Challanging gameplay.

[The-Traveling-Bard]

I feel like some people lost the idea what a real challenge is, and it's almost impossible to talk to some gamers about difficulty, because they don't want to ruin their "hardcore" game titles. But here's some truth.... most hardcore games aren't even hard. They're cheap, and lazily designed in most cases.

It seems like today's "Challenging hardcore games" are only grind fests, and unfair gameplay/super over powered moves. Let's discuss one of the modern ones.

Diablo 3 Inferno setting.
Here's an ENTIRE difficulty that can be beaten... by... BUYING GEAR!
When your entire "hardcore" game can be out wit by simple stat adjustments. That's a design flaw in my book. A game should always be challenging, and shouldn't stop because you have the "UBER EPIC LOOTZ" *Rolls my eyes* Even if you don't buy the gear all you have to spend is countless hours of your time to find it, and even if you happen to get a good item it's mostly worthless for your class. So.. more grinding!

When did grinding become the rule in what's difficult lately? When did TIME = HARD?
The problem with a game like Diablo 3 is that the game isn't necessary hard, but time consuming. The game itself isn't hard, but finding the gear to beat the actual game is.

I hope this design of games is wiped out soon, because it's lazy, and stupid. I'm not whining about the gear grind, but if the gear grind is the only thing that keeps your game being hard. It's extremely lazy.

Guild Wars 2. Holy. Crap. This game is the exact opposite of Diablo 3, and it's hard in the most stupidest ways possible. Over. Powered. Enemies, and poor AI.

Let me explain there's a few problem in this game.

Stun locking. Stun locking is a major issue in Guild Wars 2, and the community doesn't want to address the issue, because they find it "Challenging". Well here's the thing.. once again the entire "Challenge" can be avoided by having a stun breaker, and stability skill. But the down side.. you can only use it every 45 seconds. (Cooldowns may vary between classes/builds) So that's 45 seconds to wait between fighting so I don't get stunlock. but still completely avoiding the "challenge" of the game.

Here's the REAL issue now. Without the stunbreak skill you are completely useless if you go up 4-5 enemies at once with a stun ability you are DEAD! There is no discussing this. all 4-5 enemies will spam their stun ability run after another, and you die.

The community will always say. "GET A STUN BREAKER!" (Which ironically ruins the so called challenge.) "L2DODGENOOB." While I dodge into another enemy with a stun, and then have to dodge HIS stun as well. Therefor wasting my two dodges. Next the most stupidest thing to say. "Don't 1 vs 5 mobs, DERP!" I won't even discuss why this is stupid, but leads into my next reason.

Maybe the game designers give some intelligence to their monsters so they don't all spam their abilities at once? More skills, more combos, more everything. This isn't just a stunlock issue. There are plenty other mobs who spam their abilities one after another that totally wipes out the party. If they gave their mobs some level of AI, and stop spamming all the time. This wouldn't be a problem.

Super moves, and massive AoEs.
A lot of bosses have AoEs that totally wreck your day. The worst part is you can't dodge out of them! There's way too many AoE rings, and no matter which way you dodge you're always stuck in one, and then you die. Again.. people call this challenging? This is completely unfair gameplay. No matter what way you move you *WILL* die. Not only that, but some bosses have literally 1 shot insta kills if you don't dodge. Which.. is fine, but it's cheap. Not everyone plays 100% perfect, and no one should expect people to play 100% perfect all the time. Also Arenanet doesn't follow the rule that it takes an average human being at least a second to respond. So yay.

Now to the other generic style of a "challenge" dungeon run/enemies.
Creatures/enemies/etc. That have massive heal pools that every time they hit you take away 1/4, or 1/3 of your health away. This isn't challenging this is a cheap way to make your game hard. The AI isn't smart, the monsters aren't doing anything interesting. They're just swinging their weapons. I can understand if enemies were casting abilities, but not just swinging their sword each time. That just reeks of lazy design, and lazy work.

Some people pull the whole "It's a test of survivability", but that's a shitty card pull in today's market since hardware is powerful enough to handle more complex patterns/phases/etc in a fight. That excuse for me just doesn't cut it anymore.

 

[The Wykydtron]

So you want something difficult eh? Play a fighting game online. ANY fighting game. Even Super Smash Bros. You will get your arse WRECKED for weeks, probably months, maybe years and there is ALWAYS somebody better than you. Unless your name is ChrisG.

Ultimate Marvel is a good example, since it's a 3 man team you have to pick three people you are decent with and once you figure one or two out you pick a character with an assist that compliments their moves. Hulk + Sentinel for example. Unbeatable if the guy has a crap connection because lol super armour.

The best thing is, you can drop your current characters and pick up 3 totally different ones and oops the difficulty silder just went up a couple hundred notches. Then you pick up a new fighting game and fuck there is nowhere near as much skill translation as i'd hoped!

I like BlazBlue because there's no annoying team synergy, like people picking Doom to make their lives easier because Hidden Missles is arguably the best assist in the game. Also I never see any mirror matches. I often have to deal with 2 mirrors in the same game in Marvel (Vergil and Dante) but i've seen only ONE other Noel at all.

It's just me, Noel and some rager going on about how ridiculously cheap Noel's rushdown can be :3

Low health Rachel setting up a keepaway fortress?! Fullscreen FENIR haterzzzzzzzzzz.

Oh and I will learn Lambda-11 if it kills me. The keepaway! The fullscreen combos! The rushdown! SO COOL.

I'll add any MOBA in to this. You can play LoL for literally years and learn almost nothing. It's insane.

So basically, multiplayer game are harder because people start swag combos and ridiculous team comps

 

[Ickorus]

I kinda disagree on a lot of what you say about GW2, there's far more you can do to fight against tough enemies than dodging and equipping stunbreakers, most boons and conditions can have a large effect on the outcome of a fight, for instance on my Thief I frequently use blinds, invisibility, cripples, dazes, and poisons to defeat enemies I wouldn't be able to simply defeat with a stunbreaker and dodgerolls.

I do agree that they need to sort out AI and have a bit of a rethink on how they provide challenging content in future though, gigantic health pools, nearly impossible to avoid AoE, powerful mob zergs and badly telegraphed insta-kill moves need to go.

By the way, since when do people call it a 'challenging hardcore game'?

Agreed on Diablo 3 though, obscenely huge health pools and insta-kill attacks when not properly geared is not a challenge.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

*Challenging*, Mr. President.

Anyway, did I miss something? Since when were Diablo 3 and Guild Wars 2 in the conversation for difficult or hardcore games? It was my understanding they were both considered pretty easy. For God's sake, my friend's 7 year old daughter plays Guild Wars 2.

 

[DoPo]

*Challenging*, Mr. President.

Anyway, did I miss something? Since when were Diablo 3 and Guild Wars 2 in the conversation for difficult or hardcore games? It was my understanding they were both considered pretty easy. For God's sake, my friend's 7 year old daughter plays Guild Wars 2.

We both slept over some piece of news, I think. Something about redefining what "hardcore" is. Well, more than the giant mess of a conflicting definitions it is now, somehow this is a new one that doesn't fit with any of the rest. ARPGs and...whatever category exactly GW falls in only require you to do some grinding and maybe throwing some Maths optimisation on there (which is most often already done by others, so you don't crunch numbers yourself) to be successful. It's not much different than filling forms for taxes or similar. Ok, a bit more engaging and you'd probably do it of your own initiative but essentially the same. At which point it became "challenging" and "hardcore" and exactly which aspect of it, I don't know. These games are just a giant equation - your input boils down to "repeatedly do X" and occasionally fudging some of the variables, too. If the output is less or equal to the current target number, you try again until it's greater, otherwise set the target number higher. Loop until you hit the max value. Dunno, seems pretty mechanical work to me, not that difficult. The only constraint you actually have is time. Or in Diablo 3's case - also money, badum-tsh!

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Dark Souls!

Add a few sentences to your post, chum, or there's a low content warning in your future. =\

 

[TrevHead]

Wrong type of hardcore mate, IMO alot of "hardcore" games tend to be uncompromising, a game you will have to spend a long time just to get competent at.

 

[Fluffythepoo]

Diablo fans want a fast paced, good looking, grinding game.. thats what they got. The very essence of diablo is grinding for gear, that's just what it is. Also difficulty goes well beyond your first playthrough in blizzard games (first playthough being first inferno completion), still need to get all the boss achievements (perfect execution, beating them naked, and the like), beat inferno at monster power 10 (x10 health +damage, same duration enrage timers, and more lootz), and do all that on hardcore. All that said though, diablo really isnt a hard game for non-casuals

And stunlocking is only an issue if youre bad at kiting/dodging and/or if you have no survivability in your build.. every open world mob has an avoidable telegraphed stun, if you get hit by it its cause you fucked up.
The community doesn't think its a problem because they avoid the stuns or if they dont they know its their own damn fault for getting stunned. As theyve clearly indicated on the gw2 forums in pretty much every post of someone complaining about stunlock ever. Im guessing you didnt post in gw2 forums cause you knew actual gw2 players would call you on being bad at the game.

 

[SecondPrize]

I was going to google up some grade-school spelling game because of your title, but it seems like a lot of work.
You're spot on about Diablo III, but that's just Blizzard. They do gear treadmills. The content is tuned to be near impossible if you lack the basic gear level required, doable if somewhat difficult if you're geared to the minimum and then it just gets easier and easier as you down the content and get upgrades. That's what Blizzard does and that's pretty much all they do.

 

[hoboman29]

There is a clear difference between cheap difficulty and fair difficulty.

The OP already talked about cheap difficulty so that saves me some time. But for an abrdiged version cheap is when you are powerless to stop the game from throwing what would be called cheap tactics at a player.

Fair difficulty is another creature entirely and since its much harder to design its not nearly as commonly found in games. To sum it up in one sentence fair difficulty is when you have all of the power to beat the game at your disposal and anytime you fail its because you failed not because of an attack you couldn't dodge or stun loops. A perfect example is God Hand where you could dodge any move that any enemy tried to hit you with from the very beginning. It wasn't mechanics creating difficulty but rather your own skill.

Enough of me singing the praises of God Hand though (but it is on psn for 10 USD and you should totally buy it :3 ).

TL;DR Cheap difficulty = mechanic or glitch the player is helpless against, Fair difficulty = challenge based on player's skill

 

[Twilight_guy]

You cited an RPG and an MMO, two generas that historically are not hard because of grind and levels and the need for mass appeal respectably, for your argument. You should have been a bit more diverse with your examples.

With that said, difficultly is enterly subjective. Everyone is different. A developer's job is try and refine the difficulty for some group. Usually the game's target audience. The target audience is different for many games. For example, Dark Souls target audience is people who like really tough games, and thus the difficulty is attuned for them and tough. Guild Wars 3 on the other hand is marketed a general audience of people who play MMOs. That means more or less your aiming for medium difficulty between too hard for most and too easy for most. Weather they succeed or fail is difficult to say unless you poll there target audience. I can't say "too easy" by myself because what I think is too easy may be exactly what the target audience thinks is okay and what the developer was going for. Too many gamers judge difficulty on games without considering that a game isn't necessarily designed to be hard for them.

That said, there are some practices that shouldn't be used at add difficulty not because they are "cheap" but because they are boring or frustrating. For example, continuous stun-locks removes a player's ability tot react, thus leading to them having no agency, which is very frustrating. Too much health leads to repetitive combat with the player just hitting the boss over and over with no real change or advancement (eventually you get the boss's AI down and it becomes mundane). Both are bad not because of how they work but because of how they make the player feel, which is unhappy. These actually have nothing to do with difficulty as both easy and hard games are vulnerable to these mistakes.

 

[Bad Jim]

Maybe the game designers give some intelligence to their monsters so they don't all spam their abilities at once? More skills, more combos, more everything. This isn't just a stunlock issue. There are plenty other mobs who spam their abilities one after another that totally wipes out the party. If they gave their mobs some level of AI, and stop spamming all the time. This wouldn't be a problem.

Given that spamming abilities seems to be pwning you hard, why would intelligent monsters not do that? Do you define 'intelligence' as 'realising the harm and futility of violence, therefore renouncing it even in the face of death'?

 

[TrevHead]

Someone on the Shmups Forum coined this phrase once which I'll mention again here.

"A true hardcore game is one that the player themselves gain exp and get stronger through practice. A pseudo hardcore game is one where the player character instead of the player gains exp through play, usually grinding for gear and exp."

I think alot of ppl don't seem to acknowledge the difference between this, that's why most of the "hardest bosses ever" vids on YT are JRPG bosses. It's also why I don't like the fact so many FPS / MP games like CoD and BF3 have grinding in them, all it does is make a playerbase of grinders and removes some of the skill element.