Turn up difficulty

I'm a games journalist by the way, I should know.

Most people expect the game to actually be harder.
Not the exact same difficulty but the Lvl 1 fart goblin kills you in one hit with his basic attack

SHAMEFUR DISPRAY

OP didn't say that.
Also that sounds objectively harder to me.

Always just start on the highest difficulty then this isn't an issue. Only exception is games like Nier Automata where the highest diff is 1 shot kill the whole game no matter what.

When you realize this was made by bike cuck

Only exception is games like Nier Automata where the highest diff is 1 shot kill the whole game no matter what.
That sounds very funny. How would you even beat it.

inflated hp is the definition of artificial difficulty. it is not harder, it just seems harder because it takes longer.

Higher difficulty does more damage and the AI is much smarter. No health increase.

You don't get a damage decrease but are a glass canon.

Strength of character means playing terrible videogames and begging for people to think you're cool online

turn up difficulty

get shit pushed in

learn the game mechanics better

learn the enemies better

triumph over a fight that looked impossible on the first try

Yep that's some good stuff.

You can call it lazy and I can agree with that, but taking more time to defeat enemies does make the game more difficult since you are wasting more resources and might be exposed to higher risk.

In games where resource management is a major factor, maybe, but otherwise no.

Finish game on hard

14% trophy completion

Going to need you to collect all figurines, lore books, tokens, blueprints, kill x enemy y times with z weapon and play the game 2 more time through to max out all your xp bars ok

I just don't understand why people don't finish games

tell people I beat a game with the difficulty turned up

I didn't

you are wasting more resources

This is not "more difficult".
If I made pic related, and to clarify the bar does literally fucking nothing
It would not make the game more difficult
It just makes it take 10 times as long to do.

Dodge key is omnipotent in that game it has a huge window instant start up leads into a counter hit to start combos and can be chained infinitely. Only downside is it has some ending lag where you can be hit if you're mashing too much. It's very doable same as 1 hp runs on KH2 and Dante must die on DMC

They obviously reinforced them from outside to make sure this horrible shapeless fleshy abomination will never get out of its holding cell ever again.

It goes without saying that the resources have to matter somehow.
But I can also make an example with enemy groups, they become more threatening if you cannot quickly reduce their numbers.

they become more threatening if

They do not.
It's POSSIBLE by spending 10 times as long fighting the same group of enemies you could fuck up once and the game can flash a game over screen at you.
But that doesn't mean the difficulty of fighting the enemies changed at all.

But it did, you were exposed to the entire group for longer, forcing a more careful approach

But it was more difficult because it just was

No

higher difficulty gives enemies new attacks and increases enemy count

hnnnnng

Going online in a fighting game after spending five hours in training mode

Depends on the game. Inflating HP values can absolutely be a valid way of increasing difficulty. If that goblin has a chance to actually kill you if you mess up enough then giving it more HP means that you can't just brute force your way through the game knowing that you'll win the DPS race, and actually have to avoid taking damage.
DMC 1 is a good example of this where normal difficulty isn't super easy but you don't have to learn the bosses that well. Bump up the difficulty to the harder options and you actually have to learn how to deal with everything they can do because there's no way you're killing them before they kill you if you're not properly dodging.

No one said this. Maybe people just like a challenge? Retard

But it wasn't more difficult because it wasn't

More overlapping attacks = more chance to receive damage
Granted it's very lazy compared to change up enemy formations, giving them new attacks, make them more aggressive etc. but it's not literally nothing.

you can't just brute force your way through the game

Definitionally turning everything into a fat fucking wall of HP MEANS you are making the entire game something to brute force through.

It's barely more artificial than requiring faster reaction times. Both are just tweaking a value, the difference is that excessive hp doesn't turn the game straight unplayable at certain point.

forcing the player to play more carefully does not necessarily make the game harder. Let's say that on normal a goblin has 100 health and on hard it has 200. I have a fast attack that does 50 damage and a heavy attack that does 100. On normal, I block the goblin's swing and flatten him with a heavy attack, I win. On hard, this wouldn't kill it and it would stab me during the recovery, so instead I have to block, poke, block, poke, block, poke, block, poke. This isn't harder to do: the difficulty of blocking an attack is the same. It just takes longer and is less satisfying.

No one said the HP of everything needs to be increased so much as to make everything a slog. You're being silly.
If increasing enemy HP can never improve the game, then surely everything should die in one hit, right? And If having to actually engage with the enemies to the point where they have a chance to fight back makes the game boring, then it sounds like you shouldn't be playing that game to begin with. Maybe go play a musou game.

What if we're talking about a good game where fights can be more dynamic and execution is possible to fuck up instead of a shitty game that you made up?

die a couple times in a game

"would you like to select an easier difficulty that better suits your clueless retardation?"

No matter how you design the game, increasing the amount of hp that an enemy has is not going to change the difficulty of defending yourself against its attacks or the difficulty of dealing damage to it.

I am going to use yes man kerblam and DT explosion whenever i feel i want to and there is nothing these niggers can do about it.
I dont even need to, i just want to sometimes, and i do.
Cope, seethe, sweat, faggots. Im having fun here.

Only strictly in the context of 1v1 fights, and even that is not entirely true because you can kill some enemies before they can fight back unless their HP is turned up.

How about

game just lowers the difficulty without telling you

You can say it magically stops being the same difficulty if more than one enemy is there, but fact of the matter is if they do literally the exact same shit it's not more difficult beyond there being more enemies there which would apply regardless of difficulty setting.

It's worse when the conversation for a game is dominated by retards using cheats and popular 'qol' mods from the workshop. Taints the discussion far more

RE4.

This doesn't happen.

Remove "never again." There, improved.

I hate this honestly. Robs all the satisfaction of eventually winning.
Only really works in the context of arcade games where you are trying to clear everything with limited lives(assuming 1cc attempt or just not wanting to insert more coin)

It's only magical to you because you are fucking retarded.
Whether you are able to kill enemies in 2 or 4 hits changes a lot if the screen is filled with enemies that were previously easy to defeat before too many attacks start overlapping, but now you have to deal with that instead.

Wow, just like real life!

heartbreak

career failure

financial risk

I've remained miserable, still live with my parents, and am convinced there's nothing left to live for.

Do devs even test their games on hard? Almost every game on hard has some random difficulty spike when you least expect it

Bocchi?

Some do, some add harder modes as an afterthought and do very minimal testing just to make sure it's "beatable".

It's even worse when it happens because of a janky platforming section, or similar that isn't affected by the difficulty settings.

turn difficulty up

keep turning it up

spend weeks on the same game in the hardest difficulty dying over and over

handicap myself to make it even harder

It's only magical to you because you are fucking retarded.

you are fucking retarded

The guy claiming that a group of enemies magically becomes way more dangerous because they take 10x as many hits to defeat but behave literally identically

It would not make the game more difficult

If the goblin had a chance to kill you then yes it would make the game more difficult. Whether it's good game design is another question. You need to ask how much each hit should do. If the enemy has 100 health then -1HP is fucking stupid, but if it's a boss and in has 30 health then -10 health won't feel like any kind of real challenge or eventful combat.

That's correct though, do you even play vidya?
The only way an enemy group wouldn't become more dangerous by having more health is if they can't hit you at all either way.

That's correct though, do you even play vidya?

Yes, which is why I'm calling this shit retarded.

You keep stating that, but you didn't explain why it's retarded.

normal mode

4 enemies appear

you can kill 2 of them instantly

only the other 2 get an attack in, you dodge, and then win the fight

hard mode

4 enemies appear

you can't kill anything instantly

have to avoid a bigger overlap of attacks, which means squeezing less hits in against more resilient enemies, which means more attacks to dodge

>game just lowers the difficulty without telling you

I hate this shit if I wanna bang my head against a wall like a retard let me. Something like Left 4 Dead"s Director is one thing since it's multiplayer and designed to give peaks and valleys to shake up gameplay but in a single player game I don't want that adaptive difficulty nonsense. Even more annoying is if the game sees you doing good and arbitrarily scales things up to be harder, encouraging you to purposefully sandbag a little, fuck off man I don't want skill based matchmaking in a single player game

i dont consider it difficult if it's just numbers up, just tedious. annoying even. it's just an endurance test and not skill/dexterity

YOU'RE NOT ALEXANDER

Start on hard

If game is too difficult, go down to normal

If game is too easy, go up to very hard

Fun is what matters the most and there is no shame in playing on normal if the game is more enjoyable to me like that. Only easy is off limit because that's for casuals. I fucking hate easy.

hard is too hard

go up to very hard

Only game I can think of where going up in difficulty makes it easier is going from ascension 0 to ascension 1 in slay the spire, and it only gets way harder from there.

difficulty choice isn't difficulty choice, its disguised progression

sometimes lower level difficulties can be harder than the highest difficulty because it limits your selection of equipment

game has a trial-by-fire level before you get to select the difficulty

you have to make it to the very end without dying to unlock the hardest difficulty

hard difficulty just makes fights way longer without changing anything

normal mode is too easy

easy mode is effectively impossible to lose

beginner mode is game journo mode aka LITERALLY impossible to lose

hard mode just grossly inflates enemy HP and drastically lowers your damage, and nothing else

hardest difficulty is somehow the easiest of easiest difficulties out of the list because you can 1-2 shot everything in your path and get through the game like 400% faster compared to even journo mode

name the fucking games

meh, but I like when the lower difficulties are designed to teach you how to play on the higher difficulties

That's correct. Your opinion on the subject means more when you have more knowledge on it, which you will by necessity if you get good at playing on a harder difficulty compared to someone who only plays on normal. As the normal player, you should learn that it's best to shut the fuck up and actually learn something when the better players are talking.

Most games are not balanced at all at higher difficulties so its just not fun to play at all.

OOoOoOOoooo enemies are bullet sponges wow such skill!

start sound voltex

VERY EASY MODE

feels like even an octogenarian amputee can perfect a track at this difficulty

pick same track in EASY mode

feels like you already need to be an octopus OD'ing on caffeine to even get a passable score

yeah
i'll just never play again, thanks

This one's pretty funny. The lead designer basically said "we balanced this difficulty like shit, so we wanted to discourage players from picking it from the outset with one-shots".

hardest difficulty is somehow the easiest of easiest difficulties

I cant think of any game like that to be honest. Maybe something with amazing loot drops at higher difficulties that let you obtain items that break the game.

here's a hint: the entire SMT catalogue

mod that adds tons of new stuff but also makes the game INSANE HARD NOT FOR CASULS

get shit pushed in so hard to the point it's not even fun

edit the config files to make it fun again

nothing personnel modder

What I hated the most back in the day is playing through Arkham series, and on normal the game was fairly easy, and then the Game+ turned into "punch a thug 20 times to beat him up and you die in 4 hits". Its like fuck off. That is just tedious.

Nobody claimed you're a better person for playing on higher difficulty. Thats a strawman for coping with the fact that you don't like challenge.

Playing on higher difficulty DOES mean you're more skilled at the vidya though which is impressive to many people. To many, higher skill/talent does equate to being a "Better" person.

That's literally none of them. This is Persona 5 though, minus the "grossly inflates" part. Shit's easy to kill on any difficulty outside of a couple of fights.

hardest difficulty is somehow the easiest.

Kingdom hearts 2 Critical mode is the first thing that comes to mind.
You get way too many tools to avoid damage in that game. Dodge, parry, double jump and of course the reflect spell.
Only real difficulty i really had were the endgame super bosses.

ghost of sushi and shadow of war

you have more knowledge

You have the same knowledge, because the only thing that changed was hp pools and damage output

I have more knowledge because I play slop games

Which at a bare minimum would grant you more playtime which is a vector for being better at the game. Boss attack hard to dodge if you see it 5 times. Easy if you see it 50. Simple words so you can understand them.

If you're implication is that it's only slop games that do that, than the post that was being replied to was, in fact, yes bragging about having knowledge because he plays slop games

the only thing that comes close to that is the HEAVEN OR HELL difficulty in DMC games

rts

turning the difficulty up only makes AI spam more high tier units at you but doesnt actually make it any better

it's so tiresome

Metal Gear Rising, Revengence difficulty unironically lol

thread proceeded exactly as stated

Fifth Post Best Post

play game

turn up difficulty

take hours to level up my character until im powerful enough to deal with the difficulty without resorting to blind luck and borderline exploits

enjoy

replay game

keep the difficulty at normal

enjoy

start game for the first time in the hardest difficulty

its too easy to the point of simply being boring

is there a worse feeling than this?

medium: too easy

hard: too hard

difficulty choice isn't difficulty choice, its disguised progression

I actually prefer this. Difficulty settings should either be this, or have different levels, events, and mechanics. Difficulty settings that are just damage/healing/other value changes shouldn't exist and "normal" should just be the only one if that's all they can do with them.

sometimes lower level difficulties can be harder than the highest difficulty because it limits your selection of equipment

This is where EDF fucks up. Objectively a flaw in their system.

Mushihimesama is not even close to a bad game
Its better than any jeetslop you play

suck at games despite playing them for decades

got stuck on the king/queen puzzle room in re2 remake for 30 minutes, had to reload my save because I thought I broke something

needed a guide for almost the entire second half of portal 2

needed a guide for almost every puzzle in uncharted 2

never heard about the knuckles breather thing in sonic adventure 2 so I got stuck on cannons core and just played all the other levels, leaving that one unfinished for years

needed a guide for the maze in God of War 3, as well as for many puzzles in 2018 and Ragnarok

needed a guide for a large portion of shrines in breath of the wild

can't aim or parry to save my life, reflexs are shit

switch to easy for any part/boss that beats me more than once, use cheats/hacks if there is no difficulty setting

use youtube videos to solve any puzzle that stops me for more than 30 seconds because getting stuck pisses me off

abuse quick save/load for retro games and stealth games

only play big budget mainstream games that fit my comfort zone

only souls like i ever liked was jedi fallen order/survivor because it had a map and i could play on easy because i got my ass kicked on normal

I only like to win and feel good because life is awful and I use games to escape. I dont care about challenge all that much.

Yes man keblam is perfectly balanced. Its CHAIN YANKER thats unreasonably overpowered
Fuckin CHAIN YANKER

Touhou 12 exactly

Usually all the hate i see is on YMK because its a move specifically made to get lots of tension.
Ive never seen people bitch about the Yanker though

If you know, you know

There does not exist a difficult game.

Ok post your no-hit touhou gameplay all games

Turn up difficulty

No game mechanics change

Resources become restricted

Basic gameplay loop becomes less fun

Imma just chill in green zone thanks

Play a real shmup