Is it Okay for a Game to be Unfair?

[BytByte]

Thought up this idea in the most creative area, the shower. Dark Souls has mimic chests that'll bite your face off. The first one is in a room of other chests and up until that point, no chest wanted you for dinner. So, if you're like me, you die.

Some people say that's part of Dark Soul's allure. It's relentless punishing style arguably strays into unfair territory at times, but it could help augment the feeling of hopelessness pervading the game.

Conversely, rubber banding in racing games just feels like artificial difficulty, a punishment for doing well.

So, can a game be unfair at times to make it a better game, or should it always play by the rules it makes you play by?

EDIT: My B. As some have pointed out, the first mimic is in Sen's Fortress. Same question still applies though, to all games, not just Dark Souls. Think of all those poor offline mode players D=

 

[Elfgore]

Being unfair doesn't make a game better... ever. At least in my opinion.

Pirate Warriors 3 brought back this annoying as fuck thing to make the enemy offices stronger. They have a special ability that can make them invincible and they can activate it at any moment they choose. It's pretty much the perfect combo breaker. Not to mention they can break out of unbreakable grab combos, recover inhumanly fast, and remain standing on attacks that should floor them. It's made me angry quite a few times.

It doesn't make the game more enjoyable, it just makes me shout "bullshit!".

 

[Rylee Fox]

Every game is inherently unfair. It's you vs the computer. If your character dies, you lose. If the computers character dies, it just sends an infinite amount more of its characters to kill you. It doesn't follow the same rules you do either and is well known for cheating.

A game can't not be unfair, its impossible.

 

[GhostHunter]

There is a fine line between being punishing and unfair. The mimic is punishing your lack of knowledge about their existence. The Sentinels in Anor Londo are unfair. Their shields prevent all damage and can protect far more than the actual models shows. Unfair is when you are punished not by your skill, knowledge, or lack thereof, but because the game wants you to be punished. In new game plus you can totally kill that mimic before it even stands up. Heavenly Sword had unfair enemies that could override your attacks , couldn't be blocked, barely dodged, and had 1 second or less or telegraphing those were really unfair.

 

[DementedSheep]

Unfair as in what? I don't expect the computer to be following the same rules as the player necessarily, they have to make up for the fact that it's working with AI.

I don't know that the mimic was unfair. I figured it was a trap, it's a chest in the middle of a room with nothing else but an elevator and blood stains in an area full of traps. It still got me of course, I checked around it but didn't think of actually hitting the damn thing but I was more amused than pissed off. It's not much a of problem anyway as death isn't that big a deal and it should only happen once, after you know about them you shouldn't be surprise by one again.

Something that I do think is a bit unfair is that in Shadowrun games you can't position people before combat starts and companions just follow your character so your character is always at the front. They force you be out in the open or right next someone to talk before combat starts and then the enemies get first turn. Unlike X-Com they don't have take cover in the first turn, they can and will just open fire on you so you can end up getting a shotgun blast to the face before you can do anything at all.
I'm also not fond on the 'instant kill unless you make the saving throw spells' in forgotten realms games or the spells like imprisonment and petrify that count as death/game over if it is your character that gets hit even though you can reverse those if they hit anyone else. A dice roll for game over that you can't really do anything about is unfair and doesn't make the game more fun. I don't like using them either, lucking out and killing Sarevok with a single Chromatic Orb might be amusing but it's not a satisfying end to the game.

I guess I would say that yes its ok for a game to be "unfair" if it improves the game in some way rather than just slowing things down and being frustrating.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

No. But what is unfair?

I wouldn't classify a single thing in Dark Souls as unfair. Its every obstacle can be conquered with patience, attention and proceeding carefully. Okay, perhaps that first mimic is unfair, but even that's only if you haven't heard of them and happen to be unlucky enough not to have the glowing signs saying "BEWARE OF TRAP" or "TRY ATTACKING" in front of the chest. And after that first shock you're sure to hit every single chest you come across from that point on. The Sanctuary Guardian boss IMO bordered on unfair, since it seemed that every possible approach proved inefficient at best: whether tanking, dodging or trying ranged attacks, the boss moves and attacks so fast and so often that it breaks just about every possible defense.

Dark Souls II on the other hand, has some downright broken bosses, with Lud and Zallen from the Ivory King DLC IMO taking the grand prize. The hitboxes seem to be wonky as hell, and attacks can, and will, hit you even if you're half the arena away with your shield up. Plus they will bounce half the arena away from you just as you're getting into position to attack, making it impossible to position them in such a way that you'd be able to see them both at the same time. I've attempted the boss some dozen times, and it doesn't seem to be a fight dependent on skill: it depends on if you're lucky enough to have the enemies behave in a way that allows you to actually deal damage to them.

And that's not even mentioning the hitbox nightmare that was DSII on PC before the patch. I saw a gif of a player dodging one of the Pursuer's stab attacks, and actually teleporting BACK INTO the sword after the successful dodge.

But if you want to see the purest possible example of an unfair game, look up Cat Mario.

The Sentinels in Anor Londo are unfair. Their shields prevent all damage and can protect far more than the actual models shows.

They are also one of the most easily outmaneuvered enemies in the game, slow to attack and can be aggroed out of their positions one by one easily. Imagine you were playing as one: not being able to move faster than walking, your every attack having a long windup, and facing an enemy that not only moves and attacks way faster than you, but also has ranged attacks and can move behind you from beneath your feet.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I think of "unfair" as a game that betrays its own established rules (unreliable AI, programming errors, stuff like that).

 

[Danbo Jambo]

It's all about balance. Being unfair in the way described in your Dark Souls example is really about having your wits about you. However, Dark Souls being unfair in the way that the camera span around 180 degrees if you tried to lock on to an enemy but were slightly to far away, is just bullshit.

I think "unfair" is a middle-ground area and not really debateable in itself. The key question should be "is it fun/good/immersive/etc." - whatever the game is aiming to be. If unfair fits in that fine, if not nope.

 

[Subbies]

The only thing that's really unfair in Dark Souls is its shitty camera control. Also I hate to nitpick, but the first mimic you come across isn't in Anor Londo but in Sens fortress. It's in an empty room with a large pool of blood next to it, kind of a dead give away right?

OT: No I don't think that a game being unfair is going to be bad, that may even be its main attraction. As long as you know what you're getting into, beating an unfair game can be cathartic since you know that all odds were stacked against you but still prevailed.

 

[Shymer]

Fairness comes from an old English word meaning pleasing, or attractive and I think that's important in this question. If the result of a game's programming is that the gameplay feels ugly and unattractive, then it is clearly not fair.

If by fairness we also include the concept of playing by the same rules or even-handedness, then that's a bit trickier. In some genres it is clearly crucial. Simulators, for example. The 4X genre can employ the same rules for all sides, but still provide a computer team an advantage in resources. It can be difficult to build an AI which is 'human' in it's limited understanding and use of game-state information. This can be jarring. Implementing difficulty levels is also an associated game design challenge, which not every game gets right.

In your example, you talk about Dark Souls, which has a reputation - in part due to the lack of information given to the player about what they are facing. In this case, and other 'horror' titles I think it is perfectly justified for a game to adopt a theme where commonplace objects and items carry a threat and the player can never be truly comfortable and all-knowing - complacent. In other genres, this theme is not as suitable and some form of telegraphing (music, dialogue, graphical) would serve better.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Unfair is a matter of perspective.

Consider 'I wanna be the guy' and games like it.
In some ways, those are built explicitly around being brutally unfair.
Up to a point.
BUT, the gameplay design (especially respawning and how death is handled) is built around it being unfair, and thus, it still works out as something that some people might enjoy for various reasons, even though pretty much everything about such games is unfair by design.

Mostly.

See, it's unfair in the sense of it being trial and error, but not to the point where it is literally impossible to succeed.
Difficult, yes. Mind-numbingly frustrating, sure. But not impossible.

Still, on the whole, being unfair in a game is usually going to detract from it, not help it.

 

[Trippy Turtle]

I would argue that Dark Souls isn't really unfair. If you take extreme caution you probably won't be caught out most of the time. An unreasonable amount of caution, but still, its possible.

As for the topic... Of course it is.
It doesn't belong in some games. But look at IWBTG, its based on being unfair. I generally prefer unfair to easy.
Its very rare to find a game that is fair, while still being challenging. In a game where the player can be as creative as they want, the game sometimes has to play dirty too.

 

[LostCrusader]

I think its fake difficulty if the computers just break the rules of the game to make it harder, and can ruin the experience. My best example of this is the Starcraft 2 coop vs AI mode. I enjoyed trying to play against the harder computers until I figured out how they upped the difficulty, they increased the amount of resources that the AI's workers collect compared to a player's. I feel the same way about other games like shooters that increase difficulty by only increasing the health to make everything a bullet sponge.

 

[jklinders]

In order for a game to count as unfair in my opinion it needs to break it's own internal logic. The mimic example in the OP is not an example of doing that. Mimics are a long standing RPG trope. They always surprise you when you run into them for the first time, but in RPGs they are as old as Methuselah.

The only games I can think of that come close to being unfair under this definition is games that are very RNG dependent with bad probability mechanics programmed in. I'm not a fan of those, but I usually chalk that more up to incompetence than artificial difficulty.

 

[BeerTent]

Life isn't fair, baby. Sometimes you just gotta roll with the punches.

That being said, the game should be consistent with it's rules, and not pull the goddamn Gangplank cyberdisc on you! >:C

It's okay, I'll stop talking about XCOM soon... I just got Elite Dangerous with Anubis. [sub]Anubis... Talk Dhurty to meee~... Aah, eh-n-.. No. that's... ANUBIS! STAHP![/sub]

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

Rubber banding is there to keep you feeling excited, what fun is it when youve won a really long race not long after the start, and the finishing is a formality? It often goes that way in multiplayer racing, I remember expecting Burnout Revenges multiplayer to be an awesomely fun mode where we all attempt to destroy each other. Instead youre done Its not like you lose your good time either.

Sometimes computers need an advantage in strategy games, human players are too smart, too imaginitive for a lot of A.I to be challenging. Giving the A.I unnaturally large amounts of resources might be the only way for an A.I to be challenging against someone who knows how to use their armies with good tactics.

 

[Riekle Wiersma]

Dark Souls can definitely be unfair. Shitty framerate where it counts (Seath in particular) mixed with an absolute abortion of a lock on camera? Not to mention the other glitches in that game. Enemies that you've never seen or encountered before that can curse you in the blink of an eye. Shitty hitboxes (This isn't a Dark Souls II only problem, there was a lot of bullshit hit detection in the first too). The entire arguement of "Well you only die in that game because of you, it's never the games fault. It's because YOU fucked up" is a shitty arguement. I enjoyed most of the game I played, hell I even beat Ornstein and Smough on my first attempt. The game is just so poorly put together I'm surprised people were surprised when they fucked up Dark Souls II.

Unfair difficulty is not good difficulty.

Agreed about the part of shitty framerates (Blighttown with blowdarts, i'm looking at you), although i never had framedrops while fighting Seath. The hitboxes in Dark Souls 1 are not perfect, but they are certainly not as wonky as Dark Souls 2 hitboxes. I also definitly do not agree with the "curse in the blink of an eye" assesment, there is a fairly long buildup of the curse and the attack that inflicts the curse has a decently long windup.

One recent example of an unfair artificial difficulty is in Bloodborne, being that piece of shit hunter in the church at the end of Eileen's questling.. A gun that inflicts tons of damage (1/3 of your healthbar is not uncommon), infinite bullets while making use of the hunter's bone so that he can teleport all over the place, tons of health (3000-3500ish) and the ability to kill you with one parry + reposte? Goddamn, that fight was hard as shit especially when you attempt it as early as act 3..

 

[maninahat]

Games often have to disobey their own rules to provide a plausible challenge to the player. That includes things like rubber banding, or how in some strategy games, the computer gets resources from nowhere. The challenge is what keeps the game interesting, and I think that it is okay for a game to be unfair in that respect, as long as the balance is carefully applied.

It is unfair in a game when it pulls insta-kill dick moves. Many of the old Nintendo games are hard not because they required a lot of skill, but because they place unfair, unavoidable traps for first time players to blunder into. This was a holdover from arcade games, which needed a way to get the player to lose lives, and thus to keep buying more credits. That kind of unfairness isn't okay. It turns a game into a repetitive, rote memory exercise, rather than a game of true skill.