If You're Going To Have Difficulty Settings, Please Make Them Interesting (Article Opinions)

If You're Going to Have Difficulty Settings, Please Make Them Interesting

I found this article, and want to get your guys opinions on this article. This was a very interesting opinion peace that I don't know if I fully agree with.

If you decide to read the article please leave your thoughts on the subject at hand.

Agrees on more options for difficulty being better. Tailors the game to your specific tastes.

Argues that any sufficiently different difficulty ought to affect your playstyle, though. Creates some hypothetical boss named Big Bad on three different difficulty levels. Uses an attack called Big Boom. Launches a barrel that explodes five seconds later. Hits for 10/40/70% of your health, depending on your difficulty. Leave the area of effect circle to avoid taking damage.

Basically ignores Big Boom on Easy. Becomes a factor on Hard you must adjust to, especially if you played an easier difficulty before. Views different difficulties as just that: how many mechanics can you ignore safely?

Agrees on greater differences being nice too. Could launch more barrels for Big Boom or even have a special Big Shot attack on Hard. Possibly changes the boss arena instead. Runs into some potential issues in practice, however. May lead to the lower difficulties feeling too straightforward and same-y, especially with only one (possibly minor) special attack on Big Bad. Must still be interesting for lower difficulty players too.

Edit: One more point. How often do people try a second difficulty? Hears about low numbers of players seeing endgame or postgame content in some games. Presumes similar here. Is it worth a developer's time to devote lots of time to something most players will not notice? Ideally, yes. In practice? Maybe not.

Never played most of the games mentioned in the article, but I do agree with the base premise of the article that the majority games don't do difficulty settings and/or high difficulty well.

Though I know why games usually go the route of "more difficult=numbers less in player's favor" and/or "let's throw in some bullshit", because that's a lot quicker and easier than taking the time to craft the various difficulty levels/the difficulty in general well. In a capitalist world, games are more a product to be sold than an experience for people to enjoy.

I do think that things like "You deal less damage on harder difficulties" or "Bosses have less HP on easier difficulties" are band-aid fixes that don't really care about how the game is designed. Recently I've begun to think I don't really agree with the "Easy/Medium/Hard" difficulty settings a lot of games have (besides the feature some games have where it makes them very easy just so you can experience the story with no issues, I do think that's a good choice) because it's not described very well at all. If I'm playing an RPG for the first time where I have to decide what difficulty setting I want and can't change it during the game, how am I supposed to know if I'd be more comfortable playing on Easy or Hard before playing it?

Mega Man 10 was the first time I saw a game that felt like the difficulty setting actually mattered in a reasonable way. In Easy, there are extra platforms to help with difficult platforming or maybe less enemies spawning throughout the levels. In Hard, you might have to fight tougher enemies during a level or they'll have different attacks that damage you instead of just slow you down or example, and each boss will have an extra attack. It's a much more fulfilling experience than just giving the bosses an extra health bar or something.

I thought Sea of Stars was awesome with difficulty settings. You get items as you play the game that can affect a bunch of things like making items cost less at shops, letting you take less damage, but there's also ones that make the game harder in unique ways like making it so your attacks do no damage if you don't time them correctly, or reduce your HP massively but make it so blocking attacks with perfect timing deals only 1 damage. The fact you can turn each of them on or off independent of each other and whenever you like meant I was always playing at a comfortable difficulty.
There's one that just gives you 20% more XP and sometimes that's all I want. Not to make all the bosses easier but just to shorten any time I might have to spend grinding.

I also think there just seems to be a stigma around playing games on easier difficulties. If I don't want to play a game on the hardest difficulty where I do 1 damage and take 1000 damage, there will be someone out there who will say I'm "not a true gamer" and not playing the game the way it was intended to be played.

Nah said:

Though I know why games usually go the route of "more difficult=numbers less in player's favor" and/or "let's throw in some bullshit", because that's a lot quicker and easier than taking the time to craft the various difficulty levels/the difficulty in general well.

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Dude I was never a fan of games that made stuff more difficult by taking the laziest possible options/options that serve to do nothing but make content take longer, but sometimes that's all you got I guess. Loot shooters with all the damn bullet sponge nonsense are like the worst offenders of this.

I think that in any game, if you bother to have the option for adjusting difficulties, you should let the player customize the experience full nook and cranny. Maybe I'm fine with taking 10x more damage without every enemy on my screen being absolute damage sponges that do nothing but annoy me and aren't mechanically interesting. Some games have things where on higher difficulties, enemies will do attacks they didn't do on lower difficulties. Stuff like that is great. Maybe I'd like to deal with those extra attacks without dealing with the extra damage that comes with it. But this just goes back to what Nah said...