Bloodstained's difficulty

I don't think any metroidvania was really hard. I liked the challenge of the PoR and OOE lvl. 1 cap hard mode but I think they need to fine tune that to make it play better.

I like hard games myself, but I can also like easy games... zelda: a link to the past for example is something I feel is an excellent game, but darn easy. I would like it more if it was harder for sure however.

One thing I think people seem to be mistaken about however, is that a game's difficulty can somehow cater to both 'easy' mode fans, and 'hard' mode fans if it lets 'hard' mode fans do things like play without leveling up or wear no equipment or something. While it's true that doing such things does make the game harder, it also cuts away from the game's overall quality. If you are craving the game to be harder so much, than cutting the quality by 20% to increase the difficulty by 100% when difficulty is more important to you makes the game more fun yes...but...it really isn't catering to that user at all.. you can also make a game harder by playing blindfolded, or by playing with your feet, or whatever. But you're cutting away parts of the game. For example, if you play blindfolded, you cut away the graphic quality and/or artistic merit of the game...among other things.

I firmly believe that every game should have a difficulty selection to satisfy as many users as possible, and not claim a game is good for every audience assuming that the 'hard' audience loses key game components such as equipment selection, leveling mechanics, etc.


I'm not saying you disagree or whatever, but I do NOT want to give credit to such 'tactics' for hard game modes when I really think they're awful compared to just having a selection of harder modes by nature.

Basically, I would like more games to be like unreal tournament or Civilization with like 7+ difficulty levels and/or customizeable difficulty settings... They aren't even that hard to impliment. All you need to do is make it so that instead of coding the game so that enemy hp = xx etc.. you just go hp = xx*(difficulty setting).. and at the top you go difficulty setting vStoryOnly= 10%, VEasy= 50%, Easy = 75%, normal =100%, hard = 150%)... etc..

Additional steps should probably be taken so that harder settings increase hp more and damage/defense less of course otherwise you end up with enemies that 1-shot players or take 0s from players if damage formulas are subtractive/additive instead of divisive/multiplicative but the point is as long as the game is developed with difficulty settings being intended to begin with, adding more of them is incredibly easy.. it's harder when a game never has them to begin with, when the stats are hard-coded in, then it becomes a pain to add more.

I know programming and gaming, but I've never been blessed with the opportunity to actually work on a game. so if a pro can disagree and why I'll listen but so far I've never seen anyone really try and prove otherwise.


Former post:
'he' being me. Rude is an insult. There's nothing rude about feeling a game is too easy to be set as a game's 'normal' setting in a game that will hopefully have difficulty setting... Given the number of people who would prefer harder. That isn't my own personal opinion alone either. Just looking at the survey we can see that most people feel that SoTn is easier than what they would enjoy for BS...Games with difficulty settings DO have an 'easy' mode, so if someone wants an SoTn level of difficulty, they can select easy.



A game harder than SoTn will NOT kick most people's asses...well not most fan's asses anyway. I have no personal beef with people who enjoy easy games, but Castlevania is not notoriously easy, and SoTN IS Notoriously easy for the series, so I think it's actually pretty normal to object to the par being set to the game that's already outside the series norm.



If you still disagree that's fine by me, but please don't go out of your way to call me rude and expect me to not object and support my case.

Someone reported an argument here. Arguing is permitted as long as it's respectful. Ghaelon was insulted by being called rude, but it looks as though his response cleared up that he wasn't trying to be rude, but stating his opinion about SotN being very easy (a common agreement if you grind.) Anyways, keep the discussion going, but keep it respectful. It sounds respectful enough to me, bit I haven't read every word. I don't think reporting this topic was necessary. If anyone wishes to disagree, PM me. If anyone feels disrespected, PM me and I will work it out between those involved.

Edit: Ghaelon, you double posted. Please fix that, it's against the rules and it's hard for me to fix that when on my phone.

I don't know how to multiquote on these forums so uhh.. yeah.

So paragraph 1. I'm not 100% sure I get all of what you're trying to say, but I do understand "Normal should be something everyone can get into", and "easy can be different not only due to player skill, but player familiarity with the game's genre and style". I almost agree.

If normal is the easiest difficulty setting a game offers, yes, it should be something everyone can get into. However if there are easier settings, I disagree, normal should at the very least be something that provides enough of a challenge that most people can expect to learn thru mistakes and failures along the way... it is normal to lose in a game as well as win them after all. If normal was something EVERYONE can get into, what is the point of the easier setting?

As for me being a biased gamer, I honestly don't know many people who think SNES zelda is not easy, and I don't think I'm particularly biased in the sense that I DO in fact like games to offer something for everyone after all. But I AM biased in the sense that yes, my scale for difficulty is probably weighted in the 'favors difficulty' direction more than your average gamer since I've BEEN a gamer for over 20 years. I'm sure many people can claim this but games are alot more popular these days so there are a lot of newer fans who don't have as developed a game instinct. Though I don't recall thinking it wasn't easy even when the game was relatively new (relatively because I never had an SNES to play it until a few years later).

Regarding azure striker gunvolt. I wasn't actually even talking about your case by that point, I was more replying to RVMcypress. He mentioned a game mode where you are stuck at level 1 in a game that did in fact have leveling in it. My comparison is not an attempt to say it's the same thing or it's as bad. But I'm just trying to convey that they are similar in the way where a feature that a player may enjoy about the game has to be sacrificed in order to provide more challenge. Whereas a 'hard' setting ideally provides more challenge without sacrificing any of the features you may enjoy on the default settings. Similarly, if a player decides to challenge themselves by playing without using any equipment aside from the starting equipment, that kills any excitement the player might have from getting a rare equipment drop, or the excitement of investing and shopping in a game's equipment shop, etc.  Sometimes games limit what the player has for options for individual stages or portions of the game for some kind of bonus, these are a seperate case that may or may not have my point be made applicable. They should always be ok in my books though if they change what the bonuses/challenges are for each stage/boss

Regarding civilization difficulty settings and whatnot. It's true there are some games that are completely devoid of stats where this wouldn't work true. However I think you underestimate how important stats are in many games. Castlevania for example has more than enough for this to work. Even the very first one where there is no equipment menu, no shop, no leveling up, even it can be made to have easier/harder modes by modifying your health, enemy health, etc.. Even oddball things like # of scythes throws at you at a time, speed of projectiles. I CAN imagine what kind of a pain these would be to program... it wouldn't be a pain at all. As long as developers don't hard-code things everywhere and have to work backwards from there, when yous tart from the beginning, it's really very easy to adjust these things, and it doesn't make the game any bigger... Maybe like... a kilobyte, if that. I also gave unreal tournament as an example, and that one is actually one of the most difficult ones to accomplish, because the enemy bots actually behave differently  depending on the difficulty setting as well, That's something I wouldn't expect but it was certainly done.

Having difficulty modify the stats in a game does not invalidate a leveling mechanic, nor does it invalidate an equipment mechanic, I'm not sure how you can come to that conclusion. That would be like saying that there is no point for the @crazy difficulty settings in the ps2 castlevania games because it has leveling and stats or something. I'd try to debate further but it's really not something I think you can debate because they aren't related.

@rvmcypress.
Yeah, I wasn't saying you really had an opposing viewpoint, I even said it =)

"I'm not saying you disagree or whatever, but I do NOT want to give credit to such 'tactics' for hard game modes when I really think they're awful compared to just having a selection of harder modes by nature."

Basically I rambled on there about that because sometimes people think difficulty settings aren't needed or something because games can be made harder 'artificially' by handicaping yourself somehow. It certainly can be done to make a game more enjoyable, I've done it myself with some games, but I wanted to really express that difficulty settings are always better if the option is available (at least until you get to the point where even the hardest setting is still too easy!)


@xombie
Sorry, I generally try not to double post in every forum, but sometimes I do it if I see a post after making mine or something. I thought this was a forum that didn't expressly mention against double posting though, my mistake. I uhh.. don't know if I CAN delete posts though, so I just edited it with junk and ask that it be deleted by the next staffer who comes along.

And yes, though I objected to being called rude for respectfully disagreeing with someone, I certainly don't think anything here deserves reporting, including that 'rude' comment. 

This is ghaleon again on my phone.

That article is opinion not fact, not that I disagree with it terribly, its just important to keep in mind that just because a journalist writes an opinion doesnt mean its any more correct.

That said when I refer to the game being easy. I mean the fact that its very very easy to NOT DIE... Thats pretty much my definition of difficulty in a game. Some people focus on getting a "win", and I generally focus on NOT getting the "lose".

Anyway, i agree that the dungeon exploration and whatnot in zelda is infredible, and by no means do I fault that for being too easy beyond the fact that the traps and monsters inside the dungeons are virtually never a threat.

I forget what the north palace in zelda 2 is though. Is that the final dungeon? I loved that thing, minus the final boss which seems completely luck based unless you exploit it (I find jumping duck attacks work pretty good without utterly breaking the boss like ducking in the corner)

Or is northern palace the one you summon by whistling by those mountains? That one I though was bs. But even that isnt hard per say so much as near guide dang it.

I think the game should be able to vary in difficulty, but not rely on difficulty modes to adjust it. Leveling up, abusing cheap abilities, and alternate characters are a good way to ease difficulty.

I'm not against actual harder modes, but they should be reasonably harder primarily by enemy behavior enhancements, not higher survival and damage, that can be imitated easily by simply not equipping weapons and armor. Achievements could be designed to challenge players to do so, but if a player wants to hold up Alucard Shield and simply win, than he can.

That's the fundamental advance that SotN brought. Instead of having a static set of power to face mounting challenges, Alucard could simply get stronger and stronger to beast on them.

Let's not make this like Diablo 3, where the difficulty ramps up way further than the character growth can rationally pace it. It doesn't result in a better game...

The harder the better. I love challenges!

See, this is precisely the opinion I was arguing against earlier, because I know many people have it... did you read the thread kaiser? Not gonna shame you if not, I frequently read first pages and respond myself. It's just your opinion is incompatible with my own yet you don't really 'counter' it or anything so much as post like it was never made.

That doesn't really answer my question... I have no issue if you have or have not, and if you have not I'm not deluded to think you must simply because I said so (nor am I telling you to). But my recent post was directly arguing why I believe your opinion is fallacious before anyone even made your argument.

So now I'm wondering if I communicated why poorly, if I was mistaken somewhere and it is NOT evident to me where at this point, or if you simply didn't see it.