Sony has published a patent that talks of amending in-game difficulty levels in real time as a player perhaps struggles or succeeds with certain elements
I might have a one sided perspective because I play mostly roguelites. To me that sounds like a horrible idea. When playing a game, I want to get good enough to beat one difficulty and then move on to the next. For that I need to be able to choose the difficulty myself. If the difficulty constantly changes without the players control it becomes impossible to get acquainted to a certain difficulty and even worse, there is no more challenge because whenever you encounter a challenging part of the game the game will just turn down the difficulty, instead of the player having to improve. What is even the point of “beating” such a game then? The people who come up with nonsense like this obviously don´t play games themselves and don´t understand at all what gaming is about.
There’s also a huge risk of this being misapplied. I remember way back in PS2 days, I was struggling with a jumping puzzle in the original God of War so much so that the game jumped in with a prompt offering to turn down difficulty. But turning down the difficulty in God of War reduces combat difficulty, nothing to do with the huge friggin’ hole I kept falling into from mis-timing jumps.
Honestly, every game I’ve played that offers scaling difficulty based on performance has been because I sucked at the platforming parts that they couldn’t make easier with a setting. Maybe it’s a hint that I should stop playing platformers.
It’s worse with this particular case because the patent is for cross-gaming. You suck at competitive Street Fighter? The next turn-based JRPG difficulty goes down.
Trying to find ways to make something patentable that otherwise wouldn’t be.
They don’t actually have to implement the cross-game side of things because they got a patent that covers “same or different game”, and they can now carefully patent-bully over an unpatentable feature because nobody can afford to fight Sony in a lawsuit.
Gotta love patent law. I work at a company who got a (defensibly valid IMO) patent recently. There was so much silly red tape and complication that our final patent looked unpatentable to an outside observer like myself, but was approved by the Patent Office. Unlike the original feature that was far more straightforward and innovative, but that the Patent Reviewer didn’t really like because he thought some random unrelated product was “prior art”.
And if I recall, that “prior art” was something very much like “list of student names in a database with various metadata like phone number or email address, rendered on a webpage”. My first reaction to their objection was “wait, that is absolutely unpatentable…right?”
My biggest hate to any non-interactive difficulty is that players change.
What if I take a 1-year break? I haven’t gone back to playing Go because I have a ranking I know I can’t maintain, and do not want to play games where I’m giving handicaps to people who I won’t be able to beat on an even level.
But yes, there’s also “different things are harder to different people”
I might have a one sided perspective because I play mostly roguelites. To me that sounds like a horrible idea. When playing a game, I want to get good enough to beat one difficulty and then move on to the next. For that I need to be able to choose the difficulty myself. If the difficulty constantly changes without the players control it becomes impossible to get acquainted to a certain difficulty and even worse, there is no more challenge because whenever you encounter a challenging part of the game the game will just turn down the difficulty, instead of the player having to improve. What is even the point of “beating” such a game then? The people who come up with nonsense like this obviously don´t play games themselves and don´t understand at all what gaming is about.
There’s also a huge risk of this being misapplied. I remember way back in PS2 days, I was struggling with a jumping puzzle in the original God of War so much so that the game jumped in with a prompt offering to turn down difficulty. But turning down the difficulty in God of War reduces combat difficulty, nothing to do with the huge friggin’ hole I kept falling into from mis-timing jumps.
Honestly, every game I’ve played that offers scaling difficulty based on performance has been because I sucked at the platforming parts that they couldn’t make easier with a setting. Maybe it’s a hint that I should stop playing platformers.
Yes, that is indeed another good point against scaling difficulty.
It’s worse with this particular case because the patent is for cross-gaming. You suck at competitive Street Fighter? The next turn-based JRPG difficulty goes down.
WTF they can´t be serious?! How do people even come up with bs like this?
Trying to find ways to make something patentable that otherwise wouldn’t be.
They don’t actually have to implement the cross-game side of things because they got a patent that covers “same or different game”, and they can now carefully patent-bully over an unpatentable feature because nobody can afford to fight Sony in a lawsuit.
Gotta love patent law. I work at a company who got a (defensibly valid IMO) patent recently. There was so much silly red tape and complication that our final patent looked unpatentable to an outside observer like myself, but was approved by the Patent Office. Unlike the original feature that was far more straightforward and innovative, but that the Patent Reviewer didn’t really like because he thought some random unrelated product was “prior art”.
What a headache
And if I recall, that “prior art” was something very much like “list of student names in a database with various metadata like phone number or email address, rendered on a webpage”. My first reaction to their objection was “wait, that is absolutely unpatentable…right?”
My biggest hate to any non-interactive difficulty is that players change.
What if I take a 1-year break? I haven’t gone back to playing Go because I have a ranking I know I can’t maintain, and do not want to play games where I’m giving handicaps to people who I won’t be able to beat on an even level.
But yes, there’s also “different things are harder to different people”