Have games gotten easier or have we gotten better?

[sXeth]

The gamer nowadays is more trained then the gamer thenadays.
The games aren't designed to murder you in order to extract more quarters/artifically extend the playtime to compensate for how ludicrously little there actually was of the game.
Tutorials (ingame, or on youtube or whatever) exist now, as opposed to short (often poorly translated) manual blurbs.
Controls are more precise now, as is what you're seeing on screen. Theres also a wider set of controls, making complex maneuvers easier to orchestrate.
Conventions are far more present. (IE : Almost any shooter now uses a right trigger to fire. Back in the days your shoot/attack button was all over the place from game to game). This allows you to sort of train "generic FPS" skills, as opposed to only gaining proficiency in one game.
The fact that you can code a more advanced AI has created a fair amoutn of backlash against some of the more blatant AI cheating that used to go on to compensate for the inability to code up AI.
With the higher focus on franchises, theirs more incentive for the developer to let you get through, so you get hooked in for the next installment.

 

[Netrigan]

lemmie answer your question with another question:
"do you remember the days when you could actually fail a game and game over meant something?" because back in my day half the games i played i either couldn't finish or i only had a chance of finishing before i ran out of lives/time

Well, back in the day, you played the second level was exactly the same as the first level only faster and you kept doing that until you couldn't keep up.

Then they started created multiple levels and it would take quite a bit of skill to see all four levels of Ms. Pac-Man or Donkey Kong.

Then they started creating story-driven games with a fair amount of content and they figured out they could make a lot more money by letting players continue as many times as they wanted because players wanted to reach the end of the story, no matter how much they sucked at the game. A killed player could finish Double Dragon in half an hour on a single quarter, while novice players would blow $10 to get to the end of Double Dragon.

And then on the console side they figured out they could make a fairly short game seem so much longer by making it insanely hard and you get "Nintendo Hard". I don't think any game has ever beat Dragon Age for hiding 5 minutes worth of game behind hours and hours and hours of trial-and-error gameplay.

Then they start creating lots more content and putting in difficulty settings so even novice players can see it all, even if they have to resort to save scumming or cheat codes.

And then they start not bothering overly much with the difficulty settings and just set up a reasonable challenge, which will invariable start off a wave of complaints about the game being both too difficult and too easy by the people without average skills.

At every step of the way, the system was set up to get as much money from players as possible while giving them a sense of worth. And at every step of the way, they've had players complaining about the difficulty because it's impossible to please all of the people all of the time.

 

[tippy2k2]

Wait, wait, wait. I have to re-read that.

Less complicated games? Dragon Age? Mass Effect?

Skyrim is more complicated? I... What? Have you not seen the amount of team management Dragon Age requires? Or the first Mass Effect game? You have to be joking when you say Skyrim is more complex, since it holds your hand the entire way.

My Dad doesn't have the reactionary skills to play a quicker game. Dragon Age and Mass Effect both allow you to pause the game and handle your tactics without the threat of a Darkspawn/Geth stabbing/shooting you in the face while you do it. He's smart enough to play the game but can't handle a faster pace. He still has to look down at the controller to remember which button A is.

Skyrim does not let you do that. You can pause the game but everything you do for fighting is during the game. You also have to handle blocking and changing your weapons during the middle of a fight. You can also wander around and run into enemies that you just can't handle yet (something ME/DA stop you from doing with their linear nature).

Yes, there are aspects of ME/DA that are more complicated but generally you can do all that stuff at your own pace.

 

[Denamic]

I've played games for 20 years. I'm 27 years old. If I weren't better at games now than back when I was 7, there would be something seriously wrong with me.

 

[kommando367]

Yeah they've gotten way easier.

Most of the games in the last generation required some crazy reflexes.

Before that, you had a lot of games that whooped your ass in the early levels and forced perfection just to survive the later levels.

Nowadays, you only die in a game if you do something stupid like fly an aircraft into a small corridor or charge a shotgunner.

 

[V8 Ninja]

I would say both, but neither of those changes have been as drastic as some people would like to think. Of course us veterans to the hobby have undoubtedly gotten better ('Practice Makes Perfect') and mass market appeal has driven games to be less grueling than they once were, but those individual aspects have not created the reaction that many people have when it comes to this subject. Rather, those two elements in combination are why you can see people going on passionate tangents on why games should be harder or why people should stop complaining about wanting games to be harder.

 

[GameMaNiAC]

snip

Ah, so the problem is pacing. My apologies, looks like I missed the point of your previous post.

Basically, I read it as "Dragon Age/Mass Effect = simple, Skyrim = complex".

 

[JagermanXcell]

Both, I don't mind getting better, makes me feel like such a demi God every once in awhile. Its what got me into games like DMC3, Demons Souls, Ninja Gaiden, ect.
But thats just it, those are old games. Games are in fact getting easier and that really peeves me, when I want a challenge the game decides to appeal to the new casual players then me... and when I set the game to VERY MPOSSIBRU HARDCORE mode, its either still too easy or too hard: Not the good kind of hard but the lazily designed "you have less health and do less damage and they have more health and do more damage" kind of hard.

I miss Dragon's Lair...