How do you make a video game challenging without using artificial difficulty?

How do you make a video game challenging without using artificial difficulty?

you're going to have to define artificial gravity

always bet on A

Gradually reduce the margin for player error specifically, rather than increase variables regarding the AI.

Aggressive AI
Diverse moveset

wasnt this a provin fact or something? like one of the answers is never D and its either A or B with C being a ploy or something?

It's Reykjavic

Everything in a video game is "variables," dumbbutt. When will this retardation die? How did it even get popular instead of people saying, "hmm, artificial seems like the wrong word to use there"?

Create a challenge that is skill based rather than punishment, chance or numbers.

And you'd be correct

You do appreciate the distinction between the player and AI right?

Go batshit nuts with it.

>Make game with fluid controls
>Include I-frames when dodging
>When swarmed by enemies, make it possible to deal with crowds in a non-cheap way

The way I define a game as NOT having artificial difficulty is when I can tell that it was my mistake which caused my death, not some autismal trial and error hell. Some examples of trial and error hell:

>Sprinting-while-being-shot-at sections in CoD Veteran difficulty
>Obligatory turret segments on CoD Veteran difficulty
>RPG game bosses that hit you with multiple status effects that hinder your ability to act
>Card games with terrible RNG
>Games where the boss does damage if he touches you and has chase AI (potion chugger games)
>Games where the AI input-reads and pressing attack is akin to punching yourself in the face.
>Games where the enemy can block all damage, but you take damage when you block

I'm sure there are more, but these are what I can think of.

How come you faggots never say a game is artificially EASY? It's only when a game is too hard for you that you start acting like there's some principle of design that backs up your opinions.

>make all the enemies die in 1 hit
>this obviously makes the game too easy and boring
>increase enemy health
>HURRDURR IT'S NOT ACTUALLY HARDER IT'S JUST MORE TEDIOUS

I'm artificially seeing your girlfriend

RNG != trial-and-error, user. Trial-and-error is when you have no choice but to guess and hope for the best, but you can learn on each iteration. "Oh, the left door kills you, better open the right one next time."

I think what everyone is saying is to make better AI so that you and the AI can be evenly matched.

An example I like to use is Fallout 4 on Survivor. It's horrible. You go through about three 100 round drum canisters with a legendary SMG to kill a legendary raider. If you poke your body out once, the raider can one shot you.

In spite of this, I modded Fallout 4 so that I was just as susceptible to bullets as the AI (and often times stray bullets would hit my head and kill me). I still enjoyed it immensely and it felt more high stakes.

Puzzles and challenging enemy movesets.

name one example of true artificial difficulty besides rubberbanding in racing games.

If the RNG is very high percentage not in your favor, and very low percentage in your favor (2% chance to survive versus 98% to die instantly) then it absolutely is trial and error. You just load your save over and over until you finally survive that 98% that's against you. How do you figure it's not trial and error?

Cheating ai in rts?

Organic, home-grown difficulty

Make it genuinely difficult, rather than artificially difficult
>Make enemies harder to combat rather than just increasing their health or their quantity
>Don't use IWBTG:G-tier traps
That's basically it

Bosses with stunlock combos that you will die from if caught in.

Because "artificial difficulty" is a term used to describe a challenge that would not exist without the AI having an unfair, unnatural advantage (and this does not include health pools no matter how bloated they are).

A game cannot be "artificially easy" because an easy game does not present a challenge to begin with.

>A game cannot be "artificially easy" because an easy game does not present a challenge to begin with.
There's no logical connection between the halves of this sentence.

nobody even knows what artificial difficulty is. today it means anything that can't be beaten in 8 hours or cried out by casual who are unwilling to learn and try the same tactic over and over.

Wich style of game?
Games that forces you to think out of the box are charming. MGS did it like no one else.

The Prince of Persia Sands of Time had puzzles that amazed me at that time, also with a simple combat that made you use the right aproach against a variety of enemies.

What I like in dark souls is that if you are too careful you won't advance, if you overextend yourself, you die. If you dare, you can be rewarded.

Every single zelda game I notice that struggle to balance everything in the gameplay from puzzle, story telling, exploration and combat. this is admirable.

Super Mario WAHOO is always trying to reinvent the platforming genre, where most of its fellow characters that came at the same time or a little after simply failed to keep up (from Sonic to Banjo-Kazooie and Rayman). Mario keeps pushing its boundaries that every new game we really don't understand at first. But get trapped to finish it when you start.

That's simply not what trial-and-error is, mate. Playing the lottery is not "trial-and-error." Trial-and-error is a strategy, like "guess and check", not an outcome. The key word here is "error."

A 2% random win chance would be very sucky and frustrating, but if you don't change anything about how you play (i.e. it's trivial to play optimally every time, but success is still out of your hands) you're using the term incorrectly.

tl;dr "trial and error" means guesses, not dice rolls

The way I see it, natural difficulty comes from the game challenging your ability to beat it. Artificial difficulty challenges the game's ability to make an incredibly OP boss/scenario that is still beatable(thus able to be published).
Using Mario Maker as an example, remember in your mind the level that makes you move and attack based on the beat of the music. Then, remember the Mario Maker level that puts twenty bowsers in one room.

After thousands of hours of action RPGs, including a not-insignificant amount of Monster Hunter, there is one thing and one thing only that most games need:

Good hitboxes. Really, really good hitboxes.

I Wanna Be The Guy Gaiden

Just allow players to adjust certain aspects of game design. 99% of problems could be avoided if games would let you adjust things like falling speed, screen zoom, hitboxes, projectile speed, etc. Of course, all adjustments you apply to your enemies must also be applied to you, and the adjustments have to be within reason, but often just a tiny change is enough to make bullshit into fair.

Well. Very bad hitboxes, RNG being used in a non random enviroment that could be based on timing, positioning and skill. Ridiculous AI that kills you instantly at sight.

Fuck this game.

>Ai pokemon has moves it shouldn't have at that level/evolved pokemon that don't evolve at that level
>ai units in fire emblem are unaffected by fog
>camera screw gets stuck on walls

When you are punished, it is because you fucked up.

Simple as that.

Lots of enemy with fair level design is good makes a fun game all the time it's used

Encourage the player to play dangerously, take risks and step outside his comfort zone. Punish repetitive, safe playing and reward gutsy playing which pushes the player's skill. I've been playing DMC4 a lot in the last couple of days and it does a lot of interesting to make the player to master the player character's moveset and not to stick to just a couple of moves which work well enough. Shmups that reward risky moves like grazing or staying in a dangerous part of the screen are also a good example.

Alternative enemies, objectives, and alter the map.

secondary objectives like don't get scene or only use the pistol etc

Make a multiplayer only game and have players compete against other human players.

That's really a favor. Everything in that vending machine is sugar cancer.

...

i'd give each enemy about 10 different movesets and switch them on a daily basis
each month i'd create 10 new ones

sadly that'd imply making the game require an internet connection

YOU KNOW HOW MANY BUTTONS ITS GOT?

FFFIFTY