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How Hard is Hard?

  • Posted on 06 February 17 at 12:07
    Is this a word to be feared, or simply understood by us gamers?

    Please click here to read the story: How Hard is Hard?
  • Posted on 06 February 17 at 12:46
    It certainly does seem like a subjective affair and I believe this is in part caused by the fact that we all have different gaming experiences. For instance, I find the Mile High Club trophy in Call of Duty 4 to be extremely easy and I'm surprised to see the number of people that find it challenging. At the same time, I found Street Fighter V's trophy, Let's Fight Someone Strong (reach gold league in ranked) to be extremely difficult to earn while many Street Fighter veterans can surpass the gold league in a matter of hours of playing ranked. Ultimately, determining if a game is hard or not boils down to the experience of the gamer.
  • Villa_GraemeVilla_Graeme377,827
    Posted on 06 February 17 at 13:50
    Grounded mode in TLOU is to me difficulty done right. Just a few minor changes like removing the hud and making resources more sparse transformed the whole game. It didn't make all the enemies rediculous bullet sponges, you could one shot a clicker with a shiv or the bow just like you could on easy. Instead it made you think before you acted, should I use my limited ammo to take this guy out or sneak past? Grounded mode is one of the reasons why TLOU is one of my favourite ever games.
  • rob25Prob25P826,511
    Posted on 06 February 17 at 14:07
    Some games get difficulty right and others don't.

    Good hard games fail you for your own mistakes. Good 'hard' games can be learnt and mastered with skillful play. (Hitman: Blood Money for example.)

    Bad hard games fail you for things you have no control over. Call of Duty: World at War for example. Games with cheating AI or unavoidable failure.

    'Hard' games that require luck are the worst.

    Some games take difficulty too far, Cloudberry Kingdom
  • UlvenFenrirUlvenFenrir1,144,665
    Posted on 06 February 17 at 14:14, Edited on 06 February 17 at 14:15 by UlvenFenrir
    super meat boy, vanquish, metal gear rising: revengance are just a few that are skill focused without being cheap.
  • AtsumaKarinAtsumaKarin1,295,579
    Posted on 06 February 17 at 15:29
    Indeed, difficulty is very subjective.

    I love playing challenging games, nothing beats that sense of unlocking a truly difficult trophy or achievement you put countless hours into! I unlocked a fair few last year but the Wave 100 achievement in Robotron: 2084 still towers above all else to this day for me! smile

    As long as it's a fair challenge, no matter how brutal that challenge might be, I'm all for it. If it requires copious amounts of luck or online (i.e. not entirely dependent on your own skill and indeed luck-based with matchmaking/potential streak-breaking, rank-reducing rage quits assuming you don't boost), then count me out!

    PS_Prob said:
    Some games take difficulty too far, Cloudberry Kingdom
    I don't agree. It's insanely brutal, sure but the levels play out the exact same way every single time and you have a multitude of items at your disposal that you can buy with the crystals you collect, including a couple of path finder items, one of which, granted only shows you half the stage towards the end of the game but nevertheless...plus the slow time one.

    I actually like that there are insane challenges out there for those who choose to pursue them, so long as they're fair (not luck-based) but we all have our opinions on this. smile

    UlvenFenrir said:
    super meat boy, vanquish, metal gear rising: revengance are just a few that are skill focused without being cheap.
    I keep meaning to play Vanquish but keep forgetting. laugh Did you like MGR: R? I liked the music on the XMB but that's about all I know about the game. :P
    For a long time, I've been trying to think of something funny and witty to use for my signature. The wait goes on...
  • Posted on 06 February 17 at 16:09
    To be honest I never was a fan of Souls difficulty. I don't really like when games punish you for deaths (i.e losing some of your XP/equipment or starting back god knows where, forcing you to run some distance before every boss attempt and stuff like this). I understand that it sorta gives you incentive to play more carefully, but in the end it adds absolutely nothing to the difficulty itself, and only adds up the grind. Instead of playing normally, you're occasionally forced to grind for XP or gear or whatever, which is not always fun. Even if it's not forcing you to grind, you often can trivialise the game by grinding, which also makes the difficulty kinda artificial.

    Personally I don't like easy games at all, unless they have some fun mechanics, or you can just mess around. A good example of such game would be Just Cause or Saints Row, you don't need it to be hard, you're just playing to mess around and have some fun. It mostly applies to sandbox games though.

    However in general difficulty should be there for me to enjoy it. Even some action RPG games were just too easy at times, so it got boring. For example Witcher 3 started with a pretty decent dificulty, however over time it became just super easy to the point where every fight was super boring even on the highest difficulty, so I enjoyed it much less towards the end.

    In short, I don't like easy games, but I also don't like when difficult games don't value your time. The most recent example was with Titan Souls, where every time you die, you have to walk for like 10-20 seconds to the boss, just to die to him again in 1 hit within 10 seconds. Like why do I have to spend double the time trying to defeat that boss, because of extra pointless walking? It's just annoying and adds nothing. Super Meat Boy does this great in this regard. Although there are certain games that are built around starting from scratch each time you die. Those are usually fine (like Spelunky)

    As for difficulty itself, I actually don't really mind cheap difficulties or bullet sponges (to a certain extent of course) As somebody said, some games do it right and some games don't, it can work many ways as long as it's fun.
    Gaelic Flame - Hybrid created from Rathalos and Kushala Daora materials. Its cut is a death sentence
  • Slayer1189Slayer11892,172,350
    Posted on 06 February 17 at 17:05
    I feel difficulty is very poorly tackled by many developers and gamers, because I think in many cases a developer lazily adds harder or easier difficulties and a lot of gamers seem to have a strange idea of what they would consider 'hard'.

    1) Developers lazily adding easier and harder difficulties - Developers often program a game based on normal, then simply scale damage/health etc for the other difficulties. What this often results in is that the harder the difficulty, the slower you make progress as enemies take longer to kill and you have to be a little more cautious. Often for these types of games if you have the skill to beat it on easy then you have the skill to beat it on hard. There are exceptions of course but often this is the case.

    2) what people consider hard - I have heard a number of things referred to as hard that I completely disregard. Such as long grinds, completing collections in RPG's, attaining max rank in an online game or beating the story of a modern, AAA title.

    Long Grind - A long grind takes dedication to an extent and they often aren't fun. You may feel a sense of accomplishment when it is done but I wouldn't call it hard. Granted it takes 'effort' but I wouldn't say it requires skill, that it is a challenge or that that the game is trying to make you fail.

    Complete collections - Sometimes this can require planning and you may even optimise how you go about it. When you are done with your checklist it can be so satisfying, but again often there is no skill barrier to completing it if you decide to go for it. This as well has the odd exception where certain actions within a checklist can be challenging in their own right.

    Attaining max rank in online game - Most of the time this is simply a case of how long you are willing to play. Providing you can score, you will reach max rank eventually. I have often heard that this is hard because you are competing against real people. Granted if you are skilled you will rank up quickly, but anyone willing to put in the time is capable of reaching max rank if they play enough. Again, there are exceptions to this where to get higher requires beating better players and losing means losing progress. These ones gotten legitimately can be hard.

    Beating the story of a modern, big title - For a good number of years the mainstream gaming industry have been creating games that are designed to be beatable by pretty much anyone. Therefore, beating a game on normal difficulty is built in to the game design. The souls series and maybe a few others are a small exception to this, as they only give one difficulty and set the bar higher than most games. However, even in these cases I feel many say this a far harder than it is due to tricks by the developer. The Souls games are designed in such a way that death is integral to the game, however, attacks are telegraphed very well and so are dodge-able. The game encourages death to learn, but makes the learning straightforward, to give the impression of overcoming a challenge greater than it actually was. Of course it is still harder than most big titles and good players will die less and learn fast, but overall most gamers should be able to beat these games.

    Lastly, I am not bashing or downplaying any of the things above. I sometimes enjoy a mindless grind whilst I do other stuff and enjoy finishing them. I get great satisfaction optimising and finishing collections in games, there are games I enjoy to play online and I like a good AAA title and experiencing what the developers have crafted (I play on different difficulties usually depending on my mood), I just think words like hard or challenging don't necessarily fit the task at hand.
  • ArmyVaultArmyVault306,839
    Posted on 06 February 17 at 17:30
    I did Dark Souls and it was so incredibly boring. Lost Planet on Extreme was more of a challenge.
  • Slayer1189Slayer11892,172,350
    Posted on 06 February 17 at 17:42
    My previous post was my criticisms or certain claims of difficulty. I think there are a number of ways difficulty can be done right.

    1) Better AI - There are games in which the AI is just programmed to be better on higher difficulties. Sometimes this is poorly implemented but it can also work really well. It can force you to need to play better to win. Sometimes the AI is even designed to break the rules of the game to up the challenge, which can force you to attempt strategies that wouldn't normally be required.

    2) Adding a skill based (extra) requirement to the game - adding a requirement for combo's, max rank on levels, meeting special requirements etc can be a really good way to add optional difficulty to those who wish it while still having everyone play the same game at the same difficulty. Incentives often help encourage players to take on the additional challenge if they feel like it.

    3) Completely changing a difficulty - Some developers create games where higher difficulties are different in many ways from normal, this tends to create a fairly unique experience that is simply set to a higher difficulty than normal, whilst the game still adheres to all the same parameters.

    4) Having a brutal difficulty skill wise from the get go - Some games are just designed with a high skill bar in mind. Many years ago this was done by creating games to munch through quarters or in early console days making death easy to increase longevity. In more modern times some games are simply designed to be very difficult. The developers simply don't expect everyone to be able to succeed. They expect that casual gamers likely won't play the game and the people who do play will be looking for a challenge.
    PS_Prob said:
    Some games take difficulty too far, Cloudberry Kingdom
    To this, I love that some developers create these challenges and give gamers the chance to take them on. I think it is great to have a wide range of experiences possible. Cloudberry Kingdom is a fair challenge. Personally I got to the final level and gave up, but kudos to those who do it. Now I am older I lack the patience I once had to really persevere with the challenge. Maybe one day if I become patient once more I’ll return to it.

    5) Consistency – Consistency tasks often mean that you have to do repeat a long stretch of game that you have already done in its exact form, consistently. I usually feel this can end up tedious, as because nothing is really new or different you feel like you have already done it and get bored. It can take so long that if any mistake is made, it means repeating a lot of lost time.
    Even though I usually don’t usually personally enjoy this particular type of challenge, there are some exceptions. If I really love a game I don’t mind repeating the same stuff over and over again. Also, with things like speedrunning or challenge runs it is all about precision and consistency, but because you are playing differently it continues to keep me engaged.
  • Slayer1189Slayer11892,172,350
    Posted on 06 February 17 at 17:57, Edited on 06 February 17 at 17:58 by Slayer1189
    UlvenFenrir said:
    super meat boy, vanquish, metal gear rising: revengance are just a few that are skill focused without being cheap.
    Super Meat Boy is actually a great case as it implements all 5 of the god ways to increase difficulty in my previous post.

    1) Whilst bosses aren’t major in SMB, they play differently depending on light world or dark world
    2) Warp levels, bandages, Glitch levels and A+ times are all optional challenges you can choose to go for or ignore.
    3) The light world is designed to teach the mechanics and be beatable by anyone who just wants to experience the game, but Dark world is harder by changing the entire design of the levels. They also gate dark world behind A+ times in the light world to try to ensure players are ready before going in.
    4) Whilst the light world is pretty straightforward and may be a little more difficult than the average game, Cotton Alley is designed to be tough world, unlocked post game so that not everyone feels the need to do it. The dark world of cotton alley is also a nice touch. The developers knew when creating cotton Alley that not everyone would do it.
    5) Whilst the whole game is designed so that you don’t need to be consistent (Short levels, straight back into the action when you die), they added trophies for completing each world without dying, which requires playing the levels over and over again until you can go against the intended design and play a world consistently (It also really helps that because the controls are very tight and the levels remain static any death is preventable.

    Personally, I went above and beyond the golden god 100% achievement/trophy by meeting the requirements while additionally getting A+ on all dark worlds and beating al glitch levels and thoroughly enjoyed my time.

    Due to my personal dislike for most consistency based challenges I didn’t bother with the no deaths. The game doesn’t change but you need to play against the design of the game to do it.

    I appreciate that it is a very tough challenge that requires a lot of work and memorisation and kudos to all who have done it (of which you are among the few). For me though I know that it takes an awful lot of time and dedication that I would rather play other games with and I have lost the perseverance I once had (Plus it would be so bad to get to through to the really hard ones like cotton alley and struggle too much to continue :P)
  • Posted on 07 February 17 at 04:26, Edited on 07 February 17 at 04:34 by Jester-no-kami
    This might be nitpicky, but considering this is a ps site not xbox, why are using Dark Souls not Demon Souls as the pick for that series. Demon Souls was the first game in that series that brought back that old school hard feel, and pretty much everything in Dark Souls is lifted from demons souls with the only notable exception being bonfires replacing the nexus. If this was trueachievements I would get using Dark Souls as the reference point since Demons was not on the 360, but since this is a sony based site there is no reason for that.

    I just get tired of Demon Souls getting relegated to a second class citizen when it not Dark Souls is basically responsible for everything in the series.

    Nvm - This article was recycled from TA.

    Also you kind of left out a third main way to increase difficulty. There are the games like Demons Souls, there are games like Mass Effect that lets you change settings, and then there are JRPGs who modify difficulty with things like optional bosses, some of which make even Souls bosses look like chumps. That would be a better category to talk about given the rest of the article rather than Enslaved.
  • Harris59Harris591,196,223
    Posted on 07 February 17 at 04:53
    I'll say a couple of random things and keep it short because I could go on for pages on game difficulty so I'll just make a few random comments while I'm popping by on my phone lol.

    So, one thing, something that bugs me, I find increasing enemy health is most definitely NOT difficulty and I swear to god some developers need it tattooed on their bodies somewhere... Seriously, I've played a lot of games where the ONLY difference between a boss on Easy and Hard is the damage they deal and the damage they take... You could speed up attack patterns and give less room for error, make them use more difficult moves more regularly, evade better or leave less openings to attack, you could even add additional phases or give them specific additional move requirements to harm them. What's worse is when the just carry this 'difficulty' mentality through the entire game, so even on Easy when you progress further in the game everything is still easy to kill but just takes an hour of mashing Square... Or regular enemies just take an entire clip of sniper rifle rounds. It doesn't make it hard, just wastes the players time. This is especially tedious if enemies are stunlocked by your attacks because then it is LITERALLY mashing Square...

    Dark Souls, since I know it'll be mentioned a lot for apparently bringing modern 'difficult games' to the mainstream. While I disagree it's difficult reputation (I personally find souls games tedious and easy unless you impose challenges on yourself) but there's an interesting video by Extra Credits which referred to how they uniquely handled difficulty and I suggest giving it a listen.

    Oh, and Cloudberry Kingdom was mentioned, that game is garbage difficulty, basically it's highly untested "throw stuff in there" level design, it's not actually hard and replaying it a few times will result in success but it's not fun to play through because of its poor design and has unfair failure states. Cottom Alley in SMB is way harder to beat in terms of skill than Cloudberry but do you feel motivated to continue playing Cloudberry? The 0.07% Rarity on PSNP says no xD SMB however, I think Cotton Alley isn't even Ultra Rare, people WANT to beat it, the tight controls and fair, well made level design makes it enjoyable to pursue.

    Speaking of Cloudberry, I might go for that just to troll a guy xD, there's an egomaniac who boasts about it and I just wanna slap him with it xD won't take too long but I'm sure it'll really REALLY drag on... D:


    Also, just to really be a troll...

    To trigger some people who might be here...

    And get people spewing hate my way...

    The WipEoutHD platinum trophy is the most overrated 'difficult' achievement of all time... COME AT ME! XD
    We all serve one master, one king... And his name, is gaming, forever may he reign!
  • Posted on 07 February 17 at 05:04
    Will let you know when I find a hard game. The Souls games are easy, whole point is to not get hit, which can be pretty darn easy. When you were raised on NES games, which many weren't meant to be beaten, you should have no problem with today's games.
  • Posted on 07 February 17 at 06:43
    From my own personal experience, games like Vanquish, Thumper, and Geometry Wars 3 are proper hard, without being unfair. If you have the skills, you can slip and slide and perfect your timing and make it look effortless. Bloodborne is not quite as hard as those ones, it's not nails hard, but it is hard and in a good way.

    Now for my shit-list: Sound Shapes, just fuck off. Success depends on luck. If it's bad, even a gaming god can't complete the levels. If it's good and you're on your A-game, you'll get it without too much trouble.

    Dark Souls II SotFS DLC levels, you fuck off too. The enemies spawn in annoyingly large numbers, are all damage sponges with high resistances to any elemental damage, all have very high damage output, and the NPC summons are all retarded. The Loyce knights in particular have almost comically bad AI, whereas the enemy knights completely ignore your NPC help and come to bum-fuck you en masse.

    The End.
  • Harris59Harris591,196,223
    Posted on 07 February 17 at 07:44
    DigitalBarry said:
    Now for my shit-list: Sound Shapes, just fuck off. Success depends on luck. If it's bad, even a gaming god can't complete the levels. If it's good and you're on your A-game, you'll get it without too much trouble.
    +1
    Most people overlooked that difficulty and branded it an easy trophy whore game just because it has loads of easy DLC and can be auto popped on like 10 different versions or something. The game itself, from a fresh save, hugely luck based difficulty and pretty frustrating, I was beating those challenge type levels with like 0.1s remaining... Felt brutal tbh, would never play that shit again lol.
    We all serve one master, one king... And his name, is gaming, forever may he reign!
  • Posted on 07 February 17 at 14:42
    Harris59 said:
    So, one thing, something that bugs me, I find increasing enemy health is most definitely NOT difficulty and I swear to god some developers need it tattooed on their bodies somewhere...
    Actually it depends on the game. Some games just have enemies die so quickly when you get certain gear or even without it, that having more HP on enemies actually would make it much harder (in a good way), since you won't be able to one-hit enemies anymore and would be actually fighting them (dodging attacks, etc)

    Although I definitely agree that many developers tend to overreact with HP pools on higher difficulties. Again Witcher 3 was prime example of that, where on max setting enemies took a heavy beating, even though they were still easy past a certain point, so it was just tedious, but not actually hard.


    Also I feel the need to comment on Vanquish. While I really liked the game, I also find that difficulty setting in there wasn't the best. It was another example of punishing for deaths, where on higher difficulty settings you lost more upgrades for your weapons on first death in a section. Again this type of difficulty adds nothing to the game, except just making it annoying. Although there was an easy way to bypass it in Vanquish, but still.
    Gaelic Flame - Hybrid created from Rathalos and Kushala Daora materials. Its cut is a death sentence
  • Posted on 08 February 17 at 01:55
    ObliviousSenpai said:
    I find the Mile High Club trophy in Call of Duty 4 to be extremely easy and I'm surprised to see the number of people that find it challenging.


    That's because when the game first came out in 2007, YouTube was in its infancy and many of us weren't using it for tutorials. I rented the game in Spring 2008 and got every achievement except MHC in a week. Tried MHC for an hour and gave up.

    In fall of 2009 I watched a tutorial, saw how to do it, re-rented and 1k'd the game. You appear to have played the game in December of 2009 and had the advantage of YouTube so that's why you found it easy, and now you know why others found it challenging--because they didn't have a video showing them how to move second-by-second.
  • Harris59Harris591,196,223
    Posted on 08 February 17 at 06:09
    Frankie_Drums_ said:
    You appear to have played the game in December of 2009 and had the advantage of YouTube so that's why you found it easy, and now you know why others found it challenging--because they didn't have a video showing them how to move second-by-second.
    How do you know that's what they did? Just because it's available doesn't mean everyone used it. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't.
    We all serve one master, one king... And his name, is gaming, forever may he reign!
  • Posted on 08 February 17 at 15:06
    Frankie_Drums_ said:
    That's because when the game first came out in 2007, YouTube was in its infancy and many of us weren't using it for tutorials. I rented the game in Spring 2008 and got every achievement except MHC in a week. Tried MHC for an hour and gave up.

    In fall of 2009 I watched a tutorial, saw how to do it, re-rented and 1k'd the game. You appear to have played the game in December of 2009 and had the advantage of YouTube so that's why you found it easy, and now you know why others found it challenging--because they didn't have a video showing them how to move second-by-second.
    That's actually another good reason why games might seem not as hard as they were in the past. For example like 15+ years ago you couldn't just go to Youtube and watch somebody beat the boss in 10 seconds.

    I'm not saying that everybody does that today, of course most people don't. But even if most people don't watch walkthroughs and stuff, a lot of people actually hang around the forums these days, where they get lots of hints, tips, build recommendations, item recommendations, strategies, etc. All these little things adds up, and actually make the game quite a bit easier, compared to if you tried to discover all of this on your own.
    Gaelic Flame - Hybrid created from Rathalos and Kushala Daora materials. Its cut is a death sentence
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