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.
