[Thought Experiment] Player motivation map

Here's a thought experiment for anyone designing a game. Build up a 'user flow' diagram to determine what your players will do and why. Think about all the possible actions the players can do as well as all the possible motivations players have to do them.

For example, I'm going to take a basic eastern MMORPG.

 

Possible Actions: 

Grinding

Farming

Quests

In-Game events

Organized Play (Team Play)

Organized wars

Socializing/Community building.

Possible Motivators: 

Power

Greed

Competitiveness

Expression / Build creation

Exploring

Socializing

Then figure out what actions are "fed" by what motivators. That is, which actions will satisfy particular wants and desires of your players.

Farming

Motivators: Power, Greed, Competitiveness, Expression

Questing

Motivators: Power, Greed, Competitiveness

Grinding

Motivators:  Power, Greed, Competitiveness

Organized Play

Motivators: Socializing, Power, Greed, Competitiveness, Expression

Socializing/Community building:

Motivators: Socializing.

Then figure out which action is rewards some motivations *the most* in your game so you can refine your list down.  In most games, Organized play isn't the best way to satisfy power leveling. However, organized play can be the only source for some hard to acquire items. In this case, farming and organized play both satisfy greed the most in different ways.. so our refined list looks like..

Farming

Motivators: Greed

Questing

Motivators: None

Grinding

Motivators:  Power, Competitiveness

Organized Play

Motivators: Greed, Socializing, Expression

Socializing/Community building:

Motivators: Socializing.

Now you have a pretty good idea of what is going to be the dominant actions that are going to be taken in the game. If you have a better idea of specific actions in your game, you can further refine this chart to determine what actions a potential player will do. Further refinements to this list can include: availability of the various actions you can take (for example, if there are only 3 quests in the entire game then questing can't satisfy its motivators because it's not available all the time). You can also figure out if you need to design more actions to satisfy base motivators, like specific quests designed to attract players who are driven by say, greed and socializing.

On creative patterns

Almost all general game designs follow a slightly different pattern, I would endeavor to say that some of these patterns are far more successful than others. One of the most successful patterns I have seen is also one of the least understood and so I would like to give a short summary of it here. It involves 4 steps and roughly parallels to the 4 basic stages of learning how to do art.

1) Replication

"You start off by seeing if you can reproduce something you already know. An artists learns shadows and textures by drawing off of life."

In all forms of art and design, the first initial step is to replicate something you've seen. Replication is an exercise in both vision and execution. You have to see what is important or innate about the game and simultaneously be able to execute it and carry it out exactly.

Without being able to replicate something exactly, you often get the strange feeling that something is missing if you are lacking in vision or that something feels off if  you are lacking in execution.

If, for example, you are creating a first person shooting game, the first step would be to replicate a base that you know, like Doom or something. It does not have to be perfect. The key in this step is to understand what you are trying to create and make sure that you both can see what is there to do and if you can do it.

2) Variation

"Let us place the bowl of fruit in the sky, or paint it as if it was night."

Variation is when you take an already existing form and tweak aspects of it. It is mainly an exercise in coherence. By taking various related objects or concepts and putting them in the same form, you begin to see how things can interact with each other in new ways.

When you fail to do enough variations, it often feels like parts of the game don't interact with each other well because there's a poor understanding of how the various elements can fit together.

Going back to our first person shooter example, variation is when you start tweaking or adding things and seeing how the new patterns emerge. What if you could fly in Doom? (Tribes). What if it was a fantastic setting? (Heretic)

3) Innovation

"From first principles, what if we then painted the impression that a bowl of fruit left to us?"

Innovation is the introduction entirely new ideas into the scene. Innovation is mainly needed as an outlet for creativity and novelty. Only by introducing something entirely new can you achieve things that replication and variation can't. For example, if you abandon the photorealism of a painting and painted merely the effect it had on you, this would be something that perfect replication or variation could not do.

Going back to our first person shooter example, innovation is hard to come by. There are games that dramatically change the way you interact with your environment (Portal, Thief), or games that have deliberately dropped realism for artistic style (Team Fortress).

4) Refinement

"Sometimes we can emphasize our use of color by using only a little bit. A single red flower in a black and white painting is far more powerful than a painting full of color"

Refinement is simply to cut away unnecessary parts of the original form and to add elements to it that make it more streamlined. Just as using washed out colors can serve to emphasize color, removing elements that grab the players attention can serve to streamline attention.  Refinement is the hardest principle to embrace as it involves a deep understanding of what your original idea was and what made it work, the realization of how coherent the idea is to itself and the ability to add new things to streamline the idea.

In our FPS example, Team Fortress is a good example of where stripping away ideas or refinement brought about an increase in playability from the original Team Fortress Classic. Gone are the grenades and some classes. Gone are several "good" things in favor of making "great" things shine instead.

[Theory] Online RPG Game Economics and You, Part 2

It is obvious that in almost all online role playing games, that more experienced players who have played longer will have more money and in-game wealth than someone who has started the game.  In the last post, I established that price fixing and demand will generally be decided more by older experienced wealthy players than the majority of the players around.

There is a concept of "quality" good or "substitute" good in real world economies that also apply online role playing games as well. For a designer, these represent particularly complex pitfalls with itemization. Consider the fact that there may be the possibility of an item found extremely early on in the game that is still useful throughout all levels of the game. This good can be acquired by anyone.

Goods or items that are in demand with few substitutes will have their prices determined "fair" by the most powerful players.

Consider a low level item that is perpetually useful. For example, a useful little trinket that stuns an enemy for 3 seconds. Now, since this item is perpetually useful, every player in every single wealth bracket will desire this item. The free market will then decide the price of the item, most likely, to be the highest price a player will pay for it. This will naturally fall within the "elite" player's wealth bracket. 

Even if the item wasn't particularly powerful, the item's valuation will be determined by the elite player's wealth bracket.  For example, let us assume that the item is worth no more than 1% of your income. For the elite player, this could be two to a hundred times greater than players of lower levels. This common low-level item then will have ridiculously inflated market value relative to the players finding it.

Such things naturally lead to: Farming.

Farming is a horrible process as it disrupts normal gameplay (advancement and progression) and replaces it with a tedious repetitive process. Players are no longer encouraged to play what/where it suits them (or where it will challenge them) but to rapidly incur financial gain by repeatedly doing a simple area.

Combating this is even riskier. Suppose that, to encourage players to move onto new areas, you decrease the amount of items/gold from monsters that are too easy for the player. Now, players have a disincentive to level. If there is so much more gold/wealth to be obtained from killing this set of easy monsters for a low level item that can't be found anywhere else and sells for millions because elite players will pay millions, you'll see players actively make the choice to either not level or the choice to roll dedicated farming alts designed to farm this area.

With too many people farming the same resource, the rise of automated gatherers and high competition naturally occurs. If there is high collusion between player groups for highly desirable items with only one location to be obtained then you may have entire gangs of players "camped" out at a specific spot to acquire. This problem is worse if said location was originally intended to be an area for new players!

[Theory] Online RPG Game Economics and You, Part 1

I'm sure that this has definitely been done before, but here's my quick musings on multiplayer game economics.

Multiplayer economics is often a tricky subject because the designer doesn't know what factors, incentives or disincentives exist. However, there are some wonderful key factors here that I feel have been ignored in the larger scheme of things.

Resources are created for "free" but they are never permanently consumed.

For example, there are two primary sources of obtaining in-game wealth. The primary source of income in a game is any system in which the game gives the players currency. This includes the reward of gold or money or items that could potentially generate gold and money. This is the first major break from reality, as it represents an unlimited money supply which must be addressed.

The secondary source of obtaining in-game wealth is the trade of items of value with other players in exchange of items for wealth in trading systems. This is the main "economy" problem that players speak of.  The main problem with economies in general is the fact that if in-game wealth or gold is generated at too fast a rate from "nowhere" then there is no point in trading for it.  The game then needs to revert to a Barter system, where items are primarily traded for other items.

Improperly managed resources/economies can lead to trade "lock", where no parties are willing to trade.

A barter system would be fine as a secondary currency, but only *if* there are sufficient units of lower denominations available to make "change", so to speak.  I would gladly trade my sword of vorpal destruction for your shiny shield of gold. But if my sword is vastly superior to your shield, I would need something extra to compensate the difference in value. However, if there is no agreed upon secondary currency, then the trade cannot continue and the barter system will break down as everyone is locked with the items they possess.

The primary failings of both the money based and the barter based systems is the fact that the supply is essentially infinite and with no external systems, there is an infinitely growing supply of items. This problem is sometimes exacerbated by the  introduction of real money trade in the system in games that are dependent on micro-transactions for their cash flows.

The rate at which resources are obtained, inevitably favor those who are more powerful.

The second major fallout in multi-player game economics is from the rate at which wealth is acquired. Naturally, as players progress through the game, they obtain more powerful and more desireable items. They also receive increased rewards to discourage players from taking the easy road. There is also usually an increase in "cost-of-living" expenditures such as perishable consumables and item costs in general (as barriers to player growth) and thus neccesitating a rise in the ability to obtain in game wealth.

I'll give an example here, as that may have been too wordy. Our level one hero finds one gold on a slime. This is fine because his sword only cost 5G.  If our hero gets one gold a kill, he can obtain his sword in 5 kills. Now, if the next more powerful weapon costs 100G, our hero will need to kill 95 slimes in order to obtain his sword. But what is usually termed as "fair" in an RPG is that, as our hero acquires more power and defeats more powerful enemies, he should be rewarded more gold as well. That is, our hero can now kill demons and get hundreds of gold per kill.  If we only awarded our hero one gold per demon kill, our hero might as well just kill slimes instead as they were much easier.

However, with an increase of power, also comes the increased ability to gather wealth. A high level player in online rpgs can gain gold perhaps tens or hundreds of times more than a new beginning player. This creates a serious discrepancy in the wealth accumulation of the system as now, the vast majority of the wealth in the system is controlled by proportionately few people.  In real world economies, this would rapidly lead to: Price inflation and Price fixing.

On "Cheating"

There are a myriad ways of form to cheat in any game but what can the designer do about it?

Sure, he can curse and scream and ban offending players from the game. That's always an option. Granted, identifying cheaters and banning them could be a prohibitively hard thing to enforce. This is especially prevalent in online multiplayer games since interactions between players can intensify any possible motivations to cheat in the first place.

A clever designer will be able to add enough disincentives to cheating that their numbers can be curbed to the extent where cursing, screaming and banning players becomes a tractable solution for taking care of the rest.

Cheating #1: Illegal duplication of rare items

Duplication of rare items typically occurs when there is a powerful or highly desire-able item and supply cannot meet demand. This is usually the case for almost all powerful items since everyone wants the "best" items and weapons and armors.

In this case, common disincentives to this is..

Break the market/Soulbinding

Make extremely powerful items only usable by the account or person who found it. Then you can make a second tier of less powerful and less desirable items and have those trade-able and "common' removing the incentive to cheat/duplicate items.

Infinite Supply

Simply make extremely powerful items common so that everyone can have "the best" gear. Then you can focus on the rest of the game

Cheating #2: Automated Play

Automated playing or "botting" is a way where clickers and automated tools play the game for the character instead of players themselves. This is a form of cheating where the time investment by players who do use automated tools can be several times greater than the actual players themselves.

Allow Automated Play using In-Game tools / Or automated gains while offline.

You can, in effect, cancel a large portion of 3rd party automated tools by simply allow automated play in-game. Give the players a bot system in game or a way of acquiring experience and resources by being offline.  In this manner, automated play becomes less of a chore.

Make Automated Play suck

That is, a large portion of the incentive to do automated play stems from the fact that the most rewarding thing to do in the game is also the most boring. Kill the same monsters 99,000 times. If you take away the benefit from the boring same monster stuff and put the benefits somewhere else (like say, completing quests with random objectives or complicated movement puzzles/questions), then there is essentially no gain in using automated play tools.

Cheating #3: Maphack

If your game has some sort of random generation feature, a maphack tool can be extremely powerful. Consider the most famous example, Diablo 2, where maphack was used by a huge portion of the player base. Usually maphack usage arises due to the frustration between horribly designed random levels, the neccessity to get to one place from another with speed and the incentive to go somewhere fast.

Re-evaluate your network protocol

You can make maphack impossible by checking your network protocol very carefully and ensuring that the player can't have access to more of the map than he is allowed. 

Re-evaluate your random generation

Part of the reasons map hacks are used are because your random levels don't make any sense. Why should the player bother stumbling through a thousand dead ends? Having clear signals and paths for players who want to get to one place from another instead of stumbling through random garbage is a great disincentive to maphack because you don't need it.

Re-evaluate why players keep going from one place to another.

If players are constantly trying to go to one place from another, you might want to ask yourself why they won't explore the immediate surroundings. If players are in such a rush, perhaps demotivating the players from getting there (lowering the benefits of being in that area) or increasing the benefits from carefully exploring is a better fit.

Designing Encounters, Take 2: Players are not your enemy, Part 2: Solutions

"Frustrating" to "Interesting"
 
There are common methods to making a frustrating fight more interesting. The key in many of these is interaction. One of the most important principles is interaction between the game and the player. We aren't watching a movie here. The player has to be actively engaged in the experience. Many signs of frustration are simply the fact that they are artifical barriers that the player can't do anything about. The enemies have a little more health and so the fight simply takes longer.  These barriers are non-interactive and only serve as pure impediments.

In a racing game, you could make the automatic car non-responsive as all hell. That would be "difficult" because now the player will have a harder time getting first place. Compare that kind of difficulty versus a racing game where the only cars you can drive are manual. That would be more difficult but the player actually has an avenue to interact with.

1. Clear cause and effect - "Oh, the dragon roars before he does his flame breath. 

A clear cause and effect relationship lets the player learn the patterns in the encounter. If the causes are unclear and the effects devestating, then the player might be confused as to what he is actually going to see. If a player doesn't know what hit him, there's very little he can do to actually learn.


Subtle hints can be a good idea but remember not to go overboard. The more likely a player is to miss a hint, the less he should be punished for missing it.

2. Directness - "The dragon isn't just a walking sack of hit points."

Directness is critical to ensuring player interaction. Players don't want a longer fight. They want a more intense fight. A boss encounter that lasts an hour and a half with the player being in no real danger for 89 minutes is not fun. Once the player has perfected his strategy and his actions, the encounter should end relatively quickly.


A corollary to this is that there should be some path to victory that is within the player's grasp. If you set out to design your encounters with no real solution, your players will bend almost every rule and probably break your game/fight in order to overcome your encoutner.


3. High Player Interaction - "If I block, the flame breath does much less, and if I hit his leg he limps a little!"

Make all actions, even the ones that aren't optimal, do something for the player. If the player can't dodge the thousands of shards sent his way, at least make his block action mitigate damage. If the player can't hit the monster at exactly the right time, at least reward him with a little bit of damage. Nothing is worse than demanding flawlessness in your player.

"You have to hit this boss at this exact instant or nothing happens."

However small, the player should feel the effects of his actions. Have the boss bleed, or bellow taunts or scream in agony. Have a health bar or numbers pop up with damage. You want to avoid the scenario where the player has hit the boss 1000 times, only to die before the 1001th hit which would've killed the boss but the player gave up because he had no idea how many hits left he had to go.

4. Guidance IF the player needs it - "That flame blast looked like it hurt. Pay attention to his roar and prepare to defend yourself!"

On one hand, you don't want to give all the boss strategies away. On the other hand, it is highly important that if the player keeps failing, that the game realizes this and tosses him a hint or a clue to help him progress. If all else fails, remember to give the player guidance and suggestions if he's clearly doing it wrong or struggling to succeed.


"A clever example in the game Eternal Darkness was the Guardian boss. The player can only defeat this boss with magic. If the player insists on using guns to fight him, the Guardian boss simply laughs after 1-2 minutes with the phrase 'No human weaponry can defeat me, mortal', giving the player a subtle hint as to what he's supposed to be doing."


5. Options - "Man. I just can't defeat this dragon. Maybe I should look for some gear that increases my fire resistance?"

Options make more sense in RPGs where wearing the correct gear makes certain scenarios a lot easier. Being able to find/collect fire absorbing gear against bosses that primarily use fire makes the fight trivial. Essentially, if the players can't find a strategic way out, they should feel like they have enough tools/items at their disposal to "try."  Whether that be armors that mitigate specific types of damage or just a wide range of spells/tools designed for niche purposes, options exist to give players hope that perhaps they can find some tool that will make their encounter a lot easier.

Without options available, the player can only continually bang his head on the same roadblock that's been bugging him continuously. 

Afterword, my rule of thumb on attacks:


Here's my rule of thumb for toning down difficult encounters to interesting ones. For every single move/encounter/attack pattern the  player might face, you get to choose 2 out of the 3...

1. Highly Damaging/Effective
2. Hard to Dodge
3. Hard to Predict

If something is hard to dodge and hard to predict, then it shouldn't punish the player too badly because there's very little he could do about it. If something is hard to dodge and highly damaging or effective, then the player must be able to predict that it's coming. If something is hard to predict and highly damaging, then the player must be able to dodge the effect once it occurs. If something is highly damaging, hard to predict and hard to dodge then you might as well just kill the player outright because you're not giving him very many opportunities to interact.

Designing Encounters, Take 2: Players are not your enemy, Interest, Part 2

"Interesting" Hard Signs

It's hard to define what is both "interesting" and hard and yet not "frustrating" for the player. The idea is that the difficulty should not feel artificial in any way shape or form. If the player has been doing well up to this point, he should continue to do well.

"The player is doing well taking a hit every once in a while. Then suddenly, the next enemy (who acts the same as all the other enemies) instantly kills him because it does 3 times the damage of an ordinary enemy. This is not an interesting way to make things difficult. Making that next enemy say.. a ninja who moves 3 times as fast is *more* interesting than simply making him do 3 times the damage."

Exciting / Ambiance / Tone - "A DRAGON ate me... Aliens came up out of the vents and melted my face."

In some cases, you can make frustrating difficulty "feel" interesting by giving it the correct ambiance. The guy with that dagger deals 3 damage to me. But that guy over there with the BIG ass hammer over there dealing 30 damage to me "feels" intuitively correct. Even if the two don't differ meaningfully, it feels right and is more likely to be interesting than frustrating.

I mean, getting killed by ninjas is almost always a fun experience the first couple times around. No shame in that.

Eventual player success - "You know, I think I've almost got it... I just need one more try."

The player should not feel that this new difficulty is a giant roadblock. That leads to people quitting games. This is perhaps the hardest of the factors to nail down as it involves identifying potential roadblocks before you know about them and designing mechanisms to aid the player in succeeding. After all, one can exactly deduce if a player might improve on a section.

Things like artificially reducing difficulty if the player is doing badly might be a good idea but eventually may lead to players feeling coddled. Games have tried scaling difficulty systems based on how well the player is doing. The core here is that the players must always feel they are able to improve to the point where they can overcome this difficulty. Therefore, in the design of the game, the player must have options open available to them to improve.

If a boss relies on a player expertly sniping something from across the way and that is the only way to defeat the boss, there is a kind of hopelessness if the player doesn't feel his accuracy can improve to the extent that the boss demands.  If there were more avenues to defeat the boss, this feeling would be discouraged.

High degree of control over the situation - "The player can do whatever and they all contribute to success."

The core of any game is that the player must feel competent, or at least, capable of performing the tasks asked to them. Their actions should feel meaningful. If the majority of the players actions result in him being damaged or not being effective at all then the player will not have a motivation to actually fight or think. There's no motivation there.  Since all actions taken are meaningless, why bother attempting to figure out new actions?

The players actions should have some effect over the situation. Otherwise, why is he the player?

This also applies to defensive abilities. If all the attacks that the player faces are undodgeable then why should the player bother learning to dodge? If the enemy has a continuously streaming beam that never lets up, why should the player bother learning to hide? There's no incentive to perform defensive maneuvers because there's no point. It doesn't help.The players attempts at being defensive should be meaningful. The arrows should be dodgeable with clever movement. The sweeping gatling gun should let up its barrage of bullets to give the opportunity for the player to strike. Dodging the attack should present the player with a possible openings.

Clear signals and a clear path for the player to take - "Obviously, I'm supposed to aim for those glowing spots on his chest that the boss is trying to shield with his arms."

If the player doesn't know how to progress this usually leads to frustration. If the player doesn't know what to do against a monster's attacks, it might as well be unblockable for all intents and purposes. If the player doesn't know what he is supposed to do because there's no clear signals.. he will give up or, if he is especially dedicated, suspect there is a trick.

Nothing is more frustrating than not knowing what the hell you're supposed to do. You begin to suspect if the designers even had an idea in mind when they designed the encounter.

"Natural" difficulty - "Oooh, this guy is tough to hit because he's fast. I'm going to have to aim a little better."

A fairly decent way of making difficult encounters feel interesting is to make the difficulty based on the environment or the context. Aliens that storm up to you point-blank aren't very interesting or difficult. Now, imagine if that fight took place in a pitch black room with only your flash light with the aliens crawling on the walls, *that* fight is more difficult *and* more interesting even though they might not be any faster or any more damaging. Making the player fear and panic can be a interesting way to add difficulty, especially if the enemies encountered don't move in a normal pattern.

A second way of adding "natural" difficulty is simply making the monsters behaviors more complex. Enemies that are highly unpredictable aren't difficult but enemies that are just outside of the player's skill level to affect can be intensely difficult. For example, if a guy carries a heavy shield and can only be hurt by hitting the areas where the shield doesn't cover. That's a form of adding health and endurance without actually doing so.  A monster may be weak and fragile but incredibly hard to hit, pouncing from wall to wall. That's a form of difficulty that has nothing to do with simply increasing damage or numbers.

Designing Encounters, Take 2: Players are not your enemy, Frustration Part 1

 "Frustrating" Hard Signs


When a game is difficult but unfairly difficult, it can often be frustrating to the player. Many signs of frustration can be attributed to a sense of powerlessness from the player's side as if he has no choice but to accept the punishment the game is doling out for him.

As a designer, one of the main questions you have to ask yourself is "How can the player overcome this difficulty?" If there's no answer besides "Suck it up" you might want to question your design a bit more.

Let's go over the points in the recap:


Unavoidibility - "I just can't dodge that one attack." 

Unavoidable problems are almost always a mistake in design because the player can't do anything about it. These kinds of problems, especially if they lead to death or boredom, can become death knells in your game simply because the player has no choice in the matter. If he dies due to an unavoidable attack, he's always going to die. He just has to pray he never runs into the problem in the first place because there's no solution.

If you do have unavoidable problems in design, make sure that they do not directly lead to death or boredom. Unavoidable problems in this case should mean putting additional penalties or constraints rather than punishing the player because he did nothing wrong. These are good to some limited degree.

Note that unavoidable attacks due to the player doing something bad aren't truly unavoidable because the player has the option of not doing that horrible mistake in the first place and therefore don't fall in this category.

Round-aboutness - "So first, make your way uphill in the snow 6 miles. And then uphill back"

Nothing is more annoying in frustrating difficulty when you simply give no option for the player to efficiently plan his goals.  When you make a problem difficult by giving the player a convuluted method to achieve something, this is a difficulty that the player has no way of getting around.

For example, let's say that our challenge for the player is to collect 6 golden mushrooms. Now, if the player was allowed to collect them in any order, it would be wise for the player to efficiently collect mushrooms that were close to each other. But if we had the arbitrary restriction of picking them in a set order (especially a set order that made no sense, tediously making the player go back and forth in the longest path possible) the player no longer has the option to plan his route.

Thus, this level of "increased difficulty" is only frustrating.

Arbitrary methods - "You have to wait for the gold button to be depressed, then you shoot somewhere else."

This problem is often due to the designer trying to be far far too clever by half. Instead of making the player's abilities do something, they want the player to solve some specific puzzle that they have in their heads. The problem is when that puzzle follows the designer's internal logic without actually paying attention to whether or not it makes sense.

It might be a terrific puzzle that they have to shoot the gold button and then a weak spot. The problem is, is this any kind of game at all? Why would a game has something so outside the normal realm of thinking? What kind of difficulty is encouraged by this behavior?

Lack of signals/instruction/hints and/or Lack of time to gather information - "The bosses weak point is not glowing, marked or even hinted at anywhere. And then he kills you if you shoot the wrong part."

This usually goes hand in hand with the above problem. If you tell the player there's a weak spot or a set of instructions they have to follow, it's "too easy." Or is it? If you tell the player absolutely nothing at all, more often or not, the first sign something is wrong is confusion. Frustration quickly follows.

What is worse is that designers usually feel like punishing the player for not picking up our their subtle hints. However, this just exacerbates the original problem. When players are trying to figure out a problem, they shouldn't continually punished because they're trying to figure it out. That's like whipping someone for taking too long on a convuluted riddle that you asked them in the first place without giving them any hints.

You can either be subtle or you can aggressively punish mistakes. You can't have both.


Artificial difficulty - "Oh, that gun we just gave you? Doesn't work. Oh, by the way, if you don't have *this* level of gear, you're dead no matter what you do."

Artificial difficulty is the recourse of a lazy designer trying to make his game harder. Instead of thinking of interesting challenges he just gives the boss more health or makes him do three times the damage. Giving monsters arbitrary immunities or invincibilities to "cheap" attack by the player. The problem with this type of difficulty is that it really doesn't encourage the player to do anything. They can't do anything about the problem's magnitude.

There really isn't anything interesting about an artifically difficult boss. He just takes longer and he's just not as fun to fight. This may be a tough problem to identify because it's very subjective as to what makes a proper encounter. The key question here is "What makes this problem difficult?" If the answer to that is simply a sheer matter of "the enemy has high statistics and better gear" and not "the enemy fights in an interesting way" you might want to look into making your enemies more complex.

Low interactivity - "The boss kills me because he ensnares me 99% of the time."

One of the ways to frustrate players is simply take away their ability to interact with the problem. What could be more difficult right? Take away their swords and give them a toothpick. Take away their horse and make them walk through mud. That's difficult. Now they can't use their most powerful abilities and their ability to control the character is weakened.

Except for the tiny fact that, if we didn't want any control over what was happening in a game, we wouldn't be playing a game in the first place.  Nothing is more frustrating than an encounter where you spend 90% of the time watching yourself get beat on while you can do nothing about it. Sure, it may be a difficult encounter but if the majority of the time is spent fighting the fact that we can't control our own character, it's not much of a game anymore.

Designing Encounters, Take 2: Players are not your enemy, Overview

One of the easiest things to be confused about when designing enemy encounters in any game is the notion that somehow, the players are your enemy. This is most common in Dungeons and Dragons but any beginning game designer should be aware of this confusion.

It's all too easy to think that the player is on one side and you're on the other. It's you or him. If he wins, you lose. Thus it's easy to design encounters that are borderline impossible. Be aware that the purpose of your game is not to beat the player senseless until he gives up. There is an insignificant amount of players willing to put up with the masochism of being beat up continually while playing your game.

That's not to say that game should not be hard. Difficulty is what keeps the game fun in the first place and not a mindless grind to the next area. Game design is about delivering a fun experience and difficulty is a key part of that.

There is, however, quite a significant difference between an "interesting" hard and "frustrating" hard.


"Frustrating" Hard Signs

In this category are all the things that could be deemed unfairly difficult. There is a certain level of challenge to them but none of them are particularly the type of difficulty that makes a game fun.

1. Unavoidibility - "I just can't dodge that one attack."
   
2. Round-aboutness - "So first, make your way uphill in the snow 6 miles. And then uphill back"
   
3. Arbitrary methods - "You have to wait for the gold button to be depressed, then you shoot somewhere else."
   
4. Lack of signals/instruction/hints and/or Lack of time to gather information - "The bosses weak point is not glowing, marked or even hinted at anywhere. And then he kills you if you shoot the wrong part."
   
5. Artificial difficulty - "Oh, that gun we just gave you? Doesn't work. Oh, by the way, if you don't have *this* level of gear, you're dead no matter what you do."
6. Low interactivity - "The boss kills me because he ensnares me 99% of the time."
   

"Interesting" Hard Signs

 It's hard to come up with a difficulty that is "interestingly" hard but the key here would be, if the player is losing, would he still be having fun? If the player is having a difficult time in the game, is it a fun time in the game?

1. Exciting / Ambiance / Tone - "A DRAGON ate me... Aliens came up out of the vents and melted my face."
   
2. Eventual player success - "You know, I think I've almost got it... I just need one more try."
   
3. High degree of control over the situation - "The player can do whatever and they all contribute to success."
   
4. Clear signals and a clear path for the player to take - "Obviously, I'm supposed to aim for those glowing spots on his chest that the boss is trying to shield with his arms."
   
5. "Natural" difficulty - "Oooh, this guy is tough to hit because he's fast. I'm going to have to aim a little better." 
   

"Frustrating"to "Interesting"
 
There are common methods to making a frustrating fight more interesting. The key in many of these is interaction. Even if a battle is particularly hard, you want the players to feel like they have control of the environment and their character.

1. Clear cause and effect - "Oh, the dragon roars before he does his flame breath. 
2. Directness - "The dragon isn't just a walking sack of hit points."
   
3. High Player Interaction - "If I block, the flame breath does much less, and if I hit his leg he limps a little!"
4. Guidance IF the player needs it - "That flame blast looked like it hurt. Pay attention to his roar and prepare to defend yourself!"
5. Options - "Man. I just can't defeat this dragon. Maybe I should look for some gear that increases my fire resistance?"
   

Steal My Idea: Skill variants from CCGs, Part 3: Restriction Variants

Restrictions: To deny the usage of a skill in certain scenarios.

Restrictions on a spell or ability don't show up in RPGs as often as they do in card games. This is generally due to the fact that the complex interplay in cardgames must be distilled into a faster quicker paced game.

However, restrictions can be another way to provide a powerful ability and force the player to solve mini-problems.


Let us take the following skill


Impale
2000 mana
Deals half the target's health in damage.

Variants

Type Restrictions: Limiting the target selection of the skill for balance.

In Magic, many spells simply cannot affect a certain subclass of targets. Many black spells cannot affect black spells due to the fact that unholy magics tend not to be so effective against unholy people.

In an RPG, this would be similar to something like the warrior not being able to use Impale on people wearing hevy armor (most likely other warriors.) This is an interesting balance as people wearing heavier armors tend to have higher hit points overall and thus limits the possible abuse of the skill.

Timing Restrictions: Limiting the time in which a skill can be cast.

In  Magic, the basic difference between an instant and a sorcery is that you may only cast a sorcery when it is your turn. Therefore, you cannot wait to react to an opponent with a sorcery. You must decide to cast it now or never.

In an RPG, this would be similar to the warrior not being able to use the ability after taking damage for a second or two. He must either immediately lead off with the attack as soon as he can or else wait until the opponent is defensive and recovering to unleash his attack.

Conditional Restrictions: Limiting the circumstances in a which a skill can be cast.

In magic, there are quite a few spells that say you can only play a card X when some condition Y has been met. For example, a card that deals 10 damage to a player if the player has exactly 10 life.

In an RPG, this would be similar to spells that could only be used while the opponent is under some sort of effect. For example, perhaps the warrior can only impale his targets when they are stunned or dizzy. In this manner, the player must decide the best way to get his target to be stunned or dizzy before being able to use impale.

Steal My Idea: Skill variants from CCGs, Part 2: Cost Variants

Cost is the essential part of a skill that controls how many resources a skill will consume.

A resource could be represented by health or mana.
A resource could also be represented by time, as in the casting time of a skill.

For today, let us take this example:

Strike
200 mana
Deal 200 damage to target.

This is a very simple ability that deals direct damage.


Variants

Echo: Exchanging a time cost for a resource cost.

Echo is an ability in magic that allows you to cast a spell cheaply, but for the cost that you must pay an additional cost next turn. It essentially allows you to break up a spells cost over two turns.

In an RPG, this would most likely translate to a spell taking either more or less time to cast in exchange for costing more or less mana as an alternate mode.  For example, the longer the warrior holds down the strike button, the less mana it will take. A quick strike takes a lot of mana while a long strike consumes none.


APC: Exchanging a resource cost for a cooldown cost.

Alternate Playing Cost is a mechanic from magic that allows you to discard a card in return for paying no mana for it.

In an RPG, this would translate to a spell taking less mana or casting time cost, in exchange for putting itself or some spells on a timed cooldown. Let us say that the strike spell costs no mana at all, but leaves the warrior in a awkward position and therefore unable to use any other attacks for a few seconds.

Trap: Situational costlessness.

Traps are a mechanic in most magic that allows you to play a card for no resources if some condition is met by the opponent's actions.

In an RPG, this would translate to "reactionary" spells. Let us say that strike spell costs no mana and is instant when the warrior encoutners an enemy who can dodge his attacks.

Steal My Idea: Skill variants from CCGs, Part 1: Cooldown Variants

Cooldown: A period of time in which, after the usage of a skill, the skill cannot be used.

Cooldown is an important concept in balancing skills. The 3 main things cooldowns attempt to achieve in skill mechanics are...

1. Powerful.
2. Situational.
3. Limited.

For example, let us take this spell as our base example.

Prayer
1000 Mana.
5 minute cooldown.

Prevents all damage for 5 seconds.

This is an extremely powerful ability to become invulnerable for 5 seconds. However, one can see where this would be too powerful if there was no cooldown period (the ability to become immortal as long as your mana sustains you) and too useless if it was balanced strictly by cost (Imagine you had the ability to become immortal for 5 seconds but leaving you powerless by draining all your mana.)

Hence, the cooldown allows you to make a skill available to the player with the knowledge that it has a sufficient time and resource cost and remain balanced.


Variant Mechancis:

Flashback: The ability to use a skill while it is cooling down.

Flashback, is a mechanic in magic which allows you to "re-cast" a card after it has been cast for the slight cost of removing it from the game.

In an RPG, this could be represented as the ability to use a skill while it is cooling down, exchanging a small cooldown. For example, our prayer spell above. Let us say that while the skill is "cooling down", we were able to cast it again while it is cooling down, in exhange for not being able to use again the skill for 30 minutes or an hour.

Buyback: Trading mana for cooldown

Buyback, is a mechanic in magic which allows you to recover a card after you have cast it for some extra mana.

In an RPG, this could be represented as the ability to cancel a cooldown for a specific skill by paying an additional mana cost.  For example, for our prayer spell above, let us say that the cost to cancel the cooldown of prayer is 1000 mana. The player could then cast back-to-back prayer spells at the cost of 3000 mana, giving the spell additional flexibility if the player can pay for it.

Dredge: Randomly trading one cooldown for another

Dredge, is a mechanic in magic which allows you to recover the use of a spell by giving up the possibility of several spells in the game as a whole. 

In an RPG, this could be represented as the ability to cancel a cooldown by giving a random skill the same cooldown as it has. For example, let us say that our player has two spells, Prayer and Heal. If he chooses to cancel Prayer with this mechanic, then some other random skill would acquire the cooldown that Prayer had. In this case, if he had 3 minutes left on the cooldown of Prayer, cancelling it would move that 3 minute cooldown to Heal.

Game Economics: The role of money in single player games, Part 4

Again, the intro recap:

Part 4: Solutions and various money controlling mechanisms.

1. Hyperscaling - Making whatever money the player has obselete by scaling the prices.
   
2. Money Sinks - Making available convienient ways to get rid of cash like gambling.
   
3. Nickel and Dimes - By making boring processes of acquiring money have penalties to acquisition.
4. Supply Control - By slowly expanding the shop selection.

In Part 3, I described various problems of dealing with the player which stemmed from either poor price control, poor fiscal policies (monsters drop too much gold) and poor inventory control. Let's talk about a few common methods people use to fix that.

1. Hyperscaling

Let's say that in the beginning, you could buy a powerful set of armor for 100 gold. When the player moves on to the next area, however, you don't want someone who has saved up 1000 gold to be instantly able to buy everything in the next area.  However, you can't take away his hard-earned gold either.

What do you do? You hyperscale the prices.  If a piece of armor costs 100 gold in the first area then a common way to both reward and control players who have saved cash is to make that next piece of armor cost 1000 gold.

You see, the player could've saved up more than enough money to buy 10 pieces of armor from the first area. That's great and the player should be rewarded for his effort. So he is rewarded by being able to buy the next armor quicker... but at the same time you've quite covertly changed the spending power he has. He was infinitely rich before in the first area by being able to buy his armor 10 times over. Now he's essentially broke again.

And the cycle continues: The player gets rich in one area or zone and then he moves on the next zone. He finds that the prices are high compared to the previous zone and now, instead of being rich, he's only of average wealth.

You haven't taken any money away from the player but you can make sure that no amount of farming in an early zone can make farming in a later zone easy.

2. Money Sinks

A money sink is essentially a non-essential fun thing that is designed to bleed money away from the player.

Money sinks also make the players feel their money is more valuable as there are more things to spend it on.

There's a plethora of ways to do this, here's just a short list of the possibilities:

1. Cosmetic Goods: Dresses, Nice boots, etc.
2. Gambling for Random Items: A sick thrill in which you might get a really good item.. or not.
3. Temporary Bonuses: Teleporters, fast movement or just the ability to use something really powerful for a short while (Like strength potions or potions that increase speed)
   
4. Access to secrets like unlockable characters, new combinations to try out or bonus and optional areas.
   

3. Nickel and Dimes


This is a method where the most popular method of gaining money also comes with a cost. For example, if the player fights monsters to gain money then by making his armor and equipment slowly wear away so they can't be used forever is nickle and diming the player's money away.

The trick is to set up some sort of drain on the player's money if he is spending an excess amount of time acquiring money. By making weapons cost ammo to fire or by making potions and necessary mundane things cost a lot, the player's primary resource for acquiring money also has it's own costs attached to it and you can slowly bleed a player out.

Note that this should only be a serious drain if the player is hellbent on acquiring lots and lots of money. Players probably don't need to repair their armor if they are moving through the game at a quick pace as he's doing what we want them to do. By making weapons and armor wear out only if the player spends an excessive time slaying monsters, you can do a targeted bleed on the farmers. This would mean that durability should be a three mode model.

There's 'Good', which most weapons and armor should be in. 'Wearing out' which should happen after the weapons and armor has been used for a while and 'Broken' which should happen if the player refuses to repair his equipment.

4. Supply Control

There's more than one path to take in this instance. You can either give the player a very limited view of what he can buy in the game and thus cut off any motivation to go out and acquire a ton of money...

...or...

You can limit the amount of times the player can buy mundane things like healing potions and neccessary goods like ammo forcing the player to move from area to area because he can't find the neccessary items he needs to survive without progressing thruogh the game.

Game Economics: The role of money in single player games, Part 3

Let's recap from the intro:

Part 3: Then what are the common pitfalls of not balancing money correctly?

1. Making money do nothing - The "I am a millionaire, but no one sells anything useful."
2. Excess of money trivializing money - The "I have enough money to do whatever I want. No limits!"
3. Paucity/Unevenness of reward - The "Why do I bother doing quests for 3 pennies when I can kill a sheep for 12,000?"
   
4. Making money overpower the player - The "I just bought my level 99 weapon at level 3 and now the game is EZ-mode." 

1. "I am a millionaire, but no one sells anything useful"

Some designers, out of a misguided sense of balance, limits all conceivably useful things to quest rewards and rewards for doing deeds and actions. Generally, this is an okay move...


However, you must ensure that money still has a purpose. If the only purpose of money is to get 99 potions and 99 hi-potions and then you're done shopping then money essentially has no point in your game. Consider just not having money entirely or loosening your restrictions on what money can buy.  


In this case, if you fear that something might be too powerful that it shouldn't be available in stores, think again. What if it was extremely expensive? What if there were several different "tiers" of that item that grew more expensive as they scaled in power? Why shouldn't the player be able to purchase this with money?

Additionally, consider simply making more options available for the player to purchase. Different cosmetic effects or style choices can be rewarding by themselves even if they don't affect the overall power level of the game. Or consider making money a convienience fund for the player by allowing them to skip sometimes annoying and boring parts of your game with money.

2. "I have enough money to do whatever I want! No limits!"

In this case, the designer's prices are too low or money flows too freely. If the player has unlimited resources available to them early on without restriction then all attempted gameplay balance by scarcity flies straight out the window. Look over at the amount of money the player is acquiring and drastically cut it down. Or introduce lots and lots of money sinks so that money doesn't overflow the game economics.

Now, for the player, this isn't a problem. But for the designer, a player with infinite resources can throw the entire game out of whack. High prices and money sinks should be in the game to drain the player of resources.

Aside: However, it is not uncommon in the end-game of many games to give infinite resources to the player. This is generally fine and quite awesome to boot. This skips the tedious farming stage that a player might have to do before progressing to the final dungeons of doom.

Just make sure they can't become overpowered by having infinite resources to make that final dungeon anticlimatic.

3. "Why do I bother doing quests for 3 pennies when I can kill a sheep for 12,000 dollars?"

This is a case of disporportinate reward.  Money as a reward is a key motivator for players to do actions in your game. Take a look at the most famous example in Mario.  Certain jumps and paths that were fun to take were literally littered with coins in their path. Streams or arcs of coins designated paths that Mario could take.

In this manner, look at the money reward in the game and see which path player's are being pushed to. If the most boring aspects of your game give the most money reward, you might want to tune your rewards so that what you want the player to do should be the most rewarding path.

4. "I just bought my level 99 weapon at level 3 and now the game is EZ-mode!"

This is a case of availability. It's very nice and all that the player *can* acquire end-game items if they only saved up enough money to do so. However, it is not in the best interests of any game that the player sits there and farms away the early portion of the game. This leads to player burnout and boredom.

There should always be an incentive for the player to move on and progress through the game. This is why shops have limited availability. At the very most, dedicated players can be rewarded with items that are a tad bit more powerful than they should have at the moment but nothing like getting the masamune while you're beating up slimes.

Game Economics: The role of money in single player games, Part 2

A quick recap from the intro:

The logical inverse of money in a video game is cost and prices in the game.

What is the role of prices in a single player game for the designer?

1. It provides a way for the designer to set player power growth by limiting availability of items.
2. Prices can be a subtle hint as to what "Power Range" the player should buy.
3. Controlled/Constant reward mechanism for doing certain actions.

1. Prices are a way to control the availability of items to guide or set player growth/power.

Some items are simply too powerful to have unlimited access to and yet they are too neccessary to the game's function to do without. You don't want players to lean on certain items like a crutch 99% of the time. The ubiquitous example is healing potions. If you don't want players to have infinite life but it is also crucial that the player has something to fall back on, consider making healing potions really expensive. They are too expensive to use 100% of the time, so hopefully players will play extra carefully to conserve their limited resources (money) so they don't have to buy so many healing potions every single time.


Another example would be fast travel mechanisms, such as instant teleportation, warps or checkpoints. If the player was able to use these constantly all the time, there would essentially be no need to have any normal based travel and thus a large part of the game would be negated. However, by providing limited teleportation with a high enough cost attached to it (Say, by making a quick portal of return to town cost 10,000 gold each time), you can ensure that players have access to the mechanism without completely negating all the detailed work you put in when the player is going the scenic route.


2. Prices are a subtle hint and a tantalizing gesture to what the players should have and what the players will have.


There's two parts to this. If you make solid baseline items cheap then the player will more likely buy that armor because it is what he can afford inexpensively. Let's say we make a suit of normal plate armor relatively cheap on the player's budget. That provides a subtle indicator that this is probably the armor that the designer intended him to wear at this level.

At the same time, we can provide the next tier of armor at a prohibitively expensive price that the player can't afford (or could only afford a tiny limited quantity of). In this instance we create excitement and expectation as the player was able to preview the next powerful item he can use and giving him an intermediate goal (acquire more loot) in order to obtain it. I mean, you can't afford this shiny platinum armor of spikes just yet but wait until after you've played a little more and it's yours!


3. High prices essentially make money rewards better. It lets you drive the player in one direction with the reward mechanism.


Let's say that you make an especially awesome prize or special mount 1000 gold. Now with the price that high, if the player really wants the prize, every single action he can take that would grant him gold looks more appealing than everything else. In fact, the questlines that reward money become secondary goals that the player sets for himself in order to achieve your primary prize (the special mount.)

Or let's look back on our score analogy. Let's say that lives are rewarded every 100,000 points. Now if there's a safe low-scoring way to play and a risky but high-scoring way to play, the fact that the player only gets a bonus if he chooses the high scoring route makes that route look more appealing. It gives him the motivation to pursue the high scoring route knowing that a special bonus awaits.

Game Economics: The role of money in single player games, Part 1

Let's recap from the intro:

Part 1: What is the role of money in a single player game for the player?

1. It provides a resource to replenish consumable resources.
2. It provides a resource to upgrade his character's power.
3. It provides a way to affect the game environment.
4. It can serve as part of the reward mechanism.

From the point of view of the player, money essentially does these four things for him. It is imperative that none of them are made impossible by the economics of the game itself.


1. It provides a resource to replenish consumable resources.

Here, consumable resources are things like potions, durability on fragile equipment, uses of spells or even extra lives. All these things are essentially power-ups that serve to extend the player's ability on a semi-permanent basis.

These are semi-permanent because often times, a player counts on being able to "refresh" his stores of consumable resources when there is a pause in the action. For example, in most RPGs, players often go back to town to repurchase the health recovery items that they need to survive long dungeon trips. For simulation games, like Civilization, money often provides a method to temporarily speed up the production of a unit or offset the temporary shift in focus from commerce to research.

It is interesting to note that the role of score is often like money in arcade games. Mario essentially always spends his 100 coins on an extra life, while many other games like Galaga, Space Invaders or Pac Man treat score as a running balance to purchase extra lives with.


2. It provides a resource to upgrade his character's power.

These are permanent bonuses a player can purchase. Things like weapons or equipment are typically more permanent. They also provide some degree of character customization where money (a reward) is used to buy clothes or items that uniquely express the player's sense of individuality or choice.

In simulation games, money can provide a pure power by purchasing whole building very quickly or the wholesale purchase of properties to expand growth. In Civilization "rushing" a fleet of tanks with a large money reserve would often prove fatal to an opponent, but you could also "rush" a fleet of defensive infantry men very quickly if you had the resources to spare.


3. It provides a way to interact with the environment.

There are many ways in which money provides a new novel way to interact with the environment: In many classic story telling games, the usage of money could serve to bribe a judge or a guard. You could donate to a beggar to improve your character's reputation. Above all, perhaps some scripted encounters could be bypassed with a significant portion of money. In more diplomatic games like strategy games, money can often be a resource in influencing decisions.

However, the promise of money also makes the player interact differently with the environment. Consider arcade or platforming games which subtly alter the ideal path for the player by the promise of shiny coins. Many "paths" in Mario were laid out in gold coins for the player to scoop up along the way. In Pac-Man, the presence of fruit at the center of the board might change your priorities on how to move.


And remember those Pots in Zelda? Once you knew you could find rupees in pots, you became a pot breaking maniac.


4. It can serve as part of the reward mechanism.



A key part of why we play games is we receive some tangible pyschological reward out of them. Money in many times is the ubiquitous reward for completing some portion of the game's tasks. If you are doing well, money tends to flow toward the player. It tends to be the smallest reward unit that players can easily understand. 'Yay! I did something good. I get shinies!'

Money is important for a player because it gives him a sense of accomplishment that is can expressly be quantified. It is, after all, a numeric representation of wealth.

Afterthought: There are very interesting parallels between Money and Score in games for players. They serve very similar purposes for most games across the board. However, they differ in the design pitfalls that may overwhelm them, as we will see later.

Game Economics: The role of money in single player games, Intro

You've heard them under all different names: Gold. Zeny. Galders. GPs. Bronze. Silvers. Platinum.

Let's talk about the most basic reward you can give a player: MONEY.

Part 1: What is the role of money in a single player game for the player?

1. It provides a resource to replenish consumable resources.
2. It provides a resource to upgrade his character's power.
3. It provides a way to affect the game environment.
4. It can serve as part of the reward mechanism. 

Part 2: It is impossible to look at money without looking at it's logical inverse: prices in a single player game. What are the roles of prices in a single player game for the designer?

1. It provides a way for the designer to set player power growth by limiting availability of items.
2. Prices can be a subtle hint as to what "Power Range" the player should buy.
3. Controlled/Constant reward mechanism for doing certain actions.

Part 3: Then what are the common pitfalls of not balancing money correctly?

1. Making money do nothing - The "I am a millionaire, but no one sells anything useful."
2. Excess of money trivializing money - The "I have enough money to do whatever I want. No limits!"
3. Paucity/Unevenness of reward - The "Why do I bother doing quests for 3 pennies when I can kill a sheep for 12,000?"
   
4. Making money overpower the player - The "I just bought my level 99 weapon at level 3 and now the game is EZ-mode." 

Part 4: Solutions and various money controlling mechanisms.

1. Hyperscaling - Making whatever money the player has obselete by scaling the prices.
   
2. Money Sinks - Making available convienient ways to get rid of cash like gambling.
   
3. Nickel and Dimes - By making boring processes of acquiring money have penalties to acquisition.
4. Supply Control - By slowly expanding the shop selection.
   

Conflicting Desires: Player Power vs. Fun and Challenge

I believe that there is a design oversight that is very rarely addressed or remarked upon.

This is due to the fact that many problems look like they have only one facet to be modified and so they look like impossible balancing acts. Today, let's talk about the player.

There is a fundamental tension between these two statements:

Players want to feel powerful vs. Players want to have fun / Players want to be challenged

1. Players want to feel powerful...


Games are escapism. Players don't want to feel mundane. They want to feel like they've done things right. They want to feel like their character or avatar is great. They want to feel good about themselves, in that they've done well.

In an RPG, this would mean that players don't want to feel weak. They don't want to have to constantly juggle to do impressive feats.

In an FPS, this means that the player doesn't want to feel like he's holding a pea shooter. He needs to have some visible effect on the environment around him.

In short, in a game, the player needs to feel good and have a character that can affect the game environment very strongly. If the player spends 36 hours to whack one thing until it dies, the player instead feels weak, pathetic as if he's not doing something "right" or that he is missing the point.

...and yet.. when players are TOO powerful...


Players, however, get very bored when all they have to do is plow through the same things over and over again. The most engaging game is one where you are constantly challenged a half-step beyond your skill.

If every single enemy dies in easily in a single blow with no chance of success, that may be fun for a little while as the player would have an enormous impact on the world... but if that's the entirety of the game then the game isn't going to be very fun or challenging later.

If every single monster dies in a single bullet or the player is allowed to stock 9 billion health and be utterly immortal, then all that is left for the player's enjoyment is that he "feels" immortal but in reality, there is nothing pushing him to play better or get further "into" the game.

In short, if the player is super powered what gameplay turns into is a simple mindless button pressing exercise that doesn't need the player to actively engage in. A simple robot hitting 'A' for the next 12 hours would play just as well.

...but this seems impossible to get juuuust right...

You can tweak player power all along the spectrum but too little health and the player is frustrated because he dies at everything and too much health and the player feels immortal again.


Some sections might be harder than others.

Or how about, you can set the difficulty of the entire game so that the player has less health on harder difficulties and more health on easier ones...

...but that leaves the player with little choice over the matter since he knows nothing about your game and if he can't change the difficulty level in between sections of the games he is now "locked in" by his decision at the beginning of the game.

...so what's the answer?

The core oversight here in design is: They are too focused on the player and how much he effects the world and vice versa.

When you realize that the player is an active part of the entire game world then the solution becomes easier.

If the player has a large impact on the game (which he should), then the game world has to be interesting and varied enough to handle that impact.

For example, let us take a first person shooter.

If the player can kill every enemy with a single bullet that may still be interesting.  Imagine the movie 'Aliens'. If the aliens are in open terrain, they are reasonably easy to deal with. They are soft, fragile creatures. However, the trick is the aliens are intelligent and swift little buggers. The player has a huge impact on the world, he can easily end the life of an alien with a swift burst of fire but the aliens themselves aren't stupid either. They'll hide in walls, leap in weird patterns or swarm in unconventional ways.

Once you realize that making enemy's more difficult can be done without decreasing the power of the player, then you can see the solution...

I'll give another example, this time in Crono Trigger. Crono Trigger was an excellent example of good game design in this regard. If there was an enemy that seemed to take a million years for you to defeat, it was a sure sign that you were missing something tactically.  The acid slimes that were immune to physical and took 12 hits could be defeated by Crono's slash technique. Every creature had counterattacks that made you stop attacking at specific instances. You could avoid monsters if you were fast enough to move around them.

The players are enormously powerful in Crono Trigger but the game itself was not a boring grind because the encounters the player faced could be dealt and often had to be dealt with in a variety of changing ways; From proper target selection, to holding back on attacks, to attacking in a correct sequence, none of the encounters artificially increased the difficulty by making monsters simply have more defense or do more damage and thus take away from player power.

To rephrase a line from Dungeons and Dragons:

Powerful heroes need Interesting encounters.

Steal My Idea 1

Note: Going to try something out here where I do a bit of speculative game design called "Steal my Idea."

Steal my Idea

I intend for this to be a semi-regular addition to the blog where I outline a specific mechanic or game feature that could be implemented to serve a specific purpose.

Note that if you *actually* steal my idea, comment or shoot me an e-mail at kuoyen on gmail.com.

Pair Bonding / Team Training
An quest line to reward or facilitate player interactions with each other
Intended game: Casual MMOs that encourage player community.

Form: Daily Quest Chain
Original Inspiration: Ether Saga Online

Main Idea: The more quests the pair complete together, the greater the reward for each portion of the quest. Either player may decide to break their chain at any time by turning in their quest reward. In this case, both players are rewarded for how many pair quests they have completed and can restart again at Quest 1 after a day.

Quest Start: Give players tokens that they can get daily. The token given can be based on a variety of factors depending on the desired effect. Class can be an option or self-described gender or even random.

Restrictions: Some minimum level after tutorial levels.

Quest 1: Collect a token of a different type from someone. Give your token to that same person.

Restrictions: Similar level ranges are encouraged.
Alternative: Wildly differing level ranges can also be encouraged to promote old players helping new players.

After this quest, the two players are given a quest specific item that marks the two of them. Thereafter, the two, if partied, gain the option to participate in a number of bonus quests that require the two to interact

Possible Pair Quests: Parallel dungeons

A dungeon instance where the two players are isolated in two different paths. Each must manipulate switches and levers to get the other player across to the final area.

Pair Quest: Follow the leader.

A complex dungeon filled with paths and numerous doors and things to interact with. In alternating sections one player is designated as leader and is able to 'see' the correct path using a buff. The other player must follow the first player through the dungeon without being able to see which paths are safe or not. Things like ropes, platforms that you have to jump or ladders.

Pair Quest: Arena - Monster Mash

A simple kill quest where the amount of monsters are too much for one player to handle to encourage teamwork.

Pair Quest: Arena - Single Boss

Possibly at the end of the arena, where instead of dealing with a group of monsters; the player learns to face an individual threat in a pair. The boss selection should probably be based on the player's classes to strain their individual abilities.

Possible Rewards:

- An appropriate amount of in-game currency for that level.
- An appropriate amount of experience for that level.
- Pair Points that denote that you are an effective teammate!

Spinoff Idea: You can scale this up to a group of 4 or 5 but at that point groups are rather hard to form and quickly untenable for players to take full advantage of.

Math and Difficulty: Percentile and Fixed Scaling: Part 4

Note: This is part 4 of a section on Math and Scaling of item modifiers.

Let me describe... possible solutions to the points I've talked about in this series and some discussion about the results.

0. The "Safe" law about percent modifiers, if I didn't stress it enough..

Reduction modifiers should stack multiplicatively.
Enhancement modifiers should stack additively.

The reasoning being is that this is the safest way to ensure that things don't have exponential growth.

0b. Consider taking only the highest bonus or prevent things from stacking.

If you are *super* paranoid about things scaling out of control, consider using only the highest reduction or enhancement of each category. Typically however, this will simply lead players to cherry pick a whole slew of other statistics and become well rounded.

This allows you to create a whole spectrum of gear without worrying about potentially dangerous interactions allowing for better ease and flexibility of reward.

For example, if they can only have one enhancement to critical strike then they will then choose to upgrade damage, accuracy, speed, etc. Since focusing on one statistic is useless they will choose to get bonuses in a variety of statistics.

(This may be a good thing.)

Note/Beware: Make sure players understand only the highest bonus applies.

Note/Beware: Lots of nominally unrelated things can actually be related! Damage %, Attack Speed %, Number of hits, Accuracy % all increase DPS! If you ensure that only the highest bonus takes effect, be sure that you have as many offensive modifiers as defensive modifiers.

Otherwise, if there are more offensive modifiers, players that like to play defense won't be able to "catch up" or vice versa, if there are more defensive modifiers, players might not be able to do any damage.

1. Cap reduction modifiers aggressively.

Capping reduction modifiers (damage reduction, slows target, etc.) aggressively (to 50% or less) hinders their exponential growth regardless of what kind of math model you use to accumulate reduction modifiers.

That is, if you cap all reduction modifiers to a maximum of below or equal 50% then you keep the marginal benefit of each additional percent of reduction roughly equal. This is due to the fact that in reductions each percentage has increasing returns that is grows roughly exponentially.

For example, let's consider a speed reduction spell. If this spell reduces their attack speed by 10% players will survive 11% longer since his damage output will drop to 90% of what it was, a relative difference of 11%.

1/0.9 -> 1.11
1/0.8 -> 1.25
1/0.7 -> 1.42
1/0.6 -> 1.66
1/0.5 -> 2

You can see the exponential creep start here where the last 10% is 3 times as effective as the first 10% but after the 0.5 mark, it starts to climb to ridiculous levels, such as 1% being 10 to 20 times more effective at the 0.66 mark than the first 1%.

1b. Consider compensating players for capped stats - Optional! Interesting!

If players are theoretically able to reach a percentage higher than your cap then compensate them in other ways in order. If players are not compensated for capped stats then you start to hit another odd phenomenon where players stack equipment to cap as many different statistics as possible.

For example, in WoW players reach a critical strike % cap at roughly 23% chance to critical. This causes players to go for hit % chance in order to increase their DPS, causing both statistics to be maxed by both players and making equipment diversity kind of useless. The problem is that players will want to optimize themselves and since the multiple capped statistics can are obtainable and maximizable then they will seek to maximize all of them and so everyone's bonus statistics looks the same.

If additional critical strike % had been converted to critical strike bonus damage %, this would be an interesting compensation that would allow players to have builds that are more critical focused with some loss in consistency by sacrifice hit rating.

Some Examples:

Hit % Chance -> Critical Strike %

If they are able to hit a target 100% of the time then it makes sense that they could perform more deadly critical blow.

Debuff Target % -> Increased Hit % for Debuff

For example, if their ice bolt slows for the maximum 50% slow then compensate them by making the 50% slow more reliable by reducing the enemy's chance to resist the spell.

Resist Effect % -> Flat % Reduction if they fail to resist.

For example, if a character has a 50% resist against stun effects, if they go over the cap perhaps consider compensating them by making the stun they *fail* to resist last shorter.

2. Have scaling flat bonus effects based on level.

This is *similar* to having percentile effects but still allows equipment to grow obsolete when the player reaches a new tier of equipment.

A weapon could have +1 / damage per level of the player. This can, in theory, scale with the player like % effects... However, you are guaranteed that this bonus scales linearly. If your health/defense factors scale exponentially then this equipment is guaranteed to be relevant for a while and still be outgrown and irrelevant after a number of levels without any other fact.

For example, let's say that at each level, our hero (and the monsters) gain 10% a level and our hero, receives, as a prize a sword that does 10 damage and +1 additional damage per level!

Level 1: 100 hp / 11 damage sword = 10 hits to die.
Level 2: 121 hp / 12 damage sword = 11 hits to die.
Level 3: 133 hp / 13 damage sword = 11 hits to die.
Level 4: 146 hp / 14 damage sword = 11 hits to die.
Level 5: 161 hp / 15 damage sword = 11 hits to die.
Level 6: 177 hp / 16 damage sword = 12 hits to die.
Level 7: 194 hp / 17 damage sword = 12 hits to die.
Level 8: 214 hp / 18 damage sword = 12 hits to die.
Level 9: 236 hp / 19 damage sword = 13 hits to die.

The sword is slowly becoming irrelevant. In a few more levels, the sword will have to be replaced because it kills monsters far too slowly. He will soon need to switch equipment thus allowing us to simultaneously give a useful bonus and a bonus that will eventually become irrelevant.

This is better than both flat bonus and % bonus to damage in terms of how it scales and how easy it is to gift. However, this works off the following assumptions:

1. Your bonus scales linearly. (In the above example, it was x * 1)
2. The thing it scales against rises exponentially (In the above example, it was a x^10% factor).

However, beware. If your bonus is too large then you run the risk of players not bothering to replace their weapons for a long time because they don't need to. It scales "well enough" for them to skip an upgrade or two. This is good in a sense, in that players will never hit an equipment dead-end. This is bad in a sense, in that it encourages players not to upgrade.

Math and Difficulty: Percentile and Fixed Scaling: Part 3

Note: This is the third in a series about math and game balance, specifically regarding to item balance.

5. Percentile bonuses that can accrue are dangerous. Percentile bonuses out of 100 that can accrue are doubly dangerous.
+400% to a statistics at late game dwarfs everything else. A small insignificant +1 damage suddenly becomes worth 5 times the initial worth. A +1% critical bonus at the beginning of the game might be worthwhile until you realize that you can't give away more than 1% or 2% because by end game, players will reach 100%.

The crux of this is when you realize that some bonuses have a maximum relevant amount. For example, once you have reached +100% damage reduction, you can't give any more because it becomes meaningless. Some attributes simply should not be raised that high. So how do you pace yourself? Do you start off giving the player miniscule bonuses to damage reduction that accumulate? Do you arbitrarily cap players to a maximum amount of any one statistic and let overflow do nothing?

How would you then give them a "better" version of say "critical strike" gear without actually increasing the amount of critical strike they get? Or do you keep making gear with the same percentages? What if you miscalculate and accidentally give them 95% critical strike? What if you need to add new content but they've already reached absurd levels of bonuses?

World of Warcraft takes the approach of factors that scale down dependant on your level. At level 1, one critical factor might give you 1% critical strike but at level 50, one critical factor gives you 0.05% critical strike. This makes it easy to create new equipment that's better than the old (Here! This one has +86 critical factor while the other one only has 43!) but this introduces another problem. Leveling up decreases the power of your equipment. Leveling up in their system simply makes all your existing gear worse and it introduces some confusion in the inner workings of the game (Just how much critical factor do I need to reach that critical % cap?)

6. Not all percentiles are equal: Reduction and additions are and must work differently.
If I have 90% damage reduction and I get a mere 5% more reduction additively; I don't take 5% less damage. I take 50% less damage because now I'm at 95% reduction. Alternatively if I have 100% bonus to damage and I get 50% more bonus to damage additively, I don't do 50% more damage, I only do a mere 20% more damage because now I'm at 150% bonus damage.

This phenomenon often pops its nasty head up when designers either scale poorly or don't reliaze the exponential growth of penalties or the possible exponential growth of bonuses.

For example, let us take a item that reduces incoming damage by 50%. This is a very nice item as it effectively doubles our lifespan. However, what do you expect should happen when I equip another item that reduces incoming damage by 25%. This new item is clearly inferior to our old one.

Well, if the math works additively... 50% + 25% -> 75%. This means that our inferior item has raised our damage reduction to 75%! This means our lifespan is now four times our original by adding the inferior item.

What gives?

What if we then equipped another item that was a mere 15% damage reduction? This is even more inferior to our other item. However, if the math works additively.. 75% + 15% -> 90% and we now have ten times our original value.

Some poor designers then take this as a sign that this statistic is too powerful in large quantities and arbitrarily cap the statistic. Or else they give out the bonuses in small measure and irk out 5 and 10% damage reductions randomly.

However, what they fail to realize is this...

A reduction scales exponentially fast after 50%.

To double your lifespan with damage reduction, you need 50%
To triple your lifespan with damage reduction, you need 66%.
To quadruple your lifespawn with damage reduction, you need 75%.

The last few % are the ones that matter if you do additive reduction.

However, let's take positive multipliers. These are the inverse. Positive multipliers suffer the inverse problem.

Positive multipliers grow exponentially if they accumulate multiplicatively.

For example, if I have a sword that doubles my damage and a necklace that doubles my damage...

If the math works like this: 2 * 2 = 4!

Then I suddenly do four times the damage! If I get another item that doubles my damage..

2 * 2 * 2 = 8! I suddenly do eight times my damage!

This quickly leads to untenable growth when you realize just how many factors can accumulate multiplicatively...

Therefore, it is best that reductions and multipliers use different math: Reductions best accumulate multiplicatively while multipliers best accumulate additively to prevent dangerous exponential growth in effect.

Math and Difficulty: Percentile and Fixed Scaling: Part 2

Note: This post is about simple math and how they contribute to poor end-game design and scaling.

I mainly talk about damage in this article because damage is one of the few factors that directly contribute to gameplay. A game's difficulty rises or falls based on how dangerous his opponents are and damage plays a large role in determining player and monster longevity.

1. Small percentile bonuses are insignificant early on and become oversignificant later on.

Small percentile bonuses are a trap. They *look* significant early on. However, their relative contribution to damage versus fixed stats are usually tremendously small when given out in small amounts.

For example, a sword that deals 100 damage would only gain 1 damage from a 1% bonus. One might ask if that reward is actually a bonus. Unless monsters had exactly 101 life or 202 life or something; the actual difference to the player is almost nothing.

Therein comes another design trap: Giving out large percentage bonuses so they both look and actually are relevant.

4. Percentiles are very hard to give to players in the correct porportions.

Large percentile bonuses are dangerous because they never become irrelevant. 1% may be insignificant by itself but it the player is allowed to accumulate percentile bonuses to the tens or hundreds; their contribution out-shadows anything the player could do for themselves. Lots of small %'s compound much better than lots of fixed additions.

It's important enough to reiterate: If large enough quantities, they're always relevant. They will always carry an impact. They will never be 'out-leveled' or expire. An item that adds 20% to your final damage is always relevant. The only way such items can become irrelevant is if there is an item that adds 21% damage to the game.

Percentile bonuses never become old or outgrown unless a better percentile bonus comes forth. Then comes the design intention of giving out small bonuses to better control their growth but then that comes with it the same problem of complete irrelevancy in low amounts.

As a side note, percentile bonuses come in many forms. What makes it worse is that they usually compound together multiplicatively instead of increasing additively.

Damage % bonuses, attack speed bonuses, reduction in enemy defense, number of shots fired, critical % rate, critical damage bonuses are all different sounding but in the end they are all % damage multipliers to the players combat effectiveness.

2. Small fixed bonuses are over-significant early on and become trivial later on.
+1 damage to 1 damage is insane.

This is the inverse of the problem above. Due to the fact that early on, numbers tend to be lower, and that most people do not think fractional damage constitutes an appropriate reward fixed bonuses tend to be oversignificant in their contribution to damage or statistics.

However, the problem with fixed numbers is the fact that they are almost impossible to balance correctly for late game damage. Most commonly, they are trivialized later, because character and monster HP tends to scale enormously and outrace any linear progression that fixed number bonuses give.

However, fixed bonuses have one more fatal flaw that becomes readily apparent when percentile bonuses also apply. They have the potential to compound with percentile bonuses to create tremendously unfair situations between attack types. +100 to damage might not be so bad to someone who attacks once a second. But when you factor that the character might have +100% to damage and shoots twice as fast with multiple bullets, that +100 to damage can become compounded exponentially.

An example would be in the first X-men legends game. Equipment in that game could add fixed damage. For any melee attacker, these were relatively powerful equipment that added tremendously to their attacks. However, any ranged attacker capable of firing multiple bullets saw their benefit differ by a factor of 10 as they would gain their bonus across each bullet. When the damage output between characters start differing by 900% or more, you begin to see how fixed damage is a relatively dangerous concept.

3. The order of operations matters.
+1 damage then +100% damage is 4. +100% damage then +1 damage is 3.

This is related to the problem above with the interactions between fixed and percentile damage, however this is more of a player understanding and basic math issue.

That is, when determining the relative power of statistics, one must factor in when they are applied. If a fixed bonus (+1 damage) is applied before the a percentile bonus, that fixed bonus begins to get the benefit of scaling with the percentile bonus making it much harder to manage and balance as well.

However, there are generally complex interactions that go on. Even if fixed damage is applied after percentile damage, you must consider whether the enemy might have a vulnerability that might multiply his damage or if the player has a speed increase.

Generally, there are two major crimes here. If the math is completely intuitive, generally balancing the game becomes very hard. That is, if the bonuses stack the way the player expects it to, game balance is quite difficult. However, any tradeoff you make in the manageability of bonuses you trade player understanding and usability.

Consider, for example, World of Warcraft, which has neatly bypassed all these issues by introducing the concept, Attack power. While this approach does solve each of the issues described by essentially hiding all the math from the player, that leaves a very difficult problem for the player: How exactly do I increase my damage? Do I raise a statistic that increases my attack power? Do I get a faster sword? What is going on if I choose to optimize for critical damage?

Whereas, in a game like Diablo 2, you pretty much always know what is going to happen when you get more damage buffs: Exponentially increasing damage. However, this led to exponentially increasing monster hp; which caused it to leave many players in the dust if they had not accrued the necessary bonuses to survive.