Difficulty Levels

Many games adopt difficulty levels to allow the player the option of tuning the game based on his/her abilities, and they often select a wide variety of levels to choose from, in fact, the highest levels sometimes have to be unlocked.

So, what difficulty levels do you choose when playing a game? For me, I'm somewhat of a wuss when it comes to difficulty. When I played Uncharted, I went straight for easy. When I am playing any genre where I'm not very good at AND I can die (As an aside, I really hate dying/losing in a video game) I always start off with a low difficulty level. I know it's cheap, and probably weak, but I cannot stand dying.

So what difficulty level do you most likely play? Included is complimentary poll.

If I play a game just for the story, I'll go for easy. Otherwise, I go for normal, then increase that if I want to play it again later and thought it was too easy.

I don't often play games just for their story though. That would usually only be if I'm playing it because I in reality want to play its sequel, and just want to hurry through the first one.

It can also happen that I select easy in a type of game that I am very unfamiliar with, although the number of such games is pretty low at this point in my life.

On the first playthrough? The easiest mode. There's nothing more that will take away your passion for a game, than a game that keeps kicking the stuffing out of you. On my following turns, I always choose the hardest mode.

even in Ninja Gaiden?

Normal erry day (for first runthroughs). Subsequent plays will have a harder difficulty mode. :3

Almost always medium. It's how the developers intended the game to be played. Subsequent playthroughs I do harder or hardest, trophies are always a good incentive.

On Oblivion I played as a Bard and I had to turn the difficulty slider down a bit for a lot of parts. The enemies level along with you, but it's not always my combat abilities that were causing me to level, so it resulted in the game being waaay too tough for my playstyle. I've seen others rationalize the difficulty slider as necessary tweaks to correct any of the flaws in the design and keep the game as challenging as you want, so that's when I got comfortable messing with it. I kept it at default for the last stretch of the game, though.

I go with the default (usually medium) for most games during the first play through. If I play it again I'll pick a harder mode, but that's becoming more and more rare. I'm past the point in my life where I play these games for a serious challenge. I'm more interested in immersing myself in the world and having fun.

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Originally Posted by Bolivar

Almost always medium. It's how the developers intended the game to be played. Subsequent playthroughs I do harder or hardest, trophies are always a good incentive.

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I don't agree that it is necessarily how the developers intended the game to be played. I'd say they intended the game to be enjoyable for a wide range of players of different skill levels, and intended the players to become better and eventually want a bigger challenge.

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Originally Posted by Mirage

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Originally Posted by Bolivar

Almost always medium. It's how the developers intended the game to be played. Subsequent playthroughs I do harder or hardest, trophies are always a good incentive.

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I don't agree that it is necessarily how the developers intended the game to be played. I'd say they intended the game to be enjoyable for a wide range of players of different skill levels, and intended the players to become better and eventually want a bigger challenge.

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Yeah, players like me whose skill level for most games vary between "Half-decent" to "Your ruining the game". :p

I do think Medium is probably the peak of the bell curve though.

I usually go for the normal mode if it's my first playthrough.

If its a totally new kind of game I've never played before, I'll set it on easiest and play it for a few hours. Once I feel like I understand it, I will start over on normal mode.

I have to set my NHL games on hardest mode, or there is no challenge. :(

On FF, I will always crank the battle speed to fastest on active. It makes it a bit more challenging and a lot more exciting :D

For most games, I just go with the standard setting that it comes on - medium/normal. If it is a game like Skyrim/Fallout, then I will go for the hardest setting because I find the games to be more fun when played on the highest difficulty setting.

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Originally Posted by Yar

On FF, I will always crank the battle speed to fastest on active. It makes it a bit more challenging and a lot more exciting :D

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Generally medium for an initial play through, but I often jack it up a bit for later play throughs if I didn't find that too hard. One of my major exceptions are Half-Life games. I don't think I've played below the hardest on a first play through in those since I first played the original in '98. Not sure why I make an exception for those ones though.

Easy, Very Easy, or "Let me hold your hand while you play this" Easy.

Deathclaws are still obscenely difficult to kill on the easiest setting. :colbert: Although the next time I play New Vegas I'm going to up the settings to... Normal. >_>

Deathclaws are a pain in the ass.

I usually go with the normal/medium setting. On 4X games once I get good I'll start to crank up the difficulty a bit but the higher-level AIs are usually cheating bastards :colbert:

Yeah, I usually don't care about giving AIs unfair advantages. If my own AI is good enough to not need help, so should the game's AIs be. No AI discrimination here.

Depends on my mood. I usually play on normal, but there are a few games I'll bump up to the hardest difficulty just for fun. I think the Halo series and TFUII are the only games I've ever finished on the most difficult levels though.

Straight down the middle - normal difficulty.

Unless it's a genre that I'm not familiar with or a game I've heard is notoriously hard.

...or I want to impress somebody with my gaming skills. I'll just distract them with Pringles while I'm at the difficulty select screen.

Typically normal/medium as it was intended
All future playthroughs are on hard unless the difficulty balancing is completely ridiculous (looking at you kh1)

If ive played a game for years ill do max difficulty with handicaps
Ratchet and clank 3 is a good example
I limit my weapon choice, restrict armor, etc. makes it more fun for me

Also, i dont believe a game that keeps kicking the crap out of you is a ba thing
Look at games like dark souls or limbo, death is a learning tool. Those games teach that death isnt necessarily failure, though ill admit games like that are in the minority

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Originally Posted by TrollHunter

games teach that death isnt necessarily failure

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Please nobody apply this rule to real life...

....still applies
If you've been cursed to live the same day over and over again

In most games I'll go for medium/normal before cranking it up the hardest.

Normal to hard. Depends on the game and what I've heard.

Default/Normal/Medium, depending on how they want to word it. If I enjoy the game enough, I play it again on harder difficulties. It helps with replay value, that's for sure!

Oh, and on Civ IV, I never crank up the difficulty. Because I'm a complete and utter wuss and get decimated when I try to make the game harder. xD

If it's a game that I am not familiar with: easy
Games that I know the controls fairly well: medium

Psh. Deathclaws drop in no time to the Gobi Scout Rifle.

I usually just play on the default setting. Once I've completed it, I may crank up the difficulty for fun. If I don't have much time and just want to blast through a game for the story, I'll play on the easiest setting.

If I'm new to a game series I will go for easy as basically a practice run. Where as series I'm fairly decent at I will go for the hardest possible difficulty. Such as when the latest dmc was released I went straight for nephililem aka hard. But games like soul calibur that I love but am very horrible at (due to horrible joints in my fingers) I'm forced to go easy

Normal to hard. Occasionally I'll try a game of Touhou on lunatic. I'll get to maybe stage 4 now so I'm getting better. :bigsmile:

Hard then very hard.

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Originally Posted by Araciel

Hard... then very hard.

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Hot.

Whether difficulty levels work or not is very subject to the actual gameplay.

Some examples:
Metal Gear Solid 3 is a stealth action survivor game. Playing on normal is fun; a good mix between all elements allow excellent pacing. However, the harder modes throw these off balance. For some reasons the guards acquire super eyesight, forcing you to slowly crawl through every area, completely disrupting the pace and feel. I don't feel like a smooth spy anymore. I felt more like a snail.

HAWX has a ridiculously flawed hard mode. What I expect in a combat flight game is improved enemy skill when I up the difficulty level. Instead, they change nothing about the AI and just cut down half your ammo and equipment. The "hard part" is that the player can get stuck without ammo somewhere halfway through a mission, but this is for the wrong reason. It should not be because of a number being cut, but because of enemies better dodging.

Going back to MGS3, a cut on ammo and available equipment works very well in harder difficulties because of the survival part of the game. Ran out of ammo? Throw a snake to poison guards. Battery for your radar ran out? Good luck finding another one. That should be the extra challenge, not a snail-impersonation contest.

I like games best when they have 1 difficulty level that is delicately curved out so even returners still get challenged, (coughDark Soulscough) but some games (like SSX3) fail horribly in this.

Depends on the game, Minecraft for example, when playing in the survival mode I'm generally speaking going to be on Hard difficulty this just means mobs track you further, hit harder and you get less use out of tools before they break.

In FPS games I play through on normal and then once I've completed that I go through on the hardest settings. I do this because it's a real challenge and with games like Call of Duty titles or Halo titles where the main campaign can be completed in under 5 hours it adds a lot of longevity to the single player experience.

Games like Fallout 3? I tend to have the difficulty relatively high because it cuts down the amount of ammo you acquire from enemies which is fun because in a play through I started with one character I ended up with thousands and thousands of rounds for guns that would hardly ever break (Xuan Xuan Assault Rifle - 2000+ rounds and easily repaired by Chinese Assault Rifles of which I had around a hundred in a locker in my house at Nuke Town) That being said Death Claws if you're not properly equipped are a devastating foe on any difficulty. That being said a dart gun and an assault rifle with a healthy supply of ammo are all you need for taking down any number of them. One dart will cripple the legs of the beast and walking backwards pumping ammo in to the torso and head will finish them off in no time. Conversely I prefer to have difficulty in Morrowind/Oblivion to be normal - easier than normal because I suck in those so much more.

Driving games are the one where I always no matter how little I've played the game crank the settings to the hardest. If I'm going to play driving games I want to be challenged as much as possible, this is because I am fairly ridiculous in terms of skill on most driving games.

Normal usually gives me the "purest" experience, as I find it the most accurate representation of the developer's vision.

Mate, you were rubbish on Burnout: Paradise.

Depends, if i've never played a game like it before usually I'll choose easy so I can know what the game is like before trying on normal...I practically never play on hard.