Are you filled with anxiety for playing on easy? Kotaku is. (Destiny)

by Revenant1988 , How do I forum?, Monday, December 04, 2017, 12:04 (2625 days ago) @ Cody Miller
edited by Revenant1988, Monday, December 04, 2017, 12:08

Horizon Zero Dawn added a difficulty below Easy, called Story. I can't recall if it was ME3 that did the same, but I think that's neat (and I wish The Last of Us did the same, since even non-gamers should be able to hop into it to experience the story).

That said, I feel like you get a better appreciation for a game's mechanics and challenges (hence more fun) if you bump the difficulty up on your first play through, but not too high, since that limits your options.

The problem with playing on a difficulty that is too easy is that essentially everything 'works'. You can beat the game with basically any strategy, and so are not required to learn the systems in place and understand the drawbacks and benefits to certain strategies. Perhaps worse than one dominant strategy is every strategy being dominant.

That's only a problem if "learning the system" is what you set out to do in a game to begin with. For you personally, that very well may be true, but I've never picked up a game and said to myself "Oh boy I can't wait to learn how the in-game economy works" or "I can't wait to memorize all these characters moves. That stuff comes AFTER I've become invested in a game. That investment usually occurs because I had fun with the game.

Example: I love the hell out of the first Bioshock. I played on normal difficulty, found the shooting mechanics to be terribly weak compared to Halo at the time, but fell in love with the world and story. So I went back for the second playthrough to see the different ending and decided I wanted to up the challenge and difficulty. Had I started out harder, I may not have found it to be appealing to go back just for the story. It would have been a slog.

Now my wife saw me play that game and she became really interested in it because of the world and story. So she decided to play. First fps ever. So she played on the easiest difficulty.

She went through about 50% of game with the wrench. Just beating enemies to death. Neverminding that she could shoot fire from her hands, or that she had a machine gun.

I showed her an encounter (that she essentially ignored the first go round) where you could shoot electricity into a puddle where bad guys were standing to kill them- she said "awesome" and then continued on her way dolling out wrench assisted lobotomies.

My way, arguably the way the devs intended for someone to play, didn't impact her enjoyment. She played again and THEN mixed it up.

When I think about it more, I've never played a game seeking it out because it's inherently ball crushing.

Portal was great. It also starts out super, super easy and ramps up. It doesn't start you out on the hardest test chambers. It DOES force you to learn the systems as you go, but it's incredibly spaced out and gradual.

I think the point of the article is that the writer takes issue with feeling inadequate if they play on the easy level when the game jabs their pride for doing so- my comment to that is: Do what you want.

What's worse? Playing on crybaby difficulty, or being a crybaby about not wanting to be picked on for playing on crybaby difficulty?

I think accessibility options are a much better way to make the game easier while still preserving challenge. See Naughty Dog.