#KAANAVALI's Feedback (Difficulty settings analysis)

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pulsar lark
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A multi-part analysis on difficulty about the design of Difficulty as a whole, and it's application in Far Far West

-# Thank you for reading

I just want to preface this with my credentials.
Name's William, but I go by Kaan online, I've worked with a couple of studios a couple of years back, as a "Game Design Consultant", my job was to analyze games of all genres and kind, and explain what we can learn from them to my employers.

With that out of the way, I want to talk about difficulty, what makes a game hard, and what makes the difference between good and bad difficulty.

Since I'm also talking about high difficulty, I want to say that this is geared towards long term, dedicated players, who seek a challenge. This does not apply to everyone.
-# I am also aware that the roadmap mentions end game content, however, it only ever talks about things to get, not difficulty, and I hope, by making this, that I can explain why I believe difficulty is important to health of the game for dedicated players.

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1. What is difficulty?

I'll keep this one rather short, because otherwise we could go on a whole philosophical debate about this..

Difficulty, essentially boils down to one simple concept : Forcing the player outside of their comfort zone.

By forcing the player out of their comfort zone (see examples in part 2), you are forcing the player to adapt to the situation at hand, rather than letting it play on autopilot.

Something that doesn't change, cannot pose a long term challenge of any kind, because it eventually leads to the player knowing enough that they will autopilot.
Forcing the player to think about their actions is how you break the loop, and force the player to engage again with it's various difficulty mechanics.

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2. How does one create difficulty?

As stated above, the goal is to create moments that break the normal loop of the game, things that may force the player to rethink their approach, or re-engage with the game's various mechanics.

There are many ways to do so, all dependent on the game, but they all need one thing to work : Pressure.

No matter what you do, without pressure, the mechanics you add do not come into play, at least, not in a good way (See part 3).
Pressure forces the players into situations they otherwise wouldn't get in.

Pressure can come in many many forms, tho many of them can be explained as a timer, of sort :

Hard timers

Such as a strict mission timer like Helldivers 2 or a turn limit in turn based games

Soft timers

Soft timers are quite a bit more varied:
-Depleting resources (Ammo, Health, Revives...)
-Ramp up (Threats getting stronger...)
-An extra failure condition (Objective with limited health...)

Tho both are found, Soft timers are usually preferred.
Soft timers offer pressure, while keeping it in the player's hand, they present the player with an inevitable loss, should things go on for long enough, but how quickly it comes is entirely the player's fault.

By adding a timer, Hard or Soft, you're encouraging the player to act, not necessarily quickly (ie, card games like slay the spire), but decisively. And most importantly, you're preventing the player from just taking it incredibly slow.

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3. Why is it needed, and what makes a bad difficulty?

So, why do you need pressure? Why is it bad to just let the player take it incredibly slow?

For the majority of players? There's no harm. I want to insist that this section is about difficulty for dedicated players seeking a challenge, NOT for 90-99% of a community.

For the players concerned, pressure is required, because without pressure, whatever you just set in place to make the game difficult, you are allowing players to bypass by simply taking it... Veeeeery slow, which reduces, or completely removes the interaction with the systems put in place.

This causes three issues :

-Players are never forced out of their comfort zone, they don't have an incentive to leave it.
-Higher difficulty causes players to slow down, instead of trying harder. Risking turning the game into a slog or grind.
-Losing feels really bad. You lost because you decided to have fun, to go fast, you know that you would have won, if you had just decided to slow down.

Without pressure, difficulty mechanics do not make the game challenging, it makes the game slow.

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4. How does that apply here?

Far Far West is a difficult game. I think the mountain of feedback asking for nerfs to enemies speaks for itself. The content that is in the game poses a very real challenge... But the game never forces you to interact with it, in fact, it rewards the opposite.

Far Far West lacks any form of pressure..
-Ammo and Health while technically limited, can very easily be made renewable and infinite.
-Enemies never ramp up in power, or numbers
-Enemies only ever hunt down the player when the player decides it, or makes a mistake
-Negative events (storms) depend entirely on the player making a mistake
-There is no mission timer, there is no penalty for taking all the time in the world (you can literally go AFK in a corner for an hour)
-The players are never passively pressured by a risk of dying in multiplayer, especially in multiplayer, where revives are beyond easy, extremely safe, and infinite.

While at the same time, rewarding the player for grinding..
-Enemies never respawn, traps never come back, whatever you do on the map is permanent, and creates extremely safe zones to back up into when faced with danger.
-Everything you do gives you rewards, which, combined with the lack of pressure, just encourages a struggling player to spend an hour just clearing the map very slowly and methodically
-Negatives are secretly positives, it is an actively good idea to hunt down the danger zones, and trigger traps on purpose, as you are rewarded for doing both.

Now, as stated before, these aren't inherently bad, but, they prevent the creation of a real challenge imposed by the game.

As long as there is no pressure, the players are simply able to backpedal into safe, cleared out areas, wait out cooldowns for healing or ammo, and are encouraged to clear every little thing on the map, especially with something like Hoarder+Stonks.
-# I've also noticed certain elites, such as the horsemen, will NOT aggro on the player even when attacked, if the player is too far away, allowing them to be dispatched without any risk.

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5. How can we change that?

All in all, it's pretty "simple". Adding some pressure would help.

First, I would like to say, any changes of the sort should either come very gradually, or be restricted to the highest difficulty/difficulties, such as nightmare.

As for the solutions...

-Ammo/Health limitations :

Unfortunately, can't really change that without removing power from the player, since both of these are made infinite by builds, not by default.

-Limited revives :

It would work, but not on it's own.
It may be interesting to consider giving back revives to the players by accomplishing objectives, so as to not punish doing extra things too much.

-Spawning/Respawning Enemies/Traps/Structures :

An interesting thought as a whole, there are many many ways to balance this.
For example :
-Spawning and Respawning enemies could be ethereal/ghosts, like the ones coming from spawners
-Traps and structures could have a distinct sound to warn the player, and structures specifically could even have a way to prevent them from spawning if taken on early enough

-More aggressive storm triggers

Patrols of enemies going around the map, elites that can trigger storms, traps that may be harder to avoid... There's quite a few ways to handle this.

-Timed storms

In the same way DRG triggers swarms at regular intervals, triggering storms automatically can be a solid way to threaten the player.

-Storm enemies do not drop anything

This speaks for itself, there's more than enough ways to get more powerful as is, triggering a negative event on purpose to grind more rewards is very backwards, and removes the punishing part of a punishment.

-Enemy ramp up

Technically many ways to do so, but I believe the best way to integrate this would be that every storm is worse than the last. Mainly through spawn budgets, or having more elite enemies appear.
Additionally, it may be interesting to have a sort of ramp up during infinite storms, such as the objective, boss, or extraction, to avoid the player progressing through these at a snail's pace.

-Hard timers

A risky method if implemented badly, however, there might be nice ways to implement this :
-Extraction timer, a timer that would trigger AFTER the boss has been killed, forcing the player to escape in a limited amount of time. Would pair especially well with an extraction that requires the players do actively do something other than just survive
-"Cataclysm" style timer, a timer that would trigger a very negative event, such as :
-Mission start timer, triggers infinite storm when at 0
-Mission start time, triggers a limited, but very dangerous event, resets the timer after it triggered
-Boss start timer, triggers a boss "enrage"

Time based threats :

A lot of games do something like this, by having an oftenn unkillable (or nearly) threat that appears after too long of a time has passed since the start, or since the last time the player did something to progress.
-# It can also double as a nice "secret" objective, if you make the threat nearly unkillable

-# Underlined are the ones I believe to be the most effective, and I suggest

Now... These don't all have to be added, of course. In fact, some should be mutually exclusive.
But the game should, at the very least have some forms of pressure.

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Conclusion

I want to thank you for reading through my analysis, and my suggestions for improvements to be applied in the future.

Far Far West truly baffled me with how good of a game it already is, but the lack of a true difficult mode really hurts any sort of longevity for me, so I felt it was needed for me to go back to what I do best, and write down a long and comprehensive review of the current systems.

Dear devs, if you read this, you're awesome, and I hope my criticism will be well received. If you ever want to discuss about it some more, make sure to let me know (Ping and DMs ok!)

I hope you have a great day. Thank you for your time, and your work.

desert heart
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this was a very lovely read

pulsar lark
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Thank you

solar kraken
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Lots of good stuff here. Perhaps a constantly increasing storm throughout a mission that spawns ambient waves that get more dangerous as time goes on could apply more pressure

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And at like 20 mins or something it would just be perma storm?

pulsar lark
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Something along those lines can work, yeah

pulsar lark
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-# Just a little bump, as I think I posted this one at a pretty bad time, and I fear it may be buried by now. Hopefully bumping is ok

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(oh didn't see the "read by the devs", dunno if that was there before, mb if it was!)

strange depot
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Yeah ngl this was so well done 👏

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Im from hd2 so I do know that pressure is needed like in hd2 on the bot front you can legit sit at the detector tower to spawn more but they also have patrols with units that can call for back up I would love these idea implented I prefer soft timer tbh

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They also have surges which they don't use alot but the surges are incredibly hard depending on the surges like factory strider surge. Something like that would be cool in ffw thanks kaan you opened my eyes to what this game can be. W post

frank raft
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I like the idea of soft timers, but it's also gotta be implemented in a way that's not too restrictive. A core part of this game that hooks me in so much lies in the exploration aspect such as the secrets and quests that I can always partake in even on the highest difficulty at my own discretion. That said, Jokers grant a ton of power, so even with timers, the incentive to play slow still exists until objectives run out. Furthermore, the fact that we can take the methodical approach means more loadouts get to shine, especially ones that don't invest as heavily into healing or mobility since they can afford the time for setups. If we allow enemies to outscale players too fast, it risks the game becoming a speedrun contest. Outside that, having an incentive is fine, but if players feel any bit "forced" to complete a mission or risk the consequences, it may ruin build diversity as well as the exploration aspect. Such is the delicate balancing we must tread!

strange depot
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I think they should test both the hard and soft timer on the betas

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If we get a feel for what his feedback is saying in gameplay form maybe we can see what works or what doesnt I hope the devs do this for the betas

dense niche
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Two things that are mentioned that I think I have perhaps noteworthy ideas on:

Infinite mission length
I'm not going to suggest a hard timer. Instead, I would like to take a leaf from a roguelike since we got some rogue elements in FFW: Risk of Rain 2.
I think this a soft timer; "enemies scale over time." Instead of limited mission duration, you have to worry about being overwhelmed by the enemies gradual growing variation¹, numbers, health, damage. On all difficulties.
-# e.g. Normal mode doesn't have Deadeyes. If you spend 20-30 min in game: More enemy quantity, higher difficulty enemies pop up, stronger stats

Infinite revives
I think that revives not being limited (e.g. HD2) helps with a casual player base (like DRG). Plus, with my prior idea, revives would be at greater cost over time in a sense (efficiency wise). However, perhaps a deliberate inconsistent feature, an __attribute of Nightmare/harder difficulty would be limited revives.
Unneeded lore tie in: something like the Overseer presence is stronger, each time your die, soul is vulnerable to his influence, enough times soul will "eviscerated" = no more revive. (Almost like a lives + revive combo).

This was a super informative post, glad to see difficulty break down for FFW. The pressure keeps the thrill 🎃

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-# (forgot to add this image reference in. Risk of Rain 2

MonsterLevelHUD.webp
pulsar lark
# dense niche Two things that are mentioned that I think I have perhaps noteworthy ideas on: ...

Regarding enemies scaling over time, that's what I meant with Ramp up

And regarding Infinite revives, another option would be to keep infinite revives for a more forgiving experience, but reduce max health temporarily/permanently after a revive. (ie. each revive takes 20 max health away, which is either permanent, or regained at a slow pace (1 health per 30s or something)

Could also have a lowest it can go, such as 20% of the max health, so that it doesn't get to the point where you get breathed on and die

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That, or some other negative, obviously, tho health is the more straightforward one.

If we get something like enemy scaling, or storms on a timer, you could for example make it so that getting down speeds up the timer by x minutes

lean knot
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i feel like nightmare as is, is a meaningful step up from Very hard. And that a lot of these changes would be very nice to have in like an alternative difficulty strain

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Kind of like how Darktide has Auric raids that are seperate from their core 5 difficulty settings

pulsar lark
lean knot
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Its wierd that.. Checks notes i think the only mechanical change is that reapers turn invisible?

pulsar lark
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That's in V.hard already

lean knot
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Does any other enemy get anything new at any difficulty?

frank raft
lean knot
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Bosses i think should get new mechanics on nightmare, and i think a couple more elites to spice things up would be nice

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For how imposing the lich is its kind of an underwhelming enemy and should totally have a couple attacks imo

lean knot
pulsar lark
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Mhh yeah, it didn't feel like much, compared to how big of dificulty jump easy > normal > hard all get, it feels weird how small the jumps of hard > V.hard > Insane are

lean knot
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Hard and Vhard feel like the same difficulty xD

lean knot
pulsar lark
# lean knot as a mechanics question what boss do you find the most interesting? i think ne...

Mhh... I like the bird, it's got pretty varied attacks.

I don't have enough experience with the Necromancer

On the opposite end of the spectrum, I don't know whether I dislike the train or the saloon more.

The saloon doesn't feel like you have much control over the fight, and it actively penalize using high fire rate weapons as opposed to high per-shot damage

But then the train barely ever interacts with you, the best strategy is to literally just run behind it, and it's not particularly fun

lean knot
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Can you overkill the saloon windows to do more damage to the boss?

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i just thought they had like 20 health and breaking them did that to the boss

desert heart
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boss health is just the number of planks you kill

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the damage doesnt matter

lean knot
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noted, thank you uwu_nod

pulsar lark
lean knot
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i mean i guess that explains why wide sweeping aoe spells chunk it

pulsar lark
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In which case, it penalizes the opposite, which is equally not great

lean knot
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long ranger fans are in shambles

desert heart
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I'm of the opinion all bosses except for Necromancer need some love, and it's on the docket, it just won't be for a while

dense niche
solar kraken
dense niche
half kestrel
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I like the idea of swarms, perhaps only appearing at higher difficulties