DIFFICULTY: CHALLENGE VS FRUSTRATION

Posts

slash
APATHY IS FOR COWARDS
4158
That's a pretty good assessment of challenge vs. frustration.

Challenge is when the player fails due to her own mistakes.
Frustration is when the player fails due to the game's mistakes.

Frustration is bad, challenge is good - if the game is meant to be challenging.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
author=bulmabriefs144
Just read the theory of fun (I like that the ending adds the "And You" player thank that's often in games). Of course, past a certain point, I didn't really grasp alot of it.

While it does provide a good overview of easy vs hard games, it doesn't really touch on why some games are frustrating and others are challenging. I don't believe it's as simple as a line or spectrum. I think you could have the same insane level of difficulty, but the fact that you've put tools in place to solve the puzzle (example: savepoints restore hp, meaning that although battles are killer, you can camp) is the actual difference.

A game is said to be challenging when the player finds a difficult situation but which the author of the game is apparently helping (the degree of help may be a factor, "here I gave you 100 gp when buying items requires 1000 gp at least" is not helping enough).

A game is said to be frustrating when the player finds a difficult situation but which the author of the game is not helping or even hindering the player. If done well however, the player gets a sense of fun from having beaten not only the monsters but also the author's design.
But

those aren't the definitions being used in this topic

or even sensible ones at all

It's defined right in the OP: challenge is when failure is the player's fault, and frustration is when failure is caused by something outside the hands of the player. Edit: what slashphoenix said is another way to put it

I mean you can imagine the terms to mean different things and use them differently in other discussions but please stop redefining words in the middle of a discussion just to confuse people who were all using them to mean a certain thing
EDIT: Yeah, the fake difficulty page seems to be a good assessment for what's frustrating in case some people still don't get it. Sorry if I didn't word it as well before.
slash
APATHY IS FOR COWARDS
4158
As a related aside, some people love those games that are intentionally frustrating - games like I Wanna Be The Guy and Kaizo Mario. The key difference here is that these games are very obviously stated to be frustrating and were made that way intentionally.

I have friends who enjoy these games for the sheer test of grit/willpower... but I quit them very quickly :P
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Yeah. There's a certain inherent enjoyment in feeling like you're not only good enough at a game to win but good enough to win when you're not supposed to. This is the driving force behind the way a lot of people play RPGs - you want to feel like you're not just good enough, you're way better than you're supposed to be. And so even though you could probably beat FF6 effortlessly just by playing normally, you avoid experience points for 90% of the game and abuse the stat growth from espers to get your magic power so high that Fire1 does 9999 damage and Ultima rolls over the integer limit to do three-digit damage.

Unfortunately, once you've developed that level of skill, it can be hard to find any normal game challenging at all. So you will search out insanely hard games that still provide you with the thrill of challenge, and even if they are designed like crap you feel like a god for beating a game that was never meant to be beaten.
slash
APATHY IS FOR COWARDS
4158
So... they're drugs?

I do enjoy beating games the way I'm not supposed sometimes, but it's not something I could ever convince myself to spend hours on, not when there's so many other games out there. I could never do those all-white-mage challenges or anything.
"Frustration occurs when the player feels as if his time has been wasted, and that the game is at fault."

That's exactly how I feel when a game is not difficult enough.
In blueness

author=LockeZ
But

those aren't the definitions being used in this topic

or even sensible ones at all

lol

It's defined right in the OP: challenge is when failure is the player's fault, and frustration is when failure is caused by something outside the hands of the player. Edit: what slashphoenix said is another way to put

But if we replace "something outside the hands of the player" with "probably the programmer", that's exactly what the two of us said

I mean you can imagine the terms to mean different things and use them differently in other discussions but please stop redefining words in the middle of a discussion just to confuse people who were all using them to mean a certain thing

But but... ummm, yea. I thought the definition didn't quite cover what we were trying to grasp. As in, why exactly something can be challenging but another is frustrating. If we say frustration is simply "challenge" to another player, that kinda makes it totally subjective, and kills the argument, on "can something be challenging without being frustrating?" That's assuming my definition is right and I'm not making stuff up of course.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Yeah, you keep saying that something can be challenging to one player but frustrating to another, and one or two other people have also said the same thing, but I don't think that's actually true. Not by the definitions in the OP, at least. Those things are challenging to one player, and too challenging to another. That's totally different. It's not that the game is designed badly - it's just not designed for the second player. I think that's just a matter of players with different skill levels and/or different amounts of tolerance for pain.

I Wanna Be The Guy is frustrating, I mean just straight up frustrating, no question. It's not a matter of opinion or skill - it's that way for absolutely everyone, even if you're a master at it. Even if you beat the game without dying once, it's still frustrating, because the way you became that good was by playing the game for hundreds of hours and dying a lot of cheap unavoidable deaths and memorizing them.

It's also extremely challenging, though, and you honestly have to be pretty skilled just to be able to tell which parts are legit challenges and which are cheap, because when you suck at recognizing patterns and noticing danger, things seem random that really aren't. And that's probably true for any game. I mean, hell, when I was ten I couldn't beat any bosses in any Mega Man games, because I couldn't recognize their patterns. As far as I could tell, they just randomly jumped to where I was and landed on me, killing me at random with no warning. That was super cheap! Except it wasn't, and I just thought it was random and unavoidable because I sucked.
Eh... frustrating is not defined by its cause. If something is too difficult for you, it will be frustrating. In the end, frustration is just a reaction to a challenge being too great. It can be because of bad design. It can be because of a lack of skill. Its still frustrating if you can't win. The trick is avoiding the bad game design that causes it, and to provide a large enough variety of difficulty levels so everyone is happy.
Brady
Was Built From Pixels Up
3134
LX, you're correct technically: anyone will get frustrated with a challenge being too great, and will ultimately just irritate the player if they can't defeat it.

This discussion is more about the two concepts from a development standpoint: things the developer can do that are just challenging, or things they can do that are likely only to frustrate people without really having the same "challenge" element.
author=Brady
LX, you're correct technically: anyone will get frustrated with a challenge being too great, and will ultimately just irritate the player if they can't defeat it.

This discussion is more about the two concepts from a development standpoint: things the developer can do that are just challenging, or things they can do that are likely only to frustrate people without really having the same "challenge" element.


I thought I addressed that?
slash
APATHY IS FOR COWARDS
4158
I don't believe you have to offer difficulty levels for everybody. It's a nice thought and you can if it makes the game more appealing, but it could very well increase development time massively and at some point you risk watering down the game for the sake of mass appeal.

Not everybody has to like every game :)
author=slashphoenix
I don't believe you have to offer difficulty levels for everybody. It's a nice thought and you can if it makes the game more appealing, but at some point you risk watering down the game for the sake of mass appeal.

Not everybody has to like every game :)

I was more saying for if you want to eliminate as much potential frustration as possible, that was all. I agree that its hardly necessary if you don't care to try to make the game appealing to that group.
Brady
Was Built From Pixels Up
3134
Oh, I just meant that while challenge can lead to frustration (and can also be rectified with difficulty levels) that this discussion is more just about the gameplay elements that are immediately frustrating and nothnig else. The sort of things that difficulty levels won't actually make any less frustrating.

Fake difficulty, like selecting random paths -half of which lead to death- won't be any less frustrating if an "Easy Mode" gave you more time to make your decision, for example.

Wasn't a dig at you or anything, for the record.
slash
APATHY IS FOR COWARDS
4158
I'll still get mad at a game if I lose, but if it was a fair loss I'll begrudgingly accept that. If it wasn't, well, I only have so much free time these days :P
author=Brady
Oh, I just meant that while challenge can lead to frustration (and can also be rectified with difficulty levels) that this discussion is more just about the gameplay elements that are immediately frustrating and nothnig else. The sort of things that difficulty levels won't actually make any less frustrating.

Fake difficulty, like selecting random paths -half of which lead to death- won't be any less frustrating if an "Easy Mode" gave you more time to make your decision, for example.

Wasn't a dig at you or anything, for the record.


Okay, I get what you're saying. Maybe I said it wrong originally or you didn't notice it. I noted that frustration can come from with bad game design (what you're referencing) or a lack of skill (or patience if you;'re dealing with grinding games). Difficulty levels was a simply the typical tactic I pointed out in fixing the issue with a lack of skill. It was a bit unrelated to the bad game design stuff you're talking about.

Really, I was just pointing out that frustration isn't solely bad game design, and as a designer people just need to be aware that both are easily capable of creating frustration.

That's all. And no, I didn't think it was a dig at me or anything, lol.
If you want to know why I came up with the theory that frustration is generally a result of a game being designed (poorly) to not give you any tools, while challenge is something genuinely hard, here's an object lesson.

Final Fantasy X has bounty monsters, which generally beat me, because despite being massively leveled, I'm underlevel for this sort of thing. But this is considered challenging not frustrating. Why? Well, first off, they're a sidequest. This is key. If you have an epic challenge boss that can ream you in 5 secs flat, or an epic puzzle which stumps all non-Mensa candidates, take it outside the main game. Second, the final boss, after beating all the others (somehow), can actually be beaten without taking damage (or barely any, anyway). Yes, seriously, no joke.

(http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Nemesis_(Final_Fantasy_X) for the full guide)

Now, on the flip side we have Maplestory. It's a game for kids. But if you deviate from the norm (which is glass cannon weirdoes and not just for wizards), you generally suck. If you're a wizard, and follow the norm, you generally suck anyway (they absolutely must use a magic conversion skill to stay alive as upwards of level 90, their hp isn't enough to last one hit). So yea, not even bosses but normal enemies are a pain in the butt. But let's talk about bosses. One boss seriously has a stat combo that drops hp and mp to 1, and then hits you with poison. Cheap instant death, especially since poison is a common stat, and 1/1 pretty much always goes off.

Does Maple have any means of countering this technique? Sure, BUY a pet, and BUY auto-potion, so it heals when you get 1/1 reduced. This is frustrating, to anyone expecting to play the game without shelling out money.
slash
APATHY IS FOR COWARDS
4158
So, here's a question that's secretly relevant to what I'm doing at the moment...

Would the time limit in Majora's Mask be considered challenging or frustrating? It's clearly stated and the game makes no attempts to screw you with it, but if you're kinda slow at making your way through a dungeon, it could come off as a cheap way of adding difficulty, imposed by an artificial limit.

I think the key here is that the 3-day limit is that the game doesn't lie to you at all. You are explicitly told how much time you have left, at all times. Despite being an artificial limit, it's one that adds to the gameplay and the mood. Tetris is the same way. If the game didn't get faster the longer you played, there will be much less challenge and the targeted skill level would be lower. Like LockeZ said, I think this is a difference between frustration due to cheap mechanics and frustration due to your own (lack of) skill.

So, it's important to be very up-front about the challenges your game presents and why. Give the player fair warning and a chance to play and react with everything that presents challenge, instead of creating unavoidable difficulty.
For Majora's Mask, I'd say challenging. You even learn that you can play the Song of Time a certain way to slow down the passage of time if you explore all of Clock Town and find that scarecrow dude.

The only thing in Majora that was a pain in the ass big time was a game-freezing bug that would randomly occur in the version of the game on the Zelda Collector's Edition Gamecube disc, which is how I played Majora. Due to having to turn back time to permanently save the game, there were multiple occurrences where I had to repeat entire areas.

If anything, I'd say this lack of permanent save points was something that was actually frustrating and was probably only implemented so that you didn't save your game permanently 1 second before the moon crashes into Termina, resulting in an un-winnable save file. I think they could have done something better than the owl statues.

EDIT: Actually, I'm not sure if the Game Over from the moon crashing brings you directly back to the main menu or if it gives you the option to start from Day 1.