Assassin's Creed III Dev Says Easy Mode Ruins Games
- Thread starter Timothy Chang
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I think it depends on the game. in certain games, for example, I do think easy mode would ruin the point of the game. Dark Souls, for example, just wouldn't be the same if it weren't brutally challenging. VVVVVV, N, and Super Meat Boy also benefit from the extreme difficulty, and most dungeon crawlers or rogue likes probably wouldn't be the same if thy were made easy to accomodate for people who might not be as good at the genre/game.
However, I prefer to play my Uncharted on easy, just because it kinda ruins the flow of the game and cinematography if a portion of the game is so hard I die numerous times on it. Now I might play through on a harder difficulty setting on a second playthrough, for the trophies/achievements or whatever, but the first run through I prefer it to be easier for a game like that.
As long as there is a difficulty setting though, I really don't think it makes much of a difference. If they want to add an easy setting in Dark Souls (as long as it's not a whole new version of the game) and people choose to use it, it's perfectly fine. Let the people choose how they want to play it, I say.
However, I prefer to play my Uncharted on easy, just because it kinda ruins the flow of the game and cinematography if a portion of the game is so hard I die numerous times on it. Now I might play through on a harder difficulty setting on a second playthrough, for the trophies/achievements or whatever, but the first run through I prefer it to be easier for a game like that.
As long as there is a difficulty setting though, I really don't think it makes much of a difference. If they want to add an easy setting in Dark Souls (as long as it's not a whole new version of the game) and people choose to use it, it's perfectly fine. Let the people choose how they want to play it, I say.
This is pure idiocy. There isn't a reason for people who care to select easy mode. Maybe easy mode is a good thing for people who are new to video games? I've seen so many people who don't game get curious and try only to pick a game without a difficulty setting and lose all the time right away without getting a chance to get used to controlling a video game character. Games without an easy mode are just saying "Fuck you" to anyone new to gaming and thus making it more difficult to spread gaming as a medium.
While I agree that the AC games are piss easy, we are all pretty experienced gamers and know our way around a game. My girlfriend played crash bandicoot as a kid and thats about it, she sucks at AC as she cant get the counter timing and free running right; difficulty is relative.
Anyways difficulty settings are a kind of must; if I had to play CoD at veteran level i'd quit halfway through the first mission, I only ever play veteran for the challenge of completing it, usually sticking to normal or hardened to play the story first.
Anyways difficulty settings are a kind of must; if I had to play CoD at veteran level i'd quit halfway through the first mission, I only ever play veteran for the challenge of completing it, usually sticking to normal or hardened to play the story first.
I see a lot of comments about how insanely easy Assassin's Creed is (and it is. I haven't died since the first game, unless you count instant fail missions, in which case I die a small handful of times per game while going for the optional objectives) but no one addressing the issue of non-gamers.
I know plenty of people who like to play video games, but aren't very good at them and don't consider themselves part of the gamer subculture. If a man who has never had time for games because he's been too busy working 60+ hours a week in the factory while simultaneously raising his family gets the time to play a few games and likes them (an actual person I know), who are you to say "No. You aren't allowed to enjoy our game. Adding a completely optional lower difficulty bar for people like you might tempt people who don't need it to use it, and we don't think they would be having as much fun if we allowed them to do that."
It makes absolutely no sense, it's preposterous and it is either the product of a mind that does not understand the current video game market, the result of a man that does not care about a large section of that market because of their dissimilarity to him, or an outright lie to cover whatever the true reason is (Ex: "But, we never planned to include difficulty. Changing stuff is HARD, and takes TIME. We want money now.")
I know plenty of people who like to play video games, but aren't very good at them and don't consider themselves part of the gamer subculture. If a man who has never had time for games because he's been too busy working 60+ hours a week in the factory while simultaneously raising his family gets the time to play a few games and likes them (an actual person I know), who are you to say "No. You aren't allowed to enjoy our game. Adding a completely optional lower difficulty bar for people like you might tempt people who don't need it to use it, and we don't think they would be having as much fun if we allowed them to do that."
It makes absolutely no sense, it's preposterous and it is either the product of a mind that does not understand the current video game market, the result of a man that does not care about a large section of that market because of their dissimilarity to him, or an outright lie to cover whatever the true reason is (Ex: "But, we never planned to include difficulty. Changing stuff is HARD, and takes TIME. We want money now.")
Not something that should come from Assassin's Creed and I completely disagree. Games have been a lot worse off for not having a true easy difficulty and a true hard difficulty.
I'm going to agree with the general consensus that Assassin's Creed has only been difficult when there's an arbitrary limitation attached, and even then it's more frustrating then truely challenging. Especially in some of the missions where there's a Full Sync requirement that relates to a later part of the mission, but you can't go back to the last checkpoint in order to retry it. Instead you have to restart the entire mission, which can take ages. Or the missions where detection equals an instant failure, which generally means you have to take a very specific approach as dictated by the game designers. That, and the fact that Assassin's Creed guards have some of the most arbitrary rules for detecting the player ever to make up for the sometimes clumsy controls.
I would almost agree but then I realize this is coming from AC's dev team,a group of people that make games so easy it should be a crime.
No. Bad analogy! Not the same thing. Two different mediums entirely. Books are all about the story, whereas games are about more than just the story. They have many different aspects to them, all important in how they're designed--the story, the mechanics, the visuals, levels of interactivity. Some games don't require all of these elements (for a lot of games, the narrative is either an afterthought or just wasn't in the designer's vision at all) for them to be entertaining to a person, thus not every element is needed to complete the experience that the person was looking for in that game.Timothy Chang said:
An "easy mode" (being the addition, not the default) limits the challenge or gameplay, but maybe I personally am not all that good at this particular game. Maybe I just enjoy the story or I love exploring the world that was built. Fighting and combat isn't the core of what makes a game special to a person, games are remembered and held in high regard for different reasons.
Now, in Dark Souls' specific case, what makes the game so memorable and highly regarded is it's challenge and difficulty, so yes, dumbing it down would defeat this purpose, but this kind of standard just isn't applicable to every game or even games in the main stream market.
Devs do realise that younger people play games too? Personally I wouldnt have my none existance child playing AC or Dark Souls but it has its place.
If I'm honest I wouldn't mind an easy mode in Dark Souls. First playthrough in easy then move up to the regular version. disable trophies if you want..
If I'm honest I wouldn't mind an easy mode in Dark Souls. First playthrough in easy then move up to the regular version. disable trophies if you want..
Yep, that!WanderingFool said:
Seriously, I can't even muster up the interest to continue on with Brotherhood, let alone even think about Revelations or AC3. I'm not a completionist by any stretch of the imagination, but there's something annoying about being flat out told by the game that you aren't doing it right. How that decision made it into the final game is beyond me. It should have been an option you could turn on or off, or those extra requirements should have been unspoken, or at least only spoken if you completed them, not if you failed them. If I'm being constantly reminded that I'm failing, I'm not having fun.
It's ignorant to assert that games can only be engaging through testing our controller-mastery (and patience). Challenge, in its broadest sense, may be a necessary aspect of interactive media, but it can come from a lot more than a test of reflexes and muscle memory. No game should be unplayable by the uninitiated, just as no book is completely unreadable.ResonanceSD said:
I don't think difficulty is this simple an issue. It's not just a slider that you increase or decrease. For example, Dark Souls is not just difficult (it is, but there are few challenges that you'll have to replay more than five or six times), it's punishing: each death means losing souls, humanity, backtracking and possibly getting killed by normal enemies on your way to the bloodstain (in which case the souls are lost for good), and stopping for a rest and resupply respawns every enemy in the game. The game simply doesn't care for you, hampers you and treats you like an insignificant gnat throughout, which fits the tone and atmosphere perfectly. For Dark Souls, it's essential to be unforgiving and merciless, because it wouldn't be a survival RPG with a quicksave/quickload function.
You could decrease enemy damage and health (and worsen the AI) a bit, and technically "lower" the difficulty of Dark Souls without harming the atmosphere, since it's the unforgiving attitude that's key. In a cover-based shooter, rendering cover unnecessary is just bad design, and there are much smarter ways to accommodate inexperienced players without hamstringing the core gameplay. If the AC3 designers can't think of an easy mode without breaking their game, it's their own fault for being unimaginative.
I disagree, I hate playing games like Skyrim or DA 2 off easy mode, I play for the story, not the difficulty of a challenge.
It was said earlier but easy mode only ruins the game if you choose to use it, if the argument was making easy modes uses up time and other dev resources then he may of had a point. And a lot of games benefit from an easy mode like Elder Scrolls where the combat is boring and the real draw is exploring or Devil May Cry I enjoy playing the hard modes and my preferred way to play the games but it's fun to sometimes use the easy modes for stress relief.
Maybe I don't play for the satisfaction of finally winning once after losing 20 times, maybe I play to follow the story, or maybe I just play to relax. I've been wondering around in Fallout 3 recently on Very Easy mode just so I can listen to the music, lean back and not get stressed out whenever I die.
The option to customise your experience is one of the most important things to have in your game because different people like different things, we're not cattle for christ's sake. When will game designers learn this?
The option to customise your experience is one of the most important things to have in your game because different people like different things, we're not cattle for christ's sake. When will game designers learn this?
I get what he's saying, I just don't agree at all.
I'll stop playing games that are oppressively hard, because they aren't fun anymore. When I've stopped reacting to new stimulus and started learning enemy positions by rote in order to get through them I've stopped playing a game. At that point I'm learning a routine, two words that should never ever be associated with an exciting game.
Now there's nothing wrong with games where you have to initially take a step back and learn where guards are walking and what routes they patrol, those games can be great fun and challenging and even nerve wracking as you hope that your route works. When you have a game where after spotting where all the guards are you walk your carefully patrolled route only to get blindsided by a guard you couldn't have hoped to plan or react for it's just frsutrating. Often an easy mode in games can help a newer player to react in time or more effectively.
Also, how exactly does this guy intend to entice non-gamers to buy his product? I put the controller for Halo into the hands of my sister (who doesn't play games ever) and after about ten minutes on easy mode she's got the hang of the controls and can hold her own reasonably well even on normal mode. That's a great feature for a game.
Just because a game has an easy mode doesn't mean people have to play the game on easy, but games without easy mode won't be played at all in some cases because they either become frustrating (Dark Souls) or because the gamer is a newbie.
I'll stop playing games that are oppressively hard, because they aren't fun anymore. When I've stopped reacting to new stimulus and started learning enemy positions by rote in order to get through them I've stopped playing a game. At that point I'm learning a routine, two words that should never ever be associated with an exciting game.
Now there's nothing wrong with games where you have to initially take a step back and learn where guards are walking and what routes they patrol, those games can be great fun and challenging and even nerve wracking as you hope that your route works. When you have a game where after spotting where all the guards are you walk your carefully patrolled route only to get blindsided by a guard you couldn't have hoped to plan or react for it's just frsutrating. Often an easy mode in games can help a newer player to react in time or more effectively.
Also, how exactly does this guy intend to entice non-gamers to buy his product? I put the controller for Halo into the hands of my sister (who doesn't play games ever) and after about ten minutes on easy mode she's got the hang of the controls and can hold her own reasonably well even on normal mode. That's a great feature for a game.
Just because a game has an easy mode doesn't mean people have to play the game on easy, but games without easy mode won't be played at all in some cases because they either become frustrating (Dark Souls) or because the gamer is a newbie.
Books don't have different "settings"?
What about large-print books? Books written in braille? Or audio-books?
Anyone who thinks that is a good idea needs to get punched in the stomach.
What about large-print books? Books written in braille? Or audio-books?
Also this. It's even worse when you fail, it tells you game over. So then you win, and you just fail in a cutscene anyway.MiracleOfSound said:
Anyone who thinks that is a good idea needs to get punched in the stomach.
Really, it sounds to me that you're just not finishing the game on hard mode then. For Assassins Creed 100% sync is hard mode, and it's a very unforgiving hard mode. I suppose they could add a "difficulty setting" where 100% sync was required to complete the mission instead of forcing players to restart it, but how is that any different from the punishment that Dark Souls provides, except that they make it optional?Irridium said: