EA patents Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment system in games

[Ttaskmaster]

This sounds like a terrible idea. The whole point of a good game is to overcome a challenge.

Is it? Then why are flight sims so popular?
They don't really have difficulty settings and anyone with a full pilot licence should be utterly pwning all the other players...

Then there are the types of 'git gud' games, where there's always someone 'gudder' than you, so you have no hope of ever overcoming that challenge and might as well not bother playing...
RPGs are often pish-easy for anyone who can do a bit of maths, but that's not why they play those games.

Challenge is secondary, compared to entertaining you and being engaging enough to justify the purchase price. Some of my favourite games have been very unchallenging story-centric ones, to the point where the endless bullet-sponge combat gameplay (HALO, Mass Effect, Assassins Creed) was just guff getting in the way, and some were almost pure story (Cloudpunk).

[Corky34]

It's EA, if they told me they've got something that would turn my number 2's into solid gold i still wouldn't buy it.

[Spud1]

Is it? Then why are flight sims so popular?
They don't really have difficulty settings and anyone with a full pilot licence should be utterly pwning all the other players...

Flight sims have LOTS of difficulty settings - its just more detailed than "easy/normal/hard"..but there are definitely a huge range of difficulty levels in all the ones I have played. The most recent MS Flight Simulator is chock full of options to tweak how hard/realistic the flight models are, with the defaults tuned to be "easy" for controller players, but a whole range of options to make it hard and realistic for those with full flight control setups etc.

[ik9000]

It's EA, if they told me they've got something that would turn my number 2's into solid gold i still wouldn't buy it.

It's EA. They've got something that will turn the **** they sell into solid gold (for them at least). Just don't expect a finished product, bug-free experience, absence of any post-purchase monetisation or DLC packs, as based on recent experiences and headlines, it's all about the $$$$$.

[Iota]

So essentially it's a version of "level sync" where they put the difficulty at the level of the player. Which also kind of defeats the purpose of levelling up characters etc in games. Every single version I've seen of EA doing this utterly sucks, it makes players play the whole treadmill thing of levelling, for it to be of no purpose other than "player engagement" and to try to hold them into buying shiny things from microtransactions in games. Maybe this is their ultimate response to try to negate the whole "loot boxes are gambling" wall they're running into.

What a great idea! (read that part with a healthy drip of sarcasm)

[SylvanSagacious]

The Homeworld RTS games had something like that. If you built a certain type of fleet composition the AI would send an effective counter against you, so you had to keep changing things up. Post mission/level the game scanned your fleet/assets and prepped the next map according to how strong you are when finishing the previous.

Its effectiveness is questionable, I remember being really annoyed because I'd get crushed by AI in like level 5, so I'd restart and do very well at capturing ships on top of building my own, but the AI always ended up having more. It forced you to use tactics fairly often, anything to stave off the use of blobbing like in starcraft/CnC (this is debateable).


Having AI that doesn't become predictable will keep you on your toes, but there has to be a balance of keeping it fun, this is quite difficult.

[QuorTek]

I don't think you can proclaim ownership over something that has already been invented and used widely in multiple games.

[JerryTheC]

I don't think you can proclaim ownership over something that has already been invented and used widely in multiple games.

Nothing to stop you _Claiming_ it. Whether it'd hold up in court is a different thing..

depends on what exactly they're trying to patent, I suppose.

[Euphonium]

My concern is that they'll use it to scale the difficulty to try & pressure you into paying for microtransactions - "game too hard? Why not buy a booster from out in-game store!"

[FRISH]

Basically, if you suck, the game will makes things easier so you believe you're totally Epic. You're not. You suck.

Or if you have difficulties with particular aspects due to a disability or something, you will no longer be excluded from playing the games...

The thing about games is that they're supposed to be fun, which in the majority of cases means you need a reasonable chance of winning it... otherwise it's just hard work and a pointless waste of time.

It could be useful for disabilities. However most of us have probably spent a lot of time on certain games that used to be harder over overcome a challenge. Nowadays we essentially must give participation trophies and have become incredibly lazy so now we're older as well as the young today won't experience that. There seems to be a lot more sentiments nowadays that success is owned and not earned and it seems a shame to me.

As some others have displayed, I also expect that it will help to find ways to effectively monetise content for games with microtransactions.

[Gentle Viking]

It would be nice if they just make some games worth playing, but thats not the order of the day.
By now every insentient for me to play a game have been taken away by these genuineness, hell as far as i know there are not even indie games made that i would like to play.

[Ttaskmaster]

The most recent MS Flight Simulator is chock full of options to tweak how hard/realistic the flight models are

And that's the key point - Realistic does not equal hard, unless you're a newbie who has no idea how to fly that particular plane. But once you've gotten over the learning curve and are pretty competent, it's basically Realistic or Not, like an on-off switch. It doesn't get any 'harder' than Realistic... you can't add in more NPCs or make them tougher to kill, or anything.

In some ways I like to 'cheat' in games that have the option for one-shot kills, particularly headshots, because I detest the bullet-sponge NPC as being a very artificial method of increasing difficulty beyond realism and immersion.
Additionally, there's only so much banging of head against wall that will hold a person's interest, even if they have absolutely nothing better to do... and there are so many choices of games to play nowadays, while Steam sales make them so disposably cheap, that if a game gets too difficult people will just drop it and go play something else. My quit point tends to be when I unload two full mags point blank into the unprotected face of an enemy and they still don't die.

It could be useful for disabilities. However most of us have probably spent a lot of time on certain games that used to be harder over overcome a challenge. Nowadays we essentially must give participation trophies and have become incredibly lazy so now we're older as well as the young today won't experience that. There seems to be a lot more sentiments nowadays that success is owned and not earned and it seems a shame to me.

On the one hand, yes... but past success, whether owned or earned, does not mean that's what everyone else has to want going forward. Times change, whether we like it or not. The film and TV industries are proof enough of that.

On the other hand, most of us have lives now, with jobs and families and other commitments, and in many cases we're just getting older. We don't get to spend entire months practicing our 'git gud skillz' - Would you, as a developer/publisher, really want to alienate and exclude whole sections of players (some of whom have been long-time fans) by saying they're too disabled, too grown up or in any other way just not good enough to play your games?
Would you, as a paying customer, like to be told that?

[Iota]

In some ways I like to 'cheat' in games that have the option for one-shot kills, particularly headshots, because I detest the bullet-sponge NPC as being a very artificial method of increasing difficulty beyond realism and immersion.
Additionally, there's only so much banging of head against wall that will hold a person's interest, even if they have absolutely nothing better to do... and there are so many choices of games to play nowadays, while Steam sales make them so disposably cheap, that if a game gets too difficult people will just drop it and go play something else. My quit point tends to be when I unload two full mags point blank into the unprotected face of an enemy and they still don't die.

I think Control got this right, they had a certain difficulty level, however you could use the in-game options to give your character a boost, like one hit kills and invulnerability.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Wasn't EA trying to do something where they found try and actively pair worse players with better players who had all the shiny gear?? Apparently it was there to incentivise worse players to level up quicker by buying better gear,XP,boosts,etc IIRC? Maybe I am remembering it wrong.

[Scryder]

Wasn't EA trying to do something where they found try and actively pair worse players with better players who had all the shiny gear?? Apparently it was there to incentivise worse players to level up quicker by buying better gear,XP,boosts,etc IIRC? Maybe I am remembering it wrong.

Yep, I think that was in Titanfall (and some other games at that time). Where they'd pair up players with other players who have bought micro-transaction shineys in an attempt to "incentivise" the player to ALSO buy it. And this included pairing up players who were more skilled than them. It came out in the gaming press and EA were derided at the time.

Edit: CORRECTION, it was Activision:

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Yep, I think that was in Titanfall (and some other games at that time). Where they'd pair up players with other players who have bought micro-transaction shineys in an attempt to "incentivise" the player to ALSO buy it. And this included pairing up players who were more skilled than them. It came out in the gaming press and EA were derided at the time.

Edit: CORRECTION, it was Activision:

I remember that video now - it was Activision not EA(was not sure).