Harder Game Than ME2 Insanity

To be honest the difficulty curve is so slight in ME3 I can barely tell the difference between hardcore and normal and even insanity at times because the enemy health/shields/Armor multipliers are way too low. The only faction which seem significantly harder on insanity is Geth and only on levels with primes and swarms of pyros etc. Enemies on insanity should have Gold level health etc stats imo. The main problem with insanity is that enemy tactics don't really change as we'll so there's no real learning curve, nothing which takes practice to master.

Ramping up the difficulty simply through enemy damage output and hitpoint bloat is lame anyway.

Add Ironman mode.

Add permanent consequences for getting downed in combat, for squaddies and the protagonist.

Problem solved.

Anybody think a Halo skulls type system for custising the gameplay would nice? The Airmax Arena portion of Citadel already made interesting waves in this directions perhaps BioWare were testing the waters.

In halo singleplayer traditionally in addition to the difficulty tiers you can find rare collectables called skulls which can be applied to tweak gameplay in various ways to provide additional challenge but depending on your preferences. You can mix and match as you like.

Combining multiple skulls together creates unique gameplay scenarios and hence adds replay value and potential for interesting achievement challenges. What's more these tweaks are available to all users, require no modding skills, are super easy to apply or turn off in menu and of course have been thoroughly tested and updated regularly based upon player feedback.

These options needn't be collectables but could be unlocked as rewards for completing various actions.

Only if the game designers give the enemy one hit kills like Banshee sync kills and the like. And being downed may not necessarily mean death - maybe you can get evacuated and try again later, but the enemy fortifies their position in the meanwhile. With some well paced difficulty it could turn out to be a nice alternative to learning boss patterns and pounding on damage sponges until they relent.

I'm pretty sure there's no need to worry though, because nothing like that will be in the game. More hit points here, more damage there, some arbitrary resistances on top, that's what it's going to be. Anything else would surprise me.

Yeah, I'd be interested in something like that. 

ETA:  Sorry about the double post below... having internet issues today.

I don't know if it is technically feasible, but I would like an additional "dynamic" difficulty setting that scales the difficulty up and down based on the character's performance rather than the player adjusting it manually (with the manual setting also being available). I think it would be nice if the game could use the player's metrics to switch up or down as the campaign goes on, to balance the player's performance vs the NPCs output.

ME1 characters are pretty godly after a certain point, especially once you get the better armors and Spectre weapons. And there, you can send entire groups of enemies flying and suspend geth armatures and colossi in the air.

The trick is to make insanity not only more challenging but maintaining its fun factor. I really enjoyed ME3 insanity despite it not being all that difficult. ME2 insanity on the otherhand was just tedious. Scaling weak enemies to near boss levels is just dumb. I want a difficulty that makes it tactically challenging. I want enemies that employ tactics not just send more waves of the same brain dead drones with higher defensive stats. That's beyond f*cking lame.

Uhhh have you ever played the game on insanity? If so, then you'll remember how not only did ravagers take your health off (and by no small amount), they also stunlocked you.

On difficulties lower than that, they did neither. Sure, they took maybe your shields off, but that was it.

Err. Okay. Sorry, my comments weren't intended for you. They were intended for the rest of us plebian gamers.

I agree... if they implement something like this, I hope they make it a separate optional thing.  There's nothing more frustrating than really wanted to pass a  particular tough part "no matter how may tries it takes" but then having the game reduce the difficulty after only a few goes at it.  I'm old with slower reflexes and arthritic hands now and I have to made up for it by learning some "tricks" sometimes,  and sometimes it takes me quite a few tries to work things out... but that doesn't mean that I want to quit trying just when the games decide I should.  Even if I do get frustrated, I still want the right to decide for myself if I should give up on a level or keep trying it.

Hardest thing about ME2 insanity was the clunky movement. Otherwise it was EZ. Enemies were not nearly aggressive enough in trying to flank and/or dislodge the player & squadmates from cover, with the exception of husk hordes, which were cannon fodder anyway with the right tactics (cluster and nuke, basically).

ME3 arguably improved in that regard, but but it didn't matter because they made so many overpowered weapons and easily spammable combos, then replaced ME2s fully protected enemy compositions with hordes of unprotected health only mooks, that the game was laughably easy.

That said, the Citadel DLC clone fight and mirror matches were pretty okay. More enemies should've expressed aggressive behavior like them.