And don’t make “hard” excessively hard. Nothing kills my interest in a game faster than having to turn the difficulty down partway through because the stupid giant turtle mechs are nigh impossible without spending 20 hours farming parts to upgrade your weapons, and then having to turn the difficulty down even more because the FUCKING BULWARK MELEE PIT IS LEGITIMATELY IMPOSSIBLE ON HARD MODE. I’ve never understood why people thrown their controllers at their TV until I tried that shit for two hours straight. The developers of Horizon Forbidden West could come to my house and tell me that they playtested it on hard mode and I wouldn’t believe them. The hunting grounds stealth challenges are quite literally mathematically impossible in hard mode unless you have end-game gear.
A recent one I saw had pretty good options for this - Pathfinder: wrath of the righteous. Had so many different knobs to tweak to get the difficulty just right.
“story”, “intended balance”, “hard”, “no reloading hard”, “custom because you like hard except for that one bit of bullshit”
To me that’s the perfect balance of settings.
Oh, I absolutely love how Mount and Blade: Warband does it, though the “AI smart” setting doesn’t work properly.
And don’t make “hard” excessively hard. Nothing kills my interest in a game faster than having to turn the difficulty down partway through because the stupid giant turtle mechs are nigh impossible without spending 20 hours farming parts to upgrade your weapons, and then having to turn the difficulty down even more because the FUCKING BULWARK MELEE PIT IS LEGITIMATELY IMPOSSIBLE ON HARD MODE. I’ve never understood why people thrown their controllers at their TV until I tried that shit for two hours straight. The developers of Horizon Forbidden West could come to my house and tell me that they playtested it on hard mode and I wouldn’t believe them. The hunting grounds stealth challenges are quite literally mathematically impossible in hard mode unless you have end-game gear.
A recent one I saw had pretty good options for this - Pathfinder: wrath of the righteous. Had so many different knobs to tweak to get the difficulty just right.