Topic by Tompa

Posted: 9/11/2015 8:21 AM

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Tompa

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Location: Mullsjö, Sweden

To Warp: Let's say the boss has 10 times as much HP. He'll never ever attack you, all you have to is to shoot it, once every 10 seconds. Is it more of a challenge to shoot 10 times as many times? No, it isn't. Let's say the boss has 10 times as much HP. To damage him you have to wait for his 10 second attack pattern while avoid bullets. The pattern is identical on easy and hard and you use the same exact input presses every time. Is it more of a challenge to do this 10 times as many times? No, it isn't. As there is no challenge for a TAS to dodge the bullets 10 times or 9627478 times, just as easy every time. If Hard mode would make the first boss do something during Hard Mode, it would be more challenging. If the bullet pattern would change in hard mode, it would be more challenging. But right here IT IS NOT. Stop being dumb for once, please =).

Posted: 9/11/2015 8:26 AM

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Warp

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arandomgameTASer wrote:

Warp wrote:
= But the thing is, even if the difficulty level only affects enemy HP and nothing else, it still makes the game more difficult to play, and thus a perfect TAS more impressive.
What, no it wouldn't. It just gives them more HP. That just makes it longer, not more difficult.

You don't understand. The game is more difficult to play unassisted. That makes it more impressive to see it beaten by perfect gameplay.

Posted: 9/11/2015 8:28 AM

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arandomgameTASer

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Warp wrote:

arandomgameTASer wrote:
Warp wrote:
= But the thing is, even if the difficulty level only affects enemy HP and nothing else, it still makes the game more difficult to play, and thus a perfect TAS more impressive.
What, no it wouldn't. It just gives them more HP. That just makes it longer, not more difficult.
You don't understand. The game is more difficult to play unassisted. That makes it more impressive to see it beaten by perfect gameplay.

Um, what? We're talking about just enemy HP being changed. If nothing else was changed, it wouldn't be any more difficulty unassisted. Edit: Example, provided by Samsara on the previous page: Link to video

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Posted: 9/11/2015 10:15 AM

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Warp

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arandomgameTASer wrote:

Um, what? We're talking about just enemy HP being changed. If nothing else was changed, it wouldn't be any more difficulty unassisted.

I don't even understand anymore what's going on. Of course a game becomes more difficult to play if it's harder to kill enemies. It takes more hits to kill enemies, prolonging fights, making it more likely that you will be hit by enemies. Just to take an extreme example for illustrative purposes: Suppose your max HP is 1, the enemy's HP is 1, and each hit causes 1 HP of damage. In this scenario you just have to make sure you hit the enemy before it hits you, and that's it. Now change that to the enemy having 100 HP instead. Now you have to hit the enemy 100 times, without getting hit yourself even once. Obviously this is a lot more difficult (regardless of how simplistic the enemy AI might be.) There are significantly more chances for you to get hit.

Posted: 9/11/2015 1:48 PM

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xy2_

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Warp wrote:

Obviously this is a lot more difficult (regardless of how simplistic the enemy AI might be.) There are significantly more chances for you to get hit.

Do you realise we currently are on the site tasvideos.org? Not speedrun.com. This discussion would stand its ground if we were talking about speedrunning, but we're talking about TASes here. Sure, enemies having more health is way harder, but in a TAS setting, enemies having 100 more health makes the movie just as impressive as seeing a calculator answer 100 equations in a row without fail.

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Posted: 9/11/2015 2:20 PM

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moozooh

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No, he has a point. While it's true that in a TAS it's easy to predict whether a player character will get hit (we know it won't unless the movie author has it in their stated goals), there's a difference in the kind of precision that might be required for them not to. This is what Warp is talking about. It creates additional headroom for the author to demonstrate their creativity and penchant for optimization, and it drives the stakes higher for the audience. Dodging a hundred bullets is absolutely more impressive than one because whenever we're watching a movie (a gameplay, or a live action, doesn't matter) we unwittingly attempt to connect with characters we're presented. Whenever we're watching someone playing a game there's always at least one point where we compare the on-screen performance with our own projections, in the forms such as: — "I'd never be able to do that", — "this part looks like it could be done a bit better", — "this looked like it took a ton of effort", and so on. This connection has historically been stronger in unassisted runs because we know they are done by people like us, who make mistakes, rather than some hypothetical perfect beings. But in the case with perfect beings the point to drive home isn't just to demonstrate the lack of mistakes—it's obvious enough from the get-go—but that the hundred bullet scenario provides the opportunity for eliciting a "this looks on a completely different level from a human player, there's no way anybody would be able to do that without making mistakes" kind of emotional response—the feeling of overwhelming awe. Dodging a single bullet is something that anyone can do, so even if it's faster, it would fail to entertain for that very reason. This is exactly why games with complex movement generally end up so much higher on entertainment scale than the "run right for justice" ones. Perfectly holding a direction button is easy, perfectly executing a walljump or a 50-hit combo isn't. More opportunity for mistakes (and thus, optimization). When a TAS is played on an easier difficulty because it allows a larger pool of resources to take advantage of, it may similarly expand the opportunity for mistakes/optimization, which would elicit the emotional response we're looking for. Timer alone would never be able to do it; it's just an abstract number you can't connect with. Lower time is a function of better gameplay, not the other way around.

Warp wrote:

Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.

Posted: 9/11/2015 4:08 PM

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Warp

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Case in point, assume that in Megaman there were an easy difficulty mode where the only difference is that bosses have significantly less HP, and thus it takes only a couple of shots to kill them. Would you consider a TAS in that mode more interesting, less interesting, or completely equal than the current TASes? Personally I'd argue it would be less interesting. The same is true of many other games, like Super Metroid, for instance. I'm sure you can think of many others.

Posted: 9/11/2015 4:16 PM

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Tompa

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" Case in point, assume that in Megaman there were a hard difficulty mode where the only difference is that bosses have significantly more HP, and thus it takes twice as many shots to kill them. Would you consider a TAS in that mode more interesting, less interesting, or completely equal than the current TASes? Personally I'd argue it would be less interesting. " If Hard Mode will be more interesting or not is a case by case debate. Simply increases enemies health is NOT neccesarly challenging or more interesting. But it will almot always be slower. In some cases, however, it may result in the fight being too slow to become interesting to watch, such as your 1 hp example above. Though at other times it will just me insanely boring to watch the same fight go on for 10 minutes longer such because the boss has more HP and you deal less damage.

Posted: 9/11/2015 4:18 PM

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Spikestuff

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Metroid does in fact have a difficulty setting in the Prime series but do you use it? Yes, the easiest difficulty due to no difference between the game but boss health increases. Second one on the easiest difficulty trial is from Spyro: The Eternal Night it's chosen as the enemies would take more and dish out more damage on Normal or Dark Spyro (Hard) difficulty. Yet again, just health increases, get damaged for a bit more and boom, hard difficulty. Crash Bandicoot's Titans Series has difficulty settings do you it? Yes, the hardest difficulty is used besides the increase of boss health, it will not matter as the game speed itself increases as you move faster compared to normal or easy difficulty. Why is it so hard to understand the fact that difficulty is chosen for an advantage over a game if there is no difference except the amount of hits you deal or get?

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Posted: 9/11/2015 4:29 PM

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Warp

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Spikestuff wrote:

Why is it so hard to understand the fact that difficulty is chosen for an advantage over a game if there is no difference except the amount of hits you deal or get?

It has been explained several times already, by several people. Thus there's no need to repeat what has already been said.

Posted: 9/11/2015 5:34 PM

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TASeditor

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Wow, I haven't posted yet, even I have a clear opinion on the topic. To chose the best fitting difficulty some considerations need to be made. On top of all it should show interresting non-trivial solutions to the problems, which change with difficulty. They make a run entertaining to watch. More boss HP vs. less boss HP: If there's ammo in the game, it may makes the run look more interresting, due to the need of collecting ammo along the way, which requires killing enemies or opening boxes making the sections before the boss more entertaining. It also may show clever usage of multiple weapons. So the prefered difficulty should be the hardest. However if there's no ammo limit in the game ammo management is no longer needed and thus the problem falls away and with it the interresting part. In this case the difficulty is free to chose. Sometimes the hardest difficulty is the most entertaining one in this case, due to boss battles being entertaining, if the game has different ways to attack, or because of the nature of the game (example: 2529M). Enemies deal more damage vs. enemies deal less damage: When enemies deal more damage it means less damage boost/getting hit when bypassing can be made. But it also means that the TASer needs to do health management, which makes the run then more interresting. When at easy difficulty, the game may let's you rush througth the level and do as many damage boost as possible; Damage boosts alone aren't as interresting as damage boosts and health management together. The easy difficulty can be used when there's always a way to bypass the enemies without getting hit, which isn't slower. Or no damage boosts exist in the game. Enemies have more health vs. enemies have less health: Let's say the TASer is in need to drop an item from an enemy, it would be possible to kill him with one attack on easy difficulty without slowing down. But since hard difficulty is used, the more attacks can't be made without slowing down, it requires the TASer to compensate the speed loss and thus make its execution more interresting. If no enemies ever need to be killed througthout the run, it doesn't really matter which difficulty is chosen. More enemies spawn vs. less enemies spawn More enemies could mean more lag and lag reduction is hard, but this shouldn't be an excuse to use the easy difficulty if the frame-rate doesn't drop significally in the overall run. At hard difficulty clever tricks to reduce the lag, like killing enemies or camera manipulation, are needed making the overall run more interresting. In case the frame-rate drops significally the whole run, it makes the run annoying to watch, therefore the easy difficulty need to be chosen. I personally chose the hardest difficulty when ever possible, even if it doesn't change anything.

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Posted: 9/11/2015 5:45 PM

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Tangent

Joined: 3/9/2009
Posts: 530

Spikestuff wrote:

Why is it so hard to understand the fact that difficulty is chosen for an advantage over a game if there is no difference except the amount of hits you deal or get?

Because, like Tompa said, those differences can have drastic effects. I get the feeling you're referring to things like long boss patterns where the difference is sitting through ~3 repetitions as compared to sitting through ~6, instead of the example brought up where it can completely trivialize boss battles, or even obstacles in general. If the differences in damage taken/dealt means that otherwise challenging obstacles become simplistic due to being able to just walk through them thanks to inflated HP or being given ridiculously overpowered weaponry/fragile enemies, it seems incorrect to prefer the difficulty that promotes less precise play. There is the possibility entertainment will be impacted enough to prevent that, but again, the new and novel seems to always get the GREAT IMPROVEMENT, THUMBS UP, LOVED EVERY MINUTE sticker of the crowd over the old and dated. Take Resident Evil 3, for example. Easy mode raises your health, lowers enemy health, starts you off with an extra powerful weapon and a ton of ammo for it, and hands you nearly every other available weapon for free not long afterward, along with all the ammo you could ever need. Either way, most of the gameplay will be running past zombies and then doing the standard spray-and-pray against bosses, the only differences will be some detours to collect materiel and which gun you spray-and-pray with, but I cannot believe anybody would say the difficulty that gives you all buttloads of bonuses and buffs the player/debuffs the enemies is the correct difficulty to run the game on.

More enemies spawn vs. less enemies spawn More enemies could mean more lag and lag reduction is hard, but this shouldn't be an excuse to use the easy difficulty if the frame-rate doesn't drop significally in the overall run. At hard difficulty clever tricks to reduce the lag, like killing enemies or camera manipulation, are needed making the overall run more interresting. In case the frame-rate drops significally the whole run, it makes the run annoying to watch, therefore the easy difficulty need to be chosen.

It's something you see especially in SHMUPs that like to cover the screen in enemies and bullets, but also frequently in run and gun games like Contra or Metal Slug. Again, I guess there's a possible argument to be made that the loss of entertainment and not looking like super human play MIGHT cover it (although most of the bullet dancing in Gradius, for example, could be done with fewer bullets just as easily), depending on the audience at the time, but at the very least for the genres that define themselves by flooding the screen with enemies and bullets, lag reduction should not be a valid reason for an easier difficulty.

Posted: 9/14/2015 12:55 PM

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Personman

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Difficulties are branches. Treating them specially makes no sense. No Hard run should ever obsolete an Easy run, and vice versa. If the site wishes to host only one run of a game, and believes that a new run on a different difficulty is more deserving of the slot than an old run, the old run should be unpublished, and the new run instated as the primary branch. Comparing times across difficulties makes no sense, it's like comparing an any% time to a 100% time, or an SMB time to an SMB3 time. Personally, in cases where there isn't an entertainment argument for hosting multiple difficulty branches, I would generally lean towards the faster one being preferred, but that's a vague and pretty irrelevant sentiment - it really has to be handled case by case.

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Posted: 9/14/2015 3:20 PM

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thatguy

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Personman - realistically, are there any examples of where easy mode and hard mode runs of the same game would be different enough to warrant separate categories?

Posted: 9/14/2015 4:35 PM

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Radiant

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Relevant to this discussion, there is a run on the workbench that indeed uses easy mode since it's faster that way. Note that it's an improvement to a published run, which also uses easy mode for the same reason.

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Posted: 9/14/2015 5:33 PM

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Pokota

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thatguy wrote:

Personman - realistically, are there any examples of where easy mode and hard mode runs of the same game would be different enough to warrant separate categories?

Again, this would necessarily be true of any Nail 'n Scale runs that get published due to a fundamental mechanical difference (jump height) allowing for radically faster strategies on one difficulty over another. In one case (stage 34), you'd skip the level on any% hard because of a forced wait for an indestructible enemy that's going to block your path no matter what you do on Hard, while on easy you'd save that level skip for a different stage because you can get to where you need to go just quickly enough for the enemy to not be blocking you - allowing both 47 (a level requiring TAS-tier precision anyway on Hard) and 48 (largest level in the entire game) to be skipped later on.

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Posted: 9/14/2015 6:31 PM

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Alyosha

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Would it be appropriate to simply define 'any %' as the fastest completion, regardless of difficulty? It would be something of a reversal of the current guideline, but at least it would be simple and consistent.

Posted: 9/14/2015 10:11 PM

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Invariel

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I can see a problem with any % as fastest completion regardless of difficulty because it opens the door, a year or so down the line, for people to argue that an easy run should sit alongside a hard run of the same game because they use different paths or somesuch. I continue to like the hardest difficulty guideline, for many of the reasons stated above (it looks more impressive, it's more difficult, ...) but I also approve of peoples' decisions to go with easier difficulty levels when it doesn't matter to the overall challenge (things have more health, player does less damage, etc).

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Posted: 9/14/2015 11:51 PM

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moozooh

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I think going always-easy won't be too appropriate for the same reason as using debug menus, cheat codes, continues, passwords, gameshark, etc.: if it makes the game easier in a way that an any unassisted player could take advantage of from the start, then it's not worthy of a "perfect, godlike player". I've elaborated upon this in my previous post here on this page. Using the default difficulty (i.e. Normal or its equivalent) would, in my opinion, be more appropriate, and it has other benefits, too, but the best approach would be to decide it on a game-by-game basis with some generic difficulty used as a default baseline. I actually think we need to make an elaborate write-up upon the framework of gameplay, challenge, entertainment, and creator's intent that ties everything together with regards to our stated goals, rules, and needs. With regards to the question at hand, as I see it, there are currently six options to choose from that were mentioned (and enjoyed at least a post or two of vocal support) at least once in this topic: 1. Decide on a game-by-game basis, default on the hardest settings: + a lot more versatile in goal choices; + provides the most potential for impressive runs; – more challenging to judge in some cases due to goal choices; – complications may arise if an improvement is submitted using a different setting due to the rule's laxity. 2. Decide on a game-by-game basis, default on standard/typical settings (i.e. don't change them, or use a universally adopted setup used by relevant speedrunning/etc. communities if there exists one): + a lot more versatile in goal choices; + more comparable to typical playthroughs/unassisted runs; + strikes a balance between speed and entertainment; – unless it's also the easiest setting, it's rarely the fastest option; – unless it's also the hardest setting, it's rarely the most entertaining option; – complications may arise if an improvement is submitted using a different setting due to the rule's laxity. 3. Decide on a game-by-game basis, default on the quickest setting (typically easy, with some exceptions): + a lot more versatile in goal choices; + provides the most potential for the shortest/fastest runs; – more challenging to judge in some cases due to goal choices; – complications may arise if an improvement is submitted using a different setting due to the rule's laxity. 4. Enforce using the hardest settings in all cases: + a lot more convenient to both pick goals and judge; + provides more potential for impressive runs; – entertainment will suffer in some cases due to needless repetition, extra lag, etc. forced by the rule; – runs submitted on other difficulty settings will have to be rejected even if they suit the goals better. 5. Enforce using standard/typical settings (i.e. don't change them, or use a universally adopted setup used by relevant speedrunning/etc. communities if there exists one): + a lot more convenient to both pick goals and judge; + most comparable to typical playthroughs/unassisted runs; + strikes a balance between speed and entertainment; – entertainment will suffer in some cases due to mediocre balance or goal choices forced by the rule; – runs submitted on other difficulty settings will have to be rejected even if they suit the goals better. 6. Enforce using the quickest setting (typically easy, with some exceptions): + a lot more convenient to both pick goals and judge; + provides more potential for faster runs; – entertainment will suffer in some cases due to overbearing trivialization of in-game situations forced by the rule; – runs submitted on other difficulty settings will have to be rejected even if they suit the goals better. This situation outlines the aforementioned need for a write-up, because it's clear to me that options 1–3 put emphasis on overall goals (fastest, most impressive, etc.), while options 4–6 put emphasis on rule and content consistency and ease of judging. In my opinion, while the latter options put less strain on both judges and authors (at least in a way), they potentially lock us out of the better content for purely bureaucratic reasons. But either way I think we should make a poll and let it run for a while, so that enough feedback and arguments can accumulate, then have adelikat & the team decide based on what we arrive at.

Warp wrote:

Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.

Posted: 9/15/2015 12:29 AM

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Tangent

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Posts: 530

I think a distinction still needs to be drawn between difficulty for Vault and otherwise. As I said before, Moons has always been fairly lax with anything that gets crowd approval generally being accepted. The Vault's supposed to be more free from that and entertainment isn't supposed to be a concern, so except in extreme cases, there's nothing there to 'suffer.'

Posted: 9/15/2015 12:47 AM

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moozooh

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The problem with that is that the Vault is the upper layer of grouping—vaulted runs still exist in the same potential obsoletion chain as the Moons and the Stars, and goal choice might end up the tipping point that pushes a run into the Vault territory or out of it. We've had that happen. So naturally we shouldn't concern ourselves with rules specific for the Vault because runs aren't created to be vaulted—they end up vaulted.

Warp wrote:

Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.

Posted: 9/15/2015 1:14 AM

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TehBerral

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I personally like option 2. Yes it would put work on the judges (I would argue not any more than usual) but I feel it forces both difficulties to justify themselves. If Hard mode is more entertaining then any reasoning by the author/community should be easy to understand. If entertainment suffers from extended boss fights etc. or needless repetitiveness caused by the harder difficulty then any such issues should be glaring enough to see immediately (ex: if a boss that usually takes 15 seconds takes a minute and a half on hard mode). On the Vault issue, I don't think the vault should be involved in this at all, really. If a run isn't entertaining, but optimal, it goes to the vault (in most cases). If a hard mode run comes along that is deemed to be more entertaining and just as optimal, then I think that's a situation too specific to make a hard and fast rule about. From what I've seen, if a run is unvaulted it's usually due to better movement tech that results in a more polished and entertaining run. I don't know of any situations in which hard mode alone resulted in such an entertainment bump that it magically made it into a Moon tier run.

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Posted: 9/15/2015 1:22 AM

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Raelcun

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moozooh wrote:

The problem with that is that the Vault is the upper layer of grouping—vaulted runs still exist in the same potential obsoletion chain as the Moons and the Stars, and goal choice might end up the tipping point that pushes a run into the Vault territory or out of it. We've had that happen. So naturally we shouldn't concern ourselves with rules specific for the Vault because runs aren't created to be vaulted—they end up vaulted.

I see what you're saying here but the way you word is is bothering me. I agree that the guidelines, in general, should match for Vault as other submissions, but I can see situations coming up that require specific rules for the Vault. I"m currently TASing a game I fully expect to wind up in the Vault just because of the game choice. In the case where a run isn't expected to be let into Moons but it's something you want to do anyway because you enjoy the run, you kind of are creating a run to get vaulted and a Moon would be a plus. In that instance having rules on Vault specific things isn't exactly a bad thing. I just don't see difficulty being something that needs to be applied to that.

Posted: 9/15/2015 1:34 AM

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moozooh

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With respect to Vault-specific rules (which I really think is a whole another, completely separate discussion), I'd prefer to keep them to the minimum in any case so as to avoid complications and, most important of all, attempts to "pre-judge" a run, which is the situation you're describing. I mean you're free to have any kinds of expectations, but that's something that shouldn't be officially endorsed imo, even implicitly.

Warp wrote:

Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.

Posted: 9/15/2015 12:59 PM

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Warp

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I'd say that if the only reason for choosing the easiest difficulty is that it makes the run faster, that's not good enough of a reason. Again, we want to see the god-like perfect player mop the floor with the computer at its best, not at its weakest. There is no challenge in beating the game at the easiest difficulty level. I would even go so far as to say that even if the only difference between difficulty levels is boss HP, so what? Deal with it. An easy-difficulty run could exist alongside the default hardest-difficulty run (if there is enough difference between the two), but I don't think the former should replace the latter.