I won't say nothing looks like shutting down conversation, I will say things that people don't have an answer for or aren't willing to come right out and say they don't care about is instead sometimes referred to as stiffing conversation in my eyes.
So is, "You're a fucking ableist elitist who murders puppies in their spare time. You make me so mad. You and you're whole fanbase can jump off a cliff." And yes, that's a bit exaggerated. But not as much anexaggeration as I'd like.
All i can really say is "good luck with that." If I had more insight to give on how to move past that, I'd have used it to stop the "everyone is just 'git good' posters" mentality a while ago. Apparently you can't make everyone think your argument is genuine.
So here's the rub. The argument is literally about what the game was created to do and what people get out of it. As such developer intent can and should feature heavily into the argument. So should user experience and testimony. Not as a deterrent for conversation, but certainly as some sort of guide to either reconcile or reject. None of this fence sitting where people pretend to be open to developer vision saying "From can create what they want but..." and the go on for paragraphs that ignore what from wants to do. That's not logically consistent. Either accept the vision and work within it's confines or have the guts to say you think it's wrong and why without tiptoeing around saying what you mean.
The whole, "we can add difficulties without disregarding intent" when an intent is single difficulty is not a logically workable position. And no one wants or cares to try to square their ideas up with that. So yes, people instead think those people just don't care about it and it becomes a wall.
And if you want to argue from their that such a premise is itself flawed, fine. That's preferable to pretending ideas that are antithetical to the premise work fine within that premise and the problem is just "the fans being elitist." When single difficulty is explicitely stated as a means and end, making more lower difficulties does not preserve the whole that each player is intended to experience in and of their own gameplay.
And I'm sure that Miyazaki is open to criticism. I'm also sure that he's filtering it based on what improves or detracts from the product he's trying to make rather than the one that's "better" by some outside definition. Do you think no one at Activision ever thought that players might bounce hard off of the difficulty here? Yes, he certainly has a range of experiences he wants to create which is why I think we'll see more varied work from Fromsoft under his leadership going forward. But that doesn't change what they have created and may or may not ever stop creating. The desire to vary things doesn't mean this creation was created wrong or missed it's intent (in as much as we know so far). And that's what people mean when they point to 6 games. They point to a history of desiring to create some experiences of this nature, and that through that history we have a window into the intent of the creation of these games.
Which is another part of the rub. The argument here that has gotten the most pushback that you're seeing as stifling conversations comes as feedback regarding past games. Games that are already largely established quantities with a particular focus in mind and exist as established products. Products that exclude? Yes. But that's what they are. And yes anyone can provide feedback as to what they wish the game had for even the most altruistic reasons. They may have the best of intents. They also have a reality of what was created to square up against and make a decision: Engage with the product or don't. In 2009 and 2011 we could plead ignorance. In 2014 we knew what we were in for. And from there we've had these discussions in earnest, not in spite of but because we had known quantities. These aren't malleable qualities. These leave us either playing them, or playing something else.
As far as accessibility as a whole, yes, we do have a ways to go. And there is a lot that could be accounted for in Sekiro outside of difficulty. but the article that started this was titled: "An easy mode has never ruined a game." This started as being about an easy mode and has centered on that, on both sides. No one has argued against control remapping, custom hardware support, subtitle control, colorblindness options or the like. It's not a full gamut as I leaving something out surely. But the angle of being anti accessibility is being overblown to being full on ableist based on one aspect that is again seen as antithetical to the game's goals. And if we're not allowed to argue the game achieves it's intent or that that intent has made the experience better, what can we argue? And can you see why we feel conversation is being stifled? And how can you argue you're fine with anything From does while condemning people for being fine with what From does?
Mind you, this isn't all aimed at you personally, but this is just what I'm seeing here.
Sure developers are creating these experiences, most of it comes with intent in mind not by accident. Not bugs of course and because of time and resources not everything the developer wants to do is always possible. The deliberate slow nature of RDR2 is not an accident, it's vision. Controls that might feel
clumsy to someone can be with intent, to give movement weight and to make it feel realistic. Of course it can be pointed out that it's not a bug it's feature, it's part of the whole vision for the game. But does that stop the complaints, well no and I don't think it should. All people haven't come in terms with CP77 being first person only game, even though everything is designed around it and playing 3rd person would "harm" the intended experience (the act of adding optional 3rd person wouldn't though besides "wasted" resources). And while I haven't followed RDR2 discussion super closely, I assume the discussion around it's issues hasn't been quite as heated as this difficulty discussion is. And the wish/suggestion for an option to skip skinning animations doesn't cause as much controversy (I believe I've seen some people take an issue with this specific thing). Or the suggestion that developer should implement alternate movement controls for the game, for those who rather have it be more snappier/arcadey.
Killing puppies and jumping of the cliff is definitely an exaggerattion as you say. I can absolutely admit to getting mad around this discussion though, as have many others. And as I said earlier, this has been colored by people in Twitter. It's maybe not fair to those people who haven't been insulting differently abled people directly, even specifically about their impairments (people who aren't huge assholes deserving of a beating). But it's pretty hard to just ignore either as they've poisoned the well. Unfortunately they are part of the discussion too, I think they shouldn't be but they can slime their way in by just acting civil and hiding their true self. Especially in a place like ResetEra where the moderation would stomp anyone going out of line with a big ass boot, as they should of course. And this isn't me pointing any fingers at you, not saying or thinking that you've been bullying anyone in Twitter. But the discussion has been made very toxic, it's the circumstances were in unfortunately. I'd love if this had gone the other way, that we all would have just stayed on point having productive discussion.
I personally have said that I don't agree with the creators way in creating these feelings of accomplished through not offering options. But apparently since I'm not an acclaimed game designer (as was said to me), what I think about it doesn't matter (fair enough). I just can't relate to what people have described, how having options would hurt the game. Maybe it's because I don't play From Software games, maybe I finally got it if I played. But I've played other games with no difficulty selection and some of those I'd consider very challenging and most who have played those would agree. The challenge has been the very intent with probably most of these challenging games ,
like Super Meat Boy. They also did some cool things around that challenge. Yet I personally just don't see it hurting the game if someone else adjusted the difficulty to better suit them, like with something similar to Celeste assist mode. I just can't relate. But I can empathize and relate with the opposite, people struggling either because of any disadvantages they have regarding gaming or just because they're not skilled enough. I can relate to the feeling of succeeding against overwhelming odds, it's definitely a great feeling. That feeling can be still achieved with adjustable difficulty, but if someone chose to breeze through a game it's no skin of my back. Essentially that's what it comes down to atleast for me. I can relate and understand the other argument much better, I see more positives in it than the opposition. And I definitely can't understand why Miyazaki or From Soft should be seen and treated any differently than any other dev who are making challenging games with or without options. Why should they be an exception over someone else. Which is why I've said I don't pick any favorites in this discussion, but support these options across the medium. There's plenty of different ways to implement these, how it can be done would be more reasonable and interesting discussion for me than just simple "no, don't do it/won't happen". But I'm still happy this discussion has been had in social media, articles etc and Era too.
I'm sure Miyazaki will do very similar games to "Soulsbornekiro" or whatever they're now called in the future too. But when he doesn't and he doesn't consider the single set difficulty to be the soul of the game, atleast then I'd wish he put extra consideration on accessibility through directly adjustable difficulty. He's a clever guy, he could even come up with something others end up copying hence improving gaming altogether.
And obviously not anyone is arguing against button remapping, subtitles, separate audio sliders, ability to play with any controller, because those benefit
everyone (even if not everyone uses them). Why the hell would anyone argue against that. Well actually I've seen someone at Era argue against button remapping on consoles because "it would confuse people". Consoles being simple was a reason they rather play on it than on PC. And as far controllers go, people definitely have argued against allowing any controller on console multiplayer. I'd allow that too. But these are not really about adjustable difficulty like this discussion is intended to be. Controllers are about the first access, without them you don't even get to try if the game meets your needs.
And I think I've been pretty specific what I've been condemning, it's the downplaying (denying) of adjustable difficulty as an accessibility tool. This I find unacceptable, as I've made myself clear many times. Most posts I've responded to haven't been "I wouldn't like this implementation because..." What others condemn is up to them, I can understand though and why I do I've explained.
Out of interest as I don't follow From Soft discussions, is the difficulty often discussed? (I don't come into the threads to shout they should be easier either) Have people criticized some aspects of it, how something should had been tuned differently? Are there often suggestions how the experience should had been altered
to everyone, instead than making it optional? Is the creators vision then up for scrutiny, or should people just take the games as they are created or play something else.
