I’ve been playing the new Deep of Night game mode in Elden Ring: Nightreign and it’s highlighted to me one of the most unfortunate cases of lazy difficulty increases in game design, increase of enemy health and increase of enemy damage.
This is a common way to increase difficulty, Bethesda games are quite literally built on the concept. However, why is it hated so much? Simple, it causes spongey enemies without any strategic or interesting difficulty improvements, to the point that it just feels like the same game but you’re not having as much fun. You instead just get one-shot and it takes forever to take down standard enemies, sometimes to the point of it making no sense lore-wise. A bandit shouldn’t take most of your stamina and combat abilities to take down when, in comparison, one small nick from their dagger onto you and you immediately keel over and die. It just feels as though it’s a lazy way of making a game more challenging.
Some ways developers have made difficulty increases feel meaningful have varied over the years. Some introduce higher damage for both enemies and yourself, making the world feel squishier but so do you. Some give new moves to enemies or more aggressive AI. Some spawn more enemies, and some even change fundemental gameplay mechanics such as adding survival elements or new meters to keep track of. Either way, these are far more interesting difficulty options, and I hope more games follow this line of thinking.
What are your thoughts on this type of difficulty? And do you have any examples of it done well? Share your thoughts with us! That’s all for now, and as always. It’s not just a game, It’s a Life.
The Deep Night Mode is too HARD. Formsoft ware is immersed in its own art and cannot extricate itself. On the surface, the terrain is random, but in reality, nine out of ten games have no special terrain. On the surface, the distribution of monsters in the castle is random, but in reality, seven out of ten games have mountain demon castles. The attack power and attack distance of mountain demons are too far, and the reward souls are too few. Red skinned enemies have very high attack power and health, making them very difficult to fight. After struggling to defeat them with all their might, they often drop very useless red equipment, which has a negative effect that greatly increases the difficulty of the game. The reward equipment dropped by strong enemies often has a negative effect of significantly increasing the difficulty of the game. Three new spaces have been added for storing late-night items, but the store does not sell late-night items, and you need to randomly select them yourself. Randomly selected late-night artifacts often have a negative effect of significantly increasing game difficulty.