6 ms·

Making difficulty curves in games

173 points by hakkikonu 2mo ago

ComputerPerson 2mo ago
Difficulty settings, though. He mentions them only briefly (in this incredible article). Normal varies so much. As a "cozy" gamer, I want the standard setting to be something I can play without having to switch my context to to the internet for help or a guide. This was one of many triumps of Baldur's Gate 3: the difficulty settings make sense in how they translate to gameplay, and the default is fun.
- teamonkey 2mo ago
  What is ‘normal’ is unfortunately subjective and can mean a lot of different things to different people. Also often what is listed as ’hard’ is often normal, because most people will see ‘normal’ and decide they’re better than that and have a miserable old time.
  - ComputerPerson 2mo ago
    This reminds me of UX. Seems like it could be a subdomain. I think I disagree with your basic point, though what you say about normal vs. hard is funny. I'm fortunate enough to work with a UI/UX pro, and these things have right answers; they're incredibly obvious after they've been explained to you.
  - orbital-decay 2mo ago
    There's nothing wrong with opinionated design. The dev has set the bar this high and chosen this thing to represent difficulty levels, either you like it or you don't. Catering to everyone is impossible.
    - teamonkey 2mo ago
      This is true, but you don’t want people to bounce off the game immediately, so they have a bad time and refund it before giving it a proper go. This can happen if they feel it’s easier or harder then expected.
  - parallax_error 2mo ago
    Makes me think of a game like FTL, where “easy” was challenging for quite some time, and now I play normal if I want a challenge!
reactordev 2mo ago
Experience curves are just as important. However, this article reminded me of this meme https://imgur.com/gallery/eve-online-learning-curve-jj16ThL https://imgur.com/gallery/eve-online-learning-curve-jj16ThL
nkrisc 2mo ago
This will depend on the game of course, but the best is when you can adjust the difficulty of mechanics individually. City builders do this a lot where you often have lots of difficulty settings you can adjust to tailor the game to your preferred playstyle. I’ll also say this: if you’re making a game and you add in a mechanic or mini-game that is not typical of the genre, make it optional or provide a way to skip it. Few things things in gaming piss me off more than a memory or Simon Says puzzle in an MMO or similar. If I wanted to play puzzle games, I’d be playing a puzzle game, not your game.
- chihuahua 2mo ago
  Ghost Recon Breakpoint is a good example of lots of difficulty settings. You can turn off some annoying parts of the game, set enemy tactical difficulty, disable some survival aspects of the game if you don't care about them, and adjust the amount of on-screen information in several steps. For the latter part, you can have a minimap that shows the location of enemies once you've seen them, or not, and you can have waypoints that show the direction of some objective, or not. With all of the on-screen stuff disabled, there would be an awful lot of searching required to find objectives. It's pretty cool that everyone can have the amount of difficulty/frustration they desire.
  - Ukv 2mo ago
    > You can turn off some annoying parts of the game [...] cool that everyone can have the amount of difficulty/frustration they desire Depends on the type of game, but I'd generally prefer those decisions be made by the game designer. If there's frustration I want it to feel like overcoming a concrete obstacle, rather than it being self-hindering that accomplishes nothing and that I could've just avoided.
- proc0 2mo ago
  This works for sandbox or simulation type games, but otherwise I think difficulty sliders are like going to a restaurant and getting all the cooked ingredients in separate plates for you to combine. While that can be fine and cater to the maximum number of people, it's a safe approach that wastes good opportunity cost of a great plate of food catered by someone with the skills to do it. If a game can afford a designers to really think what the experience should be, I think the gold standard should be no difficulty slider. Playing the game should be a self-consistent experience that gets more difficult as you get better at the game, and gating the final content with skills is very rewarding and makes the experience feel more "real" than if you just get a super configurable game where everything can be turned on/off.
hartator 2mo ago
I never liked this kind of games - skills are locked depending where you are at the stories. Multiplayer FPS, strategy games, and sport games are still very enjoyable without these mechanisms.
orbital-decay 2mo ago
>Dynamically adjust the difficulty depending on how well the player is doing. <- This is actually magic sauce and could be the topic of a whole talk. Please never do this. This deceptively looks smart to a game designer, but actual players read this like a book and then it feels cheap and massively unrewarding for them.
- ragequittah 2mo ago
  Agreed. Something like Dark Souls where an enemy is an enemy and it'll smash you if you're underleveled is so much more satisfying than something like Oblivion where enemy health inexplicably goes up based on your level. It also gives you the satisfaction of going back to earlier areas that were scary and laughing off the puny enemies.
  - ryandrake 2mo ago
    Totally different when it comes to multiplayer matchmaking, though. There I wish games were even more aggressive and exact at matching you to players around your skill level. Nothing worse than casually sitting down after work for a quick multiplayer PVP game of any sort and getting totally annihilated by a streamer who plays 20 hours per day.
    - Scene_Cast2 2mo ago
      There's a trade-off between how long you wait and the skill spread of the team. IIRC at the very top, for DOTA2, the pros complained enough for the devs to make a "wait longer" matchmaking mode.
    - deleted 2mo ago
      [deleted]
    - para_parolu 2mo ago
      SBMM also a double-edged sword. Some people like to play game relaxed. Random matchmaking gives them chance to win. But SBMM means having sweaty games all the time. I do prefer SBMM but I’ve seen people upset about it
stillpointlab 2mo ago
I've been watching a lot of let's play content on YouTube for incremental games (it's like an ASMR thing) and after watching a lot of these games it is clear that pacing a video game is a challenge. Sometimes the player finds a sneaky way to increase their progress that busts the game, other times they miss the correct path and get stuck in a painful grind. It is also very obvious when the game dev has targeted a play-time metric and forces the game into that metric. Incremental games really expose this dynamic since they are generally pure upgrade mechanic attached to some kind of dopamine generator (flashy lights, rhythmic sounds, etc.)
- willis936 2mo ago
  Oddly specific niche jumpscare. Which games? Cookie clicker and universal paperclips are the household names, but reactor idle based off of ic2 has been my favorite gameplay-wise. The 2D adjacency bonus mechanics scratch the same itch tactical games have but without the stakes of messing up strategy.
  - stillpointlab 2mo ago
    Each game itself is mostly throw-away (although a few have some impressive graphics bling which must have taken some effort). I've been watching a channel called "Idle cub" [1] and he posts a new game every day (well, almost, sometimes he'll play a demo and then later the full game). Seeing a massive stream of games that all surround the same 12 or so mechanics has been eye opening. The games range in duration from ~2 hours all the way to several days of content, although most premises seem to get old at around 4-6 hours. At first I was doing research for my own game ideas, now I'm kind of mesmerized by the variety and the general relaxed atmosphere of these idle games. 1. https://www.youtube.com/@idlecub https://www.youtube.com/@idlecub
rnjesus 2mo ago
maybe i’m in the minority of gamers overall.. i much prefer when there’s no difficulty setting (like dark souls, for example) but rather an enormous amount of tools the game gives you to solve a problem. i know there are problems with this approach, but games without a difficulty setting “feel” more like a game to me for whatever reason
- cccchara 2mo ago
  an old school monster hunter gamer feels the same, and being stuck is part of the fun
chknkachunga 2mo ago
[dead]
msephton 2mo ago
I use the "saw" stepped difficulty curve (it's a very Nintendo thing) in my recent game BELTRUNNER (Web, Wii, Linux handhelds) https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2026/07/30/beltrunner-game-design-postmortem/ https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2026/07/30/beltrunner-game-d...
satgo1546 2mo ago
Unrelated to the article, but keyboard scrolling is not working on this site. It seems to be deliberately disabled with a script called t1.js. I wonder why. Please, don't mess with keyboard navigation on a blog.
saidnooneever 2mo ago
steam reviewer attitude difficulty curve seems pretty accurate!
willmadden 2mo ago
You missed the Terra Invicta "you think it's easy, but you'll be dead in 40 hours because you are underperforming" curve.
Thanemate 2mo ago
Relevant: I'm just sad that most turn-based JRPG's nowadays start off with you thinking about which move is appropriate for each situation, but halfway through they end up to making you use the same 3-4 moves over and over again. Trails games are even worse because there's tons of them who feel like they never gotten properly play tested. Killing a level 120 boss with a level 60 squad because you can delay the opponent's turn just isn't satisfying, especially when the boss is meant to be (narration-wise) so much stronger than you.
proc0 2mo ago
I haven't seen this connection made, but difficulty curves in video games seem to resemble Campbell's Hero's Journey. There is an initial call to adventure, then some kind of mentor, then confronting the shadow, then a return of the shadow, etc. If the game industry wasn't so myopic about recreating reality in graphics, the larger AAA titles could be exploring this more in depth. I think this would hit the jackpot of immersive experience as it could tap into the same psychological mechanisms.
- gchamonlive 2mo ago
  That's because the hero's journey is an attempt to study the physiology of story telling, so it's not restricted to the typical written romance. Games just like books and movies are often trying to tell a story and it'll eventually follow Campbell's book, even if unaware or not trying to. I'd say that writers do know about this a lot, the problem is that games are becoming progressively more expensive and riskier to make, so money will push new titles to be safer and more boring, which could be why you perceive them as unaware of this, because why not wouldn't they want to make a good game?
  - proc0 2mo ago
    I'm talking about the gameplay experience though. So applying Hero's Journey to the player through game design. I see what you mean though.
imdsm 2mo ago
Steam reviewer attitude haha!
psvv 2mo ago
This is an okay introduction, but it shouldn't be considered prescriptive. As with most art forms, the very best and most interesting examples treat rules like these as starting points, not end points.

173 points by hakkikonu 2mo ago

Difficulty settings, though. He mentions them only briefly (in this incredible article). Normal varies so much. As a "cozy" gamer, I want the standard setting to be something I can play without having to switch my context to to the internet for help or a guide. This was one of many triumps of Baldur's Gate 3: the difficulty settings make sense in how they translate to gameplay, and the default is fun.

teamonkey 2mo ago
What is ‘normal’ is unfortunately subjective and can mean a lot of different things to different people. Also often what is listed as ’hard’ is often normal, because most people will see ‘normal’ and decide they’re better than that and have a miserable old time.
- ComputerPerson 2mo ago
  This reminds me of UX. Seems like it could be a subdomain. I think I disagree with your basic point, though what you say about normal vs. hard is funny. I'm fortunate enough to work with a UI/UX pro, and these things have right answers; they're incredibly obvious after they've been explained to you.
- orbital-decay 2mo ago
  There's nothing wrong with opinionated design. The dev has set the bar this high and chosen this thing to represent difficulty levels, either you like it or you don't. Catering to everyone is impossible.
  - teamonkey 2mo ago
    This is true, but you don’t want people to bounce off the game immediately, so they have a bad time and refund it before giving it a proper go. This can happen if they feel it’s easier or harder then expected.
- parallax_error 2mo ago
  Makes me think of a game like FTL, where “easy” was challenging for quite some time, and now I play normal if I want a challenge!

reactordev 2mo ago

Experience curves are just as important. However, this article reminded me of this meme https://imgur.com/gallery/eve-online-learning-curve-jj16ThL https://imgur.com/gallery/eve-online-learning-curve-jj16ThL

nkrisc 2mo ago

This will depend on the game of course, but the best is when you can adjust the difficulty of mechanics individually. City builders do this a lot where you often have lots of difficulty settings you can adjust to tailor the game to your preferred playstyle. I’ll also say this: if you’re making a game and you add in a mechanic or mini-game that is not typical of the genre, make it optional or provide a way to skip it. Few things things in gaming piss me off more than a memory or Simon Says puzzle in an MMO or similar. If I wanted to play puzzle games, I’d be playing a puzzle game, not your game.

chihuahua 2mo ago
Ghost Recon Breakpoint is a good example of lots of difficulty settings. You can turn off some annoying parts of the game, set enemy tactical difficulty, disable some survival aspects of the game if you don't care about them, and adjust the amount of on-screen information in several steps. For the latter part, you can have a minimap that shows the location of enemies once you've seen them, or not, and you can have waypoints that show the direction of some objective, or not. With all of the on-screen stuff disabled, there would be an awful lot of searching required to find objectives. It's pretty cool that everyone can have the amount of difficulty/frustration they desire.
- Ukv 2mo ago
  > You can turn off some annoying parts of the game [...] cool that everyone can have the amount of difficulty/frustration they desire Depends on the type of game, but I'd generally prefer those decisions be made by the game designer. If there's frustration I want it to feel like overcoming a concrete obstacle, rather than it being self-hindering that accomplishes nothing and that I could've just avoided.
proc0 2mo ago
This works for sandbox or simulation type games, but otherwise I think difficulty sliders are like going to a restaurant and getting all the cooked ingredients in separate plates for you to combine. While that can be fine and cater to the maximum number of people, it's a safe approach that wastes good opportunity cost of a great plate of food catered by someone with the skills to do it. If a game can afford a designers to really think what the experience should be, I think the gold standard should be no difficulty slider. Playing the game should be a self-consistent experience that gets more difficult as you get better at the game, and gating the final content with skills is very rewarding and makes the experience feel more "real" than if you just get a super configurable game where everything can be turned on/off.

hartator 2mo ago

I never liked this kind of games - skills are locked depending where you are at the stories. Multiplayer FPS, strategy games, and sport games are still very enjoyable without these mechanisms.

orbital-decay 2mo ago

>Dynamically adjust the difficulty depending on how well the player is doing. <- This is actually magic sauce and could be the topic of a whole talk. Please never do this. This deceptively looks smart to a game designer, but actual players read this like a book and then it feels cheap and massively unrewarding for them.

ragequittah 2mo ago
Agreed. Something like Dark Souls where an enemy is an enemy and it'll smash you if you're underleveled is so much more satisfying than something like Oblivion where enemy health inexplicably goes up based on your level. It also gives you the satisfaction of going back to earlier areas that were scary and laughing off the puny enemies.
- ryandrake 2mo ago
  Totally different when it comes to multiplayer matchmaking, though. There I wish games were even more aggressive and exact at matching you to players around your skill level. Nothing worse than casually sitting down after work for a quick multiplayer PVP game of any sort and getting totally annihilated by a streamer who plays 20 hours per day.
  - Scene_Cast2 2mo ago
    There's a trade-off between how long you wait and the skill spread of the team. IIRC at the very top, for DOTA2, the pros complained enough for the devs to make a "wait longer" matchmaking mode.
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
  - para_parolu 2mo ago
    SBMM also a double-edged sword. Some people like to play game relaxed. Random matchmaking gives them chance to win. But SBMM means having sweaty games all the time. I do prefer SBMM but I’ve seen people upset about it

stillpointlab 2mo ago

I've been watching a lot of let's play content on YouTube for incremental games (it's like an ASMR thing) and after watching a lot of these games it is clear that pacing a video game is a challenge. Sometimes the player finds a sneaky way to increase their progress that busts the game, other times they miss the correct path and get stuck in a painful grind. It is also very obvious when the game dev has targeted a play-time metric and forces the game into that metric. Incremental games really expose this dynamic since they are generally pure upgrade mechanic attached to some kind of dopamine generator (flashy lights, rhythmic sounds, etc.)

willis936 2mo ago
Oddly specific niche jumpscare. Which games? Cookie clicker and universal paperclips are the household names, but reactor idle based off of ic2 has been my favorite gameplay-wise. The 2D adjacency bonus mechanics scratch the same itch tactical games have but without the stakes of messing up strategy.
- stillpointlab 2mo ago
  Each game itself is mostly throw-away (although a few have some impressive graphics bling which must have taken some effort). I've been watching a channel called "Idle cub" [1] and he posts a new game every day (well, almost, sometimes he'll play a demo and then later the full game). Seeing a massive stream of games that all surround the same 12 or so mechanics has been eye opening. The games range in duration from ~2 hours all the way to several days of content, although most premises seem to get old at around 4-6 hours. At first I was doing research for my own game ideas, now I'm kind of mesmerized by the variety and the general relaxed atmosphere of these idle games. 1. https://www.youtube.com/@idlecub https://www.youtube.com/@idlecub

rnjesus 2mo ago

maybe i’m in the minority of gamers overall.. i much prefer when there’s no difficulty setting (like dark souls, for example) but rather an enormous amount of tools the game gives you to solve a problem. i know there are problems with this approach, but games without a difficulty setting “feel” more like a game to me for whatever reason

cccchara 2mo ago
an old school monster hunter gamer feels the same, and being stuck is part of the fun

chknkachunga 2mo ago

[dead]

msephton 2mo ago

I use the "saw" stepped difficulty curve (it's a very Nintendo thing) in my recent game BELTRUNNER (Web, Wii, Linux handhelds) https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2026/07/30/beltrunner-game-design-postmortem/ https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2026/07/30/beltrunner-game-d...

satgo1546 2mo ago

Unrelated to the article, but keyboard scrolling is not working on this site. It seems to be deliberately disabled with a script called t1.js. I wonder why. Please, don't mess with keyboard navigation on a blog.

saidnooneever 2mo ago

steam reviewer attitude difficulty curve seems pretty accurate!

willmadden 2mo ago

You missed the Terra Invicta "you think it's easy, but you'll be dead in 40 hours because you are underperforming" curve.

Thanemate 2mo ago

Relevant: I'm just sad that most turn-based JRPG's nowadays start off with you thinking about which move is appropriate for each situation, but halfway through they end up to making you use the same 3-4 moves over and over again. Trails games are even worse because there's tons of them who feel like they never gotten properly play tested. Killing a level 120 boss with a level 60 squad because you can delay the opponent's turn just isn't satisfying, especially when the boss is meant to be (narration-wise) so much stronger than you.

proc0 2mo ago

I haven't seen this connection made, but difficulty curves in video games seem to resemble Campbell's Hero's Journey. There is an initial call to adventure, then some kind of mentor, then confronting the shadow, then a return of the shadow, etc. If the game industry wasn't so myopic about recreating reality in graphics, the larger AAA titles could be exploring this more in depth. I think this would hit the jackpot of immersive experience as it could tap into the same psychological mechanisms.

gchamonlive 2mo ago
That's because the hero's journey is an attempt to study the physiology of story telling, so it's not restricted to the typical written romance. Games just like books and movies are often trying to tell a story and it'll eventually follow Campbell's book, even if unaware or not trying to. I'd say that writers do know about this a lot, the problem is that games are becoming progressively more expensive and riskier to make, so money will push new titles to be safer and more boring, which could be why you perceive them as unaware of this, because why not wouldn't they want to make a good game?
- proc0 2mo ago
  I'm talking about the gameplay experience though. So applying Hero's Journey to the player through game design. I see what you mean though.

imdsm 2mo ago

Steam reviewer attitude haha!

psvv 2mo ago

This is an okay introduction, but it shouldn't be considered prescriptive. As with most art forms, the very best and most interesting examples treat rules like these as starting points, not end points.