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Cameron122

Rescued from SR388
Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,378
Texas
You know as a physically disabled person (Cerebral Palsy) I'm a little tired of some folk using accessibility as a synonym for difficulty, I just haven't been able to find the right words to articulate it. Maybe someday. Demon's Souls does have difficulty options they are just not presented in the classic menu style. Accessibility and the wish for the creator to have a difficult/complicated game can co-exist using several specific options. I mainly think of strategy games but an action example in my own life is that I have trouble pressing buttons in quick succession like opening doors in the original god of war trilogy, and I could be misremembering but I think you could change it in the 2018 GoW and Fallen Order (or maybe it was Spider-Man?) to just holding down the button? I would rather small adjustments like that exist then pigeon holing me to an easy mode I wouldn't even enjoy. Obviously disability is a wide net and I don't speak for everyone but this has been in my heart for a while and wanted to say something.
 
May 19, 2020
4,828
FOMO is what causes this issue and has made people believe they have to be part of every experience that comes out. You don't have to actually. I never played TLOU2 and never felt obligated to play it. Nor would I ask Naughty Dog to remove the weird, emotionally involved dog killing part of the game because it's weird and off putting to me. If it's not for me I simply don't have to experience it. Simple.

It's bizarre that so many people have this obsession with needing to do every type of consumer experience possible.
 

Bulebule

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,883
Good decision from Bluepoint.

For everyone who is criticizing that decision, you need to accept few things and additionally understand how this game is designed:

Lack of accessibility options for this one game compared to probably hundreds of other future games which have them is not going to be end of the world for you. You do not have to play it. No one forces you. Call me toxic/gatekeeper/basement dweller neckbeard all you want, but the fact is, this game is a heavy hybrid of offline and online and accessibility simply doesn't work for this game as you would really like to. Whatever you do offline carries to online as well.

Whatever half damage done to you/double damages/invincibilities/max stats/all equipments you decide to have for offline, you can cause huge unbalance by bringing it to online and potentially ruin other people's online gameplay experience (whether coop or invasions). And if you limit those stuff to offline only, developers are going to get blamed for not having online accessibility with those features on. Also if you try to bring it online and restrict who you can play with certain accessibility options on, you are heavily dividing the playerbase by having practically infinite combinations. Do you have any idea what you are even asking from developers? You can wonder why the designed the game this way, but it simply wouldn't work other way, considering it is both PvE and PvP -game..

As for having pause button, enable it for strictly offline. It worked for Nioh 2 too. When playing online, you are open for invasions and coop. Pause simply won't work online.
 

Ovvv

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Jan 11, 2019
10,030
Just chiming in, but as a content creator, let me ask this...

Say Miyazaki's "vision" is for a certain level of challenge, designed around a certain demographic of people, but that if an option was added that would allow other people to BETTER get to a level that is equivalent to his vision, isn't that a good thing?

That would be awesome and is not part of my argument at all. There is criticism to be had for failing to find a way to incorporate accessibility options into his vision. His failing to do that is a criticism of his and FromSoft's vision, not one of their or those defending that vision's character, which has been sprinkled across the entirety of this thread.
 

Ocean

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,739
Absolutely wonderful. I mean my enjoyment would be completely destroyed by the addition of an option that I can completely ignore but that other people might enjoy.
 

Timu

Member
Oct 25, 2017
16,956
Good decision from Bluepoint.

For everyone who is criticizing that decision, you need to accept few things and additionally understand how this game is designed:

Lack of accessibility options for this one game compared to probably hundreds of other future games which have them is not going to be end of the world for you. You do not have to play it. No one forces you. Call me toxic/gatekeeper/basement dweller neckbeard all you want, but the fact is, this game is a heavy hybrid of offline and online and accessibility simply doesn't work for this game as you would really like to. Whatever you do offline carries to online as well.

Whatever half damage done to you/double damages/invincibilities/max stats/all equipments you decide to have for offline, you can cause huge unbalance by bringing it to online and potentially ruin other people's online gameplay experience. And if you limit those stuff to offline only, developers are going to get blamed for not having online accessibility with those features on. Also if you try to bring it online and restrict who you can play with certain accessibility options on, you are heavily dividing the playerbase by having practically infinite combinations. Do you have any idea what you are even asking from developers?

As for having pause button, enable it for strictly offline. It worked for Nioh 2 too. When playing online, you are open for invasions and coop. Pause simply won't work online.
I agree with everything you said.
 

Chettlar

Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,604
As I said if you believe that the only valid way to experience Souls is to claw your way through it then I don't think you really get it. By that line of argumentation the people who get the least fulfilling experience are people who've beaten the game so many times they know them inside and out.

Why do you think the souls games have gotten harder with each entry with more and more options to make them even harder? Why do you think challenge runs are SO POPULAR.

You could like, ya know, sit down and actually ask these hardcore fans those questions? Like I have having been a part of that community? Instead of assuming?

I'll tell you why challenge runs are so popular. Because we want that rush again. That's like the dark souls end game. Helping people out and doing challenge runs. Either you're trying to protect a random from themselves lol, or you're trying to push your limits.

I am not trying to be insulting here but posts like this demonstrate you do not have a clue what you are talking about and are just talking purely theoretically about what makes sense to you might be the case.

It simply makes no sense to applaud the idea of less accessibility, for any game.

I'm not doing that. I'm against accessibility options. I think they harm what FROM games are about.

I think souls games are at their best when you acquire those options. In a previous post I mentioned I think Dark Souls 3 does a poor job of this. But I don't think a difficulty option or accessibility options in menus is the way to accomplish this.
Like I said, you are literally one post away from "you risked nothing and gained nothing" especially when we take into account your insistence that the point of Souls games is to struggle and overcome, thus reevaluating and validating your sense of self worth. Lots of people who play Souls games don't play in order to feel that way. HELL, the games aren't even ADVERTISED that way. Nor are the interviews from the directors. It's nice to know that Souls played a special part in your mental health journey and is thus important to you. However, that personal experience is not the defining way for people to play the game. Arguably, with so many Souls games out there and most people knowing the ins and outs of the experience, they can barely even accomplish what you perceive to be the overall point of the series.

The directors and producers and others have repeatedly stated that the purpose of the games is to fill the player with a sense of genuine victory and accomplishment. Given so many people have experienced that difficulty after clawing their way towards it, and given FROM has said they're glad to see that and grateful that it resonates with people in that way, I'm not sure what else to say here.

I understand not everyone may be reduced to their bare elements when playing these games like me. That's fine. But it is a very very common refrain that people dislike these games, then something clicks, and they learn to respect them and love them because at some point the game in some small way at least broke something down. Something broke and it could "click." That's that click that so so many people talk about. I'm not saying it has to be the same way as me. Hence my comment earlier about that common essential thread. A game doesn't do something so specific to thousands of people that fits with what the developer intended on happening, without that being intentional. And so many posts and videos and essays have been created examining how exactly FROM accomplishes this.

I don't mean that my entire experience is essential for everyone to experience. I mean that there is a core kernal of experience that I had, that's very valuable, that vast swathes of the community had, that the developers have said even before these games came out (like with the producer of Demon's Souls, not even Miyazaki), that only seems to happen under certain conditions. Again, I would stress, and you seem to keep ignoring, my story of depression and being on the brink of suicide is not uncommon in relation to this game. In fact, it's pretty damn common. Again. This isn't about me. This is about me going, wow, I got so lucky. I'm so glad to see others be so lucky too. I know this isn't the solution to a lot of people, but to quite a few amount of people, it is vital, and I hope they can get that too. Ya know. Textbook empathy.
 

balgajo

Self-requested ban
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
1,251
I like how a lot of these posts come down to "Well if they added it, then I wouldn't have been able to help myself from using them". That shit is a you problem, not the problem of people that would actually need those options due to any motor/cognitive difficulties.

Because adding options does not take away from the core experience if you choose to not use them. This isn't trying to take one game and fundamentally turn it into something else, this is allowing those that need it the ability to adjust factors to make the game more welcoming to them. Would your experience be ruined if an option was out in to increase the reaction window for dodges and parries? Or if an option was added that made enemies less aggressive, or if damage taken could be reduced, or damage dealt could be increased? Am I somehow losing out on games where I use assists to prevent any instances of needing to button mash because it aggravates an injury I've had in the past?

If Elden Ring had any of those added, would you not play it because you felt that From's vision was somehow"compromised" because other people might be able to enjoy the game now?
I have no problem with this. If the game advises you that it's not the intended experience by the developers and the responsibility is on you. Or putting those options under an accessibility tab. The thing I'm really against is a main menu with easy/normal/hard difficult options and being able to change difficulty options when a save was already created. About difficulty, I always play games on normal, not interested on other modes. So a Souls game wouldn't shine to me. Not being able to change options on a save would prevent myself of changing difficulty when I'm very stressed by a boss fight.
 

Crossing Eden

Member
Oct 26, 2017
57,152
That says multiplayer interactions can still occur while the game is "paused", and they can kick you back into gameplay. This isn't the gotcha you think it is.
Let's not pretend that Souls fans argued for years that there should NEVER be a pause option, even offline.

Souls games never pretended to be for people with accessibility constraints in the first place. I don't think Miyazaki has ever set out to make that a part of his series. If you want to enjoy the series in spite of those constraints, then yes, you need to find other avenues of access (of which exist). That's up to you, though. I'm not gonna tell an artist they're an asshole or whatever because they don't want to alter their vision to include that.
Who said that the director was an asshole?
 

N.47H.4N

Member
Oct 27, 2017
8,182
This thread will probably get merged, but he's right. Souls games already have so many built-in options for customizing one's own personal difficulty as a general rule, and Demon's is by far the easiest of the bunch.
Demon's Souls is easy when you have played most of them, but Dark Souls 2 was a cake walk for me, I think I beat 90% of the bosses first try without sweat.
 

MrNelson

Community Resettler
Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,356
FOMO is what causes this issue and has made people believe they have to be part of every experience that comes out. You don't have to actually. I never played TLOU2 and never felt obligated to play it. Nor would I ask Naughty Dog to remove the weird, emotionally involved dog killing part of the game because it's weird and off putting to me. If it's not for me I simply don't have to experience it. Simple.

It's bizarre that so many people have this obsession with needing to do every type of consumer experience possible.
I'm going to ask this one more time

How does the existence of OPTIONS change the experience for those that choose not to use them?
 

Euler007

Member
Jan 10, 2018
5,098
You are missing the point. Just because you install a ramp doesn't mean it is actually useful to the person in the wheelchair. The ramp can't be too steep, it has to be smooth, etc. The options present in Demon Souls aren't enough.
You can summon two people. One of them is the ramp, the other is pushing you up the ramp.
 

ZangBa

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,065
Accessibility options should be standard by now. Easy modes though, that's just for the weak of will. Some games are just designed around a singular difficulty and should remain that way.
 

Chettlar

Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,604
I like how a lot of these posts come down to "Well if they added it, then I wouldn't have been able to help myself from using them". That shit is a you problem, not the problem of people that would actually need those options due to any motor/cognitive difficulties.

lowkey this is ablist as fuck. Sorry if my life is so painful I wouldn't normally choose to make it more stressful by selecting hard mode because in most games hard mode honestly sucks because it's made purely with the intention of being hard and usually is not well balanced with shit like enemies with way too much health to the point it gets boring.

It's not a matter of "I couldn't help myself." It's that, I didn't know. I couldn't have known. I had no reason to know for the aforementioned reasons.

Again, I like how you ignore the fact that these games tend to ATTRACT people with disabilities, because they resonate with them. Ya know. Like me.
 
May 19, 2020
4,828
User banned (2 weeks): Dismissive and antagonistic commentary
I'm going to ask this one more time

How does the existence of OPTIONS change the experience for those that choose not to use them?
It's the developer's or artist's choice. If they don't include them for someone it's genuinely not my problem and I don't believe it should be your problem. If they include those options, great, more power to them. More people will likely play the game.

I engage content as it exists and not in some vacuous aspirational bubble where it needs to be what I want or it's harmful and bad.
 

EllipsisBreak

One Winged Slayer
Member
Aug 6, 2019
2,231
Let's not pretend that Souls fans argued for years that there should NEVER be a pause option, even offline.
Being able to freeze time for the purpose of taking photos, while maintaining the game's ability to force you back into gameplay at any time, is not really what advocates of a pause button were asking for. And I think you know that.
 

Garlador

Banned
Oct 30, 2017
14,131
Demon's Souls is easy when you have played most of them, but Dark Souls 2 was a cake walk for me, I think I beat 90% of the bosses first try without sweat.
This right here is almost precisely my point.

Difficulty isn't a locked metric. It varies from person to person.

I know people who beat these games with ease, and others who really struggle. Those are not identical experiences. The challenge is not the same for two different players with two different skillsets or talents.

What one person finds "easy" another laments as incredibly difficult. My best friend and I joke about our "reverse difficulty", where he'll beat someone with ease on his first try while I take hours of effort, or I'll clear something without any hassle that is a roadblock to him.

Having difficulty options helps balance those scales.

It's the developer's or artist's choice. If they don't include them for someone it's genuinely not my problem and I don't believe it should be your problem. If they include those options, great, more power to them. More people will likely play the game.

I engage content as it exists and not in some vacuous aspirational bubble where it needs to be what I want or it's harmful and bad.
The majority of movies were not filmed with disabled people in mind. 99% of filmmakers don't take the hard of hearing into consideration. And yet subtitles exist for almost every film.

And let's be 100% honest; NOBODY has ever played a game 100% the way a developer intends. I've been part of that testing process. Gamers always do insanely surprising or stupid things that caught us off guard. Players aren't robots who follow the developer "vision" lock-step and rarely do. Street Fighter combos were a programming error players exploited. The Konami Code was an exploit the programmers had to help them skip past hard sections of the game when creating later levels. Even Demon's Souls unbalanced and broken magic system was surely not the INTENDED way for the game to be played given how structured the other systems are around combat.

People swear by the developer's "vision" when I think about something Miyamoto once said; "Players are artists who create their OWN reality within the game." He remarked that no matter how hard he tried to steer players in a direction, players would always create their OWN adventures and stories that often went far outside his plans or vision, and that this was a GOOD thing.
 
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Chettlar

Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,604
Is TLOU2's vision compromised because the OPTIONS exist in a menu? Does it have a weaker vision as a result of the idea that more people should be able to play? Is Celeste compromised by assist mode? Is Darkest Dungeon compromised by accessibility? You genuinely seem to have difficulty with the idea that someone won't relive your own experience with the souls series.

No, and I already examined why. These games can't approach accessibility in the way dark souls, so they have to other ways.

And no I don't have difficulty with that. You do for some reason.
 

Crossing Eden

Member
Oct 26, 2017
57,152
Why do you think the souls games have gotten harder with each entry with more and more options to make them even harder?
They haven't.
DS3 is arguably the easiest Souls game, especially for people who were familiar with the franchise already.

You could like, ya know, sit down and actually ask these hardcore fans those questions? Like I have having been a part of that community? Instead of assuming?
I am already a big fan of the series.

I'll tell you why challenge runs are so popular. Because we want that rush again.
I think your identity is way too intrinsically tied to the idea of reliving the experience of playing through Souls for the very first time. To the detriment of your ability to contribute to this discussion without unintentionally gatekeeping what the "souls experience" is supposed to be. For example:

I'm not doing that. I'm against accessibility options. I think they harm what FROM games are about.
You should feel terrible for typing this. Period. This is the core issue. It's not an issue with the idea of accessibility, YOU are the issue in this scenario.

No, and I already examined why. These games can't approach accessibility in the way dark souls, so they have to other ways.
A game like Dark Souls could absolutely approach accessibility in the EXACT same way that a game that you didn't play did.
 

Death Penalty

Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
3,391
some of you guys are framing this like I'd be furious if there was a "God mode" option For every game, trying to make me look like a villain or something LMAO. I wouldn't, that would be awesome. I just get annoyed when you guys take the difficulty options presented in these games ESPECIALLY demons souls which is the easiest souls game and toss them aside and call them patronizing. does it suck that there's no easy mode in the remake? sure. Am I losing sleep over it though? I mean is anyone? If you want to experience it but are disabled I feel like it's the type of thing where you shouldnt be against things like summoning. I've been in the souls circles for years and this thread is literally the first time I saw someone call summoning patronizing. Made me laugh irl. It's literally co op.
Someone already explained to you in a really calm and concise manner why summoning is a poor option for someone who is disabled. There are people in this thread actively celebrating this lack of options as well, so while it's great that you would be for such options were they presented it seems that there's at least a significant chunk of people who don't feel the same way. And to be totally frank with you your assertion that the game provides plenty of avenues already to be easy reads like you don't really understand where people who need these options might be coming from. I personally have no trouble with hard games and I am not disabled, but I have a close friend who is a disabled person who really needs this sort of thing and have read similar experiences that show he's not alone. This probably makes me biased, I'll admit that, but what I've read in this thread comes off to me as a lot of people putting their experience first our handwaving the needs of others because they really like the product.
 

Chettlar

Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,604
You know as a physically disabled person (Cerebral Palsy) I'm a little tired of some folk using accessibility as a synonym for difficulty, I just haven't been able to find the right words to articulate it. Maybe someday. Demon's Souls does have difficulty options they are just not presented in the classic menu style. Accessibility and the wish for the creator to have a difficult/complicated game can co-exist using several specific options. I mainly think of strategy games but an action example in my own life is that I have trouble pressing buttons in quick succession like opening doors in the original god of war trilogy, and I could be misremembering but I think you could change it in the 2018 GoW and Fallen Order (or maybe it was Spider-Man?) to just holding down the button? I would rather small adjustments like that exist then pigeon holing me to an easy mode I wouldn't even enjoy. Obviously disability is a wide net and I don't speak for everyone but this has been in my heart for a while and wanted to say something.

Wait for people to ignore you.

Thanks for showing up though. I believe I remember you from another thread about the topic.

But don't worry there will be some other amorphous disability that you don't have that you can't speak for so your experience will be invalid. And they'll continue to keep saying that even though they can never provide an example. The best they can do is compare it to special olympics athletes.
 

Leo-Tyrant

Member
Jan 14, 2019
5,406
San Jose, Costa Rica
That's not true at all. There's tons of empathy. Seems like there's no empathy from you like I talk about in my post above.

You don't know what you're talking about here. I have yet to see someone provide an example of someone who can't beat these games.

You have empathy? You took a single line out of my entire post and quoted it as if you had a magic response that would solve all of this: "show me an example of how people cant beat the game".

I couldnt. Hundreds of other gamers that have TRIED (and want to experience the game-lore-world)...cant.

BTW 'm doing the same thing to you in this post. Context and nuisance gets lost if I just keep a single sentence right?

I also return your question with: "Show me how having OPTIONS, update-impacts-affects the balance or enjoyment of the gamers that want to keep the core experience intact"
 

dreamlongdead

Member
Nov 5, 2017
2,842
Is it just too much work to add an easy mode for this game? I think that would be a better explanation rather than saying it shouldn't have one.

I never play on easy, so it's fine since the standard (and harder) difficulties wouldn't be affected.
 

Crossing Eden

Member
Oct 26, 2017
57,152
Uhh, all the people going after those defending Bluepoint's decision to stick to that vision in the most condescending way possible?
I think people are moreso taking issue with the superfans way more than they are the overall decision itself because the superfans are stating shit like "I'm against accessibility options because creative vision"
 

SneakersSO

Banned
Oct 24, 2017
1,353
North America
Heres the thing - we are now at the point where creators are making souls-like experiences with difficulty options. It'd be one thing if From/Souls games were the only ones offering this style of gameplay, but others are now doing so and tailoring their experiences around options they feel differentiate themselves in the market.

Miyazaki has spoken on wanting frustration be a core emotion the player should feel to accentuate the feeling of triumph they get when overcoming a challenge. It is a part of the game's design, and a difficulty slider would cheapen that massively. Frustration, and ultimately realizing that patience overcomes the challenges the game presents you, is literally the bedrock of Souls games From has produced. The fact we live in a landscape where games like Jedi: Fallen Order or God of War 2018 are offering Souls-like gameplay with difficulty options should make everyone happy. And yet, here we are.
 

Deleted member 56266

Account closed at user request
Banned
Apr 25, 2019
7,291
Someone already explained to you in a really calm and concise manner why summoning is a poor option for someone who is disabled. There are people in this thread actively celebrating this lack of options as well, so while it's great that you would be for such options were they presented it seems that there's at least a significant chunk of people who don't feel the same way. And to be totally frank with you your assertion that the game provides plenty of avenues already to be easy reads like you don't really understand where people who need these options might be coming from. I personally have no trouble with hard games and I am not disabled, but I have a close friend who is a disabled person who really needs this sort of thing and have read similar experiences that show he's not alone. This probably makes me biased, I'll admit that, but what I've read in this thread comes off to me as a lot of people putting their experience first our handwaving the needs of others because they really like the product.

kinda curious if your friend looks forward to every new FROM game hoping it will have an easy mode? Like are they expecting/hoping Elden Ring will have one?
 

Death Penalty

Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
3,391
FOMO is what causes this issue and has made people believe they have to be part of every experience that comes out. You don't have to actually. I never played TLOU2 and never felt obligated to play it. Nor would I ask Naughty Dog to remove the weird, emotionally involved dog killing part of the game because it's weird and off putting to me. If it's not for me I simply don't have to experience it. Simple.

It's bizarre that so many people have this obsession with needing to do every type of consumer experience possible.
Please try to understand this.

You had the choice to skip TLOU.

A person without these options who needs them doesn't get the yes or no choice, it defaults to no. Can you see why that's not something to be celebrated? Why it might feel unfair?
 

Bossking

Member
Nov 20, 2017
2,040
Ew, enough with the gatekeeping bullshit.

Here's a fun story. There's an interesting little niche game called Pathologic 2. It's fantastic and it's one of the most unique titles I've ever come across. It's also hard as balls, a game designed to give you a very, very bad time (far worse than any Souls game I've ever played). You could say that the difficulty is an important part of the experience, and you'd be right.

Pathologic 2 is also a game that has difficulty sliders to modify your experience. Because the developers, in their infinite wisdom, understood that there are players who are interested in the wonderfully unique experience they crafted, but for one reason or another, just couldn't handle the overwhelming stress of it all. So, when you go into the accessibility options, a neat little message pops up that informs you that hey, the game is intentionally cruel, unfair and just overwhelmingly bleak and a bit unfun, but if you can't take it, or want to modify it in any way to make the game actually playable for yourself, here are the tools.

Nothing was sacrificed with the addition of these options. I didn't use them and my gamer pride (lmao) was certainly not hurt by the knowledge that somewhere, someone had an """""inauthentic""""" playthrough. Jesus Christ.

If nothing was sacrificed with the option to disable its extreme difficulty, why make the game so difficult in the first place? Is the game really so oppressive, cruel and unfair if you can turn off those elements with the click of a button?

Pathologic 1 was interesting to me not just because of its writing but because it was unrelenting difficult. Not even in a way that required intense, precise motor functionality, it was just actively unfair in every single mechanic, statistic and system in the game and definitely helped push that bleak, suffocating atmosphere.

I wouldn't have become interested in Pathologic if it wasn't for that difficulty. Hell, even the developers of Pathologic 2 say that accessibility and difficulty are two different things and an "easy mode" goes against their vision. While accessibility options like subtitles and color blindness filters are a must, I do think being able to circumvent difficulty with a button press does detract from the impression of a "cruel" game. It's more interesting to me when a game makes no concessions at all, even bullshit like Drakengard 3's final boss.

Like, in the genocide version story of Undertale, beating that version of the game means
killing literally everyone. Sans, who understands the game nature of this world, does everything he can to stop you from beating it, including breaking the game's rules and making the battle unfair for you in every possible sense. Is the narrative not hurt if you can circumvent that challenge? Sure, the game nature of Undertale means the narrative can factor in an easy mode, but does that go against the prevalent theme of "determination"?
 

Skux

Member
Oct 26, 2017
2,942
I wouldn't expect anything else, it is a Souls game after all and I'm glad the developers have respected that (core) part of the game direction.
 

SneakersSO

Banned
Oct 24, 2017
1,353
North America
I dont mind it being his vision and etc, but i also dont want to see any of the people who praise this come and ever complain about stuff like kirby being too easy as a negative, because it has to go both ways.

To me, it absolutely does. We can't sit here and say that gaming is this high point in artistic expression and then turn around and say the creators can't tailor a game to an intended design.

I think its fine if people disagree with it, but i'd rather everyone just spending time playing games they know they will enjoy rather than lamenting that everything should cater to their specific tastes cause that will just water down all experiences being offered in general.
 

Leo-Tyrant

Member
Jan 14, 2019
5,406
San Jose, Costa Rica
Is it just too much work to add an easy mode for this game? I think that would be a better explanation rather than saying it simply shouldn't have one.

I never play on easy, so it's fine since the original (or harder) difficulties wouldn't be affected.

I did my own "easy" version with cheats on PC (you cannot do this in consoles however):

  • Bit more health
  • Bit more powerful weapons

I was able to play "pretty close to the intended experience" but I knew I could survive more errors/traps without falling into a frustration loop as in the previous decade of trying these games.
 
May 19, 2020
4,828
The majority of movies were not filmed with disabled people in mind. 99% of filmmakers don't take the hard of hearing into consideration. And yet subtitles exist for almost every film.

And let's be 100% honest; NOBODY has ever played a game 100% the way a developer intends. I've been part of that testing process. Gamers always do insanely surprising or stupid things that caught us off guard. Players aren't robots who follow the developer "vision" lock-step and rarely do. Street Fighter combos were a programming error players exploited. The Konami Code was an exploit the programmers had to help them skip past hard sections of the game when creating later levels. Even Demon's Souls unbalanced and broken magic system was surely not the INTENDED way for the game to be played given how structured the other systems are around combat.

People swear by the developer's "vision" when I think about something Miyamoto once said; "Players are artists who create their OWN reality within the game." He remarked that no matter how hard he tried to steer players in a direction, players would always create their OWN adventures and stories that often went far outside his plans or vision, and that this was a GOOD thing.

Movies and games are not a 1:1 comparison so acting like the accessibility for a film and accessibility for a game are actually comparable is kind of showing that you don't actually respect the differences in the artforms? I don't know what to tell you here.
 

Crossing Eden

Member
Oct 26, 2017
57,152
Being able to freeze time for the purpose of taking photos, while maintaining the game's ability to force you back into gameplay at any time, is not really what advocates of a pause button were asking for. And I think you know that.
Yet it's still a step in that direction.

Movies and games are not a 1:1 comparison so acting like the accessibility for a film and accessibility for a game are actually comparable is kind of showing that you don't actually respect the differences in the art?
Yet again, the largest SP game of the year literally set a standard for accessibility.
 
Oct 27, 2017
3,797
Sure, it would be an unambiguously good thing because movie theaters are a hub of entertainment and are (usually, maybe they are in very specific cases!) artpieces meant to evoke X or Y emotion or stressors throughout the experience. Maybe I'm jaded, but I'd definitely like to believe that Miyazaki designed Souls with this specific vision in mind. If this is his vision, that's OK. It's not an attack on people with accessibility issues. You of course can criticize his vision, I'm not arguing the opposite. Accessibility is good. It's not an attack on people if Souls games don't have them. That's ridiculous.
Miyazaki's comment on the games From designs (it was in the context of Sekiro, but as can be seen it applies broadly] was:
source: https://twinfinite.net/2018/06/from...hy-souls-games-dont-have-difficulty-settings/

'"We don't want to include a difficulty selection because we want to bring everyone to the same level of discussion and the same level of enjoyment," Miyazaki said. "So we want everyone … to first face that challenge and to overcome it in some way that suits them as a player."

The creator continued: "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 there's different difficulties, that's 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. It's been the same way for previous titles and it's very much the same with Sekiro."

In essence it's that they don't want the player base fragmented by difficulties, and for their to be a uniform challenge within the game.

I've seen this side-lined by stating the vision fails because people don't approach it with a uniform skill-level, but that to me does not align with the quote. The game designer can ensure the game is uniform for all players; that the content within the game is the same for all players, and all players discuss based on experiencing the same content within the game (not that everyone has a uniform experience globally), in the same way that a novel like "Ducks, Newburyport" is written to provide a certain experience to the reader (all people who read it, do so in the same challenging way) but the author does not design it with the expectation that everyone will be able to have the same global experience with it (due to e.g. differences in English competency, and being able to parse the lack of punctuation/stream of consciousness) or a puzzle-maker can develop a puzzle with one solution (ensuring all who complete the puzzle have completed it in the same manner) but cannot ensure everyone will be able to complete it or have the same broader experience in completing it.

Yet it's still a step in that direction.


Yet again, the largest SP game of the year literally set a standard for accessibility.

I don't see how there is a comparison with a narrative-driven single-player game blatantly aimed at bringing people into the experience where the narrative is at the core of the experience and a gameplay-focused experience aimed at a comparatively niche crowd (which, over time, largely because of its adherence to its vision) where frustration is built into the core of the experience is worth discussing?
 
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Loud Wrong

Member
Feb 24, 2020
15,704
Ehhhh. Adding a mode that has more friendly timing and health wouldn't have ruined the game for people who Soulslikes aren't their bread and butter.

But whatever, I suppose...
According to that video posted above, they made the timing easier by presenting you with haptic cues on when you've nailed the timing. They also increased the framerate to 60.
 

Death Penalty

Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
3,391
kinda curious if your friend looks forward to every new FROM game hoping it will have an easy mode? Like are they expecting/hoping Elden Ring will have one?
He does. He loves the aesthetic, he loves the flavor and atmosphere, he loves talking about it with the rest of us who all religiously play them. The ones that have come to PC have been great because they're relatively easy to mod, but Demon's and Bloodborne haven't been an option up to this point.
 

Spicy Noodles

Member
May 29, 2018
765
Good decision from Bluepoint.

For everyone who is criticizing that decision, you need to accept few things and additionally understand how this game is designed:

Lack of accessibility options for this one game compared to probably hundreds of other future games which have them is not going to be end of the world for you. You do not have to play it. No one forces you. Call me toxic/gatekeeper/basement dweller neckbeard all you want, but the fact is, this game is a heavy hybrid of offline and online and accessibility simply doesn't work for this game as you would really like to. Whatever you do offline carries to online as well.

Whatever half damage done to you/double damages/invincibilities/max stats/all equipments you decide to have for offline, you can cause huge unbalance by bringing it to online and potentially ruin other people's online gameplay experience (whether coop or invasions). And if you limit those stuff to offline only, developers are going to get blamed for not having online accessibility with those features on. Also if you try to bring it online and restrict who you can play with certain accessibility options on, you are heavily dividing the playerbase by having practically infinite combinations. Do you have any idea what you are even asking from developers? You can wonder why the designed the game this way, but it simply wouldn't work other way, considering it is both PvE and PvP -game..

As for having pause button, enable it for strictly offline. It worked for Nioh 2 too. When playing online, you are open for invasions and coop. Pause simply won't work online.
This 100% I don't understand the comparison to the last of us 2 Demon's souls is hybrid pve pvp game
 

Crossing Eden

Member
Oct 26, 2017
57,152
According to that video posted above, they made the timing easier by presenting you with haptic cues on when you've nailed the timing. They also increased the framerate to 60.
"But that would have a positive effect on my experience so I won't argue for it's exclusion" - people arguing against accessibility options in a nutshell.

Frankly, it's always "the director's vision this and that" when it's a criticism yet they never complain about QoL features whatsoever and how those will ruin the Souls struggle.

As for having pause button, enable it for strictly offline. It worked for Nioh 2 too. When playing online, you are open for invasions and coop. Pause simply won't work online.
Yes it does.
 

apocat

Member
Oct 27, 2017
10,790
I don't get the uproar. All the souls games has very effective ways of alleviating the difficulty. Summoning, spells and playing carefully will drastically reduce the difficulty level of all the games. And summoning is an integral part of the game design. Your're supposed to do it if you get stuck.

Just because there isn't an actual difficulty setting to toggle before starting the game doesn't mean there aren't very effective ways to make the game easier. Having those options be a part of the actual game mechanics is just good design.

Sekiro is the outlier here, in that there is no summoning and there are no ways of choosing your bulid, and I honestly think that is a pretty big flaw with the game. I happily summoned help against Ornstein and Smough the first time I went through Dark Souls, and I missed having that options in Sekiro.
 
May 19, 2020
4,828
Please try to understand this.

You had the choice to skip TLOU.

A person without these options who needs them doesn't get the yes or no choice, it defaults to no. Can you see why that's not something to be celebrated? Why it might feel unfair?
You don't "need" to play a game. Media does not owe you anything. As the luxury consumer in the first world if something does not fit into your template of what you want you do something else. This is not difficult or hard to understand. If Madden is too difficult for me to play I can play NFL Blitz and likely have more fun playing rather than whining about how Madden is not something for me.
 

Chettlar

Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,604
They haven't.
DS3 is arguably the easiest Souls game, especially for people who were familiar with the franchise already.

The common consensus is that it's the hardest. It is much, much faster

I have repeatedly played all games in the series except Sekiro. I've got like 1600 hours in the series. I've participated in the community for a long time. Dark Souls 3 is a much faster, more demanding game. Dark Souls can be taken as slowly and easily as you want.

Of course being familiar with the franchise will make these games easier for people. A lot of the difficulty comes in learning them and adjusting your mindset. Most of it is really.

I am already a big fan of the series.

It's really weird for you then to be totally unfamiliar with how much challenge runs abound for people people who've completed these games after a few times.

I think your identity is way too intrinsically tied to the idea of reliving the experience of playing through Souls for the very first time. To the detriment of your ability to contribute to this discussion without unintentionally gatekeeping what the "souls experience" is supposed to be. For example:

Again, no. You keep ignoring the vast amount of people I am talking about. I'm not afraid of talking about when I have unique experiences. It's just in this case I am talking about a common experience to many people that many people have expressed was valueable.

You should feel terrible for typing this. Period. This is the core issue. It's not an issue with the idea of accessibility, YOU are the issue in this scenario.

Again you completely misunderstand me.

A game like Dark Souls could absolutely approach accessibility in the EXACT same way that a game that you didn't play did.

Oh come on. I have absolute experienced a game almost exactly like it in terms of gameplay, just with the options more rigidly locked, but nonetheless tried the permutations of.

And I don't appreciate my words being twisted repeatedly. I didn't say dark souls couldn't. I said the other way around. I said that TLOU2 could not do it the dark souls way without ruining what it's trying to do, so options are probably it's best option. But Dark Souls while it could do what TLOU2 does, has the luxury of a different approach because that different approach is very much the goal.

Souls games have the express purpose of engendering a feeling of authentic accomplishment in the face of impossibility. This has resonated with many people who have said as much repeatedly. In order to accomplish that the game gives you many tools you can spend as much time as you want acquiring and utilizing how you wish.

I am all for accessibility. I am not for accessibility menu options in souls games that have impacts on that struggle. If you don't like the idea of struggling you don't have to. It's not like everyone struggles the same. That's fine. The entire point is finding your own way to overcome, whatever that may be. That resonates with many people, including disabled people you like to ignore.
 

Deleted member 56266

Account closed at user request
Banned
Apr 25, 2019
7,291
He does. He loves the aesthetic, he loves the flavor and atmosphere, he loves talking about it with the rest of us who all religiously play them. The ones that have come to PC have been great because they're relatively easy to mod, but Demon's and Bloodborne haven't been an option up to this point.

Hope there's an option for him to enjoy it then.
 
Oct 28, 2017
6,007
You know as a physically disabled person (Cerebral Palsy) I'm a little tired of some folk using accessibility as a synonym for difficulty, I just haven't been able to find the right words to articulate it. Maybe someday. Demon's Souls does have difficulty options they are just not presented in the classic menu style. Accessibility and the wish for the creator to have a difficult/complicated game can co-exist using several specific options. I mainly think of strategy games but an action example in my own life is that I have trouble pressing buttons in quick succession like opening doors in the original god of war trilogy, and I could be misremembering but I think you could change it in the 2018 GoW and Fallen Order (or maybe it was Spider-Man?) to just holding down the button? I would rather small adjustments like that exist then pigeon holing me to an easy mode I wouldn't even enjoy. Obviously disability is a wide net and I don't speak for everyone but this has been in my heart for a while and wanted to say something.

Good post. Thanks for sharing.

Personally I'm all for adding every possible accessibility setting in regards to sound, image, controller configuration, etc., but I'll still respect the designers vision and don't feel the right to demand difficulty options that affects gameplay. And like you say, there are even plenty of in games options to make things easier.

But I'm also just fine with everything not being for everyone. That's how it is in all media and trying to please every possible consumer is the death of creativity. I really wanted to get into Spelunky for example, but the insta deaths in that game were just too frustrating for me. Doesn't mean I think that game should have an easy mode without spikes.
 

Chettlar

Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,604
You have empathy? You took a single line out of my entire post and quoted it as if you had a magic response that would solve all of this: "show me an example of how people cant beat the game".

I couldnt. Hundreds of other gamers that have TRIED (and want to experience the game-lore-world)...cant.

BTW 'm doing the same thing to you in this post. Context and nuisance gets lost if I just keep a single sentence right?

I also return your question with: "Show me how having OPTIONS, update-impacts-affects the balance or enjoyment of the gamers that want to keep the core experience intact"

I've already explained at length repeatedly why I and many many people find a lack of options valuable.

I still have yet to have someone provide an example of someone who can't beat these games.

I also have yet to have someone explain why we need menu options for things already in the game.
 

Sleepwalker

Member
Oct 29, 2017
496
Also, what's up with the whole "don't disrespect the developer's vision" thing? A developer's vision might be to drop the game's framerate by half and call you offensive slurs every time you die. People are allowed to critique game design decisions.
Pathologic has dialogue from the devs where they acknowledge what they want people to feel. Miyazaki made his case outside the game and that's that. Is walking back and forth between points in Pathologic the same obtuseness as learning a boss in souls? The bosses don't talk to you in souls mostly anyway, they get memorable with repeated attempts at their life and figuring their stuff out, letting them die in one go kinda makes it forgettable you stop paying attention at the details that do exist. One is way more gameplay oriented for sure, swinging your weapon around is fun in itself, but the people who fell in love with the minute details did so by spending a lot of time in them. It might have been an emergent thing that came to be, but it found its people. Lore videos are fun, some people don't even play these games and like to listen to the stories or reviews or essays of these games for both Pathologic and Souls since they are difficult.
Pathologic devs made it clear what their vision was and still allowed for players to modify their experience, what's "and that's that" supposed to mean? My entire point is that the integrity of Pathologic was left intact even with the modifiers, and there's no reason why it shouldn't be the same with the Souls series. Obviously the two games' approach to difficulty is wildly different. I only compared them because their difficulty is a core aspect to their respective experiences.

The rest of your post is really subjective and overstates the importance of dying multiple times to the same boss in order to appreciate everything else these games have to offer (and they have so, so much more to offer than endless difficulty spikes and frustration). Let's look at this from the opposite angle. Did the fact that i beat the majority of Dark Souls 3's bosses in my first three tries make me pay less attention to the details or tarnish my playthrough? Hell no, I had a fantastic time with it and consider it a far better game than Dark Souls 2, a game where I died many, many times more.

And that was my subjective take on my subjective experience. The point is, so many people experience these games in so many different ways already (I mean, we have summoning, shit like the Drake sword and broken magic to make the games easier), it feels needlessly restrictive to not allow the pleasure of the Souls series players who may not even have the possibility of playing them due to disabilities and whatnot. I really don't see the harm in adding accessibility options, it never hurts anyone and only makes the playerbase larger.
 
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