Death of difficulty in games.

gavinmcinns

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bug_of_war said:
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

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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

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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

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May 28, 2011
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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
MHR said:
Abomination said:
Translation; savescumming should be a feature.
It already is. Its called checkpoints. its been around for decades.

Thr33X said:
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?

Kalezian said:
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

Don't ask, or you won't know
Mar 16, 2011
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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

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May 1, 2013
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I respectfully disagree.
...
I wanted to sound all dignified and stuff but that way I get a low content post warning :[
 

Vale

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not_you said:
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.
 

Eve Charm

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Aug 10, 2011
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TES suffers from level scaling but it's not really the games fault that through countless play time you know a formula that makes you stronger then the enemies would logically be. Your not gonna give bandits super equipment because 1 it wouldn't make sense and 2 it would destroy the flow of the game because now you'll have all this super equipment to sell and get money quickly.

Difficulty just shouldn't be the AI anymore, especially now that players can do more and more to make the game easier for themselves. You have so many more choices now then a game like the old ninja gaidens where the developers knew the path you had to take to get somewhere, Where all enemies already knew some ninja was running around and basically the only factor a player could change is what sub weapon they had at the time.

Today's games you have just so many more tools at your disposal. You come across a castle in an modern game with rpg elements... is it better or worse that guards don't know your coming, better right? now you can be stealthy most of the way when back then that would never be an option. A 3d world, back then you had to walk through the front door, now maybe you can find a back door, or scale the side of a wall, or use magic to jump over or go through. Hell you can even see that castle and say " screw that" and come back much stronger, or hell never come back. Just controls in general are just so much better and offer so much more option to the player, remember when you could only whip in front of your character in Castlevaina? How insane would a modern shooter be with Resident Evil's 1-3 and CV's control style of you can't move while you aim and can only shoot in front of your character or at an 45 degree angle up or down? Hell back in the day you were lucky if the controls worked most of the time correctly, something that would never fly by today's standards.
 

TAGM

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I dunno, being one of those boring sods that wants to win more then he wants a challenge (I play games to relax, so what?) I do wish that two things were done everywhere:

1) Let me pick my difficulty
Yes, even the Dark Souls thing, I'd like that ability. Even if it's just between "Hard" and "Nut-Bustingly Hard", I'd like the choice. Or better still, just let me make the choice on the fly, without even going to the option screen!
One game I really liked about 4 or 5 years ago was Wario Land Shake It. It's a fun little platformer, and if you play just trying to get to the end, it's pretty damn easy. But there's a bunch of little challenges in every level - collect this many coins, don't touch water, don't kill an enemy - and in some cases, completing them is almost annoyingly difficult. But hey, it's my choice. If I feel like breezing through the level, I breeze through it. If I feel like getting that 100% completion more? Well, the nut-kicking awaits.

2) Don't make anything impossible in the wrong circumstances, PLEASE.

Borderlands 2 is an absolute BASTARD for this. I refuse to belive that the Badass Pyre Threshers can be killed as anyone other then Gaige and maybe Axton. In case you don't know: They're able to burrow. When they unburrow, they releace a fire nova AoE attack around them that hits pretty much instantly. They won't unburrow until you're in range, and you can't actualy hit them while they're burrowing. So, in other words, if they burrow, you're taking a hit. End of. And it's a LARGE hit, and if it sets you on fire, you're basically dead. And yes, you CAN get a second wind off of his tentacles, but if the massive fucker decides to get in the way of your aim, you're buggered and have to reset.
And those FUCKING Skeleton Sears, with their ability to just say "No, fuck you, you're not hitting me right now." Which they do. A. LOT.
And I literally spent around 10 minutes fighting ONE enemy, an enemy that had the ability to level itself up FIVE TIMES. Which, in Borderlands 2, basically takes an enemy to "a fairly hard fight," to "You may as well just run around this area for ages getting potshots, because he's going to one shot you." The ONLY reason I managed to beat him at all was because he had only Melee attacks, and even then it was a crapshoot, because his jumping attack became basically undodgeable at a short enough range, and his attacks in general seemed to hit you about 10 foot further then they should. So if you get hit when you shouldn't have, and then get the jumping attack, too bad, you're dead, start again from square 1 of 10,000. And whoever made Treeants produce electrical homing spores on death that can easily send a character who just came up from Fight For Your Life right back again deserves a swift kick up the ass for being an absolute dick-ward.
Playing Borderlands 2 with those enemies inside it is like bashing my head against a brick wall for fun. It just causes pain and a headache. And that isn't fun. I refuse to believe that someone actually play-tested it properly - no-one could go through the crap I did and say "Nope, this is good, release it."
 

zefichan

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Jul 19, 2011
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Fact: Most modern games use ridiculous handholding, older games taught you during play, new games treat you like a five year old.

Fact: A few games thankfully don't do this nonsense. Thank god.

Games as a whole aren't too easy, most devs just think their players are idiots.
 

Eve Charm

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Hehe I don't know, maybe instead of quest markers and npc's that actually explained what have to do they rather have unhelpful npcs and down right stupid puzzles like knee down next to a rock with the red crystal equipped ala Castlevaina 2. Stupid stuff like that died for a reason in games.
 

Mr Dizazta

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Mar 23, 2011
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I am sick and tired of the bullshit argument about games begin too easy now of days or why games even have difficultly settings in the first place. What I feel is that gamers complaining about some features fail to realize that not everybody who plays a game is a harden veteran since the glory days of the NES era or before. What they need to realize is that every game ever made or will be made is some poor youngster's first game. Now, are we going to scare new gamers from trying a game they heard about by ramping up a game's difficulty just because a vocal minority of gamers complain about the lack of difficulty in games? That is why difficulty settings were created in the first place: to give a new player a chance to experience something new and possible try other experiences as well. Jesus, the only reason why older games were harder in the first place was because of the arcade game design philosophy. I am sick and tired of this bitching and moaning because all it reminds me is of my parents and any other parent or grandparent complaining about how their kids have it better off than they did and how they didn't have the internet or other modern conveniences. To me this argument is just petty.
 

babinro

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I don't consider it the death of difficulty as much as the death of limitations.

Back in the NES days you frequently had games without a difficulty selection. You'd have to master the game and endure it's faults. Some games would limit your actions to a silly degree to make the game artificially difficult.
- Pits everywhere and hits knock you back
- Can't attack while crouching or while in the air or while on stairs
- Games designed to be extra difficult to extend game play time rather than offer more levels

These days, most games try and remove the BS within reason and let you do what you think the player should be able to do. This added freedom of control inherently makes the game easier. Combine this with games that frequently give multiple difficulty settings and you can scale your gameplay experience considerably.

Diablo 3 is one of the prime examples of this right now.
You have normal, nightmare, hell and inferno difficulties that can then be scaled further using an monster power 0 through 10 system. Add to this other elements like opting to play without the optional Auction House or Crafting or the means to play on Hardcore where death is permanent and you have one of the best diverse challenge experiences on the market.

It sounds to me like Madden 25 is just an example of a poorly made game. Either that or you're so amazing at those game from years/decades of playing them that what would normally challenge the typical player is no longer hard for you. For every 50 people who feel Ninja Gaiden (Nes), Battletoads (Nes), Dark Souls etc are difficult games. You'll have those select few who claim they were easy from start to finish without even bragging. They were just naturally good at something others weren't.
 

Piorn

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"Real" difficulty is hard to do, and everyone defines it differently.
For some, it might be a short but complicated platforming segment like Super Meat Boy.
For others it might be a test of endurance or resiliance, like DkS.
Some people just like to find the exploits and cheese everything to death, like in Skyrim.

And bad design is no excuse for difficulty. I played Dishonored completely without hints and had no problem at all, but had to turn them on at one point, because to save some guy, you had to drop him in a very specific dumpster without any in-universe hints whatsoever. I hid him in several places, failing the mission each time, before finally resigning and using the hints.
That's not dificulty or my stupidity, that's just bad design.
 

TehCookie

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Older games were much more difficult, if you beat the game you wouldn't throw in more quarters. Then you have games with bad controls which makes it harder to play. There were also less in game tutorials and if you wanted hints you had to read the manual. Then there have always been harder games and easier games, AAA games tend to be easy since they're for the mass market.

As for AI getting smarter when you turn the difficulty up most of Platinum/Clover games do that and DMC (with a capital M). In Persona 3 and I think 4 enemies are more likely to target your weakpoints and I'm pretty sure later Tales of games also change the AI.