Submitted 2 weeks ago by FoxtrotDeltaTango@sh.itjust.works to [deleted]
https://media.piefed.world/posts/1x/zQ/1xzQKtGfRQP2278.jpg
cross-posted from: piefed.world/post/612204
I’m not paying for a game that doesn’t allow changing difficulty if I want/need. I work two jobs and have to do most home cleaning and maintenance. I used to game competitively back in the early 2000s, but I don’t have time for that shit nor gatekeeping.
Good news: Dwarf fortress is free.
Is it still available for free? I kinda assumed once it went up on steam it wouldn’t be.
Strike the earth!
Yeah I wasted money on 2 soulslikes before I realized it. Now I avoid them like the plague.
Celeste did it perfectly imho with their Assist Mode. Just add those difficulty options in for accessibility, with a warning that it is not how the developers intend for it to be played.
“Celeste is intended to be a challenging and rewarding experience. If the default game proves inaccessible to you, we hope that you can still find that experience with Assist Mode.”
Exactly. I love Souls games but I think having an option somewhere for people that need it wouldn’t ruin the intended experience. Especially if there’s a disclaimer before you choose it.
I’m not mad they don’t have it or anything. But like, shouldn’t there be a way to play if you literally can’t otherwise?
I think it would be a pretty good joke if they made the combat of the next souls game turn based. Still monstrously difficult, release the game on an April 1st and have the entire gaming subset of players switch their stances
That actually does sound perfect
Difficulty settings are accessibility settings and anyone who disagrees can kiss my ass.
As long as the setting accommodates everyone, including people who want a difficult game
Yeah that’s the point at least in my eyes. I don’t see why it has to be one way or the other. You have absolutely nothing to lose and everything to gain from difficulty accessibility options. If someone sees difficulty as some sort of status symbol… Well, don’t project that onto me.
This is why I didn’t finish CO:E33. I’m a from soft fanboy. I have beaten everything they made other than king’s field. I head into brick walled the first optional boss after the intro. But it got way too inconsistent about halfway through. So I switched it to easy and it was just incredibly too easy so I lost interest. Wish they had something in between.
But yeah, if a game is too easy it doesn’t captivate me.
“…to first face that challenge and to overcome it in some way that suits them as a player.”
Honestly when that player is me, this is just going to mean playing a different game. I’m old and busy, I really don’t have the time or energy for hard games.
All art should have difficulty sliders. I want to listen to avant-garde jazz but I think it should be in 4/4 time signature and they should play the most melodic notes. And I think art house movies should have a version where the script is rewritten so the characters explain the allegories and symbolism of the movie while I’m watching. And I think opera should have someone reading what is being sung because I find it hard to follow along with the singing
I mean we literally do have accessibility settings for most art lmao what do you think subtitles and sign language interpreters are
Sure and we have subtitles in Fromsoft games so it’s all good right?
No we literally don’t. When the last you went to a museum? Art is presented basically as is, and if you’re blind you will probably go to the sound based works instead of the visual mediums instead.
Everyone who is opposed to difficulty sliders should be forced to spend 200 hours on each game using a controller that simulates dyspraxia by randomly adjusting every movement of the sticks by a random degree and lagging every button press by a few microseconds before they’re allowed to play it normally.
Add an additional 400 hours if they also say smug shit like this when pretending their ableism and elitism are just devotion to artistic integrity.
The devs who make games without difficulty sliders should never get their undoctored controllers back.
We should abolish all art since there will always be someone with a disability who isn’t able to enjoy it.
If someone wants to gate their game to people who can handle the level of difficulty, that’s their choice. There are plenty of developers who are willing to be accommodating, to get hung up on games that don’t
Personally I oppose difficulty sliders because I think they are overly broad and stupid, looking at you Bethesda and your lowsy ass health bar padding. Give me more zomboid and owlcat style difficulty setting where I can customize them in all minutiae.
But no seriously fuck difficulty sliders cause 9/10 they do overly broad gameplay things that some of which I may not want. This is coming from a guy who beat Boltgun on its hardest difficulty with the clown vomit filter so it’s not like I can’t enjoy ulta hard difficulty but what some consider ultra hard I may consider annoying as fuck see yet again Bethesda health bar padding. I do like NV 4s hardcore/survival mode though.
That seems like a lot more work than just trying a new hobby.
I know this is just a joke, but art should have a difficulty slider when possible if it will require active participation by the audience. Otherwise, it is just excluding people and essentially gatekeeping. Even art house movies and have subtitles, and music is often translated to text or sign.
Disagree. There are plenty of games out there that try to cater to the widest base possible, plenty of games with a bunch of difficulty sliders and adjustments. From should be able to make their art without having to cater to every single person.
Even art house movies and have subtitles, and music is often translated to text or sign.
That was not my argument. My argument was art movies should explicitly spell out the meanings and symbolism in their movie via dialogues so I don’t have to do it myself. Avant-garde jazz musicians should make albums in popular time signatures and be more melodious. Otherwise people are excluded from enjoying those art forms
Now imagine there’s a song that comes out that you like the themes of. It’s catchy, it hits your buttons just right. One problem: When you play the song, it turns your volume to maximum. Others insist that max volume is part of the artistic intent. You just need to keep on listening at max volume over and over until you can appreciate it. If you could listen to it at a lower volume, it would be a lesser experience. Why? You don’t see what this specific volume has to do with the things you enjoy about the song. People can listen to it at max volume, but there’s plenty of people who would rather listen at the volume they choose. Why not allow for a volume slider?
There’s plenty of music that I can’t connect with for one reason or another. I don’t demand artists make music I enjoy, I go out and find artists I enjoy and listen to their music. If an artist made a song that somehow turned the volume up to full everytime I put it on, that is their right as the artist to make regardless of whether or no I or anyone else enjoyed it. I fucking can’t stand country music, so I simply listen to other music. If I demanded all country musicians made music I enjoy, I wouldn’t expect anyone on earth to respect my requests because it’s not a respectable request. There are many other devs out there making games with plenty of difficulty adjustments. You should play those games.
Match the type of a game, sheesh.
Bethesda like open world? Gimmie difficulty levels - nothing will change with them except that people will be able to tailor the experience more.
Narrative and/or choice heavy game? Leave difficulty choice off to let the original vision of the author speak for itself - havimg parts too easy or hard due to watered down or pumped up difficulty can ruin the story.
Arcade/Dark Souls games? I…don’t really see reasons for difficulty settings here except for harder than baselines ones? Like new game +. In these games, learning patterns and gettimg good is the game, there is no way around it.
All in all - not every game is for everyone, we have genres for a reason. Having difficulty tailored for arcades in open world exploration game makes no sense just as much as having watered down difficulty levels in narrative heavy games.
Some have limited time and want to enjoy a good game without being one-shot or learning patterns for 5 hours to beat a single boss.
This is really such an weird argument. Like arguing that you want to be able to drive a nail with any tool you find, so no matter if these are scissors, a spoon or an actual hammer, all need to be usable as a hammer.
We have genres for a reason. If you do not like soulslikes, pick another game. If you have no time to play arcade style games, pick another genre. There are thousands of games available, and genre overlap is huge - don’t play games that aren’t meant to align with your requirements and then complain they don’t.
Like, this is borderline egoistical of you.
You’re way overblowing the difficulty of the Souls games.
I’ve beaten most of them, and my reactions are shit. 90% of the difficulty is from not knowing how it differs from other games.
Sounds like you’ll need to play a different game then.
So…. Play a different game? Not everything is for you? Does this actually need to be said?
Lol yes, I dropped High On Life at the first boss because after trying to pass it ten times, I just couldn’t be bothered.
That’s just not a game to me. It’s just packaged frustration, and I’d rather do something else. So that got uninstalled rather fast.
learning patterns and gettimg good is the game
Otherwise it’s fruit ninja lmao which is a fun game you should get if you want an easy sword slashing experience
Me, having beaten the game on the highest difficulty level, going back to play it on easy mode in the next playthrough: sometimes I just want to relax while I utterly massacre some bad guys.
Playing an anything goes run after a Soul Level 1 run.
They all challenge you on different ways.
DS3 is actually quite interesting to finish on SL1. You can cast one basic spell, lots of weapons are available to you, but you need to think carefully about your loadout so you’ve got a good set of resistance and buffs for each area.
DS1 limits you to terrible weapons with boring movesets, and by the time you’ve heard the pyromancy noise for the ten thousandth time, you’ll be ready to chuck your monitor out the window.
DS2 is hellish. Your dodge is tied to your agility, which only a few items boost, and for the first 3/4 of the game, you’ll only get that from a crap armour set. Only a couple of weapons are available to you. You’ll need to know basically every boss inside out; some of the ones that were comedic before are no longer so funny.
Scholar is like DS2, but you can’t run into the DLC early on any more to get some of the powerful rings that are in there. I almost cried when I finally got the ring of the embedded.
Wouldn’t know about finishing ER on RL1/no summons. Cleared out the four demigods easily enough, but Morgott was a run ender. RL1 does not leave you a lot of room for mistakes, put it like that.
Tbh dark souls 2 has extra hard difficulty setting
Just join the covenant at the tree in Majula
It increases enemy dmg by 50%
Reduces your dmg by 20%
Prevents summoning (but you can still be invaded)
Dark souls games start off in easy mode. You can make it harder by your gear/stat decisions or by going into NG+.
All souls have player difficulty adjustment. Just find better gear, grind XP etc
Making a game hard for the sake of making it hard is a cheap way to increase difficulty.
The challenge shouldn’t come from enemies being damage sponges or the AI having superhuman reaction times. It should come from player skill.
Balatro is one of the best examples of this. The game naturally gets easier as the player learns its systems and gains experience through playing.
Destiny 2 also had excellent skill progression. Say what you want about the game as a whole, but the core gunplay and the mechanics of its three classes rewarded players for improving their own abilities.
Even games like Madden and NBA 2K have, to a lesser extent, systems that reward player skill rather than simply inflating difficulty.
Many older games were made extremely difficult because they were relatively short. The increased difficulty extended playtime and made players feel they were getting more value for the price. That’s one of the reasons games like Ninja Gaiden on the NES earned their reputation for being brutally hard.
As for Soulslike games, they’re simply not my cup of tea. I fully acknowledge that they’re well-made games, and if you enjoy them, that’s great. They’re intentionally designed to be challenging. While the original Dark Souls was developed under a tight schedule and has some rough edges, its high level of difficulty was a deliberate design choice rather than the result of bugs or glitches.
Making enemies soak up more damage and deal more damage is lazy difficulty. Giving enemies more tools to use against the player is the better way to handle game difficulty IMO
Sekiro was my first Souls-like and honestly, it’s way too hard. There are moments in the game that lock you out UNTIL you defeat a boss. I even got the mod where it makes you near invincible, and I still struggled to fight bosses. Delivery and world was awesome, gameplay was impossible for people like me.
Then I played Elden Ring where you can literally be over-level. I was getting beat up in one zone, then moved to another area. When I returned, I was better equipped/more powerful/better as a player.
That to me is the perfect balance. Lemme go wander and git gud (by overleveling or finding useful items that make the bosses easier). Every game should allow the player to beat a boss with skill, or plow through them through cheesing/overleveling.
Sekiro bothered me, too, and I played all the Souls games. I got to the boss that wants you to jump and redirect lightning, and I stopped. I understand the philosophy behind making bosses unique, but it’s basically a QTE without the button prompt on the screen, and that’s not what I wanted from From. Also that weird fog that wants you to use consumables. I don’t do consumables.
Balatro is one of the best examples of this. The game naturally gets easier as the player learns its systems and gains experience through playing.
Isn’t this the case for most Roguelites? It’s not even necessarily player skill, so much as unlocking permanent upgrades (Jokers in Balatro, abilities/cards in Across the Obelisk or Slay the Spire, stat boosts and weapon modifiers in Hades, etc.).
Rogue like or did you mean rogue lite?
I had to double check that Tomonobu wasn’t responsible for steel battalion. (A game that deleted your save if you didn’t press the eject button in time)
I mean, lots of games have “iron man” modes wherein you cannot save scum.
There’s a lot of “you made your art wrong” in here. If you don’t have legs, you’re not going to be able to play soccer. You can make your own no-leg soccer if you want, but I’m just going to make an “ew” face at you if you say that soccer needs to change for you. Try arm wrestling!
The best argument against games (or any software) that don’t work for you is that you often can’t get refunds, and that’s a valid concern, but it has nothing to do with the content itself.
A nonverbal person joined one of hubs Delta green games and he accommodated it but was confused as to why they didn’t just join one of the text chat based games on the same server. His theory is they were just used to getting whatever they wanted because they then proceeded to insist on playing a shadowrun character until they just kind of broke down that it wasn’t working with the game and ghosted.
As someone who’s done Video game QA, working with Tomonobu Itagaki doesn’t sound pleasant. Those campaign sprints are hard enough as is
The first philosophy is why so many modern AAA games are complete crap. Why not just have FMV of the actors doing the scene and have the audience press X to continue to the next scene?
One of these days, maybe we won’t even have to press X anymore! It can just go scene to scene while we relax! Imagine it!
Personally, I gave up at the first fight in Bloodborne (I have 40 min of gameplay). Never touched a souls game ever again.
For real, I’ve got shit to do. Old-school boss fights requiring a ridiculous degree of flawless repetition was an expression of hardware limitations at the time, not a fun feature to get nostalgic about. People can spend their time as they wish, but for my money the artificially ramped-up difficulty for its own sake is a cancer on game design, not something to develop a sense of elitism about.
The Souls games actually do have difficulty settings; they’re just a bit esoteric. I think of it like the Mario games: almost anyone can “beat” a Mario, but there are secrets and collectibles all over those games that are only pursued by players who want more of a challenge. It’s the same game, but the player is opting to increase difficulty.
Souls games start at a higher skill floor than the average Mario, but you can unlock tools to make the game easier if you choose. There’s co-op summons, overpowered weapons and equipment, places to easily farm huge numbers of levels. Plus plenty of cheesy strategies for most of the toughest bosses. It’s all optional in-game choices you can make to tweak the difficulty to your taste without the devs putting in a menu slider that just gives every enemy double-HP or something. And they’ve gotten better at implementing these tools every time they’ve iterated. The few people who dunked on Elden Ring often criticized how easy it was relative to earlier FromSoft games. It’s not inherently easier, there are just many more ways to scale down the challenge if you want.
Not the original commenter but I do feel the same. I dislike souls games. Although I did enjoy sekiro and made it to the stupid lightning samurai guy.
The problem with souls-like games for me is the combat doesn’t feel good for the challenge and I believe you can see this in high tier players lazily dodging attacks.
The game isn’t about skill and strategy. It’s timing and flat experience to kill some bosses you just gotta fight them 600 times and learn the attacks patterns which to me feels mentally exhausting and frustrating. It’s like a glorified DDR game with swords. I have to do the right combos to win, some strategies exist sure but at the end of the day it’s DDR.
The big argument everyone has is “mechanics vs numbers” thinking mechanics is the true skill side but mechanics isn’t just what you do with a controller, it’s also what the game allows you to do.
Too many games equate difficulty with time sink. I want a game that I can be smart and play the numbers OR be skilled and play the mechanics or both. Souls games don’t offer that, they’re peg legged
It’s not that I don’t appreciate a challenge. I used to love difficult games. I grew up in the NES era when difficulty was the only thing that kept games from being completed in 30 minutes.
But life moves on and we get busy. If I get 2-3 hours in a week to game it’s a miracle. I am not going to spend that time grinding a boss for hours.
But other difficult games may be fine. Specifically, rogelikes. Slay the Spire and Dead Cells are games that can be very difficult, but the games are designed to be taken on in short chunks with an entire run taking under an hour, whereas Souls-Like games expect a lot more time commitment.
I really enjoyed the Respawn Jedi games. They’re Souls-likes with difficulty sliders that should appease anyone.
Souls have pretty hard bosses… but mostly, they are just optional content. Main story isn’t that difficult in my experience.
A lot of people in this thread don’t seem to have gotten the subtle meme post in this image. Itagaki was the dude who made the Modern Ninja Gaiden titles and the Dead or Alive franchise. The dude was always a massive troll to both the media and players but was very dedicated to the vision he had for the games he wanted to make. He also had a very close friendship/rivalry with Katsuhiro Harada, the main dev for the Tekken franchise starting at Tekken 3 and recently cutting ties with Namco to found a new company that is, unfortunately, owned by SNK. Itagaki sadly passed away last year and a lot of old school devs mourned for his loss, but probably none harder than Harada given just how long they had been actual irl friends.
Difficulty options aren’t there to offer different experiences with a game, they’re there to offer the same experience to players of different skill levels. People who are better at Dark Souls are playing it and its clones at a reduced difficulty compared to people who are worse at it.
Kojima:
We added Very Easy Mode
Also Kojima:
Get good or wear the chicken hat
I think difficulty settings are nice for letting more people play how they want without having to use mods.
I don’t care for the gatekeeping b.s.
I played RE Village with an unlimited-bullets-mod cause otherwise I couldn’t get past choke points.
I play with a controller and shooting is just not great with a joystick unless there is aim assist. Can’t recall if this game had it or not but either way I kept dying when swarmed by werewolves.
I like horror games and I get that the point is to make you anxious about ammo or health. To build tension. But I just find it frustrating sometimes.
I don’t mind any of these approaches. Personally I’d want a single difficulty that is made challenging but with specific accessibility options. Like disable quick time events, loose lock on, and other things to make the interface more bearable if you have a physical or mental disability.
While I don’t care if a game has an easy mode, a lot of the “easy mode is accessibility” arguments feel similar to the “AI art is accessibility” arguments. Unless you can’t properly interface with the game, having low skill is not a disability or something needing accessibility support. If you practice you’ll get better at it.
The “but I don’t have much time” argument feels especially weird, like would you demand a cliff notes version of a book or TV show because you don’t have the time otherwise? If you just want the story just find a playthrough online.
If a game has an easy mode, great, it appeals to a wider audience. If it doesn’t, great, it’s catering to a specific audience. A game’s not worse for having an easy mode and a game’s not inaccessible for asking you to practice its mechanics.
You know, the darksouls creator’s quote pisses me off. Not because of his opinion, but because the extreme soulslike fanatics will yell, kick, and scream about how difficulty sliders are the devil and how the game itself has its own way of making it easier for you but if you don’t play the game their with their specific build, your play through doesn’t count.
Souls ganes has easy modes. Usually there’s an OP build or archetype which makes the game much easier
I’ve been playing video games since the 1970s. Now I’m just a poor old man. My legs are grey. My ears are gnarled. My eyes are old and bent.
These days I mostly play video games for the story and to relax so I usually play on easy. And I’m ok with that.
Tangential, but I really dislike the industries trend toward super forgiving difficulty settings
Like the new Halo you can change basically any setting you want to make, to “customise” your difficulty
I like the video games with a difficulty selector having a joke difficulty
I think Terraria has a really good approach to this.
Your first playthrough is on “normal” mode. Boss fights aren’t about skill, you don’t have to be on your toes constantly, etc. — except, that doesn’t matter. Because your first playthrough is hopefully blind and without the wiki, meaning you’ll have really bad, inefficient gear, and most of the challenge will come from finding and understanding good gear and how the world works before you can even find and beat bosses. Normal mode on your first playthrough has its own kind of challenge.
After that you will know how to progress and want more challenge and excitement for your second playthrough. Enter “expert” mode. New loot, new super powerful cool accessories, everything is way harder, even basic mobs hit twice as hard. Now everything is about staying on your toes, showing your skills in boss fights, meticulously crafting plans — but you’re rewarded for it by a new experience and what feels like a new, more exciting Terraria. If you get tired of expert mode (I’m gonna say 200–300 hours of playtime later), there’s the ridiculous “hard” mode. And “hardcore.” Endless possibilities.
But everyone is given a chance with normal mode, which is really extremely easy. Everyone gets a chance to get to know the game. But you are rewarded with the full game, in a sense, for playing the proper difficulty.
Game should only have 1 difficulty that the developer wants . Simple . Having different difficulty to cator weak is very weak . Same can be said for laws though otherwise it would be a primitive fight between 2 people and whoever wins , wins the freedom while other perish in fire
Ninja gaiden black was such a great game.
Also Hideo Kojima: Can I add a setting to have lots of feet. Do you all like feet? more feet!
Itagaki’s comment here reminds me of Malmsteen’s “more is more”
panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Both are perfectly acceptable philosophies, but many Souls players need to learn that losing at a game for 150 hours is not what other people find fun.
yakko@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
The difficulty slider is intrinsic to the system and the world. The whole point is that you have to make it easier by engaging with it on its own terms, rather than by forcing a change upon the world to make it suit you. This is never made explicit; the creator just wants you to either dig deep or bounce off it because struggle is the whole point or something, which is why we have to talk about it forever. Blah
Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
TheYojimbo@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Most of us get that, but non souls player must also understand that dark souls on easy mode is just a bad game. There are no big cinematics, the story is scarce, there are only a few npcs. Those are games that puts you on your toes, you must be wary at all times, and learn to master the game bit by bit. It’s not for everyone, or everytime (I think everyone can play souls game but they need to be in the right mindset) but they are my favorite games. But yeah gatekeepers suck
jdr@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
You’re making the game on easy sound pretty good to me.
architect@thelemmy.club 2 weeks ago
Gatekeepers make things good by keeping those who aren’t serious out.
Sanguine@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Idk if soul players need to learn anything. Not your style of game thats fine, but all fights in souls games are fair in the sense that anyone can eventually beat it with practice, or overleveling, or innate skill (those who have, ahem, gotten good), and any combination of the three.
Have known a lot of people who played dark souls at a time in their life where they needed the lesson of getting up after getting knocked down.
FantasmaNaCasca@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I have that shit in real life. (Being taken down and having to get back up)
I work. I have to take care of the house/family. I had a leukemia…and I DID fucking rise up again from the dead…literally. With 3 prosthesis after, but hey, its just means im in a different game now (cyberpunk)
But we are talking about fucking games.
I am not a teenager with the time. Or patience. Those are both used on real life…you know…the bigger game. The real game.
I’m Not saying you can’t have the difficulty in your…playthings.
I am saying that there are people who want to play the games you like, they are great fucking games, but we just don’t have the time and energy to waste a few hours in the same fucking level/battle.
And that’s the conversation: Having the possibility to change difficulty. That exists. It’s not impossible.
You do you. No one is robing you of your experience.
Its just a shame…the gatekeeping.
rockerface@lemmy.cafe 2 weeks ago
The difficulty slider in Souls games is how many levels you’ve invested into health
Blackmist@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
You often can’t do that until you’ve made a little bit of progress. The real difficulty curve early on is knowing that picking the heavy armour class will make things much harder for yourself, that the real progression is knowledge of enemy attacks and opening shortcuts, and that losing your currency when you don’t have enough points to reach the next level isn’t really a big deal.
Zizzy@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
Why does everyone think every game has to be made for the lowest common denominator? If you don’t like a game, don’t play it. Besides, souls games can actually be quite forgiving, the difficulty adjustments just isnt in sliders. Especially in elden ring, you can beat every fight in a pretty brainless (i mean like not needing to dodge almost at all) way if you take the time to set up for it.
panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
I tried Dark Souls and I tried Demon Souls.
It’s not my thing, but I’m glad they are a lot of other people’s cup of tea
architect@thelemmy.club 2 weeks ago
Gamers are so entitled they will argue with other gamers on matters of taste. “That game is not to my specifications! Instead of finding one that is I’ll complain until the game is changed! People that like it the old way need to know i have a job!”
tomi000@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Why? Do Souls players not accept others not liking the games? Thats not my experience but maybe many are like that?
Also, usually Souls players dont lose for 150 hours straight. Most of the time its winning, but sometimes youre set back a bit and sometimes youre stuck. Some people like earning their wins. Some cant handle the difficulty and get frustrated, I get thats not fun for them. To each their own.
hakase@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Yeah, the position of most FromSoft players in my experience is: “You don’t have to like the games, but you can’t just demand that they change for you.”