General Gaming Do you enjoy doing challenging content?

[Remarkableriots]

The last few games I've played had some very hard challenges that you kept having to retry, so do you keep trying or give up after a certain amount of time? The last few games were Final Fantasy VII: Remake last fight, Prototype time challenges, and Katamari Damacy Reroll collecting every item.

[Dodger]

I try to do the ultra bosses in RPGs if the requirements aren't forever long. Like I like the Borderlands games but I hate farming for hours to get the gear you need for the end game raid bosses so i haven't done them. I'll replay a game I really like that isn't too long on a higher difficulty for the achievements. Like I just did Dead Space on impossible because it's not that long of a game. 

 

But some of you who play 100 hour open world games on hard are just nuts. These games are already long enough, I'm not adding annoying combat shit to pad it out even further. 

[stepee]

Very few specific things, usually 2D stuff can still work for me with try over and over challenges. Katana Zero, Celeste, Hollow Knight until it kept going, Castlevania is pretty hard and one of my fav series and now Bloodstained I love and the 8bit sequels. Stuff like that.

 

Big open games with a hundred hours of content and most story based things and anything I would want to play on my tv instead of on a handheld I want an easy mode.

[Remarkableriots]

I'm down to just 3 challenge events in Prototype. 2 movement ones where I have 39.2 vs 38 sec goal, 18.7 vs 18 sec and glide .500m from center and I hit .770m... I was going to give up trying to get the Platinum because I didn't think I could do it.

[Dodger]

I want to get all the achievements in Jedi Survivor but I may not have the patience for all those force tear challenges. 

[stepee]

Sometimes there will be a side activity that is just super fun in an open world game and then I will push through on harder challenges on those. It really depends on how fun the actual activity is. Saints Row 2022 had some ones I liked.

[Keyser_Soze]

I played through the original armored cores and was doing retro achievements so yeah I like them.

[crispy4000]

I never go for achievements.

I sometimes go for superbosses, if they're not stupid.

 

If its a challenge designed to be interesting and not to fill a developer's self-imposed checklist, I'll usually give it a go.

[best3444]

Simple answer, no. I play on medium difficulty in all games and even sometimes easy mode. My skills have diminished dramatically as I aged and I don't want to be constantly frustrated during my play time. 

 

In my teens and 20s I was much better at games and enjoyed a good challenge. 

[Xbob42]

I love hard challenges* and generally set my games to the highest difficulty unless it just makes everything a damage sponge or something. And I also have a pretty high bar of what I consider a "damage sponge" to be, to me it isn't having to shoot a guy several times in the Division or whatever for "muh realism," it's more like the highest difficulty of Skyrim where you're doing pissant chip damage to a goddamn level 2 crab for 15 minutes and wondering why you were born into such a hellscape.

 

*Provided they aren't bullshit one-shot bosses in certain games, some of the Ys games final bosses are so absurdly stupid that it's just not fun to learn the fights, for example

[gamer.tv]

Not if it’s the entire content of a game, but if we’re taking about the optional hard stages in a Mario game or Donkey Kong Country, count me in! 

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

Sometimes. Depends on how or why it is challenging. 
 

I like it when a game being made challenging is more than just big enemy health bars and me being 1 hit away from death at all times. 
 

While ME2 was my least favorite Insanity experience I enjoyed all the ME games on Insanity. 
 

I don’t so much like it when games are challenging just because they’re made to fuck you over. Where being cheap is a major part of the challenge. 

[best3444]

Just now, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

I don’t so much like it when games are challenging just because they’re made to fuck you over. Where being cheap is a major part of the challenge. 

 

Kinda like some of the boss fights in Elden Ring.

[dualhunter]

No. I'm too old to keep redoing the same thing until I get it perfect.

[skillzdadirecta]

18 minutes ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

Sometimes. Depends on how or why it is challenging. 
 

I like it when a game being made challenging is more than just big enemy health bars and me being 1 hit away from death at all times. 
 

While ME2 was my least favorite Insanity experience I enjoyed all the ME games on Insanity. 
 

I don’t so much like it when games are challenging just because they’re made to fuck you over. Where being cheap is a major part of the challenge. 

So interesting you bring up ME2... I found that on Insanity, some of the challenge was that the controls just weren't up to what the game was asking you to do. It's a cover based Shooter/RPG but some enemies could knock you out of cover into this frustrating stumble animation and the you died. That shit pissed me off so much in. ME2. I like a tough challenge from the gameplay... not from struggling with in adequate controls. It's one of the reasons I DESPISE a recent, well loved entry into a long running series 

[Dodger]

1 hour ago, Xbob42 said:

I love hard challenges* and generally set my games to the highest difficulty unless it just makes everything a damage sponge or something. And I also have a pretty high bar of what I consider a "damage sponge" to be, to me it isn't having to shoot a guy several times in the Division or whatever for "muh realism," it's more like the highest difficulty of Skyrim where you're doing pissant chip damage to a goddamn level 2 crab for 15 minutes and wondering why you were born into such a hellscape.

 

*Provided they aren't bullshit one-shot bosses in certain games, some of the Ys games final bosses are so absurdly stupid that it's just not fun to learn the fights, for example

 

 

This is exactly what I just don't have the patience for. 

[Fizzzzle]

I only really like super challenging stuff in platformers.

[Bacon]

I can enjoy it. It depends. While I kinda recently beat all the mass effect games in Insanity, I'm not sure if I'd ever do that again. I might since I did that on the PS5 and not on my PC but I doubt I do it. However, depending on the build, I feel like some classes should 100% play on Insanity, or else it'd be too easy. By far the worst insanity experience is ME:A which, out of the box, feels like it is intended to be done on NG+.

 

I also tend to hate content that involves a lot of repetition until you have achieved near perfection. It's why I am actually not a huge fan of MMO raids and bosses. But that also falls a lot on your party members. You can do everything right, and still fail because you understood the content faster than they did. Like, um, HELLO?! This is a Gale 2 prog party, why are you fucking up Double Meteors? And like, HELLO?!?!?!? We literally beat this guy three times already, why are you now fucking of double meteors and seeing enrage?

 

In terms of difficulty settings, the setting next to last is my preferred setting. Tho, I hate hard modes that lower exp and money while increasing enemy damage and HP and will not use them. If your hard mode exists to simply increase the amount of grinding you do, that isn't a hard mode, that is a "we want to waste your time and we don't respect you" mode. Some people like that tho, so idk.

 

Like, I don't think I'll ever play nu-GOW on very hard because I don't like that enemy level-up feature of it. Seems tedious. I tend to not enjoy the very hard setting in shooters either. I love doom eternal, but I'm not sure if I'll ever play it on nightmare, and I'll never do ultra nightmare.

 

I also just tend to do things I don't enjoy in games all the time tho for no good reason. There wasn't any good reason to spend 6 hours grinding for a drop in FF4. I didn't have fun doing it. I did it, but it wasn't fun. I didn't enjoy ME:A but I beat it. While I don't enjoy some stuff like that, I do get satisfaction out of it. I didn't enjoy ME:A but I feel it was worth it to play all the ME games on Insanity and 100% them.

[Remarkableriots]

I enjoy trying to get all the trophies in most games, but I hate when you can't get one because the game is messing up. I have every Platinum trophy in the Far Cry games I own: 3, 5, 6, Primal, and New Dawn. The only one I'm missing is Far Cry 4 (1 and 2 aren't on PSN) because every time I try to connect with a different player, it fails to connect... I need two simple online trophies! Liberate one outpost after joining someone's game and vehicle takedown from passenger seat co-op.

I think I've played Far Cry 1&2 on PC forever ago though.

[Phaseknox]

No, I like to be somewhat challenged in games but not frustrated. I play games for entertainment and fun, and I’m not having fun if I want to throw my controller through my TV. I play games on their normal difficulties to begin with, but I will drop them down to easy if I find them too hard on normal. It’s rare that I ever find games too easy on normal which would be the only reason why I would play them on hard.

[XxEvil AshxX]

I don't want everything to be a cakewalk, but at the same time I don't want to have to replay a level/boss a hundred times because it requires perfection to beat.

 

If I feel like I'm starting to waste my time, I'm done.

[Paperclyp]

I find that stuff that is challenging but paced so that my dumb ass can eventually learn and pick it up are the most rewarding experiences to me. The souls series for instance. But fighting games remain this albatross for me that I really want to understand them on a deeper level but have never put the execution together with strategy in order to enjoy them in a way that many people do. That’s the one I’m always trying to get under my belt, becoming competent at fighting games. 

[Bacon]

1 minute ago, Paperclyp said:

But fighting games remain this albatross for me that I really want to understand them on a deeper level but have never put the execution together with strategy in order to enjoy them in a way that many people do.

I gave up on fighting games lol. For me to get good, I'd have to actually study and practice. Nothing about it really comes naturally to me like with other games. MOBA and RTS games are the same. I get that if I just played more I'd become "natural" at them, as that happened to me with WoW-style MMOs (SWTOR, FF14, RIFT), but am just so much worse at fighting games and MOBA/RTS games from the get-go that I decided to not partake in them.

[best3444]

I absolutely blow at fighting games. A 2 year old toddler could easily wipe my ass in a match. 

[5timechamp]

Challenge is fun as long as its fair.. if its crappy artificial difficulty then no.. or challenges that force you to play unnaturally and break the “immersion” 

[Remarkableriots]

57 minutes ago, Paperclyp said:

I find that stuff that is challenging but paced so that my dumb ass can eventually learn and pick it up are the most rewarding experiences to me. The souls series for instance. But fighting games remain this albatross for me that I really want to understand them on a deeper level but have never put the execution together with strategy in order to enjoy them in a way that many people do. That’s the one I’m always trying to get under my belt, becoming competent at fighting games. 

I gave up ever being good at learning complex combos that you have to do in a seconds for one move.

[Remarkableriots]

One issue I've been having is with controller drift when you have to do something precise. I'm not sure why the right stick on both controllers have that problem. I'll be trying to do something and suddenly the camera shoots straight up.