Difficulty level in today's games

[Osmeric]

Anyone else getting tired of how much of today's content is spoon fed to gamers now a days?

Not me.

Is this what gamers want?

Obviously yes, or else game companies wouldn't be doing this.

One of the impacts of how games have online connectivity is that game companies can now plainly see just how bad most of their customers are.

[Bigbazz]

On the subject of game manuals I can't say I ever read any game manuals back when games came with extensive manuals, nor did any of my friends, if anything it was considered uncool to read the manual.

[Deleted]

Dark Souls isn't exactly a classic or retro game, so it's very existence kinda throws a wrench in the whole, "Games TODAY are easy" idea, no?

There are plenty of hard games out there. If you don't want to play the easy ones, don't play them.

But dark souls isn't hard - it's mostly pretty easy, actually.

Most wipes I've had were due to the poor controls and horrible responsiveness, which is why many people experience the series as tough, while in fact, it's a cheap way of artificually increasing difficulty, or giving the illusion of difficulty.

I've been playing games since the C64 and have never really come accross a game that was actually difficult. Unforgiving, like Contra for instance, sure. But actually hard, no.

Then again, what does hard mean? It's a very subjective thing.

[Kathandira]

I think the reason you do have much in the way of "Game Over" type games anymore, is due to the length of the games we demand. If a game only has 10 hours of game play, some would complain that the game was too short.

But a game which is intended to be beaten in a single session, can't be much longer than the hours you have in the day. Otherwise you would be asking people to stay awake for longer than the average person in order to complete the game, or you would be asking people to leave their consoles on over night, which wouldn't really be ideal either. It would waste energy, be potential fire hazard, and risk that if you lose power over night your game data would be lost.

A game today with out a save feature, or a passcode to pick up where you left off (ie: Mega Man) would be interesting, but it would need to be strategically created so that it is possible to complete the game in a single session, if you are good enough.

[Deleted]

Also, to add something small for finish, remember what happened when you used fireball spell for a first time in baldurs gate ? Games nowadays don't really let you get burned like this.

Developers wants to protect players too much from their own mistakes and by that remove a massive layer of difficulty - overcoming yourself.

Both Pillars of Eternity and Divinity Original Sin will certainly let you shoot a fireball into your own team with the expected results. However, I group both these games in the "good" column in terms of difficulty, particularly since their different difficulty levels are more than just "mobs hit harder, have more health".

Even Dragon Age let you fireball your own guys. This became a great tactic since mobs would always agro onto the guy in plate armour. Giving your main guy the highest possible fire resistance armour and then deliberately fireballing him and everyone around him worked wonders.

[Stalfos19]

I own a lot of 8-bit shit. Game are organized and set up differently now. They have their own challenges.
But pick up a controller and play and of the original Castlevania games, or MegaMan. I would say games were much harder back in the day.