Game difficulty (Part 4)

One way to combat the weaknesses of difficulty settings is to have the game dynamically adjust the challenge provided by the game. Dynamic difficulty scaling can sometimes be affected by difficulty levels, but at other times, it is purely the dynamic difficulty scaling used to keep the challenge "just right" for the player.

I'd argue that perhaps one of the worst examples of dynamic difficulty that keeps getting used even though it is terrible in so ways is "rubberband" AI used in driving games. Just like any difficulty scaling, this dynamically changes the skill level of opponents to always give you a challenging race. The problem is that so often it either cheapens the experience by letting you win in ridiculous circumstances, or is incredibly frustrating by effectively allowing opponents to cheat.

The reason that this design is so bad is that it prevents players from demonstrating mastery over their opponents or gain any real sense of progression of skill. In any racing game it is potentially possible crash out and end up a long way behind.  In a normal situation, the race would be lost and the player would give up and restart, or resign themselves to a lower placing. This may result in some frustration, but when the player wins, they will feel a sense of achievement. However, with rubberband AI, they can have major crashes and fall far behind but still come back and win, then the penalty for their lack of still is effectively nullified. If there is no sense of challenge, the player will feel no real sense of achievement.

We also have some Need For Equity

However, worse still is the opposite case. Take racing games with more of an arcade or "demolition derby" approach, where it is possible to knock opposing cars off the road or otherwise cause massive delays to their opponent. These manoeuvres typically take quite a bit of skill on the part of the player to ram the opposing car at the correct time. With rubberband AI, it's quite feasible that the huge lead gained from this risky behaviour will be completely nullified as the car is "sped up" to make the race "more exciting" for the player. In the worst cases (and unfortunately, this is how it is implemented in almost every modern racing game with rubberband AI), the game will actually allow the computer controlled cars to go faster than is physically possible for the car to travel in order for the "catch-up" to occur.

Once again, this brings us back to the issue of AI cheating. Players don't like to be cheated. They especially don't like to be cheated when they've gone to a lot of effort to ensure they have an advantage over their opponents. Using dynamic difficulty to take away an advantage that the player has created for themselves through challenging and skilled play is almost guaranteed to frustrate and annoy them - they've put in a lot of effort to acquire it, so the designer should not nullify that effort unfairly. Dynamical difficulty runs a significant risk of doing this if not implemented well.