Current Events > Am I weird for hating games that let you change the difficulty without penalty?

(+) Yeah! (+)

KOTOR is one of my all time favorite games but if something is too hard, you can easily just flip the difficulty to Easy mode and roll past it. There's no incentive to play on a harder difficulty but for your own gain. Same goes with people doing like "You can only play in Solo mode" and weird stuff like that. It's not an actual game mode and you get no actual reward for doing it. And you can cheat whenever you want.

An example of a good implementation of difficulty is MGS and RE. You are locked in at that difficulty for the whole game, and if you beat it, you get cool exclusive rewards.

Idk why it bugs me so much but I started up a new KOTOR file and as I was picking the difficulty I was just like ehh

DAE agree
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Kind of. A lot of difficulty related achievements won't unlock if you change difficulties and it's a system you could easily ignore.

It's also nice for player who aren't good at games and happen to get themselves stuck. Allows them to keep enjoying the game.
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don't change it then
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Some games are just fucking hard(looking at you Ninja Gaiden) so its a welcome feature, but like Tmaster said a lot of features arent unlocked by dropping the difficulty.
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The World Ends With You has probably the best difficulty system ever. You can change your level and the difficulty at will. You're not punished for playing at your current level or on Easy, but higher difficulties had better item drops, and the lower your level compared to your actual level, the higher the drop rate. If you wanna farm a lot of great items, play at level 1 on highest difficulty. Additionally, you could chain a bunch of battles together to multiply the drop rate even more, but each battle gets progressively harder and you don't heal in between. Also, you could fight every boss in the game using this system, making it far more difficult, to get better drops from them. Assuming you're good enough at the game to survive.

Don't punish people for making it easier, reward them for making it harder. I've never played a game with a better difficulty system

Except maybe South Park because the game being harder the darker your skin is is just fucking hilarious

Tmaster148 posted...

Kind of. A lot of difficulty related achievements won't unlock if you change difficulties and it's a system you could easily ignore.

It's also nice for player who aren't good at games and happen to get themselves stuck. Allows them to keep enjoying the game.

yeah i dont mind those games that affect achievements. like i think GTA has systems like that when you use the cheat codes.

but KOTOR doesn't have achievements :(

Freddie_Mercury posted...

don't change it then

in the words of EA, there's no sense of accomplishment beating a game on Difficulty as opposed to Easy. no I have no incentive to not change the difficulty if i get stuck.
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I like it. 99% of the time I don't change difficulties but there are some games where you just have to because of how BS they are (best example I can think of is Sniper: Ghost Warrior, the first game was so absurd on Hard difficulty, and glitchy too).
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Darklit_Minuet posted...

The World Ends With You has probably the best difficulty system ever. You can change your level and the difficulty at will. You're not punished for playing at your current level or on Easy, but higher difficulties had better item drops, and the lower your level compared to your actual level, the higher the drop rate. If you wanna farm a lot of great items, play at level 1 on highest difficulty. Additionally, you could chain a bunch of battles together to multiply the drop rate even more, but each battle gets progressively harder and you don't heal in between. Also, you could fight every boss in the game using this system, making it far more difficult, to get better drops from them. Assuming you're good enough at the game to survive.

Don't punish people for making it easier, reward them for making it harder. I've never played a game with a better difficulty system

Except maybe South Park because the game being harder the darker your skin is is just fucking hilarious

that is a good system. i think KOTOR just makes enemies harder to kill and they hit harder and thats it.

Hexenherz posted...

I like it. 99% of the time I don't change difficulties but there are some games where you just have to because of how BS they are (best example I can think of is Sniper: Ghost Warrior, the first game was so absurd on Hard difficulty, and glitchy too).

idk. nothing personal, but to me its like you gotta sack up and work harder to beat the game on a single difficulty. if i'm going to drop the difficulty to get past a certain part, then i might as well just play the whole game on easy mode.
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If you played Sniper: Ghost Warrior on the hardest difficulty you would probably agree with me that changing the setting was required to advance...
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Yes you are weird considering difficulty is an option you choose.

Being angry at a game for giving you options is like being angry at a TV for having a volume setting.
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UnfairRepresent posted...

Yes you are weird considering difficulty is an option you choose.

Being angry at a game for giving you options is like being angry at a TV for having a volume setting.

it's more like the TV should have a reward where you get deleted scenes if you watch a whole episode of a show on 1 volume setting
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bloodydeath0 posted...

it's more like the TV should have a reward where you get deleted scenes if you watch a whole episode of a show on 1 volume setting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw6ndZNLYUA
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It's a game. I play it for fun. If I want an actual challenge I'll play mp. Single player games shouldn't be incredibly difficult for everyone. Some of us want to enjoy the games we play the way we play them, so more options are always a good thing. There's nothing wrong with playing on Insanity difficulty, nor Easy mode.
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dont feed unfair represent
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CensorErik posted...

It's a game. I play it for fun. If I want an actual challenge I'll play mp. Single player games shouldn't be incredibly difficult for everyone. Some of us want to enjoy the games we play the way we play them, so more options are always a good thing. There's nothing wrong with playing on Insanity difficulty, nor Easy mode.

it's fine if its an option, i just wish there was some incentive to beat the game exclusively on harder difficulties

i know people can make their own incentive but for w/e reason i don't like that idea lol
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Yakuza has a cool system where if you lose a fight 3 times (I think) in a row, it'll ask you if you'd like to drop the difficulty, but it's only for that fight and resets after you win. Very cool.

Anyway, the more options the better, IMO. The older I get the less time I have for difficult games. I'll start everything on normal but won't hesitate to drop to easy if I feel the difficulty is getting in the way of my fun. I even prefer some series entirely on the easiest setting (Uncharted and TLoU flow better like that for me as I'm more interested in the story). Persona is another series I opt to lower the difficulty on, it's still a 90+ hour game regardless.

If I want a real challenge, I'll play a competitive online game. I have nothing to prove against the CPU. I know I can do it once I've learned the patterns or found a cheap strategy so increased difficulty just isn't interesting.

EDIT: My biggest exception to this though is simulator/sports type games, you want the AI to put up a challenge otherwise it won't feel like the real thing.
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