So here's how I thought we could split up the difficulties:
Player Damage
Pretty much the original difficulty levels from Deus Ex. Easy, Medium, Hard, Realistic.
NPC Health
I don't know if it would be possible to add this, but I think it would be great if we could input an additional difficulty setting for how much damage your enemies can take. That way, you can play a game where you and your enemies both can take plenty of hits, a game where a few shots can kill anybody, or anything in between. It would probably have to operate with multipliers like the original combat difficulty setting: Easy=.75 health, Medium=1.0, Hard=1.5, OMG=2.0. (Realistic wouldn't really fit here, heh).
Enemy/Item Difficulty
This would regulate the "Filter" options inherent in all Deus Ex actors. On Easy, there would be loads of equipment and few enemies. On Realistic, equipment would be sparse and enemies plentiful. If there's any way of making seperate filter functions for items (that is, actors expanding "Inventory") and enemies (actors expanding "Pawn" or "ScriptedPawn"), I think that would be amazing. Then you could set Items to Easy and Enemies to Realistic if you wanted loads of equipment AND fight loads of enemies. Or the other way around to get something more minimalistic and exploration-oriented.
That means we'd have a screen with two to four sliders, depending on what we can do. The problem is, we'd still need a button saying "Unrealistic" somewhere to let you open the platform game once you unlock that. I think maybe we should have four presets:
- Easy (PC Dmg=Easy, NPC Health=Medium, Enemies=Easy, Items=Easy)
- Normal (PC Dmg=Medium, NPC Health=Medium, Enemies=Medium, Items=Medium)
- Hard (PC Dmg=Hard, NPC Health=Medium, Enemies=Hard, Items=Hard)
- Realistic (PC Dmg=Realistic, NPC Health=Medium, Enemies=Realistic, Items=Realistic)
What say you? Can we do this? Are there better ways to do it? Feedback, people