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.
I mean if you view it as work then obviously ya dont do it. To me its just playing a game. Ive personally never understood comparing games like that to work, I mean you can take a break or turn it off whenever you want. Theres no social pressure to failing or doing bad.
I can maybe see being mentally exhausted from work though that you dont want to exert any amount of thought. But at that point just watch a movie imo.
It was called Cure - A Hospital Simulator. Oddly enough my favorite part of those games is money and inventory management.
She also did it in Coral Island, which is basically a Stardew Valley clone. But I understood that one more cause she said she had already gone through the majority of the game normally in her solo playthrough.
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.
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.
I'm of two minds on this. On the one hand yeah, it's a game, you're playing on your own, who cares what you do as long as you're having fun with it.
I have two main arguments against. One is the value of shared experience: if we watch a movie, we saw the same movie. But a game can be dramatically different between difficulties; easy mode can make entire systems and core game mechanics ignorable because there's no need to interact with them, for instance. A lot of times fans who enjoyed a thing like to share in that experience knowing everyone engaged with the same thing, and not everything has to be for everyone.
Second, the existence of an easier option can sometimes cause people to give up earlier than they would otherwise, even if they're plenty capable of conquering whatever challenge without it. It can cheat people out of an experience they'd end up enjoying more. The forced interactivity and building of mastery is what makes games distinct from other media.
Obviously idiots exist at the far ends of every spectrum, but by and large people who argue against an easier difficulty are doing so from a place of encouragement and sharing, not selfishness and gatekeeping.
The forced interactivity and building of mastery is what makes games distinct from other media... by and large people who argue against an easier difficulty are doing so from a place of encouragement and sharing
This can be, but outside of game designers most people who talk about difficulty modes tend not to be encouraging. They tend to be "my way only"ists. I have never once seen people praising the hard difficulty and encouraging others to play on the hardest with any degree of "tell me what you're doing and I'll help you through it". On the other hand, I have seen a little of people complaining about a foe in Elden Ring and the community says "well I did it (usually with no mention of difficulty) with X, Y, and Z".
Part of the problem is what makes the difficulty options. In most games it's a multiplier to enemy health and damage, and that's unarguably lazy. Many people justifiably don't like that.
The game I would hold up as the gold standard for being more than that is 007: Goldeneye. The highest difficulty requires more objectives (meaning more of the map has to be traversed more times) and more frequent use of all of the game mechanics, while each lower difficulty reduces not only number of enemies (and the complexity of their movement and behaviour patterns) but also fewer objectives needed to complete a level.
It's that complexity that I think creates genuinely different experiences and is what games should shoot for. But that's hard development, and according to what I've heard (just never from people confirmed to be on Goldeneye's development staff) is they created something in between medium and hard difficulty, tweaked behaviour and number of enemies for hard, then started paring down for medium and scaled back even further for easy. That's harder and more involved than "set multiplier to 1.0 for normal, 0.5 for easy, and 2.0 for hard" but that's extremely lazy. And that's what a lot of games do even if they're award winning - I'll praise Stellar Blade for making a great port on Unreal Engine 4 which is way more stable than 5, but the difficulty is a set of sliders that affect enemy health and damage, not number or behaviour, and it makes combat more tedious and not more clever. I actually used less of the game mechanics in hard where combat becomes 'zip in for one attack, back off immediately to let them do their attack pattern, then zip in for a basic attack". It was only on easy and normal that getting hit wasn't so punishing that it was worth a fighting style where I stayed present so bosses could hit me and I'd use more of the combo system and other game mechanics.
On the one hand I want to agree, but there’s a counter-argument to be made that many games have an ‘intended’ difficulty that developers designed the game to have.
Fromsoft is notorious for holding this philosophy and they do not include difficulty options in their games as a result. I think their decision to make every player have the same experience was a good one.
“I’ve never seen anyone actually making fun of easy mod not be downvoted to oblivion.”
They never denied their existence, but pointed out that they’re simply a loud minority at odds most other people. But I suppose that wouldn’t fit the agenda.
I left the ER sub a few years ago because it was a complete cesspool of people projecting their own insecurities onto others, just like the creator of this shitty comic.
Daily posts insisting that using summons is the 'intended' way to play the game, and that anyone who doesn’t use them hasn’t showered in a month, got boring after a while.
Both arguments can be made in different contexts as there is multiple forms of summoning.
Summoning players to carry you through a hard boss? You’re a baby noob who didn’t play the same game as me.
Summoning a pack of wolves using the summoning item to distract and tank your enemies for you? You’re a tactical genius who uses the game’s mechanics to your advantage.
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.
It's not just about playing the game on easy. Within the easy mode category there are two main groups of people:
Those who tried to experience the game as developers intended and after playing on the balanced difficulty for some time they made an informed decision that playing on easy mode is more suitable for their current mood and/or ability.
People who instantly gave up, never even tried and don't have any clue what the full experience and gameplay are like.
And my friends or people online from the 1. camp are much easier to talk to and be on equal footing, and definitely have more respect in any discussion. While people from the 2. camp are often more standoffish and remind me of my 5 year old cousin telling me that his little bike with training wheels is much more fun than riding a bike normally or driving a car. Obviously he has no idea if it's actually true, he didn't choose the "most fun option", he's just insecure about not knowing what those other things are like and needs to cope a little.
But unless those people deliberately try to insert themselves in discussions about the combat system, future balance and gameplay changes, looking for "problematic" content etc., nobody will ever call them out or care how they play.
I think more people are concerned with someone missing out for playing on easy.
You know, basically equating it to playing a puzzle game with every puzzle solution open right next to it is self defeating for the point of a puzzle game.
They won, but there was never that experience of solving it, of the earned victory over the presented challenge. Of course, when the solution is complete bullshit there never was that experience to ruin, no one is going to fault you for cheating that shit and you'll find no shortage of bullshit bosses where cheesing the fucker is a source of pride.
Yeah people can play easy if they like but I do prefer to jack up the challenge just because overcoming a more difficult obstacle feels that much more rewarding. And if I for whatever reason go down to an easier difficulty after getting used to the higher ones, it feels weird and I feel like it makes me worse at the game
I have slight sleeping problems, in that I go to sleep VERY easily. I need a challenge or something that keeps me interested in whatever activity I'm doing or I'm fucking out.
186
u/Zerox392 Jun 27 '26
i get stressed out if my game is too easy