Active Topics
-
Brave New World 1.8.4 is now available!2.0 Idea? Maybe?NT Content & Features: Requests, Suggestion...Version 9 Beta Public Beta Test DownloadSolo Thief Challenge (Thief SSCC)Videos
What Makes A Good Mod?
We've talked about what modding a game involves, but another huge misconception I find is what constitutes a good mod. For the sake of this article, we're going to be restricting this largely to difficulty mods, for obvious reasons.
To create a good difficulty mod, you have to look at the following:
- Difficulty Curve
- Difficulty Type
- Content
- Tedium
- Technical Limitations
Each of these must be managed and/or worked around appropriately in order to make a good mod, and to be honest, these are largely applicable to any type of mod, not just difficulty mods.
Difficulty Curve
First and foremost, a difficulty curve is absolutely essential to any kind of mod, hardtype or not.
A mod that is really tough from the get go will quickly reach the point where strategical difficulty becomes statistical difficulty, or in other words, your well thought out strategies will become simply a numbers game. Or, failing that, will reach a point where the player simply isn't enjoying themselves anymore. A huge offender of this is Phantasy Star IV: Purgatory Mode. The difficulty is very high at the beginning (characters being one shot in the first dungeon) and does not let up.
It's also very possible for your mod to be too easy as well. Ideally, you want a difficulty curve that challenges the player to step up their game, but you don't want the game to beat them into submission either.
Difficulty Type
Just as important as the difficulty curve is the type of difficulty. I'm not going to say that any one type of difficulty is superior to another, because to be quite honest it's all subjective. What you find fun may not be what another person finds fun.
Most difficulty mods try to have a heavy emphasis on what I call strategical difficulty. The term is self-explanatory; the difficulty comes from the strategies you employ rather than your overall stats. Final Fantasy Tactics 1.3 and Final Fantasy VI: Brave New World are two mods that do this very well. This is generally a very fun type of difficulty that a lot of people who enjoy hardtypes enjoy.
Some people find enjoyment in the type of statistical difficulty I mentioned before, and there's nothing wrong with that. If your mod is targeting that crowd of people, have at it, just don't expect those outside of that group to find it very fun or entertaining.
There's another type of difficulty that you generally won't see emphasized too much in hardtypes, which are mostly RPGs: reaction-based difficulty. A really good example of this is our Megaman X Hardtype created by Hart-Hunt. The emphasis on your reaction time is displayed quite clearly in the very first level and sets the tone for the rest of the mod.
Then there are certain mods that combine all three of these: strategy, statistical, and reaction time. In this case, the statistical part of the formula is most often done through equipment choices and, if applicable, the game's job/class system.
As a side note, a concept regarding difficulty that is something of a golden rule is to never break an established "law" without telling the player. If the player has gotten used to playing a certain way (most of the time different from the original), you don't simply change that completely without giving the player some kind of clue. Teaching the player to use different strategies is well and good, but don't do something like emphasize highly aggressive play in the first 75% of the game and then completely nullify that playstyle in the last 25%.
Content
Content in a hardtype is many things. It is the number of viable equipment and abilities, the new stuff you add to the game, and, to add onto the first, builds.
The best poster child for content I've seen has got to be, without a doubt, Brave New World. BTB and Synchysi have added a lot of things to the game, and in doing so made practically everything viable. Every piece of equipment and every ability is useful, niche or not. Every character is viable and has multiple builds, each of them with different strengths and weaknesses. This adds a lot of replayability to the mod as a result.
Something to always be cautious of, however, is overbalancing. There's a really good article on balance already that goes into it in detail. Ideally, you want to make as many things viable as you can, but also give the player the freedom to experiment. Pigeon-holing the player into using that one ability for a given fight over all others (not to be confused with an intelligent choice of abilities for a fight) is not a good thing.
Tedium
Tedium goes hand in hand with the first two points about difficulty curve and type. If you want grinding to be a necessity, that's fine. Just don't expect a lot of people to be a huge fan of your mod, because let's face it, people generally don't like tedious, arbitrary, repetitive tasks.
The key word there is "arbitrary." I'll use 1.3 as an example: everything in the Deep Dungeon is level 99, but the Deep Dungeon is optional. You can complete the game without ever grinding a single point of exp or JP.
Brave New World (most mods that we host, really) does a very good job of this. If you fight every battle you get into, then you won't have to grind at all. If you run from battles, there's obviously going to come a point where you need to do a little grinding to keep pace.
It's always good to see that a modder has put up safeguards to deter the brute force (beating a fight with levels, not strategy) approach to a given boss fight. as well. For example, when my mod, Breath of Fire III: Dragon Trial, was going through one of its first betas, a certain tester brute forced his way past the first boss. To curb that urge, I made the ability (that he was grinding for) do significantly less damage. You can also spin this another way, and make a boss counter a particular ability with an attack that almost wipes out your entire party.
Speaking on modders for a moment, there is also something to be said about how you, as a modder, try to balance around what the player may or may not do. It is a mistake to try and have complete control over what the player will do, because that stymies creativity and interesting mechanics.
"The hand of the developer should be invisible and gentle, not gigantic and shoved up your ass." - BTB, Co-creator of Brave New World
Technical Limitations
Ah, technical limitations, the bane of a modder. Anyone who has ever modded something knows all too well what these roadblocks feel like. However, all is not lost; these roadblocks are expected. As a modder, you have to find a way to work around them, as we all do.
Sometimes you work around them with mechanics, sometimes you cut to the root of the problem and change it with an Assembly hack, but regardless, you still have to get past it or your project is doomed.
Do not be afraid to ask for help. That's what we're here for.
18 Comments
Page 1 of 1Hart-Hunt
12 February 2014 - 08:23 PMGood read, as always. I was waiting for someone else to reply first, as I can't really add anything more to it.0Kjata
13 February 2014 - 02:48 AMShit, I thought I replied to this. Oh well.
Anyway, the key to making a really good mod, not just one that is "pretty good" is picking a base game that supports it. For example, of all the modded games on this site, FF9 is my favorite. The day I first played it in late 2000 until the day before I downloaded 1.3, I would say it was the best game ever made.
But the reason I loved it so much was the characters, overall story, atmosphere, etc. Gameplay was... mediocre.
FF9 Unleashed did an amazing job with making the game fun to play again, but the base game was weak for modding. In the interest of keeping shit balanced, and having an overall good game, the parts where you are stuck with a shitty party (fuck you outer countinent and your 2 white mages) really sucks. Plus because your characters get no exp for not being in battle, and they all have useful abilities, made for a shitload of extra grinding
Is FF9 Unleashed amazing? Yes. But FFT, FF7, and golden sun made for better mods, due to the way the game was structured. When playing difficult games, I want to feel like there is a way to win besides "play better." While picking a better team is playing better, I want to have options. I want to tinker with my team until I win, or have a setup I know can work.
So before making a mod, think "Is this going to be awesome because vanilla is awesome but easy, or is this truly going to be a masterpiece?" Don't let the former dissuade you, Landon Ray is a hero in my book for what he did. But it will never be 1.3, because the base game sucks for modding.4Stann
13 February 2014 - 03:46 AMKjata, on 13 February 2014 - 02:48 AM, said:
So before making a mod, think "Is this going to be awesome because vanilla is awesome but easy, or is this truly going to be a masterpiece?"
I would definitely agree with this. I'd also add "Do I have the tools/skills necessary to make this a masterpiece?" from personal experience.1Augestein
17 February 2014 - 12:01 PMOh I totally agree with Kjata on that. After playing FF9: Unleashed, there are just so many parts that you realize are just generally bad game design in FF9-- not even because something that Landon Ray did necessarily, but because of the way the game carries itself...
Another goal for modders to keep in mind is "how is the game going to present itself to players." I'll definitely explain this one as it sounds a bit weird. People need to remember that the game doesn't necessarily need to DO exactly what you want it to do, but PRESENT itself to do what you wanted it to do.
Example: I'm fooling around with Fire Emblem 7 (the one that is just called Fire Emblem), and I wanted Archers to have access to the Longbow and no one else. While searching, I noticed that there is the Wao Do weapon, a weapon that can only be used by Swordmasters and Lyn. This means that Fire Emblem 7 DOES have the capacity to do this. So what do I do? I flag Wao Do as a weapon that archers can use, and make the Longbow only usable by Wao Do users. What ends up happening is that no other class that has access to bows can use the Longbow because they don't have the flag for it. Sure, Lyn can use it too, but that just has the added perk of making her special. The beauty of this, is that archers can't suddenly use Wao Do weapons because they don't have weapon ranks in swords and swordmasters can't use Longbows because they don't have ranks in bows. So what it comes across as, is that the archers were given a bow perk when the reality is that they were given a sword flag. This leaves it open for me to assign more unique weapons to other classes. Pretty nifty to remember that it's what the player sees rather than what you actually hacked or modded.
And I especially agree on difficulty curves. One of the reasons I like 1.3 so much is that it's not all in your face about how it's harder than Vanilla. It gently slides you into the difficulty curve, and genuinely saves it's toughest challenges for the later stretches in the game. So honestly, 1.3 actually has a better difficulty curve than vanilla, as 1.3 takes into consideration that you have less tools in the beginning and more towards the end. Vanilla? It was harder because you were always outnumbered, and in the early game, you WERE the same strength as your enemies, and the gap between your strength and the enemies only lessened as you got further, so it just becomes a stomp fest at chapter 4.1Advent
17 February 2014 - 02:04 PMTo Stann's and Kjata/Aug's point, I was trying to keep the article in itself on a hopeful tone. I don't wanna discourage would-be modders/hackers, because it's quite possible that someone could read those kinds of things in the article -- someone who has the ability, whether they know it or not, to remove that roadblock -- and just give it up right there.
You definitely have a good point though, Aug, and this is something I've discussed at length with BTB. You never truly know a game until you delve into its code and try to mod it. You learn so much about the game and its developers by going through that process that it's mindblowing.2BTB
17 February 2014 - 03:58 PMOne of the first things I did with the FF6 editor was dummied out absolutely *everything* that I was sure wasn't being used.
I learned very quickly where I was incorrect in my assumptions >.>0astrums
14 July 2014 - 10:34 PMThank You For Our Information,
Regards,
syuvasri
SAP Business Solutions-211Kjata
15 July 2014 - 12:29 AM-1Kjata
15 July 2014 - 02:19 AMastrums, on 14 July 2014 - 10:34 PM, said:
URL="Url: http://astrums.net/"] SAP Business Solutions[/URL]
There's a fucking failed link this post.0Ludovician
15 July 2014 - 03:52 AM0Kjata
16 July 2014 - 03:51 AM0Ludovician
16 July 2014 - 04:05 AMAh, I see. Maybe it's the url syntax for a different forum. Oh well.0Advent
01 October 2014 - 07:55 PMEdited the article to include an important tidbit and a timeless quote.
Since finding the new part is definitely a pain in the ass:
34Archael
17 October 2014 - 09:57 AMHey Advent
We've immortalized your excellent write-up on the main guides page of the site:
http://www.insanedif...?title=Site_FAQ6Advent
23 October 2014 - 09:29 AM1You do not have permission to leave comments on this articlePage 1 of 1
- Account