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.