I vehemontly disagree with your disagreement, and I'll explain why these things are not problems:
"We don't always know what we want." - this is both perfectly true and completely irrelevant to options. All it takes is a willingness to explore new material, something you are already doing with any new product no matter what. I explore plenty of new things, even with infinite options to customize things to my particular tastes at any time I choose. The trick is not to pre-emptively choose what you want. Experience, then adjust to what you will. That's how I do it.
You just proved my main point here. This perfectly encapsulated why an easy mode for Souls would be a bad thing. This is it right here. You are not truly trying something new if all the while you are altering that thing to conform to your already determined tastes. You are fooling yourself. This is
exactly what I mean by people unknowingly ruining an experience for themselves. So many people that don't need an easy mode would select it, then not get the point of the game. You are giving them an option that allows them to avoid truly enjoying the game. Actually trying something new. Options are not always good. And this is a perfect example. The very lack of an easy mode option is important to Souls design.
"If that game was easier, had difficulty modes, had options to turn off invasions, party based co-op, it would have just been another game." - Well, I can't speak for others, but I'm currently playing it with a kind of OP build that has made several parts of the game pretty trivial with invasions turned off, and I'm still finding the experience to be special because the game has what I enjoy most out of a souls game - atmosphere, fantastic design, and unique room to write your own narrative. I don't know if it will replace Bloodborne for me, which I also played in offline mode so I didn't have to deal with people barging into my game, but it's still one of the most special games to me. I don't know if my build was OP, but I did everything I could to ensure it was, and still got my ass kicked plenty of times. So, personally, this is patently wrong.
No, it is not wrong. You're still not getting it. It's all by design that you can make "op" builds. And when I said 'turn off invasion" I mean that literally. As in, you could still get all the advantages of online without the threat of invasions. The act of making a strong character to make the game easier is still part of the game. You earn it. That is a huge aspect of the game maintaining its integrity. That is nothing like a simple option toggle in a menu. This is why I can still have fun on a casual playthrough even after doing Soul Level 1 NG+ challenges. Because I earned my mastery, my skill. This goes back to presentation and mindset. People have already talked about how Souls has a variable difficulty, and why it's really good. And in a ton of ways superior to an "easy mode". You still seem to be stuck on the idea of "gatekeeping". In that we want the game to be super hard or something. That's not the main issue.
"When I'm playing a game, I don't want that. I want to engross myself in the experience. I want to understand what the artist was going for. Why can't we have 1% of games that stand firm and say "This is the vision for our game."" - To this, again, I bring up the case of Dyack's Too Human. There's an auteur for you. There's a man who wanted to make something unique, and actually did! There is a man who had something to say. How do quantify that game? Like I said before, you can't sanctify the artistic vision, and then say it doesn't apply if you don't like what it envisions because that's just subjectivity. By this logic, there is no reason that anything about Dyack's game ought to be changed, however obvious the flaws of that design are. The truth of the matter is that creators are just human, and all humans are creators, including you, including me. The disparity is just a matter of taste and a matter of skill. Miyazaki is a developer, he's much more skilled at creating games than I am, but difference in tastes always exists, and people should have the freedom to follow their tastes. Keep in mind, this doesn't close the door to the option of exploration. Having an easy mode didn't stop people from getting good and tackling higher difficulties of DMC and Ninja Gaiden and Bayonetta. Why would it here?
Okay, straight up, you're waaay off base here. This is a lot of nirvana fallacy in here. The point was never about "the game is perfect and any change is bad." That's obvious nonsense. I could write a novel on all the various design flaws of the Souls games.You still seem to be stuck on the supposed Souls elitism. Seriously, stop. It's not a good look and just sidetracks us away from real points. So to the real point about all this, is that when you're playing a game you will have many reactions and thought about the design. Often times you will be wrong, sometimes you might be right. The point is, you might have to play a game several times to truly understand how it could be improved. For example, when first going through The Valley of Defilement in Demon's Souls, a lot of players will complain. It's too hard, it's tedious, this doesn't align to my tastes. So hey, I'll just switch on easy mode. Or I'll find a way to cheat and get around this. Where as if you just played the game for what it is you discover and reach the emotional impact that area leads you too. Something you would have ruined for yourself otherwise. You later learn that these levels are not even that hard. You feel good about your mastery of these levels. Another thing ruined by your "tastes".
Don't worry, I stay offline by default.
I think this part of the crux of the problem. People hear 'easy mode' and seem to think this is turning on god mode, which is absurd. I would think people would still get a challenge, it'd just be relatively easier to normal. But for the sake of argument, lets say that there did a god mode. A god mode breaks any game with combat. Literally, ANY game. Yet the implementation of such a mode mean that even a small but significant portion used it to play the whole game that way? Name me one time the existence of an easier difficulty stopped people who wanted to play harder difficulties from doing so?
I've already gone over in this thread how a list of difficulty modes can be bad. So I'll copy paste that here.
"Many modern games now a days have several difficulty modes. Something like Easy, Normal, Hard and Very Hard. I can not stand this, it's terrible. Because now, before I even play the game, I have to try and figure out what difficulty mode is "right" for me, with nothing to go on. Maybe I assume that the game is super easy, so I should just jack it up to Very Hard. The only problem with that is most games with these options are not intended to be hard. So the Very Hard mode is an unbalanced mess of design. It might be "challenging" but it's not fun at all. So I end up playing the first hour of the game with that setting and hate it. The game could have had one difficulty mode, been easier, and still way more fun. Because the designers could have put all their energy into that one setting. This isn't to say no games should ever have difficulty modes, but it depends on the game. And in my case, games with tons of different options are a huge turn off to me. It tells me that the game doesn't have a focus on tight, balanced and intricate design. Which is what I more than anything really. This also ignores the fact that players can easily ruin a game for themselves. For example, save scumming the hell out of a game with quick load/quick save. Certain game mechanics simply do not work with that feature. That option limits your design space. It's easy to say "oh, players that don't want to ruin those mechanics will just not use it." But that simply isn't how the human mind works. We are competitive by nature and try to beat games, this is true for the majority of people. It's up to a designer to determine how a game works. As a player I don't want to do that work while playing. I want to engross myself in the experience. I don't want to ask myself "Oh, did the designer just not care? Will I break the game by doing this?"
Again, this goes back to the idea how very few games in recent times have the design style of Souls. Most games are this sandboxy style that don't have a strong focus on game play systems. It's not so much that an easier mode makes me not want to try the hard mode, it's more about the fact that difficulty modes make hard modes of lesser quality.
I mean, it's just such a non-issue, slippery slope argument. Consider this: Plenty of people do SL1 runs, including on this forum. There is nothing whatsoever stopping them from upgrading and making the game easier. But they CHOOSE to apply that level of difficulty to themselves. That's how it's always worked. People choose the difficulty they make for themselves, and never once, until dark souls, has there been an argument that an easier difficulty would somehow break any game.
Speaking to the choir on this one. My first playthrough of Dark Souls 3 was a blind SL1 run. I've done SL1 NG+7 of Demon's Souls on Pure Black World Tendency. SL NG+ of Dark Souls. SL1 on Dark Souls 2. Blood Level 4 on Bloodborne. The thing is though, when I play casually, the game is still fun. Because I've earned my skills and abilities. This is nothing like playing on a gimmie mode that was just handed to you. How the game is presented and experienced is huge. Also, the fact that these challenges work
is because the game is designed in such a nuanced way. That's a big part of the fun, and enforces the "hard but fair" aspect of these games. Difficulty modes won't achieve that. This goes right back to why a lot of times I hate the hardest modes in many modern games. But I'll have lots of fun doing these crazy challenges in Souls.
I've addressed this like a thousand times at this point. The change of identity is the point. But only for the people who want that change made.
It doesn't work that way. The easy mode goes into everyone's game. It changes the game for everyone. The design would need to be changed. You keep talking about how an easy mode is this simple thing they could just throw into the game. So I say, put up or shut up. Burden of proof is on you. How would an easy mode actually work?
Unless you're talking about the game's reputation, so players can't market it anymore as the game that's known for it's difficulty. In which case, yeah, I don't give a fuck about that. I will defend your ability to play dark souls on hard difficulty as much as I can, I will not defend your ability to call dark souls for the exclusively hardcore.
Again, back to the elitism strawman. I'm just gonna say, it's not a good look in a debate to keep trying to paint the other side as an enemy. It's really low. And I would say it is important if a franchise dies because it wanted to sell itself to people that don't like it. Because then, ya know, people that have a game they like won't have it anymore? Seems pretty obviously bad.
Oh....okay, so it is the game's reputation, rather than it's content, that you're seeking to defend. Um....welll....yeah, I'm sorry, I have no sympathy for you here, friend. You want to defend your ability to play a hard game, sure, I can get behind that 100%. But this is you trying trying to defend the marketing pitch and reputation surrounding the game, and....well, I can give you this, an easy mode would definitely change the air around it, sure, people wouldn't whisper it in hushed tones now. But yeah, no, I place no value on that whatsoever, and even if you do, I don't feel it's worth it for the people it keeps out. So, yeah, sorry that you like the game's rep, but that would have to change. I mean, the entire point IS to make people go "Oh, I can play it now, cool". I don't think there's even anything to debate here, we just have a different value on the games reputation here.
You're still not getting it. Those people can play the game right now, in fact, you might not even realize but the games have continued to sell better and better. People are getting it, and it doesn't require changing the game into something it's not. It doesn't require the franchise
risking everything. And you seem to be willingly missing the main point here. They wouldn't be playing it now with an easy mode. They'd be playing a completely different game. Thus defeating the whole point.
Here's the thing...you said earlier that people don't know what they want. And that's true. But you don't know what they want either. I imagine there are a bunch of people that actually, truly do not want all that souls offers, while still desiring others.
Complex games don't work that way. Stop treating them like junk food. You keep ignoring the most important parts of this debate. The difficulty is needed for those other "desired" things to work. To function. This goes back to my point of "how would easy mode actually work". You just keep saying things but don't actually explain how any of it work. Me and others have gone into great detail about how an easy mode wouldn't work with Souls design.
If you can sell Souls as it is, you should still be able to sell souls playing it normal, and they would have the same game experience. And that's all I'm seeking to defend here. If you need the culture surrounding souls to enjoy it, then maybe you don't like souls as much as you think you do.
Again at the elitism. I've made many detailed points about why the game should be played as it is. Hell, I wouldn't even say the "culture" has nothing to do with it. It is a part, their is a lot camaraderie among Souls players you typically only see for fighting games and stuff. That's cool! And it's part of the shared experience.
That's a good thing that an easy mode would take away. But that's only one small part. A lot of it is tied to the mechanics and design. The games level design doesn't make sense in a easy mode game. The games length doesn't make sense in an easy mode game. The story/lore doesn't make sense in an easy mode game. The list goes on.
Well, again, you don't know what other people would like. You can use that as evidence for why Souls works the way it does, but it goes both ways, and there are potentially plenty of people who would not have an appreciation for what souls does and would actually enjoy the watered down version of it. And hte idea that those people exist and might be just as satisfied with a watered down version being something that seems to anger you, it does feel like elitism.
This is the fallacy that one game can appeal to everyone. It's crazy and makes no sense. It's the type of thinking marketing tries to beat into people. "For Everyone!" This ignores my point that Skyrim doesn't align to my tastes. Skyrim should change right? If it doesn't then the people who like it are elitist. Right? You see how this argument makes no sense? Skyrim on the hardest settings isn't fun because the game wasn't really designed to be hard. Should Skyrim be completely redesigned to suit my desires? You can continue to dismiss my arguments by attacking my character, labeling me, that's fine. It's what you want to do. But you should at least say something like "how would easy mode work". The burden of proof is on you.
Elitism isn't any less exclusive when you offer one and only one path into a club. You're basically saying here "It's our way or the high way" in regards to difficulty setting. "This is the right way to play it, and any other is meaningless." No, if it wasn't elitist, you wouldn't be trying to adhere to some kind of 'proper way' to find meaning. You'd let people find their own meaning and hold their experiences to be just as valid. And that's definitely not what your doing if you're suggesting that the prestige of the games is just as important as the games themselves.
Again, Skyrim. The game doesn't appeal to me, so it should change. It's not that I can just play a different game. Skyrim should appeal to every human being that exists, if not the people who like it are bullies, bad people, elitist etc. I'm sorry, but this argument is terrible.
Well, if you read my post, you'd see that I specifically pointed out that I have no stock invested in from, so I don't actually care how they do as a company in terms of finance. I mean, I want them to do well enough to keep making games, but that's pretty much it.
When I say expand their player base, I am just saying so more people can enjoy it. Also, true, I can perfectly agree with you that moving toward an attempt at inclusivity has harmed games when it's done at the cost of the game's identity. However, I've stressed time and time again that this would not happen with an easy mode merely existing. As long as the normal mode continues to exist, the identity of Souls would be left intact...unless, again you just want to preserve it's reputation rather than its' actual content, in which case, I can't help you out there. Keep in mind that for as many failed attempts at inclusion, there have been plenty of successful ones, whose fanbases have nourished and thrived for it, games that have been made better. You can't just use the worst case scenario and act like it's the default and inevitable result. People got sold on the identity of franchises they might not otherwise try because marketing said they include an easy mode now, but that didn't stop DMC3 from recapturing and popularizing the franchise when it appealed to more people with Dante's cheesy attitude turned up to 11 and the crazy combo's he's now able to perform. It took the identity that began with DMC1, and forged it into the series new face, making it's popularity soar. There are several examples of it. Halo 4's MP lost it's way according to many, but without doing much different in terms of design philosophy, 343i managed to reinvigorate the population by creating the best multiplayer the series has ever seen. And so on. So I feel the trick is to not forget who you are, while still moving for broader appeal.
It's possible to do.
Okay first, your Devil May Cry example is hilarious because it was DMC2 that tried to make the game more appealing to a larger audience that could have killed the franchise to begin with. DMC3 was them going back to what DMC1 started, just building on it. What they should have done to begin with. What the Souls games have been doing since the start. You again, perfectly prove my point. Hell, just look at DmC, another attempt by Capcom to get the game a "broader appeal" which backfired. And with Halo, haven't most long time fans moves on? Because the series isn't even really about what it once was? These seem like really bad examples. Why is it bad that a game have a fanbase that likes it, and the creators continue to try and please them. As players, why do we need "broader appeal".
Not every game needs to sell 10 million copies, that thinking is bad for the industry. Seriously, I hate this type of thinking with a passion. Heaven forbid a game caters to a medium sized audience (Souls isn't even niche anymore!) What your advocating is
harmful.
Also, what your talking about is actually diversity, not accessibility.
No, I specifically mean accessibility because diversity leads to that accessibility. (On an industry level) The reason I did that is because it shows the fallacy that a burden of accessibility should be on a specific game. It shows that by trying to force "accessibility" into every game, you actually hurt diversity, which in turn hurts accessibility. We don't need more skyrims. The people who like those games have them in droves. What people don't realize about accessibility is that it's all determined by the user. What's approachable to you, isn't to me. We tend to think about accessibility as in "make games easy, make games easy to understand" and while that is true for the majority of people, that same way of thinking pushes some people away. You are calling for more homogenizing of the industry. That is never a good thing for creativity and artistic merit.
That said, I respect your opinion on it. If it makes you feel better, I am confident that an easy mode is unlikely to come to pass and I respect that you took the time to write out such a detailed response. But these posts are getting extremely long, so I think I'll have to bow out here.
To be frank, I cannot say the same for you. It's not good for debate to continue to attack the other person while ignoring the actual points of the debate. I've put a decent amount of effort into these posts and I feel like you are not actually reading them. As you continue to say things I've already addressed or simply miss huge points. For example your insistence on how an easy mode could be done, whilst a levy of points have been made to the contrary, without any defense in sight.