Difficulty or Fun?

[Jonathan Solomon]

When I was younger, I preferred easier settings on the games I played. Because I was mostly going for the fun of it. Nowadays, I prefer playing games for the skill of acquiring and becoming better than the average. Naturally, I'm a competitive person. At the same time, it gives me another reason to game. For example, if I'm playing COD, I want a somewhat good KDR in every round. So between that and watching other it strives me to try harder instead of just enjoying the fun of it.

 

[Knightmanx]

There should definitely be a balance between fun and challenging, but I think I lean more towards fun factor. I've got a friend who is always into playing everything as hardcore as possible and will never let me play under hard mode if he has anything to say about it. But then I watch my nephew play something like Minecraft in creator mode with no consequences and literally all the power at his fingertips and I have to ask "what's the point?"

 

[Zyni]

Yep, I think balance is key, @Knightmanx. Too easy is boring. Too hard is frustrating. A balance of hard stuff mixed with some easier stuff to give you a break from time to time, is generally a good way to go.

I also prefer that difficulty is measured more by strategy, thinking, learning, and trying until you succeed. I don't like gimmicky stuff where you can only win if the RNG gods smile upon you, no matter how skilled you are or how hard you try.

 

[anadrotowski]

I enjoy more of a healthy mixture of both. A game that is too easy or not at all difficult makes it difficult to enjoy the game. But the more challenging, the more overall enjoyment I get out of the game. But another thing I'd rather have than just a casual, fun game is a game enriched with a complex story to explore.

 

[OursIsTheFury]

I'm the typical gamer. On my first run, I play on the default difficulty. I don't look at spoilers or guides online, and I finish the game. Then, I obsess over all the secrets of the game. Quests I missed, items I missed, results I missed because I picked the wrong choice; then after that, I go with the difficulty and speed challenges, and if it's on Steam, I'll get all the remaining achievements that I didn't get during the first 2 playthroughs.

 

[Makef0rt]

I usually go with the default difficulty setting more to enjoy the story & the game itself for what it is.

If I really liked the game, I would start another run. Sometimes for fun, I would use cheats and what not and sometimes to play on hardest possible difficulty and see how that would go.

I really loved Metro and they had quite a nice difficulty settings which forced you to think about ammo conservation, different approaches to certain missions and such. That is what makes it even more fun.

Another game that I enjoyed playing on higher difficulty was GTA V. Multiplayer has some really nice heists and other than earning more money by doing harder runs, it was really fun to go through certain heists on hard difficulty. Even worse, you could have spent more than an hour to get close to ending it, fail and have to start everything from the start if your team wasn't really well coordinated.

Me and my friends actually found a really nice way to deal with the last heist that not many people have thought of at that time. The last heist, bank robbery. After you rob the bank you have to fight your way to the bikes & ride em to your freedom. With random people in your team it can be quite hard to communicate, but when you play with a team of friends and you are all voice chatting it benefits a lot. We would just wait inside the bank for the first wave of cops and swat to show up, 3 players would provide covering fire while the 4th member would get an RPG or grenade launcher and give them hell. When you go outside, do the same. Take down the chopper and incoming police cars with explosive weapons and let your mates cover you. Once you eventually get to the bikes, drive those to the beach. Sounds crazy? Perhaps it might, but on certain part of the beach you can snatch jet-skis and leave the annoying part of ridding the bike towards the safety and enjoy the more easier way of avoiding cops. It was such a nice, yet simple discovery which made the heist way easier. Hope this might help some other GTA V players

 

[Tronikart]

A mix of both, a game too easy would become boring and repetitive, unless youre just playing it for the lore, I love myself a hard game, but it has to be a really well done one, one that doesnt make you go through a tedious respawn animation or sequence, something fast so you can jump back into action ASAP

 

[ValX]

I always play for fun, just because that's what games are all about, fun! I play games to release my stress that I've been continuously getting from whatever problems I have, and if I play it for the difficulty I'd have even more stress and frustration. While if I play for fun, I'll have all the fun I can have and I want to have :smile:

 

[Denis_P]

As others have said, difficulty and fun are not mutually exclusive, in my opinion. A prime example of that is the Dark Souls series. I get extremely frustrated during those games. There was a part in Dark Souls 2 that almost made me, a 25 year old male, cry from how angry and frustrated I was. However, no matter how angry or frustrated I had gotten during those games I cannot look back and say I didn't have fun. In fact, it was some of the best fun I had with gaming in recent memory.

However, there are also those days where I'm just stressed out and need to unwind with a game that isn't going to make me throw my controller through the screen, and that's when I aim to play something fun and with zero difficulty like Stardew Valley or Lego Star Wars. No matter how much I like a challenge, some days you're just not up to it.

 

[BethSztruhar]

I'm in the middle I think. Because I'm not the best player on Earth, I never try games on max difficulity, on if I think I can handle it. Guess how many times that happened...
But I don't like the easy mode either, so I guess I'm playing for fun AND to be challenged too.

 

[dbwv]

It depends on the game. Sometimes, overcoming the difficulty is part of the Fun. Other times, a game is fun because it is casual and not very difficult. I have played several games that I REALLY liked and then run into a level or quest that is just Too Hard and you try and fail over and over and over and get stuck.....that is NOT fun!!! That has Ruined several games for me!! At least nowadays, they can simply update the game and fix parts too difficult or bugs or whatever. Gaming today is SO much better in ways like that!!

 

[Koyomi Araragi]

If a game is ridiculously difficult, I'm not going to have fun. I'm going to get frustrated and start yelling/swearing, and then my mom's going to get frustrated and start yelling at me that it's just a game from the other room.

Videogamedunkey did a great video on video game difficulty, though I don't think all of it applies to me since, I, uh, like things easy. :sweatsmile:

 

[prasanna kumar]

I play for fun, there is no difficulty while playing, because if you are a game lover then you will not feel that difficulty , instead you will take the difficulty as a challenge.

 

[Linen]

I prefer to balance both. I like to have fun, but at some point, playing on the easiest modes stops being fun and starts getting utterly tedious. As it is, there's some games that could actually end up harder if you choose easier modes; rhythm games come to mind for me in particular, but it certainly isn't the only genre of game that has issues like that.

If I have to choose one of these qualities to prioritize, I would take fun first, because that's ultimately why I choose to play games. A challenge is fine and to some degree somewhat desirable, but I still have to enjoy myself, else why play?

 

[kenoobie]

I usually play my first play through one difficulty higher than normal. I find most games very easy on normal mode and just enough with 1 difficulty higher. I also like a balance of fun and difficulty in my games because i find it boring if its not challenging enough.

 

[Makef0rt]

Difficulty can be perceived in many ways though. If you are playing a game that has evasive tactics, there is pretty much no difficulty there. You can play on hardest settings and still deal with everything easily. Witcher 3 for an example. It can be hard, but if you learn the patterns of your enemy and the way they attack you could just easily evade every single blow and kill it without taking a single hit. True, it can be tough at certain points to evade everything, but some boss fights were a joke honestly. Especially the Hunt bosses. They can teleport, do magic tricks, but honestly, if you just roll away in the right time, there is nothing the boss can do to you. Combine it with the shielding, and you are the boss. To me personally, some monsters presented more of a challenge than bosses did.

 

[TheArticulate]

I generally play games simply for fun. If I'm doing my first run through of a game, I'll put it at normal difficulty, as I don't exactly want a challenge, but want to get a feel for the game as I play through it. In rare instances, I'll go back through and play a game a second time on a harder difficulty. The most notable time I can think of is the original Dead Space. I played it multiple times, and once all the way through with just the Plasma Cutter so I could get an achievement.

Good times!

 

[nickdamon]

I'd have to say I mainly play games for the fun of it. But I'm a fan of learning, and challenges in general, so I do like games that make me think or decision-based games where my choices matter and whatnot. I'm someone who typically likes to start games on hard though because I feel like that's one of the best ways I personally get better at games.

 

[AlexHarris]

What people define as fun can vary a lot. Some people (like myself) enjoy being overpowered in a game so I don't always like a game to be hard. I do, however, enjoy it being difficult if I can overcome it with some friends because that brings a certain kind of hype to it. Like there is this PlayStation game called Gods Eater Burst that my friends and I played together. There were this big monsters in the game like Electric Lion Chimeras and a land beluga blue whale hybrid if you can believe. Playing together and healing and reviving each other and distracting the monsters so the other could attack it, basically finding a synergy between all of our characters was a hell of fun. So on that note difficulty is fun with friends, alone it is frustrating.

 

[Javo1096]

For me it depends on the type of game I'm playing, if it's about a fighting, strategy or stealth videogames I really like when those get really difficult because I think those are the kind of games that are made to be that way so you can improve your skills and your movements to get through them.