On Difficulty and the State of Gaming.

viking97

New member
Jan 23, 2010
858
0
0
Blood Brain Barrier said:
viking97 said:
Fact is, more people being able to play your game is good. Nothing can change that, it's simple business. If you don't like it, I'm sorry.
It may be business, but in any other sphere of actual content it's the sign of stagnation. What is accessible is what is common. Being in touch with the masses means antagonism to nobody, which means nothing is being pushed at, no direction being strived for. If we seek only the broadest audience then no content is, can be, above anything else and everything is valued equally.

These are good enough reasons to oppose difficulty levels and dumbing-down. It's not a wanting to be in an exclusive club, though it may be for some.
This is why difficulty settings exist. QED, and such.
 

Toxic Sniper

New member
Mar 13, 2013
143
0
0
bigwon said:
I feel although legit as 'pattern memorizing' is as an argument....alot of my mishaps in the game i found were attributed to the lack of grinding for stats/souls or character build. If you could just bolster the player with enough stats to make the game less about grinding for stats and just learning the 'patterns' I think you might just have a winner. Reason I think you'd need stats boosted is just because of those certain scenario's that just completely decimate you....I'm looking at this mother fucker! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Tf8rAyI85I I DON"T CARE about the exploit! THOSE TWO MOTHER FUCKING DOGS!!!GOD WHY!!?!?!??!GOD WHY!?>!??!?!?
You can skip the Capra Demon with the Master Key. Take the elevator down to New Londo Ruins and walk through the Valley of Drakes to Blighttown. You also skip the Depths and most of Upper Blighttown by taking this route. The only real reason to fight him is if you want something from the Depths like the Large Ember.
 

CannibalCorpses

New member
Aug 21, 2011
987
0
0
Not this crap again...

It wasn't the difficulty that stopped me playing Dark souls because it is fairly easy and has all the powergaming aspects of any good RPG...it was just a shit boring game with barely enough narrative to give me reason to play and the multiplayer aspect is purely for harassing other people. I felt like a woodpecker trying to fell a tree when fighting almost everything and putting an 'easy(child)' difficulty in wouldn't have made me want to play it any more.

I am a hardcore gamer. I play games at their hardest setting so i can point and laugh at the pathetic bastards who struggle on child difficulty but i don't whine that the easier difficulties are there, because they aren't there for me. The only time it is an issue for me is when the developers make me play their game on an easier setting to unlock adult difficulty which generally means they gimp their harder setting by forcing me to know how to beat everything in advance. I like bashing my head against a brick wall wondering if what i'm doing is correct or maybe i'm trying to do something i'm not allowed. Trial and error isn't for everyone, i know.

In response to the original post: 10/10 for managing to capture almost every cliche in your post. You mentioned hand holding *tick*. You mentioned older games *tick*. You mention retro-games *tick* You speak of what you want like as though your view is more important than that of others (lets call that elitism huh?) *tick*. You write nothing that hasn't been said before but try to pass it off as though it is your opinion and not a parroting of the opinions of others that have gone before *tick*.

All we need now is for you to try and tell me that the reason i didn't play the game to the end is because your special and i'm not while ignoring my reasons for disliking the game and we will be back to where i got my last warning from lol.
 

Magicman10893

New member
Aug 3, 2009
455
0
0
Korten12 said:
Escapist before Dark Souls, "Games are getting too easy for the casual crowd."

Escapist after Dark Souls, "This game needs to be dumbed down for the casual crowd.."
The key difference is that the "before Dark Souls" statement was referring to games being dumbed for the entire audience, such as Mass Effect 2 and 3 having more watered down RPG elements for everyone that plays them, thus ruining the experience for the RPG fans that were with Mass Effect to begin with. On the other hand, the "after Dark Souls" argument is about the addition of an OPTIONAL (as in, you don't have to use it) easy difficulty mode for those put off by difficult games, thus preserving the difficulty that current Dark Souls fans enjoy while opening up to more casual players.

If Dark Souls 2 itself was dumbed down and was *just* an easy mode instead of an optional feature, that would be a cause for concern.
 

PedroSteckecilo

Mexican Fugitive
Feb 7, 2008
6,732
0
0
Personally I just don't have time for "Hard" games anymore, got a wife and we're talking about having kids, got a social life, I'm starting my own small business, I have a full time job, I need to get in shape and I really want to take up home beer brewing one of these days.

But I still want to play videogames... you know... good ones, not Farmville, Not Angry Birds... I want Mass Effects, Fallouts, Dishonoreds etc. but I seriously do not have time for games that don't respect mine like Dark Souls, Ni No Kuni and pretty much anything that requires excessive trial and error and backtracking.

So yeah... I'd rather they keep easy/casual modes in the "good/real" videogames I like to play... because I really don't enjoy casual games but I don't have the time or patience for hard games anymore, I've got other things I'm doing with my life.
 

AT God

New member
Dec 24, 2008
564
0
0
Solution: Difficulty modes. If it is a game with puzzles where difficulty can't be changed, people will always post hints and walkthroughs online.

I believe most games have good difficulty scales, I haven't played a game that I couldn't beat, I can't 100% some games or get all the rediculous achievements but I can at least beat them (Except Super Meat Boy, but I just haven't tried hard enough, doubt I could beat the game's dark world though so I guess I'll never unlock the real ending.)

I do have a problem of some games being too easy, even on the hardest setting. The best example of this recently was Sniper Elite Nazi Zombies. On the hardest difficulty it takes only a few attempts with a random group of players to beat any mission.
 

Torrasque

New member
Aug 6, 2010
3,441
0
0
GreaterGamingGood said:
I'd just like to address this issue. I've been thinking about it a lot and I've decided to speak up, mainly to find out how others feel about it.
I recently watched Jims "Dumbing Down for the Filthy Casuals" video and I'm a little concerned by his views, mostly that they could be the majority view. I'll be honest, I just don't understand them.
Not only do I believe that it's a shortsighted view, but it could in fact be (and probably is) hurting the gaming industry (and me). I'm going to try to put my thoughts across as clear as I can, so bare with me. Since Dark Souls was the main focus of the video, I'm going to use that as the example game. There will be others, but I'll use that as the primary focus too.
(I'd like to start by saying I have played/completed the game. These are my concerns over the industry as a whole, not just the Dark Souls issue, and reflective of my personal opinions.)

The main point was that there's no reason Dark Souls shouldn't have an easy mode because it's not hurting anyone to have one and it's allowing more gamers to play the game that may not have ordinarily done so.
My points against.

1. Learn the game. It's as simple as that, harsh maybe, but true. Dark Souls, to me, was a throw back to the classics, a game you had to learn by trial and error, forcing you to adapt and to play the game smartly in order to progress. That was the point of the game. I honestly can't stress this enough. One of the game's core mechanics was it's difficulty, if you remove that, if the option even exists, it's a detriment to the experience. The tag line is "You're going to die". Doesn't that say it all? I know it's an extreme example, but I don't remember anyone asking for an easy mode for Battletoads or Ghouls & Ghosts. Let's be honest with ourselves, those games were awesome /because/ they pushed us to the max.

2. It cheapens the game and gamers. By even giving gamers the option to make the game easier you're not only cheapening the experience within the game itself, but you're also making gamers reliant on these methods. Many people might think that adding the option of difficulty allows people to adapt their skills in order to play the higher difficulties. While this is true for /some/ I disagree almost all the time. It's my opinion that it actually hinders smart thinking and skill progression because nothing's pushing you to improve. If it's too easy there's nothing to think about.
People might also say that "That's not you're problem. Why do you care if some people play it on the easy setting." That leads to my next point.

3. It does affect me. One of the main points of Jim's video and perhaps many other people is "It doesn't affect you." Well I think it does. I like these games. I like innovation. I like new, unique, varied gameplay. If the concern of the developer (or publisher) is "Well, we need to make it easier for gamers, because last time it was too hard for them." how long is it gonna be before they say something like "Hey do you want to make Dark Souls 3?" "Nah, those games were too hard, remember? We should just make a generic game that everyone can play, it'll be less hassle for us in the long run and we'll make more money." You might be thinking that it'll never happen, but it /is/ happening. I can't help but think that this "pandering to the casuals" is going to break what little innovation the industry has left.

Side note. It's kinda sickening when I look at modern games and I see how they lead you by the
hand. Every. Step. Of. The. Way. It's tedious and often frustrating. This hand-holding gameply
spurs from this exact kind of thinking. Examples; Tomb Raider (2013) I haven't played it yet, but I'm looking forward to it. But my heart pretty much sank when I found out that you could get a map that showed the locations of all the treasures/artifacts. Shouldn't those be, you know, hidden? Assassins Creed III (Haven't played) - Same thing, items/treasures displayed on mini-map. Ni No Kuni is probably one of the worst examples I've seen in a while. While I enjoyed the game, I can't help but feel it would have been immensely better without the constant hand-holding >.>
(I'd like to see you get 100% on the original Tomb Raider. -Without a guide-)

4. Older gamers could do it, why can't you? Most games in the classic Megadrive/Snes era were difficult and still are even today. But, we persevered and kept playing them. We completed them (eventually). Imagine if Sega re-released Sonic the Hedgehog and added an easy mode. Yeah, less enemies, less obstacles, less danger, less gameplay action, yeah! That's awesome right? Wouldn't you be horrified to your f****** core? When is it going to stop? When Sonic just runs across a completely flat screen with no enemies? Is that what you want? Huh? Huh?!

I could probably go on, but what I'm trying to say is that, to me, this is a complete non-issue. It should never have been brought up in the first place and it should never have even /existed/ as a problem. I'm not saying I'm some kind of super, elite, gaming genius because I can play Dark Souls and you can't, you can too. I died a lot in that damn game (and Demon's Souls), but I learned how to play it and I enjoyed that experience. I felt like I'd accomplished something and honestly, I want more gamers to feel like that. I don't think I'm alone in saying that games have become really stale and almost insultingly easy lately. Experiences like this don't come around very often and attitudes like this hurt the chances of there ever being any more.

I'd like to know what others feel about this. Am I alone in my feelings?
I used to be like you, that I demanded my difficult games to be difficult and that was just the only way to play them. You use Dark Souls as an example--a game I don't consider that difficult--and I will use Fire Emblem: Awakening as mine. I'm not going to get into a discussion about Dark Souls being a lot easier than people give it credit, because that is pointless for this discussion.

When I first picked up Fire Emblem Awakening (FEA from now on) and started playing it, I started a new game on hard and saw that there was a setting called "casual mode". Alarm bells immediately went off in my head. This casual mode removed one of the key elements of Fire Emblem games: that when your units die, they stay dead for the rest of the game (unless they are integral to the story, they stay alive but you can't use them anymore). This part of Fire Emblem games has always made them really fucking hard at times. You play a mission for 40 minutes then because the enemy AI focusses on one of your characters that you thought was completely ok, you have to restart the level all over again. This has caused me to be completely stuck at certain points, and completely stop playing for weeks at a time at others. Half of the difficulty of Fire Emblem games has been that, "if you fuck up, you have to do everything over again" aspect. So I cringed at the thought of people playing a Fire Emblem game without that element of difficulty. I even made a thread here on The Escapist about it, lol.

So I skipped that option, selected "classic mode" and started playing. Well I got to the second mission, and because I wasn't using a unit of mine that I thought would soak up exp (there's always one of those guys in Fire Emblem games to help you in the earlier phases) I was getting absolutely owned. The second level! I restarted the game on normal-classic and have been enjoying the game ever since. There are still parts that frustrate me, but if I play cautious enough, I can get past them.

Anyways, I realized shortly after making that thread complaining about "casual mode" and on my 3rd/4th replay of the second mission on that Hard file, that the casual mode is actually a really great idea. You can mess up without completely ruining your game, can play much more aggressive, and you can try things out that you wouldn't have tried before. I'm definitely going to play the harder difficulties with the casual mode on, just because I don't want to go bald from frustration.

You talk about how older games are unrelentingly hard, well you are making one big error with your logic. Older games aren't hard because the developers decided, "Hey, lets make a game that doesn't have a map, the player has to memorize where they are in the facility and remember where they have been for the whole game!" or "Lets give them an item that they have no idea how to use so they spam every button and use it on every enemy they find so they can figure out it's uses". They could have done those things, but because they were limited by the technology of their time and because they were really inexperienced in making games, they didn't add those things. Playing a Metroid game without a map would make me break controllers. If I had to spend an hour of testing with every new upgrade and powerup I got while playing a Metroid game, I probably wouldn't play the game. Did you ever think that newer games are easier because they are better at teaching the player how to play? I'm not suggesting that games that hold your hand and show you how to do everything at a very slow pace (like Ni No Kuni is sometimes) are better games because they are better at teaching you how to play, I'm saying that a game that does more to show you how to play, is better than a game that doesn't. Try to imagine playing Sim City with no knowledge of previous games, and no guide that lets you know how to play. You'd spend your first 24 hours figuring out how to play, and that is no way to play a game. Yes, there is something to be said for games that teach you how to play in very clever ways like visual ques, Megaman X is a very good example of that. But there are some games where way too much teaching is a good thing. There were parts of Ni No Kuni that I had no idea what I was doing unless the game told me what to do and how to do it. I love it when games do this, because it lets me just play the game instead of playing Q&A for an hour.

On hand holding: there are a lot of games that let you turn off tutorials altogether and let you figure things out for yourself (or just play the game since you know how to play). I think more games should have this option to let "old school gamers" like you test things out and figure things out for yourself or to just breeze through the game. You are right for one thing, its annoying when a game is telling me how to look and aim when I already have that figured out or I've played the game before. The only advice I can give to you if you're frustrated by that, is to just ignore it or grin and bear it. If a game stops and tells you every 5 minutes how to do 'this' or what to press to do 'that', then that game is designed badly and will suffer for it. However, that doesn't mean the game is super easymode, I have played games that have in-game tutorials and detailed descriptions of every item, enemy and area, but are still really fucking hard. StarCraft 2 even has a "what units this unit is effective against/what units this unit is weak against" chart, which should mean that every game you play you should have figured out easily, but that is not the case, the game is still very challenging.

I get that this is all really TL;DR, but I really think that this way of thinking that "games should be the way they were back when I started gaming!" is really ignorant and stupid. Games will continue to evolve and change, thats just how things work. There will be games that "harken back to the old days" or "throwback games", but you'll just have to get used to games being different. You also have to--yes, you--stop associating "the game doesn't tell you how to do anything" with "difficult" and "the game tells you how to do everything, even shows you at times" with "really easy". Game difficulty comes from your ability to do the correct thing at the correct moment of gameplay, not from your ability to know what the correct thing is to do at the correct moment. The ability to know what to do comes from practice, research, and trial and error.
 

Atmos Duality

New member
Mar 3, 2010
8,473
0
0
s69-5 said:
Agreed. I have participated in this debate on many occasions as well. I don't think this dead horse is going to give us anything new. And I don't feel like getting 50 replies with people calling me unwarranted names again.

So I'm just going to plop myself onto the couch here and watch this with you. I brought my own popcorn so it's cool.

Personalized popcorn is the best. I have a half-and-half bucket of cheese-butter popcorn.
Though I'm going to have to pass on the 3D glasses.

Torrasque said:
Megaman X is a very good example of that. But there are some games where way too much teaching is a good thing. There were parts of Ni No Kuni that I had no idea what I was doing unless the game told me what to do and how to do it. I love it when games do this, because it lets me just play the game instead of playing Q&A for an hour.
Tangentially, Megaman X5 and X6 are great examples of modal difficulty that transforms a game.
It's done not just by making enemies tougher and slashing item drop rates (or removing them entirely), but by giving enemies entirely new attacks, placing enemies in nastier locations, and even altering some of their behaviors beyond just attacking.

Also tangentially: Fire Emblem Awakening has serious balance issues COMPLETELY unrelated to any modal difficulty; let alone "Casual Mode".

I will not spoil anything, but once I made it past a few of the opening chapters, I just started steamrolling the game. And that's on Classic-Hard.
 

bug_of_war

New member
Nov 30, 2012
887
0
0
kman123 said:
Look at that, you tried to hide your Dark Souls rant but in the end it's as clear as day. Jesus Christ, another one to add to the pile. Brilliant.
HAHAHA! Yes! THIS all the way.

I just love the OP's reasons for why it's bad because it shows that they're just mad because they can longer just say "I finished Dark Souls" without having to then add on, "On hard mode".

GreaterGamingGood said:
"1. Learn the game. It's as simple as that, harsh maybe, but true"
Okay, why don't you learn to run faster, or learn how to understand advanced physics? Some people just aren't good at some things and are incapable of ever going further than what they have already achieved. To alienate an audience that wants to play your game but can't because they lack the experience/skill is stupid and is the sign of a bad developer, not a good one.


GreaterGamingGood said:
"2. It cheapens the game and gamers"
But it really doesn't. A game doesn't become "less worthy" because it gives people the option to have an easier time throughout a difficult game. Only elitists think this way, and that's because in the real world their other exploits have already been achieved by others or even surpassed, so they hold onto that one hard video game they once played and that is how they find themselves important. YOU are actually making a game cheap by putting your rules onto it, you are saying it's no longer worth any 'true' gamers time because it now has an easy mode when in reality YOUR opinion is one of a few and many disagree. A majority of people are glad there is an easy mode in the works because they can then play a game they have heard good things about and not have their experienced ruined by the fact that they lack the skills to play the game. Look, if you don't like the game anymore, that's fine, you are entitled to your opinion, but when you start saying that the game is worthless based on something that is ONLY an opinion than that is where the lines in the sand are drawn. Gameplay wise nothing has changed if you pick the hard difficulty, so therefore the game is still the same, it's just going to have a larger fan base due to allowing players to choose an easier mode.

GreaterGamingGood said:
3. It does affect me. One of the main points of Jim's video and perhaps many other people is "It doesn't affect you." Well I think it does. I like these games. I like innovation. I like new, unique, varied gameplay. If the concern of the developer (or publisher) is "Well, we need to make it easier for gamers, because last time it was too hard for them." how long is it gonna be before they say something like "Hey do you want to make Dark Souls 3?" "Nah, those games were too hard, remember? We should just make a generic game that everyone can play, it'll be less hassle for us in the long run and we'll make more money." You might be thinking that it'll never happen, but it /is/ happening. I can't help but think that this "pandering to the casuals" is going to break what little innovation the industry has left.
You can't truly believe that adding an easy mode will loose innovation. Games have had easy modes since the playstation 1 (and I think probably before that), yet there are still games coming out with loads of innovation. To assume that an easy mode will eventually lead to, "Lets only make generic games" tells me that you really, REALLY don't play that many games. Right now there are dosens of indie games on Steam that are selling quite well, there are also many tripple A games that still have innovation. For example, Limbo, Amnesia, Assassins Creed (even the 3rd game had innovation(I'm talking about the naval missions)), Mass Effect, Trials Evolution, Far Cry 3 (I didn't like it but it had many 'new' things in it), Heavy Rain (same as before), Mirrors Edge, I could go on but I think I've made my point. This goes to show that games will not lack innovation, and that you're being pessemistic in believing that an easy mode in Dark Souls is just a step away from generification of all games in the future. So I'm sorry, easy mode does not effect you.
GreaterGamingGood said:
Side note. It's kinda sickening when I look at modern games and I see how they lead you by the
hand. Every. Step. Of. The. Way. It's tedious and often frustrating. This hand-holding gameply
spurs from this exact kind of thinking. Examples; Tomb Raider (2013) I haven't played it yet, but I'm looking forward to it. But my heart pretty much sank when I found out that you could get a map that showed the locations of all the treasures/artifacts. Shouldn't those be, you know, hidden? Assassins Creed III (Haven't played) - Same thing, items/treasures displayed on mini-map. Ni No Kuni is probably one of the worst examples I've seen in a while. While I enjoyed the game, I can't help but feel it would have been immensely better without the constant hand-holding >.>
(I'd like to see you get 100% on the original Tomb Raider. -Without a guide-)
I haven't played the new Tomb Raider so I can't comment, but this really, REALLY goes to show you have very little idea of what you're talking about. Assassins Creed 3 only shows the treasures on the mini map after you've gotten a direct line of sight on the treasure. You can hear the jingling noise, so you look around, and eventually you find it. The only time treasure becomes book marked on your map is when you pay 3000-5000 dollars for the maps. Yes, maps, as in you have to make dosens of purchases before you know where every chest/almanac/feather/peg leg trinkets are. It costs somewhere around 50,000 in game dollars to unlock ALL of the treasure maps. I went through the whole game not buying any tresure maps not because I had to force myself, but because you NEED to hold onto money for certain missions, equipment and upgrades.

GreaterGamingGood said:
"4. Older gamers could do it, why can't you? Most games in the classic Megadrive/Snes era were difficult and still are even today."
Most older games are not hard, I don't know where this idea is coming from that games use to be extremely hard. I have played lots and lots of old games and there are very few that I ever found being overly difficult. And when there were games that were difficult, it was more because the controls are terrible rather than the game being hard. I can only ever recall the Zelda games on the 64 being hard but not due to the controls. And let me tell you something, if you think your really talented at gaming I dare you to completely finish Predator Concrete Jungle on Blooded (hard) mode. That game will show you what your skills are worth and rub it in your face at how bad you really are.

TLDR: You're being an Elitist and it is you who is in fact cheapening the gaming industry and making games not fun to play.
 

Torrasque

New member
Aug 6, 2010
3,441
0
0
Atmos Duality said:
s69-5 said:
Agreed. I have participated in this debate on many occasions as well. I don't think this dead horse is going to give us anything new. And I don't feel like getting 50 replies with people calling me unwarranted names again.

So I'm just going to plop myself onto the couch here and watch this with you. I brought my own popcorn so it's cool.

Personalized popcorn is the best. I have a half-and-half bucket of cheese-butter popcorn.
Though I'm going to have to pass on the 3D glasses.

Torrasque said:
Megaman X is a very good example of that. But there are some games where way too much teaching is a good thing. There were parts of Ni No Kuni that I had no idea what I was doing unless the game told me what to do and how to do it. I love it when games do this, because it lets me just play the game instead of playing Q&A for an hour.
Tangentially, Megaman X5 and X6 are great examples of modal difficulty that transforms a game.
It's done not just by making enemies tougher and slashing item drop rates (or removing them entirely), but by giving enemies entirely new attacks, placing enemies in nastier locations, and even altering some of their behaviors beyond just attacking.

Also tangentially: Fire Emblem Awakening has serious balance issues COMPLETELY unrelated to any modal difficulty; let alone "Casual Mode".

I will not spoil anything, but once I made it past a few of the opening chapters, I just started steamrolling the game. And that's on Classic-Hard.
Oh I know about the balancing issues, I am a little over halfway through the game and Donnel is as overpowered at lvl 7 Hero as Hector is at lvl 10 Great Lord with Armads, and he's just one of my characters lol. The reclass system is hilariously overpowered.

One of my favorite things about Megaman games is how well the teach you how to play the game.
 

Atmos Duality

New member
Mar 3, 2010
8,473
0
0
Torrasque said:
Oh I know about the balancing issues, I am a little over halfway through the game and Donnel is as overpowered at lvl 7 Hero as Hector is at lvl 10 Great Lord with Armads, and he's just one of my characters lol. The reclass system is hilariously overpowered.
Even if you ignore the effective infinite exp and ability to max characters with enough grind, it's very easy to break the game by just feeding a handful of super-characters exp and pairing them up.
But even if you couldn't do that, the brain-dead "bumrush-dogpile AI" destroys most necessity for strategic thought, and that is probably the most disappointing thing about FE: Awakening for me.

One of my favorite things about Megaman games is how well the teach you how to play the game.
It's a very intuitive series by far and large, and why I love playing around with it even to this day.

Though the point was in relation to the "Modal Difficulty = Bad" argument I keep seeing. It's not impossible to make it work; but very few developers really put the proper effort into making it work, or scarcely experiment with the concept at all.
 

Little Gray

New member
Sep 18, 2012
499
0
0
Ok look another thread on why Dark Souls should/should not have an easy mode.

bigwon said:
Yeah i separate my idea's with big lines for now..

I feel although legit as 'pattern memorizing' is as an argument....alot of my mishaps in the game i found were attributed to the lack of grinding for stats/souls or character build. If you could just bolster the player with enough stats to make the game less about grinding for stats and just learning the 'patterns' I think you might just have a winner. Reason I think you'd need stats boosted is just because of those certain scenario's that just completely decimate you....I'm looking at this mother fucker! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Tf8rAyI85I I DON"T CARE about the exploit! THOSE TWO MOTHER FUCKING DOGS!!!GOD WHY!!?!?!??!GOD WHY!?>!??!?!?
The entire game is actually about learning patterns and paying attention and not really about stats at all. The capra demon and his dogs are actually fairly weak you just have to know when to dodge and when to block. While the Capra Demon is relatively easy once you master those its still probably the hardest fight in the entire game. Its the first and really the only time the game forces you to pay attention to your surroundings and fight in a small area.




Blood Brain Barrier said:
viking97 said:
Fact is, more people being able to play your game is good. Nothing can change that, it's simple business. If you don't like it, I'm sorry.
It may be business, but in any other sphere of actual content it's the sign of stagnation. What is accessible is what is common. Being in touch with the masses means antagonism to nobody, which means nothing is being pushed at, no direction being strived for. If we seek only the broadest audience then no content is, can be, above anything else and everything is valued equally.

These are good enough reasons to oppose difficulty levels and dumbing-down. It's not a wanting to be in an exclusive club, though it may be for some.
But if you add multiple difficulty settings your point becomes meaningless. Its not like they are taking away the normal difficulty setting and making the entire game easier. With multiple difficulty settings you can have a game that has the option of being brutally punishing and difficult for those that want that and not for those that dont.
 

Windcaler

New member
Nov 7, 2010
1,332
0
0
The entire problem with Jims video was two fold. 1. He didnt play the game, meaning he was speaking from a position of ignorance in what the game can really do. It highlights why people shouldnt talk about subjects they know nothing about. 2. The entire video was an attack on the Dark souls community through a logical fallacy. He misdirected the actual issue that most community members were presenting and made us into elitists.

The crux of the entire discussion, IMO, is that dark souls is a niche game and people dont want to accept that
 

bigwon

New member
Jan 29, 2011
256
0
0
Little Gray said:
Ok look another thread on why Dark Souls should/should not have an easy mode.

The entire game is actually about learning patterns and paying attention and not really about stats at all. The capra demon and his dogs are actually fairly weak you just have to know when to dodge and when to block. While the Capra Demon is relatively easy once you master those its still probably the hardest fight in the entire game. Its the first and really the only time the game forces you to pay attention to your surroundings and fight in a small area.
yeah although i do feel your right on this one....i think they could've tweaked that section a bit. I remember just going in there and having all 3 of them literally pouncing for the kill. Although it was relatively easy once i made it to that exploit near the top of the stair way....so many times were i'd just get nipped once and be dead within 2 seconds from the knock back effect.

like i'd die alot in the game, and made it a decent ways in....that underground magma city. All the dying, and hardship all felt really well paced, and balanced besides that one part (maybe other points but that was a OMG! standout...hehe).

Still if it meant just having original well crafted games like this I could care less about compromising for a wider audience. They seem to be successful enough already, and that's amazing in itself...we need more niche games.