BuddhaMike said:
I guess I'm lost with this whole discussion. Dark Souls too difficult for you? Then don't play it. Simple as that. Making the game easier won't make it more enjoyable for you, or anyone else for that matter, since the whole purpose of the game was to make it that difficult. Other games have different purposes, and so come with sliding difficulty levels to adjust that player's enjoyment.
I can't understand why people keep suggesting that games have
one purpose and
one reason anyone might play that game. This just isn't true. If Dark Souls had only one directive -- to challenge -- then why have all the other things it has? Why have character-building, the world lore, the meticulously-crafted creature and environment designs, or anything else, when all the game has to do is just present tremendous but generic obstacles for you to overcome? Why not simply have the exact same game, only without all of those things just mentioned, and instead have it constructed of encounters with simple stick figures within plain, grey corridors. It would have the same gameplay, the same mechanics, the same enemies and level design -- just have all of the extraneous nonsense stripped away, so you're left only with pure, undiluted challenge.
I'll tell you why: Because the game would then be boring garbage. There's more to it than just "being challenging," and some players might prefer these elements over the one overriding directive that everyone seems to espouse about this game.
Take the Devil May Cry series, for instance. It was a franchise renowned not only for its pummeling difficulty, but for the absurdity, audaciousness, and stylishness that it wrapped itself in like a flowery cloak. The developers could have set only one difficulty, but they had the good sense to unlock
optional, easier difficulties for players who died too frequently, so that they would not have to utterly struggle to progress or, worse, hit a brick wall that prevented progressing entirely, so that they, too, could enjoy all the other features the game had on offer. Did anyone complain that the games were "dumbed" down by this tiered difficulty? If so, I've never heard them.
Now, having said that, it's ultimately up to the developers to make the game how they please, and if they want it to be crushing one hundred percent of the time, no exceptions, then so be it. That's just their vision. But for gamers -- not the developers, but gamers -- to want to gate people off from these aspects because they lack the abilities or drive to overcome the hurdles the game throws at them, is exclusionary ridiculousness. An easy mode, normal mode, and balls-difficult mode would give everyone exactly what they want, enabling them to take from the game what they wish, while subtracting nothing from anyone. Hell, go one further -- include a some special bosses, loot, and cutscenes for the hardest difficulty, so that people who challenge themselves will be rewarded and incentives will be offered to those who normally wouldn't feel inclined to step up the ante. I fail to see how that would be win-win all around.
Playing the Mass Effect series, however, I WAS Shepard. I was invested in that character, in his relationships, in his quest to save the galaxy. That wouldn't have been enhanced by making the game balls-ass difficult. Quite honestly, it would have interfered with my enjoyment of the game. That's because, for Mass Effect, difficulty wasn't a point of the game. Nor was it for Shen Mue, Uncharted, Dragon Age, or any other number of games I could name. When I play those games, I'm not playing them to achieve that rush that comes from testing myself against a difficult game. Nor do I want it to be that. I want the choice one night to immerse myself in a Choose Your Own Adventure kind of game, and the next night to see if I can beat Contra without using the cheat code. That's the awesome thing about gaming. It's a big enough tent to accommodate both POV's.
This is a part of the problem. Myself, when playing Mass Effect, I slide that difficulty bar to the farthest right it will go. For me, every encounter being risky and challenging adds to each twist and turn and impact of the story, since having Shepard absolutely cream his adversaries at every turn would make the games' threats hollow. I, of course, play it moreso for the story, characters, and setting, but the gunplay is a big part of it, as well. The same goes for when I played Uncharted and Dragon Age. By your reasoning, however, I'm not playing it the "right" way; in fact, by your reasoning, there shouldn't even
be a difficulty slider, and should instead be planted squarely on easy, for
everyone playing, because anything otherwise would hamper the game's true focus: story.
But I'm sure you don't really think that. Having a difficulty slider on those games detracts nothing from the enjoyment you garner when you're playing for immersion, and adds to the challenge and enjoyment for when I'm playing, and I sincerely doubt you'd argue otherwise.
It goes both ways, however. If I'm getting more enjoyment from challenge in games in which you don't find the appeal in challenge, then why should someone not be permitted to do the inverse in games like Dark Souls?
generals3 said:
Raikas said:
Isn't the operative word there that you can use that feature and not that you must? Because as long as you're not forced to use the easy mode, why are you bothered?
Let me answer that with an anecdote. In Civ IV you had the option to turn on/off the ability to use the world builder in game. Now even if it was turned on you didn't have to use it. Yet i ended up turning it off, why? Because when turned on when things got tough it was too tempting to give myself some extra units. I'm a mere human, if there is an easy road thrown at my face it will be hard to say "no". Hence why i prefer it not to be there. You know, if at the very least that "instinct" thing was only available in an easy difficulty mode i wouldn't mind that much as i could avoid the whole thing by playing it in hard mode. But that isn't the case, there is no way to turn off the temptation of "cheating".
I'd agree that this is a fair point, that always providing an "easy" option that can be toggled on and off would potentially cheapen the experience, even for those who seek a challenge, since the temptation to use it to get past that one really tough part will constantly whisper into your ear. But this is something that simple design decisions could correct. Like you said, making certain overly-empowering or -simplifying abilities isolated into certain difficulty modes would go a long way towards fixing it. Therefore, why would optional difficulty modes themselves not fall under this umbrella? If you're allowed to choose your difficulty once, and only once, it would prevent people from falling back to easy as a simple way out when the going gets rough, since they would lose tremendous amounts of progress by having to start over from the beginning.
