When level designers are lazy

[IAmAndre]

Hi,

 

I'm writing this being very frustrated by this habit game designers have to falsely increase the difficulty of their games. I'm currently playing Dead Space 3, and I've been very frustrated this afternoon after dying and retrying multiple times before passing a level (I play on Hard mode, difficulty level 3 out of 4) with an enemy who can't die. The goal is to survive for a few minutes until the train arrives, but you're basically fighting an enemy who keep regenerating, along with a few other villains. I think this is pure laziness from the level designers: you can't make your game harder by adding this stupid difficulty, it's just not fair. I think every boss/character in a game should have a weakness, and everything should be balanced.

The same thing also happens is sports games. In NBA 2K, the CPU keeps scoring 3 points no matter what you do, and your defenders become useless. The same thing happens in FIFA.

In some strategy games, or in The Sims, sometimes they also find a way to lengthen the life of their games by forcing to wait even when you have the resources to move on to the next level.

 

So do you share my opinion, or do you have more examples to share? This topic is mostly about complaining

[ARikozuM]

Agreed with so many games. I don't mind a "survive this many minutes" if the enemy can be decimated, but, in the case of DS3, that bastard was just cheap for a hold-out. 

[Princess Luna]

Ubishit = lets collect 100 items spread across the map for an outfit you'll use for a couple of minutes since you'll be done with the game by the time you get it any ways.

[Princess Luna]

6 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

Agreed with so many games. I don't mind a "survive this many minutes" if the enemy can be decimated, but, in the case of DS3, that bastard was just cheap for a hold-out. 

I wish Valve still made games, HL2 had awesome moments where you had to survive those waves of Combine...

[IAmAndre]

10 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

Ubishit = lets collect 100 items spread across the map for an outfit you'll use for a couple of minutes since you'll be done with the game by the time you get it any ways.

What game are you referring to?

[ARikozuM]

12 minutes ago, IAmAndre said:

What game are you referring to?

Probably Assassin's Creed or collectathons in general.

[Taja]

Yeah, for example:

On fallout survival, your healing is slower, so you cant just pump 10 stimpaks and go Crazy on a bullet storm. I think this is Nice, way better than making enemies have 5x dmg

 

But some games, imo, have the "hard" equivalent to normal. I always play on hard or very hard, because normal is always too easy.

[Mira Yurizaki]

4 hours ago, IAmAndre said:

The goal is to survive for a few minutes until the train arrives, but you're basically fighting an enemy who keep regenerating, along with a few other villains. I think this is pure laziness from the level designers: you can't make your game harder by adding this stupid difficulty, it's just not fair.

If you were facing a limited amount of enemies, then this scenario doesn't really add any tension. You could kill everything and wait it out.

[ARikozuM]

Just now, M.Yurizaki said:

If you were facing a limited amount of enemies, then this scenario doesn't really add any tension. You could kill everything and wait it out.

Or they could have added an instance where the level ends and the train arrives. 

[Mira Yurizaki]

18 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

Or they could have added an instance where the level ends and the train arrives. 

Sure, but I'm also floating in the camp of if you came in fully armed and you're running the same strategy over and over hoping to win but still lose, it might be you that's having a problem and is not an issue with the design. I completed Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare's single player campaign and there was a hold-the-line instance where I was dying. But every time I died I was adjusting what I was doing for the next time until I survived.

 

Plenty of games raise the difficulty by making the computer blatantly cheat, because otherwise the game would still be too easy. Is it fair that AI in hard difficulties of strategy games basically get infinite resources or whatever? No. But the AI isn't there to make them think as good as human players.

[IAmAndre]

11 hours ago, M.Yurizaki said:

If you were facing a limited amount of enemies, then this scenario doesn't really add any tension. You could kill everything and wait it out.

Having an enemy who keeps regenerating, more enemies coming, and limited ammo isn't fair at all!

My trick was to cheat too by taking advantage of the animations when you do certain moves, it makes you kill a few seconds.