Reddit is on fire over lazy game developers equating 'Hard Difficulty' with insane enemy HP pools. Spoiler: It's just tedious, not hard.
It's 3 AM. You finally squash that annoying shader bug, boot up a new game on 'Hard' mode to flex your tryhard skills, and proceed to spend 5 straight minutes whacking a basic grunt because it has the HP pool of a raid boss. Frustrating, right?
Well, you're not alone. A massive rant just exploded on Reddit, racking up nearly 9k upvotes, calling out the entire gaming industry for getting incredibly lazy with difficulty scaling.
The original poster (OP) was venting about Stellar Blade. Apparently, the HP jump from Normal to Hard was so ridiculous that it sucked all the joy out of the experience. OP didn't even think the game was a masterpiece to begin with, but the tedious grind of chipping away at infinite health bars made them straight-up rage quit right before the final boss.
OP dropped a cold, hard truth: "If the only thing changing in your game on 'Hard' difficulty is the amount of HP and Dmg, then it's not a 'Hard' difficulty, it's a 'Tedious' difficulty." Why treat Hard mode as an afterthought? Just scrap it entirely if you're not going to put the work in.
The comments section immediately turned into a masterclass on game design, with veterans dropping some massive nostalgia bombs.
Take 1: The Golden Era Objectives Gamers immediately brought up GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark. Back in the day, cranking up the difficulty didn't just spawn bullet sponges. It added entirely new objectives to the missions, forced you to explore deeper into the map, and slapped on strict time limits. Fun fact dropped by user Dawg_Prime: For GoldenEye, the devs actually built the levels based on the hardest difficulty first, and then stripped away objectives to create the easier modes. Big brain move.
Take 2: The "Git Gud" Nuance User Seitosa brought some balance to the force: Increased HP/Dmg isn't inherently evil. If a game has deep, engaging combat, higher HP means the fight lasts longer. This forces you to engage with the mechanics longer and gives you less room for error. It punishes mistakes. However, they totally roasted Skyrim in the process. Skyrim's Legendary difficulty is infamous because the combat is basically just mashing attack. Giving enemies tank-level HP just results in players running in circles, chugging 50 cheese wheels and potions to survive.
Take 3: The Peak AI Standard Halo was brought up as the gold standard. On higher difficulties, Bungie didn't just buff stats. The Elites would dodge, flank, take cover, and spam grenades. The AI actually felt smarter. TimeSplitters 2 was also praised for literally unlocking whole new sections of a map on harder difficulties.
From a dev perspective, we all know exactly why this happens. Opening a config script and changing float healthMultiplier = 3.0f; takes literally 30 seconds. Designing a complex Behavior Tree for enemy AI to flank, take cover, and coordinate attacks? That takes months of logic, testing, and debugging.
But come on, let's not scam the players. When gamers drop $70 on a AAA title, they want their skills tested, not their patience. Unless your combat system is an absolute Souls-like masterpiece, please stop turning your mobs into damage sponges. GG.
Source: Reddit
