Comment on Three developers' different philosophies on difficulty for their games
ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 5 hours agoSo 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 4 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.
DonkeyStar@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
The analogy doesn’t work because your philosophy clashes with someone else’s. My fun is from eating progressively spicier hot sauces to build a tolerance to capsaicin, until I can talk with Sean Evans about our opinions on General Satan’s Colon Evaporator. If you extracted the capsaicin from General Satan’s Colon Evaporator, it is no longer General Satan’s Colon Evaporator, and you can’t actually contribute to the conversation.
“Everybody” that plays in the NBA is literally on the same playing field. “Everybody” at a basketball convention likes basketball. But those are two very different groups of people.
starman2112@sh.itjust.works 3 hours ago
That’s the wonderful thing about options, is that their optional. Me having the option to make the game more fun for me does not remove the option to make the game more fun for you.
If your stated goal with a hot sauce eating party is to “bring everyone to the same level of discussion and the same level of enjoyment,” are you going to feed everyone General Satan’s Colon Evaporator, or do you think that would bring some people to a “different” level of discussion and enjoyment?
What an incredible insult to Miyazaki’s writing. If you took some of the health out of Ebrietas, you’d still be playing Bloodborne. If you and I both beat her at the same level of relative difficulty, what’s stopping us from having a conversation? Why am I only able to join the conversation when I have a harder time with her than you do?
DonkeyStar@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Who said anything about a party or feeding anyone sauce? Playing the game is the option. I’m setting a goal for myself to get to that level. I’m getting the sauce for myself. I don’t need you to be part of the conversation.
ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 3 hours ago
I am just trying to engage with the context of your points. I used Hot Ones to build on it and offer a counterpoint: the games are about how you tackle the spicy mountain, which by design is the same as everyone else’s spicy mountain.
All true and fine.
Fundamentally we have not. An ‘extra mild’ The Bomb Beyond Insanity, that is an actual palatable smoke flavor, is just not the equivalent experience as suffering through the real deal.
But, for the record, it’s 100% appropriate to clown on people who suffer those million scoville hot sauces on their food like it is an enjoyable culinary experience. Don’t play the game if you don’t have fun, and no one should suffer the fools who think you should.
starman2112@sh.itjust.works 3 hours ago
Nope, fundamentally we have. I am not conditioned to eat very spicy food. If you are conditioned to eat very spicy food, then more capsaicin is less spicy for you. The nociceptors in your mouth get less overwhelmed, and you experience more of the actual flavor. You are able to taste it in a way that I am physically incapable of.
But hey, I don’t actually eat hot sauce. I’m just assuming that the strong stuff has complex flavors. Is the pain literally the only reason you eat hot sauce? Does it not taste like anything? Because Fromsoft games do have flavor, and I think that whether or not you’re physically capable of handling the spice should not factor in to whether you are allowed to taste them or not
ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 2 hours ago
Then it was probably a poor analogy to use.
Best I can say is you mentioned people being ‘conditioned’ to eat hot sauce or not. The experience of extreme hot sauces is largely about how each person react to the same sauce. Each experience is different because the conditioning is different for everyone, which is the whole point.
Fromsoft games are the same way. They don’t have any calibration for conditioning because it’s all about how well (or if) you can condition yourself to able to experience it.