There are many games where you are coasting along and making progress and are simply enjoying the experience - the ride - the scenery, and then all of a sudden you run up against some kind of situation that you can’t complete. But instead of the game giving you unlimited tries or some help to move forward, it results in a ‘game over’ situation. This is annoying. I actually just want to keep playing and flowing along, I don’t really want the experience to stop, but the game’s design stops it. Its as though the developer doesn’t actually know what you are experiencing and why it’s been enjoyable, so they put a challenge in front of you that’s too hard. An impass. For me this kills the game and destroys the good thing they had going. I couldn’ve kept on playing for hours, but to go back to the beginning is like an obnoxious failure. Does anyone really want that? Do you think games should use these roadblocks or are there games that are better suited to continuous, forgiving, uninterrupted flow and progress? This particularly annoys me in free-to-play games where eventually you cannot pass unless you pay up. It doesn’t make me want to pay, it makes me want t quit.
People, in general, don’t play games that are too easy for very long at all. Even if they say they want a game easier. That said there are whole genres and markets that have games that you can’t fail. Many 3d platformers fall in this category, often the ones built for younger crowds. For the most part all the TT Lego games are impossible to fail, and get progressively easier if you struggle with the challenges. You can’t fail clicker games. Some games you can’t fail, but the challenge is in the speed or score in you get instead.
Then you aren’t the audience for those games. Many (enough) do pay when the challenges get tougher. Though practically speaking, most of the successful F2P games don’t have any hard walls. Hard walls don’t work, they turn players away. The walls are time based usually or have a hard currency wall, with the ability to earn hard currency in game through grinding. (or a soft currency wall that is really high, that people would rather pay to get through than grind). While some people claim they don’t like these games, they are dominate the top games.
Interestingly, there are a percentage of F2P players who play these game hardcore without ever paying a dime, they feel like they are beating the system playing the crap out of the game and not paying. They feel like they are getting away with something. Which is pretty funny, really… but in the end, they are still getting joy out of playing the game.
Yeah, this.
Though, I will say the fact that you felt blindsided by these events may mean that the developer doesn’t realize they’re creating a difficulty spike. It’s usually gradual.
In general I agree with the OP.
Difficulty spikes are important. They add flavour and variety. But spikes that are too difficult can kill a game.
I’m not talking about difficulty in general. There is a market for difficult games, and I certainly enjoy a challenge. It’s just painful when one part of a game is completely out of phase with the difficulty of the rest of the game. It’s a major design flaw.
The biggest culprit for this I’ve played recently was Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Periodically the game threw you into cut scenes as boss fights. The difficulty was way out of wack with the rest of the game. In many ways it ruined why was otherwise a good experience.
Agreed. however, I invested in the first level of the Typhoon ability specifically for that purpose. And I always stocked up on candy bars, and never used Typhoon ammo for anything else, so at a boss battle I would immediately run up to whoever, use the Typhoon, while they’re reeling go into the inventory and eat a candy bar, then repeat until the cutscene began (thankfully those bosses don’t count as kills).
That strategy worked. But only if you knew about it in advance. It’s a fairly major design flaw to assume a player has chosen a specific skill on an rpg skill tree. Especially when the skill is pretty useless outside of boss battles.
There are two reasons for failing conditions in games. One reason is to provide a challenge, since many people will stop playing if they feel bored from a lack of challenge. The other reason is out of habit. Back in the arcade days, the failure condition was an opportunity for the video game machine to request more money from the player to keep playing. As video game designers, we need to make sure we provide enjoyable challenges to maintain player interest, but we should be careful not to fall into any habits from the past coin op days.
Yeah, the first time I played I wasn’t aware of it, and I’d played without ANY combat use, so it was a major “Oh [expletive]” moment.
Excellent point.
Because most people have no idea how to make something engaging, aside from challenging the player’s skills. So much of classic and current game design is based purely on edging the line of player proficiency. The other issue is most design is seen in black and white. Most designers want the players to do something specific. If the player doesn’t do the one thing they want, then their only option is to punish them. Either the player wins the fight or they die. Either the player completes the level or they die. There are no other outcomes, and certainly no nuances in what the player has to do.
Take away all roadblocks though and you’re left with something incapable of engagement. It might be immersive, but it will be void of anything tangible to engage with. If you want uninterrupted flow, however, you should put the controller down and go watch a movie.
Pay2Win games aside…
Because overcoming a challenge is fun.
Loss means you have failed to overcome the challenge.
Getting through the learning curve, starting to understand the mechanics, getting better at them, and eventually overcoming something you thought was impossible - it produces one hell of a thrill and is one of the feelings that makes games worth playing.
An example:
You’re a king of a kingdom. You’re surrounded by numerous neighbors. One day you decide to turn your kingdom into an empire. You start attacking your neighbors one by one, but none of them can resist your might. You conquer them all and the game ends.
^^^ This is a boring game. Unless it has some other component in it, I won’t be playing it.
Now, let’s compare it to:
you’re a king of a fantasy kingdom. You’re surrounded by many enemies that are stronger than you and want you dead. And one day one of them attack you. Through your skill and wits you manage to defeat the enemy and push it back after hard battle. Then you advance through their lands, arrive at their capital and conquer them… which only causes all your other enemies unite and attack you all at once. The war continues on, and one day after carefully planning, juggling troops, resources and using every trick you stand victorious! As you advance to the last stronghold at the last enemy they play their final card : they open gates of hell, and demons that are much stronger than anything you ever faced pour into your lands slaughtering your armies. You now lost most of your lands, and once again reduced to your last castle… and you decide to continue fighting back.
^^^ I’d play the hell out of this. In a game I want something to think about. I want to look for ways to overcome a challenge, because thinking is fun.
So.
When you encounter situation when “It doesn’t make me want to pay, it makes me want t quit.”, you’re not the target audience, and this is not your most suitable genre. The best idea is indeed to switch to something else that you enjoy more.
That’s when the dev have hardcore mentality, they see darksouls has coming back to the roots and the validation that the other way around was bogus to begin with. That’s just ideology.
But the reality is way more complex, Difficulty/stimulation management have always been a concern in game for example:
Stimulation and difficulty gating management.
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Walking sims is a genre that have explicitly rejected this to go push “soaking in the setting” sentiment, they have been increasingly complex and finding their own way to engage along.
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JRPG have been playing with this in many way, even in the yer old days! There is a reason why you can break these game with 99 potions stocking or grind … you get to feel like you cheated the game by putting effort and thought, you engage with the challenge by finding obvious way to get around, BUT hardcore player will use their hard earn coin to carefully choose their equipment the most adapted to the challenge through deeply learning the weakness system and engage with the combat rules to strategize, the former get to finish the game fist pumping after the boss have them strategically quaff potion and abuse revive for every one hit kills, while the latter will fist pump to be able to dodge all debuff and one hit kills and do 9999 damage with the complex combo stacking system.
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There was a moment in game design where most game where about “linear scripting”, the word toss around was “constant engagement”, always provide the player a stimulation by faking how hard a situation truly is and making feel like he did fantastic things when he really didn’t.
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there was difficulty settings
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there was dynamic difficulty adjustment
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there is nagging like in mario 3d land where if you fail too much the game offer you an optional bonus
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there is mini games to farm advantage (mario 3 and things like P wings)
This is why most games have several difficulty levels to choose from. Some people like a chill experience, others want a challenge.
As for me, if a game doesn’t seriously strain my nerves I generally get bored of it quick.
Well, I think really depends on the person and his/her mood at that moment. In my occasion, I am trying not to become upset if I cannot pass the level. If I wish to pass, I start to google, asking how to pass it…basically, looking for the option how to pass it. If it I am not in a mood or are not that interested in a game, just leave it. Maybe it sounds not that ambitious but I try to enjoy my time playing games. That is the main in my occasion.
Some people want more challenge than others. It’s a lot harder to get through a game that makes you start from scratch if you fail (roguelikes) or if you fail a few times (Mario) than one that lets you continue from your last save an infinite number of times (RPGs).
That said, I don’t find that fun at all. I think being forced to replay the whole game adds artificial difficulty. Interestingly, the new Mario game is apparently not going to have a Game Over state, but will instead just take coins from the player on death.
Literally my first thought when I first saw that: what happens when the player runs out of coins?
I think on top of that, the possibility of failure, with whatever punishment that may bring, makes everything more tense. It makes everything more difficult, it requires me to take it seriously and dig deep into its mechanics and understand them so I can take full advantage.
I hate games that have been focus tested to death and the difficulty curve is so smooth you simply flow through the game. It’s the thing that makes a lot of the recent games unmemorable.
I get why they do it. If a game is punishing and difficult, I have to be into it. If I’m not really into it I’m not going to bother replaying a level and I’ll just stop. But if I flow through it I might just keep going, because maybe the next level will have interesting stuff, or maybe I want to see where the story goes or whatever. And then I finish it and instantly forget about it.
Oddworld was good about being difficult but letting you retry from any point. I have died in the same place 30 times before figuring out how to do it. Infinite lives dosent always mean easy. Castlequest on NES start with 99 lives, lucky if you ever beat it. Most people give up long before running out of chances.
I guess I am understanding the question different then others. I do not believe the OP is asking why do games have challenge; but do you as both player and developer like games that use challenge AS roadblocks or gates to the gaming experience?
Some examples of this would be…
Gated Game Play: Willow for the NES. In this game the developers literally level gated the game so you HAD to go up in levels and could not beat bosses of each area unless you had reached the required level other wise you inflicted NO DAMAGE against the boss no matter how good you were in controlling Willow.
Roadblock Game Play: Star Control 2 had a complete the game in 5 game years or lose; yet they created a game that had a vast galaxy too explore; yet you literally had to complete the main quests ASAP with limited access to the few side quests there were in order too complete the game; so you left a vast amount of game play fun on the roadside.
Now there are some games that approach this differently…
Games like Inside and Little Nightmares allow indefinite game play. Most puzzler games do this and it is a simple trade off. Can’t beat level 14B, try again.
But now we have games like Monstrum where they invoke permadeath. You get one life, one chance to get off the ship in one of three ways, but it also uses RNG for item placement which makes it very difficult too locate most of the required items. Most players tend to think logically and head to places where they would expect to find some of the items yet they could be anywhere (why is their a blow torch in the bathroom?).
Another is something like Darkest Dungeon where it saves as you play so if you lose Reginald the crusader, he is gone forever. You cannot load up a pre-save and try that battle differently, he’s dead Jim.
There are more examples, but this is a simple post; not as advanced as other posts
No that’s not really what I meant.
There are games where I’m having a perfectly enjoyable experience progressing from one level to the next. There is challenge but it’s not too hard, and it’s enough of a challenge to keep me interested. Difficulty or complexity will increase but so too will abilities and extra tools and so on. But then after, let’s say, 20-30 levels, which feels like a nice flow that you could just keep going with for ages… suddenly they throw in a level that’s just a bit too difficult, and now you fail the level, and maybe you get a few chances to try again, and already you feel annoyed, and you get close to beating it but you don’t, and then that’s it, the whole entire game is down the tubes and you gotta start from level 1. What happened?
Whereas it seemed as though constant challenge or increasing difficulty was the aim, what I was really experiencing was a nice steady well-balanced progression where the game seemed to entertain me and matched my level of ability. But then something went outside the envelope.
Example, I was playing the new ‘snoopy pop’ game on iPad… got through like 20-odd levels, never had to replay a level, yet every level seemed engaging enough and interesting and engaging. Could’ve just kept going, I was enjoying it. I come to a level around 20-odd and suddenly the level is really long, and after even 3 or 4 tries I just can’t seem to get past it. Getting past a harder level of challenge or difficulty was NOT my goal. I guess what I’m saying is, I was having a better time enjoying the RIDE and the scenery and the journey, that when a “GOAL” came along and said, sorry no, you shall not pass, it was like F#&(*#& you. In my opinion that was a complete mismatch between the joy of just playing versus this sudden ultimatum showing up. I felt like I could’ve just casually coasted along for 100 levels, and now here I am faced with a slap in the face. I don’t want a challenge that can’t be beat without reasonable effort… if it means I have to replay levels and even the horrible scenario of starting from scratch, then it’s game over as far as I’m concerned. App will be quit and not played again.
Another game which did this was Thomas was Alone. Was really enjoying the puzzles and so on. Got through quite a number of levels. Then suddenly got to this level where the difficulty suddenly because quite different, there were all these platforms moving around and I had 3 or 4 characters to use in combination to get to the next part of the level, yet it had to be done quickly and timed just right, it was just baffling. I wasn’t ready for it, I guess. I felt ill-equipped and it seemed unfair. I quit the game. I wasn’t there to overcome a massively hard challenge, I was just enjoying gently learning how to do things and to succeed at doing them. The “competitive” bullshit of suddenly having this all-or-nothing live-or-die scenario just ruined the experience for me.
I guess I’m describing ‘casual gaming’ more than difficult challenge games. It’s not that I don’t like a challenge but… in a game which is mainly not about that kind of challenge, to suddenly experience it is just not right.
I guess this is a fundamentally different model of play… the enjoyment of just playing and relaxing and being entertained and just flowing right along, with enough challenge or change to keep it interesting, versus a game where it just gets harder faster than your ability to keep up and eventually you inevitably die. I’d rather the game be more forgiving and just let you keep going indefinitely. Perhaps, instead of an “endless” game which actually does have an end because the difficulty and ability to fail increases, maybe a type of game where you can just keep on going and “play forever” and enjoy it without having an actual end goal or interruption or reason to start over. ie games can be fun and enjoyable without having to have this “end” happening.
Maybe another way to look at this is in terms of having a game which is constantly revealing new tools or powers or abilities, which then are given a temporary challenge in a few levels where you use them, and as such there is something new and a learning curve and yet you can and will succeed. Then it moves on to a new special power or ability etc and another level where you get to try it out and succeed at it, and thus feel an accomplishment because you learned to master a new tool or skill. And just keep on going, new stuff, new stuff, new stuff. In that, it stays interesting and engaging without having to use “difficulty” as a kind of easy go-to to add a sense of new challenges or new problems or whatever. Does a game really have to become HARDER in order to keep your engagement? Or does it simply need to keep giving you something new, interesting and unexpected - something which you can nevertheless deal with and move past, to just keep on enjoying the discovery and freshness of the experience? Why end that? Why throw in a sudden sense of difficulty in as a kind of “problem” which, if you can’t find a way around it on your own, the game leaves you hanging and now you’re dead?