Sick of these entitled baby gamers - MAKE GAMES HARDER

adamsapple said:
Add a story difficulty mode to all games.
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It's easy for game creators to cater to people who want an easy game. It's much harder to cater to people who want to be challenged by games. Most of the games where the goal from the get go is to "capture the largest possible audience" end up slapping some half-assed difficulty settings on top of an easy game and hoping for the best.

There really needs to be a singular focus during design and development of the game to make various challenges difficult but doable for the average human.

I can't think of a single game where difficulty settings ever produced that.
 
I think OP is 1000% right. It's not necessarily about difficulty, it's the constant watering down of things in the name of QoL. Silksong is a great example of people refusing to learn a game and are bitching about their own failures as somehow the game's fault instead of their lack of thought and effort.

Not just gaming issue either, this phenomenon basically explains a lot of what's wrong with society in general.
 
For me it up to devs themselves if want to make difficult game or easy game and also up to them if want to add difficulty option.

If people don't like difficult games then they can play 1000 other games that's much more manageable difficulty.

People just need to accept that not every game is for everybody and in my opinion best games are usually the ones that's focus on specific experience instead of trying to be everything for everybody.
 
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MrJangles said:
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His face says I'm playing online but his controller says otherwise. Also, his size says I'm done playing on consoles along time ago and PC is the right choice for me. It's stereotype, AI understands stereotype cause it's the truth, you can't fool AI and make it escape the real world.
 
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Just play [insert game] and enjoy it. Don't play [insert game] if you do not enjoy it whatever the reason. All is good. Feel free to say why, but leave it at that.
Not every game is for everyone. Move on and stop making a big deal about it when people don't agree with you.
 
As far as I can see there are more "git gud" style games now than ever before and they have plenty of popularity.

I'm happy for these to be out there for people to enjoy. They are largely not what I'm looking for. My gaming time isn't infinite and I've never gotten much pleasure from banging my head against a specific challenge until I somehow scrape past it. It's not what I consider to be fun. I finished Hollow Knight recently and found it to be pretty good but the grind of endless retries on some of the later boss fights was annoying. The talk that Silksong
is that plus more is something that's putting me off it for now. I'll wait to see if the devs refine it some more over the next few months in terms of optional difficulty and kinder bench placement.

If ultra tough games are for you, that's great. But I don't want to see every game being made with this kind of hardcore mentality in mind.
 
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While I personally agree with you, I do love a good challenge, people enjoy games for a myriad of reasons.

What I love more then anything is passionate developers that tailor make a game to fit their vision, trends & mass market be damned. Be it a eazy-breezy button mashers, mind fucking strategy, walking sims, punishing platformers or anything in-between. Every game doesn't need to be for everyone.

But with the amount of cash AAA games burn I can understand the pressure to please everyone. Which is one of the reasons I seldom enjoy them anymore.
 
Larxia said:
There can still be an objective part about what game is considered easy or hard for the average gamer.
And games difficulty don't have to adapt to everyone, the player can adapt to the game too. That's like if movies had options to be shorter in case the viewer is feeling too lazy to watch the whole thing.
If you just move sliders to make your own difficulty, it's just the best way to miss the intended experience, with nothing feeling properly designed.

Take the recent ubisoft games for example. I don't know about Shadows, but Assassin's Creed Valhalla was terrible at that. You can tweak absolutely EVERYTHING to change the "difficulty", you can at any time change the amount of damage, in %, that you take, that you deal, you can change the amount of experience % you get, you can even decide if you will kill ennemies in one hit or not.
That's absolutely awful, it feels like there just isn't any designed, intended experience. Like who is this even for? They try so much to make this for everyone, that it ends up being designed for no one really.
What's the point of the game being a "rpg", if you can change the % of damage you deal just by adjusting a slider at any time, your equipement and everything else doesn't even matter anymore.

Most of the games out there nowadays are way too easy, and people got used to that. Most of them also have lazy difficulty choices. These games you want already exist.
Games that decide to offer one specific experience with one unique difficulty should be allowed to exist too. That's creative freedom. Challenge can be part of the intended experience, if the game is designed around that.
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No, because difficult is a 100% subjective metric. It %100 depends on the player skill and no one can measure that other than considering every player skill level in the balance of the game difficult. Some people can not finish a Dark Souls game while others can do a "no die run" in all the games consecutively. The skill gap is gigantic.

JusticeForAll said:
There's nothing wrong with difficulty options. I never understood why people care so much about how somebody else plays a game. If you beat a game on hard or just a hard game, good for you, but it's not like you cured cancer or won an olympic medal. And it somebody else beat the game on a lower difficulty than you, it doesn't affect you at all.

This doesn't even mean I don't welcome a challenge, btw. I just don't care about the way other people play single player games.
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The expression "git gud" explains it all. Some people think they are "awesome" for finishing a game that "few" finished because of the difficult. Makes sense. I would feel awesome if I could finish Diablo 2 on Hardcore or Doom on Ultra nightmare. 🤷‍♂️
 
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You need to have a delicate touch (like a safe cracker!) with simplifying vs. streamlining. Common game mechanics should be questioned whether they are worth keeping, changing, or getting rid of. I can think of two groups at the moment:
  1. Mechanics introduced in the far past due to technical limitations
  2. Real life actions in games
An example for #1 could be random battles instead of displaying enemy locations on screen (early Final Fantasy vs. Chrono Trigger). An example for #2 could be reloading in a very unrealistic game (Warframe vs. Doom Eternal). You can ask "Do these add anything to the game? Or do they take away?" Sometimes yes, sometimes no, even in these categories. It's good to examine these things.
 
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The Cockatrice said:
Easy answer to your question. Balancing is a fucking mess and 90% of the developers won't bother, in which the product ends up being a fucking casual paradise on easy/normal/hard and an absolute fucking imbalanced mess on the hardest ones. When you have one set difficulty, they can control how the gameplay flows + they dont have to waste a year on balancing every single gameplay mechanic for each difficulty.
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So then why not make the game the way you just explained......and then dial it back by injecting an "Easy" mode instead?
 
mckmas8808 said:
So then why not make the game the way you just explained......and then dial it back by injecting an "Easy" mode instead?
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Not everyone cares about sales and maybe some just want their games to be experienced as they created them? Like walking sim horror games for example, almost all of them have no difficulty options, they are niche, yet they are continued to be made, because thats the beauty of creating something, you dont always have to make a game for everyone.
 
Witcher 3 has some of the worst designed difficulty levels I've ever seen. The lower difficulties you never need to use most of the mechanics, and the higher difficulties the enemies are damage sponges and it's incredibly tedious.
 
jzbadblood said:
Witcher 3 has some of the worst designed difficulty levels I've ever seen. The lower difficulties you never need to use most of the mechanics, and the higher difficulties the enemies are damage sponges and it's incredibly tedious.
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I mad the mistake of restarting that game on some hard mode because it was boring as fuck on normal and you are on the money. The gameplay in general seemed designed by fucking monkeys.
 
Both sides of the argument are ridiculous. One side treats beating a difficult game like some kind of flex, while the other side demands that everything be made easy and catered to them. Let the devs make the game the way they intended.
 
I have no problem with challenging games. I also value my time though, so I sure as shit will lower the difficulty if I died 20 times on the same boss.

Just finished Lies of P. Only lowered the difficulty on the final boss because I have no interest in spending days of my life trying to beat it.

Some bosses are flat out punishing while my hits are the equivalent of my toddler hitting me with a foam sword. To some, fun. To others, nah. I don't think that should stop others from having an accessible startpoint into the genre.
 
Agree with you, OP. Your best line: 'And it's not even strictly about difficulty, there's a bunch of people that are too impatient to deal with any perceived inconvenience or friction in a game.'

Often, those deliberate friction points were what made the game. How do you overcome them? It's why Souls has done as well as it has, IMO.

On a side note, you pretty much summed up the industry I work in, where it's agreed that attention spans are so short that specific projects are not worth tackling at all.
 
The Cockatrice said:
Not everyone cares about sales and maybe some just want their games to be experienced as they created them? Like walking sim horror games for example, almost all of them have no difficulty options, they are niche, yet they are continued to be made, because thats the beauty of creating something, you dont always have to make a game for everyone.
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Agreed. But it is understandable as to why some people would like there to be a different mode added, just so they could enjoy the game too. Maybe they don't get that mode, but it not bad for them to ask for it.
 
mckmas8808 said:
But it is understandable as to why some people would like there to be a different mode added, just so they could enjoy the game too
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Many many many years ago I would've agreed, but nowadays when the market is saturated with more accesible games than the other way, is a definite nope from me. They can ask it ofc, but demanding it is stupid.
 
rodrigolfp said:
No, because difficult is a 100% subjective metric. It %100 depends on the player skill and no one can measure that other than considering every player skill level in the balance of the game difficult. Some people can not finish a Dark Souls game while others can do a "no die run" in all the games consecutively. The skill gap is gigantic.
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To be honest, reading all the posts here, I'm starting to doubt if it's even really a "skill" issue, it seems more like a motivation issue. Most people complaining about difficulty talk about how they don't have time for that after spending a day at work etc etc... So it's more like a choice, rather than not being able to. And if it's really a choice, there's no reason why every games should be obligated to cater to that choice, devs should be able to create the experience they want.

Sometimes when I read messages here it feels like some people talk about video games but don't actually really enjoy playing them, and just want to be done with them as quickly as possible just to move on to the next "hype" thing so they can talk about that too.

I think it's more a matter of preference, priority etc, rather than pure skills. And it's fine if people don't want to spend too much time on a game, if they only want short experiences, but they shouldn't demand for every games to meet their preference. There can be games that are easy, games that are average, and games that are hard, and there you have games for everyone, but a single specific game doesn't have to be for everyone. When you try to be for everyone, you will have to make sacrifices to your vision.

rodrigolfp said:
The expression "git gud" explains it all. Some people think they are "awesome" for finishing a game that "few" finished because of the difficult. Makes sense. I would feel awesome if I could finish Diablo 2 on Hardcore or Doom on Ultra nightmare. 🤷‍♂️
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I think that's extremely exaggerated, this is something I mostly hear from people who don't like difficulty, but people who do play difficult games most of the time don't brag about it or act like you're pretending they do. Yes there is a personal satisfaction when beating a challenge, this can be part of the fun to some people, but it's not because you're happy that you can enjoy a challenging experience, that you also hate easy games.
I beat Bayonetta in Climax difficulty, I had ton of fun doing that, it was challenging, but I can also completely enjoy something like Infinity Nikki which doesn't provide any challenge. Both experiences can co exist, but not always within the same game, that's the thing.
 
Elden Ring was perfect example for game difficulty.
You die to Boss because it hits hard hard ?....go grind some levels or explore new zones, come back & kick his ass !!!
Basically you decide on your skill level & how hard boss will be.
 
What I hate about the "entitled" person is that they think every game should suit them and be available to them to beat or win at. So basically there's a bigger than ever demand to ease up games. But what's that about really? Every well thought out/made game has a set of rules, or requires a certain skill level to be played well or at all successfully, and if one can't do it one is out simply.
Should I demand real chess to pander to me and my ignorance about it and become easier? Or basketball which I never was really good at at all, I sucked at it, but should I have demanded rules to change, or my opponents to be weaker? All in all I hope devs understand this, and stick to a clear vision without compromises for few extra bucks to earn from morons.
 
High difficulty should be fair and engaging.

In Halo you can die, restart and try new tactics, weapons, routes to complete an objective.

In CRAP like perfect dark 1 you have to memorize every inch just to finish a level without mistakes after 20 attempts.

It feels like memorizing a script, not playing a game.
 
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cash_longfellow said:
This is the answer. More options for people to tailor the experience to their own tastes. I'm a fan of sliders for accessibility, where you can increase or decrease certain aspects of the game. 99% of the time I just roll with the set difficulty or normal, but there are times that I like to be able to tweak some options, especially if it's a game I've gone through before.
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Not only individual multiple sliders, but could be one slider, where it analyzes your playing and adjust difficulty - you select "hard* on the slider and when you play it calculates the exact "hard" for your playing
 
Ainem Enamas said:
Not only individual multiple sliders, but could be one slider, where it analyzes your playing and adjust difficulty - you select "hard* on the slider and when you play it calculates the exact "hard" for your playing
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Yep, this would be perfect. There has been no creativity on the difficulty setting front in quite some time, and doing something like this would make perfect sense.
 
Ainem Enamas said:
Not only individual multiple sliders, but could be one slider, where it analyzes your playing and adjust difficulty - you select "hard* on the slider and when you play it calculates the exact "hard" for your playing
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This sounds terrible to me and one of the worst things you could do.
Fight a boss, die against it, and every time you try to fight it again, it gets easier and easier? In the end you won't even know if you managed to beat it because you learned it and got better, or if the game silently made it easier.
What you describe actually completely destroys the very concept of difficulty, medium or hard, it just removes the idea of failing in a game completely.
 
Larxia said:
This sounds terrible to me and one of the worst things you could do.
Fight a boss, die against it, and every time you try to fight it again, it gets easier and easier? In the end you won't even know if you managed to beat it because you learned it and got better, or if the game silently made it easier.
What you describe actually completely destroys the very concept of difficulty, medium or hard, it just removes the idea of failing in a game completely.
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This has literally existed in sports games for a while now, and it honestly works great. It doesn't adjust the difficulty to where it makes it super simple, it just adjusts accordingly with something is too simple or too difficult to you. You can still fail.
 
Larxia said:
This sounds terrible to me and one of the worst things you could do.
Fight a boss, die against it, and every time you try to fight it again, it gets easier and easier? In the end you won't even know if you managed to beat it because you learned it and got better, or if the game silently made it easier.
What you describe actually completely destroys the very concept of difficulty, medium or hard, it just removes the idea of failing in a game completely.
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I meant like a slider with (as an example) options easy, medium and hard. For each there's a "field" of optimization, like for "hard" it only optimizes that "hard" "field" of optimizations, everything the game optimizes stays in the "hard" optimization "field". The way game optimizes it is by adjusting things like enemy behavior, stats etc; maybe your damage taking, and attack power etc. Something like that...
edit: the additional options for choices could be "continue to increase difficulty if I'm progressing too fast" etc.
 
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I'm down for games to have difficulty, but if you think as an adult with other shit to do, that I am going to sit down and learn attack patterns and parry windows, you sir are insane. If this was my exclusive hobby like when I was a teenager or in my early 20s and poor? Sure, but in my mid 30s, and more disposable income and interests? No way.
 
Maybe there needs to be a mandatory peripheral that will squirt lemon juice in the eyes of the player when they make any errors.

It'll be the only way those n00bs git gud.
 
Moonjt9 said:
I think OP is 1000% right. It's not necessarily about difficulty, it's the constant watering down of things in the name of QoL. Silksong is a great example of people refusing to learn a game and are bitching about their own failures as somehow the game's fault instead of their lack of thought and effort.

Not just gaming issue either, this phenomenon basically explains a lot of what's wrong with society in general.
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Couldn't disagree more.

Silksong's difficulty system is based on tedious busy work, drawn out corpse runs and fiddly controls. The move set is significantly limited, at least until a long way into the game, such that combat is boring. The magic is entirely in the visuals and audio design, which are wonderful. But the mechanics are not especially interesting or rewarding.

I think it might just be the most overrated game in years. An ok, too long game that becomes a chore has been elevated to rarefied heights beyond criticism.

And whilst I agree that there are underlying social problems, I'd counter that internet groupthink, which has certainly benefited Silksong, is another!
 
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rodrigolfp said:
The expression "git gud" explains it all. Some people think they are "awesome" for finishing a game that "few" finished because of the difficult. Makes sense. I would feel awesome if I could finish Diablo 2 on Hardcore or Doom on Ultra nightmare. 🤷‍♂️
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Most people caring about "difficulty" wants it to be in manageable fashion to get a satisfaction that they are better than average, "I am gud". Not because difficulty itself.
There is a general dislike for SBMM where you eventually hit a glass ceiling and no amount of self-assurance will help you. Or extreme hard live service games where 500h tries for single boss put of 99% of those "gitgud" guys.

Larxia said:
I think that's extremely exaggerated, this is something I mostly hear from people who don't like difficulty, but people who do play difficult games most of the time don't brag about it or act like you're pretending they do.
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A LOT of people do brag
It's ofen subtle, like "go play your baby games", but it's stil bragging
 
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Ogbert said:
Couldn't disagree more.

Silksong's difficulty system is based on tedious busy work, drawn out corpse runs and fiddly controls. The move set is significantly limited, at least until a long way into the game, such that combat is boring. The magic is entirely in the visuals and audio design, which are wonderful. But the mechanics are not especially interesting or rewarding.

I think it might just be the most overrated game in years. An ok, too long game that becomes a chore has been elevated to rarefied heights beyond criticism.

And whilst I agree that there are underlying social problems, I'd counter that internet groupthink, which has certainly benefited Silksong, is another!
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That's a fair opinion.

I will counter with an example from Silksong that directly exemplifies the kind of intentional design I'm talking about.

I just got through one of the notorious areas that people are massively complaining about Bilewater and the boss at bilehaven

And the reward for beating this area is so goddamn perfect, intentional, and exactly what you were wanting the entire time, that I couldn't help but laugh out loud at how incredibly well designed the entire thing was from the start to the middle with the hope and despair and then the ending of finally winning.

If checkpoints and zero run backs and tips and everything else modern quality of life demands were on this area, the entire thing would fall apart.

This kind of intentional challenge and reward is RARE in modern gaming. It absolutely demands the player get good enough to reap the reward of success. That's a good thing.
 
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Moonjt9 said:
That's a fair opinion.

I will counter with an example from Silksong that directly exemplifies the kind of intentional design I'm talking about.

I just got through one of the notorious areas that people are massively complaining about Bilewater and the boss at bilehaven

And the reward for beating this area is so goddamn perfect, intentional, and exactly what you were wanting the entire time, that I couldn't help but laugh out loud at how incredibly well designed the entire thing was from the start to the middle with the hope and despair and then the ending of finally winning.

If checkpoints and zero run backs and tips and everything else modern quality of life demands were on this area, the entire thing would fall apart.

This kind of intentional challenge and reward is RARE in modern gaming. It absolutely demands the player get good enough to reap the reward of success. That's a good thing.
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It does somethings very, very well.

I actually love the difficulty with bosses and even some of the more obscure challenges. I also don't have an issue with the platforming elements. Adjusting to the various mechanics is a skill issue.

But there's too much tedium and chore. I feel like I'm panning for gold, sifting through opaque and unintuitive game design which serves no purpose other than drawing out the game's length. And the pacing is poor.

I think my frustration is that the game will be showered in perfect scores when it's anything but. Darling indie games get the same treatment as moneyed AAA titles.

Sekiro is difficulty perfected.
 
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