Dynamic Difficulty: “I was pwning before you moved that slider!”
Interestingly, games are still being built around sets of three or four difficulty settings. Or, some of them don’t even have a difficulty setting - they are just plain, right out, ridiculously hard. Talking about specific games, StarCraft Broodwars is unplayable after a certain difficulty level. It totally kicks your ass and you feel frustrated. Some games use cheats and hacks to counter the human mind. Which again is unfair to the player. Like the Insane mode on WarCraft 3 gives the AI controlled computer double or even triple gold supply.
Some AI is designed pretty impressive, which actually thinks for a little while until human skill takes over or it becomes annoyingly predictable as to how that creature would just lunge at you and you have aim that buck shot while it’s in it’s mid air flight. Again, repetitive AI algorithms make the game boring and predictable. Killing the fun.
OH, and games like Football Manager, FIFA or ProEvo are just mad. There comes a point in a tournament where all you players start getting injured at crucial times, and the computer can’t seem lose it’s winning streak. A point in the match comes where they just string a move with god-like passing and touch to win the game 5-4 in 90th minute. MAD!
An article on Destructroid discusses how Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment (DDA) is still a feature that is seen very little in implementation. Something like those Computer Based Tests. The difficulty keep changes with the number of correct of answers you can string in one streak. While it does not only mean that the rewards should adjust to the circumstance they were achieved in, but DDA could also make use of statistics like accuracy, speed, IQ difficulty, placement and timing to figure how skilled the player himself is. Monsters and bosses could either exploit those weaknesses or give in to them to make the game more fun. That is where Intelligence engineers come into play and suggest fast, reliable and varying methods of building an Artificial Intelligence engine. We’ve never even heard of something like that, have we?!
Image Thanks to Destructroid.
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