Nov 27, 05:13 PM

Difficulty Scaling

Table Tennis I would just like to take a moment to say how important it is how a game scales in difficulty. Kotaku has this unfortunate yet hilarious post about how a guy gets angry over Elite Beat Agents, with destructive consequences.

It is extremely important for a game to gradually increase in difficulty as the player progresses. Even when you meet bosses or big events, the player has only developed a certain amount of skill up to that point. If you create an obstacle in the game that is extremely difficult compared to the skill level required up to that point, all you’re doing is frustrating people and making them hate you.

Most of the times when I have abandoned games mid-way have been when there is some seemingly impossible obstacle in the game that I simply cannot pass. After a while it just gets annoying and the game is banished to the bottom of your stack forever. After that, the entire perception of the game revolves not around all the fun you had up to that point, but the unpleasant experience that ended it all.

My recent experience with this was Rockstar presents Table Tennis. I’m going along nicely in the tournaments having a lot of fun, until I am matched against this huge Swedish guy named Jesper (who I refer to as the anti-christ). The guy hits the ping pong ball at like 900 miles per hour and if you try to return one of his shots it like breaks your arm. It was like I had hit a wall. At first it was a challenge. After maybe 5-6 lost matches, it started to turn into something else – a resentment, a hate for this fictitious character and whoever put him in the game. After maybe about 15-20 matches I finally beat him, but not after a lot of mental anguish.

When make your games, make sure the difficulty is scaled gradually!

-Jon
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