How hard do you like it?

[Frizz.Meister]

Harder is better. Sounds dumb i know but i would rather spend a year working out each section of a level till the game is mastered, than do a Black ops and beat the game on veteran first run in 5 hours. However my limit is fairness be as instant kill as you want and it will be fun for me. But if enemies start repawning the game gets changed.

[Gamerforlife]

I actually wish games didn't have difficulty settings. I prefer one universal experience for every player. The game played the way it was MEANT to be played.

The point of difficulty levels is, in my opinion, to provide a similar experience to a very varied playerbase.

For example, you want to provide a "tense" experience to the player by facing him with powerful enemies. How can you provide that experience to both Mr Hardcore and Mr Weak? Difficulty levels are an easy helping more people to enjoy your game.

Beating the same game is a different challenge for different people. For me most DDR songs are easy but for most people they are incredibly hard.

Yeah, but to me it's hard to make a game for Mr Hardcore and Mr Weak. I think you should pick an audience and stick with it. A lot of games just feel watered down, unfocused and devoid of real identity because too many developers want to make games that please everyone

If I was a designer I would have one PURE, FOCUSED vision of what my game should be. So I simply wouldn't have difficulty settings. I'm not looking to make a game for everyone, not that there's anything wrong with trying to do that. A game like Viva Pinata though would not be Viva Pinata if they tried to make it appeal to hardcore gamers in any way, shape or form and clearly Itagaki didn't give a crap about "weak" gamers with his Ninja Gaiden games

If I wanted to appeal to hardcores and casuals, I'd make different games for each audience I think

[dgamemuster]

I like to play HARD Give it to me HARD BABY cuz I'm HARDCORE

[avrame]

Seriously. Why can't I just bang it on Insane and slog through the game. It just encourages me to put it on easy, blast through the entire game in a couple of hours, then put it on Insane to play it properly. I HATE it when devs do that sort of stupid shit.

I'm 100% certain that it is a choice by devs to encourage replay and promote story flow. Assuming they puts tons of effort into the story, the original thought of
Cutscene A -> 30 mins of play -> Cutscene B
is now
Cutscene A -> (10 mins of play <-> die, retry)x20 -> Cutscene B

I personally don't find it detracting in any way, and love the punishment and adrenaline surge you were talking about, but it deffinately is a reason.

As for my difficulty preference: Ninja Gaiden hard plz. Gotta love scoring all the achievements in one playthrough (ala Call Of Duty 2 on veteran difficult)

[DAAAAA!!]

if it's a long game that i know i'll never play again, i just put it in normal..


if it's a short game i play it on easy the first time then keep making the game harder..

[Xeogred]

I usually stick to normal, but if I like the game a ton and can replay it I'll up the difficulty.

But anyways as for the poll, I always play Doom and WAD's on HMP at least so I went with that.

[BurningDoom]

Come on. No one finds the title of this thread to be hilarious? I can't be the only immature one here.

[Xeogred]

Come on. No one finds the title of this thread to be hilarious? I can't be the only immature one here.

I honestly didn't even notice until now, haha... wow.

[FerretGamer]

Come on. No one finds the title of this thread to be hilarious? I can't be the only immature one here.

Sadly, it was the first thing that came to mind.

[CFFJR]

Come on. No one finds the title of this thread to be hilarious? I can't be the only immature one here.

You aren't. I'm totally immature, I laughed when I saw it, and I'm not completely certain that it was unintentional.

As for the question, I typically play on Normal, depending on the genre. If I like a game enough to play it again, or if there's some kind of reward for playing on higher difficulties, then I turn it up.

Its true that some games do it better than others though. Recent example for me was Mass Effect 2. I played that first on Normal, then again on Insanity, the hardest level. The Insanity run was a blast, all kinds of fun, and after playing it on that level I simply can't go back to Normal.

When I'm in the mood for it though, I really appreciate a hard game when its done well. I love the sense of accomplishment it gives.