http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DynamicDifficulty
Stumbled upon this site after a conversation with a friend of mine that claimed RE4 had implemented a dynamic difficulty. Funny, because after multiple multiple playthroughs it's something that I just didnt pick up on or simply didnt pay attention to.
Playing through RE4 now with this in mind, I just experienced a moment of it. Fighting the village chief I died three times. The first round, I unloaded about 40 rounds of a slightly upgraded Red9 into him. Two deaths later, it took about 25.
Pretty interesting stuff. I had no idea so many games had something like that programmed within. It's like that ol' "Nintendo Fairness" schtick included in various genres of titles. I had no idea it was so many though...
Examples:
- Lego Star Wars II, Indiana Jones, and Batman feature "Adaptive Difficulty" which merely affects the amount of LEGO studs you lose upon death depending on how well you play, which can go up to a very high amount.
- God Hand will adjust the difficulty up a level (1, 2, 3, and Die) if the player lands enough hits on enemies, increasing enemy strength and durability. It will then scale the difficulty back down if they take too many hits. You gain more rewards for defeating more enemies at higher difficulty levels. The game has "normal" difficulty settings, as well - the difficulty level never rises above 2 in Easy Mode, and Hard Mode has you always on Level Die.
- The Simpsons Arcade Game, the amount of enemies on screen depends on how many people are playing. In the boss fight against Smithers, if there are more than 2 players he won't throw any bombs you can throw back.
- Snatcher had a shooting range which could be accessed for fun. If you get consistently high scores on the shooting range, the game amps up the challenge of the plot relevant shooting set-pieces. It's advised that you do intentionally terrible on the shooting range, or finishing the game may require inhuman reflexes.
- The Need for Speed Underground series utilizes dynamic difficulty in two ways: first, the more you tune your car, the faster the other cars will be; second, the "Catch Up" feature causes competing cars to go faster as you pass them, and slower as they pass you.
In theory, the latter makes the game more balanced; in practice, it's nothing but Fake Difficulty. With regards to the former, one of the recommended strategies if you're having difficulty is to remove all your upgrades, as the lower speed makes it much easier for you to react to obstacles and avoid mistakes. It's like playing in slow-mo.
- Left 4 Dead features a "director AI" that spawns Infected based on how easily the players made it past the previous encounter. If the skirmish ends with the players healthy and having used few ammunition, the director sends in a horde.
If the players are dying and low on ammo, the director only sends in a few. If you are playing on Expert and are doing poorly, it says "why aren't you dead yet?" and redoubles its efforts.
- EVE Online features wormholes, where the amount of enemies depends on the number and size of the player ships. Don't ever try to bring a carrier (a capital ship) into the fight, however. Each time you do, there is an extra spawn of a few sleeper battleships. Unless you are doing this specifically to farm them, this is tantamount to suicide.
- Ratchet & Clank has a leveling system, and experience points are kept when you die. If you die a lot, you will end up getting stronger than if you played through the game without dying or revisiting old areas. In addition, dying against a single obstacle too many times will either disable it or have the checkpoint moved.
- The Homeworld series scales enemy fleets to match yours, to a certain extent. In the first game, it's easy to have an overwhelmingly powerful fleet anyway by abusing the Cap system by capturing enemy ships.
- In Homeworld 2, capturing ships is no longer practical and enemy fleets scale so heavily in comparison to yours that building more ships makes the game harder, not easier. Amusingly, a well-known exploit is to retire your fleet at the end of a mission the next one will be staggeringly easy as you can rebuild your fleet in a few scant minutes
- SaGa Frontier: Improving your party's effectiveness via Stat Grinding increases the difficulty of enemy encounters.
- The Battle Tower in Pokémon becomes harder the better you are. However, rather than just increasing AI skill, it also stacks the opponent's teams against you and manipulates the RNG.
- Resident Evil 4, playing well will increase the amount of spawned enemies and improve their AI; conversely, playing poorly and dying often reduces the number of foes and disables most of their AI. Ammo and health item rarity is also affected by dying.
- Max Payne claimed to do this. The effect was pretty noticeable on the console versions, but the PC version seemed to be permanently stuck on "as hard as possible". Bear in mind, it had this in addition to three difficulty modes.
- Kid Icarus: Uprising lowers the difficulty every time you die, unless it's already at 2.0 or lower. The hearts invested in the difficulty increase are lost however, and weapons found in the level correspond in power to the difficulty you end on. It doesn't scale up during a level if you do well, but the recommended difficulty for the next level corresponds to how well you did last level.
More on the site page.
Stumbled upon this site after a conversation with a friend of mine that claimed RE4 had implemented a dynamic difficulty. Funny, because after multiple multiple playthroughs it's something that I just didnt pick up on or simply didnt pay attention to.
Playing through RE4 now with this in mind, I just experienced a moment of it. Fighting the village chief I died three times. The first round, I unloaded about 40 rounds of a slightly upgraded Red9 into him. Two deaths later, it took about 25.
Pretty interesting stuff. I had no idea so many games had something like that programmed within. It's like that ol' "Nintendo Fairness" schtick included in various genres of titles. I had no idea it was so many though...
Examples:
- Lego Star Wars II, Indiana Jones, and Batman feature "Adaptive Difficulty" which merely affects the amount of LEGO studs you lose upon death depending on how well you play, which can go up to a very high amount.
- God Hand will adjust the difficulty up a level (1, 2, 3, and Die) if the player lands enough hits on enemies, increasing enemy strength and durability. It will then scale the difficulty back down if they take too many hits. You gain more rewards for defeating more enemies at higher difficulty levels. The game has "normal" difficulty settings, as well - the difficulty level never rises above 2 in Easy Mode, and Hard Mode has you always on Level Die.
- The Simpsons Arcade Game, the amount of enemies on screen depends on how many people are playing. In the boss fight against Smithers, if there are more than 2 players he won't throw any bombs you can throw back.
- Snatcher had a shooting range which could be accessed for fun. If you get consistently high scores on the shooting range, the game amps up the challenge of the plot relevant shooting set-pieces. It's advised that you do intentionally terrible on the shooting range, or finishing the game may require inhuman reflexes.
- The Need for Speed Underground series utilizes dynamic difficulty in two ways: first, the more you tune your car, the faster the other cars will be; second, the "Catch Up" feature causes competing cars to go faster as you pass them, and slower as they pass you.
In theory, the latter makes the game more balanced; in practice, it's nothing but Fake Difficulty. With regards to the former, one of the recommended strategies if you're having difficulty is to remove all your upgrades, as the lower speed makes it much easier for you to react to obstacles and avoid mistakes. It's like playing in slow-mo.
- Left 4 Dead features a "director AI" that spawns Infected based on how easily the players made it past the previous encounter. If the skirmish ends with the players healthy and having used few ammunition, the director sends in a horde.
If the players are dying and low on ammo, the director only sends in a few. If you are playing on Expert and are doing poorly, it says "why aren't you dead yet?" and redoubles its efforts.
- EVE Online features wormholes, where the amount of enemies depends on the number and size of the player ships. Don't ever try to bring a carrier (a capital ship) into the fight, however. Each time you do, there is an extra spawn of a few sleeper battleships. Unless you are doing this specifically to farm them, this is tantamount to suicide.
- Ratchet & Clank has a leveling system, and experience points are kept when you die. If you die a lot, you will end up getting stronger than if you played through the game without dying or revisiting old areas. In addition, dying against a single obstacle too many times will either disable it or have the checkpoint moved.
- The Homeworld series scales enemy fleets to match yours, to a certain extent. In the first game, it's easy to have an overwhelmingly powerful fleet anyway by abusing the Cap system by capturing enemy ships.
- In Homeworld 2, capturing ships is no longer practical and enemy fleets scale so heavily in comparison to yours that building more ships makes the game harder, not easier. Amusingly, a well-known exploit is to retire your fleet at the end of a mission the next one will be staggeringly easy as you can rebuild your fleet in a few scant minutes
- SaGa Frontier: Improving your party's effectiveness via Stat Grinding increases the difficulty of enemy encounters.
- The Battle Tower in Pokémon becomes harder the better you are. However, rather than just increasing AI skill, it also stacks the opponent's teams against you and manipulates the RNG.
- Resident Evil 4, playing well will increase the amount of spawned enemies and improve their AI; conversely, playing poorly and dying often reduces the number of foes and disables most of their AI. Ammo and health item rarity is also affected by dying.
- Max Payne claimed to do this. The effect was pretty noticeable on the console versions, but the PC version seemed to be permanently stuck on "as hard as possible". Bear in mind, it had this in addition to three difficulty modes.
- Kid Icarus: Uprising lowers the difficulty every time you die, unless it's already at 2.0 or lower. The hearts invested in the difficulty increase are lost however, and weapons found in the level correspond in power to the difficulty you end on. It doesn't scale up during a level if you do well, but the recommended difficulty for the next level corresponds to how well you did last level.
More on the site page.
