Difficulty and balance in Video games.

[Sno]

The fact that the "Hooray!" is from Viva Pinata just makes it even better.

[Zeusthecat]

Quick update on CoD WaW.

 

I finally fucking beat that subway mission. Turns out, one of the main guys (Reznov or something) glitched out and had got stuck at the entrance of the subway in his "waving people in" animation. I kept getting to the end of the tunnel and it was just an endless firefight with an objective that said to regroup with my squad. Problem is, since Reznov was stuck at the tunnel entrance it never triggered the final sequence where he unlocks the door. I tried over and over to get him to move and kept restarting my checkpoint but never had any luck.

 

So I finally decided to just restart the level and this time around the objective updated correctly and he moved into the tunnel with us. I must have gotten pretty fucking good at this game because this time I went from beginning to end of this level in about 25 minutes where it had taken me around 2 hours before. I actually got through the whole subway on my first try this time no problem.

 

I fucking hate glitches and I wasted hours of my life. Fuck Treyarch (I need someone to blame).

[Professor Video Games]

I somehow totally missed all the Halo discussion on the first page...sorry about that!

 

I would argue that Halo 4 is actually the easiest legendary playthrough in the series. The knights certainly do not feel like they have a ton of health once you realize what actually works.

 

There's a few things to consider: They're resistant to headshots, and the precision rifles are otherwise fairly low-damage weapons. (So no plasma pistol/DMR-style shenanigans.) The knights are also actually fairly slow to react at mid/close-range. (Very dangerous at melee range.)

So I found myself throwing myself into the middle of large fights, taking big risks with a scattershot and a suppressor.

A lot of the subtle rebalancing that goes on in the legendary difficulties of the Halo games seems centered around making the safest strategies less viable, trying to push players out of hanging back with the precision rifles.

 

Anyway, on your point, that's one reason I don't complain much about Legendary's reduction in ammo drops even though it's pretty annoying (really you only had two shots left when I killed you Mr Brute? I hate you). It tends to force me to be more creative and find solutions other than energy shot -> head shot. Those moments end up being the tensest and most memorable. It helps that Halo's weapons are pretty well balanced.

 

On the topic of tension though, I do think the near ubiquitous inclusion of recharging health in FPSs has done more harm than good. Yeah I'm sure it's easier to design for and in many ways makes the game less frustrating to play, but the loss of that moment where you make it through an entire tough encounter with just a sliver of health is a shame.

[thestalkinghead]

i think in COD2 the recharging health thing actually worked well with the other mechanics of the game, because buildings had infinitely respawning enemies inside them until you pushed forwards and cleared the building, so just hiding and picking of the enemies from a distance would be a useless tactic, it forces you to take risks and push forwards, so your infinite health recharge was countered by the infinite enemies, but games where there aren't infinite enemies there is no counter to your infinite health recharge except spamming you with a million enemies or having ones that do extreme damage

[Sno]

The thing about the respawning enemies in CoD that always really made me crazy is that those games do nothing to illustrate to the player when they are changing the rules up. Sometimes enemies don't respawn, sometimes hanging back is the smartest tactic, and then sometimes you hang back and enemies just keep coming and it's never clear if you should be moving forward. There's never any indication of when you're in a sequence with respawning enemies and when you're not, you eventually just kind of have to intuit that "Okay, i think the game wants me to keep moving."

I think that's really terrible design, changing the rules the player has become accustomed to and doing nothing to inform them of it.

I mean, i just played through Alan Wake again, and that game also employs respawning enemies to create forward momentum, but it also has a way of informing the player of when the rules are being changed. That's a really good game.

 

As for the health bar thing, i actually really like when games find a happy medium between the regeneration and permanence.  (This is starting to sound like the Halo appreciation thread, but guess what CE/Reach/ODST did.)

 

[Dewar]

Pulling this thread out of the deep dark. I thought we'd had one of these recently, but I guess it ended up in the Random Thoughts about Video Games thread or something.

 

This has been a quarter of difficult games for me so far. Highlights include Darkest Dungeon, XCOM 2, The Witness, and a renewed interest in Rocket League. All of them games that I've been looking forward to for a while, knew were going to be hard going in, but have frustrated me in various ways. For a while, I was thinking that I had just gotten worse at games. With Rocket League in particular, my reactions aren't what they once were and I can definitely feel it, but the rest aren't time based at all, so I can't blame that. I don't think it's my skill failing me, it's my patience. 

 

Various stresses in my life have made it difficult to spend the time I want on my hobbies, which means my patience for restarting or "wasting time" is much less. I've spent the weekend really re-evaluating my current gaming options over the weekend, and thinking back to some of my more frustrated rants in various threads around here. I think that both Darkest Dungeon and XCOM 2 are great games, and right in my wheel house, but not the games I need right now. I'm going to go play some Stardew Valley tonight.