Enemy health increase makes higher difficulties not fun & breaks many weapons

[Aetrion]

The higher difficulties in this game simply aren't fun for one big reason: The increase in enemy health completely changes the feel of the game and makes many weapons completely pointless.

Having to complete the missions while taking less damage and using less ammo are good challenges. These are things that challenge your mastery of the fundamentals of the game, and that's what higher difficulties should do.

Friendly fire is also alright as a game mechanic. I know some people hate it, but I think having to coordinate with your team and practicing some trigger discipline also add a reasonable challenge.

Upping the enemy health however ruins the fun in high difficulties. It changes the whole feel of the game when positioning yourself so you can mow through a swarm of runners simply doesn't have any results because their health is now too high for you to kill all of them after lining them up. It doesn't feel like the game requires you to play better, it feels like the game has taken away one of the way in which you could play well.

It also completely ruins many weapons. Sniper rifles are great in normal difficulty, but by the time you jump up to Intense they are already useless because they simply don't kill most enemies in one hit anymore.

This is one of the most common ways in which the balance breaks in RPG/Shooter hybrids. When the health of enemies is scaled up significantly weapons that rely on first hit kills to be useful, such as sniper rifles or missile launchers suddenly require two or three hits, and simply become useless because they are too slow when their kill speed gets cut in half by giving enemies bigger health pools.

This is a fun game, but there is honestly no incentive to try and work up to beating the campaign on insane difficulty, because anything past Intense simply isn't fun, and it's because of all the enemies turning into bullet sponges.

[Shibby]

引用自 Raptor：

引用自 Insano-Man：

I remember back in the days of Goldeneye when upping the difficulty added mission objectives, put mechanics like timers into levels, and did a whole heck of a lot more than just playing around with numbers.

Somebody put me in a cannon and shoot me back into the '90s. Please.

Literally besides more objectives it was just a number increase for enemies(damage,health,reaction speed,accuracy,quantity) and a decrease(Less ammo on pickup, little or no body armor, decreased aim assist) for the player. Not sure what game you played.

Goldeneye was way more fair than this game and the extra objectives are a good thing not something to be skipped over to try and prove some point. Also beating the game on 00 Agent let you unlock 007 which let you customize the game to your liking.

[Mosey]

Honestly, the only major difference I noticed between Intense and Extreme was the lower maximum ammo count and the higher friendly fire damage. The game isn't actually that much harder otherwise.

Still clears pretty easily as long as your team doesn't rush ahead like chickens or shoot each other in the back constantly.

The trick, perhaps, is learning to shoot for weak points and use abilities to clear nearby enemies not guns. Abilities do no friendly fire damage and even on Extreme my Demo's shoulder missiles still killed absolutely everything short of an orange at close range. He's using all 3 ability damage perks and the missiles are up about every 15 seconds or so, depending on how many Xenos I hit with the burst.

Also, if you have even one Tech on the team using flame turret and actually making good use of slows it makes Extreme a joke. There's no reason to use ammo on most Xeno swarms, the turret is more than capable of cleaning them all up assuming you don't place it on the ground like a fool.

Technician is the #1 class in the game right now, with Demo and Gunner being the other two you should absolutely bring every time. No other class is needed, although this isn't meant to imply this is the only way to clear the game. It's just the easiest way.

[pRaX]

I give up. It's just perpetual torment and I should know better.

[Malidictus]

引用自 Aetrion：

Being able to kill the aliens quickly when you see them coming is an important part of the feeling of this game. It's a struggle of superior firepower vs. mobility, stealth and numbers. It's Space Vietnam, you're much more lethal, but the enemy is really good at blending in and popping out from any direction. When you take the element of having superior firepower away it's just not the same game anymore.

This is something the old AvP games - especially Monolith's AvP2 - got very right. The human Marines had the worst sight of all three factions, along with the least mobility. However, their weapons were FAR AND AWAY the deadliest by a substantial margin. As an Alien or Predator, you kill Marines by getting the drop on them or sniping them. If they actually open up on you, you're either dead or hurting. Even Praetorians got chewed up right quick by a minigun or a rocket launcher.

Making all the aliens tanky somewhat undermines the general feel of the game. I've not bothered playing above Intense because - why would I? But I did mess around with challenge cards that swap Runners for Specials and it's definitely not as much fun.

[Echorion]

引用自 Aetrion：

The higher difficulties in this game simply aren't fun for one big reason: The increase in enemy health completely changes the feel of the game and makes many weapons completely pointless.

Having to complete the missions while taking less damage and using less ammo are good challenges. These are things that challenge your mastery of the fundamentals of the game, and that's what higher difficulties should do.

Friendly fire is also alright as a game mechanic. I know some people hate it, but I think having to coordinate with your team and practicing some trigger discipline also add a reasonable challenge.

Upping the enemy health however ruins the fun in high difficulties. It changes the whole feel of the game when positioning yourself so you can mow through a swarm of runners simply doesn't have any results because their health is now too high for you to kill all of them after lining them up. It doesn't feel like the game requires you to play better, it feels like the game has taken away one of the way in which you could play well.

It also completely ruins many weapons. Sniper rifles are great in normal difficulty, but by the time you jump up to Intense they are already useless because they simply don't kill most enemies in one hit anymore.

This is one of the most common ways in which the balance breaks in RPG/Shooter hybrids. When the health of enemies is scaled up significantly weapons that rely on first hit kills to be useful, such as sniper rifles or missile launchers suddenly require two or three hits, and simply become useless because they are too slow when their kill speed gets cut in half by giving enemies bigger health pools.

This is a fun game, but there is honestly no incentive to try and work up to beating the campaign on insane difficulty, because anything past Intense simply isn't fun, and it's because of all the enemies turning into bullet sponges.

I 100% agree with you man.

The harder difficulties are not "hard" they are just a slog.
Enemies have so much bloody health it doesn't feel like you are even shooting at xenomorophs, it feels like you are fighting a raid boss with only one attack that makes your finger sore.

I actually quit out of my first mission above intense difficulty because it was taking too long, I literally just got bored of rolling and holding M1 on things for like 5 minutes to kill them.

Honestly the rewards are not that worth it either. If you want to have a better challenge, it's more challenging and also better to just play intense but with challenge cards enabled. They make much better harder missions and are more engaging.

[Mosey]

引用自 Zula Hendricks：

I actually quit out of my first mission above intense difficulty because it was taking too long, I literally just got bored of rolling and holding M1 on things for like 5 minutes to kill them.

There are these things on enemies called 'weak points' and just holding your trigger down in their general direction is exactly why it was taking you so long.

The inflated HP pools are there because if you can shoot for weak points, Extreme isn't that extreme.

Insane, however, is actually insane.

[pRaX]

引用自 Mosey：

引用自 Zula Hendricks：

I actually quit out of my first mission above intense difficulty because it was taking too long, I literally just got bored of rolling and holding M1 on things for like 5 minutes to kill them.

There are these things on enemies called 'weak points' and just holding your trigger down in their general direction is exactly why it was taking you so long.

The inflated HP pools are there because if you can shoot for weak points, Extreme isn't that extreme.

Insane, however, is actually insane.

You are not denying that even if you shoot the weakpoints, you still got to shoot them alot more often than you would have to otherwise though...?
Because the HP value is still there. Weakpoints or not.
It's pretty obvious that they have to be focused and I don't get why it gets brought up so many times.

[Shibby]

引用自 Mosey：

引用自 Zula Hendricks：

I actually quit out of my first mission above intense difficulty because it was taking too long, I literally just got bored of rolling and holding M1 on things for like 5 minutes to kill them.

There are these things on enemies called 'weak points' and just holding your trigger down in their general direction is exactly why it was taking you so long.

The inflated HP pools are there because if you can shoot for weak points, Extreme isn't that extreme.

Insane, however, is actually insane.

[Grr. [SG CMD] Majah Lazah]

引用自 Aetrion：

引用自 Malidictus：

It's because of an ass backwards game development philosophy which seems to pervade damn near every developer these days. It's the belief that players are supposed to play on the highest difficulty setting possible. Anyone playing on anything below that is either "training" or "grinding" to be able to do that, or else "sucks" an should be ridiculed into training/grinding or quitting. The concept of "enough" seems to fall by the wayside all but entirely.

I think it's the exact opposite. They basically go "Only tryhards will even play this, so it doesn't matter if it's actually fun."

Of course there are tons of players out there who have that kind of attitude of looking down on people who play on a lower difficulty, but I think that's exactly why developers don't care about making the high difficulties actually fun to play. They figure the people who play them will put up with any BS just so they can feel superior.


Also I'm not saying Warframe is amazingly well balanced, just that it keeps the pace up. You don't really need to fight level 100 enemies in Warframe either.

Steel path and Arbitration directly disagree with you.

[Grr. [SG CMD] Majah Lazah]

引用自 pRaX：

It literally just wastes your time.
If it was a different game, people would call it padding.
You do not learn anything from kiting a Sponge.
You do not git gud.
Your skills don't do anything different.
The enemies don't do anything different.
You get forced into a braindead meta of dealing with the bloat.

It's just dumb and lazy.