Post
by RTM » Sun Oct 22, 2006 5:53 pm
Phil/all:
This was the discussion that took place years back with former TG MAME referee Mark Longridge.
TG occassionally makes strategic decisions to accept a lower-than-"Normal" setting for some titles, such as the Universal titles "Mr Do's Wild Ride" and also "Pandora's Palace". The logic was as follows.
When a title at normal settings precludes the average player from advancing more than several stages into a title without finite conclusion, TG evaluates whether the need to play at "Normal" best serves the gamer.
In the case of "Mr Do's Wild Ride", the average gamer cannot pass stage 6, and most "experts" at the title seldom pass stage 12 consistently, which is one and two loops respectively.
In the case of "Pandora's Palace", I argued with Mark successfully that the title will start to become difficult at "Easy" settings at stage 14, and at stage 9/10 at "Normal" settings.
We evaluated the need to establish tournament settings based on a player's proven ability to marathon the title at even hard settings, but that was a single player. In the past when a single player is so skilled as to marathon a title that most other players cannot, that does nfot necessarily warrant creation of "TGTS" (it took a second player to warrant TGTS for "Joust 2", and to date we have not adopted TGTS for "Champion Baseball" simply due to the fact that Gus Pappas, and only Gus Pappas, can marathon this title)
In the case of PP, however, we felt that TGTS was warranted and created ramped up settings following the standard of a notch above the normal difficulty and 5 allotted lives. TG Fact - Jon Dworkin's 800K+ at TGTS was in fact performed at Very Difficult settings and just 4 lives.
In PP, the harder setting has the same effect as it does in "Rush'n Attack" and "Green Beret"...the harder setting means more enemies streaming out and more opportunities for points. Under normal circumstances that is a boon to a gamer. When I initially submitted to Mark Longridge a score of approx 165K on "Green Beret" playing at easier settings and was told that I should be at "Medium", my score jumped by nearly 100K. Players of this title can attest to that impact.
In PP, I explained to Mark, and I believe I also had an opinion from former TG senior referee Ron Corcoran, that since in this title "Normal" settings generally resulted only in scaling back an average player's performance by approx 5-6 stages, allowing an average game to conclude between stages 9-12 as opposed to 14-18 due to ramped up fireball appearances, we would not be best serving the average gamer in this case using the previous "Mr Do's Wild Ride" ruling as precedent.
The goal of TG is to preserve competitiveness as well as enjoyment. Forcing the average gamer to contest at a setting which will diminish their performance range by nearly a third did not seem to be a good strategic decision as TG makes ruling calls on a title-by-title basis, so Mark agreed in this case which is why marathon settings were initially reduced to "Easy".
While I still have no objections to removing my earlier score as I am one of just two TG MAME competitors at the moment, I wanted the MARP community to understand the logic behind a former TG decision.
Sometimes we do the reverse as in the case of "Digger". For that title, TG settings were increased from the default substantially.
-> Usually in cases where there are just two (2) initial settings of "Easy" and "Hard", if the default is "Easy" then this is what we go with unless there is compelling reason not to.
-> In the cases where there are three settings including a "Normal" or "Medium", we tend to go with the "Normal" or "Medium" especially if this is the default. We still evaluate the competetiveness of this setting, and if the default is "Easy" and the game allows for significant progression and challenge even at "Normal" to the average gamer, then we adopt "Normal" or "Medium". On occassion we may adopt the hardest of the three settings if the title is deemed potentially or definitively marathonable.
-> In the cases with four (4) settings, then this requires even more discussion. The default is not necessarily "Normal" or "Medium", and there is am internal decision made as to whether to adopt that or an "Easy" setting. There are some cases made for adopting a harder setting when a title is deemed potentially or definitively marathonable.
-> For titles with more than four (4) settings, decisions are still made on a case by case basis, and fortunately, most titles in this situation are potentially or definitively marathonable. The issue then becomes which setting is right for both marathon and TGTS. As is the case with most TGTS decisions, the number of "lives" is typically set to a maximum five (5) except in rare circumstances such as "Smash TV" which is maximum difficulty, starting lives of 3, and extras can be earned along the way, or in the other direction such as "Juno First" which is one (1) single life at maximum difficulty.
Unique situations often require a unique series of decisions, as was in the case of "Time Pilot" at TGTS (maximum difficulty, maximum points for extra ship intervals, hunting allowed) and "Millipede" (maximum for all difficulty settings, 5 lives only).
In the case of PP, determining TGTS was a no-brainer, especially as we had a champion interested in establishing settings based on his personal working knowledge of the title. TGTS is not meant to make a challenge so hard that no one can do it, so we agreed to stop at the 4rd highest difficulty setting of "Difficult", and the standard 5 lives. We decided to keep the extra life intervals constant at 20K/60K as there did not seem much of a point in increasing that, just as we would not need to increase a title such as "Gyruss" to 80K per ship being that (A) top players would reach that anyway and (B) game ends after 5 ships anyway.
That left the marathon decision. While we were comfortable with TGTS, the issue was whether to make marathon "Easy" or "Medium", and that decision was largely based on the game's mechanics at the two difficulty speeds plus the previous "Mr Do's Wild Ride" decision. TG tries it's best to make all decisions with consistency using precedent as guideline, and that is why for PP we made it "Easy".
By the same token "Super Missile Attack" was played at the easier setting. It didn't make much sense to play this at normal considering the average player never reached the 8X stage let alone higher. I equate this logic to an archery competition, increasing the target distance from 150M to 200M. It's already hard as heck at 150M...why make it harder, as who is really benefitting from this ? Certainly not the competitor. When a title is made to be too hard, true challenge, creativity and enjoyment is sometimes diminished or removed. That's why "Robotron" TGTS is not at difficulty 10.
I hope that clears up the logic behind the decision. I await the MARP community opinion on what you think works best, then.
Robert
