Letting the player choose difficulty settings is fundamentally bad game design

[Halfling Rodeo]

However, I still find games in which I'm not supposed to choose a difficulty setting in the beginning far more exciting, because I can just take every challenge or easiness as it comes, rather than thinking back to the difficulty setting and thinking I made the wrong choice there.

This sounds autistic. Who cares if the challenge is greater or lesser than what you're playing? As long as it's enjoyable fuck worrying so much.

Can we please stop praising From soft's awful difficulty balance? You can splatter Rennala your first time playing Elden ring. If you run into her late you completely crush her. Many of us had wildly different difficulty experiences because we took different paths. Opening the Caelid chest sky rockets the difficulty and running into an early game boss after you've done Nokron makes them a joke. You can skip entire boss phases if you encounter them too late. In my first play through Big Mogh never finished his spell. I killed him before he entered phase 2 and everyone else was telling me how hard he was. That's not good difficulty balancing and it's not good story telling either.

 

[Viata]

As I already said once, difficulty in games now just mean "enemies turn into sponge bullets, you receive more damage and and the enemies can deal even more damage" and there is no reason to change difficulty because it's not introducing anything new, just making you waste your time.
Devil May Cry 3 would change enemy's AI, allow them to even use Devil Trigger, among other stuff if you increase the difficulty. Magical Chase for PC Engine, has 6 stages, but on Easy you can only pay the first 3 stages. Then we have old games that would unlock cool shit, extra ending, whatnot.

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

Devil May Cry 3 would change enemy's AI, allow them to even use Devil Trigger, among other stuff if you increase the difficulty

DMC's difficulty is weird because it's not intended to be an actual selection like most games. You're supposed to start on normal and work up to DMD as you unlock stuff. Hard is intended to be played with your full weapon set and enemy encounters are changed with that in mind. DMC3 also got fucked with and had it's difficulties change during localisation. I think Normal in the west was Hard in Japan and we got a new mode for our hard before DMD was the same.

 

[Viata]

DMC's difficulty is weird because it's not intended to be an actual selection like most games

Agreed. It doesn't change the fact that playing them add more stuff instead of just bullet sponge enemies.

 

[Bester]

I'm currently playing Elden Ring and spirit ashes summons

Spirit ashes? So you're not playing Elden Ring, huh. Well, maybe next time you create a character you'll decide to play it. Anyway, good job on launching at least.
Man, Elden Ring is a good game. I'm so jealous of you that you haven't played it yet.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Letting the diner choose how they want their steak done is fundamentally bad cooking.

Why is nobody mocking this take? This is unironically true. Asking the staff in a nice restaurant for your steak to be well done is akin to asking them to spit in your food and serve it with a side of ketchup.

If the diner (or the player) needs to tell you how to do your fucking job, you're shit and shouldn't be in the industry. Not all games should be for all players, and if someone is playing a game that's too easy or difficult for them, well that was a failure of marketing or a really stupid consumer. It doesn't take some sort of 79 year old grognard to figure out that Europa Universalis is going to require a few more neurons to get through than Mario Party.

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

Why is nobody mocking this take? This is unironically true. Asking the staff in a nice restaurant for your steak to be well done is akin to asking them to spit in your food and serve it with a side of ketchup.

I enjoy well done steak with ketchup. Fuck you if you don't like it. You're not eating it so why do you care? I don't like eating bloody meat but I don't tell you how to eat your food. And if I did it would involved stilts and a weed whacker!

 

[Damned Registrations]

I don't care. I eat fucking ramen and 25 cent donuts from walmart and think it's great. It's still fundamentally bad cooking. No need to get butthurt over enjoying low quality garbage.

The question is, why do you feel like a great chef should have to make garbage for your shit tastes? Just go to fucking McDonalds or whatever.

 

[KD6-3.7]

HAPPY NEW YEAR
edit:

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

The question is, why do you feel like a great chef should have to make garbage for your shit tastes? Just go to fucking McDonalds or whatever.

A great chef should be able to prepare food to the customer's tastes or he's not a great chef. If I like well done meat and I like ketchup with it then fuck you cook it for me, I'm the one paying. I'm not butthurt, I'm sick of Redditors demanding everyone eat nearly raw meat and acting like anything else makes you a lesser person. You picked it up from youtube videos and think you're an expert in cooking meat all of a sudden. While actual good chefs say "the customer is king, If that's the way they like it, that's the way I cook it." They're getting paid either way so what the fuck do they care if you like your meat cooked more or less?

 

[9ted6]

Difficulty settings are good but they need to be broken down and explained in detail in the game. Worst is when their description is some tongue in cheek quip which tells me jack shit about what is actually being changed. I shouldn't have to go to Gamefaqs and find a datamining post to tell me what %s are changed by each setting.

 

[JarlFrank]

If I like well done meat and I like ketchup with it then fuck you cook it for me, I'm the one paying.

Then go to a restaurant that already caters to your tastes, don't force all restaurants to do so.

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

If I like well done meat and I like ketchup with it then fuck you cook it for me, I'm the one paying.

Then go to a restaurant that already caters to your tastes, don't force all restaurants to do so.

Oh no. I'm forcing the chef to leave the meat in the frying pan an extra few minutes. How dare I ask him to wait an extra couple of minutes before pulling my meat. What a selfish cunt I am!

Please touch grass. You're living in reddit land.

 

[JarlFrank]

Maybe if you allowed the chef to prepare your meal properly, you'd develop a better palate.

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

Maybe if you allowed the chef to prepare your meal properly, you'd develop a better palate.

Maybe if you could cook you would stop wanting to eat bloody meat and develop a better palate.

 

[JarlFrank]

I bet you're from a backwards country where they don't even eat raw pork.

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

I bet you're from a backwards country where they don't even eat raw pork.

No, we don't eat our mothers here piggy boy.

 

[Viata]

I bet you're from a backwards country where they don't even eat raw pork.

Are Germans even allowed to eat pork at this point?

 

[processdaemon]

Oh no. I'm forcing the chef to leave the meat in the frying pan an extra few minutes. How dare I ask him to wait an extra couple of minutes before pulling my meat. What a selfish cunt I am!

Please touch grass. You're living in reddit land.

It's not selfish to ask for a product the way you like it, but to further the steak analogy if customers are regularly ordering well done steak with ketchup then the restaurant might be incentivised to adapt to that market change in a way the raw steak people don't like (for example, buying cheaper cuts of meat because it makes less of a difference for a well done steak than a raw one). Similarly if a studio switches from making games with one difficulty to multiple difficulties they might be incentivised to de-emphasize certain core systems that people who play higher difficulties enjoy if they're trying to appeal to a more casual audience since ideal reward structure differs between both groups (casual players usually have a lower tolerance for frustration for example).

Good balance between difficulties can be achieved in some games more easily than others, but as with anything it takes resources and changes in priorities as a result of casualisation can easily result in the core fanbase feeling betrayed even if it has the benefits of opening things up to a wider range of people.

 

[REhorror]

No, because I want a HARDER mode.

 

[None]

Games and foods are not the same. Games have an intrinsic element called "challenge".

What they have in common is that both have to account for taste. I often find games too easy as designed, so being able to crank up the difficulty is desirable. The more granular the settings, the better. What I am opposed to is poorly implemented difficulty settings, but not difficulty settings in principle.

A game that does it properly is Thief. I can't think of any bad implementations off the top of my head, but I'm sure it isn't hard to find an example of the stat padding you mentioned. Again, it seems an issue of implementation, not the principle.

 

[None]

Letting the diner choose how they want their steak done is fundamentally bad cooking.

Why is nobody mocking this take? This is unironically true. Asking the staff in a nice restaurant for your steak to be well done is akin to asking them to spit in your food and serve it with a side of ketchup.

If the diner (or the player) needs to tell you how to do your fucking job, you're shit and shouldn't be in the industry. Not all games should be for all players, and if someone is playing a game that's too easy or difficult for them, well that was a failure of marketing or a really stupid consumer. It doesn't take some sort of 79 year old grognard to figure out that Europa Universalis is going to require a few more neurons to get through than Mario Party.

You're missing the point and acting as if there is a single objective way to prepare food or design games. Options exist and are offered for a reason, being that taste is a subjective experience.

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

Oh no. I'm forcing the chef to leave the meat in the frying pan an extra few minutes. How dare I ask him to wait an extra couple of minutes before pulling my meat. What a selfish cunt I am!

Please touch grass. You're living in reddit land.

It's not selfish to ask for a product the way you like it, but to further the steak analogy if customers are regularly ordering well done steak with ketchup then the restaurant might be incentivised to adapt to that market change in a way the raw steak people don't like (for example, buying cheaper cuts of meat because it makes less of a difference for a well done steak than a raw one). Similarly if a studio switches from making games with one difficulty to multiple difficulties they might be incentivised to de-emphasize certain core systems that people who play higher difficulties enjoy if they're trying to appeal to a more casual audience since ideal reward structure differs between both groups (casual players usually have a lower tolerance for frustration for example).

Good balance between difficulties can be achieved in some games more easily than others, but as with anything it takes resources and changes in priorities as a result of casualisation can easily result in the core fanbase feeling betrayed even if it has the benefits of opening things up to a wider range of people.

The steak analogy falls apart when you take it as a 1 for 1 comparison. Cooking something more doesn't take any real extra effort. It's just a little longer to wait, which isn't that big of a deal. While getting good balance takes hundreds of man hours to even play test let alone fix.

I don't like losing what people like in games but there's no way to control that. The mass market is so huge now that niche try hards are such a small percentage of the customers it's no longer worth listening to them. Other wise you end up like fighting games where every game has 1 touch death combos floating around and the casual audience fucks off. I've had the exact same thing happen to me with the Souls series where the original elements I liked are gone and we're left with a mediocre action game instead.

 

[Damned Registrations]

You're missing the point and acting as if there is a single objective way to prepare food or design games. Options exist and are offered for a reason, being that taste is a subjective experience.

Options exist but there's a reasons high end chefs won't just do whatever the customer wants of them but insist on only serving food they consider to be good. They're crafting a particular experience, finely balanced against various elements within the meal. Games do include options. That's inherent to the nature of games. You can choose how to play. Difficulty shouldn't be one of those options in almost any scenario, because it implies that it was merely an afterthought while designing the game, when it should have been a central pillar everything was designed around. Did the game have an economy? Well it's going to be shit if it wasn't designed with a particular difficulty in mind. How about the pacing? Going to be shit if the difficulty is wrong. What about the atmosphere? Same deal. Difficulty influences just about all other aspects of a game, and if you can just fiddle with it and it makes the game better, the game was severely flawed to begin with.

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

Options exist but there's a reasons high end chefs won't just do whatever the customer wants of them but insist on only serving food they consider to be good.

Chef Jean Pier trained in a 3 star kitchen and says if you should cook your meat how you like it. You're so wrong it's not even funny any more. The chef is not the one eating, how they feel about it doesn't matter. They're your servant and they make the food you want or they don't get any customers. There are plenty of chefs who think they know better than their customers and they all end up out of business.