Are games too difficult or too easy?

[vanessaking2]

I currently play Baldurs gate 3 and boy this game is really tough to play.

I love RPG's but this one is really a challenge.  Do you have hard or easy games?

[Yukiko Miyamoto]

Well, the developers that are known for making difficult games either stopped producing more games or currently making a new game. Thus probably taking a few years depending on how many people are on the crew team with them. Some things in the game are intentional while sometimes its just how the game is programed. Take Crypt for example, it wasn't suppose so difficult that it would take the role of the "hardest game" its just the way the game was programmed. So, yeah, some games are built to be difficult intentionally or just came out from how the game plays out.

Edited April 20 by Yukiko Miyamoto

[JohnCenaSong-]

There's typically plenty of games in any given genre to suit any difficulty level one could be looking for so I wouldn't say on the whole games could ever really fit the bill for being overall too easy or difficult as there's always another option if you're finding games too much on one end of the scale. 

 

There will be some folk who'll whine that games are 'getting too easy' who seem to refuse to expand beyond the largest mass market AAA releases and only play on normal (or even easy) difficulty but if you're willing to look or at least turn up the difficulty option then there's plenty of challenge to be found.

 

Personally I like a mix, sometimes I like something I can switch off and slide through and other times I like a tough challenge. Generally though I prefer to be challenged at least a little even in those easier titles I play otherwise I get a little bored to be honest.

[majob]

Having grown up in the 8 bit and 16 bit era, games are easier for sure but that's not a bad thing. Early games were harder solely to pad their length because otherwise you could finish most of them in under an hour or in the case of arcades, milk you for more money. I also don't find this to be a bad thing, games are supposed to be an enjoyable activity, if I'm getting frustrated, that defeats the purpose. 

Edited April 20 by majob

[GUDGER666]

Harder by a mile imo. Fighting games for example, you use to be able to just press a few buttons for special moves, now there's loads of special moves and most require a long input that my brain has a meltdown on lol. 

 

The hard retro games are mostly just luck based or easy once you figure out the pattern, but I still never faced anything as hard as some of today's games offer. A lot of today's games are designed to be hard and require pure skill. 

[CaveBear912]

Easy games DarkSouls 1 2 3 

Elden Ring Bloodborne

Hard games Super Meat Boy

CupHead Crypt of the Necro dancer

But it depends on the person one game might be really hard for you but is very easy for the other person

 

[SnakeSound222]

I would say it really depends on the person. Some people might struggle with one game while others may find it easy.

[VigilantCrow]

I'd prefer harder games. What's the point of engaging in a hobby if you can't challenge yourself and constantly improve?

 

[the1andonly654]

2 hours ago, JohnCenaSong- said:

There will be some folk who'll whine that games are 'getting too easy' who seem to refuse to expand beyond the largest mass market AAA releases and only play on normal (or even easy) difficulty but if you're willing to look or at least turn up the difficulty option then there's plenty of challenge to be found.

There's a big difference between a game that is designed to be hard and upping the difficulty on a game that is designed to be easy. The latter usually results in resizing the life bars of you and your enemies, and it is the most lazy and boring approach possible. 

 

I kinda like the middle ground the most, as in Soulsborne games for example. They're difficult enough to be engaging and it's by design, they're also balanced around it so you don't really feel like they're too hard. I generally don't like games designed to be extremely hard, like Crypt or Super Meat Boy. And I do play on easiest/almost easiest settings in "mainstream" games because spending 5 minutes on an encounter instead of 1 is not difficult and is definitely not engaging. 

 

Overall, I think mainstream games are getting easier and easier but I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. There's plenty of games to choose from if you like a challenge. I have a feeling there's more hard games now than in the times when "games were more difficult" simply because there's way more games releasing now than three decades ago. If you don't like harder games, like BG3... well, you don't have to play them. 

[sepheroithisgod]

The majority of AAA games today have gotten much easier, to the point where you can beat most games without understanding the core mechanics of them and just following the waymarkers, and to be clear, there's nothing wrong with that, but I would like to see games that offer more challenges in normal playthroughs.

 

As someone who has been gaming for a long time, Normal difficulty today feels like what Easy used to be and that's a shame.

 

And before anyone says turn up the difficulty, in the majority of cases, doing so just makes enemies tankier and decreases your damage, which doesn't make it fun.

[RedDevil757]

Most are too easy and handhold way too much.
 

I dunno if there's still a difference in difficulty between pc and console now days. Dragon age origins and tomb raider underworld are ALOT easier on console.

[Vermilion_Joker]

A lot of “hard” games and modes these days are only hard because of artificial means. They're made annoyingly hard for the sake of calling it hard without giving you any sort of means of balancing it out (enemy health values skyrocketing while your damage is the equivalent of a wet noodle, ex. FFVII Remake), versus something like Dark Souls/Elden Ring (I know, we hear enough about it) is only hard because you don't know what's going on if you're fresh off the boat. Once you do, rolling/parrying becomes second nature and the once hard parts become easier for the average player. I know hard is subjective, but that's how I feel coming from the early PS1 era of games.

[Dantes_994]

I like hard games if it's either expected of me to dodge/jump/roll out of the way, thus using quick reflexes

or when you're slowly becoming more powerful by exploring the world, which has become rare because we gotta have an open world sandbox where you don't do anything

 

but in general I like hard games but it's not something that decides whether I'll by a game or not

[NostalgicMinion]

Sports games come to mind as being more difficult than they once were.

 

I miss the simplified approach to hitting a baseball, shooting a puck, throwing a football, or dunking in the paint.

 

If you lower the difficulty they're too easy, if you raise it, they're too hard.

 

I was all about the sports games in the PS2/early PS3 era. But today, not so much.

[PeachyJacobs]

Games are definitely easier for sure. Which like some others have mentioned isn't necessarilly a bad thing. One thing I am very much tired of is the constant hand holding. Games need to stop painting everything yellow to tell me where to go. Or at least give me the option to turn it off and figure things out for myself.

 

With the exception of FromSoft games, they should never have an easy mode imo, having an easy option to relax and enjoy a story is a good thing.

[NostalgicMinion]

2 hours ago, PeachyJacobs said:

Games are definitely easier for sure. Which like some others have mentioned isn't necessarilly a bad thing. One thing I am very much tired of is the constant hand holding. Games need to stop painting everything yellow to tell me where to go. Or at least give me the option to turn it off and figure things out for myself.

 

With the exception of FromSoft games, they should never have an easy mode imo, having an easy option to relax and enjoy a story is a good thing.

Couldn't agree more about the handholding. Let me figure something out on my own. Give the option to give a hint if I'm having trouble.

[TheDarkKratos]

I really want Sony to add an Auto-Play feature to all games. Like auto-pilot, but for games.

That way I can drink my beer and eat my fish n chips without getting my controller greasy.

Also, an App that earns the trophies for you in those games. All legitimate, just me watching.

I don't think it gets any easier than that. Oh, wait. What was the question again? Um...

 

Spoiler

 

Edited April 21 by TheDarkKratos

[heavyrockerfin]

Games tend to hold your hand nowadays and when they don't - it really surprises you. But games being easier isn't a bad thing necessarily. It's great to see that there are different options to make them more accessible; to tweak difficulty in certain gameplay parts is a good example. It's a bummer to feel that the game isn't for you, just because you are having trouble with shooting etc. but you love the rest of it.  Or to make sneaking easier in TLOU because you enjoy the story but those clickers cause you anxiety. I played plenty of Assassin's Creed Odyssey in the map mode that I can't now remember and it was really nice change.

[JohnCenaSong-]

12 hours ago, the1andonly654 said:

There's a big difference between a game that is designed to be hard and upping the difficulty on a game that is designed to be easy. The latter usually results in resizing the life bars of you and your enemies, and it is the most lazy and boring approach possible. 

I sometimes disagree, I feel like adjusting health values gets a bad wrap. It may be the most simple and less creative way to do it, but sometimes the simple solution is all you need. Depends on the context of the game itself that's implementing it and whether or not it has enough inherent depth in its systems to support it which you'll be surprised to find out is probably more games than you'd initially realise.

 

I've certainly had experiences where it's made the game a boring tedious slog, usually it's easy licensed games where you can already go through the game never taking a hit and by playing hard you just end up taking twice as long per encounter pressing the same buttons and not even looking at the screen. Last time I had that experience was XMen Origins Wolverine, I literally read through my Twitter feed while fighting the final boss...

 

But honestly, for a non-insignificant number of games increasing the damage value of enemies does create challenge by forcing or strongly encouraging the usage of all the tools put before you. There are plenty of games with decently deep enough combat systems but playing them on lower difficulties, even though the only difference is health values, allows you to facetank everything and perhaps never need to learn much of the combat system. Meanwhile to beat a hard mode because you may die in like one or two hits and enemies won't just die before they can launch an attack you may need to actually make use mechanics you otherwise wouldn't.

 

In boss encounters, when health is lowered in lower difficulties you can end up killing the boss without even encountering half it's moveset and people don't realise that by upping the difficulty what broader range of moves there are that were actually already there, all of which need to be handled properly without getting hit or taking chip damage etc. otherwise you will die very quickly. Honestly one of my pet peeves of boss fights in some games is when they're too fragile, they need to have health, they need to serve at least some kind of a consistency challenge. I don't care how crazy hard the boss fight may be mechanically, if it can be killed in less than a minute it feels pretty worthless and uneventful.

 

I can only really accept someone complaining about a game being too easy and not playing hard mode if they at the very least beat normal/easy rarely taking any damage at any point because honestly I've seen people play sometimes and can easily point out many many moments they would have been dead if not for the lower difficulty and there's so many important mechanics they're skipping out on because the games letting them get away with it.

 

Giving you less wiggle room to get away with mistakes is a way to add challenge, it's partly why everyone fawned so much over Dark Souls because making mistakes seemingly punished you more than other mainstream titles at the time that opted for small damage, unlimited healing and abundant checkpointing. Whether it be high damage values or getting sent back to a bonfire, you were encouraged to not make too many mistakes if you wanted to progress.

 

I honestly believe a lot of those who snub AAA hard modes and claim the games are 'too easy' would get a reality check if ever they tried out the hardest modes in some of them. But then they'll probably just whine that it's 'bullshit' and 'unfair' rather than recognising that it's because they never actually learned how to play the game when facetanking normal mode.

[RedDevil757]

8 hours ago, TheDarkKratos said:

I really want Sony to add an Auto-Play feature to all games. Like auto-pilot, but for games.

That way I can drink my beer and eat my fish n chips without getting my controller greasy.

Also, an App that earns the trophies for you in those games. All legitimate, just me watching.

I don't think it gets any easier than that. Oh, wait. What was the question again? Um...

 

  Hide contents

 

The latest Forza game does that. With assists the game basically plays itself 😂

[SickaDelicGaming]

You just have to keep in mind that for each individual person, different games can come with different difficulty. For example, I highly enjoy turn based games such as all the Baldur's Gates, Jagged Alliances, & XCOM 2. They are my type of game I prefer and find most easy to learn. I also regularly play RPGs that are not turn based and find them easy to grasp. As for fighting games, I have a difficult time connecting quick combo's so I find them to be the most difficult and unenjoyable. Again, everyone has their own opinion, that's just what I have experienced!

[DrBloodmoney]

No.

 

There are easy games and there are difficult games, and there are all types of games in between.

 

The problem isn’t that some are easy and some are hard…

…it’s that some people are so egotistical and self-involved, that they think all games should be “for them” and tuned to suit their exact skill level, and no other.

 

 

Edited April 21 by DrBloodmoney

[Ashbo]

I always say that game difficulty is very subjective and what someone would find easy in a particular game, someone else would find it hard, challenging or just not for them.

 

Throw trophies in the mix and this makes said subjectivity become more relevant. I think it can come down to what you enjoy in a game and it's style. I think even if you are struggling at something in a game and it's the type of game you like you sort of get there with time and persistence, learning the game and maybe from a trophy pov you don't want to give in.

 

Sometimes trophy requirements are what stop people from actually committing to games before playing them (I include myself in this) because you see what its needed, maybe read a thread or two and a see a review and write it off before it's begun.

 

Not true for all games I know as some games through difficulty alone get abandoned and never touched again, it's all personal preference and maybe your own belief that you can or can't do it.

 

I like a range of game styles with some I am okay at regardless of difficulty, some i'm terrible at and some that I just can't master or do (but this may be my own belief), Sekiro being one game that springs to mind. However sometimes I can play a game and the difficulty can be challenging but strangely enjoyable and maybe in a game I didn't think I couldn't do.

[yowzagabowza]

Never in the history of video games has there been more options to tailor the difficulty to your liking.

Not every game has this option, but it's far more prevalent than in the past. 

[mega-tallica]

I don't think games have gotten easier, I just think they have become more accessible. Games come with all these options now to curb the game to your skill level and keep the experience as fun and balanced as possible. You could make the game incredibly easy by playing everything the easiest difficulty or you have the option to play on a harder difficulty to maintain a respectable challenge.

 

You didn't have that in the past. Most games had one set difficulty and it was usually hard af. But that was required back then to keep people playing the games for an extended period of time to get better at the game. Otherwise if the game was too easy, you could beat it within a couple hours then it feels like you wasted your money. And if your game was on the easier side, you had to make sure your game had high replay ability. 

 

Now games are much longer and much larger that they don't have to rely on difficulty to extend their playtime. They've extended playtime by adding more content and thus has given developers the freedom to design games with varying difficulties to reach the widest audience possible and that's a good thing. 

 

Some people don't want any challenge and just want to experience the games for what they are without any difficulty, we now have that option for most games. But then there are the harder options for those that wish to test themselves. The choice is yours. 

 

Still doesn't mean every game you'll find challenging no matter if you're playing on the hardest difficulty or not, every players skill level varies and it's impossible to fine tune every game to suit every kind of player. You're going to have easier games for your skill level and you're going to have harder ones no matter what difficulty you set them on. 

 

The time trials in Grid Legends I found were quite easy but others found them very difficult, I found the final boss in the recent Dead Island 2 SoLA DLC fairly difficult solo while others said it was no problem for them. Every player is different.