Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment

Games that during gameplay adjust their difficulty depending on how well players progresses.

Providing the right level of challenge for players in a game can be difficult for game designers to achieve solely through creating challenges in advance. While they can let players have influence on this, e.g. through a scale of difficulty settings or by choosing their opponents, Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment is rules in the game system that adjusts players' challenges depending on how well they are gaming.

There is a US patent related to Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment.

Examples

Borderlands, Fallout 3, and Oblivion all uses Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment systems to within certain limits scale the strength of enemies to those of the players. While changing this is quite natural for these combat-oriented games, Racing Games such as Mario Kart series and Super Monkey Ball series instead typically increase the maximum speed of the last racers to help that player catch up.

Board Games can also have Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment systems. Shadows over Camelot increases the difficulty of other challenges when quests are solved, and Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game has mechanisms for balancing gameplay halfway through game instances when playing with a odd number of players.

Using the pattern

Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment is in Single-Player Games used to try and reach a certain difficulty level, possibly set by players, while for Multiplayer Games it is instead used to achieve Player Balance. In games with Teams, Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment is also applied to achieve Team Balance.

Consequences

Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment can function as a Balancing Effect.

Relations

Can Instantiate

Balancing Effects, Challenging Gameplay, Difficulty Levels, Fudged Results, Handicap Systems

with Multiplayer Games

Player Balance

with Teams

Team Balance

with Drop-In/Drop-Out

Freedom of Choice

Can Modulate

AI Players, Damage, Enemies, Movement, Multiplayer Games Single-Player Games

Can Be Instantiated By

Decreased Abilities, Dedicated Game Facilitators, Game Masters, Increased Abilities

Can Be Modulated By

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Possible Closure Effects

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Potentially Conflicting With

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History

New pattern created in this wiki.

Acknowledgments

Ian Bogost