In my opinion, Difficulty should correspond directly to rewards received. As of now, the closest thing that comes to rewards is stars for each mission, but while you're limited to one star playing easier/custom rules, there's no incentive to turn the difficulty higher if you're going for 3 stars on everything. My suggestion first requires that "difficulty level" is defined as a number between 0.0 and 1.0, corresponding to the average position of all sliders in the Campaign difficulty screen. So a game with 300% damage received (position 1.0), 500 income (position 0.0), and 100% groove charge (position 0.5) would still be "normal" difficulty: ((0.0 + 1.0 + 0.5) / 3) = 0.5 The second part of my suggestion is that the number of stars you're limited to should now become round(difficulty_level * MAX_STARS) MAX_STARS is currently 3, but presumably if higher difficulties are rewarded, it may need to jump up to 5 to properly reward the player. So using this new system, our "normal" difficulty level of .5 yields a max of 3 stars: `round(5 * .5) == round2.5) == 3` If the devs REALLY want to go ham, I'd say add more sliders to the screen for stuff like damage given, bonuses/penalties for movement, range, and vision, and isolate it from campaign in such a way that it could be used to customize Commanders' army properties. Kind of like how back in Advance Wars, Sami's Infantry could move farther or Grit's Artilleries could shoot farther. That'd probably constitute a bit of a rewrite though. (^_^; ) Also, might I suggest making a sticky thread for discussion on specific questions you guys would like feedback on? It'd probably be a lot easier to consolidate for you guys. EDIT: Apparently some content is locked behind getting a certain number of stars. That changes things to me. All content should be ideally unlocked "eventually", even if you never get perfect rankings on anything. The rate at which you unlock stuff can be determined by difficulty, but difficulty shouldn't determine what CAN be unlocked.
I thought about 2 way to implement this. The easy way would be to allow 3 star on easier difficulties but the star would be a different color (silver or copper). These would still unlock contents but a real completionist will see these "lesser value" star and might want to get them in normal difficulty. The second way would be adjust the number of turns required for 1,2 and 3 stars according to the difficulty (based on a weighted average of the differences between the default value of the sliders and their actual position).
I can't shake the feeling off that people nowadays would rather spend 100 hours on a repetetive task, than just trying accomplish a challenge, when it comes to unlock something. This game is unique in this regard and one of the reasons why I bought it. Which modern day today which isn't an rouge-lite would have unlockables where you actually have to earn them? I remember the good 'ol Advance Wars times where unlocking (for example) Nell would actually mean something. Yeah these times are almost over...
I think that those that truly think you shouldn't get stars on lower difficulties aren't using said difficulties
I kind of think that the devs asking this question of the community is a bad idea, because the vast majority of respondents will say "no". Most people like me who need to play games on easier difficulties remain quiet so as not to attract negative attention. I myself suffered in silence for years, buying games I thought were cool and then not being able to play them because they were too much for me to handle (now that Steam has a good refund policy helps, but even then if you request refunds "too often", Steam threatens to deny you any refunds at all). It's only recently that I started speaking up, and have gotten a lot of hateful comments thrown my way for even suggesting that maybe a game should have difficulty settings that don't punish the player for using them. But I can understand why people get riled up. They don't want us "inferior" gamers unlocking content by taking the easy route while those that "work harder" get nothing. Perhaps Chucklefish could make the star system out of five. Give a max of three for those who play on easier modes, that way we can unlock the all content eventually. Give the fourth star automatically to players who play on normal, and the fifth star to those who play on hard. That way, people who need the easier modes like me can still get everything, while those who play on harder difficulties are rewarded by getting their unlocks faster.
