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

[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 .

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.)

OP asked i question , i provided my answer . There is no such thing as "getting difficulty wrong " , only " playing the game wrong".

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 .

^I gotta call bullshit.

There are many, many ways of badly designing difficulty, and saying the standard is 'the game can't be impossible' is an incredibly low bar to set.

by that standard, if Halo only had pistols and Legendary difficulty, it would have 'good' difficulty according to you, because that's possible.

Just because most people can't beat it doesn't make it wrong . It just makes it unaccessible to a large group of gamers , something developpers try very hard to avoid . And because they purposely avoid making unaccessible games , none of the games we have here are unfairly difficult .

You see people like to complain when they aren't able to complet a task. Now i'm not saying they don't have the right to complain , but it's not the developpers fault is players cannot complete a game , especially on higher difficulties. I just means that the players aren't good enough . Because let's face it , QA testers have to go through these games .

 

[XMark]

I'll jump on the Souls train for this thread. Aside from a few cheap shots, most of the game is fair with its difficulty. Although, I would say that maybe the Souls games should have made the early areas easier, and ramp the difficulty up from there instead of just slamming you with a brick wall of difficulty right from the start. I'm sure they lost tons of potential players by scaring them away at the beginning.

 

[kommando367]

The later made Ninja Gaidens and the higher difficulty levels on God of War, Gears of War, Halo 3 through 4, Demon Souls, (but not dark souls), Resistance 1, and the Devil May Cry series (except 2).

 

[MetalGenocide]

Right at this moment I can't accurately describe "proper difficulty", but I can say what isn't.

Enemies with cosmic amounts of life, and retardedly telegraphed offense. RPG are especially guilty of this. I wish I can say "I'm looking at you diablo3", but it really isn't one.

Edit: Oh wait, it's coming back to me. One of the best examples of difficulty is Quake 3, play vs bots on nightmare.

 

[scorptatious]

Hmm, it's hard to say.

I've played a lot of games where

1. The game's difficulty was mellow for the most part and then spikes at one point or two points.

2. The game's difficulty was easy throughout.

3. The game's difficulty was difficult throughout.

I have a hard time thinking about games that manage to have a decent difficulty curve.

I guess the most recent example of a game that "does difficulty right" would be this one user created level I played yesterday in LittleBigPlanet 2. In which the goal of the levels is to traverse from the red square to the green square, while at the same time, getting rid of all the white squares that disappear when you walk on and walk off of them.

The first level was pretty much impossible to lose, but it gave me a very good idea of what I'm supposed to be doing. From then on, the game's levels got progressively larger and harder. Eventually, the game introduced darker squares that had to be stepped on twice in order to get rid of them.

Throughout the game, the levels got more intricate and more challenging. But the earlier levels helped me understand the strategy to dealing with these kinds of puzzles, so I never felt the game had gotten too hard at any point. As a result, I didn't get very frustrated, but I was still satisfied when I actually did finish the game.

 

[StriderShinryu]

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

This, to me, is pretty much a requirement in good difficulty. When you fail, it should always be and feel like it's your fault. That doesn't necessarily mean that you could/should have been able to do it the first time with no problems, but more that the option was there if you are a quick study and totally on your game. Each attempt should be about learning to play better, not just about memorizing obscure patterns or data that just exist as "trial and error" padding. This is the sort of good difficulty that run deeper than difficulty settings that move harder monsters around or gives them more HP.

 

[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 .

You're wrong. A game that has difficulty done wrong is a game that tries to suck out the fun and forces you to simply be more careful. As others have said, these are games where increasing the difficulty basically just increases the health and damage of others, making it so it's just more time consuming.

Difficulty done right is a game where the difficulty tests your skill at the game and makes you think more carefully. Examples of this would be Counter Strike (though not many people play AI), Dark Souls, Super Meat Boy and Mark of the Ninja.

You are wrong . You can't just make a list of games YOU find challenging and YOU enjoy and state it as fact . Fun is subjective . Why would you assume no one likes having to be more careful? Why would you assume , that no one enjoys having enemies with increased health/damage . Why would you assume this sucks out the fun for everyone?

If it was so terrible and no one liked it , developpers would not keep doing it . So apparently , there is a market for that kind of difficulty , and there are people that enjoy it. You just happen to not be one of those people . Which is fine , but don't go assuming that no one does . There are people that tackle such games on the highest difficulty and succeed .

[Small]Disclaimer : i'm not saying any of the games you mentionned are bad , i'm just saying a subjective list doesn't prove anything .[/small]

 

[DustyDrB]

There's one thing I hate when you increase difficulty on many games: Increased enemy HP. That's boring, man. Maybe make the enemy more resistant to certain types of attacks, so you have to think about how you approach them. Make them do more damage. But just straight up making them damage sponges is irritating. That's why I don't play Skyrim on any difficulty higher than Adept.

 

[The Wykydtron]

Oh god the "difficult but fair" Dark Souls brigade has arrived already... Sure Dark Souls is not too bullshit most of the time but I can give you a fair few examples of when the game says "nope, you're dying now. No questions"

OT: A game can be as challenging as it wants to be as long as there is some motivation offered to go through all the difficult crap. One of my main problems with Dark Souls is actually that there is no reason why your main character is willing to do all this random stuff in the first place. Oh there are bells are there random man? Why thanks! I really feel motivated to continue with the story on the whole bells front now.

Persona 4 does it perfectly. I ragequitted from the one boss fight then felt obligated to come back to it about 30 minutes afterwards. I didn't want to leave Leeroy and Company forever lost in the Strip Club dammit!

 

[Vern5]

A game that can claim to be fair teaches the player what he needs to know in the course of playing the game and then challenges the player to make quick use of what they know with something akin to a boss fight.

I think the best example of this kind of teach-as-you-play design would probably be the dungeons from Legend of Zelda. Each one has a specific item found within and the majority of the dungeon's design challenges the player to utilize their new item in order to proceed. However, the dungeon rarely forces the player to learn how to use their item while under pressure. This changes when the player reaches the boss, where the item becomes the boss's specific weakness in one way or another.

 

[uchytjes]

Metal gear solid 2 had a very good difficulty system. I actually couldn't get past the very first boss on the hardest difficulty... then again I was 12. Oh how i love my parents

Also, epic battle fantasy did an amazing job with difficulty, especially for a free flash game! When I beat the final boss, I yelled "hell yeah" loud enough to wake my roommate at 2:00 in the morning.

 

[lacktheknack]

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 .

While I understand what you're trying to say, I have to say that it's difficult to see random chance of being instakilled as anything except "incorrectly implemented difficulty".

 

[AgentLampshade]

The original Devil May Cry 3 (not the special edition) did pretty well, even if it was a technical error.

IIRC they made the normal mode equivalent to hard mode in the special edition.

Now imagine the hardest difficulty. Yeah. Luckily they had the option where if you die a few times, you get the option of using easy mode. This was a fantastic design choice as it encouraged people to try a harder difficulty first. More games should do this.

 

[Bad Jim]

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 .

You're wrong. A game that has difficulty done wrong is a game that tries to suck out the fun and forces you to simply be more careful. As others have said, these are games where increasing the difficulty basically just increases the health and damage of others, making it so it's just more time consuming.

Difficulty done right is a game where the difficulty tests your skill at the game and makes you think more carefully. Examples of this would be Counter Strike (though not many people play AI), Dark Souls, Super Meat Boy and Mark of the Ninja.

You are wrong . You can't just make a list of games YOU find challenging and YOU enjoy and state it as fact . Fun is subjective . Why would you assume no one likes having to be more careful? Why would you assume , that no one enjoys having enemies with increased health/damage . Why would you assume this sucks out the fun for everyone?

If it was so terrible and no one liked it , developpers would not keep doing it . So apparently , there is a market for that kind of difficulty , and there are people that enjoy it. You just happen to not be one of those people . Which is fine , but don't go assuming that no one does . There are people that tackle such games on the highest difficulty and succeed .

[Small]Disclaimer : i'm not saying any of the games you mentionned are bad , i'm just saying a subjective list doesn't prove anything .[/small]

Well there are quite a few games where higher difficulties have clearly not been playtested. The worst example I can think of is the original XCOM:UFO Defence / UFO Enemy Unknown. There is actually a bug in that game that resets the difficulty to the easiest after the first mission, so you're effectively playing on the easiest setting regardless of what you selected. This is really something that should have been noticed. Fortunately, the easiest setting is still somewhat challenging, so it's still a fun game, but very disappointing if you want a real challenge.

More common is where higher difficulty spikes hard in a few places but does not make most of the game harder.

 

[thesilentman]

OT: A game can be as challenging as it wants to be as long as there is some motivation offered to go through all the difficult crap. One of my main problems with Dark Souls is actually that there is no reason why your main character is willing to do all this random stuff in the first place. Oh there are bells are there random man? Why thanks! I really feel motivated to continue with the story on the whole bells front now.

I don't take offense to the "difficult, but fair" brigade, but I will say that the reason that Dark Souls worked is player participation. You will not learn Dark Souls unless you let yourself learn what the game's saying. Sure, people can get through the game with the same attention span of a goldfish, but to understand the game, the player needs to have a part in it.

Also look at Dark Souls. The game, at its basis is very simple. You have a Sprint, Block, and Attack button. You can go through the entire game doing perfectly fine with only using those simple commands. Hell, you can defeat 90% of the bosses stark naked with a broken weapon at level 1 if you truly wanted (it would just take longer to beat the bosses down).

The Simple controls allows you to get very good, if you are patient enough to master them. This allows the Game Developers to start off relatively easy and then quickly ramp up the difficulty. Super Mario Bros 3 remains the perfect showing of this to me. By the end of the game, you should have mastered the controls and the game hardly feels unfair by that point.

Ninja'd. Twice. You'd think I'd learn...

OT- Since Captain here already took my two examples, I'll expand on that. The reason that Dark Souls also succeeded with its difficulty is the fact that the gameplay was carefully designed around the fact that the game tells you, "You're insignificant; now allow me to show you why." The game wanted to beat you down and show you what the meaning of surviving in it's world, making you learn the mechanics and beat the game.

Same with Mario 3. It's the only game that outright makes me think that "Gee. I suck now, don't I?" without being a dick about it. It also proved that learning a game's mechanics is a good way to learn and worth it in the end.

In the end, difficulty is a form of immersion for me. I get immersed when a game grips me to the core and challenges me, but not when it downright insults me by making it too easy or too hard for all the wrong reasons.

 

[JagermanXcell]

The Souls Series, because every other post before me, thats why.
DMC3 does this well too, it rewards your efforts for doing stylish combos and merely trying to survive, and unlike Dark Souls, the story is engaging enough to where you want to keep playing and are motivated to see what happens next. Not like a certain upcoming reboot that shall not be named...

OT: I really need to stop hating on that garbage Ninja Theory game...

God Hand and I don't care that the story finally shows up 2 hrs in, this game is a frikin' hoot to play no matter how hard it is, and the combo set up system really needs to implemented into more games its simply such a unique system.