Difficulty in games.. is it that difficult to understand?

[Tanukitsune]

I hate difficulty levels in games, to me it just looks like you didn't know how to make a balanced game, so you give us, the gamers, the option to balance things out... which is just adjust a how much health you have and how much damage you deal...

The most confusing and infuriating thing about difficulty levels is that there is NO STANDARD FOR IT!

You can beat "Boom Boom Shooty Shooty 37" on the hardest difficulty and yet "LOL Headshot 14" is too much for you even on easy... What's worst is that sometimes sequels can have drastic changes in difficulty...

Could it be that... game developers have never tried to understand what gaming skills really mean?

Surely people know that gaming skills is not just one skill, but the sum of various skills and that each gamer is skilled differently in each area? Right?

I'm no scholar, but I can name a few "skills" that we gamers have:

-Short term pattern recognition

-Long term pattern recognition

-Pattern memorization

-Timing

-Short term strategy

-Long term strategy

-Game logic

-"Endurance": You can make a pixel perfect jump, but can you do 50 in a row?

-Patience

I'm sure you guys could name quite a few more, but am I insane to think that game developers should actually study gaming skills instead of just doing the lazy difficulty level thing?

Furthermore, we all have different views on what difficulty actually is! Some of use will say a game is hard because they died a lot, even though the punishment for dying is none, while others will judge how difficult the game is depending on how it punishes you and some of us view some things as more punishing as others...

They could just all start using adaptive difficulty, which is kinda a step in the right direction?

So, am I the only one who thinks the whole difficulty level thing is a bit messed up?

For those who think this is TL;DR I'll sum it up, you don't have mad gaming skillz, you have several other skills that make you a good gamer, but developers don't seem to care.

[toblix]

In a way I guess it's weird, maybe, that the player gets to adjust all sorts of stuff, and that it may seem like they didn't bother – or couldn't – balance their own game. However, if you're making a game that has multiple aspects: a story, platforming, combat, whatever, if you don't have a difficulty setting huge parts of the audience will find those parts either too easy or too hard. There's no way to tune stuff like twitch-based gaming or how many times you want to try a thing over and over because it's so god damn fucking annoying shit in a way that's right for everyone. So, either you accept that, or you let the user adjust whatever variables you find relevant. I don't find this super-ridiculous.

Oh, that reminds me of the awesome Silent Hill thing where you adjust combat and puzzles separately. That was great.

As for a standard for difficulty, that would require a bunch of metrics and analyis which, even if possible, would cost so much nobody would ever even attempt it. But it's an interesting thought, the games you play using some central API, reporting and querying about your skill. I agree that when starting a game for the first time, selecting a difficulty is a crapshoot. I guess adaptive systems is the way to go, but even then it's hard to know what you should adapt to. People who like a challenge will probably find the system too kind, and people like me will still ragequit.

[miffy495]

Furthermore, we all have different views on what difficulty actually is! Some of use will say a game is hard because they died a lot, even though the punishment for dying is none, while others will judge how difficult the game is depending on how it punishes you and some of us view some things as more punishing as others...

...And here is exactly why we do have difficulty levels. I play most games on Normal. If a game does not have a selection, I'll just go through it. There are some games though where the difficulty I have chosen is too much for me (Bioshock 2 is a recent example) and I'll bump it down after getting way too frustrated on a section. If the choice hadn't been between frustrating myself further and bumping down the difficulty, but rather between continuing or not, I never would have finished the game. Yet I've seen people, even on this forum, talking about how damn easy Bioshock 2 was. I've beaten a lot of games that people consider punishing on normal or higher difficulty with no problems as well. The problem is that the things that you mention are near impossible to quantify, meaning that we'll probably never be able to get a baseline reading for the average gamer skill. Given the games that you mention playing, Tanu, I doubt the baseline would be satisfying to you anyway.

I'm not against having a normalized level of challenge that "normal mode" could be set to, but I think that outside of hypotheticals it may be impossible. What bothers me is that you seem to think that having this would make it ok to get rid of difficulty levels altogether, which seems ridiculously extreme to me. Eliminating player choice should never be the answer when we're talking about how to reduce frustration in games. To sum up, ideally just clicking on "normal" should get the average player all they need, but I think the problem with difficulty is that yes, it is that difficult to understand.

[Thrik]

I primarily see difficulty levels as a way of enhancing replayability of a game and quite like the typical approach. I'll generally play every game on 'normal' initially as I believe it's usually the experience the developers intended, and on subsequent replays I'll pump it up. I see 'easy' as for more casual/new gamers, and it's good harder difficulties are available for the freakishly good gamers out there (read: not me).

This has made my replays of the Metal Gear Solid games much better as all sorts of things are tweaked, such as more enemies being added; enemies having more life-like reactions, vision, and hearing; bullets doing more damage; searches being more sustained and exhaustive; whole sections being added; etc. It goes well beyond the 'pump up the stats' approach of lazily-designed games.

In MGS's case adaptive difficulty would be difficult to adjust due to the nature if the game (ie: avoidance of exposure to enemies). Also I kind of like knowing the game is going to challenge me and isn't going to back down if I'm playing a bit shit, just like a puzzle doesn't solve itself if you can't work it out. I'm a stickler for overcoming odds, as long as the game is designed well.

Edited October 14, 2010 by Thrik

[Nappi]

I don't see how certain games could do without different difficulty levels simply because people are so different. I know person who plays games on lowest difficulty because he wants to experience their story and just breeze through the actual gameplay, and I know a person who plays games on the absolute hardest difficulty because he wants to be challenged all the time. If games only had one difficulty level, whether adaptive or not, neither of them would be able to enjoy games they want to. And diminishing their approach as stupid is just stupid, in my opinion.

Moreover, adaptive difficulty, when done poorly, would strip away the pleasure of becoming more skillful as a player: you should be able to dominate your enemies if you really are that good. And if you get tired of kicking ass, you can always move to harder difficulty.

Adjusting combat and puzzle difficulties and stuff like that separately is a really good idea. However, a difficulty level alternative based on various gaming skill sounds a bit utopistic to me. It would just be too hard to get it right.

Anyway, I'm off to finish my first campaign in Civilization V. Incidentally, I'm playing with one of the lowest difficulties even though I have played Civ games before simply because I want to familiarize myself with all the mechanics.

[Patters]

I hate difficulty levels in games, to me it just looks like you didn't know how to make a balanced game, so you give us, the gamers, the option to balance things out... which is just adjust a how much health you have and how much damage you deal...

That's bullshit, difficulty levels are incredibly important to games (both board and video). Take Halo for example: as someone who is pretty damn experienced with the series, I start with Heroic (hard), whereas someone who is unfamiliar with the series would be better suited to Normal and one who isn't familiar with shooters would be best with easy. When playing Halo I want to have a challenge, I want to prevail, but not too easily. What is easy for me will be hard for another.

If a game is too easy then a lot of people will forget it, if it's too hard they will resent it. Platformers in particular give me this problem, a lot of SNES era games were too hard, yet the new Super Mario Bros. game on DS was too easy. 'Splosion Man had an interesting solution to this, being able to skip sections if you died X times, however with my perseverance I didn't use this once, it felt like cheating, if I can't do it myself I don't want to play any more.

Sometimes I want a game to be kicking my arse, see shmups. Say Beat Hazard, which while I was playing I played exclusively on the hardest level. yet something like Geometry wars doesn't appeal in the same way, it didn't punch me in the face on the first level so I don't care, sure it's a good game, it's not for me though.

Now look at Civilization, with 5 I started with a quick game (difficulty level 2) it was far too easy. I progressed to a world map (difficulty level 4) which I got absolutely destroyed on, due to bad placement and the difficulty. Yet on my current game (Level 3) I'm having a great time, it feels great.

[illeria]

Theres nothing like finding the perfect difficulty for you in a game. Something thats challenging yet not impossible. This ranges from person to person, genre to genre.

Adding difficulty levels also adds re playability in games. For example, I usually beat most shooters (modern warfare 2 comes to mind) more than once. First on a normal difficulty, then once again on the hardest difficulty.

Also, Having different difficulty settings you can change mid game lets you tweak your own experience. Just last night I was playing the new Bioshock dlc and I had to change the difficulty from normal to easy because I got stuck in a certain area. If I didn't have that out I probably would have just stopped playing the game.

[Tanukitsune]

In a way I guess it's weird, maybe, that the player gets to adjust all sorts of stuff, and that it may seem like they didn't bother – or couldn't – balance their own game. However, if you're making a game that has multiple aspects: a story, platforming, combat, whatever, if you don't have a difficulty setting huge parts of the audience will find those parts either too easy or too hard. There's no way to tune stuff like twitch-based gaming or how many times you want to try a thing over and over because it's so god damn fucking annoying shit in a way that's right for everyone. So, either you accept that, or you let the user adjust whatever variables you find relevant. I don't find this super-ridiculous.

Oh, that reminds me of the awesome Silent Hill thing where you adjust combat and puzzles separately. That was great.

As for a standard for difficulty, that would require a bunch of metrics and analyis which, even if possible, would cost so much nobody would ever even attempt it. But it's an interesting thought, the games you play using some central API, reporting and querying about your skill. I agree that when starting a game for the first time, selecting a difficulty is a crapshoot. I guess adaptive systems is the way to go, but even then it's hard to know what you should adapt to. People who like a challenge will probably find the system too kind, and people like me will still ragequit.

Some games like Mega Man 10 or Bionic Commando Rearmed actually made the platforming easier on easy.

They could hire and actual casual gamer to play the game on easy? They never do that...

...And here is exactly why we do have difficulty levels. I play most games on Normal. If a game does not have a selection, I'll just go through it. There are some games though where the difficulty I have chosen is too much for me (Bioshock 2 is a recent example) and I'll bump it down after getting way too frustrated on a section. If the choice hadn't been between frustrating myself further and bumping down the difficulty, but rather between continuing or not, I never would have finished the game. Yet I've seen people, even on this forum, talking about how damn easy Bioshock 2 was. I've beaten a lot of games that people consider punishing on normal or higher difficulty with no problems as well. The problem is that the things that you mention are near impossible to quantify, meaning that we'll probably never be able to get a baseline reading for the average gamer skill. Given the games that you mention playing, Tanu, I doubt the baseline would be satisfying to you anyway.

I'm not against having a normalized level of challenge that "normal mode" could be set to, but I think that outside of hypotheticals it may be impossible. What bothers me is that you seem to think that having this would make it ok to get rid of difficulty levels altogether, which seems ridiculously extreme to me. Eliminating player choice should never be the answer when we're talking about how to reduce frustration in games. To sum up, ideally just clicking on "normal" should get the average player all they need, but I think the problem with difficulty is that yes, it is that difficult to understand.

Maybe getting rid of difficulties is going too far, but I do think difficulty levels are usually borked, besides haven't most of us started gaming when games didn't have difficulty levels?

I primarily see difficulty levels as a way of enhancing replayability of a game and quite like the typical approach. I'll generally play every game on 'normal' initially as I believe it's usually the experience the developers intended, and on subsequent replays I'll pump it up. I see 'easy' as for more casual/new gamers, and it's good harder difficulties are available for the freakishly good gamers out there (read: not me).

This has made my replays of the Metal Gear Solid games much better as all sorts of things are tweaked, such as more enemies being added; enemies having more life-like reactions, vision, and hearing; bullets doing more damage; searches being more sustained and exhaustive; whole sections being added; etc. It goes well beyond the 'pump up the stats' approach of lazily-designed games.

In MGS's case adaptive difficulty would be difficult to adjust due to the nature if the game (ie: avoidance of exposure to enemies). Also I kind of like knowing the game is going to challenge me and isn't going to back down if I'm playing a bit shit, just like a puzzle doesn't solve itself if you can't work it out. I'm a stickler for overcoming odds, as long as the game is designed well.

Thief altered the enemies "awareness" depending on the difficulty level...

I don't see how certain games could do without different difficulty levels simply because people are so different. I know person who plays games on lowest difficulty because he wants to experience their story and just breeze through the actual gameplay, and I know a person who plays games on the absolute hardest difficulty because he wants to be challenged all the time. If games only had one difficulty level, whether adaptive or not, neither of them would be able to enjoy games they want to. And diminishing their approach as stupid is just stupid, in my opinion.

Moreover, adaptive difficulty, when done poorly, would strip away the pleasure of becoming more skillful as a player: you should be able to dominate your enemies if you really are that good. And if you get tired of kicking ass, you can always move to harder difficulty.

Adjusting combat and puzzle difficulties and stuff like that separately is a really good idea. However, a difficulty level alternative based on various gaming skill sounds a bit utopistic to me. It would just be too hard to get it right.

Anyway, I'm off to finish my first campaign in Civilization V. Incidentally, I'm playing with one of the lowest difficulties even though I have played Civ games before simply because I want to familiarize myself with all the mechanics.

I'm not saying there should be several difficulty settings depending on your skills on a game, I'm just saying that simply giving an enemy more health and making it do more damage is too lazy.

That's bullshit, difficulty levels are incredibly important to games (both board and video). Take Halo for example: as someone who is pretty damn experienced with the series, I start with Heroic (hard), whereas someone who is unfamiliar with the series would be better suited to Normal and one who isn't familiar with shooters would be best with easy. When playing Halo I want to have a challenge, I want to prevail, but not too easily. What is easy for me will be hard for another.

If a game is too easy then a lot of people will forget it, if it's too hard they will resent it. Platformers in particular give me this problem, a lot of SNES era games were too hard, yet the new Super Mario Bros. game on DS was too easy. 'Splosion Man had an interesting solution to this, being able to skip sections if you died X times, however with my perseverance I didn't use this once, it felt like cheating, if I can't do it myself I don't want to play any more.

Sometimes I want a game to be kicking my arse, see shmups. Say Beat Hazard, which while I was playing I played exclusively on the hardest level. yet something like Geometry wars doesn't appeal in the same way, it didn't punch me in the face on the first level so I don't care, sure it's a good game, it's not for me though.

Now look at Civilization, with 5 I started with a quick game (difficulty level 2) it was far too easy. I progressed to a world map (difficulty level 4) which I got absolutely destroyed on, due to bad placement and the difficulty. Yet on my current game (Level 3) I'm having a great time, it feels great.

Back in the "old days" games didn't have difficulty levels, or they rarely did, but what really bothers me is that up to today all the do when changing difficulty levels is making the enemies stronger... That doesn't sound challenging... It just takes more time to kill them.... But making them more aggressive? Now that's a challenge?

[toblix]

They could hire and actual casual gamer to play the game on easy? They never do that...

Really, I thought most games were thoroughly focus tested these days, on old crones and black kids and smiling people in wheelchairs.

[illeria]

Really, I thought most games were thoroughly focus tested these days, on old crones and black kids and smiling people in wheelchairs.

If they aren't, they should be

[Tanukitsune]

Really, I thought most games were thoroughly focus tested these days, on old crones and black kids and smiling people in wheelchairs.

I heard on a few podcast interviews that testers refuse to play on easy... because they fear it make their "e-peen" shrink...

I've experienced it myself, I played Postal 2 on the special difficulty mode where the enemies ONLY have melee weapons, making it a killing spree, except.... All of the sudden I enter a room with a troop of elites with machine guns and I only had a machete because of this mode. I doubt that was on purpose...

Bigger companies might have more testers, but not all of them have "variety" within those testers...

[Patters]

I heard on a few podcast interviews that testers refuse to play on easy... because they fear it make their "e-peen" shrink...

nope, at least with the bigger companies, people who are experienced with the series to non gamers are used to test.

[CaptainFish]

It's a hard question.

I'm against difficulty settings that are just enemy number/health/damage or player character health/damage sliders. I realize that this will come into play in some way, but that shouldn't be the extent of the changes. However, I'm not against offering an array of settings to challenge the player.

I really like Megaman 10's style of changing enemies and their positions along with platform elements to make the level more difficult. Between normal and hard, there isn't always more robots, but they might be more suited to the obstacles or have different projectile patterns. Also the disappearing blocks become super tough. You can tell that the developers examined every screen, and hand picked challenges to make each spot harder. It makes it feel like you're playing a different level that is more like a rom hack than a difficulty switch.

Starcraft 2 is another game I played on hard that I loved. When I did an easy playthrough to farm achievements, I noticed that some of the damage you do and take is scaled. I'm sure unit counts were also altered. However, when I played on Brutal, I noticed that they actually modify where the enemy is on the tech scale. Enemy marines were using stims and shields, and in the second mission, upon assaulting the base you come under fire from Seige Tanks. I didn't play much further, since my hard experience was rewarding enough, but it also felt like I was fighting the enemy on fair terms. Removing that aspect by allowing the enemy to have units far above your tech level just seems like it would be a frustration, rather than a challenge.

Then there's Batman: Arkham Asylum, which on hard removes the attack warnings from the thugs. You would think this would break the game, but it actually just requires you to examine enemy animations in a way that more accurately represents having to fight off a bunch of dudes. I'm sure once you get the hang of it, you feel even more like a badass after finishing off a room.

[Tanukitsune]

nope, at least with the bigger companies, people who are experienced with the series to non gamers are used to test.

I said that more or less right after the part you replied to...

I just beat a horribly broken game today, and... Surprise, surprise! It only had two testers! So yeah, it still applies to smaller or mid range companies... And some of the bigger ones too.

[Thrik]

Then there's Batman: Arkham Asylum, which on hard removes the attack warnings from the thugs. You would think this would break the game, but it actually just requires you to examine enemy animations in a way that more accurately represents having to fight off a bunch of dudes. I'm sure once you get the hang of it, you feel even more like a badass after finishing off a room.

It's funny how taking away fundamental comforts can make a game so much harder. Metal Gear Solid 3 pulls a similar trick in that on 'normal' you have a sonar which reveals positions of living things in a reasonably-sized radius around you, but it has very limited battery life and is nowhere near as generous as the radar in the earlier games.

But stick it on hard and even that is gone, literally leaving you with nothing except a heartbeat sensor which has a fairly shit range. Makes the game so much harder as you have to intensively scan the jungle ahead before making a move and pretty much always have to creep/crawl. And that's just one of many variables cruelly changed on harder difficulties which completely transform the way you have to play the game.

[SometingStupid]

I said that more or less right after the part you replied to...

I just beat a horribly broken game today, and... Surprise, surprise! It only had two testers! So yeah, it still applies to smaller or mid range companies... And some of the bigger ones too.

My curiosity is inclined to ask which game you speak of.

My opinion on difficulty is that some games can do it really well with just the default approach, others can do it horribly wrong.

A good example of a game that does it well is halo, where as it's counterpart, COD does it terribly. Giving the AI the mad skillz to be able to turn shoot and kill you before you've even taken out your gun doesn't count as a higher difficulty.

It annoys me when games are broken down to perserverance rather than logic.

[mikemariano]

I liked Chris Kohler's article How I Learned to Stop Being Normal and Love the Sledgehammer.

He discusses how much more fun he had with Red Faction: Guerrilla once he became a "casual" gamer. He could finally use the hammer and fulfill the Space Asshole's true potential!

I think difficulty settings are at their best when they genuinely change the way in which you have to play the game. A run-and-gun portion of Normal Mass Effect 2 becomes a tense, ammo-less, stay-in-cover experience in Insanity.

[ThunderPeel2001]

I hate difficulty levels in games, to me it just looks like you didn't know how to make a balanced game, so you give us, the gamers, the option to balance things out... which is just adjust a how much health you have and how much damage you deal...

I totally agree (although Patters makes good points for exceptions). This ranks alongside QuickSaves! (Yes, I once got a letter published on Digitizer complaining about this issue, and I still believe it's true: The quicksave is simply a lazy way of not having figure out how long it should be until the next save point... that used to be a really enjoyable challenge in games )

It also ranks alongside PC games that give you a million graphical sliders, rather than figuring out what settings would work best for you, and then giving you the sliders... if you need them.

Damned cheap publishers.

[Nappi]

Maybe getting rid of difficulties is going too far, but I do think difficulty levels are usually borked, besides haven't most of us started gaming when games didn't have difficulty levels?

Yes. And many of the NES era games were simply unplayable and unenjoyable for me because of that.

I'm not saying there should be several difficulty settings depending on your skills on a game, I'm just saying that simply giving an enemy more health and making it do more damage is too lazy.

Giving the player extra health or removing some from the enemy can actually be a good partial solution to players who find, say, an FPS game too difficult because they are too slow or because their aim is off.

Back in the "old days" games didn't have difficulty levels, or they rarely did, but what really bothers me is that up to today all the do when changing difficulty levels is making the enemies stronger... That doesn't sound challenging... It just takes more time to kill them.... But making them more aggressive? Now that's a challenge?

Many games specifically make the AI more aggressive or "intelligent" on harder difficulty settings.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Many games specifically make the AI more aggressive or "intelligent" on harder difficulty settings.

I believe that's some games, surely? Most just up energy/reduce damage don't they? Crysis is the only game I heard of them reducing AI in easier modes.

[Nappi]

I thought it was quite common in strategy games, at least. I don't play a whole lot of shooters.

[Tanukitsune]

My curiosity is inclined to ask which game you speak of.

The game is Fairytale Fights... you have unlimited lives and respawn where you died, more or less and yet... it's was frustrating AND boring, imagine a game that respawns you next to fire trap and you have a 90% of dying again immediately after respawning...

Yes. And many of the NES era games were simply unplayable and unenjoyable for me because of that.

And yet today we have games that do thing more messed up that the kamikaze hawk in Ninja Gaiden... Okay, maybe it's more common from smaller companies and not the bigger ones... Or sequels to hardcore retro games that are way too messed up compared to the original.

Many games specifically make the AI more aggressive or "intelligent" on harder difficulty settings.

I don't play that much strategy games, but I don't notice it in other genres, if the enemies are dumb as bricks on easy, they still are on hard...

[JonCole]

The Halo example is most cogent for me because I think the AI is advanced enough that a theoretical health/shield slider (which I imagine is some element of the difficulty levels in that game) allows for the AI to be better expressed. So, rather than play on easy, where any Elite can be dispatched with one or two headshots with a DMR, I may prefer to play on Heroic, when the enemy can absorb more of my hits and have more opportunity to flank, take cover, and coordinate with other enemy units.

In this case, it's not just a matter of more health --> more difficult, it's a matter of more health --> longer enemy lifespan --> longer time for AI to react to you --> more difficult. That distinction is what separates Halo (in specific) from the examples you seem to cite.

Also, I think bringing up the fact that many older games didn't have difficulty settings is a bit of a red herring. Trying to make that comparison seems to imply that developers don't have more advanced tools to give them the ability to craft more complex combat instances.

[miffy495]

Older games not having difficulty settings is actually one of the things I don't like about them. The fact that they leave you with nowhere to go if you're having no fun ramming your head against a wall of difficulty surely can't be seen as a plus? It's caused me to quit games and never come back to them far more frequently than it's made me enjoy a game more. Furthermore, I see it as contributing to the old boy's club mentality that makes me uncomfortable with gaming in general. If a game can't be toned down and is made exclusively for the "most of us" that you mentioned (read: someone who is invested in the hobby enough to post on a gaming forum) we've created a barrier for entry that is restricting the hobby from reaching a broader audience. Sure, social games fill a niche, but someone who enjoys Farmville and wants to check out "real" games won't have the skills necessary to jump in. Even as a mental thing, it's helpful for a person who is intimidated by the hobby to see an "easy" option to assuage their fears that they've jumped into the deep end of the pool without ever learning how to doggie paddle. I think an implicit assumption in your complaint is that anyone who will be playing one of these games is already a gamer. Imagine someone going from Mafia Wars into Ninja Gaiden and tell me if you think they'd ever pick up a controller again.

In addition, I'm not convinced that difficulty levels could be improved by a developer choosing which variables to change to create them, nor that the problem with difficulty levels can be attributed to poor work on this aspect of the game. As Jon said, even something as minute as a health/shield adjustment in Halo can drastically change the gameplay as it gives the AI more of a lifespan in which to flex its muscles. If you kill an AI before it has the chance to impress you, you'll never be impressed. Yet for a change so simple, Halo is incredibly well regarded for how it handles difficulty. Metal Gear as well, as people have been saying, does a fantastic job of changing your equipment and enemy routines in order to keep the experience fresh. Even on "very easy" mode, you can still die fairly quickly if spotted in Metal Gear Solid, and your equipment is always your life-line. A convincing case could probably be made for giving you shoddier equipment in MGS being equivalent to simply lowering your overall health in a character-action game. These basic and fairly minor tweaks seem incredibly impressive due to the quality of the rest of the systems underpinning the game, not because of what is being done specifically to your or your enemies' health. In essence, that is still all that is being changed, but in these cases it is allowing more of what sets the games apart from the pack to shine through. All of this leads me to suspect that the problem is not in the fact that a difficulty level is not much more than moving sliders determining health and damage, but rather that it is rare that a game is designed well enough for this to make the difference we want it to.

On the other hand, I'm with Thunderpeel on Quicksaves. Properly spacing out your autosaves so that you don't need to have quicksaves is an art form. I'm currently finishing a playthrough of Splinter Cell Conviction, and I can't tell you how infuriatingly bad the autosaves are in that game, but I would much rather they be improved than be given a quicksave option.

[Tanukitsune]

So let me get this straight, most of us were brought up on "retro games that were broken and terrible" and yet we love gaming, but the new generation of gamers must be held by their hand constantly?

I don't think that really works... I used to play FPS games on easy because I was still getting used to them, but the games were so damn forgivable I never got better at them.... until I played Borderlands which didn't have difficulty levels.... THEN I learned how to play an FPS properly, I played Bioschock 2 on Normal and it was quite manageable... It might work for strategy games though?

Oh, and if you're talking about the modern Ninja Gaiden, that game makes everybody not want to pick up a controller again!

I don't think I said I wanted various parameters to toggle in a game, I just want developers to remember that skills are more complex, some games do a fine job of scaling from difficulty mode to difficulty mode and if every game did such a good job at it I wouldn't be here whining about it.