Out of Pod Experience

i can only agree with that and it has been going on for more than a decade now
does anyone remember Europa Unoversalis I and II especially II it was great challeging immersive but great and a huge succes
then they brought out EU III with smashing graphics for that time , but otherwise completely dumbed down for me that was the end of a great game if i think about it i can probably name a dozen franchises that went the same way
same thing happened with TES V skyrim compared with oblivion and ùorrowind the vanilla version is almost a empty shell all because they wanted it more acessable for console user, but on the other hand they made it very accesable to the modding cimmunity to improve the game and it shows and that is the secret of its succes , maybe that is the way pc games should go

maybe but you can not deny that the quality of single player games in terms of challenge and using your inteligence has gone down eespecially among the big game publishers

I wouldn't say we were being elitist, more that we're lamenting the days when the majority of games were challenging. More importantly games used to be about fun and innovation, the majority of the big software houses have settled for putting out on-rails games with the illusion of freedom, and pretty dresses on previous successes, the smaller developers are the ones now being innovative.

anyone griping about the difficulty of "angry birds" has obviously not struggled epically to attain 3 stars on EVERY LEVEL.

I had ADHD and was pretty unmotivated about life for reasons that exist beyond being a teenager that I won't go into. I was pretty obsessed with spaceships and wanted instant gratification, hyperactive and the like. Also poor at maths now I think about it.

Then I saw a friends older brother with this spaceship game called "Eve", mining in a condor on the day after the Boxing Day Tsunami in 04. One family pester later, I was in the game and took the name of a side Charecters from a Phillip Pullman book. I got my arse handed to me pretty swiftly, but kept at it.

I will say this, Eve has been a brilliant educator because of its approach to it. It exists as an open laboratory to be disected and analysed which kept me at it, I was picking up mathematics from corpmates and later on leapfrogging my classes. I put this down to a school system that doesn't engage with people, learn an abstract theory then apply it later, wheras I need the damn situation in front of me to relate back to the theory, Eve provided me with ample data to analyse for Mathematics, Business, English and Physics.

I now plan years in advance, study Engineering and judge games relative to how much of a ride they give you. Starcraft 2 and Mass effect 3 have the right approach as single player experiences, you paid for the content so there's a easy easy mode to get the story you paid for, and a Brutal difficulty for people who want a challenge.

Not quite sure when my response turned into what it did, but thankyou CCP.

Skyrim is a good game. Made even more amazing by the mod community over at skyrimnexus. If you still have time to play it. I'd suggest the monster mod which was awesome fun. Added creepiness and hardmode plus some familiar baddies.

Ubisoft is another terrible one, with their Silent Hunter series. SH III was good at the time, but the modding community made it 50x better. IV came out and had improved graphics and some highly requested features. Then came the travesty of SH V. Graphics were amazing, you could move throughout the sub, and all these promises. Game comes out........utter disappointment. DRM, unfinished features, bugs, hell you could only play from 1939 to 1943...they left out the last 2 years of the war. Why? Because they KNEW the modding community, with all the talent it contained, would mod the hell out of the game and finish it for them. They put out 1 patch for the game a few months after release, then discontinued support a short time after. Thank god for the modding community, because of them the game looks better, is more playable, and they even finished/updated the career timeline to include the last 2 years.

This is another problem facing the gaming community. I remember when games came in a box with a thick booklet telling you all about the game, the features, how to do it. Full 50-150 page manuals were not uncommon. Now you have to wait for a 3rd party to produce one since the modern devs (for the most part) are too lazy or the companies are just pushing to release. They really couldn't give a crap less about the people buying the game and the experience they provide. Didn't use to be that way, but I fear it's just going to get even worse.

I can tell you this though, any company with ****ty customer support, crappy unfinished games, and involving themselves in general stupidity have lost my support. I no longer buy games from EA, Ubisoft, and other such game studios. Severely limits my options, but I won't give those bastards a single dollar. And I certainly try to talk others into not buying into supporting these terrible practices either. I hope the gaming community wakes up, but I'm not holding my breath.

I modded Skyrim to have one hit kills, but still gave up after I ran out of arrows.

1. I would say so, specifically across the RPG, FPS, and Platform genres. Old RPGs had a lot more strategy to say the least and was overall a bit more complex. Modern RPGs are more like open world adventure type games, nothing wrong with it though. I actually like that format better, immersion is a lot easier. FPS have gotten dramatically easier over the years, seriously, regenerating health? Come on. Platform games have obviously gotten easier but it was a necessary shift. For example, Mario would not be the pop culture icon he is today if his games were always as hard as the original.

2. Yes and no. EVE needs to remain challenging, but things that should be easier but aren't do need toe be changed. For example, there is a huge skill gap between new, intermediate, and veteran players in EVE. Obviously players who have been around longer should have a significant advantage over someone who just started, but I feel it is very difficult for new players to get a start, primarily with making ISK.

3. It wouldn't effect me if EVE was made easier for new players that much, other than convincing friends to play the game.

17 year old here, but I started gaming pretty early and with the older games (4 years old on an SNES).

Honestly, I see what you mean by games becoming easier and easier, but I'd definitely say it started far earlier than this and also that even though it is happening in many mainstream games, you still have plenty of options.

While I can't comment specifically on the difficulty of the Elder Scrolls series (never been a fan, boring combat and repetitive game play in my opinion), a majority of the friends I speak to about gaming believe Skyrim to be mediocre at best, requiring heavy modding to be playable. I think a big part of this can be attributed to two things.

1. The development of technology. Pre 2000, gaming technology was extremely limiting, and the memory/processing power of devices required a great deal of ingenuity to create a decent game. Especially due to small file sizes, the only thing developers could do to increase playable hours on a game was to ramp up the difficulty. As technology developed games could become more expansive and rather than difficulty adding gameplay hours, content was added (Skyrim is massive world compared to older games). While I'm not expressly against the vast amounts of content some new games are putting out, I definitely feel the same way as you when it comes to the difficulty level. As far as the tipping point of this development, in my personal experience it would definitely be the first of the Fable series. That **** was easy (still fun though).

2. Pirating - Though I have no actual research data to support this, it is my belief that one of the major negative side effects of piracy is the mainstream gaming industry. Prior to rampant piracy, gaming companies could rely on the small but dedicated fanbase to continually purchase new releases as their income. However as more and more people began to pirate video games, they were forced to switch their target market to the mainstream to keep profits up, hence dumbing down games for the non-gamer to game.

To be fair though, this shouldn't be seen as a completely negative thing. The gaming community seems to leap at the chance to attack anyone who isn't as into gaming as they are (hence terms like LoL Kiddy or carebear), when in reality, it is something to be embraced. Rather than be ostracized for this hobby, you can now be accepted.

In any case, if you don't think it's hard enough you have plenty of options. You could switch games, to say, Dark Souls or Dragon's Dogma (if you aren't on a PC), or mod your game (modding is one of the best parts of gaming on a PC!). If you don't like what the mainstream has done to AAA gaming, then simply don't play mainstream games.