The Difficulty Paradox | Semi-Ramblomatic

[@SecondWindGroup]

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[@ProjectChimeraEnhancedCo-cc2th]

This isn't just an Ubisoft problems and instead it's a gaming problem, and one more common in corporate development. I tend to give the example of Legacy of Kain 2 as a great example of how to do this right (Metroid is another one, but they dont' do it quite as right because they present the problem before the solution), it shows how you can pose a a challenge by giving new powers needed to then progress the game and it does it with the blocks puzzles and soul reaver door keys. As you progress you learn skills that then are compounded upon as a new puzzle requires all the previous skills you learned to be utilized to overcome it and creates a new challenge in the process. I mention this because this is mostly a problem with Video Game RPGs, and not TTRPGs, because in a TTRPG there is a lot more room for the GM to create new problems and solutions (I'm a TTRPG designer) and it's more problematic in games that focus more on looking good (graphics and marketing) than they do on focusing on satisfying game loops. I recently played a game called Rift Breaker. By all accounts I should have hated this game because the narrative, script and VA at it's heights reaches mediocre levels and is mostly piss poor, but I found myself playing more because of the fun aspects of the game, I wanted to unlock more tools to have more ways to solve problems and move forward and do more various kinds of building and tower defense style things... and that was fun enough where the fact that the game narrative was shit didn't even bother me, even though it was noticeably bad to mediocre. Ubisoft obviously is a chief aggitator here, but so is Starfield, and CoD, and all the other big investment experiences because their goal is never to create a good game, their goal is to make money and it's more efficient to just market something that looks pretty and passably functional-ish than it is to create new and exciting types of games, instead they let the indie devs do that and then steal their ideas and call it innovation, without ever really understanding why it worked to begin with. This is why when you hand wave and stealth kill everyone in AC it's power fantasy yes, but you just deleted the game, where as in Mario 3, using the warp whistle, in that period of time was a very different matter than it is today. Today you can just google where the warp whistles are and skip the game and be done in under an hour without even using glitches and exploits, but at the time no such information was available unless you shelled out for the game guides that were printed on paper. Back then, finding the warp whistle with no information that it even existed WAS a skill challenge, but with the internet that's no longer true. The problem started when games didn't adapt to include that new information and the trend just continued. The correct answer to satisfying game play is indeed that both the challenge goes up AND the player gets new tools (becomes stronger) to deal with new kinds of challenges, but that's a lot harder to do as a designer, and costs a lot more money, and requires artistic vision and understanding of what fun and proportional challenge is rather than prioritizing quick turn over cash grabs like yearly releases laden with microtransactions. The two philosophies are fundamentally at odds. This is why you're seeing a trend now that is just starting in the indie space now of making everything customizable for the game experience and including native mod support, which you see in stuff like V Rising, and Settlement Survival so that players can decide how the game should feel for them and modify the experience with mods to make it their own game for endless engagement, and that's a brilliant new tactic... well maybe not new, but it's new as a trend. This has been around for a while, but we see stuff like Fallout and Skyrim and other games like stellaris surviving on mod support alone, and that is where video games are heading, so that players can customize their preferred experience and if they don't like it, at that point they have nobody but themselves to blame. Want to reduce the grind? Go for it! Want to increase the grind and make enemies 10x spongier? Go for it! This is the future of gaming now.

[@joeyparkhill8751]

Yahtzee, if you are reading this, I have a rather silly idea: when the week of St. Patrick's Day comes around in March, you should do that particular week's Fully Ramblomatic episode in a Ridiculous Irish Accent, complete with Cartoon Yahtzee & Cartoon Dog dressed as Bearded Leprechauns!

[@chrismeandyou]

It should be a fluctuating line of similar difficulty throughout the game with little spikes for mini-bosses/bosses as the best way to keep a player engaged. That's why the skill based games are the best kind of raw gameplay. But almost every game in the best genre, RPG, is stat level building nonsense instead. Imagine Bethesda Fallout games playing like Rainbow Six, or the Far Cry 3 realism mod that made that game so fun with high damage to yourself and enemies.

[@phillipthompson5937]

Glad you guys have kept rocking and rolling

[@rocko7711]

❤

[@RolandTFlakfizer]

Always glad to see Yahtzee's semi.

[@timotheatae]

💀

[@draivaden9745]

Euro truck driver reference

[@Demi_Purple]

I-- You-- *angrily likes comment*

[@sandwich2473]

Indeed 👀

[@dddmemaybe]

I believe the sniper was a bolt action not semi-auto. 🤓

[@eclipserepeater2466]

In pure puzzle games, "player gets stronger" directly *facilitates* "game gets harder", because a player with more abilities allows for the introduction of more complex puzzles. Portal becomes harder when your ability set expands from "move boxes and press buttons" to "violate spacetime".

[@AlexanderCollins-p6u]

There's a well known quote from Greg LeMond (who was a pro-cyclist in the 80s): "It never gets easier, you just go faster"

[@Wilkey89]

I love the intro to the merch store 🤣 "For reasons we can't legally discuss our artists have had some free time"

[@gavinchoules8165]

This made me wonder- they have been discussing the whole affair up until now in detail. Suddenly we get this- which could be a joke or they are tired of talking about it - plus this weeks FR pushed back (again, could be respect for the last ZP's dropping) I hope for their sake it's that and not real legal issues that could threaten the future of Second Wind

[@morganfreeman-sheehy842]

@@gavinchoules8165 It's probably more about avoiding litigation in the future.

[@Wilkey89]

@@gavinchoules8165 generally speaking, in situations revolving around business and questionable employer/employee relations, any lawyer will basically tell you that your only comment is "no comment" until potential litigation has run it's course. So this is a cheeky way of saying, "Hey, we have new jobs now but can't really talk about it."

[@nickoftime7232]

⁠​⁠@@gavinchoules8165 When they left The Escapist, part of the severance package was an NDA, which some of them like Nick and Yahtzee didn’t accept, so they didn’t get severance. On the other hand, they can legally talk all they want about the ordeal I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the less public members took the deal and thus can’t talk as freely about it.

[@meghanhenderson6682]

Could be part of legal discussions to get rights back to some of their old shows.

[@antennahead4978]

The trick is not to make a game more difficult but to make it more complex. Just by playing the game the player will feel that it gets easier because they are accustomed to game. You have to introduce a variety of enemies or challenges so that the player improves but are still faced with a challenge

[@Pineappolis]

Spot on - the game gets more complex, you get proportionally more abilities to deal with the complexity. That way, you _are_ getting stronger but the game's still more challenging because you have to remember how to do more things and under what circumstances. I'll grant that's a hard balance to pull off - even more so if you have a plethora of different builds to choose from because making them all capable of dealing with the increased complexities while making them different enough to bother putting in there in the first place is tricky.

[@ankoku37]

Yeah. I figured he didn't go into detail about this part because it's a whole different rant, but "make it more difficult" is a more complex task than some people realize, and if you level up to get better at sneaking up on guards only for the game to start introducing guards you just can't sneak up on then that's not fun difficulty, that just leaves us feeling cheated.

[@YuriBez2023]

I like the way Metal Gear's enemies wear helmets if you do too many headshots, get flashlights, body armour and so on. That seems a neat way for the mobs to grow in strength alongside the player.

[@seecreature8664]

I've been thinking about this myself. MGS gets away with it because it doesn't have RPG-like player upgrades, the enemies adapt to your tactics, which is cool as hell. But in a traditional RPG-like upgrade tree, it would be utter bullshit to see enemies suddenly countering cool abilities you just bought. What if it were inverted though, and your abilities came from overcoming your enemies? Like you don't earn the ability to do a stealth takedown on a heavy guy until you've killed 5+ of them in other ways. It'd be like an arms race against the enemy forces. They bring out bigger guns because you're a threat, and your skill trees reflect your character learning how to adapt to those bigger guns, making you a bigger threat. If the player is the first one in the arms race to accelerate, it feels shit. But if the enemies do it first, and overcoming those obstacles is a requisite to the player ramping themselves, it flows a little better.

[@Vilamus]

Sorta. MGS5 kinda muddies the waters a bit with the RPG style weapon research,. so whilst Venom never gets any better, the weapons and equipment he uses certainly does. @@seecreature8664

[@kidkangaroo5213]

After 40 missions and tons of side content, a lot of them had riot suits on. Had to CQC them or use non-lethal nades, difficulty spiked at that point

[@Conqtorias]

What I really wish is that the gameplay mechanic that removes these things wasn't a 'send your guys off to do a real-time mission to fuck with supply lines' but was instead a MGS3 style 'blow up the food/ammo depot to starve them of the resources' thing. Though to be fair, I've been a huge sucker for that mechanic ever since I first saw it. The new system feels really uninteractive and being able to make intentional, player-made strikes against enemy supply lines in preparation for a mission would be much more fun IMO.

[@Yodah97]

Yes but that works best when few games use it and the player isn't aware. If every game had enemies adapt to the player's play style, it'd come across as the game punishing the player for... well, playing as he liked.

[@tylerdelange5959]

XCOM's sense of difficulty always stood out to me. You gain more abilities that enable your troops to be more powerful, but simultaneously, the aliens are gaining new unit types. More elements are being added on both sides, not necessarily making it objectively harder or easier, but just with more elements to consider all around.

[@TTimeschannel]

Not to mention your soldiers can’t hit their targets at first but as they level up it gets easier. It last trying to balance those two opposing forces of player strength and player difficulty.

[@DreamblitzX]

XCOM 2 at least can also kinda swing both ways though where it tends to kind of spiral in either direction - If you're winning consistently, then your soldiers generally outpace the enemy growth, and the game gets easier and you win more and repeat. If you start losing, you fall behind the curve, and it gets harder and harder to recover and start winning again - you get stuck in a failure spiral

[@iDEATH]

@@DreamblitzX That's why you want to take a rookie or two along on missions. At least the less critical missions. Make sure you're spreading out the XP in order to minimize the odds of getting caught in that spiral you mentioned.

[@DBZHGWgamer]

@@DreamblitzX I think the key is that in Xcom 2 you need to learn how to handle mistakes, but at some point you get good enough that you rarely make them... and once your soldiers get good enough they also rarely make them, then you've kinda lost the core theme. But that's probably why mods that add 10 times more enemies are so popular in Xcom games. Gotta increase the tension to the point where no matter how good you are there will still be mistakes because of how difficult the challenge is.

[@ixirion]

@@DBZHGWgamer its the same in most games. You do less mistakes and you know mechaincs and so you have DS no hit runs at the end :)

[@jertlemiah]

I once heard "The player will optimize the fun out of a game if given a chance" , and I always think about that when conversations like this start up. Like, I feel called out with the silenced sniper rifle being my first purchase in Far Cry, but I'm not going to not do it. It's hard to turn off the desire to be optimal, when applicable, even if it makes the experience less fun

[@1IGG]

That's why I never play Sorceries in souls games.

[@ferinzz]

So then you ask yourself why is it that the activity is not worth being done in a more engaging fashion. If sitting in a bush sniping everything is the best strat, then it's a failure to the level design because there should be a lot of other tools that can be used to get through it. Or it bypasses what should normally be a stat check. And at the same time if it feels like it's cheesing it, this means that they aren't adaquately testing your stealth skills to make the methodical approach of sneaking through and clearing each enemy individually satisfying.

[@jclindsay007]

best example I know of of that phrase was, if I'm not mistaken, the game that spawned it... Ultima online. Originally, Ultima online was going to have a whole, truly organic functioning ecosystem, where there was actual population numbers for the random mobs, and food chains, and migrations if conditions were favorable. During playtests, they discovered that players were content to just farm easy to kill stuff instead of moving on because it was easier and "more optimized", so they had to abandon that model.

[@Lukus80]

I believe it may well have been TotalBiscuit (John Bain) who said that quote. He lamented years ago about how games of the time would allow you to optimise to the level of circumventing the very idea of the gameplay in question, just like Yahtzee does with Assassin's Creed here. He was one of the those players that would optimise as hard as possible for the best outcome, and would often complain that games would unbalance unlocks and abilities away from an appropriately fair challenge.

[@IncredibleEdibleCake]

I'm pretty sure that it was Sid Meier who said "Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game."

[@martin0499]

Yahtzee's so prolific he's putting out content on two channels in the same day!

[@performa9523]

He's got some mad skills!

[@psycojosho]

What's the other channel?

[@Phrate]

@@psycojosho it's a joke about The Escapist releasing the rest of the videos they had, including Yahtzee's

[@ilfardrachadi2318]

Someone finally found the KZbin account's password. XD

[@RobotsWithKnivesCartoons]

I didn't know if it was one of his videos or not but I just clicked 'Do not recommend channel' just to be safe.

[@DanGamingFan2406]

A perfect successor to Extra Punctuation. The aesthetic is really nice. I love the mixture of animation and game clips. I'm so glad you guys get to keep making the content you and we love, now free from corporate shenanigans so you can do it how you want. Way to rise from the ashes.

[@watershipup7101]

That's why they're called second wind.

[@veri745]

@@watershipup7101 Thanks for re-explaining a point he already made. Any ideas why they feature what appears to be a bird that's on fire on their merch?

[@aussieseal9979]

​@@veri745man you must be fun at parties

[@ljmoura]

😮😮😮

[@gupwalla961]

@@veri745Phoenix, risen anew from the ashes.

[@Groovebot3k]

The ninja teleport honestly sounds and looks like a cool move to have in a game selling the fantasy about being a stealthy assassin, but what I am genuinely reminded about with the RPG formula (that what a lot of designers might have forgotten) is that typically as you got stronger the enemies got harder... unless you spent time grinding (often in badly designed RPGs where the balance was off) your ideal path through the game was at an equal level of difficulty throughout despite your increased arsenal.

[@fusrosandvich3738]

I'd like to call up Final Fantasy V, as that game is special in that many fights don't actually award EXP. Skills are gained instead through BP, which can be earned by a few methods. Thus, people have been able to beat the secret super-bosses with insanely complicated solutions at the lowest possible levels. It turns every fight into a big puzzle instead of the usual RPG raw-numbers slugfest. I always consider the RPGs where low level runs are possible to be some of the best, because they typically have varied battle systems with a ton of options to work with.

[@Matthimeo]

It's actually wild how fast you folks were able to adjust and keep making stuff, props to the whole team for being able to do this so quickly and without any drop in quality.

[@JaimeNyx15]

It’s almost like their previous employer had literally nothing to contribute without the creatives they alienated

[@Briskeeen]

I mean, they're basically doing the same exact things, just with different assets. Pretty easy to continue a workflow when all you need to do is Ctrl+F the name of the show; not that I'm saying this stuff is easy in it's entirety, or that the assets are also easy to do.

[@malikoniousjoe]

@@JaimeNyx15Money man forgot he was money man and fucked with the actual lifeblood of his company. Fucking shocking. Absolutely inconceivable. Who woulda guessed?

[@Dr_Bille]

@@JaimeNyx15Executives keep forgetting they don’t actually have a real job, and don’t add any value whatsoever. They’re leeches, and the greatest ceo in the world is the one that knows to shut the fuck up, and let the people actually producing value do their thing

[@Emily12471]

I think they already had some semblance of an escape plan already though i wouldn't know

[@Wendelvendel]

I've not watched yahtzee for ages but am here for it again since all of the drama. Love to see people do well off the back of something so courageous

[@baronsengir187]

The Brotherhood "Call your allies" abillity was just the best. Felt so good after hours upon hours of collecting and upgrading the "henchmen"

[@Kaunte]

Yeah, that was cool as shit. And there were usually more than enough guards you can't just skip everything with it

[@BobisOnlyBob]

Yeah, it was on a long cooldown too, but it did trivialise a number of encounters. Helped nullify some of the more significant threats you could find when going from mission to mission.

[@nicktailor8062]

Plus it was limited to the open world, you couldn’t use them in most missions so it felt fair

[@Wolfgang9Hype]

Yeah, I loved that ability. Though I'm someone that really likes having minions in games. I will put a bunch of effort into building up minions so they can take on the threats a game offers. That's what *I* like doing while someone else might feel like they get to play less game because the AI is doing the work.

[@craptastrophe521]

I'm pretty sure it was also counterpointed by a milestone in the game where the authorities tightened security and there were a lot more guard patrols, to Yahtzee's point about balance

[@aaronrawlings5310]

Omg jack's ad read had me cracking up 🤣 Also congrats guys for keeping your heads high and carrying on

[@qrangejuice8225]

In my opinion, games should get more *complex* as they progress. Players should have access to a larger pools of resources and more options with which to use them; enemies should further tax those resources and force the use of those options.

[@Lucifer_Crowe]

Yeah, shouldn't have to be necassily frustrating. Just make you think more

[@lpsp442]

Well said!

[@Beakerbite]

Yeah, nothing is worse than getting the "I win" button but having no reason to use it other than boredom. I shouldn't be required to handicap myself in order to get a thrill near the end of the game. I should feel like "there's no way I would have made it without that upgrade".

[@dragontear1638]

Good post! I was thinking much the same thing, it should become more *challenging* so it makes the player learn and adapt. Giving that larger pool of resources and options trade-offs and costs makes a player think before doing or using Stronger Thing. Yes that shiner laser rifle is better than a rifle for example, but perhaps you have to charge it, which commits you to each use. Being able to out-wit and out-play a problem should feel good as it cost the least, through some planning and good timing, or just improvising and good luck.

[@FG-418]

I think it depends on the type of games, and to what kind of players they cater to. People find fun in different types of challenges, be it mechanical prowess, puzzle solving or spreadsheet optimization. Some game can give the player options, other it might be harder. Personally most of my favourite games don't even have enemies. I do prefer games that are more puzzle like, but I also know a lot of people that just want their mechanical skills challenged and not think too much about optimizing everything.

[@ObadiahtheSlim]

I have always had the dream of creating a "reverse leveling" system. You start at the strongest and you get weaker over time as you have to sacrifice your abilities. The super move that clears rooms is only there as a crutch for the beginning of the game. The trash enemies in the early game would become the elite enemies in the late game. Those early game elites are now full on bosses.

[@newpotential5421]

kind of reminds me of god of war 2, where you started off as the new God of War being strong and having the cool lightning ability before being banished to Hades and losing most of your starting power.

[@ObadiahtheSlim]

@@newpotential5421That's a bit different. Many games have you OP in the prologue before it's taken away you have to build your way back up. FF6 (FF3 US) was one of the earliest examples I can think of. You start with the OP magitek armor abilities that you lose after the prologue.

[@chaoslord8918]

I've had this thought too. The only game I can think of that does anything like this is in Advance Wars Dual Strike, specifically in the money challenge mode... thing (I forgot the actual name of it). The player starts with a large sum of money, but doesn't earn any more, and has to spread that money out over 20-some missions. So the player "could" buy all Mega-Tanks and bombers at the beginning and steam-roll all the early missions, but that's not sustainable long-term.

[@Zoodog72]

Semi unrelated, but I once read a cool short story that explored this concept. It’s called Navigators (by Mark Meginnis).

[@BJGvideos]

Reminds me of the story of Innana's descent into the underworld where she had to give up various things to go further.

[@Danmarinja]

I’m glad Yahtzee is settling into the new art style. The last FR was slightly stiff since the glasses took away facial expressions, glad Yahtz is finding ways to still emote his puppet show.

[@TarlukLegion]

Are we sure it's Yahtzee editing Semi-Ramblomatic? Back in Extra Punctuation, it was established that Nick was doing the majority of the editing for that series with Yahtzee's editing involvement being relegated just to Zero Punctuation.

[@ReachSaviour123]

I still don't like the glasses on the puppet, but maybe I'll get used to it

[@hanyoukimura]

​@@ReachSaviour123 I think it's the smaller pupils that throw it off, at least for me.

[@spiderjerusalem8505]

Slowly morphing back to his older self

[@sabbywins]

@@ReachSaviour123 I just miss the imps :( Hope we get to something comparable; maybe even having his dog fill the role

[@corvididaecorax2991]

I've commented on this video before, but I had a new thought on re-watching it. Strategy games have a very interesting take on the player strength vs game difficulty curves, and I think that is part of why they are my most played genre. In most game genres improved player strength is a reward for successful gameplay. You beat the enemies and you find new guns, upgrades, abilities, earn xp, get money, etc. The earning of an upgrade is a distinctive step on the gameplay loop. In most strategy games the upgrading of player strength is the gameplay loop. Your resources and units get spent to get you more and better resources and units. So there is a feedback where player skill directly leads to player power. But at the same time the opponents aren’t just statically waiting for the player to enter the room and get the fight started. In many such games they are engaged in the same buildup loop the player is, so the difficulty the player is facing naturally increases over time. Unless they are playing on a low difficulty for their skill level the player is nearly never completely safe, as the landscape and balance of power keep shifting. Some games even mix in what are essentially fixed difficulty tests of player strength. Stellaris has some good ones, with the Fallen Empires remaining essentially static through most of the game. So someone who can get powerful enough can challenge and defeat them.

[@Bobolash]

Jack’s ad-reads are pure gold!

[@anakomaru]

The duality of man

[@ChrisKChandler]

Loved the hard cut back to the ad from the HR scene 😆

[@Badficwriter]

@@imarobobot8795 RLM isn't funny anymore.

[@ujer55]

​@@imarobobot8795boo, hiss.

[@bofh139]

Jack's ad-read blows anything LTT has ever down. Really love that Yahtzee's English dry humor as rubbed off on Jack.

[@rupertBluza]

There is also a case where various parts of the game world have different, but constant difficulty level and the player character just getting stronger over time, which allows the player access to more difficult places. Nothing more satisfying then going back to an area that at the start was a death zone and beating it.

[@nddragoon]

i really like it when "game get hard" and "player get strong" are in a tug of war that you can control. like in risk of rain 2 the late game can be tortuous or play itself depending on some RNG and how well you've played up to that point between how fast you're going and how you develop your build.

[@NYKevin100]

I like Hades's take on this: The player gets significantly stronger through the course of the game... but once you beat it for the first time, it unlocks a smorgasbord of difficulty options that you can play with, and rewards you for using them. Or you can keep playing the vanilla experience, that's valid too.

[@tachrayonic2982]

@@NYKevin100I find Hades a bit of a mixed bag for it's additional difficulty options. To put it simply, I don't like it when a game takes away player choices/chances to get stronger without giving the player anything to show for it, and some of the options do just that. Increasing the Time to Kill of enemies also makes the gameplay loop less satisfying. Peglin does this even worse, the Cruciball difficulty modes not only make the game harder (Stronger Enemies), but also make you weaker (Less rewards, worse starting loadout) all for the sake of meta-progression. Meta Progression just isn't a good enough reward to make the game itself less interesting to play. For comparison, I'm a fan of the difficulty in a game like The Binding of Isaac. As you progress the game, you unlock new optional areas and challenges that are more difficult, but offer better rewards or more choices. You unlock new enemies to create new challenges. You unlock the ability to progress further into the game with more difficult areas, but the increased duration of the run gives you time to develop your loadout further.

[@jbutler8585]

Exactly, you CAN have both. Keep some enemies from the early part of the game around to act as fodder in the later stages. That's where the sense of power can come in. More difficult enemies can and should exist, mixed in with the fodder so there is an immediate and noticeable distinction between them.

[@GrammerPancreas]

The Souls games are actually a great example of this. You can either take the hard way in fights, either deliberately or inadvertently, or you can cheese almost everything, especially in Elden Ring. But the latter usually requires a good amount of investment to get it running, so it helps you feel like you're not forced to.

[@Zeraevous]

That tug-of-war can get really irritating if implemented naively. I get extremely irritated with enemy scaling in particular, which in theory can be a perfect balance. In practice it feels like an exercise in futility and frustration. The most boring rollercoaster is a flat curve. Scaling can also be frustrating in two ways - either the early game choices you made come back 40 hours later to destroy your progress (leveling useless skills in Skyrim), or nothing you accomplish ever feels satisfying because there's no indication that there's a difference. If the numerator and denominator are increasing at the same rate, the ratio stays the same, no matter how big the numbera get.

[@tgvelvet4985]

See here's another thing about RPGs, "player get stronger" actually coincides with "game get harder" bc unless you're specifically level grinding to break the level curve, you're unlocking new options that the game now expects you to use and balance with your existing options, so yeah sure older trash mobs now get clowned on but new enemies now get to ramp up their complexity to match your expanded arsenal and thus your strategizing and decision making gets harder.

[@snaremori]

I've really grown fond of this series over the course of all these minutes

[@performa9523]

It is so nice that Yahtzee is completely unchained. This is fantastic!

[@Alchemyst326]

He has been unleashed. Gods save us all.

[@Booksds]

A well designed Metroidvania can showcase the best of both worlds. As you get new abilities and increase your health bar, enemies in new areas get stronger, but you also get to backtrack to earlier areas to wipe the floor with previously difficult enemies.

[@lunarazure9969]

There's nothing more satisfying than getting the Screw Attack in a metroid game and just annihilating your way through those backtracking moments. The Screw Attack is kind of ingenious because its the moment where the game goes "You've been running back and forth through these maps for ages. Here's an upgrade that trivializes both platforming and most enemies. It'll make backtracking and collecting those tricky upgrades really easy!" But at the same time, the new areas that require the Screw Attack introduce new enemies and challenges that take it into account, so it only trivializes places you've already explored.

[@ArcaneAzmadi]

@@lunarazure9969 You seem to be a little confused. The Screw Attack doesn't trivialise platforming or enable you to reach any new areas, except in the sense that it lets you kill enemies in mid-air that might knock you out of your jump. It's the Space Jump that allows Samus freedom of traversal by enabling her mid-air multi jump.

[@jemandetwas1]

​@@ArcaneAzmadiWell, you usually have the space jump when you get the Screw Attack, and at that point the only thing that hinders your traversal are enemies, either one the ground or mid-air. In any case, the Screw Attack trivializes enemies and thus also platforming

[@Toksyuryel]

@@ArcaneAzmadi People have been sequence breaking Super Metroid for so long that it is actually a shock to some people that the Space Jump even exists separately from the Screw Attack.

[@SpartanXVII]

For a while now I’ve been under the impression that this is the opposite of a problem. In a well designed game, the more abilities you unlock, the more difficult it gets. As you have more abilities, you have more options, so picking the right option is more difficult. This is true in RPGs, where you might start out with “Attack” and “Flee”, and end up with a bunch of different weapons or magics with complex difficult effects, and you have to understand all of them. This is true in action games, where you start with just swinging a sword or firing a gun, and end up with a collection of tools or gadgets or moves, and you have to chain between them quickly to win. It’s true in stategy games for the same reasons, and metroidvanias, where getting past obstacles requires you to keep track of a larger and larger map, and what tools you do and do not have to traverse it. The best thing about this is that when done well, the game is more difficult, but you also feel stronger. Earlier you were just pressing attack but now you know all these different mechanics and effects, and you feel like you’ve made big progress. If the difficulty curve, and the skill tree are both done well and work together, feeling stronger, and being more challenged come together.

[@theresnothinghere1745]

You cannot have "so picking the right option is more difficult" just by making more options. This only happens if the situations you are in makes more options than before 'bad options'. But even that I feel is barely surface level, difficulty very rarely comes from picking 1 good option out of many bad ones. Difficulty more commonly comes from having to build a consistent path of good options, and often having more options makes this easy because there's more likely to be a clear great option for each step along the path. Rather than having to chose between less then stellar options at each step with downsides to them that need to be accounted for.

[@SpartanXVII]

@theresnothinghere1745 I know it's a simplification, but it's still generally true. If there's not more "bad options" then the game isn't really doing the difficulty curve thing. If a controller only had 1 button, every game would be about choosing the right time to press the button. An xbox controller has 8 "buttons", 2 sticks, and a direction pad. So your action games have our hands flying around, pushing us to our limits. If they added more buttons, it would become too difficult for human hands. Games work the same way with our brains. If Elden Ring only had a sword, and your only ability was attack, you could stand in front of every enemy and attack them, and you'd have made all the right choices and win. Adding just dodge and splitting attack into light and heavy means you have to make split second decisions to be offensive or defensive, and whether to dedicate to a heavy or stick to a light. Then add spells, items, estus, weapon arts, switching weapons on the fly, and suddenly we're all calling them super difficult games that require a lot of thought. More abilities, more options, more possible mistakes. I know it's a simplification, but the rule generally applies.

[@theresnothinghere1745]

@@SpartanXVII I still disagree with the premise as a whole that more choices makes things more difficult. " If Elden Ring only had a sword, and your only ability was attack, you could stand in front of every enemy and attack them, and you'd have made all the right choices and win" Far from it, if ER had 1 button and all you could do was an attack I can still very easily imagine a genuinely difficult game could be made from that without changing the 1 button. Enemies can counter-attack or dodge, depending when they are attacked, punishing a player for misreading the enemy. Similarly enemies might be able to have their attacks cancelled or have weakpoints exposed for more damage rewarding players who properly read the enemy. That alone can give the basis for a geniunely difficult game with only 1 action the player can use based entirely on timing the option with respect to an enemy. More abilities doesn't mean more mistakes. More abilities means more choices, there's only going to be more mistakes if its unclear which is the right option. But in practice I find that is rarely the case as many games end up instead presenting several clear good options to use. Very very few games make only 1 option be a correct one instead opting to allow a range of options (as that adds gameplay depth to the game).

[@SpartanXVII]

@theresnothinghere1745 Elden Ring already has all those things. Enemies do counter and punish attacks, that's part of the challenge. But you have to add to that the choice whether to attack at all, or to do many other things. I'm not saying a difficulr one button game would be impossible to do well. But adding more options would make it harder. When I think of difficult one button games, I think of The Impossible Game (or Geometry Dash). Your options are jump or not jump, the game creates challenge by forcing you to choose exactly when to jump, and hiding that perfect timing from you. But if there were also obstacles you couldn't jump over, and you had a recharging shield button, it would make the game more difficult, since you would have to jump over everything you could, and always be deciding whether you can actually make this jump, or if this is where you're supposed to use shield. As for there being more than one good option, that's part of the challenge. In ER, you might decide you can dodge backwards, and heal, or dodge forwards and attack. Both good options, but they have different outcomes. This is another thing for you to consider quickly, not only what's the "right" option, but which good option will give you the most benefit.

[@theresnothinghere1745]

@@SpartanXVII"But adding more options would make it harder." And I'm saying merely having more options doesn't make it harder. It can be harder, but it can also be easier. It entirely depends on the options themselves not on the fact that there's more. If in our hypothetical 1 button ER game I added a second button that introduced healing the game is not harder now because you have to choose between healing or attacking. "As for there being more than one good option, that's part of the challenge" But there being multiple good options really shows that having more buttons isn't going to make it harder. If I add another button to ER (say for example a sekiro style deflect that doesn't stop enemy attacks but deals a bit of stance damage). The game isn't going to become harder because players are going to have to always consider the option over other options. For many players, it will be easier because it's another universal, easy-to-use defensive action that is less risky than dodging but even more rewarding. For other players, it's not even going to register because they play at range and most of the time won't care for the move at all. Players aren't going to consider every single attack on a case-by-case basis and compare every defensive option against them. No one plays like that, people think more efficiently they categorize attacks and only use a few responses against them. (This is the basis that allows conditioning and hard reads to work in fighting games). Case-by-case basis comparisons are done against unique attacks that are hard to categorize elsewhere (like waterfowl dance) and that is done only until a solution is found not every time the attack appears.

[@DennisEngelhard]

When the game gets harder while the player gets stronger, it is also important to keep in mind that the things that got harder also have the trappings to back that up. Using minibosses as regular enemies because the player is stronger now is good and feels like progress. The Cyberpunk route of just leveling up all enemies and scaling the skill checks is ridiculously shallow and feels like stagnation. There I was, levelling my Tech skill to 20 because I wanted to be able to crack that corporate security safe that other players will have to leave behind, but all that happened was that every diner in Night City now has a level-20 lock at it's back-door.

[@Spar_kie]

I appreciate the visuals in this one feeling like they had more room to breath compared to the first Fully Ramblomatic, hopefully this'll continue on into that series! Overall great work! Really looking forward to more!

[@bross92]

What an amazing ad at the end “for some reason our artists have more free time”

[@skyllalafey]

I like how Jack is obviously enjoying doing the merch ad in an off-the-wall fashion, and it is also an amusing contrast to how begrudging some of the later ad spots on the former channel were (like for garbage games that lots of youtube channels accept ad spots for)

[@dimondsi]

Ive alway a been rule of two when it comes to scaling the difficulty and the character power. Difficulty goes up on every odd numbered linier story encounter, and player strength goes up on every even numbered one. Its best to keep it obscure as possible, but I think the peaks and valleys are important to teaching players both proactive and reactive gameplay

[@cpt_nordbart]

It's nice that your former employer still had a middle finger left for you.

[@SecondWindGroup]

Well, after 15 hours neither of those two Zero Punctuation episodes have over 100K views... so. Yea.

[@dlanightfury]

I think these guys win

[@sage23ish]

I saw the Spider-Man review and thought that I might watch it. Then I saw they had released two at the same time and realized they were desperate

[@isaacswarts6826]

I'm going to wait because Yahtzee said he was going to review Spider-Man 2 as a Fully Ramblomatic eventually. Mostly because he liked it and wants to get Sony review codes again

[@UlshaRS]

They did that trick where you flash three middle fingers. They thought it was cool but nobody was watching.

[@southofsane877]

I think a good example of balance can be found in puzzle games, especially Baba is You. In the early game you'll run into levels that are entirely too difficult to solve, but as you play through more puzzles (essentially, level up your understanding of the mechanics and tricks), you find that the hard levels have gotten easier. But then you keep playing and you find that the puzzles grow continuously harder to combat your newfound understanding, and you're still faced with difficulty.

[@lazarack4859]

I honestly really love the color scheme of Ramblomatic, it's quite pleasant to watch at night!

[@brady9592]

Link's Awakening comes to mind as a good example of game balance/design. The core gameplay mechanic of exploration/action/puzzle is present throughout, it is the reward of success, and it scales with increasing power/skill.

[@ExploDjinn]

I'm a fan of the trope where, close to the end of the game, you get a level where the combination of you getting stronger in game and accumulation of skill let's you rip through the stage, to give you an appreciation of how far you've come, before turning up the challenge again for the last leg of things.

[@andreaslinder8978]

I can think of one exception to the "don't take away gameplay" rule. There is nothing that makes you feel more powerful than starting a game with some sort of limitation to your power (say, a resource you have to constantly manage) and then, after sufficient struggles, removing that limitation. Of course, you will typically encounter new limitations, but the feeling of overcoming is the important part. A game that does this well can gradually change fundamental gameplay mechanics and leave you feeling truly accomplished.

[@justascarecrow6988]

I like how armored core does it. You do get a little stronger thanks to OS upgrades and some weapons being slight upgrades, but the parts are mostly on the same tier. Your options increase massively, allowing you to taylor your AC to match the current boss, but you never just deal more damage, you make a sacrifice for it, all the way to the final boss.

[@toolazytochangeprofilepic]

A good measure of balance between “player get strong” and “game gets hard” is how many challenges around “beating the game without X” you see on KZbin after the game comes out

[@orangeboi3387]

i think the best way to explain inmerisve sims would be "yknow those beating the game without x challenge videos? make sure every single one you can think of is beatable and engaging"

[@untemperance]

You are asking the player to design the game for you if you consider that that is enough, though.

[@belldrop7365]

@@untemperance Other way around. It's a game design so meticulous that a big range of players, not just the most hardcore, can do challenge runs and still have fun. That there are people that think there's only one way to play a game is my biggest gripe with these difficulty debates.

[@leithaziz2716]

@@belldrop7365 If playing the game X way is less interesting, then yeah it might come off that way. You can try to deviate from the intended playstyle, but that might just brake the game or lead to you just not engaging in many mechanics that would normally keep things fresh. That's usually why people feel discouraged to play like that if it means playing in a more boring manner. Like yeah, you can try to beat a Souls game without rolling or a Batman Arkham game without using any gadgets, but is that more fun?

[@warmachine5835]

@@belldrop7365 Honestly I think "only one way to play" sums up my problem with difficulty debates as well. I personally like pushing my limits when there's good gameplay to the hard mode (looking at you Alpha Protocol...), but not everyone does or can. So let those people have fun too! It doesn't hurt me at all. I can still thump my chest about beating Balteus before he was nerfed all I want, but y'know, other people should be able to enjoy big stompy robots too even if they don't want to spend 30 hours mastering the helicopter boss in the first level or whatever. It gets stickier when there are benefits beyond bragging rights attached to higher difficulty though that players who don't find that fun want. That's the harder tightrope to walk, and I think if there is any productive debate to be had, it's there.

[@somethingforcale]

Shadow of Mordor is a great counter example to ass creed mirage, especially with the 'auto kill 4 dudes' technique. Talion gains crazy abilities over the course of the game, some which are 'auto kill X enemies' type abilities, as well as having minions at your disposal. But they also ramp up the difficulty significantly so it balances out nicely and makes you feel super powerful without feeling invincible.

[@KingOfElectricNinjas]

If anything you get a problem where the more powerful orc captains barely have any meaningful weaknesses anymore, and a lot of your abilities are tuned more for taking on hordes of random orcs.

[@ArachCobra]

I'm also reminded of games like Metroid, where you get more stuff, some of which arguably makes you directly stronger. But it also amps up the challenge as you progress to new areas.

[@Teh_Akod]

I think Nintendo in particular really gets how to make a game progressively harder without sacrificing what makes it special. Zelda, Mario, Star Fox, Fire Emblem, Xenoblade. All of them start you up small and by the end you end up with so many options and abilities, but at the same time there's a challenge for you to use them all.

[@BravosChannel]

I think it's less about outright difficulty and more about depth. You can get more power, and enemies can get more powerful, but these situations would cancel out and give you balance, but the only thing that begs you to use the new mechanics are enemies/world that challenge so. If the enemies become damage sponges while you get weapons that do more damage, then it's practically the same in the beginning than end, but if the enemy prevents you from using items you've used throughout the game, and/or encourages your new tools, you begin to rewire your decision making to account for these new situations. It may not be harder but it feels like it is, because you're constantly thinking and the game loop doesn't get stale

[@lpsp442]

With Metroid, the main thrust of levelling up relates to Samus's *movement* and her ability to navigate and handle *environment* - spatial power-ups that only indirectly improve her combat performance, which is is a great blessing as only a skilled player can meaningfully exploit such tools to grow in power. That said, the suit upgrades and constant Energy Tanks do constitute a flat strength upgrade, no denying it. Metroid makes the former work by having them as rare events at key flagposts at gameplay, by which point the game can be sure the player has fought plenty of the "grade 1" and "grade 2" enemies to get a free-er pass at ignoring them. It's a limited convenience but it works. As for the latter? Energy Tanks are overwhelmingly optional and granted generally as rewards for exploration and puzzle-solving abilities, featuring little in raw combat challenges to earn. This is exceedingly wise design. A player who only cares about combat and happily skips optional environmental challenges will appreciate the greater challenge they'll experience in combat with a limited health bar. Meanwhile, players who struggle with the fights or who feel a bit overwhelmed/apprehensive, but who really dig the exploration and puzzles, are rewarded with precisely the level-up than they need to make the fighting sections do-able and enjoyable. This sort of constrained, carefully-crafted challenge-locked level up is fantastic for many reasons. Kids that find the hard gameplay impossible can grow their own skills in the puzzles AND gain the spare HP to stand a chance - years later when they replay the game for the nostalgia as adults, they can skip puzzles and challenges they don't feel like redoing (or turn off the excess tanks in the menu) to keep the fights sharp and in line with their greater skills. Completionists can enjoy the feeling of hitting that sweet, juicy, arbitrary 100% mark and then roflstomp the final boss with sheer equipment cheese. And there could be special challenges and rewards hidden the game that only a very skilled, fast player can earn by collecting all equipment in a flash and then defeating the final boss with all weapons and 0 hp lost, and so on. The creative potential is endless if the developers have the passion and care to craft with it. To truly appreciate the beauty of Metroid's systems, consider the alternative: Samus's stats gradually and generically level up by defeating enemies for EXP. This would be absolutely horrible for design and balance purposes, would leave all of the previously mentioned groups dissatisfied on some level, and would *mandate* the same "oh but all the enemies get stronger too heheh" systems that modern games do to practically undo the level-ups anyway. Ultimately, nothing but wasted coding time and menu space to track levels and stats no-one cares about would be the result. Thank fuck Metroid doesn't do that, and ditto for all the other great Metroidvanias out there.

[@chillhour6155]

I feel thats what Fromsoft nails so well, theyre games keep that perfect yo-yo difficulty formula through out youre gaming journey

[@TheDwarvenDefender]

I believe Sakurai's answer to this question is that the difficulty should have an upwards trend but have moments where it dips down so you can have both challenge and power trips in the same game.

[@mehdisilini7296]

In the end, theirs no right answer to "should the game be harder, or should it be easier" it all depends on what the game wants to do. Some games want to push on the feeling of overcoming adversity, while some want to push the feeling of gaining more freedom. What I really love is; when a game gives me a really hard challenge early on, and then brings it back in the same way around the end (before the real boss) as a cake walk, reminding you of how far you've come so that the incredibly hard end boss battle feels more like an application of everything that you've learn.

[@mathdemigod8162]

As I'm playing through yet another XCOM 2 campaign, this is a fascinating topic. In XCOM, especially using the Long War mod, the enemies get progressively more numerous, tougher, and better equipped as the game progresses. However, the same can be said for my soldiers. They gain new abilities, new weapons, advanced armor, etc. So the whole strategic layer of XCOM 2 is designed to play with this difficulty curve. If you aren't fast enough on your upgrades, you'll get left behind and the game will become impossible. If you are quick and manage your resources well, the game actually gets easier the further you go. Great video!

[@Anu242Bis]

Ironically, I think Long War screws the balance of XCOM in a bad way, making the enemies harder on a scale significantly different from how quickly your soldiers get better (or on a meta level, how much better the player's own tactical skill gets). Vanilla XCOM has this dialed in significantly better, where the enemies get harder, then your soldiers get stronger, after which the tactical challenges get more complex, then your skill improves. Firaxis is much better at doing this than the Long War folk, and this is reflected in Terra Invicta as well (when it's not trying to bore you to death, anyway).

[@pawelmazur8318]

A really good example of this balance is Prey (2017). The game gives you tons of stuff to upgrade your abilities but at the same time throws ever more harder challenges at you. And everytime you're at a point where you feel like you've conquered everything, they throw a new different thing at you. The pacing is quite genius.

[@F1nicky]

6:26 i think the animators and subtitlers misheard yahtzee because im pretty sure he said "punji stick trap", like the ones is the first tony hawk game

[@F1nicky]

or its censorship because of the whole "geneva convention" thing

[@oh_wall]

Got this video in YT recommended and thought "looks like Yahtzee, what's going on?" So glad I clicked, and good on you guys for making such a stylish channel!

[@plasmatize8494]

For the game gets harder/player gets stronger balancing act, I've always liked when games give you a taste of later, tougher, more complex challenges early, well before you're actually expected to engage. Like your first encounter with a live guardian/lynel in Breath of the Wild, or the Tree Sentinel/Margit in Elden Ring, to give a few examples. Beyond creating goals for players to work up to, it gives them a clear frame of reference so that later, when they're stronger/more skilled/knowledgeable, they can still sense their increased power even when facing these higher demands. Sprinkling in occasional early game challenges later can have a similar effect - there's no more direct way to show a player how much more powerful they've gotten than letting them destroy something that once gave them trouble!

[@Pyroniusburn]

With the very specific RPG example of the player smacking about the level 1 goblins that troubled them at the start, it indirectly illustrates the problem with the argument the discord person was making, in that every enemy in the rest of the game isn't as strong as a level 1 goblin. Unrelated to that, I was enjoying how extremely familiar some of Yahtzee's talking points were here, specifically the AC: Brotherhood example and mentions of "cheating yourself out of gameplay" like the warp whistle.

[@MoffMuppet]

Something I found when playing through the entirety of the first Ace Attorney-trilogy in one go, was that I didn’t mind if the difficulty sometimes dropped, namely when starting the next game. It was actually kind of nice to have some really easy cases after the big finale, to wind down a bit before the difficulty started ramping up again.

[@jedimasterpickle3]

I mean that's the kicker: You're starting a new game. Of course the difficulty curve is going to reset.

[@underFlorence]

@@jedimasterpickle3 That's true, but I do think there's merit to the idea that this still makes the whole package work as a single "game." Even within a single Ace Attorney game, the main thing determining difficulty on a quantifiable level is "how much evidence do I have" because that's how many options you have to choose the right one from. So as you enter a new case and acquire evidence, it's easier than the end of the last one for a bit before it picks up, creating a bit of an ebb and flow. Outside of Ace Attorney, there's definitely arguments to be made for the difficulty curve not being a linear increase from start to finish. For the "Player get Stronger" side, having a mission that shows you how much stronger (or more adept as a player) you've become by throwing early game-level challenges at you can make things feel rewarding and offer a breather, for instance.

[@jedimasterpickle3]

@@underFlorence I think discussing difficulty within individual Ace Attorney games is valid and has merit. That wasn't my point. I just disagree about treating the whole trilogy as one game for the purposes of discussing difficulty since...they're literally different games. It's a different discussion.

[@StyryderX]

Ace Attorney trilogy is something of an oddball when it comes to the difficult in that while the first case is always easiest, they also get harder by the sequels. To people who never played it, in first game the culprit is hilariously inept at lying, with very obvious contradiction for you to point out. It's so onesided the prosecutor couldn't even get a dig at you and you don't have to press the witness (so that they either add more detail, probably contradicting something in the process). Then there's the second game, first case there's still obvious lies but now there's several more subtle one where you have to either press a witness or sift through your evidence and worked up a logic on how this'll work (ie: something you only do at later case in the first game). By the third game, you're in for a loop; the culprit while remain obvious, they already captured the heart of the court, really good at lying, and your client are *very* unhelpful.

[@TriforceWisdom64]

Sakurai talked about difficulty on his KZbin channel, and his ideal curves trends toward being harder while having spikes and valleys, where beating a hard boss rewards the player with more power and an easier next level.

[@mikec4964]

The idea that the game "adapts" is a great way to take a basic sandbox and counter how "powerful" you become as you upgrade through the game. The batman series did this well by giving henchmen tools to help them if you regularly used a certain approach to dealing with them. Lots of hand-to-hand? big shields and shotguns. Lots of sneaking in the dark? Night vision goggles. Etc Etc. This opened up more of the game, as you couldn't rinse and repeat the same strategies (or if you did it got harder to do so) so you got to experience new ways to actually play the game adding to your experience as a whole.

[@Kieferson1]

honestly watching nick and yahtzee subtly take the piss outta thier old bosses while said bosses desperately try to run damage control and splurge all thier backlogged content to desperately grab as many clicks as they can dispite the fact like 80%-90% of thier viewerbase has long sinced bailed is very satisfying to watch

[@SecondWindGroup]

That channel is 15 years old. That's a lot of inactive accounts. Trust me, I would know :)@@aether388

[@corvusvocatio]

​@@SecondWindGroupoof the shade 💀

[@ArmoredCow]

@@aether388 Thanks for reminding me that I forgot to unsubscribe from that other channel.

[@moartems5076]

Honestly i dont really care about what happens to the escapist, i just want to see secondwind succeed.

[@Valhalla05]

​@@aether388I thought pre exodus they were at 1.25 Mil?

[@derrickhotard9926]

Hack N slash and bullet hell games are usually the best for difficulty scaling. You can kill the enemies faster, but you have to kill the enemies faster to succeed is a great formula

[@sommeone]

I'm incredibly excited for this series and I'm amazed you've got an episode ready so quickly! I'm one of the few weirdos that mostly watched The Escapist for Extra punctuation rather than ZP, so I've been waiting for this with baited breath!

[@idlemindedmage6925]

All of Frost's stuff has been fantastic. Very worth a watch.

[@sommeone]

@@idlemindedmage6925 Absolutely!!! I got into his videos more recently and they are wonderful! It's a real shame that my favourite episode of Cold Take is the one immediately before all this nonsense happened -_-

[@ljmoura]

We all are

[@Code7Unltd]

@@sommeone Funny, I liked the Cold Take video about the "line go up" mentality that Second Wind put out.

[@PredaConvoy]

This is why OG Resident Evil 4 is perfect to play, whatever difficulty you choose, because it adapts to how well you're doing. Are you carrying a ton of ammo but struggling with health? Game makes ammo drops more scarce, prioritises healing items, and so on. Still a joy to play all these years on, from easy to professional.

[@thessie]

Dayum, the production on these is so good. Here's to more!

[@wolfvermillion1729]

Ok, that's a much, much better placement for the ads. Much appreciated!

[@MsRRabbit]

Love the intro and the logo! Colour scheme was also great. Also a very good point. I personally quite like there to be a starting area or something similar which I can go back to feel powerful while still being able to be challenged by other sections. (Almost predictable at this point but) Dark Souls has a great feel for this. Going back to the undead burg and destroying the starting enemies is really fun. Even if the reward is low and the enjoyment is limited, it's a nice reminder of the progress that has been made.

[@jimez86]

This reminds me of how well balanced the first portal game was. You only get 2 upgrades in that game the first portal gun and then the second, however it educates you on how to use it thus player skill is getting enhanced as well. The game increases in difficulty with greater more dynamic challenges, some that you can brute force your way through, but always with a safe intentional solution. I love how it basically addresses this issue by the fact it lets you revisit an early level to see how easy the start of the game became.

[@dougieprat1137]

Probably one of the best ads I've seen in a while!😂 Love to see everyone is having fun after what happened

[@laurengsjourney]

I love how you worked with the ad at the end. Glorious

[@TheNevar18]

Batman: Arkham series balances the stealth progression well in my opinion. The game introduces new enemies and challenges as you gain new abilities and tools. It's constantly ramping up the difficulty, while also letting you get (and feel) more powerful.

[@leithaziz2716]

The stealth in the Arkham games is probably my favorite gameplay aspect of those games. Solving problems pushes you to get creative with the sandbox and your tools, and it's a lot of fun messing with the enemies and getting them to panic due to your presence.

[@tweeeeeex]

Arkham came to mind for me as well. It's the opposite of the Assassin's Creed problem Yahtzee is talking about-as the game goes on, your repertoire of moves and tools expands, and the gameplay gets more complicated and involved, not less. But the way they synchronize it all together (especially with how fluid the combat is) makes you feel like you're getting more powerful.

[@Sir_Poohheart]

In a similar vein as the Arkham series, LOTR: Shadow of Mordor does an excellent job of balancing the player’s increasing power with the game’s difficulty. Even when gaining a bunch of really cool wraith abilities, it never feels like the player gets overpowered. Enemies always have a chance to overwhelm you with numbers, and taking a hit is never an insignificant event. Especially when going against powerful Captains and Warchiefs who have different strengths and weaknesses that you’re heavily incentivized to sus out, or when you happen across a graug or group of caragors. Abilities feel like useful new tools at one’s disposal for solving challenges, rather than superpowers that dismantle the game’s challenge from its core. And learning to use your tools well is incredibly rewarding.

[@thegodofalldragons]

Makes sense to bring up Arkham, since that mechanic Yahtzee was griping about was just ripped wholesale from Arkham Knight without considering why it worked in that game and wouldn't work in Assassin's Creed.

[@thedatatreader]

It also explains why the Mr. Freeze fight was so incredibly enjoyable. The difficulty ramped up as you show off all of the abilities you'd earned up until that point, and it required quick thinking to stay on top of this suddenly incredibly challenging boss. I know there were a few other difficulty spikes in the games, but that bossfight stands out to me as the peak of the experience.

[@lelouch_zenny]

Closely tied to this matter are two other matters: 1) Automatic enemy scaling vs fixed-leved enemies vs a hybrid. Automatic can make you feel like you're not getting stronger, even though you're levelling. Fixed levels will make easy encounters completely boring and irrelevant. 2) Content meant to be "farmed", should it be easy or hard? If it's easy, it's convenient, but not very engaging. If it's hard, it's challenging and satisfying the first time, but it can become tiring/stressful to farm.

[@samuelhorsfall3862]

I love the more philisophocal and questioning nature of Sexond Wind. I love listening to these conversations on HOW games are good. 😊🖤

[@Uriel238]

In _Thief: The Dark Progect_ I remember dealing early with easy levels teeming with guards and monks, and graduating to more complex traversal problems and monsters who were less straightforward, until near the end will-o-wisps twinkled around the level, sometimes lighting up my dark place and exploding frogs were on the prowl looking for a good final cuddle. Games typically add (added once?) more zombies, trickier monsters, traps that require more derring-do as they also reward the player. So with your new skillz and gunz you can take out the basic guards more easily, but still might find juggernauts and exploding suicide mobs require more tactics.

[@thevikingbear2343]

Hell Yeah Semi Ramblomatic is a great Title. I love it. Also the Neon effects. Good for you Yahtzee and the whole Second Wind crew. The images, animations, effects, og music and branding that you guys put together in a weekend is better than most KZbin channels.

[@torinriley7569]

One of my favorite difficulty curves in games has to be the original System Shock for DOS, which is a game where you're spending most of the time just barely scraping by the ever increasing odds and ambushes despite your proportionally increasing arsenal, before at the second to last level it gives you a shield upgrade that allows you to spend the final floor just Running and Gunning through what were originally extremely threatening enemies. It makes you EARN that power fantasy.

[@Kaotiqua]

Whether I agree with Yahtzee, or as sometimes happens, not, it's still always a pleasure. And that theme music? Absolutely The Jam.

[@leeragdoll3458]

One thing i still remember fondly about MGS:V TPP’s difficulty design is that the game will counter your most relied on strategy. Most players like me rely on silenced headshots thus the game will start equipping heavy helmets to every soldier. The player is forced to switch up their gameplay style or just brute force the original strategy (ie shooting in between the eyehole in helmet). As game further progress we also unlock the ability to sabotage helmet supply by spending some resources.

[@yonaloam]

Loving what you are all doing! Followed you all for decades now and can't wait to see what's around the corner!

[@mcmosfet2856]

The episode was great, but I'm here commenting because Jack absolutely nailed that merch promo. Keep up that style and quality and I'll never skip an ad break. Good on ya, SW team.

[@Esqueletoroda]

Congrats on the artist that made the new into/outro, it's pleasant to the ears and way better than the (really) old one.

[@Idsertian]

But the old one was iconic, and not Ubisoft iconic, either.

[@domm6812]

Exactly. That's what the whole power fantasy is about. Baddies get harder but then you get stronger, and you get a feeling of power from beating the toughest, much more difficult baddies near the end. It should still be challenging, and more complicated (using the gameplay skills you've developed along the way). The result of not balancing this is either frustration or boredom, depending on whether it's too hard or too easy, respectively.

[@angeldeb82]

Yahtzee and little Toffee are so wonderful. Also, nice to see the video in its uncensored glory, as usual.

[@whateverusername5735]

I think a good example of a discussion like this is the Shadow of ____ series, Mordor and War. While you could gain a bunch of abilities to kake yourself stronger, enemies also got abilities from time to time that countered certain abilities or tactics, requiring you to play around them or use different skills, like in War there were variations of skills, like there being a ground pound explosion skill that can be changed to different elements depending on the weakness of the enemy you plan to fight.

[@Rubberman202]

You know, I like these kinds of video essays Yahtzee does; there's less emphasis on the jokes, but it's a lot more thoughtful and introspective than his typical reviews that he's known for, and I appreciate that a lot more, honestly.

[@hpalpha7323]

the player is not only getting more powerful, but also more skilled at the game

[@pixelpeek9963]

Mimimi, the team behind Desperados 3, Shadow Gambit and Shadow Tactics have this nailed down in my opinion. You gather more characters as you progress, which unlocks more options for how you tackle each level, but the overall ‘puzzle’ of the level becomes more and more complex. By the end you have some really difficult situations to work your way through, using all the skills you’ve practiced up to that point, and it is incredibly rewarding when you finally sit back having completed it.

[@the_emigrant]

One aspect of this debate worth discussing is how in RPGs in general is normal to get better stuff as you progress in the game (stuff that increases your stats) and for enemies to get stronger as well (the increase their stats). The thing is that if in the end it all cancels out, you have esentially the same game from start to finish but with numbers getting increasingly big.

[@szabolcsmiko4866]

Im so glad you guys are pulling through, i hope the channel will blow up, or at least keeps on growing, cause maan, the content has been straight fire

[@ApocalypseMoose]

Zero Punctuation --> Extra Punctuation Fully Ramblotic --> Semi Ramblotic Very clever.

[@derektom14]

I've found the difficulty curve issue to be especially true in Zelda games, particularly Twilight Princess. The first segment in which you're a wolf is easily the most deadly part of the game, as you're adjusting to being a wolf, you only have three hearts, and when you first fight three Twilight monsters, it's the only part of the game in which you don't yet have the ability to eliminate all three of them in one move, so you effectively need to beat five of them instead. Meanwhile, by the endgame, you have around 15 hearts (more if you're better at collecting hearts, so the better players encounter less challenge) plus quite a few bottles of red or blue potions that can instantly restore all of those hearts, so you're practically invincible.

[@Bighomie39]

I think BOTW has is the worst of this "difficulty curve" issue, since the endgame is post-story and you keep getting stronger well after the enemies do. I think TOTK handles this a bit better, since Silver Lynels are no longer the only, or even hardest, enemy that feels remotely challenging in endgame. You may be overpowered at the end of TP, but there's a much lower limit than BOTW to how overpowered you can get.

[@RorikH]

@@Bighomie39 The recent ones especially have a problem with the hearty foods. In most other Zelda games you had 4 bottles max for everything, and then in the new ones you can have, like, 30 full health items.

[@Cyberspark939]

@@Bighomie39 BOTW spawns enemies based on the gear that you have as part of some calculation to basically create meat sponges to force you to use up durability on your best weapons. BOTW and TOTK's real power mostly comes from ingenuity, using the systems available to you and infinite durability. I don't think the devs ever really considered balance outside of the simplistic "what's the strongest weapons available when this creature is attacking, how many of them are there and how many swings does that strongest weapon take to break"

[@seantheimp]

@@Cyberspark939 The claim about weapon held determining enemy spawns is false. BotW (I don't know if TotK uses the same system) uses a hidden "leveling" system that determines average weapon strength and what enemy colors appear. If you infiltrate Hyrule Castle early and get top-tier weapons they have zero effect on enemy spawns. If you drop all your weapons in the end-game and equip a bunch of sticks, it will not make enemies magically weaker after a Blood Moon. Killing enemies raises your level a little, while killing bosses raises it a lot. The _final effect_ is similar to what you describe, but the actual mechanic is very different.

[@Alloveck]

@@seantheimp This is correct as far as I understand, and lines up with my experience. That said, I just plain dislike the level/power/whatever scaling period no matter what it's based on. In any and all games for that matter. How tough Link currently is or what he's done so far, and how tough any given Moblin is, should have no connection. If the two newest Zeldas had some sort of fixed enemy strength and loot quality option, I'd gladly take it.

[@NachtKaiser666]

That's where you can see the genius of Mother 3. You definitely get stronger as you progress, but one of the key mechanic of the game, the OST based combo system can make or break a relatively easy fight. It starts with relatively slow 3/4 and 4/4 song, but it starts getting faster and more complex as you go through the game to the point of songs having tempo changes. So while you definitely get stronger, the game always pushes you out of your comfort zone with new songs or slightly modified ones to keep the game challenging. And while you could ignore the combo system completely, it does make the game a bit easier, and pulling that 16 hits combo is always satisfying!

[@thecorniestlemur7969]

This reminds me of one of the best pieces of game design I've seen in a pretty universally hated part of a game: in Dark Souls, when you enter the Demon Ruins, there's Taurus Demons dotted about as regular enemies. Some people say it's lazy because they're reusing a boss instead of making a new enemy, but it satisfies both the "game get harder" and "player get stronger" philosophies. Game get harder because they're still quite tough for regular enemies, but player feel stronger because just one of them used to be a boss, and now you're expected to kill about seven of them at once.

[@leithaziz2716]

I think I like the concept more than I like the execution. It's all about being able to come off seeming like an intentional decision rather than a sign of running out of resources. The Champion Gundyr fight being an evolved iteration of the tutorial boss, being harder and having a more complex moveset, is probably one of the best ways of showing the player's growth. At the start, the tutorial boss kicked your butt, but now both it and you have stepped up your game in the rematch to be able to keep up. It's a really cool idea. The secret Owl fight in Sekiro (Hirata Estate) is another good example.

[@darkzler]

The Taurus and Capra demons feel like a lazy move because of the strong feeling of just copy paste them everywhere to fill the areas, instead of the very smart and interesting way earlier enemies are located and used in places like undead burg, I don't mind the trope of previous bosses now being base enemies, but don't just sprinkle them randomly, Dark souls is one of my favorite games, but the last arch of the games, specially Demon Ruins - Lost Izalith is not up to par with the rest of the game.

[@hidood5th]

Old school fps games do this quite a bit also, reusing old bosses as normal enemies to show how much the challenge has ramped up.

[@Kasaaz]

Slay the Spire interesting to think about with this paradox. The entire game, and that kind of game in general, is basically about managing player get stronger vs game get harder. It presents, almost literally, that paradox as a fun thing.

[@TheStigification]

Tears of the kingdom has a good example when you fight Gannon at the end he starts stealing your moves which I really really enjoyed. Tears of the kingdom Gannon fight is awesome

[@yangerdanger7744]

One example I love is half life 2, where the chapters leading up to the citadel grt harder and harder, but when you actually get in you are given the super gravity gun and the game gets much easier. Thing is it all works to pace out the difficulty, giving you an easier section after a harder one.

[@kingsleycy3450]

I often find enemies with shields (ie counter to player's brute force approach) more fun than damage sponges

[@PlebNC]

As always, it's better to add more tools and ways to do things than scaling damage/health numbers. It applies to player progression too as nothing bores me faster than "+10% when crouching on tables on Thursday" but tell me I can "hold enemies as human shields and enemies actually react believably to the now hostage situation" and I'll climb a mountain to get that skill because that skill transforms and reinterprets how I play as well as add roleplaying/immersion opportunity. While the former skill is 50 shades of "you do more damage sometimes".

[@Metallijosh100]

Shadow of War is quite good at this, enemy captains become immune to types of attacks if you repeat them too much, so even as you become more powerful, some fights are incredibly hard to cheese (Shadow of Mordor is not bad at this but only had enemies being immune, they didn't adapt) - I only ever had ONE really bad experience with the adapting where a major story boss adapted to every single attack except ranged attacks, and there were hardly any arrows and no other enemies to use (for combos or converting or anything) so I just spent 15 minutes running around shooting this guy until he EVENTUALLY died.

[@grzegorzbrzeczyszczykiewic563]

You have to outsmart and outmaneuver enemies with shields, so they are not a test of strength or patience, but of skill and cunning. Tests of skill and cunning are fun. Tests of strength and patience are not.

[@PlebNC]

@@grzegorzbrzeczyszczykiewic563 Stealth games would disagree on the patience part but agree on the strength part.

[@Delmworks]

Agre to disagree- I find sheild enemies and their variants tend to break my flow too much. It probably doesn’t help in most games there’s only 1, maybe 2 anti-shield moves so it’s always the same solution

[@MarkovChains223]

BG3 is an excellent example of a game striking that balance. Outside of some specific broken builds, as you get stronger and start feeling more powerful, the game starts making fights harder by introducing new mechanics and resistances and whatnot. Almost like clockwork, as soon as you start to feel powerful, melting enemies left and right, they throw a battle that reminds you of all of the ways youre still weak and vulnerable. It's great!

[@tiffa440]

Chuffed to see how quickly and we’ll put together your response has been (from all of second wind) good work all!

[@Neatherback]

Amazing comeback guys! Here's to another 16 years of foul mouthed blithering!

[@EagleEye6486]

I think the first Bioshock did a good job of this, especially when you are trying to beat the hardest difficulty without using Vita chambers. In the beginning of the game, at least when I played, I was using the hacked automatic turrets and security cameras to kill the splicers. When you finally get to Sander Cohens theater and are able to research the Spider Splicers to use their hearts as health packs, and getting the Booze Hound tonic, things start to turn in your favor.

[@TheNwr1]

I was thinking that too! Honestly, the thuggish splicers are a good example of that. You start off fighting them one at a time, then you get (well, if you search for it) a tonic that improves your melee damage, so they get easier. That you get another, they get easier, so on, so forth. When you get to Hephaestus, they become immune to electricity. So your usual attacks really don’t work on them. The game basically forces you to adopt a new strategy, or invest in different plasmids, etc. But I guess the only downside is, the balance isn’t quite right. You effectively get 2 inverse difficulty curves, instead of a steady increase in difficulty bolstered by the new mechanics. Still tons of fun though, and challenging enough.

[@stefansuch1588]

Ultrakill handles this difficulty situation really well. It gets easier by giving you new weapons, but it gets harder by requiring more skill to make effective use of the new weapons. Your progress on gaining skill is actually extremely easy to track in Ultrakill. The style point mechanic encourages the best strategy to play the game, but is loose enough to allow for you to develop your own methods.

[@jamiecooper14]

Most entertaining ad I've seen on youtube in a long time. Also Yahtzee's points are exactly what kills Ubisoft games for me. The reason he was picking on them so much is because it's a damn hallmark of their games honestly though other games do it frequently as well.

[@dcamozzato]

One interesting thing is, in many old school pen and paper RPGs (like D&D retro clones), it feels much like a rogue like game, where your character can die at any point. For example, some D&D variants alter how you gain hit points, so you don’t end up with huge hit point pools. Also, in many games (depending on style), failing a “poison saving throw” simply means your character is dead. No matter how high level he is. Thus, it is the player’s job to keep the character alive, for example, by compulsively checking for poisoned spikes in door knobs, poison darts in chests, using 10 ft poles to check for pit traps, etc. In such games, gaining a level does not really make you more powerful - but it does increase the chance that a player’s mistake does not end up with a dead character, or worse, a total party kill.

[@fluorideinthechat7606]

Shin Megami Tensei is probably a good series that balances challenge and player getting stronger. Nocturne is probably the prime example of this, as no matter how far you get into the game you can still be fucked over by one wrong decision, enemy crit, missing an attack/hitting a block or getting it absorbed or repelled so you lose half/all of your turn, insta-kill skill on the main character, or a boss just says “Fuck you” and spams Beast/Dragon Eye to give themselves more turns (this is why I’d recommend to play the remaster, since they’ve patched out the more egregious Beast Eye spam) However, as the game goes on you can get access to more resistances, shoring up your resistance to getting fucked over, and get access to new and creative ways of fucking over the enemies, and if YOU get hit with an attack you block, absorb, repel, the enemy misses, or you land a crit or weakness you get extra turns as well. However, IV and V are probably the more fair entries in the series, since III/Nocturne is the embodiment of an abusive relationship in a video game, since all the above can happen as well.

[@echofactor1977]

Heck yeah, one of the reasons Skyrim is so enduring is that Game Get Hard but Player Get Strong... however they want to get strong. Even a casual with practically no hand eye coordination like myself can have a blast as a sneaky arrow wielding bastard, and so can a "get in the thick of it" button smashing melee fighter. That's a balance few other games handle as well as Skyrim, I think. It's probably too much work for most developers to think of more than a single progression path. Keep up the good work, and congrats on the new venture, Yahtzee and crew!

[@777SilverPhoenix777]

This was a very fun video with great points to make. It's funny cause in most of my games that allow for extra upgrades that remove game play, I almost ever use them. Half the time i forget about them. I always end up doing things the hard way apparently. 😂

[@AManChoosesASlaveObeys]

Because it's rewarding. And actually gaming

[@Pallysilverstar]

Yeah, I've never understood the "this thing makes the game so easy it's not fun" argument because rarely (basically never) is that thing necessary and if the person wants more challenge they just don't have to use it. That autostart ability in Mirage I used maybe twice, once to see what it did and once to get an achievement.

[@joedav67]

@@Pallysilverstarthe reason behind the argument is that it means those upgrade points are now useless as all you can spend them on now is stuff that removes gameplay

[@Pallysilverstar]

@@joedav67 not a great argument since the skill points are there to allow you to customize your playstyle. Can you name a game where every single skill fits into every single playstyle. I don't know about you but in my experience about half the skill trees or more are basically useless for my preferred playstyles. There's always going to be skills that it would be pointless to put points into unless you just have nothing else to spend them on or they're a bridge to another skill you actually want.

[@jimsface]

It feels like y’all are unleashed. Not to say you weren’t making what you wanted before, but there’s a joyful feeling of freedom in these videos.