I think it’d be better to have assist modes than difficulty options. As difficulty is traditionally associated with changing things like health and damage (or worse, opaquely disabling mechanics) that are fundamental to game balance I think it is too easy to be abused as a cop out from having to balance the game.

Things like slowing the pace of the game, adding aim assist, visual indicators for audio cues, more lenient hit boxes, more frequent saves would be way more useful imo. Optional mechanics or modifiers can exist, but they shouldn’t be bundled with other random stuff.

• Description of the effects and hardware demands of graphics options.
• An actual benchmark for ‘optimized settings’ (even if it’s just crunching numbers) instead of hardcoded GPU names.
• Clear indication of which difficulty the game was balanced for.
• Msaa. Hate running old games at 200 fps with jagged edges and blur thanks to fxaa.
• Instant controls switching between controller and keyboard. Tired of games that pick input type at startup, pick input glyphs at startup, ignore first button press from a different input before switching, disable controller if keyboard input is detected etc etc.
• Not games but steam: just let me force steam input on all games like Proton.

Also how ‘full potato’ do you want it to be? I assume the settings don’t scale below low, so it’d be just turning off shadows, reflections etc. Would even the lowest resolution textures fit in the vram of an older card? And besides, the engine is probably designed for modern multi core cpus so even if the graphics could be scaled down it might not run well

Conversely I can’t remember a game in recent memory that didn’t let me pause in cutscenes.

Just off of my head: Ubisoft games, Control, Shadow of Mordor, Crysis, Witchers, Borderlands 2, Devil May Cry, Celeste had it.

While I do change them if I feel things are seriously off, I don’t think changing the settings mid-playthrough is the solution. It is normal for the same game to have different difficulties at different times so if you’re adjusting difficulty mid fly on a first playthrough you probably won’t get the same highs and lows as intended. It is impossible to know from the first stages how the difficulty ramps up, sometimes they are easier, sometimes they are just mechanically simpler and sometimes they are purposefully difficult so you have to learn key mechanics.

Difficulty options are like consumable potions to me if that makes sense

How am I supposed to know which one that is

Especially when this happens in small indie games.

You were the chosen one Anakin!

Cries in shadow warrior

I’m souring on difficulty options lately. How am I supposed to know the ideal difficulty of a game without having played it before? You’re the developer, you designed it and if you’re confident in your game balance you should pick the default difficulty. Better yet, get rid of discrete difficulties and add customizable assist mode instead.

Never thought this day would come…

I can’t tell if I can’t articulate what I mean well enough or if you’re just reading it in bad faith so I’ll reiterate for the last time.

I have not made a general statement about caring for good in life. I meant that for the question of whether it should be considered okay for megacorps to ignore court orders, what they’re ignoring is irrelevant. Cheering them to do it for a good cause normalizes it for when they do it for bad, which is the majority of the time.

And it is especially off putting how comments like this are much more common when it’s the courts of a non-western country that produced the bad ruling, as if they are less sovereign than an American company.

Are you serious? You’re the one who made the “cloudflare can strongarm the Japanese govt” comment. I can see that you feel strongly about the Japanese media industry but this is the exact cognitive dissonance I’m talking about.

I don’t care what’s good and what’s bad. It’s fucking weird to cheer an international megacorp to ignore the courts of a foreign country.

I just find it weird how big dog bullying the small dog becomes justified when we have a vendetta against the small dog.

Corporation good when piracy

Does the witness not qualify?

Assetto corsa

As I explained to the other person, I meant in the context of family specifically. Of course there are many things FF could mean

It was that both of these franchises have an emphasis on family

I thought it was about the minerals in alkaline water, not the ph itself?

They’re either targeting businesses (so obscene prices) or clamav, which is buggy

No? There needs to be a space between on piefed and that’s how it works on github too.

https://piefed.social/comment/8602660