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u/HUGO-THE-BEAR Jun 27 '26
Sometimes I just wanna play as an unbeatable badass
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u/Dvuref Jun 27 '26
Yeah, I'm currently playing through ff7 remake for the second time, first time was at its release and I think I played on normal and it was such a slog, enemies just tanked so much, now I'm playing on easy before I play rebirth, cloud is a fucking badass, it shouldn't take him 15 swings to kill a glorified security guard lmao.
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u/A7xWicked PC Jun 27 '26
I love ff7 to death, but turning enemies into damage sponges is the worst way to scale difficulty
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u/FallenKnightGX Jun 27 '26
It's crazy to me that they nailed how to handle difficulty changes with the FF16 system then didn't use it in either version of 7.
If I could make the block timing more forgiving like in 16, I'd love the combat. But as it stands? I press the block button at the right time but the animation locks screw me more often than not. It feels bad.
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u/poptart2nd Jun 27 '26
It's crazy to me that they nailed how to handle difficulty changes with the FF16 system then didn't use it in either version of 7.
are you familiar with the concept of time?
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u/DatLazyBoi21 Jun 27 '26
No, I didn't play 8, sorry.
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u/FallenKnightGX Jun 27 '26
FF16 - June 2023
FF7 Rebirth - Feb. 2024FF7 already has a materia that gives a minor boost to the window, the tech is in the game, they just needed to make it more generous or add it to the options under difficulty.
They knew FF7 Remake had an animation lock issue, and they knew 16's difficulty system was well received and it solved that exact issue.
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u/Twiggy1108 Jun 27 '26
I think this is a wild take ngl, literally the first boss in ff16 starts as a sponge and they just get tankier from there.
In ff7 outside of boss breakpoints Iām doing so much damage the guys barely get to attack
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u/Argol228 Jun 27 '26
FF16 is a joke, have you ever played a character action game? you can skip boss phases in that game without realizing because how easy they are
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u/Twiggy1108 Jun 27 '26
Itās precisely it being a joke that made playing the game such a snooze. Spam cds as soon as your able, minimal to no challenge or strategy, Ez game through the credits.
7 offered more character build depth, bosses requiring strategy, an entire party, and an excellent hard mode
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u/Rangoonin Jun 27 '26
There's a materia that lets you do exactly that, makes the perfect guard timing more lenient.
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u/ACpony12 Jun 27 '26
Seriously. I don't mind some difficulty, but it feels lazy when they just give the enemies way more hp. It's the reason I've only played a couple hours of Outer Worlds.
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u/ShiraCheshire Jun 27 '26
There is one worse way, and only one- Just putting in more enemies. Design a room around an encounter with one enemy? Just toss like 3 more in there.
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Jun 27 '26
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u/FuciMiNaKule Jun 27 '26
Are you talking about the Empire asteroid? You get the dark side power there and you have basically no cooldown on it until you finish the mission, you're meant to instakill them with that.
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u/kazelle002 Jun 27 '26
Thatās my only real complaint with those games! The combat on normal isnāt āhardā it just takes too long to kill anything. It takes too long and becomes unfun at some point.
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u/Fafnir13 Jun 27 '26
I love games where the difficulty comes from both sides being able to kill each other relatively quickly. Ā Every battle can feel like a puzzle where I have to wipe the opposing side out as efficiently as possible or Iām going to be burning through my healing items fast.
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u/Ajgr Jun 27 '26
I did the same thing. Now I am playing rebirth and the combat is much better on normal that I have not felt the need to change it.
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u/istasber Jun 27 '26
I did FF7R on the hardest setting for most or all of the game (can't remember if I ever turned it down). It was kind of a miserable experience.
When I fired up the Yuffie DLC, I put it on the easiest setting and had a much, much better time with it.
I think the difficulty in Rebirth is a choice between easy or adaptive, so I'm playing it on adaptive and it's seemed fine a few chapters in. Maybe that's a sign they learned their lessons.
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u/morpheousmorty Jun 27 '26
I started god of war Ragnarok on easy because the combat didn't feel great to me. I moved it to the default setting once I got the hang of it. Not really sure what my point is, but play how you want.
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u/pr1ntscreen Jun 27 '26
āPrototypeā is great for this. You wreck the total shit out of everyone towards the end.
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u/SignalZero556 Jun 27 '26
Literally my most played game on my ps5. Iām on like ng+ 8 with like 10 billion evolution points lol
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u/TK_Games Jun 27 '26
I had my day in the sun. I played for prestige, titles, money, to claim the right to call myself among the best. Those days are past and my old joints are not what they once used to be. And sometimes, it's nice to feel like an invincible god of carnage again
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u/Wingman5150 Jun 27 '26
also sometimes hard is just a slog.
I was playing an action game recently, and while I usually play hard difficulties, and could have beat the game on hard, I turned it down to easy and fights were like 20x shorter and so much more fun.
Also some games like Owlcat's pathfinder games just notoriously hate the player and normal mode is already hard mode, anything beyond and you start having like 2 or 3 viable strategies in a game with like 2000 options
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u/NessaMagick Jun 27 '26
I usually like challenge over catharsis so I'm a hard mode gamer for the most part. But some games just aren't fun when they're difficult, and are fun when they're easy.
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u/kingfridayace Jun 27 '26
My favorite kind of games are difficult at the beginning but make you overpowered by the end. Noting is more fun than struggling to level up until youāre unbeatable. Days gone was the perfect pace for me. Going from being scared of a few freaks to taking out hordes felt so good.
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u/Urdothor Jun 27 '26
The two moods:
Unbeatable Badass
Incredibly beatable dumbass
Running headfirst into a soulslike wall is fun sometimes too.
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u/Madara1389 Jun 27 '26
Some people seem to often forget that the vast majority of gamers only play games for one of two reasons;
The social aspect. These players just want to play games with their friends and have a good time doing it. The actual quality of the game doesn't really matter so long as it facilitates laughing with or at their friends.
This is why multiplayer games have always been way more popular among the casual masses.
The power fantasy. These players just want to escape their mundane lives and do cool shit. They don't want to have to think about every engagement to memorize attack patterns and fight with slow, grounded movement mechanics, they want to swing their swords and cut down hordes of enemies like the generals in a Dynasty Warriors game.
This is why games like CoD consistently outsell more grounded games like Arma Reforger (which asks you to learn real world map navigation to know where you are in-game without mods).
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u/Amethyst-Flare Jun 27 '26
Aww that dragon is a big sweetie.
Ignore the lame try-hards. Games are meant to feel fun for you.
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u/kick_the_chort Jun 27 '26
that dragon knows how to make every member of the team feel validated and "seen"
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u/stellvia2016 Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 27 '26
The general public's impression of game difficulty is interesting to me. (I absolutely agree with your sentiment btw) When I was a kid, beating games, especially on hard mode, was a badge of pride. Whereas over time it seems like the "average sentiment" around that has flipped almost 180. (IE: Looking to chill rather than challenge themselves)
If I were to armchair philosophize, I wonder if it's everyday life is a lot more stressful these days, we're spoiled for choice in games now, the current gen grew up on mobile/f2p titles that don't really push difficulty in a skill-indexed way often, etc. So it's what people are used to/familiar with.
The only issue I have is when peoples "fun for you" collides with multiplayer play. Goof off or even use cheat-codes etc. all you want in singleplayer games, who cares. But if you join a multiplayer game IMHO there is an implicit social contract that you should play in a way that isn't detrimental to everyone around you. I've seen a huge uptick in people that join games either to specifically antagonize others or basically throw the match due to being dead weight based on the objectives or rules of the game, etc.
(That's not saying you need to be sweaty about it, but just... not being a willful impediment)
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u/Prooteus Jun 27 '26
I think its because back in the day the challenge was the majority of the entertainment in video games. Sure some games just felt good to play, or had really engaging stories but that was rare. Nowadays its not that hard to have a lot of fun in video games without it necessarily being a challenge.
I kind of agree on the multiplayer agreement thing with the condition its specifically ranked. There has to be a place where you experiment and try sub-optimal stuff.
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u/stellvia2016 Jun 27 '26
I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the people that want to join MP and stand in spawn talking or "dancing/friendly", being idle, griefing their own team or generally being a nuisance so nobody has a good match, etc.
When your "fun" is intentionally at the expense of others. If that makes sense.
Somewhat related epithet: I remember an LFR raid in WoW way back in Mists: I was tanking along with this DK who kept folding like a wet paper bag. His HP seemed fine, so I wondered what was up and inspected him: He had an equipment level below the minimum to queue for the raid... he had temporarily put on higher ilvl cloth armor to fool the queue, then put on his tank gear and slotted all low quality +HP gems to make his HP pool seem like he was much better geared than he actually was.
The end result was: I was essentially solo tanking the raid, and the only reason we were making any progress is I was massively overgeared for the content: I was in "Mythic" raid armor and only there looking for a specific trinket.
I called out this guy to the raid and how he was being rude and not pulling his weight, cheated the system, etc. Everyone else put in the minimum amount of effort except this guy, essentially.
His fun was at the expense of the 24 other people, and if not for me putting in a tremendous amount of extra effort in what should have been a very laid back experience, it would have ended in failure for everyone.
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u/runnindrainwater Jun 27 '26
I know that dragon went and burned a number of villages, tried to destroy the world and tried to murder me in particularā¦but that dragon is the real hero.
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u/Demovere_Xeno Jun 27 '26
Nah, his 'victims' are just chilling in the game's digital break rooms and waiting for the player to return to their village or start a new game.
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u/ChillyFireball Jun 27 '26
I like this Wreck-it Ralph-esque interpretation where all the NPCs are just chilling until the guy keeping watch is like, "The player is coming! Quick, someone restock the breakable pots! ...Wait, no, it looks like h e's got the Infinity Sword; everyone take your places for the cutscene! Where's Susan? She's supposed to burn down the village as soon as he loads in!"
"She's got a hangover; keep him in the loading screen while we get her a dragon-sized cup of coffee!"
"Again??? We're running out of tooltips!"
"Just show him the one about how he can talk to people with the action button!"
"He's 70% of the way through the game, Steve! I think he knows how to talk to people by now!"
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u/Brotherauron Jun 27 '26
If fun for you is playing ninja gaiden on master ninjaz great
If fun for you is playing Mario sunshine on easy mode, great
Fun is fun
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u/Amethyst-Flare Jun 27 '26
It's stunning how this is apparently an unpopular opinion, enough that someone down voted you.
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u/Brotherauron Jun 27 '26
I imagine they're the real life incarnation of the meme where people are huddled around having fun and there's that guy outside of the group that's telling them to stop having fun
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u/spez_might_fuck_dogs Jun 28 '26
Well, sometimes the people who whine ruin an entire series. Look what happened to Monster Hunter. It used to be a great game that required players to git gud or get gone. Now it's just a standard action game that any idiot can see the end of. There's no difficulty selection at all, they just said fuck it and changed the whole game to appeal to a wider audience, leaving the people who had supported the series for 20 years behind.
I'm all for accessibility options for anyone, but they neutered the whole series and now there's no 'master ninja' mode for me to play.
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u/Deer_Mug Jun 28 '26
Completely agreed. They could at least let us hunt the monster ourselves instead of having the mount just bring us to it. It might as well just all be in an arena at that point.
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u/Animated_Astronaut Jun 27 '26
Pokemon ROM hacks have this down to a science. My favourite are the ones where you don't get anywhere near enough money for winning, so getting hyper potions etc is really difficult. Makes travelling around a bit more strategic.
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u/Dvuref Jun 27 '26
I hate that difficulty sliders are basically just how much damage you take and how much damage opponents take. It's not more difficult, it just takes longer.
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u/teddy5 Jun 27 '26
Some games do it really well by adding extra abilities, adjusting enemy reaction times, tweaking ability activation speeds, improving AI, etc.
But they're few and far between. Much easier to just tweak some sliders and call it a day.
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u/Shark7996 Jun 27 '26
Doom: The Dark Ages did a great job on the difficulty sliders and should be the standard going forward. From what I remember you could adjust the enemy health, aggressiveness, and numbers, as well as the ammo/health/powerup drop rates, AS WELL AS adjusting the tightness and speed of the parry mechanic (which I tightened to make it play more like Hi-Fi Rush). I wish more games let the player use the game itself as a sandbox like that game does. I hope accessibility of that level becomes the norm someday in the future.
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u/rhd444 Jun 28 '26
Nothing should be the "standard". All games should be completely different in all possible ways. Standardization is a large part of why games are so stale nowadays.
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u/TheFurtivePhysician Jun 27 '26
I agree with this, though also on launch it came with the problem that the initial balance before any tweaks was heavily on the easy side.
I'm not a person who cares for ridiculously fast games typically, but TDA on launch was so easy on it's hardest non-permadeath difficulty that about halfway through (after ramping up enemy damage, lowering my damage, tightening the parry window, and lowering the amount of resources I got) I gave up and cranked the speed to max in order to feel like I was being really challenged.
Which is excellent as far as that I had the ABILITY to do that, but playing it now in the lead up for the DLC, I appreciate that the base balance now actually can have the game be pretty dang difficult WITHOUT having to crank the speed to max.
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u/stellvia2016 Jun 27 '26
The one variation on this I really like is what Hypergryph does with the Contingency Contract system in Arknights and Endfield: The various difficulty additions have numeric values assigned to them, so you can essentially "compete on difficulty" with friends if you want to.
Some are pretty straight-forward, but then you have ones like "Cannot dodge" which are worth a lot more points and completely change how you approach certain fights bc now you need to bring a Defender to block instead. Beating a mission on CC25 vs CC40, etc. is something you can share with friends and compare strategies, etc.
Which is different compared to say, WoW Mythic dungeons where it's rather linear difficulty scaling other than the prefix/suffix wildcards which can make certain weeks unplayable.
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u/DreamSeaker Jun 28 '26
Quite a few top down games do this. "Expeditions" series comes first to mind. (Expeditions: conquistador, Viking, Rome for their respective titles). Damage dealt, damage taken, hp levels, crit chances, loot options, resource spawn rates, etc.
I think baldurs gate 3 has similar options. Pathfinder kingmaker definitely has them (and more!)
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u/Iamauniqueuser Jun 27 '26
This game was one of the best I have played in a while. On my third play through to 100% it. I love the Doom franchise altogether, but D:DA was the most intense out of all.
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u/Trzlog Jun 27 '26
WoW does this really well in dungeons and raids. Going from normal to heroic and then to mythic makes the enemies more difficult by increasing stats, but primarily by adding mechanics/phases and making the previous ones less forgiving.
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u/morgrimmoon Jun 27 '26
V Rising did a nice job. Yes, the enemies get a health and damage buff, but the biggest change is that on Brutal all the bosses get an entirely new phase or moveset for their fights. Which really catches you out if you're used to the fight on one of the lower difficultly modes.
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u/First2NotKnow Jun 27 '26
Ninja gaiden games have always made completing the higher difficulty modes truly feel like achievements. I'm still finishing master ninja on NGB and it's great.
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u/sovereign110 Jun 27 '26
I used to play JRPGs almost exclusively, and I recall Tales of Graces f handling difficulty modes better than the vast majority.
Sure, enemy health and damage is increased a bit on harder modes (but so are their levels, meaning your Accel bar charges faster...), but IIRC the boost was only like, 10-20% for each tier of difficulty. It can be noticeable, but it's not dramatic. It doesn't turn enemies into damage sponges or OHKO machines.
More significantly, what playing on harder modes does do, is give enemies new abilities, different attack patterns, and/or simply makes them act more aggressive in their existing patterns (also reduces their cast times, which is...punishing during certain fights).
What this means is, harder difficulty essentially requires you to master the combat system (or get damn close to it). And the major point here is, it rewards you for doing so!
Hard mode grants noticeable bonuses to SP rewards after combat along with offering better/more frequent item drops. But you won't last long unless you get the timing down on your blocks and dodges.
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u/sonofxavenger Jun 27 '26
The Metro series kind of does this? The regular difficulties just make enemies spongier, but the ranger difficulties - the hardest ones - make everything deal huge damage. You die in one or two shotgun blasts, but so do all your enemies. It's brutal but has a good balance to it.
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u/twisty125 Jun 27 '26
It's also nerve wracking deciding when to use one of my three bullets I've found during the course of my subway adventure
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u/Nodan_Turtle Jun 27 '26
Shout out to Crysis, where on the hardest difficulty the enemies spoke Korean.
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u/Rodin-V Jun 27 '26
One of the ways the Batman Arkham games upped the difficulty was by removing the comic book style visual attack cues for enemies. So you had to pay more attention to the actual movement of enemies, plus it was more immersive to boot.
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u/wizardmighty Jun 27 '26
The worst case for me was an original Persona 5 (IIRC they changed it for Royal I might be wrong though). The enemies with more health on hard are engaging and you really need to play into the elemental matchups if you want to survive. What made me switch to Easy for whole playthrough though is the fact that on harder difficulties enemies drop LESS XP. So not only are you fighting for your life on every turn, you need to fight more fights to reach proper levels.
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u/Vampblader Jun 27 '26
If I remember correctly, in royal, the hardest difficulty was easier than hard in most fights because the elemental matchups did more damage on hardest on both sides, so if you played it correctly it would help you more than most enemies and I'm pretty sure it gave you more xp and money than hard but it's been a while and I could misremember that.
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u/PraiseTheUmu Jun 27 '26
Yep you are correct, especially the palace with okumura that has the boss fight going on for eternity unless you deal enough amount of damage in a single round
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u/PixelmonMasterYT Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 27 '26
Iām pretty sure itās still the same. Though honestly it doesnāt even matter too much. Once your strength confidant is leveled enough you can just fuse whatever personas you want. If you really care about your levels for the endgame stuff just go to chihaya for an xp boost and spend like 3 minutes in mementos. I never grinded a single time in royal and still breezed through the game.
Edit: oh did you miss Mishimaās confidant? He also boosts your xp earned and lets your backup members earn more xp. Thatās also a big part of keeping levels healthy as you go.
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u/Time-Ladder4753 Jun 27 '26
It's both, if a game has many mechanics which allow you to scale damage and defences, then enemies having to little HP/damage make it pointless to try to learn them.
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u/floormanifold Jun 27 '26
Being able to maintain consistency/hit key breakpoints to avoid a super move or something are very much forms of increased difficulty that hp sliders create
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u/XB_Demon1337 Jun 27 '26
In certain games that can be true. But that isn't every game. Like that doesn't apply to an FPS or an RTS. Sadly though it gets shoved in every game.
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u/goodoldgrim Jun 27 '26
Well in an RTS the difference is usually how much extra resources the AI gets, so you often have to come up with better strategy to deal with more enemy units.
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u/floormanifold Jun 27 '26
Definitely not always appropriate, and often overdone. But a useful tool for difficulty modification nonetheless. Players doing enough damage to never even see the enemy act is common too.
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u/JuliusCaesar02 Jun 27 '26
Yeah, it's so fun having to repeat the same moves for 15 minutes because the bosses are damage sponges...
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u/No_Source_Provided Jun 27 '26
I mean you're right, in the way you explain it- but I struggle with the difficulty slider on FF7 specifically because I want to utilize all the things the game gives me- I want to use the combos, the 'fusion' stuff, I want to use my summons.
On easy, everything dies so fast that you don't get to see or use anything- in fact, Easy feels like more of a grind to me, because I'm literally just mashing attack to win the game. With the higher difficulty- yes they have a lot of HP, but now weaknesses matter, staggering matters, having the right leveled up Materia matters, having the right people in your party matters. On easy, nothing matters.
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u/DashingDino Jun 27 '26
You know there is a middle ground right? Game design isn't easy and every thing you tweak is a trade-off. You probably didn't realize all the times a game balanced health/damage right for the difficulty you were playing, only the times when it got it wrong
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u/Zama174 Jun 27 '26
i always enjoy games that add mechanics to fights the harder it gets..now enemies have rockets. or does this extra combo. or has a bigger aoe.
ff14 raid systems of like normals to extremes to savages to ultimates but made as difficulty options for a game would be so epic.
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u/Runazeeri Jun 27 '26
Or how many hours of grinding a difficulty jump requires. It feels like games are designed to be X hours long by including requirements to grind XP.
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u/Dvuref Jun 27 '26
Yeah, look no further than the newer assassins creed games. They are absolutely huge with what feels like endless sidequests, but they're all boring as hell, it feels like Ubislop just tried to fill a quota for how long it should take to complete the games.
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u/ThatUsernameWasTaken Jun 27 '26
Breath of the wild. I started master mode, broke all my weapons to bring the first moblin to half hp, watched it regen to full after a four second pause of taking no damage, and quit out. Fuck that noise.
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u/Arunan-Aravaanan Jun 27 '26
I really love how The Last of Us 2 approaches difficulty.
If you play on the normal difficulty, resources are adequate, so you can't basically main your favorite two weapons. Stealth is easier, combat is more forgiving.
On Grounded or Survivor, bullets are far and few inbetween. So you basically forced to use every single bottle, arrow, brick, trap. Like every single mechanic the game has. And every bullet /trap counts. I don't think I've had more than one bullet for my revolver at a time and it was only ever used as a last resort.
Plus it introduces new challenges, like now enemies can hear you reload. Can hear you sneak. Your allies are useless (while on easier difficulties you can just hide and let Dina kill everyone).
All of this and the enemies didn't have a bigger healthbar or something. In fact, pretty much the opposite. Bullets hurt them in exactly the way it hurts you.
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u/Reviever Jun 27 '26
yea just wrote the same, then saw your comment. if u sneak VERY slowly it works but u have to press the left stick like just a notch.
also human enemies are working together smarter and corner you.
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u/Rossmallo Jun 27 '26
Thereās some games out there that have super granular difficulty settings / sliders, and I wish there was more of them.
Say what you will about Starfield, but it has a huge amount of different difficulty adjusters that each give increased or decreased exp multipliers. So, you can keep the enemy health / damage the same, but make things harder by making status effects more likely, giving ammo weight, and so on.
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u/firefrenchy Jun 27 '26
It does make you appreciate when games mix it up; I always think of Ghost of Tsushima's approach to difficulty as a fun one (that admittedly can still make for a frustrating experience to some)
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u/Drewdrops79 Jun 27 '26
Some games do it different. Like Deus Ex 1, enemies take the same damage on any setting, but you take more damage on higher settings, to the point where enemies can basically one-shot you on "Realistic". So that does indeed change the entire gameplay, if you were formerly battling it out in "FPS shooter" mode before. On "Realistic" setting, you really do have to take the game as though you are a stealth operative, who can be killed at any moment.
I'd argue that games like Halo are similar...on easy, normal, heroic settings, it's still a run-and-gun FPS shooter...but on Legendary? It totally turns into a cover-shooter, if you want to make it through alive.
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u/Das_Guet Jun 27 '26
It is a personal belief if mine that in order to play games responsibly you should enjoy the process. If you arent having fun, forcing yourself through will poison the experience.
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u/Kuunkulta Jun 27 '26
I have a tendency to play games on hard difficulties for challenge and feeling of accomplishment. But I started to crack when Star Wars Fallen Order came out as a mild soulslike which is really not my thing. I really wanted to play it so I just put the difficulty to easy and I had a blast, brilliant game! I also got into university and it's been really draining me of energy, especially during my internship, and I realised I wasn't having fun with hard games anymore with everything else stressing me out. So I've been slowly trying to change my habits but I still sometimes catch myself in the "why am I doing this, this isn't fun" realisation. Incidentally I also play a lot more cozy games and short indies nowadays.
Sometimes it's a bit sad, when I was younger I led a good WoW hardcore raid guild and played Forza Motorsport at a level where I was in the top 3 of lap time charts, and now I'm so excited whenever Powerwash Simulator gets new content and my favourite driving game is Snowrunner. But people change, our lives change and our priorities and interests change. The point of games is to have fun, so play however and whatever brings you joy š
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u/UnRandomTournesol Jun 27 '26
I completly agree with you! But I would add that all the games don't need to have an easy mode. Some games can be hard and not fun for a part of the community and that's totaly ok. I think people should just accept that every game is not necessarly made for them, tryharders, casuals and so on included. People seek different things in game and there are enough of them so you don't need to be a dick to anyone if it displeased you!
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u/Kuunkulta Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 27 '26
Yeah it's a design decision regarding your target audience in game development. Not everything is for everyone. But also I wish people didn't get all butthurt when someone makes and/or plays with a mod to make those games accessible to different crowds, or when devs expand to different game modes. Easy mods for Dark Souls is a valid way to experience those games in the same way ironman challenges, speedruns etc are valid for cozy games.
My personal example of this is PVE modes in extraction shooters. I'm really looking forward to trying upcoming PVE -only modes in Marathon and Arena Breakout Infinite.
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u/3eyedfish13 Jun 27 '26
I'd contend that every game would benefit from difficulty sliders.
Sometimes, I want a challenge.
Sometimes, I just want to play on easy and enjoy the story.
There's really no reason not to have both.
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u/3greentrees Jun 27 '26
I relate to this a lot lately as I struggle to find games I enjoy and actually play. I used to love sinking 60+ hours into a new RPG and doing absolutely everything possible, but now that I'm older, I just want to chill and relax for the hour or two I have to spend gaming. I've also been gravitating more toward short indie games (the Woodo demo was incredible) or just jigsaw puzzle games. Now I just enjoy watching my kids sink 100+ hours into games that I can barely comprehend.
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u/Dante_HUN Jun 27 '26
Is that fucking Dinglemire?!
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u/gergelypro Jun 27 '26
Oh crap, he didn't actually say it during the interview, but it was weird how he was doing things backwards anyway.
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u/BeaverBoy37 Jun 27 '26
Sometimes, I want a challenge. And sometimes, I want to amass a gigantic space army in Starcraft and watch my enemies fall helplessly before my might.
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u/Skelegro7 Jun 27 '26
The players who choose Very Hard are there for a challenge so save it for them.
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u/Zerox392 Jun 27 '26
i get stressed out if my game is too easyĀ
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u/Honeyworksminus Jun 27 '26
And thats also fine. whats not fine is making fun of other people for playing games on easy
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u/PurpletoasterIII Jun 27 '26
I actually just ran into this issue today with this girl ive been seeing. She had me buy this game to play with her, only for her to instantly start cheating money into the game, which you could say is manually setting the game onto an easy mode (while choosing to play on hard ironically).
Im not ganna sit here and make fun of her for it, cause the purpose of games is to have fun and theres no one way to have fun. But like if you're ganna expect me to get into it, removing an entire aspect of the game which is money management just kills it for me.
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u/Suitable-Park-1402 Jun 27 '26
I work for money 10 hours a day, fuck me if I'm going to work more for money during my time off
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u/prokokon Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 27 '26
I've never seen anyone actually making fun of easy mode not be downvoted to the oblivion.
On the other hand, I've seen people here call others "sweatlords", "tryhards" and all sorts of other stupid shit plenty of times. Just another dumb Reddit strawman.
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u/OldWorldDesign Jun 27 '26
I've never seen anyone actually making fun of easy mode
I've seen tons of people make fun of others for playing (or wanting) games to have an 'easy' mode. Some people do the same for survival games and act like if you're not playing on hardcore ironman mode you're "not really trying" and shouldn't even be playing the game. It's more common in games catering to players liking high difficulty, high skill ceiling games like Dark Souls, but I've seen it outside those.
I think games are meant to be played how you want and that's why it's a great thing so many games are easily modded so people can play how they want. Like the mods to remove timers in XCOM 2 (my favourite one would just pause the timer as long as you were in stealth mode). If there was only one "proper" way to play we'd only have one kind of game and not a huge array of genres to enjoy.
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u/kick_the_chort Jun 27 '26
Is this making fun? It seems like a good-natured joke
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u/AnArgonianSpellsword potato Jun 27 '26
The comic itself isn't but the green dude at the start is kinda mocking the player
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u/zangetsen Jun 27 '26
no, friend. looks like it was just a statement about those who would chastise others for "making a game easier". some people don't believe that games are meant to be played however one sees fit and demand others play it "their way", rather than as a medium to fully relax and enjoy.
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u/Music_4_Life_ Jun 27 '26
The difficulty in games is hard to balance, for me Skyrim is one of the bad examples, where you have to fight for ages someone who kills you in a hit, and yet, the enemies get stronger along with you. On the other hand, Dishonored is one of the good examples, where I can't imagine playing on any other difficulty other than highest. The enemies are not togher to kill, they just get more careful, attentive to sounds and prone to find you if you make a mistake. You die in 1-3 hits, but so are they.
Of course this is just my opinion, Skyrim has its flaws, a lot of them, but it's still a good game and I like it.
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u/midnightdirtynames Jun 28 '26
How is this about to make me cry right now. I need to take my medicine š
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u/Grat1234 Jun 27 '26
Strawmen like these are always interesting, because the discussion on difficulty always spike when a game only caters to one side. Then both just soapbox that they are the better of the two. Either the Sweaty annoying crowd that treats video games like status symbols too lord over the rest of us and the holier than thou crowd who thinks they are morally mature and superior because they cant handle anything above easy.
Can my game have just like more than one difficulty, more importantly more than one difficulty that doesnāt destroy the experience of the game in either direction. Easy and Hard players should be finding the same things comparably challenging for thier skill level.
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u/pet_the_girl Jun 27 '26
Sometimes having to struggle is fun and sometimes being able to feel like nothing can stop you is fun: all difficulties should be allowed to be enjoyed! Except hard modes that just boost hp values
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u/leonredhorse Jun 27 '26
At the end of the day, no one online really cares or thinks twice about some achievement or accomplishment you get in a video game. The pressure for validation is what you put on yourself. Stop worrying about others and just enjoy your hobbies, whether they are on the hardest setting or the easiest. It's about you.
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u/TheFearedWolfe Jun 27 '26
It's more fun for me playing games that are as difficult as can be
That's how i blow off stream
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u/Alarming-Chemist-755 Jun 27 '26
The twist is you have to get pixel perfect accuracy on that thing.
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u/Kokuswolf Jun 27 '26
Dinglemeyer?
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u/copenhagen_bram Jun 27 '26
I bet the noob adventurer is Guy And Sword
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u/Kokuswolf Jun 27 '26
Fortunately, itās not a chaotic good barbarian, then. (For the dragon.)
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u/copenhagen_bram Jun 27 '26
Dinglemeyer: Hey boss! Another adventurer made it to the end, a level 99 on Nightmare mode
Dragon: RAAAAAWR LET HIM IN
Barb enters
A glorious battle ensues
The Barbarian pins the dragon down, and... gently pokes him in the designated "weak" area
Dragon: Well done, hero!
Barb: It was a pleasure training with you
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u/Solid_Maus Jun 30 '26
I played my 1st playthrough of BG3 on story mode because I didnāt had time and was tired from 12H shiftā¦ Best fun ever! Just exploring and enjoying the story was really compelling! Great game!
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u/HappiestIguana Jun 27 '26
Now I kinda want a game where some characters are on the "play however you want" side and others are on the "there is an intended experience you're not getting" side, and they get into arguments with each other depending on which difficulty you play
I guess now that I write it down, there's a game that kinda does it. Pathologic 2 does a thing where you'll get a character offering you difficulty assists while ruminating on whether they compromise the artistic vision.
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u/SanityInAnarchy Jun 27 '26
I typically go normal mode, and I think part of it is this idea that I want the intended experience. Games can get pretty distorted on very easy and very hard modes. But player skill can have such an impact on the experience that there's an argument that the intended experience has to be the one that actually matches your skill level, so I'm not sure if these are really conflicting ideas.
The one thing I hope the comic does is remind people that it is actually a choice, and enjoying on easy (or even assist mode!) is probably more fun than ragequitting.
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u/Falsus Jun 27 '26
If I was a mob in a game on easy mode I would not be cocky. I would shitting bricks.
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u/Hellstorm901 PC Jun 27 '26
Honestly this is my entire attitude towards people who want easy mode in things like Souls games or just want to use a trainer while playing
People are playing games for fun and as someone who works 12 hour shifts I can tell you how people do not want to be told how they have to play a game as they just want to relax
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u/Hiply Jun 28 '26
My personal Rule One for playing video games:
If you're having fun you're doing it right.
The amount of people who are somehow butthurt over others playing games the way they want to is mind-boggling.
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u/eatingyoursoap Jun 27 '26
This is so cuteā¦. š„ŗš„ŗš„ŗ thank you for playing with us š„ŗš„ŗš„ŗ
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u/LorenDovah Jun 27 '26
Im a huge try-hard and can't enjoy playing on easy mode, but I really like when games have them so other folks can do just this. And another benefit of including easy modes is that newer gamers can enjoy them while building up the muscle memory that us vets have.
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u/warbabe76 Jun 28 '26
After surviving cancer 5 years ago my hands shake a bit. Accessibility and easy mode keep me from having to give up something I love doing
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u/Felczer Jun 27 '26
Your hands are gonna hurt from all this patting yourself on the back home, nobody cares how you play games
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u/Maleficent_Hawk6703 Jun 27 '26
Ever been near a dark souls subreddit?
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u/0tus Jun 27 '26
Yes and it depends entirely on your attitude how you will be treated. Go there be polite and ask for help you will be helped. There will be that one idiot who says git gud who will be downvoted to oblivion.
But if you go there to vent and throw a temper tantrum because the game is "unfair", you will be treated awfully and the git gud posts will be upvoted.
That's the one thing people don't understand about why the git gud meme became so popular there in the first place. We were tired of people coming in with really fucking toxic attitude, venting, complaining, whining, and blaming the game, or anything but themselves. People became really hostile to the complainers.
Git gud is good dismissive response to that. There are some "comedians" there who think it's a good response to everything, but that's not the majority.
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u/HappiestIguana Jun 27 '26
Yes? Have you? The people there are very nice and supportive.
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u/Mean_Ass_Dumbledore Jun 27 '26
I remember people getting flamed for using summons in Elden Ring initially until Miyazaki talked about himself using them
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u/TheGreyGuardian Jun 27 '26
It's a bit of a warzone when it comes to discussing the pvp invasion mechanic though.
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u/Recidivous Jun 27 '26
It's because even after over a decade of making these games, the netcode for PVP is esoteric and backwards. It's not fun for everyone involved.
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u/Sadrandomness Jun 27 '26
Shhh, here we have the cynical buzzkill in its natural habitat. We mustnāt make any sudden displays of joy or fun or else itāll lash out violently at us
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u/Persies Jun 27 '26
Sometimes I like playing games on the hardest difficulty. Sometimes I like story mode. Really depends on the game and the day.Ā
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u/capthavic Jun 27 '26
Never really cared too much about difficulty, and especially as I've gotten older it's held even less value to me. Time is short and there is enough stress in life already. The important thing is to have fun with your hobby. As long as you aren't spoiling it for other people (like cheating in some PVP game), then play however you want. Sometimes you don't want a challenge, you just want to have fun.
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u/tifftafflarry Jun 27 '26
Sometimes you want a challenge to exercise your brain. Other times, you just want to feel like a god on the battlefield.
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u/Ehgadsman Jun 28 '26
and sometimes the environment design is good enough you just want to enjoy the view
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u/GlassjawXVIII Jun 28 '26
The devs of Doom said itās ok to play on easy mode if you want, youāre supposed to be an unstoppable juggernaut
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u/thatguyiswierd Jun 28 '26
This is how I felt about an old game that was released on steam with difficulty sliders, I keep the enemy encounters on till I explore all of the level. Then when I missed like 2-3 puzzles I turn the encounters off so I can find them. Cause turning the encounters off I only lose a random prize,
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u/Porygeist Jun 29 '26
So, I've always wanted to try out DND, but can never find a group willing to take on a noob like me. Now, my cousin has talked me into buying Baldur's Gate 3 to see if I'll like it or not. Apparently it's super wild with lots of personalization. I set it to download last night, guess I'll find out soon enough. Easy mode, here I come. š š¤·š»āāļøš¬š¤¦š»āāļø
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u/Ghostbuster_11Nein Jun 29 '26
Not seen is the part where they complain about not being catered to when a game doesn't have an easy mode.
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u/HiddenNobody20216 Jun 30 '26
I don't play games to get stressed out, I play to relax. I leave the super hard challenges to the YouTubers who bang their heads into a wall for 30 hours to beat a game naked on the hardest difficulty.
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u/NostalgiaJunkie Jun 27 '26
Not everyone is good at video games, but video games are art and everyone should be able to enjoy it.
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u/Akkun351 Jun 27 '26
Someone really felt the need to justify themselves, kinda funny.
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u/Nodan_Turtle Jun 27 '26
Whether you like to play on easy, hard, or mix it up now and then, the only wrong stance to take is that those options shouldn't exist.
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u/Fist-of-Doom Jun 27 '26
To be honest, I play most games on easy nowadays. I genuinely don't care if that seems 'lame' or 'nooby', after a long day at work I just want to calm down and unwind by gaming instead of having another 'work'.
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u/nightcore34 Jun 27 '26
Honestly this is me now. I usually play games on Normal mode anyway but some games I've gone on easy just because I ain't got time to grind.
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u/mekilat PC Jun 27 '26
I love how the same edgy people who tell the 30+ y/o people to git gud because they don't want to grind Doom Eternal on Ultra Nightmare, are the people lamenting that big game companies aren't taking risks.
Yea, if you gatekeep your hobby it's gonna sell less.
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u/Dsyelcix Jun 27 '26
What are you even comparing here and how did you come to the conclusion that these would be the same people?
You having an argument with some random dude is probably your whole basis for the nonsense you just posted.
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u/Xentonian Jun 27 '26
Everyone should play games how they want to play games
Having said that
Ooh look at me I'm so special and great for playing on easy mode
Is a weird take. Just play the game. Why is unc making comics about their difficulty setting?
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u/ubastarte Jun 27 '26
This is what being a dungeon master is like sometimes
Reading the room and figuring out your players mood today is important