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Its important to note that Sekiro's world is tiny. You'll have seen most of it by the time you beat the Act One boss. To reach the true ending you have to traverse the same castle three times. The back half of the game is pretty much bosses back-to-back.
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Feb 23, 2020 16:57
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Orv posted:No I don't but I also wouldn't really compare pianists to playing even a technically complex video game either. I guess I just don't really get your viewpoint, but it's fine.
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Feb 23, 2020 17:08
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Why would you want an easier time playing a bad game Just play something else
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Feb 23, 2020 17:08
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StrixNebulosa posted:Based on how Dead Rising is based on a guy dying and retrying all the time, it relies on skill, knowledge of game mechanics, and picking the right equipment, I declare it to be a soulslike. Yeah, but dead rising is fun to play, it can’t be a soulslike. I honestly have no idea why soulslike games don’t work for me, on paper they should be Exactly My poo poo.
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Feb 23, 2020 17:20
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Ugly In The Morning posted:Yeah, but dead rising is fun to play, it can’t be a soulslike. 
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Feb 23, 2020 17:21
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Inspector Gesicht posted:Its important to note that Sekiro's world is tiny. You'll have seen most of it by the time you beat the Act One boss. To reach the true ending you have to traverse the same castle three times. The back half of the game is pretty much bosses back-to-back. Yeah this is what I meant. I was simultaneously stuck on knife grandma, seven spears, and cave sword guy. Grandma was in a different area but Seven Spears and Cave Guy are neighbors. I had already got all the benefit “exploring” could provide.
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Feb 23, 2020 17:21
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Volte posted:Because being punished for a mistake with "okay go back and start from the top" is the most infuriating poo poo when I'm trying to learn something. You think pianists learn complex pieces by only ever starting at the very beginning, and starting over every time they make a mistake? If it did have a no-fail mode then I'm all for a "recital" mode where you actually have to pull it off in one continuous session perfectly, but that's not the way I want to learn. play with your pianist however you want, it's your own business
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Feb 23, 2020 17:21
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I played so many games (probably majority of them, to be honest) where difficulty levels were a complete afterthought that either made the game too easy or impossibly hard that I'd rather every game was designed in exactly one way by the developer with as much effort put into it as possible. If I can't beat it I'd go and play something else. People saying making difficulty is simple/easy are being completely disingenuous because the only criteria they have is whether the result is beatable, not whether the result is actually a good game worth playing. And I'm saying this as someone who loves Soulslikes but dropped DS3 because of obnoxious "gotcha" difficulty later on, didn't finish Bloodborne because of getting fed up with the annoying phantoms and still to this day haven't beated Sekiro's last boss. I still enjoyed all 3 up to those points. Just play something else instead of harping on a dev who like to make certain type of game and they IMO do it well more often than not 
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Feb 23, 2020 17:31
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i want to phrase this as delicately as possible because i don't want it to sound like a criticism since it's not intended to be, but there's tons and tons of games out there which aren't very difficult, and there's tons and tons of games out there which are, and there's room enough in the gaming world for both to exist. games do not have to be all things for all people
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Feb 23, 2020 17:35
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I think it's fine for games to be hard, but I also think you could scale the Souls Experience and not lose anything. SMB it ain't.
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Feb 23, 2020 17:39
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Cowcaster posted:i want to phrase this as delicately as possible because i don't want it to sound like a criticism since it's not intended to be, but there's tons and tons of games out there which aren't very difficult, and there's tons and tons of games out there which are, and there's room enough in the gaming world for both to exist. games do not have to be all things for all people That's kind of where I'm at. Sure, having good difficulty selection in every game would be nice but I don't think it's a very big deal if a dev wants to focus their dev time balancing a single difficulty.
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Feb 23, 2020 17:40
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Look Sir Droids posted:Re: the game systems. This doesn’t totally cover your argument but that’s what Wikis are for. You'll have to bear with me because I'm literally playing through DS1 for the first time right now - pointedly not blind btw - so I can only really speak to that game in specific. Re: mechanics, obviously I don't think it's acceptable that so much of the game's mechanical underpinnings need to be explained via outside sources. Not that the game needs to provide every last mathematical formula for strength scaling or whatever in excruciating detail, but it does a poo poo job communicating so many things that players don't get enough info to make informed decisions about their build IMO. (Not that this is unique to Dark Souls by any stretch.) Hell, even as someone who is willing to just look stuff up and has already internalized a lot of it, I think it's lame that boss elemental resistances are basically trial and error beyond some obvious ones (Quelaag is immune to fire??  ).There's also the layer of the game above the raw mechanics. While it's only become more exacerbated by the game's inflated reputation and the dumb marketing, even taken in a vacuum the game struggles to get across what it really wants from the player. That aforementioned oppressive atmosphere + difficulty combo leads to players that are terrified of everything, especially dying. This creates a really awful feedback loop where they dump points into Vitality (or god forbid, Resistance) and ignore their offensive stat(s), turtling up behind the biggest shield possible and eight layers of heavy armor...which just leads to every fight becoming an endless slog. But that's just how Dark Souls is, right? Everyone knows the game's really hard! Oh wait, here comes SunBro420, totally naked and swinging a giant fuckoff tree trunk around killing bosses in three hits because he read the wiki first. In short, the gap created by the system mastery is insanely large and the fact that it can supersede actual skilled play in a lot of cases is lame. As for grinding, ehhh. DS1 has a pretty clear cut intended route, and while it's possible to subvert it those alternate paths also tend to terminate in yet more bosses or other tough challenges. If exploring those paths carries the exact same risk of losing my souls to a bad fight (even against basic enemies!), then why not just safely grind a big pile of souls from weak enemies until I can level to my liking? Granted, those alternate paths can have some nice items that can help turn a playthrough around, but it's impossible to know what they are or their relative importance. I can back off from mashing my face into Capra Demon and go noodle around in Darkroot and oh hey the Grass Crest Shield....but is extra stamina regen going to make the difference in the fight? Who knows. Whereas obviously stuffing more points into Vitality will absolutely make me die less and the game easier, right?
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Feb 23, 2020 17:46
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Hi thread! What are your: A) Favorite coop games (split screen or online) B) Games you’d recommend to give a newer gamer a flavor of why gaming is fun
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Feb 23, 2020 17:50
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lordfrikk posted:I played so many games (probably majority of them, to be honest) where difficulty levels were a complete afterthought that either made the game too easy or impossibly hard that I'd rather every game was designed in exactly one way by the developer with as much effort put into it as possible. If I can't beat it I'd go and play something else. I look at it in terms of Witcher 3. No one should get hung up on making that game hard or “balanced” because the combat isn’t the best part of the game. If Hard is preventing you from getting to the end, it’s extremely valuable you can turn that down to walking sim mode so you can experience it all. Witcher 3 could exist without combat at all. A game that exists primarily or solely for difficulty in terms of physical dexterity or hand eye coordination is kind of a waste. Tuning difficulty is a lot smaller portion of development than world building, art direction, or story. Why wall off most players from the latter three? What is gained? Why not dispense with story and a world and just make a boss rush game?
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Feb 23, 2020 17:52
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Fifteen of Many posted:Hi thread! What are your: Portal! Both of them! Only one is co-op but they are basically perfect experiences.
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Feb 23, 2020 17:54
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I think all the Souls games except Dark Souls 3 are pretty much perfect in their difficulty (and even then, DS3's problem isn't its difficulty per se, it's just that it there's not much going for it other than the difficulty and general combat). Bloodborne has some harsh poo poo but the rally system is perfect for letting you take a hit without it necessarily being an error. Sekiro is the only Souls-era From game (I hesitate to call it a proper Souls game) that I never really felt engaged with. I really, really wanted to like it, but I just kind of barely got through it and never really felt the need to play it again. Again, the difficulty of the combat is not the problem, it's the inherent friction in learning the combat. There is a huge difference between those two things. "It's too hard" doesn't necessarily mean "I'm not physically capable of this" or "the enemies need to do less damage" - it could also mean "I think I could be, and want to be, good enough to pull this off but the game isn't doing me any favours in helping me learn and I'm having trouble mustering the will to overcome the friction". That's the boat I'm in. edit: I've seen Hugo Martin talk about this concept a lot in promo stuff about Doom Eternal and it really sounds like he gets it, so I'm looking forward to that. Even if Nightmare difficulty needs insane technical mastery, as long as I have the ability to work my way up to that point, I feel like I could do it. But if Nightmare were the only difficulty, I probably would never bother in the first place.
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Feb 23, 2020 17:54
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Volte posted:For context, do you play piano yourself? I made the comparison because from my viewpoint there's like almost no difference in terms of the mental processes involved. I'm not a wizard on the piano (or the game controller), but once you have the basic grasp of the instrument or controller—once you can play piano (or video games) enough that your fingers go where you need them to without thinking about each individual finger—the learning process comes down to figuring out where to go, when to go there, and what it feels like when you're going there. Identifying flaws and mistakes, and what it feels like to make those mistakes, is also part of the process. The problem I see is that in a game like Sekiro you never have the chance to make a mistake without being punished harshly for it. In other words, Sekiro is the piano teacher with the ruler waiting to rap your knuckles, and I'm the piano student for whom that tactic makes me hate the piano and the teacher. I just want a chance to sit and play, even if I'm getting booed the whole time. I feel you're kinda missing the (presumed) intent behind the boss fights in Souls games. A big component (at least for me) is the escalation of tension as I approach victory in the boss fights; am I down to a couple healing items and the boss is down to 30%, I'm so close? Do I take one or two extra, high-risk swings to finish the fight, or do I back off to regroup and hope that I don't botch that? Am I sitting more upright, are my hands starting to grip the controller tighter and tighter? Is there catharsis/relief when I do succeed? That's the goal of the game, to bring the player to that state, to get you to blurt out "go gently caress yourself I win" when you finally bring down Ancient Ape or Knifey Wolf. Your piano comparison would be like practicing and learning for a make or break performance, rather than open mic night at the local coffee shop. You're supposed to have heightened emotions because of the context of the performance. It's supposed to matter, and you're asking for a different game when you ask it to not matter. And, to echo others, that doesn't mean that more options can't be built in so more players can experience that tension state, or that From et al are perfect design gods who never have flaws or cheap shots or fights where you look up some gimmick on a wiki to cheese the fight because the "correct" way is loving absurd. I get it, I'm 41, my reflexes are just not there any longer. I will never finish Sekiro even though I'm at the last boss (plus final two optional bosses) - I just can't do it, and beating the final boss will not provide me with more gameplay content. If there was a mechanism that solved those roadblocks besides "git gud" and grinding out attack boosts, I would have. From could take a cue from The Surge series and tone down the bosses some but add incentives for taking a more challenging approach to a boss fight. Or Nioh with encouraging item use through regenerating consumables on death. Or they could just have hidden multipliers where every death slowly increases your damage and defense, and at the end of the game if you died too much your rank title is "Shinobi Hamster". Or even just added checkpoints to some of the bosses since they heavily operate on phases.
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Feb 23, 2020 17:57
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I haven't done much with Steam for several years aside from buying like 2 games and enter codes to get lots of free games. I found Satellite Reign in my library and it looks pretty cool? I played through the tutorial until I got my fourth dude, but had to call it a day. What do folks think about this game? Can you sell me on it?
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Feb 23, 2020 17:57
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John Murdoch posted:You'll have to bear with me because I'm literally playing through DS1 for the first time right now - pointedly not blind btw - so I can only really speak to that game in specific. I don’t disagree with you. I just mean that Wikis exist. If they didn’t, Dark Souls wouldn’t be near what it is today. As for grinding and exploring, the paths terminate in bosses but each branch has a lot of items that you can experiment with. So the game isn’t all about beating bosses.
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Feb 23, 2020 17:59
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Wildtortilla posted:I haven't done much with Steam for several years aside from buying like 2 games and enter codes to get lots of free games. I found Satellite Reign in my library and it looks pretty cool? I played through the tutorial until I got my fourth dude, but had to call it a day. What do folks think about this game? Can you sell me on it? I enjoyed it a lot more after I found the hack that lets you pause it and give orders while paused.
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Feb 23, 2020 17:59
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Wildtortilla posted:I haven't done much with Steam for several years aside from buying like 2 games and enter codes to get lots of free games. I found Satellite Reign in my library and it looks pretty cool? I played through the tutorial until I got my fourth dude, but had to call it a day. What do folks think about this game? Can you sell me on it? Imagine meticulously observing enemy patrol routes and behaviors to help you guide your people into a labyrinthine corporate complex. Imagine as soon as you slip in through a back door, climb to a roof, and zipline to another one to stay out of sight, the AI magically decides that security's new patrol route involves climbing a roof and ziplining to yours.
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Feb 23, 2020 18:01
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StrixNebulosa posted:I enjoyed it a lot more after I found the hack that lets you pause it and give orders while paused. I thought it was going to be more like XCOM when I started, but quickly found it's more like those old Commandos games cause everything is in real time. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but we'll see. For now I need to figure out how to rebind the controls to get camera movement and rotation on WSAD and QE, respectively. Camera movement on the arrow keys is rookie level controls.
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Feb 23, 2020 18:01
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as an example (and i know it's not a perfect one), i wouldn't expect a zachtronics game to add in easy versions of it's puzzles
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Feb 23, 2020 18:02
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Zachack posted:I feel you're kinda missing the (presumed) intent behind the boss fights in Souls games. A big component (at least for me) is the escalation of tension as I approach victory in the boss fights; am I down to a couple healing items and the boss is down to 30%, I'm so close? Do I take one or two extra, high-risk swings to finish the fight, or do I back off to regroup and hope that I don't botch that? Am I sitting more upright, are my hands starting to grip the controller tighter and tighter? Is there catharsis/relief when I do succeed? That's the goal of the game, to bring the player to that state, to get you to blurt out "go gently caress yourself I win" when you finally bring down Ancient Ape or Knifey Wolf.
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Feb 23, 2020 18:06
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Cowcaster posted:i want to phrase this as delicately as possible because i don't want it to sound like a criticism since it's not intended to be, but there's tons and tons of games out there which aren't very difficult, and there's tons and tons of games out there which are, and there's room enough in the gaming world for both to exist. games do not have to be all things for all people Movies are allowed to be challenging, books are allowed to be difficult, music is allowed to be obscure and abrasive. I've never understood the sentiment and obsession that all video games need to be accessible. I can't imagine anyone claiming that more esoteric rappers like billy woods or aesop rock need to dumb down their lyrics or explain their references or hardcore punk bands would need to tone down their political content or play less abrasive to attract more people. The soulsborne games clearly sell well enough that they dont need to attract a wider audience that dont appreciate what they are doing and its totally ok to dislike them, steam has a 2 hour refund window and that should give people plenty of time to decide whether or not these games are for them. Frankly its classic gamer entitlement that makes people demand an easier setting, if fromsoft wanted to do it I wouldnt be opposed but they have been making these games for over a decade and they clearly dont want to at this point. You can call me a gatekeeper or whatever else but the truth of the matter is they make a highly tightly balanced game and I get a little concerned if they start to forsake their core fanbase at the attempt to attract more people who dont appreciate what they are doing. Tl;dr https://mobile.twitter.com/fetusberry/status/1114364382606053378?lang=en completely unironically
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Feb 23, 2020 18:07
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Volte posted:Yeah...that's the good part. I see the boss, I learn the boss, I use my skills to beat the boss, and I feel good about beating the boss. Sekiro doesn't have that for me. There's no catharsis when I succeed. The catharsis in a game, for me, comes from overcoming my personal obstacles, not the ones in the game. I didn't used to be able to predict this boss's movements, and now I can, so he's a chump. I did it. In Sekiro, there were a lot of long-fought battles, but when I finally won, it felt like I just got lucky and that if I had to do it 20 more times, I'd still fail 15 of them. I'm not saying there's no path to perfection, but since I'm not practicing for a career in Sekiro-playing or whatever, and there's no real way to practice (particularly the later phases of multi-phase fights) it just ends up feeling like my time is being wasted. The actual meat of the gameplay is the learning, the feeling confident - that's what I'm in it for. The dying and running back because I failed to get good is not a motivator. The feeling of being able to do it is the motivator. I found learning Sekiro's systems really rewarding because you can absolutely clown on bosses when you are properly aggressive. They barely even have a chance.
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Feb 23, 2020 18:09
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Cowcaster posted:as an example (and i know it's not a perfect one), i wouldn't expect a zachtronics game to add in easy versions of it's puzzles and i guess as an addendum, i wouldn't expect a zachtronics game to add in twitch based combat with an announcer shouting out WICKED SICK when you headshot an enemy with three atoms of tungsten or whatever, either
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Feb 23, 2020 18:09
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lordfrikk posted:Just play something else Telling someone who bought a game for $60 and invested time into it to just play something else kinda sucks big time. It's especially lovely because usually people don't bitch about difficulty because they hate a game and never want to play it again, they bitch because they're enjoying that game a lot and want to keep playing it. Look Sir Droids posted:As for grinding and exploring, the paths terminate in bosses but each branch has a lot of items that you can experiment with. So the game isn’t all about beating bosses. Never said it was, but if I'm already struggling there's no reason to assume any other area is going to be easier than the one I'm already stuck on and trying to subvert a road block like Capra Demon can just lead to more trouble. Plus any given item can just as easily be a booby prize, a trap, or wholly incompatible with whatever I'm doing already. Basically if I'm already trapped in the negative feedback loop to avoid dying at all costs, then it's possible to reach a point where it feels like the only reliable solution is to just farm souls.
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Feb 23, 2020 18:10
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Cowcaster posted:and i guess as an addendum, i wouldn't expect a zachtronics game to add in twitch based combat with an announcer shouting out WICKED SICK when you headshot an enemy with three atoms of tungsten or whatever, either Zachtronics games should absolutely yell WICKED SICK when you finish a puzzle though
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Feb 23, 2020 18:10
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Cowcaster posted:as an example (and i know it's not a perfect one), i wouldn't expect a zachtronics game to add in easy versions of it's puzzles Sure, but a player can look up a solution, get past a level, and then possibly not have problems after that. I'm about halfway through Opus Magnum and am "stuck" , but I know I can A) build an oversized machine that will solve it (but won't because my brain won't let me) and B) look up solutions (which I have, and which gave me ideas on how to progress, I just haven't yet). Stephen's Sausage Roll is also Very Hard but, again, sometimes a puzzle will just brainfuck you in a way that you're just not going to solve it, even though later, harder(?) puzzles you'll solve. And if both games just get progressively harder and require constant cheating to beat then yeah, play something else. But I don't think either game really locks content behind things in the way that a Souls game does. I had fun with the bosses in Sekiro but what I really liked was master ninja-ing myself around levels, dropping onto enemies, stealth, etc. The bosses weren't really the draw for me, but I had to get through them to unlock more levels.
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Feb 23, 2020 18:11
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Volte posted:Yeah...that's the good part. I see the boss, I learn the boss, I use my skills to beat the boss, and I feel good about beating the boss. Sekiro doesn't have that for me. There's no catharsis when I succeed. The catharsis in a game, for me, comes from overcoming my personal obstacles, not the ones in the game. I didn't used to be able to predict this boss's movements, and now I can, so he's a chump. I did it. In Sekiro, there were a lot of long-fought battles, but when I finally won, it felt like I just got lucky and that if I had to do it 20 more times, I'd still fail 15 of them. I'm not saying there's no path to perfection, but since I'm not practicing for a career in Sekiro-playing or whatever, and there's no real way to practice (particularly the later phases of multi-phase fights) it just ends up feeling like my time is being wasted. The actual meat of the gameplay is the learning, the feeling confident - that's what I'm in it for. The dying and running back because I failed to get good is not a motivator. The feeling of being able to do it is the motivator. I think you just don't like the core gameplay loop in Sekiro. Repetition is a lot more tolerable when you're actually enjoying that activity. And I don't say this to judge you, because I'm not much for Souls either. However, I love roguelites, which when you think about it, are very similar in terms of trial-and-error and winning by the skin of your teeth. I think it's just that Souls games are kinda fatiguing in a way a roguelite isn't. Dias fucked around with this message at 18:15 on Feb 23, 2020 |
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Feb 23, 2020 18:13
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Andrast posted:I found mastering Sekiro's systems because you can absolutely clown on bosses when you are properly aggressive. They barely even have a chance.
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Feb 23, 2020 18:13
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i think there's some cognitive dissonance going on there between "i can just look up the solution to a puzzle on the internet to continue" and "if a game requires constant cheating to beat then play something else"
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Feb 23, 2020 18:13
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Developers are entitled to make their games as difficult or accessible as they want but people are also free to call into question why the game absolutely needs to be hard for everyone, and when they do I often find myself wondering the same thing. This has nothing to do with legitimate accomodations for people with disabilities, which more games should strive for.
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Feb 23, 2020 18:14
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Fifteen of Many posted:Hi thread! What are your: Undercooked 1&2 are wonderful for both of these, as long as chaos (or teetering on the edge of) is fun for you. How old is the newbie? Although for almost any age, the Switch is better for a modern introduction to videogames. The recommend me a game thread is better for this, and isn't in the middle of an argument.
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Feb 23, 2020 18:16
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Volte posted:When you are properly aggressive and are also great at entering precise inputs. My point was that even when I knew exactly what to push when (i.e. I had "mastered" the Ape's moveset or whatever), my problem was always in the execution. Dark Souls is pretty lenient in terms of actually inputting combos. There's no technical skill check around whether you can actually type in the inputs properly, it's more of a dance around knowing openings and reacting to moves, etc. Sekiro is pretty lenient on the parry timing as well, like way more than any souls game ever was. It is faster paced than souls games though.
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Feb 23, 2020 18:16
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Zachack posted:Sure, but a player can look up a solution, get past a level, and then possibly not have problems after that. I'm about halfway through Opus Magnum and am "stuck" , but I know I can A) build an oversized machine that will solve it (but won't because my brain won't let me) and B) look up solutions (which I have, and which gave me ideas on how to progress, I just haven't yet). You can just use Cheat Engine if you get stuck in Sekiro, the same way you can look up the solution to a puzzle in a puzzle game. Both solutions are not built into the game by the developer. Both of them are real easy and there's nothing stopping you from doing it.
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Feb 23, 2020 18:17
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Also I think there's probably a lot of overlap between people who view "you cheated not only the game, but yourself" unironically with those who consider games that are thematically challenging as "not a real game," "walking sims," etc.
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Feb 23, 2020 18:17
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Dias posted:I think you just don't like the core gameplay loop in Sekiro. Repetition is a lot more tolerable when you're actually enjoying that activity.
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Feb 23, 2020 18:21
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| # ? May 29, 2024 02:24 |
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New idea for a Soulslike: Variable difficulty, but at the end of each boss fight you have to correctly answer several short essay questions identifying the central themes and relevance to the narrative or restart the whole chapter.
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Feb 23, 2020 18:26
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