User blog:Tecku/TT: Difficulty

Man, it's been awhile since my last blog, hasn't it? With the release of Forstbite Caves, many people have found a source of great joy. However, some complain that it's not challenging enough. Today, I want to talk about difficulty, and how it fits into the game.

Tecku Talks About: Difficultly

Many people on the wiki (Moonshan being the most motable one) criticize Frostbite Caves for being easier than Big Wave Beach and, to an extent, the Dark Ages. However, I do feel that while Frostbite Caves may be easier than the others, it also handles the concept of difficultly better. To understand this, I have composed a theory on how difficult levels can be implement into the game without obstructing player enjoyment. The thoery is divided into five parts: Potential of Challenge, Variety of Base, Zombie Inheritence, Blame Inheritence, and Replayability.

Potential of Challenge

Part one of my theory, potential, is a statement that difficult challenges must be available to the player. These challenges may come in the form of endless zones, set requirements (star-earning pre 1.7), survival zones, etc. No matter what world the players visit, there must be some sort of obstacle that can increase the difficulty of the player. In other words, there must be ways for the player to challenge themselves in every world.

Now, I do feel that Popcap has done an O.K. job on this. Endless zones in particular are great examples of potential difficultly. However, I believe that many sources of challenge was lost in the 1.7 update. Star challenges were great ways to push the player further in their strategic manuvers without shoving them in thier face. But, as is, we still have lots of ways to challenge ourselves. In fact, players who seek difficult challenges can look to this very wiki. The "Challenge of the Day" thread is a great way to keep challenge in the game. Indeed, I feel potential of challenge is met for every level (except Frostbite Caves ONLY becuase its endless zone isn't out YET).

Variety of Base

Variety of Base (title pending) is essentially the opposite of Potential of Challenge, and yet the two go hand in hand. What it means is that the must be more than a few levels in each world that can keep true to the basic formula of PvZ, but also be relatively simple such that the player can enjoy the mechanics of each world. In other words, there must be some levels where I can have fun casually instead of being frustrating. The most important times for this are the first levels of a new world, and levels where a players gets to try out a new plant.

This is where Big Wave Beach failed miserably. Right from the get-go, players are thrown into zombies hordes that escillate way too quick, and many of the early levels have inherintly frustraing ambushes. The first few levels needs to be a phase of experimentation. Players needs to test out strategies to see what new stategies can be made, and how to set up for later levels. In this world, not only do that not happen, but there are almost no relaxing, straightfoward levels later on. I don't want to experiment with Guacodile and Banana Launcher, I just want to stick with my classic strategies.

- "But later worlds need to be harder than the earlier ones!"

Allow me to address this in the next part of my thesis.