Are you playing the game or is the game playing you?

[GPX | 1,369]

Sometimes I feel cheated when playing video games. The cheating seems beyond the simple hit detection error and bad/sloppy programming. It’s like a whole other level of cheat mode where at times I feel the game is playing me rather than I’m playing it. Does anyone know what I’m getting at? Or is it just me going insane/senile through all the years of pixel staring and witnessing one too many glitches?

My game example is Geometry Wars 2. I can get pretty decent scores on this one, and at one time, I had broken through the top 500 on the online leaderboard on one of its stages. However, there would be random times where I got beat up by the ships bad and hardly any bonuses crop up. It really feels like every so often, the game sets a new difficulty setting without notifying me!

Anyone have any similar experiences with this paranoid/philosophical take on gaming?

 

[GPX | 1,369]

Oops, I stuffed up! Can a mod please transfer this thread to the Gauntlet section?

[3rdStrongestMole | 430]

Are you saying like:

in Street Fighter 2 when you up the difficulty the computer fighters actually skip animation frames when executing attacks, so they are straight up cheating to win.

Or...

Mario Party 3 (specifically, though I'm sure the rest are bad in their own ways) the CPU lands on hidden stars and shit at an alarming rate to gain a seemingly ridiculous unfair advantage. 

[GPX | 1,369]

3 hours ago, 3rdStrongestMole said:

Are you saying like:

in Street Fighter 2 when you up the difficulty the computer fighters actually skip animation frames when executing attacks, so they are straight up cheating to win.

Or...

Mario Party 3 (specifically, though I'm sure the rest are bad in their own ways) the CPU lands on hidden stars and shit at an alarming rate to gain a seemingly ridiculous unfair advantage. 

I guess I’m referring more the intentional cheating the programmer puts in, but the sort of unexpected plays where it seems out of the blue without telling you.

With Geometry Wars 2 in my example, the stage is for 3 minutes with you trying to blast every enemy ship as much as you can. There is no difficulty setting, just you and the time limit. So with my gaming experience on this stage, I usually can get an average of 20 to 40 million points. Then at random times, I get about 8 million points and it seems suddenly a different difficulty. Then for the next 20 minutes I would go back to my average scoring range again.

I think your Mario Party 3 example seems to fit the theme of this discussion. Basically at any stage you feel like “damn, this game is suddenly cheating its ass off!”, and then the next few minutes it plays fair again.

Edited December 9, 2023 by GPX

[Link | 2,710]

The rubber banding is notoriously cheap and obnoxious in one of the Mario Kart games

[Webhead123 | 675]

I know it's fairly common knowledge in many fighting games that the AI is programmed with certain..."triggers"...which cause it to suddenly get a lot more difficult (i.e., skip animation frames, read player inputs before they're executed, etc.). There was one specifically egregious time that I wish I had recorded on video, when I was playing either Street Fighter II or Street Fighter II Turbo on SNES. I was Guile facing Balrog on one of the higher difficulties and whooping him pretty good (still at 80-90% health) when I witnessed a moment of pure programming bullshit. I hit Balrog with a flash kick which connected unblocked and reduced him to a little under 10% health. AS I'M STILL IN THE AIR, RECOVERING FROM THE FLASH KICK ANIMATION, Balrog recovers instantly and does a charging uppercut (which I can't block because...well...I'M STILL IN THE PREVIOUS ANIMATION) and air juggles me into two more charging punches which completely depletes my health bar. Round over. I turned the SNES off. I had seen enough.

I've also had my fair share of questionable moments in games like Darkest Dungeon. You know the sort, like when the boss is down to like 1 hit point and an entire round of your attacks miss...then the boss suddenly gets a "very fortunate" string of critical hits that wipe your party. Yeah...suuuuuure.

Edited December 10, 2023 by Webhead123

[T-Pac | 7,544]

I can't say I'm too familiar with games altering their programming randomly to get harder, but I do seem to find "diminishing returns" to be pretty frequent on my end (with high-score games in particular).

If I play a game for score, I'll typically have my best run within the first few attempts, and then things tend to go downhill from there. Sort-of like doing a workout, I guess. A brief period of warmup, then peak performance, then fatigue.

[T-Pac]

[Link | 2,710]

19 minutes ago, T-Pac said:

I can't say I'm too familiar with games altering their programming randomly to get harder, but I do seem to find "diminishing returns" to be pretty frequent on my end (with high-score games in particular).

If I play a game for score, I'll typically have my best run within the first few attempts, and then things tend to go downhill from there. Sort-of like doing a workout, I guess. A brief period of warmup, then peak performance, then fatigue.

[T-Pac]

That happens to me too. But often if I keep going, I can come back around. Not always, but I can.

[Rhuno | 107]

I know it's a real thing in fighting games, but I haven't really noticed it outside of those. I'm also not big into fighters in general so I don't have a whole lot of experience with it, but MVG did a good video on the AI cheating in MK II:
 

 

[elprincipe | 142]

On 12/9/2023 at 10:05 PM, Webhead123 said:

I know it's fairly common knowledge in many fighting games that the AI is programmed with certain..."triggers"...which cause it to suddenly get a lot more difficult (i.e., skip animation frames, read player inputs before they're executed, etc.). There was one specifically egregious time that I wish I had recorded on video, when I was playing either Street Fighter II or Street Fighter II Turbo on SNES. I was Guile facing Balrog on one of the higher difficulties and whooping him pretty good (still at 80-90% health) when I witnessed a moment of pure programming bullshit. I hit Balrog with a flash kick which connected unblocked and reduced him to a little under 10% health. AS I'M STILL IN THE AIR, RECOVERING FROM THE FLASH KICK ANIMATION, Balrog recovers instantly and does a charging uppercut (which I can't block because...well...I'M STILL IN THE PREVIOUS ANIMATION) and air juggles me into two more charging punches which completely depletes my health bar. Round over. I turned the SNES off. I had seen enough.

I've also had my fair share of questionable moments in games like Darkest Dungeon. You know the sort, like when the boss is down to like 1 hit point and an entire round of your attacks miss...then the boss suddenly gets a "very fortunate" string of critical hits that wipe your party. Yeah...suuuuuure.

I don't think I've ever seen that Balrog BS, but it's obvious the computer cheats in Street Fighter II since your computer opponents will sometimes pull off moves no human could physically do. Guile will walk forward and throw a sonic boom or do a flash kick (obviously, you can't walk forward while performing the required inputs for those if you are a human). M. Bison does this quite a bit (similarly, walking forward and doing a psycho crusher, for example) and I assume that was programmed in to make him harder as the final boss. Those things always irritated me since it seems like a lazy way of increasing the difficulty at the expense of being a more realistic opponent.

[GPX | 1,369]

8 hours ago, T-Pac said:

I can't say I'm too familiar with games altering their programming randomly to get harder, but I do seem to find "diminishing returns" to be pretty frequent on my end (with high-score games in particular).

If I play a game for score, I'll typically have my best run within the first few attempts, and then things tend to go downhill from there. Sort-of like doing a workout, I guess. A brief period of warmup, then peak performance, then fatigue.

[T-Pac]

I know for sure this discussion topic and the fatigue factor are entirely separate issues. With your point, it’s more the game being a constant and you being a diminishing factor (fatigue kicking in). With what I’m trying to address, it’s more you being a relative constant, and the game suddenly sneaks you with an uppercut and then reverting to its typical game mode (and your scores/performance will revert back to its usual standard). 

[GPX | 1,369]

7 hours ago, Rhuno said:

I know it's a real thing in fighting games, but I haven't really noticed it outside of those. I'm also not big into fighters in general so I don't have a whole lot of experience with it, but MVG did a good video on the AI cheating in MK II:
 

 

Yes, this is exactly what I’m talking about! Programmers making the game suddenly go into high difficulty mode without you expecting it. Sometimes it’s very subtle which is why I had to question myself on many occasions whether I’m just overthinking it but this video helps to explain a lot!

It’s not quite the same as levels progressively getting harder and the AI being more challenging, because that’s something you’d expect the programmers to do with most games.

[OptOut | 8,884]

9 hours ago, T-Pac said:

I can't say I'm too familiar with games altering their programming randomly to get harder, but I do seem to find "diminishing returns" to be pretty frequent on my end (with high-score games in particular).

If I play a game for score, I'll typically have my best run within the first few attempts, and then things tend to go downhill from there. Sort-of like doing a workout, I guess. A brief period of warmup, then peak performance, then fatigue.

[T-Pac]

This isn't really my experience. I might go a few rounds of practicing and just trying a few things out without necessarily trying my hardest. Then I'll get into a bit of a rhythm where I'm getting used to the game and developing my skills and strats. Then there may indeed be a regression, as I'm devoting less attention to the game and relying more on muscle memory and honing that, so there may be a dip in performance there. But, after that all you push through till you really starting getting good and that's when I have some of my best scores coming through.

Of course, the next time I turn the game on, my minimum performance level starts off higher than before, and then it's possible to push things even further with more practice. Not that I'm especially good at High Score style arcade games, to be fair, but I certainly find them fun!

[RH | 4,903]

Some times it’s not the programmer being a jerk but a bug or classic RNG silliness.  

I played a mobile game for a bit recently that’s made by a guy who manages a Slack channel and is pretty active with the participants who play his games.

For this new game, you lay down tiles to make paths and you can place towers on them to then attack incoming enemies on the paths you make.  Essentially, it’s a different take on the Tower Defense mechanic.

There are three random types of tiles and a fourth one that you get every 10th stage.  What you tend to want to get is random tiles.  You may need specific ones to map the paths you want but so long as the random draw stays random, you can usually make it work.

Myself and several others noticed that all of a sudden we’d see stretches of 7-8 pulls of the same tiles round after round.  You may need to make a turn to connect a path to a bonus buff but noooooo, you’d get 8 straights in a row.  Since you can’t destroy tiles, and if working your way to a buff tile was a necessary strategy for your current run, then getting that many tiles of the same type can completely screw up your whole game.

We screenshotted this and mentioned it to the dev. He never found the problem but he did put a fix in where you could never roll the same tile more than 3x in a row. He also added a reroll feature (at a resource cost) just so you could potentially get the same piece more than 3x in a row if you really wanted it and we’re willing to pay the price to take the chance for it.

Before this fix, this experience felt cheap and like the game just “knew” your strategy and decided to play against you. I told this to the developer and even told him there was nothing wrong with not using “pure” RNG if the adjustments make the game feel more fair. He listened and that’s why he put the cap on the number of pulls you could get for a specific tiles.

[Sumez | 2,951]

The picture roulette minigame in SMB3 is absolutely this.
Outside of it being unintuitive, it will just randomly force you to fail, with nothing you could do about it.

 

[T-Pac | 7,544]

6 hours ago, GPX said:

I know for sure this discussion topic and the fatigue factor are entirely separate issues. With your point, it’s more the game being a constant and you being a diminishing factor (fatigue kicking in). With what I’m trying to address, it’s more you being a relative constant, and the game suddenly sneaks you with an uppercut and then reverting to its typical game mode (and your scores/performance will revert back to its usual standard). 

For sure. Most of the games I play aren't sophisticated enough for that kind of dynamic difficulty shifting. 
Or maybe they are, and I'm just not good enough to trigger it haha.

[T-Pac]

5 hours ago, OptOut said:

This isn't really my experience. I might go a few rounds of practicing and just trying a few things out without necessarily trying my hardest. Then I'll get into a bit of a rhythm where I'm getting used to the game and developing my skills and strats. Then there may indeed be a regression, as I'm devoting less attention to the game and relying more on muscle memory and honing that, so there may be a dip in performance there. But, after that all you push through till you really starting getting good and that's when I have some of my best scores coming through.

Of course, the next time I turn the game on, my minimum performance level starts off higher than before, and then it's possible to push things even further with more practice. Not that I'm especially good at High Score style arcade games, to be fair, but I certainly find them fun!

Yeah - I definitely have that "play longer - get better" correlation sometimes, but not as often as I'd like haha.
I just burn out too quick, I guess.

[T-Pac]

[rdrunner | 422]

NFL Blitz is horrible for this.  If you have the lead and the ball with a few seconds left, your team almost always fumbles when tackled.  Passes are usually batted/dropped and intercepted as well.  Only workaround is to try to reach the sideline, where at least you sometimes fumble out of bounds.

And don't get me started on the speed of the AI cars in later levels of R.C. Pro-Am...

[Link | 2,710]

9 hours ago, Sumez said:

The picture roulette minigame in SMB3 is absolutely this.
Outside of it being unintuitive, it will just randomly force you to fail, with nothing you could do about it.

 

Eh, I can win it pretty consistently. 

[TDIRunner | 2,737]

9 hours ago, Sumez said:

The picture roulette minigame in SMB3 is absolutely this.
Outside of it being unintuitive, it will just randomly force you to fail, with nothing you could do about it.

 

 

26 minutes ago, Link said:

Eh, I can win it pretty consistently. 

 

I've heard about this before, but I never really paid much attention to it.  But it's funny that you bring it up because the other night I played through SMB3 for the first time in a few years, and decided to play every single level.  I played through all 8 worlds, and completed every level including any level that could be skipped and every bonus round possible, and I did this in a single night.  I was actually a little surprised how often I didn't win the roulette game, and several times, I could notice the delay in the wheel stopping.  Having enough extra lives was never really a concern in this game, so I never really noticed or cared how often I didn't win this game.  However, once you start to pay attention, it's easier to notice.  

[Link | 2,710]

2 hours ago, TDIRunner said:

I've heard about this before, but I never really paid much attention to it.  But it's funny that you bring it up because the other night I played through SMB3 for the first time in a few years, and decided to play every single level.  I played through all 8 worlds, and completed every level including any level that could be skipped and every bonus round possible, and I did this in a single night. 

Lies. It's impossible to do this. Everyone knows the game needs a save battery.

2 hours ago, TDIRunner said:

I was actually a little surprised how often I didn't win the roulette game, and several times, I could notice the delay in the wheel stopping.

idk why Sumez is laughing but you just have to time it right. Do I win every time, no, but I'd put it about 50%. Hell of a lot better than a real slot machine.

[Sumez | 2,951]

Did you watch the video? Are you suggesting it's not telling the truth?  

Edited December 12, 2023 by Sumez

[Link | 2,710]

43 minutes ago, Sumez said:

Did you watch the video? Are you suggesting it's not telling the truth?  

Yes I watched the video, and no I'm not suggesting that. He thoroughly explains the code. His analysis of what it does and how it is processed during play time is very interesting. 

He also thoroughly explains the intentions that he personally presupposes and ascribes to certain undocumented motivations. That's clearer in his discussion of the card matching game than the roulette, but when you say there is nothing you can do to win and it's completely rigged because there is a variable factor, while I do win conservatively >40% of the time by following a pretty simple and strongly correlated timing strategy, yes I will disagree that the GAME OF CHANCE is flawed, unfair, and impossible. 

[Sumez | 2,951]

There is no way you can win that game more than 40% of the time outside of sheer luck.

You can time the second row to give you a decent chance at getting what you're aiming for, while the last row is 100% random. Statistically your ratio should be around 30% or so, and only if you restrict yourself to only going for the mushrooms. Flower or star would half your chances.  

[Andy_Bogomil | 815]

On 12/10/2023 at 12:55 AM, Link said:

The rubber banding is notoriously cheap and obnoxious in one of the Mario Kart games

Yeah, it's completely broken in Mario Kart 64... one of the reasons that games slides down my list on MK games. In Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, 'bagging' was a legitimate strategy where you'd hang WAY back to get two overpowered items and then abuse them on certain tracks (bullet bill, star, etc.). Apparently this was just patched in some form with the last(?) update. F-Zero for SNES wasn't far behind... your lead could only get so big before the computer more or less teleported to keep up.

Lots of similar things in sports games, especially for the arcade. NBA Jam becomes almost impossible as your lead grows which is programmed into the game. I always remember Mortal Kombat (MK3/UMK3) becoming easier with each continue as well (fuck you UMK3 Jade).

Bowser in Mario Golf does the same with his shot percentages going through the roof if you're ahead with only a few holes remaining.

I also believe that a lot of online games throw you a couple easy matches upfront to get you engaged before skill based match making really kicks in.

[G-type | 2,481]

I have tried in vain to figure out where exactly are the hit boxes on your sprite to get the bit in Adventures of Tron. I've come to the conclusion that it will just work when it feels like it.