this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2024
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[–] tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 161 points 3 months ago (9 children)

I hate bullet sponges in FPS especially. Really makes your guns feel stupid when you shoot someone a dozen times in the head and it doesn't do much.

[–] OhNoMoreLemmy@lemmy.ml 84 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I remember playing Max Payne. There was some battle in a bar against a guy with a shotgun. If you timed it right between reloads you could run up to the guy, stand on the bar so your guns were exactly level with his face and empty two Uzi clips point blank into his face before he could reload.

Then you would run out of ammo and he would one shot kill you.

[–] GeneralEmergency@lemmy.world 14 points 3 months ago (1 children)

It's bad that I know the exact guy you're talking about.

[–] blazeknave@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago

Iirc you had to watch the death in slow Mo and wait forever to play?

[–] Funwayguy@lemmy.world 31 points 3 months ago

This plus constantly running out of ammo because apparently the inside of every enemy skull is just hammerspace for more ammunition than the US military budget could ever afford. God forbid a stray shot hits your porcelain character, Thanos snapping you to dust at so much as a stubbed toe.

[–] DaddleDew@lemmy.world 25 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

The old RainbowSix games (pre-Vegas) were absolutely brutal in difficulty. Enemies died in one or two shots, depending on what part you hit. Even a non-mortal wound would cripple them permanently. But the same rules applied to you.

[–] pyre@lemmy.world 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

the only real R6 games. when everyone was raving about Vegas i was excited to play it and... the intro mission was just a shooter level... i thought ok this is the intro to basic combat... then there was the next mission and no planning section there either. i was puzzled. i closed the game and went on some forum i don't remember and asked whether i did something that made the game skip the one thing that set the series apart... nope. it doesn't exist!

from the people who made a heroes game without the town screen, introducing a rainbow six game without planning! i cannot believe reviews i saw weren't screaming that about the game.

fuck Ubisoft so much. who needs AI in games when we have Ubisoft the ultimate slop machine.

[–] DaddleDew@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

I never really cared for the planning myself but Vegas ruined it for my by introducing that stupid cover system to make it like Gears of War which was popular at the time. They completely removed the ability to lean. You couldn't properly peek around a corner to take a shot without almost fully exposing yourself anymore. This meant you couldn't avoid absorbing bullets all the time. This made the game unplayable so to counterbalance that, they've added regenerating health. But then it became too easy so they kept putting you in tactically completely unfair positions against hordes of extremely aggressive enemies that can see you and shoot you through walls. They also had a lot of visually busy environments where the enemies are difficult to spot even when they're shooting at you because the sound mixing was so botched up that often you couldn't even tell when you were being shot at.

They turned it into a mindless arcade shooter where you constantly absorb bullets like it's normal and fight a whole army on your own. I wouldn't be surprised if all of this is because some Corporate dipshit forced the inclusion of that cover system because Gears of War made money.

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[–] Geth@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I remember the hype around the division, it looked so cool and tactical. Then the game came out and every enemy was a bullet sponge. Instantly killed any interest I had in it.

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[–] conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works 11 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

IMO what it should do is:

A) Increase damage falloff. For precision guns that means non precision shots do less. For short range weapons that means the penalty for working outside the effective range is higher.

B) Add more enemies. Especially if there's any stealth element, you close windows and change how you approach encounters.

C) Depending on the game, increase the range enemies respond at. If that's sound based, they have better hearing. If it's enemies calling for help when alerted, they get assistance/raise alert levels from longer range.

Perfect play should be comparable. Mistakes should be punished harder.

[–] brygphilomena@lemmy.world 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)
  • Enemies should have more moves, particularly bosses.
  • Enemies should use more cover.
  • Enemies coordinate better.
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[–] Maestro@fedia.io 9 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Fallout 4 is the worst with this. I never found nished the game because of that. Multiple nukes square in the face of a supermutant and he's just at half health? I ain't got time for that.

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[–] where_am_i@sh.itjust.works 7 points 3 months ago (3 children)

The only game that did the difficulty right was doom eternal

[–] explodicle@sh.itjust.works 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

All the Dooms got it right. More monsters.

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[–] tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 5 points 3 months ago (7 children)

I'll not cotton any slander against Doom of any stripe, be it I, II, Final, TNT, Plutonia, or 2016. (Note that we don't talk about Doom 3 round these parts.)

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[–] dQw4w9WgXcQ@lemm.ee 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Borderlands 3 (don't know about the others) had a brutal postgame of this. Even though new difficulty stuff was added, the real challenge seemed to be collecting enough ammo to actually finish fights. At some point, the sponginess was too much for me to care about continuing.

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[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

big disappointment with cyberpunk because of this.

fallout games comes to mind too.

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[–] Commiunism@lemmy.wtf 61 points 3 months ago (12 children)

The problem with difficulties is that it's much more difficult to design an AI system which you can tweak and make it smarter or dumber as opposed to just increasing damage and health values, so devs will just implement the best AI they can and leave difficulties as afterthought.

After playing a lot of games that don't even have difficulty settings, I've started to believe in the idea that difficulty selection is just outdated game design and that having a single difficulty but optional areas/content that is more difficult is the way to do it. OSRS is one of my favorite examples - everyone plays the same game and going through levelling or whatever isn't mechanically demanding. However, there are bosses and challenges (like Theatre of Blood which is an end-game raid or Inferno which is an end-game challenge) that are incredibly challenging and require weeks if not months of attempts to master and finally beat, but also are perfectly skippable and most casual players don't even bother with them.

[–] Shou@lemmy.world 20 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Larian had to dumb the AI down to make normal mode for dos2.

[–] scops@reddthat.com 11 points 3 months ago

That's not at all surprising. PvE game design is almost always about making the computer less competent in fun and/or believable ways. If you've got a computer that can simulate every item and skill in an enemy team's arsenal and game out the best combination in milliseconds, the player is going to be dead by Turn 1 or stun-locked and dead by Turn 2.

[–] Corr@lemm.ee 9 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I've been immensely impressed with DOS2 AI. If an enemy is sleeping, another enemy will use part of its turn to hit the enemy to wake it up. There were several instances where I paused and just stared awestruck

[–] Shou@lemmy.world 9 points 3 months ago (1 children)

AI will also save up abilities with side effects until armor or magic resistance has been depleted. Such as knockdown on a battering ram ability.

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[–] thedirtyknapkin@lemmy.world 15 points 3 months ago (1 children)

but there's so many other ways to change difficulty.

change number of enemies and where they spawn change gear and abilities, the Witcher did that one with how the stamina system worked. it didn't drain on the lower difficulties. horizon zero dawn made everything in the shops more expensive and made the enemies drop less money. honestly, that one also sucked. only served to make the game grindier.

point is, there's other options.

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[–] Paradachshund@lemmy.today 45 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I hate bullet sponges, but I do think this joke gets too reductive for my taste. There are many games where enemies die so fast on easy mode that you don't get to experience whatever mechanics they have. By increasing health it can have the impact of revealing those mechanics that already existed.

It has to be a reasonable increase that doesn't turn into a slog though.

[–] Omgpwnies@lemmy.world 16 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That can be fixed by changing the factors that affect difficulty. Instead of giving the enemies less health or making your attacks stronger, give the player more health or weaken the attacks of enemies on easier modes. This would result in each combat experience being roughly equal in length and intensity, but allowing a more novice player to make mistakes and soak attacks that would be fatal in higher difficulties. You would still be able to experience an enemy's special mechanics.

This scales well in the other direction as well - say an enemy has a powerful attack that you need to dodge. On easy, you can maybe tank 3 of them from full health, medium is 2, hard is 1, and nightmare is a one-shot kill.

Another scaling option is the speed of enemies either movement speed or the time it takes for them to land hits, attack animation timing, etc.

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[–] BruceTwarzen@lemm.ee 9 points 3 months ago (3 children)

The only thing i really dislike is that there is often no middle ground. Easy is super easy, normal is still easy, and hard is annoying. I like games that tell you what difficulty the game is made for. Doom for example, the game is geared towards "nightmare" (i think) and the game really is best played on that harder difficulty.

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[–] Moldy@lemmy.zip 26 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Middle Earth: Shadow of War got it right with one of its later updates. They added a final difficulty that increases enemy aggression, attack power, and perception. It also increased player attack power. As long as you're not fighting a massively overleveled enemy, fights are hard, quick, and fairly bullshit free.

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[–] KittyCat@lemmy.world 25 points 3 months ago (1 children)

You have to beat the game first to unlock it but I love the realism mode in jedi survivor. Lightsabers actually kill like in the movies, but get shot maybe 2x and you're dead.

[–] Psythik@lemmy.world 31 points 3 months ago (1 children)

This is how harder difficulties should be. You have lower HP, but so does the enemy, forcing both parties to think things through before running in guns a'blazing. If you have to make enemies bullet sponges in order to increase the difficulty, then your AI programming is bad and you should feel bad.

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Modern fallout games do difficulty badly. Walked up to one of those boomer guys in fo:NV , he gave me some shit, so I shot him in the face with a revolver. He didn't fall over dead.

I got a bunch of mods to make everyone a lot more of a glass cannon, but made power armor very effective (and other armor somewhat so). Was a lot more fun. But also there was a lot more reloading because, like, sometimes a baddie would get the drop on me and I'd be dead from two shots.

Still more fun than sponges everywhere

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[–] AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 24 points 3 months ago (3 children)

monster_hp=selected_game_difficulty * base_hp

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[–] _____@lemm.ee 24 points 3 months ago

When the game is:

Normal mode - made for the absolute lowest common denominator, every challenge is overcome in seconds before you understand what the intended solution was

And

Hard mode - the intented challenge to normal happens 1 pico second in, you now have to solve 20 combinations of different challenges. Not because it's difficult, because the developers want you to die over and over and over until you understand all combinations enough.

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 24 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

After I had gotten the hang of Hellblade's combat on the adaptive difficulty I turned it to easy by the end because killing enemies had become just a slog. Funnily enough it coincided with her getting the new ultimate sword and made the game feel much more epic.

BTW, Baldur's Gate 3 does difficulty very well. Enemies get better abilities and use the good ones more frequently.

[–] chalupapocalypse@lemmy.world 12 points 3 months ago

I did this in persona 5 on the last boss, even if you know all the weaknesses it was still RNG and after 3 tries I said fuck it I have other shit to do

[–] ViscloReader@lemmy.world 18 points 3 months ago

Surprisingly, in COD (at least bo2 & 3) enemies get more and more "abilities" the higher you set the difficulty (this means, grenades, better accuracy, use of special equipment, higher burst rates)

[–] tfw_no_toiletpaper@lemmy.world 15 points 3 months ago (3 children)

My friend hosted a valheim server on idk hard or very hard. The parry mechanic didn't work since it would let a percentage of damage through. So even with the current highest obtainable shield enemies we were not able to use parries (or blocking lol) at all and had to dodge everything. At boss 4 or so I BEGGED him to lower the difficulty, since the lingering damage would almost one-shot us and we just kept respawning over and over for an hour.

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[–] Noite_Etion@lemmy.world 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Metro did this right, both you and your enemies can be killed in one to two shots, making combat tense and rewarding.

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[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 11 points 3 months ago (3 children)

It's pretty hard to make levels of difficulty that actually change things enough outside of either giving the enemies more damage and HP or simply adding more enemies, or in scored games having higher score thresholds for higher ranks (these can be anything from an actual score to the speed you finished and everything in between that's basically just a number that you can compare to another number).

It certainly can be done, though. I can't help but think about the bots in counter-strike. They range from braindead drooling moving targets to Terminator machines that can 1 tap you with a pistol from across the map. They actually have a difficulty scale that's more than simply being tougher to kill and hurting you more. It affects how they move around, the speed they begin shooting, their accuracy, etc. I don't know why these kind of bots do not extend to pretty much any game with enemies. Just give them 3 sets of behavior that makes them easier or harder to deal with.

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[–] vga@sopuli.xyz 10 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

If a game deals with difficulty with this method, I'll probably end up using cheats in the easiest gaming mode. Hopefully the story won't suck.

[–] olafurp@lemmy.world 9 points 3 months ago

In a game where you can dodge attacks 2x damage makes a lot more sense than 2x health. They could also just increase game speed by 10-20% to make everything more chaotic. More enemies + more drops also works pretty well IMO but a sponge just makes everything take sooooo long. RPGs already often have long battles that can take 10 minutes and making the 20 where you use up all consumables, ammo etc is just bad.

[–] Track_Shovel@slrpnk.net 7 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

It's either this, or they just scale up the damage by some arbitrary factor, that is a quantum leap from what the bad guys were doing originally.

oh? he did 10 damage in vanilla?

lazy, underfunded programer: dmg= base.dmg^2 <<endl;

[–] heavy@sh.itjust.works 6 points 3 months ago (3 children)

I think the comic is contextually true. What really irks me are games designed to be quick, fast paced and aggressive, stop you dead in your tracks. An example is the Battle Toads reboot (which is great, play it) has these enemies that have shields or you can't hurt them until after they've done their thing, slows down an otherwise fast and fun beat em up. Another is DOOM Eternal, a game where you're running at Crack addict speed, and then they put in this dude with a shield that reflects your whole way of doing damage. Really jarring to have that speed bump in your experience. It's for sure a great game, but I think a poor design decision to make the enemy work this way.

[–] simple@lemm.ee 5 points 3 months ago

Another is DOOM Eternal, a game where you’re running at Crack addict speed, and then they put in this dude with a shield that reflects your whole way of doing damage.

Marauders? I actually kind of like them, they provide a new kind of threat that you can't just run over by unloading your weapons and quick swapping the gauss rifle. That said, fighting more than one at a time really does suck.

[–] Andonyx@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I think you're hitting on a slightly broader problem. Any game where combat is the major mechanic shouldn't have a situation where you can't do any damage for any extended amount of time. The Yakuza series handles this well, enemies can block, but the moment they do you have attacks that can break the block immediately, and start damaging again. (Or you can skill up to that that attack.) As the game goes on, it gets more intricate, different enemies have different blocks that require different moves to break. The player character also has different fighting styles that have different block breaking moves that you have to keep track of, but if you know what you're doing, you can break almost ANY block with one move.

Far far too many other games decide to arbitrarily create a mechanic where you can't do any damage for a WHILE. It's either the invincible enemy that you just have to spend 3 minutes dodging, which is boring and miserable in both action and even turn based RPG battles. Or they have a shield that you have to do some elaborate and rhythm breaking routine to remove the shield. It's a miserable slog whenever they do that kind of thing. Back in the early 2000s The second game of the Xenosaga trilogy changed the entire combat design and added the thing I hate most, the RPG stagger. You can do no appreciable damage to any thing in the game until you figure out what combination of attacks cause a stagger. It could be a three move sequence involving two characters that has to be done in the right order, or woops! Start all over. If you didn't give one of your characters a specific ability or attack during leveling, screw you, you're basically fucked.

The players, rightfully, rejected that crap then and they got rid of it for the third game. Now, it's everywhere. Every RPG I've played recently has that crap. I finally just put down FFVII Rebirth half way through and said, screw this, because it was so exhausting and miserable. Every battle becomes the equivalent of getting on a non-working escalator and your body still jerks because you think you're going to start moving. I hate this trend and it's everywhere as developers think, "this battle isn't bossy enough." "Add a stagger mechanic to make it last longer" "Brilliant old chap."

I don't know what disease is moving through the game development community that boss battles, especially, have to be a certain length. Is this a marketing thing? Is this being handed down from the publishing execs? FFXVI had 20-25 minute battles towards the end that were just repetitive dodging and a kaleidoscope of flashing lights. I could have just had a gummy and watched an old screensaver and it would be more memorable and less annoying.

Okay, I'm done complaining, but the long battle for no reason other than to make it feel like a boss, is, I think, an extension of the collect-a-thon, open world, sandbox mentality that just adds superfluous crap so they can say "This game is 44% larger than the last game we made, and will take you 215 hours to complete!" Who cares if it sucks?

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[–] Googlyman64@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I kinda disagree with your DOOM statement. I assume you're talking about the Carcass or the shield zombies. They may stop your momentum when you first encounter them, but the game (for me) is all about recognizing each enemy in a flash and quickly dispatching them. It's not like the shield is super hard to bust for the zombies, just a few plasma rifle shots and they blow up the nearby zombies too. For the carcass, a quick blood punch will one-shot them. Once you're able to recognize the enemies and their weaknesses at a glance, they become part of your momentum, instead of stopping it.

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[–] fsxylo@sh.itjust.works 6 points 3 months ago

Alternative punchline: "we think we're dark souls and you'll die to random shit thrown at you off screen".

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