Difficulty Levels

[Ratty]

Thinking about difficulty levels. I'd like four of them. The normal Thief 3 plus an additional one: Master. That one would be really, really challenging, almost impossible. Something a retail game probably couldn't do but for an FM dedicated to other die-hard Thief players a real must-have.

 

So my question. In Thief 1 and 2 the difficulty levels were set at a maximum of 3. I know using Doom 3 we can do whatever we want, but are you guys setting things up so that it's easy to specify the number of difficulty levels?

[Gildoran]

That's still up in the air. I'd love to see arbitrary difficulty selection screens before levels with any number of controls, but it's possible that may be too difficult to implement.

 

In your case, why not just have normal, hard (equivelant to thief's expert difficulty) and expert (equivelant to your master difficulty)? What you're describing reminds me a bit of Spinal Tap and the dial that goes up to 11...

[Ratty]

In your case, why not just have normal, hard (equivelant to thief's expert difficulty) and expert (equivelant to your master difficulty)?

I need four. I want a hard difficulty, except that you can kill people (like Hard), and a hard difficulty where you can't kill people (like Expert) because I know there are both kinds of players. Along with Master that's three. But I also wanted an easy difficulty (like Normal) because I know there are players that enjoy an easier experience.

 

This is based on my experience with FMs that are too easy so I want to make a Master difficulty. But I've read more than a few gaming articles that lament the absence of an easy difficulty in many games. Some gamers are in it for different reasons: a need to just escape from life for a bit, or something to play for a few minutes when time permits. But you know, come to think of it, that really just mostly applies to retail games I guess. I'm not sure how appealing a really easy difficulty would be to FM players. Yeah, I suppose I could lose the Easy come to think of it. And anyway, how hard can a Thief game be when you're allowed to kill poeple? That's pretty darn Easy right there.

[Ratty]

This brings me I guess to another issue involving difficulty, the target audience, and the campaign you guys are putting together. My biggest beef with T2X was that it was too easy, even on Expert. I'm not sure how to put this delicately ... Oh hell, I won't even try. Sometimes I think the T2X people took themselves too seriously, designed a game as if they were a real development house creating something intended to sell to a large market. Now at the same time I'll commend them for actually releasing something that large and impressive when almost all other campaigns like that fail for all the reasons that they do. And if thinking about themselves as if they were professional game developers is what did the trick, then more power to them. But I could see lots of places in T2X where it seems deliberate choices were made to design in easy solutions or give the player an easy out or obvious alternative path (like the countless conveniently placed air shafts in Deus Ex: Invisible War). Deliciously difficult situations where an experienced Thief player such as 95% of their audience could figure out one or more solutions were very few and far between, considering a campaign of that size.

 

I read in the other thread about your thoughts on difficulty and I agree. The designer does not pit themselves *against* the player, the designer wants above all else for the player to succeed. It isn't designer vs. player. But I also think it's important to know your target audience and understand your niche. Your Dark Mod campaign, whatever it will eventually be, won't be sold in retail and I don't think it should be targetted for people who are new to Thief. Your audience are players who have mastered Thief and want more in FMs. Among them are people with different playing styles: I know lots of FM players like to be able to kill enemies, most don't kill but do enjoy blackjacking people, some don't harm people but aren't too worried about being detected (Lytha style), and there are of course the ghosters (who say they don't like any special accomodations built into FMs for them anyway). But they are all unified in the fact that they know how to play Thief and understand stealth gameplay.

 

So I'm just saying that I hope the campaign you produce with the Dark Mod won't be too easy on the hardest difficulty setting. Take yourselves as seriously as you need to to finish it, but remember who your audience is above all else. OK. That's all I'm just board that TTLG has been down so long so I come here to babble.

[Gildoran]

Although we won't be even starting on the campaign until after the toolset is publicly released, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that the hardest difficulty level will be quite hard. As long as there's an easy difficulty level, I figure there's nothing wrong with insanely ramping up the difficulty on the highest settings. As you said, we don't need to cater to the egos of gamers.

[Mr Retarded]

Your audience are players who have mastered Thief and want more in FMs.

 

All the audience wanting more in FMs? True.

All the audience having mastered Thief? False.

 

I haven't mastered Thief but I'm still following (and awaiting the release of) TDM, and I'd wager I'm not the only one.

[ZylonBane]

For some reason I guess I'd been tacitly assuming that TDM would duplicate classic Thief's difficulty system (a pox on Ratty for even mentioning TDS), then have an additional "roll your own" difficulty menu for people who want even more of a challenge, like fail-on-see and other uber manly macho options like that.

 

It would be pretty much the only way to go, since the differences between the built-in difficulty levels are determined by the FM author, not the game.

[Gildoran]

Yeah, that's how I think most team members want to set up the difficulty levels.

 

I personally tend to be rather skeptical of adding extra difficulties/requirements that the author didn't explicitly allow for. With fail-on-see, what if the author scripts a sequence where the player gets seen? I also worry that ramping up the AI sensory range past what the author is expecting may make it possible to lure/distract AI from farther away than the map author intended, actually making certain circumstances easier.

[sparhawk]

For some reason I guess I'd been tacitly assuming that TDM would duplicate classic Thief's difficulty system (a pox on Ratty for even mentioning TDS), then have an additional "roll your own" difficulty menu for people who want even more of a challenge, like fail-on-see and other uber manly macho options like that.

 

It would be pretty much the only way to go, since the differences between the built-in difficulty levels are determined by the FM author, not the game.

 

Correct. And that's also the way we planned it.

[NeonsStyle]

Most of its been said about difficulty, but one thing wasn't. That is, hard is great, but at the cost of realism, would suck. ie, a really cheap way (as an example) would be them having wider vision than humans, or super hearing. I think an ai should detect a lockpick if he's fairly close, or doors opening n closing. But if he's detecting that from 50 yds away, then thats just dumb.

 

Hard is great, I love hard; but keep it withing the bounds of realism.

 

Venus

[Ratty]

Games tackle difficulty a lot of different ways. Giving the player fewer hitpoints and enemies more hitpoints seems to be a common easy way out. I always loved the way it was done in Thief. More enemies in trickier positions, higher loot requirements. In Bonehoard remember, at the higher difficulties there were more areas open to explore. I thought that was a good motivation to attempt the higher difficulties, plus it enhanced replay value. I'm always impressed with FMs that really implement good difficulties, more guards in different positions, more lights, cameras, etc. A surprising number of FMs do this!

 

As for super sensitive guards I was toying around with doing a kind of optional mini campaign where Garrett and another thief friend of his challenge each other to do more and more outrageous thefts, seeing who was ultimately the better thief. They would leave hidden notes for one another with the challenges. It would all be from Garrett's point of view so you would only actually do the Garrett challenges, but your competitor would leave notes complimenting Garrett on how fiendish his challenge was and how hard it was to complete ... anyway, one idea I had was to infiltrate the warehouse of a certain noble businessman specializing in the import and export of kafe. Since the guards and other workers had access to as much kafe as they wanted to drink, everyone was extremely jittery, nervous and hyper alert. Not to mention scads of possibilities for funny conversations. Garrett's competitor felt this was an especially fiendish and unfair challenge but Garrett was perfectly free to chicken out an refuse to do it if he felt we hasn't thief enough. Heh. Oh, did I mention he had to get in and out without anyone ever knowing he was there?

 

I thought it was a fun idea, a special gift for the most hardcore of Thief players, but entirely optional within the confines of the larger main campaign.

Edited September 21, 2006 by Ratty

[Gildoran]

Heh... until now, I never thought being humorous and being cruel to the player could go hand-in-hand.

[Ratty]

Heh... until now, I never thought being humorous and being cruel to the player could go hand-in-hand.

I'd never actually do it. I was just talking out loud about an idea. I can't imagine any kind of scenario, even in the context of really challenging the most elite of Thief players, where ultra alert enemies would be fun. I kind of liked the humorous possibilities of a warehouse full of jittery guards hyped up on caffeine but it would suck to have to actually play through something like that.

 

I think one has to be extremely careful about "being cruel" to the player. It can be done and can be fun if well thought out. I think of all those bad FMs I've played where the designer makes a chest with a lock that takes forever to open and it turns out to be empty or contain something heavy that makes a loud noise when dropped or explodes or something like that. Just the designer's cruel little joke. Ha ha. What fun.

 

One of my favorite "cruel" tricks ever played in a computer game was the original NOLF. In an area with an object protected by laser sensors, each pathway you traversed contained increasingly more complex moving laser beams. The first one was a breeze, just hop over one or two and turn the corner to the next passage where there were a few more lasers that were a bit harder to get past. The next to the last one was a torment. You had to time things just right, hop over this laser beam just when that other one was spweeping away from you. Took me a long time until I finally made it to a safe place. Then I breathe a sigh of relief, turn the corner, and there is the last passageway, filled with an INSANE amount of lasers sweeping up and down, across, intersecting in dozens of places--completely and TOTALLY untraversable. I just laughed so loud when I saw that. Oh you have GOT to be kidding me! I can imagine some poor players trying to get past there time and time again until they noticed, hours later, the secret panel in the floor just under their feet.

 

Now THAT was cruel in a fun way.

[Gildoran]

I remember that... that was great. I tried (and failed miserably of course) to get through several times before I noticed the floor-grate. They did a really good job of playing on a player's expectations of increasing difficulty.

[Chi Haotian]

Speaking of Difficulty Levels again. It was suggested elsewhere that difficulty levels should determine AI abilities (sight, hearing, aptitude, etc). I would think it's a bad idea.

 

When switching to a lower difficulty level, one should not get slower, dumbed-down guards who see and hear less. This would be faulty. Difficulty levels should not make such qualitative differences (this was yet another defect of T3), but rather quantitative ones, as was pretty much done in T1 and T2 (i.e. player hitpoints, availability of weapons and inventory, number of guards, different objectives and points of access, etc).

 

As an innovation to this system, it would be great to implement a 'save restriction' for Expert difficulty, so that it would be possible to save only at the loadout screen in the beginning of a mission.

[slavatrumpevitch]

i do agree that the AI should remain intelligent at lower difficulty levels, however, a save restriction I feel, goes too far. Some people like the tension that a long duration between saves creates, while others simply like to feel continuous progress, and save often and get frustrated when they keep doing the same thing over and over again. It is not the developer's place to decide which method players can use, it should be up to them, and they should not have to abstain from the pleasures of the expert difficulty simply b/c they enjoy being able to save progress at their own pace.

[Chi Haotian]

The choice will still be up to them, with the choice of the difficulty level. And they would still be able to make progress on Expert, just in a more intense, involving way. Playing on Hard, however, is pretty much the same as playing on Expert, and it would allow saves too, so those who need to save wouldn't miss much by choosing to play on Hard. A save restriction on Expert would make that difficulty level really live up to its name, I think.

[SneaksieDave]

Preventing players who want to save whereever they please (the majority of gamers, apparently) from participating in expert difficulty is not going to happen. If someone wants to restrict saves via an individual setting (if implemented), more power to 'em (and that's actually the type of thing I personally hope will be implemented some day), but not at the expense of a whole difficulty level.

[Chi Haotian]

Don't get me wrong -- I use the Save function too. The proposed change for the Expert difficulty will be a novelty for all of us.

 

Such a save restriction is essentially no different than the kill restriction and the "getting caught" restriction of the Expert difficulty we saw in T2. Those weren't so bad, were they? Perhaps it's time we try out this new idea now?

[Chi Haotian]

I would add that it is no different than the restriction imposed by the stealth style itself! It was feared that gamers would not want to be so uncompromisingly restricted from action by that style, yet still it was introduced. We all know what the result was.

 

Such innovations are to be endorsed, not shunned and vetoed. When wisely implemented, they do much good. I think this particular one would add more spirit to the game.

[Komag]

I am absolutely very hard core AGAINST save restrictions of any kind. I am mature enough to not save much and live with my gameplay consequences - it adds to my immersion - but I always quick save regularly and especially before certain types of jumps and maneuvers, so that when the retarded game cheats and kills me in some reason-forsaken meta-gaming way, I can just reload.

 

If I couldn't save, I would be severely restricted on what moves I attempt, playing it way too safe just to avoid the game killing me. Game designers that restrict saves should all have their nuts slapped.

[Ishtvan]

Oh crap, someone is attempting to quickload back to a point before we did the save restriction discussion to death!

[Nyarlathotep]

Dammit! We should have implemented that no-save brush we talked about! Wait, that would have be opt-out in the advanced difficulty screen... Crap.

[Crispy]

Oh crap, someone is attempting to quickload back to a point before we did the save restriction discussion to death!

Indeed.

 

I anticipate that there will be no save restrictions in TDM 1.0. (I know I have better things to code.) If you want them, you can bloody well implement them yourself, after we release.

 

Chi: The qualitative/quantitative distinction that you've drawn there is bunk. Dumbing down guards is just as valid a method of reducing difficulty as removing the number of guards. Both are equally "unrealistic", and equally useful. Calling it a defect of T3 is misleading, because AFAIK T1/T2 did it as well.

[OrbWeaver]

Someone should disable the saving of save-disabling discussions.