I'm making progress with these, I think, because every week I make new mistakes. First the chroma keying was bad, then the camera was too close, and this week I've put my torso on the wrong side of the frame so my left side keeps disappearing into nothingness.
Anyway, this week I recorded a Rev Rant about game difficulty. It is, like the others, highly unresearched.
Why does Metal Gear Solid 3 suck on every difficulty level but extreme? Can a game still be challenging if you can get through the entire thing without losing once?
Hit the jump for a further discussion of these topics, except it's not a discussion because it's just me talking to a camera. You make the discussion in the comments, I guess.
I agree that difficulty through constant death is not always a good thing. I do enjoy the idea of pattern recognition in some games like Ikaruga, but I enjoy games much more when I'm given the chance to react. I hate when the only option is to just remember where an enemy spawns or whatnot. I really need to try MGS3 on extreme because what you're explaining sounds a lot like what I want; a constant back and forth, reactionary style of difficulty dependent each time on what the boss does and what supplies the player happens to have.
My opinion on game balancing is that if it takes more than twice to complete an objective it's not the mode you should be playing on for the optimal experience. Maybe that's too easy for most people, but I see game over screens as mistakes. Games need to be challenging without being punishing. Something most "hardcore" gamers tend to refute.
Nice rantin'. This is why everyone should play Half Life 2 and all its incarnations on expert - it's a whole different game when you have to hang onto that few precious drops of blood, scavenging for tender morsels of health and ammo in previously overlooked areas with only your gravity gun,crowbar, and imagination at your disposal. That's when headcrabs SUCK.
I do think that MGS3 didn't really present the many options available to you very well and in my personal experience making a game more challenging does force you to change the way you play.
Hitman really did a lot for me in the way that certain levels required you to experiment with what you've learnt so far and try different things within a fairly large environment but it would usually punish the less creative decisions that you could make.
I have a question why does hald the screen NOM NOM NOM on your arm?
But seriously, would you say that it would be a good idea to attempt playing on these difficulty modes after you have already beaten the game on a level where you get challenge but can enjoy just playing without the stress of constantly dying all the time. It seems like I will only feel comfortable with upping the difficulty setting if I have beaten a game on normal or easy. If I start playing on hard right a way I'm afraid I may confuse the difficulty level with the game having poor design that causes me to die instead of it being my own fault for not having the necessary skills.
Interesting RevRant. I definitely agree about the difficulty levels providing new ways to play, rather than just throwing in more enemies or making them harder to kill. I think games that only do the latter are a lot more shallow because the extra options to the former were always there, you just may not have been challenged to the point of having to use all options. Whereas with just more/tougher enemies or levels, they really only add to the frustration. If more games could figure out a way to use difficulty to expose different ways of playing, I think that not only would the average replay values go up, but the average first time play through would be much more enjoyable.
I do wonder how some games would handle that challenge, though. Each genre would have to address it differently, obviously... but wouldn't it get to the point where certain things just became standard and easy to see/find after playing a few of these sorta games? Would that lessen the experience or only make that good experience spread out over more games? I kinda fall on the "we'd start to take it for granted" side of things... but maybe not.
Call me old, call me elitist but I used to revel in the fact that when I beat a game I was one of the special few that ever saw the ending credits. For most games this is no longer an accomplishment but merely a time investment. I'm willing to accept that games nowadays must be easy enough so that most casual players can complete a game regardless of skill level. However, there are still ways of throwing bones to players like me. As you mentioned, Plants VS.Zombies is a great example. Like you, I blew through the campaign in a few hours without dying. The new game play additions each level were great but still not quite enough to satisfy me. For me it was the extra puzzle and survival stages. The difficulty was extreme for many of these levels and I'm still struggling with quite a few of them. And I love it. So yeah, go ahead and make a game easy but make sure you add some extra hard bonus challenges for us diehards and I'll be happy.
I did like how PvZ was difficult and frantic without being punishing. I must suck more though, because I think I died once or twice through the normal campaign.
One of the interesting ideas in PvZ was the thing where your second time through the campaign, Crazy Dave would choose three plants for you to use. The idea behind it is that you would have to come up with different strategies because you are limited to only a few of the plants you're used to.
For me though, with one exception, it broke down in practice, because you're also playing through, earning money, and buying more seed slots. So instead of starting with six slots like my first time through, I was starting with nine slots my second time through, and three of the slots were taken by plants I might or might not use.
I say one exception though, because I found a great way to go through the setup phase because I was forced to use Potato Mines on one level. I had previously dismissed the Potato Mines because of their one-time use and their long recharge time, but I found that I could get ten Sunflowers down before putting down any Peashooters by using Potato Mines and Imitator Potato Mines to take out the first few zombies in the map.
And then, I'd have enough sunlight income to start out with Repeaters or Snow Peas instead of regular Peashooters, making me much stronger at the beginning.
I do think that difficulty settings could be explored much further in games, and it is something I have actively thought about for the game I am planning.
I really like what you said about a game being challenging even if you never die. I love the feeling of seeing the options, making the best choice and having it turn out like I thought and being rewarded with a win, first try.
I still recognize the challenge, but I get the satisfaction of feeling like I'm good at the game, or that my strategy was sound.
I can be so good at Vandal Hearts 2 that I beat most stages without even losing a UNIT. (love that game)
Very nice points. I tend to love games that allow me to exploit all the game's options and strategies without bashing me repeatedly over the head with a shovel. However, many gamers only enjoy a game if it allows them to experience a kind of bragging-rights masochism - such as attempting one game task (an arena battle, an escort mission, a boss battle) hundreds of times, getting more and more frustrated with each attempt, but unable to pry themselves away until they surpass it, only to bask in the temporary afterglow of success.
Screw that. A game can be challenging without wasting your time. Makes me think of Jak II - I won that game ultimately, but the pain it put me through - oh, the pain! At least it let me play Jak 3 without regrets (a much more balanced game).
Guess I'm the only one who died multiple times in the PvZ career mode. Some gamer that makes me!
You know I didn't die once in the adventure mode of Plants vs Zombies either, but I didn't even think about it because the game kept me constantly on my toes. I hadn't thought much about it until this video and I think there is something to be said about that kind of difficulty. It was satisfying.
Plus, once you finish the game and work on the mini games it becomes serious business. I've died a ton of times on those.
To be honest, the Metal Gear Solid series is a pretty horrible baseline to choose when talking about game difficulty: I've always found them atrociously easy, especially Metal Gear Solid 3.
If you don't want to see a game-over screen (some people), that's really pansy in my opinion, because some games are created to be challenging. Prince of Persia was a joke in terms of difficulty, considering you could just use trial and error with it's platforming parts and nothing would happen to you.
What's a game that take's the "game-over" screen to an absolute maximum? Demon's Souls. After you die, you become a spirit, and have to earn your experience back: if you die again, you lose them forever. Games need a sort of punishment in my opinion. If you really don't want to die, play the game's easy mode. Casual gamers have that option. If you take away any sort of penalty in games (IE:POP), the hardcores get screwed.
Another game that eases up the "game over" screen a bit is Devil May Cry 3:SE, with the introduction of the gold orb. Normally, you'd start over at a checkpoint, but if you use a gold orb, you'll start back at the exact same spot: similar to an "extra life".
Oblivion actually has a "sliding difficulty bar", where you can change it anytime you want. If a certain boss is too hard, just slide the difficulty down. I have no problems with this mechanic, because I can just choose not to use it. Also found in Elder Scrolls games, and FF8, are a scaling difficulty system, where the game gets harder the more you level up. While it tends to make games on the easy side, it's bearable.
All of these are great innovations in the realm of difficulty. What's the moral of the story? If you make a game too easy, I get pissed. If you make a game too hard, Wii-gamers/casuals get pissed. What's the solution? Devil May Cry/Ninja Gaiden: make normal beatable, and have a system where if you die constantly, the game actually butts in and says "would you like to be super-easy mode, and learn the ropes before tackling hard?" I'm of the ideology that "gamers should learn to get better at games, and not have their hand held at all times".
I agree with you and altough I have no problems with shmups and other games that relies on memorizing and stuff, I really like when the difficulty from games comes from making me think and strategize and do things in unusual ways and not from just punishing me with death or something and making me redo half-stages.
Never cared a lot about MGS and never died in the PvZ demo. Won't buy the full game but I liked its difficulty curve.
I for one love the idea of adaptive difficulty, or the type of difficulty you mentioned in the video. Where by, in real time, the game changes the A.I (possibly, I'm a little shady on this one) location and damage the enemy inflicts. I believe as time goes on, this feature will be further implemented in more games. As you said yourself, we see snippers of the system in MGS4, and, IMHO, a little bit in MGS4. I swear the AI reacts a little diffently, serches more places and serches for longer everytime I get seen, or the enemy thinks that they have seen me. I could be wrong though! I have seen this in KZ2 as well, in fact the A.I is something else on that game and the devs need to be appaluded for it. I have not yet bothered to play the story mode on the higher difficulty levels (multiplayer beckons me to it's awesomeness), but I was flabbergasted at the AI even on the easiest setting.
Rather than act like idiots, I saw the enemy actively look for cover, shoot from cover, not make themselves static targets, hell they even peeked around sandbags for a spilt second in order to see if it was safe to shoot. Oh, and let's not forget the act of trowing back grenades at you on a constant basis. It was awesome playing the game because it was genuinely challenging. I expected to beat the game easily, instead I had to work, and felt immensely happy about it.This is a perfect case where adaptive difficulty was used very, very well. I could say the same for F.E.A.R, probably only second to KZ2 in terms of AI in FPS's. The AI on FEAR 2 is decent, but I dunno, it seems easier compared to it's predessesor.
The AI director in L4D is a prime example of why I love playing it. Yes we seen the terrible vids of people 'hunkering' down and making a near impenetrable fortresses on survival mode. But to actually make it a challenge for yourself and to kepp moving, shooting and strategizing on the fly with your fellow teamates is a blast. I'm sorry but I hate just making games like L4D easy for yourself, experiment, play differently, it's amazing to do so.
When I face a game which has a hard level which actually makes the game harder to complete, I love playing that game. Even though DMC3 was a game whereby the accusation of cheapness in game design can be legitimately levelled against it, I loved the game.
I really like hard games, maybe that's why I dig multiplayer on FPS's a lot, I like being challenged by other people. :)
I meant MGS3 when I talked (or typed) about snippets of it being in MGS3, and I think in MGS4.
Also, cool beard, ingnore Samit, he obviously has never seen a terroist beard on TV if he thinks the length of yours can be compared to that of Osama Bin Laden or a person like him. The reality is that your beard, and speaking as a muslim, is very small compared to the religious leaders I have seen and the relgious people that go to pray.
Geese Ant, one of these a week is exactly what I need to get excited about videogames again after reading through a certain foreign, monocled, writer's too-cool-for-the-room myspace blog posts that get treated as editorials...
Tubatic:
Mega Man repetition is typically mandatory, because the levels are designed in such a way that you MUST play them over and over again in order to memorize when and where enemies appear and how to deal with platforming puzzles. Death repetition in MGS3 is not so much a mandatory learning experience as a consequence for not doing the right thing -- running around trying to shoot people with an unsilenced weapon results in death because the game is trying to tell you that isn't a smart strategy to use.
The difference between how you and I seem to play MGS lies mainly in the fact that I hate getting spotted to the point where, if I do, I usually let the guards kill me so I can go over the section again. Being spotted and hiding and then slapping one or two heads in the dirt, before the intense bleeping becomes a sparse, serene, submarine-like blip in the distance takes me out of the experience. How am I to believe that they think that everything is clear 30 seconds after they saw me rolling into the tall grass, conveniently near a hollow tree.
For this reason, I found MGS3 both a challenge and rather fun.
The boss battles, aside from The Pain, which you focused on, were each very different and a great challlenge (for me, anyway). Playing this game on the hardest setting would have done little to change my experience - probably would have served as a reason for me to lie under an army truck for WAY too long. Way longer than I already did sometimes (which was a LONG time, I think).
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Contest:
2:00 PM on 05.21.2009
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Also, I'm impressed by the developing beard.
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My opinion on game balancing is that if it takes more than twice to complete an objective it's not the mode you should be playing on for the optimal experience. Maybe that's too easy for most people, but I see game over screens as mistakes. Games need to be challenging without being punishing. Something most "hardcore" gamers tend to refute.
Hitman really did a lot for me in the way that certain levels required you to experiment with what you've learnt so far and try different things within a fairly large environment but it would usually punish the less creative decisions that you could make.
But seriously, would you say that it would be a good idea to attempt playing on these difficulty modes after you have already beaten the game on a level where you get challenge but can enjoy just playing without the stress of constantly dying all the time. It seems like I will only feel comfortable with upping the difficulty setting if I have beaten a game on normal or easy. If I start playing on hard right a way I'm afraid I may confuse the difficulty level with the game having poor design that causes me to die instead of it being my own fault for not having the necessary skills.
I do wonder how some games would handle that challenge, though. Each genre would have to address it differently, obviously... but wouldn't it get to the point where certain things just became standard and easy to see/find after playing a few of these sorta games? Would that lessen the experience or only make that good experience spread out over more games? I kinda fall on the "we'd start to take it for granted" side of things... but maybe not.
Good nightmares y'all.
One of the interesting ideas in PvZ was the thing where your second time through the campaign, Crazy Dave would choose three plants for you to use. The idea behind it is that you would have to come up with different strategies because you are limited to only a few of the plants you're used to.
For me though, with one exception, it broke down in practice, because you're also playing through, earning money, and buying more seed slots. So instead of starting with six slots like my first time through, I was starting with nine slots my second time through, and three of the slots were taken by plants I might or might not use.
I say one exception though, because I found a great way to go through the setup phase because I was forced to use Potato Mines on one level. I had previously dismissed the Potato Mines because of their one-time use and their long recharge time, but I found that I could get ten Sunflowers down before putting down any Peashooters by using Potato Mines and Imitator Potato Mines to take out the first few zombies in the map.
And then, I'd have enough sunlight income to start out with Repeaters or Snow Peas instead of regular Peashooters, making me much stronger at the beginning.
I do think that difficulty settings could be explored much further in games, and it is something I have actively thought about for the game I am planning.
I still recognize the challenge, but I get the satisfaction of feeling like I'm good at the game, or that my strategy was sound.
I can be so good at Vandal Hearts 2 that I beat most stages without even losing a UNIT. (love that game)
Screw that. A game can be challenging without wasting your time. Makes me think of Jak II - I won that game ultimately, but the pain it put me through - oh, the pain! At least it let me play Jak 3 without regrets (a much more balanced game).
Guess I'm the only one who died multiple times in the PvZ career mode. Some gamer that makes me!
Plus, once you finish the game and work on the mini games it becomes serious business. I've died a ton of times on those.
If you don't want to see a game-over screen (some people), that's really pansy in my opinion, because some games are created to be challenging. Prince of Persia was a joke in terms of difficulty, considering you could just use trial and error with it's platforming parts and nothing would happen to you.
What's a game that take's the "game-over" screen to an absolute maximum? Demon's Souls. After you die, you become a spirit, and have to earn your experience back: if you die again, you lose them forever. Games need a sort of punishment in my opinion. If you really don't want to die, play the game's easy mode. Casual gamers have that option. If you take away any sort of penalty in games (IE:POP), the hardcores get screwed.
Another game that eases up the "game over" screen a bit is Devil May Cry 3:SE, with the introduction of the gold orb. Normally, you'd start over at a checkpoint, but if you use a gold orb, you'll start back at the exact same spot: similar to an "extra life".
Oblivion actually has a "sliding difficulty bar", where you can change it anytime you want. If a certain boss is too hard, just slide the difficulty down. I have no problems with this mechanic, because I can just choose not to use it. Also found in Elder Scrolls games, and FF8, are a scaling difficulty system, where the game gets harder the more you level up. While it tends to make games on the easy side, it's bearable.
All of these are great innovations in the realm of difficulty. What's the moral of the story? If you make a game too easy, I get pissed. If you make a game too hard, Wii-gamers/casuals get pissed. What's the solution? Devil May Cry/Ninja Gaiden: make normal beatable, and have a system where if you die constantly, the game actually butts in and says "would you like to be super-easy mode, and learn the ropes before tackling hard?" I'm of the ideology that "gamers should learn to get better at games, and not have their hand held at all times".
Never cared a lot about MGS and never died in the PvZ demo. Won't buy the full game but I liked its difficulty curve.
Yeah, I was just about to say that. People tell me that if I don't shave for a week. Looks like you have 3 weeks growing there, though...
I love you, Rev. I fucking lol'd and I'm sitting alone in a dimly lit room.
Also, not Scroobius Pip, but
2-Is it just me , or you extended a 30 second sentence into a whole 5:41 minutes video?
How is you experience with MGS3 on EX Hard, in which you died and had to re-do the same situations, different from Mega Man?
Hey, congrats. You now know the definition of the word "rant."
I for one love the idea of adaptive difficulty, or the type of difficulty you mentioned in the video. Where by, in real time, the game changes the A.I (possibly, I'm a little shady on this one) location and damage the enemy inflicts. I believe as time goes on, this feature will be further implemented in more games. As you said yourself, we see snippers of the system in MGS4, and, IMHO, a little bit in MGS4. I swear the AI reacts a little diffently, serches more places and serches for longer everytime I get seen, or the enemy thinks that they have seen me. I could be wrong though! I have seen this in KZ2 as well, in fact the A.I is something else on that game and the devs need to be appaluded for it. I have not yet bothered to play the story mode on the higher difficulty levels (multiplayer beckons me to it's awesomeness), but I was flabbergasted at the AI even on the easiest setting.
Rather than act like idiots, I saw the enemy actively look for cover, shoot from cover, not make themselves static targets, hell they even peeked around sandbags for a spilt second in order to see if it was safe to shoot. Oh, and let's not forget the act of trowing back grenades at you on a constant basis. It was awesome playing the game because it was genuinely challenging. I expected to beat the game easily, instead I had to work, and felt immensely happy about it.This is a perfect case where adaptive difficulty was used very, very well. I could say the same for F.E.A.R, probably only second to KZ2 in terms of AI in FPS's. The AI on FEAR 2 is decent, but I dunno, it seems easier compared to it's predessesor.
The AI director in L4D is a prime example of why I love playing it. Yes we seen the terrible vids of people 'hunkering' down and making a near impenetrable fortresses on survival mode. But to actually make it a challenge for yourself and to kepp moving, shooting and strategizing on the fly with your fellow teamates is a blast. I'm sorry but I hate just making games like L4D easy for yourself, experiment, play differently, it's amazing to do so.
When I face a game which has a hard level which actually makes the game harder to complete, I love playing that game. Even though DMC3 was a game whereby the accusation of cheapness in game design can be legitimately levelled against it, I loved the game.
I really like hard games, maybe that's why I dig multiplayer on FPS's a lot, I like being challenged by other people. :)
I meant MGS3 when I talked (or typed) about snippets of it being in MGS3, and I think in MGS4.
Also, cool beard, ingnore Samit, he obviously has never seen a terroist beard on TV if he thinks the length of yours can be compared to that of Osama Bin Laden or a person like him. The reality is that your beard, and speaking as a muslim, is very small compared to the religious leaders I have seen and the relgious people that go to pray.
I don't take racism from browntown.
Tubatic:
Mega Man repetition is typically mandatory, because the levels are designed in such a way that you MUST play them over and over again in order to memorize when and where enemies appear and how to deal with platforming puzzles. Death repetition in MGS3 is not so much a mandatory learning experience as a consequence for not doing the right thing -- running around trying to shoot people with an unsilenced weapon results in death because the game is trying to tell you that isn't a smart strategy to use.
Good food for thought.
I'm picking up more of a perverted science teacher vibe.
For this reason, I found MGS3 both a challenge and rather fun.
The boss battles, aside from The Pain, which you focused on, were each very different and a great challlenge (for me, anyway). Playing this game on the hardest setting would have done little to change my experience - probably would have served as a reason for me to lie under an army truck for WAY too long. Way longer than I already did sometimes (which was a LONG time, I think).
Really enjoyed the clip.
Don't be a pussy.
Don't listen to the pre-teens who can't grow facial hair.
don't shave
don't shave
don't shave
don't shave
come on everybody
dont shave
dont shave :)
you look somewhat a little masculine with it...only a little