Difficulty in video games

There are two main camps of difficulty in vidya, user. There's the 'static' camp which does things like increase monster density, make the player weaker, give AI players advantages, or make obstacles numerically more dangerous. In this case, barring specific examples like some RPGs or Strategy games, this is entirely done to stick to conventions and provides very little substance; there is no reason to pick anything but normal or the hardest/easiest difficulty depending on what you're after.
Skyrim is an 'excellent' example of Static difficulty, as it primarily increases enemy health/damage in an exponential manner, and can be adjusted at any time. Most players stop the difficulty at "Adept", because enemies will become vastly difficult to kill. More dangerous enemies like level-scaled vampires and dragons can take minutes of constant assault to kill, while not behaving differently or being any more dangerous to a remotely optimized character, and all being easily handled by a basic mastery of mechanics/abuse.

The other camp is 'dynamic' difficulty, which gives the player a more static and rigid ruleset, and presents the player with new or altered challenges and scenarios. This isn't always present as 'Easy/Normal/Hard', but sometimes as a NG+ or challenge mode feature. Enemies will behave differently, traps will be better hidden and relocated, and rules and restrictions may come into play. Scenarios will turn on the player more easily if they are not prepared or familiar with the world and mechanics, and encounters will be more cohesively designed; a race or battle might have been simple on the first pass, but the harder iteration presents a new challenge that preys upon you, and expects your already gained skills, knowledge, and progress to overcome it; rather than pushing the player into an arms race as static difficulty does.

I think it's just a tradition that carried on from Easy mode being "Journalist mode" or "American Mode" in the case of a Japanese game.

Well not superhuman reflexes and clairvoyance, when you are constantly playing hard trial and error or otherwise reflex demanding games you need to keep your reflexes up even when you memorize the map you still need to get the timing right, constantly having to do this over and over again actually keeps your reflexes sharp. The reason reflexes don't seem that good is because sitting on your ass all day nullifies the benefits, so keep up proper exorcise and your reflexes will be better then the average person to possibly even the level of athletes. For being able to read and predict the map before even encountering anything is primarily a matter of honing your ability to quickly, rapidly break down everything into the important details vs the unimportant details (this ties into reflexes), pattern recognition, deducing small tiny details (differentation of minor texture differences between moving platforms and non-moving platforms and interactive buttons for example), finally the limitation of how many things you could do to be creative about things thus the revelation of experienced players that what they should be expecting boils down to a few possibilities which then leads to simple logical deduction to guess a significant amount of the map. The rest of it is just basic tactics and acting accordingly.

It depends on the game but in a 3 setting game go with the middle and in a four setting go with the second hardest. Exceptions for games like Thief where the game was designed around Expert.

Older games did this.

All the Ys games were tested and balanced around Nightmare difficulty, all the other modes are just easier variants where you receive less damage, bosses have altered attacks, and there are less/different enemies present.

In older games Normal would be the intended difficulty, but in newer games Hard seems to be the intended difficulty.

I hate games that have lots of different difficulty settings. Rather not be given the choice at all.

Is Doom considered Dynamic or Static? Mostly, what the difficulty changes is not weapon damage, monster health or player health. Rather; it is handled by the maps having different spawns including enemy, item and weapons in different locations and possibly in increased numbers, with the highest difficulty having the monsters respawn minutes after being killed, ammo giving the double of what it usually does and having them behave faster and thus in a different manner than in other difficulties. This introduces new scenarios to already existing challenges but may sometimes just mean more numbers to the same scenario, making it harder due to possibly restricted ammo or health items that were previously sufficient in easier difficulties although the maps usually account for that too. Does it depend on the mapset introduced? Is it just a hybrid of both Static and Dynamic styles?

You can definitely tell depending on how the difficulties are handled. Sometimes the normal mode is just the harder mode with less content; like Goldeneye. God Hand revolves around normal but most of the content is only available on hard where enemies use all their moves and demons spawn constantly.

Worst is when other difficulties are just stat changes and nothing else. Yeah fighting stronger enemies is tougher than weaker enemies in Fire Emblem. But new enemy placement, better weapons, and a variety of enemy types to fight makes it much more interesting and difficult. Even better if they give you more tools to deal with the onslaught the new difficulty brings.

By his definition, I would say that Doom is Dynamic.

Also, the guns and ammo available on each map play a huge factor, as do the enemies and geometry.
>Should I use my superweapon ammo to clear this very difficult arena to get a different superweapon that might be helpful in a different part of the level?
etc

Normal used to be a great balance in a majority of games, now it's become the new easy mode while easy mode is often renamed to something like "story mode" so as not to hurt anyone's feelings. The hypercasual normalshits can still "beat" the game on normal and feel like they actually triumphed because it's called normal. Hard is now typically what normal would have been 5 years ago. I don't think hard should be about abusing flaws in the game or its AI rather than just forcing you to use a decent amount of your knowledge to get over hurdles. Like SMT and its spinoffs all but requiring buff/debuff management and proper use of supportive skills to make it through the harder difficulties.

If devs give only a single difficulty, you'll basically have forced-easy difficulty in all games.

i used to play every FPS i had on the game's hardest difficulty, and I discovered that different devs deal with high difficulties differently, now that's not news, but the differences are big, and more often that not the hardest difficulty just makes the game unfair in many areas, i appreciate a good challenge, but there's always that one area that the devs did not have hard mode in my mind for, or if it's not an area, it's an enemy, to make a fair and challenging hard mode seems to be harder to balance out than i thought given my experiences.

Bottom line is that picking hard mode is kind of russian roulette, you don't know if the devs created a hard but fair experience, or an absolute clusterfuck of 99999999999s

Sadly, now SMT requires DLC to beat it on the harder difficulties, and locks the hardest behind DLC as well.

It's normal. If it says it's normal mode, how is it anything other than the normal way to play it? If they wanted you to play hard mode they'd make that the normal mode. And some do.

I think how difficulty plays out has many factors.

This. I used to be able to play stock Doom on Ultra-Violence but I stopped using that mode after realizing half the maps online just go "oh shit he picked UV BETTER PUT IN A DOZEN REVENANTS"

Difficulty is almost always poorly done, as developers are typically fucking stupid when it comes to setting it up.

Harder difficulty should be gameplay based. Enemies should have more abilities, should attempt to dodge attacks like human players would, and perhaps try to flank the player if at a disadvantage. In RPGs, it could be sorted out by adding a layer to combat, where the player, character, or party's familiarity with a type of enemy or combat determines damage dealt, damage avoided, and damage taken, as well as the quality of loot acquired. A hunter with fuck all experience would come back with a deer that looks like roadkill, rather than one suitable for skinning, a trophy, and a shitload of meat. A smart mercenary low on supplies would be sure to check for mess kits, MREs, medical equipment, ammunition, armor, water, and weapons, knowing where to shoot to kill the soldier so his equipment would still be useful. An idiot just dumps ammo and shoots everything to pieces even if he has a clear advantage and gets the drop on the target.

Easier difficulties can have idiot AI, but should have lesser rewards as well, to incentivize improvement.

Bullet sponges with one-shot AOE attacks are beyond lazy, they're retarded. Dealing with that shit only improves your skills in dealing with that specific bullshit, not getting better at the whole game.

In Platinum games, easier difficulties serve as some kind of training to ease you in the game with the intention to replay the game on higher difficulties, or just to let casuals have their piece of the pie. Usually higher difficulties have entirely different enemy placements and challenge which require your skills to be polished to a tee, and that got me thinking.

How would you feel if Easy mode only let you play 50% of the game, Normal mode around 75, with the higher 'canon' difficulties only letting you see the ending and really complete the game? Each new difficulty would feature new enemy arrangements in order to make each replay feel fresh, and basically you should git gud if you want to experience the whole game to begin with, with the easier difficulties serving as some kind of lube.

That exists in basically every SHMUP ever.

hilarious how easy is no longer a thing, now easy mode is usually called normal so nobody gets offended. i remember in prinny 2, easy mode was called "baby mode" gave you a health counter represented by diapers.

Ninja Gaiden Black did difficulty perfectly. They even gave you completely new and more deadly enemy types depending on which setting you chose.

That's where I got the idea from, with harder loops being inaccessible if you use continues or Crimzon Clover abruptly ending the game and telling you to not creditfeed like a noob if you wish to reach TLB once you get there.

stop

you all want the loli succubi

Just as I was about to say
I notice the third image