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Status and Signals: Why Hardcore Gamers Are Afraid Of Easy Mode

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Re: Status and Signals: Why Hardcore Gamers Are Afraid Of Easy Mode

#31

Post by ryanelkins »

Retric wrote: post #8
anigbrowl wrote: post #4

By focusing only on the older fans and locking out the young ones, comics severely wounded itself. By focusing only on the skilled players and locking out the inexperienced ones, pinball killed itself. Videogames are lucky. They can have it both ways - easier difficulties as a low barrier to entry, and harder difficulties to entertain and challenge the veteran players. This is a great advantage of videogames, and it…

The problem is when you include an easy mode, you normally don't have some types of challenges in the game. Take God of War, when you go for "hard mode" all that changes is the hit point pools. It's challenging only in the most limited concept of challenging and in the easy mode you kill gobs of enemies and quickly go though the world, in hard mode you stand around slowly attacking the same AI doing the same things f…

What makes you think that Easy mode was what set the bar and Hard mode just had hitpoints increased? Perhaps Hard mode was what they intended the game to be like and for Easy they just lowered the hit point totals.

For all the people complaining about how horrible Hard mode usually is - what should it be? Everyone seems to say - they just make the enemies have more hit points, or add more of them, or make them aim better. What do you want hard mode to be?

I would think that to make "easy mode", first you tune your game for the hardest setting. Then, you start progressively removing obstacles, turning up player advantages, turning down enemy advantages, etc for your easier settings.

Re: Status and Signals: Why Hardcore Gamers Are Afraid Of Easy Mode

#32

Post by wmf »

lmkg wrote: post #20
Daniel_Newby wrote: post #12

Doctor Professor is wrong. Including Easy Mode is a catastrophic design flaw. It should be a choice between Normal Mode and Flaming Death Mode. Marketing, people. Marketing.

This jogs my memory of another game designer saying how some gross percentage of people always choose 'normal' difficulty, making difficulty modes somewhat redundant anyways. Since all of the people who need the easy mode will play on normal, it probably should be called normal.

Someone who needs easy mode might start on normal, get to some point where the game becomes impossible, then switch to easy. (Speaking from personal experience here.)

Re: Status and Signals: Why Hardcore Gamers Are Afraid Of Easy Mode

#33

Post by wtallis »

wmf wrote: post #32
lmkg wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This jogs my memory of another game designer saying how some gross percentage of people always choose 'normal' difficulty, making difficulty modes somewhat redundant anyways. Since all of the people who need the easy mode will play on normal, it probably should be called normal.

Someone who needs easy mode might start on normal, get to some point where the game becomes impossible, then switch to easy. (Speaking from personal experience here.)

Smart games will do this for you. For example, Warcraft 3 initially lets you choose between normal and hard, but if you lose a mission, it unlocks easy mode. This way, nobody will end up playing through the game watered-down unless that is the only way they can make it through. Everybody who turns out to be competent will experience the game as intended, regardless of their initial estimation of their abilities.

Re: Status and Signals: Why Hardcore Gamers Are Afraid Of Easy Mode

#34

Post by RK »

fragmede wrote: post #30
lmkg wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This jogs my memory of another game designer saying how some gross percentage of people always choose 'normal' difficulty, making difficulty modes somewhat redundant anyways. Since all of the people who need the easy mode will play on normal, it probably should be called normal.

Similar to how McDonalds no longer has a 'small' size of french frys? How many people are going to play a game on easy and then also play it on normal? I doubt very many at all, and those who do probably won't take the time to go back and compare the two difficulty levels. So you could make normal and easy the exact same. (Hey, this thread was started as an appeal to marketing...)

Having just gotten the new Tony Hawk game as a gift, I was wondering to myself if I would ever play on any setting other than "casual". I'm not a huge gamer, so I kind of doubt I will, except possibly to see what the difference is.

Also, I just ordered a small fries from McDonald's when I was there last week.

Re: Status and Signals: Why Hardcore Gamers Are Afraid Of Easy Mode

#35

Post by cschneid »

RK wrote: post #34
fragmede wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar to how McDonalds no longer has a 'small' size of french frys? How many people are going to play a game on easy and then also play it on normal? I doubt very many at all, and those who do probably won't take the time to go back and compare the two difficulty levels. So you could make normal and easy the exact same. (Hey, this thread was started as an appeal to marketing...)

Having just gotten the new Tony Hawk game as a gift, I was wondering to myself if I would ever play on any setting other than "casual". I'm not a huge gamer, so I kind of doubt I will, except possibly to see what the difference is. Also, I just ordered a small fries from McDonald's when I was there last week.

Counter argument, I grabbed Rainbow Six Vegas 2 when it was on sale on Steam. I play that on "Realistic" because it's so hard. I normally don't like hard games, but in this case it really changes the feel of the game itself, beyond just making it harder.

Re: Status and Signals: Why Hardcore Gamers Are Afraid Of Easy Mode

#36

Post by nazgulnarsil »

Daniel_Newby wrote: post #12

Doctor Professor is wrong. Including Easy Mode is a catastrophic design flaw. It should be a choice between Normal Mode and Flaming Death Mode. Marketing, people. Marketing.

i believe there is a condom company that makes normal, large, extra large instead of small, medium, large.

Re: Status and Signals: Why Hardcore Gamers Are Afraid Of Easy Mode

#37

Post by AlfaWolph »

wtallis wrote: post #33
wmf wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone who needs easy mode might start on normal, get to some point where the game becomes impossible, then switch to easy. (Speaking from personal experience here.)

Smart games will do this for you. For example, Warcraft 3 initially lets you choose between normal and hard, but if you lose a mission, it unlocks easy mode. This way, nobody will end up playing through the game watered-down unless that is the only way they can make it through. Everybody who turns out to be competent will experience the game as intended, regardless of their initial estimation of their abilities.

Left 4 Dead's director does this on the fly in-game.. Having and easy time? It throws more at you, less items. Too hard? Opposite.

Re: Status and Signals: Why Hardcore Gamers Are Afraid Of Easy Mode

#38

Post by csallen »

Towle_ wrote: post #23

I feel compelled to bring up what I believe to be a solid counterpoint to the "if you don't like Easy Mode, then just don't play it" mantra detailed in the post: Halo 3's Legendary Campaign vs. Halo 1 and 2's Legendary Campaigns. For those unfamiliar with the campaign gameplay of the Halo Trilogy (and those who might need a refresher), each of the three titles had four different difficulty modes for campaign play: Ea…

Don't see how this conflicts with the author's point. The author stated, "Giving an Easy Mode to the people who need or want it has no effect on the play experience of those who don't use it."

However, in your example, they made Halo 3's hard mode easier. That's not the situation the author was referencing.

Re: Status and Signals: Why Hardcore Gamers Are Afraid Of Easy Mode

#39

Post by j_baker »

fragmede wrote: post #30
lmkg wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This jogs my memory of another game designer saying how some gross percentage of people always choose 'normal' difficulty, making difficulty modes somewhat redundant anyways. Since all of the people who need the easy mode will play on normal, it probably should be called normal.

Similar to how McDonalds no longer has a 'small' size of french frys? How many people are going to play a game on easy and then also play it on normal? I doubt very many at all, and those who do probably won't take the time to go back and compare the two difficulty levels. So you could make normal and easy the exact same. (Hey, this thread was started as an appeal to marketing...)

It depends. For example, you couldn't play the game all the way through in easy mode in Doom. You had to play it in a harder difficulty to get to the third area. This was motivation for me to replay the game at harder difficulties.

Re: Status and Signals: Why Hardcore Gamers Are Afraid Of Easy Mode

#40

Post by iman »

AlfaWolph wrote: post #37
wtallis wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smart games will do this for you. For example, Warcraft 3 initially lets you choose between normal and hard, but if you lose a mission, it unlocks easy mode. This way, nobody will end up playing through the game watered-down unless that is the only way they can make it through. Everybody who turns out to be competent will experience the game as intended, regardless of their initial estimation of their abilities.

Left 4 Dead's director does this on the fly in-game.. Having and easy time? It throws more at you, less items. Too hard? Opposite.

It's actually a lot more sophisticated than that. Here's a great presentation from Valve about the "AI Director" in Left 4 Dead:

http://www.valvesoftware.com/publications/2009/ai_systems_of...

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