I loved Black Myth Wukong because of this. Hard and satisfying. No difficulty setting. Same as Gothic 2 Notr. You either get good or go home to play with toys in sand.
Games need to be difficult and challenging. Challenge our mind: reflexes, memory, logic.
I am for one sick of most modern games that are so easy and streamlined. Like all gamers have suffered lobotomies, have ADHD, retard and so on.
Old games used be difficult. Serious Sam on normal difficulty is much harder then the hardest difficulty in Dragon Age The Veilguard/Star Wars Outlaws.
Troll detected. Looks like a baiting thread to me.
I wasn't going to play as a monkey anyway but thanks for the warning.
That's exactly why we need difficulties. An ultra hard to make the elitists' eyes bleed, story for casuals and normal/hard in between.
Nothing more frustrating than being stuck on a mandatory boss fight and unable to progress the story.
Indeed. There is no way to have a game with only one difficulty setting and not have some complaining it's too easy and others that it's too hard.
Difficulty settings tend to simply change damage output and input numbers (what I call "artificial difficulty, and I welcome more sophisticated setting effects), so it can't be like a rudimentary difficulty setting system is even that complicated to create -- so, there's no reason to not have one, except in cases where the developer wants the game to have a set difficulty for all players.
Which CDPR have never done with their single-player games, and most likely won't do in the future, either, since their games appeal to both "casual" and "hardcore" gamers as well as players of neither extreme.
The problem is in today age that games have become to streamlined, boring and easy with brain dead AI. See Starfield, Dragon Age The Veilguard and Star Wars Outlaws.
Games are too easy even with the hardest difficulty.
Agreed, and that's why the game will almost certainly contain difficulty adjustments. The industry learned a long, long time ago that if they want their game to appeal to the widest audience possible, each player is going to need to be able to cater the difficulty to their individual liking. A game that forces players into either frustration or boredom does not result in fun.
(The SoulsBorne titles are a marked exception. Their "learning to tie your shoes" approach was pretty ingenious.)
Yeah, I’m a big FromSoft fan too and totally get where you’re coming from. I think one thing people forget is that Souls games do kinda have a built-in difficulty slider: grinding. If you’re stuck, you can farm a bit, level up, upgrade gear, and push through. It’s not a setting, but it works without breaking the game.
If Witcher 4 sticks to one difficulty, I think it needs something like that, some way to power up through effort if you’re having a hard time. Not necessarily grinding XP, but maybe mutagens, potion upgrades, or optional contracts with good rewards.
Also agree about build variety. Souls games let you go all in on magic, tanking, dodging, etc. Witcher’s combat tends to push you toward fast swordplay with signs on cooldown. Would love to see more viable, distinct builds if they go the no-difficulty route.
So yeah, I’d be fine with one difficulty, if the systems let players adapt without hitting a wall.
I would say it's more than a "difficulty slider" -- it's the core, blood, and soul of the game (puns intended). It throws something that may initially seem impossible at the player, then says, "Figure out the pattern." Grinding and leveling stats and gear will allow you to make a couple of additional mistakes, perhaps, probably shorten the fight time, but the player will simply face an even stiffer challenge around the corner from that point and be right back at square one.
I think the magic of that approach is that the player learns to just relax, get a feel for their build, and systematically repeat a challenge as many times as needed until they figure out the trick. The whole game is the idea of doing the same thing over and over again until what was once next-to-impossible becomes offhandedly easy. Gear and level and attributes don't really affect that central system all that much...
...at least, when players actually figure things out on their own instead of looking up builds, tutorials, and walkthroughs online...
...and that is the reason that I think Dark Souls started having more mass appeal. With all of the "how-to" stuff available, many gamers that would have played 2 hours of Dark Souls and put it down forever instead just made the game easier for themselves by removing the actual challenge and just following step-by-step instructions. At least, until they got a feel for the game, and then they started to enjoy it more.
The online trove of specific builds, locations of powerful items, maps showing secrets, videos showing the correct timing for bosses, etc. -- not to mention mods that will make things easier -- took FromSoft games from niche titles to the mass market by around the time of Dark Souls 2. I don't think it would have happened if options had not existed to make the game easier. Or more difficult, for the people out there who just can't get enough punishment in their games.
For this part, while certainly possible, I don't think that would be in-line with the vision of The Witcher games. None of the games have ever included a "grinding" mechanic, and quite the opposite, have specifically tried to avoid anything like that. Take TW3, for example, which simply stops awarding meaningful experience after the player reaches a certain level at that stage in the main quest. Enemies begin providing 1 Exp. Board contracts may provide nothing, but you can still be paid. In order to continue leveling, you need to advance to the next stage of the game.
Cyberpunk still follows a similar system, made even more gradually uphill when the level scaling was introduced. Love it or hate it, it ensures that no matter how far a player character "levels up", they will face a challenge. (Arguably, there are some aspects to that which I think come across as a bit wonky in practice, like doorlocks suddenly becoming harder because your character got better at lockpicking. But I'd say the whole point is to specifically avoid grinding in the game.)
The why of it is due to the game's wanting to present a narrative, continuously progressing experience. A contiguous story with a beginning, middle, and end. Around that is wrapped all of these RPG and action mechanics. As opposed to games that create RPG and action mechanics then wrap the story around that, like Diablo, Dark Souls, MMOs, etc.
Therefore, rather than making a brutally hard game and giving the players options to "grind" to make it easier, I would foresee CDPR remaining true to its roots and simply keeping the difficulty sliders. If someone wants to just mash the light attack button for every fight, they can. If they want even a chance encounter with a couple of bandits to be a life or death struggle, they can. And either way, the story will progress smoothly.
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Or...maybe...they could find a way to do both. Who knows? Perhaps they could do something like:
Ciri kneels in front of the fire to meditate. While doing so, the player is allowed to relive old contracts or something like that, but they'll now face different versions of the scenario, additional enemies, tougher versions of a certain monster. All excused away by Ciri meditating on the combat and exploring the experience with what-if scenarios. She gets to keep the experience, maybe unlock an ability, by meditating. Perhaps she also sees something in her mind's eye she consciously missed about the battlefield. Return to the site, and suddenly there's a hidden chest or unique item stashed in a secret spot.
It could be there if players wanted it, or you could just meditate to heal and pass the time.
I will NOT be satisfied if the game has only one difficulty level. Because if the game is big, with a well-developed world, with well-thought-out and diverse gameplay mechanics, then it should be designed not for one playthrough, but for many. And the difficulty level should be gradually increased, so as not to relax.
But there is one aspect. The difficulty, except for the initial one, should be REAL, and not like they did in the next-gen re-release of The Witcher 3, making all the enemies in the orders and in the open world helpless and pathetic. All the monsters, the Wild Hunt, people - they are all boring and pathetic. Fighting them has become too easy even on the maximum difficulty with the "increase enemy level" option enabled. This should not be done. The difficulty levels should be noticeably different from each other, and the upper difficulty levels should be truly hardcore and offer a challenge to the player.
I did a discussion with video examples showing how badly the balance is messed up in the next-gen edition of The Witcher 3 compared to the classic version of the game.
But there is one aspect. The difficulty, except for the initial one, should be REAL, and not like they did in the next-gen re-release of The Witcher 3, making all the enemies in the orders and in the open world helpless and pathetic. All the monsters, the Wild Hunt, people - they are all boring and pathetic. Fighting them has become too easy even on the maximum difficulty with the "increase enemy level" option enabled. This should not be done. The difficulty levels should be noticeably different from each other, and the upper difficulty levels should be truly hardcore and offer a challenge to the player.
I did a discussion with video examples showing how badly the balance is messed up in the next-gen edition of The Witcher 3 compared to the classic version of the game.
I always play on the hardest difficulty so if it comes at the cost of reducing the game's challenges (locking me out of choosing a more difficult option, basically) then no, they should stick with multiple difficulty options.
This is the core of it. More options is always a great idea. It all revolves around the concept of, "Let the player decide."
Are you sure game journalists even play the games at allAka. Game journalist mode
They will, responsibility issues aside, but they will often speed-through the main quests, follow a guide provided by the studio, or be given a truncated version of the game that lets them experience the salient features of the title. Problem with journalism is the deadlines for publications. There's no way that a person can experience 200 hours of dedicated gameplay and still have a full game review out inside of a couple of weeks or less. Especially not if they're writing for other games, as well.Are you sure game journalists even play the games at all
Either way, there's a big point behind this for the purposes of fair and objective criticism. Is there any purposeful attempt to misrepresent the game? Not really. I'm sure it's happened, but there's not much that can be done to hide bugs, monotonous loops, wonky gameplay mechanics, or severe balancing issues. I think, if anything, the hardest job a journalist has is being given a game they personally dislike but having to review it from the perspective of people that would enjoy that sort of thing, then making a balanced assessment.
I'm not sure what the protocol is for different difficulty levels. I've seen many articles over the year refer to it, sometimes citing specific examples in gameplay itself. There is some metric they use to test it out.
Hello, one difficulty setting ..., hmmm. Wouldn't that mean, that everyone has to play the game in, more or less, the same way? What about people, who would rather avoid to have big extenmded fights and concentrate more on following the story? On the other side, there are people, who like to be challanged by big fights and love to develop tactics to win those fights with tactics and fighting skills?
Personally, I would prefer to have the choice to at least have the influence on gameplay a difficulty setting provides.
Ford