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[DunDunDunpachi]

There are a few games in recent memory that allowed the player to tweak difficulty options beyond just selecting Normal or Hard or whatever. It would be nice if players could actually select more options for their single-player playthroughs. I can't imagine this being all that important to those who play through a game once and shelve it / sell it, but if you enjoy replaying your favorites it can be a boon to have more options at your fingertips to keep things interesting.

This complaint is squarely leveled at console devs, since the PC platform allows users to adjust a lot of these settings through an ini file or through other means.

The games made by the Bravely Default team gave player the ability select the difficulty of enemies, but you can also tweak encounter rate, EXP gain, JP gain, etc. It isn't much, but it is something. The recent Battle Garegga revision by M2 is another example. Garegga is known for its crushing difficulty, so players can do stuff like adjust bullet color to make them more visible or tweak the rank settings. The game does offer difficulty modes, too, but these nuanced options might make the game more interesting to someone on subsequent plays, or it might make them easier to get into.

Or consider the typical FPS or character-action campaign: Easy, Normal, Hard, and Legendary (or something like that) is usually what you get, and nothing more. These difficulty levels usually just affect damage. It is rare that your foes will actually get more cunning on higher difficulty levels. What about something more like this in an FPS?

Number of enemies: [Sparse] [Normal] [Double] [Triple]
Loot drop: [Sparse] [Normal] [Double] [Triple]
Reload speed: [Fast] [Normal] [half-speed]
Highlight quick-time prompt: [On] [Off]
Enemy awareness radius: [close-range] [Normal] [Eagle vision]
Weapon carry limit: [2] [5] [NO Limit]
Ammo carry limit: [400% ammo] [200% ammo] [Normal] [50% ammo]

Obviously these are just spitball ideas, but I think its high time we did away with difficulty modes. Just let me crank up whatever variables I want and play the game how I please. There's really not much prestige in beating a game on harder difficulties anyway.

Can you think of difficulty variables you'd want to tweak in your games instead of using simple difficulty modes?

 

[Starlight Lotice]

That reminds me of The World Ends With You and Kid Icarus Uprising.

I left it for the former and liked it as I hated the Top Screen's Battle Mechanics but for the latter, it actually made me go on lower difficulties as I felt that the Camera (and story) were the most awful aspects of that game. The difficulty was probably the only decent thing Kid Icarus Uprising has for it as I hated the whole thing.

A scaler would be better than the set difficulties but I guess it cost them some money to tweak those variables themselves so that the game sells.

Sonic defintely needs one where the difficulty is: Gotta Go Fast (No enemies), Gotta be Careful (Some Enemies), Leisurely Adventure (Slow Speed., No Enemies) and Eggman's Revenge (Loads of Enemies, Lateral Thinking is needed to get through with Speed and Attacking)

 

[Daymos]

ugh I hate games with difficulty like that. I start out and put everything up 100% to make the game as hard as possible all motivated wanting a challenging experience. Only then, as you can guess, it's too frustrating and I start moving stuff down. By the end I'm turning off all encounters or using unlimited rewinds just to get the damn game over with.

I need that balanced hand that can only be given to you by the people who made the game.

That stuff would be great after you beat the game for a second play though, that way I've already made my way through normal and I can break the game and give up without caring. That's basically what I got in xenoblade2, I'm not sure if you had to beat the game for the custom difficulty or if it was just DLC somewhere along the way while I was playing though.

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

ugh I hate games with difficulty like that. I start out and put everything up 100% to make the game as hard as possible all motivated wanting a challenging experience. Only then, as you can guess, it's too frustrating and I start moving stuff down. By the end I'm turning off all encounters or using unlimited rewinds just to get the damn game over with.

I need that balanced hand that can only be given to you by the people who made the game.

That stuff would be great after you beat the game for a second play though, that way I've already made my way through normal and I can break the game and give up without caring. That's basically what I got in xenoblade2, I'm not sure if you had to beat the game for the custom difficulty or if it was just DLC somewhere along the way while I was playing though.

There's definitely value in playing a fine-tuned difficulty that was intended by the developers, I can't really disagree there.

 

[Karak]

It would be great however having done some QA myself and some testing I can tell you it takes VERY little for things to go sideways when it comes to resources to test that. Which is why few games do it. We had a couple devs on the channel in the past and some discussions with others and the 2 who handled AI really dived deep into that. Including titles like ARMA.
You COULD warn folks with a disclaimer but disclaimers(may break game) don't do much these days.

 

[xool]

I prefer less - here's an alternative - one basic difficultly . If players want "easy mode" give them an OP weapon eg like the Fox Blade in MG:Rising

add some post-game hardmodes too if you want.

Seems a lot easier to do that having to balance multiple variables - which also forces player to relearn if they want to try harder difficulty

 

[DrJohnGalt]

Depends on the game, but overall I'd really like games to start adding a difficulty slider (like Skyrim had). If you want to play it on what the devs says is the recommended balance, great. But it seems more and more frequently I'm putting games on easy to do a quick run to clear them. Just have too much in the backlog and too much coming out to waste time on frustratingly (and often unnecessarily) difficult games.

 

[Helios]

ugh I hate games with difficulty like that. I start out and put everything up 100% to make the game as hard as possible all motivated wanting a challenging experience. Only then, as you can guess, it's too frustrating and I start moving stuff down. By the end I'm turning off all encounters or using unlimited rewinds just to get the damn game over with.

I need that balanced hand that can only be given to you by the people who made the game.

That stuff would be great after you beat the game for a second play though, that way I've already made my way through normal and I can break the game and give up without caring. That's basically what I got in xenoblade2, I'm not sure if you had to beat the game for the custom difficulty or if it was just DLC somewhere along the way while I was playing though.

You can always just have both.
Have presets and than options for those that want to tweak their experience.

Here are two examples I can think of. Don't Starve/Toghether where you have a few presets but you can tweak basically every spawn in the game.

And Darkest Dungeon which has 3 presets from which you choose when beggining your game. They don't actually affect difficulty as much as they change the amount of grind required.

In-game though you will find a lot more options to choose from but the developers specifically mention that tweaking any of them is not the intended experience.

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

It would be great however having done some QA myself and some testing I can tell you it takes VERY little for things to go sideways when it comes to resources to test that. Which is why few games do it. We had a couple devs on the channel in the past and some discussions with others and the 2 who handled AI really dived deep into that. Including titles like ARMA.
You COULD warn folks with a disclaimer but disclaimers(may break game) don't do much these days.

I hadn't thought of it from a resource perspective. You're referring to a slider that doubles the number of enemies on screen, for instance? Movement speed could also pose issues if your game uses a lot of scripting.

What about stuff that is no more or less resource intensive, like damage? I don't see a technical limitation in being able to adjust the damage you deal to enemies and the damage enemies deal to you as separate variables, to use one example.

Helios the tweakability of Don't Starve is a great example. The 4x genre (primarily on PC) is another good example of having a ton of tweakable options prior to starting a campaign.

Smash Bros is yet another example. You can exclude items and adjust damage rates and all that fun stuff.

 

[Pejo]

I barely can stand going through granular performance options on PC. Granular difficulty settings would totally put me off and I'd just pick the Easy/Medium/Hard settings anyways.

 

[The Shepard]

Update with video.

I like how Resident evil 4 handles difficulty, it adapts to how well your doing and how much ammo your carrying.

 

[Knightime_X]

That can actually be really really fun.
Like lots of enemies who do high damage.
You also do very high damage but both you and enemies have very low health.

 

[jufonuk]

There are a few games in recent memory that allowed the player to tweak difficulty options beyond just selecting Normal or Hard or whatever. It would be nice if players could actually select more options for their single-player playthroughs. I can't imagine this being all that important to those who play through a game once and shelve it / sell it, but if you enjoy replaying your favorites it can be a boon to have more options at your fingertips to keep things interesting.

This complaint is squarely leveled at console devs, since the PC platform allows users to adjust a lot of these settings through an ini file or through other means.

The games made by the Bravely Default team gave player the ability select the difficulty of enemies, but you can also tweak encounter rate, EXP gain, JP gain, etc. It isn't much, but it is something. The recent Battle Garegga revision by M2 is another example. Garegga is known for its crushing difficulty, so players can do stuff like adjust bullet color to make them more visible or tweak the rank settings. The game does offer difficulty modes, too, but these nuanced options might make the game more interesting to someone on subsequent plays, or it might make them easier to get into.

Or consider the typical FPS or character-action campaign: Easy, Normal, Hard, and Legendary (or something like that) is usually what you get, and nothing more. These difficulty levels usually just affect damage. It is rare that your foes will actually get more cunning on higher difficulty levels. What about something more like this in an FPS?

Number of enemies: [Sparse] [Normal] [Double] [Triple]
Loot drop: [Sparse] [Normal] [Double] [Triple]
Reload speed: [Fast] [Normal] [half-speed]
Highlight quick-time prompt: [On] [Off]
Enemy awareness radius: [close-range] [Normal] [Eagle vision]
Weapon carry limit: [2] [5] [NO Limit]
Ammo carry limit: [400% ammo] [200% ammo] [Normal] [50% ammo]

Obviously these are just spitball ideas, but I think its high time we did away with difficulty modes. Just let me crank up whatever variables I want and play the game how I please. There's really not much prestige in beating a game on harder difficulties anyway.

Can you think of difficulty variables you'd want to tweak in your games instead of using simple difficulty modes?

So you admitting PC master race cheats their games because they suck? While The filthy console peasants have to make do ... how dare you flaunt your PC privilege at me. Oh the huge manatee

we are no longer the casuals. We are the true heirs. Rise up my console brethren or not. I don’t t care. Peace all over you

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

So you admitting PC master race cheats their games because they suck? While The filthy console peasants have to make do ... how dare you flaunt your PC privilege at me. Oh the huge manatee

I never said cheats. I said PC gamers usually have more options for adjusting difficulty, whether that's cranking up/down the damage, or increasing/decreasing unit restrictions in an RTS, or something like that. So it's kind of a moot point to complain about difficulty levels in PC games since those variables can be fiddled with anyway.

 

[Bankai]

This would be great for PC games.. but it already happens in that space using mods/trainers and stuff. Not great for plug&play, no-fuzz-just-play console gaming.

 

[Neff]

I like the idea of being handed the same game as someone else, but due to decisions made (or not made) on my part, having a totally different experience to that person. The more I can tweak in a game before I go in, the more that feeling is diminished.

I mean, all the great conversations I've had about games with people over the years have been formed under the same simple rules from the outset. I'm not interested in micro-managing a challenge level until it becomes a game that -statistically speaking- is a version that will only ever be played by a select few.

Also I prefer it when game designers design and balance a game themselves rather than leaving it to me.

 

[Stefan.North]

How would someone brag then about defeating a game on hardest difficulty?

Like "Hey, I beat the game with 500% enemy setting, 10% health setting, vibration on, minimal item drop, max volume, boss resurection 3x, text scrolling slowest and menys on arabic script of finnish language! Yeah! Who da man?!"

 

[jufonuk]

I never said cheats. I said PC gamers usually have more options for adjusting difficulty, whether that's cranking up/down the damage, or increasing/decreasing unit restrictions in an RTS, or something like that. So it's kind of a moot point to complain about difficulty levels in PC games since those variables can be fiddled with anyway.

Oh I see, when it is the PC master race is it simply “fiddling variables” yet the poor console plebs are accused outright of cheating. How the other half live. you live in your ivory tower while we slum it. I miss the game genie /action replay etc.

 

[Karak]

I hadn't thought of it from a resource perspective. You're referring to a slider that doubles the number of enemies on screen, for instance? Movement speed could also pose issues if your game uses a lot of scripting.

What about stuff that is no more or less resource intensive, like damage? I don't see a technical limitation in being able to adjust the damage you deal to enemies and the damage enemies deal to you as separate variables, to use one example.

Helios the tweakability of Don't Starve is a great example. The 4x genre (primarily on PC) is another good example of having a ton of tweakable options prior to starting a campaign.

Smash Bros is yet another example. You can exclude items and adjust damage rates and all that fun stuff.

Yes testing and expectations are huge. Even for just damage. Even if you just want people to experience the game in a way that is enjoyable and makes sense. Like I said a disclaimer would work if you want to just let it happen. However many devs don't want those kinds of possibly broken experiences. Like I said some companies have resources for testing it or ways to mitigate it. However many don't.
To see how easily something can go off the rails we can look at Ace Combat 7's review from IGN with the issues of them choosing basic(built into the game) control flight model and then not understanding why they couldn't perform moves. Regardless of who is wrong or right that data got out and made it appear a certain way which wasn't true. Lots of companies are nervous about that.

 

[Myths]

Should add a poll, I would like to see the thoughts in sheer numbers.

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

How would someone brag then about defeating a game on hardest difficulty?

Like "Hey, I beat the game with 500% enemy setting, 10% health setting, vibration on, minimal item drop, max volume, boss resurection 3x, text scrolling slowest and menys on arabic script of finnish language! Yeah! Who da man?!"

Good point. Trophies and Achievements would be all kinds of messed up, too.

Oh I see, when it is the PC master race is it simply “fiddling variables” yet the poor console plebs are accused outright of cheating. How the other half live. you live in your ivory tower while we slum it. I miss the game genie /action replay etc.

lol I guess this kind of went over my head with what you're talking about. I don't play on PC. I'm a console gamer, which is why I made a thread about including more options for console gamers. Action Replay for life.

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

Yes testing and expectations are huge. Even for just damage. Even if you just want people to experience the game in a way that is enjoyable and makes sense. Like I said a disclaimer would work if you want to just let it happen. However many devs don't want those kinds of possibly broken experiences. Like I said some companies have resources for testing it or ways to mitigate it. However many don't.
To see how easily something can go off the rails we can look at Ace Combat 7's review from IGN with the issues of them choosing basic(built into the game) control flight model and then not understanding why they couldn't perform moves. Regardless of who is wrong or right that data got out and made it appear a certain way which wasn't true. Lots of companies are nervous about that.

I guess when I say "instead of fixed difficulty" in the title, I made a mistake because I'm not proposing that difficulty modes be taken away entirely, only that players should be given the option to dive deeper into the setting and tweak more variables if they wish.

Should add a poll, I would like to see the thoughts in sheer numbers.

Sadly I don't think I can add a poll after the thread was created.

 

[Karak]

I guess when I say "instead of fixed difficulty" in the title, I made a mistake because I'm not proposing that difficulty modes be taken away entirely, only that players should be given the option to dive deeper into the setting and tweak more variables if they wish.


Sadly I don't think I can add a poll after the thread was created.

Ya no I totally understand. Thats one of the major issues sadly

 

[Lucumo]

Bring back the difficulty of the games from the 80s. Offer casuals cheats.

 

[Cleyra]

Xenoblade 2 got that in one of the patches. Can't remember the details, but there was plenty of stuff to change around.

 

[PhilipDoesMatter]

I very much prefer preset options for difficulties. Like the dev saying to you how he thought the game should be played.

 

[Panajev2001a]

There are a few games in recent memory that allowed the player to tweak difficulty options beyond just selecting Normal or Hard or whatever. It would be nice if players could actually select more options for their single-player playthroughs. I can't imagine this being all that important to those who play through a game once and shelve it / sell it, but if you enjoy replaying your favorites it can be a boon to have more options at your fingertips to keep things interesting.

This complaint is squarely leveled at console devs, since the PC platform allows users to adjust a lot of these settings through an ini file or through other means.

The games made by the Bravely Default team gave player the ability select the difficulty of enemies, but you can also tweak encounter rate, EXP gain, JP gain, etc. It isn't much, but it is something. The recent Battle Garegga revision by M2 is another example. Garegga is known for its crushing difficulty, so players can do stuff like adjust bullet color to make them more visible or tweak the rank settings. The game does offer difficulty modes, too, but these nuanced options might make the game more interesting to someone on subsequent plays, or it might make them easier to get into.

Or consider the typical FPS or character-action campaign: Easy, Normal, Hard, and Legendary (or something like that) is usually what you get, and nothing more. These difficulty levels usually just affect damage. It is rare that your foes will actually get more cunning on higher difficulty levels. What about something more like this in an FPS?

Number of enemies: [Sparse] [Normal] [Double] [Triple]
Loot drop: [Sparse] [Normal] [Double] [Triple]
Reload speed: [Fast] [Normal] [half-speed]
Highlight quick-time prompt: [On] [Off]
Enemy awareness radius: [close-range] [Normal] [Eagle vision]
Weapon carry limit: [2] [5] [NO Limit]
Ammo carry limit: [400% ammo] [200% ammo] [Normal] [50% ammo]

Obviously these are just spitball ideas, but I think its high time we did away with difficulty modes. Just let me crank up whatever variables I want and play the game how I please. There's really not much prestige in beating a game on harder difficulties anyway.

Can you think of difficulty variables you'd want to tweak in your games instead of using simple difficulty modes?

So, as a player I need to choose my graphics settings and balance them (see Minecraft), create my difficulty settings and balance them, etc... this feels like games can ship with a Unity booklet and a link to the download page one day.

No thanks, overall it sounds good, but I do not need to essentially keep taking responsibilities for tweaking, optimising, and balancing the game’s feature from the dev :/...

 

[NickFire]

You know, this idea sounds pretty cool to me. I would probably default to whatever setting made my character feel as powerful as possible, while ratcheting up the enemy counts / skills.

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

Not a fan, personally. I'd always feel like I'm "breaking" something.

I'm a proponent of a developer saying "this is the game. Either you can handle it, or you can't."

 

[EverydayBeast]

Its going to be very tough to get casual gamers to bite on this but it would be better for hardcore gamers who enjoy more of a challenge.

 

[Desudzer10]

Borderlands 3 does it pretty well with easy or normal, regular or TVHM, and 3 different mayhem level. Not all the customization you want, but it gives several options.

 

[Vawn]

I'm one of those weirdos who still thinks difficulty options should be completely eliminated. Make your game easy, make your game hard as balls - or anything in between. But design the game around that and allow it to be part of the game's idenity.

FromSoft gets it. Mario gets it. Too many don't.

 

[SLoWMoTIoN]

Because devs can't make proper AI so they stick to stat shit in games. Which in turn makes it a grind or chore to play rather than it being "difficult".

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Going by sports games, half the sliders barely do anything. And many of them aren't clearly communicated what they do. I am positive it's done this way since some sliders are a placebo effect. Some metrics like game speed make a difference. But then a metric called defensive awareness can be zero or maxed out and it seems there's no difference at all.

Most AI in games are braindead anyway, so difficulty sliders would like just bump up their speed rating, damage and HP counters. and for RTS games give the AI a starting boost in resources.

Probably the only game with true difficulty (smarts) scaling is something like chess.

 

[Bakkus]

99% of games aren't deep enough to make this a worthwhile time investment for developers.

 

[Codes 208]

Gears 5 kinda does this. Instead of the traditional presets you choose what perks the enemies get to make them more challenging (or less so)

 

[MiyazakiHatesKojima]

Adjusting difficulty levels in a videogame is an art form.

 

[Coflash]

Dishonored 2 and ARMA 3 are good examples of games with custom difficulty settings. But certain settings are just going to break things. Number of AI for example. Imagine 3X the AI in a game like Dishonored 2, it wouldn't work. There's also the matter of certain settings having knock on effects with unintended consequences. It'd be possible but unless they balance every combination of every option (which would take forever) - it'd be a clusterfuck.

Perhaps labelling it 'experimental mode' and letting people go nuts would be more appropriate then trying to use these settings in a serious playthrough.

I do agree that a lot of games could do with it though. Ni No Kuni is one game I cannot play due to how simple it is (and I would love to play it) - some big ol' modifiers would be very welcome there. Too many modern games feel like they're balanced for kids.

 

[nikolino840]

You can find in isometric rpg or in Shadows of the tomb Raider

 

[nkarafo]

I prefer the developer who made the game choose the balance for me.

I'm not an expert and i will probably just ruin the balance of the game.

I even prefer games to not have difficulty settings at all but that's just me.

 

[Ar¢tos]

There is no joy in overcoming challenges if after 2 tries you can just re-tweak the difficulty for a particular enemy /boss, or change how HP/dmg works.
Just the option existing will lead people to use it.

 

[Belmonte]

IMO, it is a great idea with some types of games and very dangerous for all the others.

Soren Johnson, Civ designer, said one time: "Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game." https://www.designer-notes.com/?p=369

He was talking about how players often use boring tactics, just because it is more optimized for winning, even on single player games. I think this can be applied even more in the tweakable variables idea.

As an exemple: many players destroy the difficulty of classic games with save states and rewind. They cheapen all the risk-reward mechanics and makes the enemy pattern knowledge trivial because of that. When they arrive in the later stages they didn't learn how to properly play the game, so they think the difficulty is "artificial" (like there is anything "natural" in videogames, but I digress....). I never understood how some people can compare musou with classic beat em ups like Final Fight, until I realized people were not limiting their continues. Why be careful with Poison jump attack when you are immortal?

If they can't notice how much they cheapen the experience in this case, how would be with tweakable variables? I can even see the Steam Reviews calling the game lame.

 

[Trimesh]

System Shock did something like that - it had separate difficulty adjustments for different parts of the game - so if you liked fighting but found puzzles annoying you could make the combat hard and the puzzles easy (or even non-existent).

 

[GymWolf]

Too much works for devs and the risk of getting the casual panicked with all those settings...

I will be be happy when devs are gonna use an hard or very hard difficulty that are really hard or very hard and not the cakewalk we mostly have today...

Or when we can have ALL the difficulty choice at launch and not with bullshit dlc or after 6 months, most people do a single run with games and they want to enjoy some challenge without the need of a second run a year later...

Get your difficulty level together, devs.

 

[Rya.Reisender]

As a game designer I must say that granular settings like that are awesome. I love playing around with them until I reach the maximum enjoyment with the game.

I see other players often have problems with that. There will always be those:

Type A - If given the choice always set rewards to highest and then complain later that the game is too boring.

Type B - Don't enjoy messing around with settings, have no clue what the optimal setting for them is and don't want to invest time finding out.

 

[ROMhack]

One of the things standing in the way of this idea is achievements. If you remember towards the start of last gen, a lot of design decisions were curbed so that achievements weren't so easy to get. I think it still stands given the ubiquity of them on all platforms except the Switch and they play a pretty big role in games even if you don't care about them (I don't).

But nice idea.

Going by sports games, half the sliders barely do anything. And many of them aren't clearly communicated what they do. I am positive it's done this way since some sliders are a placebo effect. Some metrics like game speed make a difference. But then a metric called defensive awareness can be zero or maxed out and it seems there's no difference at all.

Most AI in games are braindead anyway, so difficulty sliders would like just bump up their speed rating, damage and HP counters. and for RTS games give the AI a starting boost in resources.

Probably the only game with true difficulty (smarts) scaling is something like chess.

I found the sliders improved the gameplay in FIFA a lot. I loved making the game slower, increasing pass/shot error and actually making it hard (which the base game really isn't).

Problem is that it impacts the AI massively who are clearly programmed to work on the default settings. It could get real derpy at times and I never found a good balance.

 

[anthraticus]

Just started playing Blood: Fresh Supply and it has this called the 'made to order' difficulty and it's fucking great and really needed.

Most consoletards just wanna jump into games as fast as possible, follow idiot markers, hit some awesome action buttons and call it a day though.

 

[alabtrosMyster]

Get mario maker or rpg maker, difficulty is part of the game's design and appeal.

 

[Zannegan]

Some things (like enemies) could have a big hit on performance. It would be doable in some games, but for others it might literally crash the console. I think this would work really well with remasters though. Something like the Jedi Knight games could really benefit from being able to drop crazy numbers of enemies into a room.

I do hate when "hard" mode just makes enemies bullet sponges. I want a new challenge, not the same challenge repeated ad-nauseum.

I really liked Kid Icarus' difficulty slider. It was pretty granular, and upped several variables at once. Plus, you actually had to risk something in order to use it, and the rewards went up with the challenge.

 

[Roni]

You gotta be really confident in your game design to do that and most games don't do it because they're not.

But some do, like Arkane's Prey and Dishonored 2.