Difficulty without bullet sponges?

[2fish]

Often difficulty works with creating tension. So what is your preferred method of upping difficulty or tension?

Personally I prefer limited ammo and health with well done weapon degradation. I find that for me that level of management forces me to play smarter rather than being able to force my way through it.

 

[Paulo Belato]

As I usually play strategy games, a higher difficulty means a brighter enemy A.I. Usually games will just outright give bonus resources to the A.I. the higher the difficulty is, which equals to a bullet sponge on shooters. But better games will have enemies that react better to the player, responding with better strategies.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Smarter enemies that use cover, flank me, dodge around, and work as a coordinated team to try to kill me, rather than just a bunch of people popping up behind cover every once in a while waiting for me to "whack a mole" their faces off. Of course it's always more difficult to program good AI than it is to just give the player less health and the enemies more health, which is why I'm generally disappointed in a lot of shooters.

 

[shrekfan246]

Smart AI.

That's pretty much all you need. Enemies that flank, move to higher ground, try to flush you out, or react to how your character/team has been built with an appropriate counter.

I hate bullet sponges, especially when coupled with a protagonist who has the fortitude of a sheet of paper. It's the cheapest, simplest way of saying "This is harder now!" and it just smacks of laziness. The only concession I grant is when the enemy is obviously armored and hitting unarmored spots deals normal damage.

Resource management can do it as well, but the developers who put in resource management almost always inevitably also have a bullet sponge enemy that makes you waste everything you had, and then you're screwed for the next fight.

 

[GeneralBigG]

I actually like the Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning idea of difficulty increase. Yes, the enemies do get slightly more health, but the spike comes from modifying the occurrence rates for the enemies high level/high power attacks, so that they are performed say, ~10% of the time on easy but ~40-50% of the time on hard. It didn't make most of the game that much harder after, say, level 10, but that was because the crafting system was nigh on game-breakingly OP at times. Still, it was a good idea and makes a nice change from just upping an enemies health from 1,000 to 10,000 and dropping the your health from 100 to 10.


Also, what's with all the adverts lately on Captcha?

 

[daveman247]

Most stealth action games do it well.

-Sharper AI (but not to the point of cheating).

-More guards.

Less resources to use is fun too. Making you work with what you have = very creative problem solving if the game allows it.

 

[NightmareExpress]

Better enemy AI.
Don't make the enemies more powerful per se, make them more able.
If you do that, you shouldn't have to add more than a few extras to actually make situations hard.

Otherwise, you're just going to try to overwhelm the player with numbers or ridiculous enemy health.
That would be artificial difficulty...because it's really not hard, the game just slaps an inherent advantage on the enemies and expects you to run out of ammunition and subsequently, health.

 

[Keoul]

Proper punishments for your mistakes.
If it's a stealth game, make being spotted lead to an increase of guards on high alert.
If it's a shooter, have enemies further ahead coagulate together for an ambush at a choke point when you're spotted.

That kinda stuff.

 

[Windcaler]

Often difficulty works with creating tension. So what is your preferred method of upping difficulty or tension?

Personally I prefer limited ammo and health with well done weapon degradation. I find that for me that level of management forces me to play smarter rather than being able to force my way through it.

One of the best ways IMO is to have the enemies changing or using more advanced tactics. I remember when I first played FEAR years ago I thought it was amazing that enemies would actually flank you and try to flush you out into open lines of fire on the harder difficulties. This is how difficulty should be done. Just making you do more damage and them do less damage ala bethesda difficulty is the lazy way of doing it and it doesnt even make the game harder/easier. It just adjusts how much resources you have to use to overcome something.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Helghast AI. These guys are already some of the smartest enemies I've fought in games, give their AI and self preservation tactics to other enemies and I'll be pleased.

 

[Kroxile]

Classic Doom did difficulty best. The higher difficulty the game was set to the more powerful enemies you ran into, the quantity of said enemies, and the earlier to ran into them at.

I would have loved for Bioshock infinite to throw 2 handymen at me at once instead of just giving them the ability to almost 1 shot me. Woulda made things much more interesting imo

 

[kommando367]

Higher difficulty should test tactical knowledge and or reflexes.

In shooters, this usually means more accurate enemies.

In stealth games, this usually means forcing a well thought-out approach that minimizes the chance of detection.

In hack and slash games, this usually mean faster enemies.

In RPGs, this usually means an enemy or group of enemies that requires a good amount of prep work and buffing to beat.

Having a good variety of reasonably difficult enemies/obstacles is also good.

 

[Jimmy T. Malice]

Dark Souls does difficulty well with the regular enemies. Once you're properly geared up they only take a few hits before dying, but so do you. And getting surrounded is basically suicide.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well some of the easiest ones are:
- a few more enemies
- faster attacks
- more accurate attacks
- slightly upped damage
All these are just number adjustments in games but put together they will have a dramatic effect on the difficulty and it is straight forward to combat it, you need to be more precise at playing.

While other high grade changes might not feel beneficial, AI is in huge demand but an opponent that changes behavior very frequently is unpredictable and fighting him just feels like a random set of events you can't get better at.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

Why is everyone assuming we're talking about FPS?

Harder puzzles is always my choice. On a shooter I usually put it on "easy" because killing a "hard" enemy is no more satisfying for me than killing an "easy" one. This doesn't apply with puzzles. Puzzles present a challenge to the intellect so it's usually the harder ones which you feel more satisfied when you solve them, within limits.

 

[Greg White]

Dark Souls does difficulty well with the regular enemies. Once you're properly geared up they only take a few hits before dying, but so do you. And getting surrounded is basically suicide.

Situations like that are why I go for heavy armor. Plenty of poise to attack through the enemy's attack if the worse happens and enough vitality and endurance to take more than a handful of hits before I'm screwed.

That said, when you hit new game +(basically their difficulty increase) the enemies get more powerful, but that's mostly to balance out the fact that by the end of a typical playthrough you already have +15 weapons and can one or two-shot most enemies depending on your build, and you can always power up more to compensate.

 

[Windcaler]

Why is everyone assuming we're talking about FPS?

The title of the thread is difficulty without bullet sponges? so naturally people think of First person shooters

 

[Maximum Bert]

Games like Bayonetta and the original DMC (possibly later ones as well) did it best for action games imo by actually changing what enemies you fight and where.

For games that cant do this then you have things like harder puzzles etc as mentioned by a prievious poster already but for games like RPGS or fighting games its more difficult usually they just make the enemies hit harder and soak up more damage or gimp you or in the case of fighting games just make the comp never drop combos and read your button presses or just flat out make them broken by imbuing them with ridiculously powerful moves.

Some games just add an extra challenge like a limited amount of lives or no continues which I never liked either.

 

[Benpasko]

I hated how Fallout 3 and NV handled difficulty. I want a mode where me AND the enemies die in one hit, but you have to choose whether you want yourself or the enemies to be invincible supermen.