Normal setting in video games??

[YOU]

so i was playing midnight club II and it was taking me a good 10-20 trys to beat most of the races. now, i am not one of those people who is extraordinarily good at all video games..(as most everyone who is NOT me seems to be). and i wondered how is it decided what the normal difficulty level is for a video game? it seems to vary alot from game to game. the only plausible reason i can think of for making a game that difficult on the normal level is because of a secret government plot to negatively influence my self-concept.

any thoughts?

[David Stone]

This is an interesting question, and it's appeared in various permutations. There was a mammoth debate about the difficulty in F-Zero GX (and its effect on the score that was given by this site, incidentally). I think it has a lot to do with genres and expectations. A lot of people playing the old NES standbys are squawking about how unforgiving they are, but that was simply the nature of the game. I also have found racing games, in particular, have gotten more difficult than in the past, but I don't think it's been an unrealistic ramping.

I just believe people are mostly wusses. (j/k)

[The Walking Man]

It's the game.

I had trouble with the AI in MCII.

But, that's Rockstar for you. They love to be "cute" with their AI.

I often feel like I have been digitally date-raped after playing a Rockstar game.

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I think difficulty settings should become more "normalized" also.

Include higher difficulty levels for those hard-core gamers that want them or for the casual gamer that really enjoys a particular game and wishes to get additional gameplay from the game, but do not make games so diffcult on the "normal" setting that casual gamers do not finish the game out of frustration.

All games should be completed.

I think many games are doing a great job with this by offering a main story-mode for all gamers and side-quests and % completed tasks for the more hard-core crowd.

[Mike Doolittle]

It's not like there's some quantifiable measure for setting a difficulty, but it seems to me that most gamers tend to think that games are too easy. Personally, I think it really ups the replay value of a game when it's super hard. Assuming the game is well designed, I think the challenge it what helps a game maintain its appeal.

I'm playing Kingdom Under Fire right now, and dude this game is not easy. Actually I had a tougher time on the easy campaign than I've had so far on the normal campaign. But the investment I have to make in really learning the game and playing it well to succeed is a big part of what's keeping me up all night playing it.

Or ask virtually anyone who's played Halo on Legendary about the difference in the quality of the game experience. It seems most developers are worried about making games too hard, but that's the meat and potatoes of what gaming is about, all the way back to its roots in the 80s when the whole idea was just to beat a score.

[EnduroGamer]

There's a fine balance between "super hard" and "incredibly frustrating". But I guess if you're into pissing contests, you might want your games "super hard". I prefer enjoyable. After all, we are talking "Normal" mode right?

When I'm playing a game. I want to succeed and fail. I want to win some races on the first try, and I want to win some on the 3rd try, and I want to encounter a couple that take me 8 tries to win.

In an action game, I want to be able to reach the occasional save point without dying if I feel like I'm good at the game. But I also want to encounter bosses that take me 5 times to figure out. I also want to get gunned down on occasion.

To me, Normal mode should be like a bell curve of difficulty. There should be a few percentage points worth of areas that you can breeze through without batting an eye. There should be a couple fights that really test you time and time again. But the meat of the game should be the type of gameplay that you may only die/fail/lose at 2 or 3 times.

Life is too short to spend it fighting the same boss 30 times.

[The Walking Man]

Great post EnduroGamer.

I agree whole-heartedly and I disagree with the post previous to yours.

[Mike Doolittle]

I think there's a fine line between rewarding a player for mastering the gameplay and beating them over the head until they get it right or go insane.

I hate games where I have to try over and over to find one pattern to beat a boss or pass an area or something. I much prefer learning skills that become more intuitive, so instead of messing around and playing guessing games until I get it right, I get rewarded for using my head and my reflexes.

It seems to me like for every genuiney challenging game like Halo, MDK2 or F-Zero, there are a million that basically allow anyone with modest experience to coast through without much trouble.

[gamevet]

Originally Posted by littledoc

I think there's a fine line between rewarding a player for mastering the gameplay and beating them over the head until they get it right or go insane.

I hate games where I have to try over and over to find one pattern to beat a boss or pass an area or something. I much prefer learning skills that become more intuitive, so instead of messing around and playing guessing games until I get it right, I get rewarded for using my head and my reflexes.

That's one of the main reasons why I have'nt been big on R-Type. That same formula was also in Super C and the other Contra games, but something about Super C made me want to endure that style of gaming. I can't say the same about Contra: Hard Corps.

[EnduroGamer]

Originally Posted by littledoc

I hate games where I have to try over and over to find one pattern to beat a boss or pass an area or something. I much prefer learning skills that become more intuitive, so instead of messing around and playing guessing games until I get it right, I get rewarded for using my head and my reflexes.

So true. Unfortunately, this thread did start out talking about racing games where this sort of ingenuity isn't applicable. But even outside of racing games, if you were to limit yourself to games that only allowed this freedom, you'd only play 2 or 3 games a year. Some games do a good job of it, others do not. But it does seem the industry is moving away from those annoying boss battles where there is only one place to hit the guy and do harm--Zelda, I'm looking in your direction.

[Hypatia93]

Originally Posted by littledoc

It seems to me like for every genuiney challenging game like Halo, MDK2 or F-Zero, there are a million that basically allow anyone with modest experience to coast through without much trouble.

Maybe I'm just a goober, but I find the last part of your statement essentially untrue -- mostly for the casual gamer and for the "older" gamer, whose reflexes may not be what they used to be, among others. Most of the people who are capable of coasting through a game are non-civilians (to borrow a term I first heard here) and fellows like my grrl's son, who has played video games since at least the NES days (he's only eighteen) and who still easily puts in about 30 hours a week, if not more, playing.

That's why it's better to have something like easy, normal, hard, and insufferable, or some scheme along those lines. Normal should truly be a reflection of a "normal" difficulty, whereas "easy" really should be a breeze. If those four levels aren't sufficient, add some ramped up levels to unlock.

Personally, I found the "easiest" difficulties on a game like PGR2 very difficult, but then racing isn't one of my primary genres. Eventually, I got better, but for the most part the AI still kicks my ass at every opportunity (on the harder levels now).

Also, I will repeat a level or a part of a level I find difficult repeatedly in shooters or third-person actioners, while I'll be damned if I try jumping over something more than a couple of times in a platformer (only to fail and meet my demise). But that's just me.

All of that said, I do think the difficulty levels should be tuned to the more casual gamer; the hardcore gamers (sheesh, I guess I'm hardcore in name only) can get their frustration fixes on harder levels put there for their amusement or for the amusement of those who get better and want more out of whatever particular game it may be.

[Song Jiang]

I'm probably exposing my rapidly fading hardcore gamer colors here, but I have categorize myself with Hypatia. While I don't exactly think my reflexes are failing me, I certainly don't have the time and patience anymore to hone my skills to that razor edge of refinement that some of these games require. Racing games are a good example - in the past, learning just the right microsecond to hit the brakes was time consuming and exhausting, but exhiliratingly so when I got it right. Now, though, I just want to race, see the pretty tracks, and have fun driving without putting in tens of hours refining my technique.

I love reading, and I'm now finding that a lot of my favorite videogames are those that have a good story or setting. Although games stories are admittedly not nearly as satisfying as those offered by quality fiction, I find that the modicum of interactivity and the multi-media experience still makes gaming an attractive option. With those games, sometimes I just want to get to the next point of the story without playing my thumbs to bloody nubs or leveling up 20 levels to beat a boss.

Not to say there's no validity to experiences of those of you who have gained those admirably hard earned hard-core skills (such as Littledoc with Halo and Enduro w/ Tony Hawk, amongst others) but I still appreciate a nice "cruising lane" difficulty for the less and less hardcore amongst us.

Or maybe I'm just too much of a wuss for this board now?

[QXZ]

Quoth littledoc:
I hate games where I have to try over and over to find one pattern to beat a boss or pass an area or something. I much prefer learning skills that become more intuitive, so instead of messing around and playing guessing games until I get it right, I get rewarded for using my head and my reflexes.

I, too, hate games with bosses that require burning complex patters or the location of obscure weak spots into my brain. Modern games need to start rewarding spontaneity -- that's all there is to it.

[strech]

Some games do suffer for lack of a good normal setting - in, for example, Timesplitters 2, Easy is correctly easy while Normal is actually pretty Hard.

One thing, though, is target audience - what's Normal for a kids game, an all ages game, or a mature game could be very different.

[stratu]

I think some games can rise above the occasional infuriating boss fight. I'm talking about Ocarina of Time here and Bongo Bongo - it took me 20 or so times to eventually beat him. But even after that, I have super happy memories of the game, and it remains one of the most enjoyable I've ever played. The super hard boss fight and its attendant frustrations seem diminished.

This is not so with another game I got stuck on and dropped in disgust, because I KNEW there was no way I could beat that part of it. (I don't have a bionic thumb, you see.) I've mentioned it here before anyway, it's the rail-shooting part in Star Fox Adventures .

As said or implied elsewhere here - what good is a game that you can't play through to the end because of unfair difficulty?