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[Physiocrat]

I'm thinking primarily of action adventure games, RPGs and FPS rather than racing games or sports games.

It seems to me that the ideal level of difficulty for any player is always "challenging". By which I mean the game should always be stretching relative to your current skill level: too easy it is boring, too hard then you just give up (this happened to me with Divinity 2: Original Sin). The question is how to achieve this when you have players of multiple skill levels. You could of course just have harder and easier games, which would be targeted at different markets, but even then games tend to try and give multiple difficulty levels (even the early Doom games did this IIRC).

You could have the standard - easy, normal and hard modes although if you did I think it wise to allow you to change it mid game to adjust for your current experience. Now it can be used for "cheating" but as long as I can play on challenging all the way I don't mind.

All this said, it would seem right to reward the technically superior players somehow. You could give them different endings they could see but they will probably end up on YouTube anyway. Maybe some in-game badge reward for achieving the game entirely on hardcore might be best.

TL: DR - what is the best way to modify the difficulty to the players ability, and secondly, how do we best reward the technically proficient player?

 

[feynoob]

Match users power and how he approaches the combat.
I think it was silent hill or amnesia that utilized this concept very well.
The game basically has 1 enemy. It changes shape due to how scared the user is.

 

[Physiocrat]

Match users power and how he approaches the combat.
I think it was silent hill or amnesia that utilized this concept very well.
The game basically has 1 enemy. It changes shape due to how scared the user is.

Do you have a link which shows how they did this?

 

[feynoob]

Do you have a link which shows how they did this?

 

[Wildebeest]

The best way is to give players different methods to achieve the same thing. Like if you have a complex QTE to do a complex finishing animation, that not everyone can do, then let players just execute with a regular attack but make it less satisfying.

Second best is levels of accessibility options like have options to make the QTE more forgiving, or to have it be done automatically.

The absolute worst is a global difficulty level that makes the QTE more forgiving, but also carpet bomb nerfs every other area of the game.

 

[Drizzlehell]

With a lot of practice, patience and determinaton, until you reach the state that kids these days are calling "git gut", I reckon.

 

[Fools idol]

I think going forward it will be a mixture of AI-algorithms and player input, adapting to both speed and accuracy if it is a shooter for example.

It very much depends on genre. IF you are playing an RTS game for example, the difficulty tends to come in the enemy having efficient resource management that is harder for the player to match, or even cheating, where they always have more moeny and units than you, and counter-build automaticallly based on what units you are making.

Shooters on the other hand tend to have aimbot / wallhacking bots, that speed up their intensity as the difficulty goes up. They give the player less or more time to react and or take more damage to kill.

For shooters it will again become dynamic, if your aim accuracy is poor then you are always going to be at a disadvantage to enemies with aimbot.

 

[RoboFu]

It’s not level scaling that’s for sure.

 

[SeraphJan]

I prefer two type of difficulty design

1. Like Souls game, decrease difficulty by finding better gear or practice, everything is within the mechanic itself
2. Use dynamic difficulty system used by RE4, however this is good for more casual gamer, it interferes gamer who looks for consistent challenge, a better way around it is make it on for first play through turn it off in NG+

My point is, the old "select difficulty" is the worst implementation

 

[Wildebeest]

I dislike adaptive difficulty. It is like, I'm going to adjust your game settings for you without telling you when I did it or why. I don't like being messed around with like that.

 

[22:22:22]

With Racing games just get very drunk and do time trials. Pretty difficult

 

[SleepySlippy]

Give access to different zones based on the performance on a previous level. Not only it adapts to the player's level, it also gives replayability to the game.

 

[Knightime_X]

You can do it in a lot of different ways.
There's no real wrong way.
Some can be more blunt than others though.

 

[MrTroubleMaker]

That was such a cool game.
I remember Brad was the only one that played it at giant bomb and convinced Jeff and vinny on how good it was for their game of the year.

 

[Melfice7]

handicaps, rubberbanding, scaling, all type of adaptive difficulty is a disgrace, it defeats the purpose of learning how to play a game and getting good at it

 

[brian0057]

Depends on the genre.
In a stealth game, you could change the level design slightly to make it more challenging. Give patrolling guards more awarenes and a change to their movement patterns. Of course, you can go the Thief route and change the objectives based on the difficulty level. Now, on higher settings, you have to goe through harder to sneak areas you could avoid on lower diffuclties, you can't kill and the objectives are not as straightforward.

 

[ConcealedBlaze]

God Hand had the best adaptive difficulty I’ve ever seen. It was readily transparent to the player so they knew exactly what difficulty they were facing at any given moment. Nothing is more satisfying than watching it hit Lvl. DIE and continuing to kick ass

 

[Shut0wen]

Ninja gaiden black, need super reflexes even when the camera is againest you

Also lost world jurassic park on ps1, even with cheats with 100 lives couldnt get passed the 4th lvl