Game People Calling: Now You?re Just Being Difficult

[mindlesspuppet]

Card games, board games and sports don't find the need to increase the difficulty as the end draws near.

Wow... this is an incredibly inaccurate statement...

Sports don't get more difficult as the end draws near? So play-offs and championships are just like any other game?

I could also disagree on board games, chess becomes increasingly difficult with the further pieces move and the less pieces you have on the board. Same could be said for checkers. Go is incredibly difficult as the board begins to fill, as is scrabble. Perhaps you meant to say games like Hungry Hungry Hippos and Candyland, which of course don't target a mature audience the way video games do.

Card games would greatly depend on the game being played, and whether or not money is involved, none-the-less the point could still be argued.



Games these days are too easy if anything, most single player games award time spent playing as opposed to actual skill. Let's use Mass Effect as an example. I've played through Mass Effect on every mode, and on insanity three times (twice with fresh characters). Those who have done the same will be able to tell you how incredibly difficult the very first mission is in this instance. However, by the end of the game, things were so easy it's laughable. The same could be said for just about any game with a character building element or upgrades... which is a lot.

And hell, I don't even know how many FPSs I played through, thinking I was smart saving my ammo for the powerful weapons for an impending difficult battle... which never actually came, and I find I beat the game with the starting pistol.

The reason games are more difficult now is 3D. In the 2D era, there was one, single camera angle.

3D games are more difficult than 2D games? I'm not sure anyone in their right mind would say this. Ever hear of a little game called Battletoads? or Contra for that matter? Or we could go more modern and say Ikaruga.

 

[Maldark]

I think Valve has proven quite readily with the AI Director used in Left 4 Dead just how intuative difficulty can be, a system similar to this would be appropriate for many games and (I think) solve a lot of the OPs concerns.

Now the one problem I have with the OPs article is the example of Mario Galaxy 2. IF that game did not get any harder it would not be as good as it is. For a platformer like MG2 it's not a simple matter of making the enemies more numberous, or adjusting damage since the enemies play such a small role in what makes it challanging. In order to have a flat difficulty curve the levels would have to never become more complex, or challanging which would ruin the entire experience.

 

[Clunks]

And let's not forget about people like me - lifelong gamers who are still, nevertheless, rubbish at videogames. It's a curse.

 

[SimuLord]

What games need is a difficulty level that makes sense. I can't bring myself to turn the difficulty up to 11 because there's no satisfaction in beating a cheating AI---you're still playing the same dumb computer with the same idiot tactics, you just have to click your mouse faster (or press X to not die in less time, or whatever). It doesn't engage the intellect, and most of the reason I play games in the first place is to pick it apart and figure out how it works, then beat the holy hell out of it and move on to the next game.

Until floating-intelligence AI (perhaps "hard" means the AI uses all known tactics/strategies, while there are certain things it isn't "smart" enough to understand how to do on lower levels) is perfected, there will always be that "either smash it fair or lose because the AI gets 50 units gifted to it every turn/time interval or has unlimited resources or something and ragequit" problem.

 

[SyphonX]

Eh, I pretty much disagree.. not that I don't see where you're coming from though.

Thing is, there are tons of games out there that are perfectly suited to casual entry gamers, they just don't play them. I really don't want to have to see most of my games get bland and monotonous/repetitive because the developers feel the need to cater to people who hardly play games. That doesn't make sense.. It's not that they don't play games because they're too hard, they just don't play games, period. Why should anyone cater to an audience that, frankly, just does not give a shit about games.

I don't see the point. For younger gamers out there, there are handfuls of children games, though I can see the point about Mario Galaxy 2 being too hard, fair argument indeed.. it's Mario, come on Nintendo. However.. casual gamers shouldn't just be "catered to", turning great and complex games into nothingness in the assumption that they're even interested in the first place. Meanwhile, gamers like me, are left with a game that doesn't challenge or innovate much of anything.

To be fair however, a lot of genres could use a bit of a simplification by default. It's good to get new blood into gaming.

 

[Arcane Azmadi]

Hmm. While you make some good points, I honestly can't agree with you here. I WAS going to work out my reasons and explain them, but someone else beat me to it:

The steadily rising difficulty is there for a reason: Once the player defeats one challenge, it doesn't make sense to just repeat that challenge over and over until the game is over. In stead, that challenge increases somehow, either because of changing circumstances or because the challenge itself becomes more complex. This keeps games from getting too repetitive, and keeps the players on their toes.

As others have pointed out above, multiplayer games, boardgames, and sports don't have a difficulty setting, but they certainly do ramp up in difficulty as you get better at them, because your opponents get better as well.

Seriously, does no one play games for the challenge anymore? Over and over I hear people whining about how games are too hard, and how they'd prefer to play the game without any challenge because they only want to hear the story. More and more people seem to be expecting to play a game in the same way they watch a movie. On the other hand, people never stop whining that games get dumbed down too much these days. Take a guess whose fault that is. Stop your whining and go watch a movie if you want a story without any challenge.

I realize that some games increases the difficulty too fast or too irregularly, but that's a fault of those individual games. There's nothing wrong with a game that ramps up the difficulty on a steady pace. To be honest, I'm having a bit of trouble seeing myself enjoy a game that doesn't do that.

Basically he nailed it. Once you've overcome a challenge in a single-player game, you need to provide a new challenge to keep players interested. That's why the hardest song in Guitar Hero was merely "Cowboys From Hell", in Guitar Hero II it was "Jordan" and by the time of Guitar Hero III you had "Through the Fire and the Flames", not to mention the entire final set. Guitar Hero III is actually an example of a game which took it too far, as the last set is, as Yahtzee pointed out, unreasonably difficult, but the point still stands- you have to offer a greater challenge. If you want to start the player off with nothing bigger than a pistol and want them to end the game with a Weapon of Mass Carnage, you damn well need something more formidable for them to fight than the mooks they were using the pistol to kill back at the start of the game.

 

[Gjarble]

To me, this article seems more like an argument against BAD difficulty curves. If a game gets punishingly hard for a non-gamer on the easiest difficulty after only a few minutes, then that's a design flaw. The easiest difficulty should be designed with the lowest-skilled players in the target demographic in mind. But, to echo many posters before me, if a game does not adapt AT ALL to the way a player naturally learns, it's going to get laughably easy very fast (unless the game starts off unplayably hard). As soon as the player learns a single strategy, it's a game of following instructions. This makes for boring gaming, even if you're playing for the story (think: if you're not having a good time IN BETWEEN the cutscenes too, is it really a good game?) The trick is just to figure out how fast a player of a certain skill will learn how to play a given game well. Depending on the game, a good difficulty slider may entail adjusting the slope of the difficulty curve (as I believe is proposed in the article), adjusting the... um... y-intercept (as traditional sliders typically do, maybe with a little bit of slope as well), or transforming the curve in a completely different, more mathematically complex way. All this, of course, will eventually be superseded by dynamic difficulty adjustment once developers get that all figured out.

 

[DirkGently]

This is how video games work; they go progressively harder so the game maintains a level of challenge. This works for a very simple reason: it gives a feeling of accomplishment. If the difficulty level was static throughout the game, there'd be no real accomplishment; I beat level one, I beat all the levels because they'd all be the same, just with the set pieces in different spots and the enemies had changed clothes. If the game didn't get progressively harder, why would I bother playing past the first twenty minutes?

Also, board games don't count because board games typically don't have much of a difficulty outside of the people you're playing. Your goal isn't to 'win' it's to win before anybody else can. Any difficulty the game may have is far, far out shadowed by two things: 1) Luck, which pretty much throws any concept of strategy or skill out the window, drags it back inside and proceeds to throw it out of every window in the building, ad 2) other people are the main obstacle to over come.

Most games let you go and change or lower the difficulty, but if you use that then you either A) made a hideous mistake in choosing your difficulty at the start or B) should feel slightly ashamed of yourself for taking the cheap way out, like if you ever bought money/coins/gold for one of those farmville type games.

 

[BlindTom]

All of the IRL examples are multiplayer whilst the criticism is of difficulty in primarily single player games. The central point of this article seems flawed.

 

[Ironic Pirate]

Well, most card games are "multiplayer" in a sense, and TF2 doesn't get harder as you play.

Single Player games exist to tell a narrative, and stories throw new challenges at their characters. And imagine an RPG where the enemies didn't increase in power or numbers...

Games also need to be easy in the beginning so that people can Learn to play.

EG,OM

 

[Dastardly]

The underlying problem is that the current generation of adult gamers have never lived in a world without video games. We've come up from Atari to NES and on and on up to the current generation.

There are a plethora of games that come out that assume a body of knowledge that we've gained from now DECADES of playing games in earlier stages of the evolution. But also, people who are our age have kids who are old enough to be REALLY into games.

Yes, they're more familiar with the current tech, since they've grown up around it. But there are some things--assumptions about what to do in some very common (to us) situations, or maybe subtle visual cues that are so cliche to us longtime veterans--that they have not had years and dozens of game experiences to develop.

In addition to being old enough to have kids, we've also gotten old enough to be the ones MAKING the games. And, like many craftsmen, we forget that a lot of our audience is new to our field (or at least newer than we are). We design them for people like US, which may or may not be the people we're selling to.

And when someone makes games that have the complexity WE started with (ie, Mario Bros. or Spyhunter), we think "Wow, what is this simple, casual crap?" Hey, just 'cuz we're grown up and eating steak 24-7 doesn't mean no one should make baby food anymore, right?

 

[squirrelman42]

Resident evil 5 is actually exactly what he's looking for. The enemies do get harder as the game gets towards the end, but there are actually 10 different difficulty settings hidden behind the 4 options available. Difficulty settings 1-5 are available on novice, 4-7 on normal, 7-9 on veteran, and difficulty setting 10 is professional mode. On all the visible settings aside from professional as you defeat enemies or are hurt or killed you get nudged up or down to each setting, so if there's a boss that's giving trouble it actually does get easier each time you get wiped.

 

[RelexCryo]

Actually, I think these are some good points. Oddly enough my dad has started playing games more, and seeing him flail about on some of the later stages of games is painful to watch. I understand WHY there is a difficulty curve; to test what the player has learned through increasing challenges to keep the player engaged and feel they are improving and making progress. The problem is when newer players come along and the difficulty curve, for them, ramps up way too fast to keep up.

I think the idea outlined in the article could be a good idea... but then the Fan Dumb would be saying it's dumbing down the difficulty of the game even though it's all optional and they can play it on the harder settings if they want. The announcement of 'Easy Mode' in Mega Man 10 springs to mind.

This^. I totally agree with you and the original poster/articlewriter.

 

[copycatalyst]

The biggest problem I see with this piece is the lumping of everything together, "videogames are..." or "videogames should..." I think that this kind of generalization misses the fact that there are a variety of gamers looking for a variety of experiences. Some games (and some players) might benefit from a flat difficulty line. Myself, I like a steady curve so that the later sections are more rewarding.

From my perspective, too many games are coddling the player.

 

[Wolfrug]

Agree fullheartedly, without having read any of the preceeeding comments. YES, yes and a million times YES.

 

[Double A]

It should be an option... but not mandatory. I, for one, like the progressive difficulty, as it makes victory in the end all the sweeter, especially if I die a lot.

 

[ItsAPaul]

I wouldn't have bought most of the games I own if there wasn't a difficulty curve. If casual gamers want an easier time, they can go buy games from Popcap. I have no use for a game that doesn't constantly challenge me and play on mechanics to make the game harder.

 

[Carnagath]

1) I think that altering the difficulty curve is one too many sliders. Many players are aready unsure if the game will be too hard for them if they choose "medium" (hello Dragon Age), but when you add another difficulty curve slider to that, you leave players thinking "ok, I have no idea what to choose now", unless it's your grandma so you set everything to lowest.

2) Many games don't just rely on enemies. Like Mario, that you mentioned, where the game design itself gets harder as you progress (platforming, level design etc), it's not as simple as reducing a slider. You'd have to buy a different game.

3) Games have target audiences. There are games for people who have never played games, games for more experienced gamers etc. You can't expect every game to cater to everyone. I'll refer to Dragon Age again, I gave it to a friend of mine, and she returned it to me a few days later, saying "I have no idea how this game works, there is a billion abilities that are not clearly explained, the combat is too complicated, I never know which is the optimal attack, and I don't understand any of the game's number crunching. Also, what's up with those combat tactics? I can't even begin to describe how much they are confusing me, do I need to learn all that stuff?" And she is right. Why I understand Dragon Age and she doesn't? Because I played Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights and Final Fantasy XII (gambits). Is Dragon Age badly designed? I don't think so, it just targets a more experienced audience.

4) People who dislike challenge are in the wrong entertainment medium. Overcoming challenges is what you do in games. If being challenged pisses you off, you shouldn't be gaming. It's like complaining about the way movies are made, because you hate sitting still in a chair for 2 hours. If you don't like that, then don't watch movies, go play soccer instead.

5) Sometimes, forcing a challenge that at first seems overwhelming on players can have wonderful results. I'll be the first to admit that I find it stupid to increase the difficulty in games, I'll usually just go with medium because I am too impatient to stick to hard. When a game forces me to play on hard though (Demon's Souls for example), and I accept that by buying it, then it feels so incredibly satisfying when I beat it and the game really stands out in your memories. I'm not saying that all games should be like that, but certainly more games need to be like that. Does it take guts from the developer's part to cut down their potential playerbase by so much? Definitely, and that's why I admire their decision and choose to support their effort by buying the game. If a game is well-made and not just pointlessly frustrating, with, like, timed sections tuned to the millisecond and such crap, but genuinely, constantly challenging but not glitchy or unfair, then playing by its own terms can offer great satisfaction.

 

[SonicWaffle]

Sports games are an interesting example here, although the bar can be quite high to start playing, once you have the basics down they don't ramp the difficulty too quickly. FIFA or PES are both about using the controls to execute imaginative play rather than facing a spiraling difficulty setting.

Bull.

Fucking.

Shit.

PES is one of the worst examples of spiraling difficulty around. It doesn't even have much to do with individual difficulty settings (except in so far as the higher the level is, the less effort the AI makes to disguise the blatant cheating), but more to do with the phenomenon known as 'The Computer Is A Cheating Bastard'.

Example; start a World Cup (or International Cup as they like to call it) and attempt to get through to the final. It isn't too hard, even on the highest difficulty setting, but by the time you reach the semi-finals you will be screaming abuse at the screen. A lot of it. The AI-controlled players will foul you with impunity while the gentlest tackle from your players will earn a red card. The AI players will all become psychics, and will be moving to intercept your passes the moment you press the button. You'll go a goal down, and as you make a comeback your top striker will be fouled, injured, and have to be substituted. Your players will have a perfect opportunity for a through ball to a striker, and will instead punt it directly forwards and off the pitch for a goal kick. And so on, and so on.

The reason behind all this is that the designers can't ramp up the difficulty in any other way. The player/team stats are set - if you start a tournament playing as Brazil, and the computer randomly selects the teams and gives you a group consisting of Japan, Australia and the USA (not that the selection is random. There always seems to be a roughly 50/50 split between top-class international teams and nobodies who go out in the group stages/semis, rather than having an occasional world cup were everyone sucks) then for a skilled player there would be no challenge. Brazil would plow through those three teams on player stats alone.

The only way to make the game more challenging as you progress is by making the computer cheat. I'd much prefer a different method - maybe the group stages would be auto-set to amateur difficulty level, then the semis the next one up, and so on until the final is top-tier difficulty. It'd be more satisfying than the utterly artifical hikes that are used currently.

TL;DR - Fuck you, Konami, you cheating bastards. Fuck you. You've got me hooked on your product, and I know I'll keep buying however many dick moves you pull.