>enemy larger health and more damage>you smaller health and less damage
>raise the difficulty>boss just fires more bullets
>>738844590more bullets is fun because you get to dodge more bulletsit's fun to dodge bullets
Let me guess skillet OP: "Difficulty should instead make ai "smarter" or whatever that means" is what you are going to say next
Harder difficulty should beMore Risk, Less Tedium
>>738844717So you can just spam games until you get a lucky win?
>>738844650Difficulty should give enemies more options, like unlocking attacks, while restricting yours.
>>738844590I will now buy your game
>>738844774Fuck off, i will play like i want and what fit my character. Give me stronger battles dont cripple my character
>higher difficulty just gives enemies stronger magic/skills earlier
>higher difficulty makes enemies strongerHOW COULD YOU
>>738844774Nioh games do this except for not restricting your options. Enemies on the highest difficulty gain entire new movesets and special attacks and timings. Man I love Nioh so much it's unreal.
>>738844484KH2 critical mode is the one game I know of that pulled off stat balancing difficulty right.And even then its not just a direct health and damage tweak, its higher base damage and initial player equipped skill budget + lower overall stat growth. Which fundamentally changes the power progression.
A lot of RPG difficulty problems could be solved if players could just turn off EXP gain.
>enemylarger health and more damage>yousmaller health and less damageThis is fair.
>>738844484>enemy spamBut more enemies is the most fun way of adding difficulty. That's how it would work in real life, too. Devs usually don't do it because it's harder to implement and affects performance.
>>738844961But what's the point in playing with RPG system when you cant make your own build?
>>738844650Halo CE did that on top of making enemies bullet sponge
>It’s not more difficult, you just increased the weight!
>Higher Difficulty:>You and the enemies take more damage>Actually makes the game easier.
>>738845041Alternative systems. Job EXP, Skill Points, greater focus on equipment and team composition, etc. More than just stats go up.
>>738845096Persona 5.
>>738845119Its still exp and stats still go up
>>738844650Actually yes. Duke Nukem 3D a game released 30 years ago solved that
>>738844484I wish more games had "more enemies and more weapons" option
>>738844484Yeah that makes it harder you pussy. >Muh bullet sponge Git gud. Games are being made for mongs like you, even on hardest difficulty you can most likely one shot them. And being fragile yourself is also good, less tolerance for mistakes so you can't just face tank.
>>738845254Duke Nukem 3D is such a janky game holy shit. I keep dying to doors automatically closing on me.
>>738844774Difficulty should be changing enemy density and selection based on difficulty. Revengeance does this, and it's fucking awesome.
>>738845843That ends up being a very useful trick later on when you deal with the hordes of jihadi drones that will slam into you and explode for high damage. The door does not care for friend or foe, the door kills all.
There are grown ass 35+ year old men itt who still shit like “just make the enemies smarter!”
>>738844590I love revenge bulletsExcept in Raiden, fuck raiden
OP is right.Spongy enemies are not difficulty.
>>738845096Crazy how that STALKER myth is still alive
>>738844590in a well done game, it doesn't just increase the number of something, but it introduces new mechanics you have to deal with
>forced to actually see the mechanics enemies have and deal with them>T-THATS NOT REAL D-DIFFICULTY!!! I SHOULD BE ABLE TO 1SHOT IT!!!When did /v/ get invaded by ultracasuals
>>738844774>while restricting yours.I have to disagree with this one. I always hated mechanics that take tools away from the player, or even worse make the game unplayable in general for a couple seconds, like silence, stagger, stun and so on.Give the enemy more mechanics it can utilize and which I have to find a way to deal with rather than reducing the amount of tools I have at my disposal
>>738844590the inner machinations of a bullet hell enjoyer's mind are an enigma
>give enemies extra moves/smarter AI on higher difficulties >reviews come in>reviews claim the easier difficulties just remove enemy moves and replace the AI with a retarded one, making the game way worse for no reason >they spent all that time and money making advanced AI and complex movesets, and then they removed it from the game, why didn't they just do less enemy health and damage are they stupid >I am, I am stupid>my studio is shut down for my incompetence
>>738845031>Affects performanceBut what if I like seeing the game cause my allegedly "powerful gaming console" chug to render the amount of ants and explosions on screen? That's like, half the fun, the other half is coming up with the right set up and the right tactics to defeat sky-scraper sized enemies that are being spammed by the dozen. Sometimes by the hundred.
>>738846325>do what you're meant to do to beat the enemy>game makes you repeat it 100 times>it's the exact same every timeThat's a chore, not a game.
>>738846637I'm going to guess your favorite game is elden ring then? How is it any different there?>you have to roll to avoid enemies>repeat 100 times>its the exact same every time, not a SINGLE enemy in the game forces you to block over rolling
>hard difficulty>enemies just take 5-6 hits to kill instead of 2-3>game is still easy, only takes longer
>>738844484>>738844650Terraria has examples of both types of difficulty:>Expert mode gives most enemies new attacks and behaviours, and all of the bosses get new attacks and some get additional phases in addition to flat stat buffs across the board>players love it>Master mode just adds more HP and damage bloat with no other changes>players dislike it
>>738846737Obsessed
>>738844484literally unironically both silksong and elden ring
>4X game>at all difficulties enemies have map hacks>increased difficulty just makes them abuse it more + just get more resources
>harder difficulty makes lategame enemies appear earlier>lategame enemies give more xp so you level up faster>it quickly becomes easier than a lower difficulty
>>738844961I agree, FF12 is the greatest RPG of all time
>>738846912>4X game in 2026>still has the same AI from Civ2 times
>>738844774Restricting the player too much tends to kill fun. Unless it is in a minor way like making ammo more scarce. That at least forces you to be more thoughtful with which enemies you use specific weapon against, while making it less effective to just spam one broken weapon.
giving the enemy more health IS a valid way to increase the difficulty. If your only interaction with 90% of the enemies in the game is to insa-kill them before they even have the chance to hurt you, then increasing their health to the point where you can't feasibly one-shot them makes them more dangerous, and forces you to actually deal with the consequences of fighting enemies by taking damage or getting status effects instead of essentially skipping them by one-shotting them.
>>738846912Reminds me>RTS game with stealth units>Enemy AI "conveniently" always places their "anti-stealth" AoE ability on where your stealth units are even if they have never revealed themselvesFucking Imperial Guard.
>>738847438Ironically the CnC3 Nod campaign was a little better about this. Since Nod on the whole aren't really built for drawn out slug fests, their missions rely on you using stealth and sabotage to win. Naturally missions will have detectors, but they're on a patrol route and you can sneak in, cause chaos, and get out before they show up again. And the AI will usually only start deploying detectors after they've been hit by stealth, not before, so your strengths as Nod aren't immediately being removed by the campaign AI.
>>738844774Nu GoW games do this by giving enemies animation cancellable super armor lmao. This breaks combat system basically you just tickle enemies and wait for runic AoE cooldowns to stagger and DPS. If you will try to play game normally as in trying to string combos you will get one shot by random bum enemies.
>>738847561Wow, that sounds like ass for an action game, but nuGoW isn't really an action game anymore is it?
>>738844774since restricting the player is something that the player can already do by choice, it is a pointless difficulty option
>>738844484>hard difficulty spawns you in ng+ with just starting weapon and makes enemies give less exp
>You have high damage low health >The enemy has high damage low health>There are a fuck ton of bad guysThis is the correct way to play
>>738848059So stalker on highest difficulty?
>>738844484enemy >explodes on deathyou>dead
That indeed makes the game more difficult yes.
>>738844484You either have larger health pool and higher attack or gimmick boss fights. Literally nothing else. You can combine these two, but every boss fight ever falls into one of these two categories.
Elden Ring DLC.Regular enemies hits like a truck, but also die in two hits.Bosses just have beefed up everything, 3 health bars included.After all these years, fromsoftware still can't figure how ballance late game content in their DLC's. Instead on assuming at what level players usually be at this point they introduce skibidi gimmick and pimp enemies to the max.Also alot of cool stuff, but it's all endgame and i never use most of this.
>>738846737No, I've never played it. I heard it was damage sponges and fakeout attacks x1000 that required you to be a harcore Fromsoft masochist.
>hard difficulty adds a hunger meter
>higher difficuty>basically a different game entirely
>>738849473Please. Dlcs are easy af for melee and impossible for magic users in ds2. Main game is easier for magic users.
>>738849717both ER and DS2 are harder for magic after all the patches.
>hard difficulty>it's easier because there's difficulty-exclusive items that you can access that trivialises it
>>738846862Master mode is not that bad considering how powercrept everything is. Players just deal too much damage everything melts in normal and expert mode. Expert is more like normal mode in 2026 and master is the hard difficulty. The bloated shit is legendary difficulty from that seed which makes enemies chore to kill.
Harder difficulty works ideally when it introduces new mechanics rather than just modifying parameters for existing ones.
>>738851732I gave up on master mode myself, it's just not very fun at those numbers.
>>738844484There is nothing wrong with this. What’s important is not the changes the developer makes, what’s important is what said changes do to the player’s gameplay.
>>738846637Often times that isn’t actually possible, in any game with any resource system you simply cannot “do the same thing 100 times”. Typically in a rpg you might have some of limit to ability or spell use like mana, mp, daily spell limit, etc. or in another genre it might be something like ammo
>>738844484Having too much life and/defense and taking little to no damage DOES make the game easier, you can face tank everythingLogically the contrary would make the game harder, few hits for game over mean low to no room for mistakesOn the other hand the enemy dying in few hits DOES make the game easier, being able to one shot or near one shot everything makes everything pose no threatLogically the contrary would make the game harder, longer fights mean more room for mistakesYou can argue it is unimaginative, but shit is in fact making the game harder
>>738852134This isn’t true at all. A lot of games have really easy HP thresholds for enemies. You can give enemies the most complex moveset in the world but if they die like in say DMC2 by you just brainlessly shooting them, that doesn’t matter at all. Same thing if an enemy does no damage to where you can effectively rank through them. Parameters matter, moreso than moveset to be honest.A very basic encounter of one ranged archer enemy, with one attack, that does moderate damage + one melee dude with 3 attacks (with various levels of damage) is more engaging to fight against and has the player think more than two dudes with 50 attacks that deal very little damage.
>>738846862>>738852313Master mode gives you an additional acc slot making it totally worth it
>>738852779An interesting example of this is Castle Ania SotN, a fuck load of enemies have multiple attacks you will never see just because you melt them. It is honestly pretty fun just letting them cast all their attacks.On the other hand in AoS enemies usually have one attack (plus like two animations), and you still kill them like a god in no time, with no challenge
>>738844650>aquajeet is retardedMany such cases.
>>738853016I was actually thinking of castlevania a little bit, there’s a basic enemy archetype of “the annoying faggot” that really only needs one attack, and adding more doesn’t really do anything. Like a medusa head, a bat, a rat, etc.
>>738851157>Hardest difficulty is easier because exploiting weaknesses is much stronger
>>738853126forced meme
My friend's game>loop 0 bosses use their full moveset all the time instead of waiting for you to get into loop 1+>loop enemies show up during loop 0>higher chance that enemies will be elite (harder attacks and harder to kill but more money)>less time on the clock to complete every stage, also translates to a lower time bonus at level completion>enemies are more aggressive and attack more often>all enemies are faster, as are their bullets>health recovery is more limited. The game regularly has you spending your health for more speed>a fuckton more enemies that also scales with how well you are doingI still have yet to clear the highest difficulty. Feels great.
>>738844774Isn't this exactly what most roguelites with scaling difficulties do? Except /v/ will call them indie slop.
>>738853189You are not wrong but I do like when my skelies do different kinds of throws, jump around or do slide kicks.>seeing the rapier skehlly doing a lightning attack for the first time after years of playing the gameFucking kino>>738853189>easier difficulties are harder because you are expected to play like a retard trying to get combos on a game that rewards maximizing effectiveness and kittingFucking NG turning into a shallow, izuna drop and UT spam fest
>>738853016Mods that balance SOTN completely transform the game.
>raise the difficulty>just more arrows
>>738853858>just
>>738853747Do you have a recommended one? Might as well do something this week besides MD
>Racing game Difficulty>Everyone you overtake will be faster behind you
>>738854271Rubber banding is the most bullshit mechanic ever.
>>738844484I actually like this for Tales games and action games where the purpose is to combo enemies stylishly.
>>738854206Unfortunately, I don't know which hack I used. But it shouldn't be hard to do a search and find some recommended ones.
>>738854675Oh, and of course, as is usually the case with these kinds of hacks, the difficulty can get pretty insane in some parts.
enemy spam is much better than bullet sponges, i will take that any day of the week
>>738844484I don't actually mind this in games where "normal" is actually easy and "hard" is actually normal. I shouldn't be able to kill the boss by bumrushing it or before seeing each attack at leas once.
>>738844484Absolute dogshit midwit complaint.>more enemy health forces a longer and more careful engagement>more enemy damage and less player health forces much more careful play
