but I keep getting dying or getting stuck in spots but if I turn the difficulty down I don't have access to the mechanics I want to play with SOI guess my question is why did you do it in this way and not like fallout NV?

[@CainOnGames]

Providing check boxes and sliders for every difficulty options can be overwhelming for some players. Similarly, packaging difficulty options into distinct difficulty settings can turn off other players. Even attempting a compromise, where there are difficulty settings that change every option but those options can then be adjusted separately, can make some players angry too. TLDR: no matter what you design, some players hate it

[@lrinfi]

I don't think of eat/drink/sleep mechanics as difficulty settings, either, but as things a character would normally do. Those kinds of mechanics are locked behind FO4's "survival" setting as well. I had to wait for the GCM and SCM mods to come out before I could play with them enabled. (I didn't particularly want to play a narcoleptic and nerfing the player while buffing the enemies is not my idea of increasing difficulty.) I changed only a very few of the default settings in those two mods in order to play it. Might there be a mod for Outer Worlds that enables those mechanics on lower difficulty settings? I'd only expect "survival" mechanics to make sense, but have seen so many that don't, e.g. a percentage chance of "catching" fatigue from an enemy attack. Er, what? People don't "catch" fatigue. :)

[@Jaqinta]

Hello everyone , I just tried to make a game once on swift programming language with spritekit library . The things i would like to do ain't find the right way to do soo i kinda stop on project of mine . But the thing is i really would like to something unusual on my game is which is game difficulty . Soo in my game it's 2d arcade game you are controlling spaceship and try to shoot enemy ships and you upgrade your ship with the points you earned while destroying other enemy ships . For that i make 3 different and plus one difficulty section which it's name is customizable Difficulty means there are some sections like Speed , Power , Health and Spawn Rate which they can be customizable by slider below with numbers with 1 through 5 soo basicly if you choose custom difficulty and remain the all values into 1 which is technically based on Medium Difficulty , but you can change those numbers whatever you want . But in these each difficulties your game multiplies with some numbers based on in which difficulty section you choosed . The thing i stuck into on custom difficulty esspecially on spawn rate section , when i try to did it into max spawn rate as possible , there are hordes of enemies coming into and you start to kill it but in background i ain't find the multitasking section which is going to help me on getting simultaneous actions response :) anyway maybe one day try to figure it out how can i manage to do that or i'm going to change my focus into another type of language which provides more technical informations can find it on internet .

[@nicolasa.6789]

Nice topic, I ever wonder how it works the best

[@neshdj]

You almost described the best hard mode I saw -- Fallout 4 survival mode, it was (almost) perfect including most of the things you talked about. From the time it was introduced I was unable to play in any other mode.

[@FluffySylveonBoi]

Yes, I never liked games mocking or punishing players to play easy, it's just a regular game mode and not something to be ashamed of, because not everyone has a need to prove something to themselves and just want to play the game and progress.

[@lmfsilva3000]

I like when instead of fixed difficulty settings that change a ton of variables at once, games let you pick how hard you want some parts of the game to be. Best example are racing games, where you can define how fast your opponents are, but also damage thresholds (sometimes even letting you define one for you and other for opponents), driver aids even if they're appropriate for the vehicle etc. On the topic of returning over-levelled to an earlier area, while it's always fun to do it, sometimes I get the impression it could be also fun if those opponents could also be like "no, I'm not getting killed" and flee, particularly if you have developed a certain reputation as a killing machine. Then you could also consider the morality of shooting a fleeing opponent who dropped their loot and fled on their back.

[@enparticular]

Hi Tim. Question for you: in all your games the player has options of having different moralities, being a "good" character, an "evil" one, and more complex ones in between. I was wondering if you have any thoughts about if what the player DECIDES to play has anything in common with their own personality as a person. In another video you mentioned that a friend of yours "was unable to play as a bad guys" and I found that very interesting. I'm on the same league, and when I tried to play a fallout game as a bad coldblooded murdered I always felt like I was faking it. Thanks.

[@korpos8833]

Silent Hill Shattered Memories could be a good example for this

[@Weedkilla1993]

I sensed that feeling even more in Fable 🤭

[@Parker8752]

I find it depends on how well written the NPCs are. I can happily do an evil run of most RPGs, because the evil options are typically "be an asshole to people you'll never meet again", "kill boss enemies instead of sparing them, even though you had to kill all their underlings to get this far", and "cartoonishly evil betrayal of someone you're supposed to care about but is kind of annoying". I can't bring myself to do an evil run of Alpha Protocol because the evil options typically make me feel like an asshole for choosing them. Edit: just want to add that this is not a complaint. Alpha Protocol has many flaws, but its writing is not one of them.

[@CosplayZine]

Hmm i feel like changing the game to make it harder or easier is a bit much. I think a better option is making it take a bit longer to level in hard mode by rewarding them with less exp when you achieve something or defeat something. I think having the enimies not do certain moves on easy difficulty as well as having the player start with more stuff. That might work out fine as well. But you change where something is based on the difficulty then it likely requires changing the story and could possibily make the player not choose that difficulty just because the lower difficulty seems more logical. Players may talk to each other about things happening in the game or see a youtuber playing the game and it could create confusion if they are told that something is in a certain location and the player wont always know the difficulty is the reason for it being different. So I mean its probably fine to add a few extra enemies in some locations where otherwise might be empty or have fewer enimies. But if its a core part of the story like finding the key to the castle then making it further way and more difficult to get to and the enimies are harder to fight to get to it then it can be a lot for a player. I understand people like to brag that they beat a game on hard mode and get a sense of pride when they do it. But perhaps thats also why people quit games before finishing them. Because with other games they were used to the hand holding and when they play it on medium or hard they forget which they chose and just end up thinking the game is unbalanced or unfair that they cant advance. So really it's probably best imo to make certain things hard in all the settings and other things in the game easy so that the player can advance but still is challenged but the easier things still make it doable and fun so that when the challenges do come a long they wont complain as much.

[@DAGGERBLIVION]

Could you talk about crafting systems

[@ComissarYarrick]

Good video. I always dislike when higher difficulties are just enemy damage and Hp cranked up to stupid levels.

[@fredrik3880]

Options are good.

[@koalabrownie]

I don't think removing fast travel necessarily makes the game harder- I almost never use fast travel in any game and what I found it does is simply makes me level up faster. When someone fast travels they're not just missing encounters they're missing a ton of XP and loot. I did fast travel in Outer Worlds because I simply wanted to save the game (in Supernova) or because I wanted to remove some conditions that only sleeping would get rid of. My broken legs would heal but my concussion never would until I slept, and since concussion lowered by rate of fire by half- it was important to deal with.

[@sodapopinksi667]

Hi Tim

[@MonoGrinded]

Hi me, Its Tim, everyone.

[@NotoriousROZ]

I just asked a question about this on a different videos comments, I didn't realize you had already made a video about them. Sorry!

[@Whippets]

I enjoy additional mechanics, especially for bosses ... or like in Dragon Age where they upped the damage taken by friendly fire. On the flip side I hate how some games just rely on making every enemy a bullet sponge (well, just a sponge in general), that's just tedious and uninspired.

[@SkeleTonHammer]

One of my go-to ways of implementing difficulty is by designing an AI that has a laundry list of openings and opportunities it can detect and never holds back in exploiting them. Like always attacking the healer first, attacking players with low HP first, etc. Then as difficulty is lowered, the AI essentially "skips" opportunities (also, opportunities might be rated, so some opportunities are smarter and more devastating than others, and might only be exploited by the AI at the highest level). So it will "forget" to attack low HP players, attack targets more arbitrarily, etc. You could think of it like how in Baldur's Gate 3, on easy difficulty the AI basically never decides to push the players off cliffs. On Tactician though, they'll do ANYTHING to kill you fast like throwing you over to a buddy and then that buddy then pushes you off a cliff and kills you instantly.

[@fasgamboa]

Morrowind was harder just because of the journal being just a sketch paper and no quest marker. "Hey can you find my lost family member in the middle of the mountains after a couple rivers and a big rock"....

[@TriangleCity]

Amazing as always! I'd love to interview you sometime if you're ever interested! :)

[@GypsumGeneration]

After hearing your list of old school difficulty features at 8:47, i feel a lot less cool about my no-fast-travel/survival/permadeath Skyrim run :(

[@Dutchyyyy420]

Hey tim i saw some concept art for fallout i would love if you can go over them if you still have some and explain the process:))

[@obsidiancrow450]

I think at the very least the balance should revolve around the highest difficulty with all difficulty options on.

[@MultiYoshiman]

i wish the outer worlds' supernova difficulty had less extraneous things tied to it like the needs system and no fast travel. i found that the hard difficulty of the game was too easy for me combat-wise, and supernova was a lot more suited to my tastes. however, i really didn't like the limited saves and no fast travel that came with supernova. i wish there was a way for these things to be separate, similar to the hardcore mode of fallout new vegas not being tied to the game's difficulty. i know you can't respond to these kinds of comments because of your ties to the outer worlds 2 though, i just hope that difficulty will be handled better in that sequel.

[@HeadsetHistorian]

I would love to see a co-op game that allows you to set the difficulty separately for each user.

[@Arnechk]

I absolutely loathe difficulties that just blow things out of proportion. Sure it makes it difficult, but the only solution to beat it is to literally get good with the game system and exploit it as much as possible. Difficulties that change the gameplay, immerse you or require you to think in another way are my absolute favourites. Sad thing is that many games who try to do the latter also add in some abstract modifiers for the sake of making it harder.

[@heatherharrison264]

I have been playing RPGs for a very long time - Ultima III was my first. Difficulty settings were rare in early ones, and the games could be rather unforgiving. Nobody had thought of quest markers or journals, and if there were in-game maps at all, they were accessed by using consumable items. Games were smaller, so it was possible to keep track of everything, and quest markers and journals wouldn't have made things all that much easier. There was a lot of grind, and combat was tedious and repetitive. These characteristics remained as games got bigger, and friction-reducing features such as quest markers, journals, and fast travel likely became seen as necessary due to the increased scope of the games. Also, it is easier for developers to implement a quest marker than for them to come up with a series of dialogue, waypoints, and landmarks that could replace them in a more immersive fashion. In general, I like the idea of having difficulty options because RPGs have many different aspects to them, causing them to attract gamers with a wide variety of preferences and skills. Some people want to dig into intense combat, while others want to explore the world with minimal interruptions. With intelligent implementation of difficulty options, these games can attract a wider audience. When a game has only one difficulty slider, I'll put it in the easiest mode because combat is usually the focus of difficulty settings, and combat has always been my least favorite aspect of RPGs. I like to explore RPG worlds, interact with the characters, and experience the stories set within them. All too often, combat gets in the way of these other aspects and merely serves to waste time and cause frustration. Very rarely is combat designed in such a way that I find it interesting in its own right - Baldur's Gate 3 is one of few examples I have encountered over the years. Even there, I play in the easy mode because I don't want to spend too much time bogged down in combat. Aside from rare exceptions like Baldur's Gate 3, the only good I see in combat is that it makes the world feel alive and potentially dangerous, and tough monsters can be used to gate off areas at low levels and encourage players to take a particular path without thoroughly railroading them, as was done particularly well in Fallout: New Vegas. When applied to action combat, difficulty sliders help with accessibility. I'm an old stereotypical 1980s nerd, so of course, I don't have good reflexes and have never cared to develop such skills. If not for difficulty sliders (and, in some cases, mods or cheat codes) in action RPGs, many that I love for reasons other than combat would be inaccessible to me. I like having more customization options in difficulty. I want combat to be as easy and painless as possible, but I am used to older games and don't like all the hand holding in modern games. Quest journals are fine, and as games got bigger and more complicated over the years, I found them to be a good quality of life improvement. It would be nice to have the option to jot down additional notes in them. Quest markers, on the other hand, encourage laziness on the part of both developers and players, and they can break immersion. Ideally, I would like games to be playable without quest markers, but this would require more work on the part of developers to put clues and sign posts in the world to help players figure out where they are going, and also to put interesting places in the world so that players who take a wrong turn and get lost might find a nice reward for their troubles. In such games, quest markers could be an option that could be turned on for players who find stumbling around a bit and looking for directions to be frustrating. Similarly, detailed maps covered with markers can make things too easy and less immersive. I would like an option for more limited mapping. Some possibilities include maps with limited details and relatively few points of interest marked, maps that can be brought up only through the use of a consumable item (i.e. peering into a gem in some of the Ultima games), or area maps that can be purchased at a shop or found as loot. Again, for players who want the detailed map with all the markers, that could be an easy difficulty option. When it comes to quest markers and maps, my approach these days is to attempt to ignore them and only look at them when frustration results because the game makes it impractical to find destinations without using them.

[@Baraz_Red]

I also don't like level scaling. If I optimize and try to do my best, I think it is OK that I am sometimes powerful and kick ass, but the game must still offer challenge later on.

[@jkvltra804]

I was reading some underrail reviews last night and pretty much every negative review it had included whining about it being hard and a couple of them even unironically complained about no quest markers. I feel like your average gamer really likes to think of themselves as someone that enjoys a challenge but when they actually get one, they throw a fit and call the game bad so it seems game devs are asking themselves "how can we dumb our games down even more?" more often than wondering how they could implement more challenge.

[@ThomasAndersonPhD]

Unless I zoned out and missed it, I'm sad that none of Tim's answers include, "Tune the AI such that it uses more complex behaviours that are more challenging to counter at higher difficulties".

[@veraxiana9993]

I have a decent question, as someone who has been in the industry for decades how have you seen the "are videogames art?" Discussion evolve both within & outside of the industry over the years? Thanks!

[@CainOnGames]

Games As Art (and thoughts on the Fallout TV Show) kzbin.info/www/bejne/pGaQqHuFj6iKaLc

[@veraxiana9993]

@@CainOnGames oh thank you!

[@Yehor-oz6ii]

Hi Tim, I'm curious to know: are there games that, on paper, are not your cup of tea, but you still really like playing?

[@BinaryShred]

Not a huge deal but I wouldn't label a difficulty option as an accessibility setting. Adjusting difficulty makes it easier to progress in a game, whereas including accessibility settings allows people to even play the game in the first place.

[@_Super_Hans_]

How does one submit a question?

[@CainOnGames]

Just ask