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Doctor Spaceman posted:They massively nerfed / changed it in DS3 and then didn't explain what they'd changed or what the new mechanics were, because they are bad at communicating with players. That's okay, Dark Souls 3 lets you boost your health by like 30% whenever you want so it's got its own separate easy mode. But seriously though, once Dark Souls 3's DLCs dropped I came to really dislike the Ember mechanic compared to its implementation in Demon's Souls. That game expected you to be in Soul Form most of the time, especially early on, so until you get to the area 3's and 4's of each world the damage you take is much more balanced around having half your max HP. DS3, the expansions especially, seems to expect you to be embered at all times and that bonus health is treated as if it's your baseline. The sheer number of attacks that just splat you in one hit from the Ringed City enemies is outrageous. At first I liked the Ember status and thought it was a good step away from DS2's Hollowing essentially punishing you for dying by reducing your max HP each time, but both systems ended up having the same lackluster execution. CJacobs has a new favorite as of 07:23 on Oct 15, 2020 |
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Oct 15, 2020 07:20
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The difficulty of most souls is directly proportionate to how you play and your willingness to just look stuff up. This however is very stupid and probably the best reason why it should have a easymode option.
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Oct 15, 2020 12:08
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Every game has an easy mode for people who just want to enjoy the story, it’s called youtube.
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Oct 15, 2020 13:23
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Snake Maze posted:Every game has an easy mode for people who just want to enjoy the story, it’s called youtube. But that way you often have to deal with a comedic sidekick who loves making snarky comments and who seems to mention you need to like and subscribe every half hour. It's better if games have a "so this is your first video game, nice to meet you" easy mode.
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Oct 15, 2020 13:28
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The word you're looking for is "longplay".
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Oct 15, 2020 13:32
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Mierenneuker posted:But that way you often have to deal with a comedic sidekick who loves making snarky comments and who seems to mention you need to like and subscribe every half hour.
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Oct 15, 2020 13:40
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I don't understand why this is such a hot-button issue. Is it sunk-cost fallacy, or do you need a large epeen to be able to defeat the hard game and brag to all your gamerbros? Easy mode means more people can enjoy the game, surely that's worth something. Devs have figured out difficulty sliders since at least Doom, what's the big how-do?
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Oct 15, 2020 13:42
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John Murdoch posted:Uh...many modern roguelikes literally allow you to disable permadeath (or save your game or whatever equivalent) because it turns out a lot of people don't like their games to be highly punishing and how it makes failed runs feel like a waste of time. Also most modern roguelikes boil their experience down to like, an hour, and not however long it takes to realize you hosed up your character because it turns out putting literally any points into The Bad Stat rendered your character worthless or w/e. "I wish this game did not have X" is not elitist. Some people have this idea that people only want <perceived harsh mechanic> because they want other people to suffer or to lord something over the plebs. I'm describing how a person can actually want the restriction for their own sake. Yeah you can turn off permadeath, but if you value permadeath you won't turn it off. Same for respecs. I value the lock in nature of specs so that's why I don't want respecs. I figured wanting permadeath was a more relatable punishing mechanic to desire since an entire genre is built around it. Wanting permament specs is clearly niche, and it's clearly a preference that is never going to be catered to by the industry as a whole in future, but it's something I would genuinely prefer for sake of my own personal enjoyment. And I'm hoping we see some indie games that try to build around the mechanic. Like a roguelike where building your spec around the gear that drops and/or monsters that are spawning is a big part of the game. And no, choosing not to use a mechanic is not the same. If it was then permadeath would be pointless because people who want it could always just delete their character when they die in any game.
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Oct 15, 2020 13:43
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Phigs posted:If it was then permadeath would be pointless because people who want it could always just delete their character when they die in any game.
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Oct 15, 2020 13:46
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bony tony posted:I don't understand why this is such a hot-button issue. Is it sunk-cost fallacy, or do you need a large epeen to be able to defeat the hard game and brag to all your gamerbros? Easy mode means more people can enjoy the game, surely that's worth something. Difficulty sliders are loving terrible and it's actually funny you chose Doom as an example because it is by far a massive exception to the rule. In Doom the map maker essentially makes a different map for each difficulty in terms of monster and item placement. The map designer directly controls the way each difficulty plays so they can (if they choose) cater to every difficulty individually. Most games do not do this. Most games just boost enemy HP or lower loot spawns or some other automated way of changing difficulty. Which basically means that there is one carefully designed difficulty and every other difficulty is just some bullshit modifier that results in every other difficulty being less polished. Play legendary on Skyrim and compare to the default difficulty for an example of how that feels. In a game like Dark Souls either the development teams spends a lot of extra time developing and polishing each difficulty to the same standard, meaning they get to spend less time just making the base game, or some difficulties get the shaft. Considering how rushed parts of Dark Souls were there's good reason to believe an easy mode would have made the game worse if it was anything but some ugly rush-job. And which difficulty gets the shaft? In Dark Souls it's probably the easy mode because they were targeting a niche at that point. But other games? Probably the easier, more mass market appeal mode would be the one to get the attention. There's also value in boosting the zeitgeist and shared experience of games like Dark Souls by everyone playing the same game. It's legitimately annoying to run across talk/advice for a game only to realize it's for a difficulty you don't even play so it doesn't really apply to your game. And for Dark Souls specifically it's only as good as it is because it is balanced as well as it is (though it could be better), a badly balanced easymode could easily have killed its public perception and made it sell less. That's why a lot of people don't like the idea of an easy mode in Dark Souls (I don't care about easy mode in DS for the record). And yes also there are elitists. But there are legit reasons not to want an easy mode. Developer time is not free, and difficulty sliders are not a replacement for development time. Honestly games should just come with cheats like Doom did. If the developer doesn't want to put in the full effort, just let the player tweak it themselves. Sliders are terrible. Tiggum posted:Yes? You've just made a very good argument for the exact opposite of the point you were trying to make. Then why does an entire genre essentially built around the concept of enforced permadeath exist? If there was no value to it what would be the appeal? Phigs has a new favorite as of 14:14 on Oct 15, 2020 |
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Oct 15, 2020 14:02
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Tiggum posted:Yes? You've just made a very good argument for the exact opposite of the point you were trying to make. There’s a huge difference between a player imposed challenge and one the game was designed around. If you try to play a random Final Fantasy with “permadeath” it would be bullshit, because you’d have dozens of hours of easy fights followed by the 1% chance random battle where the enemy gets first strike and lands an instant kill spell. There would be lots of cutscenes and downtime you’d have to repeat every death that would get old fast, and it would be another dozens of hours in the easy beginning before you finally reach somewhere interesting. Games that are built around permadeath are designed differently from the ground up - they’re shorter, so you don’t lose 50+ hours of playtime in an instant. They start off with dangerous enemies at the beginning, so repeat playthrough don’t need to go through a boring introductory phase. They don’t have mandatory cutscenes or story events, because players will be going through the same part of the game dozens of times. It goes on. And this isn’t because Final Fantasy was just built wrong. You design stuff differently when you think a player will see the opening to your game one time vs. fifty times. Same deal with basically any other gameplay addition that you can “just ignore”. Hard saves vs save points? It effects dungeon design. Random encounters vs monsters visible on map? Effects whether attrition is predictable or not. Games are complicated systems and it’s almost never possible to change one part without having an impact on others as well.
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Oct 15, 2020 14:31
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I don't understand why people want an easy mode in the soulsborn games. The story sits somewhere between "doesn't exist" and "sucks" depending how deep in the weeds you want to get. There's nothing that the difficulty is getting in the way of. There's no reward at the end. The difficulty is the game. It's like saying it's elitist that you have to play basketball to play basketball. That's all there is.
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Oct 15, 2020 14:48
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Phigs posted:Difficulty sliders are loving terrible and it's actually funny you chose Doom as an example because it is by far a massive exception to the rule. In Doom the map maker essentially makes a different map for each difficulty in terms of monster and item placement. The map designer directly controls the way each difficulty plays so they can (if they choose) cater to every difficulty individually. Most games do not do this. Most games just boost enemy HP or lower loot spawns or some other automated way of changing difficulty. Which basically means that there is one carefully designed difficulty and every other difficulty is just some bullshit modifier that results in every other difficulty being less polished. Play legendary on Skyrim and compare to the default difficulty for an example of how that feels. Both Control and Celeste have had multiple options in customizing the difficulty with no adverse effect towards the player, and are adjustable at any time. My gf would never have advanced past the first boss in Control if she couldn't reduce damage taken by like thirty percent, for example, and I know I have seen people posting that would have just become too frustrated to beat the final boss of the latest dlc if they couldn't have turned on one-hit-kills whenever they wanted. Easy modes are fine. Make things easy. If you don't want easy mode, play on regular mode and brag about your epeen. Get a star next to your name when you beat it. What absolutely sucks are harder difficulty modes where damage is taken from the balanced mode and then just arbitrairliy ramped up. And no one is going to give hot gameplay tips for easy mode. Manager Hoyden posted:There's nothing that the difficulty is getting in the way of. There's no reward at the end. The difficulty is the game. It's like saying it's elitist that you have to play basketball to play basketball. That's all there is. No it's like saying that if a child wants to play basketball then he has to face off against a pro to play on his local court. You? Maybe you can beat a pro at basketball. But a lot of people are going to look at that requirement, say 'gently caress this' and not want to play basketball again. Some people like to exp rience a game without being crushed by it, why is this so hard for some people to understand? Morpheus has a new favorite as of 14:56 on Oct 15, 2020 |
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Oct 15, 2020 14:53
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Manager Hoyden posted:I don't understand why people want an easy mode in the soulsborn games. The story sits somewhere between "doesn't exist" and "sucks" depending how deep in the weeds you want to get. It’s weird but some people just want to Consume Content as efficiently as possible. It’s the video game equivalent of the hosed-up sickos who watch movies and stuff at 1.5 speed.
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Oct 15, 2020 15:01
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Morpheus posted:No it's like saying that if a child wants to play basketball then he has to face off against a pro to play on his local court. I get that with your example of Control. That is a game with lots to offer and is a fun experience even outside of shooty parts. There's still a lot there if you take out the challenging parts. But Dark Souls or Celeste? The parts that people want to skip are the entire game. Everything outside the hard parts is utter garbage. Most other games have a lot more to offer, unless you are specifically looking for slow ugly sword swinging or precise jump puzzles. Like I completely do not give a single poo poo how other people want to play games. But I just don't understand it in this case. Who are the people who look at a game like Celeste and say "boy I want to play this specific game that has 1.) garbage art 2.) two minutes of bad story vaguely about depression and 3.) brilliantly designed jumping puzzles but please take out the jumping puzzles please."
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Oct 15, 2020 15:16
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Manager Hoyden posted:I don't understand why people want an easy mode in the soulsborn games. The story sits somewhere between "doesn't exist" and "sucks" depending how deep in the weeds you want to get. Because if I pay $80 for a game I don't really appreciate being locked out because I don't have the reflexes to do things perfectly. Games are the only thing where that really happens, you can not understand a movie or book or whatever but that's as close as you get to being "bad" at it, and even then you still have full access to the product you bought. Whereas if I buy something like Sekiro and then get stonewalled by some boss I can't get get passed, that's it I'm just out of luck.
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Oct 15, 2020 15:17
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Okay I think maybe I am misunderstanding. Are people being forced at gunpoint to buy these games? Like is this a hostage situation that I am not aware of edit: goigle says 1,181,019 video games exist for context
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Oct 15, 2020 15:22
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Obviously not but how is someone going to know if they're good at a game and enjoy it until they buy it? They've effectively stopped doing demos, and while betas are a bit more common they're mostly for multiplayer and even then you have to preorder the game most of the time. I don't see the harm with offering a lower difficulty for someone who gets stuck, especially if it's a toggle. You seem stuck on them wanting to skip the entire game but maybe they just want to get past a particular section
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Oct 15, 2020 15:45
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Morpheus posted:Some people like to exp rience a game without being crushed by it Being crushed by it is the game experience. Byzantine has a new favorite as of 16:07 on Oct 15, 2020 |
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Oct 15, 2020 16:03
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If a game is only good because of its difficulty, it's not a good game imo.
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Oct 15, 2020 16:13
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Byzantine posted:Being crushed by it is the game experience. For you, maybe. Other people might just want to stab some skeletons and fight some giant dragon monsters. Manager Hoyden posted:Like I completely do not give a single poo poo how other people want to play games. But I just don't understand it in this case. Who are the people who look at a game like Celeste and say "boy I want to play this specific game that has 1.) garbage art 2.) two minutes of bad story vaguely about depression and 3.) brilliantly designed jumping puzzles but please take out the jumping puzzles please." Are you this confused about the existence of a "hint" button in a puzzle game? Enjoying a genre of game and being a master of that genre of game do not always go hand in hand. It is possible to enjoy puzzles while being mediocre at them. It is possible to enjoy platforming while having iffy reflexes. It is possible to enjoy fighting skellymen without being good at combat. And your claim that the story of Dark Souls is garbage is only your opinion. Some people think it's really deep and interesting lore and get into it. They aren't wrong to do so If that is what makes them happy. Some people *gasp* like the art and story of Celeste. rydiafan has a new favorite as of 16:19 on Oct 15, 2020 |
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Oct 15, 2020 16:15
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There is a strong argument for not having actual difficulty sliders so that devs can just build the game around a intended difficulty, and I agree with this. However this is because the much better idea of accessibility options for modifying difficulty exists and whining about them is very silly. letting players have a straight granular control over the difficulty does a lot to solve the "x is too hard, Y is too easy" problem.
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Oct 15, 2020 16:15
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Byzantine posted:Being crushed by it is the game experience. I don't think anyone is suggesting making games easier entirely, just add in an easy option so everyone can enjoy. Do it in a way that doesn't affect the core experience, put up a big warning that says "this game isn't designed for this mode and it will be janky", but give people the option
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Oct 15, 2020 17:12
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Captain Hygiene posted:If a game is only good because of its difficulty, it's not a good game imo. This is a really dumb take. Overcoming challenges is fun. Overcoming challenges is precisely the thing that makes a lot of games fun - a lot of games are just a vehicle to deliver the challenge! Saying a game should still be fun even if you remove the challenge is like saying a game should be fun even if you remove the content. Not every game will appear to everyone, and that’s fine. Some people just want a casual, relaxing experience that will never push them or challenge them in any way, and some people want a difficult, interesting challenge that that have to work hard to overcome, and both games can be really fun in their own way. I could name tons of games from both categories that I love! But insisting that every game needs to be a casual, unchallenging experience in addition to whatever was originally intended is stupid. It’s like saying every movie needs to have an alternate cut that makes it a comedy, no matter what. If a game doesn’t appeal to you you can just not play it, or stop when you stop having fun. It’s not morally wrong for stuff you don’t like to exist.
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Oct 15, 2020 17:17
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My main problem is if the difficulty is poorly done, like in the newer digimon world remake - easy mode is the actual designed mode, and normal mode just ramps up the requirements to digivolve/lowers the stat gains from training so it just makes it take longer for no reason (although I stopped playing even on easy because I got frustrated with "Every X hours one or more likely both of your digimon with just DIE and you basically have to start training over - stats carry over, but only like 1% so you start with 18 strength instead of 17, big whoop.)
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Oct 15, 2020 17:20
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Snake Maze posted:This is a really dumb take. Overcoming challenges is fun. Overcoming challenges is precisely the thing that makes a lot of games fun - a lot of games are just a vehicle to deliver the challenge! Saying a game should still be fun even if you remove the challenge is like saying a game should be fun even if you remove the content. I was going for more of a reductively snarky take based on the opinion that Dark Souls just wouldn't be fun if it were any easier. The actual longer reason that I disagree with this line of thinking is because people's skill sets differ so wildly across the board that you can't just simply say a game is "hard" or "easy". I'm on the low end of skills, so Dark Souls with a 50% damage reduction slider could very well be as difficult of a challenge for me as the regular game for someone who can actually handle it. And I miss a lot of potentially good gaming experiences because that kind of tuning is often ignored. Acknowledging that people want/are capable of a wider spectrum of difficulties is what I'm really in favor of, not just a "wah, give me a baby mode where I can't get hurt" (even if that can be a potential result of the settings). I just want more experiences to be open to me, not to delete the tougher games from existence.
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Oct 15, 2020 17:27
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When I was a kid I would bang my head against a game until I had finished it. Now, if a game challenges me in any way (that isn't multiplayer) I just ditch it quick as gently caress. I have zero desire to overcome the odds or git gud on any level whatsoever
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Oct 15, 2020 17:30
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I play soulslikes with cheat engine and then tell people about how I beat them just to watch that little blood vessel on their forehead twitch and pulse Honestly who cares though, I wanted to see the art of sekiro and I got to. Things dragging games down: that there still isn't an easier way to load up a cheat engine table for a new game without digging through the forums and hoping there is a table for the right version
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Oct 15, 2020 17:36
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Snake Maze posted:This is a really dumb take. Overcoming challenges is fun. Overcoming challenges is precisely the thing that makes a lot of games fun - a lot of games are just a vehicle to deliver the challenge! Saying a game should still be fun even if you remove the challenge is like saying a game should be fun even if you remove the content. But different people have different thresholds for challenge, different skill ceilings, and are starting from different points. Lets say you play the game and die 300 times before completing it. Someone else might come along and only die 30 times because they are super experienced at the the game and have reflexes of a cheetah. They found the same content, the same game, less of a challenge. Someone else might die 5000 times and still never finish the game. They found the same game, the same content an insurmountable challenge. If you let players adjust things (the more granular the better, but any options are better than not bothering at all) then each of those players can adjust the game until they are at the appropriate level of challenge for them. Someone being innately better or worse than you at the game might want the equivalent level of challenge that you want, but thats not the same thing as "make them face the exact same thing as me". Equality vs Equity. Will some players adjust them down and then sleepwalk through the game? Almost certainly! But does that effect anyone in any way? Not even a little bit. If someone wants to do that, who give the tiniest poo poo?
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Oct 15, 2020 17:49
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I bought Dark Souls for the first time this year. I died three times to the first enemy outside of the tutorial enemy. Then I found out I was going the wrong way and promptly died to the third enemy and put down Dark Souls. I'm sure if I was a teenager I would absolutely love the poo poo out of it, banging my head against it endlessly to advance an inch, but I'm not in the mood and I strongly doubt I ever will be. But on Dark Souls in particular, where it's defining feature that it's whole fandom is built around is it's unforgiving and uncompromising (one might even say excessive) difficulty, is it still the same game if you make it easier? I might play it further if it was, but it seems to me I would be having a categorically different experience than all the people who sunk the time in as I strongly doubt anyone had a less than ball-bustingly difficult time their first playthrough. It, as someone who only spent a little while with it, appears to be more a game about systems mastery than personal abilities.
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Oct 15, 2020 17:51
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I've said it million times, but the beauty of the accessible difficulties like they added into Control is that they literally take nothing away from the intended, tuned experience. You go through a warning that tells you it's not the best intended experience, but it still lets you use it if you're having trouble. Absolutely no downside and opens the game up for way more people.
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Oct 15, 2020 17:52
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The problem with difficulty sliders is that they're inelegant blunt force hammers. It'd be a lot more engaging if instead the level design and enemy AI were fine-tuned at each difficulty level, but that's a lot harder to do than make Number Go Up. Also accessibility options are incredibly needed in the industry, especially for those with disabilities who can't play the game as "intended."
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Oct 15, 2020 18:12
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The Bee posted:The problem with difficulty sliders is that they're inelegant blunt force hammers. It'd be a lot more engaging if instead the level design and enemy AI were fine-tuned at each difficulty level, but that's a lot harder to do than make Number Go Up. Yeah, I agree with that. More tuning would be better, but I also hate to just happily volunteer every game designer for a ton more work. Realistically, just having easy, inelegant options in more games would be an acceptable compromise.
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Oct 15, 2020 18:38
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Zoig posted:The difficulty of most souls is directly proportionate to how you play and your willingness to just look stuff up. This however is very stupid and probably the best reason why it should have a easymode option. I'm very much of the opinion that a solid 50% of Dark Souls 1's difficulty is actually just down to system mastery. I'm right in the middle of DS2 at the moment and while it shakes things up a bit I think it also averages out to about 50%, to the point where that might be yet another reason why it's considered noticeably easier than 1.
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Oct 15, 2020 18:45
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I think we can all agree, however, that a hard mode in a game that just buffs health and damage for enemies isn't a really great design. Hard modes should change up the encounters and enemy attack patterns.
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Oct 15, 2020 19:14
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Getting some real "you cheated not only the game but also yourself" vibes from this thread If people want to turn on cheats and cruise through a game that's fine let them it literally doesn't impact your experience in any way. Let people experience the game you like in a way that works for them. I've out Bloodborne down at the same point shortly after Rom a few times now because I hit a brick wall at every boss because I'm bad at videogames. I could summon randoms and hope they carry me but that's hit or miss because some of them are also bad at videogames so instead I just put it down. I don't have the time or energy to throw myself at the same thing repeatedly in the hopes that THIS will be the time I beat it
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Oct 15, 2020 19:29
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Some Goon posted:I bought Dark Souls for the first time this year. I died three times to the first enemy outside of the tutorial enemy. Then I found out I was going the wrong way and promptly died to the third enemy and put down Dark Souls. I'm sure if I was a teenager I would absolutely love the poo poo out of it, banging my head against it endlessly to advance an inch, but I'm not in the mood and I strongly doubt I ever will be. Not that I expect this to turn you around on the game, but it does have a pretty classic RPG thing where the first few hours are going to be the hardest simply because you're at the absolute lowest point in terms of both player skill and mechanical progression from stats and gear. DS1 also suffers both from some shaky design choices and has been poisoned by its own hype such that people are conditioned to approach it like, I dunno, an actively sadistic "hard game" like I Wanna Be The Guy when in reality Dark Souls has very few anti-gravity apples waiting to gently caress you over as a random gotcha. It actually makes me sad when I see Dark Souls streams titled something like "prepare to rage" because while they are harder than average games approaching them with that mindset feels like a self-fulfilling prophecy. And in the opposite direction I've seen sooooo many people die because they've psyched themselves up to a point where they panic against every single enemy and promptly roll off a cliff. John Murdoch has a new favorite as of 19:36 on Oct 15, 2020 |
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Oct 15, 2020 19:34
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The grind and brickwalling of Dark Souls is part of the worldbuilding, plot and setting. I don’t get why you want to play it without engaging with any part of it. If you want to fight skeletons and dragons, there’s all sorts of fantasy games. Hell, I play Dragon Age on easy to kill hordes of baddies with my bros Alistair and Varric. Why go to Dark Souls specifically?
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Oct 15, 2020 19:39
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Everything about Dark Souls is more entertaining than Dragon Age
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Oct 15, 2020 19:41
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For one the story in Dks never gets in the way of having fun.
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Oct 15, 2020 19:46
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