Tanukitsune

Difficulty in games.. is it that difficult to understand?

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Oh, and if you're talking about the modern Ninja Gaiden, that game makes everybody not want to pick up a controller again!

No it doesn't, Ninja Gaiden is fantastic. It's punishing if you play it like a brawler or as a Dynasty warriors type game, play it properly and it's not as hard. There's only one thing which stands out as cheap to me in the second game: the fire armadillo.

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No it doesn't, Ninja Gaiden is fantastic. It's punishing if you play it like a brawler or as a Dynasty warriors type game, play it properly and it's not as hard. There's only one thing which stands out as cheap to me in the second game: the fire armadillo.

Really? That's what I get for assuming the first one was as borked as the second... :blink:

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I really wish they'd had a difficulty level in Super Mario Bros. Oh wait, no I don't, because that was an extremely well balanced game with a perfect difficulty curve. :mock: (Sorry, I'm sure that wasn't helpful to the discussion in any way, I just know that some great games didn't need them, but I appreciate that some do.)

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It'd be nice if you could make Super Mario Bros more difficult though because I've played it so much I could go through it in my sleep. More enemies being added to make certain sequences more difficult, more poison mushrooms like from The Lost Levels, etc would spice things up nicely. :tup:

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Difficulty levels have their place. People do have different levels of skill, in different genres too.

It would be nice if there was some consistancy I agree. Many times I have played a game on normal and found it too easy or too hard. But then I can't be bothered to start over. If the game is good enough I will replay it on another setting, but this is rare (the MGS games are good examples of me getting more out of a game when replaying it on hard mode).

It's tough though. There's not much science there. Judging difficulty is a black art. At best there are statistics; for instance in the way Valve uses them to analyse playstyles.

Sometimes it's hard to direct the designers on this. One game in which I was a QA consult had a couple of ridiculously hard levels, both designed by the same guy. He couldn't understand that the reason he found it easy was because he built it and knew the position and behaviour of every entity. It took months to balance that game, arguing all the way, but I think in the end it had a nice range of challenge for anybody who wanted to play it.

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So let me get this straight, most of us were brought up on "retro games that were broken and terrible" and yet we love gaming, but the new generation of gamers must be held by their hand constantly?

I fail to see your point here. I am a gamer despite the fact that some of the earlier games I played were insanely hard and thus almost unplayable for me. I imagine that many people back then were really put off by that aspect of gaming and in the worst case are now non-gamers because of that. And no, "the new generation of gamers" must not be held by their hand constantly. Adding difficulty levels does not mean lowering the difficulty level, it means adding difficulty levels.

I'm not too familiar with the games industry but I can imagine the production of a triple-A title to cost a shitload more now than any game in, say, NES era. It is just safer to have a couple of different difficulty levels than to risk losing sales from the portion of audience that thinks the game is either way too easy or hard for them. And no, I don't think you can make every modern game so balanced that it still wouldn't feel way too easy or way too difficult for some people.

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Playing on easy for newcomers can be detrimental for them in the end, like I said before, while I played shooters on easy I never got any better until I played those that didn't have easy mode, you don't learn how to play the game properly unless you play on harder modes, but since you can't play properly you play on easy.... Maybe there are good example of games were easy mode is just right to get you ready for the other modes, but I can't think of any right now....

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To be honest the 'easy' difficulty is fairly self-explanatory: you're playing a watered-down version of how challenging the game is meant to be. If you play it on that difficulty you have to expect the game to bow down and let you walk all over it — you can't blame the developers for you choosing the easy road every time. If you don't choose to promote yourself to 'normal' after conquering a few games on 'easy' that's down to you.

I personally think the way difficulty is approached in games is good and solves multiple problems, and if you choose 'normal' you almost always get a challenging but bearable game.

It means people who're more or less skilled can choose a more suitable level of challenge from the outset, and it also means those who've finished a game can enjoy it in a different way — particularly when the difficulty levels are masterfully crafted like in Metal Gear solid, which remains many people's example of choice and is a great benchmark for how to do it right. Some games are lazily designed when it comes to balancing difficulties, but then those same games are often lazily designed in many other ways too. :fart:

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Maybe I'm looking at this all wrong? Maybe we a difficulty setting BUT it has the option of adding adaptive difficulty, that way you can play on easier settings if you just want the story or lack the skill, but you add adaptive difficulty in case you're new but you want to get better? :erm:

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Playing on easy for newcomers can be detrimental for them in the end, like I said before, while I played shooters on easy I never got any better until I played those that didn't have easy mode, you don't learn how to play the game properly unless you play on harder modes, but since you can't play properly you play on easy.... Maybe there are good example of games were easy mode is just right to get you ready for the other modes, but I can't think of any right now....

This is dangerously close to being a ridiculous semantic argument. You don't get to define what "playing a game properly" means. My girlfriend loves playing games... she's recently put about 150 hours into the Mass Effect franchise. But she doesn't really like the combat so much, so she sets it to easy so she can breeze through it and enjoy the story/dialogue. So for her, lacking difficulty settings can make or break her total interest in the game.

Are you trying to imply that she should play on higher difficulty settings just so she can be a "hardcore gamer"?

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No, I'm implying that in some games you won't get better if you play on easy, you're not playing the game wrong, if the enemy dies too soon you won't learn anything from the experience, simple as that? :erm:

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I think this thread has nicely highlighted that this isn't really a problem that can be solved with any one setting as many people use difficulty settings for many different things. I use it for replayability, some use it so they can breeze through a game because they don't want a real challenge, some use it to get better at a certain genre, etc. The only real approach is to have different modes available to satisfy different needs.

Perhaps those settings could be better described (once again MGS excels here, using labels like 'if you've played an MGS game before', 'if you've played an action game before', etc), and perhaps lazy design sometimes results in lameness, but it's generally a solid system.

I think you'd be better served by using 'normal' if improvement is your goal, though. 'Easy' really is designed to always be easy, not to start off easy and get harder — just like 'hard' starts off hard and gets even harder. 'Normal' is almost always a well-engineered gradient from easy to hard if the developers have done their job properly.

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Except for those crazy bullet hell games, those are murder on any setting! :deranged:

If games were balanced playing on normal would work, but like I said before, what's normal for one game is hardcore in others.... :|

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I'm against difficulty settings that are just enemy number/health/damage or player character health/damage sliders. I realize that this will come into play in some way, but that shouldn't be the extent of the changes. However, I'm not against offering an array of settings to challenge the player.

This is basically what I hate as well, lazy difficulty changes. I'm not against difficulty setting changes, since I think it's proofing your game for a wider audience to enjoy, but I think you should add incentive for hard mode or easy mode in some way. It makes it more interesting and makes for better subsequent play throughs.

But I'm annoyed, as an OCD gamer, when games dangle some carrot on a string to me for beating a hard difficulty that is frustratingly unfair. Either an extended ending or some kind of unlockable is usually the carrot. I just don't like getting furious or cursing over a game. My girlfriend really hates when I curse up a storm over a game. I don't want to make her sad.

That said, I don't think I've recently encountered any crazy difficulty over the last year, especially in newer games. I did Castle Crashers Insane with some friends, but we knew what we were getting into, and besides one really obnoxious part, it wasn't that bad. I have been messing with the VR Missions in Metal Gear Solid Substance, but I'm about halfway done, and really nothing is terrible outside of any mission where I'm a sniper having to target things quickly and sharply. That shit sucks. Before that, the last hardest game to finish was getting all the gold medals and whatever else on Kirby's Dreamcourse, but this was the regular early 90s difficulty offered up.

I don't believe an easy game becomes forgettable though. I have no problem with games that aren't difficult since I find the experience counts more. I don't miss it if I have been playing for four hours or something and realized I haven't died once. I think Beyond Good and Evil is a great example of this. I guess many others would disagree, but I guess I already have my fair share of frustrating or difficult games to play still, so it's nice to mix it up every once and a while.

I really wish they'd had a difficulty level in Super Mario Bros. Oh wait, no I don't, because that was an extremely well balanced game with a perfect difficulty curve. :mock: (Sorry, I'm sure that wasn't helpful to the discussion in any way, I just know that some great games didn't need them, but I appreciate that some do.)

Really? I think that game is pretty difficult even with the curve. I certainly would never be able to finish the game without warping (even then, I probably couldn't) or playing one of the versions that allow you to save before each level. I finished Lost Levels on All Stars and on the GBC Deluxe one and that was just frustrating beyond belief. I almost feel like the original Super Mario Bros. sequel was impossible for anyone to realistically finish without saving.

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Yeah, that's the worst... every game should have a "New Game +" or some weapon or armor to make the next playthrough quicker...:blink:

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"The game is Fairytale Fights... you have unlimited lives and respawn where you died, more or less and yet... it's was frustrating AND boring, imagine a game that respawns you next to fire trap and you have a 90% of dying again immediately after respawning..."

Ooooh I wasn't going to make any comments on this thread and then you had to bring this game up.

I can tell you now, for a fact, that just because only two testers were credited, there will definitely have been more than two testers working on it. A lot of the time these small to mid range games outsource their work to QA houses that are on a strict remit to only test certain things (ie: submission threat worthy bugs).

You also seem to be confusing QA testers with play-testers or focus groups. I've worked in both fields and the scope of what you are looking for is very different. QA generally would bug things like that fire trap issue as it is a genuine bug but it would depend on what their remit is. Play-testers would not bug it but would report it and use it as an example of inherent frustrations in the level.

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No, I'm implying that in some games you won't get better if you play on easy, you're not playing the game wrong, if the enemy dies too soon you won't learn anything from the experience, simple as that? :erm:

So "playing a game properly" means getting better at it?

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I just don't see this. Gamer's have different skill levels.

The only needed example and place to look is Starcraft II. There's Easy, Medium, Hard, Very Hard, Brutal modes of difficulty. These levels of difficulty increase the AI's "smartness". You know how insane some Starcraft II players are. Do you honestly think they would even try to play the campaign if it was stuck on Medium? It would be too easy, not fun, not rewarding, and not challenging - the reason they play the game in the first place. If you go in the reverse, I cannot even beat the AI on hard all the time, let alone very hard or brutal. But, maybe with enough skill, I could.

That being said, some games don't need it either. Well, maybe it's a matter of the genre. Some genre's don't need it like experimental games, casual games, etc. Games where the outcome of the game isn't based on a learned or taught skill, rather, something uniquely/innately developed in the game or from real life.

TLDNR: Difficulty needs to be in some games.

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"The game is Fairytale Fights... you have unlimited lives and respawn where you died, more or less and yet... it's was frustrating AND boring, imagine a game that respawns you next to fire trap and you have a 90% of dying again immediately after respawning..."

Ooooh I wasn't going to make any comments on this thread and then you had to bring this game up.

I can tell you now, for a fact, that just because only two testers were credited, there will definitely have been more than two testers working on it. A lot of the time these small to mid range games outsource their work to QA houses that are on a strict remit to only test certain things (ie: submission threat worthy bugs).

You also seem to be confusing QA testers with play-testers or focus groups. I've worked in both fields and the scope of what you are looking for is very different. QA generally would bug things like that fire trap issue as it is a genuine bug but it would depend on what their remit is. Play-testers would not bug it but would report it and use it as an example of inherent frustrations in the level.

Have you played this game? It better have had a small QA test group! It one of the most broken game I've played in ages!

So "playing a game properly" means getting better at it?

Do you think I'm going Hydrophobia on you? YOU'RE NOT PLAYING THE GAME RIGHT!

Maybe sometimes you aren't playing the game right, but that's probably because the game didn't explain itself well enough, many games leave things unexplained in tutorials and manuals...

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What? And you didn't say anything about the terrible respawning in some of the boss battles?

The Pied Piper fire traps are right next to the spawn point, so die 9 out 10 times when respawning....

If the Little Giant kills you by blowing you into the thorns.. you spawn in front of the thorns and die again... :frusty:

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Have you reached the Beaver boss battle yet? That is probably the most broken part of the game.

Like I said, our focus and brief was about getting the game through submission the issues you described were most likely present but that was not threatening to submission so was not our priority. Standard functionality QA would probably flagged it as a mid-range bug (the fact that you respawn infinitely means that it is not a major game breaker but jarring to the end user) and Play-tester would have cited as extremely annoying.

I can't say much more than that without getting myself in trouble.

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Have you reached the Beaver boss battle yet? That is probably the most broken part of the game.

Like I said, our focus and brief was about getting the game through submission the issues you described were most likely present but that was not threatening to submission so was not our priority. Standard functionality QA would probably flagged it as a mid-range bug (the fact that you respawn infinitely means that it is not a major game breaker but jarring to the end user) and Play-tester would have cited as extremely annoying.

I can't say much more than that without getting myself in trouble.

Most boss battles were kinda broken, nearly all of their attacks cause instant death and it's hard to tell if you're hurting them or not...:blink:

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Now this is something I keep finding interesting about your definition of 'broken'.

Pretty much everything you cite is not so much as 'broken' from a QA perspective but actually poor design. Even the extreme respawn examples you gave, because of the way the life system works (although my memory is a little vague on that aspect as it was over a year ago), would not be flagged as high risk due to the way the game was designed. Of course if the game was designed with a 3 life limit or something similar then those 'design choices' would then immediately be considered broken by QA as they would akin to progression breakers

One thing I would agree with is that in the smaller teams where they cannot afford to play test is that usually, by the end of the project the testers are so familiar with the content that they will often not encounter a lot of these issues. You have to appreciate that some of them will work on the project for 9 months from very early Alpha all the way to gold master candidate and be expected to complete playthroughs in the space of a day. This leads them to be able to breeze through the parts you are struggling with.

That said even if they brought some people in from outside to critique the broken elements of their design who would do it for free, it would still be a waste of time as budget constraints will often leave developers unwilling to change code unless they absolutely have to.

I am using Fairytale Fights as an example but note, I have not referred to any part of the QA work explicitly on that project and I can say that all of the above counts for about 80% of the projects I have ever worked on.

This has derailed the thread a little Tanu, and I already feel like I am saying too much. If you are interested in continuing chatting about this, PM me as I can talk a little more freely.

As for difficulty levels it really depends on the design of the game. I really wouldn't want to see Demon's Souls get a difficulty setting as it would undermine the intent. However, games like CoD(even if I think that the implementation is terrible) and Halo merit them due to the market they are aimed at. The same for Bioshock, some people just want to experience the game and don't want to get stuck. So for them a scalable difficulty is acceptable. For some games the stress and difficulty is the experience.

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