I usually set it to the hardest difficulty mode unless it’s really asinine like iron man or turning off the ui etc. Usually the challenge adds to the enjoyment if it’s done right so if I’m having trouble I’d rather just come back to it another time when I have more energy to throw at it or whatever.

I stopped playing Remnant 2 because it wouldn’t let me change the difficulty. Played on the “normal” difficulty, whatever it was called, flew through the game with no problems, got to the final boss, and just died over and over and over again. The spike between everything else in that game and the 2nd stage of the last boss was unreal. Went to change the difficulty and it said lowering the difficulty will reset the campaign progress. Quit at that point, but I really would’ve rather been able to lower the difficulty.

I just want more granular difficulty/accessibility settings. Give me more sliders to tweak my experience. I know it might be greedy and asking for a lot but Easy/Normal/Hard or whatever is just so clumsy.

Imagine we had sliders to tweak dodge i-frames and parry window lengths? I might actually dare pickup Sekiro if that was the case.

Eh, not really. If it’s not fun, I’ll lower the difficulty or refund if this is not an option, I don’t care.

I play all of my favorite games on the hardest difficulty because the challenges they throw my way are a big part of why I find them fun—why would I bother with higher difficulties if I’m not having fun?

@theangriestbird
In addition to ego (which I’m sure plays a role) I think I would find myself reticent to lower the difficultly to “Easy” for a couple reasons

1. The default difficultly, which is typically “normal” is often the intended experience, and if I can play like that, I see value in it.
2. Related to (1), difficulty settings are often poorly thought-out; it’s quite common for hard mode to simply make enemies bullet sponges or for easy to turn them into cardboard cutouts, which is a disappointing experience.

I’m usually a normal-difficulty gamer and usually don’t turn down the difficulty from there. However, as the article says, If I started on a higher difficulty, I’m more open to go back down to the default.

Some developers are kinda bad with balancing though, there are definitely instances where I lowered the difficulty and just went through the game.

It’s not a pride thing, it’s just that I’m so used to not thinking about difficulty modes that they don’t occur to me as a solution in the moment. I straight up forget that the game is more than the version of it I’m currently experiencing.

i usually go with the default and rarely turn it up. Sometimes I turn it down. Some games are just brutal unless you turn down the difficulty.

Im playing WarTales right now and that game is unforgiving. Fuck your party. Not only are you going to have some deaths but it goes even further that your dead friend is now in your loot… you can even bury them and leave a gravestone which doesn’t go away!

You could always eat them if you take the cannibal trait

Games can’t be easy enough for me. I like playing with dolls essentially. pew pew. that being said I firmly believe elden ring leaves a lot of cheese to give folks an easy mode without having to put in an easy setting. Sorta a cake and eat it to or official deniability.