Poll: Difficulty of Games, too hard?

[GigaHz]

I played through BioShock (okay maybe this one isn't so recent but it serves the point well) on the hardest difficulty setting they made available to me and I don't think I died more than twice.

To this day, I STILL cannot beat Sonic the Hedgehog 2 without cheating.

You decide.

This comment doesn't make any sense.

You're telling me, you could beat a game where a Big Daddy can kill you in a few hits on the hardest difficulty but not a game where the majority of time you're holding the right directional button and occasionally jumping.

This boggles the mind.

 

[TrevHead]

Imo the autosave feature is one of the worst aspects of gaming. It allows devs to create unballanced games because they expect gamers to just spam F5 to get past an arkward bit. It also drastically lowers the skill level of gamers who abuse it.

Thank god that the Japanese dont use it as they believe that ballancing and using normal saves is all important to gamedesign

As for me I tend to play games in normal even if they are on the easy side. Ive been burned by too many games that dont scale up in difficulty well to bother with hard mode on my first play though.

If I want a challenging game ill play Ninja Gaiden or arcade games which are difficult in normal mode

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

I have a few comments and question regarding difficulty. Just to give a bit of context I have been playing games wince I was about five year old when I had the original Pokemon Red and Tetris for the Gameboy and Sonic and Tails for the Sega Genesis. At that age I could not get past the Green Hill Zone in Sonic or even finish a simple game of Tetris. I eventually grew out of that phase but my first PC game was MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries, which I only beat that game because there is an invincibility toggle right in the options menu. Eventually I got a PS2 mainly because I fell in love with the Ratchet & Clank series, and despite some difficulties along the way I beat them on my own.

Now a days I play a lot of action games including First and Third Person shooters, along with other action games such as Assassin's Creed, God of War () along with some Real Time Strategy games such as Starcraft 2 and Dawn of War 2. Most of the time, if not all the time I have to set the game to Easy difficulty, and on a lot of games I start on normal and eventually switch to Easy or else I won?t be able to finish the game, one such example was Bulletstorm. Other game where I just got tired of dying so often that I turned the difficulty to easy include Space Marine (and I have not played very much of it), Crysis 2, Resistance 3, all Call of Duty games. I went back and started another play through of Mass Effect 2 on Normal and also find it rather hard. There are some games I haven?t been able to finish even on easy including Crysis, the Killzone series and Company of Heroes, not to mention Armored Core games. I also gave up on a lot of Racing games single player campaigns, which include Motorstorm, Blur, and Split/Second.

My question is why? Most of my friends play these game on normal, hard, or even harder. Have I missed something along my gaming life because I have been playing games for as long and as often as they have. Have I made myself a worse player by just playing on easy? Is because I play a great variety of genres and not focus on one and get better at it? Or is it the fault of the games and developers? What do i need to do to get better? What are your opinions of game difficulty now a days? Also, I will not be picking up Dark Souls.

How on Earth were you unable to finish MW4: Mercs without invincibility? It was one of the easiest games I have ever played. My guess is just that you were awful at making mechs, more than the actual gameplay. All you had to do was rotate your torso in that game and circle-strafe the shit out of your enemies.

I can understand having some trouble with Ratchet & Clank, there was a world or two that I had an issue with in that game, for sure.

Your other examples I'm having a bit of trouble with, however. Starcraft 2? The campaign for that was incredibly easy, I could understand flicking down the difficulty for the last mission or so, but the campaign for that game wasn't particularly hard.

Next you listed DOW2. I would like to know which DOW2, because I can only see anyone having trouble in the vanilla game with the optional super-bosses to pick up your power armour. Playing through Chaos Rising was ridiculously easy if you'd done that, even easier if you picked up The Blessed Cage in the Judgement of Carrion. Retribution, I can see someone having troubles with that since all of your gear is reset, but still, all it took was some basic tactics and some RPG know-how.

Reading through the rest of the list there's only a couple I've played, COD, Armoured Core and Split/Second and the only one I've had trouble with was Armoured Core. I've finished both COD4 and 6 on Veteran, hell, my first play-through of 6 was on Vet. Split/Second I got a little while back, and am still working on it, but I haven't had any real difficulties.

So I guess, the only conclusion I can reach from this is that you're just not very good a games. So as for fixing that, just go back to a game you really enjoyed, but play through it on a harder difficulty to get some practise at this.

 

[DesiPrinceX09]

I never play any game on a difficulty below normal, it just gets too easy. I traditionally play normal on first play through and then try a harder difficulty next run. I don't get why people think that just because you can save and autosave and have checkpoints that makes it too easy; dying and having to repeat something all over again is not challenge, it's just annoying, as is having to start over from the beginning if you get a game over. God of war 3 on hard difficulty is hard as hell, that took me a long time to beat and when i did beat it i felt awesome just as i do with playing something like uncharted 2 on hard or crushing difficulty. I don't see how games are getting dumbed down when many games have hard and very hard difficulty levels for more skilled gamers. The whole game is not being aimed at casual gamers, just the easy/very easy difficulty settings and the "hardcore" crowd has the harder setting. And if games like God of war and Uncharted are still too easy even on their hardest difficulty setting, then I must suck at playing games.

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

I think most games are too easy nowadays of course there are some genres I am simply not good at and thus, have to play on just normal. An example would be Street Fighter IV. I know what it'd take for me to get better to hold my own but I just don't care enough to go through the trouble so I am fine playing my 2 friends who aren't great and the AI.
In regards to most other games, I'd say too easy. This is why I am a big fan of difficulty settings.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

ehh it depends, honestly games are "easier" these days, just slightly, as back in the day the difficulty was "cheap/annoying", not hard.

enemies turning into sponges and dealing 300% more damage is fake difficulty, which is bullshit.

enemies using better weapons and using strategic points way better? that is good difficulty which i can deal with.

plus as long as you are enjoying your games there is no reason to worry about what difficulty you play on, i play on easy/normal on basically everything, but then i'll hop online and go 24-3 *insert shooter name here*, even though most of the people i just played against smashed the campaign on god mode.

tl;dr as long as your having fun, then no big deal no matter what mode your playing on.

 

[s0p0g]

blah

I wouldn't use that as a meterstick. How difficult ME2 was on normal depended enormously on which class you picked. The first time i played through the game i was disappointed by how easy it was. Even on hardcore, it wasn't very difficult for me, it just took ages to kill anything. Then i made a new charecter to do the renegade options and picked a class other than the Sentinel, and dear god was it harder. I died more playing through on veteran as a Vanguard than i did on hardcore as a Sentinel. I don't even want to think about trying to do hardcore as an engineer or an adept.

i played as an adept (i don't like mixed classes, and the tech wasn't too appealing to me, so i only played soldier and adept, both ME 1+2), and it wasn't hard at all; heavily armoured targets like gunships were a little annoying because you only have one (i think it's just one) ability to deal any dmg to them, so you always have to wait for the cd to finally go by xD
much "rinse and repeat"

but shielded or hp-only enemies are fairly easy; throw in a couple of bullets every now and then if there are way too many enemies, and you'll just be fine.
with a nice team setup and strict skilling you won't have much of a problem as an adept; on many missions i didn't use my guns at all xD

guess it's a matter of the individual playstyle.

 

[darkonnis]

Have I made myself a worse player by just playing on easy?

Having read your full post, and all the games listed. It seems to me you have missed a beat somewhere. Probably a strategic one, what i mean by this is, your variety of games is so wide it can't be a simple inability to shoot stuff. Its probably your positioning which i found to be the case with modern warfare more than any other FPS in recent times.
You have made yourself worse by playing easy mode. You only improve by playing people better than you, otherwise, yes your basics may be sound but you won't see the variety and skill that experienced players often posses.

Select a difficult you struggle with, play it until you complete it. I did Black Ops on the hardest setting first time through, not because I'm particularly good at black ops i just admit to myself I'm only going to play it through once. May aswell make it last and for all intents and purposes there is only one difficulty setting. The one which you have to fight hammer and tong with to beat. Took some determination and one mission (vietnam) i must have died 30times in the same spot. But i got it I suggest you do the same.

 

[GeorgW]

I love difficulty options. I like to play games as hard as they come, but I understand a lot of people aren't like that. OP, there's nothing wrong with playing on easy, you just want to get through the game, not be bothered with the trial and error. Today's games are more about the experience than the challenge. I'm not really sure how I feel about that, but as long as there are games out there that cater to all types of gamers I'll find stuff to play.

 

[Trippy Turtle]

Games should be harder but not like retro difficult. There is a fine line between hard and the game being cheap.