Death of difficulty in games.

Seydaman

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Nov 21, 2008
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I must just suck at everything because games don't seem easier to me.

Maybe the tutorials got irritating.
 

white_wolf

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Aug 23, 2013
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I agree with you there OP but I just don't think the modern gaming kids can deal with the tough games. They don't want to have to work at it for months or longer to get past a single mission, they want their skills to be handed to them not work on them, be bribed to stay/rewarded with golden stars, it's very disappointing to watch, I've got a young gamer who is an extreme flake he when the going gets tough he doesn't buckle down and push on he just finds a new game and gets playing it instead. Most games out now are so easy I can beat them in 1 -2 days without trying and that's not a game that's a detraction and that sucks.
 

Eclectic Dreck

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Sep 3, 2008
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Adam Jensen said:
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.
This is largely a pipe dream. The problem with AI isn't really the lack of processing power or access to memory but rather that building good AI is really quite hard. This is why most shooters only feature rudimentary AI in the various NPCs and rely scripting in order to generate the illusion of AI. Worse still, while AI has progressed enormously in the decades since Doom, most games simply rely on a very simple FSM and, if they're really slick about it, a tiny bit of fuzziness to move characters around.

Beyond the problem of difficulty, there are secondary concerns. The most notable is simply that the more power the AI has to take action the programmer couldnt' predict, the harder it is to construct a game around it. Topping it all off there is the simple fact that AI simply isn't a sexy feature that you can easily convey with a short video or a screenshot.
 

NuclearPenguin

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Oct 29, 2009
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I prefer the CPU to be fair, not rubberbanded or breaking game mechanics.
Its the same thing as increasing the difficulty in a shooting game should in my opinion disable auto aim.
 

Aeshi

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Dec 22, 2009
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Most of that old "difficulty" usually consisted of either working out what to spam the hell out of to insta-win or trying the same jump 1000 times until you finally get a pixel-perfect one anyway.
 

V TheSystem V

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Sep 11, 2009
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I started to notice the gradual decline in difficulty in gaming when playing Super Mario Galaxy nearly 6 years ago (Jesus, that came out 6 years ago? I feel a bit older). I remember it being touted as a game easy enough for casual gamers to enjoy and enough of a challenge for Mario veterans.

Guess what? I found it too easy. It was never the game being too difficult that would make me die, it was me making stupid errors that resulted in me losing my last ounce of health or falling off the edge of the map. It was a beautiful game, and my favourite Mario game at that, but it wasn't a challenge. Nintendo then stated that Mario Galaxy 2 would be more challenging, and that was an outright lie also. Sure, it was fun, but it wasn't challenging.

BioShock Infinite falls foul of being too easy, also. 1999 Mode, once again touted as being a proper hardcore challenge for people who have completed the game, was easy. You'd have to pay $100 every time you died, and there was less ammo, but I found it really easy for the most part, only having problems with:

Lady Comstock's ghost (really, really unfair fight. Especially as you had to fight her TWICE), and the airship tower defence at the end, though that was surprisingly manageable one you figured out that it was easier to down the big air balloons rather than those carrying troops)

There are exceptions to this decrease in difficulty in gaming, however. Dark Souls (as already mentioned by other members), Gears of War on Insane difficulty, Dead Space 2 on Hardcore, Fire Emblem: Awakening on Classic mode...there are some games that make you feel like you've accomplished something when completing them on a high difficulty, but they are few and far between this console generation.