I’ve said for a long time that I think difficulty sliders need to go.
They’re in all sorts of games, whether you look at the Batman Arkham titles, The Witcher
3, or even Assassins Creed.
The first time I made this criticism publicly was in my Witcher 3 critique, when I said
that I felt the difficulty slider was simply a get out of jail free card for developers
who wanted to avoid balancing their levels.
Now, back then my channel was very small, when I posted that Witcher 3 critique in mid-2017
I only had a few thousand subscribers and honestly didn’t expect more than a thousand
people to watch it.
Now, it’s about to cross a million views (thanks by the way) and I’ve received a
lot of feedback on this one criticism, which I felt as though I should address.
To begin, what are we actually talking about?
What am I referring to when I say “difficulty slider?”
Well, when you’re playing a game, you’ll be faced with various challenges.
Some of these are small, and some are large, but if the developers have done their jobs
well, this difficulty will pace itself and level with you.
In other words, if you select the “Hard” option on the starting menu, you should be
able to expect a fairly consistent level of challenge as the game progresses over a couple
dozen hours.
I don’t have a problem with this.
Varying difficulty options are great, and even allow for more interesting repeated playthroughs;
such as having a new game plus mode.
What I’m referring to in this video is when you have a slider within the menus that allows
you to change the game’s difficulty at any point in the game.
I posit that these lead to unbalanced games, and put the responsibility on players to balance
their experience and not on the developers where this process should take place.
Now, at the outset, I know what you’re thinking, what’s the harm?
What possible downside could there be to a difficulty slider?
If I’m playing a game that has consistent spikes in difficulty, I’d like the option
to get around it without hours of frustration!
Which is fair!
But I would argue that the latter point is a solution in search of a problem and NOT
the other way around.
Allow me to explain by asking you a simple question in response: why would a game need
a difficulty slider?
Surely a simple question would have a simple answer.
So what is it?
Why have them to begin with?
Well, often features such as the aforementioned slider are made in response to an issue or
shortcoming that pre-exists within the game.
You add an FOV slider to allow for greater customization for those who perhaps suffer
from motion sickness.
I’m one such player and an FOV slider makes it so I can actually PLAY a game like Rage
2, where as I wouldn’t be able to otherwise without becoming viciously nauseous.
Or look at another type of slider, a gamma or brightness slider.
These allow you to customize the game’s graphics and lighting to your specific monitor
or TV.
Sure, some people can use it to change the way the game plays, such as making enemies
easier to spot, but this is also true of an FOV slider, and there will always be those
who seek to exploit decent mechanics.
The point is that these are all features that were borne out of a problem.
What is the problem that difficulty sliders are fixing?
I would say that changeable difficulty settings are a response to the aforementioned spikes
in difficulty.
If I’m playing through the Witcher 3 on stream over on Twitch, and I encounter a story
mission that is excessively difficult, I will likely try to push on through; dying, reloading,
dying again, and repeating this process ad nauseum until I either succeed or give up.
In a game with a changeable difficulty, this latter option is very easy to choose.
I can always just give up and lower the difficulty to get passed whatever is causing me issue.
But in a game that doesn’t have this changeability, you’re forced to adapt to the game’s challenges.
Think Sekiro; you will likely get stuck on one or more of these bosses, but you don’t
have the option to lower the difficulty to get passed.
You must adapt and learn.
But, the question may be: what if the boss isn’t properly scaled or what if the player
is underleveled and under prepared?
Exactly.
If you’re underleveled or under prepared you are forced into going and doing that which
you should have already completed before taking on the boss.
There’s no shortcuts or cheats.
You must play the game the way the developer intended and the developer has to take the
time to craft a set experience and they have to balance everything around that.
Effectively, they must polish the game until it’s perfect.
And this is more the point.
When there’s only one difficulty level, the level designers and gameplay designers
can craft one experience very carefully, as opposed to trying to make it work dynamically
for everyone.
In theory, this one experience should be crafted to avoid excessive spikes in difficulty.
This because the people in charge of balancing will only ever have to balance it for one
type of playthrough.
My biggest problem with dynamic difficulty settings are that they give those people,
the one’s in charge of balancing, an excuse not to fully balance the experience.
And all of this can be done while giving the player the option of different difficulties.
Games like Bloodborne effectively have different difficulties based on whether or not you’re
playing New Game Plus, and if you are, which NG+ mode you’re on.
Each of these have their own scale for the enemies and will change how leveled the player
character must be, and thus, how experienced the player should be.
The key, is that you can’t change this mid way.
Part of the magic of this is that you can still offer a choice to the player, but you’re
not allowing them to change the difficulty on a whim.
Offering different difficulties is great, but giving the player a crutch like a variable
slider is something that I personally can’t stand and that I think needs to go.
It’s been mainstream in the industry for years and I think it does nothing other than
give players a reason not to engage with the game they’re playing on a deeper and more
meaningful level.
That’s all from me, thank you so much for watching.
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Thank you again, I love you all, and I’ll see you in the next video.