Scalable difficulty

Is it just me thinking this, but if you want to make the game more difficult - shouldn’t all the latest alterations in the latest patch to make the game less easy (more difficult) be changed in the game difficulty setting levels?

Now despite which game difficulty level one chooses, it’s now more difficult because of the latest update. Hard for the not so good players, hard for the players with little spare time, and of course for the great player and those with lots of spare time.

Or am I moaning?

You restarted a fresh campaign? I bet you need do that.

EDIT: Before last patch I have many proof that Legendary can be easier than Easy, overall perhaps not but difficult on different aspects.

To take a page from System Shock 1 (the original). You have a screen on starting a new game, with numbered buttons of 1 to 5 per the various aspects of the game (in SS’s case it was difficulty, puzzle difficulty, cyberspace difficulty and plot difficulty). Could work for other games.

But in this games case, they just need to balance the difficulty how all the other XCOM-alike games did it. This isn’t a case of a completely new game type being made. There has been games like this since the early 90s, which the main game designer of this game helped make. So there’s no real excuse really. Unless this game was being aimed at masochists primarily (which is the impression I’m getting from the patch notes).

I suppose that I will have to again. But it’s taking the fun out of the game. I have a family with children and a finite amount of time. As a backer who has been playing Gollop games since 1984 - I feel a bit forgotten.

It never been repeated because:

  • Not working that well.
  • Serious extra problems of amount of testing tuning.
  • Increase cost for few results.
  • Too abstruse for a newbie, it doesn’t remove the necessity of difficulty levels.

Modern games show much better achievements, players options, like Invisible Inc. But it’s a tiny game and testing a lot of variations is a lot faster than in a big game as PP. It’s still a choice to consider.

Next game apply more caution, backup the game game before apply last fresh patch, pp allows it easily and allows run without epic launcher.

In general never apply fresh patches, let players with more time test and feedback.

The problem currently is that of design. For a game to succeed well it needs to be aimed at several types of gamers at once. This game is only aimed at the hardcore.

They need to have the scaling stuff only in the harder difficulty modes, where it will be the most liked (as people playing at higher difficulty modes expect higher difficulty). It shouldn’t be in the lower difficulty modes.

Is it confirmed with last version, Easy new campaign, Legendary new campaign, you know what, it looks fun I’ll try two parallel play, once I have finished the <insults, raging, bashing anything, shouting to bother neighbors> last section of final with game previous version.

But it was repeated to great success multiple times. Mainly in RPG games, but also in first FiraxCOM. Even more with Long War.

No long war is the modern player options I quoted, I suppose because I played only LW2, at least it’s that with LW2.

Weird too ambitious difficulty setup of first Schock System involve shift design to various scalable elements of gameplay, it’s a huge amount of work, it’s too much constraint on design.

But yeah players options related to difficulty, ok I agree if that’s just your point, there’s much achievement than first SS on this aspect.

For curiosity, what RpG?

EDIT: It’s like let players fine tune many AI numbers, it’s just a nightmare testing at end not playing and I mean for players. It’s a game in itself but it’s not the game itself.

Check out Pillars of Eternity or Pathfinder: Kingmaker. There are tons upon tons of ways you can fine tune your difficulty.

And for the argument that designing multiple difficulty choices is a lot of work… well it should be. Developers want to attract as many players as possible, they have to take into account that it means accommodating very different preferences.

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And its the entire point of having different difficulty modes.

Ton? I played both, only once for Kingmaker, has it an option to not allow all magic is disabled (faceplam on such stupid idea), or an option to not kill no choice some companions right before last part (facepalm on such stupid design idea).

No both are weak on that.

I’ll just leave it here
Difficulty levels - Pathfinder: Kingmaker Wiki Mode - Official Pillars of Eternity Wiki

Weak for pillars, ok they added a good amount of difficulty options it seems for PK, got bored by the game a long time before they fix it a bit. And it still has absurd designs (ok among many good aspects).