What is /v/'s definition of artificial difficulty?

it's basically just a question if it's fun or not
fairness is obviously not the factor because the challenge postulates that things are not fair in the first place, odds are against you, which is why winning is so much fun.

Hitman 2016's "Pro difficulty" sounds great on paper but it's a good example of artificial difficulty. You only level up by completing challenges but there's only half as many mastery levels compared to normal mode so a great deal of challanges get scrapped and instead of improving the AI or giving them different patrols or whatever, they just slapped three NPC's right next to the button/document/whatever that you need to interact with to finish the challenge which usually ends up descending in to a laughable attempt at throwing a ton of different items in different directions to make them face the other way, knocking them out is stupidly hard too because the guards will typically be facing eachother and never ever move unless you force them to.

>>382558251
Artificial difficulty doesn't have a set definition, since anything can be seen as it.

In Chrono Cross, the player has a very strict amount of magic he can potentially cast in a fight before being unable to use more. For enemies, they have unlimited spell usage.

Does this count as artificial difficulty since the enemies are subject to completely different rules from the player? Some would say yes, others no.

Guy who has been around since this term first started being used. This has been so corrupted over time. Dark Souls as the "artificial difficulty" thing is hilarious because originally the games were praised for being challenging but very well balanced, IE free of artificial difficulty. PC release of Dark Souls 1 saw the pendulum swing the other way and saw people who were new to the series bitching about it and picking up a word they saw used in some of the Dark Souls threads.

Real artificial difficulty is difficulty that exists outside of the mechanics of the game. Enemies that take no damage and kill you in one hit or something like that. Mastery of the mechanics may get around things like that, but it is still difficulty that exists outside of the skill curve the game is trying to build.

Artificial difficulty takes place when RNG is the decisive factor of victory instead of your own skill

RNG is good in small doses when it forces you to adapt to unexpected attacks / results, otherwise the game would be too predictable and it would involve using the same strategies every time, but with enough skill you can adapt and overcome them, which is not the case in artificial difficulty

>>382558251
Artificial difficulty is when the devs need to add other factors to make the fight harder because the combat itself is easy and bland.

For example fighting the Asylum Demon - it's piss easy because the combat is dull and it's basically just press X to roll and dodge everything with i-frames and then attack, and repeat

So if the devs wanted to make the Asylum Demon fight actually hard they would for example add shit that's falling on top of you from the roof while you're fighting and you have to dodge it. Or force you to use a shitty weapon that doesn't do DMG just so the fight seems harder but it's actually same shit just longer. And give the boss attacks that one shot you every time. So since the combat is so easy they purposely make it last much longer and att one-shot attacks so that there's more chance of you making a small mistake during the long combat and dying. That's artificial difficulty

>>382558251
A vague term that is twisted and misused with so many off definitions that everyone would be better off forgetting it ever existed, and instead actually blame themselves and their lack of skill and preparation while aiming to improve in a game where 99.9% of the time an alternate strategy exists or said issue can be or is accounted for, pehaps in a way you don't even consider.

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Generally speaking, I hold boss fights to a higher standard than the rest of a game. Based on that, my identifications for artificial difficulty goes as follows.
>Never before seen mechanic introduced in a boss fight. Especially egregious if its the final boss.
>Boss has a gigantic health pool. Not universal, some big hp bosses are fine.
>Boss has an attack that kills in one hit on a normal build while full hp. This is a deal breaker for me.
>Boss has periods of time where you cannot deal damage to it, but it can still damage you. Especially egregious in the form of "weak points". Best way of handling weak points is in the form bonus damage or a damage multiplier. Bosses who can only be damaged by attacking their weak point are almost always unfun.
>Boss defies in-game physics with no proper explanation. E.g. jumping into the air to do slam attack and floating for 0.25s extra so the game can have a "gotcha" moment. Best way of doing this is just delaying swing attacks.
>Boss heals. Acceptable if there is way to interrupt them. If not, this a deal breaker.
>Environment poses more threat than the boss itself.

>>382558483
>challenges are fun because they are not fair in the first place

I'm not arguing that all artificial difficulties are bad thing. attached webm related challenges that gimps yourself is really fun when game engine is smooth and you enjoy pushing yourself harder. But it's not really fun to me when the game makes this kind of thing mandatory.

>>382559053
>fight seems harder but it's actually same shit just longer

exactly my thought. adapting myself to longer fight by improving my irl concentration is good player challenge but not great way to design a game intentionally. I actually killed asylum demon with hilt because I was too autistic to look at the side gate

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HP sponges and inflated numbers. The game isn't more difficult its just more tedious and allows you to make less mistakes. This is fake difficulty.

I take damage or die and there was no reasonable way for me to see it coming.

>>382559816
How pointlessly restrictive and uncreative.

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>>382560463
>also it's time attack

>>382560463
But isn't less mistake part of the difficulty itself?

>>382561076
No because its not innately more challenging its just less forgiving. I'm still going through the exact same motions

If the game puts you in a situation that you cannot get out of through no fault of your own, it's artificial difficulty. For example, if an attack has an instant kill AOE that you can't escape from it's artificial difficulty. However if you put yourself in a corner and that's why you can't escape, it's not.

If the game is balanced around normal difficulty, then or hard it makes enemies have insane health and damage, it's artificial. A better way would be to put more enemies (with normal health and attack damage), or have late game enemies appear sooner.

If an enemy can ignore mechanics. Like if the game has a combo system, which lets you combo by having them in hitstun. Then an enemy/boss appears that can ignore hitstun. This is especially bad if you do an attack that has a long animation, and the boss then ignores the combo, leaving you in an animation defenseless.

>>382560463
Ther is plenty of merit in a challenge of attrition and having to perform well for longer ups the stakes and the tension. Shit like this makes devs think fights should be damp squibs that only last two hits with no grandness to them.

>>382558251
I`d say artificial' difficulty is combination of mechanics, inflated numbers and features which pretend to add deep and challenging gameplay while actually being there to froce player to replay same bossfights, grind or locations because of RNG and bad design aimed at trying to trick into investing gamehours on sameshit while compensating for lack of wider content.

>>382558251
Megaman X6.

- Enemies that can ignore pretty much every rule the player is bound to despite being in the same category as the player (like maybe every random mook soldier in a shooter has infinite grenades, or every enemy in an ARPG has infinite stamina). This is pretty common, mild and forgivable, but it reeks of lazy game balancing
- Fights / encounters you cannot win without foreknowledge and / or ridiculous levels of grinding
- Pretty much any untelegraphed instakill mechanics
- Unpredictable RNG mechanics. RNG can be okay if the game is upfront with you about the odds but some things are tied covertly to RNG for no reason other than to fuck you.

>>382563110
Also: weighted RNG that the game doesn't tell you is weighted.

>>382558251
Luck based difficulty. Blated hp is annoying, but it also reduces randomness and thus makes the outcome more dependent on skill.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FakeDifficulty
>tvtropes

I know, but it actually provides a good definition that makes sense, unlike something certain people constantly spout (see >>382558740 >>382559816 >>382560463)

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>>382558251