Why do you insist on posting shitty videos from shitty people in an obtuse effort to generate discussion? Those people are awful gamers with awful opinions.
Fuck Geoff Keighley and everything he touches.
Because we’re all fucking tired of talking about the one note subject you want to talk about Po.I mean I don’t like Geoff Keighly either, and probably wont watch that video, but it’s still an interesting topic to discuss, and waaaaay the fuck more interesting then “Fuck Capcom” and it’s derivatives.
That’s why he bothers. He actually likes talking about games. You should get out a pen and some paper and start taking notes.
I don’t play games to overcome myself. I play games to have fun. I don’t find games like Dark Souls fun, nor do I think that Dark Souls is anything but an RPG. The games that From Software make don’t really fit into anything other than RPG. Are they rage inducing? Yes, which is why I don’t play them. However, there’s nothing wrong with a challenge.
Has anyone said Souls is more then an RPG? They are just RPGs, they are even HEAVILY influenced (especially Dark Souls 1) by old D&D pen and paper type RPGs. Quelaag (one of the bosses) is even ripped off from an old obscure pen and paper table top RPG game that Miyazaki (director) really liked. What makes them special compared to most modern day videogame RPGs is they let you create your own story and narrative, to fill in the blanks and decide the course of events on your own and make the journey truly your own. They are frustrating, and at times rage inducing, but that’s why victory feels so good.
Did someone say something in the video? (Haven’t watched it, am watching something else while collecting my thoughts on the difficulty subject)
Alright, smart ass… Let’s talk difficulty.
I like games that require a modicum of effort on the part of the player to overcome challenges rather than just having you press buttons to get to the next cutscene.
For example, I think Platinum (go ahead and call me a P* stan) has a good idea of how to make a game challenging without going too far. You can tell they took a lot from the Mega Man school of gameplay design, whereby the game itself teaches you how to play in incremental steps and well designed levels and set-pieces.
I see people complain about Mega Man games being too hard when all they ask is that you pay attention to patterns and use those Boss Weapons for more than just beating the next guy in the Rock/Paper/Scissors chain…
There is no section in any MM game that doesn’t give you a practice run first to make sure you know what’s coming and prepare accordingly, and there’s usually a workaround to get past them if you’re truly stumped, like Item 1 for the Yoku Block(those disappearing blocks) section in Heat Man’s stage. Or Time Stopper shenanigans in Quick Man’s stage, but of course, you won’t have any ammo for Quick Man himself-- That’s good challenge and choice right there.
On the flipside, I think Battletoads is difficult than it has to be, not entirely because of the stage design, but because of the wonky hit detection and controls. Unlike a MM game that gives you dry runs of difficult sections or areas that change the typical gameplay rules, it just throws you headfirst into the deep end and expects you to swim.
That’s my take on game difficulty. What’s yours?
lol smart ass. And I ain’t gonna call you a P* Stan because I’d have to call myself one to. P* is an interesting company to bring up tho since they are one of the few that still institute difficulty settings which is another interesting angle on this conversation, P* games tend to be as hard as you want them to be while a game like Dark Souls is only as hard as the shallowness of your knowledge base about the game, if you know a lot about Dark Souls it can be very very easy, playing a Pyromancer can trivialize a lot of the game if you want it to. Or you can stack Poise and just no sell everything.
I think Difficulty is a balancing act of providing a challenging and demanding experience that feels rewarding to over come while trying not to fall into the pit of painful frustration. The Megaman and Battletoads examples are good games to bring up because they do nicely illustrate the point. Megaman games tend to be fair but also difficult and demanding. Battletoads on the other hand is ball bustingly difficult and overcoming an obstacle feels more like luck then skill. Battletoads is a bad game tho, it’s difficulty isn’t something a dev took time to craft well, Battletoads is difficult because it doesn’t work right. It’s unresponsive, the hitboxes are awful, and when you add another player all those problems become compounded. RARE is and always has been over rated.
I don’t think Megaman games are flawless in this respect either, MMX4 is much much harder with X then Zero because the game clearly wasn’t designed with him in mind so the situations he runs into he tends to not have a very good answer for.
I also don’t think Souls games are flawless in this respect either, The Bed of Chaos is a HORRIBLE boss fight because it’s hard for frustrating reasons instead of valid reasons. All the attacks you have to deal with from this boss you can’t see coming at all because if you are looking up to try and see them you’re most likely gonna walk into a hole and die anyway. Also the majority of said bosses attacks will also knock you into said holes and you will die.
From Bloodborne Cleric Beast is a recent example as well, while no where near as bad as Bed of Chaos, it’s a huge boss fought on a narrow bridge with a camera that can’t move past the walls. Now Cleric Beast is 50% a boss battle of positioning, you’re both fighting for the optimum positioning on the bridge, the camera still makes this fighter harder then it really needs to be, especially for how early in the game it could potentially happen (AKA he could be your very first boss fight if you wander into him or whatever).
I also think difficulty can come from interesting places, Mario games tend to be pretty easy for the most part, least until you’re trying to get that 120th Star or whatever) but I actually find controlling Mario in 3D games really difficulty because he’s very slippy slide-y. His shoes seem to have no traction and the way his feet move tell me very little about how he is actually moving. He also has a HUGE turn around animation if you’re moving at more then a snails pace, I launch myself into pits pretty regularly in 3D Mario, most people find those games easy, but I tend to find them somewhat difficult. So it’s interesting to me how something like just how a character carries them self can inject difficulty into the game. This isn’t isn’t the same as the Battletoads point above because that game doesn’t work right. 3D Mario games all work as intended 99% of the time (Fuck that pinball waterfall fucking shine bullshit in Mario Sunshine) so this is a case of the dev making a real decision to have it’s character move in a particular way, and that decision inject perhaps unseen difficulty into the game. Maybe it was intended I dunno, but it doesn’t really seem the case to me when I look at Nintendos over all library.
So my opinion is that Difficulty is a real balancing act, and how hard something should be is really dependent on the type of game that it is. I think most of the time difficulty selection options are a really good answer to how to give everyone what they want, but it’s not always the answer, difficulty settings for Souls for example would be a problem for multiple reasons.
You mean the same UMvC3 that had EVO won by a team that JWong came up with on Day 1…of Vanilla?
When it comes to Hard Difficulty it comes down to two types of people. The first being someone that plays more than 2 games a month that keeps up with all the latest releases and will play a game to completion no more than a handful of times at the most. The second being someone who might not keep up with releases, but has a particular genre and/or company they follow and is going to play that game over multiple times, long after people have moved on.
The first being someone who isn’t trying to get into the inner workings of a game and wants to move on to the next game, therefore the hard difficulty(ies) are seen as something “dumb” that’s holding them back from switching over to something else. The second isn’t going anywhere anytime soon and will be more patient with the game and take time to understand the patterns, experiment and try to push themselves just to see what a game can and can’t do. There’s mixes to this but if I were to break it down to a binary answer, this would be it.
I’ll P* stan here and say, I really like their approach in regards to their games. There are detractors that can bring up WT and other slow-mo variants, torture attacks, items to give players crutches BUT that doesn’t mean you HAVE to use it. I see this in DMC vs Bayonetta topics. Having crutches isn’t a bad thing, as it gives players a choice to customize their experience. This in turn might push them to start taking off training wheels, depending if they are first type or the second type.
I think this is one reason games being hard get knocked on, because a lot of reviewers are the first type because it’s their job, but that’s also going by a majority of the gamer population as well. I think the other reasons that hard games get knocked is because they don’t have an aesthetic that matches the difficulty. This is where “Why is it Souls games are only allowed to be hard?!” type of comments come from
Haseo…in PXZ2?? BRUH!! The first PXZ did get a little tedious around the 18th chapter. I just wanted to get to Mega Man X and Zero and call it a day…then im stuck beating up on combo sponges for 2 hours. No way RE zombies should be able to take such an ass whooping from ppl with swords and guns.
Durr I have to alter my consciousness to learn how to play this game duurrrr
See, to me, “fun” is overcoming challenges and learning and diving into systems while being in a world and seeing awesome art. Which is also why I don’t like some games that do have great challenge and systems, but don’t have great art, or at least in some cases, just art that I like. There’s plenty examples of the opposite as well, but there’s also the occasional exception to both.
Point being that whether something is “fun” or not is subjective by it’s own definition. Some people find simulation games fun, some only find angry birds fun, etc.
Also, why is Geoff Keighley a reporter or journalist or… what the heck is he even? Like, I’ve never seen him talk intelligently about anything in any of the (very few) videos I’ve seen him in. I don’t even mean that I disagree with things he’s saying or not, just that I’ve never heard him say anything insightful. At least not anymore than any other random gamer.
About Bloodborne or any Souls game, the way I see it, they are only difficult if you aren’t willing to keep trying no matter how many times you get pushed back. And death in those games is not really that punishing since the most important tool you gain to complete the game is experience, and the nothing can take that away from you, unless you just throw it away by giving up.
Granted, not everyone who stops playing is “giving up”, sometimes people just don’t want to spend the time or just don’t like it, cool, your choice. Doesn’t make it a “rage” game or a “badly designed” game. I am super tired of hearing the latter. People do NOT KNOW THE DEFINITION OF DESIGN. THEY SHOULD LOOK IT UP. IT’S NOT BAD DESIGN BECAUSE YOU DON’T LIKE IT OR THINK IT’S CHEAP, IT’S COMPLETELY RELATIVE TO THE DESIGNERS GOALS. It’s only badly designed if it clashes with those goals.
Fuck.
Edit: “This game is bad and I don’t want to play it because I’m not happy anymore”
No, the game is fine, YOU JUST DON’T LIKE IT, WHICH IS ALSO FINE BUT A DIFFERENT ISSUE.
This is what I hate more than anything I think right now. People that can’t separate their judgments on the quality of a thing from whether or not they actually like the thing.
Project X Zone 2 needs to fix the rampant pacing issues from the first game.
The original game was about as well paced as a fat guy trying to run an Olympic marathon.
From Software actually has made a lot of different type of games over the years. They own the Tenchu ip now too, and they made one or two Tenchu games IIRC. As for difficulty, it’s not that Souls game are difficult, it’s that they force you to learn their mechanics, learn enemy patterns and when to go on the defensive/attack. They’re games that require memorization more than anything, which is something that isn’t appreciated by all modern gamers.
I need more King’s Field and Shadow Tower in my life. I also should have bought this when I seen it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_Ring
Shit I like games that are
FUCK YO LIFE SON! WORK TWO JOBS? DON’T GIVE A SHIT! IF YOU WANT TO PLAY ME <Kevin Heart>YOU GON’ LEARN TODAY</Kevin Heart>
FAIR? LIFE AIN’T FAIR SON, SUCK IT UP AND TAKE THIS ASSWHOOPING
I want more folks like Itagaki that say
I avoid stuff like unintentional random dropped control inputs/bugs though. Fix your shit.
Doesn’t DS2 already have pseudo difficulty setting though? Joining one of the covenants makes the game harder, so they could probably do one that makes it easier for those who want that. They don’t NEED to though.
I think difficulty is pretty much something that is made for you to learn to beat the game. Rather it’s a gameplay mechanic or something like memorizing where that pitfall is in a platformer. The former will obviously take lots of a practive depending on the game, but that’s a situation where the game becomes easier as you grasp the mechanic, i tmay not be EASY EASY, but the diffculty will feel lowered because your skill increased. I definitely noticed once I really got the hang of witch time, learned to use the sliding in Vanquish, mastered Royal guard in DMC3 and etc.
The latter which is memorization can be more debatable. Say if you’re playing a DK country and you’re dying alot on the stage, the farther you get on that stage the more you are gonna see which is a pitfall or etc. Like for a example a minecart level, if you die alot you will obviously start remembering where you died an will be prepped to jump or etc. But I feel even though you got it memorized it still takes some type of skill to time your jumps and all that other shit.
So that’s my takes on the two ways i see difficulty.
The 3rd option is stuff that’s just straight broken bullshit that while whatever is is beatable it’s just too much bullshit to be considered legit dificulty lol
Don’t forget about this gem.
A game so American it was only released in Japan.
ENB talks about the “difficulty” of Souls games for a bit in this part of his Bloodborne playthrough. Spoilers, obviously, but nothing important. He starts around 8:10.
[quote=“DrellyFish, post:12307, topic:168710”]
Project X Zone 2 annoucnemtn trailer. This actually motivated me to start Project X Zone so I’m ready for this sequel.
3 characters shown in here got me HYPED AF
[/quote]I’m like 36 hours into PxZ and I still haven’t beat the shit yet.
We had hard games on NES/SNES/GEN so whats different? Ohh i forgot we got sissified players now that either blame its broken, can’t read a jump in a minecart lvl or complain that you need balls the size of dodge balls to take on that knight in the corner. I’ve had my fair share of hard games and i respect a developer adding a slight helping hand. We can only get the easy-med range hard games for so long till you start to wonder if i should boot up NG on the NES to get my skill back. Kinda funny i’m the only one of my friends that beat DMC3 since most of my more hardcore gamer friends said it was too hard. SMDH.
So…everyone’s DSP?