Adaptive Difficulty or Set Difficulty?

Hey all, I was wondering what ever happened to the concept of this. I remember that Borderlands tried something like this in Multiplayer, but can't think of any in the past. I can't place my finger on many other games but here's something I thought about while playing.

 I have been playing Mass Effect 2 (2nd playthrough Insanity) and it has been very frustrating. It is challenging, yes, and I do enjoy challenge, but I feel that the challenge can come at a steadier pace. At times, I will die constantly and start questioning various aspects of the game: Why does every enemy have a shield?  Is this supposed to be fun? Is this even possible? Why am I even playing on this difficulty? Perhaps I shouldn't be, but here's what I think.
 
At this point I am not enjoying myself and just questioning every little detail. There are games that have had something in the form of adaptive difficulty and that is Borderlands. The only problem is that it doesn't work for singleplayer. Borderlands actually scales the difficulty back and forth depending on how many players are present. I ask, why can't this be done in singleplayer games as well? Instead of players being the independent variable why not something like damage? The difficulty could sway back and forth during a few beginning missions or training levels and measure the damage/health that's traded back and forth between players and A.I. enemies until an average is found. After this the difficulty could set, or it could be a more persistent system (either or). 
 
I understand that some players may want an option to really test their abilities, so maybe a message might come up asking players whether to stay at that difficulty or not once a maximum difficulty has been reached. It just seems that games are focusing too much on difficulty for replay value for singleplayer as well as achievements relating to this. In my honest opinion, it makes the game less enjoyable due to the pursuit of achievements, amount of failures, etc. Here's what I wanna ask you guys:
 

• Which games have had this system and implemented it really well? 
• Why do developers not utilize a method like this? (it could be as simple as hide difficulties and change depending on deaths, kills, or damage.
• Would you like something like this or do you prefer having the option?    
• Would you rather just have a set difficulty like Assassin's Creed (just an example)?
• Could this be as important as something like autosaves in the world of gaming if done properly?

Hey all, I was wondering what ever happened to the concept of this. I remember that Borderlands tried something like this in Multiplayer, but can't think of any in the past. I can't place my finger on many other games but here's something I thought about while playing.

 I have been playing Mass Effect 2 (2nd playthrough Insanity) and it has been very frustrating. It is challenging, yes, and I do enjoy challenge, but I feel that the challenge can come at a steadier pace. At times, I will die constantly and start questioning various aspects of the game: Why does every enemy have a shield?  Is this supposed to be fun? Is this even possible? Why am I even playing on this difficulty? Perhaps I shouldn't be, but here's what I think.
 
At this point I am not enjoying myself and just questioning every little detail. There are games that have had something in the form of adaptive difficulty and that is Borderlands. The only problem is that it doesn't work for singleplayer. Borderlands actually scales the difficulty back and forth depending on how many players are present. I ask, why can't this be done in singleplayer games as well? Instead of players being the independent variable why not something like damage? The difficulty could sway back and forth during a few beginning missions or training levels and measure the damage/health that's traded back and forth between players and A.I. enemies until an average is found. After this the difficulty could set, or it could be a more persistent system (either or). 
 
I understand that some players may want an option to really test their abilities, so maybe a message might come up asking players whether to stay at that difficulty or not once a maximum difficulty has been reached. It just seems that games are focusing too much on difficulty for replay value for singleplayer as well as achievements relating to this. In my honest opinion, it makes the game less enjoyable due to the pursuit of achievements, amount of failures, etc. Here's what I wanna ask you guys:
 

• Which games have had this system and implemented it really well? 
• Why do developers not utilize a method like this? (it could be as simple as hide difficulties and change depending on deaths, kills, or damage.
• Would you like something like this or do you prefer having the option?    
• Would you rather just have a set difficulty like Assassin's Creed (just an example)?
• Could this be as important as something like autosaves in the world of gaming if done properly?

I wouldn't really say that Borderlands is a master of scaling difficulty, but I have found that I don't like games easing up on me because I played crappy for a little while. I do like how some games let you change difficulty whenever you want to because it always gives a good option of basically giving up on a harder difficulty level, instead of adapting to me sucking. I like the feeling of reward I get after beating a difficult boss, and I don't want that to then be soured by the realization that the boss was easier than when I first fought him. 
However, I do enjoy Valve's way of making crates drop more health when you need it, and I think that in games without regenerative health, something like that is absolutely essential.

I like the way Bethesda and BioWare did it for Oblivion, FO3, and Dragon Age. Big, fat, blatant menu options that can be adjusted/changed at any time.

  Left 4 Dead and especially Left 4 Dead 2 scale depending on how many players are in the game, ie Normal difficulty will be different when 4 players are in as opposed to just 2. Also the 'director' system they have in place seems to do a good job of changing events based on how well or poorly you are playing, for example if all players health are in green, and you have health packs, cue Tank. Or if your moving really quickly a Witch in a narrow corridor.  
 
I also like the way games like 'Splosion Man let you skip a level if you die a certain number of times allowing you to go back to it later so you're not stuck on one level and just give up, (even though punishment for doing so comes in the form of a pink tutu).
 
At the moment I'm having the same problem you are having but with Batman. I love that game, I love the creeping, the riddles, the back story and generally being a bad-ass. But when those boss battles take place (not Ivy, or Croc) but the ones that were just crowbared in there at the last minute to pad out the game's length and add nothing to the story ie pretty much anyone after the first Titan, like the one with the two titans in the green house or the one with the Titan and the bad guys in the elevators, and the final one with the two titans, it's really depressing. After the first one I get it, give me some thing new, do I really need to fight 5 more? And what's the game's answer to higher difficuly during these pointless bossfights? Better AI? Different attack patterns? Environmental hazzards? Nope, more Henchmen. Brilliant.

I went into my Insanity play-through in the first Mass Effect until my character was almost level 60. I demolished that play-through.
 
If I hit the highest LVL (30?) when I do an Insanity play-through, how does it compare?

I like adaptive difficulty for two reasons. If I suck, I'll probably be fine (and most of the time, I do suck) and there will be no achievements tied to difficulty.

I like being able to change the difficulty on the fly, but I don't like the game doing it for me. If I set the difficulty to hard, more often then not it's because I want to push my abilities(I'm generally a "normal" sort of guy). I don't like being frustrated, but I don't want a game to hold my hand the whole way, either.

I think adaptive difficulties are a cool idea. I remember me and a good family friend that lived with us really enjoyed playing Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando and each of us replayed it a couple times to max out all of the weapons, yet we thought it would be a really great idea if it would progressively scale up the difficulty in each playthrough. After you beat the game a couple times, your weapons and just incredible and you can breeze through pretty much any enemy with little effort. If it could have kept getting harder each time, it definitely would have increased the replay value. 
 
However, I'm not so fond of the idea of a gaming becoming easier and easier if you suck, or holding your hand through difficult spots like in New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Set difficulties are cool because then you know everyone who plays it is enduring the same challenge. Let's say you really really sucked or played terribly on purpose, just to get the game to reduce the difficulty for you, and then you could easily beat it and rack up achievements or whatever. You certainly wouldn't get the same level of satisfaction out of it, and really you'd just be cheating the whole adaptive difficulty system, as well as yourself.

" I went into my Insanity play-through in the first Mass Effect until my character was almost level 60. I demolished that play-through.  If I hit the highest LVL (30?) when I do an Insanity play-through, how does it compare? "

And no...unfortunately I am Paul Mike..not Oscar. Thanks for asking though! "

Set, set, set, set, set. The only game with adaptive difficulty where I think it worked well was God Hand, because it got harder if you did well instead of becoming easier when you did poorly. In an RPG, certain areas should be inaccessible to low level characters, unlike Fallout 3. This is my humble opinion, but I like to be challenged by a high difficulty sometimes and know that it's not going to let up no matter how many times I fail. 
 
But I also hate when games consider a higher difficulty to be 'you die faster, enemies die slower.' IMHO, real difficulty increases involve better enemy AI, throwing more enemies at me, or tougher enemies at earlier points in the game. Just doing damage modifications is lame and feels cheap rather than challenging, which explains why I've beaten Doom 1+2 on 'Utra-Violence' but only scratched the surface of the COD games on anything higher than Normal.

I'm always more of a set difficulty, because when it's done well it feels like you've really improved and succeeded at something. The best kind of adaptive difficulty iv'e yet seen in a game is Demon's Souls, making it easier the better you get, so you still have the achievement of getting better at the game, then subsequently becoming an absolute badass over those once incredibly difficult foes. 
 
@PowerSerj said:

" I like the way Bethesda and BioWare did it for Oblivion, FO3, and Dragon Age. Big, fat, blatant menu options that can be adjusted/changed at any time. "

I remember Max Payne had adaptive difficulty, not sure about Max Payne 2. 
I used to love adaptive difficulty, but as I played more and more games with great/fair diffulty setting, one of my problem with adaptive difficulty is that it somewhat diminish the feeling that you are being good at playing the game because the game just becomes unfairly hard for you at some point if you haven't died for a long time, making a perfect run impossible; and it also diminish the sense of accomplishment  when you can simply overcome any challenge by dying multiple times in a roll, intentionally or unintantionally, to make the the enemy AI completely retarded.

If you're playing Mass Effect 2 on Insanity, wouldn't adaptive game difficulty defeat the purpose?  Isn't it supposed to be bat-shit hard to test your skill and commitment?  I'm only asking because the game has the option of dialing down the difficulty if you want.  When I play Dragon Age: Origins, sometimes I need to drop it down a skill level to get through a rough spot then I bump it back up when I am over the hump.  Wouldn't adaptive game difficulty be the same thing only the computer is doing that for you?  I think all games should have adjustable difficulty throughout the single-player adventure instead of something that is set at the beginning and any change requires a fresh restart.  I think that is more reliable that the computer trying to judge whether or not it needs to make things easier on me.  I want the choice (and shame ;-D) to be mine.

I'm trying to remember which game(s) has this... but I think its best when you can have a set difficulty that only changes when you die a set number of times in a single area.  'Splosion Man had something like this, where after you die 6-8 times, it would ask you if you want to skip the level.

I prefer set difficulty, as an adaptive one can be just as frustrating, only for the entire game. If the enemies level with you in an RPG, tackling a really hard boss becomes impossible due to the lack of grinding. I'd prefer that the difficulty be set so I don't have to worry about trying every single tactic possible on a boss to get them dead.

Both could work if implemented correctly.
 
For example you might choose a difficulty setting that altered set statistics (rarity, strength, accuracy, etc...) like most difficulty settings, then the enemy AI could adjust itself to counter your play style. The initial concepts of the A-Life system used in STALKER was supposed to be super advanced and scalable to your style. Too bad that never played out.