Magic Carpet was playtested thoroughly? The game that has two levels that are bugged and literally unbeatable without cheats? And one level that is ludicrously unbalanced and stupidly hard? (I did a bit of research afterward to see if I had just missed something, but no, it seems to be really that hard and caused people to ragequit.) Haha, no. I doubt anyone besides the developers tested it, and they obviously gave up on that halfway through.

If you find the hardest difficulty level too hard, just go down one level. It's fine. Personally, for games with difficulty levels that annoyingly don't tell you what they do exactly, I just google it first. I just did that with Iconoclasts, and learned that "harder mode" is like "standard mode" with a few more enemies and fewer health drops, which seemed manageable, so I went with that, and it's been fine. (Plus you can change the difficulty when loading a game, which is a nice touch.)

I do think devs should always tell you this stuff in-game so you don't have to google it. Sometimes they do. But they should definitely continue to have difficulty levels, because a lot of the time it's not really possible to cover everyone with a single difficulty, no matter how well you design the game. I mean, this isn't the 80s anymore, and being player-hostile is less acceptable now.

For example, your question "why would they add such difficulty levels which are practically impossible (to everyone)"...that's because some people like practically impossible challenges, just to see how far they can get. It's not your thing, and it's not my thing, but why deprive some players of that if that's what they want?

Also, I've seen that games which ostensibly don't have difficulty levels do tend to have NG+ modes. But that's just a harder difficulty level that makes you play through the whole game first before you can access it. Is that really better?

I have finished Magic Carpet Plus (which includes the expansion pack) at least three times. While I recall a couple of quite hard levels (the water level with lots of griffins, and the level with masses of wyverns) and one annoyingly complicated level with mazes and teleports, I consider it far from impossible to finish. Challenging yes, impossible no.

What I really liked about Magic Carpet that the hardest parts in the levels were usually in the beginning of the level, when you didn't yet have a powerful castle protecting you or were missing many spells. If you died permanently losing the level, it usually happened in the beginning parts of the level, and the longer you survived, the easier the level would become.

Depends if the game lets you freely change the difficulty level after you have already started playing it so that you don't have to restart it many times just in order to find the "right" difficulty level for yourself.

If it turns out you chose too easy difficulty level (and it doesn't get much challenging later on either), then the game can just become boring for being too easy.

Generally there's also so much variance between games what is the "hard" mode. For instance, I finished Deus Ex (with the GMDX mod) in the hardest difficulty, and it was a cakewalk. I have no idea why I, or anyone else for that matter, would want to choose some easier difficulty level in Deus Ex. Maybe if one is disabled and have serious problems with eye-hand coordination, maybe.

I just generally see slapping difficulty levels in a game as a sign of lazy game development. Rather than trying to optimize the gameplay for people of various skills, they just make some linear difficulty choice where you have to decide beforehand what you are going to play. In a way changing difficulty to easier midway is somewhat like cheating. The game becomes too difficult? Just enable the cheat to give you more lives, more armor, more ammo, or instantly kill some hard enemy with one hit. Same thing, you change the game rules just because you feel the game has become too challenging for you. Nothing wrong with that if you want to play a single-player game with cheats, I guess.

Someone here linked to some game development article discussing about difficulty levels in games (or rather, why games shouldn't have them), and I quite much agreed with that article. Maybe I have the link to it on my old bookmarks.

Which such games do you have in mind where the developers have added difficulty levels that they are not expecting anyone to be able to finish? I guess such difficulty levels are fine, as long as the developers fully disclose that, that they have intentionally made that game mode impossible to finish. Then yes, I would avoid it.

To me it is enough if either the developer, or some game tester, can say that yes they have finished the game in the hardest difficulty (without cheats, which is what playtesters quite often use in order to test different scenarios for bugs). In that case I find it fully acceptable, even if I personally am unable to finish the game in that mode.

Forsaken is one of those games where I suspect even the developers nor the game testers have ever finished the game in the harder game modes. If they can't manage it, then such difficulty level shouldn't be there (unless they really mean it to be impossible).

Magic Carpet is known for having game-breaking bugs, and you can find various pages on the web with work-arounds. e.g. https://www.gog.com/forum/magic_carpet_series/cant_pass_level_35 I encountered them myself. Overall, even without bugs, it's not really a good example of a well-balanced game. (Still a good game, though...I'd like to see a faithful modern remake, sans bugs and difficulty spikes. And with difficulty level options.)

Difficulty levels aren't "lazy development", in fact quite the opposite, because now you have to do more testing and development, not less. They are an acknowledgement that different people have different abilities. You've already acknowledged this yourself by your inability to play Forsaken on the hardest difficulty. Someone who is better than you are at the game may want more of a challenge.

Also, like I said, some people just like the idea of an "impossible" challenge. See the attached screenshot of Infested Planet. If you beat the procedural campaign on veteran (second-hardest), you get a message saying that you're as good as the devs, and if that's still not enough, elite difficulty has all alien mutations available from the start and your marines take more damage.

deleted

Here is some food for your thought so you don't have to take only my word on it:

http://www.roguesnail.com/difficulty-levels/ (read especially the part "Last but not least, it takes the responsibility away from the designer...")

https://indiewatch.net/2016/06/08/why-difficulty-settings-are-bad-design/

Maybe also this: https://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/articles/hard-mode-good-difficulty-versus-bad-difficulty--gamedev-3596

Two completely different things. I was talking about the game difficulty, not game bugs. The bug described behind your link has nothing to do with the game's difficulty level, but that the game seems to have some kind of limit how many objects there can be in the level (or in the vicinity, not sure which). I encountered that bug as well at least once, I recall in the sequel Magic Carpet 2.

So like the thread says, you just need to try to keep the number of objects in the level low enough, including enemies, mana balls you gather etc. I had to replay the level and make sure I am more efficient killing enemies and gathering mana balls. Not that hard when you realized the workaround.

As it happens, the original Dune 2 game had a similar bug, ie. if there were too many units in the game area, neither your nor enemy's troops could even fire their guns anymore. Max limit of objects reached, and gun shots would be additional objects... The fix in Dune 2 was similar, try to keep the number of units (both yours, but especially enemy's) low enough.

I still say that the difficulty was quite well designed in Magic Carpet, mainly for two reasons:

- The hardest parts of levels were usually near the start of the level, so if you failed the whole level, not so much replay was needed. The longer you survived, the easier the levels usually became.

- If you felt overwhelmed in some situation, you could usually fly away, escape the situation. So if there is a hard situation you can't handle, you don't necessarily have to change the game difficulty, but change the way you play the game. And THAT is what I mean by good game design regarding the game difficulty. Give players of different skills different ways to approach in the game (carefully, head-on guns blazing, go to some peaceful place to gather more resources and then try again...), rather than having to "cheat" by making the enemies weaker and yourself more powerful, by changing the difficulty level.

Forsaken is the exact opposite of that. At least during the first level, it tends to just lock you in the same room with a bunch of enemies, and you either shoot them fast (and accurately) enough, or die. No fleeing, no trying to avoid them altogether, not trying to approach them from a different direction and take them out one by one... No, it gives you only one option to play. Bad game design, especially when they slap a Game Over timer on top of it..

Unless they slap difficulty levels in the game without testing them, which I am pretty sure is the case with Forsaken.

Designing a game so that people can play it in different ways (depending on their different skill levels, or merely how they like to play their games) without having to touch some arbitrary difficulty levels takes much more effort to develop, than slapping different difficulty levels where more difficulty usually just means the enemies are more powerful and you are weaker, and in the case of Forsaken, the higher the difficulty, the less time you have for finishing the level. A trained monkey could add such difficulty levels to a game.

I've tried to find a Youtube video of someone playing (and finishing) the game in the hardest difficulty, didn't find one at least before. That, and my own experiences with the game, lead me to believe that maybe the higher (or highest) difficulty level is virtually impossible, for anyone.

If you can find such proof of someone finishing the game in the hardest difficulty level, then yes I am ready to admit that apparently I just am not good enough for it. Otherwise, I consider it bad game design and sloppy (or non-existing) game testing.

Sorry but now you are trying to have the cake and eat it too, saying that "Forsaken is not too hard, you are just not good enough", and right after that implying that ok it might be impossible, but hey some people like impossible games.

You can't have it both ways.

That said, I have seen some examples of good difficulty level setting designs, and for some reason two prime examples come from the same development team:

Thief Gold: The harder difficulty settings gave you more objectives to finish in the level, and some additional restrictions like you can't kill civilians or even enemy soldiers (but you can still knock them out to get rid of them) etc.

However, at the same time I also feel Thief didn't really need the different difficulty levels. Anyone who can finish the game with the easiest difficulty level, should be able to finish it also with the hardest one. It just takes some more time and "effort" to complete the levels in the higher difficulties (like having to find 1500 coins in the mansion instead of 900, just have to search rooms more carefully), not really requiring some extra skills (like reaction times or whatever) from the player.

System Shock: This was pretty good design because it gave you several options to define the difficulty, and elaborated very clearly what each difficulty level meant. I chose to lower one of the four difficulty settings by one notch, in order to get rid of the in-game time limit to finish the game (as I prefer to examine levels in my own time, not being in a constant hurry).

Similarly, if some games have some kind of "ironman mode" where you can't save the game and/or dying in the game means having to restart the whole game, I avoid such difficulty settings. So no, it isn't like I feel I am obliged to choose the highest possible difficulty setting, no matter what.

Sorry, but a few links to someone's opinion that difficulty levels aren't good design doesn't actually make it a fact. I find that in general difficulty levels make games better if implemented well, although they're not appropriate for every game. I also find that "I'm not playing on anything less than the highest difficulty because I shouldn't have to" is an unreasonable position to take, and you're causing yourself to not have fun just for the sake of being stubborn about it. (The stuff about bugs in Magic Carpet was a response to the notion that it was playtested thoroughly. In reality, it has a very '90s "the devs were the playtesters" feel to it.)

It is more about "I shouldn't have to spend time trying to guess what is the "correct" difficulty level for me.".As the articles suggested, there the game developer is moving responsibility to the gamer, instead of designing the game better.

I might also select a too easy difficulty level, making the game boring. For instance, I am glad i selected the hardest difficulty e.g. in Deus Ex, as even that was quite easy.

That's why I google difficulty levels, if the game isn't forthcoming with info about them. I haven't played Forsaken yet, but Overload benefits greatly by having difficulty levels, particularly considering the wide variety of input methods, which has an effect on how you play the game. Also a 6DOF game is fairly specialized, and people have widely disparate abilities to navigate that; not feasible to "just design the game better".

Just saw this on the We Happy Few topic: "easy is really easy, but perfect for story hounds... and you can ramp up the difficulty to something that's monsterously hard (love that part)".

The Forsaken wikipedia article says: At least to me that doesn't really give an answer to the question "which is the right difficulty level for me?", I'd still pretty much have to test different difficulty levels to find the "right" one.

Interestingly though, the wikipedia article also mentions: Which kinda confirms what I thought, they hadn't really playtested the different difficulty levels well, at least with the PC version.

So timppu, why do you seem to not want difficulty levels? Isn't the simpler solution to just have better descriptors of the difficulty levels? Full disclosure: I am someone who at this point generally chooses the hardest difficulty in games.

I explained that already earlier in this thread. Quite often it is a sign of sloppy game design. Check also these:

http://www.roguesnail.com/difficulty-levels/ (read especially the part "Last but not least, it takes the responsibility away from the designer...")

https://indiewatch.net/2016/06/08/why-difficulty-settings-are-bad-design/

Maybe also this: https://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/articles/hard-mode-good-difficulty-versus-bad-difficulty--gamedev-3596

One of those made a good example of e.g. Nintendo games, which don't seem to have to use difficulty levels. Do you see anyone complaining that they can't select an easier (or harder) difficulty level in Super Mario Bros, or Mario 64, and that the games are impossible for many or too easy for others? Why not? Why people of different skill levels seem to be able to play the same, the one and only, difficulty level?

In most cases, the descriptions can't be detailed enough to make even a good guess

Usually problem is how difficulty settings are designed (=sloppily). Even if Forsaken explained that higher difficulty levels mean that enemies are more powerful (ie. they do more damage to you, can take more damage, and you will have less ammo available)... you still can't know what is the "right" difficulty level for you, without testing them out.

It was the same with Deus Ex. I think I got a pretty good description how the different difficulty levels differ from each other, but only by playing I found out that even the hardest difficulty level is rather easy. In Deus Ex the higher difficulty levels merely mean that you can actually die in firefights once in a while (in case you even engage into firefights in the first place, and don't play a sneaking playstyle), and have to reload a save game.

Apparently you skipped all my other messages on this topic in this thread, but here goes.

Because I never suggested they should just remove different difficulty settings, and that's that.

I said that they should design their game better so that it doesn't even need different difficulty settings, and still 99% of the people don't mind the "only" difficulty it has. Read the linked articles I provided earlier, they touch these ideas what it means to design a game so that it doesn't necessarily need the user to make some arbitrary choice in the beginning for the game difficulty, or keep changing it all the time throughout the game to "fit" their skill level.

You said Nintendo games (with one difficulty setting) are pee-easy, but I do recall e.g. Super Mario Bros having quite tricky levels or places which did need several tries, like that one place where you had to time your jump so that in mid-air you'd hit the top of a flying enemy, and be able to get to the next platform. That's just off the top of my head, I played SMB like decades ago, and I didn't have time to finish it, but I recall getting quite far in it.

The time limit in SMB is a good example. It is not there to try to rush you through the game (ie. in harder difficulty levels you might have a tighter time limit, so you'd be even more in a hurry), but it seemed to be meant mostly as an incentive for you to clear the levels faster, by giving you extra points for unused time.

I don't agree with the conclusion that "better" design involves no difficulty levels. I read your posts and am not seeing the missing premise that connects these things. I get that it is very much your preference but I don't see how it is objectively better. Pardon me mangling Hume with this, but this looks analogous to the "is-ought" problem. Fair enough, but would you admit it is much simpler to just have the user themself pick from a difficulty level instead of the developer going out of their way to not use difficulty levels? To me, it is an arbitrary choice to go out of one's way to not have difficulty levels.

Ultimately, I am for user control. To me this includes difficulty options and I welcome more options, sliders, options even beyond "Easy-Medium-Hard". I think it is a bad precedent to take this control away from the user and leave the developer in charge of it. I mean more modern Nintendo. Look at Kirby games, Yoshi Woolly World...

Is this better than Tower of Guns ?