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Good read one of the better good idea/bad idea's I've read. If its done in the manner of Max Payne, and Half Life I'm all for it, but I agree that the racing games always have annoyed me.
I really didn't mind Oblivion's when I was playing it, but now I can understand it being annoying. It would be nice if that was minimized or optional.
Generally speaking, it's a simple as 'Don't touch the enemies with DDA'. Adjust the player, not the environment. Not only is it easier to scale a single player over the entire world, it also forbids making the enemy AI godlike. Generally speaking a godlike AI resorts to cheating, faster cars, sniping with pistols for 100m, grenades that land at your feet after 3 bounces down a maze of hallways, etc. But give the player more health, or more ammo, and allow the player to be given the option to adjust.
One other thing you should have mentioned was the bounceback effect. Do well for a while, and you get pwnd, triggering a DDA adjustment to make the you pwn, which then... I think you get the point. You end up going through a rollercoaster of difficulty, and the game becomes extremely inconsistent. Time your 'phailing' correctly, and bosses become easier than peons you fought hours ago.
One other thing you should have mentioned was the bounceback effect. Do well for a while, and you get pwnd, triggering a DDA adjustment to make the you pwn, which then... I think you get the point. You end up going through a rollercoaster of difficulty, and the game becomes extremely inconsistent. Time your 'phailing' correctly, and bosses become easier than peons you fought hours ago.
Actually shmups by the late Compile had what you call DDA. They were released like 20 years ago at the earliest (anyone here ever played Zanac?) and people then called it a form of AI.
Excellent write-up. I didn't even KNOW HL2 had DDA. Another example that can sometimes suck is when you constantly die in Ninja Gaiden or God of War and the game eventually sits you down and asks if you'd like to pick a lower difficulty...it's humiliating.
Ive always hated racing and sports games where the computer mysteriously speeds up when you get a head of them, such garbage.
I also hated the leveling system in oblivion, worst idea ever. "Hey sweet, I just spent enough time grinding to master blades and get glass equipment sweet...wtf, why does every bandit have ultra-rare enchanted equipment now?"
RPGs are about being able to grind your way up if you are sucking and under leveled.
I also hated the leveling system in oblivion, worst idea ever. "Hey sweet, I just spent enough time grinding to master blades and get glass equipment sweet...wtf, why does every bandit have ultra-rare enchanted equipment now?"
RPGs are about being able to grind your way up if you are sucking and under leveled.
See, I had no idea there was DDA in Max Payne or HL.
Oblivion, however, despite its beauty and impressive open-world structure, did absolutely nothing for me -- largely due to its ridiculous DDA. I simply never felt as if my character's abilities were improving.
Oblivion, however, despite its beauty and impressive open-world structure, did absolutely nothing for me -- largely due to its ridiculous DDA. I simply never felt as if my character's abilities were improving.
"Do well, and every other car suddenly gets nitro, steroids and gains the power of The Force to catch up to you, even if it forces them to go faster than their cars could possibly go."
hahaha so true =D
and that pic with the cars? awesome :D
personally i prefer the non-dda way...u get to a boss and get raped...load that save and get grinding some, u'll probably find some fantastic new combination of skills or whatever that u can use to breeze through.
nice reading btw
hahaha so true =D
and that pic with the cars? awesome :D
personally i prefer the non-dda way...u get to a boss and get raped...load that save and get grinding some, u'll probably find some fantastic new combination of skills or whatever that u can use to breeze through.
nice reading btw
I believe there was some sorta DDA in Jak...2? or 3. Where you would be given a tiny boost of Health or Ammo if you were failing miserably in whatever area you happened to be in.
I've allways hated that in racing games, you build a rocket-car that accelerates your face of and makes the space-shuttle seem slow and there's this guy behind you with a monospace and he's gaining on you! :-)
I love your article...never got far enough HW2 that I noticed the problem, but im glad I didnt. Sounds like a shitty system. Also completely agree on the oblivion front - believe ive said this before somewhere but sometimes I like to be the omnipotent, badass who can beat up peasants and bandits with a flick of the sword. Sometimes I like to face a creature that I immediatly think 'run away!!'. Having bandits and such with daedric gear doesnt really suit the game that well, and makes you consider holding off levelling up so that everything in the game doesnt suddenly turn into a badass juggernaut.
I can't stand the way that Mario Kart 64 implements that to the point that I just stopped playing. If you gain a sizeable lead, fine, but to have that wiped out when f**king Toad suddenly can go 2x the normal speed then get on your tail -- no, that's not a challenge. That's CHEATING - and it pissed me off to no end.
Excellent write-up.
Excellent write-up.
Nice one!
But yeah I agree that racing games are the ones that tend to have terrible A.I/DDA. I also agree with the points you make about oblivion.
But yeah I agree that racing games are the ones that tend to have terrible A.I/DDA. I also agree with the points you make about oblivion.
Excellent write up. The DDA in Oblivion was so poorly executed that it completely tore me out of the game. In most large world RPGs, I like that there are places I can't go at low levels, and at high levels I like to know there are some old places I can go back to tear things up. With the scaling, everywhere was equally as difficult (or easy), so the sense of getting tough enough to finally take on that scary dark cave (or what have you) was completely gone.
I remember getting the shit kicked out of me in Homeworld 2 during the later levels. I got so frustrated, that I decided to cheat. I found out that you could edit the ships in your fleet in the Homeworld 2 directory. I gave myself about 10 destroyers and about 5 battlecruisers. Unfortunately, my little edit gave the AI a fuckload more ships to compensate. Needless to say, I had my face raped by about 50 destroyers and 25 battlecruisers.
Yay!
Yay!
Wow, Max Payne and the Half-Life series are some of my most favorite games ever and I never knew about their DDA. I suppose that's part of the reason why they are so awesome - I always felt in the gaming sweet spot in terms of the difficulty. As for Oblivion's DDA, it really didn't bother me much. Good post.
Mario Kart does it to an extent? Did we play the same game? I recall Mario Kart doing it to a horrible degree on 150cc, both with rubberband and items.
Under any circumstances, Bowser or DK are slow as hell, in 150cc they are the fastest car in the game and they recover in a second and are back to full speed if it hit with anything, hell I read somewhere that the big boo and petey pirahna where the most brutal opponents in the game and even the official Nintendo guide says to unlock them last so you don't have to deal with them during normal races.'
And as they say a picture says a 1,000 words, Elrando's says many.
Under any circumstances, Bowser or DK are slow as hell, in 150cc they are the fastest car in the game and they recover in a second and are back to full speed if it hit with anything, hell I read somewhere that the big boo and petey pirahna where the most brutal opponents in the game and even the official Nintendo guide says to unlock them last so you don't have to deal with them during normal races.'
And as they say a picture says a 1,000 words, Elrando's says many.
I was so infuriated by the Xbox 360 version of Oblivion's DDA that I got rid of it and switched over to the PC version, where there are mods to filter out all of the overbearing (and immersion breaking) hand-holding.
With a world that big, it should be like Morrowind, where you couldn't go into areas without being beefy. If you had your ass handed to you, leave and better your skills and/or gear, then come back. If the game was linear, it would be a problem. With an open-ended world like Oblivion, that kind of oh-shit-these-guys-are-way-tougher-than-me feeling can really deepen the gameplay.
"Fine, you killed me...just give me 5 levels, steel armor and a silver axe and we'll see how badassed you really are."
With a world that big, it should be like Morrowind, where you couldn't go into areas without being beefy. If you had your ass handed to you, leave and better your skills and/or gear, then come back. If the game was linear, it would be a problem. With an open-ended world like Oblivion, that kind of oh-shit-these-guys-are-way-tougher-than-me feeling can really deepen the gameplay.
"Fine, you killed me...just give me 5 levels, steel armor and a silver axe and we'll see how badassed you really are."
Excellent writeup. I loved the way Oblivion did DDA. However I can't comment on the other games since I've never played them.
Great article!
Just to add, I felt SiN Episodes did a really nice job of DDA, especially with allowing you to set how quickly it would adjust and how easy/challenging you wanted the game to be in the first place.
Just to add, I felt SiN Episodes did a really nice job of DDA, especially with allowing you to set how quickly it would adjust and how easy/challenging you wanted the game to be in the first place.
Burnout does it, but in burnout you can destroy your rivals, so instead of being annoying, its actually more fun. A better example would be the nfs series, in which rubber-banding is pretty obvious a lot of the time.
When an opponent's car in Burnout can go 180mph through oncoming traffic when you yourself can only go 120mph without crashing, something is wrong Rubber-band AI in racing games has made me stop playing them over the years. They just aren't fun to me anymore because of how badly the computer cheats.
Oblivion was bad, too. I wholeheartedly agree. I didn't, however, realize that animals disappeared after a certain point! The bandits with better armor is one thing (a challenge in combat was always welcomed by me), but totally nerfing missions is another entirely.
Excellent write up.
Oblivion was bad, too. I wholeheartedly agree. I didn't, however, realize that animals disappeared after a certain point! The bandits with better armor is one thing (a challenge in combat was always welcomed by me), but totally nerfing missions is another entirely.
Excellent write up.
i played i did the oblivion wolf pelt mission really late in the game. yeah taht went well. i slaughtered an entire city to find someone with a wolf pelt i could loot from them our their house. those poor folks of cheydinhal.
fantastic article... in my opinion, the next step for DDA is one that gives players new opportunities for performing better in the game, opens newer and harder content...
rather than a punishment, it would be seen as a reward. do really well, get more doors to open in a dungeon that were previously just plain walls.
noobs wouldn't know what they were missing, and good players would see more content and harder content.
it makes so much sense :)
nobody gets punished for being too good, nobody gets punished for sucking, you just continually get rewarded with more and better content for performing better.
rather than a punishment, it would be seen as a reward. do really well, get more doors to open in a dungeon that were previously just plain walls.
noobs wouldn't know what they were missing, and good players would see more content and harder content.
it makes so much sense :)
nobody gets punished for being too good, nobody gets punished for sucking, you just continually get rewarded with more and better content for performing better.
To reiterate countless commenters, DDA ruined Oblivion. I loved the elder scrolls series since Arena. I even played Daggerfall to death despite the fact some dungeons were just unfinishable. Morrowind was awesome, finally they were getting somewhere.
But then, Oblivion. What was the point?? You probably peaked somewhere around level 7-8 when you'd been mainly pumping your combat skills so you were slightly tougher than your level let on. From there the game designers idea of tough encounters involved slaughtering tonnes of creatures at once. I never even finished the main story line cause it was more chore than game.
I hope they can that idea by next iteration.
But then, Oblivion. What was the point?? You probably peaked somewhere around level 7-8 when you'd been mainly pumping your combat skills so you were slightly tougher than your level let on. From there the game designers idea of tough encounters involved slaughtering tonnes of creatures at once. I never even finished the main story line cause it was more chore than game.
I hope they can that idea by next iteration.
honestly, i liked ovlivions DDA. I am a lazy SOB and i didnt feel like doing all of the work to level up and such. Playing "vanilla" Oblivion was fun, and I think the best feeling in games is being overpowered. That's just my opinion tho, and who cares anyway
Riviera - The promised land GBA
When you die and choose to continue, your foes come again in half of their HP, keep dying and the otherwise hard battle will be done in one turn
When you die and choose to continue, your foes come again in half of their HP, keep dying and the otherwise hard battle will be done in one turn
What does minutiae mean?
Also, I agree. DDA works most of the time, but in racing games it does get boring.
To be fair though, look at GT4. You could spank the AI and it got boring most of the time, so I'm not completely against it when it comes to giving cars some extra horse power. Maybe making them more aggressive or something would work as well.
Also, I agree. DDA works most of the time, but in racing games it does get boring.
To be fair though, look at GT4. You could spank the AI and it got boring most of the time, so I'm not completely against it when it comes to giving cars some extra horse power. Maybe making them more aggressive or something would work as well.
I remember Godhand rewarding me for doing well by letting me know I wasn't good enough yet and bending me over its knee.
Basically, my position is: we already have difficulty levels, we don't need DDA. DDA may be cool the moment it happens, but it leaves a bad taste in the mouth afterwards. And unlike alcohol or casual sex, it's NOT worth it. I like to think that the developers carefully crafted a challenge and that it's up to me to either beat it or surrender peacefully. At least, the game should humiliate me with an explicit option, like God Of War did, but the more subtle DDA is, the less I like it. Rubber-band AI in racing, I won't even discuss.
Disclaimer of sorts: I'm not some kind of gaming ubermensch who can win every race in Gran Turismo with a Civic and complete Rainbow Six without dying once. I lose races and I die. Often, sometimes. I just like it that way.
Disclaimer of sorts: I'm not some kind of gaming ubermensch who can win every race in Gran Turismo with a Civic and complete Rainbow Six without dying once. I lose races and I die. Often, sometimes. I just like it that way.
I know all these people have constructive posts, but I just wanna say it was a good read. I mean, I agree with the Max Payne one, as I had read it changes in the manual but never noticed it. And I didn't even know it was in Half-Life 2, but unfortunately I haven't played Oblivion yet, so I can't comment on that. However, I did notice in Morrowind that as soon as I did a quest and received something like the BiPolar Blade, or found the Lord's Mail, I just pwned everything, even at a low level. Maybe one day they;ll figure out how to fix that.
That said, I never noticed it as a problem in FF8. I actually found it useful to go back and draw Firagra from Bombs. I did notice a problem in the sea research lab (where you get Bahamut). On the way down, you can often be back attacked by a Red Dragon who will immediately cast an attack that hits all your party members for 9999. Aside from that, the only other problem I saw in that was that when you hit 100, you can't lvl up your hp and stuff.
That said, I never noticed it as a problem in FF8. I actually found it useful to go back and draw Firagra from Bombs. I did notice a problem in the sea research lab (where you get Bahamut). On the way down, you can often be back attacked by a Red Dragon who will immediately cast an attack that hits all your party members for 9999. Aside from that, the only other problem I saw in that was that when you hit 100, you can't lvl up your hp and stuff.
I never understood the "controversy" if you will about Oblivion's level-scaling. Now, I at least have read some decent reasons why it didn't work for some people. For me, I didn't mind it at all. I didn't look at it as "hand-holding" at all. After all, in a traditional RPG, like everyone was saying, the game might kick your ass in the beginning, but some are forgetting that once you reach a certain level, you're going to kick the shit out of every enemy you come across. I also like the fact that once you get higher up, you find better loot. I don't want to waste my time finding shitty loot in caves full of level 3 scamps or skeletons when I'm a level 40 or higher. The level-scaling meant that the game was consistently challenging without ever being unbeatable; never overly easy and never overly difficult. Also, what in the hell is the point of an open-world game if most of the game is unbeatable until you level-grind? I liked the fact that Oblivion allowed you to do things in whatever order you like. It would be annoying if you could only get so far in one guild, so you had to stop and do something you were less interested in to level up, then come back to what you *really* wanted to do, etc.
Sorry guys, but I loved the level-scaling, or DDA if you prefer. I'm hoping we see it in the next Elder Scrolls game too, though it wouldn't be a deal-breaker for me if it wasn't in.
Sorry guys, but I loved the level-scaling, or DDA if you prefer. I'm hoping we see it in the next Elder Scrolls game too, though it wouldn't be a deal-breaker for me if it wasn't in.
Excellent write-up.
I quite enjoyed Max Payne's difficulty adjustment. For the record, you could choose a difficulty at the beginning of the game, with the highest, "Dead on Arrival", preventing the game from lowering the DDA setting below maximum difficulty.
Agreed 100% about Oblivion. It's a bit odd though. Both a friend and myself are going through it presently, and I'm having a ridiculously easy time of things, while he's finding it insanely difficult, down to things like having rats being able to instakill his character.
By the way, there's mods for Oblivion that fix the levelling system by giving every character and item minimum and maximum level caps, and tweaking a number of other aspects of the game related to difficulty.
I quite enjoyed Max Payne's difficulty adjustment. For the record, you could choose a difficulty at the beginning of the game, with the highest, "Dead on Arrival", preventing the game from lowering the DDA setting below maximum difficulty.
Agreed 100% about Oblivion. It's a bit odd though. Both a friend and myself are going through it presently, and I'm having a ridiculously easy time of things, while he's finding it insanely difficult, down to things like having rats being able to instakill his character.
By the way, there's mods for Oblivion that fix the levelling system by giving every character and item minimum and maximum level caps, and tweaking a number of other aspects of the game related to difficulty.
im wondering if crysis had dda i was just thinking about how i destroyed the demo on every difficulty with just fists but when i got the full game it seemed like it was a roller coaster of difficulty in how stealthy i could be and how much health enemies had. I may be wrong so anyone else whos played it i wanna know if u got the same feeling.
Thanks guys for the praise. In lieu of human contact internet fame is what I crave.
@nopk
Minutiae = "Minute or minor details". In videogames it might refer to trial-and-error challenge memorization, though that in itself might be considered a skill.
@akathatoneguy
I'm actually a lazy gamer. Comes with piracy and having too many games in your backlog to appreciate. I first noticed the level-scaling in Oblivion as I had been cheating up my skill points to level up with less grind. I did this as I stood in front of a quest character, apparently one who would level. One day I saw him with a Dwarven Claymore on his back, wearing an Iron Helmet, and Elven Greaves. Seriously ugly, but whatever. Three cheated levels later, I see him walking around in full Daedric with a Daedric Longsword and Shield. See what's wrong?
With Oblivion it wasn't so much the level scaling. Aside from wiping creatures out of existence, most enemies had a challenge cap. But the most acute evidence of its failure was in the loot scaling. When everyone's in Daedric, there's no more joy in finding it lying in some tough-as-hell dungeon. Kind of like you're being regarded trend-setter when you want to be non-conformist.
Bethesda states that Fallout 3's DDA will be to set environmental difficulty based less on the player's current skill but where they go first. Hit Vault 3 first, and it'll be full of chump ants. Hit it last and get radioactive Deathclaws. Sounds a teeny bit better than Oblivion, but it's pretty easy to see how this system can be "gamed" by the munchkins who make speedrun videos.
I'd recommend reserving judgment on F3's DDA until we get an impression on how the challenge map proceeds. Previous Fallout games, despite being nominally nonlinear tended to line up their challenges in a logical fashion that most players would follow, and that only the crazily independent would ignore. Quest 1, 2, 3 in town A led people to go to town B, where enemies were harder, etc.
Oh look, I made another write-up.
@nopk
Minutiae = "Minute or minor details". In videogames it might refer to trial-and-error challenge memorization, though that in itself might be considered a skill.
@akathatoneguy
I'm actually a lazy gamer. Comes with piracy and having too many games in your backlog to appreciate. I first noticed the level-scaling in Oblivion as I had been cheating up my skill points to level up with less grind. I did this as I stood in front of a quest character, apparently one who would level. One day I saw him with a Dwarven Claymore on his back, wearing an Iron Helmet, and Elven Greaves. Seriously ugly, but whatever. Three cheated levels later, I see him walking around in full Daedric with a Daedric Longsword and Shield. See what's wrong?
With Oblivion it wasn't so much the level scaling. Aside from wiping creatures out of existence, most enemies had a challenge cap. But the most acute evidence of its failure was in the loot scaling. When everyone's in Daedric, there's no more joy in finding it lying in some tough-as-hell dungeon. Kind of like you're being regarded trend-setter when you want to be non-conformist.
Bethesda states that Fallout 3's DDA will be to set environmental difficulty based less on the player's current skill but where they go first. Hit Vault 3 first, and it'll be full of chump ants. Hit it last and get radioactive Deathclaws. Sounds a teeny bit better than Oblivion, but it's pretty easy to see how this system can be "gamed" by the munchkins who make speedrun videos.
I'd recommend reserving judgment on F3's DDA until we get an impression on how the challenge map proceeds. Previous Fallout games, despite being nominally nonlinear tended to line up their challenges in a logical fashion that most players would follow, and that only the crazily independent would ignore. Quest 1, 2, 3 in town A led people to go to town B, where enemies were harder, etc.
Oh look, I made another write-up.
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