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It is generally thought that a game should have a learning curve ie. a game starts relatively easy and progressively gets harder. But now that we have more story driven plots it may not be possible. Take MOH. The famous beach scene was the third level I believe (on the PC, first level on the PS2 though), it had to be this way because the later missions wouldn't work without it. But the trouble is how hard should the developers make it. It was the scene most people were looking forward to so making it too easy would dissappoint people. But make it too hard and it will seem too difficult early on. While a games like Quake could have a steady learning curve the more story driven games are bound to find this difficult. In Mafia they balanced this quite well but even then I would complete a hard mission followed by easy ones. The only solution would be to write plots with this in mind but this would make them less plausible.
Although the traditional learning curve is a simple line, indicating increasing difficulty as you proceed, I really enjoyed Mafia's 'You've just taken on an army by yourself, now deliver this package for me' attitude. I thought it provided a refreshing change, and in many ways is more realistic, which is appropriate for the type of game. Admiteddly, Half-Life wouldn't have been much of a game if in the first half a minute (excluding the ten-minute tram ride :P), one of those huge alien grunts teleported in and killed you, but still. Wing Commander III was a bagger for that. The toughest mission in the game came completely without warning, right after a scene in which Blair could get plastered at the bar - making it almost impossible to fly the ship. The reasoning was that in a typical war, the enemy wouldn't kindly scale up the difficulty for you.
Zelda: OoT has one of the finest difficulty curves in any game ever. It gradually introduces abilities as you go through, allowing you to become familiar with them and the interaction between them, but still allows you to go back and use those abilities in locations you've previously visited, to access whole new areas and secrets. Oh well, sorry to cite old examples people, but both Deus Ex and Half-Life were plot driven, and yet both had learning curves. To begin with you could survive by running in, standing still, and letting rip with any weapon. But towards the end you had to change tactics and learn new skills of movement to combat the harder (and in many cases more numerous) enemies. Likewise games such as RTCW were story driven, but have the same effect. Even RPGs, story driven as they are, tend to have learning curves where you must learn to effectively use and combine skills and equipment to maximum effect against differing foes. However this all shows up one thing that a learning curve is. Learning curves just make you have to play better by making the enemies harder (both in terms of damage potential, defence and AI) and making them more numerous.
First time I played it I played Hacker/Stealth God but my mate went for all out assault King and just basically ran up the Statue of Liberty killing everyone. Even I was amazed watching him play it. It had never even occured to me that you could survive fighting like that. The enemies just didn't react fast enough and didn't do enough damage. By reaching the top so quick UNATCO mopped up about 80% of the other enemies.
Can there be any other kind of learning curve introduced into games? Does there even need to be? Is this rather basic system so pure and simple it is the best kind?
Thanks for reading,
Flux.
Although the traditional learning curve is a simple line, indicating increasing difficulty as you proceed, I really enjoyed Mafia's 'You've just taken on an army by yourself, now deliver this package for me' attitude. I thought it provided a refreshing change, and in many ways is more realistic, which is appropriate for the type of game. Admiteddly, Half-Life wouldn't have been much of a game if in the first half a minute (excluding the ten-minute tram ride :P), one of those huge alien grunts teleported in and killed you, but still. Wing Commander III was a bagger for that. The toughest mission in the game came completely without warning, right after a scene in which Blair could get plastered at the bar - making it almost impossible to fly the ship. The reasoning was that in a typical war, the enemy wouldn't kindly scale up the difficulty for you.
Zelda: OoT has one of the finest difficulty curves in any game ever. It gradually introduces abilities as you go through, allowing you to become familiar with them and the interaction between them, but still allows you to go back and use those abilities in locations you've previously visited, to access whole new areas and secrets. Oh well, sorry to cite old examples people, but both Deus Ex and Half-Life were plot driven, and yet both had learning curves. To begin with you could survive by running in, standing still, and letting rip with any weapon. But towards the end you had to change tactics and learn new skills of movement to combat the harder (and in many cases more numerous) enemies. Likewise games such as RTCW were story driven, but have the same effect. Even RPGs, story driven as they are, tend to have learning curves where you must learn to effectively use and combine skills and equipment to maximum effect against differing foes. However this all shows up one thing that a learning curve is. Learning curves just make you have to play better by making the enemies harder (both in terms of damage potential, defence and AI) and making them more numerous.
First time I played it I played Hacker/Stealth God but my mate went for all out assault King and just basically ran up the Statue of Liberty killing everyone. Even I was amazed watching him play it. It had never even occured to me that you could survive fighting like that. The enemies just didn't react fast enough and didn't do enough damage. By reaching the top so quick UNATCO mopped up about 80% of the other enemies.
Can there be any other kind of learning curve introduced into games? Does there even need to be? Is this rather basic system so pure and simple it is the best kind?
Thanks for reading,
Flux.
I like games to pose a bit of a challenge, it makes you feelyou got your money's worth out of their purhcase, to cite your example of Zelda; fantastic game, but it could've been a bit more difficult. I actually have the N64 rigged up beside my PS2 at present, and have been playing Zelda over the past few days, what it lacks in difficulty it makes up for in replay value. I've yet to find a copy of Majora's Mask, unfortunately. :(
TimeSplitters is fun (haven't got the sequel yet). In that you're given a relatively simple "easy mode", but then things heat up considerably, and there's no training mode persay but rather the much more useful challenge mode. In that you're thrown in at the deep end, and if you intend to complete the missions, you have to adapt quickly. Two challenges that stick out particularly well in my mind are the ones involving knocking heads off of the undead & mutants, and the one where you have to knock out all the windows in a chinese restaurant with a brick, those are pretty evil. They had me sitting glued to the TV screen determined to complete the challenge, and eventually I did, the only ones I haven't managed yet are the escort Duckman etc. missions. I don't think I was made with safety in mind. ;)
It's that fine line between difficult yet rewarding, and difficult yet irritating which poses the problem in gauging for developers. If you're going to come out of the hard challenges a better player for doing so, and possible even with a few extra characters or levels bunged in, then you're going to enjoy the experience and be glad you bought the game. But if there's no driving incentive, and all the game serves for is annoyance, then it's going to be shot back to the store for a part-exchange before you can say "end of level guardian".
TimeSplitters is fun (haven't got the sequel yet). In that you're given a relatively simple "easy mode", but then things heat up considerably, and there's no training mode persay but rather the much more useful challenge mode. In that you're thrown in at the deep end, and if you intend to complete the missions, you have to adapt quickly. Two challenges that stick out particularly well in my mind are the ones involving knocking heads off of the undead & mutants, and the one where you have to knock out all the windows in a chinese restaurant with a brick, those are pretty evil. They had me sitting glued to the TV screen determined to complete the challenge, and eventually I did, the only ones I haven't managed yet are the escort Duckman etc. missions. I don't think I was made with safety in mind. ;)
It's that fine line between difficult yet rewarding, and difficult yet irritating which poses the problem in gauging for developers. If you're going to come out of the hard challenges a better player for doing so, and possible even with a few extra characters or levels bunged in, then you're going to enjoy the experience and be glad you bought the game. But if there's no driving incentive, and all the game serves for is annoyance, then it's going to be shot back to the store for a part-exchange before you can say "end of level guardian".
It is generally thought that a game should have a learning curve ie. a game starts relatively easy and progressively gets harder. But now that we have more story driven plots it may not be possible. Take MOH. The famous beach scene was the third level I believe (on the PC, first level on the PS2 though), it had to be this way because the later missions wouldn't work without it. But the trouble is how hard should the developers make it. It was the scene most people were looking forward to so making it too easy would dissappoint people. But make it too hard and it will seem too difficult early on. While a games like Quake could have a steady learning curve the more story driven games are bound to find this difficult. In Mafia they balanced this quite well but even then I would complete a hard mission followed by easy ones. The only solution would be to write plots with this in mind but this would make them less plausible.
Although the traditional learning curve is a simple line, indicating increasing difficulty as you proceed, I really enjoyed Mafia's 'You've just taken on an army by yourself, now deliver this package for me' attitude. I thought it provided a refreshing change, and in many ways is more realistic, which is appropriate for the type of game. Admiteddly, Half-Life wouldn't have been much of a game if in the first half a minute (excluding the ten-minute tram ride :P), one of those huge alien grunts teleported in and killed you, but still. Wing Commander III was a bagger for that. The toughest mission in the game came completely without warning, right after a scene in which Blair could get plastered at the bar - making it almost impossible to fly the ship. The reasoning was that in a typical war, the enemy wouldn't kindly scale up the difficulty for you.
Zelda: OoT has one of the finest difficulty curves in any game ever. It gradually introduces abilities as you go through, allowing you to become familiar with them and the interaction between them, but still allows you to go back and use those abilities in locations you've previously visited, to access whole new areas and secrets. Oh well, sorry to cite old examples people, but both Deus Ex and Half-Life were plot driven, and yet both had learning curves. To begin with you could survive by running in, standing still, and letting rip with any weapon. But towards the end you had to change tactics and learn new skills of movement to combat the harder (and in many cases more numerous) enemies. Likewise games such as RTCW were story driven, but have the same effect. Even RPGs, story driven as they are, tend to have learning curves where you must learn to effectively use and combine skills and equipment to maximum effect against differing foes. However this all shows up one thing that a learning curve is. Learning curves just make you have to play better by making the enemies harder (both in terms of damage potential, defence and AI) and making them more numerous.
First time I played it I played Hacker/Stealth God but my mate went for all out assault King and just basically ran up the Statue of Liberty killing everyone. Even I was amazed watching him play it. It had never even occured to me that you could survive fighting like that. The enemies just didn't react fast enough and didn't do enough damage. By reaching the top so quick UNATCO mopped up about 80% of the other enemies.
Can there be any other kind of learning curve introduced into games? Does there even need to be? Is this rather basic system so pure and simple it is the best kind?
Thanks for reading,
Flux.
Although the traditional learning curve is a simple line, indicating increasing difficulty as you proceed, I really enjoyed Mafia's 'You've just taken on an army by yourself, now deliver this package for me' attitude. I thought it provided a refreshing change, and in many ways is more realistic, which is appropriate for the type of game. Admiteddly, Half-Life wouldn't have been much of a game if in the first half a minute (excluding the ten-minute tram ride :P), one of those huge alien grunts teleported in and killed you, but still. Wing Commander III was a bagger for that. The toughest mission in the game came completely without warning, right after a scene in which Blair could get plastered at the bar - making it almost impossible to fly the ship. The reasoning was that in a typical war, the enemy wouldn't kindly scale up the difficulty for you.
Zelda: OoT has one of the finest difficulty curves in any game ever. It gradually introduces abilities as you go through, allowing you to become familiar with them and the interaction between them, but still allows you to go back and use those abilities in locations you've previously visited, to access whole new areas and secrets. Oh well, sorry to cite old examples people, but both Deus Ex and Half-Life were plot driven, and yet both had learning curves. To begin with you could survive by running in, standing still, and letting rip with any weapon. But towards the end you had to change tactics and learn new skills of movement to combat the harder (and in many cases more numerous) enemies. Likewise games such as RTCW were story driven, but have the same effect. Even RPGs, story driven as they are, tend to have learning curves where you must learn to effectively use and combine skills and equipment to maximum effect against differing foes. However this all shows up one thing that a learning curve is. Learning curves just make you have to play better by making the enemies harder (both in terms of damage potential, defence and AI) and making them more numerous.
First time I played it I played Hacker/Stealth God but my mate went for all out assault King and just basically ran up the Statue of Liberty killing everyone. Even I was amazed watching him play it. It had never even occured to me that you could survive fighting like that. The enemies just didn't react fast enough and didn't do enough damage. By reaching the top so quick UNATCO mopped up about 80% of the other enemies.
Can there be any other kind of learning curve introduced into games? Does there even need to be? Is this rather basic system so pure and simple it is the best kind?
Thanks for reading,
Flux.