What difficulty do you play at, and why?

[Quitch]

I tend to play almost every game at the highest difficulty offered with three exceptions:

1. Simulated ruleset: I'll play at the level which offers the truest interpretation e.g. Core difficulty in the Infinity Engine games.

2. AI skirmishes in RTS: I'll play at the highest non-cheating difficulty.

3. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare series: The difficulty selection mechanism for this game needs to be copied by every other game immediately.

The reason for this dates back to Terra Nova, one of the best squad combat games ever - unfortunately, unplayable now I suspect due to advances in UI.

I was utterly addicted to this game the second I had it installed and the only breaks I took were when my parents called me in for meals. I was lucky enough that my dad had just bought a Pentium 166, the recommended spec for this game.

Unfortunately, after two days of solid playing, it was over. I was sad, never again would I recapture that first play through. It was at that point that I started playing games on the highest difficulty, to prolong the experience of the "first time".

I was just wondering what others pick as their difficulty and why they do so.

[Hunty]

If it's an action game or an RPG, I tend to play on Hard if there are three options, or the one below hardest if there are more. I rarely replay games at a higher difficulty or anything like that. I like extending the initial experience too, and I enjoy the challenge, plain and simple. I'm like you in that if there's a simulated ruleset, like D&D, I will play at the difficulty that best matches the ruleset.

I do a little bit of research on difficulty settings, generally, to see if they influence the game mechanics in interesting or unexpected ways - like the language thing in Crysis. For example, I know that I'll be playing Mass Effect 2 on Hardcore at the very least, because the shooting is fairly easy - even though I'll be using an Adept and there are some questionable balance choices on the biotic abilities at that difficulty. I played Dragon Age on hard because it allowed full-force friendly fire.

Exceptions: I never play Call of Duty games on anything higher than hardened. Veteran is a nightmare. Crackdown is also hard as a motherfucker even on "Ruthless", which I believe is the middle difficulty.

I tend to be weaker at strategy games and the like; I'll generally play these at normal difficulty.

[schurem]

i always play at normal, or whatever the devs intend as the middle road, main stream experience. Only eve-o I play in ultrahard mode, being minmatar specced :P

[tempus67]

I usually play at whatever the equivalent to normal is. I don't have as much time to play games as I used to, and I like to make my way through the game - putting the difficulty higher usually means more failure/replay of areas.

Now and then this is a mistake because normal turns out to be too easy - I just finished Halo O.D.S.T. and that was the case - had I known, I would have played it on a higher difficulty level.

[WarrenM]

I'll sometimes try Normal but often choose Easy. Every time I see a loading screen, or have to repeat a section, it decreases my enjoyment of the game. I think also since I have less gaming time as I get older, I want to see new stuff whenever I sit down.

[red guy]

I usually start on the medium setting, because that gives me more time to discover what the game expects me to do in situations where I get stuck, before it's game over.

If I liked the game enough, I'll kick it up a notch and try to beat it again.

[Wheelkick]

I'll sometimes try Normal but often choose Easy. Every time I see a loading screen, or have to repeat a section, it decreases my enjoyment of the game. I think also since I have less gaming time as I get older, I want to see new stuff whenever I sit down.

I'm in this camp. To little time makes you hate repetition or failure in games.
I usually play at the default, but will scale it to minimize frustration.
After I've played through a game I might try a higher difficulty. Did that with the original Mass Effect and more recently with ME2

[WarrenM]

Oh, and I really appreciate games that let me tune the difficulty in real time.

"Fuck this ridiculous checkpoint free boss fight ... *easy*"

[Saxman_72]

Oh, and I really appreciate games that let me tune the difficulty in real time.

"Fuck this ridiculous checkpoint free boss fight ... *easy*"

Seriously. This has to start becoming the standard.

I always start with whatever the default setting is.

[rrmorton]

Hard, baby! Same reasons as the OP. Me like it long time. Plus I have gobs of patience for retries, as long as the game is good enough to stay fun and surprising each time out.

Also, hell yes.

[shang]

I usually start with everything with normal and then re-adjust/re-start if that doesn't feel fun. Also, it depends on the effects of the difficulty. There is interesting difficulty and there is tedious difficulty (e.g. just upping enemy health, which generally just makes everything take longer). Crysis is the only newish game I've played on the hardest difficulty. Mainly because it spelled out clearly what the difficulty level affected, and the all game mechanics adjustments on the hardest difficulty actually improved immersion and made the game play more interesting.

[Mirriam]

I'll sometimes try Normal but often choose Easy. Every time I see a loading screen, or have to repeat a section, it decreases my enjoyment of the game. I think also since I have less gaming time as I get older, I want to see new stuff whenever I sit down.

Me too, I fully agree with this post.

I play a lot of RPGs and just want to continue the story line, not struggling against the same boss over and over again.
Sometimes when I replay a game I might crank up the dificulty a bit since I'm more familiar with the battle system and know what to expect from bosses, but never past Normal.

[BobJustBob]

The easiest one. Too-easy games are still fun, while frustrating games are not.

[Paul_cze]

Always the medium one, except in some rare cases (Torchlight comes to mind where hard was a must).

[ravenight]

I'll sometimes try Normal but often choose Easy. Every time I see a loading screen, or have to repeat a section, it decreases my enjoyment of the game. I think also since I have less gaming time as I get older, I want to see new stuff whenever I sit down.

Like several other posters, I'm in this boat. If I want a challenge from a game, it's going to be from the multiplayer - single player I just want to be able to get through before I get bored (and even there, it still happens most of the time). The exception would be something like Torchlight, where I'm not really playing to see the story per se, but to get phat lootz. That said, I'm still not sure I prefer Torchlight on Hardest over Hard, because it still gets into the occasional frustrating die-kill a little-die-kill a little situation, which becomes tedious when you keep running back from the start of the level.

[Matt Bowyer]

Medium/Normal, though occasionally easy. If I can toggle in mid-game, I'm happy. I play a lot of games, and I like a challenge, but I also like to beat the challenge.

[Ben Sones]

I tend to play on Hard if there are three options, or the one below hardest if there are more.

This is my MO, as well.

[Foxstab]

I keep it simple. Normal difficulty for the regular play. Then easy for a fun run through, then hard to break the badass skills sweat and push the envelope (it also tends to extend the gameplay time and fun since as the harder and the more intense the challenge you topple the better the adrenaline rewards, so I get to derive extra worth out of my money).

[McKnight]

I will always play my first playthrough on the level below the "hardest" difficulty. Only exceptions are RTS which I have to play on non-cheating AI difficulty at first to get used to the controls etc before moving up. And the COD games where I insist on always starting with Veteren and staying with that the whole way through.

[GloriousMess]

In order of preference:

-Accurate ruleset (D&D strict for example)
-A difficulty apt for my experience in the genre (I choose ultra-violence in Doom 2, Nightmare in Quake but Normal/Easy for RTS games)
-As originally intended by developers for the best experience (usually Normal)
-Highest difficulty before the AI doesn't cheat
-Normal
-Easy
-I'm bored of this, let's find some boobies.

[Vesper]

My preference is to play on Normal. However, these days I have kids, limited freetime, and an ever-expanding backlog. So lately, I've been playing games on Easy as I'd rather be able to experience as much as possible rather than have games take longer because of challenge.

[Robert Sharp]

Usually I play on Normal. If I replay a game, I might raise it to hard depending on the game and the challenge I got on normal. FPS games are the ones most likely to get me to play a bit on hard, just to boost the AI a bit. Otherwise, I prefer to just play through the game with minimal frustration while still getting some challenge. I very rarely play on easy.

[unbongwah]

Whatever difficulty makes things just challenging enough not to be a boring cakewalk, but not so challenging that I keep beating my virtual head against brick walls. This varies by genre; e.g., I'm a lot better at FPSs than RTSs, so invariably I play my FPSs at higher difficulties; whereas I basically suck at platformers so on those rare occasions I play one it's usually on Pansy. If I have to err, I err on the side of a little bit too easy than a little bit too hard; I'd rather be a little bored at times than a lot frustrated. [As others have said: on-the-fly difficulty changes FTW!] I play games to relax and have fun; I don't have the time or patience anymore to really work on my gameplay skills. I want self-improvement, that's what my (increasingly dusty) exercise bike is for. And judging by the size of my shrinkwrap shrines, making games take longer to finish is unnecessary; plenty more where that one came from.

EDIT: perhaps I should say I look for games which give my (sadly declining) gaming skills a decent workout, but I'm not looking to train for the Gaming Olympics.

Every once in a while I'll finish a great game and be a little sad that it's over. But I also realize that a big part of what made it great was that it found just the right balance of pacing and difficulty to keep me engaged and make me want to keep playing. Making it last longer would've involved either adding filler to pad out the length, which waters down the experience; or making it harder so I had to replay more of it to finish, which disrupts the flow of the game and sours me on the experience. PoP:SoT was, for me, damn near perfect in that regard. My basement is littered with games I abandoned because they wore out their welcome by either dragging on too long or hitting frustrating difficulty spikes.

[Telefrog]

I'm in Warren's group. Playing on hard and having to retry areas again and again just isn't fun when you have a limited amount of time for gaming. I no longer feel a sense of accomplishment by "owning" a boss or an area. I'd rather just play and have fun.

I also agree that if you offer difficulty levels, you should allow people to adjust that on the fly during the game.

[greg wak]

Put me in the normal camp. I hate repeating anything with games. The exception is sims. The flight sims or sub sims I have to play on full realism.

[Dan_Theman]

i always play at normal, or whatever the devs intend as the middle road, main stream experience.

This - I go for the experience that seems to be whatever the devs intended. If it gets too easy to be much fun (which it occasionally does), then I ramp it up. I also greatly appreciate the ability to adjust difficulties mid-game for that very reason.

[Peter Jones]

I generally stick to Medium/Normal or the equivalent. At times I will scale it down if it is a new style of game, and will scale it up if I am replaying or if I find it too easy.

However, it is very, very rare that I don't find the Normal/Medium level to be pretty much the sweet spot for me in terms of fun versus occasional challenges.

[TheJare]

I keep it simple. Normal difficulty for the regular play. Then easy for a fun run through, then hard to break the badass skills sweat and push the envelope

This, but I only do the easy run if the game has continuity and progression of some kind across multiple runs.

[chibibigos]

Looks like I'm in Warren's group as well. Mind you, for me it's mostly because I'm not very good at games. This may have something to do with the fact that I spend most of my game-time in wow. (obviously if a game is wow-like in nature, like Titan's Quest or Torchlight, I'll be more likely to play at a higher difficulty level. But for anything shooter-y? forget it.)

[merryprankster]

I'll sometimes try Normal but often choose Easy. Every time I see a loading screen, or have to repeat a section, it decreases my enjoyment of the game. I think also since I have less gaming time as I get older, I want to see new stuff whenever I sit down.

Same here. every once in a a while a difficult game like NInja Gaiden Black or Demon's Souls will get under my skin, but for the most part I just play on easy. If I can adjust difficulty as I play (thanks Bioware, Bethesda) I will often start on normal and adjust it later if I get stuck.

If I want a challenge I just play multiplayer games. Generally I find the harder AI setting cheap and annoying not challenging and exciteing.