We can tell that, indeed—but those changes don't necessarily imply a universal increase in difficulty, or a spike in it.
(For one, how a player responds to the changes in question, and thus how the difficulty scales for them, may vary from player to player. And for another, it's entirely possible for a game's numbers and levelling to scale such that higher-level gameplay can become easier for some players than lower-level.)
Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Aug 14th 2020 at 10:55:28 AM
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should the "trope" be about the reactions? I remember the trope wasn't about that.
I can't speak to what it used to be about, but if it's now YMMV then it's now about audience reactions, I believe.
As to whether it should be YMMV, not having seen the arguments that had it made so I'm a little hesitant to pronounce. That said, I'm inclined at the moment to support it remaining YMMV: I do think that difficulty is subjective, and thus YMMV.
As to the objective elements of the example that you gave above, I would imagine that they'd largely divide up into other tropes; Level Scaling, for example.
Perhaps there's a trope in sudden jumps in the numerical side of games—enemy or player damage suddenly going up far more between level X and X+1 than between X-1 and X, for example—without tying such things directly to statements of difficulty? (As difficulty might be affected by such things, but the degree of the effect—and thus whether it qualifies as a "spike"—may vary from player to player.)
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It's not so much that there isn't any objectivity to difficulty levels, but it's easier to manage acknowledging player skill is subjective than see examples spiral into the most minor difficulty increases. There is That One Level and That One Boss, though, which mostly covers the subjective elements.
All I want to know is where I can put the objective elements in. If not Difficulty Spike, what then?
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The example as listed sounds more like it is talking about endgame content and how there is a lot of Level Grinding in order to reach the final levels, raids, dungeons, etc. It's not specifically how the difficulty curve gets out of hand with Difficulty Spike. There might be something with regards to Role-Playing Endgame, The Very Definitely Final Dungeon or Bonus Dungeon.
Edited by KJMackley on Aug 14th 2020 at 10:55:04 AM
I know that Difficulty Spike was made YMMV because we can't objectively tell when a game becomes more difficult.
But at least, if we can tell that there are "changes" that happen in the gameplay as we go through, that should be objective, right?
Like this:
- Honkai Impact 3rd: for the "competitive" modes of the game - the "Abyss" and "Memorial Arena" modes - and few others (such as the Coop Multiplayer modes), the game groups players based on their Character Level: lv 38-55 is "Basic" tier, lv 56-69 is "Elite" tier, lv 70-80 is "Masters" tier, and lv 81-85 is "Exalted" tier. Within those modes, the higher tiered they are, the stronger and more durable the enemies become; for the competitive modes, the competition will also become tighter and more heated. Level 1-37 is basically spent to prepare the players for these tiers, and the game also makes it that advancing to lv 81 is optional; so if lv 80 players haven't fully prepared their characters and equipments yet, they can stay and "bide their time", so to speak, to grow in power first.
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