The Difficulty Slider

Decided this may warrant its own thread so I made a new one instead of posing this question in the jumping thread. Warning, this thread may be artsy-fartsy.

Difficulty. In most games I find the difficulty slider or settings to be fairly arbitrary. They tend to just change some numbers around, or in the case of doom, decide what and how much spawns. It is also actually a lot of work to support various difficulties in maps, and the more levels of difficulty, the harder it is. What makes a map "Hurt me plenty!" vs "Hey, not too rough?" An extra medkit? An archvile where there normally wouldn't be one? (which difficulty is 'normal'?) Difficulty, especially in FPS games has always been somewhat arbitrary to me, though I can understand its purpose. To set difficulty of the game to a level that enables you to be challenged and yet still complete the game.

I am new to doom mapping, but not necessarily to map design or game design. I have kind of always taken the approach to difficulty as I have to any other aspect, such as aesthetic, sound,, theme etc. Part of the creativity of the author and his vision for the creation (if he has one). These are things that are entirely up to the discretion of the artist. As a result I tend to design the whole map around one difficulty and don't really consider the rest, as the difficulty is part of the experience I am trying to convey. Not something separate from it. I want you to experience the difficulty the way I imagined it, in the same way I want you to experience the layout or the theme.

In practice, this essentially means, at least for my first map pack, there won't be any difficulty changes. What ever you choose the game play will be the same unless you choose Nightmare! for obvious reasons.

I would like to hear from other mappers (seasoned ones, hopefully) your take on this subject. Do you always design the maps for each difficulty? Do you spend a lot of time on it or do you just arbitrary throw stuff in/remove stuff for each difficulty. What is your design philosophy on difficulty and how it should be considered? Am I being too philosophical and lazy? :)

(which difficulty is 'normal'?)

There's no such thing as "universal HMP (or HNTR/HMP) difficulty"; you have to choose the baseline difficulty of your mapset. You might decide to make a wad full of ultra-challenging maps. Or you might set your sights on easy maps that even your grandma can complete on UV. That's your North star, and you adjust the other difficulties around that.

When you playtest a map extensively, you should have an idea of what the toughest encounters are, of where the map derives its difficulty (e.g., whether it's individual set pieces, whether it's a sparsity of health, whether it's dickishly placed chaingunners, whether it's a roving cyberdemon encountered far before the player has the resources to kill it, etc.). You can tone those elements of your level down on the lower difficulty settings, and playtest those settings to make sure the easier version of the map is still fun.

You should probably study a bunch of good maps (and play them on multiple difficulty settings) to get a sense of how experienced mappers handle this. One thing: resist the temptation to just randomly remove monsters scattershot on lower difficulty settings. If you have six relatively low-threat imps on a rocky ledge on UV, there's no rule that states you have to reduce it to five on HMP and four on HNTR. In fact, in certain encounters, it's often the case that adding monsters can make things easier, particularly when they infight more readily and/or serve as meat shields.

I'm a minor experienced Doom mapper and tend to fiddle with other map editors frequently but only a select few games I dedicated to. My first Doom wad has 6 maps but for a first it involves a range of 3D floors, Slopes, Slade content, Asset modification, ACS scripting, Prop designs, Triggered Events from subtle to major, highly detailed and themed maps etc. So don't pass me off too soon haha.

Like yourself I design my maps for one difficulty, however I intend to include multiple difficulty settings once I complete all 30+ maps of my dreamed Megawad. I think designing the difficulty for Medium is a good start. Granted player skills vary so my Medium may be your easy or visa-versa but I do deliberately design my maps to be beatable without death. I never found dying and repeating recent content fun, it only feels like a punishment for sloppy playing imo.

I'm not sure if it's possible but when or if it gets to that stage I'm going to add in more closet traps and monsters to make various situations more challenge with barely more ammo and medkits rewarded. This will result in a player needing to react faster, aim better and dodge well less he takes on the save frequently approach.

Well, so far my maps are completed from pistol start and death less. Then again, I also think archvile jumping is trivial and have included it in one map [for a secret only]. There is only one section in one map id consider sorta unfair, and I may still change it. Most of the events and such in my map are also ACS scripting, so I would need to alter scripts for each difficulty.

Unrelated to single player, but some multiplayer WADs use difficulty settings to change the weapons which are available. The only caveat to this is: ITYTD halves damage and gives double ammo, NM gives double ammo. So to make ammo more plenty then AltDeath should be used or just give more ammo on Skill 2/3.

Mechazawa said:

I would like to hear from other mappers (seasoned ones, hopefully) your take on this subject. Do you always design the maps for each difficulty? Do you spend a lot of time on it or do you just arbitrary throw stuff in/remove stuff for each difficulty. What is your design philosophy on difficulty and how it should be considered? Am I being too philosophical and lazy? :)

I consider difficulty settings to be very important even though I rarely play away from UV, myself. Occasionally I'll be away from Doom for an extended period of time and it takes me a while to get back in the groove, and unfortunately, considering the difficulty of most wads, I'm limited to playing the IWADs in order to play any map from start to finish without dying a hundred times.

To give you a one-shot answer, I'd probably consider The Plutonia Experiment to be the best model for appropriating your skill settings to this day.

Some advice I've gotten from Insane_Gazebo (creator of Sunder) was to make your maps as hard as possible, and work backwards until you find that level of difficulty you can enjoy. If you consider yourself too skilled to see your own maps through the eyes of someone inexperienced, or perhaps not skilled enough to properly test your hard maps, I created some Dehacked patches that might help you.

I was inspired by the way baseball players put those weighted sleeves on their bats to practice their swing before they step up to the plate. It puts a sort of "gameplay filter" that makes Doom harder or easier without disrupting its core mechanics too much. It helps you to understand what your maps might feel like through the perspective of a more or less experienced player. Hopefully that will help you tune your maps to your liking. I've used it on a few of my maps before and as far as I know, people who have played them didn't find any evidence that I used them.

That is actually pretty interesting. When I finish the last level of my wad I shall give my wad a few run through with these to see how it goes. Thanks.

What is Dehacked anyway?

Gustavo6046 said:

What is Dehacked anyway?

The wiki reveals all:

http://doomwiki.org/wiki/DeHackEd

Mechazawa said:

I want you to experience the difficulty the way I imagined it, in the same way I want you to experience the layout or the theme.
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What is your design philosophy on difficulty and how it should be considered? Am I being too philosophical and lazy? :)

That would only make sense if every player was the same person. How can everybody have a certain difficulty level you're imagining? Your level will be "easy" (I've seen insane maps called this) to some, and impossible to beat for others. You can't control that.

I think it makes sense to incorporate multiple difficulty settings, especially if your map is on the super hard side. Though luckily, players can just include a text file and alter the difficulty of your map themselves with ease anyway. Doom is a very customizable experience.

40oz said:

I consider difficulty settings to be very important even though I rarely play away from UV, myself. Occasionally I'll be away from Doom for an extended period of time and it takes me a while to get back in the groove, and unfortunately, considering the difficulty of most wads, I'm limited to playing the IWADs in order to play any map from start to finish without dying a hundred times.
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I created some Dehacked patches that might help you.
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I was inspired by the way baseball players put those weighted sleeves on their bats to practice their swing before they step up to the plate. It puts a sort of "gameplay filter" that makes Doom harder or easier without disrupting its core mechanics too much.

Similarly, lately I've been using custom difficulty settings to make any WAD playable for me, no matter how crazy it is. It's been pretty fun, a good way to try these crazier wads. Since you do that kind of think anyway, why do you feel you're limited to IWADs? Why not fire up Sunlust or something with 200% ammo and monsters with 50% health or something for example? Beats not playing it.


As for what to do for lower difficulties, I'd say adding plenty more health and ammo is one step that is always welcome.

I've just got to this point in a map I'm working on, and calculating difficulty has been something I haven't been looking forward to! I was thinking of starting with the Easy setting and then working harder, it somehow seems a simpler process to start easy and gradually make things tougher until it reaches a natural point than design something really difficult and then try and simplify it. I'd worry you'd lose some nuances.

At least on this particular map the whole thing is played only with the shotgun (and starting weapons), so that simplifies things. I guess just lots of playtesting is in order!