68 replies to this topic

[anikom15]

I have these ideas for my quest:
No fairy fountains
Enemies don't drop life (or magic?)
Enemies drop less rupees
No clocks
Link only starts with 3/4 of his life, except at the beginning. Heart containers and pieces refill life.
No F6

Do you think this will make things hard enough, generally speaking?

Edited by anikom15, 16 February 2014 - 08:11 PM.

[trudatman]

yes, generally typing.

[FnrrfYgmSchnish]

Definitely sounds preferable to "10 DEATHKNIGHTS AND WIZZROBES EVERYWHERE!" type difficulty.  Potentially hard (depending on how other things in the quest are set up), but not in a way that seems cheap or inherently unfair, just the kind of difficulty where you have to be more careful because your resources are more limited.

[coolgamer012345]

I like the idea but it seems a bit much without atleast one fairy fountain or something on the overworld.

But everything else seems like it is fine.

[Moosh]

No fairy fountains

This seems fine to me. Health refilling tiles aren't a feature I particularly like to use either.

 

Enemies don't drop life or magic

This is the big one that bothers me. If enemies don't drop life or magic and you don't have fairy fountains and, how do you recover your life and magic? I assume you won't be putting pots in your dungeons since those are basically the same as fairy fountains.

 

Enemies drop less rupees

This is a terrible idea. Making enemies drop less rupees just makes rupee grinding take longer and nobody likes grinding.

 

No clocks

No complaints here. The clock is a stupid, luck based item and I only keep using them because I keep forgetting to change the enemy drop sets.

 

Link only starts with 3/4 of his life, except at the beginning. Heart containers and pieces refill life

This seems kinda pointless because enemies don't drop health anyways. The point of changing the starting HP is to punish the player for dying or continue warping by making them have to grind their hearts back. If heart containers and pieces are the only thing that refill life, why not just give the player less life and have it refill all the way?

 

I think all of these sound fine except for enemies not dropping life or magic. Instead of removing life and magic drops altogether, I'd suggest decreasing the chance of hearts dropping and maybe making magic a little more common. Not having magic doesn't really make things harder for the player, it just makes it really annoying when they find a magic trigger and have to go back to get more magic.

[anikom15]

To recover life and magic you can buy various recovery items from shops, both instantaneous and in bottled form. You can hold up to four potions in this quest (by finding empty bottles).

I'm on the fence about magic being dropped. I've already changed the rupee frequency and it hasn't made much of an effect. There are times when I'm low on rupees but never a time where I'm totally broke.

I want to encourage (force) the player to search for secrets and use the spoils trading system (enemies drop spoils). Also there isn't any rupee traps or false pay for info or any evil stuff like that.

I feel like it's not hardcore enough though. I was thinking of eliminating ammo drops. Right now they're reduced to only one unit, 5%-10% chance. Does anyone else have any crafty ideas?

[Valientlink]

In my opinion those are more of annoyances (but then again so is difficulty)

It seems like hard enemies is genuine since it takes some skill to say, kill a blue wizzrobe with 3 hearts and the wooden sword.

[anikom15]

Yes I want a retry type of quest where you run out of bombs halfway through the dungeon, yell ugh, not have enough magic to use Farore's Wind (there's no F6 in this quest), die, cry, and then have to spend 60 rupees to get your life back to full.

Is that annoying enough?

EDIT: I should clarify my intent. The idea is that the player not experience this tragedy often, but rather learn to be more cautious about everything.

Edited by anikom15, 16 February 2014 - 07:54 PM.

[KingPridenia]

Hard definitely. You have to keep in mind that you have to be careful treading the line between Nintendo Hard and Fake Difficulty. I'll give me two cents on each item:

 

No fairy fountains

I could kind of live with this in a quest intended to be Nintendo Hard.

 

Enemies don't drop life or magic

I'm kind of iffy about this one. It makes things tedious if you have magic intensive puzzle you botch and now you have to run all the way out of the dungeon just to try again. That and for general fighting, it will just make players want to AVOID combat at all costs, and at least for me, I don't see any fun in running away from everything. If you just have shutters in every room, then it becomes tedious because would YOU want to run a gauntlet 10 times just because you keep dying? Sure if you're going for a Liberation of Hyrule or Armageddon Quest style quest, go for it. Otherwise, it will probably turn many off.

 

Enemies drop less rupees

As Moosh stated, people don't like to grind. I'm one of the few that don't mind it as much, but combined with the above, it doesn't add to the challenge. It just makes everything tedious and annoying. People aren't going to have the patience to spend 3x longer killing monsters for Rupees. That and several deaths that result from grinding. I wouldn't want to spend an hour grinding up 50 Rupees, especially when I have to play ridiculously conservative. I normally play defensively anyway, but where's the fun in drawing out fights for 3 minutes when you should be able to do them in 30 seconds and can't because of how fast you get dropped?

 

No clocks

I actually support this one. Clocks are often just get out of jail free cards that turn a quest into a luck-based mission more than based on player skill. I really don't like infinite clocks. Even temporary ones are a bit iffy. I personally wouldn't have permanent clocks just because of again, the element of luck.

 

Link only starts with 3/4 of his life, except at the beginning. Heart containers and pieces refill life.

A word of caution; when Link only has 3 hearts, he continues with a mere 2 hearts. To be honest, I noticed many people despise quests that don't continue you with full health, and I personally have mixed feelings.

 

Pros of 3 Heart / Partial Life Continues:

-Prevents F6 abuse, so people can't just F6 as a means of free healing

-Makes the game feel more like the console versions

-You actually have to fight like you have some sense because of the first point

 

Cons of 3 Heart / Partial Life Continues:

-Widely disliked, can add an element of fake difficulty

-Having to take the quest at a slower pace may turn people away

-Not everyone is going to have the patience to spend a lot of time restocking just for another attempt

 

I can see where you're going with your quest idea, but I have to caution you to avoid that line between fair difficulty that is genuinely hard and something where every death is an unfair profanity filled ragequit marathon. I mean there are other ways to make things difficult without making people want to strangle the quest's author. I'm not saying anything like don't make this quest, but I just wanted to make some points. I mean people generally don't like being forced into cheating (in this quest's case, flagrant save scumming) or relying on cheap tricks just to make it to the next screen.

Edited by RedmageAdam, 16 February 2014 - 08:01 PM.

[anikom15]

Hmm maybe I should make an easy mode for the American audience (!)

[KingPridenia]

Hmm maybe I should make an easy mode for the American audience (!)

 

Funny you say that. Some JPN versions are actually easier than American ones. Ninja Gaiden III is a prime example. In the US version, enemies did 2-3 damage where spikes did 6 damage. In the JPN version however, everything only does 1 damage. Although in many cases, you are right about American versions being easier. Examples:

 

SMB3 - In the Japanese version, taking a hit as Fire, Hammer, Frog, Raccoon or Tanooki Mario immediately makes him Small Mario, regardless of the source. In the US version, getting hit with any of those power-ups reverts you to Super Mario first.

 

Mega Man 2 - The Japanese version is basically a forced Difficult mode from the US version, which gives a beginner friendly Normal mode (doubles damage done to enemies).

 

Again, do whatever you want. People are going to have their issues with quests no matter what you do. Kaizo quests like LoH are not for everyone. I will admit it up front; I would never have the patience to play those types of quests. There are people on here that do like quests that make them question their sanity. I mean if your target audience are people like Y1oh and Goriya, that's fine. Just make it clear the quest isn't for someone that dies 10 times in level 1 and ragequits. Make it known that if you play that quest you're describing, nothing short of an iron will can see you to the quest's ending.

[anikom15]

Yeah I see what you're saying. I think I'll make the early dungeons fairly easy and provide rewarding secrets to ease the player in and get them used to the different mechanics. Then things will get sadistic. (I'm getting much pleasure out of designing the Shadow Temple.)

My goal is to make a quest that is accessible to everyone, but more challenging than your average quest (easy to start--hard to finish). This was not my original vision. This is something I've been pondering only the past few days.

[Jamian]

Yes I want a retry type of quest where you run out of bombs halfway through the dungeon, yell ugh, not have enough magic to use Farore's Wind (there's no F6 in this quest), die, cry, and then have to spend 60 rupees to get your life back to full.

Is that annoying enough?

EDIT: I should clarify my intent. The idea is that the player not experience this tragedy often, but rather learn to be more cautious about everything.

 

Making the player backtrack to fetch ammo/rupees/bombs/heart refills/anything else is not challenging, it's indeed simply annoying in my book.

 

I think of it this way: if I force the player to backtrack, will that involve:

A) clever thinking / new challenges

B) tedious backtracking that isn't difficult or interesting, just time consuming (something you will want to fast forward if you're watching an LP of the quest)

?

If the answer is B then I don't find it worth it at all. This is why I also dislike when quests don't make you restart with full health. Refilling your health before you can properly try again has nothing challenging or interesting about it, it's just tedious busywork. Same thing goes for refilling ammo, magic, etc.

 

If you can picture the player yawning as he goes on a "fetch the rupees/heart refills/etc." sidequest before he can resume the real adventure, I consider it a flaw, even if the player got himself in that situation through his own fault.

[anikom15]

I have to ask, what's the point of having ammo at all? I want to punish the player for sucking. What's the best way to go about that?

I appreciate all the responses, but there's been a lack of ideas for making challenges. There are a few things I want to accomplish: resources should seem scarce, dying should suck hard, and lv. 3 enemies need not be used (nor things like the gold ring).

[Avaro]

Nothing wrong with your list in my opinion. You can even make Link die on a single hit for the entire quest without having cheap difficulty. It all depends on the quest. Kind of pointless, this topic. Though, make sure that stuff in shops is not expensive to an extend, that boring grinding is reqjired.