Random encounters with hard to beat foes

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Original post by Coz *and* the rare hard ones which should be avoided to stay alive ... Suppose that the hard enemies can look like the first kind of enemies or like your allies, and only when they attack you can see the difference between an ally or a common enemy and a hard one.

How are you supposed to avoid them? Sounds like a lot of death without any error on the player's part.

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How it feels not knowing when an ally isn't one really?

I truck it alone. The comrades available are usually pretty dumb anyway.

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which kind of enemy would you like to fight more? would you be afraid of the hard enemies?

I would prefer the hard enemies. But I would like to have a clue when to expect them.

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How do you think other players will react?

To put it politely, I think most players are wimps. Most don't like difficulty up and to the point where they need to stop and think for more than five minutes.

Yeah, I guess I'm a wimp then. When I encounter a challenge in a game, the 'ooh neat, a challenge' attitude wears off after about 30 seconds, then it becomes 'why the fuck would the designers try to piss me off like this'.

"Normal" enemy strength variation is not binary (easy vs lethal) but gradual: there are practically harmless enemies that can be hunted as a sport, mediocre enemies that are better avoided but are not very worrying when the player needs to fight them, dangerous enemies requiring some preparation and skill, hard enemies for major battles and monsters the player should run away from and who aren't meant to be defeated.
In fact there are different dimensions: time required to win the fight, interesting and sophisticated special tactics and tools to figure out, general skill (e.g. aiming well in a FPS), danger posed to the player (probability of getting hurt and gravity of the possible damage), and others.
Every kind of enemy has its place in an interesting game.
Flattening the wide palette of enemy roles to only two colours (two bad ones that should be used very sparingly or not at all) doesn't seem useful.
Replacing what should be climactic fights with random nasty surprises seems even less useful.

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Original post by Kest How are you supposed to avoid them? Sounds like a lot of death without any error on the player's part.

Even thought the appareance of the hard enemies is unexpected and happens when you are close enough for them to attack you, the player's character should be fast enough and/or have a dodging move. Even thought the harder enemies are fast moving, they should be slightly slower running than the player's character, thus allowing the player to escape unless he chooses to fight or is trapped.

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Original post by Kest Quote: which kind of enemy would you like to fight more? would you be afraid of the hard enemies? I would prefer the hard enemies. But I would like to have a clue when to expect them.

The idea is not to kill the player's character just when he finds one of these hard to beat enemies. Even if the player doesn't reacts the moment the attack starts and is hit once, that doesn't means the player has lost the fight.

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Original post by Kest To put it politely, I think most players are wimps. Most don't like difficulty up and to the point where they need to stop and think for more than five minutes.

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Original post by Daniel Miller Yeah, I guess I'm a wimp then. When I encounter a challenge in a game, the 'ooh neat, a challenge' attitude wears off after about 30 seconds, then it becomes 'why the fuck would the designers try to piss me off like this'.

It might be that most players do enjoy the challenge but like Daniel after a while it wears off, also, it seems Daniel has an idea of how a game should be which seems to be a game that should look difficult but be easy in reality. I wonder what people who don't expect that the hard enemies appear think about this.

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Original post by LorenzoGatti "Normal" enemy strength variation is not binary (easy vs lethal) but gradual: there are practically harmless enemies that can be hunted as a sport, mediocre enemies that are better avoided but are not very worrying when the player needs to fight them, dangerous enemies requiring some preparation and skill, hard enemies for major battles and monsters the player should run away from and who aren't meant to be defeated.

My intent is not to follow the usual learning/difficulty curve; the idea is to have the player learn the basics with the easy enemies then learn almost everything about beating a hard enemy during the fight. The next time he fights another hard enemy he will have to learn new tactics since most of the things he learnt with the previous one won't be useful against another. The player will get better overtime, but while all the other aspects that make a player's skill improve, tactics will have to be rethought.

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Original post by LorenzoGatti In fact there are different dimensions: time required to win the fight, interesting and sophisticated special tactics and tools to figure out, general skill (e.g. aiming well in a FPS), danger posed to the player (probability of getting hurt and gravity of the possible damage), and others.

I wouldn't want to make the fighting time too long for the player to get bored or too little for him to feel it was amazingly easy. The general skill should improve over time. The danger would remain low with easy enemies and high with hard enemies.

But the tactics is what I want to focus on, with the players having to create appropiate ways of countering the enemy. Preparation must be done during the fight and fast(since the enemy comes unexpected and if you don't react quickly you will lose), also, the character should always have everything he needs to survive and the answers should be logical; nothing that feels like obscure knowledge or random guessing.

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Original post by LorenzoGatti Every kind of enemy has its place in an interesting game. Flattening the wide palette of enemy roles to only two colours (two bad ones that should be used very sparingly or not at all) doesn't seem useful. Replacing what should be climactic fights with random nasty surprises seems even less useful.

I want to make these enemies look like rare apparitions, not just the next enemy in the streght chart. I want the player to feel calm, and then in the next moment to be struggling to keep the character alive, that when the character is running away the player feel fear, hartred and excitement towards the hard enemies; to have the player do things to his character that had not tried before, to face the fear with untested abilities, to win surprised and think "that was soooo awesome".

However I would obviously like to avoid frustration with the game.

[Edited by - Coz on June 30, 2006 2:32:59 AM]

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Original post by Coz Quote: Original post by Kest Quote: which kind of enemy would you like to fight more? would you be afraid of the hard enemies? I would prefer the hard enemies. But I would like to have a clue when to expect them. The idea is not to kill the player's character just when he finds one of these hard to beat enemies. Even if the player doesn't reacts the moment the attack starts and is hit once, that doesn't means the player has lost the fight.

Yeah, but you said it yourself, that the rare hard ones should be avoided to stay alive. I like fighting things that can't be beaten. It's one of my favorite things. If the game world says it can't be done, then I can literally spend hours having fun just to prove it wrong.

For example, the situation in Half Life 2, where the enemies keep spraying at you from landing choppers, and everyone keeps yelling at you to escape into that metal door that locks off. I ignored them, stood my ground, and fought for hours. They just kept coming and comming. I must have killed hundreds of soldiers and elite forces. In the end, I lost the battle. But it was still a blast trying.

But the problem I'm having with your situation is that the player is basically jumped. He doesn't really have a chance to dig in and take advantage of everything he can, because he'll have no idea what he's facing. It's probably just me, though. I don't even really like random encounters. I like to know what's going on, and what I need to prepare for. I hate walking blind, and I hate fighting weak enemies.

Why not make it a King of Monsters type of thing? Each species of monster has a king or queen. These are far bigger and more powerful versions of the normal monster. The player would never normally encounter these monster instead they would have to hunt them out in their lair. The reward for killing the monster king could be some unique reward and the elimination of all monsters of the type from the game.

Kill the Black Ant Queen and you'll never fight another black ant again. You could even work it into the story. Maybe different monster clans are at war. So the player can choose to side with red ants or the black ants in the ant war by eliminating the opposing sides queen.

Hmmm, the hard monsters should be avoided if what you want the most is to stay alive. However what I meant is that the player should be able to resist for a short amount of time(if he is a t full health) so I don't mean to kill the player before he can choose between running or staying. The player should know how to use the abilities of his character and trust that he is prepared enough, he could learn over time for example by letting him have 1 fight against a hard monster where the monster will not beat the character but retreat before dealing the finishing blow.


About the King of monsters, the problem with it is that I want the uncertainty of when you are going to be attack or even if you are going to be attacked by a strong monster.

[Edited by - Coz on June 30, 2006 4:46:15 AM]

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Original post by Coz It might be that most players do enjoy the challenge but like Daniel after a while it wears off, also, it seems Daniel has an idea of how a game should be which seems to be a game that should look difficult but be easy in reality.

I think Daniel's idea is that games should be fun. Suppose you have a 50% probability of surviving a hard encounter. One such encounter is likely to be enjoyable. You have a 1.5% probability of surviving six such encounters.

Unless there is considerable progression of the storyline or your character's abilities between the battles, those encounters aren't fun.

If I can save the game between each encounter, then I'll will just restore and try again if I lose. When restoring from a save is so common it just becomes one of the player's abilities, it defeats the point of having encounters of different difficulty levels, since all possible encounters are equally easy.

On the other hand, if I can't save the game between each encounter, I won't play your game.

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I wonder what people who don't expect something think about this.

Don't expect what? The Spanish inquisition?

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It might be that most players do enjoy the challenge but like Daniel after a while it wears off, also, it seems Daniel has an idea of how a game should be which seems to be a game that should look difficult but be easy in reality. I wonder what people who don't expect something think about this.

Nah, I would like it to be a challenge, but I don't want it to be so hard that I "get stuck".

edit: it's 1 in the morning, i can't spell

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Original post by Daniel Miller Quote: It might be that most players do enjoy the challenge but like Daniel after a while it wears off, also, it seems Daniel has an idea of how a game should be which seems to be a game that should look difficult but be easy in reality. I wonder what people who don't expect something think about this. Nah, I would like it to be a challenge, but I don't want it to be so hard that I "get stuck". edit: it's 1 in the morning, i can't spell

Has anyone played the Gremlins II game on the very first GameBoy?

I remember it was quite an easy stroll up to the second Boss, where I would get killed in four moves, no matter what those moves were. It was a giant Bat Gremlin, who launched four little bats which followed you around the screen, and you couldn't fend them off or escape them. You would loose health when touched, and could only touch the Boss when the little bats had touched disappeared. Since I couldn't make them disappear in any other way than by letting them touch me, I couldn't beat the Boss. I tried harder for about two days (I was young, energetic and completely stubborn at the time. Reading what I've just written, I see that I haven't changed much...) and then threw the cartridge out of my window.

Difficult ennemies are good. But make sure you can beat them.

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Original post by Nathan Baum Unless there is considerable progression of the storyline or your character's abilities between the battles, those encounters aren't fun.

The only plus for the game advancement itself would be that beating one of these hard battles gives great rewards, with nothing like it anywhere else.

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Original post by Nathan Baum If I can save the game between each encounter, then I'll will just restore and try again if I lose. When restoring from a save is so common it just becomes one of the player's abilities, it defeats the point of having encounters of different difficulty levels, since all possible encounters are equally easy. On the other hand, if I can't save the game between each encounter, I won't play your game.

I should have mentioned it in my original post, but because I removed many parts of it(see below), I did not mentioned that enemies would not have to be beaten. They are just in the middle of your path and will attack you. Depending on the enviroment you might have less or more space to flee from battles, or your enemy might be blocking the escape route, so sometimes you might have to force your exit.

The point of having different difficulty levels is to provide a constant challenge to the player, while never making it too hard, right? well, not always. There are games with enemies that are not meant to be beaten(thought these are usually a very small percentage). The player should have been given a warning at the beginning (like I wrote before, maybe a first fight that shows how strong these enemies are).

Some goal like gathering an item is supposed to be given, something that requires you to move from one area to another. If the item is adquired then it should automatically save, and the next time you lose you would reestart from that point.

Also, remember that the encounter are random, if you save and find a hard enemy and lose, is more likely that you don't find it at the same spot or even before the next save.

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Original post by Nathan Baum Don't expect what? The Spanish inquisition?

Sorry, I tried to correct my post. My first post originally was 3 times bigger, I trimmed it down so it wouldn't seem too long, probably that bit of confusing text was a result of the same XD

And I mean the people who don't expect the hard enemies to appear. Like they are happily doing their thing or bashing weak baddies and are convinced that one of the hard ones will attack them.