Jimquisition: Dumbing Down for the Filthy Casuals

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Good gosh...

PEOPLE, THINK FOR TWO SECONDS.

Dark Souls is made by From Software, and published by Atlus.

These are not stupid game makers.
They are NOT the kind of guys who make quick cash-ins and stupid game decisions!
They consistently churn out quality games!

HAVE A LITTLE FAITH IN THEM, FOR THE LOVE OF ADMIN. They're NOT going to fuck up your game!

They will NOT destroy the game with easy mode. They will find a way to make it work.

Furthermore, I keep hearing about how "blighttown" has tricky footing and that they'd NEED to change that in an easy mode. ...Why? Why WOULD they need to change that? From and Atlus are not going to make easy mode suck out all the challenge, that's not the kind of thing they do. They will likely just tweak a few things to give the less experienced players a leg up. They said they wanted to make Dark Souls more "Accessible", not "remove all challenge".

The amount of "fans" with no faith in From and Atlus is...staggering

 

[Church185]

Adding an easy mode will take 3 days at most, few hours at best. It's simply editing some numbers nothing more. And it won't take away from the game because there is always a part of the dev. team that isn't working on anything at the moment which means they are free to work on the easy mode anyways.

You seem to know an awful lot about game development and how much work goes into changing things. May I ask where you got your experience? I would loved to be proved wrong by someone who knows what they are talking about.

 

[Hakazaba]

The arguments for an easy mode for this game come from ignorance of the game itself. The game already has an easy mode in the form of multiplayer, you can get help with almost anything in the game although unfortunately you have to beat the first boss to get access to it, which is a possibly a problem with design but it is easy if you pay attention.

There are options offline too, though there could probably be more, offline play may be an issue, but i still managed and am by no means extraordinary.

In regard to the actual difficulty of the game, it has similar difficulty to the Darksiders or Devil may cry series except for some poorly designed bits (i'm looking at you capra demon). I think the misunderstanding has come from the stupid 'prepare to die' marketing campaign.

In regard to the 'Why not an easy mode' argument, adding an easy mode would damage the multiplayer aspect of the game by making it far less important and splitting the player base.

It would also substantially damage the atmosphere if you are no longer punished for running onto a new area without being cautious or come up against challenges you may not be ready for and require a different path.

There is also an aspect or pride that comes from overcoming the challenges Darksouls has to offer, making those achievements trivial would make the game far less interesting and turning to multiplyer as opposed to making it easy adds in a feeling of camaraderie, its just better design than an easy mode.

 

[Mortrialus]

Good gosh...

PEOPLE, THINK FOR TWO SECONDS.

Dark Souls is made by From Software, and published by Atlus.

These are not stupid game makers.
They are NOT the kind of guys who make quick cash-ins and stupid game decisions!
They consistently churn out quality games!

HAVE A LITTLE FAITH IN THEM, FOR THE LOVE OF ADMIN. They're NOT going to fuck up your game!

They will NOT destroy the game with easy mode. They will find a way to make it work.

Furthermore, I keep hearing about how "blighttown" has tricky footing and that they'd NEED to change that in an easy mode. ...Why? Why WOULD they need to change that? From and Atlus are not going to make easy mode suck out all the challenge, that's not the kind of thing they do. They will likely just tweak a few things to give the less experienced players a leg up. They said they wanted to make Dark Souls more "Accessible", not "remove all challenge".

The amount of "fans" with no faith in From and Atlus is...staggering

I'm not saying they would do that. I'm describing how making an easy mode for Dark Souls is not as simple as some people have been saying; you can't make Dark Souls easy just by altering health, stamina, and damage.

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

That was actually done with Devil May Cry 3. Basically our "Normal" difficulty mode was the Japanese "Hard" mode, our "Hard" was their "Dante Must Die" mode etc. The release of Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition fixed all that and even made it so that if you die you had the option of ressurecting and not starting the level over again provided you had the right item.

Surprisingly the world didn't burn with the existence of this easier version of a balls hard game.

There is no more clear way to demonstrate how badly you misunderstand this topic and Dark Souls generally then to point to the fact that you think adding easy mode to Dark Souls is merely adding an "easier version of a balls hard game."

 

[girzwald]

I'll answer your question simply. It's taken time away from making Dark Souls II, for a group of people that may not even care enough to buy the game to play said easy mode.

Those aren't answers to my questions. You in fact answered and addressed zero of them. While again spewing more false premises.

You continue to speak like making an easy mode would take away so much resources and so much time that not only will it do damage to dark souls 2, that it will be irreparable damage to the game and it will now be horrible because they took the eternity it would take to make a few tweaks. And you know, if they added in an easy mode, more people might buy the game meaning......OMG........more resources for dark souls 2, to make it better!

And of course its a risk that people might not buy it. Thats called life. And the developers were at least looking at the option so they at least thought in theory it would be worth it. But before the idea could really even get off the ground, the idea was shot down by the frothing nerd rage of teh hardcorez. And if anything is going to make people not want to buy dark souls, its the dark souls community. I've seen more polite and less egotistical people in a game of league of legends.

 

[Elois]

Then there are enemies with knock backs. These can easily knock you straight off a ledge and to your death. The infested barbarians in Blighttown are an example. The most infamous is the Silver Archers in Anor Londo, which is honestly one of the trickier parts of the game (Though you can cheese them). Reducing how much damage they do and how much health they have isn't going to help much. Their bows shoot javelins, with a huge push back, even if you block them. So you'd have to completely change this enemy encounter for an easy mode.

Ok to be fair, they should totally redo the anor londo snipers anyway. That part of the game was pure BS.

 

[Church185]

I'll answer your question simply. It's taken time away from making Dark Souls II, for a group of people that may not even care enough to buy the game to play said easy mode.

Those aren't answers to my questions. You in fact answered and addressed zero of them. While again spewing more false premises.

You continue to speak like making an easy mode would take away so much resources and so much time that not only will it do damage to dark souls 2, that it will be irreparable damage to the game and it will now be horrible because they took the eternity it would take to make a few tweaks. And you know, if they added in an easy mode, more people might buy the game meaning......OMG........more resources for dark souls 2, to make it better!

And of course its a risk that people might not buy it. Thats called life. And the developers were at least looking at the option so they at least thought in theory it would be worth it. But before the idea could really even get off the ground, the idea was shot down by the frothing nerd rage of teh hardcorez. And if anything is going to make people not want to buy dark souls, its the dark souls community. I've seen more polite and less egotistical people in a game of league of legends.

The Dark Souls community was very helpful to me when I first started and didn't know proper build planning from my elbow. Forums full of helpful people giving me hints, tips, and strategies for making my life in that bleak place better. Even for the people who don't want to take the time to seek out that portion of the community I think that From Software made a brilliant decision to reward players for helping out their fellow player and promoting "Jolly Cooperation". If anything, the Dark Souls community is the only reason I didn't walk away the first time I was frustrated with the game because I felt that it was unfair.

 

[OldNewNewOld]

Adding an easy mode will take 3 days at most, few hours at best. It's simply editing some numbers nothing more. And it won't take away from the game because there is always a part of the dev. team that isn't working on anything at the moment which means they are free to work on the easy mode anyways.

You seem to know an awful lot about game development and how much work goes into changing things. May I ask where you got your experience? I would loved to be proved wrong by someone who knows what they are talking about.

Currently at a local university, studying to be a programmer.

In the first few lessons you learn that numbers that could change with updates/patches should be saved so that you can easily change them.

i.e. Make a file for enemies, every line would have name, health, damage, armor. If From finds out that some units are too powerful/weak, they can change only few numbers and patch them without making any serious changes. If all the stats are saved that way (and any competent developer will do something similar), you can make an easy mode by simply having another lane for easy and depending on the mode you chose at start, the game will pick either 1 or the other lane. or you could add few lines of code to take the numbers from the normal game mode and multiply them by 0.67/0.67/0.5. Now the enemy has 33% less health and armor while dealing 50% less damage.

And how I know that there is always a part of the dev. team that isn't currently working on the core game? A part of the team will have to wait for another part to finish before they are able to do their job. That part can be working on a different game or even on DLC's which is lately more common.

 

[anthony87]

That was actually done with Devil May Cry 3. Basically our "Normal" difficulty mode was the Japanese "Hard" mode, our "Hard" was their "Dante Must Die" mode etc. The release of Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition fixed all that and even made it so that if you die you had the option of ressurecting and not starting the level over again provided you had the right item.

Surprisingly the world didn't burn with the existence of this easier version of a balls hard game.

There is no more clear way to demonstrate how badly you misunderstand this topic and Dark Souls generally then to point to the fact that you think adding easy mode to Dark Souls is merely adding an "easier version of a balls hard game."

Oh look, more of this "You don't get it/understand" nonsense.....

You're right though, I don't understand how someone can think that adding a totally ignorable option to a game can end up ruining it but hey, that's just me.

 

[EvilRoy]

It really sounds to me, an outsider, like you're saying "by searching in-game constantly, reading forums and buying a guidebook, this game isn't that hard so an easy mode isn't necessary".

But even if I was willing to accept that as a reasonable statement, it doesn't explain why an easy mode wouldn't work. Just put all that in game. Have tooltips, have hints, make checkpoints stand out more prominently against the background, all fairly easy to do.

Actually my friend, you can skip all of that if you would just summon a sunbro.

So if difficulty is that trivial to the game, why are people so up in arms about adding an easier difficulty?

Because when you summon a sunbro, you don't need to waste development costs for the sequel

Allowable development costs are based on budgets that are based on projected earnings. Adding an easy mode would boost projected earnings and therefore boost budgetary limits. From there it is a simple cost/benefit curve to decide if it's worth it or not.

The only reasonable way to argue that the developers, having decided to add an easy mode, are taking money away from the hard part of the game is to assume incompetence on the part of the developers.

 

[Mortrialus]

Ok to be fair, they should totally redo the anor londo snipers anyway. That part of the game was pure BS.

Those assholes have the most clutch spot ever XD

But they aren't the only place like that. Just earlier in the level you had the part in the Painted World building where you fought the Painting Guardians on the scaffolding.

Throughout the entirety of Dark Souls, it's almost entirely you encountering new enemies, combined with various environmental situations and hazards. All of it is painstakingly throughout to create a difficult but fair balance and to keep the game interesting. You just can't easily make a solid, well balanced easy mode for Dark Souls without fundamentally altering the game design before hand.

 

[anthony87]

Good gosh...

PEOPLE, THINK FOR TWO SECONDS.

Dark Souls is made by From Software, and published by Atlus.

These are not stupid game makers.
They are NOT the kind of guys who make quick cash-ins and stupid game decisions!
They consistently churn out quality games!

HAVE A LITTLE FAITH IN THEM, FOR THE LOVE OF ADMIN. They're NOT going to fuck up your game!

They will NOT destroy the game with easy mode. They will find a way to make it work.

Furthermore, I keep hearing about how "blighttown" has tricky footing and that they'd NEED to change that in an easy mode. ...Why? Why WOULD they need to change that? From and Atlus are not going to make easy mode suck out all the challenge, that's not the kind of thing they do. They will likely just tweak a few things to give the less experienced players a leg up. They said they wanted to make Dark Souls more "Accessible", not "remove all challenge".

The amount of "fans" with no faith in From and Atlus is...staggering

I'm not saying they would do that. I'm describing how making an easy mode for Dark Souls is not as simple as some people have been saying; you can't make Dark Souls easy just by altering health, stamina, and damage.

No, you can't make it easy but you can make it easier. Maybe that'd be enough for some people to give it a try.

[sub][sub]remember folks. Optional.[/sub][/sub]

 

[Kroxile]

As long as games have trophies for completing hard modes that are actually somewhat difficult I don't care what they put easy modes into. Because you can't get the platinum without playing the game as its meant to be played.

All I have to do is compare trophies and at a glance I can see how many platinums they have and I can judge the player accordingly.

This doesn't work for Xbox achievements because with GS all you have to do is play many many games on easy mode to rack up a high score. You never have to play anything as its intended to get a brag-worthy score.

Now what about all those people who played Hannah Montana or all those Disney games for easy plats? Well, I guess those guys are a bit harder to judge at a glance, but upon inspection of their lists you can see they aren't worth a damn as gamers.

 

[Peithelo]

OPTIONAL

................

Sorry, it's just that so many people seem to be ignore the usage of the word optional that I figured I'd make it big and blue, maybe draw some attention to it.

Yes, you have gained my attention. :]

An option, however optional it may be, by definition gives you an alternative to something and enables you to resort to it if you so desire. This goes against what Dark Souls is trying to achieve. The very notion of an optional option degrades the experienced value of your efforts and in the case of Dark Souls lessens the amount of tension you experience. There is nothing you can do (aside from maybe erasing our memories) to avoid this from happening if the option is consciously known to be there. It's just how the concept of tension and our minds work.

 

[Mortrialus]

Oh look, more of this "You don't get it/understand" nonsense.....

You're right though, I don't understand how someone can think that adding a totally ignorable option to a game can end up ruining it but hey, that's just me.

A big part of the appeal for Dark Souls and Demon's Souls and what makes them so thrilling is that there exists the chance of failure, that you won't defeat the next boss, that you won't get to see the rest of the content. It creates a huge tension to succeed and makes every achievement that much worthwhile. Even having that option removes that, even if I never use it because there is no longer any risk of failure.

No, you can't make it easy but you can make it easier. Maybe that'd be enough for some people to give it a try.

[sub][sub]remember folks. Optional.[/sub][/sub]

Plenty of people already have given it a try. Both Dark Souls and Demon's Souls sold over a million copies each.

For the rest of your response, see above.

 

[Thetwistedendgame]

Someone else might have said this already, but Dark Souls is an exception to the "easy mode" idea.

Simply put, a normal rpg lowers enemy stats like health and damage to make a game easier. This way, these monsters become easier to defeat, and therefore, you can make an easier mode. However, Dark Souls is not a simple "wait your turn", walk until the next monster plops out RPG. It's an active RPG. No easy mode should save you from getting squished by an obvious boulder trap, or getting stunlocked by 5 taurus demons because YOU decided to take them all head-on. The point I'm trying to make here is that it doesn't matter how weak you make the enemies with an easy mode, it isn't going to stop players from accidentaly falling into death pits. Dark Souls isn't difficult because of unfair numbers, Dark Souls is difficult because you need to pay attention and find creative solutions to problems. And that is just something that can't be made easier.

There is also another reason why Dark Souls shouldn't have an easy mode. The online aspect. On Xbox live, the guy who is now number one in "the book of the guilty", a list of the top douches in Dark Souls, is a level 2 guy with the equipment of a full fledged New game+++ character, who constantly invades new players because he managed to beat Dark Souls with only leveling up a single time. Now imagine what will happen with easy mode. The starting areas will be full of people who easily played through the game using easy mode, and now abuse their high level equipment to bully new players. Not only is this not fair to those who want to play the game on normal mode and repeatedly get beaten by people who are the same level as him, but have far better equipment, but it also makes the game more difficult for those "casuals". This might even cost From Software money due to the game becoming notorious for being a "new player deathtrap". Of course you could play the game offline too, but if everyone plays offline because they're scared of getting spawncamped, Dark Souls wouldn't need an online aspect anymore, and then they would lose people who wanted to play the multiplayer, balancing out the broadening of the audience by losing audience as well!

I apologize if the wall of text might be difficult to read through, so here's a sarcastic and dishonest summary of what I just said: Easy game bad! Bah, me no like! Casuals different, me no like casuals.