Your opinion on adjustable difficulty throughout a game.

[Ando85]

With most games you choose a difficulty at the beginning and that's it. You can't lower it later on if you are having trouble or pump it up if things are too easy. Although I notice a lot of games don't do this such as Elder Scrolls titles, Dragon Age, Kingdoms of Amalur, and many others. They allow you to go into the options and adjust it whenever you want.

Would you prefer a set in stone difficulty level, or the adjustable kind in your games and why?

 

[zombieshark6666]

I got to Point Lookout at level 17. That and Ace Combat 6. It's very useful when there's a level that's badly balanced or when there's glitchy AI or something.

That's why it's good.

 

[Folji]

It lets you shape the experience to your own liking. What's not to like about that?

 

[Leemaster777]

If a game already has adjustable difficulty, I see no good reason why it SHOULDN'T be adjustable mid-playthrough. Surely, you can't know exactly how hard is TOO hard for you, nor how easy is TOO easy, until you actually play the game.

 

[PrinceOfShapeir]

Considering that Easy, Medium, and Hard (Or whatever) are rarely quantified to you before you pick them, being able to adjust difficulty on the fly is essential.

 

[Erana]

I'm torn...

I mean, most of the time, its a good thing, for the reasons people have mentioned above.
But at the same time... Playing Halo and MGS games would be a world different if you could adjust the difficulty while playing it. I mean, its not too big a deal when you can select levels, but with a long, drawn out game like MGS, I'd rather it have an unchangable difficulty. I... Can't quite peg down why, but that's what my gut says?

Actually, let me be more specific: with linear action games, I'd sometimes want an unchangeable difficulty, but with RPG or number-based games, you should have the option to at least make a game easier. Nothing's more infuriating than getting 3/4ths of the way through an RPG on its hardest setting only to realize that its nearly impossible to complete it in your current state, and to go back far enough to fix it would be an uncomfortablly long retread or a whole new save file.

 

[Jamash]

I think it's a good option, but I rarely use it. In fact, the only time I've adjusted the difficulty was to get past one frustrating mission in Saints Row 2, a uncharacteristically difficult escort mission (Corporate Meltdown) that was the only thing I had left to do in that game.

However, I don't like the way difficulty sliders are implemented in some games and won't use them if all it does is make your attacks weaker and everyone else's attacks stronger.

A recent example of this is Skyrim in which I only used the default 1:1 setting because anything else doesn't make sense to me, e.g. turning the difficulty up and making a bandit do more damage with an Iron sword than you can deal back with a Daedric sword and higher combat skill, that undermines a lot of the concepts of the game and character development.

Difficulty should make your opponents more skilled (i.e. more able), fight smarter and fight in greater numbers, not simply increase their damage and nerf yours.

 

[krazykidd]

I personally don't use it . I see why it's there . But is it really necessary? Is it really that hard to guage your video game skills? I mean really , if you know you suck at rts games go on easy . If you know you are a pro at fps , choose hard . Of you are average , choose normal . What's so difficult about that . Am i just assuming people are smarter than they really are? Do people really overestimate their skill level that much .

Also games with ridiculous difficulty curbs are rare . You are kinda suppose to learn and get better as you go along no? Are you supposed to technically get better while playing ? If you start on normal and get stuck mid-way , isn't that more a problem with the player than the game mechanic? I really don't understand how this supposedly happens so often. Maybe i'm a little jaded because i like my games challenging , but i guess people want to always press A to win , instead of thinking a little and changing their tactic a bit.

 

[ThriKreen]

SIN Episode 1 had a dynamic difficulty, and it seemed to work pretty well, adjusting enemy hitpoints and such so it was challenging for me, but not "ZOMG Impossible, they one shot killed me!"

I was falling asleep in Halo 3 on Legendary mode, because the tactic I ended up repeating to get past the game was to just duck into cover, peak out, lay a barrage, then take cover again and whittle the enemy down. All because their idea of difficulty was to just increase the enemy hitpoints and damage output, but their AI still seemed to behave the same.

 

[xshadowscreamx]

i enjoy most were you are tested before the main story starts...example,path of neo and some call of duty's

 

[klasbo]

The only argument against adjustable difficulty is that it might be harder to implement on the developer end. There is often more to difficulty settings than health, damage and number of enemies.
Being able to set the difficulty between levels/missions is easy enough to implement, so I see no reason not to do this.

If you want to "force yourself" to play on one difficulty the whole game, then you go ahead and do that. But I don't want to restart the whole game just because "hard" was too easy (I'm looking at you, all-FPS-games-from-the-last-5-years).

 

[dimensional]

Adjustable difficulty is good and should be available throughout the game if it is implemented the only instance I would say it should not be allowed is if the game offers a substantial different experience on higher or lower levels i.e you use a different character and follow a different story path for instance (of course there would have to be a reason why it is harder with a certain character as well). If all higher difficulty does is change the AI and HP and damage then it should be able to be adjusted on the fly.

So yeah 99% of the time I am for adjustable difficulty.

 

[Kahunaburger]

On one hand, there's no reason not to implement some sort of way of changing difficulty mid-playthrough. On the other hand, the sort of difficulty that can be adjusted during gameplay is almost always fake difficulty.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Ya it should be a standard, but bumping it down must be limited (only unlocked after X deaths in area) otherwise even I sometimes get lazy and just lower it for that one slightly challenging section.

 

[burningdragoon]

Being able to change the difficult part way through sounds good. However, I can safely say that I definitely would have taken advantage of it at some point or another, but I would also have felt like it was almost like cheating. I still feel certain amounts of satisfaction from difficult and taking the easy way out would lessen that satisfaction.

Maybe being able to set the difficulty and set the ability to change it mid-game as well. That would be best of both worlds I think.

 

[The Abhorrent]

It depends on how the difficulty is adjusted, as some games can make significant changes between the different settings.

Sometimes it's just not practical to change the difficulty of a game unless at specific points (between levels/missions) as the types of enemies which are present will change. The Halo series seems like an easy example, and enemies will have different ranks depending on difficulty. On easy, a spot could have a blue elite guarding it; on legendary, it's a red elite. This is in addition to all the numerical changes with a game's difficulty. Sometimes it can mean more or fewer foes as well. If the changes are purely numerical or multipliers, changing the difficulty can be done at any time with ease. Oblivion did this with "you do less damage, they do more damage" as you moved the difficulty slider.

The one time which changing the difficulty shouldn't be allowed is during the middle of a fight, and most games actually do this already. The reasons for this is both practical and to force players to at least try to complete a difficulty higher than they intended. The practical side of things is fairly obvious, it prevents spawning (or despawning) enemies in the middle of the fight and the hassle/glitchy-ness of changing their stats mid-fight (a similar case can be made for many games not allowing for the changing equipment mid-fight); this preserves the game's sense of immersion and it's stability. As for forcing players to commit to an attempt instead of them changing the difficulty mid-fight, it can help them be a better player; it won't prevent reloading of saves and changing it before the fight, but sometimes a little incentive can help. The practical reason probably rules the day here, I imagine.

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If a game is going to allow for adjustable difficulty settings, it should be allowed as much as possible (within reasonable constraints). Restricting it to only the start of the game would be silly, unless there's some significant changes which result; even them, it should be adjustable at certain points (namely between levels & missions).

 

[Username Redacted]

If it's implemented correctly I prefer the game to adjust the difficulty on its own.