Creating Challenging Enemies

After replaying a few videogames that I enjoyed in my youth, I noticed one big problem. There isn't much of a challenge to the enemies. This led me to think about the usual ways developers use to make opponents more difficult and which methods work best.


The challenge level of many current games

Method 1: Add more enemies
This is the Serious Sam approach to difficulty-add a whole ton of additional foes and the game will indeed be harder. Bonus points if the game requires the player to individually click for each attack-eventually their finger will get tired.


Eventually they'll get tired!

Although this method does work, I find it to be a cop out. In many action RPGs your character will not even take significant damage from these types of enemies because you have sufficient armor and hit points to resist their attacks. This means that you don't succeed in adding a sense of danger and challenge-the player never feels menaced, just inconvenienced.


A similar obstacle would be a room full of kittens you have to pet

Method 2: Add health and damage to the enemies
This is another pretty easy approach to make the game more difficult-just make the monsters harder to kill and make them injure you more. This is better than method 1 because it at least makes you feel that enemies are a real threat, but it's difficult to balance. It's hard to find the sweet spot of difficulty where they are hard enough to pose a threat but not at an unreasonable level of challenge.


The tricky seesaw of game balance

The other problem with this method is that it may not fit the game world very well. For example, in the The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion all of the monsters increase in strength along with your own character. This means that toward the end of the game every common bandit will still be an equal threat for your battle-hardened warrior who has won thousands of engagements, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

If this method is chosen ideally it should be implemented by making different enemies appear that look like they should be more challenging. For instance, if you were fighting bandits and thieves at the start of the game, add better equipped mercenaries or knights later on.


This enemy might pose a plausible threat at the start of the game-not at the end of the game

Method 3: Limit the player's resources
This is one of my favorite ways to add difficulty to a game. It forces the player to consider what to use in every situation as they may need that grenade or healing potion more later on. Many RPGs and survival horror games use inventory limits to impose this on the player-you're physically unable to carry everything you might want so you have to pick and choose what you take with you. Other RPGs don't have limits to your inventory but you don't have unlimited cash so you have to pick what to buy very carefully.

However, this system poses a difficult balancing act once again, as there may be situations where limiting player resources results in being stuck in a situation with no way out except reloading or restarting the game from an earlier point. This results in the player being forced to slog his way through a bunch of stuff he's already done earlier-or more likely to quit the game entirely.


and you really don't want to be stuck in the torture dungeon

Method 4: Make enemies only vulnerable to specific attacks
This is another one of my favorite methods-and can be done in many different creative ways. Add a specific weakness to an enemy-such as taking extra damage from silver weapons. Require the player to use a certain item to damage their foe-such as a stake to kill vampires. However, it's very important that there be a way for the player to KNOW what the enemy's weakness is before or during the encounter, so that they can potentially prepare for and beat it without having to go to Gamefaqs. You can do this by having hints in the game-such as NPCs you talk to in town or a book you find saying that the enemy is afraid of light.

You can also ask the player to use logic-for example the first boss in Final Fantasy Nine is a big plant. Astute players might realize that plants tend to not like being set on fire.


The dreaded Plant Brain

There should also be some visible or audible sign that you have successfully identified the enemy's weakness-anything from a shout of agony to simply taking significantly more damage from your attacks.

Method 5: Impose additional restrictions on the player
This is a great way to not only make the game more difficult, but to make the game feel more unique and original. In Final Fantasy Seven-players need to have various materia which have to be equipped to cast magic spells that can cause damage to enemies or heal allies. At one point in the game, players have all of their materia stolen by Yuffie.


Don't trust anyone who dresses like this

Obviously they want to get it back, but Yuffie is kidnapped by an enemy and the player has to fight their way through them without being able to use their magic to help. What I found extremely clever about this part of the game was that while you weren't able to cast magic and this was an abrupt, unexpected occurrence, there were ways around it. The store in town sold items that could be used to cause high damage to enemies, as well as healing potions that you could use to substitute for the cure spell.

In the Trauma Center game for the Wii you have to perform surgery on patients. You are used to being able to see the entire patient's body so that you can treat them quickly. Well, in one scenario you get involved with a car crash in a tunnel with no lighting. All you have available to light the scene is the flash on a camera that needs a few seconds to recharge. So you have to remember what's going on as the flash dims and you return to being completely in the dark so that you don't injure or kill your patient.


Nothing could possibly go wrong with doing surgery in the dark

Method 6: Make the enemy smarter
Unfortunately, making good AI for opponents seems to be extremely difficult. They are able to execute what they are programmed to do with perfection but they are also extremely predictable. Even in FPS games with the best enemy AI, after you've been through one or two rooms of enemies you pretty much know what they will do for the rest of the game. In RTS games, after the first few difficulty levels the AI is made more difficult by giving it resource gathering bonuses instead of making it better at the game.


Artificial Intelligence has not reached this point yet unfortunately

I think the best way to make the AI seem more intelligent is to constantly add new tricks that the enemies use with the precision that the AI can offer.

Using a FPS game where you attack a facility as an example, in the first engagement the enemy is stunned by you showing up and just returns fire while in the open as you gun them down. The next guards you meet are prepared and use cover to protect themselves. After that, there's an alarm in the room that you have to keep them from pressing and summoning reinforcements. Later on they turn the lights out in the room so you're blind and have to return fire to their muzzle flashes or at their flashlights. Maybe a later room has tear gas or something that floods it and you have to deactivate it.


Far too many FPS games stop at the second stage of AI-they take cover and then you spend the rest of the game popping out to blast at them for a few seconds before returning to your own cover

Summary
There are many ways to add difficulty to a game but if you want to separate your game from the pack, try and use more creative options. Don't just add more monsters with more health and damage-try and force the player to think. There are already tons of games out there that add enemies with slightly more health and damage-players won't remember those. They will remember trying to suture bleeding lacerations from the light of a camera flash.

Designing Choices in Games

Most recently released role-playing games have added moral choices or dilemmas as a core part of game-play. Unfortunately, few of these games succeed in making them interesting. They only offer "good" or "evil" options, which limit the player to being an angelic fairy of holiness or a complete jerk.


Choices need more depth than this

In order to make these choices actually elicit thought on the part of the player there are some basic requirements.

1. Make every choice viable to complete the game.
In some games you can make choices that make it almost impossible to finish the game. In Baldur's Gate, for example, the game has a reputation system which goes from 1 (extremely evil) to 20 (Heroic and noble). Unfortunately, only the heroic and noble option is viable to complete the game. If you are good, merchants will give you a steep discount on items and most people will react favorably to you. If you choose to make an evil party and your reputation drops below a certain point your game becomes a living hell. You will be attacked by the guards in every town, merchants will refuse to sell you items, and as you travel you will be ambushed by large war parties from the major cities.


The game is rather difficult to beat when a giant army of mercenaries attacks everywhere you go

It may be realistic that the major towns have a bounty on your head when you're evil, but from a game play context it's a nightmare. If you give the option to play as an evil character it needs to be a viable choice.

As an additional problem, every other character in the game who joins your adventuring party has their own alignment of good, neutral, or evil. Good and neutral characters will leave your party if you become too evil, evil characters will leave your party if you become too good. This means that if you use these characters in your group you have limitations to the choices you can make-otherwise you'll lose half of your strength and be unable to finish the game without a tedious trek around the world to find some more people of like-minded beliefs to join you.

2. Don't make one path grant benefits that are much better than the rest.
The worst route you can take for making a moral choice system is to offer unequal rewards. Players will almost always seek to take whatever route offers the best items, the most money, and the most experience. If you have a quest with one choice that gives the player a couple healing potions and one that gives the player a tremendously powerful weapon, why on earth would anyone pick the one that offers healing potions?


No offense meant healing potions, but you're just not as fun as a new sword

In the Baldur's Gate games, persuading an enemy not to fight or letting them go is almost always the worst possible choice. You don't usually get any experience points for releasing them and you also miss out on all the items and gold they might be carrying.

This isn't to say that you can't offer different rewards for different options, but they need to be properly balanced. Otherwise players aren't going to think about what choice is the best morally or pragmatically, they will think about what choice gives them the best loot.


Hmm I don't know if I want to kill hi-wait I get a TANK if I kill him? When and where do you want him dead?

3. Don't make good and evil moral compasses for players.
This is more of a personal preference of mine than anything else, but I despise games that choose to give you a good/evil compass. Many recent games use this device, such as Infamous and Prototype.


At least the cover of the game makes being evil look viable

The problem I have with these moral compasses is that they are again placing an artificial device in the way that will take precedence over your actual beliefs when it comes to making choices. To get the best armor/weapons/ending to the game you are required to play as a complete evil bastard or complete good hearted soul. If you pick a choice in between the two, a pragmatic option, you don't get the best toys to play with.

On the other hand, I can also see why a lot games choose this type of system. It makes it easy to design all of the choices-you just make an evil and a good option. If you add additional options, it adds a great deal of development time and expense to the game. If you have different endings to the game based off your choices throughout, it's also a lot easier to just have two or three to worry about as opposed to a dozen or more.

However, if you must use some sort of numeric value to rate the player's choices throughout the game, it is better to make it based off something other than good and evil. Two games I can think of that do this well are Mass Effect and Arcanum.

In Mass Effect you can make Paragon actions, which tend to be forgiving and generous to others, and Renegade actions, which tend to be pragmatic. You are allowed to make either paragon or renegade choices in some situations based off your level in that side. For instance, a paragon choice might be to let someone who tried to rob you go after you beat him up with a stern warning to turn his life around. A renegade option might be to throw him out of the window of a skyscraper.


The renegade/paragon scale of Mass Effect

The best part of this system is that you aren't limited to only one side or the other, you can choose to make paragon or renegade decisions whenever you like. The only disadvantage to not going fully down one track is that there are a few persuasive choices that you need extremely high renegade or paragon scores in order to accomplish. However, if your score isn't high enough to make them it doesn't ruin your game. Thus, you feel free to pick whatever option seems best to you.

Arcanum is a steampunk RPG where magic and technology exist in the same world. You can choose to have a character who uses swords, armor, and magic or a character who uses molotov cocktails, grenades, pistols, and shotguns. Or you can pick a character in the middle who uses elements of both.


Unfortunately the game is also so old that including any screenshots would be a bad idea

However, the game features a compass between magic and technology-as you choose abilities that let you use magic the compass tilts toward magic, as you choose technological abilities it tilts toward technology. Highly technological characters cannot use or be affected by magic as well, so if you try and use a healing spell on your character it will not be as effective. A highly magical character cannot use firearms or explosives effectively. If you pick a character in the middle, they can use items from both sides, but not to their maximum effect. This makes choosing abilities when you gain levels extremely interesting-there are many variables to consider, making it take a great deal of thought.

4. Make major choices have effects later in the game.
If you want players to care about each decision, it's good to make big decisions have a lasting effect on the game. That doesn't mean that picking between some money and a healing potion needs to change the ending of the game, but some certainly should have significance.


I told you we should have taken the healing potion!

Let me conclude with a few examples of well designed choices. In one of the downloadable modules for the first Mass Effect, a group of terrorists has taken over a mining facility on a large asteroid and have aimed it at the planet below where millions of people live. The terrorist's leader has locked up a group of the miners and scientists in a room with a bomb rigged to go off. He makes an ultimatum-let him go or he will detonate the bomb and kill all of the hostages. You can choose to release him and potentially allow him to make a similar attack again or you can go after him and all the hostages will die. You suffer no changes in loot or experience for picking either route-it's all up to you.


Although the hideous nature of Batarians does tend to bias me toward killing him

Another example-you are sent to kill the leader of a nation or city because he has been imprisoning a specific group of the population. However, when you go after him he explains the reasons behind his actions. Perhaps that group was responsible for terrorist attacks against the population and he's trying the best he can to protect his people. The leader isn't a caricature of evil, as most games make the bad guy, he's a realistic, human figure. What choice do you make now? Should you kill him? Let him stay in power? Take him prisoner?


A decision becomes much more challenging to make when it's about someone whose awkward situation you can understand

Even better, make the choice be about a character you've known throughout the whole game and grown to like. One of the members of your party was hit by a corrupting spell by an enemy sorcerer that causes him to go into a berserk rage every few days. The first time this happens he kills a few innocent civilians before you can restrain him and it wears off. Do put him in restrains and try and find someone to dispel the curse? Do you kill him outright for killing civilians? Do you keep him with you but restrain him before he's going to go berserk because you like the guy and couldn't bear losing him?

I want to see more games that offer complex choices like this, not simple ones that are biased by rewards or other ancillary factors of the game. Difficult options force me to think and care about the world that was created and will keep me coming back for the next expansion or sequel in the series.

Company of Heroes-Force Multipliers

This is an article I wrote a couple years ago about the RTS game Company of Heroes. One of the most interesting game concepts found in Company of Heroes is the presence of units that can turn the tide of battle against a much larger army. In most other RTS games, this sort of mechanism is accomplished through a rigid counter system, such as a spearman unit that can kill two light cavalry units, or an archer that can kill two spearman units. Company of Heroes has a much more interesting take on this, where support units like HMGs, buildings, and the map’s terrain itself serve to let a skilled player take advantage of this force multiplication concept. However, you can use the strategies in this article and apply them to almost any game, you just have to look at what methods you can use to defeat a numerically superior force.

HMGs: Heavy machine guns, such as the Wehrmacht MG42 and American .30 cal, are one of the most obvious tools that enable a smaller army to beat a larger one. They get accuracy bonuses against larger groups of troops and can suppress the enemy. This causes troops to crawl around on the ground, lowering their movement speed and making them more susceptible to the firepower of your main infantry, such as Grenadiers. Soon after becoming suppressed, those troops then become pinned, completely unable to fire or move. A well placed MG can stop a large infantry-based attack in its tracks.


MG-42 forcing British infantry to retreat


A 260 manpower brings 2000 manpower in British troops to a halt

Though MGs lose some effectiveness as the game progresses due to the increased availability of indirect fire weapons, such as mortars, howitzers, and doctrine based artillery call-ins, their suppression effect can still be very effective throughout an entire match. A well supported MG can be one of the best tools for stopping the current mainstream tactic of ‘blobbing.’

Tanks: With complete invulnerability to small arms fire and a powerful main gun (and potentially even an upgradeable turret-mounted HMG,) tanks serve as an extremely potent force multiplier for your army. Tanks that have heavier frontal armor, such as Tigers, StuGs, StuHs, and Hetzers, can laugh as weaker projectiles, like bazookas, bounce right off their hood.


A Hetzer watches as a bazooka round bounces off its hull, no penetration achieved


Riflemen and Rangers are forced to retreat with heavy casualties, Hetzer suffered no damage

A tank with infantry support can dish out a lot of damage, while any damage it suffers (short of death) does not cost any resources to repair - it only requires some of your repair crew’s time. In comparison, every soldier your tank kills will cost your opponent Manpower to replace. It’s important to keep in mind that you need to have infantry support with your tank for it to be truly effective and game changing. If you send in a tank solo, it will tend to die unless it is facing inferior forces.

Cover: This is easily the most available and widely used method of force multiplication. Yellow cover is frequently present all over a map in the form of small trees and brush dotted along the ground. Yellow cover gives your forces a moderate amount of protection from gunfire, allowing your squad to take fewer casualties as it faces off against a squad not in cover. Green cover, usually seen in the form of stone fences or hay piles, offers considerably greater benefits. If you have two Grenadier squads in green cover behind a stone wall, they can defeat three charging Riflemen squads. Obviously, the more cover you utilize, the better.


These grenadiers would be in trouble in the open


But behind their heavy cover they defeat these riflemen with ease

However, there are also ways to use the negative cover on the map (which causes soldiers to take additional damage) to your benefit as well. On maps like Semois and Angoville, the roads are common retreat routes. If you position some troops or a MG along these routes, you can easily get a squad kill as your opponent is attempting to flee.

Buildable defenses: Unless you’re playing as British, these tend to be forgotten in terms of improving your position on the map. A well thought out system of fortifications can make your opponent hemmed into a tiny area of the map, losing precious Manpower every time he attempts to leave that area. Each type of defense has advantages that merit individual discussion:

Barbed Wire: Currently, this isn’t used anymore due to the crappy wiring AI of the game, but I hear that this is fixed in the beta so it merits a mention. The point of barbed wire is to deny your opponent easy access to an area, because only weaker units, like Engineers and Pioneers, are able to cut it in the early game, and they suffer increased vulnerability to enemy fire as they do so. It can be built for free and VERY quickly by a variety of units from each side.

If you have secured an important area of the map, you can use these idle troops to sculpt the terrain to your advantage for when your opponent inevitably returns to contest your holdings. You can wire off some of the entrance routes to the area, button-holing him into only one access point, which leaves him as easy prey to a HMG team. You can also take advantage of negative cover on the maps and wire off access to heavy or yellow cover, forcing his infantry to walk down the main road and take additional damage from any troops you have in the area. The infamous ‘Semois Pin’ involved significant use of barbed wire to leave an opponent stuck in his base, unable to do anything of value.

Sandbags: These provide the bonuses of green cover to wherever you choose to build them. They allow for you to fortify open areas of the map, such as the left side of Angoville or many areas of Langres, giving your troops a great deal of protection from enemy fire. Another creative use that players have come up with is to build sandbags at small entrance paths to key areas, such as the high fuel on Sturzdorf. This allows it to function like barbed wire, except that it cannot be cut. In either case, they can allow your army to win against technically superior forces by providing a powerful cover bonus.


Sandbags buy time for this grenadier squad to upgrade a panzerschrek, so they can damage the armored car

Tank Traps: Basically the same as barbed wire, except it is used against vehicles. They are difficult to destroy and allow you to hem your opponent’s vehicles into your anti-tank weapons' kill zones.

Land Mines: These are the buildable defense that I see most often in 1v1 play. They only cost 25 Munitions and have a lot of power for their price - it’s highly recommended to use extra munitions you have on these! Many players do not choose to buy minesweepers, so they continually step on these. There are several varieties in the game - Panzer Elite Tellermines that only trigger on vehicles; regular land mines that trigger on anything and can be built by Sappers, Engineers, and Pioneers; and the more powerful M8 land mines that also trigger on anything.


This sniper took one step too far


Hetzer receives a damaged engine from rolling over a mine. It would now be easy prey for any enemy tanks or anti-tank infantry to destroy

Against Infantry: Mines suppress the squad temporarily, deal a bunch of damage (usually killing at least one squad member) and generally can stop an opponent in his tracks. Mines function as a force multiplier simply because they kill enemy troops as they walk around on the map, but they can be used in support of your troops to work even more effectively. For example, you can put a mine on the obvious flanking route to your MG position, resulting in your opponent’s troops blowing up as they get ready to throw a grenade. They can also be put on critical points, such as the +16 fuel points or the connecting strategic points on Angoville, Victory Points, or on major roads to give you a warning about what your opponent is doing.

Against Vehicles: Land mines do a significant amount of damage to vehicles and also frequently cause engine damage, slowing your opponent’s vehicle to a crawl. This makes them easy prey for a nearby AT gun, Panzerschreck-equipped unit, or a tank of your own. At best, when used with support it can almost guarantee the destruction of that vehicle. At worst, it still puts your opponent’s vehicle out of the fight for a significant amount of time, as he has to move a repair squad out to fix the crippled vehicle.

Buildings: Lastly, I am going to discuss the use of the buildings that are typically spread throughout each map. Though they are frequently used merely to stick a MG in (to provide a more secure base of fire for it,) they have a great deal of value for your ordinary infantry as well. They provide a significant amount of cover that can allow your squad to defeat larger numbers or superior quality opponents.


Out in the open, this rifle squad would be no match for the panzer grenadiers. As it is fortified in a building, the grenadiers must bypass that point to avoid losing men


These volksgrenadiers would normally die in seconds to these infantry squads. Within the building, they can hold out for reinforcements

Also, some squads, such as MP40-equipped Volks and Assault Grenadiers, are devastating to face in the open but do very poor damage to troops in buildings. When you run into these types of troops, you can garrison a nearby building with a Rifle squad or Infantry Section, easily winning the day.

If you approach your CoH game with these ideas of how to make your army work more efficiently to defeat your opponent, your victories will come much easier than they might have otherwise. When using all of these ideas to maximum effect, you will inflict considerable casualties on your opponent while suffering few with your own army. This will drain your opponent of Manpower while preserving your own for teching, purchasing upgrades, or training more soldiers to overwhelm him in later encounters.