Difficulty sliders and game design

[linux]

All this talk of D3 in inferno (for the record I haven't tried it nor is this thread about D3 but game design) reminded me of a time when I thought Morrowind needed more difficulty and tried Oblivion on the hardest setting. In case anybody tried it the game was brutal, deciding how to attack monsters that could one shot me while needing 1000 hits to kill, the first few minutes was fun I don't really disagree, but once I figured it out, once it was obvious that the only way to win a single battle was to exploit the weak AI, pathfinding, terrain elevation and gambryo, the game became impossibly tedious, even for a diffcultyf.. like me.

Grind does not equal difficulty, the effort taken to solve a problem is what equals difficulty. Once the problem is solved the grind should go completely away, and a new problem should be introduced. That is where difficulty sliders fail, the problem never changes for anybody, just the amount of work needed to get through it, like forcing you to take a test without a calculator.

[Lil' Fry McFly]

In an RPG with leveling stats like Oblivion or Diablo, it's impossible to have difficulty without the grind. There are action games out there, like Ninja Gaiden, where changing the difficulty actually increases the amount of skill required to win with no added grind.

[linux]

In an RPG with leveling stats like Oblivion or Diablo, it's impossible to have difficulty without the grind. There are action games out there, like Ninja Gaiden, where changing the difficulty actually increases the amount of skill required to win with no added grind.

With traditional RPGs you could have encounter design, have a set of monsters that can only be solved like a puzzle instead of grinded to oblivion.

A good case for this is Darklands, an oldskool historical action RPG where you really had to adapt your playing style because of the encounter, you could for example wear full plate and be invulnerable to high level bosses, but when you fought low level bandits they would easily kill your endurance (since I am wearing very heavy plate) and knock out my party. It took me a while to even realize why low level creeps were kicking my ass and when it clicked I was awed.

In action RPGs they have the whole abstraction, where an enemy could have lighting spells and you should gear up to prevent lightning attacks, that said it does not really change the tactics meaning setting up lines or targeting a specific point on their line, just what gear to wear. The idea is there, but simplified to rocks-papers-scissors, if an enemy does X find Y% X resistance.

One more thing, trash mobs are an abomination, I know people want to keep bashing but I loved how in Diablo 1 the enemies died they died, it was a lot of trash mobs but the game was designed to end in a few hours, not give you an addiction for months at a time.

[linux]

Now that you mention the biggest difference between action games and RPG is that the latter tend to give out HP inflation. So theoretically if you were to encounter a low level fight you thought you already solved in an action game you can still lose it if you are sloppy and don't follow tactics learned, whereas in an action RPG of today you have gained so much HP as to make them effectively irrelevant, you can brute force yourself through anything lower level.