Have games gotten too easy? (Nintendo is allergic to difficulty options)

[marvelvscapcom2]

Hello everyone


This might come off a little like a rant and I don't mean to come off mad or overly critical but Today I picked up a game I have been longing to play since it came out and was very excited about.  A game that in every single way borders on perfection in reimagining a childhood staple for me.  A reinvision of a childhood game I have loved and played since I was a kid. So I hold it near and dear to my heart. 

And that game is Pokemon Let's go Pikachu which is a reimagining of a top 10 favorite game of all time for me, Pokemon Yellow version.


The game's visuals are so incredible, the game is borderline orchestral with it's music and presentation. I smiled so wide when I seen pikachu I almost cried  .  it has the ambiance only a Pokemon game can have. The pikachu is so customizable and adorable.  It has all the right ideas, in the all the right places like Pokemon that are just out in the open so you don't have to battle pokemon you already have unless you want to. It's a true blast.  I ever like the new catch system.  Except for one major game breaking flaw....

A 2 year old blind electric eel could beat it. 


Nintendo's difficulty issues (Have games gone soft?)





Now I know what you may be thinking.  "Pokemon games have always been easy".  And their is truth to that I know.  Sure most people who are fairly decent at RPG games would just breeze through one.  But while easy for a veteran they weren't flat out challengeless and to the point where they just gave you the win.  The old pokemon especially around the elite four stages could humble you if you weren't good and certainly would require some grinding and planning for your party.  Even as recent as sun and moon I felt like I did something when I beat it.  some trainers were genuinely hard for me. .


To put in prespective how sadly easy Pokemon Let's go is.  I did a challenge for myself just to see if it was all over ridiculed as many on reddit were saying it was too easy to be enjoyed.


I heard all the rumors so I decided for myself.  I'm going to step into Pewter City Gym and beat Brock (Rock types) with a freaking lvl 9 pikachu (Weak to rock) and nothing else.


So I stroll on through just to find out the game FORCES you to go catch Brock's weakness and it won't even let you fight him without a grass or water type present. Bascially saying "Hey Brock..... You're screwed" lol. .   So I go there with a level 3 oddish in my backup.


No potions, no going back to heal.  I beat both trainers before him and Brock with a lvl 9 pikachu using double kick.  One shottted a LVL 12 onix with a leach seed from a lvl 3 Odish after almost killing it with a potionless half dead pikachu and completely obliterated him.  It was truly a sad display and I felt no joy from doing it.  I didn't feel that pulse in your neck you get when you are neck and neck on life bars with a boss about to die and triumphently win.  I just felt like I threw out the trash or put a fork in the sink.  Their was no resistance.   And that is simply where it has gone too far.  And it hit me that games are just way too easy and I doubt I can enjoy many of them the way they should be enjoyed unless I was 5. 



This isn't the only game for Switch of recent especially from Nintendo who appears to be allergic to a challenge slider or a difficulty setting in their games that is just a tad too easy imo.  Mario Odyssey was also too easy for me.  As great as it was. It was in desperate need of a Challenge slider or a hard mode imo.  Anyone skilled at platformers could beat Mario Odyssey without dying.  All bosses were a breeze.  Some stars were literally given and even the darker side of the moon levels were about the hard we needed pre boss.   Another game franchise deemed to be easy but never on such a level of easiness imo.  Mario 64 was fairly hard, Sunshine's floaty block thingy levels were a nightmare and super mario world had it's moments especially when it was our first try



The old days


Many of us won't ever forget being the little kid with the gameboy in hand and the uphoria of moving up the ranks with their pikachu.  The bond you got with your pokemon from experiences trials with them was awesome and watching them grow.  It's the very feeling that we earned through learning the ropes. And the fun it was to actually win and not get the gift of winning free.  Having to build the perfect party to beat a tougher opponet. You couldn't just wander up to brock and whoop him with a Pikachu of any lvl even up to 20 he'd probably still win.  Because Rock Types were imprevious to Electric attacks and quick attack or tackle hardly hurt him.  You had to grind out a pidgey or a rattata to become strong as him and even then it was a good little altercation.  Especially for a first boss.  It was only easy with a squirtle.  And back then it made beating brock something a kid could be proud of.  And share.  and remember for the rest of his life.  Being resourceful and winning instead of just getting it handed to him. 




I really do miss the days when your hands would sweat and you'd feel your pulse rising as you intricatly dodged obstacles with your friends watching in awe as you did something that took SKILL and not just something a 4 year old gorilla could do.  You died many times, you lost, you failed and you learned to overcome.  And that was the best feeling of all.  Even the easiest of games (Kirby's Adventure) would require some skill. 



Difficutly Settings




I know I may be the minority on this idea and it's not always easy to impliment in some games.  But almost all good games of today aside from the likes of Nintendo seem to have the universal fix to this problem.  The tried and true difficulty setting. 

With the difficulty setting you can have an option for everyone of every skill set.  A challenge for even the toughest of gamers and a casual experience for children.   It's so essential imo to have one.  I think it makes games a little worst if they don't at this point in gaming evolution.  It's 2019. We need a difficulty setting.




Nintendo Underestimating Children?


My reasoning is that Nintendo knows these are kids games and want's to baby proof the player base by making it so easy.  But I think they understimate just how good at games kids are.  I have been whooped in smash by enough kids to know lol.   They don't need hand me outs, they need challenge to grow and learn to love games as we all have. 



I want to petition Nintendo to make their games harder or include a difficulty setting from now on



Games they got right were the new donkey kong and Mario Bros. U.  they had the right amount of challenge and were fun .




Does anyone feel like the games have gotten too easy too?

[bikingjahuty]

Video games have definitely become more accessible, which I feel is to sell more games, but also to keep reviewers from having another reason to criticize the game. However, I feel this is definitely more of a thing among AAA games and games published by bigger devs. Independent games and games from smaller devs can still be brutally difficult.

[kypherion]

To a degree. Keep in mind modern Nintendo games are Nintendo hard and aren't Dark Souls or Ninja Gaiden. Then again games without difficulty options are fairly easy IMO. At least with Nintendo's Breath of the Wild there's Master Mode which makes the game relatively difficult.

And then I play Nightmare! in DOOM and I forget this post exists

[Cartagia]

For the past decade or so Nintendo's difficulty hasn't come from the main story line, which I generally understand.  There was some study done that said only like 15-20% of gamers ever see the end of all the games they play, so there has been a push on the accessibility end of things to get players to actually finish what they are playing.  The most streamlined way to do that is by making the campaign easier.

Where Nintendo's difficulty has been coming from are the bonus / challenge areas of their games.  Champion's Road in 3D World, the Dark Side of the Moon in Odyssey.  Each of these has some serious hard core challenge involved.  Another example is Shovel Knight, which has a pretty ingenious scaling system - if you want the game to be harder, just destroy the Checkpoints along the way, and then when you die you start back at the beginning

[oldgamerz]

Pretty much all games eventually become easy (for us), to do once we know how to play them properly on the same difficulty level for long enough. I do like the option to switch the difficulty in video games also. But I do not like games that are too difficult (to me) on the easiest setting.  I like games to engage me in some challenge, but not when games just keep on kicking my ass over and over, or games that leave you guessing on how exactly to beat them.

I hate boss fights especially when they require a hidden weakness or puzzle so out of thought, you may need to look up a guide upon.  in order to beat them.

[aliensstudios]

It's called accessibility, it's not hinged on a conscience decision to make games more easy.  Most of the more difficult games from the NES/SNES/Genesis era were difficult for arbitrary reasons, like having no continues, poor controls, or being cryptic in progression. The player was punished by having them return to the beginning every time they got a game over, for the most part, as soon as battery saves and memory cards became a thing, these ways died out. I enjoy NES games as much as the next guy, but I prefer the way video games are handled in the current era. Having achievements or extra content drive the difficulty. For example, Super Mario Odyssey was a pretty easy game if you just did the main objectives, the difficulty came in trying to obtain all of the coins and moons, especially that jump rope thing, that was the hardest thing I've done in a game in a good while.

Wasn't the point of Pokémon: Let's Go to be painfully easy and accessible?

[kamikazekeeg]

It's called accessibility, it's not hinged on a conscience decision to make games more easy.  Most of the more difficult games from the NES/SNES/Genesis era were difficult for arbitrary reasons, like having no continues, poor controls, or being cryptic in progression. The player was punished by having them return to the beginning every time they got a game over, for the most part, as soon as battery saves and memory cards became a thing, these ways died out. I enjoy NES games as much as the next guy, but I prefer the way video games are handled in the current era. Having achievements or extra content drive the difficulty. For example, Super Mario Odyssey was a pretty easy game if you just did the main objectives, the difficulty came in trying to obtain all of the coins and moons, especially that jump rope thing, that was the hardest thing I've done in a game in a good while.

Wasn't the point of Pokémon: Let's Go to be painfully easy and accessible?

This.  I'm more than happy to never return to that era of gaming, because while we got good classic games, a lot of games had very artificial and downright unfair difficulty, purposefully or not.  I know there were a lot of old games I never beat because they were ridiculously hard.  Nowadays it makes more sense to have a game be more accessible and let the challenge come through in other ways.  Even Mario did this back in the day where there was Super Mario World and Star Road was a bonus you could unlock for some tougher levels I believe and were there for the more dedicated people, so it's not anything particularly new.

[marvelvscapcom2]

It's called accessibility, it's not hinged on a conscience decision to make games more easy.  Most of the more difficult games from the NES/SNES/Genesis era were difficult for arbitrary reasons, like having no continues, poor controls, or being cryptic in progression. The player was punished by having them return to the beginning every time they got a game over, for the most part, as soon as battery saves and memory cards became a thing, these ways died out. I enjoy NES games as much as the next guy, but I prefer the way video games are handled in the current era. Having achievements or extra content drive the difficulty. For example, Super Mario Odyssey was a pretty easy game if you just did the main objectives, the difficulty came in trying to obtain all of the coins and moons, especially that jump rope thing, that was the hardest thing I've done in a game in a good while.

Wasn't the point of Pokémon: Let's Go to be painfully easy and accessible?

I agree with accessibility but I think too easy can ruin a game too. Accessibility means accessible to all, including veterans and adults too. And too easy can break a game sometimes. I just wish their would be options. Most PS games get it right with difficulty like GOW. 

I did find a way to make lets go hard by not grinding at all. Makes you underpowered and its fun again


Thanks for sharing everyone

[mark1982]

Some games I do find too easy, I’m not a fan of extreme hand holding or the bread crumb objective trails. It feels more like a chore following trail after trail... (a lot of games are guilty of this and it’s definitely not Nintendo games) I don’t mind the objective route marker and how you get there is up to you.

Just like in Breath of the Wild. I really loved how that game handled progression and funnily enough a lot of people were complaining because they didn’t know what to do next. It’s not really that hard to get to point A to B. But some people had a bit of a difficult time. Or weapon degradation, but that is a whole different argument.

I believe it all boils down to how modern games treat their player base now and players are just use to it and once something changes people will complain. Which is a shame because the standard is getting too easy or “accessible”. I turn off bread crumb trail when the option is available because I find it more fun to explore the world rather than follow some route the game is telling me follow. Linear games are a bit different, I do enjoy to up the difficulty because it’s rather more skilled based than just button mashing for an action title for example.

I just finished Ni No Kuni II recently and I’m glad they added the difficulty option. I had to set it on hard because normal pretty much was a press 1 button to win simulator and watch the cutscenes type of game. At least on hard I had to use different abilities and buffers along with weapon types to overcome certain bosses or side quests. Which actually felt like a proper Jrpg.

I believe that’s why Dark Souls and Bloodborne are my top games of this generation because the developers just throw you in a beautiful environment and you gotta figure shit out yourself. That is the best gaming experience imo.

[telly]

People have been asking for difficulty settings in Pokemon games for years now. I'm sure the nuzlocke craze a few years back was born out of that desire.

[sworddude]

People have been asking for difficulty settings in Pokemon games for years now. I'm sure the nuzlocke craze a few years back was born out of that desire.

to be fair pokemon black & white 2 had the hard difficulty/ challenge mode unlocked once you defeated the champion. You could start over and All trainers and especially gyms rivals and the champion had higher lvl pokemon better moves strategies better battle items. not to mention that all gym leaders and the elite four will also have an extra pokemon and sometimes some better pokemon swapped out instead of the previous weaker once.

Also  your first battle against your rival your at a disadvantage since he has a lvl 6 pokemon against your lvl 5.

Also had the best story line along side black and white 1 and the best theming kinda unfortunate that it went downhill and more focused to the kids audience afterwards.

That being said aren't there some indi games out there with more cruel difficulty settings than some of the harder original nes snes sega games? I mean the real difficult games atm are mods hacks of originals such as kaizo mairo 64 etc the originals are a joke compared to that.

[hoshichiri]

It's called accessibility, it's not hinged on a conscience decision to make games more easy.  Most of the more difficult games from the NES/SNES/Genesis era were difficult for arbitrary reasons, like having no continues, poor controls, or being cryptic in progression. The player was punished by having them return to the beginning every time they got a game over, for the most part, as soon as battery saves and memory cards became a thing, these ways died out. I enjoy NES games as much as the next guy, but I prefer the way video games are handled in the current era. Having achievements or extra content drive the difficulty. For example, Super Mario Odyssey was a pretty easy game if you just did the main objectives, the difficulty came in trying to obtain all of the coins and moons, especially that jump rope thing, that was the hardest thing I've done in a game in a good while.

Wasn't the point of Pokémon: Let's Go to be painfully easy and accessible?

You hit the nail on the head here- there's a big difference in being 'hard, but fair' and being 'hard you-make-one-mistake-and-start-over'. I think Extra Credits talked about it once... I forget what they called it, but the amount of time it takes to recover after a failure notably affects one's take on a game. If missing a jump means replaying 5-10 minutes of level to get another chance, you'd better believe I'm dumping that game quick. That's not 'hard', that's just frustrating, and I don't have the time for it.


Which I think is another thing- time. When we were younger, I think kids had more time & freedom to use it. You wanna grab a stick and go play in the yard for the next 6 hours? That's fine, come in for dinner. These days, there's a bigger push to make your kid 'well rounded', so it's music lessons & sports & after school tutoring- plus, don't forget to do your chores and your homework, keep up on social media lest your peers judge you there...I'd be curious to know just how much time a kid has these days to sink into grinding for a 'hard' game.

[oldgamerz]

You hit the nail on the head here- there's a big difference in being 'hard, but fair' and being 'hard you-make-one-mistake-and-start-over'. I think Extra Credits talked about it once... I forget what they called it, but the amount of time it takes to recover after a failure notably affects one's take on a game. If missing a jump means replaying 5-10 minutes of level to get another chance, you'd better believe I'm dumping that game quick. That's not 'hard', that's just frustrating, and I don't have the time for it.


Which I think is another thing- time. When we were younger, I think kids had more time & freedom to use it. You wanna grab a stick and go play in the yard for the next 6 hours? That's fine, come in for dinner. These days, there's a bigger push to make your kid 'well rounded', so it's music lessons & sports & after school tutoring- plus, don't forget to do your chores and your homework, keep up on social media lest your peers judge you there...I'd be curious to know just how much time a kid has these days to sink into grinding for a 'hard' game.

Lol you're reminding me of Duke Nukem Zero Hour for the Nintendo 64, You can easily lose more then 30 minutes progress, if you miss a jump or run out of health, Even if you lose a boss fight after grinding through 20-30 minutes you need to replay that level over from the beginning and that game has a lot of levels. that duke game don't even have check points every level has to be done from scratch if you make one mistake.

At least there is not a life limit 

The only difficulty option available in "Duke Nukem Zero Hour"   is Normal or Hard

[pzeke]

Well, to be fair, Pokémon games have been fairly easy from the very beginning. Nuzlockes are your best bet if you want some form of difficulty/challenge...or playing a ROM hack with difficulty improvements.

Personally, I like when games have more that one difficulty setting; I will always try them out at least once. But I’d rather not waste time that way anymore, and just finish a game and move to the next. I have enough problems as it is always wanting to 100% every game I play, so the least I need is going through difficulty settings.

[oldgamerz]

Well, to be fair, Pokémon games have been fairly easy from the very beginning. Nuzlockes are your best bet if you want some form of difficulty/challenge...or playing a ROM hack with difficulty improvements.

Personally, I like when games have more that one difficulty setting; I will always try them out at least once. But I’d rather not waste time that way anymore, and just finish a game and move to the next. I have enough problems as it is always wanting to 100% every game I play, so the least I need is going through difficulty settings.

Most Pokemon games are aimed at casual gamers I think, it's always good in my opinion if you have a game that you don't need to work your ass off in order to beat them, there is nothing worse that working your ass off to beat a video game, that you need fast reflexes and to not be good enough to accomplish the task to beat them, I don't like to sweat a game out anymore, when I was younger and happier in life, I loved NHL 2002 for the PC, to the point where I loved the heart pumping fast action. I even used to extend the time per game to be a real hockey game in life. I used to love the challenge in sports video games.