Be Excellent To Each Other

Skyrim thread's been a bit derailed with this, but I think it's worth a thread of its own.

Gaming difficulty. How low can you go?

Me, I prefer my game to carry a challenge. As I said in the Skyrim thread, playing that particular game on easy equates to playing Doom with godmode on for the lack of challenge it represents. Again, personally, I think that open-world games like Skyrim, Saints Row, Just Cause etc shouldn't have a difficulty slider as it makes a mockery of the set-pieces and design that's gone into making them.

Dragons shouldn't be an easy thing to kill, otherwise what's the point of them? Boss strongholds shouldn't be easy to infiltrate and destroy, otherwise why hasn't already been done? I don't want to have a large battle to Save The World being an easy thing to accomplish.

I tend to play everything on Normal...

But on the other hand (is my watch), if you hit a part of a quest/mission you can't do, the game ceases to be fun.. Perhaps an AI difficulty setting thing, that adjusts down if you really really can't do that part.

Hardest I can manage usually, for risk/reward type reasons.

Arse Effect the first is the only exception I can think of. I played it on easy because the combat was a steaming heap of shite & I ended up hating the game the first few times I played it.

I think my problem is that I haven't ever come across a part of a game that I can't do. Most of the time it's just a matter of adjusting the way you approach the problem. I.E. who you target first, direction of approach, finding a hidey hole etc.

I will default to Normal, but if it's a style of game I'm not very good at (fighters, for example), I will happily play on Easy.

With driving games I tend to turn all the driving aids off and play on the hardest setting. It all depends, I guess.

@Kovacs Super Mario 3D has that. If you keep dying on the same part, it'll give you a special power up to make it easier.

But I agree with games being challenging. I didn't enjoy Halo until I played it on Heroic and then suddenly, it clicked and I think its an amazing game

Yeah, Halo (3 in particular) is a game that completely transforms with the difficulty selected. In FPS games I usually go for normal for the first run through, then progress up to the hardest.

Would Geometry Wars be a better game for decreased difficulty? Gods no.

That is the noble and masterful way of playing games. However, a lot of people don't have the time/patience to strategise, so would rather beat that section and continue enjoying it. It's better that than leaving it and never coming back to it.

I tend to start on the hardest settings, then work down if I get stuck. I liked Oblivion because I was able to lower the setting at a point where I just couldn't get any further (stuck in that troll painting), otherwise I would have just given up I think. Things which annoy me are the unrealistic increases in difficulty, I wish there were a "realistic" setting, especially on shooter games, rather than make the enemy be super crack shots with instakill weapons, but still not notice when I shoot theIr partner, make them more alert and aware, they shouldn't know where I am at all times, but shouldn't just stand out in the open and take 100000000 bullets.*


*unless it is a 1000000000 bullet taking boss type character.

Most people don't play games for the amount of time you do. Almost nine hours a day on Skyrim is an awfully long time to do that sort of thing. That's a vocation, rather than a game.

If i get to a point in a game, which I can't progress past, I'll try and do it three times, then either drop the difficulty, come back to it the next day, or bin it as a one of those things. I'll not bother walking around everywhere doing everything, either. I've played New Vegas for about 60 hours now, and that's long enough. I think I'll either wind it up as quickly as I can and then put it on the shelf to rest, or just stop.

I think you probably have more patience than I do, also you have played a lot of games so you're going to be better than average at them. I tend to find that just leaving the difficulty on whatever the default is suits me fine. But it depends on the game type too. Racing games I tend to up the difficulty but rarely "complete" them. I just like getting about as fast as I can on each track then finding a speed of AI that means I can have a race.

There have been times with some shooters where I have turned the difficulty down to easy, though. Invariably it's ones that I have judged to be not all that good and I just don't care to keep replaying the same shitty bit of some shitty game but I do still just about want to see the next section. Other ones (like Halo) as you say a higher difficulty makes them more fun. So yeah I think difficulty settings are a good idea but in order to get the best out of games you should use them to give yourself a bit of a challenge.

Good point Boobyaro. I think it depends how the game handles an increase in difficulty.

See, you play Modern Warfare multiplayer a lot which is an area that has quite a sizeable difficulty wall to break in to now. Should newer players be given higher health or maybe the perks first, which are then knocked off as your skill increases? For the difficulty, like.

Funny thing is, these aids can sometimes make the driving much harder. All-Stars Racing is practically unplayable on iOS by default, but turn off all the supposed driving aids and it's almost as responsive and tight as a Mario Kart game on the GBA or DS.

Games that are all about the controls and feel, such as driving games and bemani style games I will play on harder settings.
Games that have a story to them I will play on easier settings.

I think it depends what sort of difficulties increasing the difficulty causes you to encounter as well as the number of options set before you. To go back to Halo increasing the difficulty forces you to try different things, some shooters it just means that you have to shoot the same pop-up targets more quickly and more times, not really fun.

As I just mentioned in the Skyrim thread because I didn't see this one, I would rather play games on hard, but due to not having the luxury of a lot of time to play on them I tend to go for easy, otherwise I know I'll never get to the end.

What about GTAIV, which had no difficulty settings? I thought that was perfectly weighted in the difficulty stakes, but you hear Dara O'Briain complaining about it in his set. Did any of you just give up?

Didn't GTA do "dynamic difficulty", and make people tougher / weaker depending on how well it thought you were doing?

Difficulty must be incredibly difficult to judge for game makers now that everyone and their grandma is playing. I prefer a challenge but even challenge must be judged in the context of the game you're playing.

Dark Souls is perfectly judged but I dare say that balance didn't happen overnight and must have taken hundreds of man hours to get right.

But...I've played games were the difficulty is so frustrating that I've wanted to tone it down just do I could get some enjoyment out of it. I played Doom 3 on the hardest difficulty from the outset and it was almost unplayable such that I got no enjoyment out of it at all. A tedious slog through a tedious game. I persevered of course and smashed it but only cause I'm awesome. But I hated every fucking last minute of it. I played it on an easier setting later on and it was infinitly more fun. I could enjoy the atmosphere, the scare and pipes bellowing steam without fear that a painful firefight would see me repeating the game section time and time again.

I tend to think that action games lend themselves to an easier difficulty than other types of game. I played MW3 on hardened and got so annoyed with stopping and reloading when the game was trying so hard to push me through a roller coaster. I dropped the difficulty down and it was a joy to play - blasting and jumping and swimming and knifing and so on. The game set the pace and allowed me to go along with it now rather than hiding behind a bin every other minute.

Uncharted wanted me to rattle through it too but the higher difficulty stops the flow of the game dead too often.

And so on. So difficulty levels are there for all kinds of people at differing levels of ability. Some suit a higher difficulty or offer a challenge for higher player levels (RPS' and yhe like) while some suit a lower difficulty such as the action game that wants you to see all its got without too much fuss. That's my two pence done.



Mind you I've never dropped a game down to easy, just to normal at most. I'm not an animal.

Yeah, unlocked the second island I think, then to progress, there were tow missions I couldn't do after trying a few times, so said 'fuck it' and on the shelf it went. Assassin's Creed went the same way, very early on. Mass Effect was dull and boring, and I didn't like Far Cry2 too much, so stopped playing them. After 50 hours into Oblivion, not being able to continue the main quest caused that to be shelved, too. Mirror's Edge irritated me, but 'Ive written things like that before.

I gave up on GTAIV because I thought it was rubbish.

Yup, I gave up at one particular mission, not because of the difficulty as such but because trying again meant driving for about ten minutes whilst listening to the same bits of dialogue. That sort of thing is unforgivable in game design as far as I'm concerned. Also probably some other game had come out in the meantime.

GTA IV is the best game this generation, I agree.

My gripe is more with games that don't let you alter downwards once you have started. I usually go with 'normal' and got a bit stuck in the pretty average warhammer space marine about 2/3rds in a bit with massive checkpoint gaps. As i couldn't seem to punt the difficulty down, and i couldn't face starting from scratch again, i gave up on it.

I think they acknowledged that the checkpoints in missions were an issue due to The Ballad of Gay Tony introducing them. I didn't actually like GTAIV until I played that expansion.

When I come across a section that's tougher than the rest, it turns into a kind of puzzle. Small steps to progress as in "ah, that guy comes up there, but his mate's got an RPG so he needs to go down first. I can duck behind that barrel, ah no I've been shot before I get there, so maybe... that crate" etc. I find it gives a better level of smugness when I've finally beaten it.

I also start everything on "normal" (exception being Gears The First which I started on hardcore for reasons I'm unsure of) then jump up to the hardest difficulty, usually for achievement reasons. I usually find normal is tough enough when I haven't got to grips with the controls and particular idiosyncrasies of the game yet, anything higher will leave me frustrated. There are very very few games I've found so tough I had to drop down, but if needed then I will. Sure, it's not as satisfying, and the challenge is important, but it's more satisfying than not getting to see the rest of the game because you're stuck.

There was no Normal on Gears 1, just Casual, Hardcore and Insane.

That's fine and i'll do that when i'm enjoying the game (deus ex), but when it's an averagefest that i've got from lovefilm i just can't be bothered and can use the time some other way.

How on earth, for a given game, are you supposed to know the difficulty level that suits you up front?

Some games become very different experiences on different levels -- not diluted, just different. Just Cause 2 feels utterly different on Easy than it does on Hard -- it becomes an action-filled romp rather than a careful shooter. Thing is, I felt the game mechanics much more suited the romp; I played it on Easy and was very happy to do so.

There's no one-size-fits-all answer here I think. No answer that suits all players, and no answer that suits all games.

I have to say I got the same level of smugitude when beating the bit that had me stuck in Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust, that I did from anything in any of the "good" games I've played. I refuse to let a game beat me.

Ha! I too, have finished LSL! Looking back I just think I don't have a lot of patience with FPS and GOW rip offs...

I could see this working, if implemented correctly, obviously something like that would be open to abuse, but if they took into account your stats (K/D ratio for example) and applied perks based around that, then that could be a good balancer. Hell, tbh they could apply perks based upon the sped of your connecton to the host!

I play everything on medium by default because I know for sure that the harder settings will lead to me being so frustrated that I'll stop enjoying it (thus negating the point); but conversely I can't bring myself to mentally 'pussy out' by playing on easy. This usually works alright but there have been quite a few games where certain sections just stop me in my tracks and lead to rage and a lack of enjoyment. Being a fucking idiot though I'll be unable to admit defeat and will just grind my way through it with gritted teeth so I can get back to enjoying it again. I'll even do this on games where you can adjust the difficulty down temporarily which makes me a double fucking idiot because I'm knowingly ruining my enjoyment even though I know there's an alternative that will cost me nothing.

The root cause here of course is that I'm shit at games in that I'll sometimes tend to keep repeating the same approach over and over when I get a kicking rather than taking it as a cue that I'm doing something wrong. I know that's wrong and stupid but I struggle to realise it in the heat of the moment for some reason. It would also help if I was better at seeing a challenge as an actual fun thing to surmount and not simply as a barrier to progress at which to be annoyed. That's a real stupid failing of mine and I'd love to have the (totally correct) attitude Dimrill mentions of seeing things as a puzzle to be resolved instead.

Anyway, my approach will probably need to change when I go finally back to Uncharted 3 tonight as frustration with one of the final levels led to me breaking my hand a few weeks ago (*sigh* yes, I know) so I'm now more than ready to dip the difficulty down to progress rather than literally risk broken bones.

Jesus, that post really doesn't leave me in a good light at all does it?

It's Battlefield 3's stupid vehicle perks that got me thinking on that. There is literally no point in trying to fly any of the vehicles in that now because everybody who does has already boosted their's up with heat-seeking rockets and increased armour or thermal vision. They swat you out of the sky as soon as you're airbourne.

I play virtually everything at 'normal' , or the default , if i enjoy the game enough i will go back through on a harder setting , and I also really like games where playing at a different level gives a different experience.

As an example Pac-Man Celine Dion version , you can play at normal but when you switch the game mode to hard or expert the enemies go faster and to compensate you start off at a faster speed as well , if you want to go for the highest score you need to be playing it on the highest difficulty setting.

Would another possibility for online stuff would be to have an option to put people in matches with others at a similar skills level? I don't play CoD et al though so I don't know if there are other reasons that wouldn't work (over and above the possible technical difficulties involved in implementing it of course).

The deathstreaks are designed to assist with that, I guess - die 5 times in a row without killing anyone and a perk kicks in. Not sure it really does anything to address it, mind.

I do think multiplayer is different. Mainly in that if you're not very good, you play on not doing very well and dying a lot, but you're in different situations every time. In most single-player games if you're not very good and you die a lot, you're doing the exact same piece of the game over and over again and the enemies come at you in exactly the same way etc. That's where it gets frustrating and the ability to knock down the difficulty to get past a certain section is welcomed.

There is skill matching, but if you're playing against a Battlefield 2/BC/BC2 veteren who's only just bought that game, it doesn't differentiate. Plus there was always the sods in Modern Warfare who used to quit just before the game ending so that they kept their low skill level to "pwn n00bs".

Holy fuck, that's ridiculous.

I was reading a research paper on this the other day. It concluded that the major reasons for peoples topping playing games on-line were swearing and stuff like that and camping the best areas. The didn't seem to care about the 'bullying' of lower level characters by higher level ones, nor account hacking and stuff like that. I've a friend who has written quite extensively on this sort of thing, and I'll dig some things up later, if anyone is interested. It is, of course, sociology, so frankly I'm impressed they can even draw graphs, but y'know, it's all data, mulled about to reach some kind of vague conclusion before writing it is all society's fault and women should eat more.

I would be extremely interested in that, Mali, ar.

Personally, I play everything on 'normal'. I don't like the game to be a chore but at the same time, I don't want it to be a walk-through. Unless I literally am doing a walk-through post completion to get cheevos/trophies, in which case I will turn it down to 'easy'.

Gaming isn't just for gamers...it's much more mainstream now and sometimes people need a slower start until they get the hang of a games mechanics. The children start some games off on 'easy', we rib them a bit for it but as long as they're advancing and enjoying it, who cares?

A lot of it is about achieving completion i.e. getting to the end of the story, people expect to be able to finish games now, regardless of their ability. We had loads of Mega Drive games I came no-where near completing as a child, people who did where often revered as heroes...Perhaps that's the biggest problem, anyone with an ounce of co-ordination can complete games, which may cheapen the achievement for some.

But getting through a game is what keeps people coming back and spending money on more. That's not a bad thing, it's what fuels development and hopefully improves the standard of future games.

Clarkson has nothing on you!

Halo2 had the best skill matched games I found, nothing has really come close since, maube that is because there are far more idiots playing on line than there was 6 years ago.

I don't quite agree with that. Spectrum game difficulty was utterly brutal, as was arcade game difficulty at the time. I loved every single second of it and played both types for hours, spending all my pocket/birthday/xmas money on it. There are things I used to play (and win!) as a nipper that I can't play today. I can't say it's made me like games less.

Halo.

MW had no skillskill matching

Remember that a lot of these games came or were based on the arcade where the idea was that the game should suck up your 10p in a reasonable amount of time and force you to an end so someone else can put there money in to play (*).

It also ties back to the time when you'd pay that £4.99 to buy the game and have no other cash for a long time so you needed to get your moneys worth out of it - games with much higher difficulty spikes were good because they lasted you longer !

(* )Later you got the 'continues' option which was made so you'd just keep pumping money in :-(

<DavPaz apologises for his lack of coherent thoughts on the matter. Instead, here are a few salient points>

'Normal' = Balanced
'Easy'/'Hardcore' = Unbalanced

Ass Crud has no difficulty settings. It's awesome.

I'll play everything on the default difficulty settings to begin with. If there are achievements for then playing on a higher difficulty level, I'll then make a step up afterwards, or if it's a game I want to play through again.

However, I bought the old Street Fighter II - Hyper Fighting the other day and I might have to drop the difficulty level down to get anywhere. Although when I checked, it was only on 2 stars (out of 8, I think), so I'm probably just crap.