Stop telling people how to play games

Gary Bailey: "This industry is already too negative as it is, and it’s about time we started encouraging people in their hobby instead of tearing them down."

[OB1Biker]

I can get behind this. I agree that back then people were not bragging about being 'a gamer'. some people now go on about being hardcore and, would you believe it, check out your trophies to call you out if they think they are not on part.
yes i know Ill get disagrees because its sort of 'normal' now to downplay other gamers or behave like dks on the internet. Not just gamers either. I ve seen reviewers and site mods deriding some gamers because they dared criticize without getting all those valuable trophies.
On the other hand, theres nothing wrong to want challenging games and some people should nt blame a game for its difficulty. Think Dan S crying in a piece because he couldnt cope in Bloodborne.
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[FullmetalRoyale]

It is amazing now, thanks to increased games popularity and the internet, how bullish some people are about their video game playing. It makes me laugh when I remember how it was when I was a kid, with how exciting it was to come across someone else that liked games. I remember being made fun of on the school bus when I was playing my Gameboy. Kids have grown up now with their social media and they don't really have the perspective to take a step back and realize how much they have. Not all, but the ones with perspective aren't the ones trying to make someone else feel badly.
Don't even get me started on the grown ass men that act like this!

[Sam Fisher]

Ob1
You shouldnt get a disagree, what you spoke is truth and more people should be like this.

And aswell as full metal.

Man those were the days, meeting a kid that played games like you, and even better when you guys had different tastes on games, so you guys can borrow each others games. Man those days were fun

[Princess_Pilfer]

The article makes a big dumb mistake though. You cannot lump in "people who complain that games are too easy" with "people who are jackwagons to others who play on lower difficulties." The Author is *actively* doing the thing he's complaining about by failing to make that distinction, and does so again by being actively derisive when talking about people who believe the higher degrees of challenge and succeeding after failing for hours is a rewarding way to play.

It's not about a "man badge" (I'm a woman for starters,) it's about games failing to maintain an level of interest because they're too easy to be engaging, or the satisfaction of overcoming a challenge. This is doubly true in any situation where the gameplay is the primary interest for a given player.

The authors "don't be a judgemental prick" message is fine, but the author is actively doing the thing they claim to be against, and is apparently too blind to notice it while writing up their article. They are just as much a problem as the people they complain about.

[FinalFantasyFanatic]

True, but some older games were unfairly hard for various reasons, we seemed to have gone the other way at some point (I still prefer health pickups over health regen in shooters).

I think Persona 5 is a good recent example, it still has challenges but it's easier than Persona 3 or 4 by a good margin, some people really struggle with it though. Some games like Nier Automata can get hard because Yoko Taro doesn't always do good game design (the ball centipede thing in the dessert, oh god, f**k that boss). Or in the case of Horizon Dawn Zero where I think it's reasonably balanced, health and ammo is pretty plentiful for me on normal, but the battles can challenging enough if I mess up since it's more stealth based and I'm not very stealthy.

Failure reaps it's own rewards, as long as you learn from it, some people don't learn from failure.

[Princess_Pilfer]

Persona 5 is too easy. If you've already played Persona 3 or Persona 4 you're going to blow through the game. Persona 3 and 4 weren't unfairly hard. The first large difficulty spikes are fairly early in the game, they set you up to know you're going to be grinding or hunting golden hands and you're not allowed to run unless the enemies are likely to kill you if you don't. You can not like that setup all you want, but that doesn't make it unfair. That's not even mentioning that neither of those games is particularly hard once you take the time to find a persona that's resistant or outright immune to whatever the enemy is doing. (and Persona 5 overcompensated, in an attempt to eliminate what people would interpret as a need to grind it also took out most of the mechanics that people would be likely to not get right away that might kill them as a result.)

Unfair is Battletoads. Unfair is old Contra. Games that are designed to kill you just to eat quarters, or games that actively cheat to screw you over.

And yeah, when you totally gimp the difficulty/difficulty curve of a game, especially if you then lock higher difficulties behind NG+ and require people to play a 120 hour tutorial, they're justified in being upset about it.

[PhantomTommy]

"I don’t have the time or patience to stick Uncharted: The Lost Legacy on Crushing. I will probably play it on easy and I won’t get any less out of it than someone playing it on harder difficulties. Sure, when reviewing a game I will try out harder difficulties for the sake of extra knowledge, but I won’t play everything on its hardest difficulty and brag about it on Twitter."

Of course you're entitled to play on the easier difficulty and "try out" harder modes for review -- just I am equally entitled to disregard everything you have to say about the game for doing so. Uncharted - and most action games for that matter - become "run and gun" games on easy difficulties and there is virtually no punishment for playing like an idiot. Bayonetta plays the game for you on easy mode. That's fantastic for people who may have difficulties playing on the harder modes, but that is absolutely NOT how the developers intended most people to experience the game. Imagine playing The Last of Us on easy and not having to search for resources, conserve ammo or actually "think" about your approach to combat. As a reviewer, it's your job to evaluate every aspect of the game, not just the goddamn story. Sure, stick it on easy for a bit to get a better idea of how the game changes with difficulty options -- but do not think for a second that you "won’t get any less out of it than someone playing it on harder difficulties" because that's complete nonsense.

Sorry for the rant but I'm seeing a lot of this lately, and it drives me nuts.

[FullmetalRoyale]

In regards to The Last of Us, it's odd how it's usually the story that is getting heaps of praise. For me, it's the gameplay 100% that made me fall in love with that game. It's still the main multiplayer game that my friend and I play.
My favorite moments of the game are the larger gameplay segments against humans. Having everything go wrong, and having the room(multiple floors in the hotel) to run away and gather myself was a great gameplay experience. Playing that *on easy would never have put the fear of God in me when I realized I only had two bullets left, with at least two guys after me. One is in the room I'm in, so I shoot him once and charge him to melee after, and immediately after I have to run away from the other guy who comes running.

I don't see how it would be fun on easy mode, honestly. It certainly wouldn't be a true representation of the player's experience.

[PhantomTommy]

I completely agree. I never reload checkpoints when things go wrong in the Last of Us, I always try to fight my way out even when I'm low on resources. It's real edge-of-your-seat stuff on the harder difficulties, and it feels so satisfying each time you just barely scrape by.

[morganfell]

For me, The Last of Us multiplayer still stands as the most brutal, in your face, bone crushing multiplayer around. I've died a million deaths in other games and I respawn and I'm back in. But there is something very nasty about the deaths in The Last of Us. Something personal and gutchecking in its savagery. I love it.

https://www.youtube.com/wat...

[DragonKnight]

"That's fantastic for people who may have difficulties playing on the harder modes, but that is absolutely NOT how the developers intended most people to experience the game."

Your statement can be interpreted as saying that the Harder difficulties are the intended way to play and thus should be the default difficulty. This is not true. The devs create the systems of play and the intended way to play the games is simply by using those systems. No more, no less. You are guilty of dictating what is a correct way to play a game, and the answer to that is that there is no correct way to play other than to achieve the goals of the game and have fun doing so. So in the end, just as you are free to disregard everything they have to say about the game, I am free to disregard everything you have to say about how to play it.

[PhantomTommy]

I'm only concerned with people playing on lower difficulties for review. I don't care what difficulty the average person plays on. At the same time, I maintain that you're not experiencing the game as intended. I gave examples too. Bayonetta quite literally plays itself on the easy difficulty, you don't get to input combos. I don't think the lads at Platinum would have bothered implementing such a complex combat system if they didn't intend for people to use it.

I'm not saying that all games should be played on "extreme" and nothing else -- but when it comes to a professional review, you should always at the very least play on the default difficulty setting.

[FinalFantasyFanatic]

I always considered "Normal" to be the way developers intended you to play the game, although some developers outright tell you that they intend for you to play on harder difficulties during press releases and interviews.

[BrianOBlivion]

I agree 100% with every aspect of the article. Games are to be experienced -not "beaten"... unless of course you're the personality type that can only approach them competitively. Have at it, but don't deride my way of enjoying them.
And don't go pretending to know what a developer's intentions were for a game. The more people who buy, play and enjoy ANY dev's creation; the happier they and their publisher are.

[bluefox755]

People need to stop telling people how to play games, but they also need to stop telling developers how to make games as well. They don't have to put in an easy mode to appease some people. If they believe their game is meant to be played a certain way, that's their prerogative. You are welcome to vote with your wallet if you disagree.

[ninsigma]

Totally agreed. In terms of gamers playing on easy mode, that's perfectly fine. I do it sometimes (read rarely) when I just want to see what a game is about and experience the world through the story and not be too worried about the gameplay. So I get why different people prefer to play on easy. Heck my sister doesn't have much in the way of gaming skills so she plays on easy so she can get through games because she loves to experience them. At the same time I'm absolutely fine with games such as bloodborne being exactly how the developer want it to be without artificially decreasing or increasing the dificulty. I honestly couldn't imagine playing bloodborne on an easier difficulty. It was fantastic the way it was, giving a sense of dread the suited the world so much. If people don't like that then they should just skip the game. Nothing wrong with not picking up a game based on its difficulty settings. There's plenty of other reasons why we don't pick up certain games and that's another perfectly fine reason.

As for reviewers playing games for the purpose of a review, I think they should play the game on standard difficulty. Normal mode is pretty much the base setting and what the developers actually developed for. Making the game easier or harder could effect how one reviews it due to easy mode generally not giving a challenge and harder dificulties are generally arteficially done so in unfair manners and are there to provide an extra challenege over the standard experience. Thats just my view on it anyway.

[Pantz]

Don't tell me what to do!

[MLGecko]

.. and party on, dudes!

[Miss_Weeboo]

Stop! Don't touch. Leave the area. Tell an adult (Eddie the eagle)

[kevnb]

why not just watch other people play games on YouTube if you are just playing on easy? To be honest there isn't many games worth playing on easy, the stories are usually laughable and game play is key.

[Razzer]

"Some will tell you that, unless you play games on their highest difficulty, you aren’t really a gamer, or you aren’t playing them right."

And you care what they think......why?

[meka2611]

Was wondering the same thing. To be honest most games on easy do become walking simulators with how easy they become. That being said, telling someone to play on the highest difficulty is just dumb. Yes because the first time I play a game I want to get frustrated at how many times I die from difficulty. Plus the main problem with difficulty nowadays is all it does is make the enemies bullet sponges and makes the character as fragile as an egg, that's not really fair difficulty.

[equal_youth]

Seems like more and more people come together to hate on something, then to embrace something they Love.

[Rambokind]

Stop telling people to click on your article with some clickbaity title!

[King_Lothric]

Yes and I would like developers too to stop telling people how to play. Look for example Dishonored... At the end of each chapter you have a summary screen telling you failed to play by not alerting anyone or killing anyone .

I don't want to play to achieve the developer's goal. I want to play my own way and don't want any single screen telling me if I did it right or wrong.

[FinalFantasyFanatic]

I agree, things were relatively civil until the 360/ps3 generation onwards, I still don't like the trash talk on online games these days (I was enjoying Titanfall 2 until those kinds of people started to show up). Unfortunately the online experience isn't always as fun as couch multiplayer was (I really miss those days).

Now people will scream fanboy or call you "no gamer" if you don't enjoy or point out flaws in their console/game of choice, personally I like to talk about the good and bad points where possible (most people don't like getting into the nitty-gritty with games).

Then you have people and journalists that complain certain genres are "trash" or "obsolete" or that they "need to change/adapt". But we've also had the SJW/feminism movements that have become more prevalent in games and the industry and as a whole we're worse off because of it.

As for mobile games, I find the majority to be worthless or trash, there are some good ones, but then you have to sift through alot of games to find ones you like (even then, those games I wish were on a handheld instead, despite having a high end phone).

Personally I think the best experience is the base "normal" difficulty, the other difficulties are for the more skilled people who want to dedicate the extra time to get good at that game or they just want to change up the experience for themselves. I don't really approve of easy unless you just want to get through the game or you just don't care for the game play for whatever reason. I don't care for trophies, there're nothing to me apart from a reason to play the same game again with extra challenge.

Sometimes I'll be cheap in single player games when I don't feel like spending the time on a particular mission or if I get frustrated (the rock breaker on Horizon Dawn Zero, I sat on the ramp/hillside dodging rocks and lobbing elemental bombs at it till it died, obviously I wasn't meant to play it that way, but I did). I like fighting games, but it takes too much time to get to a certain skill level, they often have a big learning curve, so I only manage to memorize and pull off the majority of the moves list and some basic tactics, never further.

ugh... I felt like I just wrote an essay.

[WePlayDirty]

I give mad respect to those who have the MetalGearSolid4 platinum.

[T2X]

People forget sometimes that the whole point of all of this is to have fun. and that's pretty much it.