Endless Paradigm

My posts are becoming frequent, can't tell if that's a good or bad thing, anyhoo.

I've become really lazy the past few months, though I have been getting back to my gaming side of being a lazy slob.

So, I'm "slobbing" my time on some vidayah of course, one of the games being fire emblem for the GC (never got to play it, though I was a diehard fan of FE when I was a kid, even now actually) and I decided to play the game on hard mode.

Fuck.

Every single time SOMEONE dies in one of my missions, from either getting 1 shotted or a bunch of knights being assholes and literally just ravaging donkey on one unit. Don't know if this is a consequence of hard mode, but it sure is annoying.

Which leads me to the question, to what difficulty do you guys expect from your games? I mean, most of the time people like progress and what not, so winning a game is usually something favourable because you don't need to repeat the same level over and over again. It also _feels_ GOOD to make progress.

But how should wee decide spending our time? I mean because the core essence of any video game is to waste time, having something on hard mode and redoing the same mission is definitely not something that isn't really progressive (and it's frustrating too!). It leads me to the belief that wee're all lulled into a sense of false security or accomplishment when wee somewhat "beat" a game, because the game wasn't all that challenging (to elaborate on this, games that on average, players never meet the game over screen).

For me, I know that I've grown older (and thus, my mental knowledge/capacity) has grown as well and I THIRST for challenges these days. Personally, if I'm going to waste my time trying to conquer something, I'm going to make sure it's challenging as fudge. For me, I think this is a good "waste" of my time because while it not only gives me a challenge worth fighting for, it also pushes me to re-evaluate my mental process of how to asses situations and devise a suitable plan to getting around them.

But there's a limit to challenging though, some developers make games (games that are based on chance, like RPG's or some spoon) hard modes by basically breaking the games, like, enemies with more HP that can one shot you randomly whenever they feel like it. I _FUCKING_ hate these implementations and usually, I figure that these games are one's that morseso punish the fudge out of you to waste your time by doing the same spoon by being inhumanely hard (such as, you cannot understand the situation the first time unless you screw up, such that an experienced player cannot assess and actually beat a challenge the first time due to causes that are unknown to the player, this isn't fun and it isn't challenging, it's just a waste of time.)

I think something that's worthy of being challenging is a game that the punishment is kept at reasonable levels and it's challenges are something "new" and not just a slight stat increase into BREAKING a video game for the player such that if the person is actually smart enough, they can beat the challenge the first time.

Do you guys enjoy challenges/hard modes? Has a "hard" mode ever strike as wonderfully implemented as giving you a "new" experience on an already played game?

I always put my games on the most difficult setting. However, this isn't really an acceptable solution because very hard mode usually makes enemies take thousands of points of damage while you get killed by anything and everything. This leads to me modding my games to get the proper realism. In real life, if you get shot, you're going to take some serious damage. I like that realism in my games. I want to be able to kill my enemies in one or two shots, but I also like to get killed in one or two shots. This keeps me on my toes using cover and strategy to play through stuff, and makes it infinitely more fun.

trademark91 Wrote: [ -> ]I always put my games on the most difficult setting. However, this isn't really an acceptable solution because very hard mode usually makes enemies take thousands of points of damage while you get killed by anything and everything. This leads to me modding my games to get the proper realism. In real life, if you get shot, you're going to take some serious damage. I like that realism in my games. I want to be able to kill my enemies in one or two shots, but I also like to get killed in one or two shots. This keeps me on my toes using cover and strategy to play through stuff, and makes it infinitely more fun.

I agree with you, a good measure for "the right difficulty" is to mimic difficulties that would otherwise appear in real life.

Then again, if you followed this too closely, then if you "died" in a game, the cartridge blows up or summat. :P

Generally want my difficulty at medium level.  Something that's hard enough to be not boring, but easy enough to be able to play through relatively smoothly.

Look I play games for fun, not to prove points to myself (lol) that I can beat the thing on the hardest setting ever, or whatever other reason people play stuff on nearly impossible for.  If I want to torture myself with grinding (or save scumming) really difficult shit that I'm not going to enjoy, I'd rather be spending that time out there grinding real money, or alternatively playing the thing on a setting that I can actually enjoy.

Also I'm the kind of guy who derives more satisfaction out of beating stuff like super hard extra bosses by cheating than doing it normally.  If you cheated to win it means you 1). saved shitloads of time compared to doing it normally, 2). found a far more efficient and thus superior method to achieve the same result.

I always pick Normal. Though there are a few exceptions, like Valkyrie Profile. Though the Hard mode in that isn't really a Hard mode >_>

Always normal. Like Assassinator said I'm in it just for enjoyment. Only cases where I'd choose Hard difficulty is if I were to play the game again and wanted a challenge since I have already cleared it regularly and doing so again would be boring. Example: Nuzlocke runs on Pokemon games.


Also I'm not the best gamer when it comes to most genres of games, I tend to miss stuff or something similar so usually normal difficulty is challenging enough.

When I first play a game, I usually do my first run as "Normal" or "Medium", then if I replay the game (I say if, because if I don't like it, I'm not replaying it), I'll play it in Hard mode to challenge myself.

Difficult to define when something is a challenge and something is merely grinding/luck/whatever, especially since it can differ from person to person.
Also note that "artificial challenges" that the game maker may not have intended can be considered a challenge (eg low level runs, Nuzlocke etc).

Some things which may cause something to be challenging:
- bad controls - typically unfavorable
- increased game speed - perhaps more favorable than bad controls
- enemies take more hits - typically done; effect can vary
- smarter enemy AI - typically a good idea, but can be difficult to implement (unless it's something where computers can easily calculate the exact angle to fire etc)
- level modifications - can make the game rather different, but requires a fair bit of design work

Also, depends on whether it's challenging because you need to execute a precise sequence of things at the right time (eg near perfect jumps), forcing you to grind more, or forcing you to think of new strategies?

I'm not sure that challenges should be beatable the first time through - after all, they're typically meant for someone who's beaten the game at least once (and some games will enforce this by unlocking the extra hard difficulty modes after the game is completed).
Sometimes having hindsight on what happens later in the game can affect how you play, and a well designed challenge will take this into consideration.

Unfortunately, designing a challenge so that it changes the gameplay a fair bit can be somewhat difficult to do, so many just resort to handicaps or similar.

This post was written in a bit of a rush.

hardest first, because the only thing that can stop me is compulsory minigame puzzle. eff those things

words of wisdom:
when in doubt: level up

I choose whatever I'm most comfortable with. In an RPG I usually choose Normal in the beginning just to test out how the game works and if I'll have fun with it or not. Then if the enemies seem a little too easy I crank up the difficulty a little. If I go through a 2nd playthrough with bonuses/cheat codes I raise it up to the highest difficulty and have as much fun as I can til I get bored of the game. I'm doing this right now with Tales of Graces.

For shooters Normal difficulty is my main choice, getting one shotted by enemies that take more than one shot to kill is totally unfair. It happens all the time on the hardest difficulty. I can make exceptions for games like Metal Gear and Deus Ex: HR since it's more aimed at assassinating than blindly shooting at everything...even though it's tempting. xD