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Are Souls games too hard? Completion trophy percentages say "no"

i think they are on the easy side. i'm an averge core gamer and i never had any problems progressing. Bloodborne was my first souls game and then i went back and beat all the others and there's maybe 5 bosses total that i would classify as hard.

i mean you don't even need to master all things to beat the game. i still can't parry or use a shield.

NG+ might be another story but i never bothered playing that.
 

Kill3r7

Member
I think this is acceptable. That way the mechanics are the same, just the enemies are slower. They could also have less HP. In theory it could work, but I just don't think it is necessary.

At the same time, if a newbie wanted to play easy mode, and then play online, they would have to be warned that they would play in normal mode only or something like this. The difference could be jarring though lol.

Agreed. The proposed solution only works if the player is playing offline/no invasion. If you introduce MP then you can't balance it that way or as you suggested the invading player would have to move at normal speed. I think the game should remain the same both for damage and enemy HP. The objective is to get a new player (casual) to the point that they have confidence in their skill to eventually switch to regular mode if they want to. FWIW, Souls games are incredibly rewarding and do not need an easy mode per se. The hardest part is learning the games rule set and figuring out the enemy tells/move-set.

Have a Souls easy mode where if you dodge at the right time, you activate witch time. And if you parry at the right time, you can slice the enemy's vital parts while the world is slowed.

I could go for this.



Can't you like parry with regular/heavy weapons in Dark Souls 2/3? When dual-wielding.

I like it. Similar to BOTW.
 

PillarEN

Member
Interesting choice, I am one of them, what a game, too bad it didn't meet as much love as it deserved, one of the best JRPGs on the PS3 and can even compete with Valkyria Chronicles imo.

Wasn't that the game that launched at the same time as FF13? I mean, what can I say haha. Haven't seen something so dumb until the release date of Titanfall 2.
 

rtcn63

Member
Interesting choice, I am one of them, what a game, too bad it didn't meet as much love as it deserved, one of the best JRPGs on the PS3 and can even compete with Valkyria Chronicles imo.

If you stop playing RoF for like a day the entire arguably-obtuse-as-hell battle system disappears from your head. Imagine if resuming Dark Souls after a short period, you were always forced to start at the entrance of Sen's Fortress or the fog door of Smoug & Ornstein.
 

Devil

Member
Um, I don't want Souls to be dumbed down either, but the trophies don't say a thing here. Souls has a different audience, one which is more likely to finish a game in general than many other audiences.
 

Costia

Member
Dark Souls 2, Bloodborne, and Dark Souls 3 were released since that interview was published.
And?
He was just musing, obviously, as three games have been released and no easy mode. In theory it could work, but I think, (I'm just hypothesizing) they decided that the component wasn't necessary, and that they instead decided to work on improving the intro to their games, which is why Dark Souls 2 has a somewhat more robust introduction area. However, Bloodborne's early area, as I said before, is a bit flawed in its progression of difficulty. Miyazaki said that he made The Abyss Watchers in Dark Souls 3 fairly approachable because he wanted to avoid the high difficulty of the early area in Bloodborne. This isn't exactly the best solution, as I personally wish that boss was more difficult, but you can see how they decided to approach the design.
You claimed it was "completely arbitrary and against their core design". The article sugests otherwise.
Like i said to pillar, money and time until release isn't infinite.
Implementing an easy mode will take time and money. I assume that implementing easy mode is at a rather low priority for them. Their first priority is the normal mode.
 

Kill3r7

Member
Um, I don't want Souls to be dumbed down either, but the trophies don't say a thing here. Souls has a different audience, one which is more likely to finish a game in general than many other audiences.

Agreed. Also percentages can be awfully deceiving especially when comparing them to mass market AAA games.
 
To those of you mentioning summons: they definitely make things easier (with some exceptions, as some bosses are so strong that your ally dying means it's just you vs. the boss and you're doing less damage to it), but they're part of the game. So yeah, it's harder to solo most of the bosses or an area, but having partners isn't cheating, so if it makes the game easier, then that's just how it is.

At the same time... they're still hard. xD~~
 

MilkBeard

Member
And?

You claimed it was "completely arbitrary and against their core design". The article sugests otherwise.
Like i said to pillar, money and time until release isn't infinite.
Implementing an easy mode will take time and money. I assume that implementing easy mode is at a rather low priority for them. Their first priority is the normal mode.

That's my opinion, and I will continue to say so until they actually implement it. Miyazaki was trying to figure out a way to make the games more accessible, and the result is methods that gel with their core concept. But if Miyazaki himeslf insists on an easy mode in a Dark Souls game and it is implemented and it worked well with the game, then I would definitely eat crow here.

But yes, an easy mode is low priority, as it means rebalancing the game all over again, when they can find ways to tweak the main experience instead that might be a more natural option.

It's possible we could see difficulty modes in future IPs though.
 

TheMink

Member
But playing a dumbed down version wouldn't show them that. That is not the intended experience. That would not show them why these games are loved.



not me :(

This is what I go back to.

People jump to elitism so quickly. But I believe anyone can beat a souls game. I have no special ability that allows me to beat it. There are "easy modes" already in Dark Souls, spell casters, summoning.
If you were to google "dark souls easy mode" I'm sure people have the easiest builds and routes for people, which would also maintain the spirit of community discovery the game motivates.

But most of all I guess I just don't understand what people think they will find in an easy mode. People looking to "see what the fuss is about" or "experience the game" will most certainly not get either of those things. How much death should the player on easy be willing to tolerate?Increasing player damage values and lowering enemy damage values would make the deliberate combat system completely moot. And if there is a more elegant solution I'm sure that require finely ballencing every outcome to be easier with enemy types and placement manually, but that would take a ton of recourses.

If you were to just slap on less stamina or something and more damage given less taken, why dodge or shield if attacking away without any consideration works? And then what's the reward? There is no overt cutscene story element waiting at the end. You fight each boss just to fight the next boss.


Dark Souls is toxic community apperently but I guarantee you that if you went onto the Souls community threads and said "does anyone want to help me through this game" you would find people up for the task of sherpa-ing you through. Because that's what this game is about. Not so much that it's hard but because there are to many ways to play it. And some of those ways will make it easier.
 

Yopis

Member
This is the same whining that destroyed SWG. Give everyone Jedi because...

Every game doesnt need to scale to every skill level.Play something else that has easy mode.

We get super easy games like Horizon (Even very hard in HZD) because companies are scared people will give up, if not a cake walk.
 

Kill3r7

Member
This is the same whining that destroyed SWG. Give everyone Jedi because...

Every game doesnt need to scale to every skill level.Play something else that has easy mode.

We get super easy games like Horizon (Even very hard in HZD) because companies are scared people will give up, if not a cake walk.

If the objective is to sell as many copies of a game as possible then making a game accessible to the masses makes sense. You would not need to compromise the overall quality or artistic integrity of the game to do this.
 

MilkBeard

Member
This is what I go back to.

People jump to elitism so quickly. But I believe anyone can beat a souls game. I have no special ability that allows me to beat it. There are "easy modes" already in Dark Souls, spell casters, summoning.
If you were to google "dark souls easy mode" I'm sure people have the easiest builds and routes for people, which would also maintain the spirit of community discovery the game motivates.

But most of all I guess I just don't understand what people think they will find in an easy mode. People looking to "see what the fuss is about" or "experience the game" will most certainly not get either of those things. How much death should the player on easy be willing to tolerate?Increasing player damage values and lowering enemy damage values would make the deliberate combat system completely moot. And if there is a more elegant solution I'm sure that require finely ballencing every outcome to be easier with enemy types and placement manually, but that would take a ton of recourses.

If you were to just slap on less stamina or something and more damage given less taken, why dodge or shield if attacking away without any consideration works? And then what's the reward? There is no overt cutscene story element waiting at the end. You fight each boss just to fight the next boss.


Dark Souls is toxic community apperently but I guarantee you that if you went onto the Souls community threads and said "does anyone want to help me through this game" you would find people up for the task of sherpa-ing you through. Because that's what this game is about. Not so much that it's hard but because there are to many ways to play it. And some of those ways will make it easier.

Yes, I agree here. And I agree that the elitism sucks, and it makes people defensive and the community a bit toxic. But really, looking at it logically, the games offer a lot of different methods to play, and some of them definitely make the games easier. If there was legitimately no way to make the game easier, like some kind of sidescroller with limited lives, I can understand the need for difficulty levels. But Dark Souls is an RPG with leveling mechanics, methods to regain everything you lost, and ways to play with others that makes it much easier.
 

Maxey

Member
If the objective is to sell as many copies of a game as possible then making a game accessible to the masses makes sense.

But that's not what we're discussing here. We're discussing whether or not Souls games needs an easy difficulty mode for people who can't handle the standard difficulty of them. It's about accessibility, not sales.
 

rtcn63

Member
If the objective is to sell as many copies of a game as possible then making a game accessible to the masses makes sense. You would not need to compromise the overall quality or artistic integrity of the game to do this.

I think what terrifies people is that... this is actually becoming more and more the case. It's the worry over the actual execution of an added "easier difficulty" and not just the concept itself.

Folks complained that Tomb Raider 2013 was too hard (it wasn't), that the challenge got in the way of the game's "strong" points- graphics, storytelling, semi-open world. So they made Rise of the Tomb Raider an interactive movie. From the individual set pieces to the core gameplay mechanics (to the non-existent difficulty settings- "survivor" is just an illusion to fool you), it was obviously designed to showcase everything but the actual... game part.

I've replayed TR2013 three or so times. I will probably never touch RotTR again.
 

LiK

Member
Summoning isn't even the only thing. If you grind and farm in Souls games, you can literally just level up to the point where you become OP and just brute force your way to victory. The game is challenging but if you're dedicated, you can beat them all. I Platinumed all of them except for Demon's cuz fuck that Pure Bladestone.
 

Yopis

Member
If the objective is to sell as many copies of a game as possible then making a game accessible to the masses makes sense. You would not need to compromise the overall quality or artistic integrity of the game to do this.


Oh for sure I get that totally. Just sad as the cost of games has gone up production wise. While at the same time, we get more and more dumbed down experiences.

Even to newer entries in established series. I just think those things are in conflict from design standpoint.


Like HZD,loved the game but no trophy for playing on hardest difficulty. That rubbed me the wrong way. I mean if you can run through the game on easy mode go for it. But atleast acknowledge I took the best challenge, your game allows.

Just my opinion. Lots of buddies with children I went to college with now, play on easy if games allow. Just not the direction I want all titles to go.

Getting better is what makes games fun for me. Does not matter if online or off. Also I play all genres.
 

A very common occurrence in gaming journalism is that someone goes to great lengths to conduct an interview or write an in-depth article, and then someone else takes a small piece of that out of context, adds an eye-catching title and then sits back to profit off of someone else's work. In these situations, the right thing to do is to link the original source. When someone works hard to publish original work, it is only fair that they get the click, and not the site stealing their work.

But disregarding the moral point of view, if you don't link that original source you risk making yourself look a bit silly, for example if the original source has been updated to reflect that there was an error in translation, while the regurgitator doesn't bother to update their piece to reflect this new information. That way you would have avoided spreading fake news based on a translation error
 

Costia

Member
A very common occurrence in gaming journalism is that someone goes to great lengths to conduct an interview or write an in-depth article, and then someone else takes a small piece of that out of context, adds an eye-catching title and then sits back to profit off of someone else's work. In these situations, the right thing to do is to link the original source. When someone works hard to publish original work, it is only fair that they get the click, and not the site stealing their work.

But disregarding the moral point of view, if you don't link that original source you risk making yourself look a bit silly, for example if the original source has been updated to reflect that there was an error in translation, while the regurgitator doesn't bother to update their piece to reflect this new information. That way you would have avoided spreading fake news based on a translation error
You could have just linked to the source and corrected me if i made a mistake instead of being condesending.
 

rtcn63

Member
Summoning isn't even the only thing. If you grind and farm in Souls games, you can literally just level up to the point where you become OP and just brute force your way to victory. The game is challenging but if you're dedicated, you can beat them all. I Platinumed all of them except for Demon's cuz fuck that Pure Bladestone.

Souls games pretty much expect that some people will need to grind to progress. They even intentionally gate things like upgrade materials to prevent you from being too overpowered too soon (i.e. in this area, you'll never be able to get more than +3 on a weapon no matter how much you explore and farm).

I grew up with old-school JRPG's so I personally don't mind it as much, BUT I can see it being a barrier. The Souls games are not perfect, and I'd never argue that they were.
 

Kill3r7

Member
But that's not what we're discussing here. We're discussing whether or not Souls games needs an easy difficulty mode for people who can't handle the standard difficulty of them. It's about accessibility, not sales.

I understand. Souls does not need an easy mode per se (summoning accomplishes this). However if it needs to reach a broader market, and can't do so under the current design, then a simple or easy mode might be something they might want to consider.

EDIT: I think this discussion is hard for most of us to have since we are already converts.
 

Despera

Banned
You know what? While an easy mode is not the solution... I also think of people with disabilities or physical ailments and a solution can be created that's within the design philosophy of the game...

Why not offer a journey-long A.I. companion? A character who's competent and constantly evolving along side the player throughout the journey. And when their HP hit 0 they just go into cool-down for a small amount of time before going back at it again.

And if the player wants to go solo at any time they can just issue a command to the companion and let them simply stand back. In trouble again? Simply use the companion signal item or whatever so they can rush to your aid.

I think that's a reasonable version of an "easy mode".
 

MilkBeard

Member
A very common occurrence in gaming journalism is that someone goes to great lengths to conduct an interview or write an in-depth article, and then someone else takes a small piece of that out of context, adds an eye-catching title and then sits back to profit off of someone else's work. In these situations, the right thing to do is to link the original source. When someone works hard to publish original work, it is only fair that they get the click, and not the site stealing their work.

But disregarding the moral point of view, if you don't link that original source you risk making yourself look a bit silly, for example if the original source has been updated to reflect that there was an error in translation, while the regurgitator doesn't bother to update their piece to reflect this new information. That way you would have avoided spreading fake news based on a translation error

Quote from the corrected source:

'But after that comment circled around the Internet Namco Bandai got in contact with us, claiming that there was a ‘translation mistake'. Although we did note at the time that the interview's translation wasn't very good the sentence in question always seemed pretty unambiguous. But this is apparently what it should have been:‘This fact is really sad to me and I am thinking about how to make everyone complete the game while maintaining the current difficulty and carefully send all gamers the messages behind it.'According to Namco Bandai, ‘This revision has been made in order to inform Miyazaki-san's true intention and what has been originally posted had a mistake because of mistranslation.'

From the corrected article. Link here.

While the editors ponder over whether Miyazaki actually said a second difficulty and they are backtracking, or whether he actually did say something else entirely, the official statement does back up my comments about the core concept. If we take this statement as true, then their intention is to make the game more accessible for new players and better to understand, while still retaining the core idea of "challenging but fair". Makes sense to me.
 

rtcn63

Member
You know what? While an easy mode is not the solution... I also think of people with disabilities or physical ailments and a solution can be created that's within the design philosophy of the game...

Why not offer a journey-long A.I. companion? A character who's competent and constantly evolving along side the player throughout the journey? And when their HP hit 0 they just go into cool-down for a small amount of time before going back at it again?

And if the player wants to go solo at any time they can just issue a command to the companion and let them simply stand back. In trouble again? Simply use the companion signal item or whatever so they can rush to your aid.

How about an NPC summon that can be called on at no cost before every boss (and that scales in resilience/damage to each area). Let's be honest, you can run through most enviroments without fighting (*cough* fuck shrine of amala and iron keep *cough*).
 

MilkBeard

Member
How about an NPC summon that can be called on at no cost before every boss. Let's be honest, you can run through most areas without fighting (*cough* fuck shrine of amala and iron keep *cough*).

Honestly, if they made an easy mode where you could select it and the only difference is that you have the choice of getting NPC assistance at any time, I think that would be the most painless inclusion of an easy mode. It's actually a pretty good idea and gels with the game. But then, to offset, you still have to deal with the HP multiplier.
 
By and large, I'm for more options in games. Things like the auto-acceleration/steering in MK8 don't bother me in the least. The Marvel Vs Capcom inputs being simplified don't bother me either.

The only exception is the Souls series. I think adding an easy mode fundamentally hurts the integrity of the game. These games are designed to be an experience in which you fail, learn, fail again, learn more, until you finally overcome the challenges presented. It's meant to teach you to be aware of your surroundings, to eventually learn them by heart because there's no map or minimap. That, as an experience, is what these games are built to be, and I think an "easy" mode would undermine that. On a more practical level, I would prefer that development resources be focused on bolstering and improving on that design philosophy, rather than be spent adding a feature which runs counter to it.

It's not an elitist thing. I don't get off on thinking about how I can beat a game that others may struggle with. I'm actually a firm believer that anyone can ultimately learn and beat the Souls series. But I have such a respect for how tightly these games are designed that I wouldn't want to see anything added that may detract from or undermine that.

That said, I think focusing the marketing on the punishing difficulty for Dark Souls was a mistake. The "Prepare to Die" slogan doesn't really sum up the game for me. Yeah, you die a lot, but the games really aren't sadistically difficult or unfair. And I think focusing so much on the difficulty of it all will put people off who may otherwise find themselves enjoying the game.
 

rtcn63

Member
One step further- what if there was an easy mode that let you play as Knuckles from Sonic Boom. "Oh, I need to beat two bosses and buy a key for 10k souls to pass this 20-foot high gate? Well..."

2EYIN8k.gif
 
Summoning isn't even the only thing. If you grind and farm in Souls games, you can literally just level up to the point where you become OP and just brute force your way to victory. The game is challenging but if you're dedicated, you can beat them all. I Platinumed all of them except for Demon's cuz fuck that Pure Bladestone.

Before I played a Demon's (my first Souls game), I'd heard that the way the game was designed was that if you reached a difficult boss, it didn't matter if you were level 9 or level 99, beating that boss was solely down to your skill.

That was one of the biggest pieces of crap I'd ever read. The game got a lot easier the higher your level was. Sure, there's some skill involved, but when you have like 40 Dex, 30 Vit, 30 End, you're obviously gonna have an easier time than if you weren't leveled as high.

As I've said earlier in this thread, the best way to implement an easy mode is just to increase the souls a player gains, so they can stay at a high level during natural progression, rather than spending time replaying the same area over and over to grind for souls.
 

Jawmuncher

Member
You could have just linked to the source and corrected me if i made a mistake instead of being condesending.

He did the same thing to me. Despite the updated article still basically saying the same thing. Like damn you can tell people "article posting etiquette" without sounding like a snob. Especially when it's a 5 year old article.
 

LiK

Member
The scariest thing about the Souls games are the OP Invaders who can destroy all your progress. It made me play Demon's offline back in the day cuz I just didn't wanna deal with them. lol
 
You could have just linked to the source and corrected me if i made a mistake instead of being condesending.

Sorry, I was being overly condescending. This is a personal pet peeve of mine. I see so often that people make threads based on news items, without giving credit to the original source. And the original source is always linked in the article people link to, so it so very easy to do it right. I feel like original work should be credited and rewarded with clicks, and this was the second time within 24 hours when someone did this mistake with this very article. So I overreacted a bit.
 

Despera

Banned
The scariest thing about the Souls games are the OP Invaders who can destroy all your progress. It made me play Demon's offline back in the day cuz I just didn't wanna deal with them. lol
I remember when players started to realize the true power of a bloodtinge build in BB.

I was going through the nightmare frontier when this guy invaded. "Cool. Should be fun" I thought.

First thing I noticed was that this invader didn't gesture or anything, he just walked ever so slowly toward me from a distance. I thought that was peculiar, but said fuck it I'll do the same for the lulz.

Once we got close to each other he took one shot at me, and it hit. And with it almost half my HP was gone. I was legit shook.

You can only imagine the chase that ensued afterward. Shit was missing the benny hill theme.
 
Souls games are tough, but they're doable. I've soloed most every boss in the game at one point or another on varying difficulties with various characters, and I've grabbed help too. Me and a few buddies have played through the series together and helped each other out too. It's fun to go wild on bosses too.

I went pure sword and board for my first playthrough of Dark Souls 1 on XBox. Game was tough as nails, but I did it. I grabbed help here and there (Biggie and Smalls no doubt, Seath, etc), hung around in hotspots for invasions, etc. Sucked to get invaded at the wrong time, but that's life. Kept me on my toes (and it was particularly hilarious watching an invader try to make their way all the way down the crystal caves, when I had two helpers with me (trying to get that tail and I wasn't gud yet, fight me).

This last DLC on NG+5 proved to be difficult, and I haven't finished Midir or Gael yet, but everything else is taken care of.

Anyway, they're not too hard, they're just not very forgiving in certain spots.
 
This is what I go back to.

People jump to elitism so quickly. But I believe anyone can beat a souls game. I have no special ability that allows me to beat it. There are "easy modes" already in Dark Souls, spell casters, summoning.
If you were to google "dark souls easy mode" I'm sure people have the easiest builds and routes for people, which would also maintain the spirit of community discovery the game motivates.

But most of all I guess I just don't understand what people think they will find in an easy mode. People looking to "see what the fuss is about" or "experience the game" will most certainly not get either of those things. How much death should the player on easy be willing to tolerate?Increasing player damage values and lowering enemy damage values would make the deliberate combat system completely moot. And if there is a more elegant solution I'm sure that require finely ballencing every outcome to be easier with enemy types and placement manually, but that would take a ton of recourses.

If you were to just slap on less stamina or something and more damage given less taken, why dodge or shield if attacking away without any consideration works? And then what's the reward? There is no overt cutscene story element waiting at the end. You fight each boss just to fight the next boss.

Yup. The Souls games spread through incredibly positive word of mouth, because everyone who got through them could recognize their personal journey as a player for the incredible experience it was. If you could sleepwalk your way through the game, many people would do so and think the game would be mediocre. Maybe more people would have played them up front, but the word of mouth would not have been so unanimously positive. Paradoxically, probably less people would have played the game in the end, and a high percentage of players that did would have had a sub-optimal experience
 

lcswagner

Neo Member
I think that using trophy completion rates is a very weak argument to say the games are not hard, simply because you can't assume that the overall skill of the average person that plays Souls games is the same as the skill of the average person that played Witcher 3, for instance, which could be considered a more mainstream game. It's basic statistics.
 
I think that using trophy completion rates is a very weak argument to say the games are not hard, simply because you can't assume that the overall skill of the average person that plays Souls games is the same as the skill of the average person that played Witcher 3, for instance, which could be considered a more mainstream game. It's basic statistics.

I wasn't making the case that the games are not hard.

I was saying that the game both had good sales, and a high completion percentage. While they are hard, they are not too hard to achieve widespread success. So adding an easy mode is not a necessity to reach a large audicence. And anyone can beat them, if they have sufficient tenacity
 

TheMink

Member
Yup. The Souls games spread through incredibly positive word of mouth, because everyone who got through them could recognize their personal journey as a player for the incredible experience it was. If you could sleepwalk your way through the game, many people would do so and think the game would be mediocre. Maybe more people would have played them up front, but the word of mouth would not have been so unanimously positive. Paradoxically, probably less people would have played the game in the end, and a high percentage of players that did would have had a sub-optimal experience

Although we can't know for sure, I believe these statements to be 100% true.

I see it in other actions games with alternate difficulties. Kingdom Hearts being a big one. Uncharted is another. People judge based on what they played it on not what the "definitive" difficulty is.

It's compounded by the fact that the quality of balance is different between entries. For instance KHIIFM Critical is one of most beautifully balanced games in my opinion. But KH DDD Critical is far worse and I would consider Proud mode the "definitive" experience. Because balancing games on multiple difficulties is harder than people think.

Uncharted 4s Crushing is usually not well liked because certain gameplay elements are basically useless because remaining out if cover is suicide.

So back to the point, when people rag on parts of the game say "oh you can do X thing over and over and win" only to find out they played on Normal or lower I'm like "oh well we were talking about completely different games basically." There is nothing wrong with someone playing on Normal I mean it's called Normal it SHOULD be the most definitive experience right? But it's often not and segregates discussion and basically caveats people into specifying what difficulty they played on before discussing.


For Dark Souls I love the idea of discussing peoples struggles and suggesting alternate solutions from gameplay mechanics that take advantage of a boss weakness then simply saying "maybe you should play on a lower difficulty"
 

royox

Member
The idea is still that of limiting the enjoyment of other people for no other reason than ideals and convictions on how something should be.

How? Why would anybody get a game they know they won't enjoy? Who bought a Souls game not knowing the "it's hard" meme? I suck at racing games so I don't buy them. People should do the same with Soulsborne games and don't buy them if they know those games are not for them.
 

Morrigan Stark

Arrogant Smirk
It's amazing how people are still waving the "niche" and "dedicated fanbase" arguments even when repeatedly confronted with the fact that DS3 stayed in the top 10 selling games for a year, that is right there in the OP.

Although on second thought perhaps a strong correlation between wanting an easy mode and not reading the OP shouldn't be that surprising.
Oh snap

Dark Souls 2, Bloodborne, and Dark Souls 3 were released since that interview was published.

And Dark Souls 2 did have an alternative difficulty setting!
A harder mode hahahaha
 
lol



An unlimited flask would completely nullify gameplay systems like kindling bonfires and finding the rite of kindling, which is very nice bit of player empowerment. Even someone who is only in it for the story would be negatively affected, because gameplay and narrative in Souls games are closely intertwined. There is a lot of lore speculation about the nature of kindling bonfires. What does it really mean to burn away humanity to strengthen the fire? If there was no need for the player to ever kindle, the lore implications of kindling would be entirely lost on the player

Okay this whole post is just you worrying about how another person plays a game...something i mentioned that people against an easy mode in games like ds should do less, in an earlier post...why do you care if somebody ruins these mechanics for themselves? IMO playing any FPS on the easiest setting (wolfenstien new order being a perfect example) makes the enemies cannon fonder and essentially makes it impossible for you to die...as somebody who beat the game on uber vs the easiest setting...one could argue many of the games mechanics become useless/unneccessary etc. But nobody complains about easy modes in these types of games despite them having arguably more significsbt impacts on gameplay mechanics.

What would happen is that people would play Dark Souls IV Easy Mode. Then bitch on internet because it was too easy, repetitive and boring because the game is just about killing idiot goons and bosses (there's no story and no other gameplay other than that, even the AI is laughlable).

If From didn't implement an Easy mode is for a reason, and it's not because they don't want people to not play the game, but the game is focused about some gameplay aspects, one is difficulty.

It's like asking for an easy mode with dumber puzzles on Fez or The Witness. It would defeat a core aspect of those games.

Okay so you have done the same thing (your just worrying about how other people play a game) but additionally you make some grand assumptions... You assume people who play games on easier settings "bitch" about said games online for being too easy/repetative but i cant say ive ever seen this (you can point me in the direction of some evidence that supports this notion if you have some, if not ill just assume you pulled that outta your ass)......but im not sure why you care either way. Again, how another person plays a game doesnt effect your experience of the default setting in any capcity...

I entirely agree with ceative freedom however. If From is stricly against an easymode in the game over fear of compromising their vision then im fine with that...im just responding to those in this thread who have suggested it would "literally be impossible" to implement an easier mode in a soulslike game without effecting the core experience in the default setting... which is simply not the case....an easy mode in a ds games like the one i described would do nothing to change the default experience/mechanics and its existence is only a problem for those who concern themselves over how others play a game.

Well, for one thing, you have to take the developers' intentions into account too. This easy-to-add item essentially makes the player an invincible god and significantly reduces the levels of thought and engagement asked of the player - are the developers going to want players to mindlessly consume the game in the manner afforded to them by this super flask? It may not be the standard mode, but for many players this will become their Dark Souls experience - they will vaguely remember Dark Souls as the game with the infinite health pool they were able to mash their way through and put down.

Second, although it is true that such a mode would attract players who would otherwise give up on the game, it will also allow an easy out for players who might have otherwise developed their skill to overcome obstacles. In Dark Souls as it exists today, if you get hopelessly stuck, your only option (aside from quitting) is to develop a stronger understanding of the game and how best to use the tools available to you. But undoubtedly, at least some players will back out and choose to take the super flask upon running up against the wall, denying them whatever harrowing and rewarding experiences they might have had down the line.

And third, yeah, the Souls games' online systems are heavily dependent on their difficulty, and working them around multiple modes of play would be a problem. Do you place all players in the same pool (meaning that invaders can haplessly attack the world of a super-flask-wielding player and find themselves up against an invulnerable foe) or do you sequester super-flask mode players into their own pool of online players (thus splitting the online playerbase and shrinking the standard mode's community)? Not to mention that players who are having trouble with the game - the kind of players who would pick the super-flask mode and would probably need to be separated from the main online playerbase - are among those most likely to summon others for help, meaning that you'd be dampening the game experience for those players eager to be summoned and help others out, too.

Okay...so you have also just wrote a whole post essentially worrying about how other people play a game....

1. Makes player invicible god (so? if you dont use it, it wont effect you and its not the default, so your worrying about the idea that somebody else will use it)

2. Reduces thought and engagement (so? Not the default setting etc.)

3.For many players this would become their dark souls experience (so? Your clearly just worrying about how other people play a game when it doesnt effect you in any way)


Also with regards to giving players an out in challenging circumstances, the gsme could simply lock its achievments behind the default mode making it impossible to gain achievments in easy mode.....similar to how Minecraft does not allow you to gain achievments in creative mode....

....Also i completely disagree with the notion that the easiest diffuculty in a game overshadows the default setting.For example, Gears of Wars easiest setting makes the game a joke and renders many of the games mechanics unneccessary....despite the inclusion of this mode people still enjoy the more challenging side of the game and i have never heard anybody claim that gears of wars is an easy game (not to suggest that its super hard either but only that its a challenging game) which clearly demonstrates that the inclusion of its easier modes did nothing to compromise the harder modes or prevent people from playing them.




i agree that developers intentions matter and ultimately the decision to implement such a mode comes down entirely to them and their vision for the game...but like i said, to suggest that it is "literally impossible" is extremely niave.



LOL, this is what I'm talking about. There's no need for me to reiterate what other people have said because there are multiple posts that soundly refute your arguments in their entirety on this page. In GankzyMcfly's case, before you even made them! Maybe try addressing those points before you start patting yourself on the back...

Lol multiple post that soundly refute my arguments? You suggested that it would "literally be impossible" to implement an easy mode in a ds game. My original post suggested that people against such a mode should stop worrying about how other people play the game...not one argument against my suggested easy mode has resolved this fact..or demonstrated to me how it would "literally be impossible".like i said in the majority of circumstances, those against an easy mode in DS games worry way tooo much about how other people play a game and all the arguments against an easy mode only reaffirm this position.
 
The difference is that self-selection biases Dark Souls specifically because it is marketed to challenge the market to beat them. The mentality of "this is a really hard game, I bet you can't beat it, prepare to die" is a huge driving force in the audience for the Souls series when they play these games, and a game like MGSV does not have that specific factor working for it to motivate its audience to beat the game.

Most people buy Souls games because they want to overcome challenges, the process of which naturally leads to beating the game. People buy other games for many different reasons, and those reasons do not necessarily lead to beating the game with the same kind of drive as the Souls games. Self-selection is absolutely a factor. I don't think the Souls series is niche, but it's definitely targeted at a very specific market. I can convince my sister to try many different kinds of games, but the difficulty stigma with Souls is so much that she has no interest in ever trying it. This kind of mainstream perception is definitely going to skew who's buying and playing these games. And we can see with the Demon's Souls example in the OP that the completion percentage drops relative to the other Souls games when the self-selection factor is somewhat mitigated and more people who aren't the target audience try them out.

That's a lot of text to state the same thing that, again, has been debunked in the OP. You don't stay within the top ten selling games for a year by "targeting a very specific market", and no amount of rationalization will change that fact.
 

test_account

XP-39C²
Funny coincidence, i was actually thinking about making a thread about the platinum completion rate for the Souls game a few weeks ago =) That is also pretty high, like 15-20%.

This is also what i like about trophies, getting stats like how many that have completed certain games and such. I find that to be interesting.
 

Carl7

Member
I know some people who played the entire Dark Souls 3 with 3 summons all the time. I don't judge them, all it matters is if they had fun doing it.
 

cakely

Member
The trophies seem to indicate that if you buy a souls game, you're probably the sort of person that wants to complete a souls game.
 
I'm surprised MGS5 is so high. Not taking a knock at the game's quality here. I've beaten nearly everything with Metal Gear in the title and I couldn't stay with it. Really long game.
 
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