But even if they 4 shot the player, it doesn't change how hard the game is unless the player learns the mechanics. So I actually think it would. Not that we would ever know because it'll never happen.Xprimentyl said:
New hard game comes out. Idiot press wants easy mode.
- Thread starter CritialGaming
- Start date
Maybe for some but not for others [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC3OuLU5XCw&feature=youtu.be&t=975].CritialGaming said:
Souls is easy to beat if that's literally your only goal, there's so many cheap ways to play that don't require looking up videos, posts, or FAQs. If you just play with the mindset that this game will do anything to kill me (which it does) and then turn it around and basically play to do everything to not die, then it's easy as shit. I did that for my initial 3rd or so of DS1 because I heard the game was hard to beat (along with the game doing cheap shit to me). I did Sen's Fortress completely blind and didn't die once, just play careful and pay attention. But to play in a fun way, Souls gets harder...CritialGaming said:
The problem with Souls is that its progression curve is opposite of what a game is supposed to be. You're not only the most gimped in the beginning but you also just don't know the game. The amount of DPS your character and enemies do basically stays the same throughout the whole game so you die in the same amount of hits you did at the start that you do at the end. With getting more estus flasks as you play means the game gives you more margin for error as you get better, which makes no sense. Sekiro is much much worse in that regard than Souls is. Also, the controls and enemy placement only serve to punish the player for trying to play at a faster pace. The controls and lock-on system are archaic and don't work well outside of 1v1 fights and then From likes to hide enemies in corners and shit to "trap" players into a BS death because the game's controls don't function well enough. An easy difficulty can help players have a better progression curve along with not punishing people for not checking their corners (these games ain't online shooters after all), especially Sekiro at least, which should play a lot faster than it does but it's full of cheap enemy placement as well.
I know most games just alter numbers but you can do more. Even just changing numbers can make a game so much better as there's always that sweet spot of how damage spongy enemies should be and the player has 2+ options to find the sweet spot if the dev fails with normal difficulty (which they usually do). Hell, part of why Uncharted 2 was so much better than the original was due to making the enemies less spongy, which fixed quite of bit of what was wrong like making automatic guns actually better than pistols like it should be. If the player just doesn't like the combat and finds it basically pointless (like I did with Witcher 3), they can lower down as far as possible to make combat basically waste less time to enjoy the actual good parts of the game. Getting back to doing more than just changing numbers. I know the new God of War's highest difficulty changes the way you fight for example. Bayonetta, for example, didn't make enemies spongier (at least not too noticeably), witch time was made less and less of a crutch while enemy aggressiveness was increased. I'm guessing at least some DMCs do stuff like that too as the same guys made them.CritialGaming said:
So players can alleviate some of From's poor game design and controls. Yahtzee literally pointed out the same thing I did about Sekiro, which is how time-wasting it is for you to have to kill all the mooks every time you try to fight quite a few of the mini-bosses (boss are usually completely by themselves). I can kill normal enemies like it's nothing because 1) they ain't tough and 2) you can stealth them so why make me do that over and over again when I just want to fight the actual challenging fight? That's why I literally would quit out the game, redownload my save (after clearing the mooks), and load the game up again because it wasted less time. That's just bad game design to put something in that only serves to waste a player's time. And why even have the player lose money and XP as punishment when it can be farmed (again, we're talking just a time issue). And the game's purses are only there because of the money punishment, thus their only point is to remove the money punishment so why even have it then?CritialGaming said:
I kinda explained health changes already. For Souls, maybe you should start with a lot of estus flasks and lose them as the game goes on, that would make more sense honestly. Difficulty is really all just increasing/decreasing margin for error and health does that inherently. It's not really hard to change enemy behavior, most spectacle fighters have a taunt move specifically to increase enemy aggressiveness, it's really not hard to do. Also altering the frequency of certain attacks is easy as well or adding some attacks on harder difficulties. Making the player stronger is basically health altering. If you can kill an enemy in 3 hits instead of 4 hits, your margin for error just increased 25%.
Amazing, this thread is; fourteen pages of back and forth and nothing really changed.
Point still remains that this all started because some people refuse to accept that a handful of games in this industry could be geared towards a certain kind of experience, and by extension a certain kind of player. Maybe that?s asking for too much.
Point still remains that this all started because some people refuse to accept that a handful of games in this industry could be geared towards a certain kind of experience, and by extension a certain kind of player. Maybe that?s asking for too much.
I'm not sure how germane this is to the dicussion but there's indie game called Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP that had an interesting gimmick(aside from being a prog rock fantasy rhythm game at times). You started off the game with about 5 or 6 hit points/health segments and each time you'd complete a plot significant battle(there were a couple of random ones here and there) one of your health segments would be gone forever, thus giving you less margin of error for the next fight. In story I believe it was supposed to be the toll the whole ordeal was taking on the PC's health/life and by the endgame, the PC is down to 1 health segment so that a single hit from the final boss was fatal. To make it even more tricky, every so often she would stop briefly to vomit because of how poor her health was at that point.Phoenixmgs said:
It's an system I wouldn't mind seeing adapted for something else.
Back to Dark Souls, I believe there's a mod out there where each boss you defeat assigns you a permanent debuff particular to that boss. It's called Scorched Contract. I don't know if it's actually balanced though.
I thought it started because a Forbes writer thought the game's "difficulty" could stand to have some options bolted onto it and "Gamers" started strawmaning the fuck out of them.hanselthecaretaker said:
Anyway, never got an answer: how does rushing the man in story change if you one shot the bosses instead of get killed by the bosses dozens of times? Aren't you just rushing the story both ways? Or do the bosses give extra exposition your 4th time through?
Hasn't changed the fact that FROM has been actively disregarding one portion of their fandom to satisty another. And it hasnt really been going for 14 pages. I noticed this discussion with Dark Souls 2. It's been going for years.hanselthecaretaker said:
But then, that's what Freedom of Speech does. Calcify ideologies
I'm well assured by the internet that Micolash gets less annoying with his fucking repeated exposition once you turn the sound off. It turns out the internet was right for once.altnameJag said:
Speaking of artificial difficulty....
Pretty much.altnameJag said:
Assuming you meant ?main story? (completely empathetic that typing from a phone is and will always be shit, if that?s the case), it?s been explained on almost every page here I?m guessing, that story is only one aspect of FROM?s design, and a few other like minded developers. The struggle against the game?s difficulty is what makes it more worthwhile when players finally succeed.
The people calling for easy modes or whatever else stifles that challenge might not care, but as of yet FROM doesn?t appear to be developing these games with them in mind anyways. There?s nothing wrong with that, because for the nth time ?every game? isn?t and shouldn?t need to be designed for ?everyone?; there should be room in the industry for these types of games that are made for a certain kind of audience, like any other medium allows, because it?s part of what makes them significant.
...the video you quoted as showing why you shouldn't have an easy mode was explicitly because "you wouldn't get the story if you didn't wander around and find it" because the dude with god mode rushed through instead of wandering around.hanselthecaretaker said:
If you beelined the bosses playing completely legit, you'd still end up missing most of the details and story, negates that video entirely.
It has a hardcore original audience, ironically little girls.Insideout Ink Demon said:
One of the reasons G4 MLP went to shit was because the studio eventually found out had created a social phenomenon, and they began to acknowledge and accommodate their obsessive grown ass men audience. The show quickly declined and became irrelevant and forgotten after season 3.
The entire point of video games is that they're an interactive medium.
That interaction will always require input from the player, and doing something vs doing nothing always have a difficulty.
If you want a medium which you can experience start to end without any expectation from your interaction. Its called a movie. And they're pretty good.
As such, we have to accept that video games have to feature some degree of difficulty. Even if it's as simple as a walking simulator where you hold W.
How much difficulty is entirely down to the individual. Not all games are for all people, and there's really nothing wrong with that.
That interaction will always require input from the player, and doing something vs doing nothing always have a difficulty.
If you want a medium which you can experience start to end without any expectation from your interaction. Its called a movie. And they're pretty good.
As such, we have to accept that video games have to feature some degree of difficulty. Even if it's as simple as a walking simulator where you hold W.
How much difficulty is entirely down to the individual. Not all games are for all people, and there's really nothing wrong with that.
Avnger said:
Yeah so if there was a game that had chosen to do that it'd be fine, forcing it to remove the difficulty options would be wrong.
It's EXACTLY just as wrong for a game which originally didn't have those modes to be made to add them.
Basically, the fact that Sekiro has no difficulty setting is what shows us it shouldn't have a difficulty setting cause it if should it'd have had it to begin with.
Because you don't seem to be able to understand the nuance...Dreiko said:
Saying Sekiro should have or would benefit from having difficulty options is completely separate from saying the developers of Sekiro should be forced to add them. You're arguing against the second statement which no one in this thread nor the original article in question has advocated.***
***unless, of course, you are arguing against people saying the former point. In that case, I'd wonder why you are trying to commit cEnSoRsHiP of people's opinions and in what world consumers and potential consumers of a product are not supposed to give advice to producers on how to improve said product.
It's the same thing though, just like how saying a game with difficulty options would benefit from not having them is wrong so is saying that a game without them would benefit from adding them is wrong. Having access to an easy mode will make the lazier players go for it opposed to getting the most out of the game (or just quitting, either way there's nobody deluded that they got the real experience of the game just cause they cleared the easy mode) which will dilute the caliber of experience the game wishes the entire playerbase to have (or to whine about failing at, which is also a positive with regards to those who did not fail, as that makes them feel better than those other folks, which in turn can act as motivation for those who are contemplating giving up, pushing them to take that one more step they need to succeed).Avnger said:
Why do you think you know better what other people will enjoy than they do? Having the option is not making anybody go for it, unless their self-restraint is so very very bad that the game could not be blamed anyway.Dreiko said:
Take a look at the kind of hyperbolic language here-- "deluded that they got the real experience"? We're not talking about some kind of spiritual rite of passage, or integral coming-of-age ritual. It's a game. It's for fun. Some people might enjoy different things, or in different ways.
Basically, this game markets itself based on ridiculing people who can't have fun the way it wants them to. The community of the game similarly will want to encourage people to try to get the most out of the experience. It may broaden one's definition of fun or expand it. You'll never know you like something until you actually TRY it.Silvanus said:
It's kinda like cow tongue or sheep kidneys, to someone who never tried them growing up they would seem disgusting but they're actually delicious cuts of meat. Lots of people would end up liking them if they threw away their prejudices and just gave them a proper chance. The fact that some people will dislike them (or be right in their prejudice) is completely irrelevant to our concerns here.