Easy Mode Hate Explained

[Vorpal Samantha]

I think that it's mostly fear that the company will ruin the other game modes. Think about it, if the difficulty can be scaled down by just making the enemies easier, then any parts of the game that are truly difficult that can't be scaled will be removed. (Such as a platforming section or a really annoying puzzle. The developers are also taking time to scale each enemy. I doubt they just lower all the health and damage, they probably have to make their individual attacks slower and have the animation redone to fit, this may take valuable time from the game.

This isn't my reasoning, I say that easy mode allows a game to be better, and it is just an added part for people who can't play the game well.
I for one have slow muscles, so in a game that requires QTEs like Uncharted, I like it to be on lower difficulty so I don't have to break my hand tapping.

 

[thethird0611]

Gamer 1 = "Man, I'm stuck at chapter whatever on easy mode. This game is so tough!"

Gamer 2 = "Oh yeah? Well I'm on new game+++ on uber-expert, look-at-the-size-of-my-penis hard mode."

Gamer 1 = "Cool! Mind telling me how to beat this boss then?"

Gamer 2 = "Pff. As if. Now get away from me you dirty 'casual'. You don't deserve to play Dark Souls. It wasn't meant for you."

You seem to use the tone that a "Dude Bro that plays the game that invented FPS: COD" would use on a casual gamer....even when COD IS a casual game by definition.

You sure that a Dark Soul fan is like that?

Yes, yes they are...

The first black phantom that invaded me absolutely demolished me with a weapon I hadn't seen before. I asked him what the name of that weapon was and he responded "noob stomper". So I asked him again and he simply said "Fuck off and stop messaging me ******".

On another incident I was summoned as a blue phantom to help deal with a boss. Just before we got to the bosses location my game logged out. It took 10 minutes for it to come back on and when I logged back in my inbox was filled with angry messages that would make a racist homophobic nazi prepubescent blush.

This isn't to take into account the dozens of times people have left unpleasant messages in my inbox for cheesing my way out of black phantom confrontations. All is fair in Dark Souls, but apparently "stalemates" are too infuriating for the "patient" dark souls players.

Dark Souls players aren't some special breed. They are the same as the sort of folks who play cod. The only difference is a completely unfounded superiority complex.

How does the multiplayer work in Dark Souls? Do you have to allow players to summon or be summoned/invade your game? While I do own Dark Souls I only played it for about two hours on the PC and I haven't played it again since I bought it so I don't know that much about it.

Those are some of the many reasons why I stay away from the multiplayer in games. I just don't want to deal with people that are rude like that.

There are multiple ways of having multiplayer, and most of them arent jerks. I hypothesis that he just told us about the bad ones, and excluded the good and/or the no response.

If you learned about reversing your hollow state and turning human, you found the online mode. When you turn human, you open up your world to be forcibly invaded by other people, which is not common (except in certain areas). While your human ,you can also summon player phantoms, up to two people, where only 1 can invade you (mostly).

 

[thejackyl]

If it's well done I don't see why an Easy Mode isn't available to ease players into the game. But easy mode should have it's pros and cons for players. Make them WANT to play on Hard, and for more than just achievements (which admittedly WILL work for some people).

The way I see it working for a Souls game would be:
+Enemies deal less damage, and have less health
+Less Bullshit enemy placement (Some Giant Skeletons in the Tomb, and the archers and Anor Londo)
-Bosses no longer drop unique souls
-"Unique" Weapons unobtainable (Titanite Pole, Channeler's Trident, etc)
Easy players can only play with easy players (Messages from all difficulties show up)

Where as normal mode is balanced like a standard Souls game.
-Normal enemy health/damage
-All enemies placed
+Bosses drop their unique souls
+All weapons obtainable
Normal players can only play with Normal players

As long as the game is balanced properly and the normal mode doesn't alienate it's fanbase (hence the incentive to play on Normal) than I don't see the issue. I think a lot of people think that if Dark Souls has an easy mode, that it will seep into the "proper" game and the game as a whole will be made easier. And for a game that's known for punishing the brave and foolish, that's not a good thing.

 

[Jedi-Hunter4]

Snip

All that said, I'll be happy to tell you why I, personally, don't want an Easy Mode in the Souls series.

It really just boils down to there being an extreme amount of easy games out there today.

Think Call of Duty on Veteran, versus Unreal Tournament on Godlike.

When, once in a blue moon, a game comes along that actually makes me feel like I could work a little harder in order to fully master it, I'm overjoyed.

I'm sorry people rag on certain games for what ever reason like CoD, but your not looking hard enough if you can't find hard games.

You have not played some of the call of dutys of recent years if you think they are easy. I think it may of been black ops 1, after having been killed for like the 100th time by the same machine gun squad I chucked the controller in yelling "this isn't fun any more".

In the category of games a large portion of the population have played with difficulty s that will slow you down:
Gears on Insane - Play that single player an say your breezed through
Halo - again play any of those on legendary solo and say it was a walk in the park

Games that are genuinely crazy hard
Operation Flashpoint on hardest difficulty - No HUD, No Map, No mini map, no tagging of enemys, no projection showing friend from foe (you have to remember what goes on, on the radio chatter) and hour long missions with no lives (if you die mission over) all with the standard rules of the game that, a head shot will kill you, if you get show in the leg or arm etc, it will cripple you and you will bleed out unless you bandage it. This is all ontop of intel may be long, so if you go in that canyon an fail to see the tanks in time, your F'd

Fight Night, essentially on the hardest difficulty I think it would be genuinely easier to fight some of the real champs across 12 rounds.

Madden, Fifa and other EA made sports games, if you have a vice of choice in the sports game arena you know playing the best team on the hardest difficulty is the challenge of the gods.

Then if you like your realistic driving games there's a whole host of insanely hard games, World superbikes or F1 both ridiculously hard on realism and highest driver/rider settings.

These are just some of the game's I have played your not looking hard enough or with broad enough horizons if you can't find truly hard games, if your looking for a true challenge even if you don't like FPS (with squad commands and strategy) play the flash point games on hardest difficulty truly truly difficult, for starter's one of the few games I've ever played where you CANNOT heal yourself by yourself, only stop yourself bleeding out.

 

[DeltaEdge]

I honestly don't care if the game has a damn easy mode. People argue that you don't get the "true experience" from playing it on easy mode, but let me ask you. Why do you care how other people play the game. A lot of people like to ease into the harder difficulties by starting on easy, so they will probably end up experiencing the "true experience" anyways. And the last time I checked, beating a game on easy mode isn't exactly brag-worthy, it would be pretty sad for someone to brag that they beat easy mode unless they were a 5 year old.

And it shouldn't have to be the developer's job to hold your hand and parent you, and put the easy mode on top of the fridge where you can't reach it just because you don't have any self control and seemingly want to shit on the experience that you desire. An easy mode shouldn't be withheld from existence just because you don't have an ounce of will power in your body to resist it. That would be like closing down a Buffet because they local fat guy on a diet knows he will eat himself sick daily if it exists.

And also important to note, easy is relative. Having an easy mode in Dark Souls won't magically turn it into a Kirby game in terms of difficultly, it will just tone it down moderately, but it would still probably be difficult enough that the average Joe who is bad at that kind of game wouldn't just be able to breeze through it. I think an easy mode would simply tone down the difficulty, not bulldoze it and replace it with something so easy that a 5 year old could plow through it in a day.

 

[The_Echo]

No, I disagree. For me, playing a hard game isn't about bragging rights. I have very few friends, and even fewer that play games. So I don't really have anyone to brag to anyway.

For me, games that are hard by default, like Dark Souls... they're fun, or memorable, or both. I like when a game forces me to become good at it in order to progress. Not just hard games, but any game without different 'modes.' The game is designed around a specified difficulty, and it makes the experience as a whole feel more complete, more fully-realized.

Tacking on an easy mode to a game like Dark Souls, to me, just ruins the spirit of the whole thing. Especially when the two games before Dark Souls II had no difficulty setting. It's inconsistent, and kind of disrespectful to those games. If you want to make a hard game with an easy mode, fine. But don't do it to Souls.

Bottom line: Sequels to games without difficulty settings should not have difficulty settings. It's about being consistent with the spirit of the previous games.

EDIT: I'd like to add that From Software said they want to make Dark Souls II more accessible. This does not mean easy mode. It means more accessible. In the same way that Dark Souls was made to be more accessible than Demon's Souls.

 

[Something Amyss]

Here's my reasoning as to why including easy modes in game franchises known for their difficulty pisses people off. People like to brag! Yep, that's pretty much it. I see topic after topic about Dark Souls 2 getting an easy mode and Fire Emblem getting a casual mode and some gamers freaking out and others that can't see the big deal. The deal is that when a gamer beats a brutally hard game, they get to revel in the bragging rights which that accomplishment entails. When a game has no easy mode option, there is no doubt to the accomplishment's validity. However, when a gamer brags about beating a game with an easy or casual mode, even if they didn't use it, just the fact that the option is there is enough to invalidate the win in the minds of anyone they would want to brag to.

An example: When I was a kid, I actually beat Battletoads on the NES. You can bet I bragged my ass off. Now imagine that Battletoads has an easy mode option that slowed down all the vehicle session and chase sequences to manageable speeds, reduced damage taken from enemies, reduced enemies HP, etc. Were that the case, everyone I bragged to just would have assumed that I used the easy mode to beat it just like they would have had to. That's just how peoples' minds work, fair or not.

Tell people who can FC Through the Fire and Flames on Expert how easy mode diminishes their bragging rights.

 

[FoolKiller]

Here's my reasoning as to why including easy modes in game franchises known for their difficulty pisses people off. People like to brag! Yep, that's pretty much it. I see topic after topic about Dark Souls 2 getting an easy mode and Fire Emblem getting a casual mode and some gamers freaking out and others that can't see the big deal. The deal is that when a gamer beats a brutally hard game, they get to revel in the bragging rights which that accomplishment entails. When a game has no easy mode option, there is no doubt to the accomplishment's validity. However, when a gamer brags about beating a game with an easy or casual mode, even if they didn't use it, just the fact that the option is there is enough to invalidate the win in the minds of anyone they would want to brag to.

An example: When I was a kid, I actually beat Battletoads on the NES. You can bet I bragged my ass off. Now imagine that Battletoads has an easy mode option that slowed down all the vehicle session and chase sequences to manageable speeds, reduced damage taken from enemies, reduced enemies HP, etc. Were that the case, everyone I bragged to just would have assumed that I used the easy mode to beat it just like they would have had to. That's just how peoples' minds work, fair or not.

1. Props to you for beating Battletoads

2. People would just assume you used a Game Genie instead of easy mode.

3. I disagree. It isn't about bragging per se. Its about questioning the direction the series is going. In many cases a game's difficulty is just another option to change. Demon's/Dark Souls is different in that the difficulty was the point of the game. Gamers worry that what they like about the series that makes it unique is what will be lost.

 

[Something Amyss]

Modern games are "easy" because some companies can't even pull off "hard" very well. Has to do with the balancing most of the time or sometimes with Bugs. Or both.

It also has to do with the fact that gaming devs are no longer using the "nickel and dime" arcade mentality. This is part of the reason oldschool games were hard. We've never had really good balancing in game difficulty.

 

[Xariat]

If the point of the game is in teaching players to be aware of their surroundings, analyze themselves and their performance, think things through, and get better, then wouldn't an easy mode invalidate the entire point of the game?

Not necessarily. If you cut damage down to 70% (for example) what you described is still there - you just have the ability to take two or three more whacks to the head or trigering one or two more traps without dying. It still pays off to be cautious and improve but leaves a little bit more room for mistakes. So no, in that case an easy mode would not invalidate anything.

Did you ever stop to consider that Dark souls has a leveling and upgrading system? you can yourself cut down the damage by upping your armor and you can yourself increase the amount of whacks you can take by increasing your vitality.

---

I seriously question if those in favor for a dark souls easy mode has actually played the game in question. Because here's the thing; Dark souls is not in need of an easy mode. The game is not cheap, the game does not have numerous unfair challenges, the enemies are not unbalanced, and the bosses are not brick walls with death lasers.

I say this out of experience, I just recently decided to give dark souls a go and I can honestly say that I never found the game to be hard. Now that's not to say that I didn't die, I certainly did, a lot. But the deaths were never unfair, the traps were never invisible.
I could go on but that would be too far off topic.

Back to the topic of easy mode: There are plenty of easy games out there, if you can't handle a challenge don't go and change a challenging game to fit your level of skill. You wouldn't ask a writer to re-write his book because the plot was too complex or the language too difficult. Even if you say that the easy mode would be optional the normal mode would still suffer because the devs would have to split the resources and the work between the two modes. It's not as simple as to change the numbers, the challenge was never in the numbers, the player can change the numbers. the challenge is the mechanics and the placement of enemies/traps and the environment.
If you think the difficulty lies in the numbers you're doing it wrong, and if you complain about it you're not willing to learn. And if you're not willing to learn then you can play something else.

 

[Filiecs]

If the point of the game is in teaching players to be aware of their surroundings, analyze themselves and their performance, think things through, and get better, then wouldn't an easy mode invalidate the entire point of the game?

Not necessarily. If you cut damage down to 70% (for example) what you described is still there - you just have the ability to take two or three more whacks to the head or triggering one or two more traps without dying. It still pays off to be cautious and improve but leaves a little bit more room for mistakes. So no, in that case an easy mode would not invalidate anything.

If a trap/attack that insta-kills you or takes away most of your HP suddenly won't anymore, then there is not as much of a reason for you to think about any special way to avoid the damage. It's easier to recover from any damage you take as well, lowering the intensity of the situation.
People begin taking advantage of the ability to soak damage and completely miss out on learning some of the mechanics of the fight because they are no longer forced to. Since the game is about learning to get better, some of the games original enjoyment is lost.

A good example would actually come from wow WotLK vs early Cataclysm. In WotLK people literally just ran through dungeons and spammed AoE attacks. They had no reason whatsoever to care about the abilities and mechanics presented.
In early Cataclysm that all changed. People were now MUCH more squishy and were forced to actually learn the fight, the mechanics, and pay attention to what was going on around them. WoW had temporally become a learning game as opposed to a piss easy not-so-spectacle fighter. Sadly, that soon changed and the game went back to its old ways.
If a player does not need to learn, chances are they wont. Even if they WANT to learn, the boss will either die to quickly or the player will overlook a mechanic they could learn from.

From what I've experienced in Dark Souls each boss has been balanced so that, as soon as you know what you're doing, the fight becomes a lot easier. With an easy mode, you won't even need to know what you're doing. Or, at least, not nearly to the extent of normal mode.
While playing Dark Souls it is quite obvious that the developers spent a lot of time balancing the bosses in a way that, during a fight, you would encounter each of the bosses mechanics several times but the fight would not become tedious. If you want a challenge with fights that take longer and kill you easier then that is what you get by replaying the game.

All in all, I believe that lowering the difficulty in dark souls would cause players on the lower difficulty to miss out on a lot of what actually makes the game fun. As such, those on a lower difficulty would not find the game fun and impact the reviews of the game, which can lead to "dumbing down" of the ENTIRE game as seen by WoW.

 

[Madbomber]

one thing id like to say

i think the reason why people are so pissed off about people crying for easy mode for games like dark souls isnt for the bragging rights, its almost like a initiation or a last bastion of hell hard gameplay.

most games these days are a walk in the park (think the easiest one ive played the last decade was the wanted adaptation, 2hrs 30 mins beaten) and its refreshing and nice to have a game that doesnt infuriate you by throwing bullshit in your face to keep the game harder or AI with cheats or neverending streams of monsters tracking you down to fight you

yes its got sort of an elitist attitude in the game but theres alot of people who loved the challange thats why dark souls got so successful i think its more along the lines of "Save us Namco Bandai! you are our only hope!" (off rolls the droid)

also the game director openly stated that dark souls 2 would most definitely NOT get a easy mode

will admit though the idea of a extra hard mode does sound interesting

I have an honest question to the people that do not want a easy mode in Dark Souls 2.

What if, hypothetically, there was a patch released tomorrow that added a easy and a Very Hard mode to Dark Souls.
The easy mode would have the following changes;
*Enemies with shield will keep them lowered more often.
*Enemies will do less damage and chain their attacks less often.
*The Player does more damage
*The player has more charges on his Estus flask

Hardcore mode will have the following changes;
*Enemies will have more max health
*It takes more souls to level up
*Your Damage has been reduced.
*The window on backstabbing is even more narrow, as well as for parry
*The amount of health from the Estus Flask is reduced.

These changes are just some random examples I made up and shouldn't be the focus of any arguments.
The point here is that these are, relative, simple changes that (to my knowledge) can be altered by changing the values of some part of the code.

Will this be a issue to you?
The Normal mode will still be the same version you played.
Easy mode and Very Hard are both optional.
Very Hard mode gets a achievement/trophy.

How would you react to this?

 

[CpT_x_Killsteal]

snip

So you don't hold the view that easy mode shouldn't be included in DS2 but you're willing to make up a point of view of someone who does? Lovely.

I'd rather it not be included because:
1. It would require fundamental design change to the levels. Not only is the damage system designed to *****-slap you, but so is the world.
2. It's simply not what the game's about. It wasn't made to coddle you. It was made to be hard. No, I don't want bragging rights, I want a game that feels like I've put in actual effort and thinking because the game forced me to, rather than it prompting me an easy option and making the levels easy enough for the average 10 year old to navigate.

In short, this isn't Crash Bandicoot or Call of Duty. It's not meant to involve hand-holding.

 

[CCountZero]

Snip

First off, let me start by clarifying that I play any game I can, on PC. I've played the Halo series, as well as Gears on X360, as well as most other games that never appeared on PC, such as Red Dead Redemption. PS exclusives on that system, naturally.

You have not played some of the call of dutys of recent years if you think they are easy. I think it may of been black ops 1, after having been killed for like the 100th time by the same machine gun squad I chucked the controller in yelling "this isn't fun any more".

Again, I can't really speak for the CoD series on Console, but on PC? Yes, I find them to be very, very easy. That said, I can see how it might not be the case with a controller.

In the category of games a large portion of the population have played with difficulty s that will slow you down:
Gears on Insane - Play that single player an say your breezed through

Ok, fair's fair. I'll give you that one. I'm generally not much for straight 3rd Person Shooters, but that's one in your court.

Halo - again play any of those on legendary solo and say it was a walk in the park

The Halo series has a few moments that can be frustrating, usually involving the Flood and tight indoor spaces, but otherwise a scoped weapon - which are usually readily available, especially in the later installments - is your friend.

Games that are genuinely crazy hard
Operation Flashpoint on hardest difficulty

If you're talking about the original Flashpoint, that's a very old game at this point, and I'd rather stick with ArmA 2, which I do play on a serious basis, with upwards of 70 other people in a TTP2 environment.

If you're talking about Dragon Rising and Red River, then please... that's not Flashpoint, and don't ever think that it even remotely resembles what the real Flashpoint experience was.

I'll admit that the Codemasters games are harder than CoD, but I'll never touch them when ArmA's right there.

Fight Night, essentially on the hardest difficulty I think it would be genuinely easier to fight some of the real champs across 12 rounds.

Madden, Fifa and other EA made sports games, if you have a vice of choice in the sports game arena you know playing the best team on the hardest difficulty is the challenge of the gods.

I don't, and have never, enjoyed physical sport games. Not much I can say about that, really.

Then if you like your realistic driving games there's a whole host of insanely hard games, World superbikes or F1 both ridiculously hard on realism and highest driver/rider settings.

Not even a mention of Gran Turismo?

I grew up with that series.

I'm used to driving games being crazy.

 

[Daniel Ferguson]

I've got enough crap to deal with, and enough challenge in my life already, to want a high challenge out of my relaxation/entertainment too.

 

[rob_simple]

I adore these threads with 'Relax guys: I've got this covered' titles. If you really care about losing bragging rights to a computer game then you are pathetic. This isn't subjective: you need to sort your priorities out.

I like when hard games have an easy mode because I, personally, have no interest in devoting hours of my time to mastering a cool game on it's highest difficulty just to enjoy it's other content. Hard mode can be fun after there's nothing left to do in a game, but sometimes it's nice to just enjoy a games world without reloading checkpoint for the fiftieth time in ten minutes.

Really though, is this a huge issue? Or is it, once again, the incessant braying of a very vocal minority?

 

[Ragsnstitches]

Snip

You seem to use the tone that a "Dude Bro that plays the game that invented FPS: COD" would use on a casual gamer....even when COD IS a casual game by definition.

You sure that a Dark Soul fan is like that?

snip

Im gonna blow your mind here for a second...

You found the small bad side of Dark Souls. Im pretty sure every person youve been invaded by nor every person whos summoned you have said that.

Let me give you a BIG example of the Dark Souls community.

http://darksoulswiki.chatango.com/

This is the chat room from the Dark Souls Wikispaces. Go ahead and ask -any- question you want and tell me how they answer.

When you fight black phantoms, things are personal, that is the way of Dark Souls. Alot of Darkwraiths are assholes, its just plain and simple, they like ruining others days. But quite a few of them arent, just the special breed.

So no. I believe you are skewing your side of the story to make it seem like that, but the Dark Souls community has THOUSANDS upon THOUSAND of people who want to help you move forward, because they want another person to experience the awesomeness of the game.

First of all, I'm not skewing anything. I have no agenda here other then to deflate the egos of some Dark Soul fans. The question asked, that I responded to was:

(In relation to "dude bro" personalities in games like CoD) "You sure that a Dark Soul fan is like that?"

And while anecdotal, I showed that yes, a Dark Soul fan CAN be like that. They can roll with the best of the fuckwads on the internet.

The whole point of this? Dark Souls fans are NOT exceptional. Any community is split, disproportionately, between varying levels of decency and ignorance. Some folks are generally helpful, others can be unbearably obnoxious, the vast majority are generally decent individuals (or at least not very communicative).

I'm not letting a few bad apples spoil the bunch here. I've contributed my share of assistance (and ass hattery) to the Dark Souls community. I've met some awesome people and some outright assholes. But more often then not the folks I encounter are silent, like myself normally, only gesturing for basic communication. This is a consistent experience I've had with most communities. Some communities might be more hot tempered then others, or have negative quirks that tarnish their reputation, but it doesn't affect my ability to engage.

Dark Souls quirk? Egotism (noting special, mind you, many communities of relatively niche games have this quirk)... your post seems to gesture towards that. You link a wiki chat (one that I'm intimately familiar with mind you) like it is something unique and special to Dark Souls. News Flash, it ain't. I've been apart of several communities that offered amazing assistance to noobs and vets alike.

And here's the real nutbuster. Do you know what makes communities like CoD so ripe for slander? Its size. The thing about loud and obnoxious players is that they are loud and obnoxious. Its hard to miss. Unfortunately, decent players are generally silent and easy to miss, and helpful players only apply to people seeking help. When the assholes of the web sound off it's easy to forget that they only represent a tiny fraction of players.

The difference between CoD and Dark Souls community? Size (and it's a massive difference). Dark Souls community has the same issues as CoD, but smaller. Obnoxious twats are obnoxious twats regardless of where you are. Dark Souls can hide it better because of:
A The relative infrequency of pvp combat.
B The size of the community makes for a smaller podium for assholes to sound off on.
and by a mild stretch
C Dark Souls incorporates trollish behaviour into a game mechanic (griefing in the form of Black Phantoms). I like this feature, just so you know.

Anyway, getting back to the point I was addressing in the first place. Dark Soul players are not a special breed of person. Assuming the opposite, while utterly adorable in its naivety, is nothing but vanity.

You don't have to stray far to see the bad side to the community... browse some of the escapist topics on the game. At all question the quality of the game, its design or its mechanics and people fly at you with teeth bared. The game is utterly perfect, never mind the fallibility of its, very human, designers, the game doesn't miss a mark and is perfect so shut up.

I hope this clarifies my standing.

How does the multiplayer work in Dark Souls? Do you have to allow players to summon or be summoned/invade your game? While I do own Dark Souls I only played it for about two hours on the PC and I haven't played it again since I bought it so I don't know that much about it.

Those are some of the many reasons why I stay away from the multiplayer in games. I just don't want to deal with people that are rude like that.

Yeah I'm not doing the community any service here. Playing Dark Souls means you will inevitably encounter someone like that, though the frequency can be pretty low (or high... it's really a lottery). But this is no different to any other community to be honest.

The multiplayer has many modes, but the notable aspect of the game is how it's seamlessly incorporated into the single player experience. In the game you have 2 forms, human and hollow. When you are human, the game opens up to allow other players to "invade" your world in the form of Black Phantoms (as long as you are connected to the internet). If you're going to encounter an asshole, it's likely to be during one of these encounters.

You can avoid these invasions by remaining hollow (which is also the only way you can invade others or be summoned as a blue phantom), though that has negative affects in terms of loot drops and "souls" gained (kind of an XP cum currency combo). There are other knacks to this, but it would be best to do a little research on the wiki if you want to prepare for these encounters. Just avoid the temptation of using the wiki too proactively... it can degrade the game from being a novel challenge to laughably easy. I recommend that you attack the game blindly at first and see how you manage and what you can suss out for yourself.

I'd still suggest that you do a little research on the multiplayer aspects, as it can be complicated and bewildering for initiates.

The multiplayer has many caveats. Aside from invasions as Black Phantoms, you can also aid other players as a Blue phantom (or they can aid you by summoning other players). This is handy for dealing with bosses, but it also makes it harder for Black Phantoms to overpower you. There are guilds in the form of "covenants" that are tailored for different player types (some prioritise invasions, others prioritise assistance... a nice twist is there is one covenant that hunts players who earn notoriety) and also have an affect on the narrative (which you will find to be somewhat scattered and difficult to interpret in your first run). The recent DLC (basically the PC version) also includes PvP matching and co-op play, though I haven't sampled that myself yet.

Overall I would say, don't let my rant above dissuade you from trying it. Its a great game if you can get into the mindset it demands of you. If you are prone to temper tantrums, I suggest playing it in small chunks, as it can be quite vexing even excluding random invasions. You need a level head to get through the game... frustration will only hinder your progress.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

F*** you.

Just, really. I...

...well, we just had a topic about easy mode in Dark Souls in which I, and PLENTY OF OTHER DARK SOULS PLAYERS, outlined the reasons, as we have done in EVERY easy mode Dark Souls topic, that easy mode would be a bad thing, and elitism is NOT a prevalent concern! I cannot believe anyone would have the audacity, after ALL the discussions that have been had, to claim that people just don't want an easy mode because they like to tell others they beat it on hard (which they would still be able to do). If anything it would promote elitism as easy mode players argue with hard mode players rather than everyone having had the same experience. So just please STOP! I thought I'd seen the last of this topic for one day...

And if you're offended pretend the first word is Find.

My basic argument: The game is easy enough with co-operative features throughout the game, convenient ways to make the game easier for yourself and a whole community willing to help for anyone who puts effort in to beat it (there are plenty of easier ways to get souls and humanity than offering a summon), an easy mode that only decreases the difficulty of combat would be a poor implementation and devalue the game's experience and leave easy mode players with a lesser opinion of the game, part of the entire concept and experience of the game IS the difficulty, making the game more straightforward in practically any other aspect would be worse than the approaches already implemented (being the pinnacle that they are), and last but not least, stop fucking trying to change something I love to accomodate you. There are games out there for you, they are not Dark Souls. I'm not better than you for playing it, I'm just different and damned if I stay silent while a game that caters to my want for challenge, to my curiosity, to my tastes, is changed so that it doesn't. Dark Souls is a niche game that is sorely missing from modern gaming, especially being as large a game as it is.

tl;dr: An easy mode that doesn't fundamentally change the game would be stupid and one that does would worsen the experiences of everyone else as well.

 

[licey]

As with anything, when things are changed from what they previously were, some people are accepting and others are not. If making games accessible means putting in an easy mode (or conversely, an "extra-hard-try-if-you-dare-mortal" mode), then that's the way it's going to go, especially if it means that widening the target audience brings in more money. At the end of the day, game quality comes in second to cash-flow, and I mean game quality in terms of level/difficulty balancing etc. and not the inclusion/exclusion of difficulty levels.

From personal experience, I enjoy my games on easy mode, if only because I started playing games recently. A lot of the difficulty in games is not about the game at all. A lot of it comes from the handling of the game and how familiar people are with the hardware required for playing the game. It's all good and well for the enemies to deal 50% damage on easy mode, but if it's your first game using a controller, even that would be difficult. The few times I have played console games were exceedingly frustrating and not at all enjoyable, if only because of the learning curve. Granted, I wouldn't play something like Dark Souls as my first console game, but everyone has to start somewhere and easy mode would be a good place to start.

Another point, I am just not very good at games, no matter how much I play of one game. I miss "obvious" things, my aim is shameful, I die a lot, etc., but I still enjoy the game. I would, however, enjoy them a lot less if I was continuously penalised, especially if I haven't familiarised myself with the controls/mechanics/understood that that's just how "these games work". Eg. in FPS games, if some part of the costume glows on a boss, it usually means that that's the point you aim for. It took me several bosses to work that out, considering my shoddy aim. Who knows, it could be something that comes with experience, but at the moment, all I can say that if it wasn't for easy mode to ease my way into things, I probably would not enjoy gaming as much as I do. Easy/normal/hard is all relative, as someone else in this thread said previously.

And isn't enjoyment what it boils down to at the end of the day? I enjoy games on easy mode and others enjoy it on hard mode, but at the end of the day, we still enjoy the game. We might get different outcomes from the game and differently experiences, but we still enjoyed the process of playing, figuring things out and beating it in our own way. Whether that includes bragging, well, that's up to the individual (publicising achievements could be part of the enjoyment).

That being said, all the discussion about designing levels around easy mode vs designing them around hard mode seems to be a legitimate concern, but I would've assumed that most levels were designed around the "normal" mode. I mean, when games say that it is "hard", I take that to mean that it's hard compared to the normal mode. Hence, for games where normal already seems to be innately difficult, anything south in terms of difficulty, would still be challenging. Of course, I could be wrong as I don't design games, but that's my experience on games to date.

...
The whole point of this? Dark Souls fans are NOT exceptional. Any community is split, disproportionately, between varying levels of decency and ignorance. Some folks are generally helpful, others can be unbearably obnoxious, the vast majority are generally decent individuals (or at least not very communicative).
...

So true. So very very true.