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Difficulty in Games


Ephesos

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To take a break from the absolutely scintillating discussions about soy milk, how freshwater life could've survived the biblical floods, and public education in the US pointlessly trolling one another, I present this article. (it's short, don't worry)

 

Now I know we have a lot of jaded min-maxers here, so I'm interested to hear people's thoughts.

 

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I have to agree with the article. There needs to be more balance put into trials and such. That's part of the reason I enjoy games like Baldur's Gate, Diablo, and the Exile/Avernum/Nethergate/Geneforge games.

 

Obviously all of the puzzles shouldn't be too tough or the game would become too hard and therefore not as fun too play, or all easy so the game isn't too challenging and again not that fun to play.

 

There needs to be a balance in the toughness of the trials and so few gamers get it right.

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I, too, agree with this article. When I sit down and play a video game, such as Geneforge or Avernum, I'm playing for fun. Sometimes, it's the storyline that's fun. So, when I get a game that has a really nice storyline, but is impossible to play, I don't have fun playing it. Therefore, I play those games on the easy difficulty, not because I'm bad at them, but because I don't want to struggle to have fun with them.

 

That said, there are other games, such as Fable or Halo, that I play just to kill things in. In those games, it's easy to go from getting massacred in combat to being a god of war. Those games are games where I want to progress in difficulty over time, to challenge myself.

 

The products developed by Spiderweb Software, Inc. address this issue rather nicely. If, like most times, I just want to advance in the game, not obsess over stats and equipment, then I can do that. On the other hand, on those times where I want to be a party of Anama warriors who don't use any magical items, unless needed by the plot, all on Torment, I can do that, as well.

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I'm not sure Myst's puzzles were entirely in the same category as the rubber chicken example. In my experience, it was entirely possible to wander around and enjoy the scenery, massively confused, and not really mind that you had no idea what was going on. Of course, I eventually wound up consulting a walkthrough in order to get myself started.

 

Myst also gets excused for the fact that there didn't always appear to be a mundane solution to the problems it presented. Off the top of my head, the only puzzle that had an easy/sensible solution was the clocktower leading to the Mechanical Age (why couldn't you just swim out there).

 

Originally Posted By: Celtic Minstrel
...You call that short?

 

Yes. Yes, I do. Funny how four years of college will do that to you.

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I'm typically a person who plays a game on easy mode. All of Jeff's games that I have played, I have done so on the easiest setting. I have once played a game for a challenge and that was halo. Beyond that I don't think I have ever played a game for the challenge. Mostly I prefer to enjoy my games and making it stupid hard just doesn't do it hard for me.

 

I once play halo all the way through on the hardest setting. Then for shits and giggles I played through on the easiest setting and thourghly enjoyed slaughtering everything with impunity.

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Originally Posted By: Lord Grey
Very few actually have button combos that do anything special.

Interesting, I had thought there were more, but that goes to show that I don't play console games. I had been thinking of one game in particular, but I don't remember what it was called.
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Hmm. It sounds to me as if the writer is projecting his own preference for storytelling-and-atmosphere over tactics onto the current gaming world. In reality, I think those two poles continue to coexist, and games of all media continue to be developed between them. People have varying degrees of comfort with each pole.

 

I think some of his specific complaints are out of context, too. To start with, the complex and obscure solution-finding he describes may be frustrating for one of two reasons:

 

1) It's pointless busywork. (Example: the item trading chain in Zelda: Link's Awakening.) Note that the same complaint applies to more common CRPG elements like gratuitous amounts of grinding.

 

2) It's not the kind of puzzle the players were expecting / looking for. In other words, those kind of think-out-of-the-box-riddles are expected and appreciated by text adventure players. They are not usually expected or appreciated by CRPG players. Thus the issue is not that difficulty of that sort is inherently bad, it's just not what many players want.

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Originally Posted By: Ephesos
I'm not sure Myst's puzzles were entirely in the same category as the rubber chicken example. In my experience, it was entirely possible to wander around and enjoy the scenery, massively confused, and not really mind that you had no idea what was going on. Of course, I eventually wound up consulting a walkthrough in order to get myself started.

Myst also gets excused for the fact that there didn't always appear to be a mundane solution to the problems it presented. Off the top of my head, the only puzzle that had an easy/sensible solution was the clocktower leading to the Mechanical Age (why couldn't you just swim out there).
I agree that Myst does not fall into the same category as the rubber chicken example. King's Quest does though, I think. I don't recall #6 being quite that bad, though. And I can't get #5 to work on my Win98 computer. Perhaps I should try it on DosBox... (And I've never known the other KQ's.)
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What I find frustrating are games that inconsistently require puzzle solving or finicky jumps. You try to perfect the barely possible jump, only to discover that it's not even barely possible, and you have to do something else instead, which is then easy once you think of it. But then the next time, you rack your brain to find the clever easy way, only to learn that the only way is a fussy jump that's very hard to make with the game controls.

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Well, there are a few places that don't work. The one house with the huge mines in it comes to mind, although I can't remember where it is. But overall, yes, that is a nice thing about the games here (or at least the geneforges, I haven't played the avernums). There is always something you can do. While it may not be on the major quest line, you can always keep busy.

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Aside from the personal preferences in there, though, I think he has a good point: most games lose their precious immersion if you have to reload repeatedly to retry. Obviously there are people who want to die over and over until they perfect their tactics for that one fight, but there are also people who want to be able to just play through the game.

 

—Alorael, who is absolutely behind the idea that games should find a way to prevent death from ruining your game. It should be exactly as much of a hardship as the game requires and no more. RPGs that allow saving whenever? Rather than making you save constantly so you can reload frequently, why not just have death penalize you in a way that doesn't have you hit quickload again... and again... and again? Games would be better for it.

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Originally Posted By: Wisteria Wall-Walker
It's pointless busywork. (Example: the item trading chain in Zelda: Link's Awakening.)
I can name at least four other Zelda games that are also guilty of this; the series, though not without merits, is becoming notorious for side quests that are both mandatory and meaningless.
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Originally Posted By: Lest we should fail in utterance
Rather than making you save constantly so you can reload frequently, why not just have death penalize you in a way that doesn't have you hit quickload again... and again... and again? Games would be better for it.


A lot of players will reload whenever they get any kind of penalty, though.
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Originally Posted By: Alorael
Why not just have death penalize you in a way that doesn't have you hit quickload again... and again... and again?


I've only ever found one game that does that, FATE. Background: Standard dungeon crawl, think rogue with shiny new graphics and not turn-based. Anyway, when you die, the god of fate appears to you and offers you three choices:

1.He will heal you and resurrect you where you stand, for a hefty XP penalty

2.He will heal you and resurrect you within three levels of where you were, for a moderate sum of gold (Dangerous, as you can be sent down as well as up)

3.He will resurrect you with 1 HP, and send you three levels upwards, but your gold remains where you died, and if you don't reach it in time, it disappears.
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Originally Posted By: Lest we should fail in utterance
Aside from the personal preferences in there, though, I think he has a good point: most games lose their precious immersion if you have to reload repeatedly to retry. Obviously there are people who want to die over and over until they perfect their tactics for that one fight, but there are also people who want to be able to just play through the game.



well there's a 360 game called fable2 and the way things are handled is when your health hits zero you get knocked down receive a scar then stand back up with full health
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Originally Posted By: Dantius
Originally Posted By: Alorael
Why not just have death penalize you in a way that doesn't have you hit quickload again... and again... and again?


I've only ever found one game that does that, FATE.
MMOs do that, too. Only they don't have a save option, so I guess it makes sense that they don't have a quickload button...
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Originally Posted By: Andraste
FATE is a Diablo clone, with some Rogue like elements.
This is true, but Diablo itself is a clear Rogue derivative. A roguelikelike?

Personally, I like the possibility of dying, as it gives me something to work to avoid. My favourite implementation of death is actually in Arcana (SNES): you lose the game if any PC dies.
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NetHack is a game of careful resource use, planning, and clever interactions. Diablo is more clearly a descendent of Moria, probably by way of UMoria and Angband.

 

—Alorael, who is quite sure that Diablo is a graphical, real-time roguelike. It's a town on top of a randomly-generated descending dungeon. The only thing it lacks is permadeath, and that's an available option (or at least is in the sequel). The sequel follows the path of many Angband derivatives and offers wilderness and more towns.

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NetHack is one of the canonical roguelikes, so the extra like wouldn't be necessary in any case. The two branches of the roguelike tree that everyone agrees on including are Moria/Angband and Hack/NetHack. Usually, there is another branch for Omega, ADOM, and the like.

 

Here's a pretty cool analysis.

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I played Diablo II for a long while. The death options were nice. If you abandon your game to get your body back, you lose your progress and some gold. On the higher difficulties, you also lose some exp, but never enough to drop you a level. Recovering your body in the same game saves you some of the exp.

 

The only problem I had with DII was the repetitiveness of it all. After you play for a few seasons, its always the same ol' same ol'. Make a character, get rich, make a new character, get richer, make a newer character, get even richer... That's why I started to play offline. Then school started...

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Originally Posted By: The Criticals
NetHack is one of the canonical roguelikes, so the extra like wouldn't be necessary in any case. The two branches of the roguelike tree that everyone agrees on including are Moria/Angband and Hack/NetHack. Usually, there is another branch for Omega, ADOM, and the like.


Well, once you go beyond the big two, you have to decide what classification system you're using. Do ToME and ADOM belong in the same family as each other because they're both roguelikes with multiple dungeons and an outdoors, or in different families because one's an Angband variant and the other's almost certainly an unacknowledged Nethack variant?
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My initial response to that article was a shocked "what?!", but if I had thought about it calmly and intelligently I might have said something like this:

 

Originally Posted By: Black Visc
Hmm. It sounds to me as if the writer is projecting his own preference for storytelling-and-atmosphere over tactics onto the current gaming world. In reality, I think those two poles continue to coexist, and games of all media continue to be developed between them. People have varying degrees of comfort with each pole.

 

I think some of his specific complaints are out of context, too.

Console games have been getting progressively easier for about fifteen years - I should know, I've been playing them longer than that. I'm not good at actiony games, but I can't remember the last game I played that presented a mandatory challenge (much less an insurmountable mandatory challenge) on the default difficulty setting, but which would have been fun otherwise. Even if you should happen to encounter one, you can probably find the story scenes on youtube.

 

I'm all for difficulty settings, but I feel that console games need them to make games harder, more often than not.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm with the notion that easy mode is for relaxation and general amusement. It's always nice for a party in Avernum or Geneforge to mass slaughter every creature and enemy in a dungeon.

 

Depending on the sort of game you play and difficulty is another story all together. I always ramp up the difficulty in strategy games, there's more foes with better stats and you have less units but there's always a way to get out of it and that's the appeal. And with bullet hell games the difficulty is the main appeal of the game in the first place so why play on easy?

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