darkSpyro

I know a lot of people will probably disagree with me since the difficulties are actually a big addition to this game(especially with Nightmare mode). However, I think that Giants was too slow paced and the combat just got tiring instead of being difficult, since the AI is dumb on all difficulties(it will feel more of an annoyance than a challenge if you get hit by them).

The levels are still somewhat stretched because of the puzzles, but now I pretty much main Easy mode. It makes the game more fun for me because enemies can be taken out faster, so the game is quicker- not at the same level as SA, but in a more similar vein than the harder difficulties. So I enjoy revisiting it more. Besides, games aren't a contest of who can be most uber pro, they're about fun, and I have more fun with Easy mode. If I feel like a harder game, I do switch to Normal and sometimes Hard as well. I've beaten Nightmare mode, but I didn't have very much fun while I was doing it.

Most people probably consider it a joke, seeing as I never hear anyone talk about it, but does anyone agree? Anyone ever change to an easier/harder mode?

i prefer nightmare!!!!!!!

I'm of the opinion that cranking up the damage ratio of enemies to 13 does NOT equal 'hard', I find Nightmare more frustrating than anything else, especially since the Giants, who're supposed to be the primary focus of the game, are made practically redundant because their size counts against them, and the biggest HP pools just mean that one hit kills become two hit kills.

It's extremely irritating when that Goliath drow needs ONE more hit, he blocks it, and then counters by killing your character.

I'm the same as you, OP... Like you, I'm up to the challenge, I finished Nightmare, but games are supposed to be fun. I find challenge is rarely fun except in the rare case where the format intrigues me, so I find it more fun to keep Skylanders on Easy, mow through the enemies with increasing ease as my characters gain levels. I feel satisfied challenging myself, like completing an Heroic or level without getting damaged.

And I too found that Nightmare wasn't harder so much as more annoying, changing HP and attack strengths to make it unreasonably easy to die and unreasonably hard for enemies to die. 1-hit deaths aren't challenging, they're infuriating.

I like the fact that there are options. The original Castlevania was only 6 levels and I've still never beaten that game. Castlevania II and III were much more fun while still providing plenty of challenges. Yet, that elusive original tough-as-nails Castlevania held a certain appeal as the ultimate test.

While I appreciate the option of Nightmare mode, I don’t feel it was very well planned out. There are a few things that would make Nightmare mode more fun for me:

1) I’m fine with boosting the enemies in hard modes – but don’t just up all their stats. That’s boring, it adds little to the game and it causes some serious balance issues (more on that later).
Instead, make some hit harder and make some more resilient. Mix it up. Make us use more varied strategies. Surprise us. Make us have to swap figures to best face different situations.

2) Don’t boost enemy health too far. By all means, add resilience to the baddies, but do it by adding resistances, immunities and dodging.
Giving a baddie higher attack adds to gameplay – it makes you dodge more, makes positioning more important and makes you have to plan your attacks more carefully. You know - it asks you to play with more skill.
But all boosting health to silly high levels does is make you repeat the same boring attack pattern over and over and over and over, while you whittle down their ridiculous healthsink. That is not fun.
Nightmare should be quick and deadly, not a war of attrition.

3) You know what’s better than tougher enemies? MORE enemies. Some levels seem empty – fill those puppies up! Add extra waves. Add more cannon fodder to the waves. Wading through a sea of enemies is just as hard and is far more fun than banging your head on one dude who just will not go down.

4) Know what’s better than tougher enemies or more enemies? Smarter enemies! Bring back the baddies from SSA that give other units immunity to certain attacks. Bring back monsters like the undead from SSA that are immune to some elements and weak to others.
Make some enemies coordinate their attacks.
Set up some areas as ambushes.
Make us play smart. Make us have to switch elements. Make us have to change the types of attack.

5) Lastly, bear balance in mind – Nightmare mode makes some figures useless.
For example, Giants are too slow to dodge the instant-kill attacks in nightmare and that makes them far too vulnerable. Their ‘great power’ is useless because of the big boost to enemy health. Giants should have been given a massive damage boost, letting them do the same percentage of damage as before – that would give them an advantage to offset the lack of mobility. They would become glass canons - deadly, but brittle. Choosing when to use them would have introduced a lot of strategy.
Don’t be afraid to modify some player abilities in order to balance the game-mode.

I will keep playing nightmare mode and I look forward to nightmare in the new games, but a bit more thought would go a long way.

I agree with Tel; Nightmare could use improvements. I have my primary game set on Easy, so that when it comes to upgrading characters, I can do it quick and easy. Then I use them in Nightmare.

I,like Tempest,agree with Tel.Smarter baddies would be awesome.

Nightmare mode is not fun because the enemies are way too overpowered.

Tel, you've nailed down almost every complaint I've made with less swearing and Super Meat Boy/I wanna be the guy references.

Actually, regarding giants, it'd be nice if they had more damage mitigation; higher chance to block? Halved damage?

Quote: Nelomet

It's extremely irritating when that Goliath drow needs ONE more hit, he blocks it, and then counters by killing your character.

If he does that using his normal skills, I think that’s fine… I mean, it is nightmare, after all.

But one issue with nightmare is that they sometime randomly shrug off or block damage randomly. That’s not fun because you can’t work around it – there isn’t any additional strategy there, you can’t develop any specific tactics, because it’s random.
If it was an immunity to an element or resistance to a type of attack, that’s fine – because that makes you work around the limitation and develop counter-tactics.

I always thought that nightmare mode was when the enemies dodge your attacks and move super fast (cause a nightmare is a dream) so I would be like, what?

Quote: Tempest

I agree with Tel; Nightmare could use improvements. I have my primary game set on Easy, so that when it comes to upgrading characters, I can do it quick and easy. Then I use them in Nightmare.

I'm hoping they change enemy layout configurations or change it in other more subtle ways other than making it easy to die/hard to kill enemies.

i like nightmare only cuz of the trill
but indeed, normal mode is better

OMG, yes, the different difficulties should have had different enemies! I've seen walkthroughs which were like "On easy there's 3 Boogs. On medium there's also 2 Blargs, and on hard there's also an Uber-Berg"... I've also seen even "On easy there's 3 Boogs, on hard you have 2 Uber-Bergs instead", CHANGING instead of adding! Doom was like that (whoo-boy, I'm dating myself now), where not only the health but the number of enemies increased on higher difficulties. THAT game did a fine job with difficulties, harder difficulties did indeed force you to use more strategy and be more careful (and save more), instead of just being infuriating... I remember at times playing through on Easy, then again on Medium, working my way up the difficulties.

I think the reason they didn't is that one way they increased the difficulty is to DECREASE the amount of XP. If they increased the enemies, that would again increase the XP, so you're still getting just as much XP out of a level.

I prefer Easy mode, because it's the first one I beat, and it's easier to get XP. I like Nightmare mode, but it's not as intriguing.

Finished Nightmare once for the replay value but don't think I'll ever go into the mode again. If I have a friend who just got it then I run through the game with them on Normal usually. I mainly just go to easy mode for the fast xp. Plus I like to relax and will just stick with once Skylander until I got them maxed and that is much easier on easy mode.

I sometimes do nightmare for the challenge.

Not changing the enemies in nightmare was a cop out. If you're gonna lock the player into the mode, it should at least have actual differences.

I would like to see a system that lets you choose easy/normal/hard for three types of things:

Enemy spawn- hard has the most enemies in levels
Enemy patterns- hard has enemies with trickier and less predictable attack patterns
Enemy stats- hard has enemies with higher HP and damage numbers

I think something like this would be the best layout to please both kinds of players.

Or a system like Kid Icarus: Uprising, which has the best difficulty mechanic ever! Intensity 9 really lives up to its name. Enemies, enemies everywhere!

Of course this is all wishful thinking, I would rather they work on developing the game more than just difficulty settings- but the current version is in need of intense changes..

I prefer Normal because that is my skill level. I dont wanna go through enemies that I can kill with one hit, yet I dont want to be ridiculously under powered compared to the opposition.

Quote: niceguy1

OMG, yes, the different difficulties should have had different enemies! I've seen walkthroughs which were like "On easy there's 3 Boogs. On medium there's also 2 Blargs, and on hard there's also an Uber-Berg"... I've also seen even "On easy there's 3 Boogs, on hard you have 2 Uber-Bergs instead", CHANGING instead of adding! Doom was like that (whoo-boy, I'm dating myself now), where not only the health but the number of enemies increased on higher difficulties. THAT game did a fine job with difficulties, harder difficulties did indeed force you to use more strategy and be more careful (and save more), instead of just being infuriating... I remember at times playing through on Easy, then again on Medium, working my way up the difficulties.

I think the reason they didn't is that one way they increased the difficulty is to DECREASE the amount of XP. If they increased the enemies, that would again increase the XP, so you're still getting just as much XP out of a level.

Easy. Drill back the max about of XP to be gained...even with the XP wheel. It's all a numbers game. You want to sound dated? How about the original castle wolfenstein that shipped on 3.5 disk?

Actually, that wasn't the "original", that was the third Wolfenstein, Wolfenstein 3D. The ORIGINAL castle Wolfenstein was top down, on 5.25 floppies and was for the Apple II. And was something like 8 years earlier. And I played that too. I remember hearing about 3D and looking forward to this innovative new THREE-D game.

Quote: Nelomet

Tel, you've nailed down almost every complaint I've made with less swearing and Super Meat Boy/I wanna be the guy references
Actually, regarding giants, it'd be nice if they had more damage mitigation; higher chance to block? Halved damage?

Yeah… those giants… I’m not sure how I’d balance the giants, but the totally needed SOMETHING to balance them in nightmare. If your changes make the title characters of your game unplayable, you need to take a better look at how you’re making your changes.

I think that your armour idea is a better option than boosting the Giant’s attack, since that would stop them collapsing almost immediately, and then TFB would have been able to scatter (at least) two scenarios throughout the world:
* Areas with few fast, hard hitting enemies that require core figures to dodge.
* Areas with a sea of small baddies, where giants are required withstand the crashing waves of enemies.

Actually, when it comes to skill levels, my favourite is the later levels in Spyro’s adventure on PS3 and 360.
Unlike the Wii version, because they didn’t get the skill levels rebalanced, so it’s an odd combination of easy and hard. You can wonder through the game without a care, and then suddenly you’re fighting for your life. And every now and then the game just throws the book at you, and smashes half your team.
I have no idea how any child bet Kaos in that game… the boss battles were unrelentingly brutal and the final battle chewed through the bulk of my collection – it was madness.
The point is, in SSA you never knew when things were going to get crazy – you weren’t constantly frustrated by hard enemies or unfair stat bumps, but you were still constantly cautious because you never knew when the game was going to freak out and go medieval on you, and you knew that you needed to preserve your health for when it did.

Quote: SkylandFollower

Not changing the enemies in nightmare was a cop out. If you're gonna lock the player into the mode, it should at least have actual differences.
….
Of course this is all wishful thinking, I would rather they work on developing the game more than just difficulty settings- but the current version is in need of intense changes..

True facts. But it’s pretty clear that nightmare (and Giants as a whole) was really a bit of a rush job. Frankly, I’m shocked they were able to add so much to the game (character quests, giants, charms, nightmare, skill wheels, badges, etc) in such a short time.
I imagine that now they are running the Call of Duty model (two developers alternating releases each year) they will be able to plan things out a bit more (and I’d rather have the current nightmare than nothing at all).

Quote: [url=http://forum.darkspyro.net/spyro/viewposts.php?topic=82962&post=4401712

The ORIGINAL castle Wolfenstein was top down, on 5.25 floppies and was for the Apple II. And was something like 8 years earlier. And I played that too.

And it was awesome

Nightmare Mode is actually quite broken, it should not be as easy as it is to take out a character. Some are just not worth using without all the Heroics done on Nightmare Mode because of this.

But that's what Nightmare mode is FOR, surely... so you have something to challenge your crew even if they are level 15 and have completed the challenges.

I use easy when playing with my brother, so he feels like he's good at the game.


He tried to use Stump Smash to open a Magic Gate. He's not the brightest.

NIGHTMARE FTW I CAn Make the Whole game IN NIGHTMARE mode With voodood and Wham-Shell,ChopChop,Zook,And ignitor!

I abuse easy mode when I'm upgrading and leveling up my guys/gurls, and I use nightmare mode to test them and to have a real challenge

To be honest, I thought SSA was a bit easy unless you do a One-And-Only challenge with any Skylander who isn't . I like games with multiple difficulty settings, and am kind of disappointed SSA only had one difficulty.

SSA was a funny case. It was easy for the most part - but on 360/PS3 it had crazy difficulty spikes at random intervals - spike that were made more difficult because you never knew when to expect them.