Keihart
Member
Not really an original thought, but having this modes selected at the start of the game takes away a lot of the balance and sometimes can even kill any challenge originally designed for the game, let me explain.
How many times you read someone complaining that x game's combat it's bad because it's too easy, and then you have a group of people telling that same group to bump up the difficulty? I think this is a hole that a lot of devs put themselves into. Just by having that menu, you automatically have a portion of your player base select the wrong difficulty for their level of skill, making them lose interest in the game because it's either too easy or too hard for them while a small portion finds the right one and calls it a good challenge.
Then of course you also have the problem of balancing each difficulty which usually ends up in some difficulties having some features taken off that were considered too challenging or even sometimes in harder modes have some features become unreliable because of the increase in challenge forcing the player to min max in a different way.
As some examples, Uncharted's combat it's not easily appreciated because in normal it's too easy and bumping it up to crushing becomes sadistic sometimes, usually best played in the difficulty before crushing but since the game it's not that challenging on normal it makes no effort to train the player for harder difficulties or ease them into the effective use of some mechanics.
Devil May Cry it's an example of changing the design of the game to the difficulty options, the game it's balanced with the idea of replaying it so most entries are fairly balanced or even kinda easy on normal sometimes but you are introduced to new mechanics during the whole game until the end so you hopefully want to comeback for harder runs or the bloody palace to challenge yourself. Usually this games start to shine when playing the harder difficulties with new enemy placement, new enemy abilities, new player handicaps and so on.
Then you have the golden standards in difficulty, Demon's Souls and the indie rouge likes like Spelunky, you just play this games and allow yourself to balance the challenge by selecting which tools are better for your play style be it either by making yourself a melee glass canon in Demon's Souls to make it harder or playing it as a royal mage to make it easier. In Spelunky you can either choose to use shortcuts to make advancing faster for learning the quirks of every stage or maybe you prefer to just do it in one run to get better equipped or maybe you want it to be harder and go for high scores using the ghosts and robbing the shopkeepers.
Kinda of a wall text, but wouldn't be better if games were always balanced about the one true difficulty where most people can engage with it, where every feature it's considered and made relevant ?
TLDR; Selecting difficulty from a menu sucks balls and keeps players out of your games.
How many times you read someone complaining that x game's combat it's bad because it's too easy, and then you have a group of people telling that same group to bump up the difficulty? I think this is a hole that a lot of devs put themselves into. Just by having that menu, you automatically have a portion of your player base select the wrong difficulty for their level of skill, making them lose interest in the game because it's either too easy or too hard for them while a small portion finds the right one and calls it a good challenge.
Then of course you also have the problem of balancing each difficulty which usually ends up in some difficulties having some features taken off that were considered too challenging or even sometimes in harder modes have some features become unreliable because of the increase in challenge forcing the player to min max in a different way.
As some examples, Uncharted's combat it's not easily appreciated because in normal it's too easy and bumping it up to crushing becomes sadistic sometimes, usually best played in the difficulty before crushing but since the game it's not that challenging on normal it makes no effort to train the player for harder difficulties or ease them into the effective use of some mechanics.
Devil May Cry it's an example of changing the design of the game to the difficulty options, the game it's balanced with the idea of replaying it so most entries are fairly balanced or even kinda easy on normal sometimes but you are introduced to new mechanics during the whole game until the end so you hopefully want to comeback for harder runs or the bloody palace to challenge yourself. Usually this games start to shine when playing the harder difficulties with new enemy placement, new enemy abilities, new player handicaps and so on.
Then you have the golden standards in difficulty, Demon's Souls and the indie rouge likes like Spelunky, you just play this games and allow yourself to balance the challenge by selecting which tools are better for your play style be it either by making yourself a melee glass canon in Demon's Souls to make it harder or playing it as a royal mage to make it easier. In Spelunky you can either choose to use shortcuts to make advancing faster for learning the quirks of every stage or maybe you prefer to just do it in one run to get better equipped or maybe you want it to be harder and go for high scores using the ghosts and robbing the shopkeepers.
Kinda of a wall text, but wouldn't be better if games were always balanced about the one true difficulty where most people can engage with it, where every feature it's considered and made relevant ?
TLDR; Selecting difficulty from a menu sucks balls and keeps players out of your games.
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