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Hard games aren't fun

ThEoRy...

ThEoRy...

Member
I like a challenging game but not if it's artificially so. Rubber band a.i. for example is just a cheap way to keep things "even". If you were winning at NBA jam for example you better believe the computer will all of a sudden not miss a shot and you will not make a shot either. That just sucks.
 
A

Arc Christelle

Member
Freshmaker said:
That's totally fine until it somehow morphs into the only way to properly enjoy a game.

"The satisfaction!"

Not everyone thinks that crap's satisfying.
Click to expand...

BUT everyone has options. I like SFV but I don't like that hyperfundamentalism is the focus at a high level, so I prefer KOFXIV or Pokken.
 
K

KnightimeX_Legacy

Banned
I really dislike hard games with shit payout for busting your ass.

"Oh look. You worked so hard to make it to this point and managed to work past all of the very hard bosses. Here is your reward. A fucking useless rock. Now go fuck yourself!"

Reward for beating Pthumerian Queen in Bloodborne

Could have at least made the reward awesome like infinite bullets or something that made it worth my time.

Fucking nope!
I absolutely despise it.
 
W

Waddle Dee

Member
I don't see how a game being hard or being easy makes it not fun to someone. If the game is doing it's job well then you'll enjoy it regardless of whether it puts up a fight or not. The best games are fun just from their core mechanics alone.

This is probably one of the big reasons why I love platformers so much. As long as the core mechanics are satisfying, it doesn't matter if the game decides to be easy (Mario Galaxy) or hard (Retro's Donkey Kong games). One of my favorite types of platformers are the ones that are easy to beat by default but offer a challenge for those looking to master them.

Sometimes I like a nice relaxing stroll, so I'll play through the main mode of any given Kirby game. Other times I want a challenge where something's on the line, in which case I can always play the arena mode in a Kirby game (or go after those Platinum medals in Return to Dreamland).
 
S

Sir Ilpalazzo

Member
Big Blue said:
How does replaying the same path over and over again reduce trial and error? That has nothing to do with the difficulty and intricacy of the game play itself. Going back to the beginning of gaming, the lack of checkpoints has been the layman's method of making a game hard.

I''m not advocating being able to save wherever you want but a balance does exist.
Click to expand...

It has everything to do with difficulty. "Difficulty" doesn't just come down to the arrangement of levels and the obstacles within them; it comes from how the player is asked to approach them as well. Being asked to take on one long stage is naturally going to be harder than being asked to take on one stage split up into multiple smaller chunks through checkpoints.

I bring up trial and error because the smaller the chunks of game you have to play in one sitting are, the easier it is to lame your way through a segment and have it stick. A lower amount of checkpoints means you have to come up with reliable strategies for each of the challenges the game throws at you and then be consistently good at executing them - but if checkpoints are common and the cost of failure is lower, simply mindlessly barging forward until you luck into a successful attempt.
 
N

NewGame

Banned
A lot of modern games are uninteresting slogs through simple button prompts with little to no skill. See: Uncharted, New Tomb Raider, The Order 1866, Skyward Sword, New Super Mario Bros etc

They're made this way so the widest audience can play them. Especially the worst skilled people in the industry: journalists amd reviewers.
 
M

Mathieran

Banned
I don't mind a difficult game as long as it feels fair. No cheap shots. Also if it just turns enemies into bullet sponges it doesn't make it more fun.

I usually play games on whatever the standard difficulty is no matter the game. I think the only games where I ever increase the difficulty is for games that seem to be designed to have it increased over time, like Diablo or Platinum games.
 
P

PaulloDEC

Member
The only problem with "hard game" culture is that some people refuse to acknowledge that "hard" is subjective. What you find to be hard I may find to be impossible. What I find easy someone else may find hard. I like a challenge, but I'm not the star player that some seem to be.

It's the reason why I find arguments against difficulty levels in games to be so frustrating. I don't want an easy mode in hard games because I want them to be a walk in the park; I want that mode because I find the regular difficulty to be insurmountably tough.
 
B

bman94

Member
I agree to a certain extent. Halo on legendary makes me hate everything and wish first person shooters never existed. But the game on Normal or Easy just feels like a waste of time.
 
J

Jedi2016

Member
Depends on the game. I do play a lot of games on Easy mode, especially if it's more about the experience or story. But, on the flip side, I play the Souls games. I'm not particularly good at them, but I do enjoy them.
 
N

Nepenthe

Member
I like games that don't assume I'm a total pushover, but also don't assume I'm some MLGPRO right out of the gate either. A game with simple or well-explained mechanics that presents challenges and levels over a period of time- optional or otherwise- that increases in difficulty engages me and makes me more apt to want to get to as high of a skill level as I can, versus something like fighting games that are really only fun once you're significantly proficient enough.
 
E

emag

Member
As Spock said to John Bender while in Citizen Kane's bowels, "It's a pity you Autobots die so easily... or I might have a sense of satisfaction now."
 
Ivory Samoan

Ivory Samoan

Gold Member
Steez said:
Challenge is fun for a lot of people. Ain't much more to it.
Click to expand...

First post nailed it.

I find waltzing through a game banal and boring now, I need and crave the fear of death in ARPG/RPG/Action games especially.

Bloodborne ruined me, after that became a Soulsborne fanatic: the rest is history.
 
P

Pacotez

Member
basically, the easier it is the "movier" it is. I want to play the game, not watch it. Also the accomplishment. The harder it is, the better one feels once he has conquered the challenge.
There is some yingyang bs about it. For good things to exist, bad things also does. Sometimes, for some people, just the prospect of bad things is enough, for others what is needed is a real threat
 
J

JBwB

Member
Tackling something that's challenging is fun for many players, myself included.

Games that have no challenge at all have a higher chance of being incredibly boring.
 
E

Eria

Member
I like all type of games. For example: I enjoyed playing TLoU and uncharted 4 on normal difficult and I play souls games regularly.
 
Neolombax

Neolombax

Member
It depends on the game. If a game is being purposely hard just for the sake of being hard and unfair, then its garbage. But game like the Souls series, Bloodborne, or even Nioh, t while appear hard on the outset, give players the opportunity to improve if they put in enough effort. Those types of games are quite rewarding to me.
 
Nester99

Nester99

Member
My brain release sweet sweet chemicals when i beat something very hard, like souls.

I actual raise my fist in the air and shout out "Fuck ya!"



When i beat an easmode bulldoze fest, my brain goes MEH.




My brain wants, Less Meh, More Fuck ya ! so that's what it gets.
 
G

Glass Shark

Banned
I don't have a problem with hard games in general, but I've never liked Dark Souls or games of its ilk, which seems to be a lot of what people mean when they talk about "hard games" these days.
 
F

Famassu

Member
Just means you lack the skill to do harder difficulty levels without it taking ages, in which case you shouldn't feel bad for choosing the kind of difficulty setting you're comfortable with. Although I like a challenge, there are genres I suck at and don't enjoy playing in harder difficulty levels and times (in genres I don't suck at) when I just want to enjoy using my better-than-average-but-not-masterful skills to dominate the enemies on some Normal or Hard difficulty level (Hard if there are, like, 3 options above it) and don't want to deal with potential roadblocks too much.
 
Yu Furealdo

Yu Furealdo

Member
I pretty much exclusively play hard games because they are intense and also more rewarding if you can git gud. Been playing F-Zero GX lately, and the kind of rush it gives is so addicting.
 
H

HeatBoost

Member
With me, for challenge to be fun, it needs a few things

1) It needs to respect your time. Don't make something hard and a pain in the ass. Making something a pain in the ass should be very selectively done for pertinent narrative or thematic reasons, like that stupid microwave hallway or Blighttown

2) An element of gambling. If something is hard because you're taking a risk, then it should come with a suitable reward. Risk VS Reward is a fun thing to toy around with. Beating a crazy challenge and coming away with nothing tangible might give a degree of satisfaction, but that satisfaction would be magnified x5 if you got a trophy of some sort.

3) This might be the most important, but I need flexibility. This is why I hate old timey adventure games; there is usually one AND PRECISELY ONE solution. Flexibility is something I love about the Souls games; you're very rarely limited in options. You can summon guys, vary your tactics (depending on your build), try different weapons, use depletable items like firebombs or poison stuff... no shortages of ways to experiment.

My least favorite Devil May Cry boss is Cerberus from DMC3, specifically because you fight him really early and don't have any other weapons to mix it up with at that point (although I guess the style changing mitigates that, but still)
 
Newk86

Newk86

Member
I say that if you are HONEST, then you will admit the following. If you are looking for a good story then you are ten times better off just watching a TV series, or a movie, or reading a book, or comic book. There are some exceptions sure, but for the most part video game stories suck.

Why play games then? For me, I play games for the story, PLUS the immersion, PLUS the challenge. And it is the combination of these three things that make gaming unique. I have to have challenge in my games. I embrace it, look forward to it, and dial it up to the max whenever I can.

RPGs are my bag, and I believe that challenge only increases the immersion! When you're scrounging the town for every bit of armour you can find because outside there are god like enemies outside waiting to kill the shit out of you in hardcore mode... Well IMO there is nothing better.

And likewise there is nothing worse than an RPG where all of the high level skills and equipment are rendered useless because the game is too easy and can be beaten just using the basic stuff anyway. Like what is the point of having all of that cool stuff when it isn't needed? Why am I bothering to unlock or collect it?

Anyway nice one OP, title of this thread has me well triggered.
 
W

web01

Member
Games that are challenging are much more fun and memorable.
The entire point of a game is to have some type of challenge, puzzles, game systems to be learnt and overcome.
 
S

SPCTRE

Member
Shamus Young recently wrote about this aspect of the difficulty debate, which of course tends to veer towards the Souls games as the obvious reference point.

Sometimes Dark Souls players will tell you they like the game because it's ”fair". This has probably caused more misunderstandings and arguments than anything else about the game, because ”fair" is a horribly loaded word with contradictory meanings in different contexts and for different players.
Click to expand...

Relative Fairness

When someone says fair, which one of these ideas are they talking about?
  1. Everyone competes according to the exact same rules and starting conditions.
  2. Everyone is forced to compete in such a way that victory is equally likely for all participants.
Those aren't just different definitions, they're opposing definitions. And yet people will often talk about ”fairness" in terms of gambling, sports, board games, and videogames without ever clarifying which concept of fairness they're talking about. Is roulette ”fair" because every space has equal chances of winning, the wheel is unbiased, and the rules are clear? Or is it ”unfair" because the odds clearly favor the house? If I play golf against Tiger Woods, is the game ”fair" before or after we institute a stroke handicap that allows for our vastly different skill levels?
Click to expand...

At the end of the day, I guess players just respond very differently to negative feedback (e.g. corpse runs in DS vs. checkpointing in Arkham Knight).
 
K

KillLaCam

Banned
I mostly like learning how to play something or a strategy or something.

Easy games would get too boring more me. Like I'm eventually just going through the motions instead of thinking.
 
A

Auto-Reply

Member
Many people that love a good challenge probably say the same thing, don't have much time so I rather not waste it on something that is barely more difficult than watching a cutscene.
 
C

Chaos2Frozen

Member
The secret about Souls games is that the penalty for death isn't even that harsh, you don't actually lose much progress and you have infinite tries.

In a world where we have rogue-likes with perma deaths and actual real lost of progress and characters, is the fear of losing only a single, easily accumulated resource that scary?

Once that illusion is broken, you will no longer be afraid.
 
F

Fug Slanderson

Member
I like playing hard games because it's the only way for me to get an adrenaline rush from gaming. There's so much more on the line when a mistake can mean starting over. Also, you are forced to really learn how to play the game, and thus you become intimately familiar with it. You end up with a deeper relationship with a hard game than one you just mindlessly breeze through.
 
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