New hard game comes out. Idiot press wants easy mode.
- Thread starter CritialGaming
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Can we not be so hostile about this? Like, I don't think someone is a bad person for wanting an easy mode, but thinking that easy modes ruin the point of some games doesn't make someone horrible either. People are arguing as if we're talking about moral issues.
Entitled? Sure. Equally? No.Saelune said:
It's arguing for an extra option that won't impact those who are against in the slightest, other than maybe their mental fortitude to not use it.
Well, like which?Saelune said:
Because I honestly don't see what makes the Souls games so special that an Easy mode would upset the balance when apparently DLC adding entire new areas, enemies, and weapons doesn't.
I'm not arguing Fromsoft should add an Easy mode, that's their own choice. I'm arguing fans insistence that adding one would somehow ruin it. It either comes down to 'I don't want normies playing my game', or 'It'll upset the balance', which all the DLC and patches prove it doesn't. And overall there's just this underlying sense of superiority to it, like Fromsoft is better than all those other games that do have Easy modes and adding one would be beneath them. And that just gets under my skin.
The people arguing against easy modes are using all kinds of whacky pseudo-religious soapboxing to justify their arguments. You have one side asking for a mechanically easier experience to allow them to experience the world and story of the game, something which could easily be accomplished without any major investment of resources. Case in Point, the ATLUS game Catherine is a puzzle game with three difficulty settings, normal, extra hard for people interested in puzzle mechanics and a story-centric easy mode. The Easy mode simply gives the player infinite lives and turn-reversing. If someone just wanted to be able to actually get through Dark souls in a reasonable ammount of time, would say, an infinite estus mode not solve most of that? The people who are against Easy modes are arguing that there is a wrong way to enjoy the game and people who aren't willing to conform to their 'right' way they don't deserve to play it. Difficulty isn't comparable to the text in a book or the actors in a movie, arguing against an easy-mode is more like arguing that it should be illegal to publish translated versions of the Oddysey and that anyone who wants to read it should learn ancient greek fluently. It also makes the assumption that people with disabilities are not 'true fans', that there are no natural impediments to motor functions or reaction time the player simply cannot help. I never heard an alpinist say they should cancel the paralympix because disabled atheltes are just lazy or that it dilutes the value of the sportSaelune said:
I don't agree that adding an easy mode that is up to the same quality of the game at large is more than changing a few numbers. Likely it would mean reworking whole sections and/or balancing abilities and upgrades to avoid weird difficulty humps. Think of the first few minibosses in Sekiro, or the black knights in DS1 - just reducing HP or dropping their damage per attack probably won't really help the average player, because you either know how to fight them or you don't. The difficulty is less their HP or damage, and more figuring out how to actually hurt them. In order to make those encounters easier something about their attack patterns and the openings they give you would need to change.Casual Shinji said:
Even if it was just reducing numbers, you have to look at the scope of the game before you decide that's simple or fast to do. How many unique enemies, bosses, minibosses, gimmick fights and so forth will need changes, and how much time per each, plus the time to have a tester run through and make sure none of the changes completely broke an npc. Plus the time it takes to have a tester confirm that the change the number tweak made actually meets the goal of the change. To put it in perspective, hiring one software engineer for day costs a little less than 1000 dollars (the engineer doesn't make that money personally, but they are billed out that way +/- depending on experience). How many of those, for how many days - it adds up fast, and there is a finite budget attached to a game that gets shared around. I actually manage budgets like these as part of my day job - you would not believe how fast something apparently innocuous eats into the hours I set aside for something else. And those jobs are for governments - the ultimate in 'not a shoestring budget' and 'we don't really sweat how much we spend' (I wish that was a joke so much) - and there is still a hard limit on how much you're gonna get.
I don't think using an easy mode is insulting or bad, I think that its a tough sell to say that a game has two difficulty settings so you should totally buy it because now you might be able to beat it. Like, if you looked at a game and decided not to buy it, would hearing that a difficulty option got added really change your mind about that? Either you think you will enjoy the gameplay or you don't - difficulty might be a factor, but you can't know to what extent until you actually play the game. If you don't like the idea of shimmying around a miniboss and tapping at them for about 5 minutes, being told there is now going to be a mode where you only do it for 2 minutes probably won't make you fall in love with the game. If its a question of wanting to be certain you can get to the end and see the story, I suggest Let's Plays, which is what I honestly do a lot of the time. I liked the look and the story of Nioh, but the gameplay made me want to pee myself, so I stopped playing and watched an LP instead - if you told me that they added a mode to make Nioh easier, I still wouldn't go back because easier gameplay won't make me enjoy the gameplay, it'll just let me do stuff I don't enjoy faster.
That's really the core of their conceit: "You shouldn't get to enjoy this AT ALL, unless you do so the way I SAY." Gamers can be so ridiculously petty.CyanCat47 said:
Saelune said:
Every game is designed with difficulty modes in mind because every dev makes a toolkit that allows them to change lots of stuff on the fly. A few games like a sports game with sliders or all the AI options of Dishonored merely make a good portion of the dev toolkit available to players, but every game has one. At some point in development Sekiro's default difficulty was basically easy mode and it was also hard mode too as the difficulty was getting tweaked. Even then, Sekiro does have 2 difficulty modes already so saying it isn't designed with difficulty modes in mind is just objectively false. I'm pretty sure every dev making action games has to have a slider for enemy AI aggressiveness as you literally see it in many other games as that's what taunting accomplishes in most action games plus higher difficulties of most action games raise enemy aggressiveness. Lastly, games are mainly tested for bugs vs balance via testers and the proof of that is literally how unbalanced the majority of games are (video game devs on the whole are horrible at balancing games compared to games in other mediums). Just look at how many shooters fail at balancing the same fucking guns we've been using for 20+ years (ARs, SMGs, shotguns, snipers, etc.). There's a core stat in Dark Souls 1 that literally doesn't do anything. Or just imagine how long game development would last if testers had to thoroughly test every change made to the difficulty over the course of development.EvilRoy said:
How is it not simple to remove the player's posture bar and make normal attacks do way more posture damage on enemies? Or to do away with the stamina bar and allow players to knock through enemy defenses much easier? Why would this need reworking of whole sections? What makes Souls games so special that it would be so hard for them to accomplish this, while other games can? And don't tell me it's because the difficulty in these games is perfectly balanced, it isn't.EvilRoy said:
You're telling me they couldn't just have shortcuts be open by default, or to take away limited uses of the Estus or prosthetic arm? This would require reworking entire sections and mechanics? It would simply be activating a cheat code, nothing more.
Again, other games with the same or even smaller budgets are able to implement a difficulty slider just fine. With how much talent Fromsoft has this really wouldn't be much of an issue at all.
You're again assuming other people play games or experience games as you do. Maybe having an Easy mode will make a player who doesn't feel confident in their skills get used to the controls, enemies, and skills so that they can get that confidence to tackle the default difficulty. And then there's the people who bought the game, who like the game, but then early on discover they simple can't progress due to the difficulty no matter how hard they try.
And it doesn't need to sell it. People generally expect games will have a couple of difficulty modes anyway. I don't think any game has ever sold itself on having an Easy mode.
Lots of Nintendo games actually are not made with difficulty modes, atleast not initially. Zelda, Kirby, Pok?mon. Plus RPGs like Pok?mon and Dark Souls have an inherent difficulty curve since you could always use poor stats or an unsuitable pokemon.Casual Shinji said:
If Dark Souls is too hard, maybe look up a build?
Fans can insist whatever they want, I am actively arguing there is nothing wrong with fans wanting an easy mode. But I also don't think games owe anyone variable difficulty if they don't want it. I see a lot of people pretty demanding of it though.
A lot of people arguing FOR easy modes are super aggressive about it. Maybe it was the hostile OP's fault, but part of why I was reluctant earlier to argue my side is because of how needlessly intense a lot of pro-easy mode people are acting.CyanCat47 said:
I think games should be made as hard or as easy as the developers want it to be. If they want to include easy modes, fine, if they don't fine. I do think making a game explicitly to be hard though, having an easy mode defeats that point.
I suppose I'm arguing from the standpoint that I expect you want an easy mode to be essentially the same game as the normal mode except easier to play. If you're alright with pulling core gameplay mechanics out then yes, it would be fairly easy to do. Although leaving all the shortcuts open would allow you to just skip big chunks of the game accidentally, and endless estus wouldn't really help in boss fights where its hard to find time to drink. I know the former because I picked the master key the first time I played DS1 and simply missed a whole section of the game.Casual Shinji said:
That's because its part of the budget - I'm talking relative terms not order of magnitude. Adding a difficulty mode costs money that otherwise goes to something else, since it all takes from the same pot. When you ask for an easy mode, you're asking for money that would otherwise go to something I like to go to something you like. We can argue about amounts or reasonableness or such, but fundamentally that is the discussion that is happening.
I'm not assuming people play or experience games as I do, I'm assuming that people make similar purchasing decisions to me. That is, I assume that people buy things they expect to enjoy on default no mods out of the box. I know some Elder Scrolls fans buy those games for the purpose of modding the shit out of them, but that's a different situation where established fans operate a certain way.
And yes, it has to sell itself. If we're going to make the argument that From fans are crazies that only like things because they're hard and elitist and this and that, then you have to accept that dropping that part of the appeal necessarily drops sales from people who actually feel that way, which means it needs to be made up somewhere, which means the people who want the easy mode are picking up the bill. Every decision costs something.
The last couple of Kirby games have been criticized for being too easy, and Zelda has recently included a harder difficulty in both Wind Waker HD and Breath of the Wild, probably due to fan demand.Saelune said:
I wouldn't know exactly what people find too hard about Dark Souls, I finished the game myself a couple of times, but I'd guess they probably would've done this already.
It's not about demanding it of the games, it's about arguing that it's totally possible to include and uninvasive to the experience of fans who are enjoying it as is. Having difficulty options in a Souls game would be no different than they are in Mega Man 11 or Resident Evil 2 remake. When the latter came out, were people complaining about how those who played on Assisted were getting a diluted experience, or how the inclusion of Assisted impacted those who played on Hardcore? Because from what I could tell the people who played on Hardcore enjoyed bragging about completing it with an S rank just as much as fans of Sekiro will undoubtedly enjoy bragging about their accomplishments.
The reason people might get a little heated over this is because Souls fans kind of have a reputation of claiming onwership over these games, how to play them, how to interpret the lore etc. And the dismissal of an Easy mode by them comes across as another example of them wanting to maintain this iron grip.
I can kind of respect wanting a certain subset of games to be hard. But I don't love the fetishizing of difficulty, or seeing that spread across the industry; they often seem to have a knack for trying to imitate a popular trend without any real clue as to what made it popular, and we have enough trouble with game companies wanting to effectively sell the player the resources that allow them to get to the "good stuff". Having an extra twenty hours to memorize the locations of items, the optimum load-outs for dealing damage, and the precise timing to dodge an enemy's patterns doesn't necessarily somehow make you a better person; it may just mean that your particular lifestyle means you have more time on your hands, and I rather resent the notion that people who don't have that don't deserve games that they can enjoy, too. (And to play those games without being nickled and dimed for premium currency and extra turns.)
It should also be noted that hard games can be good, but difficulty in itself is not an indicator of a game being good. It's too easy to toggle things like damage outputs, life gauges, and animation speeds to make a game harder than its peers without necessarily containing the depth and consideration that makes acquiring a skill to overcome that difficulty rewarding. Sometimes hard is just hard. (I haven't played Sekiro, so I couldn't say which camp it falls into; my games back-log is ridiculous.)
It should also be noted that hard games can be good, but difficulty in itself is not an indicator of a game being good. It's too easy to toggle things like damage outputs, life gauges, and animation speeds to make a game harder than its peers without necessarily containing the depth and consideration that makes acquiring a skill to overcome that difficulty rewarding. Sometimes hard is just hard. (I haven't played Sekiro, so I couldn't say which camp it falls into; my games back-log is ridiculous.)
I think this is a bit of a strawman. While I'm sure many Fromsoftware fans want those games to cater to them that's not the same as them wanting games in general to cater to how they want to play games. They just want there to be a very select set of games that finally caters to how they want to play games. Games like Dark Souls or Bloodborne are very rare in terms of their difficulty so when that starts to vanish then the people who wish for such rare hard games will have even less, or at least feel that way.TrulyBritish said:
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Hey, I have a job and a life, and I usually don't have 100s of hours to spend on a game either. That doesn't mean that 100 hour RPGs should have modes where they can be finished in 10 hours to cater to people like me with limited time. I don't ask CD Project to make The Witcher 3 shorter to suit my needs, or ask the Persona devs to make a mode that skips half the dungeons. I just choose not to play those games because they aren't for me.Tanis said:
Since when does an optional easy mode make the normal difficulty "vanish"? I agree with that last part of your statement though. The objection to this is based entirely upon "feels." As in, people feel like they're losing the ability to be superior to those "casuals" and therefore are getting their elitist GAMER panties in a twist.Hades said:
Since we're on this topic, I have to wonder how people feel about people modding the souls games(or games like them) to change the difficulty. It's fairly well known that there are a number of mods that change the game to make it harder by altering the rules/enemy placement/etc, but if mods were used to make the game easier, would that be acceptable?
And if it's not acceptable to mod the game to lower the difficulty, is it also not acceptable to mod the game to raise it?
And if it's not acceptable to mod the game to lower the difficulty, is it also not acceptable to mod the game to raise it?
Why would you have to take core mechanics out of Souls or Sekiro to make an Easy mode? Making an Easy mode is just giving the player more margin for error, which can be accomplished in many different ways. Simply starting a player out with 4 estus flasks instead of 2 and giving them 2 more vitality for a bigger health bar accomplishes that. Adjusting the damage/posture given/taken modifiers changes that. Giving them an extra resurrection changes that. None of that sacrifices any core mechanics nor does it add anything to the budget other than probably a couple extra hours of labor (assuming devs get paid per hour vs a salary), mainly discussing what route to go because the implementation on the coding side would take literal seconds of time. Or it can take literally no time or extra money because during development as the game is being tuned for difficulty, there will be a time when the lead designer feels the game is a bit too easy and then you simply save that template and you got your easy mode before you even have your default difficulty as Easy mode is literally just a natural by-product of getting to default difficulty. Thus, adding an Easy mode isn't taking anything away from the game that "hardcore" fans would've enjoyed and now is missing out on.EvilRoy said:
The problem with RPGs being too long is that they have so many elements that literally just waste your time vs needing to be there. I rarely play RPGs now not because I feel like 100 hours is too long but because I could be doing something better in that time. I'd easily play a game that is say 8+/10 good for 100 consecutive hours. RPGs are the longest games while also having the lowest percentage of engaging content.Dirty Hipsters said:
There's a boss rush mode mod for Dark Souls, that changes the game far more than lowering a bit of enemy health.Dalisclock said: