How would you increase the difficulty of encounters without just bumping up numbers? Is there any way that isn't just turning the game into an action rpg?
>>3915213>How would you increase the difficulty of encounters without just bumping up numbers?Stop playing JRPGs.
>>3915213Enemies having increasingly insane synergies where you need to dismantle their team in fairly-specific ways, or ailments and strategies like casting berserk spells on your healer or reflect spells on the whole party so any beneficial spells you cast end up on the enemy instead.In other words, tactics.
>>3915464>Enemies having increasingly insane synergies where you need to dismantle their team in fairly-specific waysAt this point it's a glorified puzzle game.>ailments and strategies like casting berserk spells on your healer or reflect spells on the whole partThis is the way you increase the challenge, ideally through an AI that actually adapts to your party. Depending on the difficulty, the AI should have a comparable level of decision making to the player.You would also need to increase enemy variety and the amount of abilities to take advantage of this. While generic monsters would remain relatively static with their list of abilities. Human characters should have a comparable amount of skills to draw upon as the player. That's not to say you give every enemy every skill, but if they had access to, say 50 skills, and each enemy had 10 of these skills randomly assigned, it would mean no two battles are the same so the challenge isn't static.On higher difficulties you could even have an AI overlord that tweaks these options prior to the encounter. If you're storming a castle and going heavy on the magic it would make sense for more enemies to have auto-shell/auto-reflect equipped.
>>3915500>At this point it's a glorified puzzle game.THEN I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK YOU'RE ASKING FOR!
>>3915506this is some retard spamming the board because he has some kind of hate boner for RPGS. there is no correct answer he just wants to bitch and moan. ignore
>>3915464>>3915500You honestly both have idiotic takes except maybe the adaptable AI but that sounds like it would go south fastzEnemies have higher stats and levels than you and don’t make suicide kills. Also balance the damage the player recieves in a way where setting up buffs, especially defensive ones is completely necessary. Thats literally all that needs to be. Look at a game like fire emblem engage maddening difficulty or trails 1st in nightmare mode for solid examples of that.A flat damage increase isn’t a good idea most of the time it leads to situations like persona games or bravely games. The enemy should do more damage to you but surviving should also be possible at the enemy’s level or hear it. In the end difficulty is about carefully curating each encounter rather than simple sweeping stat adjustments.
>>3915533>>3915506That's not me though
>>3915213what exactly is wrong with bigger numbers? it's one of the main tools in crafting difficult encounters. giving enemies bigger numbers or powerful abilities is how you make situations that are difficult to solve.
>>3915601What's the difference between a 500 HP monster when you do 50 damage, and a 5000 HP monster when you do 500 damage? Yes, you can make an argument that this means backtracking for hidden/new content in low-level areas means you wipe battles but Earthbound and even fucking Pokemon
Fat-fingered.>>3915602>Earthbound and even fucking Pokemon...... solved this in two different ways with auto-wins and repels.
>>3915601Enemies feel incredibly shallow when the only difference between them is their sprite and damage numbers. You also misunderstand what I ask a little bit, it's not increasing difficulty without changing numbers, but doing so without JUST changing numbers and calling it a day.
>>3915604>Enemies feel incredibly shallow when the only difference between them is their sprite and damage numbersWhen I realized this was the case in FFXIV not just for enemies, but for equipment too, I just stopped, stared at the screen for a moment, and uninstalled it.
