Greetings, and hello to everyone!
A while back, I was planning on writing a Tribune on Difficulty and Progression after I finished my first one on the Energy System. That said though, at the time being a Tribune on Monetization would actually be the far higher priority, so a Difficulty and Progression post would take a much longer time.
That said, there was a fairly important part of it that's probably best if it's set up earlier rather than later. As a result, I've decided to set it up as its own thing until then.
Introducing--!
A TRIBUNE EVENT - THE MANIC CHALLENGE
The MANIC Challenge is intended as an exercise in balancing for the difficulty of the game at its highest peak, centered around the experience of the top 5-10% of players who will be challenging Manic difficulty from the beginning of the game and have the highest level of player skill.
The challenge is designed around limiting a players gear/level - basically their numbers advantage - to what we consider normal/average, or slightly above average, for players at that part of the game, and playing through every Manic difficulty episode one by one without deviating too far from that average.
Then, we have players mark down their experiences, either in this thread or in individual google docs, about the difficulty of the fight, the power and game health of individual moves and their equipment/level points when the boss was defeated, to see whether it was at the level we estimate most players of this level to fight at or if it was somewhat higher.
By removing the numbers advantage, we get to see the experience of these boss fights in their purest form, representing the experience these high-skilled players are most likely to have under the fight. By balancing around this point in a way that's difficult, but still healthy from a gameplay experience and enjoyable, we get to push for a difficulty that's still a challenge to strive for while at the same time ensuring that the combat is more fair than frustrating.
Lastly - you are heavily encouraged to report your progression and experiences in this thread or in a google doc, and you are also encouraged to create a new character for the challenge with MANIC in its name - Ex. CloudMANIC, WaterMANIC.
There are four general criteria to be looking at when reporting the difficulty of individual fights or moves
Readability/Mechanical Necessity - how easy or difficult it is to read the tell of an attack, and the difficulty of dodging the ability. How easy or hard is it to avoid making a mistake and how much that's dependent on player skill instead of blind luck
Punishment - The loss of HP or damage taken when a read is failed and a hit is taken
Enjoyment - How enjoyable the fight is, even if it's simple is it a fun experience or is it just frustrating to play against?
Innovation - Does the boss introduce new elements that requires the player to change their strategy to succeed?
Generally, the harder it is to read or dodge an attack or the more often it happens, the less damage it should do. At Manic level every move should at least be a threat, but taking one attack shouldn't deal half HP or decide the fight on its own unless the player is given a clear enough signal to dodge it. The quicker a move is, the more susceptible it can be to latency problems making it unreasonable to dodge as well.
Enjoyment is what it sounds like, it should be difficult in a way where playing better makes the game more engaging
Innovation is generally used to teach the player a lesson about the game going forward - these should be tuned to be strong so the player clearly gets the message being sent, but if they're too quick the player won't be able to get the message well and it should be toned down. Generally adds another layer of balancing carefully to the fight, because you want to make it strong enough that they need to learn the lesson to progress but not so strong that the fight ends before they have a chance to learn it.
If you'd like to skip a MANIC episode, you should at least have challenged it enough to have an understanding of which of its moves/attacks falters in one of these areas. You are also exempt from stages and boss fights which are bugged, such as Grace City - Wolf Cry, Episode 4 (Grace City 3-4) at the time of writing.
By going through the challenge and marking down our results, we'll be able to more finely figure out where the game should be balanced and give more information for the team at Gameforge to tune the game even better.
Good luck, everyone!
