Difficulty and balance in Video games.

[I_smell]

Yeah everything, I can't get halfway through any of those games I mentioned without sitting back like "jeez, am I doin this right!?" I've only ever beat old games with like emulator save states.

I've never seriously tried to play a Megaman game, cos oh lord!

I've beat Super Meat Boy and other modern hard games, but y'know, my only point here is just that old games are as hard as people say they are.

[elmuerte]

Play Shinobi, play Golden Axe, Contra, Streets of Rage, Metal Slug, Gunstar Heroes, Altered Beast, any game I remember liking from the Mega Drive: It's impossible.

I couldn't finish a game up until the PS1, and in most cases I still can't without cheating.

Old games are definately hard as hell, don't worry about that. Sometimes not in FUN WAYS, but they're definately all harder.

I've beaten Shinobi on the PC without cheating. And I've beaten Streets of Rage on an actual arcade machine. (Or was that final fight? or both?) Anyway, I've beaten most Streets of Rage and Final Fight games in emulators and finished them without (savE) cheating (but not in 1 playthrough).

Altered Beast ... that one is impossible.

[I_smell]

Alright, well what we've learned here is that I'm bad at games, and have a pavlovian mental block that cripples me whenever I hear the Sega Megadrive sound-chip.

Back to the thread.

[Lork]

I don't think it's that simple, i've seen a lot of people who have wanted and tried to play through a Halo game on heroic or above, but get caught up just trying to chew through an elite's shields with a battle rifle and end up just getting nowhere. They don't even realize that they're doing something wrong, it just seems unfairly difficult to them. I mean, and everything that is there is still a part of the game on normal, but it's tweaked to the point where you start feeling it, where it starts mattering. The rules are upended on them without any explanation, and even though they want that greater challenge, the game is being opaque about what it's doing.

My belief is that this happens pretty frequently, the training wheels come off and people simply don't know what to do. I mean, a lot of things that seem self-explanatory in hindsight are anything but. I'm not for lengthy tutorials being shoved down a person's throat, that would be awful, I just wish that information would be in there somewhere. It's always shocking to me how much of it isn't. I think it would be about making games more accessible to the people who want more out of their games. The vast majority of people are never going to be willing to spend hours experimenting with the mechanics on their own, or start scouring the internet and to search for explanations of the systems in the game. Instead, they'll beat their head against it and eventually give up.

I suppose you're right. I've just never heard of anyone having that problem before now. It does seem kind of odd that they don't bother mentioning that stuff at any point. Even a throwaway line of incidental dialogue, like "Try using plasma, it works better against their shields!" would help.

I didn't mean to imply that they're just cranking up a knob, that would be silly.

I have always felt that a lot of BioShock's issues could be at least helped by toning down the over-abundance of resources. Supplies are uncharacteristically plentiful for that style of game, you never really have to stop and consider what you have on hand.

I apologize for being overly reductive before, but that's exactly what I was talking about. Reducing the amount of resources available to the player wouldn't help expose the more "fun" mechanics of Bioshock because the most efficient ways to play don't take advantage of them. You'd go from "Eh, I could shoot bees out of my hand, but why bother when I can just use the wrench?" to "I'd better not do anything wasteful like shoot bees out my hand, instead I'll use the wrench." What really needs to be done is to give the player a reason to use bees instead of the wrench sometimes, which is a change that would affect the game regardless of how difficult it was, and so could hardly be called a "difficulty adjustment".

To put it another way, a game needs to have a solid core that can be interesting and fun to play regardless of how hard it is. The only thing difficulty can do is enhance or focus that core. If there's something wrong with the core, the only thing "enhancing" it will do is expose the flaws with greater clarity.

And you can add me to the list of people who have no idea what Tanukitsune is talking about. Even supposedly "hardcore" games like Super Meat Boy and Spelunky have nothing on the sheer amount of ridiculously over the top difficulty and frustration generated by the likes of Castlevania, Megaman, Ninja Gaiden or Contra. And those aren't AVGN fodder either, they're widely considered to be some of the best games of their generation. Maybe I just haven't played whatever modern games you're thinking of, Tanu. It would help if you could mention a couple specific ones.

[Sno]

I've never seriously tried to play a Megaman game, cos oh lord!

Probably my favorite nasty stage from a Megaman game is

from Mega Man 2. (I'm pretty sure the items in the force beam sections are just the level designer being a dick, because the only way to get any of them is to use the timestopper, which you don't want to waste because it's also what Quick Man is weak to.)

Mega Man is great though, play MM2 and MMX!

I suppose you're right. I've just never heard of anyone having that problem before now. It does seem kind of odd that they don't bother mentioning that stuff at any point. Even a throwaway line of incidental dialogue, like "Try using plasma, it works better against their shields!" would help.

It's something i started looking for after trying to get some friends into fighting games (successfully) and realizing how abysmal of a job fighting games do in teaching people to play. Not even just the lack of tutorials, but how there are basic mechanics that are in no way visibly surfaced. Fighting games have things going on that you will not understand are happening unless somebody tells you to be aware of them and then what to do with them. I think we all like to believe that the experience of playing a game is itself very instructive, learn by doing and all, but more and more i've been noticing that not to be the case at all. I think it's preventing a lot of people from getting into the deeper end of the games they play.

Still, maybe the lesson to take from that isn't that games need more tutorials, but need to be more transparent about their systems, or perhaps a bit of both.

I apologize for being overly reductive before, but that's exactly what I was talking about. Reducing the amount of resources available to the player wouldn't help expose the more "fun" mechanics of Bioshock because the most efficient ways to play don't take advantage of them. You'd go from "Eh, I could shoot bees out of my hand, but why bother when I can just use the wrench?" to "I'd better not do anything wasteful like shoot bees out my hand, instead I'll use the wrench." What really needs to be done is to give the player a reason to use bees instead of the wrench sometimes, which is a change that would affect the game regardless of how difficult it was, and so could hardly be called a "difficulty adjustment".

To put it another way, a game needs to have a solid core that can be interesting and fun to play regardless of how hard it is. The only thing difficulty can do is enhance or focus that core. If there's something wrong with the core, the only thing "enhancing" it will do is expose the flaws with greater clarity.

I acknowledge what you're saying here, but i don't think it changes that games could generally stand to be more difficult. The improved balance you suggest isn't going to be felt by the player unless they're working within tighter constraints imposed by the game. I've also been saying from the start, definitely not clearly enough, that increasing the challenge doesn't fix the flaws inherent in a game and can at worst exacerbate them, but the main point is that it can also emphasize a game's strengths in a really satisfying way.

[Tanukitsune]

You know, the Mega Man talk reminded me of how Mega Man has as a tutorial "mechanically", if you've seen Sequelitis, you probably already know what I mean, but Mega Man tends to present many obstacles and enemies in "safer" environments. Remember those disappearing platforms that make you fall to your doom? They usually have a room before that where can "practice" since it has a floor and you won't die if you fall.

[Sno]

MegaMan gets a somehwat deserved bad rep from all the shitty sequels, because there have been a lot of shitty sequels, but the games that hit the mark are wonderful. Some of my favorite platformers, i'd say.

[Henroid]

You know, the Mega Man talk reminded me of how Mega Man has as a tutorial "mechanically", if you've seen Sequelitis, you probably already know what I mean, but Mega Man tends to present many obstacles and enemies in "safer" environments. Remember those disappearing platforms that make you fall to your doom? They usually have a room before that where can "practice" since it has a floor and you won't die if you fall.

I would describe it as being more of structurally tutorialized. But absolutely correct on this point.

[Sno]

Edit: I'm just going to delete this one, because I don't think i agree with what i've said. (Is there a way to delete posts on this forum software?)

[I_smell]

Yeah most games are really careful about introducing new mechanics. The developer commentary in Portal is kind of all about that.

Portal and Portal 2 have really great learning curves, I don't think anyone ever said they were too easy or boring, or got stuck at a part and quitted.

Funny though, that every game with a portal gun in it (tiny indie games mostly) are ALWAYS too slow and tutorialized. They introduce how everything works piece-by-piece just like Portal does, but without acknowledging that everybody already GETS IT by now.

Games that're designed for a wide audience, like DarkSiders or Assassin's Creed, must have a really hard time designing for people who've played games forever, AND people who are finding out this stuff for the first time. How do you ease people into the idea of what a hookshot or gravity gun is without boring the people who already know?

Yeah I bet that's a real pain for someone out there to figure out.

[flaps]

Difficulty can fall into so many categories, too. For example, the type of difficulty you will encounter in an adventure game greatly differs from what you'll be up against in Halo. And within each category of difficulty, the criteria for what constitutes a good and rewarding difficulty curve and possible design pitfalls leading to frustration, are completely different. In a shooter, like Halo, control limitations could be interpreted by the player as perceived difficulty. In an adventure game, illogical puzzles can lead to player frustration and also be interpreted as difficulty. In my opinion "good difficulty" is that which is surmountable by a progression in player skill. And the game should be teaching the player everything he needs in order to reach that goal, whether that involves training reflexive twitch responses or instilling a particular style of puzzle logic.

People are extremely adaptable and they'll even get used to bad controls and bad mechanics. Where frustration tends to arise is wherever a game does not meet player intent. Games do train player intent, to a point, by responding to input in a consistent and systemized way. And players do expect (from experience) that each game will feel somewhat different and allow them different levels and types of interaction, so they're receptive to the feedback-training loop. A breakdown of this loop, through lack of information, bad logic, or inconsistent feedback, will cause frustration. This makes the game difficult to play, but not necessarily difficult relative to an attainable level of skill.

[SecretAsianMan]

I like to adjust difficulty in games by giving myself personal "challenges" without changing the difficulty level. For example, I'll play an entire level of Halo using ONLY human weapons. I love it when games support this kind of thing without necessarily making it a menu option. Some games even encourage it. I can think of 2 examples from Half-Life 2. Both of them are tied to achievements. I'm not going to go into a rant here about achievements because frankly I don't care about them, but I will say these were 2 of my favorite achievements because they encouraged interesting gameplay.

The first one is going through all of Ravenholm in HL2 using only the gravity gun. It made me approach each situation differently and added to the atmosphere of the level. Without an accurate long range weapon, suddenly every headcrab and zombie was a much bigger threat and I had to conserve my "ammo" by carefully aiming my projectile (usually a sawblade) in such a way that I could recover it later. Obviously I could ignore this challenge at any time and just start shooting everything in sight (at one point you are literally handed a new weapon). But playing it this way made the section more difficult and the end result was much more satisfying than if it simply took more shots to kill a zombie.

The second one is similar to the first but still different enough to mention. In HL2: Ep1 there's an achievement for completing the episode using only ONE bullet. This leave you with the crowbar, gravity gun, and explosives (I think, can't remember if explosives count for this achievement or not). This makes you much more reliant on Alex and changed the tone of the episode for me. In a way, it almost felt like a reverse escort mission. Instead of me having to protect my AI buddy, suddenly I was dependent on her to take care of a lot of the enemies, something she did remarkably well I might add. Again, I was free at any time to just pull out my guns and shoot everything. But it was so much more fun to try and maneuver my enemies into a position that allowed my companion to finish them off.

I'm also reminded of a tale Chris told about playing Splinter Cell: Conviction, where he would line up headshots instead of using the game's mechanic of getting melee kills, then tagging enemies and auto-headshotting them. Whether or not this changed the game's difficulty I can't say, but it's a different way of playing the game without changing anything in the game.

I sort of got off topic there. I guess my point is that it's possible to change the "difficulty" of a game without modifying the game in any way, but sometimes it's up to the player to figure out a way of doing it. I'm not suggesting every game should support this, and it's certainly a challenge to come up with a system that allows it, but I really enjoy it when they do.

[I_smell]

Whenever I talk about Achivements, that Ravenholm one is the one I bring up. I literally did not see the point in achievements, and then suddenly got it while playing that.

It's not even really that difficult, it's just a wacky spin on the game. Geometry Wars also did this really early on, and back on the PS2, the Ratchet & Clank games had this side-thing called "Skill Points" that were basically nutty challenges.

Of course most achivements are just a shitty number-crunch badge, like "Completed Mission 01" or "Halfway there..."

I guess it ties into the theme of this thread that engineering a different style of playing what's there is always way more valuable than cranking up all the numbers.

[flaps]

Hit fingers with hammer to increase difficulty.

[BFrank]

I'm not a fan of multiple difficulty levels. My sense of it is that they're a crutch developers use when they've bitten off more than they can chew and are unsure how real people will respond to this big, wild mess they've made.

I guess I'm arguing that there's always a 'real', intended difficulty and I want the game to kindly point me towards it. Mario Kart may have 50/100/150cc cups, but the 'intended' difficulty is 'with real opponents'. Halo has a bunch of options, but only one of them seems intended for people who know how to navigate in first person and pull the trigger sometimes but haven't yet memorized the map layout and enemy spawns of the campaign.

I know that kinda runs counter to the PC-centric 'just give me options' mentality. I'm fine with options, I just hate checking my own temperature throughout an experience: "is this too easy? too hard? Hmmm!"

[darthbator]

MegaMan gets a somehwat deserved bad rep from all the shitty sequels, because there have been a lot of shitty sequels, but the games that hit the mark are wonderful. Some of my favorite platformers, i'd say.

Before I say this let me start by saying Mega Man X is among my top 10 (maybe 5) games of all time. However I think the mega man series in general suffers from a kind of specific nostalgia poison. People tend to remember it's non linear level structure, extremely tight core game play mechanics, diverse enemy and level designs, and it's power/weapon acquisition system. However people seem to often forget that if you didn't attack the bosses in the generally prescribed (and undisclosed) order they where almost impossible. This meant that unless you knew someone or bought a magazine (or read it at babbages) you ended up replaying lots of hard mega man levels only to get thoroughly whipped by the boss.

Granted as the series went on it the inferred order was clearer due to the design of the bosses (or I was older and more observant). However that rather punishing trial and error game play remains on the initial playthrough. Megan Man has a kind of "path orthodoxy" that I think kind of makes it a poor example for game difficulty/balance. It is maybe the perfect example of the foresight example given earlier in this particular post. Mega Man games can be painfully difficult on your first run through. You don't know what order to tackle the bosses or how to handle the platforming challenges. However on your second go around the game become a joke. This is true of a lot of classic games (or as identified earlier all games really). However a HUGE part of Mega Man is finding that unchanging orthodox boss order, once discovered the games challenge rapidly dissolves.

[Henroid]

However people seem to often forget that if you didn't attack the bosses in the generally prescribed (and undisclosed) order they where almost impossible.

That is absurd; I have done runs at Mega Man games where I avoid using the weaknesses and stick to the mega buster. Did the same for the Mega Man X games as well. The weapon weaknesses in the original series allow for you to succeed easily while taking hits here and there. If you stick to the regular weapon, you're relying more on being able to avoid the boss' attacks and learning his pattern. Which can be fun, and can be frustrating when certain elements align and fuck you no matter what. But it isn't impossible; it's learnable, and it's difficult, but it is doable.

Edit - I am not the most expert-pro person at video games and I've actually lost a lot of my 8-bit era adjusting while playing a game. I specifically mentioned the foresight issue and came into the idea of being given a chance to learn what went wrong when you die or fail at something in a game. Because Mega Man isn't one-hit-kill in its boss fights, you have time to still watch how the boss leaps around, how he shoots, when he does, etc. So, yeah, there are moments like that spike fall that are bullshit, but I think in the case of Mega Man those are accidental, not part of the intentional design. Because the bosses are designed to give you chances to learn; you get to restart right there with bosses if you fail.

[darthbator]

That might very well be true. I can confess that my memories of the NES era mega man games are hazy at best (I've not revisited anything earlier then Mega Man X in my adult life) and I do think that by the time we arrive at X they've really found the sweet spot of what those games are (although I think they lost is pretty shortly after that). Different people different tastes and all that, but that's something I dislike about Mega Man throughout the series (which I generally enjoy). I don't like how when tackled in a particular order Mega Man games become something of a cake walk. You can view that as giving the player a kind of agency over difficulty based on the order in which they tackle the bosses but I just don't see it that way (why, idk because it doesn't feel that way to me?).

Even viewed in the most positive way, as a kind of exploratory experience of finding enemies weaknesses, it's really only good to be milked once. I hate that I'm saying unkind stuff about Mega Man in like my 5th post... That can't be good form...

[SecretAsianMan]

I don't like how when tackled in a particular order Mega Man games become something of a cake walk. You can view that as giving the player a kind of agency over difficulty based on the order in which they tackle the bosses but I just don't see it that way (why, idk because it doesn't feel that way to me?).

Even viewed in the most positive way, as a kind of exploratory experience of finding enemies weaknesses, it's really only good to be milked once. I hate that I'm saying unkind stuff about Mega Man in like my 5th post... That can't be good form...

You can extend that idea out to most any game with certain kinds of systems. By the time I stopped playing the first Torchlight, I had several characters, but a lot of them were almost exact copies of each other. It was because I had found what seemed to be an optimal build (at least to me) so the next time I made a character I ended up going down the same path. It could be a personal fault of mine, but I experimented with different setups and still ended up doing the same thing.

Another example I can think of is from the first time I played Halo multiplayer. I didn't have an Xbox at the time and I was visiting some friends at college. They were playing Halo 1 on the dorm LAN. I had never played Halo at that point so I naturally got my butt kicked, but what really surprised me was the way they were doing it. They were using the Halo "one-two" punch of a plasma pistol to deplete your shields, followed by a pistol headshot. The plasma pistol I could understand but the pistol headshot boggled my mind because to me a pistol was a weapon of last resort, not a primary weapon. And yet it worked extremely well. So we kept doing it.

My point is that once players discover the "optimal" way to do something, it's not very likely they'll deviate from it.

[Gormongous]

My point is that once players discover the "optimal" way to do something, it's not very likely they'll deviate from it.

Not even "optimal". Often it's simply "sufficiently effective to discourage experimentation". I'll never know how many awesome Torchlight II builds I'm missing out on because I wasted points in a few skills that didn't compare well to my current tactics, but may have paid off enormously later.

Say what you will about Diablo 3, and I do, but Blizzard made sure to put the lowest possible barrier on experimentation. Which is probably why it's so widely regarded as being ridiculously easy for the first twenty hours.

[Henroid]

I don't know why this didn't occur to me until just now, but the Runic Games forum (in the wake of TL2 being launched) is FULL of gripes about difficulty. And it's gripes that I feel are so... wrong. Let me share some of the stuff I've been coming across.

Better Drops For Higher Difficulty

There was this strange concept floating around over the weekend, finally dying off mid-week, of people griping that the game's "Elite" difficulty (the hardest) should reward players with higher drop rates. The concept of playing for the challenge of things was lost on a few, and for others the concept not being applicable to their taste meant that nobody else should have it. Or at least that Runic was wrong to build the game the way they did. But it really makes me wonder what the heck fostered this concept of tangible reward for doing something harder. I don't buy into that "only TRUE gamers should play this game!" type stuff or get into any sort of "no true Scottsman" mentality with video games, but I also stay clear of the other side - which would be "I should never lose and never face adversity."

This Thing Killed Me, Remove It

The latest incarnation of this was someone dying to traps in the game. See the latter portions of what I wrote above, but there were actual expectations that standing on a dangerous thing shouldn't result in death. I know what brought this into people's minds of "the way things are in video games." There's been plenty of games (Torchlight the first had some of this going on) where spike traps or what have you hurt, but only a little. So it didn't really hurt to stand atop them and fight from there. But really, if you see something is deadly to the point of possible one-hit-death, maybe you should endeavor to stay clear. Not rant about poor design.

What's the Point of Higher Difficulty?

There are people who gripe about elite or veteran difficulties in the game being so hard that they question "what's the point," and the concept even comes up with hardcore mode (once you die, that character is done for good). Again, the attitude here is that if a player can't be served by something, why is that something present? It's an odd perception. I feel as though these types of commentary are coming from people who are having their first experience with a video game ever and have their preconceptions about why people play video games. For them, the concept of challenge isn't in the picture and they don't understand there is a legit portion of the audience that wants to be challenged rather than have a casual experience.

[SecretAsianMan]

Better Drops For Higher Difficulty.

I actually thought that's how it worked, but I'm not bothered if it doesn't (I'm playing on Veteran myself so it wouldn't even really effect me). I do sort of understand how people can get into this mindset though. A few months ago I was really into Dungeon Defenders, a tower defense/third person action game where your character actually exists in the world and has a heavy loot emphasis. Higher difficulty meant better drops so natually no one played on anything but the hardest difficulty. I really got into it for a few months, but then once I stopped and looked back, I realized how horrible the experience actually was. I stopped having fun and it became all about the next piece of loot. I would spend hours doing the exact same map over and over, which would have been ok if I was having fun the whole time, but because it's a tower defense game, a lot of that time you don't have to do anything and just let the towers do all the work. So eventually the game was about finding a good enough setup to let you be afk while the game played itself. The best way to play the game involved not actually playing the game. Torchlight doesn't suffer from this exact problem, but it's easy to fall into the trap and get swept up collecting loot instead of enjoying an actual game.

What's the Point of Higher Difficulty?

I guess this sort of ties into my point above, but more generally, I think it's a commentary on how many big AAA games are designed to push the easy pleasure buttons. Achievements, loot, gear, hats, skins, etc. Those are all small, quick payoffs now rather than longer, and hopefully more fulfilling payoffs later. When I think back on the times I enjoyed playing a game, they never involve getting an achievement or unlocking a weapon (with very few exceptions). What I remember is how much fun I had playing the game. I suppose such things can contribute to the overall experience, but when they become the point, I don't enjoy the game anymore.

[Henroid]

Someone included this in one of the discussions. It's pretty flippant but I enjoyed it anyway.

[Gormongous]

I guess this sort of ties into my point above, but more generally, I think it's a commentary on how many big AAA games are designed to push the easy pleasure buttons. Achievements, loot, gear, hats, skins, etc. Those are all small, quick payoffs now rather than longer, and hopefully more fulfilling payoffs later. When I think back on the times I enjoyed playing a game, they never involve getting an achievement or unlocking a weapon (with very few exceptions). What I remember is how much fun I had playing the game. I suppose such things can contribute to the overall experience, but when they become the point, I don't enjoy the game anymore.

The power of the human brain to form emotional connections to hard-won achievements is really stunning. I love -- I mean deeply love -- my first four squaddies in the new XCOM: "Congo" Lebedev, "Echo" Rosetti, "Rampage" Eriksen, "Smokey" Ramirez... Their randomly generated names and faces are so much more meaningful to me than the achievement that popped up when they earned those nicknames. But it takes real design talent to implement the kind of rewarding balance in difficulty. I don't know whether it's cost-effective over the long run for companies to invest in it.

[Sno]

Before I say this let me start by saying Mega Man X is among my top 10 (maybe 5) games of all time. However I think the mega man series in general suffers from a kind of specific nostalgia poison. People tend to remember it's non linear level structure, extremely tight core game play mechanics, diverse enemy and level designs, and it's power/weapon acquisition system. However people seem to often forget that if you didn't attack the bosses in the generally prescribed (and undisclosed) order they where almost impossible. This meant that unless you knew someone or bought a magazine (or read it at babbages) you ended up replaying lots of hard mega man levels only to get thoroughly whipped by the boss.

I will disagree with this. I mean, If you ask a group fans what their boss order is in Megaman 3, you will get a lot of very different answers. Even faqs rarely agree on what the proper order is for any of those games. My experience with that series and from talking about it with other people is generally that the boss order ends up being a very personal thing adapted to a player's personal strengths and weaknesses.

Though, of course, we're talking about an enormous franchise with decades of history, not all of those games are particularly well balanced. (Megaman 8 is fucking terrible, don't play Megaman 8.)

Not even "optimal". Often it's simply "sufficiently effective to discourage experimentation". I'll never know how many awesome Torchlight II builds I'm missing out on because I wasted points in a few skills that didn't compare well to my current tactics, but may have paid off enormously later.

Say what you will about Diablo 3, and I do, but Blizzard made sure to put the lowest possible barrier on experimentation. Which is probably why it's so widely regarded as being ridiculously easy for the first twenty hours.

This is an interesting thing, because my feeling is that making the game easier doesn't let you find effective tactics for playing the game.

If the reason for making it easier is simply so that you can use all of the tactics presented to you, the developer has failed in balancing their game.

For the experimentation angle, I think i've become a believer in RPG's letting players respec. I still feel like there needs to be some manner of permanence, but more as an atmospheric and experiential matter, feeling committed to and invested in your choices.

Another example I can think of is from the first time I played Halo multiplayer. I didn't have an Xbox at the time and I was visiting some friends at college. They were playing Halo 1 on the dorm LAN. I had never played Halo at that point so I naturally got my butt kicked, but what really surprised me was the way they were doing it. They were using the Halo "one-two" punch of a plasma pistol to deplete your shields, followed by a pistol headshot. The plasma pistol I could understand but the pistol headshot boggled my mind because to me a pistol was a weapon of last resort, not a primary weapon. And yet it worked extremely well. So we kept doing it.

My point is that once players discover the "optimal" way to do something, it's not very likely they'll deviate from it.

The Halo:CE pistol probably isn't a fair point to be basing that argument around, because it's an issue of fumbled game balance. Bungie has been pretty open about the Halo:CE magnum as having not been meant to be that powerful. It was allegedly a bug that showed up so late in development that nobody knew about it before it shipped, and so It does something like twice the damage it was meant to.

"noob combo" tactics persist in later games, but not to the detriment of everything else, there they are the systems working as intended. Like, and that's the trick, you want a game that is both demanding enough and well balanced enough to encourage meaningful and interesting exploration of its systems.

I don't know why this didn't occur to me until just now, but the Runic Games forum (in the wake of TL2 being launched) is FULL of gripes about difficulty. And it's gripes that I feel are so... wrong. Let me share some of the stuff I've been coming across.

This Thing Killed Me, Remove It

The latest incarnation of this was someone dying to traps in the game. See the latter portions of what I wrote above, but there were actual expectations that standing on a dangerous thing shouldn't result in death. I know what brought this into people's minds of "the way things are in video games." There's been plenty of games (Torchlight the first had some of this going on) where spike traps or what have you hurt, but only a little. So it didn't really hurt to stand atop them and fight from there. But really, if you see something is deadly to the point of possible one-hit-death, maybe you should endeavor to stay clear. Not rant about poor design.

The idea that the player expected not to die because they had seen them to be relatively harmless in other Video games is fascinating and weird. I guess it was Mega Man that taught me to be afraid of spikes.

Okay, but why are there traps in RPG's? That's the question here, then. I think it's generally to encourage careful thinking and cautious action while also creating tension. So what happens if traps aren't dangerous? You just run through them, you absorb the hit and never think twice about it, their reason for being there completely vanishes. I mean, so it's an arbitrary challenge and restriction with a purpose only evident to the designer. It's the kind of thing that you can't ever expect the audience to be sympathetic with, and you're never going to get good feedback on. (I'm always reminded of the sparse checkpoints in Dead Rising, why they exist, and how much the fans hated it.)

Also, i've been playing X-com. I think Firaxis did a pretty good job with it, and i'm pretty relieved to find that it's a significantly challenging game.

It occured to me how much a sense of challenge is an intrinsic part of what people define as X-com. If you weren't forced to makes choices about sacrificing a rookie to keep a valued veteran alive, it just wouldn't be the same. It could be literally the exact same game as the original, and it wouldn't feel at all the same if it wasn't pushing you into bad situations like that. (Whereas Firaxis has created a game that is quite mechanically distinct, but manages to evoke the same kinds of experiences that people associate with the original X-Com.)

I wonder how more casual gamers will respond to it, though I guess there is an easy mode in there.