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[SirNiko]

I agree with this idea. Basically, once you've demonstrated that you've mastered a section of the level you are no longer required to play it.

[iffi]

I agree with this idea. Basically, once you've demonstrated that you've mastered a section of the level you are no longer required to play it.

In some cases that would work, but oftentimes being able to string together all the sections is part of the challenge.

[dspencer]

If each time I die to the boss, I replay the level and complete it noticeably faster, or reach the boss with more life or ammo, then replaying the level isn't too bad.

An Untitled Story tended to have several screens between save points and boss battles. It also had doors which only opened if the player was at full health. I found myself wishing that the level design would combine these two thoughts, and occasionally provide save points immediately before bosses as a reward for navigating the prior screens flawlessly.

The way that game was designed wouldn't allow that to work - you can teleport to any save point you see.

[Razz]

Speaking of an untitled story, I love Matt and all, but why the hell did he make the window resize if you die? That shit was annoying.

[snowyowl]

Speaking of an untitled story, I love Matt and all, but why the hell did he make the window resize if you die? That shit was annoying.

Thus proving that no matter how epic or awesome your game may be, it can still be ruined by seemingly insignificant details. Bear that in mind when making games fun: Any screen that the player sees over and over and over needs to be as un-annoying as possible.

To answer your question: I think the original reason was because the death-screen was a different shape from the game-screen. I don't know why he didn't fix it later though.

[Taiko]

I like to be rewarded by interesting art/music.  If that final boss fight is insanely difficult, then hopefully it is accompanied by catchy music and detailed spritework.

Look at La Mulana (a game well noted for its difficulty) - some of the best music in the game is during the final boss fight.  It makes you feel suitably epic for finishing.

[s0]

Somewhat to related to this, I think a lot of level design variety, both presentationally and gameplay-wise, can be good motivator as well. For instance, I recently played Kid Chameleon for the first time, and I found myself pushing forward and looking for all those secret exits just to see what surprises the game has in store for me.

[KM]

For me, difficulty is a big part of the fun. :D These days I find myself just pushing games to the hardest difficulty level that is allowed without even playing the game first to see how hard it is. I like a good challenge.

Of course completely unfair difficulty is just frustrating. Something like playing a whole game of VVVVVV and accomplishing everything without dying once and if you die you have to restart from the beggining with nothing would just be stupid.

[snowyowl]

For me, difficulty is a big part of the fun. :D

Agreed. I find it's sometimes more difficult to make an easy game fun than a hard game.

[Montoli]

For me, difficulty is a big part of the fun. :D These days I find myself just pushing games to the hardest difficulty level that is allowed without even playing the game first to see how hard it is. I like a good challenge.

Of course completely unfair difficulty is just frustrating. Something like playing a whole game of VVVVVV and accomplishing everything without dying once and if you die you have to restart from the beggining with nothing would just be stupid.

But people do that sort of thing.  I remember seeing no death runs for cave story.  Or no hp runs, where you weren't allowed to pick up any health items.  Sometimes people make interesting challenges for themselves.

[iffi]

For me, difficulty is a big part of the fun. :D These days I find myself just pushing games to the hardest difficulty level that is allowed without even playing the game first to see how hard it is. I like a good challenge.

Of course completely unfair difficulty is just frustrating. Something like playing a whole game of VVVVVV and accomplishing everything without dying once and if you die you have to restart from the beggining with nothing would just be stupid.

But people do that sort of thing.  I remember seeing no death runs for cave story.  Or no hp runs, where you weren't allowed to pick up any health items.  Sometimes people make interesting challenges for themselves.

True, but making that a requirement would turn off a lot of people who aren't good or patient enough to do that. I myself tried to do a min-equips run of Cave Story, but I got stuck at the Core (I haven't tried beating it in a while, maybe I could...). If there really were no health items, I probably would not have bothered finishing Cave Story.
I guess to some it really wouldn't be that hard, though. Difficulty's relative.

[Taiko]

For me, difficulty is a big part of the fun. :D These days I find myself just pushing games to the hardest difficulty level that is allowed without even playing the game first to see how hard it is. I like a good challenge.

Of course completely unfair difficulty is just frustrating. Something like playing a whole game of VVVVVV and accomplishing everything without dying once and if you die you have to restart from the beggining with nothing would just be stupid.

But people do that sort of thing.  I remember seeing no death runs for cave story.  Or no hp runs, where you weren't allowed to pick up any health items.  Sometimes people make interesting challenges for themselves.

Wow.  I couldn't even beat Cave Story normally, much less doing it without getting hit.

I assume people who do that need to practice tons before they get it right.  Which to me implies that they aren't concerned with the music or artwork (any song gets old after the 1,000th playthrough).  I guess KM is right, it's more the challenge in-and-of itself that drives the entertainment for such gamers.

[Xion]

I've played through wind waker and twilight princess both at least once without getting any heart containers (the latter just to prove how ridiculously easy it was...I think I died maybe once? If I tried again I'm sure I wouldn't die at all.)

I enjoy when games invite challenges like that.

[iffi]

I assume people who do that need to practice tons before they get it right.  Which to me implies that they aren't concerned with the music or artwork (any song gets old after the 1,000th playthrough).  I guess KM is right, it's more the challenge in-and-of itself that drives the entertainment for such gamers.

Even the greatest music gets old after listening to it hundreds of times in a row. *thinks of Cave Story Sacred Grounds speedruns and Touhou*
While good music, artwork, atmosphere, etc. can help motivate one to push on to beat a game for the first time, it plays much less of a role when perfecting a run. Either way, having good gameplay is essential.

[KM]

@Montoli I'm in the process of a Final Fantasy 1 NES run where I'm not allowed, any equipment (weapons, armour, etc) not allowed to use any items beyond story items that are needed to proceed and no magic. Plus I decided to use a Fighter, Thief, Red Mage, Black Mge group to pay homeage to 8-bit theate, and to not use all Black belts, as that would make the run far too easy as they don't really need armour and are better without weapons.

I'm not sure if this is possible, but we will see. I just do this when I need to focus on listening to indie music as it's not really brain intensive, while reviewing an album can be.

[Montoli]

@Montoli I'm in the process of a Final Fantasy 1 NES run where I'm not allowed, any equipment (weapons, armour, etc) not allowed to use any items beyond story items that are needed to proceed and no magic. Plus I decided to use a Fighter, Thief, Red Mage, Black Mge group to pay homeage to 8-bit theate, and to not use all Black belts, as that would make the run far too easy as they don't really need armour and are better without weapons.

I'm not sure if this is possible, but we will see. I just do this when I need to focus on listening to indie music as it's not really brain intensive, while reviewing an album can be.

Haha, awesome!  In related news, I remember when the DS version of final fantasy (the first one) came out, because they made it easier, one of the popular self-imposed challenges at the time was to see how low level you can be when you beat the game.  People running from all fights, and doing crazy things like trying to last hit bosses with the whole party dead except one guy.

[KM]

Haha, awesome!  In related news, I remember when the DS version of final fantasy (the first one) came out, because they made it easier, one of the popular self-imposed challenges at the time was to see how low level you can be when you beat the game.  People running from all fights, and doing crazy things like trying to last hit bosses with the whole party dead except one guy.

You should see the speed runs. Like 1 hour and 40 minutes or something is the record. Though they kind of cheat by using programs that tell you when you'll run into monsters and such.

[darthlupi]

I don't mind a frustratingly hard game if by the time your initial scream of frustration is over you are back in the game.

Basically, when I fail, by the time my brain is able to understand that I did fail I am right back in the game again.

It has to have something to do with my short term memory, and biorhythms or something. 
Here is my basic mental reaction
1. Fun fun fun
2. FAIL, ok
3. FUN, FUN, FUN, here comes the fail YEAH! made it
4. fail AARRRGH crap crap crap
5. Shoot here we go - FUN FUN FUN FUN
6. etc

I have played a ton of hard games that either don't give your brain a chance to reset and partially process what just happened or take entirely too long to return to the point of failure.  Not fun to me.

Oh, that and some way to recognize that soon you are about to face that oh so difficult challenge.

[Pineapple]

I've been playing MAG recently after a long time of not playing any online multiplayer FPS games. I realized that there are three things that never cease to frustrate extremely strongly.

First, one-hit kills. Getting killed in one hit feels like being cheated, and killing in one hit feels cheap and unearned. The only circumstances under which someone should be able to be killed in one hit are things like shotguns - slow rate of fire and inaccurate - so you have to be pretty blatant in your approach and be paying fair little attention if it's actually going to hit you.

The second are kills that you have no means of preventing. In MAG, this and the other are combined by snipers who can get rifles that are a guaranteed one-hit-kill, even sans a headshot, not to mention with certain upgrades they get crazy powerful scopes and absurdly high rates of fire and brief reload times, and the effect of recoil is negligible and it takes only a cheap upgrade to prevent the barrel from wandering. Then there's knife kills - anyone who knows how can avoid all detection by your radar, so they'll come up behind you while you're none the wiser and happily kill you in a single hit. It takes an absurdly costly upgrade to be able to detect them on your radar when they're not shooting or running. And then there's the crazy-powerfulness of grenades. A single grenade can literally clean out an entire squad in a command point. Whenever the enemy knows you're someplace, they all throw all their grenades into your vicinity at once. Once you see all the grenade indicators on your screen like that, you know you're dead.

And thirdly are kills that require no from of skill on the part of the killing player. It's just infuriating when people with all these crazy sniper equipments won't move their scope from the only routes out of the spawn or into a key point; all the players trying to make progress get mowed down by someone who is making literally no effort to get their kills.

It's not so much a single kill fitting one or two categories that's really bad, it's when all three fit. A one-hit kill you can't prevent, you can't see coming, and cost the opponent completely and absolutely nothing are so infuriating.

Anyway, my favorite online FPS is the source mod Hidden: Source 4b. No kills fall under all three categories. All kills require a horribly massive amount of skill, especially the one-hit kills, and if you can't see your death coming from a mile away, it's either your own fault for being painfully unobservant or because the opponent is remarkable skillful.

/rant on MAG, /praise for Hidden.

TL;DR competitive online FPS's suck. Less competitive and more skill-centric than kill-centric games win. I think that'll be my new motto. FPS's should center around skills, not kills. I like that.

[KM]

I play Hidden quite often too. It's pretty fun. :D But some levels it almost feels like cheating as I got so good at spotting the hidden that they might as well been a normal player. You should add me to steam. :D