I disagree with the idea that every game should have a difficulty option. If the difficulty is there just for the sake of challenge, then difficulty options should be there because in that case it’s not all that different than setting self-imposed rules for additional difficulty. But when difficulty serves a bigger purpose I can absolutely understand keeping a level difficulty experience.
For example in ARC raiders the ARC are so dangerous that they’ve pushed people underground and going topside is this risky endeavor. But if the ARC were pushovers you get this narrative dissonance where the enemy is supposed to be so dangerous that humans can’t thrive but when you fight them they die instantly so why can’t humans thrive? ARC also pose as a balancing act to the game because if the ARC weren’t dangerous the game would just be PVP with looting. You have to take ARC seriously even if you know how to deal with them because of how easily the script can be flipped on you. ARC raiders obviously doesn’t really have difficulty options because of its multiplayer nature but it does show that difficulty can have a narrative impact and difficulty can impact how you approach the game. If the game was easier it would arguably end up as a worse experience.
And difficulty can also be used to make you feel a certain way. This is why I’ve argued against Dark Souls needing difficulty options (and to be clear, I’m talking about ONLY Dark Souls 1). There’s a reason some people call Dark Souls a cathartic experience, because that’s what the game is going for. Lordran is a world in despair. The end of an era is coming and the world has been plunged into decay. The denizens of Lordran have fallen into despair, given up and hollowed. And Dark Souls wants you to feel that. Dark Souls wants you to feel the despair and find the will to continue despite that despair, lest you become one of the hollowed people of Lordran. The game is challenging specifically to make you feel like you’re being treated unfairly, like you’re against impossible odds, like you’re supposed to fail, like there’s no point playing and just give up and never play again. Because when you eventually overcome that unfair and impossible scenario you’ve failed a dozen times all the emotional tension gets released and you achieve catharsis. If you don’t feel the failure you can’t feel the catharsis thus by making the game easier the game loses a part of what it is.
Dark Souls is not a game, Dark Souls is a piece of art. We give other art the respect to be their own thing. People accept Kafka novels are hard to read. People accept The Downward Spiral is hard to listen. People accept Requiem for a dream is hard to watch. But when Dark Souls is hard to play we complain? I say let art be art. If we want to treat games as art then every game can’t have difficulty options. Some games can, will and do use difficulty in a way that elevates their artistic vision. In my eyes denying games the tool of difficulty is to deny that games can be art.
BryceBassitt@lemmy.blahaj.zone 17 hours ago
Whats difficult for you is impossible for others. Difficulty options are accessibility features and nothing will ever convince me otherwise
Goodeye8@piefed.social 17 hours ago
And not everything is for everyone. Do you think (former) drug addicts would be comfortable watching Requiem for a dream? Would you argue the movie needs a cut that is suitable for addicts?
paraplu@piefed.social 16 hours ago
If you have a specific trigger you may want to research the movie ahead of time for content. Resources like does the dog die help. Depending on your exact needs you may be able to use other tactics like watching with a friend.
With games this is different in a couple big ways.
* Difficulty is tuneable after the fact. The developer had to make choices about the numbers and implementing them in a way they can be scaled isn’t necessarily more work. Lazy scale the number difficulties are still more accessible than single difficulty.
* Games are often too long to reasonably ask a friend to help you re-edit it by dealing with a specific mechanic every time. It’s also likely that a friend may not enjoy waiting around for their time to shine.
With movies, there are still accessibility things that people do rightly complain about, like the sound mixing. Whispery actors mixed purely for movie theaters is an accessibility problem, even if it’s not typically framed that way.
Goodeye8@piefed.social 14 hours ago
And if people don’t want a challenging game they can research beforehand and decide not to play it. Or they can get a friend to help or they can find mods for the game or they can watch a playthrough. But with games instead of working around the vision (like you’ve suggested with movies) we decide that developers should compromise their vision.
I think you’re mixing up difficulty for the sake of difficulty with difficulty for the purpose of something else. You can tune difficulty for the sake of difficulty and I don’t an issue there. I don’t think you can tune difficulty that’s designed to evoke a specific feeling or guide the player in a specific way. Take the Asylum demon from Dark Souls. It’s supposed to be near-impossible to beat the first time you see it because the game is telling you to do something different. If you turn the difficulty down and it becomes beatable then you’re actually skipping the rest of the tutorial the game designed for you. And of course environmental difficulties are even harder to tune. You can make Sens Fortress deal less damage but if you can’t avoid the traps you’re still going to end up knocked off and have to start again.
BryceBassitt@lemmy.blahaj.zone 16 hours ago
Get outta here strawman
Goodeye8@piefed.social 16 hours ago
How is that a strawman? It’s literally my point translated to the movie medium. If it’s okay to demand easier options for games that deliberately use difficulty for artistic purposes why wouldn’t it be okay to make similar demands in other mediums?