Mmm, I feel like under heavy time constraints like that, there are worse barriers than difficulty to a gameās experience. For example, itās hard to appreciate a narrative and big reveals when youāre spreading your play out so much that itās hard to remember who characters are. Itās also hard to enjoy exploring a large space, and feeling like youāve covered it well.
Elden Ring, for example, is a massive game. I soared through Elden Ring, as I played the whole franchise (besides whatās locked to PlayStation) first, and happened to stumble into an extremely powerful build. The game still took me 140 hours, including the DLC.
I also still donāt think itās an accessibility constraint. Iād totally understand why you donāt want to commit to a 150hr experience when youāre playing less than 3hrs a week, youād be stuck on it for a whole year. But learning over time in little pieces is totally viable. Stuff like muscle memory and skill sticks with you, I could put down Souls for the next few years and when I came back Iād still be much better at it than when I first sat down.
Also, I actually find small time slots one of the best ways to conquer a tough challenge. When I get hard stuck, like I did on the final boss of the ER DLC, I chose to play like, 20 minutes of attempts a night, and then go to bed and sleep on it. We know from academia that studying something right before you sleep helps, since your brain can lock that fresh experience into memory better. Youāre also starting each attempt āfreshā, in that you arenāt already frustrated and annoyed by the boss. And this worked great, it took a boss that I couldnāt beat with a whole free evening, and I beat it after only a few days. Itās a technique Iāve used repeatedly.
All that to say, I donāt think difficulty is the best reason to not play a Souls game while working 70+ hour weeks. And I donāt think itās exclusive to Souls, Iād also avoid story-heavy JRPGs, and massive open worlds in general. Not that you couldnāt sacrifice the time to play any of those things, but frankly, Iād recommend a game thatās better consumed in bits and pieces, such as GotY nominee Balatro, a competitive multiplayer game with constrained matches, or a roguelike experience such as Hades. And thatās not that odd, I also wouldnāt recommend reading an epic novel like Dune, or trying to binge Game of Thrones or something.
My honest take on your story, is that Iām really glad Souls didnāt have an easy mode for you at that time. As you say, you prefer games with high difficulty now. I would hate for you to have played a compromised version of what From Software carefully designed here, when the intended experience ultimately really worked for you. Itās the same reason I avoid trailers for games I know I want to play, that is, if you wouldāve even came back to replay a game youād already ābeatenā.
In other comments, Iāve already talked about my friend who only played games on easy before playing Souls, which made him realize how much he enjoyed hard games and the rest of beating a tough challenge. He fell in love with the experience From Software set out to make. If DS1 had had an easy mode at that time, Iām not sure he wouldāve ever learned that about himself, because he wouldāve played it on easy. He mightāve enjoyed the art, and the visual design of the creatures, but itās only because From Software had the confidence to assert their intended vision that itās his favourite game and franchise ever made.
Your first point about spreading out the narrative in such a wayā¦ that is how most media worked until very recently. I grew up waiting upwards of months for the next installment, if those are large installments, years. Also, Elden ring came out after I stopped working those hours, I am mostly having this experience, in terms of Fromsoft games, with Demonās Souls - Sekiro, but that doesnāt change the argument, just putting up my time frame.
I am more likely to not retain the patterns of attack, etc., when I have to break it up, in such a fashion, unlike the experience of seeing the new things, and partaking in the world, and its lore.
The reason I was unable to get through the souls games was that I had time to learn things like the attack patterns of the monsters, or time to experience the world and its lore in a way the memorization part was getting in the way of. When I learned something, and returned to it weeks later, I had to relearn a lot of the rote aspects of the game play. This blocks access to me experiencing the art, and lore, which is more important to me, in such games, than the mechanics of it. So, yes, I lost access.
Having now played the games, I do not wish it had this barrier back then, as I still would have preferred to experienced and easier version, so that I could participate in the larger zeitgeist, of the pop culture of the time, and then got to enjoy it how it is, now that I have time. Let me repeat that, I would have preferred to have had an easy mode, back when it was new, to experience my preferred part, when it was most culturally relevant. Now that I have played them, I STILL would have preferred that, even if I never got to experience it otherwise.
You are basically telling me how YOU would prefer to do something, and you are glad I had to conform to YOUR preferences. Meanwhile, having the option for and easier mode, would not have changed YOUR experience at all, unless YOU choose to. While my suggestion would not have affected your experience, it would have allowed me to have experienced the games when they was at their relevance peak. Meanwhile, what you ask for affects me in a negative way. To say that an option for an easy mode, on the screen, when you start, that you do not have to select, would damage your experience, is wild. That is very, very, weird. You are adamant the idea that someone could have a variant in preferences, that affect you in no way, would damage your experience because what? Because you had to see the option on the screen? Because people you deem lesser gamers would have played it? Is this some weird ideological axiom? Because people are simply doing something different than you? What is it that bothers you so much about other people having a different choice, you donāt need to make, or experience?
Ok, hang on. I replied to this initially while annoyed, and blew past some of the key points. But I do actually want to talk about the whole āparticipating in the zeitgeistā thing.
A large part of the reasons Dark Souls doesnāt have difficulties is to create that social element. Gonna stick with Elden Ring for my examples here, because I missed most of the online discussion around Sekiro. But from what I saw, the majority of the discussion online was about how hard certain bosses were, shared experiences like getting your ass kicked by Tree Sentinel, or Margit āputting your foolish ambitions to restā. If Elden Ring really did have an easy mode, that was easy enough for someone to beat the game without ālearning the attack patterns of the monstersā, and to keep up with the diehard playerbase while working 70+ hour work weeks, would they really have felt included in those conversations? Would they have been able to share the excitement at beating a boss that they struggled with for hours, without actually struggling for that time? Thereās an intentional design decision here. To quote Miyazaki from when Sekiro released:
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 thereās different difficulties, thatās 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. Itās been the same way for previous titles and itās very much the same with Sekiro.
If all you really wanted was to justā¦ experience the art and story, and see the cool enemy designs, you could always watch a youtube letās play or something as well. The ultimate easy mode, with a defined length of how long it will take. But if you wanted to commiserate about tough challenges and the experience you went through, then you kinda need to actually have that experience.
Iāll also add, that stuff doesnāt go away. I was excited by the hype around Elden Ring too. Itās what pushed me to start Dark Souls 1, and then play 2, 3, Sekiro, and finally Elden Ring. I missed the initial hype around all of those games, but that cultural stuff is still there. I built up a youtube playlist while playing each game and once I finished them I would catch up on Illusory Wall, Zullie the Witch, Vaati, and challenge runs and Lockout Bingos from the likes of Lilā Aggy or Ymfah. My friends were also excited to see me play the games. I may not have experienced the Anor Londo archers until years after they did, but it was still fun to talk to them about it, and they were excited to reminisce and replay the game alongside me.
I eventually did get to participate in the fun that was Shadow of the Erdtree releasing soon after I beat Elden Ring. And that was great, and special. It was fun to see that final boss get nerfed soon after I beat it, for example. I do feel sorry that you missed the moment of Sekiro releasing. But ultimately I donāt think your anecdotal experience is more important than say, my friend who always picked easy and didnāt realize how much he loved a tough challenge. Or any of the āDark Souls saved my lifeā people, who mightāve picked easy if it was offered and not had that experience. Or the designers at From Software who worked hard to create something special and have the right to not offer a way to half-ass it and āfragment the user baseā.
Skill issue on FromSoftās part, and I say that as someone who has been a fan of their games longer than most people in this thread - more than a decade before even Demonās Souls. Their original talent was always in detailed, immersive world design. Their gameplay was unpolished and experimental, but thatās something I liked about them. They got a smash hit with Demonās and Dark Souls and made a hard pivot towards iterating on that formula. They still embrace their roots as a studio focused on detailed world building, but theyāre trying to move more towards action and encounter design to cater to Souls fans. Where once they were highly experimental, now they seem afraid to try anything different.
A better studio could find a way for players to share that struggle and triumph while still allowing players of different skill levels to enjoy everything the game has to offer. That studio would be Supergiant with Hadesā God Mode option, which slowly gives more damage resistance each time you die so the player still struggles and gets better until the handicap and their improving skill meet in the middle. In the context of Souls, this could be separate for each boss. Or another entirely different approach could be taken. The point is merely that there are ways for players of different skill levels to still share in the same struggles, FromSoft is just unwilling or incapable of finding them.
So as a longtime FromSoft fan, I think theyāre the ones who need to git gud.
Fair point! I actually love this suggestion, rethinking more ways to make the game easier without breaking the core experience.
I donāt think From Soft is totally languishing in this department, the games include an increasing amount of ways to make the game easier, such as Elden Ring introducing summons, an open world you can tackle in any order (although this falls off post-Morgott, as does the game overall imo).
But youāre right, Iād love to see them potentially dabble with things like dynamic difficulty to create something that simultaneously better challenges experienced veterans and eases the ride for newer players. Or at least something to keep bosses you missed in the open world format somewhat interesting when you find them later. I donāt think theyāre done iterating here, and I expect them to continue to improve at accommodating more players, without violating their other design goals.
I also agree thereās some worrying trends in the design, as From Soft struggles to find ways to challenge their most diehard fans. Maleniaās waterfowl dance, for example, which requires odd specific movement to dodge thatās impractical to learn organically. Or her moves where she simply cannot be staggered, breaking expectations in a confusing way. In general as well, the games have trended towards being faster and requiring more āreactionaryā play, and I do miss the more methodical combat of DS1, when the game was much less twitchy and more about carefully planning your moves.
Iām not sure I agree that From Soft has stopped being experimental though, Sekiro was a complete departure right before Elden Ring, as was returning to Armored Core for the first time in a decade right after. Elden Ring also dabbles in an interesting blend of mechanics. Transitioning to an Open World is a massive and obvious one, but Iām also happy to see powerstancing back, interesting new weapon arts, the physick flask is a great new system, horseback combat on Torrent, and stuff like charged attacks and posture similar to Sekiro. Not perfect, by any means, I actually find the balancing of this wealth of mechanics and build options to be pretty shaky, but itās far from a boring +1 iteration that doesnāt try anything.
I see why youād say theyāre still experimenting - and they are within the confines of the souls formula. They definitely arenāt making carbon copies of past games. But, compared to the crazy variety and wild mechanics in their back catalog, the souls formula is pretty narrow. Theyāve got a card battler, an adventure game series, a co-op puzzle platformer, and more in their portfolio. Demonās Souls itself was a huge experiment: souls, messages, and invasions into a mostly single player experience were completely novel and even weird. Letās not forget about world tendency, (even if we want to).
FromSoft was always like that: a bunch of totally random ideas youād never seen before with enough good, bad, and weird to go around. The changes they make today are comparatively tame. Imagine if the next soulslike game did away with the entire magic system and instead you craft your own spells from elements (Eternal Ring). Or if they did away with respawns and overhauled the entire leveling system in Bloodborne like they did when trying to give Shadow Tower its own identity separate from Kingās Field. They were wild, but thatās what gave the world soulslikes in the first place.
I understand why they play it safe. Honestly, they donāt have a choice. It comes with the budget. So I really donāt begrudge them the lack of experimentation too much. But I do find it sad because itās our loss. They could do better, and who knows what other stuff they might have come up with if they were truly free to experiment the way they used to. What I really wish is for them and other devs to just make smaller games with smaller budgets. Still make the AAA games, just set aside a small amount to experiment with and try new things too. That way we keep learning, discovering, and innovating. Weād all have better games for it.
So, I was there, missing it. Though this doesnāt apply to elden ring, as that came out after I changed my work life.
The conversation was not simply about the difficulty and moves. Like, most of the conversations happening around me were about the lore, what people thought was happening considering X, Y, and Z, etc. The time the difficulty, mechanics, etc., took the spotlight, was over in a week or so, and mostly relegated to people asking for help with one thing, or another, new found tactics, and speed run methods. So it, fairly rapidly, evened out. Even if you look at YT videos about those games, at least a similar amount are focused on the lore, as the mechanics, though those were initial chatter. They basically only came up in a a month or so as a broad statements of difficulty, or when some new trick was found, until it circulated. There was easily enough to have be an active part of those conversations. Much more than āOh, you know my work schedule, donāt have timeā.
That stuff doesnāt go away online. However, in person, with the exception of hardcore fans, it definitely does fade away. Occasionally something will be brought up in a bout of nostalgia, or in comparison to something contemporary, but it does fade away.
If all you really wanted was to justā¦ experience the art and story, and see the cool enemy designs, you could always watch a youtube letās play or something as well
You truly do not understand the ways in which I, and many others. enjoy things, if you think this is the same. This statement leads me to believe that many perspectives you do not hold are completely alien to you.
Your anecdotal experience is not worth more than mine either, and my suggestions do not force themselves upon you.
Letās clarify a little bit here, because I actually am curious. How much easier would you actually want the game to be? Howlongtobeat puts Sekiroās main story at 30 hours. Asking a friend whoās very experienced at Sekiro and has played it dozens of times, he takes ~10 hours to beat it on a replay. So even if the game was dead easy, and had nothing to teach you, and you had no reason to explore or look around, youād only save a maximum of 2/3rds of that time. More realistically, it would probably take 15 hours to complete if we factor in the exploration, even if the game was straightforward enough that you could kill each boss in only a few attempts.
So what would you have liked this easy mode to look like, in order to save you that time? And what value would you have gotten from that, in what amount of time, compared to setting aside 30 hours, or watching someone else play it?
Well alright, Iām choosing to disregard the fact that this is 90% insults and calling me a weirdo freak. Thanks for that, btw, Iāve put a lot of effort into expressing myself clearly across a lot of different comments here.
In the latter half of this comment, I articulated why I feel an easy mode actually does make playing the game worse, even if you donāt select it. I also articulated why a simple scaling difficulty wouldnāt really work.
And in the latter half of this comment (start at āBut I also think games are artā), I expressed why I think an Easy mode hasnāt been added, and wouldnāt be the same experience.
To add to that final point, the reason I donāt want others to play an easy mode isnāt because Iām a loser and beating Souls is the only way I know Iām a real man. I just think Souls is an amazing and unique offering, and it would be a real shame for someone to play the game on easy (which would ābreak the game itselfā in Miyazakiās words) and think thatās all there was.
I want more people to give it a try and experience it, and hopefully love it, not less. But just like itās frustrating to watch a movie you love with someone whoās on their phone the whole time, it would be frustrating to see a ton of people play a kneecapped version of one of my favourite things and end up not āgetting itā. And it would be more of a loss for them than me. Itās just the same Miyazaki quote over again, both me and him love what has been made here, and want more people to experience it, but not at the expense of compromising it. To paraphrase the end of his quote, would we even be talking about it if From Soft hadnāt had the confidence to stick to their intended vision?
āIf we really wanted the whole world to play the game, we could just crank the difficulty down more and more. But that wasnāt the right approach,ā he said.
āHad we taken that approach, I donāt think the game would have done what it did, because the sense of achievement that players gain from overcoming these hurdles is such a fundamental part of the experience. Turning down difficulty would strip the game of that joy - which, in my eyes, would break the game itself.ā
90% calling you names? in the last 1/4 I brought up how it is weird to be bothered by the experience of others, when they donāt affect you, then pushed for a reasoning of it, by laying down an array of possibilities, and then asking what yours was. I used the word weird twice, and it was in relationship to the behavior, not the person. My guy, you are way too sensitive, like you imagined something isnāt there, if this is really how you viewed that comment.
There is more to scaling that just HP/Damage. It isnāt that great of a challenge to add in more time for response, and reduce pattern complexity so you donāt have memorize as much, or for as long. This is how many FPS games, Fighting games, and RTS games have done it for decades. No one bemoans Quake for having something other than nightmare, or Mortal Combat for having an easy option. Hell, in Sekiro, giving more time to respond for parries/blocks, and reducing the number needed, in order to execute the instant kill function, would have worked. There are many ways difficulty could be changed. Even if they did the dumb thing by reducing the HP of enemies, and increasing the damage you do, if normal is just as it was intended, how did it change your personal experience, since you wouldnāt play the game?
It is possible to disagree, and have a discourse about it, with the creators. You donāt have to accept artist/authorial intent as if it was the law of reality governing their product. I agree with him that people who enjoy those challenges will get more from a game than they would otherwise. However I think it is weird, maybe even self-centered in nature, to assume that everyone would get that increase in satisfaction, for the same reasons, as he does. He is free to say he doesnāt want to do this, and people who play his games are free to disagree with him on the subject.
To say that an option for an easy mode, on the screen, when you start, that you do not have to select, would damage your experience, is wild. That is very, very, weird. You are adamant the idea that someone could have a variant in preferences, that affect you in no way, would damage your experience because what? Because you had to see the option on the screen? Because people you deem lesser gamers would have played it? Is this some weird ideological axiom? Because people are simply doing something different than you? What is it that bothers you so much about other people having a different choice, you donāt need to make, or experience?
I meanā¦ quick recap here. You said the way I was behaving was āvery, very weirdā. You claimed I was offended solely ābecause I had to see an option on the screenā. You claimed my reasoning was about ālesser gamers being able to play itā, clearly insinuating that I simply have a superiority complex as a āweird ideological axiomā, as if itās the foundation of the way I think. You also basically stated that Iām deeply bothered by anyone having a different opinion or experience.
Donāt try to gaslight me about this being insulting. Iāve never expressed any anger here at disagreement, nor have I brought up anything about superiority or inferiority. Youāre bringing baggage into this from other people youāve argued with before, and then insulting my character over a strawman version of my argument.
Also, when you clearly associate a behaviour with a person, insulting that behaviour is insulting the person. You canāt claim you didnāt associate the two when you chose to write āYOUā in all caps several times while describing the behaviour you were insulting.
Itās also not at all ridiculous to assume the āWhat is it that bothers you so much about other people having a different choice, you donāt need to make, or experience?ā at the end of that rant was rhetorical like the questions preceding it, again, donāt try to gaslight me into thinking that quote was purely ālaying down an array of possibilities, and then asking what yours wasā, and that Iām being āsensitiveā.
If you actually didnāt mean offence, then Iād encourage you in future to skip the āarray of possibilitiesā, especially when those possibilities are exclusively descriptions of assholes.
That aside, thank you, I actually do appreciate you recognizing that you canāt just ādouble your health and damageā and get a good easy mode. Thatās an argument I frequently come across while having this discussion, that they could ājust scale everything downā in an hour or so, itās become what I tend to assume people mean when they say ājust add an easy modeā. Youāre also a very different person than what I usually end up having this argument with, in that you have actually played Souls, and understand the value of the more challenging default, but still wanted an easy mode. In that sense, Iād have no issue if you had played an easy mode. Thereās lots of mods to do so, for example, and I wouldnāt have any problem if you had gone and played one. Frankly, I wouldnāt have issue with anyone installing a mod to play an easier version. The option is literally there, just not on console, unfortunately, but I blame the console manufacturers for that, not From Software. I like the clarity in installing a mod that you arenāt playing the game as intended and getting the full experience, which means it doesnāt āsegment the user baseā or potentially cause people to miss out by thinking theyāve experienced everything From Soft intended.
The argument I generally take issue with is that From Software have some kind of āmoral responsibilityā or are āstupid and losing businessā for not adding an explicit easy mode. A half-baked easy mode would do more harm than good, in terms of review scores and giving many players a worse experience. And a well-made easy mode is not an insignificant amount of work. Balance is one of the hardest things to get right, From Soft is literally still doing balance patches on the base game of Elden Ring, and easy mode would essentially double the amount of situations where things have to be balanced. It would also double QA work, as every scenario needs to be tested in both difficulties. And justā¦ loading different things conditionally into a space isnāt always easy either, look at all the struggles and weird bugs id have experienced with DOOM Eternalās Master Levels, and theyāre a team lauded for their technical prowess. One of From Softās best attributes is that they iterate very quickly. A team of ~400 people have made Dark Souls 1, 2, 3, Bloodborne and Sekiro and Elden Ring in 11 years. Thatās more than a game every 2 years, not even counting DLC and other projects, in an era where game development is trending towards 5+ years as the norm. Iāve already asserted that I donāt feel an easy mode would be nearly the same quality of game as the main entry, so Iāll come out and outright say that I donāt think an easy mode would be worth the months of effort that properly balancing and tweaking such a mode to make it good would add to development. But thatās totally subjective, and youāre more than welcome to do that math differently.
If From Soft release their next title with an easy mode, then great. I wonāt go picket their office or anything, Iām not pathetic. But if they do, then I really hope itās good, and I really hope the people who finally āgetā to play will give the intended difficulty a chance.
Mmm, I feel like under heavy time constraints like that, there are worse barriers than difficulty to a gameās experience. For example, itās hard to appreciate a narrative and big reveals when youāre spreading your play out so much that itās hard to remember who characters are. Itās also hard to enjoy exploring a large space, and feeling like youāve covered it well.
Elden Ring, for example, is a massive game. I soared through Elden Ring, as I played the whole franchise (besides whatās locked to PlayStation) first, and happened to stumble into an extremely powerful build. The game still took me 140 hours, including the DLC.
I also still donāt think itās an accessibility constraint. Iād totally understand why you donāt want to commit to a 150hr experience when youāre playing less than 3hrs a week, youād be stuck on it for a whole year. But learning over time in little pieces is totally viable. Stuff like muscle memory and skill sticks with you, I could put down Souls for the next few years and when I came back Iād still be much better at it than when I first sat down.
Also, I actually find small time slots one of the best ways to conquer a tough challenge. When I get hard stuck, like I did on the final boss of the ER DLC, I chose to play like, 20 minutes of attempts a night, and then go to bed and sleep on it. We know from academia that studying something right before you sleep helps, since your brain can lock that fresh experience into memory better. Youāre also starting each attempt āfreshā, in that you arenāt already frustrated and annoyed by the boss. And this worked great, it took a boss that I couldnāt beat with a whole free evening, and I beat it after only a few days. Itās a technique Iāve used repeatedly.
All that to say, I donāt think difficulty is the best reason to not play a Souls game while working 70+ hour weeks. And I donāt think itās exclusive to Souls, Iād also avoid story-heavy JRPGs, and massive open worlds in general. Not that you couldnāt sacrifice the time to play any of those things, but frankly, Iād recommend a game thatās better consumed in bits and pieces, such as GotY nominee Balatro, a competitive multiplayer game with constrained matches, or a roguelike experience such as Hades. And thatās not that odd, I also wouldnāt recommend reading an epic novel like Dune, or trying to binge Game of Thrones or something.
My honest take on your story, is that Iām really glad Souls didnāt have an easy mode for you at that time. As you say, you prefer games with high difficulty now. I would hate for you to have played a compromised version of what From Software carefully designed here, when the intended experience ultimately really worked for you. Itās the same reason I avoid trailers for games I know I want to play, that is, if you wouldāve even came back to replay a game youād already ābeatenā.
In other comments, Iāve already talked about my friend who only played games on easy before playing Souls, which made him realize how much he enjoyed hard games and the rest of beating a tough challenge. He fell in love with the experience From Software set out to make. If DS1 had had an easy mode at that time, Iām not sure he wouldāve ever learned that about himself, because he wouldāve played it on easy. He mightāve enjoyed the art, and the visual design of the creatures, but itās only because From Software had the confidence to assert their intended vision that itās his favourite game and franchise ever made.
Your first point about spreading out the narrative in such a wayā¦ that is how most media worked until very recently. I grew up waiting upwards of months for the next installment, if those are large installments, years. Also, Elden ring came out after I stopped working those hours, I am mostly having this experience, in terms of Fromsoft games, with Demonās Souls - Sekiro, but that doesnāt change the argument, just putting up my time frame.
I am more likely to not retain the patterns of attack, etc., when I have to break it up, in such a fashion, unlike the experience of seeing the new things, and partaking in the world, and its lore.
The reason I was unable to get through the souls games was that I had time to learn things like the attack patterns of the monsters, or time to experience the world and its lore in a way the memorization part was getting in the way of. When I learned something, and returned to it weeks later, I had to relearn a lot of the rote aspects of the game play. This blocks access to me experiencing the art, and lore, which is more important to me, in such games, than the mechanics of it. So, yes, I lost access.
Having now played the games, I do not wish it had this barrier back then, as I still would have preferred to experienced and easier version, so that I could participate in the larger zeitgeist, of the pop culture of the time, and then got to enjoy it how it is, now that I have time. Let me repeat that, I would have preferred to have had an easy mode, back when it was new, to experience my preferred part, when it was most culturally relevant. Now that I have played them, I STILL would have preferred that, even if I never got to experience it otherwise.
You are basically telling me how YOU would prefer to do something, and you are glad I had to conform to YOUR preferences. Meanwhile, having the option for and easier mode, would not have changed YOUR experience at all, unless YOU choose to. While my suggestion would not have affected your experience, it would have allowed me to have experienced the games when they was at their relevance peak. Meanwhile, what you ask for affects me in a negative way. To say that an option for an easy mode, on the screen, when you start, that you do not have to select, would damage your experience, is wild. That is very, very, weird. You are adamant the idea that someone could have a variant in preferences, that affect you in no way, would damage your experience because what? Because you had to see the option on the screen? Because people you deem lesser gamers would have played it? Is this some weird ideological axiom? Because people are simply doing something different than you? What is it that bothers you so much about other people having a different choice, you donāt need to make, or experience?
Ok, hang on. I replied to this initially while annoyed, and blew past some of the key points. But I do actually want to talk about the whole āparticipating in the zeitgeistā thing.
A large part of the reasons Dark Souls doesnāt have difficulties is to create that social element. Gonna stick with Elden Ring for my examples here, because I missed most of the online discussion around Sekiro. But from what I saw, the majority of the discussion online was about how hard certain bosses were, shared experiences like getting your ass kicked by Tree Sentinel, or Margit āputting your foolish ambitions to restā. If Elden Ring really did have an easy mode, that was easy enough for someone to beat the game without ālearning the attack patterns of the monstersā, and to keep up with the diehard playerbase while working 70+ hour work weeks, would they really have felt included in those conversations? Would they have been able to share the excitement at beating a boss that they struggled with for hours, without actually struggling for that time? Thereās an intentional design decision here. To quote Miyazaki from when Sekiro released:
If all you really wanted was to justā¦ experience the art and story, and see the cool enemy designs, you could always watch a youtube letās play or something as well. The ultimate easy mode, with a defined length of how long it will take. But if you wanted to commiserate about tough challenges and the experience you went through, then you kinda need to actually have that experience.
Iāll also add, that stuff doesnāt go away. I was excited by the hype around Elden Ring too. Itās what pushed me to start Dark Souls 1, and then play 2, 3, Sekiro, and finally Elden Ring. I missed the initial hype around all of those games, but that cultural stuff is still there. I built up a youtube playlist while playing each game and once I finished them I would catch up on Illusory Wall, Zullie the Witch, Vaati, and challenge runs and Lockout Bingos from the likes of Lilā Aggy or Ymfah. My friends were also excited to see me play the games. I may not have experienced the Anor Londo archers until years after they did, but it was still fun to talk to them about it, and they were excited to reminisce and replay the game alongside me.
I eventually did get to participate in the fun that was Shadow of the Erdtree releasing soon after I beat Elden Ring. And that was great, and special. It was fun to see that final boss get nerfed soon after I beat it, for example. I do feel sorry that you missed the moment of Sekiro releasing. But ultimately I donāt think your anecdotal experience is more important than say, my friend who always picked easy and didnāt realize how much he loved a tough challenge. Or any of the āDark Souls saved my lifeā people, who mightāve picked easy if it was offered and not had that experience. Or the designers at From Software who worked hard to create something special and have the right to not offer a way to half-ass it and āfragment the user baseā.
Skill issue on FromSoftās part, and I say that as someone who has been a fan of their games longer than most people in this thread - more than a decade before even Demonās Souls. Their original talent was always in detailed, immersive world design. Their gameplay was unpolished and experimental, but thatās something I liked about them. They got a smash hit with Demonās and Dark Souls and made a hard pivot towards iterating on that formula. They still embrace their roots as a studio focused on detailed world building, but theyāre trying to move more towards action and encounter design to cater to Souls fans. Where once they were highly experimental, now they seem afraid to try anything different.
A better studio could find a way for players to share that struggle and triumph while still allowing players of different skill levels to enjoy everything the game has to offer. That studio would be Supergiant with Hadesā God Mode option, which slowly gives more damage resistance each time you die so the player still struggles and gets better until the handicap and their improving skill meet in the middle. In the context of Souls, this could be separate for each boss. Or another entirely different approach could be taken. The point is merely that there are ways for players of different skill levels to still share in the same struggles, FromSoft is just unwilling or incapable of finding them.
So as a longtime FromSoft fan, I think theyāre the ones who need to git gud.
Fair point! I actually love this suggestion, rethinking more ways to make the game easier without breaking the core experience.
I donāt think From Soft is totally languishing in this department, the games include an increasing amount of ways to make the game easier, such as Elden Ring introducing summons, an open world you can tackle in any order (although this falls off post-Morgott, as does the game overall imo).
But youāre right, Iād love to see them potentially dabble with things like dynamic difficulty to create something that simultaneously better challenges experienced veterans and eases the ride for newer players. Or at least something to keep bosses you missed in the open world format somewhat interesting when you find them later. I donāt think theyāre done iterating here, and I expect them to continue to improve at accommodating more players, without violating their other design goals.
I also agree thereās some worrying trends in the design, as From Soft struggles to find ways to challenge their most diehard fans. Maleniaās waterfowl dance, for example, which requires odd specific movement to dodge thatās impractical to learn organically. Or her moves where she simply cannot be staggered, breaking expectations in a confusing way. In general as well, the games have trended towards being faster and requiring more āreactionaryā play, and I do miss the more methodical combat of DS1, when the game was much less twitchy and more about carefully planning your moves.
Iām not sure I agree that From Soft has stopped being experimental though, Sekiro was a complete departure right before Elden Ring, as was returning to Armored Core for the first time in a decade right after. Elden Ring also dabbles in an interesting blend of mechanics. Transitioning to an Open World is a massive and obvious one, but Iām also happy to see powerstancing back, interesting new weapon arts, the physick flask is a great new system, horseback combat on Torrent, and stuff like charged attacks and posture similar to Sekiro. Not perfect, by any means, I actually find the balancing of this wealth of mechanics and build options to be pretty shaky, but itās far from a boring +1 iteration that doesnāt try anything.
I see why youād say theyāre still experimenting - and they are within the confines of the souls formula. They definitely arenāt making carbon copies of past games. But, compared to the crazy variety and wild mechanics in their back catalog, the souls formula is pretty narrow. Theyāve got a card battler, an adventure game series, a co-op puzzle platformer, and more in their portfolio. Demonās Souls itself was a huge experiment: souls, messages, and invasions into a mostly single player experience were completely novel and even weird. Letās not forget about world tendency, (even if we want to).
FromSoft was always like that: a bunch of totally random ideas youād never seen before with enough good, bad, and weird to go around. The changes they make today are comparatively tame. Imagine if the next soulslike game did away with the entire magic system and instead you craft your own spells from elements (Eternal Ring). Or if they did away with respawns and overhauled the entire leveling system in Bloodborne like they did when trying to give Shadow Tower its own identity separate from Kingās Field. They were wild, but thatās what gave the world soulslikes in the first place.
I understand why they play it safe. Honestly, they donāt have a choice. It comes with the budget. So I really donāt begrudge them the lack of experimentation too much. But I do find it sad because itās our loss. They could do better, and who knows what other stuff they might have come up with if they were truly free to experiment the way they used to. What I really wish is for them and other devs to just make smaller games with smaller budgets. Still make the AAA games, just set aside a small amount to experiment with and try new things too. That way we keep learning, discovering, and innovating. Weād all have better games for it.
So, I was there, missing it. Though this doesnāt apply to elden ring, as that came out after I changed my work life.
The conversation was not simply about the difficulty and moves. Like, most of the conversations happening around me were about the lore, what people thought was happening considering X, Y, and Z, etc. The time the difficulty, mechanics, etc., took the spotlight, was over in a week or so, and mostly relegated to people asking for help with one thing, or another, new found tactics, and speed run methods. So it, fairly rapidly, evened out. Even if you look at YT videos about those games, at least a similar amount are focused on the lore, as the mechanics, though those were initial chatter. They basically only came up in a a month or so as a broad statements of difficulty, or when some new trick was found, until it circulated. There was easily enough to have be an active part of those conversations. Much more than āOh, you know my work schedule, donāt have timeā.
That stuff doesnāt go away online. However, in person, with the exception of hardcore fans, it definitely does fade away. Occasionally something will be brought up in a bout of nostalgia, or in comparison to something contemporary, but it does fade away.
You truly do not understand the ways in which I, and many others. enjoy things, if you think this is the same. This statement leads me to believe that many perspectives you do not hold are completely alien to you.
Your anecdotal experience is not worth more than mine either, and my suggestions do not force themselves upon you.
Letās clarify a little bit here, because I actually am curious. How much easier would you actually want the game to be? Howlongtobeat puts Sekiroās main story at 30 hours. Asking a friend whoās very experienced at Sekiro and has played it dozens of times, he takes ~10 hours to beat it on a replay. So even if the game was dead easy, and had nothing to teach you, and you had no reason to explore or look around, youād only save a maximum of 2/3rds of that time. More realistically, it would probably take 15 hours to complete if we factor in the exploration, even if the game was straightforward enough that you could kill each boss in only a few attempts.
So what would you have liked this easy mode to look like, in order to save you that time? And what value would you have gotten from that, in what amount of time, compared to setting aside 30 hours, or watching someone else play it?
Well alright, Iām choosing to disregard the fact that this is 90% insults and calling me a weirdo freak. Thanks for that, btw, Iāve put a lot of effort into expressing myself clearly across a lot of different comments here.
In the latter half of this comment, I articulated why I feel an easy mode actually does make playing the game worse, even if you donāt select it. I also articulated why a simple scaling difficulty wouldnāt really work.
And in the latter half of this comment (start at āBut I also think games are artā), I expressed why I think an Easy mode hasnāt been added, and wouldnāt be the same experience.
To add to that final point, the reason I donāt want others to play an easy mode isnāt because Iām a loser and beating Souls is the only way I know Iām a real man. I just think Souls is an amazing and unique offering, and it would be a real shame for someone to play the game on easy (which would ābreak the game itselfā in Miyazakiās words) and think thatās all there was.
I want more people to give it a try and experience it, and hopefully love it, not less. But just like itās frustrating to watch a movie you love with someone whoās on their phone the whole time, it would be frustrating to see a ton of people play a kneecapped version of one of my favourite things and end up not āgetting itā. And it would be more of a loss for them than me. Itās just the same Miyazaki quote over again, both me and him love what has been made here, and want more people to experience it, but not at the expense of compromising it. To paraphrase the end of his quote, would we even be talking about it if From Soft hadnāt had the confidence to stick to their intended vision?
90% calling you names? in the last 1/4 I brought up how it is weird to be bothered by the experience of others, when they donāt affect you, then pushed for a reasoning of it, by laying down an array of possibilities, and then asking what yours was. I used the word weird twice, and it was in relationship to the behavior, not the person. My guy, you are way too sensitive, like you imagined something isnāt there, if this is really how you viewed that comment.
There is more to scaling that just HP/Damage. It isnāt that great of a challenge to add in more time for response, and reduce pattern complexity so you donāt have memorize as much, or for as long. This is how many FPS games, Fighting games, and RTS games have done it for decades. No one bemoans Quake for having something other than nightmare, or Mortal Combat for having an easy option. Hell, in Sekiro, giving more time to respond for parries/blocks, and reducing the number needed, in order to execute the instant kill function, would have worked. There are many ways difficulty could be changed. Even if they did the dumb thing by reducing the HP of enemies, and increasing the damage you do, if normal is just as it was intended, how did it change your personal experience, since you wouldnāt play the game?
It is possible to disagree, and have a discourse about it, with the creators. You donāt have to accept artist/authorial intent as if it was the law of reality governing their product. I agree with him that people who enjoy those challenges will get more from a game than they would otherwise. However I think it is weird, maybe even self-centered in nature, to assume that everyone would get that increase in satisfaction, for the same reasons, as he does. He is free to say he doesnāt want to do this, and people who play his games are free to disagree with him on the subject.
It appears we fundamentally disagree here.
I meanā¦ quick recap here. You said the way I was behaving was āvery, very weirdā. You claimed I was offended solely ābecause I had to see an option on the screenā. You claimed my reasoning was about ālesser gamers being able to play itā, clearly insinuating that I simply have a superiority complex as a āweird ideological axiomā, as if itās the foundation of the way I think. You also basically stated that Iām deeply bothered by anyone having a different opinion or experience.
Donāt try to gaslight me about this being insulting. Iāve never expressed any anger here at disagreement, nor have I brought up anything about superiority or inferiority. Youāre bringing baggage into this from other people youāve argued with before, and then insulting my character over a strawman version of my argument.
Also, when you clearly associate a behaviour with a person, insulting that behaviour is insulting the person. You canāt claim you didnāt associate the two when you chose to write āYOUā in all caps several times while describing the behaviour you were insulting.
Itās also not at all ridiculous to assume the āWhat is it that bothers you so much about other people having a different choice, you donāt need to make, or experience?ā at the end of that rant was rhetorical like the questions preceding it, again, donāt try to gaslight me into thinking that quote was purely ālaying down an array of possibilities, and then asking what yours wasā, and that Iām being āsensitiveā.
If you actually didnāt mean offence, then Iād encourage you in future to skip the āarray of possibilitiesā, especially when those possibilities are exclusively descriptions of assholes.
That aside, thank you, I actually do appreciate you recognizing that you canāt just ādouble your health and damageā and get a good easy mode. Thatās an argument I frequently come across while having this discussion, that they could ājust scale everything downā in an hour or so, itās become what I tend to assume people mean when they say ājust add an easy modeā. Youāre also a very different person than what I usually end up having this argument with, in that you have actually played Souls, and understand the value of the more challenging default, but still wanted an easy mode. In that sense, Iād have no issue if you had played an easy mode. Thereās lots of mods to do so, for example, and I wouldnāt have any problem if you had gone and played one. Frankly, I wouldnāt have issue with anyone installing a mod to play an easier version. The option is literally there, just not on console, unfortunately, but I blame the console manufacturers for that, not From Software. I like the clarity in installing a mod that you arenāt playing the game as intended and getting the full experience, which means it doesnāt āsegment the user baseā or potentially cause people to miss out by thinking theyāve experienced everything From Soft intended.
The argument I generally take issue with is that From Software have some kind of āmoral responsibilityā or are āstupid and losing businessā for not adding an explicit easy mode. A half-baked easy mode would do more harm than good, in terms of review scores and giving many players a worse experience. And a well-made easy mode is not an insignificant amount of work. Balance is one of the hardest things to get right, From Soft is literally still doing balance patches on the base game of Elden Ring, and easy mode would essentially double the amount of situations where things have to be balanced. It would also double QA work, as every scenario needs to be tested in both difficulties. And justā¦ loading different things conditionally into a space isnāt always easy either, look at all the struggles and weird bugs id have experienced with DOOM Eternalās Master Levels, and theyāre a team lauded for their technical prowess. One of From Softās best attributes is that they iterate very quickly. A team of ~400 people have made Dark Souls 1, 2, 3, Bloodborne and Sekiro and Elden Ring in 11 years. Thatās more than a game every 2 years, not even counting DLC and other projects, in an era where game development is trending towards 5+ years as the norm. Iāve already asserted that I donāt feel an easy mode would be nearly the same quality of game as the main entry, so Iāll come out and outright say that I donāt think an easy mode would be worth the months of effort that properly balancing and tweaking such a mode to make it good would add to development. But thatās totally subjective, and youāre more than welcome to do that math differently.
If From Soft release their next title with an easy mode, then great. I wonāt go picket their office or anything, Iām not pathetic. But if they do, then I really hope itās good, and I really hope the people who finally āgetā to play will give the intended difficulty a chance.