@Drakkon:
You're massively overstating the problem. Check the snopes page: http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/cocaine.asp
"...by 1902 it was as little as 1/400 of a grain of cocaine per ounce of syrup. Coca-Cola didn't become completely cocaine-free until 1929, but there was scarcely any of the drug left in the drink by then..."
1/400 of a grain per gram works out to roughly 0.016% by weight. That's some pretty heavily cut snow.
I once played a Fire Emblem game. In my first real battle, the "paladin" character that was a guardian to my scrawny-little-but-somehow-supposed-to-be-a-beast PC (I think it was Roy?) killed all the enemies, just as a recruitable character appeared on the battlefield. My friend who plays Fire Emblem and had encouraged me to try it then informed me that I could no longer recruit that character because I had won too soon and the chance was past. Note my use of the word "once" above.
@MythrilMalevolence I believe they misinformed you because I went to play the game and not at any moment units that spawned moved immediately, they always appear at the end of an enemy turn
This is a big part of why I like Diablo 3 so much more than 2. For one, dying frequently is pretty much a given for both games, but in 2, dying means restarting at the base camp with none of the gear you were wearing when you died, having to run all the way back to your corpse, snatch your gear back out from under the nose of whatever already killed you when you were wearing that gear, and you lose a little XP every time you die.
In 3, you just start back over from the last checkpoint with all your gear and no XP loss, and after a few seconds of spawn time you're ready to go again.
Further, D2's skill system meant that if the skills you picked weren't suited to the enemy you were facing, so if you couldn't kill the enemy with them (elemental immunity, anyone?), you were screwed. In 3, you can change your skills any time outside of combat, so if your current ones aren't cutting it, you can try something else right away.
The farthest I ever got in D2 was Act 4 Nightmare, because I was playing a paladin with Holy Fire, and absolutely everything in Nightmare Act 4 was immune to the element. Since my only recourse at that point was starting over with a new character, I dropped the game. I've heard that they eventually put in a way to reset your skill points, but it wasn't for years and years after not only the game, but its expansion had been released. By comparison, my D3 barbarian is currently chugging through Inferno difficulty, and I've gone through a ton of different skill combinations along the way.
This episode reminded me of the original Deus Ex. I was 13 when it came out and it was one of my first games. My aunt gave it to based on the recommendation of some random dude at a Zellers. My best friend and I got together to play it at his house. I can't recall how many times we failed on the liberty island level, but we never gave up. We didn't want to. When we finally made it into Unatco HQ we felt so damn awesome! It was great. I look forward to more games providing an experience like that.
I agree with most of this video, but disagree on one particular point - the need to have the player jump right back in to the spot where they died to try again (i.e. frequent checkpoints).
* As Miyamoto pointed out, playing through an easier section again before you get to the part you are stuck on can help build confidence and relieve the stress of being slammed up against something difficult over and over again.
* A feeling of mastery is very satisfying, as much or more so than just "victory". With frequent checkpoints, a player will often accidentally stumble their way through to the next checkpoint without actually having figured out how to correctly overcome the challenge, and are left with a feeling of "okay, well I guess I'm further now, but I'm not sure how I was actually supposed to do that", which isn't very satisfying.
* In some games, frequent checkpoints can actually make it more punishing, because not all games have the character always at the same power level like Super Meat Boy does. In Mario games, for example, if you always started at Bowser every time he killed you, you'd have no opportunity to get powerups to become Fire Mario before facing him, you'd have to now continuously face him as Small Mario. Same thing with Super Ghouls N' Ghosts - being sent back to the beginning gives an opportunity to collect better gear and come back to the challenge better prepared than you were last time.
* There really is a distinct difference in the skill required to do X, Y, and Z by themselves and to do all 3 in order without messing up at any point. Tests of endurance and sustained skill are legitimate forms of challenge. Its why both sprinting and marathon running are enjoyable sports that appeal to different athletes. Frequent checkpoints completely negates a very enjoyable type of challenge and style of play.
I don't want to take any more space up with this here but I do feel that claiming that sending players back a decent ways when they mess up is an outright "bad" design decision is not really fully exploring the issue. I agree on the Fire Emblem example, but even in that it was combined with another issue to really make it problematic.
Disagree with their example. Demon's Souls and Dark Souls are examples OF punishing games that are popular.
In Demon's Souls, when you die, you come back WITH LESS HEALTH to try again. How is that anything but punishing? There are instant death traps all over the place you have little chance of avoiding if you don't know they're there (lol chest mimics in Dark Souls).
I wonder how I Wanna Be the Guy's success factors into this video. Except for the "start right when you died" rule, it didn't follow any of their stipulations. The rules are definitively unfair, options are limited (unless you count the multiple paths,) and there's almost never any warning to what will kill you.
You know what? Nanowrimo's cancelled on account of the world is stupid.
Looking forward to playing some 'difficult' games rather than punishing games thanks to the advice provided. If so how long could it be from some designer seeing this vid and deciding yeah, I'm going to do that until a game is available for me to buy? I always wondered about the whole process. And I don't mean a game like Duke Nukem where it was in production like forever.
Demon's Souls has consequences to dying, but it isn't "punishing" in how the term was used in the video. There are shortcuts to unlock along the way so that the trek back isn't doing the same full run as before. Also, the mimics in Dark Souls have a visual difference than real chests, so if you pick up on that, you can learn what to look for (the way the chain on the ground looks), if you don't just outright attack every chest you see (which will expose a mimic, unlock in some other games), which many people do and is a valid way of applying what you learned from the first mistake.
@skyttskytt Shortcuts aren't the only progress though. Your souls are your experience which are also your progress. Die twice and you lose all you gained since last using them - that is the definition of punishing.
You'll notice the difference between mimic chests and other chests AFTER you get killed by the first one, because before then you aren't looking for differences and had no reason to. Suggesting you attack all chests because in some other game that roots out mimics is a bad analogy, because in some other games you can also destroy chests and lose items by attacking them, so why risk it here?
Trial and error deaths are the definition of punishing.
There are plenty of things about the Souls games that are challenge without being punishing, but tons of punishing stuff you can't deny.
And this is WHY people like them. This is why everyone gets mad when they hint at making an easy mode. So saying punishing games never work is simply false.
Chest mimics in Dark Souls are hardly one shot deaths. My first encounter only dropped me to half health, and you quickly learn the first time you find one that you need to attack every chest before attempting to open it (assuming you didn't read the notes left by other players in front of them). My first reaction was to attack every chest from that point on... never once did I think it would destroy the chest because there hadn't been any instance where a chest was collateral damage to my escapades prior to that.
The only punishing things I've found in Dark Souls were:
1) Stray Demon in Undead Asylum (Return) - A whole different level of difficulty than other bosses in the game, and generally unforgiving if you make more than 1 mistake. You also have to figure out that you need as much mobility as you can get to fight him (which means no armor). It's counter intuitive to take off your armor.
2) Hellkite Drake - Abusive use of flame breath makes this guy hard to take down. Having lots of fire resistance gear makes it easier, but you don't usually get that until much later in the game, at which point killing this guy gives almost no reward.
3) The twin archers in Anor Londo. Those ballistic missile arrows really hurt, and blocking them knocks you back, and potentially to your death.
Only #3 is required to progress in the story, and even then it is only an issue for melee characters. Casters have less trouble with this. The other two examples are optional bosses.
I haven't played Demon's Souls so I can't comment.
I've been a fan of gaming history for sometime, but this is a new look into that history for me.
I never thought about how development costs would change the difficulty of video games.
Additionally, this episode stands out to me as one of the best shows Extra Credits has done on game design. I have encountered so many cases of 'punishing' game play over 'difficult' and I often struggle with such games. I celebrate what you have done here EC. Kudos.
@Gungan - you make a particularly good point at the end there. Optional bosses can be more challenging because they're optional (within reason. Screw Yiazmat, etc.). Hellkite Drake gets you a shortcut, and a sword that makes the next hour or two easier (until you can upgrade a weapon to surpass it more easily).
And the Stray Demon... well, it's not worth much more than bragging rights.
@Gungan I feel it's worth pointing out that mimic chests are discolored and the flame breath path for the Hellkite Drake is visibly scorched, so you do get some forewarning. I think the two big breaks in the whole fairness doctrine are
1. Ceaseless Discharge. His attacks ignore terrain geometry, have huge aos and last for long enough to make dodging near impossible. On higher playthroughes there seems to be only 2 ways to beat him and both are highly gimmicky.
2. Bed of Chaos. As Ceasless's mother, this really shouldn't come as a surprise.
@Epsilon Rose
I would disagree that Ceaseless Discharge is ever unfair, as he's still incredibly easy to dodge and telegraphs his moves bigtime. Bed of Chaos however, even the devs admitted was a huge mistake and regret making that fight.
In regards to the video, the people whining there are no more hard games aren't looking very hard, or only play on consoles. There is a dirth of hard games and roguelikes on the PC to sate your thirst for challenge. And too few realize that older "classic" games weren't hard, just unfair. Look at classic Ninja Gaiden. It's 'hard' only in the fact it's amazingly cheap.
I have been watching Extra Credits for years now and I will say I am glad to see y'all use examples of what you talk about. So many times in your earlier episodes you would present an idea relating to a video game but not say a specific game that idea related too. Thanks for using examples to show what you are talking about so I can relate.
Dark Souls isn't a difficult game. It's a punishing game as you described it and it still sold very well.
Dark Souls has a pretty long iteration time when you die. Depending on the zone and where you died, it could easily take 10-20 minutes trying to get back to where you died. Not only that, but when you die you drop your souls on the ground. If you die before picking them up they're gone forever, preventing the player from using them to level up and gain more damage, more access to new weapons, more survivability and speed and all the other benefits to leveling that makes the game easier. So yeah, it has a long iteration time and a pretty big penalty for death.
The enemies in Dark Souls do not necessarily follow the same rules as everything else. Whether an attack staggers you is 100% dependent on your poise stat, which allows you to take damage without getting staggered. Not only that, some enemies can only stagger you if they hit you, while some enemies have attacks that all have huge knock backs that can easily knock you off a ledge leading to your instant death. That's not to say that the rules don't make sense. It's just that every enemy type presents a unique set of moves and abilities, and some of them have knockbacks as part of their abilities while others don't. Some enemies will knock your ass to the ground, some of them have completely unblockable grab attacks and since most new players will be primarily using the shield as their defense, they're probably going to die to it. Yeah, you can kill just about everything in the game. But a huge part of the game is learning about the different enemies and how radically different their abilities are.
Also, while you can whip out your bow and shoot enemies, sometimes they'll raise their shield and head to cover preventing you from just cheesing them to death.
Dark Souls has something like 72 different enemy types and all of them have different move sets, different abilities, and all require different approaches, oftentimes radically so.
Not only that, but if you're playing online you have to contend with players invading you and trying to kill you which is a very real and serious threat in online mode. It isn't made clear that being in human form allows other players to invade you and allows you to summon players for help.
Usability is not something I would use to describe Dark Souls. In fact, I would describe the lack of usability and the knowledge based players need to acquire as the source of almost all difficulty in Dark Souls. The controls and the hit detection are damn near perfect. However, literally every button on the controller is mapped to some function and almost all of them are very necessary. This gives the game an immediately steeper learning curve than a lot of games you described as "difficult, but not punishing." Not only that but what items and spells do, or what moveset the particular weapon type has isn't made obvious until you spend time experimenting with them. The game's tutorial is very bare bones, giving only the smallest bit of direction before leaving the player on their own completely. There are a lot of things the player needs to know or should know that they have to discover on their own; things like how to make a good weapon, how to dodge roll effectively, understanding weapon scaling and shield stability. Dark Souls isn't about technical execution the way Super Meat Boy is. The actual raw technical skill required to beat the game is minimal. The difficulty comes in it's inaccessibility.
Dark Souls definitely gives you a wealth of options to use. There are a huge variety of weapons, spells and armors. A lot of times switching from a light armored set to a heavy armor set with lots of poise can really help. Other times the opposite is true. That's the only area I feel Dark Souls lines up with your description.
I don't want to sound like I'm dissing Dark Souls. I'm absolutely not. Let's get one thing straight; Dark Souls is my favorite game of all time. But I think the writers of this episode have a fundamental misunderstanding of what Dark Souls is, and this episode is very flawed as a result.
there's a fine line between punishing and difficult, depending on the player and the types of games you enjoy. I read someone who hates jet set radio on the dreamcast saying it was punishing, but i degress, as for me all my failures in that made me come up with other ways to tackle the main levels than my first try. same now with new games like monster hunter and dark souls, they are do-able, it's a matter of coming up with a work around that suits you and realizing that if you're constantly failing at the game, then maybe you need to find a game that suits your style of play more... or at least acknowledge that you CAN SUCK at a game every once in a while.
Honestly, I can't say I agree with all of this episode.
While all of the points are valid, your choice of Dark Souls as a difficult and not punishing game seems a bit strange. With a lot of the conditions you mentioned for a difficult game not to be punishing, I thought "that's not Dark Souls".
It's true, Dark Souls does follow rules. However, to most players, these rules are random, and apply differently to every enemy in the game. For example, the Bed of Chaos. First, the Bed of Chaos is the only boss where your progress does not reset. Then, halfway through the fight, the floor starts falling out from under you, which if you fall though, instantly kills you. This leaves the rest of the fight to being powered entirely by blind luck or memorisation.
Another example would be with parrying. A large portion of the game can be made easier (not easy, mind) with parrying. The game introduces you to parrying at a very early point. "Oh hey, the game's telling me I can parry and riposte. Let's try it on this Hollow here. Oh cool, I parried and riposted him for more damage! Let's try it on this giant demon! Okay, that didn't go so well. So I guess I can't parry larger enemies. But what about the Heavy Knight in the Undead Parish? I can parry him. But I can't riposte! And what about the Butchers? I can parry and riposte most of their attacks, but not their grab?" Each enemy has a unique set of rules. However, they religiously follow those rules (barring any glitches).
I will concede to Dark Souls having options. Dark Souls has a hell of a lot of options. More than almost any game I can remember in recent time.
Telegraphing is something Dark Souls also has (barring the Bed of RNG).
However, iteration time is definitely something Dark Souls has. You die, your sorry ass gets dragged back to whatever bonfire you last rested at. What's that, your last bonfire was miles away, in another part of the map? Best get walking. Yes, this is punishing. However, punishing should not be read as negatively as it seems to be, in my opinion. Punishing gives a weight to failure. In Super Meat Boy, I rarely sat down and thought "huh, time to reanalyse (or even just analyse) my approach". I could keep retrying with the slightest change, never really planning, as there was no real punishment for dying. In Dark Souls, I had to stop and think. I had to think whether going ham against five wyverns was really a good idea, and whether I could be guaranteed to win against them, because I sure as hell wasn't walking all the way back here.
And Dark Souls is definitely not usable. It is beyond difficult to get into, often expecting complete understanding of the mechanics a few minutes into the game. There are 120 different weapons in Dark Souls, with many more spells, much more armor, and each weapon has a different moveset, and can be enchanted or upgraded or covered in magical crystals of happiness. While this gives options and variety, it's also an incredibly large amount of information for someone to absorb easily.
Similarly, the lore of Dark Souls is impossible to understand at a glance. There's hints and clues, sometimes not even that, requiring players to read into and make sure to check every single description to get a full understanding of the story. Of course, this isn't at all required, and the general story is given throughout the game, but a lot of players still walk away from the game wondering what the hell their moral choice actually meant.
Dark Souls is an incredibly difficult game. However, it is also a very punishing game. The thing is, this does not detract from the game. It is punishing, but not unfair, which would perhaps be a better word to describe Nintendo Hard games.
You must be talking about Nostalgia vs. Contemporary.
Megaman 9 wasn't a punishing game, it had rough edges but I also found it on Megaman 2 (Heatman stage specifically). Also Megaman 9 offered tools to make it less punishing and an easy mode for newcomers that don't like instant kills.
P.S. I didn't play Megaman 10. Was that a more refined take on the classic?
Why aren't they making hard games? Because few of them are able to! Am I playing Bayonetta on 'Non-stop infinite climax' right now? Yes I am. Am I going to play Castlevania: Lords of Shadow and it's turd of hit detection system on hard? Hayell no!
Also on repetition: you had to begin from the start of the level in Demon's Souls. I take that as a challenge of endurance. I like that feeling of near despair that you get in Ninja Gaiden 1 secret challenge rooms, where flood of enemies seems to never end.
But, I guess, most people just want to stumble through 3 games a week without even trying to master systems they offer. What a waste of money.
@Iaparapa Honestly, I agree that Dark Souls is punishing but I don't think it's as excusable as you make it out to be. There is NO excuse for the complete lack of information needed to make good build choices in-game. I tried the game recently, and remember being quickly assaulted with character and equip choices that were both completely arcane and very important, and seemingly irrevocable. That sucks, and one should not need an outside source to learn what each stat actually DOES.
Also, I one hundred percent disagree that the huge iteration time is always a good thing in that game. Weight to failure is one thing, but when it gets so heavy that it actively discourages experimentation and HEAVILY encourages using guides and precanned strategies because of the huge time loss for each failure, there is a problem.
It seemed like a cool game. I'll probably never play it, because I have no interest in a game that doesn't let me even try to experiment with builds without a fucking fan-made glossary, and one which punishes every misstep with tedious backtracking and potentially extra forced grinding to recoup lost progress. Grind is just about the worst goddamn thing in games in my opinion.
- I think the main idea is making a game easy to get into but hard to master. For example many platformers nowdays put there punishing stages at the very end, and usually after the campaign's ending.
- "Punishing games will never succeed" <- that's kinda of bold, but I assume it meant as to have the entire game being punishing (Ninja Gaiden [Xbox]), other than that a game can't have difficulty spikes.
Also as a final point is Rayman Origins a punishing game? I say it because the chest chase levels require memorization IMO.
Wait, but the creators of Dark Souls have ADMITTED they made the game cause they "hated themselves" and wanted to punish themselves :P or something to that sorts. And they wanted to make it really hard and try to beat the player (but within the rules of the game) lol.
There's something to be said about how Dark Souls is built. This is coming from someone who is heavily invested in Dark Souls...the mechanics, the lore, and everything about it. It isn't perfect, but Daniel brings up a good point about Dark Souls being internally consistent with the rules. Everything you learn, every mechanic that you realize, is usable up until the very end of the game. Enemies largely follow the same rules you do...such as when they fall of cliffs too high, they die. This is evident in the first fight with the Taurus Demon, the Iron Golem in Sen's Fortress, and especially the Ceaseless Discharge in the Demon Ruins. In fact, for these three fights, legitimate strategies include setting up for them to just walk off the edge, or in the case of the Ceaseless Discharge, to force him off the ledge. Likewise, with humanoid enemies approximately the size of the player, you can parry them. This comes into play against the last boss Gwyn the Lord of Cinder, as many players do not realize at first you can actually parry his strikes. Gwyn hits like a truck, and his attacks are huge, so being able to parry him starts to edge the fight in your favor.
It is true that Dark Souls isn't perfect. I think the game could've given you an explanation of the stats, especially since nearly all of them matter. However, I don't think this failure of the game supersedes the rest of it. As Daniel said, the game is great because it is mechanically consistent. If you know the play mechanics, the game allows you to apply them all throughout the course of the game. This means that you have a very varied and extensive "bag of tricks" to overcome the challenges within the game, and the game becomes a matter of execution.
laparapa, parry and riposte makes sense when you start thinking about things in the class of enemies. Again, when you start thinking about it like that, you realize what the set of rules are. Enemies that are human/oid around your size can be parried and riposte. Human/oid enemies significantly larger or bulkier and bosses can be parried but cannot be hit with a riposte. Monstrous or giant enemies cannot be parried. I think you and someone else confuses enemy variety with mechanical consistency. Sure...most of the enemy sets have different move sets...well of course! Do you really think that every enemy should feel and fight the same? But outside of that...how you deal with them again, is consistent with everything else. A high dex dodge character is going to more or less go through the entire game the exact same way...rolling and getting hits in. It doesn't matter what fancy moves the enemies have...you can still fight most of them the same way as long as you learn the enemy and it's peculiarities. On my first ever playthrough I got the Zweihander and I proceeded, literally, to do the same thing against every boss...brute force my way against them with heavy swings. How is that not consistent mechanically? If the monsters had different rules as you claim, then I would be forced to invent new strategy every time...but I didn't. With enough dedication and determination, even Four Kings fell to me like that.
Monsters are just as affected by staggers and stuns depending on their poise, and human enemies still recover health via estus flasks. They all still die when falling off a ledge, and they can still get poisoned or affected by status effects unless immune.
I'm sorry, but the Fire Emblem example was a bad one.
The game does warn you about enemy spawns - typically through dialogue, sometimes during the opening of the chapter, but there is always some form of warning. And enemies only move the turn they spawn on the hardest difficulties - difficulties designed to be incredibly hard, with the lower difficulties being more "fair". And the game warns you that these difficulties are ridiculous, so you know to keep weaker, or injured characters protected against spawns.
Fire Emblem Awakening is an incredibly fair, yet challenging game, which is part of why people play it. It's never punishing for the sake of punishing, and even the hardest difficulties warn you up front about changes to the "normal" rules so that you know what's going on.
Rayman Origins was really well designed. It sort of did what Super Meat Boy did, by having instant respawns and making it so the player could get right to where they had died in a very short amount of time. They however, did this with longer levels and a very large amount of checkpoints. The tricky treasure temples were however, punishing. They had no checkpoints, but skill was was necessary to get through it, but memorization really helped. I feel this is something Capcom needs to understand for the Megaman games, if they're ever going to release another one of those. It was clear they wanted it to be more accessible, but merely sticking in an easy mode in Megaman 10 was not the best way to go.
I wonder how I Wanna Be the Guy's success factors into this video. Except for the "start right when you died" rule, it didn't follow any of their stipulations. The rules are definitively unfair, options are limited (unless you count the multiple paths,) and there's almost never any warning to what will kill you.
At least with IWBTG, when you die, it's usually at least funny.
You just take a step back, go "what the hell was THAT?", laugh, and restart.
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
I wonder how I Wanna Be the Guy's success factors into this video. Except for the "start right when you died" rule, it didn't follow any of their stipulations. The rules are definitively unfair, options are limited (unless you count the multiple paths,) and there's almost never any warning to what will kill you.
At least with IWBTG, when you die, it's usually at least funny.
You just take a step back, go "what the hell was THAT?", laugh, and restart.
Also there are many checkpoints so you're never losing your progress. Usually every room has a checkpoint.
I signed up just to leave this comment.
I think this is the best episode you guys have done in a while. Although the political and business side of videogames is very important, what I really love hearing about are the core game design elements that make all the games I love so great.
I feel as in this day and age, people are not really looking for difficulty in games but more so something they can be very good at and show off to their friends. I did really agree with this episode but it seems as if people are less and less caring toward a difficult game and when it reached out for, the developers cram such a awful amount of just punishing things that you could not of seen coming.
Good point about iteration time. I reckon having good checkpoints is probably the most important way to do this. You don't really appreciate how important a good checkpoint system is until you're faced with a really BAD one.
I'm assuming you've never played Fire Emblem Awakening before, but literally every single level you are given explicit warnings that there WILL be reinforcements and you'll be given clues of where they will come from too. EVERY LEVEL.
Therefore you're given a set amount of time to proceed and brace yourself for enemy reinforcement by putting your units in formation. If your units still die, then it's only your own fault for failing to prepare in time. The video is kinda misinforming...
I'm sorry, but the Fire Emblem example was a bad one.
The game does warn you about enemy spawns - typically through dialogue, sometimes during the opening of the chapter, but there is always some form of warning. And enemies only move the turn they spawn on the hardest difficulties - difficulties designed to be incredibly hard, with the lower difficulties being more "fair". And the game warns you that these difficulties are ridiculous, so you know to keep weaker, or injured characters protected against spawns.
Fire Emblem Awakening is an incredibly fair, yet challenging game, which is part of why people play it. It's never punishing for the sake of punishing, and even the hardest difficulties warn you up front about changes to the "normal" rules so that you know what's going on.
The fact you describe the enemies spawning and moving on higher difficulties as less fair implies it's quite a punishing mechanic.
Also Dark Souls is a punishing game in the sense that every failure can be a massive step back and the game gives you literally no information to go off of when starting. To put this in perspective if you think that's exaggerating try reading some of the Dark Soul's focused posts in this thread and consider which of those words are understandable and make sense in the game world for a new player, virtually none.
While I generally agree with the complaints about FE:Awakening, there is one caveat I see in the example - we're referring to Classic Mode, which is supposed to be a throwback to when the games were intentionally punishing (NES/SNES era). It is a player choice to play in this mode, as in YOU DON'T PLAY IT IF YOU AREN'T LOOKING TO BE PUNISHED.
Posts
You're massively overstating the problem. Check the snopes page:
http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/cocaine.asp
"...by 1902 it was as little as 1/400 of a grain of cocaine per ounce of syrup. Coca-Cola didn't become completely cocaine-free until 1929, but there was scarcely any of the drug left in the drink by then..."
1/400 of a grain per gram works out to roughly 0.016% by weight. That's some pretty heavily cut snow.
In 3, you just start back over from the last checkpoint with all your gear and no XP loss, and after a few seconds of spawn time you're ready to go again.
Further, D2's skill system meant that if the skills you picked weren't suited to the enemy you were facing, so if you couldn't kill the enemy with them (elemental immunity, anyone?), you were screwed. In 3, you can change your skills any time outside of combat, so if your current ones aren't cutting it, you can try something else right away.
The farthest I ever got in D2 was Act 4 Nightmare, because I was playing a paladin with Holy Fire, and absolutely everything in Nightmare Act 4 was immune to the element. Since my only recourse at that point was starting over with a new character, I dropped the game. I've heard that they eventually put in a way to reset your skill points, but it wasn't for years and years after not only the game, but its expansion had been released. By comparison, my D3 barbarian is currently chugging through Inferno difficulty, and I've gone through a ton of different skill combinations along the way.
Shigeru Miyamoto disagrees as well:
http://www.nintendo.co.uk/Iwata-Asks/Iwata-Asks-New-Super-Mario-Bros-Wii/Volume-1/9-The-Correct-Way-to-Enjoy-An-Action-Game/9-The-Correct-Way-to-Enjoy-An-Action-Game-211131.html
Some problems with frequent checkpoints:
* As Miyamoto pointed out, playing through an easier section again before you get to the part you are stuck on can help build confidence and relieve the stress of being slammed up against something difficult over and over again.
* A feeling of mastery is very satisfying, as much or more so than just "victory". With frequent checkpoints, a player will often accidentally stumble their way through to the next checkpoint without actually having figured out how to correctly overcome the challenge, and are left with a feeling of "okay, well I guess I'm further now, but I'm not sure how I was actually supposed to do that", which isn't very satisfying.
* In some games, frequent checkpoints can actually make it more punishing, because not all games have the character always at the same power level like Super Meat Boy does. In Mario games, for example, if you always started at Bowser every time he killed you, you'd have no opportunity to get powerups to become Fire Mario before facing him, you'd have to now continuously face him as Small Mario. Same thing with Super Ghouls N' Ghosts - being sent back to the beginning gives an opportunity to collect better gear and come back to the challenge better prepared than you were last time.
* There really is a distinct difference in the skill required to do X, Y, and Z by themselves and to do all 3 in order without messing up at any point. Tests of endurance and sustained skill are legitimate forms of challenge. Its why both sprinting and marathon running are enjoyable sports that appeal to different athletes. Frequent checkpoints completely negates a very enjoyable type of challenge and style of play.
I don't want to take any more space up with this here but I do feel that claiming that sending players back a decent ways when they mess up is an outright "bad" design decision is not really fully exploring the issue. I agree on the Fire Emblem example, but even in that it was combined with another issue to really make it problematic.
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In Demon's Souls, when you die, you come back WITH LESS HEALTH to try again. How is that anything but punishing? There are instant death traps all over the place you have little chance of avoiding if you don't know they're there (lol chest mimics in Dark Souls).
There is a place for punishing difficulty.
Demon's Souls has consequences to dying, but it isn't "punishing" in how the term was used in the video. There are shortcuts to unlock along the way so that the trek back isn't doing the same full run as before. Also, the mimics in Dark Souls have a visual difference than real chests, so if you pick up on that, you can learn what to look for (the way the chain on the ground looks), if you don't just outright attack every chest you see (which will expose a mimic, unlock in some other games), which many people do and is a valid way of applying what you learned from the first mistake.
You'll notice the difference between mimic chests and other chests AFTER you get killed by the first one, because before then you aren't looking for differences and had no reason to. Suggesting you attack all chests because in some other game that roots out mimics is a bad analogy, because in some other games you can also destroy chests and lose items by attacking them, so why risk it here?
Trial and error deaths are the definition of punishing.
There are plenty of things about the Souls games that are challenge without being punishing, but tons of punishing stuff you can't deny.
And this is WHY people like them. This is why everyone gets mad when they hint at making an easy mode. So saying punishing games never work is simply false.
Chest mimics in Dark Souls are hardly one shot deaths. My first encounter only dropped me to half health, and you quickly learn the first time you find one that you need to attack every chest before attempting to open it (assuming you didn't read the notes left by other players in front of them). My first reaction was to attack every chest from that point on... never once did I think it would destroy the chest because there hadn't been any instance where a chest was collateral damage to my escapades prior to that.
The only punishing things I've found in Dark Souls were:
1) Stray Demon in Undead Asylum (Return) - A whole different level of difficulty than other bosses in the game, and generally unforgiving if you make more than 1 mistake. You also have to figure out that you need as much mobility as you can get to fight him (which means no armor). It's counter intuitive to take off your armor.
2) Hellkite Drake - Abusive use of flame breath makes this guy hard to take down. Having lots of fire resistance gear makes it easier, but you don't usually get that until much later in the game, at which point killing this guy gives almost no reward.
3) The twin archers in Anor Londo. Those ballistic missile arrows really hurt, and blocking them knocks you back, and potentially to your death.
Only #3 is required to progress in the story, and even then it is only an issue for melee characters. Casters have less trouble with this. The other two examples are optional bosses.
I haven't played Demon's Souls so I can't comment.
I never thought about how development costs would change the difficulty of video games.
Additionally, this episode stands out to me as one of the best shows Extra Credits has done on game design. I have encountered so many cases of 'punishing' game play over 'difficult' and I often struggle with such games. I celebrate what you have done here EC. Kudos.
And the Stray Demon... well, it's not worth much more than bragging rights.
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1. Ceaseless Discharge. His attacks ignore terrain geometry, have huge aos and last for long enough to make dodging near impossible. On higher playthroughes there seems to be only 2 ways to beat him and both are highly gimmicky.
2. Bed of Chaos. As Ceasless's mother, this really shouldn't come as a surprise.
I would disagree that Ceaseless Discharge is ever unfair, as he's still incredibly easy to dodge and telegraphs his moves bigtime. Bed of Chaos however, even the devs admitted was a huge mistake and regret making that fight.
In regards to the video, the people whining there are no more hard games aren't looking very hard, or only play on consoles. There is a dirth of hard games and roguelikes on the PC to sate your thirst for challenge. And too few realize that older "classic" games weren't hard, just unfair. Look at classic Ninja Gaiden. It's 'hard' only in the fact it's amazingly cheap.
Dark Souls has a pretty long iteration time when you die. Depending on the zone and where you died, it could easily take 10-20 minutes trying to get back to where you died. Not only that, but when you die you drop your souls on the ground. If you die before picking them up they're gone forever, preventing the player from using them to level up and gain more damage, more access to new weapons, more survivability and speed and all the other benefits to leveling that makes the game easier. So yeah, it has a long iteration time and a pretty big penalty for death.
The enemies in Dark Souls do not necessarily follow the same rules as everything else. Whether an attack staggers you is 100% dependent on your poise stat, which allows you to take damage without getting staggered. Not only that, some enemies can only stagger you if they hit you, while some enemies have attacks that all have huge knock backs that can easily knock you off a ledge leading to your instant death. That's not to say that the rules don't make sense. It's just that every enemy type presents a unique set of moves and abilities, and some of them have knockbacks as part of their abilities while others don't. Some enemies will knock your ass to the ground, some of them have completely unblockable grab attacks and since most new players will be primarily using the shield as their defense, they're probably going to die to it. Yeah, you can kill just about everything in the game. But a huge part of the game is learning about the different enemies and how radically different their abilities are.
Also, while you can whip out your bow and shoot enemies, sometimes they'll raise their shield and head to cover preventing you from just cheesing them to death.
Dark Souls has something like 72 different enemy types and all of them have different move sets, different abilities, and all require different approaches, oftentimes radically so.
Not only that, but if you're playing online you have to contend with players invading you and trying to kill you which is a very real and serious threat in online mode. It isn't made clear that being in human form allows other players to invade you and allows you to summon players for help.
Usability is not something I would use to describe Dark Souls. In fact, I would describe the lack of usability and the knowledge based players need to acquire as the source of almost all difficulty in Dark Souls. The controls and the hit detection are damn near perfect. However, literally every button on the controller is mapped to some function and almost all of them are very necessary. This gives the game an immediately steeper learning curve than a lot of games you described as "difficult, but not punishing." Not only that but what items and spells do, or what moveset the particular weapon type has isn't made obvious until you spend time experimenting with them. The game's tutorial is very bare bones, giving only the smallest bit of direction before leaving the player on their own completely. There are a lot of things the player needs to know or should know that they have to discover on their own; things like how to make a good weapon, how to dodge roll effectively, understanding weapon scaling and shield stability. Dark Souls isn't about technical execution the way Super Meat Boy is. The actual raw technical skill required to beat the game is minimal. The difficulty comes in it's inaccessibility.
Dark Souls definitely gives you a wealth of options to use. There are a huge variety of weapons, spells and armors. A lot of times switching from a light armored set to a heavy armor set with lots of poise can really help. Other times the opposite is true. That's the only area I feel Dark Souls lines up with your description.
I don't want to sound like I'm dissing Dark Souls. I'm absolutely not. Let's get one thing straight; Dark Souls is my favorite game of all time. But I think the writers of this episode have a fundamental misunderstanding of what Dark Souls is, and this episode is very flawed as a result.
While all of the points are valid, your choice of Dark Souls as a difficult and not punishing game seems a bit strange. With a lot of the conditions you mentioned for a difficult game not to be punishing, I thought "that's not Dark Souls".
It's true, Dark Souls does follow rules. However, to most players, these rules are random, and apply differently to every enemy in the game. For example, the Bed of Chaos. First, the Bed of Chaos is the only boss where your progress does not reset. Then, halfway through the fight, the floor starts falling out from under you, which if you fall though, instantly kills you. This leaves the rest of the fight to being powered entirely by blind luck or memorisation.
Another example would be with parrying. A large portion of the game can be made easier (not easy, mind) with parrying. The game introduces you to parrying at a very early point. "Oh hey, the game's telling me I can parry and riposte. Let's try it on this Hollow here. Oh cool, I parried and riposted him for more damage! Let's try it on this giant demon! Okay, that didn't go so well. So I guess I can't parry larger enemies. But what about the Heavy Knight in the Undead Parish? I can parry him. But I can't riposte! And what about the Butchers? I can parry and riposte most of their attacks, but not their grab?" Each enemy has a unique set of rules. However, they religiously follow those rules (barring any glitches).
I will concede to Dark Souls having options. Dark Souls has a hell of a lot of options. More than almost any game I can remember in recent time.
Telegraphing is something Dark Souls also has (barring the Bed of RNG).
However, iteration time is definitely something Dark Souls has. You die, your sorry ass gets dragged back to whatever bonfire you last rested at. What's that, your last bonfire was miles away, in another part of the map? Best get walking. Yes, this is punishing. However, punishing should not be read as negatively as it seems to be, in my opinion. Punishing gives a weight to failure. In Super Meat Boy, I rarely sat down and thought "huh, time to reanalyse (or even just analyse) my approach". I could keep retrying with the slightest change, never really planning, as there was no real punishment for dying. In Dark Souls, I had to stop and think. I had to think whether going ham against five wyverns was really a good idea, and whether I could be guaranteed to win against them, because I sure as hell wasn't walking all the way back here.
And Dark Souls is definitely not usable. It is beyond difficult to get into, often expecting complete understanding of the mechanics a few minutes into the game. There are 120 different weapons in Dark Souls, with many more spells, much more armor, and each weapon has a different moveset, and can be enchanted or upgraded or covered in magical crystals of happiness. While this gives options and variety, it's also an incredibly large amount of information for someone to absorb easily.
Similarly, the lore of Dark Souls is impossible to understand at a glance. There's hints and clues, sometimes not even that, requiring players to read into and make sure to check every single description to get a full understanding of the story. Of course, this isn't at all required, and the general story is given throughout the game, but a lot of players still walk away from the game wondering what the hell their moral choice actually meant.
Dark Souls is an incredibly difficult game. However, it is also a very punishing game. The thing is, this does not detract from the game. It is punishing, but not unfair, which would perhaps be a better word to describe Nintendo Hard games.
Mega Man 2 is fun, challenging and fair. Mega Man 9 is butt reamingly hard lined with instant kill traps.
You must be talking about Nostalgia vs. Contemporary.
Megaman 9 wasn't a punishing game, it had rough edges but I also found it on Megaman 2 (Heatman stage specifically). Also Megaman 9 offered tools to make it less punishing and an easy mode for newcomers that don't like instant kills.
P.S. I didn't play Megaman 10. Was that a more refined take on the classic?
Also on repetition: you had to begin from the start of the level in Demon's Souls. I take that as a challenge of endurance. I like that feeling of near despair that you get in Ninja Gaiden 1 secret challenge rooms, where flood of enemies seems to never end.
But, I guess, most people just want to stumble through 3 games a week without even trying to master systems they offer. What a waste of money.
Also, I one hundred percent disagree that the huge iteration time is always a good thing in that game. Weight to failure is one thing, but when it gets so heavy that it actively discourages experimentation and HEAVILY encourages using guides and precanned strategies because of the huge time loss for each failure, there is a problem.
It seemed like a cool game. I'll probably never play it, because I have no interest in a game that doesn't let me even try to experiment with builds without a fucking fan-made glossary, and one which punishes every misstep with tedious backtracking and potentially extra forced grinding to recoup lost progress. Grind is just about the worst goddamn thing in games in my opinion.
- "Punishing games will never succeed" <- that's kinda of bold, but I assume it meant as to have the entire game being punishing (Ninja Gaiden [Xbox]), other than that a game can't have difficulty spikes.
Also as a final point is Rayman Origins a punishing game? I say it because the chest chase levels require memorization IMO.
It is true that Dark Souls isn't perfect. I think the game could've given you an explanation of the stats, especially since nearly all of them matter. However, I don't think this failure of the game supersedes the rest of it. As Daniel said, the game is great because it is mechanically consistent. If you know the play mechanics, the game allows you to apply them all throughout the course of the game. This means that you have a very varied and extensive "bag of tricks" to overcome the challenges within the game, and the game becomes a matter of execution.
laparapa, parry and riposte makes sense when you start thinking about things in the class of enemies. Again, when you start thinking about it like that, you realize what the set of rules are. Enemies that are human/oid around your size can be parried and riposte. Human/oid enemies significantly larger or bulkier and bosses can be parried but cannot be hit with a riposte. Monstrous or giant enemies cannot be parried. I think you and someone else confuses enemy variety with mechanical consistency. Sure...most of the enemy sets have different move sets...well of course! Do you really think that every enemy should feel and fight the same? But outside of that...how you deal with them again, is consistent with everything else. A high dex dodge character is going to more or less go through the entire game the exact same way...rolling and getting hits in. It doesn't matter what fancy moves the enemies have...you can still fight most of them the same way as long as you learn the enemy and it's peculiarities. On my first ever playthrough I got the Zweihander and I proceeded, literally, to do the same thing against every boss...brute force my way against them with heavy swings. How is that not consistent mechanically? If the monsters had different rules as you claim, then I would be forced to invent new strategy every time...but I didn't. With enough dedication and determination, even Four Kings fell to me like that.
Monsters are just as affected by staggers and stuns depending on their poise, and human enemies still recover health via estus flasks. They all still die when falling off a ledge, and they can still get poisoned or affected by status effects unless immune.
The game does warn you about enemy spawns - typically through dialogue, sometimes during the opening of the chapter, but there is always some form of warning. And enemies only move the turn they spawn on the hardest difficulties - difficulties designed to be incredibly hard, with the lower difficulties being more "fair". And the game warns you that these difficulties are ridiculous, so you know to keep weaker, or injured characters protected against spawns.
Fire Emblem Awakening is an incredibly fair, yet challenging game, which is part of why people play it. It's never punishing for the sake of punishing, and even the hardest difficulties warn you up front about changes to the "normal" rules so that you know what's going on.
At least with IWBTG, when you die, it's usually at least funny.
You just take a step back, go "what the hell was THAT?", laugh, and restart.
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Also there are many checkpoints so you're never losing your progress. Usually every room has a checkpoint.
I think this is the best episode you guys have done in a while. Although the political and business side of videogames is very important, what I really love hearing about are the core game design elements that make all the games I love so great.
Therefore you're given a set amount of time to proceed and brace yourself for enemy reinforcement by putting your units in formation. If your units still die, then it's only your own fault for failing to prepare in time. The video is kinda misinforming...
The fact you describe the enemies spawning and moving on higher difficulties as less fair implies it's quite a punishing mechanic.
Also Dark Souls is a punishing game in the sense that every failure can be a massive step back and the game gives you literally no information to go off of when starting. To put this in perspective if you think that's exaggerating try reading some of the Dark Soul's focused posts in this thread and consider which of those words are understandable and make sense in the game world for a new player, virtually none.