So...difficulty done right? What does it?

[Pink Gregory]

One hears a whole bunch about lack of challenge, but I hear a lot less about what does it right; I guess it ties in to Yahztee's "Challenge/Context/Gratification" trifecta.

And so I present my example; I reckon Bayonetta pulls off difficulty levels pretty well. As the difficulty levels increase, in addition to enemies doing more damage, it also increases the number of encounters, and progressing onto hard mode, will spawn some of the more challenging foes earlier on; so rather than just a retread of the same encounters as normal mode, it actually creates something of a different experience.

What are your examples?

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

I suppose Dark Souls is a good example.

I like games that give you immense satisfaction from beating tough enemies, the Shin Megami Tensei series is a good example, very hard, but it is so satisfying once you beat a boss you were stuck on, or other people were stuck on.

It's strange, I've played both Nocturne and Digital Devil Saga, Nocturne especially is known for it's difficulty, but I never thought it was all that frustrating. I'd have to play through a few bosses more than once (Dante, he hurts...), but I never got "stuck". This coming from someone who is prone to rage quitting. I suppose the battle system is punishing if you just attack, but if you keep your characters at an appropriate level, take advantage of enemy weaknesses and protect yourself, you should be okay.

The same can be said for The Witcher 2, at the beginning of the game, you really need to use most of the tricks in your arsenal. (By the end of the game, on normal mode, it's pretty easy).

 

[Daystar Clarion]

Demon's/Dark Souls are both prime examples of 'difficult but fair'.

If you die in those games, it's because you fucked up, not because the game cheated.

The game rewards observation and caution, and punishes recklessness and not being aware of your surroundings.

 

[Vegosiux]

See, there's the "Alright, down it goes!" kind of difficulty and there's the "Well, I'm glad that's over with..." kind of difficulty. But I can sense this is turning into another one of them "Dark Souls, so hardcore, fuck yeah!" kind of threads...grasshoppers. Grasshoppers everywhere, I tell you.

But to each their own I suppose. We even consider different things difficult, after all. I mean I can reliably do triple digit multiplications in my head while I can't for the life of me pull off the killer combos in fighting games.

What I mean to say is, I suppose, the main thing about "difficulty done right" would be "it being actually a challenge, not just a tedious grind or a wallbanger."

The problem with "Numbers-based" difficulty (as in more health and damage and numbers on the enemies) is quite obvious: after a point it hits a plateau of tedium. No matter how much more you scale it up, it gets no more difficult, it just starts taking longer while it being basically the same.

"Difficulty" should test one's skills, decision making, and thinking-on-the-fly, not one's patience and tolerance to arbitrary bullshit.

The game rewards observation and caution, and punishes recklessness and not being aware of your surroundings.

While I generally do adopt the observant style, it's usually the "explorer" type. Which means I am taking risks. Because it's thrilling, it's fun. If that's discouraged too much, it becomes distinctly less fun. I mean, if I'm going to get murdered every time I poke your nose out, thank you very much, I'll be having my tea right here while I peruse the ancient scripture until I'm reasonably certain I won't get murdered when I poke my nose out.

 

[Nomanslander]

Dark Souls and Demon's Souls. It's the only game I suggest.

Although since you mentioned Yahtzee, I like to bring up... well, don't listen to what Yahtzee has to say especially over the question of game difficulty. The man got petty and bashed on both games for being garbage because he sucked at them, and this coming from a guy that's spent 4 years complaining how easy games are today.

He's a noob...lol

 

[Twyce]

I like games that give you immense satisfaction from beating tough enemies, the Shin Megami Tensei series is a good example, very hard, but it is so satisfying once you beat a boss you were stuck on, or other people were stuck on.

When I beat Nyx in Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 Portable (Fight is a minimum of 45 minutes) I put down my PSP and just yelled "HELL YEAH!!" I haven't gotten a rush like that since, same when I fought Polaris in Devil Survivor 2 (also of the SMT franchise)

This.

I did the same thing in Persona 4.

Aside from the Persona and Megaten series... I felt Dragon's Dogma gave GREAT satisfaction in killing enemies (more specifically the big ones). I remember when I killed the Arch Hydra, I literally jumped out of my chair cheering.

That game did a damn good job of making battles feel epic.

So yea, I think Dragon's Dogma does a good job with difficulty. Its hard (so much so the devs released an easy mode patch), but it's not impossible.

 

[Norrdicus]

The same can be said for The Witcher 2, at the beginning of the game, you really need to use most of the tricks in your arsenal. (By the end of the game, on normal mode, it's pretty easy).

I have to go and disagree. Witcher 2 has this annoying habit of occasionally spawning monsters behind you (which is a death sentence on Normal and above), and the Act 1 bossfights are an enormous pain to deal with

Monster Hunter franchise is based on this properly done difficulty, with maybe some monster-specific exceptions *coughplesiothcough*. There is some number-based progression in the game, but for a good player it is irrelevant whether the boss monsters kill you in 1 hit or 10

Also, Castlevania games when you're not meta-gaming (the rpg elements) like mad

Frozen Synapse, at least how much I've played of it. Though you tend to start with situations where the enemy has the upper hand, rest of the way it's completely up to you whether or not you survive to the end of the mission.

Gunstar Future(/Super) Heroes - I'm talking about the remake, yes, blasphemy, but aside from the top-down airplane segment, the difficulty is REALLY solid

I'm also thinking of putting STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl, Daxter, Onimusha titles among others on there, but I'm not 100% sure

 

[Evil Smurf]

I like games that give you immense satisfaction from beating tough enemies, the Shin Megami Tensei series is a good example, very hard, but it is so satisfying once you beat a boss you were stuck on, or other people were stuck on.

When I beat Nyx in Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 Portable (Fight is a minimum of 45 minutes) I put down my PSP and just yelled "HELL YEAH!!" I haven't gotten a rush like that since, same when I fought Polaris in Devil Survivor 2 (also of the SMT franchise)

that sounds like me beating MANNUP mode in TF2, so hard yet so rewarding.

 

[Legion]

Games such as Mass Effect, Halo and Gears of War are examples of how it is done wrong. The enemies just get health increases and damage increases. The game isn't about getting better, it's about spending less time shooting due to increased damage taken, and more time in cover recovering health. That's it. It's basically a game of patience.

Strategy games tend to be quite good for difficulty levels, as they are mainly about the enemy being more aggressive and using more variety of units. They also build more defences and tend to harvest minerals more efficiently.

 

[Tohuvabohu]

This is one of those topics I have a lot to say about. To me, difficulty and challenge is very important.

Examples of doing difficulty right - Devil May Cry, God Hand.

DMC is a challenging game off the bat, but how it handles difficulty - much like Bayonetta - really shines after you beat the game and begin harder difficulties. It's basically a New Game+ allowing you to start again with every powerup you've ever gotten. Except now, the entire game's cast of enemies is restructured.
Cannon fodder enemies are replaced by higher ranking versions of themselves. What used to be showstopper mini-boss enemies seldom encountered through the game now become common enemies. And those "Arena" moments now spawn far more dangerous enemies. It takes everything you've done through the normal game and forces you to master it all over again, with a challenge that actually feels fresh.

God Hand's adaptive difficulty is not only dynamic, but the way it affects enemies through the game is brilliant. Instead of remixing the game's enemies, replacing them with tougher versions of themselves, it takes the very same cast of enemies and makes each one of them far more dangerous. As difficulty rises, enemies gain more moves, attack faster and harder, dodge and counter your attacks, and attack far more aggressively. This turns basic low-ranking enemies into punishing obstacles, and high-ranking heavy hitters into nightmares.

Examples of doing difficulty wrong - Resident Evil 5, Gears of War.

Almost nothing changes in these games as you bump the difficulty up. No remixed enemies, almost no noticable change in enemy behavior. All that changes, is you take more damage, and deal less damage. Bam, the game is now 'Hard'. Aren't you feeling challenged????
To me, this is one of the most disappointing things a game can do. That is, cop-out on it's advanced difficulties. I like to find replayability in games that might not be inherently replayable, and I find a lot of replay value in harder difficulties. If the harder difficulty is the exact same thing as the normal difficulty... then that sucks.

In Gears of War, harder difficulties aren't about how GOOD you got at the game and how GOOD you handle weapons. It's about not getting shot. Which means spending even MORE time in cover, and spending even LESS time shooting enemies. Man, I sure feel like my skills are being both tested and proven.

RE5 probably has the worst case of artificial Hard-ness. As there seems to be literally no differences between Veteran and Pro at all. My friend and I actually had to handicap ourselves during our Pro playthrough just to actually feel a difference in challenge.
If we went through the game with our upgraded weapons from the get-go as the game implied it wanted us to do, then it actually would've been EASIER than it was in Veteran. Which is the exact opposite of what's SUPPOSED to happen.

I want my hard difficulties to feel like the game recognizes my experience with it, and actually mixes things up. That's why I loved how DMC and Bayonetta handle their difficulty. Even after you beat the game, you never knew just what the game was going to throw at you next, and just how much it was going to throw at you. Or God Hand where the same enemies behave differently, and the flow of every fight changes dramatically.
^If a game fails to match this sort of change in challenge one way or another, it tends to be one of those games I file under "Never replay again."

 

[krazykidd]

There is no wrong way to make difficulty . The only possible wrong way is if the game is impossible . So far it hasn't happened . So there is no wrong way to have difficulty , just wrong ways of playing the game . I love how people prefer to say a game is cheap and is doing the difficulty wrong , instead of admiting THEY suck and it's too hard from THEM.

Always pointing figures towards the developpers for the players own shortcoming .

 

[Kilo24]

Demon's/Dark Souls are both prime examples of 'difficult but fair'.

If you die in those games, it's because you fucked up, not because the game cheated.

The game rewards observation and caution, and punishes recklessness and not being aware of your surroundings.

In my opinion, that's true in most cases, although there are definitely some cheap "gotcha!" moments in both games that that that's not true of. I'd amend the statement to "if you die twice at a spot in those games, it's because you fucked up." That statement would hold for pretty much every part of both games (except for two certain archers in Anor Londo.)

But both the games have the advantage that their world feels so very fitting to the difficulty. That's (along with the excellent game mechanics that let you cope with the difficulty) is what sets it apart from most other hard games. It certainly wouldn't be "difficulty done right" if everything which made it difficult was put in, say, Lego Star Wars.

They're still the best games as far as difficulty goes that I can think of, although FTL and Spelunky come close. Both of them cut down on the traditionally long playtime of roguelikes to something that works much better for the cheap and easy permadeath that is standard with the genre. They're the first roguelikes I've played that have really managed to avoid devolving from tense exploration into just trying to avoid doing anything stupid with your established character to win the game. (DoomRL did come decently close to that, however.)

As a counterexample, Bethesda's games are an emphatic instance of difficulty done poorly. Playing with the slider tends to make battles far more tedious than tense; dying in one hit to a rat while he absorbs hits from your greatsword may be difficult, but it's not really fun. The games hit this awful point with their difficulty and mechanics where the gameplay is either quite hard (and tedious) or trivially easy depending entirely on how broken your character is. But it is (slowly) getting better with each game, IMO.

 

[Kopikatsu]

As difficulty done wrong is simply increasing the damage and health of everything and nothing else, difficulty done right adds something to the gameplay.

Despite being a great example of difficulty (level scaling) done wrong, Borderlands 2 is also a great example of difficulty done right in TVHM. Some basic enemies become armored, meaning that normal/fire damage against non-crit areas is lessened while corrosive is increased, the effect of using an element that is not effective is greatly increased (With 'wrong' elements doing as little as 20% damage), high ranked enemies that are stronger but also give better drops, etc.

 

[Kilo24]

There is no wrong way to make difficulty . The only possible wrong way is if the game is impossible . So far it hasn't happened . So there is no wrong way to have difficulty , just wrong ways of playing the game . I love how people prefer to say a game is cheap and is doing the difficulty wrong , instead of admiting THEY suck and it's too hard from THEM.

Always pointing figures towards the developpers for the players own shortcoming .

So, if you're playing a game, and the sole effect of difficulty level is to increase the chance that your character dies instantly from a heart attack when you see a boss, that's not a "wrong way" to have difficulty?

Or if all enemies in the whole game become permanently invisible and impossible to hear?

Or if 80% of the time you attack, your weapon permanently breaks, you can't get another one, and you have to reload the game?

All of these ways aren't "wrong" in the sense that they do make the game more difficult and you can still beat the game, but they also would make almost any game a hell of a lot less fun. That's why when most people say "this difficulty is cheap" they mean "this difficulty is designed such that it's significantly less fun to play." That's a bit hard to state succinctly, so most people use that definition.

Your definition of "the game is impossible" is generally known as "the game is literally impossible to win." You yourself have admitted that that hasn't happened yet. So, being sarcastic in a poorly proofread post because your very narrow definition isn't the one being used by most people is probably none too persuasive. There are legitimate reasons to "point figures towards the developers" when atrocious game design would significantly hamper the fun of most players. (And, yes, there are a great many players who do blame the game for their own shortcomings unfairly, but it's a far murkier distinction between game design and personal issues than your rather one-sided post depicts it as.)

 

[WanderingFool]

As difficulty done wrong is simply increasing the damage and health of everything and nothing else, difficulty done right adds something to the gameplay.

Despite being a great example of difficulty (level scaling) done wrong, Borderlands 2 is also a great example of difficulty done right in TVHM. Some basic enemies become armored, meaning that normal/fire damage against non-crit areas is lessened while corrosive is increased, the effect of using an element that is not effective is greatly increased (With 'wrong' elements doing as little as 20% damage), high ranked enemies that are stronger but also give better drops, etc.

You know, when I started my second playthrough on TVHM, I thought it would be like BL1 in the enemies being the same but with new names. My first encounter with Armored Psychos changed that pretty freaking quick... and I loved it!!!

I agree with what you said in the in the first sentance.

 

[DoPo]

There is no wrong way to make difficulty . The only possible wrong way is if the game is impossible . So far it hasn't happened . So there is no wrong way to have difficulty , just wrong ways of playing the game . I love how people prefer to say a game is cheap and is doing the difficulty wrong , instead of admiting THEY suck and it's too hard from THEM.

Always pointing figures towards the developpers for the players own shortcoming .

On the contrary, you can make the difficulty wrong and many, many games actually do. If the difficulty only applies a modifier to the damage and health, then that's not "more difficult", it's "more tedious". A lot of games seem to confuse the two.

OT: I really loved how Bastion did it - you play on "normal" all the time, but you can get additional challenge for additional reward at the shrine, for example, making the enemies faster for some extra XP, or make them hit harder.

 

[mitchell271]

Demon's/Dark Souls are both prime examples of 'difficult but fair'.

If you die in those games, it's because you fucked up, not because the game cheated.

Another great example is Super Meat Boy. Perfect controls and no lives

 

[MiskWisk]

I probably need to improve my gaming diet, but I've never really found a game that does difficulty right. RTS's and FPS's are particularly bad for this because, after some experimenting, I found most simply say "We are going to overpower the enemy and massively underpower you!". I mean, when a squad of Roman Heavy cavalry in Rome: Total War can be routed by a peasant squad, you realise something is up.

If anyone wants to suggest an RTS where increasing the difficulty doesn't just hand the Computer cheats but makes it smart enough not to charge cavalry into a wall of spears, please let me know.

 

[zerragonoss]

I would say that good difficultly comes in two forms, a tutorial and flow creator.(Watch while i randomly make up terms to solidify the ideas in my head.) tutorial difficultly is when a game makes you learn to advance or at least makes it very hard to go on without doing so, this is thinking mans difficulty, you have to try different tactics, maybe use an ability you thought bad, or learn more about the enemy your fighting. Flow creating difficulty is not something I have thought about enough yet to explain but the best example of it would be the rhythm game, once you have a basic plan for how to do each button combo or an idea how a song goes its all about execution challenge, platformers also tend to work this way but less as a pure example.

Dark/demons souls are great examples of tutorial difficulty in that you have to learn about the challenges you face in order to beat them the game is almost entirely cerebral, its almost a physics problem, input character abilities, input challenge, do you get the correct answer, if no start try again. the problem/genius is that the game play is tight enough that good execution can overcome some pretty bad answer this obfuscates when you are doing thing sub-optimally, or are just flailing. the reason Yahtzee does not like the game is because at no point does this allow for a sense of flow I beat both games. At no point did I stop thinking its always "ok dodged now hit back, in this break after the next attack then I will have time to potion."

the bullet hell shooter is another good example of flow difficulty sure you watch the mobs to lean their attacks but that is not to put together what all of them are doing and calculate a safe path. Its just to start to internalize it, and let you fingers and eyes play the game with out your brain getting in the way.

 

[dimensional]

Difficulty done right is when you feel pushed but that the game is still within your abilities constantly challenging you to get better bit by bit and if you die well its because you messed up not because of some ridiculous op attack or misplaced camera or broken mechanic or ridiculous difficulty spike, Demons souls did it well imo mostly although it dropped the ball a couple of times, Bayonetta handled it great in fact I much much preferred that game on hard mode it actually came alive then non stop infinity climax mode was a bit of a let down its basically hard mode without witch time which was one of the most fun mechanics in the game for me, I still finished it but after they nailed hard mode I feel they dropped the ball on climax mode.

They also had optional hard as balls challenges in separate parts of the game for people who wanted to go even further without impeeding those who just wanted to play the game at a slightly higher level.