Is difficulty selection needed in video games?

Has it ever added anything to a game? For the record I play every game on the Hard.

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Depends who's playing

I enjoy FTL much more on easy. I normally play games on normal or above, but I cant be bothered to increase the already rng riddled ftl with higher numbers.

Yes. Bamgam City on Normal was a snoozefest. On Hard there was at least the threat of death. But if you think for one second a game like Bamham would ship only with Hard difficulty, which is what your post seems to imply, you're crazy.

If Normal was a snoozefest then why wouldn't you ship with Hard as "normal"???

i play everything on easy.
I really really really don't enjoy having to play the same section of a game again because you failed.
Also i just listen to podcasts and youtubevideos at the same time. I just want to relax playing games.

I prefer them not to. It reminds you how arbitrary all games are when difficulty is just a matter of stupid set values.

still haven't decided if this is a storytelling or leisure medium. a game with an enjoyable story is often better played on easy if the gameplay is unbalanced dogshit.

Take a game like Total Warhammer. None of my friends play it and it was my first Total war game.
I didnt know the mechanics and I'm mot gonna waste my time *watching* people play it on Youtube, before enjoying it myself.
I jammed 50 hours on easy before I was comfortable to go up to a higher level. I now have 400 hours total and having a ball.
Hope that makes sense for the role of a easy mode.

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OP here, I forgot that Zig Forums doesn't play games and needs their hand held throughout the entire experience. You Easy mode faggots disgust me.

Because it was a snoozefest for me, but on starting a New game Hard was also very difficult.
I started on Hard, but kept dying. Switched to normal, but it was boring as fuck. Went back to Hard and slugged it out until I got the combo boost, and that was all I needed to balance it out.
But I don't think most players would accept dying in the early game. The whole point of being Batman is being a strong badass who beats to the badguys.

I forgot that OP literally cant stop sucking cock

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nah. it's not.
I got a stressful job so when i finaly get home, i just want to sit back and relax. I don't like those games where you're always on the edge of your seat.
The story of games doesn't change with difficulty.

People have wildly varied mental and physical skills (reflexes). I was only ever able to complete FTL on Easy, so I'm glad the option was there.

based

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>asks a loaded question
>gets honest, unbiased responses
>HURR DURR U FAGGITS MAKE ME SICK I'M BETTER THAN U ALL HURR DURR


Keep coping for your own insecurities and social inadequacies, OP. You're still getting no (You) from me.

Imagine you are a game developer creating a traditional single-player game. Your target audience frequently has widely varying skill levels and previous game experience. By offering varying difficulty options, you can both cast a wider net in terms of the percentage of your target audience you "capture", but you also promote long-term engagement in the form of growing player mastery as they learn the mechanics of your game and progress from easier to harder difficulty levels. A game with a single setting is easier to balance around that single setting, but it's easier to frustrate people that are less skilled, or likewise bore players that have mastered the mechanics by not following up with challenging that mastery. A good developer can work around these problems in other ways, but creating 3-4 difficulty settings is a good way to keep as much players as invested in your work as possible.

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Presets are an outdated crutch. Modifiers and menus are the best difficulty settings. I'll take no options over "baby mode, intended, time waste"

>For the record I play every game on the Hard.
This is not a good idea. In a lot of games, the hard difficulty is really just more tedious. More often than not, normal is the difficulty for which the game was designed, which means the easy and hard modes are often different, less tailored experiences.
But sometimes, the 'normal' difficulty is not the way the game is meant to be played at all, and you could inadvertently be ruining your first experience of the game by selecting the difficulty level that you think most suits your skills.
There are a few ways to solve this problem:
1. The game could include a note next to the intended difficulty setting specifying it as such
2. The difficulty setting could be changeable on the fly, allowing the player to find the right balance
3. Every difficulty level could have an equal amount of work put into it (impractical)
4. The base difficulty is fixed, with other options being unlockable (easy through dying too much, hard through completing the game, for instance)
and
5. Only one difficulty setting

Personally, I like number 5 with optional challenges and/or crutches.

So many insightful and great replies wasted on this bait thread.

Who cares about the OP, we're discussing ideas here.

You could just do 1, and describe what is changed instead of all that dumb shit.

The fact that you play on a non-normal difficulty means it does add something to the games you play

You can, but that solution is inelegant. It's easier, and not really wrong, but it is inelegant.

When I was still a NEET I would play every game on hard too. But very often this was more frustrating and tedious than actually rewarding because the games were balanced for the normal mode and hard mode often only made enemies respawn and ridiculous intervals or gave the enemy unfair bonuses rather than making them actually act smarter.
Nowadays I play games on normal because I don't have as much time on my hands to play games and replay them on hard if they're really good.

>inelegant
What the fuck is that even supposed to mean? If it works better than all of your solutions then its a good solution.

>hard mode does gimmick shit
Then why did you keep playing on hard mode? Theres a reason most people play DOOM 1 on Ultra Violence instead of Nightmare.

Google it.

>If it works better
It doesn't work better, it's just easier. In the example of a game where the hard mode is just a chore, solution 1 might say "enemies have more health and do more damage", which would tell the player that choosing said difficulty setting would waste their time. But instead of having a difficulty setting that locks the player into a less enjoyable way of playing the game, you could do any of those other solutions.

>Is difficulty selection needed in video games?
Yes, otherwise shitty games can use artificial difficulty as a selling point.

>Then why did you keep playing on hard mode?
To show them online.

What?

Nightmare just feels like complete bullshit. You have to play the game fundamentally different from normal difficulty. Ultra Violence just feels like a tougher version of normal which is what I wanted.
It kind of reminds me of getting 007 mode in Goldeneye 64 where you could modify enemy attributes so they had perfect accuracy, 1000% HP, and could instakill with any gun. If you changed the settings it so enemies took 5 times as many shots to kill, they killed you in 1/3 the amount of time they normally would, and they had perfect accuracy, you would have to alter your play style so much that you may as well be playing a different game, and it's not fun.
That's what Nightmare in Doom feels like to me, at least in an analogous sense. I'll be honest though, I haven't fucked with it too much, mainly just E1:M1 and I was pissed with how much damage zombie marines did. Demons with projectiles probably wouldn't feel as bad because they're dodgeable, but fuck that. E4 was hard enough on Ultra Violence, I don't need to play that shit on Nightmare.