The Problem With Game Difficulty Settings 

God I hate games that think "hard" means even the most basic enemy has a million hit points. Not only that makes the player feel like a toddler slapping the enemy. It is not challeging, as I continue to do the same thing over and over until that HP bar hits 0.

I have beaten GoW on the Give me God of War difficulty. It was a pain in the ass and maybe that's why i didn't touch the game after that. The difficulty, it made me think the game was awful, which it isn't, but I'm still not a big fan of it. I regret it everytime, that I must choose the hardest difficulty in all of the games i play, even, if I don't even know what the game is about or anything.

About dead space remake: there were some guys trying to complete the game on impossible mode, got some stupid softlock bug in the end of the game right before the final boss and they had to just delete the saves because only that would fix the softlock.

It kinda reminded me of cruelty squad. You start at 2nd hardest difficulty, but if you die, you go on lower difficulty (and if you die a lot, you get downgraded again) - and this is a gameplay element too

I agree with you; survival horror games are the best when it comes to implementing high difficulty in a functional way. For example, Resident Evil 7's Madhouse difficulty is very effective because it forces you to play differently and pursue items that you wouldn't care about in a normal playthrough. Additionally, there are games that increase enemy health and cause the player to deal only 2 damage to the weakest enemy, while that same enemy has an attack that instakills, making the experience extremely tedious and even turning a game that someone loves into the game they hate the most.

One interesting thing about (most) yakuza games with legend mode is that it’s basically just hard mode with no retrying a fight if you lose just sending you back to your last save and on most of them the scaling from normal to hard isn’t very much

I feel like the main issue with having game difficulty settings is that most of the time there is a default difficulty that the game is balanced around, and the rest of the settings are either different enemy stats or more / less stuff thrown around in the game. Usually when I first play a game I want to play the difficulty the game was balanced around but even then choosing my difficulty as the start is a nightmare because its always something different. I haven't played God of War but I'm definitely the type of person to choose "Give me God of War" just wanting to play the game only to be completely obliterated

you forgot to mention how some games are more enjoyable on hard, either because the devs intended this to be the main mode or they just thought that dying once is a harsh enough punishment (it's not in most games)

When I was younger I tried doing games on the second hardest difficulty. Now as an adult with barely enough time to play games I always play on easy mode to progress faster and I don't care what the rest of the community says.

I especially have a problem with difficulty elitists in games like terraria, where if you don’t play game on the hardest difficulty they don’t consider you a true fan. And I’m saying this as a guy who always plays games on the hardest difficulty even if it’s my first play through

I'm really not a fan of 'director' dynamic difficulty systems, mostly as a result of experience with later games in the Homeworld series. Over-preparing is how I like to play games and manage difficulty for myself and punishing me for that sucks.

Difficulty elitists in Minecraft are less worse than Terraria ones. Somehow, Keep Inventory's taboo.

I don't know if I'm a masochist but I enjoy playing games with a difficult setting because it's really satisfying when you defeat a boss or complete a mission because of the thrill of the challenge compared to easy mode. But I don't judge what difficulty people choose because your experience is what matters when playing a video game

The stuff I hate that some games do is just enemies that have more health and do more damage which isnt engaging at all. As of late, I just play the medium difficulty most of the time of any game. That way I have more freedom of choice in playstyle and put limits on myself which can still be engaging in ways that more health and damage isn't.

The greatest “hard” difficulty I’ve played was Metro: Last Light. A single bullet could take you down, but a single bullet will also take down most enemies

Honestly, I agree with most thing's here...except for Metro being an example of bad difficulty, I really dig Ranger Hardcore.

I recently played a lot of Hades. It's a dungeon crawler roguelike. The game has a mechanic called The pact of punishment, which has a bunch of modifiers that make the game harder. One of those modifiers is called "Extreme measures", I think and it's my favorite way of making any game harder. What it does is it add additional attacks to a boss's move set. There are other modifiers that introduce a time limit, additional mechanics to the basic enemies, increased prices to the items in the shop, fewer choices to choosing upgrades and the classic - increased enemy damage and health. Hands down the best difficulty system in any game I have played in my life. Certainly hope the upcoming Hades 2 keeps that and hopefully improves that and I hope more games, not only roguelikes add similar features to their difficulty setting, sort of like in Legendary Halo with it's improved enemy AI.

For FPS i consider classic doom and halo best for me in terms of difficulty. Doom provides more enemies and some enemies replaced with high tier enemies , less ammo and take more damage. Halo is similar. Noticeable in halo CE is that spawns change and also adds more enemy waves i certain sections. You also take more damage and enemies are more often higher rank. Taking more damage isn't that bad but when developers do the lazy approach of making enemies take forever to kill, that's when i lose interest.

My dad beat God of War 2018 on Give Me God of War. He had such great patience.

Funny. I think the adaptive difficult of RE4 is one of its worst qualities. Even as a kid, I absolutely HATED when, after I would lose a few times at one spot, suddenly, half the enemies would be missing on my next try. I didn't WANT it to be easier. I WANTED to be able to beat the challenge set in front of me in my own time. Making things easier without even asking is like a huge insult to me. Being treated like a baby is not my idea of a fun difficulty experience. It just made me feel cheated. However, there is one game I can think of the top of my head that did adaptive difficulty well, also from Capcom, and that is GodHand. In that game, you pick a baseline difficulty first, and have a meter with several layers in the bottom left of your hud, ranging from level 1, 2, 3, and level DIE. Doing well raises the meter bit by bit, and doing poorly lowers it. Defeating enemies on the higher difficulty layers of the meter grants you better rewards upon a chapter ending. More money, stuff like that, but if any part becomes too hard, it's not a major due to the fact that losing over and over will make the game far easier. Heck, there's even a special ability that lets you lower the meter at the cost, available from the very start of the game. To me, this is genius. It encourages you to play well with tangible rewards for doing so, constantly challenges the player if they so wish, and the hardest difficulty, like RE4, locks the challenge to the highest level at all times. It's the best of all worlds. Ninja Gaiden Black also does something cool where if you die 3 times on the first level (which is more than likely for new players), the game will ASK you if you want to abandon the path of the Ninja, and if you choose yes, you get a cutscene where you get shit talked by another ninja and then get put on "ninja dog" mode, where the game is overall easier, and your ranking cannot go above ninja dog for all missions you complete.

Sometimes I feel crazy cause unlike other people, when I do finally beat the one part in the game I was failing for hours at a time, I feel almost nothing. I don’t feel fulfilled, I don’t feel like I won. I feel like I wasted hours on all of that stress and for what? It ends up being entirely draining and debilitating, sometimes ruining the entire game for me if it’s bad enough. All it takes is one boss that I have to abuse the game mechanics in unintended ways to beat, and then I feel sour about everything afterwords. I don’t play normally again cause at that point I’ve already had to memorize how to break the game in order to win, so encounters don’t feel natural as my mindset shifts into doing what gives the enemy no chance as opposed to what’s fun. Happens the most with single player close quarters combat games I noticed, and usually way before the end of the game.

I feel like the main problem with Elden Ring is that the bosses move as fast as ones in Sekiro but the player has the movement speeds that of Dark Souls

I usually just want to play the game on the difficulty it was built around. And that can be hard because you would think that would be "normal" or "medium" but that isn't always the case. Sometimes devs will come out and say that "hard" is the true difficulty of the game. Like Halo for example, bungie devs always said that "heroic" was the true way to play Halo.

There are a few games that gets it right, that said few. There is Horizon Zero Dawn, it make the game way too hard starting out. Prices are ludicrous, enemies can see you from a mile away. They are more aggressive, can almost one shot you, and there is no health bar. It makes the game that much harder than it needs to be. Remnant is better, but you basically die in 2 hits, sometimes in one and enemies way too beefy. Invest as much as you want in protection and everything, but it still doesn't do anything. A game that I have played that does get it right is Ghost of Tsushima. Most enemies go down in 2 hits, but so do you, meaning that there is at least some level of fairness when starting out. The Witcher 3 does it differently. The game literally makes you feel like witcher. You are supposed to use everything you have at your disposal, meaning that you can use every trick up your sleeve, no matter what. The bottom line is a game is supposed to be fair no matter what difficulty you play on. Playing on hard shouldn't feel like torture, it should make you think about what you do and give a fair challenge, not throw everything at you and only make you feel like you are powerless.

if you think give me god of war was hard you should play metal gear solid 2 on European extreme and get the big boss rank it's real fun trust me

I really like hard games, there is something about beating something that pushes you to the limit. There have been times I have have though stuff being unfair and/or impossible, but I still managed to beat it. Like look at Call of duty world at war on veteran difficulty, its super hard and give you no chance to just hide away since you will get bombarded by grenades. Quake 1 on nightmare, there are parts where you pretty much die instantly in ambuses if you forgot they were there. I mean you can just save, but I think saving mid level takes away all the stress with playing on the hardest difficulty. One difficulty setting that I would say bad is in the elder scrolls and/or some of the fallout games where they just make the enemies tanky. God of war on give me god of war difficulty is fair in my opinion because just mindlessly hitting an enemy is not the intended way to get through the game on that setting, you should use combos and abilities especially investing in the Runic stat to get massive damage. Then we have games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R which has a unique difficulty setting making both you and the enemies take ridiculous damage. Headshots are usually lethal and you die in seconds, but same goes for your enemies with the exception of mutants. Max payne 3 had a unique system where if a bullet hits your head and you have no painkiller you're dead, even on some of the easier difficulties, but honestly Max payne is a powerfantasy game, the hardest difficulty is really fun.

I've been thinking about this whole thing for awhile myself like what's the point of difficulty settings in some games when sometimes the player can't even tell the difference between normal and hard or easy and normal? The souls series seems to have perfected what difficulty should be whether you have that perfect build for yourself and wreck the game or if you want it more difficult just use terrible weapons and go naked through the game, I don't understand at times how a lot of games I play(even for the first time) I have it set to easy difficulty and like I notice that I take some of the most bs damage even on that difficulty and it makes me think like "If this is easy difficulty I'd like to see what hard is like" but mostly as a joke you know? Even games like Skyrim right, okay I loved Morrowind and Oblivion, fair games and all but then I play Skyrim and I'm sitting there getting one tapped by bandit chiefs while rocking full daedric and that's with it set to novice difficulty so I thought "maybe that's hard difficulty" so I scrolled all the way to the right setting it to legendary thinking that's easy difficulty but...I noticed no difference in damage I was taking and I was baffled when yet in something like dark souls I can easily shrug off backstabs like they're nothing or even attacks from bosses. I'm kinda tired of difficulty settings in games honestly, not sure if anyone else is but yeah I totally get this video...

The Evil within's akumu mode was actually a lot of fun. I died 289 times, but it was still fun

banger

Enemies numbers & placement > Enemies buff

I will never understand the appeal of Adapting Difficulty. All it does is punishing you for playing good and rewarding your for playing bad.

I think your handsome

Highest difficulty I got on wolfenstein 2 was do or die. Duel wield all the time there's no longer any downside to doing so. And you need to deal out as much damage as possible. Machine games probably should of had vision and removed ads and made duel wielding constant while giving it a little more depth.

I enjoy fromsoft titles. I also enjoy playing games with easy options when available. Some games aren't for everyone and you know when you play them if it resonates with you. I played re2 remake on normal and I just didn't enjoy the gameplay loop. Same with dead island 2. Player preference determines just how much a player will put into a game and some games may push you to try a harder mode just to feel accomplished. Play what you like people, hard and punishing or easy as pie for the story.

There is a right and wrong way to implement the difficulty settings. I'd argue Wolfenstein 3D did it right I mean in that game harder means more enemies to kill. Same with classic Doom and Quake. Yes, there is a nightmare difficulty in Doom but it's more of a joke difficulty that is meant to silence the people who complained that Doom is too easy even on Ultra-Violence difficulty. (Though some hardcore people made a nightmare run) In Quake 1 nightmare is kinda hidden and it does the same as hard but also makes enemies harder in ways other than raising damage and HP. The wrong way of making it hard is making enemies too damage spongy and too deadly.

Halo 2 is the best game on legendary. You just need a really good co-op partner too carry your ass until you find out it's really not that hard. You just got to do that covenant dance behind the elites to smack him in the back. Works every time, also, trial and error with them jackal snipers. They killed you but you respawn from checkpoint and know where to kill them. (I discontinued my Xbox live because Halo and Perfect Dark are the only games I play and online PVE for those games are very dead)

Oh god i hate adaptove difficulty with a passion of a thousand suns.

What is the game at 5:35?

Do the MGS5 thing where there's a journalism difficulty that has your character in the chicken hat. That way we could have our easy modes but we know when a journalist is having a shitty opinion.

My take on the disability argument for souls games is that if your disability lets you play at all, you can win the game. Any disability that truly needs an assist mode will need one that will make the game play itself. It takes a lot of determination, more than from a regular person but it's possible. And if you really need it, i believe there should be third party programs integrated into souls games so people can't say they "played through the game fair". Another point is that the difficutly in souls games matters not just from a gameplay standpoint but an artistic one too. The gameplay reflects the world and your hopeless situation as the ashen one or the chosen undead or whoever else. If you beat the game without struggling, you did not experience dark souls. If we integrate an easy mode into souls games people will just be tempted to turn it on and less will experience the true dark souls experience.

3:08 Thats a fair way to do it proxi, but you should remember that its not about an easy mode being there, since, we both know there already are several difficulty settings in the souls games. This is about a simple switch they can turn on in the menus. Even if from soft literally created a blinky that occupied the helmet slot and made the enemies do 80% less damage, with an item description of 'this is for wittle tiny babies, who suck at games', they'd *STILL* complain about a lack of traditional difficulty settings, because they dont care to put in even the smallest amount of effort to have an easier time *through game mechanics*, they want that button, and nothing will satiate them. Not to mention that if said blinky was put in the game, they'd complain about being mocked, which, to be fair, would be fair criticism, but still. My points is that your solution is too nuanced for these people, and even if from soft did what you said the journalists would still complain cause its not a button they can just toggle.

🦍

RE4R is a horrible example for a good difficulty. I've beaten it 13 times and absolutely nothing is consistent on Hardcore and Professional. Staggers are vomitted into an rng based system and the bullet spread gets so much worse.

I think Celeste has great difficulty balancing.

I’d say if you cry about asking for a easy mode for a souls game go play a different game they are meant to be challenging

RE4 Remake is NOT a good example of good difficulty at all. I love that game, my fav action horror game ever. But that game has some serious BS on professional and it's a difficulty system that occasionally punishes you for playing well. The DA system causes a lot of inconsistencies.

Hell divers is great example of a game that does difficulty right

yo, 33 seconds

Halfway through the video and im starting to think you dont understand achievements and difficulties, achievements are checkmarks for completion and achievements you gained in your favourite games and difficulties give you more options to challenge yourself or to make next playthroughs more interesting

I really dislike the resi 4 remake professional difficulty.They could make the enemies have more health while giving you less ammo making the game more of a survival horror rather than an action horror game ,but they should still have the enemies get staggered by one headshot rather than 2 or 3

Not including heldivers 2 is a crime

Here's a guide from me on how to play Elden Ring. Ready for it? Git Gud Scrub. My guide right there.

I dont know why this is a topic the whole point is to pick a difficulty you think is for you, some people just like easy games, some people like a challenge, and some people like games that are unfair, yes they do exist so no difficulty options dont suck you just suck at picking them

Doom eternal gets it right

BRO. People without hands are able to play fromsoftware games HELL even a god damn rabbit defeat Cleric Beast in Bloodborne, Difficulty does not access accessibility

They may suck but you cant remove them

Waste of time nothing interesting was said in this video just 10 minutes of yapping

Herrrrrro