For those who now seek more challenges, there was a High difficulty level in the game. It allowed players to look at the mechanics from a new angle, realize their depth, and enjoy the struggle for survival in the lower leagues.
Those who have been following the game for a long time know that as a game designer, I dislike giving AI unfair advantages. Therefore, High difficulty does not affect the opponents' chances to score a goal or take the ball away. The difficulty is created naturally: through tougher initial conditions and higher prices for various upgrades. Such fair difficulty has its pros and cons.
- Pros - the sense of game fairness and the value of your tactical and strategic skills in achieving your team's successes.
- Cons - it's hard to make the game even more difficult while still maintaining the authenticity of the game world.
Still, in FTGW, we've prepared a few surprises for players who would like the game to be even harder (especially in the later stages of the game).
New option "Giftedness affects the skill potential"
In the "Football Stars" DLC, a new mechanic was introduced: Giftedness, which is expressed in the number of stars a footballer has. The higher the Giftedness, the higher the footballer's skill potential in a match.
Assuming a footballer with zero Giftedness has a skill potential of 5, then
- a footballer with Talent 1 would have a potential of 6;
- a footballer with Talent 2 would have a potential of 7;
- a footballer with Talent 3 would have a potential of 8;
- etc.
For example, a footballer with Giftedness 3 could perform a Cannon Shot with a potential of 8. If the goalkeeper had Giftedness 5, he would attempt to intercept a shot with a potential of 10. Such a small difference in skill potentials made Talent an important characteristic, while also giving chances for less talented footballers to outplay more talented ones.
On High difficulty, with each level of Giftedness, the skill potential increased by 2. This made Talent a more important characteristic. And since the player starts the campaign with a team of untalented old footballers, climbing to the higher leagues became even more difficult. The screenshot shows a similar situation, but with High difficulty:
In FTGW, we decided to make the dependence of skill potential on Giftedness adjustable in the campaign settings. You can change this dependence within a range from +1 to +5. Choosing +3 or higher, you start to appreciate gifted footballers significantly more. Here's a screenshot of a similar situation but with the setting +5:
This setting also affects other mechanics related to skill potential. For example, if the setting +5 is chosen, when a footballer receives motivation, his potential temporarily increases by 5. When a footballer fully learns the "Talent" skill tree, his potential increases by 5. Pressuring an opponent, the footballer reduces his potential by 5.
Previously, if an experienced player in the First Division built a strong team, this team almost automatically became competitive in the Premier League. This was somewhat disappointing because, on High difficulty, you want more of a challenge.
However, setting this to +5, first, the path to the higher leagues will be longer, and second, the top teams of the Premier League will still pose a challenge for several seasons with their gifted footballers. And this is precisely what the game lacked - the difficulty slightly increases, and at the same time, the game world remains fair.
An additional plus of this setting is that you can use it on other difficulty levels. For example, if you like the economy of Normal difficulty, but you want Giftedness to have a stronger effect on the game, you can set this setting, for instance, to +3 and choose Normal difficulty.
New type of randomness "Reduced+"
The problem with the difficulty of strategic games lies in their very nature. A game feels strategic when a player can use planning, cleverness, and the ability to use the situation to their advantage to win against stronger opponents, having a weaker army or football team.
If the game allows winning against stronger opponents thanks to your intellect, there are three ways to make such a game harder:
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Obviously, we will never use the first option, although it is used in many games (for example, in Civilization). Still, for us, it's important that the game world is perceived as authentic and fair.
Most current difficulties are the second point, i.e., various variations of worsening the player's starting conditions.
The new randomness option is the third variant. It reduces the effect of luck and increases the role of Giftedness of the footballers. The goal of this option is to make stronger footballers even stronger.
The game already has several RNG types. But personally, as a player, I do not like changing them. I enjoy the random nature of ordinary randomness. It can sometimes create completely wild stories, as happens in real football.
However, the new type of randomness "Reduced+" brings something interesting into the game. Before explaining its working principle, I will first describe how the "Reduced" RNG works:
- In default randomness, when performing an action, a random number from 1 to the footballer's potential is chosen. Thus, the lower boundary of the roll is always 1.
- In "Reduced" randomness, the lower boundary of the random number will always be 30% of the footballer's potential.
- So, if a footballer with Defence 60 tries to take the ball from an opponent with Control 45, the defender will roll a random number in the range of 20-60, and the opponent - in the range of 15-45.
This type of randomness does well in making strong footballers feel even stronger. And accordingly, as long as your team is weaker, it will be harder to play.
The new "Reduced+" randomness, in turn, makes more talented footballers even stronger. It works like this:
- A footballer with Giftedness 0 has a lower boundary of 1;
- A footballer with Giftedness 1 has a lower boundary of 10%;
- A footballer with Giftedness 2 has a lower boundary of 20%;
- A footballer with Giftedness 3 has a lower boundary of 30%;
- A footballer with Giftedness 4 has a lower boundary of 40%;
- A footballer with Giftedness 5 has a lower boundary of 60%;
If you've been paying attention, you'll see that with each step of Giftedness, the lower boundary increases by 10%, but for footballers with Giftedness 5, the lower boundary jumps by 20%.
Thus, the most gifted footballers will always roll high values, and it will be harder to play against them. Choosing this option, the player reduces the effect of their tactical and strategic decisions because the strength of the footballers and their Giftedness will have a significant impact on the team's results. Your ability to play will be tested because you will have to find ways to win against teams that have more talented footballers in their ranks.
Using these options together
These two settings were created to work in tandem. Thus, choosing "Reduced+" randomness and the dependency of skill potential on Giftedness +5 increases the game's difficulty, especially noticeable in the Premier League and games against stronger opponents.
However, at some point, you will still build a strong team, and the game will again become less challenging. But this moment will come much later than now.
In one of my latest test campaigns, I led an average Ukrainian team to the top of world football, playing on High difficulty, activating "Reduced+" randomness, and setting the dependency of skill potential on Giftedness to +5.
Playing became harder (and more interesting). When you first enter the European Cup, you physically feel how powerful the teams there are. Playing against them, you cannot expect random goals. If you score, it's only after a carefully thought-out tactic.
The greater effect of these settings was created in the national team games. When I took over the Ukrainian national team, where most footballers had Giftedness 3-4, playing against teams like France or Germany (Giftedness 4-5) was incredibly hard. Managing a draw felt like luck, and a victory felt like something incredible. Playing is possible, but you must understand the game mechanics at a very high level. The downside is that you will never win against an opponent who has an average Giftedness higher than yours on 2 or more. But it's a part of what makes these settings to be harder.
On the other hand, not everyone may like that the possibility of winning against stronger opponents is limited. So, you can ignore these settings. They are made for those who need extra difficulty.
Summary
For experienced players who want to make the game more challenging, we've created two new options that allow increasing the difficulty. One of these options increases the dependency of skills on Talent, and the other links Talent to the lower boundary of random numbers.
Regardless of the type of randomness you play with, we believe the first option (Dependency of skill potential on Talent) is very interesting. It's worth trying different values and seeing what you prefer. The game feels completely different with a setting of +1 compared to a setting of +3, and even more so with a setting of +5. None of the options is better - each may suit some players and not others. In any case, you have more opportunities to customize the game to your tastes.
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