Can games be considered "too hard"?

>>390022802
Yes, like Dark Souls.

>>390022802
A game that is too hard has yet to be made

>>390022830
this

>>390022853

Really? I'd like to see the reviewers of today tackle a gem like the NES port of Contra.

>>390022802
> /v/ has to pick on someone who doesn't care about their hobby again

This is some nobody who didn't know how to play. Why ruin his life over it?

>>390023014
Because it's funny.

I don't think so. I just think the skill bar has been lowered way too much.

Yes but the tutorial stage to a 2D gun and jump is not too hard.

>>390023014
I'm not gonna crucify the guy, but I don't think his criticism is worth anything.

>>390023014
>This is some nobody
No, this is some faggot who gets paid money to write about and review video games. Big difference

>>390022802

No but there can be such a thing as information overload.

>>390023014
>doesn't care
>gets paid for this
Why shouldn't we shit on him?

>>390022802
Sure, a game could be made that was too hard. It'd have to be terribly unfair. You start at level 1 with 90 hp and dealing 30 damage, and your first enemies have 400 hp and deal 100 damage with 100% accuracy.You'd just end up dying over and over with no chance of success.

Honestly, I wouldn't have figured that out and I consider myself a gamer. There weren't even any objective markers.

>>390023014
>doesn't care

Dean Takahashi has written books about video games.

I can only think about two "too hard" games:
Ghost and goblins
Puzzle quest

Even dark souls games can be completed with a little effort if you pay attention. But holy shit with puzzle quest rng bullshit and gng bullshit enemies

>>390024160
That would not be hard, that would be impossible

>>390024201

>Needing objective markers
Turns out that you're a scrub and casual.

Also there's been studies on games where people play with a reliance on certain game mechanics like objective markers and literal arrow tutorials are making people worse at their natural problem solving skills.

>>390022853
What is Ninja Gaiden for a 1000 Alex.

>>390022802
Sans is too hard.

But it's not cause he's difficult, you just need to memorize his shit to win, instead of playing it.

If a game is difficult to the point where the average player does not enjoy the experience then it is too hard from a good design perspective. Unless your goal is to make a game that very few people want to play.

>>390024816
These are the same people who would look up a solution online anyway if they had to spend more than a few minutes trying to figure something out. Adding objective markers just cuts out the middleman.

You can argue that this sort of resourcefulness is better than wasting time trying at solutions that aren't working. I know for a fact that if I can't figure something out right off the bat at my job, I can always look things up online to help find a solution to a problem.

>>390024472
Okay then maybe a game focused on 1VS1 encounters that are all aroud the difficulty level of The tutorial boss of "Demon's Souls" or "Salt & Sanctuary".

>>390022802
a difficulty is subjective

I found out today that the guy who struggled in the Cuphead tutorial also gave Mass Effect a bad review because he didn't know you could level up.

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There are times when a game can have completely bullshit moments. RNG is the biggest offender, since your skill doesn't decide anything and it all comes down to lady luck.

>>390024207
>Dean Takahashi has written books about video games.
Well so what, I too have a fanfiction.net account

>>390025762
people who hate RNG are brainlets

>>390025463

>These are the same people who would look up a solution online anyway if they had to spend more than a few minutes trying to figure something out. Adding objective markers just cuts out the middleman.

That is incorrect and not what neuroscience supports, the objective markers are turning you into figurative retards. Traditionally when your brain is faced with a puzzle, it figures out a solution and is quite adept at filling the gaps to reach the solution. The time varies but the solution is generally reached. Imagine Super Mario Bros the first one. The game already puts it into your brain that you cannot go backwards, only forwards. You now encounter a chasm of sorts for you to traverse. Within 10 seconds of playing the game you know one of your buttons lets you jump, you use the combination of jumping(and sometimes additional platforms) to get across the chasm and keep going to your destination. It's pretty simple but the game doesn't have to tell you how to do it or show you the way, you simply fill in the gaps and solve the problem.

Nowadays a game that is trying to have you traverse the same chasm is going to pause the action, go into a cutscene for 15 seconds, pan the camera to a location, highlight the location so it's flashing, have the character narrate how to get across("Hmmmm maybe I can get on top of that ledge to get a bigger boost"), have additional text float at the top of the screen reminding you what you were doing in the last 15 seconds, have an arrow or highlighted path in the direction you are supposed to go(even if there was no other possible direction for you to go) and tell you what button to press even though by simple process of elimination you would come to the solution naturally even if it took a few seconds longer.

>>390026283
Nice try Hearthstone fag.

>>390026432
Truly normies have ruined video games

>>390022881
>implying dark souls is hard

>>390025762
If there were no random factors, people would still complain and call it trial & error

>>390022802
Yes, but not that one.
>>390022853
Some I Wanna be the Guy Fangames from Japan are definitely qualifiably too hard.

>>390022802
Yes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9fmchQq0Qk

>>390026940
Protip: 90% of the bullets don't matter at all.

As long as the game developer can play through the game without cheating or asspulling bullshit secrets the game can't be too hard.

>>390027015
Protip: It took that guy nearly 8 years to beat it.

He was the first.

>>390026710
Were not the normies exactly, but a combination of normies, achivements and very faggy offended cinematic directors.
Basically a normie will not play to finish a game, it was never its intention and never will be, all he wants is to turn the game on, play half hour and then go do something else.
And the Xbox 360 achivements allowed the developers to see that for the first time, with games having a completion ratio of 15-20%.
And either they assumed that it was bad for the bussiness and they had to do something and make the game easier to finish, or the directors got butthurt that most people aren't interested in their bullshit, and this led to a game of cat and mouse of trying to force people into finishing the games with next to no results.

The only company that got it right is rockstar, and they're swilling in GTA V money for that.

>>390026818
>implying dark souls isn't the hardest game of all time

>>390022969
Contract and Mario Bros are the two easiest games on the system.

Barely functional bullshit games like Super Pitfall are where the "NES HARD" shit comes from.

>>390026710

It's a mixed bag really. Some improvements in other areas, some backwards steps in others. It's not really normies fault as I have introduced many normies to older, harsher and more difficult games with very little instruction and practically all of them have been able to figure out the mechanics and bypass challenges. As technology gets better and better sometimes we get lazier and lazier in those growing up and living in first world developed nations. I have cousins from a developing third world country that are in high school that are able to do complex mathematical calculations faster simply because the school could not afford scientific calculators for everyone so they did all the equations by hand. All those lessons you took in your advanced mathematics class where you had to solve the equation with a scientific calculator? They did that shit BY HAND. Look at today now where we have GPS for reading and navigating maps and that's fantastic but at the same time made our map recognition and orientation skills a tad worse.

>>390027015

The only bullet that matters in shmups is the one that will hit you. Gotta get up and keep going.

>>390022802
Yeah
for example, seeing this webm posted over and over and OVER again is making it really hard not to just drop gaming forever and go for something with a less childish audience.

>>390028069
Fuck off Dean

I'm making a platform game thats a homage to Pitfall. Finished building my tutorial level yesterday thinking it was too easy for anyone to die. My first tester died 75 times. I wonder if I'm making a mistake...

>>390022853
I'd like to see you win Lose/Lose

>>390028619
What kind of background does the tester have?
Do you intend for that kind of audience to die in the tutorial for a hundred times?
Do you think it's gonna negatively impact people's interest for the game or do you think it actually teaches them something important about the game?
How can you impart basic mechanics of the game better? Is it possible to break the tutorial into further constituent components teaching people step by step?

Those are the questions you should be asking of yourself.

>>390022802
Nah. Just git gud
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3TKK1pIc2s

>>390026924
That depends of the definitiom of hard, since most of these IWBTG games rely on trial and error with all thw hidden ans gimmicky 1hitko traps.

>>390023819
But he's not getting paid to review this game so who gives a shit.

Really, I don't know a single person who play 3rd person slashers and aren't absolute shit at rts or grand strategy.

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>>390028797
My tester mostly plays first person survival games. The game is also partially inspired by I Wanna Be the Guy so hopefully it'll work for that crowd. His mistakes were definitely his own fault, which I think is why he persevered. It was broken down into steps, like you can't progress unless you mastered long jump or using vines with safe areas to experiment beforehand.
>Game is pic related

>>390023014
The roasting would've died out had this Chink and his journalist friends not desperately tried to defend themselves, I.stead of just admitting fault.

>>390029146
>he game is also partially inspired by I Wanna Be the Guy
>I Wanna Be the Guy

was legit interested in your game until i read that part.

>>390029146
I think it would be an understatement to say that the free to play crafting survival audience and the i wanna be the guy audience do not intersect.

>>390029146
get an artist my dude

>>390029437
One tester who was actually good at platform games died 160 times just climbing a rope while being shot at. Predictable gunfire patterns, plenty of margin for error. I think the players being put on edge is a huge factor for difficulty as well as the actual gameplay.

>>390023014
Because games journalism shouldn't foster those without basic deductive reasoning and allow them to write about videogames that they are incapable of comprehending.

>>390023920
Whatever Arin.

>>390027307
Ghosts and Goblins and Caslevania 3 are both hard and difficult without bad controls and hidden bullshit.

Besides I'm certain that Super Pitfall was never intended to be a game. It is secretly college project in procedual generation and one of the "better" seeds was slapped on a cartridge.

>>390025762
Risk management is a skill. If your victory or loss literally comes down to a single RNG then yeah that's shitty design, but RNF itself isnt inherently bad.
XCOM for example, some people say it's shit because RNG, but without RNG there wouldn't be a game. The whole game is risk management. Yeah, this guy here only has a 65% chance of a shot. But if you move him here, he has a 90% chance, and you have another guy who can take an 80% shot if the first guy misses, and if both guys miss then you have the third guy throw a grenade, and if the enemy survived the grenade you have the fourth guy throw a mimic beacon, etc etc.

If you play the entire game just going "Okay if this guy misses this 70% shot I don't know what I'm going to do next" *miss* "WOOOOOOOW how was I supposed to know 70% =\= 100%?!"

Risk management is a skill, you have to know how to plan for the RNG, and then the RNG isn't really an issue anymore. I've beat XCOM 2 on Commander Ironman and only lost 5 soldiers the whole campaign, because I know how to manage risk. And I'm willing to admit that all of those soldiers I lost are simply because I made a poor decision. Not because of RNG.

>>390022802
No such thing as games that are too hard. Only players that are too incompetent

>>390029146
>>390029507
The pixel art is damn nice though.

>>390022802
Yeah, if it's 1) actually impossible to beat and 2) meant to be beaten.