Difficulty level in today's games

[Deleted]

The majority of games nowaday have different difficulty settings. Many games ~20 years ago didn't have that. Probably that's why people think games were harder in the past: If you were stuck somewhere, you had to become better to overcome it, or stay stuck. Now you just tune down the difficulty.

I personally enjoy the choice. If I don't like the gameplay of a game, but still like the story, I just tune down the difficulty to breeze through it. It's more like watching a movie. Without those possibilities, I probably wouldn't pick it up in the first place. If I like the gameplay, I try to stick to the highest possible difficulties I'm able to manage. Though there are games where the even the highest difficulties are more close to movie-mode (e.g. all 3 Dragon Age, King's Bounty, etc), they are the exception.

[Phookah]

Dark Souls has no "Game Over" screen. At no point in the game are you forced into the position where you go "Darn, I cannot progress any further, and have to start over"

The XCOM franchise is by this merit a much harder, though still enjoyable, game. Games where you cannot lose, are not hard games, and not challenging. The biggest problem with the majority of modern games is that developers are afraid that if a player see's a GAME OVER screen, they will quit playing. Also, many players will avoid games where it is possible that many hours of playing could ultimately be "wasted" if you die or get so stuck you cannot progress further.

When Dark Souls has an enforced Ironman Mode, then you can call it a hard game.

Ah, so by that merit than I Wanna Be The Guy is easy right? I mean, it never just says "You lose", you just restart at the last checkpoint.
By your definition about the only games that can be "hard" are roguelikes/perma death games (which are frequently one and the same), which is obviously wrong and silly.

[Remilia]

I will give you another example from a game called Salt and Sanctuary. In that game if you die, you lose your salt in a way(drop em lets say). The monster that killed you, even if it is a boss they will carry them and you will have to kill them to get your salt (In boss cases, you need damage them to certain point to get those Salt back; Non-bosses will be stronger). If you fell over the edge and died, a flying bat lets call it will manifest and will be carrying your salt. Now if you died again before retrieving your Salt (Salt is like Souls in Soul games by the way), you will lose them permanently.

Bloodborne actually has something similar. A mob can take your blood echo (souls) and wander around with it, their eyes glow indicating who has it. Zombi U has something like it, but you're killing the previous character you were controlling, cause zombie. If you die in Bloodborne's case you just lose it. I don't remember the exact specifics for Zombi U, but I believe if you die before getting it, it disappears and if you're online it gets sent to someone else's game.

[Blur4stuff]

a lot of people see video games like having a drink at the end of a work day

the last thing they want is for that drink to piss them off or make them think really hard

[Tech614]

That is the thing though, the harder difficulties in todays games are just an after thought, the balance is typically shit and it doesnt have the deepness of a Dark Souls game. That is a big difference.

Really want to see your trophy or achievement lists.

This entire thread is non nonsensical. If you want a challenge 8/10 games released today offer it. Hiding behind the "they're not balanced" cop out just makes me want to scream get gud at you.

Dark Souls 3 is one of the easier games I've played all year. Uncharted 4 on crushing is a damn monster in comparison. Star Fox Zero's final boss is one of the hardest I have ever fought in any game period. Should I go on?

[SoulForge]

i always go for the hardest way e.g: did my leveling from 90 to 100 on the first day of the xpac playing as a sub rogue, i always finish all of my games on the hardest difficult available because i like to think every single one of my moves otherwise i would watch a movie.
http://i.imgur.com/gpiMdYx.jpg

Sub rogue? Try enhancement shaman before we had to get repeated buffs to fix us.

We were the true masochists!

[VXFadhel]

Actually it would take a few hits to destroy it so anyone could always test it, plus the buckles on the chest were different so you could visibly tell the difference.

Interesting game, bought it myself but it was very easy to get lost and stay lost, even so good game and appreciated that they made a scroller game deeper

Dark Souls 2 does NG+ much better however, all the Souls games have so much depth and layers that many many games now just do not have. The game series is harder (just not as hard as many portray) but is there a more rewarding game out there in existence? I cannot think of one.

Think it depends on how strong your attack is/was (haven't played it in a long time) but yeah; Thou they could have improved on it with more layers of depth.
Some Ninja Gaiden Games are very rewarding on highest if you mean the satisfaction you get by beating it or so. Same goes for some Devil May Cry's. Now Ninja Gaiden 3 (If I'm not mistaken) had a lot of backlash on how much it went down/back on some of the improvement that has been made in the series.

Some games has survival elements, so you are short on ammo and potions etc. You need to manage your inventory and so on. Use whatever mechanism the developer decide to include to help (Think the Evil Within and Dead Space for example).

Bloodborne actually has something similar. A mob can take your blood echo (souls) and wander around with it, their eyes glow indicating who has it. Zombi U has something like it, but you're killing the previous character you were controlling, cause zombie. If you die in Bloodborne's case you just lose it. I don't remember the exact specifics for Zombi U, but I believe if you die before getting it, it disappears and if you're online it gets sent to someone else's game.

Yeah, Utopia 9 had monsters that if they kills you, they become mini-boss (kind of). Pick your weapons and you have to fight him if you pass that route again. There are many approaches in games nowadays. Putting a difficulty scale/settings is just one of the things that improved. Like for example, some RPGs (Talking mainly about Turn Based and so on at the moment) put some difficulty settings that you can choose from and so on. Old games usually force you to play whatever they want you to play.
Some likes to jump straight into hell while others likes to ease into going there (by choosing easier difficulties for example). Variety and mentality thou also changed for people. Some likes to play games but don't have the time they used to have to stay for hours playing but they are happy that the developers made it possible to experience these games.

There are many layers of depth after all. Soul games like to make you search for lore by reading description and connecting the dots while others tell you through the games. Just because the developer decided that they will tell you the lore/story doesn't mean that everyone will get it. Difficulty and punishment isn't an exception to that.

[Fencers]

The only time difficulty is relevant is when it is inherently necessary to the design. Concern for it otherwise is misplaced desire as a result of poor gameplay mechanisms.

[VXFadhel]

The only time difficulty is relevant is when it is inherently necessary to the design. Concern for it otherwise is misplaced desire as a result of poor gameplay mechanisms.

Can you elaborate a little bit? Do you mean games where enemies have same stats and so as you (Like CoD)? What about Resident Evil movement controls?

[Nutri]

I think part of the difficulty in old(er) games comes from the lack of tooltips and tutorials.
Most if not all games now simply provide the player with the info they to get past an obstacle. Flashing scenery parts, obvious switches, narrowed pathways leading to an objective etc, flashing parts of a boss to shoot in order to damage it. (in recent events, the video of that guy from Polygon playing Doom who instantly started shooting the flashy part of a Gore Nest because... it was flashing. It was actually a trigger you had to press)

In the past these where hardly there and players had to figure it out by themselves. Where are they keys, where are the secrets, how do I damage the boss That, and the lack of internet.

Another reason for games to be more difficult is that most games in the past gave you 2-3 lives and/or a hand full of continues. Nowadays with checkpoints and autosaves games maybe didn't become easier perse, but they have a big safety net in case you die.

So maybe games are not more difficult, but the feeling it was more difficult is because there where a lot less information offered to you and the lack of checkpoints/autosaves.

[Coldkil]

Do i have to be honest? Too much "MUH DARK SOULS" running around. It's not like it's the epitome of difficulty; also if you like the game style, people should try the Monster Hunter serie, which is basically Dark Souls boss only mode. Some of the arenas fights are insane - also mastering all the weapon trees requires definitely some skill.

Anyway, there is a degree of truth. Videogames have become a much bigger movement, impating mroe people - and not necessarly everyone has the same degree of skill. So if you want a successful (read: sales and cash) videogame, you have to set it to the common lower denominator (with the optional harder difficulties) so you have a bigger potential playerbase.

I mean, the goal of a videogame (or a product in general) is to be sold and played to the biggest number of people possible.

This said, no one is forcing people to play on the lower difficulty. There are a multitude of difficult game around if it's your goal, and not all people find that difficult = more fun.

Also, getting back on DS: the game is good not because it's dfficult. It's good because of the whole package - gameplay, graphics/theme, systems - and you cannot simply make a game difficult for the sake of it, because it would just be shallow and not entertaining. DS doesn't deliver because "YOU DIED", but because you're a freaking warrior going against the odds in a grim, dark world and fighting huge and dangerous bosses.

There's a lot more than sheer difficulty missing from "modern games". Most games lack a gameplay depth, innovation and a general "attention to details" which require a lot of effort to realize correctly and in a world where there are literally millions of people buying FIFA 276154764517 because they love soccer games, you can see how supposedly "AAA studios" go for the safer route and deliver standard, copycat games which don't bring new stuff but are solid sellers.

EDIT: not counting the fact that old games didn't have youtube or wikis where good players/theorycrafters explain how stuff works to everyone. Sometimes the biggest difficulty was not knowing what was going to happen or how stuff really worked.

[VXFadhel]

There are still a lot of modern games that has depth to them and so on. But due to the increase of games todays as well as the player base. You will find a lot of games with different variety of depth in many levels. But agreed that most try to play it safe instead of trying something new. When you take risks you better be prepared for the cost and consequences. Take as note, some of the failed launch in some MMOs in China.
In Final Fantasy X for example, there are the dark aeons. Which you can use the easy way or fight them "fair". FIFA sells due to rapid fans but there are many other games that sold due to some brand or something. Not just games but also everything else kind of. Not everyone is willing to pay 600$ for a smartphone and not everyone wants to play hardest difficulty.

[l33t]

Anyone else getting tired of how much of today's content is spoon fed to gamers now a days? Is this what gamers want? I am having some problems getting into many of today's games, specifically the AAA titles. I will just leave this to consider because I think it sums it up nicely:

http://imgur.com/qUVG8Sc?r

Most comical thing about Dark souls is it is not difficult, and never was.

Another very comical thing is modern people are so afraid to lose, to make a mistake, to start over... and they are so god damn fixated over never making mistakes that they actually stop thinking outside a box, stop trying new things and just endlessly repeat one successful scenario over and over and over and over and over again... which leads to stagnation and boredom. Stop fearing mistakes people! Mistakes are the things that set everything in motion!

[Deleted]

Yeah but you look at Dark Souls series, the gameplay is just so stellar and actually it is not the difficulty behemoth people think it is. Everything in it meshes so well. Some people are leery to try it but once someone commits to giving it a real try a conversion happens many times. I just wish more game would follow in its leadership. We do not need all harder games but there needs to be more like it.

Dark Souls isn't difficult, unless you call being raped by something you couldn't possibly know was there unless it stabs you in the back every 2m is difficult.

It's a good game, great map design and looks beautiful...but it's far from difficult or great for that matter. There are a lot of good things to the game...the fake difficulty isn't one of them.

[panzaghor]

Sub rogue? Try enhancement shaman before we had to get repeated buffs to fix us.

We were the true masochists!

Have you ever tried sub rogues on WOTLK?

[Pull My Finger]

Dark Souls isn't difficult, unless you call being raped by something you couldn't possibly know was there unless it stabs you in the back every 2m is difficult.

It's a good game, great map design and looks beautiful...but it's far from difficult or great for that matter. There are a lot of good things to the game...the fake difficulty isn't one of them.

Honestly, I can tell by the bolded sentiments that you have only very limited experience with the game and a highly mistaken opinion on it.

[Vespian]

That is the thing though, the harder difficulties in todays games are just an after thought, the balance is typically shit and it doesnt have the deepness of a Dark Souls game. That is a big difference. DS has so many layers where these other games do not. And again, the difficulty of Dark Souls is over played. There is an adjustment but then you get it, and you get that is is indeed fair and deep, and not a "hardcore" game at all. Big difference. But like Pull My Finger said above, this what most games arent any more, they are not deep, they are pretty fluffy.

I especially like the layers called 'horrible PC port' and 'Terrible controls even when using an XBOX controller'. I didn't mind the difficulty, but I ragequit over knowing what I was going to do, technically being able to do so within the rules of the game, personally capable of the same feat in many 3rd person games, but foaming at the mouth over the fact that a part of the artificial difficulty in DS1&2 came from the fact that the controls never did what you wanted them to do.

[Ciddy]

I prefer games that have a good range of difficulty options. A lot of games these days seem to have that. The second most recent Mortal Kombat game (I still haven't gotten around to X yet) had what I think is a good range of difficulties against the AI. It has Beginner, which is basically a "you could train your dog to win" difficulty to Expert, which requires you to actually pay attention or get destroyed by the AI, and it has 3-4 more settings in between those. Starcraft 2 also has a good range of difficulties for the vs AI and campaign stuff. I like it when games do that.

When I get home after a long day, am tired, and just want to relax/wind down, I don't necessarily feel like bashing my head against the wall and dying repeatedly on some boss that will destroy me if I blink at the wrong time. Other times, I want more of a challenge. I like being able to adjust difficulties based on what I feel like playing at the time.

Of course, that only matters when AI is involved. Multiplayer PvP stuff always varies based on the skill levels of the other players (or the players who choose "flavor of the month" stuff in some games).

[Erudean]

For me, it depends on the AI of the game you are playing. PvP games/modes are nice because the difficulty scales until you are literally the very best. For PvE games I enjoy high difficulty on a solo level, recently DS3. However, I don't enjoy a "20 man raid" atmosphere, where your success hinges on the performance of relative strangers, and your failures effect them as well. The smaller the better IMO, which is why I'm stoked for Legion's 5 man affix scaling dungeons.

[Grogo]

The "Dark Souls isnt difficult at all" comments are likely made from those who summon two phantoms on every boss. Which I suspect is most of you making that claim.
I agree that the difficulty is over-done but name one game that has as much depth. The best series I have ever played.