What Difficulty Do You Play Games On?

[Moonface]

I thought we had a thread on game difficulty but maybe it was on the old board or I'm just imagining it.

Anyway, while not every game offers it (insert FromSoft discourse here) there are a lot of games that provide difficulty settings, and so when that's the case, what do you tend to pick? Do you always go for the same difficulty across all your games, or do you pick depending on the game? For example, despite favouring harder difficulties myself, I won't pick that for fighting games like Tekken or Smash, probably because I don't play fighters very much so I'm usually out of my element with those more than other types of games I play.

[Dragon Lord]

Always the hardest difficulty setting unless that difficulty is balanced around a NG+ mode.

Good example of this is The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky Second Chapter. Nightmare mode in that game was balanced 100% around NG+, and attempting to start a fresh file on that difficulty is, well, a nightmare. I don't know if it's even possible to get through just the opening sequence, as you encounter battles with 5+ enemies and you only have two party members and all of the enemies one-shot you (or two shot if you're lucky, but that still doesn't matter when you have five enemies attacking your two characters). Skyrim on Legendary difficulty is another one that is just completely out of whack if you try playing it on a fresh play through. Mudcrabs will one-shot you while you take 10+ attacks to kill them (in the beginning, that is). I remember playing a Sword+Shield character and I had enemies just one-shot me while I was blocking.

Another exception for me is if a game is made in a way that forces you to play in one certain way to clear the hardest difficulty. If the game expects me to only use certain characters/builds/playstyles/etc. to clear the hardest difficulty, I'll tend to pass on it. If I want to use broken setups in games, I want to do it because I choose to, not because the game is forcing me to do it.

Other than those two situations, I'll generally always play on the hardest difficulty. Might occasionally make an exception if I'm in a hurry to clear a game (usually happens if a game I've been anticipating is close to releasing and I want to finish whatever game I'm currently working on before it arrives).

[Kyng]

Honestly, the highest level I feel comfortable on .

Usually, I'll go with medium-to-hard difficulties. I tend to find that the easier difficulties aren't challenging enough to stretch me, while the hardest difficulties force you into very specific play styles, which often takes the fun out for me (I'm more of a 'roleplayer' than a 'powergamer', so if I'm not given a bit of space to act 'in role', then it ceases to be a satisfying experience for me)

With that being said... I do play FTL: Faster than Light exclusively on Hard difficulty. I mostly play that for high score - and Hard difficulty offers a higher score than Normal or Easy (at least, on the runs that I actually win... I still lose well over 50% of my Hard-difficulty runs!!!!)

[Karo]

I actually normally go for the hardest difficulty mainly because I really do like a challenge, now does this mean I actually beat said challenge? Sometimes, but most of the time not!

[Cory]

Usually easier, and sometimes I still fail.

Normal when easier is too easy.

[Moonface]

I usually go for hard on most of my games, and if I go for difficulties above that it's for one of the following reasons:

1. There's a good incentive to play a higher difficulty, such as trophies, unlockables, better rewards, changes to the game, etc.
   
2. I've played a game enough that Hard feels a bit stale and I want to challenge myself again.
   

There aren't many games where I put it to the hardest possible difficulty and keep it there though. The only ones off the top of my head that I've done that for are these:

• Dying Light (Nightmare) - You get considerably more XP which makes getting through the Legendary levels less of a grind. The flashlight also doesn't die in Nightmare, but does on Hard, which is incredibly annoying to deal with. Dying also makes you lose all XP, which stops me from being reckless and actually puts a good sense of risk/reward into the game that I had lost from playing on Hard for a long time.
  
• Binding of Isaac (Hard) - The game only has two options, and Hard gives you more unlocks and such. Playing on Normal means you have to do everything twice (once per difficulty) whereas Hard just gives you both completion marks per task per character.
  
• Minecraft (Hard) - You could argue Hardcore is the highest difficulty but I view that as a separate mode like Creative. I mostly pick Hard because enemies rarely feel dangerous in anything lower unless it's a Creeper.
  
• Prey (Nightmare) - Once you know how to deal with enemies in this and get fully upgraded, the game gets too easy because you end up overpowered.
  

Easy or Normal I will use heavily when going for collectibles and trophies in games though, because I always mop the remaining ones of those up after beating a game and I see no reason to make it tedious, especially when combat is involved, such as scoring x headshots in a row, making the difficulty as easy as possible just guarantees the time you need to get the aim correct instead of getting mowed down for not playing like an aimbot.

One thing I really do like is when there are games that don't do a traditional difficulty level option (Sekiro, Hades) but rather than just locking every player into the same experience, there'll be a range of items and options you can enable to change things up based on what suits you. Hades does it really well because it has so many choices to increase the heat level that if one isn't appealing to you it doesn't prevent you from getting to 32 heat. I like the freedom those sorts of difficulty choices give me.

[Mr EliteL]

Usually play Normal on a first playthrough, unless I happen to have played a game earlier in the series I may decide to play on Hard, or play on Hard if I enjoyed the game enough to play again but want more of a challenge. Don't tend to keep going to a harder difficulty an Hard apart an odd game or two, will always play on top difficulty on Super Smash Bros or Tekken though, BlazBlue is another fighter I played on a higher difficulty than Hard. Can't remember what other genre type games I've tried on a harder difficulty but swear there's one. Did play Crushing with Moony in Co-Op Uncharted.

[Moonface]

Can't remember what other genre type games I've tried on a harder difficulty but swear there's one. Did play Crushing with Moony in Co-Op Uncharted.

Did you ever do any of the Uncharted campaigns on Crushing?

[Mr EliteL]

Don't think I have, don't have any of the trophies achieved so I take it as a no. I checked UC2 and *gasp* I haven't even do that on Hard. I must've only played the campaign once. For UC4 I have done the Speedrun trophy, and I did both UC3 and UC4 campaign on Hard first.

[Moonface]

Uncharted can get awful on Crushing mode (they did add a Brutal mode to the OG three for the PS4 remaster but I'm not touching that) because like most games, the developers idea of "harder" is to turn the player into a paper bag and every enemy into a boulder. For Uncharted games it just gets real rough in areas that are made for run and gun, like any of the vehicle segments, or the supernatural sections at the end of 2 and 3. I'd say UC3 is the worst one by far; the section with the Djinn lobbing instant exploding grenades will forever haunt me.

Fallout 4 is one of the few games I've played that did a harder mode correctly. Survival mode makes it so the "Sole Survivor does 150% damage and takes 200% damage relative to "Very Hard" difficulty. Relative to normal mode, Sole Survivor does 75% damage and takes 400% damage", whereas the majority of games I play just make the player have less health and enemies get more health, which I find to be a really lazy way of doing difficulty.

[ShiraNoMai]

I play games as the devs intended, which is Normal/Default. For the reasons Moony just stated, choosing higher difficulties can be kind of bullshit when devs have a hard time finding a good way to level scale their difficulty and just opt to raise a few obvious metrics to achieve "hard". I don't find that fun.

There's one game I can think of where I think anything lower than Hard actually seems counterintuitive and that's Guitar Hero. Medium difficulty feels detrimental to actually playing the song--in that rhythm and beat are lost when fewer notes and off beat timings are displayed to make it easier. Suffice to say, I play Hard and even Expert when I can.

[Dragon Lord]

One thing I really do like is when there are games that don't do a traditional difficulty level option (Sekiro, Hades) but rather than just locking every player into the same experience, there'll be a range of items and options you can enable to change things up based on what suits you.

Same with the Souls game. Set difficulty, but many ways to change up the way you play the game to fit your personal preference and get through the game easier. 

Games where the devs basically say "Learn the game and get good or go cry about it" are definitely top tier. Monster Hunter is the same way. Either learn the game or get your shit pushed in over and over again. Oh, and of course I can't forget about Nioh, also an absolutely amazing series that uses this formula as well. 

Hopefully we see more and more devs do this, and basically say "Oh, game is too hard for you? Too bad, so sad!" There's always the Pokemon series for people that can't handle the heat.