Current Events > Which is worse for a video game; Too Easy or Too Hard?

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Too easy

Depends who the audience is and if there are settings you can adjust the difficulty.

Too hard locks you out of content

Too easy

Easy games just aren't fulfilling to me, unless they're intended to be all about the story

Depends on how you define "too". If by too hard, I can't even play it, then that is worse. But if too hard means stuff like Dark Souls and Returnal, then give me too hard.

Too easy almost always means boring for me.

Even if a game is too easy, there can be other qualities that are enjoyable, like the music, animations, story, etc.

Something being too hard just means you'll never experience it.

Something can be easy but still be a joy to play, like the easier moons in Mario Odyssey. Too hard, where its not rewarding anymore, is always bad.

Too hard is worse. More likely to shelve it and not finish it

if a game is too easy, I'll still play it to sandbox around or dick around, or have fun. Also, if there's a good story, thats a bonus

Too easy tbh.
Unless the game is fun enough to come back to for hours on end.

Either or, though erring towards too hard being worse by taking these to the logical extremes.

A game that's as easy as possible may still have nice art and audio assets to experience, or some interesting dialogue/lore/whatever.

A game that's as hard as possible won't let you interact much at all.

But outside of that, context is more important. Dark Souls has a nice world to wander through, but it would be so depressingly wasted by being easy.

Too hard. A game being too easy won't stop me from finishing it.

If a game is too hard, it's going to drag on and be a far more frustrating experience than a game is too easy. Plus, games being too hard are usually a result of the developer not playtesting.

Garioshi posted...

If a game is too hard, it's going to drag on and be a far more frustrating experience than a game is too easy. Plus, games being too hard are usually a result of the developer not playtesting.

So what are games that you consider too hard? I don't think I have played one in many years.

Too easy.

I'll play too long trying to force it, without ever having fun.

If it's Too hard, Im entertained while trying at least.

This is assuming I paid more than $3 and won't just stop immediately

Too easy is usually ok for most games. Many people either won't notice, or won't care much, and it is way LESS likely to get bad reviews than too hard.

Too hard locks people out of the rest of the game and makes them mad. But on the other hand a hard game can be rewarding long term. But that is a rarity for online reviewers to notice. People will bitch in the short term.

That is for unknown games. However. This can be mitigated/exacerbated by expectations. If you expect a challenge, you better get one. If you expect cakewalk kirby land. You better get it.

I mean in theory, a game that is too hard is worse. Like some of the NES/arcade era games where you die to bad controls and not having impossible foresight into some surprise the game will throw at you, then have to play the game again from the beginning. But I haven't played a game that I thought was too hard that was made in the last 20 years at least. Generally I play on the max difficulty and then add challenges on top of that if it would make it more interesting. Literally spent 60 hours of attempts trying to beat the last boss of Rabi-Ribi on the hardest difficulty without dying/reloading from the mid-fight autosave and felt good about it. Played God of War (PS4) blind on the hardest difficulty as my first God of War game, struggled for hours on some of the early game encounters, then eventually 100%'d the game including the superboss. Etc...

Edit: Actually, I can think of a game that was too hard to the point of being uninteresting. That would be Tales of Vesperia. Specifically, the combat really kind of sucks and constantly takes control away from you by having ridiculous end lag animations (which you can cancel some of with an absurdly convoluted and probably unintended sequence of inputs), so you're basically forced to not play the highest difficulty setting, and the third boss forces you to drop to normal. These difficulties were apparently not intended for use without NG+ bonuses, and the boss in question was not properly tested before release. There were a lot of things I really did not enjoy about that game.

Easy difficulty ruins games. Not every game -- a game like Spiritfarer doesn't need to be difficult to be enjoyable, for example -- but games where the gameplay needs to carry the game. If Fire Emblem gets too easy, you're just mindlessly marching units across a map and watching tedious animations of winning everything without tension rather than having to plan every move and clenching your teeth when unlikely misses/hits could happen. If an RPG gets too easy, you just repeat the same strategy every fight and never have to care about what the enemies do. If an action game gets too easy, you don't feel rewarded for mastering it.

Both are about the same to me. Maybe too easy because actual challenge is pretty rare these days.

But I always feel like this is missing a point.

I don't care if a game is easy or hard as long as it's intrinsically engaging. Of a game is engaging enough I can make up for lack of challenge in easier games with my own play style, and if a game is hard, being engaging is enough to keep me playing to overcome.

bsp77 posted...

So what are games that you consider too hard? I don't think I have played one in many years.

Mother 1 has a ridiculous difficulty spike in its final area simply because the team did not get to playtest the encounters at the level a regular player would be at that point in the game. It would be an objectively better game if the final area was too easy rather than too hard because the "difficulty" just means hours of grinding.

Too hard for sure. I prefer my games easy cause I'm a wussy with a capital P

Too hard, obviously. If a game is too easy, the worst that will happen is I'll be mildly annoyed. If a game is too hard, it can be a waste of time and money.

Too easy obviously. If it's too hard I'll keep trying and it gives me a goal to achieve. If it's too easy, it's just there and I likely have no interest unless it has other harder content.

Too hard as I will not waste my time with bullshit and I have dropped games before that were to hard.

Too easy is 100% worse.

Too hard was perfect for me. I used to think Tactics Ogre was too hard as a kid, kicked my ass and I lost alot of different party members easily, now its just right as I know the game more, learned how OP bows were in the beginning etc.

I guess I should say a caveat is if its too hard just cause its hard to understand, cool. Let me just learn it more and find exploits ala Tactics Ogre. If its too hard cause its cheap, no thank you.

Too hard because if a game is too easy you can choose to play in potentially more fun ways that make it harder. Essentially, you have command of much more variety of gameplay types.

If it is too hard then there is likely only one optimal way to win and it is typically unfun like exploiting a mechanic or repeating the same technique over and over.

i hate having to intentionally play badly just because a game refuses to play on my level
some games are way too easy no matter what, making all of the complexities ultimately meaningless and not fun to explore

depends on what "too hard" ends up looking like. i mentioned before in a thread about roguelites that in Dead Cells, as you unlock harder difficulties, you lose your health refills between levels. it goes from easy as shit on normal, hard, and very hard, to basically one hit resets on extreme. that's not really "hard" more than it just demands perfect play, and that's just stupid. imagine some kind of """hard""" mode in mario where you're just always small and there's no lives, checkpoints or continues. real fucking fun

Too hard is worse for me. I lose my patience pretty quickly when I keep dying over and over again.

I've got too many other games in my backlog to care about practicing to get better if I suck at a game.

Disengaged posted...

I don't care if a game is easy or hard as long as it's intrinsically engaging.

Now that I think about it, this seems closest to how I really feel

I enjoyed Doom 2016 a lot on Hurt Me Plenty (normal), but recently started a Nightmare (super hard) run

I'm still enjoying the shit out of the game, just in a totally different way. I'm forced to view the map and my abilities differently than I did on the easier difficulty, which makes the playthrough feel fresh and exciting

Too hard is worse for more exploration or story-focused games. Too easy is worse for like combat mechanics focused games.

Too easy. It's just less fun when there's no risk! I like games that get my heart racing.

too easy might as well be a movie, what's the point of pushing buttons