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Comments: 204 + - Games: Game Difficulty As a Virtue on Thursday February 04, @02:16AM
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The Wii and various mobile gaming platforms have done wonders for the trend toward casual or "easy" games. But the success of a few recent titles, despite their difficulty, has caused some to wonder whether the pendulum has swung too far; whether a little frustration can be seen as a good thing. Quoting:
"The evidence is subtle but compelling. For one example, look to major consumer website GameSpot's Game of the Year for 2009: Atlus' PS3 RPG Demon's Souls, which received widespread critical acclaim – none of which failed to include a mention of the game's steep challenge. GameSpot called it 'ruthlessly, unforgivingly difficult.' Demon's Souls was a sleeper hit, an anomaly in the era of accessibility. One would think the deck was stacked against a game that demanded such vicious persistence, such precise attention – and yet a surge of praise from critics and developers alike praised the game for reintroducing the experience of meaningful challenge, of a game that demanded something from its players rather than looked for ways to hand them things. It wasn't just Demon's Souls that recently flipped the proverbial bird to the 'gaming for everyone' trend. In many ways, the independent development scene can be viewed on the macro level as a harbinger of trends to come, and over the past year and into 2010, many indies have decided to be brutal to their players."
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is the root of money?
-- Ayn Rand
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I returned Return to Zork in one day (Score:5, Insightful)
Emeril Lagasse suffers from the same problem as the article writer. They both think that one ingredient is the key to a winning formula. BAM! Just add some EVOO or in this case turn the difficulty all the way up.
The secret, which isn't a secret at all, is that balanced gameplay is the true Sangreal of gaming. Pitting a newbie against a grizzled Korean veteran in Starcraft isn't going to give anyone a challenge or make them feel like they want to come back to the game again. It's only when the players are evenly matched or only slightly mismatched that gameplay becomes exciting. It is the thrill of being able to beat a game but with enough challenge that victory isn't guaranteed.
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It's not the ONLY road to success. But it's part of the secret blend of herbs and spices.
It's not about cranking the difficulty up until it becomes impossible. Impossible enough even a bot can't succeed anymore [youtube.com]. That's not enjoyable.
It's about finding that sweet spot where it is doable but a challenge. This is, of course, something different for everyone. Hell, there's a good reason why difficulty levels are so popular in games. Let's stay with Guitar Hero since it's been the example in the video. Would it
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I cut the bonding plant instead of rooting it and wondered why I couldn't go into the comedy club and had to play the whole thing again hehehe. Quite challenging.
Re:I returned Return to Zork in one day (Score:4, Interesting)
Emeril Lagasse suffers from the same problem as the article writer. They both think that one ingredient is the key to a winning formula. BAM! Just add some EVOO or in this case turn the difficulty all the way up.
The secret, which isn't a secret at all, is that balanced gameplay is the true Sangreal of gaming. Pitting a newbie against a grizzled Korean veteran in Starcraft isn't going to give anyone a challenge or make them feel like they want to come back to the game again. It's only when the players are evenly matched or only slightly mismatched that gameplay becomes exciting. It is the thrill of being able to beat a game but with enough challenge that victory isn't guaranteed.
I totally agree. One of the brilliant things about Supreme Commander is that it matches you against players of equal skill. When I played RTS games before, games were always one of two types: I rolled over the enemy effortlessly, which is boring, or I got crushed like a bug, which is just as boring, and frustrating too. In SC, once it learns your rank, every game is a constant uphill struggle against an opponent you can almost but not quite defeat. It's brutal, but that's what makes it a fun challenge!
Meanwhile, games like Valve's TF2, L4D, and L4D2, which are highly dependent on not just your own player skill, but the skill of your teammates has zero in the way of skill level based match ups. There's nothing worse than a game with some 13 year old idiot in it. There's always that one prepubescent who got the game 10 minutes ago, but thinks he can do whatever the fuck he wants, including run the wrong way, ignore his team, etc...
I like to think of this analogy: imagine how stupid it would be if the world championship game of, say, football, had one team member replaced by a fucktard who just does "whatever he feels like", because, you know, "it's just a game", and there would be absolutely nothing the other players could do about it. Does that sound like a good game to you?
Unfortunately, this is the state of almost all team PC and Console gaming right now. Players with literally 10 years of experience play side-by-side with mouthbreathers who struggle to tie their own shoelaces in the morning, and have difficulty in grasping advanced concepts like "pressing a button fires the weapon". It's common to see 50:1 point ratios on TF2 servers between players, which is just insane, if you stop and think about it.
Many people would argue that this is what clans are for, but clan games are usually very small, are played only on a subset of the maps, and are few and far between. There's just no opportunity to play, say, a 32-player game for 4 or 5 hours straight with clan-level players only.
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I don't find 'difficulty' useful in itself (Score:4, Interesting)
There are certainly hard games I've enjoyed, but difficulty isn't really a single-axis thing, so I don't find it that useful to talk about in the abstract, and I certainly don't see any benefit to games that are "hard" just for the sake of it. A game might be hard because it has complex puzzles, or because it requires highly honed twitch skills, or because it requires non-obvious inferences, or because it requires acute observation, or any number of other things. Sometimes those are useful, sometimes not.
Plus, it's not even really something to set in opposition to casual games. It's really hard to get the kinds of low times on Minesweeper that aficionados get, and there are pretty hardcore communities based around such things.
I do agree that not every game has to be for a mass market. But surely, if you're given the luxury of designing a game that doesn't have to appeal to everyone, there are more interesting niches?
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A game might be hard because it has complex puzzles, or because it requires highly honed twitch skills, or because it requires non-obvious inferences, or because it requires acute observation, or any number of other things. Sometimes those are useful, sometimes not.
I totally agree with this. I've played PC FPS's for years and I don't consider them hard by any means, but the same game on a console with a gamepad makes them impossible. I wouldn't consider them 'fun' on the console just because the difficulty for me personally is way up there.
On Guitar Hero III and casual vs. hardcore gaming (Score:2)
A game might be hard because [list of reasons] [...] Plus, it's not even really something to set in opposition to casual games.
I think Guitar Hero III is an excellent example of this.
If you play at the easier levels, you can have some casual fun with friends (if you have two controllers or can put up with using a wiimote.)
On the higher difficulty levels, you can get some real finger-twitching challenges, topping out at Through the Fire and Flames. I've tried hard, I've only completed it once on Expert. Raining Blood is pretty tough too.
Plus, if you play in battle mode, you get to exercise your brain---the lefty switch and the amp
Having fun (Score:5, Insightful)
Some players find difficulty fun, and some players find that frustrating instead. Telling people that they must play on higher difficulties to have fun is like proclaiming that football is more fun than baseball or tennis.
The problem really are those few players who seem to find fun in telling others that they're doing it wrong. People should worry about themselves, not what others are doing.
People want accomplishment (Score:5, Insightful)
People like to win, of course. But if that win is easy to achive, the achivement feels hollow. Anyone could have done it. People also enjoy the feeling of being "special". And I don't mean in the PC sense. They want to have the feeling they did something not everyone could do.
Get the amulet of yendor! (Score:4, Funny)
That is no hollow achievement, a total waste of perfectly good time, granted. But boom, dead from food poisoning after getting the amulet. Fifteen years later and I'm still bitter.
Storm
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hell, getting the amulet with a search engine is hard enough.
great, now i have to go try again. see you all in a month.
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People like to win, of course. But if that win is easy to achive, the achivement feels hollow. Anyone could have done it.
Seems to me that developers can often hide how easy a win is, making an easy win feel like an accomplishment. Peggle, like many puzzle style games, doesn't require much skill. A lot of it comes down to knowing the ins and the outs of the game, and chance. After you learn how to play it, you'll make a play that happens to come out well by chance. It's easy to feel like you played that well and have an enjoyable sense of achievement, when really you got lucky... although I guess another way of looking at
Well, after all... (Score:2, Informative)
— Pierre Corneille, Le Cid
King's Bounty (Score:2)
Similar to HOMM, but more of an RPG/adventure. It has difficulty levels ranging from easy to impossible - but many unfamiliar with the genre will find "Normal" to be challenging.
I went with easy and challenged myself to lose as few units as possible. A very enjoyable game.
Right now I'm playing through Torchlight on the hardest difficulty. Good thing there's no death penalty if you respawn in town. ;) I kill enemies in about 4 hits, but they do the same.
Fake Difficulty (Score:5, Interesting)
What I mean is when they use things like... Computers get psychic powers. Or they can 'cheat'. Like bots in a shooter that know where you are at all times. Or bots that have guns that deal double damage. It is a bit hard to define... but generally speaking, any time the game becomes more about w/e coded in cheats the computer gets than about the goals set out in the game then fake difficulty has been taken too far.
AI can game break in the opposite direction as well. For example... max handicap disadvantage in smash bros melee vs a computer. You are no longer having a match. You are playing a game of fucking with the ai so it falls in a pit (yoshi sucks at this). In many cases, especially games that shoot for some degree of realism this sucks balls. In shooter, base infiltration games higher difficulty should not be merely adjusting their hp level. It should be tightening up their AI, their aim, their placements, hell number of troops and their weaponry. Otherwise the game plays like crap. (Nearly all games do it the crap way)
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Even this isn't always true though. Serious Sam FE/SE adjusted difficulty by playing with damage, hitpoints, pickups, and I think even the number of enemies that spawn but at the same time the difficulty is still "real" on most levels below the insanity ones.
Re:Fake Difficulty (Score:4, Interesting)
Starcraft always knew all your units and built counter units.
Starcraft2 they say is supposed to have really keen ai that even needs to learn through fog of war, but we'll see.
Parent
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Systems need some tactical depth (Score:4, Interesting)
That's why I love Nethack. The permadeath gives you plenty of difficulty, but the challenge doesn't feel "false" because there's so much tactical depth. Yeah, sure, there are plenty of monsters that are pretty brutal ("go team ant!"), but if that stupid orc has a wand of death, you *get* that wand of death if you manage to kill him without him killing you first and he doesn't have infinite uses of it. And there are usually a dozen ways you could have survived that last death. Contrast this with, say, Angband (or many MUDs, for that matter), where the trend in many variants has been that "we want a harder monster, so let's give it 50% more HP and make it resist *everything*!" But the only way you could have avoided dying was having more heal potions handy or retreating.
I used to be an immortal on a MUD, actually. Nobody knew how to write a mobprog except for random drops, or so it seemed at times, so almost everyone who made hard mobs just set them to aggro and cranked up their HP and armor so that you had to heal via potions for 3 hours while they dropped 1% at a time. I made the first actual mob that used intelligent spell selection to target player racial weaknesses and which used debuffs in a reasonably tactical manner, forced the player to solo it, kept the HP, armor and damage reasonable, gave it a limited number of low HP cohorts that allowed for a flanking bonus, and limited the player's ability to gulp potions so you couldn't just set an autoquaff trigger and watch TV while waiting for it to die.
People had a lot more fun inventing clever tactics to use against it and watching their use of mana for healing vs. damage over a relatively short (~5 minute) fight, vs. other critters where the main challenge was making sure you had enough potions in your bag before attacking and chatting or something while you waited for it to die.
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As a side note wow also hasn't figured it out. Mobs from level 1~80 (excluding bosses) have these strats for each time it can attack:
- If humanoid and hp under 20% flee randomly for 7 s
Difficulty(&sometimes bugs!)gives a game chara (Score:2)
Developers have to strike a balance between what makes you go "f- this game" and "YES! I CAN'T BELIEVE I FINALLY DID IT!".
Another problem they face is the fickleness of the community. For example, the Ninja Gaiden games on the NES would not fly in today's gaming community, except among a small, masochistic market segment.
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It's called Nintendo Hard [tvtropes.org].
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or example, the Ninja Gaiden games on the NES would not fly in today's gaming community, except among a small, masochistic market segment.
I hear that the newer versions of NG (XBox et all) are insanely difficult, just as the original.
Difficulty (Score:4, Interesting)
I consider a game to be a failure if I can play through the whole thing the first time through without dying. Final Fantasy VII was this way - I only died and reloaded when taking on the optional challenges like Wrong Number or Ruby.
A problem I've noted more recently is uneven difficulty levels in a game - they're easy hard at the beginning and then trivial by the end (Dragon Age, Mass Effect 1) or games that appear easy in the first couple levels or your first time through so you kick up the difficulty level to give yourself more of a challenge, and they become ridiculous (Halo 3 Legendary Mode).
Some games also conflate higher difficulty settings with "being higher level", and make the game impossible if you think "Difficult" could possibly be played by an experienced player with a 1st level character. Dark Alliance 2 was this way. Sacred 2 and Diablo 2 were as well, but at least they made you beat the game once before you could turn on Nightmare difficulty. While you could still be underleveled for it, at least you couldn't stumble into it with a 1st level character, like you could in DA2. Even still, I hate game mechanics that have a "you must be this tall to play" mechanic in place, like in Diablo 2.
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I dislike when games notch up only one factor with difficulty.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: CoP being a notorious guilty: enemy accuracy. I can still step into anomalies (they hurt more but still one medikit later I'm as good as new, and medikits are as dirt cheap as on "beginner"), I can shoot mutants just the same as before, I have 1 minute instead of 5 to hide from blowout what means I can't cross the whole map and finish the current mission at my leisure, but must run to one of few nearby hideouts within range. Artif
Demon's Souls is a bad example (Score:4, Insightful)
It started off as a cult game that looked really promising in it's original Asian release, then someone in the western gaming community got a hold of it and it became a real bandwagon game, being name-dropped everywhere. With a huge following of people that have probably hardly played it, claiming that they love difficult games, because that's what everyone else is doing. Also see : God Hand. Actually, Demon's Souls owes more than a bit to the Gothic games, for which it plays basically like a linear version of, except with bosses.
Strictly speaking Demon's Souls isn't a hard game, as once you get into the hang of it you'll find that most deaths come from lack of carelessness. You can't simply rush head-long into everything and know that the game won't hurt you for it, like most games. It's just a very punishing one; when you do make a mistake it really does kick you in the nuts. And someone in the design team has confused flawed design with difficulty. No pausing? No ability to save, even to a single constantly overwritten slot, just in case? There is difficult, there is masochistic, and then there is just plain bad game design. I don't regard having to find a safe spot before being able to take a leak or answer the phone to be 'hardcore', just stupid.
Speaking of God Hand, it is a much better example of proper difficulty. In Demon's Souls, if you tip-toe around, you'll go okay most of the time, and most lessons you learn once and you're okay from then on. God Hand kicks your ass early on, and you wonder how it got released in such an unworkable state (also, if you're an IGN reviewer, you'll likely go off and start writing at this point), but if you pay attention to the combat system and start out on an easy level, you'll become comfortable with the combat system, and then eventually you'll start tearing up the place, ready to advance in difficulty, and things that once seemed impossible will now merely present a fun challenge instead of sending you back, tail between your legs. Urban Reign did the same thing. They are great games.
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Oops. I'm not even sure why I wrote 'lack of' in the first place. Lack of carefulness? That doesn't even sound right. Sigh.
You gotta be kidding. (Score:5, Insightful)
> The Wii and various mobile gaming platforms have done wonders
> for the trend toward casual or "easy" games.
Yeah. Care to cite specific examples? Because this, here, until proved otherwise, sounds like gamer nerd handwringing over their hobby's new mass popularity, no more.
Have you played the new Super Mario game? Care to name some other Mario games that are harder? Take your time, I'll wait. Heck, has there ever been a Mario game where failing one time too many on a single level, no matter how many lives you have, means you can't reach 100% completion unless you trash your save game and start over from scratch?
Hell, have you played the Wii poster child, Mario Kart? How are those mirror cups going? Unlocked the Rainbow Road expert staff ghost yet? Beaten it?
Just because it's easy to get into for newbies does NOT make it unchallenging. Seriously, guys, this is the same line of thinking that gives us people who seem to think that user friendly and powerful GUIs are mutually exclusive. It's a real design challenge to reconcile both, I know. This makes it all the more important to recognize and laud those attempts that succeed.
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Not only that; the submission seems to ignore the wonders that flashagmes, Peggle, Solitaire, etc. have done for the trend toward casual or "easy" games.
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There's a lot of punishing games for the Wii (just like all the other consoles) -- and they don't have to be "hardcore" to be difficult. Go watch a youtube video of "We Cheer 2".
Men In Black Playstation... The Horror... (Score:4, Interesting)
When I was a lead tester at Accolade/Infogrames/Atari (same company, two different owners, multiple identity crises), I was responsible for Men In Black (Playstation). Sony had a submission requirement where they wanted a videotaped play through. Normally, it took me eight hours to get through the whole game. The developers made a change for one level just before the final level that made finishing the game impossible. I told them to change it, they told me to screw off.
I spent eight hours playing that damn level before I could advance to the final level and sent Sony two videotapes with 16 hours of video. My request to duplicate the last videotape and send it to the developers was denied. No one cares about the pains that a video game tester must suffer.
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Keep in mind that a video game tester will know every aspect of the game after four months and can play through the entire game rather quickly. The MiB title probably had 20 hours of game time for a "normal" player for the first time. When we had Neverwinter Night in test, we never did test the entire game. A complete play through that included all the side quests took up to 500 hours. Bioware had one programmer who tested the entire game in two weeks.
Overall, the single player mode for most games are g
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Overall, the single player mode for most games are getting too short. Thirty hours of game play for a $30 game was the norm ten years ago. These days you get 20 hours or less for a $60 game.
Well, that's why I buy games only after they've been out for about a year. That way I get 20h of gameplay for $20 instead. I don't see the point why I absolutely have to play a game right when it first ships.
Case in point: Dragon Age Origins (Score:2, Informative)
I'd have to agree that in many ways games today are easier than in the past, however I too have noticed a swing back towards difficulty in a few titles. Most recently in Dragon Age Origins. Even played on the easy setting, it can be brutally difficult in some parts, the spikes are enormous. I prefer to play my RPG's in real-time, provided the game has such a mode, and while the easy setting in DAO is supposed to allow real-time battles, it is not strictly true. In many cases it still takes a huge amount of
In World of Warcraft (Score:2)
latest expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, the endgame has been made substantially easier than before.
But has been added the possibility for players to unlock "hard modes" that present in many cases a much greater difficulty.
You know what?
People complain that the game is too easy (even if they never tried the hard modes).
Or that hard modes are too hard.
Or that hard modes are too easy because top world players (not them, someone else!) were able to beat hard modes in few days.
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People complain that the game is too easy (even if they never tried the hard modes).
The problem with World of Warcraft is that the last expansion truly made the game too easy in several ways.
Outside of dungeons, mobs have simply become ants. Annoying but 100% non-lethal. You almost have to disconnect while fighting multiple mobs to even have a chance of dying. In normal dungeons as well as heroics to some degree, the preferred strategy has become to basically collect as many mobs as the tank (and healer) can handle, have him keep them occupied (which is very simple nowadays) while the rest
Casual != Easy (Score:2)
Many casual games are an endless highscore hunt that has you struggling until you die, I wouldn't call that easy. Casual gamers develop extreme proficiency at their games like Tetris or Bejeweled. It's the hardcore games that are easy, they are more designed around the spectacle and story now and that's stuff that you can't make the player replay so having him die often and replay scenes over and over again is seen as a bad thing. I don't know about you but to me a game where even a minimally skilled person
Translation please... (Score:2)
Would I be right in thinking this translates as "Me and my friends liked it, but it didn't sell very well"?
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I play easy and hard games (Score:2)
I'm not sure I understand what the big deal is with worrying about some "pendulum". Sometimes I have time; sometimes I don't. (Given hard means it requires more time.) I just like games. It's not an either or proposition.
There is nothing to worry about here. The casual game market was just an expansion to reach a previously ignored segment of players: the very old, the very young, and the very busy. Your hard games aren't going away any time soon and neither will your easy games. Stop fretting over it.
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Lol...if you like that one, take a look at Syobon Action. There's a hilarious youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLrWwmnt2po [youtube.com]
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Or designers making the games to be a struggle in the misconceived idea that people will play it more because of all the retrying and struggle.
Sometimes they are dead right. Nethack, Dwarf Fortress, Mega Man, I Wanna be that Guy etc are all games of this type.
Re:I too enjoy a challenge in a game. (Score:5, Funny)
It's a lot of fun though! Really!
Parent
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Personally I liked the Lost Levels a lot. But only in the setting of All Stars where you got a couple extra lives and could save. That made for a good challenge and balance. If I had the original 3 lives and start over version, it probably would have gotten smashed to bits.