Topic: Difficulty levels on Nintendo games

[EasyCure]

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Originally posted by: Plugabugz
Geist. So difficult to control it gave me motion sickness. I can't play it anymore!

fixed, and agreed in the fullest.

[Terranigma Freak]

People thought the western audience was ready for Fire Emblem, but once the game came out, people started whining about it being too hard. Ironically, it was the easiest Fire Emblem ever made toned down some more by NOA. Nowadays, people make bold claims about FE's getting too easy when they didn't even try the hard mode. You can tell when they claim it's too easy, then when the subject of Berserk Ashnard was brought up, they didn't know about him since he was only in the hard mode. Of course sadly, even FE9 was BADLY toned down with an entire difficulty level removed from the Japanese version.

[Ian Sane]

"Nintendo should, for the kids and newcomers, make things easier. I'm all for that. For the industry to survive, kids need to be able to break in."

I don't get this.  We were kids once with no previous game experience and yet we were tossed in to the deep end and didn't drown.  When I was a kid games were probably the hardest they've even been.  I sucked at games then and I suck now and I actually benefit from lower difficulties but lowering the standards for the next generation doesn't make any sense to me.  What disadvantage do they have that we didn't?

But then it does all fit this nerf world we live in where kids sit in booster seats until they're 10 and all the playgrounds we all somehow survived have been torn down and replaced for being too dangerous and Tom & Jerry smoking is now going to warp our minds and parents complain if a school bans cell phones because then they can't keep an eye on their kid even though decades of kids somehow made it through life prior to the invention of cell phones.  We're breeding a civilization of wimps.

[Kairon]

It's not a question of games being too hard for kids, it's a question of games being too inaccessible for those kids who end up not playing games.

Although I do agree, games don't necessarily need to be easier. Some games will become easier, some games will be harder, and things'll just  even themselves out just fine, in my opinion.  

[GoldenPhoenix]

The main reason why games are "easier" now is because designers actually need to design games (not to say you didn't have ALOT of well designed games back in the NES era though) instead of making you rely on quick reflexes and drowing the player in enemies/bullets with flickering graphics and cheap hits of doom. Now days there is a higher standard for game design and in turn that makes balancing games much harder. You also have to take into account game length, do you want a game that swarms you with enemies making it "hard" that pushes a game that should be 15-20hrs to beat is now taking 70 frustrating hours? Even the "hardest" of NES games, even those with poor design choices along with poor hits usually never took more than a couple of hours to beat. So is that the era we want to go back to? Games we can run through a few hours? Or if you are experienced maybe less than an hour?  

[Kairon]

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Originally posted by: GoldenPhoenix
The main reason why games are "easier" now is because designers actually need to design games (not to say you didn't have ALOT of well designed games back in the NES era though) instead of making you rely on quick reflexes and drowing the player in enemies/bullets with flickering graphics and cheap hits of doom.

This is true as well.

[GoldenPhoenix]

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Originally posted by: Kairon

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Originally posted by: GoldenPhoenix
The main reason why games are "easier" now is because designers actually need to design games (not to say you didn't have ALOT of well designed games back in the NES era though) instead of making you rely on quick reflexes and drowing the player in enemies/bullets with flickering graphics and cheap hits of doom.

This is true as well.

Honestly I am not even sure developers are focused on making games "easier" per say, but that it comes with the territory when you have 3D gamng where your old tricks can no longer apply to many of the genres. I'm surprised I am bringing this up, but personally I feel games now are more "art" centered then they were back in the NES era, so really the focus has shifted a bit more towards the experience while trying to balance it with challenge.

[Kairon]

In fact, who'se to say that the difficulty games were at during the 8-bit generation was "right?" It's just the difficulty level we started at, not the one we'll naturally end up in.

[GoldenPhoenix]

I guess it also depends on how you define difficult? Do you define it as quick reflexes that keep you from death? Because it could also be defined as puzzle solving, exploration, or even strategy. Difficulty is such a subjective term, back in the NES/SNES days difficulty for the most part was quick reflexes and some relatively simple pattern learning combined with that.

[KDR_11k]

I still think that Twilight Princess would have needed an option to make enemies do more damage, I often had situations where I completely screwed up yet I didn't die because constantly taking serious damage still isn't enough to drain your health at a decent rate.

Failure should bear punishment. Difficulty should be how difficult it is to avoid being hit, not how many times you can allow yourself to get hit (well, not to TP levels at least, permitting 4 instead of 3 hits would be acceptable). It just feels cheap when you take 20 hits from a final boss and can still stand.

If you want failure to not be as severe use a lenient respawn system (e.g. player dies during a boss fight -> move him back to the start of the fight and let him try again, don't make him run though a long level that's no challenge for him anymore) so the player only needs to perfect a small section of the game (e.g. that particular boss fight) but he should have at least some proficiency at the part to pass it, not just slug it out and win because he has more HP than the enemy.

[Kairon]

Personally, TP did absolutely too little damage all across the board. Quarter-hearts should NOT exist.

[GoldenPhoenix]

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Originally posted by: Kairon
Personally, TP did absolutely too little damage all across the board. Quarter-hearts should NOT exist.

Too bad it wasn't any easier than OOT or you may have a point.

Or how about this, don't pick up any hearts! Tah duh it is harder. Amazing how that works.

[Adrock]

Nintendo games are generally too easy. Laughably easy. When they aren't easy, they're frustratingly cheap like in Mario Kart: Double Dash.

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

Double Dash was easy peasy.  The original Mario Kart was plain cheating.

[Mashiro]

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Originally posted by: Adrock
Nintendo games are generally too easy. Laughably easy. When they aren't easy, they're frustratingly cheap like in Mario Kart: Double Dash.

Have you played Prime 3 yet?

[KDR_11k]

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Originally posted by: GoldenPhoenix

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Originally posted by: Kairon
Personally, TP did absolutely too little damage all across the board. Quarter-hearts should NOT exist.

Too bad it wasn't any easier than OOT or you may have a point.

Are you kidding me? OOT required that you actually figure out how a Stalfos attacks to hit it, in TP you just spam special moves until you hit.

[Ian Sane]

"It's not a question of games being too hard for kids, it's a question of games being too inaccessible for those kids who end up not playing games."

What the hell kids don't end up playing games?  The only kids I've ever met who don't play videogames only don't because their parents don't let them.  I have never in my life encountered a kid who CHOSE to not play videogames.  All this non-gamer stuff accessible stuff is for adults who are either too old to have played games as a kid or who used to play games when they were kids but stopped playing as they got older.  In a kid's life videogames are on par with TV and candy.  Since the 80's it has just been part of being a kid.

On the NES there was some cheap bullsh!t CHEATING difficulty and as game design moves on the player can do more and thus isn't so vulnerable.  Even on the SNES there was a difference because I could change the direction of my jump in mid-air.  But stuff like getting creamed by an enemy but still not coming even close to dying?  That's just dumbing down the game.  Or how about when games hold your hand the whole time and tell you exactly where to go and what to do?  That's dumbing down.  How the hell is it not?  The GBA Metroid games are still 2D and yet they're easier than Super Metroid.  Why?  Because those games blatantly tell you where to go and what to do.  There's a difference between a hint and telling you the answer.  There's a difference between making an enemy a more fair opponent and turning him into a non-threat.

Games used to cheat.  Now they let you win.  There needs to be a balance.  The game should be fair and I should need talent to win.

[Kairon]

No argument there Ian. You'll see that I believe that such things as quarter hearts shouldn't exist. If non-hardcore gamers are getting hit too often in a Zelda game, the solution isn't to reduce enemy damage because that's only treating the symptom, not the cause.

But also, the inherent CHALLENGES that make up gameplay need to change and become more accessible. Changing the direction of your jump mid-air is all well and good... if you're a reflex junkie. But if all games are are tests of hardcore traits like reflexes and pure pattern recognition, then I'm almost certain that there will be TONS of people out there who won't understand gaming.

This is why a game like Sims has helped expand the market so much: the challenge wasn't so much in reflexes, but in mentally picturing the daily lives of your characters. Nintendogs was another game that actually successfully made the challenge about a relationship and not about when and how to press buttons. These games are "easy" by traditional standards, but challenging when we expand the idea of where the video game tests us. These are the games that will finally make gaming acceptable to the rest of the population who don't live and die by the split-second jamming of a button, flick of a control stick.

[Stogi]

That's why I love games like Sunset Riders and Contra. They are so damn frustrating sometimes that when I finally beat a level or have a moment of brilliance, I can't help but feel warm inside. I judge a game these days by either how mentally challenging they are or if the game makes me rush with adrenaline. Contra makes me rush with adrenaline, while Metroid Prime 1 makes me challenge myself mentally. RE4 makes me rush with adrenaline, while Pikmin challenges me mentally.

I have played about an hour into Metriod Prime 3 with hints off and on veteran mode, and I feel like this game is challenging me and damn it, it feels good!

Everyone loves a challenge and when it comes to videogames there needs to be at least a difficulty setting because we all have our own levels of easy and hard so why not cater to everyone. That is what Nintendo is suppose to do right? Blue Ocean and all that sh!t, right?


EDIT: Well said Kairon. And I agree....there are many different types of challenges, but no matter what they are they shouldn't be easy to conquer and that's exactly what makes it fun.

[Ian Sane]

"Changing the direction of your jump mid-air is all well and good... if you're a reflex junkie. But if all games are are tests of hardcore traits like reflexes and pure pattern recognition, then I'm almost certain that there will be TONS of people out there who won't understand gaming."

I agree there.  I have sh!tty reflexes so I'm glad that that's not the only type of challenge in a game.  I prefer solving puzzles and figuring out what to do next.  But I can't fully enjoy that if before I figure it out myself some blatant hint tell me what to do, and it's something that I would have figured out on my own had I thought about it for another 30 seconds.  Different types of challenges is good.  Dumbed down easy challenges aren't.

And the jump in mid-air thing isn't relfex based.  It made things easier because you could recover from a mistimed jump.  Jumping used to be harder because the player had less control.  That was a natural way of making the game easier.  Really what they were doing was just making things more fair.

[Adrock]

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Double Dash was easy peasy. The original Mario Kart was plain cheating.

Easy until 150cc... then it's multiple item attacks and unbelievable comebacks even when you plan to have CPU opponents fall off the track.

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Have you played Prime 3 yet?

Pretty easy so far. The hardest part for me was getting used to the controls in the beginning and even that didn't take too long.  

[Stogi]

"The hardest part for me was getting used to the controls in the beginning and even that didn't take too long. "

Well that shouldn't be hard...........

Also are playing on normal or veteran?

[KDR_11k]

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The GBA Metroid games are still 2D and yet they're easier than Super Metroid. Why? Because those games blatantly tell you where to go and what to do.

Fusion is completely linear but its difficulty comes from enemies doing 300+ damage per shot. Zero Mission doesn't tell you much about where to go (the "unknown upgrades" are really lame though) but it's easier because the enemies are easier. I never beat Ridley in SM but had no trouble with him in ZM (however in hard difficulty I'm once again stuck at Ridley).

Unlockable difficulty strikes me as rather dumb though, isn't the whole point of difficulty to let you choose how hard the game should be? Why require the player to spoil the whole game for himself before "properly" playing the game? Oh right, because you couldn't think of anything better for the end game unlocks...

Personally I found some parts of Metroid Prime pretty difficult, especially the wave pirates were tough IMO. Sunshine had its hard parts (but mostly related to control/camera issues...). Windwaker not that much and Twilight Princess was like "I am Chuck Norris!". Oh, right, Aonuma said he has zero reflexes but yet he's heading development of a game that heavily uses reflexes for combat... Guess his solution was to make the player invincible.

[Kairon]

Quote
Originally posted by: KDR_11k
Twilight Princess was like "I am Chuck Norris!". Oh, right, Aonuma said he has zero reflexes but yet he's heading development of a game that heavily uses reflexes for combat... Guess his solution was to make the player invincible.

So you agree with me? Aonouma's bad for Zelda?  

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

"Easy until 150cc... then it's multiple item attacks and unbelievable comebacks even when you plan to have CPU opponents fall off the track."

At least they don't physically drive faster than players are allowed.  Maybe you just haven't figured out the the game's item system favors the underdogs?  Last place is the biggest threat to first place, afterall.  *how on earth did i ever get past All-Star Cup?*

And MP3 boss fights are incredible on Veteran.