Difficulty Levels

Controls in a game for letting player choose how difficult the gameplay should be.

To be enjoyable, a game being played needs to have a difficulty fitting the challenge its players wishes to have. Many games try to solve this by steadily become more difficult as gameplay progresses under the assumption that players are getting more skilled - which can be described as keeping the players in the Flow channel. This does however not solve the case of games that are replayed since they start at a higher skill level. Difficulty Settings are design options that allow players to modify the difficulty to what they perceive as being their right level, which may be harder than normal if they are skilled but also easier than normal if they are not used to the type of game or simply want a more relaxing experience.

Examples

The Doom series lets players choose between five different levels of difficulty: I'm Too Young To Die, Hey, Not Too Rough, Hurt Me Plenty, Ultra-Violence, and Nightmare. These differ by the number of monsters encountered (or their strength), ammunition available for weapons, the speed of monsters and damage taken from their attacks, and how often they respawn.

The Hearts of Iron series of grand strategy games let players select Difficulty Settings ranging from very easy to very hard. These affect the number of manpower available, industrial capabilities, availability of resources, revolt risks, and efficiency of naval bases and supply networks.

Left 4 Dead series Space Alert Pandemic

Using the pattern

Ammunition Damage Respawning

Achievements Challenging Gameplay Casual Gameplay Agents Characters AI Players Enemies Freedom of Choice Optional Rules Handicap Achievements Goal Achievements Asymmetric Starting Conditions Abstract Player Constructs

Consequences

Difficulty Settings are a form of Handicap System.

Relations

Can Instantiate

Handicap Systems

History

New pattern created in this wiki.