Easy Mode Mockery why?

Why does anyone who play the game on easy mode gets mocked mercilessly by the game and the creators? Not all of us are challenge gamers who play the game 7000 hrs to get this prize. Why do they always do this?

You mean why do they rarely do this? Most games don't have this.

Most probably because they're an ass...especially with developers, since it's not that common of a trope to appear, I mean, even Yahtzee disagree with this practice...

I think that those devs are highly believe in the principle of Earn Your Fun, and that, well...they probably don't give a damn about those who can't play that much...

For the players...I guess it's about the combination between their massive dedication and disdain on other's lack of dedication or something like that...which is ironic, since they must have once being a newbie...then again, go long enough and time'll change people...

edited 7th Feb '11 8:06:10 PM by onyhow

Give me cute or give me...something?

...I wish my game took 7000 hours to complete. I hate beating a game so fast and easily and then realize theres no other games to buy anymore because all the other ones are even easier and shorter...and they cost just as much as the fun games (read: long playtime + difficulty to further extend playtime).

As for why Easy-Mode Mockery...this does a pretty good job explaining it.

edited 7th Feb '11 8:18:57 PM by Signed

"Every opinion that isn't mine is subjected to Your Mileage May Vary."

Still not an excuse to treat the player like a lesser person.

By the way, why is there not a Hard Mode Mockery? Just curious.

edited 7th Feb '11 8:18:43 PM by MrPastry

It's more frustrating waiting for the asskicking than the asskicking itself.

Many of these games tend to be super hard. As in, they are played just for the challenge. Therefore, playing it not for the challenge is seen as Completely Missing The Point.

At any rate, I find it just humorous when this happens. I have a good guffaw, and don't take it seriously.

One of my few regrets about being born female is the inability to grow a handlebar mustache. -Landstander

@G.G

Are you bugged by any example in particular?

Put me in motion, drink the potion, use the lotion, drain the ocean, cause commotion, fake devotion, entertain a notion, be Nova Scotian

@Mr Pastry: I seem to recall the unreleased Penn & Teller game (the same one from which Desert Bus hails) did have a Hard Mode Mockery, where "Impossible" was literally impossible and then made fun of you for picking it.

I'd totally make a hard mode mockery, though. Everything would look just a little bit more phallic and NP Cs would always ask the hero if he was compensating for something, and/or ask him why he spent so much time working on his skills in somewhat useless areas.

"Proto-Indo-European makes the damnedest words related. It's great. It's the Kevin Bacon of etymology." ~Madrugada

Well, in a similar vein, beating the hell temple in La Mulana "rewards" you with a picture of the main character in a tight and revealing swimsuit. Haven't seen many outright mockeries, though.

edited 7th Feb '11 8:44:10 PM by Deathonabun

One of my few regrets about being born female is the inability to grow a handlebar mustache. -Landstander

Mega Man 9 disables achievements if you play on any of the pay-to-unlock harder modes.

On a different note, I like Gunstar Super Heroes's approach to Easy Mode Mockery. On Easy Mode, the plotline is really simple: bad guys are taking over the world and you have to kick their asses. On the higher modes, the tone of the dialogue and plot gets more detailed and serious. Then again, this being a run-n-gun, playing for the plot is dismissed by many as Completely Missing The Point.

edited 8th Feb '11 12:39:50 AM by TsundeRay

http://twitter.com/raydere | http://raydere.tumblr.com

That seems backwards. I've often seen easy mode described as being for people that are only interested in the plot, and people that are playing on difficulties above normal likely have already seen the plot on normal and/or don't care in the first place

It depends on the game.

For example I Wanna Be The Guy actually did have an "Easy Mode" at one point. Which killed the character on the title screen to save you the bother of even playing the game. That form of Easy-Mode Mockery is understandable because the game was meant to be infuriantingly hard and having an actual easy mode would of killed the point.

edited 8th Feb '11 12:54:24 AM by PippingFool

I'm having to learn to pay the price

A good example of Easy-Mode Mockery would probobly be Devil May Cry 3: Easy mode is unlocked when you die enough many times. Capcom basicly saying "yeah, you're not man enough, just take the easy mode."

But seriously, I see this trope used very rarely. And as already stated, the rare instance it is used are in games that are often notoriously hard on any other difficulty than "Easy."

Sonic hates SOPA

I PLAY MEGA MAN ZERO 4 ON EASY.

THAT'S RIGHT CAPCOM, I DON'T WANNA BE ONE-SHOTTED BY SOME PUSSY SPIKES.

But you can equip chips that lets you survive spikes in that game...pretty early too.

edited 8th Feb '11 2:30:48 AM by Signed

"Every opinion that isn't mine is subjected to Your Mileage May Vary."

Here's an example that I myself think is batshit stupid:

Streets Of Rage 3. On Easy difficulty, the game ends after 5 stages, as opposed to allowing you to continue to the next 3. Okay, standard fare, right?

The Fridge Horror kicks in when you realize: In the North American version, Easy is equivalent to the Japanese version's Normal—all the difficulties are inflated by one level. In other words, YOU GET PUNISHED FOR PLAYING ON WHAT THE JAPANESE VERSION CONSIDERS NORMAL DIFFICULTY.

In fact, in the Japanese version, if you pick Easy (which has no equivalent in the North American verison, not even a cheat-code-enabled "Very Easy" difficulty like in SoR2), the game still allows you to complete all 8 stages. -.-

edited 8th Feb '11 2:40:15 AM by TsundeRay

http://twitter.com/raydere | http://raydere.tumblr.com

Is that shit for real, Tsundere?

And I thought Japan was the original Challenge Gamer country.

Sonic hates SOPA

There are examples of Easy-Mode Mockery on both sides of the pond, just that it seems to be a tradition in more Japanese franchises than Western ones.

I think visual cues of Easy-Mode Mockery can prevent Small Name, Big Ego players from trying to pass off a Beginner Mode run as a superplay, which is good in my book. Actual players of such games can usually tell at first glance which mode the game is on from the mechanics but laypeople tend to take claims of MAXIMUM DIFFICULTY SETTING at face value.

I actually enjoy easy mode mockery. Partially because it keeps me on the straight and narrow, telling me to my face what a failure of a gamer i am if i play on easy. Heh.

When i grew up i thought i was in the majority as a Challenge Gamer. I wanted to earn my fun right away. What's the point of a story if it goes "The knight wanted to save the princess. The knight one-shotted the dragon. The knight saved the princess."?

But i've met tons of people that, whenever given the chance, turn on invincibility or crank the difficulty down to Easier Than Easy. I don't get it. That's not entertainment. To me i feel like these people are missing out: By taking the paved road they're shortening their travel time and never seeing all the beautiful landmarks. These games are MADE to challenge you on some level, be it your intellect or your reflexes or both. So if you skip all that challenge over your not really experiencing them the way they where meant to be played.

Look at the term we use when we complete a game. We say we "Beat" the game. We don't "Beat" movies when we finished watching them. We don't "Beat" a book when we've read it. Completeing a game requires skill, and it requires you to learn the rules and mechanics of it.

There are people that will say that those that shoot for higher difficulties are just doing it to try and prove they're better. Maybe on some level that's true. But when that Big Bad lays defeated and that world gets saved it wasn't the character that did it. It was you. That's the beauty of video games. They let the player drink in a small taste of that achievement and satisfaction that just can't be expressed to an audience through passive media.

That's why Easy-Mode Mockery exists. No challenge, no satisfaction. No game.

That. I'm not really a Challenge Gamer and suck at competitive gaming(Starcraft melee, or just Pv P gaming in general) because my reflex suck and I lost attention too easily but I still like my game to be somewhat challenging(excluding some casual games which I play to relax). That's why I always play at at least Normal difficulty and if that is too easy for me I will turn up the difficulty. The only time I even touch Easy difficulty is when the game is too boring for me to put any effort in it and for most of the times it's mean I will stop playing that game soon anyway because I have lost interest in it.

Not to mention, from what I know, games with Easy-Mode Mockery are rare and most of them are games known for their difficulty, they are made to be HARD, playing it on easy seem ridiculously Completely Missing The Point to me. It's like watching Alien and expecting it to be a kid movie because it has cute alien in it or something.

edited 8th Feb '11 7:26:57 AM by Koujin

The only thing this quote explains is that Itagaki is an ass. But that's nothing new.

Easy-Mode Mockery is one of the most idiotic things I ever saw. It basically tells you: "You are not supposed to play on easy mode." This, however, raises the question why there is an easy mode in the first place. It doesn't even remotely make sense. If the game is supposed to be Nintendo Hard, then they shouldn't include an easy mode.

edited 8th Feb '11 7:31:04 AM by Nyarly

People aren't as awful as the internet makes them out to be.

I've beaten games on the hardest difficulty, had the top ranks out of all my friends in modern warfare 1 and 2 and I can normally beat anyone on any console game. I prefer to play on easy. Beating games on the hardest difficulty is normally not any more challenging, they just scale it up. MW 2 is the best example of that. The only difference between veteran and easy is how much time you spend hiding behind cover. That's not fun or engaging. If the only thing a harder mode is going to add is time I couldn't really care less.

Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?

Easy-Mode Mockery really rubs me the wrong way. As long as they're enjoying the game, does it really matter if they're using EASY MODO? It strikes me as them trying to tell the player the "correct" way to play the game, which is stupid.

Here's my hypothesis:

Playing a game on hard difficulty implies mastery of the game. Mastery of, and hence time and effort spent playing the game should be rewarded, because that's how psychology works. Therefore there must be an incentive for playing the harder difficulties. Taken to its extreme, this means that playing the easy mode should be punished, in order to push the player to play the harder difficulties. Hence trope.

The problem with Easy-Mode Mockery is that it implies that the player already has the set of reflexes, muscle memory, and genre savvy to eventually perform in the harder difficulties, and that the player either purposely chose the easier difficulty not to be challenged (And That's Terrible because...elitism?) or has the potential to reach the higher difficulty playing state. This is not the case sometimes; not everyone has the patience and time to hone their 1337 gamer skillz.

This is fine for intentionally hard games, however, like IWBTG and indie games because a green player is not going to browse the internet for some obscure game unless they're looking for a challenge. In the case of mainstream games however, isn't the whole point of having an easy mode to open the game up to a wider audience, anyway? I personally don't agree with this trope for normal difficulty games. You basically put a trap for new players when you basically just wanted a hard game. If it's a hard game, why put an "easy" mode in the first place? Just have normal and hard, or put rewards for harder difficulty completion. No need to insult the player that *gasp* paid you for the game.

...Let us in...

I have a plan for a relatively ambitious game, which would have multiple difficulty levels, some of which are "equal." The lowest difficulty would have simple enemy AI and straight-forward puzzle hints, whereas the highest difficulties would have much more complex AI for most enemies, and puzzle hints buried in story-line information.

Would sacrificing the depth of story for "easier" puzzles, and pointing this out blatantly to the player at several points, count as this, or no?

Sakamoto demands an explanation for this shit.