Fake Difficulty

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Netrigan

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It's got its own TV Tropes entry.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FakeDifficulty

So what are the Fake Difficulty game elements that annoy you most?

Mine are snipers. While there are some games that do a pretty good job of letting you know where they are (thumbs up to the Half-Life series for the laser sighting, which at least gives you a chance the first time through), a lot of them just come down to trial-and-error. Raven Software is probably the company that has annoyed me the most with it, transforming the other-wise piss-easy Return To Wolfenstein & Jedi Knight 2 into Quick Save Whoring during the Sniper areas.
 

SturmDolch

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May 17, 2009
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I'll go with

5. The game requires the player to use skills or knowledge that are either incorrect or have nothing to do with the genre.

I thought this would be on the article. My most hated offenders are games that have mandatory stealth missions or mandatory race missions. The stealth mission in The Godfather was so annoying. And the race in Mafia? Almost unplayable. Took me about an hour to complete. I don't mind the game deviating from it's genre sometimes to make it a bit more interesting. BC2 had a little quad-racing thing, but if you lost, it didn't fail you. And I like rail-gunning sequences in helicopters. Just don't expect me to race in a damn shooting game.
 

gigastrike

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Wii Sports: Resort comes to mind. The computer gives you enough leeway at the beginning, but at some point it becomes obvious that you can never slash a log faster than a computer.
 

SturmDolch

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Pirate Kitty said:
Making enemies do more damage with the same attacks.

Surely there are better ways to make a game difficult - like require strategy, perhaps?
Ugh this, too. "Hah. This looks easy. These guys have been dropping like flies... Wait... Why do you suddenly have five times the HP!? NO!!!"

Another one: Random rocket launchers... In the face!
 

lightningmagurn

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I have to agree with the sniping sections. I just finished playing MoH and it was gross. And not even races but just random vehichle sections. I'm not a pilot or a tank crewman I'm an infantryman.
 

CarpathianMuffin

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Swarms of enemies. When it makes sense in context with the level/mission, I can live with that. However, when 20 enemies spawn out of nowhere in a section that could've been challenging enough with only a fraction of them... yeah.
A certain highwayman in Dragon Age comes to mind.
 

Dreey

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enemies with infinite grenades.... like in world at war... the only difficulty between het hardest difficulty and they lower one was that the enemies never stopped throwing those frikkin grenades.....
 

Kevonovitch

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redundantly making enemies specifically designed to either annoy/force you to do 1 thing/1 way to kill them, throwing in enemies that don't fit the current scenario just to make it "more challanging", making an enemy yso you HAVE to kill it 1st out of the rest of them.

pretty much anything that's designing an enemy to make combat as liner as possible. you wanna ***** about linear gameplay? start by holding X enemies infront of there face >=(

now if thats the challange, is to do X/the scenario to do X first at certain points, thats fine, thats not what im talking about, im talking about the random/general encounter's that are solely "is x,x,x,x here? yes/no=fight goes extactly according to x,x,x,x enemy presence" and thats ALL you do for that entire game -_-*
 

lightningmagurn

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Dreey said:
enemies with infinite grenades.... like in world at war... the only difficulty between het hardest difficulty and they lower one was that the enemies never stopped throwing those frikkin grenades.....
Yeah that was annoying. But the enemies in that game were far too good at some things.
 

manythings

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CarpathianMuffin said:
Swarms of enemies. When it makes sense in context with the level/mission, I can live with that. However, when 20 enemies spawn out of nowhere in a section that could've been challenging enough with only a fraction of them... yeah.
A certain highwayman in Dragon Age comes to mind.
Highwayman?

OT: When the game ignores its own rules just to fuck you over, or does something that shouldn't be possible, e.g. an enemy that isn't facing you still shooting at you without missing.
 

pretentiousname01

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Bad controls.

Yeah I'm look at you resident evil franchise.

This whole bad controls make the game scarier is bullshit.
 

CarpathianMuffin

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manythings said:
CarpathianMuffin said:
Swarms of enemies. When it makes sense in context with the level/mission, I can live with that. However, when 20 enemies spawn out of nowhere in a section that could've been challenging enough with only a fraction of them... yeah.
A certain highwayman in Dragon Age comes to mind.
Highwayman?

OT: When the game ignores its own rules just to fuck you over, or does something that shouldn't be possible, e.g. an enemy that isn't facing you still shooting at you without missing.
One that you have to fight right after the Circle Tower. It doesn't matter what response you give or where you position everyone in your party beforehand, you have to fight him and you all clump together where his mage can throw fireballs at you as he sees fit. It doesn't matter how I control them or who I tell them to target, they always go for the leader. It always takes at least two tries to beat that bullshit encounter.
Speaking of fireballs, the damn fireball spell from Dragon Age counts. Two of those on anyone and they're screwed. And the enemies love to spam them.
 

Cosplay Horatio

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The Warriors origin level with Ajax and Snow. Near the end you get swarmed by countless numbers of Destroyers and there's a side mission where you should wreck enough Destroyers before proceeding to the end but it's very difficult because they keep coming in swarms and if your playing single player then your npc partner may not make it without your help when you basically high tail it to the end of the level.
 

manythings

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CarpathianMuffin said:
manythings said:
CarpathianMuffin said:
Swarms of enemies. When it makes sense in context with the level/mission, I can live with that. However, when 20 enemies spawn out of nowhere in a section that could've been challenging enough with only a fraction of them... yeah.
A certain highwayman in Dragon Age comes to mind.
Highwayman?

OT: When the game ignores its own rules just to fuck you over, or does something that shouldn't be possible, e.g. an enemy that isn't facing you still shooting at you without missing.
One that you have to fight right after the Circle Tower. It doesn't matter what response you give or where you position everyone in your party beforehand, you have to fight him and you all clump together where his mage can throw fireballs at you as he sees fit. It doesn't matter how I control them or who I tell them to target, they always go for the leader. It always takes at least two tries to beat that bullshit encounter.
Speaking of fireballs, the damn fireball spell from Dragon Age counts. Two of those on anyone and they're screwed. And the enemies love to spam them.
Then don't look at the pages in the rooms on that level of the tower. I always chase down the mages first to avoid the fireball problem, if you are lucky you can make him get caught in the blast.
 

hermes

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Dreey said:
enemies with infinite grenades.... like in world at war... the only difficulty between het hardest difficulty and they lower one was that the enemies never stopped throwing those frikkin grenades.....
True... but allow me to expand on your answer:

Enemies with infinite resources. For example, RTS games where the CPU players don't really need to gather resources because they have infinite, or don't have a units limit, or any other quantity restriction that applies to you... As if being able to react with almost light speed reflexes were not a good enough advantage for it.
 

robinkom

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Two of those 5 descriptions resonated big time.

1. Bad technical aspects make it difficult. Making a difficult jump is a real difficulty. Making a same difficult jump with overly complex controls, bad jumping physics, or an abrupt mid-air change of camera angle - and therefore the orientation of your controls - is not.

Sonic R for Sega Saturn was very first thing that came to mind for this one.
You might say the controls are something you have to adapt to, which is fully feasible, I know I have. But if you have no prior knowledge of the game, you'll find yourself flying all over the place both on and off the track. It was marketed somewhat as being best played with the Saturn 3D controller (a precursor to the Dreamcast controller design) but the majority of people did not have one and had to consent to the normal controller. If conforming to it's wonky controls was simply beyond your comprehension, this game was completely unplayable.

...

3. Denial of information critical to progress. A reasonable game may require the player to use information, clues, or logic to proceed. Withholding relevant information such that the player cannot possibly win without a guide, walk-through or trial and error is fake difficulty.

I immediately thought of Phantasy Star II and Phantasy Star III: Generations of Doom.
For starters, PSII came with a 108 page hint-book to help you just play the damn game. PSIII has little to know relevant dialogue at most times to tell you where you actually need to go. It DEMANDS you have a walk-through, otherwise the majority of your time is spent wandering and trial/error work. I won't deny that they're a product of their time and their style of "Fake Difficulty" borrows heavily from PC RPGs of the day, but just a little bit more cohesiveness between gameplay and story would have went a long way.

...

4. The outcome of the game is influenced by decisions that were uninformed at the time and cannot be undone. (Unless, and only unless, the game is heavily story-based and unforeseen consequences of actions undertaken with incomplete information are legitimate plot elements.)

Easy one for me, Suikoden I & II.
So as not to spoil anything for those that have not played either one, the loss of characters permanently without any notice. In the first one, the character in question can be brought back IF you recruit EVERY character in the game. The problem there? Some can only be recruited at specific times that only come up ONCE. In the second one, a character's life is in danger right in the middle of some dialogue and you're supposed to know that you're allowed to move while they're talking and try to save that character. They don't tell you at all. I lost that character permanently.
 

Netrigan

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Sturmdolch said:
I'll go with

5. The game requires the player to use skills or knowledge that are either incorrect or have nothing to do with the genre.

I thought this would be on the article. My most hated offenders are games that have mandatory stealth missions or mandatory race missions. The stealth mission in The Godfather was so annoying. And the race in Mafia? Almost unplayable. Took me about an hour to complete. I don't mind the game deviating from it's genre sometimes to make it a bit more interesting. BC2 had a little quad-racing thing, but if you lost, it didn't fail you. And I like rail-gunning sequences in helicopters. Just don't expect me to race in a damn shooting game.
I wouldn't have a problem with stealth missions in action games if it was a case of making the level easier if you went the stealth route, but I hate it when a detection leads to an instant fail. I don't think an action game should do this... a stealth game doing it is okay with me since you should be developing this skill throughout the game, but an action game requiring absolute stealth is always annoying... like Raven's Jedi Knight 2 having you battle infinite hordes of stormtroopers, but then in this one level, suddenly you lose your ability to fight absolutely everything the Empire throws at you and it's an instant fail if someone sounds an alarm.

Beaten my head against a few racing bits in sandbox games... but in all those cases, the racing mechanic was kind of implied. Having to race all across town to answer payphones isn't that much different than having to run a proper race... although I shudder to think how I'll react to the completely unfair race in Vice City when I finally get to it (still working on GTA III). I don't really like racing games, so I prefer racing missions to be on the easy side.