[Talbain]

Other than games that come from the arcade (shooters, platformers, beat-em-ups, fighters, etc.), I'd say most games have backwards difficulty curves. RPGs generally become easier as you get more party members, action/adventure as you get more items, life, etc., and FPS games as you get better guns. Any game that really "builds" the character as you go along can't really be said to have a forwards difficulty curve unless the function gained is novel; because everything before the point at which you gain the ability becomes much easier.
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[Talbain]

In what sense do you mean when does it work? Structure wise, there's never been a game where you can play it first with a backwards difficulty curve, and then with a forward one. So the simple answer would be to say that it works in any game it's applied to, because both have never been applied to a game. Well, that's not entirely accurate. It should be said that both have never been applied to a game in an effective manner, such that the curve steepening or falling changes the experience itself.
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[Talbain]

[Talbain]

I dunno. Somehow the idea of opponents scaling leads to a lack of a sense of accomplishment, or want thereof. The MMO is basically an extreme example of this, where your opponents have the ability, in most cases, to scale themselves to a point that they're unreachable, creating a sort of gap between players. Removing the gap altogether, such that one doesn't really exist in the first place, would seem a bit more enamoring to me, except that the way it's done in Ridge Racer 4 is by having everything scale. I'd rather play against AI that plays smarter, not against AI that's continually "matched" against my abilities.
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