Physiocrat
Member
I'm thinking primarily of action adventure games, RPGs and FPS rather than racing games or sports games.
It seems to me that the ideal level of difficulty for any player is always "challenging". By which I mean the game should always be stretching relative to your current skill level: too easy it is boring, too hard then you just give up (this happened to me with Divinity 2: Original Sin). The question is how to achieve this when you have players of multiple skill levels. You could of course just have harder and easier games, which would be targeted at different markets, but even then games tend to try and give multiple difficulty levels (even the early Doom games did this IIRC).
You could have the standard - easy, normal and hard modes although if you did I think it wise to allow you to change it mid game to adjust for your current experience. Now it can be used for "cheating" but as long as I can play on challenging all the way I don't mind.
All this said, it would seem right to reward the technically superior players somehow. You could give them different endings they could see but they will probably end up on YouTube anyway. Maybe some in-game badge reward for achieving the game entirely on hardcore might be best.
TL: DR - what is the best way to modify the difficulty to the players ability, and secondly, how do we best reward the technically proficient player?
It seems to me that the ideal level of difficulty for any player is always "challenging". By which I mean the game should always be stretching relative to your current skill level: too easy it is boring, too hard then you just give up (this happened to me with Divinity 2: Original Sin). The question is how to achieve this when you have players of multiple skill levels. You could of course just have harder and easier games, which would be targeted at different markets, but even then games tend to try and give multiple difficulty levels (even the early Doom games did this IIRC).
You could have the standard - easy, normal and hard modes although if you did I think it wise to allow you to change it mid game to adjust for your current experience. Now it can be used for "cheating" but as long as I can play on challenging all the way I don't mind.
All this said, it would seem right to reward the technically superior players somehow. You could give them different endings they could see but they will probably end up on YouTube anyway. Maybe some in-game badge reward for achieving the game entirely on hardcore might be best.
TL: DR - what is the best way to modify the difficulty to the players ability, and secondly, how do we best reward the technically proficient player?
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