Game People Calling: Now You?re Just Being Difficult

[Game People]

Game People Calling: Now You?re Just Being Difficult

Difficulty settings in games are due a big overhaul to really put the player first.

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[MGlBlaze]

Actually, I think these are some good points. Oddly enough my dad has started playing games more, and seeing him flail about on some of the later stages of games is painful to watch. I understand WHY there is a difficulty curve; to test what the player has learned through increasing challenges to keep the player engaged and feel they are improving and making progress. The problem is when newer players come along and the difficulty curve, for them, ramps up way too fast to keep up.

I think the idea outlined in the article could be a good idea... but then the Fan Dumb would be saying it's dumbing down the difficulty of the game even though it's all optional and they can play it on the harder settings if they want. The announcement of 'Easy Mode' in Mega Man 10 springs to mind.

 

[SavingPrincess]

-DifficultSnip-

So the main fallacy in this argument is that when it comes to sports games, the difficulty is controlled by the skill of a separate entity (or emulated by a computer). In American Football, playing against a team like the Indianapolis Colts will (should) be far more difficult than playing against the Detroit Lions; consequently, the difficulty is also controlled by the person behind the controller (or the computer emulating such). This is an impossible comparison to a game that is throwing wave after wave of "dumb" enemies or a game with "boss battles."

I believe that the "difficulty" of a game should be reflective of the type of game you're playing, with accessibility in mind of course. For instance... games where you fly a fighter-jet should be inherently more difficult than games where you drive a car, as driving a car is far easier than flying a fighter jet. I'm a fan of "realism modes" in games, (especially shooters) but do enjoy the option to turn them off.

I guess the balance would be the option to have an "accessible" difficulty versus a "realism" difficulty. I was perfectly fine in the days when falling down a hole meant you had to restart the level or at the very least from the last checkpoint. Me being different from the OP; I got VERY bored with Assassin's Creed in the sense that the story wasn't ultimately that good, so all I was doing was jumping on people and picking fights just to pull off the counter-moves with my little blade with no sense of forward momentum.

An immediate example of how to do difficulty properly springs to mind for me, and that is the game Bushido Blade. For the first time in game history, they actually made sword/weapon fighting more about thought than how fast you could input pre-memorized command sets. It actually gave a sense of "wow, this is what sword fighting was like... consequences and all." I would love to see more modern games go that route.

 

[GloatingSwine]

The assumption of the difficulty curve is that as the player continues to interact with the game, their familiarity with it increases, and so their ability to judge and execute the correct response to the situations the game presents develops and deepens.

The ideal difficulty curve is one that is unnoticed by the player because their understanding and skill with the game develops at the same rate as the complexity and difficulty of the game develops.

 

[Jandau]

Sports have an increasing difficulty as you get better at them. Many activities have it, gaming is not unique. It is also a part of gaming as a medium. Video games usually tell their stories through some form of conflict. They engage the player in this conflict and as a result draw him deeper into the narrative than passive observation might. A part of this is the added impact personal achievement adds to any plot point, and to get this there needs to be an increasing level of difficulty. This allows the game to push the player to try harder and gain greater satisfaction from the eventual success.

A bigger issue IMO is the initital learning curve of gaming in general that turns off non-gamers, as well as the learning curve of individual games. I don't mind it, but I've been gaming for about two decades...

 

[VanityGirl]

I think I can agree. If, like you said, they had a game in which you could adjust how quickly or slowly the game difficulty go up, then you might be able to keep newer players around.

This kind of makes me think about Monster Hunter Tri. It's been highly debated here, but the tutorial was very easy IMO. The easiness of the tutorial turned off some hardcore gamers, but for new gamers, it was a good start.

 

[afaceforradio]

"I think I'm in a minority here. I, for one, have no issue with Assassin's Creed's repetitious approach"

I totally agree with you - I don't like a game that starts off fun and ends up work because the difficulty gets ridiculous.

 

[Hurr Durr Derp]

The steadily rising difficulty is there for a reason: Once the player defeats one challenge, it doesn't make sense to just repeat that challenge over and over until the game is over. In stead, that challenge increases somehow, either because of changing circumstances or because the challenge itself becomes more complex. This keeps games from getting too repetitive, and keeps the players on their toes.

As others have pointed out above, multiplayer games, boardgames, and sports don't have a difficulty setting, but they certainly do ramp up in difficulty as you get better at them, because your opponents get better as well.

Seriously, does no one play games for the challenge anymore? Over and over I hear people whining about how games are too hard, and how they'd prefer to play the game without any challenge because they only want to hear the story. More and more people seem to be expecting to play a game in the same way they watch a movie. On the other hand, people never stop whining that games get dumbed down too much these days. Take a guess whose fault that is. Stop your whining and go watch a movie if you want a story without any challenge.

I realize that some games increases the difficulty too fast or too irregularly, but that's a fault of those individual games. There's nothing wrong with a game that ramps up the difficulty on a steady pace. To be honest, I'm having a bit of trouble seeing myself enjoy a game that doesn't do that.

 

[Enigmers]

I'm not sure if this exists in many games yet, but the idea that a game changes in difficulty based on how good you are would solve all these problems. Otherwise, games should definitely have two or three difficulty settings. Torchlight has Easy, Medium, Hard, and Very Hard, which are, in order, for non-gamers, for people who haven't played ARPGs before, for ARPG veterans, and for people who have played Torchlight a few times and want a decent challenge.

 

[JoJo]

The steadily rising difficulty is there for a reason: Once the player defeats one challenge, it doesn't make sense to just repeat that challenge over and over until the game is over. In stead, that challenge increases somehow, either because of changing circumstances or because the challenge itself becomes more complex. This keeps games from getting too repetitive, and keeps the players on their toes.

As others have pointed out above, multiplayer games, boardgames, and sports don't have a difficulty setting, but they certainly do ramp up in difficulty as you get better at them, because your opponents get better as well.

Seriously, does no one play games for the challenge anymore? Over and over I hear people whining about how games are too hard, and how they'd prefer to play the game without any challenge because they only want to hear the story. More and more people seem to be expecting to play a game in the same way they watch a movie. On the other hand, people never stop whining that games get dumbed down too much these days. Take a guess whose fault that is. Stop your whining and go watch a movie if you want a story without any challenge.

I realize that some games increases the difficulty too fast or too irregularly, but that's a fault of those individual games. There's nothing wrong with a game that ramps up the difficulty on a steady pace. To be honest, I'm having a bit of trouble seeing myself enjoy a game that doesn't do that.

As a gamer who does prefer a story over difficult gameplay, I must point out the reason me and similar don't just "watch a movie", or read a book for that matter: it's that in a game you can control your character so it's like you are actually in the story, rather than simply being an outside observer. This applies very well in non-linear games where you can choose what you do. While I personally do like gameplay to be somewhat challeging, if it is too hard and the player constantly dies, the game quickly loses its fun...

 

[Denamic]

If games are too easy, even if it is fun to blow shit up, I'll lose interest before long.
I need something that's able to disintegrate me if I misstep to be able to focus and to enjoy the game.

 

[AngryMongoose]

Do you mean like arcade games do or like large games do? Because your non-video game examples, sports and board games, are closer to arcade games. A comparison to a full game there would be say, starting out as a hobbiest footballer and ending up playing in the FA cup, which would gradually get harder.
The reason most games get gradually harder is a, as your get used to the controls, it becomes easier to play, thus it gets harder to counteract this, b, as new features are introduced, slowly over the game, to not overwhelm the player, it gets harder as there is more to track, and c, the increased difficulty adds to the sense of "Epicness", creating climaxes as the story progresses (along with breather levels for anticlimaxes).
As for arcade games, rather alot of them do increase in difficulty, more so than necessary. Could be a combination of a holdover from when you could suck more money from someone with more time invested, and trying to stop people of a certain skill from playing indefinitely.
Personally I think games should slowly increase in difficulty til the player is expected to know the whole thing, and from then oscillate between harder, more epic levels and breather levels, ending with an acceptably difficult finale. The higher the difficulty setting, the higher the peak difficulty should be.

Stop your whining and go watch a movie if you want a story without any challenge.

As a gamer who does prefer a story over difficult gameplay, I must point out the reason me and similar don't just "watch a movie", or read a book for that matter: it's that in a game you can control your character so it's like you are actually in the story, rather than simply being an outside observer. This applies very well in non-linear games where you can choose what you do.

It's true. While you can question the quality of execution, games have an edge over books and films for storytelling, partly due to the inherent immersiveness, and also due to the ability to choose and see things created procedurally.

 

[Truly-A-Lie]

I always thought it was a representation of how stories tend to work. Protagonist sets off, does his thing but things get worse before they get better. To quote a certain Gotham DA, "The night is darkest just before the dawn", the hero's quest is increasingly difficult before the "dawn" of the defeated villain at the end of the story. Games have the means to show this literally, by putting the player in the shoes of the protagonist and showing that it is actually harder to save the world/princess/whatever than it seemed at the start.

 

[Fearzone]

People refer to the good old days where games were harder. That is only half-true. Gaming derives from the arcades who were designed for us to play for a couple minutes, die, but get hooked, and then put another quarter in. They don't need to be that way anymore.

Somewhere along the way, games went from a fun pasttime to proof of your uberness if you can pass a difficult challenge. Now that's just stupid to derive a sense of self-esteem or superiority in any way from playing single-player videogames. That whole attitude needs to be derided by the gaming community as a whole. I can respect someone who is good at multi-player Starcraft, and venues like that is where the elite should go. Hopefully game designers will be rewarded for making games entertaining for casual players.

 

[ahiddenfigure]

In single-player experiences especially, I think a difficulty curve is absolute necessity to keep players engaged. In my mind, an increase in difficulty over time gives a sense of progress; like anything with the capability to learn, the more you perform a task the better you become at it, so a lack of increase in the skill required to "win" creates stagnation and complacency in the player. In plain English, without a rise in difficulty, the player says, "I have no need to get better, so why should I?"

Having said that, however, I think one of the issues that the OP is seeing is a problem with the rate of change of difficulty. I have a feeling this is an impossible to perfect situation because different people improve at different rates. A curve that rises too slowly causes boredom and the aforementioned complacency, while a curve rising too fast, or one that rises suddenly is punishing the player, rather than challenging him or her. This is one of the issues I have with many physics-based puzzle games - the early challenges start out stupefyingly easy, which lulls the player into a comfort zone, then suddenly the puzzles become mind-bendingly hard or crypic [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FakeDifficulty] to the point you have to effectively consult the answers [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GuideDangIt] for step 1, or else flounder with trial and error [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TrialAndErrorGameplay]. It's a terrible misconception game designers have, that once you teach the basic mechanics one-by-one, a player instantly knows exactly how to string them together; which is totally wrong. One thing Portal did right was teach the mechanics, then teach how they all link together and only then did they set the player free.

What I think the OP's other issue with the difficulty curve is a lack of perspective. A game getting harder for the sake of getting harder is also pointless. A player needs to be shown "after-the-fact" and as a part of the main story (i.e. not via replaying the game) what their improvement is worth. I've found that Monster Hunter Tri and Half Life 2 have done this very well, albeit with varying degrees of time between the moments. In the case of the latter; the "super gravity gun" final chapter gives the player a super-weapon, but also gives some perspective about what they've been through; how the combine soldiers (especially the elites) which were once a significant challenge are now effectively cannon-fodder, a moment the player has already experienced with Civil Protection. Many games show you prior what the "big goal" is and tell you "you've got to get better before you fight him", but few actually show you the benefit later on beyond being able to take down the one who's been hovering over you indirectly all game.

 

[Therumancer]

I'd also point out that there are also "casual" and "introductory" level games out there for people who are just starting out, games that generally stay easy and do not ramp up in difficulty. There are a number of RPGs for example (like arguably the Tales Of Heroes series for the PSP, or the recent Glory of Hercules game for the DS) that are intentionally designed to be easy for the neophyte and don't get as obtuse as even moderate offerings, never mind involving the sheer depty and obtuse nastiness of games like the "Shin Megami Tensei" series.

Generally speaking such arguements seem to basically amount to people saying that the majority of games, including AAA-type titles, should cater to the lowest common human denominator, which is going to be VERY low indeed. Basically the idea that anyone, irregardless of skill, should be able to play any game, and win it, irregardless of skill or intelligence. I disagree with this, as it would destroy the entire challenge of playing game for gamers, and in the end the banality of it all WOULD reaffirm the suspicians of a lot of the anti-video gaming movement that these games are for children... and it couldn't be argued on a lot of levels because they would be exactly that patronizing and approachable.

I will also point out that there are differant TYPES of games. Let's be honest, some of us don't have great twitch reflexs and super-fast reaction time. A lot of us who had these abillities lose it as we get older. That's exactly why things like turn based RPGs and Strategy games exist, being more of an intellectual exercise than a matter of reflexs. Right now the influx of new gamers as gaming has gone mainstream has filled the ranks with twitchy fingered kids, so admittedly such games are treated with scorn, however as time goes on and those kids slow down your going to see the demand for turn based games and such increase again.

It's like this, right now I am pretty bad at action games. My "adventures" in Red Dead Redemption's multiplayer are beyond laughable for example. While not my genere of choice I still occasionally play (and enjoy) these games despite my lack of success and having to work harder than most people, on the rare occasion where one inspires me to play despite my RPG fixation. I do not however feel that they should dumb down the game, or make it easier, specifically so I can dominate epically either in the single or multiplayer aspects.

Chances are if your playing a game, and not having fun even when you get pwned, that game isn't for you. Play a differant one. Not every game is for everyone.

 

[The3rdEye]

Card games, board games and sports don't find the need to increase the difficulty as the end draws near. The best cards don't start disappearing just as you are about to win, the snakes don't start multiplying as you approach the last square, and the goals don't get smaller as the final whistle approaches.

Largely due to all those games being based on chance, as opposed to video games where a majority of events are pre-scripted. If things always went "your way" in video games, that would be the same as always drawing aces, playing "Snake and Ladders"... and I honestly can't think of a suitable sports analogy. However, it's fair to say that simulator and sports games are based around the concept of being static in that there are set, immovable set pieces that the player manipulates, something that is specific to those genres . Not to mention that the entire point of those genres is to mimic reality as closely as possible. It wouldn't be much of a game if Ezio was breaking his ankle every fifteen minutes or contracting the plague right?

Spoiler

Even on the Wii, beloved of the newcomer, many games ramp up pretty fast. Showing off Super Mario Galaxy 2 to the family last weekend, they were all enraptured by the way it looked and played. The younger ones among us were soon at the controls and doing well. But fast forward even 15 minutes and they were really struggling with some pretty tricky jumps and enemies.

I think I'm in a minority here. I, for one, have no issue with Assassin's Creed's repetitious approach. To my eye, this enabled them to ramp up the difficulty much more slowly which meant I could better keep up. In fact, by making much of this repetition optional they cleverly served both the hardcore and more casual players - although drawing mixed reviews.

I like simulation games in this respect, too. Once you have the basic mechanics understood these games don't ramp up as fast. Sure, things get more complex but it is usually down to the player how quickly this happens. Sports games are an interesting example here, although the bar can be quite high to start playing, once you have the basics down they don't ramp the difficulty too quickly. FIFA or PES are both about using the controls to execute imaginative play rather than facing a spiraling difficulty setting.

I spend more time than most with people new to gaming. Recently, this has made me question why games have to get harder as you play through them. It seems to be written into the fabric of our hobby that it must begin with painfully easy tutorials and end with ridiculously difficult boss battles. So much so that to even suggest that maybe this is a mistake often draws looks of incredulity - or maybe that's just me.

While I do understand where you're coming from, this isn't a recent trend at all. Mega Man 2 and a vast number of titles on the NES and onwards had absolutely punishing difficulties, many of which ramped up steeply. I think one of the main reasons for the confusion is what people are actually expecting from their video games. I would hazard to assume that a majority of core or old school gamers are more familiar with (and seek out) the "Hero's Journey" style of writing being present in their games, so that they more closely mimic novels and movies. (If on the other hand you're just asking for a casual difficulty level in all games well... that would be a per-developer issue and honestly, if you were to get all developers to agree to a casual difficulty level that would be a bit of a waste of an article right?

However, it would also seem that many newcomers (and I'm exempting children from this) and casual gamers are just seeking a way to pass the time, in which case you are absolutely right, difficulty curves would be unnecessary to them and actually counterproductive. That is why review sites and magazines that point out casual or "friendly" games as such are such a boon.

Just as you wouldn't watch an action movie that doesn't flow, progress and test the protagonist, I wouldn't want to play a game that did not flow, change and test me as a player. People coming into video games need to understand that everything that has come before has set trends and tendencies that are pretty much hallmark to the industry. You don't go your life without swimming, then when you finally try to take a dip in your neighbor's pool complain that it's wet.

 

[Maze1125]

The first Sin episode had difficulty sliders much like you described.

But absolutely no-one bought it and so no more were made. Despite it being a pretty cool FPS.

 

[oranger]

Well, I guess the best idea to be drawn here is just more control over the game in the hands of gamers.
I recall the difficulty settings in Deus Ex included a "realistic" setting, but contrary to my expectations it turned out to be a super-duper-difficult-semi-masochistic mode.