Difficulty levels? More like difficu*ty levels...

[Miggiwoo]

I'm currently playing Crysis 2 and this is totally relevant to my interests. My so-called 'Super Soldier' is really squishy, and the enemy aliens take half a clip to the face before they die. Like Yahtzee says, sitting there waiting for your health to regenerate is not fun, and doubly so when you have to wait for power as well.

That's on the off chance you can find a hiding spot amongst all the spiderman respawns. Whoever came up with those idiots can go to hell.

 

[krazykidd]

So you're playing Gears of War, or Call of Duty, or Halo, or any one of the many fps games out there, and you think 'Man, this is eeeaaasy' so you crank the difficulty level up and what happens? Your guy turns into a pussy. He gets shot once and he's down, his shield last for 1/2 a second or he can be killed even if he's behind one of those chest high walls. Is this what people want when they want more of a challenge? Poking your head out to kill maybe 1 bad guy, then waiting in cover for 30 seconds? Surely the harder the game is, the more baddies there should be. I would much prefer to still be a total bad ass surrounded by hordes of enemies, burning off loads of ammo, making a final stand with the last clip in my pistol and just scraping through, than be successful at figuring out the best place to hide. Am I right? Feel free to call me an idiot if I'm the only one who thinks this.

I am going to take you up on your offer and call you an idiot. Idiot.

OT:So you find games too easy , but then turn the difficulty up and find them too hard? Do you know the meaning of difficulty? Cranking up the difficulty in a game , usually means that your character takes more damage, and the AI is usually better, ammo is more scarce ( in a FPS ) and the dumb shit you used to do on Easy or normal , won't work anymore, so you kinda gotta have some tact and not try to be Rambo. If you wanna feel like a total badass , stick to easy, real gamers will finish a level on hard by the skin of their teeth and feel rewarded and awesome.( i sure as hell felt awsome beating Catherine on Hard , and MW2 on veteran )

Another example is sports games. My point relates best to football soccer.
On a lower level, I win every game 6-0. This gets boring so I pop it on 'World Class' and every match is 0-0. The difficulty level has merely made the opposition team excellent at closing down and defending, so that I can't score. They still couldn't score in a brothel and the games become dull, goal less affairs. Why not up the AI defence a little bit, leaving tearing them apart with attacking flair still possible, i.e. the fun bit of the game, but make them better at attacking and presenting you with an exciting match that could end up 4-3?

Oh I dunno...

I can't comment on sport games, because the last sport game i bought was NBA 2k1 , but usually this depends on skill more than anything else , playing on the hardest mode , you need precision and timing . But not much i can say here , other than stick to easy mode if you are not having fun.

 

[Mikic]

Ah, don't get me wrong, I have completed all the games I stated on Legendary, Insane, Veteran, whatever, and I did enjoy them very much. You are also right about the sense of achievement. Knowing that you beat everything the game had to offer is very gratifying. I just feel the TYPE of difficulty is questionable. Your character becomes weaker like you say, but the AI improvements are very minor. It seems like they are clever because you die a lot, but that's just because you are now made of rice paper. And I never run out of ammo. Not once in any game mentioned did I have to resort to just my pistol in a heroic last stand.
In Flashpoint, you know that you are a real soldier. Shot in the legs, can't walk. Shot in the head, worms for din dins. This is fine, this is what the game is. In Halo, you're Superman and Batman's bastard offspring! Not my nan in 'nam.

I think you would find a game more satisfying if there were twice as many enemies and they were twice as clever, but you were still a double hard bastard.

And yes, I did put myself up to being called an idiot, but still. Ouch.

 

[Squilookle]

So you're playing Gears of War, or Call of Duty, or Halo, or any one of the many fps games out there, and you think 'Man, this is eeeaaasy' so you crank the difficulty level up and what happens? Your guy turns into a pussy. He gets shot once and he's down, his shield last for 1/2 a second or he can be killed even if he's behind one of those chest high walls. Is this what people want when they want more of a challenge? Poking your head out to kill maybe 1 bad guy, then waiting in cover for 30 seconds? Surely the harder the game is, the more baddies there should be. I would much prefer to still be a total bad ass surrounded by hordes of enemies, burning off loads of ammo, making a final stand with the last clip in my pistol and just scraping through, than be successful at figuring out the best place to hide. Am I right? Feel free to call me an idiot if I'm the only one who thinks this.

Another example is sports games. My point relates best to football soccer.
On a lower level, I win every game 6-0. This gets boring so I pop it on 'World Class' and every match is 0-0. The difficulty level has merely made the opposition team excellent at closing down and defending, so that I can't score. They still couldn't score in a brothel and the games become dull, goal less affairs. Why not up the AI defence a little bit, leaving tearing them apart with attacking flair still possible, i.e. the fun bit of the game, but make them better at attacking and presenting you with an exciting match that could end up 4-3?

Oh I dunno...

These aren't problems with difficulty- they're flaws in gameplay mechanics and AI. They were screwed from the start.