you noob!

[dub]

Are games getting easier - too easy? [if this looks like a chore to read, skip to the last paragraph]

Now the most obvious of examples is the one that lies close to home and that would be UT3. No matter which way you try and turn it, Epic themselves said they wanted to make it more accessible to newcomers, which in intarwebz talk means "catering to noobs".
BUT - I don't want this to be a thread about UT3 at all, because UT3 is by far not the only game I have noticed that has chosen to take this route.
Street Figher 4 is also going to be simplified so that it's more accessible to newcomers.
Raven Shield was pretty tough in the last few levels, but Las Vegas wasn't really all that challenging in the later levels, I thought. Think about game sequels you've played. Were the first iterations harder than the subsequent releases?

Recent games I have played, don't seem to confront you with difficulty but rather with length. The difficulty does augment a little but not so much that it really presents much more of a challenge.
I've never played it, but WoW doesn't seem like it gets much harder the further you play into it. The further you play the better your equipment. So you the game hits you with chores that just take time. They are probably about just as hard as they were at the start because even though the things you have to kill take more hits to kill, you do more damage. (maybe I'm wrong but in the one MMORPG I played it was like that)

At some point, we were all new to a game, but we all learned to get to grips with most of them so that we were at a point where we felt master of the situations the game threw at us.

Has anyone ever played a game that was that hard that they just stopped playing it out of frustration?
The closest I have ever come to that is with some fighters and some really obscure shooters that are just meant to be that hard.
In fact back in the hay-day of arcades, games were 10 times freakin' harder than they are now, it seems to me. (next thing you know developers are going to have a button in the pause menu that'll just be "win" and take you straight to the ending of a game ;P [I jest])

Another question I throw at you, is can a game that is really easy posses the same depth as one that is hard to master? Can a simplified game be as good as one that has loads of intricacies?
The only games I have played recently that are really tough are indy/doujin games. (I think it was DP ('though he was wrong) who linked to a good example of one, in the form of 'I Wanna Be the Guy!')

Will the "noob" gamers that companies are now trying to attract to gaming, be the kind of people that sustain a games life cycle? (The way I see it companies are actually happier if a game doesn't stick around for too long because it means that they keep selling more new games and don't have to spend resources on old titles - but that's not the point)

Do players even want hard games anymore? Or do they just want to waltz through a gaming experience like it was a film? Do they just want a sort of interactive movie which rather than present a challenge, offers an interactive story?
Do gamers want online games where they can just keep getting lots of kills without much hassle and lots of practice?

Tried to keep this fairly short but tl;dr
Basically are games getting way too easy and is that what gamers nowadays actually want? (and keep UT3 bitching to the absolute minimum please)

 

[Big-Al]

it's so people don't spend 6 months playing the same game, they spend a few hours and then have to go buy a new one

 

[daloonie]

I haven't really played many "really hard" games lately. Unless you can call Crysis hard.

 

[shadow_dragon]

It's mostly because, these days, the high calibre games have stories and aer more about being interactive story telling than they are about interstellar gameplay or challenge.

And why would a developer give you a story that you couldn't experience in a seemless manner?

I think it's just the nature of singleplayer games really, it's a direction that single player games have gone that i think is going downhill. I believe Morrowind got it right but oblivion broke it for example, the line is that easy to cross. Or another point to rally your own point, isn't it odd now how whenever you play a game "Easy" is the default difficulty selection, in the old days "normal" was and "normal" was normal too, nowadays "normal" is actually hard.

I think that's why World of Warcraft does so well. It's full of challenges, it's got one massive long, open ended story that involves your actions, it's got hundreds of short mini stories for you to discover. it's got multiple ways of interacting with the world via different class/specs/races/allegiances, etc and in the end there are even challenges beyond the grasp of most mortal men.
However the game isn't "hard" It is both ridiculously challenging in some ways but, still, pretty easy to actually play... and i think that's what developers should aim for.

Good/easy gameplay and difficult yet optional challenges. Exploration and achievement should = reward. I think though, as you say the games have tended towards the too easy and, though they are still good i blame the focus on the story telling and the assumption that it must be completed.

We dont' want interactive stories, we want engrossing gameplay.

I'll be quiet now.

 

[DeeperShade]

i'm playing super mario world atm. next is lost levels

 

[dub]

I finished Crysis pretty quickly. CoD4 went pretty quick too and I even went back to replay and complete it on the hardest setting.

Actually I think some Mario games are a good example of games being really tough but fun. Some later levels of Mario were pretty tough if I remember correctly.

 

[daloonie]

Puzzle platform games are fun to a certain point. Spyro the Dragon series had me going for ages and it was funs and semi hard at points.

 

[Slainchild]

Burnout Paradise gets pretty difficult...

Could just be that I suck at racing games. But you do need fast reflexes in that game.

 

[Big-Al]

i say more random events and less scripting

 

[-Jes-]

Play I Wanna Be The Guy on impossible mode.

There's your difficulty rating for you!

 

[dotnetbeast]

It really does depend on the player. I myself dont really care if its insanely hard or easy, just if it holds my attention.

 

[[VaLkyR]Anubis]

Burnout Paradise gets pretty difficult...

Could just be that I suck at racing games. But you do need fast reflexes in that game.

I liked the other Burnout games when I had my PS2,these games are ****ing fast and yeah as you mentioned,you need fast reflexes and I guess the new Burnout is faster than the others.

Hey |dub|,try to play Doom3 and Doom3 ROE on Nightmare,but without any cheats.

 

[MrSmiles]

I haven't played Crysis in a while but I finished the game on normal and started a new game on delta. I'm finding it a challenge at times, although I'm only 1/4 the way through.

I've been playing CoD4 online and I'm finding it fairly easy to get the highest score on the hc servers. I suck at normal servers though.

 

[Kantham]

I'm kinda feeling the same for a while now. It gets pretty damn obvious that the gaming industry aims at the "Everyone should have kills" concept so they make FPS less complicated and limit the movements.

How many god damn gamers on the planet knows how to play shooters? I can't count, but I bet they see them as a minority. I also bet that if a game developer comes with a twisty idea someone comes in and say "That won't work" so instead they'll give you some unlockables or something that will keep the player in for a long time.

A game Like Call of Duty 4 can't really have more than what they already have since the game focus on real life. However, a game like UT3 shouldn't get back into UT1 movements with a way too busy cramped fell. That's the main reason why I dislike UT3.

Also, give me a ****ing break with storyline based games. We don't want to race all over again from the bottom of the ladder in every god damn ****ing game. We want our action, that is all. If I want a story line I'll go watch a movie. Those stupid hungry reviwers.

i say more random events and less scripting

:tup: :tup:

 

[haslo]

The further you play the better your equipment. So you the game hits you with chores that just take time. They are probably about just as hard as they were at the start because even though the things you have to kill take more hits to kill, you do more damage. (maybe I'm wrong but in the one MMORPG I played it was like that)

It's mostly like that, yeah. I played it for a couple of months, basically neglecting my entire life in the process.

WoW still does take skill though, particularly when you start raiding you need lots of coordination, it's important to know the encounters and sometimes do the right thing as a group - like, one tick of damage too much when a boss changes phases and the raid wipes. The fun thing is that better gear can yet again make up for that. It's less challenging than other games though, overall, partially because the classes sometimes (when talking PvP) really have strong biases against some other classes - for example, a rogue has to be really good to beat an average warrior 1v1.

next thing you know developers are going to have a button in the pause menu that'll just be "win" and take you straight to the ending of a game ;P [I jest]

You never played that Monty Python game, The Quest for the Holy Grail, did you?

Myself I don't think that games are getting too easy - there's still things that make you think twice in most multiplayer titles, in UT3 for people who aren't used to UT2k4's ins and outs like me there are still many facets of gameplay to be discovered (for example, the Hellfire SPMA takes quite some practice to properly shoot with, the Viper takes some time until you can properly run people over, the vehicle's suicides need timing and aiming, the orb is a chapter on its own, there's map knowledge and flag/attack routes) - yes, there might be fewer than there were in UT2k4, but it's still challenging and I learn new stuff after hours and hours of playing.

Same goes for the Battlefield series, I spent a whole day just learning to fly the two BF2142 plane-like thingies once, on empty servers, before I felt halfway comfortable in a dogfight and stopped crashing into everything.

Singleplayer games then, well, I really care more about the story there than about challenges. I have enough challenges IRL. I even played through the UT3 campaign with the bots on "Average", because I knew I wanted to just play through the campaign to see the cutscenes and all, not for a proper challenge - there's multiplayer for that. There are so many titles that I still haven't finished although I wanted to and for some, was held back due to my old and sucky computer before I bought the new one (F.E.A.R., World in Conflict, later chapters of Dawn of War, Quake 4 (I only played till I became a Borg, twice), The Witcher, Crysis) ... when a game confronts me with something frustrating, and hasn't done enough story-wise to catch and hold me, I'll switch to the next one and leave it at gathering dust. I'm spoiled like that, and I like my games telling me long, extensive, compelling and interesting stories.

Edit: Kantham, we know you don't like UT3 meanwhile - and you know that there's quite a few of us who don't feel the UT3 feeling is cramped and busy, but rather that the UT2k4 feeling is way too spacious and hitscan-dominated. That's a matter of opinion and has nothing to do in this thread, as |dub| stated in his OP already.

 

[Capt.Toilet]

At first I would have thought that developers are making games too easy because if someone thinks the game is too hard, they will put it away forever. But with successful franchises like Ninja Gaiden, Devil May Cry, God of War etc, Im not so sure anymore. To me, a difficult game makes it all the more worthwhile once you finally make it past that section that caused you to punch a hole in the wall. Contra 4 comes to mind in so many ways. I cant tell you the sigh of relief, and the yelp of truimph when I finally downed Black Viper on NORMAL mode. I havent yet attempted hard mode because im a chicken ****. Have gamers today became pussifed, not really. But I think developers have, and the few left out there that produce quality greatness as mentioned above, my hats off to you.

 

[haarg]

I don't think it's very valid to compare multiplayer games to single players games in this regard. UT3 has a simplified learning curve, but that doesn't make it easy. The game will be easy or hard depending on who you chose to play against.

With single player games, there's plenty of examples of making them very easy. In Bioshock and Prey for example, there's practically no consequence for dying. I understand that if you give the player any chance to take a break from your game, you take the chance they won't come back to it. But if you can actually make a good game, you shouldn't need to use that kind of mechanic. Having some form of challenge is part of making a fun game. And with no consequences for your actions, it makes it hard to have much depth to the gameplay. Even ignoring that the wrench can be the most powerful weapon in the game, you could use it as your only weapon in Bioshock because it doesn't matter when you fail.

 

[haslo]

Aye, that's true too - although, sometimes it's not so much difficulty as frustrating setups that cause players the most grief. For example, I'm a big fan of the Prince of Persia series - every single game of those I devoured, except PoP3D, but including the early ones (those actually were among my first games). In The Two Thrones, there's those two brothers you fight at one time - they're particularly hard to defeat, need special tactics - which in and of itself woulnd't be the frustrating bit yet. The thing only gets frustrating once you add a non-trivial chariot race before it, and (and this is the worst bit) a non-cancellable, minute-long cutscene introducing the two brothers, and then you only let the player save before the chariot race. Damn I ****ing hated that bit after a couple dozen replays. Still, the game had me in its clutches and I kept coming back to try and try again and again, and eventually I made it - and it felt hugely rewarding.

The thing is though, if a game wants to pull this off, it has to be good enough, story-wise and gameplay-wise, to make the player want to actually finish it, despite everything the game throws in the player's way. There's very few franchises who manage to do that.

 

[T2A`]

I tend to think that, yes, games are getting easier. More and more AAA titles are following a story rather than a good gameplay idea, and because of that they tend to suffer in difficulty. Then you've got this issue of being able to save after every footstep -- this takes all the challenge and risk out of the game. A big difference between older games and games today is that you had to earn the right to save your progress back then. Nowadays you can, to paraphrase Yahtzee, bind quick save and quick load to your left and right mouse buttons. At that point nothing matters and the game ceases to be a game and is more like an interactive movie, as you mentioned.

I played through the Half-Life series (from HL1 to HL2:Ep2) recently and did so on the hard difficulty. Was it hard? A bit, but I never reached a point where I was constantly getting pissed because I couldn't get by, and HL1 was definitely more difficult in that vein. Far Cry (which I played somewhat recently before I built my new computer) was much more difficult than any HL game in comparison. And guess what -- Far Cry doesn't have quick saves!

So, while it's nice to be able to save whenever you want, I think it really, really f**ks up the gaming experience.

 

[Zarniwoop]

I don't think games are getting easier, I just think that we as gamers are getting more experienced.