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Video game difficulties

Keeweed

Keeweed

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1,871
I’ve been told on this site we always use the hardest difficulties when we judge games, but now some people have told me we don’t do that. So I’m wondering what do we count as the canon difficulty in games. I bring this up because games like Terraria and Minecraft that have zero story or cutscenes have characters scale to in game feats. But in certain difficulties these feats can one shot those who scale to them. Like in Minecraft Creepers instantly one shot Enderman on Hardmode but not on any other difficulty. Also in Terraria one of your powers changed depending on the difficulty, your regeneration is worse the higher the difficulty (and bosses completely plow straight through you but a thread about that is why I’m making this thread).

So I’m wondering do we treat the hardest difficulty of a game as canon, or do we go for the game’s default difficulty.
 
Following.

IIRC, we always assumed the default difficulty to be the base for scaling. Any other difficulty just doesn't seem to make sense.
 
From what i’ve seen, it’s whatever the “default” difficulty would be if you loaded up a game.

For example, if you just created a Skyrim character without changing difficulty settings, whatever the difficulty was when you loaded the game up would be the “default”.

Correct me if i’m wrong, though. The highest just seems weird.
 
Axxtentacle said:
From what i’ve seen, it’s whatever the “default” difficulty would be if you loaded up a game.

For example, if you just created a Skyrim character without changing difficulty settings, whatever the difficulty was when you loaded the game up would be the “default”.

Correct me if i’m wrong, though. The highest just seems weird.
Click to expand...
yes but what happens if you gotta chose the dificulty
 
The "normal" or "default" difficulty maybe? Not all games have default difficulty, but I think all have normal (it's also called medium).
 
I’ve always heard highest, and for games that entirely rely on gameplay feats this is definitely important (as the creeper example shows since it determines whether the feats scales to people or not).

So I definitely think this thread needs a lot of input.
 
I would imagine if you just had to choose a difficulty from the start, the scaling would be whatever the moderate or middle-ground difficulty is.
 
Like in Terraria many of the items are expert mode exclusives. So would those get axed if we use normal mode only?
 
This thread stemmed from a Terraria CRT, because it was brought up how the middle-ground wouldn’t really work as there’s equipment locked behind Expert Difficulty.

I would personally assume that whatever difficulty gives them all their equipment or story or whatever the hell would be the basis, and if it’s irrelevant, the “moderate” or “middle-ground” difficulty.
 
Like, if a boss fight is optional and there’s equipment behind it, but he has no relevancy to the lore or story in any way, I would personally take that to be optional equipment.

Thoughts?
 
real question what happens if entire parts of the game are locked behind dificulty like one of touho games
 
This conversation is way more complex than I thought, so I am glad I finally gave myself a reason to make this thread, because this has been slightly on my mind for a long while. Though for now I’m probably going to be busy so I’ll be back later.
 
My view is, difficulty just seems like Game Mechanics. In many games if you are underleveled you can barely harm an opponent and you need few hours to do so (cough cough) but that doesn't mean it's correct to lore, optional equipment accessible only on higher difficulties would probably be just extension but still in-lore (unless it's stated otherwise, but I doubt that happens)

On highest difficulties you usually just die in few hits to everything, but later in cutscenes the protagonist takes and exchanges hits with the boss just fine.
 
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SpookyShadow said:
My view is, difficulty just seems like Game Mechanics. In many games if you are underleveled you can barely harm an opponent and you need few hours to do so (cough cough) but that doesn't mean it's correct to lore, optional equipment accessible only on higher difficulties would probably be just extension but still in-lore
Click to expand...
But then that brings me back to the Minecraft example. Would Enderman surviving Creeper explosives be the correct view or the Creeper instantly killing the Enderman be correct.

This thread is mostly about games without story or cutscenes. Because those games rely on in games feats but these feats (like explosions) can either be survived or not depending on the difficulty.
 
It would depend on names and balance of difficulties. "Normal" and "Medium" are just super-balanced usually so IMO they should be used. Using hardest difficulty makes no more sense than using the easiest.
 
There really shouldn't be a "Canon difficulty setting" because it still falls under "Game Mechanics" regardless of difficulty. In most Nintendo, Sega, and classic verses, the protagonists should canonically be 100% invulnerable to every fodder enemy in the game except for the end game bosses. Now as for Strategy games and First Person Shooter verses, there is much less distinction between protagonists and fodder enemies, but if anything; I would just prioritize things that happen in the main story than I would gameplay. Especially if there's a difficulty setting to begin with.

For verses that have no story, such as Minecraft and the like, I'm not sure how we can handle scaling and the like, Though, I would use some common sense; fodder mook type enemies are usually supposed to be really easy while boss fights are supposed to be difficult. So worst case scenario sounds like easy for foes intended to be easy, but hardest for foes intended to be difficult.
 
DarkDragonMedeus said:
For verses that have no story, such as Minecraft and the like, I'm not sure how we can handle scaling and the like, Though, I would use some common sense
Click to expand...
Minecraft is complicated because the difficulty being a player choice is considered canon on this wiki.
For example, it is part of the lore that "The Player" can set it to peaceful and wipe all hostile mobs, and it is also part of the lore that they get to choose whether the difficulty is on easy or hard.
 
There's other examples that point to the fact that a general rule wouldn't be practical. For example, the default difficulty in Halo games is Normal, but the flavor text on the harder Heroic difficulty literally states: "This is the way Halo is meant to be played." Which means that for Halo, all scaling should be done on Heroic difficulty.
 
I think default difficulty is the middle ground for scaling, and if scaling really wants to be hammered home we can use easiest difficulty for scaling enemy dura and hardest difficulty for scaling player dura, an enemy surviving hits with a player's highest damage and a player surviving hits with an enemy's highest damage, respectively
 
SheevShezarrine said:
I think default difficulty is the middle ground for scaling, and if scaling really wants to be hammered home we can use easiest difficulty for scaling enemy dura and hardest difficulty for scaling player dura
Click to expand...
That seems incredibly arbitrary.
 
The latter was more of a suggestion, and to be used in cases where a critic would say "well would they survive those attacks on a higher/lower difficulty"
 
Whatever difficulty could the game have is not really relevant: some enemies could be pretty difficult to dodge or attack when story wise the pc can deal easily with them, or that the pc can endure dozens of attacks against a boss when lore wise the boss can one-shot if it land a direct hit.

As for the HP, damage and other stats increasing or decreasing through difficulty, take into account that those values are mere abstractions.
 
Antoniofer said:
As for the HP, damage and other stats increasing or decreasing through difficulty, take into account that those values are mere abstractions.
Click to expand...
Death is not an abstraction, though.
It is entirely possible in certain games, for example, for a character to tank a calculable explosion and survive, while on a lower difficulty they die instantly. It makes a huge difference in that sense.
 
@FinePoint In Halo's case, there already is a lot of issues even on easy difficulty settings; like certain weapons giving more damage than others despite the alleged stronger weapon scenically having a much lower energy yield. To be fair, damage ratings can vary due to sniper rifles having penetration or plasma weapons being mostly heat rather than blunt force trauma. Which is something I'm going to tackle in much bigger detail later; but 90% of military weapons should each be judged from their own individual calculations rather than trying to create an in game damage rating based powerscaling chain; that's especially true for FPS verses. And as for characters, they're more case by case; but I'd separate BFT feats from heat resistance feats if the highest energy yields comes from heat based weapons. But I'm saving that for another thread for verses like those.

But yeah, this is mostly for verses that have no story and just all gameplay, which in that case. It becomes a lot more complicated. Antoniofer already said HP ratings, damage ratings, ect that all become altered based on difficulty settings are just that game mechanics. I'm not really sure how to tackled verses like those in that case; I would use case by case and also at least individual weapons using their own calcs are the start, but not sure how we can scale chain via gameplay.
 
I asked this question before, and we normally go by the default settings as canon unless anything else is stated

For instance, some Touhou games have Normal mode as the Canon difficulty, and while there are easy modes, those lead to bad noncanon endings
 
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