radnom said:
At the moment less than 15% of Dark Souls players on Steam beat the final boss according to the achievements -
So? This doesn't mean anything.
a) You don't know why it's at 15%. Maybe it's too hard, but it could also be that people are too busy to play, or didn't like it enough to continue. For Dark Souls 3, it appears to be at 25% on Steam (at least for the most common ending, the other endings being at 19% and 16%).
b)
9/10 players won't finish the game they're playing. So if anything, the completion rate for Dark Souls is
higher than average
c) Someone
actually compared completion trophy percentages of Souls games with other games and guess what, Souls games are not particularly lower than other, more mainstream games.
radnom said:
You know what? Most players don't finish games. This is something we can do to at least help more players experience more of the games they purchased, without taking anything away from the games that we love. There are other much higher impact solutions like 'make the game much shorter' and 'make the game much easier'. This is one that will mess with the game the least.
It's funny you are so desperate to find "solutions" to the "problem" that most players don't finish games, because this implies it's a problem to begin with.
It's not. It's perfectly OK to not finish games. I have a huge amount of games I played, enjoyed, and never finished.
That's a normal, okay thing.
It's not a problem not to finish a game. I don't finish a lot of games, and it's generally due to not liking them enough, not because I get stuck. My point isn't that it's a problem that people don't finish games, it's that the people who DO actually finish games, and play through every boss battle, are a minority. It's also not
ideal that some players might want to see more of their games, but they can't. So some of the arguments here that people who don't enjoy
every aspect of a game shouldn't play them are a bit flawed, because obviously a lot of people like Dark Souls that don't intend to beat every boss. Some people love the aesthetics of Cuphead, but don't like the high difficulty level. Why
not allow some form of skip so that, if some players want to, they can see more of the game?
That's the question that's posed, and the question that I'm trying to figure out why there's so much hostility towards.
As for your architecture argument, it's patently silly. If some architecture student is really that interested in Dark Souls' architecture but doesn't want to play the game for real, the onus is on them to hack their game up with cheats and mess around as they please, not on the devs to provide that for them.
well
obviously the onus is on the developers, they're the ones making the game! I'm not disputing that it's up to the developers to make the decision to implement it, and as I've mentioned I don't agree with the extreme point of view that not ensuring a player can access every part of the game is equivalent to stealing, I'm just saying that it would be a good thing in some cases for the developers to prioritise adding this feature, because:
A. A number of people would want and use it
B. It doesn't ruin the game for people who don't want to use it
C. It's (potentially) not a huge time consuming feature to add (depending on the game)
I'm not mandating a mandatory boss skip that
needs to be in games for them to be released, I'm just saying "Hey, Developers of the games I like? Please add a boss skip feature". Same way I'd say "Hey, Developers of the games I like? Please add high frame rate support". "Hey Developers of the games I like? I can't read the small text on my TV, please add a font size option".
In a lot of these cases, wouldn't it be in the developer's best interests? In some, perhaps not. I don't imagine FROM Software ever giving the option a second thought, and fine, that's up to them. But maybe some other companies will consider it.
I mean, it's a far better and more elegant solution than adding quest navigation or popups or extended tutorials that drag out or arrows guiding you step by step through the game. I don't want to see that any more than you do, which is why I'd prefer this solution that affects the games I like less.
The problem you are describing here isn't the lack of "skip fight" option, it's badly designed boss battle.
As TheRedSnifit and others have mentioned in this thread, the solution is to make better boss gameplay, not give the option of taking it away. I can already devs not making much effort in designing a boss battle because hey, you can always just skip it to continue anyway, why bother.
'Better gameplay' wouldn't even cover half of the reasons I've provided as possible reasons to skip bosses! Plus if the developers could have made a better game, wouldn't they have done that? They could, however, potentially add a skip option with a lot less work.
And developers making worse boss battles is a really weak reason against a skip, because having a cutscene skip button available doesn't make developers think "hey you can always just skip it to continue anyway, why bother putting effort in".
It's a similar functionality to say, games having a 'permadeath' option. Fire Emblem Awakening added a mode where character death isn't permanent, and it didn't ruin the game for anyone, and it expanded the audience. They called it "Casual" mode as opposed to "Classic" mode, so players know the intended way is to have them die, but they can make that decision.
This is a solution that is one of the
least likely to 'kill gaming'. I can't even comprehend this amount of backlash.
Alright, even leaving Dark Souls alone for a bit, what about other games? How about this example?
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.
It's
not locked based on completing the game, because it's unknown whether the player has played it previously on another console, at a friend's house, etc.
During a boss fight, press Start to pause, then choose 'Skip Boss?' 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.
Does anyone have a problem with this
specific example?