The stigma of easy mode

[eclipsed_chemistry]

There is a stigma because the sort of gamers you'll run into online are the sort of hypercompetitive asshats who make XBox Live such an unpleasant place to be, and anyone who doesn't play the game on ansolute hardest difficulty with dozens of handicaps will be ridiculed.

These are known as 'Stop Having Fun' Guys, and anyone who believes that it makes a difference what difficulty you play a game on, especially in single player, is a SHFG.

I tend to play most games through all the difficuly settings, and then spend most of the replays on Easy or Normal, just because it's more fun. One of the best examples for me is John Woo's Stranglehold, because although the game is hardly difficult, even on the hardest difficulty setting, there is much more fun to be had when you are a dual wielding God of men wading through your enemies like you are actually in a John Woo movie.

I have to disagree with your premise, that a game is more fun on easy mode. Being able to wade through tons of enemies is entertaining for a while, yes, but there's really little pay off. It's like turning on God mode. Everybody does it when they're bored with the game, but the novelty and fun quickly wears off because what's the point?

I enjoy games far more when they are difficult. Halo on easy is a boring shooter that anyone can just breeze through. Bump that up to Legendary, and you have to be tactical and plan ahead, weighing your gun options and ammo count, try to be a bit sneaky, and suddenly the game becomes a completely different and more rewarding experience. Starcraft on easy is an even better example (talking about the campaign here). In this case, you can either easily tech up and hit the computer with 200 supply worth of battle cruisers when the computer has yet to build anti-air or you can build 10 marines and just kill everything in your path because the bad guys have no health and deal no damage. Either way, it gets boring. But on brutal, you have to play right. You have to adapt your strategy and think things through. Now the game is fun.

I don't play games to see the final cutscene. That's what Youtube is for. I play games to enjoy the gameplay. Upping the difficulty often makes the game more fun and extends the life of a single player campaign. I will adjust difficulty according to my ability, though. For instance, older games like Jedi Knight 2 (which I just got from Steam) is impossibly difficult on hard. I restarted on normal, and it's challenging, but that makes it more rewarding.

In my mind, the Stop Having Fun Guys are the people that look at a game and think "I want to beat this game as quickly as possible, so I'll give myself every possible advantage and just walk through it." Because at that point, you're not playing the game for fun. You're playing it as a chore.

THIS. Oh, so much this. I think the bottom line is, YOU have to take into account your skill level, your degree of patience, and craft YOUR own experience. This is what's fantastic about gaming. What works with some doesn't work with others, but we can all enjoy the same thing in a different way.

Personally, I play games on Normal just because I feel like that's the experience that the developer had in mind while crafting the game. I usually only play through a game once, but then I'll look back and think on it, reflect, see what I really like and what I didn't. And I feel this is most objective when playing on the difficulty that the developer intended for me to play. That's just my opinion, bottom line, they're games. Have fun with them.

 

[8-Bit Grin]

Most people unconsciously choose Normal mode as their starting point.

For myself, it all depends on the game.

If I'm playing at home, it's Normal or Hard mode.

If I'm playing a handheld on the go, it's Easy mode.

I've had friends drag their hulking E-Cocks out and slam them on the table with exclamations of, "Veteran on Call of Duty, bruh"!

I just shrug, keep playing, and hope they can fit that swollen ego back in their pants.

 

[bojac6]

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http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StopHavingFunGuys

That's the definition I use. A good example can be found in left 4 Dead:

Whatever difficulty you play it on, you'll probably have your own style, weapons you favour etc, so then you play it online and go for your preferred weapon, but because you haven't chosen the autoshotgun, you're immediately vote-kicked (L4D is notorious for SHFGs)

A SHFG is someone who believes that the only way to play the game is on the hardest difficulty setting, because everything else is for casuals and scrubs. (Scrubs are players who would accuse a player who uses the best weapons of cheating because they aren't balanced with the rest of the game, or even bans players who use the better moves and weapons)

Both just as bad as the other, but the SHFG in regards to difficulty mode is the most common, because, especially with the advent of achievements, people seem to believe that games are designed to be beaten with a challenge, rather than designed to have fun with.

Bottom line is that if someone has fun playing all the time on easy mode, more power to them, and it probably isn't right to assume that someone who plays always on easy finds it unfulfilling. Back to Stranglehold and I find it more fun to play on easy because you can pull off much more graceful moves and make much more use of the gameplay than in hard where you spend msot of the game hiding behind a table trying to plan your next move. If I play Halo I may be playing it to feel like an invincible hero of the galaxy, in which case why would I want to spend most of the game cowering behind a pillar? I play games for the story, not the gameplay. If the gameplay complements the story fine, but if I buy a game what I paid for is a rounded experience, including story and, most importantly, fun.

Different strokes for different folks, don't knock someone else's play just because it's not what you play a game for.

I was not aware that was a tvtrope. (Oh, and thanks, by the way. Some of us want to not spend the next three hours clicking around that site. I have things to do...but all these links...).

I'm not knocking anyone else's play style, I'm just pointing out that there are completely legitimate reasons to want a harder difficultly. I think that your line about "people seem to believe that games are designed to be beaten with a challenge, rather than designed to have fun with" sets up a false dichotomy. It isn't a choice between fun or challenge, they are often the same thing. A game should always be fun, first and foremost, which is what I meant by "I play a game for gameplay, not the story." If the gameplay is pretty much "walk over here, press X to view continue," I have to wonder why the writer chose this medium to tell the story and didn't just write a book where you turn the page to continue. If I'm playing a game, I want to enjoy the experience of playing that game. If that involves good writing, all the better, it adds to the experience. But I don't see how good writing and bad gameplay can be fun, at all. Good gameplay can make up for sloppy writing (Just Cause, Katamari, Tetris) far more easily than good writing makes up for bad gameplay (I can't think of an example).

Does it make me a better person than you if I beat a game on a harder difficulty than you did? No. It might give me a sense of accomplishment, but I think if you do something that's difficult, you deserve that sense of accomplishment. Few games have made me feel more proud than Space Chem, when I occasionally see that my solution is in the 99th percentile for efficiency or whatever, meaning most people didn't come up with as good a solution.

Am I going to hold it against someone that they beat a game on easy? No, I don't care. I mean, for a few games, it means they played a completely different game (like my earlier Starcraft example), but what does that matter? Tons of people play games with actual titles different from the ones I play, what does it matter if their experience was somehow different?

 

[Fishyash]

I don't like playing on easy mode because I find it boring. Easy mode are for people who are too lazy or are not good enough to do normal mode or higher.

Just kidding.

I once was being snide on my brother who was playing CoD: Black Ops campaign on easy mode even though he has near 2.0 KD, but of course his response was, "I'm playing it for the story."

But yeah as others have said, it depends on why you want to play the game really. I find challenges fun, some care more for the story than the gameplay, some care more about feeling like god. There's nothing really wrong with playing on easy mode to be honest.

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

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I wasn't directing it at you, I was meaning more of a general 'gaming culture as a whole vibe.' I personally also believe that really whatever you want to play a game for, you should just go with it, and if you want harder difficulty, fantastic, like I said in my original post I do play games all the way up to the hardest difficulty when I want a challenge, it's just that I don't want a challenge all the time.

I just feel that in general, amongst gaming culture, online gaming, gaming websites etc, there tends to be this feeling that 'games are to be beaten, not had fun with.' There will of course be people who don't think that, but as with anything, as long as the vocal minority remains vocal, the stigma will be there or seen to be there by default.

 

[Jonesy911]

I suck at all action games, I only play RPGs on anything above easy. I know it sounds obvious but I think if you play on an easier mode your more compelled by the experience but if you play on hard you're in it more for the challenge.

 

[Psycho78]

I try to play on Normal or above, but if I feel the game is badly designed or just stupid hard I have no problem playing on Easy if it's a game I want to see and experience.

 

[TerranReaper]

Play easy mode all you want, it's your experience after all. But if you start bitching on how easy the game is even though you played on easy mode or you start bragging that you beat the game on easy mode, expect criticism. Also, if you play a game that is designed to be hard and challenging, don't complain on the lack of an easy mode, it somewhat pisses me off to see people complain about Demon's Souls being too hard even though the difficulty was the main focus of the game.

 

[adam5396]

Spoiler

(Image is from IOSYS's Overdrive flash. Touhou Related. And don't take it seriously)

(Wow, I got the tags right on a guess)

Anyway, on a more serious note. I'd only say play on easy if you're new to the genre, control style, you still need to improve or you're just messing around. Otherwise, unless the difficulty is still insane on normal, you should stay on normal. Since I find games lose a lot of the fun on easy.

 

[karloss01]

i couldn't play easy mode, I want a challenge when i play through a game and when i do play easy mode its because theres a archivement for it *looks at DMC4 and Dead space*.

 

[Whateveralot]

I remember this game that had a bunch of difficulty settings, starting at "Very hard" seconded by "impossible". Good stuff.

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

I know it's a ridiculous feeling, and that the decision made sense, but do you think that there is a stigma attatched to playing through games on easy mode?

Feel no shame. I am with you on this one.

I don't like/play FPSs, but lately a lot of western RPGs are using that format. Fallout 3, Bioshock, and Mass Effect. All three, I played on easy mode, because I didn't want to die all the time. Even on that setting, I still got my ass killed more than once, but it was a normal "challenging game" type of ass-kickery. The simple fact that I suck as FPS games made the games a challenge, without making the difficulty a deal-breaker.

On the other hand, I play Dragon Age on Hard, because I rock with magic-users and generally most of the enemies die before they get anywhere near my party. My first playthrough was on easy, although I went up to medium part way through. My second playthrough was on medium, and I upgraded to hard by 7th level.

Also, off topic, my Captcha for this post is, I kid you not, "iscrevv you're" leaving me wondering what Captcha intends to screw of mine. Yikes.

Edit: I'm not new to FPSs. I have sucked at them for years and years. I've sucked at them since Quake 1. If I had to play on normal, I wouldn't play, because I'd be stuck on some stupid enemy for hours and get sick of the game. And then I'd miss out on games like Bioshock, Fallout 3, and Mass Effect, and that would suck worse because I really enjoyed all three.

 

[nick n stuff]

i don't care for challenge in a game. instead i'm all for the experience so i always play on easy (Guitar hero and sports games are an exception to this rule for obvious reasons). for example, i'm playing just cause 2 at the moment and am loving just driving around or blowing stuff up and using the sling shot in new ways to do as i please. the fact that i am not being challenged by the game does not mean i dont want to carry on doing this. i have clocked up 25 hours of gameplay and have only done 23% because all i want to do is screw around.

 

[Allan53]

I used to play on normal/medium difficulty, except when it got to certain points in the game I'd often get frustrated. Don't get me wrong, I like a challenge, but a lot of games (Bioshock 2, Prototype, probably others I can't think of right now) often mistake "challenging" for "massively cheap and annoying". So I turn it down to easy, and I often enjoy the game far more

 

[LandoCristo]

I've turned games onto easy for two reasons: One, I'm stuck at a certain point for whatever reason, and want to watch the completion of the plot, with the plan to come back on a 2nd playthrough and get it right, or Two: To be a God-among-men, and to torment my enemies with Bulletstorm-esque methods of death, like playing Jedi Knight: Jedi Acadamy, and finishing an entire level with Force-pulling enemies towards me, flipping over their heads, and slicing them with my lightsaber in mid-air.