How Lazy Difficulty Settings Decrease Player Enjoyment in Games

The major problem with difficulty in video games is that there is no real standard. Sure you can have labels like, “Easy,””Medium,” and “Hard,” but those don’t really tell you anything except that you should expect a more taxing experience. Really the only purpose these labels serve is to inform you that the developer(s) think hard is going to be more difficult than normal. This statement may be completely obvious, but it is quite difficult (heh) to implement a system of difficulty that both tests player skills, and is also fun. Playing a game on a harder setting not only adds replayability, but also encourages a player to get better at the game.

Here is the worst example of a bad difficulty setting in games:

“Dart gun vs. tank”: In this style of difficulty, the game is essentially unchanged, except for the fact that enemies do more damage/have more health, and you do less damage/have less health. This is not even worth the effort of attempting to replay the game, because while it technically is more challenging, it gets its challenge from making you take longer to kill enemies, and enemies take a shorter amount of time to kill you. This isn’t testing a player’s skill, just their patience. Anyone can beat these as long as they are patient enough. It’s not fun. This is especially annoying in games where the enemies are humanoid, and entire magazines will barely hurt them, while they down you in just one or two shots. I would say the Call of Duty franchise and Bioshock: Infinite are the worst example of these that I have noticed.

Essentially, if a developer wants to get a difficulty setting right, they need to tailor it to their specific game. For example: In Fallout: New Vegas, there is a hardcore mode that requires you to sleep, eat, and drink, as well as imposing a greater restriction on the gear you can carry. This encourages the player to conserve resources carefully, and think through every confrontation. This works quite well, because it is enjoyable while still challenging the skills of the player. There are many more examples, but in general playing a harder difficulty should be a rewarding experience, not a obnoxious slog.

There are many ways of implementing difficulty, and not all of them have to be through an options menu. In Dark Souls, the player is able to choose their difficulty through a plethora of methods: Don’t level your character (Soul Level 1 Playthrough), use less powerful weapons, don’t use magical spells, etc… In doing all this a player is given the option of increasing or decreasing their challenge at any time. This system works great for this game, because as the player starts being challenged less by the game, they can essentially handicap themselves to even the difficulty back out again.

I would like to see other games also attempt to be this creative in handling difficulty settings in the future.