Game-Changing Crimson Desert Patches Spark Debate About Need for a Hard Difficulty Mode

There can be no doubt that the flurry of patches released in the wake of Crimson Desert’s release have improved the experience. From tweaks to the controls to the addition of a storage box, more fast travel points to more summonable mounts, Crimson Desert updates are genuinely game-changing — and user sentiment has become more positive as a result.

However, amid the delight that comes with each new quality-of-life change, there is a small subset of players who believe Crimson Desert is getting too easy. The patches — while welcome — are starting to ease some of the challenge Crimson Desert presented at launch, whether that be through balance changes or sweeping changes to its fundamentals.

These critics point to nerfs to bosses (some of which were frustratingly brutal pre-patch), improvements to the efficiency of farming for resources, and, with the latest patch released over the weekend, changes to flight and stamina that make zipping around the environment a breeze.

And so, alongside the release of the updates are calls for the developers to add actual difficulty modes to Crimson Desert. There are a number of suggestions, including a simple “easy” and “hard mode,” the latter of which would revert some of the balance changes made in recent updates. Others want “story,” “normal,” and “hard” modes. Some are going so far as to suggest a “hardcore” mode that, they believe, would let fans play Crimson Desert “the way it was meant to be played.”

“Game is becoming too easy with each update,” declared one player. “After recent updates the bosses feel very easy, no challenge or skill required. Now crafting difficulty got nerfed as well. How hard is it to get 4 iron and 4 copper to upgrade your gear? This stuff is everywhere. Developers need seriously consider adding two game difficulties.”

“Please introduce level scaling or bring the previous difficulty setting,” added another. “Especially the boss fights seem useless now that we can simply block them without penalty and just wait till they finish their attack pattern then attack them dealing insane amounts of damage. It completely took the edge off. I literally singlehandedly eradicated all red camps and forts in the first two regions yesterday. It makes the whole camp missions element completely redundant now.”

“The difficulty is a joke now it’s so easy you don’t need to do anything just hold attack and the bosses die,” another said. “Why isn’t there a difficulty selection for everyone that can’t put in some time to learn combat… the challenge made the game fun imo.”

Some Crimson Desert players call for story, normal, and hard modes

Some are saying that the further you get into Crimson Desert, the harder it becomes, and that some of the complaints are from players who haven’t made it to areas outside Hernand. “I’ve been enjoying Crimson Desert a lot, especially after the latest patch,” explained one player. “Gameplay is a lot more responsive, combat has auto lock on and is less jank. It’s a beautiful game with a great combat system but… I’m a little worried. I’m like 50 hours in and still in Hernand and the combat difficulty feels way too easy (except for bosses).”

Now, some players are using mods to make the game harder. Tweaking settings for the player status via mods lets you do things like take double damage and deal less damage, making combat in particular much more challenging.

Pearl Abyss has signalled plans to continue to update Crimson Desert, and the developer has shown a remarkable swiftness in responding to feedback. Nothing seems off the table at the moment when it comes to tweaks, so perhaps a hard mode could be in the works to present a tougher challenge. It’s hard to see the developer rolling back any changes to the way the game plays, however. Improvements to controls, for example, are surely here to stay. But maybe balance changes could be made for a tougher difficulty mode, if it does end up making it into the game. Overall, though, most Crimson Desert players seem to be revelling in the new gameplay opportunities that are now available post-patches.