I’m surprised by how many people took issue with this post. Like, it’s specifically funny because some games already make fun of your for picking easy, which is far more mean spirited than making fun of people who are good at games and have nothing to prove. Some people have disabilities that make playing games harder, lack the time to get good because of responsibilities, or just plain aren’t good at games. Games shouldn’t be making fun of people who already have trouble accessing them, while people who are good at them often need to learn to take themselves less seriously. It’s punching down (something that already happens) vs getting proud and successful people to have humility. Games was made for gamers, it’s not like they don’t want you to play it.
I’m gonna throw this one on my ever growing pile of “posts that people took way more issue with than I expected.” The throughline for those posts seem to be that people have a hard time with self deprecating jokes and take anything that pokes fun at themselves seriously. It’s a shame, because I’m usually also the target of the jokes that piss people off the most, which is why I get surprised that other people don’t also find them funny.
edit: spelling
Most definitely was funny and I’d most definitely need a recap/“in the last episode” mode for any story games. Otherwise by the time i can play those again, i have already forgotten where the story was and who was who.
Idk I through it was funny
Honestly, I’d still pick hard. Breezing through games just isn’t as fun as having the occasional struggle on the way.
depends on the game. some games hard mode is just fighting one enemy for a long ass time over and over again
And you only have 1/3 as many places to save, so good fucking luck if you die!
Enemy sponginess is the lazy dev’s way of ramping up difficulty. I hate it in FPS especially–oh, this normal enemy just ate 37 bullets, this totally makes sense to the story in a world where guns aren’t made of styrofoam.
Left 4 Dead had the achievement What Are You Trying to Prove? earned by completing all the campaigns on expert.
L4D2 had Still something to prove, again by beating all the campaigns on expert.
I was able to get the second one by playing Last Man On Earth, which is single-player, but special infected only. The higher difficulties are mostly harder by having common infected do more damage.
The thing is: We are not doing that on any other skill-based competitive thing (sports or similar), even though you could largely make the same argument there. Of course any game like this will want to be respectful to its most dedicated players instead of pissing them off.
Honestly, wanting to insult the best players mostly just comes across salty, as if by someone who is annoyed that they are not particularly good (which is fine) and mad about it (which indicates that YOU are the one taking this too seriously). Back in the day playing through the Maw on Legendary in Halo CE was something that was respect if you managed to do it, but nobody really looked down on others for not doing so…
The thing is this:
The people playing on easy don’t get angry when they’re called easy-goers, this is not about their ego for them.
But the “I’m the most manly man of them all, I only play on the hardest difficulty!”-types will instantly have their overinflated egos implode when you call them out like that. And you’ll have your game shitstormed by incels.
Don’t think I’d cater to incels.
And you’ll have your game shitstormed by incels.
Give it a couple of weeks and they’ll be distracted by some movie with a woman lead in it, and it will all blow over.
True, just cast Lupita Nyong’o in any movie and they’ll forget all about the game.
It’s called cultivating a less toxic audience
They would be better off not judging people for any selected difficulty then.
also free advertising, having shitheads publish videos of themselves turning red from talking about your game makes the kind of person who frequents 196 go “lmao based let’s buy the game out of spite”
Seriously all the chuds bitching about the “girlboss” character they added for the new prequel missions in Halo: Campaign Evolved just highlighted that there were new prequel missions.
(Although actually most of the dipshits I’ve seen complaining about her didn’t actually play so they don’t know that she’s not part of the standard campaign, so they’re saying things like, “The game was already good, they didn’t need to add a new woke character.”)
That’s why I bought that one game about the trans caterpillar
true shit, their cries have actually led me to some things i wouldn’t have found otherwise! like Hazbin Hotel!
Ive heard genuine testimony that Hazbin’s creator is pretty shit. I wouldn’t know too much tho, it’s not my fandom.
Those controversies are pretty baseless, the one thing she genuinely did wrong was providing graphics for shoe0nhead and Blaire White, but she says she didn’t know what those stood for at the time and honstly, they can be deceiving.
Good point
True true. You definitely get a relaxed fanbase with a good ability to take some irony and self-mockery like that. You just also will always have an army of haters turn up wherever someone expresses personal joy in your game online.
Its motivation to prove the game wrong; plow your girlfriend AND play on the hardest difficulty.
I play on easy so I have more time to be sad about being single
I feel like I actually did see things like this in flash games in the early 2000s specifically making fun of 90s tropes.
Flashgames were peak creativity and a very “internet” blend of edginess and woke, there were some absolute treasures out there.
I spent way way too much time on Albino Blacksheep, YTMND, NewGrounds, EbaumsWorld, and so many others as a kid.
Woah. That unlocked some memories…
Are people actually making a big deal about what other people set their difficulty as?
Idk sounds like those people are the ones lacking said social life, not the people minding their business enjoying their game the way they want to.
See Wolfenstein having you as a baby when you pick the lowest difficulty
They should have made that mode just have no enemies at all. I would’ve laughed at that
The nazis all have clown noses and explode with confetti if you get a hit on it.
Yeah that’s even better lol
Must have been later games. 3-D only had one death effect per enemy type
If that’s your kink, sure boss.
If you actual want the respect of your player base, maybe leave shaming culture out the venue? You’re one LAN party away from making another jerk circle.
Where’s your sense of whimsy, your joie de vivre, your ability to take the piss out of the parts of yourself that can be lightheartedly mocked?
Come onnnn and join the jerk, the planet’s on fire, more than half of us are set up to die by systems put in place generations ago, and the government of every country is full of pedos.
Come play a game and if the wellington boot with frog eyes fits you a bit too nicely, dont take it personally, jump in the puddles.
I think ya answered thyne question.
I recently got into speedruning one of my favourite game. While i did beat that game on hardest difficulty absolutely casually, speedrunning on casual difficulty is so much fun
No game developer is going to try to reduce time playing their game though.
They kinda do, in this respect. When huge warning signs didn’t work, devs started locking the highest difficulties until you beat the game once or implementing a hidden system that lowers difficulty or sneaks you some goodies if you keep dying too much.
When huge warning signs didn’t work, devs started locking the highest difficulties until you beat the game once or implementing a hidden system that lowers difficulty or sneaks you some goodies if you keep dying too much.
Adaptive difficulty has been a thing for decades. The first one I remember is Max Payne, released 25 years ago, though I don’t remember if it was active on all difficulty settings…
I didn’t say it was a recent development, but if anything it has more common over the years.
Yeah I realised that might have been the case as I was hitting “comment” and was like “oh well” - just my first impression was that you meant to imply that it was recent :)
You never know how old someone is around here. Not long ago I saw someone write something like “maybe they didn’t learn about 9/11 at school” and after a quick calculation I was ready to go climb into a grave and stay there =P
💀
They teach that in sehool?
Replay value doesn’t really have to do with difficulty. That’s what all these mobile game designers found out. They get replayability through a reward system or adding some kind of social aspect to it for peer pressure.
No, but people these days are very stupid. AAA game design these days tries to appeal to the lowest common denominator. The C-suite types don’t want a player bouncing off their game because the player was too dumb to select the right difficulty type for themselves.
Their solution seems to have been to phase out difficulty selection altogether though. It’d have been more fun if they tried something like this though.
I think, with modern AAA games, you also run into the problem that they’re typically a dozen games in a trenchcoat. So, you might be able to make the shooting gameplay more difficult by just adding more enemies, but you can’t easily do that for the platforming parts or the stealth sidequests.
You’d need to build the game three times over, pretty much, to really offer three different difficulty levels.
And so, yeah, they try to avoid that by giving help to players that struggle and optional challenges for players that can handle a higher difficulty.
Some games literally have a “speed time up” button. I use those all the time.
Power fantasy simulator
No need to use that kind of language though
I also oppose English
Was this a joke? Are you objecting to “plowing”?
The language, both visual and written, is clearly discriminative. Feels like a virgin/chad meme
Play on hard, do you?
Nope. I just don’t like bullying others
If you think that’s bullying, you’re in for a stressful life, friend.
Would you have preferred it in French?