Why do people get upset by OPTIONAL difficult assists?

[DonFerrari]

Hiku said:

SvennoJ said:

Exactly. I started on a higher difficulty level and reduced it where I was struggling then back up  when it seemed to be getting too easy. I like games that allow you to switch difficulty on the fly. That's always an incentive for me to start on a higher difficulty level. If you can't change it on the fly I usually play on normal or easy.

Ah, I see. Yeah I recall doing that at least once in a game where I wasn't interested in the challenge, and felt like I was wasting my time.
Not a bad feature to have there, as I felt I saved a could of 10 minute sessions that could be better spent elsewhere, or a challenge that actually felt somewhat rewarding.

HoloDust said:

When you put it that way...sure. The thing is, from my observation at least, it's impossible to balance games for wide difficulty scaling and preserve intended expereince. Eventually, you get games that are trying to be more "accessible" where that "accessibility" creeps into every design decision, no matter the level....right about every AAA game these days is guilty of that. To the pojnt of whole genres being hijacked and completely diluted.

Like i said I think that narrow scaling can work in some games. I don't really expect any AAA publisher to implement it though, mass market is there audience and they are designing games for mass market. Nothing inherently wrong with that, there are plenty of people who like those games. Just as it's nothing wrong with those who have other priorities offfering their games "as is", and it's up to each person to decide if it's for them or not...and git gud...or not.

It's very possible that an easy mode could affect a hard mode negatively. Though could you give me some examples of elements that have had this effect? Because I can't think of any at this moment (though probably if I think on it mote), though I can give you examples of where the easy mode/assist hasn't had a negative impact on the other modes.

For example, Tekken 7. Imagine balancing the game they intended to do. Then add an assist mode that lets characters perform special moves, or specific combos, with the press of a simple button combination, or mashing one button. And as someone who plays the game normally, that feature doesn't change the way I play.

And here's a hypothetical example. Imagine a Fire Emblem game, where they design the game the way they intended. Then they add an Easy mode, where the only difference is that you dead party members don't die permanently, and you can chose to Continue after dying. In this scenario, that Easy mode would not affect the harder mode's experience.

Another example is, just slash all the enemies HP by 50%, increase your own power by 15%, and call it Easy mode.

Etc.

One of my main concerns with games is if they end up being too easy, after experiencing some really bad easy modes that scarred me for life, such as Resident Evil 4's that locked out entire sections of the game. Though I haven't really considered Easy modes making the Normal/Hard modes worse. Possibly because I don't recall seeing or noticing a concrete example of this occurring.But if you could share some with me, that would be interesting, and another reason for why I'm worried about games being too easy.

All their examples are subjective. On the line of because of mainstream they have to design the game to have it very easy on the normal mode and them they can't balance the game on harder making it impossible. Or so they say, when I said I haven't noticed that issue in any AAA game I played and that they all had a satisfactory experience for me (some I would need to play on hard or hardest) I was accused of being a mainstreamer that can only play easy games.

mjk45 said:

SvennoJ said:

Oblivion did that which resulted in silly things like random thieves walking around in glass armor. And if you waited too long to start the story the first quest become pretty impossible as all the enemies would level up yet not your companions. The quest was designed to be done as a group effort, except now your group would be wiped out almost instantly :) It had a difficulty slider anyway so you could always change it.

That was based on your level I'm not sure about games that change based on your performance. In the last of us Ellie would throw you some items in need, that's a form of help when you get in trouble.

 Oblivion bless it's sweetheart comes from Bethesda a company so buggy I'm sure it started life building coaches ,all jokes aside you still need proper implementation and  if your getting wiped out it's not , the Ellie example is a good one of the game helping the player get past a section of game , there is nothing worse than going through a fair bit of a game to suddenly find yourself outmatched by a sudden difficulty spike .

the biggest factor holding back dynamic difficulty is cost it is much cheaper to implement the standard difficulty levels than spending money on producing  and playtestings logarithms that can cope with the variety of gamers and still give a coherent experience.

Even more on a game like TLOU where you have to keep same inventory from start to end, so if you to pass your difficulty on the first half of the game use too much of what you collect you may be totally stuck on the later end of the game. That makes me a hoarder that usually ends the game using only the weakest weapon and no item until the final boss and them notice I hoarded all without need because I was capable to clear without it by insistence =p