You want to feel alienation? But isn't this what you are already experiencing?
As for the bait: I don't need easy mode, I don't want easy mode; but it really isn't my decision.
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You want to feel alienation? But isn't this what you are already experiencing?
As for the bait: I don't need easy mode, I don't want easy mode; but it really isn't my decision.
Hard games should be hard. Welcome to Tarkov
One thing I've never understood is devs making a game that is 100% intended to be difficult to complete and then some people come along to said game that has essentially been advertised as a hard game and complaining it's too hard and an easy mode should be implemented for them.
Not every game needs an easy mode and I fully support the idea that devs shouldn't have to put in an easy mode because people think a game is too hard. Especially if it's a souls game. They've never been easy and hopefully never will be.
All of the Souls games kinda have an easy mode baked in. Ranged weapons/Sorceries generally provide an easier experience. Honestly though, I just find I don't really care if there is an easy mode or not. I enjoyed the challenge and if a difficulty slider was added, it would not have detracted from my experience in the slightest. I played through the games for the challenge and I enjoyed it immensely. If someone else doesn't enjoy the challenge, then that's okay. I'm not going to gatekeep them. We're all SunBro's at our core and I will always drop my Summon Sign for others in need to find
Praise the Sun, my friend
All difficult games should have an easy mode for accessibility.
Signed, a Dark Souls enjoyer.
Honestly... I disagree. What is accessibility? Every souls game has been beaten with dance pads, rock band drum kits and guitars. They're also frequently beaten by people with serious disabilities using specialized controllers. Input speed is not an issue here, Souls has always been about carefully choosing your moves to manage the end lag and stamina cost of your actions. It's about making the right move, not about moving quickly or pressing a lot of buttons at once.
IMHO, accessibility is frequently cited as an excuse for lower difficulties here, when in reality the difficulty isn't a serious part of the barrier for disabled players. It could use better accessibility options, like configurable colourblind modes, audio indicators, more configurable text size, some kind of clear colour indicators on attacks for low vision, but difficulty? No.
There are also lots of good reasons not to add explicit difficulty options, which is y'know, why From Soft haven't done it yet.
Accessibility isn't just a case of 'accessible to the handicapped', man.
That's a fair argument then, but... this is literally what accessibility means, whether or not you can "access" the thing.
If someone isn't willing to invest the time or frustration into Souls, then fair enough, but that's a matter of priorities/convenience, not a matter of accessibility.
Also, frankly, the difficulty of Souls for regular people is insanely overblown. Stuff like "Prepare to Die" is just a marketing gimmick, and the games have become substantially easier and more flexible over time. Like in Elden Ring, where you can leave bosses for later, and can frequently just bypass them entirely, experiment with an insane variety of builds, use effective ways to grind ridiculous amounts of souls, and just generally become ridiculously powerful. They've done essentially everything but creating an explicit "easy mode" to make the game playable for as many people as possible. If you want an easy mode, basically every souls game has builds or guides that function as that easy mode.
Difficulty counts as an access barrier. You always have to consider that there are people who, for whatever reason, have a skill capacity that is lower than required for the game in question. And for those people the game will be inaccessible.
Time is also an accessibility factor. If a person with a disability or lower skill has to grind and extend the playtime for 3-4x what a normal player would have, that’s not inaccessible but it’s less accessible comparatively. Especially if that kills the fun.
That being said obviously these things can be tweaked within reason and the problem can’t be solved for every player unfortunately. And they don’t need to be. Some games can just be too hard for some players.
The ultimate point for me just seems to be that the community needs to be listened to. You shouldn’t ever be in the positions as a dev where you are telling disabled or low skill gamers to get good or no dice. If a large portion of people are saying “I’d love to enjoy the art you’ve made, but I can’t. My disability/inability is stopping me” then I’d change my approach.
I think there is a balance that can be struck, grinding is one of the balances and you’re right there are ways to make those games easier that way. But the other people are also right, the games need to be hard sometimes. I just want people to stop being dismissive of people who want to enjoy the same entertainment and art but can’t just because of difficulty.
For mechanically difficult games, definitely agree. Celeste is an example I usually bring up - it's a platformer that can get pretty tough at times, especially in the after-story optional levels. But it also has one of the most flexible and useful accessibility modes I've ever seen. It allows you to adjust basically every aspect of the game a player might struggle with (game speed, additional jumps, timed mechanics, you name it). And the game itself is very good as well.
It also has a different sort of difficulty. It's all in bite size chunks, and you can try again immediately. It never feels punishing in the way Souls games do.
I agree. It's a good think FromSoft doesn't make difficult games. They make challenging games. Their games can be trivialize by meeting it on its own terms. If you pay attention to what things are weak to, it's often pretty easy. Also, you always have the option to level up and improve your situation. Outside of secondary content, everything is easy, but it wants to challenge you to see if you're paying attention. The issue is this is abnormal for modern games, so it's seen by some as being hard. Modern gamers expect to have their hands held, which I don't think developers should always oblige if it weakens the intended experience.
I've never had vitriol spewed at me quite like when I argue in favor of easy mode for soulslike games. I'm at a point where I hate soulslike games, half because I don't want to spend ten hours on a boss that I can't beat, and half because I don't want to associate with soulsborne players
Jeeze SOMEONE wants attention!
I love how all the comments insist on discussing the difficulty, despite OP literally pointing it out as bait.
That's good bait.
I know it's bait. I'm just looking for an opportunity to unload.
The circle of "just want to feel something" wraps round and round.
Easy mode ftw. I've only got so much free time. I wanna chill when I'm gaming.
Counterpoint: not every game needs to be chill
It's a choice. You don't have to take it
Yes it’s a choice, but there need to be games that are difficult for that choice matter.
Many hard modes are just bullet sponges and extra grinding.
Where else can we find difficult games that are meant to be difficult in every aspect and not just a tacked on mode with larger health numbers?
That’s what souls games are. If you want an easy mode play ER or a different game. Not every game is designed for you.
You can also choose to play a game designed to be easy. A game like hotline Miami on “chill mode” is not the same as the actually hard hotline Miami.
If you want to just walk from cut scene to cut scene just watch someone else play the game.
The choice existing would impact how players play, which may also go against the artistic vision. You don't have to play a non-chill game.
I am playing Sekiro with a easy mode mod.
Even with being able to kill everything with 1-4 hits, I was getting TRASHED by bosses. People play this without the mod? 😭
You need to understand the absolute bliss of finnally beating that fucking ape, after hours of trying only for you to decapitate him, then the arm reaches over and picks up the head for the second health bar. Do you know what the reward is after days of attempts? 20 minutes later, you fight two at once, and you'll do it like it was stomping a goomba in Mario Brothers.
I've never touched any game of this series. If I need to replay a section or fight in a game more than 3 times it annoys me so much, I need to take a break. This often led to me never playing that game again, because only thinking about being stuck at that spot again kills all the fun for me.
In Cyberpunk for example my car got stuck in the middle of nowhere by a glitch and I would have needed to walk for god knows how long to find another vehicle. Needless to say I never played that game again, even though I was not nearly even half way through and liked it up until that point.
I'm willing to replay a section as many times as it takes, as long as I consistently feel a sense of progression and improvement. The problem is that it can take dozens of attempts before I realize I'm plateauing, and I have to give up.
I cannot tell you how much I want to play Remnant: From the Ashes. In between boss fights, I'm in love with the game. The story is deeply fascinating, and I love the gameplay. There is exactly one boss in that game that I was able to beat without going online and waiting for some random to join and carry. Eventually I got to a point where in order to upgrade gear, I had to kill bosses, and in order to kill bosses, I had to upgrade gear. Uninstalled it after I made no story progress for like 10 hours.
Contrast that with Outriders. Considered by many to be an awful game, it was my favorite game that I've played this year. The story is deeply fascinating, I love the gameplay, and there is exactly one boss in that game that I couldn't beat at the highest available difficulty. So I turned the difficulty down, breezed through it, and turned it back up afterward, and there was no penalty for doing that.
Did you not just hit the "summon a vehicle" button that the game gives you to summon one of the many cars the game gives out for free? Cause it's there. I believe they tell you about it during the prologue and it's enabled before then.
Did you just skip all tutorials or something? I'm struggling to understand how on earth you got stuck so bad you ended up quitting the game. Plus, if you're half way through, you have a minimum of 2 vehicles, the starting car and Jackie's bike, if not even more. Wtf were you even doing?
Now that you mention it, I know that I was aware of that featured. Either it didn't work or I don't remember it correctly why I got stuck there. It's been a few years now.
Can't you just summon a new vehicle?
As I just wrote in another comment, I know that I was aware of that featured. Either it didn't work or I don't remember it correctly why I got stuck there. It's been a few years now.
Lmao yeah. I'm kinda like him but even I knew you could summon your rides in Cyberpunk. I stopped playing that game because it was getting repetitive af.
I dislike how people use game completion as a method to gloat
Like bro, don't we all play games to have fun?
I separate people into two camps.
People who beat THE Sega Genesis classic Sonic 3 with lock-on Technology with Sonic and Knuckles and achieved all 12 Chaos Emeralds, and LOSERS.
Oh my god when i was a kid it took me like two YEARS to get all the chaos emeralds in Sonic 1! That’s an eternity in kid time.
There were no save states or anything like that. I failed so many times…but one day I finally did it, i finally got all of them, and on that day I was a god.
I just started playing Stellar Blade.
It's really nice to go through the checklist of which soulslike attributes games are now inheriting, and which they decide to throw away. SB happens to have a set that I really jive with. No "lose currency on death", clean and clear tutorials, but still has lots of secrets hidden around the world. And, it has an easy mode - which I'm not using, because as much as the bosses challenge and frustrate me, they're very satisfying to learn.