Am I alone? Game difficulty.

[VikingRhetoric]

I've been noticing more and more among my acquaintances that the only way they can have fun playing a game is to play with the difficulty pushed slightly past skull fuck. Now I gain no amusement from an impossibly hard challenge, in fact it has lead to four broken controllers and a fried ps2/tv combo in the past 5 years(Pro-tip: Throwing a mostly full soda can at your tv in a fit of rage, not so smart.)I play games to blow off steam, so putting a game on ultramegahard is counterintuitive to me. So this trend strikes me as odd.

Normally, I would accept this as different mindset, except I noticed that they weren't having fun either. The normal string of expletives had been replaced with what could only be described as "almost curses", where the word turns into a growl before you can finish it, knuckles were white from squeezing the piss out of controllers, and their faces looked like they just suffered a mild heart attack.

I asked why, if they get so pissed, do they play the game on impossible?
Their response was: "It's a challenge"

Now, if you noticed what I did, they didn't actually say it's fun. So, because they didn't answer my question with a satisfactory response,and I couldn't pester them for a clearer answer as they were about to have an aneurysm I now pose the question to you:

Why do you play games with the difficulty cranked up if all it does is make you insanely angry?

 

[000Ronald]

My mother does the same f***ing thing (only in pinball) and I can't understand it for the life of me. I won't play a game if it's not fun to me; sometimes this excludes hard games, sometimes this includes incredibly stupid games (don't get me started on those).

In any case, I hear ya.

Apologies abound.

 

[Frybird]

I understand how rewarding it is to beat a seemingly impossible challenge/level/game, but for me personally, this reward is dwarfed by the extreme frustration that comes before it, so i have generally no ambition to play a game on a difficulty that is more than "challenging" for me.

Also, with almost impossible difficulty levels comes often cheap design and unfairness.
I stopped playing Call of Duty 4 on Veteran after a few missions because most of the time you are killed because you are unaware of where the enemies will pop up. I want to play, not to learn all of the triggers and spawnpoints.

Also, Army of Two lately brought me close to giving it up because of the last level. It's a cool setpiece, but it somehow seems to follow the classic rule: "The Game is close to it's end, let's throw as many enemies as we can at the player with as few checkpoints as possible", to the extend that you are caught in situations that make the whole coop-"Aggro" system useless.
In the End, we played it through, but given that we spent a small part of the overall play-time on just a few firefights on the last level, i somehow had no feeling of accomplishment.

 

[Girlysprite]

They have fun in their own way, but not in a way that others can observe. They curse a lot during playing, but they do it for the golden...no, platinum moment that they finally beat the enemy/level/game, in which they feel supercool. In this case, the result is everything. The more pain and effort go into the path towards the result, the better the result becomes.

Though I must say, I don't share this mindset. Hell, I'm one of the people celebrating kiddy mode difficulty settings in some games.

 

[Fire Daemon]

For me it depends on the game. Usually if I'm playing an FPS I take it up to the max difficulty but I don't find FPS' that hard. Fighting games however.......well let me just say that I suck at them.....really suck! Beating a guy on easy makes me feel awesome and very lucky.

I think the reason people play on harder difficulties is because they want the challenge. That and Achievments.

 

[GrimRox]

I guess it depends on the game, I won't play Guitar Hero on Expert because it's too hard and won't play Gears on insane for the same reason. Though having thrashed Halo on higher difficulties I refuse to drop down to normal again. Why? Because it's not as challenging! Something I noticed after doing Co-op with my brother. So really, I don't always go for Skull-Fuck difficulty as it has been so eloquently described but I like to find the balance of fun yet acheivably challenging, I like to work for the goals but not too the point I throw things at my telly.

 

[lokust2001]

Because challenges are fun, and it gives a great sense of achievement to complete something when you've had to actually use your brains and your skills.
If something is to easy then it becomes the same as cheating at Solitaire. Sure you win, but so what?

 

[AngryMan]

Gears of War co-op on the hardest difficulty setting is a very fun way to spend an afternoon, I've discovered. on the other hand, playing Insane difficulty solo is nowhere near as much fun

 

[MossStone]

I've completly given up on playing FPS games on hard, as they just have too many moments where you have to know the trick to getting past the set piece, or you have to know how many enemies come from which corridor in order to beat them.

I guess I'd say that the acomplishment that I feel after getting through a hard battle is completly lost if I have to replay that part more than three times. It's not that way with one of my friends, who can die a hundred times and still feel that once he's got to the end, that he's beaten that section.

 

[emordino]

If a game's too easy then it doesn't feel like a game to me... it's just like clicking through menus for a couple of hours.

For a difficult game to be satisfying it has to strike a balance. STALKER and CoD on the highest difficulty, for instance, are just relentlessly hard all the time and it completely wears you out. On the other hand something like HL2 has difficult setpieces but they're balanced with sequences where you're exploring*, or running away, or engaged in easy enough combat that makes you feel like a badass. So when the harder bits come along they're much more satisfying.

Back in the day when games were cut into shortish levels, difficulty was easier to stomach. The contemporary equivalent is something like N, which can be very frustrating but ultimately very rewarding, and which has short enough levels that you don't miss modern conveniences like saving all that much.

(* During Ep 2 I was almost disappointed whenever I had to engage in combat, because I was enjoying travelling from A to B so much. San Andreas managed that too sometimes. It's something devs should take note of.)

 

[BlackOps]

same here, i like a challenge, as long as it isnt impossibly hard.

 

[ShadeOfRed]

I do that sometimes. Only when I've beaten a game on normal and think "That was too easy."

 

[Minky_man]

I always find myself, when first playing a game to always go one from normal. So say theres easy medium hard and "Only god and jesus have a hope in hell on completing this" mode. I'd go for hard. And because of that knowledge I have fun bcz I'm just learning a game and knowing that I can do it.

I don't get people who go on the easiest setting first to "get a feel" for the game. Like my brother, when he got his hands on MGS2 way back when it was released and thought it was going to be hard so he put it on the easiest setting and completed it and hasn't played it since. What fun are you having there?

 

[Duck Sandwich]

A lot of times, when I'm playing hard games, the frustration comes from either
a) Something unfair that happened or
b) I screwed up badly, making a mistake that I should have easily avoided

I hate how in some games, if I die at a hard part, I have to go back and do easier parts of a level to get back where I was. It just feels tedious.

But yeah, those tests of pure skill, reaction time, and strategy just give you this awesome feeling for accomplishing them. (*fondly remembers moments of beating several Mega Man final bosses*)

 

[Anarchemitis]

Battlefront on hard is too much hardness.

 

[Melaisis]

Hitman: Blood Money is the only real game that I've pushed myself to Pro mode on. This is mainly because, unlike traditional 'hard modes' on FPSes and such like; the game actually makes a better play because of it. The AI improves, the maps get more intense and that final run to the exit is just that little bit more packed with adrenaline. It makes for an awesome experience because a lot of the time you can actually blame yourself for fucking up; not the physic enemies or the unrealistic challenges.

 

[Melaisis]

I don't get people who go on the easiest setting first to "get a feel" for the game. Like my brother, when he got his hands on MGS2 way back when it was released and thought it was going to be hard so he put it on the easiest setting and completed it and hasn't played it since. What fun are you having there?

I can't speak for your brother, but I think you missed the point. People tend to play the Metal Gear Solid series for the compelling story, emotional character development and epic setpieces; not to get shot in the head every time they turn a corner too fast.

 

[scoHish]

It used to be that if you beat games on "rip my face off frustration mode" you got some perk that made beating the game again sadisticly easy (a really big gun for example) But i've noticed in a lot of games now, the game wont even acknowlage the fact that you just completed it on the hardest setting. Im not going to piss myself off trying to beat somthing for no reason. So yeah bro i think i get where your comming from, but i dont really have an answer...

 

[Minky_man]

I don't get people who go on the easiest setting first to "get a feel" for the game. Like my brother, when he got his hands on MGS2 way back when it was released and thought it was going to be hard so he put it on the easiest setting and completed it and hasn't played it since. What fun are you having there?

I can't speak for your brother, but I think you missed the point. People tend to play the Metal Gear Solid series for the compelling story, emotional character development and epic setpieces; not to get shot in the head every time they turn a corner too fast.

Fair point, but on easiest you could stand in a line of bullet fire for at least 3 minutes and not be killed. I'm not saying that puting a game on an unrealistic differcutly the first time is what everyone should do. But I'm talking more about playing a game and doing much much more than pushing forward to get to the next cutscene.

 

[Sib]

sometimes ill play a game on the hardest difficult when im with a friend because what was previously insanely frustrating has somehow turned into a kind of sado-masochistic (thats a word right?) entertainment.

Although playing the same on single player can be fun because you invent new swear words, hell sometimes when im playing ill invent whole chains of curses so profane i fear my controller will catch fire simply from being in such close proximity to my swearing.