How can something Difficult But Awesome be a Game Breaker?

A Game-Breaker is defined as something that automatically makes the game incredibly easy. Difficult, but Awesome is defined as something that requires skill to be effective.

Now, here's the contradiction: any game becomes super-easy once you practice it long enough, and if you're using a Difficult, but Awesome character, it requires a lot of time and practice to play that character right.

The problem is that there are some things classified as Difficult, but Awesome that are also classified as Game Breakers as well. Does anyone see the problem here?

I don't see a inherent contradiction. A Game-Breaker doesn't have to be easy to get. It's defined by the effect it has — making playing the game once you have it extremely non-challenging. So something that's difficult to get, but that has that effect on the remainder of the game once you get it could be both Difficult, but Awesome and a Game-Breaker. For instance, in Chess, if you managed to get three of your pawns all the way across the board, and promoted them Queens so that you have four queens on the board, that would be a Game-Breaker. It's far from easy to do, though, so it's also Difficult, but Awesome.

edited 27th Jul '14 1:43:42 PM by Madrugada

Plus, Game-Breaker is dependent upon a player's skill (it's YMMV for that reason) so depending upon the player's ability a game mechanic that is objectively Difficult, but Awesome may not be that difficult for some players.

Basically correct. A Game-Breaker is about game balancing, a particular feature that overshadows any and all other features in terms of high power without, or very small, Necessary Drawback (ie rarity, combo chain, resource management, etc). Difficult, but Awesome is a particular feature that is powerful and useful but requires a particular chain of events to be utilized properly. One does not exclude the other inherently but ease of use IS one (not the only) factor to consider with a Game-Breaker.

Imagine a fighting game. There is a character that is very hard to play, but possesses a combo that, once started, there is nothing the opposition can do other than hope that the player using the combo messes up. No matter how difficult it is to avoid messing up at this combo, you're still separating success from the actual skill of one of the players. Despite the difficulty of this combo, it is still a complete and total game breaker.

Good example. Others might be given but I don't think they'd be any better.