What difficulty setting do you tend to play games on?

Normal but if the game is shite I usually bump it down to easy to get it over with quicker (do this with most Naughty Dog games)

Mafro wrote:Normal but if the game is shite I usually bump it down to easy to get it over with quicker (do this with most Naughty Dog games)

Don't you strawberry floating dare say anything bad about The Last Of Us, you don't live far away from me and I'll burn your house down while you sleep :lol:

I play any story based games on easy as I don't have the gaming reflexes I once had.

First time playthrough it's 'Normal' all the way to experience the game as it was intended.

I usually choose normal for most games but if a game has a difficulty slider or a wide range of difficulties (such as the Civilization series) I'll stick it somewhere between normal and easy.

Mostly normal but I may do a second run in hard for a trophy or if I really enjoy the game.

Most games on normal. I don't have time to waste doing sections over and over. I play Civ on Prince which I suppose is easy-medium whilst still being fun. I used to be able to play Soul Calibur 2 on expert but I can't anymore. I keep football games on normal because I like a bit of escapism where the mighty Arsenal destroy all comers and don't really care about online anymore.

More games should do what Modern Warfare did and have a tutorial which suggests a difficulty setting (although I kept retrying that level until I got the achievement and then forgot to turn the difficulty back down to my actual level :lol:

)

I always play Prince on Civ and find it too easy, but I just can't stand the higher difficulties not having better AI, but just unfairly buffing the computer opponents.

OrangeRKN wrote:I always play Prince on Civ and find it too easy, but I just can't stand the higher difficulties not having better AI, but just unfairly buffing the computer opponents.

I've actually had some really tight games recently on Prince. The last one involved me, as Greece, using a network of spies to disrupt the American and Australian space programmes until I could get a culture victory. Below that difficulty it's almost like the mechanics don't work because you're not really competing against anyone, the biggest threat is barbarians!

I might try a higher difficulty on Civ V, because as you say VI's AI is all over the place.

Heroic

Generally play on east, I’m not too fussed about being ‘challenged’ and ‘pushing the limit’ I just want to enjoy the ride and all being well finish the game.

imbusydoctorwho wrote:Mostly normal but I may do a second run in hard for a trophy or if I really enjoy the game.

This.

Only game I bump from the start is PES.

4 kids and 60 hour weeks mean easy is the default setting in this house :-(

You know what I hate? Why do games ask you to pick the difficulty from the start, often before you've barely played the game?

It's really weird that it asks the player, who at this point has probably only pressed start, to guage the difficulty of a title they haven't yet played.

I wish developers actually had more confidence in their difficulty balancing and made the normal difficulty less frustrating by testing for difficulty spikes and what not. Or have adaptive difficulty, which very few games have still.

I bloody hate loading up a new game, being confronted with difficulty options and vague descriptions ("Normal: you enjoy action games") and then having to go look up on the internet which is the best one to start with.

The other thing I hate is that there is often no reason to play on Hard. Games rarely reward you for playing in Hard nowadays, bar a ticket Achievement or Trophy. And I'd argue that that reward is something "outside" the game itself too. If the only reason you're playing/enjoying a game on Hard is because you're going to get a Trophy/Achievement at the end of it, then the game shouldn't have a Hard mode. It's doing nothing in-game to reward you and you're just slogging through it.

Remember when Hard used to mean something? Like how Halo was arguably more rewarding on Legendary. Or how GoldenEye and Perfect Dark used to open up more of a level and add more objectives on Hard that changed the way you play? Area 51 in PD was a fairly linear stage on the easiest difficulty, but really opened up in to a bigger facility when you started moving up the difficulties. And the Carrington Villa had you start off the mission in a much more precarious position if you played on Perfect Agent.

That's how you reward difficulty. You make the player complete the easier ones, get a taste for things, and then encourage them to push themselves, try a little harder, see a little more of the level, uncover the "true" version of the stage. But Normal and Easy are still there to complete the game.

I've been playing Dark Souls 2 recently and that, mostly, does difficulty right (not quite as well as others in the series due to some cheap bits). That series is confident in it's difficulty and though it's challenging, I always feel like I'll overcome it.

It's not just the age-old example of being harder because the enemy's numbers are going up and yours are going down. I hate that too.

I hate everything.

I tend to opt for Normal on a first try, then if I like it sufficiently to play through again, I'll up it for the added challenge.

These days I tend to go easy, unless the game tells me the easy mode is more or less just to see the story. I have so many games I want to play, I’d rather get through things a bit quicker, then maybe go back to the stuff I really, really enjoyed. For the odd genre I especially enjoy, like stealth, I’ll play on hard from the start.

Normal first, then hard if I've enjoyed it, then easy just to try it. I tend to do this on any kingdom hearts runs I play

Normal, but I will say my pet hate is games that penalise the player for playing on easy. Like missing levels or bad endings.

Celeste does this perfectly.

Parksey wrote:
IRemember when Hard used to mean something? Like how Halo was arguably more rewarding on Legendary. Or how GoldenEye and Perfect Dark used to open up more of a level and add more objectives on Hard that changed the way you play? Area 51 in PD was a fairly linear stage on the easiest difficulty, but really opened up in to a bigger facility when you started moving up the difficulties. And the Carrington Villa had you start off the mission in a much more precarious position if you played on Perfect Agent.

That's how you reward difficulty. You make the player complete the easier ones, get a taste for things, and then encourage them to push themselves, try a little harder, see a little more of the level, uncover the "true" version of the stage. But Normal and Easy are still there to complete the game.

I utterly hate it when games hide content behind difficulty settings, I've paid for the whole game so why should I be forced to play at a high difficulty level to see everything.

Devil May Cry (original PS2 version) wound me up with that, when playing on easy, huge sections of the game were skipped and the game then has the audacity to abruptly end and say something along the lines of "Now play on hard to see the real game, you pussy"

Capcom you bastards *shakes fist*

Usually Normal for a first time.

On a replay though, Hard at least.

I usually go for hard mode but stick to normal for JRPGs to avoid difficulty spikes. I should probably ramp up Xenoblade to a harder level when I get back into it and I'm up to speed again.

What difficulty setting do you tend to play games on?

What difficulty setting do you tend to play games on?

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