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- Hacker News
- I never liked this kind of games - skills are locked depending where you are at the stories.
Multiplayer FPS, strategy games, and sport games are still very enjoyable without these mechanisms.
by hartator - Relevant: I'm just sad that most turn-based JRPG's nowadays start off with you thinking about which move is appropriate for each situation, but halfway through they end up to making you use the same 3-4 moves over and over again.
Trails games are even worse because there's tons of them who feel like they never gotten properly play tested. Killing a level 120 boss with a level 60 squad because you can delay the opponent's turn just isn't satisfying, especially when the boss is meant to be (narration-wise) so much stronger than you.
by Thanemate - Experience curves are just as important.
However, this article reminded me of this meme
by reactordev - I haven't seen this connection made, but difficulty curves in video games seem to resemble Campbell's Hero's Journey. There is an initial call to adventure, then some kind of mentor, then confronting the shadow, then a return of the shadow, etc.
If the game industry wasn't so myopic about recreating reality in graphics, the larger AAA titles could be exploring this more in depth. I think this would hit the jackpot of immersive experience as it could tap into the same psychological mechanisms.
by proc0 - Difficulty settings, though. He mentions them only briefly (in this incredible article).
Normal varies so much.
As a "cozy" gamer, I want the standard setting to be something I can play without having to switch my context to to the internet for help or a guide. This was one of many triumps of Baldur's Gate 3: the difficulty settings make sense in how they translate to gameplay, and the default is fun.
- I've been watching a lot of let's play content on YouTube for incremental games (it's like an ASMR thing) and after watching a lot of these games it is clear that pacing a video game is a challenge. Sometimes the player finds a sneaky way to increase their progress that busts the game, other times they miss the correct path and get stuck in a painful grind. It is also very obvious when the game dev has targeted a play-time metric and forces the game into that metric. Incremental games really expose this dynamic since they are generally pure upgrade mechanic attached to some kind of dopamine generator (flashy lights, rhythmic sounds, etc.)
- This will depend on the game of course, but the best is when you can adjust the difficulty of mechanics individually.
City builders do this a lot where you often have lots of difficulty settings you can adjust to tailor the game to your preferred playstyle.
I’ll also say this: if you’re making a game and you add in a mechanic or mini-game that is not typical of the genre, make it optional or provide a way to skip it. Few things things in gaming piss me off more than a memory or Simon Says puzzle in an MMO or similar. If I wanted to play puzzle games, I’d be playing a puzzle game, not your game.
by nkrisc - >Dynamically adjust the difficulty depending on how well the player is doing. <- This is actually magic sauce and could be the topic of a whole talk.
Please never do this. This deceptively looks smart to a game designer, but actual players read this like a book and then it feels cheap and massively unrewarding for them.