What's the best way to add difficulty? Pros & Cons

[Meister_anon~Master_o f_None]

So from browsing the forums for a while I see there's a lot of difference of opinion on how to implement challenge in a pokemon game.
I want to have a discussion on the topic to see what you all feel is best, and what methods work pros/cons, and maybe some can work together but may be completely incompatible with another.

The features I've seen talked about for increasing difficulty are:

1. raising the level for every trainer pokemon for every battle encounter.
2. boosting their evs/ivs.
3. programing different move sets.
4. adding more pokemon to each trainer.
5. changing battle type. (like more double battles or rotation battles)
6. setting level caps through exp gain adjustment.
7. or changes to the AI.


My opinion is most could probably work, but over-leveling is probably the bane of every attempt at balancing. That said I don't really want to take away player agency by not letting them do so. [maybe adjusting what level gym badges allow you to control would be better; to try and tackle it from the other side.]

But I'm not sure giving everyone 6 pokemon is the best way to make things more difficult either.
Was playing fire red earlier and entering a new area I was slightly under level for and my entire team was nearly destroyed by a trainer with 1 strong pokemon.

A clefairy about 3 levels up, with sing double-slap growl and encore. I don't know if it was just that tough, or a gen 3 thing, but it seemed like all my stat change effects on it were removed whenever it fainted my pokemon that applied it. Just like if I'd used a trap move.

 

[tzujm33]

I like hacks the most that make battles more difficult via improved a.i. and better movesets and ev/iv distribution.

 

[Squirtlenator]

Battle style turned to set, no healing items during battles, and when facing gym leaders use the same amount of mons i.e. 1v1, 2v2 - It doesn't seem fair that the player is allowed a full team of six while the leader has only two.

 

[Indigo_Thief]

@Meister_anon~Master_o f_None

That's a topic I spend a lot of time thinking about.

Difficulty in games is a tricky subject to tackle, but if done right it can make for a fun, challenging and, above all else, satisfying experience when overcoming obstacles.
As you've listed quite a few things I'll try to go over each one as best as I can :)

1. Raising the Level
Generally speaking a steeper level curve is something most people strive for in their games. That could be attributed to the experiences series veterans have with Johto's atrocious level curve.
Leveling in Pokémon Games is, at least in my opinion, best adjusted by looking at Pokémon learnsets and story progession.
When most Pokémon get their most interesting moves at Lv.55-65, but the Champion's ace tops at 58 those Pokémon will not have much time to use their full-potential movesets.
The Curve should be adjusted to major milestones during the journey and can be incorporated with self-imposed level caps. This increases accessibility.
In my own hack of Emerald, for example, the player can obtain Psyduck before the Brawly fight.
His ace is at Lv.23. If you would like to cap yourself at his ace's level your Psyduck best Psychic-Type move would be Confusion.
Should you think that's to hard for you, there's always the option to get to Lv.24. There, Psyuck learns Psybeam, increasing your chances of winning (alongside the statboosts).
This way, no matter the player, everyone can customize their experience on the fly and in an organic way.
Difficulty, especially through leveling can be much closer to accessibility than many might think, but I'm sure hard level caps have their place, if implemented correctly.

2. Boosting EVs/IVs
Let's split this in two. EVs first. Ever since playing Emerald Kaizo I very much enjoyed the notion of "No-EVs". The hack creator removed them from the game to reduce FOMO significantly.
FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) is especially oppressive in harder games where every stat point can make the difference.
The player is made to feel obliged to EV-Train their Team to even compete. This assesment doesn't need to be correct, but most players, if given the choice, would like to get the most out of their teams.
This fear of not doing your utmost can ruin more difficult games, especially in older ones, where EV-training was more tedious. And let's be real. EV Training isn't fun anyway.
By removing EVs from the player and the opposing trainers the player gets freed from these chores and is able to concentrate on the more fun/interesting parts of the game.
IVs, however, are an intersting way to spice up the game.
I have generally positive experiences with max IV trainers, as them being well... AI controlled, makes them inferior to the player in flexibility. This can be remedied by bumping their teams with IVs.
Sure their Pokémon are better than yours, but your're a human, who can outsmart the AI, so the max IVs are used to achieve a more balanced experience.
As it was with the Leveling, player accessibility equals fun in many regards and eliminating the tedious parts in games goes a long way.

3. Custom Movesets
Custom Movesets are a great tool to either set the mood for an area or act as a sort of skillcheck for the player. Should the player outwit the opponents strategy a sense of satisfaction ist achieved.
In my Roxanne double battle she leads with an Onix and her Nosepass. The Onix has Sand Stream to boost the Sp.DEF of her whole team and curse to boost its defense.
Her Nosepass's only move is Selfdestruct. On top of that it is holding a Choice Band. As Onix is faster it will always Curse and take next to no damage from that Selfdestruct.
At Lv.18 a banded Selfdestruct destroyes a lot of stuff and at first it's hard to outplay this early in the game, but the player ist rewarded for creative problem solving, if you give them options that is.
The Psyduck returns and one of its possible abilities is Cloud Nine, which removes the effects of weather from the field.
You can also obtain one of five Pokémon with Fake Out up until then, one of them is Nuzleaf.
As Nosepass is Base 20 SPEED in my hack both Psyduck and Nuzleaf are faster and can take it out before it goes boom.
These experiences can only be achived by intentionality behind every moveset. A steady stream of satisfaction will make the player push forward indefinitely. Competitive Pokémon is a great example for this.

4. Adding more Trainer Pokémon
Generally a good idea especially on Gym Leaders. Though as with most things the rule "Quality over Quantity" applies.
When every Route Trainer has six Pokémon early- and mid-game Routes quickly become tedious and overbearing. My favourite approach is to either think of a theme or a strategy for each trainer.
Thinking like a competitive player helps greatly.

What would the player use to defeat *Enemy Pokémon #1*?
Which *Enemy Pokémon #2* would be good to scare the players Pokémon out and make them switch?
Maybe *Enemy Pokémon #2* has a setup move so the player has to come prepared (have taunt on a potential switch in for example)?

Having different "competitve rolls" in Trainer Teams can make the player think strategically all on their own. Have a defensive Team. A offensive Team. A Stall Team.
A Rain Team. A Sun Team. A Hail Team. A Trick Room Team.
Maybe a Mixed Team? Have a Wall. A Wallbreaker. A Setup Sweeper. A Revenge Killer with Coverage. A late Game Cleaner.
Synergy between opposing team members is as important as between the players Pokémon.
Synergy is key and the Possibilites are seemingly endless.

5. Different Battle Types
This one is heavily biased as I very much dislike Triple, Rotation and Inversion (?) Battles.
A healthy mix of singles and doubles can work wonders to break up the pace every so often and challenge the player to think differently.
Most games tend to focus on singles, but doubles are a great tool to nudge the player out of their comfort zone.
Being on "unfamiliar terain" and overcoming challenges feels twice as rewarding. As with the Leveling the player needs to be provided with the necessary tools to thrive in this environment.
Spread Moves with different uses like Swift, Icy Wind and Bulldoze or Support Moves like Helping Hand, etc. are great to nudge the player in the right direction and prevent frustration.

6. Level Caps through EXP-Tampering
As it can be a welcome challenge to manage EXP to not overlevel I wouldn't support the idea of throttling or increasing EXP to hit certain caps.
Giving the player the agency to bringing a Pokémon and have it overlevel or not further supports creative problem solving.

7. Battle AI
As with the IVs the game needs something fair to fight back. A high AI setting can be that aspect, especially seeing as the player can adjust and start to predict the AI.

Sorry for the long reply, but this is something I'm pretty passionate about, so I hope this is fine.
As I'm working on my own hack right now I guess it's good to reflect on these things from time to time.
If you don't question every move and change you make during development you risk the fall into mediocrity.

I hope I could give some interesting opinions on the topic :)

Edit: Visibility Adjustments

 

[Corveone]

Well, there are clever/good ways of increasing difficulty, and there are cheap/bad ways of doing it. In my opinion:

Good:

-Improving trainers AI.

-Give trainers (at least the important ones) more competent movesets and strategies, BUT NOT dumb stuff like first Gym Leader having Pokémon that know Flamethrower or Earthquake. Keep things balanced and reasonable, early-game trainers can be made stronger by giving them better early-game strategies.

-Boost/max the trainers' Pokémon IVs/EVs, but also give the player access to features to improve their team to catch up. If the game expects you to care about IVs/EVs, natures, etc. then at least make all that stuff more friendly and less painful to deal with (give easier access to EV training features, move tutor/relearners, ability capsules, etc.)

-Level cap, so the player can't just solve a problem by overlevelling.

-Lock the use of trainer items (Full restores, revives, etc.) for both the player and the AI (or at least make it an option).

-At least for important battles, limit the number of Pokémon you can use based on how many the opponent has. If you're fighting a gym leader that uses three Pokémon it's not fair that you're able to use six.

Bad:

-Raising the trainers' levels artificially and too ahead of the natural curve, so you're allways underlevelled unless you spend a lot of time grinding to catch up. That's not fair challenge.

-Give the opposing trainers absurd and out of mind advantages, like certain rom hacks where you see the first gym leader having six fully evolved Pokémon, trainers abusing of Megas and legendaries way before you can get access to that stuff, trainers having access to the best TMs and competitive move sets while you're still stuck with garbage early game moves, etc.

-Level scaling. I don't get the point of this one, when level cap does the job better. With level scaling if one or two of your Pokémon accidentally level up too much, and you want to add some new mons to your team, you'll have to spend more time grinding them so they catch up with the higher level ones. It just makes swapping team members more grindy and annoying.

And that's the thing. Plenty of rom hacks / fan games feature increased difficulty, some do it right, some others unfortunately just don't know what balance means.

Making a Pokémon game challenging is a very difficult task, because if you want to create something good you need to make something that's challenging but feels fair, reasonable, and properly balanced (Congratulations to those who achieve this). Otherwise, you might end up creating an unbalanced mess, exclusively for players who have fun torturing themselves, waste hours grinding, and testing their patience to the limits against each BS the game throws at them, but not an actually good and properly balanced challenge.

 

[Meister_anon~Master_o f_None]

I like hacks the most that make battles more difficult via improved a.i. and better movesets and ev/iv distribution.

Ok cool I can see that, like drayano style.

 

[Meister_anon~Master_o f_None]

@Meister_anon~Master_o f_None

That's a topic I spend a lot of time thinking about.

First I love all the structure and how much effort you put into your response, thank-you very much.
I feel differently about some things but for the most part I can understand your points.

1.

The Curve should be adjusted to major milestones during the journey and can be incorporated with self-imposed level caps. This increases accessibility.
In my own hack of Emerald, for example, the player can obtain Psyduck before the Brawly fight.
His ace is at Lv.23. If you would like to cap yourself at his ace's level your Psyduck best Psychic-Type move would be Confusion.

I see so, some thought should go into deciding what pokemon are available early on, because those determine the options your player has available to them for tackling future obstacles.

For ex. In blaze black, I picked up an abra and a nidoran m, nidoran had significant moveset changes, so later on I had a fast and strong sp atker in kadabra, and a tanky status afflictor in nidoking.

having them available when I did gave me time to work on them, and the expanded moveset gave me options I normally wouldn't be able to consider.

2.

I like the option of evs, giving trainers a way to truly customize their mons and maybe even break from the limits of base stats. If getting them was like you said easier, I definitely couldn't handle ev training multiple pokemon if it wasn't for the option to speed up on emulators. Also made easier in blaze black by having multiple exp shares.

That said I've been playing fire red recently and the game is no less fun, than blaze black even though I'm not paying attention to ivs or evs at all in that game. another thought progression is just plain slower in the early games, (least I think so) with places like mt moon etc. but I love it.

>>Any thoughts on how pace of progression affects the experience? Or how to adjust it well?

3.

In my Roxanne double battle she leads with an Onix and her Nosepass. The Onix has Sand Stream to boost the Sp.DEF of her whole team and curse to boost its defense.
Her Nosepass's only move is Selfdestruct. On top of that it is holding a Choice Band. As Onix is faster it will always Curse and take next to no damage from that Selfdestruct.

lol this is the most evil thing I've ever heard.
But I kind of don't like things like this, wears its an unaccountable wall, people would fail the first time, making people have to brute force retry till they win.
With that in the first round players most likely lose their best pokemon, especially if they set up like normal trying to do a clean type sweep.

But that's just the first round so I can't say the whole thing is unbeatable on first try just from that.
And on the other hand that is realistic and like the show, back when ash actually lost gym battles, he'd leave come up with a strategy, maybe train up a new pokemon specifically for the gym, and then the gym leader would just setup exactly as they had before. lol

5.

This one is heavily biased as I very much dislike Triple, Rotation and Inversion (?) Battles.

I completely understand, that rival rotation battle with Cheron in blaze black had me tilted.
But that's probably because I absolutely refused to go train before I tried again.
So I pushed through with my fully ev'd but a few slightly under-leveled team.

I was not comfortable during the rotation battle, I felt like I should have could have one, if it was one on one, and success hinged on rng and my ability to somehow predict what my opponent was gonna go for. Of course that's only a problem with a tough team like his, that covers multiple types and has both offense and defense.

But looking back, I feel that it completely exposed the true limits of my pokemon, I mean with how things are setup, single battles we always know who's coming up next so we just switch out to who we know can handle whatever they throaw at us. So certain pokemon will only ever see combat with certain other opponents.

Rotation battles removed that, put everyone on the same playing field, with all their weaknesses and relative differences exposed.
And when I beat that thing, (by the skin of my teeth with my last pokemon in the red) I felt like my team should have gone in the hall of fame right then.


6.
I totally agree about the exp thing, the last thing I want is to have less options or remove player options in a game.
Personally I like the idea of only changing things on the back-end so to speak, I like the idea of changing the max levels allowed by each gym badge, or how much you can over-level them before your pokemon becomes disobedient.
I don't know what the actual levels are because I've never over-leveled that much, I only knew that mechanic existed from when I transferred a pokemon to a different game and couldn't use it.

7.
I'll have to look into ai, I was planning on just leaving ai unchanged, but it sounds like something I should learn about.

Thanks again for your response.

 

[Meister_anon~Master_o f_None]

.

I like your points, and you've really convinced me of the importance of difficulty settings in modern pokemon games.
Because it does seem we're divided into 2 very different types of players.

Do you have any idea how this could be implemented as an optional choice?

-Lock the use of trainer items (Full restores, revives, etc.) for both the player and the AI (or at least make it an option).

 

[Indigo_Thief]

@Meister_anon~Master_o f_None

Thanks again for reading my paragraph. It's nice to talk to people that are interested in game balancing and I can definitely see your counter-arguments :)

lol this is the most evil thing I've ever heard.
But I kind of don't like things like this, wears its an unaccountable wall, people would fail the first time, making people have to brute force retry till they win.
With that in the first round players most likely lose their best pokemon, especially if they set up like normal trying to do a clean type sweep.

But that's just the first round so I can't say the whole thing is unbeatable on first try just from that.
And on the other hand that is realistic and like the show, back when ash actually lost gym battles, he'd leave come up with a strategy, maybe train up a new pokemon specifically for the gym, and then the gym leader would just setup exactly as they had before. lol

And about that... xD You hit it spot on. It is heavy for a first gym battle and you are intended to learn from it just like the anime (in a nuzlocke setting you can obviously read the docs and prepare).
I try to make sure the player has options to deal with the Nosepass. There are about five or six mons that get Fake Out up until then and also some mons with Intimidate, Charm and Featherdance.
A decent Mightyena survives the banded Selfdestruct after only its own Intimidate (going off of that I knew that the player can preserve pokémon with minimal effort and built from there on out).
A lot of different combinations are possible (Cloud Nine Psyduck's Water Pulse + Helping Hand is another that comes to my mind). I like to give options and empower the players who think strategically and sometimes out of the box.
My Brawly fight is similar in structure. It's always about the first interaction: If handeled correctly the opponents strategy is broken and the advantage lies with the player. If not the player slips into disadvantage and has to recover.
That doesn't mean the rest of the fight is free, but I like openers like these to set the stage as well as the players expectations and Double Battles are a wonderful canvas for these scenarios.

By the way. Are you working on something yourself? If so, may I ask which game acts as the basis?
Anyway, have a nice day :)

 

[Meister_anon~Master_o f_None]

@Meister_anon~Master_o f_None

By the way. Are you working on something yourself? If so, may I ask which game acts as the basis?
Anyway, have a nice day :)

Hah I was just about to ask you the same thing about your game, I see how you setup now, and I like that, it goes to your thing about thematics with the first round informing expectation.

I'm following along to a youtuber playthrough of blaze black, and that made me remember that a gym battle they struggled with, my team completely breezed through, the way my team was setup I didn't even see the same hurdles that they went through because my team could disrupt it better.

The way you describe your setup makes me want to tackle some of your gyms with the team I have in blaze black.


What's the name of that hack you made? And can you give me a tip no how to start looking into AI?


I...tentatively am working on a hack, I'm very new here so I'm just picking up knowledge right now, but I'm planning on using a fire red base. Still undecided if I should use CFRU.

I'm not building many new things, the idea is mostly to add features and change some mechanics to make it more "realistic" and in line with what I would want.


Also its all good man, I enjoy in-depth analysis and making absurdly long posts too. :)

 

[Corveone]

Do you have any idea how this could be implemented as an optional choice?

For the AI trainers you can simply not give them items and they'll have nothing to use. For the player Radical Red uses a script or something to not let you open your bag during battles, and from what I recall reading, making it an option should be possible, the rom hack creator just didn't want to to prevent players from cheesing the difficulty with that kind of items.

 

[Meister_anon~Master_o f_None]

For the AI trainers you can simply not give them items and they'll have nothing to use. For the player Radical Red uses a script or something to not let you open your bag during battles, and from what I recall reading, making it an option should be possible, the rom hack creator just didn't want to to prevent players from cheesing the difficulty with that kind of items.

Ok thanks, that should be enough to get me on the right path.

 

[Meister_anon~Master_o f_None]

Battle style turned to set, no healing items during battles, and when facing gym leaders use the same amount of mons i.e. 1v1, 2v2 - It doesn't seem fair that the player is allowed a full team of six while the leader has only two.

So what's the bigger benefit of playing in set to you, is it not knowing what pokemon is coming next, or not being able switch after fainting the other pokemon?

 

[Squirtlenator]

So what's the bigger benefit of playing in set to you, is it not knowing what pokemon is coming next, or not being able switch after fainting the other pokemon?

Set offers more of a challenge. If you haven't tried it before then give it a shot and compare the two for yourself. Switch gives a player a "free switch in" to whatever mon is coming out next. Which makes the battle easier.

 

[Meister_anon~Master_o f_None]

Set offers more of a challenge. If you haven't tried it before then give it a shot and compare the two for yourself. Switch gives a player a "free switch in" to whatever mon is coming out next. Which makes the battle easier.

Yeah I checked it out after you said it, because I had know idea what it even was.
But what I'm thinking is this, if you had the option to switch but you couldn't base it on what pokemon was coming out next (because you wouldn't know, like in set) would that be enough?

You could switch or reject the switch. Either way you wouldn't know what pokemon was coming out next until it was sent out.
And you'd still have the option to just use set mode instead, this wouldn't replace that.
what do you think?

 

[Squirtlenator]

Yeah I checked it out after you said it, because I had know idea what it even was.
But what I'm thinking is this, if you had the option to switch but you couldn't base it on what pokemon was coming out next (because you wouldn't know, like in set) would that be enough?

You could switch or reject the switch. Either way you wouldn't know what pokemon was coming out next until it was sent out.
And you'd still have the option to just use set mode instead, this wouldn't replace that.
what do you think?

You still have the option to switch now with either battle style, it's just that set doesn't allow that initial swap. If your using the shift/switch style and you don't want to know which mon the trainer is sending out to influence your decision whether to stay in or switch, just close your eyes until that text has passed 😂

 

[Meister_anon~Master_o f_None]

You still have the option to switch now with either battle style, it's just that set doesn't allow that initial swap. If your using the shift/switch style and you don't want to know which mon the trainer is sending out to influence your decision whether to stay in or switch, just close your eyes until that text has passed 😂

lol yeah I get that, but what I'm saying is I'm thinking of changing it myself for a rom, so if switch didn't automatically tell you what pokemon the trainer would send out after you faint the opponent would that be a good difficulty change, in your opinion?

 

[Squirtlenator]

lol yeah I get that, but what I'm saying is I'm thinking of changing it myself for a rom, so if switch didn't automatically tell you what pokemon the trainer would send out after you faint the opponent would that be a good difficulty change, in your opinion?

I think the battle styles are fine as is tbh. No sense in wasting your time with that mechanic when you could be working on other things within the rom. But, it's your rom, if you want to implement it by all means go ahead. I'm not going to stand in your way.

 

[Meister_anon~Master_o f_None]

I think the battle styles are fine as is tbh. No sense in wasting your time with that mechanic when you could be working on other things within the rom. But, it's your rom, if you want to implement it by all means go ahead. I'm not going to stand in your way.

Cool, thanks for replying.
I'll probably go ahead with the change.

 

[Squirtlenator]

Cool, thanks for replying.
I'll probably go ahead with the change.

Best of luck 👍