Are save states and rewind a legitimate way to offset artificial difficulty or is it considered cheating?

>MM5 or 6
>artificially difficult
Nigger what those games spoil you silly.

That it is. And I think that might have been OP's point.

t. Posting in a troll thread.

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lol what

the original Lolo is easy as fuck. :play the later games if you want a real challenge.

Save state as much as you want to practice certain parts of the game. But then play through all of it again without them.

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there are people on Yea Forums who would never ever admit any game is hard even if their life depended on it. I dunno what they get out of posturing on an anonymous imageboard but

Or they're good at games and actually enjoy hard games.

Mega Man 5 is one of the easiest NES games in existence.

Do whatever helps you enjoy a video game, but you're still a shitter.

Savestates are okay, as long as you dont pretend you actually completed a game using them.
because you didnt, you literally used training wheels to complete the course.
Its fine for those who maybe arent as good and still want to experience the classics. but the real meat of an old game is overcoming the challenges and feeling like you actually earned it.
recently i found out nintendo NES emulating service kind of has rotating "cheats" on games that are usually tied to newer products, like smash bros for example.

You get "challenges" or easy modes that start you off with, money, items or upgrades or from a very advanced stage.

Is it better? I wouldnt know for sure, but its certainly more accesible for people who havent experienced the classics. The problem here is people pretending they actually know about videogames when in fact, they just cheated their way through.

The only way to enjoy an old game:

1. Sit down with it and play it without distractions
2. Fail
3. Don't complain like a Sonybabby bitch
4. Git Gud

Oh boy, I got something better!

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I don't know how save states alleviate "artificial difficulty" since you're just giving yourself more tries and rolling the dice more with them.

The only thing that alleviates artificial difficulty is either hacking the game or your save by changing certain values that would otherwise require you to do farming/grinding/exploiting for you to see yourself reliably beat due to the game saying you don't hit hard enough. Anything else other than that is straight up cheating and robbing yourself out of an experience.

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What diferentiates "artificial" difficulty from "real" difficulty?

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If it was real difficulty, I would have been able to beat the game because I'm good at games. It's artificial difficulty because I lost and that wouldn't happen if the game was fair because I'm good at video games.

The only kind of games I savescum on are NES era and earlier because developers at that time were still ingrained in the philosophy of sucking as many quarters as possible out of the player, a relic of the arcade era. By using savestates, you keep all the actual mechanical difficulty (jumps, movement, bosses, etc) while skipping artificial playtime extenders like restarting the game if you die 3 times or having to intentionally die to get more items ala pic related.

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>unironically using "artificial difficulty"
No, savestates are quite blatantly cheating.

Artificial difficulty usually isnt telegraphed. Like if a bird jumps into you mid jump that was off screen.
Real difficulty would be if you see a bird sitting on a branch and it flies right when you jump and you can hit a button to deflect or evade as long as you are within half a second of the hitboxes that match the art object colliding.

It's not more accessible.

>artificial difficulty

Absolutely nothing other than the wounded ego of the person playing.

Why say "artificial difficulty" instead of "trail and error"?

And no, trail and error design is not always bad.

How so? You seem to think save states are as egregious a form of cheating as a journo putting on god mode so he can chastise people who like Sekiro. I think that's a bad example. Say if Sekiro deleted your save after 3 deaths and you used a traditional save/reload system I would say that is a fair way to play the game, while also technically constituting "cheating", as having that option would likely disqualify you from speedruns or other such competitions for deviating from the dev's vision.

Is it a multiplayer game? Is there some sort of prize or record or beating it? Are you demanding the difficulty be dumbed down despite mitigating features like easier modes of save states? If the answer to the above is no who gives a fuck how you play so long as you have fun? If you want a crutch use it so long as it doesn't detract from the hardcore experience. If you want to do a no hit run, great, just don't bitch that other people play in more forgiving way.

NES games are the children's scribbles of the game industry. Sure it might be the beginning of something big, and it might even be pretty good, but only for it's age. But they're amatuer and by people that didn't really know what they were doing until they have more experience and were thus able to make a better creation.

>Make an effort to complete it in under a dozen times
>Resort to save state if it’s still looking impossible

>while skipping artificial playtime extenders like restarting the game if you die 3 times or having to intentionally die to get more items ala pic related.
if you ever see a "game over" screen you didn't beat the game desu

>implying OP even understands what artificial difficulty is supposed to mean
pic-related is unique, though. I struggle to think of even one platform game with a boss that's even close to this in terms of exacting requirements for victory. (shmups have some crazy shit but then shmups are kind of a different breed entirely)
> you keep all the actual mechanical difficulty
But you eliminate the need to actually master the challenges. You just scum until you get it right one time and then move on. That's much different than doing it until you're confident that you can do it every time.

Also most NES-era games are designed to be beaten in under 2 hours or so once you are good at it. The point isn't to merely waste your time. Plus many games had quasi-save or continue features. Mario games had warp zones, other games had passwords, like Mega Man and Mike Tyson's Punch-Out.

>Having infinite lives and start off anywhere that you want
>not accessible?
Are you retarded or just american? Read my post again, friend.

I would argue that games were better before they had to be dumbed down in order to make them more inclusive for casuals.

I have to use them in the Wily stages. No way in hell am I doing all that in one sitting.

It's adding in unintended and originally unavailable functionality to a game to avoid the punishment for failure of the game that it was designed around. I didn't make that example, you did. Your other example isn't particularly relevant either, it's just the opposite but that doesn't imply parity and it's done by the player using the game itself rather than what wasn't there before.

See, this is one legitimate time for a save state to be used, but only if you save it before beginning the fight.

The Wily Boss isn't even that bad, though. The game gives you infinite continues. If you fail at defeating the boss because you ran out of crash bombs, just go through the 3-minute easy as dirt stage all over again and try again. It'll take you two or three tries before you have it memorized for life.

Correct, it doesn't make the game more accessible, it makes it shorter, easier and compromises the design while obscuring the learning curve.

30 year old here. There is some artificial difficulty in old games. By that I mean that shit that cannot be surmounted without foreknowledge or an extreme amount of extra guys even with perfect play. This goes back to when most games were in arcades and in part designed to suck up money. Not all games suffer from this mind you but enough where it is a legit issue.

>it makes it shorter, easier and compromises the design while obscuring the learning curve.
So...more accesible...

40 year old here. There is artificial difficulty (aka 'Trial and error') in old games, and I prefer them that way.

They're fine for taking the place of passwords, staking a break from a game for awhile and skipping loading screens

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It’s fine for games that don’t have unlimited continues. I’m with the AVGN on that issue, nobody on earth wants to redo the entire game all over again because you failed at one of the last levels.

I used save states whenever I beat a stage in DK94, but only so I could get back to where I was if I reset by accident, which did happen. That game showers you in lives and stages are like 1 or two screens so save states are worthless.

In games where I have tried to save state mid stage as a last resort, I'll often do it right after I save meaning that the save state was worthless and only a gesture of my lack of self confidence.

"Buy our guidebook" vs "git gud"

Nah bro all that tedious garbage is part of the difficulty you can't really say you played a game unless you put up with fucking nonsense born from technical limitations and inexperienced design like long loading screens (according to all the artificial difficulty defenders in this thread)

>nobody on earth wants to redo the entire game all over again because you failed at one of the last levels.
What if it's a fun game that you enjoy playing?

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You can't offset something that doesn't exist, user.

You're a faggot if you believe it isn't cheating.
But it's a single player game so who cares?
Beat it legit, for yourself if you want to. Otherwise who fucking cares? Just don't be a faggot and try to pretend it isn't anything but cheating.

This, but unironically.
There is something to experiencing a game in its raw state. To play an old school game and be forced to get good at that game.
My opinion is that it's cheating, but as it's a single player game, who really cares? But I do believe you're missing out on the experience if you choose to cheat like this.

Save states are nice because some shitty games dont let you save whenever you want. Fuck save points desu I play snes rpgs for maybe 5-10 minutes at a time on my phone I need to be able leave the game when I want to. Using them to cheese is definitely cheating tho

>What diferentiates "artificial" difficulty from "real" difficulty?
theoretically, artificial difficulty means time-wasting or illusory mechanics that don't actually change the difficulty of the game but try to make the player feel like it's harder.

For example, in an RPG, if the risk/reward profile of every combat decision you make at level 10 is the exact same as level 90, with no increase in depth or complexity, and nothing has really changed except the numbers on the screen are larger and battles take more time before they are over, that is a type of artificial difficulty.

There are also some scenarios where over-reliance on RNG can result in artificial difficulty, but again most of the time anyone whining about artificial difficulty due to unfavorable RNG just doesn't know how to make risk-assessments and play the odds, or else is missing some other important element of the game.

Finally there's the "attacks not telegraphed" issue with is yet another grey area. While it's fairly reasonable to expect that the game not completely cheat and sucker-punch a player into dying or taking damage when there's literally nothing they could do about it, there's a lot of debate about what constitutes sufficient clue or telegraphing. Personally my standard tends to be "is it at least humanly possible." Could SOMEONE have reflexes fast enough to do it on their first try? Do at least SOME people notice the scorch marks before venturing onto the bridge? Just because the average scrub is too slow to react or too oblivious to notice clues doesn't make a scenario artificial difficulty.

>tedious garbage

We're talking about challenge in older games, not cutscenes, unskippable dialogue, hub-worlds, and forced mini-games.

the game has a password system user. if you don’t want to jot down dots just save state between robot masters when you’re taking a break. megaman is hardly an unforgiving franchise.

Something tells me James hates emulators and save states even when the game is fucking you over with BS. I had to use one save state at the end of Ninja Gaiden to prevent from being teleported back 3 stages.

Wounded ego in full swing. It's only a game you know.

Just use an English patched Japanese ROM bro

Only time I've ever seriously abused save states in an old game was playing through the death hallway and subsequent death fight in Castlevania. That was fucking horseshit but even then I told myself I had to do it all in one go and not save intermittently.

>If you fail at defeating the boss because you ran out of crash bombs
Well sure it's not that hard to just get past the boss with extra lives, but discounting that I really can't think of any other bosses in any game that require such precise use of a fininte resource to the point where even 2 misfires means automatic failure.

As such I consider boobeams to be a unique/unusual boss design that should not be taken as an example of what boss design in that era was actually like.

>play old game on the nes
>faggots say it is difficult
>its not
>its actually just extremely unfair level design that is trial and error
>95% of nes games in a nutshell
>inb4 git gud
I beat contra alien wars and hard corps both on hard so fuck yourself

>skipping artificial playtime extenders like restarting the game if you die 3 times
If you can't clear the level without dying three times you clearly haven't gotten good at it.

save states are for when you want to stop playing the game and thats it.
anything else makes you a faggot casual.

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Nope. Accessibility would be subtitles, full button remapping to allow for special needs controllers and colourblind options. Not making the actual game harder to learn because being granted crutches let you ignore doing so.

Trial and error =/= unfair

You shouldn't be entitled to not lose before you get to see the ending of the game. Git gud.

>trial and error
you mean you had to practice to git gud

NES games were refined titles after over a decade of mistakes in game making.

>People bring this game design philosophy over to their hard retro platformer
>Doesn't even advertise itself as a rage game but as fair and difficult
>You could beat it with enough time and effort but its the same repetitive levels and challenges
>The fans get pissed off when you point it out

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Doing anything not strictly in the game is cheating. Modding is cheating savestates are cheating etc etc. And obviously cheat codes are still cheating.

accessible
[ ak-ses-uh-buhl ]
adjective
*easy to approach, reach, enter, speak with, or use.
*that can be used, entered, reached, etc.: an accessible road; accessible ruins.
*obtainable; attainable: accessible evidence.
*open to the influence of (usually followed by to): accessible to bribery.

Retard.

>it's not difficult
>it's actually just difficult
The sooner we can get past pretending difficult things aren't difficult because of excuses the sooner we can actually talk about whether difficult things challenge the desired skills adequately in an enjoyable and well designed way.

Playing Battletoads is as simple as buying it from Gamestop, coming home, putting it in and turning the console on. The controller is straightforward as are the inputs and the main menu is clear to navigate for starting the game.

Honestly, you're missing out on the experince by not playing the game in the era and timeframe it was made anyway, which is honestly the biggest factor in the experience. Like playing super Mario 64 after playing galaxy and sunshine even if you're playing on original hardware, you're not experiencing the game even remotely in the way the developers designed it which was that it would be a never before seen jump into 3D for both Mario and the gaming world as a whole.
The developers of NES games didn't intend for people to be used to anything better like having saves or continues or checkpoints or anything like that. None of these games were made with knowledge of the modern era in mind, they were all created within the standards of the era, and obviously the era you're living in will give you an awareness of different standards of gaming, which will, whether you want it to, heavily cloud your experience.

So yeah, point is if you're playing that way for challenge it's fine but if you try to spin it as if you're playing that way gives you the experience as intended you're deluded.

zoomers don't play games for fun they just complete tasks to unlock achievements like good little drones.

Are you telling me the original is easier and made for difficult for the rest?

That doesn't really justify purposefully changing the experience even further in ways that directly impact the gameplay and design, especially since you acknowledge they were made without it in mind. That merely gives you a different perspective but it's still a different game which should always be approached as such.

>I beat contra alien wars and hard corps both on hard so fuck yourself
if you used a continue it doesn't count

>deliberately typing DuckDuckGo

Are you handicapped? Do you also say boxer dictator claw?

I think, same with Castlevania 3

Games are supposed to be fun, play how you find them the most enjoyable

>DuckDuckGo search
This is never gonna catch on fyi

>Save States

For nes games this is a good thing because it lacks of save feature in some games

>Rewind

Legitimately a faggot shit

I use save states to practice later stages before attempting the entire game in one go. Having to beat stages 1-4 just to try stage 5 again gets irritating after doing it 3-4 times especially when the first 4 stages no longer present a challenge.

I only savescum at checkpoints because Lives are kind of a pointless concept. I mean think about it, why waste time doing the same parts over and over again when you've already successfully completed those parts? You already know you can do it, so why bother?

If the game doesn't have checkpoints however, I don't savescum at all

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>artificial difficulty
youre already a retarded crybaby shitter if you use this term so do whatever you want

because you dont.
many runs might just be flukes that you cant replicate.
people use that thinking to justify saving after every single obstacle.

Because there's further content and enjoyment intended to be found through perfecting and exploring earlier levels, taking things you learned later in the game and applying it to do better and giving you a greater chance to get further later on. Consistency is a highly important and valid skill to test.

There is a vast difference between beating a challenge once and being able to do it every time, it can be dozens of hours of practice in some cases.

Nah, fuck that shit. I'm not doing the same exact thing over and over again.

Then learn to do it better and differently. That's the point.

The only save state i accept for megaman is saving at those code screen

>Not saving at the Boss Select screen

It's all a drop in the bucket regardless, but I think that if you're playing to a standard you're familiar with, it's closer to the experience than playing to a standard you're not. So long as you're not actively fucking with the gameplay

>People bring this game design philosophy over to their hard retro platformer
>Doesn't even advertise itself as a rage game but as fair and difficult
Nothing wrong with this.

>Using save states for a megaman game

You cheated not only the game, but yourself.

You didn't grow.
You didn't improve.
You took a shortcut and gained nothing.

You experienced a hollow victory.
Nothing was risked and nothing was gained.

It's sad that you don't know the difference.

Yea Forums is full of neets who have the time to waste doing the same shit over and over again on supposed difficult games and they want to hold that monopoly of being "good" at those games. The only games I accept in forcing you to do the same stuff over again is survival and horror games.

Videogames have never really had such an ubiquitous standard such that that would become a consideration, and savestates very much are in the actively fucking with gameplay category.

Alright i just finished X1 with no save states. Moving on to X2.
Also fuck that Sigma fight. i hope i never fight him again

>Also fuck that Sigma fight. i hope i never fight him again

lol, get used to it. Sigma is going to be that one boss in every X-game that will stop you dead in your tracks and force you to learn him before you're allowed to see the credits roll.

this reads like some tumblr warrior post

I used save states right before all the bosses so I could restart and fight them again instead of running out of lives. Buster only. Is that bad?

>I'm not doing the same exact thing over and over again.
so don't.
but don't pretend you didn't take a shortcut with everything that entails.
And if the game isn't worth playing multiple times, are you really sure it was even worth playing once? Maybe you shouldn't have bothered and would have been more satisfied watching the latest superhero movie instead.

I'll use them at checkpoints to avoid getting game overed and having to redo the first parts of levels. If I could make it to the checkpoint once I could do it again and at that point it's just a time save.

If you use save states every 5 seconds you are a faggot. If you use save states in the middle of difficult sections you are a faggot. Only use them before the challenge so that restarting takes less time, and only use them on really hard challenges you are sure you could not beat without save states.

If you got to resort to that nonsense then yes it is cheating. It doesn't count that you beat the game.

Play NES Ninja Gaiden from start to finish and you will know.

>I hope I never fight him again

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Don't worry user, someday you'll be a chad like me and beat him without taking any damage.

>those fucking birds
hardest thing in the game

Also anyone that wants to play Ninja Gaiden should play the jap translated version. The american version has enemies placed in unfair positions and less items.

>if I manage to random it out once that means I'm fully accomplished at it
That's not how it works at all and you're only cutting off avenues for improvement and later advantages.

Oh wait nvm the first game didn't have any changes. It's the 3rd game that they fucked up the difficulty big time.
tcrf.net/Ninja_Gaiden_Episode_III

NES ninja gaiden is a perfectly fine and fair game until you get to the final boss, then it becomes irredeemable trash.

This makes me think and wonder what gaming would have been like if even as far back as NES developers thought to include things to be standard such as saves, more story and adventure with less trial and error, high difficulty and tons of deaths. Games such as ALTTP and Super Metroid give an idea more towards what games would become than the majority of 8-16 bit era games did. Wonder how things would have unfolded if devs knew earlier on that games like those two mentioned above would end up being the vastly more appreciated games over time than stuff like Contra, the shmup genre or shit games like Shadow of The Beast.

At the very least, we would have many more great classics to remember fondly and 2D possibly could have even stayed more popular into the mid to late 90s. Still though there is an appeal to arcade type of games as well.

save scumming is for bitches

>save state before boss to learn his patterns
>restart whole level as if I game over'd
>can now beat whole level and boss buster only with barely any damage

Does having a functioning human memory now count as cheating? Even if the subsequent playthrough is legitimate? No. It's faster more efficient learning. It's practice.

Checkmate nerds.

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The only really "acceptable" use of savestates would be for suspending play to continue later and deleting it afterwards, otherwise it's still just rewinding to negate failure. They're not a replacement for passwords either because those start you off with default or set lives and resources.

Arcade style gaming on a console was fucking retard. Lives and continues were only in place instead of checkpoints and saving to keep children from beating games during rentals. Also many devs wanted to cut costs by using passwords instead of batteries which was total cancer and ruined many games.

Sometimes I'll use save states at checkpoints or save spots in games, but I try not to otherwise unless I'm trying to master a particular part.

>grinding bosses until you win

You aren't playing Megaman properly. You aren't supposed to just bash your head against a boss unlimited times until you sneak out a win. You're supposed to go off and try different levels if you fail against a certain boss 2-4 times.

The enemy respawning just seems like an accident or something, because the 2nd one doesn't have that at all.

So you think if you get to the checkpoint without enough health to survive the section that follows the checkpoint, you've proven you were good enough to not need to do the first part again?

You are bad at video games.

>You aren't supposed to just bash your head against a boss unlimited times until you sneak out a win
I'm sorry, gravity man is too unpredictable and I'm not replying his shitty boring stage 50 times.

Don't neglect to mention that one part in stage 6 before the final boss where you got those reapers throwing shit at you, guys running towards you and birds while you have to try and jump on a tiny platform. How to make it easier? Make the enemies despawn of course. That right there is nonsensical game mechanics and why the game is artificially difficult. Put it this way, had they made that game today you wouldn't have that type of bs. They would focus on the strengths which would be fast pace ninja platforming and combat with a lot less bullshit and no stupid despawning.

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I used save states so I wouldn't have to grind reserve tanks every time I died, and never used a save state outside of the level select screen
Did I cheat myself?

If you had to load save states to try the boss enough times to internalize its patterns, you don't get to brag about your memory. Execution is also a factor, once you know what you're expected to do, and multiple attempts at the boss will naturally improve your execution in addition to you learning the boss's patterns.

The lack of save battery on some games is befuddling. Rygar is a good example. Huge long action game. No saves at all. Kids would leave their NES on for weeks just so they wouldn't lose progress.

save states yes rewind no. I'll use save states before a difficult section to reduce the amount of down time in between attempts, all I'm doing is just stopping the game from wasting my time with antiquated shit like lives systems and game over screens.

>I used save states so I wouldn't have to...
>Did I cheat myself?
yes but nobody gives a shit. Lying to yourself about videogame accomplishments only hurts yourself.

Don't pretend that games don't often have braindead easy parts before the actual difficulty spikes. Have sex.

It could be argued that the tedium of having to refill your subtanks is the punishment for using them up and still not succeeding. It is cheating, regardless, even if you think it's being done to make up for a failing of the game. You have to accept that and then start thinking about what forms of cheating you actually care about.

>bought MMLC in steam summer sale
>has savestates built in, but you can at least turn them off from automatic saving
>literally can't disable the rewind function

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>antiquated shit like lives systems and game over screens.

haha fucking jesus man

Explain the difference between savestates and rewinding.

It has tough spots but its not the biggest deal even without despawning enemies. Just make a run for the boss door.
Whats not ok is that losing to the boss ONCE throws you back to the start of the world. Not the checkpoint, not the start of the level, all the fucking way to the start of the world.

Thats just fucked.

just go back to playing super meat boy

but if i git gud then waman will hav sex with me?

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fuck off tranny

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No its actually simply that the developers of the time did not know that people would grow to appreciate easier games over time that they can save their progress and come back to. They had every reason to push arcade in the home because at the time it was popular you dunce. Just that the gaming audience eventually came to realize they prefer more adventure type of games with saves and less of the hard arcade type games where you have limited lives and need to start all over again if you die too much. The times just changed and with it so did the audience.

If you can't beat the original Mega Man games by yourself you might have brain damage or something, the X games final bosses hard has fuck so i would understand using save states but classic Mega Man has a medium difficulty it's enjoyable to play

people just buy whatever they're being fed.

Only if you learn how to poop properly.

yeah I understand the tedium as punishment thing, when I was playing X I filled the tanks the first 10 or so times I died to Sigma and I eventually got really tired of it so I just bypassed that step, doesn't really bother me though

You're cheating when you do it, which is fine. Just don't go around claiming to have beaten the game.

If literal children can progress through the game just fine using the default life and checkpoint system, I'm sure a big boy like yourself can manage, user. Have faith.

Then you would have nothing to complain about and a free space to improve and practice skills and refocus according to your very specific situation.

>They had every reason to push arcade in the home because at the time it was popular you dunce.
Yeah but you can't feed a NES quarters in place of skill. Arcade style is shit.

Just admit that the game was artificially difficult man. Its still a really great game despite the flaws. In fact without those certain flaws the damn game would virtually be a 10/10 and that is no lie.

This is true, however you could refill subtanks in any way, not just the dullest.

I will not use faggot retard terms like that no.

>Whats not ok is that losing to the boss ONCE throws you back to the start of the world. Not the checkpoint, not the start of the level, all the fucking way to the start of the world.
this is where i quit every single time.

>still using "artificially difficult" around 150 posts into the thread
lol

if I make it to the end and I played every bit of the game manually the whole way through, no tools playing for me, I've beaten it and can and will claim whatever the fuck I want suck my cock dood

in fact i have more of a claim to beating it than someone who skipped entire levels and worlds using something like a warp pipe actually.

>thinking gravity man is difficult

Nigga, just don't be underneath/above him

>every single time
So you're saying you keep coming back to it? Interesting.

True but the appeal would be "well I have this port of an arcade game I love to play at my home and I don't have to beg mommy for quarters to keep playing it. Eventually if I just keep getting good I will eventually beat the game."

Devs knew what they were doing but all what I am saying is I think had they somehow got smarter or predicted better where the gaming demographic would switch to in the not so distant future retro games from the 8-16 bit era would be even more loved than they already are today.

I genuinely liked the game until that.
Now its an irredeemable trash game to me.

I sort of appreciate game overs and lives, but at the same time I really don't have the fucking time to do these boring easy parts over and over again.

You can claim that, but I don't have to consider your opinion on whether you beat it worth a shit. You played it, or "experienced" it. You didn't beat it, because you cheated.

>All this anons defending this
And you guys wonder why Megaman has been a niche platformer for years

Well the game is the definition of artificial difficulty. The final boss as people are discussing is the most notable and perfect example of such a thing in games. There is no other reason they did that other than to frustrate the player and lengthen their game some more since most would for sure be dying a ton once they got there.

How many times do we need to teach you this lesson old man?

I don't wonder why Mega Man is a niche platformer, I'm glad it is because it filters the people I don't want playing these games. Casuals can play the X games.

The problem with "artificial difficulty" is that it's an excuse for the fucking player to say "Oh, I could habe beaten that if the game wasn't bullshit!" Which is the telltale sign of a fucking scrub. You should know that old games are designed that way. They expect you to know every little nook and cranny of their game, where power ups and bonuses are, and either figure it out yourself or ask your friends. It's perfectly fine to look up the proper orders and such because that's what you're meant to do. But if you can't beat the fucking levels even in the proper order and with continues, then you're just plain bad at the game. No one's stopping you, but you're a faggot.

>an honest-to-god thread defending save state usage in fucking MMX of all games
5 years ago you would have been laughed off the board for such flagrant faggotry. Just goes to show how far this place has fallen.

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by the time you have reached the point of talking about specific encounters and their impact on the game and the experience of playing it, the term no longer serves any purpose anyway so why even bother using it? Especially when 99% of the time use of the word outs you as a retard and poser who doesn't understand shit about games or game design.

This

>hardest X (X 6) game pretty much has savestates anyway sinces lives don't mean anything
What did they mean by this?

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>anime girls
>retarded generalization
your posts are just as low quality as they were 5 years ago

Then I'm glad most people aren't like you.

>Casuals can play the X games.
Dumbass both series are casual and the franchise has always been niche. The only really popular ones are MM2, MM3, and MMX.

Do you have an actual point beyond 'NO U'?

They expect you to want to explore and test things out and enjoy discovering what weapons to use and where secrets are. But yes, "artificial difficulty" is merely a excuse to protect ego.

The first one absolutely is, you pretentious faggot.

I really want to play the mega man games. I have since I was a kid but never got around to it for one reason or another. Now I finally have the collection but they're too hard for me. I don't want to savescum but I can't take the punishment.

His post is based in verifiable truth (everyone can look at your post and see that it is shit). Your post is based on your stunted imagination that no one cares about. So his "no u" wins.

>Is that bad?
yes unless it was practice for a real buster only run

Yellow Devil done legit is about the only thing in MM1 more challenging than your average mega man game.

This has been answered millions of times for years. Artificial difficulty is punishing players without giving them insight to the mechanics or hazards beforehand. If a random hand covering 3/4th of the screen comes out of nowhere for a second to kill your character if they are not in a certain spot, that is artificial difficulty.

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There's no way anyone did Shadowman in MM3 buster only without using savestates. That would take forever without savestates.

Not many people played the first one, the series didn't really get big until the sequel.

Then you should kill yourself

How do they work there?

Of course it's the definition of artificial difficulty. Because the definition is fucking stupid. Let's say that you get to a part of the game that you cannot prepare for in any way and you die. The second time around, you should be able to get past it, right? Exactly. It doesn't fucking matter if a game is "robbing your time" or "wasting it" because you're playing the fucking game to spend time anyways. If you legitimately cannot get past these "artificial" obstacles even after learning them, you're just shit.

Use E-tanks you cunt.

it's acceptable inly on this part

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>Then you should kill yourself
Nah.

Game overing takes you back to a checkpoint, no different than dying.

There's nothing artificial about it, dealing with something that happens so fast is difficult, genuinely so. Stop spewing buzzwords and just call it unfair, that's all it is.

yeah the problem is that no one who actually understands what artificial difficulty is and how it applies to game analysis actually bothers to use the term. Outside of cherry-picking isolated examples to explain what the term means, I've literally never seen anyone use the term in a way that actually adds to a discussion. It's ALWAYS some dumbass faggot that is shit at a game and is whining about it.

That's so irrelevant I wonder what possessed you to post it.

t. someone who prides himself on video games too much

Stop acting like devs didn't have bullshit spots in games.

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>gravity man is too unpredictable
Literally the same pattern every time you fight him

>gravity man is too unpredictable
the absolute state

The only reason you'd ever save state here, and only here, is if you knew the consequence for failure. If you know the consequence for failure, you know the trick to the boss, and therefore have no excuse to fail, and thus have no excuse to be using save states.

I Wanna Be the Guy system of playing is how most of these games would be in the developers weren't deliberately trying to waste your time to forcibly elongate their game

buster only isn't even the intended way to play the game, that's just a self imposed challenge and if you're circumventing your self imposed challenge by cheating, you're ... really just something else.

>doing the same shit you're already proficient at just to get to one area again
>difficulty

Someone savestating before a boss is no different than people using the checkpoint before a boss. Just because you liked wasting your time on those limitations doesn't mean everyone else does.

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They're cheating; it doesn't matter, people won't know unless you tell them. Do whatever you want. Who the fuck cares.

you aren't supposed to bash your head against a megaman boss until you win.

The post you responded to said "Mega Man Games are easy." You pointed out an irrelevant exception to that rule.

That's actually a good thing.
Regardless of how much Capcom tries to shill Megaman to the general public, it's niche appeal for the Classic/X games is what kept it alive.
Once a company better knows it's target audience, it can focus primarily on the mechanics they love and improve on it.

But that's literally what you do if you die to them.

And when you run out of lives in most of the games, you have to start the stage over from the beginning. Save states let you try an unlimited number of times.

And just because you don't like being punished for failing doesn't mean you aren't cheating when you circumvent that punishment.

>you aren't supposed to bash your head against a megaman boss until you win.
Yes you are. The only difference is that sometimes you have to do the whole stage again.

Depends how you use them, but generally I'd say they're cheating since those games were never intended to have those particular save mechanics and would be more punishing without them. It's not like quicksaves in PC games which were designed with that save mechanism from the get go.

>dealing with something that happens so fast is difficult, genuinely so.
It's not difficult to react to, it's impossible to react to. You need to know it's there prior to playing the game in order to avoid it.

Trying until you run out of lives is not "bashing your head against the wall until you win."
When you run out of lives, you try a different level and different boss. You keep doing that until you find one that you can beat. Then you take that weapon and go find the boss that's weak to it. And so on.

>Mega man isn't part of the Mega Man series.
This is you right now. This is how hard you cling to stupid shit you say. Sort yourself out, man.

>use savestates
>never have to fear for doing the stage over again, can try the boss as many times as you like without resorting to E-Tanks to avoid a continue
objectively different

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So basically the franchise is just going to die once the boomers get too old for vidya. Gotcha,

He's not the one desperate to defend his own image by complaining about losing at a videogame.

>t. someone who prides himself on video games too much

I'm going to be honest with you user. I'm shit. I can't even get to the third teleporter in RoR2 reliably, I've never beaten a NES game, and DmC3 normal mode kicks my ass. But with all the games I've played. ALL the fucking games I've played. Even if I admit that there are bullshit moments in games, I've never thought "I died, this must be the game's fault."

This is why the DOS versions are the best, just amazing.

or a dumbass youtuber saying it to pretend he knows something, which impresses his zoomer audience who then start using the term like the idiots they are.

Doesn't matter. You like new games because they're tailored towards younger people like yourself, I like older games tailored towards older people like myself. Everything is good and all is well. We're both happy and the world is still turning.

>die to any megaman boss twice in a row, none of the boss weapons you have deal more than 1 unit of damage to them
>GAME OVER
>"gee this boss sure is tough"
>"I KNOW! I'll go try another level and come back to this one later once I have a new power that will be more effective against him!"
>You come back later and melt the boss, not only having the boss's weakness, but also having had time to reflect on the boss's patterns so that you can dodge his attacks and win even without the weakness.

this is why Megaman games are so good. stop using savestates, you impatient zoomer fuck.

after savestating beforehand and dying to him 12 times I figured it out and beat him without losing more than a quarter hp

much better than playing through the same easy level a dozen times

Who cares? Save states are hardly any different than back in the day when people farmed with lives.

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>stop using savestates
No.

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Guarantee if wouldn't have taken a dozen tries if you had to play through the level again and actually had anything to fear if you died rather than throwing yourself into the meat grinder safe in the knowledge that dying has no consequence.

see

>using save states after every step is tedious to the point I wouldn't expect anyone to do it

I've done it, and with easy games too like FFTA and Pokemon games. You know what it's like to press the same key combination after every fucking action and turn? it's like an addiction, it really drives you nuts.

Who cares?

It'll always have fans among people with taste so long as they continue to produce good ones. If not, it'll die, like anything else.
What you should be worried about is not having any good games to play once boomers die, because there won't be anyone left that understands real game design.

Some games can definitely be bad or miserable without it, but savestate abuse will very likely mostly amount to being a crutch on one's first playthrough. You won't build up the same discipline or skills as you did playing normally and you'll still be bad at video games.

*objectively better

some zoomers aren't dogshit at games like Yea Forums

Nah I'd have just got bored and played something else or went outside.

More like it's a safe franchise. AAA mascots like Megaman will always have fans, but unlike Nintendo and Sega, Capcom is aware of it's audience and no longer has to force themselves into the newer generation like they tried to do in the GBA/DS era.

Games often compensate for such things in countless ways if they ever even come close to unreactable, either through level design to put you on guard ahead of time or lessened punishment with them designed as a warning to promote a cautious approach.

apparently you do or you wouldn't care so much about the rather reasonable criticism

Honestly, since we're talking about a little Jap schoolchildren game, I'd probably kick your ass if you said Megaman was dumb and easy and that you used savestates, user. Meet me behind the school after gym class.

You cheated not only the game, but yourself. You didn't grow. You didn't improve. You took a shortcut and gained nothing. You experienced a hollow victory. Nothing was risked and nothing was gained. It's sad that you don't know the difference.

actual artificial difficulty died on the NES back in the 90's. Since then, the term has been co-opted by "tough but fair" troglodytes who invented a way to feel upset if they don't immediately figure something out on the first try.

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that's subjective based on whether or not you find easier to be better

sure there's just no word yet for a good zoomer.

the punishment is cruel and unusual and disportionate and should be dealt with equally cruel and unusual and disproportionate methods, that is, save states
there is no reason to put up with it

Megaman was dumb and easy and I used savestates.

>it's niche appeal for the Classic/X games is what kept it alive.
Oh yes tell me how "alive" the series was between 1996-2008 and then 2010-2018 when it had no new games

You can think that way if you like, just accept that you're cheating.

>I'd probably kick your ass if you said Megaman was dumb and easy and that you used savestates

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not wasting time is objectively better to wasting time

According to the game it does
Actual developers>Some loser neckbeard tbqh

This isn't some fucking French Monarchy we're talking about, user. This is you playing Snakes and Ladders by yourself and deciding that you DESERVE to only have to roll for those last 10 spaces.

right, you can't reward a player for being observant without punishing the players who aren't. (Well, unless you're doing some everyone wins bullshit and the only reward is finding some bing bing wahoo)

So this is the state of Yea Forums.

Artificial Difficulty=You get hurt/die from things that's out of your control, forcing trial and error on you
Real Difficulty=You can skip the whole trial and error process if you pay attention when the game teaches/implies on what to do/not do

>using boss weaknesses in megaman games
I think there's a stronger case for saying you're the cheater here than the guy using savestates to reload before the boss door.

>tell me how "alive" the series was between 1996-2008
What do you mean?

and the truth is anyone who uses the first term always applies it to the latter, because they cannot tell the difference.

MM5 is the easiest classic Mega Man game.

>stunted imagination
The shitting-on-casuals mindset was so prevalent people made OC taking the piss out of it. Don't think I'm the one with the stunted imagination here.

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It's no big deal since most of us who play emulated games already played the actual games normally sometime beforehand. We usually don't want to deal with respawn times, easy walking distances, or unskippable dialogue to get back to playing the game. And I'm surprised after all these years we still have autists like that flip out when people talk about savestates.

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The only time I ever us save states is before boss fights so I can instantly reload if I die.

again that's subjective, we've already established it's not going to be the same due to item usage, reaching the boss door with different levels of health and energy for your weapons etc, none of which matters in case of an infinitely refreshed restore point - to say literally nothing of actually having to put the effort in to play the stage again
if you like it easier then it's better, if you don't then it's not, argue in circles all you like

read the whole thread user and stop making stupid posts.

>And if the game isn't worth playing multiple times, are you really sure it was even worth playing once?
Of fucking course, there are plenty of great games with little to none replayability. The rest of your post is right tho, it's just a matter of taste. Some take pleasure in getting their reflexes sharper and sharper with every play while others just want to experience a game once, without having to master it. We could argue that the former is the way it was meant to be played from the start, but I don't think that matters.

The only people who unironically enjoy repetition are autists. Are you autistic user?

Fucking kek. Kill yourself, retard. It isn't like Dark Souls where the players stack a 50,000% damage buff on themselves before one-shotting the hardest boss in the game. It's the difference between doing 1 damage or 6 out of 50. And you fucking know that savestate retard is still using their weaknesses anyways.

I like sony movies because I only have to watch them one time. they are very respectful of hardcore gamers like me.

>for the Classic/X games
At least read the message right in front of you. No one except a loud minority cared about the spinoffs like Zero, Battle Network, and Legends games.
Now that they know that they should only focus on the original platformers(especially classic) then it'll only go up in popularity from here.

Save states are acceptable when:
- You save state after an unskippable cutscene, so you don't have to keep rewatching the cutscene.
- You save state to check any unique interactions (It's hard to come up with an immediate example, but boss quotes from the Fire Emblem series are all I can think off the top of my head).
- You absolutely have to end your gaming session and just want a quick save state.
- To avoid any game breaking glitches.
-Rerolling any non-essential numbers. Think of seeds in dragon quest, you can save and quit until you get your desired results and Save states just make that process faster.

Save states are not okay when:
-You want to reroll an RN that is essential or vital to that specific roll.
-You use them excessively throughout a level/save stating after a "hard" part and always resetting to that area.
-To avoid using continues.

Battle Network was more popular than you give it credit for.

>Poser
Literally the only people who disagree with the term as a whole were DarkSouls fags. Pretending everything but the DLCs don't end up only partially polished like having objective waste stats, horrendous hitbox+tracking they can bug out like Hydra and half the bosses in 2, iframes being a stat, or the dogs having different dodge timings in the Capra fight.

>It isn't like Dark Souls where the players stack a 50,000% damage buff on themselves before one-shotting the hardest boss in the game.
It is exactly like that. Using the bosses weakness and killing him before he can even complete one cycle is not the same as defeating it without it. Some bosses can even be stunlocked to death using their weakness.

>not only having the boss's weakness, but also having had time to reflect on the boss's patterns so that you can dodge his attacks and win even without the weakness.
Boss patterns are best learned through actually fighting the boss, so spending time playing other levels is completely counter-productive to learning boss patterns. Save states are especially useful in this exact case. They're essentially just a time-saving measure. Mega Man games aren't very long at all and there is no need for them to be any longer, if all that means is the player having to replay parts they've already beaten multiple times.

>are save states and rewind a legitimate way to offset artificial difficulty or is it considered cheating?
Sure. As people have already mentioned in this thread, you're not really getting better at the game if you're already doing the stuff you're good at just to get to certain part you're having a hard time with. If a stage is super easy but the boss is difficult, then just use a checkpoint/savestate right before the boss.

Sure, you could get into how a game is "supposed to be played" but that's on you. All that matters is having a fun time.

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The reason such a definition is pointless is that it implies the player is at the maximum possible level of skill and understanding and can't just be missing something, and also that it disregards the scale of the situation entirely which has a greater impact than the person's personal viewpoint.

I see a some posters defending the use of save states in a children's game and some posters arguing against it. And my point is that it would have been much more lopsided in favor of the latter then than it is now.

Collections were made both of those times. Classic series got MM&B outside of Japan on the GBA. X had 4-8 in that first time span and the entirety of the Zero series, Legends series, BN series and the SF series were made in that time.Also both 2010 and 2018 had a Mega Man game the drought was 2011-2017.

Yeah and what are you gonna do, cry about it? Gonna piss your pants, maybe? Maybe shit and cum? Kill yourself.

Delete this.

>According to the game it does
>game over
lol no

>actual artificial difficulty died on the NES back in the 90's
Incorrect. There have still been plenty of RPGs in the past 20 years with broken level scaling. There are also still plenty of FPS shooters with artificial difficulty because the devs think having enemies be bullet sponges on higher difficulty settings is "challenging." Pic related. Having to fight an enemy the same way but hold the trigger button for two minutes longer isn't legitimate difficulty.

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>either through level design to put you on guard ahead of time
>lessened punishment with them
Nigger, what about blind faith pitfalls. There's literally nothing to be on guard with or a lessened punishment to have since most of them are instant death regardless of care.

If they didn't want you to use continues, they wouldn't have put them in the game. You're not important so again
Developers of the game>Guy who lives with mommy and daddy

>Resorts to insults when his argument falls apart
Based loser giving me a concession for free.

>The truth
Literally give any example that isn't Dark Souls or Mega Man.

>If they didn't want you to use continues, they wouldn't have put them in the game.
they are for practice

>Can still see this screen even if I use continues
Sounds like you're making up nonsense again. Show me in game where it says using continues doesn't count as beating the game. Statement from the developer or in the manual works too. Otherwise you concede and I write you off as a zoomer trying too hard to fit in to impress aging anons on a shitty image board. Any response that isn't direct proof is a concession and I won't respond to it.

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if you're new to those types of video games and find them too difficult then by all means use them to ease yourself into them, but you should recognize it's a crutch and try to wean yourself off as you feel your skills develop. You should at least recognize the problem is your own ability and not "artificial difficulty." I'm honestly not trying to insult you, no one was good at these games when they first started playing. You just need to recognize the problem is you and not the game's design. MM2 is the only game in the series I would say has actual moments of unfairness.

I'm really good at playing with toys okay? And that's what really matters.

bullshit argument.
bigger health pools means longer fights means more chances to fuck up.
its absolutely legitimate difficulty. hell I'd say increasing health is one of the best way to increase difficulty and quite a few games would benefit from it.

Mega Mans are piss easy, kill yourself zoomer

Artificial difficulty is inherent in game design which creates segments that a player cannot beat without prior knowledge of the segment. Any segment should be beatable if the player is skilled enough without either relying on pure luck or on already knowing what comes next. Either that or it is simply designed to pad out game time with no significant benefit to the game, for instance if you need to find an item to progress but it has a 0.01% drop chance so you'll have to farm it for a very long time, despite the fact that making it so hard to get serves no actual purpose.

>game over

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^
I accept

your concession

no its not you fat gay retard. megaman 3 is total horse shit on the difficulty scale and has unnecessary length time because of the doc robot stages. yellow devil isn't even that bad because his pattern never changes

what's wrong with using a save state before the boss room so I can rematch him if I die? I already beat the level at that point.

>megaman 3 is total horse shit on the difficulty scale
zoom zoom

Nah, doing buster only fights against Elecman, Iceman, and Mega-Clone can be challenging. Not too difficult mind you, but definitely more challenging than most other MM games.

Personally, I usually use savestates as a substitute for actual saving in older games (save at/before the start of the level, never in the middle, etc.) And I typically find that enough to keep me going.
I also try to see if I can apply an infinite lives cheat codes of possible, but that's just me finding limited tries to be a stupid design choice that is hardly ever justified, although I've beaten plenty games with limited lives

The only time I ever use savestates is when I just want to save my progress so I don't have to leave the machine on all day long while I'm not playing. I don't use them to overcome difficult parts. I like challenge.

i use savestates just before boss fights in megaman so i dont have to run through the stage all over again, i know im a faggot.

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>all those casuals defending the use of savestates in fucking Mega Man of all things
Next time someone on Yea Forums tells you to git gud, remember that they might have posted ITT defending the use of a crutch for their ineptitude at video games.

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3 is still one of the harder games in the series but freefly Rush Jet makes it a lot more manageable, at least.
Hardest part of 1 for me has always been Gutsman's level because the game can barely ever seem to load the moving platforms and it's hard making the jumps when they keep blinking out of existence.
I always do Elecman before him.

as long as you don't claim you've beaten the game it's not a problem

Mega Man 3 has the easiest Wily Castle of any Mega Man game in the series
Needle revisit is the only potentially difficult Doc Robot stage and only because you can run out of Rush Jet if you play like a moron that can't recognise enemy patterns