Comment on Three developers' different philosophies on difficulty for their games
starman2112@sh.itjust.works 6 hours agoIt’s absolutely not right. I am not good at soulslikes, so the games are harder for me. If you have fun with it, that’s because the game is easier for you
ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 6 hours ago
Well, “soulslike” is a pretty garbage category, honestly. I have played a lot of games that call themselvea soulslikes, and I pretty much only trust Miyazaki with that genre.
Miyazaki’s quote is wrong for what the gaming industry labels ‘soulslikes’, but not necessarily the games he has designed and created. Because a lot of soulslikes don’t do what Miyazaki tries to do.
And I get what you mean about the game being easier as relative. But there’s also the fact that people do challenge runs in all kinds of games. It’s that drive to be challenged and do something harder, so it is not easier, is at the root of what draws people.
starman2112@sh.itjust.works 5 hours ago
No, it’s still wrong for the games that he has designed and created. Let me attempt an analogy.
If you give Sean Evans or Chris Schonberger a spoonful of sriracha, it will not be spicy to them. The same spoonful of sriracha would be overwhelmingly spicy if you gave it to someone who doesn’t use hot sauce. Same capsaicin content, wildly different experiences.
You need to add difficulty options if you want everyone to have a similar experience. Otherwise, you’re just making the game harder for some people for no reason.
Some people enjoy a more challenging experience. Give them options to make it a more challenging experience. Nobody is asking anyone to take options away from players who like the games to be excessively difficult.
ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 4 hours ago
So with the Hot Ones analogy. The show is about interviewing guest tackling the challenge of hot sauces.
People tap out, and that’s a part of the show. There’s challenges within the show as well: (no milk, etc.)
If guests just ate the first wing 10 times, or it was just Sean Evans eating the wings and asking questions it’d just be a different show. (And there are shows where the guests just eat nornsl chicken wings, which is fine. They just sren’t Hot Ones.)
If Sean Evans weren’t eating the wings, however, the premise of the show is still there. Him joining in just helps the guest keep trying.
You can quit, you can not even play at all. If you’re not having fun you shouldn’t feel forced either way. Tap out, drink the milk, eat the ice cream.
At a certain point there’s going to be a “Challenge Mode: The Game” that is not conducive to an Easy Mode.
starman2112@sh.itjust.works 3 hours ago
I wasn’t talking about Hot Ones the show. Those are just the first names that came to mind in terms of people who can handle spicy food.
I’m just going to have to restate the exact same analogy and hope you get it this time. If you feed a spoonful of sriracha to someone who’s used to eating hot sauce in the hundreds of thousands of scovilles, and to someone who irregularly puts a couple drops of Tabasco on their pizza, the two will have wildly different experiences of the same sauce.
Miyazaki’s stated goal was to give everyone the same experience. In order to do that, the experience must be tailored to the player’s ability. Giving me access to mild hot sauce does not reduce your access to the extra spicy stuff. Letting me reduce the Guardian Ape’s health by half in my save file does not reduce the Guardian Ape’s health in yours. It just ensures that we both have an equivalent experience to each other.