The best way to adjust difficulty in games is from a comprehensive perspective. Don't make the AI's weapons inflict seventeen times the damage whilst simultaneously dropping the player's damage output to practically zero. Your A.I. will remain just as dumb, and it will cause the player little more than pure frustration. Call of Duty: World at War is a prime example of this. I played through the entire game on veteran, from end to end, and nine times out of ten I died because the A.I. camped the same location and played deadly baseball with an inexhaustible supply of grenades. Upon completing the entire game on veteran, I went through one of the more sticky missions on regular, and found that the A.I. did little more than it did in veteran, save the fact that it ran out of grenades from time to time and became surprisingly more prone to randomly (and completely inorganically) running into my cone of fire.
And when I did die from gunfire on veteran, it was either due to a German or Japanese soldier sitting behind a wall, somehow blasting me with his K98/Arisaka at an angle of nearly ninety degrees. I once used a sniper rifle to carefully observe what most would understand to be your average COD engagement. One of my dudes ran into an abandoned apartment and took cover behind an overturned desk. Literally ten inches away from him, behind ANOTHER overturned desk, sat a German soldier with a K98. So my Soviet comrade removes a grenade from his hammerspace, and flings it over the desk, and squarely out the door behind the German. The grenade exploded in the bottom of some nameless courtyard. The Kraut does much the same, flinging his grenade out a hole in the wall, but the grenade lands next to an explosive barrel behind which (again, inexplicably) another Soviet soldier took cover. He got a kill, I guess, but that's not the point here. For FIVE MINUTES they threw grenades at each other, to the bellows of "GRANATE" and "GRANATA" respectively, reducing the surrounding battlefield to an ashen flat riddled with craters. And then the shooting began. The muzzles of both their weapons were pointed at anything but each other, and both of them fired only once, their first shot killing the other outright. I must've surely broken a rib laughing. This was the first sign that something was very much wrong with the A.I. on veteran.
My hypothesis was proven correct a mere hour later in the tunnels of the Berlin subway. So I'm camping behind a table in prone, waiting to mop up the krauts on the other side of the platform, when suddenly a grenade lands right next to me. Of course, I jump out of cover like a bat out of hell and make for the nearest safe space. In the process, I took at least two MP-40 bullets in the back, and was at this point very close to death. Seeing that the only logical place where I could escape the fire was a foreman's office, I sprinted in and took stood in the middle of the room for a minute, looking for potential threats and found some nameless allied SMG dude sitting in the corner, carefully examining the concrete wall of the other platform. My health regenerated and I inched my way forward, towards the window. Suddenly, out of fucking nowhere, I eat a Kar 98 bullet, which drained half of my health at once. Instantly I turn towards the other platform, and as I turn, I see that my allied SMG dudebro got his head blown off. Platform opposite us is clear. No second shot ever came. Deciding that there was probably a kraut in the hall behind the office, I move towards the steel door and find the hallway behind it empty. The hallway it connects to is host to a single kraut with a Kar 98, who, and now this is a mere theory, shot my allied SMG gunner in the head through a bare minimum of THREE WALLS, one table, and my chest. That's not difficulty. That's outright aimbotting.
Therein lies the problem. Games that have difficulty settings that affect A.I. behaviour AND damage, rather than just the latter, perform far better in terms of tension and enjoyability. Because getting owned by some moron camping on a hill three miles away just because he has two sniper scopes in his eyesockets and a goddamn FLIR system on his head is probably the least enjoyable game mechanic any dev could implement. The very fact that it was implemented speaks of only one thing: laziness. A.I. is not that hard to program if you've got a whole studio behind you. Seriously. Basic A.I. that improves its own strategy in a proportional manner to the difficulty setting is not that hard, ESPECIALLY when you're working for someone like Treyarch.
After having spent 12 hours in World at War on veteran, I have but one question for you, Treyarch devs: who hurt you?
/rant
And when I did die from gunfire on veteran, it was either due to a German or Japanese soldier sitting behind a wall, somehow blasting me with his K98/Arisaka at an angle of nearly ninety degrees. I once used a sniper rifle to carefully observe what most would understand to be your average COD engagement. One of my dudes ran into an abandoned apartment and took cover behind an overturned desk. Literally ten inches away from him, behind ANOTHER overturned desk, sat a German soldier with a K98. So my Soviet comrade removes a grenade from his hammerspace, and flings it over the desk, and squarely out the door behind the German. The grenade exploded in the bottom of some nameless courtyard. The Kraut does much the same, flinging his grenade out a hole in the wall, but the grenade lands next to an explosive barrel behind which (again, inexplicably) another Soviet soldier took cover. He got a kill, I guess, but that's not the point here. For FIVE MINUTES they threw grenades at each other, to the bellows of "GRANATE" and "GRANATA" respectively, reducing the surrounding battlefield to an ashen flat riddled with craters. And then the shooting began. The muzzles of both their weapons were pointed at anything but each other, and both of them fired only once, their first shot killing the other outright. I must've surely broken a rib laughing. This was the first sign that something was very much wrong with the A.I. on veteran.
My hypothesis was proven correct a mere hour later in the tunnels of the Berlin subway. So I'm camping behind a table in prone, waiting to mop up the krauts on the other side of the platform, when suddenly a grenade lands right next to me. Of course, I jump out of cover like a bat out of hell and make for the nearest safe space. In the process, I took at least two MP-40 bullets in the back, and was at this point very close to death. Seeing that the only logical place where I could escape the fire was a foreman's office, I sprinted in and took stood in the middle of the room for a minute, looking for potential threats and found some nameless allied SMG dude sitting in the corner, carefully examining the concrete wall of the other platform. My health regenerated and I inched my way forward, towards the window. Suddenly, out of fucking nowhere, I eat a Kar 98 bullet, which drained half of my health at once. Instantly I turn towards the other platform, and as I turn, I see that my allied SMG dudebro got his head blown off. Platform opposite us is clear. No second shot ever came. Deciding that there was probably a kraut in the hall behind the office, I move towards the steel door and find the hallway behind it empty. The hallway it connects to is host to a single kraut with a Kar 98, who, and now this is a mere theory, shot my allied SMG gunner in the head through a bare minimum of THREE WALLS, one table, and my chest. That's not difficulty. That's outright aimbotting.
Therein lies the problem. Games that have difficulty settings that affect A.I. behaviour AND damage, rather than just the latter, perform far better in terms of tension and enjoyability. Because getting owned by some moron camping on a hill three miles away just because he has two sniper scopes in his eyesockets and a goddamn FLIR system on his head is probably the least enjoyable game mechanic any dev could implement. The very fact that it was implemented speaks of only one thing: laziness. A.I. is not that hard to program if you've got a whole studio behind you. Seriously. Basic A.I. that improves its own strategy in a proportional manner to the difficulty setting is not that hard, ESPECIALLY when you're working for someone like Treyarch.
After having spent 12 hours in World at War on veteran, I have but one question for you, Treyarch devs: who hurt you?
/rant