Dark Souls Softcore mode?

[Darken12]

but what about the people who arent delegating their emotions to the game, hard games are designed to give the player a sense of satisfaction, I'll bring up "Xcom: Enemy unkown", there is an easy difficulty in that game but many people who use it find the game boring because its like loading dice, but many people fear the introduction of an easy difficulty will follow trends and cause the entire series to be geared towards "broad appeal" while ceasing to be one of the few games based around the satisfaction of victory.

The problem here is that you are saying "what about people who aren't delegating their emotions to the game" and then you immediately argue that this or that game is designed to give the player an emotional experience. That's the entire point of delegating your emotions onto a game. If you merely enjoy hard games, you won't have a problem with easy mode because it doesn't touch you personally at all. If you have a personal investment on a game because you are using it as a crutch to feel better about yourself, then you will obviously attack any attempt to touch the game at all. That's the dangers of getting too emotionally attached to things, games included, and using them as pillars to prop up parts of your personality.

thing is you say in these games the mechanics allow for a change in challenge but I think what people fear is that, I'm getting ahead of myself... in LoL each champion is differing playstyles and some are straight up more difficult to use than others to account for skill, but imagine if there was a semi-story based LoL where if you played on lower difficulty all of the AI elements were easyer but players remained the same, it would turn out like that in dark-souls, people who play on lower difficulty fighting players used to having more nuance in the combat would still be put off while the more experienced player's game just got easyer from an influx of easy pickings, so its really calling on a whole host of other problems.

I don't see that, sorry. I think that's all baseless speculation, since, as I've said repeatedly before, armchair programming is a tangent that gets us nowhere (because none of us here are programmers working on Dark Souls) and distracts from the main point. If easy mode can be safely implemented, then all your concerns will be assuaged. If it can't be safely implemented, then I'm pretty sure it won't. I highly doubt that the devs who take so much pride in their game are going to implement something haphazard. We've been spoiled by EA, Activision, Ubisoft and the like, but not all game developers are lazy and desperate for money.

No argument with the option to make things harder, and as a little food for thought: one of the reasons people like the difficulty, as well as those who are elitist but those who arent aswell, is that after trends with the casual gaming explosion they fear that a change to broaden appeal will snowball, just as it did with many other games, to list off a title: "Mass effect (1)" was in my opinion the best in the series because as an attempt to broaden appeal they made the sequels more action oriented and a shallower experience, theres alot of people who fear that if a game is made easyer, even as an option, then the series will start being embedded in a market that is very difficult to escape.

See, I have a very strong problem with the casual gamer hate. I consider myself a casual gamer, if only because the "hardcore" gamer demographic makes me quite angry at times. I have heard the old "broader audiences make the experience shallower" argument over and over, to the point where I'm pretty sure it's one of those things people repeat without actually thinking about what they're saying.

Games aren't shallowed because they're aimed at more people. Games are shallower because companies are greedy, lazy and scared of losing money. Their inclusion isn't done out of ethics, it's done out of the pressure of making as much money as possible, and the difference between them is clear as day: when inclusion is done out of ethics, great care is taken to make sure the game is the highest possible quality, to ensure that all the demographics that are intended to be included have the best experiences the developers can offer. When inclusion is done out of greed, corners are cut, quality is minimal, employers are exploited and costumers are taken advantage of.

If we want our games to escape corporate greed, we need to band together and tell the companies that we don't agree with what they're doing. Turning against each other and sacrificing parts of the community to appease the developer-gods ("Oh please, don't sell out to corporate greed! Look at how we are fervently opposing the filthy casuals! It's US you want, not them!") not only does it end up harming the gamer community as a whole, but it also doesn't really deter corporate greed, as they can easily just take your loyalty for granted and lower future games' quality while convincing you that they're giving you something nobody else can.

I guess that the old-fashioned jump scare is still more effective than we give credit for. Either that or the fact that the players had limited time to finish the game and were being chased made them overly tense. I can't really think of many other reasons to still be scared.

According to the people who played Daylight mode, many thought that Nighttime mode was cliched and automatically distanced them from the game, making the experience less scary. Daylight mode, to them, felt more real (because not a lot of horror takes place under daylight) and therefore more immersive.

 

[Confidingtripod]

I don't see that, sorry. I think that's all baseless speculation, since, as I've said repeatedly before, armchair programming is a tangent that gets us nowhere (because none of us here are programmers working on Dark Souls) and distracts from the main point. If easy mode can be safely implemented, then all your concerns will be assuaged. If it can't be safely implemented, then I'm pretty sure it won't. I highly doubt that the devs who take so much pride in their game are going to implement something haphazard. We've been spoiled by EA, Activision, Ubisoft and the like, but not all game developers are lazy and desperate for money.

It isnt baseless speculation, it is the literal balancing of multiple difficulty without separating the player base, but agreed, getting into it will just derail into techno babble and an argument of two possibilities with no grounding for either.

No argument with the option to make things harder, and as a little food for thought: one of the reasons people like the difficulty, as well as those who are elitist but those who arent aswell, is that after trends with the casual gaming explosion they fear that a change to broaden appeal will snowball, just as it did with many other games, to list off a title: "Mass effect (1)" was in my opinion the best in the series because as an attempt to broaden appeal they made the sequels more action oriented and a shallower experience, theres alot of people who fear that if a game is made easyer, even as an option, then the series will start being embedded in a market that is very difficult to escape.

See, I have a very strong problem with the casual gamer hate. I consider myself a casual gamer, if only because the "hardcore" gamer demographic makes me quite angry at times. I have heard the old "broader audiences make the experience shallower" argument over and over, to the point where I'm pretty sure it's one of those things people repeat without actually thinking about what they're saying.

Games aren't shallowed because they're aimed at more people. Games are shallower because companies are greedy, lazy and scared of losing money. Their inclusion isn't done out of ethics, it's done out of the pressure of making as much money as possible, and the difference between them is clear as day: when inclusion is done out of ethics, great care is taken to make sure the game is the highest possible quality, to ensure that all the demographics that are intended to be included have the best experiences the developers can offer. When inclusion is done out of greed, corners are cut, quality is minimal, employers are exploited and costumers are taken advantage of.

If we want our games to escape corporate greed, we need to band together and tell the companies that we don't agree with what they're doing. Turning against each other and sacrificing parts of the community to appease the developer-gods ("Oh please, don't sell out to corporate greed! Look at how we are fervently opposing the filthy casuals! It's US you want, not them!") not only does it end up harming the gamer community as a whole, but it also doesn't really deter corporate greed, as they can easily just take your loyalty for granted and lower future games' quality while convincing you that they're giving you something nobody else can.

Your after jumping to a conclusion, I dont hate casual gamers, if anything I'm in support of the concept, its the idea that some games are better introductions to a genre/gaming as a whole than others, if I was to suggest a fantasy RPG to someone that never played one I'd say Skyrim for its mallibility and the clarity of its action=consequence build.

The statement I made was not a dig at casuals but rather at the state the fanbase of gaming is in due to devs not giving a second glance, the fact is that they arent "our" games, we are not in immediate control over their development, the reality is that games that provide a sense of achievment through challenge rather than purely a power fantasy took a hit, and so there is a paranoia that the slightest, inconsequential, change will be the tip of the iceberg, and lets face facts, its fans of something on the internet, someone mildly disgruntled can scream from the rooftops without realising it because its easy to do.

 

[Darken12]

It isnt baseless speculation, it is the literal balancing of multiple difficulty without separating the player base, but agreed, getting into it will just derail into techno babble and an argument of two possibilities with no grounding for either.

That was my point, yes, that the argument would be the equivalent of debating if a unicorn could beat a pegasus or not. It'd be pure speculation because we don't have any "behind the scenes" facts from the people who know the code behind DS.

Your after jumping to a conclusion, I dont hate casual gamers, if anything I'm in support of the concept, its the idea that some games are better introductions to a genre/gaming as a whole than others, if I was to suggest a fantasy RPG to someone that never played one I'd say Skyrim for its mallibility and the clarity of its action=consequence build.

The statement I made was not a dig at casuals but rather at the state the fanbase of gaming is in due to devs not giving a second glance, the fact is that they arent "our" games, we are not in immediate control over their development, the reality is that games that provide a sense of achievment through challenge rather than purely a power fantasy took a hit, and so there is a paranoia that the slightest, inconsequential, change will be the tip of the iceberg, and lets face facts, its fans of something on the internet, someone mildly disgruntled can scream from the rooftops without realising it because its easy to do.

I do see your point, and I agree that we can't trust companies because they have the ethics of the Primordial Evil. So I do acknowledge the fear that suggesting or tempting change (any change) will ruin your games. I do understand that. However, ethically speaking, we can't allow our fears to turn us into assholes. Even if a game changes and your experience is ruined (which isn't a guarantee in any way, it could still turn out to be just the same) for the betterment of others, then you did a good thing at a great personal cost, but it's not the end of the world. On the contrary, use this as a stepping stone for another project, such adding a Dante Must Cry mode to the new DmC, which I heard was quite easy. As you would be living proof that gamers can have games they like "ruined" for the sake of inclusion, you have a right to demand the same, turning games that you wouldn't enjoy that much into an experience that rivalled the one you had with DS before it was "ruined". And all of this, of course, assumes the worst (and least likely) case scenario. The worst thing that could happen still gives you the right to have other games added more options for your pleasure. And in better scenarios, you get those same benefits without Dark Souls being ruined at all.

 

[Little Gray]

There is a distinction between difficulty and user friendliness. A game can be hard as balls but extremely user friendly, like veteran mode on call of duty for example, instantaneous death, but equally instantaneous respawn with constant checkpoints and no penalties whatsoever, wanting one kind doesn't mean you need to sacrifice the other.

And for the record yes, I would have bought and played dark souls if it wasn't for you losing all your shit whenever you died.

You dont lose all your shit when you die. You can potentially lose your souls and humanity if die before you make it back to your corpse but they throw so much at you its meaningless.

 

[Hisshiss]

There is a distinction between difficulty and user friendliness. A game can be hard as balls but extremely user friendly, like veteran mode on call of duty for example, instantaneous death, but equally instantaneous respawn with constant checkpoints and no penalties whatsoever, wanting one kind doesn't mean you need to sacrifice the other.

And for the record yes, I would have bought and played dark souls if it wasn't for you losing all your shit whenever you died.

You dont lose all your shit when you die. You can potentially lose your souls and humanity if die before you make it back to your corpse but they throw so much at you its meaningless.

You lose every soul you had on you that wasn't already allocated to a stat, which can often be quite alot, and any is too much, I don't like all my grinding getting thrown away because a random skeleton invoked the rage of his ancestors and chain combo'd me into a bloody pulp.

 

[Innegativeion]

Oh I'm not complaining about the fact they aren't marked.

Don't know why you would bring it up then...

I'm just rebuking the idea that their is a solution that fulfills the criteria of the opening argument in your actual statements. But then again, you don't seem interested in that anyway.

I never claimed to be arguing against your "softcore" solution, given that until I read the terrarria wiki just now, I had no idea what it meant.

Your grievances with invading players and accessibility for the summon mechanic, however, are absurd.

 

[Colt47]

Oh I'm not complaining about the fact they aren't marked.

Don't know why you would bring it up then...

I'm just rebuking the idea that their is a solution that fulfills the criteria of the opening argument in your actual statements. But then again, you don't seem interested in that anyway.

I never claimed to be arguing against your "softcore" solution, given that until I read the terrarria wiki just now, I had no idea what it meant.

Your grievances with invading players and accessibility for the summon mechanic, however, are absurd.

I'm not really interested in your opinion of my opinion of the Dark Souls invading player / accessibility for summon mechanic. That's a criticism that lacks any kind of constructive merit and we could probably be stuck in perpetual argument forever on. The fact is that even if something is intentionally designed a certain way, it can still have flaws to it. It's definitely a weakness that the player can't tell where the summon signs are for NPC aid if he is stuck in undead form.

Also, this is what is written on the description of the stone:

[em]"Online play item. Leave summon sign.
Be summoned to another world as a phantom through your sign, and defeat the area boss to acquire humanity.
In Lordran, the flow of time is distorted, and the White Sign Soapstone allows Undead to assist one another."[/em]

How does this help locate black phantom npcs and npc summon signs outside of "be human"?

 

[runic knight]

There is a distinction between difficulty and user friendliness. A game can be hard as balls but extremely user friendly, like veteran mode on call of duty for example, instantaneous death, but equally instantaneous respawn with constant checkpoints and no penalties whatsoever, wanting one kind doesn't mean you need to sacrifice the other.

And for the record yes, I would have bought and played dark souls if it wasn't for you losing all your shit whenever you died.

You dont lose all your shit when you die. You can potentially lose your souls and humanity if die before you make it back to your corpse but they throw so much at you its meaningless.

You lose every soul you had on you that wasn't already allocated to a stat, which can often be quite alot, and any is too much, I don't like all my grinding getting thrown away because a random skeleton invoked the rage of his ancestors and chain combo'd me into a bloody pulp.

Wouldn't suggest playing any mmo, as most of them have penalties for death too. For people complaining about losing souls and humanity on death, this is the equivalent of dropping your wallet. It sucks, and it is a price you want to avoid (so you avoid death for even more reason then just because you don't want to have to run through the level again, and it makes older levels still hazardous after you get the ability to warp.), but it is by no means unfair I think. you keep all the items you found and bought, you keep all the levels you already allocated.
I'm willing to accept that the gameplay itself can be hard and challenging and can understand complaints there, especially from those unfamiliar with the slower, more careful pace it demands. But this just comes off as a bit much to complain about. Losing the exp (9 out of 10 times, just the amount of souls earned from the last bonfire to the point you died as you'd have leveled up before venturing off) makes deaths have an actual price anywhere in the game, not just when you are trying to rush to the next bonfire.

 

[runic knight]

Oh I'm not complaining about the fact they aren't marked.

Don't know why you would bring it up then...

I'm just rebuking the idea that their is a solution that fulfills the criteria of the opening argument in your actual statements. But then again, you don't seem interested in that anyway.

I never claimed to be arguing against your "softcore" solution, given that until I read the terrarria wiki just now, I had no idea what it meant.

Your grievances with invading players and accessibility for the summon mechanic, however, are absurd.

I'm not really interested in your opinion of my opinion of the Dark Souls invading player / accessibility for summon mechanic. That's a criticism that lacks any kind of constructive merit and we could probably be stuck in perpetual argument forever on. The fact is that even if something is intentionally designed a certain way, it can still have flaws to it. It's definitely a weakness that the player can't tell where the summon signs are for NPC aid if he is stuck in undead form.

Also, this is what is written on the description of the stone:

[em]"Online play item. Leave summon sign.
Be summoned to another world as a phantom through your sign, and defeat the area boss to acquire humanity.
In Lordran, the flow of time is distorted, and the White Sign Soapstone allows Undead to assist one another."[/em]

How does this help locate black phantom npcs and npc summon signs outside of "be human"?

most summon signs are right before the fog door to the boss. The door is marked by a fog you must interact with to enter, thereby making the player stop a second before barreling in, with the signs right next to the door in most cases, especially earlier bosses. Hell, some have 2 summons you can use. So long as you are human, you will see them, provided you meet any other requirement for the summon (that being, so long as you interacted with the people you are trying to summon. Like talking to soltaire first). Sorry you feel that a game designed to force players to look and find secrets and tricks isn't holding your hand enough to light up a sign 5 feet from a marked boss door any more then it already does. One would assume the neon glowing mark on the floor would be enough to anyone who played the game long enough to get to a boss with a summon sign in the first place.

 

[Colt47]

Oh I'm not complaining about the fact they aren't marked.

Don't know why you would bring it up then...

I'm just rebuking the idea that their is a solution that fulfills the criteria of the opening argument in your actual statements. But then again, you don't seem interested in that anyway.

I never claimed to be arguing against your "softcore" solution, given that until I read the terrarria wiki just now, I had no idea what it meant.

Your grievances with invading players and accessibility for the summon mechanic, however, are absurd.

I'm not really interested in your opinion of my opinion of the Dark Souls invading player / accessibility for summon mechanic. That's a criticism that lacks any kind of constructive merit and we could probably be stuck in perpetual argument forever on. The fact is that even if something is intentionally designed a certain way, it can still have flaws to it. It's definitely a weakness that the player can't tell where the summon signs are for NPC aid if he is stuck in undead form.

Also, this is what is written on the description of the stone:

[em]"Online play item. Leave summon sign.
Be summoned to another world as a phantom through your sign, and defeat the area boss to acquire humanity.
In Lordran, the flow of time is distorted, and the White Sign Soapstone allows Undead to assist one another."[/em]

How does this help locate black phantom npcs and npc summon signs outside of "be human"?

most summon signs are right before the fog door to the boss. The door is marked by a fog you must interact with to enter, thereby making the player stop a second before barreling in, with the signs right next to the door in most cases, especially earlier bosses. Hell, some have 2 summons you can use. So long as you are human, you will see them, provided you meet any other requirement for the summon (that being, so long as you interacted with the people you are trying to summon. Like talking to soltaire first). Sorry you feel that a game designed to force players to look and find secrets and tricks isn't holding your hand enough to light up a sign 5 feet from a marked boss door any more then it already does. One would assume the neon glowing mark on the floor would be enough to anyone who played the game long enough to get to a boss with a summon sign in the first place.

Better solution: have the sign show up whether you are undead or not, and just not be able to use it assuming the criteria necessary for the summon is met to make it show up while alive in the first place. Problem solved and it doesn't even effect the game all that much. /shrug.

 

[Peithelo]

I invoke Death of the Author [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_the_author] on this one.

Thanks, that was an interesting read!

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.

The author's identity surely gives their creative works their form. And while I agree that the author's intent can't usually be wholly known through only knowing their identity, it is still an important aspect and part of encrypting the works possible meaning. Even so, I agree that a novel for example can mean very different things to each individual person, and so the experience sligtly varies. In the case of Dark Souls and the suggestion of adding an "Easy Mode" to it, however, I am more concerned about how such addition would affect its form at this point. Dark Souls was designed to work without the need to resort to modal difficulty, and adding it would inadvertedly alter its form. I quarantee you, I am not insisting that everyone has to have the same exact experience when they play Dark Souls, only that the source material remains in the form it was designed to have. Difficulty, I think, is an essential part of the form of Dark Souls.

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.

It is varily unlikely that the developers are intentionally trying to ostrazice any particular demographic. Like any distinctive creative work, Dark Souls was designed to have a certain form, which inadvertedly necessitates on it not being something else entirely. Not being something is a necessary side effect of being something else. This ties into the fact that people have individual preferences, opinions, and circumstances, all of which contribute to what each individual happens to consider entertaining or even suitable for them at any given time. Therefore Dark Souls as well happens to be suitable for certain people. There is nothing to be prideful about for being one of those people, but neither should there be any reason to be resentful for something not being quite suitable for you. Honest and constructive criticism should always be appreciated, though.

The accessibility of any work could theoretically be maximized, but I think it is unrealistic to think that doing so would not affect the quality or the form of the work. It should also be concidered that video games are an inherently interactive medium. Gameplay is precisely the thing that seperates video games from other mediums, such as movies and books, and it should be used to the greatest possible extent when trying to achieve whatever it is that the game is supposed to achieve. Otherwise there hardly is a point to any of it. Dark Souls cleverly uses the challenging gameplay to improve every other aspect of the game. This, to me, is a sign of great use of video games as a medium. So, I think this all comes down to personal decision on how far we should go to take varying preferences, opinions and circumstances into consideration.

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.

It does raise the entry barrier in the case of Dark Souls specifically, where the intended experience does require the gameplay to be challenging and even obscure at first. However, video games in general are extremely versatile in that the experienced difficulty in gameplay can in fact be changed or somehow altered without causing detriment to other aspects of the experience. So it is with Dark Souls as well, only in the form of organic difficulty which allows the player to directly influence how difficult they experience the game to be. Personally I think that the versatility in Dark Souls concerning the difficulty is extremely great, but benefitting from it does admittedly require some effort of its own. I can see how this might be a problem or a nuisance to some, but I don't think that modal difficulty is the ideal way to address the very apparent demand for a more accessible Souls game.

Expanding upon the organic difficulty already present in Dark Souls would have been the least harmful way that I can think of for From Software to make Dark Souls II more accessible. This doesn't seem to be the route they will take, however. Hidetaka Miyazaki's role as a director of Demon's Souls and Dark Souls ensured that the games were always going to be extremely difficult to enjoy to many people. Now that the director has changed the overall design philosophy of the series from here on out is likely to change as well. Still, as long as the developers make well-informed and considerate decisions for the right reasons, I shouldn't have a problem with any changes they decide to make, even if they were not to my personal liking.

What I am suggesting doesn't necessarily have to raise the entry barrier for newcomers to video games in general. I am merely suggesting that the developers should mainly continue to create games that they want to create. This will undoubtedly lead to numerous different kinds of video games, some of which happen to be more suitable for certain people than others. People are bound to miss out on some experiences no matter how conciderate of each other we were to be. As long as the developers are not actively discriminative there should not be a problem. The newcomers are going to have to do some picking and choosing at first anyway, if only to get familiarized to video games.

We should embrace diversity and differences instead of shunning them, or else we are never going to mature and progress as a subculture.

Agreed, but I don't think that the best way to embrace diversity is to compensate for any and all differences that may affect how one might experience the game. While differences should be acknowledged, understood and accepted, they alone aren't always a good enough reason to somehow alter a work. The developers should warn people about flashing lights in their game but they shouldn't be required to remove them only because certain people can't play the game with them in it. More so if the flashing lights are a conscious design decision that the developers feel is important to the experience. Rather than trying to design the games to be enjoyable by the largest demographic possible, we should be less dicriminative of what other people play and enjoy as their own entertainment.

 

[Innegativeion]

*snip*

So, we're going to just pretend I didn't just get through explaining to you why the soapstone isn't MEANT to point out where the summons are, and why they are intentionally hidden?

 

[runic knight]

Oh I'm not complaining about the fact they aren't marked.

Don't know why you would bring it up then...

I'm just rebuking the idea that their is a solution that fulfills the criteria of the opening argument in your actual statements. But then again, you don't seem interested in that anyway.

I never claimed to be arguing against your "softcore" solution, given that until I read the terrarria wiki just now, I had no idea what it meant.

Your grievances with invading players and accessibility for the summon mechanic, however, are absurd.

I'm not really interested in your opinion of my opinion of the Dark Souls invading player / accessibility for summon mechanic. That's a criticism that lacks any kind of constructive merit and we could probably be stuck in perpetual argument forever on. The fact is that even if something is intentionally designed a certain way, it can still have flaws to it. It's definitely a weakness that the player can't tell where the summon signs are for NPC aid if he is stuck in undead form.

Also, this is what is written on the description of the stone:

[em]"Online play item. Leave summon sign.
Be summoned to another world as a phantom through your sign, and defeat the area boss to acquire humanity.
In Lordran, the flow of time is distorted, and the White Sign Soapstone allows Undead to assist one another."[/em]

How does this help locate black phantom npcs and npc summon signs outside of "be human"?

most summon signs are right before the fog door to the boss. The door is marked by a fog you must interact with to enter, thereby making the player stop a second before barreling in, with the signs right next to the door in most cases, especially earlier bosses. Hell, some have 2 summons you can use. So long as you are human, you will see them, provided you meet any other requirement for the summon (that being, so long as you interacted with the people you are trying to summon. Like talking to soltaire first). Sorry you feel that a game designed to force players to look and find secrets and tricks isn't holding your hand enough to light up a sign 5 feet from a marked boss door any more then it already does. One would assume the neon glowing mark on the floor would be enough to anyone who played the game long enough to get to a boss with a summon sign in the first place.

Better solution: have the sign show up whether you are undead or not, and just not be able to use it assuming the criteria necessary for the summon is met to make it show up while alive in the first place. Problem solved and it doesn't even effect the game all that much. /shrug.

Except... it sort of DOES affect the game. It removes the risk/reward balance that is the entire core of the game. Humanity has risk, but to offset that, you can be rewarded by calling aid. This ties back into the pvp system where people with humanity get invaded by those seeking to take it, but they can also call in help. Plus it is a reward earned by people who can make it to the boss fight but might have drained most their flasks in doing so.

You solution offers something for nothing, help for the sake of getting help in a game based around risk/reward trade offs. It may be more helpful to those who struggle, but it defeats the purpose of weighing a risk now for a possible reward if you can pull it off. Why would I go human if I knew I didn't need to to get help?

 

[Jayemsal]

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.

Wow, I suppose all I can say is..

THIS.

Fucking this.

I have a feeling we're going to get along very well.

OT: I wanted to get Dark Souls back during the steam sale, but the massive amount of elitism from the community turned me off of it.

 

[Darken12]

I invoke Death of the Author [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_the_author] on this one.

Thanks, that was an interesting read!

No problem! I don't advocate Death of the Author for everything as a blanket rationalisation for any form of criticism (as some people do), only when it's specifically about "the intended experiences" of a piece of art or entertainment.

The author's identity surely gives their creative works their form. And while I agree that the author's intent can't usually be wholly known through only knowing their identity, it is still an important aspect and part of encrypting the works possible meaning. Even so, I agree that a novel for example can mean very different things to each individual person, and so the experience sligtly varies. In the case of Dark Souls and the suggestion of adding an "Easy Mode" to it, however, I am more concerned about how such addition would affect its form at this point. Dark Souls was designed to work without the need to resort to modal difficulty, and adding it would inadvertedly alter its form. I quarantee you, I am not insisting that everyone has to have the same exact experience when they play Dark Souls, only that the source material remains in the form it was designed to have. Difficulty, I think, is an essential part of the form of Dark Souls.

I'm not saying that authorial intent doesn't matter (nor is it what I think Death of the Author advocates), what I'm saying is that authorial intent shouldn't be used as a tool to limit experiences. I mean, I am going to be blunt here, I find a lot of (straight) male characters pretty damn hot, and I'm pretty sure that the straight males who created them would disapprove of me playing a game because I'm seeking a different type of experience than the one they're aiming for. Sometimes, the factor that tilts my opinion towards playing a game instead of ignoring it is a male character's sex appeal, which I am 99% sure no straight male is putting forth as an intended experience (at least not for LGBT men, if they do want to sell male hotness, they usually want women to find them sexy, not men). This goes too for anyone who plays games of a genre for reasons other than the genre intends. Some people play horror games not to be scared, but because they find horror funny or the gameplay interesting, or the story compelling, or the worldbuilding immersive. Why shouldn't their experiences be just as valid as those experiences who do fall in line with authorial intent? Why should we cling to "this is the way the creators intended the game to be played" as anything other than a suggestion? When Amnesia suggested me to play with the lights off and headphones, I did that because that's how I play all games, but I was tempted to go against my habits just to spite authorial intent. We should celebrate players finding new ways to play games, not punishing them from deviating from the norm.

If you have concerns over whether the implementation of an easy mode would upset game balance, that is a perfectly valid concern to have and I think you should communicate that to the developers, but it's something that ought to stay separate from the discussion of easy mode itself, because "it can be cocked up" isn't a valid rationale against easy mode. Any tweak or implementation can be cocked up. Hell, they can accidentally fry their servers and cock up your online experience all the same. They can fall prey to EA-like evil business practices and cock up the game with microtransactions, DRM and other nightmarish things we see in videogames. "It could go wrong" is not a valid argument against the existence of something, or else we would never have any progress at all.

It is varily unlikely that the developers are intentionally trying to ostrazice any particular demographic. Like any distinctive creative work, Dark Souls was designed to have a certain form, which inadvertedly necessitates on it not being something else entirely. Not being something is a necessary side effect of being something else. This ties into the fact that people have individual preferences, opinions, and circumstances, all of which contribute to what each individual happens to consider entertaining or even suitable for them at any given time. Therefore Dark Souls as well happens to be suitable for certain people. There is nothing to be prideful about for being one of those people, but neither should there be any reason to be resentful for something not being quite suitable for you. Honest and constructive criticism should always be appreciated, though.

I don't disagree with any of that, but you're missing the point: Dark Souls isn't going to stop being anything by having more options. The core gameplay and experience will remain as they are, thereby providing everything you're talking about. Adding the option of an easy mode doesn't change anything about the new experience but instead opens the door for more experiences to be had with the game.

The accessibility of any work could theoretically be maximized, but I think it is unrealistic to think that doing so would not affect the quality or the form of the work. It should also be concidered that video games are an inherently interactive medium. Gameplay is precisely the thing that seperates video games from other mediums, such as movies and books, and it should be used to the greatest possible extent when trying to achieve whatever it is that the game is supposed to achieve. Otherwise there hardly is a point to any of it. Dark Souls cleverly uses the challenging gameplay to improve every other aspect of the game. This, to me, is a sign of great use of video games as a medium. So, I think this all comes down to personal decision on how far we should go to take varying preferences, opinions and circumstances into consideration.

Nobody's demanding accessibility. We are merely saying that we would buy/play the game if it had an easy mode, that's it. We are not saying "make easy mode because you must!", we are saying "you have a demographic would buy and play your game if it had easy mode" and nothing more. That's why I defend this topic so passionately. I don't actually care if Dark Souls ends up having an easy mode or not in the end, but it makes me absolutely livid that people aren't allowed to express their preferences and tempt developers with money/attention/other desirable things without jealous elitist fans jumping at their throats.

We are not demanding, we are offering. Getting angry because we are petulantly demanding would be somewhat justifiable, but getting angry because we have money and are telling someone what they could do to get it? That's absolutely ridiculous. It's like if we went to a bakery and said "If you made cheesecakes, I'd buy them!" and a regular customer just started shouting "YOU ASSHOLE HOW DARE YOU THAT'S NOT THE POINT OF THIS BAKERY GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE NOBODY WANTS FUCKING CHEESECAKE YOU WOULD RUIN THE ENTIRE BAKERY FOR US LOYAL CUSTOMERS!" and so on.

It does raise the entry barrier in the case of Dark Souls specifically, where the intended experience does require the gameplay to be challenging and even obscure at first. However, video games in general are extremely versatile in that the experienced difficulty in gameplay can in fact be changed or somehow altered without causing detriment to other aspects of the experience. So it is with Dark Souls as well, only in the form of organic difficulty which allows the player to directly influence how difficult they experience the game to be. Personally I think that the versatility in Dark Souls concerning the difficulty is extremely great, but benefitting from it does admittedly require some effort of its own. I can see how this might be a problem or a nuisance to some, but I don't think that modal difficulty is the ideal way to address the very apparent demand for a more accessible Souls game.

Firstly, I think I've established already that "the intended experience" is not a valid argument. Yes, games have an intended experience. However, we should welcome people who have different experiences instead of shunning them. Secondly, you keep missing the point: nobody wants to take away all the things you're praising about the game. Nobody wants to take away the organic difficulty or the gameplay as-is. Those things will remain present in the game whether it gains an easy mode or not.

Expanding upon the organic difficulty already present in Dark Souls wouldhave been the least harmfull way that I can think of for From Software to make Dark Souls II more accessible. This doesn't seem to be the route they will take, however. Hidetaka Miyazaki's role as a director of Demon's Souls and Dark Souls ensured that the games were always going to be extremely difficult to enjoy to many people. Now that the director has changed the overall design philosophy of the series from here on out is likely to change as well. Still, as long as the developers make well-informed and considerate decisions for the right reasons, I shouldn't have a problem with any changes they decide to make, even if they were not to my personal liking.

What I am suggesting doesn't necessarily have to raise the entry barrier for newcomers to video games in general. I am merely suggesting that the developers should mainly continue to create games that they want to create. This will undoubtedly lead to numerous different kinds of video games, some of which happen to be more suitable for certain people than others. People are bound to miss out on some experiences no matter how conciderate of each other we were to be. As long as the developers are not actively discriminative there should not be a problem. The newcomers are going to have to do some picking and choosing at first anyway, if only to get familiarized to video games.

The problem with what you're suggesting is ghettoing and segregating. By opposing offers of accessibility, you are telling people "You are not allowed to play these games the way you want to. If you want to play these games, you have to do it my way. If you want to play games your way, play the ones over there." I will always firmly oppose the notion that "some games are for certain people". All games can be for everybody, especially if developers add more options to broaden accessibility if they decide the market is worth it. The thing that a lot of people are not realising is that videogame enjoyment is not a zero-sum game. If someone enjoys the game in a different configuration or experience, they are not taking away available enjoyment from you. If a developer adds more options, they aren't retroactively diminishing the quality of the game they've already made because the organic difficulty and other things you enjoy are still there and you can still enjoy them.

I think that what a lot of people on this thread are missing is the fact that this has nothing to do with them. They don't realise that their arguments rest entirely on other people having fun in the "wrong way" with the game, and they see that as a problem that needs to be corrected. That's what really miffs me, since they are policing other people's fun and not even owning up to it. If people want more options added to the game so that they can enjoy it too, and we can prove that adding such options will not affect the experiences that everyone else is having, then the people who won't use easy mode cannot argue from a self-preservation point of view because their experiences will not be adversely affected in any way. When they argue against it, they are basically arguing over what others should or shouldn't find fun.

Agreed, but I don't think that the best way to embrace diversity is to compensate for any and all differences that may affect how one might experience the game. While differences should be acknowledged, understood and accepted, they alone aren't always a good enough reason to somehow alter a work. The developers should warn people about flashing lights in their game but they shouldn't be required to remove them only because certain people can't play the game with them in it. More so if the flashing lights are a conscious design decision that the developers feel is important to the experience. Rather than trying to design the games to be enjoyable by the largest demographic possible, we should be less dicriminative of what other people play and enjoy as their own entertainment.

Nobody is demanding anything. We are offering. Nobody's asking that they pass a law that forces all games to cater to everyone. We are merely saying that if the developers want to do X, we will pay them money for it, just like you can say that if the new DmC has a hardcore mode like the old games, you will buy the game (because the game as-is is too easy for you), but you are not demanding that the game be harder to please you.

It's not a matter of entitlement. We don't feel entitled to an easy mode. It's a matter of capitalism. We have the capital, and if the developers want to cater to our needs, they will have our capital. That's it.

Wow, I suppose all I can say is..

THIS.

Fucking this.

I have a feeling we're going to get along very well.

I couldn't agree more.

Captcha: that's all, folks. Oh, dear Captcha, I wish.

 

[Colt47]

Oh I'm not complaining about the fact they aren't marked.

Don't know why you would bring it up then...

I'm just rebuking the idea that their is a solution that fulfills the criteria of the opening argument in your actual statements. But then again, you don't seem interested in that anyway.

I never claimed to be arguing against your "softcore" solution, given that until I read the terrarria wiki just now, I had no idea what it meant.

Your grievances with invading players and accessibility for the summon mechanic, however, are absurd.

I'm not really interested in your opinion of my opinion of the Dark Souls invading player / accessibility for summon mechanic. That's a criticism that lacks any kind of constructive merit and we could probably be stuck in perpetual argument forever on. The fact is that even if something is intentionally designed a certain way, it can still have flaws to it. It's definitely a weakness that the player can't tell where the summon signs are for NPC aid if he is stuck in undead form.

Also, this is what is written on the description of the stone:

[em]"Online play item. Leave summon sign.
Be summoned to another world as a phantom through your sign, and defeat the area boss to acquire humanity.
In Lordran, the flow of time is distorted, and the White Sign Soapstone allows Undead to assist one another."[/em]

How does this help locate black phantom npcs and npc summon signs outside of "be human"?

most summon signs are right before the fog door to the boss. The door is marked by a fog you must interact with to enter, thereby making the player stop a second before barreling in, with the signs right next to the door in most cases, especially earlier bosses. Hell, some have 2 summons you can use. So long as you are human, you will see them, provided you meet any other requirement for the summon (that being, so long as you interacted with the people you are trying to summon. Like talking to soltaire first). Sorry you feel that a game designed to force players to look and find secrets and tricks isn't holding your hand enough to light up a sign 5 feet from a marked boss door any more then it already does. One would assume the neon glowing mark on the floor would be enough to anyone who played the game long enough to get to a boss with a summon sign in the first place.

Better solution: have the sign show up whether you are undead or not, and just not be able to use it assuming the criteria necessary for the summon is met to make it show up while alive in the first place. Problem solved and it doesn't even effect the game all that much. /shrug.

Except... it sort of DOES affect the game. It removes the risk/reward balance that is the entire core of the game. Humanity has risk, but to offset that, you can be rewarded by calling aid. This ties back into the pvp system where people with humanity get invaded by those seeking to take it, but they can also call in help. Plus it is a reward earned by people who can make it to the boss fight but might have drained most their flasks in doing so.

You solution offers something for nothing, help for the sake of getting help in a game based around risk/reward trade offs. It may be more helpful to those who struggle, but it defeats the purpose of weighing a risk now for a possible reward if you can pull it off. Why would I go human if I knew I didn't need to to get help?

Because you still can't use it unless you are alive? I never said that that the person can use the summon signs if they are undead, you just assumed that for some reason.

*snip*

So, we're going to just pretend I didn't just get through explaining to you why the soapstone isn't MEANT to point out where the summons are, and why they are intentionally hidden?

The example you gave isn't a sound counter example. In Super Mario the blocks that give an item are marked most of the time unless it's a secret of some sort. In the case of Dark Souls the summon sign mechanic for at least some of the NPCs being secret is debatable.

 

[Little Gray]

The example you gave isn't a sound counter example. In Super Mario the blocks that give an item are marked most of the time unless it's a secret of some sort. In the case of Dark Souls the summon sign mechanic for at least some of the NPCs being secret is debatable.

You mean putting them in hidden places and setting up different requirements still makes it debatable? Dark Souls is a game full of secrets and you cant debate that a lot of the NPC summons signs are not one as well.

 

[runic knight]

Oh I'm not complaining about the fact they aren't marked.

Don't know why you would bring it up then...

I'm just rebuking the idea that their is a solution that fulfills the criteria of the opening argument in your actual statements. But then again, you don't seem interested in that anyway.

I never claimed to be arguing against your "softcore" solution, given that until I read the terrarria wiki just now, I had no idea what it meant.

Your grievances with invading players and accessibility for the summon mechanic, however, are absurd.

I'm not really interested in your opinion of my opinion of the Dark Souls invading player / accessibility for summon mechanic. That's a criticism that lacks any kind of constructive merit and we could probably be stuck in perpetual argument forever on. The fact is that even if something is intentionally designed a certain way, it can still have flaws to it. It's definitely a weakness that the player can't tell where the summon signs are for NPC aid if he is stuck in undead form.

Also, this is what is written on the description of the stone:

[em]"Online play item. Leave summon sign.
Be summoned to another world as a phantom through your sign, and defeat the area boss to acquire humanity.
In Lordran, the flow of time is distorted, and the White Sign Soapstone allows Undead to assist one another."[/em]

How does this help locate black phantom npcs and npc summon signs outside of "be human"?

most summon signs are right before the fog door to the boss. The door is marked by a fog you must interact with to enter, thereby making the player stop a second before barreling in, with the signs right next to the door in most cases, especially earlier bosses. Hell, some have 2 summons you can use. So long as you are human, you will see them, provided you meet any other requirement for the summon (that being, so long as you interacted with the people you are trying to summon. Like talking to soltaire first). Sorry you feel that a game designed to force players to look and find secrets and tricks isn't holding your hand enough to light up a sign 5 feet from a marked boss door any more then it already does. One would assume the neon glowing mark on the floor would be enough to anyone who played the game long enough to get to a boss with a summon sign in the first place.

Better solution: have the sign show up whether you are undead or not, and just not be able to use it assuming the criteria necessary for the summon is met to make it show up while alive in the first place. Problem solved and it doesn't even effect the game all that much. /shrug.

Except... it sort of DOES affect the game. It removes the risk/reward balance that is the entire core of the game. Humanity has risk, but to offset that, you can be rewarded by calling aid. This ties back into the pvp system where people with humanity get invaded by those seeking to take it, but they can also call in help. Plus it is a reward earned by people who can make it to the boss fight but might have drained most their flasks in doing so.

You solution offers something for nothing, help for the sake of getting help in a game based around risk/reward trade offs. It may be more helpful to those who struggle, but it defeats the purpose of weighing a risk now for a possible reward if you can pull it off. Why would I go human if I knew I didn't need to to get help?

Because you still can't use it unless you are alive? I never said that that the person can use the summon signs if they are undead, you just assumed that for some reason.

Umm...the hell is the point then? If it is just to find the summon sign, then sorry, I still say I like it better when you can only see it if you can interact with it. That pushes people to risk being human more often and help drive invasions and the like. Hell, if you saw a marker at every place there was a sign, people would just homeward bone back to the fire, human and go on, letting themselves die after and not being human again til the next one.

I'm sorry, but this seems such a stupid, petty thing to worry about to be honest. Especially since most summon signs are near the fog door anyways, and black phantoms are suppose to resemble real people invading "randomly" I can't help but think you'd be the sort to complain that shields in the old sonic games should be out in the open too instead of hidden away as rewards for the curious and the thorough. Or that alternate endings should be clearly explained as options beforehand.
Summon signs are a reward for risk, the mere fact of seeing them part of the reward. Much like having to be in the right place with the right item to see something special, it is an event that is not required but is a nice touch to those who are thorough and who braved the dangers.

The example you gave isn't a sound counter example. In Super Mario the blocks that give an item are marked most of the time unless it's a secret of some sort. In the case of Dark Souls the summon sign mechanic for at least some of the NPCs being secret is debatable.

most are marked by being glowing marks 10 feet from the boss fog door. Except for a few that are more secret, as apparent by the unconventional way you get to them or the character paths you have to take with npc.

 

[Chronologist]

My solution was to simply play offline - you can't be invaded if you're not connected to the internet, plain and simple.

Of course, in return I resolved to play the ENTIRE game offline from start to finish. This meant no AI or PC characters helping me in fights, ever. If you're not willing to deal with the negative repercussions of interacting with other players, then you shouldn't be able to reap the rewards either.

Quite a few people say that another solution is simply to stay Hollow, but I try and become Human whenever I can for the aesthetics. I'm the kind of gamer that spends a good two hours deciding what my Shepard or Skyrim character looks like, and I'll be damned if my character's going to look like a dried-up raisin for the majority of the game.

Overall I'm not opposed to a 'softcore' mode for Dark Souls, but the results you're looking for can be produced by just disconnecting from the internet. It's not complicated guys.

 

[runic knight]

My solution was to simply play offline - you can't be invaded if you're not connected to the internet, plain and simple.

Of course, in return I resolved to play the ENTIRE game offline from start to finish. This meant no AI or PC characters helping me in fights, ever. If you're not willing to deal with the negative repercussions of interacting with other players, then you shouldn't be able to reap the rewards either.

Quite a few people say that another solution is simply to stay Hollow, but I try and become Human whenever I can for the aesthetics. I'm the kind of gamer that spends a good two hours deciding what my Shepard or Skyrim character looks like, and I'll be damned if my character's going to look like a dried-up raisin for the majority of the game.

Overall I'm not opposed to a 'softcore' mode for Dark Souls, but the results you're looking for can be produced by just disconnecting from the internet. It's not complicated guys.

not quite. Yes, it removes the asshattery of invaders, sure, but the game itself is still considered too hard by a number of people because of the more methodical approach required, the slower combat that punishes you if you spam buttons or try to attack blindly and a lack of both narrative and direction.
But that is what the argument is about between those who want an easier mode and those who don't. The ones who don't, don't because of their affection for the very attributes that others are complaining about.