148 réponses à ce sujet

[Dave of Canada]

If I'm playing a game, I'd like to have a challenge and overcome difficulties. Gone are the days which you'd sit outside the boss room, making sure everything was prepared and browsing your inventory to make sure that you've got items necessary for the incoming boss fight.

The only things which even come close to that degree of satisfaction is the Etrian Odyssey series on harder difficulties without power leveling, the fight dragging out ridiculously long as your supplies and mana/health begin to dwindle, often times leaving only one or two party members standing as they defeat the boss.

Hell, I'm going to play Wasteland 2 on the toughest difficulty without much knowledge on the game mechanics because it's going to be hell of a lot of fun to try and micro-manage and make sure everyone survives. If the game was too easy, this would ruin the fun of the game.

[A Crusty Knight Of Colour]

Fair enough, I am just thinking of a lot of games where there are little long lasting consequences for bad strategy/tactics in a given encounter if you manage to end up winning. It ends up either being 100% success or reload. Like imagine the Deep Roads if party members could suffer permadeath in Origins, and more beefed up and complex injury and trap mechanics. That's closer to my idea of an enjoyable challenge.

It may come across as a long difficult slog, but that is the point that BioWare were attempting to get across. In this particular scenario, the challenge reinforces the thematic tone of the location. Still, I understand why the companions don't have permdeath from gameplay. It's a shame nonetheless.

Modifié par CrustyBot, 26 décembre 2013 - 03:50 .

[slimgrin]

Nerevar-as wrote...

IllusiveManJr wrote...

How old are you people?

37.

Late 80s to middle 90s. More or less the 8 bit times, missed the 16 ones so don´t know about those. Arcades also realized why should they make games you could finish with 1 credit when most people would pay far more.<_<

Not 37, but I understand that games used to be all about challenge. That was the entire point

[Isichar]

CrustyBot wrote...

Fair enough, I am just thinking of a lot of games where there are little long lasting consequences for bad strategy/tactics in a given encounter if you manage to end up winning. It ends up either being 100% success or reload. Like imagine the Deep Roads if party members could suffer permadeath in Origins, and more beefed up and complex injury and trap mechanics. That's closer to my idea of an enjoyable challenge.

It may come across as a long slog, but that is the point that BioWare were attempting to get across. 

That would be an interesting mode. Considering DA:O was the spiritual successor to BG and in higher difficulties characters could actually permadie.

[Isichar]

slimgrin wrote...

Not 37, but I understand that games used to be all about challenge. That was the entire point

To be fair it was mostly done in the interest of eating your quarters in the arcade

[Fast Jimmy]

CrustyBot wrote...

Fair enough, I am just thinking of a lot of games where there are little long lasting consequences for bad strategy/tactics in a given encounter if you manage to end up winning. It ends up either being 100% success or reload. Like imagine the Deep Roads if party members could suffer permadeath in Origins, and more beefed up and complex injury and trap mechanics. That's closer to my idea of an enjoyable challenge.

It may come across as a long difficult slog, but that is the point that BioWare were attempting to get across. In this particular scenario, the challenge reinforces the thematic tone of the location. Still, I understand why the companions don't have permdeath from gameplay. It's a shame nonetheless.

I loved the Deep Roads and the Fade, for this exact reason. The Fade felt like a winding made of warped reality where the player was constantly isolated and the Deep Roads felt like a marathon, where when the area was actually cleared; I felt like I was coming up for air... Oghren's comments about feeling like the sky was huge and wide were funnilngly appropriate, since I sympathized after having "been underground" for that long.

The difficulty level of a game has a lot to do with that - the level of intensity that engages the player (without, at the same time, turning them off) is important and extremely difficult, since that threshold is different for different players.


Which is why I've thought that a game that analyzes the players level of success and gives prompts for adjusting the difficulty accordingly would be a step in the right direction - gently say players into more difficult resistance as they either suffer or fail.  Expecting players to adjust the difficulty to truly match their desired level of difficult is tricky, since many people feel putting a game on Easy is less desireable than slagging bring a. Game where they constantly struggle, while many players will also not crank up the difficulty on a game they are becoming bored with, simply because they would rather deal with boredom than court overly difficult struggles.

A game that started you out on the ground floor originally and prompted for increasing the difficulty later would be a good way to keep those who would do better on Easy to not feel like a failure, while at the same time challenging the player with increased (optional) difficulty if they so choose.  

[Fast Jimmy]

Isichar wrote...

slimgrin wrote...

Not 37, but I understand that games used to be all about challenge. That was the entire point

To be fair it was mostly done in the interest of eating your quarters in the arcade

That may have been the point of arcade games, but many older games that didn't run on quarters had the same (punishing) difficulty levels. I think this may have a lot to do with the fact that games were fairly poor venues for graphics, story or sound, so the largest part of the game was the gameplay itself. Without challenge, a game would be over incredibly fast, giving the player little value for their purchase.

[Maria Caliban]

The Mad Hanar wrote...

What is it about difficult games that is appealing to people? 

They appeal to my competitive nature - Sometimes, I don't just want to be good, I want to be better than others.

They appeal to my desire for complexity - I enjoy the feeling that I'm coming to understand something that's complicated or elaborate.

Some challenges are fun in and of themselves - If they're difficult, that means I have to take more time with them, which means I get to enjoy them longer.

That said, I enjoy many games I don't consider challenging and dislike some games I do find challenging.

Modifié par Maria Caliban, 26 décembre 2013 - 05:25 .

[Kaiser Arian XVII]

I'm playing New Vegas on Very Hard difficulty and Hardcore mode... and one companion and robot are with me. So do I pass the rite of challenging passage?

[naughty99]

Kaiser Arian wrote...

I'm playing New Vegas on Very Hard difficulty and Hardcore mode... and one companion and robot are with me. So do I pass the rite of challenging passage?

If you are enjoying the game on these settings, stick with what you have.

In my case, I thought the hardcore mode was a great step in the right direction, as it gives you a reason to make use of all the food and drink items. However, unless you install some mods to enhance this, food and drink are a bit too plentiful in the game, and you only need to sleep once per week or so.

I enjoyed New Vegas the most with Arwen's Realism Tweaks and Project Nevada, along with some crafting mods and another one that expands a lot of the empty areas with increased spawns and more interior locations.

Modifié par naughty99, 26 décembre 2013 - 07:02 .

[metatheurgist]

Isichar wrote...

slimgrin wrote..
Not 37, but I understand that games used to be all about challenge. That was the entire point

To be fair it was mostly done in the interest of eating your quarters in the arcade

It was, and yet people kept coming back for more. I imagine if they tried that today people would just walk away muttering about bad game design. It was also very enjoyable when you got to the stage where you could finish a game on one coin.

[Dominus]

Normally I don't, as quite a few increase their difficulty with an enlarged health bar or stronger damage. That isn't a compelling reason to bump up to Insane Mode. Looking back, the few games I enjoyed with blistering difficulty were I Wanna Be The Guy & Dark Souls. DS for reasons below, IWBTG more for the comedic ways Kayin designed the game to warp the environment against you.

From what I've heard, in Dark Souls, one must learn the particular weaknesses of an enemy or they need to avoid certain situations. In order to do that, they must experiment with different ways to handle this. That's what I'd call trial and error.

The majority of it is. Every death is a learning lesson, which is bittersweet and(as Spiro stated) felt more balanced in Dark Souls.

They appeal to my desire for complexity - I enjoy the feeling that I'm coming to understand something that's complicated or elaborate.

I agree. Depending on the game, it can be something that requires a greater deal of effort and feels more 'earned' than simply blazing through a level/mission/etc.

Mario is the best game it's so hardcore game LOL

With some of them, definitely. I had quite a few epic fail jumps in the first. 3 has some very difficult sections in the last world.

Modifié par DominusVita, 26 décembre 2013 - 11:46 .

[frustratemyself]

I don't like games that are super difficult to start with. Once I've played a game a few times and have a better feel for the game mechanics I'll turn up the difficulty. It's to give myself a bit more of a challenge if the game starts feeling too easy on lower levels. If the game feels to easy then it gets a bit boring.

Modifié par frustratemyself, 26 décembre 2013 - 09:50 .

[Milan92]

It really depends on the kind of game. Most of the time I just play on the easiest difficulty simply because I have no interested in having to start over a certain part again and again and again. 

There are rare moments though when I enjoy the game beign more difficult then usual but it can't become the frustrated kind of difficult - otherwise it just becomes annoying.

Modifié par Milan92, 26 décembre 2013 - 10:15 .

[In Exile]

[quote]CrustyBot wrote...

Fair enough, I am just thinking of a lot of games where there are little long lasting consequences for bad strategy/tactics in a given encounter if you manage to end up winning. It ends up either being 100% success or reload. Like imagine the Deep Roads if party members could suffer permadeath in Origins, and more beefed up and complex injury and trap mechanics. That's closer to my idea of an enjoyable challenge.

It may come across as a long difficult slog, but that is the point that BioWare were attempting to get across. In this particular scenario, the challenge reinforces the thematic tone of the location. Still, I understand why the companions don't have permdeath from gameplay. It's a shame nonetheless. [/quote]

Using DA:O as an example, more punishment wouldn't make the game more challenging, just more aggravating. Permadeath would add absolutely nothing. More complex injury and trap mechanics would add nothing. Why? Because it's entirely possible to run builds that just crush the game on nightmare letting you get away with no damage taken battles, much less actual HP = 0 type injuries. 

Most games that have "consequences for failing", IMO, aren't challenging because the consequences are totally orthogonal to the challenge. The better you are as a player, the less challenging this type of game would be, because the more of the supposed "difficultly" you just sidestep from the start. 

[/quote]
I loved the Deep Roads and the Fade, for this exact reason. The Fade felt like a winding made of warped reality where the player was constantly isolated and the Deep Roads felt like a marathon, where when the area was actually cleared; I felt like I was coming up for air... Oghren's comments about feeling like the sky was huge and wide were funnilngly appropriate, since I sympathized after having "been underground" for that long. [/quote]

It's interesting, becaue I never felt anything like this. The Deep Roads was a slog, but only in the boring sense because there were so many completely powerless mobs to just curbstomp and little in between to fill the space. I never felt threatened, and in fact, kind of didn't take the threat of the Blight seriously after that point because it felt like my four-person party could probably carve a bloody swath all the way to the archdemon and beat it alone. Which, funny enough, is pretty much what DA:O ends up as anyway. 

[quote]A game that started you out on the ground floor originally and prompted for increasing the difficulty later would be a good way to keep those who would do better on Easy to not feel like a failure, while at the same time challenging the player with increased (optional) difficulty if they so choose. [/quote]

The problem with that is what you might call "learning curve" difficulty and "real" difficulty. Let's take XCOM:EU which I was just playing. A lot of the diffiicutly in that game is pure learning curve. Getting a sense for how abilities work, how to calculate compounding buffs in your head, etc., that's all stuff that you just get better at by playing the game more. Same with knowin exactly what research path to run through to be able to get the right kind of upgrades (e.g. in terms of fighting off UFOs). 

The first time I played through I couldn't manage anything above casual not because the fights themselves were hard - I never had a hard time with the turn-based strategy portion (the only exception being those save the civillians missions, which IMO are just crazy hard in a very fun way) - but because I couldn't work my way through the upgrade/base design/panic-management side. 

If the game prompted me to up my difficulty 200% over in the mid-game... it'd still have a much easier time that if I tried the next leve over at the start, because at that point I had an ovewhelming material and experience advantage. 

[Il Divo]

I1 Trust wrote...

wiggles89 wrote...

The Mad Hanar wrote...

From what I've heard, in Dark Souls, one must learn the particular weaknesses of an enemy or they need to avoid certain situations. In order to do that, they must experiment with different ways to handle this. That's what I'd call trial and error. Though, I am sure that you, in all of your elite gamer glory, never made a mistake in a video game that caused you to have to retry things.

All you really need to know are enemy movesets, which aren't hard to learn; all you need to do is bait them into attacks and observe what they do. Also, showing some common sense goes a long way (e.g. don't walk into the gas that basilisks emit). There are parts of Dark Souls that are designed poorly (e.g. the game doesn't explain how scaling works), but being trial and error isn't one of them provided that you take your time rather and observe what's happening rather than rushing into areas like a fool.

Also, what's with being such a passive aggressive c*nt?

And before anyone brings up the dragon

Pretty much this.

You can avoid a lot of deaths in Dark Souls if you simply take your time to observe the environment, the enemy movements and think things through before acting.

Yes, I died plenty of times in Dark Souls.  But most of the time I blamed myself, not the game and its developers. This is one of the key things about challenging games which make them great. 

Agreed. Learning the move sets is definitely the critical part. I remember what originally made Undead Burg difficult for me was I had trouble correlating what appeared to be slow, lazy skeletons with certain moves that were surprisingly quick and agile. Ex: Their homing jump attack, that move where they unleash a barrage of quick attacks, etc.

Now? I just got off Dark Souls about five minutes ago and I can't remember the last time a zombie was able to hit me.

[Il Divo]

In Exile wrote...

It's interesting, becaue I never felt anything like this. The Deep Roads was a slog, but only in the boring sense because there were so many completely powerless mobs to just curbstomp and little in between to fill the space. I never felt threatened, and in fact, kind of didn't take the threat of the Blight seriously after that point because it felt like my four-person party could probably carve a bloody swath all the way to the archdemon and beat it alone. Which, funny enough, is pretty much what DA:O ends up as anyway. 

Also, agreed with this.

[bEVEsthda]

The Mad Hanar wrote...

Every now and then, when games in general are being discussed, I'll notice that there will be a few people who complain that games have become far too easy, and that games should be more difficult. What I've never understood is why difficult games are so appealing. Most of the time when I hop into a harder difficulty, I die. I get frustrated. Most of the time it seems like the higher difficulties simply make my player incompetent and the A.I super awesome--a reversal of the normal video game role. I am of the belief that games are first and foremost about being fun and enjoyable. Dying a lot is not fun or enjoyable. Letting off some steam and killing a bunch of mooks, or experiencing a story without too many hiccups (cakewalks aren't fun either) is fun to me. 

What is it about difficult games that is appealing to people? 

There are different kind of games, which one enjoys for different reasons.
cRPG's, to me, should be a sort of software toy, where I can experiment with different characters' motives and choices, and shape, unravel and experience the resulting story.
Difficulty, in itself, is not needed for enjoying that. However, there should, must, be some kind of threat, a dread, towering, for the sake of experiencing the story of meeting it and overcoming it. That's the purpose difficulty fills.

In most other games the difficulty itself is the point. It's the act of solving the puzzle or/and nailing the leap, that is the game, and the reward is the satisfaction of succeeding. Games shouldn't be extremely hard though. In the early days, many games tried to build a reputation on how difficult they were. Common for scrolling shooters, for instance. Some where utterly, inhumanly impossible without cheats, already from the 4'th or 5'th level. That, of course, is idiotic and ridiculous, and I think the market eventually punished those game designers.

As for games that are only about making the player feel powerful, by killing lots in spectacular, zip-zap unrealistic ways, I'm so old and mature that I find no point in it. On the contrary, I despise it.

As for "experiencing a story without too many hiccups", I'm of the opinion that reading novels and watching movies are better for that. If that is the only purpose of the game, I feel it has failed already at the conceptive stage.

[Fast Jimmy]

Il Divo wrote...

In Exile wrote...

It's interesting, becaue I never felt anything like this. The Deep Roads was a slog, but only in the boring sense because there were so many completely powerless mobs to just curbstomp and little in between to fill the space. I never felt threatened, and in fact, kind of didn't take the threat of the Blight seriously after that point because it felt like my four-person party could probably carve a bloody swath all the way to the archdemon and beat it alone. Which, funny enough, is pretty much what DA:O ends up as anyway. 

Also, agreed with this.

Do you two often read Codex entries immediately upon getting them? Or try and stop and pause whenever an ambient conversation pops up? Or spend longer than a few minutes poking around each Level Up screen?

I'm just trying to think of activities I engaged in my first time through these areas that would have given me a perceived break in these areas outside of pure slag combat. I found quests like the Cross Cutters Cache quest a lot of fun, because  I stop the action and  read Codex entires as soon as I get them, which mean I was searching around some of the a Deep Roads maps for a little while after I had cleared out the enemies, before I moved onto the next screen. 

Just curious. I guess if combat was the only experience you had down there, broken up by an occassional conversation like with Ruck, that could get boring, I guess. I, personally, felt there wS so much going on and to do that it was a lot of fun. 

[mybudgee]

Going toe-to-toe with a boss several (dozens) of times and FINALLY realizing how to defeat them is one of my first great gaming memories

[Cyonan]

As you said, games need to be fun and enjoyable. If a game is so easy that I feel like I can't fail anymore, then it becomes boring in most cases. I enjoy needing to use my skills to overcome a challenge.

However, in my opinion challenge isn't really what makes a game fun. It's more so the icing on the cake that is very solid core gameplay mechanics. There's also the idea of fake difficulty where a game just likes killing you every 5 minutes because it can, such as Diablo 3's Inferno difficulty(At least at launch). I would just consider that to be poor design.

On a side note, I've noticed that a lot of gamers like to cry fake difficulty where it's not really there or is only there in very small amounts(the ME3 MP section had tons of this). The reality is that they got burned by the game and they just don't want to admit it.

My problem with things isn't that people want easier games, it's the people who get stomped into the ground by the hardest difficulty and then immediately always think "The game is too hard and should be brought down to my level" rather than "The game is hard and I should get better so I can beat it".

We have had difficulty levels for a very long time now. Those are supposed to be the solution to gamers wanting different amounts of difficulty in their game. There's nothing wrong with not playing the game on the hardest difficulty.

[Fishy]

Ahh and forget about anything I said. It's complicated,

Modifié par Suprez30, 26 décembre 2013 - 01:57 .

[Il Divo]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

Il Divo wrote...

In Exile wrote...

It's interesting, becaue I never felt anything like this. The Deep Roads was a slog, but only in the boring sense because there were so many completely powerless mobs to just curbstomp and little in between to fill the space. I never felt threatened, and in fact, kind of didn't take the threat of the Blight seriously after that point because it felt like my four-person party could probably carve a bloody swath all the way to the archdemon and beat it alone. Which, funny enough, is pretty much what DA:O ends up as anyway. 

Also, agreed with this.

Do you two often read Codex entries immediately upon getting them? Or try and stop and pause whenever an ambient conversation pops up? Or spend longer than a few minutes poking around each Level Up screen?

I'm just trying to think of activities I engaged in my first time through these areas that would have given me a perceived break in these areas outside of pure slag combat. I found quests like the Cross Cutters Cache quest a lot of fun, because  I stop the action and  read Codex entires as soon as I get them, which mean I was searching around some of the a Deep Roads maps for a little while after I had cleared out the enemies, before I moved onto the next screen. 

Just curious. I guess if combat was the only experience you had down there, broken up by an occassional conversation like with Ruck, that could get boring, I guess. I, personally, felt there wS so much going on and to do that it was a lot of fun. 

Yes to all of the above, except for the level up screen. Even with my first playthrough, I know exactly what I want by the time I reach the spell screen. But then, Arcane Warrior/Blood Mage combo is fairly OP.

Exploring the Deep Road maps (for myself at least) kinda compounded the problem, since it simply extended the amount of time I spent down there. The lack of diverse encounters certainly didn't help by that point.