Easy Mode Hate Explained

[Korten12]

People like to brag! Yep, that's pretty much it.

You really didn't spend much time thinking about it, did you.

There's a lot of things to consider here, and brag rights are certainly one of them, but in my opinion the most important are game design and gamers' desires for things to stay the same within a franchise. Let's start with that last one.

The current trend of game reboots and shifted perspectives on a franchise's vision has managed to prove one thing: most gamers don't like a series changing philosophies. A few really good examples are Dragon Age 2 and Devil May Cry. In the former, beyond a game that feels rushed, you got a wildly different combat system and a shift in perspective from a slow-paced RPG to a more action-esque style. In DmC, you got a complete story makeover with different characters whose only link to the past titles were their names and general roles within the story. Both of these titles got very negative fan reactions for the very reasons that they were changed. Now, where does the easy mode debacle come into play?

When a game is known and revered for being difficult, when difficulty is one of the game's major attractions and selling points, changing something within this core element constitutes the type of change that will anger gamers. People aren't so trusting of devs anymore, not after so many examples of sequels that changed and went bad. It's why they're already damning Dead Space 3, which is likely to bomb. It's why they've criticized the shit out of DA2 and Diablo 3. Because even though it shouldn't, drastic change nowadays seems to imply a drastic loss of quality. And gamers are afraid of the franchises they love going bad. Obviously, they don't want that.

But there's another major aspect to it which requires a more in-depth analysis. Here, I can't speak for Fire Emblem, but I can damn sure speak for Dark Souls. As I've said before, the game uses difficulty as a mechanic. If you've played Dark Souls for a reasonably big length of time, you'll have noticed that the game tends to stay fresh and offer ways of dealing with enemies at different levels of skill and familiarity with the game. On your first playthrough, you tend to use a shield, block, wait for the enemy to swing and then counter. That's how most of the encounters with normal enemies go. As you get more familiar with the game, you learn to backstab. You learn to parry. You learn to let go of the shield as a crutch, and start going crazy with two-handing weapons or even dual-wielding. As a result, the game is kept from getting stale, and has a longer lifetime and better replay value. It's the kind of organic replay value where you play it because the fights are still fresh and the combat just hasn't gotten boring yet. Difficulty ties in to that, because the game is designed so that losing your focus is detrimental to your experience and it WILL punish you if you start playing mindlessly.

When you're familiar with the game, you start seeing some of its flaws that were previously hidden because you were too busy shitting your pants at unseen terrors: the game itself is small. The areas are relatively brief and can be run through quickly assuming you don't die and have to return. There's a few unbalanced items and techniques that can wildly change your experience by making monster and sometimes even boss encounters trivial. Spells are samey, and the combat doesn't really have that much depth to it. Rather, it relies on the tension created by its punishing aspect and the difficulty of its execution to keep you hooked. The main quest is more or less a giant MMO fetch quest with interesting encounters along the way, but the plot is incredibly straight-forward.
Why you don't see, or don't mind, these flaws is largely because of difficulty as a core mechanic. It builds tension and atmosphere, it keeps the combat fresh, it lengthens the game and makes it seem like it has much more content than it actually does. That's why, when people become *really* good at the game, they get bored and either seek out ways to handicap themselves to make the game challenging and intense again (/r/OneBros [http://www.reddit.com/r/OneBros/] bearing testament to this) or they turn to the game's PvP aspect, with the proof of this being the relatively large online community developed over the years with unofficial community-driven themed pvp events still going strong despite the huge amount of connectivity issues.
This game lives and dies on its difficulty, and its main way of keeping itself fresh is staying difficult. And then the director comes and talks about an "easy mode". This isn't just people wanting to keep their bragging rights, or being too smug to acknowledge that everyone needs to play it. It's just a really bad idea from a design standpoint, at least for the original Dark Souls. For DS2, it would require a massive redesign of its core philosophies. Meaning it would lose at least a considerable part of what made Dark Souls great.

Great post, sad that posts like this are just ignored. :/

 

[Vegosiux]

Let's go back to the easy part. Does this mean not dying? Are you serious? Can you imagine if Planescape: Torment had this? Can you imagine how much it would throw off the dynamics of the game??

There's a rather glaring difference between DS and P:T in terms of how they treat death.

I mean, there are sections in P:T that literally require you to die, otherwise you cannot continue with the plot - and by that I of course mean not "It's so fucking hard" but "Unless you die you literally can't get to where you need to be". I recall no such occasion in DS. Or an opportunity to kill yourself for the amusement of a bored noble and get paid for it.

DS just hypes up the "you will die" thing to the point of obnoxiousness - while in P:T it's just another game mechanic, much less prominent than conversation, going out of your way to find stuff, plot and character development (and for the love of all that's sacred, whatever you do, don't leave that bronze sphere lying aroundd somewhere).

The worst part about DS is that it prides itself on something it doesn't even have - difficulty. Or rather, it gave me a challenge, yes. But what was challenged weren't my skills and perception, but rather patience and tolerance to the game trying to show off it's surprises in that smug "Clever, huh?" way...No. No. Not clever, sorry game. It's about as clever as placing a bucket onto a slightly opened door so that the next person who pushes it open gets wet. Funny prank once I suppose, but just once.

 

[Xariat]

snip

This is getting way off topic but I feel like replying to bring some closure.

The giant archers started firing at me long before I slid down and got stuck on that small patch of dirt, I guess my armor made more noise than yours.

The stray demon killed me too, but not because of the fall or because I was caught off guard. Rather I had piss poor magic defense and had to retry a few times until I got the timing in. I'm not perfect, I die too, but a death is not cheap just because I couldn't get the timing right.

I always assume that every normal looking or bigger enemy has the potential to either one shot me or stun lock me to death. you should get this mindset in the tutorial very early on the first time you get hit by a hollow soldier's combo and it almost wrecks your shit, I know I learned after dying a very embarrassing death. (and for the record the Havel knight did not one shot me, I guess it's a matter of build.)

Nito damages his own skeletons and you wont aggro the giants unless you go up to them, which you shouldn't because you can see them from where you enter the boss battle.

The four kings did grind my gears and I, like many others, died a few times too. But I don't think it was cheap, I realized my mistake when I saw the third king enter the field. of course in a boss named four kings you should expect to fight... well 4 kings.

I died a lot too, but in hindsight I more often thought "Should've seen that coming" rahter than "that was cheap".

 

[Lawnmooer]

Meh... I don't really care if there is an easy mode in games I play (Such as Dark Souls)

What I do care about is what adding easy modes to notoriously hard games can and likely will lead to.

First you start off with adding an easy mode here and there, bringing in a lot of new customers whom aren't skilled/masochistic enough to enjoy the original gameplay but can appreciate the story and scenery.

Then the next thing you know, no games are challenging and everything is handed to you on a plate because sales show that no-one has a brain and don't like having to think.

That last statement might be an over exaggeration, but looking at CoD/CoD Clones and the business practices of major publishers (Also the demise of various companies) is it really that far fetched?

 

[DioWallachia]

Isn't that what the console commands are? And the game's difficulty settings?

Depends, does the NPC react differently in each difficulty setting? if not, then the NPC are making a bunch of noise of a situation that is not really all that hard to survive given how easy is to obtain (for the player) everything you need to survive.

If this were a parody, i would have expected an NPC crying in agony on how hard life is and how there is absolutely no way to obtain anything in this world, all while the player character looks at him with a face like "U Serious? U Kidding me?". And then the camera zooms out and we see that the backpack of the protagonist is bigger than the town itself because its full of food and medical suplies, and are about to burst out of the backpack in any moment.

See how ridiculous can it be to the suspension of disbelief if the difficulty is not adjusted properly? that is why i suggested before that, most likely, it will be cheaper to just add Cheat Codes rather than add more physical objectsinto the world and have the NPC acknowledge the changes.

SNIP

Fallout, or should i say the CONCEPT of a "fallout" (not the game), is this Mad Max-eske end of the world after a nuclear war. Again, it seems that making the items like food or health packs more abundante to help the player, it will only make the setting less belivable when it is THIS easy to survive and still have plenty of resourses for you to waste on even minor injuries.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

The stray demon killed me too, but not because of the fall or because I was caught off guard. Rather I had piss poor magic defense and had to retry a few times until I got the timing in. I'm not perfect, I die too, but a death is not cheap just because I couldn't get the timing right.

That ************ killed me a record 19 times. The first 8-9 because I kept scrambling around trying to get my souls back before finally giving up, the rest because I just could not get a handle on him. I got Sif on my second try, I got the Capra Demon on my third try, and I got the NOTORIOUS Ornstein and Smough on my first try, but the fucking Stray Demon just brutalized me. I almost quit the game because of that guy.

 

[Twilight_guy]

Yeah, that's one of the reasons.

I really have nothing else to add. Some gamers take their hobby way to seriously and place too much value on unimportant things... next thread please.

 

[DementedSheep]

If you find the easier modes too easy, pick a harder mode for yourself and don't decide for me what standards I should be playing at.

And if you find a game too hard, pick an easier game for yourself and don't decide for the developer what kind of game they should be making.

I have seen very very few people demand or even ask for an easy mode to added prior to the director saying he was thinking about it. Even most of people defending it aren't particularly wanting it.
The developers decide of there own free will they might consider adding an easy mode and some of the fans flip their shit and start screaming over it. Who is the one trying to decide what sort of game the developers can or cannot make here?

 

[Vigormortis]

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?

When it comes to the holier-than-thou dick-measuring on display in these discussions? Yeah, they're like that. Particularly when it's someone who makes it a point to establish themselves as a "hardcore" gamer. Though, certainly not ALL Souls fans. The vast majority of them are just like any other gamer.

However, the more pretentious of the Dark Souls fans allow that type of personality to seep it's way to the surface. They just, you know, veil it a pseudo-cultured persona.

Even so, they still behave with the same degree of logic, maturity, and level-headed'ness'* one might expect from the stereo-typical "dude-bro".

The truth of the matter is, no matter how the whining fans try to dress it up, their complaints are nothing more than the embodiment of a community of exclusion and perceived superiority.

Something that any reasonable adult grew out of when they got out of high-school.

* [sub]Or lack thereof[/sub]

 

[Jedi-Hunter4]

Not even a mention of Gran Turismo?

I grew up with that series.

I'm used to driving games being crazy.

Used to play GT but that was back in the PS2 days.

On the topic of pc/console I do play pc games but only really RTS mainly on the basis that if I'm playing as an individual I prefer a controller, an I've seen some good attempts but nothing beats a keyboard an mouse for rts.

Although in all honesty it's been a looooong time since I gave FPS games a chance on the pc, I already feel dirty enough with all the strategy games on it! promised myself the pc was for my work lol. Is it that much easier on the pc?

 

[chikusho]

I have seen very very few people demand or even ask for an easy mode to added prior to the director saying he was thinking about it.

The discussion has been ongoing since Demon's Souls.

Who is the one trying to decide what sort of game the developers can or cannot make here?

People who the game is clearly not made for are asking for the game to be something it's not, and the louder and more frequent this misconception gets repeated, the more pressure the developers are going to get from publishers and profit-focused decision making executives to compromise the integrity of the product in favor of possibly boosting sales (and I am of the opinion that this would cause a reverse effect and possibly ruin the franchise in the long run).
Also, if this were to happen, it would be a great step back for video games as an artistic expression.

 

[Atmos Duality]

I have yet to see a single logical argument that proves how Modal Difficulty (Easy/Hard/Banana/etc) ruins their experience.

 

[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.

 

[SideSmash]

I have yet to see a single logical argument that proves how Modal Difficulty (Easy/Hard/Banana/etc) ruins their experience.

DUDE. Don't even fucking JOKE about Banana difficulty. Literally one of the hardest experiences of my life. I still have 'Nam flashbacks about it.

 

[DoPo]

People who the game is clearly not made for are asking for the game to be something it's not

Care to provide some quotes here? Of people actually going "please change the game", not "an easier difficulty" because the two are different.

 

[Bocaj2000]

Difficulty is nothing more than a part of an experience. Easy games make you feel like an avatar of destruction; hard games make you feel like an underdog overcoming the impossible.

This is basic game theory...

 

[Something Amyss]

I have yet to see a single logical argument that proves how Modal Difficulty (Easy/Hard/Banana/etc) ruins their experience.

DUDE. Don't even fucking JOKE about Banana difficulty. Literally one of the hardest experiences of my life. I still have 'Nam flashbacks about it.

When you stare into the abyss of Banana Mode, it stares back. It changes you....

Care to provide some quotes here? Of people actually going "please change the game", not "an easier difficulty" because the two are different.

I wouldn't hold my breath, as the thesis seems to be "an easier difficulty IS changing the game."

 

[Jfswift]

I can see your argument and for some that may be true even, however, that is not the only reason. I like Dark Souls for example, because it's challenging. In the words of the director, the challenge was a method used to create a sense of accomplishment. Well, it works, you feel really good about yourself when you beat Ornstein and Smough for the first time. It's the same thing as when you beat Battletoads OP, which btw is crazy hard. I never could beat that game.

Actually Colin McRae's DiRT was pretty challenging too. Not so hard that you couldn't beat it but it wasn't a walk in the park either, with each level getting progressivly harder, assuming you mastered the driving lesson from the last level, putting your skills to the test.

Also if you beat a game that has variable modes like Fallout: NV for instance you call it out when you speak. I beat Fallout: NV.. on hardcore mode. Game players know right away what you're talking about it. Having a regular or easy mode on that particular game doesn't change anything about peoples perception of it.

tl;dr: The prevailing argument on a game designed with only a hard mode is that it creates a sense of accomplishment. Right or wrong that's the mentality behind it's design. With an easy mode you really have to ask yourself, did I feel any sense of accomplishment?

edit: sorry my engrish today is terrible.

 

[DoPo]

Care to provide some quotes here? Of people actually going "please change the game", not "an easier difficulty" because the two are different.

I wouldn't hold my breath, as the thesis seems to be "an easier difficulty IS changing the game."

Which, ironically, conflicts with what the same people would be actually saying - that the devs are good at game/level design and know exactly how to make a game challenging but fair. If they can, they can make it just slightly less challanging without changing the entire game around that concept, if they cannot, then they don't deserve praise for this anyway.

Still, though, I am curious to see these apparently "masses of people" who all, I am lead to believe, scream at the top of their lungs that easy mode should be included. And seemingly at all costs. Not that I haven't seen people like that but my impression was that they were a minority, not even a "vocal" one - just several guys all in all. There is a much higher amount of people who actually do not claim that at all but instead accept the idea of the easy mode, without really expressing desire for one or condemning it. And several that go "Well, easy mode would be a nice idea". All in all, the latter two groups only show up in threads about how easy mode is presumably Satan's own child and anything it touches turns into ash and ruins. Or something like that.

 

[Belaam]

Easy Mode is like gay marriage.

It's not something I particularly want for myself, but if others want do it, I'm happy they are enjoying it and hope they have the option of doing so.