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Indivisible: Lab Zero's Action-RPG! (General Discussion)

Squire Grooktook said:
The problem is, you cannot make something that's tailored to everyone. Somebody will always find the late game really really hard, and someone will always find it really really easy.
You can properly design it for 90% of willing players, though. I'd rather it be that way than potentially too easy or hard because I didn't pick the difficulty that was right for me (but had no way of knowing until halfway through the game). I'm fine with one difficulty, and I suspect most people won't care as long as it's sufficiently fun and challenging.
 
Kai said:
You can properly design it for 90% of willing players, though. I'd rather it be that way than potentially too easy or hard because I didn't pick the difficulty that was right for me (but had no way of knowing until halfway through the game). I'm fine with one difficulty, and I suspect most people won't care as long as it's sufficiently fun and challenging.

That's a legit point, and one I've thought of. That's one reason why I prefer more subtle difficulty ramps: I don't like games where I have to play through half the game before things start getting tactical, twitchy, or otherwise interesting. I prefer games that start out close to their maximum difficulty, and only ramp very slightly over time. That way, when you start, you know what you're in for from the first stage.

For those kind of games at least, a selectable difficulty is a lot better.

But yeah, keep in mind I agree with this:

Kai said:
and I suspect most people won't care as long as it's sufficiently fun and challenging.

They definitely won't. Even some of the hardest of hardcore players I know can enjoy games even if they think they're ultimately too easy for them. They would have enjoyed them more if there was an extra setting though ;)
 
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I don't care about the difficult, i can finally play a game without getting rekt left and right (SG), also, if everyone is complaining about the difficult setting, why just not make the game progressively difficult, like most RPGs, where you start from Lv.1, you acquire better gear, weapons, armors, spells, etc. when time passes until you reach a point where you're at level 75 or 99, with the best of all that shit, or go with the option of make the game with normal difficult, but the secret dungeon is going to be unforgiving, but fair in a certain way.

Like Final Fantasy games, to put an example
 
Squire Grooktook said:
I don't play a lot of games that lock features based on difficulty though.
VP only lets you play the full game on Hard. On Normal you can get the good ending but not the secret dungeon, and lots of items/some characters/some dungeons are removed. On Easy you can't get the good ending, and even more characters and items and dungeons are removed.

Star Ocean 2 allows you to play the plot with little leveling, but if you play the plot and the secret dungeon and do the extra stuff then you can turn the final story boss into the hardest fight in the game.

I think boss fights that are grinds rather than hard are VERY poor design; it's one of Alundra's biggest failings, and it is true for a lot of RPGs. The other reason I disagree with difficulty levels is that it generally just means more HP/more damage for enemies, rather than actually changing gameplay like giving bosses new patterns or attacks.
 
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Mike_Z said:
I think boss fights that are grinds rather than hard are VERY poor design; it's one of Alundra's biggest failings, and it is true for a lot of RPGs. The other reason I disagree with difficulty levels is that it generally just means more HP/more damage for enemies, rather than actually changing gameplay like giving bosses new patterns or attacks.

Yeah, I agree, I hate that tedium shit. Changing gameplay is what I think all such difficulty modes should be. Tweaking ai to be more aggressive/punishing, tweaking attacks to require faster reflexes or greater execution, etc. (IE shmup harder difficulty: pattern now has more bullets and is faster. Hack and slash harder difficulty: enemies move faster and make a greater effort to attack you when you're healing, attacks have shorter start up and require faster reflexes, etc.)

Maybe even adding new attacks is something that could conceivably fall under "locking content". But just as long as you need to actually play differently (as in better, more tactically, etc.), rather then just fight a boss or an enemy for longer and make fewer mistakes, I think that's good design.

The problem with all of the above, I think, is that realistically most developers don't have time for all that balancing. Especially for a longer game.
 
What about something like an adaptive difficulty, like what God Hand had. To me that was a pretty cool idea, but others might think differently.
 
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I don't know how well that sort of difficulty design would work for a non-spectacle fighter though. But creative difficulty stuff like that is always awesome.
 
Lex said:
I don't know how well that sort of difficulty design would work for a non-spectacle fighter though. But creative difficulty stuff like that is always awesome.

Believe it or not, shmups and arcade games have used that for a long time. It's usually called "Rank".

Even Gradius has an extremely intensive adaptive difficulty system, though sadly it didn't always do much to alleviate the dreaded "Gradius Syndrome"*.

There's also Battle Garegga, which took this to some interesting extremes.

IE game over due to repeat death when you lose all your power ups.
 
Mike_Z said:
VP only lets you play the full game on Hard. On Normal you can get the good ending but not the secret dungeon, and lots of items/some characters/some dungeons are removed. On Easy you can't get the good ending, and even more characters and items and dungeons are removed.

Star Ocean 2 allows you to play the plot with little leveling, but if you play the plot and the secret dungeon and do the extra stuff then you can turn the final story boss into the hardest fight in the game.

I think boss fights that are grinds rather than hard are VERY poor design; it's one of Alundra's biggest failings, and it is true for a lot of RPGs. The other reason I disagree with difficulty levels is that it generally just means more HP/more damage for enemies, rather than actually changing gameplay like giving bosses new patterns or attacks.

Well, to be fair, Star Ocean 2 allows you an impressive amount of freedom, allowing you to have more than 100 endings, and also the interaction between character is really good, they build something good from the mistakes of the first game and make a better sequel, though, this game suffers from SOTN syndrome, where you start with a really powerful weapon (for the beginning) which is the gun, only to lose energy from it, and starts to battle with your sword, you acquire better equipment later though.

The secret dungeon and the fight against the Iselia Queen, while cheap at some parts, they were really fun to me, the tension from my fingers to fight against someone who is supposedly one of the hardest boss in RPG's general (Or that's what i heard), it was really fun to me, i know, i have to confess that i needed to grind a lot in order to stand a chance to battle her, and this contradicts the right statement of "Let's make a boss battle on (Lunatic) with more HP/MP than normal!" which isn't really good for those who are new to the RPG series.

The other problem of Star Ocean 2 is the passing, and directions, without a guide, i can assure you that most players who don't know shit about the tropes of an RPG will die in this game, a lot, or they will be simply lost (Happened to me the first time) and the only thing i could do was battling some minor enemies until i found what i had to do in the last town i could access to, and although the game gives you no indications, as i said, it's the freedom this game had that let me say all the way to the end.

In paper, SO2 is impressive, lots of side-quests, dungeons, skills to refill, you can't deny that this is a full RPG with a lot of shit to do, but some of the conventions that old RPG's from the 90's era suffer in this game too (Included the PSP Remake) and some gameplay choices were questionable, but it was fun for what i have enjoyed, i think that difficult settings can be a good idea if you implement it well, like, giving some features on easy that you can't find on normal and the likes of, unlike Contra where you seriously had to beat the game on the hardest setting in order to see the ending (Happened to me in Contra 3, the ending was horrendous, to say the least), but that's another game.
 
I'm a bit late to this argument, but I'm on the side where I like different diificulty settings.
While I disagree with locking content based on difficulty, I think having a difficulty setting is better, or at least as good, as adaptive difficulty or no options. I do need to clarify that this type of system only works if difficulty is raised not by cheap tactics like overall enemy damage buffs, but with things like better AI, new attacks, and different patterns/enemy tendencies.
First, and I'm not sure if this point has been made yet, is that it adds some layer of replayability. If you start on normal, once you've beaten the game, you can play the hard difficulty for a different, more challenging experience.
Second, it adds a layer of customization. If you want gameplay to be easy to enjoy the story or to have a relaxing experience, you can do that. If you want to play a teeth-grindingly hard game that will include lots of deaths, that is possible as well.

Of course, programming difficulty well is probably very hard and time-consuming, but it can be done very well, and it isn't objectively worse to have difficulty settings.
 
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If you have different difficulty settings, aside from the work, you also have the problem of the fact that most BAD gamers don't think they're bad so they'll play on Hard, and complain, when they should be playing on Normal or Easy. So then you get developers making the game, calling that Hard and making it easier for Normal (and then still easier for Easy). Blegh.

In addition, Super Metroid has no difficulty setting. :^P

Seeing as how it's more work, having different difficulties falls under the "if we have time, but there are other things I'd rather do" umbrella.
 
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Mike_Z said:
VP only lets you play the full game on Hard. On Normal you can get the good ending but not the secret dungeon, and lots of items/some characters/some dungeons are removed. On Easy you can't get the good ending, and even more characters and items and dungeons are removed.

Star Ocean 2 allows you to play the plot with little leveling, but if you play the plot and the secret dungeon and do the extra stuff then you can turn the final story boss into the hardest fight in the game.

you're reminding me of Shin megami Tensei 3, where to get many questions answered about the plot and the world, you had to beat tough dungeons and bosses stronger than the last boss itself, to in the very end face a secret boss that gave you such a different ending that served as small lore instrument for other games in the meta series.

Of course, the difference is that the lore bit was a very in-your-face reward in that game (like, after you beat the dungeon you go see a certain NPC and shell go like "shall we discuss about this?")

...And there was dante, but screw dante this time
 
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I like one difficulty compared to more than one. Probably because there are more one difficulty games I liked than more than one thought I probably can't name too many off the top of my head. Probably the only RPG game that had more than one difficulty and I would bother to try the other difficulties was The World Ends With You.
 
To chime in wouldn't best practice be to design a game that teaches its mechanics and pushes players past 1st order strategies at a pace for that good for the 90% mentioned earlier. All the while having areas, loot, companions, and experiences in general just beyond that threshold of expected skill. This way you reward the players of higher skill, and give incentive (but not punish) players who aren't there yet, and maybe give them something to go back to in say ... a new game plus.

The problem with difficulty selection is that new players have no idea what to choose. Mike just pointed out this problem and extra credits have done an ep on it as well link.
 
Mike_Z said:
If you have different difficulty settings, aside from the work, you also have the problem of the fact that most BAD gamers don't think they're bad so they'll play on Hard, and complain, when they should be playing on Normal or Easy. So then you get developers making the game, calling that Hard and making it easier for Normal (and then still easier for Easy). Blegh.

In addition, Super Metroid has no difficulty setting. :^P

Seeing as how it's more work, having different difficulties falls under the "if we have time, but there are other things I'd rather do" umbrella.

To be fair, Super Metroid doesn't exactly indicates what you have to do, so there is the problem of many "newcomers" who are slightly interested on the metroid series but then, when they play the game, they are confused, most of the time with questions being like "Where do i go?, "What should i do?", yes, you might not believe it, but there are people who got confused at metroid because it lacked a tutorial, of course you could read the manual, but in this age of gamers who don't read shit, they are most likely to fail a game the first time they play them.

So, even if you make the game without difficult settings, you have the problem balancing the difficult throughout the whole game, many people complains about SM being too easy to beat, since this game has a lot of checkpoints, predictable enemy patterns, and while the exploring and the little tricks you could do was really fun, the game itself isn't too hard to beat, a dedicated person could beat it in 4 hours or less, which isn't too much (Hell, i beat DCK2 in 5 hours with 30 minutes, and the first DKC only on 4 hours).

So, the problem with a game without difficult settings is the balancing, since you can't please everyone on a videogame, you either: > Make the game accessible for the "Bad Gamers", and make them feel rewarded, and as for the "Good Gamers" (God i hate the "gamer" term) you make some paths for these kind of gamers and make them feel rewarded while not discouraging "Bad Gamers" to not play the game.

Have you ever played Starfox 64 3D?, well, it's more or less the same philosophy, you have 3 paths in this game, each one of them with a different ending or different enemies, depending on the route you've taken, most players would take the basic predefined route during the beginning, but when they obtain better skills through the game, the second path is available seems more like the preferable option after the first play through with the first path.

You can't please everyone, but you can give options to anyone, "Bad Gamers" tend to obtain better skills while playing the game over and over until they get in a shape form, and when they finally become "Decent/Good" gamers, what are you going to do there?, what are you going to do when they obtain better skills at playing games?, they will simply play harder games and forget about the "Easy" games, so, the point of creating different paths for anyone available to choose while not discouraging bad players to not choose the game.

Now, if a "Bad Gamer" choose the "Hard Path" (Paths and Difficulties aren't the same thing) and they quickly lose, is their fault for losing quickly, because they choose something that is not accustomed to their skills, they must select an easier option while not make them feel bad for playing an "Easy Difficult", which is the previous point i mentioned, creating paths in the game allows a wider range of variety, and therefore, more gamers will be interested to learn the mechanics in each path, so, with that, even hardcore gamers will be interested on each path to see the differences between one, i think this is the best choice you can do.
 
I would be fine dropping this subject, since Mike gave a pretty clear answer last post. But since this is still going, for the sake of discussion:

JalapenoBomber said:
To chime in wouldn't best practice be to design a game that teaches its mechanics and pushes players past 1st order strategies at a pace for that good for the 90% mentioned earlier. All the while having areas, loot, companions, and experiences in general just beyond that threshold of expected skill. This way you reward the players of higher skill, and give incentive (but not punish) players who aren't there yet, and maybe give them something to go back to in say ... a new game plus.

The problem with difficulty selection is that new players have no idea what to choose. Mike just pointed out this problem and extra credits have done an ep on it as well link.

I guess we're at the part where this is a matter of taste. Me, I would prefer for the main story to be a challenge, and wouldn't want to have to go do side quests or fight secret bosses to get a challenge. If the heroine is fighting her mortal nemesis, and the battle is emotionally intense and dramatic, I'd prefer for that to be the engaging and rewarding fight, not some optional side plot character. But that's just me, and it's not a big deal.

I don't think "players won't know what to pick" is a problem, honestly. If the default setting is "90%" like you mention, and the rest are labeled or described properly, then most people won't or shouldn't have a problem. Why would you pick "super ultra legendary god mode" if you're new and don't know how the game works yet? Or why would you pick "novice casual" if you plan on spending a massive amount of time mastering the game? This also goes back to what I said above: personal preference, but I feel mostly "even" difficulty curves are far superior to massive ramps over a long period of time. If the player can get a good idea about how much will be asked of them from the first battle, then they shouldn't have any reason to fear picking the wrong difficulty. You're on the first battle, just switch. Or let people switch difficulties mid game.

A good example of that is Touhou on Lunatic. The final stages are only incrementally harder then the first stage, so you know if you're on the wrong setting or not 30 seconds in. There's also the point that that difficulty is labeled as "lunatic" and it even has a descriptor explaining that it's for people who have put a lot of time into the genre. The fact that easy, normal, hard, and lunatic are so perfectly tailored to every skill level is why that game has drawn so many new players in to the genre. No matter who you are, you can find something in-game that's neither boring nor too hard. Also anime but most of the people who were into that didn't stick around. But Touhou DID massively expand the shmup playerbase.

I find hack and slashes like DMC/Bayonetta/etc. are similar in this regard. When you get your ass handed to you by mooks on the first stage on higher difficulties, you know whether you should be there or not immediately. And those games simply wouldn't be as rewarding if they didn't offer higher difficulties for more advanced players.

Also I don't like new game +'s because I don't think you should have to work for something like that. I think people should be free to choose the option that best appeals to them from the start. But again, personal preference. Some people like unlocking stuff as they go.



Also about Super Metroid: I think Phantoon is the only part of that game that's actually hard lol. Not that there's much wrong with that, it's still an amazing game either way, for many, many reasons. But challenge isn't it's strong suit IMO.
 
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Just make the entire game based around Battletoads difficulty. First 2 stages are super easy, everything else kick you in the dick. If you don't have a dick, it makes you grow a dick just so it can kick it.
 
alexpi said:
Just make the entire game based around Battletoads difficulty. First 2 stages are super easy, everything else kick you in the dick. If you don't have a dick, it makes you grow a dick just so it can kick it.

Don't forget to top it off with an anti-climactic final boss and ending lol.
 
Kind of mixed on difficulty choices.

They can work depending on the approach which heavily depends on the game genre quite frankly since the genre would vary on how flexible the game is allowed for separate difficulty modes to modify the playing experience easier, harder, or simply just different. It can enhance the experience by introducing multiple unique ways to experience the same game or it could just be a tedious time sink. Then again it all boils down to the mindset of x individual gamer

1. There are those that want a challenge at any opportunity in any given form [whether it's simply give more health to enemy/they deal more damage to player so they are forced to be more careful with resources due to reduced forgiving leeway or something more elegant like unique attack patterns/add more immersion to the game setting by adding more game elements similar to Fallout NV Hardcore mode to satisfy a niche] and would pick the higher difficulty as a sense of personal accomplishment. They can brag to themselves or others that they beat x game on y difficulty which is a common occurrence in this gaming culture.

2. Then there are those that don't care about the difficulty and just want to beat the game. A game clear is good enough for them. I would assume this is where most mainstream gamers lie at because they don't particularly care for personal glory, but at the same time they don't particularly want their hand held the entire game either because that would understandingly dampen their excitement to keep playing the game.

3. Then finally there are those that hate hard [or even any form of resistance against the player] games period because they feel it's an unjustly wall that stops them from advancing the story or whatever. They don't want challenge they want progress. This is why recent games add a difficulty that pretty much removes any sense of risk during gameplay [You died? Don't worry auto revive! Want to just advance the story? Don't worry you can just skip the battle!] to satisfy that niche gamer that just want to experience the story, characters, setting immersion, art, etc.

^ None of the above three is objectively the superior way-of-life for a gamer since this is all subjective preference. The reason why I brought that up is when a game is made and wants to satisfy the most diverse demographic of gamers where they each have their own "this is my type of game" experience one option is make as many difficulty modes/specialized playing experiences as possible so they can each be tailor-made for x group of gamer with y mode.

The other option is just stick with one default mode period and balance it such a way that it still appeals the above three demographic to a degree.

Of course there are games with developers that don't care/need to appeal as much gamers as possible and prefer [either due to artistic direction or simply want to focus cashing in on a specific crowd to satisfy their niche] to specialize/cater to one group period where it usually has a hardcore following of the games being disgustingly difficult or comfortably easy. The advantage of this is you could be considered "that game" [could be positive or negative attention though] that can separate you from the sea of various jack-of-all-trades difficulty/specialized play-through type games out there.

It is interesting to hear Mike's personal views on said subject. Kind of ironic though when Skullgirls has several difficulty modes[even more then the average fighter quite frankly where one of the patches even added another one] for the CPU, but then again Mike might not have been involved with that.

Would still be personally interested in this game [enough where I would still throw money at the IGG like I did with SG] if it's just one difficulty or several since I enjoyed plenty of both type of games.
 
Uh so who's excited for character/enemy designs because the Southeast Asian influences sounds hella rad with all kinds of creepy and awesome monsters.
Also the potential to dip into more unknown mythological influences.
 
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WaterMystic277 said:
Uh so who's excited for character/enemy designs because the Southeast Asian influences sounds hella rad with all kinds of creepy and awesome monsters.
Also the potential to dip into more unknown mythological influences.
The characters are kinda, interesting, Ajna itself doesn't look like someone from Japan or any related culture to it, it seems more like a person who came from either:
> Thailand, a vast country with rich culture and interesting people
> Indian people, especially the ones from "The Americas" during the XVI ages.

But, this game has ruins, and apparently caves, so, i can't say too much to the respect, the mythological themes are interesting to grasp, but as i said in an earlier post, i wonder if this game will put all of those mythological and cultural things into a mixed bag, this can be a mess to understand the story in a linear way (Unless this is the type of game who isn't going to present a non linear story, but i don't know for sure)
 
Mike_Z said:
VP only lets you play the full game on Hard. On Normal you can get the good ending but not the secret dungeon, and lots of items/some characters/some dungeons are removed. On Easy you can't get the good ending, and even more characters and items and dungeons are removed.

VP is definitely an odd ball in terms of how it handles the difficulty settings. Hell, in some ways "Easy" is more difficult than Normal due to one of the dungeons that was removed from Easy Mode having some very important items in it.
 
Squire Grooktook said:
I don't think "players won't know what to pick" is a problem, honestly. If the default setting is "90%" like you mention, and the rest are labeled or described properly, then most people won't or shouldn't have a problem. Why would you pick "super ultra legendary god mode" if you're new and don't know how the game works yet? Or why would you pick "novice casual" if you plan on spending a massive amount of time mastering the game?
Hello, have you met other humans?
It's not that skilled players will pick Easy, they won't. It's that unskilled human beings are terrible at correctly estimating their own skill level. ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE AT IT.
As someone who has worked on multi-million-dollar games and been to many professionally organized focus tests, watching complete newbies pick Hard or Insane and then CONSTANTLY complain about the difficulty is a common occurrence. "Normal is for babies, and Easy is for my mom." I will never forget that.
There was a game recently, which I can't remember the name of, that just renamed Easy/Normal/Hard to Normal/Hard/Crazy in an attempt to get new players to stop picking Hard when they suck; play Portal 2 with the commentary on and listen to the concessions they made as a result of focus testing (a large reason it's a worse game than Portal); etc.

It's a VERY real, VERY common problem. Correctly choosing the difficulty for your skill level is the outlier.

Now that I remembered about those focus tests, that memory alone is enough for me to not want to include a difficulty setting. :^S
 
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Mike_Z said:
Hello, have you met other humans?*stuff about focus tests*

Hmm, interesting. Never personally encountered that. I know a lot of people who default to hard, whether they're good enough or not, but no one who would actually complain about their own choice (most people I know would either just switch to normal right away if they couldn't cut it, or stick to it till the end without complaint). That's awful. Probably another reason why we can't have nice things.

Of course, one (imperfect) solution would be to just do as Platinum Games does and lock harder difficulties until the game is completed. As I said about NG+, I personally dislike that approach because I think it's better to have a choice right away rather then work for the option you'll find more enjoyable. But it's better then nothing IMO. At the very least, that approach encourages replay.
 
Mike_Z said:
There was a game recently, which I can't remember the name of, that just renamed Easy/Normal/Hard to Normal/Hard/Crazy in an attempt to get new players to stop picking Hard when they suck; play Portal 2 with the commentary on and listen to the concessions they made as a result of focus testing (a large reason it's a worse game than Portal); etc.

That reminds me of my experience playing Dungeon of the Endless in which the difficulty levels are named "Easy" and "Too Easy" to intentionally goad players into biting off more than they could chew because 'Too Easy' is actually the 'Normal' difficulty setting.

It also reminds me of why a lot of modern games keep "Hard" "Crazy" etc. locked until you've beaten the game on normal.
 
Mike_Z said:
Hello, have you met other humans?
It's not that skilled players will pick Easy, they won't. It's that unskilled human beings are terrible at correctly estimating their own skill level. ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE AT IT.
As someone who has worked on multi-million-dollar games and been to many professionally organized focus tests, watching complete newbies pick Hard or Insane and then CONSTANTLY complain about the difficulty is a common occurrence. "Normal is for babies, and Easy is for my mom." I will never forget that.
There was a game recently, which I can't remember the name of, that just renamed Easy/Normal/Hard to Normal/Hard/Crazy in an attempt to get new players to stop picking Hard when they suck; play Portal 2 with the commentary on and listen to the concessions they made as a result of focus testing (a large reason it's a worse game than Portal); etc.

It's a VERY real, VERY common problem. Correctly choosing the difficulty for your skill level is the outlier.

Now that I remembered about those focus tests, that memory alone is enough for me to not want to include a difficulty setting. :^S

So, for those unskilled players, what would you give them?
 
Aww man. I was hoping Mike's post was linking us to a hilarious archive of focus test videos, but it was just another one of those Dunning-Kreuger links. It's barely been a week since the last time I ended up on that article.
 
While I don't mind these side-talks about these things, I kind of encourage this kind of stuff to go into a related thread. Keep the thread informative. There's only so much we can go on before it becomes thread-about-general-game-talk-and-sometimes-Indivisible.
 
Sure, @Midiman, I'm done with the topic after this one.

KaboomKid said:
Aww man. I was hoping Mike's post was linking us to a hilarious archive of focus test videos, but it was just another one of those Dunning-Kreuger links. It's barely been a week since the last time I ended up on that article.
The world's tryna tell you something. :^P

Demifiend said:
So, for those unskilled players, what would you give them?
A game that encourages players to improve at it, and helps them do so!
Same as I said about fighting games - skilled players will find things to do that are hard, as long as you give them the tools to do that. :^) I'd say more but we're not talking about mechanics yet. :^P

(Megaman 2, Chrono Trigger, etc. are fondly remembered in no small part because they are kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinda easy.)
 
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So is anyone else excited that this is the chance to see a Lab0 game run at AGDQ/SGDQ? Seeing how popular Super Metroid is during those events...
Maybe even with mike on commentary?
 
Required reading for everybody.

Never underestimate the stupidity of people. It goes further than what Mike said about idiots picking the hardest difficulty setting because they think they're hot shit. I've seen people skip tutorials on purpose because they think they're too good for them. Shit, DSP is Dunning-Kruger: The Youtube Channel.

Mike, the game you were thinking of MIGHT BE one of the new Fire Emblems. I can't remember. That sort of thing has happened a handful of times as of recent; it's something about the American Exceptionalist mindset that makes game devs have to compensate by changing the adjectives.
 
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Funny that I have exactly the other way around.

I always choose normal being afraid that I'll get frustrated on hard, and will hate the game as a result.

Some game turned out way more fun on hard for me. :P Like Batman Arkham games or Dust An Elysian Tail.
 
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I remember playing a game ages ago (I have a feeling it might have been Urban Assault?) that started you off with several difficulty levels and then one of the options in the menu that appeared on death was to change the difficulty, but you could only change it to levels easier than you previously were on. It worked pretty well because the way the rest of the game was designed made ti feel like an actual mechanic rather than 'which version of the game do you want to play?', trading off the ability to actually move forward with the loss in score multipliers, bonuses etc. that harder difficulties entailed. But if you want your average player to really take advantage of that it would have to be more central to the design rather than something extra added on to the core game.

Also, I don't think it's a problem entirely caused by people's egos not letting them choose an appropriate level, but because there's no real standard to begin with and then people are generally too invested in their current progress to want to restart with a new difficulty. If there's an option to adjust difficulty between levels then the difficulty is in convincing people that changing the difficulty is their choice instead of just admitting defeat, rather than stopping them from thinking that they have skillz before they've even started the game.

infected melon said:
So is anyone else excited that this is the chance to see a Lab0 game run at AGDQ/SGDQ? Seeing how popular Super Metroid is during those events...
Maybe even with mike on commentary?
I've been looking for something new even since I quit running Mirror's Edge, so I'm definitely excited. That said, games that are made to be 'speedrun games' rarely turn out to be good 'speedrun games'.

Also from memory the Shovel Knight dev commentary at AGDQ was really well received and resulted in a lot of people looking into the game, but I'm not sure how well that'd work with Mike telling everyone how they're playing the game wrong :-P
 
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Mike_Z said:
([Portal 2] is a worse game than Portal)
I REALLY disagree with that, but that's not on topic.

For the rest that's weird, I always picked Normal in every game I've played for the first time (so chances are I picked Easy on some games without knowing?!)
 
I like when you play through the game once, and then it unlocks a Hard Mode which is just more damage/more HP on enemies and Healthpot heal less and there's less Ammo etc

It's not a lot of work to make, nobody can pick this by accident or because they deem themselves hot shit (since they have to complete the game once first), there's no extra content (not *required* to play hard mode at all), and it increases the replay value by a good bit (of course depending on the game - if this eg existed in Pokemon and all it would lead to was people being forced to grind more levels killing Pidgeys and Rattatas because Brock is impossible to fight, that'd not be too interesting - but eg hard mode mods in SM are quite fun I believe)
 
I like how difficult is handled in character action games, they are more NG+ stuff than difficulty itself, and they are unlocked after you beat the game, so is not like anyone can pick them. This is more something similar of what Isavulpes said before.

Rpgs, i don't know, i don't have much experience with the jrpg thing, and what they try, but normally difficult in rpgs is something strange, because you can always level up you character, so a difficulty setting would just make you grind more, or exploit the system more.

And about replay value, well, in rpgs, there is a lot of ways to do that, so, i can see different opinions on how that should be handled, and i don't like difficult settings in the rpgs that i played to be honest.
 
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