Dark Souls: an experiment in logic

[jpenning]

Super Ornstein is easy, just his hug nuts and roll away when he's doing the buttstomp and it doesn't hurt to have a high stability shield like the balder or eagle shields. Most of his attacks should sail right over you as long you stay close. Also what weapon are you using?

No no... the buttslam is Smough's move. Big fat guy with the hammer that tries to sit on you: That's Smough. Smough is super easy and I eat his health for breakfast, nom nom. It's his spear-wielding, super-fast, cheap-combo-using partner that is wrecking my face.

I'm fast, and I can dodge most of his nonsense when he's normal size, but when he's twice as big and his reach is massive, I can't dodge fast enough to not die.

I'm using the Astora's Straight Sword +5. I also like to use lightning spears lesser and greater. I have a faith/dex build so I can't exactly use a high-poise shield. Queelag's Furysword +4 let me down as it's got this mighty pause to swing a friggin' dex-based sword. What a waste of souls. I'm currently working on ascending a +15 pyromancy glove.

Mmm... souls seem so plentiful...

True enough, I could probably kick Super Smough's slow ass, but I'd have to be able to kill Ornstein first which is currently taking too long, and the two of them get me eventually if I don't kill someone fast enough. Which is why I'm looking into Pyromancy now, I hear Ornstein is weak to fire. Which is good because he soaks my lightning damage.

Ornstein gets the buttslam move if you kill Smough first. Sticking close to him is the best idea though, as long as you have a decent speed roll you can escape the buttslam when he uses it.

 

[Something Amyss]

This would totally hurt my play experience because....

...

....

Umm....

Well, okay, it doesn't ruin it directly, but how can I enjoy my accomplishments knowing someone might have done something on easy mode that caused me to snap two controllers in frustration???

Puritanism: the fear that someone, somewhere is having a good time.

 

[UnmotivatedSlacker]

Super Ornstein is easy, just his hug nuts and roll away when he's doing the buttstomp and it doesn't hurt to have a high stability shield like the balder or eagle shields. Most of his attacks should sail right over you as long you stay close. Also what weapon are you using?

No no... the buttslam is Smough's move. Big fat guy with the hammer that tries to sit on you: That's Smough. Smough is super easy and I eat his health for breakfast, nom nom. It's his spear-wielding, super-fast, cheap-combo-using partner that is wrecking my face.

I'm fast, and I can dodge most of his nonsense when he's normal size, but when he's twice as big and his reach is massive, I can't dodge fast enough to not die.

I'm using the Astora's Straight Sword +5. I also like to use lightning spears lesser and greater. I have a faith/dex build so I can't exactly use a high-poise shield. Queelag's Furysword +4 let me down as it's got this mighty pause to swing a friggin' dex-based sword. What a waste of souls. I'm currently working on ascending a +15 pyromancy glove.

Mmm... souls seem so plentiful...

True enough, I could probably kick Super Smough's slow ass, but I'd have to be able to kill Ornstein first which is currently taking too long, and the two of them get me eventually if I don't kill someone fast enough. Which is why I'm looking into Pyromancy now, I hear Ornstein is weak to fire. Which is good because he soaks my lightning damage.

Orstein gets the buttslam when he absorbs Smough. Kinda surprised you didn't see it yet. And like I said as long as you stay close and stick to right side of him, most of his spear attacks should go right past you. I haven't really heard good things about Astoria's Straight Sword so you might need something better, but I don't really use faith weapons, so I don't know. Perhaps the Balder Side Sword might be worth your time. And keep in mind that the Furysword is a chaos weapon. It scales with humanity, so you need to pump that counter up a bit to really get some mileage out of it. It's actually one of the best boss weapons in the game.

With the shields, you only need 12 strength to carry the balder shield and 16 to carry the eagle shield, so I think you should probably have enough strength to at least carry the balder shield. You can get the balder shield as a drop from the knights in the parish or you can buy off of the crestfallen merchant in Sen's Fortress. It has great stability for a medium shield and it doesn't weigh that much. I usually try to get that shield the first chance I get. The eagle shield can be found in top half of blight tower on a collapsed pillar I believe, can't remember where exactly though. It's a greatshield, so it has very good stability plus a high lightning resistance. The downside is that the latest patch reduced it's physical resistance from 100 to 95 to balance it out.

Finally, you definitely want to put your focus on one of them since the other guy is just gonna heal anyway. And I would definitely recommend upgrading your glove since Ornstein is indeed weak to fire, plus it's a nice backup to have.

 

[Pebkio]

Orstein gets the buttslam when he absorbs Smough. Kinda surprised you didn't see it yet. And like I said as long as you stay close and stick to right side of him, most of his spear attacks should go right past you. I haven't really heard good things about Astoria's Straight Sword so you might need something better, but I don't really use faith weapons, so I don't know. Perhaps the Balder Side Sword might be worth your time. And keep in mind that the Furysword is a chaos weapon. It scales with humanity, so you need to pump that counter up a bit to really get some mileage out of it. It's actually one of the best boss weapons in the game.

With the shields, you only need 12 strength to carry the balder shield and 16 to carry the eagle shield, so I think you should probably have enough strength to at least carry the balder shield. You can get the balder shield as a drop from the knights in the parish or you can buy off of the crestfallen merchant in Sen's Fortress. It has great stability for a medium shield and it doesn't weigh that much. I usually try to get that shield the first chance I get. The eagle shield can be found in top half of blight tower on a collapsed pillar I believe, can't remember where exactly though. It's a greatshield, so it has very good stability plus a high lightning resistance. The downside is that the latest patch reduced it's physical resistance from 100 to 95 to balance it out.

Finally, you definitely want to put your focus on one of them since the other guy is just gonna heal anyway. And I would definitely recommend upgrading your glove since Ornstein is indeed weak to fire, plus it's a nice backup to have.

I've been finding that most divine weapons suck. No matter what the stat scaling of the weapon was, Strength is made into garbage, dex is just above that and faith is average. However, the Astora's Straight sword is good because it's got average stat scaling for dex, faith and strength. I didn't have all the humanity there, but with my build, the Astora's Straight Sword was doing just a bit less than the Furysword. It's faster too except for the running slash.

I'm currently running through blighttown just mowing everything down with it.. oh wait, yeah, I skipped most of blighttown. I found that Eagle Shield... won't do me any help at current. I've ascended the pyroflame... but I ran out of souls. I'm also looking for the Iaito. Maybe bump that up to +15...

Oh, and no, I've never run into his buttslam. What gets me... and has gotten me all four times... is when he plants his spear and charges forward with that huge aoe lightning move.

 

[UnmotivatedSlacker]

I've been finding that most divine weapons suck. No matter what the stat scaling of the weapon was, Strength is made into garbage, dex is just above that and faith is average. However, the Astora's Straight sword is good because it's got average stat scaling for dex, faith and strength. I didn't have all the humanity there, but with my build, the Astora's Straight Sword was doing just a bit less than the Furysword. It's faster too except for the running slash.

I'm currently running through blighttown just mowing everything down with it.. oh wait, yeah, I skipped most of blighttown. I found that Eagle Shield... won't do me any help at current. I've ascended the pyroflame... but I ran out of souls. I'm also looking for the Iaito. Maybe bump that up to +15...

Oh, and no, I've never run into his buttslam. What gets me... and has gotten me all four times... is when he plants his spear and charges forward with that huge aoe lightning move.

Why can't you use the eagle shield? If it's just the strength requirement, the balder shield can work nicely as well. And the Iaito can be found at the beginning of blighttown. Basically, run down the path until you reach the edge of the platforms. You should see a shiny on the left side on a platform in the distance, you gotta jump to that. It's pretty decent. As for the lightning move, that sounds like the grab move where he shocks you with lightning in the air. Just stay conservative with your attacks so you can see it coming early enough to start rolling to side or backwards.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well the purists will always argue this down to the end of days, in fear of what their pure and pristine club might turn into when immigrants come.

Now if you limit an entire game to the dumbest player base that is a huge determent, but adding options to a well made game has never been a step back, hell I see no reason why they wouldn't also have an iron man mode for people who want to go further up the scale.

Some people argue that with MP in the mix it would all be ruined, but this just isn't the case because no changes would haveto be made, hints are the same for everyone, PvP would put you on even footing and co-op pulls you into the main guys game anyway.

 

[Pebkio]

I finally got hit with his butt pound... unfortunately, my character was mightily swinging Furysword into the air that Ornstein used to occupy. Apparently, I haven't gone through the full Ruins of New Londo yet... so Iaido is sitting at +10 right now. Not a bad sword, I could get used to it.

Which brings me to my next point: The Ruins of New Londo is unfair. I know I need either a transient or a real curse to damage those ghosts, but the ghosts can travel through walls and attack while in them. The fog ring and slumbering dragoncrest don't do squat. So I walk into a room and am suddenly surrounded by ten ghosts. This has happened in two different rooms. There is no warning about where the ghosts swarm you as they all fly in from where you can't look. You just have to trial and error the place to death. Unfortunately, I don't have an unlimited supply of transient curses to learn where ambushes happen. This is NOT good design. This is NOT a "challenge". This is reminiscent of arcade machines milking us for money. I'm going to have to go back to the underground and purposefully die of a curse just so I can get through.

THAT is the "slamming against a wall trying to break through with your squishy shoulder" point that some people are trying to make.

As for PvP getting cheapened by easy mode. Um... no... I think exploiting has ruined PvP. I cleared the Painted World... quite easily, I might add, and found that I could grind 9000 souls a minute after opening the front gate to the courtyard:

10: Equip Ring of Fog and Covetous Silver Serpent Ring
20: Attune Miracle Wrath of the Gods
30: Rest at Bonfire
40: Dash strike one undead before courtyard
50: Run into group of spear flesh mound things and cast Wrath of the Gods.
60: Get closer to the center of the mob and cast Wrath of the Gods again.
70: Go to 30.

Easy levels, equipment, popularity and wenches. So, if a little build, I didn't even plan for, ruins level progression, and therefore PvP... what is so bad about an easy mode?

 

[Jimmy T. Malice]

The thing is that Dark Souls is meant to be difficult. It's a harrowing journey through a dying world where death is part of the learning experience. The difficulty is actually a narrative feature, as every minor triumph gives a sense of victory and achievement as you beat impossible odds.

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

How is it sacrificing your experience? If it is totally separate from the traditional players it doesn't effect you at all. This is the very argument that intrigued me to play the game in the first place. I don't see how it effects your playstyle at all.

I did write a pretty long post and embed a video on this topic. I have updated that post. All I can do is direct you to it above.

I feel Similairly to the Bioware, story-mode fiasco I will say the same thing now as I did then. Just let people play the game the way they want, don't want a easy mode? Fine then don't use the easy mode. You feel its prescence would kill all tension for other people? Fine let them play a worse game, you have suffered no loss for it. Seriously will people please stop trying to control how other people expierence a game because you don't like how they want to play?

You're trying to make it look like people don't want an easy mode in the game because they want to tell other people how to play. That's a massive straw-man.

The unspoken assumption here is that the normal Dark Souls difficulty won't be impacted. That's isanely unrealistic, it contradicts years of video game history and what happens when games target an audience outside their core fanbase.

I didn't say it would hurt the tension for other people, I said it would kill the tension for me. Being straw-manned as a domineering elitist is pretty much what I expected. But please consider that you are also telling me what my experience should be like. That street goes both ways. Please also consider how this issue affects Dark Souls current fanbase disproportionately. Those unwilling to engage Dark Souls can play anything else. Anything at all. I only have Dark Souls and you're trying to take it away from me, whether you see it that way or not.

I see all of the same crap come from people who don't want easy mode. The same bullshit about "Developer intentions" and "You'll get a crappy experience!"

"Developer Intentions" are not really what I'm worried about. "You'll get a crappy experience!" is most likely true, and hardly seems like something to overlook. You belittle those viewpoints without presenting any opposing arguments to them, so I can only assume you have none.

Two things.

1. Easy Mode isn't being made for you. Suck it up.

It's not being made at all, and for many good reasons. I realllly wanted to be a dick right back to you, but it may have played into the pervasive 'elitist' strawman, so I can't.

2. Why the fuck do either of those matter in a community that so readily embraces modding and unofficial patches.

Because mods aren't the base game. Mods are effectively cheats for our purposes here. It doesn't bother me that people hack and cheat in single player (online is different kettle of fish, of course).

This would totally hurt my play experience because....

...

....

Umm....

Well, okay, it doesn't ruin it directly, but how can I enjoy my accomplishments knowing someone might have done something on easy mode that caused me to snap two controllers in frustration???

Puritanism: the fear that someone, somewhere is having a good time.

Same old straw man. Look, it's really not about what other people do. I don't know why that's so hard to believe.

EDIT: Well, there is a shared community aspect to keeping the experience the same for all players, and Dark Souls goes out of it's way to take advantage of that. But I don't think that's what you're talking about.

Well the purists will always argue this down to the end of days, in fear of what their pure and pristine club might turn into when immigrants come.

I resent the implication that my distaste for easy mode in Dark Souls is in any way elitist or exclusionary. If people find the game too frustrating to engage, I find that very unfortunate, but not enough to give up the game I dig so very much.

 

[barbzilla]

]It does if my playstyle revolves around the online component. If there was, say, a 50-50 split, that means there would only be 50% of the people there are now online on either difficulty setting.

You might say that people can still play offline and all that, but that also takes the hint and co-op system away from them and makes the game harder as a result. So there is incentive to play online, which would incidentally be crushed by an easy mode, if you found you needed neither hints nor co-op to casually beat the game.

Dark Souls is a collective experience. A separate difficulty mode would disrupt it at best, and ruin it at worst. Besides, this is a game that gets almost incredibly easy once you know its tricks and master its flow. My second playthrough was almost half the duration of the first, and I had been just as completionist in it as the first time around. This contrast, the idea that what was once crushingly hard is now much easier, is a key feature in the game's replayability.

Okay well lets assume that the people playing the game currently have already made the jump into the difficulty and are enjoying it. The people who will buy the game may try easy mode or traditional mode, so this can go either way. But the thousands (potentially hundreds of thousands) of people out there who have either given up on the game, or not bought the game entirely because of the difficulty will be given the chance to learn the game we love. This leads to more sales, and believe it or not many people will migrate on to the traditional experience from there.

You argue that you will lose 50% of your players, but I find you to be wrong. This is a illogical statement. There is no evidence that you will lose any players, in fact the evidence shows that you would gain players. So isn't that what you are after? More players?

1,
Update: what this means is, an easy mode would have a huge impact on the design of the normal mode almost as a necessity. Either they literally make two different games, which is obviously unrealistic, or they take both easy mode and normal mode into account in the design of every enemy, every area, every encounter, every puzzle, every boss, the leveling system, the weapon system, parry/riposte/backstab mechanics, poise/stability/defense mechanics, invicibility frames... you get the idea. So don't act so sure this won't effect my gameplay experience. It will most likely effect it in every aspect.

2. Learning to make the seemingly unbeatable content of Dark Souls trivial is the content of the game. Take that away and you're left with a short, shitty action-RPG. That's not because Dark Souls is shitty or because it just relies on difficulty as a crutch. It's because making Dark Souls easy makes it's content and mechanics irrelevant. Figuring out what you're supposed to do is the content of the game. Taking that away is like taking the strategy out of an RTS game. It would be pointless to play a game like that, you'd just get bored of it and find something else to play.

If you ever tried Dark Souls and gave up, it may surprise or even enrage you to see people say that it's actually easy. It may seem like they're just bragging. But they figured out how to make it easy. That is to say, they experienced the game's content.

3. It is massively unrealistic to expect the "hardcore" Dark Souls experience to retain it's quality and emphasis if FROM Software decides to seek a broader audience by implementing an easy mode. It defies logic and video game history. Especially in light of the points above. It just wouldn't make sense. I think it's realistic to expect the normal Dark Souls to be damaged and not unlikely it will just fade into the same cookie-cutter 'bleh' that characterizes so much stuff out there. And consider how atmospheric and inaccessible the story telling is, or how the game doesn't always tell you where to go next. Do you expect those elements to be preserved if From Soft decides to broaden their appeal? Not a chance.

It defies logic and especially video game history. We know what happens when a series tries to broaden it's appeal and seek out a new audience. So don't play dumb with me, please. It's tedious.

4. If Dark Souls had an easy mode, the tension would evaporate for all players, even the ones who play the normal difficulty. If there is an easy version of the Capra Demon, then I know I can beat the Capra Demon. I know I can win. Not only that, but I know the game is designed to ensure I can win. The tension is lost, or at least it is not the same. I wouldn't have felt the same way the first time I got obliterated by the Capra Demon in five seconds. And I wouldn't have felt the same way the first time I beat his ass and took his souls.

5. This one is from me, not the video: Having ONE difficult AAA title is not a freaking crime. There are so many accessible games you can play. Please leave me with the ONE title like this. Try to understand how this looks from my perspective. I have ONE game like this and it's apparently too much to ask.

1: Wrong, there is nothing showing that an easy mode would require a major design change for the normal difficulty. Something as simple as scaling monster damage back is enough to make an "easy" mode. So once again I say this has NO effect on you at all.

2: Once again, we aren't marketing to the people who enjoy challenges here with an easy mode. This mode is not aimed at YOU. It is aimed at bringing more people over to fall in love with the game you say you love. I still fail to see how this is a bad thing. You say it will not provide the same experience, you say its a shitty action RPG. That means with something as simple as a change in damage, you say your beloved game is now shitty. It tells me how invested you actually are in the game itself. I found plenty of story there, sure you had to dig for it and pay attention. But after talking to everyone in the game there is a concurrent thread. You are reliving the actions of the past through your current actions. You get to learn about the downfall of the gods. Where were you during all of this? And, I've only been playing a week.

3: I'm not playing dumb with you. I don't expect easy mode to be a "hardcore experience" as you put it. I expect it to be an introductory difficulty meant to make the game more accessible. Giving players a couple of more hits before they die so they can learn how to fight the enemies. Just because you and I can play at a higher skill level, does not mean all gamers can. Some gamers utilize tactics and not reflex. These players can actually be brilliant Dark Souls players, but the catch is if they don't have the initial reflexes to learn the enemies they won't make it very far before becoming frustrated with the game. You are still arguing under the false assumption that easy mode will require a change to the traditional mode, it would not.

Once again all it would take to make an "EASY" mode would be to scale back the monster damage. Simple, elegant, and effective with no impact on the traditional players.

4: Here we are again assuming things. Can we stop with assumptions? By scaling back monster damage and giving new players an extra hit or two we are not totally destroying monster difficulty. The bosses will still destroy new players until they learn how to dodge their attacks, when to block, and where to attack. I'm not going to continue barking up the same tree, but less damage + no change to traditional mode = what I envision as easy mode.

5: Once again I am in NG++ I don't think I am saying the game is too hard for me anymore. The game takes a different approach from most games and this is exactly why I think there should be an easy mode. The game is brilliantly designed and I love it. I want everyone to experience it, but until they have the breakthrough I did they will never get the joy I do. What you are telling me right now is that you want there to be no easy mode because you enjoy having the bragging rights that you beat a game... a simple trivial game, that even you said many others consider easy... Bravo! I can see why it is such a bad idea to allow From Software to make more money off of an excellent game.

 

[barbzilla]

SNIP

snip

I don't feel tension, I don't get scared when a dragon plops down in front of me, I generally just move forward thinking about how to improve my character (though I do feel a little tension when someone invades me as I'm almost at the boss in a difficult area), and yet I agree with you. The difficulty does make the game better. In both instances you mention, the difficulty made the game better (as evident by Ninja Gaiden 3). But why does an easy mode effect that? A small change in the damage of the monsters would make all the difference in the world to some players. Hell just slapping something called easy mode in the game with no changes other than no pvp would probably make more people play the game. I don't advocate the changing of the core game at all (other than perhaps tightening the controls a bit, the still feel slow to me).

The main reason this is an argument at all is that people ASSUME that From adding a new difficulty will change the core experience, and I just don't think its the case. I do think that some players who could beat the game just fine on traditional mode will play on easy mode thinking "Oh, I just want to see the story" and be disappointed (unless they know where to look), but those players will either quit afterwards or join traditional mode to see what the fuss is about. So... Yay! more net players.

The other people who would use an easy mode are people who otherwise wouldn't play the game. We are talking about more sales for From and (potentially) more players for us on Traditional mode. Win Win situation.

 

[sethisjimmy]

So I've only played a bit of Dark Souls, but can someone explain to me logically how an easy mode would ruin the game for people who won't play on easy mode?
Offline would obviously be unaffected, but online is trickier. The Dev's could simply just separate those playing on easy and those playing normally entirely, thus those playing on hard would never see or be affected by those playing on easy. Now hypothetically, if they decided to mix those playing on easy with those playing normally there could be some negative effect on those playing normally, but considering Miyazaki and From's dedication to the hardcore crowd, I find it unlikely that they would want to change the hardcore crowd's online experience.
I really can't see how it would hurt the game overall if you add another difficulty. Looking ME3's story mode and Deus Ex HR's "Give me a story", those are good examples of recent games unhindered by embracing easy difficulties.

Obviously changing a game's entire direction to an easier approach such as with Elder Scrolls or Splinter Cell is not a good thing at all, but I don't see those scenarios as analogous, because those series are changing core features for every single player to make the game easier, whereas an easy mode only changes some things for individual players who choose it.

Sure you can argue that the players who play on easy mode aren't getting as good an experience as the hardcore players, however dumb that argument is for not understanding subjective tastes and experiences, it's irrelevant to you as a hardcore player anyway.

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

Why can't you use the eagle shield?

I don't know how they feel about it. But if I can't parry, I don't want to live lol.

I finally got hit with his butt pound... unfortunately, my character was mightily swinging Furysword into the air that Ornstein used to occupy. Apparently, I haven't gone through the full Ruins of New Londo yet... so Iaido is sitting at +10 right now. Not a bad sword, I could get used to it.

Which brings me to my next point: The Ruins of New Londo is unfair. I know I need either a transient or a real curse to damage those ghosts, but the ghosts can travel through walls and attack while in them. The fog ring and slumbering dragoncrest don't do squat. So I walk into a room and am suddenly surrounded by ten ghosts. This has happened in two different rooms. There is no warning about where the ghosts swarm you as they all fly in from where you can't look. You just have to trial and error the place to death. Unfortunately, I don't have an unlimited supply of transient curses to learn where ambushes happen.

I think there are four curses you can find on the ground. Wear the Gold Covetous Serpent Ring and/or keep a few loose humanity to boost Item Discovery. The ghosts should drop plenty of Transient Curses faster then you can die. You can also buy them from the merchant in the tunnel between Firelink Shrine and Lower Undead Burg/Depths, but I believe she will only sell four before she runs out.

In the first "spook house", you may be able to kill the one on the left, then rush into the room and kill them as they rise up from the ground. If you can't kill them fast enough, try luring the ghosts out one at a time. This also works when you get to the second "spook house". Don't run into rooms to fight, wait outside or in an empty room for them to come to you. But there is also one of the big ones with the ranged attacks, you will have to engage that one.

This is NOT good design. This is NOT a "challenge". This is reminiscent of arcade machines milking us for money. I'm going to have to go back to the underground and purposefully die of a curse just so I can get through.

You could just buy the curses. Also, dying isn't a big deal. And you can get cursed and then back to the ghosts pretty easily with the Lord Vessel. As usual, it's not that demanding, really, it's figuring it out that's difficult.

 

[barbzilla]

Why can't you use the eagle shield?

I don't know how they feel about it. But if I can't parry, I don't want to live lol.

I finally got hit with his butt pound... unfortunately, my character was mightily swinging Furysword into the air that Ornstein used to occupy. Apparently, I haven't gone through the full Ruins of New Londo yet... so Iaido is sitting at +10 right now. Not a bad sword, I could get used to it.

Which brings me to my next point: The Ruins of New Londo is unfair. I know I need either a transient or a real curse to damage those ghosts, but the ghosts can travel through walls and attack while in them. The fog ring and slumbering dragoncrest don't do squat. So I walk into a room and am suddenly surrounded by ten ghosts. This has happened in two different rooms. There is no warning about where the ghosts swarm you as they all fly in from where you can't look. You just have to trial and error the place to death. Unfortunately, I don't have an unlimited supply of transient curses to learn where ambushes happen.

I think there are four curses you can find on the ground. Wear the Gold Covetous Serpent Ring and/or keep a few loose humanity to boost Item Discovery. The ghosts should drop plenty of Transient Curses faster then you can die. You can also buy them from the merchant in the tunnel between Firelink Shrine and Lower Undead Burg/Depths, but I believe she will only sell four before she runs out.

In the first "spook house", you may be able to kill the one on the left, then rush into the room and kill them as they rise up from the ground. If you can't kill them fast enough, try luring the ghosts out one at a time. This also works when you get to the second "spook house". Don't run into rooms to fight, wait outside or in an empty room for them to come to you. But there is also one of the big ones with the ranged attacks, you will have to engage that one.

This is NOT good design. This is NOT a "challenge". This is reminiscent of arcade machines milking us for money. I'm going to have to go back to the underground and purposefully die of a curse just so I can get through.

You could just buy the curses. Also, dying isn't a big deal. And you can get cursed and then back to the ghosts pretty easily with the Lord Vessel. As usual, it's not that demanding, really, it's figuring it out that's difficult.

Lol, my first playthrough I didn't know about the transient curse thing so I ended up just hauling booty through there trying to find something to let me get past everything. I finally ended up dumping the water and getting down to the 4 Kings and they beat the ever loving crap out of me. But yes it is trial and error, that is all the difficulty boils down to (for the most part).

 

[Blazingdragoon04]

I like the danger of being able to be invaded at any time . It ups the stakes , which are already pretty fucking high . It was fun back then ( i bought it day 1 ), because people didn't cheat ( mostly they didn't know how ). I also never used a guide so i had no idea ( at least on my first play through ) how big the areas were , where i would be safe , where to go . So so much things to worry about . It was exciting and fresh and new and awsome .

Also , if you want an easy mode DS is not the game for you. It says so on the box , anyone who bought the game should have known what they were getting into . And i seriously doubt the game would have sold so well if it wasn't hard . We got enough easy games to last a lifetime . People that want that can go play the wide array of games for them . This is a game for the challenge seekers. Niche , if you will.

Haha, I had this attitude at first. However, 2nd day of playing I ran into someone that I'm, to this day, 99% sure he was cheating.

Was in human form for like, the second time near the entrance to the Church in the Undead Parish when I was invaded. Being a magic user I was already at a disadvantage, and he eventually kept poisoning me to death. Only later did I find out why he kept trying to get into melee range; he was a darkwraith. Second day of the game and I run into a darkwraith, one with a ton of health too since I backstabbed him at least 3 times in a row and hit him with magic when he tried to drain me.

Honestly, that ruined the experience of online for me until I started someone who wasn't a mage.

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

1: Wrong, there is nothing showing that an easy mode would require a major design change for the normal difficulty. Something as simple as scaling monster damage back is enough to make an "easy" mode. So once again I say this has NO effect on you at all.

While that would indeed make the game easier, it strains credulity to think that FROM would not also take mechanics into account when designing those enemies with lower damage. It's not as simple as you make it out to be. Maybe in some games, but not Dark Souls.

2: Once again, we aren't marketing to the people who enjoy challenges here with an easy mode. This mode is not aimed at YOU. It is aimed at bringing more people over to fall in love with the game you say you love. I still fail to see how this is a bad thing. You say it will not provide the same experience, you say its a shitty action RPG. That means with something as simple as a change in damage, you say your beloved game is now shitty. It tells me how invested you actually are in the game itself. I found plenty of story there, sure you had to dig for it and pay attention. But after talking to everyone in the game there is a concurrent thread. You are reliving the actions of the past through your current actions. You get to learn about the downfall of the gods. Where were you during all of this? And, I've only been playing a week.

I know who the easy mode is made for. I won't be playing it regardless. That's not the point. Bringing more people to Dark Souls is wonderful, I encourage it.

Any game can suck if you make the wrong changes to it, regardless of how much I love it's current state. While the setting is varied and rich, what really sets Dark Souls apart from the heard is the way it utilizes it's difficult gameplay to achieve it's ends. Take that away and you take the heart out of the game and are left with something fairly unremarkable. You are talking about effectively gutting the game's content. Pointing out how shitty that would be doesn't mean I'm not a true believer.

3: I'm not playing dumb with you. I don't expect easy mode to be a "hardcore experience" as you put it. I expect it to be an introductory difficulty meant to make the game more accessible.

But you are still not addressing the fact that games which pursue a broader audience consistently "sell out" on the core experience.

Giving players a couple of more hits before they die so they can learn how to fight the enemies.

A significant change in the number of hits they take would make the mechanics you currently need to succeed irrelevant. The only thing that would change is that they won't have to learn the game. But learning is this game's content. So they won't experience the game's content, so the game will suck. It will be short and shitty compared to comparable products and they will feel robbed.

Just because you and I can play at a higher skill level, does not mean all gamers can. Some gamers utilize tactics and not reflex.

There are VERY few encounters in Dark Souls that are really that demanding on the reflexes. Tactics and learning is exactly what players will miss when you upset the threshold of difficulty that keeps the mechanics relevant.

These players can actually be brilliant Dark Souls players, but the catch is if they don't have the initial reflexes to learn the enemies they won't make it very far before becoming frustrated with the game. You are still arguing under the false assumption that easy mode will require a change to the traditional mode, it would not.

Depends what you mean by "require". Strictly speaking, maybe not, but I estimate the chances of things turning out that way at about 95%, maybe higher. It almost certainly will require a change to the traditional mode, just as a practical measure. If not, it might be easier to literally make two different games. It's almost inconceivable that they could be designed in a vacuum. The closest thing is what you're talking about, basically the Bethesda route of just scaling everything uniformly without designing each enemy and encounter individually and making relevant, balanced mechanics. That doesn't work very well in Skyrim and it's out of the question in Dark Souls.

Once again all it would take to make an "EASY" mode would be to scale back the monster damage. Simple, elegant, and effective with no impact on the traditional players.

4: Here we are again assuming things. Can we stop with assumptions?

Critical thinking =/= "assumptions". You're the one making assertions about how easy things will be to design and how they will work and how things will be affected. You are making some pretty enormous and unfounded assumptions yourself.

By scaling back monster damage and giving new players an extra hit or two we are not totally destroying monster difficulty.

It will if they don't change the mechanics. Darkwraiths are trivial to me. If they had one hundred times more health or one hundred times more damage, they would be no less trivial. The health and damage of enemies are not arbitrary, they are balanced against the mechanics involved in defeating them. It's all about backstabs, parries, invincibility frames, taking advantage of stability/poise mechanics, weapon move-sets, etc. The only way allowing the player who mashes buttons to win makes the game easier is by making those mechanics irrelevant. In some other game, that might not be a big deal. But you wouldn't take the strategy out of Starcraft and you shouldn't take the learning out of Dark Souls.

The bosses will still destroy new players until they learn how to dodge their attacks, when to block, and where to attack. I'm not going to continue barking up the same tree, but less damage + no change to traditional mode = what I envision as easy mode.

5: Once again I am in NG++ I don't think I am saying the game is too hard for me anymore. The game takes a different approach from most games and this is exactly why I think there should be an easy mode.

That approach is exactly what makes an easy mode inappropriate for this title in particular.

The game is brilliantly designed and I love it. I want everyone to experience it, but until they have the breakthrough I did they will never get the joy I do.

They will never have that breakthrough, that's what you're taking from them, that's why the game will suck. They will mash until they win and they will understandably conclude that this game sucks. Or, FROM Software will do serious work on the mechanics and encounters to account for their needs. At that point any talk about the normal experience remaining unchanged sounds pretty empty (I almost said 'hollow' heh).

What you are telling me right now is that you want there to be no easy mode because you enjoy having the bragging rights that you beat a game...

STRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAW MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN

a simple trivial game, that even you said many others consider easy... Bravo! I can see why it is such a bad idea to allow From Software to make more money off of an excellent game.

I want From to make money. And I want everyone to play Dark Souls and experience it's rewards. I am not the elitist prick you want me to be. The people who find Dark Souls easy learned how to make it easy. That is to say, they experienced the game's content. I want everyone to have that experience. I don't want that experience to diminish.

 

[ReinWeisserRitter]

We got enough easy games to last a lifetime . People that want that can go play the wide array of games for them . This is a game for the challenge seekers. Niche , if you will.

It's been said a billion times already, but this game isn't hard; it's unfair. It's full of cheap deaths, surprise bullshit, bad controls, one-hit deaths, attacks that track you illogically, and enemies you're not supposed to be fighting yet in areas you have no choice but to be in if you want to progress. Anything you can see coming or know is there already is extremely easy to beat; enemies are predictable and have lengthy tells, you have a lot of useful options for dispatching them, and none of it poses much challenge the second time around. It's bad design that became popular because it makes certain people feel good about themselves.

I wouldn't go so far as to say the game as a whole is bad; there's some strategy that does need to be employed, and beating the crap out of the game on its own unfair terms can be satisfying, but from a design standpoint, as someone who enjoys difficult games and goes out of their way to play them, this game falls flat on its face, no question whatsoever about it, and I've never met anyone not of the opinion of "IT'S HARD AND ONLY REAL MEN CAN PLAY IT" who doesn't agree.

Then again, I don't talk to many people, but I still know crappy design when I see it.

A poorly-designed "hard" needs to skulk about and kill you in one hit because you didn't know a boulder was around the corner and had no way to avoid it logically without falling off a cliff. A well-designed one will kick your ass even when you see it coming.

Totally didn't mean for that to be an essay. Sorry.