It's Easy, So It Sucks - Television Tropes & Idioms

alt title(s): Its Easy So It Sucks

Remember when it was difficult to find Wally?

Nintendo Hard games were damn near impossible, right? We all have fond memories of those games back then, but the main thing we all remember is that such titles were impossible to beat.

Nowadays, with better technology and more designers thinking about how to make a fair challenge, games get less and less hectic and more and more accessible.

To some fans, this shall not stand.

Gamers sometimes believe that a company making an easier game means that they think that the players aren't capable of beating difficult games and that mainstream gamers are to blame for making gaming "too casual". Beating a challenging game makes the gamer feel triumphant, victorious, unbeatable. The act of "dumbing down" the difficulty seems like a direct insult to the gamer's own skill level, and the result is that gamers rage about how Save Points just destroyed the challenge factor of whatever video game series they hold close to their heart. A lot of people reason that when buying the games they don't buy say, 700 MB of fun. They buy seventy hours of fun, and therefore, if the game is easy, you spend less time with it, thus having less fun.

Sometimes even random games get the boot for easiness. For example, a fighting game like Bloody Roar is considered a button masher by many because you are not required to learn the in-depth fighting system to beat most players at the game. Because of it, the games are considered to lack depth and regarded as terrible by default.

Compare Stop Having Fun Guys.

Not to be confused with My Girl Is A Slut.

Examples:

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night angered many fans of the series' incredible challenge factor. The Metroidvania installments of the series tend towards easier difficulty in general.
- Despite this, though, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is still widely considered the best game in the entire series.
- That was reversed in the last Metroidvania, Order of Ecclesia, where the considerably shorter dungeons are populated by VERY angry and powerful enemies; careless players will never be able to reach the now scarcer checkpoints. Even Igarashi's detractors agreed that the game, while not perfect, is much more challenging and closer to the older Castlevanias than any of the games since Symphony Of The Night.
Ar Tonelico was panned by fans on both sides of the pond for being way, way too easy. It still proved popular enough to spawn a sequel, which upped the difficulty slightly, but not so much as to alienate those who liked the fact that it was easy.
Many gamers accused Super Smash Bros. Brawl of "scrubbing down" the series. Never mind that, if you wanted to beat all the challenges, you were forced to play through the boss battles on each difficulty.
- Some of the more hardcore tournament players of Melee also complained about scrubbification due to removal of certain "techniques" that were actually glitches. One of the most well known is "Wave Dashing" which is a glitch that caused players to slide across the floor very quickly but given that there was no set animation for this it's pretty obvious it wasn't intended by the developers.
The Mega Man franchise to an extent. Despite its still-present challenge, people don't like the new abilities that give a better chance of beating bosses. The X series gets more flak because of the dash jump and other such abilities.
- Subversively Mega Man 9 is a throwback to the Nintendo Hard era. It's short, but very difficult.
- The Zero series calls players' bluff. The stages are fairly easy, but the ranking system is aggressively demanding. In a bit of a Wall Banger, you have to get at least an A rank to receive EX Techs. Zero 4 toned this down, refreshing for a lot of the Zero fanbase. (However, try the Self Imposed Challenges in the ZX subseries.)
Arguably, the Mario franchise has fallen into this gap. This is especially evident given their RPGs have abilities that allow you to avoid attacks without statistics.
- The Mario And Luigi games compensate for this by having the attacks being considerably more damaging than most ordinary attacks in RPGs; you can't afford to get hit on a regular basis. Unfortunately, at the beginning of the second stage of the final battle in Superstar Saga, both Mario and Luigi start with one HP each, and Cackletta might do her very hard to avoid "arm swinging" attack first", and near the end of Partners in Time you can only defeat the Shroob-powered Bowser by dodging his attacks so dodging is even more crucial in those instances.
- Yoshi's Story traded in large, imaginative, dangerous levels for short, boring, easy ones. The Final Boss even has infinite numbers of invincibility powerups in the same room as him.
- Mario Kart Wii is also accused of being dumbed down. Not just because snaking is useless now, but the fact that in order to gain mini turbos, you have to drift on corners and maintain it, which is easier than wiggling the analog stick left to right and get many turbos in a row while drifting.
  - Of course, those same players that liked snaking were able to find any number of exploits in Mario Kart Wii in a few weeks.
- The Super Mario Advance series is often accused of this, what with things such as your number of lives being saved. To Super Mario Advance 4's credit, it had an e-Reader card that replaces the enemies with harder versions, but that never made it out of Japan.
- This ultimately came to a climax with the new "Demo Mode" being added into New Super Mario Bros. Wii, which will, whenever you're stuck and ask it to, take over for you and show you how to finish a level. You can complete the entire game, allegedly, through this mode, never bothering once to ever actually play. Needless to say, there's been a lot of backlash from this one.
  - Of course, since "Demo Mode" has not been touched by anyone outside of Nintendo, there are mostly just rumours; for all we know, it could drop the player back at the start of the level, armed with the knowledge of how to beat the level, rather than doing it for them. We just don't know yet.
A lot of people complained about Fire Emblem: Blazing Sword being easier than the previous games. The Sacred Stones was even easier than its predecessor. Then came Radiant Dawn, which brought back the difficulty in full force. (Of course, the gamers complained about that, too.)
A lot of people hated Metroid Fusion for giving you the location of your next destination and closing off alternate routes, claiming that it destroyed the series's emphasis on exploration. Gamespot famously deducted points from Metroid Prime 3 because the controls were too good and thus the game was "too easy".
- People complained about Super Metroid back in the day, saying the inclusion of an automap feature was a travesty against everything Metroid was about.
The Legend Of Zelda franchise has never been the same in terms of difficulty since its transition to 3-D. The series added more and more interesting puzzles but included easier combat, fewer traps, and less dangerous Boss Battles as part of the deal.
- The Legend of Zelda: a Link to the Past started the trend by actually showing you where the dungeons are instead of leaving you to go find them yourself. Also, one of the more difficult challenges in doing a 000 game is that you cannot Save and Quit (this requirement was removed in the GBA port), but even without that requirement it takes a whole lot more skill to do that in the two NES games. Once the 3D installments rolled around it got even easier to do a 000 game.
Bioshock gets criticised a lot for the Vita-Chambers. Whenever you die, you respawn nearby without penalty, so even a tough enemy like a Big Daddy can be worn down over several "lives", removing almost all challenge and a lot of scariness from the game. A patch added the option to disable the chambers, making it much harder.
- While System Shock 2, which Bioshock is the spiritual sequel of, had resurrection chambers the difference was that there was only one on each level and you had to find and activate it first.
When Halo 3 isn't being bashed for gameplay modifications or whatever, it's being bashed because it's too easy. The developers have freely admitted that Easy difficulty is purposely developed so that "my grandma can complete the game if she wants". However, try it on Legendary.
- While still being a challenge, Legendary in Halo 3 in itself is still toned down compared to Legendary in Halo 2. There are only, at best, a handful of Sniper Jackals in the entire game of Halo 3 and, while the Brutes are significantly improved from 2 to 3, the Brutes are not even close to being a replacement for how fierce and challenging the Elites could be.
It is not recommended to play Dead Space on any difficulty lower than Hard.
After several games which gradually raised the difficulty and complexity, culminating with the Nintendo Hard Sim City 4, Sim City Societies toned down the difficulty, removed the zoning system, and instead replaced it with a social influence system that would determine whether your city will be made of slums or crystal spires. Here's a hint: Sim City 4 was the highest ranked game of the entire series. Now figure out the rest.
Though the Baldurs Gate and Neverwinter Nights series weren't ever really seen as presenting killer difficulty compared to other companies' RPGs, recent Bioware franchises like Knights Of The Old Republic, Jade Empire and Mass Effect have vastly "streamlined" combat and shorter, much more linear (and repetitive) campaigns that older fans complain are a cash-in on the genre and give less bang for the buck.
Final Fantasy Mystic Quest was specifically designed for newcomers to the roleplaying-game genre. Cue hardcore Final Fantasy fans lynching it for being too easy and short.
- In the same vein, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles was bashed for, among other things, ease of play, which contrasted directly the much-hyped difficulty of use. It's not a hard game by any stretch of the imagination, but it's not supposed to be.
Kingdom Hearts 2 got this type of criticism because of its simple reaction commands and the addition of Drive forms, and the almost total removal of any platforming or puzzles whatsoever.
One third of the complaints about Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes were that the addition of the tranquilizer gun and first-person aiming made the game too easy. The other two-thirds were about the voice acting and cutscene changes.
In the MMORPG genre, a vocal minority loathe World Of Warcraft because, compared to other MMORPGs of the time, it was too easy to grind to level 70, the penalties for dying were a pittance, it was too easy to gain gear (via PVP), etc.
- The death penalties for City Of Heroes are considered to be even easier, except that their players liked it that way. Lately there have been complaints that the game is getting too easy as the already weak penalties have been reduced to near irrelevance; however, with the introduction of the mission editor in issue 14, players who like a challenge will be able to play (and create) missions as difficult as they like, to the point of creating new enemy groups which make Malta and Knives of Artemis look like wimps.
- In the latest WoW expansion, the complaining has reached new heights because Blizzard intentionally made the starting raids much easier than was the norm in the original game and first expansion. This was intended to improve accessibility - e.g. - that is, exemplis grati - that is, in example, they want as many people as possible to experience raid content... wait, what? Sorry, I don't know English, ignore me. Partly averted in that hardcore players can attempt the raid achievements which require a great deal more skill and occasionally award better gear, and the devs have promised more difficult raids in future content patches.
- Of course, now 3.1 is out, and a week later guilds have cleared all new content, and even scored a few "hard-mode" kills. There is no way for Blizzard to please their fanbase.
  - Mostly due to the fact that Blizzard is specifically trying to gather an Unpleasable Fanbase. Instead of focusing on a specific niche (which all good online RP Gs should do) they try to make everyone happy, which ultimately makes no one happy.
  - It seems to be working pretty well for them so far. Other online games only try to carve out a niche BECAUSE World Of Warcraft does well with their strategy of going for everyone. They may complain, but they keep coming back for more.
Hype Backlash aside, a common complaint against Fable was that it was extremely easy. This was largely due to you being able to carry an infinite number of health potions (which instantly restore your health to full), and health potions being really cheap to buy, resulting in it being virtually impossible for anything (even the major bosses) to kill you as long as you just kept mashing that "drink potion" key.
- This was extended even further with Fable II. It is completely impossible to die. Losing all of your health merely results in scarring. And of course, you can carry an infinite number of health potions and resurrection phials (still very cheap).
Many longtime fans of the Rainbow Six series complain about the series' shift from hardcore "one-shot kill" tactical shooters to standard First Person Shooter action games, starting with Rainbow Six: Lockdown and solidified in Rainbow Six: Vegas.
- R6V was purposely "stream-lined" to reduce the annoyance of being killed with one well-placed shot, but keep the same penalties for poor tactics, requiring the player to advance cautiously rather than run and gun (which still results in death in about two to three seconds.)
Devil May Cry 2 was criticized for a lot of design choices, the too-easy fights being just one of many.
- Devil May Cry 4 is being criticised by long-time fans of the series due its significantly lower difficulty compared to the third game, not exactly helped by Nero's Devil Bringer, who without it is almost completely useless.
La Mulana is a Take That against newer generations of games; the manual calls anyone used to playing newer games a wuss.
When Guitar Hero: World Tour's track list was announced, fans complained that there was no song on par with "Through The Fire and The Flames". Fan backlash and flame wars are expected as those fans realize that "Satch Boogie" is not on that level, and that's the only really hard song in the game.
The Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune series had its Story Mode toned down in difficulty for its third installment. The more hardcore players complained that getting undefeated status in Story Mode is too easy now.
The remakes of Final Fantasy I had purists complaining about hits being redirected to live enemies if they targeted enemies that had just died; in the original, they would have automatically missed.
Gungrave and Nightshade got this, as their challenge was mainly based around getting a high score or equivalent, and they were fairly easy if you wanted to just charge through to the end. Oddly, the more traditionally difficult Gungrave: Overdose and Shinobi instead get complaints about being too hard.
The Rhythm Game DJ MAX Portable Black Square, which was just released this week, has been getting heat for a particularly game-breaking feature: if you press at the right time, but with the wrong button, you'll still get 100% of the judgment and 80% of the points as long as the note you "hit" was on the same side as the button you pressed. This troper, who plays for judgment, is absolutely not pleased, as even Guitar Hero and Rock Band, which have reputations among Bemani fans as casual games, don't do this, and this feature is analagous to grading a spelling test and giving a student full credit for misspelling a word but having the right number of letters in it.
Any Shoot Em Up with unlimited continues will get this complaint from non-hardcore fans of the genre. And how about some Its Short So It Sucks too, for some salt in the wound?
Old fans in particular often blame Crystal Dynamics' Tomb Raider games of being too easy and straight-forward in comparison to the often expansive and difficult Core Design games.
Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney gets complaints for its dumbed-down difficulty, with some players being able to beat the entire game while only being penalized once or twice.
The latest Prince Of Persia game has also been criticized for being very easy, as the companion saves you from any death while platforming or fighting, though you're brought back at the beginning of whatever platforming, or after the enemy regains a good chunk of health. For all intents and purposes, this means that the game establishes checkpoints at every safe platform, rather than forcing you to go back to some arbitrary checkpoint and waste time redoing five minutes or so of platforming just to get back to where you were before.
- Or, as the developers said, requiring you to rewind to just before the point of mistake, which allowed them to make much longer chains of platforming action instead of being restricted to the ten seconds from the Sands of Time trilogy.
Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories has been criticized for being somewhat easy, as on many boss fights against enemies with decks (for example, the Organization members), the player can repeatedly dodge the boss's sleights (which remove one card from the deck) to drain the boss' card reserves. Eventually, the boss will be unable to make more than a few attacks without reloading, will hardly ever use any of the sleights, and most likely will have used up its Enemy Cards, so it will be relatively easy pickings.
- Not to mention the fact that your deck was never shuffled. Why is this noteworthy? Because you can stack it so that you only have to mash the buttons to pull out sleight after sleight, during some of which you are invincible, then once your deck is badly depleted via sleight depletion, reload it with an Elixir (which reloads used cards as well). Ouch.
Part of the backlash for newer Tetris games comes from infinite spin, then there's the purists of older versions of Tetris that denounce the piece generator in newer versions, saying that surviving a wave of S and Z pieces and going 50 pieces without an I piece is what Tetris is all about.
- Tetris: The Grand Master 3 implements floor kicks, which allow an I block on a flat surface to rotate upright, allowing it to more easily slip into holes one block wide. This feature was not in TGM3's predecessors, which has led some players to believe that this ruins the challenge of the TGM series.
This was a major complaint levelled at Leisure Suit Larry 5: Passionate Patti Does A Little Undercover Work: The designer's intention was to make the game play more like an interactive cartoon rather than a complicated adventure game, and make sure as many people as possible finish the game, therefore removing old Sierra adventure game standards such as death or Unwinnable situations. Despite Larry 5 being, for these reasons alone, significantly better than the games that preceded it in this troper's opinion, adventure game fans cried foul as their beloved genre was being dumbed down for the masses.
Do Tamagotchis count? No, seriously. The old ones from the mid-90s were fairly brutal if you wanted to get the best characters. The gen.1 would give you the "average" character if you made a single mistake over the course of the first 7 days, including waiting longer than one minute to turn out the lights when it went to sleep, or allowing the hunger/happiness meters to get any lower than 3/4. Then came the Angelgotch, which was nearly impossible to not get the best character on, unless you literally ignored it for two days at a time. The new Tamagotchi connections are better than angelgotch, but they still place almost no emphasis on good care - the manual no longer even classifies characters as being well or poorly taken care of. All the emphasis is on gimmicks, new features, and interaction with the website. Boo hoo.
According to TheGameOverthinker, Nintendo had just recently patented a new technology that would give hints to players who are apparently stuck in a game and allow gamers to bypass difficult sections altogether, playing them as semi-cutscenes instead. Cue the whining.
Magic The Gathering started a practice of printing italicized rules text on cards when space permitted, making it slightly easier to actually play the game without having a rulebook handy. Of course, hardcores who already know all the rules hate it. Wizards of the Coast even poked fun at its fanbase in a joke set: Duh
Some programmers look down on Visual Basic because it's easier to create working programs in compared to the likes of C, C++, and Java.
- This is nothing compared to the waves of contempt that HyperCard inspired in its day.
Wario Land and Wario Ware games often fall into this gap as well as Its Short So It Sucks, due to being generally short games that reward 100% completion more than a main mode. In the case of Wario Ware, this is likely because the gameplay is deliberately kept simple as part of the series premise, and due to the fact the first run through only requires you to play through the first micro game set difficulty level to move on to another. For Wario Land, it's probably because of the health set up being extremely generous towards the player (aka about ten heart points to complete invincibility). Which completely ignores that both series have some quite difficult bonus challenges and secrets.
Nintendo Power's only complaint about Klonoa was that it was a bit easier... because Klonoa had one more heart than in the original version.
Final Fantasy XI sometimes has its veteran players complain that recent expansions have made the game too easy. Of course, the recent expansions have only brought the game somewhat into line with modern MMO standards for ease of play and soloability, and the game is still an epic time sink for grinding and camping Notorious Monsters, among other things.