PC Level Caps and Artificial Difficulty

agrastiOs

agrastiOs

Refugee
Any true RPG player knows there is massive value in restarting a new character with different strength/weaknesses, and turning on god mode is not fun for long. Rolling a new character and focusing on a new build has given me 1000's of hours of fun in Skyrim and Fallout. Once those characters are level 60-80 they are demi gods and the game is boring. What value is there having all the perks? Nobody IRL can master everything and if its too easy its just boring.
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It is fun to play with builds, I agree with that. But just the knowledge of artificial cap feels "meh" psychologically, even if one wouldn't ever reach the cap. I don't think I would ever stay on one character for a very long time and try to make him a master at everything, and there won't be many that will, just like you said. Still, there will be probably few who will want to do that for a YouTube challenge or if they're players that really like grinding, and I think you should let them do that. Would take a ton of effort to become a demigod, unlike the exploit of driving around in BMs for example.

I am aware of it being off-topic now, just responded to your response, won't talk about level caps anymore.

@Roland, can you add to the OP that steel bullets are removed from the game? I still see some posters here talking like they will exist in A18. There's also a lying around in the "New High res icons" section.

 
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It is fun to play with builds, I agree with that. But just the knowledge of artificial cap feels "meh" psychologically, .
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Is there any part of this game or any other game thats NOT artificial? If it wasnt artificial it would be real life. Also the vast majority of games with character levels have a cap.

 
Have you heard about "artificial difficulty"? https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Artificial%20difficultyI'm saying "artificial" in that sense.
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I dislike skyrim as an example. Okay granted the base game was more or less like this. But just one ai combat altering mod changed everything.

It made skyrim into a better Dark Souls, since there are no invincibility frames.

Dark Souls is artificially difficult. Skyrim gives me 100 options on how to tackle a fight.

Is it a short fight? Is he using fire? Are there multiple enemies that I can take out with the bow first?

Artificial difficulty is zombies in walls and completely sealed off roofs. There is no reason for it and except for "cheesing" aka luring them out before they can trigger is the only possible way to defeat them.

But in Skyrim on legendary I need to use EVERYTHING. I always stack up on all potions, I rotate through my shouts, I use all my magica either offensive or defensive, I use environmental traps and so on.

In Dark Souls you just always do one thing to your enemy. Either like a top down jump attack, parry or roll, hit, roll, hit.

Later Dark Souls expanded it a bit... but the base game really was like that. (which is why I hate that everyone says Skyrims combat is bad, when they just didnt play it the right way (aka on higher difficulty with more risk)

 
The problem I have with the term "artificial difficulty" is that it is highly subjective and abused all over the place by everyone whose ego is too fragile to admit that they are the one's lacking skill. So they blame the game. The Urban Dictionary is hardly the place to reference something you want to use as a technical term. It's slang. And I would submit that most of the time it is slang for "player needs to git gud".

I mean mouse over the hyperlinked phrase "Cheesy Tactics" and you can see all you need to know about whether this supposed official jargon is technical or not.

The main problem is and ever will be that there are varying degrees of skills and settings and nobody every declares those things to be sure everyone is on the same page for a single definition to be able to cover it. Artificial difficulty just becomes whatever you personally don't like and there is nothing objective about it at all. The recent example of Space Invaders in the dev diary was perfect.

Feedback: If you move all the way to the left you are impossible to be hit by the enemies

Designer: Okay, I'll fix that. (fixes it)

Feedback: Why did space invaders add artificial difficulty to the game!?!?!?

I think it is okay to debate over what constitutes a good or bad change but if something is more difficult then it is more difficult and some people are going to appreciate that and some people are going to hate it. If zombies are beefed up with more health that really does make the game more difficult. You use up more ammo, more time, and are exposed to more risk of being hit yourself until it dies. This is real difficulty and not fake. But it also increases tedium and devs need to balance the tedium with the challenge.

I can tell you right now that there will be some that will call the new rage feature "fake difficulty" even though by the definition given by Urban Dictionary it is not. But they won't like it and they'll give up before adapting to it, and to them it will seem like something that is too hard unless you use "cheesy tactics". So they'll label it "artificial" as a way to say "I hate it".

Much better is to instead bullet point the reasons you like/dislike something and get corroboration/ counterexamples from other users and then the developers can look at the feedback and decide if the difficulty adds to the game or detracts from it according to their vision.

But just screaming "Artificial difficulty" at everything we don't like makes the term meaningless which is why at this point in time it is.

 
The problem I have with the term "artificial difficulty" is that it is highly subjective and abused all over the place by everyone whose ego is too fragile to admit that they are the one's lacking skill. So they blame the game. The Urban Dictionary is hardly the place to reference something you want to use as a technical term. It's slang. And I would submit that most of the time it is slang for "player needs to git gud".
I mean mouse over the hyperlinked phrase "Cheesy Tactics" and you can see all you need to know about whether this supposed official jargon is technical or not.

The main problem is and ever will be that there are varying degrees of skills and settings and nobody every declares those things to be sure everyone is on the same page for a single definition to be able to cover it. Artificial difficulty just becomes whatever you personally don't like and there is nothing objective about it at all. The recent example of Space Invaders in the dev diary was perfect.

Feedback: If you move all the way to the left you are impossible to be hit by the enemies

Designer: Okay, I'll fix that. (fixes it)

Feedback: Why did space invaders add artificial difficulty to the game!?!?!?

I think it is okay to debate over what constitutes a good or bad change but if something is more difficult then it is more difficult and some people are going to appreciate that and some people are going to hate it. If zombies are beefed up with more health that really does make the game more difficult. You use up more ammo, more time, and are exposed to more risk of being hit yourself until it dies. This is real difficulty and not fake. But it also increases tedium and devs need to balance the tedium with the challenge.

I can tell you right now that there will be some that will call the new rage feature "fake difficulty" even though by the definition given by Urban Dictionary it is not. But they won't like it and they'll give up before adapting to it, and to them it will seem like something that is too hard unless you use "cheesy tactics". So they'll label it "artificial" as a way to say "I hate it".

Much better is to instead bullet point the reasons you like/dislike something and get corroboration/ counterexamples from other users and then the developers can look at the feedback and decide if the difficulty adds to the game or detracts from it according to their vision.

But just screaming "Artificial difficulty" at everything we don't like makes the term meaningless which is why at this point in time it is.
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Yeah, but fake difficulty is a legitimate design issue. It's usually something hard which can't be averted with enough skill. Real difficulty can be overcome through intelligent gameplay. For example, giving a very slow enemy in a game who can hardly hit you more required hits to kill him is artificial difficulty. It's annoying, it won't improve gameplay, it won't make you need more skill to defeat him.

Also Roland, will you update the Dev Diary's OP?

 
Yeah, but fake difficulty is a legitimate design issue. It's usually something hard which can't be averted with enough skill. Real difficulty can be overcome through intelligent gameplay. For example, giving a very slow enemy in a game who can hardly hit you more required hits to kill him is artificial difficulty. It's annoying, it won't improve gameplay, it won't make you need more skill to defeat him.
Also Roland, will you update the Dev Diary's OP?
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I'm working on it. I have to verify things before adding them or removing them from the first page. As soon as I can log in to A18 and see if they are actually gone I'll do it but until the change is made then it is just "We plan to remove them" talk which as often as not ends up not happening and then people wonder why Roland listed yada yada yada to begin with.

As to the subject, I can see where there are clear and unarguable cases of what you are talking about. My point is the phrase has been ruined by too many players using it as a catch-all for something they don't personally like. You know...like pretty much all labels.

 
What's the point or goal of this thread?

There are caps for everything, even in real life.

It doesn't matter if you have to make 100 sticks to create better stick or put a perk point to make a better stick, its impossible to make perfect stick and then "perfecter" stick.

You can't become infinitely better at something with time.

There is no such thing as "arfiticial cap" if there is nothing above it.

Its just a cap.

 
For example, giving a very slow enemy in a game who can hardly hit you more required hits to kill him is artificial difficulty. It's annoying, it won't improve gameplay, it won't make you need more skill to defeat him.
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Totally disagree.

Should all enemies in every game take 1 hit to kill, or else it is artificial? If not what is the limit? Is taking 2 hits artificial? Is 5 artificial? What is this subjective limit based upon? Is it based on how things worked last alpha that u accepted as perfect limit, and anything more is artificial?

What if all zombies took 3 times more hits since Alpha 1 and we accepted that as the standard. Then TFP added weaker ones in A17...would you accuse them of artifficially making the game easier? Is it artificially easy that we dont need to shoot zombies in the brain to kill them, since that is common in zombie lore?

It could very well take more skill to kill an enemy with simply more hp. Humans make mistakes, the longer a fight takes the more chance u have to make mistakes. The more chances the enemy has to hit u or kill u. Also, In a game that requires time management, taking more time on one activity also prevents you from doing other things that could be helping your overall progress. Using up more ammo depletes your supply, that coild increase difficulty in a tome management game.

 
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TVTropes has a good definition of "Fake Difficulty" (which is what I think people are referring to when they say "Artificial Difficulty"). It's nothing to do with things like enemies having lots of health. It's about things that are specifically unfair.

The page has links to hundreds of examples (of course it does - it's TVTropes!) but their five categories of Fake Difficulty are:

  1. Bad technical aspects make it difficult. Making a difficult jump is a real difficulty. Making that same difficult jump under an overly complicated control scheme, horrible jumping mechanics, or an abrupt mid-air change of camera angle—and therefore the orientation of your controls—is fake difficulty.
  2. The outcome is not reasonably determined by the player's actions. Unlocking a door by solving a color puzzle is real difficulty. Unlocking it by pressing a button until you get the right number is not.
  3. Denial of information critical to progress. A reasonable game may require the player to use information, clues, or logic to proceed. Withholding relevant information such that the player cannot possibly win without a guide, walkthrough or trial and error is fake difficulty. Also includes hidden Unstable Equilibrium (e.g. a later level is much harder if you do badly at an early level, and you're not informed of this ahead of time). In a 2D game with no camera control, hiding important details behind foreground elements or Behind the Black counts as fake difficulty if your character should be able to see them.
  4. The outcome of the game is influenced by decisions that were uninformed at the time and cannot be undone. (Unless the game is heavily story-based and unforeseen consequences of actions undertaken with incomplete information are legitimate plot elements, or the game offers some way of mitigating or eliminating those consequences.) A game that offers a Joke Character and is clear about the character's weakness has real difficulty. A game that disguises a joke character as a real one has fake difficulty.
  5. The game requires the player to use skills or knowledge that are either incorrect or have nothing to do with the genre. A football game that requires you to describe the position that Jerry Rice played for a power-up is real difficulty. A football game that requires you to describe the position that Jerry Rice played to get a powerup, and assumes the answer is "Quarterback", or one that forces you to do multi-variable calculus in order to train your starting lineup is fake difficulty, not to mention just plain silly. (Even if that last one would arguably be kind of cool.)
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I don't think 7 Days to Die has any major features that fit that list, but I'm open to arguments that it does.

 
Any true RPG player knows there is massive value in restarting a new character with different strength/weaknesses, and turning on god mode is not fun for long. Rolling a new character and focusing on a new build has given me 1000's of hours of fun in Skyrim and Fallout.
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And I love every single enemy in Dark souls being a challenge and it still wouldnt fit a zombie game where the power lies in its numbers and not in individual strength

And I like how you need to restart after each death in some roguelikes and I still would hate it in 7d2d

And I love tower defense games and I still hate the new "efficient" way of building defenses in 7d2d

Something beeing good in a game doesnt make it good in another. I love rpgs and I love needing to make several chars of different classes. But it doesnt apply here. In rpgs you change a skill that does damage in one way for a skill that does damage in another way. Here you chose between beeing able to carry more, doing more damage, building better, beeing able to run longer, and so on.

It doesnt work in a survival game like in a combat rpg. At least not when playing solo, I get its cool in a party.

Then again, I dont mind much about this, number of perks points is the easiest thing to increase in the files. But madmoles argument isnt accurate imo

 
3. Denial of information critical to progress. A reasonable game may require the player to use information, clues, or logic to proceed. Withholding relevant information such that the player cannot possibly win without a guide, walkthrough or trial and error is fake difficulty. Also includes hidden Unstable Equilibrium (e.g. a later level is much harder if you do badly at an early level, and you're not informed of this ahead of time). In a 2D game with no camera control, hiding important details behind foreground elements or Behind the Black counts as fake difficulty if your character should be able to see them.4. The outcome of the game is influenced by decisions that were uninformed at the time and cannot be undone. (Unless the game is heavily story-based and unforeseen consequences of actions undertaken with incomplete information are legitimate plot elements, or the game offers some way of mitigating or eliminating those consequences.) A game that offers a Joke Character and is clear about the character's weakness has real difficulty. A game that disguises a joke character as a real one has fake difficulty.
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*edit* ahahah just read your post again and you were arguing AGAINST this beeing in the game :D

Well read this and tell me what you think. For me those zombies and trap placements without warning or sense ARE artificial difficulty, since there is no reasonable way to know (except having been there before or testing every block ever which is unreasonable)

Please tell me :D

This is the best explanation why zombies in sealed walles and roofs are stupid. Same goes for collapsing floors with no hint like creeking or the house beeing burnt.

This. So much this.

to reitterate: I hate these fake difficulties. But when I went into that little shack that was totally worn down and burnt in places and I fell down into water with zombies still asleep, it was the best time I had in A17. It felt fair. Why would I expect such a worn down house to hold up? I didn't even break my leg and I could still neak out without the Z's waking up. I didn't have sneakskills (because until then they were useless since jumping once would wake up all the zombies in the whole house anyways) so I was cornered and it was a really tense moment that I will always remember fondly.

Zombies breaking out of a wall where there is no ingame reason for them to be there, except that they are secretly hyperintelligent and sealed themselves in to surprise the next wanderer, is unfair, unrealistic and totally pulls me out of the immersion because I can see the devs smiling "hue hue got him!" Which is just uncreative, boring and bad design.
 
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*edit* ahahah just read your post again and you were arguing AGAINST this beeing in the game :D Well read this and tell me what you think. For me those zombies and trap placements without warning or sense ARE artificial difficulty, since there is no reasonable way to know (except having been there before or testing every block ever which is unreasonable)

Please tell me :D

This is the best explanation why zombies in sealed walles and roofs are stupid. Same goes for collapsing floors with no hint like creeking or the house beeing burnt.

This. So much this.

to reitterate: I hate these fake difficulties. But when I went into that little shack that was totally worn down and burnt in places and I fell down into water with zombies still asleep, it was the best time I had in A17. It felt fair. Why would I expect such a worn down house to hold up? I didn't even break my leg and I could still neak out without the Z's waking up. I didn't have sneakskills (because until then they were useless since jumping once would wake up all the zombies in the whole house anyways) so I was cornered and it was a really tense moment that I will always remember fondly.

Zombies breaking out of a wall where there is no ingame reason for them to be there, except that they are secretly hyperintelligent and sealed themselves in to surprise the next wanderer, is unfair, unrealistic and totally pulls me out of the immersion because I can see the devs smiling "hue hue got him!" Which is just uncreative, boring and bad design.
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The gamestage system does remind me of Unstable Equilibrium. But breaking floors and Zombs in cupboards? Denial of Information does depend on what "winning" is and also doesn't take into account that surprises are an important element of a horror game.

Since death is not a losing state in this game, even falling down into your first trap and getting killed will not fail the game. And it is a test of reaction and keeping a cool head under stress, a player has a good chance to live through the trap considering the zombies down there are still slow in the beginning. You learn from it and will hopefully look for signs of possibly unstable floors in your next pois, without any external guides or walkthroughs. And yes, there are signs for failing floors in most such POIs, if not it could likely be reported as a bug or maybe is an indication that we just didn't recognize the signs.

A zombie out of a cupboard is even more harmless, you get a shock the first time this ever happens (the horror element), most likely survive with one or two hits sustained. You obviously did not fail the game, even if you died from this, just like dying in Lost Souls is something the player doesn't like but needs to learn from.

 
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The problem with the game from the start, and I started at alpha 7 was you could win it too early. By the time I got day 7 horde I frequently had a sniper rifle and I always had a gun with sometimes north of 500 rounds of 9 mm rounds. I never had a feeling of dread with horde night, I looked upon it as a leveling opportunity.

I have experienced a feeling of constraint because of the level restrictions but now I have to plan what I'm doing and I'm always apprehensive on horde night.

 
Zombies in hidden places? I never found this immersion-breaking....mebee....

1) Infected survivors don't realize how bad off they were and were simply hiding from the zombies. They became more ill, and finally turned. Lacking food or stimulus, they go into the low metabolism "sleeper" state where they only activate when something living is close or loud.

2) Perhaps when a zombie is running out of calories, it has an instinct to hide. (Un)Natural selection would favor zombies who did this rather than rotting or falling to predation. Hide and hibernate.

-Morloc

 
The gamestage system does remind me of Unstable Equilibrium. But breaking floors and Zombs in cupboards? Denial of Information does depend on what "winning" is and also doesn't take into account that surprises are an important element of a horror game.
Since death is not a losing state in this game, even falling down into your first trap and getting killed will not fail the game. And it is a test of reaction and keeping a cool head under stress, a player has a good chance to live through the trap considering the zombies down there are still slow in the beginning. You learn from it and will hopefully look for signs of possibly unstable floors in your next pois, without any external guides or walkthroughs. And yes, there are signs for failing floors in most such POIs, if not it could likely be reported as a bug or maybe is an indication that we just didn't recognize the signs.

A zombie out of a cupboard is even more harmless, you get a shock the first time this ever happens (the horror element), most likely survive with one or two hits sustained. You obviously did not fail the game, even if you died from this, just like dying in Lost Souls is something the player doesn't like but needs to learn from.
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So much to unpack.

1. yes surprises are important. But predictability is important to survival games. You can't survive, if you don't know the parametres.

2. Death is a "losing state" in the sense of it beeing punished. Therefor, if there is a trap that has no counterplay (aka no signs or paths to avoid it) and kills you more or less instantly (looking at that random mine on op of the crane) you get punished for doing nothing wrong.

Take traditional horror games for example: there are generally second chances. if the monster shot out of the wall and grabs you, you can struggle to get free and run (relatively easy to get free), evne in cheaply made jumpscare titles, there is always a way to know that you might get surprised soon. The fear of it is half the battle.

But do not forget that this is not primarily a horror game. It is a sandbox survival game. And by madmoles definition that no one else uses, it is also an RPG because there are skills you can learn.

And a sandbox, a survival and an RPG all rely on a consistent world that you move in. If there is a happy forest and nobody tells you "eh that forest is haunted dont go there" and you walk in and die instantly, that is bad design. Yeah its not a "gameender" since you can save the game right... So you die once and then you know. Wrong. That is not how you are supposed to learn. The world should give you the clues. If you ignore those clues, you are supposed to learn the hard way. (making it spooky, make the monsters look threatening, make npcs talk about it and so on) If you ignore those clues, then you are justified in dying.

3. I was not talking about cupboards and the like.

I was talking LITERALLY fake walls and roofs with no accesspoint. All made out of easy to break false floors so zombies break them if they wake up.

It is an obvious trap by the designer, not an ingame trap.

While I personally find the cupboards stupid (the amount of zombies in cupbaords wtf)... but at least oyu can argue "they tried to hide after they were bitten and just transformed over night" or something.

There is NO REASONABLE explanation for zombies in fake roofs/walls. And no reasonable explanation for mines on top of a crane or a concrete building that has one random room where the floor collapses.

I hope you see my point ^^

 
Zombies in hidden places? I never found this immersion-breaking....mebee....
1) Infected survivors don't realize how bad off they were and were simply hiding from the zombies. They became more ill, and finally turned. Lacking food or stimulus, they go into the low metabolism "sleeper" state where they only activate when something living is close or loud.

2) Perhaps when a zombie is running out of calories, it has an instinct to hide. (Un)Natural selection would favor zombies who did this rather than rotting or falling to predation. Hide and hibernate.

-Morloc
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The concept of hidden zombie sleepers is believable. However, it's execution is not. When I try and intuit where the sleepers are located, thinking "If I was a level designer bent on suprising the player, and creating an authentic dungeon crawl experience, where would I put the sleepers?" is much more effective and reliable than thinking "If I were bitten by a zombie, where would I realistically try to hide?".

 
The concept of hidden zombie sleepers is believable. However, it's execution is not. When I try and intuit where the sleepers are located, thinking "If I was a level designer bent on suprising the player, and creating an authentic dungeon crawl experience, where would I put the sleepers?" is much more effective and reliable than thinking "If I were bitten by a zombie, where would I realistically try to hide?".
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Fair point. Perhaps if the existing POIs were made a bit more "random" in whether or not there were zombies in those spawn points (leaning toward there ~not~ being zombies present)?

Zombies which roam the POIs would also add some much needed flavor and would allow for some less-contrived jump scares.

-Morloc

 
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