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Newbie struggling with game-balance

Discussion in 'Game Design' started by lizifox, Mar 16, 2017.

  1. lizifox

    lizifox

    Joined:
    Feb 18, 2017
    Posts:
    37
    Hi,

    I'm deep into development of my first game. It's a 2D pattern-matching game, with a game mechanic I havent spotted in the wild before. So, I'm trying to develop interesting gameplay around the core mechanic.

    By now, I've become quite skilled at playing my game. I consider myself an experienced player and am no longer able to see how hard this game is for a new player.

    You get a certain timelimit to finish a board (like in many match-3 type of games). As you play a board, you can score extra time by hitting certain tiles or making certain special moves.

    Iow, difficulty is mostly defined by the timelimit imposed.

    I've noticed that when I set the timelimit to a nice balanced starting value (in my opinion) I notice that some of my testers simply dont have enough time, get stuck or frustrated.

    Easy to solve, right? Just give more time. But then it quickly becomes very boring as an experienced player.

    Why? Special moves and bonus-blocks score you extra time and points. Experienced players know this. Thats just the game's strategy.

    With the initial timelimit i had set, you NEED to do these special to be able to get higher in the game. (not in the first levels, they are very doable without those moves)

    When I increase the timelimit, its better for new players BUT terrible for experienced players. They score so many bonus time that they never run out of timelimit. In other words: there is no tension, no rush, its boring.

    I don't want an EASY - MEDIUM - HARD setting. I really dont like those. The game should gradually build.

    I've already implemented a more gradual system where:
    level 1:no bonus tiles and no explanation of special moves. only the core dynamic is explained and needed to succeed.
    level 2: explanation of the special moves
    level 3:introduction and explanation of the bonus tiles.
    (the board grows in each level)


    1. What else could I do to make the game easier for beginners but still interesting for experiences players?

    2. What techniques do you use to find a fair balance considering your own super-player-skillz.

    3. Are there useful tools for these types of questions, techniques, ... ?



    Thanks for reading this.
    I look forward to your reactions.

    Lizi
     
  2. JoeStrout

    JoeStrout

    Joined:
    Jan 14, 2011
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    9,859
    You're definitely asking the right questions (and in the right place, to boot!).

    But these things are hard. Games where the difficulty is set mostly by a time limit... it's very hard to make those fun, in my opinion. Right off the bat you're forcing the player to think quickly, with a hammer just waiting to come down on them as the clock tick tick ticks away. Of course new players get frustrated. It's a reliable recipe for frustration.

    Now, there certainly are players who like frustrating games. They take it as a matter of pride to beat a difficult challenge. There may be ways you can encourage people to look at it this way, by keeping the hammer as cheerful and friendly as possible (e.g. "Good job! Try again?" rather than "You lose!"), but I don't know how big an effect that is going to have.

    The deep design problem here is: either the game is too hard, or — once you cross a certain skill threshold — it is too easy. I don't think you can fix that with minor tweaks; you should open the floor to major design changes. Maybe it shouldn't be time-based at all. Or maybe there shouldn't be special moves that add time (they instead add points or stars or whatever). Or maybe even regular moves should add time, so that time doesn't become a real constraint even for new players, except as a way to detect when they're stuck.

    I don't know what the fix is, but I encourage you to be open to such fundamental changes — minor adjustments may not suffice.
     
    Not_Sure and theANMATOR2b like this.
  3. Teila

    Teila

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    How about the option to turn time on and off? I am not fond of timed games myself...but, as I get better at a game, I wouldn't mind the extra challenge.
     
  4. theANMATOR2b

    theANMATOR2b

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    7,790
    Could the amount of time be a variable based on the level (player experience)? The lower easy levels provide more time while the higher more difficult levels have less time?
     
  5. DominoM

    DominoM

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    Nov 24, 2016
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    Does time always have to run at the same speed? Player could fill the time tank, to do the time warp, which burns off the extra time in a high paced bonus section. So expert players could unlock extra game play more suited to their skill level and get higher scores than someone who needs the extra time just to finish the level..
     
  6. lizifox

    lizifox

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    Feb 18, 2017
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    Hi,

    Thank you all for your responses.

    @JoStrout & Tella:

    About dropping the time-limit completely: Although I can appreciate a ZEN-like playmodus without a timelimit in a tile-based game; it is never what lures me in. That will mostly be the more action-y system where time is a resource that runs out. I will start playing the ZEN mode when I'm looking for variation in a game I already know. It's like playing Bejeweled without the ticking clock. It has an appeal for a short while, but not as much as when you are challenged to complete in time.
    I also plan to include a Zen-based playmode, but this will be a secundary playmode, not the primary.

    Also, without this time-limit, I have no real way to end a game.
    The system is build so that there is always a working solution on the board. Sometimes it will just take the player a while to find it. Since there is always a working solution, the player cannot get stuck.

    @ theANMATOR2b

    Having the player's experience influence the time-limit is an interesting idea. I need to think on this to see how i could use and integrate this.

    @DominoM

    Moving time in a faster pace is also something I hadn't thought of yet that has a lot of potential. Could be very useful for a bonus-round sort of system.
     
    theANMATOR2b likes this.
  7. hoesterey

    hoesterey

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    Mar 19, 2010
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    659
    Use telemetry to record average times etc.. in early levels and dynamically adjust difficulty/set levels based on this data. You can also think about adding in challenge stages and game modes that put emphasis on the special mechanics you want players to focus on.

    Lots of ways to go about this depending on what player emotion you want.

    Could be as simple as ramping difficulty up and down based on telemetry and giving a bonus for having high difficulty.

    Another idea that works if you can create lots of levels with gradual increasing difficulty. Make skipping levels part of the reward for doing well.

    Another add multiple levels of success. E.g. beating a level at one vs three stars.
     
  8. jenny2325

    jenny2325

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    Feb 24, 2017
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    How to make the best correlation between the level and the increasing difficulty?
     
  9. DominoM

    DominoM

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    Generally it would be with play testing and experience with the game to rank them manually. There's some good info in this video on level design:
     
  10. Master-Frog

    Master-Frog

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    Read up to "I don't want different difficulty settings" . . . That's nice. Come on back to reality, though.

    Either you break the game up into multiple stages, or your break the game up into multiple difficulty settings.

    And you put a difficulty curve in there, as the player progresses things become more difficult.

    I F***ed this up in my game, it was super difficult right off the bat, and I couldn't make it harder as time progressed.

    In hindsight, different difficulty settings would have been a huge improvement, as would have enabling people to play any stage they wanted without having to go back to the beginning.

    Forest for the trees, my friend.

    take a step back and you will see the obvious
     
  11. hoesterey

    hoesterey

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    I would not add a difficulty setting personally unless you have a really good reason. The more modern way to do this for casual games is multiple levels of success.

    For the correlation you should check out
     
  12. lizifox

    lizifox

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    That was something i've been wanting to do from the start.

    I activated the analytics and upon every board completion I log a record in analytics with a bunch of data: the size of the board, the amount of colors and the time completed. I was hoping that i could easily use this data to build a baseline of good averages.

    But in the analytics service page, I find no easy way to retrieve this data.
    In the data explorer I can choose my custom event, and select metric "boardsize"
    And i can make a second with the same custom event (and select metric "boardcompletiontime"
    But i can't seem to map boardsize to boardcompletiontime. They both map to the day.

    I wish i could download the full dataset in CSV but the CSV download only downloads what I set-up in the graph.

    GDC talks are always very good. I havent seen this one yet. Thanks or the tip!

    I dont like easy-medium-hard settings because those terms are so subjective. What is easy for 1 person is hard for another. I prefer to offer different playSTYLES. Things like "ZEN-mode" or "Casual" or "Hardcore".
    This allows you to adapt the games-rules to a different playstyle (and not just making it easier/slower, but also a different way of playing the game, of scoring, ...) and also (and very important):
    you dont make the player feel like a wimp because he/she prefers a more casual playstyle.
     
  13. lizifox

    lizifox

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  14. lizifox

    lizifox

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    Short update, concerning telemetry data.
    I found this: http://www.gameanalytics.com/ maybe it's useful for others too.
    Havent adapted it yet, will do next week. *fingers crossed*
     
  15. jenny2325

    jenny2325

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    Thank you for your advises!
     
  16. hoesterey

    hoesterey

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    Good luck! You can always go the "cheep" way, go to a DMV with tons of board people waiting to get licenses and such, ask them to play, write down results. :) "Telemetry by notepad"
     
    theANMATOR2b likes this.
  17. lizifox

    lizifox

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    Hahaha what an original solution!
    The DMV is only 200meters from my workplace. :)
     
  18. Not_Sure

    Not_Sure

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    Sorry, I didn't read through the whole thread because I'm feeling lazy, but if I were you I think the solution would be to have the simplest moves offer no bonus time, middle moves that offer sizable bite of time, and then have huge moves that are tons of time.

    That way the players have to resource manage time spent examining moves to find ones that pay off, but if they can't they do a simple one to change up the board. Or if they put in the time to find a big move they get paid for their efforts.

    So let's say the small sized move takes on average 2 seconds to find, the medium move 5 seconds to find, and a big move takes 15 seconds.

    In that case I would have the pay offs be 0 seconds, 5 seconds, and 20 seconds.

    Simply adding more time takes away from the suspense needing to find a move. Having the moves pay off in time adds to the reward of finding a good move.

    Also, you may want to consider swapping out the timer from a numerical timer in seconds to a bar timer (that may also "melt" faster and faster as the game goes on). But the reason I would get rid of the numbers is because it demands players to pause their puzzle solving to read the numbers, and even convert minutes to seconds. But a bar, a bar would tell people exactly how good they are by seeing how full it is and how much pressure they're under without having to think about it at all.
     
  19. lizifox

    lizifox

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    hi all, i want to thank you all for your input.

    i eventually wrapped it up in 3 game modes:
    1. a gradually building difficulty by increasing gameboard, colors and in/decreasing time based on board size. game ends when the timebar runs out. this one i find the most fun and challenging.

    2. a beat-your-own-time version on a medium hard board. this one has a very visual "seconds played" timer and is very stressful to play because of that. i hate that mode, not a lot of room to get better, its more about getting lucky with your board. but this board is most popular with my male testers. they love the tension and addictivity of it. so, even though i had already decided to remove this mode (i really hated it as a player) i eventually put it back after feedback of testers.

    3. a "zen" mode where there is no time presure. however you need to make a "full" move, partial moves are accepted but you lose a life. after three lives, game over. without the time constraint, this mode fell flat and became boring after a while. by adding the possibility of losing lives, it has more intrest for the player.

    i'm now in the process of finishing off (adding ads and such) and then we publish.
    *crossing fingers*

    i'll share the link on the forum here when done.