Blood Brain Barrier said:
I don't quite understand why difficulty in games (scavenging for survival, aiming bullets at heads, complex puzzles) is highly praised and rewarded, and yet a difficult interface isn't. If you've just awaken on board a space station with newly acquired biotech surgery, of course you're going to have a hell of a time getting around. Using half the keyboard to navigate and use your capabilities was part of the experience, and was incredibly cool to learn and master at the time.
Sure, you might not be skilled at it but I'm not skilled at targeting things with the mouse in real-time. That doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to call all shooters crap (although I can try).
So why doesn't the old argument that interfaces should be as easy and simple to use as possible, apply to Dark Souls which during my 20 minutes of playing gave rise to endlessly frustrating and unenjoyable dead ends, deaths and needlessly difficult combat?
Because those difficulty in games you mention are just features of the game, like things that you can/will do in a game. On the other hand, the interface is the in-between link that connects the player with the game. The player relies on the interface as one of tools to gather information on what's happening in the game, in order to make moment to moment judgment on what's the next best course of action. A clunky and bad interface can only serve to confuse the player and possibly even mislead them to make a wrong move.
Think of the interface as like the dashboard gauges on your car. It should be easy to read and instantaneously recognizable so that the driver can make snap decisions, moment to moment, so that he/she can stay on the road, move toward right direction, avoid accidents, keep within the bounds of the law, and etc. But if the dashboard was a clunky, cluster-mess of stuff all over the place, then the driver needs to pay more attention to it than the road. Guess what is going to happen then? Yes, an accident... maybe even death. That's not good, right?
Please, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that such antiquated interface is absolutely bad. I'm sure it has its own brand of charm and I believe there're some people (like yourself) who enjoy such stuff. But you can't say that more most people. Think carefully for a moment: there is a reason why the interfaces of video games have gotten overall simpler and slicker over the years.
And I'd say that Dark Souls is a poor example for a comparison. First of all, Dark Souls is inherently a console game played primarily on a controller. And a typical controller doesn't have a lot of buttons. I'm even willing to bet that Dark Souls may use less number of buttons than the old Doom on PC... let alone the entire half of the keyboard (plus a mouse) for System Shock. So ask yourself which is more easier to learn & master for most people. Furthermore, the interface for Dark Souls is nothing like System Shock; unlike System Shock that has a cluttered & messy interface that takes too much space on the screen, Dark Souls only has (1) Health/Stamina/Mana/whatever bars on top left corner, (2) Weapons, Items, and Spells icons on bottom left corner, and (3) a simple Soul counter at bottom right. And none of those are too big to obstruct the main view of the screen and allows the player to focus entirely on the action if needed. It's really a no comparison.
