all video games should replace easy/normal/hard

Discussion in 'The Spam Zone' started by Nate_River, Jul 29, 2014.

  1. Jube Formerly Chuck's

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  2. DigitalAtlas Don't wake me from the dream.

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    Basically, this^
     
  3. libregkd -

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  4. Antidote Façade

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  5. Stardust Chaser

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    There's more than one form of artificial difficulty but when I hear the phrase I think of games which are made difficult not by careful design but by unfair gimmicks. I Wanna Be The Guy is an excellent example because it's designed around this idea on purpose. How the hell are you supposed to know until you get yourself killed? You can't, and it's that kind of trial-and-error gameplay that constitutes poor, cheap design (the result of course being artificial difficulty). And that game is an interesting example in itself, because it's more or less an homage to the iconic soul-crushingly difficult video game franchises that came out of the 8-bit era -- many of which were designed well and featured true difficulty! By exaggerating their controller-breaking qualities, the game -- intentionally or not -- exemplifies the fine line between artificial and real difficulty. I Wanna Be The Guy is difficult only insofar as you don't know what's about to happen to you; it's a game of memorization (and even luck). The games that inspired it, with exceptions most definitely, were designed to give you a chance before brutally murdering you like that. It's like playing a card memorization game in which you have a few seconds to look the cards before they're flipped, and then must recall where the matching pairs are. In I Wanna Be The Guy, they don't show you the damned cards first!

    Giving a boss a ridiculous amount of health to make it a test of only endurance and not skill is something I would call artificial also, but I view difficulty modes as something a little bit different. The player knows more or less what he or she is getting into when selecting a difficulty mode. The intent, at least as I see it personally, is to try a game first and then crank the difficulty up the next go when the player more experienced. Of course this arguably requires incentives to do so, which many games provide, but whether they're adequate encouragement depends I suppose.
    You could say that it's not that the game powers up things in harder modes, but it instead softens them in easier ones, if you want to argue that angle. Now, the methodology is an issue, and it can certainly be cheap: It's definitely faster and easier to just crank up stats and lower, say, item drop chances in a harder mode than it is to mess with the enemy layout of an area, and when done to an extreme it does become unfair. Is a (fairly adjusted/telegraphed) mode the same as not showing you the cards, though? I'm not so sure of the answer there, even if the manner by which it was changed was lazy.

    disclaimer: it's 4:20 in the morning and i haven't slept so i apologize if i'm incoherent, goodnight
     
    Last edited: Jul 30, 2014
  6. DigitalAtlas Don't wake me from the dream.

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    Take me with you, Miss Mame.
     
  7. jackdaniel0 Twilight Town Denizen

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    jaCK DOWN FOR WHAT
     
  8. Hayabusa Venomous

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    Can I just get a well-designed game like Megaman X? I mean, choice is good, but what should be the priority first in terms of difficulty is making the game challenging enough that the player has to, like, think.

    Of course, that can only apply to specific genres; RPG's are pretty different due to loot rates and random encounters.
     
  9. Jiku Neon Kingdom Keeper

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    Fukken dropped.
     
  10. A Zebra Chaser

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    To be fair, I think there's a reason why a lot of the most popular RPGs also happen to have fairly unique strategies for beating bosses and the like, RPGs can be well designed to make you think too