Jimquisition: Dumbing Down for the Filthy Casuals

[Therumancer]

I think your missing the point Jim, the thing with gaming is that it's well.. games. Half the satisfaction of beating a game is knowing that you put serious work into it, and not everyone is able to succeed at doing what you did. Games differ from movies or books as a form of entertainment due largely in part due to needing to unlock the content through your interaction and abillity. The satisfaction of beating a paticularly brutal part of a game, or solving a puzzle, is diminished with the knowlege that there was no point to doing it that way, when someone else could just hit "auto solve" or "EZ mode" in order to progress. What's more for winning to matter, there has to be a chance of failure, in games that involve checkpoints, save/load features and the like, being unable to progress further is the game's failure state. If that isn't for you, then you probably shouldn't be gaming.

To be honest I have no problem with developing games for all skill levels, I don't have problems with easy games, as long as harder games are still made, and do not include an "EZ mode".

One other point I think needs to be raised is the issue of self-improvement, the thing with EZ modes and being able to lower difficulty is that ir provides little motivation for someone who is having problems to improve their skills, instead of mastering the game in order to get good at it, they can just reduce the difficulty in order to proceed.

EZ modes, auto-win features, and the like are the equivilent of giving every kid in a race a ribbon whether they win or not for purposes of "self validation". It's kind of silly, and defeats the purpose of having a game or competition (increasingly an issue with internet viewable scores and acheivements).

Finally I'd like to point out that catering to casuals with almost all games by providing the easy modes and such, has also tainted multiplayer gaming experiences and such. When your playing the endgame of an MMO there is an increasing issue (albiet one that has always been present) of players expecting to be handed success. As a result you see QQing over raids and such that are too difficult, leading to them having been dumbed down in a lot of MMOs, and various other problems. PUGS (Pick Up Groups) for PVP and Raids/Dungeons/Group PVE play have actually been getting increasingly terrible over time due to the expectations people are being groomed with, rather than increasing due to people improving their skills in proportion to the challenge, or just deciding it's beyond them and dropping out. You see lots of players who are simply persistant, or wait for an inevitable content nerf before the next expansion and wind up landing all the same trophies (high end gear, etc..).

The problem I see is simply companies deciding to cater to the lowest common denominator with as many products as possible simply because of the money to be made. Serious gamers are a profitable market, but not as profitable as making everything casual accessible. The way game development is going might be good for the pockets of publishers, but it's not good for gaming... I'll also say it's not good for the casuals either as it doesn't encourage them to improve, if more games were designed for a average or advanced skill level and stuck to their guns, you'd see increasingly less casuals as they would advance their skills, they would begin with the handfull of introductory titles, and then moved onto the more advanced ones. That said the difficulty level should be more by-title, rather than set within the game, especially if the game is in any way online connected. What's more a failure to advance without developing the needed skills or whatever needs to be present in most games in order to preserve the existance of some failure state. When you pay your $60 your paying for the chance to play a game, not for an interavtive movie, if your guaranteed to win what the heck is the point of playing a game?

The thing to understand is that the rage against "filty casuals" is mostly motivated by the lack of many games with integrity for serious gamers. It wouldn't be a big deal if more "serious" titles were released, with the occasional "introductory" title for casuals, but that's not the state of affairs we find ourselves in.

It's simply put irritating when a hard mode becomes an optional way of playing, rather than what everyone goes through. Seeing a paticularly awesome victory/plot advancement cinematic loses some of it's luster when I know anyone who sets the difficulty low enough can do it, and choosing to "earn it" with a hard mode was more a matter of personal preferance than nessecity.

 

[Sotanaht]

Lets put it this way, Dark souls is a good game in large part due to it's challenge. Many people will not see this at first. Given the option to play an easy mode, many people would jump on the chance and never realize what they missed. While easy mode in one particular game wouldn't diminish my own experience in that game, there is still a legitimate reason to argue that putting it in at all is a bad idea. In short, players should be forced to play a game the way it's meant to be played or not at all, for their own damn good.

In the long run of course, it brings in people who had no business playing the game to begin with, who would then have a very noticeable impact on the sequels and or patches in the future, so it does have the potential to impact me directly.

 

[Azure-Supernova]

It's not that games shouldn't have an easy mode, it's that "there being an easy mode won't effect your experience/normal mode" is not a guarantee. If easy mode is tacked on as an afterthought, maybe it won't. If it's designed for easy mode and scaled up for harder modes, then it will, because increasing difficulty should be more than just changing a few variables to a higher number.

This is my opinion on the matter. Let me just pluck a random example out of the air, say Resident Evil 5 or 6. The differences between Easy and Normal are negligible changes in enemy health and the damage they deal. The difference between Veteran and Professional is that enemies instantly put you in the 'dying' state. There's no change in enemy numbers or tactics, more instances of special Majini or mini-bosses. If you're actually good at either of the games, you'll never know the difference because you'll barely be hit at all thanks to learning the tactics and enemy placement from previous modes (which you have to play to unlock Professional).

A contrasting example would be Bioshock. On Survivor difficulty Plasmids consume more EVE (130% I think); random items are scarce (ammo, EVE, health); there are more instances of the 'Elite' versions of the Big Daddies and there's no 'safety net' (by which I mean that if you take more damage than you have health you die, whereas on Normal or Easy you're just reduced to 1 health). Also lets not forget you can always turn the Vita Chambers off if you really want to.

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

You know, this thread has made me come to the realization that, if video games truly want to be on par with movies and novels as an artistic medium, then they need to stop being so consumer centric, and they need to stop pandering to the people who perpetuate that culture.

If you do not have the knowledge required to truly appreciate, say, War and Peace, would you demand that Tolstoy release a version that is easier to understand?

So much this ^^^. Dark Souls is at the forefront of AAA games exploring their potential as art. But after all the big talk about "games are art!", it has gone largely unremarked and unexamined! You should think of Dark Souls as more than a consumer good. It sends messages in ways film and literature cannot by their very nature.

Spoilers in this video, so use discretion if you want to solve the mysteries by yourself. It would take one person a heck of a lot of effort to piece all this together by themselves. I intend to attempt it myself in Dark Souls II if the story isn't neutered:

How peculiar that humans had found little use for humanity until they turned Undead. -Rite of Kindling

"I am thinking about how to make everyone complete the game while maintaining the current difficulty and carefully send all gamers the messages behind it." - Dark Souls Creative Director Hidetaka Miyazaki

Please think about what you're doing before you start writing rules all game have to follow.

 

[sXeth]

Need to be able to dodge specific attack/combos because they eat up too much stamina to safely block and punish? Probably not the best idea to be in full Havel's if you're going to try that strategy. Enemy uses fire? Fire resistant shield/armor. Group of enemies? Use a bow to pull one at a time.

^Actually my main dispute with DS. Its usual methods of "difficulty" are mostly countered by breaking out of the game to play meta-style (Kiting enemies). Or stuff like the Capra Demon who attacks in the middle of a loading screen (white wall, whatever) and gets 90% of its challenge from camera going nuts due to the walls of the closet or whatever that little room is meant to be.

On the broader topic ,having the easy mode wouldn't kill it. A game with infinite respawning with no permanent consequence (Oh no, lost souls, I can get more of them from every single monster in the game!) isn't exactly rocking the hardcore boat to begin with, whatever its fanbase thinks. And we can go back and view any of tons of methods used in past games to encourage people to play on Normal/Hard (Locking out Easy after one playthrough, disabling NG+ on Easy mode, lowering souls gained (which would ironically cause the Easy mode to get harder in the endgame), disabling high scores, locking them out of PvP, giving them poorer endings, etc). Theres a ton of of potential carrots to push people to experience the game "properly", but if you push them right out of the game to begin with you lose your potential audience (Either as an artist or a businessman, you're presumably looking to deliver your work to a wider set of people)

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

I have always been confused by people who get all bent out of shape when there are optional features in a game to make it easier or harder. In my eyes, more options is always better. That way everyone is happy. You want an easy experience, you have it, you want a punishing one, there ya go.

 

[m19]

Do I need to compare the game to another game to say it was easy? I think it was easy, therefore I felt it was easy.

The statement of "it was created for casuals" implies there is something that wasn't created for casuals. I played fps since the early days and I don't remember those "hardcore" games being as hardcore as people with rose coloured glasses like to think.

 

[Mortrialus]

I have always been confused by people who get all bent out of shape when there are optional features in a game to make it easier or harder. In my eyes, more options is always better. That way everyone is happy. You want an easy experience, you have it, you want a punishing one, there ya go.

I like your assumption that as a matter of fact you can make everyone happy with a game if you just put enough options in it. You can't. It's why things like genres exist in the first place.

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

I have always been confused by people who get all bent out of shape when there are optional features in a game to make it easier or harder. In my eyes, more options is always better. That way everyone is happy. You want an easy experience, you have it, you want a punishing one, there ya go.

I like your assumption that as a matter of fact you can make everyone happy with a game if you just put enough options in it. You can't. It's why things like genres exist in the first place.

I like my assumption also. That is why I made it. Thank you for noticing!

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

Need to be able to dodge specific attack/combos because they eat up too much stamina to safely block and punish? Probably not the best idea to be in full Havel's if you're going to try that strategy. Enemy uses fire? Fire resistant shield/armor. Group of enemies? Use a bow to pull one at a time.

^Actually my main dispute with DS. Its usual methods of "difficulty" are mostly countered by breaking out of the game to play meta-style (Kiting enemies). Or stuff like the Capra Demon who attacks in the middle of a loading screen (white wall, whatever) and gets 90% of its challenge from camera going nuts due to the walls of the closet or whatever that little room is meant to be.

On the broader topic ,having the easy mode wouldn't kill it. A game with infinite respawning with no permanent consequence (Oh no, lost souls, I can get more of them from every single monster in the game!) isn't exactly rocking the hardcore boat to begin with, whatever its fanbase thinks.

The fan-base thinks it's nowhere near as hard as people make it out to be, which kind of goes along with why it doesn't need an easy mode. Also, antagonizing the fans isn't convincing me you have our interests in mind. Implying you don't like the game and think less of me for playing it isn't exactly leaving me brimming with confidence that your recommendation will reflect my best interests. Almost the opposite, believe it or not.

And we can go back and view any of tons of methods used in past games to encourage people to play on Normal/Hard (Locking out Easy after one playthrough, disabling NG+ on Easy mode, lowering souls gained (which would ironically cause the Easy mode to get harder in the endgame), disabling high scores, locking them out of PvP, giving them poorer endings, etc). Theres a ton of of potential carrots to push people to experience the game "properly", but if you push them right out of the game to begin with you lose your potential audience

I'm not looking to punish people for not playing right and boss them around and make them play it the "right" way. I want uncompromising tension and genuine challenge that can't be trivialized with a menu, and a crafted experience that doesn't resemble repetitive encounters lining long hallways. That's what I have gotten used to. I don't think I should have to give up the one freaking game that offers me that. You don't like the game, you don't like us, and you don't understand where we're coming from. If people want easy mode there are games for them. Games and games and games and games. They don't need Dark Souls.

(Either as an artist or a businessman, you're presumably looking to deliver your work to a wider set of people)

/sigh

 

[Mortrialus]

I have always been confused by people who get all bent out of shape when there are optional features in a game to make it easier or harder. In my eyes, more options is always better. That way everyone is happy. You want an easy experience, you have it, you want a punishing one, there ya go.

I like your assumption that as a matter of fact you can make everyone happy with a game if you just put enough options in it. You can't. It's why things like genres exist in the first place.

I like my assumption also. That is why I made it. Thank you for noticing!

It's a false assumption. You can stick as many customization options, modes, in a Madden game as you want. I'm not going to be interested in it. The same thing applies to other people regarding Dark Souls.

 

[Sidmen]

It's amazing, Dark Souls probably has the most incredible and mature community out there with the worst reputation. People just make assumptions about us based on what we like.

Just by reading 4 pages of this thread, I can tell you that the reputation isn't undeserved. Thus far, people who would like an easier option in the game have been told "you just don't get it" - like Dark Souls is some kind of philosophical abstract painting. This is the type of bogus thing said by hipsters when you tell them that something is boring and/or offensive to the eyes.

We've also been told that "the game's encounter design precludes an easy mode." Which is bogus in every way imaginable. Want to make the game easier without changing anything? Cut the damage done by enemies attacks by 1/2 and double the number of spells you can cast. Done. Now a single hit by a random zombie doesn't make that entire life forfeit.

I can understand wanting to keep the game the way you like it, but attacking people who find the game boring or aggravating (I'm in the latter category) is absolutely the wrong way to do so. And that is what Dark Souls' fan base has taken to doing.

 

[sXeth]

I'm not looking to punish people for not playing right and boss them around and make them play it the "right" way. I want uncompromising tension and genuine challenge that can't be trivialized with a menu, and a crafted experience that doesn't resemble repetitive encounters lining long hallways. That's what I have gotten used to. I don't think I should have to give up the one freaking game that offers me that. You don't like the game, you don't like us, and you don't understand where we're coming from. If people want easy mode there are games for them. Games and games and games and games. They don't need Dark Souls.

A fair argument. Simple solution, lock the difficulty in (or only let it move up from the initial setting). I'm not sure what the encoutner bits about.

Rather then bloat the post, I've spoiler tagged my brief summary of Dark Souls below which actually does contain praise.

Spoiler

I actually found the premise interesting, and the lore sort of interesting (albeit rather limited, unless it ups itself at some point after Blightown, where I dropped off the game). On the other side, theres a fair amount of glitches (Attacks going through walls, getting enemies stuck in walls), hideous AI (Luring/Kiting, also the hilarious tendency to be able to trick them into power attacking off a cliff, and one guy I killed by running circles in a stairwell cause my armor was light enough to avoid the fall damage), and stuff that makes the game seem dated or poorly made like getting stopped up on a shin height tree root or piece of rubble or homing arrows that curve in midair). And the main determinator in my dropping the game off was the Gaping Dragon, where it was basically defeated in spirit 3 minutes in when I figured out how to take it on, but the battle was artificially extended to 20some minutes by raw HP inflation.

(Either as an artist or a businessman, you're presumably looking to deliver your work to a wider set of people)

/sigh

Artists put their paintings in public museums, they don't put it up in a tower you have to scale. I can't think of a musician that recorded his music on 6 copies (I'e handed out a least 1000 tapes and I'm not even a signed artist) and said "Whatever, thats enough". Books are published and sold to whoever buys them. Granted, the difficulty (or perception thereof) doesn't explicitly prevent anyone from playing the game, but I can understand that whoever wants more people to enjoy their work.

 

[Mortrialus]

Just by reading 4 pages of this thread, I can tell you that the reputation isn't undeserved. Thus far, people who would like an easier option in the game have been told "you just don't get it" - like Dark Souls is some kind of philosophical abstract painting. This is the type of bogus thing said by hipsters when you tell them that something is boring and/or offensive to the eyes..

If you don't see the appeal, maybe something just isn't your cup of tea to begin with? Why is it so hard to understand and accept that?

We've also been told that "the game's encounter design precludes an easy mode." Which is bogus in every way imaginable. Want to make the game easier without changing anything? Cut the damage done by enemies attacks by 1/2 and double the number of spells you can cast. Done. Now a single hit by a random zombie doesn't make that entire life forfeit.

Random zombies are already incapable of one shotting you.

PLUS you have to factor in things like online mode. Do you split the online into easy mode and offline mode? Servers are costly. In addition, skilled players already do low level runs through the game to get top notch equipment and gank low level players and you've just made it easier for them to do that? Do you group everyone together? That presents the problem of vastly more skilled players invading NPCs. Do you just have easy mode lacking in online play? In that case an easy mode still wouldn't allow players to see all the content in the game. Adding an easy mode to Dark Souls is not an easy two step move to making it work.

Plus the simple fact of the matter is that people do not find Dark Souls hard because of the technical skill required to beat the game. You do not need super fast reflexes to beat Dark Souls. You don't need to master a complex series of combos. People find it hard specifically because of the knowledge base players need to acquire to beat the game. It's things like level and enemy lay outs. Trap and ambush locations. Being able to explore properly. Learning enemy move sets and when to attack and when to defend. Learning how to conserve stamina. Learning how to make a good weapon. Learning all of that through trial and error IS the game.

The simple fact is that not everyone is going to like every game. Games can be well made and well designed and still not appeal to everyone no matter how many modes you add. Creating an easy mode where everyone is can beat the game without understanding any of the mechanics is going to cause players to shoot through a threshold of difficulty where people are going to beat the game in between 5-10 hours. It's just not that big. Creating a properly working modal difficulty would require substantial changes to the entire game design. Dark Souls is quite literally not paced or designed in any way shape or form to be easy. The entire game is built to compliment the learning process required to beat the game.

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

I have always been confused by people who get all bent out of shape when there are optional features in a game to make it easier or harder. In my eyes, more options is always better. That way everyone is happy. You want an easy experience, you have it, you want a punishing one, there ya go.

I like your assumption that as a matter of fact you can make everyone happy with a game if you just put enough options in it. You can't. It's why things like genres exist in the first place.

I like my assumption also. That is why I made it. Thank you for noticing!

It's a false assumption. You can stick as many customization options, modes, in a Madden game as you want. I'm not going to be interested in it. The same thing applies to other people regarding Dark Souls.

That sounds like another pretty hefty assumption. So many assumptions around here! It is almost like we are all just people who play video games and don't know dick about game design, no matter how much we like to pretend we do.
However, just speaking on the subject of Dark Souls. I didn't think the game was especially hard, in the honest sense of difficulty. A lot of the game was very trial and error, the lowest form of difficulty. Therefore, I didn't find the game especially difficult. However, I do know people that were very interested in playing the game but were put off by the difficult and still wanted to play it.
So, I know there are at least people that would have played the game otherwise.
Personally, I found the game mediocre, and couldn't get my money back fast enough once I finished it.
Obviously, you can't design tons of games with intricate difficulty levels that suit all gamers and make the game approachable by everyone. However, I also don't think the concept of adding a mode that has say, less damaging enemies or something, really detracts from the enjoyment of those playing on harder modes.
A friend of mine loves story and when she plays games that I do, I tend to play on the hardest setting available, and she always plays on the easiest. We both get our enjoyment from the same game, whereas if you took a middleground and designed the game with a single difficulty, as many games do. There is a good chance the game would be far too hard for her, and far too easy for me. Now no one enjoys the game.
This is a generalization and obviously won't apply to all games, as Dark Souls fans love to point out. Since that game is apparently some kind of artistic work of art. As if brutal RPGs were bad camera controls and horrible pathfinding were somehow new. Although some of the aesthetics were nice.
ANYWAY...to each their own. I must move on from this thread now. I've already broken my rule of not responding to quotes multiple times.

 

[plainlake]

I diagree. I havent even played dark souls, but even I can see that an easy mode would destroy one of the main features. I play alot of Arma 2 myself and if the campaign there could be played with a regenerative healthbar it would not even be remotely the same experience. And I would feel like everyone that played the game like that missed out.

It would be like reading the abstract of a scientific article because you would not understand parts of it, then saying that you have read the whole thing.

But hey, Im not irritated, its just Jim after all.

 

[Santern]

I agree with Jim over this one, but not entirely. There -are- instances where this dumbing down / pandering to casuals / aiming for a wider audience takes an effect on core gameplay.

Say, as an example, Hitman: Absolution. Apart from certain gameplay mechanics (Cover system) being a result of a new approach rather than making it more casual, the instinct system was definitely an addition that I'm referring to. It was a core gameplay mechanic due to it affecting the disguise system, the cover system and the shoot-outs. It wasn't merely a small, optional addition however. The disguise system heavily relies on it. You can't bypass someone wearing the same outfit without the alarm bells going off and the person recognises you.

What is the consequence of this? Well, the instinct meter degrades far faster on higher difficulties, which means disguises become less and less efficient. On Purist mode ("Designed for the hardcore audience"),it's nigh-impossible to get past anyone with the generally 3-4 seconds long instinct mode availiable for an entire level, resorting in turning the gameplay from being a disguised, infiltrating serial killer (Something that a Hitman game should be about) into dodging from cover to cover, avoiding any form of contact, which is more akin to a dumbed down Splinter Cell in the end.

The instinct mechanic is a core design that, if you get rid of it, results in the gameplay becoming extremely tedious, even at merely the higher difficulty levels. In its function it's a tool that makes situations easier (Pandering to the casuals), but removing it is simply feigning optionality. Such examples clarify the points of those people who also dislike the fact some franchises make attempts to reach out to more people. More often than not, the option to not use the tools and options 'Meant for the casuals' means you have to butcher your own gaming experience to the point it's not challenging, difficult, yet fun, but tedious, underwhelming and lacking in variety, which is something I really disliked in the latest Hitman game, but I'm sure others can raise similar examples.