369
difficulty rule
(thelemmy.club)
Power fantasy simulator
I feel like I actually did see things like this in flash games in the early 2000s specifically making fun of 90s tropes.
Flashgames were peak creativity and a very "internet" blend of edginess and woke, there were some absolute treasures out there.
I spent way way too much time on Albino Blacksheep, YTMND, NewGrounds, EbaumsWorld, and so many others as a kid.
The thing is this:
The people playing on easy don't get angry when they're called easy-goers, this is not about their ego for them.
But the "I'm the most manly man of them all, I only play on the hardest difficulty!"-types will instantly have their overinflated egos implode when you call them out like that. And you'll have your game shitstormed by incels.
Its motivation to prove the game wrong; plow your girlfriend AND play on the hardest difficulty.
It's called cultivating a less toxic audience
also free advertising, having shitheads publish videos of themselves turning red from talking about your game makes the kind of person who frequents 196 go "lmao based let's buy the game out of spite"
true shit, their cries have actually led me to some things i wouldn't have found otherwise! like Hazbin Hotel!
Seriously all the chuds bitching about the “girlboss” character they added for the new prequel missions in Halo: Campaign Evolved just highlighted that there were new prequel missions.
(Although actually most of the dipshits I’ve seen complaining about her didn’t actually play so they don’t know that she’s not part of the standard campaign, so they’re saying things like, “The game was already good, they didn’t need to add a new woke character.”)
Good point
True true. You definitely get a relaxed fanbase with a good ability to take some irony and self-mockery like that. You just also will always have an army of haters turn up wherever someone expresses personal joy in your game online.
I recently got into speedruning one of my favourite game. While i did beat that game on hardest difficulty absolutely casually, speedrunning on casual difficulty is so much fun
No game developer is going to try to reduce time playing their game though.
No, but people these days are very stupid. AAA game design these days tries to appeal to the lowest common denominator. The C-suite types don't want a player bouncing off their game because the player was too dumb to select the right difficulty type for themselves.
Their solution seems to have been to phase out difficulty selection altogether though. It'd have been more fun if they tried something like this though.
I think, with modern AAA games, you also run into the problem that they're typically a dozen games in a trenchcoat. So, you might be able to make the shooting gameplay more difficult by just adding more enemies, but you can't easily do that for the platforming parts or the stealth sidequests.
You'd need to build the game three times over, pretty much, to really offer three different difficulty levels.
And so, yeah, they try to avoid that by giving help to players that struggle and optional challenges for players that can handle a higher difficulty.
They kinda do, in this respect. When huge warning signs didn't work, devs started locking the highest difficulties until you beat the game once or implementing a hidden system that lowers difficulty or sneaks you some goodies if you keep dying too much.
When huge warning signs didn’t work, devs started locking the highest difficulties until you beat the game once or implementing a hidden system that lowers difficulty or sneaks you some goodies if you keep dying too much.
Adaptive difficulty has been a thing for decades. The first one I remember is Max Payne, released 25 years ago, though I don't remember if it was active on all difficulty settings...
I didn't say it was a recent development, but if anything it has more common over the years.
Yeah I realised that might have been the case as I was hitting "comment" and was like "oh well" - just my first impression was that you meant to imply that it was recent :)
You never know how old someone is around here. Not long ago I saw someone write something like "maybe they didn't learn about 9/11 at school" and after a quick calculation I was ready to go climb into a grave and stay there =P
💀
Replay value doesn't really have to do with difficulty. That's what all these mobile game designers found out. They get replayability through a reward system or adding some kind of social aspect to it for peer pressure.
No need to use that kind of language though
Would you have preferred it in French?
Was this a joke? Are you objecting to "plowing"?
this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2026
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