Difficulty just comes down to TTK in borderlands. There isn’t a real skill ceiling outside of headshots and crits, and even then depending on what class you play that gets affected, so-
Like in TTW, I chose hard mode and I think I shouldn’t have because the only difference between normal and hard is that my encounters last a few more seconds or minutes longer, thus ‘artificial’ difficulty.
Not that that’s a bad system for a game to have, but that would be the ‘why’ it isn’t challenging. You literally just click on stuff til it dies and press your action skill when it comes up. You don’t gotta manage an inventory (like fallout or some other FPS RPG) or do sneak attacks or use buff potions, etc. Every encounter is click til die. No need for any skill or strategy outside of being able to stay on target and survive FFYL.
Game is easy when less click = more die.
Game is ‘hard’ when you… take more clicks and more time in a fight.
Also I must say that a well designed difficult does not feel like “breaking your nose for daring to play” game designers need to find the sweet spot where the player will think “ok I failed BUT if I do this or that I may succeeded” and this feeling repeat a number of time until it is “I failed BUT I just need a little more practice” Now if you just make it feels hopeless or unreasonably tedious player will just close the game, silver lining in every game over.
self imposed rules are a joke and you know that so stop bringing it up
the game does have 3 different difficulty settings so it can do exactly that for 3 different kinds of players
Bahahahahaha, now THAT’S funny. Man, I’m sure the speed running community would love to hear that . I guess discipline, self-control, and integrity are jokes too?
How are self imposed rules a joke? It is literally the foundation for half the Pokemon playthroughs you see online.
Imposing limitations on yourself adds difficulty. That is LITERALLY what video game difficulty does.
Hard mode in this game decreases your damage by 15% and increases enemy damage by 15%. That is literally a modifier that inflates difficulty. The same as something like “not using high tier weapons”… which deal more damage… so you decrease the damage you deal…exactly like what the Hard mode modifier does and would do in any other game.
Thank you for the suggestion. Im quite happy though with how hard it is to kill enemys and how easy it is to day as long as i use no wards. Your suggestion dont deal with the problem that there is no punishment for dying, especially in coop.
You see if i only use common tier gear this of course makes enemys harder to kill but on highest difficulty they already need several mags.
In the end though this still won’t make the game really that much more difficult. Sure i would die more often in a fight, but does that mather if no enemys respawn when i die? I could still play absolutely terrible but i would still be able to defeat them.
If they would respawn once i fail i would actually need to get good enough in the game to defeat them without dying.
Non of your suggestions really deal with that problem.
They make it more likely to die but if dying doesnt mather they still don’t really raise the games difficulty.
I gotta also say if i would use only melee than i would rather choose a game with a very good melee combat system 
it’s simply not how games work
there is a fair amount of people who start doing their own challenges when being done with a game while the majority of people are playing the game as intended which means using every given tool to try and push against what the game throws at you to succeed and feel satisfied.
gimping yourself because your enemies feel gimped already and missing out of content because of that is the biggest ongoing joke possible in these conversations.
i stongly disagree with that. Many enemy attacks can be dodge or avoided by use of cover. Monitoring all the enemys that are attacking you and being able to dodge their attacks does require a lot of skill.
I fine with certain self imposed rules.
Not using a ward really makes the game more fun for me.
Not using OP weapons too.
But just using white weapons, not using skill points or only melee take away a lot from the gameplay variety, so i wouldn’t do that.
If GBX isn’t even willing to commit the time and labor required to finish a game, have it more than 95% fixed, and have it available in that state offline, why in the HELL would they invest the resources required to craft complex,
scaling AI that can coalesce multiple enemy units, and have them meaningfully react to things like terrain and player tactics?
I try to make it clear why i think a death penalty is necesary to make a game difficult.
Whatch the following recording.
In this video im just playing terrible. Not dodging at all not using cover not using my abilitys corectly.
As you can see i die. Of course i die. Would have been weird if not. In the end im playing on the highest difficulty with no ward while playing like a complete beginner.
Imagine i had used just white gear. I likely would have died more often.
Does that mean i would have had to play bether in order to progress?
No. absolutely not. I would have just respawned and defeated the remaining enemys. Sure it would have taken longer. Still even a terrible player would have done it.
Of course the Badass enemy might have been a problem because he gets his health back on my respawn, which means i at least need to be good enough to kill that one guys without respawns. But that is also only true for singleplayer. In multiplayer he wouldnt have gotten his health back.
Do you see why all that self handicapping doesnt really help?
Yeah but thats the point. Without a penatly for dying you basically cant fail. You say you might think “I failed BUT I just need a little more practice" well no… You don’t need more practice. You dont need to improve. You will beat the next encounter because sooner or later your non respawning enemys will die no mather how bad you play. If you have to finish an encouter without failing thats the point where you as a player need to get bether.
Of course there are such encounters in the BL games. Boss fights if you play solo. Some end game content. But thats maybe 10% of the entire games content. The other 90% still will never be challenging.
yea i guess the thing you are looking for is basically the chaos chamber and the base game is just supposed to be done by everyone without frustrating people
(while…overworld battles can still do that)
Well base game in BL is not designed to be challenging, only reasonable thing they could probably do rather easily is include toggle mayhem mode option like no FFYL right at the start of game
Yeah thats true. I would just be way more fun to replay the campaign with the same challenge of the chaos chambers over and over again than just that little bit of end game content.
Also true that TTW actually provides a bit of that experience, i really like that.
That would be something at least. In the end it still misses the mark of the problem. It makes dying more likely but still doesn’t actually make dying a problem.
In Butcher they say about difficulty settings “the easiest difficulty is HARD” it’s an humorous sentence but it still points out that there is only so much you can do with a (reasonable development cost ) with toggleable settings (which are mostly variance of numerical values). The real core of the difficulty is the philosophy of the game and how the mechanics are designed , for instance as you remarked in your original post in Dark Souls death is a problem because the game is designed a certain way to make it impacting and it runs really deep (level design, how fire camp works, humanity you lose, etc…).
yeah its true what you are saying. They do have the philosophy that i want to in some content of their game, like the maliwan takedown. They do have a punishment for death. No respawn and failure once everybody dies. Its just sad to see that that philosophy is just in such a small part of the game.
Of course i dont want the entire game to work excactly like maliwan takedown.
But they could archieve a similar effect by adding a modifier that respawns all enemys once a player respawns.
You lose 10% of your money upon death. Sure, it isn’t a 100% loss in cash, exp to next level, upgrade parts, etc., but I don’t see how “heavy death penalties” are “challenge”. They’re just a harsher slap on the wrist for being bested by the systems working against you.
You want harsher punishments, not more challenge. Am I understanding this correctly?
who needs cover when you have a shield and FFYL?
Specifically with BL3 and TTW.
In 1 and 2 I could see cover mattering more.