Sometimes the difficulty will improve enemy tactics, boost numbers or make the player less of a tank, and genuinely add challenge.
But, if the game has a good storyline I like to play on “normal” for the first playthrough as I feel higher difficulty ruins the pacing. Then if I enjoy the game I’ll go back and replay on higher difficulty for the challenge.
This was always the way when a new Halo game came out, they have long stated that they are “meant to be played on Heroic” but me and a buddy would rip through in coop on Normal and then bump up the difficulty.
I finally got around to Titanfall 2 and Normal feels a bit easy, but it also feels like I’m playing a robot mecha movie instead of grinding through tactical battles, which is awesome. Definitely going to revisit this one on Hard though.
That’s “increasing damage and health.” Very few games actually improve tactics to an interesting degree, and that’s really what I’m hoping for when it comes to “hard” mode.
Halo
I 100% agree. I usually played through once on normal, than went to Heroic or Legendary depending on how I felt the original playthrough went. Knowing the maps helps a ton on harder difficulties, and enemy AI also improved a bit, so harder difficulties in Halo felt great to play.
However, a ton of “hard” modes are just nerfs to the player and buffs to the AI, but other than that, little actual changes to AI.
It varies. I agree far too many games just make the enemies bullet sponges, which I hate.
Increasing numbers though ramps up challenge in a more fun way, I would rather take on a classic “double boss” than one bullet sponge boss. You have to keep track of multiple enemies and change your tactics. It’s cheap difficulty but much better than just multiplying health.
I would really like to see more games handle difficulty like Halo for sure.
Also sometimes the player needs to be nerfed for balance. Titanfall 2 for example, in normal I can switch my loadout in combat, blasting rockets as Brute and switch to Ion to fire its laser once the core is charged, totally ruining the whole concept of loadouts. Also when the player has a Halo-style shield and enemies just have regular health… Nerf me already, the game shouldn’t feel like you’re steamrolling enemies on Normal. 1v4 Titans should at least feel like a challenge, not a cakewalk.
Increasing numbers though ramps up challenge in a more fun way, I would rather take on a classic “double boss” than one bullet sponge boss. You have to keep track of multiple enemies and change your tactics. It’s cheap difficulty but much better than just multiplying health.
Ah, makes sense. Going from 10 to 20 enemies isn’t a big change, but from one to two bosses is.
I find it’s more common as part of a difficulty curve in a game than as optional difficulty, for example Metroid Dread introduces a boss which is hard until you learn the pattern. Then the same enemy turns up as a miniboss, easy now that you know it. Then it starts to show up mixed in with common enemies, forcing you to watch out for them, and when it shows up as a pair it’s a challenging boss again as managing two is much harder than one.
Metroid Dread does a great job of making the difficulty track your character’s increased abilities throughout the game, and looks beautiful in 1440/60fps on Ryujinx by the way.
However for optional difficulty the best example is probably Hades which is a great example of good game design anyways. In the postgame optional difficulty “Pact of Punishment” you can tweak all manner of game characteristics. Extreme Measures allows some bosses to team up, and changes boss arenas and behaviours. Middle Management mixes up the minibosses totally, adding trash mobs to manage as well as lots of other effects. There’s also an option to add new attacks to almost all of the enemies.
Then you can also do the standards like make yourself weaker, enemies tougher, boost the numbers of regular enemies, remove your special abilites and even disable i-frames after being hit (!) Hades probably has some of the best post-game replay value out there.
Huh, I haven’t played either, so I’ll have to give them a shot.
Hades scared me off with the “rogue-like” label, which to me often means a lot of frustration and crazy difficulty spikes due to randomness. But if it’s a smooth gameplay experience, I’ll give it a shot. I have liked some others (Slay the Spire and FTL), but I generally like a more guided experience.
Hades is absolutely not a real roguelike, the only roguelike thing about it is that you make multiple runs through a semi-randomized dungeon, and that you can expect to die a lot.
However there is persistent progression and it’s rare that you get truly screwed by RNG.
The random part is what weapon mods you get each run, but they are balanced. Part of the fun is not falling into a favorite weapon rut, but running with what you are given. And even a full “winning” run is only about half an hour so if you die it’s not a big punishment.
Meanwhile the plot progresses despite your countless deaths, I won’t spoil how. It’s really a well done game and deserves the praise it gets, and you can get it on sale for like $10, I would go for it if you like beat em up type games at all.
Dread on the other hand appears to be love or hate it, people with weak platforming/traversal skills seem to absolutely hate specific sections where you have to avoid the indestructible EMMI robots with a mix of stealth and skill. I thought it was thrilling myself but YMMV
The rest of the game is a must play for any 2D Metroid fan, but definitely play on PC and not Switch as PC blows it away. With the FPS cap unlocked, I’ve rarely seen an action platformer flow so smoothly.
Crowd control is a completely distinct combat mechanic from single enemy combat. Introducing more complex combat mechanics to allow the player to deal with multiple enemies and mixed types of enemies is precisely the kind of difficulty scaling I want to see.
Sure. My point is just scaling the enemies is often uninteresting. Like if I’m already fighting a bunch of orcs, adding more isn’t likely to be more difficult, however, adding different kinds of orcs in the mix would make it more difficult (e.g. instead of just melee, add in ranged and mounted orcs). The variety of inputs is interesting, not the quantity.
Fighting two bosses simultaneously is interesting because they’ll have different movesets that combine in interesting ways, whereas fighting the same boss back to back isn’t interesting, it’s just a slog.
Then again, quantity can be interesting if it forces you to account for it in your build, it kind of depends on the game itself.
Sometimes the difficulty will improve enemy tactics, boost numbers or make the player less of a tank, and genuinely add challenge.
But, if the game has a good storyline I like to play on “normal” for the first playthrough as I feel higher difficulty ruins the pacing. Then if I enjoy the game I’ll go back and replay on higher difficulty for the challenge.
This was always the way when a new Halo game came out, they have long stated that they are “meant to be played on Heroic” but me and a buddy would rip through in coop on Normal and then bump up the difficulty.
I finally got around to Titanfall 2 and Normal feels a bit easy, but it also feels like I’m playing a robot mecha movie instead of grinding through tactical battles, which is awesome. Definitely going to revisit this one on Hard though.
That’s “increasing damage and health.” Very few games actually improve tactics to an interesting degree, and that’s really what I’m hoping for when it comes to “hard” mode.
I 100% agree. I usually played through once on normal, than went to Heroic or Legendary depending on how I felt the original playthrough went. Knowing the maps helps a ton on harder difficulties, and enemy AI also improved a bit, so harder difficulties in Halo felt great to play.
However, a ton of “hard” modes are just nerfs to the player and buffs to the AI, but other than that, little actual changes to AI.
It varies. I agree far too many games just make the enemies bullet sponges, which I hate.
Increasing numbers though ramps up challenge in a more fun way, I would rather take on a classic “double boss” than one bullet sponge boss. You have to keep track of multiple enemies and change your tactics. It’s cheap difficulty but much better than just multiplying health.
I would really like to see more games handle difficulty like Halo for sure.
Also sometimes the player needs to be nerfed for balance. Titanfall 2 for example, in normal I can switch my loadout in combat, blasting rockets as Brute and switch to Ion to fire its laser once the core is charged, totally ruining the whole concept of loadouts. Also when the player has a Halo-style shield and enemies just have regular health… Nerf me already, the game shouldn’t feel like you’re steamrolling enemies on Normal. 1v4 Titans should at least feel like a challenge, not a cakewalk.
Ah, makes sense. Going from 10 to 20 enemies isn’t a big change, but from one to two bosses is.
Do you have examples of games that do this well?
I find it’s more common as part of a difficulty curve in a game than as optional difficulty, for example Metroid Dread introduces a boss which is hard until you learn the pattern. Then the same enemy turns up as a miniboss, easy now that you know it. Then it starts to show up mixed in with common enemies, forcing you to watch out for them, and when it shows up as a pair it’s a challenging boss again as managing two is much harder than one.
Metroid Dread does a great job of making the difficulty track your character’s increased abilities throughout the game, and looks beautiful in 1440/60fps on Ryujinx by the way.
However for optional difficulty the best example is probably Hades which is a great example of good game design anyways. In the postgame optional difficulty “Pact of Punishment” you can tweak all manner of game characteristics. Extreme Measures allows some bosses to team up, and changes boss arenas and behaviours. Middle Management mixes up the minibosses totally, adding trash mobs to manage as well as lots of other effects. There’s also an option to add new attacks to almost all of the enemies.
Then you can also do the standards like make yourself weaker, enemies tougher, boost the numbers of regular enemies, remove your special abilites and even disable i-frames after being hit (!) Hades probably has some of the best post-game replay value out there.
Huh, I haven’t played either, so I’ll have to give them a shot.
Hades scared me off with the “rogue-like” label, which to me often means a lot of frustration and crazy difficulty spikes due to randomness. But if it’s a smooth gameplay experience, I’ll give it a shot. I have liked some others (Slay the Spire and FTL), but I generally like a more guided experience.
Hades is absolutely not a real roguelike, the only roguelike thing about it is that you make multiple runs through a semi-randomized dungeon, and that you can expect to die a lot.
However there is persistent progression and it’s rare that you get truly screwed by RNG.
The random part is what weapon mods you get each run, but they are balanced. Part of the fun is not falling into a favorite weapon rut, but running with what you are given. And even a full “winning” run is only about half an hour so if you die it’s not a big punishment.
Meanwhile the plot progresses despite your countless deaths, I won’t spoil how. It’s really a well done game and deserves the praise it gets, and you can get it on sale for like $10, I would go for it if you like beat em up type games at all.
Dread on the other hand appears to be love or hate it, people with weak platforming/traversal skills seem to absolutely hate specific sections where you have to avoid the indestructible EMMI robots with a mix of stealth and skill. I thought it was thrilling myself but YMMV
The rest of the game is a must play for any 2D Metroid fan, but definitely play on PC and not Switch as PC blows it away. With the FPS cap unlocked, I’ve rarely seen an action platformer flow so smoothly.
Awesome, I’ll give them a shot. :)
Crowd control is a completely distinct combat mechanic from single enemy combat. Introducing more complex combat mechanics to allow the player to deal with multiple enemies and mixed types of enemies is precisely the kind of difficulty scaling I want to see.
Sure. My point is just scaling the enemies is often uninteresting. Like if I’m already fighting a bunch of orcs, adding more isn’t likely to be more difficult, however, adding different kinds of orcs in the mix would make it more difficult (e.g. instead of just melee, add in ranged and mounted orcs). The variety of inputs is interesting, not the quantity.
Fighting two bosses simultaneously is interesting because they’ll have different movesets that combine in interesting ways, whereas fighting the same boss back to back isn’t interesting, it’s just a slog.
Then again, quantity can be interesting if it forces you to account for it in your build, it kind of depends on the game itself.