What games do difficultly correctly? How does a game do difficultly right?

What games do difficultly correctly? How does a game do difficultly right?

Most games do difficulty correctly IMO. Just any variable can be increased to make the game more punishing. It doesn't seem hard to do and it looks like devs often do it right. I'd rather talk about games that do it wrong, like Fire Emblem Aweakening on Lunatic+ which is fucking impossible.

Games that have no obvious difficulty selection like this are superior.
A game should be made to be how the developers want it, and that includes the challenge. If they can make the difficulty rise and fall over the course of a game rather than having that for one difficulty and arbitrarily having an easy, medium, crushing etc. mode, it will always be better.

Doesn't matter, if you don't play on hard, you're a fucking loser.

Always medium first time.

game like thief where you add new objectives

Goldeneye. Higher difficulty unlocks more bonus stuff, makes enemies hit harder, and adds more objectives to do.

halo 2-3

Timesplitters 2 also does this

>How does a game do difficultly right?

less resources, different placements of enemies, who move faster, are more aggressive, have new moves coupled with tighter requirements on objectives like time limits and stuff.

Starcraft 2. It increased the intelligence and tactics of the AI rather than their abilities, army size, health, or damage.

I liked how in DMC4 DMD gives DT to your enemies and makes them more aggressive and LDK just drowns you in them.

Doing difficulty right is basically anything but just increasing damage and HP of enemies.

>What games do difficultly correctly?
shmups
>How does a game do difficultly right?
by making it difficult so that you have to be good in order to play through the game
a game without game over is not a real game imo, it's an interactive movie

Similarly, games that have no immediate difficulty selection but let you unlock them as you go are also tend to work out well. Ninja Gaiden Black, for example, gives you no difficulty choices when you start and provides a fair challenge throughout the game. Getting more difficulties by beating the game or dying too much makes the player experience the normal/intended difficulty before fucking themselves by choosing easy or hard right off the bat.

>Game has difficulty selection
>Uses terms like "classic", "strategist", "explorer" etc instead of easy, normal and hard
>Have no idea how any of the choices impact the game without searching it up online

/thread

>pick normal
>five hours in game is still easy
>turns out normal is easymode and you're supposed to have picked hard

>playing Gothic 1
>no difficulty setting
>game is hard as fuck at the start and basically anything can kill you easily
>tfw getting stronger
>tfw finally being able to kill something that's not that shitty featherless bird
>tfw finally getting a good weapon and armor

Boy I love that sort of thing

Is this Arcuz?

> Easy
> Your weapons deal +25% damage and you have +25% health
> Hard
> Your weapons deal -25% damage and you have -25% health
> Nightmare
> Your weapons deal -50% damage and you have -25% health

Absence of difficulty settings but the game being designed such that you don't mind failure and expert players have appealing ways to play the game that would tax even their skills. Games like NetHack come to my mind.

In terms of games with difficulty settings present, Ultimate General: Gettysburg has a very good way of handling them. It has 9 AI personalities in difficulty and aggressiveness axis. However, the choice of difficulty doesn't offer the AI any bonuses but instead changes its personality: weak defensive AI is timid and passive while weak aggressive AI is prone to overcommitting and leaving its positions insecure, allowing player to exploit those weaknesses. Stronger AIs try to play without presenting such weaknesses (and AI in the game actually is quite capable).

As long as it feels more difficult without feeling like bullshit

Every game is different on how you achieve harder difficulty without being bullshit, there is no one size fits all.

I feel like most games from the current and previous generation are easier than ever before. Every time I play a new game I put it on the hardest difficulty and it feels as like the game is supposed to be played that way, as if it was supposed to be the "normal" difficulty. For example, I just played Dead Space 1 & 2 for the first time. I played the first one on Hard and the second one on Zealot and the game wasn't challenging at all. Forcing you to use all your abilities, environment, different weapons, etc feels like that's how it should be in the first place. I haven't played any of the Dark Souls games yet but I plan to soon. I hope it's difficulty isn't a meme.

why do developers think this is in any way fun or balanced? it should be something like:
>easy - x1 player dmg x0,5 enemy dmg
>normal - x1 player dmg x1 enemy dmg
>hard - x2 player dmg x3 enemy dmg
>HARDER - x4 player dmg x6 enemy dmg

>pick hard mode
>difficulty is challenging and rewarding
>halfway into the game the enemies turn into damage sponges as the game was balanced around normal

Rare and Free radical used to do it right. Enemies do more damage, aren't bullet sponges and new areas are unlocked on harder game modes to make for even more challenge and interesting gameplay.

anything but bullet sponges. Just played saints row, where you can empty an entire SMG clip into someone without them dying.

the difficulty is both a meme and not a meme at the same time

yeah basically what said. They are certainly harder than most AAA games, but nearly everything is brute force able.

This but with NG+ so even the beginnings of the game where the difficulty curve hasnt ramped up yet can still be a challenge.

medium for an RTS, hard will be more tedious and expect you to know a build order and such already

Difficulty is inherent to the game, it really should be long/short modes sort of a directors cut vs a theatrical release.