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Comment on The Purpose of Difficulty | GMTK Mini

It took Silksong coming out for me to identify why I wasn’t a fan of Hollow Knight, and it’s touched on in this video.

It’s the runback.

The Dark Souls series of games have the same “problem”, and it’s why I don’t enjoy them either.

I’m a huge fan of Celeste, Super Meat Boy, the Ori series. When I fail at these games, I’m right back in the action.

I’m not against having to learn boss patterns, I really enjoyed Cuphead because after I’ve failed I’m right back in the action.

And while it’s an easier game by comparison, Shovel Knight was a fun game. The checkpoints were plentifully and I could increase the difficulty by destroying them.

But when I played Hollow Knight I reached a point where I was just running to the boss and dying. Then again. And again. And again. I wasn’t getting better. And the time it took to get back just took too long and wasn’t fun. It wasn’t a rage quit. I was having fun at one point… But then the game wore me down and eventually it wasn’t.

I don’t think the game needs to change. Although I think adding difficultly modifiers would be a good idea. I played through Metroid Dread on normal difficulty and after beating it was having so much fun I immediately played it again on Hard difficulty. If there were a mode with more checkpoints in Hollow Knight and Silksong I might give them a shot.

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Auth@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I think the runback is important. When you instantly spawn back in the fight you’re basically banging your head on the boss with zero pressure until you beat it. But with the runback in darksouls you’re forced to reset after each failed attempt and fight your way back. It makes boss fights feel more like boss fights in my opinion because there is that pressure of being sent back to the bonfire if you make a mistake against this powerful enemy.

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- MimicJar@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I think the run back is fun for some people and I think the game should deliver the best version they can for those people. For me, it’s just not fun. The reward is smaller than the frustration it causes.
  
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  - Auth@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I dont think fun is the right word because I dont think the run back is fun. Its annoying and everytime I die on the runback I am annoyed. But it helps me to slow down and stops me from tilting hard and dying 50x to the first boss attack. Instead I tilt and die 50x to the first skeleton near the bonfire :p
    
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    itsprobablyfine@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    For some people ‘fun’ is the primary reason they play games. If they aren’t fun, they better have a whole lot else going for them. Personally I play games to unwind, so any type of ‘frustrating’ is a hard no from me. I get plenty of that in my day job. But not all games need to be for me and that’s fine. I just wish people could understand that not all of us are looking for a ‘sense of accomplishment’ from playing a video game. I get that some people value that, great, stop acting like everyone needs to be the same
    
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chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I think the runback is important to give you time to think. You can repeatedly attempt a difficult section of a game with a ton of checkpoints and get through it without actually learning it properly. You essentially get lucky that your hands do the right thing just enough to get by.

Imagine going to a piano recital where the person keeps messing up and repeating a difficult passage of the music, never actually being able to play the entire thing without making a mistake! That’s just not very impressive!

The goal of playing a difficult game should be to improve your skills and get better, figure out new strategies and use them in battle, not merely reach the end.

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- Patches@ttrpg.network ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  And here I thought the goal of playing a game was to enjoy my limited free time.
  
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  - chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    It is, but different people enjoy different things. Hard games like this focus on long term goals and achieving mastery as the source of fun. Other games aim to be more relaxing.
    
    I like all types of games. I just think it’s a bit silly when people argue “why isn’t this orange more like a banana?”
    
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- BunScientist@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  most runbacks are nothing but time wasters, some are platforming challenges and others are avoid the enemies in the way which you’ve avoided plenty of times before if you are having actual problems with the boss.
  
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  - chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Of course. But that’s often a sign of bad game design. Difficulty should follow a smooth curve. Enormous difficulty spikes are what you expect from old games in the 80s.
    
    But there’s also an element to mastery that gamers seem to completely neglect: downtime. I finished my math degree a couple of years ago and throughout that entire process I got stuck on math assignments thousands of times. Bashing my head against a wall trying to solve the problem right now rarely worked. I had much better success putting the pencil down and coming back to the problem later, after a period of downtime.
    
    Since graduating I’ve been revisiting a lot of old NES games that I never finished growing up because they were too difficult. Since I’m busy with work I don’t have a ton of time to play every day. This forced downtime actually has the benefit of getting me to think and reflect on my approach, just as I would expect it to!
    
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- itsprobablyfine@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I mean if I’m going to spend time practicing something it’s certainly going to be an instrument and not a video game.
  
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  - chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    That’s fair! I’ve often levelled this same argument against my friend when it comes to mastery and video games.
    
    I mainly play video games during my lunch break at work. It would not really make sense to practice a musical instrument in the office.
    
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bluelander@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Very well stated, and echoes my sentiment exactly.

My game time is precious to me and sitting with that feeling of failure while I waste time just getting back to zero feels bad to me. I’d rather be, you know, making some sort of progress.

It’s a gorgeous game, very lovingly crafted. But I would cheer for some built in accessibility options akin to the most recent Ninja Gaiden that let me dial in the experience I want.

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Maestro@fedia.io ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
For me it wasn't so much the runback, as it was fighting your spirit every time. I hated that. Especially if you died in a difficult platforming section. It only made it more difficult.

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BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Exactly, as an adult with a job I have very little time to game as is, the last thing I need is losing progress and then having to grind through a part of the game I’ve been through already many times till I reach a difficult boss battle, just auto save the game at critical check points so people can continue from where they last failed quickly

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Wawe@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Same, this is why I like Hyper Light Drifter. Boss fights are hard, but when die you are instantly back at the fight.

I tried playing the Titan Souls but it was really annoying game. It is a boss rush game where both you are boss die in one hit. So some times you can die instantly when boss fight starts. Issue is that there is really long load times and you have to walk back to boss (and there isn’t even combat). Some times walking back to the boss takes longer than the time you fought the boss.

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