You should play Jagged alliance 2

Maybe once I finish Dead Space 1 on Impossible
1 Clip left for the pistol and 2 of my 3 saves have been used and I'm not even on chapter 4

I'm going to have to agree with Gabriel's idea of a fully customizable system.

It might be complex, but it would make a large difference.

People would just bastardise it to rush through it, I like my games long and hard...

That idea is beyond stupid.

Let them.
They want to waste 60 bucks on a game by having the lowest dificulty so that they are never challenged then yknow, it's up to them.
Us who want a challenge on the other hand will be clever about our customization so that it fits our taste.

Doesn't that defeat the purpose of a Difficulty Setting, its not meant to be a Customise Setting.
Having the ability to customise the game to my liking to suit my play style wouldn't make it more difficult, unless I just turned everything on, to which point that should already be a defined "Hardest" setting.
I can only see the customise setting being inbetween Easiest - Normal and Normal - Hardest because it would never surpass the hardest difficulty, only equalling it.

The system I suggested is a difficulty system, how players decide to use it is up to them.
But forcing a limited number of difficulties are gonna piss some people off.

I don't see that as bad.

* You might like http://www.mobygames.com/game/dungeon-hack.
I still have Dungeonhack installed, and its so customizable that the player can actually set the complexity of the maps, the frequency and/or difficulty of the monsters, how much treasure can be found; how much food, and its rate of consumption; how many illusory walls, pit traps, magical traps, available keys, the puzzle difficulty, the strength of poisons, whether or not enemies can cast spells, whether PC death is permanent, and whether or not there are undead in the game.

**Myself, I tend to prefer a 'common for all' preset of Easy, Normal, and Hard ~and perhaps also an Insane mode.

Too much customizability can (and usually will) lead to frustration in finding just the right combination of settings. Having to tweak it all the time interferes with the experience (the difficultytweaking becomes almost a game of itself and it easy to mess up your game -- and also, there is the chore for the developer to balance out all the possible setting combinations to be viable), so there should be presets from easy to hard (even if there were other choices behind some "advanced" tab).

It should be optional.

If you want to play on Easy, Medium, Hard, hardcoe, or Realistic than just set it to that but if you don't like having to eat, drink, and sleep but like your companions being able to die, no quest markers, and bullets doing realistic damage (That would probably be my setting) than you can set it to that.

Sure. But to expand a bit... I think too much optability of features can hurt the overall experience as it removes the need to adjust to anything those features offer. I know I didn't like the eat/drink/sleep stuff from NV's HC mode, but - funnily enough - I did like that the game required something from me. Sounds weird, I know, liking something that I didn't like -- but crux of the matter is, that the features were there to provide extra tackling for the player and half of the fun would've been gone had I been able to mix and match the settings as I pleased. The HC mode would've been much less fun for me, if I could've cherrypicked the features. Same would be the case for (too all around adjustable) difficultysettings.

Some adjustability is good, no doubt, but too much and you have a mess in your hands.

If that makes any sense what so ever.

All difficulties in Oblivion, Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas and Skyrim have all been [censored] for me.
None of them were balanced with their fixed setttings.
I had to buy a PC, buy the PC game of New Vegas and then mod the crap out of it for it to become challenging without gimping myself.
I don't see why it would become a chore to have better customization with difficulty, if someone wants to tweak it constantly then svcks for them.
At least the option is there for people to tweak it and that is by far better than not having any option at all or having a severely limited number of options.
Cause I played Oblivion, Fallout 3 and New Vegas on the console. And it svcked unwashed skidmarked underwear.

This is an optional thing which you can play around with if you want to.
A setting that can provide players with more customization to fit the kind of difficulty they want.
If you don't like it then simply do like this:

You want Very Easy? Then put everything at 2 and the AI at 1.
You want Easy? THen put everything at 4 and the AI at 2.
You want Normal? THen put everything at 6 and the AI at 3.
You want Hard? THen put everything at 8 and the AI at 4.
You want Very Hard? THen put everything at 10 and the AI at 5.

There, you get your fixed difficulty settings that you yourself enforce, and us who wants to tweak the gameplay can mess around with the numbers to our liking.
But I remember the console versions, and having the same limited numbers of difficulty? It's an awful idea as it never worked before. I could never find a proper balance.
And this thread? Having 'No' difficulty settings at all? That's even worse.
I might be a PC user now and can get mods to my liking but that doesn't mean I'm gonna accept that the future games have to be crap for the console players.


(Frankly, I don't see what the harm is with my system, it's an optional setting which you don't have to tinker around with if you don't want to and you could still use the Presets like Normal that makes everything go to 6 and AI to 3. Cause here's the thing: At least we have the option to tweak the game to our liking where's before when the game became to easy on Very Hard we had to gimp ourselves. - I just don't see why it's something some of you are against.)


[edit]

Now as to the whole "Well they need to balance the game out far more than they had to earlier!"
That's not necessarily true.
They can design it just like they did previously.
Design it from a base template that an enemy has X much health and X much damage.
The Easy difficulty in Fallout 3 and New Vegas just decreased both and the Hard difficulty just increased both.
They don't need to balance the game out any more than they had to earlier.
Just design the first base template, then give us the customization options and allow us to balance it out ourselves.
So it's the same as before really, just that instead of decreasing both damage and health on enemies with Easy we can decrease them separetely.

"It can cause confusion and frustration."
Confusion how exactly? If a player notices how enemies have too much health for the character they had in mind then they can lower the health to suit their gameplay style for that character. Nothing confusing about that.
As to frustration, I don't see how it would be frustrating. Oblivions difficulty sliders were frustrating, having 100 sliders to tweak the game was horrible as finding the correct one was tedious and after a couple of levels having to go through the whole mess again made it even more tedious.
But this one? I don't really thing it's that frustrating.
We don't have 100 sliders.
We have 3 separate sliders that have 10 sliders and 1 that has 5.
If you know what the problem is, that let's say you think their AI is too much for you to handle, then simply lower it a slider or two.
If it's that enemies have too much health and you want a more realistic type of combat then lower the health slider a notch or two.

"But we shouldn't be able to customize it however we want to, we should be forced to play a certain way that is meant to be played according to the developers design."
Come again when bethesda actually have a 'balanced game'.
Sure, I also think that we should play the game the way it was meant to be played according to the developers design.
But when it's so flawed that you have to gimp yourself at Very Hard and be faced with bullet sponges then I say 'Screw the developers design, it's flawed'.


I understand that there is concern to the whole 'too much customization' thing.
But consider the past games, have the fixed difficulty sliders ever worked?
In Oblivion, was it ever fun to have to rearrenge(?) the slider every couple of levels?
In Fallout 3, was it ever fun to be faced with Bullet Sponges?
In New Vegas, was it ever fun to have to gimp yourself in order for the enemies to stand a chance against you?

In skyrim, (this is gonna require a bit more text) is it ever fun to feel forced to level up Smithing or Enchanting?
Cause here's the thing, once you reach higher levels you are gonna be able to withstand too much damage for the lower settings.
But the enemies' health is gonna be ridiculous at Expert and Master.
So either you don't level up Smithing or Enchanting and your weapons and magic is gonna be crap and you have to wail at enemies forever for them to die.
Or you have to lower the difficulty setting so that you can kill them but at that point you'll be so powerful due to their decrease in damage that it's improbable you'll die.

So yeah, my system might not seem like the best idea to some.
But I again ask; Has the previous difficulty systems ever worked?

Lots of games used to have advanced difficalty options. It's not a new idea, but it's one that should be brought back.

A .22 silenced pistol has been one of the favored tools of mafia hitmen in the past. Quite lethal at point blank range.

The problem is that players have no idea what the hell they want. I mean, they think they do, but they actually don't. Giving them choices just leads to idiocy. RAGE's lack of graphics settings at launch (the engine dynamically scales settings up and down depending on your framerate) is a good example of this design philosophy taken to an extreme and executed well.

With difficulty, this generally winds up with people either setting it to the minimum or the maximum then getting annoyed at the results (too easy or bullet sponges) without ever trying a different setting; whatever they decide on initially becomes their standard. Are there cases where difficulty is implemented well? Sure, but the exceptions don't make the rule.

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If they choose to be so simplistic and stubborn then it's their own fault and all their complaints should be tossed out the window if they refuse to try and tweak it differently than just min/max settings.

But it ends up reflecting poorly on the game; when someone says a game is too easy or too tedious, no one asks what difficulty they had it on, it's simply accepted as a fair appraisal. For many genres of games, difficulty needs to either be something controlled by how the player plays (self-gimping, essentially) or dynamically adjusted based on how poorly (or well) the player is playing (for example making things easier if the player is royally svcking or more difficult if the player is steamrolling everything).

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Exactly. If someone sets his difficulty to very easy and then complains about being a bullet sponge, well... the most charitable way I can put it is that he's a f-cking moron.

EDIT: That may have been too harsh, since very easy difficulty also cuts enemy HP. It's a valid complaint if his point is that he wants to play with realistic damage. Not a problem he will have if the settings are more customizable.

Though, when people complain about a game's difficulty it's generally not something difficulty levels can tweak, such as a confusing dungeon.

Confusing dungeon?
Like, it's puzzle?

Heh ha. That annoys me about complaints about games like FONV. A player can be moaning in the comments section of a gaming site, like PC Gamer say, about it being too easy and boring or something. But if you actually got details from him you'd learn he's set it to easy, has two companions, has pretty much gone for a power-build, he and his companions are wearing the heaviest armour with the highest damage threshold, (his companions can't die) they're wielding the largest, most powerful unique weapons, he is fast-travelling everywhere selling copious quantities of gear he's looted from every single corpse, and having his gear repaired. He's bored because he skips through quest dialogue and just follows the quests way points and markers.

lol. There are so many options and choices players should have to highlight that they've made, before they give an account of their experience on a game like this. IMO

Well most of my plays in FO3 and NV where all started in the hardest difficulty. Granted In FO3 I never go any DLC's so I never had the Obvious bullet sponge enemies, but in NV IT didn't seem to make that big a differance ammo consumtion was up yes but you can find and buy enough of it that it wasn't really a factor. It only started to get interesting when I added in IWS mod and upped the spawns by about 5-8 additional enemies per spawn point.

Well yeah. I'm not against adjustability, nor do I think the difficulty sliders worked well so far. But the thing is, the game should be designed so that there wouldn't be a need for a page full of different gauges and meters. The original Fallouts fared quite well enough with two settings (and, I think, would've fared well even if the two were combined into one -- but there the ability to separately adjust combat and general gameplaydifficulty worked well, so it was a plus) and it was very clear what you got from adjusting them -- and most games do fine with just one. There was no need to start adjusting individual gameplaymechnics and inner workings directly before firing up the game (or during it) to achieve the desired difficulty. And that's where the general goal, in my opinion, should be when it comes to difficulty.

Like Vault 22. The enemies in there weren't hard to fight, but I've been lost for hours and hours in there because the minimap and objective marker are so unsuited for multilevel 'dungeons', and because there are parts of certain levels that you can only get to from other levels. It's not really something you can adjust with difficulty levels.

I agree with this, but Vault 22 is nothing compared to Vault 34.