Gaming Journalists Make No Damn Sense

[Worgen]

You're claiming to know how I (or the stand-in for my "side" of the debate) would react to a hypothetical scenario? That's a pretty serious claim. Based on what evidence?
I don't think you've been able to show a single example of people thinking that a well-done (which means included for narrative reasons) LGBT character is considered to be shoe-horned in.

If you can find an example, then you'll have some evidence to base your claim on.

Based on all the arguments you have made it seems pretty likely.

Again, you're telling me why I do or don't think certain things. Let's be real, you can't read minds. You need some solid evidence of a pattern to be able to make the claim that you know what's going on inside of people's heads.

Again, based on the arguments.....

Bored now.

 

[Houseman]

It was nice discussing this with you.

 

[Worgen]

It was nice discussing this with you.

Was fun.

 

[fOx]

Well, I can't speak for anyone else, but after struggling with Lisa the Joyful, I was glad that it included an easy mode

 

[fOx]

Actually, I have a little bit of insight into this. I don't have any experience as a game journo, so I can't speak to their experiences, or why they say the things they do. I'm sure they have as many opinions and reasons as there are people working in the industry. What I will say, as someone who has worked on some small indie projects, is that most of them don't understand game development at all. Even if they would like to think they do. That's not an insult. I think they're quite good at voicing a consumerist opinion. But they don't tend to know how actual development works.

So let me re-frame the debate a bit. Difficulty modes are a feature. That means that energy put into a difficulty mode is essentially energy that is NOT going into something else. Now, for a major AAA title, that may or may not be a big deal, depending on their resources. But in my case, if I add a difficulty mode, then another feature is getting cut. Period. A musical instrument, or an element of the battle system, or an area to explore- something has to go. And the more in depth and carefully balanced the difficulty system is, the more difficult it will be to re-balance. The longer it will take. The more that will get cut. So the question isn't whether games should have multiple difficulties. The question is how much are you willing to sacrifice in order to have multiple difficulties? Because there is a cost.

 

[Avnger]

Actually, I have a little bit of insight into this. I don't have any experience as a game journo, so I can't speak to their experiences, or why they say the things they do. I'm sure they have as many opinions and reasons as there are people working in the industry. What I will say, as someone who has worked on some small indie projects, is that most of them don't understand game development at all. Even if they would like to think they do. That's not an insult. I think they're quite good at voicing a consumerist opinion. But they don't tend to know how actual development works.

So let me re-frame the debate a bit. Difficulty modes are a feature. That means that energy put into a difficulty mode is essentially energy that is NOT going into something else. Now, for a major AAA title, that may or may not be a big deal, depending on their resources. But in my case, if I add a difficulty mode, then another feature is getting cut. Period. A musical instrument, or an element of the battle system, or an area to explore- something has to go. And the more in depth and carefully balanced the difficulty system is, the more difficult it will be to re-balance. The longer it will take. The more that will get cut. So the question isn't whether games should have multiple difficulties. The question is how much are you willing to sacrifice in order to have multiple difficulties? Because there is a cost.

While true, this applies to any type of additional feature.

• What gets cut to add graphics options?
• What gets cut to add color-blind accessibility or subtitling?
• What gets cut to add control remapping?
• What gets cut to add mouse/keyboard or controller support?
• What gets cut to add each additional language translation?

 

[Houseman]

While true, this applies to any type of additional feature.

• What gets cut to add graphics options?
• What gets cut to add color-blind accessibility or subtitling?
• What gets cut to add control remapping?
• What gets cut to add mouse/keyboard or controller support?
• What gets cut to add each additional language translation?

Not all features are "additional features". Some features are planned into the budget from the beginning.

 

[SupahEwok]

While true, this applies to any type of additional feature.

• What gets cut to add graphics options?
• What gets cut to add color-blind accessibility or subtitling?
• What gets cut to add control remapping?
• What gets cut to add mouse/keyboard or controller support?
• What gets cut to add each additional language translation?

Most of that is easier to implement. Control remapping and basic graphics options like screen resolution are handled either through your game maker program (such as RPG Maker) or can be plug-in libraries to the game engine (Unity or Unreal, etc). Implementing a library isn't trivial, but it also isn't as time consuming as creating a feature from scratch.

You'll notice that not all small indie games offer color-blind accessibility, subtitling, graphics options beyond screen resolution and brightness, or additional languages. That is because there is indeed a substantial development cost to these features. Appreciate any small dev who was willing or had the money to get someone to implement them (many who do so were Kickstarted and had budget for these things from stretch goals).

So far as large devs go, these have become expected features for major releases, with specialized personnel and budget to allocate towards them. You should expect them in a AAA release. Even so, it was not long ago when you'd get console ports for PC with none of these things (the original Dark Souls port was one of them, as I recall).

And all of them are still less significant endeavors than taking a whole game, and messing around with gameplay balance to create Easy and Hard modes that consistently hit the intended game feel while accommodating to the abilities of the target audiences. And that's if you want to do the job right. There's many games with lazy difficulty modes, which have imbalanced parts.

Me personally, I'm planning a game with turn based tactical gameplay and the idea of difficulty modes already gives me a headache. I'm probably gonna take a lazy way out, give an option for extra XP gain and throw it out there, regardless of the artistic merit of my expressed gameplay loop, simply to get more sales and quiet the yapping of people who insist I make games for everyone.

 

[fOx]

While true, this applies to any type of additional feature.

• What gets cut to add graphics options?
• What gets cut to add color-blind accessibility or subtitling?
• What gets cut to add control remapping?
• What gets cut to add mouse/keyboard or controller support?
• What gets cut to add each additional language translation?

Depends. No game I have ever worked on has had graphics options, color blind accessibility, keyboard remapping, or multiple language options. If I wanted to add any of those things, I imagine the cost would be substantial, since I would need to contract out the work. But this isn't just true for indie games. Even larger games sometimes decide that the cost of these features are counter productive. How many Japanese games never get released outside of Japan? How many japanese games get released, but only have Japanese voice acting? That's not unusual at all.

Out of curiosity, I looked up whether Dark Souls or Nier Automata have color blind modes. These are middle shelf games that have large budgets, but aren't the billion dollar behemoths you see from companies like EA. To my knowledge, they do not have these options.

No one is going to argue that accessibility is a bad thing. What people need to understand is that no work of art is ever going to be 100% accessible to everyone all the time. Accessibility options are things that require time and money, and input from paid professionals. Depending on the budget and time constraints, certain accessibility options may not be possible, because of the limitations of the project. Would I, personally, like to include some of those options into one of my titles? Of course. But I simply do not have the resources to make something like that happen. And, despite what many reviewers seem to believe, many of these middle shelf game's don't have those resources either. Time and money are not limitless resources.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

So let me re-frame the debate a bit. Difficulty modes are a feature. That means that energy put into a difficulty mode is essentially energy that is NOT going into something else. Now, for a major AAA title, that may or may not be a big deal, depending on their resources. But in my case, if I add a difficulty mode, then another feature is getting cut. Period. A musical instrument, or an element of the battle system, or an area to explore- something has to go. And the more in depth and carefully balanced the difficulty system is, the more difficult it will be to re-balance. The longer it will take. The more that will get cut. So the question isn't whether games should have multiple difficulties. The question is how much are you willing to sacrifice in order to have multiple difficulties? Because there is a cost.

When you're narrowing down to your "normal" difficulty, isn't there going to be periods of playtesting where it's a bit too hard and a bit too easy? Can't you just save those settings as your easy and hard templates then? During the course of getting to the ideal difficulty, hard and easy difficulties should have naturally come out of that process.

 

[fOx]

When you're narrowing down to your "normal" difficulty, isn't there going to be periods of playtesting where it's a bit too hard and a bit too easy? Can't you just save those settings as your easy and hard templates then? During the course of getting to the ideal difficulty, hard and easy difficulties should have naturally come out of that process.

Depends. In my personal opinion, a difficulty setting that only changes number values isn't a very good difficulty setting. In other cases, changing the number values doesn't actually make the game easier or harder.

As an example, look at sins fortress, from Dark Souls 1. There is a bridge with four swinging blades you have to avoid. On the other side there is an enemy with a shield blocking your way. If you are not careful, he will block you on the bridge, and one of the blades will hit you. Furthermore, there is a balcony above you, where another enemy will throw projectiles at you. These projectiles can damage you, knock you off the bridge, or stagger you, allowing you to get hit by the swinging blades.

Changing the damage or health values will not make this area much easier. In fact, since you can level grind, you technically CAN change those values, if you want. The difficulty instead comes from the level design. Now, you can add multiple difficulties, but now you have to change the level design and enemy placement for each area in the entire game. That means having several different versions of each area in the entire game. Maybe that doesn't sound like a lot of work to you, but given that there are several late game areas in Dark Souls that feel unfinished already, I think that world view is a mistake. It depends on the game, but difficulty is often times a lot more complicated then simply changing a few numbers around.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Depends. In my personal opinion, a difficulty setting that only changes number values isn't a very good difficulty setting. In other cases, changing the number values doesn't actually make the game easier or harder.

As an example, look at sins fortress, from Dark Souls 1. There is a bridge with four swinging blades you have to avoid. On the other side there is an enemy with a shield blocking your way. If you are not careful, he will block you on the bridge, and one of the blades will hit you. Furthermore, there is a balcony above you, where another enemy will throw projectiles at you. These projectiles can damage you, knock you off the bridge, or stagger you, allowing you to get hit by the swinging blades.

Changing the damage or health values will not make this area much easier. In fact, since you can level grind, you technically CAN change those values, if you want. The difficulty instead comes from the level design. Now, you can add multiple difficulties, but now you have to change the level design and enemy placement for each area in the entire game. That means having several different versions of each area in the entire game. Maybe that doesn't sound like a lot of work to you, but given that there are several late game areas in Dark Souls that feel unfinished already, I think that world view is a mistake. It depends on the game, but difficulty is often times a lot more complicated then simply changing a few numbers around.

I realize that not every section of every game is helped by just changing numbers but most are because combat is the predominant gameplay in most games. Most of Dark Souls encounters would be helped by the player having numbers changed in their favor. I'm also pretty sure that there's a variable for how aggressive enemies are so you can increase the time between attacks as well, which would make that section easier with projectiles coming at you slightly less often. That is already stuff built into the game because they have to be able to adjust those values during development anyway. Devs have really thorough tools do all that on the fly. In MLB The Show, the devs can change a single value in 2 seconds and have every ball hit to the 1st baseman to test animations to make sure stuff is happening as it should (like pitchers covering 1st properly) on pretty much any conceivable play at 1st. Most difficulty modes hardly take the time and resources that actual features take to implement and you're already sorta making them during the development process anyway. Sure, a more full-fledged difficulty mode where encounters and whatnot are changed up and sometimes mechanics added are like adding features. Or why not just give the player access to a decent chunk of the sliders that are made for dev purposes already to give players ways to customize the experience to their liking as sports games do or like the Dishonored games do? It only takes the time of adding a few more things (that are already made) to the options interface.

 

[fOx]

I realize that not every section of every game is helped by just changing numbers but most are because combat is the predominant gameplay in most games. Most of Dark Souls encounters would be helped by the player having numbers changed in their favor. I'm also pretty sure that there's a variable for how aggressive enemies are so you can increase the time between attacks as well, which would make that section easier with projectiles coming at you slightly less often. That is already stuff built into the game because they have to be able to adjust those values during development anyway. Devs have really thorough tools do all that on the fly. In MLB The Show, the devs can change a single value in 2 seconds and have every ball hit to the 1st baseman to test animations to make sure stuff is happening as it should (like pitchers covering 1st properly) on pretty much any conceivable play at 1st. Most difficulty modes hardly take the time and resources that actual features take to implement and you're already sorta making them during the development process anyway. Sure, a more full-fledged difficulty mode where encounters and whatnot are changed up and sometimes mechanics added are like adding features. Or why not just give the player access to a decent chunk of the sliders that are made for dev purposes already to give players ways to customize the experience to their liking as sports games do or like the Dishonored games do? It only takes the time of adding a few more things (that are already made) to the options interface.

I'm not sure you appreciate how the system works. I could change a number to alter the way enemies act in a game, and it would take about two seconds. But that changes the balance of that enemy across the whole game. So doing that to alter the difficulty in one area, could throw another area off balance. You mention changing the damage values, for instance. As I've said before, a system for that already exists, both in dark souls, and in many rpg's in general. You can level up your characters attack and defense. You can change your gear, to utilize shields or projectile weapons to attack from afar. You can summon an ally phantom to assist you. There are ways to mitigate difficulty without having to resort to difficulty sliders, which can throw the game wildly off balance.

As I've said before, most of the people who make these statements don't tend to have much experience in actual game development. They've just seen a documentary, or an interview, or a seminar, which leaves them with some rather inaccurate thoughts about what game development actually is.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

I'm not sure you appreciate how the system works. I could change a number to alter the way enemies act in a game, and it would take about two seconds. But that changes the balance of that enemy across the whole game. So doing that to alter the difficulty in one area, could throw another area off balance. You mention changing the damage values, for instance. As I've said before, a system for that already exists, both in dark souls, and in many rpg's in general. You can level up your characters attack and defense. You can change your gear, to utilize shields or projectile weapons to attack from afar. You can summon an ally phantom to assist you. There are ways to mitigate difficulty without having to resort to difficulty sliders, which can throw the game wildly off balance.

As I've said before, most of the people who make these statements don't tend to have much experience in actual game development. They've just seen a documentary, or an interview, or a seminar, which leaves them with some rather inaccurate thoughts about what game development actually is.

I was speaking more generally than just about Dark Souls. Changing how often arrows are shot by all enemies by like a half-second isn't going to break the balance in other encounters in Dark Souls. Yeah, of course, it'll change the difficulty of all encounters with enemies shooting arrows but it's not going to make them joke easy. It ain't going to let you just run up to say the Anor Londo archers without having to dodge any arrows for example. Games in general are hardly tightly balanced to begin with, adding some presets that alter some basic values could fix poor balance in the base difficulty. The new God of War was so horribly balanced from a difficulty standpoint, I probably changed the difficulty over 20 times; the game starts out pretty hard and then during the last 3rd, Hard difficulty is easier than Easy is at the start. Then, the game has a stupid loot/gear system so if you do sidequests you can be greatly underleveled/geared and it's a fucking character action game, I'm not coming back to do some side content after getting my stats/numbers up, I'm doing it now and dropping the difficulty to easy. I'm currently "prepping" to play Divinity Original Sin 2 by getting all the needed mods to fix the balance issues in the game. Modern Military Shooters have been using the same guns for like 20 years now and only a handful of them can actually balance the guns properly. It's not nearly that hard. Ghost Recon Future Soldier has all assault rifles killing in 2 hits so the one with the lowest recoil is objectively the best. How does something so obvious make it into the final game if devs are indeed so carefully balancing the game? So the argument that devs painstakingly balance games and changing some basic values by a little bit is going to totally mess up the perfect balance that game has holds very little water.

Yeah, I have no game dev experience but I understand how most games work under-the-hood. I have some programming experience and I used to every year painstaking make sliders for the MLB The Show series, it took a good month at least to get the game to play as close to real baseball as possible. I could probably do it in a few days if I had the the dev tools so I could recreate things over and over again. Setting all the sliders in a sports game totally makes you understand how one thing interacts with say 5 other things (lowering fielder speed to be realistic and that affects hitting as more balls drop in). I mainly stopped playing because getting the game to play the way I want it every year takes so much time. What's the problem in making sliders available in other games? It works great in Dishonored for example, custom difficulty every time for me. Invisible Inc has a slew of changes to do custom difficulty just like Dishonored as well. Again, all these custom difficulties only add the extra work of putting some more things in the interface menus because all the toggles/sliders already exist.

 

[bluegate]

Well Final Fantasy 7 Remake came out last night. And it has an EASY mode, which brings me to the crux of this thread.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have come full circle. From too hard, to too fucking easy. Yes that's right Kotaku has done another Journalism, this time bitching that the easy mode in FF7 is TOO easy. https://kotaku.com/final-fantasy-vii-remakes-easy-mode-is-way-too-easy-1842791313

Rather than accept that they're too shit of a player to rise up to the challenge of Normal mode, they try to shit on the game's easy mode because it's "too easy".

Entitled whining at its best.

 

[fOx]

I was speaking more generally than just about Dark Souls. Changing how often arrows are shot by all enemies by like a half-second isn't going to break the balance in other encounters in Dark Souls. Yeah, of course, it'll change the difficulty of all encounters with enemies shooting arrows but it's not going to make them joke easy. It ain't going to let you just run up to say the Anor Londo archers without having to dodge any arrows for example. Games in general are hardly tightly balanced to begin with, adding some presets that alter some basic values could fix poor balance in the base difficulty. The new God of War was so horribly balanced from a difficulty standpoint, I probably changed the difficulty over 20 times; the game starts out pretty hard and then during the last 3rd, Hard difficulty is easier than Easy is at the start. Then, the game has a stupid loot/gear system so if you do sidequests you can be greatly underleveled/geared and it's a fucking character action game, I'm not coming back to do some side content after getting my stats/numbers up, I'm doing it now and dropping the difficulty to easy. I'm currently "prepping" to play Divinity Original Sin 2 by getting all the needed mods to fix the balance issues in the game. Modern Military Shooters have been using the same guns for like 20 years now and only a handful of them can actually balance the guns properly. It's not nearly that hard. Ghost Recon Future Soldier has all assault rifles killing in 2 hits so the one with the lowest recoil is objectively the best. How does something so obvious make it into the final game if devs are indeed so carefully balancing the game? So the argument that devs painstakingly balance games and changing some basic values by a little bit is going to totally mess up the perfect balance that game has holds very little water.

Yeah, I have no game dev experience but I understand how most games work under-the-hood. I have some programming experience and I used to every year painstaking make sliders for the MLB The Show series, it took a good month at least to get the game to play as close to real baseball as possible. I could probably do it in a few days if I had the the dev tools so I could recreate things over and over again. Setting all the sliders in a sports game totally makes you understand how one thing interacts with say 5 other things (lowering fielder speed to be realistic and that affects hitting as more balls drop in). I mainly stopped playing because getting the game to play the way I want it every year takes so much time. What's the problem in making sliders available in other games? It works great in Dishonored for example, custom difficulty every time for me. Invisible Inc has a slew of changes to do custom difficulty just like Dishonored as well. Again, all these custom difficulties only add the extra work of putting some more things in the interface menus because all the toggles/sliders already exist.

If you added difficulty sliders to a game with multiplayer capability, like dark souls, it would be completely unmanageable. That sounds like a complete technical nightmare at best, and potentially abusable at worst.

Like i've said, I have no issue with difficulty settings, or even sliders, in a single player experience. What I'm dispelling is the myth that it shouldn't cost anything. I can tell you that, in my case, it would be a rather costly feature to include. It would be in many other games as well. People want games to be delivered on time, with a whole host of features and difficulties, with no crunch, and no cuts. At some point it becomes unmanageable. A creator has to look at their budget, and their team, and their time table, and decide what they can achieve within that time frame. Smaller budget games have tighter restrictions than others. What I am telling you, as someone who has actually made things, is that there is a cost, a give and take, to any feature that is included, regardless of how small it is.

Edit: I'll also add that there is a large difference between playing with difficulty settings in pre made games, and having to craft a game from scratch. There's no comparison to be made at all.

 

[BrawlMan]

I mean when it came out that Tracer and Solder 76 were gay there was a lot of backlash from people wanting politics kept out of games.

I remember that. Around 2018/19 the complaints had stopped. So either there were a vocal minority, got used to it and stopped complaining/more quiet about it, or quit the game all together. Pathetic, really. All it shows is how dumb and insecure these imbeciles are.

 

[Worgen]

I remember that. Around 2018/19 the complaints had stopped. So either there were a vocal minority, got used to it and stopped complaining/more quiet about it, or quit the game all together. Pathetic, really. All it shows is how dumb and insecure these imbeciles are.

Yeah and they continue to be, you can check on the steam forums for Xcom Chimera Squad for entirely too many people bitching about diversity and sjw and such. You can see that on the Borderlands 3 forums about gay characters too. Whiny entitled idiots who will cry about everything for reasons they don't seem to even understand.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

If you added difficulty sliders to a game with multiplayer capability, like dark souls, it would be completely unmanageable. That sounds like a complete technical nightmare at best, and potentially abusable at worst.

Like i've said, I have no issue with difficulty settings, or even sliders, in a single player experience. What I'm dispelling is the myth that it shouldn't cost anything. I can tell you that, in my case, it would be a rather costly feature to include. It would be in many other games as well. People want games to be delivered on time, with a whole host of features and difficulties, with no crunch, and no cuts. At some point it becomes unmanageable. A creator has to look at their budget, and their team, and their time table, and decide what they can achieve within that time frame. Smaller budget games have tighter restrictions than others. What I am telling you, as someone who has actually made things, is that there is a cost, a give and take, to any feature that is included, regardless of how small it is.

Edit: I'll also add that there is a large difference between playing with difficulty settings in pre made games, and having to craft a game from scratch. There's no comparison to be made at all.

Again, I was talking generally, not every game is the same. You can easily disallow the joining of games or players to your game if you customize the difficulty in Dark Souls or a multiplayer session uses "default" settings (that's literally what sports games do). I don't know why that isn't an option in the 1st place actually because I'm sure most people don't care about invasions/PvP but like the other online stuff (messages, ghosts, etc.). Dark Souls is inherently unbalanced in that regard because a character built for PvE is not nearly as good as an invading character built for PvP. Generally, lots of games would be just fine with expanding difficulty options like sports games, like Dishonored, like Invisible Inc.

How is it costing so much time and resources to do something you've already got? Again, you already probably achieved both easy and hard modes getting to your normal difficulty. You already have the toggles/sliders there because that's how you adjust the difficulty to begin with. A game like Dark Souls already has to make "hard" difficulties because of NG+, what's one more preset of damage values in the other direction going to take? Sekiro has 2 difficulties already plus probably changes in NG+ I'm assuming. Not to mention most games are simplistic enough to just do a general increase/decrease damage to achieve difficulties. Hell, most games have items already built-in that change values like items that give more experience, better drop rates, etc.; why not just allow the user to change that? If someone is say having trouble in Dark Souls and wants to overlevel (your solution to a Dark Souls easy mode) why not allow them to change the experienced earned (souls) to like 1,000% so they have to waste for less time grinding? It's literally already in the game. Combat is generally pretty simple. Adjusting sliders in a sports game is a lot more complex with far more interconnected dependencies (and players are given the power there) than combat in Dark Souls.

How is setting the difficulty in a game you're developing that much different than a game that someone else made? You can't start doing the difficulty settings until the game is in a playable state. And, you gotta get stuff like movement/dodging/attack animations down before adjusting much of the stuff because it's waste of time if you start setting difficulty for a character whose movement starts out as being clunky early in development but ends up being much smoother in the final game, that inherently changes player competence in combat. Whereas if you're doing a turn-based RPG, you can make the difficulties before you even start making assets for the game at all, it's all math at that point.

 

[fOx]

Again, I was talking generally, not every game is the same. You can easily disallow the joining of games or players to your game if you customize the difficulty in Dark Souls or a multiplayer session uses "default" settings (that's literally what sports games do). I don't know why that isn't an option in the 1st place actually because I'm sure most people don't care about invasions/PvP but like the other online stuff (messages, ghosts, etc.). Dark Souls is inherently unbalanced in that regard because a character built for PvE is not nearly as good as an invading character built for PvP. Generally, lots of games would be just fine with expanding difficulty options like sports games, like Dishonored, like Invisible Inc.

How is it costing so much time and resources to do something you've already got? Again, you already probably achieved both easy and hard modes getting to your normal difficulty. You already have the toggles/sliders there because that's how you adjust the difficulty to begin with. A game like Dark Souls already has to make "hard" difficulties because of NG+, what's one more preset of damage values in the other direction going to take? Sekiro has 2 difficulties already plus probably changes in NG+ I'm assuming. Not to mention most games are simplistic enough to just do a general increase/decrease damage to achieve difficulties. Hell, most games have items already built-in that change values like items that give more experience, better drop rates, etc.; why not just allow the user to change that? If someone is say having trouble in Dark Souls and wants to overlevel (your solution to a Dark Souls easy mode) why not allow them to change the experienced earned (souls) to like 1,000% so they have to waste for less time grinding? It's literally already in the game. Combat is generally pretty simple. Adjusting sliders in a sports game is a lot more complex with far more interconnected dependencies (and players are given the power there) than combat in Dark Souls.

How is setting the difficulty in a game you're developing that much different than a game that someone else made? You can't start doing the difficulty settings until the game is in a playable state. And, you gotta get stuff like movement/dodging/attack animations down before adjusting much of the stuff because it's waste of time if you start setting difficulty for a character whose movement starts out as being clunky early in development but ends up being much smoother in the final game, that inherently changes player competence in combat. Whereas if you're doing a turn-based RPG, you can make the difficulties before you even start making assets for the game at all, it's all math at that point.

I feel like you're missing the point. You're stuck on numbers and difficulty sliders. I've already explained ad nauseum that the difficulty in a game like dark souls doesn't come from the number system, but from the enemies move sets and the geography and world design. As for things like enemy hostility, maybe some games use a difficulty slider to control a hidden variable, but I certainly don't, and I doubt dark souls does either. That seems like something built into a specific engine, which makes it unworkable for the vast majority of games. You're using an example from a specific sports title, and seem to think that the same system that works there would work for other titles. That isn't really the case at all.

The point I'm making with my example about souls is that changing the numbers around doesn't actually make the game that much easier. If you haven't mastered the controls, or the game play, then leveling up a character won't do much for you. So changing the difficulty in the way that you describe is pointless. You can be at level 500, and it won't make a lick of difference, because the anor londo archers will still knock you off the balcony, and you will still die.