• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Difficulty vs Accessibility: A responsibility for the developers, not for the players.

Nautilus

Banned
Ever since Dark Souls released in 2011, there have been numerous discussions about accessibility in games; about whether a game being hard keeps potential players from enjoying it and even buying it, since the difficulty might scare them away. Or wheter the player who made a purchase is entitled to have an option which will help him finish the game and thus get his money worth out of the product he bought. Boiling it down, the discussion ends up being “Should hard games have an easy mode for players that aren’t good enough for the standard difficulty?”. And I’m here to say that, not only should games not cater to anything but the developer's own creative decisions, be the game easy or hard, accessibility has nothing to do with the difficulty of a game.

It's easy to imagine why this topic sprang up. Imagine yourself playing Contra, Dark Souls, Blasphemous or any other game known for being hard, and feeling frustrated for not managing to make progress into the game, especially for a game that you have spent money on. Certainly, frustration would arise from that, given that you aren’t getting enjoyment out of a product that you have paid for, and promised you dozens of hours of uninterrupted fun. So it’s expected that said people would bring their frustration to the internet, trying to make their voices known about their issues; about how they cant enjoy the game because it's “too hard”, and linking this supposed problem to the lack of accessibility to the game for players like them. But the problem is, this is not an accessibility issue. For better or for worse, it’s the player responsibility to understand the game better and to improve, much like you would need to understand a math problem or resolve an issue that would arise in your own personal life. More than that though, accessibility refers to the tools that the game provides you to play it at your best. For example, when a game's standard control scheme is simply atrocious, or the button placements simply dont make sense to you, the game should have an option in-game for you to customize its layout, so it adapts to your preferred playstyle or physical conditions. Another example would be the standard options that any game would have, such as sound and graphical settings, so that you can adjust the game to the conditions of your house or your senses, either because you're playing the game at night and want it to be quieter, or because your screen is too bright and needs to be adjusted to better see what’s going on. These are true accessibility options; tools that enable the user to adapt the game's overall settings and mechanics to their own preference, so that they can play at their best.

But more than that, the difficulty in these kind of games are more than just a tool to either make the game longer or to bar people from playing it. The way its implemented in these games makes it almost a genre in its own, so much so that when a game is hard, people usually compares said game to Dark Souls, the game mostly responsible to revive the taste for hard games. The developers of such games doesn’t simply increase the health and damage of the enemies and call it a day, but rather it is implemented in its overall design. Take Blasphemous for instance, a game that released last year boasting about how hard and brutal it is. There is a part in the game that you are forced to go down in a small platform, that slowly goes down, while you are being attack by enemies that throw boomerangs, both in your right and on your left. That particular instance isn’t simply hard because of how much damage those enemies do, but rather because of their position and how the whole situation is set up. You are forced to keep taps on how fast you are approaching the enemies, but also on your own position, giving the moving platform, and also at the same time to dodge their attacks, that comes simultaneously from both sites. The difficulty of that particular part then comes from the level design and how well the level blends with the enemy pattern and positions, making for a though situation to handle, at least at the first few times that you go through it.

Unless you make said enemies do a damage so low that dodging or blocking seems inconsequential, the situation described previously where you are surrounded by enemies is still hard, no matter how much less damage you receive or how much more life you have, especially considering that scene I have just described is just a tiny portion of a game that have numerous tough situations, and that it requires for you to tackle them in succession to make a significant progress in the game. And this is why this whole discussion of hard games having multiple difficulties is ridiculous: For you to make an easy difficulty of a game like Blasphemous or Dark Souls, it would require more than simply decreasing the damage and health of foes, it would mean to redesign a game completely from scratch. And doing that its either financially impossible, or it would be simply easier to make a new game that would cater to a different audience altogether, one that does not like games that are inherently hard.

Another point that should be brought up, and that’s personally the biggest reason why hard games should remain only being hard, is the developer own wishes and creative reasons to make the game as challenging as it is. Hidetaka Miyazaki once said he wants his games to be more satisfying than difficult, and the sense of accomplishment is given to the players through overcoming the tremendous odds his games presents. It was due to that creative freedom and the simple wish of creating a game that the creator himself would like to play, without the restrains of “what others might think the game should have”, that these hard games not only became the critical and commercial successes that they are, but also became an identity in and of itself. More than being described as a souls – like game, these games are known and revered for its difficulty. And said franchises managed to grow based on that reputation. Those games became popular because they were hard. Giving it a easier option, not only wouldn’t it make it more “accessible” to more players, but it also could backfire, and make the game less desirable, given that the level design could end up suffering because of that.

More than anything, games that are especially hard have become almost a genre on its own, and much like that, it wont be able to please everyone, either that be because of someone skills or simply because the game features don’t appeal to that certain individual. But that’s the beauty to it: like we have games that are about racing, platforming or just about story, we also have games that are about conquering the challenges the game presents to the players, to muster all you have to reach its conclusion. What we should be discussing is not that every game should be beatable by everyone, but rather how the industry have grown so much that everyone can find a game that they will utterly enjoy.
 
A good example of "bad" hard difficulty is COD Veteran aimbot hitscan enemies.

Sekiro is good. Took me 3 cracks to get it. Each spaced about 3 months apart. Finally on that third try it clicked. I was a ninja. The game slowed down and I "got it". If an easier difficulty (lower damage, wider parry window) mode had been available I know I would have taken the bait and robbed of my "git gud" experience.
 

Knightime_X

Member
The only time skill (getting good) should matter the most is competitive mp games especially in genres like fighting games.
Making moves way too hard to execute WILL kill off the community in a prompt manner. It's a delicate balance.

Gating progression in single player games is absurd and should never be enforced.

Games like bloodborne had potential to sell 20 million easily but philosophies got in the way and critically skewed its success potential.

Its seems elitist players who don't even see a red cent can't care any less if progression is gated by those with less skill.
They're also heavily against easier settings, that are entirely optional.
Why is any one's guess.
It's asinine how this is mostly limited to the souls community.

You don't see Ghouls N Ghosts Resurrection community losing their shit over that game being as easy as it can be hard.
 
Last edited:

GametimeUK

Member
Developer has the creative freedom to include whatever they like...

but I'm a massive advocate for difficulty options in EVERY game that doesn't have some PvP / MP balancing. I think more people being able to play through a whole game is only a good thing. Give people infinite health, cheats, level skips etc in every game... as long as it's an option who the fuck cares?
 

martino

Member
How dare you suggest games should offer customisable control, sound, and graphical options.

You should respect devs and their freedom to not include those things in their games
Accessibility, control , sound and graphical option doesn't mean you need to change something else in your game design (even if in the case of accesibility ones it make part of it relying on perception easier by the nature of the options)
 

Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
It's not a responsibility, just don't play the game, nobody wants you to play a game that's too hard for you to enjoy it, play other things, there are too many games out there to care that some are too hard for you as others are for me.

Value comes from the gameplay and challenge in many of these games some people want to force to their will, when if they did do that they still wouldn't enjoy the game because it lost a good chunk of what made it good. Button mashing to beat everything in Souls for example without actually learning any of the proper game mechanics because the easy difficulty made the AI easier and reduced damage modifiers to the point it doesn't matter if you even try would make it a 6 hour romp through pretty landscapes and inventive designs with nothing else to keep anyone engaged as every other element would be reduced to mindless & unnecessary.

Then as they detract the game for not having such options, they'd still go in threads to diss the game by going all, I've finished it and it's nothing special guys, why are you praising it, it's just got some nice art but it plays like shit, there's no reason to explore so I just wanna get to the main (thin) story beats asap and get annoyed when I end up somewhere with useless rewards I don't need, the battles have no depth, etc., because they don't have any real use for what they may find or be enlightened to while carefully exploring or learning the rest mechanics, lol. Damned if they do and damned if they don't for this certain crowd really. Just let them do what they want, if they do cave and add options then we'll see how they do it and judge that, if the game still feels "right" or like it was tuned for easy and higher only changed things like damage modifiers/amount of enemies etc., which isn't at all what makes the games work well and what makes them challenging and rewarding.

Heck, people already use cheats/mods then spew that stuff but at least when it's known they used such, everyone understands that they can't judge the experience because they didn't play it as intended and thus they basically ruined it for themselves by claiming they're fixing it and showing it how it really is, lol. If the method was developer sanctioned then they'd actually have the right to complain it doesn't offer a compelling experience so it shouldn't have been in the game and makes it bad, and thus it isn't in the game as tuning it to easy but making it fun would require a full rework, and thus we're going full circle with such inane non arguments, lol.

And it's not that hard, anyway, it's no Mega Man, you just need to learn to play the game and it does teach and ease you in and ramp up as usual. Asking for the above would be like me wanting to take resource gathering from the equation in a RTS (even though in the above scenario most of the actual mechanics would remain in place, just made completely useless so that nobody playing has any reason to discover, understand and learn their uses, so similarly in the RTS it could say, give me 1000x the resources per gather rather than infinite so the mechanic is still in place, but still inconsequential), then I'd just overpower everything with a massive army with no thought and finish every mission and skirmish in the same exact way by building the exact same units in the same endless amounts, how would that be fun for myself, because I get to see the different graphics of next levels and the cut scenes? I just don't play such RTS games, they aren't for me.
 
Last edited:

GHG

Gold Member
Accessibility and difficulty are two completely different things entirely.

Many disabled gamers manage to play and enjoy games like dark souls and Sekiro. If you're not disabled and you tend to cry about the difficulty in these games while demanding they make the games easy just for you then you should be embarrassed.
 
Last edited:

June

Member
Accessibility, control , sound and graphical option doesn't mean you need to change something else in your game design (even if in the case of accesibility ones it make part of it relying on perception easier by the nature of the options)

button changes, volume controls, health bars, they are all the same thing fundamentally - people want to customise their games so they better align with their individual preferences.
 
How dare you suggest games should offer customisable control, sound, and graphical options.

You should respect devs and their freedom to not include those things in their games
They should be free to, yes. Many actually exercise that right to annoying degrees, but it's their right. The only thing that should change is that people should ignore things they dislike, or at least ask for changes rather than try and loudly force them to change citing accessibility or anything else that would give them leverage.

What obscure deity gave "players" the right to dictate to the devs what they should be doing? It's their game. Content creators of any kind are under no obligation to provide content at all, much less cater to any specific groups of consumers. True, it will mean that their content is not going to be as popular, and they won't get as much money for it, at which point it's their own problem to try and fix if they want to, but the players who demand changes aren't doing it out of concern for the game's popularity or the devs' financial wellbeing, they just selfishly want to have a thing changed to suit themselves, and while I resonate deeply with that sentiment I wholly abhor it - there are many games I'd have liked to see some changes done to, and I've filled many a game's suggestion and feedback forum with my no doubt ingenious and wonderful ideas, but I've never gone so low as to presume I could actually dictate my wants to a game's developers. It's not a thing that should be done.
 
Last edited:

Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
We have same type of threads every fucking time a game comes out thats difficult, god forbid game pushes back a little.

ACEEPT the fact that some games are not made for you and just fucking move on.
 
Last edited:
We live in a world where everyone thinks they have the right to have whatever they want without putting in any effort. There are a ton of games designed to be played in your sleep, please play those and let others play the hard games they want to enjoy. Quit crawling up developers asses about including easy modes and find a game that better suits your skill level.
 

Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
Unique and interesting games comes from when devs design their games for specific experience if all games try to appeal to everyone then games becomes plain and boring as fuck. It would also limits creativity for developers, because they have to make game that has mass appeal. If Devs lose freedom to make what they want then game industry is FUCKED.
 
Last edited:

Wildebeest

Member
Souls games are like Zelda for adults. Zelda doesn't have difficulty levels, so neither does Souls. I would say the problem with Souls games is that as the concept moved forward they became more linear, so the player has less alternate content to explore or grind for power if they are frustrated. Especially noticeable in DLC where the player is already soft capped in terms of power level. Another thing is that tools which exist to mitigate difficulty like summoning or playing "tanky" are limited or stigmatized for no good reason.
 
Last edited:

zeorhymer

Member
Conflating "accessibility" with "laziness." Games are more accessible than ever. Microsoft came out with a large button controller. You have color blind modes. You have large fonts. Hell you have multi language packs.

Putting the onus on the dev so that YOU can beat the game, wtf are you on about? Thanks for perpetuating how "gamers" are so entitled.

If DSP can beat Soulsborne and Sekiro, you have ZERO excuse.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
I remember making a poll that related to this thread way back. Most gamers preferred studios making the difficulty as easy or hard as they want to to make it. Up to them.

A good example of "bad" hard difficulty is COD Veteran aimbot hitscan enemies.
I beat COD4 normal difficulty. So I only tried COD veteran mode after and I gave up. I must had died 30 times on the act that looked like the Crossfire map. The amount of random bullets and grenade spam was ridiculous. It got to a point I couldn't figure out how to to plow through the map to register the next checkpoint and quit. I forget when that act happens. I dont think I got through even half the SP mode on vet.
 

Quezacolt

Member
I don't get it why some people can't seem to understandt that not every game is for everyone. is gaming as awhole for everyone? Sure, but not all games are for everyone.

for example, a souls game. People that dont want to improve but have a easy mode, what do they expect to get from the game? Honestly. they want to play for the lore? Even to get the lore you need to put some work.

For the main story? It's pretty basic if you dont look into the items lore to find out more about the world, or look for clues in the maps themselves.

Is it for ther world? Sorry, but one of the magics of how the soulsborne games worls is how dangerous and oppressive they feel, if you lower the difficulty, you lose that.

These games are much more than their difficulty, but the difficulty also pushes them to a level that most other games dont. each game is a dangerous journey, where every step you take can lead to your death, but also to an amazing feel of accomplisment when you beat an obstacle.. it makes the world of those games feel more real in a way.

And like the OP mentioned, it's not only about changing the numners to make the game easier. sure, let's say the boss does less damage in easy mode, but it's still as fast, so you can't beat it because you're not as fast. Should the lower difficulty also lower the speed of the bosses? remove certain moves? At that point, why are you even playing the game anyway? it becomes a completely different experience from intended and not for the better, and why? Because you can't put a bit more of time to practice?

"oh, but i dont have time to waste trying" Then why are you even playing this genre of games?

someone who doesnt have much time shouldnt complain about that, it would be like me saying that i wish persona 5 was a shorter game just because i don't have time for it. then why would i even play rpg's at all, makes no sense.

If you dont like difficult games, these games are not for you. And this isn't gatekeeping, it's just the reality.
 

Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
And that's coming from "the nicest person on this forum".
i-am-at-the-limit-losing-patience.gif
 

Tripolygon

Banned
More accessibility options is better so more people can enjoy a game. Developers have the right to dictate how they want people to enjoy their games but there should be some middle ground where you can provide options for those who need assistance. Hell hide it deep inside the menus but an option would be much appreciated by those who need it. It does not diminish your design intent. I'm sure not all developers have the luxury of being able to do what naughty dog did with TLOU 2 but that is the standard for me now and if lots of developers can reach that level of accessibility it would be great.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
I don't get it why some people can't seem to understandt that not every game is for everyone. is gaming as awhole for everyone? Sure, but not all games are for everyone.

for example, a souls game. People that dont want to improve but have a easy mode, what do they expect to get from the game? Honestly. they want to play for the lore? Even to get the lore you need to put some work.

For the main story? It's pretty basic if you dont look into the items lore to find out more about the world, or look for clues in the maps themselves.

Is it for ther world? Sorry, but one of the magics of how the soulsborne games worls is how dangerous and oppressive they feel, if you lower the difficulty, you lose that.

These games are much more than their difficulty, but the difficulty also pushes them to a level that most other games dont. each game is a dangerous journey, where every step you take can lead to your death, but also to an amazing feel of accomplisment when you beat an obstacle.. it makes the world of those games feel more real in a way.

And like the OP mentioned, it's not only about changing the numners to make the game easier. sure, let's say the boss does less damage in easy mode, but it's still as fast, so you can't beat it because you're not as fast. Should the lower difficulty also lower the speed of the bosses? remove certain moves? At that point, why are you even playing the game anyway? it becomes a completely different experience from intended and not for the better, and why? Because you can't put a bit more of time to practice?

"oh, but i dont have time to waste trying" Then why are you even playing this genre of games?

someone who doesnt have much time shouldnt complain about that, it would be like me saying that i wish persona 5 was a shorter game just because i don't have time for it. then why would i even play rpg's at all, makes no sense.

If you dont like difficult games, these games are not for you. And this isn't gatekeeping, it's just the reality.
I think a key reason people want accessible games and easier skills is because how is anyone going to know a game is super easy or super hard without trying it? It's not like there's tons of demos and trials now like the 360/PS3 days. You cant refund games either.

Someone may say.... "well, go check YT videos and see how hard it is".

To me, that's not fair advice to expect a gamer to sit there watching an hour to get a feel of a game. Games IMO should have different skill levels. Movies, books and music are different because someone might not like it, but at least you can get through the entire thing. In games, a game that is naturally hard with no easier levels means someone might get stuck in the first hour and they're done.

It also goes for the opposite. Too easy. Every one of us has played an old game that we breezed through. Would had been nice if they had Very Hard or Expert difficulty levels.
 
Last edited:

June

Member
They should be free to, yes. Many actually exercise that right to annoying degrees, but it's their right. The only thing that should change is that people should ignore things they dislike, or at least ask for changes rather than try and loudly force them to change citing accessibility or anything else that would give them leverage.

What obscure deity gave "players" the right to dictate to the devs what they should be doing? It's their game. Content creators of any kind are under no obligation to provide content at all, much less cater to any specific groups of consumers. True, it will mean that their content is not going to be as popular, and they won't get as much money for it, at which point it's their own problem to try and fix if they want to, but the players who demand changes aren't doing it out of concern for the game's popularity or the devs' financial wellbeing, they just selfishly want to have a thing changed to suit themselves, and while I resonate deeply with that sentiment I wholly abhor it - there are many games I'd have liked to see some changes done to, and I've filled many a game's suggestion and feedback forum with my no doubt ingenious and wonderful ideas, but I've never gone so low as to presume I could actually dictate my wants to a game's developers. It's not a thing that should be done.

its the internet, people communicate in brash and loud ways

but regardless of tone or language, feedback is feedback at the end of the day, and any dev that cares at all about satisfying their customers should at least be taking consumer want into consideration
 
I think a key reason people want accessible games and easier skills is because how is anyone going to know a game is super easy or super hard without trying it? It's not like there's tons of demos and trials now like the 360/PS3 days. You cant refund games either.
If you're still buying games just by the box art in 2021, you deserve what you get. Everyone knows Souls games are challenging. It's mentioned in every review.
 
Last edited:

June

Member
More accessibility options is better so more people can enjoy a game. Developers have the right to dictate how they want people to enjoy their games but there should be some middle ground where you can provide options for those who need assistance. Hell hide it deep inside the menus but an option would be much appreciated by those who need it. It does not diminish your design intent. I'm sure not all developers have the luxury of being able to do what naughty dog did with TLOU 2 but that is the standard for me now and if lots of developers can reach that level of accessibility it would be great.

i played tlou2 on grounded and was having a blast then i looked at the menus and saw all those difficuly options and just about threw up. i closed the game right there and havent been back since. its a shame because theres probably a great game in there somewhere
 

Quezacolt

Member
I think a key reason people want accessible games and easier skills is because how is anyone going to know a game is super easy or super hard without trying it? It's not like there's tons of demos and trials now like the 360/PS3 days. You cant refund games either.

Someone may say.... "well, go check YT videos and see how hard it is".

To me, that's not fair advice to expect a gamer to sit there watching an hour to get a feel of a game. Games IMO should have different skill levels. Movies, books and music are different because someone might not like it, but at least you can get through the entire thing. In games, a game that is naturally hard with no easier levels means someone might get stuck in the first hour and they're done.

It also goes for the opposite. Too easy. Every one of us has played an old game that we breezed through. Would had been nice if they had Very Hard or Expert difficulty levels.
Not every game ever released before last gen had demos either. Hell, most games i bought in my entire life, i never had any demo to try. I just checked trailers, or read about the game before buying, like you should do. the souls games are known for being hard, so if you dont like hard games, just move on. This shouldnt be so hard.

I dont enjoy survival games (not survival horror) does that mean the genre should be changed just to please to my taste? no. People enjoy the genre for what it is, and i dont want to take that from them.

like i mentioned before, some games you can't just change the numbers, because that will still not be enough for some people.
 
like i mentioned before, some games you can't just change the numbers, because that will still not be enough for some people.
Recent shining example: the whatshisname guy (game developer?) that couldn't figure out a room with a shootable dividing floor in Metroid Dread despite the game's numerous subtle and unsubtle hints.
 

Nautilus

Banned
It's not a responsibility, just don't play the game, nobody wants you to play a game that's too hard for you to enjoy it, play other things, there are too many games out there to care that some are too hard for you as others are for me.

Value comes from the gameplay and challenge in many of these games some people want to force to their will, when if they did do that they still wouldn't enjoy the game because it lost a good chunk of what made it good. Button mashing to beat everything in Souls for example without actually learning any of the proper game mechanics because the easy difficulty made the AI easier and reduced damage modifiers to the point it doesn't matter if you even try would make it a 6 hour romp through pretty landscapes and inventive designs with nothing else to keep anyone engaged as every other element would be reduced to mindless & unnecessary.

Then as they detract the game for not having such options, they'd still go in threads to diss the game by going all, I've finished it and it's nothing special guys, why are you praising it, it's just got some nice art but it plays like shit, there's no reason to explore so I just wanna get to the main (thin) story beats asap and get annoyed when I end up somewhere with useless rewards I don't need, the battles have no depth, etc., because they don't have any real use for what they may find or be enlightened to while carefully exploring or learning the rest mechanics, lol. Damned if they do and damned if they don't for this certain crowd really. Just let them do what they want, if they do cave and add options then we'll see how they do it and judge that, if the game still feels "right" or like it was tuned for easy and higher only changed things like damage modifiers/amount of enemies etc., which isn't at all what makes the games work well and what makes them challenging and rewarding.

Heck, people already use cheats/mods then spew that stuff but at least when it's known they used such, everyone understands that they can't judge the experience because they didn't play it as intended and thus they basically ruined it for themselves by claiming they're fixing it and showing it how it really is, lol. If the method was developer sanctioned then they'd actually have the right to complain it doesn't offer a compelling experience so it shouldn't have been in the game and makes it bad, and thus it isn't in the game as tuning it to easy but making it fun would require a full rework, and thus we're going full circle with such inane non arguments, lol.

And it's not that hard, anyway, it's no Mega Man, you just need to learn to play the game and it does teach and ease you in and ramp up as usual. Asking for the above would be like me wanting to take resource gathering from the equation in a RTS (even though in the above scenario most of the actual mechanics would remain in place, just made completely useless so that nobody playing has any reason to discover, understand and learn their uses, so similarly in the RTS it could say, give me 1000x the resources per gather rather than infinite so the mechanic is still in place, but still inconsequential), then I'd just overpower everything with a massive army with no thought and finish every mission and skirmish in the same exact way by building the exact same units in the same endless amounts, how would that be fun for myself, because I get to see the different graphics of next levels and the cut scenes? I just don't play such RTS games, they aren't for me.
I do agree with you, I wrote everything(most anyway) you said in the OP.
 

Nautilus

Banned
Good lord, it seems few if any read the post I made.

Go read it folks.I write that the devs should decide if a game has multiples difficulties or not, not random strangers on the internet that can't beat the game.

If a game is meant to be easy, then it should be easy. If a game is meant to be hard, then it should be hard.No in-betweens.
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
We have same type of threads every fucking time a game comes out thats difficult, god forbid game pushes back a little.

ACEEPT the fact that some games are not made for you and just fucking move on.
Seriously. I accepted that Dark Souls wasn't for me back in the PS3 days.

It would be nice if more developers considered disabled gamers when setting up their difficulty models. Its pretty crappy if someone really wants to play but can't because of a physical disability. These are games, not contact sports. Accessibility modes for disabled gamers wouldn't be the worst thing to exist.
 

bender

What time is it?
Repeat after me: Not every game is meant for me.
2nd verse same as the first: not every game is meant for me.
 

MrA

Banned
back in the 80s the dumb kids liked heman, the average kids like gi joe, and the smart kids liked transformers,
he-man didn't stimulate the smart kids to search for something to challenge their problem-solving skills
heman kids couldn't handle anything but the simplest transformers and would always break the more delicate ones.
everybody could kind of meet at gi joe,
should mattel have packaged in some sort of puzzle for with heman for the smart kids
should the most complex transformers have been scrapped for the heman kids?
should chess have an easy mode?
should 1000 piece puzzle have all the pieces numbered on the back for the people that can't handle them?
should tetris have an only straights mode?
should lego make duplo version of every set ?

should basketball nets be dropped to 6 feet so everyone can dunk?
not everything needs to be accessible to you,

Repeat after me: Not every game is meant for me.
2nd verse same as the first: not every game is meant for me.
yeah exactly lego games don't need a dark souls mode because the low difficulty makes them boring for me... though dark souls lego might be pretty baller
or for the life of me I can't get sim racer's gameplay down, like at all, should every sim offer a full ridge racer mode to make me happy?
 

MrJTeera

Member
Yes, not all games are for everybody, but there are devs who want EVERYBODY to play their games.

OP basically saying the same thing as the rest of you guys here!

The real sinister element at play here are the devs who, under the guise of all-inclusiveness, creating this chimeric difficulty that’s both hard and easy, a mish mash of things you like from other games, condensed, downplayed, and blended together for general audience, just so they could maximize their sales numbers.

It sucks when someone prod around and modify the things you love, like some kind of petri dish, but it’s in their right, and that’s how the industry operates.

I’m not talking about difficulty or mechanics here. I’m talking about that essense, that feeling that made you enjoy games to begin with, and the fact that it now that feeling will be exploited, profitted, and ending up as another numbers in a yearly Ubisoft user surveys.
 
The only time skill (getting good) should matter the most is competitive mp games especially in genres like fighting games.
Making moves way too hard to execute WILL kill off the community in a prompt manner. It's a delicate balance.

Gating progression in single player games is absurd and should never be enforced.

Games like bloodborne had potential to sell 20 million easily but philosophies got in the way and critically skewed its success potential.

Its seems elitist players who don't even see a red cent can't care any less if progression is gated by those with less skill.
They're also heavily against easier settings, that are entirely optional.
Why is any one's guess.
It's asinine how this is mostly limited to the souls community.

You don't see Ghouls N Ghosts Resurrection community losing their shit over that game being as easy as it can be hard.
Has FROM "killed off the community"? Seems like they've successfully built a fairly large niche audience over the last decade, explicitly by adhering to the philosophy that you're arguing against. Who is to say that there would even be a community, unless the mythical difficulty level made the FROM games famous?
 

daywarf

Member
I'm not very good at hard action games, but I know that there are people who are good at them and like them. Games should be diverse , not overly appealing to the majority of people.
 
Last edited:

01011001

Banned
if a game is too hard for you, stop playing it and shut the fuck up... easy
what's next, do we need captions beneath movies with complex narratives so that every idiot can understand the subtle meanings behind every scene?

GIT GUD OR STFU

and if you are by any chance one of those "special people" who post on reddit how they were barely able to use the fucking slide mechanic in Metroid to get through THE FUCKIGN TUTORIAL SEQUENCE or you're one of those too dumb to do a walljump in it... then mayyyybe videogames aren't for you, just saying
 
Last edited:

MrFunSocks

Banned
Not every game is for every player. If a dev wants to make a super hard game that only 1% of people can beat, good for them. They shouldn't have to dumb their game down and add "accessibility" options just so people can finish it.
 
Top Bottom