A Thought

I don’t play on hard difficulty because of challenge, but because I want to intensify the weight of decisions. It’s essentially a way to maximize the return on my investment in a game. It’s my own gift to myself.

If you play on the hardest difficulty, you will have a much easier time feeling the consequences of gameplay decisions.

Which is why I never play on hard in games I don’t expect to invest much in. Because overcoming tougher obstacles in a game I don’t particularly enjoy for the gameplay would just be punishing myself. That makes no sense to me.

I don’t feel challenged by singleplayer games because they’re designed to be beaten. That means anyone without a serious handicap will be able to beat them if only they invest enough time and effort.

I did that enough in the past on very high levels to understand that it’s not hard at all, especially if you genuinely enjoy the game.

With some games it's not only about beating the game once, it's about replaying them to beat your own previous best. Which can be achieved on any difficulty level.

This is especially true of strategy games. With games like Civilisation some players will play for months just to knock a few turns off of their completion end-date (or score).

And then do it all over again for different difficulty levels or mods or within different option parameters.

The idea that anyone plays a strategy game once, just for one map, and then calls it a day are fairly remote and might be considered somewhat odd.

RPGs, sure, different kettle of fish, now we're talking more about a single completion and possibly move-along, at least for a good few years, and that's why they're designed differently.

You don't specify which type of game you're talking about, hence I've replied with both, but mainly about strategy games, because that's what the people before were talking about (or was it? Lol).

But yeah, I mean, what difficulty setting you choose is pretty much up to you for whatever reason, but the idea that you're put-off non-hard single-player games because they're too easy to beat, well, if it's a single-player strategy game, what you'd normally be beating is your own score, not necessarily the game. If we're just talking about beating stuff, and other things.
 
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For me the difficulty needs to be high enough so that combat requires some tactics rather than just spamming the same attacks. Otherwise it's too boring.
 
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I don't try to BEAT games, I try to COMPLETE them; perhaps I have a different perspective from all you youngsters!! :)
 
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I don't try to just beat or complete games.

I try to enjoy myself.

If a game isn't fun I'll stop playing it unless I think it might be more enjoyable with a few hours played.

For example kotor 2 has a shit first two hours but gets fun afterwards.

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Enjoying a game is something you decide after you've started playing, I would have thought. That makes sense. But when you start a game do you start it with the intention to complete it, or are you someone who only plans to play a game for a bit to use up an afternoon, fully expecting to abandon it and start another the next session, sort of like how people treat arcade games at the seaside?
 
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I have every intention of finishing every game I start. But I usually do enough research into a game before committing to playing it. Spare time is not infinite.
 
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I also jump in to the game with the intention of finishing it. That's why I am so careful in choosing thr game in first place - i don't really want to spend time playing something that I didn't really enjoy in hindsight.
 
Doing let's plays for almost all the games I play helps a lot to give you a push to actually complete a game. ^^
I don't want to have abandoned let's plays hanging around.

But yeah, you have to draw a line somewhere. If a game really sucks, even after 5 or 10 hours, and there is like 40 hours to go to finish it, then I'd drop it as well.

Oh, btw: Just finished another game on Civ6. Haven't played since shortly after release. Got crushed on first attempt within minutes. Won the second game after 9 hours. I played on deity (highest difficulty) and made lots of mistakes.
The AI was extremely stupid and could have easily won.
So after I won the game I felt like "meh…whatever". While I am somewhat happy of "winning", I am also disappointed in how easy it was. There is no "yeah, finally beaten it"-Moment as it was just a drag.
If it was a challenge I'd have more of a feeling that I accomplished something. If they killed me, I'd have more motivation to try again and beat it. But having a long drag of a rather unchallenging game…meh…
And now I am not really thrilled anymore to play the expansion. ^^
 
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I prefer to finish the games I start playing, but I see no sense in forcing myself to do it. If I'm not enjoying myself anyway, what's the point?

Sadly, it takes more and more to entertain me - and especially to keep my attention and focus. I was always greedy and hungry like that. I was never that big on repetition and very few subgenres appeal to me enough to warrant playing something overly familiar more than once or twice.

Another big problem for me is the lack of time. Well, I could make the time - but I don't deal with frequent breaks and pauses very well when it comes to staying immersed in something - which was always my preferred playstyle.

So, if I play a game during the weekend and get fully immersed in it, it's all but ruined if I have to wait a week or two before I get back to it. I might as well start over at that point, which I often do - and that means I never actually complete anything. Well, I do but it's so rare that it doesn't feel like I ever do.

So, I tend to complete games only when I have a vacation.

Now, I actually HAVE forced myself to complete games on very few occasions. The first Witcher is the most recent example, I think.

I'm actually glad I did, because I ultimately found to story and setting memorable and worth the hassle. But I also clearly remember that I didn't actually enjoy the gameplay.

I honestly can't say if that would be the case with other games - and I have absolutely no idea if it's "good" or "bad" to finish games or stop playing before you're done if you're not having much fun.
 
Enjoying a game is something you decide after you've started playing, I would have thought. That makes sense. But when you start a game do you start it with the intention to complete it, or are you someone who only plans to play a game for a bit to use up an afternoon, fully expecting to abandon it and start another the next session, sort of like how people treat arcade games at the seaside?
I tend to start with the view of completing it but not with that being the main objective.

I also play a lot of strategy games which do not always have a defined ending.

So for rpgs I tend to want to complete them at the start but if the game is not fun then I tend to stop playing.

The fun is heavily dependent on game mechanics so if a game is heavily combat oriented and I find the combat boring and annoying then I may stop playing.

This has happened to me with the witcher and pillars of eternity. They may be amazing games but I cannot derive enough fun out of them from the non combat elements to continue.

I tried playing the witcher several times and I tend to stop after reaching the first town. Not the village. That city with the sewers and the murder.

On the other hand, a game like crusader Kings that has no real ending I find a lot of fun up to the point where I feel I've done everything I wanted to do within it. So I tend to go back to the game twice a year and play for 200 or 300 in game years until I find it less fun.

Hope that answers your question



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Doing let's plays for almost all the games I play helps a lot to give you a push to actually complete a game. ^^
I don't want to have abandoned let's plays hanging around.

But yeah, you have to draw a line somewhere. If a game really sucks, even after 5 or 10 hours, and there is like 40 hours to go to finish it, then I'd drop it as well.

Oh, btw: Just finished another game on Civ6. Haven't played since shortly after release. Got crushed on first attempt within minutes. Won the second game after 9 hours. I played on deity (highest difficulty) and made lots of mistakes.
The AI was extremely stupid and could have easily won.
So after I won the game I felt like "meh…whatever". While I am somewhat happy of "winning", I am also disappointed in how easy it was. There is no "yeah, finally beaten it"-Moment as it was just a drag.
If it was a challenge I'd have more of a feeling that I accomplished something. If they killed me, I'd have more motivation to try again and beat it. But having a long drag of a rather unchallenging game…meh…
And now I am not really thrilled anymore to play the expansion. ^^
I think it's well known that civ 6 ai is horrible...


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Yes, I think this is pretty much what the vast majority of people are like. I think it would be safe to say that completion is something almost everyone is interested in with regards to single-player games of certain genres, and particularly RPGs and RPG-like games (to which one might automatically assume this might not relate to either sandbox or rouguelike style RPGs).

This kind-of automatically assumes that the person doing this to completion will also be having fun, for the most part at least, and that its the funness which is then the most important reason which allows them to complete the game. As in the two go hand in hand really, rather than being either-or intentions.

The outliers would be people who have a chronic determination to finish a game come hell or high water. And even in this scenario it might be hard to determine whether their own rage/grit is in fact something they personally consider fun, from a positive-masochistic personality trait. A bit like slowing down to get a good look at a car crash (the bad games) or simply behaving in a robotic, meditative trance-like routine (the boring games) or those who get their nuggets of pleasure from 'breaking' or fully working out a game regardless of content (the obtuse games).

Being a regular on a specialist site, of any subject matter, one is more likely to see the outliers in equal number to the more 'normal' behavioured folk, or, at least, for them to not even appear as outliers. This is the nature of specialisation environments. In specialised environments its even possible for the normal to become the outlier and the outlier to become the normal. I think its safe to assume RPGwatch is a site which primarily encourages more normal members in this regard and that most people here are doing the same thing you're/we're doing with regards to fun/completionism.

Not having zero intention to ever complete a computer game is, surprisingly, actually quite a modern phenomenon for most normal people and normal games.

I mean, did anyone ever complete Space Invaders? Well, no. The game doesn't even have an end designed into it, at least, it was never expected that anyone ever complete it.

Arcade games weren't designed with completion in mind, they were designed to suck down quarters every few minutes and the normal player behaviour was to just play them for a bit, then go try another one, until time had run out. Some people did complete them, but that was considered a major event, something to save up for and treat as something unusual and majestic.

The idea of completion only really took hold when games entered people's homes. And even then, a vast number of games weren't really designed to be completed, even if they had an ending, and the general attitude of playing a game was to just play until it got silly in some way. Again, someone completing something was more the unusual.

Further, the predominant player age was young people and the distribution of gaming equipment was very sporadic, the experience of most gamers being to visit friends, play something for a bit then go home, to which the next time the two were together the equipment owner had moved onto a different game. Combine this with a child-like sense of distraction and, again, completionism as an objective was very rare indeed.

I, for one, though having played tons of games in my youth, probably didn't even complete a game all by myself on my own time until probably about 1998, a bit and a bit more past my teenage years. And this was also coincidentally about the time when more 'adult' games were becoming the dominant force in the market, on the shop-floor shelves.

So today the situation has kinda fully reversed, and now it's more a case of the uncompleted game being the oddity worthy of mention and discussion. You couldn't complete XYZ great game? OMG why? We must converse on this immediately. Or, you designed a game that's a right pain to complete? You silly dumb developer! Etc etc.

The part which didn't reverse was the event nature of the reverse. The oddity of completion in the olden days was something to celebrate. The oddity of non-completion in the current age is something to be introspective about.

This could well be yet another reason why things like Elder Scrolls, minecraft or MOBAs perform so well in the market, because they tap into something that is inherent but undersupplied, the concept of non-completion, the more arcade concept of just shovelling quarters until you're satiated. The idea of just playing something for a bit in a more detached way. But without the introspection of non-completion.
 
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I don't try to just beat or complete games.

I try to enjoy myself.

If a game isn't fun I'll stop playing it unless I think it might be more enjoyable with a few hours played.

For example kotor 2 has a shit first two hours but gets fun afterwards.

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When stop or not play a game is another topic, the topic here is play games to have fun. Some reviewers play games so they match or surpass their expectation, they don't try adapt and find how they can get the best fun, nope they whine as if anybody care of their expectations, facepalm. I wonder when finally this madness about expectations will stop.

Play to have fun, and put some effort to find how get fun from a game, just a logical attitude, alas too much for many.
 
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I'm surprised that no-one did do a game yet in which "Money" has become a Religion.

I've been reading an article on the creation of Money - through credits. It's close to an Religion right now, because Money is created because People believe in it …
Applying for a credit has almost become some form of prayer, and the credit-maker - usually an employee of a bank - gives in into this prayer, so to say. Or refuses to it.

The most interesting Thing is that this Created Money is getting more to those who already have some Money - because they know how things work - and rather not to the poor People, because they are simply have no Money to pay that back.
Or so I understood it.

I could imagine a really, really good adventure or other game (Bioshock Comes to my mind) out of this theme.

Games nowadays always want to be mature - so why not this way ?
 
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Free to p(l)ay products adopted the model of money creation, they have their own in game currencies that is been traded against other currencies.
 
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Ah, no, that's not what I meant. I mean a full society which has "money" as a religion.
 
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That was so funny.
Game box.
Front side : "No DRM !"
Back side : "Steam is required ..."
 
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I think, Steam has got a very neat distribution model : Put on on so many physical game discs that come with games.

The games themselves ? Oh, not so important. They can be downloaded later.

It's like giving people free oil lamps to make them buy oil. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razor_and_blades_model#Standard_Oil

Full article : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razor_and_blades_model

In recent times, video game consoles have often been sold at a loss while software and accessory sales are highly profitable to the console manufacturer. For this reason, console manufacturers aggressively protect their profit margin against piracy by pursuing legal action against carriers of modchips and jailbreaks. Particularly in the sixth generation era and beyond, Sony and Microsoft, with their PlayStation 2 and Xbox, had high manufacturing costs so they sold their consoles at a loss and aimed to make a profit from game sales.[8][9] Nintendo had a different strategy with its GameCube, which was considerably less expensive to produce than its rivals, so it retailed at break-even or higher prices.[citation needed] In the following generation of consoles, both Sony and Microsoft have continued to sell their consoles, the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 respectively, at a loss, with the practice continuing in the most recent generation with the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.[10][11][12]
 
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I'm surprised that no-one did do a game yet in which "Money" has become a Religion.
(going back to Feb)

Hmm, I don't know if money could be used alone but it could be a much bigger part. Perhaps a society that considered anyone with money to be favored by the gods, no matter how they got that money? I don't know - there would have to be some rules or the society would turn into a murder-fest. It's got possibilities, though.
 
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