Current Events > As I get older, I don't like hard games.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Sonixs posted...

Your time is more valuable when you get older and you want to spend your relaxing time enjoying it.

For me, I don't want to play games that are hard jsut to be hard. So I'll never play a souls game and I don't care.

Probably older than you and I love Souls games. The reason is that they are fair and not cheap. The games are more about overcoming challenges vs a frustrating hard. I admit it took a bit for that difference to click when I first started playing them though.

Now that im super busy and have a family, I stopped liking harder games because I dont have much time to game anymore and I dont have the patience to deal with difficulty

Fluttershy posted...

sure, but are you sitting there acting like adults can't like games that actually challenge them or

Or am I saying there is nothing that says adult or child has to like easy or hard games.

The second one.

As a kid I thought if I did not beat every popular game it meant there was something wrong with me. As an adult I realize if I dont enjoy a video game (easy or hard) it doesnt matter.

I dont have to like every game that exist, I dont have to beat every game that I play.

its okay to not like/beat a game

The second one.

good, just checking.

I like to set difficulty to what I feel is the "intended experience."

"Core Rules" for Baldur's Gate 1 & 2.
Nightmare for DOOM Eternal (though my first playthrough was on Ultra-Violence)

For most other games, assuming there are 4 difficulties, I'll usually pick the 3rd one. Especially if the hardest difficulty comes with a warning like "This mode is for players who have dedicated their whole lives to this game; you will die a lot."

Then there are games like Dishonored where "Very Hard" doesn't even feel that hard, and anything less difficult than that isn't even fun.

Used to only like easy games as a kid, then started liking harder games and the hardest difficulty settings as a teenager. As an adult I still prefer challenges but will probably opt out of the most difficult setting and go with the one below it if the going gets too tough. Also not a fan of unfair BS games like IWBTG

The thing people don't get about Souls games is the game isn't about "being too hard," so much as it's about exploring and experimenting with the things that you find. The difficulty is centered around that. The more you explore/find and become familiar with your inventory/abilities, the easier the game becomes.

In Elden Ring, there was a dragon kicking my ass, and I could never get him down to even half of his health. Felt like I needed to gain like 30 levels before I could have a chance. Before giving up, I changed my armor up and equipped a spell that added red lightning to my weapon, and that dragon was dead on my 2nd try.

Cool thing about that, the armor set and spell were both things that were dropped by a mini-boss in same region as that dragon. It's like in each region of the game, the developers are giving you the items you will need to be successful in that region. You just have to pay attention to what you're picking up.

TomClark posted...

I have something similar.

When I was younger I used to massively prefer difficult games. Now, while I do still enjoy a challenge and will occasionally play on the harder settings, I also enjoy just getting through the game in a less stressful way.

I think it's probably to do with the fact that when I was younger I had much more time to play and much less money to buy new games, so the harder they were the longer they lasted, filling up more of my time before I needed a new game. Now that I'm older I have more money to get games (and a ludicrous backlog thanks to things like PSPlus), but much less time to play them in, so saying that a game has a 100 hour runtime with bosses that you'll be stuck on for hours honestly feels more like a threat than anything, haha.

This

I've gradually felt similar with Fire Emblem.

Before, when offered, I would always play on Hard/Classic mode, and do the usual "restart the chapter if someone died" schtick. Now, I play on Hard/Casual, since it's less of a headache worrying about keeping everyone alive and saves time.

I don't need crazy difficulty and thankfully *most* modern games I feel respect the challenge as in they don't artificially make things difficult or cheap just to extend the length of games. That existed when I was young and console gaming was more niche and came from the "eat your quarter" mentality of the arcades.

I definitely don't like easy games. The reason why is I feel it absolutely kills the mechanics of a game. I play a lot of rpgs and this is but one example but on the game Ni No Kuni you can capture different enemies and make them your own. They have this cool system based on the moon/sun/star/planet symbol that is supposed to incorporate strengths/weaknesses vs certain signs. You also have elemental weaknesses in this game.

So depending on what element an enemy is using and what affinity they are could drastically change the outcome of an attack. This also gives you a reason to capturing stronger monsters and having a balanced party based on these elements and signs.

The thing is though the game is so damn easy NONE of this matters. You can literally just keep the first few enemies you captured in the first area of the game and use no strategy whatsoever and just "attack" every battle and win. It absolutely kills the mechanics of the game and the fun because it because a kids game.

I don't find enjoyment in that and I'm not sure how others do. When it is such a joke that is absolutely discards every gameplay element in place and you can just over level and plow through the game with no strategy at all yeah I think that makes a game suck.

When I play an rpg I want there to be fights I have to strategize for, maybe change my build, exploit weaknesses, use items, actually need to use my healer and feel real danger of having my party wiped out.

Now I don't need the old school mechanics of a 2 hour dungeon with no save state and getting wiped on a boss means I have to do the whole thing over again no. That is just shitty design. But I do want challenges in the game to make me actually have to use mechanics within in the game.

So I personally think an element of difficulty is very important to my enjoyment.

archizzy posted...

I don't need crazy difficulty and thankfully *most* modern games I feel respect the challenge as in they don't artificially make things difficult or cheap just to extend the length of games.

At least, in the AAA space. Indie games, on the other hand, are clearly designed with the mentality that if the player wins, the dev loses.

ReturnOfDevsman posted...

At least, in the AAA space. Indie games, on the other hand, are clearly designed with the mentality that if the player wins, the dev loses.

Which indie games? I have a beat a lot of them and don't see this at all.

Also to be fair a lot of the cheapest difficulty in my youth was just a flaw of game design at the time. Like enemies respawning on the edge of the screen if you moved forward or back. Ninja Gaiden was bad for this. Or enemies that could move off screen out of range. Or shit like TMNT where you go up a ladder to a different screen and then go back down and the entire area just respawns everything.

You also had stuff like enemies on ledges where you couldn't reach and you can only attack straight out in front of you standing or jumping but no way to attack "directionally" like with more modern games and controls.

A lot of it was just a hard limitation of the 2D side scrolling technology. But they also purposefully made things hell to extend the length of the game. For sure.

bsp77 posted...

Which indie games? I have a beat a lot of them and don't see this at all.

I did play one that was reasonable, so that was nice. Cosmic Star Heroine was the title. But it wasn't enough to convince me it wasn't an outlier amidst:

Death's Gambit literally taunting you by crushing you under your own corpses

Hollow Knight with its 100-boss boss rush, including bosses that took dozens of tries to beat once and even had the nerve to include brand-new bosses as far in as THE LAST DAMN ONE

Slay the Spire, with its 21 cascading difficulty levels, the THIRD of which kicked my ass literally 80 times in a row before I gave up

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

I mean, I did give it 80 tries so I did like it a lot.

ReturnOfDevsman posted...

I did play one that was reasonable, so that was nice. Cosmic Star Heroine was the title. But it wasn't enough to convince me it wasn't an outlier amidst:

Death's Gambit literally taunting you by crushing you under your own corpses

Hollow Knight with its 100-boss boss rush, including bosses that took dozens of tries to beat once and even had the nerve to include brand-new bosses as far in as THE LAST DAMN ONE

Slay the Spire, with its 21 cascading difficulty levels, the THIRD of which kicked my ass literally 80 times in a row before I gave up

Only one of those I played was Hollow Knight. Awesome game, but what you listed is optional.

But I have also played Hades, Dead Cells, Blasphemous, Death's Door, Ori games, Steamworld games, etc. All a challenge but all doable.

bsp77 posted...

Only one of those I played was Hollow Knight. Awesome game, but what you listed is optional.

But I have also played Hades, Dead Cells, Blasphemous, Death's Door, Ori games, Steamworld games, etc. All a challenge but all doable.

Playing the game at all is optional. Reaching the credits is optional. You could walk over, talk to Elderbug and quit, but that doesn't make it an easy game just because you ignored the hard parts.

rexcrk posted...

Honestly same.

But Im not one to get enjoyment / fulfillment out of getting frustrated and stressed out over beating something difficult either. Id rather have a fun relaxing time than get all steamed.

This.

Never been into those hardware honestly, so for me it's not even a getting older thing. I play games to relax and destress. Some annoyingly difficult boss is the opposite of de-stress for me.

ReturnOfDevsman posted...

Playing the game at all is optional. Reaching the credits is optional. You could walk over, talk to Elderbug and quit, but that doesn't make it an easy game.

Don't make ridiculous points

I am only saying that the comment about the devs wanting you to lose is false with Hollow Knight. Maybe the boss rush is ridiculous, and so was that one palace place (forgot the name) but those are optional to beating the game

slay the spire's 20 ascension levels are fun. they're a nice way to encourage you to improve your game skill because once you understand the mechanics and general play pattern of the game even the first 10 or so are mostly trivial.

things like the mega boss rush in hollow knight are indeed a bit ridiculous but I think that's sort of the point. it's some insane challenge meant only for the really dedicated grinders

bsp77 posted...

Don't make ridiculous points

I am only saying that the comment about the devs wanting you to lose is false with Hollow Knight. Maybe the boss rush is ridiculous, and so was that one palace place (forgot the name) but those are optional to beating the game

"Beating the game," as you put it, by which I presume you mean convincing it to present a long list of names, is a subset of the game's content. The ridiculous point is the one who insists it somehow doesn't count because not everyone chose to do it.

ReturnOfDevsman posted...

"Beating the game," as you put it, by which I presume you mean convincing it to present a long list of names, is a subset of the game's content. The ridiculous point is the one who insists it somehow doesn't count because not everyone chose to do it.

Lol

bsp77 posted...

Only one of those I played was Hollow Knight. Awesome game, but what you listed is optional.

But I have also played Hades, Dead Cells, Blasphemous, Death's Door, Ori games, Steamworld games, etc. All a challenge but all doable.

Can also comment on cosmic Star heroine. It's pretty solid mechanically. My only issue with it was that the story is kind of hard to follow at moments.

It's the game that actually seems to love status effects both negative and positive which is a massive bonus. And sense every fight has you at full power, and dying doesn't really cause you to lose progress, you can mix and match up your builds to cater to fights that you lost.

ReturnOfDevsman posted...

Playing the game at all is optional. Reaching the credits is optional. You could walk over, talk to Elderbug and quit, but that doesn't make it an easy game just because you ignored the hard parts.

That is quite the take. So for you there's no difference between content you're required to beat to reach the end credits and content you're not required to do at all to complete the game?

If I recall correctly, Hidden Dreams, Grimm Troupe and Godmaster (this is where the boss rush is) are all free DLC content packs that were added after the full game released, they're literally extra features. It's like you're complaining about the fact that the developers went and added more content to the game, for free. (?)

Kinda opposite, kinda the same. I don't like too difficult of the games, and when I was younger I used to play nearly all games on easy mode. Though as an adult, i play most of the time normal, especially on first playthrough. And if I'm confident in my abilities in certain games, and or trophy/achievement hunting. I will play at the highest difficulty level on a subsequent playthrough.

Though it really just varies, and I still get annoyed at certain hard games for various reasons.

I do like challenging games, but it has to be the right kind of challenging. For instance I dont like slow paced games where if you dodge or attack, its like a 1-3 second commit that has to be timed perfect and if you fuck up you lose 80% of your HP in one attack. I prefer faster paced games like AC6 or KH2

I only ever played RPGs. I'm not a fan of the recent trend of low level caps, just let me grind and explore. Sometimes I only have time for a half hour of playtime and I don't want to spend it watching a movie, pressing a button every couple minutes.

Same
I just don't have the time to "git gud" anymore. I'd rather spend my time doing other things.

I don't hate them, but I'm way more like to play cheap or cheese a boss if it's particularly annoying.

Yomi posted...

That is quite the take. So for you there's no difference between content you're required to beat to reach the end credits and content you're not required to do at all to complete the game?

I guess? Completing the game, to me, means all content.

Yomi posted...

If I recall correctly, Hidden Dreams, Grimm Troupe and Godmaster (this is where the boss rush is) are all free DLC content packs that were added after the full game released, they're literally extra features. It's like you're complaining about the fact that the developers went and added more content to the game, for free. (?)

Who hasn't complained about a patch or other post-release change that they didn't like?

I think more games should try to have easy and hard together.

Like, basic victory is easy. But going above and beyond in difficulty opens up new paths, dialogue, or prizes.

Notti posted...

I think more games should try to have easy and hard together.

Like, basic victory is easy. But going above and beyond in difficulty opens up new paths, dialogue, or prizes.

That's just hard mode done properly, as well as a good demonstration of why some games don't have an easy mode. To use the obvious example of Dark Souls, you could absolutely double the player's damage and half the damage that enemies do and it would make the game easier. However, the encounters are designed with the original values in mind, as are all the weapons, levels, enemies, even the arrangement of enemies. If you adjust one value without adjusting the others, it's generally less fun. Souls combat without both parties getting hit hard is just a clunky action game.

MGS5 did this nearly perfectly imo. Each mission had main objectives that you could do pretty much however you wanted, although your score was better if you went stealthy and had zero kills. You also had bonus objectives that increased your score and sometimes unlocked bonus equipment and other side missions, which were often more difficult or sometimes timed. Finally, you could bring whatever equipment that you wanted, but it all had a cost with better equipment obviously being more expensive.

The end result was that if you went in guns blazing for the objective, it would be easy and your score would be low. If you went with minimal equipment and went for the side objectives, you'd be well rewarded. Anything in between these extremes was possible too. The player was able to finely tune their difficulty without so much as glimpsing a difficulty selection menu.

TomClark posted...

I think it's probably to do with the fact that when I was younger I had much more time to play and much less money to buy new games, so the harder they were the longer they lasted, filling up more of my time before I needed a new game. Now that I'm older I have more money to get games (and a ludicrous backlog thanks to things like PSPlus), but much less time to play them in

this is the answer for me

i own so many games. there are so many things i need to experience. i ain't got no time to waste on some challenging game that i can't progress in.

i do enjoy challenge. but there's a happy medium there. some games are designed and built around "you need to spend hundreds of hours to progress" and those games just lose me. and not even multiplayer games. i just got no time for that shit anymore.

i also used to replay games a lot and i do that less and less. just not enough time, too many games.

Reflex and eyesight deteriorated, less hand-eye coordination.

You just got old

reincarnator07 posted...

That's just hard mode done properly, as well as a good demonstration of why some games don't have an easy mode. To use the obvious example of Dark Souls, you could absolutely double the player's damage and half the damage that enemies do and it would make the game easier. However, the encounters are designed with the original values in mind, as are all the weapons, levels, enemies, even the arrangement of enemies. If you adjust one value without adjusting the others, it's generally less fun. Souls combat without both parties getting hit hard is just a clunky action game.

MGS5 did this nearly perfectly imo. Each mission had main objectives that you could do pretty much however you wanted, although your score was better if you went stealthy and had zero kills. You also had bonus objectives that increased your score and sometimes unlocked bonus equipment and other side missions, which were often more difficult or sometimes timed. Finally, you could bring whatever equipment that you wanted, but it all had a cost with better equipment obviously being more expensive.

The end result was that if you went in guns blazing for the objective, it would be easy and your score would be low. If you went with minimal equipment and went for the side objectives, you'd be well rewarded. Anything in between these extremes was possible too. The player was able to finely tune their difficulty without so much as glimpsing a difficulty selection menu.

To point out time was more important than stealth and optional objectives for your score in mgs5 is pretty much a guaranteed s rank if you completed any mission under a specific time frame. Think it was like 7 minutes. Only one mission I couldn't accomplish that in so I had to bag a optional objective or two on top of going as fast as I could.

Notti posted...

I think more games should try to have easy and hard together.

Like, basic victory is easy. But going above and beyond in difficulty opens up new paths, dialogue, or prizes.

Honestly, the series that nailed this was (of all things) Super Mario.

Getting to the credits is pretty easy. But it hid a bunch of collectables as additional challenges that could sometimes actually be kinda tricky.

Plenty of games have done that. But they've always struggled with why. You generally have two types of rewards for this:

1. Making the game easier. Sure, the player thinks they want that ultra rocket launcher, because why would they not, except the game is balanced for players who didn't get it, too. So what does the player really want? Are they making it harder on themselves because they want it to be easier? How does that make sense? Or are they making it harder on themselves for the challenge itself? If they are, why do you reward them by making it easier?

2. Something not related to gameplay. Perhaps there's a checklist to fill in, or the collectables reveal something about the story, or trivia about the property. I think this is an ok solution. It appeals to completionists, story gamers, and the challenge seekers, but it doesn't actually punish anyone who doesn't care, even by opportunity. But it still doesn't reward players in kind.

So the Mario solution is, if the player wants harder challenges, we reward them with harder challenges. Collecting a certain number of collectables, or all the collectables in a certain world, or etc, means we unlock an extra hard challenge level.

And if they beat all those levels (and, I don't remember, they might have their own collectables in turn, which the player has to collect), you unlock one last, ultra hard level, that definitively ends with a little celebration of your efforts. Like a witty "thanks for playing" message or a fanfare and confetti or etc. You know, something that definitively says "you've conquered everything we could (in good conscience) throw at you."

But honestly, I think they could do better still. There is another game that got the motive a little messed up but got the reward absolutely perfect. And that game was Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker. In that one, the "true" final boss scales in difficulty with the amount of stuff you've collected. Even after you've completed all the missions and done all the R&D.

What makes this perfect for challenge seekers is that it doesn't appeal to anyone else at all. There's no special mission in the checklist for it--you just redo the final mission, so it doesn't appeal to completionists. There's no bonus cutscene or splash screen to appeal to content and story enthusiasts. You don't even get a special weapon for it. There's no story reason for it because it's a mission redo. It's literally its own reward.

If you're asking yourself "so why do it", that's exactly the point. It doesn't appeal to you for its own sake, and they successfully made sure you're not enticed to do it for some other reason.

Now, they did still mess it up by getting you there the wrong way. The harder challenge is a reward not for seeking challenges, but for grinding and collecting. So it's actually kind of the opposite situation of getting a collectable for defeating the difficult challenge.

I like hard games...they just have to be perfectly geared to my personal level of acceptable difficulty, where they test my skills and reflexes and make for a fun challenge that I surmount by the skin of my teeth without actually dying. Is that really so hard?!

Seriously though, in our era of post-Dark Souls slam-your-head-against-the-wall-until-you-finally-break-it difficulty, when it comes to overcoming challenge there's a fine line between "WOO, I DID IT!" and "Ugh, fucking finally." I ended up liking Hollow Knight in the end, but it was definitely one of those games that always had to take one step over the line and end up in the "ugh, fucking finally" camp. For instance, the Soul Master was the perfect example of the type of expertly-balanced challenge that I described in the first paragraph...until they had to throw in a surprise final phase that took over a dozen attempts to beat, and of course each attempt just got more frustrating than the last, because I'd been robbed of the joy of beating a challenging boss on my first attempt.

But it ultimately boils down to the difference of being a kid vs adult; as a kid, it was never guaranteed that I'd beat a video game, and doing so felt like a huge accomplishment. As an adult, I'm wiser and inherently know that all games are designed to be beaten, and anything short of that is both a disappointment and a waste of time and money.

Ricemills posted...

Reflex and eyesight deteriorated, less hand-eye coordination.

You just got old

It's really not about that for everyone. Simply put, not everyone finds Dark Souls style difficulty games fun. At all.

Time is a precious commodity, and many find enjoyment just playing the game itself, beating it, and moving on to something else. Excessive time wasted on trying to study patterns, and frame data, and min/max certain stats, hard punishments for mistakes that make you start completely over.... is just not fun to everyone.

Difficulty hasn't bothered me yet. Time is the factor for everything now. You spend 40-60 hours a week working. You want to make progress on game.

For me unfortunately stealth games have been slowly pushed out, mostly. They have been the most time consuming experiences I've found.

I've always played Normal mode first and then worked upwards. Normal is the "tutorial" and above that is where skill comes into play. Did this with Devil May Cry in every game.

CountDog posted...

For me unfortunately stealth games have been slowly pushed out, mostly. They have been the most time consuming experiences I've found.

I don't get how it happened, but in the last decade or two, the stealth genre has gone from all the depth of MGS to literal 2D platforming with the most psychotic frame perfect bullshit imaginable.

ReturnOfDevsman posted...

I don't get how it happened, but in the last decade or two, the stealth genre has gone from all the depth of MGS to literal 2D platforming with the most psychotic frame perfect bullshit imaginable.

I think it's a mixture of it actually being a pretty niche genre combined with it being genuinely difficult to make a fun stealth system, especially if you want it to feel less gamey.

TheLiarParadox posted...

Same. I recently played Celeste at the recommendation of my nephew and it was okay but I didn't have it in me to go to the harder levels. I played Hollow Knight a few years back and realized I just don't get whatever I used to get out of these games. I don't want to get mad or frustrated during games. I don't want to play the same level over and over until I "get good."

You know what my favorite game has been in the last few years? A Short Hike.

Honestly Celeste is the single best execution of hard games possibly ever because you are always given the knowledge to succeed.

I get not wanting to push through it, but I love everything about it

Older people have way more stress, responsibilities and problems. They want to come home and relax not play some frustratingly difficult game.

I'm the opposite but I do have an upper limit. I don't play fighting games, schmups, rhythm games or very many roguelikes. Sword Saint in Sekiro was the toughest boss I've faced.

When I was a kid I didn't even wanna play Kingdom Hearts on proud mode. As I've gotten older, I've leaned towards games in genres I like that are considered challenging or have higher difficulties.

When games are mindlessly easy I quickly lose interest because it doesn't even feel like I'm actually playing them.

I just dont have the reflexes any more. For example, I watched the new gameplay for Clair Obscur and my first thought watching the battles was no way will I be able to pull off the timings for parrying those attacks.