Difficulty Levels

[Formalhaut]

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.

[Mirage]

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.

[Chris]

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.

[Mirage]

even in Ninja Gaiden?

[Shauna]

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

[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.

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.

[Del Murder]

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.

[Mirage]

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.

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.

[Formalhaut]

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.

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.

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

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

[Yar]

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

[Bunny]

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.

[Bolivar]

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

word

[Slothy]

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.

[Shorty]

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. Although the next time I play New Vegas I'm going to up the settings to... Normal. >_>

[Pike]

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