Making enemies that deal more damage and have more HP is not true difficulty

>making enemies that deal more damage and have more HP is not true difficulty
>making complex level design and enemies that demand more memorization is not true difficulty

What the fuck is true difficulty then?

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getting a gf

something not so hard that i can beat it without much actual exertion of effort but hard enough that i can convince myself i'm good for beating it

hes a fucking crybaby because hes shit

he plays skyrim on his mac from 2008 on easy mode

Difficulty is subjective, Dobson needs to expand his mind a bit more

Running Skyrim at more than 10 frames per second

kek

games are only hard if you can't fail at them, bigot, but can defeat every encounter you come across on your first attempt, racist. you'd realize that if you weren't such a fascist woman-hating gamergater, trumpftard. get punched.

>expand
kek

making enemies have more HP is not difficulty
fucking doom knew this

Ignoring Dobson being wrong about literally everything in his life and being an abject failure at everything he's ever attempted, difficulty in games can only be trial and error. If you beat something on your first try it probably wasn't very hard. At the same time, instant retries with no lives basically means you can slam your head against the wall and eventually win because you never have to build a strategy because you have nothing to lose. So lives and continues is the truest form of difficulty in games.

Lives and continues just add extra tedium to the process of head-banging. If I've already mastered the previous levels then running through them again and again is just a waste of time.

Its not a waste of time, it gives you a reason and an actual punishment for losing against the boss several times. Consistency is what it demands.

What is Dobson even up to these days now that his artistic career is the dumpster?

Still doing the artist career from the dumpster

Lives are outdated shit from arcades to eat your quarters. They have a lot less meaning now that people can just own the game and play as much as they want

No your punishment for losing to the boss is losing to the boss. Making you go back two levels won't make that fight easier

Friendly remainder

This mentallity that "memorizing and trial and error" isnt a skill or a way to improve your skill is such a widespread mentallity between loosers that have never been good at anything that it makes you wonder what do they consider skillful then

Do this people consider only skillful what you're born with, or what you magically get without practice or studing or any learning proccess? Do this people thing all the best at whatever where born into that or became like this because they just really belived in it? It really gives you an insight when you think about what this people think, and why they are such loosers

>No your punishment for losing to the boss is losing to the boss. Making you go back two levels won't make that fight easier
No shit it won't make the fight easier, you learning how to beat the boss will. With only a limited number of chances per go the player is disincentivized to play like a moron until he wins by war of attrition.

>difficulty in games can only be trial and error
That's only true for shitty platformers and similar games that expects you to memorize the level. Not all learning is trial and error.

You can't beat puzzle games like Tetris with trial and error, you actually have to get good at stacking.
You can't beat strategy games with trial and error. The only memorization is build orders, but then it all goes down to out-thinking the enemy and picking a strategy.
First person shooters are not trial and error either, it's reflexes, precision mouse control, feeling the guns, and again, out-thinking the enemy to flank them.
And so on.

Literally all of those examples require trial and error. Nobody is going to be good when they start something unless that something takes no skill.

The way to make good difficulty is to provide a challenge with a solid amount of agency and divergence in how one approaches it.
Good level design facilitates this; which is where visual information constantly conveys solutions and subtle clues which a player can interpret and plan accordingly.

There's no such thing as artificial difficulty. There is such thing as poor game design and poor level design, however. This is the correct response to this accusation.

Cuphead has archaic game design and level design. This is irrefutable. Hard? Sure.

Not expecting a response. Doesn't matter. Sup Forums as a general is ignorant as all fuck anyway.

>memorization isn't getting good or a skill
Of course, he's only admitting what we've all known for years. He's a goddamn retard.

Lives and continues are a way to protract a game's playtime and gobble quarters, nothing more. If I die at the boss and have to redo the boss, I'll keep trying so I can progress. If I die and go back several levels I've already mastered and beaten, wasting hours of playtime on backtracking, I'll just go play something else for a while. Unless I'm a kid who can only play this one rented game until the next month.

But game rental and arcades went the way of the radio so lives and continues are an antiquated mechanic.

>If I've already mastered the previous levels then running through them again and again is just a waste of time.

People say that but I bet there's plenty of players who've made it through certain games on the virtue of never having to repeat a section that they couldn't reliably beat.

You don't get it.

Suppose an expansion comes out with new maps for the platformer. Now you start from zero, have to learn all those maps.
New maps come out to an RTS or FPS. It takes 5 minutes to learn the map, all of your original skill level is still valid.

How do you think the best tetris players become good at stacking, how starcraft players become good at reading their opponents, how the best csgo players can form the best strategies and tactics and become proficent aimers??


Pro tip: its something to do with playing the game over and over and over and trying every single think they can think and trying it

Games with lives and continues can be beaten in under an hour usually. If you really can't stand playing though levels you supposedly mastered to get to the part you're stuck on, you either don't like the game or are a defeatist worm.
>New maps come out to an RTS or FPS. It takes 5 minutes to learn the map
Wrong in every way possible.

This is such a scrub way of thinking lmao

Sure if you are a shitter that believes that winning some unranked random online match makes you good at a game sure it takes you 5 minutes to learn a new map, but truly great players study and practice maps for years

This is completely irrelevant. Try to contain your buttpain, tripfag.
Your shitty platformers take zero skill, only memorization.

better enemy AI that can strategize against the way you play is the best form of difficulty, though damage sponges and memorization are also types of difficulty. halo was good in this regard in that enemies try to flank you at higher difficulty levels. idk what other games are similar

Memorization is skill.

This guy is not a video game. Why are you discussing him?

Just because you find someone pathetic on the internet to talk shit about does not make you less pathetic.

Find something more constructive to do with your time.

>that third paragraph

Why do people like Dobby think that all video games must cater to everybody even if they're not willing to put the time and effort into learning its mechanics?

Whatever happened to accepting that certain things in life just aren't meant for you and that its fine?

memorizing the level alone is not going to do shit to help you if you dont have the skill to hit someone and adaptability to outsmart someone else and not get killed

>2015: "You Gamer losers need to accept that some videogames aren't going to cater to you and that's fine"
>2017: "WTF why doesn't every videogame cater to me? This must be the gamers fault!"

Why aren't these people complaining that they can't compete at the olympics with 2 hours/week of training?

I dont even play platformers other than casually lmao, im talking as a competitive fighting game player that trial and error, memorization and repetition are necesary to get truly good

>inb4 hurr durr fighting games are just combo memorization

anyone who dares to say that Cuphead is unfair should try pic related

yes, that is one example of a genre that relies heavily on memorization. going back up the reply chain, the point was that trial and error is not the only way to implement difficulty fighting games are for fags, btw

Again, how do you think you get good at aiming? Doing it over and over

How do you think you can know what the opponent will do and outsmart him? Playin thousands of games, trying things and seeing what works in what situations and seeing how much it works, aka trial and error and memorization

>competitive fighting game player
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Bet you're also a nigger, like 60% of the fighter game playerbase.
Dumb nigger tripfag calling out others on skill, priceless.

I want more games where the enemies die quickly but so do you.

>practice makes perfect
thats different from trial and error

Are you actually so retarded you genuinely believe Tetris is not trial and error?

Playing a game and getting better at playing it is not trial and error.
You literally cannot beat a game with randomly generated levels with trial and error.

untrue in regards to FPS at least, learing the level better than your opponent grants you a resource and maneuvering advantage.
If you know where health/ammo/etc pickups are and how long they take to respawn or what paths lead where and how to position yourself when you know where your opponent is coming from *can* more than make up for reflexes or aim, if you can shoot longer and tank more you can bridge what gap there is in these skills.

see
and you still missed the point even after i spelled it out clearly in the post you replied to

I agree, trial and error isnt the only way to implement difficulty, my point is that trial and error is one of the only ways to get good

I'm not reading wall of text from a lolcow.

>making enemies that deal more damage and have more HP is not true difficulty
It never made a video game any more fun that's for sure.

then your arguing outside the context of the thread and reply chain. you're also still conflating practice with trial-and-error gameplay

>doing the same thing over and over again isn't trial and error
Literally every single skill on the planet is acquired by doing the same thing over and over.

Yeah, 90% of the best fg players are japanese

>2015: "You Gamer losers need to accept that some videogames aren't going to cater to you and that's fine"
Nobody said that either back then.
In fact, that very notion was never particularly in the fore, but the opposite, that every game needs to be accessible to everyone, was not as strong.

Collectively we have not yet arrived at that kernel of wisdom.

You might want to read this, you sound like you are self-scrubbed for life.
sirlin.net/ptw/

yeah its called practice. error implies youre doing something that doesnt work in order to learn not to do that. practice is generally doing something correctly in order to refine your ability to do said thing

Just have randomized enemy behaviors? Seems simple.

lmao

>trial
>this equates to doing the same thing over and over

If doing the same thing over and over equates to surpassing a problem... why did it not work the first time? You're making it sound like "single trial, single error, repeat ad infinitum"

You don't even know what trial and error is by definition.

It's almost like he does it on purpose

>not everyone has the time to waste converting these levels to muscle memory
>Cuphead is only a few hours long even if you take 10 tries on each boss

>instant retries with no lives basically means you can slam your head against the wall and eventually win
Most importantly, there's no excitement when you aren't risking anything. These "hack challenges" are just plain boring, no matter how precise or challenging.

...

There seems to be a misunderstanding here

When i say trial and error, i mean trying something, and if doesnt work, thinking about why so you can think of another strategy/tactic and try that one, and so over and over, its not a brainless method

It seems that people think as trial and error as doing just random shit until it eventually works, which is not a concept that exist in reallity cause you know, people actually think, and if something isnt working you try other things unless you are stupid or cant admit you are doing things wrong

Call it practice or whatever, its still about doing things over and over and seeing if it works

>McMichael later claimed this post was a joke

Doing the same thing in the sense that you are attempting the same thing, not necessarily in the exact same way every time.

>difficulty

Well it is a bit of an oxymoron since most and usually mainstream tend to play vidya recreationally for some relaxing fun. So then everyone being different and into different things "true" difficulty becomes something that is different for everybody.

Iets be a tad abstract about it. Most modern day vidya can be said to be a sort of puzzle as how to successfully get from point A to point B. Some people abhor puzzles. Some people like them. The people who like them tend to range from liking super fucking hard puzzle to simply lil brain teasers easily solvable in single moment.


So yeah really OP there is no general "TRUE" difficulty since it really is more of personal thing that can only be decided by ones self.
So whatever you think is just as valid as everyone else. You don't have to like it and can hate it all you want but everyones opinion as to what that is is genuinely valid to a certain extent.

I heard dobson loves masks

i gotta refer back to this idk how you got onto that tangent

>Call it practice or whatever, its still about doing things over and over and seeing if it works
Then you said nothing of value, tripshitter.
Obviously you get better at games with practice. But trial and error means something else.

As said before, trial and error only really works on static games. Random levels, random enemies or facing other players that are unpredictable means that trial and error memorization doesn't work.

Im calling out scrubs that think that memorization and trial and error isnt a way to get better dude

Learning or adapting to anything requires memorization. It's a skill in itself, and it's inevitable you'll have to memorize something new you didn't expect in the first place (which is a part of every good boss fight ever).
What Dobson is 2shit2admit is that he struggles to give his attention to a game for more than a few seconds at a time, so for him (and other mentally inept commentators) this memorization process goes from something near-instantaneous to something abortive and dragged-out, where the same mistakes are committed endlessly.
Slandering hard games (which are hard in arcades not just to suck up money, but also because easy games aren't exciting enough to take up the floor space) is just a certain person's way around acknowledging that they lack the minor mental capacity to be observant enough to manipulate some buttons in relation to an animated TV picture.

It is a way that only works with garbage games with artificial difficulty, like platformers.

Hell, it doesn't even work with your example, fighter games. You can't memorize your opponent's moves and you can't use trial and error to beat a human opponent. You need reflexes and intuition.

>facing other players that are unpredictable means that trial and error memorization doesn't work.
So you honestly believe that pro fighting game players don't play the game religiously in order to learn the matchups for their character (as well as all the top tiers in general)?

>art school graduate complaining about squandered talent
Fuck I love Dobson's complete lack of self-awareness.

It doesnt work if you think it as a single match, or a single run throu a roguelike or whatever, but it works in the long run

Also i guess what im trying to say that trial and error can be a part of practicing

>platformers are artificial difficulty
>fighting games only require reflexes and "intuition"
You couldn't be a more clueless faggot if you tried.

:c

fucksakes, it's like people never played vidya in their lives and bought cuphead so they could be "cool" or some shit. you don't WAIT for enemies to come at you in retro games, you run, jump and shoot into the nothing to get the enemies BEFORE they even have a chance to get anything but their beaks on the screen. yeesh.
git
gud

I was not prepared for that gif

There is such a thing as "fake" difficulty, but it only exists in one form. Incrseing the difficulty of a game without increasing the skill needed to clear the game. Some examples:
>Winning relies on blind luck
>The game witholds important information, such that the player cannot reasonably figure out what to do, resulting in either blind guessing or walkthrough use
>Poor controls, bad camera angles, and other such things that the player can't control interfering with the challenges presented

>You can't memorize your opponent's moves and you can't use trial and error to beat a human opponent

Haha holy shit

Ok let me go for points

1- yes you can memorize every single move of every single character, even down to every single frame, if you are talking about what a particular opponent does, then every single player has tendencies and set strategys/tactics and you can memorize those too

2- one of the most important skill in a fg is to know and test your opponent and if they know how to deal with certain stuff, and if they dont you just abuse that, how do you do it? By trying it, see if it works and reacting accordingly, theres other stuff that can be used by something similar as trial and error, too

Also ituition comes down to a player being put in a situation so many times that he knows what their opponents would most likely do from past matches, aka memorization

And reflexes arent nearly as important as you think they are

>Incrseing the difficulty of a game without increasing the skill needed to clear the game.

I think thats a good axiom to go by, ima steal it

That's why you do airman's stage before heatman

>if you are talking about what a particular opponent does
That's obviously what I meant. And no, you can't just memorize your opponent's tactics. Are you so delusional that you think you can simplify every other player to a level where you can just learn them?

Christ, you fg kids live up to your cancerous reputation.

>That's why you do airman's stage before heatman
Exactly. That stage was what the Item #2 was for.

>So lives and continues is the truest form of difficulty in games.
Naw the best kind of difficulty is giving enemies more options for battle and remixing enemy waves. Fucking with player expectations is the best way to make difficulty

>you can't just memorize your opponent's tactics
That's literally the most important part of a fighting game, even a scrub like me knows that.

dobson used to be god tier. what happened?

No wonder you're a scrub.

>Everyone but me is the bad guy.
So considering all the fuckos getting outed as rapist or pedophiles, what skeletons do you think Dobson has in his closet?

>what happened?
His self-opinion got inflated.

Real cute. If you don't even entertain the idea of reading your opponent you must just straight up never play fighting games ever.

>You can't memorize your opponents tactics
You literally can and is something that's done from sports to military strategy. No one thinks the opponent will do precisely as you predicted but it's very obvious that certain individuals, groups or organizations will act in a certain way given the expected scenario.

Reading your opponent to a degree and claiming you can just memorize him like tripfag did are very different things.

Memorizing strategies is reading.

Never played cuphead, but what I gather the bosses and enemies display animations that players can comprehend and act accordingly.

Since it is 2d there is no chance that you will be hit by bullshit mechanics a'la souls games "shockwaves". Now that is memorization without context, but I digress. Cuphead gives you ample time and warning to dodge and fire without losing health.

A comparison on true artificial difficulty is Dragon's Lair; a series of scenarios with button prompts that barely have anything to do with context. It was designed to suck quarters if anything.

Tl;dr: Andrew Dobson is a lazy idiot who literally does not understand 20 - x = ?

True difficulty is when a game that I already like is difficult. If I don't like the game and it's difficult, it's bullshit artificial difficulty because the devs couldn't bother to make a decent game and they needed to make it have some more longevity. Strangely enough, all the writing becomes forced at the same time as well.

Cuphead is basically mega man x: all the bosses have 3-4 moves and phases with particular windup animations. Some of them have dumb tricks (the extra demon that hurts you when the devil does his hands move) but even then, after you get hit the first time, you know how the move works. The hardest boss in the game for me was the queen bee because I had to concentrate on platforming while fighting. I'm shit at videogames, but I didn't feel that any of the bosses were even unfair.

To me artificial difficulty is stat bloat. Increasing enemy's HP and damage to the point where you can't make mistakes.

Real difficulty is making the enemies react smarter, faster and more varied.

The problem is difficulty is hard to actually get down right.