Challenging or annoying?

[pixeltroid]

These are some game scenarios I have in my project (theyre not at all unique). Would you consider the following to add to the challenge or make it annoying/unfair?

1. enemies who spawn a few pixels in front/behind of you giving you very little time to respond.
(intention is to keep players on edge the whole time).

Additionally spawn points are fixed, so player can memorize them.

2. Bosses with lots of health but no health bar.

3. Becoming paralyzed (momentarily unable to shoot) during knockback after taking a hit from an enemy.

4. Some jumps that need to be performed at the very last pixel of a ledge. (but no risk of falling to death)

5. Enemies respawning everytime you re-enter the room (You may need to re-enter rooms 2-3 times, as you explore).

 

[Aura]

That depends on the amount of each of those in the game. It the difficulty is well balanced, I would call most of them challenging and fair to the player.

1. Such enemies are quite challenging because you have to watch your step. But the player should still have the time to respond.
   
2. That would be fairly annoying for somebody who relies on healthbars for management in battles. But if you rely on number of hits rather than the health then you shouldn't have a problem though. I personally strongly advise against a healthbar-less boss battle.
   
3. That can get quite challenging. But also quite annoying if the player gets paralyzed too often. You should determine conditions for paralysis. For instance, the player would get paralyzed after three consequent hits or after getting attacked by a certain type of enemy. Paralysis after each hit would make the gameplay pretty annoying.
   
4. Depends.
   
5. I'm personally okay with enemies respawning upon every visit to the stage. Many games do that to make the gameplay more challenging. Some games respawn enemies after some time in the same stage. But that really depends on your game. I won't admire having to kill the same enemy every few seconds.

 

[SnoutUp]

I'm a filthy casual gamer and "power to the player" developer, so I might not be your target audience if you're aiming at challenge-loving crowd, but...

1. Having to memorize enemy spawn points doesn't sound like my idea of fun and spawning next to player might get frustrating depending on the existing fighting/dodging mechanics
2. High HP enemies without HP bars should at least have some sort of tells, that their HP is going down. Otherwise, fight will start to feel tedious.
3. Knockback with stun is fine until multiple enemies start stun-locking player to the death
4. Hate pixel perfect jump requirements, unless it's for a very rewarding secret & it's made clear that the jump is possible
5. Respawning is fine, unless there's a lot of backtracking. But if fighting enemies is fun - I'm okay with that!

 

[Yal]

If something relies on trial and error, or demands pixel (or frame) perfection, it's not fun IMO. Dark Souls has a lot of memorization built into the gameplay, but it's never trial and error - even ambushing enemies can be spotted if you're observant (and they often give audio cues when the actual ambush starts, giving you time to run for it or do a dodge roll out of harm's way), and a lot of hazards can be avoided in multiple ways - even if you don't know the timing to dodgeroll a certain attack properly yet, you could try to block it with your shield or just stay out of its range. DS also is relatively lenient with backtracking - if you know the way through a level, you can just run through it with relative ease in just a few minutes. However, running through a level you're NOT familiar with tends to make you run out of stamina at the worst possible moment, or you running into a dead end with a dozen aggroed enemies right behind you. Everything the game does rewards you for being an experienced player, which is why it's so addicting (and why it feels so hard to newcomers).

Oh, and also, give anything meant to be killed a HP bar. Just telling that you're damaging something is a good idea, but if you don't know how much progress you've made, impatient players will give up. Most players also assume that if they can't actually damage something meaningfully, they lack some sort of key item. Knockback stunning is fine as long as you get mercy invincibility for a while once you land - you don't want to be juggled until you die via Cycle Of Hurting, and IMO getting knocked off a ledge into a bottomless pit is a perfectly valid use of enemy placement (and a good source of facepalms, aka it's more of a YASD than a YAAD).

 

[Adrien Dittrick]

These are some game scenarios I have in my project (theyre not at all unique). Would you consider the following to add to the challenge or make it annoying/unfair?

1. enemies who spawn a few pixels in front/behind of you giving you very little time to respond.
(intention is to keep players on edge the whole time).

Additionally spawn points are fixed, so player can memorize them.

2. Bosses with lots of health but no health bar.

3. Becoming paralyzed (momentarily unable to shoot) during knockback after taking a hit from an enemy.

4. Some jumps that need to be performed at the very last pixel of a ledge. (but no risk of falling to death)

5. Enemies respawning everytime you re-enter the room (You may need to re-enter rooms 2-3 times, as you explore).

1. Enemies who spawn a few pixels outside of the screen are fine. But spawning right next to the player with no time to react is a bad idea. You WANT your player to be able to react.
2. More health for bosses is an easy but lazy mechanic. The player needs some kind of indicator. If you really want no healthbar, then a classy solution is to have your boss change color and behavior when his health goes down. Everyone likes a boss who gets stronger when his health is down. He turns red.
3. That's good. It keeps the player from spamming and forces him to think.
4. In my opinion the risk of falling in a hole and having to re-do an entire platforming section is more annoying then falling to your death and respawning. If you implement this last pixel thing, make sure there's a save point right before it, and that the player gets teleported there when he fails.
5. That's a classic thing and most likely easier to code than the reverse of enemies disappearing forever when they die. A good thing would be to make them slightly stronger when you have progressed the storyline, as they had time to adapt (but not too strong).

 

[Yal]

Enemies that spawn right where you are is OK if they give a clear tell they're about to spawn (and where), and don't hurt you until after their spawn animation finishes. Warping onto you for contact damage even would be a valid attack strategy for some enemies (or teleporting to directly above you and then falling down... I'd actually recommend that approach over spawning on top of the player since it's more clear what's happening). The Ocarina Of Time wallmasters does this pretty well: you see their shadow follow you around for a while, then it stops moving as they actually slam down; you need to quickly move out of the way when this happens to avoid being grabbed. Something similar in 2D would work just as well, especially if you design levels around this (such as levels with conveyor belts where you need to follow the belt at the right moment to get enough speed to avoid the enemy, but at the same time avoid being conveyed off the belt by following it for too long).

 

[RangerX]

These are some game scenarios I have in my project (theyre not at all unique). Would you consider the following to add to the challenge or make it annoying/unfair?

1. enemies who spawn a few pixels in front/behind of you giving you very little time to respond.
(intention is to keep players on edge the whole time). Additionally spawn points are fixed, so player can memorize them.

This sounds like something frustrating. The key is in the time the player have to react. If the mob spawns and then attack or can touch the player and those thing takes like 1 second, forget it. However, if there's a visual cue just before it spawns, or again if you can visually spot them before they get dangerous and have time to react, now it can be great. Per example, imagine a zombie that comes out from the ground right where the player stand or right beside it. The time the zombie takes to get out of the ground could be the window for the player to step aside, give it like max 2-3 seconds. Its an example where a visual cue makes the whole thing completely fair.

2. Bosses with lots of health but no health bar.

When the player makes progress, you need to clearly show it. It's all part of keeping things fun and induce the will to continue in the player. The healthbar is a classic way that is still super effective to show progress in some encounter. Don't ever shy from it. Can also save you alot of work because alternatively I think you need to make it apparent on the boss that he's about to die. (like getting slower and slower, appear wounded, losing liquids, limbs off, etc) and that can be hard to design and orchestrate.

3. Becoming paralyzed (momentarily unable to shoot) during knockback after taking a hit from an enemy.

Here again when you read it just like that it sounds bad. However its all about the "how" you pull it off. Look at Castlevania for instance, if you are invincible during knockback and that you don't give me too much small platform with endless pit between them, this knockback CAN be interesting. They key is this: if the knockback makes the player die and he thinking he was powerless about it, your knockback is probably questionable.

4. Some jumps that need to be performed at the very last pixel of a ledge. (but no risk of falling to death)

This is no problem as long its the impression the jump gives. Succeeding a tight jump can be really rewarding but how not making it too frustrating? Per example you can make it so the player can still jump from the platform when 1-2 pixel outside of it. It serves as a "fairness buffer" that most won't notice and will just make the tight jump feel great. And no need to go all the way Donkey Kong Country style there, just a little movie magic going on, that's all.

5. Enemies respawning everytime you re-enter the room (You may need to re-enter rooms 2-3 times, as you explore).

Sounds good. But make it consistent and logical so it appears as a game rule for the player. This way they will actually expect the respawning and the game will have another feel that is different than non-respawning enemies for sure, but a great feeling.

 

[McWolke]

2. Bosses with lots of health but no health bar.

i'd do it like Zelda does. don't show any Health Bar but show progress! You can do that by breaking the armor bit by bit with every hit for example

Spoiler: Undamaged

Spoiler: Damaged

sorry for the bad pics

 

[pixeltroid]

Thanks guys for all your inputs. I have made a few corrections:

1.A sound appears before the enemy spawns; enemy spawns further away from player giving him more reaction time

2. Boss healthbar : added a healthbar to the boss as some have advised. Yes, fights were actually bland, repetitive and felt neverending without knowing how much longer it will last. "Injured" sprites and "last throes" attacks are great but I'll need more time!

3. Working on knockback paralysis. Reduced the time I'm paralyzed, as well as amount of knockback because my player was sometimes getting knocked through walls. So still testing it.

4. Pixel perfect jumps will stay.

5. Enemies will respawn. Maybe I'll reduce the number of enemies in rooms player might have to frequent!

Once again, thanks for all youre feedback guys! Cant wait to share and get some actual feedback!