I am nearly finished with a tower defense map and I wanted to gather some community opinions on how to handle the game's difficulty settings. The game is played with six free-for-all tracks (similar to Element TD). In a future release I will be adding competitive play, but for the initial release it will just have the players individually working on their own tracks. It's essentially six people playing a single player game at the same time.
I have decided that all players should be playing at the same difficulty setting. Doing this will allow players to compare how well they're doing with the other players in the game. Without this constant difficulty between players, there is absolutely no reason to play the game with other people. This raises a challenge when it comes to letting the players decide which difficulty setting to use. Since the current b.net setup doesn't really support a "host" (you could join a lobby and it's random if you're the first player), and we don't have a way to create a game lobby that is designated as "hard mode" in the title. Any given game lobby could be comprised of both experienced players and new players.
Furthermore, the game will have many levels of difficulty available, but for playing online with others only "normal" and "hard" will be available. You must play the game by yourself to access "easy" and "extreme" difficulties.
There are three logical ways to set up the difficulty at the start of the game:
1) Player 1 picks the difficulty, all other players must abide.
2) All players vote on difficulty, a tie goes to the easier difficulty setting.
3) All players vote on difficulty, a tie goes to the harder difficulty setting.
Does anyone have an opinion on the best way to set the difficulty? Is it worse to risk new players getting into a "hard" game and being in over their heads, or is it worse to have experienced players stuck in a "normal" difficulty game? Am I just way off base with forcing all players to use the same difficulty setting?
Non-mixed difficulty is far more important in competitive play. You overestimate the importance that players will place on having a fair playing field when there is virtually no connection between players. Since you've played ETD you will notice that I enforce non-mixed difficulty when the countdown timer depends on player action, and I allow mixed difficulty when the countdown timer is independent.
I also recommend that you allow all four difficulties in online play. You definitely do not want to encourage offline play given the popularity system.
If you decide to do it your way, then I strongly encourage option 2. It is far better to have experienced players stuck in an easier game than to have new players stuck in a harder one. Consider that the ratio of new to experienced players is completely lopsided, and that you need to retain new players to have any chance in the popularity system.
I'd say use mixed difficulty for survival mode, and 2) All players vote on difficulty, a tie goes to the easier difficulty setting.
for competitive mode.
Also, as Karawasa said, you should have all difficulties available for online play. I see no reason to not have all difficulties included. If you're worried about players voting for either easy or extreme, just disable those two gamemodes in competitive play, or only make extreme available if all players have played the game at least X amount of times or beaten it at X difficulty.
Maybe I am overestimating the value of having players able to compare scores (same difficulty) in a FFA survival mode. How much do people care about playing a solo survival mode in an online game? I really don't know. B.net psychology is hard to predict.
I'll see what I can do about making all players able to have their own difficulty. Currently my difficulty is being done through handicaps, so that won't work if I let everyone use a different difficulty.
I am nearly finished with a tower defense map and I wanted to gather some community opinions on how to handle the game's difficulty settings. The game is played with six free-for-all tracks (similar to Element TD). In a future release I will be adding competitive play, but for the initial release it will just have the players individually working on their own tracks. It's essentially six people playing a single player game at the same time.
I have decided that all players should be playing at the same difficulty setting. Doing this will allow players to compare how well they're doing with the other players in the game. Without this constant difficulty between players, there is absolutely no reason to play the game with other people. This raises a challenge when it comes to letting the players decide which difficulty setting to use. Since the current b.net setup doesn't really support a "host" (you could join a lobby and it's random if you're the first player), and we don't have a way to create a game lobby that is designated as "hard mode" in the title. Any given game lobby could be comprised of both experienced players and new players.
Furthermore, the game will have many levels of difficulty available, but for playing online with others only "normal" and "hard" will be available. You must play the game by yourself to access "easy" and "extreme" difficulties.
There are three logical ways to set up the difficulty at the start of the game:
1) Player 1 picks the difficulty, all other players must abide.
2) All players vote on difficulty, a tie goes to the easier difficulty setting.
3) All players vote on difficulty, a tie goes to the harder difficulty setting.
Does anyone have an opinion on the best way to set the difficulty? Is it worse to risk new players getting into a "hard" game and being in over their heads, or is it worse to have experienced players stuck in a "normal" difficulty game? Am I just way off base with forcing all players to use the same difficulty setting?
Thanks!
-Skrow
@SkrowFunk: Go
Non-mixed difficulty is far more important in competitive play. You overestimate the importance that players will place on having a fair playing field when there is virtually no connection between players. Since you've played ETD you will notice that I enforce non-mixed difficulty when the countdown timer depends on player action, and I allow mixed difficulty when the countdown timer is independent.
I also recommend that you allow all four difficulties in online play. You definitely do not want to encourage offline play given the popularity system.
If you decide to do it your way, then I strongly encourage option 2. It is far better to have experienced players stuck in an easier game than to have new players stuck in a harder one. Consider that the ratio of new to experienced players is completely lopsided, and that you need to retain new players to have any chance in the popularity system.
I'd say use mixed difficulty for survival mode, and
2) All players vote on difficulty, a tie goes to the easier difficulty setting.
for competitive mode.
Also, as Karawasa said, you should have all difficulties available for online play. I see no reason to not have all difficulties included. If you're worried about players voting for either easy or extreme, just disable those two gamemodes in competitive play, or only make extreme available if all players have played the game at least X amount of times or beaten it at X difficulty.
Maybe I am overestimating the value of having players able to compare scores (same difficulty) in a FFA survival mode. How much do people care about playing a solo survival mode in an online game? I really don't know. B.net psychology is hard to predict.
I'll see what I can do about making all players able to have their own difficulty. Currently my difficulty is being done through handicaps, so that won't work if I let everyone use a different difficulty.
@SkrowFunk: Go
You could make players vote for mixed/nonmixed difficulties at start of the map. Nobody can complain then.
And about the difficulty. You can set maxhealth/health whenever you spawn a unit, instead of using handicap.