How not to Balance a game. 

EDIT: Since so many comments are saying this was all MMOD and the mod was "perfectly balanced" I've made an informative little video dispelling this assumption: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-fFwdtCZDIlI.html Sorry about my devolution throughout this video into a 2012 lets player. I was letting out a lot of pent up frustration through loud noises. Also sorry about the popping and mouth noises, I was practically deepthroating my microphone during this stream. Because of this video I have bought a foam mic cover which should mostly prevent this issue happening in future.

This is a great showcase of why, in my opinion, difficulty should never be a slider of "do more damage to enemies with less health who hit you like a wet noodle" to "do negligible damage to enemies with huge health pools who can and will kill you in an instant"

I don't think anyone has the right anymore to call Jolly "bad at videogames" He somehow pushed through this whole mod on Hard difficulty, only realizing at the end. And it was glorious.

"I don't care what you call me. I call me alive, and that's what matters" banger line

Now's a good time to remind you, Jolly, That the source AI does a lot of cheaty things. They intentionally miss you when you're running away under certain circumstances to make you feel like you're dodging it hollywood style. Then when they get "pissed off" they aimbot you.

Most people enjoy Jolly losing his mind to absolutely broken mods, i must admit i do too, but this one, this one i just feel bad for him, this whole ordeal of absolute madness mixed with the stab in the back at the end, i enjoyed the video but still, that must've been a mind wrecking experience.

The worst part: I feel like jolly would have actually had a pretty enjoyable time, if he'd actually been playing on normal. The fact that he THOUGHT he was on normal while he was on hard, made all the fights feel pointlessly difficult and unfair. The last fight, when he was actually playing on normal, actually felt fairly balanced. He was wrecking house with all his cool toys and he completed it without being forced to cower in a corner for several minutes.

I love the difficulty plot twist at the end.

this map is like when you're playing Gmod and you spawn in way too many enemies for shits n giggles while you have godmode on except someone actually thought that was a fun way to play the game for more than 5 minutes, made it into a map, and forgot the godmode

One of the best things about HL2 is seeing the different enemies fighting each other. There was a whole chapter dedicated to that. To have the zombies and Combine working together is really disappointing.

46:02 I haven't seen a story twist of that caliber since Bioshock.

Half life 1 was a success because you had 1 crowbar. 2 was a failure because you did not have 2 crowbars. Half life 3 will be judged upon it's crowbar count, and the desired number is 3. Not 4, as 4 is a patently rediculous number of crowbars.

I feel like the map creator played HDTF and absolutely loved every second of it

When a mod is so imbalanced jolly breaks his voice and speaks high pitched for a minute straight.

Glad to see someone finally took inspiration of Hunt down the Freeman's encounter design and made an entire mod to honour it!

I can exactly tell Jolly's emotion at 33:30 when he just watched that rocket fly towards him and did nothing but let it rip him limb from limb, absolutely defeated, broken man.

fun fact, a bit after this video came out, the MMOD patch dev released an update which changed the description of the difficulty levels. easy is now normal, normal is now hard, and hard is now "nightmare".

Reminds me of the time when the HL2 devs changed one of the playtester's games so he was receiving like 500% damage, so he went to get lunch and talked about it with other playtesters, and was told "oh yeah, that part was easy" when he was getting absolutely demolished by every enemy doing near-one-hit attacks.

Moral of the story: always remember to change the difficulty BEFORE you save poor jolly. This broke him way more than the jolly hardcore mod.. Just because Valve chose to tie saves with difficulty

The fact that Jolly handled 95% of this on hard is actually astonishing

I'm extremely sorry but Jolly's epiphany and complete mental breakdown when he realises that the difficulty had been reset to hard all along, with the flashbacks while Schubert's Ständchen plays and everything, just made me uncontrollably laugh like a maniac, it was so perfect.

39:16 >I then died 5 times trying to get up the stairs >Next frame is of him staring at a ladder 😔

I have not laughed as hard as I have watching this masterpiece of content. All stages of man are represented. Truly a tale of the ages. Jolly's descent. People will write songs of this feat.

11:38 "I feel like I was slightly in more control when playing Jolly's Hardcore Mod." Immediately flies into air without choice

I really can't see how any reasonable person could find this mod's hard difficulty "fun". Constantly bum-rushing bullet-sponge enemies that can kill you in mere seconds isn't good difficulty, it's NPCs that know they're tanky as shit and throw themselves at you knowing you're made of wet paper.

Watching this is basically an emotional rollercoaster: Confusion at the calmness in the beginning Surprise as millions of things start bombarding Jolly in the face. Laughter at the clever solution of the Trash Can Confusion again as Jolly proceeds to look for the exit. Laughing at Jolly's high pitched voice that he held for almost a minute while fighting his way to the lift. Rage at the amount of rockets being launched in Jolly's general direction and then a helicopter on top of that. Calmness as Jolly talks about the World's largest Plug And then like the last 20 minutes of the video just feels like partially sorrow and depression and the music seemed to only emphasize that and the amount of hopelessness Jolly was feeling. Like I almost cried when Jolly realized he had it on hard the whole time. But I think having it on hard does prove that Jolly is a lot better at this Half Life than he gives himself credit for. He persevered in the fact of ignorantly not knowing his settings had changed and didn't give up even the few times that chat suggested it.

Jolly, it matters not that you managed to beat 80% of the game on hard due to a mistake so trivial to foresee, That besides being painful to watch, my dude you deserve a medal for that. I wouldn't be able to finish the game on easy with godmode on

9:43 The combine rolling that grenade was so realistic it's actually insane. Sometimes Half-Life 2's AI continues to amaze me even this many years later.

47:26 the fact you were playing on hard the whole time makes you a trooper for getting through it. Your amazing jolly.

This video represents the human emotions: confidence, hope, dread, anger, rage, insanity and depression. It is perfect, i'm saving it in my playlist.

My first guess about hard difficulty was Jolly not pressing "apply", because that seemed like the kind of error he would make But the real error seems like something you need to have technical knowledge of how source works to realise without looking

This was seriously beautiful. Breaking it into 'acts' really adds to the sense of it being one of those Greek Epics or something like that, a tale of tragedy and suspense, aided more with the music and the slowly devolving sanity of the protagonist... come to think of it, many of your stories have a theme of devolving sanity.

That plot twist with the whole difficulty setting really got me straight to my heart,I knew something was off the moment enemies didn't just die from a point blank shotgun shot. Poor fucking Jolly man,someone should really give him a hug or two,He's genuinely got broken just cus of that nutcase of difficulty setting. This is why you should never make video game with a hard mode setting where you're literally a jelly with pea shooters while the enemies built like a tank and shoots like a jet. it's not challenge,It's frustrating.

Seeing this just makes me appreciate how clearly Doom modders communicate difficulty selections, man You'd never see this type of shit in Time Tripper or Reelism 2

First we had the world's smallest coffee cup. Now introducing the worlds largest plug.

Jolly beat himself up pretty hard throughout this but like... Bro... You played through so much on Hard mode, you even beat an unfair bossfight, like... Freakin good on you man. I couldn't have done that.

I like how when Jolly turn the difficulty to Normal, he suddenly changes armor with the enemies. Jolly now becomes the bullet sponge

I'm crying. This is a masterpiece. No animals were harmed in the making of this film. Just one person, who was dealt irreversible damage.

I imagine the combine throwing all this shit at Gordon, essentially just a nerd in a HEV suit, and I can only imagine how frustrated they'd be with him surviving every goddamn time Edit: Damn, 1k likes, first time, glad I spread some giggles

Jolly tried so hard and got so far, but in the end it didn't even matter

46:10 and thus, Jolly's descent into madness was complete.

Im getting the weird feeling this person made alotta Doom WADs.. feels like a Slaughtermap more than any HL2+MMOD style should be.

Jolly absolutely losing his mind halfway through the mod is easily the best thing I've seen all week.

Oh man, I remember playing this when it first came out on ModDB. Beating it on Normal difficulty was brutal, and basically required you to exactly memorize enemy spawn positions and to never miss a shot. I still have some old footage of the gameplay on a hard drive somewhere. I remember it was one of the first games I recorded using Fraps and it took forever to get it set up. Good times

loving those genuine screams and whole feeling with granade at 13:26

Genuinely thought this was Overcharged due to the horrible enemy encounter design.

Oh my god, I never expected a twist that fucking powerful out of this video. I didn't expect this amount of enjoyement out of someone's pain either... Jolly you managed to fucking bring back the sadistically hard "Let's Play" videos from a decade ago to future with your own fucking pain, literally creating art. And its even better because of how raw and powerful the emotions in this video are... This must be remembered as one of the greatest videos ever, no cap.

Jolly: *complains about people not wanting to experiment with him* Also Jolly: *complains when enemies want him more than others around them*

I actually felt for Jolly when he just died inside at the end, him realizing his mistake that cost him his sanity, he just sounds sad, and I feel for him Edit: Him screaming as the piano music plays in the background reminds me of Getting Over It

I love how calm and sane Jolly is during the entire playthrough. Truly a masterpiece.

I like the moment combine goes "peekaboo" droping 'nade at Jolly's legs

i hate Jolly for how he hurts Jolly

Realistically that's what the combine *should've* done in the main campaign.

Jolly: *Puts game on hard* Also Jolly: "This is not easy!"

The best way to actually add difficulty to a game is to make the enemies either smarter and more cover based or make ammo and health less lootable or both to make it rather resource heavy and intense. making enemies have more health just makes it more annoying to actually play the game rather than maybe an enemy or two extra and them peeking out of cover to shoot and having the same amount of health regardless

Gotta appreciate that everytime Jolly used the shotgun he made sure to be as far away from the enemy as possible before taking the shot.

I've been subscribed to this channel since around 2015 (he had stupidly funny nickname back then). It was the first big channel which aimed on showcasing trash/comedy/broken addons, mainly for HL series. It was unique so I got curious and used to watch it a lot. Content quality here progressed DRASTICALLY over the years (I will never forget Half-Life: Echoes, Portal 2 Office Prank and Heart of Evil playthroughs, those were best times I've ever had watching someone play video games); even after he stopped adding signature subtitles, I still feel like I'm watching top notch entertainment content. I think this channel is really rare in terms that it sets the goal to amuse with commentary (which is always on point without any redundancy and never gets annoying) and not with beautiful editing. Even the text-based videos had more personality than large portion of YT gaming channels then and nowadays. I also appreciate how you make videos that calm and hilarious at the same time. New uploads on this channel are like a small happy event for me which is always worth to wait (though I'd still be glad if you release vids a little bit more often :)). Keep it up, Jolly!

That was a journey, the music added for dramatic effect towards the end really capped off the showcase of the experience your were having. Just felt, exhausted, resigned, and really showed that pseudo calmness one feels once you finally realise how to get through a problem you're trying to solve.

This, Jolly, is the best video you've ever made. It has everything - an arc of tension, a story, a big reveal, emotional investment, pain, laughter... it is excellent work and I thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for the suffering you endure for the sake of us, some lads sitting somewhere halfway across the planet, howling in joy.

Another example that Stalker gets difficulty somewhat right: difficulty sliders or toggles should make your enemies harder to kill but they also have a harder time to kill you

Worst thing about some game difficulty not being them hard, they're being bullet sponge which is pretty much unfun and cheesy by game design perspective

Can we appreciate that chad Jolly almost accidentally completed the mod on hard

This is a cinematic masterpiece. The emotions, the action, the trash can sideplot.... It's beautiful.

Honestly? Really fuckin impressive he made it that far without realizing he was on hard difficulty. I can only imagine how sick this playthrough would be if it was one continuous clip

I'm enjoying the free jazz while Jolly suffers through polished and well balanced mods, it's quiet the taste, mostly tears, but they're quiet tasteful.

This video was incredibly entertaining. The pure stress throughout most of it and the incredible plot twist showing a truly broken man, it's all so perfect.

When your mod makes Jolly so insane that he starts laughing like Darkviper

All jokes aside, I genuinely wonder if this mod has done lasting damage to Jolly’s mental health.

this is going to be a very, very interesting trip. and it feels like i'm already on something.

Watching Jolly break down because of some jank Source difficulty option bullshit has been quite the experience. Hopefully all the money he gets will fund treatment for the PTSD he's gotten from this incident.

We have to admit Jolly did great. His skills are improving considerably

Title: "How not to balance your mod" Video: Jolly choosing the insanely hard difficulty

I really missed watching Jolly go insane after 'too many crates'

You are like the artists in the past, risking your own mental well-being to bring us a truly masterpiece. Thank you Jolly

46:45 This moment is pure art, possibly the best moment on the whole channel. The montage scrolling by to the continued sad piano music, just *chefs kiss*

This is more emotional than drama shows on TV. I felt sorry for Jolly during pretty much the whole video.

Jolly, this might be one of your best videos, it’s so well edited, it’s hilarious. And even though you might be embarrassed by the noises you’ve made, you were genuinely funny. Thanks for brightening my day.

Well. Now we can say that jolly was on war. And he have PTS. That mod, literally, a nightmare.

37:30 When I first saw this I wanted to both shake the programmer's hands and at the same time kick them in the groin for programming the AI in a Rube Goldberg style throwing that grenade at you and some how fell into the hole and splash damage at the right spot it's both genius and evil.

So utterly depressed by the end of this. The pain and suffering you put yourself through for our enjoyment is immense. Thank you jolly for your suffering.

Diffculty Settings: *_Easy_* *_Normal_* *_So I installed "Jolly's hardcore mod"..._*

This mod reminds me of the time me and my pal frank went to Cincinnati. Good times

how to make this mod a tad bit more balanced: 1. scale back the enemies. considering this is a pretty prominant run and gun section with the amount of twists and turns through the level with dead ends that house loot, adding a crap ton of enemies to it is not a good idea. maybe put enemies in set positions with more behind cover and up high than on the ground rushing at the player. 2. if you don't want to scale back the enemies, then add more resources for the player. put a mounted gun at the exit to the tunnel for the player to shelter at and hold off some enemies. you cannot fight that many guys with base level guns. or, put more healthkits in positions the player is likely to go to. litter those places with resources. maybe make sure that those places are places the player can bunker down and fend off before moving on further. these simple 2 solutions make the game a helluva lot more balanced, and they can easily be realized if you simply playtest the game. why do you think half-life 2 is so genius with giving you resources and enemy placement? because they playtested the game! and not just with the same guy every time, but with multiple different people who may or may not be well experienced with the game already. a lesson to be learned from this mod is this - playtesting saves fans of your game a lot of trouble

This stream legit felt like a full length tragic movie.

"we're figuring out strategies" Because there is more than one way to die

Here we have a video filled with the fragments of Jolly's sanity

I know it, you was playing on hard, and i was suffering with you dude. That was fucking hell.

i gotta say.... this was amazing...a true tour de force. The production value on this video was just....it was so far above your normal videos. this really took me on a......tr1p. Totally makes up for it being days late, lol.

Love when jolly starts losing it

theres a certain emotion thats hard to describe when youve been watching the video for half an hour and start to think its almost over, and then you realise youre only halfway through

I appreciate you, Jolly. I especially liked the editing in this video. 👍

"Opera Music makes Violence classy" - Peter Griffin This entire mod in a nutshell

Jolly: I fought so hard and got so far! Everyone and the gunship: But in the end - it didn't even mater...

Hard difficulty should NEVER just be "The enemies are bullet sponges now, and you die as fast as you would IRL" Hard difficulty SHOULD ALWAYS BE you no longer recover from wounds by just waiting and your enemies still drop quickly, but they do just as much damage to you as you do to them now

Jolly was so broken by this, that he started to ask for some puzzles

Honestly the fact you were able to almost get through this entire mod on hard mode is an achievement in it of itself. I cannot fathom how much pain you had to suffer through to finish the mod, but goddammit you still managed to get to the finish line against all odds.

This masterpiece is the greatest content you've produced to date. Congrats and cheers, thanks for suffering through the entirety of this xD

oh I can already tell this is gonna be a nightmare

To a literal dead woman: "I don't even blame you. I wish I could just sit down and cry in a puddle of my own blood as well" 😂

Jolly, that is some of the best FPS gameplay I have ever seen. While you may have used some rather well deserved cheese at first with the garbage can, basically every other fight was just plain skill paired with tenacity.