Comment on Three developers' different philosophies on difficulty for their games
vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works 7 hours agoPersonally I oppose difficulty sliders because I think they are overly broad and stupid, looking at you Bethesda and your lowsy ass health bar padding. Give me more zomboid and owlcat style difficulty setting where I can customize them in all minutiae.
But no seriously fuck difficulty sliders cause 9/10 they do overly broad gameplay things that some of which I may not want. This is coming from a guy who beat Boltgun on its hardest difficulty with the clown vomit filter so it’s not like I can’t enjoy ulta hard difficulty but what some consider ultra hard I may consider annoying as fuck see yet again Bethesda health bar padding. I do like NV 4s hardcore/survival mode though.
starman2112@sh.itjust.works 6 hours ago
I think Mortal Kombat does it best. When you die to a boss, that boss becomes ever so slightly less difficult. Unnoticeably so at first, but as you die more and more and more, they get slower and slower and slower
vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works 1 hour ago
Honestly adaptive difficulty has basically the inverse issue of fucking with shit when I don’t want it. But there is a subtype of it that I do like, that being thingd like the narrative AI in the Dead Space remake which can do really neat shit to fuck with the player and keep them on their toes. Though for me it just made everything foggy especially that one level where it’s just a bunch of cat walks which I’m pretty sure is already a low light area, seriously I couldn’t see shit and kept getting lost in what amounted to a five foot area.
But yeah doing that for a skilled based game like Mortal Kombat seems… cheap. Like maybe I’m wrong but I’m pretty sure there is a difficulty setting in MK which if that is the case that means the game decides to stop the player of their agency and accomplishment rather than let them learn the boss. Not to say you can’t do adaptive difficulty but as a general rule there’s a good reason it’s so rare, sometimes it’s just fine but I rarely see it.
The game taking into account the players actions and effecting the game though to counter that is fun IMO. Like how high casualty runs in Dishonored make the game noticable harder since difficulty only really effects health, enemy, numbers, and detection rate also it serves the narrative of the story well. Also Adam Smasher tayloring his gear to counter the player which can be subverted to catch him off guard rewarding the player for knowing the world. Or the aformentioned Dead Space narrative AI which apparently decided I’m gonna play Dead Space after the crew of the USG Ishimura had a ship wide Silent Hill themed party.