Insane Difficulty: "Insane Difficulty" - Plus / Minus a Few Other Things - Insane Difficulty

Hello everyone, fellow ID members, potential lurkers, enthusiasts of the difficulty challenges and mods with no exception, for it is the site's very name that you frequent - Insane Difficulty.

How right (and how wrong) could this statement be nowadays?

This is an observation that can have the newer user's point or view, and the older ones' as well. I joined the site in early 2013, and back then, the scope of the site was quite clear. Difficulty mods actively developed, challenges arising, events that promoted hardcore gameplay, such as badges, recognition, even things like the Let's Rage olympics. There were even articles that discussed forms of difficulty (It's all there in the forums, go take a look at them). You could feel the words "Insane" and "Difficulty" floating like a very visible aura.

Slowly but surely, the site's theme of difficulty has been crumbling, with the welcome presence of well designed mods like Monster Tactics, Brave New World, Darkness Within, New Threat. There's also less focus on self imposed challenges as well.

The community has been a lot more segmentized, fractioned, and users are more players and fans of one particular mod, unlike what it used to be. This has been heavily defied lately, with the inclusion of the Discord server, which acts as a more direct channel between the mods, the modders and the players.

So, all in all, today we have a site that still retains a love for the challenge, the hardcore, but it has also integrated the concept of good design. Mods have evolved, and now the best mods are the ones that present the least flaws while providing challenge, instead of the challenge for the sake of challenge. Can you see where I'm going with this?

To sum up: I want to know what your opinions on the site's scope is. This goes to the lurkers. This goes to the forum members, and to the chat frequents. To the modders. To everyone. What do you feel about this site, what it is, what it was? Put it in words here, and we'll hopefully have a better grasp of what makes us, us.

Thank you for reading. Now go play a challenge.

well, i never saw it at its birth so i can't tell how it was... when i joined there were hacks of any difficulty so that "insane" can be a bit misleading, but i was already informed about that.

still to the question how should it be this site... well, if this site wants to distinguish itself from other sites who host hacks then it should be more loyal to that "insane" word and focus on those kind of hacks. still i hardly see something that can be labeled as insane among the hacks... so focus on hardtype versions should be still ok.
Said that, which hacks are hosted depend on rom hackers... hard hacks will be submitted only if someone works on them, after all the site is the people around here.

I think what happened is that people realized that there's a fine line between "challenge" and "difficulty." It's one of those things that most people really don't think about until you find yourself surrounded in a sea of difficulty inspired hacks.


There's "oh shit this is so hard I'm getting my ass handed to me! How the fuck do I beat this!?" IE, getting destroyed by the New Threat enemies in Final Fantasy 7 : New Threat versus:

"What the hell? There was no way I could have seen that invisible block sitting over my head when I made that jump." Ala : every bad Mario difficulty hack.

I'd like to say that people like challenges all around, what they don't like is "let's take this one game and slap enemies to simply have higher stats." IE, Fire Emblem 7: if (I believe that was posted here once a few years ago). The enemies just have massive stat inflation and it ends up being more tedious than anything else. It's harder than the original, but the question comes like this: is it harder to play? Or is it simply more challenging? It's why even though I lose in something like say... Street Fighter 4 against a better player, I don't get annoyed, because he kicked my ass. He was difficult and challenging. I leave wanting to play more so I can challenge this bloke again and beat him.

People on this site honestly like losing, what they like is when they feel like they lost to something because they weren't clever or weren't skilled enough, not because they weren't psychic. Or the developer of the mod/hack decided they wanted to take a dump on playstyles that didn't coincide with their own.

Given that Brave New World is ostensibly *not* a difficulty hack, it does irk me a bit that it lives on a site called "Insane Difficulty". Most players are smart enough to look past it, but I do feel that it gives some people the wrong impression.

My philosophy is that challenge is simply a means to an end - an incentive to invite players to explore the various mechanics of a game rather than simply mashing A to get through it. Making it the central focus of a project is a bad idea in most cases, and naming your site after it is - again - probably going to give a lot of people the wrong idea about what you're making.

When I started making my mod, I wanted it to be as hardcore as possible but that ended up turning people off. I tried to fight this off but was for the most part convinced that people are more likely to enjoy something that has a smoother difficulty curve overall and not so many extreme moments. So basically, I was convinced to design a better game for the average player instead of a hardcore difficulty lover like Anima.

It is clear BNW is successful because it is a good mod regardless of its difficulty. Taking this further I would add that a pure difficulty hack isn't going to be as popular to a general audience. I don't think that ever mattered too much to us, and when Archael was around he was a champion of difficulty for the sake of difficulty, fighting hard against so called "Fake difficulty." I still agree with his views there but "Fake" is still used as a common way to disparage things that don't even fit it's definition.

With all that being said he made the Content version for the reason of people complaining about difficulty which only brings more exposure to his work. In the end I would say that a good mod is a good mod and it's great to host it. Could we classify them better? Possibly, if that is something that we think would be helpful. We are a niche group within a niche group so having some popular non-difficulty mods to draw attention to the site can only help bring attention to the more difficult ones.

Regarding the site itself...it has slowly withered away. Archael chose to make a lot of changes to strip the site away and make it less "cluttered" which became a meme as we all know. Those changes while mostly small were still significant and only served the vision of the person making them. Those changes were getting made regardless of what we thought although thankfully over time some small things were reverted.

To add to that the best part of the site, the community...just isn't there anymore. The people that were instrumental in building what we have here just aren't around much. That includes Admins, Regulators, Modders, and Members that were key in making ID what it was. They fostered a great community and helped us grow.

It's all understandable though, and I am no exception. It is hard to have a real life and dedicate a lot of time to other things. I think about ID a lot, I always have but it hasn't always been something I wanted to or had time to devote time to. I can't speak for everyone else but the name of the site isn't the only thing that just isn't quite the same, or not quite right anymore.

I don't mean to sound melodramatic or anything here because I'm hardly around either but it is what it is I guess. I hope that we can find a way to salvage what we have, to put something together whether it be here, another site, or the discord.

I probably didn't explain this well, its all coming to me as I go. I'm sure I will have something to add later.

Just a reminder here: we have two different topics. One is regarding the state of the site (hard values), this one about "the heart & soul" (soft values). Let's try to keep them segregated.

For those who want to get a grasp of what ID was, I think reading this will teleport you back to those days.

If I had to guess, it's just that there's only so much one can do with such a limited theme. Drawing people interested in difficulty hacks also means drawing people with an interest in playing and creating quality hacks in general, so it was just a matter of time before examples of the latter without the former appeared to add fuel to the discussions.

Kaffe Myers, on 16 November 2016 - 04:48 AM, said:

I tried to focus on the topic in my post. I'll try my best but it's hard not to talk about one without talking about the other. I think they are very connected.

Valenhil, on 16 November 2016 - 07:54 AM, said:

That's what seems to have happened gradually, which frankly is very interesting. Prior to 2013 (in other words before I joined) there was a lot more weight put into discussing the concept of difficulty (I say this after doing a little bit if research, reading old threads). If you look at the threads nowadays, one can notice that this focus has shifted towards design in general.

So far, there seems to be a consensus between players of the site (myself included, as I consider myself both a modder and player) (BTB would count here as a modder), with the idea of still prefering a decent challenge, as long as it is presented in a well designed fashion (each one of you may diffee on what that last concept includes, which is fine).

This talk has been mostly about mods, though. What about the site and the community in general? What are your thoughts about it?

While difficulty is important, it comes second to good design. In many ways, they go hand in hand. Well designed mechanics are easily ignored if the difficulty isn't there. In addition, difficulty tends to be frustrating or tend toward "fake" difficulty if it isn't well designed (e.g. "I'm going to make it harder by just upping everything's stats!")

I like good design. I only need enough difficulty to challenge me. I don't need any more Kaizo Mario Worlds. Kaizo Mario Worlds are a dime a dozen.

I'm agree with the concept of the need of both difficulty and good design and the fact they have to work together.

About kaizo i never considered invisible coin blocks as something good to increase the challenge, it's not hard... it's just stupid, a
cheap death bait; when i tried to make some difficult SMW level i never used them

I've been a member since mid 2014, did not become a relatively active member until mid-late 2015. So here it goes...

I honestly think ID can be home to both well-designed mods and "difficult just for the sake of being difficult" mods. I sometimes like to play the latter, but I'm more likely to enjoy the former.

That being said...

It really is a matter of preference here. One of the threads Hart pointed to (I think it was BP who wrote it), made me think that people who are used to tackling outrageously difficult content are more likely to develop a certain kind of tolerance and get used to it, eventually and effectively needing a higher amount of it to satisfy the need for these rewarding substances our brain generates when we fulfill the challenge. It just feels good. But I think not a lot of people enjoy that (very specifically, the amount of frustration that precedes the fulfilling of the challenge), it's probably for a very specific kind of people (a niche within a niche WITHIN a niche, i.e. people who enjoy mods, difficulty mods at that, being outrageously difficult). But like I said, I still think these kind of mods could coexist with well-designed ones.

What I like about well-designed mods is that they have a certain level of difficulty to it, and you can add your own through self-imposed challenges/limitations to play with it as you please. These kind of mods give the player the kind of freedom to play as they see fit and still enjoy the gameplay (learning stuff on the way, of course), as opposed to other mods that impose their own concept of difficulty onto the player, expecting them to solve the riddles and learning mechanics the hard way. I'm not saying the latter is worse than the former, but it certainly feels less constricting, which can explain why well-designed mods could be a lot more enjoyable overall.

I agree with BTB when he says difficulty could prove to be a mistake if it's made as the sole focus of the mod. However, I also believe there's a certain kind of difficulty that's a byproduct of rebalancing the game, and this can be worked upon to offer both a fresh experience and a challenge. I'm no modder myself, but this sounds completely feasible.

Also... I mean, before registration broke and all, we haven't had any new modders work on new stuff. I'm mentioning this because of how we have a ton of mods in the Downloads section (albeit some of them are simply stat hacks), but a lot of the modders aren't even around, and I haven't seen many new ones, besides the most recent works that Hart mentioned. This site literally lives on because of these well-designed works being actively developed (and SMRPG:A, somewhere in there ), while the "crazy mods" could probably be reduced to 1.3 and MMXHT, the former being a finished project, while the latter is also under development currently. I'd think more people would need to join for more difficulty-oriented mods to exist... So it goes back to that other topic about the site, I guess.

When I was playing through RotDS, I found a bug I wanted to report and of the available places to do so, this was the place I chose to register. While I lean more towards casual and fun content based play (with some challenge increasing limitations specific to my playstyle), sometimes I try out something such as Phantasy Star 2 primarily because I hear it is difficult.

By the time I joined, things such as Let's Rage were already a relic of the past only found in archives. I felt the heart and soul of ID is in the chatroom. Stuck around all this time because it felt like real people with some level of sense were a part of it. One of the consequences of moving chat to Discord is that the site appears less active because people (including myself here) log into Discord without logging into ID.

I digress though. The focus shifting away from difficulty for difficulty's sake seems an outcome of community members' lives becoming busier and having less time to devote to failing over and over again before overcoming a challenging game or mod (among other factors. While I regard that kind of perseverance as a positive, I find it more rewarding to practice it in the real world Speaking for myself, gaming keeps moving lower on my priority list as time goes on.

LoveColorMagic, on 17 November 2016 - 11:38 PM, said:

This is a very underrated point. In the case of FFT, it had a huge momentum in terms of modding and challenges when FFH was created and the gamefaqs board was still active. It didn't have much to do with attitude or methods, there were just a ton of people who were interested in a new kind of challenge for an old game. I think most of the player base simply moved on. Even a game like FFT can get old. I'm not an expert on what people are playing these days, but if the site wants to stay alive it will have to attract modders with a reasonably large player base and fresh content.

Not sure if this is in the right thread.

In a way, 1.3 was the main attraction of ID, which kind of reflects what you said about FFT, basically being a cult classic. People moved on, even though some remain and keep working on projects (because there's a reason for them to do so, whether personal or otherwise).

I also agree that a lot of the community here in general moved on because of various reasons: losing interest, becoming busy, growing old of this all... Vicissitudes in life in general, one could say. Gaming in general tends to lose priority when you gotta take care of yourself in the real world (even more so when it's about taking care of others), and it's even worse when you used to enjoy insanely difficult challenges (there's even less time to spend on such luxuries).

Core members have come and gone, the community nowadays is an entirely different thing to what it used to be, but that's pretty much because we still had people coming in, interested in the few things we have to offer right now. But right now, like I said, no one can come in, so it becomes really difficult right now to attract new people with new content/to create new content. More ideas could come with more people around, but that's impossible right now. We could still be getting young, eager people trying to make a hell of a mod, whether it's well-designed or insanely difficult, especially because they have the will and the availability to do so, something a lot of modders here lacked with the passing of time. If there's no cycling of members on the site, it will become stagnant and it will eventually die. Not saying that it won't die eventually even if we get to fix the issues that plague the site right now, but it could probably get things going on for a good while, and it'd probably be enjoyable.

Again, this kind of goes into the "state of the site" area, but it's hard not to relate both to this point.

Hart-Hunt, on 17 November 2016 - 04:19 AM, said:

My opinion is that it's not mostly about mods. It's all about mods, or rather, what aspects we learn through them.

There was a very clear shift in tone when BNW showed up. Before then almost everything was compared to 1.3 as a sort of goal, but the community changed. I believe it stands a lot to gain by continuing to be receptive of all types of mods and applying what was learned through time here, and this won't really diminish the theme of difficulty the forum has. Even when talking about mods that aren't difficult for the sake of being difficult, I do believe that if a mod is too easy that'll still be the first thing anyone here will mention, and that's not something you get in other boards.

Valenhil, on 18 November 2016 - 07:47 AM, said:

Wholeheartedly agreed. I never thought of that, but I do ask about the difficulty in most mods I'm interested in.

Archael invited me here when the website was first started, and ever since then I've been routinely checking these forums for anything I may find interesting. There hasn't been much quite relevant to my interests and tastes for the last couple years, so I've been going here every 2 or so weeks, mostly not really finding anything.

Archael advertised this to me as a sort of "challenge place forum", which couldn't be any closer to what I've been doing for a sizable chunk of my life in the free time, except it seems that "challenge" is mostly understood as the extreme difficulty hacks people are constantly working on, which doesn't quite correspond to my old / limited interpretation of the term. I couldn't get into any hacks, ever; I think Fire Red Omega from Drayano is the only one I managed to play for a good amount of time. FFT 1.3 (an old version I imagine, but I haven't got a clue about the development of that) didn't click with me at all, and I never bothered to share my impression or ask to change something about it so that I'd find it more agreeable - who seriously cares when I don't even play any hacks anyway?

My challenge habits have never really died down, and I'm about as prolific as ever, just playing less Final Fantasy than before, nowadays playing a ton of challenges on the 3DS and recording most of it on my channel as per usual. I haven't felt like sharing it here on these forums the way I used to, because it seems like nobody's doing the same things as me so I doubt it would generate any interest. As before, I assume that those who would share this interest already know of my channel and where to find me; I've kinda given up on reaching more people with shared interests because I know it's a very peculiar niche.

That's more or less it; I dunno why I keep checking new topics on the forums on a regular basis tbqh. Probably a habit from years back, as I have a couple dozen websites favourited that I continue checking by inertia.

Not sure if this helps at all, but I felt I should respond to the question because I haven't had a whole lot to say about anything for the last couple or so years here and this is the first time in a while when I can say something.

Moogle, on 22 November 2016 - 08:25 AM, said:

Hey there. It's just like you said, because you're an older member than me (2011, damn), and I don't recall seeing your name ever since after I joined. I do remember you from posts prior to me joining though.

Yours is truly an unique vision, of the last remain members whi come here only for self imposed challenges. My honest opinion is that you should still post your playthroughs to keep the flame alive. I know Anima does for the mods he plays, and he doesn't care that much about how man viewers he got out of it. I'd watch your vids, no idea what your channel is.

I'd honestly love if the site was still about the difficulty challenges and not only about the mods. It ultimately adds more content to our difficulty niche, and / or to our community in general.

Thanks for the post, love seeing lurkers and old school members stepping up to share their views.