As I m growing older (but still strong ... ;) I perceive my level of patience is going down.

I never liked frustrating games, but I perceive my tolerance is dropping quite significantly.

Also I drown tired of those games that I perceive using unfair difficulties: games designed around the concept of doing the same thing over and over, until you realise what you need to do to pass that step.
Other games are just completely unbalanced, and make you mainly fail (space hulk ascension...).



What is your limit?
When a game is too frustrating and quit?
You will pick it up eventually again?

I would avoid Dark Souls then, its the epitome of such a concept.

Is not, though. :p


As for frustration, it depends on how much I enjoy a game overall. If I like it, I'll try harder/longer to overcome any upcoming frustrations. If I don't have much fun playing a game in the first place and it adds frustration on top of that, it can go die in a fire.

Usually I play turn-based games, so AI is super important. My limit is usually when the programmers couldn't be bothered to learn their own game mechanics well enough to make a competent AI, and resort to letting the AI use different rules than the player, in an attempt to mimic actual difficulty. That's not the same as letting the AI cheat a little - it's very, very hard to program an AI that's as good as a practiced human player, so you do need to let it cut some corners. But when the fundamental mechanics are different, that pretty much ruins the game for me. Eador, Planar Conquest, games like that. They could be great, but the AI isn't even playing the same game you are. And, frustratingly, despite the overt cheating, they're still too easy on the highest difficulty.

Well, when you have to repeat the same quest/mission/boss fight over and over and over and over again, you start thinking about crashing your fists in the monitor instead. The two only games thus far I clearly remember to put me in such a state are Syndicate - the American Revolution data disk and Diablo II, Hell difficulty level, the Arreat Summit fight with the Sorceress class.

And I didn't quit, mind you: I just put the games on pause for a couple of decades :-D

I'll try again to fight those fights, eventually...

I can think of a few games that I gave up on because it was too difficult for me at the time, like XCom:UFO Defense and HoMM3, but the only frustratingly difficulty games I gave up on:

- KKND. Loved, but I just couldn't beat a specific frustratingly difficult survivor level. Bought it on gog many years later and tried again, managing to finally beat the game. Kind of disappointingly, once you unlock the strongest infantry unit, the sniper, the game suddenly becomes a cakewalk.

- Super Meat Boy. Completed all the base levels, and then proceeded to try and complete all the bonus levels. Completely exhausted myself trying to beat the The Guy warpzone until I asked myself "Why am I doing this to myself?"

It depends on the genre, but here's a few general thoughts.

My limit is basically as follows:For action type: Even with rewinds, progression is slow or implausible without copious outmaneuvering or memorization.

For example, Darius on SNES, and R-Type III. I reached the penultimate planet on the former, only for things to get a bit too bullet hell to consider continuing.

For role games: When the grinding has been an hour, and yet no progress is able to be sanely made in dungeon.

Strategy: More than 15 minutes in a menu and I'm not even done with a single town/providence. (Note: For obvious reason, this only counts for turn based.)

As for your second question, I feel that's covered by the first or doesn't parse correctly.

To the third, if I quit a game, chances are it goes in the dustbin. Race the Sun, Lufttrausers, Retro City Rampage DX, Windforge, Sid Meier's Railroads, the Eschalon series, all are in the hidden game section of my account.

What you found frustrating in eschalon?
I ask as I really like the game but yeah... Sometimes feels a bit harsh.

Same here - when I was still young and carefree, I could sink myself in games, that I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot-pole, nowadays. Where I draw the line, depends on the game, really.
In games, that I really like and enjoy, it will naturally take more time, for me to reach the point, where I absolutely can't enjoy them anymore. Usually it's, when I run in a situation, where I have to try over and over and over again, to overcome a hindrance, yet always to no success.
It's not, that I can't enjoy a good challenge - but at some point, you just realise, you can't beat that challenge
( no matter, how hard you try), and then a (badly implemented?) challenge can tip over into pure frustration. That's when I quit.
And at that time, when that happens, I'll have already hightened blood-pressure and am swearing like a sailor. Sure. I always do.
The problem with that, of course - most times you'll have to re-play the game up to the point, where your abilities proved to be insufficient (because - without that training, you stand absolutely no chance to beat that challenge!) - only to then find out, that your abilities still prove to be insufficient for that second try (or third, or fourth...) :)
And so the circle continues...

I definitely feel like i have less patience now than i used to. I just finished the new God of War playing on the hardest difficulty for my first playthrough of it and imo it's harder then any of the Souls games. At least until you get far enough into the game & do enough side quests to start getting better gear to increase your level. It was very frustrating. There is no option on that difficulty to lower it after you've started the game. The only option at that point would be to restart the entire game. Unlike most games where higher difficulty just means enemies have more health and do more damage while you do less damage there was more to the hardest mode here.

Unlike other games on harder difficulties, if you hang back and take your time during this game's combat you WILL die. You have to be aggressive. The reason for that is during combat if an enemy is left alone on screen for long enough while you're taking care of a few others they will level up mid combat regaining a chunk of health, becoming stronger, and becoming almost impossible to stagger/stun. This only happens on the hardest difficulty. Another thing is that certain attacks from certain enemies and bosses that were blockable on lower difficulties become unblockable on the hardest difficulty and require a dodge or some other way of avoiding the damage. I'm also not sure if this is true but i've heard that enemies are also a lot more unpredictable in their attacks then lower difficulties. I also thought i noticed them doing moves that they weren't doing on other difficulties but that one i'm also unsure of.

Having said all that though I didn't want to let the game beat me so i pushed through it and beat it.

I always prefer the harder difficulties in games these days though because the other difficulties usually make it so that learning the full mechanics of gameplay isn't really necessary. For instance I've watched others mash their way through the entirety of Witcher 3 on the lower difficulties without really ever using things like oils, bombs, signs etc. while on the hardest difficulty you're forced to learn and make use of everything at your disposal to be able to get through the combat encounters. I kinda enjoy that. If i can get through a game by blindly mashing my attack button i start falling asleep. Sometimes i feel like i want to punch my monitor at harder difficulties tbh but at least i'm not falling asleep and completely losing interest in the game. I even quit Witcher 3 on the hardest difficulty at one point but came back to it because after struggling through that when i tried playing on a lower difficulty it was too easy in comparison and became boring.

Also if the narrative of a game is that your character is going up against insane odds and during gameplay i'm able to completely steamroll over dozens and dozens of enemies it takes me out of the experience a little. It was actually the opposite for God of War though. I got taken out of the experience a little because i was so ridiculously weak on the hardest difficulty. I'm playing as a god ffs! I shouldn't be struggling at all against these undead fuckers! Though i understand it probably wouldn't make for interesting gameplay otherwise.

Except it isn't. There are very few unfair deaths in DS. If you pay attention to your environment there are almost always clues to tell you about an ambush or hidden enemies.

With Dark Reign, about halfway through the tutorial.

Now that im much older, i avoid games with a high learning curve. I stick to simple games that have a dot on the map or arrow telling where to go. I avoid games where i HAVE to constantly use a strategy guide or walkthrough. A few times is ok, but not constantly. Fortunately, i have a huge backlog and i can skip any game that i don't enjoy unlike when i was younger and only had a few games to play over and over. These days, i just don't even buy any game that i think will be too difficult and fustrating. This has saved me alot of money.

My most immediate memory is of Dragon Age 1. The game is designed to be open world in a sense, but also to keep you going into certain places and directions at appropriate times (I think it's an infinity engine games inheritance, maybe? Pillars of Eternity seems to follow the same concept. I have the infinity engine games, but I'm yet to play through them).

What it actually meant in terms of gameplay is that it kept crushing you whenever it felt like, usually mid-dungeon crawls, so you had to stop and try some other quest first so that you could get stronger.

Obviously, that got pretty old pretty quickly and I eventually gave up on the game.

I did get back after some time and, after getting a lucky break and defeating a previously unbeatable fight, I got back on track and it ended up being somewhat of a smooth sail until the end (except for the secret boss fight which took me quite some time to beat, but, hey, it was designed to be frustratingly hard as hell and not to impact the main story in any way).

Correct. While there are unfair deaths in Dark Souls, most of them are caused by player's own carelessness.