[PATV] Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - Extra Credits Season 6, Ep. 15: When Difficult Is Fun

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  • ichifishichifish Registered User regular
    Spelunky. Deliciously difficult, but the random level generator makes it addictively fun to replay. I've never gotten past level 7 without cheats, but it's my go-to game.

  • FelbloodFelblood Registered User new member
    On Warframe:

    They actually added a control scheme option that fixes this. Set you crouch key from Press to Toggle.

    It makes chaining slide-dashes harder, you will really only do that when backtracking through rooms you already cleared, and it makes all other sliding moves, especially that one 10,000% easier.

    Just start running, and then tap "X". You can now take you entire hand off the keyboard, and you would keep sliding until you run out of momentum.

    During that slide, tap "E" to kill every mother in the room.


    If you want to use Warframe as an example in here, put it's optional treasure rooms under inconsistent, poorly-telegraphed and punishing.

    How many times have I gone down an unexpectedly large optional path, to find a loot room full of treasure chests that are all locked. Master Thief card my foot.

  • Twenty SidedTwenty Sided Registered User regular
    edited June 2013
    laparapa wrote: »
    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.

    TL;DR
    Life and games are both sometimes unfair.
    How much injustice is too much injustice, and which specific injustices actually build character and serve some profound human purpose, is a matter of debate.

    All games require some amount of implicit and unspoken compromise. Sometimes that compromise is just too much and you throw your hands up and throw the controller across the room.

    Twenty Sided on
  • PinPrickNachoMancyPinPrickNachoMancy Registered User regular
    How the shit is Maximo "everybody wins"?

  • NahealNaheal Registered User new member
    edited June 2013
    I can't say that I agree with your choice of using a tactical RPG such as Fire Emblem as an example of a punishing game rather than a difficult game simply due to the nature of a game like that. Difficult TRPGs are, by their very nature, punishing. Just look at XCOM where even single mistakes which lead to injuries on your side mean that your soldiers are unusable for extended periods of time, if they even survive. Notably, Awakening is actually better about this than previous installments in the series.

    Also, consider Monster Hunter, where a failure kicks you out of the mission entirely, and you've usually spent a good ten to fifteen minutes on the low end of time spent on a hunt, just to get nothing. It's an extremely punishing and disheartening thing, but you can't actually restart the hunt because of the nature of the game. Even when you're hunting the same species in the same terrain, every monster has it's own personality and size which can change how you even approach the fight.

    Naheal on
  • likalarukulikalaruku Registered User regular
    Every time he says "punishing," I think of a specific level from Psychonauts.

  • lordgizkalordgizka Registered User new member
    The examples of Fire Emblem:Awakening and Maximo were borderline unprofessional. Maximo is very difficult, and the only time Awakening does what is described in the video is Laurent's recruitment mission, where, granted, it's pretty bad. All the other times the game is nice enough to tell just from where the enemy reinforcements are coming.

  • JoeProgramJoeProgram Registered User new member
    Great episode! I'd add that the feedback you get from failure should be unambiguous. In FTL, you can die from lack of oxygen if your life support is damaged, if your doors are open and leaking air, if fire has consumed too much of the air, if you've entered a plasma storm that's removed power from life support, or if you get a hull breach. Particularly in a difficult roguelike where it may take 20 or 30 minutes to get back to that point, the feedback from failure has to be very clear.

  • EmeraldStormEmeraldStorm Registered User new member
    I think I've played too many "punishing" games through my life because games like Dark Souls make me cringe away simply because I've heard how hard they are and I associate that with frustration and anger caused by games of yore. I haven't bought into Super Meat Boy for the same reason. And yet, I have enjoyed some games that were very tough, but were not so unpleasant to deal with, I just have to not know what I'm getting myself into in those situations.

    At anyrate, while genuinely challenging games might be great there is still a problem with those of us who were unintentionally conditioned to veer away from anything that calls itself "difficult".

  • Katamari23Katamari23 Registered User regular
    Glad JoeProgram brought up FTL, come to think of it that game did have some stupidly punishing moments. I remember times early on when I'd suddenly get boarded by 4-6 guys and there'd be nothing I could do against that. It was instant death no matter how well I'd been playing until then. That's why I ended up abandoning that game, it was based so heavily on luck rather than player skill. IMO.

  • ZombieAladdinZombieAladdin Registered User regular
    In addition, I Wanna Be the Guy gives you infinite lives (except on Impossible difficulty, but that was supposed to be, well, impossible). You're given something much smaller than a tap on the wrist for dying. It can still get mighty frustrating though.

    But all this is just taking a different approach. I Wanna Be the Guy appeals to a niche audience, people who LIVE for the very things this video speaks against. I'm not one of those people, but I have known people who are. To them, fair difficulty might as well be no difficulty at all.

  • TheSchaefTheSchaef Registered User regular
    Mad props for the double reference to the Mega Man X Sequilitis. :D

  • KayinNKayinN Registered User regular
    I'm late to the party, but it's funny to see IWBTG being discussed here. Since I made the game, I'll opine a little on the subject.

    First off, IWBTG is game ABOUT subversion. It's just not random subverting of random rules, it's a core concept to the game to the point where it becomes a rule and the game never subverts too many rules at once. There are some other rules too. Content will for the most part be the same every time you retry, save points are never traps (besides the last save point, which is marked evil and is meant to finally cash in on all that player trust in a situation where failure isn't the end of the world). Also more importantly, the game's traps follow a sort of.... 'personality' driven set of rules. "Social" rules. Players build social models for the game's designers. Like finding secrets in Super Metroid or Donkey Kong Country 2, the game is about building a relationship between the designer and the player. Players develop a sense of my design style and my self of humor so even when they're wrong, the feeling they have is often "I should have known" rather than "WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT"

    The end result is that the game is STILL very punishing by EC's standard, but does enough to engage it's playerbase to continue. It's still a lot of the same principles. I can't just go willy-nilly with traps or else it just seems dumb and arbitrary... but by carefully designing around players and their perspective, I can make the game, for some, a very psychological experience. It's actually probably, pacing wise, much akin to horror or something. So the moral here is, even if you DO want to be punishing (and people are masochists so you can still find players for punishing games), you need to approach it with a good design sense. The dom in BDSM doesn't just sadistically lash the sub with no concern for their happiness. A good dom plans out their experience to challenge the sub but ultimately give them an enjoyable experience. :D

  • ToffelskaterQToffelskaterQ Registered User new member
    Extra Credits is awesome, for a lot of reasons, but i want to mention the biggest one i feel: It doesn't call people idiots. There are tons of smart commentary on games, videos or others, out there that consistently call people idiots. And Extra Credits consistently cross these people perhaps worthy of bile, and prove the bigger man through just being understanding, smart and explanatory. Inviting people in, making people see each others sides of a coin and never stops to take a piss on anyone. Extra Credits is kind of internet game discussions if they were really smart and really good. If you fancy yourself a smart person and piss on the lesser, have a look at how these guys do this show, and learn what it means to truly provide commentary that makes people grow. No bile, just (mainly) truths. Respectful truths and arguments. You're not THAT smart if you can't understand the other guy for a second.

    I spew bile from time to time, which is why i love EC for giving me something to aspire to.

  • DylstewDylstew Registered User new member
    This is why I loved pocky and rocky 1, but hated pocky and rocky 2.Pocky and rocky 1 was difficultt and fun. but pocky and rocky 2 was very punnishing. Nothing felt rewarding, every death just felt cheap.

  • BolerBoler Registered User regular
    likalaruku wrote: »
    Every time he says "punishing," I think of a specific level from Psychonauts.

    Am I really the only human being who didn't think Meat Circus was that hard? I had more trouble figuring out where to go in Boyd's (awesome) level than I did beating meat circus, which took me maybe 2 tries, and not a long time to get all the collectibles; and this was on the PS2 version, not the dulled down PC level.

    *shrug*

  • GoatmonGoatmon Companion of Kess Registered User regular
    Some reasons I hated Meat Circus:

    The escort mission part was pretty horrid.

    Dudes are shooting you pretty much the entire level.

    Parts of the level give you a time limit.

    Switch Friend Code: SW-6680-6709-4204


  • MrdeedsMrdeeds Registered User regular
    LA NOIRE difficuluty - failing choices in interviews, great way to punish, without irritating

  • GoatmonGoatmon Companion of Kess Registered User regular
    ichifish wrote: »
    Spelunky. Deliciously difficult, but the random level generator makes it addictively fun to replay. I've never gotten past level 7 without cheats, but it's my go-to game.

    By cheating do you mean the shortcuts?

    Or just honest-to-goodness cheating your way to victory?

    Switch Friend Code: SW-6680-6709-4204


  • dracoslayer16dracoslayer16 Registered User regular
    Dark Souls was a great game and while the combat was "difficult" and drove players to master the art of demon slaying, several aspects of the game were deliberately punishing. Good old fashioned, rage-quitting, profanity-spewing, controller-smashing, punishment. "Hey I can't believe I finally beat that boss that was giving me so much trouble back there, I'm getting really good at this game :)" *boulder falls out of the ceiling, 'you died'*...........

    Several parts in the game were not based on skill and/or mastering anything but were simply moments of the game trolling the player with trap/ambush memorization, and enemy cheapshot countering. The only part that kept myself and most people going after these crap moments was the drive to find the next fight and take all your rage out on whatever you find first.

  • lordhobanlordhoban Registered User regular
    This says exactly all my issues with Warhammer 40k: Space Marine. Not only is there some difficult to pull off health retrieval move you are supposed to be able to do, but the first real big threat happens after several waves of small enemies beating you down first.... and to restart, you now have to face the several waves of small enemies again and again to face the big bad guy. A proper save feature would have helped.

    I was having loads of fun right up until this point and now, with no way of seeing how to get past this part and no temporary god mode or anything, I'm just done. And I never got my jetpack, :( (in the demo, you get a jetpack).

    I also had similar reasons of frustration with Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and was finally done for good with the second fighting game boss fight (another game that was fun up until the last part where I finally just stopped at how stupidly difficult it became).

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