Games should not have difficulty levels. The intended experience should be the ONLY experience. Easy modes obviously rob you of the proper experience and anything offered in hard mode should've been in the normal mode. If you want the game to be harder than the intended experience, just do a self-imposed challenge.
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How will game journos play games without an easy mode OP?
Download a cheat table like everyone else, the entitled pricks.
They'll just pretend they played it like they're already doing.
Hahahaha, they didn't even finish the games.
I don't even understand how that shit is still a job. Half the time the game is leaked and their early reviews are pointless, the other half of the time the reviewers are throwing a massive shitfit and their "expert critiques" don't reflect the consumer experience whatsoever.
What about the people who can't physically finish it without a easy mode? More accessibility means more sales. Sure, that might mean dumb balancing and unfair shit on harder difficulties just for padding, but the people who actually make the money off it don't give a frick about that. Most the time at least.
Frick 'em. They shouldn't play the game. Not every game should be for everyone.
This. Hard games are such a rarity and morons have nearly every game in existence to choose from.
If you design a game for top 1% it won't sell.
these terms are acceptable.
What about quadriplegics and/or anencephaly sufferers? Surely everyone deserves to be able to play, even people who don't have functioning arms, legs, or brains. You're not ableist, are you?
Is he still alive?
Actually has a chance if he's the right type of frog.
What flavor ice cream is that?
French
do blind people get to enjoy movies the same way people with 20/20 vision do? no. if games want to be taken more serious as an "art form" (haha laugh whatever) then accessibility options need to be hidden away and not made a main feature, games need to play into the interactivity and challenge aspects more as its what separates it from other forms of media.
Why would you not want your art to be experienced by as many people as possible?
Adaptive difficulty is a good thing, and can ensure the game experience is tailored to the developers intent, like the Director system of Left 4 Dead.
>actually agreeing with the facetious argument about making games for literal braindead people
Ruse status: Cruised
Because pandering to as many people as possible can hinder the point of the piece itself.
>Adaptive difficulty is a good thing
Situationally like every other tool in a devs hand.
>Surely everyone deserves to be able to play
Nobody deserves anything, frick off commie
>makes a thread of demands that excludes others
>justifies it by saying nobody should ever have their demands ever met because if they cant handle it, they should frick off
okay then frick off moron
Anon, you're asking for them to make every game easy mode only. You really think the majority of AAA devs are gonna cater to people like us? The ones that do already drop the difficulty options.
I actually agree with you, but like the idea of having player options and techniques that make the game easier or harder in the one difficulty mode, more organically including options that change difficulty rather than just tuning numbers or having different modes.
>but like the idea of having player options and techniques that make the game easier or harder in the one difficulty mode, more organically including options that change difficulty
I hate this shit, the game shouldn't become easy as piss just because I don't want to restrict myself to playing in the most barebones fashion possible. Difficulty options mean the game can be difficult even if I'm using every option available to me. Everyone wins.
"One difficulty option" works specifically for games like Souls which aren't actually that mechanically difficult but rely on having a static level of difficulty for all players that can be overcome in different ways for community rapport. But this isn't necessary for every game.
I suck at video games: the post.
I think you fundementally misunderstood OP.
No, he's dumb because hard mode would not be implemented as normal because that isn't what would appeal to the masses.
You would just have every game watered down until you mod in a hard mode yourself.
I think the opposite. Players should be able to easily customise their game as much as they want. Developer intentions be damned, I just want to have fun.
Objectively and morally correct take. Journos and easy mode roaches should unironically kill themselves.
imagine malding over toys
Yea ok I'm not gonna quote all of you who said this but do you smug midwits not understand that if we get rid of the easy mode then the hard mode will also disappear?
That's the point you fricking mongoloid, as clearly stated by OP.
Yes so then every game just because Dark Souls where only the normies will be able to enjoy it's challenge??
>Games should not have difficulty levels. The intended experience should be the ONLY experience. Easy modes obviously rob you of the proper experience and anything offered in hard mode should've been in the normal mode.
This is objectively true, but haters will say you're anti-game journalist.
They should because if they don't they'll just cater to lowest common denominator and make the game brainless. This used to not be true but it is now that mainly morons play games.
For recent examples see Elden Ring and Monster Hunter World/Rise.
Both series that never had difficulty options, their default difficulty used to be hard. But now they're both braindead if you compare them to past games.
ok, granted. now every game is incredibly easy with no higher difficulties.
agreed. Paradox of choice hits super hard here. Everyone is more satisfied if there is no choice
I work long hours and have heart issues, if I don’t turn the difficulty down it’s just a stress simulator that makes me feel like shit, but I enjoy seeing good stories and aesthetics.
>plus I’ve always been sub par at games
I'm shit at games too despite how much I play them, but I try to play on hard whenever I can because I need my games to last longer.
If you play on easy you're going to finish in a fraction of the time and then you will run out of games to play.
Playing on hard or replaying on a harder difficulty can stretch out your playtime by forcing you to play more methodically and carefully, actually learn the game, and sometimes just straight up dampens your exp gains to ensure you have to play smart.
>Easy modes obviously rob you of the proper experience
In most games the only difference between difficulty modes is how many tries it will take you to clear a certain level. There is no "proper" number of attempts it should take you to beat a game. Entirely depends on how much time you're willing to spend with it.
I think they should when appropriate. 3D action games are the genre where they apply the best imo because they are made to be replayable and have complex game mechanics. Having a difficulty mode helps this because it let's the player start at what he thinks is his level of ability, and by playing the game, he hopefully gains enough knowledge that he can tackle a more difficult mode when the current difficulty is not challenging anymore.
In this case, all of these modes are the intended experiences. Ultimately, devs should do what they think it's best, and players should stop complaining when a game is not aimed at them.
>then do a self imposed challenge
If this is the case, there should be items that make you weaker and make them stronger, as well as items that enhance the enemy AI
But at that point WHY NOT JUST HAVE DIFFICULTY OPTIONS TO BEGIN WITH
Because for whatever reason, OP feels they shouldn't exist.
I think options are fine, but a game should clearly be balanced/designed around normal mode. Give the player enough customization options in strategy/tools to dynamically set their own difficulty. Easy mode should be reserved for people who are incapable of regular play (handicapped), and hard should be a setting for autists/neets (preferably with little to no reward for completion).
>normal is too easy
>hard is normal but has a random difficulty spike that make the game borderline impossible on a blind playthrough
>It's near the end of the game
>Beginner
>Very Easy
>Easy
>Normal
>Hard (Must beat the game on Beginner, Very Easy, Easy, and Normal to unlock)
>Very Hard (DLC exclusive)
>Extreme (Only unlocks when 1,000,000 people unlock and beat Hard)
>>Hard (Must beat the game
stop doing this shit
I think it's fair if the unlock is a beyond very hard difficulty like the MGS series European Extreme
it's pointless though, just let ppl play on the hardest difficulty from the get go, you shouldn't have to play through the game just to play the game again on a harder difficulty.
I always search for save files to bypass this bullshit.
>you should experience things the way I want you to experience them
Sit and spin moron. Not even easygay but I will defend to my dying breath the right for anyone to play on easier difficulties if they want to for any reason whatsoever, be it accessibility or just power fantasy.
Easymodes = less filtering = more cancer flooding the hobby
Easy should be unlocked after you beat the game on normal.
There has never been a single good hobby, because people are involved.
If you gatekpt better maybe things wouldn't be so bad homosexual. Powerlifting is still greate because the standards are so high. If they started making changes to accomodate people who only want to pozz and destroy it would be dead.
>Powerlifting is still greate because the standards are so high.
lol
lmao even
Everyone who goes to the gym is an insufferable homosexual about it. There is not one rational, reasonable gym-goer.
>powershitters
>great
Lose weight, you fatfrick.
god nothing more cringey than powershartters talking about powershartting on the internet.
Triple A is not a hobby thing. It's just consuming. If you consider video games as your hobby look for smaller titles and/or create something video game related yourself.
>you should experience things the way I want you to experience them
Yes? That's the point of a GAME. Overcoming deliberate rules/challenges.
>game's difficulty fluctuates based on the skill of the player
>easy mode lowers the difficulty ceiling and hard mode removes the lower ramp up
easy and medium is for people who don't regularly play video games, the intended experience from people who design games for a living and people who play them as a hobby is definitely hard if not the highest difficulty setting. There is however nothing wrong with giving people the choice of how much they want to invest themselves into beating a game for whatever reason they decide. Stop trying to fit everyone into a single categoryg
The skill gap between a small child and an adult veteran player is too great to have only one difficulty.
>they can just grind their face against it for months and git gud like I did as a kid
When you were a kid you got two games a year; one for Christmas and one for your birthday. Your options were "git gud" or "don't play video games." Today the gaming market is super saturated and there are more good free games to play than time to play them, much less games you have to pay for. If you want to make and keep customers paying for your games, you need to support and account for all types of players; the children just starting out, and the adults who have been playing for decades.
>Souls games don't have difficulty levels
>sweaty tryhards still find things to call "easy mode"
You will NEVER win. If people don't have difficulty settings they invent it.
Remember when people bad at games were vool with judt playing the first few stages and not making it past that? Just make the early stages easy and the later ones hard.
Correct and based.
Difficulty levels are a crutch that encourage shit design by expecting the end-user to fudge the balance to their taste.
It shows that the developer has no faith in the coherence of their work.
The ONE THING that separates good games from bad ones is clever difficulty. Games like Castlevania, Super Meat Boy or Super Monkey Ball have very clever difficulty where you feel judt challenged enough but never overwhelmed, whereas shit games like Fire Emblem Three Houses or Horizon Forbidden Dawn have a gazillion options where they are either braindead easy or borderline impossible.
I like difficulty options except when they do this:
>Easy: Literal moron baby mode, frick you
>Normal: Hard mode in any other game
>Hard: Somehow easier than Normal mode
stalker
You do less damage on Master and your accuracy isn't affected.
you do more damage on master
that's not even what the myth is
the myth is your bullets don't disappear
neither is correct
http://www.metacognix.com/stlkrsoc/WhatYouKnowThatAintSo.html
works on my copy
it literally doesn't, you've memed yourself
this is a mandella effect moment i believe.
It's an extremely pervasive bit of misinformation that survived for years and years. I believe it lives on as a cope. Shadow of Che/ornobyl has some truly fricked up combat mechanics, like only the first bullet in a burst of an automatic weapon doing "full" damage, or certain "bones" in a character model taking very little damage (so when an enemy does that "oh no I am hurt" animation and covers himself with his arms, if you hit the arms you do very little damage, which creates the impression of a bullet sponge). Naturally, people good at the game will aim for the head and not experience said problems, so they will dunk on complainers by saying "lol play on Master noob".
it's mods that do that I think
but if someone sucks at normal, them playing on easy should be as challenging as you playing on normal (in theory).
>The intended experience should be the ONLY experience.
What if the devs intended experience includes allowing the players to choose the difficulty of the game?
>hardest difficulty is the intended experience that all the mechanics are balanced around but most likely too difficult for a newcomer to the game
>lower difficulties allow players to learn and get used to fundamental mechanics before they jump into the highest difficulty and refine their skills further
The perfect way to handle things.
What about just having the first few stages be easy and then making it more difficult?
You are forgetting about the part where some people might have played 1 000 hours of video games in their lives, some 10 000 and some below 100. Being able to choose is a good thing.
I've played 10 000 hours of games yet I've never played Thief. How am I supposed to know which difficulty to pick when I literally lose out on content from playing normal mode? Frick that shit
You have never played any game with stealth mechanics in them?
Metal Gear Solid
Zelda
Brogue
Planet Escape Tournament
Metroid Fusion
Maybe some more stealth sections I don't remember. I've also played System Shock 2 whose engine is apparently the same yet I have no clue what to expevt from Thief, or how fair the difficulty is. I'd much rather just have one difficulty where it gets progressively harder and starts out so easy I can become used to it comfortably.
So you have bunch of experience and you are asking for people with 0 experience to have similar learning curve as you? You're an idiot.
you're one step away from saying "How did people know to jump on the enemies in Super Mario Bros 1?"
Yea well if I make my mom play she probably has much smaller chance of knowing that than someone who player a similar game before...
Because that makes the beginning of the game a slog for more naturally skilled players or repeat playthroughs.
Many action games make the beginning portions of the game easy on medium difficulty but immediately throw difficult enemies at you right from the start on higher difficulties to keep things interesting.
>repeat playthroughs
Designing for repeat playthroughs is moronic, barely anybody actually replays games anymore.
>easy for kids
>normal for first time players
>hard for bored veterans, minmaxers and explorers who look around every corner
thief did it right
hard/expert is the best way to play thief for your first time
probably, I tend to play sneaking games on hardest difficulty only
but I'm talking about someone who has never touched the genre and has no idea what he's doing
Caring about how other people choose to play a game is cringe. No one gives a frick what you decide to do in a singleplayer game.
100% agreed. Love the way the souls games handle it. There's one flat difficulty, it's possible to clear at the very beginning, but it's super difficult. You can level up like crazy and make the experience a cakewalk if you want as well
Agree. There should be exactly 1 intended difficulty to play the game on. Any hard modes or challenge levels only unlock after first playthrough. If necessary a ini edit or cheat code for game journalist mode can be added.
agreed other than certain cases like 4x games where the AI just isn't going to be able to cope with the amount of decisions without bonuses and even then having 8 levels in Civ is overkill
RPGs benefit from having difficulties if you want an extra challenge, and roguelikes often have plenty of modifiers to give variety to gameplay. i dont see the problem with it.
>as intended
i bought the product, i will play as *I* intend, not as someone else intends. you can tell zoomers are posting here who never got to pick what server and game play mode they play on, but more customization is never a bad thing. go back to playing overwatch, fkn moronic consoomers
What about just choosing to play a harder game instead? Like for platformers you can play Kirby for an easy romp, Mario for medium challenge, Donkey Kong Country when you want to focus and rom hacks of all three when you want to exert yourself
when i cant beat a game i refund it. i dont have the time or energy anymore to master a video game but sometimes that doesnt meant it cant be fun if i can play it with my brain off while listening to a podcast or something.
if im getting my ass thoroughly kicked by a game, i usually refund it because i know ill never be able to enjoy it and, in fact, games that are "difficult" often have nothing going for them other than being difficult and any experienced gamer knows that, see jumping games,
if i want to play soccer, i can kick a ball at the wall, i can play with a child, i can play with adults or i can play in a minor or major league. all of these are essentially different games all played soccer that offer a different experience, based on the difficult. i dont know why games cant have a difficulty or customization.
its funny because i often play on modded servers and most people who want "higher difficult" are actually bed shitters who would be laughed out of any competitive server. they just make enemies have 1m HP but they give themselves infinite bullets also. or they completely make the game unplayable because they dont have the IQ to understand what makes the game difficult in the first place.
>but more customization is never a bad thing
But it can be.
One thing I often see said about dark souls in other places is that people are glad it forced them to get better at the game rather than just lower the difficulty, which some would have done.
If you are the developer and that's the type of experience you want to give then customization can run directly counter to it pushing people away from it and it is ultimately up to them if they're fine with that.
i cant speak of dark souls, never played it. im told theyre challenging, but looking at the gameplay, it doesnt appeal to me at all, this sort of eastern idea of "big monster with slow animations that you roll away from". they all do that and it never appealed to me.
People just need to understand that different difficulty modes are in fact different GAMES. Usually one of those games is good, and the other games suck.
I agree there shouldn't be difficulty selection unless one of them says "normal", or "this is the best experience". Because otherwise you're just guessing.
when masters are in charge of environmental story telling
>The intended experience should be the ONLY experience.
This is your brain on consoles.
>Normal
The game you initially make. Designed with a smooth difficulty curve as it introduces new enemies/obstacles/mechanics.
>Hard
Designed for a second playthrough but not necessarily NG+ although it can be. Has all the enemies/obstacles/mechanics introduced over the course of Normal utilized from the start. Level design is the same, you're just given more adversity now that you know the game and have tools to handle it.
>Easy
Normal with more lives/health/checkpoints. The difficulty technically remains the same, but you are allowed more mistakes.
>Challenge
Hard with less lives/health/checkpoints. Meant for people who have mastered the game and want to prove it, or for people who want to master it and need a trial by fire.
>Dev Commentary
Casual mode disguised as a feature so casuals don't feel bad. The player is made nigh-invincible as they play through the game with text and/or audio commentary explaining design decisions in real time. Background elements turn into concept art, the music changes to WIP versions, cutscenes have their animatics/storyboards.
if a game has to have difficulty modes, I expect it to mock you for being a pussy
The hardest difficulty is always the full game. If you pick a lower difficulty setting you aren't playing the same game at all, by definition you are missing out on a large part of the experience.
You misunderstand difficulty. easy mode is for a story, normal is for a balance on story and combat, and hard is all combat.