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Cowcaster posted: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" Not really, there are lots of games, Zachtronics included, that have weird speedbumps due to design flaws. Stuff where a puzzle got put in out of order (ie expects you to understand something when later puzzles obviously develop that), or a technique is later explained in greater detail when it's necessary now. But if you literally can't proceed at any point without cheating and are essentially just watching a Lets Play then maybe just do that instead. And looking up a solution may inform you what you're doing wrong, but in a Zachtronics game now you may better understand a mechanic you didn't grasp or think of, while Sekiro still requires a certain level of dexterity that may not be coming ever. I got to phase 3 of the final Sekiro boss, I understood what to do in the first 2 phases, but my fingers just aren't going to work well enough to get into the 3rd phase with enough health to really be able to learn it. quote: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. Zachack fucked around with this message at 18:30 on Feb 23, 2020 |
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Feb 23, 2020 18:27
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exquisite tea posted: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. You have no idea how much I genuinely want this
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Feb 23, 2020 18:30
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At last my determination to never skip a cutscene and exhaust every possible line of dialogue will be vindicated.
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Feb 23, 2020 18:32
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Oh god no I don't want to have to think about video games, you monsters.
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Feb 23, 2020 18:34
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Volte posted:Well I think you're right, that's kind of a tautology since the whole thrust of this conversation is why I don't like the core gameplay loop in Sekiro. I really wanted to because I love the other From games. It's just that I really do enjoy the meat of the game, including the harsh difficulty of the combat, and I would love to be able to partake in it without also having to subject myself to the aspects of the game that wear me down. It's not so much me saying "From needs to be respectful and implement this stuff so that they aren't disrespecting me as a gamer!!" and more like "Sekiro isn't for me, but it's like 5% away from being for me, so it'd be cool if people who don't want that 5% could just not have to play it, then it would be for everyone!" I mean, what exactly bothers you and is it just a "5%"? Because repetition and trial-and-error is a Souls thing and you seem to enjoy it just fine there, so it's not that that's wearing on you. My best guess based on what you've said so far is that you dislike the precision necessary to win the tough fights. Souls lets you take different approaches, maybe switch weapons or try and cheese a boss, while Sekiro is very much a "this is how you do it, now do it" type of game. I'd argue that's a MASSIVE part of the game though, and why many Souls fans weren't that into Sekiro.
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Feb 23, 2020 18:34
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Zachack posted:I mean Zachtronics games kinda do build it in because there are different solutions and tools for publishing your results online, but again the big difference is that looking up a solution to a puzzle game may actually help you "legit" beat other parts, while cheat engining Sekiro (not an option on PS4) for a billion HP is not. both looking up a boss strategy video for sekiro may actually help you "legit" beat those bosses, and using steam achievements manager to unlock achievements in zachtronics games will not. neither of the examples you gave are exclusive to one type of game or the other
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Feb 23, 2020 18:36
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Also I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all approach to difficulty, but... 1) Gatekeeping idiots default to a definition of "easy mode" that encompasses the worst possible implementation they can think of. Because obviously giant-brained 8000 IQ geniuses Fromsoft, blessed be their name, would take the laziest, cheapest option when it came to crafting an easy mode, thereby ruining the game forever. 2) Even if they did take the laziest, cheapest option as long as it had no effects on anyone else's experience who the gently caress cares that somebody you don't know played the easy version of Dark Souls or whatever? (I'm convinced a non-zero portion of people who froth over this are insecure about the fact that they'd totally play on easy mode if given the option.) 3) There's an infinite number of things you could tweak to make a game as involved as those in From's catalog easier. As a point of comparison, Platinum Games, who also have a reputation for making hard games, manage to have a full compliment of difficulty modes that tweak all kinds of factors beyond basic health and damage values. To say a game like Dark Souls simply can't be any more accessible than it already is is a total failure of imagination. 4) The "one difficulty ONLY" paradigm is itself a solved problem. Celeste is designed around a specific, static level of challenge. But you know what? The devs still included Assist Mode which lets you tamper with their ~artistic intent~ because there's literally no good reason to be a dick to people who bought and clearly want to enjoy your game. 5) The "artistic integrity" argument in general can die in a fire. I can mod Dark Souls to say "THANKS OBAMA" when I die, force it to run in a different framerate than intended, meme about amazing chests and sun bros, draw porn of every single character in the game, play the game as a car or Shrek, replace all in-game text with bad Google translated versions, and/or randomize literally every aspect of the entire game. But if you want the game to be a little easier? How dare you trample on Miyazaki's artistic vision!!!! 
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Feb 23, 2020 18:50
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John Murdoch posted: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. I think we should be able to refund games more freely and have demos for everything. But expecting to be able to beat something just because you bought it and invested time into it does not make sense as an argument. It happens all the time with any work of art you can buy for money, be it books, movies, music. Anything. John Murdoch posted:2) Even if they did take the laziest, cheapest option as long as it had no effects on anyone else's experience who the gently caress cares that somebody you don't know played the easy version of Dark Souls or whatever? (I'm convinced a non-zero portion of people who froth over this are insecure about the fact that they'd totally play on easy mode if given the option.) "I don't care if the game is complete turd as long as I can can beat it." lordfrikk fucked around with this message at 18:55 on Feb 23, 2020 |
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Feb 23, 2020 18:53
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John Murdoch posted:Also I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all approach to difficulty, but... Sure, FROM could offer that if they want to and it would be nice but I don't think it's a big deal if they don't
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Feb 23, 2020 18:54
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As a gamer of legendary ability I think making games more accessible is cool.
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Feb 23, 2020 18:55
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Replace all boss battles with fairy chess.
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Feb 23, 2020 19:00
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lordfrikk posted:I think we should be able to refund games more freely and have demos for everything. But expecting to be able to beat something just because you bought it and invested time into it does not make sense as an argument. It happens all the time with any work of art you can buy for money, be it books, movies, music. Anything. I more or less agree with your point, but the book and movie analogy is really poor. You can read a book or finish a movie. The book isn’t stopping you from turning the page and the movie isn’t making you press pause or watch the same scene over and over again. Video games might be the only art or media form that in most instances tries to stop you from experiencing them. You still can if you watch a Let’s Play, but you don’t need that for books and movies.
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Feb 23, 2020 19:00
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lordfrikk posted:"I don't care if the game is complete turd as long as I can can beat it." Why is it better for people to not play the game at all rather than - knowingly - play a simpler version? Why do you care how they experience the game? Why are super cool high IQ geniuses allowed to spend a million hours picking over the same handful of vague plot implications but if I want to play the game for the story over the combat then I'm a philistine?
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Feb 23, 2020 19:04
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John Murdoch posted:Why are super cool high IQ geniuses allowed to spend a million hours picking over the same handful of vague plot implications but if I want to play the game for the story over the combat then I'm a philistine? Yeah nobody makes fun of those weirdos
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Feb 23, 2020 19:08
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John Murdoch posted:3) There's an infinite number of things you could tweak to make a game as involved as those in From's catalog easier. As a point of comparison, Platinum Games, who also have a reputation for making hard games, manage to have a full compliment of difficulty modes that tweak all kinds of factors beyond basic health and damage values. To say a game like Dark Souls simply can't be any more accessible than it already is is a total failure of imagination. Platinum Games doesn't make games where the story is intrinsically tied to the difficulty. They are fundamentally about challenging yourself to beat the game as stylishly as possible - success is the expected outcome and the "diffculty" is how cool you looked doing it. From Software games (the soulsy ones at least) are about beating the game, by the skin of your teeth. Dark Souls has a health bar - Platinum games have a style meter. They are going for completely different experiences. As for your 5) point, the very same tools that let replace the You Died with Thanks Obama or reskin the game also let you cheat. And nobody stops you from doing it. Neither of them are inherently less or more "right" - they're both not intended by the developers. Artistic vision does matter - From Software is allowed to make a game as hard as they want if they think it'll make the story hit home harder. Demons Souls for example would have been a much worse game if it had been easy. DatonKallandor fucked around with this message at 19:12 on Feb 23, 2020 |
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Feb 23, 2020 19:08
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Gamers are just insecure that literal babbies can beat a game they like
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Feb 23, 2020 19:10
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DatonKallandor posted:Platinum Games doesn't make games where the story is intrinsically tied to the difficulty. They are fundamentally about challenging yourself to beat the game as stylishly as possible - success is the expected outcome and the "diffculty" is how cool you looked doing it. From Software games (the soulsy ones at least) are about beating the game, by the skin of your teeth. Dark Souls has a health bar - Platinum games have a style meter. They are going for completely different experiences. Bayonetta would have been much better if they had just gotten rid of the health bar completely, agreed.
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Feb 23, 2020 19:10
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Bayonetta without those stupidly hard QTEs sounds great
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Feb 23, 2020 19:11
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bayonetta's qte's added very little to the experience, it's true i'm still cheesed off about that split-second insta-fail one when you first encounter fortitudo in the cathedral
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Feb 23, 2020 19:12
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Bayonetta literally has a mode where you can play it with one hand.
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Feb 23, 2020 19:14
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i would play the souls game of they had an assist mode or an easy mode or whatever, and once I beat it I would play them in "true experience mode" if I liked it. I've done this with lots of other games. I'd probably even enjoy them more in that mode, who knows?
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Feb 23, 2020 19:20
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Nefarious 2.0 posted:i would play the souls game of they had an assist mode or an easy mode or whatever, and once I beat it I would play them in "true experience mode" if I liked it. I've done this with lots of other games. I'd probably even enjoy them more in that mode, who knows? Dark souls games have summoning which is basically easy mode
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Feb 23, 2020 19:21
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The difference between Doom or Platinum games with From games is the former take vastly different amounts, types, and planning of effort I'd only trust to a very few developers at this point. The 80s-00s went through some things with easy = 25% off normal mode variables stuff and I guess it worked for certain definitions of work but unless you know what you are doing (IE Doom and Platinum) it can be a waste of QA time and resources you could put toward the critical path. Lacking the wizards who can make Doom and Platinum difficulty levels work from a fundamental design and planning level, I think you just get a better time value from going full Assasin's Creed easy or Souls hard.
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Feb 23, 2020 19:31
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Steam Thread 2020: We Stand With Difficulty.
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Feb 23, 2020 19:37
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SelenicMartian posted:Steam Thread 2020: We Stand With Difficulty. You leave the ruins of my spine out of this.
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Feb 23, 2020 19:38
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Well poo poo, I wrote up a bunch of miscellaneous stuff on difficulty last night, but it looks like everyone else did too. Uh...exquisite tea posted: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. Lightningproof posted:As a gamer of legendary ability I think making games more accessible is cool. Thing is, I think there's a difference between making a game 'easy' and making it 'accessible'. I've seen talk about this in regards to allowing alternate control schemes for people who have physical disabilities, there's games that have started including a color-blind mode, and there's complaints when games don't include subtitles. However, none of those really relate to the difficulty of a game. I've seen the argument that it's ableist to not include an easy mode for those have disabilities, but I'd argue (albeit not real vehemently) that's it more ableist to assume that a person with disabilities need the challenge toned down for them. This person (a quadriplegic) managed to beat one of Sekiro's bosses. John Murdoch posted:2) Even if they did take the laziest, cheapest option as long as it had no effects on anyone else's experience who the gently caress cares that somebody you don't know played the easy version of Dark Souls or whatever? (I'm convinced a non-zero portion of people who froth over this are insecure about the fact that they'd totally play on easy mode if given the option.) This guy obviously felt insecure in that he beat the game with cheats, and had to broadcast that fact to everyone. He could have just mentioned in passing, or just not brought it up at all, but...  John Murdoch posted:Also I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all approach to difficulty, but... But there's the key issue: you could put in an easy mode for Dark Souls, but how would you do it properly? In this review of Dawn of War: Dark Crusade, there's a comment in about how the game included a difficulty mode absent from the previous games. ThunderPsyker posted:"Oh thank god, there's an easy difficulty. Don't get me wrong, Winter Assault's challenge was one of it's strongest points, and added a lot of the experience, but it's nice to have an option to take things easy." However, later in the review, he states: ThunderPsyker posted:"The campaign isn't without its problems though. While a lot of skirmish matches can be beaten in as little as five minutes, stronghold missions can take hours, which is a pretty jarring shift. Easy difficulty is one of those 'bad' kinds of difficulty modifiers, where instead of using the Easy AI, which has always been in Dawn of War's skirmish mode, Easy mode gives your units over double their base health, and reduces the enemy's health down to a quarter. Look at this poo poo! This is ridiculous! I'm outgunning the Tau as Orks! I'm steamrolling Space Marines with two squads of Guardsmen, and I don't think I even lost a single member, let alone unit, after two hour worth of matches on this mode." So how do you make an easy mode for Dark Souls, but still retain the core of the experience? Tweaking enemy health values/damage output doesn't seem like the solution. Hell, that's already in the game as it is, with enemies getting more HP (and more souls) on NG+ (I suppose you could say that means all Soulsborne games start on Easy Difficulty, but I jest). Here's something I thought of: A couple of years back, I got 100% completion in Bloodborne. One of the requirements for getting 100% completion is acquiring all the various weapons in the game. However, in the course of getting the trophy, I only ever actually used a couple of those weapons. One of the big appeals with Soulsborne games is the myriad weapons you can wield, and builds you can make. However, the biggest issue I’ve always struggled with in this regard is settling on something. I might find a weapon that has a moveset I really take to, but I’m not sure whether or not I should spend upgrade materials on it, in fear that I might find something else later down the road that works better. Alternatively, I might find a really cool weapon that seems really cool, but because of how my stats are allocated, I can’t use it properly. That’s not even getting into the issues of the upgrade paths… I never ended up using weapons in Bloodborne like the Chikage or Logarius’ Wheel, because they required you to level other stats that the other weapons didn’t rely on in order to use them effectively. It was something that seemed suited to a 2nd playthrough, where you build is more planned out. However, that raises another issue: a lot of the weapons you don’t acquire until partway through the game, so you’d have to distribute your stats What I think would be fun, though, is if there was an option to add a mode where you could start the game with access of all the weapons, and have a way to adjust your stats and the NG+ level to your liking, so you could play through and really have fun and experiment with things. Would that constitute as an ‘easy mode’? Perhaps, but the idea behind it is more so giving the player a kind of practice mode or debug mode to try things out to their leisure. Say you want to fight Lady Maria again with a different weapon, but you don’t want to restart and goes through all the previous areas to get to that point again. A mode where you could instantly respawn bosses would work well for that. In execution, it can be seen as an ‘easy mode’, but it’s also something that can be utilized by skilled players to test themselves, or experiment with builds that they want to try for PvP.
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Feb 23, 2020 19:47
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...Huh. Well, today's game is clever and pretty easy overall, so that means everyone can enjoy it! Platformebruary 2020: Ultimate Collector's Edition 1. Blasphemous 2. Duck Souls 3. Dune Sea 4. A Robot Named Fight 5. Sonic Mania 6. Izeriya 7. MagiCat 8. Runner3 9. Harold 10. Spirits Abyss 11. A Short Hike 12. Super Time Force Ultra 13. Touhou Luna Nights 14. Spark the Electric Jester 2 15. Serious Scramblers 16. PONCHO 17. Umihara Kawase 18. Noita 19. Rain World 20. 8BitBoy 21. Wings of Vi 22. MO:Astray 23. Total Party Kill    You’d think by now that every possible platformer premise would have been made by now, but games still come along that can surprise you. I’m so used to world-switching and gravity-flipping and clone-creating in puzzle platformers that games like Total Party Kill are really quite exciting to play. The drawback is that it’s a game of very small scope, one that really introduces its gimmick, does a few things with it, and then ends. And I’m not sure it’s even a gimmick that could carry a larger game, but it’s definitely fun while it lasts and just the kind of variety this genre could use more of. A knight, a ranger, and a mage enter a dungeon, and… wait, you’ve heard this one? No you haven’t, because they kill the hell out of each other as soon as they get there. Total Party Kill was created as part of Ludum Dare 43 under the theme “sacrifices must be made”, and sacrificing your party is the only way to solve the game’s otherwise innocuous puzzles. Instead of helpful blocks or tools or keys, you face each of the game’s 60 single-screen rooms with just three heroes whose corpses can become stepping stones or platforms or weights depending on how you off them. As long as one hero survives to reach the exit, that’s considered a victory, and your buddies come back good as new and not the least bit bitter for the next room. Each party member has exactly one way to kill the others, so puzzles boil down to identifying which way is needed for a specific challenge. The knight hacks things with his sword which sends them flying in an arc, the ranger can pin people to walls with his arrows, and the mage turns his buddies into ice blocks which can be pushed around. With each puzzle being only a single screen, it’s not hard to figure out what sequence of kills and moves are necessary to get someone to the exit. The only challenges are when new aspects of these limited capabilities are explored, but again the puzzles themselves are so small that you tend to stumble over the solution while exhausting your options. This all means that Total Party Kill is a fun, novel challenge that’s going to last you about an hour. It certainly won’t wear out its welcome but you may be left wanting more, even after you entirely explore the limits of what your characters can do. It’s got an ideal look for a game like this, with bright, bold pixel art an adorably stubby characters with Xs for eyes when they get whacked. The sound design is lovely too, except for the not-subtle-enough footstep sounds which started to annoy me not long into the game’s run. It’s not a long game to begin with, though, so any irritation you may experience will be fleeting. I wish this one wasn’t so fleeting overall, but for what there is, it’s a bloody good time.
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Feb 23, 2020 19:50
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Dias posted:I mean, what exactly bothers you and is it just a "5%"? Because repetition and trial-and-error is a Souls thing and you seem to enjoy it just fine there, so it's not that that's wearing on you. My best guess based on what you've said so far is that you dislike the precision necessary to win the tough fights. Souls lets you take different approaches, maybe switch weapons or try and cheese a boss, while Sekiro is very much a "this is how you do it, now do it" type of game. I'd argue that's a MASSIVE part of the game though, and why many Souls fans weren't that into Sekiro. As far as 5%, I just mean in a sense of how much of the actual content and mechanics would have to change. 5% might even be overstating it. Changing that one thing about Sekiro might change the whole game in a huge way, to the point where it might not even be in the same genre anymore, but it would have the potential to turn it into a game that I'd get wildly addicted to instead of bouncing off of, and that's without changing the actual difficulty of the fights. Again, I'm talking about a game mode or something, not changing the base Sekiro game and taking it away from people who love it the way it is.
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Feb 23, 2020 19:55
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Before I continue, I'm firmly on the side of adding more ways to adjust difficulty for accessibility when possible. For example,Volte posted:Well I think you're right, that's kind of a tautology since the whole thrust of this conversation is why I don't like the core gameplay loop in Sekiro. I really wanted to because I love the other From games. It's just that I really do enjoy the meat of the game, including the harsh difficulty of the combat, and I would love to be able to partake in it without also having to subject myself to the aspects of the game that wear me down. It's not so much me saying "From needs to be respectful and implement this stuff so that they aren't disrespecting me as a gamer!!" and more like "Sekiro isn't for me, but it's like 5% away from being for me, so it'd be cool if people who don't want that 5% could just not have to play it, then it would be for everyone!" This is how I feel about Enter the Gungeon extremely hard. However, whenever difficulty options come up I think many people have different variations/expectations on what they actually want:
There are two factors that come into choosing which stuff from above is actually implemented: development time available and player/market base. When you choose to implement more than one of these options, you need to consider how many development hours are going into that instead of another part of the game; a fully customizable difficulty experience that took months to implement isn't worth it when you've only got 30 minutes of content. In a dream world, the developer has all the time in the world; in reality, the developer has until they need to eat next (applies to all levels, whether the indie dev needs a paycheck to eat or the AAA dev needs to cut and release so the publisher doesn't drop them and expect repayment for a broken contract). Additionally, you need to ensure it is done properly or people will immediately tear it apart as a bad or incomplete game if the implementation doesn't fit their expectations; it can also drive your original player/market base away if they come to your game with a predisposition for certain implementations (simulationist games like EU4/CK2 or Civ want lots of difficulty options to finely tweak and mess around with, and you probably won't get them to come for your simulationist game unless you give them the same level of detail). As an example, you can open up your player base by adding straight difficulty settings but there's a lot of work that goes into doing them well so that your existing player base doesn't accuse you of being lazy or players who choose a difficulty other than your original intention (usually the Medium/Normal) don't have a bad experience. Take Guitar Hero/Rock Band: Easy/Medium/Hard charts increase the range of notes on the guitar the player needs to play, then Expert follows up Hard by adjusting the chart to be more accurate to the song and requiring quicker adjustments. However, the charts are still crafted so that all difficulties still embody the feeling of playing the song. If it was just a slapdash Easy=25% of the notes from Expert, Medium = 50% of the notes and so on, the charts would feel incredibly janky and not really fix some of the reasons why some players struggle (Easy/Medium players have trouble adjusting their hands to slide down the guitar neck to hit orange notes and reset). John Murdoch posted:Re: mechanics I agree with this post a lot: FromSoft likes to craft an experience where the difficulty is the same for all players, but they often craft it with mechanics that players will miss completely that could make the game loads easier. This often means that the difficulty the player experiences is solely about how much time they want to look around the world/look up a wiki vs continue playing the game, which leads the brick wall difficulty at times when a boss actually expects something other than just being almost perfect with the swordplay and the player has no idea. With the Sekiro examples, there are so many ways you can cheese out regular enemies/mini-bosses/bosses with swordplay, gadgets, and consumable items. However, they often fail to telegraph them well or hide them in some part of the map that nobody but a completionist would think to look (example: firecrackers work wonders on animals like the bull, but you need to find and detour into an optional area to get them; the poison blade gadget for the arm easily takes care of the gun-based mini bosses which I think is only in a loading screen tip and doesn't make sense for where you find one of them, and it's located at the bottom of a pit that players probably aren't even thinking twice about). Also, I've played a bunch of DS1 randomizers that it's kind of funny that my default is just back to pumping Vitality/Endurance because it's more reliable when you don't know what gear you will actually be getting and it can help trivialize earlier bosses. Edit: Dias posted:Bayonetta literally has a mode where you can play it with one hand. I mean, halfcoordinated regularly destroys games with one hand that I gently caress up a bunch with two. Floodkiller fucked around with this message at 20:18 on Feb 23, 2020 |
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Feb 23, 2020 20:02
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DatonKallandor posted:Platinum Games doesn't make games where the story is intrinsically tied to the difficulty. They are fundamentally about challenging yourself to beat the game as stylishly as possible - success is the expected outcome and the "diffculty" is how cool you looked doing it. From Software games (the soulsy ones at least) are about beating the game, by the skin of your teeth. Dark Souls has a health bar - Platinum games have a style meter. They are going for completely different experiences. Difference between Souls and Bayonetta/Devil May Cry is that in Souls, when you beat a boss, the game just says, "VICTORY ACHIEVED". In Bayonetta/Devil May Cry, after you finally manage to beat a tough boss, the game proceed to squash the small success you made by grading you performance. "Got hit five times, used four items. E Rank performance; very poor." Mind you, I'm not putting that forth as an issue with Bayo/DMC, that's more of personal annoyance. Dias posted:Bayonetta literally has a mode where you can play it with one hand. Floodkiller posted:I mean, halfcoordinated regularly destroys games with one hand that I gently caress up a bunch with two. AbleGamers did name Bayonetta 2 as the Accessible Mainstream Game of the Year. Then again, the one-handed mode might have been originally intended for, uh...something else. Max Wilco fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Feb 23, 2020 |
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Feb 23, 2020 20:23
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Ugly In The Morning posted:Yeah, but dead rising is fun to play, it can’t be a soulslike. Playing it now, and no, the bosses in that game (At least DR1) are some straight up bullshit. The bosses who have guns can stunlock you repeatedly and you either have to find a place where you can plink away at them from behind a column with guns, or drink speed juice and hope you don't get hit when you run at them (because of course getting hit with a gun doesn't just knock you down, it knocks you back and down.
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Feb 23, 2020 20:39
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ymgve posted:Playing it now, and no, the bosses in that game (At least DR1) are some straight up bullshit. The bosses who have guns can stunlock you repeatedly and you either have to find a place where you can plink away at them from behind a column with guns, or drink speed juice and hope you don't get hit when you run at them (because of course getting hit with a gun doesn't just knock you down, it knocks you back and down. DR2 has less bullshit bosses (mind you, some are still bullshit, but it’s nowhere near as bad) and you can drive a golf cart/motorcycle with chainsaws on it (SLICECYCLE!!!)/giant rolly ball through swarms of zombies. It’s insanely fun.
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Feb 23, 2020 20:43
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Leal posted:Gamers are just insecure that literal babbies can beat a game they like babies are mad because bad
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Feb 23, 2020 20:47
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Terminal autist posted: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. You don't need to but it's a valid criticism if you don't. Every game -- even a great game -- has flaws, and accessibility is a common one. A lot of people will die on the hill of Sekiro so here's a different one. In The Witness there are puzzles that cannot be done if you're hearing-impaired, colorblind, or low-contrast sensitive. The creator's defense is that putting in options to accommodate those would have interfered with his artistic vision, and you don't need to do every puzzle area to reach an ending*. Is this a reasonable design philosophy? *I will note that you DO need to do every puzzle area to reach the final puzzles, which include plenty that impaired folks could enjoy just fine.
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Feb 23, 2020 20:49
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Andrast posted:Yeah nobody makes fun of those weirdos Which statement would get more heat on Twitter - "hey guys I made a Dark Souls lore video" or "I think Dark Souls should have a Story Mode"? DatonKallandor posted:Platinum Games doesn't make games where the story is intrinsically tied to the difficulty. They are fundamentally about challenging yourself to beat the game as stylishly as possible - success is the expected outcome and the "diffculty" is how cool you looked doing it. From Software games (the soulsy ones at least) are about beating the game, by the skin of your teeth. Dark Souls has a health bar - Platinum games have a style meter. They are going for completely different experiences. That's not how Platinum's games work at all. I picked them specifically because their games occupy a very similar space to From's; people get stuck on tough Platinum bosses all the time and they elicit the exact same kind of tension. And as I said before: If I am bad at Dark Souls, such that a hypothetical easy mode is still as challenging for me as the normal game is challenging for you, then what difference does it make? I still get the same amount of skin-of-my-teeth moments as you do, experience preserved. Now flip it in the other direction - what if I find Dark Souls too easy? What about the narrative importance of the difficulty then? Or as said above, what if I just summon all day every day to make the game easier? What if I min/max my way to steamrolling over bosses? I agree that the challenge can bolster the themes of the game, but I disagree that it is so fundamental to the experience that the entire game collapses if you ameliorate it. Emphasis on ameliorate, since as I also said previously there's no reason to assume an easy mode would just remove any and all adversity from the game. I also feel like that line of thinking does a disservice to literally every other part of the game's presentation; the world is just as spooky and morose and caught in a existential death spiral even I die every ten minutes instead of every five. DatonKallandor posted:As for your 5) point, the very same tools that let replace the You Died with Thanks Obama or reskin the game also let you cheat. And nobody stops you from doing it. Neither of them are inherently less or more "right" - they're both not intended by the developers. You're correct that neither is inherently more or less right, but they are absolutely not treated as such. That's the problem. (Well, that and you can't readily mod the console versions.) DatonKallandor posted:Artistic vision does matter - From Software is allowed to make a game as hard as they want if they think it'll make the story hit home harder. Demons Souls for example would have been a much worse game if it had been easy. Max Wilco posted:So how do you make an easy mode for Dark Souls, but still retain the core of the experience? Part of my thesis is that maybe From, a developer who clearly knows a thing or two about difficulty and often employs unorthodox design, might have some cool ideas for an easy mode that can retain the core experience. John Murdoch fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Feb 23, 2020 |
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Feb 23, 2020 20:59
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John Murdoch posted:Part of my thesis is that maybe From, a developer who clearly knows a thing or two about difficulty and often employs unorthodox design, might have some cool ideas for an easy mode that are also better than whatever I can come up with on short notice and can retain the core experience. I think summoning is their take on that already. (Obviously not applicable to Sekiro)
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Feb 23, 2020 21:01
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DatonKallandor posted:Demons Souls for example would have been a much worse game if it had been easy.
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Feb 23, 2020 21:22
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Andrast posted:I think summoning is their take on that already. Unfortunately the summoning system has a lot of quirks and problems that don't make it a good "easy mode" IMO. To use some personal examples, I summoned Beatrice against Moonlight Butterfly and she killed the poo poo out of it before I even had a chance to attack it. Another time I summoned a fellow player against Quelaag and while I fumbled around with a new, unupgraded weapon dealing pathetic damage they were dancing around stabbing her with lightning and probably did like 80% of the damage to her in total. Both turned what could've been a long, grueling challenge into an easy first try win. Plus there's that tricky issue that by being unhollowed you're opening yourself up to PVP. Easy mode and PVP should be nowhere near each other.
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Feb 23, 2020 21:26
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John Murdoch posted:Part of my thesis is that maybe From, a developer who clearly knows a thing or two about difficulty and often employs unorthodox design, might have some cool ideas for an easy mode that can retain the core experience. In that case, we just have to wait and see if FromSoft decide to implement an easy mode in their next project, and see how it fares. John Murdoch posted:Which statement would get more heat on Twitter - "hey guys I made a Dark Souls lore video" or "I think Dark Souls should have a Story Mode"? "Can't believe this idiot is saying he made a Dark Souls lore video. What an rear end in a top hat. #gitgame" What's the difference between having a 'story mode' for Dark Souls (a game where most of the 'story' is told via item descriptions and characters who only have a few lines of dialog), or just saving your money and watching playthroughs and lore videos online to understand the story instead of buying the game? Something that springs to mind is when the Enhanced Editions of Icewind Dale and Baldur’s Gate came out, they included a ‘Story Mode’, that allowed the player to run through the game with boosted stats and no risk of dying. I started the BG series a few years before the EEs came out, and I struggled to figure out the game, so you think Story Mode would have been really appealing to me, but I didn’t really see the point in it. The Infinity Engine games were prided for how they replicated the combat of 2e D&D, and the myriad options you had in classes, spells, and party members. I struggled to get through the game on Normal difficulty, and so it amazes me that people modded the game to be even harder. A story mode, to me, seems to gut out the core of the game. What you're left with is a game where you just shuffle your party from one end of the map to the other to exchange dialog, and combat is just something you have to sit through. I understand it more in something like Baldur's Gate, but Icewind Dale isn't as story-heavy, and focuses more on the encounters. Plus, a lot of the dialog options aren't as impactful on what happens in the game like they are in later Bioware games. It's like, why would you play an RPG, but not actually play the RPG? The one IE game where I though a 'Story Mode' would be warranted was Planescape Torment, where the writing is the highlight of the game, but the combat is generally considered to be subpar compared to other IE games. Yet, much to my chagrin, Planescape Torment EE is the one game that does not have a 'Story Mode'.
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Feb 23, 2020 21:27
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Max Wilco posted:Something that springs to mind is when the Enhanced Editions of Icewind Dale and Baldur’s Gate came out, they included a ‘Story Mode’, that allowed the player to run through the game with boosted stats and no risk of dying. I started the BG series a few years before the EEs came out, and I struggled to figure out the game, so you think Story Mode would have been really appealing to me, but I didn’t really see the point in it. The Infinity Engine games were prided for how they replicated the combat of 2e D&D, and the myriad options you had in classes, spells, and party members. I struggled to get through the game on Normal difficulty, and so it amazes me that people modded the game to be even harder.
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Feb 23, 2020 21:38
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