The Purpose of Difficulty | GMTK Mini
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It took Silksong coming out for me to identify why I wasn’t a fan of Hollow Knight, and it’s touched on in this video.
It’s the runback.
The Dark Souls series of games have the same “problem”, and it’s why I don’t enjoy them either.
I’m a huge fan of Celeste, Super Meat Boy, the Ori series. When I fail at these games, I’m right back in the action.
I’m not against having to learn boss patterns, I really enjoyed Cuphead because after I’ve failed I’m right back in the action.
And while it’s an easier game by comparison, Shovel Knight was a fun game. The checkpoints were plentifully and I could increase the difficulty by destroying them.
But when I played Hollow Knight I reached a point where I was just running to the boss and dying. Then again. And again. And again. I wasn’t getting better. And the time it took to get back just took too long and wasn’t fun. It wasn’t a rage quit. I was having fun at one point… But then the game wore me down and eventually it wasn’t.
I don’t think the game needs to change. Although I think adding difficultly modifiers would be a good idea. I played through Metroid Dread on normal difficulty and after beating it was having so much fun I immediately played it again on Hard difficulty. If there were a mode with more checkpoints in Hollow Knight and Silksong I might give them a shot.
I think the runback is important. When you instantly spawn back in the fight you’re basically banging your head on the boss with zero pressure until you beat it. But with the runback in darksouls you’re forced to reset after each failed attempt and fight your way back. It makes boss fights feel more like boss fights in my opinion because there is that pressure of being sent back to the bonfire if you make a mistake against this powerful enemy.
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Very good video that lines up with a lot of my own thoughts (yay).
That said? I think I fundamentally disagree with the idea that everyone should be able to beat every game for narrative reasons. My preference is for something similar to what Nine Sols did (AMAZING boss fights. Dogshit metroidvania and traversal), but I don’t fundamentally believe that everyone needs to be able to experience every game. Like, you can make an “easy mode” for DCS but… the point of that game is the fidelity and turning all of that off just feels “wrong”? At the end of the day, it is up to the devs and what they want people to consider “accomplishment” to be.
And we live in the internet age. I remember beating Arkham Knight, having fun, and then deciding there was zero chance I would ever want to get all the riddler keys or fight deathstroke a dozen times and just went to youtube.
But I 100% agree with the back half of the video. The game is very much designed to just take a break and wander off when you get frustrated. Which is where I DO wish there were more QOL features to make it clear what areas might still have a mask (preferably one you can reach) rather than needing to find a guide or try to guess. Especially when you don’t even get map markers for a decent chunk early on.
You can get map markers very early into the game. Basically from the first time you meet the mapmaker some 30 minutes into the game.
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I think the runback is important. When you instantly spawn back in the fight you’re basically banging your head on the boss with zero pressure until you beat it. But with the runback in darksouls you’re forced to reset after each failed attempt and fight your way back. It makes boss fights feel more like boss fights in my opinion because there is that pressure of being sent back to the bonfire if you make a mistake against this powerful enemy.
I think the run back is fun for some people and I think the game should deliver the best version they can for those people. For me, it’s just not fun. The reward is smaller than the frustration it causes.
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It took Silksong coming out for me to identify why I wasn’t a fan of Hollow Knight, and it’s touched on in this video.
It’s the runback.
The Dark Souls series of games have the same “problem”, and it’s why I don’t enjoy them either.
I’m a huge fan of Celeste, Super Meat Boy, the Ori series. When I fail at these games, I’m right back in the action.
I’m not against having to learn boss patterns, I really enjoyed Cuphead because after I’ve failed I’m right back in the action.
And while it’s an easier game by comparison, Shovel Knight was a fun game. The checkpoints were plentifully and I could increase the difficulty by destroying them.
But when I played Hollow Knight I reached a point where I was just running to the boss and dying. Then again. And again. And again. I wasn’t getting better. And the time it took to get back just took too long and wasn’t fun. It wasn’t a rage quit. I was having fun at one point… But then the game wore me down and eventually it wasn’t.
I don’t think the game needs to change. Although I think adding difficultly modifiers would be a good idea. I played through Metroid Dread on normal difficulty and after beating it was having so much fun I immediately played it again on Hard difficulty. If there were a mode with more checkpoints in Hollow Knight and Silksong I might give them a shot.
I think the runback is important to give you time to think. You can repeatedly attempt a difficult section of a game with a ton of checkpoints and get through it without actually learning it properly. You essentially get lucky that your hands do the right thing just enough to get by.
Imagine going to a piano recital where the person keeps messing up and repeating a difficult passage of the music, never actually being able to play the entire thing without making a mistake! That’s just not very impressive!
The goal of playing a difficult game should be to improve your skills and get better, figure out new strategies and use them in battle, not merely reach the end.
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I think the run back is fun for some people and I think the game should deliver the best version they can for those people. For me, it’s just not fun. The reward is smaller than the frustration it causes.
I dont think fun is the right word because I dont think the run back is fun. Its annoying and everytime I die on the runback I am annoyed. But it helps me to slow down and stops me from tilting hard and dying 50x to the first boss attack. Instead I tilt and die 50x to the first skeleton near the bonfire
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I think the runback is important to give you time to think. You can repeatedly attempt a difficult section of a game with a ton of checkpoints and get through it without actually learning it properly. You essentially get lucky that your hands do the right thing just enough to get by.
Imagine going to a piano recital where the person keeps messing up and repeating a difficult passage of the music, never actually being able to play the entire thing without making a mistake! That’s just not very impressive!
The goal of playing a difficult game should be to improve your skills and get better, figure out new strategies and use them in battle, not merely reach the end.
most runbacks are nothing but time wasters, some are platforming challenges and others are avoid the enemies in the way which you’ve avoided plenty of times before if you are having actual problems with the boss.
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It took Silksong coming out for me to identify why I wasn’t a fan of Hollow Knight, and it’s touched on in this video.
It’s the runback.
The Dark Souls series of games have the same “problem”, and it’s why I don’t enjoy them either.
I’m a huge fan of Celeste, Super Meat Boy, the Ori series. When I fail at these games, I’m right back in the action.
I’m not against having to learn boss patterns, I really enjoyed Cuphead because after I’ve failed I’m right back in the action.
And while it’s an easier game by comparison, Shovel Knight was a fun game. The checkpoints were plentifully and I could increase the difficulty by destroying them.
But when I played Hollow Knight I reached a point where I was just running to the boss and dying. Then again. And again. And again. I wasn’t getting better. And the time it took to get back just took too long and wasn’t fun. It wasn’t a rage quit. I was having fun at one point… But then the game wore me down and eventually it wasn’t.
I don’t think the game needs to change. Although I think adding difficultly modifiers would be a good idea. I played through Metroid Dread on normal difficulty and after beating it was having so much fun I immediately played it again on Hard difficulty. If there were a mode with more checkpoints in Hollow Knight and Silksong I might give them a shot.
The Souls games really depend on which game in the series you’re playing. They actually learned what was good and what wasn’t. The boss runs are extremely short in most of them. Hell, a lot of Elden Ring respawn points are at the boss door. 2 is really the worst here, and mostly just the DLC bosses (fuck both runs to either smelter demon, tho).
Hollow Knight’s are so, so bad. I get from what I see about Silk Song, it’s more or less the same if not worse.
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most runbacks are nothing but time wasters, some are platforming challenges and others are avoid the enemies in the way which you’ve avoided plenty of times before if you are having actual problems with the boss.
Of course. But that’s often a sign of bad game design. Difficulty should follow a smooth curve. Enormous difficulty spikes are what you expect from old games in the 80s.
But there’s also an element to mastery that gamers seem to completely neglect: downtime. I finished my math degree a couple of years ago and throughout that entire process I got stuck on math assignments thousands of times. Bashing my head against a wall trying to solve the problem right now rarely worked. I had much better success putting the pencil down and coming back to the problem later, after a period of downtime.
Since graduating I’ve been revisiting a lot of old NES games that I never finished growing up because they were too difficult. Since I’m busy with work I don’t have a ton of time to play every day. This forced downtime actually has the benefit of getting me to think and reflect on my approach, just as I would expect it to!
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It took Silksong coming out for me to identify why I wasn’t a fan of Hollow Knight, and it’s touched on in this video.
It’s the runback.
The Dark Souls series of games have the same “problem”, and it’s why I don’t enjoy them either.
I’m a huge fan of Celeste, Super Meat Boy, the Ori series. When I fail at these games, I’m right back in the action.
I’m not against having to learn boss patterns, I really enjoyed Cuphead because after I’ve failed I’m right back in the action.
And while it’s an easier game by comparison, Shovel Knight was a fun game. The checkpoints were plentifully and I could increase the difficulty by destroying them.
But when I played Hollow Knight I reached a point where I was just running to the boss and dying. Then again. And again. And again. I wasn’t getting better. And the time it took to get back just took too long and wasn’t fun. It wasn’t a rage quit. I was having fun at one point… But then the game wore me down and eventually it wasn’t.
I don’t think the game needs to change. Although I think adding difficultly modifiers would be a good idea. I played through Metroid Dread on normal difficulty and after beating it was having so much fun I immediately played it again on Hard difficulty. If there were a mode with more checkpoints in Hollow Knight and Silksong I might give them a shot.
Exactly, as an adult with a job I have very little time to game as is, the last thing I need is losing progress and then having to grind through a part of the game I’ve been through already many times till I reach a difficult boss battle, just auto save the game at critical check points so people can continue from where they last failed quickly
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It took Silksong coming out for me to identify why I wasn’t a fan of Hollow Knight, and it’s touched on in this video.
It’s the runback.
The Dark Souls series of games have the same “problem”, and it’s why I don’t enjoy them either.
I’m a huge fan of Celeste, Super Meat Boy, the Ori series. When I fail at these games, I’m right back in the action.
I’m not against having to learn boss patterns, I really enjoyed Cuphead because after I’ve failed I’m right back in the action.
And while it’s an easier game by comparison, Shovel Knight was a fun game. The checkpoints were plentifully and I could increase the difficulty by destroying them.
But when I played Hollow Knight I reached a point where I was just running to the boss and dying. Then again. And again. And again. I wasn’t getting better. And the time it took to get back just took too long and wasn’t fun. It wasn’t a rage quit. I was having fun at one point… But then the game wore me down and eventually it wasn’t.
I don’t think the game needs to change. Although I think adding difficultly modifiers would be a good idea. I played through Metroid Dread on normal difficulty and after beating it was having so much fun I immediately played it again on Hard difficulty. If there were a mode with more checkpoints in Hollow Knight and Silksong I might give them a shot.
For me it wasn’t so much the runback, as it was fighting your spirit every time. I hated that. Especially if you died in a difficult platforming section. It only made it more difficult.
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It took Silksong coming out for me to identify why I wasn’t a fan of Hollow Knight, and it’s touched on in this video.
It’s the runback.
The Dark Souls series of games have the same “problem”, and it’s why I don’t enjoy them either.
I’m a huge fan of Celeste, Super Meat Boy, the Ori series. When I fail at these games, I’m right back in the action.
I’m not against having to learn boss patterns, I really enjoyed Cuphead because after I’ve failed I’m right back in the action.
And while it’s an easier game by comparison, Shovel Knight was a fun game. The checkpoints were plentifully and I could increase the difficulty by destroying them.
But when I played Hollow Knight I reached a point where I was just running to the boss and dying. Then again. And again. And again. I wasn’t getting better. And the time it took to get back just took too long and wasn’t fun. It wasn’t a rage quit. I was having fun at one point… But then the game wore me down and eventually it wasn’t.
I don’t think the game needs to change. Although I think adding difficultly modifiers would be a good idea. I played through Metroid Dread on normal difficulty and after beating it was having so much fun I immediately played it again on Hard difficulty. If there were a mode with more checkpoints in Hollow Knight and Silksong I might give them a shot.
Same, this is why I like Hyper Light Drifter. Boss fights are hard, but when die you are instantly back at the fight.
I tried playing the Titan Souls but it was really annoying game. It is a boss rush game where both you are boss die in one hit. So some times you can die instantly when boss fight starts. Issue is that there is really long load times and you have to walk back to boss (and there isn’t even combat). Some times walking back to the boss takes longer than the time you fought the boss.
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I haven’t done a whole lot with the crests as I found the starter crest to be very versatile and I got used to the moveset. I have played around with the Beast crest which is really fun, allowing you to just go ham on enemies. However I found against bosses the Beast crest doesn’t work at all, as the damage taken is too large for the lifesteal to overcome. Unless you are dodging and weaving, which defeats the purpose of the Beast crest a bit.
The patches that have been release will probably help a lot of people with the bosses as, if I understood correctly, they’ve decreased the contact damage. This will help a lot with the feeling if boss fights being unfair due to hits taken are often compounded by subsequent contact damage. On many occasions I’ve gone from 4 health, doing OK to dead in less than one sec. This can feel very unfair. Especially after going through a long and annoying run back and then 2 easy phases, just to get to the hard part and die right away.
It feels like if one were to simply be able to practice the hard part, bosses would be defeated much faster. The runbacks (which often include shortcuts it must be said) combined with long easier phases contribute to a feeling of unfair difficulty. It also makes things take up more time than needed, leaving people to feel like the game is wasting their time. Or difficulty for the sake of being difficult. As the video stated, difficulty is a tool that most be wielded carefully.
When doing for example a SL1 run in a Souls game, the player must play at a high level without many or even any mistakes. Boss fights will take longer and the stakes go up. The difference is, one chooses to do these challenges. Often only after already mastering a game. For many people Silksong feels like being thrown into the deep end, without being able to properly swim.
Silksong feels like being thrown into the deep end
I think it feels less like a standalone game and more like high-end Hollow Knight DLC. The gameplay expects that you’ve already completely beaten and mastered the hardest parts of Hollow Knight, and expects you to pick up from there.
Maybe that would be fine if I’d been grinding the Godhome continuously for the past seven years. But I think most people haven’t been doing that.
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You can get map markers very early into the game. Basically from the first time you meet the mapmaker some 30 minutes into the game.
Yes. If you know ahead of time you’ll prioritize those.
If you are new to the game/genre and are struggling and even wiping occasionally? It isn’t a priority.
But there is also a big difference between having a few different pin types and just having “Well, SOMETHING was there?”. Hell, I still need to get around to figuring out which of my oranges are NPCs because I wasn’t sure if quest NPCs would be auto-tagged (they are, once you have a reason to talk to them again).
Which is another factor to all of these discussions. I fairly regularly push back on Dark Souls (and its successors) being a “difficult game”. It really isn’t. What it is is an incredibly well designed (first half of a…) challenging game. Everything up until Amazing Chest Ahead is designed to teach you how to play the game and how to approach encounters. And once you know that? You are in really good shape for the entire genre even if it is a game that emphasizes parrying (Lies of P), blocking (Sekiro), or beautiful beautiful loot (Nioh! Aka “Best Souls”). You don’t learn character builds (mostly “pick a single stat and work with it”) but that comes later.
And… some of that applies here. I know I made it WAY farther than I should have with no meaningful upgrades because I am a sicko/idiot. But for people who don’t know the idea that “Hey, this crypt full of skeletons is a mofo. Maybe go somewhere else”, they might be slamming their head against a wall trying to fight Last Judge for far longer than they should (although, questionable balancing decisions means that upgrading your health doesn’t matter all that much but that is a different rant).
But it is still the idea of a first game versus a fifth game as it were. And we all start somewhere.
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I dont think fun is the right word because I dont think the run back is fun. Its annoying and everytime I die on the runback I am annoyed. But it helps me to slow down and stops me from tilting hard and dying 50x to the first boss attack. Instead I tilt and die 50x to the first skeleton near the bonfire
For some people ‘fun’ is the primary reason they play games. If they aren’t fun, they better have a whole lot else going for them. Personally I play games to unwind, so any type of ‘frustrating’ is a hard no from me. I get plenty of that in my day job. But not all games need to be for me and that’s fine. I just wish people could understand that not all of us are looking for a ‘sense of accomplishment’ from playing a video game. I get that some people value that, great, stop acting like everyone needs to be the same
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I think the runback is important to give you time to think. You can repeatedly attempt a difficult section of a game with a ton of checkpoints and get through it without actually learning it properly. You essentially get lucky that your hands do the right thing just enough to get by.
Imagine going to a piano recital where the person keeps messing up and repeating a difficult passage of the music, never actually being able to play the entire thing without making a mistake! That’s just not very impressive!
The goal of playing a difficult game should be to improve your skills and get better, figure out new strategies and use them in battle, not merely reach the end.
I mean if I’m going to spend time practicing something it’s certainly going to be an instrument and not a video game.
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I mean if I’m going to spend time practicing something it’s certainly going to be an instrument and not a video game.
That’s fair! I’ve often levelled this same argument against my friend when it comes to mastery and video games.
I mainly play video games during my lunch break at work. It would not really make sense to practice a musical instrument in the office.
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For some people ‘fun’ is the primary reason they play games. If they aren’t fun, they better have a whole lot else going for them. Personally I play games to unwind, so any type of ‘frustrating’ is a hard no from me. I get plenty of that in my day job. But not all games need to be for me and that’s fine. I just wish people could understand that not all of us are looking for a ‘sense of accomplishment’ from playing a video game. I get that some people value that, great, stop acting like everyone needs to be the same
I just wish people could understand that not all of us are looking for a ‘sense of accomplishment’ from playing a video game. I get that some people value that, great, stop acting like everyone needs to be the same
Yeah this is why I think the ‘easy mode’ debate is so pointless. Majority of games cater to a frictionless generalized experience with a low barrier to entry (which I find very boring). The few games that try to challenge the players that like to be challenged arent designed to be for everyone. If every game was darksouls i’d understand the ‘easy mode’ side of the argument a lot more.
