Second Wind's "The Difficulty Paradox" and how it applies to Killing Floor and KF2

[OnionBubs]

I was originally going to put this in the KF2 forums, but as I kept writing I ultimately thought it would be better out in the general forums because it doesn't strictly apply to that game anymore. Plus, I wanted to see how others would react.

Recently, Yahtzee Croshaw (formerly of The Escapist fame, now employed by Second Wind Gaming) dropped a video that I desperately wish was longer regarding difficulty and how it applies to game design. If you're interested in all in that sort of design discussion, it's worth a look.

To sum it up, the main point posited is that games with what can vaguely be described as "RPG mechanics" such as level-ups, skill trees, etc. need to wrestle with two main points:

• The game needs to get more challenging as it goes on
• The player needs to feel stronger as the game goes on

His end conclusion was thus, emphasis mine:

...to conclude my response to the Discord argument that started all this:

Yes, it is a prerequisite of any game that has RPG elements in even the vaguest sense that the player should get more powerful. But it is also true that the game needs to get proportionally harder if it wants to stay interesting. And there have been many big games lately that make me worry that the second part of that equation is being neglected.

His main example in the video of the above point was Assassin's Creed: Mirage, with the primary focus (in short form) that AC:M gives you too many powerful tools but doesn't make the game challenging enough to warrant those powers. For example, one extremely powerful ability Basim unlocks is the ability to teleport around to four guards and instakill them. This is a cool ability, but the problem is that in a game based ostensibly based around using movement and the environment to your advantage to sneak up on guards, the "kill four guys" move effectively amounts to, at that point, skipping the entire mechanical flow/loop of the game (emphasis mine):

Assassin's Creed Mirage's "auto-stab 4 guys" power particularly rubs me up the wrong way, because the game never gets challenging enough to counter it. But it also doesn't quite gel with the idea of "player gets stronger," because the thing about creeping around stabbing dudes is that that's the core mechanic of the game. The suspense, the timing, the strategising what order to take the guards out without alerting the others, that's the stuff that we're here for.
A power that just auto-stabs four of them isn't just making the game too easy, it's flat out removing the game.

While I wish the video was longer because there's quite a lot of potential nuance squandered here, this stood out to me because it's very similar to the arguments many expert KF2 players have been making about KF2's swerve in direction and design, myself included. Namely, the fact that a few years after EA and official release, KF2 lost the direction the game was designed with in mind and the team started giving players too much kit that was too powerful while not keeping the challenge it needed to balance that kit, and the game suffered from it in multiple ways.

One of the main design principles of both mainline Killing Floor games was the emphasis on headshots. Most first-person shooters do this as a means of rewarding player skills, especially zombie-flavored shooters. Zed heads are smaller targets and thus tougher to hit than limbs/center-of-mass, but the reward comes from any given Zed's head having less health than the body by way of two independent health bars. Bodyshots kill, but headshots kill faster because they are harder to hit. Rewarding players for honing their mechanical skills is just good design. This is game design 101-level stuff: hard work and honed skills should yield better rewards.

KF1 strongly emphasized headshots as you increased in difficulties through large Zed punish mechanics (if you don't kill them quickly then the raged Zeds will almost certainly kill teammates), enforcing high body health on the trash enemies (most infamously the Gorefast being able to tank an entire M99 round to the chest but can barely survive hits to the noggin from the starting weapons), and by nerfing certain strategies in Hell on Earth also designed to push players to the more skill-indexed options (Crossbow damage nerfs, M99 being insanely expensive, Firebug crisping losing all its mechanical benefits).
In this manner, players are steered towards a certain selection of playstyles at the highest difficulties that emphasized honing mechanical skill; one-shot heavy weapon playstyles are made extremely impractical and This was a good thing, because high difficulties are by design supposed to test player abilities and that very much includes the base mechanics relevant to first-person shooters in general. If a Firebug was as equally able to kill everything as a Sharpshooter in Hell on Earth, that would be a huge balancing mistake because Firebug is much, much easier to play and thus players would have little reason to play the mechanically challenging perks when the easier ones still won just as handily.
So the system more-or-less worked: the easier difficulties were for players who didn't care about mastering the game's mechanics, and with some minor exceptions, the higher difficulties were for the players that wanted a genuine challenge to master what the game demanded of them.

KF2 started like this, despite some troubling early signs (*coughEAFirebugcough*). But it didn't last.

To keep a much longer post short:
If the entire point of KF's hardest difficulties is "hit heads to kill Zeds," then KF2 in its current state fails to even bring that across. Between the headshot resistant/immune enemies added post-launch and the insane powercreeping of weapons and perks that either do not have to aim and kill by body damage or will actually just shoot things for you (such as the Sentinel), I'd argue KF2 has an extreme problem with the issue of additions and such "actively removing the game for the players." The precision perks are currently the game's challenge mode on their own while the chaos perks just let you skip that pesky "skill indexing" part. And relying on players to just not use broken things to give them the challenge they would otherwise have is a fool's errand because the vast majority of people will use what's easiest and most effective, and that also conflicts with the fact that some players will be putting effort into the game to win while others will not.

 

[Aleflippy]

Challenge in video games (and games in general honestly) is clearly the spice that keeps you craving for more... if it's balanced the way you desire! I guess it does depend on both the player (maybe you're simply willing to chill after a long day at work) and the genre of course (I wouldn't expect a game driven by its story to be necessarily challenging... it can be ! But it could also focus on the "experience")

I always found it curious how I absolutely CAN'T get into souls-like, but absolutely crave roguelikes for example. Both genres are very punishing, and require a deep learning curve that might require you to fetch external resources (wikis !! But also other players) to even realize some of the games' mechanics, items or secrets. I would guess that I'm less annoyed by the idea of starting a whole new playthrough than crying bloody tears at a single boss for an entire weekend...

It's also pretty different for competitive multiplayer games. The difficulty is usually measured by the skills of the people you're facing... and your own. And it's also why I'm not really giddy at trying my luck at games like Counter Strike or Call of Duty for example. I've played them a good dozen years ago of course... but I feel like players latched onto such games for just as long, while I went on to play other things. It's definitely NOT very welcoming for newcomers, even if you get access to the best tools the game has to offer.

But Killing Floor is obviously a little different, considering it's 95% coop rather than competitive (I wouldn't want to piss off the four players still playing Versus mode...) But I think it still warrants challenges in its own right. Hell, even solo games should offer a challenge to whoever plays them. A lot of RPGs are single-player only, a lot of FPS too. But would something like Doom Eternal by truly enjoyable if you could just steamroll through everything? I don't really think so. And I also think it's one of the best modern examples of a game that makes you feel both VERY POWERFUL, and VERY VULNERABLE. Being quick on your feet and mastering combos are not just the best way to beat the game... But absolutely necessary at harder levels.

As I've said multiple times lately though, I do admit that gauging KF's difficulty is probably not the easiest thing in the world. You have to change the difficulty depending on the setting picked (obviously... normal should be easier than suicidal), but also the amount of players on the team. I would assume that a lot of mechanics are at work behind the scene to offer something that is both manageable, but still hard enough to promote good teamwork and quick reflexes.

I compared KF's difficulty settings to L4D's in the past, and especially the now infamous AI Director and how sadistic or lenient it could be. But having played the latest TF2 community event, I realize that we could also compare it to that game's Mann vs Machine game mode... I feel like both aren't that different.

-Multiple difficulty settings (although linked to specific "missions" rather than being available for every possible maps and configurations)
-Six players being able to choose between a set of various classes with highly specific roles (but the missions won't be any easier if there's only 4-5 of you)
-An upgrade system to make you sturdier against the robot hordes (akin, yet different to the "tier system" of KF, as you don't pick up better weapons... you just upgrade them, and yourself !)

And similar strategies do apply, at least in their basics. You gotta fill your class role. You ought to have a well-balanced team. You got to know what might be the most useful (if need mandatory) upgrades for the coming wave, but also what each opponent might do to you, and how you could dispatch them quickly.

And the funniest thing is that, for a mode that hasn't been updated by Valve for TEN YEARS (unless we count the handful of weapons they've added since November 2013), it's still somewhat more balanced than KF2. It's entirely possible to goof around and use some ridiculous loadouts or team comps on lower difficulties... And beat lower difficulties with one or more players missing ! But once Advanced missions (or Expert for that matter) are on the plate : you'll WANT to have an experienced and well-balanced team that knows what they're doing. And I think it's perfectly understandable, reasonable... and obvious even? And something that, as you said, Killing Floor 2 lost along the way. I do believe that balancing stuff for both SOLO and MULTIPLAYER playthroughs might be partially to blame (it's totally impossible to beat even the easiest mission on MvM alone, and I do believe that Killing Floor should maybe stop considering solo entirely for its balance... but that's probably controversial).

But it's also, as you mentioned, a simple lack of care with a lot of the new content on offer. It's unfair to fully compare the two games obviously : Team Fortress 2 is essentially a PvP game, where Mann vs Machine is mostly an interesting distraction... While Killing Floor's PvE is its bread and butter. But while loadouts are often limited to a certain "meta" in Mann vs Machine (hell, Scout and Pyro players should pretty much NEVER change their own single viable loadout...), I think it's almost the opposite in Killing Floor... Where nearly every single option, even the silliest ones, is at least viable thanks to how lenient the game became. And while I do believe that in a perfect world, every single addition should be meaningful even if its in a few rare circumstances... In KF2, it became overlap instead. Rather than having different tools for different roles, you get multiple tools to do exactly the same thing. And it doesn't help that perk roles have been diluted into oblivion as well. Most of them are now husks of their former selves, being able to deal with nearly anything... Again, it's ok for a SOLDIER (essentially TF2's equivalent of the "jack-of-all-trade" class) to be able to do a bit of everything (team support, crowd control, nuking, tank busting...). But not for a Heavy or a Sniper for example. And I think that rule should apply to Killing Floor as well.

All in all, I'm not fully against those "rare high moments" ( ) when they are sparse. Of course I like the odd "all clots" wave where I can just freely mow through weaker zeds. Just like it's mad funny to get your hands on the Super Shotgun in Doom and start blasting... But these should be kept sparse, as a way to "blow off some steam" before coming back for an even bigger threat. When the entire game becomes a simple walk in the park... Where's the joy of improving and beating the odds anymore?