Jimquisition: Dark Souls and Dark Sales

[BrainBlow]

Fuck you Jim for saying it should have had an easy mode. If it had it wouldn't have pulled in the niche crowd it needed and it would have gone down the drain as a sub-par action title with a hardmode thats bullshit.

Did you ever actually WATCH the video where he talks about it?
An easy mode would be OPTIONAL. If you're so "hardcore" then DON'T USE IT.
It's that freaking simple.
The niche would be "turned off" by something that's completely and utterly optional? What utter nonsense!
it's like saying that people that want to play as characters being douchebags would not buy Infamous or Mass Effect because of the "paragon" options, or visa-versa. It's your CHOICE to do so!

Thats the point. Many many many games have harder "hard" modes than dark souls only mode is. But people dont praise them for their excellently balanced gameplay. I applaud the team behind DarkSouls for basically going "No, we won't include a difficulty setting because we know how we want our game to be balanced". Theres a huge difference between how those games you listed and DarkSouls engaged players, Infamous and ME does it through player actualization, while dark souls does it through incredibly fine-tuned gameplay. Dark Souls isn't even that hard, if you scavenge around and look for secrets, something that would have been completely rendered moot by an easy mode where what weapon your using isn't as important.

And again, if it is rendered moot in the easy mode then it DOESN'T MATTER.
You don't HAVE TO play with that mode.
An easy mode can be something as simple as readjusting enemy HP and Damage. It doesn't mean jack shit for those who play the hard mode regardless.
Your delicious challenging game is still THE SAME delicious challenging game regardless.
What, you'll be physically compelled to play on an easy mode if it is available?
We're not talking about stuff like exploitable glitches that make a game easy when it should not be. We're talking about a completely optional mode that you never have to touch.
What, you're just bitter at the thought of someone being able to play the same game as you but not with the exact same difficulty?
That's so unbelievably juvenile.

 

[bunji]

That's so unbelievably juvenile.

What you don't seem to understand is that game design and balance is hollistic. Adding a game mode thats easier effects the whole game, because you have to design a game that works on all settings, not just on one and then dumb it down or up for the other settings.

 

[C14N]

I've been going through a good few old Jimquisitions lately and he frequently brings up the case of Dark Souls' 2m sales success vs 3+m sales flops like Dead Space, Tomb Raider and Resident Evil 6. It seems so startlingly obvious that the solution is to budget more effectively but realistically why aren't these companies doing that? Some of these are multi-billion dollar revenue companies. They must have marketers and people who studied commerce and accounting at university working for them; they're hardly run by a bunch of 15 year old kids. So why can't they figure out the very basic practice of turning a profit? There must be something else going on here that we don't know about. It's simply too much to believe that people would keep trying failed ideas over and over and expect them to suddenly work.