Sekiro success, sales, and winning Game of the Year is a huge strike against the "difficulty equals bad" notion

[Another]

ignoring the parry

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Souls veteran here and Sekiro was by far their hardest game for me personally precisely because I couldn't ignore the parry and I suck at it tremendously. Have never managed to get along with parrying in any game ever (I play a ton of 3rd strike and Garou and have done so for almost 20 years at this point and it's the same there, I never could get the hang of parrying reliably) for some reason... beating Sekiro was harder than beating all their other games combined for me and I still couldn't parry reliably by the end, I can't get the timing down to nail it consistently. Weirdly enough I'm a "hold everything two handed and dodge everything while wearing the lightest possible armor" kind of gal when it comes to Souls stuff so it's really weird that I can master dodging so flawlessly and still miss parries so frequently.
:D

 

[Mizeris Lutz Ether Lanai]

I can see permadeath very much bothering some people for alot of the same reasons. Was it argued as an accessability issue at the time?

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Casual mode was added because the franchise was languishing in sales and facing a situation where the next instalment could be the last. So they added waifus & put in a mode without permadeath to aim for a wider audience. It worked and the game sold very well.

Lightening that series up a bit was the right thing though - as they've moved forward the characters have become much more fully fleshed out. Imagine a Final Fantasy game where a different Aeris dies in every dungeon, it just becomes bleak & traumatic. So even classic mode lets you rewind moves a limited number of times now.

 

[spootime]

Souls veteran here and Sekiro was by far their hardest game for me personally precisely because I couldn't ignore the parry and I suck at it tremendously. Have never managed to get along with parrying in any game ever (I play a ton of 3rd strike and Garou and have done so for almost 20 years at this point and it's the same there, I never could get the hang of parrying reliably) for some reason... beating Sekiro was harder than beating all their other games combined for me and I still couldn't parry reliably by the end, I can't get the timing down to nail it consistently. Weirdly enough I'm a "hold everything two handed and dodge everything while wearing the lightest possible armor" kind of gal when it comes to Souls stuff so it's really weird that I can master dodging so flawlessly and still miss parries so frequently.
:D

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I play the exact same way in Dark souls but I think the way we play is really the opposite of how you play sekiro. Sekiro gave me a toooon of trouble because the way I love to play dark souls is to play that really defensive glass cannon style -- dodge 15 attacks perfectly and then get a few hits in with a big ass UGS or something. Sekiro you have to get in their face and play super aggressively.

 

[thecaseace]

Yeah, it just proves all the 2 inchers that demanded an easier difficulty are wrong and can continue to be sad babies crying in the corner about being unable to beat the game without an "easy" difficulty option. Imagine being upset because a dev just requires you to put some effort into being good at their game. It shouldn't be impossible for anybody to beat the game if they're willing to afford it their effort, it's not that difficult of a game.

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Imagine asking for a developer to not include a mode you have no intention of playing because it means some would experience a game on easier terms than you did.

 

[cmdiego]

Please read the thread, or at least look up some of my older posts in it.

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I could have missed it, but I don't see an explanation on how an alternative mode hurts most players in your post history.

 

[Another]

I play the exact same way in Dark souls but I think the way we play is really the opposite of how you play sekiro. Sekiro gave me a toooon of trouble because the way I love to play dark souls is to play that really defensive glass cannon style -- dodge 15 attacks perfectly and then get a few hits in with a big ass UGS or something. Sekiro you have to get in their face and play super aggressively.

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Yep, the berserker approach works best!

 

[Rai_11]

There's a few tough boss fights but the difficulty is incredibly exaggerated for the most part.

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This is exactly it. Everyone freaks out about it being 'too hard'. But it's just overblown!

 

[HeroR]

Casual mode was added because the franchise was languishing in sales and facing a situation where the next instalment could be the last. So they added waifus & put in a mode without permadeath to aim for a wider audience. It worked and the game sold very well.

Lightening that series up a bit was the right thing though - as they've moved forward the characters have become much more fully fleshed out. Imagine a Final Fantasy game where a different Aeris dies in every dungeon, it just becomes bleak & traumatic. So even classic mode lets you rewind moves a limited number of times now.

Click to shrink...

Casual Mode existed before Awakening. The game just never left Japan and it sold only okay.

And why are you comparing a story relevant death to a gameplay death? Character important to the story don't even die even on classic in Fire Emblem. They retreat.

 

[AllChan7]

Only if you agree it should have won, I think there are fairly valid reasons to believe it should not have, namely how few people were seemingly able to finish it.

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It sold 4 million+ copies and was a highly praised game. It makes sense why it was nominated and given how much it impressed critics, it makes sense it won. Tho I totally thought Control or Death Stranding would win. So I'm glad something thats a bit niche won.

 

[Agent 47]

Souls veteran here and Sekiro was by far their hardest game for me personally precisely because I couldn't ignore the parry and I suck at it tremendously. Have never managed to get along with parrying in any game ever (I play a ton of 3rd strike and Garou and have done so for almost 20 years at this point and it's the same there, I never could get the hang of parrying reliably) for some reason... beating Sekiro was harder than beating all their other games combined for me and I still couldn't parry reliably by the end, I can't get the timing down to nail it consistently. Weirdly enough I'm a "hold everything two handed and dodge everything while wearing the lightest possible armor" kind of gal when it comes to Souls stuff so it's really weird that I can master dodging so flawlessly and still miss parries so frequently.
:D

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That's the thing, you can't play Sekiro like any other Souls game where dodging works for the majority of attacks. It's parry and block for basic attacks while dodge is mainly left for the unlockable attacks.

 

[RedMercury]

Myself and others have talked about why this isn't really the case elsewhere in the thread.

Feel free to disagree, but there are plenty of people who do think it hurts their experience to have difficulty settings.

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It's like saying handicapped parking hurts the experience of going to the store. Sure you need to walk a bit further, but if you're able to do it it shouldn't be a big deal, and the spaces are there for people who need them, and you're all going into the same place.

 

[DvdGzz]

No difficulty options is why these games are so beloved in my opinion. They would lose so much with an easy mode which I would be tempted to choose. I hope From keep choosing to force their vision onto us. I know that sounds bad, but in the end, it's a beautiful thing. Bring on ER and do not give in to the outcry for diff settings.

 

[Mizeris Lutz Ether Lanai]

Casual Mode existed before Awakening. The game just never left Japan and it sold only okay.

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I'm pretty much quoting Higuchi verbatim from a company interview on what the thought process was for Awakening. Can't speak to what they were doing with New Mystery.

And why are you comparing a story relevant death to a gameplay death? Character important to the story don't even die even on classic in Fire Emblem. They retreat.

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Because that's an irrelevant distinction? Compare the amount of dialogue and meaningful interaction the player has with Aeris in FF7. It's not that far off what you get through the multiple side conversations with minor characters in Three Houses. There's no reason a player wouldn't find themselves emotionally attached to one of them.

 

[KORNdog]

VGA game of the year award are decided mostly by jury, not the public, so I'm not sure it has done what you claim. It sold well and was successfull, as are all souls games. But the fact it reviewed well was a good indicator it would win GOTY since not many other games received such unanimous praise from critics this year (it had been a weirdly divisive/disappointing year for games tbh) but that's not where the concern about difficulty lies for games like Souls or Sekiro. It's with the consumer. And unless they were the ones who voted for Sekiro to win (from what I understand it's decided by jury for 90% and public vote for 10%), I'm not sure it has beaten the notion that "difficult equals bad" which isn't really what people were saying in the first place. It was that choice is better. Which imo, it is.

A Jury voting for a difficult game to win game of the year doesn't really disprove that amongst the public.

I think it's pretty obvious the games FROM make would be more successful with difficulty options since they would be casting a wider net. It's the weird argument that an easy mode would somehow detract from the games default difficulty that I don't understand. It just seems like a bunch of elitists wanting to keep people out of their precious series.

...and I say that as a fan of FROM games who has completed them all without much difficulty. Why do I care if there is a mode I don't have to select for people who just want to experience the lore and the world? No-one should care about a game having those sorts of options.

 

[HeroR]

I'm pretty much quoting Higuchi verbatim from a company interview on what the thought process was for Awakening. Can't speak to what they were doing with New Mystery.



Because that's an irrelevant distinction? Compare the amount of dialogue and meaningful interaction the player has with Aeris in FF7. It's not that far off what you get through the multiple side conversations with minor characters in Three Houses. There's no reason a player wouldn't find themselves emotionally attached to one of them.

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Even with Awakening, IS said that they didn't do anything really that different from a normal Fire Emblem game. Only that when they heard Awakening could be their last game, they decided to go balls deep and make a game they enjoyed. I mean, the marriage and child system that people like to mock Awakening about came out of Fire Emblem 4, grinding on the map came from Gaiden and Sacred Stones, difficulty settings was a thing in Path in Radiance, and an overpowered Avatar was created in New Mystery. The only thing Awakening really added was the Pair-Up system.

You can play Three Houses and watched almost none of the side conversations, they're completely optional. Heck, you don't even need to used certain characters if you don't want to. You can, in fact, go the entire game using only units forced onto you on a missions. In comparison, Aeris is a core part of your team until she dies.

 

[ScoobsJoestar]

One thing I struggle with is that I don't know how to reconcile with the fact that I like not having options and wanting games to be playable by people with disabilities.

I actively prefer games that don't give me a choice. The presence of a choice and being able to tailor the game to my tastes isn't what I want, I want a game that feels like the director going "This is my shit. Deal with it or don't, whatever, but this is my shit." It makes me really excited for those games and I love interacting with the game's weird vision. I don't like when the game lets me shape my experience, I like it when games have a singular experience and I have to deal with it. If Bloodborne had difficulty options, just knowing that they exist would make the game less interesting for me. It would change it from "this is what I gotta do to experience the game" to "Oh, I literally have no reason to put myself through the frustration." Which recontextualizes things as less "gotta climb that mountain" and more "well, I mean I could like...just teleport to the top." And even if I never took the easy mode, it would make regular mode feel less important. The atmosphere would totally change for me.

But at the same time like, letting people with disabilities play games is really important. So I always come down to the not super fun position of "Well, gonna make the game less fun for me, but some people have way worse disabilities than I do and it would be a dick move not to want them to play those games. Go ahead with the difficulty choices I guess."

 

[molnizzle]

Not every game needs to be beaten by every person. I like how Souls games are a singular experience that everyone shares in the same way. It's nice to see a game like Sekiro rewarded.

 

[Jonathan Lanza]

One thing I struggle with is that I don't know how to reconcile with the fact that I like not having options and wanting games to be playable by people with disabilities.

I actively prefer games that don't give me a choice. The presence of a choice and being able to tailor the game to my tastes isn't what I want, I want a game that feels like the director going "This is my shit. Deal with it or don't, whatever, but this is my shit." It makes me really excited for those games and I love interacting with the game's weird vision. I don't like when the game lets me shape my experience, I like it when games have a singular experience and I have to deal with it. If Bloodborne had difficulty options, just knowing that they exist would make the game less interesting for me. It would change it from "this is what I gotta do to experience the game" to "Oh, I literally have no reason to put myself through the frustration." Which recontextualizes things as less "gotta climb that mountain" and more "well, I mean I could like...just teleport to the top." And even if I never took the easy mode, it would make regular mode feel less important. The atmosphere would totally change for me.

But at the same time like, letting people with disabilities play games is really important. So I always come down to the not super fun position of "Well, gonna make the game less fun for me, but some people have way worse disabilities than I do and it would be a dick move not to want them to play those games. Go ahead with the difficulty choices I guess."

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You need to examine why your enjoyment of your hobby is so dependent on feeling like you're getting more good things than other people

 

[spootime]

You need to examine why your enjoyment of your hobby is so dependent on feeling like you're getting more good things than other people

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Well at least you're giving his post a charitable interpretation.

 

[ScoobsJoestar]

You need to examine why your enjoyment of your hobby is so dependent on feeling like you're getting more good things than other people

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That's not even remotely what I said. I stated my reasons for not liking choices and they have nothing to do with "getting more good things than other people." I get enjoyment out of the game not letting me make choices because I find it more engaging to not have a choice. I feel like it adds to the atmosphere of certain games not to be able to make choices and I personally have more fun with being forced to adapt to the game than trying to do "whatever I want." I prefer seeing what the game designer wants me to do instead of doing whatever I want to do, I find games more fun for me that way.

And in spite of that I still said "Well, people with disabilities playing is more important than my preferences though, so that should be changed even if it would make me enjoy the games less."

 

[ABK281]

Imagine asking for a developer to not include a mode you have no intention of playing because it means some would experience a game on easier terms than you did.

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I don't need to ask, they're smart and know better, hence the lack of an easy mode.

 

[Morrigan]

Difficulty balance was a huge problem in one of last year's biggest titles, 2018's God of War, for me. Basically all of the options are screwed up in some way or another. Easy/normal is pushover stuff with basically non-existing challenge, hard mode starts by being too punishing/annoying but then eventually becomes pushover as well, and Give me God of War is just unfun garbage, especially at the beginning when even the most basic enemy takes forever to kill and does massive damage to yourself.

Frankly put me on the side of preferring a singular, tightly-designed experience.

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Nah, JFO was absolutely hurt by difficulty settings. Combat was either too easy or too hard, with either too loose parry timing and reasonable boss health and damage or tight, satisfying parry windows and crushing one shots from every boss. JFO is the game I would use as an example for how difficulty settings can ruin well designed combat.

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Agreed with this.

How does that criticism have to do with having multiple difficulty settings? If they didn't have them then it would only be too easy or only be too hard, you wouldn't even get the "either" part. The literal solution to this would be to have more difficulty settings, not less.

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Well, no, since Sekiro is neither. ;) The problem with multiple settings is how difficult it is to calibrate them properly, as shown above. Wolfenstein 2 TNC has seven difficulty settings and it's impossible to know which one would even suit you best at this point.

[snip]
The identity of the series, and the community that built up around it, are heavily influenced by the fact that the games are hard, and that they're hard for everyone. It's not gatekeeping to want that preserved.

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Good post!

CrossCode does let you adjust the difficulty

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Oh yeah, now I remember it letting me adjust the speed of puzzles. I think combat was the same though, but it's been a while since I played it, maybe it was added later.

 

[G_Zero]

I could have missed it, but I don't see an explanation on how an alternative mode hurts most players in your post history.

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I believe most players to be like me, in that not being able to lower the difficulty to get past a challenge in central to their enjoyment of the game, and that the addition of this option would lessen the experience.

It's like saying handicapped parking hurts the experience of going to the store. Sure you need to walk a bit further, but if you're able to do it it shouldn't be a big deal, and the spaces are there for people who need them, and you're all going into the same place.

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I don't see it.

 

[ScoobsJoestar]

Demon of Hatred is optional. Also, (boss strategy)

Spoiler

the Phoenix Umbrella trivializes him.

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Wait, excuse me, what?

[Looking it up]

What the fuck haha. I spent a solid 3 hours on him. One of my hands has some pretty bad nerve damage so Sekiro was a nightmare hell for me that I loved dearly, but man I wish I knew that ahead of time. Would not have guessed that worked.

 

[DvdGzz]

From's worlds are supposed to feel extremely brutal and opressive.

Having a baby option hinders their vision and waters down the game's atmosphere.

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Boom. End thread. There are hundreds/thousands of games with difficulty options. Miyazaki and the rest of the souls teams want their games the way they are for a reason.

 

[ThreepQuest64]

With From Software game one should know what to expect; I don't buy a singleplayer shooter and complain that I have to shoot things (and that there's no option to finish the game without shooting things, let's say in DOOM). Is it a pity that I probably won't enjoy a possibly good game with good art direction, good story and interesting characters and boss fights because it's too difficulty for me, because I can't progress and need too much time? Yes, it is a pity. But that applies to basically any kind of game someone don't want to "learn" or don't want to invest that much time in. And this is okay because we so many great games these games that you practically can't run out of other games to play instead than this one title from this one well-known developer.

With that being said I wouldn't detract points if it's too hard (then again, points are archaic and shouldn't be in reviews to begin with) but I would point out for the interested reader and potentially interested buyer that this game is fucking hard. I never thought that being difficult equals bad, though.

 

[Wamb0wneD]

Wait, excuse me, what?

[Looking it up]

What the fuck haha. I spent a solid 3 hours on him. One of my hands has some pretty bad nerve damage so Sekiro was a nightmare hell for me that I loved dearly, but man I wish I knew that ahead of time. Would not have guessed that worked.

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Same thing with the first upgraded Umbrella shielding you from that terror inducing shout the Guardian Ape is doing.

 

[pleaseinsertdisctwo]

exactly, I just don't understand the posters that are so against this. It just makes no sense to me.

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Because the Souls game somehow boosts their ego and they can't have that ruined. It's just pathetic

 

[ScoobsJoestar]

Same thing with the first upgraded Umbrella shielding you from that terror inducing shout the Guardian Ape is doing.

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What the Christ haha. I probably made the game way harder for me than I needed to. I just lamed it out with firecrackers against most enemies.

 

[Stoze]

Well, no, since Sekiro is neither. ;) The problem with multiple settings is how difficult it is to calibrate them properly, as shown above. Wolfenstein 2 TNC has seven difficulty settings and it's impossible to know which one would even suit you best at this point.

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The poster was talking about Jedi Fallen Order, not Sekiro. Once again, how does having multiple difficulties that are poorly calibrated or balanced mean that if the game were just one difficulty instead, this difficulty also wouldn't be poorly calibrated? Hence why I'd rather have choices between "Way too Easy", "Too Easy", and "Too Hard", then just one of those.

Even if too many choices and poorly conveying information about the difficulties is an issue, as you say it is in TNC's case, I'd still much rather be able to choose the hardest or second hardest difficulty since that more closely matches my game experience and playstyle, then potentially be forced to play on a single moderate or much easier level of difficulty.

From's worlds are supposed to feel extremely brutal and opressive.

Having a baby option hinders their vision and waters down the game's atmosphere.

Click to shrink...

So what do you think about the co-op in the Souls games/Bloodborne then?

 

[Ricelord]

Wait, excuse me, what?

[Looking it up]

What the fuck haha. I spent a solid 3 hours on him. One of my hands has some pretty bad nerve damage so Sekiro was a nightmare hell for me that I loved dearly, but man I wish I knew that ahead of time. Would not have guessed that worked.

Click to shrink...

you can also use the

Spoiler

malcontent

to stun him 3 times in the fight.

 

[Morrigan]

The poster was talking about Jedi Fallen Order, not Sekiro.

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Yes, I know. But that's the entire point: Sekiro's one-difficulty is well balanced, meanwhile none of Jedi's are.

Once again, how does having multiple difficulties that are poorly calibrated or balanced mean that if the game were just one difficulty instead, this difficulty also wouldn't be poorly calibrated? Hence why I'd rather have choices between "Way too Easy", "Too Easy", and "Too Hard", then just one of those.

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The point we're trying to make is that when a dev can focus on just the one setting, they can really fine-tune it and calibrate it properly. Meanwhile, you have other games that try to implement various settings, and fail at all of them. So I was not-so-jokingly saying that they maybe should stop trying and just focus on making the one singular experience.

 

[FakePlasticTree]

I think it kind of proved the opposite, even though I really enjoyed Fallen Order overall.. Jedi Fallen Order has multiple difficulties, and I beat it on the two hardest, but none of them are as tightly tuned as the single difficulty in any of the Souls game. The boss encounters are simpler then in the Souls series, and there's far less of them.

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I found it had

Different design philosophies/goals. The Star Wars game is designed to appeal to a wide audience and follows the typical AAA cash in/fade into obscurity format. FROM games are deliberately curated experiences designed to please the internal dev team first and foremost. It's that apparent love that goes into the titles that keeps people RTTP or being LTTP for years.

When a dev states that their game is like a FROM game, that's a red flag. They're designing something in the mold of something else in an attempt to appeal to a target audience. That's what sets Souls games apart from Souls-like games.

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Nah, JFO was absolutely hurt by difficulty settings. Combat was either too easy or too hard, with either too loose parry timing and reasonable boss health and damage or tight, satisfying parry windows and crushing one shots from every boss. JFO is the game I would use as an example for how difficulty settings can ruin well designed combat.

Click to shrink...

I played Fallen Order on the second hardest difficulty. It granted a decent challenge without being too punishing, as difficulty in the case of this game would mostly affect the parry window and damage dealing, which I think could work just fine for games like this. The only times I felt the game was unbalanced was in its platforming or the boss fights with the big monsters. But From Software has had a few blunders with some of their own bosses too. I can't say I share you guy's sentiment and honestly don't see how difficulty options would affect the design of From Soft's games.

 

[ItIsOkBro]

fromsoft is a business right? in this capitalistic hell we all live in, where a thrown together easy mode would make them more money and money is paramount, the fact that they have not done it just shows how strong their vision is for what the player should experience.

 

[Jonathan Lanza]

Boom. End thread. There are hundreds/thousands of games with difficulty options. Miyazaki and the rest of the souls teams want their games the way they are for a reason.

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Just because they want it that way for a reason doesn't mean it's a good one. Accessible game and oppressive atmosphere are not mutual exclusives.

 

[crespo]

Just because they want it that way for a reason doesn't mean it's a good one. Accessible game and oppressive atmosphere are not mutual exclusives.

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Whether it's a good one or not is completely subjective. It's literally your own opinion. The real fact is that From are free to do whatever the hell they want and have been doing it successfully for a long time now, and I, and many others, are thankful for that.

 

[Opposable]

A reminder that DSP of all people has beaten this game

 

[Flipyap]

From's worlds are supposed to feel extremely brutal and opressive.

Having a baby option hinders their vision and waters down the game's atmosphere.

Click to shrink...

This trick only works if the difficulty happens to align with your skill level. If a person finds the challenge to be insurmountable, the game turns into little more a toy that can't be played with. You're not going to appreciate the world when you're forced to stare at a roadblock.
What's easy for you may still be challenging for others and having to redo the same part of the game a dozen times doesn't just water down the atmosphere, it completely strips it away.
Bloodborne is an incredibly atmospheric game when you're just strolling the dark streets, even on NG+ where you kill most things with one hit, but when you get stuck on a boss that can 1-shot you the moment you enter the arena, it turns into a bullshit arcade game. None of the artistry matters anymore, the amazing art and sound might as well be white noise when you're just bashing your head against the same AI blob.

 

[Jonathan Lanza]

Whether it's a good one or not is completely subjective. It's literally your own opinion. The real fact is that From are free to do whatever the hell they want and have been doing it successfully for a long time now, and I, and many others, are thankful for that.

Click to shrink...

Just because it's subjective doesn't mean it can't be a point of discussion, we discuss subjective things all the time here, it's literally a video game forum. An opinion can be well informed and explained after all and sometimes an opinion can be based on faulty or outright bad reasoning.

Wanting video games to be more accessible is an opinion no doubt but it's a very well informed opinion and currently the only well explained reason to not consider it is an argument of time and effort. "Artistic integrity" on the other hand is faulty reasoning because it's an ambiguous ill defined term that can mean literally anything and is often used only to support certain points and ignore others.

 

[Sotha_Sil]

Wait, excuse me, what?

[Looking it up]

What the fuck haha. I spent a solid 3 hours on him. One of my hands has some pretty bad nerve damage so Sekiro was a nightmare hell for me that I loved dearly, but man I wish I knew that ahead of time. Would not have guessed that worked.

Click to shrink...

The prosthetics have many useful moments. People who say they're mostly useless because they only tried them on mobs missed out on a lot.

 

[effin]

One thing I struggle with is that I don't know how to reconcile with the fact that I like not having options and wanting games to be playable by people with disabilities.

I actively prefer games that don't give me a choice. The presence of a choice and being able to tailor the game to my tastes isn't what I want, I want a game that feels like the director going "This is my shit. Deal with it or don't, whatever, but this is my shit." It makes me really excited for those games and I love interacting with the game's weird vision. I don't like when the game lets me shape my experience, I like it when games have a singular experience and I have to deal with it. If Bloodborne had difficulty options, just knowing that they exist would make the game less interesting for me. It would change it from "this is what I gotta do to experience the game" to "Oh, I literally have no reason to put myself through the frustration." Which recontextualizes things as less "gotta climb that mountain" and more "well, I mean I could like...just teleport to the top." And even if I never took the easy mode, it would make regular mode feel less important. The atmosphere would totally change for me.

But at the same time like, letting people with disabilities play games is really important. So I always come down to the not super fun position of "Well, gonna make the game less fun for me, but some people have way worse disabilities than I do and it would be a dick move not to want them to play those games. Go ahead with the difficulty choices I guess."

Click to shrink...

Honestly I think this sums up my feelings on it all so well. If there was an easy option in these games? I can guarantee it would be tougher for me to enjoy it because I know there's a way to circumvent those difficult and frustrating encounters - and even if I didn't take it, it now sticks in my mind.

But at the same time, yeah, it feels wrong to want this experience to remain given the implications it has on gating others from it.

 

[crespo]

Just because it's subjective doesn't mean it can't be a point of discussion, we discuss subjective things all the time here, it's literally a video game forum. An opinion can be well informed and explained after all and sometimes an opinion can be based on faulty or outright bad reasoning.

Wanting video games to be more accessible is an opinion no doubt but it's a very well informed opinion and currently the only well explained reason to not consider it is an argument of time and effort. "Artistic integrity" on the other hand is faulty reasoning because it's an ambiguous ill defined term that can mean literally anything and is often used only to support certain points and ignore others.

Click to shrink...

I'm open to discussion but you flat-out said it "wasn't a good [game design decision]" and didn't really expand on it. That is not a good way to go about discussing the point. I apologize if you had been discussing it as I haven't been following the thread, I just happened to cherry-pick your post as it caught my browsing eye.

And to counter the quoted argument: are From not free to do what they want? And have they not been extremely successful doing so? Do they have a reason to suddenly switch it up?

 

[What-ok]

From games demand that the players learn how to play their games as they are intended. You go in smashing buttons and you will not get far. Learn how to properly dodge, parry, attack etc... and you will start owning it. The rewards of learning the systems at play in From games is unmatched by others IMHO. Literally get good or is it git gud is so true and not an insult.

 

[Jonathan Lanza]

I'm open to discussion but you flat-out said it "wasn't a good [game design decision]." That is not a good way to go about discussing the point. I apologize if you had been discussing it as I haven't been following the thread, I just happened to cherry-pick your post as it caught my browsing eye.

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That is literally not what I said. I said just because you want something a specific way for a reason does not mean the reason is a good one.


Also

From games demand that the players learn how to play their games as they are intended. You go in smashing buttons and you will not get far. Learn how to properly dodge, parry, attack etc... and you will start owning it. The rewards of learning the systems at play in From games is unmatched by others IMHO. Literally get good or is it git gud is so true and not an insult.

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This is exactly WHY this disucssion always comes up when it comes to From games. It's because it's one of the only popular series out there that has this oppressive culture of "Get Good! If you get good then you will overcome any and all disabilities that you have! It is literally impossible to have a disability that makes the game an unfun task for you!"

People ask for fighting games to have options for people who don't wanna learn hand crushing combos and that's fine
People ask for SRPG's without a permadeath option and that's fine
A guy says that he cheated to beat Sekiro and he enjoys the game and the entire community loses its mind. You can't deny that these games have bred a specific brand of gatekeeping.

 

[Stoze]

The point we're trying to make is that when a dev can focus on just the one setting, they can really fine-tune it and calibrate it properly. Meanwhile, you have other games that try to implement various settings, and fail at all of them. So I was not-so-jokingly saying that they maybe should stop trying and just focus on making the one singular experience.

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There's no evidence or reason the bolded would be true at the expense of other difficulty modes or other accessibility options, though. And that's part of my point - if a developer has poor balancing on multiple difficulties, it means they have trouble balancing the game in general regardless, and having a single difficulty wouldn't magically split the difference and be closer to "perfect" for the player.

The takeaway from Sekiro nailing the difficulty without options while Fallen Order didn't with multiple (which is highly subjective and arguable, as is difficulty in games in general'), isn't "that's why multiple options can be bad". The takeaway is Sekiro is made by From Software and Fallen Order is made by Respawn.

 

[Fitts]

Wait, excuse me, what?

[Looking it up]

What the fuck haha. I spent a solid 3 hours on him. One of my hands has some pretty bad nerve damage so Sekiro was a nightmare hell for me that I loved dearly, but man I wish I knew that ahead of time. Would not have guessed that worked.

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Don't feel bad. I've played through all the Souls games blind. Before my second playthroughs is when I'll take to the internet and see any stuff I missed/strategies/etc. That Demon of Hatred strat is literally the only "cheese" I had ever found on a first playthrough. (and there may be something even easier that I'm not aware of) But yeah, it made sense to try it and I was shocked by how well it worked. Experimented with it the first attempt and then stomped him on my second attempt.

 

[amprainy]

I've found that the presence of multiple difficulty settings from the get-go tends to detract from the feeling of being immersed in a game's world. Knowing you can artificially make things easier or harder based on a toggle just seems a bit cheap if it's not connected to some in-game item or reason. I'm all for games being more accessible for others but not every game should or need to cater to everyone. From are of course targeting a specific audience and this singular approach to their design is what they want players to experience. Multiple difficulty options would possibly hinder the perception of a definitive experience and I can appreciate that the development team is making games they want to make rather than making compromises to their vision in order to sell more copies.

Having a set challenging difficulty is less about feeling more accomplished or skilled than others, which to me personally is hardly a reason, but more of a sense of satisfaction in being forced to face what a game throws at you on its own terms and overcoming those challenges. By nature, From games are not meant be accessible to everyone and that's okay. In my estimation, they offer a fair and reasonable challenge for someone who is not unfamiliar with action-adventure games. It is unfortunate that not everyone can get to experience the story or lore to the degree that they want if they find these games are too difficult but they are likely not the intended audience.

 

[RustyNails]

I avoided Sekiro because of the lack of online option where I can summon somebody to help me. I really want to play it. I played NiOh and all of its DLC. But with Sekiro I feel like I get stuck on a dumb boss and I just ragequit. I know I know, git gud, etc.

 

[Morrigan]

There's no evidence or reason the bolded would be true at the expense of other difficulties, though. And that's part of my point - if a developer has poor balancing on multiple difficulties, it means they have trouble balancing the game in general regardless, and having a single difficulty wouldn't magically split the difference and be closer to "perfect" for the player.

The takeaway from Sekiro nailing the difficulty without options while Fallen Order didn't with multiple (which is highly subjective and arguable, as is difficulty in games in general'), isn't "that's why multiple options can be bad". The takeaway is Sekiro is made by From Software and Fallen Order is made by Respawn.

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Hah, maybe. Of course all of this is subjective and arguable. Just as there's no evidence of From vs Respawn being the factor either. Hollow Knight wasn't made by FromSoft, after all. Maybe FromSoft is particularly skilled at balancing difficulty because they don't spread their resources thin... 🤔

 

[Dog of Bork]

There's no evidence or reason the bolded would be true at the expense of other difficulties, though. And that's part of my point - if a developer has poor balancing on multiple difficulties, it means they have trouble balancing the game in general regardless, and having a single difficulty wouldn't magically split the difference and be closer to "perfect" for the player.

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I would argue that one of the things that makes From games excellent is their ability to craft and tune the difficulty of their games. They are renowned for being generally hard but fair (with a few missteps here and there).

So what we have is a string of excellent games with a single, well-tuned difficulty. On the other hand, we have other games with multiple difficulties that, generally, aren't particularly well-tuned.

No one is arguing that having only one difficulty option will always lead to perfect balance. It's a pretty easy argument to make, however, that balancing for one set of options is easier than several, especially if a developer wants to deliver the same level of quality across the board.