The Gamer's Quarter

[Mr. Mechanical]

So I'm talking with RaBee right now about collaberating on an article about game difficulty for next issue, but I think it warrants a topic here as well.

Basically, how hard is too hard, and what is the difference between a hard game and a challenging one? To me "hard" just means unfairly challenging, like when the computer cheats you in Madden or whatever. The rpg boss has a million hp for whatever reason, so the fight can go on for half an hour. Basically anything artificial or anything that has less to do with your actual skills and more to do with variables beyond your control. Where is the line drawn, or is that even possible?

Conceptually, vastly different games can be at about the same difficulty level. Some games require a certain level of skill or knowledge of the established game system to get good at, like fighters to pick an easy example, yet others are content to just ramp things up by making a certain jump to a platform harder or give the enemies more health. Those are just variables though, factors that go into creating difficulty, they're not the end itself but the means.

I think what this discussion boils down to is the difference between actual player skill and artificial in-game challenge. Skill is being able to beat Contra in twelve minutes, because you've played long enough to have gotten the enemy fire patterns down and you know exactly what to do and where to go and how to do it. Artificial in-game challenges are things like rpg bosses with a zillion hp. You just have to manipulate the in-game systems long enough and you can overcome the challenge. Not to say that rpgs can't be actually challenging or requiring real skill.

So, TGQ forum members, how do you define difficulty in games?

[Shapermc]

Uh, well, like Prince Of Persia allows the enemies to dodge every attack if it wants to. You can fight as good as you want but if the AI wants it to be blocked, it is. Add that the fact that combat sucked and it was too hard for me to convince myself to play anymore.

Resident Evil is too hard to learn the controls. My brain doesn't work that way.

Also, I think you're confusing things a little. An rpg boss could be easy and have a million points, but it will just get boring after a while. I hear FFXII has an 8 hour boss fight that even has a save half way through! That's hard to convince myself to play!

And a lot of people consider the US version of Contra: Hard Corps to be "too hard" compared to the JPN version. You should grab and emulator and play both. Honestly I think that the US version is just right, where the JPN version is a bit too easy.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[RaBeeWilliams]

Well, here's the thing about fighters. The most popular ones, to some degree, are broken. Copying the CPU's moments will lead you to having a good counter attack and spacing game, since that's the height of how hard they can be in most cases. But, how well will you far when you're being corner infinite(ed) until death, or having you're guard broken thanks to an onslaught of attacks?

Now,fighters will have to stem from a different definition to me, since adding a human element as far as difficulty goes will prompt some unexpected results. This is mainly a gripe with some choice 2-D fighters. Most 3-d one's follow the appropriate "Rock, Paper Scissors - Punch, Block, Throw" method.

[FortNinety]

I hope age is a major focal point of the artcile because, damnit, I'm finding games too hard these days and I think its in relation to my age (and my shrinking brain).

[player 2]

I almost quit God Hand.

But then I realized how much I had invested, so I pretty much cheated.

Seriously, forearm smash 2 is like the most ridiculously overpowered move in the game.
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Wii #: 8749 9109 9732 3653

"It is a peaceful way of understanding life, to play"
_Marcel Duchamp

[RaBeeWilliams]

[Shapermc]

[RaBeeWilliams]

[DaleNixon]

God Hand is hard but it never felt cheap in the least bit. Almost every time I died in that game I could point out the mistake I made that messed me up.

It took me around three hours to finally beat the last boss(es). I loved every second of it.

You never really "get lucky" in God Hand nor do you get screwed over because the game decided it was time to kill you.

God Hand on Hard is absolutely insane. Facing loads and loads of enemies you are pretty much completely screwed if you leave yourself open to a powerful attack. Even on this mode, you can usually blame yourself when you get killed.

[dessgeega]

[FortNinety]

[Shapermc]

[player 2]

[dhex]

[Scratchmonkey]

Difficulty seems to me to be a combination of two factors:

1. Coherency

2. Basic Requirements

By Coherency, I mean that when the player fails, they understand when they failed, why they failed and have an idea of what they need to do in order to not fail. Otherwise failure can feel arbitrary and that the game is actively working against the player's success.

This is the game getting the idea of its internal systems across to the player in a way such that it is not unreasonable to expect the player to infer certain things about the system and to leverage that knowledge to increase their skills at succeeding at that game. This not only makes it easier for the player to succeed at the game, it adds a performative aspect to play where the player gains the knowledge of how to play well in a stylistic sense or how the game "wants you to play" in a design sense.

By Basic Requirements, I mean the minimum level of skill that the game requires for advancement. You can have a perfectly coherent game in terms of the player knowing what they did wrong; yet the game can still be "too hard" because it requires perfect or near-perfect performance on the part of the player.

Sometimes this makes sense, like in rythym games where you start off with an easy challenge and the higher levels are nearly impossible. It makes less sense in the context of a game where the emphasis is on your journey through a game and your experience of the game. This is not say that a challenge is a bad thing; just that extreme difficulty seems to be an anachronism in certain contexts.

In conclusion, I find myself most interested by games that allow you to fail and still continue, often dealing with the consequences of your failure. This allows people who are concerned with the performative goal of doing well and those concerned with the narrative goal of advancing through the game to achieve their respective goals without freezing the other out. These games are almost always simulation games, which have a very broad range of "success" vs. "failure".

[Shapermc]

I thought this might lend well to the topic at hand. I got this from an interview with Inaba (of Clover Studio) by Chris Kohler. It touches on difficulty and how they handle it.

“WN: Would you classify God Hand as being difficult?

AI: It's difficult. It's not an easy game at all. Lately in Japanese games there's been this trend towards not ever dying. In God Hand you're going to die quite a bit. And that's planned. So when you think about what makes God Hand difficult or what's diff about it, the int. part is that it's difficult.

WN: What are some of the things that make it difficult, and what can players do to overcome that?

AI: What makes God Hand difficult is that it's not a game where you're just going to be able to advance only your own powers, and the enemies just get easier. As you get stronger, the enemies also get stronger. So you have to face each enemy and think about how you're going to use your moves, and how you're going to defeat them, with all of your self. You can't take any enemies in the game for granted. So that kind of interesting aspect and the difficulty of the game are linked together. And so the difficulty is what makes the game interesting.

WN: When you say the enemies get stronger, do you mean…?

AI: There's a level system implemented in God Hand where as you learn to evade enemy attacks and attack them more stylishly, there's a gauge that goes from 1 to 4 that's going to rise. It represents the difficulty of the enemy. In level 1 they're pretty easy. But as you increase they get stronger, they're going to block more. By the time you get to level 4, which is called "Level Die," they're much faster and much stronger and they're almost unbelievably hard to defeat. As you get better the game gets harder. As you advance through levels, you'll see a different aspect to the game, because the game grows.

WN: Can you let them beat you up if you want the level to go down?

AI: In God Hand, if you start getting damaged, the level will automatically go down. But if you've really bit off more than you can chew, there's a special move that will let you get down on your hands and knees and grovel and say you're sorry, and the level will go down.

WN: But you can't use that all the time: you have to hit it on a roulette wheel, yes?

AI: The roulette wheel has orbs that set the number of times that you can do that move. You press a button and start scrolling through the moves. As long as you select the move in time you'll be able to execute it. As the number of orbs go down, there are cards in the game that refill these orbs.”
_________________
“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[grumbel]

[Shapermc]

[TOLLMASTER]

I'm on both sides of the fence on this issue.

On one hand, Shaper will attest to the fact that I think games like Devil May Cry 3, which punish the player for not being good, are positive. Most games should not be hard, but there definitely should be some where there is a high amount of difficulty and also a high degree of refinement in play attainable by the player.

What you refer to as "artificial difficulty" seems to me to be instances where the player cannot improve his skills to match the challenge. Many NES games fit this; the play control is so sloppy that it is hard to develop skills to actually improve at the game, while Contra gives you all the options and control you need to go from a losing player to a winning one. But giving an RPG boss a zillion HP is, I feel, a poor example. Why?

Because RPG battles generally revolve around the idea of a war of attrition. You have a reserve of HP and MP and probably items and other gimmicky things, and both sides try to bring the others' reserves down to zero. So when a boss has a zillion HP, that's a challenge to the player--what can you do to equal those resources?

It's a shame that most RPGs only get interesting at this high level of play, because instead of just pressing "Attack" each turn, the boss strategies are often highly developed. You can't really level up beyond the Omega Weapon's level in FF8, for instance. You have to make extreme use of the resources given to you (limit breaks you generally don't need, stat manipulation, etc) to beat these types of things.

Obligatory Nippon Ichi paragraph: While typically the battle strategy for these types of HP bosses (with stats literally into the millions) are noninvolved, the process of "beating" the game's leveling system is where the strategy lies. You win the game with characters less than 100 levels, and yet have to fight level 6000 bosses in the optional battles. You have to figure out what would usually be considered bugs or imbalances in the game systems to get levels in a weekend what would normally take years of work, so when you do beat the boss, the satisfaction is coming from not the boss battle itself, but from have finding a process to get there. (For an example, look up Makai Kingdom at GameFAQs and search for "food dungeon." The most efficient process is involved, but gets you more than 900 levels for a character in each go).

Basically, difficulty is worthless unless there is room, somewhere, for the gamer to improve, either via skills or via game knowledge and use of that knowledge. Half the reason difficulty is so great, though, is that it encourages the extreme--you need for more knowledge about how the game works to beat a Weapon than the final boss. 90% of the population would be frustrated in getting that knowledge, but if you want to see a beautiful strategy, watch that 10% remainder.

[Ryan - SuperWes' Bane]

I'm starting to really love the level-less games, where you can't max out your character and totally obiliterate the game or other peoples. Take MMORPGs for example. Is the true point of those games the actual gameplay itself, or getting your character to the highest level possible for one reason or another? Like it was said earlier, million HP bosses are really shitty to fight, especially when you have to level up for a few hours in order to face these bosses, which I think is a gimmick to artificially make the game harder. Is there such a thing as natural difficulty? A game that learns around you and creates an experience that is only as hard as it needs to be?

I love Shadow of the Colossus because it feels so natural to play it. You start out with everything you're going to need, and don't have to build levels or anything. You learn to overcome the difficulty with the tools you have, thus mastering the skills at your disposal (that you've had from the beginning). I hate when you have to get the silver key that opens the blue door which leads you to the statue that has a hidden gem in the back which you have to examine in order to find out where you have to go next. But at the same time a game like Metroid, where you get a new ability and suddenly all those new areas open up to you, along with secrets that have been there all along . . . that can be fun.


When it comes down to it, game design is key. If you have a linear game, where the only chance is to go foward, and you have these artificial obstacles slowing you down to extend the gameplay, it tends to create a pretty lame game (like speedbumps on a highway).

Ehh ... sorry, watching a movie while posting this and the post probably doesn't make much sense. I'm going back into my hole now.

[Shapermc]

Well, technically in SotC you do sort of gain levels by increasing your grip/life meter... but I get what you're saying.

It's kind of rare that you find a game that starts you out with the exact same skill set that you have through the entire game. Well, it is increasingly rare anyways.
_________________
“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[dessgeega]

quick, let's talk about umihara.
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[Shapermc]

[helicopterp]

[RaBeeWilliams]

Yes.

(Oops. Guess I'd better put content in this thing for bumping it.)

Well, look at what you have with most online games, excluding MMO, mainly for the whole "sacrifice hours of you like" aspect to get the most from them - which isn't much.

In deathmatch games, such as a Quake, or Unreal Tournament the only factor that provides an obstacle for taking out other players is where they and you spawn, and what weapons and items either of you are closest to. Maybe this isn't true entirely of those games, but I'm thinking from the Perfect Dark and Goldeneye rules of deathmatch games, since that's what I grew up on and know most about. To use a lesser scope (and a game that doesn't offer abilities for your chosen character, such as more damage intake or faster speed), I'd be better off saying Half Life 2: DM. The poor sucker that doesn't get to the RPG is just going to have to be fodder for the soul who does. Until then, every death you subcome to is the same as anyone else's. You bite it, and you restart in a different area with full heath and minus the weapons your last session.
'Oh!, so that means getting the good items early and hiding out away from everyone else will make me survive longer?'

Well, sure, to a point. Anyone can run from a fight, and it's wise to do so time to time. But, using your weapons passive-aggressive is the prime strategy. One score's when you have to, or when it's most favorable for yourself (or team, Counter-Strike, you misfit tween, you) and knowing when to hold back by mediating the playing field with who has the better gun to who just opening themselves to an easy point are the real objectives.

And then hacking was born.

The End.

But anyway, that's all to say that deathmatch's (...hopefully) go by the same flavor, in saying that everyone has an equal standing of doing well, provided that even matters to you, and in which case – have fun.

[Dracko]

I hope Bioshock goes less for the awkward skill system of System Shock 2 (A fine, but very broken, game) and aims more for something along the lines of Thief as far as player self-improvement and interaction goes.

Basically, such things as experience points and levels shouldn't really be all that acceptable these days, when game design can actually live up to simulation. There's a very good reason they're throwbacks from pen and paper gaming, and that said, most RPG players, or worst still, game masters, tend to forget that RPGs should be about role-playing, not stat-obsession.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"