Letting the player choose difficulty settings is fundamentally bad game design

[ds]

I somewhat agree that a single difficulty option is usually shit because different things are difficult for different people. For example, one of the nu-Tomb Raiders includes a puzzle difficulty. Great, I love puzzles so I can just max that out and not have Lara outright tell me the solution every time, right? No, because puzzle difficulty also tightens timers which just makes things more frustrating for me. Ideally, difficulty options should be about specific aspects of the game that the player may have difficulty with or just doesn't want to deal with.

On the first playthrough, if a game asks me what difficulty setting I want to choose, it's automatically a negative for me. For a couple of reasons:

1. Difficulty settings make the game predictable
2. The player doesn't have enough information to choose a difficulty setting
3. Difficulty settings result in lazy balancing

These things can and should be improved without removing difficulty settings. Removing settings won't magically make devs put any effort into balance either.

4. Difficulty settings don't allow players to have a shared experience
They ruin the joy of defeating a really hard boss that you might get stuck on for hours or enjoying the moments of absolute power after you have done the hard work to become strong (think Gothic games), the moments that you are eager to share with other players. With difficulty settings, moments like that are ruined and cheapened and do not become memorable enough to be worth sharing

Trying to make single-player games into shared experiences is extremely gay. If anything, individual experiences make for far more interesting stories you can share. Challenging yourself should be about improving YOUR experience, not about being able to compare yourself to other players. If you want a dick measuring contest, use this instead:

1. Adding secret easy mode withing the confines of the game-play itself: like the sorcerer class in Dark Souls or certain weapons/aspects in Hades

2. Dividing the game-world into different difficulty settings, kinda like what Gothic games did. You are technically free to go wherever you want, but certain areas are hard to get through if you are still weak (this one works for open-world and semi open-world games

These are great an much better things to focus on than worrying about whether there is an overall easy mode or not.

5. Adding dynamic difficulty (like Resident Evil 4)

Difficulty dynamically adapting to player performance is the worst cancer that has ever happened to game balance, even worse than level scaling. Fuck you if you want to force me to give up because you think I am taking too long or need too many attempts to get trough something. Anyone who does this in their games should immediately quit the game industry and dedicate their remaining life to meditating on what is wrong with their brain.

Difficulty settings are shit, make difficulty dependent on build instead. This works for all genres not just RPGs btw.

Even better than making the overall difficulty dependent on the build is making the shape of the difficulty curve vary between builds. Allow me to chose to challenge myself early in the game with a pea shooter glass cannon so that I can later mow down enemies before they even think about damaging me if that's what I want.

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.

This isn't about telling them how to do their job but about being able to accommodate different preferences. The cook's job is to be able to consistently achieve the desired doneness. Same should be true for the game developer: focus on making the player have the best experience, which you are not going to be able to do for all players with only one setting. It's worth remembering that games are an interactive medium, which means their strength is that the experience can vary from player to player so why not take advantage of that. Within reason of course, no one is expecting any other difficulty setting to receive the same amount of balancing effort as the default one but that doesn't mean the others shouldn't exist at all.

Your retort also conveniently focuses on the opposite extreme of your (presumably) desired rare steak while discounting the entire range of more reasonable doneness options for which there exists no objectively best. I may very well like my steak more rare than what the chef likes - or rather what the chef thinks the average customer wants, which is what you mostly get if there are no options.

 

[Damned Registrations]

The cook's job is to be able to consistently achieve the desired doneness.

If you're flipping burgers, sure. If you're an extremely well paid professional responsible for many other employees, your job is to know what doneness goes with the rest of the food to make everything perfect. Same with games.

If we did nothing but cater to preferences, we'd all still be eating spaghetti-o's or whatever we liked as kids and have no need for chefs to begin with. Food is an art, and so is game design. If you like a steak cooked a particular way, find a chef that agrees and prepares that kind of steak perfectly. Don't ask the one that spent years tweaking what spices and side dishes and drinks and so forth to pair with his signature dish to fuck it up so you can get something closer to what you're already used to. It's an insult to the entire profession to assume they know nothing about what tastes good.

I'm not talking about something someone spent 30 minutes poking at after training for a few weeks. I'm talking about people who've been trying to make something perfect for years.

Just play something else. Let players play something else. Pandering to the audience of every last person on earth at once is a major part of why everything is so shit these days.

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

Food is an art, and so is game design.

I laughed reading this. You're genuinely autistic aren't you?

I'm not talking about something someone spent 30 minutes poking at after training for a few weeks. I'm talking about people who've been trying to make something perfect for years.

You're missing the entire point. Perfect is what the eater enjoys eating. Your example of spaghetti-os is an example of a product not adapted to person taste, it's the most generic version to appeal to the most people. Which is what your 'perfect' cook is too. While an actual chef understands each person is going to like their meat done differently and that's why you get to specify it. Can you not understand some people will never enjoy eating bloody meat while others only want bloody meat and a good chef can make that with minimal effort?

I'm reminded of internet arguments with casual gun owners larping as navy seals right now. Are you going to tell me you're John and you hate everyone of us because we're not larping as if the chef is the god of what we like to eat and don't? Do you think a chef should kick you out of his restaurant if you're allergic to mushrooms and ask for a version of his signature dish without them? Marko is one of the best known and most praised chefs of our time and he literally said "Fuck all that pretentious retardation. It's masturbation for faggots and I'd rather enjoy cooking and food than deal with any of those cunts any further". Are you going to claim you know better than him now?

 

[ds]

If you're flipping burgers, sure. If you're an extremely well paid professional responsible for many other employees, your job is to know what doneness goes with the rest of the food to make everything perfect. Same with games.

If we did nothing but cater to preferences, we'd all still be eating spaghetti-o's or whatever we liked as kids and have no need for chefs to begin with. Food is an art, and so is game design. If you like a steak cooked a particular way, find a chef that agrees and prepares that kind of steak perfectly. Don't ask the one that spent years tweaking what spices and side dishes and drinks and so forth to pair with his signature dish to fuck it up so you can get something closer to what you're already used to. It's an insult to the entire profession to assume they know nothing about what tastes good.

The cook doesn't know my OR6A2 gene nor does he know if I am allergic to shellfish. Taste is subjective - this goes for food as well as video game difficulty. Thinking otherwise is just high-art snobbery, which is fine if that's what your are into but don't be surprised if others want different options. That's why restaurants have menu in the first place. Deferring to the cook because you want to explore something out of your comfort zone or just don't know what you like yet is a fine option too. That's why there should be a default difficulty that reflects the designer's intentions.

But pretending that having the choice to deviate from that somehow makes the game worse is absurd. No one can possibly know what you like better than you yourself, especially not someone who has never met you and is creating something identical for not just you but countless others. And let's be real here, 99.9% of games are not some meticulously designed expression of a single expert but something good enough made by a whole army of line cooks focused on making something that sells well enough so that they can keep their job. Thinking that removing difficulty options will get you the perfect difficulty is a pipe dream. Instead you will get the least offensive game possible because unlike with high art you can't live off people buying your game for a money laundering scheme or as status symbol.

I'm not talking about something someone spent 30 minutes poking at after training for a few weeks. I'm talking about people who've been trying to make something perfect for years.

Just play something else. Let players play something else. Pandering to the audience of every last person on earth at once is a major part of why everything is so shit these days.

There is a gigantic difference between compromising your design and providing options for the player to adjust their own experience. Again, by all means have a default difficulty that reflects how the game "should" be played. I also already conceded that difficulty options can have limits due to the need to focus on what you want to create. I'm also fine with calling those options cheats if you want to incentivize players to challenge themselves. But don't pretend that your choices will be the best for everyone and try provide options where that makes sense. That's just throwing away one of the biggest advantages of the medium to satisfy your own ego.

Giving the player agency to decide their own experience is hardly what is responsible for the decline in gaming. On the contrary, designers' obsession with complete control over the experience taken to the extreme is exactly what leads to cutscene-heavy linear games where you have no chance of messing up. Difficulty options are not just about making the less capable able to complete the game, they also allow for greater difficulty if that's what you want. They allow for developers to NOT compromise their design intention because they don't have to have to provide a one size fits all difficulty. In theory of course, but someone that won't design something that challenges you with difficulty options also won't do it without them.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Difficulty options are not just about making the less capable able to complete the game, they also allow for greater difficulty if that's what you want. They allow for developers to NOT compromise their design intention because they don't have to have to provide a one size fits all difficulty.

People wanting easymodes always argue this but it's never true. As has been pointed out already, adjusting difficulty isn't as simple as turning down the hp numbers on enemies or whatever. That fundamentally breaks the game. Now attacks that each had there own purpose are all useless because the one that hits fastest and widest still does enough damage so it's just best at everything, and the entire part of the game revolving around choosing which attacks to use is pointless and shit. Same deal if you move things in the other direction. You NEED an intended difficulty to make a proper game. Trying to adjust that difficulty while keeping good gameplay means you spend very significant time and resources balancing what is functionally an entirely new game's worth of content. Or, as generally happens, you design gameplay so shitty it's equally shit in all difficulties.

Look at something like Slay the Spire or it's various clones. It tries to do this whole complex scaling difficulty challenge thing. The result? The gameplay gets more and more shit the more of these optional challenges get enabled, until it's just you trying to make the same fucking deck every single game because nothing else can function under the restrictions. And that's an attempt with some effort behind it. Don't even get me started on crap like Bethesda games.

And let's be real here, 99.9% of games are not some meticulously designed expression of a single expert but something good enough made by a whole army of line cooks focused on making something that sells well enough so that they can keep their job.

Yeah, and they're shit and I don't want to play them or even hear about them. There are thousands of games out there. I can afford to be picky. I wish other people would be too so the shitty games would vanish, instead of the ones that pander to everyone seeing so much success because retards can't be bothered to find a good game instead of playing whatever showed up at E3 with the most flashing lights.

 

[Chuck Norris]

I think the disagreement here boils down to a philosophical question:

Should we give people the freedom to ruin their own life, as long as it doesn't hurt others?

A liberal would say yes, because that's what freedom means. We all have a mind of our own and can determine what's good for us and what's not.

A conservative would say no, because there's a right way to do things and the only way to make sure it's implemented is to somehow direct people in that direction, even through using a little bit of force if necessary.

We all know what the "liberal" outlook will ultimately lead to by looking around us, at society.

The thing is that there are a lot of people who are denying themselves excellent experiences because they just choose what's convenient and don't know any better. There was this video of a guy who talked about how he played Oblivion first and then his friends recommended Morrowind, but the fact that Morrowind doesn't have a quest marker and you had to find your way through environmental clues put him off and he abandoned the game. But through peer pressure, he went back to the game and ended up loving it after giving it a chance to be immersed in it.

Sometimes, you just have to allow experts to guide you in the right direction.

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

People wanting easymodes always argue this but it's never true. As has been pointed out already, adjusting difficulty isn't as simple as turning down the hp numbers on enemies or whatever. That fundamentally breaks the game. Now attacks that each had there own purpose are all useless because the one that hits fastest and widest still does enough damage so it's just best at everything, and the entire part of the game revolving around choosing which attacks to use is pointless and shit. Same deal if you move things in the other direction.

What is wrong with someone wanting to play on easy mode and blow all the enemies away without difficulty? Halo is intended to be played on Heroic, but Heroic limits gun options and forces constantly dipping into cover slowing the game down. Some days you want to pick up an AR and mow down hordes of grunts without having to stop every few seconds for your shields to regen. The people playing on easy know they're playing on easy. It's better for them to have AN EXPERIENCE THEY ENJOY than one they don't. I don't want to spend £40 on a new game only to find out the only difficulty option is way too hard or too easy and have no way to correct that.

Yeah, and they're shit and I don't want to play them or even hear about them

So? I don't want to hear about your shit taste either but here we are. You're not the boss of me and you don't get to decide what I enjoy and don't. So why do you think the game developer shouldn't be allowed to make a range of experiences for others to enjoy? As long as the player is given the information to make an informed decision it's a far better system.

A liberal would say yes, because that's what freedom means. We all have a mind of our own and can determine what's good for us and what's not.

A conservative would say no, because there's a right way to do things and the only way to make sure it's implemented is to somehow direct people in that direction, even through using a little bit of force if necessary.

Please don't. That is not at all related to the conversation at hand. It doesn't matter where I sit on the political spectrum I think it's better to have a range of options than to pick a narrow design philosophy and stick to it. I like the occasional walking sim, I like really difficult games and I hate some walking sims and I hate the occasional really hard game. You have to be severely autistic to not only think there is a perfect way to design difficulty but also to expect humans, let alone a commercial product to hit it. Designers never understand their games as well as the players do through shear weight of numbers. And if you try to perfect it you end up with Valve games cutting content because some tard ran in a circle for an hour in the antlion warrens.

 

[Damned Registrations]

You have to be severely narcissistic to think that you, personally have a better idea of how to make a great game than people who've been honing their craft for years. Nobody is forcing you to play a game you don't like. Just give up and stop. Or keep going and get better. Those are both fine options. Whining at the developers to add retard mode because you've never experienced defeat before and can't handle it is not the way. Any game that is too easy but inherently interesting can be made arbitrarily more difficult with self imposed challenges anyways. If you're that desperate to play with god mode, just run cheat engine. No need to insist the game be made shittier for everyone else too.

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

You have to be severely narcissistic to think that you, personally have a better idea of how to make a great game than people who've been honing their craft for years.

In 2016 Luminous production were the core part of Final Fantasy XV's development. A ten year development cycle until it's release. After they were spun off into their own studio instead of a sub division and spent the next 7 years working on a new title. Lets be generous on the numbers and say that's 15 years of experience as game development studio. This is what they released.


Get fucked. Game devs don't know shit.

 

[None]

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.

You've missed my point again and are attempting to retort arguments I've not made. I'll lower the difficulty of this conversation and emphasize what my point is in my previous reply.

 

[None]

The thing is that there are a lot of people who are denying themselves excellent experiences because they just choose what's convenient and don't know any better.

I could apply the exact same thinking to your argument of eschewing your own judgement in favor of someone else's. It is far more convenient to let the "experts" decide for you what is good instead of exercising your own freedom to decide for yourself. Anyone who has ever had any second of meaningful contact with a supposed expert will understand how overrated their expertise actually is and how often it boils down to their own subjective tastes. We aren't talking about some objective task like putting a satellite into orbit using the least amount of propellant, we're dealing with something relating to human experiences which makes it subject to human fickleness and preferences.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Wow, not everyone is an expert automatically after working for a long time. What a shocking revelation. Next time you need medical attention, be sure to attend your local homeopath because all opinions are equally relevant.

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

Wow, not everyone is an expert automatically after working for a long time. What a shocking revelation. Next time you need medical attention, be sure to attend your local homeopath because all opinions are equally relevant.

Is this really your argument? If you think a player is more capable of selecting a difficulty more suited to them than someone they'll never speak to you don't believe in medicine?

 

[smaug]

How the hell is this thread 3 pages long?

Answer to the OP is that it depends on the game. Certain genres incline more towards either or.

 

[Damned Registrations]

You're missing the fucking point. You can select a difficulty more suited to you. By picking a different fucking game. By playing differently. By cheating. Demanding every fucking developer to create a difficulty just for you is self centred narcisstic bullshit. It's a waste of their time and effort and diminishes the potential of the game for other people who could have enjoyed something better.

 

[Kev Inkline]

If you don't have a cinematic experience option, you won't get any reviews, so there's that.

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

You're missing the fucking point. You can select a difficulty more suited to you. By picking a different fucking game. By playing differently. By cheating. Demanding every fucking developer to create a difficulty just for you is self centred narcisstic bullshit. It's a waste of their time and effort and diminishes the potential of the game for other people who could have enjoyed something better.

I'm selfish for paying £50 for a product I would enjoy playing and want more games to be open to more people to play them so they can do the same? What the fuck are you on? Are you trolling? It's selfish to think there should be the option to play games at the skill level you currently want to play them at and others can do the same? You're sperging out demanding games be exactly how you seem to want them and calling everyone else selfish for not wanting exactly what you want. I'm starting to think you're a woman.

 

[Damned Registrations]

You're sperging out demanding games be exactly how you seem to want them and calling everyone else selfish for not wanting exactly what you want.

No, you gigantic retard. I'm saying there should be a variety of games instead of 5 copies of the same mystery sausage produced to appeal to everyone on the planet. There should be easy games and difficult games. Not directionless grey ooze games.

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

No, you gigantic retard. I'm saying there should be a variety of games instead of 5 copies of the same mystery sausage produced to appeal to everyone on the planet. There should be easy games and difficult games. Not directionless grey ooze games.

Could you try staying consistent? Jesus Christ you have to be a woman.

"I think there should be games that allow you to select your difficulty and get the experience you enjoy." does not contradict there being more than the exact same game made 5 times over. Mean while a game like Dark souls which has no option has literally created that exact situation with it's clones. Arguably a worse situation as meme difficulty made by bad developers is arguably worse than the generic modern game difficulty being too low. If a dev wants to add an easy mode that knocks off 50% health from every enemy what the fuck do you care? It's not impacting your experience, but someone else might have a great time with it.

 

[Damned Registrations]

If a dev wants to add an easy mode that knocks off 50% health from every enemy what the fuck do you care? It's not impacting your experience, but someone else might have a great time with it.

Because that's not how it ever fucking works. If it did, I'd be fine with it. But no, they have to playtest that difficulty, and balance shit around it, and think about how all the 8 year olds and game journos and whoever the fuck are going to rate the game when the easy mode is boring unplayable shit and they don't even admit what they played on in their reviews and feedback. Or vice versa, it's balanced around easy mode and the hard mode is just tedious hp bloat. It's the same as when multiplayer gets added to a game. It's never just tacked on because then it just pulls more hate than appreciation. So when it does get added they fuck over the game for everyone else by balancing shit around pvp. In order to appeal to a broader audience. Wow! It's like that thing I've been talking about. Try to please everyone and you only please retards with no taste.

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

If a dev wants to add an easy mode that knocks off 50% health from every enemy what the fuck do you care? It's not impacting your experience, but someone else might have a great time with it.

Because that's not how it ever fucking works. If it did, I'd be fine with it. But no, they have to playtest that difficulty, and balance shit around it, and think about how all the 8 year olds and game journos and whoever the fuck are going to rate the game when the easy mode is boring unplayable shit and they don't even admit what they played on in their reviews and feedback. Or vice versa, it's balanced around easy mode and the hard mode is just tedious hp bloat. It's the same as when multiplayer gets added to a game. It's never just tacked on because then it just pulls more hate than appreciation. So when it does get added they fuck over the game for everyone else by balancing shit around pvp. In order to appeal to a broader audience. Wow! It's like that thing I've been talking about. Try to please everyone and you only please retards with no taste.

You're pleased with the current state of things?

Devs should be able to make the games they want. But if they want to include a variety of difficulties they shouldn't be allowed? Okay, sure.

 

[Chuck Norris]

If a dev wants to add an easy mode that knocks off 50% health from every enemy what the fuck do you care? It's not impacting your experience, but someone else might have a great time with it.

Because that's not how it ever fucking works. If it did, I'd be fine with it. But no, they have to playtest that difficulty, and balance shit around it, and think about how all the 8 year olds and game journos and whoever the fuck are going to rate the game when the easy mode is boring unplayable shit and they don't even admit what they played on in their reviews and feedback. Or vice versa, it's balanced around easy mode and the hard mode is just tedious hp bloat. It's the same as when multiplayer gets added to a game. It's never just tacked on because then it just pulls more hate than appreciation. So when it does get added they fuck over the game for everyone else by balancing shit around pvp. In order to appeal to a broader audience. Wow! It's like that thing I've been talking about. Try to please everyone and you only please retards with no taste.

Yes, this is exactly my point.

Games - at least for the first playthrough - are almost always balanced around one difficulty, which is usually either normal or hard. Any difficulty other than that results in a shit experience. It either becomes tediously easy or frustratingly hard.

Making a hard game is not that big of an achievement. All you have to do to crank up some numbers.

From Software games are applauded because balancing in them is done with precision. They are not the hardest games around.

If Sekiro had an easier or harder difficulty, they both would be shit. The current state is how the developer intended for you to play the game. They didn't include anything else because they were just being honest with themselves.

Cuphead developers included an easy mode in their game, but they were so contemptuous of it that you can't even access the final isle and face the final boss if you finish the levels on easy. This is obviously not how they intended the game to play and the only reason they included was due to insecurity and fear of backlash.

No developer has the resource to balance their game on different difficulty levels. It's like making multiple games at once. That's how demanding balancing can get, at least if the game is any good.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Devs are allowed to make whatever they want. I'm just saying it objectively shits up the game, just like adding microtrasactions, pvp or DRM or various other shitty things. So I'm asking them not to do things that make their game shittier. It's not always game ruiningly terrible, but it's always worse than it could have been for some people.

Create the best thing you possibly can for a specific audience. Don't compromise that.

 

[Halfling Rodeo]

From Software games are applauded because balancing in them is done with precision. They are not the hardest games around.

If Sekiro had an easier or harder difficulty, they both would be shit. The current state is how the developer intended for you to play the game. They didn't include anything else because they were just being honest with themselves.

From balance is fucking terrible and never done with precision. Souls first few patches are huge changes and make it a wildly different game in both difficulty and functional playing styles.

Cuphead developers included an easy mode in their game, but they were so contemptuous of it that you can't even access the final isle and face the final boss if you finish the levels on easy. This is obviously not how they intended the game to play and the only reason they included was due to insecurity and fear of backlash.

This has been a thing since the earliest games. Long before game journos crying about difficulty. You have to play on hard or you don't get the final boss was common in beat 'em ups in the 90s. Streets of rage series has this happen and they're not especially hard games.

Devs are allowed to make whatever they want. I'm just saying it objectively shits up the game, just like adding microtrasactions, pvp or DRM or various other shitty things. So I'm asking them not to do things that make their game shittier. It's not always game ruiningly terrible, but it's always worse than it could have been for some people.

Create the best thing you possibly can for a specific audience. Don't compromise that.

It's worse for who? There's people who only enjoy easy/hard games and having a difficulty slider lets them play the game they want. RE7 is not worse for having mad house now is it?

You have a weirdly autistic mentality where you can't understand there is no perfect difficulty and even within a specific audience they will want different things.

 

[Damned Registrations]

It's worse for who?

It's worse for the people who would have enjoyed the game the most. You're flattening the curve. Instead of a game where people either give it a 10 or a 5, you're getting a game where everyone gives it a 7 or 8.

Do I enjoy an otherwise easy game more than I might have if it has a higher difficulty setting that fits me better? Sure. I'm willing to give that up so someone more suited to an easy game can have a better experience. In exchange, I want a better experience in a different game suited to what I like. It's better to play one game perfect for me than five different ones that kind of tried but half assed whatever mode fits me best. I've got hundreds of games in my library. Maybe 20 are really great for me. I wish I had 25 in my library and they were all great and I didn't even look at the rest because they were obviously not for me.

You're acting like someone is forcing you to play and buy games not suited for you. This isn't the case. This is, at worst, a problem for children who get games as presents, but even then smart parents generally just ask the kid what to buy. Play a demo. Watch a review. Pay attention to which developers make what sorts of games and how reviewers rate games you've played before. Don't day one purchase shit out of hype and then bitch that it's not what you expected.