Difficulty Selection - yes or no for the modern day?

General
1

In the modern days gaming, do you believe a game should offer “difficulty selection”?

Throughout the history of video games, difficulty selection is being offered to the player. Some want it easy while some want it hard. You have something for everyone.

But offering multiple difficulties mean you now have to balance your game for all these modes to ensure they are proper. This means extra balancing works are required on the developer side.

Some games take it further to extend the game’s longevity by offering unlockable difficulties. Modes harder than hard after you cleared the game or a simpler easy mode if the player falls too many times in normal mode. There are also times I have seen some players replay a game on the same difficulty mode and not change mode because they prefer it that way.

Nowaday, we can see that the world moves very quickly. In the old days, we play a single game for a long time through all difficulty modes, but today, what about you? Do you wanna go clear all difficulty modes or just whatever mode in a single pass is enough then you move on?

What do you guys think about this?

2 Likes
2

I think yes, with the game I’m working on the original difficulty was far to hard, even for a cozy game, so I now offer, Deity Mode and Mortal mode, Deity mode, is only unlocked by successfully completing at least one game in Mortal mode. There are huge bonuses for completing the game in Deity mode, but I like the idea it has to be earned.

Such things allow you to add more achievements for players to earn as well.

3

Depends on the game. For a story-driven game, it can be compelling to offer an easier route to attract players who are mainly there for the story. People don’t realize how disparate skill levels are in games, or how diverse the mechanics are for those skill levels. Some players are really good at min-maxing numbers, some are really good at reflexes, and some are good at pattern recognition. I assume that, since there are levels of difficulty, it is a single-player game.

There are a few patterns you can employ here.

Enemy cheats: Make the opponent or the world cheat, like giving enemies more health or damage. Generally, this feels fake.

Mechanical difficulty: Make players engage with your improvement mechanics by scaling the hardness of the main gameplay loop. You can reduce the difficulty curve to remove the need to engage with those systems. A great example is The Witcher series.

Pressure difficulty: This is what conventional games often employ. Make the game more reflex-based, add tighter time loops, make it easier to fail, and remove pressure elements for easier modes, such as relaxed timers or slower gameplay.

Loss control: If your game has ways to lose progress, add game modes that minimize it. For example, inventory drops on death, roguelike-style returns to the beginning, or, to make it easier, allow players to keep prestige stuff, a fraction of their progress, or even full progress.

Honestly, you can bypass almost everything in this list by enabling cheats, or basically letting players cheat by adding cheat presets as difficulty options.

At the end of the day, balance is a trade-off. Who is your customer base? Are they skilled players, or are they there for the story or exploration? Is difficulty the real core of your game, like in Souls-likes? Then the question becomes: how much of your game are you okay with sacrificing to reach a broader audience?

But remember, easy difficulty will make some players switch to easy at the first obstacle. Yes, some people will stick with their hardcore “hell on earth” mode, but human psychology evolved to seek the easier path to the same reward.

1 Like
4

You mostly need to just balance around your normal mode unless you’re committing to a new game plus sort of thing. Normal mode and maybe hard mode. So two modes. It’s not too tough to balance from normal to easy mode.

5

This video might interest you

3 Likes
6

I think the short and simple answer is it depends on the game, and its target audience - not what year it’s released.

That said, there is a lot more hand-holding and variable difficulty in games now than in the past, so if one was to identify a trend, that would be it. It broadens the appeal, and adds replayability (and bragging rights).

1 Like
7

Yes, as once it’s in my hands, it’s my game to play as I want, whether you, as the designer and developer like it. This means yes, difficulty settings and advanced settings section where I can tweak stuff (Dead Cells did it really well, keeping difficulty quite high by default)

Respect your customers.

Which doesn’t mean default settings shouldn’t be harsh or deadly. It just shouldn’t be the only option.

Think of long games with strong writing, narrative and lore depth, and a deep world to explore: what would you rather have ? More people finishing the whole game and talking about how amazing it was, spending 100s of hours in it, or people playing maybe a couple hours and giving up cause it’s too hard?

I know my choice : I’m nearly blind in one eye for the time being, and my manual dexterity has fallen off a cliff recently as far as console aiming and shooting go in 3d. Any shooter or game with shooter mechanics that doesn’t let me tweak autoaim to sort of baby me through the shooting is not going to be fun at all. It’ll be an experience in frustration, as I won’t be able to explore and enjoy the game itself, as I’ll be too busy dying. Over and over

Never limit the width and depth of your player base at the altar of erroneous principles of “pure" game design.

Yes, difficulty settings and advanced settings to tweak it to one’s liking for all games. There are exceptions, but that’s at the casually easy end of the spectrum. Souls and rogue lites need it 100% or you’re missing out on sales, basically.

Cheers, keep on making games and having fun!

Edit P.S. : It’s as important and an integral part of accessibility options IMHO

1 Like