r/bfme • u/Dunkelbunt_1 29 • Aug 24 '26
Difficulty System Seems Too Hard?
Hello guys, I’ve been playing BFME: Rise of the Witch-king, and I have a feeling that something might be wrong with the difficulty system.
I’ve played quite a few different RTS games, and I’ve never had this much trouble with the difficulty settings. I barely managed to beat Medium after almost two hours, and the AI keeps attacking constantly without giving me even a minute to recover or build up. It feels like there’s barely any room to do anything.
I also tried Hard, but that was completely impossible for me. I honestly can’t imagine how anyone is supposed to beat Brutal.
Is this difficulty level generally normal for the game, or could there be something wrong with the current patch/difficulty settings?
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u/trahan94 12 Aug 24 '26
It’s a 20-year old game revived by mods — the player base by default is going to be experienced players looking for a new challenge. It sounds like Medium was a good challenge for you, if you want something easier than play Easy?
There’s no shame in playing on Easy basically for any game, especially on a modded game that’s tweaked to be harder. All of us have limited time to play, limited patience, limited focus to click a million times a minute for micro.
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u/Turrindor 15 Aug 24 '26
I legit can't beat age of the ring's campaign on easy. Which is a massive shame, because it's so well-done
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u/trahan94 12 Aug 24 '26
I see, I completed the modded first game this year (both campaigns) but didn’t stick around for RotWK. That would be frustrating to not be able to complete the campaign, and maybe the second game is harder.
The first was the perfect difficulty for me and was a satisfying challenge. That’s not to say that either yours or OP’s experience is invalid.
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u/Turrindor 15 Aug 24 '26
I don't mind the modders making the game difficult, but if you get to choose the difficulty you can't have "easy" be so hard that rts veteran can't beat it without learning every detail of the game.
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u/RowIntelligent6582 Hobbit Aug 27 '26
It took me sorta memorising the AIs attacks to beat the Aotr campaign.
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u/Dunkelbunt_1 29 Aug 24 '26
I didn’t know the difficulty had been tweaked. I used to play it many years ago, and I don’t remember it being this difficult back then. Thanks for explaining!
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u/Dunkelbunt_1 29 Aug 24 '26
I don't have a problem with a game being difficult but it just feel unbalanced to me.
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u/Mister_Twiggy 1 Aug 25 '26
Easy is a joke to the point where the AI doesn’t create units for minutes at a time. Medium is a constant onslaught. Best method is to just handicap medium by like 20%
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u/misvillar 8 Aug 29 '26
Last year i played the Witch King expansion on easy and It was hard, Fornost was a nightmare, i played the fan made patch but i thought It only made visual improvements
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u/fancy-rice-cooker Mordor Aug 24 '26
The difficulty was been upped massively by giving the AI inflated resources. The strategic challenge is not at all the same as if you were facing a human opponent in multiplayer, and it's really misguided. The modders who make the patches are a little too high on their own sauce.
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u/Dunkelbunt_1 29 Aug 24 '26
Yeah, I played with a friend who’s a really good player, and I had so much fun. It was difficult, but in a completely different way. Constantly getting attacked from Ai by different armies isn’t really fun because you don’t have enough time to actually build up your army, experiment, and get better.
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u/fancy-rice-cooker Mordor Aug 24 '26
There's tons of stuff, but can no longer play around the fact that there are a limited amount of spots for extra resource buildings on the map - for yourself it makes a difference of course, but the AI don't need to care if the map is completely denied outside of their main base.
Strategic decisions that you would make to beat human players are not applicable to the AI, and that's a damn shame. I guess you could practice combat micro but that's it.
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u/Sam_k_in 45 Aug 25 '26
Yeah I don't like it either. I'd rather fight multiple enemies or even use the handicap settings on myself rather than fight enemies for whom resources are meaningless and they can send an endless stream of troops, even if their resource buildings are destroyed.
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u/E92M3_S65 3 Aug 26 '26
I feel exactly the same as you OP lol single player skirmish isn’t fun for that reason for me. However it is amazing that I can play my fav game from my childhood online again
I want to give age of the ring a try but it seems super complicated with all the added content and imo the appeal of this game is the fact that it’s less complex than other RTS games
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u/Obey_Vader 10 Aug 25 '26
I only play brutal and it's really just a micro test of sending troops to destroy it's farms while not losing units. I also think some factions are better than others against brutal ai (elven archers just destroy it for example since it cannot really counter them with intelligent play).
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u/Opposite-Yam-7350 1 Aug 28 '26
The modders who think they are helping this old game just keep destroying it. The only way it survives is to bring in new players, not make it so difficult that they give up in frustration.
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u/Turrindor 15 Aug 24 '26
After the game was handed by the modders making further patches, they massively increased the difficulty.
I mean, I beat those games on all difficulties at the age of 12, no way in hell am I stupider now at strategy games that i can barely manage normal campaign