Poll: would you lower the difficulty?

[Right Hook]

I play a decent amount of games on easy, it's not that I can't play them on normal, I can even play most games on hard if I feel up to it but with some games I just want to shut my brain off and mindlessly play, not having to worry about playing the same section eight times.

 

[babinro]

I have fun beating a game, so lowering the difficulty to accomplish this task is all to common for me.

If a game is worthy of revisiting then I start to care about the challenge and the difficulty moves up accordingly.

Point is, I'd rather play a game, than put it down due to frustration.

 

[arnoldthebird]

I have never turned the difficulty down, I will play through the game once on Normal. If the game is fun enough I will play through on a higher difficulty, the satisfaction of defeating a challenging fight is a unique one.

Except for one game, StarCraft 2 on Insane. You need to cheese, winning a FFA had me massing Battle Cruiser's on a remote island. The AI just mines too fast, builds too fast etc.

 

[Iwata]

I play the games as much for the challenge as for fun, so no. I persist.

 

[Vykrel]

yes, if im having an incredibly hard time. i actually kind of had to do this yesterday during one of the final moments of Max Payne 3. i didnt change the difficulty, but i did change the controls from free-aim to soft-aim, which made it a lot easier.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

Not really, I play on either easy or normal anyway, I don't ever play on hard.

 

[Jynthor]

If I'm dying on normal I usually trudge along unless I get really peeved off. That fucking Kraken in Witcher 2...

Otherwise I usually jump from normal to the hardest. Usually for the achievement.

I had to retry it a few times(was playing it on Hard on my first playthrough, but I never found it overly difficult, once I knew what I was doing I could kill it without getting hit. Why do you think it's hard?

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Considering I generally play games on easy/casual anyway, I chose 'sure' by default. I'll play some things on normal and if I'm really familiar with the game then I may up the difficulty but I generally prefer the easier experience to the harder, potentially frustrating one.

 

[Worgen]

I had to do it on heroes V and I still feel dirty about it, in games like that I tend to have a slow play style but if you don't hurry or you just get unlucky the ai will end up with a huge army that you have no hopes of beating and after that happened and I lost 5 hours of progress I knocked down the difficulty and just hammered though the game.

 

[blaqknoise]

I would, but I usually don't have to.

I normally play games on "regular" or "normal" difficulty.

 

[Something Amyss]

I've only done this once in my life, and that was in the first DMC on my first try.

I don't feel the need to do it normally (or anymore, at all). But I'm fine with others doing it.

 

[newdarkcloud]

If it get's so difficult that it's no longer fun, just frustrating and tedious, I WILL reduce the difficulty. No questions.

 

[kommando367]

I have a point of no return thing where if I'm 90% through a game when I get to a hard section section, I'll push through it even if it takes days of trail and error.

Even before then, I'll only lower difficulty if the thing I'm trying to beat is insanely difficult.

That's also why I really hate difficulty lowering prompts, especially in God of War 1 where I die 17 times on some kind of bastard hard platforming section and kept being prompted to lower the combat difficulty.

 

[Twilight_guy]

Yes. Anyone who is ashamed of lowing the difficulty needs to ask themselves why that is. I would say its because you need to defend your manhood but it happens to ladies to, so I'm just going to say its to defend an invisible sense of self worth and toughness. I don't define myself by how tough I am in games. I find being flexible enough to give that up to enjoy my game is far better for me.

 

[DirgeNovak]

I play games to have fun and enjoy the story. If a section is just too hard for me and keeps me from having fun and/or continuing the story, yes, I will lower the difficulty. I just love that you can switch it on the fly in most games now. That said, I generally play on easy for my first playthrough of most games, and I rarely lower it to very easy even when the game has that option (e.g. Bethesda games). I still have my pride...

 

[chimeracreator]

I play games to have fun. Now part of that is often about overcoming some sort of perceived challenge so I normally keep the difficulty set to the default. However in some cases where I get stuck in some horrible way I will lower the difficulty. For example in Dragon Age I went into the final battle without any mages at all. I went through boss mini-bosses on normal and got near the gates of the castle.

By that time I had run out of all of my healing potions with a group of 3 warriors and had them eating elf leaf while fighting ogres and the like. So I said to hell with it and before that supply ran out I turned the difficulty down to easy so I could actually finish the game. Twenty minutes later I found a nice shop in the middle of the battle field so I was able to turn it back to normal difficulty for the final fight, but yep, I turned it out because my choices resulted in the game breaking.