You feelings on fake difficulty?

[Aircross]

Fake difficulty is making the game more difficult by giving the human player handicaps instead of making the game AI play better.

Take a chess video game. Chances are there will be options to play against the computer. The computer will have difficulty settings ranging from beginner to expert. The more difficult the computer, the more advanced plays and tactics it will use.

Then you have games such as Rome: Total War, where increasing the difficulty doesn't make the computer a better strategist. Instead, it turns your army into a bunch of wimps with less morale and fighting ability.

What do you feel about this short cut to make games more difficult?

 

[TheDist]

Hmm, I love hard games and it basicaly all comes down to the type of game, some games are just not built in such a way that it is possible to ramp up without "computer cheating".

In the long run if it is still fun to play, then I am happy.

 

[sms_117b]

I usual use at a reason to not bother with a harder difficulty, as much as I like a challenge the base grounds should always be fair.

I remember Age of Empires being an absolute sucker for fake difficulty, giving the PC AI a much larger amount of starting resources, a much MUCH larger amount.

 

[Duatha]

I personally don't like it. A good example of GOOD AI throttling, in my opinion, is SC2 wings of liberty's campaign. It doesn't make you're units stronger or weaker, same with the AI opponent , but it makes them a better strategist.

 

[Byr0m]

Seriously dude, I think every modern video game does this, well everyone I have played on a harder difficulty anyways. To be honest, it REALLY annoys me, in the middle of, say, Mass Effect 2 on Insane and I'm about to be overrun by Husks that are tuned up crazily and my shields and health are basically non-existant; I'm screaming 'Why don't they just make the ******* AI harder instead of ******* hitting the player with the ******* nerf bat until they can't ******* do jack ****' (yeah I get really annoyed at video games sometimes) but to be honest, there's only so good you can make the AI in most types of games, eventually you have to start hitting the player with the nerf bat or the AI with the buff bat. However, in RTSs, especially the Total War series where it is all about tactics, it seems strange to me they cant just make the AI better, and in most cases that is all they'll do because that usually suffices in RTSs.

 

[StrixMaxima]

One word: Civilization

I have no problems with difficult games. However, I dislike difficulties that tie you to a single sequence of actions that will lead to victory. You still should be able to play the game with a modicum of freedom, no matter what difficulty you use.

 

[Tupolev]

Fake difficulty is making the game more difficult by giving the human player handicaps instead of making the game AI play better.

No, it's not. "Fake difficulty" describes forms of "difficulty" which involve things other than skill.

If a situation takes a ridiculous amount of luck to get through, that's fake difficulty. If a situation is really just trial-and-error gameplay in a game where memorization really shouldn't be the most important thing*, that's fake difficulty.

Simply handicapping the player can create fake difficulty in some circumstances and implimentations, but it can also be used to create very real and very interesting difficulty.

Fake difficulty has a lot more to do with how difficulty is created than it has to do with how the difficulty levels in a given game vary.

*Think, for instance, areas with lots of jackal snipers in Halo 2. Though that has a bunch of the luck aspect to it also.

 

[Aircross]

Fake difficulty is making the game more difficult by giving the human player handicaps instead of making the game AI play better.

No, it's not. Fake difficulty describes forms of "difficulty" which involve things other than skill.

If a situation takes a ridiculous amount of luck to get through, that's fake difficulty. If a situation is really just trial-and-error gameplay in a game where memorization really shouldn't be the most important thing*, that's fake difficulty.

Simply handicapping the player can create fake difficulty in some circumstances and implimentations, but it can also be used to create very real and very interesting difficulty.

Fake difficulty has a lot more to do with how difficulty is created than it has to do with how the difficulty levels in a given game vary.

Ah ok, thanks for expanding it to me.

 

[Davidm4]

I don't like this kind of difficulty at all, but it is used in RTS's (e.g. increased building speed, unit creation speed, resource income multipliers). Its a cheap means of increasing difficulty, but I suppose programming AI with no advantages to compete against human opponents is difficult.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

GTA San Andreas.

That game gave me so much rage with its terrible flying missions, lack of checkpoints, cross country races with super AI opponents, and generally shoddy, cheap mission design. Still, it's my favourite GTA to this day despite its maddening flaws.

Alan wake also was full of this kind of stuff. The game was pretty easy so they countered that by throwing in cheap, frustrating attacks, like the damn birds that swarm your face, or enemies that spawn behind you and hit you before you can see them.

 

[smartengine]

In some games it just makes sense to do that sort of 'fake' difficulty. Better that than to give the computer the APM of over 9000. Some games just work better with computers getting better, and some games do the hybrid approach by making both the computer smarter and your units weaker.

It's all about the game. I've personally never had too much interest in Total War games, so I don't know how badly done it really is.

 

[RuralGamer]

Ah, Rainbow Six Vegas 2... good times on the hardest difficulty because all it ultimately did was meant you died one bullet sooner. That game's difficulty system was dumb because the benefits of easy (i.e. you could take one, yes, literally one, more bullet) was outbalanced by the fact that hardest difficulty yielded x10 experience. The AI were still head-shot-at-a-kilometre masters on the easiest difficulty.

 

[Pain Is Inevitable]

To be honest, I don't think anyone will dispute that the (theoretically) best solution will always be to have the player and AI play by the same rules, and scale the difficulty by how well the AI plays within those rules. In reality we have the situation where using more resources to make the AI smarter and more complex means slashing the fancy graphics that draw consumers to your product.

So it's not so much developers laughing villanously and twiddling their moustaches over how they're totally tricking the consumers by taking shortcuts with the difficulty in their games, as it is developers having to choose between putting fancy graphics in their game or complex game mechanics/AI. Today most developers tend to lean towards graphics being more important, while a select few (the grand-strategy games made by Paradox Interactive comes to mind here) lean the other way.

 

[SckizoBoy]

Then you have games such as Rome: Total War, where increasing the difficulty doesn't make the computer a better strategist. Instead, it turns your army into a bunch of wimps with less morale and fighting ability.

Really? I didn't see that... though there is the dual difficulty level (campaign & battle). On the campaign map, the AI definitely is more aggressive (and screws you over financially, that I will concede) at higher levels while in the battles, I just never really saw much of a difference, though fighting defensive battles being harder is the only noteworthy point.

 

[the.gill123]

I found this in Arkham Asylum, the enemies took the same amount of hits, but you only had more health.

 

[zehydra]

I wouldn't say that it's a "fake" difficulty. Difficulty can come from a myriad of things; improved AI is just one of them.

 

[Jenitals]

Either way it's a challenge. Who really cares whether the playable character is inhibited or the AI is better as long as the difficulty goes up and down?

 

[Venereus]

Freaking PES! It's not even hidden well. You can clearly tell the AI is cheating on you when it scores free kicks from a mile away with a bad player, and that's just one example...

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

I usual use at a reason to not bother with a harder difficulty, as much as I like a challenge the base grounds should always be fair.

I remember Age of Empires being an absolute sucker for fake difficulty, giving the PC AI a much larger amount of starting resources, a much MUCH larger amount.

yup, i used to use the cheat where you could see the whole map, and i would see them at the beginning, the fucking AI would have a fucking space age civilization built by the time i had my first barrack done -_- shit pissed me off.

do i even need to mention mario kart?

 

[aashell13]

Yes, it really annoys me. On the other hand, i can imagine how it would be really difficult to build an AI that plays really well, especially for RTS's.