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Demon’s Souls Remake needs to have an Easy difficulty setting
- Thread starter The_Dama
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Self
Member
You slipped right into the false narrativ. They got you pal.
Exchange 'you' for 'developers' and you are good to go. To call the creators selfish and unproductive for their game design is really... weird.
hemo memo
Gold Member
Or maybe have better player signaling and overall balance and less cheap deaths.
laynelane
Member
This brings to mind that Forbes article titled: "Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice Needs to Respect its Players and Add an Easy Mode." I'm of the mind that From does respect its players and believes in their own design philosophy. That's why they make challenging games for us to enjoy.
Sigh.
You can already do things in game that are effectively the same as increasing player HP and attack power.
The game already does things that allow a player to make things easier.
That's what I'm saying.
The only distinction here is that you are arguing that these things shouldn't be done in-game but rather should just be implemented as an option in a menu.
What would easy mode even be?
"Well it could give the player extra HP."
OK but you can already do that in game.
"What about allowing the player to deal more damage?"
Again, it can be done in-game.
Even with a game like Sekiro on the surface it looks like they actually have limited the players options in a lot of ways.
However the gadgets etc really open the game up to finding solutions that can trivialize a lot of areas.
Trust me the first time I beat Ishin I used every dirty trick to beat that bastard.
The game totally allows the player to make things easier.
All you are really left with is "I don't have time to figure all that out so just make a menu option".
I'm not sure I really understand the concept that the game should be enjoyable for everyone either.
If I hate sci fi then that takes a lot of games out of my "it's enjoyable" list.
If someone doesn't like violence then A LOT of games are not enjoyable.
This is seen as perfectly acceptable though because it's the developers choice.
Yet if someone supports a developers philosophy on challenge and difficulty it is framed as "you just don't want other people to enjoy this".
What?
I think these kinds of games are what they are.
There are plenty of ways to make them easier and overcome them.
Maybe people should seek out those ways instead of hitting a roadblock and demanding a menu option to remove it.
"I don't have time for all that" is just a really strange way to approach a videogame of all things.
"I want to play the game and complete the game but I want to do it quickly."
I'm very suspicious of game journalists pushing this narrative too since their job consists of playing games and I'd bet they MUST meet deadlines. So any push from them to change a game so that it can be over and done with more quickly is very suspect. In my opinion.
Again, lets not forget we are talking about a small handful of games here.
I'd be easily convinced if it was like 50% of games that are like this but I see no harm really in allowing a couple of games to just do their own thing.
It seems the souls games are kind of a victim of their own popularity.
They built up popularity with their approach to challenge and difficulty.
A cult following turned into mainstream attention.
Then the mainstream said "actually we don't like it so it needs to change".
Stiflers Mom
Banned
I repeat myself, but after thinking a bit about it:
Demons Souls is not a difficult game.
Just read up a bit about it, and you will be breezing through the game with
demonssouls.wiki.fextralife.com
and
demonssouls.wiki.fextralife.com
Most bosses don't even require skill and are one trick ponies.
Demons Souls is not a difficult game.
Just read up a bit about it, and you will be breezing through the game with
Second Chance | Demons Souls Wiki
Second Chance is a Miracle in Demon Souls . Second Chance location, requirements, focus cost and tips for best uses.
demonssouls.wiki.fextralife.com
and
Warding | Demons Souls Wiki
Warding is a Magic Spell in Demon's Souls. How to get Warding, requirements, uses, slots, tips and builds for Demon's Souls.
demonssouls.wiki.fextralife.com
Most bosses don't even require skill and are one trick ponies.
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Nicktendo_
Banned
And yet here you are on a video game forum with an average of one post per day.
Git gud.
FunkMiller
Member
Nope. Fair enough comment.
I'm arguing against those who want to see the challenge taken away from the game, because they don't want it there. But From Software have designed these games with the challenge as an intrinsic part of the gameplay. Remove it, and you destroy what the Souls games are, and the reason for their popularity.
I have absolutely no problem with someone criticising the Souls games for being too hard, but I do have a problem with these same people insisting things be changed for them, instead of letting others enjoy the experience, and going and doing something else with their time.
Hence the parallel to the TLOU2 whingers - just go and play another game.
No one is entitled to have everything the way they want it to be, especially when they are very well served elsewhere.
It's the entitlement that I absolutely detest: "Change this thing because I don't like it."
Not every game has to appeal to everyone. If you try to do that, you just get homogenised, dull, and repetitive games that ultimately please no one - especially the same whiners who complained in the first place!
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Why though?
I think sometimes this conversation really gets to the core of why different people even play games at all.
A cheap death certainly extends the time before you can reach the end of the game.
Is that really the only reason why we play though? Just need to see all the content as efficiently as possible?
Isn't the idea of the game screwing the player over in some unpredictable ways kind of "fun" or "exhilarating" to some extent?
I can understand the frustration if you've only got an hour to play in the evening or you just want to experience the story and some enemy jumps from out of nowhere and knocks you off a cliff and back to the checkpoint. Is that a reason to remove it from the game?
I think there comes a point where individual players need to have a proper think about genres.
It's not going to be good in the long run if we just come up with a list "industry standards" that games must follow of face the wrath of Twitter and journalists.
Each game must have a story mode for those who just want to look at the stuff.
No boss battle should take more that 5 attempts to beat.
No surprise deaths.
Etc etc.
Isn't a cheap death a "story" in itself?
What if we consider the way we talk about games?
You could take a Naughty Dog game where people will take to the internet and say basically "I watched that cutscene in the game and oh my gods so emotional who would have expected that this story is so challenging".
Then when people are pissed off about a story or character choice they are mocked as "man babies" or whatever for not being able to get the "challenging themes" of the game.
Then you could take a game like Sekiro where the opposite is true and people are up in arms because the game is too challenging.
Except "holy shit I had to pull out every dirty trick I could think of to beat Gennichiro and it still took me 20 attempts" is not seen as an awesome gaming story.
TLOU2 is made a certain way. "Deal with it, man babies!"
Sekiro is made a certain way. "OMG all the man babies telling us to deal with it! So toxic!"
FunkMiller
Member
hemo memo
Gold Member
I don’t mind difficulty but should a dev also have a convoluted controls to extend game time? Game balance is not as easy as players think it is. I see cheap deaths as bad game design. Players death should be their fault not because how the game was designed. I’m not talking about tutorial boss. I’m talking about cheap traps and lack of visual feedback.
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Omnipunctual Godot
Gold Member
What cheap deaths? The challenge is incredibly fair. The only cheap death I can think of is when Seathe forces you to die in the original.
Self
Member
The overall challenge is very fair and balanced. If you advance slowly and use all of your senses you'll be able to tackle everything they throw at you.
If you want to argue that imperfect games need lesser difficulties, then no. No game is perfect.
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TheMasterSwordMaster
Member
hemo memo
Gold Member
Nope. Speedrunners make EVERY game easy. Demon Souls is challenging and only easy after you get good at it.
TheMasterSwordMaster
Member
Literally zero self control eh? pathetic. do you also take the invincibility leaf when offered to you in mario games? cmon.
Ar¢tos
Member
I didn't particularly like Lords of the Fallen, so I ran past every enemy possible and had little problem getting from checkpoint to checkpoint avoiding enemies, and I did it without having played the game before.
Souls are not much different, the only reason I bother to kill enemies is to be able to explore every corner for items without annoyances.
There are very few enemies you actually need to kill to progress in souls games.
FunkMiller
Member
Wow. You're a dick. Enjoy your ban when it inevitably comes, newbie.
TheMasterSwordMaster
Member
TheMasterSwordMaster
Member
yes, because i have self control unlike the people in this thread.I mean.... is there anyone here who wouldn’t have put the damn game on easy mode when you got beat by this fucker for the tenth time? Be honest!
DunDunDunpachi
Patient MembeR
I don't enjoy watching horror movies, and I barely go to the theatre anyway.
So the idea of going to one with the intention of being scared is beyond me. Yet I understand why people love horror movies and I wouldn't want horror movies to become "less scary" for my sake. That is because I can recognize the element that repels me -- the scares -- are exactly what attract the fans in the first place.
Souls games deliver a kind of experience that includes anxiety, uncertainty, patient risk assessment, puzzling, and the constant risk of losing your progress. These feelings will not exist if the challenge is below the player's skill level. The challenge is what invokes these experiences just like the jump-scares invoke the desired experience of a horror movie.
Hypothetically, every single player on earth could experience these feelings if there was a fine-tuned difficulty for them, but this would be impossible to actually achieve. In the case of Souls, FROM is skipping to the logical conclusion by picking a singular difficulty level and then teaching players how to rise to the occasion via the game's design. Inevitably, SOMEONE will be excluded, and SOMEONE will find the difficulty "too easy".
The player must be aware of these tricks to use them, and that player must have enough skill to pull off these tricks. That's about it, though. Some tricks, like parrying, take awhile to master. Other tricks, like firecrackers, can be exploited immediately with little effort. Part of the fun is picking apart the game and puzzling out which tools work. The "difficulty" filters out dumb ideas, poorly-executed ideas, clumsy ideas, etc and encourages you to find better tactics as the game goes on, building on the simpler tactics learned before.
Like the horror movie, I don't like how people are demanding this element is reduced or taken away. I prefer a game that teaches me how to get better at it instead of one that expects me to decide how much I already suck at it when starting a new save file.
So the idea of going to one with the intention of being scared is beyond me. Yet I understand why people love horror movies and I wouldn't want horror movies to become "less scary" for my sake. That is because I can recognize the element that repels me -- the scares -- are exactly what attract the fans in the first place.
Souls games deliver a kind of experience that includes anxiety, uncertainty, patient risk assessment, puzzling, and the constant risk of losing your progress. These feelings will not exist if the challenge is below the player's skill level. The challenge is what invokes these experiences just like the jump-scares invoke the desired experience of a horror movie.
Hypothetically, every single player on earth could experience these feelings if there was a fine-tuned difficulty for them, but this would be impossible to actually achieve. In the case of Souls, FROM is skipping to the logical conclusion by picking a singular difficulty level and then teaching players how to rise to the occasion via the game's design. Inevitably, SOMEONE will be excluded, and SOMEONE will find the difficulty "too easy".
It is for this reason that I found Sekiro to be the "easiest". Every enemy and every boss suffers from numerous weaknesses and exploits. Sekiro can be "broken" in numerous ways, from the moment you turn on the game. Infinite stamina and the counter+posture system can be used to break 100% of the bosses and enemy encounters.
The player must be aware of these tricks to use them, and that player must have enough skill to pull off these tricks. That's about it, though. Some tricks, like parrying, take awhile to master. Other tricks, like firecrackers, can be exploited immediately with little effort. Part of the fun is picking apart the game and puzzling out which tools work. The "difficulty" filters out dumb ideas, poorly-executed ideas, clumsy ideas, etc and encourages you to find better tactics as the game goes on, building on the simpler tactics learned before.
Like the horror movie, I don't like how people are demanding this element is reduced or taken away. I prefer a game that teaches me how to get better at it instead of one that expects me to decide how much I already suck at it when starting a new save file.
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Airola
Member
No, it's more like
OP: "I want something to be more accessible to me by changing the presentation of the game for everyone."
Fans: "No."
Danjin44
The nicest person on this forum
Bloodborne is all about dodging, for example: in Ludwig second phase you need to time your dodge to his swing of his sword or you are fucked, its kind of how you time your parry in Sekiro.
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GrayFoxPL
Member
But the amounts of the times you die in Souls would make the game call EVERY player a bitch, haha.
Souls to every player ever:
MastaKiiLA
Member
Is this true? Can you just grind until you're OP, to get through a tough boss? If this is the case, then I see no issue. That seems like a valid solution.
Otherwise, I kinda agree with the OP. Easier difficulty modes can make games more accessible for less-skilled gamers. I'll be honest, Ghouls and Ghosts (Ghosts and Goblins) was an incredibly frustrating for me as a kid, and it resulted in me playing that game very little, once I got more games in my library.
Danjin44
The nicest person on this forum
Airola
Member
Yeah, the underlying reason for being in favor of easy modes seems sometimes to be antipathy towards people who in one way or another brag about what they've done. They want to shut those people down, and doing that they'll often end up bashing more or less the whole fanbase. Sometimes they might just want the easy mode just to be against the people who would say "git gud." It is to get back at those annoying people. To show them their place.
That's an incorrect assumption.
Presentation is very important for games. For these games it's even more important. It's in fact part of the core design of the game. The game has been designed to have a presentation that in no circumstance gives any player the choice to make it easier in menu or options screens. It is part of the game's appeal. In every game the experience starts already from the menu screen. They have designed the menu screen to not have anything that will at any point tell anyone that they are able to make what they encounter any easier. The presentation that is given in the menu screen will be part of the gameplay part too.
To add an easy mode would change that presentation completely.
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Ixiah
Banned
The problem is, how easy ?
Dark Souls+Demon Souls already have player summons to help, Mage is always busted and you can always lame it out with a good shield.
At a certain point, why not add an "Game Journalist" mode that just plays the game for you ?(They certainly need it)
The whole point of the game is that it places Walls in front of you that seem way to high to ever climb, but once you do, thats the rush that keeps you coming back, lower the wall and its gonna feel like
the Game Version of a Participation Medal.
TheMasterSwordMaster
Member
If by presentation you mean a single option at the start of the game. If this simply existing ruins the whole experience for you then thats a you problem.
MastaKiiLA
Member
I disagree. Some gamers don't want to scale that wall, and will tune out, and play another game. Yeah, you got their money, but you haven't gotten their loyalty. Some gamers will want to scale that wall. I played Uncharted on the highest difficulty level, and it was extremely rewarding. Some encounters took a dozen or more attempts to clear, but it was worth it, because I became the greatest gunslinger in the world. I think every gamer has a specific type of game that they are willing to challenge themselves the most in. However, they still want to enjoy the best of other genres, and that's where difficulty levels come in to play. I'm personally not a huge fan of high-difficulty platformers or top-down shooters, so I appreciate the ability to experience higher levels in some of those game types, without having to find physical skills that I no longer possess. My reflexes and patience just aren't what they used to be, so I don't want to commit to having to retrain those skills at my age. However, I'd like the chance to finish a game like DS.
I'm not yet sure if it's a game that falls outside of my capabilities. I've never played a Souls game before. It might be up my alley, or it might not. However, if it's not, I just want the chance to see the full game. Give me that, and make it a rewarding experience (lower difficulties can have the same feeling of accomplishment for less-skilled gamers as high difficulty for pros), and you'll get my gaming dollar with a sequel. Punish me relentlessly, and good luck getting me to take the plunge a second time. Fool me once.
Kadayi
Banned
Try being less of a cunt in future posts. If you came to GAF to pick fights, and big yourself up, your tenure here won't be very long if that post is anything to go by.
Airola
Member
I'm just saying people are factually wrong when they say it doesn't affect players at all.
It changes a very important aspect of the game's presentation. That is irrefutable. That is a fact.
The devs have thought about how it feels for a player to fail at the game and come back to the menu screen. They haven't wanted to give the player even the thought of there being an option to change things through menus. They have wanted the player to be forced to come back to the game with the same exact difficulty they failed at. They wanted to give that experience to every player. And a lot players like exactly that about it. To change that would completely remove that aspect from the game. It wouldn't be there anymore. That is a fact.
It's not only a "me" problem. It's also a "dev" problem. They like that choice of design and presentation even more than the fans. That's why they made it so.
If you can't accept that, then that is a you problem too.
It is about the game presentation.
Any questions of "why there couldn't be an easy mode" can be decisively answered with just that one sentence. It tells the core reason from both the developers' and the players' point of view.
EDIT:
"A single option" holds in a lot of more power than people seem to understand. What is really odd is that they don't understand it even though the lack of that "single option" makes a lot of people amazingly frustrated and even angry.
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Airola
Member
It doesn't matter to the developers if someone doesn't like what they've offered and don't buy their next game. I'm sure they rather want the players who liked what they offered to buy their next game than be forced to create a different experience just to get the people who didn't like their original design to buy more from them.
If I make a metal album where the point is to have blast beats through the whole album and someone says I should make an optional version of this album with less blast beats (just remove the drums and release it online - it's cheap to do even!), I wouldn't want to do it even if it would get more buyers. Especially if my artist brand would be all about blast beats. Even as an option that would both hurt the brand and go against my integrity as a musician.
And again, having an easy mode changes the game's presentation. The developers love that presentation. The fans love that presentation. It has been there since the beginning. That has been the thing people really love about it. To change that because of trying to chase new audience and more money would most likely alienate a lot of long time fans. They'd probably rather want to get more new players who are into that exact presentation than get more players who aren't. They are probably very much ok with sacrificing sales numbers to be able to create this exact experience with this exact presentation.
MastaKiiLA
Member
From a development standpoint, you also have to consider your market. How much are you limiting your sales by keeping your product inaccessible to certain portions of the gaming market? There's a balancing act that much be found. For example, our products can be extremely feature-rich, and incredibly efficient in a way that most technical or skilled people will be able to understand. By designing the dashboard in a certain way, our power users could accomplish a lot with a lot fewer clicks. OTOH, if we want to open the app up to a larger market, we need to implement QOL improvements to the dashboard, that might dumb things down a bit, but allow newbs to access the same level of functionality as a power user.
This is the crux of the matter, IMO, and as someone who now designs and manages web and mobile apps, it's an aspect of design that I've grown to appreciate. Difficulty settings still maintain the high degree of difficulty, without restricting access. It's like adding an advanced view option to the dashboard, along with a simplified version. You package the same product in different ways to increase accessibility to a much wider range of users. Should DS remain a hardcore-only game? Sure, if they want to limit sales only to the hardcore market. Those gamers that love the hardcore aspects of the game can still get the hardcore experience, just by selecting the more hardcore difficulties. If they don't use those settings, then it's less a reflection of the game than the gamer. The gamer didn't really value the hardcoreness of the game so much as the ability to play. They only tolerated the hardcore aspects because they were forced to.
There's a difference between being forced to do something, and having the choice. I played UC on the hardest settings by choice. The AI was better, and the game was more fun to play as a result. I'd have preferred an easier setting for Ghosts n Goblins, as the forced difficulty simply turned me off of that game. Looking at DS, I see many gamers could be interested enough to pick it up, but a lot might steer clear based on reputation for being an unforgiving experience. With the games costing so much to make, they should want to attract as many customers as possible. Based on the gameplay we saw recently, it seems that they might indeed be incorporating an easy difficulty, to allow more accessibility. That won't prevent people like you from setting difficulty higher, and reaping the rewards of having accomplished what few others could have. Everyone wins then.
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Explosive Zombie
Banned
all the people who are experienced with this games can tell you that the easy mode is the first time you play the game most of them get harder on each New game plus up to new game plus 7 in other words you're forced to play on easy mode the first time you play it. There's only one entry where you could up the difficulty prior to beating it and that was Dark souls 2 the most underrated entry it had something called bonfire ascetics which would power up the bonfire and it would make the enemies in the area power up as well it was a really cool way to grind sections you were good at to level up for sections you weren't good at.
laynelane
Member
DS2 also had the Covenant of Champions which was great for farming/grinding and upping the difficulty if that's what you were looking for.
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Airola
Member
Seems to me they have balanced it already pretty well what comes to be able to get a big audience. Their games sell really well the way they are.
Maybe this is the exact sweet spot to keep the original intent of the game and have them be interesting enough to have a lot of fans.
The questions are these:
Can having an easy mode change the presentation of a game?
Can the presentation of a game affect how players feel about the game?
Throughout this thread I've explained many times how it changes the presentation and how it can affect players. So my answer to both of those questions would be yes. And it is even so with me who doesn't like to play these games.
As I've already mentioned a couple of times in this thread, I'm not a fan of these games. I don't play them. I disliked playing DS2 for the short while I did, just like I dislike playing a lot of other modern games too. I love the idea of them though and I love that games like this exist. For me I get this kind of unapologizingly tough experience from the La-Mulana games. Those games also don't have an easy mode (instead you can trigger a hard mode while playing the game).
If I'd like modern 3D games in general I would most likely love playing these games too and would be a fan. But as of now I dislike them and I don't play them, but I do appreciate what they are going for, and changing that would be terrible for video game culture. It would remove the few experiences like this from existence. It would make the world of video games less diverse, believe it or not.
There is a difference between having to choose and not having to choose the hard difficulty. It seems like a simple thing but it's actually way more important than you would believe. It's all about the presentation of the game. I wish this approach and philosophy would be applied to more games but as it is, it's quite rare. And it sucks that most of them are in the genres and styles I don't like to play. But thank god for La-Mulana 1 & 2. My top two all time favorite games.
I say this a lot here but what you are talking about comes down to a consideration of video-game genres.
A lot of people talk about "games" as if that's a monolithic concept and every game must meet the same standards or marketability etc.
So the kind of arguments you see are "well Doom let's me do X and Y so why doesn't Dark Souls also do that?"
The answer is that these 2 games belong to very different genres and are trying to do different things for different audiences. Though there will be some overlap.
I am not a fan of the idea that every developer out there should be thinking of units sold when creating their game. Seems like an good way to move from "cult classic" to "generic and mainstream".
The souls games built their reputation on just being just what they are. It would be a shame to see them change all that just for the sake of getting more units sold.
All this also ignores the fact that the game offers many ways to make things easier. At an absolute minimum players will get better with practice.
Its OK, I think, to have genres of games that just aren't for everyone. I think it would be pretty sad to see these Souls games start chasing the more "I just want story mode" minded consumers. How slippery would that slope be?
Also pretty interesting to see how a community that so passionately argues that "videogames are art" does not apparently extend this to gameplay.
Game graphics are art.
Game stories are art.
Game music is art.
Gameplay? Nah could I perhaps have some options so that I don't need to engage with that aspect?
The artists intent is lauded and explored and endlessly discussed when it comes to story choices and world design.
With gameplay, especially the idea of challenge, that doesn't seem to apply too much. The creator of the game wants me to rise to the challenge? I don't have time for that! Let me change it in the menus!
Game graphics are art.
Game stories are art.
Game music is art.
Gameplay? Nah could I perhaps have some options so that I don't need to engage with that aspect?
The artists intent is lauded and explored and endlessly discussed when it comes to story choices and world design.
With gameplay, especially the idea of challenge, that doesn't seem to apply too much. The creator of the game wants me to rise to the challenge? I don't have time for that! Let me change it in the menus!
FunkMiller
Member
Fuck yes. You can grind your way to a soul level and weapon upgrade that can melt through Ornstein &Smough easily, if you really want to.
FunkMiller
Member
Eh, I’d stick him on ignore if I were you. You can tell the fourteen year olds with fragile egos from a mile off.
Nicktendo_
Banned
Kadayi
Banned
Ignore? LOL. I'm not offended. I'm just predicting his trajectory based on how things usually play out. Anyway enough OT.
Souls isn't really difficult in the traditional sense of scaled opposition versus really demanding a lot more focus and attention from players compared to other titles in my experience. The level design in Dark Souls in particular really rewards you taking the time to actually look around and truly see the environments versus blithely meandering through as with a lot of other games. It rewards observation and patience.
FunkMiller
Member
That‘s always been my point. Dark Souls doesn’t require you to be incredible at playing video games... but it does require you to be patient. This is ultimately where the dividing line between Souls fans and those who demand an easy mode lies.
If you are patient, Souls games are by far and away the most rewarding games you can play... but if you crave immediacy and constant, fast forward momentum without obstacles, you’ll hate them, and think they’re too hard.
Souls games really are the epitome of the ‘it’s about the journey, not the destination’ philosophy of creating entertainment.
