/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.7784181]

name one actual example of artificial difficulty

a specific example, from a specific game

[Anonymous No.7784189]

>>7784181
all difficulty is artificial. at best, this thread will serve as a lesson.

the candle in zelda.

[Anonymous No.7784190]

>>7784181
Ninja Gaiden NES putting the player back to 6-1 from a death in 6-2 or even 6-3 was and will forever be, bullshit artificial difficulty.

[Anonymous No.7784201]

NES Dragon's Lair. The whole game.

[Anonymous No.7784226]

>>7784201
I heard that was a mistake, or at least the PAL version is more fair because it's slower.

Oh and the Power Glove has got to fit OPs bill, and his mom.

[Anonymous No.7784229]

>>7784181
I can't. I only play organic free range games.

[Anonymous No.7784261]

>>7784181
Artificial difficulty is fake and gay meme for retards.
All video games are artificially difficult.

[Anonymous No.7784262]

I was playing Star Tropics recently, and some doors you walked through instantly killed you.

[Anonymous No.7784301]

>>7784181
The last level of Final Fight where the game throws too many enemies at you to handle.

[Anonymous No.7784305]

the shield in ghosts n goblins

[Anonymous No.7784496]

Damn most people don't get what difficulty is. Or artificial difficulty is at least.

Non vr example. In Demons Souls there are literally enemies and things in spots that you can't know. It means on try one you will take chips of damage or do something retarded. NG+ or second character and it is so easy you almost have too many healing items and the game becomes boring.

[Anonymous No.7784502]

>>7784496
You are meant to play the game carefully. It’s deliberately designed to surprise you and for you to learn through trial, error, and persistence. The fact if the matter is it isn’t artificial difficulty. It’s just the way the game is designed, and that’s the case for nearly everything you retards cry artificial difficulty about. You signed on for this experience the moment you picked up to play, you accepted the challenge, so why whine and call it artificial when it does challenge you?

[Anonymous No.7784514]

>>7784496
>In Demons Souls there are literally enemies and things in spots that you can't know.
Ever tried swinging the camera above/around you before you turn a corner, or run towards an item? Thank me later.

[Anonymous No.7784517]

>>7784496
>in spots that you can't know
You must be a very stupid person then.

[Anonymous No.7784529]

>>7784181
Rubber-banding in racing games.
Input-reading in fighting games.

[Anonymous No.7784783]

>>7784529
>Input-reading in fighting games.
This. Fighting games shouldn't read your input. They should just sit there at the start screen and not read the input so you can't start the game.

[Anonymous No.7784794]

>>7784181
Gradius. I can get over losing all your shit upon dying, but could you at least give some more enemies that give power-up capsules near the checkpoint?

[Anonymous No.7784797]

>>7784181
Sonic 2's special stages

[Anonymous No.7785108]

>>7784181
Mortal Kombat II, when fighting the CPU you can tell the difficulty suddenly triples around the fourth fight.

[Anonymous No.7785161]

>>7784301
arcade games are meant to make money

[Anonymous No.7785168]

>>7784181
first off it depends on your definition
to me it means challenges that can't realistically be solved with skill alone, e.g. are too hard/impossible to react to, or boil down to downright grinding, cheesing, thus becoming a chore.
however it's hard to address the fact that many areas in retro games may require memorization, and STG in particular are basically built on it. whether it counts as "artificial difficulty" is up to debate.
i don't think many "classic" games have it per se. it's hard to give examples off my head. but i surely remember one level in NES Contra that felt like it was designed to throw stuff at you with barely any time to react. it wasn't even fun, it felt like deliberate way to fuck the player up and get more quarters.
SNK boss syndrome in a way is artificial difficulty. but i agree with >>7784529 and >>7785108 , input reading in fighting games in general is far more bullshit. on paper, if button reading AI is designed in a certain way, there could be a case where you'd never be able to win.

[Anonymous No.7785171]

>>7784229
NF;DL

[Anonymous No.7785175]

>>7784502
>this isn’t artificial difficulty because artificial difficulty doesn’t exist!
K retard. Leave the thread then.

[Anonymous No.7785195]

>>7784226
PAL version of Dragon's Lair is actually faster because it has a co-processor chip unlike the NTSC version. It has more smooth gameplay because of that.

[Anonymous No.7785206]

>>7784190
lol @ plebs dying on NES games. Dude just use save states or rewind.

[Anonymous No.7785285]

>>7785108
mortal kombat 2 is probably the cheapest fighting game ai ever

[Anonymous No.7785297]

>>7784496
I hate the "it's hard but fair" meme. There are parts of the game as you say that have traps that practically unavoidable.

[Anonymous No.7785553]

>>7784181
Wizardry IV. The whole game. Although I'm not sure if it's exactly artificial difficulty so much as masochism on the part of Sir-Tech.

[Anonymous No.7785710]

Extra lives that are easy to get are artificial easiness

[Anonymous No.7785753]

>>7784496
I knew I was in for a really fucking shit time as soon as I got fucking slammed by a real fucking cunt of a dragon at the start of the first Dark Souls when you climb that staircase out of a building.

[Anonymous No.7785856]

>just play the game again dude

[Anonymous No.7785925]

>>7784181
King's Quest: Using the bridle on the snake to turn it into a Pegasus. I mean, it's a reference to the myth of Medusa (Pegasus sprung from her corpse) but that's just bullshit.

>>7785753
Before you actually encounter the dragon on the bridge? How did you manage that? That part is rigged so you DON'T get smacked by the dragon.

[Anonymous No.7785968]

In my mind "artificial difficulty" would be any instance of a game breaking its established rules in an attempt to make something more difficult. For example, if you had a game where your character had three hits before they died, and then you reached a boss where that instant killed you with every attack, I feel that would suit that definition.

A non retro example is the Yiga stealth section in Breath of the Wild. For no logical reason other than the game REALLY wanted to force you to do it as a stealth section, every enemy one hit kills you, the rival magic doesn't work, fairies don't work, and a mechanic where you still have a sliver of health when you take massive damage doesn't work. Instead of making the section have any real difficulty, they just added a bunch of modifiers that up until that point (and after that point) didn't exist.

[Anonymous No.7785973]

Quake: those fat guys that lob grenades at you. They are fucking everywhere and the grenades bounce all over the place so you have to duck into the next room so they dont hit you. Your own rockets are also weak for no reason, you can hit those fat guys with 2 or 3 rockets before they go down. This plus the zombies that you can only kill with grenades is artificial difficulty because it’s unsatisfying, doesn’t provide any sort of meaningful challenge, adds nothing but tedium to the game and subtracts from the overall experience.

[Anonymous No.7785983]

>>7784181
There's apparently a chess program where the CPU will literally put pieces back on the board because fuck you that's why. Something that would get you a well deserved punch in the face at a tournament.

[Anonymous No.7785991]

>>7784181
Literally every Yu-Gi-Oh game I've played. The CPU straight-up cheats in ways that would make Yami call bullshit.

[Anonymous No.7786007]

>>7784189
Makes me think. I can't say I understand you completely, but I get a vague notion of what you are talking about.

Nonetheless, there are some "difficulties" that weren't well-thought, mistaking challenging for chore, draining away all the fun. Yeah, some will still cling to a game like that, for e-brag rights, but that stupidity, fortunately, inflicts only the minority of gamers.

[Anonymous No.7786010]

>>7784181
Vice City's police AI/clip gimmicks

[Anonymous No.7786053]

If you want to complain about unfair or frustrating design, thats fine. But the term "artificial difficulty" is just so fucking stupid. All difficulty is artificial because its whats programmed by the designers. Usually when people use it, theyre just referring to any difficult segment, because they dont enjoy being truly challenged.

>>7785973
The Ogres are the best enemy in the game because the unpredictability of their grenades makes you think quickly and prevents you from just circle-strafing everything.

[Anonymous No.7786086]

>>7784181
Damn near every strategy game I can think of has the AI outright cheat in terms of resources, unit limits, or utterly ignoring FOW

[Anonymous No.7786093]

>>7786007
yeah, most examples in this thread are "bullshit" rather than gradual restriction. like input reading in fighting games.

[Anonymous No.7786560]

>>7785206
>lol just cheat lol it feels good lol

[Anonymous No.7786572]

>>7786560
Actually, it does.

[Anonymous No.7786583]

>>7786572
I will admit that sometimes, yes, it does, but only when the game is pure bullshit, like Revenge of the Joker for SEGA Genesis. I bought a Game Genie just to cheat at that game which is an unfair monster of a cart.

[Anonymous No.7786652]

>>7786572
Nothing against you or cheating, but I'd rather play something I like than to get "revenge" on a game that doesn't suit me.

[Anonymous No.7786715]

>>7785161
Well, devs outplayed themselves then since people clearly favored owning games on home systems to feeding quarters to arcade machines, to the point where it become a very niche collector scene.

[Anonymous No.7786754]

>>7785968
>In my mind "artificial difficulty" would be any instance of a game breaking its established rules in an attempt to make something more difficult.

That's always been my understanding. The example I always go to is "Wing Commander: Privateer", in the final level none of the weapons work except for a single cannon which is located on the extreme end of the spacecraft's wing. In order to win, you have to forget everything you've learned about targeting throughout the game and aim at a spot which is several feet away from the target.

[Anonymous No.7786770]

>>7786053
This. Also, maps in Q1 rarely give you the opportunity to circlestrafe. Q played differently than any other shooter at the time.
You want the example of bad game design in it, use slimes. Stupid looks, nothing about them even suggests that they are that powerful, and you don't really fight against them - you fight against game's physics engine.

[Anonymous No.7786778]

>>7784181

[Anonymous No.7786781]

>>7786778
What game?

[Anonymous No.7786797]

>>7784181
Rubber banding and infinite CPU items. still quite beatable. pic related.

[Anonymous No.7786803]

>>7786053
>All difficulty is artificial because its whats programmed by the designers
you fucking insufferable moron.

[Anonymous No.7787474]

>>7786803
Then how exactly do you distinguish "real" difficulty from "artificial" difficulty?

[Anonymous No.7787497]

>>7784181
>GBA SRW GAME
>You have 5 missiles and 6 laser blasts to fight through 30 enemies
>They have infinite shots

I swear it's like this in all of the early 00s ones (aka all the good ones). You are so resourced locked every map it's retarded.

[Anonymous No.7787609]

>>7787474
Real difficulty is challenging player skills based on what he had to overcome in the past stages.
Artificial difficulty is traps/instadeaths/rule changes that can't be avoided without trial and error.

[Anonymous No.7787692]

PS1 Rayman with the actually broken continue system

[Anonymous No.7787725]

Finding the treasures in Tower of Druaga

[Anonymous No.7789347]

>>7787609
trial and error is a completely normal part of almost all games

[Anonymous No.7789424]

>>7789347
>trial and error is a completely normal part of almost all games
not OP, but there is a difference between throwing yourself at a problem until you understand how to solve it and just trying random stuff until it works because the mechanics are bad though
>go in and die a bunch to learn how to beat a boss
versus
>if I make a mistake, I die instantly and have to restart. Guess I'll just keep grinding until something works...

easy example is the Bed of Chaos in DS1
>instant kill mechanics
>nonintuitive boss design (especially compared to everything else you fight in that game)
>the solution is only obvious once you've solved the puzzle

idk if anyone has ever beaten that thing blind because the floor breaking out from under you and the fact that you have to jump at an angle at the same time to land on the root that leads to the BoC's heart is just unfair.

[Anonymous No.7789992]

>>7789424
>i am why psych holds exist

[Anonymous No.7790005]

>>7789424
>Guess I'll just keep grinding until something works...
it's always amazing to me to see the inner workings of the mind of an idiot. so foreign... I would have never dreamed of arriving at such a conclusion. brute force for a brute. I guess it makes sense.

[Anonymous No.7790041]

>>7790005
I mean you could cheat and look it up, but that's literally an admission that the devs fucked up that part of the game by making it too hard and that's exactly my point, dumbass

[Anonymous No.7790043]

>>7790041
>brute force
>cheat
the workflow of a total moron. simply fascinating.

[Anonymous No.7790053]

>>7790043

[Anonymous No.7790085]

>>7790005
>>7790043

[Anonymous No.7791654]

>>7787609
So its just a misleading and stupid term for trial & error

[Anonymous No.7791913]

I don't think trial and error, by themselves, are bad. If the game uses it moderately, teaching you how to get over a reasonable challenge, then the player really feels a sense of accomplishment.

Of course, trial and error in the sense of "lol u got trolled... Mad already?" are lame and of bad taste. It's also pointless if the game demands a exacting and very specific skill, since only a few players will have the ability to win.

[Anonymous No.7792785]

>>7784181
One part of Battletoads in Terra Tubes is artificial difficulty, although nothing else in the game is: when you are running through the tunnel periodically you will be chased by a giant instant-kill gear taking up the full size of the tunnel. These segments are just easy obstacle courses (compared to the difficulty of the rest of the level), but at the end of each segment is a gate that will only open when the gear reaches its endpoint. These always feature an alcove or another space to go in while the wheel reaches the end, but the game mixes up *where the wheel will go as its endpoint*, either to the alcove or the gate. It takes up the whole space so once it has made its turn, it's too late to react to it, you are sealed and dead if you chose wrong.

It's not random so you can memorize it, but on first playthrough you most likely just die to at least one of those unless very lucky. Artificial difficulty is something that is "technically punishing" but what it's punishing isn't a lack of skill. The developers consider this a difficulty factor, but it's dishonest and the game doesn't actually require more skill to overcome it.

[Anonymous No.7792796]

>>7784797
Dodge out of spaces where you cannot see hazards coming. You are not obligated to stay in a location that you could be hurt by things you don't see; you can just go to the other side or jump instead of taking that risk, and you'll have enough rings. Play efficiently with risk in mind and you'll win, zero memorization required. You just didn't understand the game this way.

[Anonymous No.7792825]

>>7785968
Forced stealth sections in otherwise non-stealth games is one of if not my most hated common game element of all time.

[Anonymous No.7793031]

[Anonymous No.7793327]

>>7784496
>Damn most people don't get what difficulty is. Or artificial difficulty is at least.
>proceeds to post an example that is mostly a case of the game punishing non-observant players
Wow.