Difficulty in Games [split topic]

[Bazooka]

The mods thing has come up a lot as a defence (not that you're doing the same but rather asking the question) and my position is that I am largely against mods because they do essentially ruin the sanctity of the original vision. Of course they do. This also goes for incredible 4K cosmetic mods and skins for Skyrim and the like. The only difference there is that they have the relative blessing of Bethesda but when I see people modding Thomas the Tank Engine into Resident Evil 2, my first thought is 'wacky cunts ruin everything'.

I also feel the same way about people changing the characters' names in Final Fantasy 7 or whatever. Not just to something 'funnee' but full stop.

There are various item randomiser mods for Dark Souls and so on and while I understand the appeal for streamers and speed runners who want to increase the longevity for their own purposes/out of boredom but this is reducing the game to 1s and 0s for me, it's fundamentally ruined.

The 'Nude Raider' patch destroys this rhetoric.

[St_Eddie]

I still think it comes down to whether or not one enjoys the game. Playing something like Dark Souls and finding it too hard or whatever is... well, not enjoying the game. Play a different game, or keep trying. The secret with games like that is that you actually can do it. I gave up on Souls three times before taking one more run at it, clearing the Bell Gargoyles and blitzing to the end of the game. I'm not good at games that work in 3D space and I was able to do that, and it was worth it.

I absolutely agree with this.

Resi 2 Remake I can't abide but I will buy that "unlock everything" DLC and cunt Mr X in the fuck with infinite ammo

I can't really blame you for that, given that the greedy cunts at Capcom have given you the option.  However, I will say that, if nothing else, by paying them for that Pay-To-Win content, you're encouraging poor industry practices.

[madhair60]

However, I will say that, if nothing else, by paying them for that Pay-To-Win content, you're encouraging poor industry practices.

I don't agree that it's a poor industry practice when it offers me precisely what I - a consumer - want. It's cheaper than buying an Xploder or whatever used to be and I want that unlockable stuff (extra scenarios etc) without playing a game I fundamentally dislike. I see no problem whatsoever. It's basically the difference between me never picking it up again or picking it up tomorrow and blitzing through with a smile on my face.

That said I will reinstall and take one more run at it to see if I start enjoying myself. It would be a bit of a shame to rob myself of that initial experience if it does click.

Fuck. I've talked myself out of it.

[St_Eddie]

I don't agree that it's a poor industry practice when it offers me precisely what I - a consumer - want.

Okay, chief but I best not hear you complain when every single game requires you to purchase an initial copy and then pay extra to keep on playing and complete it.  It's a slippery slope, this DLC/Pay-To-Win/Loot Crate business and we're already halfway down the slope.

[Quote]

I got that Angel car too, and the black one in the first Ridge Racer. For me, the actual mechanics of the game made it less of a chore than Dark Souls. It's just intrinsically fun to me powersliding around corners in Ridge Racer, I love that series - so although there was lots of effort involved, it didn't feel like a dreary trudge to me.

Same with Everybody's Golf, the basic mechanics of the gameplay are fun so I'm happy to play on even when the courses become borderline unfair.

[St_Eddie]

I got that Angel car too, and the black one in the first Ridge Racer. For me, the actual mechanics of the game made it less of a chore than Dark Souls. It's just intrinsically fun to me powersliding around corners in Ridge Racer, I love that series - so although there was lots of effort involved, it didn't feel like a dreary trudge to me.

Oh, I agree.  I wouldn't have kept on playing to unlock the White Angel car if I wasn't having fun.  It was often hugely frustrating but the compulsion was there to keep on trying and improving my skills.  I bloody well earned that car and as a result, it remains one of my fondest gaming memories.

Whereas with the Resident Evil 2 remake, I tried to beat the 4th survivor mode a few times but simply didn't feel the drive to keep on trying and that's fine.  I didn't qualify to unlock the ultimate rewards and without that required effort, I don't deserve to.  I certainly don't feel a sense of entitlement to those rewards, in spite of my lack of dedication to unlocking them.

[Zetetic]

The mods thing has come up a lot as a defence (not that you're doing the same but rather asking the question) and my position is that I am largely against mods because they do essentially ruin the sanctity of the original vision. Of course they do.

I think it's a shame in a fundamentally interactive artform to so privilege a commercial release (which version).

Not least because so many works fall so far from a coherent vision, and modding can bring them closer to one (of a choice of.many). Witcher 3 stands out for me here, where much of the mechanics of the game work against its themes and feeling.

Or games provide a space that can withstand containing other people's visions. The NPC project for Skyrim both massively develops the original game in a way that Bethesda is, I suspect, now fundamentally incapable of but within the spirit of the original while still clearly showing the traces of other people and their personalities.

Part of this is perhaps that I don't hold the perspective advanced in Dark Souls particularly dear. I'm glad people mod From's works in part because it pierces some of the nonsense they (very successfully, I don't deny) embody.

[Zetetic]

Again, I bring up the damn train, CJ. (Although, being honest, most of GTA3 plus is a near complete waste of the technology and assets.)

[The Boston Crab]

I just think it's PC wanker bullshit


What do you mean by 'perspective advanced in DS' and 'nonsense'.

[madhair60]

Dark Souls is much easier than most older games of its type. All it does that makes it "hard", really, is introduce actual stakes. The distance between checkpoints (bonfires) etc isn't that far removed from something like, say, Gears of War, really. There's a psychological barrier of losing Souls to get over. Once you realise it doesn't matter, dying is nothing.

[Blue Jam]

After this Sekiro furore I was interested to see this review of Snooker 19 which says the game is hard because, well, snooker is hard:

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-03-14-snooker-19-breaks-off-right-on-cue

I wonder what people who have never played on a physical table or who have only played pool before will make of it...

I'm probably going to play with all the aim asists turned off in some vain hope that it will improve my proper snooker game, like someone trying to learn how to pilot a plane using a flight simulator...

[Zetetic]

What do you mean by 'perspective advanced in DS' and 'nonsense'.

Stuff we discussed a while back, with you setting out your view of the philosophy it encompassed, broadly. Will try to dig it out - can't remember which username you were under.

[madhair60]

Stuff we discussed a while back, with you setting out your view of the philosophy it encompassed, broadly. Will try to dig it out - can't remember which username you were under.

Cum Commander

[The Boston Crab]

Stuff we discussed a while back, with you setting out your view of the philosophy it encompassed, broadly. Will try to dig it out - can't remember which username you were under.

Oh, that rings a bell, yep. Yeah, not really a Christian Rocket Scientist message which I know is your fondly held religion.

[madhair60]

I think he was posting as Professor Bitches

[The Boston Crab]

Nah that's the one before. He was Dr. Oetke's Cunny Farm.

[madhair60]

Rear Admiral Backchops

[The Boston Crab]

Rip H.S. Art

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Just to be clear, I have no problem with From Software, or any other developer, deliberately making difficult games. I've finished Bloodborne twice, so I think I'm 'gud' enough. I just disagree that the games need to be that fucking difficult. As I said, when it comes to beating a boss, twenty's plenty. Slogging away for an extra half hour adds nothing to the experience.

Frankly, From Software need a good hard kick up the arse (but then you'd risk hitting Boston Crab in the back of the head).

[The Boston Crab]

Haha very good.

Thank goodness Sekiro has two in-game items to make it much harder in NG+ onwards. Once you know how to play it's dead easy.

[Zetetic]

I have no issue with mods.  If a user wants to unofficially modify their game, that's fine and dandy.  What people choose to do with their own personal copy of a game is their business.  Somebody can buy a novel from a bookstore, take it home and use a magic marker to scrawl out every instance of the word 'people' and replace it with the word 'boobs' if they'd care to, that's their prerogative.  That doesn't mean that I'm a-okay with the publisher going against the author's intent and doing the same thing to 50% of their stock, to offer customers a choice.

What about if I offer such books, at cost? Are you fine with people distributing mods?, I guess, is how that question translates.

On the paid DLC front - I do agree that asking users to pay to, broadly, toggle some settings is a horrendous outcome.

I think the issue of 'officialness' is interesting. I can understand wanting soft barriers to being able to make a game easier, or otherwise different, and the ability to mark it as no-longer-the-same-thing.

[St_Eddie]

What about if I offer such books, at cost? Are you fine with people distributing mods?, I guess, is how that question translates.

For me, it all comes down to developer intent; the artist's vision, in its purest form.  If the developer genuinely believes that a modification will improve their game, then I see no real issue with that.  Although, I believe that's what patches are for and patches should be free.  Then again, it wouldn't surprise me at all if in a decade's time, publishers started charging customers for patches.

Ultimately, I don't agree with charging money to alter the experience as originally intended by the artist, especially given that 99% of the time, such practices are at the behest of the publisher and often go against what the developers themselves would want.  I pretty much guarantee that the developers of the Resident Evil 2 remake didn't want Capcom to offer Pay-To-Win DLC but what can they do?  Their hands are tied.  The only way to combat that kind bullshit is for the customers to not support it.  Sadly most do and as such, things are only going to get worse from here on out.  Money for patches.  Mark my words.

[Timothy]

Money for patches wont happen. Ever.

Also dont see how an easy mode can ruin an artist vision. If your game is good its good in every difficult setting.

[Zetetic]

To be honest, I think we've probably shown enough examples where the experience of difficulty can be an integral part of the vision - and that this might be fundamentally difficult to balance with a wide range of difficulty settings.

For me, it all comes down to developer intent; the artist's vision, in its purest form.  If the developer genuinely believes that a modification will improve their game, then I see no real issue with that.

Apologies for lack of clarity. I meant for someone who isn't the developer to distribute mods - like me, or you.

[Timothy]

But even in those examples people say the games are worth playing for exploration or lore.

[St_Eddie]

Money for patches wont happen. Ever.

"Money to win the game won't happen. Ever." ~ Somebody twenty years ago.  Probably.

"Money to unlock alternative costumes and cheat codes won't happen. Ever." ~ Somebody ten years ago.  Probably.

Also dont see how an easy mode can ruin an artist vision. If your game is good its good in every difficult setting.

If the artist wants an easy mode.  Fair enough.  Theoretically, if they were forced to add an easy mode by way of the publisher's demand because players don't want to have to abide by the artist's design (again, this is a theoretical scenario).  Not cool.

[St_Eddie]

Apologies for lack of clarity. I meant for someone who isn't the developer to distribute mods - like me, or you.

But... that already happens?  As I've already stated, I have no issue with user created mods.

But even in those examples people say the games are worth playing for exploration or lore.

If people want to experience the exploration and lore but not take part in combat and that's not a part of the designer's intent, then outside of user created mods, tough sodding luck.  Not everything can or should be catered to the audiences personal tastes.  That's not what art is about.

"I think this Mona Lisa painting would look better with green hair and a carrot for a nose.  I think that the art gallery should put up that version next to the original, so that people like me can choose which version to look at."

Oh do you now.  Well, paint your own version then or commission somebody else to do it for you and hang it on your own bedroom wall, you cunt.  Don't be requesting that it be made an officially viable alternative because that's not what Leonardo da Vinci bloody well intended.

[Thursday]

A lot of these examples are fairly disingenuous, I fall somewhere in the middle here. I can see an arthouse movie/read a difficult book all the way to the ends and there's nothing physically stopping me, even if I don't comprehend anything from it.

Are you entitled to see a game all the way to the end  though? Not sure about that.


On another note I picked up Tetris Effect recently, and that has a beginner mode, but even that's a bit hard for me, I was stuck repeating a stage a few times and put it down. So what if Easy mode isn't easy enough?  I would say most games have an easy mode that still presents a challenge that can be frustrating.

[Zetetic]

Mmm. The comparison with hard-to-understand non-interactive art is generally unhelpful, but the lack of comparison is rarely a hard fail state.

(Unless it's in a completely different language perhaps. But then we have translators, which opens up a whole other can of worms about creating derivative works and the extent to which you can and should try to preserve the essence/effect/impact of the original.)

But... that already happens?  As I've already stated, I have no issue with user created mods.

I was trying to clarify whether you distinguished between people modifying their own games, and publishing these modifications.

Hence trying to extend your analogy to supplying boob-ified books at cost.

[St_Eddie]

I was trying to clarify whether you distinguished between people modifying their own games, and publishing these modifications.

Hence trying to extend your analogy to supplying boob-ified books at cost.

But unofficial user created modifications are free and unsanctioned by their very nature.  I'm not really grasping the point that you're making here, I'm afraid.