If you come here and spam, "Too easy" and trash the game, you are one of three things. Ignorant to what challenges purpose is, and how you have control over it, a silly person trying to puff their chest, or simply stupid.

If you are happily ignorant to why challenge excites you, I"ll answer it for you. Engagement. Challenge is simply a FORM of engagement with the game, that forces you to dig in, master its systems, and perfect its demands for your success. Intelligent developers have to tread a careful line. Too hard, its not engaging. Too easy, its not engaging. The tolerance and demands for difficulty vary wildly between people. Fortunately, SoM is a broadly engaging game for different lovers of difficulty, and offers a nice bit of challenge across the bat. A balance between twitch gameplay, planning, careful action, and execution.

Now those who have enjoyed challenge for a while understand that when a certain aspect of the game trivializes something you once found engaging, you stop doing it. Its why I don't use cheat codes. There are certain abilities and unlocks in games which designers throw in that ARE easy, or trivialize certain portions of game. THIS. IS. SMART. This allows players to ignore difficult portions of the game that frustrate them, while people who like a challenge are aren't ignorant or morons, say, "I won't use that".

I don't use magic in Dark Souls because it trivializes the game. If I used magic in Dark Souls and said, "Too easy!" I would be ignoring the challenging and engaging melee combat the game presents. Some might say, "Well I HAVE to use the optional unlock that makes things easy, its the game's design." No. No you don't. The developers actually believe you're an intelligent person who can decide not to use something that ruins YOUR engagement of the game. Don't be dumb.

And of course if you're just saying "Too easy" to brag on the boards, please understand that you don't impress anyone unless you're doing it with severe restrictions or with flawless execution in a small time frame. In that case, I want a youtube vidoe so I can gawk at your legit awesomeness. THEN you can brag.

This is an incredibly dumb thread.

Everytime I die I restart the game from scratch.

This

I would like to add that making a game too easy and making it feed on itself for being too easy is something that is kind of dumb. For instance a bad player who dies lots will make the lieutenants stronger relative to him and hence the game harder, whilst someone who never dies makes the game relatively easier. The rewards for fighting harder things aren't really done well(to warrant lots of time skipping).

In my mind as far as rewarding difficulty goes that game "the last remnant" was one of the best, where getting one group of enemies got you X% chance of getting item, two groups of enemies got out 3X%, 3 groups got you 11X% etc and getting them all at once(which was a feat in itself) was in many cases a much harder endeavor. Doing this and not dying is also faster than engaging each group separately in battle.

They should make it so that optimizers(as many of us instinctivly are) face difficult challenges exclusively when we try to optimize. Instead it seems that optimizing generally means trivializing.

edit: corrected

@gamefreak9: So you are specifically targeting the fact that the game rewards you for playing well to minimize the impact of the nemesis system. *facepalm* So the game LETS you accomplish the goal of minimizing the system if it so frustrates you, allowing you to beat it, and you criticize it. If the game got progressively harder because you did well, most people would feel that isn't a reward, so why bother doing well?

Why don't you make death threats to the war chiefs? Decide not to take out their body guards first. When an orc tries to grow in power, let him. Advance time. Build a warchief with max level guards. If you were a smart player you would realize this. Instead, you harp on the game for allowing you options when it must necessarily cater to all types of players. Is it too hard for you to figure this out? Too hard for you to take the time and effort to set up epic challenges for yourself? Should the developers treat you like a child and spell everything out for you?

You sound way, way too invested in what other people like and dislike. It's really not that big of a deal. SoM sold like gangbusters. You don't need to defend it so hard. WB and Monolith will make it through, believe me.

After a point you master the systems and then the game is no longer fun. I don't think it's a failing as I enjoyed the escalation up until the end.

@wiriusjackson: Are you kidding? I am good at the game therefore I should get to experience the Nemesis system LESS? Sorry to say but if you don't like the Nemesis system then there are probably other games out there which you would enjoy more(this is like the KEY thing that makes this game unique). No, making the game harder(but not longer, and hence implicitly shorter) has plenty of potential to be psychologically rewarding.

I mention in my post(re-read it) that it would be okay to do that if the rewards were high enough but they are not, I think its pretty close to impossible to kill a warchief with full bodyguards when you are at the minimum level so the optimal strategy has to consist of just doing things the easy way until you are strong enough and even then sometimes you are still better off just taking them off one at a time(because getting the right position when they are bunched up is too time consuming).

All any game needs is adjustable difficulty. Easy for the people who want an 'interactive experience' and normal/hard/legendary for people who want a challenge.

Also, this thread is kinda dumb.

Edit: On the topic of Mordor: I felt like the game was pretty damn easy even before you get all those upgrades.. would a difficulty slider really make the game worse? I don't think so.

Well, that was certainly...aggressive...

The moment you start creating your own limiting barriers on a game to keep it challenging, is the moment you don't really have an argument against those that find it too easy by playing it as intended. Also, I would argue there's an inherent difference between cheat codes and in-game upgrades and skills.

Welcome to Giant Bomb. If you want your future topics to stay open, tone down the hostility and aggression. We don't really take kindly to that sort of thing around these parts.