The First Quest - Should it be easy?

[jonthefox]

Is it a poor design choice to make the first quest challenging?  Most games use at least the first quest to just get the player familiar and comfortable with the gameplay mechanics, skills, etc....and it's pretty much a cakewalk for any halfway competent RPG player.  This seems boring and predictable to me though.  I do intend to ramp up the difficulty as the game progresses, but if I started with say a 6, on a scale of 1 to 10 (where 1 is Final Fantasy first dungeon cakewalk, and 10 is Dark Souls) would that turn you off as a player? 

 

[Kes]

Who is your intended audience?  How confident are you that everyone playing will be the "halfway competent RPG player"?  If you are not using your first quest to "get the player familiar and comfortable with the gameplay mechanics, skills etc.", then how do you intend to cover that requirement?  You need to be clear in your own mind about these and related questions first.  As I, for one, don't have that information, I cannot give you an informed, reasoned answer to your question.  All you would get is my personal preference, and without knowing if I fall into your intended demographic, my preference, and the preference of anyone reading this question, could well be irrelevant.  As it is, with the information supplied so far, the only honest answer I could give would be "it all depends."  A bit more information would be helpful.

 

[jonthefox]

Hmm, well I am assuming that the only people who would take the time to give my game a try are players who enjoy the old school RPG genre, and are thus familiar with those types of games.  So that would be the bulk of my intended audience.

If my game doesn't start with a quick battle or two or three (as part of a cutscene or just the opening action sequence or whatever), then I'd just have an NPC give a few lines of dialogue about the most general and important aspects of gameplay.  The unfamiliarity would also be factored into the difficulty level of the first quest, so it's not like I'd make it crazy difficult, but my idea is that there would be game over potential if the player makes more than a few suboptimal decisions.  This seems reasonable to me and to my intended target audience, but I'm wondering how risky a design choice it is.  I personally get bored with a game if the first quest is too easy, so I worry about that--but I know that's just my own perspective.  So just trying to get other people's viewpoints.

 

[bgillisp]

How about an optional tutorial quest for the unfamiliar players, and for those who are familiar with the game already, then let them jump right in. I grew up on the old D an D gold box games, and they didn't hesitate to let a level 1 party get swarmed and slaughtered by undead if you didn't pay attention to the warnings about the dangers of the graveyard.

Just make sure it is fair, and the player is warned. Nothing makes players rage-quit more than a dragon one hit KO'ing the party into a game over on the first quest with no warning.

 

[Gothic Lolita]

That is a question of personal taste.
I love games like Shin Megami Tensei, that really doesn't let you learn much, instead of learning it forces you to know everything.
But easy and simple games, like Torchlight can be also fun.

I guess there is no guide for that anywhere. But if you do a hard game, don't do an impossible game, that can only be beaten by luck.
I think your skill's should be the limitation for the maximum difficulty. If you can't beat it, maybe no other can do so too. (\s/)

 

[hiromu656]

In defense of Dark Souls, the first "quest" actually teaches you everything you need to know, from ambushes, to plunging attacks, back stabs, etc. all in one small level. There's a difference between easy, and played for you (not sure how to say). Dark Souls isn't that tough of a game, it just makes the player do all the work. I think the lack of a "tutorial" would be a bad thing in a game, and it's okay to make a game challenging as long as the player is adequately supplied and or informed. I'm trying to avoid definite answers considering there are many different types of game players, but as long as the player is prepared, difficulty should be subjective.

Also in defense of Shin Megami Tensei, I would say Nocturne slacks in the "tutorial" area, but even the games before Nocturne and those after offer ways to learn the game before you're thrown into anything too dangerous. The older SMT games are definitely not for everyone, but they DO teach you things, be it through NPC dialogue or cinematics (not to mention battle tutorials), you are well informed. But much like Dark Souls, that's sort of where the game lets go of your hand, and has you do the rest of the work, which tends to be the "challenging" part.

I think I'm getting off topic, what I'm saying is: if you plan to have your game be difficulty, make sure the player is well informed to the point that nothing feels unfair or makes them feel cheated.

 

[Beamlight]

Is it a poor design choice to make the first quest challenging?  Most games use at least the first quest to just get the player familiar and comfortable with the gameplay mechanics, skills, etc....and it's pretty much a cakewalk for any halfway competent RPG player.  This seems boring and predictable to me though.  I do intend to ramp up the difficulty as the game progresses, but if I started with say a 6, on a scale of 1 to 10 (where 1 is Final Fantasy first dungeon cakewalk, and 10 is Dark Souls) would that turn you off as a player? 

Good question! I think there is a fear for designers of any level that players will not "get it" if the first dungeon is too easy, too slow, etc. This isn't something I would worry about, however. Make sure you're seeing the forest for trees here difficult games can be boring or frustrating, too. So the true 

As Hiromu said, Dark Souls introduces its mechanics fairly well in the first dungeon. I think a good example of this (or maybe its just cuz i'm watching a stream of this right now, lulz) is Super Mario RPG. The few fights teach you everything you need to know about enemy management, enemy minion summons, timed attacks, heals, etc. There is a threat if you are underleveled or make the wrong move its "Game Over"!

So I guess i'm curious to learn more about what you plan on throwing at your player! If you go into more detail I think I can hash it out in my mind

But, tl;dr, as long as its fun, and it segues and sets up the rest of your game, you're fine.

 

[C-C-C-Cashmere (old)]

In my opinion the first quest should be simple, but not simplistic. It should show you the mechanics of the game one by one, perhaps not like you're speaking to a 5 year old (unless that's your target audience), but basically an introduction to each mechanic that shows "this is how this game differs from other games".


For example, the quest can teach you about elemental resistances. The dungeon can have fire enemies, and one of your party members might have the water spell. Then when it pops up with "Strong! 125% damage!" then the player's like, "Whoa, that happens?" If needed, you can include tutorial text, but I'm a fan of teaching by showing, not telling.


The opening quests should teach you about equips and so on, and how they can be used to loadout your character better. e.g. it should have a chest that includes an accessory and then the player will be like "what's this for and how do I equip it?" and then you can teach what the accessory can do in the detail description of that accessory.

 

[Clord]

It depends, if game is designed towards people who seek challenge (is marketed as such) then you should not handheld the players via mechanics etc.


Dark Souls is a good popular example of almost Nintendo hard game done right.

 

[C-C-C-Cashmere (old)]

@Clord Yes, but I would recommend not trying to make a Dark Souls unless you really know what you're doing. The fine line that that game treads is difficult to keep balance. It happens to make things dreadfully hard, while maintaining the sense that every death that happens is your fault, and not the game's. I get the feeling that most developers will just make their game really hard to try and be like Dark Souls, but that's not a good thing if it's unfair difficulty, so I'd be careful with that.


In short, the reason why Dark Souls can afford to not hold your hand is because it's impeccably designed... so make sure if you're going to do that, then get it right!


Also, I hate the term "hand holding" because even in Dark Souls there's prompts to say "X to talk to this person" that tell you what to do. The trick is to introduce mechanics in a way that is unintrusive, and let players do things for themselves. So tell them what to do, and let them do it themselves. Then again, that's more for a discussion about gameplay mechanics than anything else.


Basically, I'd wager that Dark Souls teaches you the necessary mechanics of the game in the first part of the game by making you teach yourself. So what I'm trying to say is that in the first quest, whichever way you see fit, you should tell the player how to play the game, preferably unintrusively.

 

[Dimitris]

Depends but I like to use my first quest so I set the mood and elements of the story. I think that, that should be the goal of it. Grab the players attention and don't let go. Find a middle ground so people don't ragequit!

 

[Matseb2611]

I'd say the difficulty curve should always be gradual. Starting the game with a super challenging dungeon will put many players off, especially if it's a story-driven game. If, however, it's a challenging dungeon crawler, like Dark Souls, then you can make the first level challenging. Though even in Dark Souls, if you remember, the Asylum level was relatively easy. The first dungeon is your chance to introduce some of the game mechanics and common battle strategies, so use this chance.

Likewise, don't suddenly raise the difficulty in the next dungeon. Increase it bit by bit and let the player adjust to the game.

 

[Wavelength]

Progression tends to be one of the most important aesthetics in RPGs, as opposed to other genres, as far as the players enjoying the game.  After all, it's a much different thing to die a few times in World 1-1 of Super Mario Bros. than it is to get curbstomped by an early monster in Super Mario RPG.  So you need to be really careful about putting your player's ability to experience this progression in jeopardy early on - it's a great way to turn them off of your game.

It's good for the early quests to feel difficult (World of Warcraft did a really good job of this - I still remember the thrill of trying to harvest caskets of wine in the Brotherhood's fields) - maybe you can tune your battle so that the player will "always" end with 20%-40% of the HP remaining unless they do something really stupid.  But if they actually are difficult, and the player can get a Game Over that pushes them backwards and makes them do it over... not smart.

 

[bgillisp]

to add onto what wavelength said, I'd suggest you avoid a very sudden spike in difficulty with no warning. Many games these days are guilty of this, where the game has you just moving along normally, then suddenly the next opponent or boss KO's you without any effort.

Games that have been guilty of this: FFXIII (all three of them), FF3, Tales of Xilla 2 (what was up with those bosses with 300,000 HP?), Diablo (yes, Diablo. Only game I breezed through the first 15 levels, and then level 16 everyone could KO me without blinking).

So, if you do make the first quest easy, make sure the game does still slowly ease the player into things. Don't just do an easy quest then have them figtht 10,000 dragons (unless said 10,000 dragons are meant to be weak in your game world).

 

[whitesphere]

I think a good approach to take is to have your first quest be the easiest of your main quests.  So every quest after the first one can get more difficult.

If you're going for a hardcore level of difficulty, it's fair to have the first quest be quite hard.  

But I don't think it makes any sense to have your first quest be harder than any main quests after it.  Of course, sidequests can be much easier or harder, depending on the rewards you give for them.

So yes I think the first quest should be "easy," to set a good difficulty curve.  But what "easy" means completely depends on your game.  

As a player, I don't expect the first quest to be tricky or too difficult in terms of combat, as long as I level up properly and get properly geared up in equipment.

Think of Final Fantasy IV.   The first quest is a simple "Deliver this package" quest with a simple boss fight which introduces you to the ATB system, and the concept that "Sometimes you must WAIT before attacking."  And later boss battles build on this like the Antlion.

So a good first quest is easy relative to the rest of your game and introduces any key mechanics that the player must master, such as Elemental resistances or unusual features of your battle engine.  Ideally, it requires those key mechanics to be USED to win (i.e. first boss is a Genie that can only be hurt by Lightning).

So the first quest serves as part quest, part difficulty level illustrator, part interactive tutorial.  Then you can crank up the difficulty as much as you'd like after the first quest.

 

[Eschaton]

What the first quest should be is fun.

Also, second-playthrough-friendly.

 

[jonthefox]

So here's an example from my current project.

There may or may not be an intro cutscene / mini-quest that familiarizes the player with the basics, however what I'm talking about here is not that...this would be like the first full-fledged 'dungeon' or real quest.

It's a tomb.  It's relatively short, and 90% of it is linear.

You walk in, it's about 40 or 50 steps to the staircase to the lower floor.

 There are 9 enemy encounters which move around, but they move slowly.  It's not too hard to avoid the encounters and get to the lower floor.

The lower floor is pretty much just walking up to the boss.  I just playtested and the boss, a lich, is perfectly balanced I think:  if the player (there are 3 allies in the party) makes sound decisions (using skills at appropriate times, taking out the 2 skeletons before attacking the lich) then he wins unless he gets extremely unlucky (the lich has a hellfire nuke he uses like every 4 turns, and if he happens to target the same player with it multiple times, things could get hairy).

But here's the thing.  This was in the case of the player skipping over the 1st floor enemies.  If I was not full HP when fighting the boss, I probably would've gotten game over. 

Now, the player does get 3 hp potions to use for this dungeon, but this would only sustain him somewhat - it would not sustain him if he chose to fight every single enemy in the dungeon before fighting the boss. 

So essentially, part of the 'challenge' aside from making good gameplay decisions, is the player needs to realize that if he tries to fight all 9 encounters on the 1st floor, he simply doesn't have enough sustain to be in the shape he'd need to defeat the boss.  I say it this way because it's really NOT hard for the player to avoid the encounters, it's more that he needs to KNOW that he shouldn't just rambo it up, even if it is the first dungeon.

I know this is a long explanation...apologies if it's not clear.   What do people think?  Maybe I just need to make sure I communicate to the player at some point before this dungeon that he shouldn't necessarily rambo into every enemy encounter he sees just because it's there?

 

[Wavelength]

I'd lean toward saying you're expecting too much of a new player unless you do a superb job teaching the player strategy in your game.

A lot of games reward taking on lots of encounters throughout a dungeon and in certain games (ones with a high EXP curve and easy battles), it's the only way to be at a high enough level to take down the dungeon's boss.  So you need to clearly get the point across that they shouldn't be "ramboing", or you're going to turn off half your players immediately.  Okay, that's not so hard to get across.  You could have the main character's mentor, or one of the party members, say so outright.

But then battle strategy isn't quite as easy to teach.  An experienced RPG gamer might be able to figure out the "approprite times" to use each skill but you can't count on every new player knowing this from the outset.  Same with knowing to take out the two skeletons before the lich (a classic RPG Troop strategy, but not something you find a lot of outside RPGs).  And game overs via pure luck (even extreme unluckiness) is absolutely something to avoid in general, especially in the very early game.

Try to come up with any "halfway reasonable" strategy that players might take on as they play your first dungeon, playtest, and see whether you're able to pull out a victory.  If not, make the level forgiving enough that even these suboptimal strategies grant a victory every time.  Maybe have one somewhat "overpowered", temporary character that can demolish all of the enemies by themselves even if the rest of your party falls (letting the player know they're doing something wrong without forcing a Game Over).  Reduce the boss' HP by 10 or 20 percent.  Script it to deal less damage if the party is in trouble.  Consider decreasing the damage that skeletons do (and immediately destroying them if the Lich is defeated) so that you're not penalizing players that go right for the Lich.  And figure out ways to reduce the luck factor on that boss.  Maybe he doesn't use the nuke if you're below half health, or if he has already used it twice.

Basically, your player will usually need some time to learn the mechanics of your game and figure out how to respond to them.  Unless the game's core engagement is challenge (in the sense of overcoming obstacles that present a real chance of failure), a Game Over in the first dungeon (short of incredibly dumb play) is strictly bad design.  A Game Over in the second dungeon is likely to frustrate the player and ****** their ability to develop a flow state when playing your game.  The third dungeon seems to me like a good time to give below-average players a wake-up call with a very real possibility of GO's, now that they understand how the game works and have gotten into its flow.

Could the player figure all this out within a few runs, after their initial attempts at ramboing, then going straight for the Lich, fail?  Eh, probably.  Will they stick around long enough to do so after they fail a couple times, using strategies that may have worked in other games they've played?  I worry that they won't stick around, unless your game is unbelievably fun or compelling.  That's why I really recommend erring on the side of generosity early on, and doubly so if you're not guiding the player along with heavy instruction.

 

[jonthefox]

great ideas and suggestions, thank you.

 

[Kes]

I join with Wavelength - use the design you've just outlined and watch most of your players walk away.  If you are going to do something that runs strictly counter to what almost all RM rpg players know and expect, you have to have a superb way of telling them, and just having a characters say, "let's go straight across" won't do.  As a player I've seen lots of instances where the character gives info like that and it's fine to ignore it, and so you go off and hunt around in case there's a side map with some nice gear or a higher healing item, and then come back to do the boss.  New players wouldn't necessarily recognise what the hint might be about, so it wouldn't help them either.

That battle sounds totally unbalanced for so early in the game.  Wavelength has given some decent ideas on how you might improve it.  You might also consider having a healing item just before the boss.  Not only will that increase the party's HP, it also serves as a warning - "something nasty must be just ahead if the dev has given me this".