Post "artificial difficulty"

coming from a diagnosed aspie that's the most autistic thing I've ever read, good job

Artificial difficulty is basically just either really obvious and unfun trial and error/memory games in a genre where that doesn't belong or horrible RNG to progress.
>Boss does a combo
>Every single time it goes 1-2-3
>Boss does the 1-2-3 combo over and over
>Suddenly the combo goes 1-2-4 to EPIC TRICK STYLE HEH GOTCHA the player with absolutely no way to read or react to it happening without prior knowledge
This also counts.

extended condescending sarcasm is kino faggot

Squirrel PTSD.

It's the idea that difficulty is something that arises naturally from tests of skill, and difficulty that is derived from a source that cannot under any circumstances be circumvented by skill is undesirable.
For example, a racing game that has blind turns into obstacle ridden sections of track is difficult, but can be mastered by training your reflexes, memorizing likely patterns, and using proper strategy to mitigate the time lost by slowing down and taking care. This is fine.
However a racing game where the CPUs always stay on right on your tail regardless of how well you drive and pass you up with legitimately unobtainable speed simply by getting a random powerup from the game is not difficult, just unfair. There is no amount of skill that can help you, since no matter how well you play the CPU is just as good and sometimes arbitrarily better. The difficulty derived from these circumstances comes off as "artificial," since it's not so much a difficult task as it is pure chance.

Shiggles.

there's a long run from the bonfire

it's funny

It lets you put it up on Youtube as "FUNNY SQUIRREL GETS PRANKED VIDEO" and get thousands of dollars.

4 teh luls

It's not a prank it's a social experiment, bro.

Dark Souls saving system.

My sides

It has and always will be, a term used to describe difficulty in TES games. Ai never get smarter, you simply take more damage and do less damage as you make the game "harder".

Squirrels are pretty tasty. I'd be sure to slam it into the fence just so it dies and then I can grill him later. Mighty good eating.

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>He doesn't like watch animals suffering.
What is wrong with you?

This is the best example, although it's not 'chance.'

Some racing games are designed so that the CPUs slingshot back to you, so that no matter how well you drive they'll always be on your tail. It's supposed to be so that it actually feels like a race, but really comes across as bullshit.
Basically means that your agency isn't entirely relevant, because the game is designed to be 'hard' no matter how good you are.

Artificial difficulty was a popular term after Dark Souls released, especially on Yea Forums. But it's a bad application of the term, because only a few instances of the game introduced it, like the Bed of Chaos.

>use nuts to lure squirrel
>Squirrel triggers traps
>scatters nuts on ground
>Squirrel goes back and gets nuts now on ground.

Great "trap"

>normal - 1x damage dealt/1x enemy health
>hard - .5x damage dealt/1.5x enemy health

no other changes

I used to chase squirrels off with a little spring-action BB gun
It wasn't powerful enough to kill them or even break skin unless I was really close; the pellet just stung them and made them think twice about raiding my mom's bird feeders
One day I made a one-in-a-million shot--I got a squirrel right in the ear
I don't know how deep the pellet lodged itself because the squirrel didn't die
It just laid on the ground, writhing, making every effort to stand, but just rolling over and over
It was not even particularly disoriented and it saw me approaching and froze
When it realized I had already seen it, it began to roll and buck more violently, trying to run, I guess
I was a squeamish kid and I couldn't bring myself to just stomp it, so I scooped it up, put it in a box, and put the box in the garage freezer
It took about five hours for the thrashing and scratching sounds to stop

Bought a squirrel baffle after that

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you could glue nuts to the trap and have an electric motor connected to a solar panel for a self sufficient trap or some shit

anyway, artificial difficulty is usually described as when the AI or computer doesn't follow the established rules of the game to make the game more difficult, ie. rubberbanding in racing games, computers getting more resources, instant units, or being able to see through fog of war in strategy games, enemies in souls games having infinite stamina and being able to attack through walls, etc.

Scaling up damage is correct but bloating health at all is the definition of artificial difficulty.

>Platformer game
>Every 30 seconds a geography question (and not a real one like capitals, something gay like rivers) pops up
>Get it wrong and you die
>Hey guys, this seems like poor design
>Lol what’s the matter, don’t know geography scrub? Stop making excuses for being bad at the gams

A psycho's origin story.

It's a retarded buzzword phrase used to express disdain for a game without specifically explaining why, choosing instead to allude to the vaguest implications of valid reasoning which can be discarded or doubled-down upon at a moment's notice, depending on the opponent's response to the accusation.

Boosting enemy health can be totally fine if the devs made enemy health too low.

For example take Bethesda games. If you play on normal, enemies have such little health you can just swing blindly at enemies and win because they die in one hit. You don't need any strategy because things simply die too fast. They did this to make the game easier for casual players.

If you turn up the difficulty and therefore how many hits enemies can take, you aren't adding artificial difficulty. You're just putting the enemy's health at a level where it should have been in the first place.

The most genuine example of artificial difficulty is from Fire Emblem Awakening'd Lunatic+ mode
>enemies are given much stronger equipment and skills than they should at the level
Ok that isn't bad, but
>EVERY enemy has retarded OP skills only they can acquire
>Which enemy gets what skill is completely random, victory is actually impossible if certain enemies are loaded with certain skills, forcing you to restart the mission
>the difficulty was never even play tested