Design Helping the player experience the game. (Time Since Last Played, Recap, Dynamic Difficulty Level)

KurtBlissZ

Member
We all have got into the flow of a video game and got out of the flow because either you haven’t played in a while or you stopped paying close enough attention to the plot. So some games you get out the flow because it’s just been awhile where other may just parts that where hard to grasp.

One way of getting the player back into the flow of a game is giving them a Recap. The recap can be active if the player hasn’t played in a while. You can give the recap by having an annoying fairy or some other kind of helper that fills you in what you’re supposed to do, almost all games have something like this. Another way is giving the player a log of events and dialog that he had. Also it be to have the feature to re watch certain cuteness also.

Know that was mainly plot wise of letting the player back into the flow, gameplay wise you can use dynamic difficulty level. one of the games that does this secretly at least is Resident Evil 4. Where basically you change the difficulty without the player telling the player, one additional thing you could do is add a fixed difficulty feature but at the same for stubborn players like myself may get hung up trying to beat the game on a certain mode and never experiencing the whole game, know if you beat Resident Evil 4 you do unlock a Professional Mode weather dynamic difficulty is on that I’m un sure but I think you could turn it off on that mode.

Anyway, what do you guys think? It can be other things to help the player enjoy the game or things about what I covered. Also interested to see examples of games that uses or should use the methods your sharing too :).
 
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Deleted member 467

Guest
I think a Navi type character from Zelda is good for letting you know what happened last time. Progressive difficulty really depends on the game. Like Doom (2016) did this fairly well, and Zelda ... But if you do it you have to do it carefully. Too difficult and people will quit playing.
 

SnoutUp

Member
I think an optional recap after a longer pause would be applauded by players. But I imagine this is for quite a small portion of player base, because most quitters quit for good.
As far as dynamic difficulty goes, I think it works better when player doesn't know it's in the place. They would feel that game is... just right for them, which is great. Now you made me think about adding something like that to my own game, which at the moment has a lot of balance problems.
 

Yal

🐧 *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
IMO quest logs and stuff are perfect for getting players back into the game after a break... a tangible to-do list with unfinished business, or a bunch of FINISHED business so you know what areas you shouldn't go to. They're also nonintrusive so you can check them in your own pace, compared to Navi constantly telling you that you should go to the area you're currently on the way towards right after you realize, and then every 15 minutes after that. Pokemon FireRed/LeafGreen had a "previously on your quest" recap that shows the four most recent major events when you start up (in a cool sepia film grain filter to boot!), but it had pretty strange priorities with what counted as a major event, often flooding the four slots with you finding random items or battling some kid on the way, so it wasn't all that helpful.

Dynamic difficulty can be really patronizing when you SEE an obvious change dummying the game down, so I'd be careful with that. Instead of changing the game's rules behind the player's back, I'd implement it mostly via tweaks - if your game have random item drops, you'd make health drops after killing enemies more common if the player keeps dying, for instance. If the player plays well, you could shorten the delays between enemies' attacks so they need to get closer to enemies in order to take advantage of their dropped guard to get hits in, or get better at dodging. Don't do huge changes like randomly removing enemies' most annoying attack when the player plays poorly and then add it in again when they start playing well.
 

Phoebe Klim

Member
Dynamic difficulty?
Recently I've been working on something like that.


There's 8 challenges, player will be able to enable from none to all of them and increase enemy health/damage infinitely - until difficulty is so high that it's impossible to win.

It's the opposite of reducing difficulty if player sucks.

1) Create base difficulty.
2) Allow player to modify base difficulty to make game harder.
3) Reward player for making game harder and winning.

Player will begin by making game just a little harder. Beating level with increased difficulty will give rewards that will allow to make game even harder.

It's exciting idea and I can't wait to see this system work in my game.
Good game is a toolbox, full of awesome tools to that allow player to build their own epic experience.
Leave hand holding to movies and books.
 
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