Gameplay "difficulty"" settings

[IQandHDR]

I really dislike the "difficulty" settings in games today.

Back in the day games were much more unforgiving.
Like eg. X-Wing.
Last chapter, second to last battle. BLAM. You die.
Go back to the start, begin a new career and do better this time.
No easy mode, no being held in the hand.

It gave an sense of achievement when you finally cracked "the code" and completed a hard challenge.
Games like "Populous", "Wing Commander" or "Another world" are also great exmaples of games that have no difficulty settings.
And I find the gameplay had a better design of that.
The developers made the game hard and did not have to resort to eg. "bullet sponges" to adapt for more difficulty settings or other cheats.

You just started the game up and any failure was on you, not the game.
It feels like a "participation trophy" setting more than anything else today.

For me "difficulty" settings are a "must cater to all" and it impacts gameplay in a negativ way.

 

[cheapchips]

I'm old(ish). Don't generally have all the time in the world to bash against difficulty for the sake of it. Not always. Just being able to experience some escapism for a few hours is worthwhile entertainment.

 

[IQandHDR]

I'm old(ish). Don't generally have all the time in the world to bash against difficulty for the sake of it. Not always. Just being able to experience some escapism for a few hours is worthwhile entertainment.

Movies does that for me.
I games I want a challenge, not being held in hand and spoon fed

 

[Cyan]

for me it depends on the type of game you are playing. I am playing Indiana Jones on Easy mode now 'cos it's a game to enjoy the story and the graphics, plus out of laziness I'm using the default WASD control kb + mouse combo, and I never use WASD controls, so I am getting used to it but on Normal or Hard I wouldn't last a second because I move and manage the controls in a very clumsy manner.

My next game when I complete Indy is going to be Stalker 2 and I am going to play it on the default Normal mode.

 

[pcchen]

For me "difficulty" settings are a "must cater to all" and it impacts gameplay in a negativ way.

This puzzles me... I mean, if games don't have difficulty settings, it's very likely that most games would be too easy to you, otherwise they probably won't sell very well.
Difficulty settings actually allows you to have a harder mode where you can enjoy the game more, while the game can still sell to other more casual players.
So you should be happy that there's difficulty modes, no?

 

[davis.anthony]

Is this a technology thread?

 

[IQandHDR]

This puzzles me... I mean, if games don't have difficulty settings, it's very likely that most games would be too easy to you, otherwise they probably won't sell very well.
Difficulty settings actually allows you to have a harder mode where you can enjoy the game more, while the game can still sell to other more casual players.
So you should be happy that there's difficulty modes, no?

"X-wing" was anything but easy.
I learned really fast where the "EJECT" keyboard combo was, because dying was bad.

Like I described, the different difficulty modes impacts gameply desig IMHO.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

That doesn't address the point. How do you go about reaching a wide enough audience to have an economically viable product? The difficult games you played in the past (and some were just really bad game design because they didn't know any better, and/or an attempt to extend the value of the game through 'replayability' by being impossible to complete) cost very little to make so didn't need to sell to 5+ million players.

 

[IQandHDR]

That doesn't address the point. How do you go about reaching a wide enough audience to have an economically viable product? The difficult games you played in the past (and some were just really bad game design because they didn't know any better, and/or an attempt to extend the value of the game through 'replayability' by being impossible to complete) cost very little to make so didn't need to sell to 5+ million players.

Then it turns into a debate if you make the target group so wide, the game becomes bland.
Like take "X-wing" again.
Financial succes and game ratings were high.

Star Wars: X-Wing (video game) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I still enjoy "X-wing" via a mod, it make my pusle rise and gives me a feeling of accomplishment when completing a difficult mission.

XWVM mod for STAR WARS™ - X-Wing Special Edition

XWVM is a mod to the original X-Wing game from Lucas Arts and Totally Games by Larry Holland and Edward Kilham. We are re-implementing the executable to extend the game beyond its original hardware support. The mod of course requires the player to own...

www.moddb.com

Something later SW games does not give me.

The "participation trophy" approach makes gameplay bland, boring and too simple IMHO.

If hard games were not selling, the entire "dark souls" series should have failed.

 

[trinibwoy]

Dark souls 1 is way easier than battle toads and contra. No comparison

 

[Shifty Geezer]

If hard games were not selling, the entire "dark souls" series should have failed.

Your argument is because one series of games can be very hard and successful, all games should be?

 

[IQandHDR]

Your argument is because one series of games can be very hard and successful, all games should be?

Game that care for gameplay and avoiding eg. "bullet sponges" should be.
The gameplay should target a certain level, instaed of insisting that "everybody can" play and thus erodin the gameplay.

 

[IQandHDR]

Another great game with no difficulty settings were "Dune".
Took me months to figure out how to beat that game.
An "easy" mode would have made the experience "meh".

 

[IQandHDR]

And a "fixed" difficulty setting already excists in online games, I just want it back for singleplayer games

 

[davis.anthony]

I'm confused by this thread, nearly all games give you an option of selecting your difficulty setting when starting a new game.

So just select a harder setting if you want a challenge, no one forces you to play in easy mode.

 

[IQandHDR]

I'm confused by this thread, nearly all games give you an option of selecting your difficulty setting when starting a new game.

So just select a harder setting if you want a challenge, no one forces you to play in easy mode.

The design suffers in order to cater for all the difficulty levels, that is my point.

 

[davis.anthony]

The design suffers in order to cater for all the difficulty levels, that is my point.

No it doesn't, it normally just limits health items and increases player damage which doesn't limit the design of anything.

 

[davis.anthony]

And a "fixed" difficulty setting already excists in online games, I just want it back for singleplayer games

This comment is also false, I've been playing Counter Strike Source since it released and if I go on 10 different servers, the difficulty of each will be completely different.

It's the same for any other online game, each server or match has completely different player skill levels so the difficulty is never fixed and is always changing because player skill is always changing.

If the difficulty was fixed as claimed I would be able to pawn everyone on every server I play on, but I can't.

 

[trinibwoy]

PVE online games also have difficulty levels. Destiny, Division etc.

I’m struggling to think of game types where an easy mode can ruin the core gameplay. Platformers maybe? It’s tough to scale the hand-eye coordination and speed required to beat the most difficult platformers. Every other game type should be easy to scale difficulty though.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The premise is nonsense.

There's no such thing as a the 'perfect difficulty'. What's too hard for some people is too easy for others. There's no metric on 'difficulty' that can be used for balancing either. As a developer, you are an expert at your game. You play it, tune it, make it insanely easy for you, put it out there, and everyone struggles. It's always too hard and they never understand the nuances, no matter how easy you find it. So all you can do is pick a difficulty, see how people respond if you have the luxury of public testing, and ship it. Then some people will love it, some will find it too easy, others will find it too difficult.

The only way around that is variable difficulty.

The purpose of games is entertainment. The success of a game is surely the most people entertained? So a game that can scale and bring entertainment to a wide range of abilities and time investment is, I'd argue objectively, the better game. Unlike the mis-remembered yesteryear the OP imagines, many gamers these days are time poor. They haven't hours and hours they can spend of their precious limited downtime to 'git gud'. So scalability is essential to them being able to get the enjoyment of the game within their time constraints. Even more adjustments are being made available for those with special needs. Some people lack the motor controls or perception needed to play the games at the speed of the more typical player, so 'accessibility options', the evolved version of 'difficulty', allow fine-tuning to their tastes. While on the flip side, we also have Game+ modes introducing more challenges so difficulty can be ramped up beyond what the ordinary gamer wants.

And lastly, this idea that games had one difficulty and were awesome and everyone loved them - complete nonsense. There were games with challenges and these were satisfying when overcome, but there were also impossible games that were just frustration. Gamers hated that, controllers were thrown and games abandoned, and they invented solutions, with 8bit POKES and 16bit Action Replay/Game Shark cheat devices and pages of codes in magazines.

If there's one aspect to the argument that has validity, it's how difficulty scales, with a simple adjustment of health and damage not being as rewarding as an evolution of gameplay mechanics such as smarter enemies. Ideally, difficulty should scale in broader dimensions, and the simplicity of current solutions is perhaps disingenuous to more capable gamers who find their challenges have been watered down. Maybe also that the baseline difficulty is too low. Those are possibly meritorious points worth discussing, but that is not how the argument was presented which was just a rant about other people being able to enjoy games. Ideally games would be hard enough that the market shrinks to 5% its current size, leaving only real gamers who appreciate a challenge and are willing to invest, and all the slackers can sod off and do something else.