Any prize or incentive to play Hard or Insane?[G5]

[Flipstylez]

Do we get a cool weapon for the next new game we play? Or any "easter eggs" if we beat a game in Hard or Insane?

[Lilith]

Nope! It's strictly for challenging yourself, for your own enjoyment.

[Zummi]

Don't forget the geektastic bliss.

[Flipstylez]

Originally Posted By: meAzuma

Don't forget the geektastic bliss.

lol! that actually made me laugh

thanks guys

[Alorael at Large]

I've always had trouble with getting increased rewards from increased difficulty. Isn't that missing the point of making the game harder?

 

—Alorael, who once again points to Realmz as the worst culprit. If you are going to have experience gained scale with difficulty, try to have difficulty actually increase as the setting is raised.

[Ceiling Durkheim]

I think the idea was more along the lines of bonus content that didn't actually make the game substantially easier, but provided bragging rights/interesting tidbits.

 

As for experience scaling with difficulty, I agree that this doesn't work well, and Realmz was pretty ridiculous in that respect. On the other hand, I also find it frustrating in the Geneforge games (not so much in Avernum) that on higher difficulty settings monsters can be both 1) able to hurt my party in serious ways, and 2) not give me any experience. Offhand, it seems like the solution would be to have low-level enemies give out really small amounts of experience, rather than none at all. If a player really wants to spend hours grinding rats for 1 experience a pop, I can't see the harm in that.

 

Perhaps an automatic rat-grinder is in order. Or even a rat-blender? Then again, the average low-level adventuring party already qualifies as something of a rat-blender.

[Drayk Armitage]

Realmz also had one very unique problem related to that. The experience modifier was based on how your CURRENT total party level compared to the expected level for STARTING the scenario. This means, for example, that if a scenario expected to take 1st-level characters and provide enough content to get them to 6th-level... that for about 80% of the scenario, you would be facing an experience penalty, despite using the expected (and lowest possible) character level!

[Student of Trinity]

There are no easter eggs for difficulty, but it can add replay value. Once you figure out what you're doing, a lot of combats become easier, to the point where the game can become dull. Cranking up the difficulty can make it challenging again.