Yes, because the playing field isn't level. On a level playing field, the superior player should win. This is why Germany will almost always defeat Canada in international football - because Germany is better at it. Handicapping Germany, or letting the Canadians have more players, doesn't improve the quality of the simulation. It improves the qualtiy of contest, perhaps. But we're not talking about a game; we're talking about a simulation.
There are more layers than just the skill. The difference in skill between Germany and Canada is enough to provide a challenge in an analogous situation in game. But it's not just that. In that analogy, Germans wear shoes while Canadians don't. Germans can substitute players while canadians cannot. Most games are designed in a way that eventually you will beat them. If the enemies are easier to beat that target dummies, then there is something off. Humanoid enemies can still be fair and look the part even with asymmetric mechanics. Basically what I'm asking for in that paradigm, is for Canadians to have harder skin in their feet to compensate for the lack of shoes. We won't be able to observe the difference unless we look for it.
Take DA2 for example. The main observable difference is the health pool and damage numbers. Human enemies look and behave like humans. But the game is balanced in a way that they need x6 times our health to function. If you turn off the numbers from the screen, what is the feature that breaks the simulation? How is it even different than DAO. Without an optimized character, if you do an autoattack duel with a normal enemy, you can see that the percentage difference in health bar for every hit is about the same, even if he does 20 damage and you do 120.
Have you ever watched Let's Play videos on Youtube? Most players are idiots. They'll rush into combat without a plan again and again. And yhe AI we're facing in the game, though, doesn't even get to a chance to learn, because we're facing a new enemy with each encounter. This group of bandits shouldn't learn from the last group's failure, because it didn't witness the last group's failure.
And that's where difficulty comes in. I don't want every difficulty to be challenging, but I want the higher difficulties to actually be difficult. Basically what happens, is that they are the same enemies, but have better stats. It's not good enough. Because the modifier stacking is so strong that you tackle the encounters exactly the same way as you do in lower difficulties. Let the AI learn for higher difficulties. It's so minor that it won't even break my immersion. And it can actually be explained, although the explanation is pretty weak. It has to do with bandit groups knowing how each other fights, so if the player kills one group, the other tries something different. Whatever.
One reason that I like playing in higher difficulties, is because sometimes it adds to my immersion of the game and lets me think in the game's terms. Like for example, someone tells you to do something you don't want to, and your options are either to do it, or kill him. In a lower difficulty, you can do whatever you feel like doing, if you want to roleplay that your character isn't strong enough to kill the other, then you don't try to. In higher difficulties, the enemy can actually be so strong that you take a huge risk by going against his wishes. This adds to the simulation.
I think those two things are synonymous. This isn't NASCAR where each car manufacturer gets different rules to follow in order to produce close racing - this should behave more like real world competition and less like a contrived competition where the objective is that it be even rather than it be fair.
Fair and even are only related when the competitors are roughly equal. As you correctly point out, here they are not.
If you want challenge, that can be done through encounter design rather than by changing the rules. Give the enemies greater numbers, or better equipment (which only works once because then we can loot it - perhaps do this only with bosses), or a superior position. But not mechanical advantages that damage the authenticity and verisimilitude of the setting.
Symmetrical doesn't mean balanced. If and only if everything else is equal then it's balanced. That a notorious problem with a lot of rts games with random map generation. Age of Mythology comes to mind. Map can generate town centers in an unfair position for one player. It can have more gold mines around, or be closer to a player than it should. Which essentially doom the other player if he is at the same skill level. And the funny part is that if the game allows someone to come back from something like that, then it's probably through an imbalanced mechanism that some players wouldn't even use due to sportsmanship.
Rendering the action on screen constitutes acknowledgement. My characters do all sorts of things in these games - off screen. When you played DA2 last, what was Hawke's favourite food?
He never eats in the game, so it has no direct gameplay relevance at all, but it might have roleplaying relevance, and that can have gameplay relevance indirectly. Let's imagine that Hawke really likes cheese, and whenever there's cheese in the room, the smell puts him in a better mood. Suddenly, all those cheese wheels littering Kirkwall matter.
For most single player games I actually do what I call a main run. It's usually the first run and I roleplay the character heavily, in and out of the game. I do that to create concepts for DnD. I even create other characters that interact with the playable character and play out the conversation in my mind. My main run Hawke for example every morning stands in front of a mirror and works on mannerisms and joke routines. Also he considers the part of town that his home is his turf. He may be mostly the funny guy but he has little patience for trouble makers in lower city in act 1 for example.
There was an exercise I learned from a psychology book that you tell a story to yourself, having to speak loudly and a bit faster than you can think. It's pretty fun to do and I use it when I create characters.
Retour en haut
