The topic of difficulty options have, for some reason, become a hot topic of debate on social media. I feel that every couple of weeks or so a series of threads turns up on something like Twitter either complaining about games not having difficulty options or people complaining that a game included some kind of "auto-win" mode or something like that and people of course losing their minds and throwing insults at each other. So I got thinking about it and I have come to the conclusion that in most cases difficulty options are complete dogshit.
As a concept they make sense, skilled players pick hard and new players pick easy, and there are a variety of games where they have been used effectively but in a staggeringly large number of cases, the difficulty settings are just frustrating bullshit that's lazily mismanaged by whatever developers are making the game. So for the next few paragraphs in this post I will outline just a few of the ways in which having an option AT ALL is a pile of garbage.
1) The Pump and Dump
This is probably the most common thing you'll come across in games, where a playthrough on easy and a playthrough on hard is identical in every way except the numbers on damage done and damage taken are just raised and lowered depending on what mode you're on. The worst example I can think of this off the top of my head is basically any game made by modern day Naughty Dog. If you play Uncharted on easy or normal, Nathan Drake can walk right into direct fire of a mounted machine gun, take all of those bullets to the face and the only thing that happens is the screen gets a bit grey and you have to suck your thumb behind a rock for a bit to heal up. If you then play that game on Crushing Nathan turns into a man made of wet toilet paper and will go rag-dolling off into space if an enemy so much as coughs on him. Everything else about the game is the same, the only thing your mode choice dictates is how much hiding behind walls you have to do. This is especially boring if you're the kind of person who likes to play normal first and then hard because unless the game really gripped you, playing the exact same game again in the exact same way again but slower just isn't fun.
2) Built for Upgrades
I feel like I never noticed this being a problem until semi recently but another way difficulty is mis-managed is linking it directly to the games upgrade system and new game + playthroughs. The game that really hit home just how bad this gets is Dante's Inferno on PS3. In that game you can pick at the start if you want to play on easy, normal or hard but if you pick hard mode from a new game file then you are going to have a hell of a hard time (lol). But, if you play through the game once, get a bunch of upgrades and soul points, beat the game and then carry that shit over into a hard mode run, the challenge becomes a lot more manageable. This is bullshit because when you die it starts to feel like it's not your fault. Like imagine someone comes up to you and says "hey solve this jigsaw puzzle" but then the set of pieces they give you is just missing a bunch of pieces. That wouldn't be fun, right? and that's exactly what it feels like to play a game on hard mode when it's been built around an upgrade system.
3) Locked
This is a real pet peeve of mine as someone who likes to play games on a harder mode most of the time but locking a hard mode behind a full game clear is an UNFORGIVEABLE practice and any developer that has done this deserves to stub their toe on the leg of a metal coffee table. One thing people love to complain about when they talk about difficulty is that "they don't have time to learn the game and get good", which personally I think is a dogshit argument but OK I'll roll with it. But by that same logic, I'm also a busy man with a large backlog of games and I do not have all the time in the world to play through a game twice just to get the experience that I mainly enjoy. I can understand locking challenge modes behind a clear like Dante Must Die in Devil May Cry but when I buy a game, load it up and my options for difficulty are "easy, normal and LOCKED" I want to start swinging at people
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This is just 3 ways that I pulled off the top of my head and I'm sure if you gave me a stack of games and a couple of days I could probably come up with a lot more. But what is the solution? Well, it's to probably get rid of difficulty settings altogether. A game that springs right to the forefront of my mind in this regard is Celeste. The base game where you get the story of the girl going up the mountain is a challenging yet fair experience that I think anyone can clear with a little bit of practice. When you finish the game, you can either fuck off and never play it again OR you can go and hunt down the B-Sides, C-Sides, Golden Berries etc. which are all challenging extras that players who want to push themselves with absolutely enjoy. The game is designed in such a way so that EVERYONE can get a win but those who want to master the mechanics and platforming can get even more satisfaction after the credits roll
Another example of this would be a game like Bastion. When you start Bastion up you aren't given any difficulty settings but a short ways into the game you unlock the shrine. In the shrine you can unlock little statues that you activate and for each active statue you get an experience and currency bonus in return for the game becoming harder. This allows players to customize their own experience to make the game as hard or as easy and they would like and players who do go for the extra challenge are appropriately rewarded. If you don't like a hard game and just want the story, leave the shrine alone, but if you want to show just how good you are at Bastion then head into that shrine and activate EVERYTHING and see how hard the game gets. The annoying thing about this example in particular is the time it takes to get the shrine and the statues but my point is that instead of having an "easy, normal, hard" mode setting, let players tweak certain aspects of the game themselves to get the challenge that they would like.
Obviously difficulty settings aren't just going to dissapear and like I said, they CAN be used well in certain cases but the point is that most devs are very lazy with them and in a lot of cases just letting the creators deliver the experience THEY want to give you is probably the better option. Game too hard and has no modes? Just play something else. Game has an easy mode that's far too easy for you? Just don't use it. More importantly, shut the fuck up about it on Twitter
