Difficulty of single-player computer games
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@Rook WHY AREN'T YOU DOING THE THING THAT I THINK YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE DOING?!?!?!?!?!
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If the game is a skill/twitch game like half life, I'll go normal, maybe hard. If it's a dice roller like Dragon's age, I'll go easy, because it's already out of my hands if my character hits or not, and higher numbers just makes it more tedious.
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@Arkandel said in Difficulty of single-player computer games:
How do you guys feel when a game offers both single- and multi-player modes? Are you feeling the urge to compete in ladders?
I'm highly uncompetitive. World of Tanks(/Warships/Warplanes) and Overwatch are the only multiplayer-only games I care to play. The only reason I like to play Competitive in Overwatch is because the competitive matchmaker logic is the thing that really intrigued me, and it works. My "comp" matches are more reliably even, well-fought things right at my skill level than quick-play matches, which are a ROFLstomp for one side or the other 2/3rds of the time or more. It evens out, but the sway, the standard of deviation is greater.
So that's all I use rankings for: To find people who play at my level so I can be evenly challenged and know I won or lost by my own hands.
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I'm bad at video games in general, compared with people with patience. I used to be really good at some games--fighting games mostly--but now a days, nope. I play League of Legends some, but not professionally (obviously) and I don't even try ranking (I mean, I play ranked sometimes, but I'm bad at it). I lose normal games quite a bit, etc. I get bored of video games, too. I just play the default difficulty, usually, and make it easier if it's getting annoying.
The only exception was the Prince of Persia games for Playstation. I played the fucking SHIT out of those and once I swung through normal, I always put them on hard, and if there was a harder one, that too. God of War was similar, but not as much.
"Excuse the hell out of you. He's a bag of dicks. I'm a carefully curated box of cocks." -- to @GirlCalledBlu upon being misrepresented.
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Normal until the difficulty makes it a cakewalk, then I step it up.
For story-based games, it's the story I want. For challenge/grind type games, like Diablo 3, I'm currently running on my seasonal bit on Torment 4
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I'm playing for story so I play on easy. If there's no story, I'm bored and wandering off anyways.
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@Coin said in Difficulty of single-player computer games:
I'm bad at video games in general, compared with people with patience.
You reminded me of something else. Some people's problem is they voluntarily 'cripple' themselves (I use the quotes for a reason) by refusing to read up on their class online for ways to optimize them.
For example on WoW I was always a superior healer than most because I knew how to build for it; which talents were best for which gear and skills, the best sequences to maximize my mana efficiency, etc... none of which did I have to actually crunch numbers for on my own. It still takes patience and work but it's a different type - it's out of game, checking out forums, looking at raiding logs and figuring where to go from there.
I know people who just won't do this shit, who won't read guides or spend much time outside the game to improve their in-game performance. I'm not saying they're wrong, either.
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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@Arkandel I've spent some time studying the characters I like on LoL, and I do occasionally do research for single player games, but I don't particularly enjoy it.
I think the Tomb Raider reboot was so great for me because it didn't have a bazillion sidequests and I really enjoyed being able to do things by intuition. By contrast, I have had a hard time really getting into Rise of the Tomb Raider, its sequel.
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I usually just play normal. When I pick up single player games I tend to only get RPG ones (lately that's Witcher and Mass Effect series). I want to see the story and beauty of the game more than get a 'challenge' from the game really. I don't have a whole lot of spare time so being able to work through a game without having to repeat the same sections over and over and over because it's hard is just what I look for. It's also one of the reasons I bought dark souls one, played it for three hours, then immediately went back and returned it lol.
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@Arkandel If I need to use external resources to "optimise" my character, your game is bad.
He/Him
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@Tinuviel said in Difficulty of single-player computer games:
@Arkandel If I need to use external resources to "optimise" my character, your game is bad.
Or, you're bad at figuring out the optimal system without hand holding. Just because the game doesn't shove it in your face that 'this skill is ten times better than anything else so you have to get it' doesn't mean the game is bad, it means it probably has a lot of options and some of them are for fun and some of them are for making things easier/make you do more dmg etc.
Such as the Dark Souls games, don't think they show you what the 'optimal' systems are, would you call those bad games? I know lots of people that spend hours researching through outside sources for that 'best badass weapon/armor' combo but I don't hear any of them call the game bad because of that.
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@Tinuviel said in Difficulty of single-player computer games:
@Arkandel If I need to use external resources to "optimise" my character, your game is bad.
Well, in WoW's case the game was so complex. There were a lot of factors involved - there's usually a rotation which isn't too hard to figure out but then a lot of other stuff goes into it which aren't immediately obvious to anyone who's not studying the game's 'hidden' mechanics closely.
For example during the first few years there was something called the five-second rule. You had a stat (Spirit) which determined how quickly you regenerated your mana pool, but what the game didn't make clear is that this regeneration took place after you spent at least five seconds from your last cast; so the idea was to try and heal in bursts in order to become more efficient. Casting a heal now, one in 3 seconds and another 3 seconds after that was far worse than waiting 6 seconds to cast three times and wait again. This - or its importance could easily escape even a non-casual gamer, but there were strategies you could follow (healer rotations for example) to let you get away with this without your raid dying.
Even more so, each person had to fit in a larger group - back then raids were 40-large. That meant you had to coordinate all those people in how to defeat bosses, and it's a lot easier to point them all to an out-of-game resource (like a refined guide or a YouTube video) than to explain it over Skype from scratch while the fight's about to happen.
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I play normal SP. If it feels to hard I step out down, but try to stay at normal. If it's fun I complete the game then look for extras (like Lego games I'll get all gold bricks after I run through story mode first). If the game play was honestly fun, I'll up the difficulty and start over.
If multiplayer is quick (5-10 minutes for a race or some MP arena style fight) I'll try it. If the MP mode is even a hint Virulent, I walk away. If I'm actually good at the game, and it's virulent, i play and target the virus parts (I still play tanki, the Russian world of tanks game before there was world of tanks).
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@Arkandel said in Difficulty of single-player computer games:
How do you guys feel when a game offers both single- and multi-player modes? Are you feeling the urge to compete in ladders?
For me, no but then I never play multiplayer unless I am sitting in a room with that person. For me video games are my entertainment when I don't want to deal with other humans so for me multiplayer defeats the purpose of the games. I understand why other people love plying video games with others but it is not my thing.
When I want to have entertainments with other humans I tend to MUSH, or do RL things. -
I play on Normal on my first go. Then tick it up to the next difficulty setting if I'm doing subsequent playthroughs, but I don't go much higher than that. If I'm frustrated, I'm not having fun. Conversely, if I don't feel like I'm playing a game at all, but just pressing buttons to advance, I also don't have fun, so I tend to get off Easy pretty quick unless it's a playstyle I'm REALLY unfamiliar with (or really bad at).
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@Tinuviel said:
@Arkandel If I need to use external resources to "optimise" my character, your game is bad.
This. If there's an optimal build, the game has failed at balance of design. This is different from an orthodox build, this is different from allowing for niche builds. Those are fine.
Let me add something else to this train of thought: In WoW, what I hated most was the constant social pressure to 1.) skip all the "flavour text," and 2.) just do what you're told. Sorry, I play an RPG for that flavour text, and if I have to follow a straightjacket of build rules then I'd better be getting a paycheck.
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For me it depends on the game.
On FPS games I mostly stick with normal because in a lot of them the AI has perfect targeting and does not share the same visual obstructions in some cases that the player does. For example, in Medal of Honor (I think, could have been another warfighter FPS like Battlefield or CoD) there was a building I was going through where there were curtains in the doorway, while I could not see through them, the AI did not have t - and would shoot me. A lot. In games like that on harder settings shots kill you faster so normal is about the good spot to not have to worry about those kinds of AI/Game Dev issues.
RPGs and most RTS I will go with a higher difficulty just for the challenge of it. For Witcher 3 I went with the hardest difficulty right out because I wanted the challenge and surprisingly, playing it on lesser difficulties now feels too easy. I did Divinity Original Sin and Pillars of Eternity on their hardest settings.
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@magee101 Bad is a matter of opinion, of course. I would, for instance, call the Dark/Demon Souls games bad, because the premise behind them (die lots, beat things up, progress maybe) isn't a premise I like.
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@Rook Jeez. I don't think I know any man who isn't a gamer, at least in some degree!
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@EUBanana said in Difficulty of single-player computer games:
@Rook Jeez. I don't think I know any man who isn't a gamer, at least in some degree!
Define "gamer" here? If you mean video games, I'm emphatically not a gamer. We could get together over a beer and then you'd know a man who isn't a gamer.
If you mean the broader sense of RPGs/wargames/board games/card games/etc. then I'm definitely a gamer.
