Did you read the post I was responding to? It's silly to expect the dev let every player pass the challenge if the challenge is exactly what's being sold.
Ah, you're right, I don't agree with the post you're responding to. I agree it's too much to ensure every player can see every aspect of every game. I'm sorry for taking your quote out of context.
For reference:
This is bollocks. If someone pays 60 dollars for an experience the developers should be bending over backwards to ensure that as many people as possible have the opportunity to see as much of the game as possible. Doing otherwise is a dereliction of duty on the part of the developer, akin to taking the money and running.
So if you buy a 1000 piece puzzle do you also demand that you'll be able to complete it without any effort?
I mean, I can see the opposite argument if you assume:
-the game is more rewarding on a higher difficulty
-Some people that could have toughed it out and gotten to a higher difficulty level, and enjoyed it more, will use the easy mode or boss skip.
I think this is basically where Dark Souls is at. I'm glad most games have a difficulty selector, since, say, PoE's inherent gameplay isn't as rewarding as Dark Souls and I don't personally get a lot out of trying to optimize that system. But if there'd been an easier difficulty on DS, I'd probably have taken it, and it would have been a worse experience for it.
So I think ultimately this is on a game-by-game basis. Some games basically just exist to provide that challenge, and Dark Souls is one of them. There's some merit in letting people explore that world and delve into the lore and stuff that wouldn't otherwise, but it's not worth the cost of losing some players to the worse experience.
At the moment less than 15% of Dark Souls players on Steam beat the final boss according to the achievements - you could also argue that 85% of players are
already getting the worse experience.
I'm not going to disagree with you that someone who skips a boss isn't getting the same quality experience as someone who plays through all the game - same as how skipping a section of any other medium isn't going to give the full effect. But surely it'd be better than only letting a fraction of players through? Those 15% wouldn't be affected, their game would be intact - and of course, there'd absolutely be a large amount of the 85% who still don't continue playing even with the skip.
Maybe some of the people who skipped some fights on the first round would come back through for a second play and beat the game again, properly this time.
You are absolutely right that it's a case-by-case basis though. I could argue in favour of say, Spelunky
not having skips or difficulty selections (I think that one could go either way). Dark Souls is a pretty complicated example for a lot of reasons, and I think it's a decent defence for "Not every game should have a skip boss fight button". Same with Cuphead - Cuphead having a boss skip sounds like a pretty crazy suggestion to me (An easier difficulty, though, might not be as crazy). In fact, the author of the original article even states:
And when your game is made of boss fights tied together with string, then yes, its plainly idiotic for a hater to buy it.
So I completely agree with you that it's case-by-case, and so does the article's author.
That also means there are some cases where yes, a Skip Boss option would be a great addition.
Exactly. This "let me skip this and play what I want to" mentality is a slippery slope only leading to the lessening of video games as a whole. Why pay full price for a AAA game when it can be treated like a interactive film? When everything becomes optional then why even "play"? What is "playing" a video game at that point? Let's Play already exist. I'd be very hard pressed to envision a future where people would spend $60 for a Let's Play AAA release.
Why pay full price for a AAA game when it can be treated like an interactive film? Wouldn't that be a decision that people who want to treat it like an interactive film should make for themselves? Also, don't a lot of games come under a pretty similar umbrella of 'interactive film'? Adventure games, Telltale games, David Cage games etc.
I don't see how it's a slippery slope at all. It doesn't take boss fights away, it just adds an option to skip it for whatever reason (not just 'it's too hard'). Just because you can't see the value in it doesn't mean there is no value in it, as there are a lot of people trying to explain in this very forum.
Alright, so a lot of the arguments against having the option to skip boss fights tend to focus on certain cases where it wouldn't work, like Cuphead, or might be more difficult to justify, like Dark Souls. How about ones where it would
absolutely work?
Here's a very
specific proposition:
Let Us Skip Boss Fights in Persona 5.
- No intrinsic link between difficulty and theme like Dark Souls.
- There's already an Easy Mode.
- There's already a 'skip cutscene/dialogue' option that can be used even the first time through.
- Highly replayable so a skip will likely be well-used.
- No multiplayer.
- A lot of people who would love the storytelling sections don't like turn based RPG combat.
- There's still a lot of gameplay outside the bosses so there would still be a 'point' to playing outside of watching Let's Play videos.
- The game doesn't teach you necessary mechanics during the scenes.
The implementation would be as follows:
When launching or loading the game, choose an option to allow Boss Skip. This is so that players won't be 'tempted' by the option.
During a boss fight, press Start to pause, then choose it from an option menu.
A message pops up saying "It's highly recommended you complete this fight rather than skip it! You will not receive any more trophies with this save file." If you choose to continue, the boss fight will be skipped as though you beat it, and the victory cutscene will play.
The game will continue as normal, rewards given as normal, but no more trophies will be rewarded.
Players who don't want to skip battles won't even see the option during their game. People who do want the option can see it and use it for whatever reason they want, i.e. too hard, too easy, too long, boring, beaten it 100x before, trying to get to the next segment etc. etc.
Are there any arguments against that specific case? How about for these other games:
Horizon Zero Dawn
Zelda BOTW
Nier Automata
Mario + Rabbids
Wolfenstein II
Mario Odyssey