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

[OneCatch]

Spoiler: snip

As for how to balance it, there are a few things I'd suggest:

No one-hit melee kills

No hit detection on the HUD or as audible cues. That 'squelch' sound effect when you headshot is something that's rampant in games at the moment - it's one of those things you just can't unhear.

Make damage a little varied. Instead of bullets doing a fixed amount of damage, give them a reasonable range to add a bit of unpredictability. Preferably extend this to damage inflicted on the player (within reason).

Another thing that might help is restricting field of view. Metro 2033 is certainly effective because of it (though admittedly that's a horror game, so might not be applicable to FPS in general).

None or restricted radar

Decent AI, decent AI, decent AI. (that was the major weakness in Far Cry 3 imo)


It's about making things a little more unpredictable for the player. If you can pull off headshots or quick kills with certainty then you don't feel vulnerable. Even if you've got restricted health and movement, or are weaker than the enemies, if things are predictable, then you'll feel overpowered.

Conversely, if things remain unpredictable and fluid, forcing you to replan, lose momentum, then you're more likely to feel vulnerable as a character.

I agree with most of this post, except for the limiting FOV. Some people get nauseous if the field of view is too low, and that is never a good thing.

In addition, making the controls a bit clunky can help (Last of Us did this to great affect in my opinion), in addition to making the game control somewhat differently than standards of the genre, forcing experienced gamers to learn the controls and make them fight against muscle memory.

Another thing is restricting resources. This has to be done carefully, as it can cause the player to never use some tools because they are hard to get a hold of. Severely restricting the amount of resources carried is a pretty good compromise, as the player can find ammo or grenades easily, but can't just spam them (again, I think Last of Us did this pretty well).

Yeah, the FOV one was always going to be contentious one in my post wasn't it?
Maybe not reducing it, but instead having it stuck to the standard one so you can't set a ridiculously wide field of view (like 160 degrees or similar) and thus spot people creeping up on you. The other thing with wider FOVs in general is that you generally have to boost player character movement speed to stop it looking weird, which is OP in it's own right.

Not sure about control restriction - but then I am a self-entitled PC gamer who's used to getting his own way when it comes to mapping controls! I'd completely agree when it comes to things like increasing the time it takes to ADS, or go into sprint, recover accuracy after movement, change equipment, that kind of thing. Good example; the Operation Flashpoint series.

And damn it, I forgot resource restriction. That's another really important one. Maybe not go quite as extreme as Metro or Stalker, but even something like the rather tame restriction on heavy weapons in the original F.E.A.R would be an improvement on most current games.

 

[Arakasi]

I've been playing Dishonored a lot and I've noticed that on the hardest difficulty, it's about perfect for me. It makes the gameplay feel both realistic and challenging, though I do tend to get 1 hit killed a fair bit.

 

[OneCatch]

No one-hit melee kills

THIS!!!

I really, really couldn't take to Far Cry 3 for the simple fact that I was playing the role of this soft, inexperienced civilian, yet he was able to wrestle and dispatch enemies silently with melee kills at the mere push of a button. It was made and immersion almost impossible.

It's even more gratuitous because of the way you can do it at any time that you're vaguely pointing at them and moving towards them. I wouldn't so much mind if you could do it when you were right behind someone and it took a few seconds (maybe a bit like Hitman Absolution did with the non-lethal takedowns where you have to hold the button to complete the move). You could then upgrade the skill to take less time, to be able to do it from a little bit further away, or something.

But the kind of wild lunging attack that you could do in about 1/3 of a second was downright ridiculous. I'm not even that devastating when playing as a transhuman supersoldier in Crysis.

 

[Fox12]

Well, TLoU made every encounter feel like a puzzle. All the levels were carefully constructed in such a way that you had to use your mind to win a fight, or else avoid an enemy. Fighting got you killed. The character doesn't win because they can chew through bullets, or because their tougher, but because they are actually more experienced fighters. Arkham Asylum was similar. If you charged an assault rifle then the assault rifle typically won. This is difficult to pull off in an open world game, where the levels are not as tightly constructed, forcing you to typically rely on force more than tactics.

 

[Thedutchjelle]

I like the S.T.A.L.K.E.R series. You're powerful, for if you plan correctly, and are in favorable circumstances, you can fight a small army. But even with the best gear, a fight in poor circumstances against an enemy with poor gear isn't without risk. Against two it can be suicide. As a result your greatest power is the quick save (which you'll also need since the games tends to crash a lot)

This!

The STALKER NPC AI is quite decent and will attempt to flank you based on where they think you were last. They also get increasingly better at murdering you even though the scrub bandits in the first map can already do so quite handily. STALKER punishes brute force and hasty combat as virtually every NPC can kill you in a few hits (even the environment can kill you easily) but if you go slow & steady and know how to properly fight the AI you can beat it.

 

[SiskoBlue]

I think one of the main differences between weak and underpowered is choice, and knowledge. Take Demon/Dark Souls. You start out fairly unequiped and underpowered compared to what you can become.

But (especially in Dark Souls) you can go where ever you want. You won't survive most of the paths to begin with, no matter how skilled a player you are. But, you choose. Weakness is only frustrating when it feels artificial. When it limits your options with false blocks (like poor gun sway, nerfed controls).

You can't fight how or whatever you want to fight, you can't go where you want to go. You feel constricted by the game. Take away artificial constrictions and you might be in the same situation but you are allowed to test those limits. Like a child you have to learn the world and what you are capable of. As you grow stronger, become better equiped, learn how things work, you can then go back and test yourself against tougher and tougher situations. So you may feel both weak and underpowered but it fits the context, it feels natural and intuitive.

What you're talking about is bad game design. Jason(?) in Far Cry 3 gets over his squeamishness WAAAAY to quickly in my opinion. What they could have done is made it harder for him to stealth at the beginning, meaning enemies came at him more aggressively. Teach the player to be more cautious. You could also subtley shift their down-iron-sights view from less zoomed in, to more zoomed in, making accuracy harder to begin with. I've seen other games where recoil and reloading get naturally quicker the more you use a particular weapon. You can do these things so subtley a player may not even notice.

Of course that gives the issue of making the game harder to play to begin with but that's where world/level building needs to be carefully balanced so there's context and the progression feels intuitive. In most cases where people complain about games, it's nearly always cases of poor context, illogical balancing, non-intuitive pathways. It's just like movies. You can make people believe there are zombies running around and dragons are a real threat if you give clear, consistent rules to the universe. Games that try to sell you on an idea they haven't earned make for cognitive dissonance.

 

[Benni88]

Can't believe no one has mentioned it yet. Journey [PS3] does a fantastic job of making the player feel underpowered and vulnerable. Towards the end they reduce the effectiveness of a mechanic you've relied on throughout the rest of the game. Soon after, they remove it altogether. When you're movement, something which was previously free and easy, has been hindered you feel powerless.

 

[somonels]

Plenty of ways, none of which can be implemented post-release or even during balancing. A way needs to be built as a mechanic and convey and fit the feel and tone of the game.

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

Can't believe no one has mentioned it yet. Journey [PS3] does a fantastic job of making the player feel underpowered and vulnerable. Towards the end they reduce the effectiveness of a mechanic you've relied on throughout the rest of the game. Soon after, they remove it altogether. When you're movement, something which was previously free and easy, has been hindered you feel powerless.

Cool, did not know of that.

 

[G-Force]

How do your folks feel about control in games. Jason and Lara controlled very fluid and felt fun to control. Joel does control very responsive but there is a slower feedback with his actions (gun sways more, punches take time to recover after landing etc.)

Unresponsive controls and see as a major sin and a sign of artifical difficulty so is there a balance you can walk?

 

[George Learmonth]

The main issue I have with a lot of games is that they are power fantasies. They make you very powerful to deal with a situation, which puts you on an uneven footing when facing your challenge. I much prefer being on equal or even underpowered terms with the challenge, which is why I like games like overgrowth, dark souls, ArmA and DotA. When you overcome something that is more powerful than you, the experience is more worthwhile than using overpowered abilities to do the same. Although power fantasies aren't always bad, but they are better when you feel weakness enough for the power to seem more significant (arkham asylum does this very well).

 

[Thaluikhain]

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.

 

[Saelune]

A counter button. In the Smackdown vs Raw wrestling games, I prefered agile lean characters. Could not lift most characters, but was good at reversals, and so was I as a player, and was like a bar of soap. As for things like say, a horror game, I think the same thing can apply. If you feel like you cant kill whatever is chasing you, but can counter it well enough somehow, it an make you feel underpowered, but not weak.

 

[Azure-Supernova]

Conversely, if things remain unpredictable and fluid, forcing you to replan, lose momentum, then you're more likely to feel vulnerable as a character.

I think the big hurdle is the competence of AI, I've yet to play a game that gets it right. Higher difficulty is almost always simply increasing enemy health/damage resistance and decreasing the players as it goes up. But when we achieve AI that change tactics based on the situations they face with the player. I'm not sure how that's going to work exactly, I'm hardly a programmer, but I think that's really what's needed to make difficulty feel more natural. Unpredictable enemies that work around and against us, rather than acting as cannon fodder between you and the next checkpoint.

Problem is, as one programmer said in an interview with Game Informer a while back, when they make an AI that can react to any amount of success to a human... they react in psychic ways because the only way they know what the human does is via the human's input. So, for instance, if a player takes a back alley to get around the enemies, adaptive AI simply re-routes every guard within 10 miles to the new location even if the player did nothing to alert them, because the AI can't read actions, just inputs.

I was thinking in terms of AI that learn, though I'm not sure how possible that is within the confines of games. A way around psychic AI might be to use scout tactics and communication between the AI NPCs, something like an AI director from L4D. If you've played any of the Batman games, at a certain point in the game you find that the vantage points that you've (most likely) come to rely on (the stone gargoyle things) are being booby trapped. The first time this happened to me I freaked out a little, because I lost the advantage for a brief moment. But of course, it's scripted (they don't start booby trapping grates and vents if you used those more) and you can adapt to it quickly.

 

[SanguiniusMagnificum]

Dark Souls: You're just one dude(ette) with the uncanny power of immortality. You're fighting monsters that are much bigger, stronger and faster than you are in a dying world where almost everything and everyone is trying to kill you. You will get burned, stabbed, frozen, squished and petrified. You're just one human in a land of mighty gods and powerfull demons. The only way that you can survive is by knowing how, when and where you will die, by having superior equipment and sheer willpower. Enjoy!

Hotline Miami: You're a one-hitpoint wonder, just like (almost) everyone else in the game. You are alone, the enemy is in force. You. will. die. It's up to you to be fast enough, smart enough and lucky enough to shoot, crush, slash and stab your way through the game, leaving a mountain of corpses behind you. Enjoy!

 

[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.