Death of difficulty in games.

[Mister Chippy]

I had around the same amount of trouble beat HL on hard mode as I had beating SS3 on normal.

Red faction took only 2 play sessions to complete. I have yet to complete Bioshock Infinite on it's hardest mode.

I beat the original Advanced Wars pretty damned easily. To this day I have not managed to survive more than halfway through Level 14 of Days of Ruin.

Battletoads was and still is completely fucking impossible.

Personally I find that any well designed games not specifically designed to be nearly impossible in order to pad the game time have an fairly equal chance of giving me trouble or being really easy no matter when they were made. One of the reasons that people feel like older games were harder is because they either were very short and padded their difficulty with unfair enemies or they were just poorly designed. Yes, lots of games back then were poorly designed and thats to be expected considering gaming was still kinda new back then (although plenty of the same problems still exist today too ). They often took longer because you would get lost due to poor level design, and yes if people get lost easily that counts as poor level design no matter how well designed the levels were when it came to other things. Sections only completable through trial and error due to hidden traps with unexplained disarming mechanics, scripted enemy spawns, or because you had to jump into goddamned portals blind when there were some that would just kill you instantly *choughcoughHalfLifecoughcough*.

Not saying that these problems don't exist in games today, just whenever I play a game that I think "wow, this is hard" its normally due to artificial difficulty instead of ingenious design. Also HalfLife is amazing and does lots of things right, but it has no shame in making sections completely impossible to complete the first time around. It normally warns you before you walk into a sniper's line or fire or into a minefield, but it's horrible about actually telling you how to get through them. It also has to be the biggest douche of a game when it comes to spawning enemies in unfair places. It spawns them in your face a few seconds after you turn a corner, behind your back, and surrounding you as you walk down hallways.

 

[briankoontz]

There's tons of difficulty in many lower budget games, but very little in high budget games since the design philosophy centers around plot progression, and difficulty hinders the player from progressing through the plot.

Imagine if you were watching a movie and every 5 minutes you had to complete some complex puzzle to be allowed to watch the next 5 minutes. Those movies would not be financially successful.

Lower budget games have the advantages of not necessarily being plot driven in the first place, and secondly even when they are plot driven they don't have to get nearly as many sales to be successful, allowing them more design freedom.

The underlying reason why so many big budget games are plot driven is because plot is content that is not based on difficulty, just like a movie can be watched by anyone with functional eyes.

Dark Souls actually is not a plot driven game, despite there being something of a plot. It's gameplay driven, and that gameplay never stops no matter how much trouble the player might have in plot progression.

Here's just a few examples of difficult lower budget games:

Super Meat Boy
I Wanna Be the Guy series
Rogue Legacy
Hammerwatch
Hotline Miami

Games not focused on plot progression, like chess for example, benefit vastly from being difficult, since difficulty allows for players to feel accomplished when they progress through the game. Gamers are proud to defeat Dark Souls, while noone is proud to defeat Call of Duty, and a grandmaster chess player who wins an international tournament is extremely proud, while someone who wins at tic-tac-toe thinks nothing of it.

 

[Evonisia]

Well, to me, Insane difficutly and Veteren difficutly for Gears of War and Call of Duty are pretty tough and thought provoking. Gears of War more than Call of Duty though since in COD the only real significant change is the fact that the enemy soldiers seem to have a surplus of grenades.

I agree with this. Think AI need to react faster or not be as thick? Play Gears of War 3 on Normal, then Insane, then try to erase the memory of playing that arse campaign and all the times they perfectly align explosives to land by you rather than in an easily dodged area whilst the shooting enemies fire at you.

 

[lord.jeff]

I think the reason that games seem so much easier is the throwing away of lives and including regular check points, mistakes are no longer play a level 20X just because one jump is to hard.

 

[Glongpre]

just started playing through the witcher 2 now my pc can actually run things, and on hard it's proving to be a fair challenge, and is pretty unforgiving at times

I enjoyed the witcher 2 on dark because enemies have the same hp while doing more damage. I hate games that increase hp AND damage, so they are bullet sponges that explode you.

I think the next step for games is more advanced ai. The best I have played was in Ninja Gaiden Black. Each difficulty had new enemies and returning enemies had the same attributes. Each enemy had their own moveset and patterns for the most part but they felt the most alive so far. The difficulty was because of the ai, not damage or health increases.

 

[FoolKiller]

It's not the fault of the developers that this is the case, contrary to most people's opinions of why AAA cater to the broader audiences...believe it or not it's the players. 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, basically the did a research playtest with "modern" gamers of Super Mario Bros. 1, and 90% (90 PERCENT!!!!!!) of them couldn't even get past Stage 1-1. 70% of that number died TO THE FIRST GOOMBA. 50% of that 70% died TWICE. Many thought the coins were enemies and avoided them, and many even complained that there was no in-game tutorial and didn't even know they were playing an already released product (they thought it was some Nintendo 3DS project, and hence complained the graphics were too pixelated). Now bear in mind, every one of the people they used in this test were given the original instruction manual for the game and left to their own devices, and still all but 10% couldn't even get through the first stage (My personal best is like 35 seconds for Stage 1-1)!

This isn't the only case of this dumbing down of games either. In the comments of that article I read of playtesters for Dishonoured not knowing what the hell to do unless they had their hands held...

Source:
http://www.lazygamer.net/xbox-360/without-clues-dishonored-was-too-difficult/

...and of content in Portal 2 that was completely scrapped because playtesters had no idea where to go or what to do. They literally walk around in circles for hours. I mean we all get stuck every now and then in certain games, but not even knowing how to navigate!? After reading this information I can't help but reason with why the "hardcore" gamer hates the "casual" gamer with great vengeance and furious anger. It's as if companies now have to develop to the lowest common denominator, and make games as thoughtless as possible in order to ensure people will play them to completion.

Mind blowing stuff I tell ya.

Regarding the OP. Yes, the problem is that challenge and difficulty are not the same but increasing difficulty is easy compared to increasing challenge. This is why Gears of War on Insane sucks. The strategy didn't change. You just duck and cover more. It's actually rather boring.

People who can't play through the first level of SMB need to learn to play rather than require hand holding.

As for Portal 2, I agree. The second Portal had a lot of times where you weren't trying to solve the puzzle so much as trying to find a visible wall that was "portal-able".

Back to the idea of games being easier now. Here is a theory of mine that I apply to students but it works for everything.

Let's pretend you have a bar about knee high that I ask you to jump over. Assuming no disabilities, most could do this without a problem. Now if I give you a bar that is an inch off the ground, how high will you jump to clear it? Most would just jump enough to clear it.

The point being that if you don't lower the bar, people will jump higher.

 

[Vegosiux]

Let's pretend you have a bar about knee high that I ask you to jump over. Assuming no disabilities, most could do this without a problem. Now if I give you a bar that is an inch off the ground, how high will you jump to clear it? Most would just jump enough to clear it.

The point being that if you don't lower the bar, people will jump higher.

Ah, but I have a perfect solution for that. When you lower the bar, instead of jumping, order them to play

By which I mean, switch around the challenge a bit. I mostly like self-imposed challenges. For example, I'm in Mark of the Ninja NG+ these days, and while I could easily get from the beginning to the end by just tripping every damn alarm and diving into the vents fast enough to outrun the enemy mooks on normal (not so much at NG+ as line of sight kicks in - in a 2D stealth platformer, mind - and taking any damage at all kills you), I prefer the stealthy sneaky approach, play with them, then scare them out of their minds so they start firing at each other like crazy... (helps with the score too, I'm quite high on the non-cheating leaderboards).

I can finish the game by just bruteforcing my way though it, and in that regard, I suppose it's "easy", but I don't actually play it that way.

 

[Netrigan]

I don't think AI is what makes a game difficult. Some of the toughest games around are just filled with cannon fodder enemies that rush you turning the whole thing into something of a bullet storm where a bit of planning and quick reflexes save the day.

Mostly the entire concept of good AI is something of a pipe dream. Better AI often ends up making the game less difficult since they can't dedicate as much processing power to loading up the screen with enemies, so you end up with fewer enemies with higher hit points to compensate.

But, really, every generation of games sort of molds itself to the delivery system. The early arcade games were like bucking broncos meant to throw off players after a handful of minutes. Later when stories started entering into the equation, they started pumping up the difficulty to keep players putting in more quarters to see how the game ended. Nintendo era games ported a lot of those games over, so you get the concept of Nintendo Hard which also covered up the dirty little secret that there was only a couple of hours of content in most of those games and you got most of your play value from repeating the same areas over and over until you mastered them enough to get all the way to the end of the game.

Today the focus is more and more on story and games are meant to be finished by just about everyone, so we're seeing a shift toward fun game mechanics instead of difficulty. Assassin's Creed and Saints Row might be easy as sin, but they're all about giving you tons of tools in which to over-power your enemy in the funnest way possible.

 

[bug_of_war]

Dark Souls,
Demon's Souls
Total war games can be pretty hard for me but I just kind of suck at rts games.

But for the majority of the market you are 110% right.

In addition to that list: Predator: Concrete Jungle, Mortal Kombat (latest one included), Skyrim (Master difficulty), Resident Evil 4 and 5 were pretty hard on Professional difficulty.

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'm having a hard time thinking of many older games where in which the AI is smarter and not just tougher in terms of their health and my damage output. But, it has been stated before that games have gotten easier, and most people seem to accept this as being true simply because a lot of game designers have come out and said, "We made games harder back then because it would increase the longevity of the game". So yeah, you're not wrong that games have gotten easier, but at the same time I find that most games that have difficulty settings can be difficult if you go for it.

Easier games isn't inherently a bad thing so I don't really get too peeved when a game is easy, sometimes I enjoy feeling unstoppable.

 

[Netrigan]

level-1-in-super-mario-bros/

But if you don't wanna read through that, basically the did a research playtest with "modern" gamers of Super Mario Bros. 1, and 90% (90 PERCENT!!!!!!) of them couldn't even get past Stage 1-1. 70% of that number died TO THE FIRST GOOMBA. 50% of that 70% died TWICE. Many thought the coins were enemies and avoided them, and many even complained that there was no in-game tutorial and didn't even know they were playing an already released product (they thought it was some Nintendo 3DS project, and hence complained the graphics were too pixelated). Now bear in mind, every one of the people they used in this test were given the original instruction manual for the game and left to their own devices, and still all but 10% couldn't even get through the first stage (My personal best is like 35 seconds for Stage 1-1)!

Having sat out various trends only to stumble across them many years later, I can attest that quite often this sort of thing is simple ignorance of the underlying video game convention. The first time you play a particular type of game, you're probably going to be all kinds of baffled. Just recently I started playing the tutorially rich X-Com game and I eventually just quit because I had almost no idea what the hell I was doing. The only reason I got through the first level was because the game told me exactly what to do, because my brain has learned to play that way.

So if someone has never played a side-scroller (and this would likely be a fair number of new gamers), then they're simply not equipped to know all this stuff veterans of the genre instantly know. In a game where stuff kills you by touching you, how logical is it that jumping on them kills them? That's a gaming convention a player has to learn. Collectibles... lord knows I've dodged a few in my life-time, because I didn't realize their purpose in the game.

This isn't the only case of this dumbing down of games either. In the comments of that article I read of playtesters for Dishonoured not knowing what the hell to do unless they had their hands held...

This goes way back. I forget which game it was, but it was a first person shooter that decided to add waypoints to help players navigate levels because someone invariably gets stuck in a room with one way in or out and can't find the door. I'm a veteran of first person shooters from the DOOM days and rarely get lost in games... but something about Halo always gets me turned around and wandering around trying to figure out how to progress. I can usually figure out how to progress in games like Dishonored, but every so often the most obvious thing in the world doesn't occur to you because you made the mistake of taking the lessons of one game and applying them to another. In most first person shooters, if someone says "you can't go up the stairs", then they mean "you can't go up the stairs" and you shoot stuff until they decide to open up that section of the map. Whereas in Dishonored, they're basically daring you to figure out how to get up there.

It's the old saying, a person is clever, people are stupid. The more people you bring in to play your game, the more likely you're going to be dealing with people who don't quite understand what your game is. If you put a microbiologist, a historian, a race car driver, and musician into an experience which combines all those elements, then you'll end up having to dumb all four elements down because no person has a particularly deep knowledge of anyone else's skill-set. If you want to create something deeper, then you have to narrow your focus and make the project profitable at a lower threshold.

 

[gavinmcinns]

Total war games can be pretty hard for me but I just kind of suck at rts games.

Play Crusader Kings 2. Total War is babies compared to that game.

The singleplayer is pretty easy but multiplayer can get pretty crazy. There are some pretty cool mods out there too like third age.

I might have to check that out though, it looks kind of intimidating. What race do you play?

 

[gavinmcinns]

I'm having a hard time thinking of many older games where in which the AI is smarter and not just tougher in terms of their health and my damage output. But, it has been stated before that games have gotten easier, and most people seem to accept this as being true simply because a lot of game designers have come out and said, "We made games harder back then because it would increase the longevity of the game". So yeah, you're not wrong that games have gotten easier, but at the same time I find that most games that have difficulty settings can be difficult if you go for it.

Easier games isn't inherently a bad thing so I don't really get too peeved when a game is easy, sometimes I enjoy feeling unstoppable.

Games are easier now because we are people who have been gaming our whole lives. People like that are going to want a bigger challenge, and while many of them may enjoy "feeling unstoppable" like you, I just don't like seeing the market overcome by this trend.

 

[FoolKiller]

Let's pretend you have a bar about knee high that I ask you to jump over. Assuming no disabilities, most could do this without a problem. Now if I give you a bar that is an inch off the ground, how high will you jump to clear it? Most would just jump enough to clear it.

The point being that if you don't lower the bar, people will jump higher.

Ah, but I have a perfect solution for that. When you lower the bar, instead of jumping, order them to play

By which I mean, switch around the challenge a bit. I mostly like self-imposed challenges. For example, I'm in Mark of the Ninja NG+ these days, and while I could easily get from the beginning to the end by just tripping every damn alarm and diving into the vents fast enough to outrun the enemy mooks on normal (not so much at NG+ as line of sight kicks in - in a 2D stealth platformer, mind - and taking any damage at all kills you), I prefer the stealthy sneaky approach, play with them, then scare them out of their minds so they start firing at each other like crazy... (helps with the score too, I'm quite high on the non-cheating leaderboards).

I can finish the game by just bruteforcing my way though it, and in that regard, I suppose it's "easy", but I don't actually play it that way.

But this is quite rare. It has to be a game with variable playstyles. It's why I loved Dishonored and my favourite series (for the most part) is Splinter Cell. In fact, Blacklist does this beautifully. And to add to it, on Perfectionist difficulty, they don't make enemies more spongy or you less so compared to Realistic. What they do is remove some of the features that make it easier (such as Mark and Execute) which made it too easy for the stealth fans in Conviction.

Also, this is why I don't love The Last of Us. Stealth forced isn't stealth. There was no other option.

The point is that it isn't really a self-imposed challenge so much as being able to play different playstyles. SMB has no other playstyles. It just needs someone to practice and get better at the basic mechanics. Giving Mario invincibility all the time would just ruin the point of the game.

 

[gavinmcinns]

I'm having a hard time thinking of many older games where in which the AI is smarter and not just tougher in terms of their health and my damage output. But, it has been stated before that games have gotten easier, and most people seem to accept this as being true simply because a lot of game designers have come out and said, "We made games harder back then because it would increase the longevity of the game". So yeah, you're not wrong that games have gotten easier, but at the same time I find that most games that have difficulty settings can be difficult if you go for it.

Easier games isn't inherently a bad thing so I don't really get too peeved when a game is easy, sometimes I enjoy feeling unstoppable.

That feeling of enjoyment is like crack. After the initial high, you settle eventually come down, and you keep seeking that high again but it's never quite as good as the first time. Saints row 4 for example, has a pretty short high to comedown time. Objectively speaking.
Joke.
For me anyway.

 

[Gamer_152]

Games have eased up in difficulty over the years, but I think games becoming more welcoming and requiring you to repeat fewer sections over and over has been a good thing, and I think to say there's been a death of difficulty in games is a huge exaggeration. As for opponents that can outsmart you, AI in games still has a long way to go, but we can't pretend that back in the day AI was smarter than it is now.

 

[Brotha Desmond]

I'm tired about people who say games are too easy. You want a game that is hard, there are plenty. It seems to me you want games to be acute. Difficult for the sake of difficulty. Hard not because you aren't good enough, but hard because it is impossible to beat first time around.

 

[Strazdas]

the reason for this is simply - AI is hard on programmers and hardware alike. you got basically two problems:
1. smart AI is hard to program, and it is far easier to just throw more enemies at you and like that than make enemies smarter. It is also cheaper jstu to throw more enemies at you.
2. this is a problem that may be at least partially solved with new generation - the hardware problem. while everyone talks about how shiny graphics make your hardware cry and so on, everyone ignores what happens in the background. the AI needs to analyze and make decisions fast, often and intelligently. this requires quite a lot of processing power for AI as well as plenty of ram to store its own information and acess it fast to make decisions sicne it has to know pretty much everything thats going on. and here we hit the main problem - the old consoles only had 512 MB of ram, which was not only a huge problem for graphics, but also for AI. you need to chose to make AI or graphics, and since graphics are easier to advertise, most chose graphics. thus AI suffers. ANd sincem ost games are designed for consoles and then ported to PC, AI hardly ever gets improved. on games designed for PC initially AI is often a bitm ore complex, but that often hits problem 1.
Now, the new consoels will bring a nice amount of RAM and while their processors wont be that great it will give a lot more freedom here anyway. so we may see an improvement here. or lack of optimization (more likely seeing how industry is going).



especially when it is being programmer separately from the game world in the big titles

Translation; savescumming should be a feature.

It already is. Its called checkpoints. its been around for decades.

But if you don't wanna read through that, basically the did a research playtest with "modern" gamers of Super Mario Bros. 1, and 90% (90 PERCENT!!!!!!) of them couldn't even get past Stage 1-1. 70% of that number died TO THE FIRST GOOMBA. 50% of that 70% died TWICE. Many thought the coins were enemies and avoided them, and many even complained that there was no in-game tutorial and didn't even know they were playing an already released product (they thought it was some Nintendo 3DS project, and hence complained the graphics were too pixelated). Now bear in mind, every one of the people they used in this test were given the original instruction manual for the game and left to their own devices, and still all but 10% couldn't even get through the first stage (My personal best is like 35 seconds for Stage 1-1)!

mind-blow. i played SMB when i was 9, without any manual or instructions, and i believe i beat the first stage in an hour or so. dont remember clearly. were they working with mentally challenged gamers?

Sure, it's the same old "Bullet Sponge Difficulty", but when a level 20, on your hardest difficulty is essentially an unstoppable killing machine, you need to actually make your game difficult.

Still fun as hell though, Hearthfire made me realize I had just spent four hours building a house that I was never actually going to use, so I adopted two children and left them in a house out in the wilderness that has giants and bandits roaming nearby and havent been back in months.

I dont even know if they have any food or anything.

I am a horrible parent.

BUt that is true for all TES games. in morrowind i became immortal at level 9. how? i enchanted 1 ring and looted a daedric broadsword from killing 20 or so daedras that actually posed challenge when i was going agaisnt one of the stringest enemies with newbie gear. however at that point i could 2-3 hit everyone and the ring health regen made me immortal. at level 9. so Skyrim is far from being easy in this regard.

 

[not_you]

Well, after re-installing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat, I stumbled upon a mod called "Misery"

It certainly gave me that...

If you want something that will throw you to the ground, kick your teeth in and feed you mutant droppings before breakfast... Give that a try...

It's not that enemies have gotten HARDER to kill (ie, the more bullets theory) it just makes it much more realistic in the survival aspect of the game...
Flashlight has batteries, food needed for sustenance... Sleeping needed for straight vision... anti-rad gives you side-effects of being addicted..... etc...etc....

painful stuff... I might try again one day....

 

[Vale]

I respectfully disagree.
...
I wanted to sound all dignified and stuff but that way I get a low content post warning :[

 

[Vale]

Well, after re-installing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat, I stumbled upon a mod called "Misery"

It certainly gave me that...

If you want something that will throw you to the ground, kick your teeth in and feed you mutant droppings before breakfast... Give that a try...

It's not that enemies have gotten HARDER to kill (ie, the more bullets theory) it just makes it much more realistic in the survival aspect of the game...
Flashlight has batteries, food needed for sustenance... Sleeping needed for straight vision... anti-rad gives you side-effects of being addicted..... etc...etc....

painful stuff... I might try again one day....

Tried that one recently. "Misery" is the appropriate term indeed. Just walking around was miserable. I understand that if I'm carrying 30 kgs on my back (which I have indeed done IRL) I get tired out even if I'm just walking at a brisk space, but by god was it unbelievably frustrating. Never even got to do any fighting before I said "fuggit WE OUT" and just dropped the thing.
... anyhow, I might be missing something with that mod.