How difficult should video games be?

Certain games like Dark Souls are known for being notoriously difficult with that hard learning curve, while others like Pokemon have a bit of an easier learning curve.

How sharp should that learning curve be? Should be games be hard from the start? Or should it be a bit more gradual slope?

Whatever is most fun.

Some people play video games for a challenge, others don't. It can even vary between games/series if a person is looking for a harder/easier game. Then on top of that there's how different things might be easy/hard to one person but hard/easy to the next.

It's why difficulty settings, when done right, are nice to have. Lets everyone play at however hard to easy of a level they want.

If a game doesn't have difficulty settings, then I think it should be on the easier side for proper accessibility.

If a game has difficulty settings, devs can go wild as far as I'm concerned, but I'm definitely in the camp where I'm starting to feel like story-driven games could almost become walking simulators on the easiest setting just so everyone can experience it no matter their ability.

However, the best games have difficulty settings that are carefully tailored. I mostly play JRPGs so for those, most of the time when they have a difficulty setting, what they really have are stat multipliers. So, for example, on normal mode everything is 1x, but on easy, you might do 2x damage and receive 0.5x damage, and so on. But great games? When you up the difficulty in those, in addition to basic multipliers that make the game harder, they might change the attack patterns of enemies and bosses, meaning you have to play strategically instead of just brute forcing your way through everything and it's always so much more rewarding.

As for learning curve, I guess I prefer when elements are introduced gradually. If I get too many tools at my disposal from the very start, I'll often end up just finding whatever basic thing works really well for me at the start and stubbornly use it all the way through because I'm bad at video games, apparently. But if I get new skills/abilities/weapons throughout the whole game, I'll be much more inclined to experiment and try everything, which I think leads to a better experience all around, even if I end up going back to my tried-and-true original strategy anyway ahaha.

Games should be as easy or as challenging as the developers desire. Same with learning curve.

Buying a game shouldn't automatically mean you have the divine right to see everything that game has to offer, if story gets locked off behind a boss or puzzle you can't beat then so be it. Games aren't books.

Although It is 2019, if you can't beat a boss just go to youtube and watch a girl in thigh highs beat it on her dance mat.

It depends on the game, some games can be easy for some players and hard for others hence why the difficulty level can be changed.

But there are some games that developers make too easy now to placate the newer gamers.

I appreciate a gradual increase in difficulty once the mechanics have been established, just to keep you on your toes and to keep things interesting.

I think games should have a difficulty setting choice for all games to give everyone the choice of how difficult they want the game to be for their play style.

I know one thng is that it so tough for me to play all sort of genre, i tried play a lot of JRPG games, but they are all complicated, espcaially for easy mode, when dealing with them all the time. I tried playing racing games, but it was too complicted when trying playing the racing games as well, and i needed it in traning to know better racing games with it.

FIFA is the easiest thing out there, as i score a goal a lot and i help the football team winning all the time, SIms is another one, but the difficulty is still bad at all, espacially since i ended up Sim getting dying all the time.

For me, while I enjoy the challenge of steamrolling AIs under high difficulty as higher difficulties encourage me to think more strategically, I feel like ultimately I play games to have fun, not to be stressed out or annoyed or angered or anything like that, lol. Like if given a choice between Easy, Normal, and Hard, I'd play Normal just so I'd get the experience the game intended and, assuming that the difficulty is changeable at any point, adjust it to harder difficulties once I get a hang of things.

But I'm also not afraid of knowing where my limits are and knowing when something is too difficult, so I do scale back the difficulty when necessary. Like in Tales games I don't go above Hard because I already enjoy the benefits of Hard move anyway, so...

tl;dr what Cherrim said

Juno said:

I appreciate a gradual increase in difficulty once the mechanics have been established, just to keep you on your toes and to keep things interesting.

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I feel like this is the basic cornerstone of almost any engaging gaming experience. Obviously, there are outliers, but most games cease to be fun if there is no longer a challenge. That being said, I think there should be versatility in choosing at what level the challenge begins before it begins that gradual increase in difficulty.

They should be as difficult as the difficulty setting tells you. Difficulty settings are great, but only when they're actually implemented well (like in Mega Man 10).

If they don't have a difficulty setting, I'd like a game to be consistently easy, average, or difficult, with it slowly getting more challenging as the game progresses. You know, how a game is supposed to be.