I'm not going to waste my time with this any further. If you dont want to engage with the arguments and think you could easily debunk them because you worked on a small portfolio of games all the more power to you. It just makes you look ridiculous.
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Sekiro success, sales, and winning Game of the Year is a huge strike against the "difficulty equals bad" notion
- Thread starter CenturionNami
- Start date
OP
OP
Except for the fact they took the ability to spam healing items by making them bound to the checkpoints. Most people found Dark Souls far more challenging then Demon Soul. They made bosses much more difficult, made Estus a set number of heals, and introduced other elements to compensate for some of the removed elements from Demon Souls.
Not to mention that they took out the ability to call for help in Sekiro. Which is one of the issues people have, since they can't summon for help, the game is already harder for people who played souls like that.
Then don't make multiple difficulty settings. Just make 1. Then you can have certain modifiers. The exact same ones they use when they debug the game. One hit kill, max souls, etc. Simple as that. No other difficulty modes have to be made and now people have more options to enjoy the game the way they want to. It is a literal no downsides option. You can't even say it would effect sales because every game on the PC has an easily downloadable trainer and yet every single From game seeks millions on the PC.
User warned: hostility
WHAT ARGUMENTS
jfc
No but then the HARDCORE BROZ won't be able to tell everyone how much they rule because anybody will be able to clear it
You dummy
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Lol "ableist" speech. Jesus Christ. Absolutely nothing wrong with not having different difficulty settings, 90% of games are easy as hell anyway. I got no problem with making fonts bigger or color options and stuff but it is literally impossible to make every game playable for everyone.
It is absolutely proven that the community is what let this game grow from Demon's Souls to Souls and onwards back then, and that community grew especially fast and well because they all shared the exact same experience. Everyone was in the same boat. That creates a sense of companionship and incentive to help each other out via ingame messages, summonings and forums like barely anything else does. They already deviated from that with Sekiro anyway though.
The devs are aware of it, and they don't feel the need to deviate from it as long as their games continue to grow in sales with each new release. They are catering to a niche noone in the AAA or even AA space catered to before they showed up, and that niche continues to grow.
I'm not worried about anything. Again, if they want to include difficulty settings, that's their decision and I'd be fine with it. They would have a reason for deviating from their core design principle. But as long they don't have a reason for it I don't see a problem in that.
As Nami says, these are not changes made "for appealing to people with different tastes" but rather game design choices.
Dark Souls is beautifully crafted with Estus in mind so that you can explore from checkpoint to next with the limited amount providing you some tension on your journey, while Demons Souls levels don't have any checkpoints in-between but rather shortcuts so you're expected to stock up for the time you're planning to spend there, do you want to just open a shortcut or go straight for the boss.
I think it IS worth looking through at the numerous points people have made, because honestly I do agree with them. It doesn't mean that we can't be discussing the importance of accessibility- but it's also important to see where people are coming from on the other side of the argument.
To bring up (just one) point many people have made prior, there is a very strong community behind these games, and in large part this is due to the difficulty. Everyone going through a tough boss is going through the same struggle you did, and there's a kind of strange comradery created as a result. Does this gate people out of the experience? Yes. Is that a good thing? No. However for that that experience to exist it RELIES on its difficulty that has no compromises or ways out.
There's a huge number of reasons people have given in the thread but I genuinely do believe it would harm the experience, and I'm not saying this without also saying that accessibility is important - just that it WOULD have an impact.
additionally I don't think it's fair to equate it to something like Celeste. I agree that the accessibility options in that game are fantastic, however if you add them into souls games you already destroy the point made above - and that's just a single reason.
That completely goes against what they want to accomplish with their design though. It's not about the word "difficulty settings", it's about what only having one difficulty accomplishes for their design goals. Adding modifiers would be the exact same thing as adding different difficulties, it would detract from the experience the devs want to deliver. That's the freaking downside lol.
You think Miyazaki and co. ponder endlessly over the exact number of frames an attack needs to be visisble in its windup but still challenging to react to, over the respective hitboxes and animations, and then add something for you to circumvent all of that?
Why would he? That's not the experience he wants to deliver, and it shouldn't be mandatory for him to do so. If you personally want to experience the game that way that's on you, not them.
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The only way adding in an easier difficulty (or assist mode options) would affect the community is if the community is formed around how much better they are then other people, and if that's the case (it seems to be, for many), fuck 'em. If it's because they genuinely enjoy a really challenging experience (which will remain untouched) or because they love the gameplay, lore, graphics, audio, or production, they're all good.
NBA players don't lose their sense of community because some kids lower the rim to 8 feet. They're strengthened by it, and encourage people of all skill levels to play basketball and enjoy the game they love so much.
I do not accept that "people are just going to take the easy way out". That didn't happen for Celeste, it doesn't happen for bowling, it doesn't happen for anything where people enjoy a challenge. And I'm tired of people telling me they don't want other people to have options and enjoy the game because they think THEIR weak asses are gonna pick the easier option.
I'm not gonna argue with you because in my opinion you are correct on your points but I also feel I am correct.
There are a ton of people out there who would love to play but can't get past the difficulty and I don't see a problem with having any other option to make it more enjoyable for others.
I never got into the series because of the difficulty I enjoyed it because of other areas, shit when I first tried demon souls I went to return it and was like fuck that this is too hard, but I did some reading and got back into it because I loved other aspects of the game so much.
I played some much of the series that now I can pretty much can breeze through all the games in the series.
I don't like thinking that this series is only good because of a difficulty that you can easily overcome with summons, builds or practice, I like to think of the bigger picture and it is a fuckin beauty of a game.
I get it that that's how the community can seem (and I mean honestly, there probably is a decent percentage that IS that way) however that's not the only point.
As someone else discussed, a huge huge part of the games is that they feel like you're scaling a mountain. That relief and joy you get when you best an incredibly hard boss is an enormous part of the experience. The reason why I do believe accessibility options would harm this (even though as mentioned I don't think it's a good thing NOT having the options ) is that they give you a way out. At least speaking for myself - and some others in the thread - knowing there's an easier way out with the boss changes my mindset against it. Suddenly it feels like this isn't a mountain I have to climb, but one I could circumvent once it gets too painful. Instead I have the same tools as everyone else, and I know there's no way over it except beating it the same way everyone else did. For some reason that makes me feel okay going up against a difficult boss over and over again.
Alongside this, the community is 100% an enormous part of why these games are successful, so it's not easily dismissed as just a minor change if it does end up impacting the reason a lot of people play these games.
Of course people can target any game for the same criticism. It's not like people wanted to expose FromSoft in some bad faith.
For the art comparison, unlike video games which are mass produced data based entertainment, traditional artworks are supposed to be one and only objects. What matters is not about this object, but how galleries and museums as the actual service providers present the work to visitors. The truth is, galleries, especially the rich ones, spend a lot on accessible facilities. Artists don't make alt-versions of their works, but it's possible to have disability-friendly documentations.
How is that a downside if every player gets what they want? You want the normal experience then you get that and if you want to diverge from that then you get that. Any argument about "Every player wouldn't be playing on the same difficulty" is rendered completely moot by the fact that that already happens with the PC version of the game. Plenty of people play with trainers, they come out like a day after the game comes out and are incredibly easy to download. I know people who cheat through the entire game and enjoy it just fine, hell some of these people end up liking the game more than I like it.
The "shared singular experience" narrative has long since been circumvented and it could be argued that it was never really a thing in the first place as from the beginning people have been experiencing the game in radically different ways from people who don't play online to people who don't get to the end of the game to people who don't buy all the Downloadable Content.
And despite this the games are received excellently. It's a noble philosophy but ultimately a philosophy that never had any basis in reality and especially doesn't now that there's easy ways to get around it.
You are claiming that, but past experience with other games and players has shown that really isn't the case. (Especially if you do something trivial, like adding a stamp to a save file if you use assist options!) And something tells me you wouldn't *really* use them. You clearly feel some measure of pride in overcoming these challenges, which I respect. I think you should have more faith in yourself.
Love the setting and wanna play this game but being difficult put me off. I don't really have much time and energy to spend on gaming as much as I used too. Let alone practice my gaming skill to pass game like this. It doesn't make the game bad, it make the game unayable for many people who grown up with life and family get in the way.
That's why I appreciate a company like Capcom. They make challenging game but at the same time balance it in a way that make it accessible for people like me. So you don't feel like you play dump down easy game.
Making a good game is difficult regardless of difficulty. Making well balance game that is accessible by many people is a lot more difficult than just make it straight up difficult.
That's why I appreciate a company like Capcom. They make challenging game but at the same time balance it in a way that make it accessible for people like me. So you don't feel like you play dump down easy game.
Making a good game is difficult regardless of difficulty. Making well balance game that is accessible by many people is a lot more difficult than just make it straight up difficult.
It's a downside for what the dev intended his game to be. It's a dowside to the dev's intent. These folks aren't robots who search for the lowest common denominator.
Miyazaki didn't intend for people to use third party software to circumvent his game design, nor is it in his power or (probably) motivation to stop people from doing that. He's not forcing anything down anyone's throat, he makes a game and people either like it or not.
That's why I said you, or anybody else, can obviously do with their copy whatever they want. Install trainers, burn it, use it as a frisbee. But demanding any of that shit to be done from the devs side doesn't make much sense to me.
People who don't play online, don't play to the end, or don't have the downloadable content, still experienced the parts they actually played the same way everyone else did. That's because there is just one difficulty.
You are basically saying the philosophy the devs have isn't based in reality, despite it being their reason for success. Despite them being received excellently, despite them selling well. Seems like their faux philosophy is working.
Of course they do , because they wan to stick it to Froms "toxic" fanbase. Some people in this very thread would looove to shove these fans their "git gud" (even if they never said it, but appearently everyone arguing against them says it) in their faces, or tell them how they were right all along. Why do you think this discussion comes up again and again with this particular dev?
Games are mass produced as a product, but the creative process behind making them is absolutely the same, and it seems like people often conflate these things.
I would be all for system wide disablity options on every console, too.
I don't like thinking that either, and it's definetly not the case. But it's still part of their design philosophy, for (as of yet) good reason.
You are misunderstanding. When I say the philosophy is not based in reality what I mean is that the idea of a singular shared experience isn't an actual thing and this is evident by the fact that this...
....is untrue.
People who play the whole game offline have experienced the game completely differently from people who played it all online.
People who have looked up guides and know where the big fire breathing dragon is what he's gonna do experience that part of the game differently from people who were not aware of it.
People have fight the Taurus Demon have experienced the fight completely differently from people who had the fucker fall off the bridge and kill himself.
And of course, people who have an easy time with the game experience the game completely differently from people who have a hard time with the game. Let's not act as if the latter people don't exist.
People have long since been experiencing parts of these games and even the entire games completely differently from everyone else. People will experience the same thing completely differently, they may see things you don't see, or enjoy things differently then you. It's BECAUSE people experience things differently that there are people who play these games for a variety of reasons. That's not a video game thing, that's a fact of life. The philosophy isn't grounded in reality because it doesn't really happen. People have different experience. No doubt you're going to find people who experienced the same things you did but that doesn't mean everyone or even a majority did.
And the game's are still great! And people still love them even if the philosophy hasn't really been achieved. And if that is the case then it's hard to see any downsides to modifiers as people are already experiencing the games radically differently from eachother and still having a good time. The only potential downside is as you said the possibility that Miyazaki is personally miffed by the fact that people play his game differently then he intended but I do not think that should be any cause for distress.
FROMSOFT makes their games for a specific group of people who like hard challenges and the feeling of overcoming those challenges. They are not for everyone. And that is perfectly ok.
Other studios make battle royale games and moba's and they are not for everyone as well. And thats also ok.
Its the same damn thing.
FROMSOFT should never add an easy mode. ever. This is why I come to FROMSOFT games with excitement and anticipation. The 2 weeks leading up to a FROMSOFT release are the longest two weeks ever because I can not wait to see what they did and how hard its going to be for me to overcome.
I spent a good 2 hours on the OWL fight and could feel myself getting better and better till I overcame the fight. It felt amazing landing that final deathblow.
They should not change their formula for anyone.
Other studios make battle royale games and moba's and they are not for everyone as well. And thats also ok.
Its the same damn thing.
FROMSOFT should never add an easy mode. ever. This is why I come to FROMSOFT games with excitement and anticipation. The 2 weeks leading up to a FROMSOFT release are the longest two weeks ever because I can not wait to see what they did and how hard its going to be for me to overcome.
I spent a good 2 hours on the OWL fight and could feel myself getting better and better till I overcame the fight. It felt amazing landing that final deathblow.
They should not change their formula for anyone.
I'm pretty sure nothing being suggested would require FROMSOFT would alter that experience for you.
But they don't need to do anything. Their games are for a specific audience. Just like MOBA's and battle royale games.
Devil May Cry is for a specific audience too.
And yet.
And amazingly, this did not in fact ruin the DMC series.
Devil May Cry is for a specific audience too.
And yet.
And amazingly, this did not in fact ruin the DMC series.
And that is their choice to add that. Fromsoft is under no obligation to do so.
Sekiro is a game carried entirely by the experience of just barely slipping by. It's about being forced to focus and pay attention in a way that the vast majority of games do not expect you to do. What makes the game work is that the game is carefully tuned in a way that allows the player to gradually learn it as they progress. Adding more difficulties or options to give players the ability to fine-tune the gameplay has a nontrivial effect on how much work it takes the developer to curate the difficulty. If you add an easy mode, what you're left with is just a shitty action game that retains very little of what makes it good. To avoid that, the developer would essentially have to duplicate the work of curating the "normal" mode except now they need to imagine a player whose skill level they can't even really define. And then after all that if the game still turns out to be too hard for some people - and it will, because being challenged to pay attention is literally the point of the game - you'd still have failed to address the criticism that some people simply can't beat Sekiro.
If your argument is that developers should include options that allow people to make their game bad for the sake of letting people beat it, then you'd do best to just say so.
I also reject the argument that Sekiro creates some kind of a reaction time barrier that some players are physically incapable of overcoming. While this is probably true to an extent, the fact is that a lot of people have beaten Sekiro and they're hardly genetic freaks. Indeed, I have a rather poor reaction time and was able to beat the game without too much trouble. Some players may have gotten through it faster than I did, but since my pride isn't wrapped up in being able to beat videogames that's not a huge deal to me.
Finally, even if I'm wrong and Sekiro would be a good game even if it was easy, there are entire genres of games for which difficulty and a massive barrier of entry are defining traits. I am a big fan of the Tetris the Grandmaster series. The third game in that series is so difficult that it might as well be impossible; the number of people who have beaten it is in the single digits despite there being a decent size community of players who have been trying for the past fourteen years. Indeed, it's probably true that most of the people who play the game are fundamentally, physically incapable of playing Tetris at the speed required to play the game to completion. TGM's intrigue (not to mention fanbase) would disappear overnight if the games were easier to beat. TGM3's legacy is entirely tied to the absurdity of the requirements and the level of accomplishment it takes to overcome them. Why is there no concern about the accessibility of this game? Is it a sales thing? Could it be that the real problem is that people don't like the idea of a AAA they can't beat?
They aren't under obligation to do anything. Doesn't mean they shouldn't do things.
That's the point though. Without the penalty for dying it wouldn't even be the same game anymore. The penalty is meant to encourage you to be patient, examine your surroundings carefully, and actually learn from your mistakes. Death is a part of the experience and if these games were easier to the point where you hardly ever died, it would negate so many of the game's mechanics and themes. I get that some people might want to leisurely explore these beautifully crafted worlds but that's just not what these games are about. You don't go to a horror movie and then complain when you get scared.
This is just such a weird mentality that people often apply to the Souls games. Most games don't offer ways of completely negating the intended experience.
Not to mention that you can easily farm exp points and gold early on....taking the penalty away would make the game bad.
Bayonetta too with their touch mode and other stuff. PlatinumGames has also been pretty responsive to accessibility. Like when Halfcoordinated played through Transformers during a GDQ, they took what he said to heart about some things like button configuration, etc., and implemented all that in their next game, Nier Automata.Devil May Cry is for a specific audience too.
And yet.
And amazingly, this did not in fact ruin the DMC series.
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Because there are other Tetris games that people, who want a lighter challenge, can play instead?
So? If the argument is about accessibility, then why should any game be designed in such a way that limits accessibility?
What I'm saying is other difficult genres has come under fire. The Dark series is just the most popular one around here since it's a ResetEra darling. This type of discussions have been a thing in SRPGs, fighting games, Monster Hunter, ect for years.
Holy smokes, we have covered this already.
If you suggested modifiers for Tetris you would get next to no reaction from anyone.
If you suggest it for a From game then all bets are off. The discussion comes up with From because it has a fan base that is very vocal about their disapproval of these options as there is an oppressive gatekeeper culture that surrounds the company.
Because there are plenty of games with the same basic gameplay and aesthetic of Tetris. If you want an alternative it's there and your experience is not vastly different outside of the level of challenge.
There is no "casual Souls." I love Bloodbornes aesthetic, but I'm shit out of luck because I couldn't even make it past the opening so just fuck me I guess.
I'm just answering the question you asked. The reason people don't complain about the game you speak of is likely because they have the option to play other Tetris games that are not so brutally challenging.
Because again, you don't need to know disabled people to know that there is severe lack of options and people are willing to defend these lack of options under 'artist creativity' or 'some disabled people can play'.
Yeah, good for From and it saves me money since I don't have buy anything from them. So we both come out ahead.
It's not just about From games. When this comes up in other contexts (like in fighting games, where the idea of making them easier is very controversial) there's resistance.
There's no casual Souls because the idea is incoherent. The gameplay doesn't work unless it's hard. I don't share the opposition to the idea that some others have to a "story mode" difficulty where playing the game is trivial and you just play through the plot, but I find the idea of holding developers' feet to the fire if they don't implement anything in between pretty strange because you're taking away the main thing that makes the game work.
Sure - I don't really think that's true because TGM isn't just fast Tetris, but okay. My point was that there are games where the gameplay is explicitly pegged on difficulty and that even if you could make the argument that Sekiro isn't, there'd still be hundreds of other games that are, so it doesn't really mean much to say "we can make easy Sekiro work".
Acessibility in games is more than just those. Accessibility has been doing more to now have gameplay options so that those with disibilities and impairments can play these games too. You'd have to be ignoring just about every conversation about accessibility and what companies have been doing regarding player input and interaction.
To add to this point, studies have shown that people would rather play and quit playing the higher difficulty setting than lower the difficulty. Which is why many games called their Easy setting 'Normal' these days and Hard is really Normal.
Humans are competitive creatures. Few will admit that they beat anything on Easy, especially video games where beating a hard game on the highest difficulty is being compared here to running a marathon.
Feel like this should be added. Thing about difficulty modes like an easy mode is that it's more of a first step and more blunt since it's, as I said earlier in the thread, often a bundle of accessibility features rolled into a single mode.
gameaccessibilityguidelines.com
Yes, easy mode is also an accessibility option. But if some games don't want to do multiple difficulties for whatever reasons, there's still a lot options to help assist players.
Game accessibility guidelines | Offer a wide choice of difficulty levels
gameaccessibilityguidelines.com
Yes, easy mode is also an accessibility option. But if some games don't want to do multiple difficulties for whatever reasons, there's still a lot options to help assist players.
Not really actually.
The resistance only comes from people who are well into fighting games which is an incredibly tiny minority. Even in that you will have FGC vets like Spooky and LordKnight who are perfectly fine with lenient inputs and reduced move sets.
Otherwise a majority of people when talking about fighting games are largely for accessibility options like input shortcuts and less emphasis on Deadly Raves.
What? Any Souls fan will tell you that these games are not difficult, but have a steep learning curve that mostly anyone can master if willing to invest enough time.
I would also note that you can build a strong community based on sharing your own experience with others and seeing how others did things differently from you. The most popular recent example of this is Breath of the Wild. Everyone have the same end goal, but how you get there varies between people. Like me and my brother had long discussions on how we tackled situations m differently and sharing notes on the crazy stuff you can do in the game.
Games should be designed with accessibility in mind so that anyone can play them.
However, not every game will inevitably be for everyone, even those willing to try them. I learned the hard way that Bloodborne (and by extension, other From Software games of its ilk) are simply not for me. I banged my head against it, making little to no progress until I finally gave up. There are other games and other genres that I enjoy more and am more willing to be patient with. I would not ask From to bend over backwards to please players like myself, who tried Bloodborne, bounced off of it hard, and gave up.
What I would ask of From is to be accommodating in their accessibility options so that more players can get at least to the point I did. (i.e.: Beyond the tutorial fight, and then five hours of banging my head on a wall before calling it.) If the game is too difficult for you to adapt to, then yeah, tough luck. But the game should be adaptive enough to at least give you the chance to play, even if you're going to hate every minute of your life on Earth as you do.
However, not every game will inevitably be for everyone, even those willing to try them. I learned the hard way that Bloodborne (and by extension, other From Software games of its ilk) are simply not for me. I banged my head against it, making little to no progress until I finally gave up. There are other games and other genres that I enjoy more and am more willing to be patient with. I would not ask From to bend over backwards to please players like myself, who tried Bloodborne, bounced off of it hard, and gave up.
What I would ask of From is to be accommodating in their accessibility options so that more players can get at least to the point I did. (i.e.: Beyond the tutorial fight, and then five hours of banging my head on a wall before calling it.) If the game is too difficult for you to adapt to, then yeah, tough luck. But the game should be adaptive enough to at least give you the chance to play, even if you're going to hate every minute of your life on Earth as you do.
To bring everyone on the same level, they could start by making all versions of the game locked at 60 fps with equal latency. The console version is a fucking travesty compared to PC version with variable framerate and additional lag. I thought it was fine until I switched to PC version and it was a revelation, not a single missed parry in 20+ hours on PC version. Its like playing on easy mode compared to PS4.