The game industry has another problem...or problems

[jamail77]

Not enough games with a boss rush mode!

I'm tired of not seeing this. I recently bought Batman: Arkham Origins at a heavy 80% discount because I could tell from PR, trailers, gameplay showcases, reviews [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/8390-Batman-Arkham-Origins] that it was a filler/cashgrab game that would not have the heart Rocksteady Studios has put into the franchise and would probably largely be a lazy copy/paste of Arkham City. And I was right. I knew I would still like it though and at such a discount it was worth it.

The Arkham franchise is one of my favorite collection of games. So, it's really disappointing that while the games aren't known for having the best bosses of all time we still don't get a boss rush mode. I don't want to play the whole game again just to fight a boss I really liked, especially since that, while these boss fights still have problems in feeling scripted and repetitive, they can be quite fun.

On that note, I am also upset with seeing these awesome moves done in cutscenes or heavily scripted QTEs that we can never do ourselves. I once thought up a system that would be more flexible about this since I understand some of this is limitations by current technology rather than all of it being a lack of creativity or ingenuity. I know it would require quite dynamic gameplay to deviate from the normal into doing certain moves often constricted to said cutscenes or QTEs, but I really want to execute such awesomeness. It's part of what makes me hate QTEs more. Some of you might jokingly point out that the Arkham gameplay is like a QTE system and yet I love it, but at least it's not single person encounter QTEs or...you know...environment encounter QTEs ...like most are, it's more dynamic because it doesn't quite approach being a QTE system. It can get close to one sometimes, but it's no Heavy Rain; to be fair, at least Heavy Rain made them front and center, committed to it, and tried to see what would happen with such an experiment.

While I'm at it I might as well complain about having to unlock difficulties, which in this day and age has often gotten attached to, if not gone hand in hand with, the same mentality that encourages bad microtransaction implementation if you ask me. I don't like that I can't just go to the hardest difficulty. I tend to always choose the hardest difficulty available because I consider myself a seasoned gamer and I love a challenge. I find far too many good games to be too easy. To make things worse, some games will try to hide it in a pathetic way by giving you easy, medium, hard options only to also offer New Game+ and then a one hit death or one death, restart from beginning mode or what have you once you've beaten the standard difficulty options. So, hard was never really the hard you intended to play -_-

So, what are you upset the game industry hasn't adopted enough of yet in the games it pumps out? It can be something you've seen done in certain games, but not the ones you'd appreciate it in most or just something you thought up and wish would happen already.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

It's funny you should name drop Resident Evil 5, cause that game let's you replay any part of the game you want without having to go through the whole game again.

 

[jamail77]

I have never actually played Resident Evil 5. My friend owns it, so I've heard about it from him and I've seen quite a bit of it via clips and jokes made at its expense like the boulder thing.

Though, I certainly appreciate such an inclusion, that falls into the category of being in a game I don't care about versus being in a game I do want it in. Also, if a level or section is really long and includes a boss fight at the end, I can see problems with that. If I don't want to play the long level or section, but do want the boss fight I still have to sift through the non-boss fight stuff. If I want to replay the level, I will.

 

[thedragon232]

On the note of difficulty, I feel most games put too little changes between them. Most the time is just you have less heath, which feel like an artificial way to make games harder. I remember Armored Core 4 had a mission where you were to ambush another mech that was being transported. Normal difficulty you get 10 seconds a attack him while he starts his mech. On hard difficulty he ambushes you and he brings a second mech to back him up.

 

[jamail77]

I remember Armored Core 4 had a mission where you were to ambush another mech that was being transported. Normal difficulty you get 10 seconds a attack him while he starts his mech. On hard difficulty he ambushes you and he brings a second mech to back him up.

Is that supposed to be an example of a good difficulty change? It's certainly better than lowering your health and/or simply making the enemies' strikes do more damage while keeping their intelligence pretty much the same. Still, I feel like that doesn't really go far enough. All it does is bring in a second mech and handicap you from the start, which isn't so different to me from the undesirable scenario I listed. It's just better because the situation itself is changed and requires a different approach, but it's only so much of a change really.

I guess it has more to do with the idea that normal difficulty sounds like a grace period, hard sounds like what it should be especially since that changes the story, at least in that moment in time, a bit. The normal difficulty context just sounds too unlikely to me: I don't understand why this guy would give you the opportunity to attack him like that. But, to be fair, I haven't played the game.

That does bring up an interesting question on whether a higher difficulty should result in a changed story experience. If you can handle more should the game dish out to you the way this would probably more likely go down? Should enemies say different things based on a how much of an advantage or disadvantage they have due to difficulty settings? Or should the game be be made harder while keeping actions essentially the same? I guess it all depends on whether the higher difficulty will affect enough small things to make the entire story feel different, in which case some might complain that the "true story" is locked off to players who can't handle higher difficulties.

 

[Bad Jim]

I remember Armored Core 4 had a mission where you were to ambush another mech that was being transported. Normal difficulty you get 10 seconds a attack him while he starts his mech. On hard difficulty he ambushes you and he brings a second mech to back him up.

Is that supposed to be an example of a good difficulty change? It's certainly better than lowering your health and/or simply making the enemies' strikes do more damage while keeping their intelligence pretty much the same. Still, I feel like that doesn't really go far enough.

I haven't played the game, but that sounds good to me. I'd say the best way to handle difficulty is to change each encounter by hand to achieve the right difficulty. Stuff like complex AI isn't really necessary, simple things can make a big difference. What's important is that they don't just apply global modifiers like damage scaling, which can have a rather uneven effect on the difficulty and usually means you don't have to change tactics at all.

I often see claims that the right way to do difficulty is to make enemies smarter on higher difficulties, often with the claim that nothing else should change. I don't think that's true. Imagine for a second that you had started off by designing a game at the hardest level of difficulty. How would you make it easier? As a low difficulty player, I'd rather fight sensible enemies that aren't too strong than fight enemies that are dangerously strong but laughably stupid. And even your best AI will struggle to achieve 'sensible', don't think you can make a typical game AI for normal difficulty then somehow make a super genius AI for higher difficulties.

 

[jamail77]

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I haven't played the game, but that sounds good to me. I'd say the best way to handle difficulty is to change each encounter by hand to achieve the right difficulty. Stuff like complex AI isn't really necessary, simple things can make a big difference. What's important is that they don't just apply global modifiers like damage scaling, which can have a rather uneven effect on the difficulty and usually means you don't have to change tactics at all.

I often see claims that the right way to do difficulty is to make enemies smarter on higher difficulties, often with the claim that nothing else should change. I don't think that's true. Imagine for a second that you had started off by designing a game at the hardest level of difficulty. How would you make it easier? As a low difficulty player, I'd rather fight sensible enemies that aren't too strong than fight enemies that are dangerously strong but laughably stupid. And even your best AI will struggle to achieve 'sensible', don't think you can make a typical game AI for normal difficulty then somehow make a super genius AI for higher difficulties.

I actually completely agree with you. My point was that while the game we're talking about tries to change the encounter, it sounds to me it more likely would just come off as a slightly less than superficial disadvantage, a lack of a grace period, rather than something that challenges your skills and thinking. If I've played before, I just have to be prepared to be ambushed. If I haven't and there weren't any signs I was going to be ambushed then it all comes down to whether I was capable of handling everything that happened before easily on this hard difficulty. It probably isn't any harder. You just start off at a disadvantage.

I've never played the game, but I've seen this sort of thing done before in other games and that is usually what ends up happening. It also creates a bit of ludonarrative dissonance as I said earlier. I mean on a lower difficulty he wasn't being sensible. He gave you chance to attack him. Then, on hard he is more sensible. I bet the way he acted on lower difficulty doesn't go in line with his character. Maybe I should play the game to be sure. Who knows: Maybe I'm wrong.

The only reason I brought up smarter AI is because when you try to make a game harder by adding a global modifier like damage scaling it is useless if you were already dodging/blocking/countering, say, 9/10 attacks on the lower difficulty. It's not harder really; it's just a lazy difficult standard. It's only harder for those who got moderately damaged on the lower difficulty because they'll probably die more often and sooner. A difficulty has to be harder beyond something so superficial as it won't affect all players and probably gives the game less replay value. I wasn't suggesting smarter AI is the solution. That depends completely on the type of game, how it's done, and the limits the developers have. This is especially true since, as you said, fighting dumb, strong enemies on a low difficulty is rather silly. It might even take you out of the experience, if the game is trying very hard to immerse you in it: "Oh look, this well written character is walking in place into a wall continuously while shouting some epic lines...awkward".

 

[Pink Gregory]

I often see claims that the right way to do difficulty is to make enemies smarter on higher difficulties, often with the claim that nothing else should change.

Wouldn't that essentially mean coding up to three or four different AIs for each difficulty setting, as well?

 

[Bad Jim]

I often see claims that the right way to do difficulty is to make enemies smarter on higher difficulties, often with the claim that nothing else should change.

Wouldn't that essentially mean coding up to three or four different AIs for each difficulty setting, as well?

I guess so, although you could probably just start with the hardest and disable the most effective tactics to make lower difficulties, rather than rewrite it four times.