I struggled with the Elevator, Krauser and the Castle Accolyte Room for HOURS!!! Ya mean I just needed to shoot at the floor and walls like a CoD KID?!? Dammit Man...No wonder those kidz get so many KILLZ!!!!
Also, it surprises me how, in the middle of so much criticism, most people don't give MGS5 credit for using dynamic difficulty so well. Basically, enemies adapt to whichever strategies you use the most, so that you can't rely on a single strategy too much. If you use a lot of sneaking headshots, enemies will start to wear shields, if you use a lot of neutralizing, they'll start surprising you with knives, if you use a lot of firepower, they'll start carrying shields, and so on. You can even counter such measures by sending combat teams on sabotaging missions. People got so fed up on criticizing MGS5 for what it lacks, that they missed some of the impressive things it actually did right.
This is a feature I felt Breath of the Wild was sorely lacking. It would have been great to have enemies build out their camps to combat your playstyle, rather than just becoming slightly faster, stronger and way more damage-spongey.
That is not dynamic difficulty in the way it is discussed in this video (the game becoming harder if you do well and easier if you fail), as it doesn't necessarily change the challenge of the game, it just forces you to think of a different strategy.
You know what, I'm downloading MGSV I've been playing 2 and 3 back and forth and even 4 a couple times but I loved this about MGSV the only part that made me feel disappointed was the story not being finished but cliffhanger stories can be cool. Its surprisingly awesome for an unfinished game
@@thesalazzah55 MGSV's story doesn't have a clifffhanger lol. It's a prequel story, and it's in no way "unfinished". Sure we all wished it was even longer (don't we all wish good things to last longer?), with more missions and more story, but it is a complete game, which sets up the sequels very well. I remember MGS2 having so much content left out of the game, yet it felt finished too.
@@alphag4mer909 you must not like speed running. And because I was poor this was like my only game, hence the high clear count. Also the game is one of the best ever made, allowing me to clear it allot.
Yeah bro I relate to having the game as the only game too. I eventual got gta san Andreas and I think a call of duty game but after I played those I would just play re4 doing every possible thing I could, unlocking costumes and even the extras like mercenaries and the ada stories/files/chronicles whatever they were called
@@Touching_Zone I'd even do single gun playthroughs but I think every time I'd pick up the control and put on RE4 I would clear it 4-6 times in about a week and a half. It never got old
Resi 4 launched in 2005, and the game is over 10 years old. The PS3, 360 and Wii hadn't launched yet, and only the 360 would launch that year, but not even the original 360 had HDMI support, so the game was made with 480p textures which were the commom thing at the time. Since the game was made that way, when ported to other, newer platforms the game suffers from upscaling, as the 480 textures get stretched and look bad in 720p and higher. To fix this, Capcom would need to redo ALL the textures for the game. And we know Capcom, that's not happening any time soon.
It's not really ahead of it's time and this feature was already present in previous Capcom games. SF 3 had a ranking system, which was used to regulate the CPU difficulty in arcade mode. The Megaman X series also had this as well.
It was actually something of it's time. God Hand had a similar difficulty system. Only that it wasn't hidden in that game since it had a difficulty meter visible
Holy shit, a video that wasn't a clickbait? Damn, I actually learned something about Resident Evil 4 and a few other games as well. Keep up the great work dude.
I think this one of the many reasons why RE4 is so damn replayable. I finished this game so many times and it never gets old, the replay value is insane! xD
I know what you all mean I have the classic resident evil-4 for Nintendo game cube I play it on my Wii all the time it never gets old the faster and more people you kill the harder the characters get boss and small..
Link's AMV. You're right, it isn't that similar to RE4. But it could make the game easier for someone that has trouble going through a whole area without dying.
but in DS you know where the enemies are going to be at when you respawn, making it predictable,thus easier. DS is all about muscle memory,study and recognizing patterns. This doesn't happen in, say, Left 4 dead.
MeowAlien にゃあエイリアン do it it's so dam worth I'm doing it for the 4th time I think Edit: 4th time finishing both normal and professional getting the hand cannon and finishing Ada XD
Im going thru my first ever playthrough rn on the Xbox one, and oh boi does this game have a learning curve for me 😂 I'm having tons of fun tho and I wish I could watch this entire vid but I don't wanna spoil it for myself
TheHeadHunter1000 There's always someone who is better then me I've never tried an only pistol run. Don't get me wrong I'm not mad at you or anything is just that I didn't think a Pistol run was possible I'm going to try it, I thought completing this game 100% no deaths on professional was awesome but now a pistol only run is way badass nice job!
Except for the last level where the zombies get guns. Could have done without that. Resident evil 4 is in my top 2 RE games, but it was the start of the decline of their future titles as well.
@@grahamtaylor8912 I disagree. RE5 was definitely a departure from the previous themes of the franchise, but 4 sewed the seeds for 5. By giving zombies weapons. Them having melee weapons and chainsaws didnt bother me. But when they had rifles, machine guns, and rocket launchers at the end of 4. It was too much.
@@Kaldrean . Yup I see what you mean. I just loved RE4. The island section at the end was definitely the worst part of the game though I agree. Though it did have these Regenerators, they were cool. I didn't think much of RE 5, it was just, alright. Playing RE 6 currently and I really don't like it at all. I jumped straight into the Chris campaign to get it out of the way, it seems that one is the worst for all the QTE stuff. I can see why fans of the series dislike part 4, but I thought it was awesome. Finished it multiple times on pro mode and got a max rating on Mercenaries. I put some hours in on that game.
because while it is a nice game (not a masterpiece), it fucked up the resident evil franchise shifting from a fantastic survival horror to a mediocre action shooter.
I always thought Resident Evil 4's Professional mode was really similar to standard mode, while many of my friends complained it was so much harder than standard. Now I realize it's because I was pretty much already playing professional mode because I never saved the game after dying. Doing so apparently made it a lot harder for me, but also got me used to the challenge.
Yes, There is also adaptive difficulty even on Pro mode (PC UHD Version), contrary to what many people believe. Selecting "continue" after death will prevent Leon's death for the next fatal damage. Not sure how long it lasts tho, as i never select "continue", but instead i load save on deaths. Tried this my self with Garadar's charging stab several times.
I recently saw a video about the design of Halo 3 where the devs talked about how they implemented dynamic difficulty in a much more subtle way, "the more you push, the more the game pushes back". Important info about Halo 3: 1- Your weapons are hitscan, while (most) alien weapons are projectile-based 2- You're a walking tank with regenerating shields, while your enemies are very weak -grunts take one Battle Rifle shot to kill, jackals take 2 or 3 and brutes take a few more You control the challenge in two main ways: 1- the number of enemies you decide to fight at the same time 2- the tactics you use (sneak or not, engagement distance, etc...) The more frustrated you are, the more carefully you'll play, with guaranteed success (reducing your frustration). The more bored you are, the more aggressively you'll play and the more challenging the game will be (reducing your boredom).
Miau Frito I’m more than confident that Halo has been using this Dynamic System since Combat Evolved. Matter of fact there are times in CE that if you try to skip an area of enemies harder enemies will show up. If you kill the first group then the harder enemies will not spawn in
Im the opposite. I get frustrated when its too challenging so id be reckless and it would get harder so id probably have a cardiac event. And if its too easy i feel sleepy, so id stop fighting and the game would just finish itself for me i guess?
This is one of the rare games that make me feel like the creators actually cared about us enjoying the game instead of just being satisfied by making money of it, and that's why RE4 is always gonna be the best RE game (and the best shooter game in my opinion) ever. I wonder if Capcom did something like that with the Megaman franchise, some of the Megaman games gave me the same feeling.
I would have loved RE4 if it hadn't been labeled resident evil. It threw away the survival horror aspects of the game (so did 3 a bit, it was a steady evolution) and the disappointment of the subverted expectations tarnished my experience with the game. It's a great game, but not what I was spending money to get. If I hadn't picked it up wanting a survival horror experience I would have enjoyed it a lot more.
+Ur Waifu is Shit I'd rather say that it was a gradual movement away from survival horror. Even the first game had plenty of action based segments, but the design was clearly pressed more towards survival. 2 had more fast paced portions, but ammo was still strictly limited, making you worry about every engagement. In 3 you could craft ammo, but resources overall were still limited. In 4 you could effectively grind forever without worry. There were plenty of other elements that gradually shifted through the series, this is just one example. The truth is 4 should have never surprised me with the way the series was going, but being a fan of RE from the first game just left me feeling like the games were deviating from what I personally wanted out of them. That didn't make them bad at all, of course. Great game.
The only instance I recall the game making it easier for me was in the fight against Krauser, on my first playthrough. After getting my ass kicked so many times, I did notice that Krauser was becoming slower and barely using his shove attack with his mutated arm, giving me plenty of time to shoot his legs. But I didn't know that it was part of a fancy programming trick, I thought it was some kind of randomness to the attacking pattern. And I think that the number of dogs spawning in the garden labirinth also change. I'm currently replaying the PS3 HD Remaster and I'm using the Chicago with infinite ammo. So I'm obviously bursting through the game, and I had no memory of so many dogs attacking me back in the PS2 and Wii days. At least as far as I remember. Twelve years playing this son of a bitch and still finding new things about it. And one that completely changes the way I see the game now. It has been said countless times before but it's never too much: a true masterpiece of a game.
I'm with you on this. It'd always made the game feel more puzzling and mysterious, because enemies sometimes were vicious, other times logey and mundane. It made them feel more random. I feel like this system could be increased just by making scenario's more random and adding things between deaths. Not just making it easier or harder per se.... just.... different.
what I know is you fought way more dogs in the labyrinth in normal than in easy :p if you die too much in normal, do you get to skip the labyrinth too? :p
Also, not a lot of people know this but Krauser's gameplay, you're suppose to get up close and knife him, of course it also involves dodging and quick time events though. He takes triple damage from knife and get's stun. It's quite amazing how the game tricked you the entire time as Krauser's was always portrayed to be a veteran melee combatant that you should avoid when up close.
Max Payne (1) had a sliding difficulty scale. Enemies got more accurate and aggressive every time you completed an area, and they got a little easier every time you died. When MP1 was current I made a few mods that toyed with these values.
Not really. In PC UHD Version, selecting "continue" after death will prevent Leon's intant death for the next fatal damage, but no change on Load save. So there is also adaptive difficulty on Pro mode, at least in that version of RE4.
that's a really well done system and a good idea! But it's not for me, i rather die a lot and overcome the challenge than having the level made easier without any choice
Yeah, but inversely I like that it ramps up when I am curb stomping enemies. When you're walking around basically being Mr. Boom Headshot it gets boring.
***** i rather choose a fair challenge that force me to play better and change my strategies... why directly assume that i want stupid difficulty like bullet sponges? And like i said before, it's a good system, just not for ME!
gigaganon That is completely fair. Personally I like this style for a first playthrough. Keeps it from getting too hard while I am getting comfortable with the game mechanics, while keeping it from getting too easy once I am getting the hang of things. Still though, after the first play I want a full brick wall challenge, and I feel there should be an option to turn this off, or it should be disabled for higher difficulties. This allows people like me to enjoy a nice pace as they learn the game, going to professional mode in the second play (if they choose of course), while people like you who want unforgivable challenge right off the bat can go straight to professional (where I'm sure you already know this is disabled). If you're wanting a brick wall, you'll probably be going to professional mode anyway first thing. It's when you don't have a choice this becomes a problem. When set up like this, is serves all play styles and allows you to have the game experience you want. For this reason, I encourage more developers to do this, but be sure to include a toggle switch, or disable it on harder difficulties. I hear some games make this the only system, and I agree, that's not cool.
You can find a UA-cam series from two developers who worked on the Ratchet and Clank series which talks about the different ways they and their former colleagues implemented dynamic difficulty in those games. It was extremely informative about designing difficulty in general, as it also delved into the idea of making a game challenging, not difficult. For anyone looking to watch the videos, search for 'UselessPodcasts' on YT and look for the video titled, "The Useless Podcast: Episode 3 - Cheating in the Player's Favor."
With Kid Icarus's difficulty slider, one thing a friend of mine liked doing (and I eventually picked up on) was setting it to max, and seeing what difficulty we were actually at upon finishing the level.
Btw maybe not a lot of people tell you this but...THANK YOU FOR PUTTING SUBTITLES....It helps people like me who have problems with understanding oral english videos but we can read english language quite easily...And of course, another great video :D
I've noticed some aspects of this while playing Resident Evil 4. While replaying the game, I realized that there's no use in keeping a lot of stuff in your inventory, because it prevents you from getting new stuff. Not that you have no room for new items: it's that the game "knows" you're stocked so all boxes and barrels are empty. It's actually better (somewhat) to sell some of your gear so that new gear appears in boxes and barrels. Otherewise the game gives up on giving you anything: herbs, ammo, gold. It also explains why the game became so malicious about my playthrough. I rarely ever hit "Continue" in Resident Evil 4. This causes the game to not register your death (it doesn't show in the statistics) and thus your next attempt is equally difficult. Since I had 0 death count up to chapter 5, the difficulty hasn't drop at all, bringing in the real challenge. But the biggest atrocity of the RE4 was the room where Ashley had to use 2 cranks, while you scope for enemies (castle). I never hit "Continue" on that room so it took me 20 attempts to beat it on PRO mode.
JukeGuy HD Gaming I'm pretty sure PRO mode also has some room for difficulty balancing. If you're running low on health (even on PRO), next dead enemy is more likely to drop a green herb. It's not even a matter of hacking files to see the script, it's what happened to me over and over. So no. It's not locked. Definitely.
I hated that section of tha game as well!!! To be honest, I hated the castle in general. Ashley not being able to get out of the damn way, those garradors who are as dangerous as they look, and the new plagas that formed there. All bad and fun haha. Just never liked that part in particular.
Yes, but... what if I just wanted to overcome the difficulty setting I agreed to at the start, and not get shifted into Very Easy every time I encounter the slightest hiccup? This is one of those things that seems clever on the surface, but really just leaves me feeling like I've never actually overcome anything, the game just tricked me into thinking I had.
@@diorsawaaj Professional mode only unlocks after you beat the game once though. Which I can't bring myself to do, because this game feels absurdly bipolar to play through with the standard difficulty system.
One common concern from a lot of people seems to be that if the difficulty is dynamically changed that you can then game the system or that you can never be certain of how good you really are. From an old research paper I read a few years back (if I ever find it then I will try to link it) there seems to be 2 ways people learn. Some people learn better through dynamic difficulty. They will get better at an even rate and because of that the experience will become gradually harder. Other people, however, need something concrete. In a dynamic system they will rarely get good enough to push the system further or they will not try to push it further because they feel they have already mastered it because they are doing well enough. The paper was not conclusive as to why this was the case, as it was merely seeking to examine if teaching through dynamic methods worked. It suggested further research into why some people learn better through adaptive scenarios and why others do not.
Interesting. I also think that it varies a lot from game to game. What type of game is it, what does the game require you to do, what is the difficulty spike of the game, what does actually change and when do the chagnes happen in dynamic difficulty, how does the system knwo when someone is cheating it (if at all), how does this affect the players skill, how does a bad player adjust to it? Many questions. But I really like the system and I think that it works perfectly in RE4, which originally played when I was still relatively young and maybe the system is among the reasons that make me like the game so much. The game does a good job with the increase in difficulty on its own, but I think that the dynamic system adds a bit more variety to it especially during more hectic and stressful situations that might cause problems and frustration to some players. However I feel like players in a game with no dynamic difficulty face the same problems you mentioned above, maybe even more drastic. For some it might be too easy, for some too hard. And for some a swith a setting up or down is already too much. Imho you could very well say that even with a dynamic difficulty there are players who fit the "normal" setting and will always stay on normal and not drop down significantly or go up significantly. However they'll, at least in RE4, still be expereincing an increase in difficulty tha the game has in its design. So for some people it might not even come into effect. However with a dynamic system you can, and even in the scenario I just mentioned, counteract poorley designed sections which are too hard for what a player should be able too handly. Ideally games don't have those poor sections, but I think we all know that they do, so with this system in place those sections will not pose a huge problem anymore. And even in RE4 this dynamic setting only applies to "normal". All other settings do, afaik, never change so that players who want a real challenge can stick with professional or players who are unexperienced and don't want a challange cans tick to easy. All others will probably only benefit from the game automatically switching between many options.
Kevo Yeah, I thought that there were actual difficulty settings. So what you are saying is that there is only dynamic difficulty on the normal difficulty setting. I also think you make a really interesting point when you mention the dynamic difficulty assisting in sequences that were actually poorly balanced to begin with. A big reason I don't play many game son hard are these such sections. These sections are often the ones based around gimmicks. Like a turret sequence or something of the sort. The game is not based around this so you do not have the requisite skills to be good at it and often they are just poorly balanced and even unpolished anyhow, so they are a natural sticking point. I mean a turret system that is used for 5 minutes of gameplay is not going to have the same amount of responsiveness and tweaking as the base gameplay, naturally. So adding in dynamic difficulty really allows you to fix these problems. And I think that is great too. And you are absolutely right that it's really about how you do it. Certain tweaks could have drastic changes, especially if you have unique objectives, like escort missions.
There is still difficulty scaling on the harder difficulty, ammo and health will drop less as you use them less, and enemies will get more health as you get better at dealing with them. The obvious things like enemies disappearing can occur, but you have to do a LOT of dying before it does. How do I know? I've been trying to unlock the PRL, but by the time I'm done with the village ammo will have stopped dropping completely after I made every effort to save ammo for later levels.
Certain games, like Civilization, like to build the sliding difficulty level into the mechanics of the game itself. It's designed so that expanding too quickly is costly, increasing unhappiness, starvation, or other negative stats in the game that you haven't corrected through research. On the other hand, pout too much into building and you'll have massive upkeep costs that will bankrupt your city and make it difficult to maintain an army. It's an emergent behavior of the mechanics itself. On the other hand, dynamic difficulty can piss some players off as being unfair. Realizing that it was being done in MarioKart 64 pretty much ruined the whole game for me. That's because no matter how well I did, I never got the proper feedback for it. A game with dynamic difficulty is like playing a game where you're not allowed to keep score and everyone gets a participation trophy at the end.
I think looking at a game as simple as Pokemon demonstrates somewhat similar qualities. Really any RPG that gives you a cast of characters that you can level up separate from one another requires you to constantly balance your leveling so that you can stay competitive. Sure you can get your start to lv90 by the end of pokemon, but there is probably going to b one trainer in the elite 4 that has your starter's weakness and you are going to have a hard as hell time handling that. Pokemon is really a bad example in the sense that it is already a quite easy game, but looking at a game like Fire Emblem shows a similar thing. Once your units get a few levels higher than enemies you only earn like 5% towards your next level when you defeat a foe, as opposed to 20 or 30% when you are at or below their level. So the game encourages you to make a balanced team and guides your approach to the game in this manner, which is pretty similar to what Civilization does.
+John Edwards *Wrong*. Pokémon RBY and possibly SGC is piss easy to just use your starter all the way through and is actually preferred if you just want to get through the game quickly. The newer game in the series pisses all over this by making it *harder* for one solo to get experience which is bullshit. You actually earn *less* by using only one, in an attempt to make you use a full team.
But Pokémon does a terrible job of it though. I got through two entire Pokémon games before I realized that they actually meant for you to balance your team. They don’t telegraph this to the player in any way, and even if you realize it close to the end of the game, there’s not much you can do about it. There’s only so much post-game grinding you can do before you realize that you’ve run out of game.
In almost ALL racing games, there's a thing called rubber-banding, doesn't have to be Mario Kart. As to Civ, you're totally right, that's why long Civilization campaigns are more fun than, say, Total War, where, instead of challenges becoming more complex the more you play, the only thing that gets harder as you expand is frustrating micro-managing of all cities and armies (endless uprisings in earlier games too, they just take away a bunch of turns from progress), as by the time you get a sizeable chunk of the map, the rest is just "click next region to win" in Total War. Not so much in Civ. As to RPG games, there's a thing with enemies scaling to your level, it's usually horrible. FFVIII and Last Remnant make it so the more you AVOID ENCOUNTERS, the better your characters are (since equipment and skills still get improved). So you're punished not for playing better but simply for playing more. Also, some relatively-modern RPGs just eschew the separate character leveling as it doesn't add much to the experience, compare old Baldur's Gate with newer KOTOR or Mass Effect, same dev., same tropes, just more party swapping and fun.
As this is one Re4 is still one of my favourite games. As a sidenote, i thought it was pretty obvious at times that the game changes difficulty if you die too much.. but it's done in such a great way that i'm surprised more games don't employ the system.
Do a No Continues Run, the game will think you never died and the difficulty will always be at its highest. I kind of figured that out on my own and I feel like the game is more satisfying to beat because it is harder, which is what you want.
@@LeFaucheur Do they react faster? I never really picked up on that but that's sweet if so, I love when games do more than "you do less damage and the baddies do more" for a difficulty increase. I've only done 2 full playthroughs on normal compared to 6 on pro so I only really remember what pro felt like.
Depends on what kind they are, 1 is the long slashy sword one, 2 is the instant death head chomp one and 3 is the spider who runs at you once you kill the body.
as a kid this was one of the few games I had that I could replay countless of times. I knew every single inch of that game. never knew it changed the difficulty as you play
Wait, seriously? What exactly does spyro 3 do to change the difficulty? If I remember right, if you die the enemies all die the exact same way, i.e. Some can't be killed by fire and need a charge. Is it that they stop attacking as much or something? Or there's more health fairies around if you die?
That section killed me so many times the first time I played it and it still does occasionally. It's that initial encounter and trying to get distance from the enemies.
Joseph DiSalvo present day for me it would be Ok. But when I was younger, resident evil games scared the shit outta me. Took me like a month to want to continue the part after Leon gets injected with the plaga.
Yeah… The more facts you learn about a piece of art, whether it’s a TV show or a video game, the more sterile the experience of replaying it becomes. :(
Yeah, I also want to forget and re-experience Mass Effect like that. @Allie Boy I had legit nightmares after being chainsawed in the first village. Controller vibration didn't help! XD
I've observed that big enemies in God of War 1 & 2 (PS2) get suspiciously easier to kill after one or two failures. I guess they use an adaptative difficulty too. When I noticed it, I thought it sucked. But maybe it also kept me happy playing the game. Difficult to say for sure.
I think Alan Wake (one of my all time favourite games) did it as well, and man did it deliver some stunning sequences. I remember several times I cleared an area killing the last enemy with my last bullet, and wow that felt exhilarating. Sometimes you have a choice of fighting or fleeing the battlefield, and reaching the safe zone with health at the "one more hit and you're dead" level is an experience unlike any other. How much of that was artifice or real game mechanics remains a mystery to me and I don't really want to find out. That feeling of winning by a hair at the last possible moment is priceless, and for all its faults Alan Wake managed to consistently create such thrilling moments. And for that, I love it. (Also, for the story, of course. The story is the best.)
Valve's "coordinator/administrator" is awesome! It controls the zombie difficulty and where the zombies are sent in the map. It's a dynamically genius. They also used it in half life for combines and zombies there too.
Spyro 3 had a similar mechanic. A good example was the notorious boxing minigame and the skateboard races. Play well and both of them become VERY hard to beat. But after a few failures the AI starts to relent and they become more beatable.
I think the Souls game do something different to keep the player in the flow. If you're very good at the game, you will level up slower, because you will defeat the respawning enemies only once.
I don't believe so. It's the player's decision whether they risk their souls or not in any given situation. So, in spatial terms, I think you're right, better players lose their souls farther apart, but in terms of a timeline it's your decision wether you risk your souls or not, based on your gaming experience. You're constantly adjusting the stakes to your liking. The game never takes away your souls in normal gameplay (unless for narrative reasons).
algi There is always the possibility that you die in a situation you are not familiar with and keep dying before you can get back to your souls. Sacrifice ring helps a lot but a new player does not know how to use it properly.
But you always know how to get to your bloodstain. And if you think it's too hard to get there, you can grind until you get stronger. You can only lose your souls by dying of something you knew about.
That castle scene you mentioned, since i was younger i ran re4 multiple times on ps2 and ps4 and always noticed a difference in the enemies, never knew about this system til now so thanks for solving a long asked question for me haha
i agree it's clever, but it in the end i feel like the game is lying to me. I enjoy a game's mechanics the most when it's very clear about how it operates to the player. Still loved Re4 though.
I agree. It didn't really affect me in RE4 because the game is so easy I don't think it ever dropped me even close to the normal difficulty, but it's really obnoxious in racing games with rubber banding. They try and argue that rubber banding is to make it more interesting for the player, but when I run an entire race perfectly and then make one slip up at the end and lose, and then screw up a ton but play the last 20 seconds perfectly and win it makes it feel like 90% of the game doesn't even matter if the game is gonna try and match me no matter what and it really irritates me.
Something you really have to understand is all games lie to you. The graphics aren't actually an ingame world. They're just models compiled in a renderer. The world you're playing has seams and a ceiling. Every piece of art lies to you. Movies lie to you constantly. Very often in films the effect you're watching is just a bunch of guys dressed up in bright green suits. What I liked about Resident Evil 4 was it was clever in how it lied to you since it was very hard to catch unless you played the game through several times.
the game still has a challenge. It's adaptive difficulty still makes the game harder if you're doing very well. Additionally the game has an extra difficulty you unlock called "Professional" which then completely lacks the adaptive difficulty. So you get the best of both worlds.
I have the same with God of War 2. Game is easy yet it has shit ton of cheap one hit deaths. Didnt die often in same spot but there was one room filled with annoying enemies and fact half of the time i died cos bugs and glitches or that touch screen didnt work like it supposed to. Died like 20 times and game mocking me with lowering difficulty. Its going from Souls veteran, fuck unfair God of War 2 difficulty.
The Homeworld Games did this in an RTS. Some encounters will always have the same core, but with different numbers of support and escort ships with them to always pose a challenge. Being an RTS, your ships were persistent between levels and with limited resources, every ship lost was essentially gone from the game forever. It also had a mechanic that allowed you to capture enemy ships by escorting vulnerable, unarmed units that were essentially tugboats to drag them back to your Mothership. Because the game had these mechanics, players could be at the same point in the game with very different fleets, and the game adapted some of the challenge to reflect it. All the games in the franchise, including the standalone developed third party have this. Though the sequel, Homeworld 2, did this to a fault, where the Game would build encounters to counter the player's fleet in sizes that the player could not have. I'd love to see your take on the older gem that Homeworld is.
NOVA2509 That makes sense. I played the game on the hardest difficulty numerous times and never noticed the crossbow Ganados disappearing on me like in the video, so I was very confused. Thanks for clearing that up.
I believe only Normal mode does this. Professional is simply Normal, but where every variable assumes your skill is maximum at all times. Which is why sometimes on Normal the damage you take seems to vary, but not on Professional.
I think the damage inflicted in Professional is a little bit higher though and think ammo is a little more scarce, but other than that its not really all that harder. Plus the ammo issue is easily remedied if you use the knife to attack constantly.
This was like almost in MGS5, when you get more headshots, guards will wear helmets. when you use sleep gas frequently, guards will have masks. When you do more CQC they'll start to wear body armor and shields on their back. When you do most of your missions at night, they wear NV. Pretty cool and overlooked feature of the game.
I must have completed this game dozens of times on gamecube, ps2 and i am about to buy it on ps4 and i had no idea this happened. My favourite of all resident evil games. Great video, thanks.
I recently watched developer commentary for the games "Ratchet and Clank Going Commando" and "Ratchet and Clank Up your Arsenal" and learned that the games had a system like this in place, it was a little less noticeable as they made sure never to delete enemies. Instead, they lowered the health of the enemies, so you as the player never noticed a change in the level just the ease at which they completed it. Doing it this way made the player feel as if they had gotten better so not to patronise them by making it obvious the game had mercy on the player by making itself easier. The system if I remember correctly also increased the currency in crates in case the player was having trouble due to their lack of fire power. In the later games in the series ("Deadlocked" and "A Crack in Time") they allowed you to pick your difficulty which just told the system at what level to tune you to by setting a minimum and a maximum level to tune you to, so by picking hardcore, for example, the game would set the minimum tuning level to the hardest level on the hard difficulty and the maximum at the hardest difficulty level possible. Adversely if you picked easy, the game would set the minimum level to the lowest possible difficulty level and the maximum difficulty level to the lowest difficulty level on medium setting. This is by far my favourite known iteration of this kind of system.
I'm not too sold on this concept. I feel it somehow cheapens the experience since you never know whether it was your skill that made you pass a challenge, or it was in fact the game deciding you truly suck so it will start secretly handicapping itself. In Dark Souls for example if I kill a boss after a dozen tries - I am happy, because the win gave me a sense of accomplishment. But if I have to wonder whether it was truly my skill that merited the win or simply the game deciding enough is enough and told the boss to start going easier on me... that would kinda suck.
resident evil 4 still doesn't get easier the more you suck, it just get harder when you get better if you played it on normal mode and you find the game a bit easy instead of starting the game again on harder difficulty, the game changes the difficulty it for you without you noticing it and if the game realize your starting to be confused it just returns to it original state.
Well it's just the fact that regardless where the game decides the actual difficulty "line" is, I don't appreciate the game "tweaking" itself based on my performance, because once I'm aware of that fact I may freely question every challenge thrown my way and it immediately sucks out all enjoyment I could have had out of beating it. Hell, I even hate it when the game explicitly acknowledges that I suck and offers to lower the difficulty - but doing it without me getting a say is a whole new level of patronizing.
McFly dark souls kinda did that tweaking with bosses too. the bosses sometimes transforms and changes it's ways of attacking when it finally realize youre getting used to it's attack patterns and when you die it just transform back to his current state. this video is just shows that resident evil 4 did that on a very subtle way where every death is fair and not just a cheap hits from your enemy. keep in mind this game way created before patches or beta's was even a thing so this developers don't know if one of the enemies is over powered so they have to find a way to fix it (think it as a self patching mechanic) if it wasn't for the tweaking system resident evil 4 would be another devil may cry 3 which requires a release of a special edition just to make it balance and playable.
I've never heard of Dark Souls secretly becoming easier or harder based on player's success rate. Also, my point is not that the game shouldn't adapt to player's actions. My point is the game should never on its own start implying that player's repeated failure is automatically a wish for a diminished challenge.
I think that the game giving you a mode or option that permanently locks the game on a harder difficulty would be a fantastic solution. Resi 4 might do this, I haven't done Hard Mode or read much about it.
Yes I noticed Resident Evil 4 did this on the PS2 and the GameCube where I played it. I didn't know people didn't notice this. Wasn't it obvious? Maybe I play too many games...
Dark Souls 2 has a sliding difficulty curve, if you kill enemies 10 times they stop re-spawning but it doesn't get harder when you do well, though you can choose to make the game harder for extra rewards.(Champions Covenant, Bonfire Aesthetics).
And still a lot of people complains about the game eating up your HP when dying too much being Hollow. Or people complaining that it's too easy because you can despawn. Or people saying it's not a true Dark Souls because "Team B" at From Software made it. Goes to show how a lot of people complains because things are not like they want to, and most "Dark Souls-only" players are just a glorified bunch of hardcore-wannabes.
Bucky•JaKRBT Whether you find it easy or not has nothing to do with the fact that Professional mode does not use the dynamic difficulty curve in most cases, so you have to 'learn and improve as a player' to beat it because the game does not cut you any slack there.
Wait this shouldn't be too hard to implement into a combat game right? You pretty much just need to increase the aggression, health, attack damage, speed, add more attack moves to enemies and add more enemies to levels each time you die etc. This could all be done with creating a function that just adds a point to the aggression, heath and the amount of enemies on each level.
Perfect again Mark Brown! Before watching the video I said to myself I hate it when I notice this because I want to beat the challenge as is! However if I don’t notice this happening I still feel that same sense of accomplishment without the demeaning feeling of reducing the difficulty. You also pointed out an angle I didn’t see, in that speed runners can utilize this which I both think is cool and adds an interesting dynamic to speed runs but also can see how it almost makes, for lack of a better term, the speed run a bit wonky and not as pure idk something to think about! Love the content will definitely pitch in when I can, just found you a week ago and appreciate the quality and money coming from fans who want to pay for the continuation of your content! I wanna help push you forward and reward your way of making this Chanel and the content you out forward! I just left a comment on another video of yours but I’ve never come across a UA-cam page before that seems to truly put unique and interesting content the way you do, everyone seems to copy everyone else and it’s a breath of fresh air! Keep it up!
And I'm guessing this difficulty system isn't present when you play in professional right? Because on my first playthrough in professional I died around 25 times and never noticed the game getting easier
At least as late as Destiny The Taken King, it’s still very much a thing Bungie does. It’s fairly subtle-I think one of the main knobs it tunes is how quickly AIs acquire you as a target, but I went in to the last battle of the last mission of the TTK campaign with an absolutely garbage loadout on one of my characters, and it *definitely* got easier with each death. It also massively reduces damage by AIs if you’re in the menu swapping weapons/etc, but that’s something they’ve actually confirmed.
So the game is self aware of what difficulty you're struggling on and it makes itself slightly easier if you're having trouble? That's pretty cool if you ask me!
This IS something I noticed years ago during this same era of gaming. Like I was just confident I knew it was happening and I vividly remember my dad having a hard time and I just told him to die a couple times and the game let up. This is wild to have this system confirmed.
God I hate dynamic difficulty. If I die 20 times in the same situation, it's because I'm trying to get better at it, and do it properly, it's not because I'm bad and want an easier ride.
+Asdayasman I feel the same way. But, it's probably also because I feel like I'm being patronized, like those super blocks in DKCR and Super Mario as described in the video. I'm pretty sure Devil May Cry 3 SE did this too, if not the original DMC3.
+Asdayasman I think the concern many designers have when making a challenging game is that they may end up with something so hard that will alienate a large portion of the players. Most gamers would rather make up some excuse and stop playing the game altogether than putting it on easy mode. Also sometimes the difficulty feels rather cheap , which is why the dynamic thing works, at least for me, only in games like Devil May Cry, Dark Souls and God Hand where you can actually feel yourself getting better at them the more you play 'em.
+baseballrogue >Most gamers would rather make up some excuse and stop playing the game altogether than putting it on easy mode. This is why I am THOROUGHLY of the opinion "fuck the casuals". They don't deserve to impinge on my fun.
This actually makes more similarities to God Hand, some animations from God Hand are the same from RE4, and in God Hand, the same difficulty flow system is there, but more obvious
On pro you still have difficulty scaling, it just mostly trends upwards. If you try to conserve ammo or health, you'll find those items drop less frequently and enemies will be able to take, and deal out, more damage. I always got stuck in the castle because the game stopped dropping ammo and health, trying to conserve ammo really backfired on me there.
Thanks a lot for making this video. I didn't know of this...It makes a lot more sense to me now why the amount of enemies had been greatly reduced each time I played.... Nemesis was a nightmare for me also...Alas, I think that no matter what, Biohazard will forever have a special place in my heart.
Capcom recently released a remake of Resident Evil 4. Here's why the studio is the king of the remake - ua-cam.com/video/baV1fTQBDyo/v-deo.html
RE4 is like playing a game against your dad then years later you find out he let you win all those times.
Lmfao very well said
Never let the kid win, show him who's boss 🤣
No wonder I've found bazookas in all crates
Lmao
Wade 😂😂😂
You didn’t find a bazooka in a crate
Gold
I struggled with the Elevator, Krauser and the Castle Accolyte Room for HOURS!!! Ya mean I just needed to shoot at the floor and walls like a CoD KID?!? Dammit Man...No wonder those kidz get so many KILLZ!!!!
Also, it surprises me how, in the middle of so much criticism, most people don't give MGS5 credit for using dynamic difficulty so well. Basically, enemies adapt to whichever strategies you use the most, so that you can't rely on a single strategy too much. If you use a lot of sneaking headshots, enemies will start to wear shields, if you use a lot of neutralizing, they'll start surprising you with knives, if you use a lot of firepower, they'll start carrying shields, and so on. You can even counter such measures by sending combat teams on sabotaging missions. People got so fed up on criticizing MGS5 for what it lacks, that they missed some of the impressive things it actually did right.
Love how MGSV's AI adapt to your playstyle it keeps the gameplay from getting boring
This is a feature I felt Breath of the Wild was sorely lacking. It would have been great to have enemies build out their camps to combat your playstyle, rather than just becoming slightly faster, stronger and way more damage-spongey.
That is not dynamic difficulty in the way it is discussed in this video (the game becoming harder if you do well and easier if you fail), as it doesn't necessarily change the challenge of the game, it just forces you to think of a different strategy.
You know what, I'm downloading MGSV I've been playing 2 and 3 back and forth and even 4 a couple times but I loved this about MGSV the only part that made me feel disappointed was the story not being finished but cliffhanger stories can be cool. Its surprisingly awesome for an unfinished game
@@thesalazzah55 MGSV's story doesn't have a clifffhanger lol. It's a prequel story, and it's in no way "unfinished". Sure we all wished it was even longer (don't we all wish good things to last longer?), with more missions and more story, but it is a complete game, which sets up the sequels very well.
I remember MGS2 having so much content left out of the game, yet it felt finished too.
I've lost count how many times I bought a Resident Evil 4 & maybe a remake 😱
I bought it 2 times on PS2 1 time on PC and 1 Time on PS3 XD
Iron Dante not on ps3
Not on ps3 cuz they can only remaster a game once(ps4 xboxone)
LWILKS97 never seen this game on ps3 i went to gamestop and they had it on ps2 and ps4
LWILKS97 name one game remastered more than once?
I've beaten the game 70+ times and never found out about this until recently.
I'm still playing it today and I'm around that number as well. The game is just too good.
really addiction....beating the same game over 70 times is just way too much
@@alphag4mer909 you must not like speed running. And because I was poor this was like my only game, hence the high clear count. Also the game is one of the best ever made, allowing me to clear it allot.
Yeah bro I relate to having the game as the only game too. I eventual got gta san Andreas and I think a call of duty game but after I played those I would just play re4 doing every possible thing I could, unlocking costumes and even the extras like mercenaries and the ada stories/files/chronicles whatever they were called
@@Touching_Zone I'd even do single gun playthroughs but I think every time I'd pick up the control and put on RE4 I would clear it 4-6 times in about a week and a half. It never got old
Are you serious?!?!?!
I didn't know the game gets harder and harder the more professionally you play! That makes the game even more ahead of its time.
Resi 4 launched in 2005, and the game is over 10 years old. The PS3, 360 and Wii hadn't launched yet, and only the 360 would launch that year, but not even the original 360 had HDMI support, so the game was made with 480p textures which were the commom thing at the time. Since the game was made that way, when ported to other, newer platforms the game suffers from upscaling, as the 480 textures get stretched and look bad in 720p and higher. To fix this, Capcom would need to redo ALL the textures for the game. And we know Capcom, that's not happening any time soon.
actually, many game does that way back, you just didn't notice
It's not really ahead of it's time and this feature was already present in previous Capcom games.
SF 3 had a ranking system, which was used to regulate the CPU difficulty in arcade mode. The Megaman X series also had this as well.
It was actually something of it's time. God Hand had a similar difficulty system. Only that it wasn't hidden in that game since it had a difficulty meter visible
no wonder I been dying a lot lately lol
Holy shit, a video that wasn't a clickbait? Damn, I actually learned something about Resident Evil 4 and a few other games as well.
Keep up the great work dude.
same here
I actually expected the classic " Did you know Devil May Cry was going to be Resident evil 4?" At this point is so well known as the -1 world in SMB
i learned this about RE5 by reading the strategy guide, i didn't realize it was in RE4 as well
^^highly agreed.
up next... top ten videos that are not click bait. number four made my jaw hit the floor.
I think this one of the many reasons why RE4 is so damn replayable.
I finished this game so many times and it never gets old, the replay value is insane! xD
I know what you mean, I still play it now!
First run through Pro was hard spending over an hour to defeat Krauser but it was worth it
BadAssMacmillan I finished it like 7 or more times
I know what you all mean I have the classic resident evil-4 for Nintendo game cube I play it on my Wii all the time it never gets old the faster and more people you kill the harder the characters get boss and small..
G'Hammer krausers easy dude, just knife him lol
what are some other reasons, which have not been stated yet in this thread
Meanwhile in Dark Souls:
Game : Oh you died again?
Me : yeah..... ;_;
Game : Hahaha.... git gud.
Dark Souls 2 had a similar system to RE4.
Also, Dark Souls isn't that punishing or insulting. .
joko49perez true that. Any old nes game like contra or ninja gaiden is way harder then dark souls
Link's AMV. You're right, it isn't that similar to RE4. But it could make the game easier for someone that has trouble going through a whole area without dying.
madeOfClay honestly after youve played 100's of hours into ds it is a VERY easy game lol
but in DS you know where the enemies are going to be at when you respawn, making it predictable,thus easier. DS is all about muscle memory,study and recognizing patterns.
This doesn't happen in, say, Left 4 dead.
Dammit, now I really want to play RE4 again
MeowAlien にゃあエイリアン do it it's so dam worth I'm doing it for the 4th time I think
Edit: 4th time finishing both normal and professional getting the hand cannon and finishing Ada XD
にゃあエイリアンMeowAlien play it again it's worth it
Im going thru my first ever playthrough rn on the Xbox one, and oh boi does this game have a learning curve for me 😂 I'm having tons of fun tho and I wish I could watch this entire vid but I don't wanna spoil it for myself
I own three copies on three different platforms and still can’t get enough of it
にゃあエイリアンMeowAlien i play it
i noticed this in my 30+ plays. sometimes enemies were missing and i thought it was some glitch.
oh thank god i'm not the only one who has played this game more then 5 times
I've done around 12 rounds on one save file. And did a no merchant pistol only run. Only game I've played through multiple times without bordem.
you can't just play re4 twice, that's too few
TheHeadHunter1000 There's always someone who is better then me I've never tried an only pistol run. Don't get me wrong I'm not mad at you or anything is just that I didn't think a Pistol run was possible I'm going to try it, I thought completing this game 100% no deaths on professional was awesome but now a pistol only run is way badass nice job!
I did a punisher only run, it was awesome!
The Red 9 with extended clip is my spirit animal.
Anthony Palumbo Ayyy Red 9 must buy and Stock rush! 👊
reloading gives me an orgasm
AAHH A TEH CHOICE FOR AN AVID GUN COLLECTAH. it's a nice gun STRANGEJAH.
That's how we do it down in 'Lantic city!
Why is this not the top-rated comment?
RE 4 is one of the greatest games of all time!!! Still better than most games out today. A true masterpiece
Except for the last level where the zombies get guns. Could have done without that. Resident evil 4 is in my top 2 RE games, but it was the start of the decline of their future titles as well.
RE 5 was the start of the decline, not RE4.
@@grahamtaylor8912 I disagree. RE5 was definitely a departure from the previous themes of the franchise, but 4 sewed the seeds for 5. By giving zombies weapons. Them having melee weapons and chainsaws didnt bother me. But when they had rifles, machine guns, and rocket launchers at the end of 4. It was too much.
@@Kaldrean . Yup I see what you mean. I just loved RE4. The island section at the end was definitely the worst part of the game though I agree. Though it did have these Regenerators, they were cool. I didn't think much of RE 5, it was just, alright. Playing RE 6 currently and I really don't like it at all. I jumped straight into the Chris campaign to get it out of the way, it seems that one is the worst for all the QTE stuff.
I can see why fans of the series dislike part 4, but I thought it was awesome. Finished it multiple times on pro mode and got a max rating on Mercenaries. I put some hours in on that game.
@@grahamtaylor8912 4 Is my favorite (tied with 7). I just also acknowledge that while i love 4, it set the shitty path for 5 and 6.
I wondered why I never got tired of playing this ahead of it's time masterpiece of a video game. RESIDENT EVIL 4.
because while it is a nice game (not a masterpiece), it fucked up the resident evil franchise shifting from a fantastic survival horror to a mediocre action shooter.
GTFO.
Agree
@@totetoresano boo hoo
I always thought Resident Evil 4's Professional mode was really similar to standard mode, while many of my friends complained it was so much harder than standard.
Now I realize it's because I was pretty much already playing professional mode because I never saved the game after dying. Doing so apparently made it a lot harder for me, but also got me used to the challenge.
Yes, There is also adaptive difficulty even on Pro mode (PC UHD Version), contrary to what many people believe.
Selecting "continue" after death will prevent Leon's death for the next fatal damage.
Not sure how long it lasts tho, as i never select "continue", but instead i load save on deaths.
Tried this my self with Garadar's charging stab several times.
Thank you for featuring me in the video!
No worries, thanks for putting on a great show!
Mark Brown And thank you for this great work. Cheers.
I recently saw a video about the design of Halo 3 where the devs talked about how they implemented dynamic difficulty in a much more subtle way, "the more you push, the more the game pushes back".
Important info about Halo 3:
1- Your weapons are hitscan, while (most) alien weapons are projectile-based
2- You're a walking tank with regenerating shields, while your enemies are very weak -grunts take one Battle Rifle shot to kill, jackals take 2 or 3 and brutes take a few more
You control the challenge in two main ways:
1- the number of enemies you decide to fight at the same time
2- the tactics you use (sneak or not, engagement distance, etc...)
The more frustrated you are, the more carefully you'll play, with guaranteed success (reducing your frustration).
The more bored you are, the more aggressively you'll play and the more challenging the game will be (reducing your boredom).
Miau Frito I’m more than confident that Halo has been using this Dynamic System since Combat Evolved. Matter of fact there are times in CE that if you try to skip an area of enemies harder enemies will show up. If you kill the first group then the harder enemies will not spawn in
Im the opposite. I get frustrated when its too challenging so id be reckless and it would get harder so id probably have a cardiac event. And if its too easy i feel sleepy, so id stop fighting and the game would just finish itself for me i guess?
@@MegaSpartan138 I haven't seen any examples of that happening
This is one of the rare games that make me feel like the creators actually cared about us enjoying the game instead of just being satisfied by making money of it, and that's why RE4 is always gonna be the best RE game (and the best shooter game in my opinion) ever.
I wonder if Capcom did something like that with the Megaman franchise, some of the Megaman games gave me the same feeling.
Well, tell that to all the Resident evil fans who were pissed off about the direction change of the franchise.
Yes i agree
seth martin RE4 saved the franchise actually, it was then that the action took too much importance
I would have loved RE4 if it hadn't been labeled resident evil. It threw away the survival horror aspects of the game (so did 3 a bit, it was a steady evolution) and the disappointment of the subverted expectations tarnished my experience with the game. It's a great game, but not what I was spending money to get. If I hadn't picked it up wanting a survival horror experience I would have enjoyed it a lot more.
+Ur Waifu is Shit I'd rather say that it was a gradual movement away from survival horror. Even the first game had plenty of action based segments, but the design was clearly pressed more towards survival. 2 had more fast paced portions, but ammo was still strictly limited, making you worry about every engagement. In 3 you could craft ammo, but resources overall were still limited. In 4 you could effectively grind forever without worry.
There were plenty of other elements that gradually shifted through the series, this is just one example. The truth is 4 should have never surprised me with the way the series was going, but being a fan of RE from the first game just left me feeling like the games were deviating from what I personally wanted out of them. That didn't make them bad at all, of course. Great game.
The only instance I recall the game making it easier for me was in the fight against Krauser, on my first playthrough. After getting my ass kicked so many times, I did notice that Krauser was becoming slower and barely using his shove attack with his mutated arm, giving me plenty of time to shoot his legs. But I didn't know that it was part of a fancy programming trick, I thought it was some kind of randomness to the attacking pattern. And I think that the number of dogs spawning in the garden labirinth also change. I'm currently replaying the PS3 HD Remaster and I'm using the Chicago with infinite ammo. So I'm obviously bursting through the game, and I had no memory of so many dogs attacking me back in the PS2 and Wii days. At least as far as I remember.
Twelve years playing this son of a bitch and still finding new things about it. And one that completely changes the way I see the game now. It has been said countless times before but it's never too much: a true masterpiece of a game.
I'm with you on this. It'd always made the game feel more puzzling and mysterious, because enemies sometimes were vicious, other times logey and mundane. It made them feel more random.
I feel like this system could be increased just by making scenario's more random and adding things between deaths. Not just making it easier or harder per se.... just.... different.
what I know is you fought way more dogs in the labyrinth in normal than in easy :p if you die too much in normal, do you get to skip the labyrinth too? :p
Also, not a lot of people know this but Krauser's gameplay, you're suppose to get up close and knife him, of course it also involves dodging and quick time events though. He takes triple damage from knife and get's stun. It's quite amazing how the game tricked you the entire time as Krauser's was always portrayed to be a veteran melee combatant that you should avoid when up close.
Yup its a lot easier using the knife vs Krauser, the clue is in the knife fight QTE you have with him prior.
As soon as he starts approaching, get your knife ready, and when he gets close, start whacking. fastest boss fight ever.
Max Payne (1) had a sliding difficulty scale. Enemies got more accurate and aggressive every time you completed an area, and they got a little easier every time you died. When MP1 was current I made a few mods that toyed with these values.
This is only for easy and normal modes.
In professional, you are always in the hardest level you can reach in normal.
Not really.
In PC UHD Version, selecting "continue" after death will prevent Leon's intant death for the next fatal damage, but no change on Load save.
So there is also adaptive difficulty on Pro mode, at least in that version of RE4.
that's a really well done system and a good idea! But it's not for me, i rather die a lot and overcome the challenge than having the level made easier without any choice
Yeah, but inversely I like that it ramps up when I am curb stomping enemies. When you're walking around basically being Mr. Boom Headshot it gets boring.
*****
i rather choose a fair challenge that force me to play better and change my strategies... why directly assume that i want stupid difficulty like bullet sponges? And like i said before, it's a good system, just not for ME!
gigaganon That is completely fair. Personally I like this style for a first playthrough. Keeps it from getting too hard while I am getting comfortable with the game mechanics, while keeping it from getting too easy once I am getting the hang of things.
Still though, after the first play I want a full brick wall challenge, and I feel there should be an option to turn this off, or it should be disabled for higher difficulties.
This allows people like me to enjoy a nice pace as they learn the game, going to professional mode in the second play (if they choose of course), while people like you who want unforgivable challenge right off the bat can go straight to professional (where I'm sure you already know this is disabled). If you're wanting a brick wall, you'll probably be going to professional mode anyway first thing.
It's when you don't have a choice this becomes a problem.
When set up like this, is serves all play styles and allows you to have the game experience you want. For this reason, I encourage more developers to do this, but be sure to include a toggle switch, or disable it on harder difficulties. I hear some games make this the only system, and I agree, that's not cool.
Totally agree
@gigaganon I agree with you.
You can find a UA-cam series from two developers who worked on the Ratchet and Clank series which talks about the different ways they and their former colleagues implemented dynamic difficulty in those games. It was extremely informative about designing difficulty in general, as it also delved into the idea of making a game challenging, not difficult.
For anyone looking to watch the videos, search for 'UselessPodcasts' on YT and look for the video titled, "The Useless Podcast: Episode 3 - Cheating in the Player's Favor."
Edgar Onukwugha thx
Edgar Onukwugha Interesting listen. Thanks!
With Kid Icarus's difficulty slider, one thing a friend of mine liked doing (and I eventually picked up on) was setting it to max, and seeing what difficulty we were actually at upon finishing the level.
I died so many times in RE4 that you'd swear I was cheating the system.
JAJAJAJA
This one made my day! Thank you!
did you eventually meet just one semi-crippled Ganados who stand there looking confused while pleading "please just shoot me!" ?
@@gendoruwo6322 I met a ganados just running around the ladder trying to climb up, I waited but he was never able and I shot him
Btw maybe not a lot of people tell you this but...THANK YOU FOR PUTTING SUBTITLES....It helps people like me who have problems with understanding oral english videos but we can read english language quite easily...And of course, another great video :D
***** You're welcome! It's really easy to do for scripted videos, so I encourage more video makers to do it
I've noticed some aspects of this while playing Resident Evil 4. While replaying the game, I realized that there's no use in keeping a lot of stuff in your inventory, because it prevents you from getting new stuff. Not that you have no room for new items: it's that the game "knows" you're stocked so all boxes and barrels are empty. It's actually better (somewhat) to sell some of your gear so that new gear appears in boxes and barrels. Otherewise the game gives up on giving you anything: herbs, ammo, gold.
It also explains why the game became so malicious about my playthrough. I rarely ever hit "Continue" in Resident Evil 4. This causes the game to not register your death (it doesn't show in the statistics) and thus your next attempt is equally difficult. Since I had 0 death count up to chapter 5, the difficulty hasn't drop at all, bringing in the real challenge. But the biggest atrocity of the RE4 was the room where Ashley had to use 2 cranks, while you scope for enemies (castle). I never hit "Continue" on that room so it took me 20 attempts to beat it on PRO mode.
Everyime Ashley screams Leon i just wanna kick her head off.
You do realise that on Pro difficulty it is locked to the highest difficulty at all times, right?
JukeGuy HD Gaming
I'm pretty sure PRO mode also has some room for difficulty balancing. If you're running low on health (even on PRO), next dead enemy is more likely to drop a green herb. It's not even a matter of hacking files to see the script, it's what happened to me over and over. So no. It's not locked. Definitely.
That's not the difficulty, that's the mechanic of the game. You run low on health? You're bound to get health soon or later
I hated that section of tha game as well!!! To be honest, I hated the castle in general. Ashley not being able to get out of the damn way, those garradors who are as dangerous as they look, and the new plagas that formed there. All bad and fun haha. Just never liked that part in particular.
Yes, but... what if I just wanted to overcome the difficulty setting I agreed to at the start, and not get shifted into Very Easy every time I encounter the slightest hiccup? This is one of those things that seems clever on the surface, but really just leaves me feeling like I've never actually overcome anything, the game just tricked me into thinking I had.
The Adaptive Difficulty is disabled on Professional Mode I think. If you want the true RE4 experience, you gotta play it on Professional Mode.
@@diorsawaaj Professional mode only unlocks after you beat the game once though. Which I can't bring myself to do, because this game feels absurdly bipolar to play through with the standard difficulty system.
Well this explains how I beat RE4 at age 8 😂. I thought I was hot shit.
One common concern from a lot of people seems to be that if the difficulty is dynamically changed that you can then game the system or that you can never be certain of how good you really are. From an old research paper I read a few years back (if I ever find it then I will try to link it) there seems to be 2 ways people learn. Some people learn better through dynamic difficulty. They will get better at an even rate and because of that the experience will become gradually harder. Other people, however, need something concrete. In a dynamic system they will rarely get good enough to push the system further or they will not try to push it further because they feel they have already mastered it because they are doing well enough. The paper was not conclusive as to why this was the case, as it was merely seeking to examine if teaching through dynamic methods worked. It suggested further research into why some people learn better through adaptive scenarios and why others do not.
Interesting. I also think that it varies a lot from game to game. What type of game is it, what does the game require you to do, what is the difficulty spike of the game, what does actually change and when do the chagnes happen in dynamic difficulty, how does the system knwo when someone is cheating it (if at all), how does this affect the players skill, how does a bad player adjust to it? Many questions. But I really like the system and I think that it works perfectly in RE4, which originally played when I was still relatively young and maybe the system is among the reasons that make me like the game so much. The game does a good job with the increase in difficulty on its own, but I think that the dynamic system adds a bit more variety to it especially during more hectic and stressful situations that might cause problems and frustration to some players.
However I feel like players in a game with no dynamic difficulty face the same problems you mentioned above, maybe even more drastic. For some it might be too easy, for some too hard. And for some a swith a setting up or down is already too much. Imho you could very well say that even with a dynamic difficulty there are players who fit the "normal" setting and will always stay on normal and not drop down significantly or go up significantly. However they'll, at least in RE4, still be expereincing an increase in difficulty tha the game has in its design. So for some people it might not even come into effect. However with a dynamic system you can, and even in the scenario I just mentioned, counteract poorley designed sections which are too hard for what a player should be able too handly. Ideally games don't have those poor sections, but I think we all know that they do, so with this system in place those sections will not pose a huge problem anymore.
And even in RE4 this dynamic setting only applies to "normal". All other settings do, afaik, never change so that players who want a real challenge can stick with professional or players who are unexperienced and don't want a challange cans tick to easy. All others will probably only benefit from the game automatically switching between many options.
Kevo Yeah, I thought that there were actual difficulty settings. So what you are saying is that there is only dynamic difficulty on the normal difficulty setting.
I also think you make a really interesting point when you mention the dynamic difficulty assisting in sequences that were actually poorly balanced to begin with. A big reason I don't play many game son hard are these such sections. These sections are often the ones based around gimmicks. Like a turret sequence or something of the sort. The game is not based around this so you do not have the requisite skills to be good at it and often they are just poorly balanced and even unpolished anyhow, so they are a natural sticking point. I mean a turret system that is used for 5 minutes of gameplay is not going to have the same amount of responsiveness and tweaking as the base gameplay, naturally. So adding in dynamic difficulty really allows you to fix these problems. And I think that is great too.
And you are absolutely right that it's really about how you do it. Certain tweaks could have drastic changes, especially if you have unique objectives, like escort missions.
There is still difficulty scaling on the harder difficulty, ammo and health will drop less as you use them less, and enemies will get more health as you get better at dealing with them. The obvious things like enemies disappearing can occur, but you have to do a LOT of dying before it does.
How do I know? I've been trying to unlock the PRL, but by the time I'm done with the village ammo will have stopped dropping completely after I made every effort to save ammo for later levels.
catboy357 Very interesting observation. Much appreciated. :)
"Whack it in the comments below." Anybody whackin it down here?
I'm whacking it after seeing Ashley again :P
Well well
Shione Cooper
Hah! sexual innuendo comment has 69 likes! :'D
gotta keep those ballistics secured
Im whacking it in San Diego :p
3:14 "RE4 gives players all the advantages of dynamic difficulty adjustment without making them feel patronised"
...UNTIL TODAY!!!! >:(
What happened that day?
I feel rewarded after learning this, actually. It's awesome. The game is just better this way.
I've beaten this game so many times, and never knew about the adaptive difficulty. Great video
In Horizon Zero Dawn the robots get more armor after you killed them alot of times. So they get harder to kill.
RushingDolphin I guess I've never noticed because of how bad I am at the game....
i beat the game without noticeing this lol
it's a subtle detail that also makes sense lore-wise.
@@kamon242 absolutely
I didn't even notice honestly, the robots may have actually been interesting if they did this better
"those games so hard that ends up frustrating you"
*relaxing music from DUSTFORCE playing on the back*
I see what you did there
Ahhhh that was the first thing I noticed! Dust force has such a good soundtrack!
Prince alucard Thank you for making me aware that Spire is a thing.
Certain games, like Civilization, like to build the sliding difficulty level into the mechanics of the game itself. It's designed so that expanding too quickly is costly, increasing unhappiness, starvation, or other negative stats in the game that you haven't corrected through research. On the other hand, pout too much into building and you'll have massive upkeep costs that will bankrupt your city and make it difficult to maintain an army. It's an emergent behavior of the mechanics itself.
On the other hand, dynamic difficulty can piss some players off as being unfair. Realizing that it was being done in MarioKart 64 pretty much ruined the whole game for me. That's because no matter how well I did, I never got the proper feedback for it. A game with dynamic difficulty is like playing a game where you're not allowed to keep score and everyone gets a participation trophy at the end.
The Civilization point is interesting, thanks for sharing
I think looking at a game as simple as Pokemon demonstrates somewhat similar qualities. Really any RPG that gives you a cast of characters that you can level up separate from one another requires you to constantly balance your leveling so that you can stay competitive. Sure you can get your start to lv90 by the end of pokemon, but there is probably going to b one trainer in the elite 4 that has your starter's weakness and you are going to have a hard as hell time handling that. Pokemon is really a bad example in the sense that it is already a quite easy game, but looking at a game like Fire Emblem shows a similar thing. Once your units get a few levels higher than enemies you only earn like 5% towards your next level when you defeat a foe, as opposed to 20 or 30% when you are at or below their level. So the game encourages you to make a balanced team and guides your approach to the game in this manner, which is pretty similar to what Civilization does.
+John Edwards
*Wrong*. Pokémon RBY and possibly SGC is piss easy to just use your starter all the way through and is actually preferred if you just want to get through the game quickly. The newer game in the series pisses all over this by making it *harder* for one solo to get experience which is bullshit. You actually earn *less* by using only one, in an attempt to make you use a full team.
But Pokémon does a terrible job of it though. I got through two entire Pokémon games before I realized that they actually meant for you to balance your team. They don’t telegraph this to the player in any way, and even if you realize it close to the end of the game, there’s not much you can do about it. There’s only so much post-game grinding you can do before you realize that you’ve run out of game.
In almost ALL racing games, there's a thing called rubber-banding, doesn't have to be Mario Kart. As to Civ, you're totally right, that's why long Civilization campaigns are more fun than, say, Total War, where, instead of challenges becoming more complex the more you play, the only thing that gets harder as you expand is frustrating micro-managing of all cities and armies (endless uprisings in earlier games too, they just take away a bunch of turns from progress), as by the time you get a sizeable chunk of the map, the rest is just "click next region to win" in Total War. Not so much in Civ.
As to RPG games, there's a thing with enemies scaling to your level, it's usually horrible. FFVIII and Last Remnant make it so the more you AVOID ENCOUNTERS, the better your characters are (since equipment and skills still get improved). So you're punished not for playing better but simply for playing more. Also, some relatively-modern RPGs just eschew the separate character leveling as it doesn't add much to the experience, compare old Baldur's Gate with newer KOTOR or Mass Effect, same dev., same tropes, just more party swapping and fun.
As this is one Re4 is still one of my favourite games. As a sidenote, i thought it was pretty obvious at times that the game changes difficulty if you die too much.. but it's done in such a great way that i'm surprised more games don't employ the system.
Do a No Continues Run, the game will think you never died and the difficulty will always be at its highest. I kind of figured that out on my own and I feel like the game is more satisfying to beat because it is harder, which is what you want.
Master Betty! Or just play on professional which disables the adaptive difficulty.
Morgan OB it still has it, it just lowers the difficulty alot less, making it pretty much a Hard version
@@MogsnOB Makes it sound like professional is like normal. I haven't seen enemies in normal react as fast as in professional.
@@LeFaucheur Do they react faster? I never really picked up on that but that's sweet if so, I love when games do more than "you do less damage and the baddies do more" for a difficulty increase. I've only done 2 full playthroughs on normal compared to 6 on pro so I only really remember what pro felt like.
This game is easily in the Top 5 games ever made.
Not even in the top 25
@@randomguy6679 you sure showed him
Nah, top 30.
@@zeroeleven6551 Well, OPs original point didnt have much substance either. lmao
@@SeightJam it's more about the subjective nature of taste than constructing a reasoned argument in a comments section.
play it on the wii, the wii mote makes it more fun to aim
Tommy B The Wii Remote enables you to kick some serious ass in a way that's impossible on other versions. It's fun as hell
I concur. The definitive version.
@@whiteknight5100 the most underrated version
When the qte's came up I was a god.
The shadow boss fight in dmc3 gets easier by making the light panels open up with only 1 hit as opposed to 3 which is the default.
Parasite heads : Naaah we dont play like that!
i swear they do 3/4 damage of your health or even 1 hit death swings sometimes!
Depends on what kind they are, 1 is the long slashy sword one, 2 is the instant death head chomp one and 3 is the spider who runs at you once you kill the body.
@@joshuaanderson1712 The insta-kill parasite (type 2) has only enemies in the castle.
this game was indeed a Masterpiece
This was my first episode of GMTK a couple months ago; now i'm hooked.
That's absolutely awesome. Explains why I thought the game's difficulty was exactly on par with my gameplay.
Nice, good video and channel. Subscribed
as a kid this was one of the few games I had that I could replay countless of times. I knew every single inch of that game. never knew it changed the difficulty as you play
Spyro 3 does this, but people don't talk about it much.
There's also a cheat code that allows you to manually change the difficulty.
I never noticed.
Same with Ratchet & Clank, according to the Developer Commentary on uselesspodcasts channel. Seems to be a staple for Insomniac games.
Wait, seriously? What exactly does spyro 3 do to change the difficulty? If I remember right, if you die the enemies all die the exact same way, i.e. Some can't be killed by fire and need a charge. Is it that they stop attacking as much or something? Or there's more health fairies around if you die?
Thank you for referencing Flow, it kinda reminded me of Spores, so I'm gunna have to check it out!!
Dustforce music :D , amazing video as always mark!
I didn't know the water place was notorious, i finished it in one go while avoiding the bow men but it sure did eat up all my ammo :'C
Run into the lower room and keep an eye on the door and the hole in the ceiling, just put Ashley in a corner or something and it'll be fine.
I'll do that in PRO mode someday.
That section killed me so many times the first time I played it and it still does occasionally. It's that initial encounter and trying to get distance from the enemies.
what was your arsenal back then?
Mine was the Handgun, Redgun, TMP with stock, semi-auto assault rifle, and SPAS12.
Oh god it's been so long since I played this game lol. I think I mainly used the assault shotgun and TMP.
I wish I could forget every aspect of RE4 and play it blind like it was my first time again. ;_;
Joseph DiSalvo present day for me it would be Ok. But when I was younger, resident evil games scared the shit outta me. Took me like a month to want to continue the part after Leon gets injected with the plaga.
Yeah… The more facts you learn about a piece of art, whether it’s a TV show or a video game, the more sterile the experience of replaying it becomes. :(
Yeah, I also want to forget and re-experience Mass Effect like that.
@Allie Boy I had legit nightmares after being chainsawed in the first village. Controller vibration didn't help! XD
I've observed that big enemies in God of War 1 & 2 (PS2) get suspiciously easier to kill after one or two failures. I guess they use an adaptative difficulty too. When I noticed it, I thought it sucked. But maybe it also kept me happy playing the game. Difficult to say for sure.
Id call myself an RE4 veteran. I have like 5 copies and have played through it hundreds of times (literally), I never fuckin had a clue about this
Well, that explains why I had such a hard time last time I played despite being great at it.
I think Alan Wake (one of my all time favourite games) did it as well, and man did it deliver some stunning sequences. I remember several times I cleared an area killing the last enemy with my last bullet, and wow that felt exhilarating. Sometimes you have a choice of fighting or fleeing the battlefield, and reaching the safe zone with health at the "one more hit and you're dead" level is an experience unlike any other.
How much of that was artifice or real game mechanics remains a mystery to me and I don't really want to find out. That feeling of winning by a hair at the last possible moment is priceless, and for all its faults Alan Wake managed to consistently create such thrilling moments. And for that, I love it. (Also, for the story, of course. The story is the best.)
discard your guns except for the killer7. there you go, ganadoes dropping magnum rounds.
yurieu will it work on the ps2 version?
Deni Budiman I beleive
I never knew Resident Evil 4 had this mechanic. That's dope. Resident Evil 4 is definitely in my top 5 horror survival games.
There's also the Demon's Souls approach: the more you die, the harder the game gets...
Valve's "coordinator/administrator" is awesome! It controls the zombie difficulty and where the zombies are sent in the map. It's a dynamically genius.
They also used it in half life for combines and zombies there too.
It's called The Director in L4D, if I recall correctly...
Spyro 3 had a similar mechanic. A good example was the notorious boxing minigame and the skateboard races. Play well and both of them become VERY hard to beat. But after a few failures the AI starts to relent and they become more beatable.
I think the Souls game do something different to keep the player in the flow. If you're very good at the game, you will level up slower, because you will defeat the respawning enemies only once.
But if you are very good you will lose not lose your souls so often.
I don't believe so. It's the player's decision whether they risk their souls or not in any given situation. So, in spatial terms, I think you're right, better players lose their souls farther apart, but in terms of a timeline it's your decision wether you risk your souls or not, based on your gaming experience. You're constantly adjusting the stakes to your liking. The game never takes away your souls in normal gameplay (unless for narrative reasons).
algi There is always the possibility that you die in a situation you are not familiar with and keep dying before you can get back to your souls. Sacrifice ring helps a lot but a new player does not know how to use it properly.
But you always know how to get to your bloodstain. And if you think it's too hard to get there, you can grind until you get stronger. You can only lose your souls by dying of something you knew about.
Also, this is a moot point, since dynamic difficulty isn't about not letting you die. There is still challenge. You can still die in RE4.
Hey man don't trash talk epic yarn, that's a solid game.
Love your video. And great editing by putting dustforce ost 😊
That castle scene you mentioned, since i was younger i ran re4 multiple times on ps2 and ps4 and always noticed a difference in the enemies, never knew about this system til now so thanks for solving a long asked question for me haha
1:06 - WHAT? I never ever performed that wrestling move.
elemileTLDR shoot the kneecaps once you enter the castle
@Eduardo Mendez thats quite unnecessary. Enemies will almost always fall to their knees if you shoot their shins.
i agree it's clever, but it in the end i feel like the game is lying to me.
I enjoy a game's mechanics the most when it's very clear about how it operates to the player. Still loved Re4 though.
I agree. It didn't really affect me in RE4 because the game is so easy I don't think it ever dropped me even close to the normal difficulty, but it's really obnoxious in racing games with rubber banding. They try and argue that rubber banding is to make it more interesting for the player, but when I run an entire race perfectly and then make one slip up at the end and lose, and then screw up a ton but play the last 20 seconds perfectly and win it makes it feel like 90% of the game doesn't even matter if the game is gonna try and match me no matter what and it really irritates me.
Something you really have to understand is all games lie to you.
The graphics aren't actually an ingame world. They're just models compiled in a renderer. The world you're playing has seams and a ceiling.
Every piece of art lies to you. Movies lie to you constantly. Very often in films the effect you're watching is just a bunch of guys dressed up in bright green suits.
What I liked about Resident Evil 4 was it was clever in how it lied to you since it was very hard to catch unless you played the game through several times.
When i play a game i want a challenge.
A good challenge has clear rules.
the game still has a challenge. It's adaptive difficulty still makes the game harder if you're doing very well.
Additionally the game has an extra difficulty you unlock called "Professional" which then completely lacks the adaptive difficulty. So you get the best of both worlds.
Very Insulting when a game ask you if you want to bump the difficulty down.
That's just makes me angry and want to beat it even harder.
I have the same with God of War 2. Game is easy yet it has shit ton of cheap one hit deaths. Didnt die often in same spot but there was one room filled with annoying enemies and fact half of the time i died cos bugs and glitches or that touch screen didnt work like it supposed to. Died like 20 times and game mocking me with lowering difficulty. Its going from Souls veteran, fuck unfair God of War 2 difficulty.
I love that you mentioned Left 4 Dead! Both are incredible games, too.
The Homeworld Games did this in an RTS. Some encounters will always have the same core, but with different numbers of support and escort ships with them to always pose a challenge.
Being an RTS, your ships were persistent between levels and with limited resources, every ship lost was essentially gone from the game forever. It also had a mechanic that allowed you to capture enemy ships by escorting vulnerable, unarmed units that were essentially tugboats to drag them back to your Mothership. Because the game had these mechanics, players could be at the same point in the game with very different fleets, and the game adapted some of the challenge to reflect it.
All the games in the franchise, including the standalone developed third party have this. Though the sequel, Homeworld 2, did this to a fault, where the Game would build encounters to counter the player's fleet in sizes that the player could not have.
I'd love to see your take on the older gem that Homeworld is.
Mission 12 in Homeworld 2 was particularly egregious. So. Many. Battlecruisers.
Did the game really did that? My life is a lie!
Same.
English. do you speak it?
+Hiiper Phoenix ...But you made as many grammatical errors as he did.
Only in easy and normal difficulties. In Pro, the game is locked to the highest diffculty no matter how bad you are at the game.
NOVA2509 That makes sense. I played the game on the hardest difficulty numerous times and never noticed the crossbow Ganados disappearing on me like in the video, so I was very confused. Thanks for clearing that up.
I believe only Normal mode does this. Professional is simply Normal, but where every variable assumes your skill is maximum at all times. Which is why sometimes on Normal the damage you take seems to vary, but not on Professional.
Dawn Wolf I kind of wondered why Professional mode didn't seem all that much harder compared to my Normal playthroughs
I think the damage inflicted in Professional is a little bit higher though and think ammo is a little more scarce, but other than that its not really all that harder. Plus the ammo issue is easily remedied if you use the knife to attack constantly.
you got a point in that
So Professional really is the true experience thenÉ
And I also noticed that the enemies generally take more hits to kill.
I think maybe Ninja Gaiden: Sigma may have done that, but then again, maybe I was just getting better at the game... so, just call it a theory.
a GAME theory
Hypothesis.
so you are saying the game was getting easier cause you played better? i'm confused
i mean lol, if they used this system the game should have gone harder if you play better.. :D
I'm sure you were just getting better at it.
I KNEW IT! I almost never died on my first playthrough, and noticed the same enemies eventually took more and more hits before they died
This was like almost in MGS5, when you get more headshots, guards will wear helmets. when you use sleep gas frequently, guards will have masks. When you do more CQC they'll start to wear body armor and shields on their back. When you do most of your missions at night, they wear NV. Pretty cool and overlooked feature of the game.
gamers: Then we just have to keep dying in porpose to lower the difficulty, right?
Pro mode: Hold my plaga
Never knew this! Thanks for the video, RE4 is truly a masterpiece.
Hey Mr. God up there, please take notes from Capcom's Resident Evil 4's difficulty setting. k, thnx.
I must have completed this game dozens of times on
gamecube, ps2 and i am about to buy it on ps4 and
i had no idea this happened.
My favourite of all resident evil games.
Great video, thanks.
I recently watched developer commentary for the games "Ratchet and Clank Going Commando" and "Ratchet and Clank Up your Arsenal" and learned that the games had a system like this in place, it was a little less noticeable as they made sure never to delete enemies. Instead, they lowered the health of the enemies, so you as the player never noticed a change in the level just the ease at which they completed it. Doing it this way made the player feel as if they had gotten better so not to patronise them by making it obvious the game had mercy on the player by making itself easier. The system if I remember correctly also increased the currency in crates in case the player was having trouble due to their lack of fire power. In the later games in the series ("Deadlocked" and "A Crack in Time") they allowed you to pick your difficulty which just told the system at what level to tune you to by setting a minimum and a maximum level to tune you to, so by picking hardcore, for example, the game would set the minimum tuning level to the hardest level on the hard difficulty and the maximum at the hardest difficulty level possible. Adversely if you picked easy, the game would set the minimum level to the lowest possible difficulty level and the maximum difficulty level to the lowest difficulty level on medium setting. This is by far my favourite known iteration of this kind of system.
I'm not too sold on this concept. I feel it somehow cheapens the experience since you never know whether it was your skill that made you pass a challenge, or it was in fact the game deciding you truly suck so it will start secretly handicapping itself. In Dark Souls for example if I kill a boss after a dozen tries - I am happy, because the win gave me a sense of accomplishment. But if I have to wonder whether it was truly my skill that merited the win or simply the game deciding enough is enough and told the boss to start going easier on me... that would kinda suck.
resident evil 4 still doesn't get easier the more you suck, it just get harder when you get better if you played it on normal mode and you find the game a bit easy instead of starting the game again on harder difficulty, the game changes the difficulty it for you without you noticing it and if the game realize your starting to be confused it just returns to it original state.
Well it's just the fact that regardless where the game decides the actual difficulty "line" is, I don't appreciate the game "tweaking" itself based on my performance, because once I'm aware of that fact I may freely question every challenge thrown my way and it immediately sucks out all enjoyment I could have had out of beating it.
Hell, I even hate it when the game explicitly acknowledges that I suck and offers to lower the difficulty - but doing it without me getting a say is a whole new level of patronizing.
McFly dark souls kinda did that tweaking with bosses too. the bosses sometimes transforms and changes it's ways of attacking when it finally realize youre getting used to it's attack patterns and when you die it just transform back to his current state. this video is just shows that resident evil 4 did that on a very subtle way where every death is fair and not just a cheap hits from your enemy. keep in mind this game way created before patches or beta's was even a thing so this developers don't know if one of the enemies is over powered so they have to find a way to fix it (think it as a self patching mechanic) if it wasn't for the tweaking system resident evil 4 would be another devil may cry 3 which requires a release of a special edition just to make it balance and playable.
I've never heard of Dark Souls secretly becoming easier or harder based on player's success rate.
Also, my point is not that the game shouldn't adapt to player's actions. My point is the game should never on its own start implying that player's repeated failure is automatically a wish for a diminished challenge.
I think that the game giving you a mode or option that permanently locks the game on a harder difficulty would be a fantastic solution. Resi 4 might do this, I haven't done Hard Mode or read much about it.
Yes I noticed Resident Evil 4 did this on the PS2 and the GameCube where I played it. I didn't know people didn't notice this. Wasn't it obvious? Maybe I play too many games...
0:23 "Leone the Professional"
Addicted to your videos at the minute, fantastic channel with fantastic content.
How did I not notice this!? Genius and prevents those difficulty spikes on harder skill levels
Dark Souls 2 has a sliding difficulty curve, if you kill enemies 10 times they stop re-spawning but it doesn't get harder when you do well, though you can choose to make the game harder for extra rewards.(Champions Covenant, Bonfire Aesthetics).
And still a lot of people complains about the game eating up your HP when dying too much being Hollow.
Or people complaining that it's too easy because you can despawn.
Or people saying it's not a true Dark Souls because "Team B" at From Software made it.
Goes to show how a lot of people complains because things are not like they want to,
and most "Dark Souls-only" players are just a glorified bunch of hardcore-wannabes.
I personally hate adaptive difficulty, since it basically takes away the incentive to learn and improve as a player.
^ This.
That's what Professional mode is for.
Solibrae III
Pro mode is easy mate, especially on PC with mouse aiming.
Bucky•JaKRBT Whether you find it easy or not has nothing to do with the fact that Professional mode does not use the dynamic difficulty curve in most cases, so you have to 'learn and improve as a player' to beat it because the game does not cut you any slack there.
Solibrae III
True, but the game is still easy though.
Wait this shouldn't be too hard to implement into a combat game right? You pretty much just need to increase the aggression, health, attack damage, speed, add more attack moves to enemies and add more enemies to levels each time you die etc. This could all be done with creating a function that just adds a point to the aggression, heath and the amount of enemies on each level.
Here from GameTheory! Great video you earned a new fan!
Perfect again Mark Brown! Before watching the video I said to myself I hate it when I notice this because I want to beat the challenge as is! However if I don’t notice this happening I still feel that same sense of accomplishment without the demeaning feeling of reducing the difficulty. You also pointed out an angle I didn’t see, in that speed runners can utilize this which I both think is cool and adds an interesting dynamic to speed runs but also can see how it almost makes, for lack of a better term, the speed run a bit wonky and not as pure idk something to think about! Love the content will definitely pitch in when I can, just found you a week ago and appreciate the quality and money coming from fans who want to pay for the continuation of your content! I wanna help push you forward and reward your way of making this Chanel and the content you out forward! I just left a comment on another video of yours but I’ve never come across a UA-cam page before that seems to truly put unique and interesting content the way you do, everyone seems to copy everyone else and it’s a breath of fresh air! Keep it up!
And I'm guessing this difficulty system isn't present when you play in professional right? Because on my first playthrough in professional I died around 25 times and never noticed the game getting easier
Not sure about RE4. I know for certain in RE5 professional locks you at the top of the sliding scale though.
Halo 1, 2 and 3 all did it. They would lower the ranks of certian elites and give them different weapons
At least as late as Destiny The Taken King, it’s still very much a thing Bungie does. It’s fairly subtle-I think one of the main knobs it tunes is how quickly AIs acquire you as a target, but I went in to the last battle of the last mission of the TTK campaign with an absolutely garbage loadout on one of my characters, and it *definitely* got easier with each death.
It also massively reduces damage by AIs if you’re in the menu swapping weapons/etc, but that’s something they’ve actually confirmed.
So the game is self aware of what difficulty you're struggling on and it makes itself slightly easier if you're having trouble? That's pretty cool if you ask me!
This IS something I noticed years ago during this same era of gaming. Like I was just confident I knew it was happening and I vividly remember my dad having a hard time and I just told him to die a couple times and the game let up. This is wild to have this system confirmed.
I love this series. I can't believe I've been on youtube this long and never heard of it.
God I hate dynamic difficulty. If I die 20 times in the same situation, it's because I'm trying to get better at it, and do it properly, it's not because I'm bad and want an easier ride.
+Asdayasman I feel the same way. But, it's probably also because I feel like I'm being patronized, like those super blocks in DKCR and Super Mario as described in the video.
I'm pretty sure Devil May Cry 3 SE did this too, if not the original DMC3.
+Asdayasman I think the concern many designers have when making a challenging game is that they may end up with something so hard that will alienate a large portion of the players. Most gamers would rather make up some excuse and stop playing the game altogether than putting it on easy mode. Also sometimes the difficulty feels rather cheap , which is why the dynamic thing works, at least for me, only in games like Devil May Cry, Dark Souls and God Hand where you can actually feel yourself getting better at them the more you play 'em.
+baseballrogue >Most gamers would rather make up some excuse and stop playing the game altogether than putting it on easy mode.
This is why I am THOROUGHLY of the opinion "fuck the casuals". They don't deserve to impinge on my fun.
I have the same opinion, sir. #fuckcasuals
+Bartosz Skorupa You wanna be best friends for a bit?
This actually makes more similarities to God Hand, some animations from God Hand are the same from RE4, and in God Hand, the same difficulty flow system is there, but more obvious
comments before he mentions God Hand in the video
God Hand was made by the guy who Directed RE4 (Shinji Mikami)
Same developer so understandable, assuming this was actually in RE4, but it's not.
and I thought I was so good at this game because I finished it on professional difficulty.
The difficulty adjustment only works on easy and normal. Pro is pro, no matter how many times you die.
On pro you still have difficulty scaling, it just mostly trends upwards. If you try to conserve ammo or health, you'll find those items drop less frequently and enemies will be able to take, and deal out, more damage.
I always got stuck in the castle because the game stopped dropping ammo and health, trying to conserve ammo really backfired on me there.
Thanks a lot for making this video. I didn't know of this...It makes a lot more sense to me now why the amount of enemies had been greatly reduced each time I played....
Nemesis was a nightmare for me also...Alas, I think that no matter what, Biohazard will forever have a special place in my heart.
Ive played through RE4 so many times my back arched.
I didnt even know that.