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Designing Difficulty Options In Games
Gamasutra is running a story about how the "hard" modes in games can be designed to include difficulty, but not frustration. They give some examples of the changes made to several games as their difficulty settings are increased, and they discuss some of the simple options, such as increasing the number of required button presses, or increasing the relevant numbers by an arbitrary amount (a boss on easy may hit you for 10 damage, whereas a boss on hard may act the same but hit you for 100 damage). They also talk about maintaining the "illusion of fairness." Quoting:
"Bungie's Halo series is often praised for its excellent execution of difficult play in the form of its Legendary mode. Not surprisingly, the team took a very well-thought out approach to introducing and tuning difficult play. Halo 3 gameplay designer Francois Boucher-Genesse explains that it's not just a case of one formula fits all. 'It's not like we just cranked every enemy's health by 200% and called it Legendary,' he said. 'There was a good amount of custom changes made per mission as well. In that sense we encourage players with previous Halo experience to play at least on Heroic, since they get to see the game in its full scale.'"
The solution, then, is to ensure that AI can jump, right? :)
I was particularly a fan of the AI in FEAR
Give me a better option. I worked on Civ4 and the expansions. And I think that generally, the right approach to difficulty was taken.
The AI is only going to be this smart. Fact is, most players actually play at below-average difficulties. But what makes Civ hard? Your competition, the AI ultimately. We all want a better and stronger AI but there are limits to what you can do. Specifically, it's never going to be as effective in using its units as a competent human player. Therefore, the AI needs more units to be competitive against a human.
For the Beyond the Sword expansion, one of the best Civ4 players out there had a contract to work on the AI. It was improved dramatically and, interestingly, the bonuses it gets on higher difficulties were actually decreased compared to the original game. Still, despite some great programming and LOTS of playtester attention to the AI, it's obviously not as smart as human players. So yes, higher difficulties have to give the AI some bonuses to compensate. Immortal (it's the 2nd highest) and Deity are designed for a very small minority of players who just need a challenge against all odds. It's not a level meant to be fun for everyone, just like Settler is a level specifically designed for people who don't know what they're doing at all.
The only other approach would be to make the AI behaviour smarter at high levels. But if you write a smarter AI algorithm, why leave it enabled only for the higher levels? Let it be everywhere. I strongly opposed the notion of having silly AI behaviour on lower levels. It can bite you in the ass. Higher levels may be warranted in being more aggressive, but not smarter. Because if you make higher levels smarter than you're at the same time denying lower levels these smart algorithms, which is a bad thing.
As a side note, BtS has a revamped "Aggressive AI" setting which is more like "ruthless AI". It's not plain-out aggression, it just plays a more hardcore game and expects a more ruthless human opponent.