Is difficulty a serious problem for you in games?
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It depends on what kind of difficulty.
Personally, I like the difficulty where if I lose or fail, it's completely my fault. Not the fault of buggy AI, game-breaking glitches, artificial difficulty, or sudden changing of the rules or mechanics.
Demon/Dark Souls and VVVVVV are good examples of this kind of difficulty.
Personally, I like the difficulty where if I lose or fail, it's completely my fault. Not the fault of buggy AI, game-breaking glitches, artificial difficulty, or sudden changing of the rules or mechanics.
Demon/Dark Souls and VVVVVV are good examples of this kind of difficulty.
It depends. If a game is a brutal grindfest on a high difficulty, I'll usually play on a lower one. But if a game is still fun despite it being extremely difficult, then I'll still power through it.
Max Payne 3 is probably my favorite example of how a developer should make a difficult game. Yes, some parts can be hard, but if you can beat the game without resorting to cheating or using exploits.
Max Payne 3 is probably my favorite example of how a developer should make a difficult game. Yes, some parts can be hard, but if you can beat the game without resorting to cheating or using exploits.
It depends how the difficulty is done.
For me, La-Mulana is the go-to example about how a game should not be made. The game is not difficult, it's frustrating. There is no challenge in trying endless combinations of puzzles and doing the same tasks, "getting lucky" should not be the final strategy that one has to use in order to progress in a game.
Even the most diehard lovers of Dark Souls (myself included) agree that the Bed of Chaos is a bullshit fight, because it doesn't rely on the player being skillful.
For me, La-Mulana is the go-to example about how a game should not be made. The game is not difficult, it's frustrating. There is no challenge in trying endless combinations of puzzles and doing the same tasks, "getting lucky" should not be the final strategy that one has to use in order to progress in a game.
Even the most diehard lovers of Dark Souls (myself included) agree that the Bed of Chaos is a bullshit fight, because it doesn't rely on the player being skillful.
My main issue is finding the right kind of difficulty. Often the solution in games is to just crank up the health or damage of an enemy to some obscene extent (looking at you, Skyrim. Draugr Deathlords and Dragon Priests 1-shotting my broken minmaxed character and taking twenty-something hits to kill != difficulty. It just means I have to wait a long time once I've got them in a stagger loop, or even longer while I get cozy with cover) which is ultimately just boring as I can't allow any kind of back-and-forth. It's also pretty terrible when the game is ultimately clumsy to play. If I had a dollar for every time I've accidentally jumped over cover into the light in Splinter Cell Conviction because the game didn't recognize that I was looking over at the next bit of wall or whatnot, I'd have enough to have paid off all my Splinter-Cell related expenditures.
I do generally crank up games as high as they'll go difficulty-wise prior to that point though. I despise feeling like my hand is being held
Also my solution to the difficulty issue is usually just mods and player-made patches, though it's a bit sad when some random person fixes major gameplay flaws in a AAA title from their bedroom or something.
I'm also not particularly appreciative of games where you get killed off for not knowing something the game never actually told you. While Dark Souls is a good example of a game that kills you off for screwing up, sometimes it doesn't do a very good job of telling you what screwing up actually *is*. Though at the very least you can run back and grab up all your souls again.
I do generally crank up games as high as they'll go difficulty-wise prior to that point though. I despise feeling like my hand is being held
Also my solution to the difficulty issue is usually just mods and player-made patches, though it's a bit sad when some random person fixes major gameplay flaws in a AAA title from their bedroom or something.
I'm also not particularly appreciative of games where you get killed off for not knowing something the game never actually told you. While Dark Souls is a good example of a game that kills you off for screwing up, sometimes it doesn't do a very good job of telling you what screwing up actually *is*. Though at the very least you can run back and grab up all your souls again.
Ugh yes. Some of the puzzles in La-Mulana are just absurd. At least some of them give you some kind of hint but many of them don't. I still like the game but it would be nice to be able to solve more puzzles without the wiki. Even with the wiki some of the puzzles seem really strange and kinda illogical.Lovely Mixture said:
This too. The fight got a lot easier when I realized I could just block every single swipe attack, but before that it was just frustrating. Especially combined with the quite long way from the bonfire back into the fight. Jumping over the moat in the final stage was also extremely annoying for me. I don't know how often I made the jump just to get grilled by the flamestrike attack right after landing.Lovely Mixture said:
Although the fight against the Ceaseless Discharge was just as frustrating for me. The hitboxes of those arms are quite strange and sometimes I got hit by arms that came down 5 m away and sometimes I could stand inside them and didn't get hit. Another prime example of difficulty done wrong. If I can learn what to do to prevent getting killed all is fine...but the game just randomly deciding "Oh that hit that didn't even come close to hitting you? Well yeah that was a hit" is just frustrating.
Depends on the difficulty. If it's Dark Souls difficulty where everything is very fair and there's always a simple solution to all the problems it throws at you if you're willing to experiment a little and learn from your previous mistakes then the difficulty is rewarding and finally getting past that one little bit that tarpitted you last time always feels good. Or the difficulty of a good puzzle game where, if you just took some time to think about it then the solution becomes obvious and you'll wonder why it was so hard in the first place (Myst is a good example of this).
However, if it's difficult because it's broken or just being difficult for difficulty's sake then it's not quite as fun, you do get that same sense of achievement sometimes, but most of the time it's not because you stopped to try a new strategy that fitted the situation or because you managed to figure out the proper combination of items required to solve a puzzle it's just because you brute forced your way through by either smashing your head against a wall before you finally broke through or you exhausted every other possible option and just managed to get the right one by sheer luck.
So, difficulty for me is only fun when it's rewarding in some way. Dark Souls is the most obvious example and you always hear people in the community singing its praises, but it's because they've experienced it themselves and can vouch for it. There's something satisfying to learning how to parry correctly, or figuring out one of the little secrets, or beating the Taurus demon by using the plunging attacks a few times to whittle him down. I could go on with everything that have given me a big smile on my face, but that's off-topic.
It's about finding that balance that Dark Souls has struck so well, its been compared with the older Nintendo titles with a similar punishing-yet-rewarding level of difficulty, like Super Metroid, Megaman or Castlevania, where knowing where that wall turkey is, or where to stock up on power bombs is part of what makes the game fun. Getting stuck on a boss in those games is frustrating for a while but you eventually work out what strategy works best against them and how to take them down efficiently and it's rewarding to know that the mistakes you make are your fault for not doing something you know you should've done but weren't fast enough or skilled enough to pull off at that moment, not because the game was just being cheap.
That's how Dark Souls does it, too, you should've kept your eye on your HP, you should've gotten a tiny bit more out of range before you healed, you shouldn't have run around that blind corner when you knew that the game likes to put something there to murder you. And the next time you come back, you remember these things and you get a little further, you learn to be cautious and how to better protect yourself on the next run. So even making it to the next bonfire is a huge achievement but also a burden because all those enemies you just killed on the way are back and there's more to come, too.
Anyway, I've been rambling way too much. Go play Dark Souls and the sequel, seriously, play it. It's just incredible.
However, if it's difficult because it's broken or just being difficult for difficulty's sake then it's not quite as fun, you do get that same sense of achievement sometimes, but most of the time it's not because you stopped to try a new strategy that fitted the situation or because you managed to figure out the proper combination of items required to solve a puzzle it's just because you brute forced your way through by either smashing your head against a wall before you finally broke through or you exhausted every other possible option and just managed to get the right one by sheer luck.
So, difficulty for me is only fun when it's rewarding in some way. Dark Souls is the most obvious example and you always hear people in the community singing its praises, but it's because they've experienced it themselves and can vouch for it. There's something satisfying to learning how to parry correctly, or figuring out one of the little secrets, or beating the Taurus demon by using the plunging attacks a few times to whittle him down. I could go on with everything that have given me a big smile on my face, but that's off-topic.
It's about finding that balance that Dark Souls has struck so well, its been compared with the older Nintendo titles with a similar punishing-yet-rewarding level of difficulty, like Super Metroid, Megaman or Castlevania, where knowing where that wall turkey is, or where to stock up on power bombs is part of what makes the game fun. Getting stuck on a boss in those games is frustrating for a while but you eventually work out what strategy works best against them and how to take them down efficiently and it's rewarding to know that the mistakes you make are your fault for not doing something you know you should've done but weren't fast enough or skilled enough to pull off at that moment, not because the game was just being cheap.
That's how Dark Souls does it, too, you should've kept your eye on your HP, you should've gotten a tiny bit more out of range before you healed, you shouldn't have run around that blind corner when you knew that the game likes to put something there to murder you. And the next time you come back, you remember these things and you get a little further, you learn to be cautious and how to better protect yourself on the next run. So even making it to the next bonfire is a huge achievement but also a burden because all those enemies you just killed on the way are back and there's more to come, too.
Anyway, I've been rambling way too much. Go play Dark Souls and the sequel, seriously, play it. It's just incredible.
As I've gotten older, I've realized the story-telling in the vast majority of games is ass. They can be fun and interesting sure, but the execution is almost always ass. So now, I try to get the most out of games via their challenge and mechanics. I generally like hard games, but my problem is when a game designer thinks 'hard' is the same as cheap. Case and point, the end boss of pretty much any fighting game.
I'd say games like Revengeance, Halo, and Spec Ops: The Line all did difficulty in very different, but effective ways.
I'd say games like Revengeance, Halo, and Spec Ops: The Line all did difficulty in very different, but effective ways.
It's not so much about difficulty as it is about engagement.
See, the problem that people have with difficult games is that it often feels like the game will throw a challenge at a player that their level of control doesn't account for, or the solution takes away from how the mechanics are enjoyed.
To contextualize this, think of how a large number of shooters simply increase enemy health and numbers to make the game more difficult. While this makes the game more "difficult" in the abstract sense, it doesn't account for what the player does moment to moment in game. Shooters work largely because of how they crescendo as the player goes through the motions of setting up a kill (either through aiming or positioning), shooting, and then seeing the exciting and often gory result. By increasing the difficulty of enemies simply by increasing the amount of times we need to shoot them, it flattens the curve of excitement. It's simply increasing the number of times the player has to succeed, not the depth required to succeed.
Obviously, there are reasons that it is hard to increase difficulty in a way that increases depth, simply because it's easier to learn how to exploit a system while playing a game rather than designing it. Further more, increasing the complexity of enemy movement and tactics rather than changing the integer that controls enemy health is significantly harder to do.
See, the problem that people have with difficult games is that it often feels like the game will throw a challenge at a player that their level of control doesn't account for, or the solution takes away from how the mechanics are enjoyed.
To contextualize this, think of how a large number of shooters simply increase enemy health and numbers to make the game more difficult. While this makes the game more "difficult" in the abstract sense, it doesn't account for what the player does moment to moment in game. Shooters work largely because of how they crescendo as the player goes through the motions of setting up a kill (either through aiming or positioning), shooting, and then seeing the exciting and often gory result. By increasing the difficulty of enemies simply by increasing the amount of times we need to shoot them, it flattens the curve of excitement. It's simply increasing the number of times the player has to succeed, not the depth required to succeed.
Obviously, there are reasons that it is hard to increase difficulty in a way that increases depth, simply because it's easier to learn how to exploit a system while playing a game rather than designing it. Further more, increasing the complexity of enemy movement and tactics rather than changing the integer that controls enemy health is significantly harder to do.