Difficulty Levels 1-7

by Cody Miller , Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Wednesday, April 24, 2013, 10:30 (4230 days ago) @ Cold

Level 4 difficulty would be impossible to make any sort of progress in having not obtained at least some gear from the previous difficulties. So on and so forth for difficulties 5-7 as well.

However, not only do enemies hit harder, have more health, etc. in increasing difficulty levels but their mechanics are also slightly different. This should effectively make difficulty level 5 (for instance) fundamentally harder than difficulty level 4, regardless of how sparkly your loot is. It should also help to keep players interested in additional playthroughs/difficulty levels.

Level 7 difficulty should be virtually unbeatable by even the most skilled players in the game's best gear.

Once upon a time I was talking with all sorts of people at Valve and having a good time. One of the designers on Portal 2 said that they pretty much eliminated the twitch puzzles from the first game, because as a puzzle game, it was frustrating to KNOW the solution, but struggle to actually execute it. The act of solving the puzzle and arriving at the solution should be the hard part.

Same thing with action games. If I have the skill, or knowledge of the game required to play at a high level, then it's frustrating having to get gear merely to compete on higher levels of difficulty. Imagine you're the best Destiny player in the world, but you can't play on level 7 because you don't have a piece of good gear. You're stuck having to acquire gear, i.e. not running and jumping and shooting stuff. Basically, you're no longer playing the real game. You have to do bullshit in order to keep playing even though you are the best player in the world.

If there has to be gear, then the least worst way to do it would be to do it like a JRPG, where the gear isn't random, and is obtained in specific ways on specific quests. At least then you can play more of the real game before moving on, because the quests and stuff are ostensibly fun in their own right.