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The Playa Hater's Club

 
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Gizmog1
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Joined: 05 Mar 2003
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 06, 2006 10:38 pm    Post subject: The Playa Hater's Club Reply with quote

How difficult do you guys think a game should be? Should it be a minor challenge, or should it be throw your controller through the wall unforgiving? How far can you go before you're alienating the player?

And is a goal/high score style approach a good way of offsetting an overall high difficultly, letting the player accomplish something while he masters the game? Sure, you didn't beat Bowser, but you got a gold medal for time on Level 1-1!

I look at it as sort of a mixed bag, because I'm fairly quick to call something "Impossible" and get discouraged, but I also really hate losing, and obsessively will play and replay (and replay and replay) a game until I've thoroughly beaten it.
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Onlyoneinall
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Joined: 16 Jul 2005
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 06, 2006 11:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

This is why some games have things called difficulty settings. True, it's not always done well, but it allows the player to make the game difficult to their preference, since everyone has a different opinion on what is difficult and what is not.

Sometimes though, a game should be difficult in accordance to what the game is. A horror styled game should generally challenge the player or be difficult to stimulate the horror element. A kiddy game however, would have to be generally easy enough for a three year old to be able to beat. It all depends..
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Moogle1
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Joined: 15 Jul 2004
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 07, 2006 9:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Onlyoneinall wrote:
A horror styled game should generally challenge the player or be difficult to stimulate the horror element. A kiddy game however, would have to be generally easy enough for a three year old to be able to beat. It all depends..


I disagree on both points: Missing is a great example of a horror game that is not difficult, though it was very suspenseful because you didn't know you couldn't die until you'd beaten the game.

As far as kids' games are concerned, kids are less picky about game difficulty. I remember loving Castlevania 3 as a kid, even though the furthest I remember getting was beating Alucard or Grant (depending on the path I took). Kids aren't stupid, nor are they necessarily unskilled.

If you can make it through a game without ever dying or the equivalent (in the case of Missing, for example, getting stuck), then the game is too easy. If you lose a lot of progress when you die, then the game can be too frustrating. The bottom line is that the player should feel a sense of accomplishment as he completes the tasks and this is accomplished by striking a balance on difficulty. Too easy and there is no sense of fulfillment; too frustrating and the player doesn't care about the gratification enough to make it past his current obstacle.

On that note, there are some games that I know I'll never beat, like Nethack, but that I continue to play anyway. I wouldn't continue to play Nethack if I were able to beat it like I can beat Mario Bros. (There is also the matter of me continuing to go back to FFT, but that is in spite of the difficulty, since except for a couple of battles, it is way too easy.)
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PlayerOne




Joined: 07 Sep 2005
Posts: 143
Location: UK

PostPosted: Thu Sep 07, 2006 1:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I quite like easy games, myself.

I definitely prefer story-based games to be relatively easy. Although, hmm, it is impossible to die(*) in Monkey Island, but is it really an easy game? I guess it's okay to be stumped (although better if there's something else to do too) but not good to be set back in the story.

Ideally, action games should be satisfying to play however well you progress through the levels, so it doesn't make the experience wholly unenjoyable if/when you fail. Even better, it should be easy to get the basics, and hard to master the advanced tricks, but push you into them gradually.



*Okay, nearly impossible. (Or was that 2?)
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Calehay
...yeah.
Class B Minstrel



Joined: 07 Jul 2004
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 07, 2006 4:37 pm    Post subject: Re: The Playa Hater's Club Reply with quote

Gizmog1 wrote:

And is a goal/high score style approach a good way of offsetting an overall high difficultly, letting the player accomplish something while he masters the game? Sure, you didn't beat Bowser, but you got a gold medal for time on Level 1-1!


In response to this, I have to tell a little thing about Star Fox 64 (which in my opinion is probably the most addicting game in the history of video games, and I'll tell you why.)

Now, Star Fox 64 in of itself is not that difficult a game to beat, but what I've found is that I love trying to rack in the points, and after learning what other people's high scores were, I deemed mine far to low, and now I play the game in an endless attempt to get the highest score that I possibly can.

Why does this work for Star Fox 64? In my opinion, I think it's because it's a short game (1 hour and a half to 3 at the most) Say if you were playing some 50 hour RPG, and then at the end, "You scored 4th place with 50,000 points! Try again!" you would proceed to take a hammer to the game and throw it out the window.

But I do think, say the ever so famous "Monster Arena" in an RPG would be great. It's kind of like hidden treasures or puzzles.


As for how I like my difficult... It really matters what I'm playing. I don't like dying everytime I try to fight something in an RPG, but I don't like too much simplicity. I agree with PlayerOne about the idea of and action game giving you the ropes and then letting you loose as difficulty beams (something else I think Star Fox does well, though the difficulty doesn't get too high.)

I think it's really just a matter of testing and retesting to see if it flows "like buttah"
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