Multi What difficulty do you play on?

[MrDawn]

What difficulty do you like to play on?

Easy, normal, hard, or very hard?

 

[TD]

It depends completely on the game and typically anywhere from medium to hard.

 

[Smacktard]

Depends on the game, but for the most part I start on the 2nd highest difficulty. If the game requires multiple playthroughs to 100%, I may start lower than that and/or go higher than that.

 

[MrDawn]

I mostly keep it on Normal difficulty with most games I play.

 

[Spiner202]

I usually start on normal, and then as soon as I encounter any challenges, I drop the difficulty. I also tend to get the trophies for beating games on the hardest difficulty, but for various reasons (familiarity, NG+, etc.), games are just so much easier on a replay, so I'd rather start them on easy and go for the harder difficulties later.

 

[Benzine]

hard

 

[Raine]

Depends entirely on what I'm trying to do and what kind of game it is. I absolutely loathe being forced to replay games, for starters.

So if there are difficulty setting-based achievements/trophies, then 100% of the time I'm starting with the highest difficulty available. The way I see it my first playthrough is my only "real" playthrough - so, because harder difficulties usually encourage leveling up/finding upgrades/getting good to clear, I'll do all of the optional content along the way to stay on par/slightly ahead of the curve. And then, if there are achievements/trophies left over, drop to the lowest difficulty and blitz/TL;DR through only the absolute essentials.

If achievements/trophies aren't involved, then whatever "feels" right. So like for, I don't know, Halo? I would play that on Heroic because Legendary is full of cheap bullshit like one-shot, perfect accuracy snipers that are at best obnoxious. Something like a Catherine or Guitar Hero/Rock Band, where the mechanics of the game are based on difficulty? Always the hardest (assuming I don't have to build muscle memory/IRL skill on lower difficulties first). I would play a Souls(borne)-like on the hardest difficulty setting, if they actually had them, because I understand that the challenge is the majority of the appeal. Something like Persona or Tales? Default/Normal difficulty is fine; I'm in it more for the character interactions and narrative.

 

[Crystal]

I tend to play through on whatever the standard is the first time through, just to feel the game as-is and get through it, then if I enjoyed it I tend to go back through on the higher difficulties.

 

[Tommy Boy]

I shamelessly play every game on the easiest difficulty in my older years. I don't enjoy grinding in any game, as it doesn't turn out rewarding for me. I stopped caring about achievements/trophies/100%ing stuff years ago, so nowadays I'll just relax and enjoy on easy/story mode. Certain game genres I enjoy like escape room/puzzle games, there isn't usually a difficulty setting - which is fine. But for RPGs and stuff, I always roll with easy now. I like feeling OP in the games and I'm totally fine "ruining" games like that.

 

[Jawneh]

I like to start on hard if possible. Especially if it's a genre I'm already familiar with. Any rougelite, FPS, most RPGs, aRPGs, even some strategy games. Gimme the hard stuff. The last time I did something not hard was BG3 as I wasn't familiar with the mechanics or anything so I went with what the normal was. I probably could've done the harder difficulty next, but didn't feel like I wanted the challenge yet over exploring more story.

Next D&D based game though, gimme the hard stuff for that first too.

I've also noticed that if you play and condition yourself to playing on a harder difficulty, you'll become better at the game much faster. I remember playing Binding of Isaac forever ago on the easy/normal difficulty until they actually released the hard difficulty. The game was difficult in the beginning both times, but now easy is just too easy. Mario Kart with playing on at least 150cc or 200cc. The lower ones just start feeling too slow and easy to race on. Things like that.

 

[MrDawn]

I shamelessly play every game on the easiest difficulty in my older years. I don't enjoy grinding in any game, as it doesn't turn out rewarding for me. I stopped caring about achievements/trophies/100%ing stuff years ago, so nowadays I'll just relax and enjoy on easy/story mode. Certain game genres I enjoy like escape room/puzzle games, there isn't usually a difficulty setting - which is fine. But for RPGs and stuff, I always roll with easy now. I like feeling OP in the games and I'm totally fine "ruining" games like that.

I'm the same. I'm a 37 year old man with no friends to impress who basically only plays single player games. No one is going to come over and look at the achievements on my xbox or what difficulties I'm playing and give me a pat on the back.

 

[Raine]

I'm the same. I'm a 37 year old man with no friends to impress who basically only plays single player games. No one is going to come over and look at the achievements on my xbox or what difficulties I'm playing and give me a pat on the back.

We totally have threads for this!

Though less for patting one another on the back, more for trauma counseling and sharing stories of benign forms of self-harm. Like spending 500 hours playing a game you loathe because you're too much of a stubborn jackass to quit.

 

[The Eye in the Sky!]

Story mode or the easiest mode that you can actually die in. I've never been good at games and I'm even worse as an adult.