Just play the way you want.
For the record I play without raids until I get major security and advanced weapons established.
this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2026
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Rimworld
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Same as you! Easy/normal Randy Random is my go to. I just build a colony and sometimes try out different winning conditions. More often than not I don’t even go for winning, just build up until the colony is too rich for it to be fun
Haven’t started a new game in a while though maybe I should try out other difficulties and see how that goes
The only right way to play is the one that's fun to you 👍
If it's not difficult, I lose interest because my reality is based on misery. Lol that sounds so edgelord and lame, but it is my rationale. The challenge creates the drama, the drama creates the interest. Like naming your XCom soldiers back in the day. NOOOOO the bastards got Hicks! NOOOOO!
Yeah. I dont remember any missions i played perfectly in the original XCOM, but damn if i remember the mission that went sideways.
But i dont understand when people play games on so hard difficulty, they need to cheese every mechanic to keep playing. Like yay! You put max zombies on in Project Zomboid and now you spend hours kiting them over a campfire... Just keep the zombie amount on normal and enjoy the freaking game.
I think the sweet spot in difficulty is when the game challenges you and punishes you for mistakes, but you dont need to play perfectly to win and you can recover from the losses.
This is the way. I want a challenge, I don't want a struggle.
Making a real mistake that's my fault I'm happy with punishment. Suffering because of a stupid mechanical mistake ruins it.
yes, I think there is something here - when it's too easy I get bored and uninterested
it's the difficulty that gives my accomplishments meaning, if that makes sense
You know its funny because I can play Xcom on Impossible Ironman and i have a great time, but for some reason, Rimworld difficulty frustrates me. I lose a colonel in the Base Defense mission in Xcom and its great, I lose a colonist in Rimworld and I feel frustrated. I dont get why i feel that way, i just do ;-;
The options exist because all modes of play are legitimate. You don't need to confess that any more than you need to confess that sometimes you eat food.
I tend to play easier settings too, with lots of mods. One of those mods lets me use the coms console to insult other factions and get them to send a raid, so I still get plenty of fighting in. But it's honestly a coin toss when a mech cluster drops in whether I'm going to actually deal with it legitimately or just grumble about how I can't be arsed and nuke it from orbit.
You don't need to confess that any more than you need to confess that sometimes you eat food.
An even more direct comparison is confessing that you don't like spicy food and eat mild food. People will shame others over considering food too spicy, but simultaneously enjoying spicy food is completely legitimate itself.
I also play to build a successful colony; but I use Randy Random on a normal difficulty because it's less predictable and thus more fun and challenging to get a good colony going and staying alive.
I play the same, still lose quite a bit lol
I tend to play Randy on Medium-Hard, there was a storyteller for VFE-Vikings I miss that would give you less negative events if you raided regularly so would see less raids, but if you turtled up you'd get more negative stuff, used it to force myself to regularly send caravans and I really like playing that way.
I'd play harder but I find it really annoying to get mechanoid raids when I'm barely preindustrial, my partner found a mod that limits the global tech level to match and I'm really tempted to start a new run with it. She tends to run with randy on losing is fun, she's much better at getting things going than I am.
I also play with no/weak raids, phoebe chillax, dev enabled, etc.
But I have soooooooo many mods that add complexity and decor and stuff, and my goal is to build up an incredible resort of happy people for the wandering visitor groups that come through, and end up with everyone being allies (if convertible - dart guns to capture enemies for release reputation are glorious). I usually end up with 80+ people before the lag hits too hard to keep going (let’s hear it for move speed enhancers!!! rimrails is my favorite by far.)
So I have massive numbers of recreation buildings and stuff, and my base ends up so huge and complicated with multiple floors, absolutely giant freezers, and everything just everywhere so that it crashes and lags to hell and I start over with a new map. I need a better gpu..
I have never once completed a main objective, whether from vanilla or the DLC or even mod objectives. I’ve made some tiny amounts of progress toward them (like the one where you sell your base 3x, I’ve sold it once) but never actually done anything with completing them. Someday I might! But probably not. Win conditions don’t interest me in a sandbox game. Haven’t done any main objectives in oxygen not included, either.
I play on standard. I up the starting settlers to 6 but make them all drop naked in tundra biome for a neat survival from nothing scenario. Adds the risk of temp issues and colonist more immediate needs, but balances itself with more hands to do jobs to meet them. I also try to balance the ratio of men to women as much as I can to increase likelihood of kids to help the colony grow organically earlier. This post has made me have to fire up a new rimworld game now.
People who want games to be hardcore just have a fetish for suffering or something.
Games should be about having fun, and if the world wasn't contaminated with toxic competitiveness, I'm pretty sure almost no one would enjoy hardcore games. But it's always been about competition, even the old arcade games were all about the high scores, and it's shit.
Rimworld strives as a story generator, not as a stupid minmaxing frame-by-frame micromanagement hell
People who want games to be hardcore just gave a fetish for suffering or something.
If that's their way of having fun.. Why not
Because that's what lead to the flood of "souls-like" games that intentionally have a bad design, because it encourages toxic competitiveness, encourages mocking and shaming online based on "performance".
A lot of games either don't let you make the game easier, or "punish" you for it (no unlocks, no achievements, no progress, etc) because they try to appeal to the stupid "hardcore gamers". You have a disability, a situation that makes things harder, not enough money to buy the proper kind of controller, or anything else? Well fuck you, you do not deserve to play the game, and if you try you're going to be bullied for it.
If everyone had no problem with the idea that allowing to adjust precisely the difficulty of a game was mandatory, then sure. But until then, the toxic culture of "hardcore" needs to die because it just makes things worse for a lot of people, with no added value.
Also, the initial reason games were hardcore were either bad (or none at all) game design, or as a scam so that you keep on putting money in the machine to continue playing. Then boomers started crying about "new generations" when games became more accessible, and that's when people started thinking that a game being easy means that it's shit. It all comes from a bunch of boomers and edgelords.
Different game genres have different customers.
Don’t play souls like games… I don’t play certain genres of games because I don’t like them.
Personally, I love challenging games that I have to think deeply how to win. I have adhd and I like to play games that make me think and require strategy. My disability allows me to play these games better.
What you are saying is the equivalent of “horror games shouldn’t be scary”. That’s to the core of their game genre…
I would agree that games could improve their accessibility modes.
Everyone is different, let people play the games they like.
"Souls like" is an overly used term that just means "unfair" at that point. It's not a genre, I'm pretty sure you can find card games that call themselves "souls like".
And requiring to think and strategy isn't the same as forcing micromanagement and making you lose immediately if you don't comply.
I don't play horror games because I don't like the genre. I played over a thousand hours of rimworld, but I never would have with the base game, default settings and no mods. And while rimworld has those (even though people do get bullied as soon as a mod is "unbalanced" even if optional, or as soon as they play the easier settings), most games don't because they think that everyone wants to be a hardcore gamer. Heck, even the term "casual" is used as an insult, as if not being a professional hardcore gamer is an anomaly. That's where I have my grief with "hardcore games".
Once again, in a perfect world without this stupid bullying, with accessibility settings, etc, I'd have zero problem with hardcore games and gamers. But in the current state of the world, it is very different.
even though people do get bullied as soon as a mod is "unbalanced"
How do you mean bullied?
People will argue over a mod that makes the game easier in some way. I imagine bullying does happen, though that might depend on your definition. I know I myself would laugh at somebody using mods that make the game easier while claiming they don't, and while I don't have examples for RimWorld, it reminds me of a funny terraria video.
To me the issue is, all kinds of mods have a place, whether it's cosmetic, content expansion, quality of life, straight up cheats, but the categorizations should be respected.
What will absolutely cause an argument is somebody talking about difficulty or their accomplishments while using mods that make a game easier, especially if they're not upfront about it.
I love souls like games.
I guess I'm playing games wrong. Sorry.
just gave a fetish for suffering or something.
I mean that's like 90% this game. There's a reason why I call it depression simulator.
Phoebe Chill, second-to-hardest difficulty (blood and dust?), Naked Brutality start, reloads enabled.
You can learn how to trivialize most singular raids/events on youtube, so I like that Phoebe gives me "perfect storms" so that I have to make sacrifices or be very creative with how I solve problems, but generally my colony doesn't get completely wiped out, but it also gives me the breaks necessary to prepare for the bad events.
Can't imagine playing with no reloads. Managing even a medium-scale battle of any complexity is such a slog in this game, and way too often I will play through a battle and only realize after the fact I've completely forgotten about another corner of the map where everything's burning to the ground and half my colony is dead because I didn't have fire at will on or something.
Naked Brutality feels like the best story to me. I like to just run with whatever pawn gets generated first and I try to work with their strengths and find friends that can help asap. Not very good for your own ideology though. Normally I end up adopting whatever ideology my social pawn is.
Medium difficulty, Casandra. But the second a raid starts I'm saving. I have saves like 'pre-fight' 'pre-deal' 'pre-venture'. I'll try to get out of every situation without losing a pawn because I don't have many. At worst I use the auto saves to back up by a day and hope for an easier event but I try not to do that too much.
I'm not looking for a hardcore experience I'm looking to just keep myself stimulated enough to stay awake between work and bedtime.
I generally play the same.
I don’t want to lose hours of work because we died in a raid and my last pawn got captured. That’s not fun for me.
I play it with chill mode. Try new things. Unlock some ideas in my brain. Reroll. I kind of wish I could figure out how to keep the world persistent like in Dwarf Fortress, starting new colonies when I get new ideas. I always think “this is the time I am going to clear out all other factions.”
Though the first time in vanilla that I launched the ship it was with two babies on it, because the parents were dead and they wouldn’t stop crying. 😂🤷♀️
I often disable dev mode and play on one of the middle difficulties because I like the stories it creates.
Playing higher difficulties just makes the game less fun for me.
It depends for me, sometimes I want to build a colony, other times I want to see the world burn. In most games I only care about the starting pawns, while the rest can die. I do not play ironman though as sometimes the pawns finds doors that should be closed, opened
Often, I do end up changing the settings to harder midgame, as when you have "everything". Changing the equilibrium some feels like a more fun challenge
I play medium as if iron Man is enabled--it isn't, but I generally only reload if something terrible happens due to a stupid mistake or I want to try/test something. Basically, I want to win, but I want there to be risk. I always play the whole way through the final mission. Sometimes I intend to continue on past that, but I never do. I don't enjoy the infestation event and played a couple of times with it forcibly disabled, but now I simply don't leave under-mountain areas cleared.
I have about a dozen mods installed, but nothing extravagant. Just a few for QoL and several inconsequential extras like additional hair styles and music.
Same, I even use dev mode to knock down enemies if I can't be bothered with a raid at that time. I don't want them turned off or anything, I just want to deal with them when it's convenient for me. I do turn off things like solar flares though, that's no fun.
I like to hoard stuff and build extravagant buildings out of money. The usual place it ends up is with half of the colony operating a giant silver hotel, restaurant (/drug den) & casino with the Hospitality mods, and all of that bankrolls a facility that turns my colonists into superhumans one by one with bionics & implants from various mods, which usually snowballs as they start researching and crafting more parts faster and faster for the next set of colonists. At that point I generally get bored and drop the game for a few months before doing it all again.
I don’t know much about Rimworld but it seems like easier settings are more of a storyteller style-the game doesn’t force you to set aside the narrative you’re crafting. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
To a point that is kind of true, but I would argue that a story without conflict isn't a story, it's a setting. It's the beginning of the movie. Here's the Shire; hobbits live here. Without difficulty, no grand adventure. I get it though, I struggle with the idea that harder difficulties means a higher chance I lose pawns I'm attached to, or might see destroyed colonies that I've worked a long time to create. But at the same time that risk is where the best stories are generated; that raider clan killed our first pawn so now we're gonna wipe them out with a group wearing their clan mate's skin as armour led by the clan chief's ex-wife who we convinced to join us instead.
To be clear, it's perfectly fine to play it however you want; there is no right or wrong way. But in my experience the best stories are created on higher difficulties because Rimworld isn't a story creator where you craft an entire narrative, it's a story generator. You aren't God; you're as much a part of the world as the pawns are.
I tend to play on easy mode now.
If I am being honest, I 'think' there's a part of Rimworld's gameplay that I like and another section I don't like as much, so now I find myself setting up mods and special difficulty modifiers to work towards whatever this other gameplay style is.
Also it doesn't help that many mods (though quite cool) are semi-unbalanced and raids are based on your colony's financial status - Which leads to the default difficulty settings being way overdone.
I play in mostlythe same way, just with phoebe on adventure story to get a bit of use out of any defenses and weapons
i play about the same way. want to build things and become way too attached to the little blob shaped people. if that wasnt a way we're 'allowed' to play the game it wouldn't have been included as a way to play the game.
I like to play a colony for about a week. I want to get just into late game with a challenge then collapse. If it is too easy for me, then late game just drags out forever. If it is too hard then I don't get the same fun from mid game. I really like the thrill of starting a new colony, but just past the slog of early game. Starting around hour 3-5 it starts to hit a lot of fun up till about hour 25-30 or so. I want a good mid game with a bit of struggle, but not constant verge of death.
For mods I play with some basic quality of life add ons, but nothing extensive. The expansions have taken care of most of what I was adding in the past. I like dev mode for the one extra speed, but don't normally cheat with it. I do keep iron man mode on.
So, medium? Medium-hard? But definitely not hard or extreme.
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