Did people forget this..?

[Broderick]

IMO a lot depends on how the game stands up without it, i'm one of the few people who never played or wanted to play Skyrim so i wouldnt know about fast travel or the quest markers but Dishonoured played just fine with them (the quest markers) turned off, in fact it made the game a whole lot more fun. I have no problem with an easy mode or optional DLC like Dead Space 3 has. Personally i would prefer if those features can be turned off in the options so they are not waved in my face all the time. But really, complain about easy mode? for shame.

In skyrim, unless you knew each cave by name and location, there is very, very little to go on in terms of directions if you turn the quest arrows off. The game was designed with the arrows in mind. Morrowind did not have quest markers, but it did have directions(which were sometimes a bit unreliable but for the most part accurate).

Here is an example:

Skyrim: "Some dickbutts stole my wedding ring and I want revenge! Could you go out to Ferry Weather Cave and kill them till you find the one that stole it? Thanks" (From here the game expects you to use the arrows, as the npc does not tell you where the cave is located).

Morrowind: "Some dickbutts stole my wedding ring and I want revenge! Could you go out to Ferry Weather Cave and kill them till you find the one that stole it? You can get to the cave by taking the south road out of town till you hit a 3 way intersection. From there, head along the eastern path till you find some crumbling ruins of the ancient cat lords. Head north from the ruins and you will see the cave straight ahead." In this case, there are no quest markers, but the lack of them does not hurt the game, as you have clear(for the most part) directions to the cave.

 

[The_Echo]

Dark Souls needed a better tutorial system.

What was... what was wrong with it? The entirety of the Undead Asylum is a big tutorial. Every single message on the ground tells you the controls, there's a button prompt at the first bonfire (and every other), and upon entering Firelink Shrine, the game very blatantly tells you what you can do at a bonfire initially. What did it miss?

What's wrong with the item menu? It's simple to navigate and shows you everything you need to know at a glance. If you want more info about an item, there's a button to change the menu to see its stats and description.

Do people just... not notice this? Every menu has a list of menu controls at the bottom. It's so easy to figure out.

OT: Dark Souls does not need an easy mode. Why? Because the devs didn't design the game to be easy. Why? Because they wanted to, that's the goddamned point, and not everything is made for everybody. They're called demographics; Demon's/Dark Souls was designed for the demo that enjoys hard games.

 

[Vegosiux]

OT: Dark Souls does not need an easy mode. Why? Because the devs didn't design the game to be easy. Why? Because they wanted to, that's the goddamned point, and not everything is made for everybody. They're called demographics; Demon's/Dark Souls was designed for the demo that enjoys hard games.

So, do you promise, cross your heart and all, that in case the devs do include an easy mode in a future Souls game, you will acknowledge that that was their design decision, respect that decision and not lambast them for it?

Because, you know, otherwise it all comes across as "I respect the developers' decision to make the game the way they want to make it, unless they do something I don't like, the cheap sellout fucks caving to someone who's not me!"

Just an advance warning (not just to you) about glass houses not being built to have rocks hurled inside them.

 

[Dethenger]

Try to play Skyrim without quest markers. Go ahead, try it. If the game is built around (a) certain feature(s), you can't just say 'don't use them'. It doesn't work like that.

This, basically. I mean, if you don't like ironsights in Call of Duty, or the cover system in Gears of War, you don't just get to not use them; you need to use them.

Also, it's not really an equal parallel to Dark Souls anyways. Skyrim is all about exploration, so if you feel that knowing exactly where to go, or being able to fast travel there, detracts from that experience, then turning them off is a viable option. In this case, nav points and quick-travel are simply tools the player can utilize, it's not a specific design choice on the part of the developer.
Dark Souls is meant to be rewarding. In order for it to be rewarding, the player must have the ability to fail. Not die, fail. Death is not failure, they tell you straight up to prepare to die. That's not just a pithy tagline, that's solid advice. The difficulty is the essential element of the game that allows this failure to occur, and therefore the difficulty of the game allows for its reward. If you implement an easy mode, you undermine a player's ability to fail by giving them something they know they can use to succeed. It's not just a matter of not using it any more, because you will always know you have the option of just switching down to Easy Mode. It doesn't matter how hard a boss is, or how impossible an area is, because you know you have the option to win. It cheapens the experience for players who never even touch the Easy Mode.

 

[Busard]

OT: Dark Souls does not need an easy mode. Why? Because the devs didn't design the game to be easy. Why? Because they wanted to, that's the goddamned point, and not everything is made for everybody. They're called demographics; Demon's/Dark Souls was designed for the demo that enjoys hard games.

So, do you promise, cross your heart and all, that in case the devs do include an easy mode in a future Souls game, you will acknowledge that that was their design decision, respect that decision and not lambast them for it?

Because, you know, otherwise it all comes across as "I respect the developers' decision to make the game the way they want to make it, unless they do something I don't like, the cheap sellout fucks caving to someone who's not me!"

Just an advance warning (not just to you) about glass houses not being built to have rocks hurled inside them.

Well if they add an easy mode, fair to them, but I won't be playing it then. I won't respect a decision that I, and many original fans, think is detrimental to the original intent of the series. But casuals will be happy to have another game watered down for them I suppose.

Also the whole argument "If you don't like it, don't use it/watch it", referring to you OP, if absolutely moronic since it can go both ways.

If you don't like hard games, don't play them. If you don't like people liking hard games, just ignore them ! See how easy I can throw this shit around ?

Every design decision made within a game has it's importance, both for the player and the dev. For the dev, it takes effective ressources to design games in such ways, and I'm not shelling out 60 bucks just I can ignore some features. I want a game that is well designed and everything works well according to the challenge. If Skyrim was well designed, the whole "Don't use crafting" wouldn't even have to be mentionned.

 

[The_Echo]

OT: Dark Souls does not need an easy mode. Why? Because the devs didn't design the game to be easy. Why? Because they wanted to, that's the goddamned point, and not everything is made for everybody. They're called demographics; Demon's/Dark Souls was designed for the demo that enjoys hard games.

So, do you promise, cross your heart and all, that in case the devs do include an easy mode in a future Souls game, you will acknowledge that that was their design decision, respect that decision and not lambast them for it?

Because, you know, otherwise it all comes across as "I respect the developers' decision to make the game the way they want to make it, unless they do something I don't like, the cheap sellout fucks caving to someone who's not me!"

Just an advance warning (not just to you) about glass houses not being built to have rocks hurled inside them.

Honestly, I would be disappointed if Dark Souls II had an easy mode. Not because it's selling out, but because it kind of betrays its predecessors in a few ways.

I wouldn't go on forums and rant to high hell about it, though.

 

[Pulse]

There's a massive difference between in game mechanics (fast travel, op weapons/skills) and difficulty modes. Difficulty modes are easily ignorable..you just select the one you want from the start.

I don't think anyone should complain if DS2's easy mode was exactly the same but all enemies had 1/3 the HPs. Sure they may notbe getiing the "right" experience, but get over it, you are.

 

[Loonyyy]

I'm in agreement with pretty much all of those except for the fast travel.

I actually like navigational challenges, and being forced to make decisions on carry weight. And yes, you can turn off all the miriad markers, and refuse to use fast travel, but that's not really what I mean. I prefer a deep ingame system for travel, rather than the shallower one they usually leave in it's place in the others.

For instance: Morrowind had special teleports, which, unless you had them as spells, you'd have to buy as scrolls. Each large town had a mass transit system, and most roads were sign posted. Exploring was one of the big things in that game. Those teleports could solve problems, outnumbered? Encounter a too dangerous enemy? Use an intervention scroll. Similarly, there was great depth in learning how the mass transit system worked: The routes had different costs, and different stations only served other certain stations. You ended up learning the landscape, and how to get around. It was added depth, that they stripped out. It's not that it's easier, it's that it's more boring. And when they add in quick travel to TES for instance, they actually reduced the effort in that playstyle.

Compare Skyrim, which had massively cut down on the mass transit, gives players the ability to fast travel from anywhere, to almost anywhere, and doesn't leave the option for that added depth, whilst also removing challenge (Run far enough away from an enemy, you can teleport away). It's doubly frustrating, because I decided I'd explore everywhere on foot, and Skyrim has so many more encounters you'll have on the roads, and the small towns (While I think there are fewer), are often more interesting. There really is so much more when you're doing it with less. The game is actively trying to get users to cut content, which is just ridiculous to me. And horse travel, introduced in Oblivion, clearly wasn't well considered, because combat isn't possible on horseback. You had to wait for an expansion to Skyrim to get that. Did no one test this and find it odd?

I much prefer the depth introduced by leaving in some navigational challenges, and the use of a more Journal than Quest Log approach, it adds to the depth, and the immersion. It doesn't work for everything, and some games may even be better with it. But it's not always the case that it's just something you can take out. And when you take it out, you leave behind a gaping hole in the depth, which you had better be prepared to fill.

EDIT:

SNIP

You beautiful bastard. You ninja'd me completely.

 

[Quellist]

IMO a lot depends on how the game stands up without it, i'm one of the few people who never played or wanted to play Skyrim so i wouldnt know about fast travel or the quest markers but Dishonoured played just fine with them (the quest markers) turned off, in fact it made the game a whole lot more fun. I have no problem with an easy mode or optional DLC like Dead Space 3 has. Personally i would prefer if those features can be turned off in the options so they are not waved in my face all the time. But really, complain about easy mode? for shame.

In skyrim, unless you knew each cave by name and location, there is very, very little to go on in terms of directions if you turn the quest arrows off. The game was designed with the arrows in mind. Morrowind did not have quest markers, but it did have directions(which were sometimes a bit unreliable but for the most part accurate).

Here is an example:

Skyrim: "Some dickbutts stole my wedding ring and I want revenge! Could you go out to Ferry Weather Cave and kill them till you find the one that stole it? Thanks" (From here the game expects you to use the arrows, as the npc does not tell you where the cave is located).

Morrowind: "Some dickbutts stole my wedding ring and I want revenge! Could you go out to Ferry Weather Cave and kill them till you find the one that stole it? You can get to the cave by taking the south road out of town till you hit a 3 way intersection. From there, head along the eastern path till you find some crumbling ruins of the ancient cat lords. Head north from the ruins and you will see the cave straight ahead." In this case, there are no quest markers, but the lack of them does not hurt the game, as you have clear(for the most part) directions to the cave.

Yuck! well i guess that just reinforces my point about wether or not the game can stand up without them. For a triple A title like Skyrim to be that reliant on waypoints is just sad and reflects bad and hurried game design, thats especially sad if in previous titles like Morrowind waypoints were not required.

 

[infinity_turtles]

I love threads like these. Really I do. It's not like design is just as much about what options not to include as the ones to include. I'm sure Bioshock would've been vastly improved if you had the option not to smash Andrew Ryan's brains in with the golf club. It's not like taking away that option had any real impact on the experience of the game, right?

Games are an interactive medium, and this means that the limitations imposed on the player are crucial in defining the experience they provide. The degree to which any one feature matters varies, but if a decent portion of the fans of a series have strong feelings regarding a feature, then it's very likely including or discluding that option is going to change the type of experience they have with the game.

 

[Ickorus]

The only thing I disagree with you on is the Dark Souls easy mode, well, unless it had a big warning label saying "WE RECOMMEND USING THE NORMAL MODE IF YOU WANT FULL ENJOYMENT OF THE GAME" because an easy mode would turn the game into a rather crappy hack-an-slash and most people would get bored of it in very little time which may translate to bad reviews and damaged sales.

But on everything else, yeah, agreed.

I would however like systems to be put in place for those that don't like fast travel and such like the carts in Skyrim, though I would suggest allowing players to pick any location directly along main roads and perhaps throw in some random encounters such as bandit attacks (Dragon Age did these well).

 

[Shocksplicer]

Like in dead space 3, even if you don't play co-op, carver will just miraculously appear in cutscenes

He doesn't "miraculously appear". He was just never with Isaac. If you play single player he stays with the others instead of tagging along with Isaac, so whenever you meet up with the others he's there because he always was.

 

[Strazdas]

If a game has fast traveling, and if you're against it. DON'T USE IT. Self control.
If a game has over powered skills. (Skyrim crafting, etc.) Don't use it!
If a game has quest markers TURN THEM OFF. don't use it! (Unless there isn't any way to turn them, then feel free to complain)
Didn't like Fable 2 & 3 bread crumb trail? TURN IT OFF, AND DON'T USE IT!

Dark souls getting an easy mode?
Don't play the easy mode.

I am doing all those things already. but i wanted to comment about the quest markers. yes, you may be able to ignore them, however thing is nowadays games dont gibve you enough text to go there without a marker. spoting some random location name (usually unexplored place where marker is) is not giving much of directions. and its not like in morrowind you could get lsot for 3 hours and still be ok since your invulnerable anyway.

also some games may not be balanced for non-fast-travel. quests timing out ect. but i agree in general.

thats especially sad if in previous titles like Morrowind waypoints were not required.

They kind of are. the game tries to give you directions. however in many cases it fails miserably and you are left asking EVERY random npc for hlep till one knows something or being lost for 2 hours. using a out-of-game map has in fact enchanted my morrowind experience. (not to mention the quest journal is ass, even for 2003)

 

[DioWallachia]

Try to play Skyrim without quest markers. Go ahead, try it. If the game is built around (a) certain feature(s), you can't just say 'don't use them'. It doesn't work like that.

Specially when the developers sacrifice features that were working just fine:

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

1. I agree. I often restrict myself from fast travel in games. That said, most of the time you have to do a fair bit of 'manual' travelling before you get that option, and once you do the quests tend to be further apart by necessity, and sometimes in Dark Souls I really cannot be bothered to go from Darkroot Garden to Anor Londo and back again on foot just to buy a few large titanite shards. But Dragon's Dogma, Skyrim and Pokemon games have all gotten the manual travelling approach from me.
2. You shouldn't be expected to have to restrain yourself from using something that is in the game. It should be balanced as is. With overpowered gameplay approaches, I sort of sympathise, because a game should allow for all its mechanics being abused, and any time something trivialises the game like the alchemy/enchanting chain tactic of Skyrim does, that's poor game design and the player shouldn't have to put up with that. In single-player games it's less of a problem, but weak willed people should be able to have a challenge as well.
3. A lot of times that's not an option, but the worse problem is, a lot of games are designed to use quest markers in such a way that you cannot just intuitively know what to do, or figure it out. The game doesn't give you the information that you need to make a reasonable decision because it thinks there'll be a fucking star above where you have to stand, or which one of the dozens of indistinguishable NPCs in an area is Wise Freddy. An NPC won't have the option to say "Oh, Wise Freddy? He's the one in the red jacket" because the game thinks you won't need anyone to tell you that, because it's pretty sure it handed you everything you needed in one obnoxious floating star. In Assassin's Creed 3 on the other hand, when you have to climb up a wall and the only possible handhold in the whole wall feels the need to display a quest marker, that's just insulting.
4. I don't know what that is but it sounds tasty.

And finally...Dark Souls easy mode, you rear your ugly head. I'm getting better as this brevity thing, I'm pretty sure, so here's why I don't like an easy mode that doesn't even interfere with the main game:

It cheapens the game's concept, makes for a short and boring game, doesn't do service to many of the intricacies of the gameplay and world, eliminates the feeling of utter satisfaction that comes from defeating a boss like Ornstein and Smough on your 21st try, and leaves the player with a different experience to the one Dark Souls is actually trying to create.

I've always said I'm not against a bit of a tutorial on poise and things like that, but Asylum is as much as you should need for the basics and I found nothing wrong with the way items or their stats were displayed. There's even a button that explains each stat in turn as you go down the list, same as in Armored Core games. A gamer shouldn't necessarily always have a clear understanding right off the bat. A basic understanding, yes, and I think Dark Souls fails to provide that in terms of poise, bleed and some other mechanics, but it isn't hard to figure out and a comprehensive understanding is available to those who are willing to pay attention.

 

[loa]

Like in dead space 3, even if you don't play co-op, carver will just miraculously appear in cutscenes

He doesn't "miraculously appear". He was just never with Isaac. If you play single player he stays with the others instead of tagging along with Isaac, so whenever you meet up with the others he's there because he always was.

It's hard to hunt functional videos down but there:
Stuff like at 7:00, you walk around alone, cutscene time and look who's there and whoops, cutscene is over and look who conveniently jumped out of the screen into nonexistence.
Happens all the time.

 

[Windcaler]

I cant comment on the witcher because Ive not played a witcher game since the first one that came off as Mysoginistic making me completely uninterested i the rest of the franchise.

Misogynistic, maybe. But guess what? In medieval times people weren't as tolerant, open minded and emancipated as today. Is it really that terrible that a game tries to portray a more realistic version of how life was in those days? Or do you rather have happy fantasy worlds where the feminism movement apparently also already happened like in Skyrim?

I mean, it's fine if you do. But don't call a game misogynistic just because it did some fact checking on human history. People in the game are misogynistic. The game itself isn't.

I said it came off as Mysoginistic. To be fair, if the witcher was going for a more realistic depiction of medival times then Im ok with that. However if thats what they were trying to do they probably shouldnt have added in so much magic and made the reward for meeting a witch turning them into the inquisition or burning them at the stake instead of getting a PG-13 sex scene. I dont believe for a moment that the developers intention was to give a real life portrayal of medival times social movements because the game is anything but that

However to be fair, if you can find me a developer interview from before the game came out (I say before because afterwards just indicates someone trying to cover their butt) then Ill be willing to reevaluate my opinion on what their true intention was

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Try to play Skyrim without quest markers. Go ahead, try it. If the game is built around (a) certain feature(s), you can't just say 'don't use them'. It doesn't work like that.

By this logic, Morrowind should be nigh-impossible. It was, at the very least, just a little difficult since I was so used to waypoints. I had to remember names and places and maps, and Oblivion onward never asked that much of me. But back then, Morrowind was considered one of the greatest RPGs of all time. So no, a sandbox WRPG does not need waypoints.

Actually no, Morrowind would have the quest giver give you actual directions to go to places, Head out the east gate, take a left at the fork, once you reach the fort go south etc...
At no point would it have been impossible, you just need to pay attention, and the journal would log your discussions with the character so even if you forgot them you'd be able to just look up what the directions were and use that.

Dont forget the map. The Morrowind map has to be the best game map ever (the paper one). You could follow the directions on the map to plan out where you were going in advance and also it had every cave and building on it so you knew what to look for. Excellent stuff. Also the fast travel was superior to the sequels. Stilt riders, mages guild, boats, mark/recall and even those teleport stone things that begin with P. I really hope when they make another ES game its more like Morrowind than Skyrim. Skyrim was so boring i only played it once....even Oblivion i played through a few times.

 

[The-Traveling-Bard]

Dark souls getting an easy mode?
Don't play the easy mode. Simple as that, and let's face it. Dark Souls needed a better tutorial system. It's a fact I shouldn't have to use google to figure out how to do certain things, and the item menu was complete utter trash. A gamer should *always* have a clear understanding of the games mechanics, and features. This doesn't make the game "easy" it makes the game accessible. Those are two different things. I don't understand why people confuse the two words.

You first talk about self control, and then say you "need" google to find out how things work in Dark Souls. Oh the irony. Dark Souls is build around trial and error. You're supposed to fail and fail again until you find out the correct way to do it. And you're supposed to try and try again until you find out how to do something.

Seems you're just as "weak willed" as the people you're accusing. As you too circumvent the game mechanics and intentions and instead choose the easier way to play the game. (As in, with the help of google.)

No, there were some things in the game that completely were *not* explained. There are core mechanics that were *not* mentioned in the tutorial. Do you need to know all about combat? Pretty much. What about stats? miracles? Spells? Shops? Armor? Weapons? What the fuck is humanity, and why was it so important? Outside the tutorial nothing is explained in the little time I played. This is bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad design. I can't care how many people say "IT'S PART OF THE GAME. IT'S SUPPOSE TO BE HARD." Because this argument is completely *stupid*

A game is hard by having smart AI that if you were not paying attention, and playing right could kill you.
A game is hard by having smart AI with smart abilities that if mob X did spell Z. Then mob Y would use skill K after.
A game isn't hard just because it doesn't explain things clearly. This is frustrating to most players, and it's the reasons why I never played Dark Souls.

And it honestly could do with a better guide system, but this should be a complete options to turn off. Another reason why I never played Dark Souls is that I never knew where to go. Which was fun, and exciting for awhile, because I would turn around, and got into insanely hard fight. I like exploring, but being lost for an hour, or two because you don't know what to do, and where to go. Is terrible. I'm not a "Causal" gamer, and i'm not a "hardocore" gamer. I'm some where in the middle.

I don't mind the game actually being hard, but let me understand the features, and mechanics clearly. Some people are more slower. (like me) and need that extra detail/information to help play the game, and there's *nothing wrong with that*

 

[TheCommanders]

Yeah I always find these sorts of complaints weird. I like the option of fast traveling in Far Cry 3, even if I rarely use it for example. I honestly can't understand people getting mad about an optional easy mode in a game like Dark Souls. Personally, I usually play games for fun, rather than challenge, so I like having the option for easier gameplay if I'm getting frustrated. Why what I do with a game - that in no way obligates another to change anything about their play style - makes others mad boggles my mind.