"Good" vs "Bad" Difficulty

[TallanKhan]

I like difficult games, I like a challenge, I like games that make you think and force you to be creative to progress. That to my mind is fun.

What isn't fun is when challenge is replaced with cheap bullshit or just bad design. Dying because I didn't check the corners and a zombie chewed my face of? Fine. Died because the zombie spawned behind me after I already checked the corners or because it was hidden by the dodgy fixed camera? Cheap bullshit.

 

[sneakypenguin]

Skyrim for me is bad difficulty. You mean I can destroy the world eater in a flurry of melee attacks but this random mage is suddenly two shotting me with lightning. Also glitched him and took 27 melee swings with my flawless massive fire damage ebony sword before he died....

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

Good difficulty: Dark Souls. You learn the systems, you pay attention, you exploit the game's rules and you win, otherwise you die.

Bad difficulty: Dragon Age. You may learn the systems, you may pay attention, but the enemy just deals more damage and soaks up injuries no matter what you do.

The latter is artificial difficulty. Designers choose to instead take the old-guard method of increasing difficulty by making the fight more unfair, instead of say, challenging the player's micro skills(since Dragon Age is largely hot-key based). When a game doesn't challenge the player's manipulation of its own mechanics, then the difficulty becomes artificial. It's bad and often times lazy.

Other pet peeves include leaps of faith, instant failure states, enemy spamming and other needless padding in place of difficulty.

 

[sageoftruth]

One great comparison of Good vs. Bad difficulty for me was God of War 2 vs. Ninja Gaiden (Black, Sigma, whatever).

God of War 2 on Titan Mode definitely fell squarely within the "Bag of HPs" category mentioned at the beginning. As I mentioned in another thread, the enemies and bosses can take a lot more punishment, which can be a cardinal sin in a game where combat can feel repetitive pretty fast if there's no one to QTE into little pieces. However, this was made far worse by the fact that bosses had no visible life bars. Combining the "Bags of HPs" with No Lifebar made fighting bosses feel like a chore. You just kept hitting them, not knowing which attacks were more effective or how close you were to finishing the fight. *Yawn.

Ninja Gaiden on the other hand handled difficulty pretty well. First of all, they really put some thought into it. They didn't just change some stats and call it a day. It felt like a completely different game. They changed which enemies appeared where, the locations of various items, and even made the bosses fight smarter, making them more likely to avoid attacks that used to work before, and making bosses like Alma fire off more projectiles than before. Jumping up to the next difficulty in that game did not feel like playing the same game twice. Also, their bosses had life bars. Kudos Team Ninja.

 

[sageoftruth]

To be fair about what I mentioned earlier, I have seen the Bags of Hps change work. In Freedom Planet, changing the difficulty simply made you deal slightly less damage and take a lot more (also the bosses had no life bars). What made it more bearable was that the bosses didn't exactly have bags of HP. The fights were fairly short, and avoiding attacks was far more frantic. The thing about the change was that now I couldn't afford to trade blows with the bosses anymore. It was no longer about dealing out more damage than the boss. Instead, it was about finding a system where I NEVER took damage, unless I made an error or two. Because the fights weren't cheap, this worked out pretty well.

So, I guess simply changing the damage stats can work out if the conditions are right.

 

[Callate]

So good and bad difficulty is being discussed, but how does the way the game handles getting the player back into the fray affect our judgment on how it handles difficulty overall?

Take for example Super Meat Boy or Hotline Miami. Now whether you consider these games to be good hard or bad hard, while they will happily kill you in a nanosecond they will also let you restart and try again in a nanosecond. Does this affect our judgement; does this excuse otherwise bad difficulty?

As far as Hotline goes, I would have said yes up until the stupid @#$%ing Ninja Girl. I'm pretty sure I would have died a thousand times without progress if I hadn't finally caved and looked up a Youtube video as to how to get past that moment, and I still died plenty trying to actually execute the necessary steps to get past.

(That said moment forces you to go through the dialogue scene each time before giving it another go definitely didn't amp my affection for it, though.)

 

[Poetic Nova]

Well, lets say I'm glad that the A.I. cannot use grenades in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl. If they could they would always be pinpoint accurate, no matter the difficulty. Damn game actually becomes easier in higher difficulties since it balances out HP and accuracy for you and your enemies (on lower difficulties they have the same amount but your accuracy is worse, making them more bullet spongy).

Yes, accuracy is tied to difficulty, which is a first from my experience.

On the other side of the coin, I can't help but mention Metro 2033.

Apart from one dreaded later level, both you and your enemies become soft as shit, while ammo becomes scarce it is never an issue if you know how to aim and know how to use stealth. In fact, I can't play the Metro games on anything lower than Ranger Hardcore anymore.

 

[Zendariel]

So good and bad difficulty is being discussed, but how does the way the game handles getting the player back into the fray affect our judgment on how it handles difficulty overall?

Take for example Super Meat Boy or Hotline Miami. Now whether you consider these games to be good hard or bad hard [footnote]hurr hurr hurr it's like good touch bad touch[/footnote], while they will happily kill you in a nanosecond they will also let you restart and try again in a nanosecond. Does this affect our judgement; does this excuse otherwise bad difficulty?

I'd say it rarely excuses bad difficulty, it can however make it more manageable. It can also enhance good but unforgiving difficulty (Like meat boy does in my opinion, for the most part). If there is a really bad level, even if it only takes 30 seconds to pass if done right, if it requires you to die over and over again without much ability to change the outcome it will become frustrating. Now one level might not break the game, but throw 3 or 4 bad levels in succession and it won't matter that much even if you get to restart quickly.

 

[SoreWristed]

I've written somewhat of a review using difficulty as a guideline of some games on my blog.

*cough* http://soregaming.blogspot.be/2015/01/boss-battle-or-difficulty-spike.html *cough*

If that's too much text, it basically goes as follows. I always play games on the difficulty i think the devs had in mind during development. Mostly normal, sometimes hard. I do applaud games that don't use a difficulty switch, either because they don't require enemy AI to emulate difficulty, or the game doesn't revolve around throwing obstacles at the player.

Anyway, I want a game to steadily ask more of my skills and patience as it goes on. And the perfect example i'd give would be Wolfenstein : the new order. Every time i feel i'm sure of my skills and begin to feel confident, the game should react accordingly.

On good vs bad difficulty, a game can increase difficulty in a multitude of ways. The only way i view as bad, is when a game becomes a trial and error puppet show. 'two doors, i'll take the left one. Death. Okay, let's take the right door, two more doors....'. Those that remember the days of raiding in vanilla wow, may remember the Heigen dance. This, is the exact perfect example of trial and error. During the fight with Heigen the unclean, he often summoned goo to spray up from the floor, and only by doing an exactly timed dance routine, could you avoid certain death.

 

[FC Groningen]

Some examples I came across. I know the AI is flawed at times, but it somehow doesn't really bother me.

Good:
I loved the Fire Emblem series; especially 7. Sure, you could be screwed over by the random number generator at times, but there was always a fixed chance for things to happen. Got criticalled by a bandit that had 2% chance? Tough luck, but you'd knew that from the start. Gain 1 hp after you level up? Tough luck, but the percentage of stats improving is fixed. On top of that, it was challenging and unforgiving, but didn't rely on secret buffs, or any other unfair advantages.

Similar, I loved the advance wars series. Yes, the AI isn't too smart and could be abused, but similar rules always were in place. Each time, the AI starts off a little stronger, but still, there are always several ways to complete the mission. Also, one of the few games like Fire Emblem that respects the rules of "Fog of War".

Bad:
Most Total War games. Especially in Rome 1, turning up the difficulty could make things near impossible to play as on the map, it meant cities couldn't become larger than "x" before they would revolt non stop; especially if they are located further away from the capital, which is not something you can avoid the moment you expand (and are expected to). In battle, the units of the AI received insane bonusses, which meant even your elite troops like praetorians could lose out to ordinary peasants. In other Total War games, the AI would receive economical boosts so they can keep producing armies and don't go bankrupt because of the inevitable upkeep problems. Especially in Medieval 2 and it's mods, the only way the AI could make things challenging (and feel like a real grind), by spamming stacks at you. The battle AI always had it's flaws so it's sort of understandable why difficulty can't be fixed there.

A lot of RPG games:
At times I love to play RPG games and even go as far as to try out RPG maker games. Apart from a lot of unrelated issues with RPG maker games (terrible plot/no balance/unlikable or stereotypical characters etc.), a lot of these games are made "hard" by either requiring players to grind for sometimes hours, or by spamming "status effects" in battle, which means around the 33%/50% mark of the game, you keep running into bosses that fight just by stunning/paralising/poisoning/blinding/stoning/silencing/insta ko'ing/bleeding etc. you which means that at least 2 of your inevitable 4 party members are on "potion duty" or "status removing duty". It might be unfair at this point, but by now, I'm also rather sick of most games having the same kind of puzzles like an ice sliding puzzle, a light puzzle which requires shoving mirrors around and pushing objects from A to B.

Really on the fence about:

I really, really love Crusader Kings II lately. By now, I've spent closely to 300 hours on it already and no sign of stopping. However, a lot of major events for each playthrough/ruler/character are decided by the roll of a dice. You can influence most factors, but there's still a random chance you'll receive a blow to the head in battle, pick up some illness and die, or get thrown in prison by your liege at the worst possible times. The thing here, however, is that everyone/almost everyone playing the game (myself included) doesn't seem to mind as the "randomness" is what makes each playthrough or each character unique, which delivers the most hilarious results, like a lustful heir that studied a year with the pope, buying a necklace for the wife to "bring out the color in her eyes" after just blinding her, or just your inbred, craven, Hunchback bastard brother killing you in your sleep and then ruining your Byzantine Empire 400 years before it's time. The thing is that the randomness is so incorporated and accepted that it no longer seems to be an issue, despite the fact that people could actually call it flawed design.

 

[Luminous_Umbra]

For bad difficulty, AI collusion in competition games is pretty annoying. One actively tries to win, while the rest do everything they can to sabotage you, even if it guarantees they can't win themselves. Thankfully, I don't see it too often.

 

[Grumman]

4. Overly random. We're not talking XCOM "I missed on an 80% shot, is impossible" randomness, but "I will triumph or wipe based on this single utterly random event/dice roll that is outside of my ability to mitigate" randomness. Hearthstone's Unstable Portal is a good example of overly random determination of outcome.

I would say that Mindgames and Sneed's Old Shredder are worse examples. Unstable Portal gets you a random minion, yes, but since the total price scales with the price of the minion, it's not too bad. You're getting a -1 mana discount in exchange for the randomness, which puts it on par with Animal Companion in value. With Mindgames and Sneed's, the potential discount is much larger - anything up to -6 mana and your hand for Deathwing. And if that's not bad enough, Sneed's into Kel'Thusad is just a massive "**** you!" to your opponent.

 

[ThreeName]

Now I'm going to spoil this, but since Isolation was released last year, I don't really care.

You've been here long enough to know about spoiler tags. Come on mate.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I would say that Mindgames and Sneed's Old Shredder are worse examples. Unstable Portal gets you a random minion, yes, but since the total price scales with the price of the minion, it's not too bad. You're getting a -1 mana discount in exchange for the randomness, which puts it on par with Animal Companion in value. With Mindgames and Sneed's, the potential discount is much larger - anything up to -6 mana and your hand for Deathwing. And if that's not bad enough, Sneed's into Kel'Thusad is just a massive "**** you!" to your opponent.

Long story short, GvG made Hearthstone err on the side of being way too random. You'll find no arguments here.

 

[Cpu46]

Similar, I loved the advance wars series. Yes, the AI isn't too smart and could be abused, but similar rules always were in place. Each time, the AI starts off a little stronger, but still, there are always several ways to complete the mission. Also, one of the few games like Fire Emblem that respects the rules of "Fog of War".

What I loved most about the Advance Wars games balance is that while the AI may have an advantage over you it is never anything outside of the rules that the player is bound by. They don't get bonus funds, they can't see in fog of war, and they don't simply do more damage than you.

Compared to almost any other Turn Based Strategy out there where the AI gets ridiculous resource boosts, can see your units and sometimes even what you are building.


... Now I am really sad that we haven't had an Advance War so far in this handheld cycle.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

I think my favourite example of good difficulty might be Klei's Mark of the Ninja. The enemies in that game can kill you in a second, but it never feels like bullshit because the stealth gameplay is so well done. It's perfectly possible to 1 shot each section if you're cautious and skilled. There are multiple tactics that can work in any given situation. The AI doesn't, as far as I recall, cheat.

I was going to throw WoW on the pile as an example of bad difficulty. Challenge Modes are way easier if you have the optimum class setup, so if you rolled a class that's not imba at the moment you're out of luck. Raid bosses are just rote memorisation. It's incredibly boring.

 

[Alma Mare]

Good difficulty: The Bellfry Gargoyles in Dark Souls 1: You fight a single enemy that's an easy opponent, but when his health gets too low you get ganked by another gargoyle with half the HP but access to fire attacks. At this point you have several choices: Rush to kill the 1st gargoyle because he's low, rush the second because he's naturally weaker but also a bigger threat or play defensively until the first opening on either because after all 2 are still manageable.

Bad difficulty: The Bellfry Gargoyles in Dark Souls 2: They are the same as DS1, but you start the battle against 2. Then, on a timer, the game adds a 3rd. And a 4rd. And a 5th. Because fuck you.

 

[Slenn]

Another poor thread falling to Dark Souls... (though if I'll add, stray demon isn't bad if you have bleed, but I never could reliably kill O&S and I always gave up when trying to kill super ornstein).

FTL really pisses me off in that the only way to win is being lucky with weapon sold, while there are some ways to circumvent it, if you don't have enough lasers you're fucked. Bombs? you're gonna inevitably run out, and the upkeep is enormous, hull breaching lasers? they are useless on the final boss since the timing has to be just right not to get shielded. Don't get me started on ion.

The game requires a stupidly large amount of luck in order to beat it. I had to set it on easy because 'normal' difficulty had some excruciatingly bad design choices. The luck thing factors into it, but I strongly dislike how the average play time is on the order of minutes. Yeah, the game can theoretically be beaten in an hour. But factor in the amount of times you're gonna be dying and you're gonna be throwing away missions every 10 minutes as if it was trash. All that does is just aggravate the player, because all your hard work is thrown away and you're going through the same tedium again and again and again.

Psychonaughts also has a bad difficulty curve. Everything up until the meat circus is a cake walk. Raz takes forever to mount himself on a rope, and during that time the figurative dad continuously wails on him with fire clubs. And multiply that with having to climb up from a rising pool of water. Grrrrr.

 

[greatcheezer2021]

GOOD means balanced, well thought and usually has depth. this means a scenario can be dealt with by a multitude of well executed maneuvers and strategies if allowed. this means something has variety and has replay value. a game should be punishing towards mistakes, but should allow a player to adapt to and grow with response. this is best represented by X-COM: Ufo Defense 1994, COD 2, and Diablo II.

BAD means unbalanced, rushed and not followed upon, which usually reflects and makes the overall experience more shallow. this means a scenario may be limited by its short-comings and may be accomplished by luck/trial and error. a few strategies exist and some may not even work because of level/map/player limitations. this means something has little variety and why you are playing it, boggles even me. a game should allow for more flexibility in overcoming an objective without being too rigid. this is best represented by xcom: enemy unknown 2012, cod: world at war, and diablo 3.


story can help enhance the story, but gameplay mechanics are what will determine difficulty. a game is always going to have some degree of difficulty. the ease of which the player carries out the tasks at hand can help set an base difficulty. knowing who and what crowd will play your game helps as what is to be expected. also having luck based on virtual dice rolls/card pickups usually DO NOT HELP

 

[greatcheezer2021]

Similar, I loved the advance wars series. Yes, the AI isn't too smart and could be abused, but similar rules always were in place. Each time, the AI starts off a little stronger, but still, there are always several ways to complete the mission. Also, one of the few games like Fire Emblem that respects the rules of "Fog of War".

What I loved most about the Advance Wars games balance is that while the AI may have an advantage over you it is never anything outside of the rules that the player is bound by. They don't get bonus funds, they can't see in fog of war, and they don't simply do more damage than you.

Compared to almost any other Turn Based Strategy out there where the AI gets ridiculous resource boosts, can see your units and sometimes even what you are building.


... Now I am really sad that we haven't had an Advance War so far in this handheld cycle.

thats because sturm is broken. and grit can be broken. and hachi. and kanbei. and sensei. and sami. and hawke. the game is always going to be difficult and can still be absolutely balanced and beautiful in every way only if the map is designed to be so.