What is difficulty really?

[Siyano_v1legacy]

Hello, I was wondering what was your opinion on what is difficulty really?
Personnally when I look at those "supposed" hard and difficulty game, I feel like its all about varying game around specific thing

1- Pattern recognition, dodge move that have "tells" or learning how a monster react to specific move, such as Dark Souls

2- Repetition, learning from fails, learning by restart the same part thousand time, learning specific timing, such as Super Meat Boy

3- Quick Reflexe, this one is more in game such as Guitar Hero

4- Ridiculous control, a new genre to say its supposed to be hard, which is include in QWOP, surgeon simulator or Octodad

After all, my opinion is, I don't find most of those can be considered a difficulty setting
-pattern recognition? that just memory, like saying that Simon Says is hard when you get to a certain number

-repetition, either because its was a stupid trap (such as in game like I wanna be the guy) or because something one hit me and such I don't see how that supposed to be hard to learn from randomness you can't know

-Quick Reflexe, this one I can slightly consider to be somewhat a difficulty setter up to a skill setter, but it all boil down to how good can you get rather than how hard it is

-Ridiculous control, well I am not even talking about this one, I feel like this one is more a bandwagon than a trend and hope its doesn't get to much popularity with this new Octodad

 

[Able Seacat]

Well it's pretty subjective, what I find difficult you may not. I think for the most part Dark Souls does a good job with making challenging gameplay. I think Dark Souls contains those first three things you mentioned and not just the first one.

The kind of challenging game I like is one that makes me think. In Dark Souls I didn't rush blindly into new areas, swinging my weapon like Raiden on red bull. I paced slowly, looking for traps, learning from past deaths (mimic chests) and being aware of the surroundings (shout out to Liam Neeson) when fighting enemies.

It must be damn hard for a game designer to balance the line between challenge and frustration.

 

[MysticSlayer]

If I have trouble overcoming an obstacle that I'm perfectly capable of overcoming with enough practice, thought, or development of skill, then I see it as difficult. Just because it is pattern recognition or level memorization doesn't make it less difficult. I still had to invest considerable time mastering whatever it is the game wanted me to master. Easier games wouldn't require that investment in recognizing the patterns, memorizing the layout, or developing the necessary reflexes.

 

[Siyano_v1legacy]

Yes overcoming an obstacle is something that can have a degree of difficulty, but personnally I can't seem to find pattern recog, memory and such really something that make a games difficult, dieing in one hit not seeing a "tell" that hurts a lot, memorising that in that corner the chest is a mimic is just a question of using your brain to some extend.
I guess it all about how you see it

 

[MysticSlayer]

Yes overcoming an obstacle is something that can have a degree of difficulty, but personnally I can't seem to find pattern recog, memory and such really something that make a games difficult, dieing in one hit not seeing a "tell" that hurts a lot, memorising that in that corner the chest is a mimic is just a question of using your brain to some extend.
I guess it all about how you see it

I understand the sentiment, and I too get a little annoyed when people constantly praise a game's challenge only to discover that it uses numerous unfair or basic tricks that don't really add any substance beyond a "ha, ha, got you!" moment. And don't even get me started on "challenges" based on pure luck (or lack thereof)!

Still, I think there is some merit to making a game that forces you to remain aware of enemy patterns so that you can defeat the enemy efficiently, sort of like turning a challenging puzzle into a battle. Is it a mental challenge? Sure, but so are the puzzles whose nature inspired it. Is trying to nail the timing of jumps in Super Meat Boy little more than a physical challenge of hand-eye-coordination? Yes, but so is the challenge of learning to hit a tennis ball well enough to play competitively. Ultimately, both of these types of challenges are based on challenges we enjoy taking outside of games in sports, puzzles, and other activities, but they've been digitized and applied to rules that we wouldn't normally be working with in real life. As a result, I think calling them a challenge has some merit. At that point, it really comes down to whether or not the type of challenge appeals to us.

 

[Maximum Bert]

Difficulty is overcoming something that does not come naturally now lets see many would see learning a new language as difficult but hey thats just memorising a few thousand words right and the grammar and applications its all memory and yeah in the right environment and given the way some peoples minds work some wouldnt find it difficult at all and even children do it so it cant be that difficult right.

There are various levels of difficulty obviously and each is largely subjective to each person, everythings easy once you get it and difficult if you dont.

The game could be slow paced and require little thought or reflexes and yet some people would find it difficult with continued practice most things eventually become easier to most people thats just overcoming the difficulty and how much time and practice you had to put in to overcome the difficulty is a reflection on how difficult you found it.

 

[scorptatious]

In my opinion, no matter how difficult something may be, it needs to be designed so that the player is able to accomplish it on their first try, not saying that they SHOULD do it on their first try, but designed in a way so that if a player messes up, they can realize what they did wrong and learn from it.

Unfortunately, a lot of games don't seem to get that right IMO. Especially if it's an adventure game like King's Quest 5. I watched an LP of the game, there was a puzzle that involved a witch that won't let you leave until you use a specific item on her. From what I remember, you can't leave as soon as you enter, so if you don't have the item by then, you're screwed. That's not what bugs me though. It's how you figure out which item you're supposed to use.

In another area, you pick up this bottle. You don't have any idea what it does, so you examine it. Out pops a genie. The genie then defies what one would expect a genie to do and locks you up in the bottle he was in, ending the game. You need to use this item to trap the witch so you can progress in the game.

Do you see what I'm getting at now? If there was something like say, a note or something on the bottle that warns against rubbing it, then the player could probably put two and two together, but no, the only way you can figure out the puzzle is to try it yourself, die, and reload. From a narrative stand point, that would make absolutely no sense. King Graham would not have known that there was a spiteful genie waiting to imprison whatever poor sucker who accidentally lets him out, so how would he figure out to use it on the witch?

I've heard about games that "hold your hand" too much, but I think this kind of design is just as bad, if not worse.

Anyway, I believe difficulty for the most part is subjective. What you may find hard, I might find not too bad, and vice versa. People work and think in different ways. I hear people say the Fury from MGS3 is easy, but I personally find him to be one of, if not the hardest boss in the game.

 

[joest01]

Fully agree there are different kinds of games that are considered hard.

Dark Souls fits in with say Ghosts and Goblins in that if you know the level inside out it becomes basically a non issue to navigate it.

A game like N+ (super meatboy in your list) where you learn through endless repetition. But as compared to Dark Souls or GnG there is a LOT more reflexes involved (a dash of luck doesnt hurt either.

JRPG after game boss: grrrrrh. this one is down to having spent hundreds of hours and absolutely understanding the game battle mechanics to the tee. You need to know exactly what party members in which sequence, with what gear, when to heal, which elemental damage etc.

To me the perfect example of well done difficulty is Ninja Gaiden in the sense that the game gives you all the tools to dominate but you need to work at mastering them to succeed. There is components of all of the above at work here.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

It's a number of things, but I just wanted to clarify that pattern recognition tends to be a large part, but isn't as easy as you propose. The difficulty comes from adapting to new scenarios. Enemies with difference attack patterns and timings, fighting a group of different enemies with different patterns. Also, in games like Dark Souls, intuition from common sense or game experience can put a player at an advantageous position in a new area when they're thinking, and is often the only thing preventing traps from being artificial difficulty - and it does prevent that. You could trigger an arrow trap and die immediately, or see a raised tile and proceed cautiously, seeing the arrow spitter in the opposite wall later.

 

[Nuuu]

Not too sure where I heard it but for a while now, I've described "Difficulty" and "Challenge" in games to be two different things:

Difficulty: How easy it is to lose.

Challenge: How hard it is to win.

So a game like Kirby's Epic Yarn may be considered not difficult at all since you can't actually "Lose" but may be considered somewhat "Challenging" because winning isn't an absolute cakewalk.

Difficulty can lead to challenge, but not necessarily the other way around, Dark Souls would be a nice example of this. Of course all this is just the user's opinion, language is what you make out of it.

 

[Reed Spacer]

A miserable little pile of secrets.

I regret nothing.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

I think a small mix of the first 3 points (pattern recognition, repetition and quick reflexes) while not relying too heavily on a particular one makes a good difficulty that is fun.

Quick reflexes are the main difficulty in many FPSs, but they also include benefits from recognition (seeing enemies, predicting attacks and ambushes, being able to tell how many enemies on screen, their directions and levels of threat) and repetition (memorising spawn points, particular encounters, positions of snipers etc.)

For turn based strategy games it will be a different blend of memorisation of enemy encounters, popular AI tactics and abilities verses your own team tactics and abilities, and repetition of when you get to a difficult enemy repeating different strategies to find out weaknesses/strengths and discover what works (or grinding past their level)

RTSs require a lot of memorisation and repetition, memorising the maps resource and enemy locations, and repetition to discover how best to build your base, where the most defences should go, which units to invest in, where the enemy is most likely to attack first and in what way. Reflexes are also important as you need to be constantly working at your army, balancing resource gathering investment and army expenditure.

I think relying too much on one to the detriment of the others is where 'false difficulty' is created, such as the Nintendo hard games, which often switched between requiring all memory or all reflexes at record pace, disorienting the player. Or the instant one hit kill moves often seen in JRPG bosses, which just requires repetition until the RNG doesn't spam it.

 

[The Abhorrent]

I find difficulty tends to be due to three main factors:

Learning Curve
Essentially, how fast the game requires you to learn to adapt to the evolving conditions. A gentle learning curve is easy to adapt to, even if at the end you're performing at a very high level of play; on the other hand, "difficulty spikes" are near universally hard due to their sudden nature (even in relatively easy games). A well-paced learning curve challenges the player to perform, but doesn't frustrate them; keep in mind that "well-paced" is very dependent on the player themselves, some like being thrown to the wolves while others don't.

Margin of Error
A bit more of an absolute, but the precision and accuracy required by a player while going through a game tends to be good measure for how "difficult" a game is. A low margin of error means a high failure rate, and vice versa. Too low, and frustration may set in due to failures occurring due to what will seem to be (and may actually be) random chance; those who persevere at this point may be simply stubborn, but to each their own.

The price of failure
Another good variable... How often can you attempt something? Does failure mean going back a long ways, or just a few seconds? Heck, does it just mean a lower score but in no way impedes completing the challenge? A high price forces the player to play better or be doomed to a cycle of failure (especially when frustration doesn't help one's performance), but this can lead to an "unstable equilibrium" where better performance actually means the game gets EASIER. A low margin of error can be off-set by a low price of failure, leading to repeat attempts being very frequent.

---

Getting the difficulty of any given game is a balancing act between all three, especially if you want a smooth learning curve.

The developer is also free to throw in the odd "speed bump" (difficult spike), and may in fact be obligated to do so; the fluctuations in the difficulty make it more interesting, rather than a semi-monotonous steady increase in the challenge. These also serve as prime points to test the player's ability, to see if they've learned all the necessary techniques to progress further into the game.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

In the absolute sense, difficulty simply is an arbitrary benchmark of how much time the average person would take to become proficient at some task or another. Most video games do this using systems that require a degree of route memorization or muscle memory and pinning down exactly what makes something difficult varies from game to game.

As a rule though, difficulty necessarily implies that the player needs to learn something in order to succeed and most games have relatively little to teach. Those games that have the most to teach tend to be the most difficult and, in some cases, can become nearly timeless as a result.

To use a sporting example, fencing is a sport where the basic requirements to participate can be learned in a few weeks and after a year or so of solid practice a person can learn all the physical motions required for all but the most exotic fencing maneuvers - there are, as it turns out, relatively few ways to use a sword on attack or defense. This mastery allows you to compete with others where various combinations of moves are strung together in a bout. Thanks to nearly endless variations of attack and defense that can result, the sport becomes effectively impossible to master because at no point have you actually seen every possible permutation of attack and defense enough to have formulated the perfect response. Chess similarly offers so many possible board states that it is impossible for a person (or even a computer) to know the optimal move at all times - perfect mastery thus being impossible makes chess supremely difficult.

To take it back to Dark Souls, most people assert that the game is brutally difficult and yet never stop and ask why they think this is the case. On the whole, the game can teach you just about everything you need to know by the time you've fought the Taurus Demon and the only new things you pick up through the rest of the game mostly relate to the exact position and disposition of foes. The game doesn't teach much after the first few hours; instead, it simply punishes any failure to adhere to those early lessons with a heavy hand. On the whole, having recently beaten the game, I'd argue that Dark Souls isn't difficult, it is simply cruel.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Most of the time (for me) difficulty comes from over-eagerness. Though this may be cause I've been playing a lot of Demon's Souls lately... generally speaking in an RPG there's no obstacle I can't surpass without leveling up until I'm faster better harder stronger.

 

[Chaos Isaac]

"Fair, challenging, adversity."

This, to me, is difficulty. Dark Souls is a good example of this, as most of the time any enemy in the game can, and will, kill you if you don't take it seriously. But at the same time, you can kill any enemy in the game without agonizing over it. Well, for the most part. Bed of Chaos, Blight town and some other monsters/situations can be really annoying, but that's a oddity and not the general rule.


There's no stupid amount of over compensation for the enemies to be a challenge. (One shot kills, hyper-accuracy and reaction time, out right cheating and knowing where you are when hiding, lookin' at you GTA V, or flat out ignoring your attacks and throwing repeated super moves at you without stopping. Tales of Graces, that's on you.)