On Difficulty Levels

[Athinira]

Think of the early scene in Bioshock when you've got the wrench and the electrobolt plasmid and the NPC instructs you on how to do the one-two punch where you stun a splicer with the electrobolt and then wail him in the head with your wrench. Now imagine you need to zap and whack each splice twice to take them down in this manner. Not only does it waste Eve, but you're just doing the same goddamned thing twice on each guy. Is that more challenging or is that tedious? I think the latter.

There is a difference between "difficulty level" and "repetition". Just because you can name an example where a higher difficulty just adds repetition (mostly because the electric plasmid stunlocks the enemy, making it so he can't fight back) doesn't mean every game does that.



Bottom line is this: If changing the difficulty setting in a game forces you to change your playstyle (or die if you don't), then it's handling difficulty properly while avoiding repetition. This doesn't always make the game more fun though, but it can definitely make it more challenging.


And given that i know plenty of people (myself included) that replays games on different difficulty settings, you are, at the end of the day, wrong. Maybe changing the difficulty setting doesn't add anything to you personally (which i find hard to believe if you claim it never does, no matter the game), but it does to a lot of other players, so you can't really "disagree" with Yahtzee on this point, even if it still doesn't apply to you.

 

[Airsoftslayer93]

Oblivion lets you change difficulty, and i think so does fallout 3, on a kind of sliding scale, far better than seperate difficulty levels, i always make it as easy as possible, not to good at games

 

[Stumpy105]

I think that difficulty levels themselves need to be reworked. like insted of a higher difficulty incresing enemy helth, enamy numbers, or lowering player helth. that the eniemes acctually get smarter and use more advanced tactics but I know that this will not happen because it would take extra time and effort on the developers part. it would just be more interesting compared to the almost computer cheating higher dificulty levels of some games.

 

[duchaked]

mm XBLA should give him a contract :] and not just in the indie listings, but like a real legit game listing haha

 

[SteinFaust]

my favorite difficulty settings came from Kane & Lynch: Dead Men.
Aspirin
Codeine
Morphine

 

[iron skirt]

Lego Star Wars, Indi and Batman had an extra called "adaptiv difficulty"... I haven't tried it but i think it only goes up. Alsow, in Warcraft III you had the option of reduceing difficulty after iou've lost aa mision.

 

[DrEmo]

I remember this PS1 game called Tigershark that had creative difficulty level names. They were things like Milk run and such. I can't remember them all at the moment, since I played the game years ago, but it's a lost art.

I play games on the second highest difficulty setting the first go-around. If there's Easy-Medium-Hard-Very hard, I'll play on hard the 1st time then on very hard the second time. If there's just Easy-Medium-Hard, I'll play on hard.

I'm playing through Mass Effect on hard on the first go and it's pretty hard, making for a more intense, engaging and rewarding experience.

 

[SaintWaldo]

There's an example of the "one time difficulty" effect in Dragon Age: When you are setting up to defend Redcliffe Village, you have 2 optional quests to make things easier. You can get a blessing or you can set up flaming oil, or both. This has an effect of giving the player, through dialog and questing, the option of 3 different difficulties on this battle.

It seems you've hit upon something that's starting to emerge on its own.

 

[Biffy Cakeo]

Oblivion let you change diffuculty settings. Hardest for me. I like the joy of killing a crab with triple my stats and health. 1 hit kill through a shield made me laugh alot.

 

[Giest4life]

I know that there is not a lot of love between you and MW2, but the game does give you an option of changing the difficulty setting during any campaign.

 

[Quillpaw]

I know Yahtzee wasn't a fan of it (or really any JRPG, for that matter), but I think The World Ends With You did a good job with its difficulty thing.
Not only could you switch mid-game...or indeed, any time you wanted, you could also alter your level. Changing your difficulty (You start on Normal, gain Easy later, Hard after beating the story and you could buy Ultimate) changed enemy health and how much damage you recieved, and what kind of items they dropped. Lowering your level made them drop more and made you recieve more damage while dealing less, while upping your level did the opposite.
You could do this whenever you wanted, and it is in fact encouraged in game so that you can get different pins and items. Also, if you were a pussy and kept losing to a boss, you could replay the fight on Easy mode.

Unless your were fighting that elephant, because you HAD to beat it on Hard for it to count. Fucking purple elephant.

 

[Amazon warrior]

I am very interested in seeing Yahtzee make an actually scary game. Scary stuff FTW!

 

[Kristoffer Sivertsen]

Yeah, the 90's style difficulty settings were awesome.

 

[zamble]

Reminds me of The world Ends With YOu, on wich you can change difficulty and drop down character levle to mayke it harder anytime between battles.

 

[Erick.S]

Infamous has the option to ramp up the difficulty if you're doing to well. I was playing the game on normal and the game seem to notice that I was impaling every challenge it threw at me on a gigantic lightning rod. It prompted me to play on Hard Mode instead, which I did. Sadly, the majority of the game was still piss easy.

But it is one example that what Yahtzee mentioned has been implemented. They were even kind enough to still give me the gold trophy for beating it on hard, since the game changed the difficulty for me.



Whatever happened to those awesome difficulty settings...[/QUOTE]

Awesome reference to difficulty levels. Oh, wolfy, I've never bothered to finish you on death incarnate :)

On another note, it would indeed be cool to see a game that manages to accomplish what star control 2 did at the time. I've never found anything since that would fulfill this small hole in my heart.
Oh well.

 

[ArmorArmadillo]

If the Escapist Released a Game:
Graham Stark, MovieBob, Yahtzee, Rebecca Mayes

You win my admiration. Well done. She is brilliant.
[sub]Personally, I'd switch Graham with Bob but eh, nothings perfect[/sub]

I was actually ranking them in terms of hostility, Rebecca winning for her fatal attraction move.

 

[MildPsychedelic]

Oblivion has a difficulty slider in the gameplay options which is pretty neat, and seeing as you spend 3/4 of your time killing things on Oblivion I guess it could be an Action/RPG?

So I'm guessing it can't be that hard to put that sort of thing in any other action games.

 

[lifestorm2]

What about Infamous? It gave the option to change difficulty anytime in the game, even before the game itself sets a difficulty for you based on how you did on your first set of tutorials.

 

[Yoshi-Pop]

Not to sound like a fanboy, but didn't Yahtzee already make Actually Scary Game: The Game, like 4 times already?

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Difficulty scales in games is useless, so the enemies have a few extra hp and you get a few less ammo and med pack drops. That is not an indicator of difficulty. You know what would be? Scaling the AI. At the very easiest you get absolute morons you don't react very often when the guard standing next to them is hit in the face with a rocket, conversely at the very hardest setting you are fighting Professor X (you know, "psychic" guards who can spot you through walls clear across the map).