Originally Posted by
Elone
This is why we cant have a lot of nice things. Everything has to be balanced for competition, often at the cost of fun. In a singleplayer game. Let me ask you, and no offense intended; given a choice, why would I play by your rules if I can play by my rules which I like better?
Sure, lock the difficulty, restrict the player! What better way to lock out virtually every single newbie out there?
That's what is wrong with the concept.
Or you could, you know, not be such an elitist and let others enjoy at their own customizable pace. With a difficulty which they can personally alter as they themselves get better at the game.
I'm not the same person you were replying to, but I think I understand him. I personally don't find a game, any game, fun at all if there is no competition. Period.
Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that there must only be one difficulty level and it must be extra hard. It just mean that there must be a way of telling good players from bad ones, or of showing off. Sure, have several difficulty levels, but then have separate highscore lists for each difficulty level (or make the level affect the score). Sure, allow savescumming, but then display in the highscore that that player has savescummed. Etc. But if I can't compare myself to other players in some way, I don't enjoy.
I remember that I used to see doing sudokus as a really boring thing until a friend of mine told me: "hey, I found this website where they have sudokus and they measure the time you take, I managed to do one in the hard level in 2 minutes". Damn, I spent a whole week doing sudokus until I achieved better times than him (not for long though, he's just better at that than me, but it was fun trying to win, not necessarily winning).
I think in general men play games for competition and challenge, and women play games for... well, I don't know... understanding why a game could be fun without competition just escapes my limited mind! :)
Of course that's in general, I know at least one woman that is so competitive that she can get really angry when losing at board games.