It sure would be great if there was a way to change difficulty settings especially since there is a coop online feature. The difficulty ramp up would not only change monster stats but also daily living mechanics. For example there could be a "hard"core difficulty setting that alongside the obvious monster buffs, would also implement some sort of taxation system where you were required to pay taxes based on how much land you've claimed to the mayor of the town. Or where you were required to eat/drink to sustain maximum efficiency. Buildings could be harder to build because of higher requirements ect... I'm not sure how hard these things would be to code in but it would in my opinion extend the gameplay longevity in both single and mulitplayer games. My personal playing experience has found that there gets to be a point where too much money can be earned and as a result, loses value. In a game with strong economical elements like SV I think a taxation element would give players a reason for "hoarding" gold. Also I have a question about what you're planning to do with the difficulty scaling of online games. Will SV automatically scale monsters to the number of connected players in a game so it doesn't get to be too easy?
There will be different difficulty settings, and I'd also like to make these settings customizable (so if you wanted the combat/monsters to be really easy or even non-existent, but still wanted challenges elsewhere, you could set things up that way). I don't want to say anything for sure until it's all finalized... but yes, I'm planning on having the number of monsters scale up with the number of players ( who are currently in the same area).
