Talk:Dynamic game difficulty balancing

Chen's 'Fl0w' Representing Dynamic Difficulty

Need to add more and detailed information and examples of DDA, such as Jenova Chen's thesis paper/game fl0w. Tyler 18:15, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

In all honesty, I would oppose supporting Chen's example of representing dynamic difficulty - dynamic difficulty in my view should mean that the game automatically adjusts the difficulty - in fl0w the player chooses whether or not to 'dive deeper', so surely this is static and 'manual' difficulty adjustment? Edit: Further to this, Ikaruga has absolutely ZERO dynamic difficulty mechanics. Who added these? I can however confirm that at least Far Cry has "AI Auto Balance" (Finding a reliable source for this isn't easy :| ) but from opinion it seems they haven't got great feedback from how they've implemented it :| --Scottdavies (talk) 01:25, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Merge

I propose merging this article with Dynamic game balancing. What are your thoughts? Waldir ^talk 18:14, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Under the name of DGB, yes, but not merging it here. Hołek ҉ 08:37, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Sure, I also agree that DGB is a more descriptive name, since DDA doesn't specify what the difficulty refers to. Perhaps an even more descriptive name could be "Dynamic Game Dificulty Adjustment" or "Dynamic Game Dificulty Balancing", what do you think? --Waldir ^talk 12:35, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

The latter seems to constist of every possible variation of this term. "Dynamic game difficulty balancing," here we come! :> Hołek ҉ 13:43, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

I've performed the merge. I tried to keep the contents of both articles, and I think I didn't leave anything out, but please confirm: diff from DGB, diff from DDA. Also, I made some grammar fixes on the way :) --Waldir ^talk 19:27, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

I understand that the current title is more descriptive; however, DDA seems to be used exclusively in the cited articles, and seems to be the more popular term (on here and on Google). Should the title not be the most widely-used term (with references to other terms below)? Druckles (talk) 22:36, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

I'd also like to mention that the difficulty isn't necessarily adjusted for balance. It commonly is, but DDA may also be used to change the amount of tension in a game (e.g. Left 4 Dead's AI director). Druckles (talk) 15:33, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Counter-Strike

I am not a gamer myself, but a friend of mine (who is) told me that he believes that Counter-Strike adjusted the difficulty according to the player's gameplaying ability. Can anyone confirm or deny this? --Waldir ^talk 21:09, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

You're friend must have been pulling your leg since Counter-Strike natively lacks any AI being a multiplayer only game (bots do exist and some unscrupilous players may even use bots but they aren't official). Well theoretically aiming accuracy and damage taken etc could be adjusted but that's rarely done in multiplayer games unless as a configurable option (instead of dynamic) because it's liable to piss off skiled players. (I believe a few FPS games with console-PC gaming support to reduce accuracy for the PC so that they don't destroy console games since using the mouse generally gives far more accuracy but even that is controversial.) Note that because CS (tradionally anyway) lacks any official centralised player database which keeps track of stats, the amount of info on how skilled a player is, is limited anyway. Either that or they were referring to Counter-Strike: Condition Zero. Nil Einne (talk) 10:26, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. To clarify, I was talking about the game adjusting parameters like aiming accuracy, damage taken, health recovery speed, frequency of power-ups, etc., according to the gamer's performance. But I can understand how in multiplayer mode it could upset the more experienced players. --Waldir ^talk 00:30, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Rubber band AI

The game artificial intelligence article has an inappropriate section on game balance, including rubber banding, that I'm trying to clear up. I'd like to point all the redirects to rubber band effect here, because this is exactly the context in which it makes sense, however I'm not certain that there's anything to add here. As far as I can tell, rubber banding for dynamic difficulty has the following connotations:

• It's from racing games (where the analogy works).
• It's disparaging, because it can appear unrealistic or unfair if you notice the effect. (That's how it's used in this article.)

Apart from that it uses a heuristic to adjust the dynamic game elements for difficulty. —Mrwojo (talk) 22:08, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Is there reference for the term rubber banding, or is this original research? Apart from that, ruber banding is not exclusive to racing games. I am currently applying the technique to an edu-game, and the effect surfaces there as well. --217.66.60.14 (talk) 13:09, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

There is reference, for example Hunicke 2005. --178.0.155.26 (talk) 18:41, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Did Naughty Dog invented DDA ?

In part 6 of Andy Gavin's "Making Crash Bandicoot" post series, Jason Rubin states that they used DDA (even named it) while making the first Crash Bandicoot game. Does this deserve a mention in this article ? How can we put this out ? --Hell Pé (talk) 01:49, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

For sure this deserves a mention... I remember elements of what he describes in is blog post. Tspilman (talk) 18:39, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Approaches

The Approaches section currently feels to me more like an academic paper. Does anyone else see this? Can it be broken into smaller sections?

In addition, the second paragraph refers to, "implausible situations." Are there examples of this? I don't understand what implausible situations are being referred to, or how they differ from the given racing example. The example given appears to affect the stats of the enemies, rather than the AI (and is not exclusive to AI). Druckles (talk) 22:28, 3 November 2014 (UTC)