History Main / DynamicDifficulty

* ''Franchise/ResidentEvil'':

* The ''Videogame/SpyroTheDragon'' series scales difficulty depending on the skill of the player. Unfortunately, this results in an individual playing on the lowest difficulty setting being incapable of completing the third game 100%.

* ''Minecraft'' surprisingly features a dynamic difficulty system in Survival mode that is separate to (but impacted by) the world difficulty. The longer a player stays in one location and the longer a certain world has been active, the more difficult the game gets. With each passing day-night cycle, the difficulty steps up a small amount. In time, this manifests itself in monsters having higher chances of spawning with armor, enchanted weapons, increased strength of certain attacks, seeing the player from further away, and even enabling certain monsters to access new attacks. At even higher difficulties, the enchantment levels on the monsters' weapons and armor increase as well.

* ''VideoGame/{{Homeworld}}'' scales enemy fleets to match yours. However, it doesn't count captured enemy ships. By kiting enemy fleets while your salvage corvettes steal them one-by-one, you can become game-shatteringly overpowerful.
** In ''Homeworld 2'', capturing ships is no longer practical and enemy fleets scale so heavily in comparison to yours that building more ships makes the game harder, not easier. The strongest tactic is to self-destruct your fleet at the end of a mission -- you can rebuild in a few scant minutes but the enemy will still be helpless.

* In academic institutions, grading "curves" are these; the instructor may adjust the score requirements for each letter grade based on how well their students are doing, usually if they feel that they were initially too hard on their students.

* ''VideoGame/GodHand'' will adjust the difficulty up a level (1, 2, 3, and [[HarderThanHard Die]]) if the player lands enough hits on enemies, increasing enemy strength and durability. It will then scale the difficulty back down if they take too many hits. You gain more rewards for defeating more enemies at higher difficulty levels. The game has "normal" difficulty settings, as well - the difficulty level never rises above 2 in Easy Mode, and Hard Mode has you ''always'' on Level Die.

* ''Minecraft'' surprisingly features a dynamic difficulty system in Survival mode that is separate to (but impacted by) the world difficulty. The longer a player stays in one location and the longer a certain world has been active, the more difficult the game gets. With each passing day-night cycle, the difficulty steps up a small amount. In time, this manifests itself in monsters having higher chances of spawning with armor, enchanted weapons, increased strength of certain attacks, seeing the player from further away, and even enabling certain monsters to access new attacks. At even higher difficulties, the enchantment levels the monsters' weapons and armor increase as well.

* ''Videogame/Minecraft'' surprisingly features a dynamic difficulty system in Survival mode that is separate to (but impacted by) the world difficulty. The longer a player stays in one location and the longer a certain world has been active, the more difficult the game gets. With each passing day-night cycle, the difficulty steps up a small amount. In time, this manifests itself in monsters having higher chances of spawning with armor, enchanted weapons, increased strength of certain attacks, seeing the player from further away, and even enabling certain monsters to access new attacks. At even higher difficulties, the enchantment levels the monsters' weapons and armor increase as well.

* ''Minecraft'' surprisingly features a dynamic difficulty system in Survival mode that is separate to (but impacted by) the world difficulty. The longer a player stays in one location and the longer a certain world has been active, the more difficult the game gets. With each passing day-night cycle, the difficulty steps up a small amount. In time, this manifests itself in monsters having higher chances of spawning with armor, enchanted weapons, increased strength of certain attacks, seeing the player from further away, and even enabling certain monsters to access new attacks. At even higher difficulties, the enchantment levels the monsters' weapons and armor increase as well.

A certain measure of Dynamic Difficulty is considered good design practice in tabletop (particularly board) games, as major principles of design are "Don't make a player think they're definitely going to lose" and "Don't make a player ''wish'' they'd lose ''as long as it happens right now and this stupid game is finally over''". As it is very easy to create an UnstableEquilibrium where gathering ressources leads to being able to gather more resources later on, many games consciously employ a headwind effect that subtly slows down the leading player by having them auto-targeted by certain attacks or by awarding benefits according to reverse placement.

* In ''VideoGame/TheSimpsonsHitAndRun'', cars that you're supposed to follow or stay close to drop below your max speed when you fall behind and climb above it when you get close. At the same time, cars that you're supposed to outrun or escape from do the opposite. This also gets less exaggerated as the game goes on to make the challenges more difficult as you progress through the game.

** In ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil4'', playing well will increase the amount of spawned enemies and improve their AI; conversely, playing poorly and dying often reduces the number of foes and disables most of their AI. Ammo and health item rarity is also affected by dying.

** There are two notable exceptions to this system. The first is the Lynel and its allies that hang out in the Colosseum, who do gradually grow in strength, but their progression is linked to how many Divine Beasts you have freed, instead of enemies defeated. The second is the Yiga Clan, who instead get a strength upgrade after a story event ([[spoiler:specifically, returning the Thunderhelm to Riju]]).

** There are two notable exceptions to this system. The first is the Lynel and its allies that hang out in the Colosseum, who do gradually grow in strength, but their progression is linked to how many Divine Beasts you have freed, instead of enemies defeated. The second is the Yiga Clan, who instead get a strength upgrade due to a story event ([[spoiler:specifically after returning the Thunderhelm to Riju]]).

* CPU-controlled [[MechaMook Jugger]] from ''[[VideoGame/AdvanceWars Advance Wars: Dual Strike]]'' has this as part of his C.O. Power "Overclock", along with an increase to his [[LuckBasedMission positive and negative extremes of his luck modifiers]]. He has two separate AI scripts in the game, [[ArtificialStupidity a quite stupid one that he uses normally]], and a [[ArtificialBrilliance much smarter one]] that he follows when his power is active. Of course when you're playing as Jugger, all you get is the luck modifiers. [[CaptainObvious Your DS can't make you stupid when you're not using your CO's powers, after all]].

* Most games offer some sort of "mystery award" feature, which gives a random award - usually points, feature completions, or even lighting extra balls. If you're having a poor game, it's much more likely to award a lit extra ball -- on the other hand, don't expect more than a small point reward if you're doing well. In multi player games when not in competition mode it may give a player who behind in score better awards.

* In ''VideoGame/NeedForSpeed: [[VideoGame/NeedForSpeedMostWanted Most Wanted]]'', the AI's cars [[Main/RubberBandAI get faster the more races you win, and become slower when you lose one]]. Thus the easiest way to win races is to deliberately lose about every fifth race to keep the competitors' car speeds as low as one wants.

* ''VideoGame/GranTurismo 4'' uses "[[BraggingRightsReward A-Spec Points]]" to encourage you to choose slower, less powerful cars to win the race: the more powerful your car is, the smaller your score will be. If, for example, you manage to win against a squad of sleek German machines with a puny little Pontiac Sunfire, you'll win 200 points; but if you win the race with the superpowered Polyphony Formula Gran Turismo, you'll win 1 single point. However, A-Spec points aren't a reliable method of judging difficulty, as the game seems to mainly base the point levels on your car's specs relative to the AI, and it's possible to get easy 200 point races in vehicles such as the Suzuki GSX-R/4, which much less powerful than most supercars but is good handling and very light.

* ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBrosForNintendo3DSAndWiiU'' borrows from ''VideoGame/KidIcarusUprising'' the system of using currency to increase the single-player mode's difficulty level. The more coins the player wagers before beginning, the more difficult the battles, but the more valuable the prizes for victory. Losing causes the difficulty to be reduced by one half of a level, as well as costing some of the initial wager and a few prizes that had been won. Higher difficulties are required to face the TrueFinalBoss, who takes on more forms depending on the difficulty level.

* ''VideoGame/{{beatmania}} IIDX'' has Step Up mode. First, your current [[KyuAndDanRanks dan rank]] dicatates the initial pool of charts you get to play; the higher your rank, the harder the songs you'll start with. Second, as you clear songs, the the game gives you harder charts to play, while failing songs will decrease the difficulty of charts allowed. To accomodate this feature, Step Up guarantees three stages, even if you fail your first two.

* ''[[VideoGame/LegoAdaptationGame Lego Star Wars II]]'', ''Indiana Jones'', and ''Batman'' feature "Adaptive Difficulty" which merely affects the amount of {{Lego}} studs you lose upon death depending on how well you play, which can go up to a very high amount.

* Games in the ''Franchise/CrashBandicoot'' series will often disable environmental hazards and/or move checkpoints if a player dies too often on one particular obstacle.

* In academic institutions, grading "curves" are these; the instructor may adjust the score requirements for each letter grade based on how well their performances are doing, usually if they feel that they were initially too hard on their students.