At what point does difficulty become artificial difficulty?
when you turn on the game.
When some self-aggrandizing man-child reaches an encounter he cannot beat.
Artificial difficulty is when a game is balanced around certain values, then to add difficulty they simply change the values instead of the physics or mechanics on how the game is meant to be played.
An example would be playing a game on normal then changing it to hard. That is artificial difficulty.
>>320547843
To add to this real difficulty would be something like progressing farther into a game(usually). Where more precise use of in game physics or mechanics is required to complete an objective.
When a fat virgin posts in /v/ saying the game is shit because the game is too hard.
Search Results
ar·ti·fi·cial
ˌärdəˈfiSHəl/
adjective
adjective: artificial
1.
made or produced by human beings rather than occurring naturally, typically as a copy of something natural.
Unless you found your game growing on a fucking tree, it was made by humans (or, failing that, machines programmed by humans) and is, by fucking definition, artificial, now stop it with this fucking meme
Artificial difficulty is trial and error.
If there are two buttons on a wall, and one opens a door, while the other one instantly kills you, that would be artificial difficulty.
It's only artificial difficulty if there is no possible way for you to know which is which.
>>320546391
when they pad out boss battles by having them retreat or be invulnerable and you have to do stupid shit to make them vulnerable like in destiny.
>>320547843
Bullshit. Tuning numbers to change difficulty been around for ages, and no one called it artificial. More to the point, no one complains when it is done well.
>>320546391
When you die for some reason you had no control over and couldn't have foreseen.
ALL DIFFICULTY IS ARTIFICIAL BECAUSE GAMES ARE MADE BY PEOPLE
>>320548542
I don't think you understand what artificial difficulty is.
I always was under the impression it was when a game either made certain choices or because of their flaws.
Examples:
A. When a game has very clearly established rules or reasons for a style and then periodically change them to increase the difficulty. (Some boss fights or general mechanics of mobs)
B. When a game cannot perform to level that they expect a player to perform at due to inconsistencies (Souls and bloodborne hit box and animations being a prime example since you can technically play perfectly but you still may get punished)
Maybe I mislabeled this in my mind but these were always the things that grated on my nerves while playing games.
>>320548417
fuck off retard
>>320548847
up yours turbonerd
>>320548834
A is sometimes necessary for interesting design and B is just glitchy shit, hardly the intent of the developers
>>320548431
It's not trial and error, because 1) People have repeatedly labeled far less egregious things as artificial difficulty, 2) You can reduce lots of things to "trial and error" if you don't want to be charitable. Most people do not find it fun if the game doesn't obscure the correct course of action in some way. e.g., if blocking an enemy's attack animation has to be timed and if the game doesn't give you a QTE-style button prompt, then the only way to learn the timing is... you guess it, trial and error.
>>320548791
This is actually true.
>Artificial Difficulty
Single Player Games
>Natural Difficulty
Multiplayer Games
>>320546391
Artificial difficulty DOES NOT have a specific meaning, because it was just an off hand term. It sprung up a few years ago and seemed only to mean "I feel this level of difficulty was arbitrary. It was made harder far beyond what it should have been just for the sake of making it harder." It doesn't mean anything, and offers no new insight into difficulty design.
>>320546391
When i can't get past a certain part in the game.
>>320549018
No.
You can clearly see an enemy's attacks, and most include a sound cue to help you time it.
Even if the timing is precise, or off, you still have a general idea of when to block.
That isnt so much trial and error as my first example.
When you limit the players health significantly, like OHK moves or things like the three-heart challenge. When you also lower the time allowed to complete, so you might have a somewhat challenging but do able Mario level but then lower the time limit to only allowed a "perfect" run. That isn't difficulty, its just artificial.
>>320546391
Seem to be two notions:
1: Basically >>320547843
Compare changing difficulty on Uncharted (simply increase enemy health & damage values to daft levels) & on Killzone (enemy AI becomes much better as well as their damage values)
2: When not-losing becomes about trial-&-error. This is only truly seen in a handful of games like Cat Mario, & most accusations of this kind are because people are bad at the game & therefore they retry again & again without really changing their approach until by chance they succeed (as with my approach to beating Shao Khan on MK9 the other week, which gave me a lot of grief & a blistered thumb)
the only thing i would consider artificial difficulty is infrequent checkpoints
>>320549102
It's also very autistic to say, so I assume he was being retarded on purpose.
>>320549276
That's true, there is a big difference in conveyance in these two examples. But it's not "lack of conveyance" that gets labeled as artificially difficulty. e.g., brutal boss battles are often labeled as artificial difficulty.
I think its were enemies just soak up more damage but you die from less damage. It just makes it a chore to kill them.
A good example of well done "hard mode" is the Metro 2033 series' ranger mode. You will die from a few bullet hits but so will your enemies. ammo is scarce so you cant just spam fire your way through. Howeverthis still wont change how mad i got at the defense level, FUCK NOSALIS HORDES.
I'd say when the difficulty is not due to a matter of player skill, but of game systems designed to ignore player skill.
Artificial difficulty is difficulty that arises by raising stats of enemies/lowering players stats.
i.e most RPG difficulty.
Example of real difficulty scaling: Enemies use smarter and deadlier tactics to kill you.
Artificial difficulty: ALL ENEMIES DEAL 100% MORE DAMAGE.
>>320549117
>it sprung up a few years ago
Yeah, a few years ago. What do you think it has been doing all this time, masturbating like you? There is a very obvious understanding that anyone who has paid any sort of attention to anything understands at this point.
As soon as fights become a game of chance.
>>320549487
nah m8 you're autistic
>>320549529
Concise definition that seems to apply to what most people have said. Nice one
>>320548431
Eh, so are dungeons artificial difficulty? You don't know the correct path to the boss change, you have to explore the area randomly. Zelda 2's final palace comes to mind. Most of the challenge is the required endurance and sense of navigation. Even Link to the Past has explicit trap rooms which serve no purpose other than to put you in danger until you can open the door to get out.
What about conversation options? The best option could lead to a reward, and there might not be any clue. It's not the same as "dying" for the wrong choice, but what line do you draw?
>>320546391
Killing or punishing the player for things he couldn't had possibly been aware of is definitely a form of it.
>>320549529
that basically just describes RNG and nothing else
>>320549771
one of the telltale signs of autism is getting caught up on literal definitions and an inability to understand implied meanings.
>>320546391
When enemies recharge half their HP every time you attack them or they attack you
>>320546391
When turning it to hard just makes the enemies into 99% accuracy bulletsponges and increases damage 10x.
Im fine with making the enemy deal more damage etc but increasing their health is bullshit.
Games like Wolfenstein: New Order on hardest difficulty were playable because enemies still died in the usual amount of bullets, the increased accuracy and damage caused me to become more adapt at nailing headshots. In The Last of Us, the enemies not only did more damage, they got smarter, supplies became less common forcing you to opt for stealth over action more.
>>320549935
so like when DotA players hate the genre term moba? Makes sense
stuff that forces you to die/take damage with no way to react/no clear way to surpass it.
aka iwbtg garbage
>>320546391
At what point are the Soul games hard?
>>320548624
Whatever, it's still artificial difficulty.
The Legendary difficulty mode from Skyrim is the best example there is. There is no difference in the AI, there is no qualitative change in the way your enemies behavior. They don't have new spells, new ways of doing things, they are just a quantitatively bigger version of their normal self.
>>320549521
>>320549521
> I think its were enemies just soak up more damage but you die from less damage. It just makes it a chore to kill them.
But that doesn't make it "artificially difficult" by itself. Sometimes that makes for a good hard mode, because it prevents an experienced player from eliminating enemies before they can even start their attack animations.
I think you should all watch this guy named Egoraptor's review on Mega Man X for a good description of perfect difficulty.
>>320546391
Frigid Outskirts
>>320550147
>OP uses a random souls image but wants to discuss the general definiton of artificial difficulty
>/v/irgin sperg sees the image and is compelled to shitpost
and no one is surprised
>>320550167
Artificial difficulty is preventing skilled players from eliminating enemies before they can even start their attack animations.
Artificial difficulty is making skill irrelevant.
>>320550165
Skyrim's legendary mode sounds like shit, but there are tons of games that seem to have good difficulty modes with just number changes. Like, what is almost everyone's favorite difficulty mode in Doom? It's fucking ultra violence. Was that artificial? Should that have been the default difficulty for first timers?
>>320549521
I dropped the game shortly after that level simply because after saving up ammo as much as I could the whole game I couldn't find shit afterwards.
>>320550165
I don't consider that 'artificial difficulty' as much as I do 'shit difficulty'. The term just doesn't really get thrown around in that context - it's almost always related to people being killed/punished in a way that they feel implies that the challenge is simply trial-&-error
>>320546391
When someone who thinks he's hot shit reaches an obstacle he can't defeat, only then are things unfair.
Take your tvtrope regurgitation somewhere else.
>>320546391
An example of something that is artificial difficulty would be "realistic" mode on Black Ops 3 campaign. No it isn't fucking realistic to make enemies take an entire clip or more to kill while being able to one shot you, that's just ducking retarded.
An example of a game that is not artificial difficulty is Ranger Hardcore Mode on Metro 2033 where by increasing the enemies damage your damage is also increased. The game is a lot harder but it's fair still.
>>320550420
But those aren't the same things anon-kun!
>>320550420
but in the other artificial difficulty thread, people are calling Winter Lanterns artificial difficulty when players with more skill can deal with them easier than bad players
>>320550572
They are exactly the same thing, anon-senpai.
>>320546391
'Artificial difficulty' is mostly a meaningless buzzword here. Difficulty is difficulty. Good game design, good balance, and good progression should make a reasonable difficulty curve as you continue to play a game.
Still, it has some merit. I'd classify artificial difficulty as any game feature that arbitrarily punishes skill rather than rewarding it.
When you set up an elaborate sequence of traps and attacks to kill the boss instantly, only for him to take minimal to no damage because the game has judged that you aren't 'fighting him fairly', forcing you to enter the arena and engage the enemy on his own terms: that's artificial difficulty. When you sneak past an entire enemy encampment, only for a scripted alarm to go off alerting them to your presence, that's artificial difficulty. When you're playing a racing game, and the computer gives speed boosts to the cars you passed by, that's artificial difficulty.
Basically, any time the game is quite clearly 'cheating', or altering it's own rules, in order to make something more difficult than it has any reason being.
But remember what I said about 'good game design'? Funny thing is, that this kind of artificial difficulty has no place in it.
>>320550545
>ducking
Posting on a phone are we, Anon?
at what point did the definition of shit difficulty turn into "artificial" difficulty
>>320549521
>>320550469
I remember it taking a couple of tries but it wasn't that bad I was also playing in Ranger Hardcore. Stealth sections were more annoying due to my autistic obsession with continuously restarting sections until I successfully kill everybody stealthily
>>320550687
Yup, and no matter how many times I save "fucking" to my dictionary it always erases it so it auto corrects anyway. Makes me want to punch a baby
>>320550657
I don't know what this shit means, but they're wrong. Artificial Difficulty is a system that is designed (either through mistake or intention) to make skill irrelevant to whether or not the player does well.
>>320550167
I talking about when its done to unarmored enemies or the "average" level enemies for example you turn a corner and there is some regular dude there. it takes you 6 shots to kill him where as it takes him 1 shot to kill you.
>>320550469
I really regret not just getting as much pistol ammo as possible. Iv got 5 shotgun shells and the 8 helsing bolts.(I swear that shit doesn't fire straight.) I'm really missing my voltdriver from my first play through but i couldnt afford it this time round.
RNG. It also functions as artificial padding.
>>320546391
"Artificial Difficulty" is just a convenient shorthand.
It basically means "I want to single out some aspect of game design as being a universally bad method for providing challenge." That's it.
IMHO, if you believe in artificial difficulty in the truest sense (that whatever-it-is is *universally* bad, no exceptions), then you have narrower tastes than I do. I can think of at least one example that used such-and-such principle to provide challenge that I liked, no matter how bad that principle is most of the time.
>>320549521
Defense anything is always shit.
>>320551080
defend RNG
>>320550948
> I talking about when its done to unarmored enemies or the "average" level enemies for example you turn a corner and there is some regular dude there. it takes you 6 shots to kill him where as it takes him 1 shot to kill you.
That's fair, but we really need better language to express the difference. That situation would probably be fine if it took 2 shots on normal and 3 shots on hard.
>>320551139
RNG can be accounted for and in some games manipulating it so that your chances are optimally favourable is part of the core in strategizing. And this approach works in many acclaimed titles (in some form, most RPGs and sRPGs have this).
It can be implemented badly, but is not intrinsically an evil in design.
>>320551080
Bullshit.
>>320547843
This. It's when a game changes the functionality of mechanics in a way that defies the already established rules of the game.
Let's say, for an entire game, a single headshot kills an enemy. Then, for no apparent reason, there is an enemy identical to all others that requires two headshots, with no narrative explanation for it, and for the sole purpose of forcing the player to fail to no legitimate fault of their own. THAT is artificial difficulty.
>>320551139
I have no problem with RNG. Lots of games would be easier if you removed RNG, what's the problem?
I can imagine you replying with some extreme example, but like I said unless you believe RNG is *universally* bad then we aren't in disagreement.
>>320551083
Its just a super rough level
>two swipes from the enemy kills you
>your squad mates are either reloading, missing their shots or dead.
>the enemies are fast as fuck jumping off the walls
>they send in support fuckers that bugger up your aiming
>you end up knifing the last few because you have run out of ammo
I ended up exploiting the enemies AI to win
is there actual discussion happening on this board right now?
/v/, when you hear the term artificial difficulty, what moments in games do you think of first?
>>320551491
> Bullshit.
Which part is bullshit? The definition of artificial difficulty or the idea that there can be rare examples of good use of reviled principles?
>>320551813
JRPGs
>>320546391
When it's not probable that a person who is playing the game blind could get through without dying especially when the segment exists specifically to lengthen the playthrough.
The hawks in Ninja Gaiden for the NES are a great example of artifical difficulty.
Alternatively when a "fair" game gives bonuses to compensate for poor ai. Civ is infamous for this form of cancer.
>>320551832
>I can think of at least one example that used such-and-such principle to provide challenge that I liked, no matter how bad that principle is most of the time.
Complete fucking bullshit.
>>320551959
But anon-kun most jrpgs are easy as shit
>>320551813
Dark Souls.
>>320552051
>doesn't provide a mechanic for the other anon to provide an example
like whats even the point then
>>320551553
sure is casual in here
>>320551959
>I'm too incompetent to set my party up in a way that makes me unbeatable
>>320552112
Because he'll just make up bullshit or blatantly lie.
>>320552051
> Complete fucking bullshit.
Yeah maybe, but I do truly believe that, like, 9 out of the 10 "principles" people would post in this thread have rare exceptions that I liked.
That doesn't mean that person was wrong or that their viewpoint is illegitimate. You can legit dislike certain types of design that other people can love. And I'm not saying I love it either, I'm saying I can find rare examples that I thought weren't bad.
Artificial difficulty the term was conjured up by baddies when they got their hands on Dark Souls. It has no meaning. People can say something something is bullshit hard like Silver Surfer or Superman 64, but they are about as "artificially difficult" as Pokemon.
>>320551813
>what moment
The moment I ran into a fucking bandit wearing glass armor and an ebony weapon in Oblivion.
Not all artificial difficulty is level scaling, but all level scaling is artificial difficulty.
>>320551813
Fighting game mechanics like EWGF and Ramlethal's Green Dauro. It's a true artifical barrier of difficulty, especially in the age of netplay fighting.
If I made a game that tried to avoid everything people are posting in this thread it'd have to be a point-and-click visual adventure where every choice is a good one because this thread is just people bitching about completely normal video game things.
>>320552432
The irony is dark souls is about as opposite from artificial difficulty as you can get
Difficulty can't be artificial.
Most people just call games that require trial and error artificially difficult. Or they say that if you just increase enemy HP with no change to the AI is artificial difficulty.
There's no strict rules, it's just a term that's used to describe bullshit.
For example in Fallout: New Vegas turning on Hardcore Mode is a very nice way of increasing difficulty while switching to Very Hard is a simple kind of shit way of making the game difficult by making the enemies deal a lot of damage and be very tough.
Still I consider both of those well done in their context because even though just making enemies tougher forces you to utilize the ammo crafting and chem addiction systems that exist in the game, giving it a new twist.
In some other games, like Skyrim the difficulty slider really IS bullshit because it doesn't really make you change your playstyle, it simply makes everything several times stronger than it's originally designed values.
Just my 2 cents.
>>320552569
>inb4 "this is what soulsfags actually believe"
Original definition of artificial difficulty; increasing enemy health or decreasing your damage so that things were not harder, they just took longer.
Post Dark Souls definition of artificial difficulty; everything that kills you and that you think is bullshit
That pretty much sums it up.
>>320551986
>When it's not probable that a person who is playing the game blind could get through without dying
Even if a first time player can overcome every skill-based challenge with 98% success rate, it's more likely than not that they will die before the game is over.
How many games did you never, ever die in your first time? More than 50%? Why does that make them likely candidates for artificial difficulty?
Artificial difficulty refers, i think, generally to a type of difficult that is not "fair" in the eyes of the player. It means 1. The player is getting overly draconian punishments for small mistakes, or 2. The player feels its unreasonable to be expected to perform a certain task without failure, regardless of the scale of the punishment
Artificial difficulty was originally used to describe just inflating numbers instead of making the game actually mechanically harder
for example a boss in NG+ now has double its health
this doesnt make the game inherently harder, it just makes the fight longer and more tedious
its a result of video game developers and players confusing the concepts of time consuming versus actually hard
>>320552693
>artificial difficulty
>doesn't change the difficulty
uh ok, then the term is useless
>>320551813
bethesda difficulty slider
>>320552648
I mean there really is no logical argument that dark souls is artificially difficult. It's a very unforgiving game but it is fair through and through. If you die it's your own damn fault
When you are forced to save-scum due to mind-numbing RNG or vaguely presented choices which lead to unexpected game over.
See Age of Decadence for reference.
>>320552518
>play Skyrim
>levled up my swords or whatever fighting skill
>leveld up blacksmithing
>got pretty bored so I wanted to try out some spells so I maxed out illusion and ... something else just for fun
>game detects my level has doubled and triples the HP of every bandit in the world
I wouldn't mind this shit if half the skill schools weren't ABSOLUTE DOGSHIT
>>320546391
It's when developers reach into the game and specifically, literally make the game harder, either by placing a whole bunch of enemies close to each other in Dark Souls II, something which players who use short-ranged weapons really can't deal with, or by purposefully cranking up the enemy stats to a ridiculous degree. 'Natural difficulty' is when things are altered so that they are usually harder, but not necessarily, and the player can most importantly adapt to this; making the enemy A.I smarter so that the player has to play smarter, making resources more scarce so that the player needs to be more conservative, reducing the effectiveness of cheesy tactics and strategies, etc.
>>320552720
I'm speaking of specific segments of a game.
For example the pod racing in battletoads.
If everyone dies at a certain point in the game on their first playthrough, you can bet it's artificially difficulty as it's highly unlikely the devs knew this spot wasn't impossibly hard to beat blind.
>>320552774
> this doesnt make the game inherently harder, it just makes the fight longer and more tedious
Increasing enemy health doesn't *always* make it tedious though. If the game can be reduced to a simple pattern, then a fight that lasts twice as long can remain tense and interesting.
>>320552785
Its always been a totally useless term. All games are different and different types of difficulty work differently with different games.
Its all utter bullshit and always has been, under the old or new definition.
Enemies with higher HP are not difficult, they are annoying and time consuming.
Bosses that requires you to grind a certain level is not being difficult, it's just annoying and time consuming fodder.
The same goes for changing a game's difficulty to Hard or "Impossible". Changing health values is not difficulty. What difficulty is, is behavior and reaction based on your actions. It has to do, mainly with AI or environmental. A well made difficult game cannot have difficulty options.
>>320552849
Dark Souls is neither difficult nor artificially difficult. It's a fun game that you sometimes die in and I literally don't understand how did it spawn so many epic edgy memes about the hardest game ever.
>>320552785
No, you moron. That's why the term exists/makes sense in the first place.
The difficulty is "artificial" because it's fake. It's not actually more difficult. Things that are purported as more difficult but in actuality more time consuming/tedious/etc without providing any legitimate extra challenge are artificially difficult.
>>320552858
fucking skyrims level scaling was so horrible
whats the point of progressing my character if i cant run up on a bandit camp end game and blow out bandit fags effortlessly
im supposed to feel powerful after putting 100 hours into a game, not struggling to fight a fucking bear
artificial difficulty is forcing mechanics in a game not made to support them
like platforming in a game with SHIT physics and controls
>>320552986
>Dark Souls is neither difficult
Dark Souls is difficult.
You may not personally find it difficult, but it is a difficult game for the majority of people.
"Artificial" difficulty is a stupid fucking term. Is something difficult or not? That's all that matters. The question is whether or not the difficulty is appealing or compelling.
Witcher 3 level gating is artificial difficulty.
Enemies gain a 90% damage reduction shield if they're X levels higher than you. Fuck that game.
>>320552986
It's because people are too retarded to be observant of their environment and take combat slowly to learn enemy attack patterns. People zerg rush into combat and get butt fucked and then cry about how hard it is
>>320553003
literally this, but to be fair dark souls does this too
all NG+ is is just enemies with more health and do more damage
It's a type of difficulty where the factor of player's influence over certain action is reduced to minimum. Basically, trial and error taken to extreme.
>>320552986
cause it IS harder than the average modern game, hell it's probably harder than most older games that have solid controls.
When do we decide to pattern recognition, meter management, and use of reflexes doesn't contribute to whether or not a game can be difficult?
>>320550501
That's literally what artificial difficulty is though, it's number changes, skyrim is the perfect example of this, regardless of how people use the term, it's just a quantity change that makes the game appear 'harder'
>>320553086
>>320553262
I guess it is pretty challenging, but that's what a video game is supposed to be, right? I guess actually losing from time to time and the game telling you you should be doing better is a novelty nowadays.
I guess if the game explained more mechanics to you it wouldn't be considered so hard. I remember being legitimately surprised I could even block the Taurus Demons attacks, it didn't even occur to me to try because his weapon is literally larger than my character.
>>320546391
Buffs to max life. I can tolerate damage buffs, unless its unavoidable damage. Anything that forces grinding to win is artificial difficulty.
>>320552967
>A well made difficult game cannot have difficulty options
Super Meat Boy.
>>320552858
>playing a spellcaster without one of the numerous mods that improves spellcasting in general
>playing without mods to nullify or stunt level scaling
You brought it upon yourself.
Illusion is the most dogshit school in the game. Totally binary. Either the spells work, in which case you cast 'Fury' a couple of times and just let the enemies kill each other, or they don't, in which case the school is totally worthless. The entire school has, literally, like 5 actual spell effects. Frenzy, Calm, Fear, Invisibility, and... Muffle? Did I forget any?
Destruction is terrible without mods as well. Spells have ZERO scaling in vanilla, making them useless later in the game or on higher difficulties.
Conjuration is terrible because most 'bosses' have a skill that kills your summons instantly, meaning you can't use them on the very enemies you need them for most.
Alteration is okay. Serves it's purpose, but you don't start a new game and go 'I'm gonna specialize in Alteration!'. That's like trying to kill Alduin with 100 Smithing and Speechcraft and zero combat skills.
Restoration is probably the only school actually worth anything. In vanilla, anyway. That once a day 'oh shit I nearly died' button is nice if you're on a high difficulty.
>>320546391
When it involves a situation a player can't control or overcome with skill. Making an single enemy have more health or defense than others of the same kind or making cars in a racing game rubberband like hell for no reason is a good example of this because it doesn't allow the player to get any better. All it does is just force them to hit it more until it dies.
>>320554110
*All it does is just force them to hit it more until it dies or constantly have other cars right behind them.
>>320554110
And this is why JRPGs, alongisde Turn base combat, is horseshit. You cannot defeat the boss because you haven't farmed to a level necessary to beat him. So you go back and farm, which takes insane amounts of time, while choosing attacks from a fucking menu. Stale, boring, lifeless. It's why real time action will always be superior, taking spacing into account, 3D positioning, reaction time skill, calculating animations, boss movements and so much more.
>>320554571
How many turn based JRPGs released after 1991 actually required farming levels to defeat bosses?
I wager 90% or more of these games had the player at the right level if they fought the random battles along the way.
>>320546391
It never becomes "artificial difficulty".
Artificial difficulty is just shit that is not supposed to be hard, but it is because of shitty design, RNG bullshit, bugs and so on. Stop inventing bullshit.
Can you guys just make a list of games that have designed difficulty instead of artificial? I wanna avoid artificial difficulty games.
>>320555510
>he's never played a game that was intentionally shitty to make the game harder for you
Resident Evil, how have you never played it?
>>320550038
THAT FUCKING ROOM.
>>320551813
Bloodborne the Bloody Crow of Cainhurst
>Reads your inputs and insta-parries
>Has infinite bullets so he can shoot for days
>Also has infinite bullets so he can use the bone numerous times
>Dodges out of hitstun for unknown reasons
>>320554571
>having to farm to beat bosses
literally get good, this guy can beat the first Filter boss in the game at level 8 on hard when you should be level 18 on normal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8p2KYwLx7GM
>>320546391
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FakeDifficulty
>>320554571
JRPGs require you to think ahead a lot, you have to put points into certain skills and abilities and combined them with other characters, if you can't do this then you have to grind as there is nothing you can do if you go full retard on character building
>>320558020
>JRPGs require you to think ahead a lot
>>320558020
>JRPGs require you to buy a strategy guide to know what bosses are coming up or play a dumb ass guessing game where you try figuring out which stats and abilities the devs decided you need.
fixed that for you my friend :^)
>>320559012
sorry, i forgot games like Persona 4 and Final Fantasy 10 exist, let me rephrase that to GOOD jrpgs
>>320550165
Tweaking numbers is a good way of changing difficulty if it requires the player to approach challenges in new ways.
The Mega Man Zero series is a good example. On Normal difficulties you have enough health and can deal enough damage to tank a few hits, or on some bosses depending on your health tank through the whole entire fight. Increasing the damage you take, limiting your health pool, and lowering the damage you deal mean you have to approach the game very differently - avoiding every hit and truly learning boss patterns becomes crucial, and suddenly that stupid axe weapon you could Zero Knuckle from axeloids but never used becomes your most powerful attack.
>>320554571
dude. the last time i farmed to beat a boss was when i was a little kid. Git gud.
>>320546391
Generally I define artificial difficulty as anything that requires more than one attemtp. If a skilled player could beat something on their first playthrough, that's fair. If it requires failure, or trial and error that's artificial difficulty.
Also, in RPGs requiring grinding to progress is artificial difficulty. Because that does nothing but waste the player's time.
I usually think of difficulty owing itself entirely to bullshit. For example, Ornstein and Smough. In themselves, they're not that hard of a boss battle, and they're fun. However:
>Smough hitting you through pillar bases
>Ornstien's spear also phasing through pillar bases to hit you
>Ornstien's lightning flying through pillar bases sometimes, and being stopped by them other times
>Ornstien stabbing you through Smough's hammer after you roll it
>Ornstein hitting you through Smough's fucking body
>Sentinels hitting you through the fog wall
Actually I think that's just shit programming and design. Let me revise what I think of as artificial difficulty.
A good encounter is designed to be a certain way. An enemy is given specific movesets, movement speed, health, ect. Enemies are designed with a certain way of fighting them in mind. Artificial difficulty is when devs take shortcuts to make something "hard", instead of putting to the work in to make it good. When a dev designs something specifically to be frustrating in order to make the game hard.
>>320546391
When they throw complete and utter garbage at you out of nowhere that you have no way of knowing about unless you had already died to it previously.
IWTBTG comes to mind.
>>320550468
No one likes Doom now though, and it was artificial. It's just that back then games had much lower standards. Or do you think using up down left right to move your sights is still how FPS should be played?
Let's look at Skyrim as an example.
The "Normal" difficulty in that game is known as "Adept", the damage that the player receives in that difficulty is the default damage, same for the damage they deal.
When you decrease the difficulty to say, "Novice", the player now deals more damage, while also taking LESS damage.
Now, when you increase the difficulty, the amount of damage the player deals is reduced, but the amount of damage he takes is increased, effectively forcing him to rely more on tedious or exploting strategies to win a fight rather than using his skill.
Pretty much when you try to make something difficult via lazy design (Like described above) instead of forcing the player to use his own skill and creativity.
>>320550469
The worst part is that if you get to Polis and you don't have any gas-masks (after a very length outside portion), it is not possible to buy more gas masks, because that is the last store in the whole game.
Following Polis, you immediately spend 40 minutes outside and are forced to rely on scavenging.
I had 1 minute of filter at that point on my second playthrough and constantly died from suffocation.
>>320551813
Capra demon
Dante bossfight in DMC4
>>320562908
>No one likes Doom now though
Speak for yourself, you underage faggot.
Were you even alive when Doom came out?
When it becomes trial and error
Where is that goddamn list.
>>320553832
Super Meat Boy has some problems with the Dark Levels.
For example, one of the really early ones, Creamsoda (I think), you have to perfectly find the spot where you can jump between 2 saw blades, there's no way to know exactly where it is and its pretty difficult even for advanced players.
To have that and then have an achievement for going through all 20 dark levels without dying, that's artificial difficulty.
When you need pixel-perfect maneuvers, shit's artificial difficulty. A normal gamer (as well as casual gamer) can't do that shit, only tryhards.
Bullet Hell not included, they're designed specifically to be artificial difficulty.
So here's a tricky one and I'm really wondering if this is artificial difficulty.
Monster Madness: Battle for Suburbia
The hardest difficulty does several things:
>Change health and damage values of enemies
>Increase the number of enemies
>Change the type of enemies (some random zombies become explosive zombies)
>Create different types of enemies
>Change the types of collectibles (so that you can get better weapons)
>Change the map (every stunt jump becomes nearly impossible and the wikipedia page states that it actually is impossible to beat the game on Madness difficulty for that reason)
>>320546391
Typically, it's altering values without changing the gameplay.
The concept of difficulty is usually the application of skill to scenarios set upon in the game using the tools available. So presenting scenarios of increasing difficulty at a rate which challenges these skills isn't artificial, like what you see in most platformers.
"Hard modes" where Enemies do more damage, have more health, higher defence or having more enemies to fight but you're capped to the same you're usually fighting (Have to fight 30 instead of 15 enemies but you only get 5 max at a time) and so on is artificial. Whilst it does change the way you play to be more conservative and careful, this isn't really a good indicator of difficulty because its often typically boring to the player and in extreme cases, requires exploitation of the games AI to the most extreme level. And when you have to exploit how shoddy a game plays to beat it normally, that's never a good thing.
What are games with difficulty done right besides the Souls series? Someone already mentioned Persona 4 and FFX. What else.
bump you fucks.
>>320564268
This is the exact opposite. Natural difficulty = tight frame data. Atrifical difficulty = increasing HP or lowering damage
>dark souls
>hard
>>320566947
fuck that game
>>320546675
this
/thread
>>320565226
I think Transistor and Bastion handled difficulty extremely well. Customizable to your pros and cons with proper progression through the story depending on not just leveling up and powering through shit.
>>320548193
you seem to confuse /tv/ with /v/ Anon.
>Arrows bend mid flight to hit you like heat seeking missles
>enemies have magnetic attacks that track you in stupid ways, making them jerk unnaturally to be able to hit you
>Hit boxes
>When the game controlling or play poorly is what makes it hard(like octodad, though this is a bad example since it's intentionally hard to control)
>>320567087
that post doesnt mention that the ghost moves through walls and moves in real time rather than turn based like the rest of the game, the only time he ever pauses is when you enter combat
When the CPU starts getting unfair advantage rather than just increased intelligence and response time.
Take Smash Bros for example. CPUs Lv. 1 - 8 increase in difficulty with each level. This is actual difficulty. Each one gets smarter, more responsive and better at recognizing your patterns.
At Lv. 9 though, things change. Instead of getting smarter, the CPU gains the ability to read your button inputs, so it's no longer trying to predict you based on your movements. Instead, a response is triggered the moment you press a button. This is literally cheating and is a form of artificial difficulty.
>>320567193
Hmm, will check them out.
>>320567087
RNG: The Game.
>>320568028
It also doesnt mention that there's 5 different endings, all of which but the worst require one of the most bullshit puzzles I know of, and the best of which requires things I've yet to see expected of the player in a video game since, not to mention that saving the game respawns all the enemies on your floor, as does merely leaving the floor, or the input cap that autokills you if you hit it, or the morality system, etc. etc.
>tfw never actually played the game, just read about it a bunch
I think I'm just too retarded to use a commodore 64 emulator with all the virtual disk switching and shit, I just can't seem to make it work. Despite the bullshit though, I want to play it.
>>320568290
I think Bastion's 3 dollars on PSN if you're looking to start there. It was after PSX at least, sorry if that's not true.
>>320550147
They aren't. They’re the perfect example of artificial difficulty though obscurity of mechanics.
>>320546391
that behemoth that throws heat tracking stones in fallout 4, easy to kill though, but goddammit was it some kind of effort to make the game somewhat more difficult?
Killing floor does difficulty the best
Enemies don't earn more health throughout the waves, they always take the same amount of damage to die. The difficulty comes from them doing more complex maneuvers and coming in different combinations
>>320568871
What mechanics are obscured in Dark Souls? Everything is nearly handed to you from the start. Weapon balance is good, combos stays the same, etc.
>>320568574
you can play it with dosbox it's abandonware too
>http://www.myabandonware.com/game/wizardry-the-return-of-werdna-the-fourth-scenario-k8
another thing when you beat the game you can send your score in to sirtech for them to verify you didn't cheat or use a guide
>>320568980
KF1 or KF2?
When the difference between one difficulty and the next is either increase in enemy damage or damage you take, and not enemy AI.
>>320569115
2
I haven't played 1
Seriously though, 2 could be such a good game if the devs were competent enough to finish the game
>>320561550
Who ever complains about IWTBTG being 'artificially difficult'? That's what makes the game fun.
Artificial Difficulty, as a phrase, wasn't used often until PC manbabbies got ahold of Dark Souls.
That's literally the rise of the term -- that they couldn't handle the nerfed version of a game that console players had suffered through months prior.
>>320569036
>playing in browser
just killed the first faggot fighter
>>320569223
even if people don't complain about it, that's what artificial difficulty is.
>>320569294
NU UH I OWN A PEECEE SO IM DA BEST
>>320569031
Roll i-frames, which change depending on equip load (and Agility in DaS2).
Difficulty is where completing something is challenging, but never impossible or luck based. Artificial difficulty is where something is designed to be challenging to complete primarily due to unnecessary backtracking, grinding, timegated mechanics, or other factors that add additional steps or remove control from the player.
>>320569031
>What mechanics are obscured in Dark Souls?
How encumbrance works. How to jump. Iframes. How your stamina is affected by shielding. How two handing effects weapon requirements. What specific effects unhollowing has on the gameplay (and what it doesn't do, despite the game heavily implying to the contrary).
>>320569294
Dark Souls is a pretty good example of legit difficulty tho.
>>320569613
It would make way more sense if heavy armour gave you more iframes, really.
>>320569613
That's just DS2. Not DS, DarkS or Blood. You generalized it to include all those games, which frankly isn't fair.
>>320551813
Diablo 3
Sometimes you can run into something that just instakills you. Normally that wouldn't be too bad, but the game has a fucking Hardcore mode
>>320569768
Fatroll in DaS has 9 i-frames, which is equal to 88 agility in DaS2. Midroll in DaS has 11 i-frames, which is equal to 96 agility in DaS2. Fastroll in DaS has 13 i-frames, which is equal to 105 agility in DaS2. Ninjaflip ring in DaS has 15 i-frames, which is equal to 114 agility in DaS2. The fact that you have to do proper fucking video tests to even understand the exact difference between those roll i-frames IS mechanism obscurity.
>>320569943
Diablo at it's core is a heavily flawed game. Both at it's core and narrative. The only thing D1 and D2 had was atmosphere. Something 3 didn't managed to even come close to.
>>320569036
thanks anon, I appreciate it
>wah RPGS are artificially difficult because they don't let me dodge everything!
People like this misunderstand the origin of RPGs, mechanically that is, and what a good RPG essentially is. An RPG is not Devil May Cry, an RPG is not Godhand, an RPG is generally not action oriented(bar action RPGs). They aren't trying to be, because they test different skill sets/ask the player to do different things.
Almost any RPG can trace it's roots back to tabletop, in tabletop RPGs the GAME portion was about producing a character within the confines of the the system to interact with the world using another set of systems.
Typically, this entailed going into a dank as fuck dungeon, beating the shit out of whatever is inside, taking their shit and growing in power.
Mechanically this was about accounting for a relatively random system using not random parts. The implicit skill being tested was ones ability to assess the usefulness of certain abilities while taking into account the inherent randomness of the game. RPG video games codify these rules and put them into a convenient program for us to engage with. They were never about twitch skill, I don't know where this "tech limitations" thing comes from.
>>320570712
>assess the usefulness of certain abilities
That's a random ass skill if I ever saw one. You're basically second guessing what the designers were thinking and hoping it all works out.
Where did the Dark Souls is hard meme start? It was really easy especially if you used any type of spells. I think i beat NG+ in less than 20 hours first try.
>>320570712
You're right about this, but that's why most RPGs nowadays are sold as Action RPGs, and not as true D&D style RPGs. With any turn-based RPG, I'd agree that there's no point in arguing about artificial difficulty, but for most ARPGs, like Dark Souls, which can be completed at Soul Level 1 if you're good enough, it would make no sense to die because you lost a 1/3 dice roll.
Does that make sense?
>>320571419
>NG+
NG+ is piss easy as you already have your gear and know what you're going to encounter.
>>320570712
That was never what RPGs were meant to be about. RPGs are about the choices and consequences that changes the world around you and the story. PnP RPG/Tabletop Games were always about the adventures of what you've found within the world lore and story. Why do you think one of the things that are praised about Tabletop RPGs is imagination? Precisely, it was never meant to be about Calculus. Go take a Math class if that's all you want to do fag.
>>320571984
The stormwind is strong in this one.
First off, RPGs as we understand them began as wargames. All that neat fluff about imagination and adventure came afterwords.
Numbers, choices(and let me say that deciding on a character class, weapons, spells abilities, where to go, what to do, how to fight are also choices. Choice isn't just "be dick dastardly or my nice guy"), and consequences are all aspects of RPGs.
For the most part the games we call "RPGs" borrow HEAVILY from the mechanical portion of this, and that's fine. If anything they exist to lighten the load of worrying about stuff like that to better let people imagine better.
Plenty of people enjoy meat grinder type, how power, no nonsense dungeon crawling in PnP. They aren't playing the game any more or less correctly than an aspiring thespian.
The defining feature of "artificial" difficulty is that a number is changed in the data and that is the only difference.
So, increasing the damage of enemies to a meaningful degree is artificial difficulty. That particular form seems like it would be the biggest problem in a game that is supposed to feature visceral action packed combat because now that the enemies can one-shot you, you're forced to play the game in a very boring way. It can also just make games tedious, such as increasing the enemy HP to a meaningful degree but still having the most efficient methods to defeat them remain the same so that all that really changes is it takes longer to defeat them.
In order to present difficulty that does not present the artificial experience, something need to alter your fundamental experience instead of just mixing up numbers. Take Monster Hunter, a game played by autistic people who love grind. When you transition from the high ranked quests to the G ranked quests, Monster stats go up. That would be artificial difficulty. But the same monsters now unleash new moves entirely, so even once you get your G rank greatsword of crush everything in order for your damage to catch up to their defenses, they're still a lot harder to fight. That is a good use of difficulty, and wasn't just a number changing somewhere.
Similarly, some Monsters in G rank can no longer be fought where they are likely to be the only boss in the area. This might seem like a mere increase in numbers but it's not the stats changing it's the battlefield, it's changing the way you have to fight, either keeping an eye on one monster while trying to wear down the other, using gimmicky tactics to keep the monsters separated like smoke bombs, dung bombs, traps, and fences, or even splitting up your party so that the monsters have to run between two groups before being able to assist each other. That's a lot more important than just increasing a stat or something.
>>320571932
>NG+ is piss easy
Exactly. When does it start becoming hard?
>>320546391
imagine you're playing a platformer. You've mastered everything about it and your reflexes are topnotch. Then there comes this bullshit stage where the controls get mirrored. up is down, down is up, left is right, etc. That's artificial difficulty
Artificial difficulty is literally just a situation where the player can't tell what to do without pure trial and error or luck. A difficulty can be overly punishing or add tons of life/dmg to enemies. Those are just examples of lazy difficulty not artificial difficulty because both of those just demand more consistency from the player for less of a real reward.
Its a shit term and its very often used in correctly by retards who want to pin their being shit on the game itself. Like casuals who can't do fighting game motions.
>>320546391
Artificial difficulty is when the game is hard in a way that isn't fun and generally more tedious than challenging.
>>320573012
No that sounds fantastic as long as there is some recognizable indication that it's happening.
>>320574008
>those just demand more consistency from the player for less of a real reward.
No, they usually have nothing to do with consistency unless it's some sort of bullshit hack'n'slash game with combos where you can just hitstun all the enemies repeatedly until you win. Buffing enemies to insane levels usually just does nothing but force everybody to adopt ridiculous tactics that are not fun such as dropping a ton of mines in one spot and kiting all enemies into them or getting a good shot off and running away or min-maxing your build to such a degree that you can actually kill something before it kills you and then you just have to dodge everything forever, etc. Usually this results in the game being less fun due to either limited options or dramatically slowed down deliberate gameplay. But it's still definitely changing the way you have to play rather than being consistent.
>>320546391
It's like in Civ 5 where AI civs literally get free technologies at higher difficulty levels
that's artificial difficulty
>>320546391
When you aren't given the proper amount of tools and information to deal with the challenges presented to you.
pretty simple really.
A good example of artificial difficulty is bioshock II on hard, its impossible to kill big daddys unless you shoot all of the ammo from all of your guns into it and it just feels like a chore, and the repercussion of dying is just respawning with a little less health.
