Poll: Will you drop the difficulty if you're having trouble?

[A Satanic Panda]

In Fallout 3, to even the odds a little I'll set the difficulty to very easy, and divide my health by 5 via console commands. (player.modav health -x)

I have to adjust it each time I level to keep it constant. For reference, My character is currently level 10, 9 endurance, and after the division, has 74 hp, rather than the original 370 hp. I also bump my carry weight down by 100, so I don't turn in to the largest economy in the wasteland.

 

[tippy2k2]

No, I wouldn't let myself do it. Voted primarily to see how others were voting, and expected 'No' to be winning by more than it is.

I wanted to respond to this but I thought my thread was dying. I wanted to give it a nice and clean death instead of letting it wallow in life support. I guess others wanted to keep it going so who am I to tell them no?

Anyway, what I'm trying to say in my rambling is that I agree. I am very surprised that the poll is aligned the way that it is especially considering (nothing personal my Escapist chums; love you!) the attitude of "hardcore gamer" that this site can sometimes have. There's nothing wrong with the "hardcore gamer" attitude sometimes; just surprised at the results is all.

 

[mitchell271]

I won't drop it unless it's a realistic shooter. Jesus tapdancing Christ, those get annoying on high difficulty. They never stop shooting and they have perfect aim.

 

[Pulse]

I usually start a game on the third highest difficulty. I don't tailor the difficulty during a playthrough, otherwise it feels almost pointless (ESPECIALLY in game where you level up). I like the challenge. But I don't increase it either, a playthrough should be all or nothing....for me. Stupid but whatever.

Very rarely with some games with steep learning curves I'll drop down one and start again if I absolutely have to. Namely ninja gaiden 2 and xcom, I tried the harder difficulties first and was demolished, but I came back to them.

If I'm on a successive playthrough at a higher difficulty and it feels artificial then I leave it at that. I loved gears on insane against normal enemies, but some sections against bosses/on the rails were just ridiculously frustrating so I stopped. Normal and hardcore will have to do.

 

[Kalahee]

I'll often play easy and I'd even cheat if I have to so I can have fun and get through the storyline. I play like it's a movie, I'll rewind if I missed a spot, but I won't be doing that twenty times... and for some games, a fast foward is needed when the story is good but gameplay is crappy. I would never cheat/hack in a coop or pvp because that fun is playing with others. I'm not bad at games, I am a gamer, but I don't feel the need for challenge, I want entertainment.

 

[MAUSZX]

Probably you won't read this since this discussion is long. I think the Witcher 2 it's hard to get the idea of the fighting system at the beginning, but after some time you get the mechanic. Now about the answer, I do it because of the challenge, but also because of pride, I will not surrender, unless is Catherine, I played that game in normal from the beginning because I knew it was very hard.

 

[OpticalJunction]

Sure if it gets to be more frustrating than fun. I usually turn it back to the regular setting afterwards though.

 

[Thunderblue6]

When I was playing Halo 4 for the first time I played it on legendary to get the "real ending" and I must have died 100s of times but it was still quite fun

 

[Nomanslander]

Depends on the level of b.s. in the difficulty. If the game is taking cheap shots killing me and I start to lose interest in the game, yes, I'll drop the difficulty. But if I like the challenge, then, no!

 

[tippy2k2]

Probably you won't read this since this discussion is long. I think the Witcher 2 it's hard to get the idea of the fighting system at the beginning, but after some time you get the mechanic. Now about the answer, I do it because of the challenge, but also because of pride, I will not surrender, unless is Catherine, I played that game in normal from the beginning because I knew it was very hard.

Oh ye of little faith; of course I read every comment in my thread!

I have actually kicked The Witcher 2 back up to Normal and so far so good. However, I've also just been running around and not doing anything very useful except for stabbing the dudes that look like Gollum so maybe I need to run into something a bit more difficult before I get cocky...

 

[rapidoud]

No . I try to find out what i'm doing wrong so i can get better at the game , and at games in general . Skills from games carry over to others . Also i have been gaming for so log and i have learned so much , that i can play through most games on hard on my first playthrough. Gaming being my main hobby , i strive to better myself in all aspects . So i welcome challenge and frustration wholeheartedly knowing it will make me a better gamer .

No they don't.

The skills from Hearts of Iron 3 don't translate to Call of Duty.

For everyone it should be yes; some games spike the difficulty up insanely high (Battletoads much?) due to poor design, and just putting yourself through misery for some false sense of ego is just pointless, and not something everyone has time for.

Dying for 10-30 minutes could be natural for a game, but dying for an hour+ due to a broken boss with fake difficulty (or a crappily designed one) is just a waste of my time as the devs couldn't create a proper boss battle.

In some cases I may even quit instead; for The Witcher 2 I got started off with the dragon, and the dragon is one of the most broken pieces of gaming I have ever had the not enjoyment of playing; you just take damage randomly, and it's purely trial and error to get through without any help from the game's visuals.

If the game's this hard already from being stupidly broken and extremely vague, then the game design isn't going to improve from turning down the difficulty.

It's one of the reasons I gave up on The Witcher 2 and labelled it as a poor game.

 

[Beffudled Sheep_v1legacy]

Sometimes I do, especially on my first playthrough of a game. I do it a lot in Elderscrolls games too because the first few levels are pretty damn hard and unfun (for me) until I can get a better grip on my character.

When I'm on my 2nd or further playthroughs I usually crank up the difficulty and refuse to back down because I made a commitment to be teh herdcorz.

 

[Elvaril]

I will turn it down, but I am going to give it a damn good shot on the higher difficulty first though. I have only ever lowered the difficulty three times in games. The first was Halo 2. After 2 hours playing on legendary and only getting barely halfway through the first level, I finally gave up and lowered the DL down to Heroic. (Note I did go back last week and finally beat it on Legendary.)
The second and third times were both in Skyrim. I had played a bit of Oblivion, but only through the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild story lines and did not do much else, so I was going into Skyrim fairly fresh to the series. Being foolish, I started out on Master difficulty and regularly got my ass handed to me by everything I encountered. Dropped it down to Expert and felt that I was at a high enough challenge level. Though now after 350+ hours I feel that I should probably attempt to raise the DL back up to expert. Third time was in the Dawnguard DLC fighting the final guy. It was not a particularly difficult fight. The only problem was that I could not out dps his healing so I had to lower the DL down to whatever is below Expert and then raised it back up immediately after the person died. I probably was just not well geared enough for my level, but it still had to be done cause I was pretty much stuck there until he died.

 

[Grottnikk]

I usually play on Normal unless that's too easy. If I'm having trouble, I'll usually look around to find out what I'm doing wrong and change my play style.

 

[Mad Artillery]

Whats the point if it's not difficult?

 

[ronald1840]

I just finished the Lineage & Legacies Arc on Tales of Graces F (PS3). I played through the Main Arc and all the way up to the final boss. Asbel, Sophie, Pascal, and Cheria have been my set party since the very beginning and I was pretty confident in my Pascal skills since that's who I actually play as; Asbel's on AI.

It was after my fourth attempt that I decided to take a step back and re-evalute some things. I figured that the only way I was going to win was the same way I beat Final Fantasy XIII: go back and grind up titles and skills for some weeks, and come back to finish the game.

I understand the whole gamer-credibility thing. The confidence in my JRPG skillz(z) took a little hit; especially after finishing the Xenosaga trilogy (PS2), but I wasn't having fun anymore. I've done everything in the game except this one boss and there are other games I want to play. So I bumped the difficulty down to Easy and sailed right through to the credits. I loved the post-game cutscenes and how they wrapped up everyone's story, and especially the ending theme.

I loaded back into the game just for one last look when I got a request to go back to Lhant manor and am now in what I think's the game's optional dungeon; Zhonecage. I'm on the 4th level now and have bumped the difficulty back up to Normal.

I'll never go straight to the settings, but after a certain number of tries then I have no problem turning down the difficulty, but this only applies to situations when I know I'm at the end of the game and only RPGs/JRPGs. I want to have fun and no one gave me a medal for beating Dark Souls so there's no point in trying to impress anybody.

 

[BartyMae]

These poll options are kind of crappy. I want to say no, but not for either of the reasons listed...

 

[Macgyvercas]

As Yahtzee once said:

"Yes, maybe I would like to skip this level. Then maybe I'll eat a few French fancies and take a lovely scented bath to clean my massive vagina. Now get out of the fucking way, this shit will not beat me."