I absolutely agree about difficulty and frustration. I’m in my 50s, my hands are a bit fucked, and I don’t have the reaction times I did a few decades back. I also just don’t have as much screen time. I don’t want to spend that limited time getting my arse kicked again and again and making no progress. With a few notable exceptions, if I can’t get past something after a dozen or so tries, I’ll usually quit.
It’s very hard to define the difference, but there’s a type of difficulty that gives me a real feeling of triumph to overcome, and there’s a type that just annoys me. I can’t be arsed with the latter - life is short and backlog is long.
Not to hijack but I can relate, I’m in acting school and we had an older gentleman join. He kept getting his ass handed to him in class because he couldn’t keep up, so he decided to quit. At first I thought it was lame, so I told him not to quit, but then he explained to me that he was 66 years old and didn’t know how much time he had left so he wanted to spend his time doing things that brought him joy.
You’ve identified one part of the issue and it’s a valid one.
Aside from aging, games have also evolved into lazy design. What used to be difficulty was really innovation a decade+ ago. Take a game like the original Soul Reaver. The bosses required specific skills and strategies you had to figure out in order to win. If you didn’t figure it out they would laugh and mock you for failing. It was genius and you felt accomplished when you figured it out.
Contrast that to Elden Ring. The moveset isn’t intuitive and your character moves like it’s not attached to the world.
The bosses are just extremely higher health bars and your health bar is on the opposite end of theirs. That’s it. That’s the game difficulty.
So “strategy” just means dodging until you can get a hit on the overly large boss and repeat for long periods until someone dies. I find it lazy and uninspiring.
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I absolutely agree about difficulty and frustration. I’m in my 50s, my hands are a bit fucked, and I don’t have the reaction times I did a few decades back. I also just don’t have as much screen time. I don’t want to spend that limited time getting my arse kicked again and again and making no progress. With a few notable exceptions, if I can’t get past something after a dozen or so tries, I’ll usually quit.
It’s very hard to define the difference, but there’s a type of difficulty that gives me a real feeling of triumph to overcome, and there’s a type that just annoys me. I can’t be arsed with the latter - life is short and backlog is long.
Not to hijack but I can relate, I’m in acting school and we had an older gentleman join. He kept getting his ass handed to him in class because he couldn’t keep up, so he decided to quit. At first I thought it was lame, so I told him not to quit, but then he explained to me that he was 66 years old and didn’t know how much time he had left so he wanted to spend his time doing things that brought him joy.
You’ve identified one part of the issue and it’s a valid one.
Aside from aging, games have also evolved into lazy design. What used to be difficulty was really innovation a decade+ ago. Take a game like the original Soul Reaver. The bosses required specific skills and strategies you had to figure out in order to win. If you didn’t figure it out they would laugh and mock you for failing. It was genius and you felt accomplished when you figured it out.
Contrast that to Elden Ring. The moveset isn’t intuitive and your character moves like it’s not attached to the world.
The bosses are just extremely higher health bars and your health bar is on the opposite end of theirs. That’s it. That’s the game difficulty.
So “strategy” just means dodging until you can get a hit on the overly large boss and repeat for long periods until someone dies. I find it lazy and uninspiring.
So yeah, you’re not crazy.
Delusional
Well, thanks for telling us. Perhaps seek treatment?
“The moveset isn’t intuitive” the moveset changes completely depending on your weapons, you clearly don’t have a clue what you’re talking about