FatesVagrant t1_iy6x0fs wrote on November 29, 2022 at 4:46 AM

Reply to comment by SepticKnave39 in Can someone give me a brief explanation of "Artificial Difficulty"? by ShrankNutz

Yeah it is a personal pet peeve of mine when people complain about artificial difficulty because enemies get higher health and damage and act like this is an invalid way to add difficulty. Pretty much every game in existence that isn't an RTS or stealth game is "artificial difficulty" on higher than default settings then.

Enimies hits harder= less room for mistakes, more health means you have to be more efficient at dealing damage and able to keep performance up for longer. That is the foundation for increasing difficulty. There is absolutely no point in adding in some extra behaviors to a boss if a good player who has optimized their build, consistently hits weak points or knows how to combo effectively and doesn't need to back off can burst them down in 10 secs.

Developing AI and unique features/attacks is expensive, it's probably not something you want to spend a lot of time on if most players won't see it and do you really want enemies to have neutered behaviors, less variety and seem stupid on lower difficulties when the player really only need more room for error?

SepticKnave39 t1_iy6xwlc wrote on November 29, 2022 at 4:55 AM

Exactly. I mean it absolutely is a good thing to have higher difficulty also mean more aggressive enemies and potentially more varied move sets and introduce maybe an additional moveset or more. I definitely think that adds value. But more aggressive enemies really doesn't mean much if the game is ultra forgiving on the "artificial difficulty" and you can take so many hits that the aggressiveness barely makes a difference. Having both forms of "difficulty" is definitely better than just increasing health and damage but there is nothing wrong with increasing health and damage. It forces you to play more "perfectly" which is exactly the point.

HellDuke t1_iy7ackw wrote on November 29, 2022 at 7:15 AM

To be fair it is a valid complaint. Got GOW2018 when it came to PC and was appaled when I saw that the high difficulty setting was just dog shit and all it did was adjust the stats to the point where a basic enemy took several minutes of whacking to kill. I don't call it artificial difficulty, just bad design. Stat increases are valid but only to an extent. Addind a bunch of hp to enemies does jot make the game more difficult it makes it more tedious.

Increasing their damage is fine, but instead of adding a ton of hp it's better if enemies become more aggressive, tightening the parry (if mechanic exists) window, adding more enemies or enemies with some status effect etc. Making the player spend 20 mintes in a fight instead of 5 by HP and damage changes does not equate to difficulty