Death of difficulty in games.

[GoaThief]

I'm not sure how many people are aware of this, but earlier this year during a stockholder meeting at Nintendo, this very topic was brought up and current president Satoru Iwata stated that they had to make games easier because people simply couldn't play them.

Source:
http://www.p4rgaming.com/majority-of-gamers-today-cant-finish-level-1-in-super-mario-bros/

But if you don't wanna read through that

If you don't want to read through that, don't worry as it's just a completely satirical piece that the above thought was true. :-D

I don't believe many games have been dumbed down, a term I don't really like as people tend to misuse the expression. There are so many titles and genres out there now there is certainly something for everyone. If you like to get involved in a story you're covered, if you like to focus on refining your play to the nth degree you've also got it. If you like both depending on mood, individual titles and/or a mix of the two then you're golden.

Of course there are some exceptions such as the horrifying tween low quality cheesefest that is Dragon Age 2. Not like there isn't anything else out there at all to keep oneself occupied.

 

[MacChris1991]

I don't think it's that games aren't difficult anymore, it probably has more to do with the fact that we have all gotten better at gaming. Think about it, how long have you been playing games, then think about how many different rpgs, shooters, horror titles,fighting games, and sports games you have played in that amount of time. Know think about the mechanics that modern games still share with all those old games. The fact that you are coming into every new game you play with all your experience and strategies means that you are able to deal with whatever the game throws at you despite the fact that it may be slightly more complex and difficult than whatever you played before. Walking anywhere now is easier than babies first steps because of a lack of experience, not because there is a difference in difficulty, the mechanics of walking are the same, you just know how now. Or in gamer terms any new Super Mario bros is easy because we all beat Super Mario world.

 

[freaper]

I wouldn't say modern games are harder than, eh, retro (?) games. It's just that some genres have a higher propensity towards being more difficult. Platformers, Shoot-em-ups, Rts's, etc. are all challenging from the get-go. Of course there are games in those genres which are dumbed down, but it would be easier to say FPS's, RPG's, etc. are generally easier than the aforementioned genres.

 

[Thr33X]

I wouldn't say modern games are harder than, eh, retro (?) games. It's just that some genres have a higher propensity towards being more difficult. Platformers, Shoot-em-ups, Rts's, etc. are all challenging from the get-go. Of course there are games in those genres which are dumbed down, but it would be easier to say FPS's, RPG's, etc. are generally easier than the aforementioned genres.

IDK if I'd say FPS games are easier though. Since most are played in multiplayer that adds the human element to the equation which ramps up the difficulty tenfold because of unpredictability of human opponents. That kind of behavior in AI however has yet to be even tapped, let alone harnessed. The general idea of "hard mode" in modern gaming is either make the enemies hit harder or make you hit softer. I'd say FPS, Fighting and RTS games probably provide the biggest difficulties, because they require mastery of the game mechanics to be effective...you have to know not only what to do but when to do it to be the most effective.

I don't want to label them as "skill based" games, but there is a reason why those 3 genres specifically are used in eSports and not your AAA action adventure titles.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

For the most part I agree. And it sucks. They could offer better difficulty options offering sliders on various things as so you can customize the difficulty better.

Also an obligatory games are about gameplay not watching a damn film....

 

[skywolfblue]

Honestly, I cant think of a single game that has the enemy AI actually get smarter with difficulty increase. Usually its just make the player die fast/ make the enemy take more bullets/ add various amounts of "The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard" [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheComputerIsACheatingBastard].

Halo: Reach. On legendary, elites get muuuuch better at pulling back when their shield are low, while all their comrades advance to shoot you (sometimes the higher shielded units actually move in front of the injured to block you from killing the guy), get better at running forward to flush you out when you're in cover. They become pros at tricking you forward out of cover and then turning around and shooting you to death or charging with a sword to stab you.

That's about the only game I can think of.

 

[happyninja42]

I decided to pick up Madden 25 (Shut up I like football) cause why not? I played the game for 1 hour and found it to be too easy. I kicked up the difficulty up a notch and guess what? It didn't make the the opponents smarter, it made my guys dumber. I would get intercepted cause my guy would be too stupid to know where the ball was and the AI looked out for my ball more than my own damn team! And this is something that has pissed me off about modern gaming. The lack of difficulty in games. In my opinion a difficult game is one that makes you think over your strategies and forces you to push harder. Not making an enemy that take 100,000 bullets to kill, but one that can outsmart me and force me to do better. I can't remember that many modern games that are difficult. I don't know. Is it just me? Or are games getting easier? What do you think?

I think it's not easy to code "cunning" into a video game character. I think that the basic limitations of a video game architecture make it very hard for programmers to make a character that can intelligently respond to the myriad of ways a player might decide to resolve a puzzle. I think that some programmers are better at this than others, and that some of them are under tight deadlines and might cut corners to get out on time. I think that the 100,000 bullets coding is way easier to implement, than to encode an enemy that reacts realistically to whatever strategy you are employing.

 

[gargantual]

What are you talking about? The extremely large majority of all games ever made had and still have shitty hard difficulty that has nothing to do with enemies being smarter. They are just stronger and have better equipment and you're weaker. A few games dare to make enemies react faster, but that's it.

We are actually moving forward on this issue. And hopefully new consoles will improve this aspect of games with more RAM and better processing power that can be used for AI.

Also, what scorptatious said is true. For example, sports games are extremely hard for me because I don't play them at all. I played PES and FIFA once in my life and that was it. I have no idea how NPC's will react to situations. I don't have that problem with violent games because I played so many of them I learned what to expect from enemies.

I'm not trying to say that all games back then didn't have the same difficulty problems that are in modern games, but I seem to find them more often now. Most games aren't as challenging as they can be. Or maybe I'm playing the wrong games. I don't know.

You're not dreaming dude. Smart A.I. is very possible. Just look at fighter games. Even if you were to nudge the difficulty up to a medium hard range just to get more respite out of the challenge. The computer CLEARLY demonstrates that it's capable of catching familiar patterns and moves, and blocking at moments where you typically spot an opening. That's another reason you don't see too much participation in that genre from western devs. You gotta put quite a bit into A.I. to make them THAT versatile.

 

[Tribalism]

The original Ninja Gaiden actually approached difficulty very well and managed to have ball-busting difficulty for most people. It achieved this in much the same way as any other game of its type (increased enemy damage, increased enemy health) but it also switched up the enemies and locations of collectables.

Hard mode would pit you against much tougher enemies much sooner and that chest you thought had an upgrade? HERE HAVE SOME BATS INSTEAD. The switchup in enemies kept you on your feet and made you prioritise some upgrades more. The exploration element was kept fresh because of the change in item locations. Beside the Alma battles, that game was difficulty done right. The other option is to offer challenges that extend beyond the scope of the main game, such as FFX's Dark Aeons or the collectables in most 3D Mario platformers.

 

[BloodSquirrel]

I wonder how many people that go on about the ease of 'modern games' have also been playing the damn things for 10+ years?

I've been playing games for over twenty years now. I play them less now than I did ten years ago.

The idea that I'm just so much better at games than I was ten years ago doesn't hold water. Am I better than I was when I was ten years old? Probably. Better than when I was twenty? Definitely not. I certainly haven't improved so much between Metroid Prime and Metorid Prime 3 that I can put down the difference in difficulty between those two to "I got better at it".

 

[thejackyl]

I tend to believe that FAIR difficulty died a LONG time ago. Dark Souls and Demon's Souls are an exception, but playing games on anything above Normal, or Normal+1 seems to usually be unfairly difficult.

I played The Last of Us on survivor and got to the point where you have to sneak past a group of runners and clickers while the Ellie and Tess follow you. I make a single noise, and if I were alone I would be fine, but Tess begins shooting like crazy and guess who the clickers attack?

I tried Tales of Xillia on Hard, and I ended up getting destroyed by the second(?) boss, and I had nearly no chance whatsoever of winning. He hits with an AoE attack that does more than 3x my characters total health, even after 75% damage reduction (Earth Guardx2 + Earth Cape). It would have been doable, but it would have just been me chipping away at his 30000ish HP while doing 30-50 damage per hit. I said fuck that, and knocked in down to Normal, and he was still a pain (my AI partners can't avoid the AoE to save their lives so they still died to it, a LOT), but he only had like 12000 HP and my attacks were doing 120-200 damage now.

I don't like games that change everything based on difficulty. I remember playing an FPS on Normal, enemy accuracy, damage, and health were normal. On Hard, Accuracy was boosted by 30%, damage and health doubled, on the next difficulty accuracy was boosted by 75% damage was tripled and enemy health was quadrupled. And this was an action game, where you're meant to get in the enemies faces and shoot them, not a stealth game. It made the heavy enemies (who on Easy took 4 grenades and about 3 mags from a shotgun to kill... which was about the max you could carry) a HUGE pain on anything higher than Easy (Easy reduced accuracy and damage by 20%, and enemy health was halved)

Needless to say, it didn't feel fair on anything higher than Easy

 

[The Feast]

I don't know if you guys remember a game called Supreme Commander which have the AI of a Skynet from Terminator. From the PC Gamer, three guys aim to annihilate a single AI opponent but always being outsmart by the strategy that the AI make. AI isn't hard to be apply to games, it's just that game developers always encourage people to make their games easy to beat just so the player doesn't experience frustration, unlike Dark Souls.

If you look at a modded game such as ARMA 2's "headless client AI" which make the enemy able to spot the player and shoot the player miles away, and also the modded Skyrim that have a gazillion AI enhancement, difficulty experience can easily be achieved. But the problem is that those games are considered open world, moddable and no console developers will cater with the difficulty of their games to an elite level just because they don't want to.

It is sad that even a game that offers tools to the player such as Assassin's Creed and Dishonored can easily be finished, which make the tools seems useless. The Dishonored is a best example of consequential outcome, but it lacks the challenge for the player who guns blazing and slashing to the end.

Games are now advertise themselves to be a game that give too much redundant tools to the players such as Infamous 2, Far Cry 3 and especially the new Saints Row(why the hell do you need to use regular guns and driving cars, anyway?) and many newer games. Those games doesn't aim to be hard, but instead to give their own version of variety enjoyment to the players.

I don't dislike these games, but having a hard game that gives me a satisfying success would be nice. I'm looking at you Skyrim, your vanilla difficulty sucks. Going through the main quest is like a rail ride.

 

[SilkySkyKitten]

Oh look, it's this thread again. You know, the one where "hardcore gamers" complain about games being "dumbed down" and "filthy casuals" supposedly "ruining" games...

I'll just post this fantastic Jimquisition episode on the subject and leave it there:

 

[BloodSquirrel]

That's not what I'm getting at, I'm not saying anything as specific or drastic as that.

What I'm really getting at here is that in these conversations we all sit around and talk about how harder it all "used" to be, and nobody ever says that maybe it "used" to be so hard cause you were a kid and weren't as experienced a gamer as you are now.

I'm not really sure how that's different than what I was responding to. The problem is that I'm old enough that I'm not just comparing against games I played when I was a kid- I'm comparing them to last generation, when I had a lot more time to sit around and play them than I do now.

Besides, I can't speak for you, but for me anyway as I've gotten older things like old muscle memory and straight twitch reflexes and spotting really tiny ass things are starting to get a bit rusty just cause. Hard mode shooters are out and fighters make my hands hurt!

...and that just makes my point stronger, if games feel like they're getting easier even though my twitch reflexes are slowing.

 

[Ishal]

make every game like that and the gaming audience will be reduced to a fraction of what it is.

I wonder if we'd be better off XD

Nah, I don't want the gaming audience to shrink, but Dark Souls is pretty much the only game that approached difficulty in that way. I'm a pretty avid gamer, too. I've played a good amount of games, and that was pretty unique. I think patience is the biggest thing in Dark Souls. The Stray Demon killed me at least 14 times before I beat him. I was pretty frustrated after that, but I kept playing and it payed off in dividends. I loved Anor Londo and The Painted World when I finally got there.

 

[HardkorSB]

Is it just me? Or are games getting easier? What do you think?

In the 80's, a lot of games were essentially arcade titles that were 20 minutes long so the game developers made them overly difficult on purpose to get us to put more coins into the arcade machines. That's a fact and even the developers admitted it.
Some of the games, like Battletoads, were just trial and error games, impossible to get through without memorizing them. I don't think anyone really wants these type of games to return.

I used to spend days on these games. I beat the damn Battletoads, I can still beat Contra on 1 life. I just don't want to do that anymore. I don't want to spend countless hours replaying the same level over and over again.
People say that kids back in the day were better gamers. I think they just were more desperate.