Difficulty Level adjustment in Adventure Games

[Linque]

In addition to having a conversation about Adventure Game difficulty levels at the AG Forums, I thought we could have one here as well, since not all users use both forums.

The main idea of the topic is about how to work out a good system that caters for all sorts of gamers from the newest of newbies to the most hardcore, and everyone in between. Emily mentioned that in general most developers don't like to spend time adding content that only a fraction of the players will experience, so removing/adding puzzles is not a preferred way of adjusting difficulty levels. Here's my take:

The difficulty setting in Adventure games could (and in my opinion should) be adjusted not by changing the amount of puzzles, but rather by creating different sorts of hint systems. Here's a few off the top of my head:

• Make objects you can pick up glow.
• Make hot spots that are relevant to the story glow.
• Point to the screen/area that you should explore next.
• Give verbal hints.
• Mark important / next relevant interactive character differently.
• Mark the item(s) that you are required to use next (multiple if there are multiple paths open at the moment)
• When looking at inventory, highlight items that you can use in the current area / chapter / segment.
• When looking at dialog log / journal (if exists), highlight segments of text that work as hints for the current problem.
• Show what kind of item you need to use to solve a puzzle, but leave it to you to actually find the item.
• Combine all objects automatically.

What do you think? Do you have some different views about difficulty settings? Are different difficulties needed at all in your opinion? In my opinion it would be nice to have a lot of different hint systems available. It would make introducing the games to new audiences much, much easier.

Then again, we have to consider the drawbacks as well. Does too elaborate hint systems make the games seem too much shorter? Will people be inclined to use too many hints and plow through all the games all too easily? Which one is better - less frustration, or a longer playthrough time?

[PimPamPet]

Hmm... I think the hint system used in Telltale's games is pretty effective at making their adventure games more accessible to newbies and/or younger players by means of verbal hints. Taking it any further than this seems unnecessary to me. By turning an adventure game into a no-brainer, you make it lose all appeal. It seems a crazy idea to me to take away any more of the puzzle solving aspect.

I certainly prefer longer playtime > less frustration, myself. This is not true for everyone and god knows, there are some pretty mean puzzles out there. That's why there's things called walkthroughs which give you the solutions straight up. When you're really totally and utterly stumped, I can understand you just want to get on with the game and take a peek at one. But I think this is unlikely if you've got a built-in verbal hint system much like Telltale's, which gives away some pretty shockingly revealing clues already. I can't see a need for anything more elaborate. People who don't want to think about anything shouldn't be playing adventure games in the first place.

[natlinxz]

The hints in SBCG4AP didn't help me much, but the Sam and Max ones did.

[Marduk]

What concerned me about Emily's post was that she didn't mention whether or not the devs knew for a fact that only a fraction would play the game on whichever setting had less content.



Of all of your suggestions, though, I liked your first one the best. They had this in the first STS. (I don't know if it was in any of the following). It meant that pixel hunting wasn't needed at all.

I kind of like the last one, too, but I think it's one that would have to go into a "difficulty" setting. Sometimes half the fun of the game is in combining objects. (Not on TMI, though. Putting an object onto either plate before combining looking good in the video but was far too time consuming in the long run). On the other hand, if it was possible for the protagonist to tell you if an item in you inventory needed to be combined with another item, in your inventory or not, when you click on it (on a certain setting)...

If we're talking about a difficulty level that can be adjusted at any point throughout, like an extension of the current hint systems, then it might be nice if the indicator was more descriptive in what that level does. IE, setting one will tell you that it will drop a hint every [X] minutes. Setting 2 will tell you this and will tell you another thing it's going to do to make it easier (eg; highlight items you may interact with). Setting 10... Well, if you're adding this many things to make it easier I imagine the game will be playing itself for you to watch, much like this. (This was posted on the Adventure Gamers thread).

I didn't post this on that other thread but I thought an "easy mode" wouldn't necessarily need to cut out puzzles but maybe the computer can do some of them for you to speed things up.

[LuigiHann]

What I would do is similar to what Telltale does with the hint frequency, but rather than have characters speak hints on their own, incorporate the hints into the dialog trees... but only if you have hints turned on.

[taumel]

A hint system is something very nice and helpful, although i don't see it as important as it would have been years before due to all the easy access of walkthroughs on the net these days.

I had my problems noticing a difference between the several settings in TOMI. I switched the mode a few times out of curiosity but i didn't notice any difference. Is there any?

The help system in TSOMISE was a more direct approach but nevertheless it was quite effective. I ran into two situations were i wasn't sure what to do anymore and *boom* it helped instantly.

[Molokov]

Originally Posted by LuigiHann

What I would do is similar to what Telltale does with the hint frequency, but rather than have characters speak hints on their own, incorporate the hints into the dialog trees... but only if you have hints turned on.

Sam and Max Season one did this - the dialogue options when Sam was talking to Max included some hints for current puzzles to be solved. However most people didn't realise it was for this in the first few episodes and just clicked everything to hear all the dialogue. In Episode 6 (Bright Side of the Moon) they moved it to a specific "Hint" sub-dialogue so you could click there to get some hints specifically from Max.

I prefer the new style... although when I do need a hint, and I switch the hints on, sometimes it can take ages before I get anything useful out of the characters

[fhqwhgads]

Originally Posted by LuigiHann

What I would do is similar to what Telltale does with the hint frequency, but rather than have characters speak hints on their own, incorporate the hints into the dialog trees... but only if you have hints turned on.

I like this idea. It's almost like a combination of the hints systems used in Sam & Max seasons 1 & 2.

[LuigiHann]

Originally Posted by Molokov

Sam and Max Season one did this - the dialogue options when Sam was talking to Max included some hints for current puzzles to be solved. However most people didn't realise it was for this in the first few episodes and just clicked everything to hear all the dialogue. In Episode 6 (Bright Side of the Moon) they moved it to a specific "Hint" sub-dialogue so you could click there to get some hints specifically from Max.

In my version, Max's hint-related dialogues wouldn't appear at all if you have hints turned off. Hopefully he'd still have other things to say

[Linque]

The Universal Hint System ( http://www.uhs-hints.com/ ) is brilliant too. Integrating something like that to all adventure games would be pretty cool too.