Games that can never be made again because of difficulty

[ikarinokami]

after reading the changes coming to diablo 3 in patch 1.03. I got to thinking about games that would be just too hard to be made again.

1. EQ. I can't imagine that there could ever be another mmo like this again. 100% unforgiving to the player. you lost xp, levels upon death. it was extremely hard to level, the concept of the hell level was creating in eq. if you were a mage you had to med, which met your screen went black, and it being eq, your chances of death was quite high. you had to run everywhere, you had to have food and drink. depending on your race/god some guards would KOS you. there were the 4-8 hour corpse run on vox. the instant death trains of Mistmoore, unrest and karnors castle. high level, high agrro mobs in low level zone.

2. Ulitma online- this was the only true PVP game ever made. when it came out, there was pretty much no limit on pvp death. players would routinely get ganked the minute they stepped outside of town. traveling to was nightmare. this type of pvp i dont will ever appear in another mmo. The game at lauch was literally lord of the flies. no level restriction on pvp, no consent restrictions- it's almost unthinkable now, given the current climate.

 

[Master_of_Sparks]

Call of Duty 4. Was much harder than the later installments.

 

[MavericK]

Any kind of old-school NES platformer. Some of those were insanely hard and I think kids today would rage so hard they would go on a shooting spree.

 

[FranklyShankly]

2. Ulitma online- this was the only true PVP game ever made. when it came out, there was pretty much no limit on pvp death. players would routinely get ganked the minute they stepped outside of town. traveling to was nightmare. this type of pvp i dont will ever appear in another mmo.

Doesn't Darkfall have basically the same system. There was also Mortal Online but that was so small I don't really count it. I guess EvE isnt really the same because of the security ratings and such.

 

[LeninGHOLA]

You forgot PoFear corpse runs and Veeshan's Peak, where you could actually lose your gear permanently.

Anyway -

Wizardry 4 and possibly 7. The RNG and sheer brutality would make most gamers climb back up in the womb.

Dark Heart of Uukrul. Do not attempt unless you are a diehard RPG person. Great game, though.

 

[dr.stevil]

snip...

I don't know. I know it's not an official game (Mod), but the DayZ mod proves that people are still into that kind of unforgiving torture lol

Minecraft also has a 'hardcore' mode that, upon death, deletes your world.

EDIT: There was a game for iOS called One Life that, once you died, that was it. Game over.

I think the audience is still there for games that don't hold the players hand. However, theyre probably a tiny minority.

Call of Duty 4

Anything with regenerating health should never be considered difficult

 

[Nytegard]

Wizardry 4 and possibly 7. The RNG and sheer brutality would make most gamers climb back up in the womb.

Heck, the Wizardry series in general could never be made today. An RPG where you can't grind your way past a situation? Unthinkable!

Key items which can be stolen, monsters which can 1 shot you regardless of your hp & level, monsters which can permantly lower your level, being able to be teleported into the middle of a wall (thus losing your character), resurrections which may or may not work (with a possibility of turning your character to dust, thus losing your character), resurrections which permantly lower your character stats, sequels which require you to play earlier games, having to map out the game on your own, and write notes, the list goes on and on.

 

[ob1]

How about any game that doesn't have a quest indicator over the persons head or map icons showing you where to kill x creatures?

 

[Deleted member 174368]

How about any game that doesn't have a quest indicator over the persons head or map icons showing you where to kill x creatures?

Witcher 2 did this and so many people complained.

 

[Domingo]

Any kind of old-school NES platformer. Some of those were insanely hard and I think kids today would rage so hard they would go on a shooting spree.

Agreed. Some of those were crazy tough...although some of that might relate to me being 10 years old at the time, too.

 

[termite]

Wizardry 4 .

I think I still have nightmares about Wizardy fucking 4.

EQ1 was arguably how MMO's especially PvP should still be, difficult with actual repercussions for death. Having to do a corpse run to get your gear back was a painful learning experience.

How about any game that doesn't have a quest indicator over the persons head or map icons showing you where to kill x creatures?

This is one thing I loath about pretty much all modern MMO's along with most RPGS these days. God forbid someone having to actually read or listen to where the quest giver is telling you to go. The gimmee kids must have a an arrow or fucking sparkly path to lead them to exactly where they have to go; they may as well add an instant teleport button and complete quest clicker to help them out.

 

[Caelum Atra]

I don't know. I know it's not an official game (Mod), but the DayZ mod proves that people are still into that kind of unforgiving torture lol

I was going to say the same thing. The fact you can play for such a long time to be killed at random by anyone, even what you thought was a friend...or a sniper hundreds of yards away...and lose all of your shit completely! Every death is, in essence, perma death. Your stats are wiped and your gear is taken by the guy who killed you

 

[ikarinokami]

Agreed. Some of those were crazy tough...although some of that might relate to me being 10 years old at the time, too.

definately not anything to do with age, some of those nes, snes, genesis and sega master system platformers were tough. but as someone mention, they were outgrown of arcade platform games, where they wanted you to spend that quarter to continue and that aesthic got carried over to the home games.

Honestly most people i know didnt finish most the nes through genesis games they brought.

 

[MavericK]

Yeah, there was one platformer on Genesis called Quackshot. Fun game, but I got pretty far into it and got stuck at an insanely hard level. Never played it again.

 

[WarriorX]

Any kind of old-school NES platformer. Some of those were insanely hard and I think kids today would rage so hard they would go on a shooting spree.

I was playing the original Prince of Persia a few months ago..I have never died so many times on the first few levels.

 

[vallonen]

This is one thing I loath about pretty much all modern MMO's along with most RPGS these days. God forbid someone having to actually read or listen to where the quest giver is telling you to go. The gimmee kids must have a an arrow or fucking sparkly path to lead them to exactly where they have to go; they may as well add an instant teleport button and complete quest clicker to help them out.

Kids today have no patience. no attention span. and they are driven incorrectly. They are are like toddlers... nej... like infants. It's really sad.

 

[ultraman7k]

I was playing the original Prince of Persia a few months ago..I have never died so many times on the first few levels.

Not to mention the time limit that is imposed on you in the game.

The way I see it, back in the day when you bought a game it was a pretty significant investment (iirc there were no trade ins back in the day, at least till later on in the 90s). You stuck with it until you beat it, or got so frustrated you never played it again and sold it to your friend (i'm writing this with NES in mind).

I pretty much remember only really having one new game at a time in the late early 90's, and of course that has changed now a days with the advent of games being released every week.

Of course, I had a ton of different games on C64 but that's a different story.

Good point about the coin-op though, and how the difficulty was there for increased spending by the gamer... never really thought about it.

 

[Amaroth]

Game Genie never could of made it in todays market.

 

[piscian18]

You forgot PoFear corpse runs and Veeshan's Peak, where you could actually lose your gear permanently.

Anyway -

Wizardry 4 and possibly 7. The RNG and sheer brutality would make most gamers climb back up in the womb.

Dark Heart of Uukrul. Do not attempt unless you are a diehard RPG person. Great game, though.

I still haven't beat Heart of the maelstorm. Talk about unreasonably difficult.

I'm the only one I know whos ever played it but Wizardry Tales of the forsaken land On PS2 is pretty impossible too.

TMNT on Nes. Fuck that game.

 

[Biznatch]

I never played EQ, but i played waaay too many hours of Asherons Call. That was the best MMO ever, and had similar reprocusions for death as EQ. You would drop your body with a number of your high value items, the higher your level the more you dropped. You could die and lose your whole suit of armor, and your body might be unrecoverable. Plus the character customization was unlimited, not this stupid skill tree shit everything has now. Every MMO out now feels like a silly limited kids game compared to that.

 

[LeninGHOLA]

I never played EQ, but i played waaay too many hours of Asherons Call. That was the best MMO ever, and had similar reprocusions for death as EQ. You would drop your body with a number of your high value items, the higher your level the more you dropped. You could die and lose your whole suit of armor, and your body might be unrecoverable. Plus the character customization was unlimited, not this stupid skill tree shit everything has now. Every MMO out now feels like a silly limited kids game compared to that.

You dropped everything on death in EQ, aside from soulbound keys and possibly certain epic pieces. (No, WoW didn't invent soulbound items or epics)

You can summon your body at a summoner now, from any zone. Early EQ, however, was insane. Unless you could camp a cleric in a safe spot of VP (safe spot? hah), you could lose that gear and key forever upon raid wipe.

 

[ultraman7k]

I agree completely with TMNT on the NES.

I don't know a singly person that beat that game. My friend bought the game, and if we were lucky, we would make it out of the underwater bomb defuse level only to be beaten up by whatever else lay around the corner. I can count the number of times on 1 hand where we made it out of the swimming level.

Needless to say this game changed hand many a time.

Add to the fact that Raphael and Michaelangelo were pretty useless with their super short range...and you almost always had to use Donatello to beat the Rhino dude by crouching at the top of the staircase and attack...

Refer to this list.

http://www.retrojunk.com/content/article/7790/index/

Many a tear was shed playing these games.

 

[DarkStryke]

EQ style difficulty will never be remade, the genre has gone too mainstream. People these days can't even handle 15 minute duration instances.

I had my corpse recovered with 18 minutes left on it under CT early in the fear progression, but I got it back. No summon corpse, no hand holding, just relying on other people to get the job done.

 

[LeninGHOLA]

Heh. /dragcorpse ...feared?!? buffs stripped?! blinded? ... where the fuck am I?

/guild need help dragging two corpses in CT

 

[FLCLimax]

I never played EQ, but i played waaay too many hours of Asherons Call. That was the best MMO ever, and had similar reprocusions for death as EQ. You would drop your body with a number of your high value items, the higher your level the more you dropped. You could die and lose your whole suit of armor, and your body might be unrecoverable. Plus the character customization was unlimited, not this stupid skill tree shit everything has now. Every MMO out now feels like a silly limited kids game compared to that.

Asheron's Call was indeed the best MMO.

 

[socK]

Anything with regenerating health should never be considered difficult

how does regenerating health help you when you die instantly? playing on veteran is literally more luck based than anything.

 

[LeviathanZERO]

Yeah, there was one platformer on Genesis called Quackshot. Fun game, but I got pretty far into it and got stuck at an insanely hard level. Never played it again.

Holy shit, I played so much of this game growing up, I basically have it completely memorized. Got it for xmas in 91, the hardest part was figuring out the item system (91' no internet, remember video game magazines?), but after that I thought it was a fairly easy game. Do you remember how far you got? After the first 3 stages you open up the map, viking ship, south pole, egypt, yada, yada....

AH, now that I remember, the Maharajah stage was fucking annoying as shit, the puzzle with all the doors, where you could literally get stuck in a loop for hours. The tiger at the end of that stage isn't too friendly either. Oh I hated that, I did get stuck for more than an hour once. Kids have amazing endurance I tell you (I was 8 or 9 at the time).

EDIT:
Oh, BTW....

FUCK BATTLETOADS. (The difficulty is an illusion. The game is fucking broken)
that is all.

 

[MavericK]

Holy shit, I played so much of this game growing up, I basically have it completely memorized. Got it for xmas in 91, the hardest part was figuring out the item system (91' no internet, remember video game magazines?), but after that I thought it was a fairly easy game. Do you remember how far you got? After the first 3 stages you open up the map, viking ship, south pole, egypt, yada, yada....

AH, now that I remember, the Maharajah stage was fucking annoying as shit, the puzzle with all the doors, where you could literally get stuck in a loop for hours. The tiger at the end of that stage isn't too friendly either. Oh I hated that, I did get stuck for more than an hour once. Kids have amazing endurance I tell you (I was 8 or 9 at the time).

Now that you mention it, I think it was the Maharajah stage. I really don't remember what it is that made it difficult, but I think it was the door thing. I seriously spent hours on it and eventually just gave up.

 

[LeviathanZERO]

Now that you mention it, I think it was the Maharajah stage. I really don't remember what it is that made it difficult, but I think it was the door thing. I seriously spent hours on it and eventually just gave up.

Dude I know what mean man! That stage drove me absolutely mad! Mostly because I never really "got" the puzzle, it was just luck if I got to the tiger in less than 5 minutes. I never did figure out the pattern, and I haven't played that game in years. Hmm... it has been a while... heh

 

[Godmachine]

Everquest. No question. The most challenging game I've ever played (back in 1999-2004).

 

[stevedave]

A good Square Enix game.

Atlus seems to be the only company left making good rpg's. I don't even really know why popular RPGs sell pretty well.

For PC I'd say age of empires 1 and 2. Graphics seems to have hurt srpgs.

 

[magnetik]

some of the ones I remember...

Solomon's Key NES (threw you back several levels after getting a shot at the final level)
Megaman 1 NES (your timing had to be perfect in some spots)
Ghost n' Goblins ARCADE/NES (still play this one on the arcade but no longer have to waste quarters)
Ninja Gaiden NES (at least until I figured out how to beat the final boss)
Rush n' Attack NES

 

[ikarinokami]

I loved AC with my life mage, but in terms of difficulty it wasnt in the same league as Eq.

The planes when they came out where insane, they litterally took days to break it. Vox raid were nasty, because if you failed, you would be naked, and all the adds would respawn. i remember session were we spent over 8 hours just getting corpses back- this was before verant went soft and gave necros corpse summon.

and god forbid you died on level 35 without a cleric to rez you. you would literally lose hundreds of hours of playtime in xp and probally the level

Man i loved that game, asheron's call was a close second though. but there was just somthing special about the sheer calaousdisregard EQ treated it's players with, like they were characters in a real immersive world as opposed to bunch of suscribers that needed to be appeased and every whim catered to.

 

[omi]

lol eq wow those were the day. I remember asking around the world for a monk and cleric to get my body back and rez. How can you forget about corpse dragging. Oh the good old sebili. Wizard is the only class that can take you to places in EQ. I think wiz, cleric and druid are the ultimate gold making class. my most used line in eq is "50plat for sow?" haha

 

[DarkStryke]

Yes, those were the days. They were also the best source of excellent memories I will never forget in gaming. There were far too many to list, but it really was a journey from the start. I miss the KFC music..

 

[Oldie]

Any kind of old-school NES platformer. Some of those were insanely hard and I think kids today would rage so hard they would go on a shooting spree.

The Super Mario Wii is actually pretty friggin hard on some levels and seemed to go pretty well. It took my kid and I a decent amount of time to beat it together.

 

[ekuest]

Call of Duty 4. Was much harder than the later installments.

wut. thats the only CoD ive ever actually played, but i remember walking through it. for me, basically anything with an 8-point thumbstick and precision movement. trying to walk a tiny ledge or jump to exactly the right spot when you can only chose either 12:00 or 1:30 and not in between is toture. give me a continous stick or better yet, a mouse.

 

[5tharrow]

Kids today have no patience. no attention span. and they are driven incorrectly. They are are like toddlers... nej... like infants. It's really sad.

I'm tempted to agree with this, but I think it's a tad bit unfair. When EQ was around there wasn't near the competition. For a long while, there were really only four or five choices when it came to MMORPGs; now, there are tons PLUS there are consoles that help proliferate the short attention spans.

It's become "how many explosions can we fit into a three minute Youtube clip" nowadays. There's so much out there, it seems gaming companies are going for the "oh look, shiny!" reaction. I guess I'm trying to say that game makers are the parents and we are the children. Feed us junk and we acquire a taste for junk until good food tastes like cardboard. I blame the parents.

So yeah, I'm with you to a certain extent. I hope that it comes full circle and games like EQ become popular again as people get tired of what used to be new and different in comparison but has now become the norm (the norm being pew-pew games). Wishful thinking, I know.

If EQ was made today, Hasten Bootstrutter would have a gigantic question mark floating above his head and would have arrows pointed at him on your mini-map.

 

[Bobthecoolguy]

This makes me laugh, most of these games were hard because of bad design, rather than hard by design.

 

[MavericK]

The Super Mario Wii is actually pretty friggin hard on some levels and seemed to go pretty well. It took my kid and I a decent amount of time to beat it together.

Haha, I tried playing that with my GF, and my friend and his wife in co-op.

We came to call it "The Relationship Killer"