What's Fun About Difficulty? - The Bear and Badger

stonechalice

So I've been spurred to make a thread about imaginative difficulty in games. What makes difficult games fun? Why do devs insist on including the standard easy, normal and hard settings in their most popular franchises? How hard is it to implement difficulty into games?

Many say Goldeneye got it bang on with its myriad of bolted on objectives if you ramp up the difficulty, or Halo with its ruthless AI on Legendary or Dark Souls in all its unforgiving glory, but there are many other examples of thoughtful difficulty in games.

Prince of Persia: Sands of Time springs to mind with its reverse time gimmick which was aped by many after, even the racing genre got in on it.

There are so many ways that videogames can be hard to play, but very few that are actually entertaining.

What are your favourite difficult games?

Escape

I hate difficult games. I love easy-to-play games that players can make as challenging as they desire.

IanHamlett

I used to think hard should pick up where normal left off so I could keep playing on the same difficulty ramp. After finishing DMC I started it on hard and got my arse gift wrapped and handed to me with a little note. I thought that was bullshit.

Years later, when I played Bayonetta, same happened. This time I noticed that hard was very different to normal but not actually that much harder.

Along with extra objectives, this is how it should be.

TheDJR

It's all about learning curve, Bayonetta and Dark Souls have the best I've seen.

Dark Soldier

As is Trials. Mate to git gud at that, you gotta put the motherfucking work in.

IanHamlett

Black did a good one. All the objectives were there but you had to complete more of them iirc. There was the usual boost in enemy aggression but the health system changed too.

Normal let you hold three health packs that you could manually activate plus some enemies drop health that is used as soon as it's picked up. On hard you only get the drops. That changes the game more than you might think. Also, the enemies that are likely to drop health are more likely to chase you down. Kind of a health delivery system with added peril.

Diluted Dante

The fun in difficulty is beating a challenge. Too easy and it's boring, too hard, and it's frustrating. The trick is handling the curve right. Difficulty spikes have ruined countless games.

That's not to say that all games need difficulty.

IanHamlett

Difficulty curves aren't as curved as they seem. Even on endless games they usually spike at regular intervals.

A lot of games have pretty standard progression.

Grunt AI x1.
Grunt AI x2.
Grunt AI x2 with limited environment.
Middle management AI x1.
Middle management x1 + Grunt x2.

and so on.

IanHamlett

Diluted Dante wrote:

That's not to say that all games need difficulty.

I think the kind of people that play on the hardest difficulty are also the people that will try to collect an item atop the tower of death just because it's there. We could probably get away with making the core game piss easy and setting bastard side quests.

Vela

I think there is a lot to be said for Wonderful 101 in this regard. I assume it draws on elements of DMC and Bayonetta, but I'm not all that familiar with those titles.

Basically it is hard. On normal. For me. But it lets you wear down enemies even if it takes you a dozen goes (immediate restarts from where you died) only it gives you a shit rating. It basically forces you to learn the battle system if you want good ratings, and mocks you if you dont. However, if you keep getting shit ratings then it tends to be a dull game with simplistic strategies - basically banging your head against a brick wall will eventually bring it down but it wont be fun. But if you get to grips with the metaphorical wrecking ball, it's awesome fun.

I hated Halo 3 difficulty spikes on chokepoints with shit checkpoints though. That was bad. Specifically Crows Nest early on.

Escape

Middle-management AI cocks-up and there's a reshuffle.

Blue Swirl

stonechalice wrote:

What are your favourite difficult games?

Getting the achievement 'Epic Tier 3 Engineer' in Dead Space was a moment of supreme pride. It was my fourth play through, so the element of surprise was gone - the fear was provided by the knowledge that even a single slip up would send me back to the last checkpoint.

Dead Space 2, though, added the mode in which you could only save five (three?) times, and there were no check points. Bugger that for a bunch of bananas. There's a challenge and there's masochism.

IanHamlett

Some hard modes are for people that are hardcore and jobless.

God Hard on Vanquish is probably the hardest thing I've ever played. It might take half an hour to clear a room that I could do in a minute on normal. I had to give up after spending a few hours on one bit.

Vela

I'd also say my most recent hard mode achievement was the Champions Road level in Mario 3D World.

Holy fuck that was hard.

Brooks

Dark Souls is about as hard as I can be bothered with these days, i.e. not very.

Skerret

Make it accessible and make it quick, I really can't be fucked. This applies to many things in my life nowadays.

Blue Swirl

Vela wrote:

I'd also say my most recent hard mode achievement was the Champions Road level in Mario 3D World. Holy fuck that was hard.

Still haven't done that. It's the only thing I've got left. Seems a shame to leave it, but I just don't have the patience for grinding a level out like I did in me school days. Goldeneye's Aztec on 00 was a month's worth of effort with no qualms. Can't imagine myself doing that now.

Skerret wrote:

Make it accessible and make it quick, I really can't be fucked. This applies to many things in my life nowadays.

Giggedy.

Though you are right, to a point. I think games need to be accessible to compete with the myriad of time-sinks available to the 21st century person, but hardcore modes should be in there too for those that fall in love with a specific title.

Here's a question for the badgers - do games with a multiplayer component even need difficulty settings? Should the single player section act as a tutorial only? If the multiplayer is properly balanced (i.e., ranked, whether visibly or not) everyone should in theory find the right level of challenge.

Vela

Other achievements I'm proud of would have to include an 11-9 win over Super Nashwan in Speedball 2 cup final. And 1CC run through Final Fight (Amiga version).

JonB

The best hard for me is about getting stuck on something, going away and reconsidering tactics, trying new tactic and finding it works. The bosses on Dark Souls are this - they can seem impossibly hard if you just keep plugging away, but if you actually think about the environment, your move set and your equipment there's an answer in there. Most games would fail at this nowadays because they'd just tell you what to do.

Vela

Via a button prompt

WorKid

Nintendo teaching modes on the mario games in particular are heading in a good direction I think.

retroking1981

What I said when this topic kicked off in the Zelda thread:

retroking1981 wrote:

I'm not a fan of difficulty settings in games.

Goldeneye did it well, added extra objectives as well as being a bit tougher. Kinda felt like you were getting better and had more of a reason to replay.

Uncharted for example is just bloody annoying. I completed the OG on hard so why did I have to play 2 and 3 on normal just to unlock my level? Shite!

retroking1981 wrote:

IanHamlett wrote:

I fucking hate competing ahit on normal to unlock hard.

Indeed.

If Psycho Mantis could read what else we'd been playing on a PSone surely a PS3 should have been able to read we've completed Uncharted on hard and allowed us to jump straight in on hard in the sequel.

As far as my favourite difficult game goes it would definitely be some thing old skool. Maybe one of the infamous tough NES games. Yoshi's Island on SNES springs to mind actually, easy to complete but hard to 100% probably the best balance Nintendo ever got with that off the top of my head.

Moot_Geeza

I don't mind something being tough if it throws you straight back into it. Super Meat Boy, learning hard or extreme tracks in Trials, 'Splosion Man. You're back at the section you failed at within seconds. As a kid I didn't really consider (most) games with infinite continues hard, even if the game was tricky, because it's a bit like cheating. Ghouls 'n Ghosts on MD isn't difficult to complete, it just takes patience and repetition. Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts is insanely difficult to complete, because the continues are finite.

Moot_Geeza

It's also worth noting that I have far less patience with 3D games than 2D ones, because the way I process the rules allows me to factor in an extra layer of 'that's not fair'. Why anyone would want to play COD on veteran is beyond me - I'd rather put the bins out for an hour. Halo 3 was mentioned above, the forest level where you get constantly headshot sniped on legendary was awful.

stonechalice

God yeah CoD on veteran was horrid. Particularly the later games. An exercise in attrition.

Spelunky and rogue likes are interesting, as you never know what you're going to get, you've got to constantly think on the fly, therefore it's down to nothing but your skill and reactions to get through a level. You can't memory test any part of the game.

There's no trial and error.

Trials and Super Meat Boy are very similar games, what with the instant restarts and intricate levels, but they are very much down to playing the same section over and over until you get it right.

Is this fun? I suppose it must be because most of us love those games.

Halo and Dark Souls really aren't all that different when you think about it. Halo has instant restarts and you play the same section until you get it right, but you can be quite imaginative in how you get through it. It's your own interpretation. Same goes for Dark Souls.

Blue Swirl

Moot_Geeza wrote:

... the forest level where you get constantly headshot sniped on legendary was awful.

As someone who did Halo 3 on Legendary with a few skulls active when he got bored, I can tell you the secret there was to snipe them first.

Little Franklin

For me the satisfaction in playing hard games comes from getting really good at playing them, rather than from overcoming a specific challenge. When I destroy a room full of goons and titans on hard in batman it's because I'm awesome, and I'm playing the game the way it was really meant to be played. Until then I just feel like a monkey hitting buttons at random.

I'll only play on really hard modes if it's the the kind where you can potentially get a perfect run without taking damage, like Batman, DMC, Mario. In most FPSs getting shot is like the games way of telling you where the bad guys are, turn up the difficulty dial and it just leads to unfair deaths.

Vela

Blue Swirl wrote:

Moot_Geeza wrote:

... the forest level where you get constantly headshot sniped on legendary was awful.

As someone who did Halo 3 on Legendary with a few skulls active when he got bored, I can tell you the secret there was to snipe them first.

Good advice that. Shoot them before they shoot you. Also, dont die.

Moot_Geeza

Vela wrote:

... the forest level where you get constantly headshot sniped on legendary was awful.

As someone who did Halo 3 on Legendary with a few skulls active when he got bored, I can tell you the secret there was to snipe them first.

Good advice that. Shoot them before they shoot you. Also, dont die.

I distinctly remember a blind panic in 4 player online co-op, and not a single beam rifle between us. Then a decision that someone should hang back and stand still for a while so the other three players could respawn with non gleeful abandon.

mk64

This was one of my first memories of how games increased difficulty. They also used it on those handheld car games where you had to go side to side to get the flags/fuel. Trick with those games was to just weave the cars for 5pts adfinitum to get massive scores.

The other difficulty spike which I think is massively unfair is Street Fighter 2. Trying to beat the game without losing a round...

You can do this on level 0 to still get the cheevo but as soon as you get past the fourth/fifth character the difficulty ramps up somehow to about level 7. I'm a seasoned SF2 player and even i've never completed this challenge. Beat the game on level 7? Yeah.. but the not losing a round on level 0? Fuck off.

JonB

I beat it on level 7 without losing a round.

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