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Comment by rjh29 | Hacker News Reader

Pretty simple: the pleasure I get from solving the puzzle is not always higher than the pain of trying to solve it. There is a limit and it's different for everybody.

When I do the New York Times crossword too, I'll try to figure it out without hints. If no progress for 10-20 minutes, I'm opening google. I enjoy it more this way.

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I don't think it's a matter of different pain thresholds - for us who are into those kinds of games the struggle is part of the enjoyment. Just like some people like doing extreme sports or other hard activities and some prefer to scroll through tiktok for dopamine hits.

There has to be a point when the struggle is no longer enjoyalble, right? Outer Wilds had a puzzle that I was struggling hard with (for those who've played: the jellyfish one), and I had felt I did every permutation of things to complete it, but nothing worked. I only "figured it out" from a friend giving progressively heavier hints; and when I did I concluded I could not have completed the game at all without being nearly told.

Have you never had a puzzle like that? Where the "struggle" would entail sitting there staring at the puzzle with 0 clue for a few hours? A majority of puzzle games I've played have 1 or 2 of these, and they aren't even bad games.

> I don't think it's a matter of different pain thresholds - for us who are into those kinds of games the struggle is part of the enjoyment.

Weird thing to say in a thread where most of us are puzzle game fans. Who exactly are you speaking for?

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