Artificial Difficulty

[Krylo]

I get that it's personal, but calling it artificial is acting like it's some legitimate category.
Which it isn't if it's personal and different for everyone.

Just because people (mis)use the term in ridiculous ways that doesn't mean it doesn't exist and have a meaning, or that it's purely subjective. It's another word for 'bad' difficulty or 'punishing' vs 'challenging'.

Basically games are designed with specific mechanics and gameplay cycles involved. In FFXIV DPS checks are one of them, as is dodging AoEs, 'team jump rope', and otherwise executing manuevers. These are all designed/challenging/good difficulty. They're there for a reason, and are all keyed very specifically. FFXIV has very very little artificial difficulty. I'd suggest there's some in RNG issues with farming things and crafting, but that's there to be a time sink. Arguably, there's also the increase in open world mob difficulty in HW (but those mobs are so easy anyway, that it's hardly worth mentioning).

Artificial/bad/punishing difficulty is the opposite of designed difficulty. The most common place it happens is when enemy parameters are tuned up (damage, hp, etc) but nothing is altered in their actual mechanics. Imagine if T9 savage mode had all the mechanics exactly the same, but Nael had 5x the HP and did 3x as much damage, as opposed to adding extra meteors during heavensfall, and divebombs and adding an extra thunder and just generally adding more mechanics. That's artificial difficulty. It's no longer tuned to allow people to learn the fight, or increase their skill. Indeed, as you have to have done T9 normal to do savage, it's no longer skill at all that prevails, just endurance.

It's most often seen in difficulty increases in other games (go into Very Hard and instead of AI or mechanics changing things just hit you harder and absorb more bullets).

Or when things aren't telegraphed at all--which is to say something happens you have no method of reacting to until it's happened. All your choices need to be informed; if you're just shooting in the dark that's artificial difficulty. You need some kind of hint that something dangerous is going to happen, or, at least, time to react when it does. You need a way to play around things (the ground AoE markers in FFXIV are a great way of ensuring this doesn't happen here, or at least very very rarely). Lacking these is the equivalent of 'rocks fall, everybody dies, no saving throw.'

There's also things like bad camera controls (most early 3D games, most noticable in platformers--how many times did you miss a jump in Mario 3D, not because you were incapable, but because the Camera refused to stay lined up right?), or buggy, glitchy things. Or situations where the rules in the game change without warning or consistency (this kind of leads back to telegraphing, if the rules are consistent they telegraph themselves--such as being able to look away to dodge gaze attacks in FFXIV). And, of course, iteration time. Long iteration time--which is to say you die and go back 30 minutes of gameplay--is punishing, not challenging or fun. Again, FFXIV avoids this pretty well with instant and cheap teleports--although I'd say it could be improved by having you rez at the nearest aetheryte to your death instead of your home point, but no one's perfect.

ANYWAY, the point of all this is that, no it's not entirely subjective. It's part of game design and important for design philosophy to understand and identify the difference between artificial/designed or good/bad or challenging/punishing or whatever two adjectives you want to use for difficult.

[Allyrion]

Just because people (mis)use the term in ridiculous ways that doesn't mean it doesn't exist and have a meaning, or that it's purely subjective. It's another word for 'bad' difficulty or 'punishing' vs 'challenging'.

I'm contradicting it because there is an objective way to use the term.
It's just misused.

Even you are conflating punishing difficulty with artificial difficulty, and even bad difficulty (which is obviously the most subjective category).
Those are all different type if you look at them objectively.
Grouping together different terminology in some general negative category, lends to the same subjective misuse of the term.

Your biggest example is not artificial difficulty.
Tuned up parameters still take the personal performance mechanics into account, where the difficulty comes from the mechanics of your character/group rather than the boss.
That is objectively designed difficulty unless it's completely gear-gated which is almost never the case.

Once the potential to clear is within the player(s), then it's not artificial.
Tuning things tightly might be Punishing difficulty, just like stuff like Titan extreme as well (with twitch mechanics).
But it's not Artificial.

Things outside of your control are Artificial difficulty.
Like RNG, which can test adaptability in some cases but can be considered artificial when you had a more difficult run because RNG wasn't on your side.
Or when it's used to gate rewards, so it's not about earning but you wait for the system to randomly be nice to you.
Gating in general is artificial. Such as weekly lockouts.
The system restricts your growth to sustain tuning difficulty.

But the tuning itself is not artificial.
Increasing numbers instead of specific fight mechanics, just means you have to work with your own personal Jobs' mechanics.
But that should be expected.
Just because they gave you damage mechanics to work with when you started the game/levelled up (personal abilities and traits) instead of when you entered the instance (Dive-bombs, meteors, etc.) doesn't make it less valid.
Ideally the game should be testing your ability to juggle fight mechanics while also doing your personal skills extremely optimally.

The main error in assumption (while true in some other games) is when people believe that number tuning isn't based with the players abilities/resources in mind.
At least in this game, it obviously is. They don't just up numbers and HP without taking into account what Jobs are able to achieve with how their Job mechanics work..

Hence tight tuning is still usually still designed with the player's control to clear.
It is designed difficulty as well, because you have rotations that are designed to be optimized.
That's the whole point of your skill set, to use it in the fight.

Like I said above, things should be tuned to test your optimization instead of just how well you can jump through the fight specific hoops.
All your Job mechanics are meant to be part of the difficulty of mastering your Job, and how well you've mastered your Job should be relevant to the clearing content (not just the fight gimmicks).
That is in your control. It is not artificial.

Bad camera controls, RNG, system gating, these are things that are really outside your control.
These are artificial.
Some, like the gating and some level of RNG, are acceptable forms of artificial difficulty.
They are still designed difficulty, but it's not designed with the player being relevant at all.
The difficulty is there no matter how good you are because the system decides everything, hence it's completely artificial.

If we're being objective, it's not about good or bad.
So grouping up everything negative is making the term itself meaningless.

There can be good and bad artificial difficulty, or good and bad punishing difficulty.
When you're talking about good or bad though, then you're talking about subjectively.
The categories themselves can be a priori, while people are free to judge what they like or don't like within each category.

[Krylo]

Snip

You're not very good at reading comprehension.

I clearly wasn't talking about 'finely tuned' things or I'd have mentioned any of the Alex savage. I'm talking about--go play Dead Space. Now play Dead Space on the highest difficulty setting. It's no longer balanced, it's just increased parameters in a way that breaks normal flow of gameplay (get startled->regain control->kill enemy turns into get startled->die or have every jump scare memorized and kill enemies before they have a chance to react).

I mean, I, literally, multiple times, pointed out the ways FFXIV avoids those specific traps, and used a made up example drawing a contrast to what was actually done.

Also, Artificial/Bad/Punishing difficulty all mean the same thing. They're used interchangeably in game design and are in contrast, respectively, with Designed/Good/Challenging difficulty, which are also interchangeable.

Lets say you are in a game where the checkpoints are 30 minutes apart and nothing is retained between deaths.

Punishing: This mechanic is too punishing. It breaks game flow and causes an unintended exit point in play.

Bad: This mechanic is badly designed. It breaks game flow and causes an unintended exit point in play.

Artificial: This mechanic presents an artificial difficulty curve. We already know our players can make it past these things, and forcing them to go back this far breaks game flow and causes an unintended exit point in play.

They're all just different ways of saying the same thing.