Difficulty balancing: a conundrum

How do you particularly balance your maps? Do you have some guidelines that you follow for yourself? I'd like to know mroe about the way people balance their maps. Here go some of mine:

- Removing one or two enemies for medium and one or two more for easy in areas with a lot of enemies.

- Changing pain elementals to cacodemons in big arenas which can relieve some of the pressure to finish them off first.
- Making a teleporter inactive in one or another part of an arena so enemies always come off from the same place.
- Different and easier key placement if the map layout allows for it
- Chaingunners become shotgunners and shotgunners become regular zombie men if an area is too tough. 

And for testing, here is how I go:
- Hard: I test on UV until I can barely beat the map. Then I dial it down a notch.
- Medium: I play on Hurt me Plenty and my general goal is to beat the map while stil having fun and not being below 30% health most of the time, but it's okay if it happens and I recover.
- Easy: Medium minus some enemies. Has to be kind of a walk in the park.

How about you, what are your practices?

Those are some good guidelines! I definitely utilize the monster demotion tactic. Notably:

• UV cyberdemons -> mancubi or barons
• archies -> revenants
• chaingunners -> shotgunners -> zombiemen
• pain elementals -> cacos

Of course it depends on the encounters, layout, etc. so it's not a hard or fast rule.

For larger encounters, I generally trim down the hoard to 50% of the original demon count for medium difficulty, then 25% of the original for easy.

I actually don't find myself adjusting ammo/health that much between difficulties, which is probably something I need to work on.

I am one of the rare ones who design their maps for HMP, and then add some unfair shit for UV at specific points.

As someone who nearly-exclusively plays ITYTD, I have some advice regarding cyberdemons, since 90% of the low-difficulty-balancing screwups I've seen involve them:

Lone cyberdemons are usually OK, but make sure the player has access to a major health/armor pickup before the cyberdemon fight, and don't put in multiple cyberdemons unless they're very close together or you have at least one invuln sphere in the arena. The kind of players who prefer ITYTD and HNTR are generally the kind who will get hit by a rocket or two in a typical cyberdemon fight, and if we don't have enough health or armor to survive that, it'll quickly turn into an irritating reload-fest. A plasma rifle and/or BFG before the battle would also be preferable, and it's probably best to replace the cyberdemon altogether if there isn't much room to maneuver, like in a maze.

59 minutes ago, stochastic said:

• UV cyberdemons -> mancubi or barons
• archies -> revenants
• chaingunners -> shotgunners -> zombiemen
• pain elementals -> cacos

I don’t think that demoting monsters in a hierarchy is a good idea. It’s really haphazard and does really take how this changes encounters inFor example, let’s say a specific fight requires a particular strategy to consistently beat it. Assuming I am creating UV first and balancing down from there, my goal would be to preserve that strategy as the solution to the fight while making the execution of that strategy more forgiving. If the fight in question requires the player to maneuver around a horde of barons in a specific way to survive then I would either change some barons to hell knights or reduce the amount of barons slightly and in either case ammo would also be reduce accordingly. Both of these options preserve the fight choreography because you still have to do a similar thing to beat the fight. Hell knights can replace barons in this encounter because they both serve the same purpose here and will act the same.

Now let’s look at why using a hierarchy to reduce difficulty doesn’t work very well. I’ll use the quoted section to explain my reasoning.

1. Changing Cyberdemons to any other enemy is not a good way to balance difficulty for two reasons. The first is that cyberdemons pose a completely different threat to any other enemy. They fire high damage missiles that can inflict severe damage upon both you and every other enemy with both the rocket itself and splash damage. The second reason is that a cyberdemon has 4000 health. The second highest enemy other than the mastermind which cannot sub for a cyber due to its size is a baron which has 1000 health. The cyber also tends to infight with enemies. These two factors will completely change the ammo balance of most maps and in the process fail to replicate the experience from higher difficulties in a more forgiving fashion.

2. Archvile are the most unique enemy in the game. The have a charged hitscan attack and can resurrect enemies. Once again there is no substitute for either of these attributes. While revenants are excellently designed enemies just like arch viles, their roles in combat are completely different. An enemy with the ability to resurrect its allies cannot be replaced by any other due to that mechanic alone.

3. Chaingunners cannot be substituted with lesser hitscanners but shotgunners can be subbed by zombiemen. They can because they function the same way. Both fire a single shot at a time with varying damage between them. Chaingunners apply a constant amount of damage and have higher health so they can’t be substituted most of the time without changing the encounter.

4. Pain elementals and cacos are not similar enemies except for the fact that they both fly. One is basically just a flying hell knight with less health and the other is able to spawn an unlimited amount of another enemy. Cacos do not just by existing create an urgency to kill them as soon as possible to prevent wasting ammo and losing space while pain elementals are almost always one of your top priorities.

Fill the map with barrels

18 minutes ago, Jacek Bourne said:

I don’t think that demoting monsters in a hierarchy is a good idea. It’s really haphazard and does really take how this changes encounters inFor example, let’s say a specific fight requires a particular strategy to consistently beat it. Assuming I am creating UV first and balancing down from there, my goal would be to preserve that strategy as the solution to the fight while making the execution of that strategy more forgiving. If the fight in question requires the player to maneuver around a horde of barons in a specific way to survive then I would either change some barons to hell knights or reduce the amount of barons slightly and in either case ammo would also be reduce accordingly. Both of these options preserve the fight choreography because you still have to do a similar thing to beat the fight. Hell knights can replace barons in this encounter because they both serve the same purpose here and will act the same.

 

Now let’s look at why using a hierarchy to reduce difficulty doesn’t work very well. I’ll use the quoted section to explain my reasoning.

 

1. Changing Cyberdemons to any other enemy is not a good way to balance difficulty for two reasons. The first is that cyberdemons pose a completely different threat to any other enemy. They fire high damage missiles that can inflict severe damage upon both you and every other enemy with both the rocket itself and splash damage. The second reason is that a cyberdemon has 4000 health. The second highest enemy other than the mastermind which cannot sub for a cyber due to its size is a baron which has 1000 health. The cyber also tends to infight with enemies. These two factors will completely change the ammo balance of most maps and in the process fail to replicate the experience from higher difficulties in a more forgiving fashion.

 

2. Archvile are the most unique enemy in the game. The have a charged hitscan attack and can resurrect enemies. Once again there is no substitute for either of these attributes. While revenants are excellently designed enemies just like arch viles, their roles in combat are completely different. An enemy with the ability to resurrect its allies cannot be replaced by any other due to that mechanic alone.

 

3. Chaingunners cannot be substituted with lesser hitscanners but shotgunners can be subbed by zombiemen. They can because they function the same way. Both fire a single shot at a time with varying damage between them. Chaingunners apply a constant amount of damage and have higher health so they can’t be substituted most of the time without changing the encounter.

 

4. Pain elementals and cacos are not similar enemies except for the fact that they both fly. One is basically just a flying hell knight with less health and the other is able to spawn an unlimited amount of another enemy. Cacos do not just by existing create an urgency to kill them as soon as possible to prevent wasting ammo and losing space while pain elementals are almost always one of your top priorities.

I agree with most of what you said, but you're assuming that the mapperr does not want to change the nature of the encounter when designing the easier skills. There are very few cases that I can think of where that would be detrimental to the map itself. The first case that comes to mind is the map01 of Ancient Aliens, which would be completely pointless if the cyberdemon in the little corral area in the center wasn't there to put pressure on the player. I haven't played it in anything besides Ultra Violence so I don't know how it is in other difficulty levels, but I think the cyberdemon is probably still there. But besides these cases where the arena is necessarily designed around a specific concept or fight, I'd argue that these changes can be made to a satisfying degree.

To be honest, I prefer when mappers mostly do not change enemy composition but add power ups and so on on lower difficulties.

33 minutes ago, Jacek Bourne said:

I don’t think that demoting monsters in a hierarchy is a good idea...

Thanks for your insight.

As I said, it's not a hard and fast rule. I don't universally replace all instances of said monsters in a map, but will sometimes swap them out when I don't mind affecting the dynamics of a particular encounter. 

13 minutes ago, DoomGappy said:

But besides these cases where the arena is necessarily designed around a specific concept or fight, I'd argue that these changes can be made to a satisfying degree.

Bingo.

I start by balancing for UV to create a difficulty I find satisfying. I playtest each room individually, then different parts at a time and finally all together.

The important thing to remember is to also take into account ammo and health - if you make the enemy composition easier, you should also reduce the ammo and health provided so it doesn't become a complete cakewalk.

It’s situational for me whether I adjust items or monsters in balancing difficulty levels. My preference is mostly for balancing items but some setups like eg multiple archies at once may be too much for HNTR especially. Sometimes also the combat setups only work, logistically or conceptually, with just such a configuration of monsters, but the items can be freely readjusted instead.

Ideally I would like in my maps for HNTR to be a real light romp, HMP a decent challenge, and UV near madness but in practice I’m not good enough at Doom to balance UV that way so it tends to be easier than that. I know I could playtest on HMP and then just add more nasty shit/remove kit for UV but I’m concerned it’d just be impossible or grindy frustration even for Doomgods.  On the other hand, I usually assume a map on first attempt will be harder for anyone than for myself and can adjust a bit in the other direction for that.

This is something I do struggle with so I’ll be watching people’s responses with great interest

45 minutes ago, Stabbey said:

If you make the enemy composition easier, you should also reduce the ammo and health provided so it doesn't become a complete cakewalk.

That begs the question: do you ask other people to test your maps? Be cause the mapper is always biased towards his map based on his own perspective as a creator. And also the mapper can play to a certain skill level, which may or may not be his strong suit. I've figured that Playtesting, demos and videos of maps can definitely help the mapper improve their work.

17 minutes ago, Stupid Bunny said:

It’s situational for me whether I adjust items or monsters in balancing difficulty levels. My preference is mostly for balancing items but some setups like eg multiple archies at once may be too much for HNTR especially. Sometimes also the combat setups only work, logistically or conceptually, with just such a configuration of monsters, but the items can be freely readjusted instead.

 

Ideally I would like in my maps for HNTR to be a real light romp, HMP a decent challenge, and UV near madness but in practice I’m not good enough at Doom to balance UV that way so it tends to be easier than that. I know I could playtest on HMP and then just add more nasty shit/remove kit for UV but I’m concerned it’d just be impossible or grindy frustration even for Doomgods.  On the other hand, I usually assume a map on first attempt will be harder for anyone than for myself and can adjust a bit in the other direction for that.

 

This is something I do struggle with so I’ll be watching people’s responses with great interest

I've almost never done any adjustments to items, except for the occasional swap of a green armor for a blue one and the like. It's an interesting perspective that I will surely have to consider more in the future. I think there is an infinite potential for making maps play different, given that doom allows for placements per difficulty, so mappers can change the way combat works by moving weapons or ammo to other areas, for example. Interesting stuff.

1 hour ago, DoomGappy said:

That begs the question: do you ask other people to test your maps? Be cause the mapper is always biased towards his map based on his own perspective as a creator. And also the mapper can play to a certain skill level, which may or may not be his strong suit. I've figured that Playtesting, demos and videos of maps can definitely help the mapper improve their work.

 

I've almost never done any adjustments to items, except for the occasional swap of a green armor for a blue one and the like. It's an interesting perspective that I will surely have to consider more in the future. I think there is an infinite potential for making maps play different, given that doom allows for placements per difficulty, so mappers can change the way combat works by moving weapons or ammo to other areas, for example. Interesting stuff.

I do ask people to test my maps, but not specifically for lower difficulty balance. I build for UV and so I personally can only really do basic tests on lower difficulties. I usually just eyeball the balance.

Do you include health and ammo in what you call items? If you don't, you really should consider those when balancing for difficulties.

Removing enemies first, than maybe adding or removing powerups, depending on what exactly I'm trying to accomplish. But I operate on a philosophy of "easy should mean easy"...and let's just say I've played a fair few challenge wads whose idea of 'easy' feels a bit like mid-to-late Sunlust and uh, no.

For difficulty implementation, I like to go as follows:

Hard Skill (UV/NM): When I'm originally making the map, this is what I initially balance my monster and item placement around.

Once I finish the initial map layout and monster/item placement, then I'll make two more passes and rebalance items for lower skills, starting with

Medium Skill (HMP): During my first balancing pass I'll comb through the entire map layout and I'll generally remove some monsters here and there. Sometimes I'll remove a very strong enemy from a certain encounter or cull some of the weaker fodder enemies in a more heavily-populated fight.

Easy Skill (ITYTD/HNTR): Then once I finish with medium skill balancing I'll make a second balancing pass through the map and remove more enemies. For easy skill I also like to add more health and ammo to give beginner players a more accessible time. (Also, consider how much ammo you're taking away from the player if you, for example, replace a room/closet full of shotgun guys with a room/closet full of zombiemen. Maybe place extra ammo to counteract the missing ammo from the replaced/removed enemies). Sometimes I'll replace some powerups with stronger ones, like placing a blue armor instead of a green armor, or a megasphere instead of a soulsphere. I'll also make a handful of monster replacements for this skill, usually. I fall into the 'when in doubt, replace it with an imp' camp for this, hehe.

When it comes to playtesting, there's certain criteria I'd like the difficulties to fall under for my maps to be considered balanced properly (at least, according to me):

UV: Usually people like to be able to UV-MAX the map to consider this balanced, but I also want to ensure that I can beat the map without obtaining any secrets. That helps me figure out how to balance the secrets in my map so they fall into the nice balance where it's a satisfying thing to find that rewards exploration or a keen eye, but isn't required to find in order to even complete the map.

HMP: Basically the same as UV, I'll play normally and if I can get 100% kills without having to find any secrets, then I'll consider this difficulty balanced for the map.

ITYTD/HNTR: I do the same thing as the above skills, except I stole esselfortium's idea (was it essel's? can't remember) of getting 100% kills by playing keyboard-only. If I can do that, then I can safely presume that a beginner player can complete the map without MAX-ing it on M+K without much issue.

Some other things I like to do:

- I like to kinda keep a general ratio in my head for monster counts across skills. I forget which youtube video mentioned it, but for example if my map has 100 monsters on UV, then I'll aim to lower the monster count to around 80-85 monsters for HMP, and around 50-60 monsters for ITYTD/HNTR.

- Replacing monsters and items is a nice way to balance a certain area without taking too much out. Generally I'll replace a handful of stimpacks with medkits for easy skill, and replace strong mid-tier enemies like revs and hellknights to pinkies or imps for easy skill. Maybe I'll replace a small ammo pickup for a large ammo pickup here and there.

I typically follow the 1-2-3 rule for crowds - 1 monster on HNTR = 2 monsters on HMP = 3 monsters on UV. For singular enemies, it depends, there isn't really a universal correct answer.

If an area's too easy on UV, I add Revenants until it isn't.

The big rule I encourage mappers to follow is to remember they know where everything is, what's around every corner, so never short change the player on resources. A map that's short on ammo is forever an annoying chore but one that has slightly too much ammo but otherwise well-designed and enjoyable fights is always going to be more fondly remembered, so always err on the side of caution in that regard.

2 hours ago, SirPootis said:

Some other things I like to do:

- I like to kinda keep a general ratio in my head for monster counts across skills. I forget which youtube video mentioned it, but for example if my map has 100 monsters on UV, then I'll aim to lower the monster count to around 80-85 monsters for HMP, and around 50-60 monsters for ITYTD/HNTR.

- Replacing monsters and items is a nice way to balance a certain area without taking too much out. Generally I'll replace a handful of stimpacks with medkits for easy skill, and replace strong mid-tier enemies like revs and hellknights to pinkies or imps for easy skill. Maybe I'll replace a small ammo pickup for a large ammo pickup here and there.

The one who said that was Doomkid on this video. Great stuff.
 

One thing I look for when balancing for lower difficulties is reducing ambushes. That shotgunner hiding around the corner to tag you when you’re distracted by imps? Gone. It’s a small change, but it makes a world of difference for difficulty.

The simplest and even laziest approach I do is, once all is distributed to their places, removing 1-2-etc monsters and/or replacing the more dangerous with something that is less of that, adequate to context, and adding or subtracting items of value. I'm not too much of a fan of doing this because it tends to fall into afterthought after afterthought, instead of putting real effort to differentiate every skill while offering equal quality of experience, and in a few cases my HMPs and HNTRs ended up just washed out UVs when looking back at them. Still works in the end though, and it's not like the results don't match with my stance that, the lower the skill, the easier should the time be for players (generally speaking). Balancing skills with a little (to a lot) inventiveness is more exciting. I'm sure anyone who opts for that can attest.  

For example, I really liked what I did once which was all planned from the beginning: UV and HMP got nearly the exact ration of content, but aside from an extra powerup, a key difference between each was that, on UV, every monster around the start point is coercing you to move from the first second or else you get killed, whereas on HMP those same monsters are facing away from you, so you aren't immediately pressured and you can sightsee a little. Lastly, I toyed around with HNTR to make it feel like strolling through a classic doom miniwad with traditional progression, completely unlike the other skills and the original intent for the set, but I found that this idea adapted nicely to the maps. In my opinion this was my best effort with skill balancing and my favorite, I have to say that.

The map has to tell a story, everything else is optional. Cheap, fair, stressful, claustrophobic, grindy, all are viable when you specifically want the player to have that specific experience, but it has to be knit into the journey you're making. I tend to start by mathematically calculating out the monster count and ensuring I have enough ammo to kill everything with any of the guns I want the player to main, but then I will remove it or add it piecemeal to ensure that the encounters feel the way I want them to.

I tend to balance a map in this order:
1. Make sure that I actually have to try in order to complete the map on Ultra-Violence (I.E. I die to combat scenarios multiple times before getting them right).
2. Make easier difficulties fundamentally the same as the fight on UV, but with weaker (if possible, the same quantity) of opposition to fight against, which means it'll retain the feel of the fight across the difficulties, while still being easier.
3. Make the fights a sort of controlled chaos. Part of the fun in a fight (and pretty much all of the fun in replaying a fight) is things happening differently each time. For example, in WADs like SIGIL II, the fights are fun, but stiff like cardboard, and replaying them is very boring because nothing different happens between different attempts, due to the limited movement and variety of the enemies. Usually, throwing in shotgunners, revenants, hell knights and cacodemons is a good way to inject chaos into fights.
4. Make sure that no matter what happens during a fight, the player still has the ammo to kill enemies in a fight. Not too much to the point where you could just hold down left click to win, but also not little enough to where they have to rely on less fun things like infighting or going around the enemies to win. Hitting the sweet spot would force the player to think outside of the box to finish off a group of enemies, as using all your ammo would leave you defenseless, and doing nothing would result in the player being overwhelmed (or bored), which would encourage them to keep fighting.
5. Make sure that if a fight requires more or less ammo depending on difficulty, that the sweet spot is hit for each difficulty.
6. Never have the player break the flow of a level in order to get 100% kills.

I don't have any set rules for that but I rather empower people on HMP/HNTR, than to remove/demote monsters. 

What I mean is that I do the core testing on UV (that's how most people play) and make it hard. And for HMP/HNTR, you face the same enemies in number and composition but you get more health and armour, or even better guns with more ammo. You may get a plasma for a fight on HNTR where you'd only have SSG or rockets otherwise. You have the satisfaction of killing a bunch of dudes but the opposition isn't as strong because you're better equipped. 

Plus, it's much easier to design and test

The way I do difficulty is, well, kinda I just design the map first with the sort of fights I want to see. Tight circle-strafe a baron on a precarious ledge whilst a swarm of cacos come in from all sides? K, got it. That kinda thing.

Then I'll see if it's possible, and what ammo/health I need in the encounter's general area to ensure this. Good, gotcha.

Next is the bit where I consider my 'default' difficulty of HMP: if things seem about-right for me, I'll put an extra enemy or two in 'annoying places' to get in the way and disrupt the fight. If there's That One Enemy™ keeps killing me or being a general nuisance, I'll flag for UV only. I'll also feel out a general (or estimated) aggregate average of my stats after said encounter for any ITYTD/HNTR additional health or ammo. Will test on all of these settings to make sure it's (a) still possible and (b) feels 'right' to me.

Then I'll consider if the fight would be made a touch more fun to breeze through with something additional I hadn't planned for the encounter (radsuit? blursphere? maybe even early access to a weapon usually found a bit later?) and then stick it somewhere in a secret in either an obscure-ish corner of the current area or an adjacent/close one. Importantly, I made sure the entire shebang was possible without this boon I just gave. Secrets are in no way mandatory, and I map for this.

Also on some occasions I'll move keys around to be easier to access on ITYTD/HNTR and a little more awkward on UV. Even if just a small change, it makes the difficulties kinda unique in their own ways IMO.

I really like how Scythe 2's fifth episode did difficulty balancing: monster count/placement was kept virtually the same, but more resources were added for lower skill levels. I think that's a good way to silence the "UV iS tHe InTeNdEd ExPeRiEnCe" crowd.

I've never made UV the intended experience in my maps if I'm honest. It's usually "what I originally envisaged, but with added annoyances". This goes as far back as Murderous Intent back in 2001, in which I renamed the skill levels to reflect this.

Usually, for Skill 2 I just place the bare minimum to make sure the map doesn't feel empty. Sometimes, when a fight is supposed to feel big, I keep the monster count the same but add more powerups on lower skills. Also, I like to keep beefier enemies on easier skills and weak ammo-dropping enemies on harder skills to make the ammo more balanced without having to actually add extra ammo on higher skills. On 3IAC's MAP03, there's a place where hell knights on HNTR become revenants on HMP and chaingunners on UV, but because they're far ledge snipers and there's plenty of ammo to spare, the chaingunners are actually more dangerous than the revenants. On the same map there's also a secret with a skill-dependent powerup - a soulsphere on HNTR, an invulnerability on HMP and a blur sphere on UV, which is especially useful for those chaingunners in particular.

1 hour ago, Andromeda said:

I really like how Scythe 2's fifth episode did difficulty balancing: monster count/placement was kept virtually the same, but more resources were added for lower skill levels. I think that's a good way to silence the "UV iS tHe InTeNdEd ExPeRiEnCe" crowd.

Been playing some Crumpets 2 on HMP and lowered it to HNTR for the final levels and it was a blast, it does the same as you mentioned: same enemy count and placement but you get things like a supercharge next to the spawn on Easy skill. Since then I got convinced to take the same approach, the powerup switch like Scypek2's post just mentioned also seems like a good idea, could throw in an extra weapon that isn't available on UV as well. 

i use geometric sequence/progression for the number of monsters in my maps. in other words, the number of monsters roughly doubles for every increase in difficulty level (eg. easy = 50 monsters, medium = 100 monsters, hard = 200 monsters). however, all monster attack strategies are fully implemented at medium difficulty, uv only doubles the amount of monsters in those tactics. i use this approach because:

1. the difficulty level could easily be implemented during making a map section (i make a map section complete with monsters before starting the next map section). monsters are assigned in teams of 4s for vanilla/limit-removing/boom, and teams of 8s for udmf. monsters' difficulty assignment in a team: vanilla/limit-removing/boom (1 unit = easy + medium + hard, 1 unit = medium + hard, 2 units = hard); udmf (1 unit = itytd + hntr + hmp + uv, 1 unit = hntr + hmp + uv, 2 units = hmp + uv, 4 units = uv).
2. i'm not a big fan of extreme resource starvation. all health/ammo/powerups are available in all difficulty levels.
3. the geometric sequence/progression approach to difficulty levels allows the map to cater much wider range of playing skill - from beginners, to veterans, to an extent slaughter enthusiasts.

i then play the map section in uv till i die. if not, i add more monsters or change the strategy in that map section. health/ammo/powerups are then finally added to compensate. all this is done map section by map section till the rough layout of the full map is complete.

I think it depends from the type of threat of the encounters (this is mostly from a player's perspective, but the few times I find time for mapping I do it this way).

If density is the problem the player has to solve, like in many slaughter maps, or in "you are never safe" type maps of dense incidental combat, then adding/removing monsters makes sense, but even on the lowest difficulty some density threat should remain for the player to learn the needed strategies (e.g. crowdshaping). Otherwise on HNTR it becomes a simple cleanup exercise.

If instead there's a specific monster (e.g. cybie) or small group (e.g. archvile duo or trio) which is the threat, then I would not like this monster removed or replaced by "lesser" enemies in lower diffs (and vice versa). Instead, here I think adding/removing resources like ammo, health, and maybe an invul sphere or more radsuits make sense. Or reduce the number of threats which affect the player at the same time, but maintain the main threat intact. Obstacle placement for higher diffs is also something I approve (although I still hate Scythe Map28 ;) ).

Something similar could be done in the case of ammo starvation: if the idea is that the player has to tyson some monsters, then let even the HNTR/ITYTD player punch some pinkies, zombies and imps, but add mainly armor, and don't give them the shotgun right away. If the idea is that the player has to show some precision (e.g. rocketing snipers) because otherwise he runs out of ammo, then also, even HNTR players should get right at least one shot.