CSE4AT3

Design Balancing Continued…………………………………………………………………………..

Psychology 101

Managing Difficulty

• Difficulty vs Player Ability– Either results in Anxiety, Boredom, or Flow

• Flow is our goal here

– Csikszentmihalyi, 1991

Factors within your control

• Intrinsic skill

• Stress– Created by the absolute difficulty

• Perceived difficulty (inherited from the above)– This is what matters to the player

Factors Outside your Control

• Previous experience

• Native talent

• Multiplayer Opponents

Cheats

• Cheats are fun, but should never be relied on by players to complete the game.

– If they are required by many players to complete the game, consider adding the cheat to one of the easier difficulties

Types of Difficulty

• Absolute Difficulty

• Relative Difficulty and Power

• Perceived Difficulty and Experience

Difficulty Progression

• Gameplay needs to either stay as hard as the beginning or rise

• Gameplay is based on the Perceived Difficulty– To adjust this you need to raise the Relative

Difficulty, based on player experience

• To raise the relative difficulty you need to raise the absolute difficulty, based on the power the player has

Super Graph Time!!!!

Notes from super graph

• The type of gamer in your audience should control the difficulty rise– Casual / children need none/gradual rises– Hardcore and older players can take

frustration

• Genre dependence (genre audience)– In a puzzle game, physical coordination

challenges should rise slowly/not at all

Creating Rhythm

• Remember that a ever-increasing difficulty curve sucks.

• You need the Hard-Easy-Hard Rhythm to make players feel achievement– Sawtooth Level Progression / Level Challenge

Balancing

Difficulty Selection

Casual Hardcore Insane

How good do those options look! (GoW)

• In single player games this can control all challenges

• In multiplayer games, it is only the environment that can be controlled– Race Tracks, Computer AI, World Damage

Normal / Easy Mode

• Players usually should be able to win the game without a lot of improvement through game experience

• Eg Becoming proficient with the sniper rifle should not be critical to winning the game.

• Casual gamers who play infrequently will still be able to finish the game

Normal/Hard Modes

• Players should expect to need their skills to improve a lot to finish on this difficulty

• Being able to use specific weapons / tactics will be part of the winning strategy

• Although perfection of these skills will not be 100% required (GoW active reload)

Hard / Insane Modes

• Playing through the game on this difficulty is a badge of honour, players do not do it for fun. They will die 500 times, certain parts of the game will require absolute perfection to survive.

• You will repeat sections of the game 5 or 10 or 15 times….

• Players doing this are happy to sacrifice their time for the reward of beating the game on the most unbeatable mode.

Adaptive Difficulty….

• Firstly make it optional!– Some players trying to improve their skills will

play at a difficulty above them deliberately– Your perception of a fair challenge may be

above or below the players perception

• It is relatively easy to increase difficulty– Avoids players cheating the system (burnout

2)– Still include difficulty levels, players like to

control their world

Psychology 102

Behaviour Management

Good behaviour Bad Behaviour

Give something Positive Reinforcement

Punishment

Remove something

Negative Reinforcement

Extinction

Rewarding your Players

• Achievements should give the player rewards (Positive Reinforcement)

• Rewards which make the gameplay easier will be the most prized, others such as skins, characters, and songs are less desirable (players may consider them optional??)

• RPG Level Up

Negative Feedback

• This will typically result in anger and frustration– There is usually far more positive feedback

than negative– Severe Punishment and Extinction less

common.– In Rayman Raving Rabids there are many

comical Punishments– Pool is based on Negative Feedback

Keeping Rewards under control

• You can use Negative Feedback to control the level of positive feedback you give players– A bad example is Oblivion

• Keep Victory Conditions separate to the Rewards– Meaning a highly rewarded player is not the only one

with a good chance of winning

• Adding a bit of chance to players rewards(Mario Kart is an obvious one)

Stagnation not Stalemate!

• Players get bored• Don’t know where to go• Get lost

– Age of Empires, the hiding character

Solutions• Hide clues in the game for when players start

looking around• Detect when players are wandering around

aimlessly (hard to do in Oblivion style RPG’s)

Avoiding Trivial Chores

• Choosing how much health /ammo to pick up in an FPS. (All of it!)

• In an RTS having to tell your agents (repetitively) how to walk around a cliff

• Units without any autonomous abilities• Players having to re-visit a character to

hear what they have said again, and again.

• Spore