How do game designers program the characters to behave in different levels of difficulty?

Question

e.g. A soldier shooting you faster on Veteran level but taking a bit to shoot you in Amateur.

In: Technology

Answer 1

As an example, in Bioshock the splicers, when they spot you for the first time, always miss their first shot by design. That way the player gets a moment to recognize and react to the threat before they actually take damage. Scaling up the difficulty for the game might involve removing that feature or other intentional AI behavioral handicaps. If the developer is lazy (Bioware and Anthem or Bethesda and Skyrim) they’ll just tack a modifier onto the health and damage calculations for an enemy. A Giant in Skyrim on Normal mode might have 150 x [1 x player level] x 1 health and do 30 x [.5 x player level] x 1 damage, but in hard mode he has 150 x [1 x player level] x 1.75 health and does 30 x [.5 x player level] x 3 damage.

EDIT:: Markup, please ;_;