Modern gamers' hatred of challenging games

[DUB1]

I've frequently read that a lot of modern gamers just want to quickly go through a game and put it on the shelf, and they can't stand anything slightly challenging. I've also read enough complaining from gamers online to know that it is at least partially true. Plenty of older games would drive some people to hair-pulling insanity.

My question is, does anyone when this started, exactly? When did a significant amount of gamers started hating difficult games? What made it happen? Or was it always like that, and it just became worse over time?

I hope I'm not blowing it way out of proportion. I decided to post this thread after reading the "first or third person gameplay for Aliens?" thread in the A:CM forum. There were a few comments about modern gamers' dislike of games with a high learning curve, and how the Aliens' gameplay will be in the third person to make them "less disorienting" to play as. Ugh, how I hate when developers cater to dummies.

[DoomRulz]

Games are only easier in the sense that there is no shortage of tips and tricks a person can find online to help them through it. But there are games out there that really do have their difficulty factor jacked up for what seems like no good reason.

Case in point. the following games are all guilty of this:

1. The Ninja Gaiden series
2. Any CoD made by Treyarch
3. Far Cry 2
4. Most modern RTS games (mainly due to poor AI programming that knows nothing except rushing)
5. The God of War games

Short list but it's the ones that immediately come to mind. I can't tell you the # of times I've played either of those and just felt like destroying something because the developers seem to make a scenario impossible to get through simply because they were bored and couldn't think of a real way to make it challenging.

I like challenging. What I don't like is having to face wave after wave of opponents and struggle to advance because that takes the fun out of whatever it is I'm playing.

[WinterActual]

The games you mentioned are not "challenging" hard, they are "screw you" hard. (Far Cry 2 is not hard, but its annoying because of the random respawns)

[DoomRulz]

Random respawns and cars dying and guns jamming. Who the hell thought those would be good ideas?

[Nightlord]

I'm the opposite whenever I first play through a game I turn it to the highest difficulty that I can, usually gives the most enjoyment.

Except some developers don't seem to have any understanding of how to make a game harder and also be a challenge without it turning into a LOLROFLSTOMP as seen here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vkoCWLU190#ws

The best games make it so their higher difficulty makes you play the game differently, one of my favourites was Dead Space 2 on hard core, the game wasn't made any harder in terms of enemy health but you only had three saves for the entire game which encouraged you play more cautiously.

While it's obvious that kind of difficulty isn't for everyone IMO it's more fun and fair than a game like COD world at war which just decides it's going to punish for the hell of it.

[DoomRulz]

"What do I do here?!" "WHAT DO I DO HERE!?!?!?!?!" poor thing

Yeah, the first MW had that problem, minus the grenade spamming. At least IW learned from it and it wasn't much of a problem in MW 2.

Dead Space 2 is challenging from what I hear but that type of hardcore gameplay suffers from what the guy in the video was talking about. You think you've cleared out an entire room and then BAM! some asshole that came outta nowhere takes your head off.

[Terx2]

I like challenging games. Why? because if we don't challenge ourselves we don't improve. I want to improve myself. I just like games that get difficult slowly instead of a sudden jump in difficulty.

[DoomRulz]

There don't seem to be many games like that, nowadays. Developers would rather spike things up with infinite enemy respawn or super limited ammo for the player than actually do something intelligent.

[Sylizar]

It's really hard to pin challenging games because, once again, it's all subjective. What's challenging to you may be bullsh*t to someone else and vice-versa.

[First Blood]

The God of War games

I never found the GOW games that challenging, except for the first one, when you had to climb your way out of Hades on those spiked towers. Oh, did that make my piss boil.

[Stalker]

I personally love a challenge. Every game I play I always set the difficulty to maximum.

The only issue I have is when they add in a bullshit stipulation like time limits or no checkpoints. Going back to Dead Space 2, I actually recently beat the game on Zealot & died many times in the process. The amount of dedication it would take to even attempt a 'perfect' run on Hard Core mode with only 3 saves is just ridiculous & for me would take the fun out of the experience.

Some people have mentioned Far Cry 2. Personally I didn't find that game overly tough even on Infamous difficulty, the only real bitch was that if you died you had to restart from your last save point- which could have been an hour ago.

My philosophy is make the game as hard as you want- but don't force me to lose all my progress if I screw up.

[SM]

1. The Ninja Gaiden series

I loved the DS Ninja Gaiden - until the final boss.  Eventually gave up up and went "Close enough".

[Ratchetcomand]

Older games are much harder. Younger people have no right to bitch about it being hard when games like Ninja Gaiden is a cake walk compare to Back to the Future on NES.

[WinterActual]

Except some developers don't seem to have any understanding of how to make a game harder and also be a challenge without it turning into a LOLROFLSTOMP as seen here

Exactly. Back then the higher difficulties were made for a reason, giving you better rewards for completing. The reason for the higher difficulties was - ok you finished the game, you are skilled/lvled enough so you can try the next mode for our great reward. Like in Diablo 2 - the sweet things come from the higher diffs. You were given the opportunity to replay the game after you already know it secrets and levels and enemies, but this time you will face some challenge but still remaining fun to play. Current gen games are not like that. Lets say CoD 4 or WaW - holy shit, lets throw at the player 9999999999 enemies at once, and another 999999999 enemies but they will throw grenades, just make it 1 hit kill and remove the AI from the player's teammates. Yeah what a great fun is that! Our customers can't miss such a fun! >.< I can bet money on that there is some pattern in the Vet diffs in the CoD games how many times you must die and then after you reach the pattern end the game will allow you to continue. And its not just in the FPS games. The same goes for the racing and different sport games where the AI is simply cheating. With impossible goals and taking corners with ridiculously high speed which is not possible to be done by the player. You remember the Ravenwest guys from GRID right? Thats right, these guys were made out of robots. Their AI is simply cheating, this is not challenging racing game, made with good AI pilots, it just cheating AI. Same shit with the NFS games - the game boosts the AI cars' speed all the time.... I am just disgusted from some devs in this gen. Many indie devs are patching the difficulties for months to get it done. But the big bad corporative giant devs - no, ofc not. Tripwire patched Killing Floor about hundred times before they got balanced, still very challenging but in the same time not stomping the player difficulty. I am really hoping if ACM's coop (and singleplayer ofc) is somehow easy or damn imbalanced hard, GBX to patch it 'till its fine no matter how many patches this will take 

EDIT: I forgot to mention my theory about the new games being easy. I think they make the new games easy because they want everybody to complete them so the devs can show off their work. Back in the day, where was everything but NES, SNES, GENS, DooM, Quake, you know the rest, the games were not exactly just for kids so they were hard. And I had many friends, including me, who never finished some games. But this kept us playing them. You know what - for almost 20 years I still haven't beaten NG 1 and 2 on NES. And I am still trying from time to time. Yes I can beat Contra and Super C without dying but this cost me around 10 years of trying and playing. And I still have fun of those games, I still play them. Maybe its not exactly 10 years, but its something around that, 7-8 years of trying to master these games. And I feel very goot after I am already "qualified" to beat them without dying. So what about the new games, lets say CoD because its more popular - its made to be easy because they want everybody to finish it fast so they can release another one next year/incoming months. Its all about the damn money, its not about the games anymore. Not from the "big" devs at least. In the end I must say - support the indie scene. There are many great indie games on the way. Like Wasteland 2, or Contagion or Ravaged and many more. These games have life, the others are 5-6 months decoy which die after that

[RagingDragon]

Dude, original NES had some games that didn't give a f**k.  So impossible.

Try beating the first Ghosts n' Goblins.

I double dog dare you.