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Do you think games should have one fixed difficulty and no hint systems?

sublimit

sublimit

Banned
I really think that games who have just one "fixed" difficulty setting are much more balanced and "fine-tuned" than the ones having various settings or games that use hint systems.
Especially the later seem like sloppy implementations where the game designers wheren't sure if the gamer could find his way out of a puzzle or a level so they had to implement a hint mode.
Personally i think this is an "easy way out" for game designers who are not confident in their vision of their work.
What do you guys think on this subject?
 
Absolutely not. Some people like to play on easy and some like to play on hard. Some what to breeze through and enjoy an "interactive story" while others want a true challenge. Having only on difficulty would be really, really stupid.
 
No, I always found it weird people fixation with things that are horrendously hard and not wanting any options for players who have difficulty with it. (vice versa too)
 
Depends on the game. I do think this is Shigeru Miyamoto's philosophy though, the difficulty part anyway.
 
I don't trust game designers enough to successfully pull off what you're suggesting.

When it comes to puzzle solving, you're trying to think as they think and it's one of the reasons why I never made it past the airship in Stacking.
 
It really depends on the genre and what each game is trying to accomplish. Some games don't have concrete stats to scale while others are built all around the challenge. For the most part, especially story-centric games, difficulty settings help broaden the appeal and let everyone see the ending. But for games like Super Meat Boy and Dark Souls an easy modo would rob the game of it's challenge, the central aspect of the game.

I really like the idea of the Super Guide. Everyone has one unifying experience, but if a part is too hard they can skip through it. It allows people just in it for the story and world to skip ahead of a few intense portions while not gimping the content for anyone else.
 
No, not everyone has the same patience for challenging games, multiple difficulties is a good thing. After all if you're a developer, the more people willing to play your game, the better.
 
Derrick01 said:
No. Because if there's only 1 choice then dumb will always prevail.
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Not always.I think Demon's Souls is a fine example of how to fine tune a game and make it challenging without making it feel cheap-difficult or dumb-easy.
Implementing an optional hint system would have also watered down the design IMO.
 
sublimit said:
Not always.I think Demon's Souls is a fine example of how to fine tune a game and make it challenging without making it feel cheap-difficult or dumb-easy.
Implementing an optional hint system would have also watered down the design IMO.
Click to expand...

The Souls games are the exceptions. We all know most if not all western developers will choose to make the game for the....less intelligent if only given 1 difficulty choice. Gamers would suffer under this hellish future.
 
sublimit said:
Implementing an optional hint system would have also watered down the design IMO.
Click to expand...
Well, in that case they implemented an optional community hint system, which works ore interestingly than the developers pointing somewhere or whatever.
Derrick01 said:
The Souls games are the exceptions. We all know most if not all western developers will choose to make the game for the....less intelligent if only given 1 difficulty choice. Gamers would suffer under this hellish future.
Click to expand...
There's been so many games without difficulty settings that I can't actually see this as a "hellish future". Though that mainly applies outside of AAA western games.
 
Sadly I'm mediocre in games. If it's too difficult, then I'd get frustrated, if it's too easy, then it's no fun. So, it's better if there's a choice.
 
Not everyone has the same level of skill. Not everyone has the same level of intelligence when it comes to things like solving puzzles. Also, not everyone plays a game for the same reasons - some people love a real challenge, while some just want to chill out and not be challenged much at all.

The Souls games work because they are exceptions to the rule. They are being sold with slogans like "prepare to die" so it's like a challenge being laid down to the more "hardcore" gamer - and there are plenty of those - but not every gamer is in that category and so you would always be pissing someone off if a game just had 1 default skill level, unless it was adaptive.
 
What you speak of is "Normal" difficulty. Yes, "Hard" difficulty modes can sometimes be unbalanced but that's the price of getting a challenge.
 
Absolutely not. I love Multiple Difficulty levels handled masterfully like Platinum Games does it and Hint Systems the way it's implemented in New Super Mario Bros Wii are great. I love how in that game you can spend star coins to see super play movies and get hints on hidden exits and star coins. With the Wii U I think this is going to get even better with your friends being able to leave you hints or their general thoughts on an area. Being able to post on a board right on the system if your having trouble at a part in a game and get responses from your friends or the general public will be great. Then just having the ability to open up a video stream with someone seamlessly and get advice will be perfect.
 
Absolutely not.

Have you looked at the average completion rate of games lately? They're abysmal. Devs should be working on increasing that number, not decreasing it, and difficulty levels tailored to a wide range of gaming skills is one way to help with that.
 
no, I think you can make the main mode perfectly balanced and fine tuned, you dont need to bother for easier modes so you can always throw in a poorly balanced way too easy mode for people who suck and just let them play.
 
I don't like my games easy, but I also don't like them ridiculously hard. I don't trust every dev to get the balance right if they were aiming for one difficulty level, so for that reason I like to have options.
 
No, if it's something like Dark Souls where the difficulty is the point of the game then it's fine, otherwise players should be able to choose how difficult they want it.
 
I think that if you can make a game that's nicely tuned and has a good difficulty ramp, you can still make a hard mode for it. Even something simple like giving the player less health or adding more enemies will work, but it's best if you do things like replace easy enemies with harder enemies or give old enemies new attacks.

Hint systems are nice, but I like the way Skyward Sword does it, in that you'll get small hints from your companion Fi, and big hints from the hint stone (that basically shows you what to do).
 
No. I want games to have difficulty settings. Let me give you an example. My older sister and I both love the Kingdom Hearts series.

I play on Proud (Hard) difficulty

She plays on Easy difficulty

Because there's an easier difficulty setting for her, we can both enjoy the game and talk about our favorite bosses and Disney worlds. If there was only a Hard difficulty setting, she'd only be able to watch me play and not get to enjoy playing the game herself.

What I am against are LAZILY implemented difficulty settings. Those are dumb.
 
Kid Icarus did it best, with the difficulty sliders per level that allow a risk / reward gamble, encourage you to challenge yourself, and yet also decrease the difficulty mid-level if you start dying.
 
I think it depends on the aim of the game designer. Let's not automatically assume that all games are made for the same purpose. We're not talking about some form of high art here, but rather an entertainment medium. If a developer is confident in their ability to deliver a singular vision of a game and go through with it, more power to them. But many games are also developed to just provide entertainment to a broad range of gamers. It's not something which has a right or wrong answer. It depends on intent. Also, some games have great design for different difficulty levels. Some games are lazy as fuck. It's not an equal generalization either.
 
The answer is to design the games better.

Having one difficulty setting is just as bad as/worse than, having multiple poorly tuned difficulty settings.

Having only one difficulty setting does 2 main things in terms of design:

-reduces replay value.

-necessitates that the game not be too hard for a large section of the audience to play.


This in nearly all cases means that:

-The game must be artificially padded out with a surplus of repetitive gameplay content, or icrease the time and cost of production, or both.

-The game must be easy enough for the majority of the audience to play.


Thus you get franchises which consist of multiple home console iterations which are...

1253.jpg

Games that still really need to be designed better.






Edit: No hints systems means games would have to come with instruction manuals. What, you hate the environment?
 
.... Naaa.

I think they should just design better "hard mode" ideas, and beter "easy mode" tools.

I like a lot of the taunting devs have given to gamers in easy modes (Ninja Dog! Platforms over OBVIOUS spikes in Megaman 10!), it's enough to ease the game, but just enough of a jab to try to goad you into doing better.

And hard modes... I love the way Borderlands handles hard modes, with throwing massively overpowered enemies at you, which look different, act different, etc...

And then you had things like Perfect Dark's Difficulties, which actually implemented unique objectives and enemy behaviors into the harder difficulties.

In the end, though, along with options like the ones above, I'd love to see more games implement entirely different modes into games, as "normal" and "hard", similiar to how Hard Corp Uprising does. You have a classic, 8-bit-like difficulty that's like classic Contra, where each character is pre-built by the game designer to flat stats and style, and then you have "Rising Mode", which gives you leveling systems, more HP and techniques, and lets you grow any character into an uber-chara, full of defensive and offensive techniques, bonus lives, etc...

I'd love to see more games pull off something similar. What would Soul Calibur be like, with a bonus Bushido-Blade like mode? Or if every RPG / BEU hybrid offered an arcade-difficulty style mode, with no leveling, and preset movesets? Or if every shooter offered the modern "Hide behind cover and regen!" style, along with the more classic "Non-regen health, fight for pickups and powerups!" style?

I'd much rather see things like this occur, giving us 6 hour games with solid alt playstyles, rather than 8 hour games that have 4 hours of filler content, in comparision.
 
There's no perfect solutions, just like some developers can't create perfect multiple balanced difficulties, there are also ones who couldn't make a fixed difficulty that appeals to wider audiences (assuming that would be what they're aiming for), but if there's a chance that the game is going to be boring as fuck with braindead AIs, I would prefer them to take an easy way and offer a difficulty slider for damage curve (like the one in skyrim) so I could at least get some enjoyment out of the 60 dollar game without artificially limiting myself. Multiple difficulties is probably the easiest way.
 
I think it should be completely up to the devs, though for my sake I hope they let me disable the hints and don't require me to play through lower difficulties to unlock the higher ones.
 
Depends on the game you're designing. There might be something really specific you're attempting to accomplish with your challenges, a puzzle game being an obvious example of this.
 
Yes for the difficulty.

No for the hint system. People should be able to have one if they want one.

I'm just tired of poorly made pieces of shit. Games like COD and BF3 that have the worst difficulty systems ever.

Easy mode has stupid crazy Aim Assist, and you can take 500 shots because everyone can hit you from a mile away when you stick your toe out. Put it on hard, and they can kill you in 5 hits and can still hit your toe from a mile away.

How about we take the time in making a good game.

No?

Okay.jpeg
 
People and reviewers will comeplain that the game is too hard or they can get stuck in one level and might not play the game anymore.

Options are good.
 
ChosenPredator said:
No, I always found it weird people fixation with things that are horrendously hard and not wanting any options for players who have difficulty with it. (vice versa too)
Click to expand...

It's because they want to impose their experience with the game on others. It's not with bad intentions, but it is misguided.
 
It's an interesting question.

I mean we don't have the "dumb" version of books or films.

Why should we have the "dumb" version of games?
 
Honestly, I just wish more developers included a Developer recommend setting which is balanced in a way that the developers feel is the best way to play the game. I tend to play on normal simply because I assume that is what that mode stands for.
 
Xater said:
Exactly. What games do need these days is a checkbox that says "I am not retarded. You don't have to prompt buttons for shit I have done dozens of times already".
Click to expand...

Oh my god this. Videogame, I know that tilting the left analogue stick moves me around!
 
Irish said:
Honestly, I just wish more developers included a Developer recommend setting which is balanced in a way that the developers feel is the best way to play the game. I tend to play on normal simply because I assume that is what that mode stands for.
Click to expand...

But the question is, why should there be anything other than the "developer recommended" way to play the game. They are the game designers. They should design the game experience they want players to have, no? Why should there even be the version the developers don't recommend as a part of the core package? I get if modders or somebody wants to change it, but at least from an artistic perspective, what is the justification for including a version of the game that the developers feel is inferior?
 
Haunted said:
Absolutely not.

Have you looked at the average completion rate of games lately? They're abysmal. Devs should be working on increasing that number, not decreasing it, and difficulty levels tailored to a wide range of gaming skills is one way to help with that.
Click to expand...

Do you actually really think that has anything to do with difficulty?

Games this generation have been piss easy. School aged children can beat games like Demon Souls with no problems.
Its adults without any patience that crack the shits and give up when they lose.

Low completion rates in general is a time and loss of interest issue not a difficulty issue.
 
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