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[Bragr]

tldr: I feel that in a lot of 3D games, on harder difficulties, the challenge comes down to too much chance, hope, and luck which leads to frustration, rather than "skill building" through conscious design. Alternatively, 2D games and turn-based games can juggle difficulty better because of the predictable rules, and because the sightlines provided gives the player better awareness. I also feel top-down viewpoints offer better rules for building player skills (like RTS-games).

I ran into this problem with Doom Eternal, and it made me think about my experience with harder difficulty modes in 3D games. Usually, I will tell myself I need to get better and keep grinding until I get through, but I now think this is the wrong way to approach this. In Doom Eternal your skill depends on timing and movement around the level, dodging, staying in areas where the demons have a limited potential to hit you, and so on. But because of the speed of the demons and the battles that involve many enemies at once, the chance to skillfully move and strike seems to more arbitrary than it should, it takes too long to memorize the arenas and learn where all the demons come from, and it becomes a battle where you end up just doing an area 20 times over and over, and hope that one of the times you take out the most dangerous enemies early before they over-complicate the fight.

I feel that the interesting and fun parts in 3D games have a tendency to break down at harder modes. You are glad you broke through the hard part, but it didn't result in a feeling of betterment or satisfaction, you are mostly just glad you don't have to do that fucking part again.

I find that frustrating, and I notice the same while playing most of the top 3D games on the market, even God of War has some really annoying parts on the harder difficulty that feel poorly conceived. Most will think of the From Software games, and I do feel those games are better tuned, but there is still plenty of parts where you fight many enemies at once and the game starts to struggle. Sekiro is the best at this because of the speed you can get away and regroup, but Dark Souls and Bloodborne certainly struggle when you face many enemies at once, as your ability to predict all of them is too poor, and the characters take a while to recover from rolls which leads to unforeseen hits. However, the From Software games are smarter in designing levels that are usually tight and understandable than most games, which reduces irritation when facing many enemies even if it's punishing. But it's still there in some form.

I guess what I am trying to say, is that the limited awareness and un-predictable nature of multiple enemies ruin many harder difficulties in too many 3D games, that there is something here that developers haven't figured out yet. It instead becomes a situation where you "sometimes win, sometimes lose", and you just have to do it over and over until you push through, rather than actually becoming better and feeling accomplishment from it.

I don't get any of those negative feelings from games like Cuphead, or StarCraft, or League of Legends, where the skill levels are understandable no matter how punishing. Simply put, too many modern 3D games overlook what is annoying difficulty contra meaningful progress and just scale difficulty based on harder enemies and less health.

 

[Krappadizzle]

Hard games are supposed to be hard.

If too many enemies becomes a problem on harder difficulties, it's because you don't remember the patterns or the best route to take while playing.

You are essentially wanting the label of hard without the challenge for some reason. Play on Normal, learn the game, then play on Hard.

Even then, these games aren't "hard" like they used to be. You want a hard game? Go play Blood on Extra Crispy difficulty and then play through Doom Eternal again and see if you still think it's hard.

 

[llLeonhart]

I feel the opposite actually, and usually I find harder difficulties are usually my cup of tea.

Played Ghost of tsushima and horizon on Hard for example, and I feel it truly made the experience better.

Of course it varies a lot by game, like on GoW for example I think it's challenging, and maybe fun, but unstaggarable enemies looks weird. and made the game less impactfull as a result for me.

Recently played the FFOrigins demo, and by god, the hard difficulty was just right. What an amazing experience.

 

[Jeeves]

Just...play games in the way that's most enjoyable for you. If you find the game to be more an exercise in frustration than an engaging challenge, turn the difficulty down. If it's too easy to be stimulating, try bumping it up.

I feel like gamers love to ruin things for themselves by imposing weird expectations upon themselves that nobody else will ever give a shit about. "The game is unfair on Very Hard but I refuse to lower it", "My backlog is stressing me out", "I'm compelled to collect every achievement despite having long since ceased enjoying what I'm doing" - these are all self-invented problems that you see from gamers all the time.

 

[TrueLegend]

Yes most games dont know what to do when it comes to higher difficult except raising hp. The games that do that like Sekiro and Dark Souls II with their New Game+ are awesome. I too play usually on hard mode but i keep in mind to not take it upon my ego but Jedi Fallen Order and its unblockable charging animals nearlly made me lose it. I enjyoed God of War III's Chaos mode the most and then Sekiro's new game plus without kuro's charm and bell demon.

 

[Danjin44]

I personally never had issue with high difficulty in 3D games, I mostly run in to issue with ARPG with AI party members In higher difficulty the AI can't keep up and you end up babysitting them, this why I prefer turn based combat most of the time because I have full control over the battle and my party members.

 

[Captain Toad]

I hate difficulty settings. I miss when games were just easy, medium or hard on their own. I enjoy all difficulty levels, but I prefer a game embrace whatever type of difficulty it's going for. Whether that's Yoshi, Uncharted, Dark Souls or Super Meat Boy.

 

[Saber]

I think most of the frustration comes on how develpoers implement hard difficulties.

Some increase the number of enemies or make them more hard to beat(either by increasing their life or making them more intelligent). While this is perfectly normal, there are devs that don't know how to handle difficulty and opt for the "lazy" way, like literally taking away limbs from your character or creating what people call "sponge" enemies.

Take Skyrim for instance. Skyrim is one of dumbest and retardest ways to balance a game. In order to make the game harder they make you deal way less damage on the eneny while you take way too much damage from them, up to a 75% less damage and 3x received damage. This without counting npc hidden skills that bypass your resistances/armor and scaling skills absurdly better than you. Ni No Kumi 2 suffers from the same syndrome, where a monsters 30 levels above can one-hit-kill your characters while you do almost no damage at all.

Harder games are rewarding when the difficulty requires you to hone your skills and imposes learning(like patterns and how to deal with different type of enemies). Making a boss harder to hit and punishing is not a problem, the problem comes when while fighting the boss you have to handle the lava/spikes, homming arrows and a time limit before you die.

 

[rofif]

Gaming is not always about challenging yourself.
I like to get it all in and live the world. Sometimes even on easier difficulty if it's annoying

 

[Lethal01]

So many games have ruined themselves by not giving high enough difficulty options, or making you unlock them first.

 

[zcaa0g]

I play every game on easy and blast through them. Then if the game was worth a shit, I will play it again months or years later on a hard difficulty. Good way to have replay value and if a game was shit that I bought, I wasted less time by playing on the easy difficulty.

 

[Rentahamster]

I guess what I am trying to say, is that the limited awareness and un-predictable nature of multiple enemies ruin many harder difficulties in too many 3D games, that there is something here that developers haven't figured out yet.

Some have, some haven't. It's not easy to perfectly balance all difficulty levels. You're putting too much of the responsibility on the developers, when you could simply just play on the next lower difficulty level.

You should know yourself well enough to know when the difficulty of a game is becoming more frustration than entertainment, and that beating games on hard, while a nice accomplishment, is a secondary goal to entertainment.

 

[Corgi1985]

Depends on how the games are harder. When harder is just more bullet sponges then it sucks.

 

[GreenAlien]

That's why difficulty choices are the devil. How are you supposed to make an informed decision without playing the game first?

 

[JOEVIAL]

I agree with what you're saying OP. Most games simply don't have gameplay mechanics that are conductive for higher difficulties. The mechanics in place should be skill and timing based, instead of luck and scripted event based. When a game is skill based, it allows the player to actually get better at the core mechanics, instead of just learning through trial and error. Out of all game mechanics, I hate trial and error the most.

Anywho... designing games that reward skill and finesse takes.... well... skill. And a lot of time. That's why the bulk majority of games have boring gameplay that seems to play itself to a point.

Also, for most games when you up the difficulty passed its original intention and balance (usually Standard/Medium/Hard) it tends to break and show it's flaws. Uncharted is one of the worst offenders that comes to mind.

 

[ethomaz]

I’m the opposite.
I just find most games pretty easy even on hard difficulty compared to old days.

For example I don’t know anybody can play TLOU or TLOU2 below Hard difficult… to be fair Crushing should be the ideal play thought.

 

[Prof. Tivor Tontomo]

There aren't many games that require you to beat the harder difficulties these days, so choose the lower option if you are having unsatisfactions.

 

[OrangeSun77]

The ideal difficulty should be the perfect balance. Neither stupidly easy nor extremely difficult. It does not make sense to start a new game at the maximum difficulty, the maximum difficulty is when you have mastered the game, it is not the difficulty to start.

 

[Strider Highwind]

I think games are a little bit too easy for the last decade + personally, have done no hit runs in quite a few titles.


I want harder games

 

[jshackles]

Do what I do - set every game's difficulty to Easy and if you want to really challenge yourself get super fucked up before playing.

 

[R6Rider]

I play the Yakuza games on easy. They're much more fun slapping around enemies easily and lets you get to the ridiculous characters and quests faster.

Meanwhile I play Sniper Elite games on hard with full bullet physics, wind, and so forth. No diamond cursor to tell me where to shoot.

Difficulty depends on game, and there's nothing wrong with playing however you want. If hard tends to be less fun, then don't play on hard.

 

[teezzy]

I play on normal because I'm not a nerd

 

[The Pleasure]

You want a hard game? Go play Blood on Extra Crispy difficulty and then play through Doom Eternal again and see if you still think it's hard.

That shit is illegal and you KNOW IT. Even Blood on normal difficulty is fucking insane. The damage and how fast anything could mow you down on blood is fucking insane.

 

[Krappadizzle]

That shit is illegal and you KNOW IT. Even Blood on normal difficulty is fucking insane. The damage and how fast anything could mow you down on blood is fucking insane.

 

[Cornbread78]

The older I get the less I'm interested in challenging myself and wasting time replaying the same thing over and over again. No getting gud here, I'm just playing to experience the characters, world & story while having fun

 

[Bo_Hazem]

I find most games easy, some are too easy on highest difficulty like AC Valhalla, The Witcher 3, and RDR2. Easy games usual get one or two points off the final score.

 

[Bartski]

There are exceptions with some real effort put in altering game mechanics and when done right, if I really like the game it's the best way to play.
I don't think it's an issue of "3d games" but in general, "hard" modes are usually complete garbage and an afterthought, created by shifting health and damage volumes in games balanced for more casual friendly "normal". that the studio assumes most players will choose.

 

[Zannegan]

I just hate when hard = damage sponge enemies. If they actually make the game harder with more enemies or smarter enemies, I'm all about that.

 

[GymWolf]

I have the opposite problem, the majority of games that i play are too easy even on the harder difficulty and i'm far from a super skilled player.

 

[Keihart]

well i had the opposite problem until i started bumping almost every game to the hardest one, some games become trivial on normal and really good challenges on hard.
I would have not played more than an hour of GOW 2018 on normal for example.

 

[R6Rider]

I find most games easy, some are too easy on highest difficulty like AC Valhalla, The Witcher 3, and RDR2. Easy games usual get one or two points off the final score.

Wow, you're so cool and good at games. Why don't you 1v1 me in Minecraft to prove who the real gamer is.

 

[junguler]

there is no one size fits all when it comes to difficulty, some people like to relax and enjoy themselves, others want to overcome a challenge and feel accomplished. both are valid approaches and thankfully most of the games will give you the option to choose for yourself.

 

[Knightime_X]

I start out on easy (sometimes) and go up from there if the replay value is high.
usually I start on normal.
I'll only pick hard when I'm ready to shove the game up my ass and go for a spin.

 

[WalterSobchak]

I love hard difficulties, I usually play on the hardest or just below difficulties. Dying a lot is part of the fun for me.
The only ones I avoid are difficulties that make you restart your whole game if you die or that limit saves , that would just make me too angry.
But I totally get why people prefer a lower difficulty and would want to get thru a game quicker. I guess it makes me feel I am getting my monies worth when I play on hard haha.

Looking forward to a Villiage of Shadows non infinite ammo run in re8 soon. Many Ethan deaths await .

 

[Bo_Hazem]

Wow, you're so cool and good at games. Why don't you 1v1 me in Minecraft to prove who the real gamer is.

You'll win because I'll probably suffocate from boredom.

 

[Yoboman]

So many games have ruined themselves by not giving high enough difficulty options, or making you unlock them first.

Or many games where the hard modes should be the normal mode

TLOU comes to mind as a game far better on harder modes without the dumb listening mode stuff

 

[NeonDelta]

I used to always play on hard difficulty but these days I just stick to normal or easy depending on the game.

 

[Dacon]

I just wish difficulty wasn't so manufactured in games. Making a game hard apparently means giving them laser aim, triple the health points and the ability to spot you three miles away through walls.

I wish someone would innovate with games by making enemies smarter with better pathing instead of artificially beefing them up into super soldiers.

 

[Fbh]

I've found I enjoy most games on whatever comes after normal. I find that's usually the sweet spot of challenging enough that you need to stay alert and actually learn to play the game, without it getting too frustrating.
Though I do think it depends on the game. Some games just turn everyone into a bullet sponge on harder difficulties and it turns the game into a slog.

I do have a friend with whom I've played a lot of coop games with that has sort of ruined a couple of them by insisting we go with the mega inferno nightmare from hell difficulty setting.

 

[Raonak]

No OP, I don't find hard 2D games any easier than hard 3D games.
Spacing, and managing enemy numbers is part of the difficulty.

You're just bad at it.

 

[Bragr]

No OP, I don't find hard 2D games any easier than hard 3D games.
Spacing, and managing enemy numbers is part of the difficulty.

You're just bad at it.

I'm not saying that 2D games are easier, I'm saying they handle difficulty better, systems-wise. It's not about what is hard or easy, it's about how challenging aspects of a game is treated. Do they make it interesting? engaging? annoying?

In a sense, I find that a lot of the game systems in 3D games don't translate when they get more punishing, there are plenty of exceptions, but I find that a lot of 3D games become more about "just get through the area".

I think a good example is armoured enemies that a lot of games usher in as you progress, these enemies might be harder to fight, but usually suck to deal with and is boring as hell to fight because you get so little response from them, bullet-sponges, you shot them 20 times and they still just lumber forward. It's a bad way of doing difficulty, they need to figure out ways to increase difficulty without making the combat suck in return. In 2D games, there are better ways to do this than in 3D games, in my experience.

 

[Noncanon Ship]

"Cinematic" games that emphasize story over gameplay are the worst for this. The Uncharted series' Crushing difficulty has always been bad (UC1 - terrible checkpoints, UC2 and 3 - too easy) but UC4 was absolute bs. Bullet spongy, luck-based, far-too-quick enemy detection from stealth, and most infuriatingly, there are scripted parts where you just have to survive till x event triggers rather than actually being able to kill the enemy. So you're just helplessly trying to avoid bullets as cover crumbles in an instant, and that comes down to bullet trajectories statistically calculated to miss you on your umpteenth try. Later in the game, there's just a section that's utterly impossible without activating cheats. It's just not possible to get through, completely unbalanced.

Don't put in a difficulty mode if you're not going to balance it.

 

[01011001]

"Cinematic" games that emphasize story over gameplay are the worst for this. The Uncharted series' Crushing difficulty has always been bad (UC1 - terrible checkpoints, UC2 and 3 - too easy) but UC4 was absolute bs. Bullet spongy, luck-based, far-too-quick enemy detection from stealth, and most infuriatingly, there are scripted parts where you just have to survive till x event triggers rather than actually being able to kill the enemy. So you're just helplessly trying to avoid bullets as cover crumbles in an instant, and that comes down to bullet trajectories statistically calculated to miss you on your umpteenth try. Later in the game, there's just a section that's utterly impossible without activating cheats. It's just not possible to get through, completely unbalanced.

Don't put in a difficulty mode if you're not going to balance it.

to be fair, Uncharted 4 warns you in the menu if you play this mode without finishing the game once

that being said xD I ignored that (didn't even read the warning popup) and finished it first time on that mode... because Uncharted is so braindead, at least the fights were a challenge (sometimes) I still found it to be pretty easy aside from the last level, which took me ages to get through because it truly is completely random if you survive or not (further proving the bad gamedesign of it)... because Uncharted is a braindead game, so there's not much aside from changing damage numbers that they can do in order to make it more difficult.

 

[Raonak]

I'm not saying that 2D games are easier, I'm saying they handle difficulty better, systems-wise. It's not about what is hard or easy, it's about how challenging aspects of a game is treated. Do they make it interesting? engaging? annoying?

In a sense, I find that a lot of the game systems in 3D games don't translate when they get more punishing, there are plenty of exceptions, but I find that a lot of 3D games become more about "just get through the area".

I think a good example is armoured enemies that a lot of games usher in as you progress, these enemies might be harder to fight, but usually suck to deal with and is boring as hell to fight because you get so little response from them, bullet-sponges, you shot them 20 times and they still just lumber forward. It's a bad way of doing difficulty, they need to figure out ways to increase difficulty without making the combat suck in return. In 2D games, there are better ways to do this than in 3D games, in my experience.

Well, I disagree with everything you've written.

I don't find them any better or worse in translation. They require a different set of skills.
Bulletsponge enemies exist in both 3D and 2D games, the amount of dimensions has no bearing on it.

I think you're probably just bad at 3D games.

 

[darkangel-212559]

tldr: I feel that in a lot of 3D games, on harder difficulties, the challenge comes down to too much chance, hope, and luck which leads to frustration, rather than "skill building" through conscious design. Alternatively, 2D games and turn-based games can juggle difficulty better because of the predictable rules, and because the sightlines provided gives the player better awareness. I also feel top-down viewpoints offer better rules for building player skills (like RTS-games).

I ran into this problem with Doom Eternal, and it made me think about my experience with harder difficulty modes in 3D games. Usually, I will tell myself I need to get better and keep grinding until I get through, but I now think this is the wrong way to approach this. In Doom Eternal your skill depends on timing and movement around the level, dodging, staying in areas where the demons have a limited potential to hit you, and so on. But because of the speed of the demons and the battles that involve many enemies at once, the chance to skillfully move and strike seems to more arbitrary than it should, it takes too long to memorize the arenas and learn where all the demons come from, and it becomes a battle where you end up just doing an area 20 times over and over, and hope that one of the times you take out the most dangerous enemies early before they over-complicate the fight.

I feel that the interesting and fun parts in 3D games have a tendency to break down at harder modes. You are glad you broke through the hard part, but it didn't result in a feeling of betterment or satisfaction, you are mostly just glad you don't have to do that fucking part again.

I find that frustrating, and I notice the same while playing most of the top 3D games on the market, even God of War has some really annoying parts on the harder difficulty that feel poorly conceived. Most will think of the From Software games, and I do feel those games are better tuned, but there is still plenty of parts where you fight many enemies at once and the game starts to struggle. Sekiro is the best at this because of the speed you can get away and regroup, but Dark Souls and Bloodborne certainly struggle when you face many enemies at once, as your ability to predict all of them is too poor, and the characters take a while to recover from rolls which leads to unforeseen hits. However, the From Software games are smarter in designing levels that are usually tight and understandable than most games, which reduces irritation when facing many enemies even if it's punishing. But it's still there in some form.

I guess what I am trying to say, is that the limited awareness and un-predictable nature of multiple enemies ruin many harder difficulties in too many 3D games, that there is something here that developers haven't figured out yet. It instead becomes a situation where you "sometimes win, sometimes lose", and you just have to do it over and over until you push through, rather than actually becoming better and feeling accomplishment from it.

I don't get any of those negative feelings from games like Cuphead, or StarCraft, or League of Legends, where the skill levels are understandable no matter how punishing. Simply put, too many modern 3D games overlook what is annoying difficulty contra meaningful progress and just scale difficulty based on harder enemies and less health.

Good luck with the introduction to Nier Automata on hard mode with getting 2 shot by everything in bullet hell sequences. If you die (and you will) you have the luxury of zero check points and unskippable cutscenes! It's brutal.

Still after that it's hard but boy oh boy do you feel like a bad ass when you master the combat mechanics.

 

[Tschumi]

I agree man. I recently kind of decided to stop selecting hardest difficulty levels in anything but stealth games like deus ex or Cyberpunk,. Like, you play god of war for the dad and son stuff, not to reload repeatedly because one of the weakest zombies in the game has landed glancing blows on you once or twice. I play age of empires for building a city and then going to war, not for using the perfect number of villagers for the perfect number of jobs on the perfect buildings in the perfect order in a race to beat the ai to cap and make trebuchet...

 

[Joey.]

I used to think I HAD to play and beat every game on the hardest difficult. And while it always felt like an achievement, many of the times it started feeling like a chore and frustrating and I wouldn’t always end up beating the game.

Now I play everything on normal mode (if the option is available) and I feel like I enjoy games again and can really get into the stories.

Maybe it’s because I don’t have as much time anymore….

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

I have nothing to add except that I wish more games would use the godly system devised for Kid Icarus, where you could bet on a difficulty per level and reap different rewards for making your goal.

 

[Spidey Fan]

I am in the same position as you, except i cant play games alot like i used to. I am now playing with a 2-3 hour limit a day. i cant even last more than that. If i dont keep playing the game every day, Then i forget about that game next week. I pushed myself away from games, because of some thing i did in 2016. I keep blaming myself for those days, and it makes me not enjoy gaming that much. I might quit gaming in 3-4 years if it goes like that. I already quit watching tv and movies long time.

 

[GermanZepp]

I play most games on normal, If i really enjoy the gameplay and the are some incentives like end game, pvp o ng+ that is worth it, maybe I try it on hard. I'm currently about to finish my first playthough of sekiro.