I have a question for the warning and/or the regulars here:

Have games ever become less enjoyable for you as a result of a change in your gaming habits?

I'll give a broad example. I enjoy JRPGs a lot, especially on handhelds as of late, but I've found myself playing them very differently than I used to. When playing through Final Fantasy 6 for the first time, I never really got discouraged at any point because I knew that if a boss or dungeon was too much for me, I always had the option to swallow my pride and go kill angry bees or zombies or whatever for a little while, gain some levels, spend my newly acquired cash on some extra supplies, and try again when I was a bit stronger.

More recently, however, I've found pride getting in the way of doing that. After all, out-levelling a boss is the weaksause way out of a situation, it's "supposed" to be about you against the odds, using wits and strategy rather than just making yourself strong enough to absorb damage and spam overpowered attacks.

On the one hand, what used to be a low-impact, chilled-out gaming experience became something filled with lots of tense moments punctuated by brief periods of extreme excitement and satisfaction.

On the other hand, any point, at any time, and in any game, if the balance or difficulty curve isn't just right, it pisses me off! I'll bang my head against the same boss over and over again, losing every time, and feel insulted at the insinuation that, hey, maybe I could manage this fight if I were level 32 instead of 30. Meanwhile, if a battle is too easy, then the absence of strategy starts to annoy me and I start to feel like I'm just sinking time.

I feel like I can appreciate these games on a deeper level now, but at the same time, I'm just not having as much fun when I play them. More notably, I find myself getting increasingly cynical about this genre that I used to love, games that don't meet an exacting standard are much less appealing to me now. So, in the future, I plan to try and reverse this trend and recapture the fun, if that means being "worse" at games, and maybe it won't, so be it.

Have any other shackers ever fallen into a rut like this?