The eternal struggle
(media.scored.co)
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Nearly any game that has difficulty settings is going to be numbers, so that rules a fair amount out.
Well the meme was specifically if it was simply difficult, not if it had sliders.
The difference is somewhat like the difference between Oblivion and Sekiro let's say.
Oblivion can be hard if you don't spreadsheet out your skill leveling and end up with zero higher level combat skills on your way up. Now the Numbers have fucked you.
Sekiro is mechanics. You either get it or you don't, skill issue or skill display.
The meme, from what I thought, was asking if the difficulty came from mechanics or numbers. My point was that difficulty sliders are usually based on numbers, increasing HP or decreasing damage, and not based on adding new mechanics for enemies. Perhaps I misunderstood.
I think it's generally understood that numbers have to play a role in difficulty on some level, but the question is where the line is drawn. For example, difficulty in the good Halo games is largely numbers; there are a few AI tweaks that happen and if you're using skulls you can add non-numbers things like exploding enemies or no checkpoints, but a big part of the scale from Easy-Legendary is about how much damage you do, or enemies do, or your occasional marine allies do. For the most part, people are fine with this because it's very well-executed in general and the number tweaks are done with intention and consideration.
But there are definitely some games that are guilty of saying "okay, my higher difficulty setting is that the basic grunt who you're supposed to be mowing down in hordes now takes five hits to kill and if he hits you you die." (And to be fair, some people enjoy this too).
The only game I can think of where difficulty isn't numbers at all is something like "I Wanna Be The Boshy," where if you ever mess up a jump or get hit you die. But not every game can be or should be a precision platformer, and some genres do need to use numbers on some level.
Halo is a great example for it because Legendary in a lot of games also shows the problem with "Numbers" as the big barometer.
Halo Legendary is often a game where numbers are cranked so high that a lot of the mechanics actually stop mattering. Most of the weapons that aren't named Plasma Pistol become useless. A lot of the vehicles just become death traps. Heck merely peeking out a pixel from cover is death if you haven't memorized Jackal spawns. It becomes basically "meta only."
Its not "absolutely bad, no one can have fun with this" but its a good example of why people also dislike the Numbers system a lot of the time as well.
I think Halo helps itself on this one by having Heroic mode. If you want reasonably challenging without being too meta, that mode works and if you want a "you have to know this game and the strats really well" mode, you can turn it up to legendary.
If I had to name a really bad numbers system, I'd probably pick something like Breath of the Wild because the hard mode makes everything chunkier and deal more damage and even gives health regen to every enemy. If you don't know where to go to start getting good weapons quickly you're going to struggle (especially since the early game weapons also break really fast)... but in the normal mode, a lot of the combat is too easy for anyone that has a decent amount of gaming experience. There's no in between mode. And I think stuff like that is what makes people really angry at numbers systems.
Yeah Heroic is by far the best balance between all the factors. You can pick up Heroic without a deep knowledge of the game and still have an enjoyable but challenging time.
And Breath of the Wild already had a terrible difficulty system even in Normal mode. The durability system is designed to force you to constantly hard gimp yourself so you can save "good weapons" for bigger moments. Not only using subpar equipment, but taking up more and more inventory slots with stuff you are hesitant to use because you know it'll break instantly once you do.
Its just not super noticeable because the game is so easy that you aren't really hard challenged much. If you aren't getting one shot, you are usually not in any danger and will eventually whittle down anything.
I think most numbers systems are bad, because usually they are made on the coding side without consideration for how they actually play. A lot of companies have admitted they don't even play test their highest difficulty levels. Sometimes this creates emergent strategies, often times it leads to the Legendary restrictions I mentioned earlier.
And its not just the number systems becoming too hard, it can happen in the opposite. Games that are too easy numerically never let you engage with to learn the systems or get good at them because you never need to and its wasteful to pretend to try. You see this a lot with bad tutorial modes/zones, or even games where "the post game is the real game." Halo on Easy or even Normal suffers from this a lot.
Heroic Halo really was a perfect balance, its a shame it took them until like Reach to say "this is the intended version" because I think most people default to Normal because it says Normal.
Do you mean in terms of default settings for mission selection? Maybe I’m being misremembering, but I swear that all the way back in the original CE, the description for Heroic said “Halo the way it’s meant to be played.”
Sekiro feels like an outlier, even among Fromsoft games. The mechanics are so simple and pure that its kind of difficulty is closer to an indie platformer or racing game. I happen to be in the camp that thinks Sekiro's difficulty is overstated, but since there is no way to outlevel or RNG-hack its challenge, it developed a reputation as one of the toughest games ever. The masses really aren't comfortable with a game that doesn't adapt to their natural level of play and forces them to learn, react and rise to its level.
I'm playing through the Nioh games for the first time lately and I love them - maybe as much as I love Sekiro - but I can't help the nagging feeling that despite a similar reputation to Sekiro, they are... easy. And I'm not the type of person to use easy as a pejorative, I'm fine with not struggling in a game. I do die a fair amount in Nioh, sure, but there is such an absolute glut of ways to overwhelm, outlevel, out-equip and out-maths the enemies, that it makes the ways the devs have cooked up to make the game 'difficult' - mostly cynical and sadistic enemy placement, combined with high incoming damage - come across as comedic more than serious. There is such an abundance of options at your disposal at any given moment that the biggest difficulty is being spoilt for choice. Thankfully the gameplay, as deep as it is, is also incredibly fun as a result. But any challenge you fail to live up to in skill terms in Nioh, you'll soon compensate for and beat with the help of maths, it feels. That isn't as satisfying a feeling as I got from Sekiro... although mastery of the complex combat comes with a different sense of satisfaction to Sekiro.
Most people who beat Sekiro didn't do it charmless, let alone with the demon mode active. This isn't to brag, as I didn't get very far charmless alone, but its unironically turning the game into what its intended to be difficulty wise.
Regular Sekiro you can spam the parry button and fish for hits and do pretty well. Timing isn't super strict and you lose little from doing so. And you still feel really fucking good mastering it regardless, because it is still very hard to do.
But it is a great example of a "Mechanical" Difficulty change that is purely skill based. All it does is take off training wheels you didn't know you had, and makes the game absolutely miles harder.
Agreed, Charmless is where the game becomes a real test, but it's also a natural and harmonious upgrade from the first run difficulty. There was a point somewhere in NG+ (going for the Shura ending) that I thought I'd hit my ceiling and that Charmless/Bell was too much for me and I'd have to throw in the towel. But I pushed through, tried to raise my game and then started enjoying the game even more in NG+2 Charmless (going for the finicky ending with the sakura branch stuff) - and even started having an easier time, despite the fact that you more or less hit a hard limit on attack dmg at that stage (besides expensive upgrades via dragon mask). I sometimes revisit the game for the boss gauntlets these days but never play it in anything less than charmless, since it feels like the most natural difficulty now.
Still, I have a tendency to talk about Sekiro in terms of its first run difficulty, because I know that's what everyone else tends to be talking about. A bizarrely low number of people ever seem to have tried or are talking about Charmless, even when they talk about Sekiro as if they've played it inside out. To me that just cements how unaccustomed most players are to real mechanical difficulty challenges. They just write Charmless off as some bonus mode, whereas what its really doing is kicking off the training wheels, as you say.
But imo rather than parry spam, the real training wheels in first run difficulty is ... blocking. When blocking you're immune from all damage from everything that isn't a rare piercing attack or telegraphed unblockable. Enemies are mostly quite bad at punishing a broken posture bar, as long as you recovery roll asap. And from block, a quick release and re-tap in response to an enemy attack becomes a successful deflect. Once you realise this it reveals itself as a massive safety blanket. I've thought about going back through Seki on NG and timing how long it takes for certain bosses to kill me if I just stand still, hold block, recovery roll after posture break and sprint away from unblockables, no attacking or healing. I suspect multiple bosses will find it literally impossible to kill me. Charmless takes all this away, as it should, but it's weird how so few players ever learn how safe they are in vanilla Sekiro if they just engage with the mechanics, plus the fact that the real learning experience is discovering how to fill every empty moment with pro-active attacking.
You are a better gamer than me, because I absolutely did. But I also feel across all genres my age is slowing me down considerably, and I've always sucked at rhythm games (which Sekiro absolutely becomes at the highest level, it feels like a dance) so I've hit my own limit.
Even right now playing Clair Obscur I feel myself struggling often with basic dodges and parries that shouldn't be as hard as I keep making it look. But that's my personal limit, and I think most gamers are more capable than I am in this department if they tried and pushed (as you did).
One of Sekiro's best traits is that damage is mostly just a safety net. Sure it makes the posture bar fill up faster and decrease slower, but you are very rarely going to actually deplete it. What it does is make you feel like you are making tangible process even as you fuck up (keeping morale high) and saying that if you can just survive you can win even if you never get a perfect deflect reaction going.
By the time you hit the damage cap, you are likely a player strong enough that you don't need it. Your skill is high enough to be Deflecting well and just breaking them.
I think this is a problem with playing the genre too much. You come in with expectations and thoughts from prior games and then pigeon hole yourself into certain mindsets. Sekiro players almost all came from Dark Souls or Bloodborne, and saw they had no shield so they went with thinking about only Deflecting.
Shit by the time I realized how broken the Umbrella block was, I had already 100%'d the game. Heck I barely used any of the tools because they always seemed too niche except for the obvious Flame and Firecracker ones with immediate results.
The game has numerous ways to both increase or mitigate the difficulty with a little effort, but most people (myself included) just defaulted to only the most basic strategies. Which makes it seem much harder than it is, though at the gain of beating the fundamentals in to increase skill level.
Though Mikiri Counter should be a default ability and not an unlockable. That is 100% a fault of the game that makes the very beginning very hard for no reason other than "you didn't know."
Among all the tough moments Seki threw at me, the one I spent longest on, and the only one that almost had me despairing like a real wall of difficulty, was Shinobi Hunter: one of the very first spear minibosses, whom you encounter in the hirata memory. He must have killed me well upwards of 20 times and basically the entire challenge in the end was... learn mikiri counter from the skills list and practice how to use it. I never suffered against anyone as much as against that guy.
Sekiro has a few iffy teaching moments, perhaps none more egregious than Chained Ogre being the very second miniboss you face. He teaches you about the importance of mobility, of staying out of range, of dodging and how prosthetics can carry you... lmao all atrocious anti-lessons for Sekiro, which it takes basically everyone several hours to recover from. Still love it, but it's hard to excuse that.
He is the exact reason why I say that. He is super early in the game, in a game famous for its difficulty, with a dozen adds around (meaning every reattempt takes a while as you pick them off), and you are basically fucked trying to kill him if you didn't spend your skill points on the exact skill he needs at a time when your skill points are slow coming still.
The entire Hirata memory feels off in its placement. Like, you receive it and get a lot of benefits from doing it as early as possible, but things like that and Lady Butterfly make it feel like it should be held off until a few more bosses into the game.
I wonder how much of the reputation Sekiro has is because of that alone.
Having watched a few other people play, I don't think enough people realize how far they really can carry you. Like the amount of people who don't realize that the Flame Vent inflicts burn faster to anyone wearing Straw, or anything fuzzy (like the Ape) is staggering. Same with using the Spear to pull the Ape's Centipede out to do a considerable amount of damage. Or Firecrackers on basically anything, but especially animals like the Bull or the Ape. I feel like there is a pattern there. But it is a huge boon to open with to get a chunk of health off to make the posture damage stick.
The big problem I think is how two of them (Flame/Firecracker) just so significantly outclass everything else that there is little point in messing with the rest. Umbrella has niche uses once you get the anti-Terror version, but all the rest are basically only useful for a handful of random mooks or for the thing meant to very specifically work like the Whistle on Demon of Hatred.
Unfortunately, all the hardest and best bosses are basically just Man v Man duels without much in the way of options, so they never get much chance to shine. At most, you are weaving in a Firecracker hit into a combo that you know by heart will punish Owl exactly.
Ironically, all great lessons for Shichimen Warriors, who you won't be able to seriously fight until the end of the game.
And are the by far worst part of the game, them and the Headless. The game would be unironically improved if those two types got removed and replaced with generic Generals or anything else.
Not all. Take RTSs. StarCraft is hard. In campaign you turn up the difficulty by increasing the speed. The AI will make largely the same decisions you just have less time to deal with it. Purely mechanics skill based.
Funny, cause what you just said is exactly what difficulty by number is. It's not just about levels and gears stats.
You can quantittize anything and everything, but a change in the rate of flow of time is not what people would consider numbers. The enemies don't get more HP or higher attack or faster attack speed comparable to your own, everything just happens faster taxing a human player's multi-tasking and strategy given their skill's limited amount of APM.
Another good example would be a fighting game where the difficulty is altered by changing the amount of time between when the AI performs combos. The enemy doesn't get more HP or higher attack or faster attack speed comparable to your own. Sure, you could consider that in built "stagger time" a number too, but everything that would stay the same against a human opponent instead stays the same.
Absolutely don't care about "what people would consider". People still don't understand what AAA or Indie games mean, or the difference between a remake and a remaster. Because the number is hidden, doesn't mean it's not a number.
No, you can't quantitize everything. A game mechanic is made of numbers, but by itself, is not a number or even a math concept at all.
Take Pacman, and every level, it gets 5% faster (for everyone). This is easily measurable, even if the game doesn't show you the value.
Take Pacman, and each level, you introduce a different level design elements (like one-way passages, portals, boosts or slow-downs, or "pacgums" for the ghosts that will power them up instead of Pacman). Those mechanics do have numbers with them sure, but adding them to the game doesn't constitute an increas by number. You can't really tell how much harder the game got if you suddenly have one-way passages, contrary to a flat 5% speed increase.
That would be a number, you twit.
You can quantittize anything and everything, but a change in the rate of flow of time is not what people would consider numbers. The enemies don't get more HP or higher attack or faster attack speed comparable to your own, everything just happens faster taxing a human player's multi-tasking and strategy given their skill's limited amount of APM.
Another good example would be a fighting game where the difficulty is altered by changing the amount of time between when the AI performs combos. The enemy doesn't get more HP or higher attack or faster attack speed comparable to your own. Sure, you could consider that in built "stagger time" a number too, but everything that would stay the same against a human opponent instead stays the same.
Yes, that's why I didn't say all.
KEEP GRINDING ANON
I do like grind on occasion but not every single fucking game tyvm.
Yep, not a gamer anymore. I don't understand that. By numbers and mechanics does it mean stats and levels versus ability?
Pretty much. A game that says you lose no matter what because you're not allowed to deal damage to an enemy because their level is higher is shitty, at least in the meme opinion (and mine)
Numbers: Things hit harde/faster, also you die quicker.
Mechanics: Addition of other effects that can often synergise and require completely different priorities so you don't get FUBAR'd three ways from Sunday.
Take the Left 4 Dead games. In L4D1 you had various spots most of the Horde would get stuck trying to reach you so you could turtle down with twin pistols that had infinite ammo and slowly chip things down. For any Special that spawns you could still chip them and then swap to your primary weapon if really needed for that extra DPS burst, especially for Tanks.
L4D2 make this both harder and all but impossible by not only fixing many spots that you weren't really meant to get to in the first place, like the rock near the finale house in Death Toll, but added in new Specials that either specifically caused area denial of camping spots or raised the importance of positioning and situational awareness signiticantly beyond just fighting Tanks. For the former you have Spitters that covered the area in acid, for the latter Chargers that could very quickly close the distance on Survivors and scatter them in addition to carrying a primary target away/off a cliff.
Mass Effect 3 did this as well with updates to its multiplayer system after players would frequently pick Firebase White vs Geth since the former had great camping spots pre-Retaliation nerfs and Geth had no mobs which had auto 1 shot sync-kills. While the nerf didn't change the latter it did add drones to the Geth that would carpet bomb an area with timed explosives as well as adding in several new approaches to the former camping spots, both mechanical changes in regards to this topic.
So going from L4D1 to L4D2 the change in numbers and mechanics were:
Numbers: Same as in L4D1, harder modes meant Survivors took more damage, zombies needed more damage to die, no real difference between the two games.
Mechanics: Daytime maps which means wandering Witches, sometimes a good thing because it made getting past them simpler but also the opposite if they patrolled an area like a hallway between sets of stairs on The Parish map which required precise timing and a lot of waiting to not startle her. Weather. Heavy Rain in particular focuses on this when the Survivors start the 5 map campaign with comments made about a storm coming. By the time you make it to the halfway point and pick up the gas cans there is both rain and large puddles which slow movement. On the return journey all 3 subsequent maps, of which the 3rd is the finale holdout that includes Horde waves, Specials, and Tanks, there would be random squalls that impeded vision, hearing, and consequently your ability to shoot things. While you could temporarily hunker down somewhere for a few minutes and wait for this to pass, it wouldn't stop anything attacking you. So any lingering zombies would still charge after you, Specials would still spawn and make things even more difficult depending on which ones spawns, like Spitters for the reason mentioned above regarding area denial, Witches which were now back in their L4D1 sitting/crying poses and the Sugar Mill specifically spawns multiple Witches making them a guaranteed encounter to deal with in this campaign, and most importantly and Tanks you were unfortunate enough to run into.
Many of these new mechanics would also synergise to go back to that point. If a Hunter had you pinned then a Spitter can make things even worse by not only spitting on you to increase the damage you take, but damage any other Survivors trying to make it to you attempting to either knock the Hunter off if ranged weapons are limited or help you Recover if you took enough damage to collapse, aka area denial.
Not only the above, but also "story" changes where Survivors would start off with the bare minimum of weapons. No Mercy, the first L4D map gives you a primary ranged weapon from the get go, be that a shotgun or uzi. You don't get that in L4D2 Dead Center until you get down the elevator after already 2/3rds or 3/4ths through the first map, and when you do get your first set of primary weapon spawns outside the elevator the room is on fire, smoke is everywhere, and opening the doors spawns a Horde that rushes you which may also include some Special spawns with it. Until that point you start with either getting to pick a second pistol or melee weapons, which are at least extremely effective vs normal zombies although have mixed success vs Specials for different reasons.
The two choices presented are "boss has 300% more health and does 100% more damage, meaning the difficulty is playing correctly for longer" and "the boss has more moves and mechanics."
Majority of games just use difficulty to mean the first option, which is harder because mistakes are punished harder but also usually pretty lazily done in a lot of games making it feel closer to a slog than satisfying.
For years Stellaris devs claimed the numbers approach wasn't what the AI was doing until a player specifically caught it on video and proved the devs to have been lying the whole time. The tl;dr of the whole thing was the Stellaris devs simply couldn't code the AI to be better so they just shoveled mountains of extra resources on the AI instead.
What's sad is, if they were just honest about it most gamers would probably be pretty forgiving because an AI that isn't hard lobotomized would play at a level that is unbeatably perfect at the game. So the only form of difficulty for most of them is just pure numerical advantages that you overcome through your own skill.
Its not ideal, but its understandable. Yet devs for decades seem so scared to admit to it.
saar plz i don't understan
Some have already responded in the thread.
When you increase difficulty on a game, numbers mean monsters have more health and/or hit harder - numbers on stats and dmg increase. Mechanics are much harder to implement but greater satisfaction, instead of making monsters harder you make them smarter, you add additional mechanics like special attacks, better positioning, extra monsters can be considered both numbers and mechanics depending on how it is done.
Do you need to hit the early monsters 5 times in the head to kill them or monsters now are not as easy to kill because they try to flank you and explode or something.
I'm not that much of a hardcore gamer, even I understood he meant. Kind of shocking that some people will not get the first question he asked. I'm guessing she is a casual.
Its Gamestop, its probably just a minimum wage job to her or a job to get discounts on Pokemon cards or Funko Pops.
Video games are like 1/3rd of their business now, and even when it was closer to 100% they girls they hired were usually just there to look pretty and draw in nerds.
That's the joke.
Roguelite with inter-run progression
Make your own game lol.