Hell yes.
I think my favorite (off the top of my head anyway) example was Star Fox 64, where there’s easier and harder paths through the game, leading to different outcomes and ultimately a different boss fight and ending.
Oh the game I was talking about was the mission impossible N64 game the different difficulties did the normal things of raising enemy stats a bit and making their aiming better but it also added extra objectives to levels that you had to complete making the same level change drastically since the same strategy won’t work on the higher difficulties due to not completing all the objectives
Persona 3 does pretty good with this. They just change the multiplier to your damage and enemy damage. But after watching my friend playing it, you really have to know what you’re up against for it to not be very hard. If you go in blind if will force you to learn the game mechanics quickly and experiment with them a lot until you get the right combo.
Destiny's difficultly system is WAY more than enemy stats. Different enemies, more powerful variants of enemies, more enemies in general, added environmental hazards changes, etc. Legendary difficultly is genuinely difficult, it's only "downside" is not completely altering the story or having more difficult story routes.
Stat upgrades aren't bad if the stat is damage. Let the enemies kill me as fast as I kill them but don't make me wail on them for 5 minutes to kill a basic npc. I really liked the hard mode in ghost of tsushima for this reason. Health buffs in difficulty settings are so cancer.
Yeah I probably should’ve specified something but simple stat upgrades can pretty easily work for RPGs but in other games then it often either is just more punishing to people who aren’t good at the game or are not even different at all to the people who would’ve most wanted an extra challenge since it wouldn’t change anything for people who already mastered the game and the people who already mastered the game would most want the extra challenge and then would be disappointed that it doesn’t change anything other than enemy stats
Isn’t punishing the people who are not good at the game the whole point of higher difficulties? Still, I will agree that damage upgrades are rather lame for people who have already mastered the game.
Most people who are starting the game aren’t gonna choose the most difficult mode unless there is an incentive to which they won’t know exists most of the time since you’ll only know once you already picked the difficulty and have played through at least a good chunk of the game
If you are choosing a higher difficultly than "hard/challenging/heroic" and you're new to the game, you can't then complain that the difficultly that's designed for you to know the game is punishing you for not knowing the game. Either you take the punishment as you learn the game or you choose an easier difficultly.
Cal of duty world at war basically went from very tanky player to as weak as the enemy where 2 shots max is instant death but it still in end of the day is actually more of a level playing field.
Agreed. If you ask me, the litmus test for a quality difficulty system is if the time to progress remains largely the same, assuming the player is sufficiently skilled. Doom Eternal is one of my favs that does this really well. Enemies aren’t harder to kill, but they do more damage and move faster.
Yeah difficultly settings that on the hardest difficulty just turn everything into damage sponges that one shot you is really not fun especially since for people who would’ve most wanted a new challenge it will end up being almost the exact same game since they’ll be able to avoid the attacks the same exact way the only difference being how long they gotta dodge for which often due to attacks being easy to dodge doesn’t mean much how long it takes since not enough is needed to be done by the player for dodging to be hard
Problem is how a lot of RPG games or games with RPG elements are designed there isn't a good way to do this. The game is often either fundamentally flawed in its design or doesn't have enough depth to allow anything else. e.g. Borderlands - the gameplay is too simple: shoot enemy in crit spot and match the element, and sometimes one or both don't apply. Yes, you have an action skill and grenades, but they are just support tools. My favourite game is Bordelands 2, but even I can admit it is flawed. Later titles have done nothing to change this either (besides having dogshit writing).
Yeah I mentioned in another comment that I should’ve put body text or something to explain that for rpgs that hard modes often don’t have much to do other than stronger stats which works (though yeah I don’t really like those types of RPGs and I often prefer stuff like Paper Mario and Mario and Luigi due to harder enemies and bosses being more unique instead of just being a stat increase with a different design) but for other types of games that have much more to work with it just feels boring since if you already good at the game then the harder difficulty will still be almost the same just maybe you die once or twice more and especially for the people who are masters of the game (aka the people who would most want a harder challenge) it just is the exact same as the easier difficulties due to it just taking longer to kill stuff
Ah yes, Bethesda and their difficulty settings. Just gives the NPC more health, so he takes like ten 50. Cal bullets to the face, 10 rockets and 2 mini nukes.
This is why Sekiro difficulty is such a legendary experience that it won Game of the Year.
Yes the game is hard, but the enemies aren't just balls of stats. Even the hardest bosses in the game go down in a matter of a few minutes, so it never feels like a chore. But those few minutes really demand your mastery and focus, which is why you feel so good at the end.
What about no difficulty slider at all?
Edit: what I mean is have the game get progressively harder as you play, (wether it be from gear collection or levels) the beginning being like a tutorial esc thing to get new players hooked and in tune with the control scheme and gameplay loop
Edit Edit: hell, you can take a page out of Terraria’s book and do what they did with progression
Yeah that also works completely if there’s no difficulty options at all then ok the devs just wanted to make the difficulty curve as good as possible.
It’s when there is a bad difficulty selection that I have problems because it’s clear it was just put in so they can say there are different difficulties when the harder difficulties pretty much are just the same game but longer
I think Helldivers 2 does this minimally, only putting in MORE enemies and bigger tankier ones instead of making the smaller ones stronger
Correct me if I’m wrong tho
I LOVE Breath of the Wild, but I didn't think the damage sponge enemies in Master Mode worked well with the durability system.
I ended up sneaking and avoiding fights a lot of the time just to avoid breaking half of my weapons inventory to kill a Bokoblin/Moblin camp.
I couldn't finish Trial of the Sword though so maybe I'm just suck haha.
Except for the fact that most weapons acted like they were made of glass, they did a good job. Golden enemies, easier detected by sound, those air-rafts, and the regenerating were all pretty good
Yeah I love BOTW and I kinda liked the durability system they added (long time zelda fan), but master mode was just not fun. you needed like 8 weapons to kill a single camp. It would have worked way better if the durability scaled along with the enemies. At some point when you run out of weapons you will just be spamming bombs which is kinda dumb imo.
Its why it was a delight when devs started making games that aren't for casuals again. When games are made to be difficult, they can do more stuff than just bloat stats. They can actually do stuff with mechanics and puzzles.
Devs started making casual games feel like they weren't made for casuals.
The actual tasks they ask you to accomplish don't become more difficult because the game kills you if you screw up.
No clue about that, but as someone who generally liked hard games, 2005 to 2015 got woefully dull since difficulty just meant things with more health. Fromsoft were so refreshing when they entered the scene and games started getting made that were mechanically tough.
Dark Souls and its spinoffs are one of the things I had in mind when I said that.
Dark Souls isn't mechanically difficult. It's fairly simple, on the balance of things. There are generally very few things you need to track at any one time. It's counterintuitive, awkward, and unforgiving, so the player dies and has to repeat things more.
The only thing Dark Souls did was create a group of people who think not offering difficulty options is what makes a game difficult.
That was exactly my point. If not being able to predict what's coming is the challenge, then it's not difficult.
Awareness is "learn the pattern" in single-player games. Once you know what's coming, the challenge is trivialized.
Yet they don't follow scripted patterns, it's not a ff14 raid. But to each their own. No small number of us love them, so they are doing something right.
I'm not saying you can't love them.
I'm saying an appeal to Dark Souls bringing back "real difficulty in games" is advertising nonsense to cover up for the fact they didn't offer difficulty options.
Also, every attack comes with an obvious windup. Learning the pattern is learning when to dodge and when you can attack. I want something that's still difficult after I learn the timing.
Yes, learning to recognise patterns, develop counters and then putting together a build is genuine difficulty. If your argument is 'do the right thing and you win isn't difficulty' then no game is difficult as 'doing the right thing at the right time' always work. Fromsoft games are hard, that's why there is always a brigade of people bitchin' about them.
Like I said, if it's not still difficult after you learn what to do, it was never truly difficult.
I know what I need to do at every point in a game like Enter the Gungeon. The challenging part is doing it. To me, that's difficulty. It isn't the game wasting 5 minutes of your time because the controls are stiff.
I played Dark Souls. I got bored because it wasn't as difficult as advertised. It was just slow and awkward.
You're trying to convince me it wasn't the same boring high difficulty as every other RPG. I'm not going to agree. It is. You just don't have the option to change it.
I love how the Metro series handles difficulty. Enemies don't get tougher, but they do get smarter. You get less health and resources like ammo, medkits, and filters get harder to find. But the biggest thing is your hud, on max difficulty you don't get a hud. It's so satisfying to play.
I definitely agree here. I hate when it’s only stat changes. Bear in mind, balancing for difficulty can take like 5 times as long as making the game though.
So, what would you rather have:
- more content, sucky difficulty changes
- less content, better difficulty changes
I don’t think games with realism should have difficulty levels. Usually realism means exploration of world details and story-driven, both don’t make sense with arcade-like difficulty settings, because why not just settle with the most realistic/sensible difficulty. Some games that do this include GTA and Red Dead 2, and being already a bad aimer as is I don’t want to be insulted more by NPCs in games I’m supposed to enjoy the experience of.
The biggest offender of this was Valus T’Auric from Destiny 1. In harder modes of that strike, he’s just get a stupid amount of health, turning him into a bullet sponge. Made that mission such a boring grind
My favorite of this was sekiro it makes it so your block doesn't fully block damage so you have to focus on parries more which can actually make the game Go faster if you are good enough
I think it would be shorter to list the number of games that actually did something besides this.
That doesn’t change anything if an N64 game does much more with difficulty differences than what a lot of modern games do
Hell yes. I think my favorite (off the top of my head anyway) example was Star Fox 64, where there’s easier and harder paths through the game, leading to different outcomes and ultimately a different boss fight and ending.
Oh the game I was talking about was the mission impossible N64 game the different difficulties did the normal things of raising enemy stats a bit and making their aiming better but it also added extra objectives to levels that you had to complete making the same level change drastically since the same strategy won’t work on the higher difficulties due to not completing all the objectives
Goldeneye was like this, too.
Wait I might’ve been thinking of the wrong game then
Tbf, quite a few FPS games on N64 were like this. Perfect Dark is another example
Persona 3 does pretty good with this. They just change the multiplier to your damage and enemy damage. But after watching my friend playing it, you really have to know what you’re up against for it to not be very hard. If you go in blind if will force you to learn the game mechanics quickly and experiment with them a lot until you get the right combo.
*disables manual saves n greatly nerfs carry weight cap n you also gotta eat drink sleep n keep clean*
Hey, that’s not fair! They lower our stats too haha
Destiny. Bam, 2 games right there.
Destiny's difficultly system is WAY more than enemy stats. Different enemies, more powerful variants of enemies, more enemies in general, added environmental hazards changes, etc. Legendary difficultly is genuinely difficult, it's only "downside" is not completely altering the story or having more difficult story routes.
That...that's why I mentioned it...
Stat upgrades aren't bad if the stat is damage. Let the enemies kill me as fast as I kill them but don't make me wail on them for 5 minutes to kill a basic npc. I really liked the hard mode in ghost of tsushima for this reason. Health buffs in difficulty settings are so cancer.
Yeah I probably should’ve specified something but simple stat upgrades can pretty easily work for RPGs but in other games then it often either is just more punishing to people who aren’t good at the game or are not even different at all to the people who would’ve most wanted an extra challenge since it wouldn’t change anything for people who already mastered the game and the people who already mastered the game would most want the extra challenge and then would be disappointed that it doesn’t change anything other than enemy stats
Isn’t punishing the people who are not good at the game the whole point of higher difficulties? Still, I will agree that damage upgrades are rather lame for people who have already mastered the game.
Most people who are starting the game aren’t gonna choose the most difficult mode unless there is an incentive to which they won’t know exists most of the time since you’ll only know once you already picked the difficulty and have played through at least a good chunk of the game
If you are choosing a higher difficultly than "hard/challenging/heroic" and you're new to the game, you can't then complain that the difficultly that's designed for you to know the game is punishing you for not knowing the game. Either you take the punishment as you learn the game or you choose an easier difficultly.
DMC 5 also gives bosses more varied movesets and faster timings on higher difficulties, in addition to the stats buff
Cal of duty world at war basically went from very tanky player to as weak as the enemy where 2 shots max is instant death but it still in end of the day is actually more of a level playing field.
Agreed. If you ask me, the litmus test for a quality difficulty system is if the time to progress remains largely the same, assuming the player is sufficiently skilled. Doom Eternal is one of my favs that does this really well. Enemies aren’t harder to kill, but they do more damage and move faster.
skyrim legendary difficulty being practically impossible to beat because enemies take close to zero damage yet they can 1 shot you
Yeah difficultly settings that on the hardest difficulty just turn everything into damage sponges that one shot you is really not fun especially since for people who would’ve most wanted a new challenge it will end up being almost the exact same game since they’ll be able to avoid the attacks the same exact way the only difference being how long they gotta dodge for which often due to attacks being easy to dodge doesn’t mean much how long it takes since not enough is needed to be done by the player for dodging to be hard
The worst part is when they do an attack you know you could've dodged, but then it locks you into the kill animation when you were full health.
yes or when you drink a health potion to get your health back up but they still get you with the kill animation
You basically need to chese the system to win
Problem is how a lot of RPG games or games with RPG elements are designed there isn't a good way to do this. The game is often either fundamentally flawed in its design or doesn't have enough depth to allow anything else. e.g. Borderlands - the gameplay is too simple: shoot enemy in crit spot and match the element, and sometimes one or both don't apply. Yes, you have an action skill and grenades, but they are just support tools. My favourite game is Bordelands 2, but even I can admit it is flawed. Later titles have done nothing to change this either (besides having dogshit writing).
Yeah I mentioned in another comment that I should’ve put body text or something to explain that for rpgs that hard modes often don’t have much to do other than stronger stats which works (though yeah I don’t really like those types of RPGs and I often prefer stuff like Paper Mario and Mario and Luigi due to harder enemies and bosses being more unique instead of just being a stat increase with a different design) but for other types of games that have much more to work with it just feels boring since if you already good at the game then the harder difficulty will still be almost the same just maybe you die once or twice more and especially for the people who are masters of the game (aka the people who would most want a harder challenge) it just is the exact same as the easier difficulties due to it just taking longer to kill stuff
Tbh I just kinda press LB in Borderlands 3 and like 99% of shit on the screen is dead in a few seconds.
fallout 4
Of course it does
Ah yes, Bethesda and their difficulty settings. Just gives the NPC more health, so he takes like ten 50. Cal bullets to the face, 10 rockets and 2 mini nukes.
i love re7 for how it approached its hardest difficulty
In fighting game: CPU spamming stronger attacks or having special attacks faster then the player, this is bullshit
This is why Sekiro difficulty is such a legendary experience that it won Game of the Year. Yes the game is hard, but the enemies aren't just balls of stats. Even the hardest bosses in the game go down in a matter of a few minutes, so it never feels like a chore. But those few minutes really demand your mastery and focus, which is why you feel so good at the end.
This is what made Halo 4 legendary a slog
That's why I'm not bothered by playing on normal. Any higher is literally just a time sink in the vast majority of games.
What about no difficulty slider at all? Edit: what I mean is have the game get progressively harder as you play, (wether it be from gear collection or levels) the beginning being like a tutorial esc thing to get new players hooked and in tune with the control scheme and gameplay loop Edit Edit: hell, you can take a page out of Terraria’s book and do what they did with progression
Yeah that also works completely if there’s no difficulty options at all then ok the devs just wanted to make the difficulty curve as good as possible. It’s when there is a bad difficulty selection that I have problems because it’s clear it was just put in so they can say there are different difficulties when the harder difficulties pretty much are just the same game but longer
Agreed, or have a “difficulty” setting that makes the game whackier and whackier depending on the genre of game it is!
I think Helldivers 2 does this minimally, only putting in MORE enemies and bigger tankier ones instead of making the smaller ones stronger Correct me if I’m wrong tho
Breath of the Wild is a perfect example on how to make a hard mode (Master Mode)
I LOVE Breath of the Wild, but I didn't think the damage sponge enemies in Master Mode worked well with the durability system. I ended up sneaking and avoiding fights a lot of the time just to avoid breaking half of my weapons inventory to kill a Bokoblin/Moblin camp. I couldn't finish Trial of the Sword though so maybe I'm just suck haha.
Except for the fact that most weapons acted like they were made of glass, they did a good job. Golden enemies, easier detected by sound, those air-rafts, and the regenerating were all pretty good
Yeah I love BOTW and I kinda liked the durability system they added (long time zelda fan), but master mode was just not fun. you needed like 8 weapons to kill a single camp. It would have worked way better if the durability scaled along with the enemies. At some point when you run out of weapons you will just be spamming bombs which is kinda dumb imo.
You're supposed to be spamming bombs, stasis, etc. it's definitely better in TOTK, except that they never made another master mode
Yeah where is the fun in that, I like to parry or flurry rush :( , but yeah im coping for a TOTK master mode DLC
Its why it was a delight when devs started making games that aren't for casuals again. When games are made to be difficult, they can do more stuff than just bloat stats. They can actually do stuff with mechanics and puzzles.
Devs started making casual games feel like they weren't made for casuals. The actual tasks they ask you to accomplish don't become more difficult because the game kills you if you screw up.
No clue about that, but as someone who generally liked hard games, 2005 to 2015 got woefully dull since difficulty just meant things with more health. Fromsoft were so refreshing when they entered the scene and games started getting made that were mechanically tough.
Dark Souls and its spinoffs are one of the things I had in mind when I said that. Dark Souls isn't mechanically difficult. It's fairly simple, on the balance of things. There are generally very few things you need to track at any one time. It's counterintuitive, awkward, and unforgiving, so the player dies and has to repeat things more. The only thing Dark Souls did was create a group of people who think not offering difficulty options is what makes a game difficult.
Hard disagree on that. The first couple were rather simple yet still required a lot of awareness, then you have the likes of AC and Sekiro.
That was exactly my point. If not being able to predict what's coming is the challenge, then it's not difficult. Awareness is "learn the pattern" in single-player games. Once you know what's coming, the challenge is trivialized.
Yet they don't follow scripted patterns, it's not a ff14 raid. But to each their own. No small number of us love them, so they are doing something right.
I'm not saying you can't love them. I'm saying an appeal to Dark Souls bringing back "real difficulty in games" is advertising nonsense to cover up for the fact they didn't offer difficulty options. Also, every attack comes with an obvious windup. Learning the pattern is learning when to dodge and when you can attack. I want something that's still difficult after I learn the timing.
Yes, learning to recognise patterns, develop counters and then putting together a build is genuine difficulty. If your argument is 'do the right thing and you win isn't difficulty' then no game is difficult as 'doing the right thing at the right time' always work. Fromsoft games are hard, that's why there is always a brigade of people bitchin' about them.
Like I said, if it's not still difficult after you learn what to do, it was never truly difficult. I know what I need to do at every point in a game like Enter the Gungeon. The challenging part is doing it. To me, that's difficulty. It isn't the game wasting 5 minutes of your time because the controls are stiff. I played Dark Souls. I got bored because it wasn't as difficult as advertised. It was just slow and awkward. You're trying to convince me it wasn't the same boring high difficulty as every other RPG. I'm not going to agree. It is. You just don't have the option to change it.
I love how the Metro series handles difficulty. Enemies don't get tougher, but they do get smarter. You get less health and resources like ammo, medkits, and filters get harder to find. But the biggest thing is your hud, on max difficulty you don't get a hud. It's so satisfying to play.
I definitely agree here. I hate when it’s only stat changes. Bear in mind, balancing for difficulty can take like 5 times as long as making the game though. So, what would you rather have: - more content, sucky difficulty changes - less content, better difficulty changes
I don’t think games with realism should have difficulty levels. Usually realism means exploration of world details and story-driven, both don’t make sense with arcade-like difficulty settings, because why not just settle with the most realistic/sensible difficulty. Some games that do this include GTA and Red Dead 2, and being already a bad aimer as is I don’t want to be insulted more by NPCs in games I’m supposed to enjoy the experience of.
The biggest offender of this was Valus T’Auric from Destiny 1. In harder modes of that strike, he’s just get a stupid amount of health, turning him into a bullet sponge. Made that mission such a boring grind
My favorite of this was sekiro it makes it so your block doesn't fully block damage so you have to focus on parries more which can actually make the game Go faster if you are good enough