How can you make the player feel underpowered but not weak?

[Mycroft Holmes]

Simply tailor games better to the actual narrative. For example smarter but less numerous enemies and or have allies helping you.

A good example would be Mount and Blade Warband. Until you're leveled fairly high(or a mounted archer fighting infantry,) anything more than a 1v1 is fairly difficult. And even when you are highly leveled, other more dangerous characters are still difficult to engage when outnumbered. This is however mitigated by the fact that you command an army. If you get talented at fighting 1v1 or small groups, so long as you have an army with you, you can rack up kills because the enemy will be dealing with all your soldiers thus taking the pressure off of you. This is probably the best compromise for a game involving a lot of deaths in the story.

 

[Varrdy]

The original Silent Hill did this very well - Harry Mason was just your average Joe flung into a nightmare. As such, we was pretty crap with the limited range of firearms on offer and all he had to warn of impending nasties was a battery-powered transistor radio!

This stayed the same throughout and really added to both the realism and also the sheer sense of pant-shitting terror the game managed to induce in my younger self!

 

[Iori Branford]

The few powers you have should let you do many creative and challenging things, and every problem in the game should be solvable by doing those things well enough.

Yea, since getting seriously into the biz I don't really see genres much anymore.

 

[Angelous Wang]

A very easy way to do it is to make the character very fragile (1-3 hit death), but provide them with a completely manual dodge/block system.

That way it comes down to skill (and luck).

The character is completely able to defeat any enemy provided the player can dodge/block it's attacks, but even a few well placed or lucky hits from any enemy and the character will be pushing up daises.

Very much like Dark Souls.

Doesn't work very well in FPS though.

 

[Sectan]

I downloaded a mod for Fallout: NV that I think did the trick. It drastically increases all weapon, explosive and melee damage. So it has a way of making quick shots, cover and stealth a must.

I guess it's just making player skill an important role in the gameplay instead of giving the player a bloated health pool and bloated damage.

 

[SadisticBrownie]

I've been playing Mirror's Edge again since the bundle gave me it pretty much for free, and I think it's a good example. Faith is competent, but she just can't deal with a bunch of armed men like Lara somehow could. She even struggles with single opponents at times and I think that's good. Of course, making the combat an absolute mess isn't exactly a valid game strategy, but I think it turned out pretty well.

 

[Drops a Sweet Katana]

I can think of a few things for FPS's:
-Add mechanics that make aiming slightly more difficult when you are inexperienced with a weapon. For example:
*Strong, unpredictable recoil that throws the gun in pretty much all directions when fired continuously
*Add a sway to the front sight when you aim in as the character tries to line up the sights
*The player character could have a chance of fumbling with and dropping a magazine as they try to reload, lengthening the reload by having to retrieve the magazine or losing ammo if they didn't have a chance to pick it up.
*Add a stress mechanic whereby the likelihood or magnitude of the above effects are increased when under fire

-If the PC encounters a new weapon they will be shit with it. An inexperienced person thrown into a combat situation will not know how to work every gun under the sun with any sort of proficiency.

-Experience with weapons and certain associated actions should be gained passively and be relatively unnoticed. Learning is a gradual process after all. You can show the numbers somewhere, but don't make a big deal of an increase in weapon proficiency. That can lead to things like boosting which will shatter the feeling of weakness you're trying to create.

-Allow the player options most of the time, but sometimes force the player into combat. It can throw someone off guard and make them feel as though they aren't in control of the situation, thereby magnifying the feeling of weakness.

-Do NOT alter the damage, accuracy and other stats of weapons as the player becomes more proficient. Firearms don't work like that. Being shit with a gun doesn't affect ballistics and weapon operation.

I think FPS's are the hardest genre to effectively pull this off, due to the reliance on a player's input skill. So in order to give a feeling of weakness and then progression, you generally have to resort to disrupting the player's input in some way, jeopardising player enjoyment as a result. If I had any sort of programming experience, I'd love to give this a try.

 

[Bad Jim]

Unfortunately people want power fantasies, and they want them out of the box.

I think this is the root of the problem. Lots of people want to blow stuff up without much challenge, and money talks. And without challenge, we feel like juggernaughts.

We really just need challenging games. If the new Tomb Raider had been anything like Tomb Raider 3, no-one would have been complaining about her being overpowered.

 

[white_wolf]

I don't know how you balance that OP you're playing a shooter game the point is to mow them all down.

Contrast that with Siren (in some places Forbidden Siren) You can get a gun in this game one of the 10 characters actively carries his gun on him but you're terrified to use it! The monsters never officially die here they come back after a short break and making loud sounds like gunfire makes all the zombies come out. This game with some characters did great at making you extremely scared to move forward, and even if you had a weapon you still didn't feel much better but this is a horror game scared and lack of situation control is the point.

I like Remember Me how between missions Nillin is wrestling with what she's doing, physically rewriting a persons memory shouldn't be waived off and she is scared at first but like Lara she too gets over it for the sake of plot.

Maybe for balance make the first 5 kills meaningful for this person. The first do a cutscene showing the green hero scared maybe even mortified of what they did then for the next 3 deaths her/his in game posture is changing and maybe they're upset stating how they have to do this, its survival, it has to be done, by 4 they're doing a bit better portrayed as going numb to it, and by 5 they've accepted they'll have to kill more. But a game showing a lead doing this takes a strong plot and good pacing to back it up.

Another scene is when Snake talks to Naomi over comm after his torture that scene is profound humanizing Snake showing he is a man who can feel pain he's seeking her comfort. A scene like this if well placed can do tons for a green character to evolve and balance out all the murdering with some sense show how the character is dealing or not dealing with the moral issues or trauma issues associated with all they're being required in game to do for the sake of survival. Raiden from MGS2 is how not to do the character struggling mentally with issues he is the worse coming of as a cry baby man child despite his background. So MGS done right MGS2 done wrong.

 

[Gottesstrafe]

Give the player the ability to deal with obstacles in their way, but put severe limits on it. That's it. If you're making a game with guns, have severely limited ammo (both in the amount for you to scavenge and the amount you can carry) and plenty of enemies that are competent at killing you (or cannot be permanently killed). Make the guns powerful enough that they can eliminate the threats in front of you, but your ammo count scarce and the number of enemies large enough that simply running and gunning all the time is not an option. Short term gains made by eliminating the enemy in front of you can become long term losses when balanced with the prospect of fighting with less ammo in the future thanks to previous impulsive expenditures of resources (this includes health kits).

You mentioned The Last of Us, which works as a good example of this because while it is entirely possible to play through the game fast and loud, it emphasizes stealth. Instead of shooting on sight, you can sneak around and avoid enemies or take them out silently to conserve ammo. The game even has an entire mechanic based around the use of sound to locate and distract your enemies to reinforce this. The game also keeps the stealth option from being overpowered by not making silent take downs instantaneous, as well as making some enemies immune to stealth attacks. Every time you try to take down an enemy silently, you risk being discovered by another enemy during the middle of an attack or when they stumble upon the body of your latest victim. Weapon variety adds a whole new dimension to the limited ammo aspect of the game with weapons that can penetrate armor (making them invaluable against armored enemies), as well as a single silent weapon that is balanced by having projectile travel time thrown in the mix (making it almost useless in a fire fight) as well as making a loud noise when you miss.

If you want to show character growth and killing proficiency in game play, make the player character weak and clumsy in the beginning and gradually turn them into Billy Badass by progressing through the game. Make combat sticky and unreliable (i.e. melee combat with large recovery frames and gun combat with lots of gun sway, shortened iron sights zoom, and long reload times) and stealth slow and clumsy (i.e. your character makes more noise while sneaking, breathes louder when enemies get closer, or is more likely to be spotted while hiding). RPG-style stat progression favors this type of game play, slowly making your character more proficient in whatever they're doing as they gain more experience and lose their inhibitions (i.e. like introducing the ability to know from what direction you're being fired at after your character has been in several fire fight).

 

[briankoontz]

This is a fundamental psychological problem within the industry as a whole. Consider the development of id's game engine, where John Carmack's primary focus was not on the gamer or the game experience, but rather on maximizing the efficiency and technical quality of the engine, especially for speed.

So we have game developers competing to see who can construct the sexiest race car, with noone paying much attention to the driver, the surrounding road conditions, or the pedestrians. The result is that we get game after game with engines constructed for maximum technical output, with the result that the actual human being playing the game is forced to play as an inhuman superhero.

Once game developers learn to construct the game engine around the player experience instead of the other way around, it will make for better games for all of us.

A step in the right direction is to simply stop making killing the primary focus of basic game design. The game industry's OCD concerning swords and guns is out of hand.

The survival horror genre has taken the best approach of a killing game, or sometimes not even killing such as in Slender, by means of protagonists who are much more human than the run 'n gun standard game god protagonist, and that genre inspired the Last of Us to it's betterment.

 

[veloper]

"Underpowered but not weak" = many HPs and a low damage output.

You shouldn't do this, if you don't want to bore the player.

Powerful but vulnerable/weak is the way to go.

 

[LAGG]

Don't make combat rewarding
Make it so that survival is the only goal and only reward. Fight or flight. No drops from defeated enemies.

Make players respect the enemies
Reduce the number of enemies drastically and make it so the player is never put in a "clear the room" stage unless it's a boss fight, in which case it should be only 1 or 2 enemies max. All other encounters must be escapable without defeating the foe, and defeating them must have a price, not a reward. Make it sometimes possible to only take out foes temporarily, this should be less costly but also harder or require more planning. If you throw the player in a room with 30 foes and lock the doors (*cough* Dead Space), all you're doing is telling them that them can take on 30 foes alone. Don't let your players lose respect for the enemies.

Contrast
Give the players a panic resource of limited use that makes them not so underpowered. Let the players themselves judge if, when and how to use (no turret defense sections). Never use it as a foretelling of what's to come (no ammo refill room right before encounter). Feeling week is only possible if you know/understand what being strong means, and if you have to rely on something you know would solve your problem and you don't have it anymore but once had, it's far worse that just being eternally week, because in that case you can simply adapt to being week. You don't want the players adapting to being week, and preventing that means making them feel strong once in a while, specially if relying on something external and limited to do so. Good old PacMan already knew that.

Furthermore:
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/LuisGuimaraes/20121030/180414/Survival_Horror_Then_and_Now.php

 

[The Wykydtron]

How about the Arkham games? I mean I know you're BATMAN but you can get gunned down at any point in the stealth sections if you make any mistake and you keep fighting perfectly in the combat bits even if you're on 1HP.

Batman as a character, and I suppose many superheroes is about looking invulnerable when you know for a fact you're one fuck up away from death. I think the Arkham games pulled that off rather well.

The worst example of someone who's supposed to be less powerful is Ezio in his final Assassin's Creed game. In the prologue he goes a bit powerless and you lose most of your combat efficiency because he's getting old and he was really injured.
"Oh" I thought, "does this mean we will have to adapt to an Ezio coming to terms with the fact that he can't keep jumping around now his youth has come and gone?"

Nope, he's even more overpowered and the age thing was thrown out the window. Good job throwing away an interesting character development opportunity.

 

[Mr F.]

I loved Far Cry 3, but I have yet to finish it due to one thing bugging me beyond belief.

I wish he would stop saying "Urgh, Gross" or words to the effect of. Bro, you just killed a Cassowary with a knife. Earlier today you killed a Komodo Dragon with a knife. A little bit earlier you shot about a dozen people and stabbed half a dozen with a knife. You dropped on someones head and shoved a knife into their brain.

Could you stop bitching about hunting? Please?

That broke the game for me. Genuinely. I liked the whole starting out green, I loved the crafting and the leveling system and everything else. But him bitching and whining because he has to skin an animal, an animal that was actively trying to eat him that he stabbed to fucking death really, really bugged me. Also...

Spoiler: Not really a spoiler, just a bit of exploration that bugged me

I found a cave full of cocaine. Like, crates of the stuff. Broke immersion right there. Why are these pirates trying to be pirates in the middle of nowhere when they have enough cocaine to buy a small nation outright? Seriously, just sell that, buy an island and move!

Anyway, on the subject you said? I really do not know. Like at all. Its a bit of a contradiction in terms. Not played the last of us (No PS3), I really want to though so I cannot comment on that. I have never really played a game that got the balance right. GTA4 got the balance slightly wrong in my eyes, I very rarely felt I deserved the deaths I was dealt, it more felt cheap whenever I died.

 

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

I think there are 2 good ways for this... on is to make it trial-and-error hard, ie, lots of checkpoints, and make it so it's difficult and you die often... whilst this can interfere with the flow of the game, it will make you feel underpowered, and that every move you make has to be thought out carefully... there should be punishment for making the wrong decisions!
Far Cry 3, whilst good, sucked at this, and you could often find yourself stupidly driving into the middle of enemy territory, get shot at by 10 guys with automatic weapons, and survive by high tailing it away afterwards... or, as I found once, I managed to clear a post without being detected just because a tiger wandered in whilst I was watching and killed everyone for me... :/ Bit easy there! (Although lucky!) If you had to restart the checkpoint a few times until you managed to find a tactic that worked, then it would make you feel more vulnerable.

The other way is the way old survival games like the early Silent Hills and Resident Evils were... and to some extent games like Condemned and its sequel, and that is to make the controls slightly clunky, and to allow the enemy have certain cheap shots on you (ambush and surprise normally, although better reach and faster were others) This. coupled with lack of ammo and means to defend yourself, meant that it was sometimes therefore better in situations to run when attacked instead of fighting. A fast moving feind attacking from your 4 or 8 o'clock when you have the turning speed of a merry-go-round (as opposed to the waltzer of FPSs) meant that your reaction was to run and not defend, even when you had weapons and the like! On top of this, there should be things that you cannot defend against... Such as enemies that cannot be killed, and have to be avoided. Farcry 3 again, imagine if the heavy armoured guys couldn't be killed, and you just had to hide and avoid, or could only be killed with some sort of hard to pull off trap... that would make you feel more vulnerable and amateur!

 

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

As mentioned, make the enemies as strong as you. Same stats, same guns and so on.

SWAT 4 comes to mind. You needed to use your team and your fancy equipment because the enemies can have the same weapons and can be more numerous.

I think the Flashpoint games were similar to this as well! You would be cut apart by enemy fire in seconds if you didn't plan ahead, and if you were outnumbered then you would also have a higher chance of being hit. The enemy also don't die with one shot either, so gun fights would take quite a while and increase the chance of being outflanked.