Poll: Difficulty. Why?

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revolverwolf

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Qayin said:
revolverwolf said:
HomeAliveIn45 said:
What's the point of playing if you accomplish nothing?
The point is to have fun...It is the point of every game ever.
Many would say that the fun comes from the sense of accomplishment, and from the extent to which you are immersed in the plot - if the game is too easy and therefore ends too quickly then you get neither, meaning lack of fun; the dreaded minus/negative fun that causes disks to be broken and game develepors to be letterbombed.
Indeed. I don't like my game to be TOO easy or TOO hard and i agree that the accomplishment leads to the fun...which means all games are made to be fun, yes?
 

ElArabDeMagnifico

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revolverwolf said:
HomeAliveIn45 said:
revolverwolf said:
HomeAliveIn45 said:
What's the point of playing if you accomplish nothing?
The point is to have fun...It is the point of every game ever.
My logic is inescapable, fun is irrelevant.
Fun is irrelevent? That's not logic...that's your opinion.
What else is in a game if not the fun? Sure you can try to accomplish things but that in itself I feel doesn't actually make a difference.
Quiet you! We're not here for fun. *builds up post count and gamerscore*



Now excuse me while I play the hell out of Super Stardust HD, Halo 3, and Burnout Paradise on both platforms, not for fun, but to SHOW YOU ONLINE ABOUT HOW AWESOME I AM! BWAHAHA! Fun is so last-gen.

(Not being serious here and I don't think "HomeAlive" was either... We all do it for fun, but some games (Example would be SSBB) just end up turning that "fun" into "tedious boring work/padding length")
 

revolverwolf

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I bought SSBB and so far I like it...but I have loads of people to play with constantly so I don't get so bored with it.
 

ElArabDeMagnifico

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revolverwolf said:
I bought SSBB and so far I like...but I have loads of people to play with constantly so I don't get so bored with it.
Yeah, and there's lots of ways to accomplish goals, you can either spend a lot of time in single player, or play hundreds of brawls (and there's different modes too) - but when the game says "Unlock wolf by playing 750 brawls!" - it makes you think "Oh dear God....I think I'll get sick of this at around 300..."

Thankfully you can just find him in Single Player.
 

Tom_Violence

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Jul 19, 2008
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revolverwolf said:
Qayin said:
revolverwolf said:
HomeAliveIn45 said:
What's the point of playing if you accomplish nothing?
The point is to have fun...It is the point of every game ever.
Many would say that the fun comes from the sense of accomplishment, and from the extent to which you are immersed in the plot - if the game is too easy and therefore ends too quickly then you get neither, meaning lack of fun; the dreaded minus/negative fun that causes disks to be broken and game develepors to be letterbombed.
Indeed. I don't like my game to be TOO easy or TOO hard and i agree that the accomplishment leads to the fun...which means all games are made to be fun, yes?
I wouldn't even necessarily agree with that. There have been some great games out there that are challenging to the extent that completing them can be a real uphill struggle, and hard enough that they're actually not fun to play (they're also not so unfun that I stop playing them though). So even though I'm getting no enjoyment from slogging through those stages of the games, I still do it because I like the feeling of having beaten something so difficult. But I'm playing it for the sense of accomplishment, not for the fun.
 

Johnn Johnston

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If a game is stupidly easy, I don't find it fun. There always has to be the risk of dying, but it shouldn't be constantly happening.
 

Shotaro

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I tend to play through games more than once anyway usually on normal first so I can absorb the story get to know the enemies and the likes then play through it on the hardest difficulty when thats possible, sometimes it isn't and other times games without difficulty settings are restrictingly difficult (Dead Rising anyone?) If I find myself getting frustrated or bored I just switch to a different game
 

The Potato Lord

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Enough challenge to make you think is good. I usually play a game for fun but if a game is fun even on higher difficulties I will consider playing on hard( Mass Effect I acctually play on harder difficulties because of this) but if it is arbitrarily hard to the point where there's no fun involved(Cod4's Veteran)I'll stop playing the game altogether..
 

Break

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Sep 10, 2007
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It all depends on how much you suck at any given game. Say, for scrolling shooters or Street Fighter-style beat 'em ups, the only way I have any fun whatsoever is if I say "fuck you objective" and spend the whole time pissing about, since I'm absolutely horrible with them. On the other hand, I've spent so much time with DMC that if I play it on anything below super-hard mode, it's just a tiresome chore of a cakewalk and I enjoy nothing. Games should always be just below or just above your skill level; either you can deal with things quite simply, but can easily become overwhelmed if you don't focus, or most of everything is a challenge, making the "continue?" screen a common sight, but every time you start again, you're appreciably better than you were last time.

HomeAliveIn45 said:
What's the point of playing if you accomplish nothing?
What do you accomplish by playing hard mode?
 

corporate_gamer

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i get bored with easy games. hard games are more... engaging i suppose, you have put a lot more brain power into it. i played cod4 on veteran first, then went back and did it on recruit and it didnt give any challenge at all. the storyline was good, but as i could complete the missions without any effort, i didnt really pay as much attention. which made it a poorer experience. i think games have to have levels of difficult. as obviously people have different level of skills. but why should we pander to those with the least amount of ablility? they can play games on easy. i'll play them on hardest (if i can succeed) and everyones happy.
 

Iron Mal

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My opinion is that a game should be varied in its difficulty, thus bypassing this entire issue all together.

A game should have an easy mode which gives even the least experienced or skilled of players a fair/good chance of completing the game without pushing themselves too hard.

However, it should also provide a more difficult setting or mode for more venerable and grizzled veterans of games to have a genuinely challanging experience.

Unfortunatly, most games I've seen seem to learn too much towards one extreme or the other.

Eg: Too hard- Ninja Gaiden 2
Too easy- Bioshock
 

Karisse

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I like a game that is just hard enough to only mildly frustrate me. That way I'm still having fun and I feel like I'm actually demonstrating some level of skill.

Dead Rising, for example, maintained a pretty standard difficulty throughout the game - as long as you minded your surroundings, you'd be more or less fine, but let your mind wander and you could wind up zombie chow, even if it was day time. The main storyline remained challenging but never went absolutely insane. There were also plenty of optional things to do that made the game more difficult (rescuing survivors, hunting psychopaths or going on a zombie genocide), but rewarded you for it with extra experience, new items or an achievement.
 

HomeAliveIn45

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Break said:
HomeAliveIn45 said:
What's the point of playing if you accomplish nothing?
What do you accomplish by playing hard mode?
Something difficult. Here's an extreme example; If you became the CEO of a company after starting as a poor farmboy (no, that's not my screenplay I'm trying to get made) as opposed to inheriting it from your father , wouldn't that make you feel a little prouder?
 

shatnershaman

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HomeAliveIn45 said:
Something difficult. Here's an extreme example; If you became the CEO of a company after starting as a poor farmboy (no, that's not my screenplay I'm trying to get made) as opposed to inheriting it from your father , wouldn't that make you feel a little prouder?
Nope all I care about is the final result.
 

Livi70590

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Well, it all depends on how the difficulty works.

For Example, shooters. Most of them play the health see-saw, where if you turn the difficulty up, you lose the health but your foes gain it. And if you turn the difficulty down, you gain health and your enemies lose it. While this is OK to an extent, It does not replace a good AIwho will break up and try to flank you, or react quicker.
 

Alphavillain

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I only like difficult games when the difficulty isn't cheap, difficult-for-the-sake-of-it sort of stuff. Some games are "difficult" because they require so much playing time to get even close to half finishing them (I'm looking at you Final Fantasy games). A game like Ninja Gaiden is doubly special because it all about skill.
 

stompy

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I'm in the 'variable difficulty' camp. I usually play the game on normal, to soak in the story and learn the gameplay. Then I'll go to hard if I want to face the challenge. If you can change the difficulty from "your mum can do it" to something like Veteran or Hard in GRAW, I think that's the middle ground.
 

corporate_gamer

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shatnershaman said:
HomeAliveIn45 said:
Something difficult. Here's an extreme example; If you became the CEO of a company after starting as a poor farmboy (no, that's not my screenplay I'm trying to get made) as opposed to inheriting it from your father , wouldn't that make you feel a little prouder?
Nope all I care about is the final result.
well if you only care about the final result, why do you play games? which will eventually end with nothing more than you switch the box off. achieving nothing tangible.
 

Aries_Split

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Wargamer said:
Allow me to give an example of "Hard" vs "Easy".


I am currently trying to earn the Foxhound Medal on MGS4. This means I've got to do the game in under six hours (or was is 5 hours 30 mins? anyway...) and without being spotted.

This makes the game SO FUCKING ANNOYING that it has taken me a WEEK to do the first act.

Playing through normally, I can do it in an hour or so. Because the Foxhound Medal is so hard to get, having to quit and restart so often, I get totally pissed off and abandon it for days at a time.

So hard games are not really that fun. What I like is a challenging game. I don't want it to be a dull, boring cakewalk that in a retarded pre-teen Halo 3 Fanboy can do, but neither do I want to have to spend 20 hours a day mastering some obscure tactic and combo to win. Oh, and in case the team behind Mario Kart is reading; IT IS NOT FUCKING FUN FOR EVERY SINGLE RACER TO RED-SHELL ME THREE INCHES FROM THE FINISH LINE!!! I don't care if it's 150cc! If I am half a mile ahead and 10 seconds from the line, I should be UNTOUCHABLE!
HAH! I got big boss emblem after about 4 weeks of trying. But it was weird, because when I saw the screen that said I did it, I was all like screaming and jumping and shit, and my roomates all like "dude it's just a frucking game".
And I'm all like..."Oh..." And I look around my dorm and see all the pop cans and shit and then I got really depressed. What were we talking about again?