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[1].
This is hard to design in games since players learn as they play games and replaying them makes it impossible to rely on solutions such as having levels that become more and more difficult.
This pattern is a still a stub.
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.
Left 4 Dead series Space Alert Pandemic
Using the pattern
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
Diegetic Aspects
Interface Aspects
Narrative Aspects
Consequences
Difficulty Settings are a form of Handicap System.
Relations
Can Instantiate
with ...
Can Modulate
Can Be Instantiated By
Can Be Modulated By
Possible Closure Effects
Potentially Conflicting With
History
New pattern created in this wiki.
References
- ↑ Csíkszentmihályi, Mihály (1996). Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. New York: Harper Perennial. ISBN 0-06-092820-4.
