Difficulty is Hard

[Therumancer]

I think "Extra Credits" is well intentioned on a lot of levels, but I think a lot of what it has to say is simply wrong. I can understand where they are coming from, why they are wrong, and what their agenda is, but in a lot of cases it seems like they are pursueing things from a perspective that is counter productive to gaming in general.

To put things into perspective, I write stuff here all the time in response to your column, MovieBob, and others. If you check some of my responses in "extra credits" it's ironic that where I tend to mostly comment/discuss a couple of things said in other columns, but there I usually come away going "WTF" and more or less feeling the need to write what amounts to a rebuttal to everything Daniel Floyd and company are trying to say, in the vain hopes that people will come away agreeing with me (having agreed with my comments) than the article/video itself.

Oh doubtlessly I'll agree with them at some point, but I think it's one of those situations where I think the industry expertise that grants them the authority to do segements like that, also puts them out of context with a lot of the subject matter they are trying to address.


-


That said, when it comes to difficulty in games, I will say what I said (or tried to say) in response to "Extra Credits":

People who want difficult games are people who want Video games (not Simon) which the majority of people playing them are not going to be able to finish. The abillity to finish being determined by talent, and intelligence, rather than simply the investment of time.

To put things into perspective, in the context of RPGs (my primary interest) look at games like say "Wizardry: Return Of Wenda", the first two "Might And Magic" games, or say "Ultima IV" and similar titles. A lot of people played those games, but how many people finished them? The answer is not many. The reason being because you couldn't just follow a storyline to the next event, and cross the finish line, or even spend hundreds of hours grinding. No, you needed to explore the world, find the information you needed, and figure out what you needed to do on your own. You could grind "Might and Magic" for hundreds upon hundreds of hours and one-shot every monster in the game, and if you couldn't figure out what things like those gold and silver messages meant, or where "The Inner Sanctum" was, or heck even just didn't pay attention to the descriptions for riddles like "who is the voluptuous one?" you just weren't going to succeed.

An extension of this is elitism, there is a degree of satisfaction in a game like the original "Everquest" where hundreds of thousands, or even millions of people might be online, but there is content only a comparitively few people are going to be able to access. To be able to walk around with your uber gear, and know that it meant not only being able to invest time, but being able to coordinate large numbers of people with military presician, solve the puzzle of how to beat bosses, and win increasingly difficult encounters to gather the gear you need in order to succeed and so on. Being able to walk around and show off loot from zones that like 99% of the game population will never see, not because of time (despite what they might say) but because of abillity, actually feels pretty good. Oh sure, you can sit there and say that people like this are the "worst kind of human being" but let's be honest, most people have been there with something, and deep down inside I think we all know what it's like and what a lot of people want from games.

The problem here is manyfold, but one of the big reasons is that as was pointed out by some of Blizzard's Designers when it came to things like "Naxxaramas", that coders ultimatly wanttheir creations to be seen. Some of them were getting upset over having created content for what amounted to a tiny percentage of elite players. The result of this was to basially turn around and turn most of the raids into what comparitively could be termed "loot Pinatas". Right now in World Of Warcraft it seems like 90% of the game population, if not more, are raiders, which incidenty means the accomplishments mean less. It's not "difficult" or anything paticularly special if anyone who wants to can eventually do it.

Now, ironically I am not one of the "gods of WoW" so to speak. I wasn't an original Naxx raider. I however have been one of "those guys" in various things through the years to understand the euphoria and not want to deny it to anyone. I just don't see the point of denying people their glory so to speak.

I think ideally games should be approachable to start, but in many cases, nearly impossible to finish. Sort of like how in many older RPGs, back when cluebooks were just "clues" as opposed to walkthroughs (compare say the cluebook for the original Might and Magic, or Ultima IV to a modern one), mastering the game mechanics and building powerful characters was only half the battle, in the end it came down to YOU the player. I still vaguely remember when a bounty was placed on being the first guy to successfully beat "Return Of Wenda".

See, the problem comes down to the simple fact that making a game for everyone, pretty much contridicts making the game difficult. The problem is that the game industry has gotten to the point where it pretty much makes it so anyone who pays for a game, online or off, is pretty much guaranteed to see the end of the game/all the content if they want to put in the time. It's not about being approachable, it's about what it takes to beat them... and the fact that the game industry either no longer understands that, or is willfully ignorant of it, is the problem, and exactly why there is a problem.

Just recently in "Game Informer" I was looking at the article they were doing on "Catherine" and while the game seems like it would be interesting and all, I was a bit disturbed by the implicationt that it was being developed for people who liked the looks/vibe of the later Persona games, but were put off by the difficulty and committment. That right there sort of shows how it seems developer attitudes are changing, with a fairly "hardcore" developer deciding to stop being hardcore in hopes of drawing in more people. From a business perspective it makes sense, I can't judge things on that level, but it seems like when companies do things like this they dance around the issue of difficulty with the fans who WANT hardcore games that not everyone is going to be able to succeed at. Oftentimes trying to tell us (as Extra Credits oftentimes seems to) what we really want, when it's actually what THEY want, we know perfectly well what we're after. I sort of expect there is some guilt among game developers to be honest, not that they would ever admit it.

I'll also say something else, platformers and games like "Prince Of Persia" are not my thing. However I do not think that because someone doesn't want to play games that punishing anymore, does not mean that nobody does. Trying to act like the industry should change and stop producing things like that, because it's no longer what you (personally) want, or in the case of others want to develop, just isn't cool.

I'll also say that right now I think there are games like "Demon's Souls" which are getting an unjust reputation for being actually difficult. To be honest I've never done it all the way through, and most of my playtime has been scattered among other people's copies. I will say however that the game is all about memorization and pattern recognition. It's not unlike a lot of the old scrolling shooters of yesterday. It seems hard until you know exactly what's coming, and have the instinctive reflexs down. A point more or less reinforced by guys who have taken starting characters and defeated the entire game without leveling up. Throw yourself at it enough time and you'll win. It makes me wonder how many gamers today would still be alive if some Lunatic like Jigsaw (from the Saw Movies) put them in a cell with life support for exactly 30 days, and an electronic door hooked up to an Apple II loaded with "Deathlord" that would only open if they could beat the game. To be fair, I'm not sure I would survive it, I'm pretty sure most people who think they are masters of today's difficult days would actually fare worse.



Hopefully my rant is coherant to those who have been interested enough to read this far.

 

[Sgt Pepper]

It's a fine line between challenging and frustrating.

 

[Mister Benoit]

I like when I play a game and when I die I think to myself "Is this in my ability? YES!" If this isn't the answer I give myself then the game is doing something wrong.

Case in point, Super Meat Boy, not a single level so far hasn't my own fault for dieing.(~230 completed levels, Cotton Valley Completed, IWBTG 5-7 Completed(after 4 hours non-stop))

Also though it isn't too difficulty NSMBW and Galaxy II were never insanely difficult but they were generally hard enough to feel satisfied after completing a challenge.

 

[WindKnight]

When its beyond your control, or the game outright plays unfair... then its definitely not good difficulty.

I managed to solo Gears of War 2 on insane difficulty. There were many sections I had to restart from the last checkpoint because even though I had found a good cover position and was whittling the enemies down no problem, my AI partners ran into the melee, and one would get 'downed'. Now, I had to try and revive them, because if I didn't within a strict time limit, they died, and I had to back to the last checkpoint. I was being punished for the AI's stupidity, as often the only reason they went down was their own suicidal stupidity, upto and include CRAWLING DEEPER INTO A CROSSFIRE instead of crawling towards me, so if I wanted to revive them I would be killed in their place.

 

[Xocrates]

-snip-

From the moment on that any form of entertainment is in some way story based, making most of your audience being unable to finish it is downright stupid. You'll alienate pretty much everyone who would be interested in the game fiction.

I can sort of understand the desire of being challenged, but I can't understand the desire of wanting a challenging game simply so one can belong to a minority.

You should also keep in mind that the games you mention as having a lot of players were made at a time when the gaming industry was fraction of what we have today. Not only are those "lot of players" comparatively few, many probably played those games because there wasn't any other choice.

Your argument only kind of holds if you want a purely skill based game.

Granted, an ideal game should be able to cater for both type of players. Personally in that regard I liked Diablo 2 approach.

However, I would like to throw out there that one of the reasons games seem much easier nowadays is the abundance of checkpoints.

 

[-|-]

I don't know if you're aware of this but, some of us play games to have fun.

I agree. I normally go for normal mode - but occasionally I get to a point where frustration sets and the game isn't fun any more. I then drop down to easy only to find easy to be a cakewalk and unsatisfying. Some level between easy and normal would be good thing sometimes.

 

[Tohron]

*Wall of text*

I think a solution to this problem would be to simply make the highest difficulty level hard enough so that most people couldn't beat it, and then add achievements for doing things like beating the various bosses on that difficulty. It allows for the feeling of accomplishment and bragging rights, while allowing the game to be completed by others at lower difficulties. And then they could maybe throw in an easter egg or two on the max difficulty.

 

[FightThePower]

Am I over-simplifying things by saying that 'difficulty levels solve all problems'? There must be some kind of problem with that I'm missing, seems too obvious an answer...

The way I see it people who aren't good can play on a difficulty that's super easy and that they'll complete without needing to have much experience at all when playing games. And the daredevils amongst us can play on the hardest setting imaginable.

People who want difficult games are people who want Video games (not Simon) which the majority of people playing them are not going to be able to finish. The abillity to finish being determined by talent, and intelligence, rather than simply the investment of time.

To an extent, isn't investment of time one thing that determines talent anyway? I'd say that some of the more ridiculously difficult games (e.g. I wanna be the Guy) are mostly about Trial and Error so experience plays a huge role. Not to mention those of us who are better at games in general probably have spent more time with them.

 

[The Deadpool]

And this is precisely why Demon's Souls is overrated. I don't want to have to spend 10 minutes trudging through the easy parts only to die again. Yeah, it keeps the tension, but when you die, and when you feel like your death is more luck than skill, why bother to keep playing?

Oddly enough, Demon's Souls was used as an example of things done RIGHT.

I don't remember dying out of bad luck in that game... I'd say they did the difficulty right on point.

 

[timeadept]

-snip-

I read your whole post, there was a lot to it, but the thing that stuck out to me the most was your WoW/EverQuest example(mainly the wow part though). I have nothing against you guys getting your extra shiny armor, where my problem is that in a game like WoW this armor is then REQUIRED to have even a chance at the next challenge. I love a challenge in games, i fought crawmax in borderlands solo and won, no glitches or exploits (played a siren). It took me some time to learn how to fight him and think up tactics capable of taking him down but i managed it and it was awesome. But I didn't need to grind lower difficulty dungeons to do it. I didn't have to run Naxx 10 or 20 times to get the armor i needed to move on to the next raid. For me it's enough to beat these challenges once and move on and i could care less if i get the gear to "prove" that i beat these guys. Hell once i was kicked from a dungeon from having poor gear on my healer, despite the fact that up to that point NOBODY HAD DIED. A side note, it was the aoe healing giving me trouble, we were about to fight a boss with largely single target attacks and i was confident that he'd be easier than the mobs we'd fought up to this point because of it. I was DENIED my challenge because my group didn't feel that i met the arbitrary requirements for killing the boss. Like i said, you can have your shiny toys, i'd just like to fight the boss please.

I suppose it's a side note to the overall article (or maybe exactly the point, just approached from a different angle), but I don't want to have to play and replay content that i've all ready beaten just to move onto the next challenge. And more to your point, again you can have your uber challenge but it should be in the minority of content, the majority of say, the endgame content in WoW should not be accessible to only a minority. In any case, the endgame content in WoW is primarily gear based and not skill based, you need the gear to access it and after that and ONLY after you have the gear does skill begin to make a difference.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

I do not think its difficult at all, first off know your target audience(which have more and more drool cups by the day) so what was easy is the new normal, also scripted jumping would help ease their pain. Once you see to the needs of the lowest common denominator you can then add options when can make normal and higher levels of difficultly more fun and less frustrating. Like sliders for AI sensitivity, all auto aim off, damage done,damage taken, pickup rate and such, this way even the worse game mechanics can be tweaked to taste.

 

[TheEggplant]

"The game wasn't challenging, it was just punishing. Stupidly, horribly, punishing."

..try again, Shamus. At the time the game was an evolution of the narrative-less never-ending arcade action, and it renewed that without disappearing off the scale completely. I.e., instead forcing you to use cheat-codes to ever get to the end of the game, it had endless lives. That in itself made it "easy".

So to pressure you ahead, you had the 60 minutes before the hourglass ran out. Which really is more than good enough time. But it's likely that people will have to try the game a few times before they are capable of completing it. Compared to other games at the time, though - it was an easy game, and it was designed that way to ensure that people managed to play all the way through it.

He's referring to The Shadow and The Flame, not the original PoP. The first game was difficult but ultimately rewarding game because it never felt(to me)cheap. The second however was bone crunchingly destructive to one's sanity. I had to buy the strategy guide just to get past the first dungeon only to be completely murdered in the second because I couldn't get the sword fighting down. That game was NES+10 level hard. I can't conceive of anyone except masochists finding it fun.

 

[Michael O'Hair]

From the article:

I'm playing the game to have fun and be entertained, and if making a mistake means the game is going to refuse to entertain me for a couple of minutes, then the game is no longer doing its job.

People play games for different reasons, and you were playing the wrong game. Many people disparage games for lacking qualities that they would enjoy, and in some cases those dislikes are warranted. But I've found that I haven't been playing bad games, but playing the wrong games; games that aren't tuned to the risk-reward frequency I'm accustomed to.

Everyone plays games to have fun. But not every game is fun for everyone. Some players enjoy the competition of fighting games, others the exhilaration of shooter games, and other people enjoy turn-based strategy games. Different strokes for different folks.

There is a subset of players, who are few in number and probably going extinct as we speak, who enjoy very difficult games. They enjoy overcoming seemingly impossible obstacles. They can't get enough of Demon's Souls (masochists). They aim for the no-miss completions of curtain fire scrolling shooter games (unrealistic idealists). They challenge the best fighting game players in online matches despite the fact that their chances of winning are slim-to-none (gluttons for punishment). They practice and lose and practice more and lose more then occasionally win, but they stubbornly refuse to give up (stubborn slow-learners). There's a lesson to be learned in that, a lesson easily learned from a game but difficult to learn in the real world: do not give up until you win.

Games are not movies; you don't get to see the ending and developer's credits just for being there. Some of the early games of this generation of home consoles awarded trophies and achievements just for pressing the start button or completing the first level. Back in 1986, I couldn't complete World 8 in Super Mario Bros. I'd run out of time in World 8-3 or fall into a pit in World 8-1. It wasn't until 1988 that I had actually completed that game, two years later. But I don't remember playing the game in 1987, in fact, I believe that I had become so frustrated with the game that I refused to play it during that year. After my sabbatical from Super Mario Bros., I managed to complete that game. Perhaps I had not gave up, I would have completed the game sooner.

I missing games of overwhelming difficulty; many of the bullet hell shooters are only released in Japan or occasionally released on X-Box Live in the West, difficult puzzle games aren't in vogue anymore and hard to come by, games where the player has a limited number of lives to complete the game have infinite continues, etc. I recently saw a trailer for the new Pac-Man game to be released: dozens of ghosts being consumed after eating a power pellet, as if the game delivers them to the player on a silver platter.

Games are not movies. Do not expect a reward just for participating. If you expect to be entertained, do not play challenging games. If you expect to be challenged by a game, you will probably despise the game until you find a way to complete it. I think being challenged by a game is more worthwhile than being entertained.

It is late. And I feel old.

 

[maiiau]

It really seems to be a matter of what you came into the game for. I'm not old enough to have been too into the challenge-based games (I was four or five at the time the Sega Genesis was out, I just didn't have the motor skills yet), and got into games later based more on the interactive stories they're telling; if a game isn't going to let me see its story to me it wasn't worth the investment. Of course, this just means I don't buy the super punishing challenge games because they're not my thing. But saying another gamer is doing it wrong is silly--they're just in the hobby for a different reason.

On the other hand, I really adore bullet hell shooters, though I did get into that through Touhou, which has enough characters to keep just about anyone interested in that sort of narrative interested. Maybe it's just certain kinds of challenges for certain people--I've always liked the idea of games that anyone can beat on a certain level, but with a lot of room for mastery above and beyond the storyline. Case in point, Touhou games on normal or Touhou games on insane difficulties.

On a different note, did the article get trimmed in editing or something? It really seems to have just cut off at the end.

 

[Daniel Laeben-Rosen]

I don't know if you're aware of this but, some of us play games to have fun.

I agree. I normally go for normal mode - but occasionally I get to a point where frustration sets and the game isn't fun any more. I then drop down to easy only to find easy to be a cakewalk and unsatisfying. Some level between easy and normal would be good thing sometimes.

Indeed. That's what I like about some games having an Easy and a Very Easy-mode. There Easy will still put of a challenge enough to feel like the game isn't holding your hand. Well, usually. One or two games I've ramped up to the hardest-possible difficulty and still not felt even slightly challenged. Then... I get disappointed.

 

[Dectilon]

I'll agree that PoP was punishing, but wasn't that partly the point? You had to learn the levels, because although you could restart a level as many times as you wanted the hour was still ticking away. I personally don't like that game (much prefer for example Flashback), but I see what they were going for. As for "wasting your time", I'm sad to say you're wasting your time regardless of game. Nothing wrong with that, but it's not like you're accomplishing more playing MW2 over PoP1.

The hack n slash genre contains some of the best examples of difficulty in the business.

"Devil May Cry always did it right."

I'll agree with you there. The fact that the increase in difficulty level makes enemies faster and more varied rather than have oodles of HP. Also there's the fact that if you don't feel up to a certain challenge you still keep your red orbs if you die, so you can power up for your next run.

"Megaman fucks it up really bad. Megaman is hard, and unfair about it. It's all PURELY trial and error. And good difficulty will challenge you, but make it more than possible to beat things on your first try."

First of all I'd like to say I beat most of MM9's levels on my first try, so there's that, but it's not all that different from DMC really. In DMC a certain boss can absolutely destroy you with its attacks before you figure out how to dodge them or damage them(the method isn't always entirely obvious). In the MM games you can challenge yourself by picking any level in any order, or you can pick the easiest first and use that boss' weapon to make some other level much easier. Both series have a vein of exploration and imposing restrictions on yourself to see what you can handle.

And if you're talking about block puzzles and the like, 9 times out of 10 any sort of puzzle in a MM-game can be solved by observing it for a few cycles before jumping into them.

 

[DaveMc]

0.95^30 = 0.21... ?

To elaborate on this: the probability of making one 95% jump is 0.95. Making that *and* the next one is (0.95)(0.95). Doing that thirty times in a row gives you a probability of (0.95)^30, which is about 0.215, or 21.5%. So yes, your simulation was off a bit, but close enough to get the general idea.

On the actual subject: interesting point that difficulty needs not only to be right, but to be *communicated* correctly in advance, if it's going to match its intended audience.

 

[Phishfood]

See, I would say that expert level on l4d is my perfect difficulty. With the right support and a bit of luck, its doable. Its not a cakewalk.

The trouble with NO punishment for death is that there is no feeling of achievement for beating something. if something only has a 5% chance of working, but its ok...I can have 10,000 attempts for free...well. Not fun to me.

It really does depend on the game. I am content that I couldn't finish crysis, I didn't enjoy the entire game enough to care. If however Fallout 3 had been too hard to finish, I would have been pissed. As others have said, having a story that people can't finish is bad. Having a dungeon that only 5% of people can handle is good.

 

[kouriichi]

Alot of producers forget the differance between "challanging" and "a**hole" these days.

I was playing assassin's creed Brotherhood, which i am loving by the way, and to get 100% on a mission, you have to go without taking a single hit. This would be easy, if the 30 minute mission didnt end a cutscene and have you attacked by 3 armed men who you cant counter.

The cutscene litterally ended to me having 3 of the toughest guys in the game charging me. Ofcourse, i get baby tapped and fail the full sync. Because of the way the game is set up, you eather have to restart the whole 30 minute mission of walking some people to some place, or say screw it, and retry for full sync at another time.

Thats where the line from, "Difficult" to "a**hole" is crossed.