Artificial difficulty

Guess racing games are artificially difficult now

For me, artificial difficulty is three things:

1. Increasing difficulty by making enemies take forever to die while you take 1-2 hits to die. This results in the fight becoming a battle of attrition where you obviously can finish but any small misstep gets you killed. Something like AT Xeno in Monster Hunter -- the fight itself isn't terribly difficult but when it takes 20 minutes it's just exhausting.

2. Unavoidable deaths that are designed solely to catch you off guard so you can memorize them later. Common in Soulslikes since their revival mechanics make this feel slightly less unfair.

3. Increasing difficulty by adding sub-enemies to boss fights. Ninja Gaiden is guilty of this and it's just not fun. Give the boss more moves and better AI on higher difficulties rather than making me micromanage smaller enemies. It's a low effort way of increasing difficulty.

Artificial difficulty is making you replay a long ass easy level to get to the hard boss at the end
Artificial difficulty is not letting you progress because you have to collect 300 dicks from grinding a certain easy monster

none of these are artificial

>Increasing difficulty by adding sub-enemies to boss fights.

This and multi enemy bosses are fun fuck you user, less exploitable too usually

the third example isn't artificial though, it actually makes the fight harder because of the micromanagement element. I don't recall any ninja gaiden boss having mobs in it anyway

How is an unavoidable death not artificial? If you played a game where you had to go through a room and it gave you no hints on which squares would instantly kill you, that's artificial difficulty because you have to die to know the correct path.

>Ghostface spawns under you*
Nothing personnel.

>You need constant jobs to pay your mercs and buy food
>You can visit multiple towns in a row that offer no jobs
>Can take up to a day walking between towns

This is what i'd call "difficulty beyond player control"
Combat is great though

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The only unavoidable death in the entirety of the Souls franchise is the first Seath encounter. Everything else can be easily avoided with observation.

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No game is overrated. You have an unpopular opinion, it is not more correct than others.

No it fucking isn’t, that is another way it’s being misused. Artificial difficulty is shit like bad camera angles, environmental hazards with zero warning, AI cheating without telling you; anything where the game lies about its rules or lacks clarity. Number buffs are not fake difficulty.

You obviously never played on Master Ninja then. Almost every boss has mobs on MNM in both NGB and NGII.

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>fake difficulty
Not the same term and it's a dumb tvtropes meme you zoomer, and all of those things already can be explained very clearly in other ways without making you sound like a whiny bitch, besides the AI cheating which is fine since it's AI and can't adapt

You're confusing artifical difficulty with bad game design.

I guess it's just my opinion. I guess I can kind of see how it's not "artificial", it just feels cheaper than actually making the enemy harder to fight. I prefer boss battles to be one on one fights but you're right, calling it artificial is hyperbole. I take that one back.

Nah, the first time a lot of the sword wielder bosses do one of their attacks you're gonna have no idea what property it's going to have and get one shotted

cool I didn't know this

No I’m not that is literally what artificial difficulty is; difficulty that arises due to bad game design rather than mechanics of the game. All the dumb shit you guys say like “higher numbers are artificial difficulty” is not artificial difficulty

There's always ways to prevent that, main one is blocking which requires no timing. If you're saying that most or even all players will die the first time then sure but that just means it's challenging, you can't have a game that's hard yet at the same time doable on your first try.

The example with sub-enemies in boss fights usually tell me that the devs couldn't find a way to make the boss a good fight on its' own so they just throw some chaff at you now and then. So, most western bosses.

>Dumb tvtropes meme
It's only a dumb tvtropes meme to Soulfaggot memers trying to validate shit like complete 90-180 pivots because From can't program back attacks.

"Artificial intelligence is not allowed to be artificially difficult"

LOL and there we go, a whiny shitter outs himself immediately. Souls games are garbage but tracking does not fit a single criteria you listed, yet you'll still lump it in because you're looking for excuses why you got btfo

No its not.

>game
>normal difficulty
>AI is dumb
>AI does average amount of damage
>hardmode
>AI is still dumb
>AI does a lot of damage

this is what artificial difficulty is.
For it to not be artificial difficulty, the AI would become smarter in hard mode.

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>Criteria
>Shit like
Not only am I not the same guy, but you failed on using a big boy word. Those were examples, not a hard standard.

Rubbish. If AI is always dumb then higher damage shouldn't be a problem either way.

Isn't there a better word for artificial difficulty?

Because technically, everything in a game is artificial.

Artificial difficulty imo would be the difficulty as created by the game developers, so more of a neutral term.
Fake difficulty imo would be inflated stats on the same palette swapped enemies that previously had less.

The criteria is implicit in examples, such as a lack of ruleset consistency or clear feedback, which again doesn't fit tracking. And my bad, guess that guy actually has a consistent definition instead of your "artificial difficulty is anything I don't like"

My first brush with the term was someone using it to describe how in Lufia 2's Ancient Cave you can get blindsided by two Gold Dragons who cast Stardust Blow (The best spell in the game which pretty much deals 1000 damage in a game with a 999 hp cap) twice each and you cannot really do anything about it.

Frustrating difficulty to show the completely subjective and inconsistent way in which it's used

Artificial difficulty is tank controls. Don't @ me.

that's pretty good

if things feel fair, like most of the time in dark souls, nobody complains

so maybe just subjective difficulty

have sex

>It was heavily implied
Translated : I just assumed.
>clear feedback, which again doesn't fit tracking.
Okay, now you're just a moron.
They spin on their axis with a lingering hitbox, that's the definition of bad visual feedback.Are you gonna defend DS2 "shockwaves" too?
>"artificial difficulty is anything I don't like"
And where did you get that assumption from?

Love this franchise despite it being hard as hell. Beat the SNES game. Would like to see a 3D take on this game, no not Maximo, the actual GnG with Arthur. Sadly no company today really has the talent to pull off a super difficult 3D platformer with projectile throwing today.

>They spin on their axis
Not a problem at all, this doesn't break any rules, either enemy side (most enemies do it to some extent) nor player side (the player can spin around as they wish) nor does it lack feedback since you can clearly see them doing it at all times. Poor lingering hitboxes are a completely separate issue which you didn't mention in your original post so nice try retard

Artificial difficulty is a made up term so of course it's used inconsistently. Generally the most common uses for it are:
>Gameplay segment is very tedious for whatever reason making it hard but not fun
This could be poor camera angles, janky enemy attacks, even just long stretches without saves. Different people will have different tolerance levels when it comes to this.
>The challenge differs significantly from other skills the game requires
Bed of Chaos is a good example of this. The skills required to win are unlike everything else in the game.
>Fight contains high elements of luck
Nobody likes dying for reasons beyond their own mistakes so pretty self explanatory.
>Extreme difficulty spikes
I don't really like this definition but for many people this counts as artificial difficulty.

Actually, Bed of Chaos hits pretty much all of these points. No wonder it fucking sucks.

>Artificial difficulty is a made up term
What isn't, you pretentious autistic nigger?

nah that's only missused by sony

>this doesn't break any rules
You don't track to anywhere close that level mid-swing, and many enemies are beaten by physically dodging instead of i-frame abusing otherwise.
In fact the bigger enemies are beaten by hugging their sides so I don't know what garbage you're lying with.
>does it lack feedback since you can clearly see them doing it at all times.
Artificial difficulty =/= not common or even highly difficult, I i-framed it after the first 5 hours in DS1.
>Poor lingering hitboxes are a completely separate issue
Vague animations with hitboxes that allow them to not be dodged just by getting out of the way are separate issues?
Wow wee, do you play ANYTHING difficult outside Souls?

there is no artificial difficulty in these games unless you mean the snes one with the absolutely awful controls

You know exactly what he meant, child.

Fuck off fag.

artificial difficulty as a term literally can't be misused because it isn't a real thing
difficulty can only be deemed artificial through the subjective view of an individual and what they deem as "bullshit"
of course this isn't universal so if retard A says mechanic B is artificially difficult, but retard C says it isn't then they're both right and the term is being used correctly

1) I agree to an extent, when you play at a higher difficulty in a game and the only change is enemy HP, player HP and damage done then I see it as artificial. If the game is built around the idea that you are fragile and the mobs are not, then there should be mechanics in place to make it non-bullshit. Fluid controls are really important if this is the case.
2) I can't think of any game where this is really the case, in souls games you could maybe effectively argue this point if you have only played the game for like 30 minutes. They aren't exactly subtle with their traps, and after getting caught once it becomes the players fault 100% of the time.
3) micromanagement is not artificial difficulty and your point about "just make the fight more compelling" is silly.

That's why they give the Enemies a shit ton of health so killing them takes a year if you don't have all the right stuff.

>You don't track to anywhere close that level mid-swing
Yet you still do track, with some weapons more than others like the clubs, and there are techniques to turn around quickly right before a swing if you disable lock on. Enemies don't have the vast majority of your moves and tools to compensate for any kind of "unfairness".
>and many enemies are beaten by physically dodging instead of i-frame abusing otherwise.
And? It's not "iframe abuse" it's the game's central mechanic that it wants you to use, any mechanics encouraging its use are perfectly fine especially since tracking minimizes degenerate strategies, you can roll through everything so it's safer, it's always the go-to option.
>Vague animations with hitboxes that allow them to not be dodged just by getting out of the way are separate issues?
There's nothing vague about enemies turning around to face you, oversized, mismatched and lingering hitboxes ARE a separate issue seeing as how hitboxes are invisible. You can have full tracking with perfect hitboxes, or you can have shit hitboxes without tracking.

The rest of your post is irrelevant or cope

Kill yourself worldbaby. Kill yourself

Artificial difficulty is stuff like rubber band AI.

Turning up damage numbers is perfectly legitimate difficulty. Having to make less mistakes over a long period of time tests your skills. It's the difference between scoring 75 and 95% on a test.

jackal snipers

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>Artificial difficulty is stuff like rubber band AI.
So a good thing? It's a good system for making the AI sort of a threat even as the player gets good.

and your opinion might be that a game is over rated. what the fuck do you think over rated means?

No I don't mean god hand difficulty. I mean cars in a race game breaking the speed cap to catch up with you if you're winning.

That's exactly what I'm talking about, God Hand's difficulty has a hard cap so it's not as good. Without rubberbanding you get ahead of the AI and it becomes a single player time trial game without any interaction between racers, and since the other racers have to deal with each other which slows them down while you can take the perfect lines with no pressure they're unlikely to catch up. With rubberbanding they can catch up to you if you make a few mistakes, adding psychological/real pressure and turning it into a race again.

It just eliminates any point in getting good. It's like level scaling in an rpg. I don't like it.

I find the word comfy to be incredibly annoying.

comfy
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m
f
y

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"Illusion of difficulty" maybe, goes hand in hand with "illusion of choice" which is a well received term afaik.

No, although "clunky" and "tedious" are hot on it's heels. There's also people being so ready to call something "bad design" before they even come close to understanding it or are actively disregarding mechanics.

No it doesn't, you still get better times and you still get better at playing against humans, and decent consistency + speed will always beat AI even if it's heavily rubberbanded. Without rubberbanding the AI's locked at reasonable speeds which become far too easy when you get decent and merely good laptimes become a joke.

Thanks for proving exactly why the term is such a huge misnomer, and I only just started reading the thread too. Great props on really including every kind of pleb filter with the most basic surface value excuses too.

I've been gaming since I was 4 years old,
I played Super Ghouls and Ghosts 2 years ago at 28, and it climbed the ranks in my top 10 vidyas. Game was so deep, and had a lot of great "level up" moments.

I like that nobody can agree on what artificial difficulty is. I assume it has more to do with poorly designed/lazy difficulty.

I dont like how nintendo DS fire emblem games handles the hardest difficulties like lunatic/lunatic+

Artificial difficulty stems from:
>bad camera/aiming
>off screen attacks or enemies you never could have seen without prior knowledge (less of an issue in 3D games with proper camera, but there are exceptions here too)
>insta kill environment hazards out of nowhere
>sponge enemies that take all your health in one shot or hit, but requires minutes of you wailing on them to win i.e the reason bethesda games are campy unfun shit on high difficulties

It's really simple to understand. Take a platformer for example. You have to make a difficult jump. The controls are horribly awkward and difficult. The camera abruptly changes direction mid-air. You can't see the platform you're jumping towards. That's artificial difficulty. Nothing about that involves your own skill, it's the game bending over backwards to say "fuck you."

They're usually one and the same though

No, artificial difficulty is shit like giving the player a wonky camera angle as they go down a ladder and having an enemy attack right as you get to the bottom. Or having 8 dudes sitting on ballistas to fuck your shit up as you pass by for no reason

Then why are you adding the word artificial as an adjective to the difficulty, if what you are describing has nothing to do with the word artificial?

You really should educate yourself as to the words you use. It's fine for it to be a meme and not taken seriously, like everything on Yea Forums, if that's what you use it for.

Based gotem

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That's a perfect example of artificial difficulty.

Fine, just call it bad game design instead if you're so damn picky about it.

something you can't beat through skill or with mechanics you could have learned so far, and requires meta knowledge, for instance floor opening under you, with no telegraph, hint or warning,

The Shakespeare puzzle in Silent Hill. It relies on obtuse outside knowledge to solve an in-game puzzle because the devs couldn't think of a proper way to implement hard puzzles, so they just made a Trivia Pursuit puzzle. Don't have Shakespeare memorized and no guide handy? Too bad.

Practically doesn't exist in games

The entirety of the adventure game genre. Pixel hunts, combing unrelated objects to form a new item (looking at you, Longest Journey), all of it.

this is so provably wrong, there are plenty of games with asspull moments, especially before the turn of the century

Play phantasmagoria.

Should be easy naming some examples then. This really was almost never a problem outside of some puzzle based games, in action games you're always given time to react

>Whole thread dedicated to semantics
Wew lad.