I like the hard modes on new games...
Challenge without absolute failure. No "lives" system and all that it implies.
Challenge without absolute failure. No "lives" system and all that it implies.
Poll: Difficulty in games is changing.
- Thread starter Gotterdammerung
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I think what people forget about older games is that they were not generally "hard" but rather "unfair".
The AI, such as it was, would outright cheat. The Developers had few tools available to make games challanging, and they needed to pad the games length by making it so hard it was near impossible at times because they wanted people to keep playing their games.
Many of the mechanics of the time were born from gamings root in the arcades, where more "Continues" meant more coins which meant more money.
As the technology and budget available to developers becomes better, and as the gaming audience grows older, the devs have more abilities to engage us beyond frustration and we have less patience due to having less time to play.
The AI, such as it was, would outright cheat. The Developers had few tools available to make games challanging, and they needed to pad the games length by making it so hard it was near impossible at times because they wanted people to keep playing their games.
Many of the mechanics of the time were born from gamings root in the arcades, where more "Continues" meant more coins which meant more money.
As the technology and budget available to developers becomes better, and as the gaming audience grows older, the devs have more abilities to engage us beyond frustration and we have less patience due to having less time to play.
thats why i always loved OP Flash and older Ghost Recon series, they are fucking really hard on highes difficult, I loved how you have to think about your every move. Sometimes I was pissed because game mechanics was out of my tactic capabilities (like having a sniper shot target, and rest of enemies already knows the locations of nearby campers with shortrange silent weaponry, GR)
What I have to say is that I enjoy playing the Wither 2 and Dwarf Fortress. Those games are convoluted messes of difficulty in some points. I like the X games for being inaccessible behemoths of content. I love games that give you everything you could want but don't tell you where to get to it and don't pave you a nice broad road directly to the sweetest content. You often screw up beyond possibilities in Dwarf Fortress, but at least it allows a player to go absolutely batshit bonkers with their game.
What I'm saying is: being unfairly hard isn't fun unless the game provides equal amounts of a rewarding feeling for beating it.
I fondly recall Deus Ex, Homeworld and UFO for being just hard and then beating them felt incredibly good. With almost all games aimed at a broad audience, often console ports but not exclusively those, it feels like you get handed the fun in nice, casual packagages and the challenge resembles just that. Nice, controllable packages with no big surprise. It's safe, predictable, but also really boring. It can still be a fun experience, but compare that to the feelings of rage you get when crashing into an asteroid at 1200% time enhancement in X or the joy of seeing a massive enemy battleship finally buy it in a rewarding explosion, the fun of destroying a Shivan Sathanas in Freespace 2 or the utter nonesense that is Dwarf Fortress as a whole.
It is emotionally way more rewarding to beat something that is really, really hard and you remember it more fondly, even if you almost rammed your keyboard through the monitor more than once.
What I'm saying is: being unfairly hard isn't fun unless the game provides equal amounts of a rewarding feeling for beating it.
I fondly recall Deus Ex, Homeworld and UFO for being just hard and then beating them felt incredibly good. With almost all games aimed at a broad audience, often console ports but not exclusively those, it feels like you get handed the fun in nice, casual packagages and the challenge resembles just that. Nice, controllable packages with no big surprise. It's safe, predictable, but also really boring. It can still be a fun experience, but compare that to the feelings of rage you get when crashing into an asteroid at 1200% time enhancement in X or the joy of seeing a massive enemy battleship finally buy it in a rewarding explosion, the fun of destroying a Shivan Sathanas in Freespace 2 or the utter nonesense that is Dwarf Fortress as a whole.
It is emotionally way more rewarding to beat something that is really, really hard and you remember it more fondly, even if you almost rammed your keyboard through the monitor more than once.
I've seen old games have more story than the new ones...Vault101 said:
The only challenge you will get now is ...
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SelfImposedChallenge
Well there are always different ways to make things difficult, I prefer the mechanics and puzzles to be challenging.
Always hated the "haha you just died and lost 1 hour of gameplay" bullshit, not to mention the retarded spawn points where you would be thrown back 30 minutes of travel every time you exit the game... just save where I fucking am you assholes.
The worst part is developers still put this bullshit into games, even into triple A titles, do I really need to find a hack for every game to fix your shit?
Always hated the "haha you just died and lost 1 hour of gameplay" bullshit, not to mention the retarded spawn points where you would be thrown back 30 minutes of travel every time you exit the game... just save where I fucking am you assholes.
The worst part is developers still put this bullshit into games, even into triple A titles, do I really need to find a hack for every game to fix your shit?
I agree with this one. I recently played Mario Kart on the SNES and it's only difficult because the AI just uses cheats. The one guy who has more points than you will always win the race if you don't, simply by just using a cheat which gives them about twice the top speed of anyone else.Craorach said:
And don't even get me started on older RTS games like C&C where the AI was just able to build a lot faster than you.
New. as yahtzee himself said "Old school gaming troped died out for a good fucking reason."
There's nothing wrong with people of any age or skill level having the right to finish a game. The nintendo-hard elitists must have something wrong with other people getting enjoyment out of what they want to play.
There's nothing wrong with people of any age or skill level having the right to finish a game. The nintendo-hard elitists must have something wrong with other people getting enjoyment out of what they want to play.
You're telling me about the oldschool C&C games! I would see the A.I. drop multiple buildings at the same time!Nimcha said:
couldn't have said it better myself. it's not even about laziness. a lot of people's lives are stressful enough without even their entertainment *****-slapping them for not being "good enough"Jaxtor said:
Agreed. A challenge is one thing, but a game should be fun more than anything else.Akihiko said:
Also, the lives system is obsolete in modern gaming since we don't use arcades on the same scale we used to. That gimmick was only created to get more quarters out of competitive kids.
Opposite we just love the abuse is all.Azaraxzealot said:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NintendoHard
There is also Atlus hard, but that's entirely somethign else.
Shooters and the like don't provide real challenge campaign wise anymore.
I can get far more challenge out of real time RPG's and games that require extreme planning.
Basically shooters are easier than pokemon nowadays.
I prefer the games which give me a choice.
I like tough games, I do. I get a lot of enjoyment out of being good enough, fast enough, smart enough or just lucky enough to pull off a win in tough circumstances.
Some people don't.
So, the obvious answer is an adaptive difficulty where easy is actually easy and hard is actually...well, hard.
Sometimes that's not possible, where gameplay can't be changed by difficulty so exploits exist then the difficulty is more or less set after a point.
That said, fuck finite lives. In some games it works, notably the old games which were shorter than the current ones (I mean seriously, save cartridges exist for a reason, when they didn't finite lives kinda made sense). Nowadays games are simply too long for it to be fair, if you cock up or hit the wrong button or just don't get it (it happens to the best of us, you see a puzzle and just solve it the wrong way, so you start following your solution through and death occurs) forcing you to start over is just horrible.
I also like the ability to save practically anywhere but I get that sometimes it should be limited (to stop people saving during important events so they can reload if it goes wrong). At the start of sections though or if you're just running around you should be able to save, apart from anything else not everyone has the time to devote to reaching that next checkpoint, I tend to stop playing games when I need to replay the 20 minutes I played last time because I was just shy of a checkpoint when I needed to go...
I like tough games, I do. I get a lot of enjoyment out of being good enough, fast enough, smart enough or just lucky enough to pull off a win in tough circumstances.
Some people don't.
So, the obvious answer is an adaptive difficulty where easy is actually easy and hard is actually...well, hard.
Sometimes that's not possible, where gameplay can't be changed by difficulty so exploits exist then the difficulty is more or less set after a point.
That said, fuck finite lives. In some games it works, notably the old games which were shorter than the current ones (I mean seriously, save cartridges exist for a reason, when they didn't finite lives kinda made sense). Nowadays games are simply too long for it to be fair, if you cock up or hit the wrong button or just don't get it (it happens to the best of us, you see a puzzle and just solve it the wrong way, so you start following your solution through and death occurs) forcing you to start over is just horrible.
I also like the ability to save practically anywhere but I get that sometimes it should be limited (to stop people saving during important events so they can reload if it goes wrong). At the start of sections though or if you're just running around you should be able to save, apart from anything else not everyone has the time to devote to reaching that next checkpoint, I tend to stop playing games when I need to replay the 20 minutes I played last time because I was just shy of a checkpoint when I needed to go...
Personally, I like the new form of difficulty better. And I'm not judging it based on your standards. I'm judging it on fairness. I'll compare two games you'll likely have never heard of, but they're of the same series, just about 15 years apart.
Story of Eastern Wonderland: The stages are short, your character is slow, the bullets and pickups are fast, there is no slow movement key, and bosses are often bullshitty. However the patterns are much simpler and easy to read. The lives system isn't very generous but is rather easy to use. Bombs are reset to three after every death. Deaths do not affect Power very much. Continuing starts where the player died.
Undefined Fantastic Object: The stages are longer, your choice of shottype is much better with multiple movement speeds. Lives and bombs are more common but there is more risk to getting them. Bombs are retained after each death unless below three. Death is very hard on Power. Bullets are larger, more varied, and the patterns are much more complex. Continuing restarts the stage. Hitbox is visible during focused movement.
Of the two games UFO is far superior. SoEW relies a whole bunch on Fake Difficulty to beat the player due to crappy hitbox programming, enemies colliding with the player, bosses doing things that would be impossible to avoid without foresight, and just overall unfairness. UFO on the other hand is difficult, but it's not for unfair reasons. The game doesn't try to trick you often and while it would be incredibly difficult, it is possible to win on a first attempt on any difficulty.
The difference between the old difficulty and today's is how fair the games are being. Lots of older games are difficult for unfair reasons. This is what makes I Wanna Be The Guy so hard, as it emulates the cheapness of the games it references.
Story of Eastern Wonderland: The stages are short, your character is slow, the bullets and pickups are fast, there is no slow movement key, and bosses are often bullshitty. However the patterns are much simpler and easy to read. The lives system isn't very generous but is rather easy to use. Bombs are reset to three after every death. Deaths do not affect Power very much. Continuing starts where the player died.
Undefined Fantastic Object: The stages are longer, your choice of shottype is much better with multiple movement speeds. Lives and bombs are more common but there is more risk to getting them. Bombs are retained after each death unless below three. Death is very hard on Power. Bullets are larger, more varied, and the patterns are much more complex. Continuing restarts the stage. Hitbox is visible during focused movement.
Of the two games UFO is far superior. SoEW relies a whole bunch on Fake Difficulty to beat the player due to crappy hitbox programming, enemies colliding with the player, bosses doing things that would be impossible to avoid without foresight, and just overall unfairness. UFO on the other hand is difficult, but it's not for unfair reasons. The game doesn't try to trick you often and while it would be incredibly difficult, it is possible to win on a first attempt on any difficulty.
The difference between the old difficulty and today's is how fair the games are being. Lots of older games are difficult for unfair reasons. This is what makes I Wanna Be The Guy so hard, as it emulates the cheapness of the games it references.
First off, the bolded aspects are what is called "Fake Difficulty" [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FakeDifficulty]. More distance between checkpoints and a limited number of attempts does not mean the gameplay itself is innately more difficult to execute, it just means that you are more penalized for screwing up. If you die, you go back further; if you die too often, you have to restart. These aspects are probably just a remnant from when games were only coin-op arcade machines; it made sense back then because you had to pay for each number of attempts, it created more profits for the owner of the machine.Gotterdammerung said:
With home consoles (or personal PCs) being the dominant format today, these limits make very little sense because the developper isn't making any money off the game after the initial sale. In fact, it's in their best interest for the player to complete the game so that they're able to move onto the developpers next product. As such, most games are simply more fair in their challenges; this could also be the reason games have been getting a bit shorter in the last decade or so. Fortunately, game developpers make the effort for generally high-quality experiences that allows for a great deal of replayability.
There still is one genre of games which still favours a high degree of fake difficulty (for those who enjoy that sort of thing), and it would be the MMORPG. While WoW's popularity (and accessibility) has killed some forms of fake difficulty (i.e.: experience loss upon death), it retains at least one type in the form of random drops; this trick serves no purpose other than to make players re-do the same content and keep playing the game... and paying their subscription to do so.
Another thing which makes games feel easier these days is a gentler difficulty curve, good tutorials are more common. The player isn't stonewalled with a challenge they have to look at outside the game to gain the insight needed to overcome it, but the games make the effort to incorporate teaching the player how to play... as they play the game. Of course, we've seen a few examples where it's been taken too far (usually when the game reminds a bit too often how to do basic things) but the general trend has been towards more accessibility. A good example of this is seen in the Super Mario series (the platforming games in particular, not the spin-offs), all of which are very accessible (and easy) at the start but still present a great deal of challenge towards their conclusion. You can almost say that each game is mostly made up of tutorials, teaching you how to use each element of the gameplay in a different way that you'll be using later on in the game.
Nevertheless, with the general market of games these days not being of the pay-to-play variety, it makes no sense for developpers to include large amounts of fake difficulty. Fair games sell better (more accessible), and the developpers gain no profits from games which artificially increase their length with unfair challenges. The net effect is that games FEEL easier, but it's just because they aren't cheating so much anymore and make the effort to have good tutorials.
I like having tons of checkpoints, but limited health supplies and no, none, nada health regen. checkpoints few and far between caused plenty of frustration when you die and have to start the whole level over again, especialy when you can see the next checkpoint but the hardest jumpmaze or you get ambushed before you get to it.
I personally prefer the difficulty of newer games. I play games to have fun and immerse myself in the game's world, and the frustration of dying over and over and losing a lot of progress when I die takes away from that in a fairly major way. But how about a compromise so both me and the insane people who actually enjoyed the difficulty of older games can have our way? Maybe games could, I dunno, have an optional difficulty setting where you either have limited lives or saves with few to no checkpoints, like the "hard core" mode in Dead Space 2.
I think developers have come to realise difficulty =/= challenge.
A game with cheating enemies, slow controls and broken hit detection makes for a hard game but it is not challenging in an enjoyable way. It is a frustration test getting killed by things you couldn't possibly avoid except by memorisation and luck. Being forced to play through long sections of a game OVER AND OVER is not challenging, it is POOR DESIGN. You aren't repeating the bits you fail on, you are repeating the tedious bits, it is blatant padding.
Example: Call of Duty's popular online modes are really really challenging, you have to know the game very well and be on the top of your game to compete, but it is not frustrating thanks to very good controls (largely down to the emphasis on 60fps framerate).
Though I'll agree rebounding health isn't good for a single-player game. It somewhat works in multiplayer as it allows for every encounter to be on a level playing field of health, but in single
A game with cheating enemies, slow controls and broken hit detection makes for a hard game but it is not challenging in an enjoyable way. It is a frustration test getting killed by things you couldn't possibly avoid except by memorisation and luck. Being forced to play through long sections of a game OVER AND OVER is not challenging, it is POOR DESIGN. You aren't repeating the bits you fail on, you are repeating the tedious bits, it is blatant padding.
Example: Call of Duty's popular online modes are really really challenging, you have to know the game very well and be on the top of your game to compete, but it is not frustrating thanks to very good controls (largely down to the emphasis on 60fps framerate).
Though I'll agree rebounding health isn't good for a single-player game. It somewhat works in multiplayer as it allows for every encounter to be on a level playing field of health, but in single