So, what are your thoughts? What things seem a bit easy, which ones seem really hard? What makes things easy/hard overall for you? Are there any weapons or items that seem to really change the difficulty overall right now?
While i have been really too busy lately to be up-to-date version-wise(sorry 
), but assuming nothing about shields/enemies changed from 0.205, its waaaay too easy. Mainly what makes is easy is shields, mainly the fact that they regen after every room, giving ridiculous amount of freedom as far as getting hit goes. And then there are items on top of that that act like shields after getting them can just flail around like drunk and still win.
Back when Archer ship type was a thing(Which had no shields), i actually found playing that reasonably hard in a fun way!
Well, one way or another, the game just isnt meant for the hardcore shmup crowd. It's meant to not be all that tough at all on Normal difficulty, though I'll be interested to see what happens when people go up against the Crescendo boss and it's 5 forms that I probably went overboard on.
The higher difficulties may be a bit different; I intend on getting really unpleasant with the Misery one in general. An interesting challenge for experts will be to find and defeat the game's hidden "ultimate" boss; I have free reign on that one and have been told to make it hard enough that I myself can barely defeat it, which means it's going to be really absurd. AKA, I can just go nuts with it. That boss will probably only be available on that difficulty level. Which makes sense, there's not going to be any point in fighting it if the player cant handle Misery mode. The method for reaching it is undecided.
As the overall difficulty goes, the shield mechanic though is likely remaining. One way or another, the game has a ton of bullets flying around much of the time, and plenty of people playing it wont be shmup experts. Giving the player some leeway isnt a bad thing, in that context.
personally I feel that the difficulty's in a happy place at the moment but 2 questions 1 is the misery difficulty name after deliberately?
2 is Chris okay? I'm just asking since he appears to have vanished(I presume he's keeping him self busy but it doesn't hurt to ask)
I'm genuinely not sure if I'm supposed to say anything or not about what everyone's doing, but I can say for certain that everyone is fine. There's no problems or anything. It'll be at least a couple of days before another update though. But I think there's some interesting stuff coming up! And I dont just mean the boss. In particular there's a certain idea that Chris had that he has decided to implement into the game, and THAT bit should be unique, and I'm looking forward to it. I probably shouldnt say anything else about it, but I think everyone will find it pretty darn interesting. It'll break up the pacing really nicely. I dont know just when that's coming though.
And despite the holidays, *I* am constantly here because I'm up much of the night and family events arent exactly happening at that time, so it doesnt interfere with stuff I want to do on the computer here. And the forums dont stress me out like lots of other things do (in other words, it doesnt clash with the autism stuff for me).
As for the difficulty name, haha, that wasnt my idea. It started with Bionic Dues actually after I kept saying that Expert difficulty wasnt hard enough. I'd suggested a bunch of specific changes that could create a harder mode without giving the enemies even MORE shields/HP, and Chris went and jammed it into the game and called it "Misery" difficulty. TLF has it too, under the combat difficulty selection specifically. Was pretty flattered by it, honestly, definitely appreciated.
I'm good at helping to make things more absurd, really. Well, depending on the type of game.
Chris proably spends the holidays with his family (New Years Eve/Christmas), so I wouldn't worry so much about him.
About difficulty: I think it is fine at the moment. Coming from someone who never beat the game as of now (my record was fourth floor).
I think we need however a better spread between the difficulty of different floors. That stronger oppenent can appear on lower floors is in my opinion not a good design choice. I hate this at Isaac so much and considering this game is about upgrades and stuff, lower floors should have also easier enemies. Or maybe you can scale damage/health with the floor level.
I really hate it when I get murdered in the first room because of bad luck. That's what I hate about Isaac the most.
Most enemies simply arent set to specific floor ranges now. Aint gotten around to it yet. There's still so many more of them coming, and new items are constantly coming out too, so the balance of the game is very much not set. Also I kept forgetting. I *think* I'm not the only one that's going to be setting the floor ranges though, which makes sense because I'm likely to end up just making things too hard if I do it all on my own.
But yeah, that's why that's happening. Enemies are just appearing basically everywhere right now, except for the absolute nastiest ones. Not a design choice, just a fun side effect of the game still being developed.
