Screw Attack E3 videos

Sulphur on 25/7/2010 at 09:00

Re: body awareness, that's true, it's not experimental any more. But it's hardly mainstream either. Experimenting, in the sense of furthering it a la Crysis's mechanic where you can see your hand pick something up instead of it magically appearing in your inventory, is where I'd like to see it go.

Adaptive difficulty, well, that's again about implementation, isn't it? Let's say we're talking about having it in an FPS. If you have the feedback loop set for a delay of every five minutes, say, you'd have a rather infuriating game.

However, a game that dials down the difficulty a bit if you die too often wouldn't be intrusive. And, ramping up the difficulty/AI a little once you've gone on for a good while without taking much damage wouldn't be very intrusive either.

polytourist97 on 25/7/2010 at 18:46

Quote Posted by DDL

Coz they're games, not hobbies?

:weird:

I get the sense I might be wasting time trying to engage in this discussion thoughtfully.

Chade on 26/7/2010 at 23:03

Quote Posted by Papy

Then first try to answer how the game can know when I find something challenging or not. How can the game know when I'm bored or when I'm frustrated. Once you answered that, then we'll talk about how you can reward the player for his effort to.

As we discussed before, the experimental results show that this is simply not an impossible problem. It is possible to tell how much someone is enjoying themselves by observing their play experience. Not 100% accurate, sure ... but then, it doesn't have to be.

Quote Posted by polytourist97

But adaptive difficulty doesn't solve that problem. There is still going to be some sort of baseline that any adaptive difficulty system can level down to, and that should be the equivalent to an "easy" or "beginner" setting in a game. If upon reaching this baseline of difficulty a player is still having problems, what is the adaptive system going to do then? Start playing the game for the player?

Adaptive difficulty does not have to make the game playable for absolutely everyone in order to be useful. It just has to work better then not altering the difficulty.

Quote Posted by Briareos H

Anyway, I can't believe we're still discussing adaptive difficulty. In games with deep player involvement, the mental model of the world & mechanisms must leave no place to changes you can't acknowledge fully. Introducing a feedback loop is the best way to piss the player off as an expected behaviour will induce a new set of rules that could hardly be anticipated, at least when influencing higher level variables.

We're not really talking about Deus Ex at this point, and I think most people would agree that adapative difficulty is not so desirable in a DX game. It's difficult for the reasons you mentioned, and the player already has a lot of power to adjust the difficulty by playing more carefully.

Still, while I'm defending adaptive difficulty, I think you're falling into the same trap that other people are falling into, by not thinking about the broad range of possible ways to adjust difficulty, especially in a game like Deus Ex!

You don't need to change the game mechanics to change the difficulty. Deus Ex levels are huge: you can change the parts of the level which the player has not visited. Ideal candidates might include readables (add or remove sentences which tell the player about secret passages/passwords), items in chests, lockpick strength, etc. You could also change guard numbers, lighting strength, add/remove cover, change the placement of security terminals, and so forth.

Of course, you don't want to go so far that you can't give the player information about room A in room B, but you can change a lot of things and still let the player plan ahead.

Briareos H on 27/7/2010 at 09:29

I understand what you're saying. Still:

I'm not in favour of player-induced changes that the player can't tie directly to his actions within the game logic. Any kind of potentially third-wall breaking feedback must be made very cautiously, so that at no point we would feel either punished or rewarded. Player expectations are a crucial element of gameplay which unfortunately still tend to be overlooked. At this stage, the mere fact of knowing that the game you're playing has adaptive difficulty is enough to make you question how tangible the apparently fixed variables around you are.

I'd rather have randomization than adaptive difficulty, because I don't want to cause something that has no grounding in the game reality*. This is unfair and enough to break immersion.

*again, depending on the degree of immersion required by the game genre/general purpose

Chade on 30/7/2010 at 00:38

In case it wasn't obvious by now, I can't really disagree with anything in your post. Obviously if an adaptive difficulty mechanic does not have a good fictional explanation, then it should be introduced carefully. I probably don't think this would be easier then you imagine, however.

And again, it wouldn't be my ideal approach to difficulty in DX.

Papy on 1/8/2010 at 00:35

Quote Posted by DDL

The problem here is that the 'pro-dynamic difficulty' argument seems to be that it CAN work, not that it always does, the anti argument seems to be exclusively that it WILL NEVER WORK, IN ANY SITUATION, EVER, and uses very specific examples of very ...well, unique playstyle in Papy's case. And constant references to oblivion, which has the least dynamic difficulty ever, and which could actually have benefited from some dynamic adjusting.

I'm not saying adaptive difficulty will never work, I'm saying it's a motivation breaking solution for a very minor problem. If you make a game which is more akin to an interactive movie with no real challenge rather than a "true" game, then I will agree that adaptive difficulty might be worth the risks. But for a game, i.e. something which can be won or lost, then I really don't see the point of even trying to implement adaptive difficulty.

Also, I'd like to know what's so special about "my" playstyle? Is it because I like the stress associated with being punished if I make a mistake? Or more accurately, because I like the relief of not being punished when I don't screw up? I certainly don't think I'm the only one like that. I'm certainly not the only one who disliked Vita-Chambers with BioShock.

Ok... I think a little context is needed. The truth is I don't find playing (single player) video games particularly rewarding in itself. I don't feel good about myself because I play some video games. Comparing my results with other people, might be rewarding (if I'm better than they are), but finishing a single player game is not rewarding in itself. I also don't view video game as a significant art medium. The potential is there, but up to now, I find video games worthless compared to books or movies. I was strongly influenced by several books and movies, but not a single video game story came close to changing my view on an idea or simply leaving with a sense of awe because of some artistic aspect. I won't deny I had some feelings which were a direct result of the interaction, for example when I reached Tenenbaum's sanctuary with BioShock, but those moments are too rare to be significant.

That means in order for me to find a single player game worth playing, I must have this feeling of "I did it"! That implies I must perceive the game as a challenge I must overcome, not as a theme park created for my entertainment. If I know that the game is adapting to me, then it's not a challenge I must overcome anymore, it's just a theme park. I didn't "do it", I just went along the "experience". As I think that "experience" is pretty much a waste of time, there is no point for me playing the game. Do you think I'm the only one like that?

As for Oblivion, I use that game because the design goal was exactly the same as adaptvie difficulty (to make sure the player always has the "right" challenge) and it more or less reached that goal. It is a very good example to use. One of the problem was that players realized what was going on, the illusion fell, and everything was lost. That's exactly what will happen with any kind of adaptive difficulty : once players realize it's there, you end up with a massive backlash.

Quote Posted by DDL

And the fact that there still seems to be a perception of 'the game going easy on you == reward', which is incorrect. Or at the very least, a dumb definition of reward.

There may be several kind of reward, from having a high score, so you can compare yourself with other people, to unlocking some new gameplay, but "the game going easy on you == reward" is correct. When I get that +5 sword of death, I want to be able to crush enemies who were giving me a hard time before. In fact, I percieve that sword as a reward BECAUSE I am now able to easily crush enemies who were giving me ahard time before.

Quote Posted by Thirith

Would anyone here in the "no dynamic difficulty ever, because it's a stupid, stupid idea" camp also argue against enemies that learn and adapt to the player, e.g. if the player always uses the same trick, they change their tactics? Because that is clearly an example of dynamic difficulty: the game reacts to the player having found a cheap way of getting ahead and adjusts the enemy behaviour so the game becomes more challenging. How can that not be called dynamic difficulty, other than pulling some "No true Scotsman" trick?

And again, the notion of adaptive difficulty in this discussion become so broad that we end up saying Pac-Man had adaptive difficulty too because levels became harder and harder. Could anyone, for once, define clearly what we are talking about?

Quote Posted by Sulphur

However, a game that dials down the difficulty a bit if you die too often wouldn't be intrusive. And, ramping up the difficulty/AI a little once you've gone on for a good while without taking much damage wouldn't be very intrusive either.

Would "a little" be useful?

Quote Posted by Chade

If you are refering to the paper you already linked here, it didn't made any correlation between "enjoyment" and the way people were playing the game. "Enjoyment" was not even part of the data.

If there are experimental results about this, then I'd like to know : what is the accuracy of the correlation? 50%? 75%? 95%?

DDL on 1/8/2010 at 11:36

So..just to clarify, Papy: If you find a game which is far too hard on "hard" and far too easy on "normal", then for you, that game is largely unplayable? Just hypothetically.

And regarding oblivion: the aim was to make sure the player always had the SAME challenge, not necessarily the RIGHT challenge. And the challenge level was pegged exclusively to character level, not player skill or player action or in fact any player involvement at all, other than levelling up. This is not "adapting to players".

Thirith on 1/8/2010 at 17:39

Quote Posted by Papy

Okay, here's an attempt: adaptive/dynamic difficulty is present in any game where the difficulty level for any given point isn't set in stone but adapts to the individual player's successes and failures. (Again, this can be implemented well or badly.) Would that be an acceptable definition (probably with some tweaks)?

Papy on 2/8/2010 at 08:10

Quote Posted by DDL

So..just to clarify, Papy: If you find a game which is far too hard on "hard" and far too easy on "normal", then for you, that game is largely unplayable? Just hypothetically.

If the change between "hard" and "normal" is as drastic as you describe, then obviously there is a problem with the design of the game. I don't remember seeing a single game like that. Talking hypothetically may be fun, but it is also pointless (unless you view adaptive difficulty as a new way to not test the game with a focus group).

Also, I have a bit of difficulty with the idea that a game could become "unplayable" because it's too easy. I could agree with boring (and even then, not always), but certainly not "unplayable".

Quote Posted by DDL

And regarding oblivion: the aim was to make sure the player always had the SAME challenge, not necessarily the RIGHT challenge. And the challenge level was pegged exclusively to character level, not player skill or player action or in fact any player involvement at all, other than levelling up. This is not "adapting to players".

Oblivion had a fine grained difficulty slider to make sure the "same" challenge was also the "right" challenge. As for Oblivion adaptation not being on the player skill but rather on the character abilities, I'd say it doesn't change much in the end considering the character abilities were far more influential to the result than the player's skill. This is to me only a technicality because what the player could do was directly linked to what the character could do.

I have a question though : what is the "right" challenge for a game? Can concretely you define it?

Quote Posted by Thirith

According to this definition, Tetris (as a lot of other games) could be viewed as having an adaptive difficulty system.

OK, I propose a first tweak to your definition : the difficulty at which the player is currently playing the game and the overall effect of the adaptive difficulty system on the game must be hidden from him. Do you agree with this tweak to your definition?

Thirith on 4/8/2010 at 00:40

Quote Posted by Papy

I don't think this is necessary. Take the example I gave earlier of enemies 'learning' from player behaviour in the sense that if the player always uses the same strategy, the enemies adapt.

In most cases, though, I'd agree that the system isn't necessarily readily apparent. At its best, what I'm talking about is a tweaking of the learning curve to take into consideration how well a player 'learns' the game. If the player very quickly takes to the game, the learning curve can be tweaked to be more steep; if the player isn't quite up to the steepness of the curve, it's flattened out. I believe that Max Payne did something along those lines (probably by tweaking certain parameters such as the healing effect of painkillers, the damage done by bullets, and that sort of thing?), and I've never heard anyone say that this system negatively affected their experience of the game - nor positively, for that matter, which admittedly makes it difficult to assess whether it contributed to players' enjoyment of the game.