I think the best option for 1 would be to have a sort of easy / hard mode. it doesn't need to be too complicated, just reducing how much ammo you find would be good so then players can have a choice, but ideally you could do something like how Terraria (if you know what that is) handles expert mode, in that bosses are harder but they drop powerful / gimmicky items. maybe I'm putting too much thought into this though lol