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[Angry_Megalodon]

What some of you fail to see is that Sekiro, regardless its difficulty, is NEVER going to be a game for the masses or bigger audiences. Nor any other From game. It's not about the difficulty but their genres, aesthetics, lieu, storytelling and narrative, the mood... nothing is for the masses here. It all appeals to the gamer that is somehow knowledgeable, skilled or not.

Nier Automata has a sexy waifu, easy options and still is a game that sells good but not something to write home about. Same applies to games that are purposefully made for CERTAIN audiences. The claim that these games are going to become +10 million sellers is utter bullshit.

But I can safely say that if From games would betray their established vision they would LOSE more customers than gain new ones. And another developer would step in as the "new From Software". There is a very basic marketing concept called "positioning" meaning that once you get an ideal perception of your product in the mind of consumers, you don't fuck with that.

Tell Apple to be cheaper so they "get to bigger audiences" Or Nintendo, for that matter.

 

[Airola]

If any thing, it would make beating it on normal even MORE of a big deal because you had the damn option to play on easy, and played on normal thus showing you indeed are better then others and didn't select the easy way out.

No, that works with hardcore modes and stuff like that.

The point of these games is that the lowest possible difficulty is hard for everyone. Adding an additional easy mode doesn't remove the normal difficulty, but it changes the lowest possible difficulty and changes the whole presentation of the game.

The point is that there is no easy way out. And having an easy mode would make the game not being anymore a game where there is no easy way out. Surely you would agree with that, wouldn't you?

But more options would enable many more people to enjoy the work at very little effort on the part of the devs, and the original experience still exists just as it did for those who want it.

The presentation of the game would be different. It wouldn't any more be a game where there is no easy way out. Having an easy mode would be pretty much the same as the normal game having some super weapon available in every boss room. Sure, you could choose to not take it but the game wouldn't anymore be a game where the lowest possible difficulty for the boss fights is very tough. That changes how you feel about the bosses.

The original experience of the game is that there is no easy way out, not by having some ultimate weapon available for every boss, not by choosing to debuff the bosses through an in-game menu and not by choosing the overall difficulty level through the main menu. Zero developer-made ways to make things easier. That's the design of the game. That's what the developers loved to create and that's what their core market loves about it. The experience of the game changes even if you would never choose to play on easy mode. That's a fact and there is no way around it.

 

[June]

The presentation of the game would be different. It wouldn't any more be a game where there is no easy way out. Having an easy mode would be pretty much the same as the normal game having some super weapon available in every boss room.

There is still no easy way out... on the original difficulty. So if you don't want an easy way out then just stay on that difficulty.

It's not the same as having a super overpowered weapon because that hypothetical weapon would exist internally to the mode you're playing, not externally like difficulty modes are.

Sure, you could choose to not take it but the game wouldn't anymore be a game where the lowest possible difficulty for the boss fights is very tough. That changes how you feel about the bosses.

It doesn't change how I feel about the bosses because I am able to make a distinction between the different settings I chose to apply. So the easy bosses feel like easy bosses and the hard bosses continue to feel like a hard bosses.

In fact I have never played a game on normal/hard and felt my experience was lessened due to an optional easy mode also existing. Have you?

 

[alabtrosMyster]

I tried to watch the video but all I could think of is someone who sees a set of stairs and wishes there was an elevator, and then I pictured Jim Sterling trying to take the stairs, wheezing and coughing with each labored step, and I just started feeling bad for him. How can I tell someone who gets winded by the handicap ramp to "git gud" with stairs?

I think a better analogy would be biking, on two wheels... I mean, sure you can do it with training wheels, but is it really biking? Now we have the option available to help kids learn, so the analogy is not that great. However, i will never tell my kids that they can really ride their bike until they can ride it without the training wheels.

So yeah, it's nice to have the option to play the game on a training level, but you're not really playing until you challenge yourself to beat it on a harder level... Anyway, nowadays we have plenty of games like Fez where you don't really die, it's more like a form of meditation, as there's no real tension ever! And would he complain that much if the game was an horror style experience where you actually have no weapon (Like the alien game released a couple of years ago)?

In the end I think that the whole idea that we should be able to finish all games within days of purchasing them misses the whole point of gaming, there are plenty of classic games that I never finished, and I still love them, same for casuals from 20 years ago, they were saying things like "I love this game but I couldn't get past boss x" with a smile.

 

[Airola]

There is still no easy way out... on the original difficulty. So if you don't want an easy way out then just stay on that difficulty.

It's not the same as having a super overpowered weapon because that hypothetical weapon would exist internally to the mode you're playing, not externally like difficulty modes are.

The point is that the game offers you an easy way out. And I'm not saying games shouldn't have easy modes. It's fine for a lot of games where the concept of the game isn't about the difficulty. But what I don't understand is how some people don't want that type of games to exist.

The thing you don't understand is that the existence of the possibility to make things easier, even if from menu screen, alters the way the game is presented to the players. People asking for an easy mode just proves it. What it currently is in normal mode is too intimidating for some people. They don't want the game to be presented the way it is. Clearly for them the inclusion of easy mode would make a difference, so why not the other way around too? It's not as if they literally can't play the game if it doesn't have an easy mode. Surely they can play it but for them the lowest possible difficulty being what it is is something they want to get rid of. Yeah, they don't want to get rid of the regular mode, but they want to get rid of the lowest difficulty being what it currently is.

So clearly the way the hard game is presented is something very distinct that makes other players love it and others dislike it.

Imagine someone being the biggest and toughest guy at school. People dread to even look at that guy. Now imagine that someone comes and says that actually if you go home and press this button he'll become smaller and weaker. The mere knowledge of that would have an effect on how intimidating that guy is. Sure, if you don't press the button he'll be just as tough as ever, but he surely feels much more dreadful without any knowledge of the option to make him weaker than if you had that knowledge.

How would the concept of Hell feel like if it suddenly included the possibility of you pressing a button now and that making Hell for you much less of a torment and maybe even something you can get out of? Sure, it feels nice to think this is an option, but it would make the overall concept of Hell less dreadful.

Some games just are intended to be like Hell without cooling water or the tough guy at school without a button to weaken him beforehand. Games like I Wanna Be The Guy and Super Meat Boy wouldn't be the same if they offered the easy way out.

The game is what it is from the intro screen to the end credits. The game is what is presented in the menu screen too. The possibility to go back to the menu screen and change the difficulty is part of the game. The game has certain settings and certain characters. Being able to change their behaviour or stats through the manu screen is all part of the game. And besides, some games offer you to change the difficulty form an in-game menu too so if, say, From Software would choose to put their difficulty settings on the in-game menu, it would then be exactly like having an overpowered weapon to be included in every boss room. Apparently in Sekiro there is a bell you can ring to put the game in a hard mode, so if they would make an easy mode, it could be an overpowered weapon in the first screen that you can choose to take or leave. That would be pretty much the same as having the option on the menu screen.

It doesn't change how I feel about the bosses because I am able to make a distinction between the different settings I chose to apply. So the easy bosses feel like easy bosses and the hard bosses continue to feel like a hard bosses.

How many games that include easy and normal modes are notorious for their ultra hard mode? Not even the From Software games really are known to the general public for that. Those are known from their normal difficulty being really hard. If you would have an easy mode in games like that, that notoriety would drop like a stone. They wouldn't be known as games where it is impossible to make it less hard. With easy mode no-one would think anymore than the regular difficulty is the lowest possible difficulty because, well, it isn't.

The regular difficulty would be more like a super hard difficulty on the newest Doom. Is that game known for the general public for its hardest difficulty? No. Is Resident Evil 2 Remake known for the general public for its hardest difficulty? No. Would Resident Evil 2 Remake have a way different presentation if the only difficulty was its hardest mode? Of course, and it would be that to the point that there would be people telling the game should be different. Now, as the concept of RE2R isn't about its difficulty but it more or less has been built to be beatable by anyone, it's more ok to have an easy mode there than in a game that is first and foremost intended to be a hard game where even the developers' intent isn't that everyone should be able to see the ending.

In fact I have never played a game on normal/hard and felt my experience was lessened due to an optional easy mode also existing. Have you?

This is hard to answer because there haven't been many games where an easy mode has been added afterwards. So you don't really know how the game would've felt like if the lowest possibile difficulty was the normal or the hard mode.

One that comes to my mind is that I very much dislike the rewind option in The Disney Afternoon Collection. The mere existence of it makes the games feel "lesser" than what they originally were. Even just thinking that this hard part could be doable by just pressing this rewind button even if I don't use it is completely unnecessary (and annoying) little thought game that never existed in the original games. And it's not about me being mad that someone else can play the game easier, but it's about this option being presented to me. The possibility changes the "aura" of the games. Part of the fun for me back in the day was to get a bit further until I either beat the game or failed to get any further. And both situations were ok for me. Now the addition of a button that rewinds time gives this odd sense of unimportance to the levels.

And sure, RE2R can be fun even with the possibility of having easy mode, but let's imagine that option would be taken away. Wouldn't that have an effect to the general "aura" of the game. How about leaving only the hard mode in? Surely now as the lowest possible difficulty would be very hard, the overall experience would be different. The late parts of the game would have more mystery to them as it would be very tough for even seasoned players to go that far. The overall tone of the game would be more dreadful and intimidating than what it now is. But that's not what the developers intended the game to be so that's not what it is. And it's ok.

In games like RE2R most people will not choose the hardest difficulty from the get go so that game would never have the aura of being really tough, but if that was the only difficulty the whole scenery of the game would feel different. Ok, maybe that just is something that you couldn't sense even then, but just because you wouldn't feel that doesn't mean the developers and the core audience didn't feel that either. It's clear as a day that this sense of intimidation is what the developers of certain games are after and they have their audience that really appreciates that approach and design philosophy. And why would anyone want to take that away when there already are countless of other games that offer the easy experience?

In the end I think that the whole idea that we should be able to finish all games within days of purchasing them misses the whole point of gaming, there are plenty of classic games that I never finished, and I still love them, same for casuals from 20 years ago, they were saying things like "I love this game but I couldn't get past boss x" with a smile.

Exactly!

I still haven't finished Platoon and Rambo 3 on Commodore 64 and both are some of my favorite games ever. And hell, how about Mr. Mephisto on C64 (it's MUCH harder than it looks in that video)? This game has only a few levels. I think I was never able to beat the second level and I still can't do it. This game had this "demo play" thing at the start screen and you could see glimpses of different levels and the last boss. Man, that level with Satan felt so mysterious to me and I still haven't been able to go that far, but I still love the game. This game specifically stayed in my mind because of the sense of MYSTERY its toughness allowed it to have. The mystery would be GONE if that game had an option to make it easier than what it at lowest was.

I've said it over and over again, but if people just could accept that games can beat you and not the other way around and find enjoyment from that fact, there would be a lot more games they would enjoy to play.

 

[wzy]

The absence of easy mode is what makes inexperienced players depend on experienced ones, i.e., specifically what is valuable about hard mode is the connection it builds between audience members. Better have a really fucking good argument for diminishing this because its one of the series' most appealing features. Also for the one hundredth time this debate is idiotic and anyone who claims they would play the games if only they had easy mode is lying.

 

[Panajev2001a]

The point is that the game offers you an easy way out. And I'm not saying games shouldn't have easy modes. It's fine for a lot of games where the concept of the game isn't about the difficulty. But what I don't understand is how some people don't want that type of games to exist.

The thing you don't understand is that the existence of the possibility to make things easier, even if from menu screen, alters the way the game is presented to the players. People asking for an easy mode just proves it. What it currently is in normal mode is too intimidating for some people. They don't want the game to be presented the way it is. Clearly for them the inclusion of easy mode would make a difference, so why not the other way around too? It's not as if they literally can't play the game if it doesn't have an easy mode. Surely they can play it but for them the lowest possible difficulty being what it is is something they want to get rid of. Yeah, they don't want to get rid of the regular mode, but they want to get rid of the lowest difficulty being what it currently is.

So clearly the way the hard game is presented is something very distinct that makes other players love it and others dislike it.

Imagine someone being the biggest and toughest guy at school. People dread to even look at that guy. Now imagine that someone comes and says that actually if you go home and press this button he'll become smaller and weaker. The mere knowledge of that would have an effect on how intimidating that guy is. Sure, if you don't press the button he'll be just as tough as ever, but he surely feels much more dreadful without any knowledge of the option to make him weaker than if you had that knowledge.

How would the concept of Hell feel like if it suddenly included the possibility of you pressing a button now and that making Hell for you much less of a torment and maybe even something you can get out of? Sure, it feels nice to think this is an option, but it would make the overall concept of Hell less dreadful.

Some games just are intended to be like Hell without cooling water or the tough guy at school without a button to weaken him beforehand. Games like I Wanna Be The Guy and Super Meat Boy wouldn't be the same if they offered the easy way out.

The game is what it is from the intro screen to the end credits. The game is what is presented in the menu screen too. The possibility to go back to the menu screen and change the difficulty is part of the game. The game has certain settings and certain characters. Being able to change their behaviour or stats through the manu screen is all part of the game. And besides, some games offer you to change the difficulty form an in-game menu too so if, say, From Software would choose to put their difficulty settings on the in-game menu, it would then be exactly like having an overpowered weapon to be included in every boss room. Apparently in Sekiro there is a bell you can ring to put the game in a hard mode, so if they would make an easy mode, it could be an overpowered weapon in the first screen that you can choose to take or leave. That would be pretty much the same as having the option on the menu screen.




How many games that include easy and normal modes are notorious for their ultra hard mode? Not even the From Software games really are known to the general public for that. Those are known from their normal difficulty being really hard. If you would have an easy mode in games like that, that notoriety would drop like a stone. They wouldn't be known as games where it is impossible to make it less hard. With easy mode no-one would think anymore than the regular difficulty is the lowest possible difficulty because, well, it isn't.

The regular difficulty would be more like a super hard difficulty on the newest Doom. Is that game known for the general public for its hardest difficulty? No. Is Resident Evil 2 Remake known for the general public for its hardest difficulty? No. Would Resident Evil 2 Remake have a way different presentation if the only difficulty was its hardest mode? Of course, and it would be that to the point that there would be people telling the game should be different. Now, as the concept of RE2R isn't about its difficulty but it more or less has been built to be beatable by anyone, it's more ok to have an easy mode there than in a game that is first and foremost intended to be a hard game where even the developers' intent isn't that everyone should be able to see the ending.



This is hard to answer because there haven't been many games where an easy mode has been added afterwards. So you don't really know how the game would've felt like if the lowest possibile difficulty was the normal or the hard mode.

One that comes to my mind is that I very much dislike the rewind option in The Disney Afternoon Collection. The mere existence of it makes the games feel "lesser" than what they originally were. Even just thinking that this hard part could be doable by just pressing this rewind button even if I don't use it is completely unnecessary (and annoying) little thought game that never existed in the original games. And it's not about me being mad that someone else can play the game easier, but it's about this option being presented to me. The possibility changes the "aura" of the games. Part of the fun for me back in the day was to get a bit further until I either beat the game or failed to get any further. And both situations were ok for me. Now the addition of a button that rewinds time gives this odd sense of unimportance to the levels.

And sure, RE2R can be fun even with the possibility of having easy mode, but let's imagine that option would be taken away. Wouldn't that have an effect to the general "aura" of the game. How about leaving only the hard mode in? Surely now as the lowest possible difficulty would be very hard, the overall experience would be different. The late parts of the game would have more mystery to them as it would be very tough for even seasoned players to go that far. The overall tone of the game would be more dreadful and intimidating than what it now is. But that's not what the developers intended the game to be so that's not what it is. And it's ok.

In games like RE2R most people will not choose the hardest difficulty from the get go so that game would never have the aura of being really tough, but if that was the only difficulty the whole scenery of the game would feel different. Ok, maybe that just is something that you couldn't sense even then, but just because you wouldn't feel that doesn't mean the developers and the core audience didn't feel that either. It's clear as a day that this sense of intimidation is what the developers of certain games are after and they have their audience that really appreciates that approach and design philosophy. And why would anyone want to take that away when there already are countless of other games that offer the easy experience?




Exactly!

I still haven't finished Platoon and Rambo 3 on Commodore 64 and both are some of my favorite games ever. And hell, how about Mr. Mephisto on C64 (it's MUCH harder than it looks in that video)? This game has only a few levels. I think I was never able to beat the second level and I still can't do it. This game had this "demo play" thing at the start screen and you could see glimpses of different levels and the last boss. Man, that level with Satan felt so mysterious to me and I still haven't been able to go that far, but I still love the game. This game specifically stayed in my mind because of the sense of MYSTERY its toughness allowed it to have. The mystery would be GONE if that game had an option to make it easier than what it at lowest was.

I've said it over and over again, but if people just could accept that games can beat you and not the other way around and find enjoyment from that fact, there would be a lot more games they would enjoy to play.

There is space and need for games that are pure entertainment and are not very difficult, Nintendo has mastered the single difficulty level approach, but there is also need for games where you NEED to learn how to play them, where the enjoyment comes after overcoming its challenges and stepping out of your comfort zone. They are not for everyone... and that is ok, but especially when you are young and have plenty of time in your hands... an easy entertain but not challenge game diet only would be perhaps even bad as it does not exercise any problem solving skills.

 

[tassletine]

You may consider games as art or whatever you want but that's YOUR opinion, man.

Once you think that consideration restricts what games can and can't be (even worse, you deny people who consider games competition, challenge against oneself/the community, gameplay experiences, or escapism... so you're intolerant to other considerations) in the name of "art", so games that lack walking simulator difficulties have no right to exist, theeeen... NO.

And frankly, with the push to conflate walking simulator modes with "accessibility options" meant for the genuinely disabled (who seem to enjoy Sekiro and Dark Souls but are denied a voice in this game journalism debate) then we just know what's the next item in Sony's censorship guidelines. It would fit a lot their shift to "cinematic" experiences, and denying Japan Studios chances to continue Wild Arms and Popolocrois on traditional consoles.

You're quoting out of context. I don't consider games art. I was responding to a post that said Miyazaki's games were art.

 

[tassletine]

What some of you fail to see is that Sekiro, regardless its difficulty, is NEVER going to be a game for the masses or bigger audiences. Nor any other From game. It's not about the difficulty but their genres, aesthetics, lieu, storytelling and narrative, the mood... nothing is for the masses here. It all appeals to the gamer that is somehow knowledgeable, skilled or not.

Nier Automata has a sexy waifu, easy options and still is a game that sells good but not something to write home about. Same applies to games that are purposefully made for CERTAIN audiences. The claim that these games are going to become +10 million sellers is utter bullshit.

But I can safely say that if From games would betray their established vision they would LOSE more customers than gain new ones. And another developer would step in as the "new From Software". There is a very basic marketing concept called "positioning" meaning that once you get an ideal perception of your product in the mind of consumers, you don't fuck with that.

Tell Apple to be cheaper so they "get to bigger audiences" Or Nintendo, for that matter.

Unfortunately though Sekiro was sold as a AAA game. I agree wholeheartedly that Sekiro is niche so your comparisons to Apple and Nintendo ring a little false as they go out of their way to appeal to the broadest market possible -- That is how Apple and Nintendo make their money.

The skill as you grow as any developer is to try and capture as big an audience is possible without compromise. Here I can see little compromise at all. Probably more of a regression if anything. Going back to the drawing board sort of feel.

Regards losing customers, they've kind of lost me here, at least a little as I was a huge From fan until this. It's not a bad game but I primarily like games that test my skill, not my patience. And I don't mean that in a bad way, it's just the game actually seems designed to test patience more than anything else.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Unfortunately though Sekiro was sold as a AAA game. I agree wholeheartedly that Sekiro is niche so your comparisons to Apple and Nintendo ring a little false as they go out of their way to appeal to the broadest market possible -- That is how Apple and Nintendo make their money.

The skill as you grow as any developer is to try and capture as big an audience is possible without compromise. Here I can see little compromise at all. Probably more of a regression if anything. Going back to the drawing board sort of feel.

Regards losing customers, they've kind of lost me here, at least a little as I was a huge From fan until this. It's not a bad game but I primarily like games that test my skill, not my patience. And I don't mean that in a bad way, it's just the game actually seems designed to test patience more than anything else.

Fair, but patience is a skill and virtue in its own right .

 

[June]

Clearly for them the inclusion of easy mode would make a difference, so why not the other way around too?

Because the people who don't want to play the additional, optionable easy mode can simply avoid it and play on normal difficulty as they would have done anyway. Pretty obvious.

And besides, some games offer you to change the difficulty form an in-game menu too so if, say, From Software would choose to put their difficulty settings on the in-game menu, it would then be exactly like having an overpowered weapon to be included in every boss room.

I agree. That's why I'm also in favour of having a pre-game - not in-game - option to lock yourself into a difficulty for a playthrough, so no changing on the fly if you don't want to.

Apparently in Sekiro there is a bell you can ring to put the game in a hard mode, so if they would make an easy mode, it could be an overpowered weapon in the first screen that you can choose to take or leave. That would be pretty much the same as having the option on the menu screen.

There is an item in Sekiro that if used makes the game harder. And yet no one complains that this hard mode devalues the regular difficulty. Funny that.

How many games that include easy and normal modes are notorious for their ultra hard mode? [...] The regular difficulty would be more like a super hard difficulty on the newest Doom. Is that game known for the general public for its hardest difficulty? No. Is Resident Evil 2 Remake known for the general public for its hardest difficulty? No.

How many games are balanced, by default, around their ultra hard modes?

Most games don't aim for their default state to be at a high difficulty like the From games do. Most games are balanced around a medium difficulty and then their easy and hard are basically just number tweaks to enable a wider audience to enjoy the game. So it's no surprise games like Doom and RE2R aren't 'notorious' for their highest difficulty setting because those games were fundamentally balanced around their medium setting.

This is not the case for From games. From games are fundamentally balanced around a higher difficulty state and that wouldn't change if additional difficulty options were introduced.

One that comes to my mind is that I very much dislike the rewind option in The Disney Afternoon Collection. The mere existence of it makes the games feel "lesser" than what they originally were. Even just thinking that this hard part could be doable by just pressing this rewind button even if I don't use it is completely unnecessary (and annoying) little thought game that never existed in the original games. And it's not about me being mad that someone else can play the game easier, but it's about this option being presented to me.

If mere existence of options makes the game feel lesser to you then you must disapprove of all the mods available that make Sekiro easier.

So are you against mods too?

 

[Airola]

Because the people who don't want to play the additional, optionable easy mode can simply avoid it and play on normal difficulty as they would have done anyway. Pretty obvious.

I and several others have gone through all of these arguments in several different threads in the past few weeks and even in past few years. Maybe I should just refer to those other threads to save time.

There are two analogies I like to use:
1) The unclimbable mountain
Imagine a mountain people say is either near or completely unclimbable. Mountain climbers see that mountain as a special mountain. The mountain has a special feel to it, a sense of intimidation and dread.
People say once you start climbing there will be no-one to help you. People hesitate to climb the mountain but have a certain appreciation towards the mountain itself because of its notoriety.
Now, one mountain climber sees a sign that says "walk this way to get help" and he follows the sign. He's now in another part of the mountain and sees an elevator that has been built to go up the mountain. The climber sure has the choice to go and climb it without help, but the top of the mountain and the mountain itself doesn't feel the same anymore.

2) The dreadful cave
There is a cave with a sign that says "if you enter the cave, you are on your own and probably don't come out alive, enter at your own risk." People tell all kinds of stories about the horrors the cave holds and how it's the most terrifying cave in existence. The cave feels amazingly mysterious. Only a few have ever come out alive to tell the story. This cave is legendary and people have this sense of terror and excitement when they are looking at the entrance.
Now, imagine that just a few steps away there is another entrance to that same cave. This entrance has a sign that says "if you enter the cave through this entrance you'll get a lot of help and the things inside aren't dangerous to you." You'll see people enter the cave through that entrance and come out and say "yeah I went to the deepest part and came out unscratched, it's not that big of a deal." The original sense of mystery and intimidation is now much smaller than what it initially was when only one entrance was known. Of course a lot of people would use that entrance and it's ok to use it because it exists. It's not about there now being people who can go through the cave more easily, but it's about the feeling of that cave that has completely changed.

Sure it's fine to have these types of caves with two entrances but wouldn't it be exciting to have at least a few of these caves that have a bigger sense of dread to them?

I agree. That's why I'm also in favour of having a pre-game - not in-game - option to lock yourself into a difficulty for a playthrough, so no changing on the fly if you don't want to.

Why do you feel you should have the option to lock yourself into a certain difficulty for a playthrough? Just don't go to the in-game menu and just don't choose to change the difficulty mid-game, right? It's just an option, right?
Or is it that this kind of locking out of something actually changes how the game feels?
I mean, for many players the idea of certain games is that they are completely locked out of being able to make the game easier. Not even a chance to reset the game and choose lower difficulty. And that gives the game a certain feel to it as opposed to a game where you haven't been locked out from doing that.

There is an item in Sekiro that if used makes the game harder. And yet no one complains that this hard mode devalues the regular difficulty. Funny that.

Of course it doesn't devalue it in a game where the core concept is that the game is already really hard. When the idea of the enemies is that they should feel intimidating as hell, the only way to lessen that idea is to make it possible to make them less intimidating. Making them even more intimidating doesn't lessen that idea at all, but only strengthens it.

How many games are balanced, by default, around their ultra hard modes?

Most games don't aim for their default state to be at a high difficulty like the From games do. Most games are balanced around a medium difficulty and then their easy and hard are basically just number tweaks to enable a wider audience to enjoy the game. So it's no surprise games like Doom and RE2R aren't 'notorious' for their highest difficulty setting because those games were fundamentally balanced around their medium setting.

This is not the case for From games. From games are fundamentally balanced around a higher difficulty state and that wouldn't change if additional difficulty options were introduced.

You seem to understand the point here wery well until the last half of the last sentence.

The feeling of RE2R would be different if everyone would know the only way to play the game would be to have to rely on Ink Ribbons to save the game. That feeling is not there anymore. The original RE2 had that feeling but the remake doesn't, even if you don't ever play on the lowest difficulty. In fact now the experience that comes from having to rely on Ink Ribbons is what most players will never experience on RE2R because that's only in the hardcore difficulty level. Even the normal difficulty doesn't have that. You have to choose the hardest difficulty to get the save room experience that was in the original game. This is an example of a game where a core feature has been removed from the normal game in favor of more easier experience. Without the option to choose the easy and normal modes the feeling of the game would be so much different that people would probably be crying for another modes.

It is very much different to play a game where you KNOW you can go back to the menu screen and make it easier than to play a game where you know can't go back to the menu screen and make it easier. There are countless of people who try the normal mode or even the hardest modes while feeling a sense of calmness because they know they can change the difficulty if things get too hard for them. And the same players would probably feel much more frustrated if there wasn't an option to make it easier. In fact that's exactly what some people are feeling when they are playing Sekiro. It's frankly just bullshit to say the existence of easier modes don't make the other difficulty modes feel different. The reason people are asking for an easy mode is that without it the game feels too intimidating. And when that mode is added, playing the normal difficulty doesn't feel as intimidating anymore as it isn't anymore the only way to go. The fact that people are asking easy mode for Sekiro just proves the lack of that mode makes the game feel different. To some that feeling is a negative thing, to the core audience that feeling is a positive thing.

If mere existence of options makes the game feel lesser to you then you must disapprove of all the mods available that make Sekiro easier.

So are you against mods too?

No, people can change their games into a Teletubbies show for all I care with whatever tools they have, but don't have the developers do that for yourself.
People who bring up mods as an argument are really missing the point here.

It's a completely different thing to have a 3rd party tool to do whatever you want to do than to have the developers put that tool to be accessed through the menu screen.
It's like saying "hey Game Genie exists so Nintendo should make Super Mario Bros. 1 to have the option to have unlimited invincibility and mega high jump from the menu screen."
Sure use whatever cheats and tools you want to use but let the creators of the game give people the experience they want to give.

It's ok to have a game walkthrough in a gaming magazine or in gamefaqs but it would be a different thing to require the developers to include a complete walkthrough to be accessed through the main menu.

 

[June]

The climber sure has the choice to go and climb it without help, but the top of the mountain and the mountain itself doesn't feel the same anymore.

It may not feel the same to them but people can feel sad and upset over anything silly thing, but that in itself is not a good reason to have to tolerate them and their feelings.

It's like when two babies each have an identical toy to play with but one of the babies cries because he wants the toy his brother has instead.

At the end of the day you can continue to free-climb up the mountain on the specific route you like - no one is taking that away from you - and others can take a helicopter or elevator up to the top if they want.

And this is even more true in digital mediums where there are infinite copies of an experience rather the limited space of physical real world mountain.

Why do you feel you should have the option to lock yourself into a certain difficulty for a playthrough?

Because I know people would like having that option.

In fact now the experience that comes from having to rely on Ink Ribbons is what most players will never experience on RE2R because that's only in the hardcore difficulty level. Even the normal difficulty doesn't have that. You have to choose the hardest difficulty to get the save room experience that was in the original game. This is an example of a game where a core feature has been removed from the normal game in favor of more easier experience.

If the ribbon system is only available in hard mode then I agree that that is a bad thing, and I would be in favour of allowing the ribbon system to be used on easy and normal modes too. Again, more options is a good thing.

What you stated is not an argument against difficulty options, but rather an argument against the bad implementation and lack of options.

No, people can change their games into a Teletubbies show for all I care with whatever tools they have, but don't have the developers do that for yourself.
People who bring up mods as an argument are really missing the point here.

No, no, no.

This "don't have the developers do it" is a new and separate argument from everything you've been arguing prior.

You have repeatedly argued that the mere existence of an easy mode devalues the experience and feeling of the other modes; that when someone knows they can just fall back on an easier mode they do not get the same sense of mystery and fear as when there is no other, easier way to progress. In fact let me take your own quotes to back this up:

The thing you don't understand is that the existence of the possibility to make things easier, even if from menu screen, alters the way the game is presented to the players.

The mere knowledge of that would have an effect on how intimidating that guy is. Sure, if you don't press the button he'll be just as tough as ever, but he surely feels much more dreadful without any knowledge of the option to make him weaker than if you had that knowledge.

Sure, it feels nice to think this is an option, but it would make the overall concept of Hell less dreadful.

The mere existence of it makes the games feel "lesser" than what they originally were. [...] The possibility changes the "aura" of the games.

I mean, for many players the idea of certain games is that they are completely locked out of being able to make the game easier. Not even a chance to reset the game and choose lower difficulty. And that gives the game a certain feel to it as opposed to a game where you haven't been locked out from doing that.

The feeling of RE2R would be different if everyone would know the only way to play the game would be to have to rely on Ink Ribbons to save the game.

It is very much different to play a game where you KNOW you can go back to the menu screen and make it easier than to play a game where you know can't go back to the menu screen and make it easier. There are countless of people who try the normal mode or even the hardest modes while feeling a sense of calmness because they know they can change the difficulty if things get too hard for them.

Well, that's exactly what mods are. They are an additional option that players have the possibility to fall back on when they get frustrated with the original experience.

So using all the logic you have been arguing for repeatedly, you should also be against the existence and use of mods.

 

[Airola]

It may not feel the same to them but people can feel sad and upset over anything silly thing, but that in itself is not a good reason to have to tolerate them and their feelings.

One of the silly things people can feel sad and upset about is that some game doesn't have an easy mode. Like, seriously, people are being sad and upset that progression in a game isn't easy. Should we also entertain the idea of having every Rubik's Cube out there to have a button that finishes three sides automatically? From now on Rubik's Cubes have to include this button so that people who can't solve the puzzle could solve the puzzle. Sure, it might make the Rubik's Cube feel less of a frustrating brain teaser, but who cares as long as more people can see it solved, right?

It's like when two babies each have an identical toy to play with but one of the babies cries because he wants the toy his brother has instead.

No, it's like two babies having a doll and the other wants to have the other doll but not the way it is but with another face painted in the back of the doll's head. The baby who originally had the doll should just ignore the new face in the back of the head. Just don't turn the doll around and it's just the same as it was before.

At the end of the day you can continue to free-climb up the mountain on the specific route you like - no one is taking that away from you - and others can take a helicopter or elevator up to the top if they want.

You still don't get it. That's exactly what I said too. But you are missing the point.

Let me try to explain it one more time.

Imagine two different times in world history. The other has a terrifying but mysterious mountain in a time where helicopters and elevators didn't even exist. That mountain had a certain type of feeling to it back then, when perhaps no-one had climbed it before. And back then the equipment to climb it were not as sophisticated as they are now.
Then there is that same mountain way further in the future where the equipment to climb are better and there are helicopters and elevators and all. The overall feeling of that mountain is now different.

The thing is that some developers want their games to evoke the feeling of that mountain back in history, and they want that be the entry level feeling every player would have.
And there are players who want to play a game that evokes that feeling. That feeling is not quite the same anymore if there was a portal that would make you jump to the future to the point in time where the mountain has been created more easily climbable. Yes, you don't have to go through that portal but the feeling of that mountain just wouldn't be the same if there was the knowledge of the mountain being easy to climb.

Now you would probably bring in the "but mods exist" argument. But what you don't understand is that in my analogy the portal has been there forever and it belongs to the mountain itself. In the "mod" scenario though the portal is mostly just an idea that isn't there yet but has to be brought in from somewhere. And most people wouldn't even know anything about the portal and even if they knew, they would have to have the knowledge in how and where to get it.

Besides, mods are mostly a thing for PCs. The mod argument shatters when we start to talk about the console versions.

Anyway, in short:
10,000 BC oceans were mysterious and super dangerous. Today they aren't even nearly that mysterious and dangerous. Some games want to give that experience of the ocean in the past rather than the ocean in present time. And by that experience I mean an experience that includes the impossibility to choose to make the ocean less dangerous. Those people didn't have a choice and in games not having that choice is a deliberately made part of the experience.

And this is even more true in digital mediums where there are infinite copies of an experience rather the limited space of physical real world mountain.

There are limited amount of developers and limited amount of different games. Let a few of these games be experiences where the lowest possible difficulty is hard. Why is that such a big problem?

Because I know people would like having that option.

And I know people would like to have an option to play a game where the game offers certain difficulty as its lowest difficulty. That option wouldn't be there if that game would offer lower difficulty.

If the ribbon system is only available in hard mode then I agree that that is a bad thing, and I would be in favour of allowing the ribbon system to be used on easy and normal modes too. Again, more options is a good thing.

What you stated is not an argument against difficulty options, but rather an argument against the bad implementation and lack of options.

Every single game has to draw a line somewhere in how many different options there is going to be. And often the lack of certain options is a deliberate decision that is part of the core of that game's design.

No, no, no.

This "don't have the developers do it" is a new and separate argument from everything you've been arguing prior.

What? People have asked for a built-in easy mode for all games and have claimed that a built-in easy mode wouldn't change the way people look at the normal mode in certain games. That is essentially the thing I disagree with. I have never said anything against mods or cheating by editing some text files. People can do whatever they want with the games they have bought. What people are asking for is that the games would have the things they achieve by modding and cheating already built in to the game. And that is what I am against. Not in every game out there, but in games that have been designed to give you a certain difficult experience. Just let those games be the way they are. You can already mod them and you can use other cheats. That's all fine and ok. But having the games to have those options built in and accessible from the menu screen, the presentation of the game you buy and load up for the first time is then different.

You have repeatedly argued that the mere existence of an easy mode devalues the experience and feeling of the other modes; that when someone knows they can just fall back on an easier mode they do not get the same sense of mystery and fear as when there is no other, easier way to progress.

Yes, it devalues the experience of certain games. Not all games, not even most games, but certain games. Am I wrong about it?

Well, that's exactly what mods are. They are an additional option that players have the possibility to fall back on when they get frustrated with the original experience.

So using all the logic you have been arguing for repeatedly, you should also be against the existence and use of mods.

It doesn't matter what a third party has made to change things. It doesn't matter what a player somewhere chooses to do with the game. But what matters is what the developers have chosen to do because that is what the game people buy will present to them when they first load the game up. When some Gary Gameplayer somewhere mods a character to have a giant head and the dexterity of a drunk person, and when playing the game with that mod even requires some extra downloads and possibly even manually editing some files, it is a completely different thing than the developers putting up an option to change the enemy the same way for every single copy of the game existing out there.

By your logic I should be against customers who recut the movies they bought in their own time if I would be against having a rule that says every physical horror movie should include a cut with most of the terrifying parts cut off even if that goes against what the director wants.

 

[June]

Should we also entertain the idea of having every Rubik's Cube out there to have a button that finishes three sides automatically? From now on Rubik's Cubes have to include this button so that people who can't solve the puzzle could solve the puzzle. Sure, it might make the Rubik's Cube feel less of a frustrating brain teaser, but who cares as long as more people can see it solved, right?

If someone created a rubix cube with a solve button I literally couldn't care less.

No, it's like two babies having a doll and the other wants to have the other doll but not the way it is but with another face painted in the back of the doll's head. The baby who originally had the doll should just ignore the new face in the back of the head. Just don't turn the doll around and it's just the same as it was before.

It wouldn't be the same as it was before because the back of the head would be altered.

That is not analogous to having an additional, extra doll with a different face. Having more different dolls doesn't alter your own doll.

There are limited amount of developers and limited amount of different games. Let a few of these games be experiences where the lowest possible difficulty is hard. Why is that such a big problem?

Adding a few sliders for movement speed and damage and health would take very little effort yet benefit many people. Why is that such a big problem?

And I know people would like to have an option to play a game where the game offers certain difficulty as its lowest difficulty. That option wouldn't be there if that game would offer lower difficulty.

Opinions!

Yes, it devalues the experience of certain games. Not all games, not even most games, but certain games. Am I wrong about it?

People can feel options devalue a game just like people can feel the existence of vanilla devalues their experience of chocolate. That doesn't mean their feelings are rational or should be supported and adhered to.

It doesn't matter what a third party has made to change things. It doesn't matter what a player somewhere chooses to do with the game. But what matters is what the developers have chosen to do because that is what the game people buy will present to them when they first load the game up.

You have repeatedly argued that the mere existence of difficulty options devalues and lessens the original experience. Well, mods are options.

You are contradicting yourself.

By your logic I should be against customers who recut the movies they bought in their own time if I would be against having a rule that says every physical horror movie should include a cut with most of the terrifying parts cut off even if that goes against what the director wants.

If you argued that the mere existence of recuts devalues the original cut - as you have repeatedly done for difficulty options in games - then yes, you would be opposed to recuts.

 

[zenspider]

If someone created a rubix cube with a solve button I literally couldn't care less.



It wouldn't be the same as it was before because the back of the head would be altered.

That is not analogous to having an additional, extra doll with a different face. Having more different dolls doesn't alter your own doll.



Adding a few sliders for movement speed and damage and health would take very little effort yet benefit many people. Why is that such a big problem?



Opinions!



People can feel options devalue a game just like people can feel the existence of vanilla devalues their experience of chocolate. That doesn't mean their feelings are rational or should be supported and adhered to.



You have repeatedly argued that the mere existence of difficulty options devalues and lessens the original experience. Well, mods are options.

You are contradicting yourself.



If you argued that the mere existence of recuts devalues the original cut - as you have repeatedly done for difficulty options in games - then yes, you would be opposed to recuts.

Charitably, mods would be akin to "house rules" and not outright cheating.
It's a less fun analogy for you and Airola 's back and forth, but let's use Monopoly's Free Parking as an example. Airola is not against people using this house rule - most do - but against that fact they do to insist Parker Brothers include it as an optional way to play.

Now my take on it is a bit more stand-offish. I think that it's important to delineate that those who are playing house rules understand they are not playing the game as intended. You're free to do so, and I hope all those families are having fun, but you're not playing Monopoly properly.

 

[June]

Airola is not against people using this house rule - most do - but against that fact they do to insist Parker Brothers include it as an optional way to play.

This is just not accurate. Just like they are against the existence of difficulty options, they would also be against the existence of 'house rules', because they have repeatedly made the argument that the mere existence of options devalues the original experience and alters the game's "aura".

Let me pull up relevant quotes of theirs again:

The mere existence of it makes the games feel "lesser" than what they originally were. [...] The possibility changes the "aura" of the games.

I mean, for many players the idea of certain games is that they are completely locked out of being able to make the game easier. Not even a chance to reset the game and choose lower difficulty. And that gives the game a certain feel to it as opposed to a game where you haven't been locked out from doing that.

It is very much different to play a game where you KNOW you can go back to the menu screen and make it easier than to play a game where you know can't go back to the menu screen and make it easier. There are countless of people who try the normal mode or even the hardest modes while feeling a sense of calmness because they know they can change the difficulty if things get too hard for them.

And following their logic, they must also be against the existence and possibility to use mods.

I think that it's important to delineate that those who are playing house rules understand they are not playing the game as intended. You're free to do so, and I hope all those families are having fun, but you're not playing Monopoly properly.

That's fine. The devs can even put a warning saying that you are altering the intended experience - in fact many games already do this, as they label one specific difficulty mode as the intended experience. Heck the devs can call it 'cheat options' if they want.

People don't really care. People just want to enjoy the game in their own way and have the options available to enable that.

 

[zenspider]

This is just not accurate. Just like they are against the existence of difficulty options, they would also be against the existence of 'house rules', because they have repeatedly made the argument that the mere existence of options devalues the original experience and alters the game's "aura".

Let me pull up relevant quotes of theirs again:







And following their logic, they must also be against the existence and possibility to use mods.



That's fine. The devs can even put a warning saying that you are altering the intended experience - in fact many games already do this, as they label one specific difficulty mode as the intended experience. Heck the devs can call it 'cheat options' if they want.

People don't really care. People just want to enjoy the game in their own way and have the options available to enable that.

I see your point, but let's see what Airola has to say about it. Do you think mods can be categorized like 'house rules' - an unofficial way to play, but still "in the spirit" of the game?

To be clear, I am in the 'git gud' camp insofar as 1) I think generally difficulty options are poor game design, 2) I don't think a game designer should be under any obligation to make their games inclusive; inclusivity and accessibility -which I am 100 percent for whenever possible - are two distinict things, and 3) I do think an intrinsic 'easy mode' diminishes the integrity of the game, thus the experience for sporting gamers - it's a positive argument for exclusivity.

Edit: I'm all for people enjoying videogames themselves however they want, but when it comes down to coming together to discuss them and converge on ideas, people not playing the game as intended really need to qualify that, not defend it as 'proper'. You wouldn't want to delve into a book discussion with someone who read the Cliff Notes.

 

[Airola]

If someone created a rubix cube with a solve button I literally couldn't care less.

No, it's not about someone solving the game. It's about the presentation of the game.
I don't care if someone would disassemble the cube and move the pieces around and put it back together. That's not the point I'm making at all.
The point is that Rubik's Cube wouldn't have the same sense of tough obstacle at its initial state of existence.

The presentation of a mountain where it's nearly impossible to get to the top changes completely when you add the option to use an elevator or a helicopter to get to the top.
Sure, if that option exists, use that option. But it's about the presentation. The presentation clearly changes. And in games the presentation changes every time you add options. And in certain games the presentation is that there is no easy way out at all available from within the finished product. And in those games adding easy mode changes that presentation completely.

It wouldn't be the same as it was before because the back of the head would be altered.

That is not analogous to having an additional, extra doll with a different face. Having more different dolls doesn't alter your own doll.

Your example works as an analogue to mods, but not as an analogue to a finished game with set rules.

Adding a few sliders for movement speed and damage and health would take very little effort yet benefit many people. Why is that such a big problem?

As you don't believe the existence of those sliders would ever make the game feel different even to the people who might never use them, I understand why this is your opinion.

Opinions!

Sure.

People can feel options devalue a game just like people can feel the existence of vanilla devalues their experience of chocolate. That doesn't mean their feelings are rational or should be supported and adhered to.

And people can feel them not being able to finish a game devalues their experience. That doesn't mean their feelings are rational. I will always support people getting enjoyment of games where they might not even get further than the first boss.

I think it's generally better to both enjoy games you know you can finish and games you don't know you can finish. The latter games are much more rare than the former and it would be a sad thing if some general rule would make all games have the option to make the game something everyone knows would help them beat it by just activating the choice in the menu screen. I think the world of video games is much richer when it has its Sekiros and La-Mulanas and I Wanna Be the Guys and Super Meat Boys along with games that offer the option to make them easy to beat.

And I have to note this again: I'm not a fan of From Software games in the sense that I would buy them. I love the IDEA of them but I don't like to play them because I don't generally like many modern 3rd person games (or even 1st person games). I'm not asking for options to make the game mechanisms more likeable for me. I just don't play the games. It's that simple. I will never buy Sekiro and I will never buy Bloodborne. But I really really REALLY love the idea of them and I understand people who love the idea that these games have a set difficulty as the lowest difficulty and that difficulty is not moving an inch lower than that. And I really understand the philosophy of the developers too. And I root for them to stay with that philosophy and not ever cave in when people require them to change their philosophy.

You have repeatedly argued that the mere existence of difficulty options devalues and lessens the original experience. Well, mods are options.

You are contradicting yourself.

Mods are options not available in the base game. It's not as if the modding possibility comes along with buying the game straight from the game itself.

If you argued that the mere existence of recuts devalues the original cut - as you have repeatedly done for difficulty options in games - then yes, you would be opposed to recuts.

No, you haven't understood what I've meant at all. It's very clear by now.

This is just not accurate. Just like they are against the existence of difficulty options, they would also be against the existence of 'house rules', because they have repeatedly made the argument that the mere existence of options devalues the original experience and alters the game's "aura".

No, you have not understood what I've meant.
zenspider was correct.

You don't see the difference between 3rd party cheats/options and 1st party cheats/options.

Basically you would be arguing that because non-canonical comics of some superhero exists, the creators of the superhero should add those non-canonical comics as optional things to read in his comic books. Or at the very least that non-canonical comics external of a canonical comic book is always exactly the same as non-canonical comic internal of a canonical comic.
This is not exactly the same thing but shows a bit what I mean.
Yeah, you can get those fan fiction comics somewhere else but that doesn't mean their place is in the original comic books. Sure that can be done, and maybe it even fits to certain comics, but does that inclusion fit to all comics out there, and should that inclusion be fit to all comics out there? Sure, maybe you would not care but that doesn't mean others wouldn't and that these choices should be made by your standards. And if you start to argue that the more players can enjoy the game the better it is, you are dead wrong. Resident Evil 5 and 6 are still the two best selling parts of the franchise. Clearly it seems more people would buy the game if they'd make these games more like what Resident Evil 6 was, but does that mean that's the direction they should take or is it better to try to take the franchise back to its roots even if they would lose part of their audience?

Adding an easy mode is fine for a lot of games. But then there are certain games that are targetted at a certain type of audience, and the developers love to do a game like that. Adding easy mode to, say, From Software games would mostly be an attempt to change the presentation of the game to get more buyers from a segment of people who never were interested in the original ideas and concepts in the first place. They would do that in expence of their core audience, the people who were interested in the game specifically because of the lack of difficulty options.

If you look at the history of Rogue (an ascii based procedurally generated RPG originally published in 1980). The creators intended to make it really hard. At first it was supposed to be beaten in one sitting, but the original playtesters wanted the game to have a save feature so that people wouldn't have to leave their computers on if they had to go somewhere and wanted to continue playing. So that's what they did. They added a save feature. Then some people started to abuse the saving system to ease their way out, but the developers responsed by making the game delete the save files upon loading a new game making the game be saveable but still have a permadeath system. It became a cult hit that is still loved by many, and the game influenced a ton of developers and their games. The harsh difficulty was one of its undeniable charms. The charm of the game would be lesser if it had the option to abuse the save system. It would become less interesting to people who loved it the way it was. Maybe some people coded that system in the game by themselves, but the base game that was circulated didn't have that option and that's how the game was to most of its players out there.
There are people who are looking for "roguelikes" that have the option to turn permadeath off, and lo and behold, there ARE other games that let you do that. Those players who want to have that experience can look it from other games. But there is still audience for games like that where that option is not available at all and a lot of the people who want easier experiences still understand that Rogue doesn't have to have that option. It can be what it is.

 

[eot]

Should "Getting Over It" have an easy mode? The intent of that game is to frustrate you, and making you frustrate yourself. Difficulty can be an integral part of the design, and it doesn't make sense to say things like "there's no excuse for every game not to have an easy mode". Complaining about the inclusion of difficulty modes is equally dumb, but that's a different thing, I'm not sure why Jim grouped the two.

 

[June]

I'm not asking for options to make the game mechanisms more likeable for me. I just don't play the games. It's that simple.

You can do what you like, that's your prerogative.

Other people do ask for these things though, because the addition of simple, basic, and reasonable options would allow them to enjoy the work more.

Using your "don't ask, don't play" logic would be like when games release without basic features such as inverted controls, adjustable camera sensitivity, or adjustable volume levels, and instead of supporting the act of providing feedback such as: "Hey I love so much about this game from the gameplay to the art style to the music, but I only use inverted controls so could they please be added?", you just say: "Whelp, no inverted controls! This game is clearly not for me! No point in playing it!"

Again, you can not ask if you want. But many people think this a perfectly reasonable piece of feedback.

Mods are options not available in the base game. It's not as if the modding possibility comes along with buying the game straight from the game itself.

Irrelevant.

You have repeatedly stated that the mere possibility and existence of changeable difficulties devalues the game. Which logically means you are against mods because, regardless of them being in the base game or not, they still exist and are options to use.

Either concede this point or change the arguments you previously made, if you want to be logical consistent. Because you are just explicitly wrong here.

Adding easy mode to, say, From Software games would mostly be an attempt to change the presentation of the game to get more buyers from a segment of people who never were interested in the original ideas and concepts in the first place.

Sekiro consists of many ideas and concepts that people are interested in. Just because they prefer a single thing to be altered does not mean they are not interested in the game as a whole.

Again, that is like saying a person who uses inverted controls was never interested in a game to begin with because the game does not offer that single option.

 

[tkscz]

Arcade games were also meant to be perpetual money-makers that players rarely owned. It’s worth noting that arcade games also had adjustable difficulty settings, which arcade operators could tinker with based on customer reaction. Finally, many arcade games from the Golden Age could not be “beaten”; they were quests for points, with either kill screens or score rollovers as close to “beating” them as players could ever get.

If you buy an arcade game, you can set the difficulty lower. You can set the game to Free Play. You can tinker with all kinds of settings to “beat” it or run up a ridiculous amount of points. And it doesn’t matter how you do it, because you spent your money on it, and it’s yours to play as you wish.

The gatekeeping and elitism among today’s video game players is fucking shitty, full stop. Nobody fucking owns this hobby, nor is there a designated arbiter to tell players how they should play and enjoy games. I don’t give a fuck what others think when I play through modern games on Easy. I have nobody to impress, no e-penis to grow and flaunt. If others want to play on higher difficulty settings, then good for them. It’s nice to have various options so that more people can play and— most importantly— enjoy games.

And lest we forget that these are fucking video games. Things that, once upon a time, were allowed to be fun things. Now it’s serious business. “Artistic vision”. “Git gud”. “If you’re not frustrated, it’s not rewarding when you succeed.”

Fuck all that. In a world where real life is frustrating enough, I don’t need to be more frustrated. I want to get away from that shit for awhile and just enjoy myself without wanting to snap a controller in two.

If developers don’t want to put easier difficulty settings into their games, fine. I won’t buy them. If marketing teams want to promote their games as being ball-bustingly difficult, fine. I won’t play them. It’s all about choice— and thanks to having tons of modern games to pick from and decades worth of games from the past to revisit, nothing major is lost if I decide to skip a few. These hard games— whether hard in reality or hard based on reputation— just aren’t my thing.

And that's fine, in fact, your view should be ideal. My issue comes with people who believe that these games HAVE to have an easy mode even if the devs don't want to add one. If they get an easy mod made by someone else, that's fine, get an easy mod, nothing wrong with that, but complaining that the devs gave to add and easy mode is just as elitest as those yelling git good. It's pure ignorance to not know these games have a reputation for being hard. If you are not enjoying the experience, then play something more enjoyable, that's fine. Take the game back, get your cash back and buy something else. If someone tries to be an elite prick, fuck'em. Let them have their elitest game, have fun your way.

 

[Danjin44]

Fuck all that. In a world where real life is frustrating enough, I don’t need to be more frustrated. I want to get away from that shit for awhile and just enjoy myself without wanting to snap a controller in two.

Easy, you can just buy the game that has easy difficulty option, there is 1000 of them.

Point here is not all game needs to cater to your needs, same way we have different type of gamers we also have different games for any type of gamer.

 

[somerset]

Critic 'hates' thing critic has to review but makes critic work 'hard' in order to complete review. Didn't see that one coming. Next you'll be telling me most well known critics take a pay-off from publishers to give their product a better review. Or that grass is green or the sky is blue.

Here's the thing. Understand the nature of critics and their biz. Take into account this nature, and process their reviews to remove the nonsense that simply flows from their business.

Most critics are bought off- sorry if you do not like this fact, but they are- all sectors of paid 'criticism'. When they are positive, you have an issue splitting the genuine applause from the paid. When they are negative, the same thinking in reverse applies.

Example in point the once excellent Youtube game critic best known by three letters. Then the adopaclypse happened and he, like so many others, lost the vast amoiunt of his direct Youtube ad income. Patreon didn't come close to replacing it. Suddenly he started loving and recommending every title from a *major* publisher. Most recently, and controversially his flat recommenation of troubled title World War Z. And his Xmas 'worst games' list where no-one had heard of any of his 'worst' titles, for he most certainly did not wish to burn bridges with any of the major publishers by trashing a big well known game. But he wants to continue being a full time critic - so what choice does he have?

Every critic will say "I'm honest". That's meaningless. Someone has to pay the pro-critic's salary. Even if a critic can be fan sponsored, that critic needs to please his fan base. The now gone period where Youtubers could make good money from ads without having a direct relationship with the advertisers themselves was a rare golden age when the need for critics to please a paymaster was missing.

A 'hard' game can be safely taken by peeps like 'Jim' as 'minority' appeal. So he can pitch to people who won't play the game to justify his own laziness- a laziness exasperated by an aging gamer for whom reaction based games are far more of a pain now.

Worse is vile bile like the word 'elitism'. This is a disgusting term when misused, as in the case of Shadows die Twice. It plays to the unwashed and implies that everything made must be made for everyone. A logical fallacy that plays well with the hard of thinking in order to rally the pitchfork and torches crowd.

Should a ballet have a comedy and slapstick section for people who do not like ballet? I mean I don't like ballet, but there's other things on a stage I might like. Do I have the right to call ballet 'elitist', measure its audience and then say the audience could be bigger if non-ballet elements were added?

Ah, but the disingeneous trouble-makers will say "forcing slapstick into a ballet performance would spoil the ballet for everyone, but an 'optional' easy mode in a game could be ignored by the regular player". Sounds like a 'reasonable' argument to the hard of thinking- but let's destroy that dishonesty. The aforementioned Ballet can be released on DVD, of course. And DVD allows 'branching' playback where one can introduce 'optional' content into any video stream. So I can insert that 'slapstick' into the ballet, and still allow the purist to watch just the pure version. Is this an argument for placing scenes of unwanted comedy into a ballet performance? Of course not. Should a novel with a 'sad' ending be forced to have an optional 'happy' ending that can be optionally read like one of those "make your own story" game books?

There is such a thing as 'artistic vision'. And Shadows die Twice has devs with such a vision. If they were forced to put an easy mode in- an act explained by making the game more 'accessible'- the logical assumption is that the greater potential audience would be for the 'accessible' version. Meaning that next time, the publsiher would, for commercial reasons, force the devs to focus on the 'accessible' mode from day one, and kill the unpopular 'hard' mode. Just as Epic gave the world the thoroughly dreadful corridor and cover shooters in Gears of War, that Epic's owner unabashedly described as dumbed down gaming for the biggest audience possible. Lowest common denominator gaming that measures success by one metric- total number of users.

Should horrible mainstream titles like Transformers (in the cinema) or Gears of War (on the Xbox) exist? Of course, and their profits pay for a lot of other stuff. Should specialist titles like Shadows die Twice be forced to include mainstream dumbed down modes - absoluetly not. Should we be tolerant of attacks on Shadows or ballet or other specialist works of art using 'elitism' as the rallying cry? I hope everyone knows this answer.

PS I 'cheat' in Shadows using a 'trainer' and can only enjoy the game this way. But conceptually this is no difference from pausing that ballet half way thru, watching an episode of a favourite sitcom, then getting back to the rest of the ballet. Or giving up on a novel before the end. As a user my own actions do not impact the artistic vision of the creator- or end up interfering with the future relationship between the creator and publisher. What I choose to do with my agency is of me. What we force the artist/creator to do impacts their agency- their freedom.

Jim could have downloaded a trainer, finished Shadows, then joked in his review that old geezers like him are going to have to increasing rely on artificial aids. A pleasant Human way to handle his work dilemma. Instead he chose the "all about me" approach, and I lost all interest in his future works.

 

[Airola]

You can do what you like, that's your prerogative.

Other people do ask for these things though, because the addition of simple, basic, and reasonable options would allow them to enjoy the work more.

Using your "don't ask, don't play" logic would be like when games release without basic features such as inverted controls, adjustable camera sensitivity, or adjustable volume levels, and instead of supporting the act of providing feedback such as: "Hey I love so much about this game from the gameplay to the art style to the music, but I only use inverted controls so could they please be added?", you just say: "Whelp, no inverted controls! This game is clearly not for me! No point in playing it!"

Again, you can not ask if you want. But many people think this a perfectly reasonable piece of feedback.

Are there games where their major point in their design is to specifically have inverted controls and where the players are specifically enjoying the game because it has been designed with inverted controls in mind? No.

You comparing this to inverted controls and camera sensitivity shows you don't have the slightest clue what people are talking about when they are defending the developers' choice to not include easier difficulty options. You are attacking arguments no-one has made.

Irrelevant.

You have repeatedly stated that the mere possibility and existence of changeable difficulties devalues the game. Which logically means you are against mods because, regardless of them being in the base game or not, they still exist and are options to use.

Either concede this point or change the arguments you previously made, if you want to be logical consistent. Because you are just explicitly wrong here.

If you didn't get the point that this is about the choices in the base game without any 3rd party tampering earlier, it should be 100% clear to you now as I have said it several times when you and others have brought up the mod issue. I have said it already in other threads and I have said it in this thread. The context for my claims have always been all about what the developers have made the game to be, and not about whatever tricks different individuals might create for the community to download.

And I have also said it applies to some games, not all. I have been clear with that in both this and previous threads about this subject. Some arcade racer could very much benefit from having all kinds of difficulty options but some hardcore driving simulator might be more appealing when it's lowest possible difficulty is more than what an arcade racer would have. And that doesn't mean someone couldn't make a game where you can choose between hyper realistic simulation and super breezy and easy arcade style racing, but there can be games where the point is to learn to do things the hard way no questions asked, and that can be the main appeal to a lot of players out there.

An option that is already in the game that you buy and load for the first time is very much different than an option some individual creates and has it available to be downloaded from some external 3rd party website. The first options are available for everyone immediately and designed to the game by the developers and are part of the official set of rules (a rule can be that you can make the enemies easier by choosing something from the main menu). The 3rd party options are not immediately available when you load the game and are not designed by the developers and are not part of the official set of rules, and most players will never even know the existence of those mods and don't care to know their existence. If you really can't see the difference between these two types of options I don't know what to tell you...

Sekiro consists of many ideas and concepts that people are interested in. Just because they prefer a single thing to be altered does not mean they are not interested in the game as a whole.

Again, that is like saying a person who uses inverted controls was never interested in a game to begin with because the game does not offer that single option.

Maybe someone makes another game with those concepts and ideas that has these difficulty settings. Maybe they don't. This game exists the way it exists and no-one stops anyone from playing it. And if you want to make it easier, go ahead and use whatever cheats and mods you like. The game is what it is, and it pleases its core audience in ways you clearly don't just understand.

That one "single thing" that would be altered just happens to be something in the deepest core of the game's design and presentation. It's not even remotely comparable to some volume level adjustments and options to choose inverted controls. The fact that you see them as comparable shows you don't understand the issue at all. You don't understand the design philosophy of these games and you don't understand the core audience for these games, yet you think your views on what should be changed or added to the game is the correct thing to do.

You have three easy options you can do:
1) Play the game by its rules.
2) Use 3rd party software or cheats to make it easier for you.
3) Don't play the game.

Just because a game's set rules and presentation aren't to your liking doesn't mean they should be changed to your liking, especially if those are very much liked by both the developers and a huge amount of fans. And yes, adding the option to make the game easier changes the rules and the presentation even if someone will never use the easier options. You can also always learn to like playing a game you might not be ever able to beat. That's the only thing that seems to be stopping you and some others from being able to enjoy the game.

Most mainstream high budget games already have these options to make the games easier. I can't understand why people demand the rare small percentage of all games out there to be like everything else what comes to difficulty options. There are people who especially enjoy these types of games. Let them have their excitement with those games the way the games are.

 

[Airola]

Worse is vile bile like the word 'elitism'. This is a disgusting term when misused, as in the case of Shadows die Twice. It plays to the unwashed and implies that everything made must be made for everyone. A logical fallacy that plays well with the hard of thinking in order to rally the pitchfork and torches crowd.

Should a ballet have a comedy and slapstick section for people who do not like ballet? I mean I don't like ballet, but there's other things on a stage I might like. Do I have the right to call ballet 'elitist', measure its audience and then say the audience could be bigger if non-ballet elements were added?

Yeah, this whole "elitism" thing puzzles me to no end.
What people are trying to aim with that? To make people think "oh no, I don't want to be an elitist so I guess I have to change my opinion"?
What if someone says "ok, I am an elitist", now what? What is the argument now? Is the argument that if someone is an elitist he can't be right?

It's nothing more than a stupid way to use an -ism to try to make someone feel bad about their arguments. It has nothing to do with any actual argument but is just all about trying to make the other side feel guilty about themselves and somehow "win" the argument with that.

 

[tassletine]

Fair, but patience is a skill and virtue in its own right .

You're not wrong. Patience should be rewarded.

However I feel that Miyazaki should maybe have playtested this on people who have jobs if they wanted to reach a broader audience. Instead I feel, he's pushing From back into a niche.

I understand that most videogames are aimed towards a teenage male audience but I don't think it would be difficult to make a game like this a little more accessible.
I'm not saying making it easier per se. Just make sure that your game isn't wasting peoples time, that the mechanics work and flow into each other, the frame rate is solid etc. And please don't smother your game with systems that deliberately confuse the player and waste their time (ie: hidden aid).

 

[tassletine]

Yeah, this whole "elitism" thing puzzles me to no end.
What people are trying to aim with that? To make people think "oh no, I don't want to be an elitist so I guess I have to change my opinion"?
What if someone says "ok, I am an elitist", now what? What is the argument now? Is the argument that if someone is an elitist he can't be right?

It's nothing more than a stupid way to use an -ism to try to make someone feel bad about their arguments. It has nothing to do with any actual argument but is just all about trying to make the other side feel guilty about themselves and somehow "win" the argument with that.

Not necessarily. If you take things personally then that will always be the case but here Elitism refers to the attitude of the Git Good crowd and the fact that more expensive machines run the console better.
I don't think that the term should be bandied around myself, but it's not inaccurate here. The Souls' fanbase is famously toxic.

 

[Panajev2001a]

You're not wrong. Patience should be rewarded.

However I feel that Miyazaki should maybe have playtested this on people who have jobs if they wanted to reach a broader audience. Instead I feel, he's pushing From back into a niche.

I understand that most videogames are aimed towards a teenage male audience but I don't think it would be difficult to make a game like this a little more accessible.
I'm not saying making it easier per se. Just make sure that your game isn't wasting peoples time, that the mechanics work and flow into each other, the frame rate is solid etc. And please don't smother your game with systems that deliberately confuse the player and waste their time (ie: hidden aid).

Possibly yes, games can and some should be designed for a wider audience... but some, nope they should not. I do not see gaming as just “entertainment”, but also as a kind of interactive puzzles / challenges where part of the fun is enduring and overcoming the challenge: for kids also it is a positive thing to be exposed to.

Experiencing challenge and yes even some frustration while playing a game and learning how it works in the pursuit of overcoming it and find enjoyment that way is not bad at all, more game’s should find their niche and be welcomed by gamers.

 

[tassletine]

Are there games where their major point in their design is to specifically have inverted controls and where the players are specifically enjoying the game because it has been designed with inverted controls in mind? No.

You comparing this to inverted controls and camera sensitivity shows you don't have the slightest clue what people are talking about when they are defending the developers' choice to not include easier difficulty options. You are attacking arguments no-one has made.




If you didn't get the point that this is about the choices in the base game without any 3rd party tampering earlier, it should be 100% clear to you now as I have said it several times when you and others have brought up the mod issue. I have said it already in other threads and I have said it in this thread. The context for my claims have always been all about what the developers have made the game to be, and not about whatever tricks different individuals might create for the community to download.

And I have also said it applies to some games, not all. I have been clear with that in both this and previous threads about this subject. Some arcade racer could very much benefit from having all kinds of difficulty options but some hardcore driving simulator might be more appealing when it's lowest possible difficulty is more than what an arcade racer would have. And that doesn't mean someone couldn't make a game where you can choose between hyper realistic simulation and super breezy and easy arcade style racing, but there can be games where the point is to learn to do things the hard way no questions asked, and that can be the main appeal to a lot of players out there.

An option that is already in the game that you buy and load for the first time is very much different than an option some individual creates and has it available to be downloaded from some external 3rd party website. The first options are available for everyone immediately and designed to the game by the developers and are part of the official set of rules (a rule can be that you can make the enemies easier by choosing something from the main menu). The 3rd party options are not immediately available when you load the game and are not designed by the developers and are not part of the official set of rules, and most players will never even know the existence of those mods and don't care to know their existence. If you really can't see the difference between these two types of options I don't know what to tell you...



Maybe someone makes another game with those concepts and ideas that has these difficulty settings. Maybe they don't. This game exists the way it exists and no-one stops anyone from playing it. And if you want to make it easier, go ahead and use whatever cheats and mods you like. The game is what it is, and it pleases its core audience in ways you clearly don't just understand.

That one "single thing" that would be altered just happens to be something in the deepest core of the game's design and presentation. It's not even remotely comparable to some volume level adjustments and options to choose inverted controls. The fact that you see them as comparable shows you don't understand the issue at all. You don't understand the design philosophy of these games and you don't understand the core audience for these games, yet you think your views on what should be changed or added to the game is the correct thing to do.

You have three easy options you can do:
1) Play the game by its rules.
2) Use 3rd party software or cheats to make it easier for you.
3) Don't play the game.

Just because a game's set rules and presentation aren't to your liking doesn't mean they should be changed to your liking, especially if those are very much liked by both the developers and a huge amount of fans. And yes, adding the option to make the game easier changes the rules and the presentation even if someone will never use the easier options. You can also always learn to like playing a game you might not be ever able to beat. That's the only thing that seems to be stopping you and some others from being able to enjoy the game.

Most mainstream high budget games already have these options to make the games easier. I can't understand why people demand the rare small percentage of all games out there to be like everything else what comes to difficulty options. There are people who especially enjoy these types of games. Let them have their excitement with those games the way the games are.

I'm glad you like the game but when you talk about, altering the deepest core of the game, that doesn't make much sense here -- Mainly because From are well known for developing systems that don't really work properly. DS2 and 3 both had gameplay systems that were abandoned and Sekiro has one (hidden aid) that doesn't seem to affect gameplay in any meaningful way at all.

These are not games that aren't designed around one core mechanic but games that are sort of bolted together at the last minute. Miyazaki has said as much, and it certainly feels that way when you play them. They are usually pretty inconsistent. The best ones (Bloodborne) are less so.

Now, you may defend that as style, but to me it's poor workmanship.
Adding difficulty levels etc. might effect the core of the game for you, but I'd say since the majority of developers do and have managed to include difficulty levels in all their games, it really comes off as just being stubborn or lazy.

I should add that I don't really care if there is a difficulty level or not. I'm happy the way it is -- I just disagree with how you view the game (as a perfect, untinkerable work of art). There's a lot wrong here mechanically that could be fixed.

 

[tassletine]

Possibly yes, games can and some should be designed for a wider audience... but some, nope they should not. I do not see gaming as just “entertainment”, but also as a kind of interactive puzzles / challenges where part of the fun is enduring and overcoming the challenge: for kids also it is a positive thing to be exposed to.

Experiencing challenge and yes even some frustration while playing a game and learning how it works in the pursuit of overcoming it and find enjoyment that way is not bad at all, more game’s should find their niche and be welcomed by gamers.

I agree that some games should be niche, but this was commissioned by Activision and marketed as a AAA title. People tend to get annoyed if they go to a blockbuster and get an art film, it very rarely happens.

Having said that, I very much see games the way you do. The way I describe it is, games are like facing off against the diabolical mind of a fiend.
Monkey Ball was the best example of this for me, but Dark Souls is close.

 

[tassletine]

Should a ballet have a comedy and slapstick section for people who do not like ballet? I mean I don't like ballet, but there's other things on a stage I might like. Do I have the right to call ballet 'elitist', measure its audience and then say the audience could be bigger if non-ballet elements were added?

You should probably be aware that whilst you are deliberating whether or not Ballet is elitist, the establishment definitely thinks it is. And by that I mean the Audience, the performers, and the people who put it on. It's a considerable problem for ballet and one they have been dealing with for decades. Once you get into a niche it's hard to come back from that.

What people traditionally do is reinvent the form. That's how you got Rock and Roll from Blues, Rap from Poetry etc. There's really nothing wrong with that.

Since old art forms never die, the only real choice is with the developer and what sort of audience the developer wants to capture.
I thought they were going for a bigger audience here but it appears not. Growing and still maintaining your audience is the hardest thing to do.

 

[June]

Are there games where their major point in their design is to specifically have inverted controls and where the players are specifically enjoying the game because it has been designed with inverted controls in mind? No.

Hypothetically if it there was, would you be against people asking for the option of inverted controls?
If you want more practical examples then games have had gore and art style in their artistic vision yet devs included options to minimize blood and and chromatic aberration - because some people enjoy the experience more without those things.

If you didn't get the point that this is about the choices in the base game without any 3rd party tampering earlier, it should be 100% clear to you now as I have said it several times when you and others have brought up the mod issue.

Yes, you have said that.
You have also said the mere existence of options devalues the game.
Hence the contradiction.

If From added difficulty options in a patch how would you feel? Would you think it devalues the original game or it's now cool because the devs chose to do so?

You have three easy options you can do:
1) Play the game by its rules.
2) Use 3rd party software or cheats to make it easier for you.
3) Don't play the game.

4) Discuss your perspective to the devs and community and hope to get reasonable change enacted either in a patch or in future releases, as has been done in countless other games.
It's called feedback and criticism.

You can also always learn to like playing a game you might not be ever able to beat. That's the only thing that seems to be stopping you and some others from being able to enjoy the game.

No. I beat Bloodborne. That's not the problem for me.
The problem is I would have had more fun if there were difficulty options.

 

[Airola]

Not necessarily. If you take things personally then that will always be the case but here Elitism refers to the attitude of the Git Good crowd and the fact that more expensive machines run the console better.
I don't think that the term should be bandied around myself, but it's not inaccurate here. The Souls' fanbase is famously toxic.

I'm glad you like the game but when you talk about, altering the deepest core of the game, that doesn't make much sense here -- Mainly because From are well known for developing systems that don't really work properly. DS2 and 3 both had gameplay systems that were abandoned and Sekiro has one (hidden aid) that doesn't seem to affect gameplay in any meaningful way at all.

These are not games that aren't designed around one core mechanic but games that are sort of bolted together at the last minute. Miyazaki has said as much, and it certainly feels that way when you play them. They are usually pretty inconsistent. The best ones (Bloodborne) are less so.

Now, you may defend that as style, but to me it's poor workmanship.
Adding difficulty levels etc. might effect the core of the game for you, but I'd say since the majority of developers do and have managed to include difficulty levels in all their games, it really comes off as just being stubborn or lazy.

I should add that I don't really care if there is a difficulty level or not. I'm happy the way it is -- I just disagree with how you view the game (as a perfect, untinkerable work of art). There's a lot wrong here mechanically that could be fixed.

I haven't played Sekiro. I haven't played Demon's Souls. I haven't played Dark Souls 1 and 3. I haven't played Bloodborne.
I own Dark Souls 2 on Xbox360 but haven't played it on that, but I have it on Steam and have tested it a bit to know it's not a game for me, not because of the difficulty but because I just generally dislike and have very little interest to modern 3rd person and 1st person games. If I for some reason started to like modern games, I would definitely go for these games instead of, say, Assassin's Creeds or God of Wars.

I am not defending these games because I'm a fan of them or a fan of From Software. I am defending their philosophy what comes to difficulty based game design. I love the fact that these games exist even though I probably will not ever even buy them.

I have no idea what you mean about the mechanics of these games. I wouldn't call the lack of difficulty options as a mechanic of the game but it's more about the concept and the presentation and I think a huge part of these games, as it is with any deliberately hard game that have no options to make the difficulty lower than the initial normal mode, is that concept and the presentation. I Wanna Be The Guy or Battle Kid wouldn't be what they are if that concept was changed for them. Those are games that a lot of people have started to play because they know they are games with a certain difficulty as their lowest possible difficulty. Those were made by people who like that idea to people who like that idea.

I agree that some games should be niche, but this was commissioned by Activision and marketed as a AAA title. People tend to get annoyed if they go to a blockbuster and get an art film, it very rarely happens.

I'm sure Activision knew what they were paying for and Activision knew what they were marketing. It most certainly wasn't a surprise for them that this new game would be very hard for everyone.
I for one am very glad that Activision hasn't stepped in to force them to change the core idea of difficulty.

Back in the day Battletoad was sold with all other big NES titles. It was very close to if not the toughest game of the bunch. People bought it, people played it. Some hated it, some loved it. The Game Boy and the SNES Battletoads games were really hard too. Often one of the biggest if not the biggest reason to both love and hate was the difficulty. In any case this franchise became infamous for the difficulty and it has gained certain status because of that and is still fondly remembered so much that there is now a new Battletoads game coming. Now, it could be that this new game will have its easy modes and I would be somewhat disappointed if it did, but right now I believe one of the reasons why this franchise has been given new life is the existence and popularity of modern deliberately hard games such as From Software titles. I think they know there is now a market for very hard games.

What comes to getting an art film instead of a blockbuster, I think we could use someone like David Lynch as an example. His movies are very "artistic" and deeply layered with themes and plots that are very hard to understand and put into words, but his films are often also relatively easy to watch too as there is just enough regular entertainment in those films for people to still able to enjoy them. Those are movies that people might still be able to enjoy even if they would be expecting something else. For some it would even be a pleasant surprise to get something different for once.

Besides, what does AAA even mean? Couldn't there be AAA simulators? If there can, should they always have an arcade mode that makes them much more straightforward for people who can't get into more complex controls and game mechanics? I think you are looking at this AAA term more as a term for marketing instead of a term for the general production level. The way you mentioned this feels as if you would imply games should change when their creators become bigger and start to get bigger budgets for their games. Like, as if some big studio financing a game made by previously a smaller studio and the game getting an AAA tier budget and production would mean they would have to cater to bigger audience that go even beyond their core market. I see that as a big problem for movie industry too. There are indie film makers who do innovative and interesting stuff, and as soon as some big studio picks them up, the ideas start to get watered down in order to make those movies more in line with everything else that is currently the big thing. It's like as if it's ok for From Software to do their regular approach to games if they were smaller and didn't have that big of a production and marketing budget.

However, I see that you said you agree some games should be niche, but why couldn't even some AAA titles be first and foremost be catered to a niche audience? What if the developers and the producers are happy to break even and maybe get a bit of profit because they just enjoy the existence of that types of games? It's not as if the developers and studios should always try to aim for some GTA level of selling success. Sure they can aim for that but some developers and producers just don't even care to aim for that if it means they can still try to make the game they wanted to make in the first place.

 

[Airola]

Hypothetically if it there was, would you be against people asking for the option of inverted controls?
If you want more practical examples then games have had gore and art style in their artistic vision yet devs included options to minimize blood and and chromatic aberration - because some people enjoy the experience more without those things.

I can't see any idea that would depend upon that but if someone would come up with an idea like that, yeah, I would support their choice to not include another control option.

If the game's point and concept would really depend on deliberately having that gore in, I would defend the creator's choice to not add any blood level options in the game. Now if they want to go for a wider audience and they are willing to change that presentation in order to achieve that, sure, let them do it.

Yes, you have said that.
You have also said the mere existence of options devalues the game.
Hence the contradiction.

You should learn to read the context better then. Sometimes a thing that is said later brings context to what was said earlier, and sometimes it's the other way around.

If From added difficulty options in a patch how would you feel? Would you think it devalues the original game or it's now cool because the devs chose to do so?

I doubt they would ever do that. If they did, I would lose my interest in their renewed game philosophy. I would still be glad if they'd leave some of their earlier games to be the way they are but I wouldn't have this curiosity to their games anymore. Not that I would've bought them anyway since as I have said I don't play their games. But my general curiosity would drop.

I would be very very VERY disappointed if La-Mulana 3 was made and it had and easy mode to be chosen from the menu.

However, obviously all would also depend on what that mode would do. If that mode was made into a big enough of a joke as in if it would be an ironic and clever enough commentary on easy modes, yeah that could be acceptable. Then it would show the creators haven't completely lost their philosophy. Ninja Dog mode in Ninja Gaiden Black is a step in the right direction what comes to how easy modes should be implemented in otherwise deliberately hard games, but I would want it to be even more than that to not be disappointed.

I would maybe accept an easy mode where you would be given a completely new route where you would perhaps be able to see the regular game bosses from far away but couldn't go and fight them (or if you could they'd be as hard as they ever were). This way the easy mode would actually be a new experience also for people who play on regular or hard modes only and there would be an element that would make the regular mode and the developer intended playthrough more mysterious. Yeah, I would support that kind of an easy mode.

4) Discuss your perspective to the devs and community and hope to get reasonable change enacted either in a patch or in future releases, as has been done in countless other games.
It's called feedback and criticism.

Sure, that's ok too. I would just give you the heads up that it will be very unlikely for a developer known for making deliberately hard games to take a step to change that. They would probably just tweak the game in general and still leave the base game have a set difficulty for everyone. I could see them lowering the difficulty in the normal mode so that it would be the same for everyone instead of making an optional easy mode.

But sure, you can criticise whatever you want with any game you want and ask the developers to change whatever you want. Criticism in itself isn't ever a problem and I don't blame people who say some games are too hard and think that go against the game for them. Yeah I understand that completely. When people make claims that there is no way that "just an option" would make any difference to anything, then I'm going to chime in. That's a point that can be discussed and debated, as are claims that because thing X is already done in games A, B and C, then there would be no problems with implementing thing X also to game D.

No. I beat Bloodborne. That's not the problem for me.
The problem is I would have had more fun if there were difficulty options.

So it seems like you just don't get much enjoyment from struggling hard and beating the struggle. That's ok. But I hope you understand there are people who enjoy that. There are people who enjoy that even if they don't end up beating the struggle. And there are people who especially love trying to beat the struggle knowing the game doesn't offer any other easier way to do it. Note the word "trying" as some people don't need the struggle to be beaten as they enjoy the trying part enough.

Anyway, this was a fair point from you. But the question is that should the game be made to be more fun to you if it would then make it less fun and interesting to those who enjoy it as it is even if they won't be able to beat the game, and if it at the same time would make the game be a bit less of what the developers would want it to be? Here you can of course make the claim again that just an option in a game wouldn't make any difference, but then we'd be continuing to go in circles and I would bring up my cave analogies for the nth time in this forum.

 

[wzy]

Not necessarily. If you take things personally then that will always be the case but here Elitism refers to the attitude of the Git Good crowd and the fact that more expensive machines run the console better.
I don't think that the term should be bandied around myself, but it's not inaccurate here. The Souls' fanbase is famously toxic.

According to who? Because every single time I've asked for help with a FROM game, I've gotten great feedback, valuable advice, and lots of encouragement. What specifically does not fly with that crowd is idle bitching, ranting and raging, blaming the game, or protesting that your job, kids, whatever makes you too special to learn how to play a videogame in whatever time increments are available to you. And I'll let you in on a little secret: the only person who does like being griped at is fucking nobody. At best, your spouse or family tolerate it because they have no choice.

There is a particular species of souls poster that everyone knows about and has met a thousand times before, and who is entirely and deservedly unwelcome anywhere people are trying to discuss the game. This is the "I've had it and I just need to go yell on the internet" guy. Everyone knows this routine and the ego associated with it, they know its pointless to give this person any tips because they're too mad to listen anyway. They get told to "git gud", which is honestly a gentle, polite way of saying "go away".

Do you know who has never, not even once, been told to "git gud"? The guy who gives a detailed report on what is happening in the fight, what tactics he's tried, what specifically he's unclear about, and who asks answerable questions about patterns, items, and secrets that might help. That guy just gets help. "Get gud" is a phrase reserved for whiners, a group of people who are not wanted basically anywhere on planet Earth.

 

[Slings and Arrows]

Gaming is the only hobby or activity that I know of where people ask to make it easier to play.

Football? Nope. Gym? Nope. Art? Nope. Academics? Nope. Films? Nope.

So why do games have to get hammered all of the time. If you don't have the skill to play a game, then don't play it or get better.

Also, why are games difficult in the physical area (quick combos, move fast, avoid shit) but never in the mental arena (difficult puzzles etc.)?

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

Also, why are games difficult in the physical area (quick combos, move fast, avoid shit) but never in the mental arena (difficult puzzles etc.)?

Depends on what you mean by "in the mental arena". I think high-level play requires a lot of both. To use your examples of "difficult in the physical area":

quick combos

Yes, but which combos? Don't you have to observe the situation and consider what is the best option? This requires practice and intelligent thought to figure out. Combos are just tools. How you learn them and how you use them is the difficult part, and that is mostly mental, not physical.

move fast

Yes, but "move fast" in which direction? Do you have to dodge things as you move? Puzzling out how to navigate through a web of enemies is complicated and takes brainpower. Your ability to press the movement buttons accurately will play a small role, but your mental capacities are working overtime here.

avoid shit

Similar to above, "avoiding shit" requires you to have a basic grasp of enemy types and their attack patterns. You'll also have to figure out how the level geometry gets in your way. These kind of (often subconscious) calculations are 100% mental and 0% "physical", in the sense that using your reflexes to "raw dodge" is a poor way of tackling high-level play.

Maybe you're just playing the wrong games...

I agree with the rest of your post. For junior readers, we write children's books and easy chapterbooks. For junior sports players, we offer kids/junior leagues that have lower skill requirements. For junior artists, we have countless "Learn to Draw" books and countless classes available online or at a local school.

For junior gamers, we have tens of thousands of games catering to that market: Super Mario Bros series, Wii Sports, various match-three puzzle games, Minecraft, Fortnite, etc etc etc

If you are an experienced gamer, on the other hand, you are able to access some of the harder games, just like a more experienced reader could tackle longer books and a more experienced sports-player could play against more skilled opponents.

 

[synchronicity]

Gaming is the only hobby or activity that I know of where people ask to make it easier to play.

Football? Nope. Gym? Nope. Art? Nope. Academics? Nope. Films? Nope.

So why do games have to get hammered all of the time. If you don't have the skill to play a game, then don't play it or get better.

Also, why are games difficult in the physical area (quick combos, move fast, avoid shit) but never in the mental arena (difficult puzzles etc.)?

Because:

 

[Slings and Arrows]

...snip...

I agree with the rest of your post. For junior readers, we write children's books and easy chapterbooks. For junior sports players, we offer kids/junior leagues that have lower skill requirements. For junior artists, we have countless "Learn to Draw" books and countless classes available online or at a local school.

For junior gamers, we have tens of thousands of games catering to that market: Super Mario Bros series, Wii Sports, various match-three puzzle games, Minecraft, Fortnite, etc etc etc

If you are an experienced gamer, on the other hand, you are able to access some of the harder games, just like a more experienced reader could tackle longer books and a more experienced sports-player could play against more skilled opponents.

I think I didn't explain myself very well at the start of my previous post. All I was saying is that it seems easier to push physical skills of quick movement over mental thinking like a chess game (turn based combat games which involve thinking many moves ahead have largely died, with the odd exception).

Yeah fast moving, quick shooting games to require quick reactions and reflections (which die down as we get older. Is gaming ageist?) do require a quick mental processing speed.

The difference I mean though is quake twitch shooter, which is fast reaction, VS XCOM which is based on strategy and planning ahead (there might be a better example but that's all I can think of off of the top of my head)

 

[Slings and Arrows]

Because:

I don't follow? ELI5.

 

[synchronicity]

I don't follow? ELI5.

I was just in agreement that gamers demanding greater accessibility are entitled - thinking that all games / creations are duty-bound to cater to them specifically.

 

[tassletine]

According to who? Because every single time I've asked for help with a FROM game, I've gotten great feedback, valuable advice, and lots of encouragement. What specifically does not fly with that crowd is idle bitching, ranting and raging, blaming the game, or protesting that your job, kids, whatever makes you too special to learn how to play a videogame in whatever time increments are available to you. And I'll let you in on a little secret: the only person who does like being griped at is fucking nobody. At best, your spouse or family tolerate it because they have no choice.

There is a particular species of souls poster that everyone knows about and has met a thousand times before, and who is entirely and deservedly unwelcome anywhere people are trying to discuss the game. This is the "I've had it and I just need to go yell on the internet" guy. Everyone knows this routine and the ego associated with it, they know its pointless to give this person any tips because they're too mad to listen anyway. They get told to "git gud", which is honestly a gentle, polite way of saying "go away".

Do you know who has never, not even once, been told to "git gud"? The guy who gives a detailed report on what is happening in the fight, what tactics he's tried, what specifically he's unclear about, and who asks answerable questions about patterns, items, and secrets that might help. That guy just gets help. "Get gud" is a phrase reserved for whiners, a group of people who are not wanted basically anywhere on planet Earth.

Oh please. Git Good is famously antagonsing. That's literally what it's there for. Reddit ban you for it. There aren't that many games that have those sorts of memes attached to them.

What you don't like about my comments is that I enjoy the game and think it's good, but can still criticise it. What exactly is the problem with that?

I think the game is great, but for some reason that's not good enough -- instead you come here to offhandedly criticise personality which is frankly exactly what I expected. Case closed.

 

[tassletine]

I haven't played Sekiro. I haven't played Demon's Souls. I haven't played Dark Souls 1 and 3. I haven't played Bloodborne.
I own Dark Souls 2 on Xbox360 but haven't played it on that, but I have it on Steam and have tested it a bit to know it's not a game for me, not because of the difficulty but because I just generally dislike and have very little interest to modern 3rd person and 1st person games. If I for some reason started to like modern games, I would definitely go for these games instead of, say, Assassin's Creeds or God of Wars.

I am not defending these games because I'm a fan of them or a fan of From Software. I am defending their philosophy what comes to difficulty based game design. I love the fact that these games exist even though I probably will not ever even buy them.

I have no idea what you mean about the mechanics of these games. I wouldn't call the lack of difficulty options as a mechanic of the game but it's more about the concept and the presentation and I think a huge part of these games, as it is with any deliberately hard game that have no options to make the difficulty lower than the initial normal mode, is that concept and the presentation. I Wanna Be The Guy or Battle Kid wouldn't be what they are if that concept was changed for them. Those are games that a lot of people have started to play because they know they are games with a certain difficulty as their lowest possible difficulty. Those were made by people who like that idea to people who like that idea.



I'm sure Activision knew what they were paying for and Activision knew what they were marketing. It most certainly wasn't a surprise for them that this new game would be very hard for everyone.
I for one am very glad that Activision hasn't stepped in to force them to change the core idea of difficulty.

Back in the day Battletoad was sold with all other big NES titles. It was very close to if not the toughest game of the bunch. People bought it, people played it. Some hated it, some loved it. The Game Boy and the SNES Battletoads games were really hard too. Often one of the biggest if not the biggest reason to both love and hate was the difficulty. In any case this franchise became infamous for the difficulty and it has gained certain status because of that and is still fondly remembered so much that there is now a new Battletoads game coming. Now, it could be that this new game will have its easy modes and I would be somewhat disappointed if it did, but right now I believe one of the reasons why this franchise has been given new life is the existence and popularity of modern deliberately hard games such as From Software titles. I think they know there is now a market for very hard games.

What comes to getting an art film instead of a blockbuster, I think we could use someone like David Lynch as an example. His movies are very "artistic" and deeply layered with themes and plots that are very hard to understand and put into words, but his films are often also relatively easy to watch too as there is just enough regular entertainment in those films for people to still able to enjoy them. Those are movies that people might still be able to enjoy even if they would be expecting something else. For some it would even be a pleasant surprise to get something different for once.

Besides, what does AAA even mean? Couldn't there be AAA simulators? If there can, should they always have an arcade mode that makes them much more straightforward for people who can't get into more complex controls and game mechanics? I think you are looking at this AAA term more as a term for marketing instead of a term for the general production level. The way you mentioned this feels as if you would imply games should change when their creators become bigger and start to get bigger budgets for their games. Like, as if some big studio financing a game made by previously a smaller studio and the game getting an AAA tier budget and production would mean they would have to cater to bigger audience that go even beyond their core market. I see that as a big problem for movie industry too. There are indie film makers who do innovative and interesting stuff, and as soon as some big studio picks them up, the ideas start to get watered down in order to make those movies more in line with everything else that is currently the big thing. It's like as if it's ok for From Software to do their regular approach to games if they were smaller and didn't have that big of a production and marketing budget.

However, I see that you said you agree some games should be niche, but why couldn't even some AAA titles be first and foremost be catered to a niche audience? What if the developers and the producers are happy to break even and maybe get a bit of profit because they just enjoy the existence of that types of games? It's not as if the developers and studios should always try to aim for some GTA level of selling success. Sure they can aim for that but some developers and producers just don't even care to aim for that if it means they can still try to make the game they wanted to make in the first place.

Sorry you wrote so much, but I was mainly talking about the mechanics of the game, so what you're saying skirts around that.

I agree with most of what you've said. I don't think that From games should be made easier per se, but although I'm enjoying this title I think it's regressive in terms of gameplay and shouldn't be rated so highly. I'm glad everyone is having fun, but fun is very subjective. We all play bad games (as a guilty pleasure) that we know are fun. I play tons. Devils 3rd being my favourite.

I'm going to try and explain. A really GOOD game, a classic, is always open to multiple skill levels. The best example of this would be chess. A beginner can beat a grandmaster if the circumstances are right.

In sport this isn't the case as a physical advantage means that you get grouped together.

And this is what's happened here, because it's a niche game. It's aimed at a particular type of player. But I can't for the life of me work out why? There is literally nothing in the gameplay that prevents it from being made easier, unlike Dark Souls, so I wonder why they would do this?To get a certain type of emotion from the player? But that emotion can be found in titles with difficulty levels so that can't be it.

--

My frustration with this game mainly comes down to the fact that I initially played it on a base PS4, and the lag there, combined with my TV (which actually has a good refresh rate) made it impossible to play. There were also loads of bugs which annoyed me -- So I really don't think releasing a game in this state is good news when the game is already a time sink.

I swapped to PC. The bugs remained but I was a bit soured as I had to restart. Then I got to Genichiro (again) and realised that I was playing a rhyhm game -- And I really don't like those, or long boss battles.

This is one of the best I've played, and Kudos to From for making it fun, but the mechanics need to flow better in an action title I think. I've come across more roadblocks in this game than any title in recent memory. If you could get straight back into the fight I wouldn't mind, but I find the break in rhythm quite unbearable. And it should be noted that breaking rhythm or routine is a well known torture technique, so all in all the game often feels like I'm getting relief from torture rather than actually feeling accomplishment.

That's probably too harsh a crit though. It's a good game.

 

[tassletine]

Oh please. Git Good is famously antagonsing. That's literally what it's there for. Reddit ban you for it. There aren't that many games that have those sorts of memes attached to them.

What you don't like about my comments is that I enjoy the game and think it's good, but can still criticise it. What exactly is the problem with that?

I think the game is great, but for some reason that's not good enough -- instead you come here to offhandedly criticise personality, whilst all the time speaking as a 'From' community member.

This is frankly exactly what I expected. Not everyone who plays these games has such a judgmental and haughty attitude.