Re: What difficultly level do you play one?

On 7/10/2024 4:24 AM, Zaghadka wrote:

On Sun, 7 Jul 2024 08:48:11 -0700, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
Justisaur wrote:
 

On 7/7/2024 2:23 AM, JAB wrote:

This one came up on a channel for table top miniatures games but they
did also talk about computer games. Now of course this is all personal
preference as there's no right way to enjoy games but the main thrust of
the argument was that the advantage of playing on easy mode (in the TT
context that was interchangeable with social) was it gives you a lot
more scope to be creative and play the game how you want and just try
things out to see what happens.
>
That's certain how I approach CRPG's. I don't want to go through
numerous guides on how to build an optimal character, I want to pick
what I fancy playing. My general strategy is start on normal mode and if
it all becomes too much, which it often does as the game progresses and
your character/party becomes progressively less optimal, change it to
easy mode and carry on.
>
One of the interesting parts they said is that if you're effectively
going to use someone else's build then what not just watch them playing
the game. Obviously that's a bit of hyperbole but I can understand their
point.
>
So for me, yep I play on easy mode.

>
I used to do that, or normal. Falout 3 started the cure for that, as the
game is actually easier on the hardest difficulty  because you level up
much faster, and even though the enemies scale to you, your level makes
you exponentially better.  (with the 30 level cap from BS DLC, not so
much just because enemies become annoying bullet sponges and aren't fun
after level 20.)
>
Dark Souls 3 finally fully cured me of that.  I found I liked the
challenge better.  Sure I look up builds and weapons and whatnot, but I
still try things out and change them to suit me, or abandon overused
"op" build because they aren't fun, or the style just doesn't work for me.
>
In fact I don't really like difficulty sliders at all now, as they tend
to be much more poorly tuned, doing things like just turning the enemies
into bullet sponges or one hit kills you on harder difficulties, and
feels like just watching a movie with no challenge at lower difficulties.

 Particularly fun in strat games like Civ V, where the AI doesn't actually
get any smarter, it just cheats.
 

Yeah those too.  Master of Magic, IIRC Impossible just gave you a bunch of restrictions the enemies didn't have and gave them extra stuff.  I eventually started playing Impossible because I got too good at the normal and hard mode.  Unfortunately Impossible was also bugged, and would hit some point the game would crash at the same point even if you reloaded from old saves long before, so I never completed a game on Impossible.  You could say it really cheated, like the player in a chess game tossing the board. Taking that analogy I won by default :)
I just look at the hardness cheating as a handicap.  I don't often find games I enjoy that I feel like I need a handicap.  But I did back in the day with fewer games and more time, even in fallout 2 getting to the point of playing ironman (start over if you die.)
The only thing recently I can point to like that is that I played so much dark souls 1 & 3 (and even to some extent ER,) I got to that point and started low level runs too even though the games are very hard.  I never did finish them (maybe DS1 I don't remember for sure.)
--
-Justisaur
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