Discussion Should FromSoftware games have an easy mode?

[GJ]

Do you think games criticism is legitimate or no

Yes, absolutely. I review games myself. But personally not liking something because of whatever reasons, or telling someone they made their game wrong are two different things.

If this is their decision, it’s ours to accept that or to move on. We can disagree with it, which is always fine, especially when you can back up why you disagree with it. But if that disagreement goes against the design philosophy, it’s just not meant for you.

 

[Hyrulean]

Somebody earlier said games should be fun

I'm the culprit, and I will die on that hill.

PS : but if there's an easy mode, maybe I'll make it to the next

 

[Lichtsang]

I'm at a very huge loss of words with this post, because this is just ablest as all hell.

There are so many resources that try to help people with difficulties with reading higher level books, sometimes simplified or modified versions to assist with younger or those with disabilities that make it difficult. We even have audio books and brail versions of books. There's so much to unpack with this post that I can't even begin to explain.

Like, how dare you?

I didn't talk about disabled people with this, of course there are audio books or brail versions. That wasn't what I meant at all.

 

[Deleted member 1141]

I didn't talk about disabled people with this, of course there are audio books or brail versions. That wasn't what I meant at all.

Maybe perhaps you should refrain from giving opinions about how accessibility impacts users in a topic regarding accessibility then. Just a thought.

 

[Apopheniac]

If this is their decision, it’s ours to accept that or to move on. We can disagree with it, which is always fine, especially when you can back up why you disagree with it. But if that disagreement goes against the design philosophy, it’s just not meant for you.

what's the difference between saying "this character sucks because of x" and "this game should have an easy mode" in terms of whether or not criticizing the "design philosophy" is valid

 

[Kasur1309]

In my eyes some Games are Art and Dark Souls is one of them.

The difficulty is part of the whole experience and specially Dark Souls 1 is not a "hard" game. It just forces you to learn the mechanics and to pay attention.

In many ways difficulty settings are just a lazy way for developers to not care about balancing there games. Which happens in most games nowadays.

 

[Lichtsang]

Maybe perhaps you should refrain from giving opinions about how accessibility impacts users in a topic regarding accessibility then. Just a thought.

What? Just because people misunderstood what I meant I should not be allowed to voice my opinion? This really reads like there is only one correct opinion, and at that point, why discuss this at all?

 

[BlueManifest]

Not all games need to be hard
Not all games need to be easy
Not all games need to have options

 

[Mazzle]

Maybe perhaps you should refrain from giving opinions about how accessibility impacts users in a topic regarding accessibility then. Just a thought.

But that is the problem. The OP asked about easy mode just so someone who doesn't like parts of a game can play it, even if it might be against the vision of the designer and more often then not the discussion changes into accessibility options, where an easy mode might be part of making a game accessible but isn't the only thing and people start misunderstaning others

 

[Hyrulean]

I’ve also got some motor control issues and some neurological issues that can make remembering/dealing with patterns difficult over the course of a long fight. I fell off some monkey bars when I was 4 and, since it was the 1980s and nobody cared about child safety yet, I landed on fucking concrete. Yeah.

I'm sad to hear that

 

[kpup]

Should a highly demanding book have a simplified version for non experienced readers that don't enjoy that kind of writing?

A hard book can still be read. The reader can just move on to the next page, or spend more time understanding a passage, or read an analysis online—they're not physically blocked by the book. But players can hit walls in games that are just unsurmountable for them for any sort of reasons. Same goes for other mediums, where I feel like the only place a consumer can get hardstuck is in a game.


My personal thoughts on this are that fromsoft doesn't have to implement an easy mode if they don't want to, but that's not to be conflated with the idea that difficult games can't or shouldn't be more accessible. Celeste is often looked to as a challenging platformer, yet also praised for its accessibility options. Those options don't take away from anyone's achievements.

I do think it's a shame that many people are unable to experience or enjoy their games because of said difficulty.

I don’t think they should, and that has nothing to do with not wanting certain people to be able to play this game. Not at all. The more the merrier! It’s probably my favorite franchise in gaming right now and I love sharing those games with people, but I never would’ve loved the games as much as I do now if it were just another action game where you bash through enemies in an ‘easy mode’. I’ll tell you why. I know this is gonna be a weird and floaty story, and people will probably laugh at it, haha, but this franchise really pulled me through my depression in a way no other game could.

My experience with the series started with Dark Souls. I had heard of Demon’s Souls, but since I or none of my friends had a PS3 I had no way to play it. My friend bought a copy of Dark Souls and we played it over the weekend, being stuck on the tutorial boss for hours. Once we finally beat that boss we took the wrong turn in Firelink Shrine, went to the Graveyard, and got totally fucked up by the skeletons. We shut off the game, put it back in the case, and he sold it the next day. We didn’t get it. We didn’t understand why anyone would play a game like this. It was clunky, looked pretty bad for the time and we just didn’t have fun with it. No fun at all.

Months later the game was on sale on Xbox LIVE for €5. I read many great things about it and wanted to give a shot again. So many people loved it, why couldn’t I? So I booted it up and the same thing happened. Stuck at the tutorial boss for like an hour, wrong way in Firelink Shrine once again etc. Fast forward a couple months and I was looking for a game to play. I had to quit school because of a burn-out and I really wanted to get lost in a world different from mine. I wanted a chance to prove myself, and I know how dumb that sounds, but I felt só bad back then, I was depressed as hell, I just needed to escape.

So I found Dark Souls again. And this time I forced myself to power through it. I looked up some good items to pick up early in the game to give me a little head start and I went on my adventure. I got killed over and over again by the simplest enemies in Firelink Shrine, but slowely but surely I learned the mechanics of the game, learned the timing of their attacks and I beat them. That‘s exactly what got me through the rest of the game. Perseverance. I wanted to beat this game. I wanted it so bad. So I forced myself to get better, and I did. Every boss took me tens of tries, some even more, but I managed to kill them all eventually. And every single one of those victories felt só good. It’s a feeling of satisfaction that you wouldn’t get out of a boss you kill in one or two tries by spamming the attack button. It’s a feeling of relief, a feeling of proving to yourself that you can actually do something if you just want it bad enough.

Many, many hours later I beat the game. I did it. I had beaten the unbeatable game. The game I started so many times, and dropped just as many times. Somehow, with me powering through the game, something finally clicked and I started to ’get’ Dark Souls. And that’s when I fell in love with the franchise. I proved to the game that I could beat that fucking thing, and I proved to myself that I can accomplish a goal if I just keep working on it. Once I beat it I re-introduced it to my friend who dropped it after that weekend many months ago and after showing him how the game is supposed to be played he eventually managed to beat it too, and two other friends also got hooked on it and beat every game in the franchise multiple times throughout the years.

Dark Souls is a game you have to learn to play. The experience, the sense of relief when you finally beat that boss you have trouble with, you’ll only get that if you play the game the way it’s meant to be played. The way it’s designed. One would never, ever be able to get the same amount of satisfaction out of the game if it was just a button basher, or if the enemies hit only a third as hard. This game is about falling a thousand times and still getting back up. Everything that would undermine that experience, such as an easy mode, would go 100% against its design philosophy.

Now don’t get me wrong. If FROM would ever introduce an easy mode for newcomers, great! I wouldn’t be against it at all if it would get more people to play and love the franchise that I love. They’ve already introduced some great QoL features over the years and there are already ways to make the games easier, such as co-op for bosses or making a Magic character, since Magic is pretty OP in these games. But I would be very sad that people who would play on easy wouldn’t get to experience the game the way I did, and wouldn’t fall in love with it, because for them it would be just another action RPG they could finish in a couple of days without having to learn any mechanics or patterns or whatever. When it comes to those things it would just be any other game that’s already on the market.

That leads me to think people should just accept that not everything has to be for everyone. I for example don’t like ‘realistic’ racing games outside of the Forza Horizon series. I just love driving around with some nice tunes in the background and shooting some pics in photo mode. That doesn’t mean I’m gonna complain that GT7 should have an open world mode so I could enjoy it. I just accept that that game isn’t for me and I get my driving fix somewhere else. And it’s way easier to accept something like that and get your fun somewhere else, than to beg on the internet for years (not talking about the OP, just people in general) about an easy mode in a game of which the director has said multiple times that he doesn’t want it because he doesn’t want people to get to play a butchered experience that doesn’t compare to how he intended it to be played/experienced.

Sorry for the long, personal post. But I wanted to share my take on why an easy mode would ruin the magic of these games.

I mean I read all this, and it's great that you had this experience but I can still disagree. Difficulty isn't one set thing, it's a spectrum. For someone who somehow beats every fromsoft boss on their first try and these games are a breeze for them, they wouldn't have the same magic you had because for them, there was no struggle or relief. For them, they would actually benefit from a more difficult game, even if you would not.

And on the flip side, someone less adept at these sorts of games might try more than you have and never get past a certain boss, even if they grinded more or put in 10x the time you have. You say it's about falling 1000 times and getting back up, but they could've fallen 10000 times. Is their experience somehow less valid, even though they tried powering through it? With difficulty options, they could have the same amount of struggles that you had, scaled to their own abilities.

 

[GJ]

what's the difference between saying "this character sucks because of x" and "this game should have an easy mode" in terms of whether or not criticizing the "design philosophy" is valid

When I design something, I make choices because of reasons that are valid to me. It’s my piece of art and when it’s done I share it with the world. People can have their opinion of it and I often value their opinions, but in the end it’s still my piece, made by my choices. You can think it sucks. If you can tell me why and it’s valid criticism that’s totally fair and I would never hold that against you. Not everyone is the same of course. But does that mean I was wrong in designing it the way I did? Or does that just mean we have different opinions about my work?

I think it’s the latter. So I will continue to create work my way, because I know my work has a lot of fans who do like the choices I make. That doesn’t mean I don’t value your opinion, or I don’t want you to enjoy my work as well, but the way you want to see my art might just not be the way I want to make it. Don’t you think that should be okay? And in the end it’s your choice to make if you want to continue engaging with my art, or go look for your art fix somewhere else.

 

[Deleted member 1250]

Not all games need to be hard
Not all games need to be easy
Not all games need to have options

BULLSHIT THEY SHOULD ALWAYS HAVE option regardless

 

[Ginta]

Not every game needs to have extensive accessibility options like Control does, but a little bit can go a long way into enjoying a too challenging experience.

 

[Phantoon]

There are books that have Shakespeare's plays in the modern vernacular rather than the early modern English of Elizabethan times so that's definitely possible.

I looked up one. This is Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Tomorrow from Macbeth:

How the days stretched out – each one the same as the one before, and they would continue to do so, tediously, until the end of history. And every day we have lived has been the last day of some other fool’s life, each day a dot of candle-light showing him the way to his death-bed. Blow the short candle out: life was no more than a walking shadow – a poor actor – who goes through all the emotions in one hour on the stage and then bows out. It was a story told by an idiot, full of noise and passion, but meaningless.

Please stop doing that

 

[Lichtsang]

A hard book can still be read. The reader can just move on to the next page, or spend more time understanding a passage, or read an analysis online—they're not physically blocked by the book. But players can hit walls in games that are just unsurmountable for them for any sort of reasons. Same goes for other mediums, where I feel like the only place a consumer can get hardstuck is in a game.

And a hard game can still be played. If you have to skip parts of the books chances are that you can't experience it fully, like you can't experience the game fully because certain sections are too hard for you.
It's not 1 to 1, yes, but I think it has enough similarities to be compared. I also simplified it, I know.
But asking developers to make a game easier when that could hurt their vision isn't too far from asking an author to write more accessible, which could ruin their vision.

And again, I'm not talking about the problem of disability, which is a related, but different topic.

 

[Apopheniac]

When I design something, I make choices because of reasons that are valid to me. It’s my piece of art and when it’s done I share it with the world. People can have their opinion of it and I often value their opinions, but in the end it’s still my piece, made by my choices. You can think it sucks. If you can tell me why and it’s valid criticism that’s totally fair and I would never hold that against you. Not everyone is the same of course. But does that mean I was wrong in designing it the way I did? Or does that just mean we have different opinions about my work?

I think it’s the latter. So I will continue to create work my way, because I know my work has a lot of fans who do like the choices I make. That doesn’t mean I don’t value your opinion, or I don’t want you to enjoy my work as well, but the way you want to see my art might just not be the way I want to make it. Don’t you think that should be okay? And in the end it’s your choice to make if you want to continue engaging with my art, or go look for your art fix somewhere else.

No one who talks about any of this is arguing to take away From Soft's right to design their games without easy modes. We can still insult them for that and say why they're dummies

I'm not gonna bother with their games, so this is the best I've got

 

[Lichtsang]

I looked up one. This is Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Tomorrow from Macbeth:

How the days stretched out – each one the same as the one before, and they would continue to do so, tediously, until the end of history. And every day we have lived has been the last day of some other fool’s life, each day a dot of candle-light showing him the way to his death-bed. Blow the short candle out: life was no more than a walking shadow – a poor actor – who goes through all the emotions in one hour on the stage and then bows out. It was a story told by an idiot, full of noise and passion, but meaningless.

Please stop doing that

I just imagined Goethe's Faust done like that and shuddered.

 

[Yoshifan31]

I don’t think so, the whole point of these games is to go through a challenge. If you’re frustrated to the point you have trouble progressing, you can either grind or have someone help you beat the boss. The easier option is literally right there

Some games will target different audiences, there’s a ton of easy action RPGs out there. Difficulty options for Souls isn’t a core feature, it’s basically a nice to have that would probably require a lot of work since I don’t think tweaking HP and damage values are enough to make those games easier. Those games are honestly pretty pointless if they are easier. Difficulty is a part of game design, asking for an easy mode in those games is like asking arthouse movies to provide captions to explain the symbolism behind every scene. I know this sounds snobbish but if you want to get into From’s games but don’t care about challenges and don’t care about their vision of an easy mode which is summoning, well this just means you don’t like the game. Again, the challenge is such a core part of the game, if you remove that from Souls all you have is another hack and slash grindfest with a medieval aesthethic and lore in item descriptions, also above average level design for the most part I guess. You can easily find all of those aspects that would appeal to you in many other games, the challenge is simply a core part of From’s games and there’s no going around that. Sure there are tons of harder games with easy or assist modes but none of them value challenge like Souls does. Action games like Ninja Gaiden are about feeling powerful and looking cool before being really challenging. Celeste is a very hard plaformer but it actually has a compelling story unlike Souls, so that’s why it makes sense for that game to have an assist mode. It is simply a design decision

Also accessibility and difficulty aren’t the same thing. If you want to call out the lack of accessibility options in a game, talk about things like colorblind mode, UI/audio options and adaptive controller support. Lumping difficulty is that is not only not true but it also dilutes the debate

 

[Aurc]

Yes. Easy mode helps those who aren't as good at games, and as long as the usual difficulty level in FromSoft games is still preserved, it doesn't affect me in any way. It just makes the game more accessible to a wider audience.

 

[Cat]

Is it accessible from the start, though? This I'm not familiar with enough, so apologies if this comes off a little snippy.



It's absolutely NOT a different point. Accessibility is tied with options to select and/or tweak the difficulty. It's something that should be taken into game design at the start of the games development and understand how it could impact users abilities to play the game.

I am very tired of being literally hand waved so much at the old place and I'm not about to deal with this here. Accessibility and Difficulty Options are one in the same and they absolutely are within the same rule of thumb. They aren't different. They are the same.

PERIOD.

Just to clarify, my point was made towards the original topic, and not the wider issue of accessibility. Though, that’s not to say that game design and accessibility aren’t connected; it was poor wording on my part.

I was trying to talk about the artistic elements of the franchise, but it seems like I’ve mixed it with a wider discussion, which wasn’t my intent.

 

[GJ]

I mean I read all this, and it's great that you had this experience but I can still disagree. Difficulty isn't one set thing, it's a spectrum. For someone who somehow beats every fromsoft boss on their first try and these games are a breeze for them, they wouldn't have the same magic you had because for them, there was no struggle or relief. For them, they would actually benefit from a more difficult game, even if you would not.

And on the flip side, someone less adept at these sorts of games might try more than you have and never get past a certain boss, even if they grinded more or put in 10x the time you have. You say it's about falling 1000 times and getting back up, but they could've fallen 10000 times. Is their experience somehow less valid, even though they tried powering through it? With difficulty options, they could have the same amount of struggles that you had, scaled to their own abilities.

You make a great point here and of course you’re free to disagree. I don’t consider myself a good gamer. It took me 14 hours on the clock to get through Metroid Dread (taking my time with exploration for the 100%) even though HLTB has it at 7 hours for a first playthrough. I’ve had a friend mention to me how he thought the game was a breeze, while someone else I know spent over 30 tries on a single boss. Personally I’m somewhere in the middle. Both friends beat the game, and for both it’s currently the game of the year. The one friend loved how good the game overall is, while the other loved the challenge and that’s what kept him coming back, because he really wanted to beat those bosses that gave him a hard time. That doesn’t make any of their experience less valid, since they both played exactly the same game on the same difficulty. Heck, even playing a game with multiple difficulty settings on whatever difficulty doesn’t make any of the experiences less valid, since those games are usually designed with different difficulties in mind from the start of development. Once you introduce an easy mode to a Souls game, you’re changing the fundamentals of what made the game stand out from other games in the first place. It would just be any other action RPG. At that point why not just play any other action RPG?

 

[Seacat]

Do the Celeste thing where they let you have at the various toggles but make the developer intention clear as well. This way the people who place importance on developer vision can experience the game knowing that is what they're getting, and the people who choose not to are aware that they are warping the experience to fit with their preferences, and are okay with that. I mean, people are just using cheat engine to get around this as it is, may as well give them the tools directly. Cut them from online access when using them and why not?

Celeste is a very hard plaformer but it actually has a compelling story unlike Souls, so that’s why it makes sense for that game to have an assist mode. It is simply a design decision

I would argue that Celeste's difficulty plays a part in its narrative at least as much as Souls' does, I disagree with contrasting them.

 

[Deleted member 1020]

Also accessibility and difficulty aren’t the same thing. If you want to call out the lack of accessibility options in a game, talk about things like colorblind mode, UI/audio options and adaptive controller support. Lumping difficulty is that is not only not true but it also dilutes the debate

Apologies for asking for an easy mode to enable play with my MS. Obviously they will be solved by a colorblind mode. Please don't presume to know my accessibility requirements. It's condescending and ableist.

 

[Lord Azrael]

Is an easy mode really interchangeable with accessibility options? Personally I think no. I'm all in favor of From games adding difficulty modes, but I think that's just a cheap shorthand for accessibility. Yeah the game being easier could probably help people with certain physical conditions get through it indirectly, but it's not really addressing their needs head on. I fear developers just slapping on an easy mode in lieu of proper accessibility options and thinking it's good enough because that's all they see the majority demand.

 

[AngryAlchemist]

People in this thread are equating "I don't like this game, it's not meant to me" as the same as "I want to enjoy this game and I like almost everything about it, but it's giving me problems due to lack of accessibility options" as the same thing and they are NOT.

Similarly, accessibility options should not be treated as the same thing as difficulty options inherently.

 

[GJ]

No one who talks about any of this is arguing to take away From Soft's right to design their games without easy modes. We can still insult them for that and say why they're dummies

I'm not gonna bother with their games, so this is the best I've got

You totally can and if you want to do that then you definitely should. But you can also put that time and energy in either learning how to play the game and trying to get better at it (like I did back in 2012 with Dark Souls), or in playing something else that you know you do enjoy, which would be a way more positive and fun experience.

I mentioned Forza Horizon and GT7 before since I love driving around an open world and GT doesn’t offer that. At that point I could try to get into GT which probably wouldn’t be all that fun for me but who knows, it just might click, or I could just go play Forza which I know I love.

 

[balgajo]

As someone who only played and finished DS3 and died tons of time on each bosses(some of them 50+ times).

Let's say that there was an easy/normal/hard, where normal is equivalent to current the DS difficulty.
I would start playing the game and after dying tons of times to a boss I would think: "Ok, normal mode is too difficulty for me, let's switch to easy".

When doing this I wouldn't care to master the combat mechanics(where the game is superb imo) and the game would become a boring corridor with beautiful architecture. Even though I don't plan on playing other DS games(too stressful for me) I had a great and memorable time with DS3 thanks to the difficulty.

If From software believes that most players would act like me when having a difficulty option, then the decision of not having one makes sense to provide a similar experience between the majority of players.

 

[Miltiades]

Also accessibility and difficulty aren’t the same thing. If you want to call out the lack of accessibility options in a game, talk about things like colorblind mode, UI/audio options and adaptive controller support. Lumping difficulty is that is not only not true but it also dilutes the debate

I think this goes a little too far. Difficulty is not the totality of accessibility, but difficulty can absolutely be a part of accessibility.

The problem with the hyperfocused discussion on an "easy mode" is that it ignores the vast differences in ability. A developer could include a normal and "easy" mode as their two options, and that particular easy mode can still not meet the particular needs of a player.

Which again is why I still stand by my earlier comment that we should be advocating for modding being accessible in every game and on every piece of hardware.

 

[paranoodle]

One thing that always really confuses me when this discussion comes up is how many people say (or imply) Souls games have nothing (or very little) going for them other than their difficulty and/or gameplay. Did you really dislike the rest that much? Did it really not bring anything to the table?

I don't mean that as a gotcha, I'm legitimately confused because to me the story/lore (depending on how you want to call it) and general vibes/atmosphere are the part that appeals to me the most, and I don't know many other games that go in similar directions and do it that well. And it's not something you can get from just watching a video either because that takes away all the exploration elements related to it.

 

[kpup]

I don’t think so, the whole point of these games is to go through a challenge. If you’re frustrated to the point you have trouble progressing, you can either grind or have someone help you beat the boss. The easier option is literally right there

Some games will target different audiences, there’s a ton of easy action RPGs out there. Difficulty options for Souls isn’t a core feature, it’s basically a nice to have that would probably require a lot of work since I don’t think tweaking HP and damage values are enough to make those games easier. Those games are honestly pretty pointless if they are easier. Difficulty is a part of game design, asking for an easy mode in those games is like asking arthouse movies to provide captions to explain the symbolism behind every scene. I know this sounds snobbish but if you want to get into From’s games but don’t care about challenges and don’t care about their vision of an easy mode which is summoning, well this just means you don’t like the game. Again, the challenge is such a core part of the game, if you remove that from Souls all you have is another hack and slash grindfest with a medieval aesthethic and lore in item descriptions, also above average level design for the most part I guess. You can easily find all of those aspects that would appeal to you in many other games, the challenge is simply a core part of From’s games and there’s no going around that. Sure there are tons of harder games with easy or assist modes but none of them value challenge like Souls does. Action games like Ninja Gaiden are about feeling powerful and looking cool before being really challenging. Celeste is a very hard plaformer but it actually has a compelling story unlike Souls, so that’s why it makes sense for that game to have an assist mode. It is simply a design decision

Also accessibility and difficulty aren’t the same thing. If you want to call out the lack of accessibility options in a game, talk about things like colorblind mode, UI/audio options and adaptive controller support. Lumping difficulty is that is not only not true but it also dilutes the debate

If the point of the game is to go through a challenge, and these games are actually too easy for some people (especially souls vets or whatnot), wouldn't the game benefit from having harder difficulties for them? Which is lacking in fromsoft games, besides not summoning or ringing the bell in sekiro. If you believe in what you're saying about challenge, then you should be able to see that having additional options would benefit this, and not hurt your experience.

 

[GJ]

As someone who only played and finished DS3 and died tons of time on each bosses(some of them 50+ times).

Let's say that there was an easy/normal/hard, where normal is equivalent to current the DS difficulty.
I would start playing the game and dying tons of times to the bosses and think: "Ok, normal mode is too difficulty for me, let's switch to easy".

When doing this I wouldn't care to master the combat mechanics(where the game is superb imo) and the game would become a boring corridor with beautiful architecture. Even though I don't plan on playing other DS games(too stressful for me) I had a great and memorable time with DS3 thanks to the difficulty.

If From software believes that most players would act like me when having a difficulty option, then the decision of not having one makes sense to provide a similar experience between the majority of players.

This is where I’m at.

There are many ways to make the game more accessible without making it actually easier. Something like healing automatically when your health bar reaches zero, or weapons not losing durability. That way the game would still play the same and enemies would still hit just as hard, but a player would have less to worry about, which could get them to focus more on mastering the combat.

 

[Jersh]

And I think that robs the classics a lot.

Are you arguing that these versions shouldn't exist? That the world would be better off if the option to have an easier to read Shakespeare was gone? That only people who can parse a form of English from 500 years ago that's since fallen out of use deserve not just the full experience, but the only experience? Because intentional or not, that's the equivalence you're making. Again, no one's saying you need to read those versions if you prefer the original.

There's more to disabilities than not being able to physically hit the buttons on a regular controller. Reaction time can be impaired. Coordinating multiple actions at once can be impaired. Microsoft's controller is an incredible achievement, but it can't solve everything just by the nature of the problem.

 

[Miltiades]

If the point of the game is to go through a challenge, and these games are actually too easy for some people (especially souls vets or whatnot), wouldn't the game benefit from having harder difficulties for them? Which is lacking in fromsoft games, besides not summoning or ringing the bell in sekiro. If you believe in what you're saying about challenge, then you should be able to see that having additional options would benefit this, and not hurt your experience.

This is making the presumption that a player who enjoys Souls' current level of difficulty should be willing to risk the current equilibrium they enjoy by having developers spend more precious development time on additional harder difficulty modes that might upset the current balance they've already struck.

That seems like an unfounded presumption to me.

 

[Hyrulean]

If the point of the game is to go through a challenge, and these games are actually too easy for some people (especially souls vets or whatnot), wouldn't the game benefit from having harder difficulties for them? Which is lacking in fromsoft games, besides not summoning or ringing the bell in sekiro. If you believe in what you're saying about challenge, then you should be able to see that having additional options would benefit this, and not hurt your experience.

Going along with what you just said and since we're on Famiboards, how many people here often complain about Nintendo games being too easy ?

 

[GJ]

One thing that always really confuses me when this discussion comes up is how many people say (or imply) Souls games have nothing (or very little) going for them other than their difficulty and/or gameplay. Did you really dislike the rest that much? Did it really not bring anything to the table?

Hmm, it’s not that I dislike the rest, not at all. I love it even, but those things go hand in hand with the difficulty. I love exploring in souls games, because I know if I won’t be careful someone could be lurking around the corner and 1h-KO me from behind. I know I have to be careful at edges because someone could shoot an arrow at me from a distance and make me fall to my death. If those attacks would just let me lose 5% of my total health and nothing else, I wouldn’t have to be so careful while exploring. I wouldn’t have to listen closely if I hear someone walk around in the distance. The consequence of being spotted would only be losing 5% of my health.

And for story, one could look those parts up on YouTube or read the plot on Wikipedia and get the gist of the story. It’s not the same as experiencing it firsthand and it never will be, but once again those things go hand in hand. Seeing a new NPC in the distance always fills me with joy because it often means I reached a safe place and I will learn something new about the world I’m in, but I should still be wary because I don’t know if they’re friend or foe. They could totally fuck me over if I’m not careful, so I shouldn’t lower my guard. That brings us back to the first paragraph of this post, haha.

Souls games to me are a perfect balance between combat/challenge, exploration and lore/storytelling. Taking one of those things away, or altering them, would fundamentally change the experience, for better or worse.

 

[Lichtsang]

Are you arguing that these versions shouldn't exist? That the world would be better off if the option to have an easier to read Shakespeare was gone? That only people who can parse a form of English from 500 years ago that's since fallen out of use deserve not just the full experience, but the only experience? Because intentional or not, that's the equivalence you're making. Again, no one's saying you need to read those versions if you prefer the original.

There's more to disabilities than not being able to physically hit the buttons on a regular controller. Reaction time can be impaired. Coordinating multiple actions at once can be impaired. Microsoft's controller is an incredible achievement, but it can't solve everything.

I don't want to derail the thread further with literary, espacially If you're going at it in such a way, so I better keep it at the question at hand.

"but it can't solve everything" also applies to a difficulty setting. Some people sadly won't, for one reason or another, be able to beat the game even if you make it easier. You can't have an experience that can be enjoyed by every single person in the world. The best thing is to try to even the playing field with aspects like different controllers, audio or visual help or something like that. Aspects that don't change the game, but the way a player is able to interact with it.

 

[AngryAlchemist]

I don't want to derail the thread further with literary, espacially If you're going at it in such a way, so I better keep it at the question at hand.

"but it can't solve everything" also applies to a difficulty setting. Some people sadly won't, for one reason or another, be able to beat the game even if you make it easier. You can't have an experience that can be enjoyed by every single person in the world. The best thing is to try to even the playing field with aspects like different controllers, audio or visual help or something like that. Aspects that don't change the game, but the way a player is able to interact with it.

So you're saying MercurySteam shouldn't have made more accessibility options for David Jaffe?

 

[Lichtsang]

So you're saying MercurySteam shouldn't have made more accessibility options for David Jaffe?

I saw clips on Twitter of that ... kinda hilarious.

 

[Jersh]

I don't want to derail the thread further with literary, espacially If you're going at it in such a way, so I better keep it at the question at hand.

"but it can't solve everything" also applies to a difficulty setting. Some people sadly won't, for one reason or another, be able to beat the game even if you make it easier. You can't have an experience that can be enjoyed by every single person in the world. The best thing is to try to even the playing field with aspects like different controllers, audio or visual help or something like that. Aspects that don't change the game, but the way a player is able to interact with it.

No one's trying to solve everything. We're trying to solve more. The Xbox Adaptive Controller solves more. Color blindness settings solve more. Difficulty settings solve more.

Every little bit helps.

 

[kpup]

You make a great point here and of course you’re free to disagree. I don’t consider myself a good gamer. It took me 14 hours on the clock to get through Metroid Dread (taking my time with exploration for the 100%) even though HLTB has it at 7 hours for a first playthrough. I’ve had a friend mention to me how he thought the game was a breeze, while someone else I know spent over 30 tries on a single boss. Personally I’m somewhere in the middle. Both friends beat the game, and for both it’s currently the game of the year. The one friend loved how good the game overall is, while the other loved the challenge and that’s what kept him coming back, because he really wanted to beat those bosses that gave him a hard time. That doesn’t make any of their experience less valid, since they both played exactly the same game on the same difficulty. Heck, even playing a game with multiple difficulty settings on whatever difficulty doesn’t make any of the experiences less valid, since those games are usually designed with different difficulties in mind from the start of development. Once you introduce an easy mode to a Souls game, you’re changing the fundamentals of what made the game stand out from other games in the first place. It would just be any other action RPG. At that point why not just play any other action RPG?

Kind of a side note but while HLTB is a great resource, for games that just came out like dread, the stats getting input early will naturally be from people who finished the game faster.

Also a side note, but it's funny to use dread as an example when it itself offers a harder difficulty mode, though you make your point about that.

"Once you introduce an easy mode to a souls game, you're changing the fundamentals". I think what you say is true and believed by many of the consumers of souls games, but if one day fromsoft and miyazaki said they wanted difficulty options in their new soulslike, we'd all have to swallow our words and honestly would eat the game up anyway. I feel like it ends up discrediting many of the reasons people might play a fromsoft game over other action rpgs, when they have such a unique style, environment, some of the best map / set design, enemy design, etc.

This is making the presumption that a player who enjoys Souls' current level of difficulty should be willing to risk the current equilibrium they enjoy by having developers spend more precious development time on additional harder difficulty modes that might upset the current balance they've already struck.

That seems like an unfounded presumption to me.

That presumption can go hand in hand with the one that assumes the balance could be upset by having the developers spend more time on their game. We clearly enjoy the output that fromsoft has—why not extend the trust to them instead of seeming like they wouldn't be capable of implementing difficulty options confidently.

edit: this last part is also why the difficulty and accessibility discourse is usually hard to have when it gets tied to one studio's output. what games should have and should do are separate from what developers have resources and priorities for, and what publishers want to support. that often leads to these discussions getting murky around accessibility especially, because sure a developer can have their vision and want to fulfill it for their game, but that also doesn't mean it meets the needs of many that want to experience it.

 

[Deleted member 1108]

Yes, there’s no reason not to.

From the top of my head:

- Make the player more durable
-Spawn them in the room next to where they died
-Carry over the damage you do to the bosses between tries
- Infinite healing
-invencibility frames while healing

Other than Sekiro the main challenge from Dark Souls bosses is not fall asleep between the 1 seg window you get to strike them before rolling back

 

[Ginta]

The best thing is to try to even the playing field with aspects like different controllers, audio or visual help or something like that. Aspects that don't change the game, but the way a player is able to interact with it.

Multiple people have already told you that just a change of controllers or some visual/aural help won't make a difference with their disabilities. Why is that not getting through still? I'm so confused with your replies.

 

[Abzeronow]

I looked up one. This is Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Tomorrow from Macbeth:

How the days stretched out – each one the same as the one before, and they would continue to do so, tediously, until the end of history. And every day we have lived has been the last day of some other fool’s life, each day a dot of candle-light showing him the way to his death-bed. Blow the short candle out: life was no more than a walking shadow – a poor actor – who goes through all the emotions in one hour on the stage and then bows out. It was a story told by an idiot, full of noise and passion, but meaningless.

Please stop doing that

If that version helps someone really get into The Scottish Play then I think it would be worth it. Shakespeare is wonderful and the more people see it and hear it performed (if they are able to do so) the better. Hearing Shakespeare done in Original Pronunciation is also an experience too

 

[dingbat]

I think they should do it. Then we can finally put this discourse behind us. I'm surprised it's so often Souls that's brought up when there are lots of popular games that also require a lot of dexterity while not having a way to reduce the baseline difficulty, e.g. the entirety of The Legend of Zelda series.

 

[AngryAlchemist]

Kind of a side note but while HLTB is a great resource, for games that just came out like dread, the stats getting input early will naturally be from people who finished the game faster.

I actually think a bigger problem is people using the "official" game time, which is about 3-5 hours shorter than a persons actual playtime, because it doesn't consider deaths and restarts.

 

[kpup]

I actually think a bigger problem is people using the "official" game time, which is about 3-5 hours shorter than a persons actual playtime, because it doesn't consider deaths and restarts.

Yeah this is definitely true for dread, and the switch not having better stats exposed to the user unless you activate parental controls.

 

[Sheldon]

First off, plenty RPGs have easy modes (or unlockable hard modes for that matter). In fact, RPGs without adjustable difficulty sliders, encounter rate toggles and skippable fights, etc. - either overt via menu options or integrated by in-game mechanics - miss the point of grinding.

As for the main argument: Devs not challenging themselves to find ways to make games hard for different levels of players are picking easy mode. I love to see creative solutions that let more people experience the thrill of a game pushing back against the player just the right amount and the joy of overcoming after many trials. Don't let the skilled and healthy hoard that gift.

Making games everyone can beat with equal effort is the Dark Souls of designing difficulty.

Making games for only one sub-set of gamers is the Yoshi's Crafted World of doing difficulty.

 

[Timefire]

Why did you have to bring that evil over to this land op?

 

[Lichtsang]

Multiple people have already told you that just a change of controllers or some visual/aural help won't make a difference with their disabilities. Why is that not getting through still? I'm so confused with your replies.

That are just examples of the top of my head. See the "something like that".

You can't achieve 100% accessibility without fundamentally changing the entire game. At some point, as sad as it is, you might have to accept that you can't experience that particulat thing in it's fullest. That isn't great, but that is sadly reality. I also can't experience everything I would like to. That's how it is.
Trying our best to even the playing field with a wide range of options, without completely changing the game, is the best compromise in my opinion. You will never, regardless of the options, reach everyone.

This, of course, isn't only about Dark Souls anymore.