Difficulty/challenge in games: What do you think?

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This is just me asking out of purest curiosity, just to see what some responses might be.

The question: What do you think of difficulty/challenge in games? Do you find it to be important? If so, what level of challenge are you, personally, after? How much is too much? Is there a point for you where it becomes not enough?

And what KIND of challenge do you like? A twitch-based challenge, with fast action, stuff to dodge, chaos to deal with? Or an intellectual challenge, where you must out-think the enemy in order to not die?

Or are you the sort of player who, instead, prefers a more relaxing experience, where challenge doesnt really factor in?


Whichever option it might be for you, there are piles of games of that type available. Do you have any favorites that fit just what you're looking for?1


In my case I need a very high challenge to even hold my interest. I wont ramble on in detail, but I tend to stick to bullet-hell games and roguelikes.

But I've mentioned that enough time on here. I'd rather hear what some of you guys like/dislike as a whole.

well it's been over half a year since i last played vidya regularly, but i can perhaps still answer. i usually go to video games looking for an escape from daily stresses, not (always) for a challenge, so i tend to stick to more forgiving games. (casual, i know)

that said, i can accept a greater challenge when i know i won't lose all my progress if i meet the games "losing" conditions. if the game is one of those where you lose all your progress wen you die or lose, i'm going to be more reticent with greater challenge because that is one the biggest turn offs i can expect when playing a game. when that happens, i tend to just turn it off and stop playing for a while because it's just do discouraging to start from scratch.

i can appreciate both "witch-based challenge, with fast action, stuff to dodge, chaos to deal with" and "an intellectual challenge, where you must out-think the enemy in order to not die", it really depends on what mood i'm in and how much of the other kind of challenge i've just finished, i like variety. i also enjoy intellectual challenges where there's no immediate threat. puzzles.

i'm a big nintendo guy, and in 2015 i finished playing zelda: ALTTP for the first time. alongside some others, i think that game hit the sweet spot for what i'm looking for in a 2d game, in terms of difficulty. i hope ninty can realize games can be both family friendly and be challenging, because it seems like they've been much more soft and handholdy as of late.

i think i had much more patience with hard games a kid, when i had nothing else to do and i was much more easily captivated, than i do now as a young adult with responsibilities and other interests.

I like challenges that are either reflex-based or built around mastering the game's mechanics and using them to your advantage. I feel that FPS games, especially AFPSs like Quake 3 Arena, are the perfect mixture of both - you need knowledge and skill as much as reflexes. That's why I love playing them.

Personally, I don't like challenge in games. And I'm not good at remembering what buttons do, or using too many in quick succession, either. If a game becomes difficult, I switch it off. I get no sense of achievement from stressing myself out and playing the same bit over and over again, just to beat it and move on.

The Fable series of games is ideal for me. You don't need good gaming skill to enjoy it, and it's open-world so you can take it at your own pace. I spend as much time just wandering around and enjoying the scenery, or shopping and managing the property ladder, or finding a partner and having children, as I do with anything more story goal orientated.

I also love The Sims for the same reason. A nice, light and easy game. You can play with lots of family members and work on their careers to make it more difficult, but I prefer playing as a single person doing my own thing each day - maybe adding a pet into the equation.

To be honest, there are very few games that accommodate my need for ease and freedom. The Fable games obviously went off the rails, and I've stopped playing The Sims due to EA's greed with that and the extortionate cost of a barely complete game and 100 expensive expansion packs, so I haven't enjoyed gaming in quite some time.

I get frustrated with games that are hard [often easy by other people's standards], and platforming games are naturally difficult for me [except Metroid Zero Mission and Super Metroid]. That's mainly why I prefer [fantasy] JRPGs like Pokemon or Final Fantasy, or strategy games like Fire Emblem and Radiant Historia, or Rune Factory games.
I am so good at playing the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games that I know exactly how to get the best items and skills, so by doing that, the games become quite easy.

It really is a shame, aint it?

The sad part is, it really IS a very good series of games. THere's a heck of alot to like there. But... EA. No matter what the game, if EA is around, it's going to be trouble.

I remember way back when the original Sims came out. The very first, before ANY expansion packs, back when Maxis was still a big name in gaming. For the time it was released (late 90s, I was in highschool at the time) it was a BIG game. There was soooooo much content, so many things you could do, in a totally new type of game. Everyone loved it. It was very worth the money that you paid. So were it's expansions, which were PROPER expansions (not the "content that should have been there from the start" type, which is a business idea that would never have flown back then).

Now though? Ugh. The game at it's core is still very good, but.... bah. They've screwed with things too much on the business side.

Anyone into the series is best off sticking to #3 and certain expansions in that game: THat one really is a BIG game even without expansions, to be honest. It seemed to hit just before bad business practices became the norm. With #4 though, it's too late. Which is too bad, it's not a bad game at all, but it's monetized like crazy. So many players just stick with the third game now. Particularly now that technology has advanced a bit (alot of machines had trouble running it when it came out, but that's so much less of a problem nowadays).

I mean, really, #4 took out the whole element of creating your own fabric patterns/colors and whatnot, with no excuse other than "so we can sell them to you". Bah. A real shame.

Absolutely. And it's not that I couldn't pay for it, but I refuse to on principle. I refuse to support that level of greed. I do enjoy Sims 3 and the expansion packs, but they have been out for so long now that there is little new to discover. I used to take 6 months off then binge play for a week or two. I can't remember the last time I did that.

I do have a lot of nostalgia for the original game. The expansions wouldn't run on my laptop at the time, but I remember the excitement going out to buy the game as a teenager, and that it was just the most incredible and innovative game. Obviously it's now a very basic game, so it couldn't entertain me the same, but for its time...wow!

I like things difficult, but not frustrating, with a minimal amount of praying to RNJeezus if possible. I'm thinking like Ninja Gaiden on the Xbox here, a game that seemed really hard at first, but was extremely rewarding once you got the hang of the mechanics.

It depends on my mood.
Often, i play games to indeed be challenged, so i choose a game with some challenge; other times, i prefer some simple entertainment, so i'll start up a game that has a lower difficulty (either overall or becouse of chosen settings).

RNGsus is indeed often an exercise in frustration, especially if it is the factor providing the challenge, but it is hard to completely get rid of it.

I just don't have the reflexes for games that require that sort of thing, and one the whole my appetite for challenge has decreased with age and available free time to devote to mastering new games. My all-time favorite, NetHack, has a pretty fair amount of randomness (if it didn't, I 'd have gotten bored playing a game that came out in the late 1980s!) but is basically a turn-based strategy game in which the majority of challenges can be overcome in more than one way if you can gather up inventory items and think of good ways to use them. I appreciate recent strategy and RPGs' ability to change difficulty levels as I'd rather complete a game on a lower difficulty level than get frustrated and not complete a game at all - in fact, I often play through RPGs twice to make different choices of companions, quests, and so forth.

dunno, i had the sims 3 for a while, and it wasn't that the games mechanics were frustrating, or that EA's greed was poisoning the game excessively, but i just couldn't being myself to play it for long

it was if i had developed an emotional bond with those bits of code that were my characters, no matter what i did they would be unhappy and frustrated, and i couldn't bear to see them like that any longer, so i had to quit playing.

While I'll concede that games are definitely easier than the games I played growing up, I also acknowledge a number of other relevant factors. Aside from the lack of spare time nowadays, games today are also longer, more cinematic, and attempting to appeal to multiple demographics other than just gamers.

With that said, I don't mind playing an easier game casually for about 30 minutes a day during the week. If I'm to play a harder game or one that consumes more time (RPGs), I usually save those for a weekend where I can dedicate a sizeable amount of time towards it.

This joins on to another issue for me. My games of choice growing up were the simulation/builder/Theme/tycoon type games. Unfortunately, this genre has now almost entirely moved on to being the 'pay to play' format, where you can't progress without repeatedly paying out small amounts of money. These are the games now to be downloaded as apps, or played on Facebook, ripping off the casual gamer.

Incredibly frustrating.

I believe they recently brought out a new game along the lines of Rollercoaster Tycoon, following the original format, but when I looked into the specs there was not the slightest chance of running it on my hardware.

Multiple difficulty settings works in nearly every game type. Then people can enjoy the game however they want.

Personally I play at normal or hard difficulty in games and I enjoy it.

Most games released in the past 5 years (probably more) are much much easier and shorter than games released in the past. Role-playing games are extremely guilty of this! Unless its an online RPG (MMO, MMORPG, etc), the replay value is usually pretty low. They tack on sidequest after sidequest to pad gameplay time. Plus trophies and achievements for more useless stuff that only diehard fans of the game and trophy/achievement hunters enjoy. I will say it's not always bad they do this, but it's more and more frequent in RPGs these days. Do random thing- get a trophy. Kill 1000 of a certain enemy- get a trophy. Some stuff is difficult but it's not a fun difficult (for me at least). I don't need 100 percent in a game just for bragging rights or whatever.

What really gets me about this one is how vehemently some people would annoyingly disagree with you. You know, like the ones that think that Dark Souls would be TOTALLY RUINED if it had an Easy mode. Uuuugh. Enter the Gungeon has been the same way, there are alot of people that would REALLY like an Easy mode, either because the game is just plain WAY too hard for them or because they think it'd help them learn the game overall and move onto normal mode later, but then on the other hand you've got tons of other fans telling them how it'd totally destroy the game and it'd be horrible and it'd "invalidate" hard-earned achievements (???) and it's so ridiculous.

One thing I've learned from doing game design, doing testing, and whatnot: The more OPTIONS you give to the players, the more players you can appeal to. And they're "options" because you dont HAVE to use them. But as you've probably seen for yourself... people often dont seem to grasp that last bit. It's so annoying to see.

Okay I'll stop ranting about that bit now.





Yeah, same here.






Yes, this bothers me too.

Though, there ARE a good number of games of these types still out there, but as they're not made by the Big Guys anymore (unless they're the monetized type on mobile or whatever), they can be harder to find. Stuff like Cities: Skylines and whatnot are very good.

But they do pretty much all require a fairly strong machine. Simulations always do.

i think that latter point ties into the general downward trend in game difficulty. (with exceptions of course, there's always going to be exceptions)

game companies are trying to reach out to demographics besides just "gamers", or people who have been playing games for many years and spend much of their time on them...turns out these other people aren't as skilled, and so the difficulty is toned down to be able to appeal to the point where they can have their money. might be what's happening.

or...we are all just getting worse at games!