Artificial Difficulty

[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.