Difficulty is Weird
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- Опубликовано: 2 июн 2024
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Difficulty is one of the most important things about a game, and as there are so many different kinds of players out there, it is pretty much impossible to balance things perfectly. So, I wanted to take a little time exploring some of the major approaches by diving into everything from The Witcher 3 to Resident Evil 4 to Dark Souls in order to figure out what I like and dislike about each of them.
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0:00 How Difficulty Options Made Me Hate (and Then Love) The Witcher 3
3:59 Why I Don't Like To Switch Between Difficulties
6:41 The Blessing (and Curse) Of Customization
9:13 Recommended and Adaptive Difficulty
15:50 This Is The Part Where I Talk About Dark Souls
25:07 This Is The Part Where I Talk About Elden Ring
28:40 So, What's It All About Then? 
Игры
been a bit of time between videos, but I hope you are well.
No worries ❤
Wish I could be better. But your voice helps.
As always, take as much time as you need. Gonna watch whenever you upload. Happy Halloween!
Likewise hope things are well for yourself and family.
I’m doing good thanks for asking man
I hate when hard difficult just means that enemies deal more damage and have more health.
Good old Bullet sponge 1-shot enemies really make it challenging 😐
i think the issue that makes this approach seem cheap is when it is done to a game that is already lacking.
if the normal difficulty means you can kill an enemy before even seeing its full range of abilities/moves, then increasing its health means you get more gameplay, and more challenge.
but if at normal difficulty you already see everything that enemy has to offer, increasing its health doesnt lead to anything new or interesting happening. instead youre just stuck seeing the same stuff for longer.
the same goes for damage. if at normal difficulty enemies aren't always threatening enough to make you engage in the games mechanics fully (for example, knowing you can just ignore an attack because it wont do enough damage to matter for the encounter, or never concerning yourself with elemental resistance since the elemental damage of enemies attacks is negligible.), then an increase that makes you consider changing your build to survive specific, difficult attacks, or forces you to learn to avoid damage instead of ignoring the smaller enemies entirely will make you engage with the game more.
where this fails is when there isnt more of the game to engage in. in that case it just makes the game less forgiving. for some people, that isnt a problem, but most gamers arent trying to play the game like a "no hit challenge run" in dark souls. being allowed to make a few mistakes is good, because it gives the player a chance to respond and adapt to the challenge instead of just sending them to a loading screen repeatedly until they've memorized the correct sequence of button presses to pass the first enemy.
so yeah, tl;dr i totally agree but there definitely are reasons those values get changed sometimes
Difficulty modes have been reified to exactly that, unfortunately.
Unfortunately I’ve always had that mindset. I’ve never bothered with anything higher then normal because of the whole dmg sponge and double dmg.
In a lot of games it would be better to leave those numbers alone, and to just slow down certain attacks so that players have more time to react.
I appreciate so much when a game just says "this is the intended experience difficulty"
I wish more developers told us which difficulty was play tested and balanced. Sometimes Easy and Normal are just not fun due to lack of challenge, but sometimes Hard is just unfair with no difference to AI.
@@MrConredsXor just didn't have those settings to begin with
When that option is available I pick it 100% of the time on a first playthrough.
Except in Pathologic 2, that game's intended difficulty can go fuck itself
is there a game that ever had the easy difficulty be called the "intended experiance"? it makes me curious what kind of reputation it would have in the community.
Another thing about adaptive difficulty and games that get harder as you get better - it also takes away from the sweet feeling of "these guys used to be hard and now I can wreck them because I got better"
For one mechanic of one game? At what cost cost? Losing immersion and burning out?
Yes! I hate when enemies "evolve" with you, so they never get easier to take down. I've gotten better weapons and leveled up 40 times, why do I still have to spend time on you?!
@@jaye2997 Git gud noobie
Not really an issue, because there is a ceiling. If you cap out the difficulty cieling early, you can enjoy progressing against enemies that are as hard as they can be.
That was soo me - on the second play-through of Elden Ring, beating the Tree Sentinel knight outside the starting cave.
I was like - how did I ever think this guy was hard?! :D
I recall the first time I encountered adaptive difficulty. It really took the joy out of the game. I had played against a difficult spot several times and lost, and then one of the times, the game decided to downgrade the difficulty level and I could immediately tell the difference. The enemies weren't as aggressive, they didn't use some of their attacks and it felt like the game just let me win out of pity. It robbed me of the chance to actually win at the encounter.
Adaptive difficulty is the worst.I hate with passion.I don't want your pity,I play game to develop skill,to cross a hurdle and I am not alone look at the successes of hard and punishing games.
what game was it?
@@TheK0rs3 It was Resident Evil 4, if I recall correctly. There was a room where you have to fight through several enemies that are more powerful than average. Not quite a boss fight, but harder than usual. I lost a few times, figuring out how best to deal with them, and then suddenly one of the attempts the enemies barely put up any fight at all...
You'll be still losing that level to this date then
@@AugustCrossroads You do realize that you get better at a game as you play it, right? Failure is part of the path to learning.
I really liked how in MGSV enemies on the world map would adapt to your play style . If you focus on headshots, they’ll start wearing helmets, wearing night vision goggles if you only approach at night, etc. It forces you to be agile with your tactics and has a very believable in-universe explanation - the camps and bases communicate with each other about what’s happened to their fallen allies.
yeah, Far Cry 3 was like this
@@alfistibrasilianiI want to play that copy of Far Cry 3
@@alfistibrasiliani huh?
Reminds me of Mr. Freeze’s boss fight in Arkham City where the player must damage him with a different method ever time since Mr. Freeze, being a smart guy, will adjust his suit on the fly to cover every weakness you expose
I meant that Far Cry 3 enemies will also adapt to your gameplay and strategies
Adaptive difficulty is great in horror. A lot of people don't realize this but you don't want a horror game to be too hard. This might seem counterintuitive but it's true in most cases. The moment the game gets too hard and you start dying a lot is the moment the game stops being scary. If you see death is just an annoyance, you stop fearing it. It becomes familiar at that point.
Good horror is all about making you feel helpless, like death lurks around every corner. It's an illusion though. And a great way to break that illusion is to change the difficulty too much.
I hope I didn't spoil the magic for a lot you. I just find it fascinating.
Though outside of horror, I hate adaptive difficulty.
great point
horror is different for everyone though, in truth, no one should be scared at all by horror because you cannot die in real life when playing horror games, therefore all fear is gone immediately.
also i think horror has that affect only once and then it's like "whatever", jump scares aren't really horror either, cheap trick for the mechanism of the body, they can be done well though.
Yeah, When you repeatedly get destroyed by the same roadblock in a horror game it starts feeling frustrating instead of tense/scary.
Leads to becoming desensitfied much faster, so the best balance keeps things near the brink as much as possible where you feel like you COULD die often, but never actuall do so too frequently.
@@Psycho1343It's less about the fear of death and more about maintaining the tension. A good horror game will attempt to keep the tension going for as long as possible. You want the player to be constantly on edge, fearing that the game will suddenly force them in an uncomfortable situation that they may have to face again if they fail. But what if they _do_ fail? Well then they're sent to the game over screen. The scares are gone. There is no danger. They are given an opportunity to catch a breath in peace. The tension is lost and the player is forced to revisit the section knowing what's up ahead. And do it enough times and the feeling of dread will be replaced with the feeling of frustration, which is the number one way of undermining the horror. Things stop being scary when the illusion breaks and you're simply annoyed you can't get a move on.
Of course everyone finds different things scary but for those scared by the game, it's best to make sure the game is not too challenging for them for the aforementioned reasons.
I just go for whatever the normal mode is and then increase it to make it a thoughtful game if need be. I stopped caring about playing on the highest difficulty ages ago, found out I was having less fun for no purpose. One other massive benefit for 1 difficulty that is set, is you can really discuss games with friends under the same lens. It helps the Souls communities really relate, because everyone deals with the same challenge.
yes, if anyone ever thought what this junks of item or Crafting is used for, it's often very important in a very hard game mode.
but because people play it in normal mode, they're often can finish the game without using any of the mechanics,
often, blasting thing randomly will solve the problem.
i also agree, that game like Dark Soul and Monster Hunter is really good, because you've to use everything to be able to win,
use every items and trick to our advantage, and it was very rewarding.
some game like starfield even become an entirely completely new game when you change from normal to hard,
because instead of only relying to looting, you're forced to crafting & Modification, and creating your own buff,
seeing that your weapon finally effective against the enemy is one of the most rewarding moment.
i think game should scale the Enemy, let people learn the rope, the techniques on the go, not the difficulty.
Well even in souls this is flawed as some people say, actually LEARNED Malenia and beat her sword vs sword whereas many likely did mimic tear comet azure instant kill for both phases.
You'll have skilled player A who learned Malenia say she was a challenge but one that felt very good to beat.
Whereas unskilled player B will say he felt nothing upon killing her and that she was easy.
Even under one global difficulty the cheese available ruins that "we all faced the same challenge" thing.
Sekiro is the closest to that. As it has the least amount of cheese and doesn't even have stat grinding. And even there some think x is harder than y and vice versa. One example being fire cracker spamming into mortal blade to cheese some enemies.
You'd need a game like sekiro but without ANY cheese. So sekiro with just the grapple to get around and katana. That's it. Then players would have a identical challenge no matter what. Then you know most people who fought say, Isshin for the first time likely struggled a similar amount to you. And you wouldn't have these "I beat this boss by using this cheese haha so easy"
It’s just a shame for older games where you can’t change your difficulty whilst playing (Arkham asylum and Arkham city)
@thedoomslayer5863 by definition it doesn't really "ruin" facing the same challenge at all- it just means overcoming a challenge in a different way, regardless of how cheesy it can feel to other players
But not doesn't help everybody relate. My girlfriend playing No Mans Sky on the same difficulty as me doesn't relate, because it's too hard for her but easy for me. When she makes it easier, then we relate, because it feels equally difficult for both of us. You act like everybody subjectively feels the same difficulty.
I like The World Ends With You, where increasing difficulty gives you bonus rewards so you never feel too pressured to play it on hard but you get better rewards for completing fights on a harder difficulty.
reminds me of the additional conditions you could take on per-mission in assassin's creed, though some of them were extremely unfair and i stopped having fun because I felt like my gamer cred required me to fulfill them no matter how many times i failed.
Dying light does nightmare mode really well too, rewarding you with more recourses for playing on the hardest difficulty, my only argument is that it’s too easy. Cause you can grind stuffed turtle and grind the prison and have OP weapons by level 15 smh
Reminds me of Terraria - High difficulties unlock unique rewards
❤ TWEWY's awesome for that. I struggled A LOT with the hardest Leo Cantus in NEO 😂
the only thing this video lacks is a brief explanation on the difficulty / punishment thematic. Celeste for example can be very difficult, but its punishment is nearly nonexistant, there is no downtime, you just get reset to the beginning of the screen/levelpart. you can also have games that are mostly a cakewalk and still feel unfairly difficult because in case you die you need to replay the last hour.
This is an extremely good point. It’s something I noticed while playing Super Meat Boy, Hotline Miami, Celeste, etc. I normally do not enjoy difficult games, but these games became my favorite despite being harder than most of the other games I played. And then I realized that the punishment for failing is a more significant factor in how frustrating the game feels than the actual gameplay difficulty itself.
I noticed this in Slime Rancher.
Those games are super chill and breezy to play, but if you miss the drop and run off a cliff? You lose everything in your vac-pac. And that kinda sucks.. especially in 2, there are way too many blind drops to warrant that amount of punishment. You can turn off tar and the angry slimes, why not this?
This is why I think the difficulty of Souls games are exaggerated some. Death is likely, but the cost of death is negligible and even what is lost can usually be regained.
This comment made me realize that I like games with high punishment and games with almost no punishment. I hate having to redo the same sections of a game over and over, I hate grinding. If I have to redo something, it better be highly variable during playthroughs, so that on the next playthrough I don't feel like I have to repeat stuff, and if that's the case, reloading an earlier state of my current run seems less interesting than just starting a new run entirely.
So I play roguelikes, which are made for permadeath,
modern Paradox titles which are mostly about simulation and which will punish you with you losing options but hardly ever with ending the game
and stuff like Disco Elysium, which doesn't ever end the game until you've reached The End, but will give you lots of options inbetween on how to get there.
Something that rubs me the wrong way is a game taking away your abilities because of mistakes you’ve made. For example, if in the depths of dark souls you become cursed, your health is halved until you collect a rare item, a devastating punishment which makes the following areas much harder.
So i started playing the witcher 3 recently for the first time, and i decided to start on death march (because why not). "Certain enemies are impossible to beat without specific game mechanics" and the werewolf on screen hits hard
That was the moment where I was really like "okay, we really gotta pay attention to shit now"
Don't you get less xp on higher difficulties? It seems like it would be better if it were the opposite.
Ngl Death March made me love Witcher 3 all over again.
@@eneco3965 Huh, it does give less EXP. Didn't realize. Even so, there's enough EXP in the game to be well above EXP requirements, you just have to do more sidequests, so there's no problem for completionist types, and there was already EXP scaling, so this more tries to avoid excessive overleveling. Definitely not a "beat the game quickly" mode.
I find the Witcher 3 combat too clunky for DM to be enjoyable, especially at early levels. Great game though.
I like the way control and others do it. One definitive difficulty level and if people can't get through it treat it like accessibility features. At least for smaller studios it makes sense to focus on one experience.
My young sister definitely would not have played Celeste had she not been able to turn on unlimited dashes. i definitely agree
I prefer Mario odyssey and Kirby game approaches.
It allows an adult to assist a child. With a very young person they can be the helper. Since the adult doesn’t need help it doesn’t matter how good they are and they still get to play. The helper usually is invincible.
Then when a child is older / more skilled, you play the helper character. Then the game is over when they die but you can add in extra help.
Usually those games have options to swap out and in.
It does require multiplayer so might not be best for the scope of some developers
One of my favorite approaches to difficulty is The World Ends With You. It starts you off on Easy, and you unlock the other difficulties as you go. The game changes which enemies you fight and how difficult they are to beat by difficulty, but it also affects what drops these enemies have. You also unlock the ability to lower your maximum health in exchange for higher drop rates. This essentially incentivizes the player to experiment with difficulty, and feel free to change it up and down as it benefits your experience. Also gives replayability, since you can replay each section with difficulties unlocked later in the game.
I like how Hades deals with difficulty. Once you have enough skill and upgrades to get to and defeat the final boss reliably, you can enable options to make the game more difficult, spawning more enemies, giving them armor or buffs, limiting upgrades, adding time limits, new boss move sets, etc. The fact that each run can be quite short makes it particularly fun to experiment with those options and finding a challenge you enjoy
@@SimonWoodburyForget I agree that having that many options can be overwhelming. But while the player is encouraged to play with the settings, this is not absolutely necessary. Also, not all permutations need to be checked. I see it more as the game providing the player with options to increase difficulty to their taste. E.g., I never really liked the addition of a time limit, so I hardly ever played with that option enabled. But having more enemies spawn and giving them additional buffs can be quite fun. If it becomes too much, I can simply dial down some of the settings in my next run.
You can think of this approach more like gradient descent (i.e. taking small steps until you find a setting you like), rather than exhaustive grid search (i.e. trying out all options and then choose the one you like best)
@@SimonWoodburyForget Sort of, but you're encouraged to only turn on 1 at a time, win a run, add another/swap it out for one higher value, and so on until you clear 20 heat with each weapon. So considering it only unlocks once you clear a run, I think it's as much complexity as a winning player can handle & ramps up in complexity very, very slowly.
Also, the Fates encouraage you to try each one once, which further narrows choice (like, "oh I need to turn _this_ one on to get the in-game cheevo").
I don't know what you guy's opinions are, but I think that a difficulty system based on removing the player's abilities is a really bad way of doing it.
one of the greatest games of all time
@@SimonWoodburyForget That's why in Hades those options aren't there right away.
I found the notion that "player skill" is at some set level to be interesting. In my experience, my own "skill level" is wildly malleable, fluctuating up and down with my mood, my energy level, and the situation at hand. And by just playing a game and gradually accumulating knowledge, my skill level's "baseline" also goes up over time. Not slowly, either--that baseline goes up fast.
How is that interesting. You just described learning.
@@zeosummers3984 lol true, i believe that players have some responsibility to "learn" a game (in addition to developers designing a fair challenge)
@@Eksratu "fair" should just be replaced with "fun", fair isn't necessarily fun and unfair isn't necessarily unfun.
@@Ghorda9 Eh.. Yes I agree that unfair and unfun aren't necessarily the same thing even if they can be related. But I'm not sure I like the word fun either. Because when I am first banging my head against a really difficult boss fight dying over and over in that moment I'm not really having fun per se. Rather I'm actually getting a little frustrated but it's the release of all that build up frustration that creates for such a satisfying moment when I finally do overcome the challenge. That FUCK YESS moment.
Fair in that sense works a little better for me. Because when the difficulty is coming in part from the game being poorly designed that moment doesn't always happen.
@@zeosummers3984It’s interesting because it’s clear that devs don’t take this into account and force you to keep learning. Difficulty should scale dynamically depending on how easy you’ve progressed through the game.
I always feel like the conversation about difficulty in games is held mostly between good or professional gamers and often leaves those of us who are more casual or just bad at it behind.
I have notoriously bad reaction times and have pretty much failed to get out of the tutorial for every first person shooter I've ever attempted to do. My first open world game was Skyrim. I really enjoy exploring and doing the side quests. I have done seven playthroughs of Skyrim getting up into the '80s and '90s for my character level and even maxing out multiple skill trees. But I have never beaten the main game and gotten all the way to Auldwin.
Recently my little brother was staying with us during a covid lockdown and I got to play Elden Ring using his Steam account. It was the only dark souls game I have ever played. Before he moved out to his own apartment, I logged over 300 hours on the game. Made it all the way up to the 150s for levels and only just made it to Lindell. I hadn't exceedingly large amount of fun playing it, and only haven't gotten my own copy because I have neither computer nor game system capable of running it since I normally game on a switch. I did have to do a lot of grinding and over leveling to get the game to a point where I was comfortable, but I am aware of my inadequacies with gaming enough to have been knowledgeable to do that.
On games with hard difficulty settings that you have to select. I typically go for the one above easy and give the game a try on that. If I find the game to be far too easy within the first 6 to 8 hours of gameplay, I restart on a higher difficulty. I think a lot of the discussion about difficulty needs to acknowledge that you are responsible for your own actions. If you're unwilling when you're not having fun with the game to think about what that issue is and take strides towards fixing it, then you are kind of shooting yourself in your own foot.
I'm also one of the people who requires accessibility features. I have learning disability and I'm slowly going deaf. I need subtitles in my games to be able to play. I'm very glad that recently subtitles have become a common option in games. Their older games I used to play as a child that I can no longer revisit unless I have someone sitting there to clarify what they're saying to me.
I feel that in the last two decades the video game industry has made some fantastic strides towards accessibility. I'm irate at certain choices like Xbox planning to prevent use of third-party controllers and then charging an arm and a leg for their own accessibility controller. However, on a whole, I think that the video game industry has made fantastic forward movement on this.
They're absolutely some games that I am never going to be able to beat, even on the easiest difficulty. I have an issue with my hand. I coordination that makes all shooters pretty much impossible for me to make any decent strides in, but that just means that those games aren't for me. Something that people need to remember is just because you can purchase. It doesn't mean you're going to be able to play or beat it. In some ways I feel that people look at video games and feel that since they are consumer who paid for it, they should be able to get absolutely everything out of it and that's not always going to be possible.
I bought Hollow Knight on the switch at one point when it was on sale. I have put about 25 hours into that game and still never beaten the first boss. This is not a fault of the game company but a skill issue on my end 🤷🏻♀️ I think it's important that people be honest with themselves about what isn't isn't within their capabilities on certain video games. 😅 My inability to beat this boss does not remove the fun I have had trying. Or the fund my little siblings have had watching me fail and then turning around and beating it for me.
I just think it's important that people remember that will accessibility and ease of use is valuable. Not everything is for everyone and sometimes you just have to accept the fact that you're not good enough to do something.
This is why I would never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever recommend a FromSoftware game at full price to someone who's never played one. Or at least give someone a disclaimer.
Very well put
A really good game to me allows for me to play through it once on normal. Enjoy every bit of the story. Make some mistakes but still absolutely crush everything.
Then if the game is good enough and I found it engaging I’ll play it a second time. Hardest difficulty with a play style that I found intriguing after my first play through. Grind it out, do every side quest, use the wiki to find all the best gear and experience all the depth the developers added.
The games that can keep me engaged and happy for hundreds of hours through both those styles of play I think are 10/10’s. That’s why I think games like Skyrim and the Witcher have so many fans. There’s enough depth, story and challenge to keep you entertained on multiple play throughs over years.
I think one thing not covered here but that i find incredibly interesting is a way that lower difficulties can train bad habits into new players making it harder for them to asceses higher difficulties.
you can extend that issue into real life and make it something that's worth mentioning
What if they never care to access higher difficulties
That was mentioned multiple times
It's actually much worse than that. Think of God of War 2016. On the easiest difficulty, your axe attack accomplishes everything. Will you ever do combos or weapon skills or powers? Combat will get quite repetitive then. Players will just smash the light attack button, forget the heavy attack even exists, or vice versa. 2016's combat itself isn't even much to write home about, but at least it has more to it than just spamming the attack button. At least they didn't do a Bethesda approach.
Horizon Forbidden West is another example. I have come across those who didn't know that weapon skills or valor surges were a thing, or at least never use them, because at lower difficulties it was honestly more work to read the tooltips on the valor surges and weapon skills, than it was to just fire the bow. It was more work to learn the button to activate a weapon skill, than just to just spam melee or just fire your bow semi-blindly at the enemy, not even utilizing weak points.
"Well I'm not an avid gamer, and these are new modern titles, so they must have advanced in player accessibility and streamlining the average experience that even I can't possibly mess it up!" Wrong. Especially on the accessibility front. Horizon Forbidden West's hud on large widescreen TVs is so miniscule, and you can't even scale it. And the subtitles are microscopic even on the largest setting.
But at least there is an "easy loot" accessibility option that goes completely against the core gameplay loop and combat system and decentivizes playing the game in one of the few ways that actually makes it worth playing. It's probably no coincidence that those who didn't even focus on weak points or even know remotely how to also had easy loot turned on. And when the game introduced stronger enemies, the solution wasn't to learn how to counter them, it was to turn down enemy health so that basic arrows did enough damage to easily kill the giant boss enemy. Watching the gameplay was little more than watching someone play a choose your own adventure game/movie hybrid (but with no narrative choice.) A pretty bad movie IMO.
And I checked, the tutorial and teaching systems in that game are quite awful. It just brushes over everything.
Half Life 2, what if ammo in Ravenholm was so plentiful or guns did so much damage, that you never actually were incentivized to use the gravity gun? Thankfully the game didn't give you the accessibility option to just give you infinite ammo.
A lot of players will take the path of least resistance if it is offered.
Well.... That's kinda already been shown really. Just no one likes to look at it. There is a reason dark souls ... was given it's title... and it's not because it really is that hard, but because the normal was just that 'easy' before to the point that it was unthinkable that a game 'mostly' follow it's own rules & not just let you to the end if you couldn't do it.
I like it when games have a “this is our intended difficulty” marker on one of them, regardless of if it is the “normal” difficulty mode
Like heroic on Halo
Fromsoft does it right.
@@emperorborgpalpatine Yes. Their intended difficulty is "stop being shit at the game" as it should be in damn near every game.
@@emperorborgpalpatineI think it’s right for their game. I don’t think an immersive rpg like Skyrim is made better by being made difficult.
skyrim difficulty scaling is so horrid
getting insta killed with a custcene attack by a dragon on legendary even though your 70% hp ;c@@ungabungacaveman9021
In the TWEWY games, changing the difficulty is a core gameplay mechanic. enemies drop different items on different difficulties (generally rarer items on higher difficulties, but on the other hand Easy is probably best for making money). You can also lower your level to increase the drop rate.
There's also systems like Skulls in Halo or Heat in Hades, which treats the "detailed difficulty options" as a set of optional challenges (or semi-optional, i guess, in Hades' case).
I don't think either of these options works universally, but in general i think the idea of integrating difficulty settings into gameplay is a neat way to go about it.
Hades heat in particular works really well to give the game lasting playability for genre veterans (or people who want to just keep for ages). It incrementally increases the challenge pretty nicely from "difficult for a beginner" all the way to "impossible for an expert", and in a way that forces you to adapt how you play as well, rather than just having to perform the same moves more accurately.
One thing I've learned in all my years of always playing games on whatever the hardest difficulty is. The tutorial/first couple fights/encounters are always the hardest, either they have been overlooked in the balancing and design aspect, or I just havn't been able to *git gud* yet.
A game that has an interesting adaptive difficulty is Metal Gear V, they upgrade their guards depending on your playstyle in a way that feels organic. You do mostly headshots ? The guards now wear helmets. You act more at night ? The guards now have nightvision goggles. Etc... I liked that approach because not only did it gradually increase the challenge, but it also made me feel like I had an impact on the world of the game
Not enough people talk about that absolutely amazing aspect of the game design.
Also, if you headshot a lot in that game, you can still do it, you just gotta knock the helmets off first with another shot
but if I'm not mistaken, if you explode some specific cargo and storage places, enemies would not be able to wear helmets.
Far Cry 3 enemies also adapt like this, I feel that Far Cry 3 is harder than MGSV
@@lankyGiganticor bypass the helmet by hitting the lower part of their nog
That reminds me of how in the batman arkham games, if thugs see you retreating up to gargoyles or down into vents, they'll make it a point to ruin those escape routes when they can
Cool stuff and it makes the enemies feel more dynamic and lively
@@roseflows6585 Bypass the helmet by running in with an LMG
You might die but y'know, it is what it is
The customizable difficulty settings part reminded me of Hades. It's amazing how you can customize your runs to achieve the perfect challenge.
The other thing that hades does which is cool is just the whole rogue like style in general. Its supposed to be insanely hard and you are supposed to die and fail over and over but make small progress with each attempt that helps you eventually succeed. For some people they will rely more on skill and succeed faster while others can organically rely more on powering up from each fail. This way its still fun for everyone despite your skill and despite the difficulty and no one thinks about the difficulty but instead focuses on just doing there personal best and mastering the gameplay and builds. Great game design overall.
Sniper elite 4 and 5. Totally customizable
.... ive had that game for nearly 3 years and I'm only now learning that there's difficulty settings... i haven't been able to get past thesus and the minotur (I'm not bitter about not finishing any runs I really love the game play loop so it dosen bother me but I would love for the chance to finish it one day)
Not just Hades but all 4 games from Super Giant have that sort of system and they all work so well in making the game as much of a challenge as you can take.
@@crowsandcryptids if you want a couple tips, i'd say go for killing the minotaur first, and then theseus once he's dead. you don't want both of them in their second phase at once, and at least without extreme measures 3 on, theseus' second phase is a lot harder than asterius'! also don't forget to use your cast with boiling blood to make him take 50% more damage, and if you can survive to there without dying more than twice use death defiance instead of stubborn defiance :)
also, athena's call is super great for dealing with theseus, since when he first uses his call he stops using his shield, and if you're invincible while it's happening you can just beat him tf up while he's vulnerable instead of dodging. i actually save my greater call if i have it until theseus' second phase even if it is fully charged before then!
That’s why I love the dark souls series and counterparts to them. It tests your patience and how greedy you can get when fighting enemies or bosses. There’s easy enemies and easy areas but then there’s an area where it’s a pain with the different type of enemies.
It also forces you to learn more of the game and learn the game mechanics imo
One thing I appreciate is that besides Elden Ring, none of the games really have a particularly “easy” mode. No matter what weapon you use, you will have to learn the core mechanics of the game if you want to beat the bosses. There’s no way to get pampered through it. If anything, there are extra hard modes, like under leveling, using a trash weapon, or in Sekiro’s case, Kuro’s Charm+Demon Bell. If you don’t use these features, you will still have to learn how to engage with the game mechanics, and it won’t be easy at all. But these features are there for expert players or repeat runs to add difficulty for replay value.
Elden Ring’s summons undoubtedly jeopardize this system to an extent, but I’m also fine with it. The summons make bosses so easy to the point where it’s boring, so many hardcore players would forego using these because they want the full experience.
After watching the video, I've come to realize the solution to the difficulty problem in games is to not play games anymore. Thank you.
In bloodborne i would always use people summoning me to get better at the fight without losing my mind by getting killed 33 times and while it definitely didn’t make me better as fast as if I just tried alone it again and again it was a nice break and a reminder that other people were struggling with the same boss and seeing them win was so encouraging
Without loosing your mind you say?
Sometimes you bump into a host who just doesn't even try to touch the boss and it's incredibly sad to see. When that happens I try my best to remind them they should at least accept the challenge by directing the boss's attention to the host, using less effective weapons etcetc because... where's the fun in watching your summon defeat the boss? Like, I don't care if you're a bad player, at least punch the annoying shit in the face when it's staggered!
@@danieladamczyk4024 I think he might have missed the point of the game ***pops insight skull***
What you mentioned around 27:00 was exactly my experience, but I just saw it as a kind of reward: Me being overpowered was a reward for exploring a lot and beating a lot of bosses. Some of the late game bosses like Hoarah Loux and Radagon were a piece of cake with my strength build and I wasnt disappointed by that. I felt like I deserved that by enduring all the stuff before
It’s honestly a very realistic approach to RPGs in general. You suffer now to thrive later. I see it as an absolute win lol
Couldn't have said it better myself. Ppl forget Elden is not Dark souls. you are meant to become powerful in this game. Its literally in the story but I digress.
I did the same thing you did with the Witcher 3 difficulty. Got my ass handed to me until I started seriously using potions. It got to the point where I had a irl pencil notepad with recipes to craft according to weaknesses faster lol and I still use a notepad thanks to that. A whole lot faster overall than using in-game journals that take too long to get to.
I watched this because I've got two game designs on my mind that I'm going to try making. The one waiting on the side will be a "one difficulty, take it or leave it" platformer, and the one I'm working on now will be a "here's a gazillion settings to play around with" text-based RPG.
You've got me thinking a little bit deeper about the philosophy and tradeoffs between each of those choices. I don't plan to change either, but it's good to think about it more.
Curious, how would a platformer have more than one difficulty?
@@Spectrum0122
Enemies could move faster. You could have less health. Some platforms could be removed to easier jumps aren't available and you have to make trickier ones.
I think one of the best points in this video is that the player doesn't always know what level of difficulty they want (or are best served by). Sometimes you think you may just want the story but if pushed you end up having so much more fun than you would have if you didn't struggle a bit.
Personally, I pretty much always want to be pushed to the limit but never lose. Yes, I am aware how tricky that is to pull off.
Or vice versa, one might think they want a challenge but actually end up having more fun just enjoying the story :D
And to make things more complicated, one might feel like a challenge one night, and another might just want to sit back and relax (or, ya know, maybe plow through some enemies)
@@greatday19 That's become me with the years. I used to be a "I want the hardest challenge" type of guy but then I set Deus Ex: Mankind divided in hard mode...
And I dropped it. I didn't drop it becase I physically couldn't make it (I could) but because any single level/mission was a really terrible chore so I just lost interest in the game.
And I'm a bit sad because I did like Deus Ex: Human Revolution and if I only had set the game to "normal" I would have possibly make it to the end instead of dropping it.
Nowadays I either look on the internet for opinions or just go to whatever the game hints as the default option. I usually like to complete the game with a challenge but without it being a chore. I can die/lose several times on hardest sections but if I'm not dying at all or I'm dying at "easy" sections I just lose interest
Yeah, as great as configurability options are, we as players are often idiots: optimizing the fun out of a game, pushing ourselves to the absolute limits when that might not actually be the most enjoyable, or turning the difficulty too far down just because it’s the path of least resistance. I do find myself more and more appreciating when a dev has the confidence to just set a single difficulty that helps better shape the player experience. (That certainly is not a universal solution tho)
that is why I believe the best way to do it if you really need to is to have the basic difficulty options, with the game balanced for normal, but have all of them being mechanically identical, and then just give the player the option to enable or disable mechanics in the difficulty menu. for example in Witcher 3, I hated the damage sponge enemies, but I wanted to play without auto-healing on rest, but I couldn't change it without also making the enemies harder to kill.
I feel the same way, and I think a big factor with this is having a solid enough idea of what's actually expected of you. Walking up to a boss and finding yourself unable to win at the moment could be affected by a number of significant factors, such as the enemy's power level (relative to your character's stats, if any), gear, intended player experience/developed skills, and on top of all that, the enemy's relative challenge level, meaning how difficult they're 'supposed' to be for your current level of power/gear/experience playing. All this can make a big difference in how you react to the challenge presented, and in how you may need to solve it.
If you're fighting a boss and losing, you may be spurred on to eventual victory if you know you're fighting it much earlier than 'intended'. Or you may be more likely to accept that 'it's okay I can't win this right now', leave it for later. You may also have a better idea of what you need to work on to bridge the gap. However, if you have no information on where this enemy rests on the 'challenge' spectrum, you may find yourself badly discouraged, never realizing how far you're actually pushing yourself, thinking you're bad because you're 'expected' to be able to do this right here and now.
Even a rough idea of power scaling can help a lot with this, I think, and a more accurate system could help even more.
I’m surprised you didn’t talk about when higher difficulties are locked behind a completed play through on a lower difficulty.
Yeah I hate that like just why
@@SalmanKhan-ez7no because it's progression and it ensures youre equipped to tackle a higher difficulty mode by making you beat a baseline difficulty first. RE7 does this, starting you out on either assisted or standard and clearing the game on standard unlocks madhouse difficulty, which doesn't just make enemies faster and deal more damage, but also changes up things like item placement and spawning more enemies in places where there aren't any on the base difficulty. I think if madhouse was just unlocked at the start, the player wouldn't be able to appreciate these changes nearly as much as they can after playing through the game beforehand and it makes madhouse a fun piece of post game content.
@@itsrainingcats9968 So I can't play the game the way I want because it might make a programmer feel less appreciated? I paid money for the game, I don't feel like I need to prove myself to play how I want
Ah yes, the gatekeeping of "you must grind your way through entire game in normal (easy for any experienced gamer) to get to unlocking actual difficult gameplay".
I thought the way FF7 remake did it was alright. At that point you have all your gear choices and you have to optimize it to overcome much harder progression.
One thing i feel often goes ignored in this discussion is disabled players. Obviously its not reasonable to expect every game to have detailed difficulty options for players with motor issues and the like, and theyre not ableist for lacking it, but i feel that centering the discussion of difficulty options exclusively around player skill level can leave a lot of people out and ignore the more important things
Yeah, I often find when people assume that if you want difficulty levels, you need to get good. It's just so frustrating, when more often than not, the people who do need difficulty levels are going to be disabled people. No matter how disabled they are. I more often times will go for an easier mode, while I don't currently have motor issues, I'm still disabled and can find harder and sometimes even normal difficulties ... well ... difficult. But a lot of my issues with that are similar to abled-bodied/non-disabled folks! That is, no one testing to see if difficulty levels are balanced enough. There are times where easy is just, too easy for me. But normal could be like pulling teeth.
But like I said, it's frustrating when disabled people want to talk about difficulty levels, and then get told to get good. Like, buddy, you may as well have just told me to stop being disabled, if that's how you really feel.
The biggest amount of shell shock was playing on Hard difficulty (or it’s equivalent) in Doom 2016 and hopping to Eternal and feeling like I was playing on an actual simulation of World War One…
This is timely. I'm at the end of my youth, and arthritis is becoming a factor in how I play, among things. Difficulty and accessibility have become part of my decision making process when figuring out what to play. Thanks for making this video.
Gg
Carpio g2.0
I tend to play on easier difficulties because way to many games just raise the enemies' health so I catch myself thinking "what if I'll just have to deal with bullet sponges all the time on hard mode" when it comes to deciding the difficulty.
I agree with you, also I prefer not having too high of a difficulty in horror games, because encounters will stop having any impact to me if I already done them like 10 times because I died to something.
Dying Light suffers from this MASSIVELY. That game is just straight up not fun on its highest difficulty due to how durable EVERYTHING becomes.
Be careful not to call them bullet sponges too quickly. Sometimes it's to incentivize combos or to push you to learn about the game's combat mechanics or to utilize skills or weapons you otherwise wouldn't.
But yes, sadly a lot of games don't use it as a teaching tool, but more of a... I'm not exactly sure what the intention is really. I guess, a quick mandatory setting for the "hardcore gamers" out there. Added right before shipping. The ultra super easy modes tend to be added post-production as well for the game journalists.
And sometimes hard mode just does become... Longer mode. Fun may or may not be included. Enter at your own risk.
@@GarrulousHerald Nah, in Dying Light it's absolutely a problem of some enemies being TOO durable.
people who have played S.T.A.L.K.E.R are tumbling on their beds reading this lol
For me personally I figured that I almost always roll the best with the second hardest difficulty available, I like a little challenge where I feel how I’m getting better and better over time but I don’t get crushed in the ground if I’m not always a 100% focused it’s most of the time the best balance between a challenge and enjoying the story
the thing with dark souls is that you could just grind/farm to get stronger and its hard to tell if you are underleveled or playing it how it is meant to be
I also have this feeling "normal" difficulty is now what easy used to be, but I also can't tell how much of that feeling stems from me being more experienced at games.
What you learn in games carries over to those you'll play later.
Another feeling I also frequently get is how some difficulty can be punishing leaving you with a "thank god it's over" feeling, closer to victory by attrition after countless die/retry runs.
I enjoy difficulty when it feels rewarding, not when it comes as a relief.
No games are definitely easier now. But I don't think that's a bad thing. For example, arcade games were made to be purposely impossible to force you to pump in quarter after quarter. Also back in the old days movement was limited by the crappy equipment so a lot of it was less intuitive. You can't play Ghosts and Goblins or Contra and tell me it feels natural and smooth. So not only were you overcoming the obstacles you were overcoming the game itself.
That being said, the original Halo is stupidly easy and then when they made the second one they said, fk you nobody gets to beat Legendary now lol. Make games accessible to a wider audience isn't a bad thing necessarily
I can't remember who said it but I think there is truth to the idea that back in the old NES/SNES days they couldn't put much game into a cartridge, so they just made them crazy hard to ensure you got your 40-50 hours of play time out of them. Now open world landscapes are so cheap I routinely find areas I assume were for some encounter or side quest that didn't make it into the final game because there's a big open side area that looks interesting/intentionally designed but doesn't have anything in it.
Imo if 3 difficulty options go hard, if 5 go hard not very hard
That's so true! I was thinking that during the whole intro section. Razbuten felt underwhelmed by Normal because he has a baseline ability to play games similar to the Witcher 3 already. And he's right about how it's weird we have to guess what difficulty we'll like based on if we've played similar games before (and that's a guess based on info we have before we even play). So many online conversations around difficulty are about the same types of games (action games with elements like live combat, large open worlds, etc), and so many of the people talking about it ONLY play those games (or mostly those games), and are super used to them. Is "normal" meant for someone who's used to those mechanics? How familiar do you have to be? It makes sense that the guy who does a whole series where his non-gamer partner tries different titles would have so many nuanced things to say about this topic. I can say it gets a little frustrating whenever this conversation comes up, as someone who IS a gamer but not "that" type of gamer, so I rely on easy mode in most action games just to experience them at all. I sometimes even get stuck in the easiest "cinematic" modes, like the one for death stranding.
There is also another option. I've found that the way I select games to play have changed. It used to be more on ratings and now it is more on the gameplay but this change is only possible after playing a bunch of different games and figuring out what I like and don't like. The feeling of difficulty is also tied to how much you are enjoying the experience. It's like someone working at a job that they really like not feeling like it is a job versus working at a job where you just show up for the paycheck.
I've been thinking about difficulty lately myself. Whenever I play games, I usually choose easy and bump it up later. I'm a slow learner which is why I go at my own pace. I never choose "story" modes if there is one below easy.
Lately though, Ive realized that choosing story mode actually IS the best option for me. I always found myself feeling guilty that I don't play harder than easy. I feel like I'm not getting the "intended" expect if I don't force myself to learn the battle system. But lately I realized, that doesn't and shouldn't matter to me. What matters isn't if I'm a master at the combat, it isn't if I'm throwing myself at bosses for hours because I can't beat it.
What matters is if I'm taking something positive away from the experience. If harder difficulty hurts my experience in the game... Then I shouldn't force myself to do it.
This is pretty much what I do too. And also the main reason I refuse to touch any Souls game and hate when people call newly difficult games "the dark souls of " because if, for example, Pokemon Legends: Arceus REALLY was "the dark souls of pokemon," I wouldn't have beaten it so easily??? Or at all???
@@SnoFitzroy Well if you refuse to touch any Souls game you will never know if you are actually good at them lol. Souls games are hard but fair, there are no 100% hit attacks or anything like that so you are guaranteed to succeed if you spend enough time learning the attack patterns. But I'm also the kind of guy who enjoys fighting a boss 20 times and is kinda disappointed when I finally defeat them because I want to fight them a little longer so if you don't like to feel challenged then just ignore my recommendations. The cool thing about From Software Games in my opinion is that you always know why you died. You can immediately identify your mistakes and improve, try a different approach or timing there is always something for you to try.
Same for me. Sometimes my pride is the hardest boss fight. I've played a lot of games on story or easy and I couldn't care less about the difficulty. I just remember the story, the characters, the world. Nowadays I play on normal if I know I'm "comfortable" with the genre, but I won't hesitate to bump it down immediately if I get frustrated.
Always remember, the point of videogames is to have fun. If the game is too easy, bump it up, if it's too hard, bump it down. If someone judges you for playing on a specific difficulty, just ignore them and move on.
@@SnoFitzroySimply being "difficult" is an enormously reductive way to view that series. And you're greatly limiting yourself if you refuse to touch it because of that viewpoint
@@SnoFitzroy Sorry bud, you've activated the souls game sleeper agents, they will not rest until you say that learning to be good at Dark Souls opened your third eye and cured your medical anxiety.
This was a really interesting video especially considering how I rarely think about difficulty in games I play, and what sort of games I play generally.
Like, I remember my first time playing a Souls game and being so frustrated that I didn't want to touch it again. Subsequently, this was also due to the fact that the game had spiders and it wasn't mine in thenfirst place.
At the same time, looking over the games I do frequently play most of them are story focused first, or I play just to learn more of the story and world and not play to beat the game.
It's a fascinating topic that also got me interested in your Gaming for Non-Gamers series, as well as subbing to your channel. I'd love a continuation of this topic if possible because it feels so vast.
Great video, nice to see someone cover difficulty in all its facets rather than just regurgitating the 'easy mode' discourse. It's fascinating to me how difficulty connects with the experience of a game, and trying to simplify it to 'options good' or 'options bad' has never sat well.
There's another interesting side effect with dynamic difficulty where players begin to gameify it. In RE4 for instance, I picked up on the fact that enemies would drop more bullets when I was low on ammo - so I became more reckless with my shots knowing I'd always be good down the line. It actually removed an important part of the conservation mechanic for me, which was somewhat unfortunate, because I couldn't unlearn that mechanic. It also made me prioritize weapons with high magazine capacity, as the game seemed to only consider reserve ammo - not what was already loaded. This isn't necessarily bad, but it does have interesting consequences.
Was it more or less fun to play this way?
Could also bank all your items in the item crate and the game will give you more ammo and health pickups, which makes it easier and less items to manage. You could see this also as the game compensating for those who are badly prepared, big part of survival horror was managing what you take out of the safe room with you but this is now gone, with dynamic drops based on what's in your inventory you don't need to try. When I watched most streamers playing the modern REmakes, they almost all "failed" their way through the game but the game kept them alive barely, so for first playthrough tension I guess it does it's job.
I think it took away part of the anxiety that is appropriate for the setting of not knowing whether I'd have enough to continue, knowing that I always would. I stopped caring about missed shots because I knew they'd be replaced. The thing is, the game is quite easy (even on professional) when this decision becomes less important. Without that pressure, good shots don't matter as much - and therefore you can let loose much more than you would without that knowledge. It's not at all like having infinite ammo, but it sometimes feels close to it.@@ookiemand
Thank you Underdog for your elaborate explanation!@@underdog353777
I appreciate how ULTRAKILL lists their difficulties: it gives a little bit of information on what the enemies are like, and what you need to do to survive. For example on Harmless difficulty, it says something like this: “Enemies seldom use strong attacks. They will still hit just as hard, but even a mountain could dodge them”. Having played through the game on both Harmless and Standard difficulty, I can confirm that the only noticeable difference between them is the speed of the attacks. The enemies’ health and damage they deal are still exactly the same, but their attacks speed is greatly reduced on Harmless. You still might die, but it gives you a better chance to learn how the enemies work.
The reason why Capcom pioneered dynamic difficulty for basically the Resident Evil series is because it actually helps maintain the horror elements better. Horror games, contrary to what conventional thinking might indicate, don't actually want you to die. If you die, you do the same section over and over, which makes you familiar which makes you unscared of the game. They want to keep you on the cusp of thinking you're going to die. That's maximum tension. It's why as you get more familiar with the game through playthroughs and seek higher challenge the scaling modifiers are usually turned all the way up and left there on the hardest of difficulties.
The worst is when bosses and such aren’t hard just annoying. Like they could not think of a hard boss so they add two or three or have them send in minions
Ah, most bosses in DS2
some bosses in god of war
My least favorite boss trope is a fairly standard move set but an unreasonable amount of status affect affliction on most attacks
Sending in minions during a boss fight can ruin its flow imo.
Twin gargoyles 💀
I never thought about the difficulty affecting the experience you get that much until this video.
cuz you always play on easy mode
Literally how was this not your immediate inference?
Bit late here but I wanted to say that one thing I hate about games is when a "true" ending or whatever is locked behind the hardest difficulty.
I'm not joking, you actually helped me fall asleep last night. Your style of video is so relaxing
Personally I prefer to play lighter difficulties on my first playthrough just so I can allow myself a chance to immerse myself with the world. Only after I've finished the story or felt comfortable enough with the gameplay loop will I go and increase the difficulty.
I think it depends on the game. Some games like mayber Baldurs gate 3 yes, but for many other games I dont see why I should need to do a second playthrough just to experience the game in a way that actually challenges me after the first hour
If a game's world isn't interesting enough to make me want to play it again on a higher difficulty, then I would have been happy I started on the lower difficultly and not wasted the effort. But also, if difficulty wasn't the appeal in the first place, same conclusion but the opposite reason: the world was interesting enough as it was.
@@almicc the problem with that approach is that sometimes games just arent good enough for a second run, but way too easy on the first one if you decide to go the "give me absolutely no challenge, I want to have a I win everything button" difficulty.
Or maybe you will feel so bored by the easy approach that you dont really feel like trying again in a more difficult setting
In some games I find a higher difficulty improves immersion. Walking though a world that is supposed to convey a feeling of danger and fragility but you are not scratched by anything is at odds with each other.
a problem with that would be that especially in Open world games, you just start being overpowered so insanely fast
i played horizon zero dawn on second hardest difficulty and everything was straight up a joke because at some point you find out stuff that makes Fights laughably easy
I like Crosscodes approach, where the difficulty is set to the intented difficulty at the beginning but they offer you 3 sliders, where you can turn down damage taken, enemy attack frequency and puzzle speed.
I remember in Jedi Survivor I played the first 1/3 of the game on the normal difficulty, but then for the sake of immersion I lowered it to the easiest difficulty. Not because the game was particularly challenging for me, but because it didn't make sense to me that a seasoned Jedi would have any issue with the majority of enemies in the game. Like, a Jedi who's been fighting for years really shouldn't have an issue with a single stormtrooper. They should just be a bug that they squash, but occasionally the game will put you in a situation where that isn't the case.
Really solid video. My quick take is having difficulty options, even ines that aren't thought out very well, will always be better than having none.
It's silly for gamers™️ to get mad at difficulty options for one game (dark souls) but beg for them in another (pokemon). It hurts no one to have options. It only ever helps bring in different people.
This is not universally true. Because the difficulty of a game should be determined by the intentions of the developer, not the desire of gamers. Generally, difficulty comes in two favors. Either the player must meet a difficulty check to complete an objective to the developer's satisfaction, or the game must meet the skill level of the player. Is the concept or the completion of a game its core goal? Is the vehicle of that challenge or immersion?
Have difficulty options does hurt some players though. This is one of the many reasons Souls fans are so adamant about not having them and appreciative of the one difficulty for all philosophy.
How does it hurt players having these options? Because people get frustrated, rage and in a hissy fit they lower the difficulty and cheat themselves of the "Git Gud" moments Souls fans love. Even people who know they want these challenging have moments of weakness and will take the easy road if it's there when they're pissed off.
This philosophy isn't for every game or even every genre. Most games and I'm talking 90 plus percent, cater to the difficulty option philosophy.
Part of the reason Fromsoft basically started a Souls genre is because their base philosophy was extremely missed and lacking in the video game world.
Souls fans can be as cringe and ridiculous as any other fans but a lot of what Souls fans are fighting back against, is the idea that Fromsoft should stop being the one small corner of the game world where this philosophy can be found and comform.
@@SaintKines If you get mad because you chose to use a completely optional option, that's not the optional option's fault, that's your fault. Also you're forcing your own view onto everyone else. You are not the god king, your view is not everyone else's.
@@Purpletrident Fromsoft isn't forcing anything on anyone. And at this point nobody could realistically claim that they didn't know either. Considering "Soulslike" is a full on genre at this point.
Not every game is for every person and that's ok. Demanding that every single game follow a certain difficulty option rule is forcing your views on everyone else. 90 plus percent of games already cater to you and you still can't accept and understand that at least a small minority group appreciate and believe in a different way. Whos the one forcing their opinions here? It's well known Souls games don't have those options and are designed to be a reasonable challenge, if that's not your thing then you're still in luck because most of the industry is pandering directly to you.
And yes, the options are optional, kind of in the name. But you can look at thousands and thousands of Fromsoft testimonials where people admit that not having the option to just switch off all challenge when frustrated saved from ruining rewarding Git Gud moments when they finally overcame the challenge. It's what keeps Souls fans going and coming back.
Some people just want to put a game in and chill and not be challenged. There is nothing wrong with that. Some people just want to engage in a power fantasy where they get to pretend and experience what it's like to be powerful and skillful. Some people want to spend the time and rage to earn that.
This is a very interesting topic to me, I have a friend who has very minimal game experience but loves the game Hades as a classics student, but even with the assist mode she's still frustrated by it as she wants to progress the story but is hindered by her lack of experience and reactions. I also had her and another friend come over several years ago and try Spiderman PS4 - she liked the swinging and picked the movement up very fast, but our friend took over the fighting sections for her. Interesting to me how different people handle different challenges!
I felt the same way as her, I wanted to see the progress of the story. But that's why I love Hades so much, you still get most story dialogue after a failed attempt!
I did a second playthrough where I won a lot very early on, and I had to die a bunch over and over just to get the stories going
@stevhen42 and unfortunately most gamers take their skill for granted... I've been trying to introduce my wife to video games, but I've had to be very selective about what i suggest (something with a minimal barrier of entry, low skill level, and that's aligned with her interest so that she is internally motivated to play during her free time) and very careful about how i react to her struggles (not taking things for granted, not being patronizing, putting her down, getting exasperated)...
I loved Razbuten's Games for Non Gamers series because of how eye opening it was. Most recently, I've been trying to teach her to use a controller (a input method a lot of gamers prefer because of how comfortable it fits in your hand), but it's a completely foreign tool for her, constantly having to look at it to see what buttons are where... I tried introducing her to smash, and quickly realized first she needs to get comfortable with a controller before even considering approaching a fighting game...
@@rinzen9976 that's actually sth that's been on my mind a lot: why are the majority of games centered on combat? When looking at MMOs (or, well, any RPG), the first thing that gets reviewed is the combat...
I was recently looking into introducing my wife to Skyrim, a game which i love because of it's quests, npc interactions, exploration, and breadth of life skills. However, when i pulled up the trailer to show it to her to see if she'd be interested, all that was showcased was combat, something which is part of the core gameplay loop...
We see this even in Minecraft... If you want to play pure survival, you need monsters enabled for resources like slime balls, string, and bone meal, resources which are needed to craft tools like leads, fishing rods, bow and arrow, and for wolf taming... (Basically, you need these ingredients for a farming play style). Sure, technically they're all obtainable in peaceful, i do appreciate that it is possible, but a bamboo forest is one of the rarest biomes in the game (which is where pandas live that produce slime balls)...
There are a lot of open world games you might enjoy that don’t focus on combat, especially in the indie scene. They might be smaller in scope than the massive AAA maps but they make up for it in quality and detail. Off the top of my head:
- Outer Wilds
- A Short Hike
- Firewatch
- Subnautica
- Astroneer
- Slime Rancher (more of a farm sim but you do a lot of exploration)
I did a similar thing with my little sister when breath of the wild first came out
Coming from the standpoint of a game developer myself, I would say giving enough choices for everyone is important. Some people don't want to be bothered with min/maxing stats and mixing potions for just to a single encounter. But at the same time you don't want the elite players to get bored. It is a tough balance for sure.
Recently discovered your channel and really love your content. So unique! Could you make a video where you give us your POV about playing multiple games at the same rather rather than one after another?
Just found your channel. I enjoy these essay style videos that I can just listen to while working. Subscribed.
There is no one size fits all solution to difficulty, and there shouldn't be. Every game and its difficulty and how that difficulty is presented to the player is part of the game experience.
Great vid as it always is Raz, I hope the family is good!
(happy Halloween as well)
yes one thing fabout difficulty options isn't just that it makes it more accessible to people with disabilities/less skill/slower reactions. It makes it so we can go back and play it on a harder mode giving us a reason to play it again when we've gotten really good at it and its just a cakewalk. I played the first two mass effects over and over when I couldn't work due to a broken clavicle and therefore had no money to buy new games. each time I beat it I started on a higher difficulty that I would not have been able to do previously, my skill at that game getting better and better each time.
I just stick to normal difficulty because that's how the devs intended the game to be played.
@@Karlach_that is a wild statement to make and very untrue lmao
There CAN'T be
@@Karlach_ about normal bief the intended difficulty, it may have been true in the past but nowadays easy mode has been renamed normal and normal become hard and etc, anyway unless the game directly specifies it I don’t think there will be a intended difficulty but personally I like too play in hard but not the hardest difficulty because these is where I am challenged, you want something that isn’t enraging nor that takes away the stakes of the story by being too easy and the latter is especially true in games that should feel hard by their stories or world like most post-apo game or really any stories that talks about you facing impossible odds
Another advantage of the difficulty setting is to allow disabled or young players to be able to enjoy the story without being limited by the gameplay. I really like how tunic does this. The difficulty is not presented as an option at the start, but it is in the options if you look for it. There's even an invincible option which was great for my 5yo. She wanted to play the "fox game" as her first game, without having the reflexes you need to be able to survive the enemies.
The drawback is that they will have no challenge so they will not learn how to face higuer difficulties.
Every approach has its downsides: more accessible then less improvement
@@lluisg.8578 invincible mode doesn't necessarily imply 'no challenge'. For my daughter (and I'm sure for other kids or disabled people), the movement and gameplay itself without enemies may be challenging enough. My daughter struggles with any games that require timing of button presses (mario, pong, etc) nevermind the enemies. Naturally when she gets older and this mode no longer poses a challenge to her, I can change it.
Great comment! People can enjoy games for very different things. When I was little I loved playing games like Kirby Air Ride and Sonic Adventure 2, not for the story or any of the main quests, but just because I loved interacting with the world. I also liked games with invincibility options (GoldenEye & Guitar Hero come to mind) but these options were always locked behind "cheat" menus. It's nice to see more accessibility options being implemented as part of the base game experience.
i like pathfinder: kingmaker's difficulty adjustment system: they have like 6 defoult difficulties to choose from, but also extreamely customizable options if you want to fin-tune, and options of both numerical and meccanical influence. you have an hp, damage and critical hit damag multiplier or you can turn on things like party members being able to die permanently, rest removing otherwise permanent debuffs etc...
also library of ruina is a turn based card game with set difficulty (i guess you can choose to use weaker floors instead of the OP braindead ones as a difficulty scale) were you are always given all the info you need to understand the meccanics of every enemy and beat it so the real final boss becomes reading comprehention
I love this video. It puts into words how I feel about these things, and it's even weirder for me because I'm subcontracted to a gaming company as a consultant right now. It's a fine line between creating difficulty spikes in games while keeping mass appeal intact for general difficulty levels. One thing we tried to play with was having dynamic difficulty through player choice in-game, through effective use of weapons, armor, and itemization. I don't think we'll ever get it perfect; I think it's more so doing our best and trying to make a product we love, and hoping players resonate with that vision and endproduct. In choosing game balance, perfect is oftentimes the enemy of good.
man I always appreciate how this channel makes me think about just how difficult some otherwise unnoticed aspects of game development are. Really brings a whole new appreciation from me to the art form I've enjoyed for my entire life. Really great work as usual :)
It's a nice change from seeing everyone complain constantly about videogames
One reason I love difficulty options in games is for accessibility.
I have dyspraxia, so a lot of the time, playing on easy is equivalent to a neurotypical person playing on normal, simply because my hands don't always do what my brain tells them to do.
I feel like not enough people take this into consideration when talking about difficulty options. The souls games aren't much of a challenge for me but I have neurodivergent friends that literally can't play them and no amount of telling them to get good is going to change their physical limitations
This!! Absolutely this.
My brain can't always react fast enough to what I see. So extremely aggressive enemies are going to wipe the floor with me because I'm trying to parse what I'm even seeing... as the sword is coming down.
I have a similar issue with games that ask you to move and aim and shoot, all at once. With the camera moving, I'll often struggle to recognize what I need to be aiming at. That makes most action games impossible for me if it's based on reactive combat, lacks auto aim features, or even just incorporates a camera bob when the character moves.
To me this is kind of the only argument that matters. Easy mode is necessary for some people not just to enjoy a game but to play it at all. Games not having an easy mode (like the souls games) is indefensible for this exact reason and people who say otherwise are deliberately excluding certain people from certain games because of a disability or a neurodifference and that's not ok. Especially when the level of difficulty someone plays at is nobody's business but their own and it has no impact on people who choose to play on diamond bastard hard that story mode exists.
@@rosiescott1531it's perfectly fine to exclude anyone you want from anything for any reason :)
This is something I've had sooo many issues with too. I can never tell what I should increase or decrease. It also doesn't help that I am disabled and have brain fog issues. Somedays I will have quicker reaction time and sometimes I will have slower reaction time. It can change on a day to day basis. Obviously I'm not going to change the difficulty settings every single time I play it. Due to this and just in general not knowing which difficulty would be best, I always set whatever is the 'recommended' by the game. I honestly have no idea what is the best way to set these things lolo it's so complex. Honestly I can't imagine how videogame designers set difficulties in general as every gamer is different, everyone has different brains and lives.
I'm the kind of player that just... Sometimes needs an immortal mode. It sucks to have to stop playing a game because it's just not possible to get past one scene or encounter when i love everything else about it (ori and the blind forest, looking at you)
"I like to play without choosing the difficulty" is exactly why I i will ALWAYS select the second hardest difficulty for my first playthrough. I feel confident that I can handle most challenges a game throws at me, but I'm extremely aware that the hardest difficulty available for a game is typically not designed for your first playthrough. So the second hardest is generally good enough, and then I dont change the difficulty from then on: this is how hard the game is, so if I'm struggling then I've got to get better until I can beat it
I've seen people with this mentality on reddit, except they ignore the fact that the hardest difficulty isn't meant for beginners. So they retry like 30 times and then have to give up because they played the entire day away instead of just inviting an experienced player who can teach them and carry the noob.
@@Phoenix.Sparkles- I started going for the max difficulty years ago to avoid multiple playthroughs when going for platinum trophies, but later I discovered it enhances the immersion of games like the Witcher (all 3 of them) or The Last of Us or even Horizon (Zero Dawn/Forbidden West).
Hell, I even started Dragon's Dogma on Hard, a clearly NG+ difficulty, but it was _so_ immersive for my glass canon assassin character!
Same for Horizon on Ultra Hard: in the beginning it makes you _feel_ like a human fighting huge killer robots. Sure, by the end you can easily kill scores of them without breaking a sweat, but if you don't mind the switch to power fantasy, then _that_ effect is heightened even more by three sheer difference in power level, going from 11 dmg with your starter bow to 3500+ with a triple Powershot on a frozen enemy's weak spot!
I've also adopted that mentality, and honestly, it works.
Back in the day the hardest difficulty setting had to be unlocked by completing the game
Maybe I’m alone here, but I play video games to escape and relax, to have fun… not to spend weeks improving so I can complete a difficult, frustrating experience. Imagine if you could only watch half a movie because it was too difficult to continue without not wasting a week on it.
You definitely not alone in this, the thing is word "fun" is hard to define and measure so it will differ from person to person. That's why there is so many books and science work on the topic. For some one concept of "fun" as you described - just to relax, but some people find that boring and "fun" for them is overcoming difficult games.
There is a massive chasm in what constitutes enjoyment and skill levels for different people though. Comparing games to movies will forever be a fallacy because they are two very different things. If you had to stop a movie and fill out a test or write an essay on what you've seen so far, that's somewhat similar.
You can relax while improving though. If the game has like no resistance at all, I'd rather just watch a movie than be forced to interact with the game.
I 100% agree. There's nothing wrong with challenging games that some people find rewarding to overcome, but I often just roll my eyes when some of them start preaching about how rewarding it was for them and will be for me too if I just spend hours or days of my free time grinding through frustrating gameplay loops to perfect my skills.
Games like the Witcher I mostly play for the story, with the gameplay just being the loop I jump through for the next cutscene. I'm not interested in being forced to learn all the mechanics or utilize all the oils and potions in my kit, so I usually just play on the easiest difficulty to save myself the time and frustration.
As someone that plays games for relaxation I am a great fan of playing in easier difficulties. As such it annoys me when there is no difficulty settings, its not like i have no frustration tollerance. But as someone who studies Physics my Frustration tolerance is used up in other places over the day already.
Thus I think noone should be shamed for liking to play in easy mode you never know what the person does or has been through.
Edit: I was writing this comment in the middle of the Dark Souls part. And thank you so much for saying that there is more to love a game about than being good at the combat. And that its to easy to say these games are not for those people. Thank you so much its a major pain point I have been having whenever I look at the Soulslike stuff and people are just like well if you dont like difficulty then the game is not for you. Even tho I belive games are so much more than just the difficulty.
Armored Core 6 has been probably my favorite experience with difficulty. The opening mission and boss encourages you to utilize most of the core elements of combat and the chapter 1 boss builds on that by encouraging experimentation with playstyle and parts. Those 2 moments set you up for the rest how the game will play.
One of my favorite implementations of difficulty is in God Hand. Difficulty dynamically adjusts as you defeat enemies without taking damage, but you will most likely spend your entire first playthrough on the easiest level due to the high upfront difficulty. As you get better at the game, the difficulty increases and enemies become more aggressive/less exploitable. It forces you to learn all of the game's systems and gradually incorporate them into your gameplay if you want to maintain that higher difficulty. And unlike Resident Evil, the difficulty is shown as a gauge at all times; this removes the sense that the game is handholding you from behind the scenes with impenetrable algorithms.
I think outsidexbox covered this system in one of their videos, mentioned some tricky think that can end up happening if you combo too hard
As good as God Hand is, this approach has plenty of problems as well. Enemy damage scales far to harshly with the dynamic difficulty, and it often feels like the game is punishing you for doing well. It's to the extent that many players strategically choose to sandbag their performance in order to keep the difficulty in check. I know I basically felt as though I had to, as I dropped the game multiple times due to sitting in the exact skill window in which I would reach the highest level and immediately get killed for it. The number of times I had to repeat segments because I was good enough to reach the highest difficulty, but not good enough to beat the highest difficulty, was such that I just gave up entirely. The fact that I had to make the strategic choice to eat hits at certain points in order to succeed felt artificial, cheap, and unintuitive on a level that was just blatantly unfun. I think the game is great, but my first playthrough was anything but.
@@tyrant-thanatos These are all honestly great points that I just never ran into. I was so terrible during my first playthrough that I basically never got out of level 1. After that, chasing higher levels became the name of the game so I never really ran into that frustration. I can totally see how it could ruin a first playthrough if you grasp the mechanics more quickly than I did lol.
On a similarish vein I really enjoyed Furi. It doesn't have a dynamic difficulty but the default choice is appropriately challenging. Yet the entire game feels like it's training you to get better. One of the bosses is focused solely on a specific part of the combat. While that's a cool boss fight it also forces you to engage with a system you might've been largely avoiding. But that also means it's making you better and more confident at using it on every other boss fight in the game. By the time you have beaten the game it feels like the entire game has been preparing you for the harder difficulty option (that I think only unlocks after playing through it?)
It also has one of my favorite boss fights in any game I have ever played. And that is Bernard an untextured dummy they used to test boss mechanics on. A 9 stage boss fight that has some of the best elements from every other boss combined into one single challenge.
It was thrown in as a bonus alongside the one more fight dlc alongside a boss fight that i belief was an xbox exclusive at first? Which is a little unfortunate but apparently it's now included with the base game.
OMG I just wrote about GOD HAND the best forgotten PS2 fighting game that is basically resident evil 4 but with punches instead of guns and that leans even more on its combat system resulting the in most chad and stylish fighting game EVER ( not even kidding its that GOOD) and with EPIC soundtack IT ROCKS DUDE.
As an older gamer, who has vision difficulties in certain situations and also can suffer tremors in my hands... getting the difficulty right for a game can be extremely frustrating.
You started this talking about The Witcher 3, and I recently started this on Story and Sword (the one you said was not a challenge) because I was told it would be the right balance for me. However I found the game nearly impossible at this difficulty. The combat was just a blur on my screen because it was so close to the camera, and I couldn't tell the difference between a monster attacking and a monster moving. And the dodge was nearly impossible to time correctly because the controls were so picky that if due to hands shaking I pushed a button too early to too late, the whole combat was over and I just couldn't progress. I could understand what I had to do, it was just physically impossible for me to do it.
This is what difficulty sliders are so important. The ability to slow down aspects of a game for people who aren't able to react as fast as they used to, or are dealing with various disabilities.
Often when I am talking about these issues I am told "just get gud" or "The game isn't designed for you". This might be true, but I have to ask all gamers, are you planning on stopping playing games as you get older? Are you just not expecting to get older? There is a reason you don't see as many people playing professional sports in their 40s as in their 20s, and when you hit your 50s and 60s, do you expect to completely give up playing video games; or do you want video games that can adapt to you?
Qhenever i invade someone or get summoned in dark souls 3, i usually drop them a bunch of embers before we do anything. Someone did that for me when i was new and it was a nice way to show me that i was never alone.
As a games designer where my main job is balance of systems, after decades of back and forth on this, I came down on the side of accessibility. Challenging core combat is usually only one facet of your game and difficulty modes when done right (either through an obvious menu, adaptive mechanics or a clear ability to play in an easier way - personally they're all classed under difficulty options for me) are essential to opening up as much of your game to as many people as possible. Which is what it's all about really. More people should have the chance to enjoy the experience you and hundreds of others have made over many years. Even if it's only a part of it.
Then again easy game may instead "close" experience of accessing a mechanic. Like what he said about Witcher 3 where it's possible to never even consider maybe enjoyable gameplay like potion. Designing really is hard.
@@HazhMcMoor When developing a slew of mechanics, one thing I developer must consider is how many of them an individual player is going to access. There can be good reasons that every tool must be used to its fullest, or that different people will only utilize certain tools, depending on a game's core themes and objectives.
I definitely understand difficulty options, I just prefer the Fromsoft approach, there are different gameplay options but the challenge is measured and set.
Survival horror games usually do some really cool stuff with their harder difficulties. The AI of the Xenomorph in Isolation is optimal at the harder difficulties.
Im glad you addressed acessability as I feel like that particular topic is always neglected specifically in the difficulty topic. I have often felt like some games just tell me "youre not good enough to play." As ive just harsly learned souls games are. I have have tremmors, peripheral regognition issues and with adhd i have issues focussing, be this overwhelmed or underwellmed on game's. For me with small elements like the lack of a pause button in souls games or an option for more recovery time in fights i will never be physicaly able to play, complete or enjoy a souls game. Which is sad because i just got given lies of p as a gift over Christmas, which is why i got here looking at the difficulty debate. I do feel like i have learned more about the other side - more skilled players' issues with difficulty. However, i still can't help but feel like difficultly gatekeeps some games.
And while i understand the argument some people have that an easy mode and acessability are not the same and that an easy mode would undermine dissabled people. I have played many a game where ive had a little cry because they remind me that my disabilities in fact- disable me.
The issue for me stands with the stigma and naming of difficulties as well as the creation of them. To have a "as intended" difficultly topped with a more challenging one, an unlockable one like many dmc games and then for people like me a "beginner, story or learner" mode would just make more games feel accepting.
I do get sad as a lover of gothic littriture and media that i can never fully experience a souls game on my own on console (if i was pc i know there are mod creators who add disability aids more then the game creators... which is also sad to me) its sad to me that games just cut a whole willing audience off through difficulty gatekeeping.
I think the most blatant example I have experienced when my neurodivergence has completely fucked up a gand for me was cuphead
I’ve ADHD myself but generally I don’t think it’s too bad in a lot of places but I know for a fact that u literally cannot see most of the screen because I have to focus on my character
Currently I’ve gotten past most of the game I’ve rage quit a few times but I eventually got through until I found Dr Kahls robot
It’s the hardest base boss in the game abd it’s obvious why
I can get to the third stage (even if u require a speed run strat gif the second phase) but I literally cannot see anything in the third stage and end up dying constantly
I can barely avoid the emerald sparks but the electrified gates are basically unavoidable
This also gatekeeps younger players from playing certain games, as typically you have less fine motor control until you start to reach adulthood. Not to mention it keeps less skilled players from playing titles they think look fun. As someone with no physical disabilities but who just sucks at video games, it really sucks when I pay 80 dollars for a game just to find out I can't actually play it because of the skill requirements.
Also, some games don't seem to know what "easy" is. I genuinely struggled in some spots in certain games, on the games designated "easy mode".
To top it off, games that lock the "good ending" off to higher difficulties? Just.. no. That's really shitty.
I enjoyed this video. Really put things into a new light. I’ve played almost every game on either the hardest or 2nd hardest difficulty.
Two examples of difficulty systems i enjoy are slay the spire and a lot of the supergiant games. Both of them feel like integrate the difficulty more closely with the gameplay than most games which i think is important.
For the the spire, the fact that difficulty is tied with progression, gives you a reason to finish runs on the highest difficulty you can. It's also really gradual so you never feel that you're way out of your league; you've worked to unlock the difficulty multiple times beating runs at slightly easier difficulties.
A lot of supergiant games have another mechanic where you pick a curse which improve the rewards that you get, which i think solves the problem of games with multiple aspects of difficulty you can adjust if balanced right. There's a base level of difficulty and you can adjust based off of the risk and reward which makes it a more interesting decision and makes the decision more extrinsically motivatee than intrinsic.
These aren't perfect systems but are a good step over traditional approaches to difficulty. I do think difficulty balancing is possibly the most important thing to get right in most games since it really determines what systems the player will find themselves needing to engage with.
The way I've enjoyed difficulty handled that is a bit less obvious is just difficulty in the form of optional content. The base game should be fairly approachable but those who are up for challenge have extra levels to look forward to. Kind of like the b sides in celeste
Another thing I think would have liked to hear you touch upon is difficulty scaling as well. Some games can feel so different from the beginning to the end of the game as you gain more gear or as enemies get harder. Its frustrating when i play a game where the difficulty is enjoyable, then i either get overleveled/geared or there's a difficulty spike that makes the game harder than i would enjoy
Your last point is exactly how I felt with the Witcher 3. At the beginning, the game looked like it was going to give me a real challenge and by the end I was having such an easy time I fought the final boss bare-fisted for a while because they just weren't a threat.
As Thomas Sowell says, "There are no solutions. Only trade offs". Difficulty options might solve one problem, but it might makes existing ones worse or introduce new ones. At the end of the day, as obvious as this may sound, the answer is simply, "Make games good".
Don’t know Thomas Sowell, but yes, I agree. Correct take.
@@razbuten Sowell is an African-American economics pundit. He can explain basic economic concepts well, but has a history of being a talking head for rich white conservatives.
But there IS a solution. It just may not be the one all players are gonna love. The developers need to ask themselves, "What is the intended experience of my (or our) video game, and how should we handle difficulty in a way that best reflects that?"
@@Orange_Swirl Yeah, that's what I meant by "make games good." Whatever experience developers want players to have for their game should dictate how they develop their game.
@@marchmelloow The problem I had with your statement "make games good" is that it was too subjective, so I wanted to come up with something more specific. You may have meant that, but I didn't like how vague it was imo.
28:00 this actually the reason why giving missle tanks in secret spots works in Metroid games.
If you aren't familiar with this series, missles are a weapon stronger than your main one but with a limited ammo. Game frequently gives you ammo capacity as a reward.
The thing is that at some point you have so many missles that you don't care about getting another five. So missle tank basically means "Congrats! You found a secret! No real reward is here".
It is kinda frustrating but it allows you to explore for the sake of exploring.
Just when I feel like I overthink things way too much, I watch a video like this, and realize it could be so much worse. 😂
LMAO BURNNNN
Agreed
The Celeste method is interesting. It made it clear what the expected version is, but it does provide assistance methods. Although, I never went with those methods. I wonder if people felt discouraged because of that separation.
the assist tools in celeste were intended as an accessibility tool, but it's good that it ALSO functions as a difficulty slider. You can make the game a bit more forgiving if you cannot physically move fast enough for certain segments , have a hard time seeing certain things, or just don't wanna bang your head against a wall when you're playing a highly emotional game about defeating depression and finding yourself.
I loved it. i couldn't beat the ending of the final part of farewell and was frustrated and was about to look it up on youtube and I heard someone say the assisstance options so I just turned them on and cheesed the final room so I could finally see the ending. I don't think games without a story need assistance options, but if you put such a meaningful story behind an extreme difficulty wall people are going to never see the ending and maybe even resent the story because it made them frustrated.
@@Zectifin I was the same, I gave up on the very last B-Side and the last part of farewell. But see for me, if I feel like I cheesed it, I think, why am I wasting my time on this? I love how the achievement for getting every strawberry was literally a sarcastic "impress your friends." I honestly found the strawberries really rewarding, but choosing between another 3000 deaths or turning on a cheese mode? I picked neither, just didn't finish the game
@@Zectifinditto. I grided the last room for a few hours before turning on invincibility, but have subsequently beat farewell over a dozen times without it. Instead of dropping it and never coming back which is close to where I was, assist mode let me get closure, and then later git gud
@@SnoFitzroy I'm in the "physically cannot move fast enough for certain segments" camp, to where it's actually random whether I nailed the timing for even a single input in one of the more demanding sections, even after I learned the rhythm. I only ever had to slow down the game speed by a max of 30% (so 70% speed) to get to a point where it felt -- and was -- doable for me, though. Could still be really hard, but there's a colossal difference between 'hard' and 'beyond my ability to even control whether I succeed.'
As someone that didn't grow up with video games and has very little inherent video game skill, I really appreciated Resident Evil's adaptive gameplay. As it is, there aren't a lot of games that interest me (as I like stories and puzzles but have little ability to deal with action or platforming) so I really appreciate it when I can play a game and not get so frustrated that I just give up because I just can't enjoy it.
The main downside is you are playing a game in which the rules are constantly changing, which can be unsatisfying to someone who feels they have mastered their current difficulty, only for it to suddenly change and they are now failing, or for deaths to be required before the game starts easy enough for lower skilled. The game is learning and changing the difficulty dynamically every time you succeed or fail, but a series of failures will still always lead to death and constantly changing combat rules can make understanding that combat harder. Also making a horror game dynamically easier does take away some of the fear factor and the whole overcoming your fear aspect to horror.
@@cattysplat as he said in the video, there's not a great way to make a game work for everyone. Though maybe it would be good to have the difficulty settings and adaptive difficulty (such as with RE) but with an option to turn ad off. I guess I don't really see RE as a game that's really meant to scare you or make you face fears so not being as scary wasn't even a consideration, but again, everyone is different. I'm sure a lot of people don't think fatal fame is scary, but that creeped me out more than dead space or resident evil. As far as adaptive difficulty goes, I don't see how it really changes combat at all. You don't have to adapt to playing differently, the enemies just die easier and there are more ammo drops and stuff like that. You aren't having to adjust to a different combat style...granted I'm a noob so maybe I just don't see it.
This subject was fascinating. Great Vid!
An interesting exploration and discussion of the difficulties with... well, difficulties. I'd always thought that having the game test you a bit and then suggest a difficulty setting for your skill would be a great option (and it's one I can't remember any games I've actually played doing), but you point out some reasonable issues even with that.
I really love the difficulty scaling thats baked into Hades and the Pact of Punishment system. I agree that wondering if i have all the right settings sticks in the back of my head. Happy Halloween!
Another big advantage of Hades is that you apply before each run, and you only engage with it after being already familiar with the game. But that sort of brings the issue of difficulty to when you start Hades for the first time, with there being only 2 options.
in principle yes, but i think it could still be improved. For example, i wanted to be challenged by Hades, becase even the lower heat levels didnt really do it for me. However, i need to actually grind the heat levels 1 by 1 for every weapon to actually get the rewards. Which just made me give up because its tedious, grinding through multiple dozens of fairly easy runs just to get to the fun part. If they instead just let you choose whataver heat level you wanted, and gave you all lower heat rewards you havent gotten yet, it'd be better imo.
Difficulty sliders and Roguelikes tend to go hand in hand, since you're encouraged to play through the game multiple times. Games like Dead Cells do a mix of both difficulty sliders in the form of upgrades/passive skills and Boss Cells which are basically the game's gradual difficulty options.
I remember being determined to beat the game without God Mode. Once I achieved that, I did all I could to attain full Godhood. Zagreus shall forever be ~80% god.
Yeah, my favourite way to do adjustable difficulty is in roguelikes like Hades and Slay the Spire where it starts out pretty managable and then once you beat your first run you can increase the difficulty at your own pace. Hades even has an easy mode that explicitly framed as something you can turn on if you're struggling too much, rather than just one option in a list of difficulty modes.
razbuten vids are the kind that I deliberate avoid until I'm in the perfect mood to absorb everything
I like this video, but also believe this is on an incredibly tricky (and important) topic. Like you touched on towards the end, saying "all difficulty settings are bad" -- I believe it's as interesting to remark that "if they're all bad, they're all good" -- by equal and opposite reasoning: a level playing field means level sets are uniform.
This being said, I enjoyed the touching on things like how addressing "contradictions" (e.g. some difficulty setting being good and bad at the same time) is the infinitely-expanding tree of complexity.
There'll always be further refinements and further "encompassments" -- in the sense that you can always "zoom in more" and get more "local" detail, but you can conversely "globalize" by zooming out, essentially combining the complex specialization into one that encompasses them all.
Of course, the "ultimate zoom out" is then just the stereotypical difficulty selector, with perhaps one more (funny, both important to note) difficulty selector of "none at all".
I really want to remark though that what you call a "dynamic difficult slider" is perhaps the best equivalent of "none at all" -- essentially a difficulty scaling that "scales itself". This perpetual loop it's in makes it perfect though this raises more questions on "if the player is, currently, at time T, then we need to decide how long ago before T is their performance going to affect the difficulty." Of course, updating it after each time you kill 1 enemy is possible, though questionable...
(This is all being said from the hyper-specific angle of games that have some sense of "uniform meaning of difficulty" and, somewhat tragically oddly writing in such serious tone, involve some sort of "killing" another -- like an FPS.) This (previous paranthesis) matters as, you seemingly geared towards at one point, there is the blatant question of "what do we even mean by difficulty?"
As the genre of the game changes, e.g. DDR versus Call of Duty, the effect "difficulty" has on the games code and structure DRAMATICALLY begins altering itself. This is why I agree with "not agreeing" and the idea of having no difficulty as the dynamic difficulty, that the only way for each game to create a "good difficulty system" that allows breathing room and room for growth for each player, the difficulty needs to be contained in its own bubble, where it (continuously, and SMOOTHLY never "discretely jumping") keeps altering itself based on *whatever THING* the difficulty "cares" about.
Even this prior comment further can be refined... Because not only is there the difficulty that the "game" cares about, but distinguishing that from the difficulty the "player" cares about, and how (theoretically) infinitely-many players have infinitely-many potential "difficulties they care about" -- whereas the game has a finite amount.
For this earlier point, one good example is Outer Wilds. Consider the "reduce frights" option in the DLC. This is interpertable as a "difficulty" with the option being turned ON or OFF. Though, in either case, I find myself repeatedly playing the game, doing different things each time, after beating it -- just to re-approach the game with a different perspective, set of goals, and interpertation of the metaphors of the story and design. Some things you can do (e.g. pretend you aim for "an easter egg") are easier to accomplish than others. You may well then say that each easter egg has "it's own difficulty".
I don't think I have anything "of substance" to offer in this comment besides really amplifying many of yours as really fascinating and notably their potential for more considerations/interestingly dually observing how game developers really have numerous (seemingly infinite) directions to explore this in relation to the player.
this is probably my favorite vid from you. I like hearing of your non-gamer wife struggle, sure. but this touched on a lot of core gameplay mechanics. also it's the first time I've ever watched a sponsor promo without skipping 😅
It also depends on what kind of player you are. Are you looking for a challenge or just walking around shooting stuff and have fun or do some exploring. For me I mostly don't play games for the challenge just want to hop in a be in a different world for some time.
Totally agree. Razbuten talks a lot about enjoying overcoming obstacles but if I am playing a puzzle game with a puzzle way above my level, I don't feel satisfied when I finally figure it out - I just feel kind of stupid.
Same. I’m honestly more in the “power fantasy lover” group they mentioned near the end of the video. But I love just taking in a new world and testing what I can do with it. It’s a lot easier to do that when the enemies don’t do 6 times your normal damage lol
Absolutely. I can't relate to this "sense of achievement" constantly spouted by the people who can only get enjoyment from challenging difficulty. To me it's just a feeling of "I'm glad that's over" more than anything. Challenging gameplay often gets in the way of my enjoyment of a game.
I play every game on easy/story mode for this reason and I don't have to justify myself to others why. I enjoy the game far more as I'm looking for a different experience, and on a single player game, why does that even matter? I'm not trying to prove anything, I'm trying to have fun.
I do think for that reason even in fromsoft games and other set-difficulty games I wish there were the options of "power trip" and "intended difficulty"
That being said I'm disappointed in the way some games have made difficulty choice feel like a personal attack that "intended difficulty" even as I wrote it felt like some attack on those who would choose power trip, even though I don't think it had to be that way.
@@loucam08 I hate how games have left people feeling the need to justify themselves why they choose an easier difficulty. One of the most common statements I hear when I walk in on my mother playing Horizon: Zero Dawn is she'll make some comment about the challenge of enemies after beating them and then clarify something like: "Of course I know I'm playing on an easy difficulty, I'm just so exhausted after work that I want to come home and have fun playing the game, not have a challenge"
Many people have this "git gud" mentality whenever it comes to difficulty. I often drop the difficulty, because I want to experience the game first and if it is really fun I'll consider putting more time in. If something isn't for me, I want to move on to something I can enjoy. In case it is so much fun that I want to learn everything it has to offer, I will "git gud". But I won't waste time on things that are only fun once you have already mastered it.
I love to “git gud”, so I always play on “normal” settings. Easy makes games too easy most of the time and hard makes the games tedious instead of hard.
I usually play at normal or harder difficulty usually just because I don’t want the game to be to easy, I actually forgot I was in hard mode when playing my current game🤣
I personally liked the Halo-system, where you need to do certain challenges to achieve new ones. Thereby, you get to experience different difficulties and can choose which one fits you most without taking the fun out of it. Just another reason why Halo 3 & Reach are some of the best games I’ve ever played
What? Halo just has a normal difficulty selection system, and you can choose the highest (Legendary) from the very beginning. What are you talking about?
@@vicc6790 don’t you remember the skulls? it‘s like min-maxing the difficulty by choosing specific adjustments like more aggressive enemies oder foes throwing more grenades etc
The world ends with you on the DS (legendary game) has a adjustable difficulty system where you lower your health to increase drop rates and can adjust the enemie strength on the fly. Amazing game if you like collecting and action
People with handicaps, I think, have the most benefit from difficulty settings.
If you're afflicted by stress related problems for instance, lowering certain settings allow you to surpass points you otherwise couldn't cross. For these people, it'd be like torturing themselves.
You can enjoy the story. Certain mechanics, like crafting in the witcher (I mean similar in its mechanics) can be fun but it can be frustrating to gather the required materials or go to a specific place to craft... especially if you don't have a boatload of time to constantly repeat something.
Yeah they're the ones accessibility settings were made for, but then some people complain about them even existing and letting 'casuals' enjoy their game 😐
I think Will you Snail did a really good job with adaptive difficulty as it changes mid game based on how well you do. And it actually feels very integrated to the game because of how its set up
It decrease the difficult but I still die at the same spike , I think king of thief's does it better by removing the spikes if you die to it for 3 times in a row
Really good video. You think really well. It’s very uncommon to find someone who makes well-reasoned analysis.
My favorite experience with difficult was ghost of tsushima. I always put difficulty on the highest setting but with tsushima it was crushing. I had progress with stealth around my first few hours because i couldnt continue but little by little as i grew stronger i felt comfortable attacking enemies head on. Until eventually towards the last hours the game became really easy
Honestly those ghouls are unironically the second hardest fight on death march. With the hardest one being making sure that one merchants brother survives looting a battlefield so you can get a crossing ticket.
The Djinn is also really hard if you turn level scaling on.
This was a really nuanced breakdown, nice job! Personally, I don’t mind adaptive difficulty when it’s successfully unnoticeable, because I like to be fully immersed in a game-both easily wiping through enemies and dying all the time can break the immersion for me, so if the game can successfully tweak that behind the curtain, I definitely find it to be a more fulfilling experience. But I know that just has to do with my playstyle preferences, and there’s as many of those as there are gamers
*I like when a game lies to me about my skill at the game"
@@stackflow343 yeah sure, as long as I’m having fun 😂 what is any curated experience but a detailed, intricate lie
One thing I love is when games tell you their intended difficulty, but something that would make me like games with toggleable difficulty even more is if they tell me how difficult the game is intended to be. Some games have a normal mode that I could feasibly breeze through and others are hard enough that I will just inevitably get stuck at a certain point and need to lower the difficulty to progress in a reasonable amount of time, and the "intended gameplay experience" only tells me that this is the setting that the game was playtested with in mind
In general, I always stick to the easiest difficulty and focus on the story, but I totally get the point you're making. I think I ran into things becoming mindless in Bioshock: Infinite, but other than that easy mode usually never disappoints me. I still think the best approach to this challenge is the single difficulty paired with the Assist Mode in Celeste that you mentioned.
Normal - Introducing myself to the mechanics and other systems
Higher difficulties - Testing my knowledge on what I know and my skill in more difficult situations
Reality:
Normal - normal numbers
Higher difficulty - higher numbers
The thing for me, and the reason I'll usually opt to play most games on at least one-higher-than-normal difficulty is that it tends to force me to engage with the game's mechanics and systems more meaningfully. Normal difficulty has a habit of letting you skate by with only minimal engagement and you can sometimes miss out on a lot of what the game is offering. Even something The Last of Us, on harder difficulties, the game plays more like a survival horror game which is great, and you need to scrounge for supplies, making exploration more rewarding, and forces you to make smarter and greater use of the tools available to you in encounters and all. On Normal, you can mostly just shoot your way through most of the game. It's definitely a lot more than just 'higher numbers'.