"Artificial Difficulty" in video games / Doom?

[[McD] James]

 

 

 

 

2 hours ago, Cynical said:

Cave's games post-Ketsui are just atrocious poorly-designed mess after atrocious poorly-designed mess.

 

That's just crazy talk. 

[Barry Burton]

On 11/15/2019 at 6:23 PM, Scotty said:

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

 

Disagree to an extent.

 

Vanilla Dark Souls 2 is a good example of this term. If you compare DaS2 to DaS1, there are some really clear cut examples, even in a series where difficulty is the selling point and drives the entire experience. Part of the appeal is the weaponry. Everything has a certain heft to it, and heavy weapons in particular feel heavy. Combat becomes more strategic, where stamina conservation matters between the exchange of blows. In DaS1, this feels pretty spot on.

 

In DaS2 however, there's an increased slowness to your character. Certain animations now have a longer wind up, but the worst aspect is that now your stamina replenishes much slower. To add to this, you are often overwhelmed by enemies who are much faster than you, and they come in droves. In vanilla DaS2, these enemies can turn on a dime 80% into their swing arc. This makes rolling and dodging much harder. In Scholar of the First Sin, the experience is much more polished, but it still has its share of bullshit. Lud and Zallen are two bosses that are incredibly difficult to fight at once, but they wouldn't nearly be that difficult if they couldn't turn invisible. In DaS1 you fight two bosses at once (Ornstein and Smough) and while extremely challenging, it doesn't necessarily feel hopeless because they can't turn invisible. Even if you die, you aren't far away to get back into the action. If you die to Lud and Zallen, you have to traverse a gigantic snowfield that obscures your vision every few seconds, while being pounded by 3-5 horse type enemies with a ton of health every step of the way. It's incredibly frustrating when it feels like a battle just to get to a boss fight that feels like you'll never win. Even if you summon the three phantoms there, they will most likely be half health by the time you reach the fog wall to the bosses, or dead because half the time they fall off the narrow bridge that leads to the fog wall.

 

Even Estus takes longer. In DaS1, your health refills almost instantly the moment you drink Estus. In DaS2, it slowly increases, unless you drink twice in a row or more. If you stop a moment to take a drink, enemies aggro you. If they're able to get a hit in, you're probably dead. This is especially annoying in boss fights, because again, they're usually much faster than you are. Miracles take double this time to cast, and time is not something you get in these games. Your only option after this are lifegems, which again, refill slowly and take like 3 seconds to use. Slower refill than Estus in fact, unless you have a higher tier lifegem.

 

So yeah, I think the term is real to an extent in my opinion. Don't get me wrong, I love DaS2 now, but it could have changed a lot of things even in Scholar of the First Sin to make it more enjoyable while still being incredibly difficult.

[reflex17]

1 hour ago, R4L said:

It's incredibly frustrating when it feels like a battle just to get to a boss fight that feels like you'll never win.

 

 

Someone else might be indifferent to this situation, and some players might even enjoy the gameplay that's described here. Believe me, I know DS2 is not a well-loved game to say the least... I'm not trying to say it's an acceptable sequel or even a good game, it's just an example.

 

As hard as Dark Souls might've been for some, I'll bet there was a large number of players at the time petitioning FROM software to make the next game more difficult. It might've even been the developers themselves who decided this without any external influence. On the topic of developers, Dark Souls 2 was made by a different group of people so it's easy to expect that the game won't feel like the original. I don't know the details like if they used the same engine or not, but for better or worse, many times devs try to reinvent the wheel, or at least try something new - especially when it's a different team. It doesn't always work out, and the game could fragment the fan community somewhat, just like we see some folks prefer original Doom over the sequel. In Doom's case it seems to have worked the other way, with the "average fan" preferring the sequel overall. Even if the game has poor controls and objectively more glitches than the original, and players end up preferring the first one, to call any difficulty artificial or fake that might be there from glitches or 'unfair gameplay' is redundant and unnecessary, imho. 

 

The more popular a game or other piece of media is, the more people talk about it, and of course the easier it is for misunderstandings to spread around. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, another recent FROM title, is often called a 'soulslike' game. I get it, the phrase tries to describe the game and give an idea what it's like. However, Sekiro is much more like the earlier Tenchu series that was developed by Acquire and K2 and eventually published by FromSoftware than it is like Dark Souls. Sekiro was planned as a Tenchu title, and to call it a soulslike potentially disregards the legacy of the titles that established the gameplay before it. This is just another example.

 

As always, this is just my opinion of course. R4L I don't mean to call you out specifically - I found your post interesting, and it got me thinking so I appreciate what you had to say on the topic.

 

[Super Mighty G]

16 hours ago, R4L said:

 

Disagree to an extent.

 

Vanilla Dark Souls 2 is a good example of this term. If you compare DaS2 to DaS1, there are some really clear cut examples, even in a series where difficulty is the selling point and drives the entire experience. Part of the appeal is the weaponry. Everything has a certain heft to it, and heavy weapons in particular feel heavy. Combat becomes more strategic, where stamina conservation matters between the exchange of blows. In DaS1, this feels pretty spot on.

 

In DaS2 however, there's an increased slowness to your character. Certain animations now have a longer wind up, but the worst aspect is that now your stamina replenishes much slower. To add to this, you are often overwhelmed by enemies who are much faster than you, and they come in droves. In vanilla DaS2, these enemies can turn on a dime 80% into their swing arc. This makes rolling and dodging much harder. In Scholar of the First Sin, the experience is much more polished, but it still has its share of bullshit. Lud and Zallen are two bosses that are incredibly difficult to fight at once, but they wouldn't nearly be that difficult if they couldn't turn invisible. In DaS1 you fight two bosses at once (Ornstein and Smough) and while extremely challenging, it doesn't necessarily feel hopeless because they can't turn invisible. Even if you die, you aren't far away to get back into the action. If you die to Lud and Zallen, you have to traverse a gigantic snowfield that obscures your vision every few seconds, while being pounded by 3-5 horse type enemies with a ton of health every step of the way. It's incredibly frustrating when it feels like a battle just to get to a boss fight that feels like you'll never win. Even if you summon the three phantoms there, they will most likely be half health by the time you reach the fog wall to the bosses, or dead because half the time they fall off the narrow bridge that leads to the fog wall.

 

Even Estus takes longer. In DaS1, your health refills almost instantly the moment you drink Estus. In DaS2, it slowly increases, unless you drink twice in a row or more. If you stop a moment to take a drink, enemies aggro you. If they're able to get a hit in, you're probably dead. This is especially annoying in boss fights, because again, they're usually much faster than you are. Miracles take double this time to cast, and time is not something you get in these games. Your only option after this are lifegems, which again, refill slowly and take like 3 seconds to use. Slower refill than Estus in fact, unless you have a higher tier lifegem.

 

So yeah, I think the term is real to an extent in my opinion. Don't get me wrong, I love DaS2 now, but it could have changed a lot of things even in Scholar of the First Sin to make it more enjoyable while still being incredibly difficult.

Commenting on this tangent, difficulty in Dark Souls is always pushed by marketing, but the director has stated it was never the point to be difficult. Stepping back from it, Dark Souls isn't actually difficult if difficult is to be defined as "mechanically demanding". It can be difficult in the sense that you have to use your brain more than casual gamers are used to. You usually can't just slash monster with sharp thing mindlessly and be successful. 

 

That actually makes me think about how a lot of Doom players despise puzzle elements in Doom. Regardless of how simple something is, people don't want to stop and think about it and get frustrated when the answer isn't just "push button to do x". I think more maps should have elements beyond epic set pieces and endless slaughter. Having to think a little isn't bad.

[Nine Inch Heels]

25 minutes ago, Super Mighty G said:

I think more maps should have elements beyond epic set pieces and endless slaughter. Having to think a little isn't bad.

It's not as if slaughtermaps are only about mindlessly hurling rockets and BFG-rounds into mobs of mid-tiers (sure, there are maps like that), they're also about problem solving and resource management, which does require actual thinking every so often... Because how else are you gonna figure out how a given fight is supposed to be played? The way you make it seem suggests your supposed readers that slaughter is merely "spam", and that is plain and simple false.

 

Let's also not forget that puzzle elements, which don't include monsters in any way shape or form, can be somewhat complicated to put together (playtest, cheese-proof, etc), especially if it's a particularly complex puzzle. And on top of that, some types of puzzles might very well be limited in terms of which map formats are required to put them together in the first place. Not every mapper is willing (or has the time to spare) to sit down and stare down the barrel which is the learning hurdle that comes with complex ACS/ZScript "structures" (or using DBX's lua-feature in some cases), which might be especially problematic if it's something they're going to put together just once or twice, and never again after that. Also, even some experienced people (one of which told me I'd "hardly have to learn shit" to do proper ACS) do eventually encounter problems with their scripts despite their experience (also true for the aforementioned person, by the way). Having said that, if you want to see more puzzles in maps, in whichever way shape or form, go right ahead and see what you can contribute to the landscape of "brainteaser-WADs"

 

I find it a bit too "simple" to argue that people aren't willing to give anything any thought at all. I wouldn't be surprised if some folks simply aren't looking to stress themselves even more after a hard day's work, and reach for something they can play more or less on autopilot, while leaving the heavy stuff for the weekend, or whatever. It's not an issue that people want something easy, it's an issue when people say that anything that isn't easy/simple/straightforward is "bad" (usually for arbitrary reasons which they sometimes like to pass off as "objective"), and the latter suspect usually is being met with a healthy dose of resistance (if not a bit too much at times).

 

From my point of view, it looks as if there's a little something for everybody in the very vast landscape of community output. From "Doom how mom used to make it" to "esoteric" all bases are pretty much sufficiently covered, and if there is a shortage of anything, it might be worthwhile to ask why only a few things of a certain kind are being made.

[Stocki]

Just my two cents for this topic:

As long as a game achieves a high difficulty via it's own mechanisms, I wouldn't call it artificial.

Artificial would be if I'd ... don't know ... switch hands while playing Doom. Using my left hand for the mouse would certainly add difficulty for me. But this is beyond the mechanisms of the game. That's what I'd call artifical.

Everything else is just part of the normal mechanisms (that can change or be extended on higher difficulty) or maybe it's just lazy game design but certainly not artificial.

[Super Mighty G]

1 hour ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

Let's also not forget that puzzle elements, which don't include monsters in any way shape or form, can be somewhat complicated to put together (playtest, cheese-proof, etc), especially if it's a particularly complex puzzle.

 

Having said that, if you want to see more puzzles in maps, in whichever way shape or form, go right ahead and see what you can contribute to the landscape of "brainteaser-WADs"

Do they not involve monsters? I think they can.

 

I'm not really advocating for complex brain benders. Just something a little outside the box. Think Doom 64. That has a lot of interesting little bits that I don't see a lot of. But maybe I should put my money where my mouth is and make something I've been planning for awhile now. 

[⇛Marnetmar⇛]

Artificial difficulty = setting your map up in such a way that beating it depends more on luck than skill

[reflex17]

56 minutes ago, Marn said:

Artificial difficulty = setting your map up in such a way that beating it depends more on luck than skill

 

 

Okay, let's take a moment to understand what luck is. Luck is the outcome of an event, either positive or negative, that was brought about by random chance. The term luck is subjective and not very relevant to any game that's more complex than a slot machine. If you go around a corner and a sergeant rolls big damage and kills you, you can call that bad luck if you want, but to give that situation an actual concrete description I would say it's poor preparation or a lack of skill on part of the player. I can see how the lines can get blurred because games of skill and games of chance both require only patience to overcome, and lots of games have elements of both types. Playing an RPG and you don't get the drop you wanted? You can say it's bad luck but more realistically it's simply an undesired outcome. Tacking the word 'Artificial' in front does nothing to reinforce or clarify the meaning of the word it's attached to, and really only succeeds in adding a layer of interpretation that doesn't need to be there in the first place, this very thread is an indication of that.

[some guy who made a wad]

A C H V I V E  T I M E

[Benjogami]

On 11/18/2019 at 4:45 PM, R4L said:

 

Disagree to an extent.

 

Vanilla Dark Souls 2 is a good example of this term. If you compare DaS2 to DaS1, there are some really clear cut examples [...]

What makes all of this "artificial difficulty" rather than design choices that you don't agree with?

 

You've clearly described some things that make 2 more difficult than 1, seems like you could just say that these things make it less fun for you and stop there, rather than calling it artificial difficulty. It's as if Dark Souls 1 is the accepted reference point, and anything that makes it harder is artificial because you can measure the difference. Seems similar to the complaint about Doom 3's Nightmare mode, because UV is the reference point and the changes that make Nightmare harder really stand out (and probably make it less fun).

 

Maybe if you could describe what changes could be made to Dark Souls 1's mechanics that would make it more difficult but in a non-artificial way, it would be clearer.

[Spectre01]

Re: Dark Souls 2

I'm a big fan, just like the rest of the series, and disagree on a lot of common complaints regarding that game, such as a few that @R4L brought up. Yes, you generally fight more enemies at once than in DS1, but that tests your ability to manage space between your character and incoming threats. Slower stamina replenishment means you cannot spam roll for iframes with almost no drawback. Same deal with slower Estus healing. In DS1 once you get your 20 flasks, you can simply double chug on bosses and not get punished for it even if they are bashing you in the face. You outheal the damage done and be back into the fight. DS2 demands better timing from players choosing to heal in combat. So I wouldn't call that artificial, bullshit, or lazy design. One thing I would, however, is the Adaptability stat. You have to level it for your rolls to be consistently good but there is nothing in game telling you what the iframe thresholds are for that stat. You have to check a wiki to see how many points are worth investing into it and when it becomes pointless to do so.  

[xdarkmasterx]

On 11/19/2019 at 12:45 AM, R4L said:

 

 Lud and Zallen are two bosses that are incredibly difficult to fight at once,

i disagree :p this only took me 2 tries

Spoiler

 

 

i never thought DS2 was particularly "cheap" or unfare, compared ot the rest. you learne how enemies fight, where the dead zones are in their attacks, and you can dodge back and forth between them without getting hit, even in the largest crowds it throw at you. running back to the boss, I agree, that's annoying. but that's just the game. i'll take the most annoying runback over one with no enemies between you and the boss, which makes me ask, why they even had that rather than putting the checkpoint right at the fight (no challenge, just time waste). that to me is something the series could have done without

 

Edited November 20, 2019 by xdarkmasterx

[xdarkmasterx]

btw on the topic with RNG in doom https://www.dropbox.com/s/itayf9iaqplvb8h/churchofrngsus.wad?dl=0

 

(don't get mad at me guys XD)

[jazzmaster9]

On 11/16/2019 at 7:08 AM, Archvile Hunter said:

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"?

Agreed. Shoving 3 Arch-viles in a box with only a chaingun is perfectly acceptable, its not artificial the players just suck... GIT GUD

 

But in all seriousness, I have to disagree that artificial difficulty doesn't exist, it Absolutely does, but with experience mappers can avoid these pitfalls.

There is a difference between a challenge and just plain unfair like the example shown above.

 

but based on your responses, you're more bothered with semantics that the actual meaning of "artificial difficulty" and i can't really change your mind about that.

Edited November 20, 2019 by jazzmaster9

[reflex17]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

[Archvile Hunter]

2 hours ago, jazzmaster9 said:

but based on your responses, you're more bothered with semantics that the actual meaning of "artificial difficulty" and i can't really change your mind about that.

Well, it is really hard to discuss "artificial difficulty", if nobody can agree on what it even means. I would even say that, if nobody can agree on what a word means, it has negative value, since it causes nothing but miscommunication and misunderstanding, the opposite of what words are supposed to do. The only thing people seem to agree on is that "artificial difficulty" is somehow unfun and/or unfair. But regardless of people's definition, it is also interesting to discuss what sort of difficulty people find unfair or unreasonable. Difficulty is very subjective, so what one person finds very easy might be completely unreasonable for another. If someone thinks something is "artificially difficult", they better be able to explain exactly why they think that.

[dr_st]

In some way, "artificial difficulty" and "cheating AI" (also frequently heard) are indeed an oxymoron in a video game, where all parameters are defined by the computer anyways.

 

Think of it this way - the AI doesn't cheat; it just plays by a different set of rules, chosen for it by the programmers to present a challenge to human players. Maybe they don't always do such a good job, and in other cases they may be targeting higher/lower skills than yours. Designing a game that can be tweaked to challenge wide ranges of player skills is not easy.

 

Yes, there are games, or parts of games (for example some of the new DOOM levels) that are too hard for me, and I accept that it is because I just haven't developed the skill. I wouldn't call any of this "artificial" or "cheap".

 

There are two things, however, that make me lose interest rather quickly.

 

One - when I see that the challenge is mostly luck-based, and difficulty is increased by simply stacking the odds against me; so that no matter what I do, I only have a 10% chance of success, and it seems to be independent of my actions. And then someone things that by making it 1% chance I will want to take it as a challenge. No thanks.

 

Two - when the game is difficult for the wrong reasons - not because the task is hard, but because the controls are clumsy, for example.

[Graf Zahl]

6 minutes ago, dr_st said:

There are two things, however, that make me lose interest rather quickly. 

 

One - when I see that the challenge is mostly luck-based, and difficulty is increased by simply stacking the odds against me; so that no matter what I do, I only have a 10% chance of success, and it seems to be independent of my actions. And then someone things that by making it 1% chance I will want to take it as a challenge. No thanks. 

 

Two - when the game is difficult for the wrong reasons - not because the task is hard, but because the controls are clumsy, for example.

 

I'd add a third point here. If difficulty is achieved by repetetive application of the same thing to make it harder it can get boring very, very quickly.

 

As an example, fighting Revenants on occasion is fine, fighting packs of Revenants can become annoying, but where I draw the line is when a map puts a bunch of Revenants into every second trap it has or behind every door, preferably in situations where the player has an SSG at best. That's no longer difficult, that's just tiresome. But there's lots of maps falling for this type of design.

 

[Bauul]

On 11/16/2019 at 1:47 AM, Doomkid said:

Why do people refer to unfair or impossible shit as artificial though?

 

I always presumed the word was chosen as the opposite to difficulty that felt "natural" in the sense of the internal logic of the game.

 

Obviously that's not a real distinction in a technical sense, but in a well designed game you don't feel the 'presence' of the code, the whole experience feels coherent and immersive.

 

I've seen difficulty described as artificial where it essentially becomes immersion breaking. When difficulty doesn't come from the core design of the game, but rather overtly and obviously inserted by the developers.

 

The previous example of Doom 3's depleting health feels "artificial" because it isn't in keeping with the rest of the game. It feels unnatural in the sense that there's no reason it would ever happen organically in the logic of the game world.

 

There is no technical distinction of course, but I think that's where the use of the word came from.

[jazzmaster9]

6 hours ago, Archvile Hunter said:

If someone thinks something is "artificially difficult", they better be able to explain exactly why they think that.

Well i really dont see any reason for shoving 3 archviles in an empty room objectively fun or fair so... sounds artificially difficult... but oh well

[Barry Burton]

11 hours ago, Benjogami said:

What makes all of this "artificial difficulty" rather than design choices that you don't agree with?

 

You've clearly described some things that make 2 more difficult than 1, seems like you could just say that these things make it less fun for you and stop there, rather than calling it artificial difficulty. It's as if Dark Souls 1 is the accepted reference point, and anything that makes it harder is artificial because you can measure the difference. Seems similar to the complaint about Doom 3's Nightmare mode, because UV is the reference point and the changes that make Nightmare harder really stand out (and probably make it less fun).

 

Maybe if you could describe what changes could be made to Dark Souls 1's mechanics that would make it more difficult but in a non-artificial way, it would be clearer.

 

Excellent counterpoint. So excellent in fact, that I'm going to admit defeat and say I'm wrong. When you ask about DaS1 and how it could be made harder, I never really thought about it that way honestly.

 

I've played DeS and DaS a lot. I think not having played DaS2 nearly as much maybe skewed my opinion a bit too far. In my defense, most of my gripes are how sluggish things feel. Having played DeS first makes this contrast much bigger, because DeS is much more faster paced. Arcade-like, even. DaS1 slowed things down as well, but not as dramatically as DaS2 I feel. Still, you're right; these are gripes I have and not sprinklings of unfairness from the game developers. DaS2 is just a different play style.

 

Quote

i disagree :p this only took me 2 tries

 

I guess I have to change things up then. My powerstance +10 Mace/Club and my maxed Lightning Greatsword barely scratch these guys.