Arc Christelle
Member
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Why do "Hard" difficulty settings almost always suck?
- Thread starter Realyn
- Start date
I think we've hit an interesting point for game difficulty where the AI can actually get smarter, not just have more hit points. Whether devs will take the time to craft different AI for the different modes is questionable, but we will definitely have the power in the coming generation.
IISANDERII
Member
Call of Duty
Enemy is at full sprint, 45m away firing at you with flawless precision from the goddamn hip.
Enemy is at full sprint, 45m away firing at you with flawless precision from the goddamn hip.
Astral/H3X
Member
Because devs are lazy and it's easier to balance the game for easy - -I mean normal, and then double HP for hard, which ends up with wildly imbalanced gameplay.
I'm ashamed to admit that Metroid Prime is perhaps the worst offender of this.
I'm ashamed to admit that Metroid Prime is perhaps the worst offender of this.
Rhazer Fusion
Member
Ooohh....I wholeheartedly agree. Hard modes almost always suck. Imo, they alway seem to resort to he same lazy, cheap tactics. Bullet sponges, perfect aiming from enemies at 50 miles away, one hit kills, etc. Bayonetta I think was one of the only games with a good, balanced hard difficulty mode.
haha what
Well ... LOL
. For one, I haven't bought one single DLC for FE:A because of reasons I allready mentioned. But thanks for assuming otherwise.Also, yes, you can beat Lunatic+ without DLC. But have you even read my post? I said that you either have to buy DLC or only use 2 out of 100 units. Please, please ask your friends to upload some videos how they are beating Lunatic+ without overusing Chrom, Avatar or Fred. Please.
Hard Mode in the DS Castlevania games is just freaking cruel. Honestly, for Hard Mode in Dawn of Sorrow and Portrait of Ruin, I think that something along the lines of Normal Mode in Order of Ecclesia would've been ideal. I'd say that Order of Ecclesia's Normal Mode was probably a bit much in terms of difficulty, but I'd also say that the difficulty was perfect for me in that I appreciated that it was actually difficult. That said, I still wish that Normal Mode was easier and that Hard Mode was more akin to what Normal Mode ended up being.
abstract alien
Member
Yeah, I said the same thing when I played that shit.
Rhazer Fusion
Member
He is probably talking about those legendary incendiary shuriken ninjas everyone loves to hate on Master Ninja on X360's version Ninja Gaiden 2. Also cheap grabs possibly. They threw exploding shurikens at Ryu off screen basically throughout the game consistently and relentlessly. Ninja Gaiden is one of the worst offenders and I own all of them. One hit kill throws on Master Ninja on NGS2 on PS3 if I remember correctly is just cheap and ridiculous. I got one hit killed on it and then my talisman of rebirth came up meaning that Ryu was resurrected and then he died immediately after he came back to life lol.
Sir Ilpalazzo
Member
Risette nailed it. If a game goes to shit on harder difficulty levels, then it wasn't actually a good game to begin with.
AcceptableGhost
Member
ngs2 is shit we dont talk about that in these parts cowboy
ng2 is mad imba overall but incendiary shuriken ninjas are the least of your worries in high difficulty ng2, if you get tagged you can just use iframes on your dash (or an OT, or any of the myriad of attacks in the game that drench you in invulnerability) to nullify the explosion
Edit: Also yes, NGB and NG2 have excellent higher difficulties.
devious.one
Member
I thought Mass Effect series did Hardmodes decently.
Borderlands 2 also did a pretty good job if you avoided over leveling.
Borderlands 2 also did a pretty good job if you avoided over leveling.
Really? I remember playing 2 on the PC and quitting halfway through because it got quite boring. Enemies had a shitload of health and kept killing my AI buddies.
devious.one
Member
I should probably clean that up, the first half of Mass Effect 2 was good on Insane, once you gained quite a few skills for your class, it did get easy. but before that, I enjoyed the Stance dance of Cover-Shoot or Cover-Cast(Adept) while waiting out enemy reloads/dodging enemy adepts/watching for random flanks.
ME2 got kinda nuts with giving EVERYONE additional health bars, but proper specs made it alright(i.e. being an infiltrator). 3 was a lot better in that regard for me.
lowhighkang_LHK
Member
The games with the best balanced / challenging difficulty settings are games which are so on it's default setting (i.e, Demon/Dark Souls, first 1/3rd of Dragons Dogma, DMC3 : JPN/SE version)
The problem with most games today, the gameplay and all of it's systems is designed around the default setting. They then adjust for hard by simply making "enemies have tons of health" which isn't fun, nor is it really "challenging" as opposed to annoying.
The entire concept of proper challenge has been next to lost in video games. A game that is well balanced in regards to difficulty should be a game where if the developers give you tools A, B and C to overcome obstacles A, B, and C, you are required to actually use tools A, B and C. Example, if you can give me a fire spell that I can enchant my sword with, then by all means of fucking shit require the player to understand this concept and enchant his weapon with fire when he goes up against that scary looking enemy covered in ice. If you give the player a shield, then you need to use it to block. Failure to block = health bar drops. Negative/Positive Reinforcement. Make it clear to the player, that not using shield = death, using shield = success. Shaping, conditioning - whatever you want to call it, pretty soon, you'll be amazed, even the most dudebro mountain dew gamer will soon figure out the importance of a shield.
What we have now - for example, let's say Skyrim, where you can explore, gets tons of EXP, pray to the stars or some shit for different classes and spells and focuses and jobs, weapons all over the place, customization, enchantments, combining items, alchemy, and whatever else bullshit 'gameplay' they have, but none of that matters when you can clear the game with any random semi-updated sword and utilize left trigger / right trigger stick waggling.
There is no balance. And when a game that comes out that is balanced in terms of what you the player can do to overcome the game's various challenges, people call that "too hard" or "broken." When it's really not. People just don't want to learn mechanics, or use a thing called perceptual and orderly planning to complete tasks/levels/enemies/whatever. The excitement from clearing well balanced, challenging scenarios used to be the 'thrill' in games, that has been removed now - so developers are left with including more and more explosions and "cinematic" experiences to replace that lost "thrill."
What developers should do is implement ways to ever increase difficulty while minimizing frustration. I.e, frequent checkpoints, auto saves, intelligently designed and integrated tutorials that naturally train the players and help them understand gameplay mechanics. Almost "fool" them into not even realizing they are playing a "challenging" game. I also firmly believe in auto adjusting difficulty settings. If a game's normal mode is designed to be difficult, and if a player is clearly having a hard time, increase the rate of healing item drops which still keeps the level of difficulty design but sort of "throws a bone" to the player to give him just enough edge to clear the obstacle. Because unfortunately, easy modes suffer from a problem of being too easy. Classic example is DMC1. A normal mode that really pushed players, but then offered a solution through easy automatic ( a mode that dumbs down the gameplay, while even removing enemies seen in normal) When all the player needed to stay on normal was maybe one extra healing item. Yet now, because they barely couldn't pass a boss fight, they are forced to play on easy in which they absolutely dominate everything. Complete imbalance seen there.
Luckily, there is an emerging appreciation for challenging/balanced games, as seen by the successes of the Souls games and to a lesser extent, Dragon's Dogma. I think we'll start seeing more and more developers wanting to tap into that market.
The problem with most games today, the gameplay and all of it's systems is designed around the default setting. They then adjust for hard by simply making "enemies have tons of health" which isn't fun, nor is it really "challenging" as opposed to annoying.
The entire concept of proper challenge has been next to lost in video games. A game that is well balanced in regards to difficulty should be a game where if the developers give you tools A, B and C to overcome obstacles A, B, and C, you are required to actually use tools A, B and C. Example, if you can give me a fire spell that I can enchant my sword with, then by all means of fucking shit require the player to understand this concept and enchant his weapon with fire when he goes up against that scary looking enemy covered in ice. If you give the player a shield, then you need to use it to block. Failure to block = health bar drops. Negative/Positive Reinforcement. Make it clear to the player, that not using shield = death, using shield = success. Shaping, conditioning - whatever you want to call it, pretty soon, you'll be amazed, even the most dudebro mountain dew gamer will soon figure out the importance of a shield.
What we have now - for example, let's say Skyrim, where you can explore, gets tons of EXP, pray to the stars or some shit for different classes and spells and focuses and jobs, weapons all over the place, customization, enchantments, combining items, alchemy, and whatever else bullshit 'gameplay' they have, but none of that matters when you can clear the game with any random semi-updated sword and utilize left trigger / right trigger stick waggling.
There is no balance. And when a game that comes out that is balanced in terms of what you the player can do to overcome the game's various challenges, people call that "too hard" or "broken." When it's really not. People just don't want to learn mechanics, or use a thing called perceptual and orderly planning to complete tasks/levels/enemies/whatever. The excitement from clearing well balanced, challenging scenarios used to be the 'thrill' in games, that has been removed now - so developers are left with including more and more explosions and "cinematic" experiences to replace that lost "thrill."
What developers should do is implement ways to ever increase difficulty while minimizing frustration. I.e, frequent checkpoints, auto saves, intelligently designed and integrated tutorials that naturally train the players and help them understand gameplay mechanics. Almost "fool" them into not even realizing they are playing a "challenging" game. I also firmly believe in auto adjusting difficulty settings. If a game's normal mode is designed to be difficult, and if a player is clearly having a hard time, increase the rate of healing item drops which still keeps the level of difficulty design but sort of "throws a bone" to the player to give him just enough edge to clear the obstacle. Because unfortunately, easy modes suffer from a problem of being too easy. Classic example is DMC1. A normal mode that really pushed players, but then offered a solution through easy automatic ( a mode that dumbs down the gameplay, while even removing enemies seen in normal) When all the player needed to stay on normal was maybe one extra healing item. Yet now, because they barely couldn't pass a boss fight, they are forced to play on easy in which they absolutely dominate everything. Complete imbalance seen there.
Luckily, there is an emerging appreciation for challenging/balanced games, as seen by the successes of the Souls games and to a lesser extent, Dragon's Dogma. I think we'll start seeing more and more developers wanting to tap into that market.
NeonZ
Member
Eh, almost everyone is usable, you just have to concentrate on a very small number of characters for a single playthrough, if you aren't using DLC. And the lvl 20 legacy characters basically break the mode. Either way, Frederick basically has to see quite a bit of use, if you aren't using any lvl 20 legacies, and Chrom has to be used too because he's always there anyway. The avatar has the skill that allows it to level up faster, which helps immensely there too. So, those will basically always be used in Lunatic, but you can fit in some extras that can be useful after a few chapters.
Lunatic + is another matter and I'd hardly call it even "designed" at all, considering how it's just Lunatic with randomized broken skills given to the enemies. It's a complete mess. I guess you could reduce the difficulty by grinding high fame in another file and starting with many extra items though, but even then, I agree that it's bad.
How'd I forget MGS? The gameplay lends itself so well to harder replays. 100% this.
Astral/H3X
Member
Extreme Difficulty on MGS3 is awesome. I've never beaten it, but it's still fucking awesome.
play it loud
Speaking of different sets of objectives, I think Thief games do it pretty well.
I don't really agree about everyone being useable. One chapter that stood out to me as really stupid was 14. I honestly have no idea how Virion/Lissa for example are supposed to survive more than 1 round. Oh and 15 was pretty bad too.
Only chance of recruiting the npc on the top was rushing her with Chrom/Avatar, but then you would have noone to kill the bottom left guys and therefor loose everyone else. I tried to hold the bottom left with Morg, Lucina, a lvl 14 allready promoted Lon'qu+Panne, but no chance
abstract alien
Member
Watched about 3 seconds of that and came to the concussion that it was a poorly drawn, terribly voiced, miserable excuse for even being a mockery of entertainment, just like that game on harder settings.
Augemitbutter
Member
1. the game you were playing was shit from the start, which is the most frequent scenario. you just didn't notice, because your figure "tanked" the damage you took through the bad parts. most players won't see a reason to dig deeper into the game. these are easy and normal modes in plenty of games nowadays.
2. the studio took the lazy way out and tripled everything that's on the screen, cause who cares about balance and the poor sob that's trying to play this mess.
2. the studio took the lazy way out and tripled everything that's on the screen, cause who cares about balance and the poor sob that's trying to play this mess.
AcceptableGhost
Member
explain your position without making it sound like your bad at video games
Rhazer Fusion
Member
Nah, you just probably have uncanny skills and a lot of patience. I know MGR is no joke on the harest difficulty.
abstract alien
Member
Haha, I wouldn't feel so bad about the last party since that is kinda funny. Seriously though, it just pisses me off because the game is actually really good underneath all of that. Such speed and aggressiveness from the enemies is great. A couple of things just proceed to throw the entire thing off and all of the hard work you did trying to hone skills is over thrown by something you couldn't control.
I refuse to explain anything to that horrible YouTube clip outside of how horrible the clip was.
I get murdered a lot too. I feel like it's mostly me just trying to look cool instead of doing the moves I need to be doing for that moment though. Same shit I do in street fighter at times.
AcceptableGhost
Member
mgr on revengeance difficulty isn't that hard really
Yeah, perfect parries are so powerful on Revengeance... You can kill almost anything in 1 hit with them.
NeonZ
Member
Like I said, you'd have to focus on a very small number of characters to get their levels high enough. If you were using even close to 10 characters, then, yeah, they likely wouldn't be able to keep up, but you can add some extras and focus on them to make them usable without getting close to that number. Also, you can use rescue staffs on allied units, which easily solves the problem of that chapter.
May I ask if you have done a no grind playthrough? I used Chrom/Avatar, Lon'qu/Panne, Donnel/Nowi and Miriel/Tharja for the occasional range attack - not counting the healers.
I really don't understand how a rescue staff is supposed to help on this map. Couldn't find a Lunatic video. Out of my head top left had 15 units and right and bottom 10 each.
Fried Food
Banned
they don't balance the game for them. they just change sliders
LorDjidane
Member
Yeah, difficulty change is really poorly managed overall. If I take a shooter, dayum, I'm only gonna need one or two bullets to die. Ok that's fair, that's more realistic I'd say. But why do the ennemies need fifty bullets to die? That's not a clever way to add difficulty, that's lazy. And boring. Gimme some better AI. Not just a few sliders. Or don't just pretend you're giving a true hard difficulty that makes poor sense.
I didn't try reveangeance difficulty, but very hard in MGR did a lot of thing different from normal/hard, which made it very fun.
Alcoholikaust
Member
because adding even more enemies that can shoot you with laser precision does not make a game harder/ it breaks it.
giving player less health, one life, no checkpoints, a steep learning curve ala no tutorial
thats doing it right
basically demons souls/dark souls model: even though they were default difficulty
giving player less health, one life, no checkpoints, a steep learning curve ala no tutorial
thats doing it right
basically demons souls/dark souls model: even though they were default difficulty