Not a fan. It's like rubber-banding in racing games. If it is there I want to know about it so I can game the system to my advantage. (like die on purpose a bunch of times so a game spawns easier guards with more loot or xp to farm)
I think the game that did this kind of thing best was Left 4 Dead (and 2). Where if a player is low on health it's more likely to generate a health pack. If everybody is healthy then it might spawn a boss monster, etc.
It worked well because the difficulty settings were well balanced too. So if you wanted an easy or hard time you can still get what you want.
Depends on implementation. A bit of adjustment is alright, and might even be able to make a game more fun. Too much ruins it, though. Also, do not put it in multiplayer games, you absolute lunatics. It just makes everything feel even faker.
It's up there with "quick play only multiplayer" for telling me the primary target audience is probably too retarded to operate a server browser or a settings menu.
At best it saves me from having to fiddle around manually and dip my toes in different difficulty settings to see which works best. At worst it absolutely ruins games by taking away all consequences or objectives. The risk isn't worth it IMO.
Instead of wasting effort on an adaptive difficulty setting I'd rather more devs do like my fave management sim Against the Storm does and have 25+ handmade difficulties (I.E not just +5% numbers per difficulty level, specific system changes and even new mechanics) that are all pretty close together and you can gradually ramp up to stay in the challenging but fun sweetspot for far longer.
Against the Storm does and have 25+ handmade difficulties
What's funny is how they are not only handmade, but feed into each other in a way that makes them become more than just their baseline effect.
Like, it gradually forces you to engage with each mechanic more and more in depth piece by piece, slowly teaching you how to deal with it before it becomes a monumental task. Mostly because you have to do them in order. Prestige 2 (double storm) turns Prestige 5 (villagers leave twice as fast) into a major issue. Prestige 9 (slower glade events) make mean you now can no longer pop at the start of drizzle and be done before storm and need to engage with the "speed up" mechanics. Cysts start at Prestige 3 and they are basically a non-issue all the way until Prestige 11 when their effects are ramped up to be a nightmare. And all the various "you have one less option and rerolls cost more" levels make you move out of your comfort zone by denying you the chance to get your favorite build every map.
Its truly a great game, and the fact that the only use of going up Prestige is your own pride and the "Seals" that only make your "run" go a little longer, makes it an even better system. So you get more resources, but that just saves time. You are never compelled beyond gently to move up the chain, and you still have to prove you can beat each level before the next one is available.
Personally I stay on 14 until I reach the map edge where I have to go higher. 15 is where things get too stressful for continued play.
I can accept that, but that whole notion is still a cop-out.
You'll still need generic difficulty settings, and if you're building nothing but cheating AI, players are still going to run into issues of unbalanced gameplay against cpu opponents.
Putting all the details onto sliders to make it customizable is basically the devs throwing up their hands and saying, "fuck it, we don't know, you pick what you want". They didn't actually build a better game, they let you build it.
Difficulty is basically almost impossible to do right in modern gaming because it takes an enormous amount of effort and planning to make good difficulty without being cheap. This is one of the reasons why Halo CE has the best enemy AI in the franchise even nearly 20 years later. Each class of enemy unit operates differently with different levels of co-ordination, aggression, and tactics; and will adapt if different members of their squad are present.
Instead, most difficulty is just cheating. Rubber-banding racers behind you, making enemies bullet sponges in an FPS, ignoring fog of war in an RTS, ultra-focusing on player in a grand strategy game.
As a result of that, adaptive difficulty is going to be a bad experience for you because you're not actually getting better at the gameplay loop to defeat it, it's just swarming you with unfair opponents, which is why you also can't use the tactics and lessons you've learned in single-player in multi-player: your human opponents never react the way that the enemy 'ai' does. They actually can't rubber band, get extra health, ignore fog of war, or prioritize you over food for their kingdom. Human enemies have to develop real strategies to win over other human opponents by making their gameplay loops more efficient or productive.
If the adaptive difficulty operated with that in mind, then you won't have an issue with it. But it means that most developers would have to spend the time, understanding their own gameplay loop, understand how players adapt, and understand each mental milestone that each player has to go through ("oh wait! I should bounce the grenade where I want the enemies to leave so I can channelize them!"). Unfortunately, in the budget of a game the argument against this is strong: "80% of the players will never finish the game, and 80% of that will never finish the game on the highest victory level. So, let's spend all of the our money on marketing, graphics, and the first 10 minutes. If we don't actually finish the game, we'll just add the ending of the game on as a DLC. Fuck it."
"Bullets acting like bullets" is basically you admitting that you are playing the wrong genera of game.
Part of me is clearly a boomer so I love the M-14. I have yet to see a game actually treat the M-14 properly given it's long range, enormous recoil, and enormous 'stopping power'. I've actually seen games give a 20" barrel M-16 have more "power" than an M-14 variant. I'm not even sure why game developers use real things when they are just going to do this kind of wild shit with them to preserve the gameplay loop. Asking for realistic penetration or arc of bullets is basically saying "I want a mil-sim" because they are the only people offering that.
At this point the only game that seems to be dedicated to making bullets act like bullets is Grayzone Warfare which hasn't come out yet.
I think there are some games where you can do it well. If a tactics game like XCOM makes missions more difficult by having the aliens escalate their efforts to protect their objectives with more troops, more elite troops or heavier fortifications then the player can feel good about driving the aliens to that kind of desperation, and gets to kill more aliens in line with their superior proficiency. Just making enemies into bullet sponges doesn't do that.
Ironically, I think XCOM 2 is the definition of doing difficulty wrong. "We added time limitations to make you rush. If you're rushing, that means it's harder, which is good. Rushing is what all people who play turn based strategy games enjoy."
What's always funny about XCOM2 is that they literally added in a setting to straight double the turn timer, and it goes from feeling ridiculous and limiting to fair and accomplishing the task it sets out to do. You have time to make plans and strategic moves, but not enough to sit still and turtle. Same with the similar option for the Avatar timer.
It has been done well in the past, but very nearly everyone makes it absolutely horrible, where harder difficulties scale in tedium much faster than they scale in actual difficulty.
I do meme builds in PoE, ironmans in Fire Emblem, and nuzlockes in Pokemon. I can adapt my own difficulty, thank you very much, I don't need the game doing it for me.
If you're struggling on a boss, and it just keels over from a heart attack instead of fighting you, you don't get any sense of accomplishment or success from the encounter. If I wanted a cakewalk, I'd adjust the difficulty slider, or do something different on my end. If I wanted my ass handed to me, same thing in reverse.
Difficulty SETTINGS are... okay. Neutral. You can make a game as intended, or make several very similar games that have different balances, sure. But difficulty changing on the back end for no reason other than "adaptive"? It ruins fun runs, and ruins purposeful challenge modes.
FFX's no-sphere-grid run would be boring if the enemies all scaled down because you never bothered to level up even once. You're making a choice. Pick a slow car in Chocobo Racing 2? The fast ones SHOULD get quite a lead on you if you make poor driving choices.
The only games that I'v played that had it besides TES are Unreal Tournament 99, and Rimworld.
In UT 99, the adaptive difficulty for the bots is a kind of a fun setting. You start the bots at some low difficulty, put the kill limit at 50 kills and see how long before they reach godlike difficulty.
In Rimworld it's less fun but a core part of the game play, though you can turn it off since the DLC's started coming out.
If it's a level-based game of some sort, then it's incredibly stupid. The point of levelling up is to get better, if the enemies level up as well to compensate, then not only it destroys the point of levelling up, you also developed 2 features that fundamentally counter each-other. Feature creep and lack of foresight at their best.
Generally, I don't like it, especially the moment I actively notice it. It's why I don't like RE 4 (the original, don't know about the Remake). The loot you get is influenced by what you have. If you have plenty of ammo already, the game won't give you any. If you're low, it will massively increase the drop rate to make sure you're not soft-locked. That means you can actively use your best weapons constantly, because you're almost guaranteed to have enough ammo at all times anyway.
normally i hate it because of HOW most companies do ai competetor difficulty, cheat cheat and more cheat. sometimes they are so blatent in your face that you can see and identify it happening. when i see that it just sucks the fun out of the game because then I cheat right back, if your not going to play fair why should i?
if they made the ai actualy be a threat with minimal cheating and had adaptive difficulty elements affect the map in some way rather then strap rocket boosters to marios kart then its more tollerable, a good example would be shortcuts and additional stage hazards opening up or closing instead, that way everyone can potentaly benifit when someone does well.
I hate it. A game is suppose to reward you for getting better at it.
Oblivion was the worse to implement it, monsters scaled with level but then your levels don't really make you stronger so you can end up gimped.
It is also why I barely played Vampyr.
It is just easier for the devs to manage difficulty. You need to balance the game around the potential/ reasonable level of the player when he gets to an area, you also need a way to restrict player power level so it doesn't become to OP and the areas boring, either via gear, skills or a cap on available XP. All that takes work, you can't really trust Pajeet with this task, it is much easier to say just make monsters scale with level.
Yes, it's absolute cancer. I still remember accidentally agreeing to lower the difficulty in one of the original God of War games after dying too many times on a timed swimming sequence (which wasn't even affected by the difficulty iirc).
I don't even like outlevelling the immediate enemies in a souls-like, but I level up anyway because I have no way of knowing if the devs have crafted the fight around my level or something higher, and I see no point in making myself suffer if it's the latter. The inevitable power-creep in those games is a form of adaptive difficulty-lowering when applied to reattempts at the same level. It's why I prefer Sekiro. This was discussed a bit in the 'eternal struggle' thread.
Not a fan. It's like rubber-banding in racing games. If it is there I want to know about it so I can game the system to my advantage. (like die on purpose a bunch of times so a game spawns easier guards with more loot or xp to farm)
I think the game that did this kind of thing best was Left 4 Dead (and 2). Where if a player is low on health it's more likely to generate a health pack. If everybody is healthy then it might spawn a boss monster, etc. It worked well because the difficulty settings were well balanced too. So if you wanted an easy or hard time you can still get what you want.
Depends on implementation. A bit of adjustment is alright, and might even be able to make a game more fun. Too much ruins it, though. Also, do not put it in multiplayer games, you absolute lunatics. It just makes everything feel even faker.
It's up there with "quick play only multiplayer" for telling me the primary target audience is probably too retarded to operate a server browser or a settings menu.
At best it saves me from having to fiddle around manually and dip my toes in different difficulty settings to see which works best. At worst it absolutely ruins games by taking away all consequences or objectives. The risk isn't worth it IMO.
Instead of wasting effort on an adaptive difficulty setting I'd rather more devs do like my fave management sim Against the Storm does and have 25+ handmade difficulties (I.E not just +5% numbers per difficulty level, specific system changes and even new mechanics) that are all pretty close together and you can gradually ramp up to stay in the challenging but fun sweetspot for far longer.
What's funny is how they are not only handmade, but feed into each other in a way that makes them become more than just their baseline effect.
Like, it gradually forces you to engage with each mechanic more and more in depth piece by piece, slowly teaching you how to deal with it before it becomes a monumental task. Mostly because you have to do them in order. Prestige 2 (double storm) turns Prestige 5 (villagers leave twice as fast) into a major issue. Prestige 9 (slower glade events) make mean you now can no longer pop at the start of drizzle and be done before storm and need to engage with the "speed up" mechanics. Cysts start at Prestige 3 and they are basically a non-issue all the way until Prestige 11 when their effects are ramped up to be a nightmare. And all the various "you have one less option and rerolls cost more" levels make you move out of your comfort zone by denying you the chance to get your favorite build every map.
Its truly a great game, and the fact that the only use of going up Prestige is your own pride and the "Seals" that only make your "run" go a little longer, makes it an even better system. So you get more resources, but that just saves time. You are never compelled beyond gently to move up the chain, and you still have to prove you can beat each level before the next one is available.
Personally I stay on 14 until I reach the map edge where I have to go higher. 15 is where things get too stressful for continued play.
I can accept that, but that whole notion is still a cop-out.
You'll still need generic difficulty settings, and if you're building nothing but cheating AI, players are still going to run into issues of unbalanced gameplay against cpu opponents.
Putting all the details onto sliders to make it customizable is basically the devs throwing up their hands and saying, "fuck it, we don't know, you pick what you want". They didn't actually build a better game, they let you build it.
Don't like it, I think there should be easier and harder areas depending on when you're supposed to play through them.
Difficulty is basically almost impossible to do right in modern gaming because it takes an enormous amount of effort and planning to make good difficulty without being cheap. This is one of the reasons why Halo CE has the best enemy AI in the franchise even nearly 20 years later. Each class of enemy unit operates differently with different levels of co-ordination, aggression, and tactics; and will adapt if different members of their squad are present.
Instead, most difficulty is just cheating. Rubber-banding racers behind you, making enemies bullet sponges in an FPS, ignoring fog of war in an RTS, ultra-focusing on player in a grand strategy game.
As a result of that, adaptive difficulty is going to be a bad experience for you because you're not actually getting better at the gameplay loop to defeat it, it's just swarming you with unfair opponents, which is why you also can't use the tactics and lessons you've learned in single-player in multi-player: your human opponents never react the way that the enemy 'ai' does. They actually can't rubber band, get extra health, ignore fog of war, or prioritize you over food for their kingdom. Human enemies have to develop real strategies to win over other human opponents by making their gameplay loops more efficient or productive.
If the adaptive difficulty operated with that in mind, then you won't have an issue with it. But it means that most developers would have to spend the time, understanding their own gameplay loop, understand how players adapt, and understand each mental milestone that each player has to go through ("oh wait! I should bounce the grenade where I want the enemies to leave so I can channelize them!"). Unfortunately, in the budget of a game the argument against this is strong: "80% of the players will never finish the game, and 80% of that will never finish the game on the highest victory level. So, let's spend all of the our money on marketing, graphics, and the first 10 minutes. If we don't actually finish the game, we'll just add the ending of the game on as a DLC. Fuck it."
As in rubber banding? Or just flat out "ignores fog of war and still sucks".
Zombies get more health because I'm good at shooting them. The boss does less damage because I hit myself with a storage crate and died too much.
"Bullets acting like bullets" is basically you admitting that you are playing the wrong genera of game.
Part of me is clearly a boomer so I love the M-14. I have yet to see a game actually treat the M-14 properly given it's long range, enormous recoil, and enormous 'stopping power'. I've actually seen games give a 20" barrel M-16 have more "power" than an M-14 variant. I'm not even sure why game developers use real things when they are just going to do this kind of wild shit with them to preserve the gameplay loop. Asking for realistic penetration or arc of bullets is basically saying "I want a mil-sim" because they are the only people offering that.
At this point the only game that seems to be dedicated to making bullets act like bullets is Grayzone Warfare which hasn't come out yet.
I think there are some games where you can do it well. If a tactics game like XCOM makes missions more difficult by having the aliens escalate their efforts to protect their objectives with more troops, more elite troops or heavier fortifications then the player can feel good about driving the aliens to that kind of desperation, and gets to kill more aliens in line with their superior proficiency. Just making enemies into bullet sponges doesn't do that.
Ironically, I think XCOM 2 is the definition of doing difficulty wrong. "We added time limitations to make you rush. If you're rushing, that means it's harder, which is good. Rushing is what all people who play turn based strategy games enjoy."
What's always funny about XCOM2 is that they literally added in a setting to straight double the turn timer, and it goes from feeling ridiculous and limiting to fair and accomplishing the task it sets out to do. You have time to make plans and strategic moves, but not enough to sit still and turtle. Same with the similar option for the Avatar timer.
I'll have to take your word for it, I assume that was added on later after the initial release.
It was, just like Second Wave was in the original game, though I can't say if it was a patch of its own or with the WotC expansion.
Either way, it was also a literal day one mod when the game came out so its existence was just them adding it "officially."
I think it has entirely do with how it's implemented.
Sometimes it works well, and other times it's just terrible.
Take one of the mario games for the switch. If you die a lot in a stage, they give you that suit that is essentially invulnerability.
Good in theory, but sometimes it's not the enemies that are the issue, it's just a jump puzzle that causes the deaths. So invulnerability won't help.
If it's togglable? Great for when I need a challenge instead of playing in relax-o vision.
inb4 you start a race war with this topic
It has been done well in the past, but very nearly everyone makes it absolutely horrible, where harder difficulties scale in tedium much faster than they scale in actual difficulty.
Edit: I misunderstood the question, clearly.
I do meme builds in PoE, ironmans in Fire Emblem, and nuzlockes in Pokemon. I can adapt my own difficulty, thank you very much, I don't need the game doing it for me.
If you're struggling on a boss, and it just keels over from a heart attack instead of fighting you, you don't get any sense of accomplishment or success from the encounter. If I wanted a cakewalk, I'd adjust the difficulty slider, or do something different on my end. If I wanted my ass handed to me, same thing in reverse.
Difficulty SETTINGS are... okay. Neutral. You can make a game as intended, or make several very similar games that have different balances, sure. But difficulty changing on the back end for no reason other than "adaptive"? It ruins fun runs, and ruins purposeful challenge modes.
FFX's no-sphere-grid run would be boring if the enemies all scaled down because you never bothered to level up even once. You're making a choice. Pick a slow car in Chocobo Racing 2? The fast ones SHOULD get quite a lead on you if you make poor driving choices.
The only games that I'v played that had it besides TES are Unreal Tournament 99, and Rimworld.
In UT 99, the adaptive difficulty for the bots is a kind of a fun setting. You start the bots at some low difficulty, put the kill limit at 50 kills and see how long before they reach godlike difficulty.
In Rimworld it's less fun but a core part of the game play, though you can turn it off since the DLC's started coming out.
If it's a level-based game of some sort, then it's incredibly stupid. The point of levelling up is to get better, if the enemies level up as well to compensate, then not only it destroys the point of levelling up, you also developed 2 features that fundamentally counter each-other. Feature creep and lack of foresight at their best.
Generally, I don't like it, especially the moment I actively notice it. It's why I don't like RE 4 (the original, don't know about the Remake). The loot you get is influenced by what you have. If you have plenty of ammo already, the game won't give you any. If you're low, it will massively increase the drop rate to make sure you're not soft-locked. That means you can actively use your best weapons constantly, because you're almost guaranteed to have enough ammo at all times anyway.
Its one of the more universal mechanics that started turning games from "games" into "product for people who don't like playing games"
in general, dislike. indepth?
normally i hate it because of HOW most companies do ai competetor difficulty, cheat cheat and more cheat. sometimes they are so blatent in your face that you can see and identify it happening. when i see that it just sucks the fun out of the game because then I cheat right back, if your not going to play fair why should i?
if they made the ai actualy be a threat with minimal cheating and had adaptive difficulty elements affect the map in some way rather then strap rocket boosters to marios kart then its more tollerable, a good example would be shortcuts and additional stage hazards opening up or closing instead, that way everyone can potentaly benifit when someone does well.
I hate it. A game is suppose to reward you for getting better at it. Oblivion was the worse to implement it, monsters scaled with level but then your levels don't really make you stronger so you can end up gimped.
It is also why I barely played Vampyr.
It is just easier for the devs to manage difficulty. You need to balance the game around the potential/ reasonable level of the player when he gets to an area, you also need a way to restrict player power level so it doesn't become to OP and the areas boring, either via gear, skills or a cap on available XP. All that takes work, you can't really trust Pajeet with this task, it is much easier to say just make monsters scale with level.
Yes, it's absolute cancer. I still remember accidentally agreeing to lower the difficulty in one of the original God of War games after dying too many times on a timed swimming sequence (which wasn't even affected by the difficulty iirc).
I don't even like outlevelling the immediate enemies in a souls-like, but I level up anyway because I have no way of knowing if the devs have crafted the fight around my level or something higher, and I see no point in making myself suffer if it's the latter. The inevitable power-creep in those games is a form of adaptive difficulty-lowering when applied to reattempts at the same level. It's why I prefer Sekiro. This was discussed a bit in the 'eternal struggle' thread.