A gamer’s guide to difficulty levels on Twitter

by Dr NT Stacey

Selecting an appropriate difficulty level is crucial to having a rewarding experience with any game, and Twitter is no different in that respect. However, it doesn’t fit neatly into any familiar genre of game, which means new players can’t easily gauge their skill level based on their level of experience with other games. This is a quick guide to the different difficulty levels to help new players pick the right level for their current skillset, and also to dig into the variant play modes designed to give experienced players replayability. Let’s jump right into it.

Tutorial mode

In this mode, you just follow other accounts and don’t post anything yourself. You don’t have to pick a faction for this game mode, so you can follow a bunch of different accounts and that way, you get to familiarize yourself with the different factions as well as learning how the game works.

Tutorial mode gets boring very quickly so it’s only suitable for brand new players, and you will want to start a new play-through pretty soon. Just remember to delete your old save-file when you start a new play-through, otherwise you can find yourself in trouble later on, because accounts from multiple factions will have followed you back.

Easy Mode

This is where most new players should start the game. In this mode you must choose a faction and stick to it. The ins and outs of all the specific factions is a matter for another article, so just pick something you’re comfortable with. Remember; the Devs do sometimes step in to rebalance the factions so try keep up to date on the metagame!

There is one main strat in this mode: agree with posts from your own faction. Pro Tip: you can also compliment them while you agree with them for a points multiplier, but the most effective compliments are faction specific; “I love your dress, does it have pockets?” will earn you a high multiplier in some factions but if you use it on a Rogan-faction player you will incur a heavy penalty.

Normal Mode

This mode opens up a lot more Tweeting options. The most potentially powerful of these is posting your own faction-specific Tweets rather than just responding to others. While very powerful in the hands of a skilled player, for most players this attack has little or no effect, but it’s always worth plugging away at it; the ceiling is very high and there’s little risk involved.

The other powerful option available to you in this mode is the “Disagree with enemy faction” attack. This can very powerful, but it does open you up to damage. The trick is to scout out the enemy accounts beforehand and find one that your own faction, or allied factions, regularly raid. That way, when you post your criticism there will be teammates on hand to get on board with you.

Hard Mode

In this mode, you post your own actual opinions that you formulated yourself. Playing in this mode earns you fewer points and opens you up to more damage, so only a minority of players stick with this mode for long. Hardly any top-ranked players use this mode so if you’re optimizing for high scores, stick to Normal Mode.

Nevertheless, this mode is highly rewarding for players who enjoy a challenge and want to test their skills without the guiderails offered by the lower difficulties. Your Twitter experience is not complete unless you’ve tackled this mode at least once!

Nightmare Mode

This mode resembles Hard Mode but takes it to the next level by preventing you from blocking people who argue with you. Only the most battle-hardened players should try this mode, but those who revel in conflict can reap huge benefits from the attention that heated arguments can bring to their accounts. However, even the most avowed Nightmare Mode players find they need to take occasional breaks from this bruising play-style.

That wraps up all the Twitter difficulty settings, just leaving us with the variant modes. These are play-styles with rules variations intended to give experienced players new and unique experiences on repeated play-throughs.

The Turncoat

In this variant, you simply begin a play-through for a new faction using a previous save-file from an opposed faction. This variant will have you viciously attacked by your previous faction, but will often have you welcomed by your new faction if they see your change of alignment as vindication of their views.

The Contrarian

In this obscure variant you block people who agree with you rather than those who argue with you. The result is, typically, an extremely challenging play-through where it’s difficult to score any points at all. This is one is just for the purists looking for an unusual challenge.

The Outcast

In this variant, you put garbled faction signifiers in your bio, such as the word “pronouns” rather than your preferred pronouns, or a hashtag like “#MakePalestineGreatAgain”

Because of entrenched biases toward conflict, all factions will assume that you have done this to mock them specifically. This is believed to be the most violent play variant of all.

Let me know in the comments if you have any variant styles to try out on my next Twitter play-through!