Easy Mode Hate Explained

[RobfromtheGulag]

I can see the argument for the difficulty itself contributing to the setting. This is actually kind of thought provoking. But this isn't necessarily mutually exclusive with an 'easy mode'. Putting in a disclaimer sort of like they did in Fallout NV for Hardcore mode seems a lot more accessible than simply foregoing a difficulty setting. "This game experience was designed to be played at X difficulty". In the past I could have sworn this was what 'Normal' meant, but what do I know.

I'm sure if I wanted the Demon Souls experience on PC I could just alter the .ini file to give me infinite health or something. But for console gamers it's kind of a sh!t or get off the pot kind of scenario. Every time I come into one of these heated Demon/Dark Souls threads the people who've played the game say it's an amazing game for it's story or setting or whatnot, while the unhappy folks are made about the difficulty. Would it be any skin off your back if they enjoyed these amazing atmospheres at an altered difficulty level?

One thing I never hear is casuals bragging about beating games. 'I beat Devil May Cry on Easy!' -said no person ever.
Do you ever hear casual gamers raging about the prospect of a hard mode? Bragging seems to be the main motivation here, this elitist cadre of gamers who've beaten X game. I personally don't care if you've beaten Dark Souls or I wanna be the Boshy or w/e the latest fad is. I've seen these games on Twitch, they look like garbage imo. The difficulty is just another reason to avoid them.

I don't know why I'm here typing this up, I think Jim did a video saying everything that needed to be said a month or so ago.

 

[BloodSquirrel]

You're going to want to pick a better analogy if you want to demonstrate a concept. Attempting to demonstrate that an easy mode in a non-platforming RPG is impossible because of platforming is a bit of a non-starter.

Look, if you can't follow a discussion when it starts to become about fundamentals of game design rather than one specific example, don't participate. Don't barge in rudely and demand that people don't have it. The basic concept of difficulty not always being trivially reducible is a important than whether Dark Souls has driving in it or not.

Well that's basically what it does, yeah? It means your strategy can be more sloppy. Ergo, you have an easier strategy game, that a poor or learning strategist can more easily enjoy.

Sloppy strategy means that you're not experiencing the game's mechanics, which is at least as bad as not experiencing some of a game's levels or story. It means that you have to pull a different set of tricks to make sure that the player has something new to experience as the game goes on, since you've removed the main impetuous for getting a player to experiment with new items, units, weapons or tactics.

Whose quote is that? It sounds suspiciously like a quote attributable to Mr. Straw Man.

No, people have quite literally called for every game to have a mode where even their grandmothers can beat it, and I'm not seeing anyone here arguing for an easy mode that they still can't beat.

Frankly, I was being generous with that quote- many people aren't even saying that they can't beat it as-is, just that they want to be able to beat it without having to try as hard.

No, it isn't really. Otherwise 4 different difficulty levels of a first person shooter would suddenly find themselves in four different genres. It's an element of game play, of varying importance to different individuals. You can argue that it's important. You can possibly even argue, cogently, that it's essential in a game like Dark Souls in order to have an optimal experience. But it is not a distinct genre.

And, as always, "difficult" varies from individual to individual.

Halo on Novice and Halo on Legendary are as radically different a pair of experiences as I would get from playing a shooter vs. playing a hack & slash. And that's a game that was designed with difficulty levels, versus a game that was designed without the need for an easy mode vs. one that was. I'm not sure what personal definition of genre you're using here, but it isn't helping you make a point.

 

[Vegosiux]

"I want the game to be so easy that anybody can beat it" is not reducing the challenge- it's removing it.

And you care about what kind of challenge or lack thereof that others are going to have, why exactly? I mean, you're still going to pick the hardest difficulty, the one with the challenge, right?

It's a defining element that radically changes the appeal of a game. It's as important as anything else we'd consider as part of defining a genre.

[citation needed]

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Look, if you can't follow a discussion when it starts to become about fundamentals of game design rather than one specific example, don't participate. Don't barge in rudely and demand that people don't have it. The basic concept of difficulty not always being trivially reducible is a important than whether Dark Souls has driving in it or not.

So whether or not reducing the difficulty of the GAME IN QUESTION is irrelevant, as long as we can demonstrate that OTHER games will experience difficulties for unrelated reasons? If you want to demonstrate "basic concepts" and bloviate about game design fundamentals, you might start by applying them to the question at hand. Otherwise it's not really applicable, is it?

Sloppy strategy means that you're not experiencing the game's mechanics, which is at least as bad as not experiencing some of a game's levels or story. It means that you have to pull a different set of tricks to make sure that the player has something new to experience as the game goes on, since you've removed the main impetuous for getting a player to experiment with new items, units, weapons or tactics.

That's not true at all. All of those games I listed, along with others, can easily communicate basic fundamentals of game play and introduce basic strategic elements without overwhelming the player with hard consequences for poor decisions. A new player picking up Civilization for the first time and starting on Chieftan is still going to be learning, and experiencing elements of strategic game play. They don't need to be shoved into Deity right from the get go in order to have "a proper strategic experience".

No, people have quite literally called for every game to have a mode where even their grandmothers can beat it, and I'm not seeing anyone here arguing for an easy mode that they still can't beat.

Who? What people? Can you quote some of these people? I imagine we could both cherry pick some pretty ludicrous quotes on both sides of this argument if we wanted to, but I'd like to see the people saying "I want the game to be so easy anyone can beat it". I find that to be an unreasonable request, and I would join you in censure of those individuals.

Halo on Novice and Halo on Legendary are as radically different a pair of experiences as I would get from playing a shooter vs. playing a hack & slash. And that's a game that was designed with difficulty levels, versus a game that was designed without the need for an easy mode vs. one that was. I'm not sure what personal definition of genre you're using here, but it isn't helping you make a point.

I'm using the dictionary definition of genre, which I assumed was the widely utilized employment of the word. Perhaps there are different colloquial uses, and genre can mean "difficulty" or "a type of cheese". I'm really not certain. Why we would need to substitute "genre" for "difficulty" when "difficulty" is already a perfectly serviceable word is beyond me, but English is a funny old language.

The "point" remains that tiered difficulty in games does not rob you of the "difficult" genre, if such a thing could be said to exist. You can speculate that madcap tinkering with the game mechanics of Dark Souls in order to shoehorn in some lobotomized easy mode would destroy the experience, but that's alarmist claptrap. Everyone is dancing in From's panties telling them what Good Guys they are at creating balanced but fair experiences, and suddenly we don't trust them to move a few numbers around without the game exploding like a novelty cigar. It strikes me as deeply disingenuous.

[citation needed]

You have misquoted me, chum. Pistols at dawn.

 

[Vegosiux]

[citation needed]

You have misquoted me, chum. Pistols at dawn.

I accept. High noon is just too risky what with the sun glare and all.

I'm not sure how I managed to pull it off tho. Ah well.

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

Here's my reasoning as to why including easy modes in game franchises known for their difficulty pisses people off. People like to brag!

Yeah, I think you're spot on with that assessment. Of course, I also think that's a terrible reason for anyone to be upset about it.

Bragging rights are not worth shutting out a huge portion of ones audience.

 

[Dogstile]

Jesus christ it's like people don't seem to realise developers could just create the hard mode first and then put in the easy mode. That way you avoid all the "it'll change how its designed" bullshit and they no longer have a leg to stand on.

That would only work if making a game easier was as simple as scaling a few numbers. It isn't.

How do you make a platformer easier? Do you have two sets of almost identical levels? How do you make a driving section more difficult? Or how do you make strategy easy, without basically making the goals easy enough to accomplish that strategy isn't necessary? How do you pull out pieces of a complex system in order to make a game simpler without completely redesigning the system? How do you make a game that was designed around challenge not feel bland when the core aesthetic is removed? How do you keep all of the flashiness and cruft that comes from trying to keep a straight button masher interesting from impacting the careful balance of the game on hard mode?

Making a game that can be both extremely easy and genuinely challenging introduces a set of limitations and compromises that not all games should have to abide by. Saying that every game should have an easy mode is like saying that an entire genre of game shouldn't exist.

You make a platforming easier in dark souls by either tweaking the jump distance (making jumps that required precise timing easier to manage).

Its not about making the section more difficult (its designed to be hard, remember?), you make it easier by making the AI you're against more forgiving or increasing speed/durability.

Strategy, you just buff the units you're using so brute forcing becomes viable on easy mode. Command and Conquer also just made the AI not produce as many units. FTL just gives you more resources on easy.

The appeal of dark souls for me was that the combat was tight and the tactics for different enemies were interesting. applying the platforming changes and buffing health would be two simple changes that would make the game still fun and way more accessible.

 

[chikusho]

snip

There are some issues with the formatting of your post you might want to see to.

Letting that rather astonishing comment about games not needing to be fun (something can be fun without being *mindless* fun, and I don't buy games to make them my second job) go,

I don't see what's astonishing. Games shouldn't need to be fun if the experience they are setting out to create is not that. Also, good point, you don't buy games to make them your "second job", but you do buy games that are "too difficult". How is that different? And why aren't you in a thread called "Take the grinding out of EVE Online!"?

that comment about "people changing themselves to enjoy the game" bugged me. Like many other older people and/or people with disabilities, I *can't* change myself to enjoy the game, it's physiologically impossible. I can't make my reaction time better, I can't change my inability to navigate a new environment where all the rooms/corridors look identical, I can't stop the fatigue, dulled reflexes, and slowed thinking that happens to me when I've wiped repeatedly in an encounter; these things are the cause of age and disability and there's not a damn thing I can do about them.

Naturally I'm talking about the average player in this line of reasoning.
I'm sorry to hear that your age/disability is hindering you from enjoying the game, but at the same kind, you can't accept every developer of every game to have a contingency for every performance reducing ailment that can affect a person. The same way you have to find a special organization and invest in specially crafted wheel-chairs to play basketball without functioning legs, perhaps you need to find a modding community and invest in a decent PC to mess around with things at whatever pace you require. But if the effort involved in ejoying something is too great, perhaps it just isn't for you.
If it is, well, then you can learn to play competitive Street Fighter with your face.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=83nSodg-HTU#!

*EDIT*

The appeal of dark souls for me was that the combat was tight and the tactics for different enemies were interesting.

The combat wouldn't be tight and the tactics for different enemies would be exactly the same if the enemies don't pose a threat to you.

 

[Loonyyy]

...This whole thing plays both ways-modal difficulty allows players to choose the difficulty they want, and not including a variation of difficulty can either put off less, or more, skilled players.

It's not all about modal difficulty though. Or rather, it could be, but it would be a lot more work than any developer is gonna put into it.

No, it wouldn't. As you detail below.

Modal difficulty basically just scales numbers up or down,

False. What is meant here, is difficulty in modes. That can be accomplished by scaling damage or timings, which is in fact, quite easy (You could probably hack it in yourself), or by putting in some effort to make fundamental changes, particularly to AI. But you could just put in a scale, which would be easy. With proper access to the source, anyone with some experience with coding could do it in minutes.

and most of the time it results in a hard mode that feels cheap,

News flash: They always do. The hardest difficulty modes always feel cheap when you know you could be shrugging off all the damage. Halo on Legendary is vastly different to Halo on Normal. It doesn't cheapen the experience though. But, you'd rather the game with the cheap hard mode, and no lower mode. That's not an improvement. And, to the player who is less experienced, potentially with the controls, the lower difficulty may even be extremely difficult.

and an easy mode that often ruins the story, by making the enemy feel less dangerous than the game makes them out to be.

This is outright disingenuous. You choose the difficulty you want. If you think the enemy aren't hard enough, you increase the difficulty. There should be no narrative dissonance if there is the option to choose harder difficulties. If a player doesn't mind threat being undermined by difficulty, that's their choice. And, as above, an easier difficulty can be just as difficult for an unskilled player.

If you added an "easy mode" to Souls, people would still be complaining about not being able to find their way, and getting lost.

Sure. But those problems are relatively easily solved, and if you're lost, you can wonder around for a while, or even give up and look it up. You can't do that if your mastery of the controls or reflexes are not good enough. Hell, I still remember having to write down the pathings for the Lost Woods (Or whatever it was called) for Ocarina of Time.
That sort of challenge is far less frustrating than having the bar for entry set to high to begin with.

You know what, if they included in Souls and the like, the option for a player who cannot play due to the high difficulty to claim a refund, proportionate to the content unexperienced, then I wouldn't care. If they were willing to back up their supposed artistic expression with their wallets, I wouldn't care. They'd sell only to the hardcore, and everyone else would stay away, and there'd be no chance of grievance. But when someone buys an expensive product (And yes, it's advertised as difficult, but don't give me that), and is unable to experience it because the developer is lacking in the talent to make different difficulty modes, then they're entitled to recieve compensation for the game they didn't play. It's as bad as games that are too buggy to run.

 

[ikoian]

To me, a game with good depth and consistant difficulty curve will to more wonders than a game just being hard.