Static difficulty

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Regardless of the player's skill, the difficulty of Pac-Man remains fixed.

Static difficulty describes a game where the challenge is predetermined by the designer and remains fixed regardless of the player's actions. While the game may still become more difficult as the player progresses, even the rate at which it becomes more difficult is fixed. This contrasts with dynamic difficulty where the game adjusts its challenge to match the player's skill level. Static difficulty applies to single player games and player-vs-AI games, but not player-vs-player games. The vast majority of games use static difficulty rather than dynamic difficulty because it's far easier to design. Early games with static difficulty typically had a flat skill–challenge relationship, but, when designers began awarding power-ups for skilled play, they inadvertently caused the skill–challenge relationship to reduce.

Usage

Since static difficulty is the default, there isn't anything a game designer has to do to use it. As long as they aren't altering the game based on the player's performance, the game is using static difficulty. While this makes static difficulty much easier to implement, it's not without its share of problems. Trying to balance a game with static difficulty so that beginners don't find it too difficult, and experts still find it challenging is hard to balance. So many early arcade games alienate players by either starting out too hard or have a very steep difficulty curve. Home games often solve this problem by introducing difficulty levels.

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