Both are perfectly acceptable philosophies, but many Souls players need to learn that losing at a game for 150 hours is not what other people find fun.
Most of us get that, but non souls player must also understand that dark souls on easy mode is just a bad game. There are no big cinematics, the story is scarce, there are only a few npcs. Those are games that puts you on your toes, you must be wary at all times, and learn to master the game bit by bit. It’s not for everyone, or everytime (I think everyone can play souls game but they need to be in the right mindset) but they are my favorite games. But yeah gatekeepers suck
You’re making the game on easy sound pretty good to me.
Gatekeepers make things good by keeping those who aren’t serious out.
games
mumble about keeping non-serious people out
(You can just ignore non-serious people as they don’t affect you btw)
Idk if soul players need to learn anything. Not your style of game thats fine, but all fights in souls games are fair in the sense that anyone can eventually beat it with practice, or overleveling, or innate skill (those who have, ahem, gotten good), and any combination of the three.
Have known a lot of people who played dark souls at a time in their life where they needed the lesson of getting up after getting knocked down.
I have that shit in real life. (Being taken down and having to get back up)
I work. I have to take care of the house/family. I had a leukemia…and I DID fucking rise up again from the dead…literally. With 3 prosthesis after, but hey, its just means im in a different game now (cyberpunk)
But we are talking about fucking games.
I am not a teenager with the time. Or patience. Those are both used on real life…you know…the bigger game. The real game.
I’m Not saying you can’t have the difficulty in your…playthings.
I am saying that there are people who want to play the games you like, they are great fucking games, but we just don’t have the time and energy to waste a few hours in the same fucking level/battle.
And that’s the conversation: Having the possibility to change difficulty. That exists. It’s not impossible.
You do you. No one is robing you of your experience.
Its just a shame…the gatekeeping.
Edit: I’m loving the responses missing the point.
And lots of people want to go to hawaii but it’s a long flight and people with jobs might not have the time to go. Welcome to real life!
Play something else. (I don’t play games at all anymore but the last thing people want is a square coming into the circles room to complain there’s too many rounded edges.)
I’ve never picked up a Souls game myself, because that kind of challenge isn’t what I play video games for. But I’ve also never felt like I was being cheated out of an experience, there are plenty of other games out there for me.
I think if a developer doesn’t want to add an easy mode because they feel like that would be an inferior version of their game, it’s their prerogative not to do it. When an author writes an intellectually challenging book, nobody serious complains that the author refused to include cliff notes or explanations. Why don’t we treat video game designers the same?
Hey sorry you had cancer; glad you survived.
I mean that, but you are bringing some weird antagonist monologue energy to this thread.
Difficult sliders are simply bad for certain games, soulsborne games are one of them.
You are also robbing your own experience BTW. Give yourself a fair shot at beating these games without taking the easy route.
Why? Do Souls players not accept others not liking the games? Thats not my experience but maybe many are like that?
Also, usually Souls players dont lose for 150 hours straight. Most of the time its winning, but sometimes youre set back a bit and sometimes youre stuck. Some people like earning their wins. Some dont deal well with the difficulty and get frustrated, I get thats not fun for them. To each their own.
Why does everyone think every game has to be made for the lowest common denominator? If you don’t like a game, don’t play it. Besides, souls games can actually be quite forgiving, the difficulty adjustments just isnt in sliders. Especially in elden ring, you can beat every fight in a pretty brainless (i mean like not needing to dodge almost at all) way if you take the time to set up for it.
I tried Dark Souls and I tried Demon Souls.
It’s not my thing, but I’m glad they are a lot of other people’s cup of tea
Gamers are so entitled they will argue with other gamers on matters of taste. “That game is not to my specifications! Instead of finding one that is I’ll complain until the game is changed! People that like it the old way need to know i have a job!”
Difficulty settings are accessibility settings and anyone who disagrees can kiss my ass.
As long as the setting accommodates everyone, including people who want a difficult game
Yeah that’s the point at least in my eyes. I don’t see why it has to be one way or the other. You have absolutely nothing to lose and everything to gain from difficulty accessibility options. If someone sees difficulty as some sort of status symbol… Well, don’t project that onto me.
“…to first face that challenge and to overcome it in some way that suits them as a player.”
Honestly when that player is me, this is just going to mean playing a different game. I’m old and busy, I really don’t have the time or energy for hard games.
All art should have difficulty sliders. I want to listen to avant-garde jazz but I think it should be in 4/4 time signature and they should play the most melodic notes. And I think art house movies should have a version where the script is rewritten so the characters explain the allegories and symbolism of the movie while I’m watching. And I think opera should have someone reading what is being sung because I find it hard to follow along with the singing
I mean we literally do have accessibility settings for most art lmao what do you think subtitles and sign language interpreters are
No we literally don’t ‘have accessibility settings for most art’. Whens the last you went to a museum? Art is presented basically as is, and if you’re blind you will probably go to the sound based works instead of the visual mediums instead.
Sure and we have subtitles in Fromsoft games so it’s all good right?
Yeah maybe we should have even more accessibility settings too. Things that don’t fundamentally change the game like changing the time signature on a piece of music changes that piece of music. Like, it wouldn’t fundamentally change Bloodborne if there was an option to make Rom the Vacuous Spider take fewer hits to kill.
It wouldn’t even have to get in the way of players who enjoy spending 5 hours slashing at a blob of flesh. That’s the beauty of options! They’re optional!
If From thought they could add difficulty settings without diminishing the vision of their game don’t you think they would? I’m not against difficulty sliders if a dev wants them. I am against difficulty sliders if devs cant or won’t do them. My point is artists should be making THEIR art and not art that caters to the most amount of people.
I know this is just a joke, but art should have a difficulty slider when possible if it will require active participation by the audience. Otherwise, it is just excluding people and essentially gatekeeping. Even art house movies and have subtitles, and music is often translated to text or sign.
Disagree. There are plenty of games out there that try to cater to the widest base possible, plenty of games with a bunch of difficulty sliders and adjustments. From should be able to make their art without having to cater to every single person.
Even art house movies and have subtitles, and music is often translated to text or sign.
That was not my argument. My argument was art movies should explicitly spell out the meanings and symbolism in their movie via dialogues so I don’t have to do it myself. Avant-garde jazz musicians should make albums in popular time signatures and be more melodious. Otherwise people are excluded from enjoying those art forms
Everyone who is opposed to difficulty sliders should be forced to spend 200 hours on each game using a controller that simulates dyspraxia by randomly adjusting every movement of the sticks by a random degree and lagging every button press by a few microseconds before they’re allowed to play it normally.
Add an additional 400 hours if they also say smug shit like this when pretending their ableism and elitism are just devotion to artistic integrity.
The devs who make games without difficulty sliders should never get their undoctored controllers back.
Personally I oppose difficulty sliders because I think they are overly broad and stupid, looking at you Bethesda and your lowsy ass health bar padding. Give me more zomboid and owlcat style difficulty setting where I can customize them in all minutiae.
But no seriously fuck difficulty sliders cause 9/10 they do overly broad gameplay things that some of which I may not want. This is coming from a guy who beat Boltgun on its hardest difficulty with the clown vomit filter so it’s not like I can’t enjoy ulta hard difficulty but what some consider ultra hard I may consider annoying as fuck see yet again Bethesda health bar padding. I do like NV 4s hardcore/survival mode though.
I think Mortal Kombat does it best. When you die to a boss, that boss becomes ever so slightly less difficult. Unnoticeably so at first, but as you die more and more and more, they get slower and slower and slower
Honestly adaptive difficulty has basically the inverse issue of fucking with shit when I don’t want it. But there is a subtype of it that I do like, that being thingd like the narrative AI in the Dead Space remake which can do really neat shit to fuck with the player and keep them on their toes. Though for me it just made everything foggy especially that one level where it’s just a bunch of cat walks which I’m pretty sure is already a low light area, seriously I couldn’t see shit and kept getting lost in what amounted to a five foot area.
But yeah doing that for a skilled based game like Mortal Kombat seems… cheap. Like maybe I’m wrong but I’m pretty sure there is a difficulty setting in MK which if that is the case that means the game decides to stop the player of their agency and accomplishment rather than let them learn the boss. Not to say you can’t do adaptive difficulty but as a general rule there’s a good reason it’s so rare, sometimes it’s just fine but I rarely see it.
The game taking into account the players actions and effecting the game though to counter that is fun IMO. Like how high casualty runs in Dishonored make the game noticable harder since difficulty only really effects health, enemy, numbers, and detection rate also it serves the narrative of the story well. Also Adam Smasher tayloring his gear to counter the player which can be subverted to catch him off guard rewarding the player for knowing the world. Or the aformentioned Dead Space narrative AI which apparently decided I’m gonna play Dead Space after the crew of the USG Ishimura had a ship wide Silent Hill themed party.
We should abolish all art since there will always be someone with a disability who isn’t able to enjoy it.
Do you think the entire artistic value of soulsikes is in their difficulty? That it would ruin them if players with worse reaction time were given the ability to progress at the same rate as players with exceptional reaction time? That Dark Souls would be essentially the same if instead of Gwyn, Lord of Cinder, there was just a floating hitbox with 4,185 health? What a fucking insult to Miyazaki’s writing
Do you think the entire artistic value of soulsikes is in their difficulty?
I mean the entire theme of souls games is overcoming rediculous challenges in the face of what seems like an impossible task. These aren’t games with amazingly written dialogues, or intricate in depth stories. The game you play is the story of your character dieing repeatedly until they overcome a great challenge to meet their goals. It would fundamentally change the game if you could just slide a bar to make it easier.
Let me ask you this, why do you think every game should cater to you? Isn’t it OK for some art to not be for everyone? Isn’t that what we tells chuds when they whine and moan about main characters being women or poc? Why can’t some art be about the overcoming a challenge?
Sure, and what counts as a ridiculous challenge depends on the player. I can promise you that you have an easier time beating the Dancer of the Boreal Valley at 5,111 health than I would if she only had 2,500. We are playing at different difficulty levels already. The challenge is harder for me.
Let me ask you this, why do you think every game should cater to you?
I don’t. I don’t like visual novels because there’s not enough action, so I don’t play visual novels. I don’t care for sports, so I don’t play sport games. I don’t enjoy the basic mechanics of fighting games, so I don’t play fighting games.
I do enjoy Fromsoft games. I apparently like the stories more than you do since you’re actively insulting them, and everything between boss fights is fantastic. Literally the only thing I’m asking for is the ability to play a game that I already like at the same level of difficulty that you play at. Again, it would not fundamentally change the game if the Ancient Wyvern had half as much health.
Since I’ve seen your other reply, this got even funnier. “Do you think the entire point of pizza is sauce? What a fucking insult to cheese.”
“Pizza has sauce and cheese. People like pizza that has sauce and cheese.”
“I LOVE PIZZA, I JUST THINK PIZZA SHOULD HAVE LESS SAUCE! IT WON’T CHANGE THE PIZZA!”
How exactly do you think your analogy works? Because I think it actually makes perfect sense to let people put less sauce on their pizza if they want less sauce on their pizza
EXACTLY. What you’re missing is that you’re asking for alterations to someone else’s pizza rather than making your own or finding a different pizza.
No I’m not lmfao do you think I’m demanding that they make the game easier for everyone? Why don’t Fromsoft fans understand the concept of options? The whole point is that you should be able to play the game at whatever level of difficulty is appropriate for you
If someone wants to gate their game to people who can handle the level of difficulty, that’s their choice. There are plenty of developers who are willing to be accommodating, to get hung up on games that don’t
“There are plenty of ADA compliant buildings, don’t get hung up on the ones that aren’t”…
Are you suggesting that games that don’t provide difficulty settings violate the ADA?
That seems like a lot more work than just trying a new hobby.
Now imagine there’s a song that comes out that you like the themes of. It’s catchy, it hits your buttons just right. One problem: When you play the song, it turns your volume to maximum. Others insist that max volume is part of the artistic intent. You just need to keep on listening at max volume over and over until you can appreciate it. If you could listen to it at a lower volume, it would be a lesser experience. Why? You don’t see what this specific volume has to do with the things you enjoy about the song. People can listen to it at max volume, but there’s plenty of people who would rather listen at the volume they choose. Why not allow for a volume slider?
There’s plenty of music that I can’t connect with for one reason or another. I don’t demand artists make music I enjoy, I go out and find artists I enjoy and listen to their music. If an artist made a song that somehow turned the volume up to full everytime I put it on, that is their right as the artist to make regardless of whether or no I or anyone else enjoyed it. I fucking can’t stand country music, so I simply listen to other music. If I demanded all country musicians made music I enjoy, I wouldn’t expect anyone on earth to respect my requests because it’s not a respectable request. There are many other devs out there making games with plenty of difficulty adjustments. You should play those games.
A genre is not comparable to a difficulty slider. And a difficulty is not a genre.
Making a game hard for the sake of making it hard is a cheap way to increase difficulty.
The challenge shouldn’t come from enemies being damage sponges or the AI having superhuman reaction times. It should come from player skill.
Balatro is one of the best examples of this. The game naturally gets easier as the player learns its systems and gains experience through playing.
Destiny 2 also had excellent skill progression. Say what you want about the game as a whole, but the core gunplay and the mechanics of its three classes rewarded players for improving their own abilities.
Even games like Madden and NBA 2K have, to a lesser extent, systems that reward player skill rather than simply inflating difficulty.
Many older games were made extremely difficult because they were relatively short. The increased difficulty extended playtime and made players feel they were getting more value for the price. That’s one of the reasons games like Ninja Gaiden on the NES earned their reputation for being brutally hard.
As for Soulslike games, they’re simply not my cup of tea. I fully acknowledge that they’re well-made games, and if you enjoy them, that’s great. They’re intentionally designed to be challenging. While the original Dark Souls was developed under a tight schedule and has some rough edges, its high level of difficulty was a deliberate design choice rather than the result of bugs or glitches.
Making enemies soak up more damage and deal more damage is lazy difficulty. Giving enemies more tools to use against the player is the better way to handle game difficulty IMO
Balatro is one of the best examples of this. The game naturally gets easier as the player learns its systems and gains experience through playing.
Isn’t this the case for most Roguelites? It’s not even necessarily player skill, so much as unlocking permanent upgrades (Jokers in Balatro, abilities/cards in Across the Obelisk or Slay the Spire, stat boosts and weapon modifiers in Hades, etc.).
As someone who’s done Video game QA, working with Tomonobu Itagaki doesn’t sound pleasant. Those campaign sprints are hard enough as is
Match the type of a game, sheesh.
Bethesda like open world? Gimmie difficulty levels - nothing will change with them except that people will be able to tailor the experience more.
Narrative and/or choice heavy game? Leave difficulty choice off to let the original vision of the author speak for itself - havimg parts too easy or hard due to watered down or pumped up difficulty can ruin the story.
Arcade/Dark Souls games? I…don’t really see reasons for difficulty settings here except for harder than baselines ones? Like new game +. In these games, learning patterns and gettimg good is the game, there is no way around it.
All in all - not every game is for everyone, we have genres for a reason. Having difficulty tailored for arcades in open world exploration game makes no sense just as much as having watered down difficulty levels in narrative heavy games.
Some have limited time and want to enjoy a good game without being one-shot or learning patterns for 5 hours to beat a single boss.
This is really such an weird argument. Like arguing that you want to be able to drive a nail with any tool you find, so no matter if these are scissors, a spoon or an actual hammer, all need to be usable as a hammer.
We have genres for a reason. If you do not like soulslikes, pick another game. If you have no time to play arcade style games, pick another genre. There are thousands of games available, and genre overlap is huge - don’t play games that aren’t meant to align with your requirements and then complain they don’t.
Like, this is borderline egoistical of you.
I think it’s a valid argument. For example, if someone wants to read Shakespeare but they aren’t a strong reader, you could provide a simpler version, while acknowledging it isn’t as originally intended. It allows for accessibility for a larger audience while not changing the experience for others. You wouldn’t tell someone to read a different story genre instead. This isn’t tools, where we have to bend the laws of physics, it’s changing some numbers in a database, and something already done for higher level difficulty settings, so just allow a version that is easier. No one is forcing anyone to play it that way.
Lol yes, I dropped High On Life at the first boss because after trying to pass it ten times, I just couldn’t be bothered.
That’s just not a game to me. It’s just packaged frustration, and I’d rather do something else. So that got uninstalled rather fast.Sounds like you’ll need to play a different game then.
Sounds like you need to learn to respect the boundaries of others.
What? I am not interacting with your boundaries at all. I’m not forcing you to play anything that doesn’t suit you. You are complaining that you want to play a game that doesn’t suit you. Maybe you’ll just have to get over the fact that it doesn’t suit you and play something else?
Sounds like you’ll need to play a different game then.
Sounds like you are telling me what my taste is supposed to be
Maybe you’ll just have to get over the fact that it doesn’t suit you and play something else?
I am aware of it and have already decided it not being my cup of tea.
I am talking about those that like a moderate challenge but do not enjoy being stuck for 10hours at a stage without any meaningful progress to achieve.I am talking about those that like a moderate challenge but do not enjoy being stuck for 10hours at a stage without any meaningful progress to achieve.
Maybe they should pick a game that provides a moderate challenge and not one that provides “being stuck for 10h at a stage without any meaningful progress”?
Can’t be real.
So…. Play a different game? Not everything is for you? Does this actually need to be said?
learning patterns and gettimg good is the game
Otherwise it’s fruit ninja lmao which is a fun game you should get if you want an easy sword slashing experience
I had to double check that Tomonobu wasn’t responsible for steel battalion. (A game that deleted your save if you didn’t press the eject button in time)
Personally, I gave up at the first fight in Bloodborne (I have 40 min of gameplay). Never touched a souls game ever again.
For real, I’ve got shit to do. Old-school boss fights requiring a ridiculous degree of flawless repetition was an expression of hardware limitations at the time, not a fun feature to get nostalgic about. People can spend their time as they wish, but for my money the artificially ramped-up difficulty for its own sake is a cancer on game design, not something to develop a sense of elitism about.
It’s not that I don’t appreciate a challenge. I used to love difficult games. I grew up in the NES era when difficulty was the only thing that kept games from being completed in 30 minutes.
But life moves on and we get busy. If I get 2-3 hours in a week to game it’s a miracle. I am not going to spend that time grinding a boss for hours.
But other difficult games may be fine. Specifically, rogelikes. Slay the Spire and Dead Cells are games that can be very difficult, but the games are designed to be taken on in short chunks with an entire run taking under an hour, whereas Souls-Like games expect a lot more time commitment.
I really enjoyed the Respawn Jedi games. They’re Souls-likes with difficulty sliders that should appease anyone.
I play both of these and loved em. I also poured 50 hours into beating cuphead. Difficulty isn’t a problem if the depth of the game is a pool instead of a sea.
I think Hades/Hades did it great. Brutally difficult at first, but with an optional mode to make it easier each time you die, and full runs taking about 30 minutes.
And making failure a part of the story that allows you to maintain progression despite dying is also neat.
The only thing I’d really like to see changed is making an optional twist on God Mode where every time you lose it gets easier, but every time you win it gets harder.
Souls have pretty hard bosses… but mostly, they are just optional content. Main story isn’t that difficult in my experience.
A lot of people in this thread don’t seem to have gotten the subtle meme post in this image. Itagaki was the dude who made the Modern Ninja Gaiden titles and the Dead or Alive franchise. The dude was always a massive troll to both the media and players but was very dedicated to the vision he had for the games he wanted to make. He also had a very close friendship/rivalry with Katsuhiro Harada, the main dev for the Tekken franchise starting at Tekken 3 and recently cutting ties with Namco to found a new company that is, unfortunately, owned by SNK. Itagaki sadly passed away last year and a lot of old school devs mourned for his loss, but probably none harder than Harada given just how long they had been actual irl friends.
Kojima:
We added Very Easy Mode
Also Kojima:
Get good or wear the chicken hat
The first philosophy is why so many modern AAA games are complete crap. Why not just have FMV of the actors doing the scene and have the audience press X to continue to the next scene?
One of these days, maybe we won’t even have to press X anymore! It can just go scene to scene while we relax! Imagine it!
Difficulty options aren’t there to offer different experiences with a game, they’re there to offer the same experience to players of different skill levels. People who are better at Dark Souls are playing it and its clones at a reduced difficulty compared to people who are worse at it.
But the more you play the better you get…
Like hell. I hit my skill ceiling in these games a long time ago, and I’m not getting any younger.
Maybe, but that’s okay. Not every game needs to be for every player. I used to be very much into action heavy games, even did a big Nintendo Blockbuster tournament back when I was a kid and placed 4th regionally. And I was really big into the 2D fighting scene, particularly Street Fighter 3 and Guilty Gear series.
I’m in my 40s now, and I don’t really play those kinds of games much anymore. Action heavy games are fun from time to time, but they make my hands hurt. Also, I just don’t have the time to learn the meta, pokes, skills and strategies for fighting games anymore. And button mashing (like Mortal Kombat’s “test your might” sections) is right out. I don’t see the issue. Time marches on and we enjoy the things we can.
These days I’m more likely to play RPGs, indie, and retro games, with occasional dips into modern games, and while I still like fighting games, I’m more inclined to play ones that have a single player campaign and lower skill ceiling, like Soul Calibur 6. Anything with tons of button mashing or joystick waggling for range setting will have my hands hurting over time if I keep at it.
🤷. I’m old.
I think difficulty settings are nice for letting more people play how they want without having to use mods.
I don’t care for the gatekeeping b.s.
I played RE Village with an unlimited-bullets-mod cause otherwise I couldn’t get past choke points.
I play with a controller and shooting is just not great with a joystick unless there is aim assist. Can’t recall if this game had it or not but either way I kept dying when swarmed by werewolves.
I like horror games and I get that the point is to make you anxious about ammo or health. To build tension. But I just find it frustrating sometimes.
There’s a lot of “you made your art wrong” in here. If you don’t have legs, you’re not going to be able to play soccer. You can make your own no-leg soccer if you want, but I’m just going to make an “ew” face at you if you say that soccer needs to change for you. Try arm wrestling!
The best argument against games (or any software) that don’t work for you is that you often can’t get refunds, and that’s a valid concern, but it has nothing to do with the content itself.
A nonverbal person joined one of hubs Delta green games on discord and he accommodated it but was confused as to why they didn’t just join one of the text chat based games on the same server. His theory is they were just used to getting whatever they wanted because they then proceeded to insist on playing a shadowrun character until they just kind of broke down that it wasn’t working with the game and ghosted.
