What difficulty level do you default to on your first play through?

[IronWing]

Usually the hardest level. The only exception was Far Cry with it's "Realistic" setting where you get killed everytime you fire a shot.

 

[mwestep]

Depends on what I am feeling.. usually either easy or normal. I don't have as much time to play games as I used to, so I can't waste a bunch of time trying to get through a section of a game that I keep dying at.

 

[jdoggg12]

Normal on my first play through because I like the immersion of the story over the challenge of the game on the first pass. I can always kick it up a notch or 2 if it's stupid easy... on the other hand, if I rage quit because of some ridiculously difficult section, I tend to stew over it for a while (I'm looking at you, Halo 3 Legendary) and it draws me out of the story

 

[JeffNY35]

I was playing on harder difficulties with the false sense of doing something more badass or more challenging. Then I finally realized

very few games offer anything more than poorly implemented adjustments which just result in annoyances .

I wish harder settings would at least reward you in some way but they do not.

And that's a shame because if a game is way to easy ( like far cry 3 ) it sort of kills it for me .

Bioshock was a little better , the challenge seemed a little better on regular.

Now, sometimes ill make my own challenge with the right game: baldurs gate 2 no reload is quite fun. As long as your main char lives you can replace dead folks with new npcs. Sort of a made up rule I play with. Makes it fun for me anyway.

 

[runzwithsizorz]

I wish harder settings would at least reward you in some way but they do not.

I think some of the older games did reward you with opening up new areas if played on hardest level.Painkiller comes to mind. I was also surprised to discover Witcher 2 dumbed down the difficulty level for the Xbox version.

 

[pcslookout]

Very Hard.

 

[OVerLoRDI]

If it is an RPG or RTS, I chose hard. If it is an FPS I'll chose hard or possibly the highest difficulty.

 

[tential]

LOL the early EA sports games were the WORST for me.
Baseball.
Normal: I would win 20 in a row.... Striking out 15 a game and all my guys are hitting over 300. thats no fun.

Go up a level....

All my guys are hitting below 150, I cant strike out Ray Charles and I am 1 and 24 after 25 games.

Had me loling at the Ray Charles.

I always do normal. I have a full time job and I hate getting stuck in games, because then they start feeling like jobs.

Eh, I feel you on this but I just fired up a couple of games and set it to the hardest difficulty level (gaming while I wait for BF4 + I literally have only played 1 game on my Haswell rig, I didn't spend 1k+ to not game at all), and my "getting stuck" has been dying 2-3 times in a row that had nothing to do with the difficulty.
IMO for FPS, if you're on normal or below, I can literally walk through enemies as it's almost near impossible to die.

I was playing on harder difficulties with the false sense of doing something more badass or more challenging. Then I finally realized

very few games offer anything more than poorly implemented adjustments which just result in annoyances .

I wish harder settings would at least reward you in some way but they do not.

And that's a shame because if a game is way to easy ( like far cry 3 ) it sort of kills it for me .

Bioshock was a little better , the challenge seemed a little better on regular.

Now, sometimes ill make my own challenge with the right game: baldurs gate 2 no reload is quite fun. As long as your main char lives you can replace dead folks with new npcs. Sort of a made up rule I play with. Makes it fun for me anyway.

I thought BioShock was actually decent until end game, then I found it was very hard to die. I had mixed feelings but it was probably one of the few games where on Normal, it was decently difficult and I felt I was actually struggling at times. And I also feel with the higher difficutly in Bioshock (at least BS1) I really feel scared to go places / do things. I'm actually worrying if I can kill something but then come end game you almost always have full ammo in all your guns which I didn't like.

I also rarely game so when I do play a game I want it to be fun and not just me walking through from cut scene to cut scene. I want to hide when I'm supposed to or use stealth when I'm supposed to and not just be like "Stealth? lol, I'll just kill all 20 people in the room at once!"

 

[IGemini]

I always do normal. I have a full time job and I hate getting stuck in games, because then they start feeling like jobs.

Some games can be too easy. I think for Bad Company 2 I jumped into SP on hard (highest level) and it was absurdly short...finished in 8 hours, I think? Even for the overplayed multiplayer-heavy FPS games I expect 10-12 hours of SP time, at least.

 

[Fire&Blood]

I think the thread highlights the issues with most modern games. Nowadays people play single player only if the multiplayer servers or their networks are down. Enemy AI most of the time is either blind or can spot you from a mile away, can't hit a fish in a barrel or is super accurate, consistently hitting headshots from half a mile away. AI is either stuck and can't turn a corner in a hallway or they find you instantly as if they have a satellite lock on you at all times. Then there are mini bosses who absorb hundreds of headshots easily but if you shoot the bookshelf behind them causing a book to fall down, it slices them in half on it's way down and you "advance" to the next QTE or a video.

Usually increasing the difficulty just means instead of 50 extremely stupid but extremely accurate enemies means you face 100 of them instead of, I don't know maybe same enemy count but smarter, if you ask me.

The whole "if you are exposed, we put some strawberry jam on your screen, hide for 5 seconds to wipe it away" deal is just annoying.

Maybe it's me, just not as patient as I used to be/supposed to be. It's most likely me since I have the same tendencies with TV shows, dismissing them within first few episodes. Then again, maybe I am right to expect shows to meet the Breaking Bad standard and boycott subpar stuff.

Either way, there is definitely room for improvement. Forcing gamers to die 20 times only to give them the edge so that they clear the level with their closed in the 21st and all following walkthroughs is far from what difficulty should be about.

In game audio and visuals have gotten better over the years but AI got worse if you ask me. I miss the immersion of FEAR's AI and the lols listening to the guards chatter.

Yeah multiplayer has the edge because of the human factor but that doesn't justify all the botched story/singleplayer modes to the point where players don't even try them once.

To get back on topic, if it's a sequel of a game I played before, I am more likely to step up the difficulty. If I don't know the title upfront and don't have faith in how the devs handled the difficulty, I will start off regular/normal and repeat on higher difficulty if the game inspires me but that hasn't been the case for a while.

 

[Malladine]

I prefer the Icarus approach. In the 5+ difficulty level games - in those I usually go to 4/5 not 5/5. In my experience 5/5 just serves as an exercise in frustration. I don't have enough free time any more to plod through a game using all the tricks in the book to progress. Also it gets boring frankly and usually involves reloading until I find just the right combination of tactics to get past a certain encounter.

eg i'm on Novice/Apprentice/Adept/Expert/Master/Legendary in Skyrim and it's a fairly good mix of badass and challenge.

In 3 difficulty level games some are decent on Hard and some go too far with the super tough enemies etc.

I guess the way I see it there's a certain difficulty level that the developers balance the game around. If you play on something else, especially the weakest or toughest settings, you're asking for an unbalanced experience, for better or worse.

 

[Cagey75]

I usually just go for 'Normal' - I'm not the greatest player in the world, and don't like the frustration that often comes with Harder difficulties. I play for fun mostly

 

[RandomFool]

It changes based on the game but in general I select Normal. I'll go up a level if it seems extra easy or I'm playing coop with friends.

Like a lot of people here I'm more interested in the story and having fun than the challenge.

 

[draknon]

I have a massive backlog of games to get though (Steam summer/winter sales) Until my backlog shrinks, I'll play everything on easy.

 

[wetech]

always hard

you should talk to your doctor about that, or get a girlfriend.