The title should be explicit enough, but if it's not the case:
I've seen multiple people on era, on twitter, on some articles... saying that all games should have difficulty modes (this thread is not really a debate on if that should be the case or not, and I personally disagree with it as a player and a designer), and specifically focusing on the easy side of the spectrum. Obviously this debate is pretty old and coming back for every popular hard or punishing game being released, will die down, then come back at the next one as usual. But people advocating for an easy mode are never really clear in what they are looking for in that elusive easy mode in games that don't have one (or arguably, are already in easy mode since you can sometimes unlock harder modes).
When is easy easy enough for people complaining about that? When you can win easily against every boss and there's no challenge anymore? When you just have a few deaths throughout the whole game? What if it's now easy enough for the whole majority of people, but still not for you?
Note that I'm not talking about accessibility features (which can be a perfectly different discussion), just difficulty modes (whether the classic easy > very hard basic system, or more customizable options like in racing games).
I'm also not really thinking about From games (which reignited this debate) or their genre only, but everything as a whole. Be it for shmups, character action games, RPGs, FPSs, etc.
I've seen multiple people on era, on twitter, on some articles... saying that all games should have difficulty modes (this thread is not really a debate on if that should be the case or not, and I personally disagree with it as a player and a designer), and specifically focusing on the easy side of the spectrum. Obviously this debate is pretty old and coming back for every popular hard or punishing game being released, will die down, then come back at the next one as usual. But people advocating for an easy mode are never really clear in what they are looking for in that elusive easy mode in games that don't have one (or arguably, are already in easy mode since you can sometimes unlock harder modes).
When is easy easy enough for people complaining about that? When you can win easily against every boss and there's no challenge anymore? When you just have a few deaths throughout the whole game? What if it's now easy enough for the whole majority of people, but still not for you?
Note that I'm not talking about accessibility features (which can be a perfectly different discussion), just difficulty modes (whether the classic easy > very hard basic system, or more customizable options like in racing games).
I'm also not really thinking about From games (which reignited this debate) or their genre only, but everything as a whole. Be it for shmups, character action games, RPGs, FPSs, etc.
