History Main / NonIndicativeDifficulty

* ''VideoGame/FZero'' (SNES) has the Fire Stingray, billed as an expert machine as it boasts the highest top speed can't turn as tightly as the other three. However, it's also the least drifty, so not only is it the only machine worth using in Time Attack (unless you're doing machine-specific records), it's also the ''easiest'' machine to learn.

* ''VideoGame/BattleTech2018'' is NintendoHard to begin with, but the listed difficulty for individual missions is calculated based on relative 'Mech tonnages, which is only marginally useful given how much variety there is in both player and AI loadouts.

* This happens to some attacks and spellcards in ''Franchise/TouhouProject'', particularly since easier difficulties tend to slow down the bullets, which sometimes just makes the patterns denser, leaves more bullets on the screen, and requires more micrododging. A good example is ''VideoGame/TouhouFuujinrokuMountainOfFaith'', Kanako's last spellcard, on Easy and Normal: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKRMW-RWUlc see this video for a comparison]].

* The 4/20 challenge in ''VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys'' (in which, on Night 7, you set all four animatronics to their maximum AI level of 20), has a quirk when it comes to Bonnie and Chica that has lead some to speculate that setting their AI level to 18 or 19 might actually be harder than putting it at 20. The numbers are used to determine whether, at set intervals, an animatronic will move; 1 means a 5% chance, while 20 means a 100% chance. When those two specific animatronics are outside your office, they will remain in place until their next successful movement check, and on 4/20 mode that is guaranteed to be after about 5 seconds. On a slightly lower AI level however, they have a chance to stay outside the office for an extended period of time, wasting power and putting you at the mercy of the RandomNumberGod.

* ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'': Back in ''Wrath of the Lich King'', 25-man raids were intended to be harder and more rewarding than their 10-man counterparts, giving loot with higher item levels than the latter. This is mostly true but there are some encounters that are actually easier on the 25man setting simply because more people are present to handle things, whereas in a 10-man raid the relative importance of each individual is increased, and losing a single person can potentially spell doom for any boss attempt. In ''Cataclysm'' and ''Mists of Pandaria'', the two raid sizes were presented as roughly the same difficulty, before the flexible raid difficulty was introduced at the end of the latter expansion.

* ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'': Back in ''Wrath of the Lich King'', 25-man raids were intended to be harder and more rewarding than their 10-man counterparts, giving loot with higher item levels than the latter. This is mostly true but there are some encounters that are actually easier on the 25man setting simply because more people are present to handle things and losing a single person tends to make less of an impact on the overall performance. In ''Cataclysm'' and ''Mists of Pandaria'', the two raid sizes were presented as roughly the same difficulty, before the flexible raid difficulty was introduced at the end of the latter expansion.

* ''VideoGame/DevilMayCry'':
** Heaven Or Hell difficulty, where [[OneHitPointWonder you die in one hit]], but so does everything else. Contrast with the more traditionally difficult Hell And Hell, where only ''you'' die in one hit.
** The PC version of ''VideoGame/DevilMayCry4'' had the Legendary Dark Knight difficulty which took the overall difficulty down a notch and made all enemies die a lot faster but greatly increased enemy numbers. Apart from being generally easier, your area-affecting attacks would hit most of the clustered demons, resulting in them dying fast and you getting a crapload of [[RankInflation style points]] for every attack.

** The UpdatedRerelease, ''Mushihimesama Futari Black Label'' offers God difficulty, which replaces previous versions' [[HarderThanHard Ultra]] difficulty. Despite the name of the difficulty, it's actually ''easier'' than Ultra mode; there is more slowdown, far more chances to cancel bullets, enemies don't let off as many suicide bullets as they did in Ultra, and the TrueFinalboss, likely due to an oversight on the developers' part, has safe spots in her final attack.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands}}''' DLC, ''Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot'', after Round 1 Moxxi will randomly choose an effect (or effects) with which to make the next wave harder. One example of this is by making the enemies have double shield strength. Which doesn't come into play if you're only fighting Skags (with no shields) or have Mordecai's Trespass skill maxed (which ignores shields). Granted, it's not making things easier, but it's not making them harder either.

* ''{{Franchise/Castlevania}}'':
** ''[[VideoGame/CastlevaniaOrderOfEcclesia Order of Ecclesia's]]'' Hard Mode places a level cap. But it also gives you a NewGamePlus. It turns out health and mana are meaningless; your glyph setup and knowing how to approach enemies is key. A cap of Level 1 isn't that much harder than a Cap of 50.
** ''[[VideoGame/CastlevaniaHarmonyOfDespair Harmony of Despair's]]'' Dracula has the Demonic Megiddo attack, a powerful move that can only be avoided by running to the corners of the boss room. In Hard Mode, the attack gains fire pillars that appear in the safe spots during the attack's wind up, forcing the player to wait until the last possible second to run to safety. This makes the move harder to dodge, but it also functions as a ''much'' more obvious telegraph that Demonic Megiddo is coming than the InstantRunes that are the only other warning.

** Similarly, in some older arcade games (''VideoGame/MsPacMan'', for instance) the cabinet can be set to a difficulty by the owner. While it isn't universal some players find the fastest speed to be much easier than the slower ones.

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIX'' players will sometimes go through the game without gaining a single point of experience, competing it at level one. Through creative use of abilities, spells and equipment, most early bosses can actually be killed ''faster'' than if one were to play through normally. Quina's Limit Glove Blue Magic deals 9999 damage if s/he has 1 HP remaining, which is enough to one-shot everything until Oeilvert, by which time Zidane and Freya are able to do the same with their own attacks.

* In ''VideoGame/PacMan Championship Edition DX'', it's somewhat easier to get higher grades (which are based on your ranking percentile rather than an absolute scale) on the harder and later courses like Half, because there are less players making a serious attempt on those courses than on the earlier and more popular courses such as Championship II and Highway.

* The Hidden Mansion mode in the European version of ''VideoGame/LuigisMansion''. The Poltergust's improved performance more than makes up for the more powerful ghosts.

*** Several chapters in the supposedly-hardest difficulty, Hector Hard Mode, are arguably a drop from their normal mode counterparts, due to attempts to change an enemy's design that actually make them weaker. The most common manifestation of this is switching out a more mundane weapon for a WeaponOfXSlaying--on the one hand, it lets the enemy get the drop on a unit they have effective damage on (i.e. a Hammer against a Knight), but on the other, these weapons are heavy and inaccurate, meaning that if the player simply checks the enemy weapon and sends any other unit type after the enemy, they'll be barely any threat whatsoever.

** In ''VideoGame/Persona4'' you can now take your whole party to the bonus boss. Sounds like it would be easier, right? [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUj97ejr-xk&playnext_from=TL&videos=UrHqSDoZDeE&feature=rec-LGOUT-exp_stronger_r2-2r-7-HM Nope, knowing her attack cycle lets you switch persona to absorb most of her attacks]] (Allies get in the way of this) and makes it far easier (which [[NintendoHard isn't saying a lot]]).

* In ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIV'', the {{Final Boss}}es are at level 99. However, several high-end {{Bonus Boss}}es, such as the Fiends, are pegged at level 80-90. Anyone who goes into these bonus bosses expecting them to be easier due to being rated lower than the final bosses will be in for a massive rude awakening.