Emily Short, Graham Nelson and Andrew Plotkin all had discussions on the past on different kinds of difficulty.
Emily Short made the point that in a good game (by her standards), the difficulty should like in figuring out the puzzle, not figuring out how to input it. So like you said, having a hard puzzle in a game could be fine (like the game 15 minutes where you have to figure out how your clones’ timelines fit into each other) but having to guess the verb or dealing with unhelpful error messages would not be fine.
Andrew Plotkin categorized games by fairness, with cruel games being those that let you end up in ‘zombie’ states where you can’t win but don’t know it.
Graham Nelson had the Player’s Bill of Rights (which he violated himself quite a few times). I’ll post the whole thing here but put it behind a spoiler so it doesn’t overwhelm uninterested people:
Summary
- Not to be killed without warning
At its most basic level, this means that a room with three exits, two of
which lead to instant death and the third to treasure, is unreasonable
without some hint. Mention of which brings us to:
- Not to be given horribly unclear hints
Many years ago, I played a game in which going north from a cave led to a
lethal pit. The hint was: there was a pride of lions carved above the
doorway. Good hints can be skilfully hidden, or very brief (I think, for
example, the hint in the moving-rocks plain problem in “Spellbreaker” is a
masterpiece) but should not need explaining even after the event.
A more sophisticated version of (1) leads us to:
- To be able to win without experience of past lives
Suppose, for instance, there is a nuclear bomb buried under some anonymous
floor somewhere, which must be disarmed. It is unreasonable to expect a
player to dig up this floor purely because in previous games, the bomb blew
up there. To take a more concrete example, in “The Lurking Horror” there is
something which needs cooking for the right length of time. As far as I can
tell, the only way to find out the right time is by trial and error. But
you only get one trial per game. In principle a good player should be able
to play the entire game out without doing anything illogical. In similar
vein:
- To be able to win without knowledge of future events
For example, the game opens near a shop. You have one coin and can buy a
lamp, a magic carpet or a periscope. Five minutes later you are transported
away without warning to a submarine, whereupon you need a periscope. If you
bought the carpet, bad luck.
- Not to have the game closed off without warning
Closed off meaning that it would become impossible to proceed at some
later date. If there is a papier-mache wall which you can walk through at
the very beginning of the game, it is extremely annoying to find that a
puzzle at the very end requires it to still be intact, because every one of
your saved games will be useless. Similarly it is quite common to have a
room which can only be visited once per game. If there are two different
things to be accomplished there, this should be hinted at.
- Not to need to do unlikely things
For example, a game which depends on asking a policeman about something he
could not reasonably know about. (Less extremely, the problem of the
hacker’s keys in “The Lurking Horror”.) Another unlikely thing is waiting
in uninteresting places. If you have a junction such that after five turns
an elf turns up and gives you a magic ring, a player may well never spend
five turns there and never solve what you intended to be straightforward.
On the other hand, if you were to put something which demanded investigation
in the junction, it might be fair enough. (“Zork III” is especially poor in
this respect.)
- Not to need to do boring things for the sake of it
In the bad old days many games would make life difficult by putting
objects needed to solve a problem miles away from where the problem was,
despite all logic - say, putting a boat in the middle of a desert. Or, for
example, it might be fun to have a four-discs tower of Hanoi puzzle in a
game. But not an eight-discs one.
- Not to have to type exactly the right verb
For instance, looking inside a box finds nothing, but searching it does.
Or consider the following dialogue (amazingly, from “Sorcerer”):
unlock journal
(with the small key)
No spell would help with that!
open journal
(with the small key)
The journal springs open.
This is so misleading as to constitute a bug. But it’s an easy design fault
to fall into. (Similarly, the wording needed to use the brick in Zork II
strikes me as quite unfair. Or perhaps I missed something obvious.)
- To be allowed reasonable synonyms
In the same room in “Sorcerer” is a “woven wall hanging” which can instead
be called “tapestry” (though not “curtain”). This is not a luxury, it’s an
essential.
- To have a decent parser
This goes without saying. At the very least it should provide for taking
and dropping multiple objects.
The last few are more a matter of taste, but I believe in them:
- To have reasonable freedom of action
Being locked up in a long sequence of prisons, with only brief escapes
between them, is not all that entertaining. After a while the player begins
to feel that the designer has tied him to a chair in order to shout the plot
at him.
- Not to depend much on luck
Small chance variations add to the fun, but only small ones. The thief in
“Zork I” seems to me to be just about right in this respect, and similarly
the spinning room in “Zork II”. But a ten-ton weight which fell down and
killed you at a certain point in half of all games is just annoying.
- To be able to understand a problem once it is solved
This may sound odd, but many problems are solved by accident or trial and
error. A guard-post which can be passed only if you are carrying a spear,
for instance, ought to have some indication that this is why you’re allowed
past. (The most extreme example must be the notorious Bank of Zork.)
- Not to be given too many red herrings
A few red herrings make a game more interesting. A very nice feature of
“Zork I”, “II” and “III” is that they each contain red herrings explained in
the others (in one case, explained in “Sorcerer”). But difficult puzzles
tend to be solved last, and the main technique players use is to look at
their maps and see what’s left that they don’t understand. This is
frustrated when there are many insoluble puzzles and useless objects. So
you can expect players to lose interest if you aren’t careful. My personal
view is that red herrings ought to have some clue provided (even only much
later): for instance, if there is a useless coconut near the beginning, then
perhaps much later an absent-minded botanist could be found who wandered
about dropping them. The coconut should at least have some rationale.
The very worst game I’ve played for red herrings is “Sorcerer”, which by
my reckoning has 10.
- To have a good reason why something is impossible
Unless it’s also funny, a very contrived reason why something is
impossible just irritates. (The reason one can’t walk on the grass in
“Trinity” is only just funny enough, I think.)
- Not to need to be American to understand hints
The diamond maze in “Zork II” being a case in point. Similarly, it’s
polite to allow the player to type English or American spellings or idiom.
For instance “Trinity” endears itself to English players in that the soccer
ball can be called “football” - soccer is a word almost never used in
England.
- To know how the game is getting on
In other words, when the end is approaching, or how the plot is
developing. Once upon a time, score was the only measure of this, but
hopefully not any more.
