In fact, death is an intended game mechanic of Soulsborne games. The highs of overcoming a challenging foe is much greater if victory isn't handed to you on a platter. And the game philosophy of the Dark Souls series has always been one of the protagonist being little more than just a mindless undead, unfit to live, let alone wear a crown.
The difference is whether you see death as a set back and learning experience, or just a complete failure that frustrates you. It's a matter of mindset.
But in general the difficulty of Soulsborne games is overstated. They're mechanically simple, combat is fair (RNG isn't a big factor), with plenty of opportunities to make the game easier. Just level up more. Now with Elden Ring you can choose to go elsewhere, and come back later, stronger. This game isn't about easy victory, so easy mode has no place existing. A piece of media doesn't have to cater to all audiences.
Part of. The context for this discussion is the atmosphere, lore, and art. That is independent of difficulty.
And further, it is clearly not the case in any of the soulsborne games that the difficulty is tuned perfectly for each player. If that were true, there would be no interest in SL1 runes or there wouldn't have been patches rebalancing of Lost Izalith in DS1 or summons wouldn't be an available option.
The difficulty and risk of death and loss is intrinsically intertwined with the atmosphere. There are many other games with amazing dark art, but without the actual fear of death from the game system, they have less impact.
It's not the dark art that makes Dark Souls unique. It's the combination of deep lore that isn't fully explained or explainable in the game, world building that somehow finds a way to look and feel extremely realistic and fitting while being dreamlike and fantastical at many points, a story that couldn't care less if you followed it, NPCs building an inescapable spell on your mind with 3 lines of non-sensical dialogue, and dark art that underlines and brings all those things together.
There certainly aren't many games like that out there. I'd wager very few to nine, to be honest.
On the contrary, there are boatloads Soulslike games out there that imitate the gameplay (including the difficulty and risk of death) that cannot even be mentioned with being in the same league as the original Souls games. If anything, in the year 2022 it's the Souls gameplay that's "generic" while the rest of the game is still unique in every sense of the word.
You're going to need a guide to understanding the lore and atmosphere. The hard mode is not contained to the game play. Bloodborne, for example, has the atmosphere change based on certain unlocked events and paths you choose to go down. Even if you notice the change in atmosphere, you're not going to understand how it fits together with the story.
I'd just watch a YouTube walkthrough if you don't want to play. Playing the game, alone, is not enough to fully appreciate any of the Souls games.
However, "difficulty" is Souls games has two parts. One good--one bad.
1) There is the "Git Gud" part. This is fine. Having some difficulty in executing game actions is fine. Having to be alert to even low-level enemies is fine.
2) There is the "WTF do I upgrade?" part. This is bad. "Poise" was the canonical example where if you didn't understand it you would get turned into paste by enemies with no idea why. Having to read a full treatise on the web before starting a game is not something you should have to do.
To be fair, most RPGs suffer this problem, but the Souls games suffer it worst because the enemies hit very hard. I think the Souls games would benefit a lot from being able to freely reallocate your points in skill until you hit some level (10-15-20?) that then locks them in. "Hey, I got pasted by that enemy. Maybe I should adjust my skill points and see what that "poise" thing does on the next pass."
The interesting thing about FromSoft games is that almost all of the difficulty is observation and timing. It's real difficulty, to be sure, but almost anybody (obviously without severe visual impairment) can learn observation and timing. It's not like a high APM or high precision thing, where you need good reflexes or dexterity with keyboard and mouse; it's mostly a matter of learning when to hit which button.
The problem is that some people find it highly satisfying to learn when to hit which button, but some people find it boring. To the latter, this manifests as a level of difficulty so high that it almost prohibits playing the game. Which is fine -- not everyone needs to like every game -- but it's annoying to those people when others tell them that they should like it.
There isn't much opportunity for learning when you get to face the enemy for just a few seconds, get killed and then have to grind through loading screen and low level enemies to get another try. It's just awful game design.
I feel like people who say this sort of thing just have not actually played these games. I understand that in theory, a game could require extremely good reaction times or complicated inputs which make it exclusive. But Elden Ring is definitely not hard in that respect. In fact, part of the difficulty is that all the animations are long and you can't cancel them. This actually removes the need for good reaction time -- you have more than enough time to hit a button when you know you will need to.
The "difficulty" really arises from the need for game knowledge -- you have to keep dying until you figure out the right weapon, right spell, or right attack which works well against a particular encounter. And find all the places you can upgrade your weapons and tools and such. After you do these things, the game is in fact quite easy. Hunting around and gathering this stuff is the core fun of the game and I can't see how this is exclusionary toward anybody who would want to play.
I suppose there is a segment of people who would like to see images of the game without doing that but honestly... just watch a Let's Play. That way you don't even need to pay for the game.
I mostly agree... and I'd still argue that the FromSoft games kinda fail at the "knowledge gathering" phase. Walking into a boss that kills you in less than 20 seconds means very little knowledge can be gathered, and sometimes it takes minutes to go back and try again. This is a specific thing that Hollow Knight does pretty much perfectly: you can keep most bosses at bay, because the focus isn't usually to survive, but to find openings where you can safely do some damage.
Needing game knowledge is a great approach to game design. Dispensing such knowledge in the random way FromSoft games do is not. And this goes beyond just the combat aspect. Equipment and items in FromSoft games usually have non-discoverable hidden effects that at best turn the game into a weird puzzle, and at worst draw parallels to graphic adventure games of old. Case in point: Father Gascoigne in Bloodborne. You can find a music box that staggers the boss if you use it during the battle. It makes some sense from a lore perspective, but it's pure bullshit from a game perspective.
I think it's part of the game design. I also think it's bullshit from a game perspective. Tying the box to Gascoigne is a secret bordering on an easter egg. The item must be equipped in the usable items bar. And you have to use it on the very first battle against another hunter, an enemy who keeps attacking relentlessly and gives no time to think. Even more, the effect of the item doesn't give enough feedback to the player.
That item is just one of many in that game. The end effect is that players have to either treat the game as an arcane puzzle, or just search for solutions and ruin the mystery. No middle ground. Even accessing the DLC content borders on bullshit! There's only one clue to find the solution that puts the player in the first DLC area, and finding it becomes a process of trying dumb things until you find the right one by pure chance. Of course, that creature did a different thing when you found it earlier, but the game usually rewrites its own rules constantly so that's less of a surprise. Players can do this... or just turn to a guide and forget about the "graphic-adventure-puzzle level of randomness" aspect of Bloodborne and the other FromSoft games.
This is why I think this is a valid criticism. FromSoft games excel at world building, atmosphere, combat design, and music. But their approach to game knowledge is only enjoyed by those who love that arcane aspect, and the only way around it for those who love all else save for that part is to ruin the magic and reach for a guide.
PD. Also, some text translations in Spanish do not manage to keep the knowledge clues present in the English version. Discovering that was not very fun.
> you have to keep dying until you figure out the right weapon, right spell, or right attack [...] Hunting around and gathering this stuff is the core fun
Different things are fun for different people. That sounds pretty tedious to me, a long slog of arbitrary "guess what the game designer is thinking of" puzzles. Especially when it's all built around killing, something that just doesn't interest me much. To each their own, I guess.
Most of these that I've come across are fairly intuitive. For example stone enemies being resistant to slashing damage, or dark ghosts being weak to holy damage. There's also typically a workaround, for example a jumping attack with a small slashing weapon does more physical damage.
I believe you, and it sounds like that is fun for you.
Maybe I can explain by analogy. I'm very fond of the author Raymond Chandler, who wrote noir mysteries. I love his work, and especially the way he uses language. But I don't care at all who did it. The artificial puzzle aspect of mysteries just doesn't interest me.
It's the same deal here. I get people like this kind of thing. I'm just saying I'm not one of those people. It sounds like I might appreciate the aesthetics of the game, so if I could play through it on easy mode, I might. Sort of the way I read through a mystery and am allowed to ignore the whodunnit aspect.
I definitely get that it isn't for everyone. I'm not familiar with that author but I can relate via House Of Leaves and only really liking parts of it.
Looking at it from the opposite side, some people have no problem with the gameplay, but pay little attention to the aesthetics or dialogue and lore or item descriptions. For them they can instead look up YouTube videos or Wiki articles to explain things. I don't think it's a bad thing those alternatives options exist, but I think adding say a logbook like in Outer Wilds would cheapen the experience for people who really want to get immersed in the world.
I think practically watching a playthrough or just modding the game to make your character OP is the best workaround.
> I feel like people who say this sort of thing just have not actually played these games.
I think this is uncharitable. You can look at completion rates on Steam for some data. I personally stopped playing the xbox360 version of DS1 because the goddamn giants in Lost Izalith kept respawning (something that was mercifully changed with patches). I'd have kept going if I had the patched (and easier) game.
> You can look at completion rates on Steam for some data.
I think we have to accept that not every game is for every person. How adamantly FROM Software fans defend the difficulty shows that this style of game is greatly appreciated by many and, while it sucks to not be into that if the rest of the game looks good to you, I think we just have to be ok with the fact that ok maybe this game was made for people who are into that.
Personally, I appreciate that FROM Software basically force me to learn their games mechanics rather than button mashing my way through, even if it is very frustrating in the moment. I know I'm not good enough to persevere if I could just play in easy mode, and I would have missed out on some truly exhilarating moments. I understand that that's just me and everyone is different, but I mean, there's plenty of games out there, not all have to cater to everyone. There are certainly plenty of games that I think look really cool but ultimately I don't feel are for me (most multiplayer games, really. Even if they look awesome, I just don't have the dedication for it).
This is also why I think its important to watch gameplay videos before you buy, so that you know what you're getting yourself into.
I do agree that not every game is for every person. I'd prefer it if the games could be made easier, but FromSoft can do what they want. What I find frustrating is that asking for this feature produces intense backlash in many communities.
I'm not asking to be able to button mash my way through. Perhaps this is a problem with terms. I'd like a "hard but doable for me" mode. That mode is tuned lighter than the default tuning of the game as released.
Consider that the games already come with many various forms of hard mode. You can do NG+ runs that are harder. You can do SL1 runs that are harder. You can put all of your souls into Resistance and waste your character. If the game shipped without level ups and everybody was forced into SL1 runs, would that make the game better? Surely for some people that'd place the difficulty right at their boundary of "hard, but doable." But for you (or certainly me) that'd be a frustrating wall.
> What I find frustrating is that asking for this feature produces intense backlash in many communities.
I can understand it though. I mean, leaving aside whether or not adding an easy mode actually affects the game for those who don't want to play in it. Its kinda like, the developers created a game that, as it stands, appeals to person A. Person B wants changes made or added to the game so that the game appeals more to them. Of course person A is going to be upset that others want the game changed to suit those other people, when it works perfectly fine for person A as is.
For me, I know that adding an easy mode would affect my experience, but the reason for that is a me problem: because I know I don't have the tenacity to persevere if I have a choice to just play in easy instead (yet I also know that being forced to persevere has led to some of the greatest satisfaction I've gotten from playing games). That's my problem, though, but for me its like yeah well the game as is suits me, so.. please don't change it. Of course I totally understand that this is just me and that others could enjoy the game much more if this were added to the game, and I should just work on my self control in that area.
But I totally get it, especially if this is the only thing that prevents someone from enjoying a game that in every other way would be enjoyable to them.
The controversy (or rather the online dialogue about a controversy which may or may not really exist) over game difficulty is kind of a smaller proxy battle in a larger culture war, as well as a topic that tends to come up when megacorps can use it for self-promotion. e.g. Microsoft/Double Fine and Psychonauts 2. Have they said anything whatsoever about Elden Ring accessibility?
Please continue to tell me that I'm having fun incorrectly.
I'm 46, I have well over 10k hours in hundreds of video games. Been gaming since I had an Atari and games had no directions or guides like Indiana Jones.
Having difficulty that I don't enjoy in a game is the number 2 reason after "it didn't click" that I abandon a game.
There's literally nothing that stops me from reading a novel or watching a movie or walking through a museum or a world historical site to gate keep that experience. Games is the only one where we say "you must enjoy frustration or read spoilers to progress". Just gate keeping that great artistic vision. If it is art worth the experience it shouldn't behind a wall saying "get gud to enter". Let people experience it how they can or want to or have time to.
We're no longer charging quarters based on deaths but that still has it's tendrils in our artform.
To be clear I die a ton in games, I also appreciate it when the game is like ok buddy you tried you can go forward like gta5/gth2. I died 10 times to gremlin shamans in valheim yesterday, but that isn't gatekeeping some artwork, and that game has creative mode.
For my part I don't enjoy games where the gameplay is just something you do to experience a story. Last of Us is a good example. Great story, great atmosphere, bored to tears playing it. If Dark Souls were easy I would probably feel the same.
It's also important to appreciate how difficult it is to balance a game especially when your character's power level increases throughout the game. Most games that have a hard mode are lazy: bosses just have more health or enemies suddenly get headshots all the time. The game needs to be balanced around an intended difficulty level to make it compelling. It takes a lot of talent to make a good difficulty curve, as proven by the lame ripoffs of Souls games that have come out over the years.
That's the beauty tho, an optional difficulty mode lets people pick and choose. For instance in GT5 which has the 3 fails and skip mode, I can choose to try again, or I can chose to move the story forward, it's my choice. This fixes massive difficulty spikes and smooths out other parts of the game. So you can have it either way. It doesn't in any way remove your choice to have the "pure" experience, or mine to get 95% of your experience out of the game.
I think I skipped one mission in GT5 (yoga) and about 5 in GTH2 (the cuba stealth missions that were broken). My brother played along side me and is not an experienced gamer, he would skip the parts that required constant fast aiming, but played the rest. It worked well for both of us.
As a note, Sony had an internal stat a while back, only 10% of people ever finish any game, only 30% make it past the first 3rd... This was for people who purchased the game. This wasn't an average across all titles, this was very consistent for most titles. This was measured with trophies. People fell off very obviously at each boss or challenge increase. If you're making an "Authorial experience" this type of gate keeping will keep most people from experiencing it that would have otherwise.
Great points. I’m turning 40 in a few couple months, so I saw a mostly saw it all since the beginning as well, from Kings Quest till games today as they evolved. I would concisely boil my view down to, and I think you’ll agree: I prefer games be fun even when losing.
For me that says it all. And I don’t find the Souls games fun. Too much 3D camera control, and frustrating rather than fun when dying. I think if you removed the beautiful graphics, few people would play them. I also think the player base for these titles are going to skew younger, those who haven’t experienced as much as we have. I see nothing special in them at all. They landed on no magic for me.
The game that brought me to this realization that a good game should be fun even when losing is League of Legends. While there’s too many kids that think the fun is only in stomping out the opponent quickly or they want to quit, for me that game is fun in the struggle for a comeback. And I’m still mysteriously unbothered when I lose. I enjoy it all the way.
For me, that’s the mark of a good game. And it’s probably not a coincidence that it’s the most popular video game in the world.
The only thing that stops me from reading Ulysses is that I didn't enjoy it, not because I couldn't memorize the correct pattern of verbs to pass Garrett Deasy and acquire my paycheck.
Your comment seems unreasonable to me. What exactly does it mean to enjoy things to you?
Sure, it's physically possible to read any part of Ulysses as there are no physical barriers but for what gain? You're not going to pull any enjoyment out of reading the last few pages of Ulysess. The non existing barrier is a moot point.
The only way of enjoying the last pages of Ulysess is by enjoying the whole thing. And to enjoy Ulysess, you havr to put in your time and go through hoops that aren't usual for most other books. I feel like it's very disingenuous to say that the only reason you haven't read Ulysess is bc you didn't enjoy it. Enjoying Ulysess contains enjoying going the extra mile for it.
Streamers (e.g. MoonMoon's playthrough) are pointing out that if you go "everywhere" and do "everything", truly immersing yourself (as perhaps intended), and you don't rush from boss-to-boss that that "difficulty" is greatly reduced to non-existent. Yes, some very hard spots, but far less than one would assume from the outset based on quick overviews. There are also builds that greatly reduce difficulty making some "impossible" bosses trivial.
Hmmm...I wonder if that's something you would have to deliberately do. In Witcher 3, the world was so huge and engrossing that, just by exploring and participating in it, I outleveled quests, and had a very hard time catching my quests and world progression up to my power even when I tried to. Enabling enemies to scale to my level wasn't the best solution, since it just meant that instead of everything being easy, everything became equally hard.
Sure. And there is similarly nothing wrong with a product adding options to cater to a wider audience. I don't think many of the people asking for easy mode think that Miyazaki is a bad person. But I've certainly been called some pretty nasty things for suggesting an easy mode. What I'd like is for people to be able to express their preference without being attacked for being perceived as scrubs.
There is no game with multiple difficulty options where hard mode is as well designed as in fromsoft games. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that adding easy modes significantly detracts from the experience of hard mode options. You can argue all you want about how in theory it shouldn't affect hard mode experience, but that goes against everything we see happening in practice.
So for the people who likes hardmode, you are extremely greedy when you want to remove the only game offering the hardmode those people want, you can just go and play any of all the other easy mode games while they have no other options. You are a part of the majority who is catered to in almost every game going to the minority asking them why they don't cater to you as well, of course they get angry.
> There is no game with multiple difficulty options where hard mode is as well designed as in fromsoft games.
I don't believe this is true at all. Heck, you can look at the patches put into the various games to see places where FromSoft agreed that they botched something. I don't think anybody thinks that Bed of Chaos is the good kind of hard.
And Soulsbourne games do have multiple difficulty options. NG+ exists. SL1 exists.
I’m always surprised to read things like, “please change the difficulty so I can appreciate the art.” The difficulty is the art - you can’t just carve it out. It couldn’t be done even if Miyazaki wanted to do it. You’d lose the essence of the art because so much hangs on the challenge: the failure, the success, the relationship of the player with the game.
Instead, the real solutions to the mechanical challenges that Soulsbornes throw at you are sprinkled throughout this thread.
> I don't believe this is true at all. Heck, you can look at the patches put into the various games to see places where FromSoft agreed that they botched something. I don't think anybody thinks that Bed of Chaos is the good kind of hard.
The fact that they patch the experience of their hardmode helps my case, not yours. It shows that they care deeply about the experience of their hardmode players, since everyone is forced to play it they have to care about it. While other developers just say "if you find it too hard just play on easy", fromsoft has to actually fix their games when they mess it up.
> NG+ exists
NG+ isn't a higher difficulty, its just continuing the game with yoru current character. The monsters have higher stats than the first run, but so do you since your character is higher level.
> SL1 exists
Deliberately choosing to not use certain options in the game makes every game harder, yes, but that isn't a part of difficulty options and the game isn't designed around SL1 runs.
But games with difficulty modes always are. It happens naturally, developers and testers are just doing their job after all, to them it is easier to always test things on the easiest difficulty setting so that setting is what gets most development time. Solo developers might be able to work around this, but in a large team this will always happen. High level of polish comes when everyone is forced to run through the content, since then everyone will provide feedback and solutions to problems will be found. If a part is too hard or too tedious people will complain and the part will be made easier or changed, this wont happen if you enable developers or testers to run easier modes.
Very well put. And the feeling of accomplishment of conquering a boss is shared by _everyone_ who plays this game. Beating Radahn or Malenia in ER or The Nameless King in DS3 or O&S in DS1 was always a magnificent feeling and one that everyone else in the community knew and appreciated when found in one another. It would cheapen it so much if I knew you could just turn a slider down and really diminish the community experience.
Agreed, go play something else if you want an easy game. This ain’t it.
"We don't want to include a difficulty selection because we want to bring everyone to the same level of discussion and the same level of enjoyment," Miyazaki said. "So we want everyone … to first face that challenge and to overcome it in some way that suits them as a player."
"We want everyone to feel that sense of accomplishment. We want everyone to feel elated and to join that discussion on the same level. We feel if there's different difficulties, that's going to segment and fragment the user base. People will have different experiences based on that [differing difficulty level]. This is something we take to heart when we design games. It's been the same way for previous titles and it's very much the same with Sekiro."
It makes some sense, the constant in the world is the bosses, so you have to change yourself in some way to beat them. If you suck at souls games, like I do, that means a lot of studying to finally win. But then I'm content that I've beaten the same thing everyone has.
On the other hand, Celeste is an example of a brutally difficult game with much lauded accessibility options. It’s not the same as “easy mode”, but the results are similar.
because art is a way of personal expression and its function, ideally is to elicit growth in the people who engage with it. On the other hand I don't need a Dark Souls can opener.
you attribute to art things which you don't define ("personal expression") and a function that cannot be measured and which you probably can't even define ("... growth in the people who engage with it").
'growth'? in what?
what is 'engage with it' mean?
What if I disagree, does that mean I have a different and valid opinion, or that I'm mentally stunted and unable to 'grow'?
I could go on. Your justification is the kind of unchallengeable nebulosity that artist types come up with to justify stuff, and if I don't get it, I'm wrong.
I'm not anti-art by any means, but I do wonder at the ability of 'art' as a topic to inhibit critical thinking, or making up one's own mind.
Not really sure where the confusion comes from. Personal expression in art is translating feelings, ideas or concepts you have into a work of art. If other people understand you through your work of art, you've done a good job as an artist.
Growth can come in many forms. Learning something about the artist, learning something about yourself while studying art, learning how to distinguish good critique from bad critique, how form and function of art work together, and so on.
There's nothing nebulous here. It's ironic that you go on a rant about 'art types' and demand critical thinking but then in some passive aggressive tone deserve that people serve you definitions on a platter.
And sure you can disagree, nothing I said implies you can't, I didn't call anyone mentally stunted so I don't know where that comes from.
This is a respectable attempt at an answer (bar para 3 anyway) and exactly what I so rarely get. I just get shut down because "it's art" and you don't question it. It's art so it's beautiful, it's art so it's valuable. The angry grunt from people or the silent downvotes here is the usual, so I appreciate this answer, or an attempt at thereof
I don't agree with what you say but I do appreciate your trying. Not enough karma to upvote you so a simple thanks must suffice. I wish we had a chance to talk in person on this.
I doubt this is true, as much for many people, they're not willing to invest the time to overcome the challenge. Which is fine, but they're not the target audience, and that's also ok.
Welcome to the 70s and 80s where there was no such thing as savegames for the most part and you got 3 deaths before starting over. This is no different. A boss is just a level of sorts. You learn the mechanics and then you beat the boss and move on. Do it enough times and you can do it in your sleep. People have been playing ridiculously forgiving and easy games where there's no cost of failure so long that they don't even know what a merely challenging game is.
Difficulty systems in the 70s and 80s were famously for eating quarter rather than based on any actual game design philosophy. Not exactly a comparison I think is worth making.
The "just learn the boss" argument is also somewhat frustrating given how frequently there are long ass walks back from bonfires to boss doors. Dying a bunch to learn the tells and attack timings is much less attractive when it takes minutes to go from a death to your next attempt. Compare this to something like Hotline Miami where you are playing again instantly. Much better option there.
