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6/23/2016 6:57:42 PM
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Your Opinion On Artificial Difficulty?

Artificial difficulty is a method of increasing the challenge within a game by simply buffing the enemy's health and/or damage, while other aspects remain the same. An example of this would be the AI within most RPG and/or MMO games. The opposite of this, which I will call genuine difficulty, is where enemies will begin to behave in different ways and employ different tactics and smarter play as a method of increasing difficulty. An example of this would be the AI within most RTS and Fighting games. What's your opinion on artificial difficulty?

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  • Fine with me as long as it isn't excessive. In 10 years of gaming, the Division's first Incursion is the first time I've been upset with artificial difficulty. I honestly thought Division was going to be great until they launched that garbage "endgame" content. That was nothing but a horde mode in a story mission.

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  • I prefer when they work in tandem.

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    • I hate it

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    • Difficulty is better when it's both artificial and ontop of that, traits change such as the level of aggression, movement speed, tactics and abilities used. Sometimes abilities or skills used alone make the challenge a little more interesting, but if it isn't artificially enhanced with health buff, well you'd one shot them before they can even display the new abilities if your character has a progression and grows stronger through experience. So imo, it's best with both

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      • Artificial difficulty is lazy as hell. Enemies should progress and use a different tactic or use a tactic to combat yours by "learning"

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      • Edited by FrostD: 6/23/2016 8:59:40 PM
        Behavior changes on higher difficulty leaves a lower difficulty such as "normal" with a sub standard A.I. compared to "Hard" It's easy to see "genuine" difficulty as "adding" things, but in reality what takes place is the dev ends up "subtracting" something that was already in place to create an easier difficulty. F.E.A.R. did this. While in the middle of combat you could switch the difficulty on the fly. On Hard the A.I. darted around, flanked you and charge in when your health was low. Flip it to normal and the enemies literally stood up from behind thier cover and let you shoot them. In Oddworld: New and Tasty "Hard" is actually the original difficulty setting, its what the game was designed to be. The lower difficulty slows down timed puzzles as well as increasing the reaction time of enemies making it easier on the player. What you want then is a genuinely difficult game with an option to tone it down.

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      • It ruined Halo 2

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      • It's lazy, I prefer to see AI improvements

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      • Edited by TonyPartridge30: 6/23/2016 8:39:17 PM
        It's lazy. Lazy and boring to experience. "OMG, that boss has 2x the health and damage as before and no other differences!" Please. I know that some game genres don't lend themselves well to boss fights, but when you do try to implement a boss, changing difficulty by just increasing health and damage is lame. Hell, even Destiny has learned to throw in relatively interesting bosses compared to what the vanilla version had. Edit: I will amend that if boss fights were interesting and dynamic to start, then upping the difficulty via health and damage is ok.

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      • Just like you said - if it's an RPG or RPG-esque game built around stats, then it's totally acceptable. Damage checks and health checks are totally fine in those games. If not, then it's lazy and no.

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      • Dark Souls has spoiled me on video game difficulty, I now get frustrated at game I would have enjoyed before experiencing Dark Souls.

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      • I'm fine with artificial difficulty unless I run into a part of a game full of either nearly limitless enemies or multiple 3-4 enemy ambushes.

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