What Are You, a Pansy? Game Difficulty Discussion

[Ketzal]

Alright, first disclaimer that I'm going to put here: I am a person who is probably more emotionally sensitive than most, so I have a tendency to get angry a lot more easily than some other people. Given that, please take what I say here with a grain (or pinch even) of salt.

This has been something nagging at the back of my mind for a while, and recent games that I've played or seen have prompted me to lay out my gripes for everyone to agree and disagree with. What am I griping about? Game difficulty...

Well, I guess more specifically, the expectations of difficulty in the gaming community.

Please note that this isn't some rant about Dark Souls or any game that was made specifically difficult as a selling point. Those are fine, I just tend to avoid them unless they have a really good hook to them. What I'm focusing on is the community's attitude towards game difficulty, and how that affects things like community-created content.

I know that currently most people are playing fallout 4. Me, I don't have any of the current-gen consoles or a computer that would be able to feasibly run the game, but I did remember buying fallout 3 from the humble store for less than five dollars. So on a whim I decided to install and play the game, and boy, was it fun. I probably sunk twenty hours into it over the next few days alone, but eventually I noticed a point where it seemed like it was getting too easy: health items and ammo were aplenty, I could mow down enemies left and right, and anything that took more than a few shots to kill just took longer to kill, without really providing a threat. Nothing really provided any challenge.

Now I know the immediate reaction is "so turn up the difficulty", but that wouldn't have changed the problems that were occurring. I'd still have both a crazy amount of ammo and health to rely one when taking on enemies; turning up the difficulty would just mean stockpiling even more of that stuff. So what did I decide to do? Check out the mods.

One mod that kept coming up as I read through top mod lists and the like was Fallout: Wanderer's Edition, a mod that claimed to change the game's mechanics in a way that made it more challenging, immersive, and allowed for a wider variety of gameplay styles. I thought, "cool! Sounds like just what I'm looking for!"

Two hours later, after dying to the same freaking bandits maybe twenty times to two or three hits each, I said "screw this" and toned everything down. While the mod introduced options that made the game more interesting in the right areas, the actual combat just became horrifically frustrating.

Now I'm not about to condemn this mod for having such unforgiving combat difficulty. It still does some things right by limiting ammo and health (as well as how often you can apply healing items), but what baffled me so much was why this mod was being heralded as one of the best mods for fallout 3 when the gameplay changes were seriously punishing. It left me both frustrated and confused, and it didn't help that when I went to a control panel provided by the mod to tone it down back to vanilla settings, it gave me the message "Are you sure you want to wuss out?"

This, good readers, is where I come to the point of all this: are gaming communities too obsessed with difficulty? I'm not the only one who has complaints to this mod's difficulty curve, but for the most part people obsess over it as the greatest mod ever made to the game. And sure, maybe after a while the game tones down when I get better weapons and armor and the like, but the game takes strides to limit money as well, so it's not easy getting those supplies. I get it that it's going for a more realistic approach to the game, but why does that have to go hand-in-hand with frustrating gameplay? Why can't the default be to just have supplies be limited while having minor tweaks to the damage? It's questions like this that lead me to believe that people just want a game to be unforgivably hard for some reason.

Now I get the argument that harder gameplay just makes success all the more rewarding, but there's a point to where the effort just isn't worth the payoff. It kind of reminds me of when I tried warheads candies as a kid: the center was sweet enough when I got to it, but getting through the horrifically sour coating made it not worth it.

I could go on about this topic with stuff like Super Mario Maker and stuff like that, but I want to see what you guys think about this.

TL;DR
A Fallout 3 mod that made the game frustratingly hard has left me wondering if the gaming community has become a bit obsessed with difficult gameplay. While Fallout 3 isn't the entire gaming community, there are other instances of frustrating difficulty (Super Mario Maker) from user-created content that has left me wondering about this. Do you guys think we're focusing a lot on difficulty, or do you feel like these are isolated cases and don't represent the community's views as a whole?

[Him]

Well, it obviously doesn't represent the views of the entire community. Though a good number of people do value high difficultly a lot. I personally enjoy the hardest difficulties because I like getting better. And I disagree with you about the effort not being worth the payoff. That is completely situational and up to the person doing it to decide. People are just doing what is fun for them. Of course, there are those who will shame you for not beating a game on its highest difficulty. Who cares though? Let a jerk be a jerk.

So yeah, a lot of people value the difficulty itself a lot. Though I think it's mostly because they think people enjoy it and that they themselves do.

[HeckobA]

Just as there are super-difficult mods and levels for games to provide additional challenge, there are also super-easy levels or mods that give you overpowered weapons or practically invulnerability etc.

Some people, myself included enjoy the difficulty. I'm one of the people who would play something on the high(er/est) difficulty even if it's already challenging or limit myself in some other way (for instance, no leveling past level 20 in Dark Souls) and die 20 (or, if we're talking Wings of Vi (holy **** that game is HARD) more like 300) times and then when I finally beat something I'd be extremely pleased.
Dying just fills me with DETERMINATION. aheh... Undertale reference

The reason why I do it is usually one (or both) of these two:
1. The game is too easy without it and without any real challenge there's only the story left, which might carry the game and keep it fun but quite possibly not and either way it will be more boring. Example: Dust - AET. You become stupidly OP if you're a completionist and thus get the best items and level up all the way. Even if not, the game still became pretty easy, the only challenges being a few of the completely optional time trial stages. So I restarted the game on the highest instead of 2nd highest difficulty. Things were different! You couldn't afford to take lazy hits all the time, you had to get your dodges and parries right to beat some of the stronger enemies and the combat system really showed its worth when you couldn't just beat up everything by barely breaking your run to do a few slashes. This changed again later as you still get stupid OP, just with enemies taking a bit longer to kill, but while it was hard it was enjoyable and also made the power climb more rewarding, even though the progression really was too fast.

2. I get a kick out of completing something particularly challenging. Some Super Meat Boy levels, for instance. Really difficult, takes so many tries, but when I finally get it, I feel great about it. If I played a game at an easier difficulty, it would almost feel like I'm shooting myself in the foot by choosing not to experience all the game has to offer.

I don't always do though, sometimes I like playing easier difficulty, if I'm just looking to go through a game and don't care too much for making it hard on myself.

So this brings us to the particular Fallout mod. If I found Fallout too easy and got a mod specifically to make it hard and challenging, then indeed, removing (or adjusting) said mod would feel like wussing out of the challenge I set for myself. Therefore I completely understand the message it gives you when you decide to make things easier, since you chose to do this. Also, you shouldn't take it seriously. Take it as a joke. For me, a special custom message like that is nice and it'll be like "Yeah, mod, you beat me. You win, grats. You're right to feel smug about it, heh" and then I go on with my now easier life.

Maybe it's because I grew up with challenging video games that had no save feature, meaning you got only as far as your skill could take you and have to start over from the beginning if when you fail (e.g. Mario Bros (I did finally beat world 8 eventually) and Solomon's Key) so you had to play it over and over till you got it and then it was great.

I admit I sometimes kind of make fun of people not doing hard stuff or failing at hard stuff (many a 'scrub' and 'git gud' was uttered...) but I'm only kidding and I try to make sure to tell them that.

So yeah. Difficulty is important for me (just look at this wall of text...) and I think it's important to give people a choice. People who aren't that skilled or don't want it for the challenge might never pick up a game if it was too hard and frustrating for them to play, but there are people who do enjoy bashing their heads against walls. Repeatedly.
I don't think there's too much of a focus on it, just about the right amount of focus.

TL;DR
Just read what Him said, that works too.

[Ketzal]

Heh. Now that I'm looking at this from a calmer mindset, I kinda regret writing out this topic the way I did XP I'm not gonna bother editing it though, otherwise it would just be full of me back pedaling from my statements.

Heckoba, I can see what you're getting at, and one thing that you mentioned really stuck out to me: growing up on challenging games.

I grew up with Nintendo 64 and game boy color games, so I was all over stuff like paper Mario, Pokemon snap, Pokemon blue, Mario party...basically, games that were less about challenge and more about story or game feel or unique gameplay. There was some challenge, sure, but I was almost never in a scenario where I had to restart a part of the game because it was too difficult to beat.

I guess difficulty isn't necessarily obsessed over, it's probably more a statement to what kind of person I am. I'm emotionally sensitive, I know that about myself. When I get frustrated, it's less a feeling of attacking the problem and overcoming it, but rather more of a "screw this, this is bs" reaction.

Overcoming really challenging gameplay just doesn't feel rewarding to me. There will be a few times where I actually feel like I accomplished something (like taking out a high dragon in Dragon Age), but for the most part my reaction is less "hell yeah, I finally did it!" and more "Jeez, I'm finally done with that stupid part..."

I don't see this as a right or wrong way to think, and I don't have problems with people who have fun with difficult gameplay. In the end, I just got used to playing games that more or less held your hand and let you play the game at your own pace, so dealing with a scenario where I'm dying twenty times a row to the same enemy just doesn't do it for me.

And yeah, I shouldn't have really taken the "wuss out?" message seriously, but I completely HATE that kind of heckling. You can be as lighthearted as you want with it, but I won't see it any differently than making fun of someone for their lack of skill, and I don't really like that.

And yeah, Him does make a good point too.

[The Rookie]

*Points at Darksouls players*

There's definitely a community of sadist out there who enjoy being beaten over an over by something, only to eventually overcome it. Some have taken it to the next level, like the guy who beat Darksouls using a rockband guitar or the guy who modded his controller to physically drain blood from his arm when ever he died.

As for myself, I really only just play through a games on the highest difficulty for the achievements. I mean, I never really give up on them once I started, It's doable and I know I'm capable of doing it so I keep going.

[Ketzal]

the guy who modded his controller to physically drain blood from his arm when ever he died.

O.o

Please, please tell me you're joking...

[The Rookie]

Please, please tell me you're joking...

Nope