Redpill me on artificial difficulty.

>>3769138
Delete this, and post it again in a more /vr/ way

>>3769138
It's a meme invented by underages and people that didn't grow up with arcades.

>>3769138
>Redpilling is what idiots who get their philosophy from bad sci-fi movies think is cool
>artificial difficulty is what people who suck at games call games they're bad at

>>3769152
This. Kids can't play games unless they're easy as shit, then call others casuals

>>3769138
When a game beats you with raw numbers or pure random chance that negates all strategy, its artificial difficulty. Like a DQ monster that ambushes you and immediately casts Thwack for an instant kill against the party, or spams a deadly party-wide attack. Phantasy Star 2 does this with the Blaster enemy.

Or a boss that is so overwhelmingly powerful you have to run back and forth for an hour to level up because no matter what tactics you use, none of them give you an advantage and only raw numbers will count. This is especially true of RPGs where bosses are completely impervious to every status ailment.

Or unpredictable/nonsensical traps and deaths that you had no way to predict, sense, extrapolate, or otherwise react to. I Wanna Be The Guy is riddled with this shit.

Also a game fucking you over several hours later because you did/didn't do a very minor thing that is of near zero significance, even in hindsight. This is also artificial difficulty and alarmingly common in point and click games.

Basically it's when a game beats you because of your lack of psychic ability or forcing you into grinding for hours.

>>3769148
What do I need to do to make it more /vr/?

It's a term used by people who are bad at video games to describe anything that's too hard for them.

arcade games had artificial difficulty to suck more money out of you, some home games did too but only because that style of game was what people were used to, if you suck at any thing post nes youre just a scrub though

>>3769138
Lurk more. Redpill? That's a board specific term.

>>3769168
You have just described, difficulty.

>>3769206
It means give me the lowdown. Not hard to understand unless you're retarded.

>>3769208
Or, over 30. We could talk tax brackets and make you look retarded also.

>>3769207
No he described bad game design. Artificial difficulty punishes you for not being able to see the future or having bad luck.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIjVvnO5lgM

This boss in SMT3 is capable of pulling turns out of his ass, at will, at no cost, while being able to cast highly damaging spells that cannot be resisted in any way. This is not difficulty, this is shit design because you can lose from nothing but bad luck. Last I checked, RNG manipulation tends to be a bug exploit rather than a skill.

>>3769138
Super Street Fighter II Turbo (US version). The computer cheats, reads your inputs, and loves to do the perfect counter at inhuman speed 100% of the time.

Streets of Rage 3 (US version). Just awful.

Eternal Champions. Zany controls + endless final boss + go back to the beginning if you fail... Meh.

The boss battles in Earthworm Jim 3D are the very quintessence of artificial difficulty. The video doesn't properly get my point across because you have to actually play it and feel how purposely ass the controls are.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WxjtnNwk7A

>>3769210
Why is a mature individual over 30 still angry over harmless memeing?

>>3769252
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LtcVG5gRIU

>>3769210
I'm 42 and it's a stupid term but even I know what they're talking about.

>>3769208
That isn't even close to what it means. If someone asks to be "redpilled," you're supposed to supply them with blatant falsehoods that allow them to retreat into a delusional fantasy-land. This grants them a sense of self-importance, as they are now one of the gifted few who understands the truth about the lizard-people running the FEMA death-camps, and they can imagine the rest of the populace as ignorant witless sheep.

>>3769421
or they could be using the term sarcastically

>>3769421
this: >>3769431
>they could be using the term sarcastically

Blue pill refers to this >>3769421
>you're supposed to supply them with blatant falsehoods that allow them to retreat into a delusional fantasy-land.

>>3769234
>This boss in SMT3 is capable of pulling turns out of his ass.
The player can do that as well. Its a huge part of the battle system

According to the consensus in this thread, all original arcade type score attack games are entirely artificial difficulty unless they have zero randomness. Difficulty includes reaction time and forethought. Quickly repeating patterns as fat as you can is challenge, not difficulty.

I like when people ask us to redpill them it makes me feel wise

>all these tryhards that cant admit artificial difficulty even exists
>Forgetting about all those pre-snes random enemy clusterfuck games

>>3769168
>Basically it's when a game beats you because of your lack of psychic ability
what if some people actually have psychic ability though, then it's not artificial difficulty because you really are not good enough

>>3769673
at a certain point in the game you're never supposed to walk around with literally any exploitable weaknesses. you can be immune to instant death in SMT games.
>>3769168
when you die in DQ you keep all your XP and half your gold, this is a way of checking your progress to make you grind while being a bit sneaky about it

>>3769673
Except Beast Eye can, in theory, give Mot an infinite amount of turns. Even if you reduced Megidolaon's damage to single digits he could still kill you through nothing but luck. SMT3, 4, and Persona had limits on extra turns to prevent that kind of bullshit.

>>3769814
>Except Beast Eye can, in theory, give Mot an infinite amount of turns
videogames don't use real random number generators, only pseudo-rng and there is no seed that will allow that to happen.

>>3769168
People usually abuse the shit out of this term, but the stuff in this post is legit. It makes me think of cheap garbage like SNK bosses who use charge moves without actually charging them, or spam Super attacks without filling up the Super bar, first.

seriously, some games are designed to be unbeatable: games like Tempest that add more and more enemies per level. or games like Wipeout that give you are challenge track with a ship that goes faster every lap you complete. but, these games are about testing your skill and giving you a training tool to get better. there are also arcade games that are just there to take your money.

some games are not clear, at all, about what the challenge is supposed to be, or what the point of a giving death/failure is. Like anon said, some games don't either fail to train you to anticipate and deal with the challenges, or just fuck their own rules and spring cruel shit on you. Super Meat Boy is about honing skills to perfection to beat savagely tough levels. you are SUPPOSED to beat it. some games are just about punishing the player.

>>3769798
>you can be immune to instant death in SMT games.
Yes I know. In the example he provided its an almighty attack though, so there not much to do about that other than not get hit. For that fight, you are supposed to go first and hit him with electricity attacks, defence debuffs and yourself with magic attack buffs and group heals. Pretty sure some skills allow you to hang on at 1HP.

>>3769834
Trial and error is also part of the game, and some games train you to anticipate the fact that the computer opponent will cheat, but there is still a means of victory that can be predicted or devised.

Another World is not designed with the expectation that anyone would be able to finish it the first time they pick it up, but that is not artificial difficulty.

>>3769837
he's also not that strong in general and you'll easily have had degenerate and war cry/fog breath for ages by the time you get to him.

>>3769859
True. He usually isn't a problem by that point in the game. If you can handle Beel and Metatron, you can handle him easily, though i forget the order in which you fight them.

>>3769138
Imposing made up rules on yourself when you play.

E.g. fist-only naked runs in Symphony of the Night.

>>3769138
Natural difficulty
>Level design
>Larger number of enemies as you increase difficulty levels
>Different, stronger enemies
>Puzzles
>Boss battles, in general

Artificial difficulty
>As difficulty level increases, your effective damage output decreases as the monsters' increases
>Rubber band effect on racing games, CPU goes faster when you are in 1st place
>Random instant deaths you can't predict
>Breaking established gameplay rules to increase difficulty
>Adding a timer mechanic where it was not originally present
>Invisible/hidden stuff required for progression
>Glitches that increase difficulty (Morrowind had a lot of broken stuff that made certain play styles unnecessarily difficult)

> Artificial Difficulty
> etymology : millennial civilization
> adj - used by youth to describe something that does not give instant gratification. See also life, relationships, shmups, and frozen-bananas in the case you want a regular one.

>>3770427
>frozen bananas

That's not artificial difficulty, it's just bad design.

I only consume all-natural organically-grown difficulty.

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>>3769138
>Redpill me

Let me redpill you to fucking off back to /v/.

you should fuck off back to /v/, bambino

>>3769831
Put your tits back in, mate. I've seen TAS runs that rely on odds that go into the trillions over the course of a single fight.

>>3770636
It really depends on whether the game uses an RNG with something the player can manipulate or not, and every game is different in that respect.

>>3770270
>Rubber band effect on racing games, CPU goes faster when you are in 1st place
Or in some extreme cases, actually warping the CPU players ahead so that they're always right behind you.

>>3769168
Only your first stanza is artificial difficulty, you worthless child. Even then it's just shit luck.

>>3772150
>triggered /vr/ baby's favorite game got criticized

>>3769182
Stop using words like "redpill"

>>3769208
quick rundown

>>3769208
We fucking know what it means, but it's taken straight outta /pol/ and has nothing to do with /vr/. 4chan != /pol/

>>3769138
Go back to /pol/ where you crawled from

>RTS
>You have a fog of war
>use dev command to disable it
>you can see the enemy troops reacting to your actions as you do them
>they build counters to what you buid without them actually seeing it
>the veil has been lifted

>>3769138
Old definition of Artificial Difficulty:
>Something that appears challenging at first glance, but in reality isn't difficult at all and only triumphs the player in surprise or through gimmicks
Example: Walk to the right, suddenly floor opens up without warning and you're put into a pit with a shit ton of enemies and have to climb your way out of the pit. The enemies can usually kill you before you do this. However, upon climbing out of the pit, you realize that it's very trivial to simply jump over the obstacle, and that the only reason you got hit by it before was simply the fact there was no way of knowing it was there.

>Modern day transformation
Since the definition above simply does not occur often enough in a modern game to warrant a term anymore, the definition slowly changed to meaning when a higher difficulty setting simply increases the numbers of the enemies stats rather than give them any new attacks. I feel this is pure sophistry though, as an enemy with better stats is not difficult in an artificial way. They really do become more difficult, but people do not like this trend, so they call it Artificial Difficulty to shame game developers for taking the lazy way out.

>How /v/ thinks other people use artificial difficulty unironically
"I don't like this game because I suck at it".

>>3769138
There is a good thread on the /v/ board right now that answers your questions.

>>3769138
It's some shit underage faggots who can't git gud say

>>3772492
>a higher difficulty setting simply increases the numbers of the enemies stats rather than give them any new attacks.
Skyrim takes this to an extreme. The highest setting quarters the damage you do and triples the damage you take.

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Why do the lamest of bait threads here always get more traffic than topics that are actually about games?

>>3773067
There are people giving legit opinions while others are just shitposting as hard as possible. No bait, only newfags.

>>3773070
You're implying that a post asking about both redpilling and artificial difficulty can have a serious response in the first place. That's kind of the point.

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>not artificial difficulty
>normal:
>enemies move at normal speed and have normal movement patterns
>enemies do average damage and have average health

>hard:
>enemies move high speeds and have more erratic movement patterns, better AI
>enemies do more damage and have more health

>artificial difficulty
>hard:
>enemies move at normal speed and have normal movement patterns, AI unchanged
>enemies only do more damage and have more health

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>>3773095
That is a thing but not quite what I would call artificial difficulty. More like lazy development

I always liked difficulty sliders that change major elements of the game. Like Silent Hill 3 also featuring harder puzzles.

Another thing is randomizing elements of the game altogether. Difficulty should determine drop rates and your average success rate but devs rarely go this distance and just slap some more HP and damage on.

>>3769138
Any game where you can read a guide and immediately be good without any practice or meaningful execution is not a difficult game. The huge majority of video games are like this.

What isn't artificial difficulty
>stuff that can possibly kill you and may require practice, but perfectly feasible to survive without foreknowledge

>>3773074
I count a dozen serious posts and several times that talibanning and being autistic.

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>>3773095
NOT RETRO but modern Bethesda games like Skyrim are perfect examples of artificial difficulty. Everything is exactly the same on every difficulty but enemy health and damage>>3773095

>>3775193
OMG YOU TRIGGERED MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE WAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH

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>>3775205

>>3772183
>Stop saying things I dont like
>>>/reddit/

>redpill
/r/the_donald is leaking again.

>>3775213
>stop not liking retarded shit i like
See what I did there sport?

>>3775343
Except that's not what I'm saying at all, but nice try anyway faggot.

>>3775224
Back to lebbit

>>3769148
Your post in and of it's self is an artificial difficulty

>>3775346
It's exactly what you're saying. If you'd taken HS English yet you'd understand that.