Poll: What sort of game difficulty do you prefer?

[Captante]

Back in the day when all I cared about was death-match, I wanted Xaero with his railgun in "ultra-nightmare" mode at all times to help keep me sharp for the somehow occasionally even deadlier humans!



Now however I will play any single-player game at whatever level is fun for me since that's what I paid good money to do.

Most often I do end up on "hard" (lol) setting or above and I pretty much never use "story-mode" however ALL paid PC games should have a "difficulty-slider" that can be adjusted in-game if desired while in single-player along with manual saves instead of stupid/lazy "checkpoints".

 

[igor_kavinski]

Back in the day when all I cared about was death-match, I wanted Xaero with his railgun in "ultra-nightmare" mode at all times to help keep me sharp for the somehow occasionally even deadlier humans!

You gotta be a masochist for ultra nightmare difficulty preference. Might as well electroshock your brain

Story modes can suck if they are not done well. But they should provide tourist story mode for the impatient. Agree on manual saves. I guess they are harder to do (if they save the current engine state, each save may take hundreds of megs). Doing a good manual save implementation with minimum file size would require engine support or a masochistic developer

 

[Captante]

When I was into deathmatch all I cared about was frames per second, ping-time and most of all frags. I was rarely/never the absolute best, but I could hold my own in the top 5 on pretty much any non-cheating server. (with the occasional match-win!)

Once I discovered Bioware RPG's like Dragon-Age back in the day however that all changed. Now what I look for along with entertaining combat and exploration is the same stuff I look for in a movie.

I want a compelling storyline with decisions that affect the course it takes and most importantly I want to care about the characters. (impressive/smooth graphics are "nice to have" too but NOT required!)

 

[igor_kavinski]

I want a compelling storyline with decisions that affect the course it takes and most importantly I want to care about the characters. (impressive/smooth graphics are "nice to have" too but NOT required!)

You sound like a prime candidate for Detroit: Become Human. It shows a frickin' decision chart on what paths you took, what path other players in the world took and what paths you missed, so you can replay again and again.

Quantic Dream's older games are decent for their branching storylines. Some of them have really emotional scenes. No decision chart in those, though.

 

[Captante]

You sound like a prime candidate for Detroit: Become Human. It shows a frickin' decision chart on what paths you took, what path other players in the world took and what paths you missed, so you can replay again and again.

Quantic Dream's older games are decent for their branching storylines. Some of them have really emotional scenes. No decision chart in those, though.

Never heard of it but I'll check it out!

 

[igor_kavinski]

Never heard of it but I'll check it out!

The first one, Heavy Rain (originally on PS3 but now on Steam), made a big splash and launched Quantic Dream into the limelight. I remember thinking, "Woah! The only time I've felt this emotionally exhausted is after watching a really, really good Hollywood movie!".

It was probably also the first game on PS3 that showed breasts in a shower scene!

 

[Captante]

I'm downloading the demo for "Detroit" now... nice to see a company still do that!

I'll be waiting for a sale on the full version... it's $40 @ full retail!

 

[igor_kavinski]

It's a PS4 port so expect it to be a bit harsh in the performance department. Didn't try it on PC yet.

Demo may not indicate how messed up the story is. As in, you will be like, "Whaaaaa???". At least, that's what I thought on my first and only playthrough (coz life).

 

[Captante]

I'll lyk... I have a 3080/5800x so it should perform okay what usually ends up killing console-ports for me are dumb control-limitations and check-point saves.

 

[Hotrod2go]

I didn't pick any option but generally always go with default difficulty until I get use to the game interface & mechanics. Then when I feel confident enough, will up the difficulty.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Adaptive difficulty is something I don't remember any game doing. Maybe there are some games out there that do that, especially if they don't offer multiple difficulty levels. I would really like to try something like that, as it would allow me to complete the game comfortably, rather than feeling that the game is too easy or too hard on the default available difficulty settings.

I really enjoyed the puzzle levels in Catherine (PS3). They went from really easy to pretty tough at the later levels but my brain adapted to the rising difficulty so that I was running my character around without even thinking. That was pure joy. Sadly, couldn't finish it coz my PS3 died (due to cockroach babies and their poo, of all things!).

I have Catherine Full Body Experience in my PS4 library. I hope to get to it in the next annual holidays, whenever that materializes.

Boss: What you do isn't rocket science!
Me: Can I go on vacation now?
Boss: I don't want any disturbance in the office due to you not being there a whole month!
Me (To myself): What was that you said about rocket science????

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Adaptive difficulty is something I don't remember any game doing. Maybe there are some games out there that do that, especially if they don't offer multiple difficulty levels. I would really like to try something like that, as it would allow me to complete the game comfortably, rather than feeling that the game is too easy or too hard on the default available difficulty settings.

I really enjoyed the puzzle levels in Catherine (PS3). They went from really easy to pretty tough at the later levels but my brain adapted to the rising difficulty so that I was running my character around without even thinking. That was pure joy. Sadly, couldn't finish it coz my PS3 died (due to cockroach babies and their poo, of all things!).

I have Catherine Full Body Experience in my PS4 library. I hope to get to it in the next annual holidays, whenever that materializes.

Boss: What you do isn't rocket science!
Me: Can I go on vacation now?
Boss: I don't want any disturbance in the office due to you not being there a whole month!
Me (To myself): What was that you said about rocket science????

- You could argue the AI director in the Left 4 Dead games was a sort of adaptive difficulty mode. If your crews is streamrolling, then more specials and more waves. If you guys are struggling, calm things down a bit and give you a breather.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Left 4 Dead games

Other than HL2 (and episodes) and Portal, I managed to miss playing almost everything else by Valve

 

[EXCellR8]

Racing games: hard or expert
Everything else: normal/standard

There are some non-racing games i prefer to ramp the difficulty up on, but few and far between; I have to really like or enjoy playing them.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Racing games: hard or expert

Do you use a wheel? Hard seems insane to me. Tried it. The AI completed two laps while I was still on the first one.

 

[EXCellR8]

Yea a Logi or Fanatec wheel and 3-pedal setup but only with sims, otherwise the arcade racers I do fine with a regular gamepad. Just depends on what game or how much time I have. Mind you I may not win every single race but it's really the only genre I can be super competitive with. I need to rebuild my setup but moving soon so hopefully I have a bit more space.