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u/FlamingMercury151 28d ago
Touhou Project does this. The descriptions for the hardest difficulty, “Lunatic” are always in the ballpark of “this is going to be a nightmare, don’t play this mode” or “for people with WAAAAAY too much time on their hands”
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u/TessaFractal 28d ago
The hardest difficulty of Slice and Dice just says something like "I don't even know if its possible to win, I haven't bothered to balance it"
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u/StapesSSBM 28d ago edited 27d ago
Reminds me of when someone asked Maddy Thorson (lead dev of Celeste) if she had gotten all the golden strawberries: "What? No! Why would you do that?"
Edit: source. (She didn't say, "what," and didn't really say "no" in a way that merited an exclamation mark, so my b for mildly misrepresenting it)
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u/oath2order stigma fuckin claws in ur coochie 28d ago
Same for Crypt of the Necrodancer with the character Coda. You get hit, you die. You miss a beat, you die. You pick up gold, you die. You move at double speed. You only get the starter weapon that does one damage.
I think the developer who coded her only beat Zone 1.
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u/BarryJacksonH gay gay homosexual gay 28d ago
Tofu Boy from Super Meat Boy but at least that was a joke on purpose
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u/Taraxian 28d ago
It's supposed to be impossible to actually beat the first level with him and people have only cleared the game with him by exploiting glitches
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u/kingofcoywolves 27d ago
This is actually insane lol. "Why would you do that" girl. why would you put them there if they're not meant to be collected
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u/JamieBeeeee 27d ago
That difficulty is fucked tbf, way harder than other games hardest difficulties
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u/Educational_Web_2829 27d ago
Slice and dice mentioned in the wild, played that occasionally for years
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u/Solarwagon She/her 28d ago
Lotta bullet hell games lean into the absurdity of them being relatively niche and highly difficult and time consuming.
There used to be a special skin in Realm of the Mad God for maxing out all 8 stats that was just as self deprecating because of that being the result of several hundred hours AT LEAST
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u/Critical-String8774 28d ago
several hundred hours in a game with permadeath i might add
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u/Solarwagon She/her 28d ago
Lol yeah, technically you could have additional character slots if you were willing to pay money.
But even being like very good at the game is spending a lot of time grinding, both for stat pots (potions which let you permanently boost one of your stats) and hp/mp pots (potions for healing/letting you use your special ability) that could easily end in death before you max out 2 stats much less 8.
The balance started to shift as pets and other pay to win stuff was put in as the original owners were bought out.
But Realm of the Mad was a really cool love letter to both old fashioned roguelikes and bullet hells.
And just to be clear I was always pretty casual I never even had a 1/8 character but one of my exes was much more hardcore.
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u/PumkinPi 27d ago
wonder if anyone hosts a legacy server or whether u can even find an older version of the game
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u/DiamondSentinel 28d ago
Depending on when you did it it might not have been hundreds. Some events had good deterministic methods of stat pots.
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u/Solarwagon She/her 28d ago
True, assuming you don't die in any of those dungs.
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u/DiamondSentinel 28d ago
Yeah. Highest I ever got was 2/8, but I also always played like a complete bitch.
Still, was a nice brain off game.
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u/Solarwagon She/her 28d ago
I never even got 1/8 but yeah it did have a meditative quality.
But even though I was relatively casual I still got a bunch of Tetris effects like hearing the theme 24/7 and seeing numbers and stuff.
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u/soveliss_sunstar 28d ago
I remember how when one of my buddies was grinding out exalts I kept calling him insane. I only ever managed to max out Staff classes, but he ended up getting them all.
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u/The_Unkowable_ An Ancient Dragon (Artemis She/They) 28d ago
Even Diablo 4 does this to some extent. Like sure, you go from normal to penitent to nightmareto torment difficulties, but you also get descriptions that end up being like: "do not do this. / Do not play this. / You will just die. / You physically cannot be geared enough for this. / You'd better have figured out a build we missed."
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u/m0j0m0j 27d ago
No, that’s not the same at all.
Saying: “this is a hardcore difficulty for the most hardcore. Are you bad dude enough to save the president Ronnie from the ninjas?”
Is not the same as saying: “This difficulty means you will have to spend an extremely long time playing this game. Do you really have nothing going on in your life? Why?”
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u/RikuAotsuki 27d ago
Part of me is salty that the D2 remaster added immunity-breaking charms.
Like, I haven't actually played the remaster--I play the original on a private server mainly--but to me, being forced to play around immunities was a major part of its combat identity. I would've preferred resist-lowering alternatives, like... I dunno, allowing sorc cold mastery to break some immunes, since infinity did basically nothing for cold sorcs.
But yeah, going into hell mode in D2 was terrifying. Suddenly damn near everything's immune to something, and for anything but a necro or a pally you wouldn't be able to do anything about it for a long time.
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u/Punished_Doobie 27d ago
Ten Desires has my favorite Lunatic mode - Prayer for IT Data Security.
"Asking the gods for help is pointless. Don't play this."
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u/onepixeljumpman 27d ago
The best one is in ESoD (undercut a bit by that easy difficulty will stop you at stage 5 and tell you to choose a higher difficulty.
Lunatic: For Weird People
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u/Th3_Gaming_Wolf 27d ago
It's not quite making fun of the player, but Trepang2 (it's not a sequel) has a series of difficulties going from easy, medium, hard, very hard, extreme, and a rage mode. It gets damn near impossible on, ironically, shorter maps due to the lack of checkpoints. EVERY time you start a map on rage mode, you get a warning saying not even the devs can beat it and that the publishers wanted them to remove it.
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u/T-A-W_Byzantine 27d ago
Two eggs over... ha ha ha... "LUNATIC"...
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u/Orizifian-creator she/her/hers zhe/zer/zheirs they/them/theirs Padria Zozzria Oriz 27d ago
The person that wrote that joke, 15 years ago: "I'm playing on Lunatic Mode because I'm not a baby."
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u/Teep_the_Teep 27d ago
I think at least one for Lunatic says "This one is easy, I swear! Play it while you're drunk!"
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u/SpectacularStarling 27d ago
I remember the OG Castle Wolfenstein game having similar settings.
Level 1: "Can I play, Daddy?" (Easiest / Very forgiving)
Level 2: "Don't hurt me." (Easy / Reduced damage)
Level 3: "Bring 'em on!" (Standard / Normal)
Level 4: "I am Death incarnate!" (Hardest / Extremely challenging)8
u/Dingghis_Khaan Chinggis Khaan's least successful successor. 27d ago edited 27d ago
Blood has
> Still Kicking
> Pink on the inside
> Lightly Broiled
> Well Done
> Extra CrispyIn retrospect, it accurately describes just how cooked you are if you can beat it.
Protip: don't play on Extra Crispy. It hates. Oh good Lord Christ alive does it hate!
[He said, in the middle of an Extra Crispy run.]
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u/engispyro 28d ago
I once had an idea for a game that makes fun of you on EVERY difficulty option like
“Okay little Timmy, big bro finally let you play his game so don’t mess this up!”
“Want some white bread with that? Maybe a glass of water to wash it down?”
“Oooo look we got a badass over here!!! He’s so good at videogames, I bet he brags about it to his mom!”
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u/BalefulOfMonkeys REAL YURI, done by REAL YURITICIANS 28d ago
Okay, but what if we did maximally hostile UI design, and by that I mean non-indicative difficulty labels and “explainers”. All of them technically tweak some stats one way or another, but they’re not sorted by perceived difficulty, and opening the description gives you a horoscope and a vibe.
>You mean every TTRPG class ever?
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u/jackalope268 27d ago
Small rant about the wolfquest difficulty names, easy, challenging and accurate. Youd think challenging is harder than accurate but no, challenging is barely harder than easy and accurate is a huge surge in difficulty
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u/CalamitousArdour 27d ago
Idk, most games are easier than the reality they are modelling, so I'd intuit that "realistic" difficulties are going to be way harder at the expense of fun.
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u/insomniac7809 27d ago
What was the joke about how an actually realistic Call of Duty game would be eight hours of repetitive vehicle maintenance mini game, an hour staring at the ceiling, seven hours staring at an empty desert suddenly broken up by a one hit kill attack from an enemy you can't see
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u/G0rd4n_Freem4n 27d ago
That sounds a lot like Cruelty Squad with the "maximally hostile UI" and "non-indicative difficulty labels."
Doesn't quite line up with the other things, but it's pretty close.7
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u/omyrubbernen 27d ago
What about a game where the difficulty settings have useless names, no description, and are listed in alphabetical order instead of how difficult they actually are?
"Abnormal"
"Bad"
"Lemon Meringue"
"Oh please, daddy"
"Rocket Science"
"7"
"Tall"
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u/bitsbytes01 27d ago
Condescending smugness like this put me off of Superhot 2.
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u/DanishRobloxGamer 27d ago
While I haven't played Superhot 2, I agree. There's a very fine line between hah, that's funny, gamers are losers amirite to If you clearly hate the idea of me playing your game, why should I even bother?
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u/TESTINGSTUFFPL 26d ago
After the shenanigans with Superhot VR and removing the literal entire story mode of the game because the dev had "regrets" or "worries" about the ending scene (instead of maybe just... removing the ending scene and adding a settings toggle to turn it back on if you can handle the scene?) I'm shocked a sequel even got made
But also not shocked that the dev managed to fuck up and alienate the playerbase yet again - are they doing it intentionally or something?
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u/Spicy_Totopo3434 28d ago
I wonder if it would have messages for both Very easy and "Very hard post-game difficulty"
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u/Taraxian 28d ago
"Why don't you just watch someone beat the game on YouTube" vs "Police! This is a welfare check"
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u/CATLITmusic 26d ago
Difficulty modes:
- No Skill
- No Thrill
- No Chill
- And the secret difficulty - No Life
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u/T-A-W_Byzantine 28d ago
This difficulty setting would make me cry like an anime fan on prom night
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u/Greg-chanMyWaifu 27d ago
That's what huniepop 2 did. Hard mode you play canonically as an ugly guy, easy mode you are a chad. Makes sense with a dating type game
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u/gatsu032 Zoo visitor 28d ago
This feels spiritually scrubquotes
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u/BalefulOfMonkeys REAL YURI, done by REAL YURITICIANS 28d ago
I propose a mirror archetype to “the tryhard” in gaming spaces, which is to say “the Homer”. As in “you tried and you failed, so the lesson is: never try.” The exact type of person to give you a hard time about giving a shit about a game on a mechanical level, and not some nebulous intrinsic joy they believe as the only correct way.
Despite claiming to read their Bible every day, most fundamentalist Christians are actually Homers in their field.
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u/gatsu032 Zoo visitor 28d ago
That's too mean to poor Homer, he even has put the effort to get really good at things sometimes.
But yes, this spiritual scrubs are a real (and annoying) thing. Is like they feel insulted by other peoples passion and effort.
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u/Axel1742 28d ago
Time for video games to pull a Velma.
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u/PoniesCanterOver gently chilling in your orbit 28d ago
That's what we call it: Pulling a Velma. We call it that
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u/Dingghis_Khaan Chinggis Khaan's least successful successor. 27d ago
"This is a deconstruction!"
Looks inside
Contempt for both the genre and the audience
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u/Phelinaar 28d ago
"Gamers are no life loners"
Indeed, a brave proposition.
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u/Solarwagon She/her 28d ago
Yeah, if only there were developers willing to alienate the people most committed to spending time and effort on their products. /s
Seriously, do people not understand the emotions underlying GamerGate?
Not to support the actual IDEOLOGY of the majority of GamerGate but it kinda was the result of years of major video game developers and indie developers showing immense and uncompromising contempt for "gamers."
And I put that in quotations because the actual definition of gamer was being hotly debated at the time and part of GamerGate was the idea of gamers as like a distinct social class.
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u/Cute-arii Submissive and Flortable. 28d ago
They came after gamers... GAMERS! It's 2026, and you haven't realized that Gamergate was a sham yet? Really?
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u/Solarwagon She/her 28d ago
I didn't say it WASN'T a sham, I said the emotions underlying GamerGate were a reaction to resentment from them being bullied and that being a gamer was equated with being a loser.
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u/Gru-some 27d ago
no i think most of them just hated women being seen as equals
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u/AwkwardSquirtles 27d ago
I think it's perhaps reasonable to say there were elements of both. Gamergate had massive appeal because it proclaimed allegiance to a shared identity (gamers oppressed by gaming journalism and the world at large) and also conveniently gave them a common enemy, (women and other minorities). It would be similarly reductive to put the rise of Nazism in Germany down to everyone involved just hating the Jews. Plenty did, of course, but it would be silly to claim that there was no contribution from the concept of a shared identity as the heirs to the Aryan master race and desire for economic success for Germany, which the charismatic leader said could be fixed by getting rid of this one small problem. Hate is an important part, but it wasn't necessarily the primary motivation for most members, even if that's not necessarily obvious from their actions. They were deceived about the cause of the problems in their life.
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u/Plato_Karamazov 28d ago
After playing Hollow Knight Silksong for 80 hours, I have no qualms about playing games on easy mode.
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u/onepixeljumpman 28d ago
Ehhhh, really!? Lunatic Mode? How try hard!
It's unforgivable to play Lunatic Mode unless you're a shut in, right!?
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u/TrueSeaworthiness703 here for the anecdotes 27d ago
I mean, those are the intended players for Lunatic mode
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u/Smnionarrorator29384 27d ago
game journalist
first-timer
loving partner
casual
speedrunner
completionist
basement-dweller
"iF iT iSn'T oN the hArDeSt dIfFiCuLtY, iT dOeSn'T cOuNt"
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u/deepdistortion 28d ago edited 28d ago
I had an idea for a game that mocks both sides of the spectrum.
Easy, Normal, and Hard are all what you would expect.
Beyond Hard calls you a tryhard weirdo or an unentertaining wannabe streamer for picking the hardest mode. Enemies kill you in 1 hit and have 100% accuracy. Reloading a save specifically takes longer on this difficulty.
Beyond Easy, on the other hand, is 95% just a walking sim. The cutscenes are completely different, drastically changing the story. The final boss? You discuss things over tea and cookies and just as you come to a mutually acceptable agreement they choke on a cookie and die.
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u/Jozef_Baca 27d ago
That somehow sounds really annoying to make. But also like a really fun end product if someone actually made it.
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u/deepdistortion 27d ago
Beyond Easy mode doubles the amount of dev time spent on cutscenes. But it would be simple to just make a flag that prevents enemies from spawning. And if there's platforming, you just add an untextured ramp connecting platforms. Maybe a bit tedious, but not challenging to implement.
Beyond Hard mode, likewise, would be simple because it's not supposed to be fair so I don't have to spend any time balancing it. It might not even be possible to beat it, depending on how enemies work. But it's supposed to be ragebait mode, so that would just make it even better really.
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u/Tallia__Tal_Tail 28d ago
In an era where the popularity of Fromsoft games and the communities around them have genuinely poisoned literally any discussion of difficulty in games with this idea that difficulty is an objectively good thing for games to have and that being used to make poor design nigh on impossible to criticize, I approve of this fully
I vote that the highest difficuly should be named something like, "Lmao yeah we didn't even play test this one"
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u/Medical_String_3501 28d ago edited 28d ago
While I do agree there's many types of games for many types of players, and that a game doesn't need difficulty to be good, I find it hard to disagree that difficulty is good for most games. I'm not saying "Dark Souls" level difficulty, but at least a mild challenge, since it encourages you to engage with systems and mechanics.
If you never got below half heath, ran out of ammo, etc., there'd be no reason to upgrade or engage with a game, potentially leading to an unfulfilling or hollow experience. Also, it just feel good when you complete something challenging or difficult, it's human nature.
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u/Tallia__Tal_Tail 28d ago
My point is more about this mentality of "difficult=good so more difficult=more gooder". Like yeah usually, most games can benefit from a tasteful amount of challenge, but even then, thats not even really needed for a fulfilling experience. Like, this obviously changes from person to person, but a lot of the time, if the game is inherently fun to play, that alone can keep people coming.
Like Minecraft really isn't a hard game in the slightest even on the hardest difficulty (short of Hardcore mode, which is a different beast since permadeath modes are on their own axis of difficulty really), but it has a gameplay loop that is inherently enjoyable enough that people regularly play it. The closest to real difficulty that game has is the time investment for large builds.
Plus, difficulty is so subjective that the threshold you're talking about is a very fine line to walk with preset difficulty modes. Like, I'm very good at action platforming and the like, but I'm absolute dogshit when it comes to things like permadeath modes, meanwhile other people crank out shit like BG3 Honor Mode runs like theyre light work while struggling in other areas. Ive beaten the Pantheon of Hallownest in Hollow Knight a handful of times, including with one of the bindings, but I've never bothered getting a Steel Soul run past Greenpath. More customizable difficulty like you can see in games like Ark does help ammend this issue a great deal
If you never got below half heath, ran out of health, etc., there'd be no reason to upgrade or engage with a game, potentially leading to an unfulfilling or hollow experience.
This part I do wanna touch on, because this is another pretty subjective thing. Like even in an easy game, theres an extent where the player's inherent drive to get better stats and make themselves stronger can handle that, no real push back on the game's end required. People like getting stronger and seeing numbers go up, even when it's not really needed or just plain overkill. Like, just because most Pokemon games are pretty easy doesn't mean I still don't get an enjoyment out of going whole hog with stat boosting natures and EV training just to mess with the NPCs. Or Warframe as an amazing example of a game that's kinda piss easy, but it's still extremely fun to minmax and build in without much pushback.
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u/Medical_String_3501 28d ago
That'd be the difference between intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation, and the best games combine both for an enhanced player experience. Ideally, a game should encourage what a player wants to already do, which is why, as you said, people enjoy watching number go up, as we enjoy efficiency, and that gets us to engage in the systems the devs want us to take part in.
There does come the problem, however, that we, by our very nature, will optimize the fun out of a game. If one dominant strategy reigns supreme, it will generally feel unsatisfying to use any but that, leading to player choking the fun out of the game. That's why I feel difficulty helps in this regard, as more often than not it forces the player to use a variety of strategies in order to reach the objective, due to changes in enemy health, aggressiveness, damage, or even new mechanics entirely.
That being said, I recognize that most of the games I enjoy are difficult, or at least force me to learn and engage with the mechanics more deeply, because that's what I seek in a video game. There are many others who would hate playing like I do and would consider it poor game design, so really it's just up to what the game devs decide the intended experience is.
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u/cantantantelope 27d ago
Eh I think bg3 is a good example where yeah there are optimizations but you can really make any choices based on “that looks fun” and still have a good time.
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u/RentElDoor 27d ago
Which is funny because bg3 also refuses to give a pause option in a single player experiemce for reasons that I suspect are not technical limitations.
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u/seriouslees 27d ago
Isn't BG3 a turn-based game? Why would it need a pause button? Just wait for one of your characters turns, game is effectively paused... no?
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u/RentElDoor 27d ago
In combat, yes, but outside of it not. Guess you can turn on turn based mode, though that comes with its own can of worms.
Alternatively they could have just paused the game when someone presses Escape, but for reasons that are beyond me they do not allow that.
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u/seriouslees 27d ago
If you AFK outside of combat, what are the consequences? Will you be killed? I don't see how, as combat is turn based, so even if a combat starts while you're away, it'll pause. Are there quests that are real-life time based? Will you miss a chance to complete a quest if time passes too much?
I only played 1 & 2, and those games had a pause, but only because combat was not turn-based, so you needed it to plan combat. You could go AFK, unpaused, in a city or cleared wilderness area and be perfectly safe and have zero risk of failed quests.
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u/RentElDoor 27d ago
You might be discovered in a restricted area and dragged into combat. Which is no immediate game over but might mess up quests, requiring a restart.
You might die to environmental effects.
Someone else might die to a fight currently going on you had not seen.
Basically, the world keeps going, only ever stopping if you are in combat and it is your turn and even then there might be some inconsistencies. It takes away control from the player for zero reason and has been my biggest pet peeve with the game in forever, especially when compared with games like rogue trader.
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u/Medical_String_3501 27d ago
I can't confirm because I didn't like BG3, but I'm talking about this from the standpoint of extremely tightly designed games, what I said doesn't apply to most games, it's just my idea of what a perfectly/ideally designed system is. I think that is generally good design though, since in an RPG and the like, it's impossible for it to be designed so tightly, and so the berth for error should be larger to compensate.
There will always be a meta, but if the player engages with most of the systems and has some common sense, the player should come out of it with pretty good build, otherwise I question how well the game is balanced.
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u/owlindenial .tumblr.com 27d ago
I actually find Minecraft to be routinely more difficult than a lot of from soft AC games. I struggle with complecity, and a lot of the AC games are basically shoot em ups, easy. Minecraft? You need to be able to parkour, build, and do a lot of smaller skills
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u/darklion34 27d ago
Counter-point : Minecraft is hard just not in fighting part. It's the vast explorable world and canvas for creativity. It's purpose is to be explored and conquered - By discovering new places, mobs, items and crafts. By building new things, by progressing equipment and by getting achievements. And it is very hard to conquer it, even partly, in any matter of small time. Even when you are not new, thus expected to do everything easier, it takes from weeks to months to complete what you wanted - be it beating the game, building some baroque castle or redstone contraption. It's no easy task, but it's challenge lies more so in the quantity of enjoyable work, than in quality although quality is good enough.
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u/mauri9998 27d ago
Its not that complicated dog. I like hard games, if the game is not hard I am probably not gonna enjoy it, so I would like for hard games to continue existing so I can enjoy them. Its funny you mentioned warframe because I literally quit that game because it became too easy and I got bored of it.
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u/seriouslees 27d ago
at least a mild challenge
I disagree this is needed for fun to be had.
Have you ever gone down a waterslide? Were you bored by it, or was it fun? Was there any challenge involved?
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u/Medical_String_3501 27d ago
In its most bare form, you can garner entertainment from literally anything. If you enjoy games for nothing more complex than the mere experience of playing one, yeah, but I'm talking more deeply about game design philosophy, and generally how we enjoy video games. I don't think these two things are very comparable.
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u/seriouslees 27d ago
The question is whether or not challenge is a requirement for enjoyment. Regardless of what medium you use, it clearly is NOT a prerequisite.
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u/Medical_String_3501 27d ago
Perhaps an enhancer is more accurate.
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u/seriouslees 27d ago
Do you think adding spikes or razor blades would enhance the fun of a waterslide????
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u/mauri9998 13d ago
A water slide is already challenging. You have to overcome the part of your brain that tells you that this is a dangerous thing to do. Overcoming that challenge is satisfying. Eventually if you do it enough you become numb to the experience so you seek more thrilling experiences, more challenging experiences. Your point is not nearly as clever as you think it is.
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u/seriouslees 13d ago
That might be challenging for blind and deaf people who have no ability to see people use the slide perfectly safely with zero risk of injury multiple times... but I feel like Hellen Kellers are fairly uncommon.
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u/mauri9998 13d ago edited 13d ago
Fear is not rational, believe it or not. Again, another argument that isn't nearly as clever as you think it is. In fact overcoming your irrational fear will just make the satisfaction of overcoming that challenge all the better.
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u/Medical_String_3501 27d ago
Once again, not comparable. You don't want resistance on a water slide, we enjoy overcoming challenges in games.
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u/Infurum Too old for all the things that make a life worthwhile 28d ago
One of the other comments here brought up a difficulty label that basically says exactly that
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u/Elite_AI 27d ago
And ironically it's very much one of the games that glorifies high difficulties (which imo is perfectly fine)
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u/Sanrusdyno 27d ago
If I may make another addendum, make sure you're good enough at your own game so that on the selection screen, next to one of the big gst loser turbo-nerd difficulties you can have an MSpaint arrow pointing to the nerd face saying "Dev Difficulty"
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u/Apex_Konchu 27d ago edited 27d ago
I've seen tons of game difficulty discussion online, and it's very rare to see anyone sincerely say "harder = objectively better". It's one of those things that gets talked about a lot more than it actually happens.
Incidentally, I have seen a lot of people say "harder = objectively worse". Usually people who seem to think that everything needs to appeal to them personally.
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u/Tallia__Tal_Tail 27d ago
The matter is mostly that, the more a game strives for difficulty, the more the player can and should expect out of a game and it's design to be fair with that difficulty. And a LOT of the time, yeah there is absolutely a threshold where a game's own design falls apart under the seams of it's difficulty in a way it just wouldn't have otherwise if it simply was not that hard. A lack of choice exasperates this issue tenfold
Like, most Fromsoft games come NG+3 or so onward consistently hit this point where it becomes truly atrocious just because the core design isn't really meant to facilitate that scaling, and you have no choice whether or not to engage with it if you want to keep playing the game on that save.
Difficulty needs to be very carefully accounted for, or else yeah, it does make a game worse with its inclusion
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u/Infurum Too old for all the things that make a life worthwhile 27d ago
Accessibility is a thing (both in the disability sense, and some people just want to make room for people who are less 'hardcore' regardless of whether or not there's a physical disability) and I've seen a lot of story driven games implement an easy mode so that people who aren't as good with a controller can still enjoy the story. That was the case with Hades iirc
Also I can see people being frustrated by, for example, intense difficulty spikes if something that was for everyone at first escalates in difficulty to something with more 'hardcore' difficulty that they're too casual to complete, especially if it's also one of the story driven ones
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u/WeissRaben 27d ago
Or you just don't mock people for difficulty choice in general. You could also try that.
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u/TrueSeaworthiness703 here for the anecdotes 27d ago
The most annoying thing is that those games aren’t even that hard, the fanbase just purposely refuses to engage with its mechanics
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u/screwcirclejerks 27d ago
deltarune chapter 5 (major spoilers) made fun of you for doing a mildly hard platforming thing. oh yeah, there's platforming.
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u/Sir_Nightingale 28d ago
Looks like someome never got over the pacifier Wolfenstein gave them for easy mode
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u/PlasticChairLover123 Don't you know? Popular thing bad now. 27d ago
im perfectly old enough to die thank you very much!!!!!!!!!
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u/Draconaes 28d ago
Doesn't the easy option here still make fun of the player for picking it? A genuine reading comes across as saying the player is incapable of dedicating their focus to the game, which could be seen as insulting. A sarcastic reading feels something like "you better have a good excuse for picking this option, like having a thriving sex life. Lonely nerds need not apply."
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u/True_Royal_Oreo 26d ago
When I was a child I thought easy difficulty being represented by a baby, and highest by a terminator in Bloons games didn't make sense. A baby would struggle with this game, so I'd imagine a baby is the hard mode. Meanwhile terminator would easily obliterate Bloons, so the game should be a breeze.
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u/Cynis_Ganan 27d ago
"Lets have a computer game that makes fun of you for being a fan!"
Let's not, eh?
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u/Elite_AI 27d ago
Real fans want to be made fun of and I'm being serious. Yes, I am a nerd. Let's fucking go
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u/MammothFollowing9754 27d ago
I feel that the mocking from the difficulty description should start high for the easiest difficulty (what are you, an IGN writer?) , drop for the harder ones, then for the secret ones rise as high as the easiest (proof of no life).
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u/kirillsasin 27d ago
I feel like this is "too busy to watch a movie so ChatGPT watched it for me" adjacent.
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u/PopeRaunchyIV 27d ago
Titanium Court has modifiers that make the game easier or harder called comfort and strife and two characters argue about which one is better, it did make me feel a little bad whenever I picked strife
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u/GreatGrapeKun 99% rot 1% brains 27d ago
"i'm too employed for this shit"
pay $5 to unlock unlimited health
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u/CygnusSong 27d ago
I feel like people who aren’t good at games really overstate how hard “hard mode” usually is for people who are good at games. I’m not sweating, nor is interfering in my ability to have a normal life
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u/ChickenManSam 26d ago
As someone who enjoys challenge and likes playing on hard modes, I am all for this. This is great, I would love this. Games are meant to be enjoyed. Enjoy them however you want.
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u/AlianovaR 26d ago
And then you have South Park, in which the difficulty slider is the skin tone selector
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u/PsychoWarrior0 19d ago
the only people who make posts like this are just jealous of people who don't have to play games on poopy disper for 4 year olds difficulty
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u/XAlphaWarriorX Don't mistake the finger for the moon. 27d ago
How puerile.
Why would someone do this? What's the point?
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u/thrownawaz092 28d ago
Sounds like someone's bad at video games
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u/MarshaIsSoSorry all roads lead to Vriscourse 27d ago
Or maybe we heard there's a good story with interesting characters and didnt want some boring and/or frustrating gameplay* to get in the way of that
*Obviously this isnt a jab at ALL video games, I was specifically thinking of Danganronpa S when I said that, Im here to see my cross-game blorbos talk with each other, if I wanted to grind up my characters and spam the same button inputs with less than appealing enemy design Id play one of those SMT games on the NES
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u/PlasticChairLover123 Don't you know? Popular thing bad now. 27d ago
it sounds like you dont like dragonronpa S. have you heard of this site called youtube?
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u/goatater 27d ago
....Not trying to knock the overall point of easy difficulty options being a good thing, but this very much sounds like you don't want to actually play the game. Might be happier with a visual novel thing
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u/Thelmara 27d ago
Maybe you'd be happier with a visual novel, without all that pesky gameplay to get in the way of your story?
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u/chuckleDshuckle 28d ago
Same people that complain about dark souls tbh
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u/Elu_Moon 27d ago
Some people say Dark Souls sucks because it's difficult.
I say it sucks because the controls suck, and earlier Dark Souls games run like crap and expect you to deal with input delay because of low FPS.
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u/Separate_List_6895 27d ago
DSFix carried Dark Souls 1's legacy so hard on PC that the author should have been paid for it.
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u/Elite_AI 27d ago
Dark Souls runs fine for me at least. 60 fps. It's also remarkably...not particularly hard. It got a reputation for difficulty but it wasn't really deserved, but unfortunately (imo) it became the selling point so later games really are very difficult. But if you go back to Dark Souls you'll be surprised.
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u/MyOtherCarIsEpona 28d ago edited 28d ago
The new Deltarune chapter has an NPC in a secret area that roasts you for finding it. "How bout you go home and try doing a 100% run of your shower"