I Wanna Be The Guy: Is this what passes for hard now?

[p3t3r]

well it gets harder i know a lot of the deaths is because of stupid shit flying and killing you but once you figure out there is some crazy timing and precision needed to pass the obsticals knowing what will kill you in just part of it figuring how to avoid the that is another part it is a puzzler as much as it is a plat former. take the first boss even though i knew what to do and i knew how he was gonna kill me it still took way to many tries to beat him

 

[Grell Sutcliff]

I think games need to have a good mix of knowledge and skill difficulty like when enemies use fire you should obviously use something like water aganst them or jump in a lake and if the enemy wears armor of course you use stuff that peirces armor but even then what will really save you is your skill at evading/countering attacks and the knowledge only makes the fight easier for you, if you figure out their their weaknesses so you can win even if your skill is not the greatest.

example: in one of those war shooter games on a high difficulty setting one guy was hideing behind a pillar and he was trapped but I had low health so I therw a gernade to the side of the pillar he couldn't run out the other side because of a wall so logically he either lets the gernade kill him or he goes out of cover to throw it back and I already had my gun aimed right where he'd be then as soon as he jumped out I got him with a head shot I was so happy.

 

[Snake Plissken]

5 minutes? And you're judging the entire game based on that? Methinks thou protests too much.

+1

OP: Seriously? Are you telling me that IWBTG takes no skill to complete? Even knowing all of the cheap shots the game will throw at me, it's STILL incredibly difficult. Never once was I ever saying to myself "Oh, shit, didn't see that coming. Oh well, it'll be easy to avoid it next time." Even the things that are skill-based in that game (nearly EVERY fucking jump you make) are incredibly hard.

 

[Jonathan Wingo]

I think it should be a mixture of skill and trial and error. When it's all skill then you're basically going to only have those people who've played lots of games and are good at games who are going to find any enjoyment out of it, but when it's all trial and error, the skilled players who enjoy playing a skillful game that rewards them for their skills, are going to be turned off to it, while those who don't really know wtf they're doing to begin with find it an enjoyable challenge... The trick is to mix both together so that both audiences can enjoy the challenge... The game should start out mostly about trial and error but have optional, but not meaningless bonus objectives for the skilled players to find. The game should throw in more skillful aspects and build up as it goes along... The players who aren't that skillful can learn to be skillful, while the players who are fairly skillful still have something to do. Now when it's all about skill, it takes challenge out for the skillful players because once you learn the mechanics, you can pretty easily figure most of the game out... This is where some trial and error and knowledge comes in... You have sections where the player really has no idea what to do and fails easily, even if the player is skilled. The number one thing that must be remembered though, is that just because a game is hard, doesn't mean it's good. Making a game challenging is easy, making the challenge fun isn't. You need the right combination of all of the elements, or it'll just be annoying to any player.

(I also have never played IWBTG so I can't really say anything about the game, this is just in general)

 

[CrystalShadow]

Hard for me is something that you can still fail at in spite of perfect execution of the skills you have learnt in that game thus far, all thanks to a little RNG, i haven't played IWBTG, but from the way you describe it there seems to be no random elements to it, so I wouldn't consider it a hard game.

So yeah, having to be perfect in my play and have the RNG Gods smile down on me at the same time? That's a hard game.

I would think a game where your fate depends on the outcome of a random number generator is the opposite of one that requires skill.

If chance alone affects whether you succeed or fail, that's not HARD, that's unfair.

And unless being unfair is an intentional part of your game design, it's basically stupid.
(Being unfair to your players can be justified in some circumstances, but usually those have to do with realism, and get into the realms of simulation rather than game. Because, basically, life is unfair, and random things, or stuff you can't defend against CAN kill you. And real life is frequently horribly unbalanced.)

 

[ElectrifiedSorcerer]

Yeah, there's a whole bunch of games now that are so mind-bogglingly infuriating to play they count as self-mutilation. And much of it is deliberate. Part of it is a parody of old-school illogical difficulty and part of it is just plain old-fashioned torture. The developer of 'Mighty Jill Off' coined the term 'masocore' to describe this kind of games.

http://bitmob.com/articles/five-indie-games-referenced-in-super-meat-boy-that-will-beat-your-face-into-a-meaty-bloody-pulp

 

[PekoponTAS]

Honestly, I think most people stopped paying attention to IWBTG a couple years ago, especially now that most people have replaced that game with Super Meat Boy, which is also insanely hard, but at least beatable.

 

[icame]

If you want hard search qwop on google. Nothing is harder then that game.

 

[SillyNilly]

"Trust nothing" isn't a pattern, it's a LACK of pattern.

There is a pattern. It isn't a lack of pattern, it is a lack of coherence.

As you make mistakes and understand the environment, the pattern emerges. The pattern doesn't appear to be there, but through trial-and-error the world forms and is quantified as logic.

Suddenly you know where the apples shift, what pops out of where, and then the focus of the game turns to accuracy and efficiency.

 

[SillyNilly]

IWBTG isn't focused in conventional game design. The game is meant to be unforgiving.

Are certain sections cheap? Yes, but only initially as it is all trial-and-error.
Is the game broken? No, the game has end-conditions and is considered beatable, and the sections that seem broken actually require accuracy and precise timing.

Therefore, the game relies on the player to memorize sections of the game and be adaptive to changing momentum, as well as refine their reflexes.

The punishment for death is resetting to earlier checkpoints, but as difficulty progresses, the saves become less frequent.
The reward is easier progression in the game as the player's skill increases, which is contrasted by the current difficulty level coupled with how dependent the player is on saves.

Speaking of which, Impossible difficulty is impossible! No saves whatsoever terrifies me.

Unregistered Hypercam 2

Oh goodness. The horror!

 

[Axelhander]

After reading a few articles proclaiming IWBTG to be the hardest game in all of creation, I decided to try it. It took me about 5 minutes to become disgusted with it & delete it.

I think some people have forgotten what it means for a game to be 'hard'. A hard game is a game that requires a high level of skill to complete. Games like IWBTG just seem to require you to die to work out what you have to do on almost every obstacle, thus requiring you to repeat everything before it just to have your first fair try at beating it. Obstacles should be surpassable without prior knowledge of them, & only require skill.

There seem to be many instances of this in games these days, usually restricted to the highest difficulty. The first thing that springs to mind is veteran difficulty on CoD: World at War; specifically the infinitely respawning soldiers thatthrew a grenade every couple of seconds.

/rant. So, what do your thoughts on this matter? Do you think games need to be more skill than knowledge orientated, or do you think you should have to learn from experience & guessing?

EDIT: Okay, maybe I shouldn't've taken it as a serious game, but this rule still applies to many other games, many of which are serious.

The creator of IWBTG posts on the Sirlin.net forums as KayinN. He's an extraordinarily intelligent fellow with great insights on game design.

On that same forum he talks about IWBTG, and his thoughts are very intriguing. I'd check it out. You might realize just what IWBTG is supposed to be.

Cool guys quote themselves.

 

[Wuvlycuddles]

I would think a game where your fate depends on the outcome of a random number generator is the opposite of one that requires skill.

If chance alone affects whether you succeed or fail, that's not HARD, that's unfair.

And unless being unfair is an intentional part of your game design, it's basically stupid.
(Being unfair to your players can be justified in some circumstances, but usually those have to do with realism, and get into the realms of simulation rather than game. Because, basically, life is unfair, and random things, or stuff you can't defend against CAN kill you. And real life is frequently horribly unbalanced.)

No no no, you misunderstand, the difference I'm talking about is say a Donkey Kong boss battle and a boss battle from a Street Fighter game. In Donkey Kong, the bosses have a certain sequence of events, you perform an action and you learn the result and then deal with it, its the same each time. In Street Fighter, you can learn all the bosses moves, but you have no idea of the sequence. Knowing exactly when and where to apply the appropriate skills you have learned isn't difficult in my eyes, but what is difficult is being able to apply them when the situation demands, but you don't know when or where. That's what I mean by RNG, I'm not talking chance alone, but it HAS to be a factor in order for me to feel challenged.

 

[CrystalShadow]

I would think a game where your fate depends on the outcome of a random number generator is the opposite of one that requires skill.

If chance alone affects whether you succeed or fail, that's not HARD, that's unfair.

And unless being unfair is an intentional part of your game design, it's basically stupid.
(Being unfair to your players can be justified in some circumstances, but usually those have to do with realism, and get into the realms of simulation rather than game. Because, basically, life is unfair, and random things, or stuff you can't defend against CAN kill you. And real life is frequently horribly unbalanced.)

No no no, you misunderstand, the difference I'm talking about is say a Donkey Kong boss battle and a boss battle from a Street Fighter game. In Donkey Kong, the bosses have a certain sequence of events, you perform an action and you learn the result and then deal with it, its the same each time. In Street Fighter, you can learn all the bosses moves, but you have no idea of the sequence. Knowing exactly when and where to apply the appropriate skills you have learned isn't difficult in my eyes, but what is difficult is being able to apply them when the situation demands, but you don't know when or where. That's what I mean by RNG, I'm not talking chance alone, but it HAS to be a factor in order for me to feel challenged.

Right. OK. That makes more sense.
But, realistically, that kind of thing is not as random as it seems.

Enemies in games fall into a number of groups.

At one level you have a predictable pre-scripted opponent.
From there, you get to opponents that have predictable sequences of behaviour, but choose which to use randomly.

What you're talking about isn't that though. Not for the truly difficult opponents at least.

No, what your computer opponent tends to be doing at that level is working out what you are doing, and then exploiting your weaknesses.

To stop that being totally impossible to go against, sometimes the AI will intentionally screw up, to give you an opening.

Because, ironically, creating near undefeatable AI is in many cases simpler than creating AI that's difficult, but still leaves itself vulnerable sometimes in a way that you can do something with.

(And what's even trickier is making those vulnerabilities seem believable, rather than just obviously stupid.)

But still, I get what you were trying to say now.
You meant that while any given move may be predictable, you don't know in advance which one is going to be used at any given moment.
And thus have to pay very close attention and know most of the things the enemy can use against you.

 

[GodofCider]

I believe it was intended as a parody of old-style Nintendo games which were ridiculously difficult, and of how some older gamers are clamouring to go back to those days.

Moreover, how much of the "Nintendo hard" trope is due to fake difficulty clouded by nostalgia.

I thought it was cause were mad harder because in the US you could rent games legally unlike in places like japan where games where easy as compared (I believe battle toads is one of those games).

I actually have an original battle toads game; found it at a yard sale years ago along with a super nintendo. That game is brutal. I never could progress past the first space stage.

I'd say it's hard because you have little warning due to it's side-scrolling nature, poor controls, and glitchiness.

 

[Kaanyr Vhok]

I believe it was intended as a parody of old-style Nintendo games which were ridiculously difficult, and of how some older gamers are clamouring to go back to those days.

They arent clamouring to go back to that they want to go back to the time after that and more importantly the level of overall depth. Compare Darklands with budget in consideration to Baldur's Gate and then KOTOR and then DA:O to DA 2.

 

[gbemery]

There seem to be many instances of this in games these days, usually restricted to the highest difficulty. The first thing that springs to mind is veteran difficulty on CoD: World at War; specifically the infinitely respawning soldiers thatthrew a grenade every couple of seconds.

I think that is pretty much all of the CoD games since CoD4. To me it takes out any tactics you could use since it pretty much comes down to enemies always respawning until you get to a certain spot, they have you zero'd in the moment you come out of cover and they throw a grenade every damn second. There was one spot where I was waiting for the blood to get off my face and threw a grenade back then another then another over and over. Then they attack from every damn angle like your NPCs don't do a damn thing and don't understand the term 'flanks'. It isn't hard skill wise just more of a trial and error run and gun kind of thing. *sigh* /rant.

 

[Solo-Wing]

IWBTG is not a serious game. it is just to be sadistic on the player. I managed to beat mike tyson then quit because I know I got farther then 90% of the people who play that fucking game.

 

[archvile93]

That's what hard was in the past, and that's what IWBTG is trying to parody.

 

[Pearwood]

yup, that's why i gave up on bayonetta, there's hard because the design feels smart, like your AI opponents are skilled as well, then there's hard because the design is just a mess and it interfears with actual gameplay, and then there's this kind of hard, which is to say "cheap"

If you'd kept on you'd have figured out combos that trip the enemies or quick combos that do a lot of damage in not much time. It's not unfair really, the bosses can be very tough but they have mid-boss checkpoints all over the place. It's basically just a more fast paced Devil May Cry. Get your dodge timing right, learn good combos and you'll be able to complete normal.