"It's Easy, so It Sucks" - is this a norm among video game players?

To put it simply, no.

You have to understand that what you see posted on the internet is not representative of most people. A lot of people complain on the internet about easy games but we've been shown time and time again that this isn't necessarily a dealbreaker for the vast majority of people. In fact I would say that people who aren't dedicated hobbyists aren't going to want to play a game where they can't make progress and see everything.

The Souls series is an outlier and I'm not sure how it's taken off the way it was apparently. I would say that it does prove that a considerable amount of people do want more punishing, challenging games, but even still a lot of people don't care for them.

For my own money, an easy game is not necessarily a bad one, but I will say there is a lot to the idea of Difficult, but Awesome. That is to say, a fair but genuinely challenging game gives you a much greater sense of reward and satisfaction because your victories actually mean something. It's also something that has a lot of opportunities to tie the story and gameplay of a game together, but that's another subject.

edited 23rd Mar '16 9:49:37 AM by wehrmacht

You (OP) should probably post in Trope Repair Shop or Ask the Tropers instead if you wanna argue the definition or use of a trope.

Serious mode, I don't see this except when it's a hard game series and the veterans are complaining about an easy or more accessible sequel.

edited 23rd Mar '16 10:00:17 AM by Malco

My DA account... I draw stuff sometimes!

Related note, 1% rule. It would stand to logic for the minority that feels it's all too easy to express discontent while the majority who has no interest in that has no need to say anything.

...the obvious state of the game industry notwithstanding. Plenty of gamers complain about cliches and patterns among modern games, but while these games continue to profit, those opinions are clearly in a minority.

Not to say any of these stances are necessarily right or wrong, of course.

edited 23rd Mar '16 10:02:46 AM by VutherA

To be fair, the difficulty curve has always been a thorny issue since the age of atari, There are few games that can truly be considered fair and balanced, and almost always easily swing between too easy and too hard. The fact that it's also YMMV Also makes the issue a difficult one to argue.

Apocalypse: Dirge Of Swans.

I think as the demographic expands, more catering is required. Obviously you don't want to make your game unwinnable in too many situations, and you want to avoid Fake Difficulty at all costs. Better for that Fake Difficulty to be on the easy spectrum anyway.

Because those who aren't hardcore gamers won't play a game that is really difficult. One of my former Livejournal friends asked for recommendations on SNES and N64 games to play, and I suggested stuff like Mega Man X and Super Castlevania IV, which she turned down because they looked too difficult for her.

Never mind that you're almost never going to be instantly good at a game series unless you are a seasoned vet at it.

You know, I have to wonder why Pit is obsessed with this site. It’s gonna ruin his life!

I would say there's a spectrum: You've got people who like games with no actual difficulty whatsoever ("zen" games, creative toys, some casual games), people who want some challenge without it being either too easy or too frustrating and people who take insane levels of challenge as a badge of pride, with or without the added side effect of looking down on people who don't like the same as them.

I think it's also that people are misusing the term "easy" for the term "boring".

For example, Kirby games are rather easy and simplistic in mechanics, but a lot of people outside thir target age group absolutely adore these games because they are fun and well designed.

Other games might be just as easy, but the mechanics are just not as fun or as satisfying to play with and leave no impact. So not only do you get an unsatisfying experience, but a short one.

I'm having to learn to pay the price

Easy all depends on your perspective.

With my boyfriend, if you put him in front of an RPG and say "Fire works well against shields, ice against armor, lightning against flesh" he's just going to stare at you blankly. Sure, he has the capacity to understand it, but he doesn't have the drive to decide which character does what type of damage to affect which type of enemy. It is not something he's interested in.

Put him in front of a FPS that requires some twitch reflexes and he's a beast. Put me on the same and I'll be asking you how I jump while I'm getting blasted repeatedly.

I haven't played an RPG that is a genuine challenge to me in a while, and I'm fine with that. Playing RP Gs is like reading a book that I can stand in the middle of and affect the story to my satisfaction, not a practice in Min-Maxing and building the most godly character.

Every gamer wants something specific, so this is a severe YMMV situation.

I also would love to know why fans of the super-hard games I've mentioned in the OP insist in defending their games as "they aren't that hard".

Look, you can vomit on me all the tripe you want about how Touhou is super generous with lives and therefore easy for a Bullet Hell; you're not going to ever convince me that Touhou is easy. Not even its fangames, which are all also tailor-made for the masochistic Challenge Gamer sort that the main games cater to.

You realize that difficulty is subjective to begin with right? The Souls games are mostly only difficult in the beginning when you don't know what you're doing. Once you understand how you should be playing the game becomes much more straightforward.

I'm really not convinced, because of how imprecise your claim is. "Not knowing what to do" can pretty much extend itself for the entire game due to bosses.

It means that Dark Souls is an unusual game which requires the player to cultivate a different playstyle from most games. It is very punishing, the control scheme is "delayed" to make you commit to your actions rather than just spamming buttons, etc. The game is also limited in the guidance it offers, a lot of NPC's will give you advice but players are used to having everything be laid out for them in impossible-to-miss ways. However, working within that framework isn't that difficult, most people who play one Souls game usually find the others much less difficult. Not to say there aren't legitimately difficult moments/areas/bosses but the difficulty of Dark Souls has always been completely overblown, not helped by Namco-Bandai's insistence on playing up its difficulty for marketing purposes.

Or I mean, someone can find them legitimately difficult, but like I said, difficulty is subjective. Some bosses in the Souls series I find to be relatively simple to fight while others consider them really really hard (Artorias and Alonne).

edited 24th Mar '16 1:38:09 PM by wehrmacht

There's easy and then there's TOO easy. For instance, you mentioned Pokémon. I was fine with the difficulty level of these games, until I played X and realized I was outleveling every Gym Leader without even trying. That game was less easy and more absolute cakewalk, which definitely hurt my enjoyment of it. The majority of games are played because people want adventure, a challenge, a change of pace from their real-life routine. But if the game doesn't resist you in any way, if you don't even need to think about what you're doing, then it fails its role as help to escapism.

Second, people tend to associate "easy" with "massive hand-holding". It generally spectacularly breaks the flow of a game with constant pop-ups or dialogue full of command prompts that doesn't exactly help with immersion, and more importantly no one wants to be treated like a five-year old. Not even (or rather especially not) actual five-year old kids. A lot of games have been guilty of this in more recent gens, especially at Nintendo's.

I very much believe that challenge is just one potential core that a video game may have; offhand, story and exploration or escapism are two others that come to mind.

I'm not sure that I agree: look at those who enjoy "walking simulators", for example—they seem quite happy with games that present minimal, if any, challenge.

Even then, I'd argue that what constitutes "too easy" is very much subjective: what's "too easy" for one person might be "just right", or even "too difficult", for another, I believe.

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Agreed. Good Points.

Not everyone is a player who can play hard games in their sleep.

"Eratoeir is a Gangsta."

Or wants/is willing to put up the effort.

But apparently certain members of a certain fanbase have absolutely no concern for that. All of the games made with that thematic at the very least have erratic cheating AI, and at worst are Nintendo Hard nightmares comparable to Battletoads.

edited 25th Mar '16 4:58:15 PM by AngelG55th

I don't understand why you're so upset by this. Just like a game being too easy is subjective, a game being too hard is the same. If it's too overwhelmingly challenging for you than maybe you're not quite part of the target audience.

Just as we shouldn't criticize people for wanting a game that isn't frustratingly difficult, we shouldn't talk down fans of games that go out of their way to be exactly that.

Complaint thread. Zapping.

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