Author Topic: Game difficulty? (Read 5107 times)

DRJ · « **on:** June 30, 2003, 08:56:31 AM »

I was just wondering what everyone thinks about the difficulty of GCN games. I really liked WW, but in the end it was just too easy. Its still a great game, but I never died once and only had one fairy pop out once in the final fight versus Ganon.

Metroid Prime was pretty tough the first time through, and I just recently went back and completed it on hard mode. The Omega Pirate was killing me for a while, but I finally got past him and breazed through the rest of the game.

Now the rest of my GCN lineup are all too easy, they are great games, and very fun, but just not challenging. Leaving out party games like SSBM and Mario Party 4 I have SMS, Star Fox, Pikmin plus a few others and the difficulty is a joke. And Nintendo wants to make them easier? I really dont know how they could be easier, unless they make your character invincible, or better yet just have a menu when you start the game that lets you just select the ending you want, and your done, no need to play at all.

If the games need to be easier for more people to complete/enjoy, fine, but why cant there just be difficulty settings like in MP for every game.
1) Normal
2) Hard
3) Extreme
4) ...

This way you could set SMS to the highest difficulty and lets say two hits would kill you, that would make it a lot more gratifying when you finally beat the game.

Maybe its just me, but when I beat MP and hard I was like "Yes, finally" and when I beat WW I was like "Well, Ok, so what form is Ganon going to change into when he breaks out of his stone form??? .... Oh the game is over??? @#$@"

Luciferschild · « **Reply #1 on:** June 30, 2003, 09:37:21 AM »

Yeah I heard some people complaining about how sms is too hard. Like please that game is not hard, it's average difficulty. I got to give them some credit for not making sms a total pushover but I bet the next mario game will be even easier. Personally it feels like nintendo is dumbing down the difficulty of zelda to appeal to kiddies. Typical nintendo. Wouldn't surprise me if in the next zelda game you have to get hit 50 times before it takes away one/ one thousandth of a heart piece.

NintendoFanGirl · « **Reply #2 on:** June 30, 2003, 11:26:24 AM »

I would say Wario World was challenging at times, not necessarily hard, but challenging. I like it that way. It it is too difficult, I end up quitting and never going back and I hate games like that. I'm almost at the end of WW and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who is considering buying it. I feel it was worth the $50 I paid.
A game shouldn't be about difficultly or frustration, it should be about fun and entertainment. Even though Zelda was easy, wasn't it one of the best games out there?

Grey Ninja · « **Reply #3 on:** June 30, 2003, 11:39:50 AM »

Quit your damn whining. If it really bothers you that some games are easier than others, then don't play the easy ones. Only play the stupidly difficult games like Ikuraga or Tetris.

DRJ · « **Reply #4 on:** June 30, 2003, 12:23:29 PM »

Quote
Even though Zelda was easy, wasn't it one of the best games out there?

Zelda WW is one of the best games I have ever seen. Just too easy.

I would just like to see a selection of difficulty levels on more games, that way if you want the challenge, it is there, and if you want it a little easier, you can do that too.

joshnickerson · « **Reply #5 on:** June 30, 2003, 12:30:38 PM »

You can blame casual gamers for that. Most casual gamers won't spend a lot of time trying to finish a level or even an entire game, so in order to appeal to them, the games have to be somewhat easier so casual gamers won't abandon them.

Hostile Creation · « **Reply #6 on:** June 30, 2003, 12:53:29 PM »

I don't mind difficulty. Sometimes it'd be nice to have a harder game, but I buy video games for fun, not so I can cuss out my Gamecube when I can't beat something (I do that in SSBM; I can provide my own difficulty in that).

Actually, I started the bonus Zelda thing over (when you beat the game and start out with other clothes and the camera) and died once on the first boss. It was more a matter of being impatient than lack of skill, but. . . whatever.

WesDawg · « **Reply #7 on:** June 30, 2003, 01:31:53 PM »

I figure the dumbed down the number of hits you could take in WW after they got criticised for making SMS to hard. IIt woulda been nice to have an option for a harder skill level though, I agree They'd have to give you some sort of bonus for beating it on hard, of course, but I figure they can add a demo of some sort of upcoming game. I always thought that'd be cool why to promote upcoming stuff, and encourage people to play your games a lot.

Gup · « **Reply #8 on:** June 30, 2003, 04:22:56 PM »

The hardest games that I've played on GC:

Resident Evil Zero on hard(ammo is almost non-existant)
Mystic Heroes
Metroid Prime(mainly Prime, because I couldn't figure out how to hurt his true form, but then. . .)

mojorizin · « **Reply #9 on:** June 30, 2003, 04:46:18 PM »

Honestly, I think the drop in difficulty can be directly traced back to the advent of "all 3-D" gaming. When you look at the few 2D games out there - Ikaruga and Mega Man, both have insane difficulty. Contra for PS2 - same thing. The hardest thing in 3D games is the control, not the game itself. Taking SMS as an example, other than those Red Coin stages the toughest thing was trying to line up Mario in a 3D world to accomplish certain tasks. Remember trying to figure out to jump/bounce/squirt your way to a super high red or blue coin and doing it over and over, falling several times, simply because you have little idea where you are in relation to the coin?

The length of these games don't help either. After spending years developing and programming a few fantastic worlds, there isn't time for much else - thus we get the WW's - Wind Waker and Wario World that just feel....cut off 2/3 of the way through - you know something was meant to be there, but they just couldn't get it all in. With all due respect, I'm certain it takes gargantuan effort to build these games, but I would settle for a 2D games that is twice as long with tons more enemies, areas, items, etc. Thats why I've always felt Castlevania:Symphony of the Night and Super Metroid are the two greates games ever.

RickPowers · « **Reply #10 on:** June 30, 2003, 05:08:22 PM »

Sounds like someone needs a dose of something ... Viewtiful. Two difficulty levels to start with, and two more unlockable!

blu knight · « **Reply #11 on:** June 30, 2003, 05:13:57 PM »

I absolutley agree with Mojo here, 3-D games are traditionally easier then 2-D games only because it takes so much time and effort to develop these games that difficulty settings seem more like an after thought in the development stages. Also casual gamers need that quick sense of accomplishment so developers purposely tone down the difficulty to keep in line with this trend. With that being said, I think the N64 had some of the most challenging 3-D games of its era. Games like Turok 1 and 2 were insanely difficult at times especially when it came to boss battles. Also Body Harvest is a great example of awesome game design and challenging gameplay. The Gamecube game library, on the whole, is pretty lacking in the gameplay difficulty area but Nintendo can't be blamed for it because its an industry trend right now. If you want tough games try the GBA and have ago at Sonic Advance 2. Getting all the Choas emeralds is near impposible without a walkthrough and some of the latter boss levels are freakin crazy.

mjbd · « **Reply #12 on:** June 30, 2003, 05:34:01 PM »

There is a thin line between challenging and tedious. Not to many people like to play games that are tedious/difficult. Consider this, you have played Zelda OoT, beaten it many times. Then you Play Zelda MM, beat it a few times. Now you play Zelda WW. You complete the game without to much difficulty. Why? Because you developed skills from the previous Zelda's. Someone who is new to the series may find WW to be fairly difficult. Very few games would gain much value in difficulty settings. Games like mario and zelda dont need them. A game like Resident Evil can pull it off because of the genre its in. Survival horror, less bullets, and harder enemies add to the experiece of suspense. In the end, I feel that many of us have been playing games for years and years, and have developed skills that a new gamers has yet to aquire, and developers need to appeal to them as much as they do to us.

mojorizin · « **Reply #13 on:** June 30, 2003, 05:56:44 PM »

Funny, but I feel the twitch has actually degraded over the years. After playing these softer games and trying to fire up an SNES classic shooter like Gradius or R-Type, I get it handed to me. I use to play these games with the thought of collecting every power up and destroying as close to every enemy as possible. Seems like now I can barely get through the first couple stages. Maybe its arthritis?

I do agree that we've pick up certain skills necessary in a Zelda-type game. When there's a lonely rock, blow the thing up and wait for the "you found something" chimes. Its tougher to get stuck because we know what to "look" for, or we automatically think "which item would probably solve this..."

Definitely not a fan of difficulty levels, and at least for me that doesn't lend itself much to replayability. The exception would be racers like Waverace where the circuits change and I know I'll unlock another track by beating the next difficulty group.

I don't mind the "collection" theme in Sonic, Mario etc, and I'm anal about finding everything anyway, but this stuff should either come during the course of play, or be something completely seperate. Here is where we get into the difference between difficulty and tedium, and I think both games above are prime examples of that. Collecting Sonic's emblems is difficult, many of the blue coins in Mario are just a pain in the arse. Collecting 120 shines should be a nice bonus, but the collection seems to now be the entire premise, rather than an amusing sideline to keep your interest long after the main game is over. I don't want to complain about SMS difficulty, and I do love the game, but the only moderately difficult part of the game is the collection of coins/shines - more difficult in terms of time and searching rather than gameplay.

HolyPaladin · « **Reply #14 on:** June 30, 2003, 06:41:18 PM »

I have commented on this a few times just these past few days, but I must do it again here. As I pointed out before, all gamers can play an easy game, but not all gamers can play a hard one. If you make a game harder, it slams the door shut on less skilled gamers. Moreover, a harder game is not necessarily fun. Mjbd said, "There is a thin line between challenging and tedious," which is almost exactly what I have been saying, though my structuring is more of, "There is a fine line between enjoyable challenge and frustration." It is almost the same, but I wanted to use my phrasiology because I feel it to be more accurate. I want to point out that frustration is never, has never been, and will never be fun, and a game that is not fun is a worthless game.

Believe it or not, as I have used frequently as an example, my girlfriend declared Wind Waker to be too frustratingly difficult and vowed never to touch it ever again. As for how easy or hard a game is varies from one beholder to another. Mario Sunshine is a more difficult game, regardless of how many people here might line up to post arguments to the contrary. The problem is not how easy games are, or are getting, as was suggested the other day, but that gamers are getting better. What was considered challenging ten years ago is considered simple, these days; the reason being that gamers are more skilled now than they were back then. You can't simply pump a game full of challenge, though, to accomodate (spelling?) the really skilled because you shut out all of those that aren't. An easy but fun game is a thousand times better than a difficult but frustrating game.

ReallyScrued · « **Reply #15 on:** June 30, 2003, 06:41:57 PM »

hahahah, u want a hard 3d game? play ts2 story mode on hard and the last few challenges, ive been bustin my nuts for the last few hours trying to beat it. i remember super mario world days when ur jumping skillz was all u needed to beat a level. it got repetitive but no one cared.......people judge games too much these days, take a game, and enjoy it, thas what it was designed to do. but alot of 3d games are more challenging than 2d, metroid? u cant tell me the 2d version is challenging, it just takes time, not skill. metroid prime on the other hand is all about how u carry out and in which direction u jump, shoot, and are looking in. if the time is spent into making a game hard, it will be just that, if it was made to be ez and enjoyable, it will be that too. ww was shooting at tiny babies i bet. looks like a damn cartoon anyway. its not supposed to be hard....many cudnt beat OOT so they complained. OOT was too much, WW is too little, u guyz are never happy....tsk tsk tsk

Hostile Creation · « **Reply #16 on:** June 30, 2003, 07:12:23 PM »

I agree completely with Holy Paladin.

NinGurl69 *huggles · « **Reply #17 on:** June 30, 2003, 07:18:03 PM »

Final Fight is the shite.

Gup · « **Reply #18 on:** June 30, 2003, 08:00:50 PM »

Quote
Originally posted by: mojorizin
I think the drop in difficulty can be directly traced back to the advent of "all 3-D" gaming.

I agree, it's just so much easier to stay alive when you can move in all directions instead of just timing your jump.

yellowfellow · « **Reply #19 on:** June 30, 2003, 08:07:28 PM »

i agree with many opinions posted here, especially josh, mojo and paladin. and since my views would be simple reiterations of what they said, i feel no need to repeat what they said.

these points though, have been expressed by miyamoto as well... i believe in a recent interview he explained how "old-school" games were accessable to everyone and with the jump to 3D a difficulty barrier arose shutting many people out. this is why mario is not the same to people that grew up with the 8 bit versions. i think his wish was to be able to make a game that anyone could "pick up and play" and where the difficulty spawned from pure game design (no dimensional visualization related control issues). but it's difficult since nintendo gamers are a different breed than others.

i realized this weekend when my two best friends drove up from TO that miyamoto is right. one friend is a PC gamer the other would be considered a typical mainstream gamer. games such as metroid and zelda really have strayed from this ideal difficulty notion (its not a bad thing and i know a hundred people are going to tell me that they aren't complex at all... believe it or not, if you are on this forum then you really aren';t a mainstream gamer so the hell do you know?). the fact is the controls have become quite complex and do take a little while to become adjusted to. unless you are a video game junkie (me) chances are slim that you would stick with a game for long (my friends). and because of this, mainstream gamers walk away from the game not enjoying it and yet not realizing how entertaining it really can be. this may be the reason why these game sold well on the systems but only to those that owned GCN, they weren't the system sellers many hoped they would be. in the end, nintendo isn't dumbing down games for "little kiddies"... its to appeal more to the large mainstream market.

i'm tired so i'll just add that nintendo faces problems with this, firstly, having the skill to pull this off, like it was said, game production is very difficult nowadays and much gets lost from concept to product. the developers have to be extremely skilled to be able to pull off a game where the control can be manipulated without any thought (viewtiful joe is very good in this regard). secondly, like denis dyack basically stated is that a certain degree of "flash" is needed in the games. mainstream gamers have to be drawn in by the flash and be able to manipulate the character easily and flawlessly to pull off satisfying moves. and finally, how to accomplish all this without entirely alienating your core audience, us nintendo players. for us metroid and zelda and mario are easy to navigate and easy to enjoy. what better way would metroid be controlled? i think any dumbed down method would cause such rage to flow through these message boards that computers would be spontaneously combusting all ove rthe world. in reality, metroid really can never be a mainstream game, never really has either.

these three things are what nintendo needs, albeit not the only things, to attempt to repopularize their games. i think nintendo has realized its games only appeal to nintendo players now and are taking steps to widen this market. but how to accomplish this without completely abandoning what what makes you special. its very difficult to conceptualize. miyamoto is right.

KDR_11k · « **Reply #20 on:** June 30, 2003, 09:38:03 PM »

The thin line between frustration and fun is fault. When you have the feeling of your failure being your fault, you know you can try again and succeed when you don't repeat the mistake. On the other hand, if you feel like it's the game's fault you lost, you don't think you can correct the mistake and thus get frustrated.
Good: Dying in MP because you forgot to jump over Prime's shockwave. You swear, next time you won't forget that!
Bad: Dropping into the void in SMS because the camera turned too slow. You notice the real enemy cannot be defeated...
Unfortunately, with the pride rising people are less willing to accept their mistakes and thus blame the game for avoidable mistakes. Means you either have to drop the difficulty to nonexistant to appeal to them or you can raise it while adjusting the controls, giving less proud people a game that's challenging, but natural to control.

I've had a frustrating experience with Rogue Leader (being shot down by some off-screen ship) and Bloody Roar (unnatural controls). In both cases I felt like I lost control.

Gamefreak · « **Reply #21 on:** June 30, 2003, 10:23:38 PM »

Want hard?
Viewtiful Joe and Ikaruga...

egman · « **Reply #22 on:** July 01, 2003, 05:25:54 AM »

KDR_11k--Good point. The barrier between difficult and frustrating is certainly complicated by the limitations of game design. And as some have already pointed out, 3-d gaming brought a whole mess of issues to game design that didn't exist before. We still have problems with camera position, AI, hit detection, etc. Of course older games had bugs and stuff, but not at the level we are seeing now. I hope video games are not becoming too difficult to develop, but that seems to be where things are headed, especially if parallel processing becomes the future.

There are some circumstances where it wouldn't be diffcult to up the challenge, however. Simply limiting saves or your chances to replenish health can go a long way in some games. Wario World could have a used a mode that did this. So, I'm not willing to let any developering of the hook if there are simple things that can be done to make a game more appealing to skilled players.

I think another thing that complicates the situation is the expectations of gamers. We are living in the "graphics whore" era. If you don't believe me, try lurking around other forums and see some the things that are talked about. I can't tell you how many threads I have seen over the net about the graphics of MGS:TS and how they compare to Sons of Liberty. There is very little talk about SK and Konami's plans to shake up the game play. Instead we get a lot threads of people slaming SK because they can't see the bump-mapping or the lighting is flat or the models don't have enough polys and the texturing sucks. How can a developer concentrate on tweaking his game mechanics when they know that having even a slightly rough looking game will get you panned? You only have to look at something like Eternal Darkness to see this phenomenon in action. For every fan of the game's atmosphere and design, there is a person that is disappointed about ED's models or how some textures looked. The audience also has a responsiblity to demand good gameplay and not fall into the trap of fawning over eye candy. They have no right to complain about a bad playing game when at the same time they get distraught over game not supporting some graphically effect.

Hostile Creation · « **Reply #23 on:** July 01, 2003, 06:29:22 AM »

KDR_11k, being shot offscreen by a ship is completely realistic. Why shouldn't that happen? That's how it would happen in a real dogfight/space battle or whatever.

DRJ · « **Reply #24 on:** July 01, 2003, 06:32:38 AM »

If a game is difficult to control or difficult because of a bad camera angle, so you cant see where you have to jump can get frustrating very fast. But if the game plays well, and the controls are set up nice (like in Metroid Prime) then it should be very easy to make the game harder just by making you take more damage for every hit. On normal mode for MP it was challenging because I didnt know what to do or where to go. The second time through on hard mode I knew what to do, but everyone was a lot harder. So I got to enjoy the game all over again.

For example

Good Challenge
Getting killed by Omega Pirate on Hard. Get pissed of, go back and try again. Get killed again, but do more damage, get even more pissed of (not at the game, at the enemy) repeat until you win.

Tedius Challenge
Trying to get the shine on SMS where you have to get yoshi and shoot the fish, jump on the platforms, jump on more platforms, fall into the water and lose yoshi. Start all over, including having to find the right fruit to hatch yoshi again. I actually gave up on this one and completed the rest of the game before I went back.

As someone pointed out for Zelda games, actually I never really thought about this, but I have played almost every Zelda game. So I know what to do even the first time through which does make it seem easier. I know for example if there is a crack in a wall, that I can blow it up as soon as I find the bombs. If there is a ledge, the first thing I do is look for the grapple point (even before I have the item).

It must be hard to try and make a game challenging for experienced gamers, while at the same time make it easy enough for anyone to just pick up a controller and play.

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Author Topic: Game difficulty? (Read 5107 times)