It was just an example. But I was talking about progressively injecting milliseconds in a chain of moves... not changing patterns or anything.
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Kotaku: An easy mode has never ruined a game
- Thread starter BAD
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That sounds nice on paper, but as a programmer... whew, that's kind of a big ask.
Dark Souls 3 actually managed to break 3 million
https://gematsu.com/2016/05/dark-so...n-shipments-dark-souls-series-tops-13-million
I think it's the only title to do so. Bloodborne seems to be over 2 million as well, even although it's an exclusive.
So 2~3m seems to be right. Still AAA numbers, but obviously a "niche" in the market, to some degree.
I really don't know why this is so hard to understand for people, or why people keep focusing on FromSoft's games but not, say, even more niche hardcore platformer/rogue-likes/etc. games.
I'm guessing the FOMO is real? I had to google that btw (Fear of Missing Out), came across this a bunch of times lately and wondered what it was about... but yeah I think that's the crux here. No one cares if they can't clear a level in a bullet hell shooter, in Super Meat Boy, or in Super Hexagon, or whatever. No one is writing articles demanding that La-Mulana adds an easy mode.
Presumably it's because they are not AAA games?
So, basically talk down to your potential player base if they struggle and infantilize them? Nice.
Not every single game can possibily be accessible to everyone. Does that mean its ok when films don't have closed captions? Or ratings?
We have a situation where difficulty tweaks (easy mode, I hate this term now) are discussed as a possibility and rejected. This would be the same as having subtitles rejected or deciding to not warn people about flashing lights...
Honestly, this is a bit of an insulting "gotcha" argument.
They're focusing on From Soft because that's the game of the moment. ITT because of the screenshot in the article and OP completely abandoned the thread.
I haven't seen any discussion about this before on Era but I would've been involved then too. I've never played more than an hour of any From Software game.
Including the developers since there have been six games like this with no change.
What's an easy mode in Souls? Or Sekiro? What does that look like, or behave like?
Yes, but just adding an easy mode as most suggest is not helping with accessibility at all. It's not going to slow the pace, it's not going to make systems more lenient. Enemies will still be as quick as before.
I don't know how accessibility can be accomplished in some cases, just from the nature of games.
Have you played From Software games? What are your thoughts on them?
Would an easy mode make Dark Souls fun? Would compromising the central aspect of the game be worth it?
No I don't care if they have an easy mode or not.
My whole argument is that From Software cares. They make the game. They want a certain experience to be felt. Are they not allowed to make their games as they wish?
How is having a simple ability to familiarize with the game play, so they can find their way into the gameplay loop talking down to them when nothing is offered now. sorry for trying....
I never did understand why "games as art" is being dismissed as a valid justification for why there are no difficulty options when the director himself is very vocal about his "vision". It would be okay if it was just the players interpretation, but the words came from the director himself. At this point we can say that "art" is the very reason.
Let's not do that. Making people feel emasculated just because they want to play their game is ridiculous and thank goodness most devs aren't that stupid or cruel.
Adding something the devs have never added and that seems to work perfectly fine from em so far does is taking away from the vision (or whatever) the dev has.
also what with this "gatekeeping" thing, what is people being locked out of?
You think so? Maybe I'm missing something, but I'd simply do something like this:
Once an attack pattern is triggered (i.e., swingA, swingB, swingC), you'd increase the cooldown between each swing by some factor, like:
swingACooldown = baseSwingACooldown + modifier;
The modifier would be determined by a boolean queue of size N.
Edit: i.e., if the threshold is 90% and assuming a queue of size 20, you'd start increasing the size of "modifier" every time the queue is updated with a new value and the number of "false" is at or above 18...
I was focusing more on your suggesting that you make fun of the players for choosing an easy mode as incentive to not choose the easy mode or a difficulty assist.
Souls: It's called magic and summoning
Sekiro: Sugars and stealth, granted this doesn't really help much against bosses.
but its the director himself to says that he wants everyone that plays the game be on equal grounds. ergo why standard difficulty
Sure, it's their prerogative then. But my point still stands, difficulty options are very much tied to accessibility too. But I'm glad to hear you wouldn't be against it if they added different difficulties or an assist mode.
The whole dark and gritty world, the entire atmosphere, is built on the possibility of you dying at every corner. Why do you want to fight "giant monsters and shit" when you can't die? These games clearly weren't meant as dark fantasy sightseeing simulators, so you wanting it to be one has no bearing on the game designers motivations. Some of y'all are really confusing me.
What, do you want to still get trophies? You are still playing the game, isn't that what you wanted? Or you want to get all the recognition without trying?
I will be all-in if they add an easy mode to From Soft games but they add this.
They clearly don't want to. This is about whether or not they should.
Maybe less damage? No death penalty? Who knows. I ain't a game designer. This is a separate question but an interesting one. Someone make a "how would you design your sekiro easy mode" thread.
why does working your skill level up make people feel emasculated? if i sucked i would have no problem working my skill level up this way and i did with cuphead!. How is playing on "easy" not emasculating then? why does that matter? that just makes this sound like an overall pride based issue that others cant beat the game they are feeling emasculated already.... not FROM and others having something against accessibility and disabled gamers....
If you've played the game, what is going on here?
Is it just "abusing" the mechanics/items so the boss almost stays perma stun-locked?
Why "should" they if they don't want to? It clearly serves a purpose to them.
Terrain navigation and pitfalls are still an issue.
Are you simply suggesting cooldowns between attacks? Then yeah, it seems feasible. For a moment I thought you were suggesting tweaking attack animations, and yeah that's a whole can of worms.
Yeah not being a big and flashy game definitely affects that. And I guess Super Meat Boy is also rather old game already. And it doesn't really have as much going for it than From Soft games have (don't mean it's any worse game, just much smaller scope). It's not like there's much to explore in the world of SMB. But there's a lot to see in From Soft games. The visuals are more complex and detailed, so there's more to admire so to speak. And fashion souls of course! More world building, lore and story.
For more recent indies Cuphead has been part of similar discussions, so has Ori and the Blind Forest. And Moon Studios actually did give some options in the definitive edition, Mahler has also said they did something new regarding difficulty for the sequel. Something they are excited to share with players. There was a discussion in GAF about the difficulty back then.
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im not saying they have to wear the hat just the mode that does that thing, that was the reference.
It's not that simple, the temptation is going to be there in games like this. I can tell you with 100% certainty that if Bloodborne (my first From game) had an easy mode, i would have switched to it on the very first level, had i done that there's no doubt in my mind i wouldn't have had anywhere near the sense of accomplishment of going through and beating it.
Bloodborne is easily a top 10 favorite game of all time for me, maybe even top 5. If i had played that on easy that definitely wouldn't be the case, i would have run through the game not understanding what the game is trying to teach me, using the same strategy for every fight, and probably wondered why everyone praised these games so much. Or worse, struggle through the game on easy and severely demoralize me, resulting in me dropping the game entirely.
I'm not saying that an easy mode is going to ruin the games, I wouldn't be upset if they added one, i'm just giving you my personal experience with these games. It without a doubt would have hurt my experience.
I also think its worth noting that Sekiro is Froms 6th title like this, using 4 different IPs, among 3 different publishers, they still to this day don't have an easy mode in there. So either From are a bunch of incompetent devs that don't understand game development, or they're intentionally being mean to players who are too intimidated by the games, I don't think either one of those are likely.
Then people are free to criticize it if they feel such a decision detracts from the game's quality or accessibility.
When Nintendo decided to put Fusion Mode behind an amiibo paywall in Metroid: Samus Returns, no one stepped in to defend Nintendo's "artistic vision".
Locking content behind a seperate purchase is completely different.
I completely agree with you. If I made a thread right now that Yoshi's Crafted World would be more enjoyable with a hard mode, nobody (or at least fewer/different users) would shut me down and say "no, go play something else".
I'll say it right now: I found Dark Souls 3 way too easy and my experience with the game would have been far better if I could have gone into the options and turned up some sliders. Maybe that could be reducing i-frames (DS2 had modifiable i-frames with the agility (?) stat), or something as simple as increasing the damage I take across the board. I tried to gimp my character as much as I feasibly could through the RPG mechanics, but the sliders would have made an improvement.
If being "hard but fair" is such an important part of these games, then allowing players to tune the difficulty to achieve "hard but fair" relative to their experience or physical capability is a logical addition.
Disabled people should not be exempt from experiencing parts of the game just because of their disability.
Your idea just comes across as needless elitism and gatekeeping. Serious gatekeeping.
I fundamentally disagree with this article. It's inherent to the design of From's games. Even if someday their games become too hard for me, I still wouldn't want them to include an easy mode. They have a clear vision with these games. I want to experience that fully.
Yeah and that's the point, too. What does an easy mode in sekiro look like that adequately affects the boss gameplay, without ruining the game/boss gameplay? Without substantially changing the way the boss behaves, or the fight itself, I'm not sure there is a way.
Lowering the boss's HP pool or increasing the amount of damage the player outputs against them doesn't fix the "problem" if the core combat mechanics are what is truly the challenging factor here. So...what, is an easy mode going to relegate the enemies to just standing there and never really swinging an attack at you? Is the boss going to stand there and take the hit without reaction? Because that reaction is still going to destroy you if you aren't adjusted to the gameplay mechanics.
I suppose what I'm trying to say is that it doesn't appear to be as easy a task to just lump an easy mode into a game like Sekiro. And to effectively do so would be have the player, playing on easy, playing a completely different game at that point. Should the easy mode give the player infinite health? Infinite revives? Does that truly seem like the answer? I don't think so.
Summons in Souls games is a great way that From handles creating an easier experience for players that need the assistance. But, as others have mentioned, that's not even a perfect method as summons effectively break the boss battles completely.
Perhaps I should clarify; my specific explanation of my relationship to artistic interpretation was probably a bit misleading. I am aware of Miyazaki's opinions on game design. I do not think I would say that I entirely agree with his design principles but I can respect his decisions. Where I draw the line is in saying that because these were his goals that his creative output has necessarily accomplished them, and where I cite death of the author as a principle of interpretation. It is in that sense that I think citing his words as a counter-argument to what people are bringing up about whether these games are actually accessible to them misses the point.
From Software does not exempt anyone because of their disability.
The word disability covers a wide range of people and there is no intent on behalf of From Software to specifically target anyone in a detrimental or regressive way.
Just because yourself and others keep repeating that statement, does not make it true.
Those won't do enough to create an "easier" experience for the player. It'll just make it take longer for the boss/enemies to kill the player, but kill the player they still will.
The core gameplay mechanics and combat would need to be altered.
Yeah. First of all the player uses a divine confetti, said item increases the damage you do to demons and illusion/apparition type enemies then he pops the sugar that boosts attack power. The snap seeds he's using are an item that's meant to disperse illusions (That boss is one), but they didn't want there to be a way to one hit kill the boss so they made them deal damage and stun her instead. After that he transitions to firecrackers (a tool that doesn;t deal damage but stuns almost eveey enemy in the game, including bosses. After that he switches to fistfuls of ash which are basically consumable firecrackers.
I was responding to someone's idea of keeping parts of the game away from people playing on an easier setting.
Yeah, mine was just a very simple example (among potentially many) to illustrate how one could subtly affect the difficulty while a) still requiring the need to analyze the enemy and recognize patterns b) keeping it difficult for any kind of player.
The threshold I mentioned (i.e., 90% in my example) would basically determine how harsh a game is.
FOMO and less exposure or appeal. While many might not like From Software's difficulty their games have a unique aesthetic that is appealing, which is a credit to their art directors and studio in general. That people really want to interact with the work they do and wish for ways to do so is a compliment to that team, regardless if they choose to implement options or not.
User Warned: Inappropriate point of comparison
Why should the USA have free healthcare when the government clearly doesn't want to? The "should" question is a valid discussion to have. Why should any game add easy mode? Allows more people to enjoy the game on an (admittedly shittier) level. You let people make that choice for themselves at no cost to the rest of us.
I think that's more on you, man.
Again, I find intent to basically irrelevant for the question of "should they." It's perfectly clear that they don't want to do it. You're correct. They will probably never do it for any of their games. We are talking about whether or not they should.
Edit: I apologize. I"ll take that L. It was not my intention to compare, only to show illustrate the absurdity of "because they want to/don't want to". My point was that any institution or person "in power" (whether that may be a creative person, a parent, government, a sports coach, or a teacher) can choose to do any number of things "because they want to/don't want to." That's still no reason to stop the discussion about how things "should" be, how things can be better for more people.
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why do people try to mix up disability friendly features into "ADD EASY MODE" as a way to try to justify their point.
Making a game able for people with limitation will make the game easier
=/=
Making a game easier might not make it able for people with limitations
Right, I was trying to follow. So this might not work for every boss given what type of boss they might be and obviously, it requires an inventory of stocked up items and the necessary abilities.
Still, it goes to show how players can come up with almost puzzle-like solutions to break the game.