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Why does an optional, opt in easy mode take away the satisfaction of its target audience? You are not required to play it. It is like saying having a gluten fre

by pibaker 16d ago

Why does an optional, opt in easy mode take away the satisfaction of its target audience? You are not required to play it. It is like saying having a gluten free option on the menu takes away the enjoyment of a meal's target audience.

anal_reactor 16d ago
> It is like saying having a gluten free option on the menu takes away the enjoyment of a meal's target audience. Having a gluten-free option takes away resources from other parts of the restaurant. Considering the fact that gluten allergy can be pretty serious, having gluten-free options means shitload of money spent on making sure there's no cross-contamination. Money that could be invested in better croissants for example. Anyway, easy modes shift and break the game. It's very visible with GTA for example. Savehouses in GTA III, VC and SA are very memorable because the game forced you to go there pretty much after every mission to save. In GTA IV we got autosave after each mission plus GPS which means we don't remember shit from what Liberty City looked like and especially we have zero emotional connection to savehouses. Technically you could go back to the savehouse just to save, but really, you didn't. You could turn off GPS in options, but really, you didn't. There was this one fucking mission in GTA VC where you had to fly a toy aircraft but controls were fucked and after every fail you had to go through this over and over again. It was memorable because it was annoying. In GTA SA there was the famous line > All we had to do, was follow the damn train, CJ! As a result of a broken voiceline where Smoke told you to get closer while in fact you needed to get further away. The fact that after each fail we had to do the mission again from the start made it frustrating, but also memorable. In GTA V we have mission checkpoints. All friction has been removed because general audience hates friction.
BoxwoodSeed 16d ago
Imagine if there was a lift to the peak of Mt. Everest. That existing alone would undermine the achievement of having reached said peak. Also, it's very hard to get multiple difficulty settings right. It's much better to have cheats available to make the experience easier and learn to get better at the game through those.
- account42 15d ago
  > Imagine if there was a lift to the peak of Mt. Everest. That existing alone would undermine the achievement of having reached said peak. It would not undermine the achievement of reaching the peak by foot. > Also, it's very hard to get multiple difficulty settings right. It's much better to have cheats available to make the experience easier and learn to get better at the game through those. Somewhat agree there and I especially dislike "harder" difficulties that just bloat HP to the point of wasting your time. But you can also expose some of those cheats in the setting menu which makes them a kind of difficulty option except its up to the player to choose where they need help and they are not forced to choose between e.g. ultra-tight timing or more reasonable timing but your character also tells you all the solution to logic puzzles if you take more than a second to look at them (non-made up example).
- Anvoker 14d ago
  I don't want to be uncharitable but the Mt. Everest analogy is not that far away from directly justifying not adding accessibility features in order to satisfy the ego of specific gamers. I agree with you that in some sense it undermines the achievement, but tending to the ego of players that feel undermined by the existence of accessibility features is not high in my hierarchy of values personally.
- fckgw 16d ago
  I would respectfully disagree that playing a video game is equivalent to climbing the world's tallest mountain peak. Sometimes I want to play a game to experience the story.
  - BoxwoodSeed 16d ago
    There's not only Mt. Everest. You can also take a stroll to your local hill. Or watch footage of someone else doing the climbing.
    - dalmo3 16d ago
      My local hill has car access to the very top. I still see plenty of people just climbing it for fun or fitness.
eudamoniac 16d ago
> Why does an optional, opt in easy mode take away the satisfaction of its target audience? It just does. Completing a challenge gives a feeling of achievement. That feeling is lessened if others get the reward of completion without the effort. The Mt. Everest comparison sibling is accurate. If a difficult game had a "skip this hard thing" button on the screen you could press whenever you want, that would be a big turnoff to a lot of players. Dark Souls would never have caught on if it had such a button.
- account42 15d ago
  That's the toxic part of gaming platforms pushing social aspects. Playing a game doesn't need to be an e-peen competition and when you are comparing your performance against your friends you can make up all the rules you want like "no easy mode" or "don't use that obviously broken mechanic".
  - eudamoniac 9d ago
    Why is every sports body in the world normal for having rules under which achievements may be recognized, but in gaming it is toxic? Are games not allowed to have any pretense of mastery? If the Olympic committee decided to give out indistinguishable gold medals to random subpar athletes, I'm pretty sure a lot of the real medalists would be upset.
- pibaker 16d ago
  Maybe you should base your sense of satisfaction on the overcoming of the challenge itself instead of the social aspect of other people not having it then. And even if you want to feel superior to others, you can just count them as cheaters and not count their "achievements?" Many games already disable achievements if you turn cheats on already.
  - account42 15d ago
    > Many games already disable achievements if you turn cheats on already. On steam, achievements are easily cheated with third-party tools. Which is good, the end game of the alternative is kernel-level anti-cheat for Steam itself.

by pibaker 16d ago

anal_reactor 16d ago

> It is like saying having a gluten free option on the menu takes away the enjoyment of a meal's target audience. Having a gluten-free option takes away resources from other parts of the restaurant. Considering the fact that gluten allergy can be pretty serious, having gluten-free options means shitload of money spent on making sure there's no cross-contamination. Money that could be invested in better croissants for example. Anyway, easy modes shift and break the game. It's very visible with GTA for example. Savehouses in GTA III, VC and SA are very memorable because the game forced you to go there pretty much after every mission to save. In GTA IV we got autosave after each mission plus GPS which means we don't remember shit from what Liberty City looked like and especially we have zero emotional connection to savehouses. Technically you could go back to the savehouse just to save, but really, you didn't. You could turn off GPS in options, but really, you didn't. There was this one fucking mission in GTA VC where you had to fly a toy aircraft but controls were fucked and after every fail you had to go through this over and over again. It was memorable because it was annoying. In GTA SA there was the famous line > All we had to do, was follow the damn train, CJ! As a result of a broken voiceline where Smoke told you to get closer while in fact you needed to get further away. The fact that after each fail we had to do the mission again from the start made it frustrating, but also memorable. In GTA V we have mission checkpoints. All friction has been removed because general audience hates friction.

BoxwoodSeed 16d ago

Imagine if there was a lift to the peak of Mt. Everest. That existing alone would undermine the achievement of having reached said peak. Also, it's very hard to get multiple difficulty settings right. It's much better to have cheats available to make the experience easier and learn to get better at the game through those.

account42 15d ago
> Imagine if there was a lift to the peak of Mt. Everest. That existing alone would undermine the achievement of having reached said peak. It would not undermine the achievement of reaching the peak by foot. > Also, it's very hard to get multiple difficulty settings right. It's much better to have cheats available to make the experience easier and learn to get better at the game through those. Somewhat agree there and I especially dislike "harder" difficulties that just bloat HP to the point of wasting your time. But you can also expose some of those cheats in the setting menu which makes them a kind of difficulty option except its up to the player to choose where they need help and they are not forced to choose between e.g. ultra-tight timing or more reasonable timing but your character also tells you all the solution to logic puzzles if you take more than a second to look at them (non-made up example).
Anvoker 14d ago
I don't want to be uncharitable but the Mt. Everest analogy is not that far away from directly justifying not adding accessibility features in order to satisfy the ego of specific gamers. I agree with you that in some sense it undermines the achievement, but tending to the ego of players that feel undermined by the existence of accessibility features is not high in my hierarchy of values personally.
fckgw 16d ago
I would respectfully disagree that playing a video game is equivalent to climbing the world's tallest mountain peak. Sometimes I want to play a game to experience the story.
- BoxwoodSeed 16d ago
  There's not only Mt. Everest. You can also take a stroll to your local hill. Or watch footage of someone else doing the climbing.
  - dalmo3 16d ago
    My local hill has car access to the very top. I still see plenty of people just climbing it for fun or fitness.

eudamoniac 16d ago

> Why does an optional, opt in easy mode take away the satisfaction of its target audience? It just does. Completing a challenge gives a feeling of achievement. That feeling is lessened if others get the reward of completion without the effort. The Mt. Everest comparison sibling is accurate. If a difficult game had a "skip this hard thing" button on the screen you could press whenever you want, that would be a big turnoff to a lot of players. Dark Souls would never have caught on if it had such a button.

account42 15d ago
That's the toxic part of gaming platforms pushing social aspects. Playing a game doesn't need to be an e-peen competition and when you are comparing your performance against your friends you can make up all the rules you want like "no easy mode" or "don't use that obviously broken mechanic".
- eudamoniac 9d ago
  Why is every sports body in the world normal for having rules under which achievements may be recognized, but in gaming it is toxic? Are games not allowed to have any pretense of mastery? If the Olympic committee decided to give out indistinguishable gold medals to random subpar athletes, I'm pretty sure a lot of the real medalists would be upset.
pibaker 16d ago
Maybe you should base your sense of satisfaction on the overcoming of the challenge itself instead of the social aspect of other people not having it then. And even if you want to feel superior to others, you can just count them as cheaters and not count their "achievements?" Many games already disable achievements if you turn cheats on already.
- account42 15d ago
  > Many games already disable achievements if you turn cheats on already. On steam, achievements are easily cheated with third-party tools. Which is good, the end game of the alternative is kernel-level anti-cheat for Steam itself.