How vital is difficulty/challenging gameplay to you?

Thirith on 18/1/2010 at 12:10

Since "They've dumbed it down!" is one of the things people tend to be most angry about with modern games, I wanted to ask the TTLG crowd: how big a part does a game's difficulty in your enjoyment of that game? How important is it to you that a game challenges you?

In the last few years I've come to realise that while I appreciate games that are challenging every now and then, on the whole a game's difficulty isn't high up on my list of what I enjoy about games - at least not in itself. STALKER was one of my favourite games in the last couple of years, and it was definitely a challenging title, but its difficulty wasn't so much something I appreciated in and of itself: the difficulty added to the atmosphere, it made it easier for me to suspend my disbelief. Take RPGs such as Baldur's Gate or Fallout, and I don't get much enjoyment out of difficult, tactically deep combat. It's simply not something that's all that much fun for me.

I guess if a game ramps up its difficulty cleverly, I appreciate challenging gameplay. If I get some sort of gratification without playing like a grandmaster but at the same time I see that there's a lot of room for improval on my part, that I can go and hone my skills and the game rewards it, that works for me. But by and large, if a game has a steep learning curve, it'd better have a compelling plot, characters or game world, otherwise I get frustrated. (I recognise that lack of challenge can make a game less believable - but again, it's not the (lack of) difficulty as such that is the issue so much as its impact on the cohesion of the game experience, to put it somewhat pretentiously.)

Two of the games I enjoyed a lot recently were Colin McRae DIRT (the first game) and Mirror's Edge. It was relatively easy in both of them to succeed (minus some of the enemy-packed levels in ME), but I loved going back to them and improving my times or ramping up the difficulty.

Having said all of this, I still want a game to give me the impression that it's difficult without necessarily being so. Breezing through a game in quasi-God mode isn't fun. Thief was quite good in that respect - I tend to succeed more often than I fail, but at the same time I feel that I just about managed to sneak behind this one guard, grab the jewel and sneak out again.

So, after this long and boring preamble, how important is it for you that a game is challenging?

SubJeff on 18/1/2010 at 12:16

Very important.

And for this reason gameplay is important. I want to be able to learn how to do, not have it handed to me on a plate. This is why MP is so important these days. I can play an RTS or a beat 'em up against the computer but ultimately it will never be as devious or cunning as a human can be.

If the gameplay mechanic allows for challenging SP play, like Dead Space on Hard, it makes me try harder and I'm happier for my victories. This is also why I play every game on the hardest level from the start - it often makes up for gameplay deficiencies.

Iroquois on 18/1/2010 at 12:27

It's... uh... complicated. I need to be able to beat a game in no more than two or three tries these days, since I don't have the time or the patience (for several reasons) to sit back and take what I did back in the 8/16-bit era.

But really, difficulty bothers me less than cheap tricks either in gameplay or overall design. It bothers me that I need to reach a castle to save in New Super Mario Bros, since occasionally I'll get pissed off over a crevice that fat idiot slipped into and I'll just shut the damn thing off, having to go through every damn stage all over again next time I boot it up.

That's just an example, of course. Scarce checkpoints and save screens, schizophrenic difficulty curve (or one that takes height in the last level) and shit like that is the kind of artificial difficulty that just pisses me off and turns me away from a title. I do still appreciate the impossible odds of beating seven opponents in Age of Empires 2 in a deathmatch game, hardest difficulty. I know what I'm getting myself into there.

Thirith on 18/1/2010 at 12:38

Quote Posted by Iroquois

Scarce checkpoints and save screens, schizophrenic difficulty curve (or one that takes height in the last level) and shit like that is the kind of artificial difficulty that just pisses me off and turns me away from a title.

That reminds me of Bionic Commando Rearmed, which I enjoyed a lot - but I can't seem to get through that final level. The earlier levels were challenging, but never to the point of being frustrating as hell... but I seem to be physically incapable of navigating that last level.

gunsmoke on 18/1/2010 at 12:46

Entirely dependent on both my mood, and how compelling the game is (and appealing to me, but that should go without saying).

I play a lot of games on easy, but a lot more on Hard. Games that I have never played before, or are introducing more complicated gameplay, I tend to play on easy, at least initially.

Games like Half-Life 1 and 2, always Hard. I replayed Black on its hardest setting and struggled through it, loving every second, but another shooter may just frustrate me. I play FarCry on the max difficulty (Realistic), and have been known to impose artificial limitations on myself in it as well.

So, this post made me realize...it comes down to how GOOD the game is where I set the slider. If it is a game I just want to get through and move on (a la Bioshock currently, Call of Juarez, and a bunch of others) it is easy.

Survival Horror is very dependent on high difficulty for me, seems stupid to be able to get through it without a struggle.

DarkForge on 18/1/2010 at 12:59

In all honesty, difficulty isn't a really big issue for my needs. By all means, throw in a few challenges and make the game a bit more involved - I don't necessarily want a leisurely stroll through this particular park. But when I buy a game, the main reason I buy it is because it tells a story. And that's what I care about the most, a decent story that I can get into. It links in with the whole roleplaying aspect where you become the character you're playing, and the plot helps to sell it.

Like I said, I welcome a game that's a little challenging. But it's the main reason why, if I found a game becoming so difficult for me that I kept getting killed every 5 seconds or just couldn't get past a certain point no matter how many attempts, I wouldn't think twice about using God Mode. After all, what I'm after most is the story, and if God Mode is the only way to reach the end of that story, then so be it. Would I appreciate the story as much if I kept getting stuck somewhere and growing ever increasingly frustrated while doing it? I'm not so sure I would.

If there was a movie you'd been eagerly looking forward to seeing, and was then watching it for the first time on a DVD or something, how would you feel if it kept skipping and freezing in your machine? You're dying to know what happens next but the damn thing is just incapable of getting there under its own power! It's the same deal with me and games: I regard them more like "interactive movies", where the plot is the main focus. If a DVD skips, I take it out and see if I can give it a little clean. If I get desperately stuck on a game, I again intervene with a little divine influence.

Thinking about it now, that's probably a main factor why I prefer certain game genres (like FPS) over others (like racing) - driving a car around a track might be fun but there's just not much in the way of storytelling for me to get interested.

DDL on 18/1/2010 at 13:51

One of the problems is that the stuff that is so hard it can cause mindfucking levels of frustration..is also the stuff that is most rewarding when it works. The buzz comes from just completing a level, or just beating that boss with 2 health left, or whatever: not from breezing through it, or from getting crushed utterly, nine times in a row. It's a balancing act, a knife-edge for developers to try and walk you down, without helping you (or at least, without making it obvious that they are helping you: getting repeatedly killed by two huge dudes that are mysteriously absent when you try it for the twentieth time, etc).

I think I don't mind horrendous difficulty, as long as the actual punishment for failure is minor...if that makes any sense. Mirror's edge was good for this: christ knows I killed faith horribly more times than I can count, but it just brought you back, stuck you back on the roof not too far from where you died, and off you went again.

I know there are people that restrict themselves to a single life in games, or hell, even games that force this on you, but..no: not for me.

As an aside, any game that involves power creep (be it of your character, or simply player skill) that is matched by increasing enemy difficulty (so..almost all of them, really) ideally should always include a few crappy enemies even at the later stages, just so you can visibly appreciate how much better you are now.

242 on 18/1/2010 at 14:51

For me it's VERY important. If you have a notion how God of War 1/2, Siren1/2, Resident Evil 4 are on highest difficulty, then you know what difficulty I like. Absolute majority of modern AAA games are like 2-5 times easier on the most difficult setting than I would like.

DarkForge on 18/1/2010 at 15:41

Quote Posted by DDL

You do make a fine point there. I often experience the same kind of feeling. I enjoy playing the odd beat-em-up even though I suck at them - many is the time on Soul Calibur 2 or 3 when on what seems like the 50th attempt I finally just scrape through a match with only a microscopic amount of health left, thanks to what can usually only be described as a "lucky hit". Granted it does bring a certain gratifying relief to all the frustration built up when I had my ass handed to me those last 49 times. (While I'm on the subject, I SWEAR the CPU fighters in the Soul Calibur games cheat and cheat often! :mad: )

Oh and for the record: even if I do use God Mode in an FPS, I always like to pretend that I don't when playing. I'm not one of those guys who just stands there in the open letting 10 guys empty their guns into my invincible body while I gloat about my own immortality and perceived awesomeness. I still run, dodge, duck for cover... all the usual things one does to try and not get shot. Of course, I suppose my evasive skills must be pathetic if I'm in such a situation where I needed to activate God Mode in the first place, but in any case it still helps to sell the atmosphere.

As I said, it's all about the story. And in the story, Gordon Freeman's HEV suit is not an invincibility shield...

CCCToad on 18/1/2010 at 15:50

Its also about the cause of difficulty. In a game like Ninja Gaiden 2 (played a few of the early levels off a friend's disc before getting fed up), the difficulty doesn't really come from being good or bad at the game. It comes from cheap shots: enemies attacking off camera, heavily imbalanced weapons available to you(spamming swan-strike works better than any advanced combo), and a somewhat unresponsive controls. If you die, it feels like the game is being unfair and punishing you.

Demon's souls is the other way around. If you die, its not because the game did something that impaired your ability to fight back or to give enemies an unfair advantage. Its always because YOU screwed up. The distinction is key: Its your fault, nobody else's. In that case high difficulty is a good thing because it not only keeps the game achievable but puts the onus on you to do well. For example, at one early point in the game I got destroyed by a pack of dogs that tore through me effortlessly. I found that I was able to beat them easily by switching to a shield and wand , using the shield to bash them when the charged(which stunned them momentarily) and then blasting them with a fire spell.

i didn't die because of a bad camera and enemies attacking offscreen, which is a game design flaw I can't affect. I died because the first time I approached the situation I wasn't using tactics that could deal with the enemies I was about to encounter.