Hard games vs. easy games

[Skyblade]

For many people, when you find a hard game, I imagine you go A-B-C-quit. You're missing out on a lot of fun if you do. The harder the challenge, the better you feel once you beat it.

Too be honest, I'm more likely to quit after a hard boss. I don't like being beaten, and I keep working until I overcome whatever was holding me back.

But then I look back at everything I did, and look forward to all I have left to do, and I can't help but think "It is so not going to be worth doing this again". So I quit. Even though I may have a nice, leisurely trip to the next boss ahead of me. I don't care anymore.

Whatever engagement or attachment I have to the story is thrown away when I have to repeat a section of it ad nauseam. I wind up wondering why I am even playing the game. I beat the boss, I feel happy for a few minutes, but I've lost any forward momentum in the plot. I've lost dozens of hours of my life for this fleeting satisfaction, AND I HAVE TO DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN IN AN HOUR OR TWO.

No. Just no.


The one time I have actually felt a sense of lasting accomplishment from winning a difficult battle, it was an optional superboss that I took on, on my own terms, and I defeated, just to prove a point. Doing that to progress? The satisfaction wouldn't last. What is the point of going "oh, I beat the first boss" after dozens of hours of preparation, when all it gets you is "great, here's 55 more"?

Dark Souls was one of the worst game purchases I ever made. I've literally never even turned the game on. I see no reason to. I've seen people play, I've seen screenshots, and there is nothing that makes me think "oh, wow, I'd love to try that", or "ooh, I wonder what's over that hill". I see no reason to explore the world, no reason to quest in it, no characters to care about, nothing to get attached to. I picked it up on a sale and I'm still kicking myself about wasting that money.

I don't give a damn about game challenge, I want more. You can deliver challenging gameplay and a satisfying rest of the game (see anything in the Shin Megami Tensei series). But they are very rare compared to the games that are just difficult and nothing else.

[Sefie1999AD]

I understand what you're saying but I just don't think it works like that for me personally. I've completed both easy and hard games and this is how hard games went for me:

Wow what a fun game!
Yeah I really like this!
Oh a hard part. I'll keep trying
Okay this is really frustrating, let's spend a few days preparing, grinding, getting equipment, etc
Okay this is still hard but I can get through
Okay I got through that hard part. Ugh. There's going to be an even harder part coming up isn't there?
Oh this is fun
Ah poo I'm probably getting to another hard boss soon. Oh man not this again.
Okay got through that one too. Ugh I hate these boss fights.
Oh yay this is a fun part.
Oh not another boss fight please please please
It's another boss fight. Ughhh I'll do it tomorrow
I don't want to do it today, I'll do it tomorrow
I guess I have to now to see what happens.
*fast forward*
Okay that was fun but I don't think I'll play again. It was just too much work

easy games:
Oh this is fun!
Oh yay I'm liking this!
Oh a boss fight. Oh that wasn't so bad!
I can't wait to see what happens next, etc etc
fast forward
Wow that was fun, I'll probably play that again!

I dunno, just personal taste I guess. Different things work for different people

This sounds more like how hard games and easy games feel for me, although for me, the "I don't want to do it today, I'll do it tomorrow" part can last for several months until I want to touch the game again. Of course, if the game is too easy, I may get bored, but usually something like a good storyline, interesting world, fun gameplay, side quests etc can make up for the lack of challenge and keep me interested in playing the game.

For example, I wanted to play Lightning Returns just for the storyline, so I played the game on Easy mode. The battles could have been harder, but in the Easy difficulty, they give enough EP for constant Chronostasis spamming, so you'll have to worry less about the Doomsday clock, which isn't really a problem when you get used to the game mechanics, but it's really annoying and stressful when you're just getting started with the game. The battles against (LR SPOILERS)Noel, Snow, Grendel, Caius, Aeronite, Ereshkigal and Bhunivelze were still challenging enough to give me a sense of accomplishment when I won those battles.

On the other hand, I played my first game of Kingdom Hearts II on Proud mode (the hardest difficulty), and I was constantly getting frustrated about the game. It took me 16 hours to defeat (KH2 SPOILER)Sephiroth, not sure if that time included the grinding I went to do in the middle of all those retries. Anyway, after hitting my head against such a brick wall for so long, I didn't even get the sense of euphoria when I finally beat him. I was more like "smurf this trout" and couldn't be bothered to continue playing the game. Well, I did beat the game, but I just couldn't enjoy the final parts since I had lost all my interests and motivation to play the game.

EDIT:

Trial and error is fun if implemented correctly. When the error is punishable by having to restart a lengthy sequence again then no, I don't think that's the way to go about it when designing a game.

Would this scenario fit your description: (FFX SPOILER)Yunalesca casts Zombie on your characters, you heal them, then you get killed by Mega Death, and you'll have to watch an unskippable 5-minute cutscene all over again, and beat her first two forms again? xD

[Wolf Kanno]

I prefer a balance to be honest, which I feel is what Dr. Unne tried to clarify in their second post. I love a good challenge and I generally prefer when a game makes me work for it as oppose to one that just hands me the keys to the city. Still, I don't like cheap ass difficulty which might be the other reason I don't play fighting games anymore since their A.I. is well known for cheating to screw you out of victory and lord knows I won't put up with a game that is hard due to troutty design.

On the other hand, I no longer have the lifestyle that affords me the time to deal with a really challenging game. I tackled and conquered DMC3 back in the day, but I was in colloge, with no girlfriend, a crappy but ewasy job, and no debt or major bills to deal with; so spending my evenings getting my ass kicked and learning the game's ins and outs until I conquered it wasn't much of a hassle. From Software's Souls series? I just don't have the time anymore to do that anymore, each time I play one, its probably been weeks since I touched it and I have to relearn everything which makes it more frustrating than it should be, it's a game for the younger gamers who don't have major responsibilities or commitments and can just dedicate themselves to its glory. More power to them and I wish I could join them but I just don't have the time to get that good. I mean if DMC3 was released today, even knowing it's smurfing awesome, I probably would never finish it because I don't have the time.

Still I need something engaging. I think the reason why I find it hard to get into new RPGs is because they are too easy, I think one of the reasons why MegaTen and old school (like late 80s early 90s) RPGs occupy my time is because they offer a lair of challenge that is completely lacking in other titles in the genre. I mean Action-RPGs tend to have fun battle systems, but I don't find the sub-genre hard and the battle systems lose their fun factor for me when it gets stretched over 40 hours with little to no challenge to make it buck up and keep me from not viewing every random battle or boss battle as some silly formality to get to the next story section.

I prefer being engaged all the time and so I look for challenge in my games, I don't mind seeing the game over screen a couple of times and I do get a lot of satisfaction when I emerge victorious, yet I'll point out that I'm in agreement with Psychotic that a second playthrough should feel easier. There should be some growth in skill or knowledge that should make subsequent playthroughs feel easier and not as hair pulling frustration. It is all about balance.

[Mirage]

A bit of both. I don't want to be able to "break" the game on my first playthrough. I'm a big fan of difficulty modes, or difficulty that adjusts dynamically to the player's level. In a way, FF6's exp-saved-when-defeated accomplishes this. If you keep dying in a dungeon, you'll gradually grow stronger, and be able to defeat it eventually. The player often won't even be aware of the fact that the game's difficulty is easier relative to how it was when they entered the dungeon, and that's pretty good.

If a dynamic/automatic adjustment isn't easy to implement, or would be really weird for the type of game for some reason, the game should at the very least have user selectable difficulty modes at the start of the game, perhaps with a short description of what the player can expect from each level. It'd be fun if one of the hardest difficulties had a description like "you'll probably not even get past the first boss".

I am actually pretty annoyed at many SE RPGs because of their lack of difficulty levels.

[Rantz]

I'm definitely more in it for the story, atmosphere, and things like that, than for the challenge. In other words, I mostly agree with Skyblade/Del/Psychotic. What Psychotic calls his ideal difficulty sounds pretty great to me as well.

That's not to say I necessarily mind a few rounds of trial and error, as long as it's done cleverly. If I can usually figure it out by taking a step back and thinking about it, and there's not too much overhead in trying again, I'm okay with it taking a few tries to get there. If after solving it I feel like the solution really made sense, rather than just being one out of a dozen of approaches I could've tried at random, then I'm happy with it.

[Sephiroth]

For me the most important thing is the story so I don't mind easy gameplay and appreciate it more. For the real challenges there should be the sidequests.

This is a preference thing. One person likes a certain context and what comnes with it more than the other one.

[Formalhaut]

I have quite an aversion to dying in video games, and if I ever get close to dying, I reset so I don't have to see the 'death' animation or 'death' sounds or whatever game over screen.

It's partly why I tend to play games on the easier settings - I tend to play games more for their story anyway, though I do enjoy gameplay elements when they suit me. FPS games don't really suit me, so I almost without fail play them on easy.

I'm playing ME2, and it's pretty fast paced, what with the shooting, and that your shields deplete actually quite quickly now compared to ME1, so that's on casual.

My thoughts on this are pretty much in line with Psychotic, Skyblade and Del Murder. I do find it annoying when they have achievements designed around beating a game on their hardest difficulty, as it sort of punishes you for simply not being very good at the game. I do have a passing interest in collecting trophies, so that's always bugged me, slightly.

[Dr Unne]

Here's a story. I took a years-long break from playing video games, and then about 5 or 6 years ago I tried to get back into it. One of the games I loved as a kid was Mega Man, and when I tried to play Mega Man 2 or 3, I found myself getting killed over and over, and getting reeeeeeeeally angry and frustrated and turning the game off for days. My tolerance for dying was zero. I didn't remember being like this when I was young. I used to play these games for hours, and I don't remember beating them on the first try every time, so I must've been dying a lot back then too.

I realized this was a reflection of my mental state: impatience, unconstructive self-criticism, irrational expectation of perfectionism. None of those things is very healthy. I resolved to Zen out a bit and try to let go. I picked a hard game, I can't remember what, and I told myself no matter how many times I died, I wouldn't get angry. My goal was to practice the game, and in the meantime enjoy the game for what it was, and try to be in the moment. Not to look at my deaths as failures, but as part of the experience. Not to have expectations or requirements for how good I need to be, just to try to get better. Not to have a goal other than "play the game" and "improve yourself". Then I played a lot and died a LOT. And I enjoyed it! And as a weird side effect of playing hard games all the time, I got better at video games. And now I don't always die 100 times trying to beat a level of Mega Man. And if I do die a lot of times and find myself becoming angry, I try to relax and keep trying and ease my way through it.

I can play a game like Spelunky, where my death-to-victory ratio is probably 20:1, and somehow it's still relaxing and still a lot of fun. (Most of the time. Sometimes I still rage.) It's like eating really spicy food; it hurts but in a good way.

[Noire]

I don't mind a challenge, but I prefer a game to be balanced. The problem with hard games is that they are very rarely balanced - they get hard, then they get easy, then hard again, and so on...or they're ridiculously easy save for one or two moments that are so unreasonably difficult that they sap the fun out of the game and feel utterly cheap.

A lot of people call the Souls games hard, but I found them almost painfully easy...asides from certain bosses (Flamelurker from Demon's Souls and Four Kings from Dark Souls spring to mind as the two worst candidates) which curb-stomped me multiple times until I got lucky and managed to win. I hate that luck factor, which most hard games these days rely solely on to make them difficult. You either get lucky or you don't; your own skill barely even enters it...or doesn't enter it at all, as is the case with some...like The Last Remnant. That game was hard for one reason only: Curse. Mass Effect 3 on Insanity was ridiculous, too. Easy, save for one moment: Marauder Shields.

Compared with, say, Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, which was extremely difficult and required you to learn the layout of the stage perfectly to avoid an untimely death - a hard game that was solely dependent on your skill as a player, and not on some invisible random number generator mechanic you have zero control over - hard games these days don't really cut it; they feel cheap. I suppose I'm whining because of a few unpleasant experiences I've had, but as I said: I like balance. If I have to sweat blood and tears to advance in games, I don't mind, but what I DON'T appreciate is being suddenly forced into unbalanced, deliberately unfair circumstances to make a game harder. RPGs are very guilty of abusing this; you always get that one boss that feels totally out of place for whatever reason - stupidly high HP, cheap instant-death/full HP restore tactics, or whatever. It ruins an enjoyable experience, at least for me.

I don't play many hard games, but I'm not sure if that's because they're easy or because I've just gotten more experienced as a player. Maybe my struggles at points in games are just moments where I've actually noticed a game's difficulty, rather than a question of balance...

[Pete for President]

20110520darksouls2.jpg

I'll use any excuse to mention this masterpiece. I find it hard to play other games ever since my first trip to Lordran. The sense of challenge is grand from beginning to the end no matter how many times I have played through it because of the sheer amount of different playstyles and PvP. Hard games forever!

[Slothy]

The euphoria of winning is great, but it doesn't outweigh the frustration I've felt over the past hour or two I've spent having my trout pushed in by a broken boss like the Locust Queen at the end of Gears 3. I come away feeling unsatisfied overall, not accomplished.

I've played very little of the game and am unfamiliar with that boss, but given that you describe it as broken it isn't really what people mean when they talk about hard but rewarding games. There's a difference between challenging but fair, and challenging because it's a case of troutty game design.

[Mirage]

I have quite an aversion to dying in video games, and if I ever get close to dying, I reset so I don't have to see the 'death' animation or 'death' sounds or whatever game over screen.

It's partly why I tend to play games on the easier settings - I tend to play games more for their story anyway, though I do enjoy gameplay elements when they suit me. FPS games don't really suit me, so I almost without fail play them on easy.

I'm playing ME2, and it's pretty fast paced, what with the shooting, and that your shields deplete actually quite quickly now compared to ME1, so that's on casual.

My thoughts on this are pretty much in line with Psychotic, Skyblade and Del Murder. I do find it annoying when they have achievements designed around beating a game on their hardest difficulty, as it sort of punishes you for simply not being very good at the game. I do have a passing interest in collecting trophies, so that's always bugged me, slightly.

Well, why call them trophies if everyone can get them without even trying? I actually severely dislike trophies that are handed out like they're nothing.

[Dat Matt]

There is a game we recently started playing that gave us a Trophy for turning on the game for the first time. Think it was Rayman Legends. That annoys the hell out of me

[Skyblade]

I have quite an aversion to dying in video games, and if I ever get close to dying, I reset so I don't have to see the 'death' animation or 'death' sounds or whatever game over screen.

It's partly why I tend to play games on the easier settings - I tend to play games more for their story anyway, though I do enjoy gameplay elements when they suit me. FPS games don't really suit me, so I almost without fail play them on easy.

I'm playing ME2, and it's pretty fast paced, what with the shooting, and that your shields deplete actually quite quickly now compared to ME1, so that's on casual.

My thoughts on this are pretty much in line with Psychotic, Skyblade and Del Murder. I do find it annoying when they have achievements designed around beating a game on their hardest difficulty, as it sort of punishes you for simply not being very good at the game. I do have a passing interest in collecting trophies, so that's always bugged me, slightly.

Well, why call them trophies if everyone can get them without even trying? I actually severely dislike trophies that are handed out like they're nothing.

I absolutely agree.

At the same time, I hate there being trophies that I quite simply can't get.

I think trophies should be challenging, but I also think they shouldn't be hard to the point of impossibility for anyone who isn't capable of 3-frame button inputs or 60 APM play.

[Pheesh]

I just hate multiplayer trophies. Either put them in their own category or leave them out completely.