Community Rules
You must post before you leave
Be nice. Assume others have good intent (within reason).
Block or ignore posts, comments, and users that irritate you in some way rather than engaging. Report if they are actually breaking community rules.
Use content warnings and/or mark as NSFW when appropriate. Most posts with content warnings likely need to be marked NSFW.
Most 196 posts are memes, shitposts, cute images, or even just recent things that happened, etc. There is no real theme, but try to avoid posts that are very inflammatory, offensive, very low quality, or very "off topic".
Bigotry is not allowed, this includes (but is not limited to): Homophobia, Transphobia, Racism, Sexism, Abelism, Classism, or discrimination based on things like Ethnicity, Nationality, Language, or Religion.
Avoid shilling for corporations, posting advertisements, or promoting exploitation of workers.
Proselytization, support, or defense of authoritarianism is not welcome. This includes but is not limited to: imperialism, nationalism, genocide denial, ethnic or racial supremacy, fascism, Nazism, Marxism-Leninism, Maoism, etc.
Avoid AI generated content.
Avoid misinformation.
Avoid incomprehensible posts.
No threats or personal attacks.
No spam.
Moderator Guidelines
Left 4 Dead had the achievement What Are You Trying to Prove? earned by completing all the campaigns on expert.
L4D2 had Still something to prove, again by beating all the campaigns on expert.
I was able to get the second one by playing Last Man On Earth, which is single-player, but special infected only. The higher difficulties are mostly harder by having common infected do more damage.
If that's your kink, sure boss.
If you actual want the respect of your player base, maybe leave shaming culture out the venue? You're one LAN party away from making another jerk circle.
Where's your sense of whimsy, your joie de vivre, your ability to take the piss out of the parts of yourself that can be lightheartedly mocked?
Come onnnn and join the jerk, the planet's on fire, more than half of us are set up to die by systems put in place generations ago, and the government of every country is full of pedos.
Come play a game and if the wellington boot with frog eyes fits you a bit too nicely, dont take it personally, jump in the puddles.
I think ya answered thyne question.
Are people actually making a big deal about what other people set their difficulty as?
Idk sounds like those people are the ones lacking said social life, not the people minding their business enjoying their game the way they want to.
See Wolfenstein having you as a baby when you pick the lowest difficulty
They should have made that mode just have no enemies at all. I would've laughed at that
The nazis all have clown noses and explode with confetti if you get a hit on it.
Must have been later games. 3-D only had one death effect per enemy type
I feel like I actually did see things like this in flash games in the early 2000s specifically making fun of 90s tropes.
Flashgames were peak creativity and a very "internet" blend of edginess and woke, there were some absolute treasures out there.
I spent way way too much time on Albino Blacksheep, YTMND, NewGrounds, EbaumsWorld, and so many others as a kid.
Woah. That unlocked some memories....
The thing is this:
The people playing on easy don't get angry when they're called easy-goers, this is not about their ego for them.
But the "I'm the most manly man of them all, I only play on the hardest difficulty!"-types will instantly have their overinflated egos implode when you call them out like that. And you'll have your game shitstormed by incels.
It's called cultivating a less toxic audience
also free advertising, having shitheads publish videos of themselves turning red from talking about your game makes the kind of person who frequents 196 go "lmao based let's buy the game out of spite"
That's why I bought that one game about the trans caterpillar
Seriously all the chuds bitching about the “girlboss” character they added for the new prequel missions in Halo: Campaign Evolved just highlighted that there were new prequel missions.
(Although actually most of the dipshits I’ve seen complaining about her didn’t actually play so they don’t know that she’s not part of the standard campaign, so they’re saying things like, “The game was already good, they didn’t need to add a new woke character.”)
true shit, their cries have actually led me to some things i wouldn't have found otherwise! like Hazbin Hotel!
Ive heard genuine testimony that Hazbin's creator is pretty shit. I wouldn't know too much tho, it's not my fandom.
Good point
True true. You definitely get a relaxed fanbase with a good ability to take some irony and self-mockery like that. You just also will always have an army of haters turn up wherever someone expresses personal joy in your game online.
Its motivation to prove the game wrong; plow your girlfriend AND play on the hardest difficulty.
I play on easy so I have more time to be sad about being single
I recently got into speedruning one of my favourite game. While i did beat that game on hardest difficulty absolutely casually, speedrunning on casual difficulty is so much fun
Power fantasy simulator
No game developer is going to try to reduce time playing their game though.
Some games literally have a "speed time up" button. I use those all the time.
They kinda do, in this respect. When huge warning signs didn't work, devs started locking the highest difficulties until you beat the game once or implementing a hidden system that lowers difficulty or sneaks you some goodies if you keep dying too much.
When huge warning signs didn’t work, devs started locking the highest difficulties until you beat the game once or implementing a hidden system that lowers difficulty or sneaks you some goodies if you keep dying too much.
Adaptive difficulty has been a thing for decades. The first one I remember is Max Payne, released 25 years ago, though I don't remember if it was active on all difficulty settings...
I didn't say it was a recent development, but if anything it has more common over the years.
Yeah I realised that might have been the case as I was hitting "comment" and was like "oh well" - just my first impression was that you meant to imply that it was recent :)
You never know how old someone is around here. Not long ago I saw someone write something like "maybe they didn't learn about 9/11 at school" and after a quick calculation I was ready to go climb into a grave and stay there =P
They teach that in sehool?
💀
Replay value doesn't really have to do with difficulty. That's what all these mobile game designers found out. They get replayability through a reward system or adding some kind of social aspect to it for peer pressure.
No, but people these days are very stupid. AAA game design these days tries to appeal to the lowest common denominator. The C-suite types don't want a player bouncing off their game because the player was too dumb to select the right difficulty type for themselves.
Their solution seems to have been to phase out difficulty selection altogether though. It'd have been more fun if they tried something like this though.
I think, with modern AAA games, you also run into the problem that they're typically a dozen games in a trenchcoat. So, you might be able to make the shooting gameplay more difficult by just adding more enemies, but you can't easily do that for the platforming parts or the stealth sidequests.
You'd need to build the game three times over, pretty much, to really offer three different difficulty levels.
And so, yeah, they try to avoid that by giving help to players that struggle and optional challenges for players that can handle a higher difficulty.
No need to use that kind of language though
I also oppose English
Was this a joke? Are you objecting to "plowing"?
The language, both visual and written, is clearly discriminative. Feels like a virgin/chad meme
Play on hard, do you?
Nope. I just don't like bullying others
Would you have preferred it in French?