[Campaign] Idea for increasing/decreasing difficulty

[Lord Siler]

Hello, what are some creative thing (besides the obvious ones of giving units more hp or handicapping the player) which you can increase or decrease the difficult in a campaign?

 

[apsyll]

Like everything depens:
What is the goal of the quest?
Think how the player will act to reach the goal and try to make this steps harder.
Examples:
Base survival let the player run out of ressources and create expansions in the enemy side.
Get in region add "doors" where you have to fight bosses to get "keys"...
Concer the enemy base: give the player just in midgame the chance to build a base.
Adding supporter to the enemy gives also more depth of fighting taktics.

 

[Lord Siler]

I forgot to mention that the goal of most (but not all) missions would be to destroy either the whole enemy base or a particular enemy structure.

 

[cleavinghammer]

You should think in terms of handicapping the enemy rather than the player for lower difficulties, to make sure it remains challenging but not frustrating.

Changing the abilities the enemy has access to. For example, Easy only have standard casters, Normal gives them Adept training, and Hard gives them Master training.

Changing the rate at which they gather resources could also work, though it might prove difficult to ensure the player has enough to finish the mission.

 

[Lord Siler]

I wouldnt not limit the gold available to the player, all this would do is frustrate the player

 

[Razorfang]

We had a list of things, some of which I remember

1. to decrease difficulty increase the level of upgrades research by the players side at the start of the mission
2. to decrease difficulty give the player extra re-inforcements
3. to decrease difficulty give the player extra gold and lumber at the start
4. to decrease difficulty give the player an extra hero
5. to decrease difficulty reduce the upgrades of the enemy forces
6. to decrease difficulty give the hero items such as akhns of reincarnation
7. to decrease difficulty provide the player with an extra ally
8. to decrease difficulty reduce the level of abilities of enemy heroes
9. to decrease difficulty reduce the level of the auras worn by enemy units
10. to decrease difficulty give the player an item that ressurect several fallen units
11. to decrease difficulty allocate a large sum of gold to him if he destroys an enemy base
12. to decrease difficulty increase the time between when the player first gets control and when he first gets attacked
13. to decrease difficulty provide the player with a number of already built towers which do not exist on other difficulties
14. to decrease difficulty reduce the food max of the enemy armies by 10/20/30 <----I personally find this to work rather well
15. to recrease difficulty raise the players max food by a number per difficulty level

hope that will be of use

 

[Brikak]

Add smarter AI to increase difficulty. Instead of keep sending units to you, maybe add some "While waiting until Food is at 70/90, put all units to defense, defending own base, then continue attack" when it is usually attacking constantily where food is always at max 30/50 or so.

Adding paths for the AI to go to and attack you from there, or some tricks like saving units at some place and attack you once you attack him.
You could watch some progammers and learn from there and add some of their strategies to the AI.


Give it like Computer(Insane) double wood and gold gain.
You could increase this to 3x more G and W. then 4x, 5x etc..


for the first time i see someone who also is is aware of the obvious "increase HP / DMG for difficulty".

How are these ideas ?

You are right one has to be creative this way, not lowering and increasing numbers of existing features / functions...

 

[Lord Aiden]

If you want to increase difficulty start the enemy's attack waves extra early if you want to decrease the difficulty send the attack waves later on

 

[pick-a-chew]

I seem to remember in the standard TFT campaign, the naga Coral Beds gave 90 food each and the AI miners only took 1 gold from mines as opposed to 10 (thus making it easier for the computer to create and sustain an army). Though i always felt this kind of mechanic made killing food-production buildings or expansions pointless since they weren't really needed by them.

You could put in a global Endurance Aura that boosts movement speed of all enemy units. If enemy units move faster, they can attack, retreat and move around the map quicker which makes it more difficult for the human player (and probably helps compensate for the AI's lack of ability).

Though the author of the post probably isn't looking for suggestions anymore...

 

[Daffa]

Create certain events and traps that only occurs at higher difficulties. At least I did this in my campaign. This way people won't be able to accordingly prepare in higher difficulty just by playing lower ones, adding challenge and usability of save-load.

Add some surprise reinforcement for enemy side in higher difficulty.

 

[Dr Super Good]

The general approach to difficulty is on easier modes to give the player an advantage by removing/reducing complex game mechanics, while on harder difficulties increasing the magnitude of the complex game mechanics.

Here are some examples.

• Easy mode has players always regenerating health. Normal mode players only regenerate health in "safe zones" such as towns or checkpoints. Hard mode increases enemy damage by 50% on top of only regenerating life in safe zones.
• Easy mode has a boss only use 2 basic attacks. Normal mode has a boss use 3 basic attacks and 1 ultimate attack. Hard mode has a boss use 3 basic attacks and 1 ultimate attack which have all been upgraded to be harder to avoid, be more devastating or apply extra/stronger debuffs.
• Easy mode has a group of enemy units consisting of 3 trash units. Normal mode has the same group with 2 trash units, 1 tough unit and 1 support unit. Hard mode has the same group with 2 trash units, 1 tough unit and 1 support unit, all of which have been upgraded/improved with higher stats or new abilities.
• Easy mode sends armies to capture player controlled tactical points. Normal mode builds defences around captured tactical points as well as sending armies to capture player controlled ones. Hard mode builds defences around captured tactical points and sends armies to both attack player controlled ones and defend ones under attack by the player.

Easy should be the difficulty for people who really have problems playing, personally I never play this difficulty. Normal should be the difficulty the game is designed around, where most players can jump right in and play while not having to be super skilled. Hard is an enhancement of normal raising the required skill level such that not everyone might be able to play it while not changing gameplay too drastically that a person used to normal feels overwhelmed when first trying.

Create certain events and traps that only occurs at higher difficulties. At least I did this in my campaign. This way people won't be able to accordingly prepare in higher difficulty just by playing lower ones, adding challenge and usability of save-load.

Add some surprise reinforcement for enemy side in higher difficulty.

This is actually bad design practice as you are not increasing difficulty, but rather completely changing the game. One is meant to be able to practice on lower difficulties to help prepare for higher difficulties, after all that is the entire point of having different difficulty levels in the first place.

 

[Daffa]

This is actually bad design practice as you are not increasing difficulty, but rather completely changing the game. One is meant to be able to practice on lower difficulties to help prepare for higher difficulties, after all that is the entire point of having different difficulty levels in the first place.

Even if it's not drastically make any difference? I'll keep this mind at least for future works.

 

[WaterKnight]

Of course that depends a lot on your map/campaign. But I agree that just changing some values is lame. The difficulties should be distinct, adding, what Daffa mentioned, some features to explore. The easiest mode is the one most forgiving where you can play any strategy if you do not screw up generally. The higher difficulties, as Dr Super Good said, are how the game was meant to play in some way but since you do not want to fixate it too much, you can increase complexity which again raises the amount of viable strategies yet are much harder to pick out/execute.

Actually, I found the accessability a bit of a problem. Keeping the difficulties in mind, the additional development workload+testing can be quite intimidating since when you modify some feature later on, every difficulty that uses it would require adjustment. Then as a beginner you sometimes do not know what to select, games are different and in multiplayer you may have to decide for the whole party, maybe someone is a beginner, another one advanced, so the preferences might not match up, which can partially be countered by the interaction design. I mean like the advanced player takes a greater share of responsibility but the novice does not want to feel useless either, so maybe install some abilities that cannot be substituted in effect or that push synergy at certain points.

Some games give you the opportunity to set the difficulty midway between or are like "if you succeed in this quest of higher demands, you will get more bounty", which propagates towards ending stages or grants temporary benefits. This may be mixed with some global resource like time (time race) as a counterweight to indeed render the question of walking different routes a valid one.