How do you implement additional difficulties without pulling stupid shit such as removing the HUD or simply making...

More skillful mechanics. For example, adding a series of moves to a boss with a fair windup that does massive damage/oneshots you if you don't evade/counter most of it, but leaves them open for a long while after so you can beat their ass in return. A good chance of failure with an appropriate amount of reward/payoff when you succeed.

>add more enemies
>reduce enemy reaction times
>add new enemy routines at higher difficulty levels
>further hearing range
>wider sight cones

I dunno. I don't know why "bullet sponge" is the default. I know AI is hard to design, but damn, Halo CE/F.E.A.R. both had incredible enemy AI so it can be done.

I really like how Titanfall 2 did difficulties for Frontier Defense. While there is inflation of stats and enemy numbers, it also gives enemies better equipment. I remember shitting my pants the first time 12 stalkers with EPGs rolled up on my almost dead Northstar, or when the grunts whip out charge rifles on your ass. And removing the radar on max difficulty is one of the few instances of removing hud that I think was implemented well, since it forces communication with your squad if you don't wanna have the harvester assraped by 10 arc ronins.

More enemy waves and greater heals or health but heals at a rate lower than the base difficulty settings making prolonged survival highly dependent on the player’s skill.

What if I gate harder designed levels via difficulties?
So for instance if you choose easy or normal, then the harder stages will be inaccessible and for all you know, non existent.
I wonder if any game has ever done this.

Give the player more things to keep track of, more decisions to make at the same time, tighter margins for making correct decisions, and harsher punishment for making bad decisions.

Well first of all fuck you calling HUD removal “stupid shit”; HUDs and minimaps are both fucking gaaaaaay. I turn them off any time it’s remotely possible.
Secondly I don’t know. It seems like there’s a threshold for realistic difficulty that short of major advancements in enemy AI you can’t really avoid.
Normally what I tend to do is restrict myself to only using certain weapons, or if there’s a skill tree not leveling up things that might be op, etc.

BETTER AI. Unleash those fuckers on harder levels. Make the AI sentient Gods which rain fire down on those who would challenge them. Add new enemies with new quirks, adjust how aggressive they are, change patterns/timings, force the player to use all the tools they have, give them completely new movesets. There is so much you can outside of bullet sponging, but devs are lazy and just want to make movies instead of games.

Change the enemy AI. Make it more aggressive, make it use more moves that would normally be locked in easier difficulties. Less telegraphed attacks. And yeah, make them dish out more damage.
If the game has a cheese strategy, have harder difficulties punish you for trying to use it.

Lots of ways, stupid

Newfags can’t triforce

Why try? Just make one solid game and let people who think it’s too hard rely on exploits/walkthroughs and let people who think it’s too easy come up with their own challenge runs.

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Why dont invisible characters work AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

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If a game is designed with it in mind, removing hud can be good. Have stuff like visually checking magazines, good health indicator (audio/visible health bar in world like dead space etc. basically just removing the hud but giving the player the tools to check what they have in the world. Metro exodus kinda does this but when checking ammo it just shows you through hud which is lame.

Honestly would love to see a metro kinda game, kinda hardcore, no hud other than the gear you can see in the world. Magazines have cutouts you can inspect etc.

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>removing the hud
>stupid shit
If you mean it should not exist from default, remember normalfags will delete the game immediately and call the police if the game doesn't play itself.

platinum games except that one time they didn't do this and instead took out lock on and made it so enemies 1 or 2 levels higher than you could one shot you unless you slotted for HP/Def

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>HUDless
This is truly the most immersive way.

Less hud is good, but if its removal means you have no way to check actually important information it's cancer. If it's designed around minimal/no hud it's good, having it as a difficulty in a game that's built around having one is ass.

How about no, MGR's difficulty scaling was garbage. The game was unplayable on V. Hard on a blind playthrough due to lmao 2grad and Revengeance was a piss easy difficulty because of the parry shit.

Just do it the Falcom way, design every boss fight around the highest difficulty and nerf it from there

I like the way Arkane does HUD options and difficulty choices. Dishonored and Prey both have great options.

A zombie flash game I played had a good implementation. Hard mode added hunger and thirst.

More game mechanics to juggle is the way to go, because it makes the game harder AND more interesting and fun.

The only games that I can think of which did harder difficulties right are Thief with the added objectives, STALKER with making everybody more fragile and Silent Hill's puzzles.

enemies employ different tactics and have different abilities at their disposal.

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I genuinely can't think of a single game where adding a hunger system didn't make it worse by increasing tedium
either there's so little food it's a crapshoot whether you live or die, there's too much so you are never at risk of starving and it adds nothing, or there's just enough around meaning it adds nothing to the game other than being another check box you need to complete to continue playing

>western devs because holy shit they just don't fucking get it.
It's not western devs. It's the players. Every single time devs try to add smarter AI that tries to use tactics or all of their abilities, players seethe.
IIRC several FPS games have tried implementing flanking AI and in each case their playtesters were extremely frustrated at the 'cheating' AI that they believed to teleport behind them.

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>tfw my alt codes are busted
alt 255 gives me ÿ, alt 30 gives me nothing.

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Didn't this happen with TLOU? They nerfed the AI from the E3 build when they had actually good AI that used tactics and would retreat and re-engage as necessary, but they removed it because their game is a movie and people were having trouble watching the cutscenes with all the pesky gameplay getting in the way, and replaced the AI with dumbshit retarded cover shooter assholes and made melee-using enemies just bumrush you like a retard

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E3 builds end up being misleading because of how hardware translates
It can come off as false advertising when it's really that developers usually tone things down before release because they can be too ambitious