I am not even joking about this and I'm curious to know if anyone else has noticed it, or if any programmers here can attest that it is actually put into games.

This thread is inspired by a Settlers 4 mission I just won but I've had this vibe during countless games before. I've been on this particular mission for two full days now not even getting close to making any headway. All of a sudden and hour or so ago a crack appears in the enemy D that I swear has never been there before, I take it, I set up, I push in, I get the big V. I can only think that the game has thrown me a bone. :D

Has anyone ever experienced this before? You get your ass kicked so many times to the point you are about to gargle hemlock and all of a sudden victory, almost as if the game got tired of beating the shit out of you and by way of feeling sorry for you gave you the win.

Rambling here, sorry. If there is any possible truth to this it is two fold. I'm glad I got through the mission and get to move onto the next one, but the thought of a silly game feeling sorry for me is a tad pathetic.

That's an increasingly common feature of modern games - if you can't get past a certain stage, the game will successively lower the difficulty until you basically get a bye. It's mostly done in action games though, and Settlers 4 seems a bit too old to have such a feature (though it's not impossible).

Personally I find that annoying. I would like to decide by myself if the difficulty should be lowered or not. This automatic nonsense deprives me of the challenge and feeling of accomplishment (if I _want_ to play on the highest difficulty no matter how often I die), or forces me to die several times to proceed in games that I just play for the story. But giving control to the player seems to have gone out of fashion ...

It certainly does happen, although it's decidedly less common in strategy games and older titles. I'd more chock this up to unpredictability in the AI. Strategy games by their nature tend to have a broader range of actions that a user can perform, so AI's have to be a lot more complex. Often times even the developer has a difficulty time predicting expected behavior, so don't look too deeply into it if the AI does something new and unexpected every so often.

I'd second that I don't like it when games lower the difficulty behind the scenes. I'll explicitly use a cheat code or lower the difficulty if that's what I want. The opposite is also true in some cases, increasing the difficulty if you're doing too well (this is often done in timed "survival" missions so that you're always on the verge of defeat when the time runs out and you get evacuation or the super-weapon activates).

In Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, at one point in the game you need to take a series of photographs to get someone to open a door. Fail often enough, and the door will open automatically, and your character will get a text message telling him how pathetic he is ("The door's open - go home and meditate on your uselessness.")

Considering that Settlers 4 is kind of old, It might be simply a scripted "time". So it is scripted that you play some amount of times until there is event that could make you go forward in the game. From user point of view, it made looks like the game could sense futility. But that is because you persistent in playing it. Other people might found it as annoying...

Or it could be a random events. Only the developers know.

Yes, this has been around for a while. It has some fancy name like Dynamic Difficulty Settings. I don't know about Settlers 4 but I remember it being in the original Max Payne and Unreal Tournament.

awh you beat me to it! *sulks*

YAY, I WIN AGAIN, ALL YOUR BASE BELONG TO US!!!!

church is that you? what have i told you about not belonging to the blue team and its base?!
(RvsB reference here btw if noone else gets it?)

Dynamic difficulty and anti-frustration features definitely have been around for a while. Some amount of these usually doesn't hurt, but with some games it almost feels like the devs were paranoid about the idea that you might rage quit after failing enough times...

I think you should just get on the Warthog already Chezy.

well it technically is a console game reference and not pc so ... ... ... *pauses* ... .... ... *hangs head in shame* ... *leaves*
[url=http://Wait Can i drive?! *takes wheel* goes smash into a tree then off the cliff half a mile away :D][/url]

Why ya leaving? Didn't you know I was just joking? Everybody knows Warthogs aren't real, like Pumas.

did you read the url tag hidden reply? hmm maybe it wont show correctly for you hmm.
and i beg to differ btw :p