Difficulty setting differences
Posted: Mon Feb 09, 2015 3:11 amLooking at my demos here...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg8nFE2 ... 8MqYvKIST3
Salient details (note that these can only be said for sure to apply to Stage 1 - there could always be level- or enemy-specific changes):
- Power usage and health recharge is identical between difficulties.
- Player and enemy health is identical between difficulties. You can see Ranger X took the same amount of damage from a single artillery shot and took the same amount of time to kill the artillery cannon.
- Rate of enemy fire is scaled up with difficulty. The artillery cannon, which took the same time to beat in each, lands 1 hit in Easy, 2 in Normal, 3 in Hard, and 4 in Heavy. You can also clearly see the trio of walker robots firing more in the harder difficulties - they don't even get off a shot in Easy.
- Enemy presence is scaled up from Easy/Normal to Hard/Heavy - while not shown in this video, you can see from the indicator that in Easy/Normal there are 6 targets in Stage 1, while in Hard/Heavy there are 7.
- Stage 1 has a different color palette on Heavy!
In conclusion, it's looking like the difference between difficulties is enemy placement and firing rate. Which is generally the pretty correct way to handle things in an action game. Instead of reducing the number of mistakes allowed, it introduces new ways to make them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg8nFE2 ... 8MqYvKIST3
Salient details (note that these can only be said for sure to apply to Stage 1 - there could always be level- or enemy-specific changes):
- Power usage and health recharge is identical between difficulties.
- Player and enemy health is identical between difficulties. You can see Ranger X took the same amount of damage from a single artillery shot and took the same amount of time to kill the artillery cannon.
- Rate of enemy fire is scaled up with difficulty. The artillery cannon, which took the same time to beat in each, lands 1 hit in Easy, 2 in Normal, 3 in Hard, and 4 in Heavy. You can also clearly see the trio of walker robots firing more in the harder difficulties - they don't even get off a shot in Easy.
- Enemy presence is scaled up from Easy/Normal to Hard/Heavy - while not shown in this video, you can see from the indicator that in Easy/Normal there are 6 targets in Stage 1, while in Hard/Heavy there are 7.
- Stage 1 has a different color palette on Heavy!
In conclusion, it's looking like the difference between difficulties is enemy placement and firing rate. Which is generally the pretty correct way to handle things in an action game. Instead of reducing the number of mistakes allowed, it introduces new ways to make them.