I played TW3 on easy, not bothering with all the busy work with potions and what not. So maybe I didn't get the full experience of scraping by and preparing for every battle, I did have a lot of fun going after deep red (or was it purple) contracts, way above my level, that I was not supposed to go after yet. Then slowly wear them down in a battle of attrition. 

GoW I changed the difficulty higher to be more engaged during exploring, lower to get past boss battles without wasting time on them. (I don't like boss battles unless it's SotC :p)

In Dark Souls I also enjoyed the normal battles much more than any of the boss fights. I still need to start Elden Ring, my kid giving up on it for the end difficulty put me off. The fixation on boss battles turns me off in those games.

Instead of story, medium, hard difficulty, give me options to reduce repetitive side quests, skip boss battles, less resource management. As much as I enjoyed the campaign in PoE2, when they're trying to sell you stash and organizer tabs for all the different ingredients you need for random upgrades, something is very wrong!

Another example Death Stranding. Played it on the hardest difficulty for all the contracts and exploring stuff and finished it with all orders at Legend of Legends status. However all the story segments I just walked through on easy mode, not interested.

Difficulty sliders let me pick and choose what to engage with, hence I shy away from games without them.


But sure if AI could detect what you like and what you like to be challenged with, and can dynamically adjust the game to turn it into the best experience for you, then that would be the answer. Then throw a profile out at the end of the game to compare with how others have completed it. Developers might learn something from that feedback as well :)

Oh you missed out on such a great gameplay loop, the systems in that game coming together is phenomenal and the hardest difficulty isn't really hard after the first dozen hours, it bottle necks once or twice but it's not even close to being Souls or anything like that. 

Ah, anyway. I suppose it comes down to personal preference. I just love the way From Soft do difficulty and particularly with Sekiro, that game is such a balanced treat. I do find some games where I have no issues with difficulty sliders like Stellar Blade and Khazan but they only have two modes and both are tuned very nicely. 

I have my doubts about Ai though, like how will you ever skill up or progress if the barrier is always just under what you can do. You'll never get better at anything, you'll never overcome a challenge. Perhaps if you could tell the Ai how you feel for the session "Okay, I'm feeling confident tonight, I wanna bit of a challenge" or "I'm fucked dead tired, I don't want the challenge but I still wanna feel rewarded". Idk.

I missed out on picking up flowers and other shit :p Really combat is the last thing that draws me to games, so the simpler, the better :) Hence in Horizon FW I also just stuck to normal arrows, bows, direct engagement. The only 'strategy' I like to use is use of the terrain. 

AI can track what you're doing in the game, see what draws your interest, where you quit. Where you get frustrated, mashing buttons or put the controller down. Track where you reload or just give up and wait for the character to die to retry. And it can see what has become trivial for you and either remove those or subtly increase the difficulty. Maybe it can also hear, stop telling me what to do, when hints pop up too soon :) Perhaps it can also look at your profile, trophies etc to see what you go for and which games you quit, where. It's basically making a big, people like you (dis)like this in games database to balance future games to the player.

Experimental dynamic difficulty as an option. (And then you can add sliders to that again lol)

Also good idea before starting the game to ask what you feel up to, from wander aimlessly entertain me, to come get me I'm ready.


Actually I've done that with a friend with Dune 2. Had a 'trainer' installed to adjust the game difficulty on the fly while watching him play. 'Cheats' like doubling enemy or player unit health / firepower. Made for some fun sessions!

Completed it last night. Copying my thoughts from another thread.

And last night I finished Ghost of Yotei. Then the Platinum looked easy enough and took an extra 2 hours. It is very much like Ghost of Tsushima. There are a few things better in Ghost of Tsushima and a few things worse. However much like NG plus, the 2nd time around isn't quite as enjoyable. Still it wasn't bad, but maybe it is because I really want to play Nioh 3, that this game feels kind of bland in comparison. Obviously I enjoyed it enough to platinum it, but something just felt off the entire time I played it. I really enjoyed using the Odachi, and I wasn't afraid to use the other tools in the duels. In Ghost of Tsushima I always did the duels without the extra tools and it was great fun. In Ghost of Yotei, katana only felt frustrating. Maybe the timings felt different, or maybe I am just off. The snow place seemed to be 2 or 3 times as big as the other areas, which was strange. I rushed the Odachi and then went to the snow place after that area in order to get Odachi upgrades. But it forced me to dip my toes in the Ishikari plain for a bit to get the upgrades. I really enjoyed the Shamisen and the music. Overall a decent game, now make Infamous 4.