Define "artificial difficulty".

Melons.

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>>379305709
I wish facade would be remade, it was a fun little experiment and something that could spawn a new genre

capra demon

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>>379305963
I once did a Kornheiser playthrough just by spamming "Why?". It actually worked and I fixed all their problems.

>>379306186
I think a better definition would be Centipede Demon.

>newgame+
>enemies have more health
>enemies do more damage
>thats it

>>379305963
they were making a new game. what happened to it?

when you change the numbers instead of the behaviours.

you can figure out a difficult enemy pattern. being one-shot by common bullet sponge goons is just bullshit.

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>>379305607

instant kill landmines that are invisible and impossible to blow up forcing you to save often until you find where it is then hope you can trigger it and back up before you die. fuck you shadow warrior:twin dragons

A game blatantly breaking its established rules.

See: Ninja Gaiden NES life shenanigans during the final bosses.

>>379309271
This is Daggerfall, right? Just looking at this fight is making me angry, what the fuck are you supposed to do?

>>379309817
knowing nothing about the game, the message seems to imply that the material of the weapon is ineffective. perhaps silver, or enchanted would work.

>>379309735
I feel nothing but pity for the people who got that far only for the game to blatantly cheat and put them back on a different stage after dying to the final boss. Fucking horseshit game.

>>379305607
Drakengard 3 final boss.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49gLC9yiGOg

>>379306186
>the dogs are just in that room, they're not really part of the boss fight
>if you go back to the "arena" they're still there

I'm still mad.

>>379305607
Artificial Difficulty, otherwise known as the "Hidden Block"

Say you are playing Mario, you see a hole, you know a hole is bad, you jump, you hit a Hidden block that sends you into the hole, killing you and you start over from the start.

This is it. nothing more, nothing less.

>>379309817
Yes. I didn't suffer through it long enough to find out. That is literally the third enemy in the entire game. The first is a rat, the second is a bat, and you're still on the first couple stages of the fucking tutorial (which does not mention anything about this) at that point.

Beating MegaMan using only the buster.

>>379309817
The game is literally telling you what you need to do. The player in the webm is just retarded.

>Game has a life meter
>None of it matters because the game can't think of any other way to be hard aside from having all the enemies knock you into instant kill pits

This is like half the fucking games on the NES I swear

>>379305607
when higher difficulties don't offer any change to the gameplay, level objectives, or enemy behavoir and tactics.

just make the enemies take more damage and or do more damage.

Difficulty does purely exist in the fact it is unknown to the player and doesn't revolve around any real preset mechanics.

Like for Dark Souls
>Capra Demon is not artificial in itself, it's the sudden burst of RNG dog AI that stun locks you and the impossibly small arena for it.
>It's not the fact you can die instantly to the dragon's fire, it's that you can instantly die to the lasting flames even with the i-frames on the roll and a full sprint to the ladder is the only way to survive it.
>It's not the fact poise isn't explained to you, it's the fact that the animatons and weapon types completely ignore the logical sense of it. (Even broken knives stunlock you in light armor )

>>379308967
>>379309224
this is how artificial difficulty was originally defined

it's when you look at the implementation of shitty difficulty systems that change nothing except the hp/damage numbers

>>379305607
I'll use dark souls as examples
>Real difficulty (not a difficult area I know
Black Knights,(not a common enemy) in kiln of the first flame are spaced apart reasonably
>Artificial
Dude10regularenemiesinasmallroomlmao

CPU opponents in multiplayer games that can blatantly disregard the game rules to do whatever they like, that's a big one.

In the original Super Mario Kart the AI can use items whenever they want. They don't need to pick any up they can just spam them all day long. Each character will only use one item, but it's still bullshit, especially considering Mario and Luigi can use the fucking STARMAN.

Also there's a few fighting games where AI opponents don't have to "input" commands to use moves. Normally this won't be an issue, but then you have bullshit like Guile from Street Fighter. Sonic Boom requires that the player walk backwards for a moment and then snap forward before firing. In several games the AI Guile can just walk towards you and throw out Sonic Booms for free.

>>379310754
Dark Souls can be beaten at level 1. None of the games have artificial difficulty.
>b-but an ambush
If you're too retarded to beat a few enemies, you could just run. If you can't do that, just find a different game.

>>379310314
Yeah, it's telling you that you should have gotten an ebony dagger from the character background generation.

>>379311303
Is it impossible to run away? Is killing the enemy required for progression?

>>379311405
You can run right past it, the door to exit the starting dungeon is like right behind it.

>>379310754
Are you saying dark souls is artificially difficult? This post is formatted so terribly you didn't even get your point across.

>>379309271
wow, what a shit game

>>379311405
oh i see you just have to run away! that's so fun!

>game has multiple ways to build a character
>you being able to approach the game anyway you want is a huge selling point
>game basically punishes you for picking anything other than pure combat abilities by forcing you to fight bosses where all your hacking and stealth skills don't mean fucking shit

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>>379306821
better version

>>379311567
Its quite obvious you fucking retard, hes using dark souls as and example of both types of difficulty

>>379311854
>there's one stat that seems like a good thing to get more of
>it does absolutely nothing
>and there is no way to respec

I just played Facade for the first time
Can I fuck his wife?

>>379305607
Situation where you MUST learn by forced trial and error or it doesn't give you the means to overcome the obstacle naturally.

Good example is in a DaS1 situation: the bridge soon after Taurus Demon. You won't avoid death the first time unless if you are lucky. It requires you to go too far onto the bridge before it triggers the dragon's arrival. So unless if you know to SPRINT LIKE A MOTHER FUCKER back into the passage you came as soon as you hear a shake (or just get lucky), you're dead.

You can argue there's burns on the bridge, but there's still far too little warning. The best way they could've approached this was to place the dragon in front of you, let it rear up its head, and prepare a lengthy charge with fire being an obvious threat.

>>379311265
>lol dood you can beat it at level 1 so nothing is artificial about it
So if you can beat the game with a self made challenge then it can't have artificial difficulty?
Shit, then by your logic there isn't a game in the world with artificial difficulty.

>>379311532
You're thinking of a different imp. That webm is the one you see at the very beginning. The imp you're thinking of is in the final room next to the exit, which you'll have to run past if you can't fight it for whatever reason.

The real man's solution is to get your Impish skill as high as possible when you make your character so they have a small chance to not attack you in the first place.

>>379305607
itt: people confuse confuse artificial and cheap difficulty

>>379312008
>stat is bugged and literally does nothing
>ever

I swear like almost every Nintendo-era Final Fantasy had at least one mechanic that was literally broken and did not function.

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>>379309271
>He didn't take something better than steel
>he didn't punch the imp in its face
>he didn't just close the door on it
>he didn't just shoot a spell at it
I figured this out when I was a little kid, how the hell can people struggle with this?

>>379312425
You're right but it's important to note that it can open the door on its own.

>>379312352
If you can overcome an obstacle with pure skill, then there's no artificial difficulty. You lacking the skill to overcome an obstacle is your fault, not the game's. If it's literally impossible to progress based on your skill alone, then you've got yourself genuine artificial difficulty.

Look at Borderlands 2. That game is damn near the definition of artificial difficulty.

>>379312585
To be fair I booked it the second it closed.

>>379312846
Yeah basically. knowing a lot about the game is one thing but most areas are complete rng and the main difficulty comes from being one shot constantly.

>>379312726
this guy gets it

>>379312726
>If you can overcome an obstacle with pure skill
Holy shit you're fucking stupid.
You can do that with what's virtually RNG as well, how the fuck do you think any% speedrunning works?
That doesn't make shit like instant spawn enemies in an NES game, and forced damage in a game with limited recovery any more legit.
It doesn't even sound like you ever really played Souls when you think ambushes don't have tracking leaps for attacks half the time.

>>379312251
I think you should leave.

Play legendary difficulty on skyrim.
Best thing i can come up with.

>>379312726
But there are obstacles that require no skill in order to avoid in every Souls game, they just require the knowledge that the thing is going to happen, general traps and mimics are prime examples, you won't know how to avoid them on your first time, in order to avoid them you'll need prior knowledge, which has nothing at all to do with skill.

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>The owner's manual states that at the game's highest difficulty level, the estimated ratio of wins to losses will be near 1 in 800. However, the actual ratio may be lower or higher based somewhat on the skill of the players, with the approximate frequency of winning the major prize being set at the discretion of the game's operator

I think artificial difficulty is mostly any unexpected and new mechanic or enemy that can one shot you and you have no way to know it is there or how to stop it. But this only applies if the game is not based around trial and error like Super meat boy or Dark souls in some sense, otherwise that is the real difficulty of the game.

>>379306821
>try the game once
>try really hard to solve their problem
>realize i'm so antisocial i just stand around being powerless and listen to them babbling about shit that piss them off

this would be a nightmare for me if there was more games like that

>>379313582
Mimics are a terrible example. You can see them breathe; if youndie to any mimic but the first you might be retarded.

>>379313914
Thanks for proving my point.

>>379305607
Artificial difficulty
Noun
1. To make a situation more challenging to overcome due to outside forces altering certain aspects of the situation, but otherwise leaving the situation as a whole as it was originally.

I tried.

>artificial difficulty
usually being forced to do something easy without mistakes instead of making it faster paced or adding harder mechanics
i.e.: being forced to get 100% on something easy like this https://youtu.be/yI3hFzb6VIc
instead of playing something harder but with less accuracy such as https://youtu.be/jvw-DRZqzDk

>>379314313
not that guy but honestly by that point I just assumed EVERYTHING can kill you
I went up to each chest with the expectation that some fucker would leap from behind a wall and stab me
so you can bet I didn't fuck around with a moving chest

>>379314349
Thats a terrible definition

>>379314978
Mimic breathing is hardly noticeable unless you're specifically looking out for it, so to be honest I kinda doubt that you weren't caught just because you saw it breathing.

>>379305607
Making something harder to complete/overcome using obstacles that cannot be avoided entirely through skill or foresight.

Try to 100% The Binding of Isaac in a sensible amount of time and you'll see what that means.

>any situation that's (near) impossible to resolve on first try because of a lack of information (invisible mines, non-specified weak spots, etc)
alternatively
>making enemies harder to beat by giving them more HP but leaving everything else unchanged

>>379309271
Was unarmed not an option in this game?

>>379315761
I thought it was something hiding in the chest, peeking out of the lid. surprised when the entire fucking chest started attacking, but managed to only almost die.
I don't think you understand the level of paranoia I got for that game

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Any time a western game tries to be "challenging" like a properly difficult Japanese title.

>>379313436
I've played every Souls game for at least 200 hours. If you're too stupid to dodge an enemy or run the fuck away from a few of them, I highly recommend you pick up another hobby. The Souls games aren't even that difficult to begin with.

>>379316686
Is that neofag? What a joke.

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>>379310228
"Haha wow, what a clever trick! I love difficult games like these! Only indie games have the balls to do this!"

>RTS AI doesn't need resources to build units
>Racing game has rubber band AI
>Fighting game AI reads your inputs

>>379309735
>>379308967
This

Does throwing a bunch of enemies that can stunlock you count as artificial difficulty?
Or a shit ton of enemies that can't be hit stunned?
Or what about the game having shit controls and the real battle is fighting the controls.

>>379305607
Turning the enemies into bullet sponges and increase their damage.

>>379305963
When I downloaded it I thought I was just going to fuck around. Then I started playing and remember being taken back by how close to human they sounded. Their responses weren't great as we all know, but I hadn't seen anything done quite that well before.

I decided my first play through would be with the intent to "win" and I ended up saving their marriage and being thanked by them.

I've never been able to do it again since.

>>379305607
Increasing the length of time, or amount of deaths, required to beat something, without requiring an increase in skill or intelligence from the player. Making enemies huge damage sponges, trial-and-error deaths, making you face huge amounts of basic enemies, stuff like that.

Things like making you face enemies in an excessively small space or increasing the damage the enemies do aren't quite artificial difficulty, but are very cheap ways of making the game harder by simply decreasing the margin of error.

True, satisfying increases in difficulty don't necessarily require more time or deaths from the player, but only require the player to think of a new solution to a problem.

whenever there is an unfair advantage against you, ex enemies knowing exactly where you are with no vison on you

>>379322061
There's nothing wrong with that.

>>379305607
an unproven, theoretical term used by /v/tards who somehow think that games that are hard aren't actually hard and it's just the game "artificially" screwing them over.

Unbeknownst to the /v/ anon, it is typically used as a substitute for cheap difficulty, a.k.a. trial and error gameplay.

The difficulty above which the net fun experienced by a broad-spectrum sample of gamers is negative.