My browser has issues, and doesn't always play nice. [url=You can beg all you like Donut, it's not gonna... change... um... you don't have to grab my... well, okay just once. Maybe twice.][/url]

Chuckles, that is defo one up from mine!

Yeah, once in a while, but for me it sometimes seems to be I don't try the obvious approach, thinking it too obvious, so I try a bunch of different stuff and then get tired of it and say "Ok, I'm going to try to make this as simple as possible" and voila.

Also, big V.... bone.... your subconscious is showing. :-)

edit: and also, i push in... crack...

It's not just me, is it?

I am really bad at games and hence a huge fan of Auto Dynamic Difficulty. Scott Miller has a great blog post about it here. If it is not obvious in the first place that blog post should make it clear that there are bad and good ways to implement such a system.

Personally I only recall completing three games in my favorite genre, FPS. Those being Quake 1, Duke Nukem Forever and Bioshock Infinite. I spent perhaps upwards of 40 hours before I managed to complete DNF and to this day I still haven't completed the single player DLC. This was on the easiest difficulty level. Why should games have to be a frustrating experience for me? I stil haven't been able to finish the 2nd level of Duke Nukem 3D.

Personally though I feel like a ADD system should be supplemented with what is essentialy a *PERSONALIZED* difficulty level. So if someone like Fatal1ty were to choose "Easy" he would die on average every X minutes(or hours or whatever) and if I were to choose that difficulty level I too would die every X minutes and the same with say a hard difficulty level, only with X being smaller in that case.

The difference being that in order for the game to have a master player die every X minutes would involve much lower damage dealt by the weapons to the enemies than in my case and much higher damage dealt by the enemies to the player than in my case.

I've only seen that movie 8 kazzillion times, what am I missing? I know Falken's idea was to make a game that could learn form it's mistakes and get better but that's not really what I was on about here.

Hmmm, maybe I need to watch it 8 kazzillion and one times. :D

Seems more like "You played enough times, at least of those had to be an opportunity to win easily" more than "Ok guys, take it easy before he ragequits and abandons us for the GOG forums".

XD How odd. As soon as won the damn level I came in here.
Everywhere forum members are cursing Settlers 4 for letting me off the hook.

Yuck. That post is so full of designer arrogance that I really wish I hadn't read it. He advocates taking control away from the players, taking _options_ away from the players, and lying to the players, and all this because in his glorified megalomania he believes that he, as a game designers, knows better how I'll enjoy a game best than myself. As I said, Yuck. Capitalized.

The "good way" is to allow the player to turn it off. Which Miller strongly advocates against, since it would make the player aware of the ADD system, which Miller doesn't want. So allowing a player to turn that feature off would give away the secret. Again, Yuck.

Why do you need a _hidden_, _mandatory_, _dynamic_ difficulty system for something that could easily be achieved by just allowing you to set a game's difficulty to something easier than currently available?

That sounds needlessly complicated for something that could easily be achieved by allowing players to set the difficulty in wide ranges. But yeah, Scott Miller in his glory as a game designer believes that we players are too stupid to choose a difficulty level that we would enjoy ...

"Why do you need a _hidden_, _mandatory_, _dynamic_ difficulty system for something that could easily be achieved by just allowing you to set a game's difficulty to something easier than currently available? "

The problem with that is that the set difficulty level of easy just happens to be way to hard for me in basically every case out there.

I understood that. But you didn't answer my question.

Your problem can be solved by implementing a dfficulty level that is easier than the currently lowest level. I would actually advocate that, since sometimes I'm really playing a game just for the story and don't want a challenge at all. Also, there are probably more people for whom the currently easiest level is still too hard, for various reasons.

So, again: If your problem can be solved by implementing an easier difficulty level, then why do you need a _hidden_, _mandatory_, _dynamic_ difficulty system for that?

Actually, with a lower difficulty level, you could set the game to that level straight away (since you know what you prefer), instead of having to die several times until the hidden ADD system decides in its mercy that you've dies enough and makes it easier for you.

Civilization 4 has the completely different programming. If Civ4 sees you are able to defend against one or two other civilizations and push a counter-attack, just about every other civ will declare war on you (even civs that have to cross two or three other civs to attack).
One thing I always hated about civ. How do they attack through a civ that you're on friendly terms with?

I like the way it's handled in Sting games.

I've never encountered this. In games, if it takes me a long time to beat something it usually means I'm not doing something right. Then later, I change my tactics and I win.

Actually, no. Civ4 is most notable for _not_ throwing particular wrenches into the player's progress. On nearly all accounts, the AI treats you exactly the same as any of the AI empires. And the source code of the AI is well-known and has been analyzed thoroughly, so we know pretty well how the Civ4 AI is "thinking".

The AI does have a "dogpile war mode" - that is, when it sees that one empire gets attacked by several others, it considers joining in on the stronger side, to get its part of the booty. That led some players to thinking that the AI were ganging up on the human player, but in fact the AI empires dogpile on other AI empires just the same if they have the opportunity. Some human players _do_ get dogpiled very often, but that's because they have a weaker military than most of their rivals, not because they are humans.

However, there was a bug that could make the AI disregard the distance to your empire when it considered declaring war. This caused the AI to sometimes march through one or two other empires just to attack you, which many players considered anti-human behavior. But again, it did the same to other AIs, and based o a bug in the first place.