Easy mode ruins your game

[ShadowSoldier]

Just seen this article with an interview with the lead designer of Assassin's Creed III

"A lot of games have been ruined by easy modes," he asserts. "If you have a cover shooter and you switch it to easy and you don’t have to use cover, you kind of broke your game.
"You made a game that is essentially the worst possible version of your game."

I find this extremely funny considering Assassin Creed games are probably the easiest games in the world and are meant more for story. Seriously, you can clear out a group of 20 enemies and not even get hurt.

http://www.edge-online.com/news/assassins-creed-iii-devs-easy-mode-often-ruins-games

 

[RupeeClock]

Unfortunately some people want to think they are being hardcore and winning when really they're just playing easy of mode.

I've heard this criticism a lot about Call of Duty, that in spite of looking very cinematic and Michael Bay-esque, anybody could do it.

 

[shakirmoledina]

assassin creed is easy not to lose but it is also not easy to win. stealth cannot be executed by just anyone but needs someone who can think ahead a little and react to a situation.
acr became much more difficult in its battle after you started fighting the Janissary.

 

[ShadowSoldier]

assassin creed is easy not to lose but it is also not easy to win. stealth cannot be executed by just anyone but needs someone who can think ahead a little and react to a situation.
acr became much more difficult in its battle after you started fighting the Janissary.

Ya, but just like Fable, guns should have stayed out of the game, it kind of ruined all the fun. They didnt need to add guns. Yeah I get that it's based in that timeline, but come on, you're making up a story, you can add not to have guns. Just make the AI better so they attack you at once instead of just one at a time.

 

[FAST6191]

Certainly you can gimp challenges in an attempt to create an easy mode but sometimes a story is worth it and people watch lets plays for a reason I guess.

Also I feel the need to bring back up all the bitching (the bitching part I argued was pointless although the patent aspect of it can jump off a cliff) about the mario autoplay.

This said on cover shooting my favourite was some of the critics of Kane and Lynch 2 attempting to pull it up (and there were many justifiable reasons to do so for that game) for the cover occasionally failing to work which I actually thought was pretty good.

 

[shadowmanwkp]

I think the designer is talking about making the game easier by making you neigh-invincible. A lot of games these days tend to simply make enemies weaker and you stronger, while older games usually gave you easier challenges. I think there is a fundamental difference between the two, because tweaking a whole level to make it easier gives you a lot more satisfaction, than making everybody around you snap like twigs while you hold the left mouse button.

 

[FAST6191]

An interesting theory shadowmanwkp and I can certainly get behind a statement of at least visibly then difficulty back when was usually a function of altered puzzles and such where now it is at best a removed spawn point. This said how does one adjust difficulty on a shooting game- enemies with less health, enemies less accurate, enemies less damaging, enemies not using certain tactics a la tetris (vs CPU on easier modes will not do instant drop for instance but here it might be enemies not firing at longer distances) or perhaps fewer enemies spawned.
However the fewer enemies spawned point would bring me onto my main point of does that mean a fundamentally different challenge: if I no longer have to say cover my right flank does that not free up team mates to provide more suppressing fire and thus change the puzzle of the game? Going further/more abstract if enemies take less bullets (and I will have limited amount in a magazine/heat bar- few would argue knowing where to properly change a magazine or accounting for it is a skill worth having in such a game) or can be managed by a different weapon or damage per second being done to me meaning I can poke my head out for longer would that not also speak to the nature of the puzzle?

 

[Just Another Gamer]

I don't get the point of complaining about "easy mode" ruins games when some games *coughJRPGscough* need an easy mode to reduce grinding and actually let people get engrossed into the story because its usually the story that makes it great and the grinding aspect of the gameplay ruins it really but my personal bias aside I can't see why its wrong to have games have modes ranging from easy to hard, if you personally think easy ruins the game then play on hard, simple.

 

[Lanlan]

Monster Hunter. I like games like this. Games where you actually have to learn to play right. There's no "avatar strength" or whatever Egoraptor called it. In Monster Hunter you actually get better, you can't just grind and level up and get the best stats and equipment.

 

[TwoBladedKnight]

assassin creed is easy not to lose but it is also not easy to win. stealth cannot be executed by just anyone but needs someone who can think ahead a little and react to a situation.
acr became much more difficult in its battle after you started fighting the Janissary.

I somewhat agree. The first game was hard when fighting multiple enemies, mainly towards the end where you're surrounded by twenty odd guys. The other games are a cake walk though even when surrounded.

 

[The Milkman]

Monster Hunter. I like games like this. Games where you actually have to learn to play right. There's no "avatar strength" or whatever Egoraptor called it. In Monster Hunter you actually get better, you can't just grind and level up and get the best stats and equipment.

This.
Monster Hunter is very odd like that in the fact that its one of the most realistic feeling games, yet is all about hunting monsters. There's no experience, no skills/spells, and you actually have to learn from your enemies and your own mistakes and even if you use a guide or walk-through its still no as simple as just taking its advice. To me its what more games should be based on instead of variables and values in a program telling you how skilled you are.

 

[xist]

Another games designer who feels precious about their "artistic integrity" making massive statements which can't hold up to analysis. Easy mode doesn't "ruin" games...in some cases it provides a learning experience, in others, such as in Odin Sphere, it makes a repetitive challenging games somewhat tolerable rather than frustrating painful. It provides a "different experience" and probably not the "intended" experience that is the optimal run.

But ultimately it's the failings of the designers who make these ruinous easy modes rather than the gamers who use what's been provided.

 

[Hadrian]

The three Walking Dead episodes felt more like an interactive movie than a game and that was because it was so damn easy. However those episodes have provided me with some of the best entertainment this year, the storytelling, voice acting etc elevated the game.

Easy modes in games often cut a whole lot out and the hard modes often stick a load of unnecessary bits and some of what is added is cheap deaths. Most of the time the normal mode is pretty much the true vision of what the studio wants. Sometimes an easy game can be extremely enjoyable if it has good gameplay and interesting moments such like Mario Galaxy 1 but then you have games like CoD which are ok enough to play if there is nothing else but even on hard they're a breeze to play and they lack interesting gameplay elements and their stories are pretty poor so once you've played through it you never want to go through the campaign mode again.

 

[EyeZ]

I feel that gamers these days are not wanting challenging gameplay, they seem to wanna get through a game quickly and then on to the next.

 

[Depravo]

...and flicking to the last page of a book spoils the story. Easy modes only spoil the game if a player chooses to use them.

 

[FAST6191]

I feel that gamers these days are not wanting challenging gameplay, they seem to wanna get through a game quickly and then on to the next.

Speed is probably a different discussion* and that is before we spin in multiplayer (must have the multiplayer for the replayability and all that and said game can be played for years and all that wouldn't you know) but I have to ask what is challenging and is the traditional "definition" worth making? Is rapid button pressing challenging? Is memorising a route (probably by brute force) challenging? Is making your own fun (not getting hearts/swords/whatever, only using.....) challenging? Is grinding effectively the previous one but framed differently? Is having to consider the stats of a lot of things challenging? Is having to consider the interplay between a lot of stats with a potential high payoff challenging (note I calling it quite different to the previous possibility)? I have seen all of those (and probably a few more) called challenging in my time but they are quite different things.

*I recently watched speedruns of the last few Elder scrolls games which felt very odd.

By the way if the last two possibilities are something you want I will suggest looking up Academagia.

Re: Walking dead games. I gave up on the TV show because it went sub par and only got worse and tend not to read comics so I never did those either but if they are of note I will have to jump start my 360 and get them going. I was planning to grab them when all the episodes got released but seen as there is not a lot I care to play coming out for the rest of the year (and quite possibly until next Christmas run up) save perhaps Borderlands 2 (especially if they make good on their promise of a story) and the developers of Dishonored succeeded in attracting my attention at least I should at least give it a try.

 

[Just Another Gamer]

I feel that gamers these days are not wanting challenging gameplay, they seem to wanna get through a game quickly and then on to the next.

If grinding = challenging then of course I hate and don't want it because it slows down the gameplay and pauses the story which is usually engaging and awesome.

 

[EyeZ]

I feel that gamers these days are not wanting challenging gameplay, they seem to wanna get through a game quickly and then on to the next.

If grinding = challenging then of course I hate and don't want it because it slows down the gameplay and pauses the story which is usually engaging and awesome.

Isn't grinding part of the gameplay? If you reach the stage of the game quicker than you have levelled your character then yes grinding is what's needed.

I was more referring to watching my nephew gaming, the games were always set on easy, i know he plays his Xbox with his mates and i would guess they all do the same, play the game on the easy setting.

 

[jalaneme]

I feel that gamers these days are not wanting challenging gameplay, they seem to wanna get through a game quickly and then on to the next.

Its simply not that, the real problem is game developers who release thier games too often when people have busy lives like work, looking after kids and other personal social activities these kind of people don't have time for a hard mode let alone online gaming grinding, the fact that the action replay and xploder has gone extinct like the dodo has made this gen even more annoying because of the stupid online modes this stuff can't happen, because of this its left me with such a unfinished backlog on the ps3 that i am starting to not care anymore and play my pc even more.

I think that is aslo the reason mobile gaming on android and ios is so popular, its pick up and play and is easy to acess as almost everyone has a phone of some sort, that is why its a rising market and the major gaming companies are running scared because of it, some are even jumping aboard and want some of the action, no one wants a extremly difficult game anymore people don't have time for things like that anymore. (Unless you're japanese of course)

 

[ShadowSoldier]

I feel that gamers these days are not wanting challenging gameplay, they seem to wanna get through a game quickly and then on to the next.

This is true. Nobody likes a challenge any more. Remember 'NES Hard' ? Some of those games while difficult, were beatable, but they required a lot of time for you to get through levels or dungeons or games. But when you did, you felt like you accomplished so much. Personally, I think the biggest crime is people who just rush through an open world game, and don't bother exploring. Me, I love exploring in games, which is the only reason why I play Skyrim.