作者：Dylan Woodbury

游戏的难度是一个非常令人困惑的话题。设计师甚至在开始设计以前就要明确自己希望游戏达到什么程度的难度。难度决定了你的目标受众是哪些人，休闲的还是硬核的。

许多设计师有这样的误解：为了迎合最硬核的玩家，难度必须上升，以便排除大部分非硬核玩家。与这种做法相反的是，把游戏做得尽量简单，使所有人都能上手。事实上，近来游戏公司一直在让玩家作弊。在《超级马里奥银河2》中，任天堂允许玩家跳过玩家认为太难的挑战。不！糟糕的设计师。

作弊是游戏的大敌。允许玩家作弊是设计师的失职。在学校，有些老师总是人为“扭曲”测验得分，即去掉大部分学生都不会做的题目。这种“扭曲”正是教师承认自己教得不够好，学生不应该对此负责。如果学生被要求使用这些他们没有学会的技能，他们可能就会不及格。在电子游戏中，能够跳过这些旨在考验你的技能同时教授/训练你的技能的挑战，导致你错过重要的概念等，更别说让玩家心生反感。

在线攻略也是如此——它们破坏了玩家本应该感觉到的成就感。许多技能是通过尝试-犯错学习到的，单纯地阅读攻略可能让玩家错过重要的知识。这表明游戏设计中存在重大缺陷，也提供了一个非常重要的信号。

如果玩家绝对无法克服这个挑战，以至于放弃或求助于在线攻略，上述信号就是，学习曲线有缺口。玩家不能够利用他所必需的技能或知识。我们怎么解决这个问题？更多挑战。

Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess(from zelda.com)

例如：在《塞尔达传说：黎明公主》中，有一个非常小的挑战给我带来麻烦。目标：到地底下去。障碍：通向地底的两个洞被蜘蛛网盖住了，导致不能通过。我尝试了我能想到的一切办法——抛回力镖、射箭、用弹弓。我用回力镖弹墙上的火把，希望烧掉蜘蛛网。我滚到蜘蛛网那里，希望用我的体重破坏它。都不管用。

我不想这么做，但最终我还是做了——我看了在线攻略。说出这件事让我很羞愧，不过总有那么个时候，遇到实在太让人受挫的挑战，为了继续玩下去只能作弊，否则就永远玩不下去。解决方案：拿出你的灯笼，滚到蜘蛛网的地方——火会烧掉蜘蛛网。

出于某些原因，我对这个方法很郁闷。那时候我不明白我为什么郁闷，不过我现在明白了——游戏并没有告诉你在蜘蛛网前面滚你的灯笼（摇动远程控制器）就能破坏蜘蛛网。在整个游戏中有足够的挑战让玩家记住这点。在这个挑战之前的部分，游戏从来没有要求玩家通过滚动某物来解决挑战，也没有要求玩家通过除了摇摆控制器以外的方式来使用灯笼。

所以有些人可能会马上指出来，没有经过足够的训练使大部分人理解这个挑战，怎么能指望他们解决这个挑战？如果在这个挑战以前添加许多需要摇摆操作的挑战呢？这不能让答案明显，但它对发现这个解决方案且后来觉得了不起的玩家没有提出很高的要求。它只是给玩家他们想出这个解决方案所需要的完整技能——既要想到新技能，又要懂得如何用它解决新难题，这对玩家的要求可能太高了。

这些问题大多是可以通过测试发现的。设计师应该发现哪些挑战太困难或太简单，为什么太困难（以至于玩家放弃、完全不理解或寻找在线攻略、破坏了长期体验），如何通过提前训练玩家以帮助解决困难。

挑战的难度应该由问题解决方案、模式识别和横向思维（或其他思维）等产生的，且玩家有一套特定的技能和工具来解决这些挑战。挑战不应该来自要求玩家使用自己还没有学过的技能解决问题（正如《黎明公主》这个例子所反映的）。挑战也不应该要求玩家使用自己刚学会不久的技能（人是见忘的）。

half life 2(from the-ripple.co.uk)

《半条命：第二章》提供了一个好例子。在接近结尾时，在黑森林里，玩家遇到一个要求使用蒸汽阀的情境，玩家学习这个技能还不久。在真正的行动开始前，设计师安排了一个小挑战，要求玩家从散出蒸汽的管道的一另爬到另一边。玩家无法忍受高温的蒸汽，但能看到红色的大转盘，操作它，蒸汽就被关了。玩家已经学习了许多关于某个技能的东西，突然从脑海中回想起来。玩家不必在高温的折磨中思考转盘和蒸汽的关系，因为他之前就知道了。所以，这个挑战就显得更合理、更有趣了。

这个例子解释了我的观点，让我想到另一个重点。挑战应该要么关于解决挑战，要么关于学习新技能（游戏邦注：用非常简单的挑战，如上述《半条命2》的小挑战）——通常不能二者兼有。当玩家面临挑战时，他不会尝试解决它且通常不会想出什么新技能（新工具），而是希望用自己已经知道的办法解决挑战——这是我们大脑的运作方式。如果够明显，玩家可以学习技能（如用转盘关掉蒸汽），且这类挑战通常应该让人有成就感。这类挑战最需要测试（以便确定是否需要修改或删除）。

现在可以总结我的观点了——难度不应该只关于乱按键、定时等。难度是使用技能完成挑战，使用新技能完成新挑战。在《塞尔达传说》中，当你得到一个新工具时，游戏就会给你一个非常基础的挑战教你学习基本技能。与此类似，当玩家学会新技能，游戏就可以拿许多需要这种技能的挑战来考验玩家。

令一些惊讶的是，游戏的相对难度在整个游戏过程中应该保持一致（不能比开头难上10多倍）。当你玩一款设计良好的游戏时，你对游戏教给你的技能会越来越上手。你会不断地学习新技能，为了解决新问题，你会不断改良旧方法。出现在游戏结尾的绝对难度的挑战是非常困难的——把新玩家折腾得非常厉害的挑战。但是，如果相对难度是基本一致的，那么从头到尾玩到这里的玩家感觉到的困难应该与解决第三关的挑战差不多。

设计游戏的一系列挑战是很困难的——每个挑战都需要加强技能、启发玩家以新方式使用技能、教玩家组合某些技能或学习全新的技能。游戏必须在之前的挑战中教会玩家当前挑战所要求的技能/知识——这个难度在于使用这些工具（无论你是以不同的方式还是以更困难的方式使用它们）。

如果学习曲线和个人挑战不存在断层，那么困难的程度应该既适合休闲玩家，也适合硬核玩家，且这两类玩家仍然从中获得乐趣。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

The Difficulty of Difficulty

by Dylan Woodbury

Difficulty in games is a very confusing topic. All designers must know how difficult they want their game to be before the design process even begins. It decides what kind of audience you are shooting for. Casual vs Hardcore.

There is a major misconception that in order to please the most hardcore, the difficulty needs to be raised, shutting out a large part of the market. The alternative to this would be to make the game so easy that anyone can beat it. In fact, companies have been cheating lately. In Super Mario Galaxy 2, Nintendo allowed the player to skip over challenges the player deemed to difficult. NO! Bad designer.

Cheating is the enemy of gaming. Allowing the player to cheat is the designers not doing their job. In school, some teachers are always “curving” test scores, getting rid of problems that most students missed (pretty much extra credit). This “curve” is the teacher acknowledging that the teaching was not good enough, and that the students should not be held accountable for it. If they are required to use these skills that haven’t counted, that they have not correctly learned, they are going to fail. In a video game, being able to skip challenges, which are designed to test your skills while teach/train your skills, leads to you missing out on important concepts and such, not to mention the terrible feeling the player has inside.

The same goes for online walkthroughs – they ruin the satisfaction that the player is supposed tofeel. Many skills are learned by trial and error, and the player may miss out on important things by just reading the solution to the challenge online. Although this is a very big pitfall of video game design, it is a very important signal.

If a player absolutely cannot solve the challenge, to the point where they give up or look it up online, it is a signal that there is a gap in the learning curve. Something is not clicking, and the player is not able to draw on a skill or piece of knowledge that is required of him/her. How do we solve this? More challenges.

Example: In Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, there was a small challenge that gave me trouble. Goal: get to floor below ground. Obstacle: the two holes one can use to get to bottom floor are covered in spider webs, making them impossible to go through. I tried everything I could think of – shooting my boomerang, arrows, and slingshot at the web. I tried shooting my boomerang from the torch on the wall to the web, hoping to burn it. I tried rolling onto the web, hoping my weight would break apart the web. Nothing worked.

I didn’t want to do this, but I eventually had to – I looked at the walkthrough online. I am ashamed to say it, but there is a point where you become so frustrated with a challenge, that cheating is the only thing that can keep you engrossed in the game, as not doing so would lead to you not being able to play it anymore. The solution: pull out your lantern and roll onto the web – the fire will break open the web.

For some reason then, I was frustrated with this solution. I did not understand why at the time, but I think I do now. In the game, they taught you that swinging your lantern (by shaking the remote) infront of a web in your way will break it. There were enough challenges here and there for the player to remember this throughout the game. In the entire portion of the game before this challenge, the player was never required to roll to solve a challenge, nor was the player required to use a lantern in a way besides shaking the remote in front of a web.

So some people may have figured out, maybe right away, but there was not enough training beforehand to make that challenge reasonable for many. How could they have solved this? How about a couple challenges prior to this one that require rolling to complete the challenge. This doesn’t make the answer obvious, but it doesn’t take much away from the player who found the solution and felt awesome afterwards. It simply gives the player the complete skills they need to figure out the solution – it may be to much to ask from the player, figuring out both new skills and how you can use them to solve a new problem.

Much of these problems are found by just testing. Designers should find out which challenges are too difficult or broken, why they were too difficult (to the point where the player gave up, now completely unabsorbed, or looked up the answer, hurting his/her experience in the long run), and how to help this by training the player better beforehand.

Challenge’s difficulty should arise from their problem solving, pattern recognition, and lateral thinking (amond others), with a given set of skills and tools to work with. Challenges should not arise from solving a problem with a skill that has not been well established yet (Twilight Princess example). Challenges should also not require the player to use a skill that has not been used in quite a while (people are forgetful).

An example of this is seen in Half Life 2: Episode 2. Near the end, at Black Forest, the player was thrown into areas that required him/her to make use of the steam valves, which had not been utilized in quite a while. The designers through in a mini challenge before the real action started, requiring the player to get from one side of a pipe shooting out steam to the other. One cannot get through the steam, so the player would see the big red wheel, interact with it, and what do you know, the steam is shut off. Suddenly, the player has learned a lot about a certain skill, recalling from memory. Instead of the player having to figure out the corrollation between the wheel and steam and such during the heat of battle, he/she is taught it beforehand, makingfor a more pleasurable, and rewarding, challenge.

This example shows my point well, and leads me to another important point. Challenges should either be about solving a challenge or learning a new skill (with a very easy challenge, like the Half Life 2 example) – not both… usually. When a player is given a challenge, he/she is going to try to solve it, and usually, he/she will not figure out a new skill (a new use of a tool/asset), as he/she expects to be able to solve the challenge using only what he/she knows already – it is the way our brains work. A player could learn a skill if it is obvious (like turning the wheel to stop the steam), and these type of challenges tend to be very rewarding. These kind of challenges require the most testing (be prepared to change or throw them out).

Now to finish my point – difficulty should not include only button mashing, quick timing, etc. The difficulty is reliant on using skills to complete challenges, with the occasional new skill introduced to open up new kinds of challenges. When you get a new tool in Zelda, you are given a VERY basic challenge to learn the basics of that skill. When given the hookshot, you are in a small room, and must shoot the hookshot at the red dot to get out of the room. Just like that, the player knows a new skill, and many challenges that require this skill can be thrown at him/her.

The relative difficulty of the game, surprising to some, should remain about the same throughout the game (it does not get 10X harder – in may even be harder in the beginning). As you play through a well designed game, you get better and better at the skills it quizzes you on. You tackle new skills constantly, always improving on old concepts for new ways to tackle solutions. The absolute difficulty of a challenge at the end of the game is very hard – a brand new player would have a extremely (it is almost impossible) hard time with it. But, if the relative difficulty is about the same – a player playing the game all the way through that point will have about as hard of a time as he/she did solving a challenge from way back to level 3.

Designing a game’s series of challenges is very difficult – each challenge needs to reinforce skills, open the player’s mind to using skills in new ways, teach the player to combine certain skills, or learn entire new skills. The skills/knowledge a challenge requires must be well taught through previous challenges – the difficulty lies in using these tools (whether you use them in a different way, or in a more difficult way).

The level of difficulty can be suitable to both the casual and hardcore audience, and still be wildly fun for both, if the learning curve and individual challenges are not broken.(source:dtwgames)