Thatās a fair argument then, butā¦ this is literally what accessibility means, whether or not you can āaccessā the thing.
If someone isnāt willing to invest the time or frustration into Souls, then fair enough, but thatās a matter of priorities/convenience, not a matter of accessibility.
Also, frankly, the difficulty of Souls for regular people is insanely overblown. Stuff like āPrepare to Dieā is just a marketing gimmick, and the games have become substantially easier and more flexible over time. Like in Elden Ring, where you can leave bosses for later, and can frequently just bypass them entirely, experiment with an insane variety of builds, use effective ways to grind ridiculous amounts of souls, and just generally become ridiculously powerful. Theyāve done essentially everything but creating an explicit āeasy modeā to make the game playable for as many people as possible. If you want an easy mode, basically every souls game has builds or guides that function as that easy mode.
Difficulty counts as an access barrier. You always have to consider that there are people who, for whatever reason, have a skill capacity that is lower than required for the game in question. And for those people the game will be inaccessible.
Time is also an accessibility factor. If a person with a disability or lower skill has to grind and extend the playtime for 3-4x what a normal player would have, thatās not inaccessible but itās less accessible comparatively. Especially if that kills the fun.
That being said obviously these things can be tweaked within reason and the problem canāt be solved for every player unfortunately. And they donāt need to be. Some games can just be too hard for some players.
The ultimate point for me just seems to be that the community needs to be listened to. You shouldnāt ever be in the positions as a dev where you are telling disabled or low skill gamers to get good or no dice. If a large portion of people are saying āIād love to enjoy the art youāve made, but I canāt. My disability/inability is stopping meā then Iād change my approach.
I think there is a balance that can be struck, grinding is one of the balances and youāre right there are ways to make those games easier that way. But the other people are also right, the games need to be hard sometimes. I just want people to stop being dismissive of people who want to enjoy the same entertainment and art but canāt just because of difficulty.
Apologies in advance for the essay lol, Souls is one of my favourite franchises, and Iāve spent a lot of time thinking and talking about these games.
You always have to consider that there are people who, for whatever reason, have a skill capacity that is lower than required for the game in question.
I donāt think Souls requires any amount of skill beyond justā¦ basic understanding of how to control a 3D character. They even tutorialize that, actually. Everyone starts somewhere, I personally got thrashed immediately after the tutorial in Dark Souls 1, and it took me hours to beat the first proper boss, with many deaths to regular enemies. Like any good video game, Souls teaches you the skills you need progressively, and gets gradually harder and asks more of the player over time. Itās not like just starting Guitar Hero on the highest difficulty, the game is balanced for anyone.
Time is also an accessibility factor.
I donāt actually think these games require an excessive time investment. Howlongtobeat puts Dark Souls Remasteredās Main Story at 30 hours. Even if youāre somehow spending 4x that time, that still only puts it at 120 hours, which isnāt unreasonable, lots of games have runtimes around that length.
I also take issue with the idea that you can consistently take 3-4x longer than most. In reality, you only get seriously walled a handful of times learning the game, and surpassing those tough challenges teaches you how to play. For example, in Sekiro, I got walled for hours on one of the games earliest minibosses, but once I got a solid enough grasp on the game to beat him, I wasnāt seriously walled like that again for several hours of gameplay. Getting stuck just means there are lessons youāre learning, and you tend to remember what you struggled hard to learn.
The ultimate point for me just seems to be that the community needs to be listened to.
A key part of developing anything for millions of people is that you have to learn what feedback to take and how to implement it properly. From Soft absolutely has listened to their community. First of all, thereās a vocal community that doesnāt want difficulties, which is what this whole post is joking about. Iād argue From Soft have done a phenomenal job of listening to their audience, and catering to the niche of people that want a tough, unyielding experience is how theyāve slowly built themselves into the multi-GotY juggernaut they are now.
But second of all, theyāve put a ton of effort into introducing ways to make the game easier. In Sekiro, if youāre hard stuck on a boss, tough luck, that game is mostly linear, and has key story moments that leave you no alternatives but to āgit gudā. In Elden Ring, you can go elsewhere to learn the game more against a different boss, level up, and come back. In most cases, you donāt even need to come back. You can also explore different builds, respec your character, try a different weapon or spell or summon, summon a friend in multiplayer, go find more equipment, anything.
And personally, I really preferred Sekiro, itās my favourite game theyāve ever made. I got stuck for hours on every key boss, and that game absolutely wiped the floor with me. It has barely any buildcraft, you truly do just have to āgit gudā. And the purity of that experience really speaks to me and what I want out of a game. Thereās no āquestioning if Iām doing it wrongā, I just need to get in there and learn the required skills head on.
Ultimately, Iām really just tired of being villainizedĀ (not that your comment is doing that, to be clear) for wanting some games to pursue a single well-crafted and balanced hard experience that challenges me to push myself, when basically everything else on the market is pursuing the widest audience possible, with aggressive hints telling you how to do puzzles before you can even think, and several difficulty options that make things incredibly easy, at the cost of the harder difficulties usually being poorly balanced and uneven. Iām not going around saying every Mario game needs to be a Kaizo, with no way to tone it down, but it feels like many are coming to my favourite games and telling me theyāre bad for being what I love.
Especially when I feel like From Soft is hitting that balance youāre talking about, and giving the player lots of options, but some people will seemingly just never be satisfied until they can choose āEasyā from the start screen. I donāt feel like me or From Soft is being dismissive when there are an abundance of accommodations and options to make things easier, you just need to actually engage with the game to use them.
I donāt think Souls requires any amount of skill beyond justā¦ basic understanding of how to control a 3D character.
Thatās obviously not true. Try playing an FPS with a mouse and keyboard vs controller and youāll see understanding how to do something theoretically is less than half the battle. Say someone is missing arms so plays with their feet, it is far far more difficult to get a higher level of precision, and some people just wonāt be able to no matter the amount of practice. People have a peak of reaction time no matter the amount of practice, and its different for different people. People have a peak of ability to move with precision no matter the amount of practice(see dyspraxia). People have shakes that cannot be controlled no matter the amount of practice.
I also take issue with the idea that you can consistently take 3-4x longer than most. In reality, you only get seriously walled a handful of times learning the game, and surpassing those tough challenges teaches you how to play. For example, in Sekiro, I got walled for hours on one of the games earliest minibosses, but once I got a solid enough grasp on the game to beat him, I wasnāt seriously walled like that again for several hours of gameplay. Getting stuck just means there are lessons youāre learning, and you tend to remember what you struggled hard to learn.
Ignoring that that experience just isnāt fun for a lot of people, youāre using your own experience of your own ability.
Ultimately, Iām really just tired of being villainized (not that your comment is doing that, to be clear) for wanting some games to pursue a single well-crafted and balanced hard experience that challenges me to push myself,
ā¦ It doesnāt detract from your experience at all to add an optional mode for quick save or other similar features.
Accessibility is literally how this thread started. I also disagree that the game requires a high degree of precision. Dark Souls originally came out with only 8-directional rolling, which you could do on a D-Pad, Fight Stick, or any other accessible controller. Thereās no FPS-style aiming or anything, and again, you can find challenge runs of people beating the game while wearing oven mitts and other such shenanigans. The series main difficulty is in making the right decisions with the committed attack animations, end lag, and stagger mechanics, not quick reactions or precise inputs, although Iāll absolutely grant that the combat has become faster over time. Not that you canāt conquer the game with good buildcraft anyway, check out an āall hit runā for ways to beat Elden Ring while literally not dodging any attacks.
Ignoring that that experience just isnāt fun for a lot of people, youāre using your own experience of your own ability.
Sure, but skills and muscle memory are skills and muscle memory. Unless youāre referring to learning disabilities, people improve at things with practice, and time spent practicing the combat will make you better at the combat.
ā¦ It doesnāt detract from your experience at all to add an optional mode for quick save or other similar features.
Iāve also replied to that in this thread. But Iāll also add that something like a quick save is very different from adding a new scaled difficulty option, and Souls already implements aĀ wealth of options to make the game easier. Adding another option in that same vein is a separate conversation from adding an Easy Mode.
P.S. I donāt mean to be snarky by linking my own comments. Itās understandable that you wouldnāt constantly be re-reading every comment Iāve made on this thread before replying, but I am getting a bit fatigued after debating this all day with Lemmy, and donāt feel a need to re-hash the same arguments here.
Accessibility is literally how this thread started.
What? Yea? Sorry maybe you mixed me up with someone else I didnāt deny that.
I also disagree that the game requires a high degree of precision. Dark Souls originally came out with only 8-directional rolling, which you could do on a D-Pad, Fight Stick, or any other accessible controller.
Its not just a matter of precision in being able to input a control, its being able to reliably input a control quickly.
you can find challenge runs of people beating the game while wearing oven mitts and other such shenanigans.
Again, someone being able to do something doesnāt mean everyone can.
The series main difficulty is in making the right decisions with the committed attack animations, end lag, and stagger mechanics, not quick reactions or precise inputs
Yea this I wouldnāt agree with, there definitely is a lot of quick inputs needed
Sure, but skills and muscle memory are skills and muscle memory. Unless youāre referring to learning disabilities, people improve at things with practice, and time spent practicing the combat will make you better at the combat.
Look into stuff like dysgraphia and dyspraxia, or even speech impediments. People can practice things repeatedly, but still because of muscle or neurological issues be unable to reliably perform certain actions. Obviously practice can improve, or it might not, or there might be a ceiling much lower than people without those issues- as well as improving much more slowly. What you seem to be misunderstanding is people arenāt saying its impossible for anyone to play the game with differing levels of ability, they are saying it might not be viable- and they wonāt necessarily follow the same path of improvement that you did. This could make it way more frustrating or even impossible to finish the game.
Iāve also replied to that in this thread. But Iāll also add that something like a quick save is very different from adding a new scaled difficulty option, and Souls already implements a wealth of options to make the game easier. Adding another option in that same vein is a separate conversation from adding an Easy Mode.
P.S. I donāt mean to be snarky by linking my own comments. Itās understandable that you wouldnāt constantly be re-reading every comment Iāve made on this thread before replying, but I am getting a bit fatigued after debating this all day with Lemmy, and donāt feel a need to re-hash the same arguments here.
Fair, at least from my perspective it seems like youāre kinda talking past people though of course I would think that.
Fair, at least from my perspective it seems like youāre kinda talking past people though of course I would think that.
Fair enough, I do actually think weāre having a fundamental misunderstanding here. I get the impression that when youāre asking for accessibility, youāre looking for a perfect accessibility, where literally anyone can play the game.
When I say accessibility, Iām picturing more of a sliding scale, from completely inaccessible (a game that just crashes on boot or something) to perfect accessibility.
I think a game like Elden Ring is actually very accessible, despite itās difficulty. I bring up examples like beating the game with oven mitts or voice control to say that it doesnāt require superhuman precision or reaction time. I assume that the majority of disabled players, using an adaptive controller or specialized rig that theyāve had years of practice with will be able to control their character with better precision or reaction time than the ridiculous twitch streamers who completed those challenges. Those players will still have to invest time to build game knowledge and experience to apply that to beating the game, but fundamentally, the game ācan be accessedā by them.
I also have no illusions that āeveryone can beat Elden Ring in 140 hoursā, like youāve implied that I do. And uhā¦ yes? Games take different amounts of time to beat for different players, and thatās fine. If Elden Ring was your first ever video game, then uhā¦ questionable decision, but the game would eventually teach you everything you need to know to beat it. Iām not exactly sure why this is a gotcha, honestly. If you take 1000+ hours to beat Elden Ring and love it, then power to you, I would never shame you for it or assert you had a worse experience than mine. Same way I feel about summons, or using multiplayer to beat bosses, or whatever else Souls weirdos can be elitist about.
If you look hard enough, youāll always be able to find a disability that canāt play the game. Thatās unfortunate, but I donāt think itās a requirement that the game is playable by everyone. Books are written in languages I donāt speak, art is made about life experiences I canāt share, and thatās OK. A wealth of good games are coming out all the time, and Iām sure someone with dyspraxia can find games they can play and enjoy.
Obviously, I know how that sounds, if a game can be made accessible to more players, and has the budget, it should be. I wholeheartedly agree. Thatās why Iāve advocated for better support for captions and flashing visual cues and audio indicators. I would love the next Elden Ring to be a better experience for the visually impaired or hard of hearing.
But I also think that games are art, and that the careful crafting and balancing of souls games are a part of that art. And theyāre designed from the ground up with that difficulty in mind. Honestly, I think itās a fundamental part of what Souls offers, and an easy mode wouldnāt be the same experience. To quote Miyazaki:
āIf we really wanted the whole world to play the game, we could just crank the difficulty down more and more. But that wasnāt the right approach,ā he said.
āHad we taken that approach, I donāt think the game would have done what it did, because the sense of achievement that players gain from overcoming these hurdles is such a fundamental part of the experience. Turning down difficulty would strip the game of that joy - which, in my eyes, would break the game itself.ā
As a piece of art, if an easy difficulty was added, lots of people would play it. But Iāve already articulated why I donāt think a simple scaling difficulty would work, and why I think itās important the base game is difficult. The only way to do it properly would be a bespoke and balanced lower difficulty. But the artists that made the game have no passion for that, and bluntly, I donāt feel it would be worth their time and talent because it would justā¦ be like a lot of other games you could go play instead, rather than the unique experience that Souls is.
And unfortunately, this does fundamentally exclude some people. Elden Ring takes tons of measures to minimize the excluded crowd, but it wonāt ever be zero, without fundamentally changing what Souls is. Thatās a shame, but ultimately, I really think Souls should exist, and is important art all the same. Do a quick google search for āDark Souls saved my lifeā and youāll see just how powerful a piece of art it can be.
My real point here is, just because a small sliver of people canāt play it, or because people donāt want to invest the time or effort to experience it, Souls has the right to exist, and From Software should be allowed to make the game they want to make, even if itās for a niche crowd. They donāt have to offer an option that they feel compromises the experience, regardless of whether or not we agree.
Accessibility also includes time constraints. You say yourself, it took you hours to get to a point where you could get through the game, let alone the hours it takes to just pass through the game with that aside. I personally missed out on a lot of Fromsoftās stuff because, at the time, I was working 70+ hours a week, with 3 hours of commuting. I would have loved to spent some of the little free time I had putzing around in those games, an experience their art. However, I never had the time to spend double digit hours honing skills, just to get through the game in a reasonable time frame. Sure, now that I donāt work like that, I prefer games with high difficulty, doesnāt mean that when I play those games, now that I have time, I still donāt wish I had that access back then. If you can access a broader audience by offering a selected difficulty, why not? Many games with the highest skill ceilings have, traditionally, had difficulty modes, no on talks shit on all the boomer shooters for having easy/hard/harder/nightmare modes.
Mmm, I feel like under heavy time constraints like that, there are worse barriers than difficulty to a gameās experience. For example, itās hard to appreciate a narrative and big reveals when youāre spreading your play out so much that itās hard to remember who characters are. Itās also hard to enjoy exploring a large space, and feeling like youāve covered it well.
Elden Ring, for example, is a massive game. I soared through Elden Ring, as I played the whole franchise (besides whatās locked to PlayStation) first, and happened to stumble into an extremely powerful build. The game still took me 140 hours, including the DLC.
I also still donāt think itās an accessibility constraint. Iād totally understand why you donāt want to commit to a 150hr experience when youāre playing less than 3hrs a week, youād be stuck on it for a whole year. But learning over time in little pieces is totally viable. Stuff like muscle memory and skill sticks with you, I could put down Souls for the next few years and when I came back Iād still be much better at it than when I first sat down.
Also, I actually find small time slots one of the best ways to conquer a tough challenge. When I get hard stuck, like I did on the final boss of the ER DLC, I chose to play like, 20 minutes of attempts a night, and then go to bed and sleep on it. We know from academia that studying something right before you sleep helps, since your brain can lock that fresh experience into memory better. Youāre also starting each attempt āfreshā, in that you arenāt already frustrated and annoyed by the boss. And this worked great, it took a boss that I couldnāt beat with a whole free evening, and I beat it after only a few days. Itās a technique Iāve used repeatedly.
All that to say, I donāt think difficulty is the best reason to not play a Souls game while working 70+ hour weeks. And I donāt think itās exclusive to Souls, Iād also avoid story-heavy JRPGs, and massive open worlds in general. Not that you couldnāt sacrifice the time to play any of those things, but frankly, Iād recommend a game thatās better consumed in bits and pieces, such as GotY nominee Balatro, a competitive multiplayer game with constrained matches, or a roguelike experience such as Hades. And thatās not that odd, I also wouldnāt recommend reading an epic novel like Dune, or trying to binge Game of Thrones or something.
My honest take on your story, is that Iām really glad Souls didnāt have an easy mode for you at that time. As you say, you prefer games with high difficulty now. I would hate for you to have played a compromised version of what From Software carefully designed here, when the intended experience ultimately really worked for you. Itās the same reason I avoid trailers for games I know I want to play, that is, if you wouldāve even came back to replay a game youād already ābeatenā.
In other comments, Iāve already talked about my friend who only played games on easy before playing Souls, which made him realize how much he enjoyed hard games and the rest of beating a tough challenge. He fell in love with the experience From Software set out to make. If DS1 had had an easy mode at that time, Iām not sure he wouldāve ever learned that about himself, because he wouldāve played it on easy. He mightāve enjoyed the art, and the visual design of the creatures, but itās only because From Software had the confidence to assert their intended vision that itās his favourite game and franchise ever made.
Your first point about spreading out the narrative in such a wayā¦ that is how most media worked until very recently. I grew up waiting upwards of months for the next installment, if those are large installments, years. Also, Elden ring came out after I stopped working those hours, I am mostly having this experience, in terms of Fromsoft games, with Demonās Souls - Sekiro, but that doesnāt change the argument, just putting up my time frame.
I am more likely to not retain the patterns of attack, etc., when I have to break it up, in such a fashion, unlike the experience of seeing the new things, and partaking in the world, and its lore.
The reason I was unable to get through the souls games was that I had time to learn things like the attack patterns of the monsters, or time to experience the world and its lore in a way the memorization part was getting in the way of. When I learned something, and returned to it weeks later, I had to relearn a lot of the rote aspects of the game play. This blocks access to me experiencing the art, and lore, which is more important to me, in such games, than the mechanics of it. So, yes, I lost access.
Having now played the games, I do not wish it had this barrier back then, as I still would have preferred to experienced and easier version, so that I could participate in the larger zeitgeist, of the pop culture of the time, and then got to enjoy it how it is, now that I have time. Let me repeat that, I would have preferred to have had an easy mode, back when it was new, to experience my preferred part, when it was most culturally relevant. Now that I have played them, I STILL would have preferred that, even if I never got to experience it otherwise.
You are basically telling me how YOU would prefer to do something, and you are glad I had to conform to YOUR preferences. Meanwhile, having the option for and easier mode, would not have changed YOUR experience at all, unless YOU choose to. While my suggestion would not have affected your experience, it would have allowed me to have experienced the games when they was at their relevance peak. Meanwhile, what you ask for affects me in a negative way. To say that an option for an easy mode, on the screen, when you start, that you do not have to select, would damage your experience, is wild. That is very, very, weird. You are adamant the idea that someone could have a variant in preferences, that affect you in no way, would damage your experience because what? Because you had to see the option on the screen? Because people you deem lesser gamers would have played it? Is this some weird ideological axiom? Because people are simply doing something different than you? What is it that bothers you so much about other people having a different choice, you donāt need to make, or experience?
Ok, hang on. I replied to this initially while annoyed, and blew past some of the key points. But I do actually want to talk about the whole āparticipating in the zeitgeistā thing.
A large part of the reasons Dark Souls doesnāt have difficulties is to create that social element. Gonna stick with Elden Ring for my examples here, because I missed most of the online discussion around Sekiro. But from what I saw, the majority of the discussion online was about how hard certain bosses were, shared experiences like getting your ass kicked by Tree Sentinel, or Margit āputting your foolish ambitions to restā. If Elden Ring really did have an easy mode, that was easy enough for someone to beat the game without ālearning the attack patterns of the monstersā, and to keep up with the diehard playerbase while working 70+ hour work weeks, would they really have felt included in those conversations? Would they have been able to share the excitement at beating a boss that they struggled with for hours, without actually struggling for that time? Thereās an intentional design decision here. To quote Miyazaki from when Sekiro released:
We want everyone to feel that sense of accomplishment. We want everyone to feel elated and to join that discussion on the same level. We feel if thereās different difficulties, thatās going to segment and fragment the user base. People will have different experiences based on that [differing difficulty level]. This is something we take to heart when we design games. Itās been the same way for previous titles and itās very much the same with Sekiro.
If all you really wanted was to justā¦ experience the art and story, and see the cool enemy designs, you could always watch a youtube letās play or something as well. The ultimate easy mode, with a defined length of how long it will take. But if you wanted to commiserate about tough challenges and the experience you went through, then you kinda need to actually have that experience.
Iāll also add, that stuff doesnāt go away. I was excited by the hype around Elden Ring too. Itās what pushed me to start Dark Souls 1, and then play 2, 3, Sekiro, and finally Elden Ring. I missed the initial hype around all of those games, but that cultural stuff is still there. I built up a youtube playlist while playing each game and once I finished them I would catch up on Illusory Wall, Zullie the Witch, Vaati, and challenge runs and Lockout Bingos from the likes of Lilā Aggy or Ymfah. My friends were also excited to see me play the games. I may not have experienced the Anor Londo archers until years after they did, but it was still fun to talk to them about it, and they were excited to reminisce and replay the game alongside me.
I eventually did get to participate in the fun that was Shadow of the Erdtree releasing soon after I beat Elden Ring. And that was great, and special. It was fun to see that final boss get nerfed soon after I beat it, for example. I do feel sorry that you missed the moment of Sekiro releasing. But ultimately I donāt think your anecdotal experience is more important than say, my friend who always picked easy and didnāt realize how much he loved a tough challenge. Or any of the āDark Souls saved my lifeā people, who mightāve picked easy if it was offered and not had that experience. Or the designers at From Software who worked hard to create something special and have the right to not offer a way to half-ass it and āfragment the user baseā.
Skill issue on FromSoftās part, and I say that as someone who has been a fan of their games longer than most people in this thread - more than a decade before even Demonās Souls. Their original talent was always in detailed, immersive world design. Their gameplay was unpolished and experimental, but thatās something I liked about them. They got a smash hit with Demonās and Dark Souls and made a hard pivot towards iterating on that formula. They still embrace their roots as a studio focused on detailed world building, but theyāre trying to move more towards action and encounter design to cater to Souls fans. Where once they were highly experimental, now they seem afraid to try anything different.
A better studio could find a way for players to share that struggle and triumph while still allowing players of different skill levels to enjoy everything the game has to offer. That studio would be Supergiant with Hadesā God Mode option, which slowly gives more damage resistance each time you die so the player still struggles and gets better until the handicap and their improving skill meet in the middle. In the context of Souls, this could be separate for each boss. Or another entirely different approach could be taken. The point is merely that there are ways for players of different skill levels to still share in the same struggles, FromSoft is just unwilling or incapable of finding them.
So as a longtime FromSoft fan, I think theyāre the ones who need to git gud.
Fair point! I actually love this suggestion, rethinking more ways to make the game easier without breaking the core experience.
I donāt think From Soft is totally languishing in this department, the games include an increasing amount of ways to make the game easier, such as Elden Ring introducing summons, an open world you can tackle in any order (although this falls off post-Morgott, as does the game overall imo).
But youāre right, Iād love to see them potentially dabble with things like dynamic difficulty to create something that simultaneously better challenges experienced veterans and eases the ride for newer players. Or at least something to keep bosses you missed in the open world format somewhat interesting when you find them later. I donāt think theyāre done iterating here, and I expect them to continue to improve at accommodating more players, without violating their other design goals.
I also agree thereās some worrying trends in the design, as From Soft struggles to find ways to challenge their most diehard fans. Maleniaās waterfowl dance, for example, which requires odd specific movement to dodge thatās impractical to learn organically. Or her moves where she simply cannot be staggered, breaking expectations in a confusing way. In general as well, the games have trended towards being faster and requiring more āreactionaryā play, and I do miss the more methodical combat of DS1, when the game was much less twitchy and more about carefully planning your moves.
Iām not sure I agree that From Soft has stopped being experimental though, Sekiro was a complete departure right before Elden Ring, as was returning to Armored Core for the first time in a decade right after. Elden Ring also dabbles in an interesting blend of mechanics. Transitioning to an Open World is a massive and obvious one, but Iām also happy to see powerstancing back, interesting new weapon arts, the physick flask is a great new system, horseback combat on Torrent, and stuff like charged attacks and posture similar to Sekiro. Not perfect, by any means, I actually find the balancing of this wealth of mechanics and build options to be pretty shaky, but itās far from a boring +1 iteration that doesnāt try anything.
I see why youād say theyāre still experimenting - and they are within the confines of the souls formula. They definitely arenāt making carbon copies of past games. But, compared to the crazy variety and wild mechanics in their back catalog, the souls formula is pretty narrow. Theyāve got a card battler, an adventure game series, a co-op puzzle platformer, and more in their portfolio. Demonās Souls itself was a huge experiment: souls, messages, and invasions into a mostly single player experience were completely novel and even weird. Letās not forget about world tendency, (even if we want to).
FromSoft was always like that: a bunch of totally random ideas youād never seen before with enough good, bad, and weird to go around. The changes they make today are comparatively tame. Imagine if the next soulslike game did away with the entire magic system and instead you craft your own spells from elements (Eternal Ring). Or if they did away with respawns and overhauled the entire leveling system in Bloodborne like they did when trying to give Shadow Tower its own identity separate from Kingās Field. They were wild, but thatās what gave the world soulslikes in the first place.
I understand why they play it safe. Honestly, they donāt have a choice. It comes with the budget. So I really donāt begrudge them the lack of experimentation too much. But I do find it sad because itās our loss. They could do better, and who knows what other stuff they might have come up with if they were truly free to experiment the way they used to. What I really wish is for them and other devs to just make smaller games with smaller budgets. Still make the AAA games, just set aside a small amount to experiment with and try new things too. That way we keep learning, discovering, and innovating. Weād all have better games for it.
So, I was there, missing it. Though this doesnāt apply to elden ring, as that came out after I changed my work life.
The conversation was not simply about the difficulty and moves. Like, most of the conversations happening around me were about the lore, what people thought was happening considering X, Y, and Z, etc. The time the difficulty, mechanics, etc., took the spotlight, was over in a week or so, and mostly relegated to people asking for help with one thing, or another, new found tactics, and speed run methods. So it, fairly rapidly, evened out. Even if you look at YT videos about those games, at least a similar amount are focused on the lore, as the mechanics, though those were initial chatter. They basically only came up in a a month or so as a broad statements of difficulty, or when some new trick was found, until it circulated. There was easily enough to have be an active part of those conversations. Much more than āOh, you know my work schedule, donāt have timeā.
That stuff doesnāt go away online. However, in person, with the exception of hardcore fans, it definitely does fade away. Occasionally something will be brought up in a bout of nostalgia, or in comparison to something contemporary, but it does fade away.
If all you really wanted was to justā¦ experience the art and story, and see the cool enemy designs, you could always watch a youtube letās play or something as well
You truly do not understand the ways in which I, and many others. enjoy things, if you think this is the same. This statement leads me to believe that many perspectives you do not hold are completely alien to you.
Your anecdotal experience is not worth more than mine either, and my suggestions do not force themselves upon you.
Letās clarify a little bit here, because I actually am curious. How much easier would you actually want the game to be? Howlongtobeat puts Sekiroās main story at 30 hours. Asking a friend whoās very experienced at Sekiro and has played it dozens of times, he takes ~10 hours to beat it on a replay. So even if the game was dead easy, and had nothing to teach you, and you had no reason to explore or look around, youād only save a maximum of 2/3rds of that time. More realistically, it would probably take 15 hours to complete if we factor in the exploration, even if the game was straightforward enough that you could kill each boss in only a few attempts.
So what would you have liked this easy mode to look like, in order to save you that time? And what value would you have gotten from that, in what amount of time, compared to setting aside 30 hours, or watching someone else play it?
Well alright, Iām choosing to disregard the fact that this is 90% insults and calling me a weirdo freak. Thanks for that, btw, Iāve put a lot of effort into expressing myself clearly across a lot of different comments here.
In the latter half of this comment, I articulated why I feel an easy mode actually does make playing the game worse, even if you donāt select it. I also articulated why a simple scaling difficulty wouldnāt really work.
And in the latter half of this comment (start at āBut I also think games are artā), I expressed why I think an Easy mode hasnāt been added, and wouldnāt be the same experience.
To add to that final point, the reason I donāt want others to play an easy mode isnāt because Iām a loser and beating Souls is the only way I know Iām a real man. I just think Souls is an amazing and unique offering, and it would be a real shame for someone to play the game on easy (which would ābreak the game itselfā in Miyazakiās words) and think thatās all there was.
I want more people to give it a try and experience it, and hopefully love it, not less. But just like itās frustrating to watch a movie you love with someone whoās on their phone the whole time, it would be frustrating to see a ton of people play a kneecapped version of one of my favourite things and end up not āgetting itā. And it would be more of a loss for them than me. Itās just the same Miyazaki quote over again, both me and him love what has been made here, and want more people to experience it, but not at the expense of compromising it. To paraphrase the end of his quote, would we even be talking about it if From Soft hadnāt had the confidence to stick to their intended vision?
āIf we really wanted the whole world to play the game, we could just crank the difficulty down more and more. But that wasnāt the right approach,ā he said.
āHad we taken that approach, I donāt think the game would have done what it did, because the sense of achievement that players gain from overcoming these hurdles is such a fundamental part of the experience. Turning down difficulty would strip the game of that joy - which, in my eyes, would break the game itself.ā
90% calling you names? in the last 1/4 I brought up how it is weird to be bothered by the experience of others, when they donāt affect you, then pushed for a reasoning of it, by laying down an array of possibilities, and then asking what yours was. I used the word weird twice, and it was in relationship to the behavior, not the person. My guy, you are way too sensitive, like you imagined something isnāt there, if this is really how you viewed that comment.
There is more to scaling that just HP/Damage. It isnāt that great of a challenge to add in more time for response, and reduce pattern complexity so you donāt have memorize as much, or for as long. This is how many FPS games, Fighting games, and RTS games have done it for decades. No one bemoans Quake for having something other than nightmare, or Mortal Combat for having an easy option. Hell, in Sekiro, giving more time to respond for parries/blocks, and reducing the number needed, in order to execute the instant kill function, would have worked. There are many ways difficulty could be changed. Even if they did the dumb thing by reducing the HP of enemies, and increasing the damage you do, if normal is just as it was intended, how did it change your personal experience, since you wouldnāt play the game?
It is possible to disagree, and have a discourse about it, with the creators. You donāt have to accept artist/authorial intent as if it was the law of reality governing their product. I agree with him that people who enjoy those challenges will get more from a game than they would otherwise. However I think it is weird, maybe even self-centered in nature, to assume that everyone would get that increase in satisfaction, for the same reasons, as he does. He is free to say he doesnāt want to do this, and people who play his games are free to disagree with him on the subject.
To say that an option for an easy mode, on the screen, when you start, that you do not have to select, would damage your experience, is wild. That is very, very, weird. You are adamant the idea that someone could have a variant in preferences, that affect you in no way, would damage your experience because what? Because you had to see the option on the screen? Because people you deem lesser gamers would have played it? Is this some weird ideological axiom? Because people are simply doing something different than you? What is it that bothers you so much about other people having a different choice, you donāt need to make, or experience?
I meanā¦ quick recap here. You said the way I was behaving was āvery, very weirdā. You claimed I was offended solely ābecause I had to see an option on the screenā. You claimed my reasoning was about ālesser gamers being able to play itā, clearly insinuating that I simply have a superiority complex as a āweird ideological axiomā, as if itās the foundation of the way I think. You also basically stated that Iām deeply bothered by anyone having a different opinion or experience.
Donāt try to gaslight me about this being insulting. Iāve never expressed any anger here at disagreement, nor have I brought up anything about superiority or inferiority. Youāre bringing baggage into this from other people youāve argued with before, and then insulting my character over a strawman version of my argument.
Also, when you clearly associate a behaviour with a person, insulting that behaviour is insulting the person. You canāt claim you didnāt associate the two when you chose to write āYOUā in all caps several times while describing the behaviour you were insulting.
Itās also not at all ridiculous to assume the āWhat is it that bothers you so much about other people having a different choice, you donāt need to make, or experience?ā at the end of that rant was rhetorical like the questions preceding it, again, donāt try to gaslight me into thinking that quote was purely ālaying down an array of possibilities, and then asking what yours wasā, and that Iām being āsensitiveā.
If you actually didnāt mean offence, then Iād encourage you in future to skip the āarray of possibilitiesā, especially when those possibilities are exclusively descriptions of assholes.
That aside, thank you, I actually do appreciate you recognizing that you canāt just ādouble your health and damageā and get a good easy mode. Thatās an argument I frequently come across while having this discussion, that they could ājust scale everything downā in an hour or so, itās become what I tend to assume people mean when they say ājust add an easy modeā. Youāre also a very different person than what I usually end up having this argument with, in that you have actually played Souls, and understand the value of the more challenging default, but still wanted an easy mode. In that sense, Iād have no issue if you had played an easy mode. Thereās lots of mods to do so, for example, and I wouldnāt have any problem if you had gone and played one. Frankly, I wouldnāt have issue with anyone installing a mod to play an easier version. The option is literally there, just not on console, unfortunately, but I blame the console manufacturers for that, not From Software. I like the clarity in installing a mod that you arenāt playing the game as intended and getting the full experience, which means it doesnāt āsegment the user baseā or potentially cause people to miss out by thinking theyāve experienced everything From Soft intended.
The argument I generally take issue with is that From Software have some kind of āmoral responsibilityā or are āstupid and losing businessā for not adding an explicit easy mode. A half-baked easy mode would do more harm than good, in terms of review scores and giving many players a worse experience. And a well-made easy mode is not an insignificant amount of work. Balance is one of the hardest things to get right, From Soft is literally still doing balance patches on the base game of Elden Ring, and easy mode would essentially double the amount of situations where things have to be balanced. It would also double QA work, as every scenario needs to be tested in both difficulties. And justā¦ loading different things conditionally into a space isnāt always easy either, look at all the struggles and weird bugs id have experienced with DOOM Eternalās Master Levels, and theyāre a team lauded for their technical prowess. One of From Softās best attributes is that they iterate very quickly. A team of ~400 people have made Dark Souls 1, 2, 3, Bloodborne and Sekiro and Elden Ring in 11 years. Thatās more than a game every 2 years, not even counting DLC and other projects, in an era where game development is trending towards 5+ years as the norm. Iāve already asserted that I donāt feel an easy mode would be nearly the same quality of game as the main entry, so Iāll come out and outright say that I donāt think an easy mode would be worth the months of effort that properly balancing and tweaking such a mode to make it good would add to development. But thatās totally subjective, and youāre more than welcome to do that math differently.
If From Soft release their next title with an easy mode, then great. I wonāt go picket their office or anything, Iām not pathetic. But if they do, then I really hope itās good, and I really hope the people who finally āgetā to play will give the intended difficulty a chance.
Thatās a fair argument then, butā¦ this is literally what accessibility means, whether or not you can āaccessā the thing.
If someone isnāt willing to invest the time or frustration into Souls, then fair enough, but thatās a matter of priorities/convenience, not a matter of accessibility.
Also, frankly, the difficulty of Souls for regular people is insanely overblown. Stuff like āPrepare to Dieā is just a marketing gimmick, and the games have become substantially easier and more flexible over time. Like in Elden Ring, where you can leave bosses for later, and can frequently just bypass them entirely, experiment with an insane variety of builds, use effective ways to grind ridiculous amounts of souls, and just generally become ridiculously powerful. Theyāve done essentially everything but creating an explicit āeasy modeā to make the game playable for as many people as possible. If you want an easy mode, basically every souls game has builds or guides that function as that easy mode.
Difficulty counts as an access barrier. You always have to consider that there are people who, for whatever reason, have a skill capacity that is lower than required for the game in question. And for those people the game will be inaccessible.
Time is also an accessibility factor. If a person with a disability or lower skill has to grind and extend the playtime for 3-4x what a normal player would have, thatās not inaccessible but itās less accessible comparatively. Especially if that kills the fun.
That being said obviously these things can be tweaked within reason and the problem canāt be solved for every player unfortunately. And they donāt need to be. Some games can just be too hard for some players.
The ultimate point for me just seems to be that the community needs to be listened to. You shouldnāt ever be in the positions as a dev where you are telling disabled or low skill gamers to get good or no dice. If a large portion of people are saying āIād love to enjoy the art youāve made, but I canāt. My disability/inability is stopping meā then Iād change my approach.
I think there is a balance that can be struck, grinding is one of the balances and youāre right there are ways to make those games easier that way. But the other people are also right, the games need to be hard sometimes. I just want people to stop being dismissive of people who want to enjoy the same entertainment and art but canāt just because of difficulty.
Apologies in advance for the essay lol, Souls is one of my favourite franchises, and Iāve spent a lot of time thinking and talking about these games.
I donāt think Souls requires any amount of skill beyond justā¦ basic understanding of how to control a 3D character. They even tutorialize that, actually. Everyone starts somewhere, I personally got thrashed immediately after the tutorial in Dark Souls 1, and it took me hours to beat the first proper boss, with many deaths to regular enemies. Like any good video game, Souls teaches you the skills you need progressively, and gets gradually harder and asks more of the player over time. Itās not like just starting Guitar Hero on the highest difficulty, the game is balanced for anyone.
I donāt actually think these games require an excessive time investment. Howlongtobeat puts Dark Souls Remasteredās Main Story at 30 hours. Even if youāre somehow spending 4x that time, that still only puts it at 120 hours, which isnāt unreasonable, lots of games have runtimes around that length.
I also take issue with the idea that you can consistently take 3-4x longer than most. In reality, you only get seriously walled a handful of times learning the game, and surpassing those tough challenges teaches you how to play. For example, in Sekiro, I got walled for hours on one of the games earliest minibosses, but once I got a solid enough grasp on the game to beat him, I wasnāt seriously walled like that again for several hours of gameplay. Getting stuck just means there are lessons youāre learning, and you tend to remember what you struggled hard to learn.
A key part of developing anything for millions of people is that you have to learn what feedback to take and how to implement it properly. From Soft absolutely has listened to their community. First of all, thereās a vocal community that doesnāt want difficulties, which is what this whole post is joking about. Iād argue From Soft have done a phenomenal job of listening to their audience, and catering to the niche of people that want a tough, unyielding experience is how theyāve slowly built themselves into the multi-GotY juggernaut they are now.
But second of all, theyāve put a ton of effort into introducing ways to make the game easier. In Sekiro, if youāre hard stuck on a boss, tough luck, that game is mostly linear, and has key story moments that leave you no alternatives but to āgit gudā. In Elden Ring, you can go elsewhere to learn the game more against a different boss, level up, and come back. In most cases, you donāt even need to come back. You can also explore different builds, respec your character, try a different weapon or spell or summon, summon a friend in multiplayer, go find more equipment, anything.
And personally, I really preferred Sekiro, itās my favourite game theyāve ever made. I got stuck for hours on every key boss, and that game absolutely wiped the floor with me. It has barely any buildcraft, you truly do just have to āgit gudā. And the purity of that experience really speaks to me and what I want out of a game. Thereās no āquestioning if Iām doing it wrongā, I just need to get in there and learn the required skills head on.
Ultimately, Iām really just tired of being villainizedĀ (not that your comment is doing that, to be clear) for wanting some games to pursue a single well-crafted and balanced hard experience that challenges me to push myself, when basically everything else on the market is pursuing the widest audience possible, with aggressive hints telling you how to do puzzles before you can even think, and several difficulty options that make things incredibly easy, at the cost of the harder difficulties usually being poorly balanced and uneven. Iām not going around saying every Mario game needs to be a Kaizo, with no way to tone it down, but it feels like many are coming to my favourite games and telling me theyāre bad for being what I love.
Especially when I feel like From Soft is hitting that balance youāre talking about, and giving the player lots of options, but some people will seemingly just never be satisfied until they can choose āEasyā from the start screen. I donāt feel like me or From Soft is being dismissive when there are an abundance of accommodations and options to make things easier, you just need to actually engage with the game to use them.
Thatās obviously not true. Try playing an FPS with a mouse and keyboard vs controller and youāll see understanding how to do something theoretically is less than half the battle. Say someone is missing arms so plays with their feet, it is far far more difficult to get a higher level of precision, and some people just wonāt be able to no matter the amount of practice. People have a peak of reaction time no matter the amount of practice, and its different for different people. People have a peak of ability to move with precision no matter the amount of practice(see dyspraxia). People have shakes that cannot be controlled no matter the amount of practice.
Ignoring that that experience just isnāt fun for a lot of people, youāre using your own experience of your own ability.
ā¦ It doesnāt detract from your experience at all to add an optional mode for quick save or other similar features.
Accessibility is literally how this thread started. I also disagree that the game requires a high degree of precision. Dark Souls originally came out with only 8-directional rolling, which you could do on a D-Pad, Fight Stick, or any other accessible controller. Thereās no FPS-style aiming or anything, and again, you can find challenge runs of people beating the game while wearing oven mitts and other such shenanigans. The series main difficulty is in making the right decisions with the committed attack animations, end lag, and stagger mechanics, not quick reactions or precise inputs, although Iāll absolutely grant that the combat has become faster over time. Not that you canāt conquer the game with good buildcraft anyway, check out an āall hit runā for ways to beat Elden Ring while literally not dodging any attacks.
Sure, but skills and muscle memory are skills and muscle memory. Unless youāre referring to learning disabilities, people improve at things with practice, and time spent practicing the combat will make you better at the combat.
Iāve also replied to that in this thread. But Iāll also add that something like a quick save is very different from adding a new scaled difficulty option, and Souls already implements aĀ wealth of options to make the game easier. Adding another option in that same vein is a separate conversation from adding an Easy Mode.
P.S. I donāt mean to be snarky by linking my own comments. Itās understandable that you wouldnāt constantly be re-reading every comment Iāve made on this thread before replying, but I am getting a bit fatigued after debating this all day with Lemmy, and donāt feel a need to re-hash the same arguments here.
What? Yea? Sorry maybe you mixed me up with someone else I didnāt deny that.
Its not just a matter of precision in being able to input a control, its being able to reliably input a control quickly.
Again, someone being able to do something doesnāt mean everyone can.
Yea this I wouldnāt agree with, there definitely is a lot of quick inputs needed
Look into stuff like dysgraphia and dyspraxia, or even speech impediments. People can practice things repeatedly, but still because of muscle or neurological issues be unable to reliably perform certain actions. Obviously practice can improve, or it might not, or there might be a ceiling much lower than people without those issues- as well as improving much more slowly. What you seem to be misunderstanding is people arenāt saying its impossible for anyone to play the game with differing levels of ability, they are saying it might not be viable- and they wonāt necessarily follow the same path of improvement that you did. This could make it way more frustrating or even impossible to finish the game.
Iām advocating either or/both, an easy mode would be an improvement. But Iāll add more in the comment there.
Fair, at least from my perspective it seems like youāre kinda talking past people though of course I would think that.
Fair enough, I do actually think weāre having a fundamental misunderstanding here. I get the impression that when youāre asking for accessibility, youāre looking for a perfect accessibility, where literally anyone can play the game.
When I say accessibility, Iām picturing more of a sliding scale, from completely inaccessible (a game that just crashes on boot or something) to perfect accessibility.
I think a game like Elden Ring is actually very accessible, despite itās difficulty. I bring up examples like beating the game with oven mitts or voice control to say that it doesnāt require superhuman precision or reaction time. I assume that the majority of disabled players, using an adaptive controller or specialized rig that theyāve had years of practice with will be able to control their character with better precision or reaction time than the ridiculous twitch streamers who completed those challenges. Those players will still have to invest time to build game knowledge and experience to apply that to beating the game, but fundamentally, the game ācan be accessedā by them.
I also have no illusions that āeveryone can beat Elden Ring in 140 hoursā, like youāve implied that I do. And uhā¦ yes? Games take different amounts of time to beat for different players, and thatās fine. If Elden Ring was your first ever video game, then uhā¦ questionable decision, but the game would eventually teach you everything you need to know to beat it. Iām not exactly sure why this is a gotcha, honestly. If you take 1000+ hours to beat Elden Ring and love it, then power to you, I would never shame you for it or assert you had a worse experience than mine. Same way I feel about summons, or using multiplayer to beat bosses, or whatever else Souls weirdos can be elitist about.
If you look hard enough, youāll always be able to find a disability that canāt play the game. Thatās unfortunate, but I donāt think itās a requirement that the game is playable by everyone. Books are written in languages I donāt speak, art is made about life experiences I canāt share, and thatās OK. A wealth of good games are coming out all the time, and Iām sure someone with dyspraxia can find games they can play and enjoy.
Obviously, I know how that sounds, if a game can be made accessible to more players, and has the budget, it should be. I wholeheartedly agree. Thatās why Iāve advocated for better support for captions and flashing visual cues and audio indicators. I would love the next Elden Ring to be a better experience for the visually impaired or hard of hearing.
But I also think that games are art, and that the careful crafting and balancing of souls games are a part of that art. And theyāre designed from the ground up with that difficulty in mind. Honestly, I think itās a fundamental part of what Souls offers, and an easy mode wouldnāt be the same experience. To quote Miyazaki:
As a piece of art, if an easy difficulty was added, lots of people would play it. But Iāve already articulated why I donāt think a simple scaling difficulty would work, and why I think itās important the base game is difficult. The only way to do it properly would be a bespoke and balanced lower difficulty. But the artists that made the game have no passion for that, and bluntly, I donāt feel it would be worth their time and talent because it would justā¦ be like a lot of other games you could go play instead, rather than the unique experience that Souls is.
And unfortunately, this does fundamentally exclude some people. Elden Ring takes tons of measures to minimize the excluded crowd, but it wonāt ever be zero, without fundamentally changing what Souls is. Thatās a shame, but ultimately, I really think Souls should exist, and is important art all the same. Do a quick google search for āDark Souls saved my lifeā and youāll see just how powerful a piece of art it can be.
My real point here is, just because a small sliver of people canāt play it, or because people donāt want to invest the time or effort to experience it, Souls has the right to exist, and From Software should be allowed to make the game they want to make, even if itās for a niche crowd. They donāt have to offer an option that they feel compromises the experience, regardless of whether or not we agree.
Accessibility also includes time constraints. You say yourself, it took you hours to get to a point where you could get through the game, let alone the hours it takes to just pass through the game with that aside. I personally missed out on a lot of Fromsoftās stuff because, at the time, I was working 70+ hours a week, with 3 hours of commuting. I would have loved to spent some of the little free time I had putzing around in those games, an experience their art. However, I never had the time to spend double digit hours honing skills, just to get through the game in a reasonable time frame. Sure, now that I donāt work like that, I prefer games with high difficulty, doesnāt mean that when I play those games, now that I have time, I still donāt wish I had that access back then. If you can access a broader audience by offering a selected difficulty, why not? Many games with the highest skill ceilings have, traditionally, had difficulty modes, no on talks shit on all the boomer shooters for having easy/hard/harder/nightmare modes.
Mmm, I feel like under heavy time constraints like that, there are worse barriers than difficulty to a gameās experience. For example, itās hard to appreciate a narrative and big reveals when youāre spreading your play out so much that itās hard to remember who characters are. Itās also hard to enjoy exploring a large space, and feeling like youāve covered it well.
Elden Ring, for example, is a massive game. I soared through Elden Ring, as I played the whole franchise (besides whatās locked to PlayStation) first, and happened to stumble into an extremely powerful build. The game still took me 140 hours, including the DLC.
I also still donāt think itās an accessibility constraint. Iād totally understand why you donāt want to commit to a 150hr experience when youāre playing less than 3hrs a week, youād be stuck on it for a whole year. But learning over time in little pieces is totally viable. Stuff like muscle memory and skill sticks with you, I could put down Souls for the next few years and when I came back Iād still be much better at it than when I first sat down.
Also, I actually find small time slots one of the best ways to conquer a tough challenge. When I get hard stuck, like I did on the final boss of the ER DLC, I chose to play like, 20 minutes of attempts a night, and then go to bed and sleep on it. We know from academia that studying something right before you sleep helps, since your brain can lock that fresh experience into memory better. Youāre also starting each attempt āfreshā, in that you arenāt already frustrated and annoyed by the boss. And this worked great, it took a boss that I couldnāt beat with a whole free evening, and I beat it after only a few days. Itās a technique Iāve used repeatedly.
All that to say, I donāt think difficulty is the best reason to not play a Souls game while working 70+ hour weeks. And I donāt think itās exclusive to Souls, Iād also avoid story-heavy JRPGs, and massive open worlds in general. Not that you couldnāt sacrifice the time to play any of those things, but frankly, Iād recommend a game thatās better consumed in bits and pieces, such as GotY nominee Balatro, a competitive multiplayer game with constrained matches, or a roguelike experience such as Hades. And thatās not that odd, I also wouldnāt recommend reading an epic novel like Dune, or trying to binge Game of Thrones or something.
My honest take on your story, is that Iām really glad Souls didnāt have an easy mode for you at that time. As you say, you prefer games with high difficulty now. I would hate for you to have played a compromised version of what From Software carefully designed here, when the intended experience ultimately really worked for you. Itās the same reason I avoid trailers for games I know I want to play, that is, if you wouldāve even came back to replay a game youād already ābeatenā.
In other comments, Iāve already talked about my friend who only played games on easy before playing Souls, which made him realize how much he enjoyed hard games and the rest of beating a tough challenge. He fell in love with the experience From Software set out to make. If DS1 had had an easy mode at that time, Iām not sure he wouldāve ever learned that about himself, because he wouldāve played it on easy. He mightāve enjoyed the art, and the visual design of the creatures, but itās only because From Software had the confidence to assert their intended vision that itās his favourite game and franchise ever made.
Your first point about spreading out the narrative in such a wayā¦ that is how most media worked until very recently. I grew up waiting upwards of months for the next installment, if those are large installments, years. Also, Elden ring came out after I stopped working those hours, I am mostly having this experience, in terms of Fromsoft games, with Demonās Souls - Sekiro, but that doesnāt change the argument, just putting up my time frame.
I am more likely to not retain the patterns of attack, etc., when I have to break it up, in such a fashion, unlike the experience of seeing the new things, and partaking in the world, and its lore.
The reason I was unable to get through the souls games was that I had time to learn things like the attack patterns of the monsters, or time to experience the world and its lore in a way the memorization part was getting in the way of. When I learned something, and returned to it weeks later, I had to relearn a lot of the rote aspects of the game play. This blocks access to me experiencing the art, and lore, which is more important to me, in such games, than the mechanics of it. So, yes, I lost access.
Having now played the games, I do not wish it had this barrier back then, as I still would have preferred to experienced and easier version, so that I could participate in the larger zeitgeist, of the pop culture of the time, and then got to enjoy it how it is, now that I have time. Let me repeat that, I would have preferred to have had an easy mode, back when it was new, to experience my preferred part, when it was most culturally relevant. Now that I have played them, I STILL would have preferred that, even if I never got to experience it otherwise.
You are basically telling me how YOU would prefer to do something, and you are glad I had to conform to YOUR preferences. Meanwhile, having the option for and easier mode, would not have changed YOUR experience at all, unless YOU choose to. While my suggestion would not have affected your experience, it would have allowed me to have experienced the games when they was at their relevance peak. Meanwhile, what you ask for affects me in a negative way. To say that an option for an easy mode, on the screen, when you start, that you do not have to select, would damage your experience, is wild. That is very, very, weird. You are adamant the idea that someone could have a variant in preferences, that affect you in no way, would damage your experience because what? Because you had to see the option on the screen? Because people you deem lesser gamers would have played it? Is this some weird ideological axiom? Because people are simply doing something different than you? What is it that bothers you so much about other people having a different choice, you donāt need to make, or experience?
Ok, hang on. I replied to this initially while annoyed, and blew past some of the key points. But I do actually want to talk about the whole āparticipating in the zeitgeistā thing.
A large part of the reasons Dark Souls doesnāt have difficulties is to create that social element. Gonna stick with Elden Ring for my examples here, because I missed most of the online discussion around Sekiro. But from what I saw, the majority of the discussion online was about how hard certain bosses were, shared experiences like getting your ass kicked by Tree Sentinel, or Margit āputting your foolish ambitions to restā. If Elden Ring really did have an easy mode, that was easy enough for someone to beat the game without ālearning the attack patterns of the monstersā, and to keep up with the diehard playerbase while working 70+ hour work weeks, would they really have felt included in those conversations? Would they have been able to share the excitement at beating a boss that they struggled with for hours, without actually struggling for that time? Thereās an intentional design decision here. To quote Miyazaki from when Sekiro released:
If all you really wanted was to justā¦ experience the art and story, and see the cool enemy designs, you could always watch a youtube letās play or something as well. The ultimate easy mode, with a defined length of how long it will take. But if you wanted to commiserate about tough challenges and the experience you went through, then you kinda need to actually have that experience.
Iāll also add, that stuff doesnāt go away. I was excited by the hype around Elden Ring too. Itās what pushed me to start Dark Souls 1, and then play 2, 3, Sekiro, and finally Elden Ring. I missed the initial hype around all of those games, but that cultural stuff is still there. I built up a youtube playlist while playing each game and once I finished them I would catch up on Illusory Wall, Zullie the Witch, Vaati, and challenge runs and Lockout Bingos from the likes of Lilā Aggy or Ymfah. My friends were also excited to see me play the games. I may not have experienced the Anor Londo archers until years after they did, but it was still fun to talk to them about it, and they were excited to reminisce and replay the game alongside me.
I eventually did get to participate in the fun that was Shadow of the Erdtree releasing soon after I beat Elden Ring. And that was great, and special. It was fun to see that final boss get nerfed soon after I beat it, for example. I do feel sorry that you missed the moment of Sekiro releasing. But ultimately I donāt think your anecdotal experience is more important than say, my friend who always picked easy and didnāt realize how much he loved a tough challenge. Or any of the āDark Souls saved my lifeā people, who mightāve picked easy if it was offered and not had that experience. Or the designers at From Software who worked hard to create something special and have the right to not offer a way to half-ass it and āfragment the user baseā.
Skill issue on FromSoftās part, and I say that as someone who has been a fan of their games longer than most people in this thread - more than a decade before even Demonās Souls. Their original talent was always in detailed, immersive world design. Their gameplay was unpolished and experimental, but thatās something I liked about them. They got a smash hit with Demonās and Dark Souls and made a hard pivot towards iterating on that formula. They still embrace their roots as a studio focused on detailed world building, but theyāre trying to move more towards action and encounter design to cater to Souls fans. Where once they were highly experimental, now they seem afraid to try anything different.
A better studio could find a way for players to share that struggle and triumph while still allowing players of different skill levels to enjoy everything the game has to offer. That studio would be Supergiant with Hadesā God Mode option, which slowly gives more damage resistance each time you die so the player still struggles and gets better until the handicap and their improving skill meet in the middle. In the context of Souls, this could be separate for each boss. Or another entirely different approach could be taken. The point is merely that there are ways for players of different skill levels to still share in the same struggles, FromSoft is just unwilling or incapable of finding them.
So as a longtime FromSoft fan, I think theyāre the ones who need to git gud.
Fair point! I actually love this suggestion, rethinking more ways to make the game easier without breaking the core experience.
I donāt think From Soft is totally languishing in this department, the games include an increasing amount of ways to make the game easier, such as Elden Ring introducing summons, an open world you can tackle in any order (although this falls off post-Morgott, as does the game overall imo).
But youāre right, Iād love to see them potentially dabble with things like dynamic difficulty to create something that simultaneously better challenges experienced veterans and eases the ride for newer players. Or at least something to keep bosses you missed in the open world format somewhat interesting when you find them later. I donāt think theyāre done iterating here, and I expect them to continue to improve at accommodating more players, without violating their other design goals.
I also agree thereās some worrying trends in the design, as From Soft struggles to find ways to challenge their most diehard fans. Maleniaās waterfowl dance, for example, which requires odd specific movement to dodge thatās impractical to learn organically. Or her moves where she simply cannot be staggered, breaking expectations in a confusing way. In general as well, the games have trended towards being faster and requiring more āreactionaryā play, and I do miss the more methodical combat of DS1, when the game was much less twitchy and more about carefully planning your moves.
Iām not sure I agree that From Soft has stopped being experimental though, Sekiro was a complete departure right before Elden Ring, as was returning to Armored Core for the first time in a decade right after. Elden Ring also dabbles in an interesting blend of mechanics. Transitioning to an Open World is a massive and obvious one, but Iām also happy to see powerstancing back, interesting new weapon arts, the physick flask is a great new system, horseback combat on Torrent, and stuff like charged attacks and posture similar to Sekiro. Not perfect, by any means, I actually find the balancing of this wealth of mechanics and build options to be pretty shaky, but itās far from a boring +1 iteration that doesnāt try anything.
I see why youād say theyāre still experimenting - and they are within the confines of the souls formula. They definitely arenāt making carbon copies of past games. But, compared to the crazy variety and wild mechanics in their back catalog, the souls formula is pretty narrow. Theyāve got a card battler, an adventure game series, a co-op puzzle platformer, and more in their portfolio. Demonās Souls itself was a huge experiment: souls, messages, and invasions into a mostly single player experience were completely novel and even weird. Letās not forget about world tendency, (even if we want to).
FromSoft was always like that: a bunch of totally random ideas youād never seen before with enough good, bad, and weird to go around. The changes they make today are comparatively tame. Imagine if the next soulslike game did away with the entire magic system and instead you craft your own spells from elements (Eternal Ring). Or if they did away with respawns and overhauled the entire leveling system in Bloodborne like they did when trying to give Shadow Tower its own identity separate from Kingās Field. They were wild, but thatās what gave the world soulslikes in the first place.
I understand why they play it safe. Honestly, they donāt have a choice. It comes with the budget. So I really donāt begrudge them the lack of experimentation too much. But I do find it sad because itās our loss. They could do better, and who knows what other stuff they might have come up with if they were truly free to experiment the way they used to. What I really wish is for them and other devs to just make smaller games with smaller budgets. Still make the AAA games, just set aside a small amount to experiment with and try new things too. That way we keep learning, discovering, and innovating. Weād all have better games for it.
So, I was there, missing it. Though this doesnāt apply to elden ring, as that came out after I changed my work life.
The conversation was not simply about the difficulty and moves. Like, most of the conversations happening around me were about the lore, what people thought was happening considering X, Y, and Z, etc. The time the difficulty, mechanics, etc., took the spotlight, was over in a week or so, and mostly relegated to people asking for help with one thing, or another, new found tactics, and speed run methods. So it, fairly rapidly, evened out. Even if you look at YT videos about those games, at least a similar amount are focused on the lore, as the mechanics, though those were initial chatter. They basically only came up in a a month or so as a broad statements of difficulty, or when some new trick was found, until it circulated. There was easily enough to have be an active part of those conversations. Much more than āOh, you know my work schedule, donāt have timeā.
That stuff doesnāt go away online. However, in person, with the exception of hardcore fans, it definitely does fade away. Occasionally something will be brought up in a bout of nostalgia, or in comparison to something contemporary, but it does fade away.
You truly do not understand the ways in which I, and many others. enjoy things, if you think this is the same. This statement leads me to believe that many perspectives you do not hold are completely alien to you.
Your anecdotal experience is not worth more than mine either, and my suggestions do not force themselves upon you.
Letās clarify a little bit here, because I actually am curious. How much easier would you actually want the game to be? Howlongtobeat puts Sekiroās main story at 30 hours. Asking a friend whoās very experienced at Sekiro and has played it dozens of times, he takes ~10 hours to beat it on a replay. So even if the game was dead easy, and had nothing to teach you, and you had no reason to explore or look around, youād only save a maximum of 2/3rds of that time. More realistically, it would probably take 15 hours to complete if we factor in the exploration, even if the game was straightforward enough that you could kill each boss in only a few attempts.
So what would you have liked this easy mode to look like, in order to save you that time? And what value would you have gotten from that, in what amount of time, compared to setting aside 30 hours, or watching someone else play it?
Well alright, Iām choosing to disregard the fact that this is 90% insults and calling me a weirdo freak. Thanks for that, btw, Iāve put a lot of effort into expressing myself clearly across a lot of different comments here.
In the latter half of this comment, I articulated why I feel an easy mode actually does make playing the game worse, even if you donāt select it. I also articulated why a simple scaling difficulty wouldnāt really work.
And in the latter half of this comment (start at āBut I also think games are artā), I expressed why I think an Easy mode hasnāt been added, and wouldnāt be the same experience.
To add to that final point, the reason I donāt want others to play an easy mode isnāt because Iām a loser and beating Souls is the only way I know Iām a real man. I just think Souls is an amazing and unique offering, and it would be a real shame for someone to play the game on easy (which would ābreak the game itselfā in Miyazakiās words) and think thatās all there was.
I want more people to give it a try and experience it, and hopefully love it, not less. But just like itās frustrating to watch a movie you love with someone whoās on their phone the whole time, it would be frustrating to see a ton of people play a kneecapped version of one of my favourite things and end up not āgetting itā. And it would be more of a loss for them than me. Itās just the same Miyazaki quote over again, both me and him love what has been made here, and want more people to experience it, but not at the expense of compromising it. To paraphrase the end of his quote, would we even be talking about it if From Soft hadnāt had the confidence to stick to their intended vision?
90% calling you names? in the last 1/4 I brought up how it is weird to be bothered by the experience of others, when they donāt affect you, then pushed for a reasoning of it, by laying down an array of possibilities, and then asking what yours was. I used the word weird twice, and it was in relationship to the behavior, not the person. My guy, you are way too sensitive, like you imagined something isnāt there, if this is really how you viewed that comment.
There is more to scaling that just HP/Damage. It isnāt that great of a challenge to add in more time for response, and reduce pattern complexity so you donāt have memorize as much, or for as long. This is how many FPS games, Fighting games, and RTS games have done it for decades. No one bemoans Quake for having something other than nightmare, or Mortal Combat for having an easy option. Hell, in Sekiro, giving more time to respond for parries/blocks, and reducing the number needed, in order to execute the instant kill function, would have worked. There are many ways difficulty could be changed. Even if they did the dumb thing by reducing the HP of enemies, and increasing the damage you do, if normal is just as it was intended, how did it change your personal experience, since you wouldnāt play the game?
It is possible to disagree, and have a discourse about it, with the creators. You donāt have to accept artist/authorial intent as if it was the law of reality governing their product. I agree with him that people who enjoy those challenges will get more from a game than they would otherwise. However I think it is weird, maybe even self-centered in nature, to assume that everyone would get that increase in satisfaction, for the same reasons, as he does. He is free to say he doesnāt want to do this, and people who play his games are free to disagree with him on the subject.
It appears we fundamentally disagree here.
I meanā¦ quick recap here. You said the way I was behaving was āvery, very weirdā. You claimed I was offended solely ābecause I had to see an option on the screenā. You claimed my reasoning was about ālesser gamers being able to play itā, clearly insinuating that I simply have a superiority complex as a āweird ideological axiomā, as if itās the foundation of the way I think. You also basically stated that Iām deeply bothered by anyone having a different opinion or experience.
Donāt try to gaslight me about this being insulting. Iāve never expressed any anger here at disagreement, nor have I brought up anything about superiority or inferiority. Youāre bringing baggage into this from other people youāve argued with before, and then insulting my character over a strawman version of my argument.
Also, when you clearly associate a behaviour with a person, insulting that behaviour is insulting the person. You canāt claim you didnāt associate the two when you chose to write āYOUā in all caps several times while describing the behaviour you were insulting.
Itās also not at all ridiculous to assume the āWhat is it that bothers you so much about other people having a different choice, you donāt need to make, or experience?ā at the end of that rant was rhetorical like the questions preceding it, again, donāt try to gaslight me into thinking that quote was purely ālaying down an array of possibilities, and then asking what yours wasā, and that Iām being āsensitiveā.
If you actually didnāt mean offence, then Iād encourage you in future to skip the āarray of possibilitiesā, especially when those possibilities are exclusively descriptions of assholes.
That aside, thank you, I actually do appreciate you recognizing that you canāt just ādouble your health and damageā and get a good easy mode. Thatās an argument I frequently come across while having this discussion, that they could ājust scale everything downā in an hour or so, itās become what I tend to assume people mean when they say ājust add an easy modeā. Youāre also a very different person than what I usually end up having this argument with, in that you have actually played Souls, and understand the value of the more challenging default, but still wanted an easy mode. In that sense, Iād have no issue if you had played an easy mode. Thereās lots of mods to do so, for example, and I wouldnāt have any problem if you had gone and played one. Frankly, I wouldnāt have issue with anyone installing a mod to play an easier version. The option is literally there, just not on console, unfortunately, but I blame the console manufacturers for that, not From Software. I like the clarity in installing a mod that you arenāt playing the game as intended and getting the full experience, which means it doesnāt āsegment the user baseā or potentially cause people to miss out by thinking theyāve experienced everything From Soft intended.
The argument I generally take issue with is that From Software have some kind of āmoral responsibilityā or are āstupid and losing businessā for not adding an explicit easy mode. A half-baked easy mode would do more harm than good, in terms of review scores and giving many players a worse experience. And a well-made easy mode is not an insignificant amount of work. Balance is one of the hardest things to get right, From Soft is literally still doing balance patches on the base game of Elden Ring, and easy mode would essentially double the amount of situations where things have to be balanced. It would also double QA work, as every scenario needs to be tested in both difficulties. And justā¦ loading different things conditionally into a space isnāt always easy either, look at all the struggles and weird bugs id have experienced with DOOM Eternalās Master Levels, and theyāre a team lauded for their technical prowess. One of From Softās best attributes is that they iterate very quickly. A team of ~400 people have made Dark Souls 1, 2, 3, Bloodborne and Sekiro and Elden Ring in 11 years. Thatās more than a game every 2 years, not even counting DLC and other projects, in an era where game development is trending towards 5+ years as the norm. Iāve already asserted that I donāt feel an easy mode would be nearly the same quality of game as the main entry, so Iāll come out and outright say that I donāt think an easy mode would be worth the months of effort that properly balancing and tweaking such a mode to make it good would add to development. But thatās totally subjective, and youāre more than welcome to do that math differently.
If From Soft release their next title with an easy mode, then great. I wonāt go picket their office or anything, Iām not pathetic. But if they do, then I really hope itās good, and I really hope the people who finally āgetā to play will give the intended difficulty a chance.