What difficulty do you start with?

[BoredAussieGamer]

Normal. I'm not overly skilled, or challenge seeking, but I have been gaming since I was 5 and get bored of anything that poses no challenge. It's very rare that I play above or below normal, even on repeat playthroughs of games I really liked.

I think this thread would have been better with a poll, by the way.

 

[Lieju]

Depends on the type of game and why I'm playing it for. If it's for the story, and I suck at the types of games it is, normal or easy. Also depends on how the difficulty ramps up. If playing on harder would just mean I'd have to grind more, I don't think that adds value to the experience.

 

[Dree]

If i have played a lot of games in that genre then the hardest but if not then one down from the hardest.

 

[Hemlet]

I'll generally play on Normal or Easy first, so I can fuck about and learn things about the game at my leisure. Then if I think the game's worth playing through another time or two then I'll put the difficulty up a couple of notches and work my way through dealing with the changes the extra difficulty brings and learning from them.

 

[thesilentman]

I'll start on normal, then go higher if I like the game. I usually tone the difficulty up to squeeze a few more hours out of the game.

 

[Blackdoom]

I typically go with the hardest difficulty available when starting a game which is usually the second hardest difficult for the game.

 

[chazwicked82]

Always have and always will start one normal, mainly cause some of the games I play the hard/hardest difficulty has to unlocked.

 

[Mungular]

normal to enjoy the story or whatever. then i might amp it up if i feel like playing it again

 

[Anathrax]

Hardest difficulty if it's a game like Darksiders where you can block and dodge, Normal and working my way up if it's something like Dragon Age.

 

[Strazdas]

It depends on a game.
1. A game i got no knowledge about: easy to learn the mechanics and so on. for example a new sim game.
2. A game that i have never played before: normal
3. A game that i have played before and found it too easy ot next installment in the series that should be of same difficulty.: above normal
4. A game i am replaying and want more challenge out of it: raise difficulty one notch than previously played.

There are some games that are imbalanced. for example i found stalker way too easy on hard until the last part which turned kinda impossible. Also morrowind has a nice trick, at first any animal will kill you if your not careful. get your first enchant - you feel like a god with so much power you could take on all NPCs at once. kinda turns adventure into a boring walk.

 

[Dense_Electric]

It all depends on why I'm playing the game in question. If it's a game I play for the challenge (such as Guitar Hero, or even Halo), I'll usually start on Hard/Heroic/whatever the game's medium-high difficulty is. If I'm playing because I was to simulate doing something (like a flight-sim or some very realistic shooters), I'll usually try to set it at the most realistic settings possible (usually the hardest). If I'm playing because I want to dick around a feel like a badass (Half-Life 2: SMOD, Just Cause 2, FarCry2/3), I'll set the difficulty way down so I don't get killed and break flow.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Either normal or easy mode (depend what that game define easy as) depening on the game.

I know for one thing is that my brother had always played the Halo series on hard mode, he find it more challanging from the game that way.

 

[RyQ_TMC]

I used to go for the easiest difficulty very often, mostly because I wanted to experience the story first. If a game warranted one or more playthroughs, I would bump the difficulty up progressively.

Nowadays, I usually do normal - it being the "intended" level - and kick it down for particularly frustrating moments. I sometimes play on harder difficulties, but I often feel that the challenge it provides is achieved through fake difficulty.

 

[deviltry]

Default is Normal. But it really depends on the game.
For stealth based games I go with Hard.
For games with crappy gameplay but good story like Mass Effect 2 - easy, ofcourse.
For shooters - if hard means "more damage taken, more enemy HP" - ef that, easy. Played Halo games on Legendary because enemy starts to use some tactics.

 

[Patathatapon]

Usually I go for normal, unless I have enough experience in the game, or it decides to be too much of an Asshole.

For example, I always go on Minecraft's Hardcore mode because it's way too fuckin easy. The only time I die in it is when I'm either being cocky, or because my luck was shit. I.E. a skeleton shoots me into some lava, meanwhile I'm carrying over 1000 pounds of items...

Another example for the latter category would be Serious Sam BFE. It wasn't too hard, it was alright, then they spammed thousands of monsters at me to the point of impossibility. Easy mode it is!

 

[Assassin Xaero]

Usually normal, and usually what I stick with unless I've played the game so much that it needs to be a bit of a challenge to be fun. I play games for fun, not for competition or a challenge, so I usually can't beat them on the harder difficulties anyway.

 

[Milanezi]

I used to go with hardest, so I'd open many achievements at once, and if it turned out TOO hard, I'd just switch to an easier mode. Nowadays, not only because I don't care about achievements/trophies anymore, but MOSTLY because I don't have half the patience I used to and much less the time to play all the stuff I want to, i just go straight into easy mode (if I reckon it's a genre I'm not very good at) or normal (if I know I could even take hard mode, but normal means faster)... Obviously, depending on the game "nightmare mode" will be to easy, or "normal" too hard...

 

[blink]

I usually just play normal mainly for the fact that it gives me room to muck around and have more fun. I could probably complete the harder difficulties but I find that the most fun you have in games is when you create your own. (and on harder difficulties you have to properly pay the game and not mess around)

I'm probably going to start playing on harder difficulties now as the games just go by too quickly on normal

 

[ZCAB]

I usually go for the middle and \ or default difficulty, unless it's cover-based shooting, in which case I go for the next higher setting. I'm usually inclined to go for lower settings when the game is more about the experience than the challenge to me (open world exploration games), or if it's a racing game (which I just suck at).