I hate it, it either punishes me for being too good or prevents me from getting better by making things easier.
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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.