#game difficulty

Normal-Bake Oven

Hard-Bake Oven

Extreme-Bake Oven

Nightmare-Bake Oven

Insane-Bake Oven

I love these things. Is it a little clunky? Sure! But I love a spell casting system that says "sure you CAN try to cast a really power spell you fuckin novice see how that goes" and then after a few levels in you it becomes completely doable and rewarding!

I want to use this as a specific type of Difficulty Scaling outside of just video games, I hope my students like it!

That’s not really a reasonable ask because it isn’t broadly applicable. When I build gameplay systems, I usually know how they work and I can usually handle it myself under controlled conditions at maximum difficulty, sure. However, that doesn’t (and can’t) always apply. The skills needed to design content don’t necessarily match the skills needed to execute on that content at the highest difficulty level. As long as the iterative process involves people on the team who can perform the actions consistently, it’s largely fine if the designer or programmer working on the feature can’t - as long as some people can do it within acceptable limits, we’re good.

Let’s take an example from my own history. One of the gameplay systems I’ve worked on in the past was a QTE system - press this button during this canned animation sequence within this timing window to succeed. The creative leads decided that the timing window to press the button at higher difficulties should be smaller. I adjusted the timing window based on difficulty, and then pulled in various other team members to test out how the different difficulties felt. I wasn’t always able to hit the timing consistently at the highest difficulty (I gave a 500ms window), but a few of the QA testers were able to do it. That was good enough for the leads to give it their stamp of approval.

As another example, let’s say that I’m designing new multiplayer content. There is no way for me to test it on my own because I have only two arms and two eyes. There’s no way for me to test group content like raids in Destiny or zombie mode in Call of Duty by myself. I can verify that the monster abilities work, but I need enough people to field a group to test it properly and tune it. So I have to organize playtests - developers, QA testers, etc. For high execution content like WoW’s Mythic raid difficulty, it generally involves scheduling a lot of highly skilled testers (almost always QA) to test.

Overall, given the breadth of content and features we have to design, it’s unreasonable to expect a developer to be able to clear all content at all difficulties. Skills needed to perform at that execution level aren’t the same as skills needed to create that content in the first place, especially for things like multiplayer content. As long as we have somebody involved who can perform at the necessary level of execution during the difficulty tuning process, it’s fine. That somebody might be the designer, but it doesn’t have to be.

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Its funny, but both games have different philosophies that make them hard. 

In short: Dark souls is about answering challenges the best way you can, and is evenly distributed across the environment, enemies and bosses but for the most part your character is unique and may struggle in different areas from other characters. In the end, its about enduring and pulling through with your best tools than it is beating it with pure skill.

Sekiro forces you to get better by learning and reacting faster than you thought you could. So a big part of Sekiro is simply getting used to the game.

Ok, so you are the best player in your area in this one Fighting game. The game is complex but pretty playable. In your area, nobody has beaten you, until someone from a different country comes to play against you. He wins with seemingly even more skill. He did things you never thought you could. He basically rose the skill ceiling of the game for you and is now demanding that you climb that new height.

This is what Sekiro does as a singleplayer game.

Once you beat your 1st playtrough, 2nd playtrough is much more fun and engaging as you have learned everything that it can throw at you. Heck, maybe you have gotten so good that you will have new and better answers against bosses and enemies you have played.

But Dark souls is different in this manner. You may choose to play a different character all together and re-struggle in areas you have played. You MUST answer with things you can only answer with, especially towards the end game.

Play it how you want. Video games are for fun, not trying to raise Satan from his sleep because you're so pissed off you keep dying every 10 seconds.

I personally play a game once on easy. Then restart and play how I want (if it's not like a set story.) Fallout 4 is so heavily modded, I can almost scrap half the game. I also enjoy god mode. Don't hate, it's best on days you're so stressed out that you can barely function.

like, making Raids show up when you also get near your bed, this would be a better idea without Bad Omen being a potion.

If Pillagers could actively set TNT or just set Wooden structures on fire it would be interesting.

ravages being the thing to be able to destroy stone type blocks when they charge.

Adding the Terrain Summoning Illagers from that one mob vote to add more disruption would also be fun and giving breaching capability for wall structures.