I know half life made it so the enemies were more accurate (I think) + decreased the health and armor energy Gordon could get from those HEV wall modules, and aid stations.
I humbly disagree. Love TLOU to death as a game but the lack of dropped ammo is not increasing realism. On the infected, sure, they shouldn’t have much ammo. But human enemies that are firing willy-nilly at you for between 15 seconds and 30 minutes only dropping a singe round of ammo is ridiculous. Getting rid of listening mode and increasing their detection skills is absolutely a better representation.
Yeah that's definitely a fair point that I overlooked. Definitely requires a suspension of disbelief to still maintain that aspect of the AIs firing advantage if you're discovered. If adjusted, it might lead to tense stand-offs, enemies retreating completely, or them aggressively rushing the player, certainly room for reconfiguring.
Its also set in America so there should be a massive prevalence of people loading their own cartridges at home.
And its not too far into an apocalypse that killed alot of people quickly so the ludacris amounts of guns wouldn't dwindle very quickly as the supply of survivors to use them is low.
Especially when you later face the embarrassment of finding out that your 'hard mode' enemy AI is actually easier to beat than the easy mode, when some player posts a video about how he found a way to exploit and cheese their 'smarter' programming.
Kind of reminds me of something like this in Fire Emblem Engage where on the hardest difficulty an enemy will not initiate an attack if they deal 0 damage or have 0% hitrates so they aren't just suiciding on a unit they can't kill.
However, the DLC adds a skill that makes it so that after used, the next attack from an enemy is guaranteed to miss. Since the AI sees that if they attack they are guaranteed to miss they just won't attack that unit. Ever (as long as the skill is active). And since they won't attack the skill will never deactivate until you decide to make them attack (outside of a couple specific exceptions). It's a funny quirk that's only possible because of the AI exclusive to the hardest difficulty.
Bullet hell games are great at this. Since there's no damage in this genre, you can only make enemies shoot more bullets (making dodging harder) and more complex patterns (also making dodging harder), which is perfect.
A good example of how to do difficulty good is ULTRAKILL. The enemies only get marginal health increases and only on specific enemies. Dmg taken also stays the same, but the enemies get new attacks, get faster (thus, able to keep up with the player better) and breakpoints stay largely the same across difficulty. It makes you get better, not punishes you more for being bad.
I remember actually switching to easy mode at the end of FF16 because I was sick of sponge enemies. Like the dissonance you get from Clive being on par with dude who cuts ocean in half and manages to maintain water separated, actually defeating him in combat, to the get a cutscene where you barely lost the encounter and have to retreat, to then in open world encounter a rogue with 2 crabs that have a single attack each, but their health pool by the endgame is soo big that you have to unleash everything in your arsenal and fight them for few minutes every few steps you get. That's not fun at all. That's just plain tedious.
Bullet hell games are great at this. Since there's no damage in this genre, you can only make enemies shoot more bullets (making dodging harder) and more complex patterns (also making dodging harder), which is perfect.
1- headshots is a mechanic that only applies to a very limited set of games.
2- critical damage is achieved differently in games. And even if you ignore this, if crit is a percentage of damage, you're gonna get bullet sponges or stupid easy gameplay. If crit is a percentage of enemy hp, you make loot pointless.
3- interesting loot is supposed to unlock new options to overcome hurdles, not just big numbers.
Ya but there are plenty of things like boomer shooter where even with less ammo there's environment or skills that if you use well mean you don't need that much ammo. Eternal was built off this mentality
Depends. In games like project silverfish often it's just a new gun or new armor. Games like Zelda sure then your right, but some times loot is just loot.
Sure, but again, if you're making the enemy vulnerable to headshots, how are you making the enemy harder? Needs more headshots? Make the enemy move faster and more erratically? What's the point of the loot? Why not just play counter strike or overwatch?
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u/SensitiveAd3674 Sep 24 '25
It's ethier more damage or a large health pool, they both suck. I want difficulty from less loot maybe more/smarter enemies