I would rather hold off on making any sort of difficulty-related changes to the system until the game is in a more complete state. I say this because it’s pretty much near impossible to balance anything considering that the factor that would provide the greatest difficulty or aid, NPCs, is not in the game yet, and for me at least, I’m not quite certain what form NPCs will take in this game.
We could argue that unarmed specialists are awesome or too good with the system we’re running now because they’re running around kicking multiple hulk zombie butts. Then the unarmed specialist runs into a hostile NPC faction armed with shotguns and is killed instantly by three or four shotgun blasts in one turn. Same with cars; NPCs armed with grenades could be problematic, let alone ones with explosive guns like LAWs or charge rifles, or high powered sniper rifles, etc. There’s no particular reason that NPCs wouldn’t have access to mutations or bionics either, given the ease of the player attaining them.
Once they’re in in some sort of working order, I anticipate the game becoming extremely difficult, as the only real ranged threat we have in the game now are robots, and they’re usually almost always encountered in a situation where their threat can be/is minimized. Lacking NPCs and the wildcard they represent, it would be unwise to reduce the effectiveness of the player, especially when the player is all on his lonesome. The player is pretty much required to become overpowered to survive the game and its spawn system of everything-exists-to-kill-you. The player pretty much has to master everything in order to make the most of the crafting system, something that may grow or dwindle in importance with possible NPC allies/enemies.
But really, if I had to assume a default stance of the NPC towards the player, I would look at the default stance of Day Z players towards other players (shoot and loot, unless friend). Despite it being a game, people are rather merciless, and I would expect no less in a real crisis.
With that in mind I’d rather not see any difficulty-related decisions made until we’re sure what NPCs are going to do to that difficulty. At the very least I anticipate melee losing viability unless martial artists somehow learn how to block bullets, and archery possibly becoming/remaining the best answer to the challenge of survival.
Edit: To clarify, when I’m referring to NPCs, I’m referring specifically to NPC factions, and the player’s relationship with and their presence in the world with the player.
