Difficulty levels in games

[tomchick]

@Nightgaunt

@tomchick

In other words, if there’s a way to opt out of parts of your game, why is it even in there?

Because a video game (like a movie) can be different things to different people.

Notice how I keep making arguments about different strata of audiences, and you keep responding with arguments about one player’s experience?

More critically though…

@tomchick

Why would I play the shootout twice when I could just turn down the difficulty and play it once? And more to the point, in future shootout, why would I play carefully – using cover, making sure to reload my gun, aiming carefully, flanking enemies – when I can just play the options menu instead?

Because you understand–or, well, YOU don’t understand, but preeeeeety much everyone else in this thread understands–that the settings in the options menu are a convention that exist outside of the gameplay itself to accommodate multiple kinds of players, that just because the button is there doesn’t mean that you should use it when you’re frustrated, that your experience can be better for not pushing it, and that gameplay incentives probably won’t change those fundamental facts.

So an insult, an appeal to authority, and a lecture on How Games Are Supposed To Be Played. I’m not swayed. :)

And for the record, I don’t touch the options menu. I play on normal and let the chips fall where they may (e.g. Prey).

-Tom