6e7fc5 No.14731800
I was gonna start off this thread with a big-ass paragraph about a boss I thought was badly designed, but that's too long so I'll just get right into the topic. At what point does a level/sequence/boss stop being a good, fair challenge and instead become difficult because of shitty design? Not because of Sonic '06-tier glitches, just poor design.
8e379c No.14731803
>I was going to post with more effort but I decided not to
how disappointing
2bd79b No.14731805
>>14731800
>i was going to have a good OP but i didn't feel like it
I hope you saved that shit in a text editor because your thread will be trash without it.
325864 No.14731849
>enemy can 2-3 shot you, has unpredictable, zero-second wind-ups, un-techable grabs or attacks
>player has to chip away at the bosses health using sluggish controls or terrible, half-assed, baked-in RPG 'mechanics'
pretty much Dark Souls vs Ninja Gaiden Black or DM3. some of that is inherently flawed design, like 30 FPS vs 60 FPS, but I think it plays in here as well. If your reflexes are up to snuff but the game's input doesn't allow you to maximize your true skill, it's a fake difficulty type of game
325864 No.14731851
6e7fc5 No.14731868
>>14731803
>>14731805
Okay, fuck it. The boss I was talking about was Ansem's second form in Kingdom Hearts DDD. His attacks do a lot of damage but are pretty easy to dodge for the most part, except for one. After taking a certain amount of damage, he'll fling you to the very back of the stage, and while you're running towards him, he'll sometimes fire two big-ass lasers., one of which will hit you for half your health and stunlock you so the other can finish you off. They're telegraphed, and from what I can gather, there's three ways to get around them:
<perfectly time your dodge or block, but only with the upgraded versions you get as rewards from playing Flick Rush
<use Dark Splicer to teleport in front of him and do some damage, but at risk of taking massive damage/getting fucking killed
<use Flowmotion to zigzag across the stage's pillars, which can still get you hit by the first laser, but you have super armor so you'll keep moving and won't get hit by the second
It was a particularly frustrating fight and I beat it using the third method, but with the ideal way being possible only with optional upgrades acquired through minigames and the most easily accessible way not guaranteeing safety, it got me thinking that this really wasn't a well-designed boss. I hear some people have trouble with the rolling balls part too, but I managed to get through that on my first try.
de3a26 No.14731972
>>14731868
<use Flowmotion to zigzag across the stage's pillars, which can still get you hit by the first laser, but you have super armor so you'll keep moving and won't get hit by the second
>being this retarded
I haven't played 3D in a while but that was one of the easiest fights. Ir I remember correctly, You should be able to flowmotion back into the wall you jump off of as opposed to going across the middle. If you keep jumping on one side you won't get hit.
6e7fc5 No.14732015
>>14731972
How does that work? That sounds like it would make you even more likely to get hit since they linger around in one spot for a few seconds.
defbad No.14732182
>>14731849
>enemy can 2-3 shot you
It's true for both Dark Souls and DMC3
>has unpredictable, zero-second wind-ups, un-techable grabs or attacks
It's not true for both Dark Souls and DMC3
>player has to chip away at the bosses health using sluggish controls
It's not true for both Dark Souls and DMC3
> terrible, half-assed, baked-in RPG 'mechanics'
That's sort for true for Dark Souls. Difference between defeating boss with undergeard and properly gear character (read: weapon) can mean up to 15 minutes longer fights.
I haven't played Ninja Gaiden.
a747c9 No.14732348
The defense system in Dragon's Dogma is awful. It can turn a simple fight into insanely long battle due to every attack barely doing any damage. I'll spend like 20 minutes trying to kill an Eliminator because I just wasn't a high enough level.
>>14731849
This really just sounds like you're bad at the games. Ninja Gaiden has plenty of telegraphed attacked and the fastest grabs can be broken. Like Doku's energy drain. Even then, that's why you don't constantly stand next to enemies that can grab you. You shouldn't be getting hit in the first place and, unless you're playing on anything above hard, you won't be dying in 2-3 hits.
>player has to chip away at the bosses health using sluggish controls or terrible, half-assed, baked-in RPG 'mechanics'
Sluggish controls? The only thing sluggish in Dark Souls is the awful delay on jumping when you run. Even the heavy weapons have enough reach to make up for their slow swings. Everything responds immediately but has a wind-up. As for the RPG mechanics, they don't nearly matter as much as skill. It's more to determine your build and what equipment you'll carry. So it shouldn't matter that much as long as you play well in general.
4a4dd5 No.14732488
>>14731800
It ceases being a legit challenge when it breaks with the "Challenging but fair" setup. Like for example a strong attack or trap in a well designed game will have a tell or some kind of warning for the player to learn/notice. Where as a shitty game will just unload pain on the player without warning.
Another example is how DS2 approached difficulty in the most artificial of ways by just throwing more enemies at the player (despite the combat not being well suited to fighting large groups of enemies). Or again from DS2, the weapon tracking on enemies. Where as before the player could punish a npcs missed attack by dodging or strafing aside then attacking, DS2 instead will allow some ridiculous shit where they may spin around completely to follow the player during their attack.
cbf830 No.14733815
>>14731800
>Legitimate Challenge
Something like Misery for STALKER which actually forced you to develop your skills and plan stuff to win.
>Shitty Design
Dark Souls which is just trial-and-error with poor controls.
985d56 No.14733851
Usually, when you're fighting a gimmicky boss where all the game mechanics you learned are useless
Die and retry bosses are pretty shitty too in RPGs, if you don't have the right party comp, you'll die no matter what. Some of them can give clues of what you're going to encounter and what kind of skills they have, but most of the time, the games expects you to just throw yourself at them and hope for the best
925be3 No.14733873
>>14733851
Reminds me of some of the level bosses in Persona 3, if you went in with someone weak to an element they boss used, it was pretty much impossible on the first try.
985d56 No.14733889
>>14733873
>I see that you took someone with Diarahan
>Would be a shame if they were charmed and heal me to full hp
What a fucking cheap trick, at least you can equip an item that gives an immunity to charm, but you'll have to use a guide to know both of these things in advance
f52655 No.14733907
>>14733851
Usually if an rpg is good it'll put the bosses gimmick in their stage with the random encounters or the minibosses. Sometimes the player is too dense to pick up on the cues and complain about fake difficulty. If the game let's you save before the boss fight and have multiple saves it's hardly a problem.
de3a26 No.14733920
>>14733889
Go away Darksydephil, no one here likes you.
985d56 No.14733926
>>14733907
Most well designed rpgs will make the trash/enemies reflect the coming boss fight, yes. Putting a save points right before them doesn't make it less a pain in the ass though, if you don't know what to expect and get locked in an unwinnable fight, it's still frustrating.
ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY ARE LONG ASS UNSKIPPABLE CUTSCENES RIGHT BEFORE THEM, FUCK YOU FINAL FANTASY
c8e0f4 No.14733985
You want a shitty boss? Fucking Lucifer from Painkiller. If you don't bring the right tarot cards or fall correctly you're fucked with fall damage. I don't know why they thought this nigger was a good idea.
43bceb No.14734010
Seiken Densetsu 3 was full of badly-designed bosses. Fight for 10 minutes - then out of nowhere comes out a fullscreen attack dealing 90% damage to everyone.
Legit challenge? Most NES games.
067e56 No.14734014
>>14731800
<Good
Different AI, new moves/abilities
<Bad
The boss now has 10000% HP and Damge
/thread
5b2afb No.14734047
>>14734014
>/threading your own post
Shameful.
06d95e No.14734097
>>14733985
Isn't Lucifer the final boss? Otherwise I know which guy you are talking about, the set-up behind it is cool but the inevitable falling damage and all the physics debris getting in your way at the very bottom is pure shit design and shows that the developers had no real idea what they were doing, or didn't playtest it at the higher difficulties. I never used Tarot Cards because I considered them to be like items like in Bayonetta.
To add to the thread, it's a good practice to be able to pass through any challenge without taking damage. That way people will complain less that things are bullshit. Inevitable damage is no fun to anyone.
fd2fe1 No.14734120
>>14733889
>portable
>no junpei
>using yukabitch ever
>probably has the AI turned off
summon your persona irl
a3018a No.14734145
The first Doom is a fantastic example of how difficulty should be done, it does more than change some values around.
Nightmare fundamentally changes how you have to play the game by causing enemies to be infinite and twice as fast, but it balances this by doubling the ammo pickup. That's brilliant game design right there.
Now look at other games, like Half-Life 2.
Don't get me wrong - I love HL2, but there is no reason to play on any difficultly above easy. The only thing that changes is how tedious the game is. On easy Striders take three rockets to kill, on hard they take seven; that's bad game design.
Webm unrelated.
bf2fce No.14734152
>>14731800
>OHK enemies
>"hard" difficulties that just buff enemies health and damage
>bosses that spawn mobs to attack you mid fight
The funny part is all of these shit game design techniques are present in the nuGoW game.
6716f6 No.14734159
>>14734145
>The first Doom is a fantastic example of how difficulty should be done
>difficulty settings are "Bullshit", "Ultra-Violence" and three funny names for "Very Easy"
a3018a No.14734160
>>14734152
>bosses that spawn mobs to attack you mid fight
This is always terrible unless the boss is specifically built around it.
a3018a No.14734169
>>14734159
>Nightmare
>Bullshit
Git gut
No really, it's hard as hard as people think. You just have to treat each level as a mad race to the finish, the only enemies you should bother killing are the hitscan ones. I've beaten the first three episodes on Nightmare. To this day I've never gotten past Thy Flesh Consumed on Nightmare, though.
a3018a No.14734172
>>14734169
*it's not as hard
239d70 No.14734181
>>14734169
I can't even get past Thy Flesh Consumed on UV, fuck doing it on Nightmare.
df6403 No.14734192
>>14734181
Please say you're playing original version in dosbox, with keyboard only.
980e54 No.14734206
>>14732348
>unless you're playing on anything above hard, you won't be dying in 2-3 hits.
Why would you play NG on anything below Master Ninja? I don't care if you have to unlock it for some of them, just get the save file off the net or something.
c8e0f4 No.14734360
>>14734097
Yeah you're right, my bad. It's Alastor.
fd2fe1 No.14734485
>>14734169
While you're not wrong, you seem to be forgetting that doom was one of the first of it's kind and playing doom in a modern sourceport is nothing like playing OG dos doom.
Nightmare was never intended to be a serious difficulty. It was a joke, something so flat out unfair that id didn't even bother trying to beat it themselves, they genuinely thought that it was impossible.
25 years later and nightmare is only considered "difficult" by today's standards, but when it was new people hadn't spent most of their lives playing FPS games, and dos doom's janky 35 fps and wonky mouse aiming (if you even owned a mouse) was a lot harder to work with.
So in a way, doom is a rare case of artificial difficulty transitioning into genuine difficulty over time.
It's also worth noting that the very first versions of doom didn't even have nightmare mode, it was added to mock people who complained the game was too easy by giving them something that was actually impossible.
>>14734192
doom and even wolfenstein supported mouse aiming.
f36b34 No.14734553
>>14734485
>doom and even wolfenstein supported mouse aiming
Yes, but they weren't made with KB+M controls in mind, regardless of what Romero says. It's obvious that no one in id knew about circle strafe when making original Doom, otherwise they wouldn't have made Cyberdemon the way they made him. And do note how pretty much every new enemy in Doom 2 is made to mess with circlestrafers, except maybe Hell Knight.
a3018a No.14734603
>>14734485
Anon.. I play Doom on DOSBox with keyboard controls.
8432ee No.14734612
9d218a No.14734627
>>14734169
The difficulty on Nightmare is really inconsistent, it all depends on how much backtracking and chokepoints there are. Having to slowly chew through walls of Pinkies while everything else is respawning on top of you is damn painful. I can get through most of each episode without dying once, but then one map kills me over and over, like E1M5 and E2M6.
a3018a No.14734629
>>14734612
Have you ever played DOS Doom? The mouse aiming is absolute shit, I rebind the controls as such
>W = Forward
>A = Strafe left
>S = Backwards
>D = Strafe right
>Left arrow key = Turn left
>Right arrow key = Turn right
>Space = Fire
>E = Use
Setting it up in that configuration makes it easier to play that it otherwise would be with a mouse.
8cba3d No.14734655
>>14734120
What's wrong with Yukari
8432ee No.14734663
>>14734629
No, I mean why are you playing the original version of Doom? Play Chocolate Doom at the very least, not raw vanilla Doom.
f096c1 No.14734675
>>14734629
Isn't spacebar the biggest source of rollover issues? Fire should be Up button in this configuration. Also try playing Chocolate Doom instead, it allows for better mouse aiming because Y axis is not used for walking. Don't worry, it's period accurate because people were using special mouse drivers that blocked Y axis to play Doom back in the day.
9c830e No.14734685
>>14734360
It was an absolutely shit fight. Yhe problem with a lot of the bosses in painkiller is the levels are all very easy. If you're ever taking a lot of damage it's likely just the cramped corridors the game occssionally shoves you in. Bosses like Alastor are a shit show because of all the forced damage. Getting through that was real trial and error. What is it with Euro devs forcing you to take damage in games?
e46e73 No.14734688
>>14731800
N++ is the pinnacle of platforming challenge
9d218a No.14734708
These guys made me never have a problem with Doom 2 chaingunners again.
>Completely silent
>3 frame attack startup
>On higher difficulties, one shot can take TWO THIRDS of your health at close range
>Every map is an anxiety-inducing maze with a million blind corners, so at any time one of these can silently creep up and instakill you
>Best strategy is to alert a room with them and just wait at the entrance until they all make their way through, which can take several minutes
Did they go insane when they made these enemies? How is a person in 1992, who doesn't even know what an FPS is, supposed to beat this? Everything else in the game is a joke by comparison, too. Let's make the common enemies instant hitscanners, but the episode boss? He just throws some easily dodged projectiles.
5da9da No.14734724
>>14734708
>He just throws some easily dodged projectiles
Do remember that Wolf3D has no separate "strafe left/right" buttons, only one stupid sidestep button.
9d218a No.14734735
>>14734724
He's still so slow that I can't see it being a problem, his needles don't even do that much damage, and there's also a huge supply of healing. Though for some reason he has twice as much health as the final boss.
0c2a8a No.14734814
>>14731868
>DDD
That game was full of awful bosses. The awful Spellican boss rush where you fight bosses made for large, wide-open areas with big AoEs in a tiny closed off arena, Ansem, the Anti Black Coat's DoTs fucking over the "survive with 1HP" skills, the second last boss being a toned down version of one of BBS's secret bosses, who in BBS was arguably the worst boss in the entire series, but now with a retarded gimmick and worst of all the very last boss, who's #000000 black, spams #000000 black attacks, is fought in a #000000 black room, and can teleport and break target lock.
81d8f6 No.14734855
>>14734553
The community swore by KB&M even into the early days of Quake 1. There was a lot of arguing about it and arguments in favor of mouselook (which wasn't even the default) back then.
fd2fe1 No.14734866
>>14734553
>regardless of what Romero says.
I think it's a pretty stupid thing to disregard, especially when we have actual footage of the man playing with KB+M from before the game was released, strafing included. PRO DOOM STRATS it ain't, but don't tell me it isn't the way doom was meant to be played just because you didn't own a mouse.
I won't argue the game wasn't made with keyboard players in mind, and it's fine to have nostalgia for the keyboard, but you are complete and utter retard if you think the mouse wasn't the controller of choice since day fucking 1.
a3018a No.14734884
>>14734866
Personally, I find the original Doom awkward to play with a mouse and better with keyboard controls.
Personal preference, I'm sure, but I wouldn't have fucked around with mouse drivers back in '93 either.
81d8f6 No.14734899
>>14734884
They didn't need drivers in '93, there were only a couple hardware interfaces all mice used and they were handled natively by DOS. Even in assembly it would only take a few instructions.
6deab7 No.14734918
>>14734120
> portable is bad
> implying yukari is bad
> leaving the ai turned on is bad
9e8ccf No.14741151
>>14733815
>Dark Souls which is just trial-and-error with poor controls.
Git gud.
bd62b4 No.14743233
"Challenges" (to include the modern achievement) that were clearly not playtested by whomever set the requirements.
Timesplitters; Future Perfect had a maddening one to unlock a character that boiled down to low-chance RNG. It was a linear arena that curved over itself in places so you could potentially shoot enemies on the other "end" but the gametype was FFA, with time limit, and you had to place 1st.
Good luck if the game spawns everyone else together and you on the opposite side.
f164d0 No.14747856
>>14731800
>starts off as fucking bullshit; thinkgen you need to bomb as soon as you're boxed in to a corner
>but then you eventually begin to go full neo and start to see the fucking part where i need to go
but compare that to the fourth boss, now that's bullshit.
5040f1 No.14747918
>>14734899
DOS most certainly does NOT handle mice natively. You have to install a driver for even generic 2 button mice, and specific bullshit for 3 buttons or more.
9e8ccf No.14754069
>>14747918
DOS is obsolete anyway.
b1653a No.14754132
>>14734708
>How is a person in 1992, who doesn't even know what an FPS is, supposed to beat this?
You do know there are lower difficulties, right? Beating a game on hard should feel like an accomplishment.
8566ec No.14754217
>>14734685
Alastor was such extreme trial-and-error bullshit and part of the reason I don't waste my life playing on the hardest difficulty anymore.
9e8ccf No.14760798
>>14754132
And easy should be a cakewalk.
0cff5c No.14760855
>Mass Effect 2 on Insanity
That toed the line between poor design and ball-busting challenge, but I think it was pretty well designed overall.
Fuck Scions, though.
9e8ccf No.14766383
>>14760855
>Finding Mass Effect 2 hard
cbf830 No.14772247
>>14766383
Have you even played it?
8d69d3 No.14772915
>1 hit kill attacks from bosses.
You could avoid every other attack, but you don't know that this one certain attack actually kills you in one hit regardless of health. If there was some sort of mention in the game's story/lore about it beforehand it wouldn't be so bad but it basically becomes trial and error. In a game like No More Heroes 1/2, some bosses have them but at least you restart at the beginning of the boss fight (and some of them were funny).
Fuck Fatal Frame 2 Wii Edition though and it's final boss and the path leading up to it. Have to run past a bunch of enemies (they will try to grab you and can only escape through waggle, though waggling when normally running will make you do a 180 turn), watch an unskipabble 2 minute cutscene, and then fight a boss that has a 1 hit kill attack without any knowledge that it is one until it happens.
Then to top it off, restarting don't put you back to the beginning of the boss fight, it makes your restart the whole fucking process (and cutscene) all over again. This was for a (remade) game released in fucking 2011/2012.
325864 No.14778723
>>14732348
>This really just sounds like you're bad at the games.
you are apparently illiterate. I'm praising DMC3 and NGB, shitting on Dark Souls here.
>>14732182
>enemy can 2-3 shot you
>It's true for both Dark Souls and DMC3
non-bosses in DMC3? it's been a while since I've played it, but outside of DMD mode, I don't recall that being the case for the most part.
>damage chip on bosses isn't a thing in Dark Souls
holy fucking shit, have you never played the game or something?
> terrible, half-assed, baked-in RPG 'mechanics'
>That's sort for true for Dark Souls
absolutely true for Dark Souls. I guess there's the answer to my previous question
f0e349 No.14791706
a96ea0 No.14793081
The same as any other obstacle in a video game. If a game has intuitive design and controls as well as easy-to-read obstacles, the challenge is fair. If the game is inconsistent, hard to understand and has bad controls, you will have a bad time.
Good boss battles have around 2-5 attacks, telegraphed ahead of time or slow enough to react to either way. It's a battle, not DDR. It also has to be different in how you control in the battle than others whether it's how the boss is targeted or the moves available. Otherwise what's the point? Finally it should be tough but not obtuse with how they're beaten. It also shouldn't last longer than 5 minutes after practice.
3abfbb No.14793182
>>14778723
>holy fucking shit, have you never played the game or something?
Only slow, easily dodgeable magic attacks do chip most of the time. In Dark Souls 3 there are 2-3 bosses with magic weapons so their regular attacks do chip, but for 95% of the bosses this isn't a thing.
That is, unless you never bothered to see how shields work and used a low phys resist one for as long as you've played(which probably wasn't for more than an hour or two)
3abfbb No.14793184
>>14778723
>absolutely true for Dark Souls. I guess there's the answer to my previous question
Examples?
f0e349 No.14801744
>>14793184
Dark Souls sucks tbh.
6dc3fa No.14801989
>>14734010
Most NES artificial difficulty came from technical limitations, such as the spawning in Ninja Gaiden games.