4
I have a confession
(pawb.social)
The only right way to play is the one that's fun to you 👍
If it's not difficult, I lose interest because my reality is based on misery. Lol that sounds so edgelord and lame, but it is my rationale. The challenge creates the drama, the drama creates the interest. Like naming your XCom soldiers back in the day. NOOOOO the bastards got Hicks! NOOOOO!
Same as you! Easy/normal Randy Random is my go to. I just build a colony and sometimes try out different winning conditions. More often than not I don’t even go for winning, just build up until the colony is too rich for it to be fun
Haven’t started a new game in a while though maybe I should try out other difficulties and see how that goes
I generally play the same.
I don’t want to lose hours of work because we died in a raid and my last pawn got captured. That’s not fun for me.
I tend to play Randy on Medium-Hard, there was a storyteller for VFE-Vikings I miss that would give you less negative events if you raided regularly so would see less raids, but if you turtled up you'd get more negative stuff, used it to force myself to regularly send caravans and I really like playing that way.
I'd play harder but I find it really annoying to get mechanoid raids when I'm barely preindustrial, my partner found a mod that limits the global tech level to match and I'm really tempted to start a new run with it. She tends to run with randy on losing is fun, she's much better at getting things going than I am.
Phoebe Chill, second-to-hardest difficulty (blood and dust?), Naked Brutality start, reloads enabled.
You can learn how to trivialize most singular raids/events on youtube, so I like that Phoebe gives me "perfect storms" so that I have to make sacrifices or be very creative with how I solve problems, but generally my colony doesn't get completely wiped out, but it also gives me the breaks necessary to prepare for the bad events.
Can't imagine playing with no reloads. Managing even a medium-scale battle of any complexity is such a slog in this game, and way too often I will play through a battle and only realize after the fact I've completely forgotten about another corner of the map where everything's burning to the ground and half my colony is dead because I didn't have fire at will on or something.
Naked Brutality feels like the best story to me. I like to just run with whatever pawn gets generated first and I try to work with their strengths and find friends that can help asap. Not very good for your own ideology though. Normally I end up adopting whatever ideology my social pawn is.
Just play the way you want.
For the record I play without raids until I get major security and advanced weapons established.
People who want games to be hardcore just have a fetish for suffering or something.
Games should be about having fun, and if the world wasn't contaminated with toxic competitiveness, I'm pretty sure almost no one would enjoy hardcore games. But it's always been about competition, even the old arcade games were all about the high scores, and it's shit.
Rimworld strives as a story generator, not as a stupid minmaxing frame-by-frame micromanagement hell
People who want games to be hardcore just gave a fetish for suffering or something.
If that's their way of having fun.. Why not
Because that's what lead to the flood of "souls-like" games that intentionally have a bad design, because it encourages toxic competitiveness, encourages mocking and shaming online based on "performance".
A lot of games either don't let you make the game easier, or "punish" you for it (no unlocks, no achievements, no progress, etc) because they try to appeal to the stupid "hardcore gamers". You have a disability, a situation that makes things harder, not enough money to buy the proper kind of controller, or anything else? Well fuck you, you do not deserve to play the game, and if you try you're going to be bullied for it.
If everyone had no problem with the idea that allowing to adjust precisely the difficulty of a game was mandatory, then sure. But until then, the toxic culture of "hardcore" needs to die because it just makes things worse for a lot of people, with no added value.
Also, the initial reason games were hardcore were either bad (or none at all) game design, or as a scam so that you keep on putting money in the machine to continue playing. Then boomers started crying about "new generations" when games became more accessible, and that's when people started thinking that a game being easy means that it's shit. It all comes from a bunch of boomers and edgelords.
Different game genres have different customers.
Don’t play souls like games… I don’t play certain genres of games because I don’t like them.
Personally, I love challenging games that I have to think deeply how to win. I have adhd and I like to play games that make me think and require strategy. My disability allows me to play these games better.
What you are saying is the equivalent of “horror games shouldn’t be scary”. That’s to the core of their game genre…
I would agree that games could improve their accessibility modes.
Everyone is different, let people play the games they like.
"Souls like" is an overly used term that just means "unfair" at that point. It's not a genre, I'm pretty sure you can find card games that call themselves "souls like".
And requiring to think and strategy isn't the same as forcing micromanagement and making you lose immediately if you don't comply.
I don't play horror games because I don't like the genre. I played over a thousand hours of rimworld, but I never would have with the base game, default settings and no mods. And while rimworld has those (even though people do get bullied as soon as a mod is "unbalanced" even if optional, or as soon as they play the easier settings), most games don't because they think that everyone wants to be a hardcore gamer. Heck, even the term "casual" is used as an insult, as if not being a professional hardcore gamer is an anomaly. That's where I have my grief with "hardcore games".
Once again, in a perfect world without this stupid bullying, with accessibility settings, etc, I'd have zero problem with hardcore games and gamers. But in the current state of the world, it is very different.
even though people do get bullied as soon as a mod is "unbalanced"
How do you mean bullied?
People will argue over a mod that makes the game easier in some way. I imagine bullying does happen, though that might depend on your definition. I know I myself would laugh at somebody using mods that make the game easier while claiming they don't, and while I don't have examples for RimWorld, it reminds me of a funny terraria video.
To me the issue is, all kinds of mods have a place, whether it's cosmetic, content expansion, quality of life, straight up cheats, but the categorizations should be respected.
What will absolutely cause an argument is somebody talking about difficulty or their accomplishments while using mods that make a game easier, especially if they're not upfront about it.
Games should be about having fun
👀
NOT LIKE THAT
Yeah, just like freedom of speech is about freedom, and yet to enforce it you need to block toxic behaviors.
See my other comment about accessibility, if you want, I'm not going to write it again.
You're talking about the paradox of tolerance, which isn't a paradox and isn't relevant here.
You said games should be about having fun, and then immediately proceeded to proscribe one kind of fun by baselessly denigrating the people who enjoy the challenge of a difficult game.
Some perspective for you: RimWorld is single player. There are no toxic behaviours to block, except the very ones you're complaining about and perpetrating here like gatekeeping.
Or just wilfully ignore me and strawman me, whatever, it's the internet so most likely that one 🤷♀️
The fucking post is called "I have a confession" and you're telling me that there is no problem with people being shamed for not playing the game at the "proper" difficulty?
My point is that this love of "hardcore" is bringing a lot of toxicity in all games (including other than video games) and so yeah, right now I have a problem with hardcore gamers because they lead the movement of hardcore games, which are making games worse for everyone else.
It is similar to the paradox of tolerance because with the way things are now, not fighting against hardcore gaming actively makes everyone else have less fun with games. It wouldn't be like that in a world of empathy and inclusion, but that's not where we are at, just like "colorblind" would be a good term in a perfect world but for now it's just racist.
I will add, you can always make a game more challenging on your own. Play with one hand, don't save, don't look at the screen, whatever suits you. But you cannot make the game easier without accessibility settings to do so, and even when they exist, then you get mocked online for using them or not playing the game the "right way". So I call bullshit, rejecting hardcore games does not prevent anyone from having a challenging game.
Or just wilfully ignore me and strawman me, whatever, it’s the internet so most likely that one 🤷♀️
And you're taking a gentle poke in fun far too seriously (which is a bad idea, because you can't seriously defend yourself - the charge of hypocrisy is accurate). Complaining about toxicity in the RimWorld community, no less, widely known as one of the nicest communities in gaming. Get off your high horse, you smug git.
Or don't, and keep being insufferable. Again, it's the internet, so most likely that one 🤷♀️
I cant stand toxic comments like this. Just joking.
I think you are somewhat wrong by saying love of hardcore is bringing toxicity. Its toxic people that are bringing in the toxicity.
I love playing games like Rimworld on harder difficulties, because it creates emergent stories in to the games. It makes the game richer for me and it makes the colonies feel unique and i enjoy that quite a lot, but i dont feel the need to ridicule anybody for playing the game on peacefull.
In a way you are doing exactly the same thing than the "HC-players", but on the different end of the spectrum.
Also i want to say im firm beliver that not everything needs to be for everyone. If somebody wants to make a SHMUP that is impossible for people who have not played them before or kaizo Mario that only few people in small community can finish, its their artistic decition. I cant eat seafood, so sushi is not for me, but i cant resent the cheff who wanted to start a allfish restaurant, nor i cant blame my friend who loves to eat salmon.
How ever i do belive that aslong as the difficulty is not part of the games core design philosophy, it should be adjustable. Also there is no good reason to not add things like colorblind mode, adjustable font sizes and possibility to remap key bindings to games. Accessibility and difficulty are not the same thing.
I know that I'm pushing a bit too far in the opposite direction, but that's because basically no one is trying to counter this endless trend of "hardcore is cool and edgy"
Obviously not all players are like that.
The problem is that the norm now is to assume that a game needs to be hard, and that anything less is "too easy".
Recent example that comes to mind, Songs of Syx (you probably know it already, if not you can look it up, it's not a bad game). The game has unlocks in an achievement-like way, which help make the game a bit easier; logical one would say, it's along the lines of rogue-like unlocks, you can play and lose while still progressing, amazing. But the game itself can be pretty hard, and while there are difficulty settings, changing any to be easier prevents unlocking anything (but harder difficulties don't, which clearly gives the vibe of "you are too bad at the game to deserve the achievements"). There's no good reason to do that, the developer is far from being incompetent, but yet there is the idea that you cannot enjoy the full game if you don't want it as hard.
It's not about the core of the game being hard, nothing actually would change badly if the achievements were never locked from a difficulty setting, but here it is. And you are put with the background thought that you're not really playing the game properly if you reduce the difficulty (even though the achievements themselves do that, but the " hard" way so it's ok I guess)
this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2026
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