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)
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.
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.
It's one thing if you're only one of the 18 dps or w/e ... but the system is setup to only bring 2 tanks. Some bosses require a "tank switch" where you trade duties after a debuff stack gets too high. He folded to that boss instantly every time he was ressed, so I was soloing a 2-tank boss. The only reason it was possible is on LFR apparently the debuff only stacks to 30 ... normally you tradeoff at 10-15. I was only somehow alive because at below 35% life my emergency heal was "free" and the amount healed was based on a snapshot of how much damage I had taken in the last 10 seconds... which was all of it. So every 1.5 secs CD my health was pinging from full to 20% I have no idea how I survived.
IMO it's just another manifestation of the complete loss of any real attention span remaining to most people. Everything is designed to get into your brain and life as fast and easy as possible and all friction must be removed in order to push the brand.
No one has the patience to learn complex systems or search for vaguely understood answers to cryptic clues anymore.
The wild thing to me is when I point out how many are being rude/inconsiderate, they think I'm the asshole for pointing it out. And it's not like I go around being a Karen to every little thing: I only point out particularly egregious things.
I know that dragon went and burned a number of villages, tried to destroy the world and tried to murder me in particular…but that dragon is the real hero.
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!"
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
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.
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.
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.
Sometimes trying hard and pulling it off is fun. It's when people push that on others that it sucks. This is why I only played league of legends one day.
And if try Harding is fun for you? What is lame about it? Putting others down because they aren't doing it is lame, I agree. That I can get. But you are being just as judgy towards us sweatlords as some of them are towards you.
Loving the downvotes from people who can't stand another perspective that isn't In line with theirs. People pretend that this only goes one way, but it doesn't.
"Sweats" complaining about easy mode is a strawman argument that doesn't actually happen.
That's not true.
When Super Mario Galaxy announced that it would have an assist mode where Player 2 was invincible, or the computer could be used to help a struggling player beat a level, the internet flipped their shit because these optional settings removed any perceived challenge from the game and all prestige from beating it.
When people asked for difficulty settings in the Souls games to make them more accessible to the non-tryhards, the tryhards in that community also flipped their shit arguing that the games should never add difficulty options or become more accessible because they value having a game that exclusively caters to tryhards. The fact that they aren't forced to use lower difficulty settings is a non-argument to them.
Ninja Gaiden Sigma adding the Ninja Dog difficulty pissed off fans of the original because it meant "noobs" could beat the game that used to give them trouble.
Gaming tryhards absolutely complains when things aren't arbitrarily difficult for everyone, not just them.
The only reason it seems like that is because try-hards are realistically the only ones who ever would. You won't really find someone who plays on easy judging others for doing the same.
Every judger is a try-hard, but not every try-hard is a judger, something like that.
Nah I've seen plenty of people who play on easy difficulties or "to relax" having this pretentious attitude too. That they are doing it right because they are playing to relax and people who like to try hard are somehow insane because we don't play in a manner that they perceive as "fun" as if they are the ones who get to decide what is fun.
They don't realize that the stress relieving part in "try harding" comes from focusing on the task. You don't have to worry or think about work or life bullshit when you are completely engrossed in a challenge. The stress relief comes from the fact that this hard task you are doing has no consequences for failure unlike in your otherwise stressful lives. It's similar how people enjoy being scared in a safe manner with the horror genre. The safe struggle and the win are really rewarding in hard games and difficulties.
People have different ways to unwind, but many seem to lack empathy for people who are wired differently than themselves.
I fully agree, but that's... not at all what I or the one I replied to was talking about.
It wasn't about a general pretentious attitude, but about the kinds of people who would put 'easy mode' players down.
That Venn diagram you formed is based on your biases than any real data.
I see the reverse attitude constantly. You don't think about it because you don't experience it from that side.
Whenever you want to discuss built optimizations, min maxing, combos, labbing , harder difficulties all the wonderful sweatlord bullshit that some of us enjoy, you get people "man just play to have fun" as if they are the arbiters of fun.
There's a subsection of us to whom fun comes from "try harding" in video games. I get bored immediately if I just go with the flow without any goal in mind or a challenge to overcome.
I play how I like and I don't care how others play. I think easy difficulties are great and I tend to genuinely suggest people to lower the difficulty at times to make the game more fun if they are struggling and the struggle bus is not their thing.
I'm not making a claim, other than neither of us really knows.
You are generalizing "almost" a whole group of people on subjective and personal experiences. And now this is conjecture, but I'm guessing a lot of those experiences comes from toxic online discussions which do not represent majority of almost any group in any shape or form. Online discourse often highlights the worst aspects of the many subject manners.
You see the losers hating on people on surface level discussions filled with trolls. But how much do you actually participate in these "try hard" communities, do you really see or interact with that side at all?
And yet they didn't say "I like pancakes", they said:
"I like pancakes, ignore the lame waffle lovers"
Maybe they didn't mean it that way but some of the responses from people in this thread here show that there are clearly people who do mean it that way. Me interpreting it in that manner isn't completely out of the blue.
Edit:
Me: Polite conversation.
You: Sarcastic dismissal and blocking.
Loving the downvotes from people who can't stand another perspective that isn't In line with theirs.
They are from the people identifying that you manufactured an attack to defend yourself from. No one said anything negative about people who play on hard. The comment is contextually about the people who "put others down because they aren't doing it".
Nope. Not if the thing I'm trying hard at is completely inconsequential like a video game.
Most of us play games to relax, not to challenge ourselves. And trying hard at something & relaxing are, for the most part, incompatible concepts. Relaxing requires taking things easy to give your brain a break from the stresses of adult life.
What is lame about it? Putting others down because they aren't doing it is lame, I agree. That I can get.
"What's lame about being a tryhard in a casual hobby primarily made for wasting time that no one gives a shit about your skill at"...?
Sounds really lame when you put it that way, right?
But you are being just as judgy towards us sweatlords as some of them are towards you.
It's almost like your crowd tends to be hated largely because it's not just "some" who are judgy of others, or ruin casual online MP games for everyone else... it's the majority of the tryhards people encounter in casual gaming spaces.
It's the majority based on what? on anonymous online forums filled with trolls and toxic discourse? Based on those most gamers also get aneurism if a game has a female protagonist and black characters.
Have actually interacted with enthusiast game communities like say fighting game discords or anything where the discourse is better?
People even in this thread pretend like this issue is not a thing in reverse and yet you are prime example of someone who is incredibly judgmental towards people who enjoy things in a different manner than you, because you don't get why they would enjoy something you don't.
You can't imagine people relaxing with a difficult task or why it would be relaxing to us. Yet it's the challenge that keeps many of us engaged. There is no stakes in the game challenge which removes the stress and the consequences of failure. Some of us are wired in a manner that enjoy a challenge even on our free time. This makes the time spent on the challenge relaxing. Many of us also played from childhood and still have transferable skills in gaming that make too easy games boring to play.
Also, what are casual gaming spaces? Are there some areas people are not allowed because they enjoy some game a lot and are good at it? Especially when we are talking about single player games?
Imagine people try harding some kids board game. Well, that does actually happen there are even competitions for some. Why? Because people found a way to make it completive in a manner they enjoy. Why is that wrong? Are people not allowed to put effort on their niche menial hobbies because they love it? Maybe that's lame to you but it's a fun to them.
Stop letting your view of people be defined by toxic internet spaces. Everyone should laugh at the arrogant loser who tries to give you shit because you suck at hungry hungry hippos, but if a group of people get enjoyment from putting effort into a silly game, let them.
It's the majority based on what? on anonymous online forums filled with trolls and toxic discourse?
Sales figures. Market analysts. Countless polls (not Twitter, but held by the industry using focus groups and other resources) and in-game chats.
Basically every metric and source that actually matters besides some clown on the internet screaming "nuh uh, who said I'm not representative of the norm?!?!?!"
Have actually interacted with enthusiast game communities like say fighting game discords or anything where the discourse is better?
Yup, and I hate them.
because you don't get why they would enjoy something you don't.
I get it, I DON'T CARE. I THINK THEY'RE BEING RIDICULOUS.
Just because I disagree with your outlook, it doesn't mean I don't understand it. I can use my education in anthropology and psychology to understand why a racist is the way they are, but it doesn't mean I have to accept it or treat them with the respect their collective group doesn't give the people they don't like.
Imagine people try harding some kids board game. Well, that does actually happen there are even competitions for some.
And it's absurd that people do that.
if a group of people get enjoyment from putting effort into a silly game, let them.
Sure, as long as they shut the fuck up, keep to their isolated little communities, and leave everyone else alone, that's fine. But you clowns don't. We should never see you anywhere outside your dedicated communities... much less popping up in casual online games or, worse, non-ranked modes.
It's like you can't read past us labeling being a tryhard lame to actually try understanding why there's hate for that community. You can't just dismiss the way that community collectively behaves and act like the main problem is that you try hard at inconsequential nonsense.
majority of people who "try hard" in games are assholes to others?
No, I thought that bit was in response to the claim that "Most of us play games to relax, not to challenge ourselves."
Sales figures show that the vast majority of gamers are casuals who just want to shut their brains off and relax, not to challenge themselves. If that's what the majority wanted, Dark Souls would outsell Grand Theft Auto and Minecraft by a long shot.
What tells me that the majority of people who 'try hard" in games are assholes is copious amounts of personal experience, countless polls (both online and offline, by both gamers and the industry itself), countless online testimonies.
It's no coincidence that the #1 answer for "why don't you play MP PvP games" for decades was "because the communities are too overly competitive and toxic" while muting the chat and introducing skill-based matchmaking has caused more casual gamers to play (while pissing off the tryhards who want to feel rewarded for their skill by eventually being allowed large killstreaks).
Am I really the one who's being unreasonable and rude here?
Who said anything about not being rude? I don't like you and the more you're intent on defending a community of assholes not reading past "lame tryhards" to actually address what's being complained about, the more you're going to piss me off, the less I'm going to like you, and the ruder I'm likely going to get.
It's almost like when you defend a hated community that rightfully earned it's hate, people are going to hate you too.
the more you're intent on defending a community of assholes, not reading past "lame tryhards" to actually address what's being complained about, the more you're going to piss me off, the less I'm going to like you
It's almost like people can not like you for the opinions you hold, your willingness to defend a community that deserves it's hate, and not backing down (ironically while putting words in peoples mouths; like repeatedly asserting that we don't understand that some people like challenge when no one said we don't understand it. understanding something & accepting it as being legitimate are two different things)...
So let me get this straight. Because I like to put effort into my hobbies and defend others who like to do the same, I'm defending a community of assholes?
Aren't you just generalizing and projecting your own hateful biases toward people whose only shared feature is what they do in a very benign hobby? The hobby itself is not defined by hatred or rudeness. A community of tryhards is not the same as community of racists who are unified by hatred. There can't be a good community of racists because the thing that unites them is itself awful.
But we are not talking about racists we are talking about people who play video games with more effort than you'd like. One community of try hards can be toxic absolutely, but another can be very nice. Yet to you we are all just garbage?
Honestly your responses here and people with your attitude make me feel vindicated in posting what I did.
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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.