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Demon’s Souls Remake needs to have an Easy difficulty setting

iHaunter

Member
Adding difficulty options to include people with lesser skills is not "change their vision", same as making the game easier is not "removing the difficulty", same as making it easier is not "smash R1 to kill boss at first try". All those are exaggeration fallacies.




Of course, because in a "It would be great to..." discussion only the past is valid. 🤦‍♂️



Top tier argument. I'm sure it depleted your brain capability. :messenger_tears_of_joy:


The fact you keep avoiding is: nothing changes for you. You will keep playing exactly the same games. You're only screeching to deny others.

It's the WHOLE POINT of the game. The entire PREMISE of the SOULS series. There is no difficulty, there's just the game. Learn it or give up.
 

FunkMiller

Member
It seems to me that there is hyper sensitivity to anyone just simply saying ‘I’d like it for X To also include a Y’

no one here is demanding the devs do anything. This isn’t a thread about creative freedoms being repressed. This isn’t a call to arms demanding a developer do a thing or we’ll boycott it.

fucks sake. Fight the fight when it needs to be fought. Not when it doesn’t.

id like DS to have a baby mode. You don’t? Ok...

Yes, but when people try to rationally and calmly explain why easy modes aren’t a good idea for Souls games, we get called all the names under the sun, and basically called assholes for wanting to keep the games the way the developers intended.
 
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OldBoyGamer

Banned
Yes, but when people try to rationally and calmly explain why easy modes aren’t a good idea for Souls games, we get called all the names under the sun, and basically called assholes for wanting to keep the games the way the developers intended.
I really haven’t been keeping a huge eye on this thread tbh. So apologies if I’m off here but the responses on here I can see why people get called arseholes tbh.

as I said. Fight the fight when it needs to be fought not when it doesn’t. Too many people seem incapable of that simple premise.
 
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Dr. Claus

Vincit qui se vincit
Options are ALWAYS GOOD.

There's no reason (besides time and money) to not make anything be enjoyable by a bigger audience.

We are not talking precisely about censorship, or changing a story, just a difficulty setting.
Come on people, no one will take you out of your 'normal' experience. Why all the complaints??

The game can be enjoyed by anyone who has patience above a pre kindergarten level and doesn’t throw hissy fits when they die too many times.

There is no reason an easier option would give a bigger audience than it already has. The games aren’t hard. All they ask is a bit more patience than your average game released in the past two generations. A level of patience that was common in the 8 and 16 bit days.
 
Souls games are not difficult, most old nes games were difficult.

If people can finish them with guitar hero guitar, they just arent difficult

They require some skills + ability to think, but it doesnt make it difficult.

It is like people are crying because they are too lazy to learn the rules and want super easy game instead of even trying to learn.

Souls games have normal difficulty while most games are super easy these days
 
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Warnen

Don't pass gaas, it is your Destiny!
If they didn’t alter the game to much, you can farm souls easy with the Bow in some choke point areas and stand out side of some boss areas and finish them off pretty easy. I’m not the best at these games and I easily beat Demon’s Souls.
 

Self

Member
Come on people, no one will take you out of your 'normal' experience. Why all the complaints??

You got it all backwards. OP complained and demanded.
And how are people who play the game as intended and support the creators intend taking away from your or anybody's "normal" experience?
 

borborygmus

Member
Souls games are not difficult, most old nes games were difficult.

If people can finish them with guitar hero guitar, they just arent difficult

They require some skills + ability to think, but it doesnt make it difficult.

It is like people are crying because they are too lazy to learn the rules and want super easy game instead of even trying to learn.

Souls games have normal difficulty while most games are super easy these days

Absolutely. I'd like to reiterate:

- You can literally AFK almost anywhere in a dungeon and nothing will hurt you, with a few exceptions. This is one of the only games that lets you cower as long as you want, right in the middle of a level. There are almost no patrols, 95% of the time the AI stays in its initial aggro zone.
- You can outrun probably 90% of enemies
- You can carry up to 99 healing items
- Checkpoints are unlocked permanently
- You can roll straight through most attacks
- You gain additional exp simply by exploring and picking up souls
- You will find that without even trying, you will have an abundance of items in your inventory that can give you a very significant boost
- You can have a random stranger help you kill a boss
- There's no time pressure
- You have infinite lives - there is no "game over" state
- Many bosses can be cheesed
- Some player classes make the game much easier
- You have a choice of what order to complete the levels in, especially in Demon's Souls
- Some bosses are just puzzle bosses
- You can grind exp much more easily than in your typical RPG and become overpowered


I'm convinced there's some kind of nocebo effect going on with these games.
 
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The funniest thing about this entire thread, is that even if the Souls games added an 'easy' mode, where the player has more health and the enemies do less damage, the target audience of such an 'easy' mode would still die over and over again, complain that it is too hard, and give up. There must have been at least two hundred scenarios during my time with the Souls games where I could have had twice the health bar, and still would have died every single time.

I think this is something that people are missing in this thread. To make the game easy and accessible in the way that they'd want, you'd have to completely overhaul the level design, remove most traps, add invisible walls to most ledges, add an in game journal to keep track of quests, build in indicators of where to go next instead of being left to your own devices, add a pause function, just to mention a few.

It wouldn't be the same game, at all. The fact that some here refuse to engage with that argument, and just yell about options and accessibility, is the reason why this thread has been arguing in circles for about 20 pages now.
 

Airola

Member
It seems to me that there is hyper sensitivity to anyone just simply saying ‘I’d like it for X To also include a Y’

no one here is demanding the devs do anything. This isn’t a thread about creative freedoms being repressed. This isn’t a call to arms demanding a developer do a thing or we’ll boycott it.

fucks sake. Fight the fight when it needs to be fought. Not when it doesn’t.

id like DS to have a baby mode. You don’t? Ok...

It's a different thing to say "I'd like an easy mode for this and that reason", than it is to say:
1) Making this and that change will not hurt anyone's experience.
2) You are a gatekeeper, don't you have any empathy, haha go in your big boys club, you just don't want others to play the game you play, you just want to brag, do you hate people with disabilities, huh, huh!

So it's claims of things that are not true - those claims of course should be corrected.
And it's insults against people who don't want that change and who give good explanations for why they don't want it.
It's these corrections and explanations that some people just don't want to hear.
 
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Airola

Member
- You can roll straight through most attacks

This is one of the reasons I hate the dodge roll mechanism in most games. It's one of my pet peeves in modern video games.
A designated button for dodging an attack. I like games where the dodging happens by just moving around and jumping, and where you can get hit while trying to dodge by moving or jumping.
Someone could say that you don't have to use the dodge buttons, but most often those games are designed with the dodge mechanism in mind.
 

Spaceman292

Banned
I’ve played DS several times. Ive spent hours trying to figure it out and I can’t get anywhere with it. I like the idea of the game. I love the genre. I enjoy the themes and the general ‘gameplay’ Is right up my street. But it’s just too punishing for me. I get so deflated by it I give up. So yeh. for me, I’d love to have a baby mode.

what I don’t understand is how that would impact anyone else other than me?

for instance. I’m also shit at the SF series. But they give people like me a baby mode so I can enjoy playing by myself and I get to see quite a bit of the content.

no one who plays the SF series is impacted by that as far as I’m aware?
The only way to lose the game is to give up bro
 

Keihart

Member
This is one of the reasons I hate the dodge roll mechanism in most games. It's one of my pet peeves in modern video games.
A designated button for dodging an attack. I like games where the dodging happens by just moving around and jumping, and where you can get hit while trying to dodge by moving or jumping.
Someone could say that you don't have to use the dodge buttons, but most often those games are designed with the dodge mechanism in mind.
Monster Hunter it's pretty strict with the rolls. While you can move out of the way with a roll, the invincibility window it's pretty small. Quite a stark difference from Souls roll.
Just mentioning it, no really arguing with anything on your post btw.
 

Saruhashi

Banned
Every time....every fucking time.....before was Sekiro and now this and we will suffer through this again when Elden Ring comes out.


I guess people really hate the idea that some games just not made for them.

Honestly, I think there is more to it than just that.

You look at a lot of the posts in this thread and a lot of people are including some really specific swipes at the "community" or "fanboys" alongside their insistence that it affects nobody when the developer is basically pressured into changing the game.

Remember when there was all the drama over that journalist making an arse of himself trying to play Cuphead?
Same kind of things going on there with battle lines being immediately drawn.

Some of the reactions to valid points about the creators vision or the games presentation are WAY too aggressive for what is essentially a conversation on what developers should and should not do when creating a game.

Now, if those people just came out and said "it annoys me that a certain type of person beats these difficult games and then acts like they are king of the word or something" then that would be preferable. Of course they'd come across as petty and bitter but at least the motivations would be honest. "I just want an easy mode so these little pricks will shut the hell up because anyone can complete their dumb game now".

Seems to me that it's always been pretty easy to just ignore games you don't like.

There's also a bit of a contradiction in how we talk about "getting more people to play the game".

If someone says "urgh, I just really don't enjoy westerns and I don't really like open world games" then we just say RDR2 probably isn't for them.
If someone says "I'm not into loud rock music and the demons are a bit scary and I'm not into that" then we'd just accept that they won't enjoy Doom.

In those instances it's totally fine.
Nobody is going to argue that RDR2 should have a "sci fi mode" for fans who'd rather be playing Destiny 2 or something.
Nobody is going to make the case that Doom needs to tone down everything and be a bit more like Stardew Valley.

Someone says that the difficulty of Sekiro is off putting then suddenly the developer is missing out by not getting as many people as possible playing the game. If they just changed a few things here and there then it would be more popular. Popularity is everything, I guess.

So it kind of comes down to people seeing games as really just interactive stories.
It's OK to say "if you don't like Sci fi then don't play Mass Effect" but not OK to say " if you don't like difficulty don't play Dark Souls".
 

Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
Honestly, I think there is more to it than just that.

You look at a lot of the posts in this thread and a lot of people are including some really specific swipes at the "community" or "fanboys" alongside their insistence that it affects nobody when the developer is basically pressured into changing the game.

Remember when there was all the drama over that journalist making an arse of himself trying to play Cuphead?
Same kind of things going on there with battle lines being immediately drawn.

Some of the reactions to valid points about the creators vision or the games presentation are WAY too aggressive for what is essentially a conversation on what developers should and should not do when creating a game.

Now, if those people just came out and said "it annoys me that a certain type of person beats these difficult games and then acts like they are king of the word or something" then that would be preferable. Of course they'd come across as petty and bitter but at least the motivations would be honest. "I just want an easy mode so these little pricks will shut the hell up because anyone can complete their dumb game now".

Seems to me that it's always been pretty easy to just ignore games you don't like.

There's also a bit of a contradiction in how we talk about "getting more people to play the game".

If someone says "urgh, I just really don't enjoy westerns and I don't really like open world games" then we just say RDR2 probably isn't for them.
If someone says "I'm not into loud rock music and the demons are a bit scary and I'm not into that" then we'd just accept that they won't enjoy Doom.

In those instances it's totally fine.
Nobody is going to argue that RDR2 should have a "sci fi mode" for fans who'd rather be playing Destiny 2 or something.
Nobody is going to make the case that Doom needs to tone down everything and be a bit more like Stardew Valley.

Someone says that the difficulty of Sekiro is off putting then suddenly the developer is missing out by not getting as many people as possible playing the game. If they just changed a few things here and there then it would be more popular. Popularity is everything, I guess.

So it kind of comes down to people seeing games as really just interactive stories.
It's OK to say "if you don't like Sci fi then don't play Mass Effect" but not OK to say " if you don't like difficulty don't play Dark Souls".
It also comes down to them feeling "missing out", since now FROM game is more popular and well known they feel they should able to play it as well but they forget the unapologetic way FROM designing their games and not following "industry standards" is exactly why they became well known and loved in first place.
 

OldBoyGamer

Banned
It's a different thing to say "I'd like an easy mode for this and that reason", than it is to say:
1) Making this and that change will not hurt anyone's experience.
2) You are a gatekeeper, don't you have any empathy, haha go in your big boys club, you just don't want others to play the game you play, you just want to brag, do you hate people with disabilities, huh, huh!

So it's claims of things that are not true - those claims of course should be corrected.
And it's insults against people who don't want that change and who give good explanations for why they don't want it.
It's these corrections and explanations that some people just don't want to hear.

fair enough if that’s true. And as I said I haven’t been reading the entire thread just bits and pieces and from what I have read the vitriol and aggression is coming heavily from one side. Happy to be told that’s a wrong impression.
 
I’m in the camp of not playing these games because you die too often. I understand that is the premise. I understand that’s how it’s supposed to be. I understand that it’s not exactly ‘hard’ when you work things out.

None of these things let me bypass the repetition scenario and let me experience the game. A game with awesome looking art style, world and an experience I would like to enjoy but just can’t seem to because I really don’t enjoy dying over and over again and then having to run back to the place just to get knocked again. I personally find this frustrating rather than enjoyable and I would honestly love to experience these games. I just don’t have the time to invest in playing the same thing over and over again even if that’s how it’s meant to be played that’s just not fun for me. I feel like I’m wasting time and I play games to relax and escape my busy life. It is a shame that people can’t understand there are people who would like to experience these kinds of game’s without having to die so many times.

It’s not about the difficulty it’s about the repetition. If someone has enough time and patience to try something enough times to figure it out then good for you. I don’t. Not in game’s. I have a good amount of patience in general but this type of gaming is just frustrating to me. Maybe I’m starting to get old. I’m sure I would have relished and loved this type of thing in my teens but not anymore.

Why does this ‘easy mode’ request offend so many people so much? Again - personally I’ve come to the conclusion I’ll never gather the patience the play these games and so I will never get to experience them and I honestly find that to be a shame because they look so cool. Maybe I should try playing with a guide.
 

TheSHEEEP

Gold Member
I personally find this frustrating rather than enjoyable and I would honestly love to experience these games
You are experiencing these games the way they are meant to be experienced and you don't love it.
That's fine, of course. No game is meant for everyone. Now just leave it at that and move on to other games instead.
Just because you suck at some games, doesn't mean you can't be good at others - I know I suck at plenty of games and generally don't play them.

The "I don't have time for this" excuse is just that - an excuse. Your lack of time is a consequence of your life choices.
I've got a full time job as well and still enough time to get a few hours of gaming in on most days.

Why does this ‘easy mode’ request offend so many people so much?
I'll just repeat what I wrote earlier, this thread is long and nobody can read all of that...

Funny that so many people don't get what others would lose if there was an easy mode.

Think about it like a club.
An exquisite club that only allows a select clientele to join. Anyone in the club is assured of their elevated status and their shared experience by the high standards.
Now people outside of the club demand the clubs standards to be lowered so that everyone can join.
The members of the club would naturally be against that, as that would mean they would lose what is special about being in the club to begin with.

Yes, this is gatekeeping.
And gatekeeping is good, because it is what keeps a hobby healthy and its standards high. Just look at PnP gaming or comics to see what happens when you open the floodgates and try to appeal to more people instead of catering to your core audience...
 
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Raonak

Banned
I agree. Multiplayer is already easy mode compromised experience, so why not just add a full easy mode.

Make it so you have more healing or something.

At the same time...
Why not add a hard mode too!
One hit deaths anyone? Like I can't believe that's not a thing already considering how the combat is all about reacting to enemies.
 

borborygmus

Member
I agree. Multiplayer is already easy mode compromised experience, so why not just add a full easy mode.

Make it so you have more healing or something.

At the same time...
Why not add a hard mode too!
One hit deaths anyone? Like I can't believe that's not a thing already considering how the combat is all about reacting to enemies.

It's armchair game design at this point. Being a game developer in this day and age seems like a nightmare. Suddenly everyone's a producer.

I'm not trying to be anti-consumer, but this isn't a toaster, it's content. I find a lot of arguments very clinical, as if there are objective principles like "options are always good." Well, no, this is a creative endeavor and we should know when to get out of the way.
 
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Ar¢tos

Member
They even seem to be adding one more summon slot in the remake like with DSR and DS3 (player + 3 summons + 2 invaders max).
Player + 2 summons already cleared areas easily and melted any boss, the game is going to get boring for new players and then they will complain it is too easy.
 
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BlackGauna

Member
Demon's Souls doesn't "need" an easy mode. I don't know where this entitlement, or whatever you wanna call it, from some people comes from. It could have one, but "need"? No I don't think so.

If this game is too hard for you, or you don't want to invest time into it, then don't play it. You can't expect developers to accomodate their games for you, just because you are not skilled enough or not able to adjust to the gameplay.

It is always good if developers do it, of course, so more people can enjoy their games. Accessability is always a good thing. But you can't expect the opposite and demand for things like this, especially if it would compromise some of the core aspects or premise of the whole experience.

You wouldn't ask for a horror movie to be less scary. It is meant be scary. If you can't handle it, then watch something else.

Or to stick to video games: It would be as if people where to complain about Silent Hill or Resident Evil being too scary and demanding to make it less scary. It would take away from the whole experience. They don't have a "less jump scares" or "less scary" option. They have a difficulty option because their goal or intention doesn't rely on difficulty.

Maybe From doesn't want to have a difficulty setting in their games because of that. They want all players to have the same core experience. If some people can't have that experience because of the inherent skill barrier it creates, then that is unfortunate, but on the other hand they also don't get to play an "inferior" version that maybe wouldn't even deliver the intended message of the game.

There are so many games and other media out there. Play those games or have fun with something else. Not everything is for everyone.

Oh and there is an easy mode for all Souls games: just watch a let's play or walkthrough on youtube. It doesn't get easier than that, the game plays itself, isn't that great. /s
 

JohannCK

Member
(Miyazaki) says that as Sekiro is different from Dark Souls, players may first find it to be difficult, but as they learn new ways of fighting and new tactics and get better, they should feel the pleasure of getting better, which is part of their usual unchanging theme of gaining catharsis through overcoming hardship, and thinks this would be similar to experiences that people had with Demon’s Souls.


”Getting better" is the entire point of these games. People who claim that they are being denied access to content because the games are too hard are missing the entire point. That difficulty IS the content.
 

Gandih42

Member
I’m in the camp of not playing these games because you die too often. I understand that is the premise. I understand that’s how it’s supposed to be. I understand that it’s not exactly ‘hard’ when you work things out.

None of these things let me bypass the repetition scenario and let me experience the game. A game with awesome looking art style, world and an experience I would like to enjoy but just can’t seem to because I really don’t enjoy dying over and over again and then having to run back to the place just to get knocked again. I personally find this frustrating rather than enjoyable and I would honestly love to experience these games. I just don’t have the time to invest in playing the same thing over and over again even if that’s how it’s meant to be played that’s just not fun for me. I feel like I’m wasting time and I play games to relax and escape my busy life. It is a shame that people can’t understand there are people who would like to experience these kinds of game’s without having to die so many times.

It’s not about the difficulty it’s about the repetition. If someone has enough time and patience to try something enough times to figure it out then good for you. I don’t. Not in game’s. I have a good amount of patience in general but this type of gaming is just frustrating to me. Maybe I’m starting to get old. I’m sure I would have relished and loved this type of thing in my teens but not anymore.

Why does this ‘easy mode’ request offend so many people so much? Again - personally I’ve come to the conclusion I’ll never gather the patience the play these games and so I will never get to experience them and I honestly find that to be a shame because they look so cool. Maybe I should try playing with a guide.

It's a very interesting discussion. I think a lot of people will argue that you are experiencing the game when you die over and over, repeating sections of the game while getting better. That that is the core of the game, dressed up in a cool looking world with interesting lore and stories going on around it. If you talk to the developers I'm certain they'd tell you that everything in the games design is built around achieving this very specific level of difficulty. Level design, encounter design, weapon design, enemy design etc.

But I don't think any of that necessarily invalidates your point. As I understand you want to experience all the awesome window dressing without engaging with the repetition of 'getting gud'. Could you move some sliders around so you could survive and defeat every enemy much easier, with sloppy play? Certainly. I doubt it would be difficult to do. This would in my opinion be the most harmless way of adding an easy mode to the game. The experience would from my point of view be severely handicapped, but as long as the base experience was unchanged, I wouldn't care.

I do think there's a certain level of elitism/gatekeeping surrounding the genre and I don't agree that an easy mode necessarily damages the intended experience. But I also don't think the concerns are entirely unwarranted. 'Git gud' aside, I think a lot of these concerns really just stem from the fact that people don't want to lose this experience by the games design sliding towards the casual end of the spectrum, rather than the hardcore. It's happened with many games and genres, as they are streamlined to have a wider appeal, they loose what made them popular in the first place. Examples of this would in my mind be World of Warcraft, Mass Effect, Diablo, Dragon Age. In these cases I think the original vision of the games was compromised in order to reach a broader audience and follow current trends. Not always with disastrous results, but I'm sure many people who loved the original iteration were eventually left behind in favor of a more casual audience.

I'm not saying that this would happen if an easy mode was added, but I think that is part of the concern and reason why people react so strongly to the notion. It might just be the foot in the door that would start to shift the focus of the games toward a more casual audience. If the game become more casual and sold much better I imagine the higher-ups would push for more of these kinds of things. A map, quest logs, a compass, non-fatal ledges etc.

Anyway enough rambling. I don't think we're currently at any risk of FromSoftware making their games easier, at least not going by Sekiro's example. We also have many more developers making these types of games with very varying difficulty levels. But should an easy mode be implemented, I'd be happy for whomever could now enjoy the game, even though I personally think they're doing it wrong. Luckily a lot of these games are also available on PC now (one of the reasons multiplatform is so great), so I'm quite sure you can find mods to tailor the games exactly to your needs (although obviously not the upcoming Demon's Souls remake).
 
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royox

Member
and I would honestly love to experience these games.

Dying repeatedly and learning how to overcome the dangers IS the "Experience of these games".


that’s just not fun for me.

And that's perfect. You have millions of other games to play and chill and enjoy beautiful landscapes and butterflies and birds.


Why does this ‘easy mode’ request offend so many people so much?

Because "not being like all the other games" is what make Souls games special and loved by the fanbase. A super important value of Souls games is something called "Shared Experience" and Theorycrafting the lore and story of the games. Knowing that you beat "THAT BOSS" that everybody else is talking about "how hard is" it's just the best feeling in the gaming industry. Beating Orstein and Smough in DS1, or the motherfucking Flame Lurker in Demon's, or Ludwig in Bloodborne it's an amazing feeling, but it's even better when somebody in forums ask for help and advice to beat those bosses and people starts dropping hints, info, diferent tactics and strategies and that person 2-3 days later writes again explaining super happy how he managed to beat that fucker, how he was so lucky to dodge the mortal attack at the last second and strike the boss with the last hit to kill it.

Those are feelings no other games are giving nowadays. So, as I said before: You (plural You) have millions of other games that you can and will enjoy. Just let us have 1 single company that makes games as we love.
 



Thanks for the reasonable and well reasoned replies guys. I feel like it might be time to give it another shot on ps5 release. I recently finished tlou2 on survivor + and there was a hell of a lot of repetition for me in that yet I still enjoyed it. Living in Aus I can always return the game if I find once again I don’t like it.

Oh and @TheSHEEP you’re right I could make more time for gaming and I do when there is a game I want to play but they’re rare and few and far between these days. I get bored very easily these days and feel like I’m wasting my time and should be working on something more productive if I’m not really enjoying myself. As a result I go through many months without any escape (and the escape of games really helps me relax and unwind) but in the end that just makes the next unwinding session that much more enjoyable if the game is good. So I wouldn’t say I have millions of other games to choose from. It’s really weird cause the soulsbourne game style seems like it should really appeal to me. I really need to give it another chance.
 
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