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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 26d 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 26d 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 26d 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.
- fckgw 26d 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 25d 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 25d ago
      My local hill has car access to the very top. I still see plenty of people just climbing it for fun or fitness.
- pibaker 26d ago
  Does the availability of oxygen bottles undermine the achievement of people who summited Mount Everest without supplementary oxygen?
  - parineum 26d ago
    Yes. Next question.
- GoblinSlayer 26d ago
  If they climbed it without a wheelchair, it was easy mode, so not a tru achievement. If there's an easy mode, there can be a hard mode too. I thought higher difficulty modes are interesting because they make an impression of a bigger work and provide a bigger dopamine reward. If the enemy survives longer it also mean a rich gameplay.
  - parineum 26d ago
    The game _is_ "hard mode". There are many, many mountains to climb. Some are harder than others. Each doesn't need to have an escalator so everyone can climb it. Developers have limited time and all features, including accessibility features, take away from that time. There are many games I never beat because they were difficult.
eudamoniac 26d 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.
- pibaker 26d 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.
  - eudamoniac 26d 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 25d 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.

by pibaker 26d ago

anal_reactor 26d 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 26d 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.

fckgw 26d 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 25d 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 25d ago
    My local hill has car access to the very top. I still see plenty of people just climbing it for fun or fitness.
pibaker 26d ago
Does the availability of oxygen bottles undermine the achievement of people who summited Mount Everest without supplementary oxygen?
- parineum 26d ago
  Yes. Next question.
GoblinSlayer 26d ago
If they climbed it without a wheelchair, it was easy mode, so not a tru achievement. If there's an easy mode, there can be a hard mode too. I thought higher difficulty modes are interesting because they make an impression of a bigger work and provide a bigger dopamine reward. If the enemy survives longer it also mean a rich gameplay.
- parineum 26d ago
  The game _is_ "hard mode". There are many, many mountains to climb. Some are harder than others. Each doesn't need to have an escalator so everyone can climb it. Developers have limited time and all features, including accessibility features, take away from that time. There are many games I never beat because they were difficult.

eudamoniac 26d 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.

pibaker 26d 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.
- eudamoniac 26d 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 25d 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.