Hi Sup Forums, I've seen lots of people using the term "artificial difficulty" really loosely...

Hi Sup Forums, I've seen lots of people using the term "artificial difficulty" really loosely, but it doesn't make much sense to me.
Is there any consensus of what's that about?

It is making enemies bullet sponges on higher difficulties without changing anything else.

kill yourself frogfucker

Bump

It's artificially making the game more difficult than it needs to be.
For example: Bosses being damage sponges, Falling Anvil traps, or gimping the player in some way

When the game breaks it's own rules in order to make the game more challenging. Such as making enemies fire their weapons faster than you can fire them, or being constantly aware of where the player is at all times, even though they shouldn't.
Plus things like making enemies have absurdly high health and increased damage for no good reason.

Pic related, on Legendary difficulty these guys can shoot out of the back of the gun while facing away from you.

What's ***artificial*** about it? I think that endurance run on enemies is a challenge, you have to stay really focused and have a very small mistake margin
give me examples of "difficulty" executed in a not "artificial" way and the other way around

Bosses being damage sponges with mountains of health that have unavoidable one hit kill attacks

Pretty much this.

Whenever the player isn't given the opportunity to understand the game mechanics, it's artificial. Think EVs in Pokemon, who the hell could realistically keep track of these while playing the game normally, or ever figure out which Pokemon give which EVs without googling it?

There's no real consensus so people use it to mean whatever they want.

Protip inflated health and damage values is not artificial difficulty. It's lazy but perfectly legitimate.

just a term that bads use to describe games they can't beat. they say they want to see complex AI that acts like humans but that's impossible to make with the technology we have now. so the only way to make games harder is to raise enemy health and damage output. they are whiny little babies who can't deal with those upgrades, so they invented a term to excuse their shittiness.

>you have to stay really focused and have a very small mistake margin
Nah, you just spam same strategy as on lower difficulties for 10 minutes longer and finish the fight without even losing any of your HP.

Remember Bethesda games? The difficulty is ONLY you doing less damage and the enemies doing more. It's not fun and is a ton of wasted potential.

Frumb dogposter.

But in case you're not trolling, it means making the game harder by giving enemies more HP or by having the enemies do more damage (or both).

alright question for you chums, is it artificial difficulty to use the lives system in a game outside of an arcade? or is it just bad, frustrating design?

what user said above pretty much
increasing enemies HP, increasing the numbers of enemies, damage they do, and such.

No, this is wrong. That's just annoying difficulty.

Artificial difficulty is when the AI just fucking cheats, such as rubberbanding in racing games, or the enemy faction having obscene starting resources in an RTS

This is form Urban dictionary:

A term to describe games that have enemies that are too powerful to be killed even through intelligent gameplay and the player must resort to cheap tactics and exploits because the enemy cannot be killed in a straight up fight due their health and damage surpassing the player's. The difference between artificial difficulty and real difficulty is that real difficulty can be overcome through intelligent gameplay such as planning out how you will attack a group so you will not take any damage, being patient, and being cautious. Real difficulty is achieved through enemies that have intelligent abilities that the player must learn and learn to avoid while artificial difficulty is achieved simply by raising the enemies' damage and health.

>Skyrim on Master is artificial difficulty. Enemies are no more intelligent than normal, but have double health and damage.

I think I like this definition the most.

From seeing it used I just assumed it describes "stuff that kills me in games".

But doesn't "intelligent gameplay such as planning out how you will attack a group so you will not take any damage, being patient, and being cautious" end up being a cheap tactic and exploit?

"Oh no I actually have to take advantage of the enemy's weakness! So artificial!"

It's a meme just like artificial fun.

Not him but:
In Doom increasing the difficulty increases enemy damage and adds more enemy placements
Bastion and Risk of Rain have a system were you choose different idols/artifacts that add new challenges, like making enemies faster, giving them new abilities or making them release little bombs on death
Some shooter games have a difficulty mode were enemies do insane amounts of damage but so does the player making thing more realistic
Changing enemy AI or adding new challenges is the best way to aproach harder difficulties in my opinion, raising hp and damage is ok as long as is not the only thing that changes.

lives only make sense in arcade style games
when put in regular games, it's just stupid
>lose a life, have to start from the beginning of the level
>lose all your lives, get a game over and... have to start from the beginning of the level

OP here, I guess there's no real consensus so I'd assume is a buzzword used when autists dislike some aspect about a game.
I dare you to convince me this isn't this way

This. It's stacking the cards against you in a retarded way. Artificial difficulty is when the game stops playing by the terms it has set for the player and just starts cheating. It's a very very thin line between annoying difficulty and artificial, but when it becomes artificial it's fucking unbearable.

It would be like the opponent in a racing game having a starting line 3 miles in front of you.

Here:

How is planning something out a cheap tactic? Did also use Napoleon used cheap tactics?

That's my point.

EYE divine cybermancy did this relatively well. If you still have lives left you ressurect on the spot, if not you restart the level.

>"I'd assume is a buzzword"
>Calls people who use it autists
You fucking hypocrite frogposter.

>It would be like the opponent in a racing game having a starting line 3 miles in front of you.
Wouldn't a better racing game analogy be the actual mechanic of AI being able to magically catch-up to you, but you can't do the same to them? And I'm not talking about slipstreams.

Eat shit.

Did you not read your own fucking thread? There clearly is a common consensus, but not everyone agrees because Sup Forums is a lot of people

But nowhere in the urban dictionary quote does it imply that, so why do you ask if that's your point?

Now you're just being an impossible autist.

I suspected as much but thanks for confirming it nonetheless.

Eat shit faggot.

Not him but Urban Dictionary has no authority at all.

Your are right, but i listed the most obvious example. Racing games are notorious for artificial difficulty with opponents who don't win based on driving skill, but because their cars are not programmed the same as yours is.

Yes, that's called rubber-banding, which I said in my first post here. The idea is that there's a magic rubber band connecting you to your opponent, and if you get too far ahead, the band snaps, pulling them to you much faster than possible. And of course, it only works on them.

Please take several reading courses at your local community college.

>t. someone with no authority

Artificial Difficulty has several different, contested definitions.
>decreasing player strength and increasing enemy health/power
This is one of the most common definitions, and is also referred to as artificial length, as it forces the player to spend more time on sections to whittle down enemies.
>giving the AI impossible abilities to force players to play via trial and error in sections that shouldn't need that many deaths
A viable alternative for the definition, exemplified in the Jackal shown in this post, as the "sniper alley" section will typically require the player to instantly die several times due to random sniper placement that needs to memorized and dealt with as the player gets checkpoints.
>any difficulty factor that results in a section becoming unbeatable unless one takes several hours, optimizes, or uses "cheating" strategies
Most infamously exemplified with the FF boss "Absolute Virtue," this is generally the most frustrating kind of artificial difficulty since it technically is possible, but requires a specific setup for the game (or in virtue's case, the admins) to recognize as complete. Other generic examples would be superbosses with unavoidable gameover attacks that require memorization of one of 12 random patterns to prevent, etc.

I could go right now and define "artificial difficulty" and with only 82 likes or upboats or whatever the fuck they use I can be the new top definition.
A page from Urban Dictionary has the same authority as a post from leddit.

I don't see anyone stopping you.

Do it faggot. If I like it i'll upboat it.

If a game requires you to kill a boss in a specific manner like with a Fire Spell, that's real difficulty.

If a game expects you to kill a boss a random number of times for you to get a specific event to happen, its artificial.

If at any point you go "It's basically up to luck if I win" its artificial

what about 's absolute virtue? I mean the players killed it several times but the devs said fuck you, you have to beat it our way (which would actually result in violation of the TOS)

>>any difficulty factor that results in a section becoming unbeatable unless one takes several hours, optimizes, or uses "cheating" strategies
I wouldn't call that artificial difficulty. Generally, giving the player multiple choices and having one be objectively/extremely better than the rest is just bad design. Of course, all artificial difficulty is bad design, but not all bad design is artificial difficulty.

Hmm, I suppose. I was generally trying to refer to actual cheating (especially through bug/glitch optimization) or the something like the AV battle.

see any dark souls game where your rules are not their own, biggest offender is when the enemies can clip through the wall with their swings which lets them use swords axes in a hallway and you are fucked if you dont have a spear handy.

The definitions for MMO's a strange in that what is conisdered unbelievably unfair in regular games can be standard course in MMO's, the bullshittery of

Absolute Virtue is even more of a special case since there were actually a number of ways to legitimately beat it, but every time somepeople did the fight changed so you could only beat it THIS ONE SPECIFIC WAY

Yeah this pisses me off to no end. Every weapon has its own "bounce off obstacle" animation, but enemy weapons always can swing through them with no recourse.

What about Red Phantom NPCs on DaS2?
The fuckers have way too much hp and infinite stamina.

yeah they are cheap as fuck that one outside the chariot boss is a huge dick.

>something like the AV battle
For context, that was about some tough endboss in a FF game, and when players banded together and beat it, the devs added an update where the boss couldn't be defeated that way, correct? Again, I'd say that's just shitty devs and bad design, since they want players to only be able to beat it one way. Same thing for sections that require cheats or glitches. It's bad design on the dev's part, not artificial difficulty.

Then quote exactly where it implies that in the urban dictionary text mister smart ass.

Artificial difficulty is a term you use when you don't want to admit you're bad.

>sell game by advertising how diverse the combat is and how you can use different strategies like exhausting enemies or break parts or some shit
>through halfway game all enemies become immune for that shit and combat becomes a pure dps fest
Not really artificial difficulty, yeah, but retarded design nevertheless.

Ah. I was under the impression that it was artificial difficulty since it was literally unwinnable unless you committed a bannable offense. I do suppose that you're right though, unwinnablility via pickiness of the devs isn't technically difficulty, but rather being purposely designed to be impossible. And impossible isn't just difficult, it's, well, impossible.

am I bad?
I'm bad, you know I'm bad, I'm bad, you know it.

I never said it did. Your lack of reading comprehension is amusing.

you do 1 damage and enemies have 1,000,000 hp
stuff like that

dumb frogoster

Well, as others have said, the definition of artificial difficulty changes from person to person. But I don't think needing to cheat is artificial difficulty, since the difficulty that comes from cheating isn't directly part of the game.

>the difficulty that comes from cheating isn't directly part of the game.
Exactly, that's why it's artificial

You certainly seem convinced "intelligent gameplay such as planning out how you will attack a group etc." is a cheap tactic.

But then you contradict yourself What exactly is your point?

Same user you replied to, I agree. Unwinnability is indeed poor design, not part of the difficulty. Difficulty would imply that it's beatable but hard to do so, while it isn't the case with cheating requirements.

TES difficulty slider in a nut shell

You're not worth it

Hi Sup Forums, I've seen lots of people using the term "op is a faggot" really loosely, but it doesn't make much sense to me.
Is there any consensus of what's that about?

>Hi Sup Forums, I've seen lots of people using the term "artificial difficulty" really loosely, but it doesn't make much sense to me.

I knew you would reply like that instead of answering my question.

The first time I remember artificial difficulty being used before Dark Souls was for talking about health sponges in MMOs. Sometimes there were really weak enemies you're required to kill to progress but have humongous health bars. It was very easy to defeat them, and it was highly unlikely that these enemies could kill you, but it just took time to do just like long division. It wasn't "real" difficulty inside the game where you tried to not die from attacks; it was meta difficulty outside the game where you tried to not die of boredom. I don't think "meta" was as popular a word as it is now, so the artificial became the go-to word because it contrasted with real.

Generally the term is used to express displeasure with the poster of a thread, which can be attributed to things such as the poster tricking the audience of the the thread via failing to fulfill a promise, posting an opinion that is not widely agreed with, or purposely trying to incite anger via use of logical fallacies or inaccurate information. Other reasons exist for the phrase's use, depending on the the poster of it.

What is the difference between planning out the best way to handle a hard enemy and using a cheap tactic?

Nothing but semantics.

OP IS A FLATULENT FAGGOT HA HA

>Artificial difficulty is when the game stops playing by the terms it has set for the player

I think this one part can be considered an official definition OP

A very good example would be Jagged Alliance 2 1.13
Something in that game is absolutely fucked for me, no matter how much of an advantage I manage to get, no matter how good the odds of me hitting the enemy seem, I will inevitably miss and get shot in the head the next turn.

It's odd, this wasn't happening in an earlier version that I was playing.

tl;d; fucked up RNG

>is a buzzword
>uses autistic

Ok. You can fuck off.

>people calling lazy health and damage incrrases "artificial difficulty"

Kill yourselves you fucking gigantic retards. It's not good difficulty, but it certainly isn't artificial.

Examples of actual artificial difficulty.
>rubberbanding driving ai in racing games that keep them on your tail
>the final canary mary race in bt(she always goes faster then your average tapping speed, winning requires mashing super hard near the end, doing your best for the whole race results in loss)
>rts games giving the ai free resources
>input reading ai in fighting games

The game needs to be giving the ai cheats to make up for not being good, that's artificial difficulty.

Lazy enemy health bar bloat is not artificial, it's just lame and lazy

It'd be like if you had a relatively simple maze with a few simple enemies in it. Then you decide it's too easy so you revamp it with tons of fire and death spikes every where and then add enemies that can 1 hit you.

Fuck off you cunt dont post that piece of shit moldy pasta again ,who ever wrote that is a massive faggot.

It's an excuse neo Sup Forums uses to explain why they're bad at games. You'll often see them use other meme terms like "boring" to describe games. It's all just an effort to avoid admitting not having any skill.

Well, it's just semantics then. Would you say the difficulty that comes from cheating is or is not part of the game? Since you're using outside tools to change parts of the game, I wouldn't say the cheating is "inside" the game. Therefore, the game doesn't "contain" artificial difficulty, it just has bullshit design.
I agree as long as there's a special case for unwinnable parts that connect with the story. Have-to-lose fights are alright if they help put the story in perspective.

Is Absolute Virtue the single greatest case of developer asspain in any MMO ever?

One requires you to actually use your brain the other doesn't.

Example of a cheap tactic: stocking up on 1 million hp potions before the boss because the boss can kill you in 4 hits and has 1 million hp. That's artificial difficulty; it can only be beaten in a very tedious way and there's no other option where you can use your brain or a smart trick to beat the boss.

It isn't pasta, I typed it up since I try and be as much of a wikifag and use proper definitions when asked as much as I can.
Well of course, unwinnable cutscene battles are used in many games. I do recall fighting a High Dragon in the new 7th Dragon and I remember it being an unwinnable cutscene battle. Those aren't really "unwinnable" since technically you usually do defeat the character in an actual battle rather than what amounts to an interactive battle cutscene to advance the story.

>isn't artificial
It is EXACTLY as artificial as rubberbanding AI.

Properly preparing for a boss sounds like a tactic to me

Unfair RNG existing for no reason

A very cheap tactic yes.

The entire point of tactics is to make the fight easier.

A tactic is a bad one if it isn't cheap.

I knew you wrote that,i was just calling you a double faggot .

Cheap isn't used in a literal sense here.

I see. Thank you then.

>cars gaining free speed boosts when they get too far behind
>the same as health bloat

Retard

It's cheap as in it's creatively bankrupt.

If the tactic to defeat a boss is "buy a million health potions and then wail on it for an hour", that's not really a tactic at all, that's just bashing your head against the wall because there's no other way to do it.

Is that Ethan?

Bosses need moderate health pools at least. If a boss has low health you can just pass it by getting lucky. It needs to be dragged out long enough for you to have proven you've mastered the boss.

Damage is similar, enemy damage dictates how many mistakes you can make. Forcing you to make few mistakes over a moderate amount of time is harder than giving you lots of mistakes over a short period of time.

Well you can't give cars a health bloat in a racing games, can you? Different games and different lazy game design to give a artificial challenge.

when difficulty isn't being fair

like making it so hitboxes are way bigger than the vfx, making a strong boss skill being rng, unavoidable damage

all those things make the game harder but the player has very little control over it, not fair

Probably
The ending of Tabula Rasa was pretty bad, though

imagine you're fighting a boss.

it shoots a fireball that you must jump over perfectly to dodge and land a hit.

that's the only way you can hit him, you must do this 100 times.

making the player do that shit 100 times is artificial difficulty. the only reason its difficult is because you're having the player repeat something that has a low probability of succeeding which creates the overall goal an incredibly low probability of success.

there is nothing interesting about the boss, how to fight him, and there is no other way to fight him either. it's only hard because you have to repeat the same shit a million times.