"Artificial Difficulty" in video games / Doom?

[Archvile Hunter]

I've often come across several individuals claiming that certain types of difficuly in video games are "artificial", meaning the way that difficulty is achieved is through "unfair" or "lazy" means. Specifically, recently, that The Plutonia Experiment is "artificially difficult" because of particularly "rude" chaingunner placement amongst other things.

 

In my opinion, "artificial difficulty" is a meaningless term when discussing video game difficulty. Either something is extremely easy, extremely difficult, or somewhere inbetween. Of course, difficuly is in some ways subjective, but the term "artificial difficulty" is still prevalent in casual discussion about video game difficulty.

 

In my opinion, the view that difficulty can be "artificial" is completely unjustified. It doesn't matter how difficulty is achieved, the fact of the matter is, that the parameters of the game coupled with the level design lead to specific situations, requiring a certain level of skill to be overcome. Different situations can require different subsets of player skills, eg. a Doom map can be challenging due to strong enemies, the amount of enemies, restricted movement, ammo balance, available weapons, health and armor placed in the level, the level's length etc. Any combination/selection of the previously mentioned parameters impact the difficulty of a map in different ways.

 

No matter what the designer had in mind, the fact of the matter is that a certain amount of skill in (a) specific area(s) is required to succeed. The only thing standing between you and victory is your own knowledge of game mehcanics and your personal ability. That said, foreknowledge is always helpful, of course.

 

I wonder what the Doomworld community thinks of this term, "artificial difficulty". Is it actually a thing, or just an excuse used by players who refuse to accept that a game is holding back the gratification of victory? Is the truth, that a game can be intentionally cruel in order to force the player to become more intimate with a game's mehcanics, either through trial & error or research online, hurting the quality of said game? Going on a tangent, Dark Souls is a game often praised for being "difficult, but fair," yet, in my opinion, Dark Souls is absolutely not "fair". Dark Souls is a game that deliberately puts the player at a disadvantage with its level design and enemy placement, and it is lauded as a fantastic example of impeccable difficulty design, yet The Plutonia Experiment is hated for the exact same design philosophy amongst many casual Doom players...

 

TL;DR Is "artificial difficulty" real, or just an excuse made by players who refuse to accept that a challenge is too hard? And, if you think "artificial difficulty" is real,  is The Plutonia Experiment really "artificially difficult"?

Edited November 15, 2019 by Archvile Hunter

[GarrettChan]

TBH, Plutonia is not that difficult to begin with. I personally just say it's a lazy excuse. The problem to me is that sometimes people like accuse some of maps are not fair or whatever even though the mapper(s) already said the maps are hard and not suitable for everybody. However, if the map has design flaw, that's another story. Sometimes the map doesn't give you enough ammo or necessary resource to do a thing, so in this case, I would say, well, maybe it's the problem of the map.

 

Other things could get into this type of debate is: Castlevania (long delay before using the whip); Lifeforce / Gradius (lose all the powerups when you die and basically unplayable unless you're good, but why would you die if you're good though); Wolf3D (enemies can shoot through other enemies, but you can't).

[Scotty]

It is a completely meaningless term used by poor, salty players.

[Archvile Hunter]

3 minutes ago, GarrettChan said:

TBH, Plutonia is not that difficult to begin with.

I feel the same way personally. The same people who complain that Plutonia is way too difficult would be shocked to learn how difficult many modern maps are in comparison.

[Edward850]

8 minutes ago, Scotty said:

It is a completely meaningless term used by poor, salty players.

Same, though I'd have said it as anybody screaming "artificial difficulty" is likely also someone who disables homing projectiles on Revenants.

[GarrettChan]

1 minute ago, Archvile Hunter said:

I feel the same way personally. The same people who complain that Plutonia is way too difficult would be shocked to learn how difficult many modern maps are in comparison.

 

Spoiler

The root of these things is basically it's hard for someone to admit he/she sucks. People just want to "win" everything (don't know how to say this. There's a particular word in Chinese, but it seems it can't be translated precisely to English.)

 

I think everybody has this problem, just more or less. I sometimes have this, but I just try to control myself not getting into this situation. Whenever you want to make up excuses to prove you're right, it's not a healthy thinking process anymore.

[reflex17]

I tend to disagree with buzzwords like that because most of the time all they do is cause needless confusion/misinterpretation. "Artificial difficulty" seems to be a phrase invented by someone who doesn't have the patience to beat a certain difficult part or a hard game. If something is difficult it's just difficult, games are artificial by their very nature because someone made them and almost any game has situations that are pre-set to have a certain expected reaction from the player.

 

Take the opposite as an example, we don't hear much about "artificially easy" because it doesn't really exist. If some part is easy because it's a tutorial or it's the beginning of the game, it's not "artificially easy", it's just easy.

 

As another example imagine a Doom level where the player has to run across some pillars that are high above a pit of lava. The player doesn't want to fall in, so there is a certain skillset required to overcome the challenge. Now add in a monster closet with some imps or a cyberdemon that attack while the player is trying to run across those pillars. This adds a new degree of difficulty, but to call it "artificial" is incorrect imho. The situation went from average to extremely difficult, but at the end of the day a game is a set of rules/parameters that are set for a challenge or to meet an end goal. Everyone likes different games/has different skillsets and I think there's more to it than can be easily summed up in a phrase like "artificial difficulty".

[Not Jabba]

25 minutes ago, Archvile Hunter said:

Is it actually a thing, or just an excuse used by players who refuse to accept that a game is holding back the gratification of victory?

 

Usually the latter, though I think the term once had more meaning. Consider the following scenarios:

1) A game's Normal and Hard settings have completely different monster placement, each one tailored to a specific skill level.

2) A game's Hard setting is the same as Normal, except that enemies do 2x as much damage and attack twice as fast.

The second scenario's difficulty isn't *necessarily* artificial, but it certainly sounds like they didn't think about it very hard, and it could be poor design. Monster placement, on the other hand, is pretty much the epitome of a design decision that somebody has to think through. I think this distinction is what people once meant when they said "artificial difficulty," but the term has unsurprisingly been latched onto and overused.

 

 

[GarrettChan]

5 minutes ago, reflex17 said:

"artificially easy"

Make Cyberdemon has 1 health ;P

 

1 minute ago, Not Jabba said:

2) A game's Hard setting is the same as Normal, except that enemies do 2x as much damage and attack twice as fast.

This is probably a good example to put in this debate. It's a rather lazy design TBH, but if at least the designer know this is somehow beatable, I would personally think it's OK to me. However, if they just multiply everything by a certain number and don't even know whether this is beatable, I would say this is not a good way to design things (probably unless they tell you this is not fair like Doom)

[RonnieJamesDiner]

I'm not trying to be the devils advocate, but I do believe artificial difficulty is a relevant term in certain circumstances.

 

For me, an example of artificial difficulty is Doom 3's Nightmare difficulty. You just lose HP every five seconds, at all times, until you reach 25 HP. They could've done all kinds of things with Nightmare, from simply harder hitting enemies with more HP, to classic-style changes like -fast monsters or even respawning monsters. Having a perpetual Damage Over Time debuff was, to me, lazy. It's more frustrating than it is challenging, which is where I personally peg artificial difficulty.

[reflex17]

1 minute ago, GarrettChan said:

Make Cyberdemon has 1 health ;P

 

hahaha 

 

"this is the version of Doom you can play by rolling your face on the keyboard"

[Murdoch]

I think you are correct, difficulty is difficulty regardless of the means of achieving it. But the means of going about it can be clever and well done, or cheap. I am in a minority it seems who despise Plutonia. I played it once and never again. I found it more frustrating than fun with far too many cheap moments, many that would have necessitated prior knowledge of certain traps in order to avoid getting really badly damaged or outright killed. I prefer to take a bad hit or death because my skills failed me, not because a trigger suddenly unleashed a swarm I had no realistic way of avoiding severe damage from without prior knowledge. A certain amount of that is OK but there is a line and I think Plutonia crosses it riding a cartoon rocket Wyle E. Coyote style screaming "Woohoo!" at the top of it's lungs.

 

But lots of people enjoy that kind of gameplay, and that's fine. Different strokes and all that.

[[McD] James]

OP is wrong about everything and in a myriad of different ways. I'd rather not spend the next hour explaining in explicit detail as to why they're wrong. I'm disappointed in some of you right now.

[snapshot]

I tend to use it to refer to parts of games that are cheap / unfair and don't provide actual challenge (like crazy unpredictable cam shake that I have no control over) but to be honest I don't know if that's the right term to describe it. No opinion on Plutonia's difficulty personally.

Edited November 16, 2019 by sluggard

[Archvile Hunter]

8 minutes ago, RonnieJamesDiner said:

For me, an example of artificial difficulty is Doom 3's Nightmare difficulty. You just lose HP every five seconds, at all times, until you reach 25 HP. They could've done all kinds of things with Nightmare, from simply harder hitting enemies with more HP, to classic-style changes like -fast monsters or even respawning monsters. Having a perpetual Damage Over Time debuff was, to me, lazy. It's more frustrating than it is challenging, which is where I personally peg artificial difficulty.

This is certainly an insteresting approach to difficulty. Doom 3 on Nightmare almost feels like an entirely different game, and I wouldn't choose to play on Nightmare under normal circumstances, but I still fail to see how the difficulty delivered by Doom 3's Nightmare difficulty is "artificial". Maybe 'artificial' is simply the wrong word to use, but the fact is that searching "artificial difficulty" on google yields over 100 million results. I wonder if there would be a more appropriate term for this kind of difficulty, like "alternative difficulty" or something. It's certainly a more creative and thoughtful design than simply raising enemy damage and HP values.

[Archvile Hunter]

6 minutes ago, sluggard said:

I tend to use it to refer to parts of games that are cheap / unfair (like crazy unpredictable cam shake) but yeah I don't know if that's the right term to describe it.

The mere fact that it's a topic of discussion suggests to me that there is something tangible worth exploring here, but the use of the word "artificial" has always sat wrong with me.

[reflex17]

8 minutes ago, Archvile Hunter said:

This is certainly an insteresting approach to difficulty. Doom 3 on Nightmare almost feels like an entirely different game, and I wouldn't choose to play one Nightmare under normal circumstances, but I still fail to see how the difficulty delivered by Doom 3's Nightmare difficulty is "artificial". Maybe 'artificial' is simply the wrong word to use, but the fact is that searching "artificial difficulty" on google yields over 100 million results. I wonder if there would be a more appropriate term for this kind of difficulty, like "alternative difficulty" or something. It's certainly a more creative and thoughtful design than simply raising enemy damage and HP values.

 

 

Calling something artificially difficult also places the reason for it on the developers of the game instead of the player's lack of skill or patience.

 

Like others have said there's good design and poor design. Ridiculous camshake or something like that is more unfair than anything. Take the original Prince of Persia on Apple II for example - the movement controls can be very stiff and 'clunky' at first, but with practice the player can learn to run around the dungeons no problem, that's the fun of it. Every game has a set of rules that the player must adapt to, and one of the most satisfying parts of games is figuring these things out, I imagine.

[Lila Feuer]

I prefer arbitrary difficulty myself. If something isn't functioning as intended however I am inclined to call it "broken difficulty" (being one-shotted at maximum health and defense because someone screwed up damage scaling in an RPG for example).

E: Flooding my screen with shit so I die however is probably artificial, since it has no actual effect on the difficulty presented in-game, but post FX being overwhelming.

[RonnieJamesDiner]

27 minutes ago, Archvile Hunter said:

This is certainly an insteresting approach to difficulty. Doom 3 on Nightmare almost feels like an entirely different game, and I wouldn't choose to play on Nightmare under normal circumstances, but I still fail to see how the difficulty delivered by Doom 3's Nightmare difficulty is "artificial". Maybe 'artificial' is simply the wrong word to use, but the fact is that searching "artificial difficulty" on google yields over 100 million results. I wonder if there would be a more appropriate term for this kind of difficulty, like "alternative difficulty" or something. It's certainly a more creative and thoughtful design than simply raising enemy damage and HP values.

 

I suppose in my subject view of what "artificial difficulty" means, an appropriate (and less subtle) replacement would be "asshole difficulty". I mean, just imagine for a second that when id Software released Doom 1 and 2, instead of the Nightmare difficulty being what we all know, they just took UV and then made every single sector of every single map a Damage -2 or 5% Health sector, bar none. It would've just been an asshole move. Yes, of course, there would've been a legion of people who defended it as an interesting twist and a unique challenge, given that it would inevitably result in speedrunning being mandatory, and speedrunning is already a popular playstyle. But I guess it boils down to the idea of forced damage on the player for me.

 

The more a game relies on the player taking damage which they cannot mitigate or avoid, in order to provide a challenge, the closer a game gets to what I consider "artificial" difficulty -- as in, the player isn't being punished for not understanding the game mechanics, or the levels, or the enemies, or the weapons, or even RNG, the player is simply just being punished for the sake of punishing them. Now, don't get me wrong, I think this is a viable (and sometimes fun) mechanic, because it can lead to some incredibly rewarding victories when you overcome it. That said, if used too much, and too often, I believe it steps over that line.

 

[Edit] I suppose another appropriate term might be "Masochism Difficulty"  

Edited November 16, 2019 by RonnieJamesDiner

[Archvile Hunter]

On a very abstract level every video game is really about inputting a series of commands such that 'Situation -> player input -> Win State'. The important thing here is that the player is able to make informed descisions about what to input, and when. Looking at it this way, the only way a game can "cheat" is by excluding crucial information (or inexplicably disallow certain actions by breaking predefined rules). If the player doesn't have information, they can't possibly make an informed choice. Just writing this, I remember the two teleporters at the end of Plutonia's Map11. Both teleporters technically grant a short-term victory in form of level completion, but if you're playing continuously, one of the two obviously sends you off worse than the other. There is no indication as to which is the right choice, yet you are still punished for choosing wrong. Or maybe you're punished for deciding not to save / forgetting to save your game beforehand?

 

On a blind playthrough, the player is of course not informed about monster closets / teleport ambushes (though they may be subtly telegraphed, or simply intuited by players after having picked up one seemingly unguarded key too many), but is it still unfair? Part of the challenge should be to react appropriately to the unexpected, right? I mean, if a game were completely predictable, it would quickly grow uninteresting. Surprising interventions in the player's situation, and a sudden need to re-evaluate, is necessary for interesting gameplay, correct?

[RonnieJamesDiner]

That seems like a fair assessment. The MAP11 teleport scenario in Plutonia is an interesting example to look at... is it artificial difficulty? Maybe, but I think I'd opt to consider it more of a ruthless gimmick than anything else. For starters, once you've played the map once, you've acquired the necessary information and the gimmick is gone (short of having a spotty memory). Second of all, as you mentioned, the biggest consequence of choosing incorrectly on a blind continuous playthrough is simply the disadvantage of having to pistol start the next map. Every established game mechanic and rule is still intact, and you've gained new information which eliminates that disadvantage on your next playthrough. So, bottom-line I wouldn't personally call this artificial. Just a little savage, which seems par for the course in Plutonia, anyways.

 

But yes I agree completely that surprising interventions in the player's situation, and a sudden need to re-evaluate, are necessary components of interesting gameplay, and I'd argue that this is a major element of re-playability.  

[baja blast rd.]

TVTropes explains it well.

 

Their categories (read the page for more explanation). My examples, using Doom.

 

Bad technical aspects make it difficult. The coding of a port is messed up and sometimes pressing the key corresponding to 'forward' will move you backward and vice versa, likewise left and right are messed up.

 

The outcome is not reasonably determined by the player's actions. At the end of beating a map, a frog sprite appears with the caption 'I will roll a dice. If the number is between 1 and 4, you exit; otherwise you die.' Then some RNG shenanigans enact that. Or perhaps there is a one-use only door operable by monsters that can never reopen for the player, gating off a room containing a valuable item -- or even the exit -- and you can't reliably prevent a monster from operating it.

 

Denial of information critical to progress. Obscure progression can be a valid part of challenge, but it can be taken too far! You have to shoot an unmarked 32-wide chunk of the wall to operate a lift several rooms away. That sounds quite artificial. 

 

The outcome of the game is influenced by decisions that were uninformed at the time and cannot be undone. There are two identical doorways through which you can leave the start room. Go through one of those and the exit is permanently blocked off. (By an impassable frog sprite!) 

 

The game requires the player to use skills or knowledge that are either incorrect or have nothing to do with the genre. Like, uh, a frog that asks you math problems. (This one is accepted, interestingly -- these maps are thought of as 'avant garde'.)

 

If these seem highly improbable in Doom modding, it is because they are. We are modding an existing game, rather than designing one from scratch. A lot of design choices are ultimately constrained -- from the practically limitless possibility of 'no game exists, make one' to something quite large, but finite -- by the structure of the game and stuff like existing map-design tropes and guidelines. The majority of Doom maps these days -- even hard ones -- will design fights, design aesthetics, and design progression, without focusing as much on crafting elements that might be lumped into the 'pure game design' category. Or when they do, as with custom monsters, those elements are bounded by some semblance of normalcy (or QC). All of that works to naturally curtail a great deal of what could be thought of as artificial difficulty.

 

When it does happen, anyway, we tend to call much of it 'bugs'. 

[Archvile Hunter]

30 minutes ago, RonnieJamesDiner said:

the biggest consequence of choosing incorrectly on a blind continuous playthrough is simply the disadvantage of having to pistol start the next map. Every established game mechanic and rule is still intact,

This is true, in a sense, since the player is never expected to know where a teleporter will take them, but the level design previously throughout Plutonia has taught the player that this specific type of teleporter is the level exit. They both technically still are, but one of them will come off as a cruel surprise to an unsuspecting player (though, maybe the player should suspect something was up when there were suddenly two teleprters to pick from?). Still, neither regresses player progress; all that changes is the starting condition of the player in the next map, which, in the scope of the entire campaign, is a very minor thing. Some players will even find the prospect of starting the next map on less than 10% health through sheer bad luck / lack of knowledge exciting!

Edited November 16, 2019 by Archvile Hunter

[Archvile Hunter]

5 minutes ago, rdwpa said:

The outcome of the game is influenced by decisions that were uninformed at the time and cannot be undone. There are two identical doorways through which you can leave the start room. Go through one of those and the exit is permanently blocked off. (By an impassable frog sprite!)

Again, are the two exits at the end of Plutonia Map11 bad design? Neither "prevents progress", one just puts the player in a tougher situation going forward than the other, but there is no way for a first-time player to know that.

 

I guess you could compare it to a choice between two random chests in a rogue-like dungeon. There is no way to know which contains better loot, but both are of "positive value". In a way, both exits in Plutonia Map11 are of "positive value", since they advance the game to the next map, but one is obviously preferable to the other. The worse choice just feels wrong, since losing health is usually an indication of poor decision-making and/or poor movement.

[RonnieJamesDiner]

Oh god, I forgot how that Plutonia teleport ending actually worked. For some reason I was thinking you died and got reset with a pistol start in MAP12, not that you started the map on death's door, haha. Yikes. I guess I still stand by what I said. 

[Marcaek]

All challenges in video games are artificially diffcult by definition

[Juza]

1 hour ago, Not Jabba said:

2) A game's Hard setting is the same as Normal, except that enemies do 2x as much damage and attack twice as fast.

Most if not all modern FPS games do this, including Doom 2016. It's the cheapest form of difficulty implementation there is, and that's when I say the term "artificially difficult" is, in a way, correct. Because it's the cheapest way there could reasonably be, in my eyes.

 

Why I don't see Doom 3's implementation of its Nightmare difficulty as 'cheap and lazy' is because I don't think players are expected to play it once they reach a high skill level, much like with the Nightmare difficulty in the classic Doom games: it is meant to be cheap and unfair. Nightmare in Doom 3 is a very gimmicky play-style for players who want to experience an unusual challenge. I wager it is only there as a homage to the classic Nightmare concept.

 

There doesn't need to be, nor do I think it is possible to have a difficulty setting challenging for everyone; this includes players who think a game's highest difficulty is too easy for them. Well, there's no such thing as perfection.

[mewbusi]

1 hour ago, rdwpa said:

TVTropes explains it well.

 

Their categories (read the page for more explanation). My examples, using Doom.

 

Bad technical aspects make it difficult. The coding of a port is messed up and sometimes pressing the key corresponding to 'forward' will move you backward and vice versa, likewise left and right are messed up.

 

The outcome is not reasonably determined by the player's actions. At the end of beating a map, a frog sprite appears with the caption 'I will roll a dice. If the number is between 1 and 4, you exit; otherwise you die.' Then some RNG shenanigans enact that. Or perhaps there is a one-use only door operable by monsters that can never reopen for the player, gating off a room containing a valuable item -- or even the exit -- and you can't reliably prevent a monster from operating it.

 

Denial of information critical to progress. Obscure progression can be a valid part of challenge, but it can be taken too far! You have to shoot an unmarked 32-wide chunk of the wall to operate a lift several rooms away. That sounds quite artificial. 

 

The outcome of the game is influenced by decisions that were uninformed at the time and cannot be undone. There are two identical doorways through which you can leave the start room. Go through one of those and the exit is permanently blocked off. (By an impassable frog sprite!) 

 

The game requires the player to use skills or knowledge that are either incorrect or have nothing to do with the genre. Like, uh, a frog that asks you math problems. (This one is accepted, interestingly -- these maps are thought of as 'avant garde'.)

 

If these seem highly improbable in Doom modding, it is because they are. We are modding an existing game, rather than designing one from scratch. A lot of design choices are ultimately constrained -- from the practically limitless possibility of 'no game exists, make one' to something quite large, but finite -- by the structure of the game and stuff like existing map-design tropes and guidelines. The majority of Doom maps these days -- even hard ones -- will design fights, design aesthetics, and design progression, without focusing as much on crafting elements that might be lumped into the 'pure game design' category. Or when they do, as with custom monsters, those elements are bounded by some semblance of normalcy (or QC). All of that works to naturally curtail a great deal of what could be thought of as artificial difficulty.

 

When it does happen, anyway, we tend to call much of it 'bugs'. 

 

This is probably the best overview of artificial difficulty. If your game is hard due to its technical aspects without their consideration, too much RNG, withholding information, making seemingly trivial decisions decide life and death (Hello Sierra), or asking for a unexpected skill set of the players these are textbook examples.

 

However while not necessary artificial I argue that incorrect texturing of difficulty or not having enough perceived effort placed into the difficulty is one of the most common reasons for people saying a game has artificial difficulty.

 

Having a 10 hour long boss battle even with the most finely honed strategy to complete once, especially without the allowance of save points or pausing is a can of crap that nobody wants to open. Even less if the only reason the boss is hard is due to its healthbar. 

 

Tedious difficulty and Hard difficulty are two entirely separate things. If that tedious difficulty passes into the this took perhaps 10 minutes to think up and implement its more than reasonable to call it artificial.

[Aurelius]

I think enough relevant things have been said about the topic, especially by @rdwpa and @mewbusi, but I thought I'd chip in with some random thoughts.

I don't mind the 'git gud' attitude. Some games require you to master it's mechanics, quirks, map layout, enemy behavior and so forth to beat it at it's highest difficult. Hell, maybe even wearing a blindfold and using sound cues and playing with a Guitar Hero controller. I love to play many different games, so I will probably never have the time to learn just one on the highest level (especially while working full time), and I'm fine with that. That is why difficulty settings exist. Anyone who bitches about a game being too difficult (or 'artificially difficult') because of the aforementioned reasons, is wrong.

However, artificial difficulty does exist. Whether we should call it artificial difficulty or not is a question of semantics, but I think it does get the point across if used properly. Good examples have been given above, and the example I was going to give would've been an amalgamation of some of them, mainly RNG and lack of logic in progression. But like I previously said, I agree with the sentiment that most people don't know what artificial difficulty means and use it just to justify their entitlement to gratification just by playing a video game, but then there are a few more informed ones that mean exactly the kind of things that are being said here. Hence, I feel that the calling the term 'meaningless' is somewhat black-and-white way of thinking about it.

 

Spoiler

Unless by using a very polarized OP you wanted to incite people to respond, then kudos to you, because I fell into your trap.

 

[reflex17]

I had a look at the tvtropes article's points and, as far as I can see, they can all be addressed as one of two things:

 

a) poor game design

b) hypothetical examples the article draws with no basis or reference, such as doing heavy calculus in a football game

 

The phrase artificial or fake difficulty are catch-alls and do little to describe what actually makes a game difficult. Another phrase you hear is some mechanic in a game being "cheap", which means essentially the same thing - fake difficulty is just a new way of saying it.  If the player messes up a jump because of the camera, that's bad design. The article says "Unlocking a door by solving a color puzzle is real difficulty. Unlocking it by pressing a button until you get the right number is not." ... Is there a game where you just press at a button like a hamster until the door opens? Again this would be bad design, there's no question of difficulty in that picture at all. I know about mobile games like cookie tapper or whatever, but I don't think that's the type of videogame we're discussing here. 

 

It also says "Withholding relevant information such that the player cannot possibly win without a guide, walkthrough or trial and error is fake difficulty."

 

There do exist games that can't be beaten without the documentation, but these are older games usually that had supplementary materials which were included in the box. Most games now come with anything necessary in digital format, and I can't think of any game that can't be beaten by trial and error. The only limiting factor is time and the value the player puts on the experience. I would say the phrase 'artificial difficulty' leads to misunderstanding at best, and could be considered harmful to discourse at the worst. To be sure I'm not opposed to anyone else saying it because there's usually more to the story. Just speaking from my own perspective, I usually appreciate it when someone goes into more detail.

 

Spoiler