Article - The Tao of Difficulty

Written by Alcator.

You’re building a track and want it to have a certain difficulty level. You may, for example, want to make it so that only about half of all racers in an on-line race are able to complete the track during the first 6 minutes of playing. Or you may want to make it so that all finish but only few make it the “fast way”.

This article will give you some tips on tuning difficulty.

Just how good exactly are you?

First of all, you need to have a very precise perspective of your own position on the skill scale. This position may be different for each environment and track style – a player that is great in technical stadium may be absolutely helpless once he is to perform a wallride or an off-set loop with extended up-side-down flight. To know how good you are on a specific environment-style combination, you need to go on-line yourself and play a lot of tracks of that combination. Note how many times you fail to finish (and what the ratio of finishing/failing players at that moment is), how many times you make it through the track only by using safety nets, etc. You may, for example, notice that whenever you finish, all others who finish are better than you. This means you are below average.

Instant test

Once you know how good you are, you may use your first and second attempts on each added stage of your track as a measurement of the difficulty: Did you finish with ease? Then the track is suitable for players who are worse than you. Did you fail once and finish the second time? Then it’s probably for your skill level. Do you need 10 attempts to finish once? Man, you just built a stage for much players much better than you!

Remember – you should use this test right after you build a section; if you’ve driven it multiple times, the above “finishing test” doesn’t give good results, as you know the section too well.

You know it the best

The important thing to keep in mind is that you of all people know your track the best, and although this may sometimes result in that you don’t see tricks (shortcuts etc.) that you didn’t intentionally place in the track, it usually means you’ll be driving very efficiently: You know which turn you designed so that braking is needed and which turn can be driven at full speed, for example. Therefore, most players will be worse their first few tries. This in most situations means they will get a worse time, but in certain situations, such as at very precisely calculated jumps or stunts, they will not be able to get past that spot. And while most players don’t get angry if they don’t make it through a tough section on their first try, they easily despise the track if they need 20 tries to get to the first checkpoint.

“CP-respawnable” doesn’t mean “Easy”

Many authors make the wrong assumption that if the track can be finished from any Checkpoint, it’s OK. This is, however, not entirely true. The thing is, once you reach a certain high speed (after a CP-respawn), the turns and chicanes become so sharp that you need to either maintain the speed (which is almost impossible on a keyboard), or even slow down. If you slow down only as much as is needed, and if you keep the speed where you can afford it, then everything is fine and you make that next jump correctly, but if you slow too much or if you misjudge a turn and scratch a wall, your speed drops too low and you don’t make it through the jump. So, even if you can finish the track from any CP, it can still be way too difficult for an ordinary player to pass the series of twists and turns you built. Unless you want to make a full speed track, I suggest how it plays if you occasionally slow down for no obvious reason.

Bad way of decorating a track

One final theoretical note: Many builders first build the intended route on which the car is supposed to drive, test is thoroughly and think it plays OK. Then, they add a huge amount of driveable tiles around this “intended route”; such as adding more corkscrew segments around a corkscrew or adding driveable platform tiles around a narrow row of platform tiles that the car drives on. After they do this, they validate the track (knowing where to go by heart) and post it. The result? A player that never saw the “raw” track is very confused by the wide spaces, wide range of angles under which he might enter the loop. This even sometimes results in places where originally, you were supposed to make a single 360 degree cork, but due to the added tiles, some players make 3 or 4 full circles, never knowing what angle they should exit at. So, although adding plenty of tiles around the track adds an “intimidating” or “magnificent” look to the track, it also makes it very confusing (three environments are especially prone to this, Island, Bay and Stadium, as they have many tiles that can be attached at any edge, there are no “borders” of the road).

Challenge ain’t difficulty

I often talk about a track providing a challenge, but challenging the players is not about overall difficulty. Challenge – a provoking obstacle that is laughing at the player’s face, like saying “You cannot possibly make this” – can be a simple bonus area that the player can only enter if he drives absolutely flawlessly and that rewards him with -1.5 second time. Or it may be a sequence of turns and chicanes that, if navigated properly, rewards the player with an option to jump over the road edge and gain a few seconds.

So, in my opinion, Challenge is one harder part of the track that is particularly rewarding to those who master it.

Calm before storming

In some tracks, you experience a non-stop adrenaline action; stunts smoothly transit into other stunts, jumps and drops nicely connect…

However, such approach to building a track means the track is over-saturated. There are too many things in it, and while some players (those who can handle it) will say “Wow”, many players will fail simply because they cannot adapt so quickly to surprises along the way. A typical example is the infamous Corkscrew-wallride-corkscrew sequence where you are first looping, then you go through a wallride and then smoothly pass into another corkscrew. While for a pro, this is great, most players simply fly off the wallride or crash into the last corkscrew.

The principle of “Calming before storming” is this: Before each BIG thing, give the racer between 3 and 5 seconds of easier stuff (like a simple chicane or a wide platform) where he could catch his breath; the last second or two before the next BIG thing should be so that the player sees what awaits him and can prepare for it. If such “showing” is not possible, add an in-game text message, such as “Loop – 2 lanes right” or “Double loop” or “Wallride 450° up”. I suggest not relying on custom signs; if you tend to use them instead of text messages with hopes of freeing the players’ view, reconsider – the sign must be PLACED above the road, so it blocks the view as well…

Thanks for your time, and I see you in the editor