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> 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

> 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.
- eudamoniac 16d ago
  Well unfortunately it's not the realm of Vulcan logicians. That's how it is, among most of the target audiences. If you want to see the story I'm sure you can find a playthrough on YouTube?
- Ukv 15d ago
  > Maybe you should base your sense of satisfaction on [...] If senses like satisfaction were fully voluntarily controllable then arguably there would be no need for games in the first place. I feel there's generally more satisfaction from overcoming a well-designed concrete obstacle rather than self-hindering that accomplishes nothing in particular and that could've just been avoided. At the end of the day all challenges in games are artificial and avoidable, but some separation (like having to go into settings, enable cheats, then open dev console to enable godmode, rather than just having a godmode keybind) is good for tricking the brain. That said, the challenge of the Portal games (outside of challenge modes) is almost entirely in the puzzles rather than fast reflexes, so I don't think a slow-mode would really take away from anything challenge-wise. I'd guess it was just a bit awkward with dialog, and simpler to design puzzles around not requiring fast reactions rather than introduce a new control. In comparison, something like yellow paint giving away the solution definitely would be detrimental, even if you could in theory ignore it.

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.
eudamoniac 16d ago
Well unfortunately it's not the realm of Vulcan logicians. That's how it is, among most of the target audiences. If you want to see the story I'm sure you can find a playthrough on YouTube?
Ukv 15d ago
> Maybe you should base your sense of satisfaction on [...] If senses like satisfaction were fully voluntarily controllable then arguably there would be no need for games in the first place. I feel there's generally more satisfaction from overcoming a well-designed concrete obstacle rather than self-hindering that accomplishes nothing in particular and that could've just been avoided. At the end of the day all challenges in games are artificial and avoidable, but some separation (like having to go into settings, enable cheats, then open dev console to enable godmode, rather than just having a godmode keybind) is good for tricking the brain. That said, the challenge of the Portal games (outside of challenge modes) is almost entirely in the puzzles rather than fast reflexes, so I don't think a slow-mode would really take away from anything challenge-wise. I'd guess it was just a bit awkward with dialog, and simpler to design puzzles around not requiring fast reactions rather than introduce a new control. In comparison, something like yellow paint giving away the solution definitely would be detrimental, even if you could in theory ignore it.