Hallownest Beckons - Let's Play Hollow Knight Blind

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Hallownest Beckons - Let's Play Hollow Knight Blind

Black Robe: Sep 12, 2017; Generic Magic User

I am here for this, this game's whole vibe is great.

# ¿ Mar 18, 2021 07:13

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 03:45

Black Robe: Sep 12, 2017; Generic Magic User

90s Cringe Rock posted:

Mornington Crescant

The lovely Samantha approves of this reference.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2021 15:09

Black Robe: Sep 12, 2017; Generic Magic User

"But why did you go there?"
"Because it was there."

The true video game spirit.

# ¿ Mar 30, 2021 07:10

Black Robe: Sep 12, 2017; Generic Magic User

To add to the difficulty discussion, I think it comes down to just giving the player options. Obviously the developers will have an ideal level they want you to experience the game at, for many different reasons, so that should absolutely be the default setting and they should make it very clear at the start of the game that that's what they recommend.

But there should also be the option to change it if you want to or need to, without shame. It's a game. By definition it is a thing that should be fun to play, and that means different things to different people. And there are accessibility reasons too.

Gamers are flexible people. Every big-name game immediately attracts a flock of modders who make tools to customise the experience to be easier or harder as the player desires, and a dozen different unofficial challenges - low%, speedrun, no-healing, no-item, solo character, Nuzlocke, etc. - except in those rare instances where the game already offers it. Sometimes casual gamers want to challenge themselves more. Sometimes diehard 'git gud' serious people want to just relax and gently run through an old favourite without stress. Not including ways to alter the difficulty just means you're declaring your game off limits to some of your potential audience for no real reason until they band together and find ways to do it without you (or just give their money to a different game).

I'm tired of games that try to force me to play a certain way. I promise I will enjoy your content just as much if I'm occasionally allowed to cheese a boss that's caused me a lot of issues or bypass a really tedious encounter. In fact I'll likely enjoy it more than if you make me spend hours trying to brute-force something, because at that point I'll be tired and stressed and pissed off and just want to move on as fast as possible, and when I look back all I'll remember is that I hated it.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2021 07:59

Black Robe: Sep 12, 2017; Generic Magic User

Jen X posted:

"Not being good at platformers" isn't an accessibility issue, and making this comparison, independent of everything else, is really dumb

Of course. There are no visual, nerve or motor control issues that would impact someone's ability to play platformers. None at all. Anyone struggling is just bad.

People are suggesting an option. As in, you do not have to do it if you don't want to. It's not instead of anything, it's not changing the default game. Nobody's Hollow Knight experience would be altered by there being a completely optional setting to change the difficulty slightly.

Developers would have to invest more time, money and resources to do it, obviously. But the end result is a game accessible to more people that will therefore sell better and make more money back.

# ¿ Mar 31, 2021 12:42

Black Robe: Sep 12, 2017; Generic Magic User

That was super smooth, dang. Even with a death that's gotta be one of the best Mantis Lord encounters I've seen.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2021 10:35

Black Robe: Sep 12, 2017; Generic Magic User

rastilin posted:

After the modding discussion I looked into Hollow Knight mods. Previously I got pretty far into it (about 3/4ths of the way) before hitting one boss and just getting completely stuck. There aren't many mods. There's one difficulty mod that can uncap your power by lowering charm costs, so you can equip more of them at once, but that's it, and you need to start a new game to use it. I had 20 hours in the old save file, so I'm not too keen on restarting, but I'll try it and see how it goes.

The difficulty discussion really made me think about the biggest annoyance with gaming difficulty and bosses, because it's really a metaphor for life. Technically a skilled play can beat any boss with any equipment, but in practice you need to basically know the future.. and the game only really works because you have infinite lives and can keep retrying after you die. Meanwhile the bosses are always stronger than you and while you do get stronger, there's a hard cap on how strong you can get, how good equipment you can use and so on. With old games you could just outgrind the boss, but that's not an option in many recent ones. It's depressing to scrape out a win only to realize the next boss fight is going to be even more obnoxiously one sided.

As a metaphor for the powerlessness and difficulty of climbing the social ladder in a capitalist country, it works great; but as a game the first question I end up asking is... could someone beat this game without knowledge that they have no way to acquire at the point where they need it? That is, is this winnable as it is or do you literally need to be precognitive to beat it without dying once.

Basically, difficulty that comes from repeated cheap shots just isn't fun to fight, especially if your abilities are being limited on purpose. The biggest one that comes to mind is the corrupted mantis' multiple screen covering AOE hits that do double damage and come out in rapid succession , but even getting to that fight is a horrible slog with disappearing platforms above damage floors and multiple arena battles . At a certain point the designers are just messing with you.

Which made me wonder... how much would gamers be willing to accept as "difficulty".

For example, if I made a platformer that secretly yanked the controls just before one in every 5 jumps were about to land, would people figure it out or would they just chalk it down to "difficulty"? Invisible, faster-than-the-player enemies that spawn in directly behind you and get a first hit with paralyzing attacks are probably out, but.. if you took out the invisibility people might accept it.

I think the problem with the idea of the "difficulty curve" is that past some point the devs are just wasting your time with cheap deaths.

I get what you're saying, but you've got two completely separate arguments here. Not knowing in advance how to beat bosses has nothing to do with difficulty, it's just how games work - I can't think of any game where you're told before you get to them exactly what attacks and patterns you're going to face. The normal experience going in is either finding out that you're able to beat them right away, or learning that you need a different strategy or equipment (or higher stats in another genre) and figuring that out.

Likewise the things you spoilered are difficult but not cheap shots. No, you can't predict them in advance, so you get hit by that attack or tripped up by that obstacle, and then you know and can watch for it next time. This game is balanced around letting you do that without a significant penalty - you can heal infinitely for free at any time as long as you have a random enemy to smack for soul, it takes quite a few hits even in the earlygame to actually kill you, and if you are unlucky enough to die somewhere you can't get your shade back easily there's a way to work around that. The bench checkpoints are only for true deaths, dropping onto spikes doesn't instakill you unless you had no health to start with, you just get put right before the jump that you messed up. It only costs you a few seconds of your time and a gentle reminder to pay more attention.

Your example of a platformer where you deliberately gently caress up the controls isn't a cheap shot either, that's just lovely cheating and eventually people would figure it out and then hate you and boycott your game.

I think the only true cheap shot I think we've seen so far is the grub mimics, not in terms of difficulty but just being a nasty surprise that contradicts a game mechanic we already knew. For me that's what a cheap shot is - something you've learned in earlier gameplay suddenly being flipped out of nowhere, especially if it's not clear what happened and you need to try it a few more times to figure it out. If you tried to heal in a particular fight and it damaged you instead with no warning, that would be cheap. A new attack from a new enemy that you weren't prepared for isn't, that's just harder.

Or maybe something like a badly designed boss that has multiple possible attacks, one of which is unblockable and instakills you or does far more damage than you can cope with at the current level, which I think is closer to what you're talking about. There certainly are badly made games like this which a lot of gamers claim is just about difficulty and skill, but the fact that Nat has already first-try-blind-beaten a lot of bosses to get to this point, including really hard ones we were all surprised by, shows that this game isn't cheap in that sense. You have more than enough of a health buffer to take a few hits while you figure out the pattern, as long as you're skilled enough. (I'm not. There's a reason I don't personally play these kinds of games.)

Yeah, there's a couple of later spoilered bosses that do have some nasty moments, but they're the exception rather than the rule.

# ¿ May 2, 2021 08:59

Black Robe: Sep 12, 2017; Generic Magic User

Reveilled posted:

I'd argue that the latter point about teetering near 1 HP to learn the mechanics--which is unquestionably true about how you play--is essentially the opposite of aggressively going for healing. Having watched a bunch of people play this for the first time, new players will almost always panic and try to heal in the shorter windows where there's just too little time to safely heal. You're much more willing to just focus on dodging and learning until you can identify when it's safe to heal, and then generally remain disciplined about healing only in those windows (not always, but who could expect perfection on your first try!). In that sense you're actually less aggressive about going for healing than most new players, which I think is a large part of your success.

Yeah, I've seen a lot of LPers get wrecked in boss fights because they stand still trying to heal instead of getting out of the loving way.

# ¿ May 8, 2021 13:06

Black Robe: Sep 12, 2017; Generic Magic User

I'm rewatching Nat's LP of Symphony of the Night and he and Tea get into a long conversation about signposts and being pointed towards upgrades, and how being able to annotate a map is important to Nat, and Tea mentions that he just bought Hollow Knight and you can do that in that game.

And now here we are watching as Nat utterly fails to note anything on his map. :allears:

# ¿ May 8, 2021 20:17

Black Robe: Sep 12, 2017; Generic Magic User

Dareon posted:

So, question for everybody who is not Nat or otherwise blind (Seriously, no one look at this if you're coming in blind): How are we going to make sure he gets the reaction to Millibelle stealing his money on camera?

We're going to have to rely on Tea's sense of timing. I'm sure he won't let us down.

# ¿ May 11, 2021 14:18

Black Robe: Sep 12, 2017; Generic Magic User

Natural 20 posted:

In retrospect I should record my offscreen work and just cut stuff like that into a quick highlight before the next set of episodes air. Because I was pretty surprised.

Please! There are a lot of things we want to see you discover and if you stumble on any of them offscreen that would be sad.

# ¿ May 14, 2021 07:53

Black Robe: Sep 12, 2017; Generic Magic User

pointlessone posted:

Since there's a delay on these videos, how's the cat and why haven't we seen pictures of it?

# ¿ May 20, 2021 08:31

Black Robe: Sep 12, 2017; Generic Magic User

As Tea is British and most pet cats here are indoor/outdoor, don't name a cat anything you'd be embarrassed to stand on the doorstep yelling in the evenings.

# ¿ May 20, 2021 15:51

Black Robe: Sep 12, 2017; Generic Magic User

Abbee Gnational

# ¿ Jun 5, 2021 18:06

Black Robe: Sep 12, 2017; Generic Magic User

Why do I suspect drinking and football may have been involved...?

# ¿ Jun 20, 2021 15:37

Black Robe: Sep 12, 2017; Generic Magic User

C-Euro posted:

Screaming at Nat for sticking his head into a room, saying "I'll explore this in a moment" and then forgetting about it 60 seconds later.

Every time he looks at the full map it hurts inside to see areas that come up as explored when they haven't been.

# ¿ Jun 24, 2021 08:07

Black Robe: Sep 12, 2017; Generic Magic User

I would guess they didn't do ants or termites because they didn't want to take anything from Deepnest as the underground area. Having an underground insect nest as well might lessen the impact.

# ¿ Jul 6, 2021 05:20