Gears of War designer calls current games too easy

But easier difficulties make poor level design and bad button configurations tolerable. If they make Gears harder they won't be able to have one button do everything.

Posted:10 months ago

I don't understand his point. You have a range of difficulties so everyone who plays can find a decent challenge for their own ability. If you make all difficulties "hard" except for the absolute lowest, are you not just screwing over medium-ability players? Surely it's up to the player how much they'd like their skills to be tested?

Posted:10 months ago

I never killed RAAM in Gears of War 1 and because of that I NEVER played another one.

I think ramping up the difficulty just alienates the less able gamers like me.

Posted:10 months ago

I must admit Cliffs words was music to my ears. There was a time where you were supposed to die in games. Alot. It was a learning experience. Todays games caters to the generation of gamers which expect gratification for close to zero effort. Otherwise they give up and do something else which will fulfill this need. It saddens me, because most of todays games do actually bore me. They are slightly more than action / horror movies with some interaction and silly puzzles added to them. I crave the challenges games used to have. Working hard to achieve something is alot more satisfying, and to me that is an important part of gaming.

Will the market realistically support such games? Cliff points at Dark Souls, which has experienced reasonable success. Yet it has also scared away alot of potential customers. I even read a review where the author gave up playing because it was too hard. Cliff mentions a casual mode for such players. While I think this is a step in the right direction, supporting both the casual and hardcore gamers, I think even more effort should be directed towards supporting a wider range of gamers, ie. including those in between. Maybe even adjusting difficulty in realtime based upon players performance. I realise, though, that it might not always be cost-efficient to implement. But as with all technology, as it evolves more solutions will become available. Thus, I appreciate attempts at getting the snowball rolling.

Posted:10 months ago

@Dave Herod: It's basically a mark of a poor game designer to think that your role is to beat up your player.

Maybe "Cliffy B" is good at delivering impressive *looking* games, but I've always found them full of tiresome adrenaline-soaked meathead themes. Not a lot going on under the surface - not a lot to say - and this idea just reinforces that.

Posted:10 months ago

Game difficulty is a real interesting point. When Manic miner came out, you made it to whatever level you made it to, based on how good you were at it. It was easy to rate how good you were at a game by your amount of progression. Now we expect that content is open to us whether or not we are any good at the game. The argument from many comes out that 'I've paid for this content, so I should be able to access it'. So when Call of Duty whatever comes out everyone completes it. Completing it bares no relationship to how well you played it.

I for one liked game progress to signify how well I've played a game but I'm clearly in a minority in feeling that way. Games will be made however the majority want them to be made so it's kind of been our choice, and you know what ? We chose them to be easy.

Posted:10 months ago