Game balancing and relative difficulty

I really hope we get one of these options:

Adapted Difficulty

Game adapt the skill after your level. Making speedrunners and standard from A to B gamers (ignoring full castle) having an easier time and the explorer (want to see and obtain all) to accept the hardest possible game before unlocking Nightmare Mode, which are one of the rewards finish it in the first place.

Difficulty gain after item-unlock

Game have prefixed areas after how far you have traveled, making in short an item that you found to unlock new sections a part of the difficulty to be risen. Double jump = New gateway to a entirely new area. Now the game shifted from easy to normal. Or a doorway, a curse, a wall, a boss..

Replay to Unlock Areas

You encounter a orange door that is locked with some information about you need to finish the game first before it can be unlocked. Meeting Gebel, finish him off (or not). Complete the game. The next run; use the orange key to get pass it. Now this whole new section of the game is a bit harder. Here you encounter a red door that is locked with the same information. You meet Gebel twice, after the second time in the orange area, you finish him off (or not) and completes the game. Now we have seen two different endings, but it is revealed that the true one can only be obtained my meet Gebel three times in both normal, orange and red areas. Alternative: If orange door is unlocked, Gebel will shift to that room and another boss takes his place in the normal area room. Same goes with red door. If the red door is unlocked Gebel will shift once again from orange area room to the red area room.

This idea went way to complex, I wouldn't want to develop that type of game. Just throwing it out there.

Replay to Unlock Difficulties

Pretty straight forward. Play once and finish it on easy to unlock medium. Play again to unlock hard. Play last time to unlock nightmare. Of course you must finish the game every time. This can feel less fun for the hardcore gamers, but fine with the more relaxed players. I think this is the way IGA thouguth about doing first. But choosing difficulty would be nice.

Choose Difficulty A

Have the difficulty option at the beginning, allowing Easy, Normal and Hard to make the game a bit more straight forward in terms of difficulty, just tweeking numbers and procentage across the board. The castle should have more engaging boss-fights and harder encounter as is anyway due to the castle-layout and progress. If this is also a thing, let us unlock Nightmare Difficulty ONLY if we can beat Hard.

Choose Difficulty B

Like above, but do not allow Easy at the beginning, just after you have died X amount of times in Normal. By choosing Easy, the rate of shards and such are lowered but the overal experience are easier.

Choose Difficulty C

Like above but with no Easy, just Normal and Hard.

And

• Higher difficulty, the higher reward of some kind. (Different end scenarios too).
  
• Allow Nightmare difficulty to be applied on all game modes, not just the main game.
• When replay, choose if you want to continue with the shards / stats or use a new "character".
• Have a bunch of save-slots.
  

Suggestion: Nightmare Difficulty Settings

If there is a way, making Nightmare a place for us to change the settings, like.. Spawn random items in different rooms (like swap stuff at random that aren't THAT important but semi-vital), stats and number tweeks, disable things, double the amount for other things.. Then the Nightmare difficulty are as its base a really hard game, but with the options we can make the game suit our flavor a bit more. It could be just 1 or 2 things, it would make more people try it out.

If you ask me, I think "Adapted Difficulty" is pretty much already achievable in normal gameplay, through self-imposed limitations.

Or we could take the Final Fantasy XIII route and make leveling up completely pointless because the monsters level up with you.

I guess in a sense...there are no difficulties on FFXIII, it's nightmare difficulty all the way...hmmm...