Jimquisition: Dumbing Down for the Filthy Casuals

[Havoc Himself]

This video honestly made me frustrated. Not because I'm against an easy mode in video games or I'm against casual players but because I am subscribed to a guy on Youtube named Epic Name Bro who already talked about this and he did it a lot better than you as far as the idea of an easy mode in Dark Souls. I'll paraphrase a little bit from him, the idea worried him because of a few problems it might cause for the overall game. First off would be the issue with multiplayer and balancing. Would someone who played the game on the new easy mode and someone who played on the harder difficulty get the same type of gear? If they did then it would be somewhat unfair to the player on the harder difficulty as they are higher skilled and completed a more impressive feat but at the same time the casual player paid the same amount of money so would they not be entitled to balanced multiplayer? From Software could always just take the multiplayer out but that would be a shame as the multiplayer in the souls series is really unique and pretty damn fun.
As for the super mario bit I was kind of confused, why are you comparing Dark Souls to Mario? One is a platformer and the other an ARPG. The people who play them are completely different and the reasons you play them are completely different. Last thing I guess is just trust the developers, if they decide to add in an easier difficulty then it's their decision and it shouldn't be that bad. It's if they don't implement the difficulty in a way that works that you should start to get pissed off.
Anyway that is my (sort of)rant, keep doing what you do Jim Sterling. You are usually pretty awesome.

 

[Elois]

>implying that people care that you place that much value you in the game

>implying that some guy on the internet should dictate who values what in the game

>implying that people will give a damn


and i believe i have won

See what I mean? Right here^

"People just shouldn't care that much about games" Is a terrible argument.

Saying "people don't give a crap" and declaring victory is an amazing display of childishness.

This immaturity is nothing the community needs if its what we are gonna get if easy mode goes in.

 

[getoffmycloud]

My issue with the dark souls easy mode is what is the point in even playing it. It would be like playing LA noire with all the interrogations taken out.

Excuse me, but who the hell are you to dictate how other people enjoy their entertainment? Who the hell are ANY of you people to dictate how other people enjoy their entertainment? I'm seeing a lot of snobby, stuck-up comments like the one I quoted all over this thread, and my message to these people... would get me modded, so I won't actually say it, but the polite version is stop it. Other people enjoying a game in a different way than you did doesn't change how much you enjoy the game with your "hardcorez" settings. For fuck's sake, get over yourselves. You all thoroughly disgust me.

Ok I am not saying that I should dictate how people play or that new people shouldn't start gaming cause I am all for that I am saying they are not going to get a good impression of games we all think are awesome if you start ripping out what made us all love the games in the first place like the difficulty in Dark souls. If you start doing that then you are going to put people off gaming.

 

[skywolfblue]

Well said Jim, well said.

The thing that bothers me most about "dumbing down" complaints is when people ***** and moan about *optional features* implemented to ease new players into a game. In these cases the real concern isn't preserving the integrity of games but excluding certain people from playing them.

This in particular. "There is the "Option" to do it easy? WAAAAA RUINING MY HARDCORE EXPERIENCE!"

You know I never see Bayonetta mentioned in any of these difficulty discussions, it really does deserve bringing up. Bayonetta on the harder modes is a challenge enthusiasts dream come true. Bayonetta on super easy mode is easy enough for "filthy casuals" like me. The latter doesn't "destroy" or lessen the former.

 

[barinelg]

Well made video Jim, and very good points.

One of the things I find interesting is that gamers mostly do not want to be patronized about their hobby, but tend to alienate those who don't fit into the elitist status of the hardcore. Take this comic on Dorkly for example (http://www.dorkly.com/comic/46874/female-fantasy-iii). It's along the same mentality. "I want someone to indulge and accept my hobby, but you /obviously/ don't know your stuff, so why are you wasting my time?" (Yes, a bit of a gross generalization, but if you strip it to the core concept, they relate). If the casual gamer wants to ease into these more hardcore games, why not give them stepping stools? They could ease up to where they could be on the same level as other gamers, but they aren't going to start there.

Along with that, many of us who frequent gaming sites and play such games have been playing video games since we were young, or more frequently than others. To say that a brand new gamer should "play at our level" is not only off-putting for a new person, but simply a negative thing for the view of gamers themselves. It helps keep the potential for acceptance at a distance.

Now should every single game out there have difficulty settings? No, but if they include the option, or options to help the player out (such as the features Jim pointed out for the NSMB games), then it's fine as they are just that: options. The Easy Mode outcry would have been 100% justifiable if it was the only difficulty that they were patching in, but instead they were giving new, curious players something that they could step into the Dark Souls world and experience it. Also, if that player played on easy and became better, they could amp it up to hard. This could provide the player a great comparison of how they've grown in skill as a video game player, and further encourage them to play harder games.

I've seen where the concern is that, nowadays, Hard and Very Hard are now too easy. A valid concern to have. But maybe it's that system that needs to be tweaked. I know early games had 3 settings (sometimes only 2!):
Easy, Normal, Hard
We then later saw things along the lines of:
Very Easy, Easy, Normal, Hard, Very Hard
This evolution of options allowed for better tweaking of difficulty so the player could choose how hard they wanted the game. We even saw another evolution of this in Kid Icarus: Uprising, where the intensity was on a slider from 0.1 to 9.0. Maybe such an option should be incorporated into more games, where the dead center is exactly what you think it is: not too hard, but not too easy. It can be hard for a developer to really know where the starting point should be, but giving the option to the player to fine-tune the difficulty is the best choice if you're opening it up to a bigger audience.

This could also be a bad thing where a person on easy gains some form of competitive edge in multiplayer than a person on hard. There are ways around it, but developers should be mindful of this should such a situation like this could exist in their game.

These days I like having the option for the fact that I have so many games I want to play that I don't have the time to play them on a harder difficulty (like I used to do). The easier difficulties allow me to experience the content without spending too much time stuck in certain areas. So many games, so little time.

Lastly, more players means more sales, which can mean sequels to your favorite games. Video games are a business, after all.

So in short, we shouldn't have every single game with this option and finding a good balance when having the options will be difficult, but by giving more players the ability to work up to the "elite" level, we gain more people that we can share our passion with. Outside of the few bad seeds we'll get with it, I'm ok with that.

Thanks for reading my rant on this!

 

[Zeckt]

You make some sense but there is the trend in games that hurt themselves by dumbing down WAY too much case in point ff 13. The first 3 hours you can win all the fights simply by pressing one button and have no exploration or danger of getting lost. Oh trust me, the challenge and exploration is eventually there for those who want it in alot of the later marks that will have you swearing at the screen but you have to slog through SO much handholding before you get to the challenging bits.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I'm sure this post will bite me in the ass, but the last few episodes of Jimquisition have been nothing but "You gamers are upset about something; How dare you, you whiny little bastards." I'm sorry, but it's starting to get a bit condescending.

To be fair, judging by what gamers get upset by, most of us are whiny little bastards.

And you might've wanted to play Dark Souls first before stating that adding an easy mode wouldn't matter. It's easy to generalize everyone in the "no easy mode" camp as bitchy, hardcore elitists.

I'm pretty sure he has played it.
And everyone in the no easy mode camp are bitchy hardcore elitists. It's optional there is no reason to not want it, other than hating the idea that someone can play through it without being awesome at games. Which is pretty much the definition of bitchy hardcore elitists.

I clearly heard him say in the video that he didn't play it. And way to generalize yourself there, pal.

It's not about not wanting "filthy casuals" to play the game, it's about taking away the uncompromizing nature of the game.

 

[bunji]

No a easy mode would ruin Dark Soul's, what's the point in trying your hardest when you can just skip it down to easy and roll through it? And it doesn't encourage gamers to become better players by constantly handing them an easy out, for scrubs.

 

[Starik20X6]

The way I see it, games have gotten easier over time for two main reasons:

1) You've gotten better at them. Having played almost every Zelda game, being able to read the environments and enemy patterns has become virtually second nature to me. But hand the controller to somebody who hasn't played them and they'll have a tricky time. It's like Usain Bolt complaining that the race he was in was too easy; well of course it was because he's the best at running.

2) Games were harder back in the day because it was the only way to keep you playing. The limited memory available on old consoles meant the games couldn't be too massive, so in order to pad out the gameplay the games were made nigh on impossible to beat. Now we have infinitely more space to work with than we did, so games can provide more actual content instead of just beating us to death with their difficulty.

 

[Karma168]

I can relate to this from both sides:

My favourite game series is the Jak and Daxter series. There is a mission in Jak 2 where you have to run a constant gauntlet of enemies on narrow walkways with insta-death if you fell off. No healthkits no checkpoints, hundreds of troops and dozens of gunships that can shoot you from miles away. It took me ages to get past that bit and it drove me nuts, though once I got there I *may* have done a little victory dance. If a games too easy people never get that feeling.

However if a games too hard before you get invested (for example the above mission was roughly half way through) you'll just rage-quit and return the game. Bought a jrpg (forget the name) and the very first fucking enemy after leaving the starting city had me beat, I could not beat this mission no matter what I tried, I was dead inside a turn. Gave up and returned it (was a preowned copy so didn't lose much money)

 

[Shuguard]

I will disagree Jim, I don't think just because you payed for something there should be an easy-mode. I have two examples. In the past lets say star fox 64, there are two difficulties: Normal and Expert. I have never seen anyone ever complain about how star fox 64 or old n64 console games needed an easy mode. Now i know both difficulties are different from dark souls and star fox 64, but are they? Both are about recognizing patterns and understanding how to get from point A to point B(safely) and beating a boss(who may or may not kill you multiple times and you have to go back to the checkpoint).
In other words the same exact concept.

Now you made a point about literature(exploding words) or movies(pausing till a quiz is finished). Now here is my counter argument to this. Now if i bought a book written by Steven Hawkings or from someone who is difficult to understand, can i beg the author to write it in an easier way for me to read? The answer is no and never. Just because someone purchases something does not entitle someone to easy-mode. Consumers need to be educated on what they are buying. They are entitled to the product and it's content, but if they didn't know what they were buying in the first place then they deserve to feel bad.

Taking the difficulty out of dark souls would cause the game to lose it's appeal. The game wasn't catered to casuals or easy-moders. Let the hardcore crowd have their game.

 

[ARKSgtAlpha]

Wow.. you went there, and not only made "hardcore" gamers complaining seem silly, you made opposition to gay marriage seem just as trivial... Nice.

 

[Erttheking]

My issue with the dark souls easy mode is what is the point in even playing it. It would be like playing LA noire with all the interrogations taken out.

Who are you to say "what's the point" for other people?

I think it's safe to say that the point of a game with the tagline "prepare to die" is to be hard. Just my two cents.

So, people can't enjoy the game for reasons other than it's difficulty?

OT:
I agree with jim, and have argued as such on these forums before. About all I have to say about that...

I'm just saying that it's tearing out a key component of the game.

 

[Mythmaker]

It isn't "easy modes" that should be getting people up-in-arms. It's what they've done in NSMBU that should be getting this attention.

If they want to give you the option to make the game insultingly easy, that's one thing. But letting the game play itself while you watch completely defeats the purpose. Someone who partakes of that option isn't allowing them access to content they might otherwise have been denied, they are simply denying themselves content to give themselves the illusion of progress. It's the completely wrong way to go about it, and this is a blatant example of what happens when you dumb down content to make it "accessible." It'd be like watching a scary movie, and having a warning appear in the corner before every scare, or a mystery novel telling you to skip to the end.

This is the real threat, because it doesn't make games accessible, it destroys what makes them games in the first place.

 

[Korten12]

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OMG! I am literally about to rip out my hair, the ignorance in this thread is just amazing. Dark Souls isn't hard because the enemies have too high health or do too much damage, it's not because you do too little damage nor is it difficult because of too low health.

It's difficult because of LEVEL FUCKING DESIGN. In Dark Souls the levels are crafted to be difficult, but possible, in easy mode they would have to change this to be, not difficult and possible. In Dark Souls there are parts where even with more health and damage, it would still be brutually difficult because it has careful placing of enemies spots, traps, and overall just where things are placed.

They would have to redesign all enemies and levels to be easy enough for a casual player to do it. Trying to then apply that to the normal mode it would be way to easy. What allows the quality of the levels to be as good as they're is that they don't have to worry about designing it for multiple difficulties. Games with multiple difficulties usually don't have levels that are built for any specific difficulty but built for ALL difficulties.

That's what makes Dark Soul's unique, it's built from the ground up to be hard, so it's all possible, and difficult at the same time. Enemies don't have a lot of health (some do, but mostly optional enemies), but are placed in the right spots to make it difficult.

The Souls series rewards CAREFUL PLAY and not Reckless play. Apparently people don't understand this and think it's all about Health and Damage when it's not. Bosses usually don't even have that much health, but they all have staredgy's on how to easily beat them.

So yes, Easy Mode would dumb it down by making the levels having to account for both difficulties. Same for bosses and enemies.

This is why fans of the Dark Souls series don't want multiple difficulties because it WOULD suffer.

 

[empirialtank]

I have seen the future of reality television and it is hosted by mutant carrot men!

OT: Personally when i play games i usually play them on easy, because i like to play games to hear the story and have some fun interaction along the way, but i must say that my favorite games are the ones which don't give you a choice of difficulty like TF2 or KOTOR. I think the goal of a developers shouldn't be to make a game that only the best can beat or so easy that any lobotomized howler monkey can beat, but a game that has been made so well that the developers know by the time you reach a certain part in the story you're ready for whatever they throw at you, or a game that can scale itself to the level that the player seems to be at. A game that can scale back for a newb or ramp up for the 1337.

 

[BreakfastMan]

My issue with the dark souls easy mode is what is the point in even playing it. It would be like playing LA noire with all the interrogations taken out.

Who are you to say "what's the point" for other people?

I think it's safe to say that the point of a game with the tagline "prepare to die" is to be hard. Just my two cents.

So, people can't enjoy the game for reasons other than it's difficulty?

OT:
I agree with jim, and have argued as such on these forums before. About all I have to say about that...

I'm just saying that it's tearing out a key component of the game.

I honestly don't really consider it as such. The difficulty seems complimentary more than anything, like bad controls in Silent Hill. It serves it's purpose, but I don't think the game would be directionless if it was less hard. But then again, I think of the game much differently than others, it seems...