Difficulty in Games

[Zannah]

We can all agree, that a games difficulty has great impact on the gaming experience, wether because you can't beat the first level, or because the game provides no challenges. In modern days, games use several different ways to create aforementioned dificulty.
I'd like to discuss, which ways to create diffculty do you like? Which one do you dispise? Can anyone provide more examples of where certain ways are executed exeptionally well / bad?
(and yes, i am bored)

1) Strength in numbers
While you as a player will generally be outnumbered in most non-strategy titles, some games just overdo it, by swarming you with unreasonable amounts of cannon-fodder. A way to create difficulty that, in my humble opinion, is almost impossible to execute well, since any game (with the exeption of zombie-games) will loose immersion, if you have to eradicate entire populations, just to get across a room. A current title especially guilty of this, is Dragon Age Origins, where enemies tend to appear only in hordes, and even the most epic boss battles high atop a tower against an arch demon, swarm you with small enemies, dispite being absolutely unnecesary. Outstanding at this point is the part in Orzamar, fighting through the bandits den, where I most likely single handedly butchered 70% of the entire dwarwen population (or at least felt like it)

2) Strenth in health
Instead of making a game difficult, just increase the health of every npc ingame tenfold. Some devs have yet to learn, that this, while being quite easy for them, does not make the enemies worthy opponents, just more annoying ones. This is a problem Mass effect 2 has, where enemies on the higher difficulties tend to survive a whole ar clip to the face, but the ultimate "how to never do it ever"-prize in this category goes to borderlands coop, where for every player joining in, the health of all npcs is doubled, leading to them having 8 times their original health if you play full 4 player coop. So me, my boyfriend, and two people from our Wow-guild are trying to kill Bonehead (i think that was the guys name) Were all lvl 8, hes 11, but no problem. Or so we thought, since we had to take turns in walking back to firestone and buying new ammo, because the guy took a rough 80 snipershells. to the head.

3) Giving enemies superhuman abilities
Since its the ai, it can cheat - make the npcs faster / stronger / improve their aim. While this can go horribly wrong (See also - Far Cry, or being sniped in full cover, in a closed building, from several countries away, with a pistol) this can also go well - as can be seen in Modern Warfare 2, where enmies basically turn their aimbots on when you select veteran, but despite that, still feel like human enemies, that you can sneak up on / flank.

4) Making the enemies more skillful
While this would seem the most obvious choice, it is also the rarest to be seen, because it is not only hard to implement, but also means walking on razors edge, because as a dev you want to make your game challenging, not frustrating (unless your capcom) - They did it well in Dmc-series - the enemies, despite being quite skillfull, don't just wipe the floor with your entrails - on the other hand they did it horribly in street fighter (Try beating Blanka / Dhalsim on highest difficulty, with a character that has no ranged attacks).

 

[Tharwen]

Yes, I agree, but making the enemies mroe skillful only really applies in chess sims and RTSs, because in most other games, the AI is used to make the NPCs more realistic, so reducing the quality of the AI usually just means that you beat them by taking advantage of a glitch, or just the fact that they don't realise that you are there, or that they don't have to put their gun away and run round the edge of the room to attack you etc.

 

[Zannah]

Again Age of empires is complete bullshit on harder difficulties your enemies will gain like 300 resources every minute.

Whats worse when facing Aoe Ai, is that they, despite always attacking on the same rout, no matter how many castles you put there, they control every single of their blody archers manually, meaning that if an enemy group of ranged fighters so much as sees a single of your melee-soldiers they will all flee in different directions, shooting and runnig away if something comes close. Then again, Aoe II lets you control one player with four or five people which is one hell lot of fun (why can't all rts do this?)

 

[Scabadus]

When playing Mass Effect 1 on Insanity certain enemies have a chance to hit you with a biotic power that made Shapard collapse on the floor for a good ten seconds. There was no way of blocking, dodging, coutering or predicting this.

That is how not to make a game harder.

 

[richasr]

We can all agree, that a games difficulty has great impact on the gaming experience, wether because you can't beat the first level, or because the game provides no challenges. In modern days, games use several different ways to create aforementioned dificulty.
I'd like to discuss, which ways to create diffculty do you like? Which one do you dispise? Can anyone provide more examples of where certain ways are executed exeptionally well / bad?
(and yes, i am bored)

1) Strength in numbers
While you as a player will generally be outnumbered in most non-strategy titles, some games just overdo it, by swarming you with unreasonable amounts of cannon-fodder. A way to create difficulty that, in my humble opinion, is almost impossible to execute well, since any game (with the exeption of zombie-games) will loose immersion, if you have to eradicate entire populations, just to get across a room. A current title especially guilty of this, is Dragon Age Origins, where enemies tend to appear only in hordes, and even the most epic boss battles high atop a tower against an arch demon, swarm you with small enemies, dispite being absolutely unnecesary. Outstanding at this point is the part in Orzamar, fighting through the bandits den, where I most likely single handedly butchered 70% of the entire dwarwen population (or at least felt like it)

2) Strenth in health
Instead of making a game difficult, just increase the health of every npc ingame tenfold. Some devs have yet to learn, that this, while being quite easy for them, does not make the enemies worthy opponents, just more annoying ones. This is a problem Mass effect 2 has, where enemies on the higher difficulties tend to survive a whole ar clip to the face, but the ultimate "how to never do it ever"-prize in this category goes to borderlands coop, where for every player joining in, the health of all npcs is doubled, leading to them having 8 times their original health if you play full 4 player coop. So me, my boyfriend, and two people from our Wow-guild are trying to kill Bonehead (i think that was the guys name) Were all lvl 8, hes 11, but no problem. Or so we thought, since we had to take turns in walking back to firestone and buying new ammo, because the guy took a rough 80 snipershells. to the head.

3) Giving enemies superhuman abilities
Since its the ai, it can cheat - make the npcs faster / stronger / improve their aim. While this can go horribly wrong (See also - Far Cry, or being sniped in full cover, in a closed building, from several countries away, with a pistol) this can also go well - as can be seen in Modern Warfare 2, where enmies basically turn their aimbots on when you select veteran, but despite that, still feel like human enemies, that you can sneak up on / flank.

4) Making the enemies more skillful
While this would seem the most obvious choice, it is also the rarest to be seen, because it is not only hard to implement, but also means walking on razors edge, because as a dev you want to make your game challenging, not frustrating (unless your capcom) - They did it well in Dmc-series - the enemies, despite being quite skillfull, don't just wipe the floor with your entrails - on the other hand they did it horribly in street fighter (Try beating Blanka / Dhalsim on highest difficulty, with a character that has no ranged attacks).

I despise the endless spawning enemies, superhuman enemies and enemies with a ton more health than usual. That sort of stuff is for classic FPS games that are extremely light-hearted (Serious Sam anyone?).

Even games like Flashpointragon rising that are meant to be super realistic have enemies that will not even move an inch when being shot repeatedly in the head from 10 yards. Okay, Flashpoint is not the best example of that, as Codemasters are lying fucks it seems, but I'm sure you get my point.

Making the enemies more adept is not a problem for me, I would encourage it as that makes games a worthy challenge rather than just battling seemingly omnipotent and unlimited re-spawning enemies. I would relish a game where that was the cavse

 

[MiracleOfSound]

COD4 got it mostly right on its hardest setting, apart from one or two nasty spikes. (No Fighting in the War Room... ugh)

Mass Effect 2 on Insanity was often a controller smashing frustration fest due to the enemies often having tonnes of armour and barriers and killing you with 2 or 3 shots, and my personal pet hate...

... endlessly respawning fucking enemies.

 

[ottenni]

I hated how in Oblivion to make the game harder it simply upped everything's health. This made playing a meele character a chore when ogres become part of the equation. Hacking at something for 5 minutes is not fun.

 

[iLikeHippos]

We can all agree, that a games difficulty has great impact on the gaming experience, wether because you can't beat the first level, or because the game provides no challenges. In modern days, games use several different ways to create aforementioned dificulty.
I'd like to discuss, which ways to create diffculty do you like? Which one do you dispise? Can anyone provide more examples of where certain ways are executed exeptionally well / bad?
(and yes, i am bored)

1) Strength in numbers
While you as a player will generally be outnumbered in most non-strategy titles, some games just overdo it, by swarming you with unreasonable amounts of cannon-fodder. A way to create difficulty that, in my humble opinion, is almost impossible to execute well, since any game (with the exeption of zombie-games) will loose immersion, if you have to eradicate entire populations, just to get across a room. A current title especially guilty of this, is Dragon Age Origins, where enemies tend to appear only in hordes, and even the most epic boss battles high atop a tower against an arch demon, swarm you with small enemies, dispite being absolutely unnecesary. Outstanding at this point is the part in Orzamar, fighting through the bandits den, where I most likely single handedly butchered 70% of the entire dwarwen population (or at least felt like it)

The Dragon Age part with that bandit boss wasn't too "overflowing" in my part. Maybe because I never focused on those feeble dwarfs who tried protect their little queen. But the best game for example for ALL of these standpoints must be Gears of fucking War. It's all true there, as I will write. For instance, at one part you just had to fix a tank you were going to drive until, out of the blue, some reavers came (flying squids with grenade launchers attached to them.) and started to bomb us for no apparent reason given. How could they know we were fixing our tank? >.>

2) Strenth in health
Instead of making a game difficult, just increase the health of every npc ingame tenfold. Some devs have yet to learn, that this, while being quite easy for them, does not make the enemies worthy opponents, just more annoying ones. This is a problem Mass effect 2 has, where enemies on the higher difficulties tend to survive a whole ar clip to the face, but the ultimate "how to never do it ever"-prize in this category goes to borderlands coop, where for every player joining in, the health of all npcs is doubled, leading to them having 8 times their original health if you play full 4 player coop. So me, my boyfriend, and two people from our Wow-guild are trying to kill Bonehead (i think that was the guys name) Were all lvl 8, hes 11, but no problem. Or so we thought, since we had to take turns in walking back to firestone and buying new ammo, because the guy took a rough 80 snipershells. to the head.

I'm not quite sure if Gears of War evaded this issue, because I keep one shotting locusts with the sniper to find out whether they got more health or not. But how they do make the game difficult if you raise the bar, is that you can die much more easily. But than again, that's no problem when you got a one-shot sniper and a lot of chest-high walls. Unless your a poor aim, those locust stands no apparent chance, unless.. >>>>> vvv

3) Giving enemies superhuman abilities
Since its the ai, it can cheat - make the npcs faster / stronger / improve their aim. While this can go horribly wrong (See also - Far Cry, or being sniped in full cover, in a closed building, from several countries away, with a pistol) this can also go well - as can be seen in Modern Warfare 2, where enmies basically turn their aimbots on when you select veteran, but despite that, still feel like human enemies, that you can sneak up on / flank.

Now this is an issue for me when it comes to versus in Gears of War. Those bots are so fucking sneaky, but that's what I love about the game. If you're trying to focus on an enemy behind cover, and you take to long time, someone will probably flank you or put you into a rear assault, completely tactical. But what I do find very annoying is if the computer gets THE ONE SHOT SNIPER! The bot doesn't need to aim! He'll cap your ass, with a probability chance of 98%! But than again, just throw a grenade and the bot'll presumably die, since they got a slow reaction time for grenades to make things more balanced.
It's also lame when they run up to you with the fucking lancer (chainsaw attached to a machine gun)or with a possible shotgun... They will probably take you unawares than, as you're cut/shot in half before you can yell out loud "FUCK!"

4) Making the enemies more skillful
While this would seem the most obvious choice, it is also the rarest to be seen, because it is not only hard to implement, but also means walking on razors edge, because as a dev you want to make your game challenging, not frustrating (unless your capcom) - They did it well in Dmc-series - the enemies, despite being quite skillfull, don't just wipe the floor with your entrails - on the other hand they did it horribly in street fighter (Try beating Blanka / Dhalsim on highest difficulty, with a character that has no ranged attacks).

Isn't that a lot to ask? AI's no child's play. I don't really know for sure, since I'm not a modder, but I've only heard hard things about it.
I think this has been done in Oblivion, but than it's balanced for the skills you self earn.
Once I got good with the shield so I had a chance to bash people, suddenly, the guards that I loved to slaughter for no reason had a chance to bash me that they never could before. I think they imprint your own skills than and thus add a skillfull field into the enemies. But it's reeeeal horsecrap in my opinion. If I get really damn good in shield doesn't mean they should be >:C I worked my ass of for Shield Mastery. Bloody parasites...

Well, those are my opinions to the subject. Hope they have been enlightening enough, and not remotely, in any way, time absorbing and annoying. Also, I'm bored too. Lol.

 

[richasr]

I'd much rather have a boss who couldn't perform un-blockable/un-counterable attacks on you, but was just more skilled as the difficulty level rises. Things like being a better shot with a sniper rifle, or the intelligence to flank you etc. I despise the way Call of Duty does things to increase the difficulty, with endless respawning enemies if you don't move up quick enough, never-ending ammo and the absolute focus on you when a single hair on your head appears above cover (no matter if you've successfully flanked them or not)

 

[MiracleOfSound]

I hated how in Oblivion to make the game harder it simply upped everything's health. This made playing a meele character a chore when ogres become part of the equation. Hacking at something for 5 minutes is not fun.

Too true.

Even on normal difficulty Oblivion was a drag when you had to fight two or more enemies at once.

Slash slash benny hill chase slash slash...

It was just as annoying with a mage by the way, and god help anyone who chose a rogue type character...

 

[ottenni]

I hated how in Oblivion to make the game harder it simply upped everything's health. This made playing a meele character a chore when ogres become part of the equation. Hacking at something for 5 minutes is not fun.

Too true.

Even on normal difficulty Oblivion was a drag when you had to fight two or more enemies at once.

Slash slash benny hill chase slash slash...

It was just as annoying with a mage by the way, and god help anyone who chose a rogue type character...

Actually if you had a high acrobatics you become nearly impossible to hit in open spaces due to your awesome somersault roll. I just hope you like repetitive roll and poke fights. And that is why i use the kill command. Because even with Goldbrand it takes to damn long.

 

[wooty]

I think the one that stands out for me now is Bayonetta, I was used to the DMC series and its difficulty settings just meaning that the enemies deal more and take less damage.

Bayonetta on the higher difficulties however does all of the above, but pits you against some of the strongest enemies in the game right from the offset and sometimes even doubled the amount of them. Now that one too a while to hack my way through, but it was a challege worthy of the title "ultimate climax", and I thought the game was quite challenging on medium.....

Edit: sorry forgot to mention why I liked it, I just did like ramping up the frustration level in this game, made it more appealing to play more. The problem with the DMC series and its harder levels was that you just fight the same things through each difficulty over and over again. At least Miss Netta threw a lot of things in just to make you stand there in disbelief for a few seconds...then get your arse handed to you

 

[MiracleOfSound]

I hated how in Oblivion to make the game harder it simply upped everything's health. This made playing a meele character a chore when ogres become part of the equation. Hacking at something for 5 minutes is not fun.

Too true.

Even on normal difficulty Oblivion was a drag when you had to fight two or more enemies at once.

Slash slash benny hill chase slash slash...

It was just as annoying with a mage by the way, and god help anyone who chose a rogue type character...

Actually if you had a high acrobatics you become nearly impossible to hit in open spaces due to your awesome somersault roll. I just hope you like repetitive roll and poke fights. And that is why i use the kill command. Because even with Goldbrand it takes to damn long.

When I got pissed off and bored I just threw the difficulty down to easy.

No kill command on the 360!

 

[ottenni]

I hated how in Oblivion to make the game harder it simply upped everything's health. This made playing a meele character a chore when ogres become part of the equation. Hacking at something for 5 minutes is not fun.

Too true.

Even on normal difficulty Oblivion was a drag when you had to fight two or more enemies at once.

Slash slash benny hill chase slash slash...

It was just as annoying with a mage by the way, and god help anyone who chose a rogue type character...

Actually if you had a high acrobatics you become nearly impossible to hit in open spaces due to your awesome somersault roll. I just hope you like repetitive roll and poke fights. And that is why i use the kill command. Because even with Goldbrand it takes to damn long.

When I got pissed off and bored I just threw the difficulty down to easy.

No kill command on the 360!

Yeah that works too. Maybe i should do that too and save myself the trouble. The things you think off after you have done all the hard work.

 

[Beatrix]

I like fighting hordes of enemies though...
But not in every game, I admit.

For me a good way of upping the difficulty is making them slightly smarter and a lot beefier in stats.

 

[Lightslei]

Meh I'll add to a type of game that hasn't been mentioned, precision falling in platformer games. It's not needed, and just exist to irritate the player til they pass it. For an analogy I'd have to make it akin to that itch on your back you can't reach that slowly goes away.

 

[Coldfreeze]

I really hate the gap between the normal and hard mode most games have now. If you play a game on normal its not challenging but fun, but if you set to hard mode it's like they want revenge for the time you beat the game on normal. I finished some games on hard and some games gave me the feeling it went somewhat harder giving you less chance but still a chance.
If you play halo 3 on legendary, the game kicks your ass. There is a real gap between heroic and legendary i just can't get a hold of.

 

[Flour]

#1 This one is usually combined with #3 to create difficulty. The most well-known offender of this is Call of Duty, in seven games(yes seven, the first game's "expansion" was more like a full game) Respawning enemies all moving to the same six places to shoot at the player with near-perfect accuracy.

#2 I haven't seen this one that much, well, in shooters it's uncommon. But Oblivion was horrible for this, the only time the game was somewhat playable at high levels was with weapons that had insane damaging enchantments. Even worse, the choice was to finish mage guild quests as a level 1 to get access to an enchanting shrine and learn where to create dark soul gems(soul-trap humans for best enchants), or stay at level 1.

#3 Every game does this, and it's fine since this is needed to create a good AI. The only problem is when the developers don't hide the cheating. Again, Call of Duty is the best-known example because if you've played one game you know exactly how to fuck with the AI in every game. Other obvious examples are the Command and Conquer games, where the AI will know where every one of your units is and the fucking Mario Kart series. It's like the developers know they don't have to bother with it because people will buy their games.

#4 This will never happen, it takes money away from working on graphics, someone has to actually test the new AI and the last two generations of consoles(and the PC always has) were more focused on pretty pictures. Sure, the AI will get stuck behind doors, but it are very pretty doors.