Assassin's Creed III Dev Says Easy Mode Ruins Games

[Grey_Gore]

"A lot of games have been ruined by easy modes," he says. "If you have a cover shooter and you switch it to easy and you don't have to use cover, you kind of broke your game."

Correct me if I'm wrong but if this happens, isn't it most usually because:

A. The game mechanics (in this case cover shooting) are not well-implemented/useful to begin with or
B. The people in charge of balancing difficulty didn't do a good enough job

On the same topic, why cut off a part of your audience (those of us that due to lack of patience or time etc. can't or won't sit around playing the same level multiple times due to difficulty) by removing the difficulty select feature?

At any rate, UbiSoft really, *really* needs to start assigning publicists to their dev teams, lately their leads have been spouting all sorts of, uh, "unfortunate" opinions.

 

[Kahani]

He uses literature as an example: "It's like if I picked up a book and it said, 'Do you want the easy version or the complicated version?' (Game designers) can simplify the language, you know; we can make it two syllables."

Maybe Hutchinson should try looking up the word "abridged" in his dictionary. That would be the abridged dictionary of course, I don't think I've ever met anyone who owned a full one.

 

[loudestmute]

Do I use easy mode? Not since the mislabeled difficulties in NA Devil May Cry 3, no. But at the same time, saying that easy mode ruins games is at best focusing on the wrong problem and at worse logically inconsistent.

AAA game design likes to talk about their focus on being cinematic and telling more compelling narratives than films. Saying "easy mode sux" is like a director refusing to let people use the fast forward button on their DVDs because you have to see the whole movie to understand. People want to skip the boring stuff, let them. It won't make the game any different for the people who avoid easy mode, and those that do use easy mode get to experience the story you're trying to impress us with in the first place.

Keep easy mode. Deal with it.

 

[Kargathia]

Funny, considering that the Assassin's Creed games have been stuck in "easy mode" since from about halfway through the first game.

"Here, have three different weapons that all basically do the same thing, insta-kills, disarm insta kills, chain-insta-kills, four different ways to kill silently -three of them from range, get-out-of-fuck-up-free smoke bombs, NPC support, an insta-kill-everything-in-sight button, more health upgrades then you can shake a stick at, ten full health potions and, finally, twenty different kinds of grenade."

"Oh, and easy mode ruins games."

Just look at it from his perspective - if you'd made Assassin's Creed any easier it'd be a flashing message at the game's start "Congratulations, you have won the game!". Under that light, I can understand where he's coming from.

I'm not sure though whether he even played Dark Souls before spouting his opinion.

 

[ResonanceSD]

Absolutely agree on the content at hand. Easy modes ruin games. Games are interactive. Games need challenge to stay engaging.

However, AC: B&R kinda ruined things for me, I was just too damned good at counter-killing for them to pose any challenge.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

No.

What ruins games is being on Normal mode and being constantly told you FAILED after completing missions because you didn't do it within some ridiculous parameter.

Just put a hard mode in AC3, enough of that 100% sync bullshit.

 

[Nazulu]

This is one of those 'if' things. It really depends how you make it easier.

 

[Ljs1121]

Dang it, AC3 people, I want to buy the game and at least somewhat love/respect you! Stop saying things!

 

[teh_gunslinger]

Coming from a guy making games where you can block+counter your way through the entire series I find this extremely amusing, bordering on hilarious.

 

[Tsaba]

I agree and see his point, but, hearing it from him just makes it

Spoiler: a hard pill to swallow.

Oh dear God.....

 

[WanderingFool]

Im sorry... "easy mode ruins games?"

Ever since ACB, the only thing I found hard[footnote][sub]Also, I think the other games were just as easy, its just noticable now[/sub][/footnote] wasthose sync ratios where you have to do the one objective to achieve the 100% sync rating. Thats was a ***** with the tank weapon in ACB, but beyond that...

*Edit*

No.

What ruins games is being on Normal mode and being constantly told you FAILED after completing missions because you didn't do it within some ridiculous parameter.

Just put a hard mode in AC3, enough of that 100% sync bullshit.

Yeah... this...

 

[infinity_turtles]

I think the problem is the title of the article, not what he says. And possibly that ruin is too strong a word. He never states easy mode ruins games, he says it ruins SOME games. Some games have an easy mode where gameplay elements the game was designed around are made invalid. I'd say any game that does that has failed in there application of difficulty levels. Hell, the way I interpret this is a statement on design, not difficulty.

I don't even like Assassin's Creed, and hate fucking Ubisoft. Honestly makes me feel a little dirty for being the guy to defend this, but I honestly think people are reading too much into this as an attack on easy modes.

 

[Ishigami]

That's funny considering AC1 and 2 are one of the easiest games I ever played thanks to their broken combat system (counter kill anyone?)...

 

[Dandark]

With how easy Assasins creed is then I can only imagine that putting an "easy mode" into it really would ruin the game. It would probably just turn into one giant cutscene so you don't have to do anything.

 

[Astoria]

I...think I can see what he's saying? But the simple solution is if you don't like it, don't play in easy mode? Also, as many have said, a bit much coming from someone who's game it very easy once you get used to the controls. Not that I'm complaining of course, I love the series.

 

[chimeracreator]

Actually the guy has a point. What a lot of people forget is that Brotherhood and Revelations both introduced an optional "Hard Mode" with a metric to track it. Sure you could just go in and abuse the incredibly easy combat system to win most any mission without breaking a sweat or you could go for the 100% sync optional objective for the mission which forced you to change up your tactics and often required a mix of stealth and speed.

So most missions of Assassins Creed 2: B & R on "Hard Mode" were: Do this objective without anyone ever seeing you because we know it's WAAAAY too easy if you fight your way through it, but if you aren't good at playing that way have at it. Which seems to tell me that he is more in favor of making optional hard modes on an easy game compared to tacking on an easy mode on a hard game. Plus it could mean that he wishes he was allowed to make more difficult objectives in Assassins Creed 3 for the baseline.

 

[Krantos]

Says the franchise that hasn't had an ounce of difficulty in the last 3 games.

Seriously, this is just dumb. Stop trying to cover yourself from not including difficulty settings. It's not a good thing, and your games are WAAAY too easy.

 

[Bernzz]

Huge Assassin's Creed fan here. The games are basically one long easy mode, except for the occasional instant fail missions, which are more annoying than properly difficult.