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General discussion (archive)Do Games Sense Futility?(54 posts)(54 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted June 18, 2013
I have to agree with Psyringe. I've never heard of this notion of ADD and now that I have, I'm disgusted. I think it's horrible that devs are sitting there deciding how challanging MY play gets to be and thinking it great. Over and over in life I've gotten pissed at people who mess with other people's lives "for their own good", "because we know what's best for you", "you'll thank us for it later".

I read some of those posts from the link and just.... ugh. As others have already expressed, devs don't know what kind of game I want to play. Maybe I'm in the mood for challenge tonight, the more the better. Maybe tomorrow I'll have a horrible shitty day and all I want is a super easy play where I pwn everything to make me feel a LITTLE bit better, and giving me challenge makes me feel worse. Taking away difficulty options, deciding difficulty behind the scenes without telling the players, limiting options... THAT is shoddy development Mr. Miller.

How many times have I played games and was incredibly confused when the difficulty of an area was vastly different from how I remember it? How many hours did I sit there wracking my brain, thinking there was something wrong with my memory? How many hours did I waste examining mods, installing, rearranging, and reapplying them? All the time I spent examining system settings or game versions or patches or online research to try to figure out what's wrong with my game? It was ADD! Thank you Mr. Miller, all that time wasted was completely enjoyable. I'll be sure to tell all my friends.
Posted June 18, 2013
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Psyringe: So, again: If your problem can be solved by implementing an easier difficulty level, then why do you need a _hidden_, _mandatory_, _dynamic_ difficulty system for that?
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ET3D: The reason I'd want such a system (and I just jumped into this thread, I'm not the previous poster) is that predefined difficulty settings mean very little. Some experienced players consider the 'hard' level of some games to be too easy, some players consider the 'easy' level to be hard. It varies by player and by game, and there's no way to tell up front when coming to a game how easy or difficult a particular level will be for you.

The easiest solution is to allow the player to switch difficulty mid game, and provide a very wide range of difficulty settings, but using adaptive difficulty could provide a more seamless gaming experience.

If 'easy', 'normal' and 'hard' are interpreted as intentions (how much the player is willing to be frustrated and retry a challenge) and the game adapts to the player skill, then that would likely result in a smoother difficulty curve that's more fitting for the player than when the difficulty level are treated as fixed.
I see your point, and I agree that each player's "sweet spot" for difficulty depends on the player and the game. However, dynamic difficulty based on such "intention settngs" does not solve this issue, it just shifts the problem. Even if you interpret such settings as "intentions" in a dynamic difficulty system, each player's sweet spot for these intentions will _still_ depend on the player and the game.

The difficulty curve may indeed by more smooth, but you can achieve the same by implementing a difficulty slider instead of fixed levels. Morrowind is a common example for this - it doesn't have difficulty levels, but a slider, which can be changed at any time during the game.

Dynamic difficulty, as advocated in the Scott Miller blog post that has been linked to earlier, runs into a very obvious fallacy:
(1) The skill of players differs vastly.
(2) The preferred individual challenge level also differs vastly between players. By this, I mean that even among players with identical skill levels, some may enjoy the game in a cruise control setting, playing in a relaxed way, while not being challenged at all, while others may enjoy the game more when it challenges them intensely.
(3) Any "Automatic Dynamic Difficulty" system tries to find the single preferred challenge level for _all_ players, and it adjusts the game's raw difficulty in order to approach this "perfect" challenge level - but this perfect challenge does not exist - see (2) -, it varies wildly between players.
(4) Since it is logically impossible to find one "perfect" challenge level, players need some control over the game's difficulty in order to adjust it to their own preferences, which the game can't possibly guess.However, the advocates of ADD specifically recommend against given players that control because they think they know better than us players how we will enjoy a game best.

It's an obvious fallacy, and it's completely ridiculous that modern games try to find the perfect single setting for something that varies wildly between players.
Posted June 18, 2013
I don't see the problem with game designers actually designing games and making rules and balancing things. I certainly don't see why I should have to give up game after game after game after game out of frustration.
Posted June 18, 2013
The "dynamic difficulty" in Max Payne 1 didn't work worth a damn--I only knew it had it because people have said so on other forums. And because they didn't tell people they were doing it, people would quickload after they died instead of sitting through the animation, and then of course the game wouldn't know they were dying, and it wouldn't work at all.

I liked dynamic difficulty fine in God Hand (PS2), but that was radically different from what this guy is suggesting. First, there are difficulty levels, so the dynamic difficulty is only tweaking something the player gets to choose. Second, the game is open and straightforward about it--the difficulty rises as you beat enemies without getting hit, and is clearly displayed on the screen at all times. Third, there's a special move you can do to dump the difficulty back to the default level if you're getting overwhelmed.
Post edited June 18, 2013 by BadDecissions
Posted June 18, 2013
In Nier there is a fishing mini game you seem to have to do to get on with the main story of the game. Mess it i up enough times and the game just let;s you skip the mini game. Funny thing is though that i know someone who gave up at this point before the game just let's you bypass it....
Posted June 19, 2013
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Psyringe: However, the advocates of ADD specifically recommend against given players that control because they think they know better than us players how we will enjoy a game best.
I resemble that remark. Like I said, it's possible to give the player control and still adjust it dynamically. What BadDecissions describes in God Hand sounds decent. Frankly I like the 'hint' button in many casual games, which lets you decide when you want to skip forward.

I think that the main problem with dynamic difficulty is implementing it in a good way. It's simplest not to do it. That doesn't mean it's bad in theory, just that it needs a lot of attention to get right. And I think that getting it right has to include a way for the player to tell the game what experience he's looking for.
Posted June 19, 2013
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Psyringe: However, the advocates of ADD specifically recommend against given players that control because they think they know better than us players how we will enjoy a game best.
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ET3D: I resemble that remark. Like I said, it's possible to give the player control and still adjust it dynamically. What BadDecissions describes in God Hand sounds decent. Frankly I like the 'hint' button in many casual games, which lets you decide when you want to skip forward.
I agree with all of that. Implemented like this, dynamic difficulty is a convenience feature that (best case) saves the player some fiddling with the difficulty slider and thereby increases immersion, or (worst case) continually tries to steer the game's challenge level away from the player's sweet spot, but then it can simply be turned off.

Sadly, I think that such implementations are in the minority. Usually, proponents of automatic dynamic difficulty believe that they need to hide this mechanic - which inevitably leads to the problems I outlined earlier. They can measure the player's skill level and the game's current challenge level, but they can't tell whether the playing is enjoying this level of challenge or not. They have to guess that, and inevitably get it it wrong in many cases due to the huge individual variance in this regard.
Posted June 19, 2013
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Kristian: I don't see the problem with game designers actually designing games and making rules and balancing things. I certainly don't see why I should have to give up game after game after game after game out of frustration.
At this point, I'm not sure if you're just trolling, or if I'm explaining myself badly (though others seem to not have a problem with my lines of thought), or if you simply fail to understand what I'm saying.

You are under the impression that dynamic difficulty would allow you to play games that would otherwise be too hard for you. I've already explained to you that a) this isn't true, b) this is merely a side effect of dynamic difficulty often implementing a wider range of difficulties, but a fixed difficulty system can implement the same range just as well, and c) that a fixed "very easy" difficulty would actually cater better to your needs than a dynamic one (because you wouldn't have to die lots of times until the system learns that the regular level is too hard for you).

I have also asked you repeatedly why exactly you think that you need a dynamic, hidden, mandatory automatic system to cater to your needs. You haven't provided a single argument for that - you simply keep repeating the same statement ("without dynamic difficulty the games would be too hard for me") despite the fact that it's obviously wrong, as explained earlier. You seem either incapable or unwilling to reflect and explain your statement, so it really doesn't make much sense to continue this discussion. If you _do_ want to answer my question, I'm still all ears though.
Posted June 19, 2013
Ehhm... I already stated plainly that I prefer a system where you can selected a challenge level and the game automatically brings yoiu that challenge level based on your skill.
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General discussion (archive)Do Games Sense Futility?(54 posts)(54 posts)
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