Yet another thing that’s impossible to discuss without being strawmanned by both sides. I’m not a hardcore gamer and for the most part play on medium or just slightly above medium difficulty in most video games.
I don’t think a dev should have to accommodate customers that they don’t want to accommodate, and this goes beyond difficulty. Souls games don’t need a difficulty choice in the same way that Firewatch doesn’t. Gacha games don’t need to improve the f2p experience because those are games for whales.
It’s like asking for sex drugs and rock&roll in disney movies and pg 13 horror movies.
I agree in that it doesn’t need to be required, but I think you’re leaving money on the table and intentionally limiting who can experience the art you’re trying to share with the world.
You don’t HAVE to include more than the basic colorblind option and maybe some extra visual cues, but games that go farther and allow more people to enjoy their product are better products for it.
Souls games are great. I don’t want to ‘get gud’ so I haven’t bought one ever, and with no difficulty drop I probably never will. I don’t have time for that. It’s not a bad game because they don’t have features to make it more accessible to me, but it COULD be a better game if they did.
It’s not a bad game because they don’t have features to make it more accessible to me, but it COULD be a better game if they did.
They already have this feature. With the exception of Sekiro, you can summon a partner to help you defeat any challenge as long as you’re outside the tutorial area.
That, or you can just find enemies you’re comfortable with defeating repeatedly and use them to level up until the game is easy enough for you. Or you can look up good weapons and where to find them. Or items that may help in certain situations, or weaknesses the boss/enemy you’re struggling against has…
I think you’re leaving money on the table
For some people that is ok
intentionally limiting who can experience the art you’re trying to share with the world
Almost every musician, painter, or sculptor ever has done that. It is ok.
You don’t HAVE to include more than the basic colorblind option
I think most devs could include stuff like colorblind options or rebindable control schemes and such, and I definitely think they should
better products for it
Difficulty is not the same as colorblind mode. Colorblind mode is the same as creating closed captions for movies, difficulty is the same as changing the movie to fit another audience. Difficulty is part of the game.
it COULD be a better game if they did
It would be a different game, that they are not trying to make.
I agree in that it doesn’t need to be required, but I think you’re leaving money on the table and intentionally limiting who can experience the art you’re trying to share with the world.
Buddy, they are not leaving money on the table by limiting who enjoy the experience of their game. I in fact think that ONLY reason they make that kind of money is by being that difficult. It’s their staple, it’s the reason why people go to those kinds of games.
You don’t HAVE to include more than the basic colorblind option and maybe some extra visual cues, but games that go farther and allow more people to enjoy their product are better products for it.
Colorblindness has nothing to do with the difficulty of a game and as much games as possible should include the option as it’s not part of game design, is a human defect.
Souls games are great. I don’t want to ‘get gud’ so I haven’t bought one ever, and with no difficulty drop I probably never will. I don’t have time for that. It’s not a bad game because they don’t have features to make it more accessible to me, but it COULD be a better game if they did.
I am not by any means a “casual gamer” but I’m not a good gamer either, I still played through-out the entire Elden Ring without that much trouble. It ain’t a walk in the park but I think most people could beat it at some point, if not by the normal route you can easily cheese most enemies.
Games are rarely art someone is trying to share. They’re money machines now.
If the hard mode merely makes everything into a bullet sponge with huge HP bar, no thanks. I’m perfectly fine with some games just being easier and others just being harder. Or having multiple well thought out difficulty options, but only if they are actually well thought out.
Agree on the bullet sponge thing, god I hate that. Helldivers 2 does it best, IMO. Not deadlier or more resilient enemies, just more of them and deadlier types.
When games go too far with this, it can encourage exploit or cheese strategies, or at least strict adherence to a meta build. This can actually mean resorting to a solution with less skill needed, since the game has already been effectively solved. A still-challenging situation that doesn’t demand perfection can be reasonably done with unoptimized preparation and adaptation.
Yup. This is the lazy devs “difficulty” setting. Harder just means, “Enemies take more damage / Enemies deal more damage.”
So, games should have options so they suit a wide range of players and preferences?
Controversial.
Gonna assume a lack of sarcasm here but yes. Dark Souls and Street Fighter embody this debate
It’s only controversial if you want the game to have easier options. ;)
It would be a lot to ask the devs to include a variable for the basic functions 😁
I think the irony is, there’s a huge overlap between gamers who don’t have a lot of time to game because of work and the gamers who have money because they work.
A market for those who want to enjoy games in an easier way that doesn’t require practice 😏
Thanks :)
Actually, even easier cuz I judt had to copy the link and paste it in my app and it auto formatted so I really didnt need to do anything
“I got a 3 second video as a reward for beating this game on the hardest difficulty. It took me hundreds of hours and I hated myself the whole time. You can look up the video of the ending online, but I’ll be DAMNED if someone else can watch it from having FUN while beating the game.”
-These butthurt game bros, probably
Personally I don’t care about the rewards. If I’m playing a tough game or a higher difficulty it’s more about the sense of accomplishment that comes from finally overcoming the challenge. That being said, some people don’t get their dopamine from that sort of thing so I totally think more difficulty options is always a good thing.
Meme about fun police g*mers
Comments full of fun police g*mers
Right? :P
The thing is, games have a minimum difficulty to be somewhat generally enjoyable, and the game designers have often built their game around this. The fun is generally in the obstacles providing real resistance that can be overcome by optimizing your strategy. It means that these obstacles need to be mentally picked apart by the player to proceed. They are built like puzzles.
This design philosophy - anyone who plays these games can tell you - is deeply rewarding if you go through it, because it requires genuine improvement that you can notice and be proud of. Hence why there is often a limit to how much easier you can make games like these without losing that because you forget the obstacle before even realizing it was preventing you from doing something.
It’s often not as easy as just tweaking numbers. And often these development teams don’t have the time to rebalance a game for those lower difficulties, so they just don’t.
Honestly, the first wojack could be quite mad too, because often making an easy game harder also misses the point, where the game is just more difficult, but doesn’t actually provide you with that carefully crafted feeling of constant improvement. Instead some easy games can become downright frustrating because obstacles feel “cheap” or “lacking depth” now that you have to spend a lot more time on them.
But making an easy game harder by just tweaking the numbers is definitely easier on the development team, and gives existing players a chance to re-experience the game, which wouldn’t happen the other way around. But it’s almost certainly not a better option for new players wanting a harder difficulty.
At the end of the day though, often there are ways to get what you want. Either by cheating, modding, or otherwise using ‘OP’ usables in the game. Do whatever you want to make the game more enjoyable to yourself. But if you make it too easy on yourself you might come out on the other end wondering why other people enjoyed the game so much more than you did.
I’ve still not really seen issues in just including options for total overthrowing of difficulty. I’ve enjoyed some hard games that have prompted frustration from some Dark Souls players; eg, Furi, Tunic, . The options menu include capabilities for infinite stamina and invincibility, and I just ignored them.
Even though I can beat those games without those options, I consider them better for having them because each player plays differently. It is not a tremendous ask for the developer to decide on the best way to address playability concerns, even if they go for something extremely simple that removes challenge and lets them explore the world.
On topic: A new Spongebob-Souls game is out called “Another Crab’s Treasure”. It has positive reviews, and its own implementation of this (aside from being generally a bit easier) seems to be an options menu box which gives your crab a gun.
I have never seen it framed as “it is an absolute disgrace that this game does not have a hard mode, and if you think otherwise you are an idiot and/or ableist (or whatever the opposite would be)” tbh. Which is pretty much what the easy mode advocates were saying about Sekiro the last time I followed that debate
This is a fair point. I have seen violent reactions to casual statements, but I have not seen hyperbolic calls for hard modes nearly as much as for easy modes, it`s true.
For hardcore gamers don’t exist an easy mode
Check out this video that discusses the difficulties in balancing difficulty (ha) for games with configurable levels of difficulty.
Related: Crusader Kings fandom reacting to perceiving Crusader Kings 3 to be slightly less intricate than Crusader Kings 2
