What difficulty do you choose?

If turning up the difficulty just gives enemies more health and makes them do more damage I don't bother, but if it does something interesting with the game mechanics then I usually push it up.

I work six days a week, often for twelve hours a day. I have a family to spend time with. When there's time, I play video games. Often on hard.

The mistake you're making is assuming that playing on hard = playing more hours a day. But that's not a given. Oftentimes this just means we're playing fewer games across a longer stretch of time. Speaking for my part, if it's a game I'm really into, I want to get the most out of it, and I don't care if it means it'll take me months to finish.

Everyone plays games differently. It's easy to fall into the trap of being dismissive, but at this point we should know video games go a lot further than the basement-dwelling nerd archetype. (Although I suppose I'm just a basement-dwelling nerd who happens to have a job, haha)

EDIT: I didn't refresh the page, so I didn't see that you'd already gotten a lot of replies. Now I just feel like I'm piling on. Ah well, no hard feelings, at any rate. Just thought I'd state my case for doing the thing I do.

I almost never play anything on easy, since there are barely any stories worth suffering through boring gameplay to reach. And if I don't enjoy the gameplay on some level, I likely don't want to play the game in the first place, or at least not enough to finish it. This ofcourse has a couple of exceptions. I wanna say Asura's Wrath had a difficulty setting... That is one specific instance where I just wanted to watch it unfold with minimal stress.

And on the same note, I rarely play on hard since there isn't a lot of games that do upwards difficulty scaling especially well, and I can generally get what I want out of the most balanced core difficulty. With the exception of inherently easy games, or ones where I feel the urge to replay it to improve my own skill at it "games like Bayonetta".

You could have left it at even less than that, since I (nor anyone else) asked you what you did for a living. Many of us are adults that have jobs, you don't have to explain the concept of not having all the time in the world to play video games.

And I took none of the shit you said "too personally" since none of your baseless assumptions about hypothetical people applied to me.

Normal 90% of the time. Occasionally, if there are 4 difficulty options from the start and it's a particular game or genre I'm fond of, I will pick the second to hardest difficulty.

Either normal or hard, it depends on the game. Binary Domain I started on hard, along with Rage and some other games. I wish I started The Last of Us on hard =/

I usually choose hard and then go through again in the hardest, because usually the hardest is locked as well (E.g. Gears of War). If the game allows the hardest setting and it looks easy (E.g. Darksiders) I choose the hardest from the start, for the challenge and the achievements.

If it turns out to be too hard (I decided to play Halo Reach on Legendary from the start and I'm not any good at FPSs) I get frustrated after about 2 or 3 hours and restart on a easier setting.

It does also depend on the game. I have no problem in going through a FPS again since it's more or less the same and it's fun. Going back to the start of Darksiders is not so nice because you get lots of abilities and stuff during the way and starting with nothing of that (but the armor) is slightly frustrating.

@ki11tank: playing easy games is dull and boring, its actually like the worst work in the world, a bunch of things to do that are not any rewarding because they were not any challenging.

You can see my activity here: http://raptr.com/trylks/wall

Last time I played a game was september. I may not play much, but if I play I want a challenge. If a game lasts for 80 hours, that usually means a whole year, and I'm fine with it. There are quite a few interesting games out there, but if I don't play all of them I'm fine with it, because I have a life and going through a game is not a priority in my life, I don't need to have finished any number of games by the end of the year or month.

Work hard, party hard, play hard.

If I'm too tired to play, which happens sometimes, I spend some time on the forums, I watch some series, read a book, whatever. Games are there for the challenge. The story may be good or not, but usually TV series have better stories (and are "easier").

"I don't know why people get so sensitive"

I don't like people making false statements. But I'm just a PhD student with a crappy salary that cares about that to publish (correct) papers, if I was an executive in finance maybe I could be thinking wrongly (with a flawed logic and implicit wrong assumptions), stating wrong things and basing my decisions in wrong information, why not?

It's the declaration that those who like long, difficult games must not have a life that made you come off a bit dick-ish. You said that in the middle of a gaming forum and then went "too many people take shit too personally". And then declared the same statement again!

I like challenge in some game genres. It helps me to focus on just the game and it helps me to place all of my worries and thoughts aside for just an hour or two when I can get it. As someone who has been having anxiety issues build up over the past few years, you fucking bet I'm going to take something that can put a big stupid grin on my face without a care in the world. That doesn't make me a "no-lifer". And the ability to play games well doesn't make me a "superior human" or a "hardcore", either, it just means I give thought and attention to how I'm playing and try to adjust if my approach isn't working.

For the record, you beat a forty hour game by playing it a little bit at a time every evening for a few months. You don't have to beat a game in a week, you know.

EDIT: I also don't play all of the current games, I just play whatever I want no matter when it came out. And I removed a line that made this post angrier than I meant for it to sound.

Screw hard mode, the middle is all good.

I ALWAYS play on normal. Easy is most of the time just too easy, and hard is just too hard for me in most cases. The only game I can remember turning the difficulty up on to hard, was Kingdoms of Amalur, cause that game was a cakewalk on anything else.

I go for hard, I generally find normal to lack the challenge I'm looking for.

I always start a new game on Normal difficulty. It's the best difficulty to enjoy the story. Once I've beaten and enjoyed it, I'll generally start a new game on Hard for achievements and challenges.

Any new game I'll play on Normal. I will, however, up the difficulty on games I'm either replaying or have played so many others in the franchise that I feel sort of overpowered already and need to artificially make the game harder (any new Kingdom Hearts game for instance: I'm so used to those game mechanics now that if I didn't up the difficulty I'd be neigh-on invincible since there was a point when I mastered the dodging/invincibility frames and the animations of all the main attacks). If it is a genre I'm very new to or know I am horrendous at, I might play it on easy (for instance, the first person perspective makes me kind of confused/ill so I might play those on easy if it looks like the game isn't heavily scripted/easy already). In general though, I care little about difficulty and just want to play games on the difficulty that means I feel like if I don't pay attention, I'll die, but that I don't die (if at all) very often anyway (I call this "the protagonist difficulty").

I play almost everything on Normal. I don't like the way most games handle difficulty levels, in terms of merely adjusting health/damage ratios (I'm looking at you, Elder Scrolls). One exception would be the Halo series, which I play on Legendary after finishing it once on Normal. While the health/damage ratios are definitely adjusted there as well, the AI seems more... tactical, from my experience.

Normal 99% of the time.

If the game allows changing of difficulty on the fly, i will once in a while switch it to easy if a level is particularly irritating, then go back to normal on the next level.

Normal. Easy is too easy and Hard is more of a challenge than I usually have the patience for.

always go hard

Always on normal.

Always 1 down from the hardest for first play (if three settings, choose number two; if five settings, choose number four, etc.)

99% of the time I play on Normal. Sports games I usually up the difficulty as I get better at them, to give myself some challenge.