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The games also definitely got more difficult over time. Going back to play Demon's Souls and it feels really easy after playing the later iterations on the formula
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Aug 17, 2023 19:04
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MockingQuantum posted:I feel like the Souls games sometimes have this reputation online (they're by and large pretty difficult because the designers aren't building the games around casual players, but the dedicated hardcore fans) but how true is that perception? I've never played any of the Dark Souls games, and only ever played a couple hours of Bloodborne but got stuck at a pretty tough boss and also had an obnoxious former friend who insisted on basically giving me a verbal walkthrough of the first area and all the secrets while I played, so my experience with it is probably not a good indicator, lol. The Dark Souls games have a ton of inscrutable mechanics that make it very easy to feel overwhelmed, but despite that they're not necessarily tremendously difficult to play or progress in. They've got their reputation mostly for coming out at a time when most AAA games were shying away from difficulty. Like, Dark Souls was contemporary with Skyrim. Sure, you'll die a lot playing them, but that's also true for most Mario platformers.
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Aug 17, 2023 19:06
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Hmm okay, that makes me much more inclined to give them a try. The Souls games (and Bloodborne, and I think Elden Ring?) all have a very specific style/aesthetic/genre/whatever you want to call it that I really dig but I've always been hesitant to try them because I am generally bad at games and didn't want to end up in a situation where I was just going to be beating my head against the wall forever, but it sounds like it's not super likely that's the case.
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Aug 17, 2023 19:09
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fromsoft’s games also encourage you to cheat right back whenever you feel the need, which makes their antagonism feel a lot more playful. ai exploits, terrain exploits, projectile spam, it’s all there on the table
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Aug 17, 2023 19:11
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MockingQuantum posted:Hmm okay, that makes me much more inclined to give them a try. The Souls games (and Bloodborne, and I think Elden Ring?) all have a very specific style/aesthetic/genre/whatever you want to call it that I really dig but I've always been hesitant to try them because I am generally bad at games and didn't want to end up in a situation where I was just going to be beating my head against the wall forever, but it sounds like it's not super likely that's the case. I think a major thing about Souls games is that they were inherently designed to mimic the idea of playing a game in the 'my friend on the playground' days. They were designed around trying to create a social experience in the game in a way that wasn't inherently MMO. There was an expectation of people sharing information with one another and helping each other out. The 'call for help' mechanic is part of this and is designed like asking your friend who is good at a specific part to help out. The entire idea was to try to create a game that captured the feel of the pre-internet days of playground rumors and frustration. There's an inherently level of 'oh bullshit' and 'how was I supposed to figure that out' in the game because it was created with the assumption people would learn together. But a shocking number of Souls players saw this and decided that actually Souls was a super hardcore game for the best of the best and anyone who used the many mechanics and game design choices made specifically to make the game a more social thing were baby things for babies and not part of the 'real' experience and got really loud and annoying about it. Yet that isn't really the case at all and playing Souls 'as intended' is all about bringing information to a fight that makes it easier or calling for help if you need it. Like yeah there's those jackasses who post in threads about how wearing armor or using ranged attacks makes you a LAMEASS who needs to GET GUD but they really are ignorable.
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Aug 17, 2023 19:16
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ImpAtom posted:I think a major thing about Souls games is that they were inherently designed to mimic the idea of playing a game in the 'my friend on the playground' days. They were designed around trying to create a social experience in the game in a way that wasn't inherently MMO. There was an expectation of people sharing information with one another and helping each other out. The 'call for help' mechanic is part of this and is designed like asking your friend who is good at a specific part to help out. The entire idea was to try to create a game that captured the feel of the pre-internet days of playground rumors and frustration. There's an inherently level of 'oh bullshit' and 'how was I supposed to figure that out' in the game because it was created with the assumption people would learn together. Calling the PC version of the first Dark Souls the Prepare to Die Edition and the marketing surrounding that probably encouraged that a fair bit.
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Aug 17, 2023 19:23
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Many games still shy away from difficulty or friction in their gaming experiences. Part of the reason why the new GoWs condescend to the player as much as they do is because they're trying to make the game as easy to follow as possible for what they mistakely believed to be the lowest possible common denominator. (DarkSydePhil, they thought DSP was somehow a common and reasonable representative to base their gameplay standards around.) FromSoft were notable for acknowledging the place difficulty and friction have in developing a specific experience and achieving great mainstream success when applying that idea.
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Aug 17, 2023 19:23
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its this everyone wants a trophy culture. now we even put trophies in our games: achievements. create a custom character, get a trophy. play for 30 minutes, get a trophy. roll around in some dirt, get a trophy that calls you lil piggy. it used to be if you wanted a trophy for playing video games you had to have autism and go play super mario 3 in a big movie.
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Aug 17, 2023 19:29
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MockingQuantum posted:I feel like the Souls games sometimes have this reputation online (they're by and large pretty difficult because the designers aren't building the games around casual players, but the dedicated hardcore fans) but how true is that perception? I've never played any of the Dark Souls games, and only ever played a couple hours of Bloodborne but got stuck at a pretty tough boss and also had an obnoxious former friend who insisted on basically giving me a verbal walkthrough of the first area and all the secrets while I played, so my experience with it is probably not a good indicator, lol. Just like Monster Hunter they're built for potential speedrunners. If you're not ready to put in at least 186 attempts fighting the first boss, then you'll never make it to the title screen.
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Aug 17, 2023 19:37
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MockingQuantum posted:I feel like the Souls games sometimes have this reputation online (they're by and large pretty difficult because the designers aren't building the games around casual players, but the dedicated hardcore fans) but how true is that perception? I've never played any of the Dark Souls games, and only ever played a couple hours of Bloodborne but got stuck at a pretty tough boss and also had an obnoxious former friend who insisted on basically giving me a verbal walkthrough of the first area and all the secrets while I played, so my experience with it is probably not a good indicator, lol. they're rpgs. they've got occasional bullshit like any rpg with their particular origin or inspiration but people miss the king's field influence pretty frequently, king's field makes it pretty clear immediately that what you're meant to do isn't take things on in the most challenging way, it's to approach things from a variety of angles and figure out what works for you. if you have trouble then you always have ways to switch up your approach and make things easier on yourself. souls garnering the people who approach it the single minded, pure action game-y way they do is more just indicative of how good the core combat feels to interact with. Failboattootoot posted:It feels pretty true to me. I love souls games, been playing them since Demon's Souls. But they have definitely hit a point (sekiro and later games for me, beat all the games prior) where they get to be too hard/annoying in my opinion and I just stop playing. There's definitely a difficulty progression and the games just keep getting harder and harder and I can only assume that is trying to live up to the difficulty reputation it has online. For me, the breaking points were; late game elden ring is much more manageable if you figure out a good summon ash and upgrade that. there's a lot of bosses that feel clearly designed around summoning to make things easier on yourself, i did hit a point of fatigue myself but ended up managing to get through the last leg of the game using mimic ashes and only really summoned another player in for malenia. Electric Phantasm posted:Isn't this basically what happened with Star Fox Zero? not really? zelda stuck to a formula too hard without figuring out ways to make the overall experience feel as engaging as previous entries and continues to be stuck to some ancient series traditions or reintroduce old concepts and iconography without a lot of interesting changes (like the gerudo reappearing as a friendly nation but, getting lots of bizarre writing because functionally they're just written the same as the gorons in having one big "gimmick" but their gimmick is one that gets weirder the more you expand on it, and zelda herself consistently being relegated to a side role lol) but star fox zero more just feels like an underbudgeted gimmick release. nobody wants more star fox 64, they want another game like 64, with the ideas and tone of 64, but with a new story and levels. zero's problem is that, in making itself another reboot of 64 it mostly just makes it obvious how much more it sucks and feels worse to play and was just another game they made to justify the gamepad. if star fox zero was like, an actual sequel to 64 that's entirely new ideas instead of some new ideas that are kinda mediocre and some old ideas that are rendered in a mediocre way, there would be a lot more to love about it there's a lot of poo poo to say about star fox adventures, assault and command but i think it says something that the latter two actually do get some appreciation for how utterly weird they are and how they make some vaguely interesting attempts at expanding the setting even if most of assault's attempts don't really work, and the main reason adventures doesn't get quite the same level is cause it, really actually did not benefit from the switch to a star fox game at all. like not only does the star fox side not benefit but the dinosaur planet side got completely devastated by the switch lol. The Colonel fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Aug 17, 2023 |
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Aug 17, 2023 19:40
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Any time I got stuck on a Souls boss and felt I wasn't making any progress with my attempts I would watch a youtube of someone beating the boss and I'd usually do it in a few tries after that
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Aug 17, 2023 19:43
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star fox zero was extra weird because the game immediately preceding it was a literal remake of 64 and then also they bundled it with an awful tower defense game featuring uncle grippy
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Aug 17, 2023 19:49
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the souls series is just a matter of a previously niche dev getting a big break without making compromises to get there, and with that popularity getting a lot more people to potentially say dumb stuff due to no frame of reference with anything beyond "other" AAA games (and I really wouldn't call souls that until some entries in, wherever you want to peg it).
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Aug 17, 2023 19:49
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Oxxidation posted:fromsoft’s games also encourage you to cheat right back whenever you feel the need, which makes their antagonism feel a lot more playful. ai exploits, terrain exploits, projectile spam, it’s all there on the table i have fond memories of cheesing one of the gunner minibosses in sekiro by luring her into a pool of poison and then playing something else for half an hour
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Aug 17, 2023 19:51
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Looper posted:i have fond memories of cheesing one of the gunner minibosses in sekiro by luring her into a pool of poison and then playing something else for half an hour I defeated a number of the bosses in Demon's Souls by casting Acid Cloud near them, going sneaky so that they lose sight of me, and just checking my phone until I needed to re-cast the spell.
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Aug 17, 2023 19:57
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MockingQuantum posted:I feel like the Souls games sometimes have this reputation online (they're by and large pretty difficult because the designers aren't building the games around casual players, but the dedicated hardcore fans) but how true is that perception? I've never played any of the Dark Souls games, and only ever played a couple hours of Bloodborne but got stuck at a pretty tough boss and also had an obnoxious former friend who insisted on basically giving me a verbal walkthrough of the first area and all the secrets while I played, so my experience with it is probably not a good indicator, lol. in actuality, there are many systems in place designed for helping players and making the game easier. what gave Souls games this reputation is that they have high yet fair expectations of the player and came out during a period where every other video game was a walk in the park. I still think that's true to an extent, with games bending over backwards to ensure the least amount of friction possible for players so they can experience the maximum amount of content. the difference is that From's game design philosophy is that friction creates fun, satisfying game experiences
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Aug 17, 2023 19:58
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Snooze Cruise posted:its this everyone wants a trophy culture. now we even put trophies in our games: achievements. create a custom character, get a trophy. play for 30 minutes, get a trophy. roll around in some dirt, get a trophy that calls you lil piggy. it used to be if you wanted a trophy for playing video games you had to have autism and go play super mario 3 in a big movie. Like participation trophies, this poo poo was more foisted on people than demanded and now we're just accustomed to it. Plenty of people will go for them because it makes it easier to tap into the same thinking that created 100% playthroughs in the first place, the feeling that you're missing something for your money and time, sure, but that's just taking advantage of a mindset that already existed. Otherwise, they're also useful as a completion metric - Steam is sitting there telling everyone, including devs, how far most players get into a game, what kinds of side content and silliness people engage with. Knowledge I would find useful as a dev if it turned out most people were falling off a game after the second big plot beat or without completing the third boss fight or whatever. Rarely, I have seen them used as encouragements to try something out you normally wouldn't. Seven: the Days Long Gone is the only non-puzzle game I've 100%'d because I got most achievements naturally from play and then saw the remainder were easily fulfilled by trying out weapon types and combat moves I hadn't bothered with. A lot of those weapons I'd ignored turned out to be pretty fun to use, so they can be used to improve a game.
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Aug 17, 2023 19:58
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Dark Souls also benefits from the fact that they were pretty blunt about it being a game that expects you to die and fail a lot. You don't really get into Dark Souls without knowing that and the game is designed to push that mindset onto you. Not every game can do that nor does every game want to do that. As absurd as it sounds presentation can play a huge factor in if someone is going to give up or not even on basically identical challenges.
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Aug 17, 2023 20:03
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they're, not that useful as a completion metric. there's a ton of reasons numbers might drop off but in most cases even if they do there isn't actually a true, absolutely certain way to learn from that and ensure those numbers don't drop off in a similar way again and it's not something you need to care about unless people are vocally expressing wider issues you'd become aware of without looking at that metric in the first place. using them that way i feel like mostly builds into the anxiety big games have about making interesting missable content people might not see. was insanely funny though when game maker's toolkit tried to contextualize and justify why games like god of war make things so braindead easy and have characters actively shouting out the thing you should be doing at all time with proof that people don't finish games, citing the completion numbers for... hitman absolution. not, any of the new hitman games. hitman absolution. his evidence for games people don't finish was hitman absolution.
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Aug 17, 2023 20:05
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Morpheus posted:I defeated a number of the bosses in Demon's Souls by casting Acid Cloud near them, going sneaky so that they lose sight of me, and just checking my phone until I needed to re-cast the spell. This is more or less how I beat the Draconic Tree Sentinel outside Leyndell in Elden Ring--poison arrows and enough distance to break aggro. The more things change~
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Aug 17, 2023 20:05
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The Colonel posted:was insanely funny though when game maker's toolkit tried to contextualize and justify why games like god of war make things so braindead easy and have characters actively shouting out the thing you should be doing at all time with proof that people don't finish games, citing the completion numbers for... hitman absolution. not, any of the new hitman games. hitman absolution. his evidence for games people don't finish was hitman absolution. I will say I absolutely hate this trend. I don't dislike the idea of helpful prompts, especially if you can trigger them yourself, but a few times in Horizon: Zero Dawn, Aloy suddenly kept muttering about something I was trying to solve and it was the opposite of helpful because she kept breaking my train of thought. Like that is the opposite of helpful, Aloy, and indicates that segment needed to be worked into something that flowed better given elsewhere in the game I could just find secrets by following the flow of the area without any prompting. GOW sounds like it would drive me to distraction with that.
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Aug 17, 2023 20:11
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i like how dark dawn is still pretty married to the dragon questy idea of having a priest in every town to revive people and dispell curses, but they i guess didn't want to build temples for them, so most towns instead shove this old human man in the corner of the inn even in what are supposed to be beastman towns. like sure dude you can nail your holy man sign to the door i guess
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Aug 17, 2023 20:14
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disposablewords posted:I will say I absolutely hate this trend. I don't dislike the idea of helpful prompts, especially if you can trigger them yourself, but a few times in Horizon: Zero Dawn, Aloy suddenly kept muttering about something I was trying to solve and it was the opposite of helpful because she kept breaking my train of thought. Like that is the opposite of helpful, Aloy, and indicates that segment needed to be worked into something that flowed better given elsewhere in the game I could just find secrets by following the flow of the area without any prompting. GOW sounds like it would drive me to distraction with that. At one point in Forbidden West, Aloy started giving me hints for a puzzle that utterly baffled me because I was in a hallway and couldn't find anything to climb on or to. She was giving me hints for the jumping puzzle in the next room before I even saw it. I assume this was a bug and has been fixed by now, but still.
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Aug 17, 2023 20:15
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Does the hint chatter get ramped all the way up in Ragnarok because I didn't really notice any "explain the solution to the puzzle" dialogue in the first game but GOW is almost always used as an example. But it's been years and maybe I'm a lightning fast block pusher so it never triggered or something.
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Aug 17, 2023 20:15
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mycot posted:Does the hint chatter get ramped all the way up in Ragnarok because I didn't really notice any "explain the solution to the puzzle" dialogue in the first game but GOW is almost always used as an example. But it's been years and maybe I'm a lightning fast block pusher so it never triggered or something. i think ragnarok had some bugged hint triggers for a few fights. the one i always think of is the one with freya yelling at you and calling you an idiot for not hitting this snake monster in the mouth or something
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Aug 17, 2023 20:21
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I would simply solve the puzzles before the person gave hints  (no but actually every game needs an option to turn that poo poo off)
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Aug 17, 2023 20:22
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mycot posted:Does the hint chatter get ramped all the way up in Ragnarok because I didn't really notice any "explain the solution to the puzzle" dialogue in the first game but GOW is almost always used as an example. But it's been years and maybe I'm a lightning fast block pusher so it never triggered or something. I think it was far more a Horizon thing than a GOW thing
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Aug 17, 2023 20:24
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This is probably being pedantic about something people are taking as read, but I don't really like the framing of From as the only devs who dared to make hard games in 7th gen since that glazes over all the other devs doing neat things in their same former position as well as the fact that, like people are currently saying, AAA games haven't changed much lol (besides a few that happen to include Souls among the trends they're chasing)
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Aug 17, 2023 20:24
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Makes me think about Severance: Blade of Darkness. Now there was a fuckin' tough game.
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Aug 17, 2023 20:27
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Dark Souls killing you also doesn't cost you anything except maybe xp/currency if you don't pick them up. So after learning the lesson "don't proceed into the unknown before spending your xp" you really only lose time but gain knowledge. Also like ImpAtom said the game is upfront about killing you and it's even part of the story that your guy is a chump that's dying a lot. The Prince of Persia game treating (consequence free) death as the prince making a mistake while recounting the events of the game also made it less off-putting.
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Aug 17, 2023 20:28
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Motto posted:This is probably being pedantic about something people are taking as read, but I don't really like the framing of From as the only devs who dared to make hard games in 7th gen since that glazes over all the other devs doing neat things in their same former position as well as the fact that, like people are currently saying, AAA games haven't changed much lol (besides a few that happen to include Souls among the trends they're chasing) i'm sure From wasn't the only studio making games with high expectations but they're definitely the poster child for it i'm trying to think who else that gen had games i'd describe as difficult
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Aug 17, 2023 20:29
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Man, I'm really annoyed at the crossbow in W3 and how it takes a DLC mechanic to make it not poo poo, as well as the fact that it is finicky as hell. I wished they spent more time on that, but I'll just have to deal with it.
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Aug 17, 2023 20:44
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grieving for Gandalf posted:i'm sure From wasn't the only studio making games with high expectations but they're definitely the poster child for it Team Ninja, PlatinumGames and Nintendo occasionally. Ninja Gaiden seems like a tough series, Metal Gear Rising and Bayonetta are all pretty tough first playthrough.
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Aug 17, 2023 20:49
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disposablewords posted:Like participation trophies, this poo poo was more foisted on people than demanded and now we're just accustomed to it. Plenty of people will go for them because it makes it easier to tap into the same thinking that created 100% playthroughs in the first place, the feeling that you're missing something for your money and time, sure, but that's just taking advantage of a mindset that already existed. Otherwise, they're also useful as a completion metric - Steam is sitting there telling everyone, including devs, how far most players get into a game, what kinds of side content and silliness people engage with. Knowledge I would find useful as a dev if it turned out most people were falling off a game after the second big plot beat or without completing the third boss fight or whatever. please don't reply to my bad joke posts sincerely, i don't know how to react
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Aug 17, 2023 20:53
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RareAcumen posted:Team Ninja, PlatinumGames and Nintendo occasionally. Ninja Gaiden seems like a tough series, Metal Gear Rising and Bayonetta are all pretty tough first playthrough. there you go, the DMC series and similar titles have similar "friction creates satisfying game experiences" philosophies baked into their design
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Aug 17, 2023 20:56
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I like when RPGs give you trophies personally, so you can use them to decorate your characters house
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Aug 17, 2023 21:00
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Weird Pumpkin posted:I like when RPGs give you trophies personally, so you can use them to decorate your characters house After Monster Hunter did this, I hoped other action games would follow its lead in stealing this mechanic from RPGs but sadly very few have 
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Aug 17, 2023 21:02
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I'd rather decorate my house with furniture
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Aug 17, 2023 21:03
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MockingQuantum posted:Hmm okay, that makes me much more inclined to give them a try. The Souls games (and Bloodborne, and I think Elden Ring?) all have a very specific style/aesthetic/genre/whatever you want to call it that I really dig but I've always been hesitant to try them because I am generally bad at games and didn't want to end up in a situation where I was just going to be beating my head against the wall forever, but it sounds like it's not super likely that's the case. as someone who's recently finished dark souls for the first time, the big thing i'd recommend at least for your first game is following a walkthrough. there's a lot of hidden tricks that can get you extra power early on that you probably won't find yourself. conversely, there's also a surprisingly large amount of ways to permanently gently caress things up (in the sense of like "the npc that sells spells is now dead") and a lot of those events or ways can be hidden and happen without you knowing it. i never found the difficulty of the game itself to hurt the experience of playing it too much, but loving up something permanently is what made me take three tries to get through dark souls.
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Aug 17, 2023 21:09
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gently caress you Luigi I don't need you to solve puzzles for me
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Aug 17, 2023 21:32
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