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Memody: Sindrel Song Testing - Week 1 - Difficulty Difficulties (UPDATE)

6 years ago4,464 words

It's been just over a week since testing on Memody: Sindrel Song started, and there's been a whole lot of high-quality feedback to sift through! I've fixed some bugs and added some relatively minor technical things, but I'm concerned about some of the more subjective aspects, as the opinions from different people seem to vary quite drastically. Most notably, the difficulty is still a concern; I feel it'll be difficult to find the right balance there.

First, thanks again to those of you who've provided feedback! I feel bad about not replying to it all yet; I've certainly read it all, and I've got plenty to say, but I suppose I've lacked the time and energy to actually type out my thoughts. I did so eagerly when comments were just coming in, but at that point I was essentially just twiddling my thumbs waiting for issues to be brought up that I could fix, so I had nothing else to steal my focus. I've since compiled a huge To Do List from things mentioned in the comments, and I've been spending most of my time working through that. I don't want anyone to feel like their efforts are wasted, though; it's all incredibly valuable, and I've been feeling really grateful about how lucky I am to have testers who give such thorough feedback! Hopefully it'll allow me to make this game as good as it can be.

What that actually means is quite elusive though, since it's not a linear thing, where I can progress in a known direction towards 'betterness' and I always know whatever changes I make will improve the experience for everyone. Different people want different things, and what might be deeply appreciated enhancement to one person might be a dissonant move that sours the entire experience for another.

I wanted to talk about a number of concerns that have been raised, especially story and setting concerns I'd had myself, but I think rather than crowding this post with too many things, I'll just focus on difficulty, again.



Difficulty is, I think, is the biggest thing I need to get as right as possible. If it's too difficult, many people will quit and likely leave bad reviews. If it's too easy, progress feels unearned and empty, and it encourages an apathetic attitude towards the game, makes it forgettable, cheapens everything.

When I started testing, there were no difficulty options at all; you just had to push through and keep trying to gradually improve your performance percent score. It's been really interesting seeing all the comments about this! There's been lots of frustration, but also an apparently strong drive to share the progress graphs - not just with me, but with other people - which is great to see, because that's what I'd hoped for. I know for me there's that thrill I've often talked about that I get because it's a challenge, which a few of you also mentioned.

Performance has been so variable, too. Some people finished a stage in like three attempts, or even on their first attempt, while others took over a dozen on the same stage. So it seems that there's some skill - or set of skills - that's being tested there that has a wide variance between individuals. I suspect it's not so much related to musical experience or giftedness, as some trained musicians struggled while others who claimed they were unmusical did much better, but rather it's related to experience with video games in general? I'm not sure though.

Actually, if you have progress graphs of your genuine first attempts with the stages, maybe you could send them to me and I'll collect them all and we can compare? Some of you have already included them in comments or emails, but the more data, the better. Or, even better, the save files contain the performance data in numerical form, so if you could send me yours, I could create a graph for each song that includes and compares everyone's attempts? That could be interesting! Save files are stored at C:|Users|(username)|AppData|LocalLow|Alora Fane|Sindrel Song.

A few days ago, I added three difficulty options, including a Casual mode which is far more forgiving. Reactions to that have been mixed. There've been comments suggesting that Casual should be the default mode, and others suggesting it cheapens the experience so much that nothing's gained from it and the game's not even really worth playing at all if it's so easy to beat. So I'm wondering what to do about that.

Ideally, just because an option for easier completion is technically available, it doesn't mean people have to use it, but that's not really how psychology works. I remember reading a TVTropes page years ago that stuck with me, though annoyingly I can't remember what it was called, nor was I able to find it just now. It talked about how if some super-powered character or item is given to the player, even though they don't have to use it, they always will, all the while complaining about how it trivialises any sense of challenge. A self-imposed challenge where that item is ignored is an option, but only a few hardcore players end up going down that path.

I didn't find the trope article I was looking for, but there's ∞ No Challenge Equals No Satisfaction ∞, which contains this bit regarding how it applies to video games:



I've heard of that guy but never seen anything by him directly. I think he makes videos? Or a podcast or something? Or used to? I'm not interested in looking for those, but I found ∞ this article ∞ which he seems to have written about this concept. Mostly it talks about destroying zombies in a flashy fashion, and how that's dull in the long run without any challenge behind it or reason for doing it, no matter how fancy it looks. I get the impression he's a True Gamer from this bit, regarding reducing difficulty to maximise this show-offy display of the player's power:



There are these gamers, the sorts who'd be offended if you dared suggest they were 'casual', who'd probably embrace the challenge, but what percentage of players are they, I wonder? Do I actually want to target them? Or would I rather appeal to a wider audience who might be curious about the story and themes without having them blocked off by what feel like insurmountable barriers?

I feel that the kind of people who'd deeply get into the game would also be the most likely to appreciate a challenge, while the ones who'd be put off at the first affront to their ego - because they're not amazingly impressive at everything right from the start - might only investigate it superficially anyway, so it feels like a shame to pander to the latter at the former group's expense. Or something. Like dumbing down the language or themes in a book in a way that doesn't make Joe Sixpack feel stupid when he reads it on the toilet, but which leaves 'real readers' - the ones who'd dress as and dream about having passionate intercourse with the characters - hungry for something meatier.

There's a lot to think about, and I'm not sure what the best course of action is.



A couple of days ago, I returned to my Oculus Rift for the first time in a few months (apparently there's an upgraded one (or two, more accurately) being released soon, though I can't exactly afford the cost). When I started up, I saw a game called ∞ Audica ∞ featured in the store, which was apparently a rhythm game; the comments (obviously) compared it to Beat Saber. Since I like Beat Saber (who doesn't?), and I rarely play rhythm games but feel I should if I'm making this thing (which I still say isn't a rhythm game, but I know people will see it as such), I thought I should give it a try.

I've not played it for very long, and quite frankly I have little desire to do so. I'm having to push myself. There's absolutely no hook for me. (Though this could be depression as much as anything.) All the songs are available right from the start, and there's no reason to sing any of them. No story or setting, no emotional connection at all. Nothing to aim for other than some abstract high score. Plus the music is this electronic stuff that I always seem to see in these kinds of games; sounds like harsh industrial clanking rather than the pretty melodic fare that I prefer. Different things for different minds, I suppose. I wonder whether the minds that make these things are attracted to such music for the same reasons they're attracted to development in the first place; preferring things over people, thinking relatively 'mechanically', valuing logic and toughness over sensitive emotion, etc (I say, as a curious psychologist).

It's very much a typical rhythm game in that you just react to stimuli that appear all over the screen. You have two differently-coloured guns, and you have to fire at targets of the correct colour when the timing is right. The way these games spice up their gameplay and make it interesting is by using a variety of different stimuli. Sometimes the notes are just basic targets to shoot. Other times you have to hold the trigger down to sustain, or even hold it down while moving your arm in an arc to hit connected targets. Other times orbs fly at you and you have to hit them with the guns directly. These various targets appear from portals at either side of you, sometimes the opposite side to their corresponding coloured gun, meaning you need to cross your arms over. It's all just reaction times, and I find myself paying little attention to the clanging music because I don't really have to; it all goes in one ear and out the other as I have to be vigilant of the next thing visually assaulting me from I've-no-idea-where.

I wonder whether Beat Saber is as renowned as it is because it does away with much of this; its mechanics are much simpler, really only consisting of slashing cubes and dodging the occasional hugely obvious obstacle. It's essentially variations of one action repeated over and over, which allows for real focus on that action rather than dividing attention between different ones.

I like Beat Saber a lot (and I see it's updated a lot since I last played it too, so I'll probably get back into that), but I don't really like Audica. I tend not to like rhythm games in general, really. I suppose that's why it bothers me when Sindrel Song is classed as one. I feel those types of games aim for a different part of the mind - and body - than what I'm aiming for. They're very much targeting instinctual, essentially primal reflexes, the kind we'd have used in ancient history when being wary of the sudden jolting movements or subtle stealth of predators and prey, whereas I'm trying to engage the more cognitive, higher parts of the mind. It's the difference between perceive-react-forget and perceive-comprehend-produce. It's that mental middle step that intrigues me, and the 'produce' is fundamentally different to just reacting as well. To me, they're as different as a conversation and a fist fight. I don't mean that what I'm doing is 'better' in any way, to be clear; I just personally find it more interesting as the sort of introverted intellectual who's always been far more into cognitive acrobatics than physical ones.

I'm mentioning Audica mostly because I was paying particular attention to how it handled difficulty. Each song had several different difficulties, as seems to be the standard from the few games in this genre that I've played, and each difficulty was fundamentally different in the amount of notes that it bombarded you with, to the point where they may as well have been different songs entirely. Notably, you started with a Beginner mode and a 'Standard' mode, but could unlock Advanced and Expert modes by completing the song on the earlier difficulties. Beginner was selected by default, and I played it while in the foggy 'I don't know what's going on yet' state I typically feel during my first few minutes with a game. I didn't struggle, but didn't exactly feel engaged either. It's really forgiving too; I tried again on Standard, and made a *lot* of mistakes, but finished with an overall rating of something like 92%. I felt I didn't deserve it, and there was no incentive to try better. This is similar to what I've noticed in the few other rhythm games I've played as well.

There were some developer notes for the game's latest update, which had apparently renamed the 'Standard' difficulty from something else ('Normal', maybe?) to better reflect the intended kind of engagement, which I found noteworthy because the naming of difficulty settings would very much affect how players engage with them, and it's something that's already come up in comments regarding Sindrel Song. It's why I went with "Casual" and "Challenge" rather than "Easy" and "Normal"; people don't have to feel bad about themselves for choosing a 'sub-normal' option, I thought. But then 'casual' seems to have negative connotations too, so maybe that's less than ideal.

The developer notes also mentioned a practice mode, which had been added recently based on user feedback. I tried it, and it was quite thorough, complex; it did a lot of things I've been thinking of adding to Sindrel Song. You could loop a certain number of sections, go back to the previous section, or forward, pause, change tempo, things like that. I could see how it would be valuable for the hardcore players trying to achieve the top scores, though I had no motivation to engage with it myself as a naive player. You could also toggle whether or not you could potentially fail as a result of mistakes, unrelated to the difficulty setting. This disabled scoring entirely.

So there were a lot of options that could help with difficulty, but I felt overwhelmed by how many there were, wished it was simpler. I thought about how bad an idea it would have been to include all the granular difficulty settings (number of lives, tempo, etc) I suggested for Sindrel Song in a previous post. Giving a clear course forward is far better, I think, especially when the player doesn't know what they're doing anyway.



I have the challenge of trying to please as many people as possible while irritating and putting off as few as possible. I get the feeling that gamers would fall roughly into two 'camps' - those who hate to lose ever, and those who want to earn their victories - and I don't know what I could do to appease both of them.

Currently, on Casual mode you can finish stages. One possibility - based on feedback I've got so far - is to change that, to rename that mode Practice and prevent stage completion if you get to the end. "Challenge" mode then could be renamed to "Performance", which someone suggested, and I actually prefer that because the game isn't about belligerently defeating opponents or anything, and 'Performance' has pleasingly musical connotations. Perhaps it could be thematically like Memody learning about the wintrel during Practice, and showing what she's learned during Performance? I could also add extra things to Practice, at least during Remedy's stage, where for example she comments with (more, clearer) hints if you get things wrong, or perhaps even shares a story where she got frustrated playing others' songs but stuck with it and got something positive because she experienced that negative emotion initially (she already says things to this effect, but maybe more detail would help?). The final song is a concern because it'd make no sense to Practice it and then Perform it, but maybe I could just handle that differently the first time, disabling lives but also allowing completion?

My concern with using a Practice/Performance format like that is that genuinely casual players, those who'd rather see the story and breeze through the gameplay, would get to the end of the first practice, be told they have to then perform that same song that they've 'already finiiiiiished!', and would react badly to that and quit. Or it could be that if they already felt familiar with the song, they'd know what they were getting themselves into and would be quite open to the idea of 'performing' it? It's hard to predict, and probably varies between individuals.

By allowing completion on Casual mode, though, it feels like you don't have to try, so those who'd prefer to earn their way forward would find it unjust that anyone could just breeze through. Even if they challenge themselves, a friend might get further than them just by playing on Casual. That wouldn't be a nice feeling at all.

One possibility is just awarding extra things for going down the Challenge/Performance path, but I'm not sure what. Currently clothes are the only things that are rewarded, but I don't really want to add more of those (at least until post-game), and I'm not sure what else I could include. I've seen other games include things like physical trophy cases, or variants thereof; Mario Odyssey just came to mind, where you can collect souvenirs from each world which are all stored in your ship. I remember liking that. Since Memody has a home area, perhaps I could do something similar? She'd win trinkets that'd decorate her tent and beach. That could work?

Originally, you unlocked the characters' backstories based on your completion percentage. I wrote a bunch of dialogue for that, spent ages on it, but eventually removed it because it was too difficult to tell a linear story when so many bits of information were optional. A few testers expressed interest in the wintrels having more dialogue, though, and I agree; they should! They're definitely meant to say different things when you finish songs, based on your performance; the only reason that's not in yet is because I rushed into testing before finishing everything that I wanted to. I'm hoping to get around to it early next week.

Someone mentioned that other people he'd shown the game to were put off by the lack of rewards early on. So I suppose this could play into that. I'm aware it's hardly welcoming, to 'punish' the player for even the slightest of slip-ups right from the very start, so awarding *good* performance does seem more important. That's a thing in psychology, actually; praising desired behaviours works a lot better than punishing undesired ones.



There's a lot more to say about this, but I'll leave it at this for now. It's not the most interesting or exciting thing to be talking about, and I wish I didn't have to concern myself with it at all, but I do understand how important it is to get right, and a lot of the feedback did relate to it in some way or another.

Personally, I like that the game is challenging. The rollercoaster of emotions - frustration, thrill, relief and proud achievement - feels to me far more worthwhile an experience than a steady bland unthreatenedness. But games are meant to be fun, first and foremost, and while some degree of challenge is fundamental to creating fun rather than boredom, everyone has such different thresholds.

Oh, before I end: I'm expecting testing to go on for at least a couple more weeks. There are still quite a few things I need to add, most notably the ending and better character animations. If you volunteered for testing late and I haven't got back to you yet, I likely will soon; it'll be valuable to get some new first impressions once these changes to things like difficulty etc have been implemented. I also want to reply to comments that I haven't yet, but I feel a bit burned out currently so I'll get to them when I can (it's irritating, because I want to reply, but there are a bunch of things I want to do but can't due to fatigue).

So yes, I'm interested in any thoughts you have about all this, especially since the feedback has been so good and useful so far!

EDIT - 20 May

HELLO. I still haven't replied to comments, and there are some really good, long ones on this post that bring up some really interesting and thought-provoking points which I'd like to reply to as well, but obviously I haven't yet.

Quite frankly it's because the depression I mentioned previously, which started with the stupid thing about disability benefits, gradually evolved into a full-blown depressive episode. A couple of days ago, I was on the verge of tears, mind full of thoughts like "I'll never get this game right, everyone will hate it and me and I'll just have wasted my time and I should just kill myself!!" Which was lovely. I'm aware that such thoughts are born of mental illness, and take massive leaps beyond the bounds of reasonableness, but they are still there, and I didn't think it'd be wise to reply to anything in such an awful state of mind. Yesterday I actually had a day where I didn't even open Sindrel Song once, for the first time in what feels like forever. I felt I really needed a break.

I can't say I'm enormously better today, so I'm going to take it slow rather than rushing into potential stressors. I do however want to mention some thoughts I've had concerning difficulty.

I want everyone to be able to enjoy the game, whether they're the hardcore 'True Gamer' sort of player, or whether they'd rather just have an easier time with the gameplay so they can see the story. At this point I don't know whether I can really make drastic changes, but subtle changes might make a difference. For one thing, I'll remove the bit on the description of Challenge mode which says that's how the game was meant to be played; maybe I'll push the idea that it's a choice, which one you go with. I also feel like I could potentially rename Casual and Challenge to something else, though I don't know what yet. I'm open to suggestions. Something that makes them both feel like valid paths.

Also, I've been thinking about making the notes easier to remember in some way.



This is something based on the kinds of feedback some people have been giving, which suggests a struggle distinguishing different notes. I also wondered whether someone with perfect pitch would have an extra data point (the note name) to help bind the sequence into memory, and that led to wondering what additional data points I could add to each note to aid in this multi-layered binding.

The thought goes like this. Say there's this sequence that needs to be remembered: highest, high, mid-high, lowest, mid-high, highest
If your memory captures it with some error, like this: highest, high, mid-high, ?, mid-high, highest
Then the whole sequence falls apart.
But if the sequence were like this: highest+red+6, high+orange+5, mid-high+green+4, lowest+purple+1, mid-high+green+4, highest+red+6
And it were captured like this: highest+?+?, ?+orange+5, mid-high+?+4, lowest+?+1, ?+?+4, highest+red+6
Even with more holes in the memory, each entry has more data points to call upon, and as such is more robust.

Or at least that's the theory. I don't know how it'd work in practice. Perhaps the amount of data would be far more overwhelming because it feels like there's more than needs to be remembered? Ideally none of them should be consciously analysed - you don't spend a couple of seconds thinking "okay, so green, four...", it just registers unconsciously - but I can't predict what people would do mentally, obviously.

It also might appeal to different mental preferences or abilities. Someone might be terrible at remembering or distinguishing tones, but they might have a real knack for recalling number or colour sequences, meaning that if they were struggling with the 'main' way of remembering, they could use one of these additional data points instead.

So I'm curious to hear whether you'd want something like this included.

This rough mock-up is just me experimenting with how the various elements might look if I added colour and number to the notes. The transparent rings would replace the current 'snowflakes', though I don't know how best to incorporate colour; the rightmost one feels best to me at the moment, but it also feels less than ideal. It'd be much easier if colour wasn't already used to represent dark/light mode. The player's notes would be replaced with these more flashy versions (like the progress screen nodes) with colour but no indication of number.

(Hmm, minor edit; maybe the dark/light mode could just change the darkness/lightness of the ring colour, as in the green ones at the top here? Though I do like the purple/yellow motif and it'd be a shame to lose that...)

I've been meaning to change the look of the buttons for ages, and the notes have looked the same for so much of development that I'd welcome a change myself. But I also feel that adding all these colours might muddy up the aesthetics or add rather than helping with confusion. Even if I didn't go with colour, I could at least add number, probably.

So yes. Sorry again about being slow with replying etc. I suppose I did go from months and months of isolation to having to handle the detailed feedback of many people coming in quite quickly, and while it's been amazing, it's also no surprise I was so quickly burned out!