What is "Challenging"?

[Cognisant]

In most games the more difficult enemies are often palette swapped versions of weaker enemies with better stats. Something I found particularly jarring in "Elder Scrolls: Oblivion" when I finally allowed my character to level up then discovered the goblins I had been fighting only a day earlier were like skinny green Terminators. They weren't bigger, faster, wearing better armour or anything like that, they were just mathematically tougher, which utterly ruined the experience for me. Instead of feeling like I was a badass because I was taking on stronger opponents I felt the exact opposite, that levelling up had somehow made my character so much weaker.

The problem was less prevalent in Skyrim where enemies will increase in number, size, and the quality of their equipment, giving me better visual cues to show the progression of my character's relative strength, but a lot of the dissatisfaction remained. After mulling on it for a while I came to realise that the challenge of these encounters never really changed, I never felt challenged, despite the ever increasing level of difficulty.

As I see it a challenge is a personal test of the player's skill, not thier character's attributes, so although increasing the stats of an enemy type may increase the difficulty of overcoming them the challenge of fighting them remains largely the same. For example imagine a rat, a low level rat poses little difficulty and little challenge, the only player skill required to overcome the rat is to press the attack button when it's in range. Increasing the rat's health and attack power increases the difficulty, killing the rat may require several attacks by the player, but the challenge hasn't changed at all, the game isn't demanding anything new of the player.

Now if the rat had so much health and attack power that the player has to manage their HP with healing spells/potions and try to dodge the rat's attacks then the challenge has increased, but the rats in ES:Oblivion had this virtually unavoidable jump attack, so yeah nuts to that.

Ideally as the player progresses through the game they should encounter increasingly challenging enemies by which I mean overcoming these enemies requires the player to demonstrate more of their skill as a player.

Imagine young Link fighting a petty beast of some sort, there's nothing to it but attacking until the enemy is overcome, later on when fighting several such beasts Link may need to mindful not to let them attack him from behind, but again it's fairly simple. Later still Link may have to fight a skeleton with a sword, he doesn’t have a shield yet so he ducks and rolls to avoid its swings, this is clearly more of a challenge because the abilities he had all along but didn't need are now needed to overcome this opponent.

The same principles could apply to Skyrim if Dwemer constructs were weak to alternating heat & cold, or if arrows did more damage if you aim for the gaps in an opponent's armour. That's because it tests the player on not only having multiple attack spells or well fletched arrows but also how well those spells and arrows are used.

In fact I think Skyrim may have been intentionally dumbed down because I remember one crypt where there's three panels on the floor that cause bars to raise up, blocking a doorway, as it is it's pointless but if it worked in reverse, there's three moveable pots nearby...

 

[420MuNkEy]

There are really 3 ways I've seen games address difficulty in relation to game progress.

The first way is increasing the enemy difficulty over time making it seem your character is weak in relation to the enemies, but in fact more things have been given to you that you can skillfully use. This method relies on increased caution, awareness, and knowledge of the player over time. This can cause frustration.

The second way I've seen is to increase the player's character power/strength exactly as much as the difficulty of the enemies is increased. This method doesn't require the player to change the way they play, which is simple, but in my opinion, boring.

The third way is to increase the power/strength of the player's character so that you become stronger than enemies you were previously equal to before they add new enemies. This can also be accomplished by just adding many more enemies. This method can change the way a player plays by making them less cautious. This will usually leave perpetuates a feeling of minor accomplishment while making the player feel like they're super-powerful.


Games which have their difficulty based in puzzles usually either increase in complexity (Portal 1) or maintain a constant level of complexity to tell a story (Portal 2).

 

[Cognisant]

How about atrophy, the more power a player obtains the more the player has to maintain it, just as skills naturally progress in ES games what if they naturally atrophied when not used?

In this way adaptation becomes the challenge, wealth and political power require management, micromanaging one's assets is time consuming, so is crafting and research, then there's shopping, cooking (assuming the character needs to eat regularly) and study (adventuring is a lot more rewarding if you know where to go, what to take, and what to do) so the player will have to meditate and spar to keep their magic & combat skills up, but the more powerful they become in the world the less time there is for meditation and sparring, so the game gets harder as the player learns to make do with less.

 

[EyeSeeCold]

What makes a game challenging to me is when there is a narrow threshold of ability / finesse to execute some action or when the rules change to the extent that I have to relearn the mechanics and logic of the new level. Portal is a good example of both.


When games utilize the same mechanics and logic throughout, then it's just a matter of trudging through story plots and slashing monsters / shooting enemies, which can be fun as in LoZ:OoT but for the most part it makes the game largely tedious with a low replay value.

 

[Solitaire U.]

Haven't played Oblivion. Grinding games...no thanks.

There's an excellent mod for STALKER Call of Priypat called 'Sigerous Mod'. English language conversion of it is here for anyone who cares: http://blackbyte.org/sgm/

I really like the difficulty angle in this series, and especially this particular mod. It basically dumps you into a witches brew of monsters and NPC human enemies with a wide variety of strengths and (for monsters) special abilities. You start out with shitty weapons and armor and a million different directions to go in. Go wherever you want, detour around whatever you can't handle and return when you're up to the challenge. What makes your human enemies better than you is not determined by a mystical set of skill parameters, but rather by the better equipment/weapons they carry. The nice thing is that, if you manage to kill a more well-equipped enemy, you get to loot their corpse for all the shit they were using against you. This in turn you can sell or equip yourself. Therein lies both the challenge and motivation to face more well-equipped enemies...what is that exo-skeleton sporting, G-36 toting bad ass merc going to drop if you manage to waste him?

This is in effect a form of leveling up, but it's a hell of a lot more satisfying and realistic than having to kill a million 'level whatever' rat clones to increase your stats, just so you can get past that 'level whatever' boss, so you can start the whole process over again. Rinse repeat vomit...

The brilliant thing about STALKER COP is its non-linear structure. While there are missions and tasks you have to complete to advance the story, you're not forced to do these in any particular order or fashion. For example, can't avoid getting gang-raped by that pack of bloodsuckers you've been hired to kill? No problem. Do what any sane person would do...run the fuck away, go exploring or whatever and come back later when you're more well equipped to handle the job.

I guess what I'm saying is that linearity forces the 'challenge curve' to be experienced as an escalating spiral of unrealistic Jedi mind tricks. I watched hours and hours of an Elder Scrolls let's play on YouTube and, while there were elements I liked, my overarching impression was "What a waste of a lush, beautifully executed free-roam world. Also, if I had a dollar for every time the narrator said "Yeah, welcome back...I just spent 4 hours grinding off-camera..." I'd probably have enough money to buy the fucking game myself.

 

[travelnjones]

Games that can achieve flow are usually the ones were I have felt challenge. I usually do not find this in most modern games. I do get it from Guitar hero though. Usually game this this are the simpler games of yesterday. Dragonfire for the Atari comes to mind. I have experienced it in Doom though too. A game like Robotron is probably another example simple but many enemies make it hard.

For me resource management is not challenging it is frustrating. When I don't have the tools to play the game as it was intended I feel upset more than I feel challenged. I am not a fan of managing bullets in first person shooters. But that said I don't like games like how shooters have gotten rid of health packs for regeneration of health over time. I don't feel its challenging

I don't really care for anything that feels like a quarter muncher to use an old arcade term. I don't want to face an impossible challenge over and over again. I am happy its over more than feeling accomplished. I like a hard enemy though.

 

[Pistoli]

Atmosphere. I know Resident Evil wasn't the most perfectly constructed or has the most efficient gameplay. But it created an environment with a "I might get kinda scared if I played this game alone and in the dark" atmosphere. Really, even the awkward angles and, sometimes, pain in the ass gameplay added to the tension and anxiety,,, When you combine this with limited ammo and creatures that could surprise attack you,, ..it could get tense.

No I know you could run around the zombies and totally own the games AI,,the developers knew this too- they rewarded you for it. Remember, if you completed the game in under 2 hours you would get some kind of reward..(different outfits I think).

All games can be broken down into their lowest common denominator,, Since Pong, they just added more stuff,, more games within a game. That's why I think, for some, the games environment and the atmosphere it creates can be a huge factor in the difficultly of a game. The more realistic it feels or, the more it emotionally engages you, the more you are in the game. When this happens, you start to vicariously playing the game through your character,,and become "human/mortal". Forget you have a chainsaw machine gun, grenades and super muscles,,,it's you in there and, you don't wanna die.

It's up to ones imagination..some people tend to enjoy the "game" part more of video games and, tend to focus their skills toward that element(points, kills, healthbar, stats, etc). Some people try to immerse themselves into the game,,while still acknowledging the games within the games like "ammo count, items, trade, bad guys,,etc) but, treating the games with the game as part of the atmosphere.

If the immersion is not great or, if the games within the game's patterns become to obvious,,then bye bye challenge,,bye bye fun. I think that's why games like Guitar Hero were so successful, they are the best of both worlds,,you immerse and become a rockstar and the game side of your brain gets challenged.( I never played Guitar Hero).

A game like Resident Evil for me, my brain focused more on the atmosphere and less on the mechanics of the game..so I didn't allocate enough of my brain to patterns that could of been obvious at the time, I was too worried about having 5 handgun bullets and 2 shotgun shells and needing to get the eagle medallion. Of coarse, that game was linear,, sandbox games like Fallout 3,,shit, I'll run around forever in that game, totally ignoring mainquest, unless I just happen to walk into one. Playing non-linear I then have time to recognize patterns in the games within the game,,it's like an XP point that my mind logs.