Are games getting easier?

[<RJMC>]

today I could have the chance to play on a original grey squared playstation,just like the first one I got years ago

and played some 2 games I remenbered,shiphon filter and parasite eve2

so when playing syphon filter I noted that even if I could remenber how to beat some mission I noted that it felt hard,died a lot by the enemies and such

parasite eve2 is first time played cuz I used to watch a friend playing it(we all used to seat around to the tv looking and ocasionally helping) and also noted that it felt hard compared to modern games like resident evil4 which is the closest
the first parts feel like the last one of RE4 in terms of anxiety and such
though not so hard

but also I got a nintendo 64 borrowed,whit perfect dark,goldeneye and I even bought zelda ocarina of time and mario 64

and I also noted them harder that today standards, well perfect dark not so much but zelda and mario yes

still not so hard like "OMFG IMPOSSIABLUE!" but harder that the tipical todays game

and in my opinion things like the famous "duck and your health would replenish" and a gameplay designed so you dont die too quickly are making games kind of easier recently

so anyone felt the same or it just me?

 

[bam23]

Games were definitely harder back then.

 

[Hazar]

being accessible by a lot of people is a good thing, not a bad thing.

 

[Warbie]

Games are a piece of piss these days. It's bloody annoying.

 

[DEATHMASTER]

being accessible by a lot of people is a good thing, not a bad thing.

That's why there's 'easy, medium, hard'. It gets annoying when noobs complain about the hard mode being too hard *coughep2*
instead of going to the level they belong in :frown:

 

[AmishSlayer]

Games are a piece of piss these days. It's bloody annoying.

Yep. With recharging health, quicksaving and games that aren't continue and life-based, there's no reason that anybody shouldn't be able to beat a game now.

 

[Stigmata]

Games are much, much easier now. The thinking goes that the easier a game is, the more likely any given person will be able to play it and enjoy it, and thus that person is more likely to buy the game.

I think another facet is that as games have become more complex and immersive, the idea of keeping score has fallen to the wayside. Old games like Pac-Man and Breakout and so forth didn't really have much to them aside from the very one-dimensional gameplay, so the high score feature gave players a reason to keep playing (which itself was a holdover from the arcades, where the high score list gave players a reason to fork over quarters). Now that games have actual stories, voice actors, quasi-realistic graphics and physics, and so forth, there are hundreds of other reasons for people to play through a game, and a high score list isn't one of them. And with the loss of the high score list, the players need to be motivated via story/gameplay to finish the game on their own terms, and making the game too difficult means many players will never finish the game, or even the second level. And if they are unable to beat the game, they're a lot less likely to buy the game.

 

[Qonfused]

That's basically it.

I think games have just switched from being competitive to being more of a story, an adventure, where difficulty doesn't really play a part.

 

[Vegeta897]

The game market has grown to nearly everybody in the kid to 34 demographic. Therefore, since not just the hardcore nerds are gaming, games need to be easier so more people can play them and have fun.

 

[Warbie]

But where's the fun in it? Really.

I don't feel empowered by fps these days as the enemy are usually a bunch of simpletons led by a moron. A million miles away from something like Golden Eye which made you feel like the ****ing man. Even the mighty Mario Galaxy - the best game to be released in years imo - was insultingly easy. Compare that to the original Mario Bros. and the difference in challenge is huge.

I say no to quick saves - they are the devil.

 

[Vegeta897]

I said more fun for the majority.

Sure it's not as fun for hardcore gamers. But money, business, is important.

 

[Asknoone]

Yep. With recharging health, quicksaving and games that aren't continue and life-based, there's no reason that anybody shouldn't be able to beat a game now.

Which is exactly the way it should be.

Games should be moderately easy - everyone should be able to finish the game from start to finish with little to no problems. It's about accessibility and appealing to a far broader, more important market: the casual gamer. A game doesn't need to be challenging or mind-bogglingly frustrating and difficult to be fun. Far from it. We've moved into a sophisticated gaming age; point scoring, time-based levels are a thing of the past that have been rightly put aside.

A shocking number of players aren't even making it to the end and it's often due to sloppy difficulty design. If you're a clever designer you can make your game feel intense and difficult without it actually being that difficult – by that I mean the player making it through a set piece feeling as though he'd only just made it when really, he was far from dying. Simply put, we're heading the right direction.

 

[Kyorisu]

It's were god dammit.

I mean hi I agree.

 

[staticprimer]

I really don't mind that games have become easier. I play games to have fun, and what is not fun to me is when a game is head bashingly difficult.

 

[AmishSlayer]

Which is exactly the way it should be.

Games should be moderately easy - everyone should be able to finish the game from start to finish with little to no problems. It's about accessibility and appealing to a far broader, more important market: the casual gamer. A game doesn't need to be challenging or mind-bogglingly frustrating and difficult to be fun. Far from it. We've moved into a sophisticated gaming age; point scoring, time-based levels are a thing of the past that have been rightly put aside.

A shocking number of players aren't even making it to the end and it's often due to sloppy difficulty design. If you're a clever designer you can make your game feel intense and difficult without it actually being that difficult ? by that I mean the player making it through a set piece feeling as though he'd only just made it when really, he was far from dying. Simply put, we're heading the right direction.

Very true, but I'd still like games to offer a good challenge for those that want it. Too many games out there just dumb it all down and don't offer a solid higher difficulty for hardcore gamers.

 

[kupocake]

Currently, I'm playing Final Fantasy 8. I'm 2 discs in and I've had a character KO'd once. Some games are easy, some are hard. Depends on what you're playing.

An re-balancing in Single-Player games has also been offset greatly by multiplayer titles too remember. Most games didn't have anything as difficult as a human opponent for quite some time.

I think as a forum we have a skewed perspective because most of us are here as Half-Life 2 players. Whilst I really 'get' Valve's difficulty strategy, and enjoy playing with it in place, they have no excuse for why selecting a 'Hard' run-through doesn't get you a game that's substantially more difficult than on lower settings. Why not satisfy everyone by giving difficulty settings that mean what they say? If your audience is stupid enough to select 'Hard' when they suck, that's their problem.

But it's also important not to lose sight than a lot of the time, games are easier because you are a better player. Half-Life took me a week to complete, Half-Life 2 about two days of semi-solid playing. It wasn't a difficulty thing. Similarly, Final Fantasy 8 was once a difficult 'game' to play through. The point at which you realized that the whole 'junction' system was a piece of piss and that the only difficulty in the game was understanding those opaque tutorials was a happy one.

 

[Planetary]

Games have gotten much easier. The only modern games I can think of without recharging health are Valve's stuff, FEAR, Far Cry, and ... that's it. Everything else is much older.

Remember the old days, where there's exactly one place on the level you can go to heal up, one place you can save, a set amount of ammo so that if you waste it, you gotta go fists?
But that was back when only an absolute expert knew what things like "WWW" meant, or ".com" or FPS for that matter.

And don't forget automaps. It's been so loooong. : Daydreaming look:

 

[Pesmerga]

Singleplayer games should offer enough challenge so as to enjoy it as the developers intended, but not so much to have the player go through a level a dozen times over.

Multiplayer games are fundamentally challenging because it's against human opponents, dur.

 

[Raxxman]

Games have gotten easier, we've also gotten better.

No FPS can match Doom 2 on Nightmare. It's not even remotely fair...

 

[Warbie]

Singleplayer games should offer enough challenge so as to enjoy it as the developers intended, but not so much to have the player go through a level a dozen times over.

I've always found that with decent games it isn't a chore to repeat a level 10, 20 or more times. If they're fun, balanced and challenging for the right reasons, the experience is heightened as you become familiar with the games workings and get to appreciate the intricacies. It's when they're designed poorly that you find yourself sighing at each death.

Without challenge there can be no sense of achievement. I agree that a balance needs to be found, but it's the balance between feeling cheated and having gone down in a fair fight.

 

[Laivasse]

I have found that games which force me to die and replay a certain section numerous times give me no sense of satisfaction upon finally completing that section. The only feeling I get from that is that the game has told me I suck.

It doesn't feel like I've accomplished anything if I can only get through an area after having memorised the enemy placement, after having taken ages to find out what I was meant to do in an obscure puzzle, after waiting to find out whether the enemies can all be killed or whether they endlessly respawn, etc...

The God of War games were like this for me. I enjoyed playing the game - that is to say, I enjoyed the fighting and I enjoyed travelling through the breathtaking cinematic settings. What I didn't enjoy was being forced to die hundreds of times because sometimes

• there was no apparent difference between ledges you could jump to and those you couldn't, or between ledges you could jump off of and those that were surrounded by invisible walls.
• there were puzzles or traps that only demonstrated how they worked by killing you at least once
• I was faced with near-hopeless situations, eg. an endlessly respawning horde of foes while being required to spin some lever or doohickey which left me helpless, requiring sheer luck or flukey timing to pull off successfully
• there were shitreeking QTE's

Sure, those things made me die countless times, making for a challenging game. Similarly, a game that somehow exploded my TV and showered me with shards of razor-sharp, semi-molten plastic would also be 'challenging', but it's not necessarily the best way to design a game. The most exhilarating and memorable set piece in GoW2 for me was the jumping section with the collapsing pillars. That bit was pitched at a difficulty where it was perfectly doable first time through, plus it looked and felt great. Even if it was a glorified quick time event, at least it was a nice experiment with the swing-jumping mechanism that didn't feel like a frustrating test of your reactions.

In days of yore games tended to be designed along those principles of frustration, unavoidable deaths and memory tests (eg. 'oh yeah, this is the bit where that bastard pops out and kills me' *avoids*), but that stuff should have all gone out the door with Life Counters and limited Continues. Nowadays I much more enjoy playing, and get a greater sense of accomplishment from, games where I can at least have a chance to survive on the first attempt, rather than games where I can only succeed on the fiftieth.

 

[Stigmata]

Plus there's the fact that, by and large, we have been gaming since childhood. We've had years and years of practice with videogames. It's much easier for me to pick up Timesplitters than it is for a seven year old who's only played Peggle and Solitaire.

 

[Warbie]

*snip*

That sounds like an example of challenging done wrong. If repeating a section is no fun it suggests the game is lacking fullstop, and that you're only playing to see what happens next. It really should be fun in the attempt, regardless of whether you succeed or not.

 

[Laivasse]

See, I would consider HL2 an example of a game that's fun and challenging in the attempt, but the consensus (at least among people who've been gaming a long time) is that it was too easy. I'm of the opinion that if I, a moderately skilled player, die in random firefights at least a few times (which I did), then it's challenging enough. And the great thing about HL2 (and HL1 too) was that I had no problem replaying not only the firefights I died in, but those I survived too.

I think there's a reason the swarm of Combine troops in Entanglement stands out so much in HL2 as a challenging section, and that's because it's one of the only places where you really have very little chance of surviving the first time around, if you don't have an inkling of what's about to happen (and if you have it on a reasonable difficulty setting). In other words it does challenging in the 'old' way. Most of the rest of the game tries to do challenging in a different way - ie. by giving the impression of risk while not truly endangering the player unless they screw up significantly. By doing that, it makes the game much easier on subsequent playthroughs, since if you remember the enemy placement then you have the battle half won. I can't help but feel, however, that players who replay HL2 while relying their foreknowledge of the enemy placement and keeping all their one-shot-kill weapons ready are kind of missing the point, if they then complain that the game is too easy. It shouldn't all be just about completing the game any more these days, it should be about enjoying the experience, soaking up the atmos, and seeing what you can do differently to how you did it the first time.

Entanglement stands out as a highly enjoyable section for most people, myself included, because it's a change in pace and methodology, but IMO it would be very wearying if the entire game tried to be challenging in that way.

 

[Shoes_Buttback03]

Everyone who wants to play a game should be able to without dying somany times they stay off games. That hurts games as an industry if the only people playing are hardcores who only get enjoyment when the game is 99% impossible then your product wont see to all the other gamers who are good but not that good.. Thus there are difficulty levels. So everyone from casual to hardcore can play a good game and enjoy it.

When I get a new game I start at the lowest play level then go up after each playthrogh. I like seeing how it changes. And often by the time I get to the highest difficulty I'm so used to the game it becomes fun when I encounter impossible odds and I'm yelling sh** sh** sh** every few seconds. Like in ep2 when your running away from the guard antlion. I love that part, I always taunt the lion when I get into the next safe tunnel.

 

[Deleted member 56031]

Yeah games are definitely easier compared to the nes days. There are still hard games now a days but not as much and heck games can even be criticised for it at times now like ninja gaiden.

 

[Asknoone]

I've always found that with decent games it isn't a chore to repeat a level 10, 20 or more times.

The vast majority give it to about 2 before they turn it off and I think if players are dying beyond the 5 mark, there is something wrong.

 

[Pulse]

Blame casuals.

 

[Warbie]

The vast majority give it to about 2 before they turn it off and I think if players are dying beyond the 5 mark, there is something wrong.

That's what the easy setting is for. I've nothing against nubs, I just don't see why they ruin our fun for those of us that want something more involved. My other gripe is when games are made to be flown through - which many are - there's often little depth or variety to gameplay and each play through ends up the same. Dull, dull, dull.

People play the same maps over and over again in multiplayer, so clearly it isn't repetition that's the problem - it's how much fun they have at each visit.

 

[Pesmerga]

MP can't really be compared to SP like that. 2fort, for example, is such a classic map because of its simplicity and iconic design- it creates a great environment for multiplayer matches. Create a single-player experience out of 2fort and players will get bored with it on the 3rd run.

What I'm saying is singleplayer should be an experience that is challenging and makes the player think about what they're doing, but not make the player play the same level over and over again trying to find out "how the developer wanted it done".

Multiplayer games have always been the forefront of competitive and challenging play, anyway. No one play Starcraft against the AI a thousand times and still has fun doing it.

 

[Cornerstone]

The vast majority give it to about 2 before they turn it off and I think if players are dying beyond the 5 mark, there is something wrong.

No gamer left behind???

 

[Asknoone]

That's what the easy setting is for. I've nothing against nubs, I just don't see why they ruin our fun for those of us that want something more involved. My other gripe is when games are made to be flown through - which many are - there's often little depth or variety to gameplay and each play through ends up the same. Dull, dull, dull.

Those "nubs" make up a massive percentage of the gaming community, with the "hardcore" players a tiny little minority. The casual gamer deserves the standard, medium experience - not the easy option because he's a "nub". Games are way more sophisticated these days and they don't rely on challenging, tear-out-your-hair set pieces. You're wrong if you think there's only fun in challenge.

People play the same maps over and over again in multiplayer, so clearly it isn't repetition that's the problem - it's how much fun they have at each visit.

There's a huge difference between singleplayer repetition and multiplayer repetition - you can't compare them like that at all.

 

[Qonfused]

I guess I can see both arguements. I like difficult games, but there's a big difference between annoying difficult and good difficult. Stuntman is an example of bad difficult. I know I mention Stuntman a lot, only because it was so disappointing. Blah. Sometimes though I just want to play through a game without getting pissed off at the aimbotting AI. Also, there are other ways to making a game difficult than making the enemies a better shot.

 

[Raziaar]

Games are certainly getting easier when we have stupid developers trying to pander to larger 'less game oriented crowds'.

Seriously, look at many games in the past while that have been made or are being made, and you will see that they are simplified so as to bring in less hardcore gamer types.

 

[Warbie]

There's a huge difference between singleplayer repetition and multiplayer repetition - you can't compare them like that at all.

Why not? I didn't intend to compare like for like, only to show that people can be happy doing something similar over and over if it's a blast each time. This helps explain why so many gamers played through the stages in Golden Eye over and over (and over and over), yet would rather have their testicles degloved than sit through Doom 3 on even one occasion.

I agree about there being more to having fun with a game than the challenge it offers, but feel it is critical to setting a mood and giving a sense of achievement. If the enemy are pathetic, you'll never feel in any danger and any intended sense tension or menace goes straight out the window. Any triumphs in pacing and narrative, in this case, would be wasted.

 

[DEATHMASTER]

No gamer left behind???

You have no idea how much this sentence, it's implications, and thought of its possibility scare me.

 

[Tarkus]

I'm kind of disapointed at how easy assassin's creed is. Kinda takes the fun out of it

 

[Shoes_Buttback03]

You have no idea how much this sentence, it's implications, and thought of its possibility scare me.

Everyone has the right to play videogames dude. I stand here as a hardcore defending the casuals. Some people are just inept in there level of reflex, and to deny them a great game like HL2 just because they aren't as good as the elitist mean people is wrong.

GAMING FOR EVERYONE!

 

[Saturos]

Most of you have very good points.

I remember JakII when the casual noob gamers were complaining about the difficulty being too hard. JAKII!! Com'on, that game was easy as pie. :|

If you want something ball-bustingly hard that trumps even Doom2 in terms of difficulty, then try any of the Metal Slug series on arcade mode, (the mode without the infinite continues) or any of the Contra series.

Freakin' noobs.

 

[99.vikram]

I find it hilarious when people point out Super Mario Bros as an example of a good, difficult game. It basically took a play mechanic that worked well and stretched it out till you were bored out of your skull. I never bothered to play beyond 10 levels or so. That's not what a game should be. It should be interesting, and challenging in an interesting way (conceptual challenges instead of actual difficulty in doing a task).

EDIT: The only reason I played Contra till the end was the two player mode (and the neat levels).