Frustrating or Fair?

[Cube]

Playing a couple of games recently, The Touryst and Battletoads (new), got me thinking about what makes games feel fair/unfair or frustrating.

The Touryst is what should be a relaxing puzzle adventure game, with calming settings and visuals and no "death" as such. However, I got very angry at the game. Some parts require precise platforming (sometimes onto moving objects) and the games camera and controls just aren't up to the task. Fall into a hole and you return to the start of the room. but the slow pace of the game makes it feel like it takes an age to get back to the jump you missed due to not being able to determine the "depth" of the object.

Meanwhile, there's a section of Battletoads which is like a DKC minecart level. There are different types of "rails" and you have to press the right button to morph into the correct mode for each type. I died constantly, yet didn't feel annoyed at all. Each death felt like it was my fault. 

I think Super Meat Boy is a big example of that. The game is extremely difficult, but as the controls feel spot-on and you restart the level instantly, it removes the frustration of the death, yet it still feels rewarding when you finish.

 

Are there any other things that can make a game feel either fair, or something that can make one frustrating?

[Dcubed]

Cool idea for a topic!

For me? The number one thing that makes a game feel frustrating and unfair is a poorly designed gameplay camera.  Any time where you can't clearly see what you need to interact with is a sure-fire recipe for a miserable time.

 

Oh No! My PTSD has come back to haunt me!

Difficult doesn't have to mean frustrating.  Donkey Kong Country Returns & Tropical Freeze are great examples of games that are hard as nails, but always feel fun and fair; no matter how many times you die.

Super Mario Sunshine though? That shit is aggrevating!

Edited August 30, 2020 by Dcubed

[Josh64]

I don't know if it's the increased player count from 8 to 12, if the items seem more constant or what but Mario Kart has generally felt fair even with all the crazy items, but something about 8 rubs me up the wrong way and I just get so pissed off every time I'm hit that I can't enjoy it. 

What a bitter, bitter man I have become. 

Edited August 30, 2020 by Josh64

[Glen-i]

Yep, bad camera is definitely one of the worst offenders of frustration.

You know what frustrates me the most in RPG's? Enemies that scale to your level.

One of the many, many, many reasons Final Fantasy VIII sucks is because enemies level up alongside you. And their stats go up at a faster rate than Squall and friends.

Congrats, you've just made the game 100 times harder!

It's such an unrewarding feeling, knowing the work you've put into getting stronger is detrimental to your success. The most efficient way to play FF8 is to run from everything, stay at Level 1, and get your stat boosts from the junction system, which provide flat boosts that let you decimate bosses.

Skyrim does this in a frustrating way as well. You can totally screw yourself if you're unaware of the way enemies scale.

Also, it's a boring open world game, but that's not for here.

Of course, with most things, there tends to be an exception. And that exception is Octopath Traveler, which uses Level Scaling in a much better way. In that game, enemies rise in level as you recruit more party members and finish more chapters. So leveling up doesn't inadvertently make enemies harder, progress in the story does.

There's also a cap to how strong the enemies can get, no matter how far you are in the story, the random encounters in the first chapter areas will still be balanced around a Level 11 party.

EDIT: @Josh64, I imagine the key change with Mario Kart 8 in item distribution might be what you're feeling.

You see, in 8, it's the physical distance between 1st place and everyone else that determines what items you get. So even 2nd place can get great items if they're really far behind 1st place.

Edited August 30, 2020 by Glen-i

[Will]

For me it all comes down to why I’m failing at something.

17 hours ago, Cube said:

Each death felt like it was my fault. 

This is key, if it’s my fault because I’m not up to the task then I won’t get frustrated. If it’s a control issue, camera issue, or just weird game design then it will really irk my and I probably won’t be playing for long.

Difficulty curve design is really... difficult. There are cheap ways you can do things as talked about by @Glen-i where things just arbitrarily get harder the better you get, or things that genuinely add to the challenge and introduce new elements to a game that can be very enjoyable.

With micro-transactions now a huge thing the design of “frustration” has become a key component of games, especially on mobile. We design everything around gameplay loops that maximize frustration at just the right time to push a purchase, and then allow a player some joyous returns to enforce the idea that spending money in the game was a good thing. It is what it is but the design by analytics to maximize the returns of this loop is not really something that benefits gaming as a medium in my opinion.

[Dcubed]

2 hours ago, will' said:

For me it all comes down to why I’m failing at something.

This is key, if it’s my fault because I’m not up to the task then I won’t get frustrated. If it’s a control issue, camera issue, or just weird game design then it will really irk my and I probably won’t be playing for long.

Difficulty curve design is really... difficult. There are cheap ways you can do things as talked about by @Glen-i where things just arbitrarily get harder the better you get, or things that genuinely add to the challenge and introduce new elements to a game that can be very enjoyable.

With micro-transactions now a huge thing the design of “frustration” has become a key component of games, especially on mobile. We design everything around gameplay loops that maximize frustration at just the right time to push a purchase, and then allow a player some joyous returns to enforce the idea that spending money in the game was a good thing. It is what it is but the design by analytics to maximize the returns of this loop is not really something that benefits gaming as a medium in my opinion.

This is a bit of a tangent, but what is also frustrating is when a game either doesn't introduce anything meaningfully new & interesting throughout the game's running time, or when it's difficulty curve and new gameplay features are entierly predictable.

The best games aim to surprise and maintain novelty throughout the entire experience.  The Metroid Prime games are a great example of this, as they are purposely designed to have an uneven difficulty curve with diffiulty spikes strategically scattered throughout the game; something that ultimetely makes the games much more memorable and enjoyable as a result.

Edited August 31, 2020 by Dcubed

[Dufniall]

Cool topic. It's hard to put a finger on what really makes a game fair or frustrating games. Plus, there are games that are frustrating that I love and games that are fair that I hate. So it's not only this aspect that makes or breaks a game for me.

To start with some frustrations.

• Bad camera has already been mentioned and is one of the worst things in games. Not making a jump because you can't see where you are going is just unforgiveable.
• Somebody also mentioned it in another topic, but unexpected reinforcements in strategy games. Valkryia Chronicles does this, as well as for example Wargroove. In your first playthrough you have no clue they are coming and where they are coming, so you cannot anticipate. This really feels unfair.
• Weird controls or mechanics. I'm currently playing Super Castlevania IV in the Castlevania Collection and there are just some weird mechanics. Like stairs, if you fall or jump on one you'll fall through, unless you press down. Bad hitboxes is another point of frustration, especially in platformers. As are blind falls. Not knowing if something is an insta-kill or not (again Castlevania: some spikes kill you in 1 hit while others don't).

What does feel fair? Basically the opposite of what I've said above. Games like Hollow Knight control great and have perfect hitboxes, so every death there feels fair. Monster Hunter is also a franchise I love because you need to learn the behaviour of the monsters, and in time you will always be able to take one down.

Despite the frustrations I love Wargroove and Valkyria Chronicles, so that's an example of games that do something wrong but still are great. I'm mixed about Castlevania IV, I have a feeling this series started to get good from the GBA on onwards.

[Cube]

1 hour ago, Vileplume2000 said:

• Somebody also mentioned it in another topic, but unexpected reinforcements in strategy games. Valkryia Chronicles does this, as well as for example Wargroove. In your first playthrough you have no clue they are coming and where they are coming, so you cannot anticipate. This really feels unfair.

That reminds me of something else: enemies healing. Even though it's technically fair (as you can do the same), it often feels unfair. 

If there's clearly a healer enemy, then it's fine as you know you have to take them out first, but when an enemy is low on health and gets more out of the blue (either through potion or due to it triggering a new "phase"), it's just annoying.

[Dcubed]

1 hour ago, Vileplume2000 said:

• Somebody also mentioned it in another topic, but unexpected reinforcements in strategy games. Valkryia Chronicles does this, as well as for example Wargroove. In your first playthrough you have no clue they are coming and where they are coming, so you cannot anticipate. This really feels unfair.

I don't mind this so much... Except when these reinforcements can attack on the same turn they spawn in on.  THEN it's blatantly unfair (I'm looking at YOU Fire Emblem Awakening!)

[drahkon]

1 hour ago, Vileplume2000 said:

Somebody also mentioned it in another topic, but unexpected reinforcements in strategy games. Valkryia Chronicles does this, as well as for example Wargroove. In your first playthrough you have no clue they are coming and where they are coming, so you cannot anticipate. This really feels unfair.

That was me
And I agree, it's such an unfair (and also unnecessary) way to increase the difficulty

29 minutes ago, Cube said:

That reminds me of something else: enemies healing. Even though it's technically fair (as you can do the same), it often feels unfair. 

Like in Pokémon games...every time you fight in an arena and you get a Pokémon down to low HP: BOOM, here's the ultra-mega-potion to fully heal.

[Aperson]

This is definitely an interesting topic to discuss.

 

One boss I always think of when it comes to difficulty is the Boost Guardian from Prime 2. In the original Gamecube version this boss was a huge difficulty spike and the general design of the boss was very difficult, you needed multiple attempts just to be able to clear this thing. But, as I found out earlier this year when I LP'd the game, they nerfed the boost guardian on the Trilogy version and it was significantly easier as a result. Prime 3 I feel goes on a reverse difficulty curve when it comes to it's major seed bosses, with the game putting a large difficult spike towards the end of Bryyo which culimates in the Mogenar boss fight but then everything after that somehow ends up easier.

 

I'm a big fan of difficulty curves and I always think a game should be easy (but not TOO easy) to begin with and then ramp up the challenge as the game goes along. Mario games are usually excellent at this... though it is debatable how far up the difficulty curve the New Super Mario Bros. games go, it does seem like the difficulty for the final levels in those games has been set somewhat lower than normal with the levels that would generally be reserved for the higher portions of that difficulty curve reserved for the secret worlds. If a game stays too easy throughout then it's not really much fun and if it's too hard throughout then it can be rather frustrating.

 

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Dark Souls in this thread yet. That game has a really high difficulty curve, but in many ways it skirts the line between frustrating in fair. Perhaps it's because the combat and game design in Dark Souls is built in a way to remove randomness from the equation, if you do certain things in a certain way you will succeed and if you do anything else then it doesn't usually end well. The difficulty ends up coming from a lack of knowledge which you gain. That probably clashes with some of my approaches to boss battles and explains why I have yet to beat Ornstein and Smough and why I put the game back on the shelf after getting stuck on that boss battle. Fundamentally with Dark Souls I feel ike the combat is fair in one on one encounters, you can read the movements of one enemy and react accordingly, add multiple into the mix though and the timing can be thrown off. So, if you ever have to fight two bosses at once it is flat out mean.

 

Other difficult bosses and moments I've had to face include the Biolizard from Sonic Adventure 2 which I was stuck on for ages. Probably because the speed based gameplay was not very well suited to a boss battle where you are cornered in to a limited area of the environment. Then he starts moving around the arena so your natural instinct is to run away with Shadow but oh, if you run too far there's a random tail in the way and you have to run another way... that doesn't seem very fair. Also the boss changes the way you get to it's weak point about halfway through and it isn't very obvious that you're supposed to homing attack the floating balls around the area. Much like many things in 3D Sonic games I think this one goes into the frustrating category.

 

Ansem's second fight in Kingdom Hearts is another example of a boss battle that is particularly brutal. When you have a third person camera and a limited arena to fight in, is having a pinball like attack that launches the boss all around the arena really that fair to deal with? Yeah, you can counter it with good timing but the split second window in which you need to react to it is so specific that most people who do this fight will end up either getting hit by the attack or then actively focus on dodge rolling out of the way of it, which can be slightly awkward to do due to the nature of said attack. Not to mention that you then get in such a situation where attacking can harm you thanks to the Guardian "SUBMIT" attack so that situation requires you to basically dodge every time he's shouting SUBMIT. Also, there's a particularly brutal enemy gauntlet right before the final boss which imo drags on for way too long and requires you to do a ridiculous amount.

 

Also, in Ratchet & clank 2, the planet Grelbin has one ridiculously annoying Snowbeast enemy. The enemy spawns at a relentless rate and constantly chases after you, in a level which is basically a massive snow field which you have to go around collecting crystals. This becomes particularly annoying but then I heard from the uselesspodcasts Youtube channel which is run by two ex-Insomniac developers that they had a very limited time in which to complete the level so they needed to do something quickly, hence why such a ridiculously unfair enemy like the Snowbeasts exists. Insomniac has since had an "Annual Snowbeast Award" for the worst game design decision in each of their games.

 

So, in general I think the most infamous moments in gaming tend to come because of difficulty spikes and while some are fair difficulty, a lot of bad game designs are generally responsible for some ridiculous boss battles.

[Dcubed]

19 minutes ago, Aperson said:

This is definitely an interesting topic to discuss.

 

One boss I always think of when it comes to difficulty is the Boost Guardian from Prime 2. In the original Gamecube version this boss was a huge difficulty spike and the general design of the boss was very difficult, you needed multiple attempts just to be able to clear this thing. But, as I found out earlier this year when I LP'd the game, they nerfed the boost guardian on the Trilogy version and it was significantly easier as a result. Prime 3 I feel goes on a reverse difficulty curve when it comes to it's major seed bosses, with the game putting a large difficult spike towards the end of Bryyo which culimates in the Mogenar boss fight but then everything after that somehow ends up easier.

 

I'm a big fan of difficulty curves and I always think a game should be easy (but not TOO easy) to begin with and then ramp up the challenge as the game goes along. Mario games are usually excellent at this... though it is debatable how far up the difficulty curve the New Super Mario Bros. games go, it does seem like the difficulty for the final levels in those games has been set somewhat lower than normal with the levels that would generally be reserved for the higher portions of that difficulty curve reserved for the secret worlds. If a game stays too easy throughout then it's not really much fun and if it's too hard throughout then it can be rather frustrating.

 

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Dark Souls in this thread yet. That game has a really high difficulty curve, but in many ways it skirts the line between frustrating in fair. Perhaps it's because the combat and game design in Dark Souls is built in a way to remove randomness from the equation, if you do certain things in a certain way you will succeed and if you do anything else then it doesn't usually end well. The difficulty ends up coming from a lack of knowledge which you gain. That probably clashes with some of my approaches to boss battles and explains why I have yet to beat Ornstein and Smough and why I put the game back on the shelf after getting stuck on that boss battle. Fundamentally with Dark Souls I feel ike the combat is fair in one on one encounters, you can read the movements of one enemy and react accordingly, add multiple into the mix though and the timing can be thrown off. So, if you ever have to fight two bosses at once it is flat out mean.

 

Other difficult bosses and moments I've had to face include the Biolizard from Sonic Adventure 2 which I was stuck on for ages. Probably because the speed based gameplay was not very well suited to a boss battle where you are cornered in to a limited area of the environment. Then he starts moving around the arena so your natural instinct is to run away with Shadow but oh, if you run too far there's a random tail in the way and you have to run another way... that doesn't seem very fair. Also the boss changes the way you get to it's weak point about halfway through and it isn't very obvious that you're supposed to homing attack the floating balls around the area. Much like many things in 3D Sonic games I think this one goes into the frustrating category.

 

Ansem's second fight in Kingdom Hearts is another example of a boss battle that is particularly brutal. When you have a third person camera and a limited arena to fight in, is having a pinball like attack that launches the boss all around the arena really that fair to deal with? Yeah, you can counter it with good timing but the split second window in which you need to react to it is so specific that most people who do this fight will end up either getting hit by the attack or then actively focus on dodge rolling out of the way of it, which can be slightly awkward to do due to the nature of said attack. Not to mention that you then get in such a situation where attacking can harm you thanks to the Guardian "SUBMIT" attack so that situation requires you to basically dodge every time he's shouting SUBMIT. Also, there's a particularly brutal enemy gauntlet right before the final boss which imo drags on for way too long and requires you to do a ridiculous amount.

 

Also, in Ratchet & clank 2, the planet Grelbin has one ridiculously annoying Snowbeast enemy. The enemy spawns at a relentless rate and constantly chases after you, in a level which is basically a massive snow field which you have to go around collecting crystals. This becomes particularly annoying but then I heard from the uselesspodcasts Youtube channel which is run by two ex-Insomniac developers that they had a very limited time in which to complete the level so they needed to do something quickly, hence why such a ridiculously unfair enemy like the Snowbeasts exists. Insomniac has since had an "Annual Snowbeast Award" for the worst game design decision in each of their games.

 

So, in general I think the most infamous moments in gaming tend to come because of difficulty spikes and while some are fair difficulty, a lot of bad game designs are generally responsible for some ridiculous boss battles.

Worth pointing out that those difficulty spikes are part of the reason why those bosses and moments stick out so well in your memory.  Everybody remembers Boost Guardian because it kicked everyone's arse when they dared to challenge it, and left a deep emotional scar that begged to be shared with others.

A difficulty curve needs to progress of course, but equally, a linear curve is preditable and boring.  Carefully placed difficulty spikes can make your game more memorable and interesting.  Case in point? I've just started another playthrough of NSMB Wii and I was stunned to see Hammer Bros being placed as early as Level 1-3!! Holy shit! NSMB Wii doesn't fuck around!  This game is brutally hard, and makes even Lost Levels look piss easy by comparison! But it also has levels scattered about that offer moments of reprieve, with a difficulty curve that progresses nicely overall, but not in a predictable & linear fashion; rather you have difficulty spikes strategically scattered throughout that act to surprise throughout (This is really enabled by the myriad of optional support mechanics in play that give less skilled players a fighting chance, but that's outside the scope of this post; look forward to my writeup later on ).

And that's one of the big reasons why NSMB Wii's level design is so good! It's got real bite, and it's not predictable at all! The difficulty curve is purposely non-linear, and that works entierly to the game's favour.

Edited August 31, 2020 by Dcubed

[Glen-i]

On 31/08/2020 at 6:36 PM, Dcubed said:

Case in point? I've just started another playthrough of NSMB Wii and I was stunned to see Hammer Bros being placed as early as Level 1-3!! Holy shit! NSMB Wii doesn't fuck around!  This game is brutally hard, and makes even Lost Levels look piss easy by comparison!

Mate, come on. That's some proper exaggeration right there, and I mostly agree with you about NSMB Wii being on the more difficult side of Mario Platformers.

But now that you mention it, Lost Levels and NSMB Wii are really great examples of frustrating and fair, respectively.

[Aperson]

OK, I will fully admit the last time I played New Super Mario Bros. Wii was over 11 years ago so I may be misremembering certain aspects of difficulty. I don't remember having too much problem with that game until I got towards the end, but perhaps also my viewpoint over difficulty in a 2D Mario game was more based on how often I might get a Game Over as opposed to how often I would actually be failing at levels and since the NSMB games give you so many extra lives it's not something that I considered as something to be difficult if going by that metric.

 

Also this is going to be extremely contentious but... I don't consider Hammer Bros. to be that difficult. This might be my own selfish view though because I know very much how to deal with Hammer Bros now and that viewpoint has probably been skewed by Mario Maker. Difficulty curve in Mario games for me has always been viewed through the perspective of Super Mario World which was the first 2D Mario game I ever played. The first few levels in Mario World aren't very challenging, but for new players there's also a margin of error you can make. But overall once you understand how to play the game you beat those levels. As the game goes on and new powerups are introduced they also throw new types of levels in there, the Ghost Houses up the complexity of level design and you actually have to think about where to go next. The castles provide major platforming gauntlets that really test your mettle.

 

I guess when I'm talking of NSMB difficulty curves my mind always goes back towards the original one on DS. For whatever reason, I never really felt that game got particularly difficult. It starts off on the right foot but for me that game never really pushed the boat out so far aside from a few difficult lava levels in the last world. The last castle is extremely memorable due to the Stone Tower temple like structure of how you flip the whole level upside down to progress but it never felt too difficult and then was topped off by a rather easy final boss.

 

Now, this is going to be an aesthetic preference, but I also feel like the levels in NSMB games, as objectively well designed as they are, have not always looked as interesting as levels in other 2D platformers and honestly, as soon as Donkey Kong Country Returns came out I found myself much preferring that game to New Super Mario Bros. Wii. The level design felt a lot more intense in some situations but... it runs into a particular problem with it's own difficult curve which I think is raised a bit too high too quickly. As soon as World 4 you are faced with an entire world of gruelling mine cart gauntlets which are extremely punishing and feel a bit too difficult for what is essentially the midpoint in the game. Now, I feel the DKCR games are in general designed for those who want a bit more challenge in their 2D platformers but ultimately what grabbed me with those games is Retro's design aesthetic and how every level feels totally unique. Well, almost as far as DKCR is concerned, Tropical Freeze then came out and was just in general a much better game than DKCR with a much fairer difficulty curve as well as combining how each level is distinct and unique. If you showed me any gameplay footage of a level from any New Super Mario Bros games without telling me what the level was, aside from a few I couldn't tell you which level that actually was. With Tropical Freeze which is personally my favourite 2D platformer of all time, I could very easily tell about 80% of the levels from that game. But... that's going off topic somewhat as this is talking about aesthetic over difficulty.

 

Then again, considering how all of you lot panned my Super Mario Maker 2 levels, it's clear we're on different pages in terms of what we want from our level designs...

[WackerJr]

Great topic and I agree with the suggestions made so far.

Another one I’d like to raise is blind leaps of faith (especially in 2D games).

I understand that with a limited viewing space, there will be times where you can’t see where to go next / the platform you next need to reach. In these instances you’re often given a choice to either drop carefully off the edge & hope there’s a lower platform, or to leap off as far as possible.

When done right and you leap off and land can be exhilarating & feel like you’ve pulled off a great feat.  All too often I’ve experienced games where the next platform requires a precise leap that’s some way in the distance but if you leapt as far as possible you’d overshoot (& often die).

Games like the Mario platformers deal with this in clever ways, such as putting coins to indicate where to go.  These indicators without explicitly telling the player is good & feels fair.

Unfair is where there are no markers & you just have to memorise how far to jump following the inevitable loss of life.  I haven’t found any good gifs to display my point, although if you’ve ever played the awful Tazmania games, or Sonic 2 in Game Gear you’ll no doubt have a lasting impression of how infuriating & unfair these can be. 

 

[Jonnas]

Fair challenges usually come from when you feel like you're in control of the situation. Frustration comes when it feels like there's nothing you could've done.

For example, fighting games are fair in theory, both players have a decent, legitimate shot at winning. But if one player outclasses the other by a wide margin, the game itself might feel unfair, even though it all had to do with the other player. However, some characters just tend to be high tiers, so fighting them can feel unfair, and yet paradoxically, not all top tiers feel unfair to fight against. There's a theory about this that goes further, once you take into account that some games put a lot of emphasis into combo execution (Tekken, Capcom vs.) while others put a lot into the "neutral", that is, the spacing and mindgames (Smash Bros, Street Fighter). One player used to the latter can find the necessity of combos frustrating, while a player used to the former can be infuriated that they can't get a decent hit, and if they fight each other in a brand new game, whichever way that game's design leans (combos or spacing) will dictate which player becomes frustrated.

In single-player games, that sort of thing is simpler, since the developer is in charge of control, playstyle, and challenge. A lot of good stuff was already mentioned here, and you'll find that most of these come down to the question of "Does the player feel in control of the potentially frustrating element or not?". This is why a lot of it can be down to UI, or gameplay limitations, intentional or otherwise. How fair you find a game can just be down to how tolerant you are of certain aspects, or how willing you are to work under permanent obstacles or limitations (I remember the Mega Man Zero series being called nigh-unplayable by a reviewer because you... can't duck to bypass projectiles. So silly, so few enemies even shoot to begin with!)

The reinforcements in Fire Emblem are an interesting one, because some games telegraph where they're going to pop up from (if you see tiles with fortresses or stairs, you know enemies will pop up from there), and that feels fair. But if they come out of nowhere, it just feels like annoying extra work you weren't preparing for. At the same time, them popping up at the end of a turn can actually make them piss-easy to deal with, because you can kill them before they move. But if they spawn and move in the same turn, it's a nasty, nasty surprise you never considered and never had any control over. FE Awakening actually gives verbal warning about when they'll appear, but even that doesn't feel like enough.

Different FE games handle them differently, and seeing those differences can help break down the issue. Blazing Blade feels fair, you can prepare for reinforcements, and even block them if you manage to plan things properly. Whereas Binding Blade has the most consistently bullshit ambush spawns, with same-turn reinforcements you can't block, that also show up in the middle of where your army is expected to be. However, Awakening had the single worst case ever of that, with Falcoknights (the glass cannon units) suddenly flanking you from the sides on the narrowest map in the game (mind you, I like dealing with unexpected elements, as preparing for the worst case scenario we can imagine is a very fun challenge. But a surprise Lancefaire Pegasus ramming into my dick was not the sort of scenario I could imagine in that moment).

Edited September 6, 2020 by Jonnas