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

I joined around 2012 so I guess I seen the site change a bit lol. I first came here because I saw 1.3 hosted on another site (romhacking.net) and it linked to here and that's how I found the site. There was a lot going on back then. Archael was doing a solo archer challenge in FFT. That seemed to inspire a lot of people to do solo challenges as well. I did my own solo chemist challenge and I remember many others including a solo wizard, solo geomancer, and of course the legendary solo thief. Not only that but other people seemed to be doing other challenges in other games as well. I remember the megaman mantis style where the guy was going through megaman with out missing a shot and taking no damage. This is what defined insane difficutly for me. It was a place with people that were insane enough to try these difficult things.

I feel like around 2014 was when the site started to degrade. I was doing challenges in 1.3 content and was waiting for it to be updated from 1.3.0.6 to 1.3.0.8. It never got updated. This was when I could tell that Archale was starting to be less interested and active in the site in general. I started lurking more and eventually stopped coming all together until sometime in late 2015 when I started lurking again and just as I thought the site had gone down hill. A lot of the active members from when I was around were gone.

As for the heart of the site changing, I feel like that came from trends in gaming in general. When I was here, games like “I wanna be the guy” were popular. This form of difficulty can be fun but it gets old. Honestly I'm glad those kinds of games are gone because they lean more towards the “fake” difficulty that has been brought up to me. “Fake” difficulty is indeed difficulty but not so much fun and I think that is what a lot of modders are realizing. The thing I think that makes the most fun as far as difficulty is the need for knowledge of the game. That's why I like 1.3 so much. You need to know the mechanics of FFT very well, how to manipulate CT, how the AI acts and many other things. A lot of games have ways of cheesing through them, taking out all of the difficulty and I think these are what we want to see changed.

I feel like a lot of this is just rambling but I felt like I should say something lol.

Hack Fan, on 25 November 2016 - 11:35 AM, said:

It's not. What's a constant in the posts around here is that older members are connected to analyzing the role of difficulty in gaming (not just mods), while newer members seem to lean into analyzing what makes a good mod, good. For them, difficulty is just sn aspect, a means to an end, for which we don't see new members doing Mantis Style challenges anymore.

The community has evolved, but the constant is the tendency to analyze games critically, which is something that I still haven't seen this deep in any other website. Which is what keeps me coming here.

For everyone reading and posting, your posts are important, even if tou think they aren't. More than important, I'd say essential. Not just for me, but for everyone. Once we figure a stable solution to the problems with the site (hint: we are working on it), then we'll be able to continue growing, this time with a much clear concept of who we are as a community.


PS: I have to say I'm grateful about this thread. It's doing exactly what I hoped for - To act as a bridge between older and newer members, and to redefine who we are as a community.

Well, I haven't been active in a while on the forums. To me, this place has become less about the mods and challenges, and more about talking to a bunch of nerds I've known for fives years about dicks and shitting, and occasionally some video game talk.

But, that's off topic. Point is, the focus on difficulty is why I got so into the shit here that I stuck around so long. And the recent trend of "not fucking you up the the ass" difficulty (BNW, NT, etc.) might be why I'm no longer using the forums, and why I stick to chat.

Or maybe it's because 1.3 is dead, our most popular mod is a mod with a crowd who cares about deeply different things than I do (I never see people discussing strategies for bosses, just this build is good for this, this build is good for that), or some other stupid reason.

I've always enjoyed self-imposed challenges, took up playing romhacks a couple years ago, and even created one myself last year. I do enjoy some rather difficult things (LLGs, BNW CES, solo character/class/both runs) which involve a lot of strategy and forethought. What I don't care much for is butt-difficult things that are only hard to make you mad, make you retry 100 times (kind of ironic since I enjoy LLGs ), or require you to complete them in a super specific manner.

I get the feeling that a lot of the older members like the butt-difficult things and sort of resent the newer modders for creating things that are less difficult and more about proper balance. With the site effectively dead, it's tough to rekindle the flame that many of the members started coming here for (difficult mods [most of which are no longer supported] and self-imposed challenges). I also feel like a lot of the chat about challenges and minor updates about mod runs are placed in Discord these days.

Just my two copper on this.

Kjata, on 25 November 2016 - 09:57 PM, said:

I think I joined around a similar time to you, so I think both of us can speak in similarities, I was just considerably less active than you ever were.

I don't think it's that the focused changed, so much as there were only a select few mods that did stuff like that. Like for instance, Landon Ray's Unleashed is considerably more difficult than 1.3, but I also find it considerably more annoying to play than the original or 1.3. I'd rather play a Final Fantasy IX playthrough where I say... Do Excalibur 2 than play Unleashed, and an E2 runthrough is way harder/challenging than Unleashed was or is now. My friends also played LR's FFX mod, and it's considerably better made in their opinion so they actually finished (most of) it as opposed to IX. But let's also mention 1.3. 1.3 even started out as an extension of 1.2 , which served to be a rebalance of the original FFT. As tools were made, Archael and a team essentially started out doing stuff with 1.3 and then ended up making most of it alone. The first version of the game? Was pretty close to great IMO, as it was essentially made to be exactly what 1.2 was with even further tweaks. Somewhere along the lines, 1.3 became less of a rebalance mod and more of a difficulty mod with rebalance (as all mods are going to have some form of rebalance, but the term "rebalance" gives a considerably different initial angle) laced around the mod. Seriously, if you can find earlier versions of 1.3, you should give them a shot, they are considerably closer to content than the final result of 1.3. I think what happened is that we were already running into issues with this style of difficulty from the get-go of this site --this happened in at least 2012 I can attest to from the Dr.Bretto sticky post. Hence content even existing; that only happened because 1.3 was, as you stated, ID's most popular mod. So it's not like people already hated this style of difficulty from mods earlier in the creation of ID.

You can even see such a thing happen with Seiken Densetsu 3's mod here. People essentially asked Praetarius5018
for Vanilla with the bug fixes because they felt that the game was way too difficult. And to be honest, I think he took the right approach by having several difficulties instead of just one. The site cannot survive off of mods that sound like they are meant to be "fuck you in the ass." Because most people will respond with a "ain't nobody got time for that" style of response. And I guarantee you, that if you make an easy and hard version and could do analytics, I can guarantee you'd have a higher downloaded to completed ratio with the easier version than you would the hard version.

Rynzer, on 27 November 2016 - 08:10 AM, said:

I can say that isn't the case for me at least, not sure what others would say. I would add that other older members(Stann and Advent specifically) helped convince me to work more on balance vs just raw numbers determining difficulty.

My main disconnect is that I personally don't like self imposed challenges. They are interesting to follow or watch but I don't like doing them myself. The reason for this is because I feel sort of empty when I don't play a game to the fullest extent I can. It is hard for me to skip things, or speed through them.

In making my mod I have tried to create a challenging experience that makes the player use everything around them, or at least have most things around as a viable option. In other words IMO the game should already be hard enough that a challenge run should not been needed to try to find challenge. That doesn't mean it needs to be so extreme that you have to make 100 tries so that RNG goes your way but it shouldn't mean that you have to go out of your way to let enemies kill you, or that there is no strategy involved.

"Insane Difficulty" as a name certainly doesn't fit the site anymore...an evolution has taken place. Hopefully whatever work is being done by Hart and Co. behind the scenes will take us in the right direction but it is clear that we need to redefine ourselves and see where that takes us.

"Sane Difficulty", perhaps? >.>

New site logo



I want to make a real post in this thread at some point, but I feel like I should say something well thought out and meaningful, which takes time that I don't have right now.

+1

The real question is "How do we want to define ourselves?"

It's obvious there are some disagreements on how we view difficulty as a whole. I think its important to keep our roots while at the same time representing how the community has evolved over the years.

Yep. I came up with the idea of this thread with that exact question. And I quickly understood that the community speaking openly like this is key to redefine ourselves, and perhaps even renaming ourselves.

And what you point out is spot on, because it's the fundamental issue in hand: It's hars to find a name or term that includes 1. How we have evolved and who we are and were and 2. How we see games, mods, challenges, etc.

What do you guys think about that?

Hart-Hunt, on 28 November 2016 - 12:24 AM, said:

Captain Obvious submits that perhaps a name that says "mods" more than "difficulty" would be appropriate, since this is primarily a modding community and challenge is more of a byproduct.

We should differentiate ourselves from a romhacking.net for example though. We host mods but we are also heavily focused on commentary and community discussion.

auraplatonic, on 28 November 2016 - 12:31 PM, said:

I'd say or focus is on actually ensuring that there's a clear direction on the scope of a mod when it's grander scale. IE, we generally don't seem to have mods that are things like "fix evade bug" from FFVI, instead there are full blown ones like BNW, Super Mario RPG, 1.3, Lufia etc.

Augestein, on 28 November 2016 - 05:09 PM, said:

I would love for us to continue articles and debates on gaming related topics as well. I hope there is a way to put focus on that. I always thought the community thrived on those type of discussions.

auraplatonic, on 28 November 2016 - 10:29 PM, said:

Agreed.

Hi!

My name is Bastard "B Pee" Poetry, and I was the 3rd registered user on ID, right after Arch and some other guy. I helped Arch set the site up, by giving him feedback on how everything looked as he threw all the html codes together. (I'm still quite miffed by the fact I wasn't fast enough to be the 2nd registered user here). In short: I am extremely proud to have been a part of Insane Difficulty, from its inception to now. I love a great many of the mods, the people, and the insanity. Before ID, I had conflicted relationships with the crew over at FFH, and before that, I was hamming it up on the Gamefaqs' FFT board with many of the oldest of old-school FFT vets, such as completeboy. I'm known for co-creating the original War of the Gods Challenge, writing and shooping "The Chronicles of Kanbabrif," stumbling and mumbling through an unfinished Solo Thief SSCC, and being the founder, CEO, and only true member of the official "Sexy Fangirls of AsmoX Club."

One other fun fact about me is that I am probably the only person here who has had his bare ass shot by a Nerf gun-welding Philsov.

I haven't been active on the forums, or group chat, for years and years. At first, it was just life and school and such getting in the way of my hobbies. Then some unexpected life events turned me into an anxiety-ridden recluse. I still occasionally lurk, but mostly I just keep an eye on what all of my close buds get up to on the facebooks.

All that said; I firmly believe that you guys are capable of transforming this ghost town into something splendid. Based on this discussion, and the discussion about the broken state of everything, it really seems like there's solid interest in maintaining the community--regardless of what the new focus ends up being.

That's all. I just wanted to introduce myself to the new guys, and throw my full support behind all the old guys. I love all you guys.

You guys.

Bastard Poetry, on 30 November 2016 - 05:30 AM, said:

That was one of the most heart warming posts I've ever seen here. :3

Love you bud.

Bastard Poetry, on 30 November 2016 - 05:30 AM, said:

I joined a bit over three years ago, in September of 2013. I had discovered 1.3 somehow or other and started playing it. I joined the forum very shortly thereafter. Although at first I played 1.3 a couple of times (maybe one of the days years I'll finally finish my Mediator/Wizard/Knight only challenge) and have also made some (to me) memorable contributions to BNW, mostly I come here nowadays to watch other people's challenge LPs. You guys produce way better content than most of what's on television, and the price is right. The amount of free time I've had to do things like play video games has gone down since I first came here, and I find that I don't really have the mental energy to commit to a forty- or hundred- or however many hour playthrough, but I can experience that vicariously through you while eating my lunch! I suppose one can obtain that experience through twitch or YouTube, but the community here makes this a much better venue for that. There is something to be said for the classic "forum" approach over the more ephemeral stream.

Not sure I have any conclusions to draw from that. I like watching LPs, I have occasionally enjoyed producing them in the past. Also I like this cactuar: