Character as Difficulty.

[WindKnight]

Random thoughts fizzing around in my brain, mainly started as a musing on how often the harder difficulties in a game generally are given names to give the implication that the player is 'better', while often making you feel weaker given how much faster you take damage, and harder it was to inflict damage on enemies, when the idea came to me - why not embody the actual difficulty a a specific character going through the same events.

Easy would be the hardened veteran, with better aim, better knowledge of how to make his shots count, and how to avoid or minimise damage, with the less skilled characters having less enhancements, thus making the game harder. Making the rookie - or even maybe a civilian - the hardest difficulty would be more fitting, and in my mind make the fact someone like that got through more interesting or impressive.

this could be combined with a roleplaying element - the easiest difficulty, veteran, would have maxed stats and abilities, with the higher difficulties starting with lower stats, but growing stronger as the game goes on, but not being able to be as powerful as the veteran

 

[Mr.Cynic88]

I think that's a good idea. It probably doesn't happen because developers would have to split their work between a bunch of characters rather than focus on the guy who will be on the cover. Still, I would love to see somebody produce something like that.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

That's a terrific idea from where we're standing on the issue of difficulty. But wouldn't we normally pan a game like this for offering, say, four or five characters to play with through the same plot? Difficulty alone isn't a good selling point for replayability, I think. Each character would have to take a slightly different path and follow a different story, at least.

 

[krazykidd]

That's a terrific idea from where we're standing on the issue of difficulty. But wouldn't we normally pan a game like this for offering, say, four or five characters to play with through the same plot? Difficulty alone isn't a good selling point for replayability, I think. Each character would have to take a slightly different path and follow a different story, at least.

The difficulty doesn't have to be unlocked , just maybe certain dialogue , and the character models . Sounds like a good idea , except for the fact that most people that play games have those words associated to the oposite difficulty . Meaning rookie is easy and vet is hard .

 

[Diablo2000]

That's a terrific idea from where we're standing on the issue of difficulty. But wouldn't we normally pan a game like this for offering, say, four or five characters to play with through the same plot? Difficulty alone isn't a good selling point for replayability, I think. Each character would have to take a slightly different path and follow a different story, at least.

The difficulty doesn't have to be unlocked , just maybe certain dialogue , and the character models . Sounds like a good idea , except for the fact that most people that play games have those words associated to the oposite difficulty . Meaning rookie is easy and vet is hard .

The first Resident Evil did that, Chris path was slightly different from Jill but Chris is the dificult mode of that game,he doens't have the lockpick so it means he got to get the small keys to open some drawers, he also doesn't start with the pistol and he fights 2 final bosses at the end.
So it has been done before in a rather popular game, I believe that can be done again.
RPG does that a lot too with classes, there are always some classes who are more dificult to play than others.

So is not a thing unheard off...

 

[XMark]

The earliest example I can think of for this is The Oregon Trail, where at the start you decide if you want to be a banker, carpenter, or farmer. Farmer was the poorest to start with and banker was the richest.

 

[NeutralDrow]

The Toperia mod for Terraria does that, I recall.

I think Sonic Heroes does, too, but in a different way (the paths are different depending on team, but the team capabilities don't differ much).

 

[BrotherRool]

Alpha Protocol does this (along with a normal difficulty system) you can choose to be a recruit who has no starting skill points or abilities, or a veteran who has crud loads of skill points and starts off good at everything.

On top of that, recruits and veterans get different dialogue options based off their (lack of) experience and there will be some different lines and reactions towards them because of their background

 

[Gatx]

Dark Souls has the Deprived class.

Other than in a game where you could create a character like a WRPG where something like this is easily achievable with mechanics, I don't think there'd be a point to such a system. Either they need to input varying differences into each difficulty of the campaign to acknowledge this new character, or they just outright ignore him in which case it'd just pretty much be a regular selectable difficulty.

 

[bug_of_war]

It's a good idea, but they probably wouldn't implement it in fear of confusing their players. I can assume that most people would get it by reading the description of the difficulty level (like in Deus Ex Human Revolution it had a quick summary of what the experience would be) or just the basic knowledge that when set out like:

Veteran
Soldier
Rookie

The top level tends to be the easy one. However I can easily see the game industry fearing that people could get confused and would choose veteran or rookie believing they were getting hard/easy. It's just one of those unnecessary risks that really aren't that risky but will probably never be used.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Dark Souls has the Deprived class.

But is that REALLY a disadvantage? You have 11 of every stat and most classes' starting armour is useless anyway. The club is a decent weapon, the only real downside is the plank shield. The only reason I don't use it at all is the stat spread means unnecessary levelling for virtually any build.

OT: I do like the idea, and many games have different characters to use (as opposed to decidedly over or underpowered ones, although some are designed to start weak and get stronger or vice versa), but I prefer flexibility in build and being able to tailor your difficulty by gameplay.

 

[DioWallachia]

Uff...you almost give me a hearth attack with that title.

I thought you were about to suggest something like having ONE character alone but you can choose a moral code that may or may not make the game even more hard, and that also has repercutions on the plot as people try to understand the reasoning of why the character is doing it AND they will call you out as hypocrite of you don't adhere to your code.

 

[gamernerdtg2]

Nice thought. I think unlocking difficulties creates replay value...in theory anyways.
You could have the standard three - novice, normal, and hard, and then unlock another three catagories with your thinking involved. That might confuse folks but it'd be interesting.

 

[Gladys Knight]

The part you should consider is what is the point if all three characters are the same? And if they're not the same how do you account for those who may not be Hard level players but like the Hard level character?

It just seems to make more sense, allow more freedom and accomplish more to have difficulty be over arching rather than character specific. There simply isn't much to gain with character specific difficulty as opposed to how much you can lose and how much trickier it can be to implement.

With a standard setting character imbalances don't have as huge of an effect. But imagine making a game where the hard mode character had some sort of glitch or ability that made hard mode easier than the other modes. It's a little different han if a character was just good across all modes.