Is difficulty a serious problem for you in games?

[CrimsonBlaze]

I'd have to say that difficulty was always "just right" for the type of games that I played.

For most games in which I am introduced to a series, I usually go on the Medium difficulty; if I feel like restarting the game, I usually go up a difficulty.

For most shooters, which have a notoriously short campaign, I usually go on the Hard difficulty; this way, I need to take a more tactical or stealthy approach to complete and make the campaign feel longer and more fulfilling.

 

[Fireaxe]

I usually play Normal+1 difficulty, don't find much I can't handle pretty easily.

 

[scorptatious]

Generally, I can get through most games I play. Some I tend to struggle with more than others, but I persevere and get through them all the same.

The one exception would be the original Rayman for the PS1.

Dear god, there is so much to be said about this game. It's probably one of the most stressful and frustrating games I have ever played.

The difficulty curve spikes very early on and it only gets worse from then on. Lives and continues are handled in a way that essentially makes you want to get through most levels without fucking up too much. Otherwise, you're not going to have enough to get through the really tough ones. So if you're like me, there's going to be a lot of saving and reloading involved.

Most of these levels can last quite a long time, and the level design becomes incredibly dickish by having you go through several sections in which one tiny mistake costs you a life.

I could deal with all that if it weren't for the fact that had to rescue EVERY. SINGLE. GODDAMNED electoon cage in the game before you can access the final level. A lot of these cages are very well hidden in a way that they won't appear unless you move, crouch, or jump in a VERY specific spot. I swear, half of these feel like they require a guide to find.
And even if you do figure out where all these cages are, you won't be able to reach some of them until Rayman learns a special ability later on.

This essentially means that you have to repeat ENTIRE levels over again just to get those electoons you missed because Rayman didn't have the mental capacity to RUN or GRAB ONTO LEDGES at the time. And this only adds to the problems I mentioned above.

It got to the point to where the game just stopped being fun and I ended up dreading having to pick up and play the game again. Eventually, I just stopped after beating Space Mama and using up a continue.

I enjoy a challenge in games. But I feel there's a fine line between "challenging" and "bullshit". And Rayman veers too far towards the latter.

I will admit though, I do like the art style and the music is phenomenal.

 

[Maximum Bert]

I don't find any game challenging when guides exist. However for that reason I don't use guides and do get stuck often in games. I don't see it as a problem since I can cheat my way out, but I like to beat games on my own.

I think gaming is a lot less about skill and more about perseverance, I can't beat the games I could as a kid when I had less responsibilities and fewer games to play.

True to an extent but guides will only help you so far in games where dexterity, accuracy and timing is key or if the game is directly competitive i.e facing another player. But yeah for things like most RPGs guides can make them very easy or at least a lot easier.

I generally dont have a problem with difficulty most of the time I just play on the standard setting and only crank it up if I really feel the need to. I must admit though I would rather breeze through a game than get stuck on a hard as nails section for hours. I rarely get any sense of satisfaction from beating a difficult section that has kicked my arse usually I just think thank f*** thats over with, overcoming difficulty in games means nothing to me if im not enjoying the game as I just see it as a pointless challenge especially now when I dont have much time to play da video games.

 

[TehCookie]

I don't find any game challenging when guides exist. However for that reason I don't use guides and do get stuck often in games. I don't see it as a problem since I can cheat my way out, but I like to beat games on my own.

I think gaming is a lot less about skill and more about perseverance, I can't beat the games I could as a kid when I had less responsibilities and fewer games to play.

True to an extent but guides will only help you so far in games where dexterity, accuracy and timing is key or if the game is directly competitive i.e facing another player. But yeah for things like most RPGs guides can make them very easy or at least a lot easier.

If you can't press buttons that's a whole different issue than the game being difficult. No guide will be able to teach me how to aim with a controller, but that's not a game being difficult that's me being terrible.

I don't understand how you can get stuck in a competitive game, but I still find watching them to be helpful. A majority of map based ones like shooters I find it easier to memorize the map just watching than playing myself since when I play I'm more focused on shooting others than watching for spawn points or popular camping spots. In fighters you can learn combos, or in my case learning that you can block (and none of my friends have yet to figure out how >). Plenty of competitive games also have strategies you can look up.

Youtube also makes a wonderful guide that can show you timings, techniques in action games, or if you paw attention and notice things you didn't before like audio or visual cues. Either that or when I play I just have to narrow of a focus and watching others helps me see the broad picture and think outside the box. Even if you can't perfectly mimic the great player, it's usually good enough to pass the challenge.

 

[Timmaaaah]

Haven't had a hard time finishing games since before the first Halo came out... That was the first shooter that I beat on a decent difficulty easily as hell and since then it's felt like only watching half a film if I don't

 

[Kingjackl]

It's only really an issue with games that are unfairly difficult. You know, over-reliance on luck, overpowered bosses, cheap enemies, unfair spikes.

Right now, I'm playing XCOM: Enemy Within and having the problem I'm sure a lot of people are having where Normal difficulty is too easy and Classic difficulty is too hard. It's not a serious issue, but it emphasizes how hard difficulty can be to get right in such a way that everyone is covered for.

 

[MHR]

I have to really think about this. I'm not sure it counts if 80% of what you play is a shooter. With how many thousands of hours I've put into shooters anyone would be good at them. But for other types of games, I'm pretty good at those too. I'd say the times I find a game not hard enough outweigh the times I find a game too hard.

I play a lot of shooters, and generally if shooting things makes them dead, I rip it apart. I played Serious Sam on Serious difficulty on the last level, the one that lasts almost a complete hour through THE valley of darkness fighting an endless river of bad guys, at the end of which is a relatively dangerous boss, and finished it all on the FIRST attempt without dying. Got an achievement for that. To be fair I've done the level a few times on other difficulties, I only did it once on the serious difficulty.

I thought Bioshock infinite on the hardest difficulty was still too easy, though mostly because enemies refused to ever charge you if you take cover in certain areas. Abusing that can kind of sedate it. The other Bioshocks I played on hard and still managed to keep max money, a F ton of ammos, and very rarely die.

In Team Fortress 2 I manage to regularly stomp everyone who isn't a hyper-elite competitive player

Games like Fallout 3/NV I can turn up the difficulty and utilize safe "granny" strats and almost never die. Basically for such types of RPGs or minecraft or Don't Starve or anything where you can control when and how you fight, if patience is something you have in large abundance you'll do well.

But I'm going to have to think about other games. Difficulty can vary wildly. I don't really play RTSs because the level of effort and practice needed to complete higher difficulties can be absurd. I still play the ancient Total Annihilation but the AI in that game is pretty pathetic and if you pause to issue commands often, you'll outmaneuver it easily.

I don't play fighting games. I hate most of them in fact. They take quite a bit of practice to get good at, and frankly they don't keep me interested enough to care. It's just 2 dudes just fighting eachother the whole time. Booooring. Needless to say the higher difficulties will thrash me.

I'm going to agree with what others are saying about whether a game interests you. If you don't think a game is any fun, you're not going to stick around to try and get good at it, though there's a fine line between a game being genuinely uninteresting and a game you don't want to play BECAUSE it stomps you making you rage and quit it.

Now that I look at my steam list, it seems I play 90% shooters these days.... I thought I was a bit more varied than that, but apparently not. Still, I've played more than my share of many types of games and I don't consider them to be huge problems usually.

 

[Flatfrog]

I don't mind difficulty. What I hate is replaying long, easy sections to get to the one difficult bit. It drives me crazy when games don't allow you to save or have long stretches between save points. The worst culprit is strategy games, where a level may last half an hour before throwing one last wave of next-to-impossible enemies at you.

I always thought Crash Bandicoot had the most ingenious solution to this problem. After three or four attempts at a particular section, you'd be given an Uka-uka mask the next time you respawned. Then if you still didn't succeed, one of the crates nearer to the place you were dying would turn into a checkpoint crate, allowing you to skip the easy bit and jump straight to the problem section.

 

[Kyle Melville]

I've had it happen a few times myself. If I recall correctly, Apache had really frustrating controls so there's no surprise there.
I've been watching my girlfriend go through Little Big Planet and I think she's about done with its crap.
I stopped playing FarCry 2 and Twisted Metal because of difficulty spikes. Well, FarCry just annoyed me out of finishing it as well.
However, Jamestown and Trials Evolution I have every intention of going back and mastering.
I think it's all a matter of how interesting the game (story or mechanics) are to you.
Something about the Star Coins got me through 9-7 in Super Mario Wii and the severed limbs of my enemies in Ninja Gaiden Black or uncovering the mystery in Guardian Legend.
My thinking is just do what's fun to you. Some things you'll naturally want to push through because it has that certain something to it, and others you'll just leave behind to rot in hell where they belong.

 

[Dandark]

There are not really any games I can think of recently that I stopped playing due to difficulty. There are plenty I stopped playing because I got bored or found a better game but none for the difficulty.

Well I suppose one contender would be the Brytenwalda mod for Mount and blade warband. I had a lot of trouble getting started on that and eventually just went back to Prophecy of Pendor, I might try redownloading and playing that again at some point.

 

[Alcamonic]

Assassin's Creed IV Tailing Missions: Be careful, because your targets will turn around randomly.

That alone would be frustrating, but then you fail ten billion more fucking times because of course they walk through areas covered in guards so you have to somehow avoid every hint of detection. And you can fail in one second and lose like an hour of sneaking.

Speaking of which, FUCK MANDATORY STEALTH TOO! I know I am supposed to be an assassin, but come on!

To be fair, stealth is fairly non-mandatory since you can just rush into a crowd, through a smoke bomb and kill everything with a few button presses. Failing that, you can always rush from guard to guard and kill them on the move, like some form of Monty Python rabbit. But yeah, some of those follow missions tend to have a rather stupid reason to even exist or are loaded with guards. Never mind the fact how every corrupt guy in the game gloat openly about how he ripped people off or stole merchandise.

Personally I find difficulty something that is welcomed in games. Dark Souls is especially wonderful. But on the other hand, any game that is difficult for the sake of difficult (Rush Bros, Meatboy etc) is nothing that I find amusing.

 

[FPLOON]

...Not unless I'm trying to get that "Beat game on X difficulty" trophy...

Otherwise, I say the hell away from higher difficulties because 9 times out of... *counts* 9, I'm trying to have fun with the game I'm playing, probably enjoying it's unique story, wondering if this game's good enough to be played again on a higher difficulty without wondering if I get a trophy for it in the end...

It's becomes more of a gamble when I just so happen to buy the guide for said game... ("Must... not... look...")

 

[DragonLordSerge]

In newer games not really i think the hardest game i have played this year is Shin Megami Tensai IV, and the easiest was Ni no Kuni i actualy think games are becoming easier rather than hard

 

[Mister K]

Well, I never quit a game because of it's difficulty. But (and that's a huge but) whenever I play any RPG with an open world I tend to use guides.
You see, I am a completionist and if I do not complete at least all major sidequests I will not be satisfied. Thus, whenever I play older RPG's (Old FF's, Fallout, etc.) I look at the guide to know about all sidequests/dungeons avaliable.

 

[franticfarken]

It's when the time comes where the game is simply unforgiving, such as the tekken 6 final battle on arcade mode (HAVING SOMEONE THAT CAN BLOCK ATTACKS AND MOVE WITH UNBLOCK-ABLE ATTACKS IS NOT UNFAIR IT'S UNFORGIVING)

This is also the case with Dark Souls, with a lack of saving as well as the game setting you back a very long time after death. (IF YOU DIE AT A BOSS YOU SHOULD NOT TRAVEL 20 MINUTES OF GAME TIME BEFORE THE BOSS TO DIE IMMEDIATELY AGAIN)

These are just my opinions of course. And that is when i quit in an angry manner of fashion.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

The only game in recent years I have remotely struggled with has been Dark Souls. That was frustrating enough to make me quit it within a few hours. I wanted to like it, but found it far too frustrating, especially as it doesn't explain anything, not even what half of the stats do.

Other than that, I play most games on the hardest difficulty I can from the start, and rarely have any issues.

I can't play Dark Souls for long amounts of time, even one of my progressions stopped completely because I was so far into it and felt like I'd probably screwed something up along the way... It took me for goddamn ever just to beat the first boss post-intro level (and funny enough I beat him by knocking him off the wall somehow).
Difficulty isn't always a factor but I also don't feel like a game absolutely has to be hard to be good. I've completed many many hard ass games in the past (remember when completing all the Star World levels in Super Mario World was an achievement? Pepperidge Farm remembers...)

 

[Scarim Coral]

Depend on the said difficuly, yes it is hard but how is it hard?

Example- I quit Resident Evil 4 eventhought I didn't wanted to but I did. I got to the point that I had little to none ammo left and I was right in a boss welcome mat. None of my previous saves can let me reduce my ammo so the only alternative was to restart the game.

While I tend to overcome a difficuly once I read a guide on it but even then the best guide won't solve it for you (Advance War: Black Hole Rising and Golden Sun 2 duing the Dullahamn boss).

Before you mention Dark Soul, I haven't played it.

 

[bojackx]

I can't think of a single time I've stopped playing a game because it's too hard, but I have quit many games after getting stuck in a game, which I'd say is totally different.

I was playing Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon and there was only so many times I could be puzzled about what to do next and consult an online guide before I realised I'm either a massive retard or the game is shit at hinting what needs to be done to advance. Also the whole fucking time limit in each section, which meant in order to get the best grade at the end of a section you needed to get all the hidden treasure and be super quick about it, but I suppose I'm getting off-topic now.

I got up to a point where you needed to light a ball of spider's web on fire to set more web on fire (not actually the most complex of puzzles since I'd had to do it several times before) but before I realised what I had to do, I'd tried sticking the ball into a crack in the wall, where the crack decided to slowly but surely suck the ball right into it mega-glitch-style and I'd be damned if I was going to redo the last half hour of tedious coin-collecting gameplay, so I dropped it and never went back.

 

[raeior]

This happened to me in several games, even though I usually play on the highest difficulty available and I love games like Dark Souls. What I can't stand is difficulty that seems...unfair. Enemies shooting across half of the map and instakilling you? Sure why not! That sounds fun.
It gets even worse when you have to repeat large sections of a game or cutscenes. Strangely this didn't bother me as much in Dark Souls.

One recent example of this was GTA IV. During the final mission you first have to chase a car, then shoot your way through dozens of goons who are no real danger but just annoy the hell out of you and then chase a helicopter on a motorbike. The last part was the problem for me. I tried it I don't know how often but every time I crashed into something or missed the jump at the end. Every single time you get the starting cutscene again and have to shoot your way through all those goons to get to the motorbike. I quit the game for a year or so, then tried that mission again and got through after ~3 tries and afterwards realized that it was already the final mission.

The final battle in Mass Effect 3 where you have to defend some missile launchers also angered me to no end. I played every ME game on highest difficulty and all of them had their share of "if it sees you, you're dead" enemies but ME3 was even worse. Throwing 2 or 3 banshees who prevent you from taking cover and also a dozen marauders at you who absolutely require you to take cover wasn't much fun. I switched the difficulty down to "story telling mode" or how it was called after several attempts just to get through the game.

An older example would be "Albion", a RPG by BlueByte. There was one enemy (Kamulos) that was ridiculously easy if you had a certain spell and the resources for it..or nigh on impossible if you didn't. I quit the game at that point and have just recently started playing it again to finally finish it. Because the story and the atmosphere in general are just awesome.

Also great was the fishing village mission in XCOM: EU on classic difficulty. It has an endless supply of one of the most annoying enemies in the game: Chrysalids. You have to run past a whale corpse that spews out 1 or 2 of those creatures every turn. Then press a button that is one story above the corpse (the Chrysalids can just jump there after spawning and nearly instantly kill your guy) and after that evacuate every one to the starting zone. I tried it several times and in the end just sacrificed a rookie who pressed the button and instantly after that died, while the rest of my guys where waiting at the extraction point. I guess it's a lot easier if you have mechs or the jumping upgrade for your own soldiers but I didn't.