History Main / RubberBandAI

** In the Original ''VideoGame/FZero'' game it's [[UnwinnableByMistake physically impossible]] to beat the Death Wind course using the Golden Fox on the Master Difficulty. All the other vehicles have a max speed of 478 k/h and remain at that speed the whole race while the Golden Fox's top speed is 438. Well... ok, it's TECHNICALLY possible, but it's only been pulled off once, in a [[{{Speedrun}} Tool Assisted Speedrun]], [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33dli_QAdHA by getting an early lead and making the car in second place push him along]].
** ''VideoGame/FZero'' is infamous for that. You can, with just moderate skill, give the enemy a full lap of advantage, and still win, at least in easy mode (and mind you, the race is only 5 laps!). But getting more than a few seconds ahead of the enemy is completely impossible. Combine this with the game's habit of literally throwing explosive cars at you in the final turns, and you have a recipe for disaster.

* ''VideoGame/MidnightClub'': ''Los Angeles'' has the variety that also works in reverse. They even (more or less) lampshade it.

* In the ''VideoGame/MegaManZero'' games, the difficulty increases or decreases depending on your rank. This combined with the games' FakeDifficulty makes it seem as though the ranking/difficulty system in question is the games' way of "taking pity" on the less experienced players; something that some of those players [[DontYouDarePityMe may take as an insult]].
** Want more? Get a low Rank or Escape a mission in Zero 1 and you'll get a silly codename.
** It gets worse: In the second and third games, you don't get all the unlockables unless you manage to maintain at least an '''A''' rank.

* Completely averted in ''VideoGame/GranTurismo''. In career races with no class restrictions, a player can put in a super-fast UsefulNotes/FormulaOne machine against against several low-level sedans. The difference between first and second place isn't just several seconds, [[CurbStompBattle but several laps]] if the race is long enough.

* The otherwise superb ''Tiger Woods PGA Tour'' series uses this heavily in career mode. Shoot well under par, and computer opponents will put up absurdly good scores on the next round. Play poorly, and they'll all post mediocre scores. As a result, the easiest way to win tournaments is to DoWellButNotPerfect the first two days so the computer will hover around par, and then step on the gas in the later rounds.

** Though unlike most other examples on this page, we are talking about a match fixed in a small arena, specifically [[http://unreal.wikia.com/wiki/DM-HyperBlast DM-HyperBlast]], a small spaceship midway through the cosmos. Which translates to low gravity, little footing, and of course a BottomlessPit ''[[UpToEleven wrapping the whole stage, even upwards!]]'' Also, there's an ASMD Shock Rifle laying on top of the ship, a gun specialized in pushing people to their deaths should they be close enough to an environmental hazard. Do the math, and see what was supposed to be the hardest fight in the whole game suddenly becoming a much-needed BreatherLevel.

A hypothetical: You're playing ''VideoGame/MaddenNFL''. Your team is up by 13, there's three and a half minutes left until the end of the game, and you have the ball. Your victory is assured, right?

* ''Top Gear'' (or ''Top Racer'' in Japan) has this with your partner: if you have the red car (the fastest and most oil-wasting in the game) and your white car (the slowest but most efficient car) partner goes way behind, the partner AI can go even to 240 km/h, when it's max speed is 210 km/h, without boosting! But if the opposite applies, the AI slows down to 150 km/h until you are closer. The non-partner AI in first place do the opposite: if you don't reach the first place near the last lap, they are too far or even more than a lap over you (in extreme cases, taking a lap over the second place), the on-screen speed? 190-195 km/h.

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* The ''TabletopGame/OldWorldOfDarkness'' games had something like this at one point. Success of an action was determined by rolling a number of dice corresponding to one's skill. Rolls higher than a target number were successes, lower were failures, and 1's cancelled out successes. Having more 1's than successes constituted a botch, in which the action not only failed, but led to disastrous consequences. A character with more dice, constituting more experience and power, would therefore be more likely to ''spectacularly'' fail than an inexperienced one. This was thankfully revised in later editions, to where a botch also required that no successes at all had been rolled. A simple example follows. Say you have a difficulty 7 roll, where 7 or greater is a success. With one die, your odds of a botch are 1 in 10 if you don't get to reroll your 10. Odds of success are 4 in 10. If you are rolling two dice, then there are 100 possible outcomes. ELEVEN of them are botches, for 11/100 (11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 21, 31, 41, 51, and 61). However, 56 of them are successes, for 23/50 chance of success. The chance of success went up 16%, but the chance of a botch went up 1%. The effect of rerolling 10s is really hard to calculate, but at higher difficulties, it was not enough to make up for it.
* And the ''TabletopGame/NewWorldOfDarkness'' discarded the "botch" rule for just that reason. "[[CriticalFailure Dramatic Failure]]" requires that penalties ''completely'' erase your dice pool, ''and'' that you roll a 1 on the "chance die" you get instead (which only succeeds on a 10). Instead of "The better you are, the harder you fall", it becomes "If things go against you, you're going to suffer". It's still possible to botch, but only in certain situations. For example, making any roll involving Presence as a [[TabletopGame/VampireTheRequiem Nosferatu]][[note]]A clan of vampires that all have some aspect that makes others inclined to avoid them[[/note]] not only reinstates the botch rule for that roll, but also removes the ability to re-roll on 10's.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Shadowrun}}'' mirrors the ''World of Darkness'' system considerably (Shadowrun, however, uses standard six-sided dice rather than ten-siders). In earlier editions, you rolled dice so as to get at least a target number (if it's more than 6, you had to roll for 6's and then reroll to add onto their total, hoping to eventually reach the number), and 1s were always considered a fail. The 4th Edition changed it so that "hit" was simply anything at least a 5 and you tried to get a requisite number. 1s are still bad as a majority of 1s results in a "glitch", a setback that occurs even if you succeed (unless of course, you roll a majority of 1s and no "hits": the dreaded "critical glitch").

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* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D31rhjKHytg Jalyss]] weighs in re: [[EmptyLevels scaled levelling]]. (Spoiler: She doesn't like it any more than the rest of us.)

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* Discord from ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' operates like this since he's basically just toying with the ponies for his own amusement. His powers are essentially unlimited and he could easily abrakadabra their ''lungs'' away and win right then and there if he wanted to, but he continually just barely steps up his game to keep just on top of them because [[ItAmusedMe it's more fun]]. When they outdo his maze by flying or magic, he takes their wings and horns. When Fluttershy outdoes his brainwashing BreakingSpeech, he just brainwashes her by force. On the flip side when they lose his game, he tells them where the Elements actually ''are'' located, and when they've given up he basically leaves them to their own devices to enjoy the WorldGoneMad.

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->''This era also witnesses the dawning of the "No Bleeping Way Game," where you are playing out a "season" against the computer and doing a little ''too'' well, so the computer gets ticked and make sure there is ''no bleeping way'' you are winning the next game -- dropped passes, improbable kick returns, random fumbles and so on. God, I hate the No Bleeping Way Game.''

* For various reasons, the producers of ''Series/TheAmazingRace'' create what are known as "bunching points" or "equalizers," usually involving operating hours of businesses or transport schedules, so that no team gets too far ahead or behind: Logistically, it's easier to keep the crew in a single country at a time and you don't want to tie up locals in assisting/judging tasks for days on end. Dramatically, having wins or losses be a ForegoneConclusion every week [[BoringInvincibleHero is]] [[BoringFailureHero boring]]. The one season they didn't set up these equalizers, two teams got so far ahead on leg 9, that it was impossible for the other teams to catch up, and the next three legs before the finale were pretty much pointless.

* ''VideoGame/TheGetaway'': At the latter stages for both Marc and Frank, where any gang starts chasing you, they'll always be faster than even the only sports car in the game, and only a crash will stop them from going to your side and empty their guns on your current car.

* Perhaps the most noticeable example is the ''VideoGame/MaddenNFL'' games, which are often accused of featuring an "AI catch-up mode", in which opposing teams inexplicably become drastically more potent in the final minutes of a close game, often to the point where preventing them from completing long bombs and scoring touchdowns seems like an impossible task (sometimes called "Robo QB"). Some Madden players, however, dispute the existence of Rubber Band A.I. in the game, arguing that this is more likely the perception of players who are unable to adjust to the AI's late-game all-out offensive strategy. It is also possible that the difficulty level may have something to do with it.
** In most cases, the AI level of rubberbanding is directly related to the difficulty level, particularly in EA Sports games. On the easiest difficulty level, the AI doesn't rubberband at all: the same tactics, the same plays, over and over. As difficulty level goes up, so does the degree of rubberbanding: on the highest difficulty level, as soon as the player reaches anything approaching a lead, the AI responds aggressively to shut down any hope of winning...much like what sports teams do in real life. The rubberbanding does ''not'' work in the opposite direction, however. The AI just goes back to the normal difficulty.
** ''NBA 2k'' and ''NBA Live'' actually have this as a feature, Clutch Factor and CPU Assistance respectively. It does work both ways, though. Doesn't make it any less irritating to see Kobe Bryant missing clutch layup after clutch layup.
** Truth in real life for that last one after game 7 of the 2010 NBA finals, where Kobe shot a horrible 6-for-24 in the biggest game of his career.

* ''Top Gear'' (or ''Top Racer'' in Japan) has this with your partner, if you have the red car (the fastest and oil-waster in the game) and your white car (the most slower but oil-economic car) partner goes way behind, the partner AI can go even to 240 km/h, when it's max speed is 210 km/h, without boosting!, but if the opposite applies, the AI goes to 150 km/h until you are closer. The non-partner AI in first place do the opposite, if you don't reach the first place near the last lap, they are too far or even more than a lap over you (on extreme cases, taking a lap over the second place), the on-screen speed? 190-195 km/h.

* The arcade game ''Pigskin: 621 A.D.'' (released as ''Jerry Glanville's Pigskin Footbrawl'' on the Sega Genesis) is a game vaguely reminiscent of rugby and American football, though set in the Middle Ages. You could punch other players out, or get into a brawl (read: two characters collide and [[BigBallOfViolence turn into a dust cloud]]) on the field. If one side is losing badly, the crowd starts chanting, "Send in the troll!" At which point a big green troll enters the field for the losing side. He's immune to the game's weapons and much more difficult to knock down. If the fortunes reverse and the losing team starts winning, a troll can come in for the ''opposite'' side as well, to even things up. Then of course, if one team is truly getting a spanking? Simple, TROLL BOWL!!! Every player is swapped out for invincible, immortal Trolls!

* ''[[VideoGame/SiN SiN Episodes]]'' was released with a much-touted dynamic difficulty system -- kill the enemies too quickly and they'd send more next time, get too many headshots and the next group will wear helmets, etc. Unfortunately, encounters that were ''supposed'' to be easier or harder were counted in this, resulting in situations that a hard encounter would be made virtually impossible due to how quickly you dispatched an easy one.

** Though unlike most other examples on this page, we are talking about a match fixed in a small arena, specifically [[http://unreal.wikia.com/wiki/DM-HyperBlast DM-HyperBlast]], a small spaceship midway through the cosmos. Which translates to, low gravity, little footing, and of course a BottomlessPit ''[[UpToEleven wrapping the whole stage, even upwards!]]'' Also, there's an ASMD Shock Rifle laying on top of the ship, a gun specialized in pushing people to their deaths should they be close enough to an environmental hazard. Do the math, and see what was supposed to be the hardest fight in the whole game suddenly becoming a much-needed BreatherLevel.

** This actually spawned the meme of Karma Charger, which came from the habit of chargers conveniently spawning and punting a player halfway across the map if they leave their group. While any infected can do this, Chargers are the hardest of them to kill, and cannot be pushed off other survivors and must be killed.
** Karma Charger actually appears whenever the team is making a dickish move, at least as per the meme. One of the most obvious ones is teamkilling.

* In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII,'' Bizarro∙ and Safer∙Sephiroth's stats are based on a ton of variables, one of which is your party members' levels. Having all of your characters at level 99 makes Safer one of the strongest final bosses in the series, only surpassed by [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII Orphan]]. Of course, by that point, you probably have [[GameBreaker Knights of the Round]]...
** [[DoWellButNotPerfect Casting Knights of the Round]] on the earlier fight against Jenova∙SYNTHESIS [[FromBadToWorse adds 60000 HP to Bizzaro and 80000 HP to Safer]]. Granted, at high level this is significantly less health than you can take off with [[GameBreaker one casting of it]].
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII''. However, since the ability to draw magic and junction it to your stats was technically separate from the {{Character Level}}s gained from actual battling, it was very easy to [[GameBreaker unbalance]] the game with some ingenuity.

Wrong. Suddenly, the AI is twice as fast as you, knows what play you're going to run, and shuts down your offense, forcing you to punt - or, worse, your running back with a high "Hands" rating fumbles the ball, or an AI defensive back makes a miracle interception. On their drive, the AI marches down-field with no difficulty by completing several consecutive bombs, scoring an easy touchdown. Worse still, your clutch plays whether you control the offense or defense will be negated by penalties, giving the AI a [[JustForPun sporting chance]]. Rinse and repeat, and before you know it you've lost what you thought was a safe lead. The video game has just experienced a MiracleRally.

Why does this happen? The further you stretch a rubber band, the harder it pulls. It's the same idea here. Basically, the better you are doing at a game, the harder the game gets in order to continue to present a challenge. This isn't just the idea of making the game harder and harder as you progress farther and farther, this means that the level you're on ''right now'' will, for seemingly no reason, ramp up its difficulty if it thinks you're doing too well. This may, in some cases, be coupled with the computer [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard actually cheating]], rather than just getting better.

** Interestingly enough, in the original version for SNES, CPU opponents always finish in the order they start the race, plus or minus one depending on how the player does (so if, say, Bowser starts the race in the first position, he will remain there until you finish a race ahead of him, at which point he will always finish at whatever position he next starts unless he manages to pull out ahead of you again). This can be used to game the AI in amusing ways, especially in order to neuter the [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard cheating ones]] that get weapons and powerups a human racer doesn't have access to.
** And if you're good at hitting shortcuts, expect the computer to be able to suddenly hit a top speed well beyond what any human could do. The most blatant instance is Rainbow Road in ''VideoGame/MarioKart64'', which has a shortcut that can literally skip 40% of the course (and it is, to this date, the longest course in the series' history). Even if you hit said shortcut on all three laps, the computer is still able to catch you on the last lap.
*** By turning on the map-view in ''64'' it's possible to watch opponents suddenly accelerate to unrealistic speed when they are far behind or ahead. Allow a single CPU driver to get too far ahead in 150cc and they'll reach the finish line in times no human player, even drifting experts, can finish in.

* The first ''VideoGame/MaxPayne'' proudly touted this as one of its features, with arguably less-than-optimal results. Even on the "easy" difficulty setting it ramped up the durability, accuracy and reflexes of the enemies until you died at least once per level.
-->''"Why did they even bother giving you difficulty options? As far as I could tell your options were "insane / insane / impossible / impossible with a time limit."'' -- curst, Quarter to Three forums