History Main / FakeDifficulty

Notably this is the reason why joysticks and d-pads are on the left, despite the majority of people being right-handed. Following UsefulNotes/TheGreatVideoGameCrashOf1983, there were less new arcade cabinets being made, leading to players getting too good at the existing games and putting less money into them. Taking the cabinet apart and swapping the controls was a simple yet diabolically effective way to inflate the difficulty and milk more quarters out of their patrons, so much so that the idea spread like wildfire to the point it was adopted globally, leading to it becoming the norm in gaming today.

-->-- '''WebVideo/TheAngryVideoGameNerd''' on ''Literature/TheWizardOfOz'' for UsefulNotes/{{Super Nintendo|EntertainmentSystem}}

* RandomDrop - if the dropped item is necessary to continue the game or achieve certain endings.

* '''Bad technical aspects make it difficult.''' Making a difficult jump is a real difficulty. Making that same difficult jump under [[SomeDexterityRequired an overly complicated control scheme]], horrible [[JumpPhysics jumping mechanics]], or [[CameraScrew an abrupt mid-air change of camera angle]]--and therefore the orientation of your controls--is fake difficulty.

See also FakeLongevity. For its cousin, see FakeBalance. For the player variant, see NotTheIntendedUse.

In which the player does so well that the AI [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard outright cheats]], so much so that it makes certain mission objectives impossible unless the player ''also'' cheats, or even spawns so many extra enemies that tracking all of them starts to overwhelm the hardware. See also FakeBalance.

See also FakeLongevity, ClassicVideoGameScrewYous. For its cousin, see FakeBalance. For the player variant, see NotTheIntendedUse.

* '''The game requires the player to use skills or knowledge that are either incorrect or [[UnexpectedGameplayChange have nothing to do with the genre.]]''' A football game that requires you to name the eleven positions that make up a team is real difficulty. A football game that requires you to calculate the trajectory of a football in motion is fake difficulty, even if it is tangentially related.

[[Administrivia/ExampleSectionectomy No Examples, Please.]]

* '''The game requires the player to use skills or knowledge that are either incorrect or [[UnexpectedGameplayChange have nothing to do with the genre.]]''' A football game that requires you to name the eleven positions that make up a time is real difficulty. A football game that requires you to calculate the trajectory of a football in motion is fake difficulty, even if it is tangentially related.

* '''The game requires the player to use skills or knowledge that are either incorrect or [[UnexpectedGameplayChange have nothing to do with the genre.]]''' An American football game that requires you to describe the position that Jerry Rice played for a power-up is real difficulty. An American football game that requires you to describe the position that [[UsefulNotes/AssociationFootball Ronaldinho]] [[CriticalResearchFailure played the most as]], or one that forces you to do multi-variable calculus in order to train your starting lineup, is fake difficulty, not to mention just plain silly (even if that last one would arguably be kind of cool, at least to the mathematically-inclined).

Fake or Artificial difficulty is sometimes used to refer to the raising of enemy stats without improving their AI or giving them new abilities. However, raising enemy stats may force the player to devise new strategies or execute their inputs with less errors. Trial and error and reattempting sections of a game are a natural part of most games, and only [[TrialAndErrorGameplay excessive or ridiculous examples of trial and error]] should be considered "fake". Also, difficulty is a measurable statistic that can be categorized into different kinds of player skills required to overcome it. Thus the term "fake" difficulty is a matter of opinion which can change from player to player, depending on which forms of difficulty they like or dislike.

Where the game designs levels or enemies to only be beatable by a particular character or set of characters and doesn't require or at least hint at which characters you need to pick at the outset. Some older D&D modules that require a certain character class's abilities in order to advance the plot (but doesn't force a member of the party to be one at the outset) are like this.

* '''The game requires the player to use skills or knowledge that are either incorrect or [[UnexpectedGameplayChange have nothing to do with the genre.]]''' An American football game that requires you to describe the position that Jerry Rice played for a power-up is real difficulty. An American football game that requires you to describe the position that [[UsefulNotes/AssociationFootball Ronaldinho]] [[CriticalResearchFailure played the most]], or one that forces you to do multi-variable calculus in order to train your starting lineup, is fake difficulty, not to mention just plain silly (even if that last one would arguably be kind of cool, at least to the mathematically-inclined).

* '''The game requires the player to use skills or knowledge that are either incorrect or [[UnexpectedGameplayChange have nothing to do with the genre.]]''' A football game that requires you to describe the position that Jerry Rice played for a power-up is real difficulty. A football game that requires you to describe the position that Jerry Rice played to get a powerup, and assumes the answer is "[[CriticalResearchFailure Defensive midfielder]]", or one that forces you to do multi-variable calculus in order to train your starting lineup, is fake difficulty, not to mention just plain silly (even if that last one would arguably be kind of cool, at least to the mathematically-inclined).

* '''The game requires the player to use skills or knowledge that are either incorrect or [[UnexpectedGameplayChange have nothing to do with the genre.]]''' A football game that requires you to describe the position that Jerry Rice played for a power-up is real difficulty. A football game that requires you to describe the position that Jerry Rice played to get a powerup, and assumes the answer is "[[CriticalResearchFailure Quarterback]]", or one that forces you to do multi-variable calculus in order to train your starting lineup, is fake difficulty, not to mention just plain silly (even if that last one would arguably be kind of cool, at least to the mathematically-inclined).

** UnwinnableByMistake \\