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Difficulty in Games [split topic]

Started by Moribunderast, April 16, 2019, 07:51:42 AM

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Sin Agog

I think the appeal of these sorts of games is the David Vs Goliath aspect, which would be somewhat watered down if David had an option to hand in his sling in exchange for a railgun.  The very temptation would be a spell-breaking annoyance.  There are thousands of angry threads by people who've started a From game, only to completely 180 after they've surmounted their first major obstacle.

Twed

Quote from: Sin Agog on April 16, 2019, 06:52:38 PM
I think the appeal of these sorts of games is the David Vs Goliath aspect, which would be somewhat watered down if David had an option to hand in his sling in exchange for a railgun.
Is that what we're talking about? (genuine question)
I thought it was just being able to go in the menu and turn down the difficulty so you take less damage from Goliath's nipple cripples or something. Like games have been doing since 1992.

Zetetic

Quote from: madhair60 on April 16, 2019, 11:11:30 AM
The difficulty and accessibility arguments need to be utterly seperate.
I don't think that's entirely possible - difficulty is calibrated with respect to some idea of human ability (a vague baseline and vague gradient of improvement with practice or insight), whether that's about perception or motor control or divergent thinking etc.

And I accept that there are simply some games that you can't make widely accessible, in a very broad sense, without changing what they express.

(Obviously there are examples where you can make something more accessible without doing this - because the variation in the experience of difficulty is irrelevant to whatever you're trying to express. Red-green colourblindness is probably the most obviously example.)




My general views are:
1. Express whatever you like in your games though difficulty.
2. Do what you can to make it easier for others to modify your games after release.

On 2, I don't think that has to be a choice when you start a new game. Perhaps it's hidden in the settings screen. Perhaps it's another tool you have to download. Perhaps it's an ini file. Maybe it's having to arse about in UDK for a bit (or wait for someone else to do so).

I think it's reasonable to put a light barrier up between the game you had in mind, and the game after others have fiddled with it.




I think that the Dishonored series is a recent example of an interesting attempt to give players the choice of very wide range of difficulty within the games themselves (powers choices, bonecharms choices, interest in stealth/lethality/exploration).

But I'm not sure that it's much interested in expressing anything through that, other than the entertainment of interacting systems.

Twed

Quote from: Zetetic on April 16, 2019, 06:56:59 PM
I don't think that's entirely possible - difficulty is calibrated with respect to some idea of human ability (a vague baseline and vague gradient of improvement with practice or insight), whether that's about perception or motor control or divergent thinking etc.
Yes, thank you. Difficulty and accessibility are not entirely separate things, which is why people are not separating them in this discussion.

Nobody ever gave a fuck about accessibility until they couldn't get past the first fuckin general in Sekiro.


Too fuckin bad, it ain't happening anyway no matter what .


Spiderman and that kind of fuckin crap will always have a load of easy modes so play that bullshit instead. God of War  Days Gone all that  Oscar fodder shit. Too bad Japan doesn't give a shit about pretending to the give a fuck

Zetetic

For reference, Sekiro does now have an 'easy mode' (insofar as you can change player and game speed independently) and also a mode where you can play as a lizard.

That's Yoshi's Crafted World, you melt.

Blue Jam

Quote from: Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth on April 16, 2019, 01:06:18 PM
I played Wolfenstein: The New Colossus recently. There's a game totally spoiled by over the top difficulty. It does give you the option of changing it

I love that game but found the difficulty all over the shop- I mostly played it on "Call me Terror-Billy" but for a couple of sections I dropped it to "Can I play, Daddy?" simply because I was getting bored.

Also, why "Daddy" and not "Mummy"? Bleedin' sexists.

Blue Jam

Alien: Isolation is one I've had a real problem with. I played it on the difficulty setting just below Nightmare Mode and began to regret it around the sixtieth time I tried to exit the San Cristobal medical facility without the Alien detecting me at 50 paces. By the end it wasn't even scary, it was just boring.

Incidentally, I love Prey on Nightmare mode and that's supposed to be a relatively hard game. The difference with that one is that it actually feels more like a challenge than a chore.

Twed

That's also the upside to providing difficulty settings. You can whack it on the setting that makes it harder than the default, for added challenge.

Almost every game has difficulty settings. Play one of them.

Twed

I'm not personally affected by this so I won't. I've just been playing the game of EMPATHY

Twed

Why don't you play the game of posting in /r/incels where people will agree with your opinions, which are that of an incel

Twed

Baba Is You is a good example of a game that can't have difficulty settings. You can't make puzzles less difficult without making them different puzzles. Instead, it makes some of the puzzles optional. Good game design, that.


Chess is too hard for me to unnerstan so I just put the pieces on a fuckin RC and drive it wherever the fuck I wanna put it. That's how me and my buddies play so everyone can get a real taste of chess you know. We're not down with people fuckin gatekeepin trying to say we gotta learn all these fuckin pieces and the moves. We start a petition for all chess to come with a fuckin RC so the crips don't feel left out.

Thursday

Never said I objected to it? Just saying, I don't really know why people's reaction isn't "That a shame not for me then" rather than

"ALL 👏 GAMES 👏 SHOULD 👏 BE 👏 ACCESSIBLE 👏 TO 👏 EVERYONE 👏"

(Which they should, but you know)

Quote from: Twed on April 16, 2019, 08:06:49 PM
Why don't you play the game of posting in /r/incels where people will agree with your opinions, which are that of an incel

Are you kidding man, I been laid more times than your fuckin dining table

Twed

Quote from: The Boston Crab on April 16, 2019, 08:09:52 PM
Chess is too hard for me to unnerstan so I just put the pieces on a fuckin RC and drive it wherever the fuck I wanna put it. That's how me and my buddies play so everyone can get a real taste of chess you know. We're not down with people fuckin gatekeepin trying to say we gotta learn all these fuckin pieces and the moves. We start a petition for all chess to come with a fuckin RC so the crips don't feel left out.
Let people who are crap at chess use the pieces to play draughts with. It's fine. Did you know that they won't be allowed into chess tournaments or affect any standard related to chess play? So maybe just don't worry about it.

Quote from: The Boston Crab on April 16, 2019, 08:12:50 PM
Are you kidding man, I been laid more times than your fuckin dining table
Nobody secure about their sexual prowess ever says this kind of thing

The only thing I'm insecure about is whether I been with triple or quadruple digits

Twed

I can help you: you shagged your dad 435 times.

I laffed


BTW, your not stupid mon  ,I don't know why you trying to genuinely debate this with me I don't give a fuck on any level. It's unbelievably boring. I'm just being destructive /playful
.

Twed

Quote from: The Boston Crab on April 16, 2019, 08:20:13 PM
I laffed


BTW, your not stupid mon  ,I don't know why you trying to genuinely debate this with me I don't give a fuck on any level. It's unbelievably boring. I'm just being destructive  .
If you're getting sincere about this I'm obviously not really calling you a virgin because that would make me an abysmal person, it's just banter, harmless banter and I do it with you because I know you probably get it and because it's hot

I mean debate about people freaking about difficulty settings because they're shit at Sekiro and they think that they can tag onto some disabled guys agenda to strengthen their argument because who would dare criticise crips etc. Too fuckin bad.

Barry Admin

Quote from: Moribunderast on April 16, 2019, 11:17:20 AM
Yeah, you're arguing against a point he doesn't make there.

As I said, I haven't watched the video.

The reason I care is that I think people should try different things, and should be willing to be challenged and taken out of their safety zone. I can't stand quitters, although I would at least respect someone for making an attempt. Saying "it's too hard! Make it easy, and give me easy special achievements pls" makes me want to vomit.

Timothy

Sekiro would be an incredible dull game with an easy mode since all it has going for it is the difficulty. When you take that away you have a four hour long action game with a mediocre story in a beautiful setting.

That said, I don't get why people are being against an easy mode. Lock the choice you make at the beginning so that you can't change it when it becomes to difficult so that the temptation to do so is gone for the players that might change the difficulty when they can't win against a boss and everybody's happy.

You don't have to play it in easy mode. I don't have to play it in easy mode. But when people want to do so, then fine by me.

Twed

Quote from: The Boston Crab on April 16, 2019, 08:24:36 PM
I mean debate about people freaking about difficulty settings because they're shit at Sekiro and they think that they can tag onto some disabled guys agenda to strengthen their argument because who would dare criticise crips etc. Too fuckin bad.
People say interesting stuff, it doesn't take much energy and it keeps you in touch, I guess. I don't know anything about the Sekiro controversy, just shooting the shit with people here, some of whom say things that almost put them on my level (the faux arrogance belies my insecurities)

Twed

Quote from: Timothy on April 16, 2019, 08:25:40 PM
Sekiro would be an incredible dull game with an easy mode since all it has going for it is the difficulty. When you take that away you have a four hour long action game with a mediocre story in a beautiful setting.
Reasons I can think of for people doing that:

Games mean different things to some people. Some people just want to experience a cultural thing that other people are talking about but the barrier of entry is too high for them. Some people like replaying it in higher difficulty settings the second time through. For some people that's what the gittin gud process is.

Barry Admin

Gaming is an art form, and I don't think you really see this sort of pandering in other art forms.

'This David Lynch film is all weird, can you make a version that's not as weird so I can understand it and don't feel like I'm missing out?' - no, go and fuck yourself.

Twed

Quote from: Barry Admin on April 16, 2019, 08:41:38 PM
Gaming is an art form, and I don't think you really see this sort of pandering in other art forms.

'This David Lynch film is all weird, can you make a version that's not as weird so I can understand it and don't feel like I'm missing out?' - no, go and fuck yourself.
That's because it's not feasible, and would be very expensive.

Would it hurt if somebody did have a version of Eraserhead that was dumbed down for them and they watched it in private and you never had to see it?

I just don't think this is a good analogy. Difficulty can mean a lot of things. Lowering the damage in an FPS is more like increasing the volume on a movie than dumbing it down, IMO.

It's also an art form which is fundamentally about overcoming obstacles, reaching goals, meeting challenges, learning through repetition.

AND

As I said, pretty much every game comes with multiple difficulty settings already but when one puts a fixed barrier of entry a a fundamental design principle, there's a shitfit.