Challenge In Games Is Not A Dirty Word

Thanks to GamerDad for their editorial discussing why there should be more difficult-to-complete games out there. The piece takes difficulty complaints regarding F-Zero GX for GameCube as a starting point, saying "This isn't the first time a top quality, high profile game has kicked people in the butts with challenge and it won't be the last. This kind of challenge is good for gaming and we need more games like it." The article goes on: "Players have grown accustomed to difficulty levels that are far too easy and I think it's contributing to their boredom with many games", but also cites specifics: "The most important thing about challenge, and it's one that F-Zero GX gets right, is that the game must let the player know it was their fault that they lost."

Comments

Adjustable difficulty levels

[neglige]

Players have grown accustomed to difficulty levels that are far too easy and I think it's contributing to their boredom with many games

The real topic is that games should have various difficulty settings: one for beginners, one for intermediates and one for experts. And the settings should be really different. That way, anyone can pick their favourite level of challenge. And after having played through a game on an easy level, chances are that the player will re-play the game with harder settings.

Good examples include System Shock (puzzles? shooter? your choice!), DN3D (come get some!), Quake or Civ 3. Or Grand Prix 3/4, where you could enable several stages of realism.

Also a good choice if your game has levels: first levels are easy, then become more difficult. Baldurs Gate (2) did it like that, although some parts were (for me) extremely difficult. No problem if there is a cheat. And after failing 10 times at the exact same position, I'm inclined to cheat.

Re:Adjustable difficulty levels

[Anonymous Coward]

you mustt be a complete idiot if you found bg2 hard. i finished it blindfolded and drugged with a bard using a non-magical shortbow and magic missile. the only non trivial part were the dragons

Re:Adjustable difficulty levels

[whee]

And F-Zero has just that. From the GameSpy review:

But is the game too difficult for most? That's pretty debatable. I personally found the difficulty curve pretty harsh -- particularly on the harder difficulty settings -- but F-Zero has always been about the overall challenge.

I don't understand this reviewer at all. When the difficulty is set higher, the game actually gets harder! What a concept! This amazing technology should be implemented in as many games as possible.

I think gamers are just getting used to games that are nothing more than busy work and no challenge. Obviously, a few hours of NetHack could solve a lot of problems.

Re:Adjustable difficulty levels

[Ondo]

I don't understand this reviewer at all. When the difficulty is set higher, the game actually gets harder! What a concept! This amazing technology should be implemented in as many games as possible.

The problem is that while the enemies get harder on the higher difficulty levels they're not the problem. The problem is not falling off the track. They only have 20 courses and they get quite hard with the 11-15th ones. That's a harsh difficulty curve.

Re:Adjustable difficulty levels

[n0wak]

The problem is that while the enemies get harder on the higher difficulty levels they're not the problem. The problem is not falling off the track. They only have 20 courses and they get quite hard with the 11-15th ones. That's a harsh difficulty curve.

There are 26 courses, actually. And I'd argue your claim about the tracks being too difficult. Given some practice, most of those tracks can be easily completed on Novice or Standard. The difficulty comes in on, gasp, the more difficult levels (Expert and Master), where the challenge is not just to stay on the track -- but to stay on while going as absolutely fast as possible. That's easier said than done when you also have 29 other racers.

I find the difficulty curve of the game to be steep, but tolerable. It took me a while to beat the GPs on Expert, but after I did that, I beat the first GP on Master on the first try -- though the later GPs are giving me trouble again. If you practice the courses and vehicles enough, the difficulty curve is fine.


It's just that, I guess, "practice" is a dirty word when it comes to the lazy, casual gamer.

Re:Adjustable difficulty levels

[Anonymous Coward]

Well yes, actually. I play games to let off steam as a break from doing something useful. I don't want to have to play the game for more than half an hour to achieve anything; I want to get back to achieving useful goals.

Ok, I've got to ask...

[handsomepete]

How many other people share this complaint that games are too easy? Several of the games I have for my PS2 I haven't finished yet because I'm having trouble completing a level (ZOE2, Contra SS) or don't have the time to finish (GTA:VC). I'm sure a large part of it is because I suck or don't dedicate enough time to it, but are gamers at a point where they want every game to be Ghosts N' Goblins hard?

If F-ZeroGX is as hard as that GBA F-Zero, count me out. That thing kicks my ass.

Re:Ok, I've got to ask...

[Prior Restraint]

...or don't have the time to finish (GTA:VC).

I just want to start by saying I enjoyed Vice City as a general rule. Getting 100% completion on it, though, is an exercise in tedium. It wasn't so much hard as repetitive and dull in places. I wouldn't mind if that gets addressed, either.

Re:Ok, I've got to ask...

[Goldberg's Pants]

Get cheats to unlock everything:) I have no idea how far in I am, but the missions bore me. I just like running round the city causing chaos:)

One of the coolest inventions in recent years with gaming difficulty is where is scales to the player. For example, the most recent Papyrus NASCAR sim has an option for AI that scales according to your skill. I've tested it a few times, and it works VERY well. Keeps the racing close. A BIG problem with racing games is when you're either way fast or way slow. Having scaleable AI difficulty is a great idea.

ALL games should have a difficulty option. I usually play games first on Easy. That way you can get through it pretty quick, get the story etc... Then, if the game was actually FUN, I'll try it on a harder difficulty.

Quake is a good example. Went through it on the lowest difficulty the first time. Then went through it on Nightmare difficulty. THAT was sweet:)

Re:Ok, I've got to ask...

[Prior Restraint]

I have this weird personality quirk: GTA (3 or VC) is about the only game I won't use a cheat on. I've no idea why. (Though I agree: random chaos is the way to go.)

I usually follow your strategy: go through once on easy (or whichever is default), then once more on the hardest (exception for Civilization derivatives: those seriously stomp my ass). More recently, I've tried starting on the hardest level, because I simply don't have time to go all the way through a game twice, and I feel like a wuss if I just play on "normal" and then shelve it.

Re:Ok, I've got to ask...

[Goldberg's Pants]

MOST games I like don't have a story or anything. Sports games and the like.

As for GTA, I like to cheat. Not to give myself infinite health etc... But to get WEAPONS!:)

There's also a funny trainer you can get which, among other things, let's you (if you hammer the key) have it rain cars:) THAT makes for some fun screenshots:)

Re:Ok, I've got to ask...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not trying to be a jerk, but I found the GBA F-Zero to be more boring than hard. Once you learned to tap the A button I found it had almost no challenge. I quite wish it had been a straight port of the SNES game instead of a stylistic rehash.

Thus far w/ GX I'm finding it hard, but not enough to really beat me down. Then again I've been playing since the NES and don't find most current games hard the way the old ones were. Some of the story mode races definitely bring back the old days.

On a Slight Tangent

[NJVil]

When will programmers stop equating difficulty with the computer "cheating" to make it better?

As one example, even on the easiest level of CivIII, the computer players somehow, magically, know more about the map and areas they cannot possibly have seen (even by trading maps with each other). Only by clamping down on the computer players' ability to produce units/buildings does it rein in its knowledge. At the higher levels, not only does it know more about the map than a human player ever could, it outproduces you dramatically.

Would it really have been that difficult to come up with an AI that did not cheat by violating the fog of war? I could understand it if at the highest levels this happened, but when it's pretty obvious on the easiest level, it shows a lack of interest in working on making the AI truly challenging, but rather taking a one-size-fits-all approach and altering the difficulty by manipulating non-AI facets of the game.

Re:On a Slight Tangent

[Anonymous Coward]

The main thing I hated about civ3 was that it was SOOOO much harder than civ2. On civ2 it was nearly impossible to lose on the easiest difficulty. On civ3's easiest difficulty I find myself winning only about 20% of the time. I'm afraid to even try the higher levels.

Re:On a Slight Tangent

[mattgreen]

Or even more obvious cheats, such as in Frozen Throne on hard mode the computer has infinite resources while you have to keep going from mine to mine and risking your throat in the process.

Re:On a Slight Tangent

[hibiki_r]

IMNSHO, the main problem is that on many games the enemy AI is coded way too close to the end of developement. If the internal data structures in a strategy game are not designed with the AI in mind, developing a challenging and fair AI is a daunting task. Thus, many strategy game developers end up having to create the enemy AI by reusing code. Yes, the same sub-par code that they created 2 or three years ago for the previous version of the game, or maybe just another game that used similar mechanics.After a week or two making sure that the computer uses some of the latest game features that the previous version didn't have, the AI is done.

Of course, some game makers like Lionhead are making AI in strategy games more of an issue, but many developers are still cutting corners in the enemy AI due to the publisher's pressure.

If you buy a PC strategy game this fall, and you get the feeling the enemy AI is pretty similar to the one of the previous version, who knows? you might be facing the exact same enemy you played 4 years ago.

Re:On a Slight Tangent

[Goldberg's Pants]

Starcraft is the same. The AI knows from the start the entire map layout AND where you are. Easily demonstrated by cheating to remove fog of war, and watching the AI IMMEDIATELY head in your direction.

Cheating AI is something I REALLY hate. It's just a kludge developers use to make the AI seem smarter than it is. Without the cheating, most game AI would be dumb as a brick.

Re:On a Slight Tangent

[Fred IV]

As one example, even on the easiest level of CivIII, the computer players somehow, magically, know more about the map and areas they cannot possibly have seen (even by trading maps with each other). Only by clamping down on the computer players' ability to produce units/buildings does it rein in its knowledge. At the higher levels, not only does it know more about the map than a human player ever could, it outproduces you dramatically.

That's entirely the point of the more difficult levels of play in Civ III. The AI is not able to outplay a skilled player, so it is given production and starting unit bonuses to make the more challenging difficulty levels...well...more challenging.

Read more about difficulty levels in Civ III here.

Re:On a Slight Tangent

[Fred IV]

On civ3's easiest difficulty I find myself winning only about 20% of the time. I'm afraid to even try the higher levels.

You need to learn how to play the game, it is very different than Civ 2 and should not be approached the same way. Good pointers here.

Re:On a Slight Tangent

[FreekyGeek]

Would it really have been that difficult to come up with an AI that did not cheat by violating the fog of war?

Yes.

People who complain about the difficulty of video games (either too tough or too easy) are almost always unaware of 1) how tough it is to have variable "difficulty" settings in a game, and 2) the real-world restrictions that preclude what might seem like "common-sense" solutions to these problems - restrictions that game developers have to face.

First, what does "difficulty" mean? It's a completely variable term, since everyone has different skill levels, so what seems easy to some seems difficult to thers. There's no objective measure of "difficulty". There's no such thing as a "difficulty meter". In some games, difficulty is easy to adjust - in shooters, you give the player more hitpoints, stronger weapons, or powerups. Or you give the enemies less armor, or whatever. But what about an RPG? A strategy game? Should game designers have to come up with three or more seperate puzzles for each place in the story that calls for a puzzle? How does one gague how easy or difficult a puzzle is? Some people can solve word scrambles in a second, while others can hardly do them at all. Some people think very visually and have good spatial relations while others don't.

Second, there are a huge number of restrictions game developers work under - time and money, mostly. Every developer in the world would love to have the luxury of releasing games "when they're done". But unless you're Id, forget it. Sure, if you had a team of ten programmers with three years to do nothing but write AI code, you could come up with some very sophisticated AI for games, but that's hardly realistic. So games only have to have AI that's good enough to challenge most players most of the time. And often that means "cheating" by the AI. Ever tried to write AI? How would you design a game AI that could provide a good challenege to all players, with a variable difficulty level, without cheating, without spending ten years doing it, without requiring a supercomputer to do so?

Strategy AI is hard to write. If it was easy, the military would just write the Best AI Ever and let it run all the wars. Stategy, even basic strategy, is an incerdibly complex subject with a billion variables. Don't believe me? take a look at Chess, a game with extremely simple rules. It has taken decades of time and many supercomputers to write software to beat a human at chess, and even then it is only through brute force, by analyzing every possible move and permutation. Ever wonder why the game of Go doesn't have too many good computer versions? because writing AI for it is so damn hard. he rules are evn simpler than Chess, yet Go makes chess look like tic-tac-toe in terms of strategic complexity.

Second, there are very serious hardware limitations. Even on fast computers, AI chews up a LOT of CPU time. Programmers have to share the CPU time between all kinds of tasks, and the AI can't chew up 90% of the cycles. There's no point having a near-sentient AI if you the rest of the game runs like molasses. And as much as us high-end, hardcore gamers hate to admit it, a HUGE portion of the gamer audience still uses pretty old PCs. And they buy games, too - a lot of them.

As is so often the case, this issue is far more complex than it appears. Game design does not happen by itself, and every hour spent tweaking difficulty levels is one less hour spent making the game better in other ways. Every cycle the AI uses makes the game that much slower and that much less accessible to people on low-end machines. Every minute of programmer time spent on any of these things costs money and adds to the schedule.

In a perfect world, we'd have unlimited game developement budgets and cycles. Until then, compromises have to be made.

Re:On a Slight Tangent

[Rimbo]

You're right that building AI can be difficult. That's why there's really only a handful of chess programs out there -- GNUChess and ehrm... that non-free one.

But with chess, the AI has to be good, because the game is fair. There is no fog of war, no way for the computer to know what move you'll make next. And the rules of the game are known, so the computer can't cheat and get away with it.

You do know the engineering principle that the later you start development on an idea, the more it costs to implement? The general rule is that what costs $1 in the design phase costs $10 in the development phase, which costs $100 in the testing phase, which costs $1000 in the beta phase, and $10,000 in the release phase.

If you're arguing about budget constraints, then you've made the parent post's point for him: You have to design the AI from the beginning, not as an afterthought.

Remember, you are making a game. Part of what makes a game into a game is the challenge of playing it, of which AI development can be a big part. By waiting to develop AI until the last minute, it costs more to make the AI, and more importantly, you're putting the cart before the horse.

In summary...

Parent post: "Developers put the cart before the horse."
Your post: "Well what do you expect us to do, put the horse back?"

My point: Putting the cart before the horse is not the only way to develop games; in fact, it is the wrong way. This is an engineering principle as old as time: If you design from the beginning with good AI in mind, expense is not the problem.

Re:On a Slight Tangent

[FreekyGeek]

You do know the engineering principle that the later you start development on an idea, the more it costs to implement? The general rule is that what costs $1 in the design phase costs $10 in the development phase, which costs $100 in the testing phase, which costs $1000 in the beta phase, and $10,000 in the release phase.

1) What is true in physical engineering is usually not true in software enginnering. Just because they're both called "engineering" does not mean that rules of thumb from one automatically apply to the other. It's dangerous to spread such guidelines between largely unrelated disciplines.

2) Just because it's cheapER and easiIER to do stuff early does not necessarily make it cheap or easy. No matter when you design it, game AI architecture will always be difficult to write and balance. Cost and schedule are only parts of the equation. You are mistakenly assuming that the earlier you start, the cheaper and easier it is. If that were true. then starting at the very beginning you could write one line of code for a buck and be done with it. There is a baseline for cost and time for this stuff, and the baseline is very high.

Simply saying "start earlier" isn't a solution to the problem. If you think that game developers alway leave AI to the last minute, get to then end of the project, and say "oh, whatever, let's just toss something in", you're mistaken. Oh, sure, sometimes it happens. There are dumbasses in every industry. But most developers aren't that stupid. They generally have detailed design documents before they start writing code.

The main problem, as I said before, is that AI in general, especially game AI, especially strategy game AI, is very, very difficult stuff to write. Anyone who thinks it isn't has never tried it.

If you're not a programmer, sit down and think about the millions of variable in strategy. You and I see it pretty easily because the human brain is designed to see patterns and it's obvious "oh, the enemy has a large force over there, go attack it." It isn't so obvious to the computer. Nor is it obvious that if you send your main force to attack another, someone else could sneak into your undefended base. And so on, with the "if this, then that" stuff getting monstrous.

If you are a programmer, give it a shot. Sit down and try to write an AI for the game of Go. You can learn the rules in about ten seconds. Or write one for Othello. If you find it extremely difficult, you've learned something. And if you find a brilliant way to do it that no one's ever thought of before, that doesn't involve "cheating", and doesn't require a supercomputer to constantly calculate permutations and possibilities, you'll be a millionaire.

Re:On a Slight Tangent

[Rimbo]

"What is true in physical engineering is usually not true in software enginnering. Just because they're both called "engineering" does not mean that rules of thumb from one automatically apply to the other. It's dangerous to spread such guidelines between largely unrelated disciplines."

Every bit of software engineering research I dug up in grad school and every year of experience I've had in the software industry has consistently demonstrated that software engineering is as much like other forms of engineering as they are like each other. Now maybe I went to the wrong software engineering conference and read the wrong research papers, and maybe I just worked for the wrong companies.

"Sit down and try to write an AI for the game of Go."

Do you always recommend to your junior staffers that they pick the most computationally complex example when learning a new topic? Or do you point them to "Hello World?"

Besides, we're not talking about fucking Go here. If I get into the games industry, approximately how many Go games do you think I'll be working on? How 'bout... none? We're not even talking about things on the level of chess here. We're talking about things like ReaperBot -- which was leaps and bounds ahead of the monster AI in Quake I, but hardly complex.

You clearly mistake me for one of the vast hordes of Slashdotters who have neither the education nor the experience to back up their juvenile rants. But my juvenile rants are quite well thought through, thank you very much! ;)

Re:On a Slight Tangent

[FreekyGeek]

Do you always recommend to your junior staffers that they pick the most computationally complex example when learning a new topic? Or do you point them to "Hello World?"

Dude, that's why I picked Go - because it's simple. It has about 2 rules. It's probably the last complex strategy game you could have. You don't have to worry about enemy strengths, or tech trees, or bases, or paper-scissors-rock style attack and defense ratings, resource gathering, constructing new units, exploration, or any of the other million things a strategy game AI has to worry about. That's the point: that even a game with very, very simple rules is very hard to write an AI for.

Reaperbots are pretty simple creatures and can hardly even be said to have much of an AI. They don't really have to plan anything, just "shoot guys, and try to take cover when they shoot you." Their "AI" is simply a matter of distances, lines of sight, and other stuff that isn't too hard to code.

I disagree with you about there being too much of an overlap between physical enginnering and software engineering, but since it's completely a matter of opinion, there's no point really discussing it.

If you get into the game industry, you probably won't be writing an AI for Go, but you may wish you were.

Re:On a Slight Tangent

[Rimbo]

"Dude, that's why I picked Go - because it's simple."

Go is one of the most computationally complex games in existence, dramatically more so than games like checkers and chess. You may say it is simple, but it's probably one of the worst, if not THE worst, scenarios for developing a good game AI. The main reason is the size of the board, but an important secondary reason is the very lack of rules you describe.

All those additional rules in "complex" games -- enemy strength, tech trees, resource numbers -- are quantifiable measures that simplify heuristic design because they are quantifiable. I know exactly how much more powerful my army will be if I go for one tech now rather than another. With "Go," there is no such obvious means to quantify possibilities (that is, to weight the edges of the search tree).

The question all game AIs must solve is: How do you -quantify- that one move is better than another? No matter how "fuzzy" or complex your method is, all computation comes down to quantification -- saying this move is "worth" more than that move, and then picking the one that is "worth" the most.

"Reaperbots are pretty simple creatures and can hardly even be said to have much of an AI. They don't really have to plan anything, just "shoot guys, and try to take cover when they shoot you." Their "AI" is simply a matter of distances, lines of sight, and other stuff that isn't too hard to code."

It's a challenging opponent that has varying levels of difficulty and doesn't cheat. As such, it is an OUTSTANDING video-game AI. What matters is the quality of the game, not whether the AI is "real" or not. Nobody playing the game gives a hoot if the AI is "real."

You almost seem to suggest that the ease of coding is a flaw -- but that's my whole point; good games are EASY to code, if you design for them from the start. "Real" AI is not the goal; a challenging game that plays fair is the goal.

"I disagree with you about there being too much of an overlap between physical enginnering and software engineering, but since it's completely a matter of opinion, there's no point really discussing it."

Of course there are facts we can use. It's a matter of looking at projects and how much time and money they cost to complete, and the consequences of having flaws. Since you can actually count the man-hours and dollars involved with the former, and you can count the lawsuit settlement dollars with the latter, you can measure quite well how similar software engineering is to other forms of engineering.

The main difference is that software engineering is much more immature than other forms of engineering, and as a result, lacks most of the tools that other engineering disciplines have. But we're improving quite rapidly. Compilers are all but taken for granted in their quality, gdb has made debuggers common, OO techniques seem to have taken firm root, and component-based design seems to be about to hit critical mass in a few years.

In short...

Game AI design gets simpler when things get quantifiable, or when restrictions are added. The goal of a good game AI is not for it to be "real" intelligence, but to be challenging, adjustable, and fair. And we can quantify exactly how much engineering practices benefit software (compared to other engineering disciplines) because all kinds of engineering development cost money and time.

article was very one sided

[forehead]

While I can't disagree with the article, as it is mostly an opinion piece, it
seems that the author is not familiar with other segments of the game playing
community.

There are some -- myself included -- who do not want challenging games. If it
takes more than a dozen tries to get through a level, and a trip to gamefaqs
isn't able to clear things up, the game designers did [some of] their players a
disservice.

Those of us in that category like games that entertain. Playing the same damned
level over [and over, and over] just to shave .0001 seconds off a lap time
is tedious and boring as hell. I'd much rather play games that show a lot of
creativity. I don't want to be twitch master of the universe. I don't care if
my initials never make it on the top 10 list. To me, that is not what gaming is
about. It isn't something to master. It is something to distract and entertain.

One of the things I like about the Resident Evil series is the fact that they
are generally playable by a diverse group of gamers. For starters, there is a
choice of difficulty levels. People in it for the challenge take the more
difficult character, and set the difficulty level higher. Those you are just in
it for that adreniline rush that comes when some big nasty monster jumps out at
you when you were least expecting it can use an easier difficulty setting.

There are a great many who like to pick up a game, and just sit back, relax,
and let themselves be distracted for awhile. These sorts of gamers don't _want_
games that get them so frustrated the it ceases to be enjoyable.

To boil this all down a bit, there are a wide variety of gamers out there. They
have a wide variety of tastes. They have a wide variety of motivations for
playing. If game studios are still pulling in the bucks, they must be doing
something right.

Re:article was very one sided

[Goldberg's Pants]

I have to disagree about Res Evil being a good game. I found it tedious and dull, but to each their own.

I agree with you. I like a challenge, sure. The first time I broke 75,000 points on the first level of Tony Hawk 2 was REALLY satisfying.

However, games are SUPPOSED to entertain, not frustrate. Games are often likened to movies when it comes to categorisation. Now, when a MOVIE frustrates, it gets bad reviews, people bitch. When a GAME frustrates because it's difficult, we get articles like this one from GamerDad saying we need more frustrating games.

It goes without saying a game needs multiple difficulty settings. But there is a difference between challenging and frustrating. For example, the amount of WORK you have to put in in the Tony Hawk series to get access to all the stuff you've paid for is retarded. I'm a heavy gamer, and I wound up using cheats. I mean for Gods sake, Tony Hawk 2 (the last one I actually cared about) you had to complete the game with something like 10 different skaters. Yes, that's right, you had to complete the game 10 TIMES to unlock everything. That's a reprehensible design decision.

Games are supposed to entertain. Some insanely addictive games (Bejewelled for example) don't ramp up the difficulty.

In short, you make some VERY good points. One thing I HATE is having to do stuff over and over again to unlock stuff I should have been able to access in the first place. I don't mind having extra characters unlockable, and videos etc... That doesn't bother me. What DOES REALLY piss me off is, again, like Tony Hawk, only having access to *ONE STINKING LEVEL* at game start. It's one thing to reward GOOD players with unlockables. It's another entirely to punish mediocre players by locking out 90% of the game they've paid for.

Re:article was very one sided

[scot4875]

Games are supposed to entertain. Some insanely addictive games (Bejewelled for example) don't ramp up the difficulty.

And as soon as I found that I could basically play Bejeweled for an indefinite amount of time with no change in challenge, I got bored of it.

I'm sorry, but if there's no challenge, there's no game. Can you name a single game outside of video games that offers no (or little) challenge, and is still entertaining to intelligent adults? Of course, there are games like Candyland that are purely luck and have a winner predetermined if you play long enough, but the suggested age group for that game is what, 3-6?

The problem with video games is that we're getting nothing but Candyland equivalents because people aren't interested in a challenge -- they just want to see the next FMV. I don't get why anybody would take any enjoyment or satisfaction out of succeeding at completing something when there was no chance of failure to begin with.

Your example about Tony Hawk 2 -- I haven't played, but I *have* played 3, and completed it with nearly every character. Why? It was a fun game. In the course of playing it, I played with everyone (since they're all roughtly equivalent), and finished everything. My question to you is -- if you don't like playing it to begin with, why do you even care about unlocking more stuff to bore yourself with?

It's another entirely to punish mediocre players by locking out 90% of the game they've paid for.

So let's just aim for the lowest common denominator and make an easy game so that *everyone* can be a winner! It's worked great for the education system!

--Jeremy

Re:article was very one sided

[evilhayama]

This is partly true, but video games can also be viewed as interactive entertainment, not just a "Game" in the traditional sense. Playing a game for the story is not wrong, especially for genres like the RPG where the story has a lot of focus. There's also some other reasons for playing games, like amplitude where you can remix your own song. challenge doesn't nescessarily add to that.

Re:article was very one sided

[Goldberg's Pants]

Rabid dog fever...

I LOVE Tony Hawk 2. I like to PLAY the game, nail tricks etc... I have no interest in skating around and collecting the letters to spell SKATE and that nonsense. If I did, I'd write the letters to spell SKATE down on little pieces of paper and scatter them about my house. The level design in Tony Hawk is awesome. The game design is fundamentally flawed in requiring so much effort just to open up the levels. In fact I would go so far as to say the game should carry a label saying "Don't buy this game unless you're prepared to invest hours upon hours unlocking the stuff we're hyping on the back." I LOVE THPS2, but due to the way the game is designed I would never buy another one, as that's just rewarding a developer for making retarded design decisions.

As I said, I have NO problem with unlockables such as extra characters etc... But locking out all but one area from the start is just wrong IMO and punishes those, not just mediocre, but also those who simply don't have the time to invest in completing the game something like 12 times.

I agree with you about FMV. I DESPISE FMV in games. Now don't get me wrong, I LOVE a good game intro (Mechwarrior 3, Warcraft 3 and the like spring to mind, as well as the very amusing Dungeon Keeper) but I loathe FMV during games.

As for aiming for the common denominator, no, you misread my post. (Assuming you actually READ it rather than skim it.) I was advocating difficulty levels. Tony Hawk 2 was my example. I love the two player game, but I can't get anyone to play it with me as they find it too hard. (Which, to the non-hardcore gamer, it is.) If they'd put in difficulty levels so you could scale it, it could be set so it could be enjoyed amongst players of different skills.

One of the reasons reviewers get up in arms

[Kenshiro70]

Quite a few reviewers play games at lower difficulty levels so that they can get a quick sense of the content without having to play a particular level five times just to see the next level. I wonder if that does figure into some of the complaints.

Young wippersnappers, no skills I tell ya.

[Coco13]

I've never had a problem with games being difficult, in fact, it's something I yearn for. Having grown up on games that actually didn't care if you lost, I'm very thankful for games like this. Reason why I picked up Ikaruga. Ikaruga has the perfect balence of sheer difficulty, rewards for playing, rewards for playing well, and fun. It's a side-scrolling shooter where level memorization is key, and skill is mission 1. Beating the game is difficult, getting a high score is even harder. Brilliant stuff for the Gamecube.

Re:Young wippersnappers, no skills I tell ya.

[Stormwatch]

Ikaruga is indeed one of the best game ever. Wanna see my review of it?

[ http://www.shmups.com/reviews/ikaruga/index.html ]

Hard but not frustrating..

[CashCarSTAR]

To be honest, it's almost impossible to get that balance right. Most games that are "hard" are also seen as just being frustrating. Mainly because they feel unfair. I think that problem comes when the difficulty level is not balanced throughout the level design.

To put it simply, the problem occurs when a part of a level is out of whack, challenge wise with the rest of the surrounding area. Meaning repeated losses at the EXACT same part and for the exact same reason. That is what usually goes for difficulty.

When I put it on "Hard" difficulty, I expect a relativly constant stream of intense challenge. Not making individual set scenes that are almost impossible to navigate.

In a nutshell, I think that difficulty levels work best in more skill based gaming. VF4 avoided a lot of frustration, to be honest, even when getting your butt whooped. I felt the same thing with the Mario Kart series at 150cc (and F-Zero GX more than likely, havn't played that yet)

The best challenge I find is in fighting games and shumups. For RPGs and FPS games, I prefer a slightly lower challenge level, as they tend to be too frustrating at higher difficulty levels.

YES!

[Apreche]

This is exactly what I'm saying. When I got F-ZERO and found out it was hard I was overjoyed. The best part is that it's not the kind of game you can become the master of just by reading a strategy guide. You actually need to play it a lot and increase your skill level. Just like in the NES days, finally we have a new game that is "Nintendo hard."

It really pisses me off that they dumb down all these games for the american audience. Since the Final Fantasies they have been making games easier for the US. The Japanese think that we are too dumb, or that we wont like games that take time and effort to beat. The sad part is that for the most part, it is true. I see too many kids these days, kids who's first console was a PSX, buying strategy guides with their games. Kids with a pc with gamefaqs.com next to their tv.

When I have kids, they're getting an NES. When they master Mega Man 2, Zelda 1, Bionic Commando, Mario 1, 2 and 3, and all the other classics. Then I'll give 'em an SNES.

My kids will be brought up right. Not like the shmucky kids of today who run at the slightest difficulty.

Oh yeah, lastly, if I ever happen to make a video game. I will be sure not to publish an official strategy guide, and include a EULA to prevent anyone else from writing one. I will also make it a game like F-ZERO where all the strategy guides in the world wont help you, you have to practice and build skill. I'll make up for my loss in sales by suing the pants off all the unofficial strategy guides.

Re:YES!

[Anonymous Coward]

I play NES and SNES with a 10 year old who plays PS2 etc in all of the free time he has. He prefers the games that are for little kids. He can't handle things like super mario world. Hell, he can't even handle holding down a button to run, and then jump over a pit. It is all too hard for him, probably because he is so used to too easy PS2 games.

Re:YES!

[Black Noise]

When I have kids, they're getting an NES. When they master Mega Man 2, Zelda 1, Bionic Commando, Mario 1, 2 and 3, and all the other classics. Then I'll give 'em an SNES.

I take it you don't want grandchildren? :-)

Re:YES!

[Doctor_Jest]

Nice bit of sarcasm... :D

One thing you folks are missing is that games are ENTERTAINMENT. This isn't a Calculus course. It's a GAME. Making a game ultra-difficult with no easy or tutorial mode is a guarantee the frustrated gamer isn't going to buy any of your other games, even if you add a "tutorial" mode.

Most people game in their spare time and don't make a career out of it, so an extremely difficult game is just going to be unfinished. I'm sure that is not what designers had in mind, guaranteeing a large segment of the audience won't see their design and work put into the game.

If a game designer wants to make a "Nintendo Hard" game, that's fine. There's room for "easy" games as well.

There's a difference between "hard" and "easy to learn: difficult to master" (Try Go.)

Re:YES!

[Stephen Williams]

Since the Final Fantasies they have been making games easier for the US.

Nowadays, the story has become the point of playing a Final Fantasy game. I think that's why the difficulty level has been adjusted: everyone who starts the game should be able to finish it to see how the story ends. You can progress through a Final Fantasy story without having to keep stopping to spend hours levelling up. And that's the way it should be, IMHO.

However, the FF series also caters for those gamers who like a challenge by typically including side-quests which you have to explore to discover, and superbosses which are very difficult, usually much harder than the end-of-story battles. People who want to spend ages exploring to find all the secrets or training their party to beat the superbosses are welcome to do that; people who can't be bothered with all the hardcore stuff and just want to enjoy a story are welcome to do that.

-Stephen

Re:YES!

[strech]

Well, I have a different issue with F-Zero.

It's, frankly, despite what the article says, frustrating-hard-dumb luck at times. Especially on certain levels (Mute City Serial Gaps, or Phantom Road at anything but Novice) where you can die completely from something that isn't your mistake: Wow, a computer I couldn't see or do antyhing about because I started at the end of the pack and had to pass him (or had just passed him) tapped me, now I hit ice and die before I can react, or hit several bombs in a row and die, or fall of the edge and die, or bounce back and forth and blow up or bounce back and forthand over the wall and die, or go off the edge and die ....

There's a reason when the general advice on gamefaqs.com for 'beating cup x on difficulty y' generally involves making sure you lead by 100 points on the final track because on that track the computer will be able to kick your ass and there's nothing you can do about it, so you should just hover at dead last and maybe kill anyone that's a threat because they're probably near enough you that you can deal with them.

Re:YES!

[scot4875]

Funny, I've died a few times because of 'dumb luck,' (on Half Pipe mostly) bust most often it has been because of my lack of skill, not luck. (and I tend to be a pretty skilled player)

I spent the last few days working on Master difficulty. I was getting my ass handed to me repeatedly on some of the tracks. I ran the tracks a bunch to practice, and I got better. I just beat the diamond cup with 1st, 2nd, 1st, 5th, and 18th place finishes.

It was an extremely satisfying experience. (1st on Undulation was great, 2nd on Shift was even better) In fact, it's one of few times I've actually talked smack to computer opponents.

My *only* complaint about the difficulty is that the computer opponents don't seem to be fazed whatsoever by impacts. When going through the boosts with 15 other racers at the end of Green Tree 2 (Intersecting Track, I think), you never see *them* lose control because of a collision and end up dead last because of it. Other than that, I think the game is perfectly fair.

I think the key is to just learn from your mistakes. Died on a turn when you got bumped by someone? Remember that and be more careful next time. Lost too much speed going through a corner and got passed by 12 people? Run the track on practice mode and learn how to get through the turn better. Don't like situations where you can't react to something? Learn to avoid those situations.

Learn the best places on the track to make aggressive moves for position -- learn the places on the track to just relax and keep moving.

Most of all, learn from defeat.

--Jeremy

Re:YES!

[strech]

Oh, I'm not saying most of my deaths (including pretty much all of my half-pipe deaths, I'm fine with that stage weirdly enough) weren't because of my stupidity.

But it's not really correct to say that's what all the deaths are like. There are still a fair number of 'dumb luck' deaths on those couple of tracks for me. And that's a big issue when you start getting very few continues.

Still, I got through expert and am occasionally trying master now. I'll eventually get there.

Re:YES!

[evilhayama]

Amen to this. I can't be bothered finishing all the sidequests for final fantasies lately, but I still want to see the story (and the nifty CG). I tried to play Breath of Fire 1 for GBA, and you needed to level so much I couldn't play it any more. RPG difficulty should be done the FF way, or like in Suikoden 3 where there were lots of tough battles you -could- win, but the story continued even if you lost.

Re:YES!

[Anonymous Coward]

It really pisses me off that they dumb down all these games for the american audience. Since the Final Fantasies they have been making games easier for the US. The Japanese think that we are too dumb, or that we wont like games that take time and effort to beat.

I've read more than one interview with japanese developers who state the exact opposite, that the western versions are usually harder than the japanese versions. Allegedly, the japanese dislike losing even more than westerners.

It's the mentality of kids now

[cdneng2]

Ever talk to a kid about how fast they finish a videogame?

Well, if you do, they'll tell you that they play until they get stuck. Then they go the FAQ, or the convenient gaming guide, that comes out at the same time as the game release, and then they continue playing until they finish the game. Kids nowadays almost play the game like a marathon. Kids nowadays don't spend the time to think about that obstacle in the game, and how to overcome it, they take the easy solution, and use the game guide to get through the problem. They'll put the game difficulty to the easiest setting to finish it right away.

Take a look at 'Stuntman', the sequel to 'Driver'. That game was damn difficult, which critics argued was the reason why it did so bad.

Sure I can see making a game difficult, but the attention span of kids nowadays are far too short to make the game popular if that was the case.

Re:It's the mentality of kids now

[k_187]

A) Stuntman was not the sequel to Driver, Driver 2 was the sequel to driver.
b) Stuntman's "difficulty" mostly came from the fact that the game didn't tell you what you needed to do in a level until half a second before you had to do it, and then if you messed up forced you to start over at the beginning of a level. That's a flaw in gameplay and presentation, not a game being overly challenging.
And there is a difference between a game being difficult and challenging. difficult makes you smash controllers in frustration, challenging makes you want to come back and beat what you're stuck at. Its a difficult balance to strike, and what seperates good games from the great games.

Re:It's the mentality of kids now

[Dave Long]

That's exactly true of Stuntman and was my biggest complaint with that game. There's no setup for the stunts. You're left to go into it blind which a real Stuntman would never, ever do. Stunts are rehearsed, choreographed and planned to the letter. The way the game handled it was trial and error. In other words, a failure.

Re:It's the mentality of kids now

[k8to]

The problem is when games provide uneven challenge or the wrong kinds of challenge for the player. I enjoy a good exploration, acquire information, put it all together kind of challenge. However, games sometimes provide an obstacle that you have to beat or not progress. If I can't beat it in three tries, I'm not having fun, so I FAQ, or cheat, and get on the with the game.

There are many better ways to design games, including Jak & Daxter's auto-adjusting difficulty, or better information about why you don't succeed when you fail. Other games incorporate RPG-like levelling up, where you can simply work harder to make the game easier if you want to.

Still other games simply provide a more reasonable learning curve, where you learn the play the game better at a reasonable pace, and acquire specific skills by dint of specific levels requiring them, like Warcraft 2 and Starcraft.

Some games just have arbitrarily hard parts which induce massive frustration. See the game ending to Parasite Eve.

F*** GameCube

[dynoman7]

...put those same ppl on America's Army and watch them get cleaned up rather quickly. When you die, you are DEAD (for the rest of that game).

the problem with F-ZERO....

[fireduck]

I don't mind hard games at all. I've played a number of games that aren't for the faint of heart.

The problem with F-Zero is the lack of a tutorial or anything similar. I'm stuck on the 3rd mission in the story mode (the casino race). For the life of me, I can't get better than 11th place. I don't know exactly why. Am I turning wrong? Do I need to use regular turns, drift turns, the sharp turns? Should I configure my vehicle for speed or acceleration? I haven't a clue, and the game isn't helping me figure it out.

I'm not asking for hand holding, just some psuedo training. One level where drift turns are used exclusively and when you lose it says "try drift turns next time". Levels/Tutorials that show you how to attack and when to use the attacks.

Don't dumb the skill down, but teach me how to get better. I'm sure if I sit down and play the game for several days straight, I'll eventually figure it out. But several days of frustration isn't what I bought the game for.

Re:the problem with F-ZERO....

[Deathlok's Bear]

I agree that F-zero tends to lack feedback and, even more, even when you do know what to do the game can become frustratingly impossible.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the game, but the difficulty level on some of the missions and courses is just incredible.

The diamond cup, even on novice, is frustrating because few of the courses have edges so I tend to constantly fall off the sides.

Trying to unlock anything in story mode is an exercise in insane frustration (you did know that beating a story mode mission on Very Hard unlocks an AX racer, right?). If you think Mission 3 is tough, wait until you try it on hard or very hard. And if you think _that_ is tough, Mission 7 is the same thing (finish a race first) but with more racers, a harder track, and faster opponents. I've been stuck on Mission 7 for over a week, as I cannot even beat it on the lowest difficulty.

But the one mission that really takes the cake for me is Very Hard mission 5. You must race through a series of doors which are only wide enough to fit your racer. You _must_ boost every second of the race. You _must_ collect every boost capsule along the way. You _cannot_ hit anything or slow down the entire way. Did I mention you have 40 seconds to do it? Even the best players who have bothered to post their videos often take around 39.5-40 seconds to do it...what chance do I have, if a perfect run only has a 0.5 second margin of error?

So with all the super-hard story missions and the insane difficulty in grand prix, I'm wondering if I'll even see the hidden stuff, such as the AX courses, AX racers, and character endings (that require you to beat _master_ grand prix difficulties to get!)

At least super monkey ball let you enjoy most of the game (aside from the extra and master levels, of which only expert extra and master were a serious challenge to get. SMB2 was actually easier than SMB1 in this regard, as you could get 99 lives to finish it in, instead of the 3 lives you had in SMB1). My roomate managed to beat even those after literally months of spending his afternoons playing until the _one_ time he managed to beat the whole thing. For me, unless the game is an RPG with an engaging story that lasts the whole time, I'm not going to spend that kind of time.

Re:the problem with F-ZERO....

[n0wak]

So with all the super-hard story missions and the insane difficulty in grand prix, I'm wondering if I'll even see the hidden stuff,

I thought the same. I wondered: "God damn, I'll never beat chapter 3!" So I quit, and focused on the Grand Prixs. And you know what happened? *gasp* I got better, and went back and beat chapter 3.

I thought I would never unlock Master difficulty. But then I went and practiced the tracks that gave me the most trouble (Half Pipe, Serial Gaps), and *gasp* I improved and unlocked it finally.

Now I'm saying that I will never unlock the AX courses... well, we'll see in a week.

It's a game that rewards skill, rather than the perserverence through inane tedium. And the only way to get skill, is to practice. While I can see this turning off A LOT of casual gamers, I find it enjoyable. Just like I find Ikaruga enjoyable (though I still can't one credit it, arg).

Re:the problem with F-ZERO....

[Dr Tall]

It's a game that rewards skill, rather than the perserverence through inane tedium. And the only way to get skill, is to practice.
Right on. I actually just unlocked the AX courses this morning. When an unlockable is hard to get, it is a lot more satisfying. Like in AV's Super Monkey Ball 2, you could get 99 lives per continue just by playing the game on any difficulty enough times. But this game made me feel a lot better in that I earned something not by repeating a mindless task lots of times, but an impossible task just once.

Re:the problem with F-ZERO....

[Anonymous Coward]

I find I get more enjoyment from the method of Simpsons Road Rage, some missions with strict requirements (the 10 driving missions) but the game mode lets me play and however good or bad I do only matters to my high score, other then that I can still progress and unlock stuff, just nowhere near as fast as someone who is better then me.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

[Jerf]

I'm actually torn on whether to purchase Final Fantasy Tactics Advance; on the one hand I really enjoy that sort of game. On the other hand, when even the reviewers are commenting on how easy it is, you know it's going to be easy. And that's sad. I don't want a massacre, I want a challenge. Especially for something like FFTA, where the "challenge" is set by taking your party's level and adding some constant, and that's the opposition's level. (Or so I hear; Tactics Ogre was like that.) Is it so hard to add a difficulty level that consists of adding "4" instead of "1" or "2"? I mean, come on, that wouldn't have taken a full programmer-day, and the art is negligible.

Sigh.

And that's for the Japanese version. If I hear that they've dumbed it down even more for America, as they did in the past, I think I won't buy it.

OK, I admit I'm a little "old-skool" here without trying; being brought up on an Intellivision will do that to you. But are kids today really that incompetent at gaming?

(Well, I am 25 and can still whale on my cousins with any game I've played, and hold up even when I haven't played the game... maybe ~20 years of playing is hard to keep up with...)

Re:Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't seen a review that says it's easy - I haven't seen one that says it's hard either, but most agree that it has a lot of replay value and your first run will take ~40 hours. Even if it is easy, $25 for 40 hours of entertainment is cool with me.

Re:Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

[Lukey Boy]

I recommend you buy Disgaea for the PS2 (if you can find it). It's very similiar to FFT and FFTA but much, much more deep. Check the reviews for it, it sounds like it'd suit your needs.

Re:Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Disgaea is very very deep. I wouldn't be surprised if someone found a way to level up their pants which in turn unlocked a new class. Just mentally trying to figure out the right place to put all of the Geo crystals on some of the item world maps can take 10 minutes or more. Electronics Boutique and friends are carrying it even if some of the bigger chains aren't...

Re:Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

[shadowcabbit]

Most tactical games have challenges set by the method you describe (party level plus x), for the random battles. The storyline battles in the PSX FF Tactics were at fixed levels, and I don't think that that would change for the game that's coming out on Tuesday.

The Japanese version of FFTA includes some "laws" (battlefield restrictions) that were removed from the U.S. version simply because they wouldn't have made sense in English (ie all skills which started with a certain katakana were banned). IIRC only one other law was removed for difficulty. However, for me, tactical games are always damn hard anyway (it took me 16 months to finally finish Tactics Ogre: KOL), so I'm not going to complain about difficulty.

Granted, I have noticed that games are either getting easier or shorter or both, which does leave me feeling kinda cheated in either scenario. However, like you said, gaming for twenty years can and will do that. From Ms. Pac-Man to Mario Sunshine is a hell of a lot of ground to cover, with varying degrees of difficulty. (And don't even try to tell me that Mario Sunshine was too easy-- those $^@#ing block-world stages irritated the hell out of me the first fifty times.) Do I wish games were harder? In some cases, yeah. Do I think some games, like the original Final Fantasy, were too hard and might benefit from an "easy mode"? Again, in some cases, absolutely. Do I admire people who take the initiative and create challenge in their games by trying ridiculous things (such as the no-materia, all-initial-weapon completion of Final Fantasy VII)? Without a doubt. Just because the superweapon is coded into the game doesn't mean you have to use it.

Though I think Greg Dean said it best... "If it were Nintendo hard I would have shot myself by now."

Re:Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

[Jerf]

Do I admire people who take the initiative and create challenge in their games by trying ridiculous things (such as the no-materia, all-initial-weapon completion of Final Fantasy VII)? Without a doubt. Just because the superweapon is coded into the game doesn't mean you have to use it.

Oh, absolutely! I'm on my second "clean-up" game of Tactics Ogre and when that's done, barring FFTA ownership (which due to $$$ may not be immediate even if I do buy it eventually), I plan on trying the "Single Character Challenge", where you try to defeat the game using only the main character. (Apparently it is possible; there are some points in the game where you must split your forces and fight two battles "at once", so the game writers must have explicitly handled that case; thanks!) Considering Tactics Ogre has 8-char parties (for those who don't know that), that's quite a challenge.

(it took me 16 months to finally finish Tactics Ogre: KOL)

Well, it didn't take me anywhere near "16 months", but that's not the greatest measure. For me, I measured by the fact I only lost two battles in my first pass through. That's not very good, really; I expect better then that. This second time through the battles are almost perfunctory.

BTW, Hint: It's all about the heal, the only thing in these games (tactics RPGs and conventional RPGs) that have no real-world counterparts. (We can deal the damage out in the real world as much as you'd like; waving a magic wand and bringing a person from 1HP to 11,342HP in a single turn is a bit harder.) If you're really having trouble in Tactics Ogre for instance, stacking three healers on your team (including Knights with the heal spell) will win nearly any battle, though not necessarily quickly, as long as you keep your healers alive.

Ever noticed your enemies almost NEVER have heal, and even more rarely have "full heal"? (Yes, I know, it's been done, but it is rare; there's this one boss in Skies of Arcadia in the middle that has Full Heal; low probability but quite annoying when it fires when you've got one turn to go!) That's because they'd often be nearly unbeatable if they did; they'd CERTAINLY be unbeatable if they used it intelligently. Healing is the key.

Re:Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

[AvitarX]

or perhaps magic or spell points would be the key?

if they had unlimited full heal, that would be impossible, but if they played by the same rules as you then it would mean nothing. Also enemies in the earlier FF games had 10x the HP, that covers a lot of healing.

I found Skies of Arcadia to be difficuslt at the beginning. then way to easy, slowly working it's way to a good, maybe slightly to easy point.

When you steal the big ass ship it is rediculously easy and a big nuisance for quite a while.

Ganes like that also need some kind of a fast auto fight option, exploring around for things when you can thwomp any enemies but still gotta wait your turn is my biggest gaming sin.

Re:Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

[shadowcabbit]

In the original Final Fantasy, Chaos (the final boss) could heal himself fully, at will.

Even in Easy Mode (PSX remake) this pissed me off to no end.

Re:Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

[Anonymous Coward]

Such a shame. The original FFT is probably my all time favorite playstation game. For me, the difficulty level was just about right. I won most battles, I lost quite a few, I rarely lost the same battle more than twice. I do remember there was one very annoying battle, on a rooftop, I think, that I had to do quite a few times.

Re:Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

[AvitarX]

when I played FF1 I misread the G for gold after the price of nuke as another 0, I was something like level 45 when I baught nuke and my money didn't drop to near zero. I killed him in 3 rounds, there was no healing for him.

I found the packs of 5 wind elementals in the sky palace the most difficult part of the game though.

Games are only getting easier

[vasqzr]

Arcade games were very difficult. Some had simple patterns and could be mastered, but your average player can't get past the third round in Q*Bert

NES games were pretty challenging. But when the SNES came out, games got real easy. Anyone remember beating Super Mario World the first night (or next morning) they brought their Super Nintendo home from the store?

Todays games also have too many codes, maps, cheats... In the days of the NES you might get a walkthrough of the first couple levels in Nintendo power but then it was up to you.

I'm sure in the future the games will just beat themselves.

Re:Games are only getting easier

[Anonymous Coward]

"Anyone remember beating Super Mario World the first night (or next morning) they brought their Super Nintendo home from the store?"

Yes! I was so disappointed! SNES Still turned out to be my favorite, but that experience nearly killed me. I think I had 100% of the world uncovered a few days later and I was really hurting for new games by then. ;)

Difficulty is one thing...

[Zed2K]

but when the computer opponent cheats to give you a sense of higher difficulty thats a whole different world. Many games take this approach as a cheap way to say "oh its hard".

I was going to buy the new FZero game, then I heard how hard it was. Now I'm probably not going to buy it at all. I don't have time to be beating my head against the floor because I can't win the race because I'm coordination-ally challenged these days.

Difficult games... good or bad?

[Metroid72]

From reading the very few opinions posted, I've noticed the following:
If you're a casual gamer, you seem to like the *easy* games.
If you're hardcore (and old school), well you like *real* hard games.
Honestly, I'd consider myself an old-school casual gamer, I spent a great deal of time with Fzero yesterday, and one side of me felt good (the old school/hardcore gamer), but the other side felt frustrated (the casual gamer, member of the workforce that has a life).
I personally know that if I spend time with the game I'll master it. I remember my conquering of the original F-zero (familiarize with Novice-Challenge with Standard-Master with expert) - and who didn't feel like a god when conquering King-expert winning all races for the first time. (But two months had gone bye and the day was divided between Mario, Gradius III and F-zero).
This time around is different, you have dates, you have to work, you read (to keep up with technology), if you live alone, you have house-stuff to do.
I believe that a game like this is for the dedicated gamer. I beat a lot of difficult games when I was a dedicated gamer, but Unless I take as a personal challenge, conquering F-zero will be a long, long process...

Happy gaming!!!
BTW, Is it only me or the story-mode level race in the casino (after Beating Samurai Goroh) is REALLY difficult?? - I've been stuck for hours in that sucker.

Hard games are bad and good...

[PhotoBoy]

During my years at school and university a hard game was always welcome, it meant that the game I'd just spent my hard earned grant money on was going to last more than a few minutes, and that I would get my money's worth.

However, since finding gainful employment my gameing time has been dramatically reduced. To this end, easier games that I can play without spending hours trying to beat the same area have become much more welcome in my various consoles and PC.

It's a shame, I do miss the days where I could spend hours playing Super Ghouls n' Ghosts or Sim City. The best solution to this I have seen is in games like GTA, which are broken up into small chunks which you can save after if necessary. Games that let you quicksave are quite helpful like this too, but the temptation to save every few seconds often makes a difficult game defeatable in an afternoon.

Still I remember the days before memory cards etc, when you had to start from level 1 every time!

Disagree

[Kyouryuu]

I've been a gamer since the days of the NES. From my own experience, I would be willing to say that the majority of games I enjoyed were consequently easy games. Why is that? I think it's because I find that video games, as a source of entertainment, are not fun when you're trying to get through the same damned level or boss ten times. RPGs, in particular, are getting so obscure these days that you'd swear they were written around the gamer buying the complementary strategy guide.

Make no mistake, I like games I can sit down and play for twenty minutes and leave without caring much about progress. The idea of fighting a boss that takes 45 minutes to defeat, then dying, just isn't too appealing. I'm not a stathead or a completist in this regard - the kind of person that has to find and battle every last secret character.

There is, as mentioned elsewhere, a fine line between difficulty and frustration. To me, a good challenge is described as one where when the player dies, (s)he can see how it happened and see some route to prevent it from happening the next time. This is as opposed to one challenge after another, to the point where when you die, you blame the game designers for their lousy creation instead of your own skills.

Re:Disagree

[Gr33nNight]

There was a game for the Genesis called Shining Force (and its sequel) where each battle took close to 1 - 2 hours. That was insane, it sucked bad when the last enemy on the screen whooped you.

It's not the difficulty, it's the lack of curve

[Andy_R]

When a game gradually introduces me to new concepts, and I end up mastering a highly complex system of controls, I feel I have really achieved something by performing the manouvers needed for the hard bits.

Yoshi's Island is the best emample of this I can think of. If you sit down at the game for the first time and see all the controls it's overwhelming, but after you are 70% done, it's all become second nature.

Contrast this with Gran Turismo 2 (and it's derivatives for PS2). You are required to comlpete the most difficult things in the game (the licence tests) BEFORE you can get to any of the events where you woiuld learn the necessary skils! The curve actually goes the wrong way, if you pass the very hardest licence, you can finally enter the race where you win a fortune for simply holding the accellerator dowm for half an hour and turning a gentle flat out left turn every few minutes (cue the NASCAR jokes).

The best way to incorporate difficulty is to make the game enjoyable without leaving the people who don't do the hardest things feel they have 'lost'. The old N64 game Wetrix does exactly this, finishing it (by getting a billion points) took a bunck of people exchanging strategies of the net for months, and was the hardest think I eve did in gaming, but it was a complete surprise that the game actually did finish at all until we got there, so everyone is happy!

Re:It's not the difficulty, it's the lack of curve

[Newrad]

That's exactly what happens for me. I get a cool fun game and then things are pretty simple. I go to the next level and all of a sudden I am supposed to use all these manuevers that I have never used before. Even when you go to the tutorials (if there are any) You have to do that many times just to understand how you are doing it. In games like Tony Hawk you have to write down all these special moves just so you can remember what you need to press to get the points to get a high score. A lot of games I just quit because I can't beat it without using all these cheats and barely pass the level.

Re:Casino

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone earlier in the thread said the same thing. Scary. http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=77522&ci d=6893033

Only if you want to ensure a niche market share

[Anonymous Coward]

This is basically an article about hardcore gamers for hardcore gamers. If developers really want to expand their market share, they have to realize that most potential consumers don't want to be challenged, they want to have fun. The Sims is successful because it allows gamers to play the game in any way they feel. Grand Theft Auto has challenging parts, but balances this by so much other stuff to do. Non-Challenging games != Non-Fun games. There are more than 1 type of gamer in the world.

SpaceCowboy

Heh

[evilWurst]

Man, people who complain about games not being hard anymore aren't challenging themselves or playing the right games. Try unlocking all the features of the new stuff sometime, for example.

I'm gradually finishing up the Weapon Master mode of Soul Calibur 2, and it's hard as hell. The further you go, the more the odds are stacked against you. It's like the Tetris of fighting games. Sure the first missions were easy... but the entire second half when they all reset to harder versions? ugh...

Kids nowadays

[Scarblac]

We old guys have stood on the right altar, Amulet in hand, and choked on a tin of spinach right there.

And we still love the game!

Kids nowadays, can't tell a d from a D.

Re:Kids nowadays

[Anonymous Coward]

... stood on the right alter... oh man, oh man.
I can feel the nostalgia bubbling in the back of my head, but I just can't remember... What's that from?!

Re:Kids nowadays

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, judging from the reference to an "amulet" and "d from a D", I'd guess he's talking about Nethack.

Update

[Metroid72]

I've already beat the Casino stage.
Try to master all the jumps and the last curve before the finish line.

Re:the problem with F-ZERO....[controls]

[Metroid72]

Maybe some of you will agree with me. Another issue that I've felt with F-zero is that in this version you have to press the UP arrow to keep top acceleration. In my personal case, I feel that it affects the turning accuracy (especially on light weight machines), and that can make a difference on those tracks where you can fall down.
The original F-zero let you just press the gas and focus on the turning, instead of this new annoyance.

Confusing the issue

[stryck9]

Using F-Zero GX is a bad example for a "hard game". Sure it is hard in the sense that the AI is good. But it is also hard in that the designers used really cheap-shots, like you miss a jump; you die in the final levels to make it "hard". This does not make it hard in terms of a challenging game; it makes it hard in terms up memorizing the level so you can make that jump which wouldn't be such a big deal except that to make it "hard" the designers only allow you to continue 3 times. This takes F-Zero out of the realm of hard / challenging into the realm of hard / annoying. It is an important distinction which this whole argument obscures.

Re:Confusing the issue

[Dave Long]

I think you're way off base there. As I noted in the article, F-Zero GX never gives you any reason to think it was anyone's fault but your own that you crashed or lost positions. Racing games are ALWAYS about knowing the circuit and the fastest way around it. When the circuit has jumps and those jumps are required to keep from crashing, then it's up to you to navigate them. You're blaming the game for your own lack of skill if you take any other stance on it. You know the jump is there and you missed it. That's not the game's failing, it's your own. It's exactly how games should be made because the player should always be in complete control and in F-Zero GX, you most certainly are always in complete control of every move your craft makes. Cheap shots are things you can't anticipate like a side scroller where a stake flies out of the ground that you have no visual cue for. Or a FPS where an enemy jumps down from the ceiling behind you when there was no indication that could occur. That's a cheap shot. You can't anticipate it and your skills can't do anything about it. In F-Zero GX, I'll reiterate, you are completely to blame or praise for your progression through the game.

Video Games are too easy?

[Mitaphane]

I hear this argument much. People compare the games from the NES era to today games and say how games aren't as difficult as they once were. Example: compare the difficulty of the original Super Mario Brothers to Mario Sunshine.

But I think alot of people don't realize that back in the NES day the actual content of a game was much smaller. Play an old school NES game in a emulator with a save state feature, it will take you a hour or two at most to finish the game. Compared that with say, Half Life. Even with built in saving the game will take you probably 10-15 hours to complete. There's way much more content( scripted events, puzzles, movies, etc.) in most today's games compared with older games.

Old NES games had to have some "challenge" component to it otherwise it would be beat in a few hours which wouldn't justify it's $50 price tag. Keep in mind I said "challenge" because many old games were challenging in the sense you had to die A LOT by trial and error before you figured how to beat the boss, make the jump, etc. And in the end, video games are about having fun. Challenge might be related to fun but the two neccesarily don't go hand in hand.

Moreover, there are many of videogames out there where the definition of "challenge" is not the same as the dying-over-and-over type of challenge. Think about multiplayer FPS or RTS games. What's more challenging? Playing actual people with a sense of strategy or some dumb AI? What about games whose challenge is more mental(like strategy based games) than based than reaction time based?

Games have a wider variety of genres than they did back in the NES and as such the definition of "challenge" does too. And if all that doesn't convince you, play Contra: Shattered Soldier. It's just as 'hard' as any NES Contra game and it's certainly harder than the Contra III.

Depends on what makes it difficult

[clambake]

It's no fun at all if the difficulty is becuase of a single puzzle that you KNOW how to complete, but can't because:

1) you have to constantly press buttons a random complicated sequence as fast as possible (jump from one spinning disk to the other through five screens while doging the robot lasers, no saving allowed at this point in the game).

2) you have to do long repetitive tasks over and over again (travel across the island, press a button, travel back flip a switch, travel back again press the second button, etc...) just to open a friggin' door.

3) figure out a puzzle that makes no logical sense (give the wrench to the fox and tell him to use it to bash the witch on the head)

4) figure out a puzzle that is complicated for the wrong reasons, or is so totally random that it is impossible to determine without the walkthrough guide (The secret code for the door lock can be found by taking the first letters of each name of the security staff, taking the greek equivlent of thos eletter, dividing by the floor that the elevator starts on in level 4 and then adding 3)

5) adding some kind of arcade-style game into your rpg-style game that is REQUIRED to progress pass a certian point (The king says, "in order to be my royal quard, you must first beat me at tiddlywinks!").

Making games challenging means you actually have to work at it. Dumping a puzzle that pulls you out of the story and takes ten frustrating days to solve doesn't make the game any more fun.

Re:Depends on what makes it difficult

[shadowcabbit]

You forgot the worst sin of all.

666) Having a very easy puzzle in a dungeon, but jacking up the encounter rate to just shy of "KILL ME NOW AND END THE TORMENT" for that room alone.

Deus Ex

[illumina us]

I feel as if games should be more like Deus Ex. Have a plot, but the gameplay be completely open ended. The difficulty settings range from whatever to completely and utterly reaslistic. i.e. Easy you can get blasted a few times before you die, in realistic you can get killed from one shot. Also, open ended gameplay in the game allows the player to choose how to solve problems in the game. While in Deus Ex you did have to use force once, in Deus Ex 2 you don't at all. Too many games force you to take on a certain role even if they are supposed to be open ended games they don't allow you to fully interact with the enviroment etc. A game wouldn't be boring if you felt you could do anything you wanted in the game, make it so you are the character instead of forcing you to make decisions based on what the character would think.

Maybe you need to get over yourself.

[Inoshiro]

Not everyone is like you; not everyone enjoys the same things you do. I own and enjoy F-Zero because it is a challenging, fast racing game. I think it's the pinnacle of arcade racing available.

I also buy strategy guides. I also read gamefaqs. Why do I do these things? Because, when I am stuck in a game, I no longer enjoy it. In F-Zero it's a matter of learning more about the game, but in most games it's a matter of noticing something that's not entirely obvious unless you've already solved it once before. If I get off on a tangent it trying to solve a problem, I'll likely never finish the game as I have a couple hundred other ones vying for attention.

The way you talk in this post is very offensive to a lot of gamers. You give no respect to people who play for fun. I don't think that's at all cool.

Re:Maybe you need to get over yourself.

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to Slashdot, home of the closed-mind. :)

Realistic AI

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Great post, although your point about good AI being unrealistic isn't entirely true. Several years ago, a game called Creatures was released that was quite remarkable in its use of AI. There's quite an interesting story behind the game and how it came to be as well, which you might find of interest. More recently, Black and White has been praised for the depth of its artificial world, and of course games like The Sims are only so fiendishly addictive because of this stuff. So sometimes games do have good AI, but as you say, in things like RTS or FPS games other aspects often get priority.

Re:Realistic AI

[PainKilleR-CE]

and of course games like The Sims are only so fiendishly addictive because of this stuff. So sometimes games do have good AI, but as you say, in things like RTS or FPS games other aspects often get priority.

umm The Sims doesn't really have an AI, it just has a set of scripts that run when your Sim gets near a particular area in the game world. The actions of the Sims are built into the world, not into some AI, and the Sims themselves just wander a limited distance from their path somewhat randomly until they encounter the action points on the map. They have a couple of variables that help them determine whether they'll prefer one point or another, but overall there isn't an AI there that would look much better than your average FPS (excepting Half-Life).

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.03/aigames _p r.html

It talks about happiness as a motivating factor for Sims, and hunger driving them to some item marked as food in their environment, though they could easily be sidetracked. This could be seen as similar to a very simple hunting AI in an fps, where the AI is always switched on to go after the player, but may get sidetracked if another AI is also tagged as an enemy to that particular AI. Of course, it would also include embedded 'instructions' for the AI to use any usable objects in the environment, so they wouldn't be stopped by doors and elevators, even if they had to operate a switch, because the doors and elevators would tell them what to do to use them.

User-selected vs. Progressive Difficulty

[mowph]

I remember Max Payne's advertisements stating that it was the first game to feature auto-adjusting difficulty to "keep you in the sweet spot" of gaming bliss. I postulate that this technique was invented long ago, and just forgotten by the new generations that want gratification and want it now.

Does anyone else remember the Good Ol' Days where games didn't have a difficulty setting? Take the original "Super Mario Brothers", or Sega's "Wonderboy" on the Master System, for example. The first few levels are ludicrously easy so that even your mom could pick up the controller and have a chance at it.

But get into the game and it would pick up and up and up... not just in number and difficuty of enemies, but also level design. There's no on-screen tutorials, just a well-balanced and rewarding natural curve of challenge. The game forced you to figure out why you were dying and become a better player. It didn't really matter who played it -- you would hit the sweet spot just by playing the game.

Why don't games (nethack excluded) do this any more? Diablo is (arguably) pretty and all, but once you've completed to first level, it doesn't really do anything different... just the same game with higher numbers. You don't have to be any better of a player to finish the 5th level than the 1st. The game rewards you for playing obsessively and racking up your character, not for really being better at playing the game.

Now we have cheats to contend with difficulty. In Wonder Boy's age, the most common cheat wasn't "God Mode", it was "Level Select".. instead of allowing munchkins to walk through the game, it allowed advanced players to skip ahead to where the challenge was.

Did making games more complex actually make them any better or more enjoyable? If you need me, I'll be digging my Master System out of the closet and blowing the dust off of "Choplifter"...

Re:User-selected vs. Progressive Difficulty

[Dave Long]

Most Nintendo games are still made this way. You start with some fairly easy levels and new concepts are introduced one by one building your skill for the later challenges. Sega also does this fairly well. But there are far more games that do not understand the usage of this method of game design and either drop you in the deep end with no help or are simply too easy all the way through. Many game designers seem to come up with an idea, get so wrapped up in it, and then forget they have to do a lot of other stuff to ramp up the challenge and have the player build skills they can use for later, more difficult puzzles or levels.

Whatever happened to variable difficulty?

[nick_davison]

I remember when Mortal Kombat first made it to the PC. There was a big fuss made about how the game had "A.I." (almost certainly an exageration but we'll let it slip) that allowed it to learn you play style and adapt accordingly.

So far, so samey for most other beat-em ups. One thing that got talked about, no idea of the varacity, was that it varied the difficulty. So, unless you suddenly pulled off something miraculous, it would keep it challenging but not impossible. If you kept losing at a given point, it would slowly make it easier until you eventually got passed it. If you kept on completing levels on the first attempt, it would keep making it slightly harder until it took a few attempts.

It strikes me as though a Dynamic Difficulty setting could add a lot to modern games, especially if you had some means of telling how hard it had made things for you.

Rather than having the l33t players talk about how they'd beaten Quake on Nightmare, wouldn't it be more interesting to be able to say, "It's DD'd me to level X!" That way it could always get harder and always get easier, meaning you'd never have a game that was too difficult for the very occasional gamer, yet also kept providing a challenge, month after month, play-through after play-through for the hardcore twitch-freaks.

Of course you'd still leave in the fixed difficulty settings for the times when you wanted to be able to play through, at just below your level, without getting beaten back fairly often.

(Note: There is one game I can think of that kind of did this. NeverWinterNights' DM client has a slider so human DMs can keep fights exciting to the last, never getting too easy but also stopping them from getting impassable.)

Re:Whatever happened to variable difficulty?

[Newrad]

I think you should be able to say how long you plan to play a game and then it adjusts the dificulty accordingly (for example: You bought a game and you are only playing so you get the backround story for the new game that is just coming out.) This way it will be easy enough for you to play at a steady pace instead of shooting through 8 levels and then you find something that you can't pass and you end up quitting playing because of it.

Also if you plan on playing it a long time you can set the time longer so it becomes more challenging and you can use the time that you have to complete the game.

Re:Whatever happened to variable difficulty?

[chriskenrick]

Unreal Tournament and Unreal Tournament 2003 both have an "Auto adjust skill" option for the bots, where they will attempt to play at the same standard as the human player(s). It doesn't have this option for the single player tournament mode though.

Charging for Challenge

[RpeggioQues]

If you bought a 32ozs bottle of bleach and were told at the door that until you pass the Clean Laundry Challenge you can only have 16ozs would you go home and practice on the sheets? If a game has x number of levels and the last 6 can't be reached, because the developers 'Director of Sales&Marketing Philosophy' decided that the customer needs to develop more personal fortitude, you've been ripped off. You paid for it, it's yours. All of it.

Re:the problem with F-ZERO....[controls]

[phyrz]

Sounds like this version is designed for the analog stick where the SNES version was digital. If you are playing with the arrows, that is.

F-Zero GX vs. Jet Moto 2 vs. NFS:HP2

[Demon-Xanth]

These are three racing games, they're all fun, but how do they compare challenge wise?

F-Zero GX:
Difficult, but with practice any track can be mastered, in GP mode I have beat al but the Diamond cup in Master Difficulty (I just beat it on Expert, give me some time). The game is difficult in the higher levels because the drivers are better, and it works very well. You can still beat them, but you have to be good.

Jet Moto 2:
"Easy" should have been changed to "hard" and the 5 levels above it are even more difficult. I do not know a single person that has come close to completing this game. It's easy to get behind and very hard to make up time.

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2:
Beat it in 6 days, went on to dominate the hell out of it on a regular basis, until I got a certain amount of points it was quite fair. Then something happened, the computer cars were getting pulled over 4 times and still racing (they should've been arrested after the third). And one race, I watched a car get pulled over 7 times before getting arrested. Then the game was no fun. The AI resorted to flagrant cheating.

Now, there are numerous other games that simply just make it repetitious. As much as I like the GGX series, I will use a cheat code to unlock the other modes rather than having to do 380 battles in a row. I don't get enough large blocks of free time to even attempt feats like that very often. That's just silly long for an uninterruptable, unsavable path.

+1, Choplifter

[misfit13b]

Damn, that was one hell of a great game. I miss my SMS.

Nethack is a great examlple

[jonathan_the_ninja]

Nethack has a good level of difficulty. It's a game you actually need to think about, that real literature can help you with. A fortune cookie once told me that reading the Lord of the Rings would help me, and there is certain in Nethack that is helped by that book. Back to difficulty, Nethack has a nice little option called "Explore Mode" where you can choose to die or not. Of course, you don't need that if you back up your save, but I learned a lot of stuff about the general architecture of Nethack, creatures, armor, and such. Nethack is much more than your average game, it's a different episode if you will, each time. If your a gamer and you haven't played it, play it!

"Nintendo hard" is right!

[jonathan_the_ninja]

The NES was notorious (maybe I'm abusing that word) for hard games. Even with saved states on an NES emulator, even the simplest-type game (Chip and Dale: Rescue Rangers) was a pretty hard game. Maybe not super-cool like megaman, but still nice and hard. I mean, megaman 1 for the NES is really hard. The other ones are easier becuase of the password system, but Megaman 1 really takes the cake as for difficulty with megaman games. Megaman 5 has a good difficulty level, I mean, the Protoman's fortress/Wily's fortress (Sorry about the spoilers for those of you who haven't played it!) stuff is hard stuff! But the 8 main bosses aren't too hard! That's a truly good difficulty level. Manageable to master in under a matter of years, and , still a very nice challenge. The Graphics were way cool for the NES, too! And Music! Oh! That was the stuff! And as for raising kids, that sound like the way to go! Except for the rarity of the systems and games....(but, there's always piracy...)

The definition of motivation

[TerryAtWork]

is to give the to-be-motivated party a 75% success rate.

Any more and it's boring - less and it's frustrating.

An excellent game to be sure

[Anonymous Coward]

Ikaruga is a vintage shooter when vintage shooters are hard to come by. And it's one game where replaying the level again and again is fun. Why is that? Well, it's really awesome to see yourself dodging five million bullets without getting hit.

One thing I dislike about today's games is the need to unlock everything. I want playing the game to be it's own reward, and while Ikaruga has unlockable practice modes and so on, playing well is it's own reward.

It's just FUN. If the game is fun, "hard" is ok. If it's tedious, "hard is hard".

I'm passing on F-Zero GX for that reason. Playing a game for days to beat a level is why I learned to hate Rogue Leader...free form gameplay or one that doesn't require sheer perfection is much more entertaining.

My favourite...

[SharpFang]

...were the ones where you could hardly catch a breath. Anyone remembers "Killing Games Show" from Amiga? I got that game with a trainer. Boooring. But one day I got a badsector on the game disk and by lucky occurence the badsector happened to hit the trainer file. I recovered the game, but I was forced to play without cheating. WOW! Incredible. I lost maybe 200 times before I finished the first level, and then I thought "Hell, 2nd level is about twice as hard!". After a while I had no more trouble finishing lv 1, but 2 took me a month or so (and despite it's "arcade extreme", I had to work on a very strict tactic to succeed). And then the "bonus level" where level 1 and 2 were child's play...

To make the long story short, each level was about twice as hard as previous, it took me about 2 years to reach something like bonus level of world 4 (some 8 levels since startup, and about 20 from the end) until I found a bug that allowed me to cheat. And that effectively killed the game. Pity.

I'd disagree at the "75% success ratio". Make that 5% BUT by skill, not by luck. And definitely by gameplay, not by bugs/broken AI. (I hate when instead of cautious standoff one of my characters rushes into crowd of enemies just asking to get killed, or can't ignore unavoidable damage and must answer with pathetic fire, getting exposed to certain death. Or even worse rushes at enemy on sight, triggering all the hidden traps possible.)