Resurgence of High Difficulty (and Defeat) by Proper Design - U Love/Hate/Like/Dislike?

A lot of developers start to offer 'Hardcore' modes for their games. Some go as far as allowing the player to be absolutely defeated. A countermovement to the 'playability at any cost' design predominant in recent years.

Dead Space 2 had the 'three savegames for one playthrough' limitation. Bioshock Infinite's gonna have '1999 Mode'. Firaxis' XCOM remake will have 'Iron Man' mode, with a very limited save game system - one save file, no loading - the game goes only one direction, and that is forward. Dark Souls has been designed with punishing core mechanics and high difficulty balancing to begin with. Then there's Super Meat Boy and the 'masocore' movement in indie-game development.

Most notably, designers are becoming less lazy and much more conscious about difficulty as a game experience enhancing design tool. They thoughtfully design difficulty, rather than just cranking up statistical values such as damage output and survivability to nigh-broken stupid high levels.

Do you like this trend? Do you opt to play that way?

I flippin' love it. Being forced to live with consequences of my actions by denying instant do-overs, that's difficulty I dig. Having to use every tool at my disposal for success. That's how games should be balanced. Gameplay proficiency/mastery as a prerequisite for success. Absolute defeat being a possible outcome. I'm down with that, if a game warrants such passion. I'm looking forward to all these games and am eternally grateful for gamedesigners who care enough to lovingly design a challenge - and hopefully a more immersive experience.

problem is that if its to hard most people won't get too see half of that lovingly crated experience.

im happy with the easy/meduim/hard trend

There has got to be a less convoluted way to ask this.

@doobie said:

problem is that if its to hard most people won't get too see half of that lovingly crated experience.

im happy with the easy/meduim/hard trend

Same, I will most likely do the *hardcore* option if i really like the game.

As i did the whole 3 saves thing on dead space 2.

And the whole thing is lodged into my mind,Was a great experience.

I'm a bit mixed on the new difficulty resurgence. Dark Souls for instance makes you repeat entire sections to pay for your mistakes. I love the game, I love the difficult mechanics, but repeating sections doesn't make something difficult. It just makes it tedious. I understand that it adds to the consequence of dying, but surely there has to be a better way to make things difficult.
 
On the other hand, I do prefer it to systems like Skyrim where you simply walk towards the map marker and simply kill/talk to whatever's waiting for you at the end.
 
I thought the Witcher 2 was really great. Encounters were difficult, and I was given the choice to save after each one. It was difficult, while never feeling tedious.

The difference between the love it and like it options are too extreme, it's either: that's how you want everything to be, or I don't care and just like chillaxin.

I like the trend but would not want to see gaming culture become only that, so I would choose something between like it/love it (A/C).

Super Meat Boy has nothing to do with intentionally shitty save systems. Super Meat Boy checkpoints you at the end of every level (so 45 seconds, tops). There is no permanent punishment for failure, other than an immediate retry. Super Meat Boy has difficult levels, but it is not a difficult game to play. It gives the player everything they need to succeed, unlike older games which stretched out playtime by not giving the player the tools and resources they need to play the game. I played Deus Ex yesterday. Your superiors send you to rescue a hostage and take a terrorist leader into custody with 6 handgun bullets and a single medpac. Because it would be a lot easier if you had arrived at a terrorist insurgency with the proper equipment.

Repeating levels/areas because of a mistake made 3 hours in is not difficult, it's just repetitive. You are not making the gameplay more difficult, you're making everything around it more difficult.

Uncharted traditionally is one of the tougher third person shooters out there. You will die 100 times your first time through an Uncharted game on normal. But it's never called "brutal" because it doesn't punish the player. I bet even people who love Demon's Souls will never die as many times in 90 hours of Demon's Souls than they will in 9 hours of Uncharted.

The original Resident Evil had a terrible save system, and no checkpointing. I played through it in November last year, and dying and losing a bunch of progress just makes you want to shut it off. Still. I might have only died 6-7 times, but I was pissed off every single time. I played Resident Evil 4 after it, that game has checkpoints and doesn't limit your saves. I died 52 times throughout that game (it tells you at the end), and at no point did it upset me (maybe a few of those chainsaw deaths).

The problem though is that most games are designed around "normal" (more like easy now ), and difficulties like hard or insane are conveluted/game breaking. A game needs to be designed with harder difficulties in mind to produce an appealing procduct.

Making boses have a million hp, while retaining the poor "normal" game mechanics is a poor solution. The best way to make a game challenging without falling for teh giant life pool trope, is to punish mistakes, and reward precise execution.

So if you left your guard down an npc can kill you in 2-3 hits, but if you outsmart the npc, and advance with a good strategy you can kil an enemy with 2-3 hits as well. Don't make bosses have giant healh pools, make them smarter, by using minions, cover, any clever mechanic. Don't gimp the player, or simply make the npc's damage sponges.

@Beaudacious said:

The problem though is that most games are designed around "normal" (more like easy now ), and difficulties like hard or insane are conveluted/game breaking. A game needs to be designed with harder difficulties in mind to produce an appealing procduct.

Making boses have a million hp, while retaining the poor "normal" game mechanics is a poor solution. The best way to make a game challenging without falling for teh giant life pool trope, is to punish mistakes, and reward precise execution.

So if you left your guard down an npc can kill you in 2-3 hits, but if you outsmart the npc, and advance with a good strategy you can kil an enemy with 2-3 hits as well. Don't make bosses have giant healh pools, make them smarter, by using minions, cover, any clever mechanic. Don't gimp the player, or simply make the npc's damage sponges.

This is very true. Most of the bosses in Dark Souls weren't that difficult once you figured out what you needed to do.

I want game disks to explode if I get a game over screen.

i played Demon Soul's and Dark Souls to completion and thought they were too easy... what's that make me?

I like it...but I like other styles of game design as well. There's no option for that, but yeah. I just like games in general

I'm kind of torn on this, to the point where I don't really connect with any of the poll choices.  On one hand, I love it.  It's kind of a return to how I remember gaming growing up, and I think the feeling of accomplishment and personal pride is higher.  On the other hand, as I've gotten older (and maybe slower) it can easily end up that I just lock out content for myself.  If I start a game on hard (or just start playing a hard game), I want to continue at the level that I've set.  Even if I get stuck, I couldn't bring myself to lower the difficulty.  Combine this with a overall loss of free time, and I can definitely see it limiting my experiences.

i did highly anjoy demon and dark souls and im currently playing the witcher 1 which i am enjoying but i dont want every game to become terribly hard. what i do is play on like normal or hard (if you can unlock very hard mode) first to enjoy the experience and then move my way up thrugh the dificulties. but hell not every game should be super hard. Certain games just have an unpleasant experience playing through hard while others are more creative in their rising dificulties (dead space 2 and fallout NV for instance) while something like call of duty gets extremely fustrating on veteran.