>>56788616>By this logic difficulty in nearly all RPGs is fake.It kind of is, although not really
Video Game RPGs are way behind the curve in this regard, but TTRPG designers have long ago realised that "number go up" is a rather troublesom aspect of RPG design when it comes to difficulty
To maintain balance in a system where the players numbers are going up, you also need the enemies numbers to always be going up to match, so you're basically just making a treadmil
That's why you have DnD 5e pushing concepts like "bounded accuracy", the idea being that you minimize how much stats change from level to level, althoug its actual implementation of these design practices are somewhat quastionable
But on the extreme end of this design philosophy you have TTRPGs like ICON, where your stats are identical from level 1 to level 12 (the max level of the game), and the only thing that changes as you level up is how many abilities you and the enemies have access to
That aside, even if the treadmill is there, you can still create difficulty through design for the reasons you mention. It's just that leveling systems themselves are kind of a vestige of 70s era game design. You could completely get rid of level dependant stats and have the entire game operate on battle facility rules without massively impacting the gameplay experience.
