The developers of Deathloop recently held a Discord AMA where they answered questions about the game from fans. One of the features of gameplay that they revealed to their fans was that the upcoming game won’t have a range of difficulty options. Instead, the game will mold itself to the player’s abilities, becoming harder or easier depending on how good the player is.
They said, in response to a question about the difficulty: “There is no difficulty option, but we have an adaptive difficulty system. As you can play the same maps several times at different moments of your play-through, we had to think about a system that can make the game challenging the more you play. If the NPCs accuracy is forgiven at the beginning, they will be more accurate, aggressive, and reactive the more you perform.”
They also added, regarding players being matched together in multiplayer: “The PvP system matches players with similar skill and tries to keep a fair and balance win and loss ratio. This is an organic way to choose the most accurate player depending on your performances and play-through history.” So hopefully one player won’t completely dominate the field as Colt or Julianna.
This might not sound typical for most shooters, but it makes more sense if you consider Deathloop a roguelike more than a first-person shooter. In many of those I’ve played, the loops become more difficult the more competent the player becomes. It would also fit nicely in with the detail announced in the same AMA that the player would only have one save file and wouldn’t be able to save in mission. It makes sense: If you could save-scum the game would be prohibitively difficult as the game would assume you’re extremely good at it as the only thing it would “know” is that you accomplish every objective.
Source: Discord AMA