Dark Souls Softcore mode?

[KRAKENDIE]

I don't see why Dark Souls should be the exception.

Because Dark Souls is an exceptional game. Not just in terms of quality, but in terms of how the dynamics of gameplay lock in with each other. How many games that you're talking about, other 'difficult' games, have a mechanic that allows for other plays to invade your world without permission, with no balancing of levels or anything else? How many of those games require you to retrieve effectively all of your unused experience points/currency from the exact place you died, starting at a checkpoint half an in-game kilometer back? Unless they're another From Software game, it's unlikely. Saying 'other games have well-implemented easy mode!' as an argument for Dark Souls having an easy mode is like saying 'other games have well-implemented mounts!' as an argument for Dragon Age having mounts. While it may be true, it is sorely missing the point. Realistically, if Dark Souls II has an easy mode, some core elements of what made Demon's Souls and Dark Souls will be watered down or taken out, because some core elements contribute considerably to the difficulty level. It will come out another sandbox action-RPG; granted, it will be gorgeous, stylish, precise one, but still not what the series was originally intended to be about i.e. what made it so big in the first place.

I like how you take a completely reductionist view of the other side though. "You're either lazy or elitist!" Rare form.

 

[KRAKENDIE]

So am I peeing in your soup? Or are you peeing in mine because I want to share it with everyone who couldn't get into the restaurant?

You're definitely still peeing in his soup. It's not out of malice, it's just because the ingredients are too potent for everyone who couldn't get into the restaurant, so the mixture has to be distilled with something.

P.S. And your point about how Dark Souls belongs to From Software and what-have-you is philosophically correct, but practically leads to companies like EA, Capcom, and Activision's nickel-and-dime, authoritarian inner markets, faulty engines, etc.

P.P.S. And your quasi-whiny 'ELITIST' McCarthy-an name-calling would be well-suited for most games, but we're talking about a franchise wherein the last game's ad line slogan was "PREPARE TO DIE" in a very prodding way, challenging players to be great at it or be continuous failures, because only those prepared to die will be coming out on top. The message from From Software up until this point(this point being unprecedented monetary success and press)? 'Impatient, stupid, laid-back, or non-invested players aka 'casuals' need not apply'.

 

[Boris Goodenough]

I learned to play the game correctly after about 8 hours in, it takes time to learn to play Dark Souls, it just does and you have to learn the encounters. Every. Single. One.
The reason it was so immensely hard in the start was because I hadn't upgraded my weapon.

The encounter that gave me the most excitement/most deaths in the first play through was Knight Artorias (followed by Kalameet), in NG+ I one shotted him.

And if you take the challenge away, then it's just a hack and slash game and that is not what these games are supposed to be.

 

[Innegativeion]

Primarily to guard against resource loss due to player intervention. I like dueling (assuming the guy isn't porting around like a crazy lunatic), just not losing stuff to an X factor outside of what is programmed into the environment.

Then you're missing the point of human form.

In return for being able to invade others, summon co-op partners, talk to certain NPCs, and kindle bonfires, you make yourself vulnerable to attack. Those benefits are NOT free. If you can't defend yourself, you die. Simple as that. Darkwraiths may seem like assholes, to be sure, but they are a necessary evil to balance the benefits of human form.

If you don't WANT to be invaded, just walk off a cliff next to a bonfire. Simple.

 

[Pink Gregory]

I saw the title of this thread and my thoughts immediately went towards 'Dark Souls: Soft Play Edition'.

Then I realised that it'd just be an inordinately good 'GLADIATORS' official game, with insta-kill ball-pits.

Unsure about how to feel, I went home and ruminated on the idea.

 

[Dethenger]

Then don't farm while human.

Yes, being human increases the drop rate, but that's the price you pay.

Want to get stuff quicker, risk getting invaded.

Actually, I'm pretty sure that holding Humanity (as in, using it so the counter next to your Health/ Stamina goes up) increases your droprate, not actually being human.

Checking...

Humanity also increases the player's Item Discovery rate, which determines the likelihood of enemies dropping items. Maximum at 10 Humanity. [http://darksoulswiki.wikispaces.com/Humanity]

Having 10 Humanity plus the Covetous Gold Serpent Ring or the Symbol of Avarice (preferably the former) takes your item discovery to 410, which is the maximum.

Basically, yeah. Don't be Human while you farm.

 

[Colt47]

Primarily to guard against resource loss due to player intervention. I like dueling (assuming the guy isn't porting around like a crazy lunatic), just not losing stuff to an X factor outside of what is programmed into the environment.

Then you're missing the point of human form.

In return for being able to invade others, summon co-op partners, talk to certain NPCs, and kindle bonfires, you make yourself vulnerable to attack. Those benefits are NOT free. If you can't defend yourself, you die. Simple as that. Darkwraiths may seem like assholes, to be sure, but they are a necessary evil to balance the benefits of human form.

If you don't WANT to be invaded, just walk off a cliff next to a bonfire. Simple.

In order to know where it's possible to summon NPC help for bosses, the player has to be in human form. If the player is going around in hollow form it is likely they won't even know that they can summon help from npcs if they are playing for the first time. Further more, there are built in dark wraith encounters in the game that can only be encountered if the player is in human form and one of them (Something the Man Eater) can actually be summoned as an aid if she is defeated. So the option is more like walking around with a blind fold on vs walking around being able to see what is actually there in the game. This seems to be the biggest point that established players are missing here. Unless you want to advocate having a game FAQ forum up all the time.

That and one has to burn a humanity to get their human form back after committing suicide. And why would someone want to do that when they can take on the dark wraith for dueling practice AND if they die just reload a backed up save?

 

[chaos order]

Wow, you really misunderstood that - or you just glanced and tried to cherry pick without understandng the meaning.

Exactly how is the very correct assertion that "not all games are meant for all people" elitist?
Also, where in the old school assertion that I could give a flying fuck who can or cannot play a game, do you find elitism.

If you mean "meant" as "aimed", then that assertion is irrelevant by way of obviousness. No piece of entertainment is purposefully aimed at absolutely everyone. If you mean "are meant for" as "should be played by" then that is elitism, because it means that you don't want any person to play any game, you want specific people to play specific games, according to your views on what each person should enjoy, depending on how you think each game should be played. When it comes to the games you play, it becomes elitism as you are denying others the right to play games unless they do it under your terms, so that they are forced to belong to the same group as you after suffering through the same trials and exhibiting the same desirable qualities.

You seem to be grasping at straws to try to keep your argument viable.

Did you not read my own experience with the FPS genre on that matter, or were you too busy trying to find a way to dismiss these very pertinent arguments that were in NO WAY yet addressed by you beyond "hurr durr - DS fans are elitist - derp".

Your FPS argument boils down to "because I suffer, so shall everyone else." I would fully support your petition for new camera angles on FPSs. I am with Extra Credits on this one: the concept of the FPS genre is absolutely ridiculous. Instead of defining a genre by the emotion it intends to evoke or the type of narrative it evokes, we are defining it by a highly specific and arbitrary mechanic (which has no bearing on the actual narrative, and very little bearing on the setting and mechanics). I fully support the idea of adding optional third person view (like in the TES games, where you can freely switch between either) as a way for more people to be able to enjoy games.

Being resigned to one's disadvantages is not a progressive or positive ideology.

Also, you made some pretty broad assertions about how apparently sales would increase with an easy mode. Can you be sure of this? Or is it possible that the crowd who didn't like the game before, would still dislike it and the original fans, now alienated, would refuse to purchase it?

Can you be sure that it won't? Armchair marketing, just like armchair programming, is a distraction tactic that has no relevance with the topic at hand. The company has its marketers and businesspeople, and I will let them be the judges of whether an easy mode would be a good business decision or not.

by using that same logic that the games difficulty is what it sells it self on, adding an easy mode takes away from that. because now its no longer a hard game but a game that "could" be hard. In addition, if you watch a video of some the earlier areas like the undead burgh youd see that most of the "difficulty" of the game derives from punishing mistakes rather than having actually difficult enemies( excluding the mini bosses and bosses of course), and the flasks are there to give the player some wiggle room for small accidents that happen. Having an "easy" mode where someone can take more hits or have enemies take less to beat (most enemies btw only take 1-2) would dumb the game down to just hacking and slashing the game would lose all substance. The game as it is now forces you to play more thoughtfully and avoid any mistakes because of the nature of the games punishment system

Yes, and? If I want to play a mindless, easy hack and slash, what's the problem? If I'm willing to pay money for it, why shouldn't I get to play something like that? A game that punishes you for your mistakes, forces you to be patient, smart and thoughtful, isn't superior to any other game. No game is objectively better than any other, much less on grounds as irrelevant as gameplay, and you consider those things to be good because you like them. That's not a bad thing. You are allowed to like whatever you want. However, those things aren't an ideal that we should all aspire to, and if I don't like them, there isn't something wrong with me. It's okay for me not to like those things. All those things aren't going to go away because someone else prefers to play the game without them. Me not being punished (because I don't enjoy punishment) isn't going to stop the game from punishing you as much as you like.

Wow, you really misunderstood that - or you just glanced and tried to cherry pick without understandng the meaning.

Exactly how is the very correct assertion that "not all games are meant for all people" elitist?
Also, where in the old school assertion that I could give a flying fuck who can or cannot play a game, do you find elitism.

If you mean "meant" as "aimed", then that assertion is irrelevant by way of obviousness. No piece of entertainment is purposefully aimed at absolutely everyone. If you mean "are meant for" as "should be played by" then that is elitism, because it means that you don't want any person to play any game, you want specific people to play specific games, according to your views on what each person should enjoy, depending on how you think each game should be played. When it comes to the games you play, it becomes elitism as you are denying others the right to play games unless they do it under your terms, so that they are forced to belong to the same group as you after suffering through the same trials and exhibiting the same desirable qualities.

You seem to be grasping at straws to try to keep your argument viable.

Did you not read my own experience with the FPS genre on that matter, or were you too busy trying to find a way to dismiss these very pertinent arguments that were in NO WAY yet addressed by you beyond "hurr durr - DS fans are elitist - derp".

Your FPS argument boils down to "because I suffer, so shall everyone else." I would fully support your petition for new camera angles on FPSs. I am with Extra Credits on this one: the concept of the FPS genre is absolutely ridiculous. Instead of defining a genre by the emotion it intends to evoke or the type of narrative it evokes, we are defining it by a highly specific and arbitrary mechanic (which has no bearing on the actual narrative, and very little bearing on the setting and mechanics). I fully support the idea of adding optional third person view (like in the TES games, where you can freely switch between either) as a way for more people to be able to enjoy games.

Being resigned to one's disadvantages is not a progressive or positive ideology.

Also, you made some pretty broad assertions about how apparently sales would increase with an easy mode. Can you be sure of this? Or is it possible that the crowd who didn't like the game before, would still dislike it and the original fans, now alienated, would refuse to purchase it?

Can you be sure that it won't? Armchair marketing, just like armchair programming, is a distraction tactic that has no relevance with the topic at hand. The company has its marketers and businesspeople, and I will let them be the judges of whether an easy mode would be a good business decision or not.

by using that same logic that the games difficulty is what it sells it self on, adding an easy mode takes away from that. because now its no longer a hard game but a game that "could" be hard. In addition, if you watch a video of some the earlier areas like the undead burgh youd see that most of the "difficulty" of the game derives from punishing mistakes rather than having actually difficult enemies( excluding the mini bosses and bosses of course), and the flasks are there to give the player some wiggle room for small accidents that happen. Having an "easy" mode where someone can take more hits or have enemies take less to beat (most enemies btw only take 1-2) would dumb the game down to just hacking and slashing the game would lose all substance. The game as it is now forces you to play more thoughtfully and avoid any mistakes because of the nature of the games punishment system

Yes, and? If I want to play a mindless, easy hack and slash, what's the problem? If I'm willing to pay money for it, why shouldn't I get to play something like that? A game that punishes you for your mistakes, forces you to be patient, smart and thoughtful, isn't superior to any other game. No game is objectively better than any other, much less on grounds as irrelevant as gameplay, and you consider those things to be good because you like them. That's not a bad thing. You are allowed to like whatever you want. However, those things aren't an ideal that we should all aspire to, and if I don't like them, there isn't something wrong with me. It's okay for me not to like those things. All those things aren't going to go away because someone else prefers to play the game without them. Me not being punished (because I don't enjoy punishment) isn't going to stop the game from punishing you as much as you like.

Snip.

That would be all fine and well but the people who are asking for an easy mode haven't given much thought to why the developers made it the way it is. They've missed the point of the game and while they're totally allowed to do that they can't just demand devs to put an easy mode in for them because they can't play it properly. You can do whatever you want to your copy but it isn't your game, it's the developers. If they saw fit to add an easy mode then they would have, the game is clearly supposed to be unforgiving, it's a mechanic, by adding an easy mode you'd be removing the core mechanic.

Even though I haven't played it this is all incredibly clear.

Demanding is not the same as expressing interest. I don't think anybody's demanding anything. I think a lot of people started saying "Dark Souls would be great if it had an easy mode" or "I would play Dark Souls if it had an easy mode" and then all the hardcore Dark Souls players jumped on everyone's throats for having the gall not to enjoy being repeatedly kicked in the gonads.

Also, your reasoning is disingenuous. The devs aren't all-knowing. They might have thought that the game would only sell with masochists, but discovered that a significant demographic would be willing to buy it if it had easy mode. That might have come as surprising news to them.

Though I agree: ultimately the decision rests on the developers' shoulders and I personally would respect whatever they decide to do. That doesn't mean I appreciate being told that the very idea of wanting an easy mode is somehow obscene and sacrilegious.

see the problem is is that you're forgetting that the difficulty is that selling point, in that the game was meant to be that difficult. Lets looks at the horror genre of games for example. The selling point is that they are scary, i choose not to play them because im not good with that aspect of the game. However that aspect is what sets those games apart, so asking for a "mode" that makes the game less scary takes away from how the game was meant to be played. By your logic, If i wanted to play lets say fatal frame but with ducks because theyre adorable instead of ghosts then shouldnt I then have an option for that in the game. What im trying to say is that not every game is for everyone and that every game shouldnt just tac on options to pander to as many people as possible, because in my mind that cheapens the experience and the game. If you wanted to play a hack and slash then dont get dark souls get a game that is a hack and slash because that is the sort of game that you are willing to spend money on; and thats the sorrt of game that you feel is fun. Im not saying the dark souls is "objectively" better or more "hardcore", just that the difficulty is what the game is all about and by adding an easy mode would no longer make the game stand out as hard but just a game that could be hard like any other.

 

[GamingAwesome1]

Because Dark Souls is an exceptional game. Not just in terms of quality, but in terms of how the dynamics of gameplay lock in with each other.

I already said making the argument that Dark Souls is just more finely crafted than other games smacks of a total load of fanboy bollocks.

I don't buy it, simply put. All the things you've stated could be easily toned down to some degree to allow for easier play without sacrificing the tightness of the experience. It simply seems like you're selling the game a bit too high for it's own good.

 

[Innegativeion]

*snip*

Oh god, please do not even start. The white soapstone blatantly explains you can't use it if you're hollow. Summoning players is also entirely secondary to the actual gameplay, anyway. In many cases, summoning players will even make bosses disproportionately easy. So if a player so chooses they do not want to be invaded, or get outside help, they'll still get the full experience.

Maintaining humanity while branded with the darksign is supposed to be a struggle. If you can't handle other people, both helpful and harmful, you'll be cursed with isolation. That's the whole point.

Also, why would you want to burn another humanity to become human again? Clearly the prospect of having some risk associated with the bonuses of human form is unacceptable to you, which is why I suggested you simply remove the "X factor" you find such issue with.

 

[Darken12]

I was going to painstakingly quote and address all the posts directed at me, but I realised that would make this post gargantuan. And what's worse, 90% of the post would be me repeating myself over and over.

To sum up:

1) Adding an easy mode doesn't change the game if it's an option. Anything that is optional cannot change a game by definition, because you're not forced to implement it.
2) It's all about elitism, though it has a heavy dose of insisting that suffering and frustration are a good thing either because you think we should all enjoy the exact same experience (of overcoming a challenge after many failed attempts), or because you don't want to accept the fact that your suffering and frustration were unnecessary.

Earlier in this thread you said that having more options could never be a bad thing. I fundamentally disagree. The purposeful utilization of lack of options is also a valid design decision. An option by definition gives you an alternative to something and enables you to resort to it if you so desire. Having such an option would be, I think, counterproductive to Dark Souls and the experience it was designed to provide. Merely knowing that an effortless option to change the difficulty exists would affect the way you experience the game. This is why the means of affecting the experienced difficulty in Dark Souls exist within the game world and not in 'artificial' main menu as a clickable option.

This is something I haven't addressed before, so it gets its own reply.

I invoke Death of the Author [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_the_author] on this one. While I completely agree that lack of options is a perfectly valid design choice (after all, no game can have all of the infinite options in existence), I would argue that the concept of "the experience it was designed to provide" actively hinders progress and development in videogames. By saying "Dark Souls is designed to offer this experience, and no other" you are effectively limiting the game to people who specifically enjoy that experience. By pigeonholing games into highly specific niches and policing the way people interact with videogames, you're turning the medium into a highly constrained, limiting, stale and off-putting form of entertainment.

What you're suggesting drastically raises the entry barrier of any newcomer to videogames. They have to carefully select the games they play and either become proficient liars about their experiences or learn what kind of experiences are considered acceptable in the gamer community. If the gamer community is hostile and unwelcoming to people who don't fit with their highly specific views, the gamer community is going to become stale, isolationistic and hostile (since they are under so much attack by the media already). Saying that you should not have an experience with a game other than the one that game was designed to have is only going to create contention and hostility in the gamer community. We should embrace diversity and differences instead of shunning them, or else we are never going to mature and progress as a subculture.

 

[RedDeadFred]

Why are there 4 of these threads going around? Does the beginning of a new month just set off some weird chemical reaction in people's brains that forces them to create these threads?

 

[Colt47]

*snip*

Oh god, please do not even start. The white soapstone blatantly explains you can't use it if you're hollow. Summoning players is also entirely secondary to the actual gameplay, anyway. In many cases, summoning players will even make bosses disproportionately easy. So if a player so chooses they do not want to be invaded, or get outside help, they'll still get the full experience.

Maintaining humanity while branded with the darksign is supposed to be a struggle. If you can't handle other people, both helpful and harmful, you'll be cursed with isolation. That's the whole point.

Also, why would you want to burn another humanity to become human again? Clearly the prospect of having some risk associated with the bonuses of human form is unacceptable to you, which is why I suggested you simply remove the "X factor" you find such issue with.

You're being that condescending... why? And you do realize that doesn't help locating the places where you can summon npc intervention, or encounter the black phantoms. Sounds like you are the one stuck in a corner.

 

[Something Amyss]

So you advocating an "easier" to some extent mode, and instead of calling it an 'easy' mode (or easy PvP mode) you're using the term 'softcore' to make it more palatable. Feels like a political talk.

Considering the issue is primarily one of words to begin with, it was already political talk.

 

[chaos order]

I was going to painstakingly quote and address all the posts directed at me, but I realised that would make this post gargantuan. And what's worse, 90% of the post would be me repeating myself over and over.

To sum up:

1) Adding an easy mode doesn't change the game if it's an option. Anything that is optional cannot change a game by definition, because you're not forced to implement it.
2) It's all about elitism, though it has a heavy dose of insisting that suffering and frustration are a good thing either because you think we should all enjoy the exact same experience (of overcoming a challenge after many failed attempts), or because you don't want to accept the fact that your suffering and frustration were unnecessary.

Earlier in this thread you said that having more options could never be a bad thing. I fundamentally disagree. The purposeful utilization of lack of options is also a valid design decision. An option by definition gives you an alternative to something and enables you to resort to it if you so desire. Having such an option would be, I think, counterproductive to Dark Souls and the experience it was designed to provide. Merely knowing that an effortless option to change the difficulty exists would affect the way you experience the game. This is why the means of affecting the experienced difficulty in Dark Souls exist within the game world and not in 'artificial' main menu as a clickable option.

This is something I haven't addressed before, so it gets its own reply.

I invoke Death of the Author [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_the_author] on this one. While I completely agree that lack of options is a perfectly valid design choice (after all, no game can have all of the infinite options in existence), I would argue that the concept of "the experience it was designed to provide" actively hinders progress and development in videogames. By saying "Dark Souls is designed to offer this experience, and no other" you are effectively limiting the game to people who specifically enjoy that experience. By pigeonholing games into highly specific niches and policing the way people interact with videogames, you're turning the medium into a highly constrained, limiting, stale and off-putting form of entertainment.

What you're suggesting drastically raises the entry barrier of any newcomer to videogames. They have to carefully select the games they play and either become proficient liars about their experiences or learn what kind of experiences are considered acceptable in the gamer community. If the gamer community is hostile and unwelcoming to people who don't fit with their highly specific views, the gamer community is going to become stale, isolationistic and hostile (since they are under so much attack by the media already). Saying that you should not have an experience with a game other than the one that game was designed to have is only going to create contention and hostility in the gamer community. We should embrace diversity and differences instead of shunning them, or else we are never going to mature and progress as a subculture.

ppl who are arguing against an easy mode arent trying to pigeon hole anyone. (atleast most of them arent) i dont think that having a game designed for a certain group of people is bad. Again id like to use my horror game example. I am bad with horror so i dont play those games. Horror games are meant for those people who like horror in games. It would be ridiculous to suggest an less "scary" mode like having cute animals instead of monsters in amnesia. dark souls is "meant" for people who like difficulty without any option to tempt oneself with an easier option when one is flustered with the game just as amnesia is meant for people who like survival horror. Not everyone will like amnesia (me) but i wouldnt want to change a core aspect of the game that i cant play to suit my needs.

 

[Darken12]

ppl who are arguing against an easy mode arent trying to pigeon hole anyone. (atleast most of them arent) i dont think that having a game designed for a certain group of people is bad. Again id like to use my horror game example. I am bad with horror so i dont play those games. Horror games are meant for those people who like horror in games. It would be ridiculous to suggest an less "scary" mode like having cute animals instead of monsters in amnesia. dark souls is "meant" for people who like difficulty without any option to tempt oneself with an easier option when one is flustered with the game just as amnesia is meant for people who like survival horror. Not everyone will like amnesia (me) but i wouldnt want to change a core aspect of the game that i cant play to suit my needs.

The indie horror game Slender came with a Daylight mode. It kept the game the same, but turned the night into day. This was assumed to make the game less scary, but for a lot of people, it surprisingly didn't. For some people, it made the whole thing scarier by making it less cliched (as nighttime is wont to do), and for others, it made the whole thing less scary and actually allowed them to play the game at all, because the standard version of the game was just too scary for them. By playing on Daylight mode, they were able to enjoy a game that they would have otherwise missed out on. The game also had (for a brief period, before it was removed for copyright reasons) the "20 dollars" mode, where the apparition of the titular Slenderman was accompanied by this sound cue (video comes with a seizure warning!):


Now this? There probably wasn't a person who didn't get the horror sapped right out of them by the 20 Dollars mode. It wasn't like the Daylight mode, that some people found legitimately scarier, this was outright silly. And you know what? It was awesome. It legitimately made me want to replay the game just so I could laugh merrily at Slenderman coming at me with rap blaring from the speakers. It completely reinvigorated the game for me, and I consider it a perfectly valid optional mode that goes directly against the game's intended experience. I have absolutely no problem with "non scary modes" in horror games. Or "scary modes" in non-horror games.

 

[infinity_turtles]

Done this whole song and dance before, but I like games that refuse to adapt to me. If you make it so I can have the game adapt to me, guess what, you've just changed something I like about the game to something I don't. Damn near every other game out adapts to you in order to try and make sure you beat it. Can people stop bitching and moaning about one of the few that doesn't?

 

[Confidingtripod]

What the holy hell is everyone's problem. Holy shit. I've been staying out of the "Dark Souls easy mode" because I don't have any intention of playing it, but my goodness, this is absolutely ridiculous. Nobody is trying to take away your toys, people. Stop assuming that by adding something to a game, you are going to lose something else. More options are never, ever a bad thing (why? because they're optional, they're not mandatory, nobody's forcing you to pick them if you dislike them).

Clinging to your elitism and ego-stroking mechanisms, using games as a tool to feel superior to others and resisting any attempt to make games available to more audiences is being awful gamers. It's people like you that rag on about "fake nerds", "casual gamers", "fake nerd girls" or "gay options". Don't be a hateful, toxic gamer. If I want to spend 60 bucks or more and then "miss the point of the game" then fucking let me. If I want to use any game as an expensive coaster for my drinks, that's my choice. If I want to hang all my games from strings in front of a window so that they look pretty when they catch the sunlight, that's my prerogative because I paid for the fucking thing.

Stop. Policing. Other. People's. Fun.

I may be a little late to this so I'm just quoting your first comment, but I have read the thread and among all the posts here I have to say your argument interests me the most, at first I would have thought you a troll, poking people and exaggerating views to get a reaction, but your too well spoken and objective for that, I still find humor in you throwing around the title "Elitist" when your reference to psychology among other things is quite pretentious and could be viewed as quite an "Elitist" way of backing up a comment, case and point the tone I'm taking with you is much like that your using on others.

Your argument is quite valid, appreciation of design is free from difficulty, but I find a flaw with your views that I'd like you to expand on, I'm not challenging just questioning.

Why do elitists need to be wrong? it is a game based around the concept of being hard to beat, at least one of the endings involves creatures physically bowing to the player, it is a game based around being the best you can be at the self-contained skill, if someone enjoys that and feels that an option to ignore it is a threat to their enjoyment then who is anyone but the dev to tell them its wrong? Even in your own views the dev has no right to tell them its wrong.

I am a fan of the game but have never played it, I watched let's plays, and before anyone shoots me down: I like the setting and find it entertaining to watch but didn't enjoy it to play, it didn't suit me, it wasn't the difficulty, it was the way it handled, so should there have been an "option" for me? No, because then either I'm at an advantage or disadvantage due to my differing mechanics.

My opinion on an addition of "easy" or "soft-core" is that while it would be a good addition for more relaxed players, it would be in contradiction with the mechanics of being unforgiving but consistent, besides the fact that it likely wont be changed for better or worse at this point in time, the laughable part is I have seen people complaining of it being too easy, by finding an exploit or playstyle so suited to them that they breezed through, so the games difficulty is even quite artificial, adding an easy seems redundant when experimentation is your easy option.

 

[chaos order]

ppl who are arguing against an easy mode arent trying to pigeon hole anyone. (atleast most of them arent) i dont think that having a game designed for a certain group of people is bad. Again id like to use my horror game example. I am bad with horror so i dont play those games. Horror games are meant for those people who like horror in games. It would be ridiculous to suggest an less "scary" mode like having cute animals instead of monsters in amnesia. dark souls is "meant" for people who like difficulty without any option to tempt oneself with an easier option when one is flustered with the game just as amnesia is meant for people who like survival horror. Not everyone will like amnesia (me) but i wouldnt want to change a core aspect of the game that i cant play to suit my needs.

The indie horror game Slender came with a Daylight mode. It kept the game the same, but turned the night into day. This was assumed to make the game less scary, but for a lot of people, it surprisingly didn't. For some people, it made the whole thing scarier by making it less cliched (as nighttime is wont to do), and for others, it made the whole thing less scary and actually allowed them to play the game at all, because the standard version of the game was just too scary for them. By playing on Daylight mode, they were able to enjoy a game that they would have otherwise missed out on. The game also had (for a brief period, before it was removed for copyright reasons) the "20 dollars" mode, where the apparition of the titular Slenderman was accompanied by this sound cue (video comes with a seizure warning!):


Now this? There probably wasn't a person who didn't get the horror sapped right out of them by the 20 Dollars mode. It wasn't like the Daylight mode, that some people found legitimately scarier, this was outright silly. And you know what? It was awesome. It legitimately made me want to replay the game just so I could laugh merrily at Slenderman coming at me with rap blaring from the speakers. It completely reinvigorated the game for me, and I consider it a perfectly valid optional mode that goes directly against the game's intended experience. I have absolutely no problem with "non scary modes" in horror games. Or "scary modes" in non-horror games.

the thing about the 20 dollar mode is that its no longer slender man but a parody of it . It completely changes the game and how it feels even though the controls and objectives are still the same.

another thing is when do we draw the line of adding extra options to pander to as many people as possible. you said that you wouldnt have a problem with "non-scary" options for a horror game. but then is it a horror game? Why should developers have to add an option that fundamentally change a key aspect of a game when thats the type of game they are making. Why cant you or i choose games that suit our needs rather than having a game try to suit them all. if developers did that kind of pandering then all they would create vacous games that dont really have anything special about them.