this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2023
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[–] [email protected] 104 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Isnt this done by many games already?

[–] [email protected] 101 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Yeah, but now we get to be robbed of a feature, like we were when Namco patented playing mini-games on loading screens. We needn't have suffered as much during the worst years of loading.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Sometimes, just sometimes a company also patents it so no one else can use the terrible idea, not even them. Sony has done it a few times in the past. They patented yelling at ads to do something iirc.

[–] MrScottyTay 7 points 8 months ago

🙌 McDonalds!!!!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago (1 children)

;_; TIL....that would have been awesome.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago (1 children)

A lot of arcade games already do this.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Sony is making sure they can't do it in the future

[–] Mnemnosyne 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Only if no one challenges it, which is a big problem.

Patents are supposed to be given for new ideas, and also a certain degree of non-obviousness.

In the event that something has been done before by others, it should be open and shut to challenge the patent, but it still costs money. So it's often easier not to, and the patent doesn't get challenged.

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[–] [email protected] 57 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Thing is, it's fucking easy to dispute this patent because of how many other games already do something extremely similar. Adaptive difficulty isn't a novel idea. That they think they can patent it shows how broken that system is.

On a side note, the site had this other gem: New Sony Patent Will Let You Replay A Game From Any Point Possible. From the name, I thought they were patenting savestates, like those you do with emulators. But nope, it's dumber and more convoluted than that, closely tied to streaming, somehow.

Anyway, fuck Sony and this patent bullshit

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

afaik software patents get awards based on the implementation details. So Sony could get a patent if they implemented this behavior in a novel way.

Although I do agree with you this is a basic feature in many games and that sold be recognized.

[–] abraxas 10 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I think the "novel way" in this case is the idea that games can look at your data from other games to adjust difficulty. So if you do well in God of War, the AI difficulty in the new Devil May Cry could get harder. Ditto the other way around.

I would say it's a newish idea. I don't see it as particularly innovative, though. We just don't do it NOW because it's stupid.

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 8 months ago (2 children)

If it's optional, whatever, but if it's a forced game "feature", that would suck. I am perfectly capable of choosing the difficulty of the game I'm playing. Sometimes I want a good challenge, sometimes I don't, but I never need the game to decide for me that I'm taking too long or going too fast. Screw all of that.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

I would be moderately peeved if the game just decided to let me win. Clearing the sword saint in sekiro was a triumph. If the game made it easier because I was taking a while, it would cheapen the win.

Some people don't enjoy the challenge and would probably enjoy this, though. Utterly alien to me, but they exist.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

Dynamic difficulty has its place. For example, most people don't want to die to the same boss over and over again. That's just not good gameplay and it's overall a waste of time.

Instead, a dynamic difficulty system could very slightly adjust some values each time you die: a few points off the enemy HP, juice your damage a bit, slow the boss down. It can be made so subtle that you don't even notice it happening.

Resident Evil 4 has a dynamic difficulty and people praise it for that. It keeps you moving through the game instead of feeling defeated when you have to manually reduce the difficulty or when you get stuck in the same area for a long time.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Bear in mind there are games like God Hand where it's constantly punishing as well. The game never gets easy, it just gets harder when you do well for too long.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 8 months ago

Fuck you sony. I have still not forgiven WB Studios for patenting the nemesis system and never using it anymore.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 8 months ago (4 children)

Does this mean other game publishers get sued if they use dynamic difficulty?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

No. Only if they use the same system. That's what's being patented, not the concept of dynamic difficulty.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 8 months ago
[–] [email protected] 21 points 8 months ago (2 children)

laughs at Sony because of the inevitable patent challenge from Valve via Left 4 Dead.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago

The original Homeworld also scaled difficulty based on how well you were doing on previous levels.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Huh, I didn't know about that mechanic in that series. I never really did end up liking L4D much, and thinking back on it, probably my biggest issue with the game was a feeling that I never really improved. No matter what I did, every time I played felt like I couldn't catch up, and it wasn't an enjoyable, "challenging" feeling. It was just frustrating.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago (4 children)

One of the defining concepts in the game was the "director", an overarching map managing system that kept the desired pacing of the game in real time.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 8 months ago (1 children)

So like left 4 dead 2 then

[–] [email protected] 25 points 8 months ago (1 children)

RE 4 (original), every Ratchet and Clank game, Space Invaders by complete accident, etc

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, a lot of games do it under the hood without anyone even noticing.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (2 children)

And some spell it out and make it a main feature, like Rimworld and its "storytellers".

They're actually rather basic, but they check how well the player is doing and adapt the threat level accordingly.

Well, if they're not Randy, anyway.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 8 months ago

fuck you, sony!

[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Why copyright this? They do more harm to the industry than their games and consoles can ever compensate!

[–] mnemonicmonkeys 5 points 8 months ago

Patents != Copyright.

Also, they can't patent this, there's too many prior games that already do this. As soon as it goes through they're going to get challenged in court and lose handily

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (3 children)

What I like more than this is when games make every individual aspect of difficulty (e.g. enemy health, enemy aggression, enemy damage, etc.) something you can tweak in the accessibility menu. Spider-Man 2 and The Last of Us Part 1 are two good examples of this.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

Don't Starve is probably the supreme example of this. It's great. You can adjust difficulty in specific areas.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

1, remember that video game patents are rarely actually applied to anything real. 2, this has been a thing since at least the ps2, not in this globalized way, but games like ratchet and clank adjusted difficulty based on performance.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nJtd8AJghM&t=0 Interesting video why dynamic difficulty isn't the holy grail. Hope they leave it in as an option and don't force it on the player

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

As long as you can still manually change the difficulty or turn it off, it sounds like it could be interesting.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

I'd be frustrated if I kept having to adjust it back.

[–] pomodoro_longbreak 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I'm fine with dynamic difficulty, if it's something that the designers bake into the game, which is already done in many cases.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Yeah but this is about sony fucking patenting the concept, which is dumb as hell.

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