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Should Computer Games Adapt To the Way You Play?
jtogel writes "Many games use 'rubberbanding' to adapt to your skill level, making the game harder if you're a better player and easier if you're not. Just think of Mario Kart and the obvious ways it punishes you for driving too well by giving the people who are hopelessly behind you super-weapons to smack you with. It's also very common to just increase the skill of the NPCs as you get better — see Oblivion. In my research group, we are working on slightly more sophisticated ways to adapt the game to you, including generating new level elements (PDF) based on your playing style (PDF). Now, the question becomes: is this a good thing at all? Some people would claim that adapting the game to you just rewards mediocrity (i.e. you don't get rewarded for playing well). Others would say that it restricts the freedom of expression for the game designer. But still, game players have very different skill levels and skill sets when they come to a game, and we would like to cater to them all. And if you don't see playing skill as one-dimensional, maybe it's possible to do meaningful adaptation. What sort of game adaptation would you like to see?"
I'd like to see it configurable. Check box that allows adaptation, with sub-items that define what type of adaptation will occur.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Rubber-banding is no different than a golf handicap, tennis ladder, or beginner/expert/pro leagues in most sports. It's simply not fun to play too far out of your skill range. The talk about "rewarding mediocrity" is misplaced in an activity that exists only for fun - it should be rewarding for everybody, otherwise players would (and should) quit.
What if the game taught you to be a better player? For example, it could slant the gameplay to teach you one strategy, then once you'd mastered that, move on to teach you a different one. If you do well enough, it starts to require combined strategies, etc.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Games should not adapt to people.. I played nintendo with 0 Adaption and i loved the games way longer then these new ones. I think it makes the game boring and trivial. Just make a game that is hard as hell and people will adapt to it.
Maybe the system works in the long run, but in my experiences over one season of a franchise, the difficulty adjustment is a little too jumpy. If my I.Q. is low, I can absolutely slaughter the opponent, causing it to go artificially high. If it is high, I can't successfully do anything, and I get steamrolled. End result? With one exception near the season's end (as things finally balanced out), I lost every even-numbered game.
Adaptation is great, but unless you're playing to win (in a Deep Blue style competition), don't let your game adapt too quickly (in either direction). Or better yet, let the user have some control over the adaptation rate.
Others would say that it restricts the freedom of expression for the game designer.
First, the question I feel stupid even asking: How would that restrict the game designer's freedom of expression?
And, the one that doesn't make me feel stupid: Are you serious? Can I get a "who fucking cares" ? "Selling out" is what happens when you have bills to pay. Get used to it.
Whale
Most games already have a option to choose how hard or easy you want your game. This works better than autoleveling, because If I set the game to be hard, and I die too much, maybe thats exactly what I want, and If set game too easy and I kill everything, maybe thats what I want.
Good games, like World of Goo, have options to skip night imposible levels (since is a puzzle game, you could be stoped totally to experience the whole level). This is like these ols space games with "megabombs" that clear the screen. But that "megabomb" is limited.
Challenge is good wen you want challenge, havin games that kill challenge would be fatal. And this one of the reasons Oblivium was a bad game, and Morrowind was a much better game.
postdata:
Also, dificulty is not that all important. Fun is important. Games sould be fun. The dificulty is not the reason. But since we are talking here about dificulty, I have talked about it, and what it means.
-Woof woof woof!
If I just keep sending Kasumi to the pool to watch her rock back and forth on an inflatable dolphin in the pool, you might as well remove her swimming suit completely.
I don't know what you'd call that, I would call it a reward for not exhausting my character in volleyball matches under extremely hot temperatures.
...because it provides, at least for me, a challenging game experience while at the same being in line with the market trend of games that are more accessible. Accessibility these days often comes in the form of significantly reduced challenge, which leads to uninteresting games for me. At least this way, I still have something to play.
try rewarding better players by giving them more stuff to do in the game. Or give them bragging rights, like the achievements system in COD4.
for a game to achieve a given level of revenue at a given price then you can compute the number of items you need to sell. if you make it too hard, your demographic won't support it. if you make it too easy then you bore the hard core and also may lose the demographic size you need.
the question is does medium hard work?
if not then you need to have variable difficulty to capture the area under the demand curve.
Also if lets freinds and guests compete on the turf of an expert. the expert may enjoy having more freinds than the person at his level.
Configurable is nice but i'd probably not be an expert enough to know what i needed until I had played it for a while and gotten frustrated.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
you only have to try in the last few seconds of the game, and even then you're just a crapshoot and a bad bounce away from a win or a loss.
blech.
One problem, potentially, if you 'adapt to players skill level' *too* well, is that as they get better (or as their character gets more powerful in an RPG type system), they might feel like they never get to enjoy the increase in either their skill, or power. It can feel like treading water, if as you get better, the game gets so much harder that you never get any feeling of accomplishment, no sense that you are any better or stronger than you started out, even though you *know* you've gotten better, or have more powerful abilities.
However, at some point, you do want more challenge. The trick will be, adapting to the players, while still giving them some opportunity to experience their increase in skill or strength.
This could be applied to almost any game genre, btw. I mean, consider an FPS. If you've gotten better at managing your economy, strategizing attack tactics, etc, but the computer remains in lockstep with your real skill increase as a player, then it can be very frustrating. At some point, you want the satisfaction of just slaughtering the AI player that used to beat you on the same 'skill level', because your skill has actually increased.
Adapting the game is just tech, its how you use it that makes the game better worse.
Notice that I kill the grunts like noobs, unless you send more than 5 in at a time, then decide to send them in in groups of 6-10 = good
Notice that I'm simple too much of a noob to kill 11, stop sending in 11 = questionable but it will make the game more enjoyable for many (maybe in hard mode just make me suffer)
Some people would claim that adapting the game to you just rewards mediocrity (i.e. you don't get rewarded for playing well)
So easy mode makes the game worse? IMO no, it lets players choose the game THEY want to play, only so many of us can give the boses infinite health and still win!
OFC i hope the tech is much more interesting that just adding/removing grunts, but basically giving game developers more options is always good (yes even flash), but it can lead to some crappy game if used badly (yes especially flash)
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
Some people would claim that adapting the game to you just rewards mediocrity (i.e. you don't get rewarded for playing well).
Are you kidding me? So freakin' what? It's a game. It's not real life. You play it for fun. Should a person be "not qualified" to play a game if they're not good enough? And if so, by whose standards?
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
There are too many Jews in the Mario games.
Koopa Troopas, Ghosts, those little shelled spikey things, the fucking plants that come out of the pipes. All Jews.
Just like everything else, Mario games would be alot better without the Jews.
Basically WoW has it right. Oblivion was annoying as as soon as i level those "bandits" suddenly had very very good gear. I don't like that it's no fun, sometimes it is nice to walk to an area you have been before with your gear and butcher the low level stuff for fun.
Bestheda also fucked up Fallout 3 with this, you can pretty much complete the game in under 3hours (iirc) with hardly any leveling as the monsters are pretty much all scaled to the player.
I do like rubber-banding as long as it is managed (eg a lvl 4 monster, depending on my skill, can have the stats of say a lvl 5 monster but never any higher) this allows for a small degree of rubber-banding so good players will have a harder time but can still return to low level places.
Adaptive gameplay doesn't need to be complicated. Take chess for instance. Most computer chess games let you choose your initial opponent (level), and based upon how you do, it changes your opponent (up/down a level) to the point where you can play without destroying the computer or the computer mangling you in gameplay... and you still get the same out of the game, regardless.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Players enjoy certain aspects of particular genres:
1) In an RTS like Battle for Middle Earth, the draw is general defending large armies with large armies, the thrill of out-strategizing the enemy (AI), and the final devastating blow to your opponent's base. If you're playing well, and dominating the enemy, then make the game last a little longer: send out a large "backup" force from the enemy that really makes your main force struggle...but once your main force is weakened (or not), you're given time to rebuild. You may be prepared for these reinforcements to hit you and split your main force to flank them when they do arrive, etc.
2) In an FPS like Quake or Doom, you might reward run'n'gun playstyles with simply more enemies to slaughter, or be slaughtered by. More strategic FPS players may actually get the same reward, or perhaps have enemies begin to spawn behind them to make them start watching their backs, heightening the tension that comes from playing an FPS slowly.
3) World of Warcraft players might get the Amazing Sword of Brilliance if they actually attack two mobs at once instead of ganging up on one.
It has a lot to do with what people decide is fun in a game, and one reward system won't work for each genre -- but it may work for the majority of players in that genre. Find what the players are looking for in that game, and give them more.
I think there's room for choosing a difficulty level and having the game adapt as well. Didn't RE5 do that? You chose how hard you wanted it to be, but within that the game also decreased enemy health if you died over and over, and increased it if you survived fights without dying. So it was self adapting but within constraints you could choose yourself.
There's also a clear difference between games in which you compete against other people which try to provide an enjoyable experience, and games in which you are trying to win by having more skill than the other players, and single player games that are intended to be enjoyable and what people enjoy varies from person to person.
All I can say is that the original Starfleet Command had a similar 'we match the challenge to your power' and it got old VERY quickly. In fact, due to scaling issues, it was far easier to progress in the campaign if you simply kept to the smaller ships, where the opponents then stayed as smaller ships and repair costs were always low.
Rank up to an uber-dreadnought? Your AI opponent would have one too.
It actually got old very quickly.
Part of the fun is NOT KNOWING if this 'next challenge' is going to be too much for you to handle. If you always know you can win, that's just boring.
-Styopa
Another old school gamer here.
I play some games specifically for the difficulty. The challenge is what makes it fun. Take for example first-person-shooter games online. Sometimes it just isn't fun to play on a server where your skill outclasses everyone else. I get my FPS release when I have to fight for every kill, and I don't get to blink for 15 to 30 minutes.
But the very next day, I might be content with hopping on a server where the admin has low gravity and is turning people into headcrabs.
All of that being said, difficulty is a non-pervasive element in today's video-gaming culture. Case in point, some games even play themselves now.
Just some food for thought.
The enemies did not "Increase in skill", as if they matured and became better fighters, they simply leveled up as you did. :/
That's not adaptive AI
There are 2 things that need work in games-- AI and facial animations. It's been 10 years since UT99 and in UT3 the computer basically rolls a dice that determines if it's going to kill you. If it's going to kill you, it usually kills you on the first shot. Which never happens in real life. Something as simple as this, which would be so easy to get around, makes the game feel so cheap. Yes, I play with people online, but when there's only 3 and we need a 4th for iCTF, having a bot ruins the fun.
Facial animations-- see Half Life 2, in my opinion. Even though the character animations themselves are a little stiff, the lipsyncing is top notch, and the Gman can display emotions such as confusion, malice, irritation, etc. Combined these all work together for a great suspension of disbelief.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Adaptive difficulty should be implemented as a checkbox option. At that point, who cares? It's far more practical than having someone struggle for a few hours on the most difficult setting and then start all over at an easier setting. Developers still have the option of what the bounds of difficulty are. Difficulty can be adaptive without making the game a cakewalk.
Here is how I look at difficulty or how I would like it to be. Anyone can beat the game and have fun doing so, but make it so that when I take the harder routes or perfect harder combos, inventive problem solving, etc. I get rewarded by seeing my character do acts of absolute badassery. Ever watch a REALLY REALLY EXCELLENT player go through Ninja Gaiden Sigma? My character looks like a boring old movie extra in comparison, there guy is covered in gore, doing backflips, and generally looking like one bad-a$$ mofo. I can still complete the game AND enjoy it, but it's much less impressive doing it, personally I enjoy adaptive difficulty to a point. I like games that make me change my tactics as well, Call of Duty is ocassionally excellent at this on Veteran, if you sniper for too long the enemy will flank you and come around from behind, the same way real live players do. Now sometimes I just want to kill some Nazis, I drop the difficulty down, same thing I do on Rock Band/DDR. It all comes down to how impressive do I LOOK while doing this, making a pro LOOK like a pro is VERY important. It loses it's shine if anybody can play through looking like a God, I enjoy showing off my skills so when people watch me play they go, "How did you DO that?" Then again, that's just my opinion. The crux of this is why I HATE racing games, there is little middle ground, easy is too easy and I always win, but on expert I have to be consistently perfect lap after lap to even have a CHANCE of winning. One more example before I go, Metal Gear Solid 4, watching a first time player go through that game on Liquid Easy and watching somone on Boss Hard is a completely different experiance, as it should be, again the key is making a devoted and skilled player LOOK superior because he IS.
I'd specify that "rewarding mediocrity" is a misleading term in a single-player game. In multiplayer games you can and should pick who the player competes with based on previous results. In a single-player game I don't see a reason not to make the game harder for better players. Ideally, if you can adjust difficulties or change relative occurences of separate elements of gameplay, you should be able to trickle out content to a player at a predetermined rate. This avoids problems of breezing though interesting parts of a storyline too fast or getting stuck in "grinding" without getting more story. For more puzzle-like games it seems reasonable to assume that inserting more of the elements a given player finds difficult would make the game more fun. This may not be true and might even be the other way around, though.
I was intrigued by the concept of adaptable games until I played Oblivion. Granted, Oblivion made the worst possible decisions when it came to adapting Mobs to your level: it had an uneven leveling "curve" to the point where gaining a level could make previously easy monsters into a nightmare. It used obscure leveling mechanisms where you could gimp your character to an unplayable point if you didn't happen to pick the right class or jump often enough between leveling.
Since then, I don't care about adaptive leveling, because it is a much harder problem than it appears to be on the surface. Part of the fun for me is to go from getting stomped by the computer to stomping the computer, just because I got better at the game. Sometimes I want the challenge, but then I select it, not the game. Judging from the amount of Starcraft games that are labeled "7v1 stomp the comp", I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in this.
Adaptive difficulty should really come only in two flavors: select an overall game difficulty, so that you know what to expect; or enter some dungeon or bonus level/path that you know is much harder than what you've done so far. Don't force me into a harder game just because I've been doing so well so far. It could have been just a lucky streak, in which case I'll get really frustrated with the sudden ramp-up in difficulty.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I don't want to get a reward for playing well, I want to get a reward for my 60Eur I paid!
bickerdyke
Little baby niglet
Most games already have a option to choose how hard or easy you want your game. This works better than autoleveling, because If I set the game to be hard, and I die too much, maybe thats exactly what I want, and If set game too easy and I kill everything, maybe thats what I want.
I couldn't agree more. There seems to be continuing trend in game design towards making games where the player is never frustrated. The way I interpret this, we're headed towards the philosophy of "don't make the game too hard, and if the player is still having trouble, make it even easier by dynamically adjusting the difficulty."
Now obviously for some people that's great. If you're a casual gamer, you still want to be able to play through games without getting stuck on the first level. However, I think there's a real hole in the market right now for games that cater to hardcore gamers. Personally, I like games that are a little bit frustrating, because it means I'm being challenged. I don't want to play an interactive movie, I want to play a game.
There are signs that this might be changing (Demon's Souls is a good example of a game that bucks the trend and does so in a very compelling way), but I think one of the big reasons that multiplayer games are so popular nowadays is simply that real players provide a genuine challenge to play against.
However, more advanced players should be able to access none-core parts of the game, whether these be items, abilities, story segements, additional characters, more complex and interesting locations and maps etc. What's more, it should be reinforced to the lower-level player that with practise, these things would become available - otherwise, they might just play through on the lowest setting and think "Well, that was boring."
There should also be cross-skill rubberbanding in games which offer multiple skill tests to proceed. There's already some forms of this, where (for example) great resource planning can counter weak button-mashing ability.
One option might be a time-based or counter-based seesaw, where the longer a player has bashed their head against a given game obstacle, the easier it becomes to overcome. Then, it's a matter of finding a balance relating to how _fast_ such a change occurs and to what minimum level it can drop. A number of counters might be available - time spent, miles travelled, opponents overcome, miniquests completed, etc - but remember, endless grinding doesn't suit everyone.
Or how about having several elements present in the game, and playing to the player's strength(s) in order to present a game which the player feels they can do well at? Alter the size of platforms to be jumped on, the number/level/placement of opponents, the emphasis on sneaking vs combat, intellectual puzzles vs smashfests, resource management vs grinding, hunts vs brawls.
Keep assessing and tweaking as the game progresses; players learn new skills at different rates, and it's fairly easy to game an adaptive system by pretending to be hopeless at one skill until the game offers an easy out or massive XP for any kind of use of the skill at all.
When we developed Tracers back in the '80s we tuned the reward system so that the game would just run at a higher speed (voltage, in the circuit-board language of the game)... every time you won a level, the voltage would ramp up, when you lost a life it would ramp down. Most people found themselves in a cycle where the game would get harder until they started losing lives, and then it slowed down again until they started winning levels again.
The higher the voltage, the more points you got for blocking off and killing an opponent... but we found that the best players quit paying attention to the score. The challenge in the game was pushing the voltage higher and higher. That number was the thing to beat.
I don't like games that try and hide the mechanics of the process from people, but when it's exposed like this it can be extremely effective.
Although these advanced systems can be done in single player, stand alone experiences, I predict we will see a lot of progress made in the MMO space where it is easier introduce dynamic content. One thing sorely missing from MMOs is custom built challenges. The game has access to all of that information on the character and how to play...why not start using it to change the things prsented to them?
- Using general terms for an example: If you enter an instance with a Warrior, a Thief, Wizard, and a Cleric but you kill the dragon and get some Ranger bow everyone goes "BOOO!". The game knows what classes came in so instead of just tossing out static loot from a static table, start considering who walked in and what improvements they need. Instead of forcing players to grind content for drops they know a monster has, they should come back for a chance on loot they know will be useful to someone.
- Since the game knows what classes came in, why not start seeding the instance with challenges configured for them? Each of the classes in the example are strong and weak to attacks and monsters, like for instance this group is a little weak on "ranged attacks" but stronger on defense. This group would avoid any static content they know would have a preponderance of stuff that flies or run around them. How about have them go into an instance that configures it to have less fliers, less stand back but features stuff that hits a little harder than normal?
- If the group is working well together and is stomping everything, why not up the difficulty a little till they aren't stomping everything? If the group isn't doing well, why not ease the difficulty so they aren't wiping every turn?
The basic idea is that the game should be smart enough to see at least the game/character data and evaluate what should be easy and hard for them to beat. This isn't so much "hand holding" but crafting a more interesting experience. If you swap the Thief for a Ranger and go into the same area you get a different mix of monsters and a guarantee that someone is going be rewarded. If you come in with a weak group you get a challenging experience. If you come in with a strong, expert group you get a very different but still challenging experience. The game designers should want you get through the quest handed to the players, to experience the story of the content, but still provide enough of challenge to feel accomplishment. Right now this is done with carefully crafted static content that involves a bit of statistical analysis that can be easily memorized or grow out of.
There's always been a form of adaptation to the user, call it difficulty levels, increasingly difficult stages or bosses, etc, it also depends on the game and it's structure, but it's implicit that you will get better as you play, so I guess the question is how to do it efficiently so you could keep balance to not dissuade the user with a too difficult game or bore him to death with a too easy one
I think the Mario Kart example is probably the most unique. The way that competition in MK racing works is heavily (read: enormously) influenced by the items you have, especially in the newest one where a Bullet can send you from 8th to 1st. The fact that the very mechanics of which item you receive is governed by your position in the race, is even more interesting because it's a kind of communism. The balancing aspect, being done in this way, is also highly transparent, as opposed to manipulating the AI of all the computer opponents which is completely unobservable (read: frustrating). At the same time, this kind of balancing works just as well when you translate it to Human vs. Human races. I think it's great because, as a handicap that works in all races so the good players have to keep on their toes, and the not so good players can still manage top-5 placement as they learn the ropes.
It is really going to depend on the game that you are developing. Adaptive elements of a game would certainly be appropriate for single player games or even multiplayer games with cooperative elements. When it comes to competitive multiplayer games however handicapping player skill through game mechanics will definitely come down to striking a balance between fun and reward.
Regarding the question posed however assuming you had two players of differing skill and were offering an equal reward then you should be using time as an additional cost for the under skilled players. For example, a simple RPG might award a piece of armour for slaying the dragon and rescuing the princess. A skilled player may be able to slay the dragon with little effort. An unskilled player may be unable to kill the dragon - unless they first collect a salve of fire protection. In the end both players received an equal reward however the skilled player did so faster and then has more time to invest into
Heh, how about game difficulty set via Breathalyzer!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I've always liked the way RPGs and the like handled this, where as you progress in the game, the enemies become increasingly difficult - however going back to an earlier point in the game awards you a clear advantage over anything you may encounter. MMOs work on this principle as well with the concept of "zones." This has always worked best for me.
* Easy
* Medium
* Hard
* Nightmare!
In Oblivion, this was terribly implemented, where all enemies would also level up as you leveled up. At higher levels, you ended up with ultra-powerful enemies that took just too long to kill and made the game a tiring slog to fight through if you didn't particularly like the combat mechanics and just wanted to get on with the story. It was also as if you weren't an uber-leveled up character because *all* enemies were uber-high-level around you at high levels.
In Bioshock, the game would adapt to how well you were playing by raising enemy hitpoints if you were skilled enough at killing them quickly. Basically, my same complaint with Oblivion. I just want the enemies to die fast so I can get on with the story, but they get tougher and tougher to kill, making things very tiring for me.
http://www.object404.com
Whose brilliant ideas about having the difficulty increase based on the parties level in fact made the game easier to beat with Lvl. 10 characters that had been dead for half the game then with a Lvl. 99 party.
This of course made it somewhat interesting, but as a novelty rather than a design element I wish to see continued.
The game that pops into my head that did it right was Timesplitters 2. As you advanced through the difficulty levels, there are more and more objectives for you to complete, it gave the game some depth that gave the player a true challenge that is much more engaging then just making enemies hit harder.
Your post makes me think of the topical VGCats Comic Strip
Racing games need the rubberbanding - if it were like real life, one crash and you're toast- hopelessly unable to catch up with those who haven't crashed, where's the fun?
Same thing applies across the board in strategy, FPS, etc., though I do like having the option of "turning the realism up" where there's less adaptation to skill, and another "knob" for overall difficulty. Lately, I'd like to have another "knob" for complexity - something that would dial back the number of available options, like playing World of Warcraft (solo) during the tutorials where there aren't as many spells, units, etc. to deal with. High complexity adds depth and replay-ability, but it creates a barrier to engaging with the game on a casual level.
Most modern games have some variation of a tutorial that starts you off on "easy," "simple," and "adaptive," and works up to the "full blown" game. Having direct control over these three variables would allow the player to customize the gameplay to fit their personal preference, and hopefully would broaden the appeal of the game.
"What sort of game adaptation would you like to see?"
No more Steam/DRM.
The adaptation in Oblivion was terrible. When I first played it, I had no idea it would do that. So I'm in some crypt smaking around thieves. Hey I can level. So I do.
Suddenly these thieves I had been beating got levelled up as well as new gear (which I didn't), and they beat the snot out of me. That was such a WTF moment that I never played the game again.
Its telling that Oblivion's most popular ones are rebalancing mods that either change or scrap the adaptation entirely.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
It's called 'difficulty levels'. *I* want to decide how hard the game will be. If I am getting my ass kicked, I want to be able to dial back the difficulty. I think we've all played games where the difficulty curve spikes sharply, and sometimes we just want to pass the level and get back into the flow of increasing difficulty so that we can pass the mission without having to go into training. Anyone who hasn't probably isn't qualified to contribute to this conversation, although they are permitted to feel differently about it than me ;)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
in the DS title "the world ends with you" you could adjust your difficulty at any time by means of a slider in your setup page.
the benefit of this was more exp at higher settings.
so you could choose to play a few tough matches or or tons of easy ones to get you next level.
as you lvl'd you were able to set the difficulty to higher lvls yet.
this was cool as sometimes you wanted a challenge and others you wanted to be uber and pwn.
There are quite a few points to consider how the game should adapt. Besides the simple fact that the main focus should always be on the fun aspect of the game I have two examples on my mind of good and bad adaptation. In neither cases "rewarding mediocrity" is a real concern.
The bad example of adaptation can be seen in quite a few FPS. Before adaptation there were different skill settings from beginner, easy, normal, veteran, nightmare. Now the game constantly assesses how well I am doing and as a somewhat experienced player it increases the difficulty level quickly. Now there are the basic enemies around the corner, who I had plenty of fun slaughtering early on in the game, which are now equipped with x-ray vision and one-shot-to-kill handguns. While the player may still manage to progress by being much more careful it just seems unfair and not fun anymore. So basic enemies should always be easy to overcome, no matter what.
A good example is the A.I. director from Left 4 Dead. Quite often the teams are unbalanced and it stops being enjoyable if you know that your team does not stand a chance at all. Sometimes right at that moment the A.I. notices and throws in an extra tank. This can often mess up even an organized team and now it immediately feels more balanced. Also the basic zombies are always easy to kill, the adaptation changes their number not their individual strength.
A simple way around automatic adaptation is to continually look how the player progresses into the game and then at the end of a level their commander just asks: "You exceeded my expectations, do you want a tougher challenge next time?"
Talk of adaptive AI for games is all well and good, but I see no talk of the amount of CPU power and RAM something like this could take.
If you had to analyze the PC's playing style, it could degrade perfomance by a large amount, especially if the player happens to play erratically.
It would probably end up being another thread in the game, but when does it end?
Sure we will have Massively multi-core CPU's in future, but what about the averge gamer of now with a dual, or quad-core CPU?
And what happens if the player does not react in a way the programmer resposible for the analysis program responds? How is the analytical engine going to handle that?
In WoW, you can play at the edge of new content, high difficulty rating, or just play casually through the game, low difficulty rating. You both end up at the same place. Those playing hard mode just get there a bit faster.
Anyone from the UK see the recent episode of Gameswipe? Dara O Briain had a rant where he discussed why he should be made to work to earn the game content when he's bought it. He used the analogy "When you finish reading a chapter in a book, you aren't made to prove your understanding of it before you can move to the next one. It's my book, if I want to go to the last page, I can. Why can't I do that in a game?" (or words to that effect). It seems like a fair point, so you should have the choice about the game you play. In my opinion though, I hate games that level up with me. I like the thought of an area in a game that will kick my arse because I am clearly not ready and at the same time, being able to go back to an 'early' area and kick them about if need be. This is why I found Oblivion quite a repetitive experience of a game.
I think in the Mario Kart example, it's a good thing, in Oblivion not. In the Mario Kart example, it makes the game more challenging if you're doing good. In the Oblivion example, it means stats are meaningless, which sort of ruined the "leveling up" gameplay.
I don't like it when the game cheat on you. By example in a FPS you can try to be stategic by using a path rather than another one to better kill the ennemy and have a position advantage but generally the AI punish you by spawning ennemy where there was none just before. Some of the later game were better played by running in the fire really fast and to go directly to the end of the level instead of advancing logically.
Same thing happen in need for speed. If you take a risk of making a collision you are cheated by the game by having the other car comeback in a way that was not fair for the risk you took just before
Except that's yet another case of talking out the arse without knowing what the real problem is.
The problem is: in many of those games with rubberbanding, there is already another mechanic for those tiers you describe. And the rubberbanding is nullifying the other mechanic. _That_ is what some of us complain about.
E.g., in the Gran Turismo series (and many similar games), the focus isn't on just jumping into a random race and having your 15 minutes of fun. You have to earn the car and the upgrades to qualify for the next league, and then even more upgrades to win in it. There is already a mechanic to simulate those leagues, and to justify why you should spend several days grinding your way through them. (Read: why you should play each of the few race tracks more than once.) Throwing in rubberbanding is nullifying all that, and turning it right back into a kiddie kart game. Suddenly it's hard not to notice that the whole tuning and upgrading aspect is bogus, since the opponents really are just tied to your car with rubberbands. What's the point in grinding to upgrade your engine HP by 50% when, effectively, every single opponent just got the same upgrade?
E.g., in Oblivion and generally an RPG, there's already a mechanic for simulating those leagues and tiers. It's called xp and levels. (Or skills, if it's skill-based a la Oblivion.) If your skill is too low to beat this opponent, you're supposed to go raise it somewhere else, and if it's too low, well, then just go fight something higher level instead. Do you understand that crucial aspect? There is no need to simulate those leagues and tiers in a game which already has another mechanic for just that. And adding some form of rubber-banding just makes the other mechanic a pointless waste of time. Why bother grinding your character to level 50, when effectively it gave you no advantage at all?
And it doesn't help that all too often it's done _badly_ too. E.g., since we're talking about Oblivion, the end opponent is actually a lot easier to beat if you somehow manage to get there as a level 3 character, than if you did all the quests and have a level 30 character. Effectively, you're better off if you skip 90% of the game and just do the absolute minimum that gets you through the short main quest arc. It's not that all that grinding and exploring and getting equipment doesn't give any advantage, it's that it actually becomes a disadvantage.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
So pretend for a minute that you're in charge of a giant, multi-player video game. And your goal is to get as many people as possible to play the game.
In a normal game without handicapping, the good players would win quickly, get bored easily, and simply quit. The poor players would get crushed, lose, and also quit. You would not achieve your goal.
But what if, instead, you take things (items, resources, points, whatever) from the good players, and give things to the poor players. Everyone who enjoys playing the game, for fun, would keep playing. You maximize the number of people playing the game, and achieve your goal.
Now pretend that instead of running a video game, you're running the US economy.
Do you enjoy working, just for fun? Or do you work in order to create and earn things by doing so? Does "maximizing the number of players" help you, as a worker (or player)? Who does it help?
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
I seem to remember in the promotional materials for the NES game Zanac (by FCI) that the game was supposed to get dynamically harder the better you played. When I was playing, I specifically remember this being the case, and that I enjoyed the game more as a result. I used to be able to play straight through to the 10th (out of 13) levels without dying once, and then I would die multiple times in a row. As if sensing my desparation the game would scale back the number of baddies it was throwing at me, and then I could regain my footing, collect some powerups and move on. Then the game would throw more and more at me until I got to the unholy nightmare 13th level.
Time to go dust this game off on the Wii...
A game like Viewtiful Joe was a welcome throwback to a game that could be brutally hard on the correct settings, but was still a lot of fun, even though many probably didn't finish it at the harder settings.
This can be a good thing if done right, Madden football has been playing with it for years. Example if you have a tendency to come back to the same plays over and over again, the computer starts playing defenses that will stop that play, it's just like AI for some games. It makes for a better feel for the game as opposed to your hopelessly behind enemy popping up with superweapons. You can make a game adapt for better play without resorting to "cheating"
Gotta move
I'm looking forward to retiring in the next few years and playing all the games that have come out in the last 20 years. I stopped about 20 years ago when my son got to be 12. I would guess lots of us boomers will want to do the same. Setting up games in geezer mode may be the only way to make single player games work for us. Unfortunately we do not get slow and forgetful and shaky because it seems cool.
Rubber-banding sucks. Plain and simple it ruins the player's ability to "become good" at the game. It robs you of real fun. A large part of the fun of a game comes from that you can fail. Fail in real life, and you generally don't get a second or third chance. But a game is different, you can fail again and again until you learn. Rubber-banding robs you of the cycle of failure and learning, by not rewarding the development of skill. It also shifts the focus of game play from player-skill towards "luck" and meaningless power-ups. Look at any game you can still play after 10 years, and you will find that the game is one that doesn't rubber-band.
Just because a game is hard doesn't mean that people don't play it for fun, like say Chess. No one would claim that changing the rules of chess mid-game to make it easier for a newbie to compete with a grand master. It wouldn't be fair if a newbie's knights could suddenly move anywhere within 3 squares in any direction just because he's unskilled. It also wouldn't be fair, if the pawns got special power-ups to account for the inept play of the newbi. It might be fun for the newbi in the short term to beat up on a grand master, but it ultimately robs the newbie of the ability to master the game.
Repeat after me, "Losing is Fun".
And it was pretty awesome.
Racing games need the rubberbanding - if it were like real life, one crash and you're toast- hopelessly unable to catch up with those who haven't crashed, where's the fun?
It's a challenge, if it's a short race a small fender bender should take you out of the running completely. A long race you might be able to recover. If it's a devastating straight-into-the-wall crash you should definitely not be able to finish the race.
Re-start the race, it's what the games always did before and they were still fun. Where's the fun in being able to win no matter what? Where's the challenge?
Most modern games have some variation of a tutorial that starts you off on "easy," "simple," and "adaptive," and works up to the "full blown" game. Having direct control over these three variables would allow the player to customize the gameplay to fit their personal preference, and hopefully would broaden the appeal of the game.
I hate to break it to you, but up until 5-10 years ago (depending on the genre) that's how almost ALL video games were created. Especially FPS games, you generally had an easy, normal, and hard play mode, with an insane mode either immediately available or unlockable by beating one of the other modes first.
The trouble with "rubberbanding" is applying it to a multiplayer game is extremely difficult and very prone to abuse. For example, in Halo 3 online it tries to match people up at the same skill level. The thing is, anybody playing on a guest account has a permanent skill level of 0, it doesn't matter if they are god's gift to snipers, they bring the average down and the whole team gets matched up with an easier team, which leads to a slaughter. People also regularly delete their accounts and create new ones (you get annoying messages all the time of "Hey, I'm now soandso"), allowing them to wreak havoc on their way back up the rankings.
There is nothing skill adjustments can do to fix these problems, so perhaps designers should be looking at ways to enourage people to play more difficult areas as they get better instead of arbitrarily making the whole world harder?
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
A post below this one complains about Need for Speed, as an example of this adaptation done poorly. I'd agree, because it's so obvious, it's kind of insulting to the player. It cheapens the experience if you're trying to best to get through a game, and you obviously see the rest of the game "slow down" to accommodate a big mistake you make.
Ideally, I'd like to see games strike a balance where as you get better, they keep "pushing" you a little bit harder, but do it in such a gradual and unobtrusive way that you never even realize it's happening. (I think many games already do this in a non-intelligent fashion. They purposely increase the level of difficulty of little things as you progress through levels, making an assumption that the player has "mastered" certain techniques by the time they succeeded in beating certain puzzles or "bosses" placed as obstacles to advancing. The problem is, sometimes people just "brute force" defeat a level boss or lucky-guess their way past a tough spot without really learning the technique the game author assumed they learned. Then the levels that come next get frustrating for the player, and the person tends to just quit playing instead of trying to finish the game.)
I'd have to say though, in general, I think racing games are the most frustrating to play. If they're realistic, they're pretty much a case of "one false move and you lose", because you're racing against a number of other "contestants". What are the chances that ALL of them will make a mistake that puts each and every one of them further behind you after a slip-up you make? When they're setting up a "fun scenario" where you're this "larger than life" racing character (a la recent Need for Speed games), they tend to fall into the opposite trap. They can't maintain any respectability in the gameplay because you see obviously "worthy opponents" suddenly do nonsensical things, repeatedly, any time you screw up, just to justify how your car has a second chance at overtaking them a little further down the road.
I think they almost need to continuously analyze your driving style and skill level, and mimic it with the other cars you're racing against, to ensure you're all so closely matched that it really does seem accurate that your cars are all racing pretty close to each other through most of the course.
Putting the two together, I'd say, the first time the player goes through an area, they get a "fixed" difficulty -- easy areas are easy, hard areas are hard, etc. When they revisit an area after beating it, THEN it should have appropriate-difficulty generated content in it.
So if you found an area too easy, you can go back to it and enjoy a better challenge. If you found an area very difficult, you can go back to it and experience the satisfaction of having pounded it into an easier shape (the difficult enemies are gone because you beat them).
-- 77IM
Student: Is it true that the foundation of the universe is paradox?
Master: Well, yes and no.
It's not about rewarding mediocrity, it's about keeping it challenging. If the game is too easy people stop playing. If the game is too hard people stop playing.
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
To that effect, one of the most frustrating game elements that I see time and again is the age old "die, fight, repeat" formula.
This is, quite frankly, annoying and has been done before.
Don't get me wrong, some risk is required to have fun (coincidentally, it is also another principle of flow), but a game which forces the user to repeat themselves is a game that's run out of new ideas.
I've seen some variation on this formula in the past with decent success, like bullet time effect, which allows the user to "cheat" and slow down the game when the going gets tough. However, it's still a very constrained way of tackling the problem.
Thinking a little outside of the box, I'd like to see adaptive story lines, where based on a player's proficency and style, the story line changes in sensical ways. Also, tiered reward systems based on proficency, not on difficulty, and new ways to handle character death through story telling elements like ghosts, time warping (maybe the ability to go back or forwards in time?), etc.
I believe that adaptive difficulty would be sweet. Usually I find Normal/Medium too easy and Hard/er too hard. I will not even touch Easy difficulty levels they are just a waste of my time. I find this happens too often. Take God of War for example Easy is a joke, Medium is just barely challenging and Hard and Very Hard? Well, let us just say "eff you developers!" I do not want a game to be ridiculously difficult but I do not want it too easy either. If a game got harder as I did better and easier when I did not that would be ideal, at least for me. I do believe God of War had some of that for I noticed that after repeated game overs I always got slightly more health back each time I restarted from a checkpoint. And let us not forget the Devil May Crys, by the gods were they difficult! I do not want to have to "work" at a game to become decent enough to enjoy it. I know I cannot master every game when I pick it up; it is acceptable to have some "orientation" time. I feel that adaptive difficulty would be enjoyable. A set difficulty of Hard may not be Hard to some, yet too hard for others.
One - Most games are not sophisticated enough to alter their actual play to match that of an actual player. Most just cheat by increasing stats (health, speed, number of, etc...) arbitrarily to make it more difficult. This bugs me a bit. It is the cheap easy stupid way to do it, so it is common. If someone can design a computer game that will alter its strategy or tactics in order to best me, that is the game I want to play. If it only gives itself 150% health, or 175% speed, or spawns 100 more extra guys, that is the computer just cheating against my superior intellect. Shame on you, I don't want o to play you any more.
Two - Having said that, most games cannot even handle simple friendly AI, let alone enemy AI. I just finished playing the solo campaign of World at War, and wow, my squad mates are dumb as bricks. I couldn't count the times where I would get "stuck" because some stupid squad mate decided to take cover right next to you, and you can even shoot the damn sumbitch as it won't let you. Only choice is to drop a grenade at your own feet, and hope you make it, or just commit yourself to the sweet embrace of death. If you don't have a grenade, you better hope someone can hit you standing up, or you are hitting the power button.
Generally speaking this is why people enjoy multiplayer games. Sure you get noobs out there (and everyone is at some point), however playing with people generally is more entertaining that the computer. Of course then again computers are rarely asshats that team kill, or act like complete morons, or scream obcenities and racist remarks for that matter.... Now there would be a real turning test, program an AI to be an asshole, and most players would probably be fooled... "That guy is too much of an asshole to be a bot!"
How about games that adapt to your skill level in obtaining the cash to purchase them. Many of us seem to be getting a bit rusty in that department.
... and few things irritate me more than when computer "AI" gets to simply cheat to beat me.
If you're developing ramping skill difficulties, like previous posters, I'd recommend giving players options:
1. Turn off ramping difficulty, or set it at a specific point (x.5, x.75, x1, x1.5, x2.0, etc)
2. Set a base difficulty (Wussy, Easy, Moderate, Hard, Hellish)
Other things you may want to look at would be how fast the AI can react and function. Example... in some RTS games, AI will settle a new colony and then *bink* it's up and running - 12 buildings and 100 miles of road appear as if by magic. This is a clear advantage and frustrating to the player. If the player "sees" AI building - slowly or quickly - at least they feel like the AI is trying to win, not just being given the "win button".
As a turtler myself, I do understand that you shouldn't just build AI that can be killed with simple patience. Games that grant automagical bonuses to AI are frustrating, but needed sometimes.
Ultimately, it really depends on the kind of game you're building. Sit down and look at your mechanic and think about it... better yet, explain it to a set of non-programming gamers and ask them if the challenge response sounds like fun. People play games for fun - not to be tormented by increasing difficulty and ultimately impossible scenarios (unless they're some kind of sick in the head).
And for the love of Bob, whatever you do, don't make the game dumbed-down AND increasing in difficulty.
However, I think there's a real hole in the market right now for games that cater to hardcore gamers.
It's not just the hardcore gamers, I'm a casual gamer that likes a challenge. That usually means I only play for a couple hours a week, and a challenging game can take months or even years to finish, depending on how often I play.
I LIKE having to avoid certain areas, or run like hell because I'm not good enough yet. Seeing some baddie and going "Oh shit! He's gonna eat my lunch!" and having to get out of dodge is fun. What is NOT fun is running into a muskrat that I was able to kill three months earlier with a rusty sword and barely the ability to swing it, and find it nearly as difficult to kill with a high quality sword and armor and a high level of fighting skill. What the hell? When the muskrats are nearly as tough as the dragons, something is wrong. That's the experience of Oblivion.
In fact, some good advice for playing Oblivion is to not get too high level too fast, because the monsters get more skills and abilities that actualy make them harder to kill when you are higher level than they would be at a lower level. I mean, what? That's bullshit, and it doesn't make one bit of sense.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
It depends on what sort of potential "adjustment" we'd be talking about. A lot of video games allow you to adjust the difficulty, but most of the time this simply means an increase in stats that makes it easier for the same old AI to kill you and harder for you to kill it.
What a lot of video games DON'T seem to have is an adjustment in AI. I don't know how many games (RPGs in particular) where it simply seems like the enemy is wailing on my characters at random, rather than attempting to *gasp* strategically isolate one character, kill them, and then move down the line! If they see you use healing magic, then why can't they realize that they should mute - or eliminate - the mage(s) first?
Other posts above have mentioned that we'd like to be rewarded sometimes for our increased skill in a game - so accordingly, I'd agree that not all enemies should be able to adjust as much as others. At the same time, what would really make a game more interesting is if a zone change resulted in a more strategic AI to combat, rather than just a simple stat increase.
Start off a game with a few areas (or dungeons) that allow you to comprehend the game mechanics and get strategies. Then, allow the enemies to understand the mechanics and those same strategies, rather than just adding a status ailment or two and increased stats to their armament, and allow there to be a semblance of intelligence to what we're fighting.
For something like an FPS, I'd like to see the "ramped up difficulty level" have:
If the harder level is JUST harder, what's the point of replaying the game? But if there's a lot of undiscovered fun in the harder level, well, bring it on. That means more hours of fun in the game.
Like me who play Halo and Half Life like complete wuss and do nothing but continual "attack one enemy and retreat" over and over again?
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
There's an interesting related mechanism for resource harvesting in "grind" play. Most MMOs either limit the availability of resources or modify the reward for exploiting a poorly used resource. So resources that are easy to obtain (and hit hard by the players) have lower reward than those that are harder to access. What this does is that it modifies the reward for effort. The resource doesn't change in difficulty, but the reward can change for that action of fixed difficulty. If there's a decent market in the MMO, then there's another mechanism for modifying the reward versus difficulty. Resources that turn out to be relatively easy to exploit will end up lower priced than otherwise equivalent resources that are much more difficult to exploit.
These are natural mechanisms that have the effect of modifying a game as far as the collective pool of players' skill levels are concerned. An individual player has some ability to chose easier or harder locations and modify their effort and reward.
NPC adaption may be a little helpful to, or even a hindrance to, replayability. Regardless though, I think the much more adaptable game comes from allowing the PLAYER to adapt. I wouldn't mind a game with an ancient dragon on the first level, IF the game was varied enough that you could win without brute power that a level 200 character has. For example, if you had could go around a village, talking to everyone, asking them about the dragon, about their wants and desires, their eaten family members, and somehow build an army, even when that was not the most obvious way to defeat the thing, that would be great. Or, you might convince them all to contribute to a fund, which lets you walk thirty leagues, pay a grandmaster to train you, come back, and fulfill a contract to guard the city for the next five years. Then, you could get on with the next quest, in whatever way you can think of.
THAT would be nice adaptability. But having the problem change because the problem is easy for you is essentially cheating on the part of the game designers. I'd rather just zip through an easy 1st level to one that was DESIGNED to be hard, if I was that good.
they should then invent choices like
1.Easy
2.Normal
3.Hard
Oh Wait it already does.
DOHHHHHHHHH!!!!!
Left 4 Dead strikes an ideal balance between user-selected difficulty and adaptive difficulty. The user gets to pick what general difficulty they want to play and this affects damage taken, friendly fire damage given, etc. But then the adaptive part looks at your health, your ammo, and what you've killed recently (essentially, player skill) to determine how many enemies there are left out there, where/if you find the good weapons in a level, and where the special boss bad guys show up. So basically the user picks the quality of the opposition but the game picks the quantity of the opposition. Also, while the game picks the quantity of the reward, it'd be nice if the player could pick the quality of the reward (by choosing a harder difficulty). This isn't really in place in L4D, but it would be nice.
With a scheme like this, in Oblivion the decision tree to see what you face when you go under that arch by the ruin might go like:
-easy level/beat up player character: 1 highwayman, easy, crappy drops
-easy level/fresh player character: 2 highwaymen, easy, crappy drops
-hard level/beat up pc: 1 highwayman, hard, good drops
-hard level/fresh pc: 2 highwaymen, hard, good drops
Are we really this far from what we've always known?
In the early 80's (probably before that too, but that's the earliest I can remember) it was common for games to start out with a skill level selection. This is manual and leaves the choice up to the user. It still rewards good play because "I beat the 'hard' level" is a different accomplishment from "I beat the 'easy' level". One of the best relatively recent examples I can think of is F-Zero, which starts out offering 3 levels of difficulty (on each of 3 progressively harder sets of track), and when you beat the 3rd level on a set of tracks it unlocks a 4th.
Another common technique is for the game to get progressively more difficult as you play successfully. Tetris is probably the purest example. Again, anyone can play but the best players are "more rewarded" ('I got to level 30!')
That idea was expanded on by games like Super Mario Brothers and The Legend of Zelda, which have a "second quest" should you be good enough to beat the game (or if you know the codes to skip ahead).
This idea of "rubber banding" seems to aim for making skill-level adaptation automatic (take control from the player), dynamic, and transparent.
Finding creative ways to make skill-level adaptation dynamic could be a good thing for some types of game.
Making it automatic is murkier. Generally I think the user should be able to override skill-level adaptation to get the game experience he/she wants, though I'm not opposed to the idea that you have to acheive a certain skill level to unlock higher levels.
Making it transparent is a bad idea IMO. There should always be clear feedback - You are playing at this level; you beat the game at this level; etc.
Especially in games where the implied goal is "finish the game", a dynamic, automatic, transparent handicapping system just encourages sandbagging.
FWIW I don't like rubber-banding in my games. Done too rigorously it can be a real put off on a game as it stretches to your level and makes stuff too hard. I want a nice arc of growing difficulty throughout the game governed by the usual meta-level of easy, normal, difficult, hardcore etc. Normal too normal? Fine, I'll set it on difficult and see what happens. Sometimes there's a lot of pleasure blasting through stuff and not having much problem with that - I don't need everything to be an effort and a trial. Actually maybe I'm just a pussy, thinking about it, I think what I'm saying is I don't want the level ratcheted up on me, but I don't find it too objectionable if you ratchet down when I'm flailing around and dying for the umpteenth (but not first or second) time...
Does doing so make the game more fun for most players?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I'm pretty good at racing games so I hate it when computer cars catch up with me with impossible lap times. On the other side I appreciate it when I make a mistake because I know that I'll eventually catch up even if it feels like cheating. So, if the goal of a game is fun, rubberbanding should only help the player and never the computer. If the game pits two human players against each other there should be no rubberbanding: if I'm better than my pal I have to win and he has to train more.
Racing games need the rubberbanding - if it were like real life, one crash and you're toast- hopelessly unable to catch up with those who haven't crashed, where's the fun?
The fun is driving a race car as fast as you can, not winning. Granted, if you're good enough winning is better than just racing but I usually disable rubberbanding now. If I fall behind I restart or race against the time and enjoy the track and if I do well I enjoy winning with a large margin on the second. I see no problem with that.
I don't play FPS a lot and I usually go for "easy" setups because I don't want to have to worry too much about staying alive. Rubberbanding might be as good as that, but I don't care about the genre very much. The rule might be that good players want a fair contest and casual gamers appreciate being helped.
"Now, the question becomes: is this a good thing at all?"
No, it's stupid.
The slaughter will continue until play improves.
http://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/2009/05/coddling-players.html
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Did Final Fantasy VIII play this way? It sure felt like I was treading water.
That seems to be how our education system works.
This automatic adjustment is the reason I've stopped playing games. Real life does not adjust the world to how much you suck.
exp. If you suck at the game, and don't have the brains to outhink your opponent, there is no reason why the game world should be dumbed down just so that you can get to the next zone.
exp. If I can race faster than you, and you keep crashing, why should the game slow me down just cause you're a dumb epileptic that can't even steer?
This kind of dynamic difficulty adjustment just panders to the idiots of our society... in this case, it seems most of you people.
I'll stick with games coming from Russia, like Stalker, where if you don't have the skills, or the brains, or the equipment, you simply won't survive an encounter with the more powerful stalkers. Hey, if you want to quit because the game does not dumb down to suit your level of stupidity,... well, that's your problem. Everyone should populate the same gaming world, and just like in real life if you're better than your competitor, you should go further and be rewarded, the world should not bend backwards just because there are tards in the area...
That brings maximum enjoyment and creates a challenge the challenging to a specific users.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I had worked as a game reviewer and playtester for some years and the one thing I always brought up was... they're games, we design them, back in the day they had to use certain cheesy tactics to suck up more quarters or to deal with hardware/software limitations... those are largely gone now... why not just make the whole game awesome? You could have amazing powers from the start and be able to do amazing things from start to finish... why limit and aggravate the player unnecessarily? You have the power and ability to make anything happen, why limit yourself and the player?
It was always met with initial "well you have to or there is no reason to play" and then as we would talk more, light bulbs would go off and they would finally realize a lot of the trappings and assumed constructs really weren't necessary after all... but they still would ignore it.
What benefit or importance is it if I can fly, shoot laser beams, and finish with the awesome rip your spine out fatality with easy button presses or complex cryptic sequences? There aren't actual quarters involved anymore (for the most part). Why have your character punch with a fist instead of plunging a plasma sword through flesh? They could accomplish the same goal but one is infinitely cooler. You can still have a progression and you can still have obstacle and challenges but make the entire damn thing awesome... it's a GAME!
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
I think the idea of this type of adaptability in games is interesting, but one unfortunate instance of this kind of system is the searcher for Battle.net's Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. Every time you win, it will pair you at a greater disadvantage, whether this means you get an ally who has never played before, or an opponent who is exponentially better than you. Unless you're just an incredible player, you rarely win more than two or three games in a row. The system works in reverse when you lose. The consequence I notice is that the vast majority of players have records around 50%, give or take 5%, while a very small majority can keep a 80%+ record, with very few players falling in between. It's incredibly unrewarding and frustrating, and leads many people to simply abuse the system by purposefully losing many games in a row before starting to play in earnest.
In many types of games, this is a good idea. Puzzlers, platformers, shmups, and I'm sure others can all benefit from this approach.
Racing games are the antithesis of this concept. They're all about practicing something until you can do it just right. This is why rubberbanding causes so much frustration, and why it needs to go away.
What the hell is so wrong with just putting a menu with difficulty options in, like every FPS since forever has done?
* Can I play, Daddy?
* Don't hurt me
* Bring 'em on
* I am Death Incarnate!
Unpleasantries.
I have strong feeling on this topic. Pity I had a specially loaded day and didn't see the thread earlier. Anyway, to the point.
I get fun from certain games by beating them. I don't want a balanced threat, a "more fun" difficulty or however you justify changing the opposition to match the player.
If I want to play in a harder mode, to try to beat it too, I'm perfectly able to change the mode by myself. However, if I'm in the middle of discovering the perfect evolution algorithm that makes my character vaporise his enemies by dealing a damage orders of magnitude over their hps, and then the games decides I need different enemies to "have fun", I usually delete the game and sell it.
Oblivion is a special case. The evolving threat algorithm itself could be beaten. The optimal character never advanced a single lvl, to avoid triggering the algorithm. In that case, a player who enjoys games my way, plays for some hours, "solves" the game and quickly finds that playing a classic action RPG without advancing levels, is quite boring, as there's no progressive evolution to also "solve".
Having to struggle against myself does NOT sound relaxing to me.
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i have found the inclusion of content that is not vital to storyline is one of the best ways to adjust for the "difficulty level" challenge.
most games I will play on normal mode. most games I will not play a second time (i dont care if there's another ending/quest/item of superpower).
i want a game to have the following:
1. adjustable difficulty level *mid-game* - if i start the game on normal and it's a snooze fest and i have died twice in 30 hours of gameplay, there is very low chance i will even care to finish the game. let me change the difficulty at hour 20 instead of making me start a new game on a higher difficulty level
2. side content - so the main plot line only requires you to get to xx level or xx weapon upgrade? fine. leave that 20 hour game intact for the casual gamers who dont WANT the challenge. give me a level 30 zone where i can go crazy and still enjoy playing. give me the ability to upgrade my [item] to compete with a higher calibre AI.
3. a big FU to the 'hard' mode AI - good AI does not mean they see through walls, are invincible, or have ungodly upgrades. FPS are notorious for making the AI impossible at higher difficulty. AI for "auto-aim headshots" is not harder, just annoying. make the AI SMARTER at higher difficulty. 'hard' on a racing game should not mean the ai should never crash. make them smarter.
4. make power leveling viable - if i'm going to waste my time grinding out levels/items/cash/whatever, force me to spend more points/cash/time attaining future levels. don't make the "appropriate" plotline harder, i'm power leveling for a reason.
5. introduce the smart AI right off the bat - why do i always have to wait until halfway through a game to have the fear of death/loss/competition? 'normal' should be a 50/50 for the average user to win. 'hard' 50/50 for a skilled player to win.
6. allow the player to level outside of the 'appropriate' area - don't block off the vampire crypt. if i'm level 2 and want a swift death, let me in. similarly, if i'm level 40 and i want to kill 1 legged zombie bunnies, let me. just dont give me anything useful for it. and dont even think of making things that low-level aggressive towards me. and on that note...
7. i pick my battles, why doesnt the AI? - if i can see that i'm horridly outclassed, i will avoid the encounter. why do hordes of fiends swarm me after i have been running around laying waste to the encampment like rambo. if i can pick my battle, i'd like them to as well. make the ai pick.
8. don't ever put an impossible segment in to prevent me from leveling too much - i get frustrated on some tower defense games for this reason. i will get to a certain level where it becomes, quite literally, impossible to pass. if my config is the absolute best possible without cheating, why would you force my game to end? maybe i like winning. or at least showing that i can build the tower defense to be self sufficient and destroy anything thrown at it (within reason).
9. allow the ai to advance skill if they complete things i dont - if i skip the zombie bunny camp at level 2, have some ai actively clear it out by level 5 and make them a bit stronger when i try to defeat that group at level 10. make the ai work for power, just like i do. make the ai hunt for weapons, ammo, skills, [item].
"Yes we can!" If Obama was only a game designer... I could finally complete with all you stoners who used to torture me on Mortal Combat.
What I would like to see is a challenge setting instead of a difficulty setting to adjust how the game plays. If you want to breeze through, set it to a low challenge, or if you are Awesome gamer extreme, you can set it to high and get a truly challenging experience. And adjusting health/damage is a really cheap way to do that; change the composition of the enemy forces. Add an extra guard to this group, make that guy extra strong, etc. Allow better AI's against players that do well. Changing the mechanics of the game is problematic, so change the content. Make ammo scarce, or better hidden. OR on the flip side, gamers without a lot of skill could have some measure of aim-assist.
Scale difficulty, but scale rewards too. Always allow to scale back and never let the game overwhelm the player.
This is precisely what Oblivion did wrong. It decided about your difficulty basing on your character level, never caring if your character mastered in Speechcraft, Mercantile, lockpicking and Acrobatics. It still threw strongest ogres and meanest trolls at you. OTOH if you -avoided- levelling up, you could beat the enemies better. Also, by making the whole world levelled flat with your progress, it removed incentive for exploration and made it hard to scale difficulty yourself by picking your battles.
So instead of arbitrarily deciding "this player is good, let's give him a hard path", present the player with three paths of various difficulty, AND various rewards. Say, you can only get the "best" ending if you finish on "hard", because only then you will have to snipe the main boss precisely instead of blowing up the whole place, and the collateral damage will be reduced - and best if the difficulty is chosen by the player by gameplay decisions. Picking the right opponents, choosing the right weaponry etc. ...also, never deprive the player of the pleasure of squashing the strongest enemy like a bug, if they earned it by hard work. My fav moment of STALKER-SOTC? The final assault on the Reactor, armed with the Bulldog grenade launcher and a stash of grenades saved over the whole gameplay. They would make common battles way easier, but I saved them and then the over-the-top weapon made the final difficult battle a breeze, elite enemies thrown left and right.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Racing games need the rubberbanding - if it were like real life, one crash and you're toast
In Tetris, if you fill the piece entry area with blocks, you're toast.
hopelessly unable to catch up with those who haven't crashed, where's the fun?
And if only the second half of the final lap counts for anything, where's the fun in a 5-lap race?
just make it a game option... let's move on
One of the main reasons I disliked Oblivion was the scaling.
In an RPG I expect to be able to go back to a starting areas and completely decimate any enemies. But in oblivion the enemies levels scale right along with yours so you can never go back and take on dozens at a time or even just ignore the one hitting you until he gives up.
In my mind Left 4 Dead,in the co-op and solo campaigns, does a fair job of adjusting to the playing level of the group. If your playing through and not taking much damage, then the 2nd lvl weapons are further along then they otherwise might be, or more zombies get thrown at you. Conversly if your getting killed off multiple times in a section then you'll start seeing more pills or pipe bomb/moltovs. The end result is you can play through and feel challenged, regardless of whether your playing with hardcore players, or some friends that just picked up the game. The key that makes this constant challenge work is that you have that option to drop down to advanced (or even easy) if you are in the mood to just breeze through and kill zombies. Obviously a game that was more persistant such as a MMO or RPG wouldn't have to find a different formula for acheiving this. Prehaps as someone already suggested having some sort of leveling cap on enemies in specific areas (I believe the orginal pokemon games did this). However the more open world nature of most recent games would make this more difficult to implement.
The problem with most adaptive games is that they only take level into consideration. When in fact, it should be looking at everything BUT level
Why? Because leveling just happens; always. In any RPG, you can gain levels without a single fight just by doing side-missions; fed-ex runs being the main source. So by level 5 I've never swung a sword yet the game thinks I'm ready for High Orcs. Shooters, just toss a grenade or a missile in general area and you'll do some damage.
Instead, it should look at what you've accomplished, and how you did it. For a shoot-em-up, it should being looking at my hit ratio. If I can't hit the broadside of a barn, then to make things "easier" send MORE things at me. That way I'm more likely to hit targets even while I'm sporadic making a much funner game while I learn how to aim. If I'm dead-eye, then send only single, but highly agile opponents at me. If they keep dodging all my sniper shots, I will have to adapt a new strategy to take him out.
Racing games need the rubberbanding - if it were like real life, one crash and you're toast- hopelessly unable to catch up with those who haven't crashed, where's the fun?
The fun is driving a race car as fast as you can, not winning. Granted, if you're good enough winning is better than just racing but I usually disable rubberbanding now. If I fall behind I restart or race against the time and enjoy the track and if I do well I enjoy winning with a large margin on the second. I see no problem with that.
Restart and try-again is pretty much where GT5-Prologue lost it (the fun) for me, in the 3rd level single lap challenge on Suzuka. I'd much rather be able to progress to the next level with a smudge on my record (tried 10x, didn't get the trophy, oh well...) than be forever stuck in dork land because I'm playing with a standard controller instead of a "real wheel". I like challenges, but I don't like to be unable to access content that "I paid for" until I conquer something that I obviously have some dis-ability to conquer after 50+ tries.
For what it's worth, I did a hard drive upgrade on the PS3 and restarted GT5P from the start, and somehow I beat that damn track on about the 5th try this time, think I got 2nd place (you only need 3rd to progress...), I think the previous "character" was somehow adjusted into a challenge/skill that I was just not capable of.
I just had a terrifying thought of playing a game and seeing an animated paperclip pop up and say "It looks like you're trying to destroy the mothership, would you like some tips?"
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"Make it easier, and keep the emphasis purely on rewards."
Don't make it so we have to use our brains. Don't make it so that we have to do anything remotely challenging. Just make everything utterly superficial, and over in 5 seconds flat. We don't want to have to spend more than a minute on any single thing we do; our TV reared attention spans can't take it. We also don't want anything that requires more than a 50+ IQ, because we don't have one. For anyone who might want something minutely more interesting than Minesweeper, that's just too damn bad, because we want our cookie and bear and potty, and we want them RIGHT NOW, damn it; and if we don't get them, we're going to hold our breath until we turn blue.
Seriously, when did the human race degenerate into such perpetual, mindless infants? How old are you people? I get the feeling that what you'd probably consider the single greatest reward for getting through a game, (or anything else, for that matter) would be to find someone next to your chair with a clean nappy and a warm bottle fresh out of the microwave when you'd finished. Either that or a pacifier.
It honestly looks as though the corporate goal has been entirely achieved, looking at this thread. The only thing I'm seeing here is post after post written by servile, utterly dependent consumers.
I'm ashamed to be human, sometimes. I don't want to be associated with this type of mentality, at all.
What is NOT fun is running into a muskrat that I was able to kill three months earlier with a rusty sword and barely the ability to swing it, and find it nearly as difficult to kill with a high quality sword and armor and a high level of fighting skill. What the hell? When the muskrats are nearly as tough as the dragons, something is wrong. That's the experience of Oblivion.
Which is one reason I still much prefer Morrowind. You don't find that the scamps get more powerful, you find that you are running into storm atronachs instead -- which is consistent with the storyline, as Dagoth-Ur is increasing in power.
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i don't mind the adaptability, but at least show the players of the games that have the "auto-adjust" enemies that they're owning them at a much higher than normal difficulty! For example, maybe make the enemies say different things when they die/walk around depending on 'how adjusted they are, or add a special combo meter that increases faster the harder the adjusted difficulty is. That was the players feel rewarded, even if that special combo meter doesn't do much, so much as its there and they're getting ~something~ you know?
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I agree with the people who prefer the classic Easy-Medium-Hard-Very Hard approach. I think that works fine up to 5 difficulty levels (any more and it becomes too much). But difficulty is hard to do sometimes. Some games make enemies have more health, their weapons do more damage, they have better aim etc. That works out OK most times. Other games just go nuts on very hard and make you unable to quick save, or limit the times you can save per level, or just take away any kind of chance you have of surviving and I find that kinda cheap.
As for adaptation, I think Freespace 2 got this part right when they made the game pop up a question box asking if you want to change the difficulty level after dying 10 times on the same mission. That's about as adaptive as you can get without taking control away from the player. I recently played a game at the 3/4 difficulty and it was pretty hard at some points, but I like it that way. I like the challenge and the annoyance. If it dropped the difficulty automatically without asking or informing me and I just got away without a scratch the 10th time I'd feel like I was cheating.
This calls for a poll
If I am better at the game, I want to be able to see the results, I don't want the game to ramp up, that would just be frustrating. Here is an example: In Oblivion and Fallout, the more you level up, the enemies do so as well. I don't want enemies to get harder the better I do! Normally the point of an experience system is so that your character can get better to overcome the enemy, not to bring the entire game to a more advanced level.
All we need is difficulty settings at the title screen. Some games even let you change the difficulty level in the pause menu on the fly, so you don't have to restart your game if you want to change difficulty and lose all your progress.
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I used to play Mario Kart 64 a lot. It was a fun game, but the AI opponents had a habbit of getting random speed boosts to magically catch up to you, no matter how many shells/bananas you hit them with. This detracted from the game experience IMO.
In the SNES version,you could target one specific AI opponent and completely ruin their race. They wouldn't miraculously catch up. It was great!
In NFS Underground if you play well, you'll see a F$%* Volkswagen going faster than your Skyline, way faster than is actually possible in that car.
Where's the fun?
Racing games definitely do NOT need the rubberbanding. What they need is a constant and small increase in difficulty from one race to the next. And lots of races.
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Nintendo already implemented this with a small device that reads your pulse in your fingertip. didn't you guys see E3 videos of 2k9?
Just like anything else, if it's done correctly, it can be great. The problem is most people don't bother to spend the time at it and throw out a half-assed system. To date, Fallout 3 is the only one where the scaling isn't horribly done. The first time I played through Bioshock (PC) I had adaptive difficulty turned on. About 1/2 way through the game, I began wondering why every enemy I came across took 5 or 6 headshots with anti-personnel rounds to bring down. Unfortunately, it took them a while to patch it so that the difficulty would turn itself back down if you weren't doing as well. Oblivion was horribly done. Enemies would scale up as high as your level, but your ability to scale up your damage was often cut short long before that. A level gained due to speechcraft and alchemy would net the same increase in monster stats as a level in blades and repair. In the end I wound up editing the game via the construction set just so I could actually enjoy it again. Ultimately, companies need to hire players rather than play testers. Someone who's going to go through a game because they enjoy it will find many more problems than someone who's told specifically what to test for and look at.
There is a big difference between man-vs-machine and multiplayer games. In multiplayer games, there is certainly the need of a certain handicap to make the game fun to everybody. In man-vs-machine, I'd say that yes, the game can get more difficult, but also that the rewards must increase. So if the enemies get stronger, you have to at least have the option (if you are skilled enough) of getting better weapons or whatever. Also if the measure of the game is the score, for example, then the score should reflect that you have walked a more difficult route.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
I thought I was the only person who had the issue of wanting to explore a new area, but getting slaughtered by the first thing [popping out of the ground|falling from the sky|warping in out of nowhere] was a major irritant.
I'd love to see an MMO that allows one to explore, with some logical limits. Like a real person, you can't just run all over the world in 5 minutes. You actually need to build up your endurance (hooray for stat gaining without a level, preferably -- someone who explores a lot and carries lots of stuff would likely have more endurance than a flabby something or other that's just wandering around the outskirts of town), buy equipment for exploring some areas (mountain climbing means you need pitons, rope, carabiners, etc; safari exploration means you might need some type of insect repellent, a machete, and a prayer to protect you from [insert random creature here]) and make money by bringing things back from your explorations to sell.
Of course, this kind of an idea would be hard to apply adaptive skill levels to, honestly.
One of these days, I am going to flip out. When I flip out, I'll be back in five minutes.
"Some people would claim that adapting the game to you just rewards mediocrity (i.e. you don't get rewarded for playing well). Others would say that it restricts the freedom of expression for the game designer."
The point of a video game is NOT to reward greatness or maximize freedom of expression of the designer. The main point of most games these days is usually simply to be fun, but more generally, games as an artistic medium may aim to provide any sort of valuable experience. Rewarding mediocrity or limiting the designers' freedom of expression are only a problem if they get in the way of these goals. (It should be noted that working within a strict framework of limitations can even *increase* an artists' ability to express him/herself, but that's an essay [or book, or library] in and of itself.)
Many games which aim to be fun can be made more fun by adapting themselves to the player; hence, it's probably a good thing to do. However, as you point out, changing the difficulty is only one way the game may adapt; adapting to the player's gameplay style may be more difficult, but more rewarding. The adaptation may be integrated into the game's plot; consider the old Escape Velocity series, where a more combat-oriented player who attacks whenever he gets a chance will quickly make lots of enemies, and hence find himself with a lot more combat opportunities. On the other hand, a diplomat who focuses on trading may make a lot of friends, opening up extra trading opportunities.
Alternately, the adaptations may be more explicit; consider Spore, where a player who plays aggressively is rewarded with additional weapons and tools that add a bit of depth and fun to the combat side of the game; players who aim for a friendly or balanced strategy are given tools that directly enrich their own style of play.
The idea that adaptive difficulty "rewards mediocrity" reveals a huge crate full of bad thinking - as if videogames are a meritocracy meant to reward the skilled few and cull the weak from the herd! To me, that's a sentiment that would come from a very game-obsessed 7th grader, whose Xbox achievements meant more to him than anything else the world could possibly offer. It earns and gets derision all around.
More importantly, it is trivially easy to create challenges that are insurmountable. Pretty much all computer-based challenges are handicapped to give players a chance.
A more interesting question is whether and when multiplayer games should provide positive and negative feedback loops: when you're winning, should the game get harder for you and easier for your opponents (Mario Kart?) Or should it race to its conclusion, letting a won-game be won and allowing for the next one to start quickly (Risk?) There are advantages to either design concept, and playtesting is the best way to figure out which works for your game.
Lets go back to the OLD days when we used to play games that we still play today. All of nintendo had 2 settings.. 1 HARD and 2 Cheating... those games were all epic and made me want to get good at them to win. old PC games like X-com UFO defense even on easy its so hard.. but i love it cause I WANT to get good and see what happens next. Its so annoying with games today where I can sit there and play mindlessly smashing a button. As you say mario Kart does not take skill its strategy dont fly light years ahead of everyone. No matter what you pick Rubber band or an AI that learns from your moves if the game does not challenge you then why play it. If I can change it to easy then maybe I should just go play a spongebob game. This era is mass producing gamers and if you dont challenge them and give them something to hold over other gamers then its not impressive. Make an Epic game that challenges the players and gets hard and harder as you play through.. start the game on easyish and then get harder and harder until you really gotta be good.. cause after you put 20 hours into a game you will put 20 hours just trying to get to the next part.
If you break down racing into the separate actions being performed; you can then rank order and think about how to enhance the elements of gameplay that are the most fun.
The most popular racing element of wide appeal is clearly the PASSING and DEFENDING; if you can play ruff and have the control, then "brawling" enhances this dueling aspect. Since bumping and the physics are hard to implement and are not easy to learn to do PLUS limited in scope-- it just begs for more accessible alternatives like oil slicks, weapons, etc. Mario Kart focuses heavily upon this and in nintendo style makes it simple, accessible, and revolves the game around it with balancing and adaptable AI. Its not about winning the race, its about winning the fight for 1st place. Therefore, the AI is perfectly suited to the purpose of the game; therefore, it should NOT adapt.
One could say that people racing in time trials are the complainers who are playing the wrong game; and they are-- but that mode was placed there probably because of those people (or when you're in that mood.) That mode should get an AI that is better suited for that player's intent - which is to race the clock, not brawl. Nintendo leaves out the AI players in this mode; clearly, they understand. Perhaps an option for non-brawling AI players would shut up these people once and for all? I suppose that and a multiplayer mode without weapons...
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Like all game design questions, it depends on whether or not the designer SHOULD make the game scale to you.
The World Ends With You for the DS is a great example - you can choose whatever attack types and styles suit you best. You can also turn up the difficulty to get better item drops. You basically tailor the game to your play style and change it as needed.
Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil on the other hand, will notice that you're doing well, and crank up the difficulty higher and higher until you die, basically only ensuring that you never see the end of the game. Brilliant, but not entirely unexpected for a game of its sort.
In general yes, modifying game style to fit play style is a great concept.
Modifying difficulty is a gray area IMHO.
Mario Kart: Now their is a to to be said for making the leader in a race not lap everyone else 20 times, he still wins but everyone else does not feel like a loser.
but "Mario Kart Wii" throws that out the window allows a players who was in last place the entire game suddenly get the instant win item and you, the far superior player suddenly loses.
And i have gone personally from last or close to it and winning the game in and the same goes for the first place player, i have been feet away from the finish line only to be pelted by homing leader shells and other non avoidable items
In Mario Kart Wii the actual best player has to stay in second place for as much of the game as possible, as leading the pack means constantly being attacked by pretty much every time in the game
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I'd like it if the game would silently make things a little easier if I had died more than 6 times trying to get through some dexterity based feat. (Like how I never finished psychonauts because I could never throw the knives at the rotating wheel accurately and fast enough to beat the clock on the last level.) splosionman's "way of the coward" is just too wussy... I don't want to "skip" the feat, but just need a little help since I know *how* to solve the puzzle, but just don't have the razor sharp reaction times and coordination.
;-)
If I want to be humiliated I'd rather humans do it, rather than my computer... I'll join a multiplayer game if I want grief.
Also Braid's rewind mode is really good as well, so one doesn't have to restart at some predetermined checkpoint and have to repeat several minutes of play that you already did each time you die. Add the toggleable behind the scenes "auto pity mode" and I'd be a happy puppy.
Sometimes I just need a helping hand to get past a "sticking point" and I'm good playing at the "hard" difficulty most of the time. Games are for "fun" for me. For the "elites" they can just turn pity mode off and the developers could reward them with a special "achievement" or "trophy" so they can show off their leetness.
Dude. Has the writer of this article never played left 4 dead ? I don't think there has been a game since Pacman with such re~playability. The A.I. director manages the ebb and flow of the game, increasing and decreasing the difficulty depending on the players assembled and their progress.
Any computer program, whether a game or not, should be repeatable, consistent and comprehensible.
You learn how a program works in a similar way that a scientist learns how nature works.
Do something...observe the result.
Do the identical thing again...observe the identical result.
If the result is not identical, the program becomes incomprehensible.
In one game that I like to play to blow off some steam, you can easily beat all the bots at one level (they seem to enjoy standing around waiting for you to blast 'em) and if you increase the difficulty by one level, the bots can be falling off a ledge or doing a double somersault and still manage to squeeze of a single shot that kills you. And that's after you've hit them with 2-3 rockets. Go figure. I haven't tried it yet but I can't even imagine what the "Godlike" level would be like except that I suspect I wouldn't even be completely reborn before a bot killed me.
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I prefer to be able to select my difficulty level and have the game simply react that way. I may be an outlying data point but I don't play games for a massive challenge. I do it to pass the time and escape from reality. If a game becomes too difficult I simply cast it aside as it is not having the intended effect of relaxing me.
Some games I have played are just too hard. Even on easy settings, it is nearly impossible to beat the game because there are just too many enemies.
What I would like to see is adaptive games... But also have "Easy, Medium, Hard, Expert" levels of difficulties. That way if I want it to be easy, I choose Easy, but the game will adapt if I am doing really well, or really poor. However if I I am a fantastic gamer, and I choose hard or expert, then the game adapting to that would be a good way to keep expert gamers engaged.
And it could increase re-play ability of games.
Hey now, watching video games play themselves can be fun. I recently got access to a WoW honor grinding bot and spent hours just watching it battle in Alterac Valley with no intervention. That's right, HOURS. Turns out it's more fun to think of ways to tweak your combat script and make yourself look human than it is to actually get in there and fight.
And before anyone gives me crap for AFK botting in battlegrounds, keep in mind that my bot still outperforms most actual players...
"Some people would claim that adapting the game to you just rewards mediocrity (i.e. you don't get rewarded for playing well). Others would say that it restricts the freedom of expression for the game designer."
What, their freedom to guess wrong and alienate a large chunk of their playerbase? Player skill is going to be on a bell curve, and the best you can do without some dynamic adjustment is to hope to hell you've nailed the difficulty perfectly at the top of the curve; that way you're the least wrong for the fewest number of players... but even then, you're still going to be unplayably wrong for 10% and irritating to another 20%. And this will only reward skill for that narrow slice of players for which the game was initially slightly too hard (and then becomes pefect as the player improves).
The flaw in rubberbanding is only that it still can't read your mind. The developer's idea of "normal" may actually still be too easy or too hard, and then the game guarantees that it stays too easy or too hard throughout, no matter what you the player do. Really what we need is a hybrid between the old "easy/normal/hard" choice and dynamic adjustment. That puts enough wiggle room back in that the developer can be wrong yet the player can still fix it and have fun. And the holy grail here is to have it require minimal interaction - if you implement this right, it's correct by default for the largest reasonably attainable number of players, and for the rest it's correctable through the simple and well-understood easy/normal/hard mode choice.
Unreal Tournament 3 ftw. Bot skill levels plus toggle skill-adapt on/off.
So, why not design the auto-tune so that it's based on your skill difficulty selection?
On easy, the auto tune could reduce the difficulty of enemies when you start slowing down, allowing you to blow through the game at a relatively quick pace. It should ramp the difficulty back up only when things are getting trivially easy.
On normal, it should keep the game constantly challenging, but not difficult. The player should be able have to work, but not too hard.
On hard mode, the game should provide a constant challenge.
A game that I think would benefit from a dynamic difficulty curve would be Far Cry 2 - it has a huge open world, where it's possible to sneak around enemy checkpoints, and take multiple approaches to achieving objectives; E.g.: Assult a base with rockets, morters, or grenades and then run in guns blazing... Or set the camp on fire using a flare gun and a shoot the enemy when they try to escape... Or to pick off unsuspecting foes with a dart gun, and then finish off any remaining troops with a silenced MP5.
It would be nice to see the enemy respond by changing their tactics along with yours - for instance, deploying counter-snipers and taking cover as you build a reputation for sniping their position, or spreading out and posting patrols to counter the explosive approach.
In a game like that, it's too easy to adapt a single tactic that works in most any situation, and the only change in approach needed is based on environmental factors - sniping and fire isn't as effective in the jungle, and running in guns blazing doesn't work very well in the desert.
Depends on a game and overall design. I'm not going to say that there is a genre where it would never work (because someone would just prove me wrong with a single datapoint saying otherwise) but I'd say that
a) It must be very carefully balanced
b) Game should have better rewards for those who handle the greater challenge. That should solve the problem of "rewarding mediocrity".
Take shmups, for instance. The better the player plays in them, the harder they usually get. (at least most of the good ones.) However, the "better" playing is also tightly coupled with the mechanics of scoring, which is essentially the main rewarding system, which means that harder difficulty=higher scores. I actually like this type of system more than pre-set easy-normal-hard-very hard -steps, because first, they are by definition able (when executed right) to give the "right" difficulty for everyone, and second because it keeps everyone's scores on the same scale.
Of course, this type of system does not fit into every game. Also, if awards for good playing are items, completely losing opportunity to get some specialized gear because of good play would be mildly off-putting.
I'm surprised so many of these posts seem to support nerfing er.. adjusting the game to the level of the player. It was annoying in Oblivion and a very unnecessary. It seems that everyone is always worried about the player who doesn't know how to play the game, isn't "good" at playing the game, or simply doesn't have time to get good at playing the game. Why, why, why, is this particular group so important to developers and designers? I've seen several games ruined by this pursuit to make sure "everyone is having fun". Those who are good should be the example that motivates those who are not, to strive for that higher level of play.
SWG went through this effort with something they called the NGE. The idea for the NGE was to "simplify" the game so that it appealed to ALL. It was a fantastic failure and will go down in history as the single worst implosion of a game by attempting to appeal to "everyone".
Interesting side-note to the SWG saga. After the servers were rendered howling wastelands containing only those who had no other game to run to, they began a 2 year plan to reintroduce the complexity that the game once had. Their subscription numbers are not back to where they were pre-NGE but they've done a really good job and are sustaining population after 6 years. It's a different game than it once was but most argue that it's a much better game. They've even recently introduced Player Created Questing which is something I don't think exists anywhere else in any other MMO. Since the game is a sandbox type game, the possibilities are endless for player created content. The message here is, complexity is good, challenge is good and in the end, there are good players and not so good players. Putting a system in place to punish the good players and make things easier for bad players is flawed at the very root of its concept.
I've always thought the best compromise is just to make all the roads safe. So you can explore high-level areas as much as you want as long as you stick to the roads. Not ideal, but at least you could get between towns and such.
Comment of the year
As pointed out below, the easy way to dynamically adapt game play is to add or subtract game elements as needed. However, it may be more interesting to allow the game AI to adapt -- instead of adding or subtracting objects have the AI continue to learn during game play. That is, for some games the AI learns "offline" -- it may be trained using many runs in a headless simulation mode; once the game is shipped the AI's knowledge doesn't change since learning is "turned off." But if learning can still happen during normal game play, then adaption will happen implicitly.
Of course that sounds really simple, but may actually be a bear to implement. For example, learning has associated overhead which might have an impact on game performance. (Which is normally why it would be done offline during development.) And if the AI is fairly simple to begin with then it might not make sense to have it learn during normal game play.
MAC | A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Dude, just make a FUN game and don't worry about this. If your game needs it then put it in, if you think it would be less fun with it in then leave it out. Now obviously weigh that against the time and effort it would take to put in this automatic correction mode, if you want it in. It may cost too much to put it in anyway.
My personal thought is that I kind of hate it in a game, and that almost every game that has done it I don't like. Oblivion is a prime example. I NEVER have the fear some games put in me because I know the game auto balances things out fairly well. Yes I die some but to compare that to the traditional JRPG were you have fear of certain areas/monsters and also feel like a complete bad ass when you get to a certain point. Again though, it depends on the game. Mario Kart is great to play with kids and family and it works well. It was a great design choice for that game. Madden would suck. It makes sense they left it out.
The more I learn about science, the more my faith in God increases.
A game to help you discover what your mind and eyes could process per second. It has difficulty selection and level branching based on performance, which allows it to try to keep the challenge at a level that is still fun for the player. Of course, being an arcade game, no matter what branch you take there are plenty of traps to eat your quarters. This was also released as Raiden Fighter Aces for 360.
As an aside I thought that Bioshock addressed the facial animation problem with a clever hack: have the agents wear masquerade masks. No visible face! No need for animations! (And they even managed to make it fit into the back story.)
MAC | A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"Is this a good thing" depends on your goals. This would vary based on whether you are:
A) Hoping to eat up as much of my time as possible,
B) Hoping to force me down a particular game path,
C) Trying to establish yourselves as the makers of the smartest product,
or
D) Trying to make sure I have the most fun possible.
While D is the only acceptable choice from my point of view, A, B, and C are going to be damn hard to avoid. And as a consumer I'll never know which I'm purchasing until I reach the point where I cannot have a refund. If you're noticing the parts of the game I like and are making a few more of those happen, great. If you are noticing the parts that are 'too easy' for me, taking note of the parts I am skipping, and/or recording that I spend too little time on a particular feature so you can force more of that on me - well that would suck.
Assuming I can trust you, please shoot for D. Otherwise, please just leave it out due to the risks involved. Thanks!
My first thought on reading the summary was that it sounded a lot like the local chess and go competitions when I was in high school (a few decades ago, before computer games were common). I was one of the top players. I didn't much get that way by reading a lot of chess strategy books or by beating a lot of novices. I did it by consciously deciding that I liked losing better. That is, I challenged players who were better than I was. They usually learned to try each trick on me just once, because the second time I'd have worked out a reply. Also, from then on, they had to look out for the same trick from me.
Nowadays, I don't play many computer games. But if I decide to take it up, it'll be because of access to slowly-increasing challenges. If a game doesn't behave as described here, I'll get bored with it fast and go looking for something that's more interesting.
Actually, part of the reasons for getting out of games is that I realized that software development is a kind of game that you can get paid well for. The basic setup is: When you get the recalcitrant little beastie to do what you want, you get points (and possibly a raise for the next project). When the designers of the system (OS, runtime libs, compilers, data designers, whatever) trick you and the machine interprets your code differently than you expected, the people responsible for the system code get points (and possibly a good position building the next release of the system ;-). A good programmer is one who can win at this game against the system designers.
So as a programmer, you're constantly challenged by the new challenges that are hiding out in the latest releases of the systems that you're programming for. You really are playing against some of the brightest human opponents on the planet. It's a much more interesting and challenging computer game than anything actually advertised as a game.
I've described this theory to a number of bosses in the past. One of them chuckled, and explained that this was probably why I hadn't ever "graduated" into management. He'd seen my code, and it was too clear and well-documented to ever be a good player on the "system" team in the game. The other programmers wouldn't face the challenges they expected from my code, so it was obvious that I wouldn't be welcome on the other team. So I chuckled to, and told him that I was happy playing for my current team. I got to build things that users actually use, which was a nice bennie. Sometimes they've even paid me for copies of my code, while people only pay for "systems" code because they have to for the machine to be usable. We both thought it was all pretty funny. But maybe this was partly because we were both paid pretty well to play.
For some reason many "system" programmers don't seem to appreciate this characterization of the software industry ...
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
After reading the thread... maybe i'll sum it up.
configurable - awesome. checkbox form seems easiest.
i like the subset options as well. one for health adaptation, one for aim, one for gear, one for number of enemies, starting cash. etc. noobs dont care, they click easy. hard core guys need something to keep it interesting.
genre matters - true that. some reward systems do not translate. in counterstrike no one cares about rings, and in WOW no one cares about weapon kickback since you dont aim.
fun, not difficulty. all about the playtesting. noobs gotta have fun, and hard core guys gotta have fun. just watch them play.
single vs multi - team fortress 2 doesn't need single player (players provide difficulty), oblivion didn't need multiplayer (developers provide difficulty). which game is yours? or is it both?
rubberbanding - sucks when done wrong. best example i can think of is the Director from left 4 dead. look it up, it calculates a bunch of stuff and improvises the current environment accordingly. but it doesn't effect hp, damage, etc.
game examples. there's a reason people answer and append a game or two. really pay attention to that. it's been done right and wrong.
World of Warcraft already sort of follows this game design. They have different modes for their raid dungeons for example (e.g. hard mode, heroic, etc.).
In a sense, even WoW's arena system tries to place players of equal skills against each other. Their rating system ensures that you will eventually only pvp with those of your team's skill level after you lose/win enough games.
You mean they should get worse over time?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Let me explain: what I want is a game where not only the world doesn't adapt to how I play but, also, that it's not even designed to how the developers *think* I'm gonna play. Things like Final Fantasy VII, for instance, where even the strongest bosses in the first few areas would be killed in a single hit from the random encounters you get at the final dungeon. I want a game where I feel I was just thrown in a different world, that I'm merely a participant in something bigger, rather than The One True Hero around whom the whole world is built.
STALKER did this, to a degree, where in the beginning with your trusty pistol and simple jacket you're forced to run from mere bandits, while in the end-game you can hunt military soldiers for fun and profit with your customized AK-74 and bulletproof suit. It did have an "NPC difficulty curve" (mostly due to quests leading you to more dangerous areas as the game progressed), but it was flatter than most and that worked to the game's favor, IMHO.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
For single and co-op games adaptive difficulty is a plus - these games are all about the enjoyment of the player and "fairness" is not an issue. Things that players do use to compare with each other should be fair however, for example the hardest difficulty setting should always be comparable, as should achievements and a good lap time should always be a good lap time.
Never take the control away from the player either. Keep hard, medium and easy, the rubber-banding should just offer a bit of flexibility around the edges.
For multiplayer, there should be no artificial adaptation but ideally the design of the game should involve a degree of natural levelling. Ensure both teams have their opportunity, but it should never go so far as tipping the balance in favour of either winning. Spawn points should always be highly defendable, for example. The key here is any advantage to one is unfair on another.
Ironically perhaps the trend seems to be the reverse. Games are increasingly benefiting players who do well with unlockable weapons and such for demonstrations of skill or at least long play time. All this does it help skilled players "pwn n00bs" some more while lesser players seem to thrive on being "rewarded", or rather being given something to help them defeat even lesser players. Nobody ever gets rewarded for being a good guy, like a skilled player swapping to a weaker team.
I'm still "newbie" in TF2 but it seems to have a good take on unlockables. They seem to arrive almost at random and usually the advantages are outweighed with disadvantages, making them more "different" or specialist than "better".
As all things, it depends on how you use it.
I'd certainly love a game that adapts to my style of play if that means when I sneak and use stealth, it'll give me more opportunities to do so, while when I shoot everything that moves, it'll throw more enemies to kill at me.
But if the game adapts so far that it gives me only that which I'm good at, then the challenge is gone. If it modifies the level of difficulty to exactly my abilities (instead of slightly above them, as it should), then it'll be boring.
Once more, it's a technology. Some game designers will use it to improve the game. A lot will tack it on to the next cheaply produced crapware just to make sure a so-so idea is ruined completely.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I have to ask this to the person behind this particular Ask Slashdot, because having to Ask Slashdot for this, I really wonder what you're doing in the industry and what you've been doing the last couple of years.. You should really study the latest freeware games, like free MMORPGs and other genres, how they do business out of exactly these kinds of things. Just google "free MMORPG" to get started. There are alot of MMORPGs, as well as action-games, board-games, etc., and they all make money out of catering to different types of players. Like some players are hardcore achievers, some like to socialize, some like to show off status symbols (pets, money, levels, equipment, magic, you name it), some like to explore (ok, these should really BUY a game to get more quality and depth), etc. All this can be capitalized in a free game, when done right, and can give some ideas what is possible regarding difficulty levels as well.
With parent poster, I totally agree about configurability and visibility, instead of trying to obscure some "adaption" algorithm which you think is cool, but will be seen as absolutely lame and obvious to hardcore gamers. It can even ruin gameplay for many, when it is "hidden" away.
I remember playing a car-game automat, don't remember the name but its still popular in India, and then discovered when I drove slower, I won more! Of course, I quickly realized if I drove 2nd to last place in all but the last lap, I could turbo-charge past- or simply drive better the last lap, and almost always win. While if I drove my best through the whole race, I would be squashed by some silly mistake in the end on the more hardcore tracks, and the bots would just "float" past me without any trouble. Yes, that was it. No more point to play at that mode anymore, so I tried to compete with other players for time. On some laps I scored top rank, while on others some dedicated guy had made som really good times I couldn't beat. But it worked for a while until I realized I had maxed out my skill for now and wouldn't be able to beat those guys on those particular tracks (I honestly suspect they know of some cheating method to achieve those results. I saw the clerk had some "codes" to give extra credit at least. ;*).Unless they had used tons of credits to discover the perfect car-combination to every track, but still, they were miles ahead of anything I could achieve on those tracks.
But this added some replay value, after discovering this lame "reward for mediocricy", which totally ruined my gameplay against the computer bots.
The positive lesson is that multiplayer, in any form, also brings something more to a game than just playing against bots, or the same storyline.
The other side of the coin is that making the computer "unnatural", just destroys the illusion you're trying to create and maintain in the first place.
Rule #1 should be to never destroy this illusion! Because after that, the player might well be gone for good! The successful games, keep their players, like Quake, Quake Team Fortress (my only reason I played Quake - a whole book in itself in game-design), CS, WoW, even for years. On the business-side, if you keep some, profitable players, you can even give your game away for free to most people in the world!
Regarding difficulty, the bots should really act more like a human, than just ramp up amount of units, speed or any such simple factor that you think would make the game "harder". Even if the game "detects" you're good, it should be optional to have it harder I think, because some people just want to relax and kick ass, not having to save and load at every corner. If the player selects a harder mode, it should be harder in an intelligent way, like in chess, where the computer can think longer into the future and anticipate results (but not too far!! ;)
So the difficulty level should be configurable, otherwise it might become too unrealistic, indeterminable and even exploitable.
Another example that comes to mind is Shaiya, a
The AI in old NEO-GEO arcade fighting games is rather remarkable from what I understand. For example, in the Samurai Spirits series (a.k.a Samurai Shodown) it adapts to any patterns you exhibit early in the match and builds strategies to avoid and counter them later. I never imagined that games from the 16-bit era could have adaptive enemy AI. :O
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
With games that have adaptive AI everyone gets to ultimately succeed if you play long enough, as the AI just downgrades itself until you can win.
Consequently with those types of games I always wonder how relatively good/bad I actually am playing.
I would like to see all games with adaptive AI provide some sort of quantitative indicator for e.g. how hard the player pushed the AI (was it struggling to beat the player or did it shoot itself in the foot so the player could beat it), and how good as a player overall (perhaps relative to other players) you are.
This is a wonderful and worthy task you're undertaking. Yes, video games should adapt to the player's skill, but I think that BEFORE you address that issue, you have to either address or make a conscious decision to ignore another problem:
Make losing fun.
I play 2 games more than any others. One, I play Unreal Tournament 3. I always play singleplayer, and always in god mode. Why? Because there's nothing fun about losing or getting fragged and spending the next 5 minutes trying to get the rocket launcher and flak cannon before someone else does. The other is Red Alert 3: Uprising which is singleplayer-only. When playing that, I always play against easy AIs and I turtle. A lot. I discovered that if you can build a lot of units and keep yours alive while the AI bashes low tech units hopelessly against your defenses, victory is somewhat easy. Why not risk losing my base and go for an early rush or another tactic? Because losing is no fun whatsoever!
So, if you're going to make an adaptive AI, that's fine, but remember this. If your game is too hard to win for any decent portion of the player base, you must do one of 2 things. Either the AI must be easy to defeat at any skill level (though a little less easy for veterans) OR else it must be FUN to LOSE, and that's very hard to do. In a game like MarioKart, coming in 3rd can still be fun so long as I take/lose second place a couple times and get to hit the person in first with a few red shells. But in UT3, a loss is pretty much never fun (unless you camp a spawn point and point-blank flak people as they spawn, but they'll snipe you for that so fast it's not even funny...) The point is, either losing has to be fun, or else losing has to be hard (i.e. only a total n00b can even possibly lose). If losing is both easy and depressing, then the game is just one huge mountain and it's not FUN any more, and that's the whole point of ANY game - fun.
Just yesterday (Oct 12), there was a symposium at UC Santa Cruz on Procedural Content Generation that addressed that very question (among others). No strong conclusions, but it's evident there are many in the game industry and game academia asking the very same question, and trying to figure out an answer.
Cheers, Tim -- Tim Janke Part mad scientist, part lion tamer: sr. software engineer, global team leader, project mana
Call me old-fashioned but I've always believed that one of the pre-requisites of calling something a "game" is that it should challenge you. Give you something to learn and get better at. There was no adaptive difficulty on Mario, Zelda, or Metroid. If you wanted to advance in the game (or even beat it), your only choice was to practice, explore, learn from your mistakes, and hopefully get better. A game that automatically makes itself easier when you do poorer isn't a game, it's just a time-waster. In the same class as the click-on-the-pretty-pictures web games and every board game that boils down to sheer chance.
hopelessly unable to catch up with those who haven't crashed, where's the fun?
And if only the second half of the final lap counts for anything, where's the fun in a 5-lap race?
There's fun in leading. Basically, if you're not skill-matched it's too easy for a superior driver to "drive away from" a lesser opponent. Yeah, maybe I get off on doing that the first (two dozen) times to my little brother, but after awhile, it's more entertaining to not have a certain outcome until the very end. I think this is why Jeopardy plays for increasing stakes throughout the game....
What about multiple optional paths with various rewards based on skill.
Challenging optional quests with decent optional rewards.
Get your upgrades early.. IF you have the skill to.
Plenty of RPG's have levelled areas. Higher leveled areas reduce grind time in Xp based progression if nothing else.
Completely linear storylines kinda reduce replayability anyway.
I do like video games but I do not have the time anymore to stay days trying to find my way through a labyrinth. Some guidance would be nice for those who just want to have fun without wasting time or getting frustrated with a game. Grandparents who would like to share time with their kids playing video games, for example mario bross, died just by trying to do the “simplest” action, for instance jump over a turtle. Super powers, eternal life, why not? I do not thing that is cheating is just another way to enjoy the game.
Adaptive content does not necessarily mean that difficulty changes. There is a reason why many games allow the player to change difficulty, and some players might welcome a hint that they wouldn't die as often on lower difficulty, but that may be as far as it should go.
On the other hand, what I miss in many games are several options to solve problems. Fallout does this in some cases, but the game still leaves me wondering how I should communicate my ideas to the game in other cases. And the answer is: probably even more complex scripts. Creating games as an open environment where problems can be solved by talking, thinking and shooting is difficult. And even if many might think that shooting is all that most people want anyway, and that it is easiest to program, people beyond 30 years might pay for that kind of entertainment.
Non-linear gameplay gets more difficult the more flexible the user's and AI's options are. I believe that many players would welcome new ideas here.
Except that:
1/ Staying in the middle/front of the pack will get you pummeled with all that the opponents behind can throw at you.
2/ For this reason, keeping around offensive items as opposed to defensive items is a poor strategy.
3/ Besides, POW blocks and lightning bolts specifically exist to make item hoarding a poor strategy as well.
The thing people don't realize with Mario Kart is that it's a hard game that pretends to be easy, because it's already fun even when you suck at first.
In fact, I never cease to be amazed at how well balanced Mario Kart Wii is. The effect of most items can be mitigated to some extent. Off the top of my mind there are at least three or four ways to limit how much the blue shell will affect your race. Some are bitching hard to pull, but hey, you're going for first place, right? Gotta work for it.
The only really succesful approach I found is to be just a bit faster than your opponents -- and there are many ways to tend toward that goal, the most important of which being in equal parts the quality of your trajectories and a good tactic use of the circuit's features -- and a good knowledge of how to make the best defensive use of your items. A skilled player can cross the finish line of Rainbow Road 30 to 40 seconds ahead of the closest AI opponents in hard mode. Can you do that? If not, then you're not a skilled player, and that's where your problem is.
A good way to tell where you actually stand is to go through time trial mode and try to unlock (and then beat) all the Expert Staff Ghosts. No items there, so it's just you against the circuit. When you can routinely race ahead of most or all expert ghosts you'll find the regular championship and multiplayer modes significantly more manageable.
By which I mean you'll still lose now and then. Just not as much. That's the Mario Kart philosophy: work hard, and you'll pull ahead often -- but not always. That's okay. That's life. And it's been a fun ride either way.
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
"The only way to get better is to play a better opponent".
The closest example I have is Rock Band (and it's a poor example, so follow with me) Playing easy allows you to enjoy playing the game. If you suck, you could play easy forever and have fun. There is point though where you can't go any further with easy. You've obtained all the fans you are going to obtain. If you don't step it up to medium, you aren't going to go any further. Those other things will forever be outside your reach.
If a game automatically adjusted to this dynamic, leaving it fun, but "slowing down" progress until the skill with the game was sufficient to progress to the end, instead of forcing the users into "pick easy or medium" that would be a great, immersion-enhancing, addition.
The adjustments widely panned in the other comments (and I agree with) are adjustments that allow false satisfaction. It would suck if you could get every achievement in any game without being good at the game.
Wouldn't it just be smarter to develop a more sophisticated AI that responds like a human would? Then not only are you pushing the limit for AI in games but also its useful research for robotics
I think this is why Jeopardy plays for increasing stakes throughout the game....
The Double Jeopardy! round also has significantly more difficult questions. Driving games do not.
Adaptation is typically predictable. Unless you add some entropy when needed, but I've seen a lot of games that do this "randomization" combined with a simple difficulty scaling.
The problem is that the adaptation becomes a pattern, which the game user learns specific methods to counter and the experience for the user becomes repetitive, thus replay value goes down. I've found the best gaming experiences (in terms of choice of solution) are often at the beginning of the game, rather than mid or late in the game.
This idea reminds me of what we used to call 'grade inflation' when referring to our educational system. It is the idea that today's A grade is yesterday's C grade. Here we have video game developers wanting to tell the C players they really got an A. Sounds like they are trying to sell more games to average players, to me.
My game Mystic Mine adapts the difficulty to how good you actually play. So basically you're playing against your own skill level. Bytten has written the following in their review: "This is a virtually unique system and I offer my commendations to Koonsolo for coming up with it!".
I created this system because basically it's very hard to fine-tune the difficulty of a game. It needs to be challenging, but not impossible. If you have a wide range of player skills it's almost impossible to make it fun for everyone. So my system kind of solves that problem.
I've always felt that games need to adapt more realistic AI that adapts to the players actions as they go on. I fully understand that what I'm about to describe is an incredibly complicated system that would be pretty difficult to implement, but it does seem like a good guide to go by.
Say I'm playing Splinter Cell. I've been going pretty stealthy throughout this mission, and the guards should be getting more and more wary of this, paying more attention to air vents, shadowy areas, et cetera. Because of this, they're leaving the more bombastic pathways a little bit less guarded, meaning I could tear in through the front door, guns blazing, taking them completely by surprise. Or, if I have a history of disabling people in a particular way, the guards could start protecting themselves from those particular attacks.
Maybe I'm just crazy, but I think this seems entirely reasonable!
One of the things I liked about Morrowind and disliked about Oblivion was that, in Morrowind, if you walked off into the wilderness without a definite plan, you were gonna die - end of story. If you weren't ready to go head to head against beasts, you wanted to stay in the 'safe' areas. In Oblivion, a low level character can walk across the wilderness to Kvatch, and it's *safer* than taking the roads - no bandits.
So, I rather hated that system. It's dumb.
Now, a system that starts to *anticipate* strategies - Galactic Civilization II, the AI notes what you're developing, and develops counter-measures. I'd love a system that took even this basic principle and changed the NPC's to notice that you used swords and work with ranged weapons, or if you used ranged weaponry and avoided close combat to develop ambushes and so on. Sane reactive strategies that make it obvious the thieves guild (or whatever) is taking notes thank you very much.
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
It's interesting that most people think of "difficulty" here. There might even be more importantly to cater to playstyle - reckless berserk, careful sniper, silent, never seen and non-killing thief, explorer... socializer.
Altogether way too few games today you can play without killing anything.