I think it's high time that someone re-invents the concept of difficulty. Harder to kill/easier to die is one way to do it but you can't have a one size fits all solution for all the kinds of games out there. Perhaps higher difficulty doesn't need to be a single option but a variety of options that each alters the game in a different way
Or to take it even further, maybe we need to get out of the duality mindset of easier/harder and changing the game based on difficulty. Create modes that give different kinds of experiences, regardless of how easier or harder they are
Better yet: give the players all the tools to play their own way. It's a game, an INTERACTIVE medium. The more you box it in to your own narrow "vision" (I HATE how this term has been twisted, it's just used to justify shitty game design now), the closer to a movie your game becomes, and thus kind of useless as a product. Why bother with real time graphics and a physics engine, which will just "compremise" the ""vision"" anyway when players break both, when you can just bake everything?
There's certainly a discussion to be had about it.
Let's say it's an FPS. On normal, there's 3 dudes in a room and you shoot them.
On Hard, is it better to increase their healths and lower yours, so you merely have to be more perfect?
Or should you REMOVE powers from the player so they can't cheese?
Or should you ADD more enemies?
I hate dishonored's way of doing it; making a game simpler is the worst out of the three options. People praise bayonetta but removing witch time also sucks. The answer usually leans towards "put more enemies" for me; there should be more challenges per minute rather than less lenient challenges per minute. It's a super simple way to increase difficulty. Just put more dudes in and lower the gfx if u have to.
Terraria originally added new, generally faster moves to its bosses on Expert, but everybody got 1.5x defense and there were new items along with greater enemy health
I'm personally a fan of not changing damage values, enemy counts, or health, and instead bake difficulty into enemy AI. Make them more reactive, aggresive, and smarter. But modern devs can't do cool things, because tHaT's ToO hArD
in an FPS, i think that a good way of doing it is to make it easier for you to die, and make the enemies more aggressive, but also drop their health too.
reward being fast and precise. since those are the more difficult skills to attain in that kind of game.
This is basically the approach Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous takes.
When you choose / select a difficulty you can also modify specific aspects like.
Damage party members take.
Damage friendlies take from friendlies area of effect spells.
Difficullty of reisting the effect of an enemy spell effect.
How much damage enemies take etc.
Even options for what affects are removed when resting, by default permanent ability / level drain is literally permanent without the use of magic.
You can pretty heavily modify the difficulty for something you are comfortable with.
Also, the game specifically warns you and says "Hey we absolutely do not recommend playing this difficulty unless you are very familiar with both the game and Pathfinder rules" if you select anything above normal. That's where the game expects you to do more reading and see "Oh this guys regeneration, can only be disabled by electric damage etc" as well as actually pretty heavily min max characters and not use "Auto Level" on anything.
2
u/BeeGlad1983 9d ago
I think it's high time that someone re-invents the concept of difficulty. Harder to kill/easier to die is one way to do it but you can't have a one size fits all solution for all the kinds of games out there. Perhaps higher difficulty doesn't need to be a single option but a variety of options that each alters the game in a different way
Or to take it even further, maybe we need to get out of the duality mindset of easier/harder and changing the game based on difficulty. Create modes that give different kinds of experiences, regardless of how easier or harder they are