I hate dying in RE2 and RE3 and getting asked if i want to go to Assisted. especially considering theres no way to change it back, you have to reload the newest save, thank god they display the difficulty in the file screen. there should be the ability to go back up in difficulty in one game, At least with Normal Mode come on.
I'm always of the mind that not everything should be made with everyone in mind. If you're game is designed for a certain group's interests or gameplay styles, you shouldn't be obligated to undermine your own design to fit those who never played. Not saying that there shouldn't be any games for the general audience, but if the core design calls for the game to be difficult, why change it to fit the play styles of people who probably wouldn't play it anyway?
I'm still wondering how the existence of an easier option takes anything away from someone who ignores it for the harder route. In a PvP game, sure, online experiences between players ought to be on equal footing if not equal skill. Obviously. Predominantly single player experience though? Who is out there shaking their fist at the screen saying "oh boy, I killed that enemy in 5 hits while some entitled whippersnapper picked easy mode and did it in three"??? Just make a separate multiplayer section for easy mode people, or if that's too much effort only enable it on normal mode. Crisis fucking averted, those who want to interact with le hardc0re gamerz have an incentive to git gud before hopping online.
gatfatf I don't think it takes away from other's experience at all. However, one difficulty means the devs can tailor make it to be as close to their design as they can manage. That means that all of the players that chose to continue playing all had the same experience (ideally, but it should be close overall) which means they can adjust things better based off their data and player feedback. When your player base is split between 3+ difficulty options it becomes hard to parse what needs adjustment. For example, everybody on easy says that the damage scaling in a mace is off. Is it bugged since other options don't talk about it, do people on easy play differently, is it off because they are finishing the game faster so people tend not to upgrade, etc. There's two options to go with, either leave it as is since only a select few complain or the overwatch route of whatever competitive players say matters. Some people are concerned if you brought the option to souls games you'll take dev time away from the intended experience which will make the game worse. There's some truth to it but the option exists to hire or outsource people to do it. QA testing on the other hand tends to only focus on either Hard or Normal too. Generally because most people play on those two settings depending on the genre. Resources are limited and as long as the other options can be completed, it'll pass QA. (QA information is from friends I have that did that work and some industry people talking about it. Probably doesn't apply everywhere) Just my 2 cents
You mean like Cadence of Hyrule, a rythm game, having an option to remove the rythm from the game, so that people who don't play rythm games can beat this rythm game
@@gatfatf It takes away from me if I know that at any moment I could pick up a crutch. If I know that the only way I'll make it to the end is to grind it through the way it was intended, it makes it that much more interesting. It's not because other people can have it easier, it's because _I_ could have it easier. It would be like running 5km on normal ground while people next to me are running on a moving walkway. People will beat the game on easy after a few hours while I'm stuck at the second or so boss thinking what the point even is. I don't have this with other games, but Soulsborne games are built around that challenge. And yeah, it's fun to have a community that enjoys a challenge. I don't think that's necessarily toxic at all. The Soulsborne games are centred around their difficulty, lack unforgivingness and that great feeling you get when you push through those challenges. Why should its community abandon what they so enjoy about the games because people outside that community feel differently about it?
God I miss the days when Demon's Souls threads on /v/ were the friendliest things Like people would just be talking about the game and posting meme comics and then when someone talked about how they were having difficulty with a boss people were quick to offer tips to them
People still offer advice if people are asking, its when people just whine about it saying things along it being poorly desigined (unless it actually is like BoC) that the toxic comes out.
Here's the thing about "Gotta Catch em All", it was only an American thing. In Japan it's always been "Get Pokémon". That's it. Get the Pokémon you want or like. You're right Woolie, if they thought it was going to be as huge as its become they would have chosen different.
I'm glad that there's some people who's at least intelligent around these parts. When people are quick to jump to dumb conclusions like this, who aren't up to date with the series anyways like Pat and Woolie are, as they've clearly shown here and before. Of course I guess American, and most especially 4kids, sets a terrible precedence for the franchise, which has done them no favors in the long run. It was way too catchy, and has ran way too deep into most people's mind about the franchise now, that there's little to no undoing the damage, like there was with at least One Piece.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks so. I'd say more just annoying personally though. It's never a battle of skill or focus for me, it's always a battle of me losing interest.
@@NocturneJester Oddly enough it's still my favorite because it's the easiest on my eyes and has lots of cool spells that are admittedly op. But I know I'd lose interest pretty quickly in certain places.
souls games don't have difficulties because they want you to learn and git gud, but also there's not as much to understand about combat. For example people would get SHIT on if trying ninja gaiden or DMC on the hardest dififculties right away.
Yeah, that's my problem with NioH, it has a shit ton of systems but the game is so punishing that it doesn't incentivate the use of them. How the fuck do you practice moves when so many attacks are one hit kills? I'll just use the one move that gets the job done without any risk.
The reason for this is because the real difficulty in Character Action games is in the mechanics, not just what you can do but what enemies can do. Stats are almost secondary when the creatures who you normally beat on have DT to and can keep you from juggling them as a Fury sneaks behind you. To me real skill comes from being able to deal with those situations which is more than reflexes.
Well the thing with games like dmc is that they're usually reliant on you having the neccessary upgrades on the highest settings to even attempt the harder shit.Missing some resources or a skill wont make or break you in souls,but in DMD or HnH it could be the difference between you styling effortlessly or getting shit on because you messed up an entire string that cost your life or just missing one more pip on your bar causing you to run out of dt at the worst moments.
@@bearandthebull2372 To be fair you're intended to have almost everything by that point. DMC 4 was the only one that was a real problem but it was remedied in the Special Edition and even more so on DMCV.
I'm pretty sure you'd get SHIT on for trying to play any games on the hardest difficulty available right away. Doubly so if you call it a bad game, when it's not. They're just an idiot and suck a lot. Like that one guy whom played RE2 Remake.
I remember hearing the "Gotta catch them all" was only a American thing and that Japan had nothing to do with it Destiny and the worst consumer confidence it is always on the downward slope and player perception is also always foggy sunsetting isn't a fix it's crazy also cause exotics are not going to be sunset so there are still going to be overwhelming powerful meta defining weapons thus defeating the purpose of sunsetting
Rather than an easy mode, I want the option that when you start new game plus, the enemies don't scale up. Let me beast on everything like an overpowered god.
Two years later and I come back to this video/topic because it kinda fascinates me. The underlying issue with game difficulty, imo, is that we all play games for different reasons/get enjoyment from games for different reasons. Some people want Hell Or Hell Mode to really test their skills, feel like they're mastering their tools to overcome obstacles, adapting, etc. The "I'm an underdog" feeling that got me into difficult games at a young age. Some people want the power fantasy or to just enjoy the story. They dont really wanna adapt or think too deeply about a mere video game. Hit the thing, go the place, follow the objective marker, whatever. "Real life is hard enough, why purposefully make a game hard for myself?" That kinda thing. And NEITHER of those mentalities are wrong. Those are two polar opposite extremes for the sake of conversation, sure, but still. We all want different things out of our immersive experiences. The problem is that most people want to be part of most things. But that just aint how gaming works. So yeah. If a thing is difficult because that's what the devs want, then it doesnt need an easy mode. People who play videogames & the people who make them would benefit from understanding that "everything aint gotta be for everyone."
3:20 that's why demons,1 and 3 have difficulty that feels "natural to the world" in a sense.The challenge in those games comes from the story treating your character like a shitty little bitch whose stuck in a world filled with gods and beings of immense power,so when you die it's less an "fuck you" and more of "I should be careful next time".The difficulty makes sense to the worlds purpose,and therefore feels like a challenge you have to overcome.
Yeah, but DS2 is unfair ... look at Black Gluch, Ivory Kingdom, the Fog forest. Most deaths are more of a Fuck You because alot of the Enemys and some areas are unfair to you. Yes theres ways to make it easier, but its the most frustating of the franchinse.
@@peterwhite6415 who said anything about being fair. One second your fighting the guardian dragon (easy) The next your against the big old fuck you Ancient Chadragon which can be cheesed by anti-backstab ring and a shit ton of soul geysers to the face.
@@peterwhite6415 most of that is people not using shields and not looking for environmental cuew. gulch you can avoid the statues pretty easily and quickly and there's supplies to cure it. ivory kindgom i'm assuming you're referring to the ice field where a shield stops getting hit so easy. and fog forest you can see the enemies if you pay attention or if you just stick to the left wall you can scoot through pretty easily with likely nobody even showing up.
It's hard for me want a easy mode for soulsbourne game because the difficulty, more over navagating yourself around the 'difficulty' is part of the joy of the game, and also a bitter point of the narrative. Souls games is supposed to give this crushing atmosphere, you're supposed to rise above that. Concluding in a fight between two nobodies at the end of the world. Blood Bourne is showing how unimportant you are in the grand scheme of things. You are just some random person who got themselves way over their head. The game play is expressing that.
So heres the thing. The majority of people who play the game WILL play it on the easier modes. And then they'll walk away from the game saying "Oh all you do is press the x button. Not all that exciting." I know this, because I'm a kingdom hearts fan. And that's all I've heard from casual players since I started playing. "All you do is press 1 button. Press this button till the game tells you to press the next button." Souls games need to keep their identity of hard and punishing games. Lest they be reduced to 'Hack and Slash' status.
Dude high difficulty Kingdom Hearts has some reallllllllllllllly fun super bosses. Some of my favorite. I've fought sephiroth multiple times because the fights are just fun!
@@GBSpiral i played kh3 on critical once the dlc came out and my god it was so much fun, having block be important and not just an option makes the game amazing
@@hatsunemikufanboy Do casual KH players even realize how amazing it is that in KH3 you can block WHILE IN MIDAIR!? That's GAME CHANGING! But they don't even use the normal block.
The same people who scream "burn the gatekeeping" at every mention of rewarding difficulty, lack of difficulty selections and OPTIONAL content locked behind difficulty selection or challenges are the SAME ones that get pissy if they had such options but the game joked about it like the Chicken Helmet. They are the exact inverse of the powergamer gatekeeper they are complaining about. They want to feel like they are "in the club" without feeling guilty that they cheated themselves out of an unique experience, or from an experience that just wasn't designed for them to begin with. If you go full sociology study in this, it can mostly boil down to the "participation award" that some competition with children have, fuck you person that won, everyone is equal and deserves a prize, here's your pat on the back, now go, and never face any challenge in your life again whatsoever, and if you do, its unfair!
I feel the people crying out for an easy mode with every souls release are simply people who hear of difficulty and are afraid to dive into the series, those who hear these cries of difficulty from players who don't have the capacity to slow down and take things from another angle, and then they get assaulted by the "git gud" crowd and are afraid to get into the series because their perception of souls games is tainted by a bunch of immature "gamers", but real talk my 9 year old niece and peach saliva have beaten souls games, they take time and patience, "skill" comes with time and investment in those previous two categories. you get infinite tries to solve every problem, you have the capacity to infinitely farm as many souls as you want until you're op, there's no lives system, most souls games these days have checkpoints so frequent that veterans mod them out due to how excessive they can get. and here's the kicker, most of you aren't here for PVP so you can just make some OP lv600 abomination of a build and feel good about yourself by curb stomping every boss. souls games are never hard they're designed to slow the player down a bit, to teach you to look around instead of charging straight ahead like every other game lets you and once you know what's there, then you can charge forward confident that nothing will hurt you, it places obvious traps and ambushes in the hopes that by the 8th time you fall for the same dumb trick you might learn to look around before grabbing the shiny. and for the modern "gamer" that can be hard, I know, thinking and basic memorization with a bit of spacial reasoning is pretty hard and the puzzle-like bosses of demons souls will challenge quite a few, I expect to hear a plethora of winging about adjudicator just because of his bouncy belly, but if you struggle to solo content there's always already an easy baby mode in the form of bringing phantoms into your world to kill the boss and everything else for you, as proven by the multitude of streamers who've done 0 kill runs letting their phantoms do all the work for them and if you ever do decide to get into pvp know that 120 is the designated level for that in most games because that's where builds get the most diversity and that's where most PVP crowd stop if you struggle with a souls game you probably have the wrong mindset to begin with and are getting frustrated at the wrong things. - death is not a punishment, its a learning opportunity
The only time it ever made sense is with Sekiro, which has actual walls. The other Soulsesque games all have co-op, which trivializes any game difficulty. Sekiro probably could have used something, but for all the others it's literally just "the easy mode isn't implemented directly in the UI like I expected." Before anyone says anything, Sekiro has silver bullets for bosses, but its impact is much more limited. Sure you can cause gorilla in-fighting, but that only applies when there are multiple, and the fire gimmicks are not a tenth as impactful in Sekiro as co-op is in DaS.
i hear ya but personally all i ever asked for was good controls and the ability to pause the game in souls games. no input lag, no jank, no bullshit hitboxes and a button that stops the gameplay in case i need to go do something and dont want to just quit out of it. that cannot be too much to ask, especially with how much money they got on the last four games, three of which (ds1, bloodborne and ds3) are heralded as some of the best games ever when they still dont have a pause putton and still have input lag.
@@god47398 Both of those are intentional design choices. The lack of pausing enforces a tension, especially because one does not have the conveniences of fooling with their entire inventory in the stopped time. And im almost certain what you believe to be "input lag" is merely "animations that are not as zippy and cartoony as my dumb ass is used to." You might want to look up a principle of physics known as "inertia" But all this is besides the point that the quality of a game has remarkably little to do with how skillfully and cleanly its programmed, as long as its playable. Fallout: new vegas is essentially the best first-person RPG the west has made and it launched, and remains, a buggy janky mess. the Souls series is one of the finest explorations into dark fantasy in the history of games because of its tone, its storytelling, and its ambiance. you'll notice 'well optimized' and 'fun and easy to play' and 'well balanced' is not part of that because its window dressing. You are a fool complaining that a great novel sucks because it is printed on paper you, personally, don't like the texture of. But I think that all this is literally beyond you. everything beyond the hacky slashy shit, thats the window dressing to you, isnt it?
"souls games are never hard they're designed to slow the player down a bit, to teach you to look around instead of charging straight ahead like every other game lets you and once you know what's there, then you can charge forward confident that nothing will hurt you, it places obvious traps and ambushes in the hopes that by the 8th time you fall for the same dumb trick you might learn to look around before grabbing the shiny." The idea that Souls games are never hard is total bullshit, and it makes you look like a part of the arrogant "git gud" crowd yourself. They're just not hard in the particular ways you've described. Certain enemy types are significant challenges, and most of the difficulty comes from the boss fights. If someone were to claim that Nameless King, Sister Friede, Midir, Demon of Hatred, & Sword Saint Ashina aren't difficult, they'd be full of shit. Adjudicator is a terrible example because he's cherry-picked; he's the most brain-dead easy boss in DeS with an incredibly simple gimmick that's incredibly easy to figure out. "if you struggle with a souls game you probably have the wrong mindset to begin with and are getting frustrated at the wrong things" ...not really dude. Miyazaki has explicitly stated that they want players to feel a sense of accomplishment from overcoming challenges. If a player is struggling, they're actually having the intended experience; it's nothing wrong or improper. You're being patronizing as all hell. You're a good example of the portion of the Souls fanbase that just uses the series as a tool to give themselves a false sense of superiority by wanking themselves off to how skilled & smart they think they are because of their prowess with an entertainment product.
@@god47398 No idea where you're coming from with the controls. The only odd parts are jumping, jump attacking, & kicking. Everything else is simple, intuitive, & smooth. No idea what you mean by input lag; animations have longer startup periods than in most games, and this helps movement & actions feel weighty and encourages the player to be more mindful about their actions. No idea what you mean by jank, either, and I can count the number of weird hitbox problems I've ever seen throughout the series, both from myself & others, on two hands at most. The lack of a pause function is a non issue: if you're fighting, finish the fight, and if you're not, just stay in a safe area & put the controller down. The lack of pausing is there to maintain tension in fights.
Pat: Mocks people who are insufferable for mocking other peoples playstyles People still angry about the fact that pat touched an Estoc in that one playthrough: Well actually
It has to be stated again and again and again; the Souls games have always had difficulty settings. It's called leveling up, upgrading equipment and summoning. For instance, the Gargoyles in DaS1 can be a big difficulty spike for a first time player, but by just spending a small amount of time around the Undead Pariah, leveling up slightly and getting enough shards to upgrade all weapons and armour and then summoning a player or an NPC, the Gargoyles become a complete joke. An actual cakewalk. Could the games do a better job at expressing these ideas? Probably. But it's like playing FF7 original and never bothering to level up or equip materia and then complaining that the game is too difficult. If you're not actually going to use the tools the game gives you then what are we even doing here. Also seconding what Pat said about DeS: after all the other games in the series, including Sekiro, DeS feels like an easy baby game. (of course we can also get into a discussion about how the difficuly of the series in general is way overblown and how Sekiro is the only genuinely hard one but heeyyyyyyy)
@@NocturneJester Have you seen owl father? Or sword Saint ishin? Granted they didn't take me as long as say O&S or sanctuary guardian but Ds1 was my first souls game. When I got to ishin I'd had played every souls game since Ds1 to completion so many times I know them almost entirely front to back, and still the bosses consistently kicked my ass from both sides of their arenas and back again, especially lady butterfly.... God that old woman gives me coniptions.
Matt C. Yeah the headless and shich warriors are definitely spikes for me. The one boss who’s always been awful to deal with is headless ape and headless duo, they’re my worst bosses by far everything else I’m pretty good at now.
@@NocturneJester unless you're plague. he struggled with jedi fallen order bosses because he refused to deflect, dash or use most abilities, insisting on playing it like ds1 and only using rolls and basic attacks.
I wholeheartedly agree with this, because this is exactly what happened when I first played Dark Souls. It was my first try at any of these games and I got wrecked by the early bosses. I wound up leveling up a ton and hiding behind a big shield and ended up walking through the rest of the game. That first run helped me understand how the game worked, and I immediately went back for a second playthrough with a different more offensive build and did so much better and had a blast with it. There are plenty of resources in the game that can help you get over a lot of hurdles, the hardest part is just getting that knowledge and learning how things work. Honestly the way to make things easier wouldn't be about changes to enemies or equipment, it would just be better explaining some mechanics up front so newcomers aren't lost or confused.
As someone who’s only just now finally getting around to properly playing Dark Souls, it’s challenging sure but it’s pretty fair overall and the difficulty is really over played. Sure it’s hard but it never feels like anything is completely out of your reach if you just think and act accordingly and can adapt to what the enemy’s up to. I don’t even know how they’d add an ‘easy mode’ if I’m honest. It seems like something that would both be extremely difficult to implement as most of the game would need to be retooled and I feel it would also cause the game to lose a great deal of its appeal. These games feel like a big deal to overcome because they present such a finely tuned challenge and losing that would take something away from the game, optional or not. And again that’s coming from someone who gets mad every 5 seconds because he keeps getting his ass handed to him.
How about an easy mode, but it has a downside? Enemies are easier, but there's perma-death if you mess up. This essentially forces you to do a no death run. On normal mode you can respawn at bonfires, but enemies have more health, do more damage, and have new moves. Also there are items you can only get in normal mode.
The AFK forge farming was so people could play the new dungeon as soon as possible, I thought. Cause Prophecy was released at a power level that was way too high for most people to get to I'm a timely manner, similar to what happened when the forges themselves first released
not only for prophecy but also the public event and nightfall :the ordeal difficulty. it was also because people were so tired of the last 3 events of grinding (season of the worthy, the guardian games, and the community event to get a pinnacle shotgun) that its actually a breath of fresh air that we can easily grind for stuff while doing productive things.
The problem was when players choose to not lower their power level under 750... Nobody could legitimately do forges with all the 758 power level afk players
@@lzfsburner They still are. I just came back to D2 and have a bunch of stuff locked behind a successful forge completion. 6 days of randomly queuing, maybe 50~ instances of 900 ilevel forge missions and EVERYTIME I get grouped with AFKers.
The AFK forge problem was never a problem during Season of Dawn because people would lower their power level to farm. (Matchmaking is based on power level, if you didn't know) But for some reason, there are plenty of idiots who are doing it at 1K power and above right now. That muddles up the matchmaking queue and prevents players like me who actually want to play the game mode, goddamnit! And you know what's worse? It's still happening. Bungie made it so that you get booted back to Orbit after every Forge run to stop AFK farming. But that wouldn't stop people from making macros to auto-queue back. It's annoying as hell.
Ninja Gaiden actually did the easy item perfectly Frilly ribbons on the badass ninja, and you got shittalked the entire game Did a run with them just for the dialogue because it was great
I like the spectacle of no difficulty options, playing the game the way it’s intended, feeling like a mountain everyone else has to climb or else no glory will be granted. Then after that mountain. An even bigger and more treacherous hulk of a landscape being available for completing the main or first quarter to half of the game. Every game mechanic at your disposal and then the real struggle is whether or not will the summit be reached. Not just the game or immersion breaking kind of difficulty like Skyrim’s Legendary (hardest), in which I did complete it but it just doesn’t feel very natural from average guards being able to one hit you with High ranking armour or be too damage sponge-y. Or maybe it's immersion breaking to me from the perspective of having played Adept (normal). Maybe I find it even more immersive if I think of it as starting out as a nobody prisoner into a somebody adventurer in a barbarian filled, civil war ridden land. Or I'm a masochist who likes hard games, so who knows.
P.s. There is actually a Skyrim game tip saying that if the game's too hard; lower the difficulty anytime on the menu. Which has the same attitude as Baby mode from Wolfenstein, lots of salt right there!
I think it depends on the kind of experience the game wants you to have. Im of the belief that not all games should appeal to everyone because niche games are not niche for the sake of being not mainstream but because they deliver a unique experience thats different from most other games and some people might not be into it.
This is me a few days ago, begrudgingly finished Dishonored 2 on the hardest setting(with powers, so a little leeway) only to find out I was torturing myself and there was literally no achievement to be had for playing it like that other than to challenge myself. I'm replaying New Game+ on an easier setting with no powers and after 40+ hours of playing the game, I am finally enjoying it. I'm a masochistic idiot. Games should only have one setting IMO, don't be afraid to let people learn the game. Sekiro sucked for me the first 10 hours and after getting the hang of it's combat, I was breezing through the whole thing occassionally beating 2 bosses in a couple of hours.
@White-Van Helsing then again most stealth games have bullshit mechanics that make the games artificially harder. i.e. the only reason why Dishonored 2 is frustrating in harder difficulties is that Leaning Mechanic becomes utterly useless, Stealth FPS don't really work too great when you impair that mechanic unlike in 3rd Person Perspective. It give you too much unnecessary disadvantage. What I'm saying is to make games challenging and engaging enough that people actually enjoy it rather than hatefuck the game to completion.
@White-Van Helsing That's why I played Dishonored 2 on the hardest difficulty WITH powers. That was the only way you can circumvent the bullshit mechanics of making the game artificially harder. You know why Thief was the best? Because it didn't make you impaired by leaning to look at corners.
So I've never played more than a few hours of a Souls game so I have no stake in this, but I really believe that most of the people screaming for an easy mode just won't like the game. Like most of it involves fighting and getting lost with minimal story. If you don't like that then it's fine. I didn't care for it so I just moved on.
@@chicomarotoDeflecting in Sekiro is nothing like parrying in the Souls games, it's way more streamlined and the timings are way more lenient, and a failed deflect will still result in a block if you hold the button making it quite forgiving.
Loooong time ago after barely beating Demons Souls for my first time (I had to cheat through the entire game, mainly because my stats were terrible and I didn't understand the game), I left a comment on RUclips complaining about how badly I wanted to be a souls fan but couldn't get past the stress and anxiety of overcoming the difficulty. Well, someone commented that I should watch a EpicNameBro video titled something like "Dark Souls Easy Mode Do Not Want". Wish I could find that video, it seems to have been deleted, flagged, or maybe he changed the titled? Anyways, it helped me understand that the difficulty is the core of the Souls franchise. Without it, the game isn't really much of anything special. I went on to beat Dark Souls 2 that year after watching that video, no cheating and I felt so proud. I later went back to beat Dark Souls, then Demons Souls (clashing swords with False King Allant made me feel so brave!) and I've been a die hard fan ever since. Even went further into the past to beat King's Field 2 (America), Shadow Tower, and Kings Field(4) The Ancient City. PS. I would highly recommended King's Field The Ancient City.
Epic Name Bro has moved away from youtube and has only kept a select few series that he was proud of the quality of on his channel. He streams a lot on Twitch now though and he is currently one of my favorite streamers. That being said I'm sad that he removed so many of his old videos since I quite liked his more casual chat series that he used to do.
Towards the later half of the video when Pat is talking about Destiny 2 and specifically in that time period where Bungie made players too powerful, that was the circumstances under which they made activities like "The Reckoning", where players were so over-powered and unkillable, the only way Bungie could possibly design the encounters to have any semblance of challenge was to make enemies and bosses that use cheap tactics to knock you off of platforms and run down the time limit, since nothing else could do anything about players being too strong.
Chat might end up saying something, but there is a huge chance that Pat didn't miss anything from nightwave as he was last talking about the infested one and there was only the intermission for months between then and the one that is currently available.
So watching this after Elden Ring came out is interesting, because I’m currently playing on easy mode, by which I mean I got big strong sword and just evaporate everything, and it’s super fun! I put time into exploring, happened upon good materials, earned a good sword and upgraded it. And you can do that at any point in the game, theres a bunch of places you can run to straight away to gather upgrade materials and get yourself a beefy weapon.
Easy modes need to exist for acessablility, you can hide it im menus, or in an item if needed, but it has to be there for the sake of people who simply dont have the ability. I just think the game needs to have an obvious "intended difficulty" thats balanced as the developers intended
Most games do, it's also why there isn't an easy mode in souls games for example, the devs want you to struggle, to cry and scream and swear until you kick down that wall and have that almost euphoric high at the end. I'll never forget the time I killed ornstein and smough for the first time and cried happy god damn tears.
But does every game need to be accessible? Believe me I understand not being able to play something that’s really fucking cool do to ailments but the whole argument of “accessibility is a must” has always seemed narrow to me. If a dev wants there game to be as accessible as possible I applaud them, say what you will about Last of Us 2 but holy shit those accessibility options are next level. But then you have games like Tarkov and Hunt that are built around the “hardcore” and obtuse nature of their design. I’d argue those games being made arbitrarily more accessible would weaken them. Tl;Dr, what if a dev doesn’t want there game to be accessible?
That’s pretty much my stance. I want to share the Souls experience with my partner (and he’s willing to give it a shot) but at a certain point he’s just not going to have the patience to stick with it and grind and deal with the frustration like I am. He’s not a gamer, he likes playing games “together”. For him Dark Souls on “easy” would still be a big challenge, at least equal to what I overcame with my pre-existing knowledge and gaming habits. That means he’d be able to have that experience and we can share rather than just hitting a wall and losing patience and moving into something else.
We've talked it into the ground but for SB games, the majority of the "difficulty" from them often comes from your brain being bombarded by the following: Game controls, Enemies, Stamina, Stats, Weapons, Armor/Weight, Upgrade Materials, Scaling, Weapon Paths/Blood Gems, etc. and then your brain goes "Okay what the fuck?" Just understanding each of those things among some others is arguably the steepest challenge players face at the start and the majority of SB players will often tell you they had the experience of being frustrated for a while until things "just clicked" and then they steamrolled on through the rest of the game save a few snags, and they may also note that experience from one game carries over to the others giving you a fair bit less time until the new games "click" themselves. Like with all things in life, patience and understanding is key and getting the fundamentals down really lets you enjoy the SB entries a lot more. As Pat said, Demon's Souls in particular is a mess and gives you some extra confusing shit to think about. Character/World Tendency comes to mind alongside of the complexity of some NPC questlines. But beyond that? Once you've got a grip on basic gameplay and character progression elements, you're mainly just tasked with memorizing how each new area is laid out, how the enemies are positioned, and what their movesets are. Nothing you probably haven't done in a video game before. Actually, I suppose since these games are RPGs, the stats enemies have is also considered a point of difficulty folks can complain about. Things like the "absurd health pools" of enemies in the DLC areas of the games, particularly bosses like those featured at the end of the Ringed City in DaS3. In which case, as far as addressing a hypothetical difficulty slider for Soulsborne games goes, the cynical asshole in me says that starting a new file should just show you a list of: "NG, NG+, NG+2, NG+3, NG+4, NG+5, NG+6, etc." to highlight the fact that the games already start on their easiest difficulty and ramp up each cycle. I've personally always considered NG+ to be the default balance of the the SB titles. From NG to NG+, you'll notice a giant spike in early game enemy stats and smaller bumps to late game enemies. However, from NG+ onwards, you'd typically see consistent incremental increases in things like Enemy HP. Of course, the adjusted stats enemies have on NG is primarily to match the area they're in to grant a sense of progression as well as account for the player having no/limited upgrades so far, so I can understand some folks thinking regular NG counts as a default too since that's the intended design, after all. As an example of the increases, let's look at BB. The Cleric Beast has 3,015 HP on NG and has 18,323 HP on NG+, more than 6 times its health on the initial cycle. Using NG+ as a base, he'll only reach 19,606 HP on NG+2, a mere 7% increase compared to NG+. NG+3 will increase his Health by almost 10% compared to NG+ bringing him to 20,155. NG+4 is 13%, NG+5 is 15%, NG+6, the final cycle where enemies scale in BB, is about 20% as far as HP is concerned. The %s at which HP increases from NG+ to NG+6 is more or less the same across the board for the enemies in the base game and DLC, hence why I say I look at NG+ as their default values. At NG+6 Cleric has 21,988 Health compared to barely 3K on NG. Meanwhile, the third final boss of the base game has 8,909 HP on NG and then 11,969 HP on NG+. They then follow the % increases each cycle like Cleric, but as you'll note, their NG+6 HP of 14,363 is barely a difference of 5K health, compared to Cleric Beast's having a difference of 18K...Of course, damage and blood echoes are also increased on NG+, but for the most part, they ramp up in a similar way to the health pools although not exactly by the same %s as HP does. Of course, NG+ cycles are a ways off for a lot of players who like to just go through once, lord knows they're barely missing anything since NG+ doesn't add much in terms of new content(excluding DaS2) beyond second choices on some NPC quest decisions and the ability to pick up any gear you didn't get before. Let's just look at NG. What options are available to players in SB games to make things flat out easier, assuming the player is aware of it? You can level your character to equip certain weapons/armor/spells as well as increase the power of said weapons/spells via scaling on the appropriate stats. You can upgrade/ascend your weapons, in DaS1/2 you can upgrade your armor and in DaS2/3 you can upgrade your spell casting tools. You can summon in other players/npcs to help with areas/bosses, you can even be summoned yourself to either scout out areas or farm Souls/Echoes and Covenant items where applicable. For survivability off of just items, you can carry 99 of every grass in DeS, 99 of every Life Gem in DaS2, 99 Twin/Humanity in DaS1(99 Divine Blessings outside of the Remastered version, too), and in all the DaS games you can upgrade your Estus Flask to both carry more of them and have them heal more. All of these factors lower the difficulty the games would otherwise present. Older Castlevanias and Super/Ghosts n' Goblins often come to my mind as precursors with significantly more rigid allowances in terms of what the player can do to make the game easier beyond just sitting down and learning the levels and encounters. I often consider the SB games to be 3D SotN-esque takes, but with some notable improvements. Unlike SotN, you don't just level up with all your stats growing randomly which can eventually push Alucard to a state where you can conceivably outlevel content you might be stuck on, your levels have weight to them in SB titles and allow you to choose a playstyle beyond just what your weapon swing looks like. It also doesn't flat out make the game directly easier so much as it adds a sense of character progression, like "I pumped my strength so now I can use the Heater Shield instead of the less than 100% Physical Reduction shield I started with." Chip damage from physical attacks are unlikely to be a concern for you now and you're rewarded for your choice if those are the kinda threats you'll be faced with. It's not too big a difference in how the process plays out for character progression all things considered, but it does feel like the choice is more satisfying. Choices like this adds depth and nuance to how hard certain encounters might be without just snowballing in the opposite direction like SotN eventually does. Moving on, in general a number of mechanics/information is not made initially apparent to the player in SB games. Just like how you're not given a prompt at the start of a new file as to whether you want to play Easy/Normal/Hard mode, this is done intentionally for a number of reasons. The primary one is that the Devs at Fromsoft want players to have a unified experience of sorts. Both the existence of the internet and the idea of a community were kept in mind for this. If someone unga bungas through easy mode then chances are they won't have much to relate to on players who do it on higher difficulties and face things that potentially might not have been available on lower difficulties. Of course, even then difficulty is subjective, one player will struggle with Boss A while others find Boss A easier to deal with than Boss B who the initial player didn't have much issue with and vice versa. Still, not having that initial difficulty slider makes it so that players are all discussing the same area, the same boss, the same stats, which makes sharing strategies and having general discourse flow a bit better. Admittedly, this method of design's reliant on each player's individual sense of gumption. These games love it and encourage the player to continue with the agency to actively seek things out be it on their own or through others. The DLC of DaS1 being located dead center in the middle of west bumblefuck? Someone'll let you know or you'll stumble upon one thing or another that'll make you curious and it'll piece together eventually. You get that kinda old school sense of secrets being shared on the playground that leads to gnarly nonsense. It fostered a feeling of shared discovery and appreciation, I think that's probably one of the main reasons Demon's Souls had such a decent cult following before things really blew up. There has been a bit of devolution in these talks over the years that ultimately boil down to "Oh, you cheesed it with a caster/archer, your victory is invalid. Do it max NG with twelve super butt plugs that shock you every time you press R1 without rolling/running and then it'll count." or otherwise just "Gatekeepers should die, these games are poorly designed and no one should give them the time of day." but that all came a bit later in the franchise for the community and it's whatever. In the DeS days the general atmosphere was the game didn't give a fuck about the player's feelings and the players in kind rallied together at any chance to disrespect the game's design. Maneaters? Fuck it, shoot 'em through the fog gate. Two and a half years for a single Pure Bladestone? Ay yo Thomas, dupe this shit. Leveled the wrong stats like a dummy(excluding Vit)? Someone come give me the Soul Succ. Wanna see me crash the game? R u n n i n g F i r e s t o r m It was busted as all hell and we laughed and enjoyed and exploited the crap out of the game's shortcomings and it was a grand old time. I kinda miss that, but it is what it is.
Pointless essay of regurgitated discourse everyone has either read or said themselves over the past decade or longer aside, I should at least make it clear that I don't really care for the whole "make it easier for a wider casul audience/harder to match my inflated e-peen" thing. For From in particular, I've enjoyed their works enough that I'd try things just because their name's on it. Whether Blue Point implements options that make DeS easier or keep it almost exactly as it was minus the updated graphics (doubt it 'cuz I swear I saw the 6th archstone that they ended up just using for the DaS2 3rd DLC bonus area), it makes no difference to me as long it's still a fun run. If I'm being honest the whole discussion of difficulty selection means a lot less to me on the DeS Remake than finding out if they patch any of the mini-skips in levels. I was quite happy with DaSR keeping all the skips in on top of even making the Kiln skip easier and introducing new ones with the mid/heavy roll glitch. I absolutely love when Devs make broken stuff like that by accident and never bothering to fix them be it because it's locked behind too much of the rest of the code to fix without messing anything else up or just because your company is ignorant of fan feedback in general or even the glitch being intentional by someone's hand. It's the best. But that's enough ranting from an old jaded asshole for one day.
I can't really emphasize with the notion of Demon Souls or any of the Soulsbourne games having an easy mode considering the games all lend themselves to jankiness and cheese. Also there were folks complaining about games made for children, Spyro and Crash, being too hard. Not sure how much stock could be put into putting an easy mode at that point.
also shoutouts to old /v/ from damn near a decade ago, those bozos actually taught me to embrace demon's souls pvp. chuck your lighting spears bitches.
I don't think easy modes would ever work for soulsboure games like Demons Souls: How would you handle invasions and multiplayer? Does each difficulty mode have it's own server? Also can't you just find Gengar in the wild in Sword and Sheild?
"You can have people come in and play the level for you" Yeah like the SBFP fan base and your Demon's Souls run. That being said, for all the people bitching about difficulty, especially those using disability as a shield...blind people have beaten these games. And it's not elitist to say that not everything has to be made just for you.
Naw man. The reason i like souls so much comes from a person i accidently summoned via a duel sign back in ds one. The trash talked via psn, I told em I just got the game and was confused they had me resummon em and they carried me through all the way to sens showing me all kinds of stuff. The community will help you out if you just you know ask.
My problem with people saying Souls games need an easy mode is that there are already plenty of ways to make the games easier and they really aren't even that hard in the first place. It just sounds like people want games to play themselves nowadays but still want the pop-off that comes with getting good. Case in point, that game journalist that complained the game didn't have an ending when it did but he was playing on easy mode. Also games that are looked at as being "hard" are often intentionally designed in a specific way and easy modes undermine that design.
I never understood the mentality of caring about someone else perception on difficulty( because something extremely easy to you is extremely difficulty for someone else). Some people just want to go through a story or setting without having to worry about punishing gameplay, and while thats not how I personally prefer to play im not gonna judge them for it.
Honestly having an easy mode that doesn't actually have the full game just seems like a bad move to me. Why even have the option if it's not a valid option?
@@NocturneJester what about the people who literally can't though? Whats the problem with giving them an option if it doesn't effect the base game at all?
@@HellecticMojo It does have the full game. He got to play all the levels and have fun. Isn't the fun what it's all about? That's the excuse everyone trots out when they want to cut the balls off anything even remotely challenging like a Souls game or fighting games.
There are players in the Souls community (that regularly stream, mind you) who have actual physical disabilities that prevent them from normally playing with a standard controller input and still make it through the game with relative ease. The games don't need an easy mode, you just need to actually...you know, have a functioning brain, and get good as the kids say.
HandicapableOne is the handle on Twitch for anyone thinking I'm just pulling this out of my ass, dude beat Gael with a controller hooked to his chin and mouth, the absolute maniac
Funny enough, I stopped checking back in on Warframe when they did The Pacifism Defect event a while ago. It was a whole-ass clan event where you could earn special rewards if everyone worked to get your clan to the top of the ranks! If you got in the top 10% or something, your clan got a fancy new Ignis Wraith blueprint anyone in it could pump out as much as they wanted. I believe the grade below that was everyone in the clan getting their own Ignis Wraith, but not the blueprint. So I, wanting to make my own clan, realized that there would be a permanent reason not to join my clan over another that no amount of resources or time could fix if I didn't get the blueprint. Had a name, an icon ready, a theme, themed ranks, all the faciltiies, the whole 9 yards, but it wouldn't matter. So by myself, I busted my ass off for hours and hours and hours on the event trying to get my clan to the top percentage of the Ghost size clans Never got it. Kinda just lost interest after that.
You know I really love games that are difficult, I welcome the challenge any game brings. However, i understand I'm getting older. My hand eye coordination will deteriorate, and I won't be able to overcome these challenges as easily as i do now. The games i love will keep coming out and will still be difficult but I'll be changing. An easy mode will be welcome when I'm older because i will not want to miss out on the things i enjoy in case i just can't keep up anymore
my personal head-canon is that to let dark souls have easy mode but only if they drastically change the way you play. for example, if you select easy mode, you cant fight the optional bosses nor access the optional areas, you only get one ending (and that is linking the fire ending), it is offline so no player controlled phantoms nor invaders, cant finish the side quests of NPCs, hostile human NPCs are removed (or if you defeat them, you cant loot their armor nor weapons) some enemies that spawn (like the red eyed monsters or the crabs) will be less on the field, no estus but double the item find on healing items (or just put the life-gems back in and only the basic life-gems), make the game go straight to regular difficulty and they cant change it even when they make another new game (so when the player links the fire, it instantly goes into new game normal and you cant select easy mode ever again) put it simply, give the player a feel of easiness but also only give them a taste of the game rather than the full course, so you incentive's players to play your game on normal or hard like how secret endings or new boss encounters (like kingdom hearts) are on the hardest difficulties.
This difficulty thing can totally backfire and people might end up with another God Hand in which hard is just the norm and the game still calls you a bitch for not going harder.
My opinion on this matter has always been "if the difficulty is such a sticking point to you that you can't handle it, and need recompense, then mod it." And so long as there's no multiplayer option/input from outside human sources, there's no foul. I don't think people's problem is that they want an easier game; it's that they want to maintain their perception of self-aggrandizement.
I feel like this topic depends on how you see games/ what you want from a game. Souls for example. Many hardened gamers want something challenging to test their mettle and the satisfaction of overcoming ( e.g. NG+ no armour soul level 0 broken sword depraved runs). Then there are people who just want to play the game because they want to have fun and they think a game looks cool because it has cool dragons and swords, and they might find the difficulty to be gatekeeping because they don't want games to challenge them, they want fun; casual gamers if you will. My girlfriend would love the dark lore of Souls games, or the roleplaying of Divinity OS 2, but they fact that she needs to use her brain and react under pressure puts her off, and she's content with playing Animal Crossing and Rune Factory.
I never felt that DS1 or 3 were all that difficult, i played a very parry centric build during DS1 and DS3 just felt so similar. The only game that felt tough was DS2 but I was mostly just always frustrated with it. The only reason I’ve ever felt a want for an easy mode in games such as Dark Souls or Bloodborne is for a friend who has a disease that messes with their hands and joints. So they tend to play on the easiest difficulties so if it occurs mid-game or doesn’t go away for days they can still enjoy a game without getting shit on constantly.
My favorite example of a game treating you differently when you play on easy mode rather than any other is the sixth Touhou game; Embodiment of a Scarlet Devil. You can fight all the way up to the second to last level but after you defeat that stage's boss, she tells you that you'll have to at least choose normal difficulty if you want to fight the final boss.
For me grinding can either be like Baten Kaitos, where the sick as hell combat draws you in to fight more and try more weird card combos, and the randomness is an actual factor in your own skill-based gameplay. Or it can be like Xenoblade where you walk up to the guys and press buttons. Suffice it to say I never got much further than the mines area.
Either they give great rewards to finishing hard/normal difficulty of souls games, or make a Kojima Chicken Mask easy mode for people who just wanna breeze through the game or a Megaman rookie mode where they lock all achievements but you almost unlimited health
Sorry for posting this on every video until I get an answer, but what exactly is the name of the song at the end of this weeks podcast. it says jenova theme, but thats obviously not true. thanks in advance for an answer.
Final Fantasy VII Remake OST - Jenova (Phase 3) For the record, the always post them on the official website in the description of each podcast. Guess you didn't play the FF7 Remake, or your probably could have guessed this track.
I live in rural America, so when I played dark souls for the first time I had no idea that summoning friends was a thing. Ornstein and smough tore me a new one my first playthrough... Help would have a been a life saver
@@33link333 yeaaaaah i didn't know that at the time lol i never unhollowed myself on my first playthrough so i never even knew summon signs were a thing.
I've been trying to play Destiny 2 for awhile now since I like Halo and what not. However I really don't understand how the daily/seasonal stuff works. I usually just putz around on planets doing my own thing. I do not understand the meta or what I'm supposed to be doing.
When destiny makes the player too strong to kill it doesn't break raids, Bungie is just shit at designing raids. Remember Vault of Glass? How like 80% of your losses came because the team failed an objective that kills everyone? That raid that almost everyone loved because it was fun to wipe a ton of enemies while working together for an objective?
Vault of Glass was the pinnacle and I would argue Kingsfall was a *very* close second in terms of raid design and story telling. The rest of them I could give less of a shit about (Crota's End should never have been a raid.)
I honestly just kept switching between the easiest and middle difficulties in Wolfenstein: The New Order while restarting from checkpoint so that I could complete challenges and get better abilities like increased ammo. That game was tough as crud even on lower difficulties because I was ammo starved but as soon as I could reliably dual wield my assault rifles for more than a picosecond it became much more fun.
I know this is years old but im rewatching and what to chime in anyway: TL;DR: Having a level of challenge culls the people who arent passionate about the game. Adding an easy mode to DeS/DkS would actively ruin the hobby for other Souls game enjoyers. Think of it like Mt. Everest (i know, it sounds silly, but bear with me.) Climbing Mt. Everest used to be a huge accomplishment and people who had done it or had asperations to do it shared a similar level of passion for the hobby. Now anyone can pay a sherpa to being them up. Its just nothing. Luckily they have other mountains and such to climb that arent so commercialized. When i talk to someone who loves Souls, i know that theres a reasonable chance that they have a similar level of passion for the game as i do because it requires a certain amount of dedication to get through. (Even if they grind souls for easy mode, at least they cared enough to devote time to beat the game, even if it was too hard to beat the normal way.) Same with Dark Souls. Playing through a game like Wolfenstein isnt an indication of passion or care for Wolfenstein. Anyone can play through it. Some people will love the story and designs, some people will love the gameplay, some people will be middling, and some might even dislike it outright. But ALL of them will be people who have beaten the game. With Souls games, if they beat it, they probably at least like it but it's more likely that they love it.
I'm fine with adding an easy mode to DeS, if they also added a hard mode with the Pure Black phantoms, summoning disabled and a higher invasion rate permanently on. I'm someone that likes choosing the hard mode equivalent in a lot of games, but it's fine to have an easy mode for people that don't want that kind of challenge.
wait, doesn't Dark Souls (and i think a couple other games to my knowledge) have New Game+, where you keep all the things you have from the previous save and go through the game with your end game build? And doesn't it like increase the difficulty of bosses (at least i think in Dark Souls, otherwise those "No Damage / NG7 " videos wouldn't be as popular?
I honestly don't care about easier modes for accessibility, it's an rpg you can steamroll that thing by literally leveling up a couple times. And besides, These games are only hard the first couple of times you played them because the combat system is obtuse and when they first rolled around nobody knew how to play them and after beating them and replaying you have the motor functions to play it just fine. I played DS2 first out of all the games and I rage quitted it without getting to the first boss. Then I played it again a month later and didn't die until I got to that fake Ornstein fight
Just put in a ring that gives you extreme amounts of healing if you back off for a length of time or something. Call it the ring of the marvelous badger man or some crap. It can take up all of your ringslots and/or limit you in some other way I can't think of at the moment.
Ring of the Fool's Estus Lore- The one known as The Fool may not be as foolish as thought. They carried around a ring that cushioned every fall, but the Fool knew that each fall would still linger in their mind. The moment they decided to forgoe the Ring, they were met with greater struggle the likes which they've never seen. Gameplay- A Ring that takes up both Ring slots, and provides the user with continuous healing, although small bits at a time. Can only be used if the user does not perform any other actions besides walking. Also decreases souls gained by 25%
what is hard with playing souls games? can't people just watch the enemies first to see how they attack? can't they parry the obvious slow swings? can't they spam the dodge button if the enemy is swinging like crazy? can't they run away at full sprint if they are hit once? can't they attack once and retreat to do it all over again, spending hours on one enemy,learning all their moves,and the counters to their moves and building the confidence that, if i see another enemy like it, i am prepared and panic? or is it cause their brains turn off and they go 'unga bunga must attack attack attack ook ook!' when they see an enemy? i dont know...it is a mystery...
I don't think having it as an option would be bad or detract from the game but I also do not think it is necessary. If the devs want to put it in the should do it if they don't they don't have to. If people want to mod it to make it easier thats fine its their copy as long as they don't play online when using mods.
Or add an easy mode, but it has a downside. Enemies are easier, but there's perma-death if you mess up. This essentially forces you to do a no death run. On normal mode you can respawn at bonfires, but enemies have more health, do more damage, and have new moves. Also there are items you can only get in normal mode.
I think it's cool when things are designed for a smaller audience in mind. Don't understand why people get so upset when a game isn't made for them when there's thousands of good options out there. That being said I don't dislike difficulty options as long as it's clear which one is the intended experience.
Here's my counter to difficulty means accomplishment. I played a bit of Cuphead. It was hard right out the gate as I was getting used to the controls and mechanics. I eventually felt pretty good about my muscle memory. Got to the Clown and it took hundreds of attempts over 1 or 2 hours. I didn't feel good when I beat him, I just felt numb. I played the next run and gun level, then put the game down. I could beat the game if I want, I just don't enjoy playing it because the difficulty was so extreme (for me). By contrast I beat Hollow Knight and I found a pattern emerged when I was fighting hard bosses. Learning all their attacks, learning how to dodge them, attack during safe times, kept dying and wanted the fight to go faster, start optimizing every second of the fight to hit them at every opportunity, practice until my execution gets good enough, then the higher amount of time after that it takes to beat them then the higher chance I start getting frustrated but then I beat them eventually. I think difficulty is a tool to facilitate engagement with mechanics. But once it hits pure execution then it's a balancing act, and that's what difficulty settings/mechanics should be for. The question is just how to balance it.
I rage quit Demon Souls so many times, so much so that I have yet to finish it, but not because its hard, it is entirely because of the janky ass controls and how hard it is just to play the damn game. I really hope they update the controls and the way shit feels to be closer to Dark Souls 1.
Demon's Souls is the only game I rage quit, due to some asshole invader camping the final elevator leading to False King, spamming the big AOE miracle on the walkway.
Seasonal stuff is so terrible. I wanted to play Granblue because of the Persona 5, Slayers and Street Fighter characters they added to it, but they're long gone now so the main reason I wanna play it is also the biggest reason I don't wanna.
Dark Souls has 2 forms of easy mode. Co-Op and Grinding. Realistically you can only need to be Slvl 80ish to beat every Souls game on your first playthrough. Get up to Slvl 120 in your first playthrough which is very most people play co op or invade and you are set. Except for D1 remaster because Fromsoft
No. Not all games are made for all people. Making games that are hard by design easier robs a fundamental part of the experience and narrative and contributes for the homogenization of game design. And the Souls Series has an easy mode in the form of Summons. Saying "I want it to be easy but don't want to summon" is like "I want all my groceries in the same bag but don't want it to be heavy".
I'm of the mindset that every game should have options, whether it be the traditional "Easy, Normal, Hard" or something like Celeste where you can build your own difficulty. I think these options are 100% pro with no cons. That being said, there is a discussion to be had with "easy" modes that don't have the right amount of work put into them. Example being FF7R. When the game is so easy to the point where it might as well just be a cutscene movie then you've reach that point of "overfixing" the issue. Contrary to popular belief, people who might choose "easy" still want to play the game. They just might not have the same level of motor skills to enjoyably go through the other difficulties. Should a game be lambasted for being difficult? Not unless it's an actual issue that contradicts the game design. While I think the idea of having options should be talked about, I feel like it shouldn't come off as a demand or some kind of "mandatory feature" because a bad easy mode is worse than not having one imo. If it doesn't have them and you know that will mean you can't enjoy it while you play then let your voice be heard but also look into something else that suits your needs. Don't wait around for a product, there are already a million and one other great games you could be playing.
the idea of not offering an easy/beginner mode in single-player games has always been hilarious to me simply from the idea of it being applied to real-life activities. "You want to get into rock climbing but want to start on an easier climb?" "haha get good scrub we only climb grade VI cliffs". "You like practicing archery but the draw weight is too high to easily shoot?" "ok you can lower the draw weight but you have to sign a paper calling yourself a bitch".
The real issue when it comes to Souls games is there is like a difficulty wall you have to smash through before you can feel their "real" difficulty. If you choose not to use a guide or look up ANYTHING about builds, you may literally not get true a feel for things until pretty darn far into your first game.
There is a lot a newbie friendly tutorial would do to help I think. But to be honest most of the info is available in game. Just gotta open that menu and read the explanation. I mean I didnt either for a long time but that was my own fault haha
Some games' difficulty is essential as part of the experience. Devil may Cry and Crash Bandicoot, to name a couple. That being said, I agree that it's important to have difficulty options and not just stick the player with just one. I'm still baffled by RE3's "Easy" or "Hard" XD
I still think its funny that the only reason why dark souls is always at the center of this type of discussion is because of its marketing. It DS1 isn't a hard game, its what I would call middle of the rode difficulty (plenty of options, once you know how the game works you win). It just happened to come out in a time that easy games were the main thing.
Imo the game doesnt hold your hand and it came out in a time when every game was being SUPER handholdy. It hit different back then. But all you gotta do is like slow down, grab a shield and look around. It will still get you sometimes but that will safe guard you against most of it.
I think I can solve this argument with one sentence. “Easy mode is now selectable”
"GOD DAMMIT!"
Pat feels that in his soul.
Unlockable only after you reach "shirtless in the rain" sidequest.
I hate dying in RE2 and RE3 and getting asked if i want to go to Assisted. especially considering theres no way to change it back, you have to reload the newest save, thank god they display the difficulty in the file screen. there should be the ability to go back up in difficulty in one game, At least with Normal Mode come on.
Should be called piss baby mode. ;)
I'm always of the mind that not everything should be made with everyone in mind. If you're game is designed for a certain group's interests or gameplay styles, you shouldn't be obligated to undermine your own design to fit those who never played. Not saying that there shouldn't be any games for the general audience, but if the core design calls for the game to be difficult, why change it to fit the play styles of people who probably wouldn't play it anyway?
I'm still wondering how the existence of an easier option takes anything away from someone who ignores it for the harder route. In a PvP game, sure, online experiences between players ought to be on equal footing if not equal skill. Obviously. Predominantly single player experience though? Who is out there shaking their fist at the screen saying "oh boy, I killed that enemy in 5 hits while some entitled whippersnapper picked easy mode and did it in three"??? Just make a separate multiplayer section for easy mode people, or if that's too much effort only enable it on normal mode. Crisis fucking averted, those who want to interact with le hardc0re gamerz have an incentive to git gud before hopping online.
gatfatf I don't think it takes away from other's experience at all. However, one difficulty means the devs can tailor make it to be as close to their design as they can manage. That means that all of the players that chose to continue playing all had the same experience (ideally, but it should be close overall) which means they can adjust things better based off their data and player feedback.
When your player base is split between 3+ difficulty options it becomes hard to parse what needs adjustment. For example, everybody on easy says that the damage scaling in a mace is off. Is it bugged since other options don't talk about it, do people on easy play differently, is it off because they are finishing the game faster so people tend not to upgrade, etc. There's two options to go with, either leave it as is since only a select few complain or the overwatch route of whatever competitive players say matters. Some people are concerned if you brought the option to souls games you'll take dev time away from the intended experience which will make the game worse. There's some truth to it but the option exists to hire or outsource people to do it.
QA testing on the other hand tends to only focus on either Hard or Normal too. Generally because most people play on those two settings depending on the genre. Resources are limited and as long as the other options can be completed, it'll pass QA. (QA information is from friends I have that did that work and some industry people talking about it. Probably doesn't apply everywhere)
Just my 2 cents
You mean like Cadence of Hyrule, a rythm game, having an option to remove the rythm from the game, so that people who don't play rythm games can beat this rythm game
@@gatfatf It takes away from me if I know that at any moment I could pick up a crutch. If I know that the only way I'll make it to the end is to grind it through the way it was intended, it makes it that much more interesting. It's not because other people can have it easier, it's because _I_ could have it easier. It would be like running 5km on normal ground while people next to me are running on a moving walkway. People will beat the game on easy after a few hours while I'm stuck at the second or so boss thinking what the point even is. I don't have this with other games, but Soulsborne games are built around that challenge.
And yeah, it's fun to have a community that enjoys a challenge. I don't think that's necessarily toxic at all. The Soulsborne games are centred around their difficulty, lack unforgivingness and that great feeling you get when you push through those challenges. Why should its community abandon what they so enjoy about the games because people outside that community feel differently about it?
God I miss the days when Demon's Souls threads on /v/ were the friendliest things
Like people would just be talking about the game and posting meme comics and then when someone talked about how they were having difficulty with a boss people were quick to offer tips to them
People still offer advice if people are asking, its when people just whine about it saying things along it being poorly desigined (unless it actually is like BoC) that the toxic comes out.
White-Van Helsing There were better days.
Better days are gone but old kind hearts still beat somewhere out there in our shared cesspit.
@White-Van Helsing that's 9k. V bitches about anything vidya related.
Sekiro was like that
God, looking back at 2010's /v/ and thinking "ahh good times" is fucking depressing.
Here's the thing about "Gotta Catch em All", it was only an American thing. In Japan it's always been "Get Pokémon". That's it. Get the Pokémon you want or like. You're right Woolie, if they thought it was going to be as huge as its become they would have chosen different.
4Kids used it for the anime and NoA though that it was catchy enough to use it for the entire franchise.
@@xxtz2007xx yeah and my point still stands
I'm glad that there's some people who's at least intelligent around these parts. When people are quick to jump to dumb conclusions like this, who aren't up to date with the series anyways like Pat and Woolie are, as they've clearly shown here and before. Of course I guess American, and most especially 4kids, sets a terrible precedence for the franchise, which has done them no favors in the long run. It was way too catchy, and has ran way too deep into most people's mind about the franchise now, that there's little to no undoing the damage, like there was with at least One Piece.
@@byronlyons3548 don't get me started on how 4 Kids did one piece. All those edits are stupid
@Rock Golem DREAM IT
"Things don't always have to be black and white."
So when's Minh gonna join the Castle Super Beast?
It's almost like Souls games aren't actually that hard and everyone makes a bigger deal out of it than what it actually is.
no. it not hard just really depressing .
This
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks so. I'd say more just annoying personally though. It's never a battle of skill or focus for me, it's always a battle of me losing interest.
Because they're not and those fanatics keep yelling that fromsoft makes hard games.
@@NocturneJester Oddly enough it's still my favorite because it's the easiest on my eyes and has lots of cool spells that are admittedly op. But I know I'd lose interest pretty quickly in certain places.
"IT WAS ME, I WROTE IT!" -Patrick Brando
souls games don't have difficulties because they want you to learn and git gud, but also there's not as much to understand about combat. For example people would get SHIT on if trying ninja gaiden or DMC on the hardest dififculties right away.
Yeah, that's my problem with NioH, it has a shit ton of systems but the game is so punishing that it doesn't incentivate the use of them. How the fuck do you practice moves when so many attacks are one hit kills? I'll just use the one move that gets the job done without any risk.
The reason for this is because the real difficulty in Character Action games is in the mechanics, not just what you can do but what enemies can do. Stats are almost secondary when the creatures who you normally beat on have DT to and can keep you from juggling them as a Fury sneaks behind you.
To me real skill comes from being able to deal with those situations which is more than reflexes.
Well the thing with games like dmc is that they're usually reliant on you having the neccessary upgrades on the highest settings to even attempt the harder shit.Missing some resources or a skill wont make or break you in souls,but in DMD or HnH it could be the difference between you styling effortlessly or getting shit on because you messed up an entire string that cost your life or just missing one more pip on your bar causing you to run out of dt at the worst moments.
@@bearandthebull2372 To be fair you're intended to have almost everything by that point. DMC 4 was the only one that was a real problem but it was remedied in the Special Edition and even more so on DMCV.
I'm pretty sure you'd get SHIT on for trying to play any games on the hardest difficulty available right away.
Doubly so if you call it a bad game, when it's not. They're just an idiot and suck a lot.
Like that one guy whom played RE2 Remake.
I remember hearing the "Gotta catch them all" was only a American thing and that Japan had nothing to do with it
Destiny and the worst consumer confidence it is always on the downward slope and player perception is also always foggy sunsetting isn't a fix it's crazy also cause exotics are not going to be sunset so there are still going to be overwhelming powerful meta defining weapons thus defeating the purpose of sunsetting
The japanese catchphrase is simply "Get Pokemon" or "Pokemon getto daze"
Yep. "Gotta catch 'em all!" is just the US tag, the Japanese one roughly translates to "Everyone, let's catch Pokémon!"
funny thing about that, they dropped that catchphrase at Gen3. it almost stayed though.
@@Levitz9 That's way to friendly of a phrase for the US.
I just wonder how it would be played even without the phrase. I feel like the draw to "catch them all" would still be strong.
Rather than an easy mode, I want the option that when you start new game plus, the enemies don't scale up. Let me beast on everything like an overpowered god.
The feeling of returning to stage one with your stage seven upgrades but the entire game
Nah, make it an option, I want an interesting New Game+, rather than an amusing overpowered trip that turns dull after 10 mins.
@@tacosalvapor9264 Seems you need a Reading Accessibility option turned on because that's literally what the dude said: "I want the option".
@@Tsyuait lmao you right, this an L for me
Code Vein has this option. When you start NG+, it asks you if you want the enemies beefed up too or not.
Two years later and I come back to this video/topic because it kinda fascinates me.
The underlying issue with game difficulty, imo, is that we all play games for different reasons/get enjoyment from games for different reasons. Some people want Hell Or Hell Mode to really test their skills, feel like they're mastering their tools to overcome obstacles, adapting, etc. The "I'm an underdog" feeling that got me into difficult games at a young age.
Some people want the power fantasy or to just enjoy the story. They dont really wanna adapt or think too deeply about a mere video game. Hit the thing, go the place, follow the objective marker, whatever. "Real life is hard enough, why purposefully make a game hard for myself?" That kinda thing.
And NEITHER of those mentalities are wrong. Those are two polar opposite extremes for the sake of conversation, sure, but still. We all want different things out of our immersive experiences. The problem is that most people want to be part of most things. But that just aint how gaming works.
So yeah. If a thing is difficult because that's what the devs want, then it doesnt need an easy mode. People who play videogames & the people who make them would benefit from understanding that "everything aint gotta be for everyone."
3:20 that's why demons,1 and 3 have difficulty that feels "natural to the world" in a sense.The challenge in those games comes from the story treating your character like a shitty little bitch whose stuck in a world filled with gods and beings of immense power,so when you die it's less an "fuck you" and more of "I should be careful next time".The difficulty makes sense to the worlds purpose,and therefore feels like a challenge you have to overcome.
Well not really 3
Don't sleep on DS2 it'll still powerbomb you even if it has a beer gut
Yeah, but DS2 is unfair ... look at Black Gluch, Ivory Kingdom, the Fog forest.
Most deaths are more of a Fuck You because alot of the Enemys and some areas are unfair to you. Yes theres ways to make it easier, but its the most frustating of the franchinse.
@@peterwhite6415 who said anything about being fair.
One second your fighting the guardian dragon (easy)
The next your against the big old fuck you Ancient Chadragon which can be cheesed by anti-backstab ring and a shit ton of soul geysers to the face.
@@peterwhite6415 most of that is people not using shields and not looking for environmental cuew. gulch you can avoid the statues pretty easily and quickly and there's supplies to cure it. ivory kindgom i'm assuming you're referring to the ice field where a shield stops getting hit so easy. and fog forest you can see the enemies if you pay attention or if you just stick to the left wall you can scoot through pretty easily with likely nobody even showing up.
There is an easy mode its called being over leveled.
Nothing like the old reliable grind until there's no issue
Playing mage
Nothing like the old "So I grinded a little bit offscreen"
Dark souls 3 let’s play flash back. When pat was super over leveled by the time he got to the undead settlement.
well you see, it's called "being really good at fighting"
It's hard for me want a easy mode for soulsbourne game because the difficulty, more over navagating yourself around the 'difficulty' is part of the joy of the game, and also a bitter point of the narrative. Souls games is supposed to give this crushing atmosphere, you're supposed to rise above that. Concluding in a fight between two nobodies at the end of the world. Blood Bourne is showing how unimportant you are in the grand scheme of things. You are just some random person who got themselves way over their head. The game play is expressing that.
wrong
Welp, pack it up Ninno, cuz you just got OWNED
@@yellow242 Bitch baby bitch
@@yellow242 wrong.
See? I can do it too
So heres the thing. The majority of people who play the game WILL play it on the easier modes. And then they'll walk away from the game saying "Oh all you do is press the x button. Not all that exciting." I know this, because I'm a kingdom hearts fan. And that's all I've heard from casual players since I started playing. "All you do is press 1 button. Press this button till the game tells you to press the next button." Souls games need to keep their identity of hard and punishing games. Lest they be reduced to 'Hack and Slash' status.
Dude high difficulty Kingdom Hearts has some reallllllllllllllly fun super bosses. Some of my favorite. I've fought sephiroth multiple times because the fights are just fun!
@@GBSpiral i played kh3 on critical once the dlc came out and my god it was so much fun, having block be important and not just an option makes the game amazing
@@hatsunemikufanboy Do casual KH players even realize how amazing it is that in KH3 you can block WHILE IN MIDAIR!? That's GAME CHANGING! But they don't even use the normal block.
@@MemoryOfDarkSky i know right
So people who want difficulty options shouldn't get them because you're insecure about some people dismissing Kingdom Hearts games.
The solution to Destiny’s Power Level problem: Excise Power like the tumor it is.
The same people who scream "burn the gatekeeping" at every mention of rewarding difficulty, lack of difficulty selections and OPTIONAL content locked behind difficulty selection or challenges are the SAME ones that get pissy if they had such options but the game joked about it like the Chicken Helmet. They are the exact inverse of the powergamer gatekeeper they are complaining about. They want to feel like they are "in the club" without feeling guilty that they cheated themselves out of an unique experience, or from an experience that just wasn't designed for them to begin with. If you go full sociology study in this, it can mostly boil down to the "participation award" that some competition with children have, fuck you person that won, everyone is equal and deserves a prize, here's your pat on the back, now go, and never face any challenge in your life again whatsoever, and if you do, its unfair!
@White-Van Helsing absolutely. But also right
I feel the people crying out for an easy mode with every souls release are simply people who hear of difficulty and are afraid to dive into the series, those who hear these cries of difficulty from players who don't have the capacity to slow down and take things from another angle, and then they get assaulted by the "git gud" crowd and are afraid to get into the series because their perception of souls games is tainted by a bunch of immature "gamers", but real talk my 9 year old niece and peach saliva have beaten souls games, they take time and patience, "skill" comes with time and investment in those previous two categories.
you get infinite tries to solve every problem, you have the capacity to infinitely farm as many souls as you want until you're op, there's no lives system, most souls games these days have checkpoints so frequent that veterans mod them out due to how excessive they can get. and here's the kicker, most of you aren't here for PVP so you can just make some OP lv600 abomination of a build and feel good about yourself by curb stomping every boss.
souls games are never hard they're designed to slow the player down a bit, to teach you to look around instead of charging straight ahead like every other game lets you and once you know what's there, then you can charge forward confident that nothing will hurt you, it places obvious traps and ambushes in the hopes that by the 8th time you fall for the same dumb trick you might learn to look around before grabbing the shiny.
and for the modern "gamer" that can be hard, I know, thinking and basic memorization with a bit of spacial reasoning is pretty hard and the puzzle-like bosses of demons souls will challenge quite a few, I expect to hear a plethora of winging about adjudicator just because of his bouncy belly, but if you struggle to solo content there's always already an easy baby mode in the form of bringing phantoms into your world to kill the boss and everything else for you, as proven by the multitude of streamers who've done 0 kill runs letting their phantoms do all the work for them
and if you ever do decide to get into pvp know that 120 is the designated level for that in most games because that's where builds get the most diversity and that's where most PVP crowd stop
if you struggle with a souls game you probably have the wrong mindset to begin with and are getting frustrated at the wrong things. - death is not a punishment, its a learning opportunity
The only time it ever made sense is with Sekiro, which has actual walls. The other Soulsesque games all have co-op, which trivializes any game difficulty. Sekiro probably could have used something, but for all the others it's literally just "the easy mode isn't implemented directly in the UI like I expected."
Before anyone says anything, Sekiro has silver bullets for bosses, but its impact is much more limited. Sure you can cause gorilla in-fighting, but that only applies when there are multiple, and the fire gimmicks are not a tenth as impactful in Sekiro as co-op is in DaS.
i hear ya but personally all i ever asked for was good controls and the ability to pause the game in souls games. no input lag, no jank, no bullshit hitboxes and a button that stops the gameplay in case i need to go do something and dont want to just quit out of it. that cannot be too much to ask, especially with how much money they got on the last four games, three of which (ds1, bloodborne and ds3) are heralded as some of the best games ever when they still dont have a pause putton and still have input lag.
@@god47398 Both of those are intentional design choices. The lack of pausing enforces a tension, especially because one does not have the conveniences of fooling with their entire inventory in the stopped time.
And im almost certain what you believe to be "input lag" is merely "animations that are not as zippy and cartoony as my dumb ass is used to."
You might want to look up a principle of physics known as "inertia"
But all this is besides the point that the quality of a game has remarkably little to do with how skillfully and cleanly its programmed, as long as its playable. Fallout: new vegas is essentially the best first-person RPG the west has made and it launched, and remains, a buggy janky mess.
the Souls series is one of the finest explorations into dark fantasy in the history of games because of its tone, its storytelling, and its ambiance. you'll notice 'well optimized' and 'fun and easy to play' and 'well balanced' is not part of that because its window dressing. You are a fool complaining that a great novel sucks because it is printed on paper you, personally, don't like the texture of.
But I think that all this is literally beyond you. everything beyond the hacky slashy shit, thats the window dressing to you, isnt it?
"souls games are never hard they're designed to slow the player down a bit, to teach you to look around instead of charging straight ahead like every other game lets you and once you know what's there, then you can charge forward confident that nothing will hurt you, it places obvious traps and ambushes in the hopes that by the 8th time you fall for the same dumb trick you might learn to look around before grabbing the shiny."
The idea that Souls games are never hard is total bullshit, and it makes you look like a part of the arrogant "git gud" crowd yourself. They're just not hard in the particular ways you've described. Certain enemy types are significant challenges, and most of the difficulty comes from the boss fights. If someone were to claim that Nameless King, Sister Friede, Midir, Demon of Hatred, & Sword Saint Ashina aren't difficult, they'd be full of shit. Adjudicator is a terrible example because he's cherry-picked; he's the most brain-dead easy boss in DeS with an incredibly simple gimmick that's incredibly easy to figure out.
"if you struggle with a souls game you probably have the wrong mindset to begin with and are getting frustrated at the wrong things"
...not really dude. Miyazaki has explicitly stated that they want players to feel a sense of accomplishment from overcoming challenges. If a player is struggling, they're actually having the intended experience; it's nothing wrong or improper. You're being patronizing as all hell. You're a good example of the portion of the Souls fanbase that just uses the series as a tool to give themselves a false sense of superiority by wanking themselves off to how skilled & smart they think they are because of their prowess with an entertainment product.
@@god47398 No idea where you're coming from with the controls. The only odd parts are jumping, jump attacking, & kicking. Everything else is simple, intuitive, & smooth. No idea what you mean by input lag; animations have longer startup periods than in most games, and this helps movement & actions feel weighty and encourages the player to be more mindful about their actions. No idea what you mean by jank, either, and I can count the number of weird hitbox problems I've ever seen throughout the series, both from myself & others, on two hands at most. The lack of a pause function is a non issue: if you're fighting, finish the fight, and if you're not, just stay in a safe area & put the controller down. The lack of pausing is there to maintain tension in fights.
Pat: Mocks people who are insufferable for mocking other peoples playstyles
People still angry about the fact that pat touched an Estoc in that one playthrough: Well actually
It has to be stated again and again and again; the Souls games have always had difficulty settings. It's called leveling up, upgrading equipment and summoning. For instance, the Gargoyles in DaS1 can be a big difficulty spike for a first time player, but by just spending a small amount of time around the Undead Pariah, leveling up slightly and getting enough shards to upgrade all weapons and armour and then summoning a player or an NPC, the Gargoyles become a complete joke. An actual cakewalk.
Could the games do a better job at expressing these ideas? Probably. But it's like playing FF7 original and never bothering to level up or equip materia and then complaining that the game is too difficult. If you're not actually going to use the tools the game gives you then what are we even doing here.
Also seconding what Pat said about DeS: after all the other games in the series, including Sekiro, DeS feels like an easy baby game.
(of course we can also get into a discussion about how the difficuly of the series in general is way overblown and how Sekiro is the only genuinely hard one but heeyyyyyyy)
@@NocturneJester Have you seen owl father? Or sword Saint ishin? Granted they didn't take me as long as say O&S or sanctuary guardian but Ds1 was my first souls game.
When I got to ishin I'd had played every souls game since Ds1 to completion so many times I know them almost entirely front to back, and still the bosses consistently kicked my ass from both sides of their arenas and back again, especially lady butterfly.... God that old woman gives me coniptions.
Matt C. Yeah the headless and shich warriors are definitely spikes for me. The one boss who’s always been awful to deal with is headless ape and headless duo, they’re my worst bosses by far everything else I’m pretty good at now.
just look at how much more forgiving ds3 was when pat grinded dozens of levels and summoned a party to kill a boss for him.
@@NocturneJester unless you're plague. he struggled with jedi fallen order bosses because he refused to deflect, dash or use most abilities, insisting on playing it like ds1 and only using rolls and basic attacks.
I wholeheartedly agree with this, because this is exactly what happened when I first played Dark Souls. It was my first try at any of these games and I got wrecked by the early bosses. I wound up leveling up a ton and hiding behind a big shield and ended up walking through the rest of the game. That first run helped me understand how the game worked, and I immediately went back for a second playthrough with a different more offensive build and did so much better and had a blast with it. There are plenty of resources in the game that can help you get over a lot of hurdles, the hardest part is just getting that knowledge and learning how things work. Honestly the way to make things easier wouldn't be about changes to enemies or equipment, it would just be better explaining some mechanics up front so newcomers aren't lost or confused.
Saiyng "i want it to be easy but don't want to summon" is like saying "i want all my groceries in one bag but don't want it to be heavy"
"Can you please give me your summon?"
Damn it Woolie, that "drop sack" bit just made me inhale my drink.
As someone who’s only just now finally getting around to properly playing Dark Souls, it’s challenging sure but it’s pretty fair overall and the difficulty is really over played. Sure it’s hard but it never feels like anything is completely out of your reach if you just think and act accordingly and can adapt to what the enemy’s up to.
I don’t even know how they’d add an ‘easy mode’ if I’m honest. It seems like something that would both be extremely difficult to implement as most of the game would need to be retooled and I feel it would also cause the game to lose a great deal of its appeal. These games feel like a big deal to overcome because they present such a finely tuned challenge and losing that would take something away from the game, optional or not.
And again that’s coming from someone who gets mad every 5 seconds because he keeps getting his ass handed to him.
Nice dude. Glad you're playing it. Really solid game. Playing back in the day, during the zeitgeist while everyone was figuring stuff out was a trip
How about an easy mode, but it has a downside? Enemies are easier, but there's perma-death if you mess up. This essentially forces you to do a no death run. On normal mode you can respawn at bonfires, but enemies have more health, do more damage, and have new moves. Also there are items you can only get in normal mode.
What Demon's Soul needs is just checkpoints before bosses and better loading times.
Bro, how does it feel to have predicted Elden Ring.
The AFK forge farming was so people could play the new dungeon as soon as possible, I thought. Cause Prophecy was released at a power level that was way too high for most people to get to I'm a timely manner, similar to what happened when the forges themselves first released
not only for prophecy but also the public event and nightfall :the ordeal difficulty. it was also because people were so tired of the last 3 events of grinding (season of the worthy, the guardian games, and the community event to get a pinnacle shotgun) that its actually a breath of fresh air that we can easily grind for stuff while doing productive things.
The problem was when players choose to not lower their power level under 750... Nobody could legitimately do forges with all the 758 power level afk players
@@lzfsburner They still are. I just came back to D2 and have a bunch of stuff locked behind a successful forge completion. 6 days of randomly queuing, maybe 50~ instances of 900 ilevel forge missions and EVERYTIME I get grouped with AFKers.
The AFK forge problem was never a problem during Season of Dawn because people would lower their power level to farm. (Matchmaking is based on power level, if you didn't know) But for some reason, there are plenty of idiots who are doing it at 1K power and above right now. That muddles up the matchmaking queue and prevents players like me who actually want to play the game mode, goddamnit! And you know what's worse? It's still happening.
Bungie made it so that you get booted back to Orbit after every Forge run to stop AFK farming. But that wouldn't stop people from making macros to auto-queue back. It's annoying as hell.
Ninja Gaiden actually did the easy item perfectly
Frilly ribbons on the badass ninja, and you got shittalked the entire game
Did a run with them just for the dialogue because it was great
Woolie looks super stoned. He's already so chill too, good times.
I know right!
I like the spectacle of no difficulty options, playing the game the way it’s intended, feeling like a mountain everyone else has to climb or else no glory will be granted.
Then after that mountain. An even bigger and more treacherous hulk of a landscape being available for completing the main or first quarter to half of the game. Every game mechanic at your disposal and then the real struggle is whether or not will the summit be reached.
Not just the game or immersion breaking kind of difficulty like Skyrim’s Legendary (hardest), in which I did complete it but it just doesn’t feel very natural from average guards being able to one hit you with High ranking armour or be too damage sponge-y.
Or maybe it's immersion breaking to me from the perspective of having played Adept (normal). Maybe I find it even more immersive if I think of it as starting out as a nobody prisoner into a somebody adventurer in a barbarian filled, civil war ridden land.
Or I'm a masochist who likes hard games, so who knows.
P.s. There is actually a Skyrim game tip saying that if the game's too hard; lower the difficulty anytime on the menu.
Which has the same attitude as Baby mode from Wolfenstein, lots of salt right there!
I think it depends on the kind of experience the game wants you to have. Im of the belief that not all games should appeal to everyone because niche games are not niche for the sake of being not mainstream but because they deliver a unique experience thats different from most other games and some people might not be into it.
Tomas Fong death stranding
This is me a few days ago, begrudgingly finished Dishonored 2 on the hardest setting(with powers, so a little leeway) only to find out I was torturing myself and there was literally no achievement to be had for playing it like that other than to challenge myself. I'm replaying New Game+ on an easier setting with no powers and after 40+ hours of playing the game, I am finally enjoying it.
I'm a masochistic idiot. Games should only have one setting IMO, don't be afraid to let people learn the game. Sekiro sucked for me the first 10 hours and after getting the hang of it's combat, I was breezing through the whole thing occassionally beating 2 bosses in a couple of hours.
@White-Van Helsing then again most stealth games have bullshit mechanics that make the games artificially harder. i.e. the only reason why Dishonored 2 is frustrating in harder difficulties is that Leaning Mechanic becomes utterly useless, Stealth FPS don't really work too great when you impair that mechanic unlike in 3rd Person Perspective. It give you too much unnecessary disadvantage.
What I'm saying is to make games challenging and engaging enough that people actually enjoy it rather than hatefuck the game to completion.
@White-Van Helsing That's why I played Dishonored 2 on the hardest difficulty WITH powers. That was the only way you can circumvent the bullshit mechanics of making the game artificially harder. You know why Thief was the best? Because it didn't make you impaired by leaning to look at corners.
So I've never played more than a few hours of a Souls game so I have no stake in this, but I really believe that most of the people screaming for an easy mode just won't like the game. Like most of it involves fighting and getting lost with minimal story. If you don't like that then it's fine. I didn't care for it so I just moved on.
The trial and error its what make them fun but sometimes is too much for me. Thats why ill not even try Sekiro bc i suck on parrying
@@chicomarotoDeflecting in Sekiro is nothing like parrying in the Souls games, it's way more streamlined and the timings are way more lenient, and a failed deflect will still result in a block if you hold the button making it quite forgiving.
@@33link333 Guess ill try
Easy mode to me is reading notes to get hints on enemies/bosses. Hell I remember using poison arrow cheese on the red and blue dragons lol 🐉
Loooong time ago after barely beating Demons Souls for my first time (I had to cheat through the entire game, mainly because my stats were terrible and I didn't understand the game), I left a comment on RUclips complaining about how badly I wanted to be a souls fan but couldn't get past the stress and anxiety of overcoming the difficulty.
Well, someone commented that I should watch a EpicNameBro video titled something like "Dark Souls Easy Mode Do Not Want".
Wish I could find that video, it seems to have been deleted, flagged, or maybe he changed the titled?
Anyways, it helped me understand that the difficulty is the core of the Souls franchise. Without it, the game isn't really much of anything special. I went on to beat Dark Souls 2 that year after watching that video, no cheating and I felt so proud. I later went back to beat Dark Souls, then Demons Souls (clashing swords with False King Allant made me feel so brave!) and I've been a die hard fan ever since. Even went further into the past to beat King's Field 2 (America), Shadow Tower, and Kings Field(4) The Ancient City.
PS. I would highly recommended King's Field The Ancient City.
Epic Name Bro has moved away from youtube and has only kept a select few series that he was proud of the quality of on his channel. He streams a lot on Twitch now though and he is currently one of my favorite streamers.
That being said I'm sad that he removed so many of his old videos since I quite liked his more casual chat series that he used to do.
@@33link333 Ah that sucks to hear, thanks for letting me know. I'll have to check out his stream out of respect for him.
It's the jank. Demon's Souls is all about that jank.
it's all about that jank
bout that jank
hitboxing
Towards the later half of the video when Pat is talking about Destiny 2 and specifically in that time period where Bungie made players too powerful, that was the circumstances under which they made activities like "The Reckoning", where players were so over-powered and unkillable, the only way Bungie could possibly design the encounters to have any semblance of challenge was to make enemies and bosses that use cheap tactics to knock you off of platforms and run down the time limit, since nothing else could do anything about players being too strong.
Demon's Souls does have an easy mode. It's called White World Tendency. If you would like to play on "Very Easy" start the game as the Royalty class.
And also the "Cling Ring" and "Thief Ring" making the game a lot easier and are both possible to get relatively early on.
Chat might end up saying something, but there is a huge chance that Pat didn't miss anything from nightwave as he was last talking about the infested one and there was only the intermission for months between then and the one that is currently available.
So watching this after Elden Ring came out is interesting, because I’m currently playing on easy mode, by which I mean I got big strong sword and just evaporate everything, and it’s super fun! I put time into exploring, happened upon good materials, earned a good sword and upgraded it. And you can do that at any point in the game, theres a bunch of places you can run to straight away to gather upgrade materials and get yourself a beefy weapon.
The opposite of FOMO if FIIMO: Fuck It, Im
Missing Out.
Easy modes need to exist for acessablility, you can hide it im menus, or in an item if needed, but it has to be there for the sake of people who simply dont have the ability. I just think the game needs to have an obvious "intended difficulty" thats balanced as the developers intended
Most games do, it's also why there isn't an easy mode in souls games for example, the devs want you to struggle, to cry and scream and swear until you kick down that wall and have that almost euphoric high at the end.
I'll never forget the time I killed ornstein and smough for the first time and cried happy god damn tears.
@@jerryjezzaberry5009 gonna go out on a limb here and assume that you don't have arthritis.
But does every game need to be accessible? Believe me I understand not being able to play something that’s really fucking cool do to ailments but the whole argument of “accessibility is a must” has always seemed narrow to me. If a dev wants there game to be as accessible as possible I applaud them, say what you will about Last of Us 2 but holy shit those accessibility options are next level. But then you have games like Tarkov and Hunt that are built around the “hardcore” and obtuse nature of their design. I’d argue those games being made arbitrarily more accessible would weaken them.
Tl;Dr, what if a dev doesn’t want there game to be accessible?
That’s pretty much my stance. I want to share the Souls experience with my partner (and he’s willing to give it a shot) but at a certain point he’s just not going to have the patience to stick with it and grind and deal with the frustration like I am. He’s not a gamer, he likes playing games “together”. For him Dark Souls on “easy” would still be a big challenge, at least equal to what I overcame with my pre-existing knowledge and gaming habits. That means he’d be able to have that experience and we can share rather than just hitting a wall and losing patience and moving into something else.
If you are not capable of playing the game, then dont buy the game. Or better yet. Easy mode disables all achievements
We've talked it into the ground but for SB games, the majority of the "difficulty" from them often comes from your brain being bombarded by the following: Game controls, Enemies, Stamina, Stats, Weapons, Armor/Weight, Upgrade Materials, Scaling, Weapon Paths/Blood Gems, etc. and then your brain goes "Okay what the fuck?"
Just understanding each of those things among some others is arguably the steepest challenge players face at the start and the majority of SB players will often tell you they had the experience of being frustrated for a while until things "just clicked" and then they steamrolled on through the rest of the game save a few snags, and they may also note that experience from one game carries over to the others giving you a fair bit less time until the new games "click" themselves. Like with all things in life, patience and understanding is key and getting the fundamentals down really lets you enjoy the SB entries a lot more.
As Pat said, Demon's Souls in particular is a mess and gives you some extra confusing shit to think about. Character/World Tendency comes to mind alongside of the complexity of some NPC questlines. But beyond that? Once you've got a grip on basic gameplay and character progression elements, you're mainly just tasked with memorizing how each new area is laid out, how the enemies are positioned, and what their movesets are. Nothing you probably haven't done in a video game before.
Actually, I suppose since these games are RPGs, the stats enemies have is also considered a point of difficulty folks can complain about. Things like the "absurd health pools" of enemies in the DLC areas of the games, particularly bosses like those featured at the end of the Ringed City in DaS3. In which case, as far as addressing a hypothetical difficulty slider for Soulsborne games goes, the cynical asshole in me says that starting a new file should just show you a list of: "NG, NG+, NG+2, NG+3, NG+4, NG+5, NG+6, etc." to highlight the fact that the games already start on their easiest difficulty and ramp up each cycle. I've personally always considered NG+ to be the default balance of the the SB titles. From NG to NG+, you'll notice a giant spike in early game enemy stats and smaller bumps to late game enemies. However, from NG+ onwards, you'd typically see consistent incremental increases in things like Enemy HP. Of course, the adjusted stats enemies have on NG is primarily to match the area they're in to grant a sense of progression as well as account for the player having no/limited upgrades so far, so I can understand some folks thinking regular NG counts as a default too since that's the intended design, after all.
As an example of the increases, let's look at BB. The Cleric Beast has 3,015 HP on NG and has 18,323 HP on NG+, more than 6 times its health on the initial cycle.
Using NG+ as a base, he'll only reach 19,606 HP on NG+2, a mere 7% increase compared to NG+. NG+3 will increase his Health by almost 10% compared to NG+ bringing him to 20,155. NG+4 is 13%, NG+5 is 15%, NG+6, the final cycle where enemies scale in BB, is about 20% as far as HP is concerned. The %s at which HP increases from NG+ to NG+6 is more or less the same across the board for the enemies in the base game and DLC, hence why I say I look at NG+ as their default values.
At NG+6 Cleric has 21,988 Health compared to barely 3K on NG.
Meanwhile, the third final boss of the base game has 8,909 HP on NG and then 11,969 HP on NG+.
They then follow the % increases each cycle like Cleric, but as you'll note, their NG+6 HP of 14,363 is barely a difference of 5K health, compared to Cleric Beast's having a difference of 18K...Of course, damage and blood echoes are also increased on NG+, but for the most part, they ramp up in a similar way to the health pools although not exactly by the same %s as HP does.
Of course, NG+ cycles are a ways off for a lot of players who like to just go through once, lord knows they're barely missing anything since NG+ doesn't add much in terms of new content(excluding DaS2) beyond second choices on some NPC quest decisions and the ability to pick up any gear you didn't get before.
Let's just look at NG. What options are available to players in SB games to make things flat out easier, assuming the player is aware of it? You can level your character to equip certain weapons/armor/spells as well as increase the power of said weapons/spells via scaling on the appropriate stats. You can upgrade/ascend your weapons, in DaS1/2 you can upgrade your armor and in DaS2/3 you can upgrade your spell casting tools. You can summon in other players/npcs to help with areas/bosses, you can even be summoned yourself to either scout out areas or farm Souls/Echoes and Covenant items where applicable.
For survivability off of just items, you can carry 99 of every grass in DeS, 99 of every Life Gem in DaS2, 99 Twin/Humanity in DaS1(99 Divine Blessings outside of the Remastered version, too), and in all the DaS games you can upgrade your Estus Flask to both carry more of them and have them heal more.
All of these factors lower the difficulty the games would otherwise present. Older Castlevanias and Super/Ghosts n' Goblins often come to my mind as precursors with significantly more rigid allowances in terms of what the player can do to make the game easier beyond just sitting down and learning the levels and encounters.
I often consider the SB games to be 3D SotN-esque takes, but with some notable improvements. Unlike SotN, you don't just level up with all your stats growing randomly which can eventually push Alucard to a state where you can conceivably outlevel content you might be stuck on, your levels have weight to them in SB titles and allow you to choose a playstyle beyond just what your weapon swing looks like. It also doesn't flat out make the game directly easier so much as it adds a sense of character progression, like "I pumped my strength so now I can use the Heater Shield instead of the less than 100% Physical Reduction shield I started with."
Chip damage from physical attacks are unlikely to be a concern for you now and you're rewarded for your choice if those are the kinda threats you'll be faced with. It's not too big a difference in how the process plays out for character progression all things considered, but it does feel like the choice is more satisfying. Choices like this adds depth and nuance to how hard certain encounters might be without just snowballing in the opposite direction like SotN eventually does.
Moving on, in general a number of mechanics/information is not made initially apparent to the player in SB games. Just like how you're not given a prompt at the start of a new file as to whether you want to play Easy/Normal/Hard mode, this is done intentionally for a number of reasons. The primary one is that the Devs at Fromsoft want players to have a unified experience of sorts. Both the existence of the internet and the idea of a community were kept in mind for this.
If someone unga bungas through easy mode then chances are they won't have much to relate to on players who do it on higher difficulties and face things that potentially might not have been available on lower difficulties. Of course, even then difficulty is subjective, one player will struggle with Boss A while others find Boss A easier to deal with than Boss B who the initial player didn't have much issue with and vice versa. Still, not having that initial difficulty slider makes it so that players are all discussing the same area, the same boss, the same stats, which makes sharing strategies and having general discourse flow a bit better. Admittedly, this method of design's reliant on each player's individual sense of gumption. These games love it and encourage the player to continue with the agency to actively seek things out be it on their own or through others. The DLC of DaS1 being located dead center in the middle of west bumblefuck? Someone'll let you know or you'll stumble upon one thing or another that'll make you curious and it'll piece together eventually. You get that kinda old school sense of secrets being shared on the playground that leads to gnarly nonsense. It fostered a feeling of shared discovery and appreciation, I think that's probably one of the main reasons Demon's Souls had such a decent cult following before things really blew up.
There has been a bit of devolution in these talks over the years that ultimately boil down to "Oh, you cheesed it with a caster/archer, your victory is invalid. Do it max NG with twelve super butt plugs that shock you every time you press R1 without rolling/running and then it'll count." or otherwise just "Gatekeepers should die, these games are poorly designed and no one should give them the time of day." but that all came a bit later in the franchise for the community and it's whatever.
In the DeS days the general atmosphere was the game didn't give a fuck about the player's feelings and the players in kind rallied together at any chance to disrespect the game's design.
Maneaters? Fuck it, shoot 'em through the fog gate.
Two and a half years for a single Pure Bladestone? Ay yo Thomas, dupe this shit.
Leveled the wrong stats like a dummy(excluding Vit)? Someone come give me the Soul Succ.
Wanna see me crash the game? R u n n i n g F i r e s t o r m
It was busted as all hell and we laughed and enjoyed and exploited the crap out of the game's shortcomings and it was a grand old time. I kinda miss that, but it is what it is.
Pointless essay of regurgitated discourse everyone has either read or said themselves over the past decade or longer aside, I should at least make it clear that I don't really care for the whole "make it easier for a wider casul audience/harder to match my inflated e-peen" thing.
For From in particular, I've enjoyed their works enough that I'd try things just because their name's on it. Whether Blue Point implements options that make DeS easier or keep it almost exactly as it was minus the updated graphics (doubt it 'cuz I swear I saw the 6th archstone that they ended up just using for the DaS2 3rd DLC bonus area), it makes no difference to me as long it's still a fun run.
If I'm being honest the whole discussion of difficulty selection means a lot less to me on the DeS Remake than finding out if they patch any of the mini-skips in levels. I was quite happy with DaSR keeping all the skips in on top of even making the Kiln skip easier and introducing new ones with the mid/heavy roll glitch. I absolutely love when Devs make broken stuff like that by accident and never bothering to fix them be it because it's locked behind too much of the rest of the code to fix without messing anything else up or just because your company is ignorant of fan feedback in general or even the glitch being intentional by someone's hand.
It's the best. But that's enough ranting from an old jaded asshole for one day.
The whole sunsetting thing is the exact reason i left again after shadowkeep and the vex season wrapped up.
Bro sunsetting didn't even get mentioned until long after shadow keep and season 8
I can't really emphasize with the notion of Demon Souls or any of the Soulsbourne games having an easy mode considering the games all lend themselves to jankiness and cheese.
Also there were folks complaining about games made for children, Spyro and Crash, being too hard. Not sure how much stock could be put into putting an easy mode at that point.
Holy shit pat talking about Destiny, I'm so glad I never bothered.
also shoutouts to old /v/ from damn near a decade ago, those bozos actually taught me to embrace demon's souls pvp. chuck your lighting spears bitches.
I don't think easy modes would ever work for soulsboure games like Demons Souls: How would you handle invasions and multiplayer? Does each difficulty mode have it's own server?
Also can't you just find Gengar in the wild in Sword and Sheild?
"You can have people come in and play the level for you" Yeah like the SBFP fan base and your Demon's Souls run. That being said, for all the people bitching about difficulty, especially those using disability as a shield...blind people have beaten these games. And it's not elitist to say that not everything has to be made just for you.
Naw man. The reason i like souls so much comes from a person i accidently summoned via a duel sign back in ds one. The trash talked via psn, I told em I just got the game and was confused they had me resummon em and they carried me through all the way to sens showing me all kinds of stuff. The community will help you out if you just you know ask.
People with disabilities besides blindness beat this game and people actively handicapped themselves on purpose to do so as well
My problem with people saying Souls games need an easy mode is that there are already plenty of ways to make the games easier and they really aren't even that hard in the first place. It just sounds like people want games to play themselves nowadays but still want the pop-off that comes with getting good. Case in point, that game journalist that complained the game didn't have an ending when it did but he was playing on easy mode.
Also games that are looked at as being "hard" are often intentionally designed in a specific way and easy modes undermine that design.
I never understood the mentality of caring about someone else perception on difficulty( because something extremely easy to you is extremely difficulty for someone else). Some people just want to go through a story or setting without having to worry about punishing gameplay, and while thats not how I personally prefer to play im not gonna judge them for it.
Honestly having an easy mode that doesn't actually have the full game just seems like a bad move to me. Why even have the option if it's not a valid option?
@@HellecticMojo its really shitty gatekeeping.
@@NocturneJester what about the people who literally can't though? Whats the problem with giving them an option if it doesn't effect the base game at all?
@@HellecticMojo It does have the full game. He got to play all the levels and have fun. Isn't the fun what it's all about? That's the excuse everyone trots out when they want to cut the balls off anything even remotely challenging like a Souls game or fighting games.
There are players in the Souls community (that regularly stream, mind you) who have actual physical disabilities that prevent them from normally playing with a standard controller input and still make it through the game with relative ease.
The games don't need an easy mode, you just need to actually...you know, have a functioning brain, and get good as the kids say.
HandicapableOne is the handle on Twitch for anyone thinking I'm just pulling this out of my ass, dude beat Gael with a controller hooked to his chin and mouth, the absolute maniac
Funny enough, I stopped checking back in on Warframe when they did The Pacifism Defect event a while ago.
It was a whole-ass clan event where you could earn special rewards if everyone worked to get your clan to the top of the ranks!
If you got in the top 10% or something, your clan got a fancy new Ignis Wraith blueprint anyone in it could pump out as much as they wanted.
I believe the grade below that was everyone in the clan getting their own Ignis Wraith, but not the blueprint.
So I, wanting to make my own clan, realized that there would be a permanent reason not to join my clan over another that no amount of resources or time could fix if I didn't get the blueprint. Had a name, an icon ready, a theme, themed ranks, all the faciltiies, the whole 9 yards, but it wouldn't matter.
So by myself, I busted my ass off for hours and hours and hours on the event trying to get my clan to the top percentage of the Ghost size clans
Never got it.
Kinda just lost interest after that.
You know I really love games that are difficult, I welcome the challenge any game brings. However, i understand I'm getting older. My hand eye coordination will deteriorate, and I won't be able to overcome these challenges as easily as i do now. The games i love will keep coming out and will still be difficult but I'll be changing. An easy mode will be welcome when I'm older because i will not want to miss out on the things i enjoy in case i just can't keep up anymore
my personal head-canon is that to let dark souls have easy mode but only if they drastically change the way you play. for example, if you select easy mode,
you cant fight the optional bosses nor access the optional areas,
you only get one ending (and that is linking the fire ending),
it is offline so no player controlled phantoms nor invaders,
cant finish the side quests of NPCs,
hostile human NPCs are removed (or if you defeat them, you cant loot their armor nor weapons)
some enemies that spawn (like the red eyed monsters or the crabs) will be less on the field,
no estus but double the item find on healing items (or just put the life-gems back in and only the basic life-gems),
make the game go straight to regular difficulty and they cant change it even when they make another new game (so when the player links the fire, it instantly goes into new game normal and you cant select easy mode ever again)
put it simply, give the player a feel of easiness but also only give them a taste of the game rather than the full course, so you incentive's players to play your game on normal or hard like how secret endings or new boss encounters (like kingdom hearts) are on the hardest difficulties.
This difficulty thing can totally backfire and people might end up with another God Hand in which hard is just the norm and the game still calls you a bitch for not going harder.
but my arm can summon the power of the god hand!
My opinion on this matter has always been "if the difficulty is such a sticking point to you that you can't handle it, and need recompense, then mod it." And so long as there's no multiplayer option/input from outside human sources, there's no foul. I don't think people's problem is that they want an easier game; it's that they want to maintain their perception of self-aggrandizement.
The Souls series is popular as it is EXACTLY because there was no way to select the level of challenge. This should be obvious.
I feel like this topic depends on how you see games/ what you want from a game. Souls for example.
Many hardened gamers want something challenging to test their mettle and the satisfaction of overcoming ( e.g. NG+ no armour soul level 0 broken sword depraved runs).
Then there are people who just want to play the game because they want to have fun and they think a game looks cool because it has cool dragons and swords, and they might find the difficulty to be gatekeeping because they don't want games to challenge them, they want fun; casual gamers if you will.
My girlfriend would love the dark lore of Souls games, or the roleplaying of Divinity OS 2, but they fact that she needs to use her brain and react under pressure puts her off, and she's content with playing Animal Crossing and Rune Factory.
I never felt that DS1 or 3 were all that difficult, i played a very parry centric build during DS1 and DS3 just felt so similar. The only game that felt tough was DS2 but I was mostly just always frustrated with it.
The only reason I’ve ever felt a want for an easy mode in games such as Dark Souls or Bloodborne is for a friend who has a disease that messes with their hands and joints. So they tend to play on the easiest difficulties so if it occurs mid-game or doesn’t go away for days they can still enjoy a game without getting shit on constantly.
My favorite example of a game treating you differently when you play on easy mode rather than any other is the sixth Touhou game; Embodiment of a Scarlet Devil. You can fight all the way up to the second to last level but after you defeat that stage's boss, she tells you that you'll have to at least choose normal difficulty if you want to fight the final boss.
For me grinding can either be like Baten Kaitos, where the sick as hell combat draws you in to fight more and try more weird card combos, and the randomness is an actual factor in your own skill-based gameplay.
Or it can be like Xenoblade where you walk up to the guys and press buttons.
Suffice it to say I never got much further than the mines area.
Just make a unique achievement that you can only get playing on easy mode that’s something like “You Did It?”
Either they give great rewards to finishing hard/normal difficulty of souls games, or make a Kojima Chicken Mask easy mode for people who just wanna breeze through the game or a Megaman rookie mode where they lock all achievements but you almost unlimited health
Woolies hair looks like really long crunchberries.
Sorry for posting this on every video until I get an answer, but what exactly is the name of the song at the end of this weeks podcast. it says jenova theme, but thats obviously not true. thanks in advance for an answer.
Final Fantasy VII Remake OST - Jenova (Phase 3)
For the record, the always post them on the official website in the description of each podcast.
Guess you didn't play the FF7 Remake, or your probably could have guessed this track.
It was something for a couple seconds, but then shifted to The World Revolving from Deltarune.
@@UberEric The first track is from Deltarune too, it's the theme of the rules card guy.
I live in rural America, so when I played dark souls for the first time I had no idea that summoning friends was a thing. Ornstein and smough tore me a new one my first playthrough... Help would have a been a life saver
You can summon Solaire for that fight who can help splitting the aggro making the fight much easier.
@@33link333 yeaaaaah i didn't know that at the time lol i never unhollowed myself on my first playthrough so i never even knew summon signs were a thing.
I've been trying to play Destiny 2 for awhile now since I like Halo and what not.
However I really don't understand how the daily/seasonal stuff works. I usually just putz around on planets doing my own thing. I do not understand the meta or what I'm supposed to be doing.
They should force you to use a broken sword and the ugliest armor imaginable and you cant remove it
When destiny makes the player too strong to kill it doesn't break raids, Bungie is just shit at designing raids. Remember Vault of Glass? How like 80% of your losses came because the team failed an objective that kills everyone? That raid that almost everyone loved because it was fun to wipe a ton of enemies while working together for an objective?
Vault of Glass was the pinnacle and I would argue Kingsfall was a *very* close second in terms of raid design and story telling. The rest of them I could give less of a shit about (Crota's End should never have been a raid.)
Demon's Souls easy mode is just Cling Ring + Thief's Ring
Easy=Cling+Thief rings
Normal=Cling ring
Hard=Neither ring
I honestly just kept switching between the easiest and middle difficulties in Wolfenstein: The New Order while restarting from checkpoint so that I could complete challenges and get better abilities like increased ammo. That game was tough as crud even on lower difficulties because I was ammo starved but as soon as I could reliably dual wield my assault rifles for more than a picosecond it became much more fun.
A tailored experience being fixed is like playing DS1 but all enemies die in 1-5 hits even bosses and you’re 25% faster and has unlimited stamina.
I know this is years old but im rewatching and what to chime in anyway:
TL;DR: Having a level of challenge culls the people who arent passionate about the game.
Adding an easy mode to DeS/DkS would actively ruin the hobby for other Souls game enjoyers. Think of it like Mt. Everest (i know, it sounds silly, but bear with me.)
Climbing Mt. Everest used to be a huge accomplishment and people who had done it or had asperations to do it shared a similar level of passion for the hobby. Now anyone can pay a sherpa to being them up. Its just nothing. Luckily they have other mountains and such to climb that arent so commercialized.
When i talk to someone who loves Souls, i know that theres a reasonable chance that they have a similar level of passion for the game as i do because it requires a certain amount of dedication to get through. (Even if they grind souls for easy mode, at least they cared enough to devote time to beat the game, even if it was too hard to beat the normal way.)
Same with Dark Souls. Playing through a game like Wolfenstein isnt an indication of passion or care for Wolfenstein. Anyone can play through it. Some people will love the story and designs, some people will love the gameplay, some people will be middling, and some might even dislike it outright. But ALL of them will be people who have beaten the game. With Souls games, if they beat it, they probably at least like it but it's more likely that they love it.
I'm fine with adding an easy mode to DeS, if they also added a hard mode with the Pure Black phantoms, summoning disabled and a higher invasion rate permanently on. I'm someone that likes choosing the hard mode equivalent in a lot of games, but it's fine to have an easy mode for people that don't want that kind of challenge.
Ight if we’re being honest it’s only a fragment of the all mighty because most of it was like vaporized in orbit.
wait, doesn't Dark Souls (and i think a couple other games to my knowledge) have New Game+, where you keep all the things you have from the previous save and go through the game with your end game build? And doesn't it like increase the difficulty of bosses (at least i think in Dark Souls, otherwise those "No Damage / NG7 " videos wouldn't be as popular?
I honestly don't care about easier modes for accessibility, it's an rpg you can steamroll that thing by literally leveling up a couple times. And besides, These games are only hard the first couple of times you played them because the combat system is obtuse and when they first rolled around nobody knew how to play them and after beating them and replaying you have the motor functions to play it just fine. I played DS2 first out of all the games and I rage quitted it without getting to the first boss. Then I played it again a month later and didn't die until I got to that fake Ornstein fight
Just put in a ring that gives you extreme amounts of healing if you back off for a length of time or something. Call it the ring of the marvelous badger man or some crap. It can take up all of your ringslots and/or limit you in some other way I can't think of at the moment.
Ring of the Fool's Estus
Lore- The one known as The Fool may not be as foolish as thought. They carried around a ring that cushioned every fall, but the Fool knew that each fall would still linger in their mind. The moment they decided to forgoe the Ring, they were met with greater struggle the likes which they've never seen.
Gameplay- A Ring that takes up both Ring slots, and provides the user with continuous healing, although small bits at a time. Can only be used if the user does not perform any other actions besides walking. Also decreases souls gained by 25%
what is hard with playing souls games?
can't people just watch the enemies first to see how they attack?
can't they parry the obvious slow swings?
can't they spam the dodge button if the enemy is swinging like crazy?
can't they run away at full sprint if they are hit once?
can't they attack once and retreat to do it all over again, spending hours on one enemy,learning all their moves,and the counters to their moves and building the confidence that, if i see another enemy like it, i am prepared and panic?
or is it cause their brains turn off and they go 'unga bunga must attack attack attack ook ook!' when they see an enemy?
i dont know...it is a mystery...
Have you seen Peach Saliva playing these games? That's what I imagine many people's playstyles to be like. With less coaching and skill of course.
I don't think having it as an option would be bad or detract from the game but I also do not think it is necessary. If the devs want to put it in the should do it if they don't they don't have to. If people want to mod it to make it easier thats fine its their copy as long as they don't play online when using mods.
Glad to hear im not the only one who thinks we need Destiny 3 rather than content vaulting.
Add an easy mode but make it entertaining and/or humiliating
Or add an easy mode, but it has a downside. Enemies are easier, but there's perma-death if you mess up. This essentially forces you to do a no death run. On normal mode you can respawn at bonfires, but enemies have more health, do more damage, and have new moves. Also there are items you can only get in normal mode.
11:00 'fuck those people, git gud'
12:00 'the git gud people in souls are the absolute worst'
I think it's cool when things are designed for a smaller audience in mind. Don't understand why people get so upset when a game isn't made for them when there's thousands of good options out there. That being said I don't dislike difficulty options as long as it's clear which one is the intended experience.
Here's my counter to difficulty means accomplishment. I played a bit of Cuphead. It was hard right out the gate as I was getting used to the controls and mechanics. I eventually felt pretty good about my muscle memory. Got to the Clown and it took hundreds of attempts over 1 or 2 hours. I didn't feel good when I beat him, I just felt numb. I played the next run and gun level, then put the game down. I could beat the game if I want, I just don't enjoy playing it because the difficulty was so extreme (for me).
By contrast I beat Hollow Knight and I found a pattern emerged when I was fighting hard bosses. Learning all their attacks, learning how to dodge them, attack during safe times, kept dying and wanted the fight to go faster, start optimizing every second of the fight to hit them at every opportunity, practice until my execution gets good enough, then the higher amount of time after that it takes to beat them then the higher chance I start getting frustrated but then I beat them eventually.
I think difficulty is a tool to facilitate engagement with mechanics. But once it hits pure execution then it's a balancing act, and that's what difficulty settings/mechanics should be for. The question is just how to balance it.
Anyone wanna tell pat his perfect paradox’s is already out moded
I rage quit Demon Souls so many times, so much so that I have yet to finish it, but not because its hard, it is entirely because of the janky ass controls and how hard it is just to play the damn game. I really hope they update the controls and the way shit feels to be closer to Dark Souls 1.
Demon's Souls is the only game I rage quit, due to some asshole invader camping the final elevator leading to False King, spamming the big AOE miracle on the walkway.
Seasonal stuff is so terrible. I wanted to play Granblue because of the Persona 5, Slayers and Street Fighter characters they added to it, but they're long gone now so the main reason I wanna play it is also the biggest reason I don't wanna.
Dark Souls has 2 forms of easy mode.
Co-Op and Grinding. Realistically you can only need to be Slvl 80ish to beat every Souls game on your first playthrough. Get up to Slvl 120 in your first playthrough which is very most people play co op or invade and you are set.
Except for D1 remaster because Fromsoft
Holy mother of Ad's batman.
No. Not all games are made for all people. Making games that are hard by design easier robs a fundamental part of the experience and narrative and contributes for the homogenization of game design. And the Souls Series has an easy mode in the form of Summons. Saying "I want it to be easy but don't want to summon" is like "I want all my groceries in the same bag but don't want it to be heavy".
I was Destiny 1 vet me and my friends had at the very least 6000+ hours put in lol I put like 1000 in D2 then I was finally burnt out..
I'm of the mindset that every game should have options, whether it be the traditional "Easy, Normal, Hard" or something like Celeste where you can build your own difficulty. I think these options are 100% pro with no cons. That being said, there is a discussion to be had with "easy" modes that don't have the right amount of work put into them. Example being FF7R. When the game is so easy to the point where it might as well just be a cutscene movie then you've reach that point of "overfixing" the issue. Contrary to popular belief, people who might choose "easy" still want to play the game. They just might not have the same level of motor skills to enjoyably go through the other difficulties.
Should a game be lambasted for being difficult? Not unless it's an actual issue that contradicts the game design. While I think the idea of having options should be talked about, I feel like it shouldn't come off as a demand or some kind of "mandatory feature" because a bad easy mode is worse than not having one imo. If it doesn't have them and you know that will mean you can't enjoy it while you play then let your voice be heard but also look into something else that suits your needs. Don't wait around for a product, there are already a million and one other great games you could be playing.
the idea of not offering an easy/beginner mode in single-player games has always been hilarious to me simply from the idea of it being applied to real-life activities. "You want to get into rock climbing but want to start on an easier climb?" "haha get good scrub we only climb grade VI cliffs". "You like practicing archery but the draw weight is too high to easily shoot?" "ok you can lower the draw weight but you have to sign a paper calling yourself a bitch".
Every time I hear something about Destiny I think "Wow, that sounds like a real piece of shit! Why would anyone play it?"
What about games that make fun of you for playing easy but have no other accessibility options?
But Pat, how dare you grind levels in a RPG!
Why Game Journalist mode? Why not middle aged mom mode?
Tomato tomoto
It's because of that game journalist who got stuck in the Cuphead tutorial
Pat: I have 400 hundred hours in D2 I know what I’m talking about!
Also Pat: I just afk grinded for 300 hours a few months ago
I love woolie's jacket.
The real issue when it comes to Souls games is there is like a difficulty wall you have to smash through before you can feel their "real" difficulty. If you choose not to use a guide or look up ANYTHING about builds, you may literally not get true a feel for things until pretty darn far into your first game.
There is a lot a newbie friendly tutorial would do to help I think. But to be honest most of the info is available in game. Just gotta open that menu and read the explanation. I mean I didnt either for a long time but that was my own fault haha
Some games' difficulty is essential as part of the experience. Devil may Cry and Crash Bandicoot, to name a couple. That being said, I agree that it's important to have difficulty options and not just stick the player with just one. I'm still baffled by RE3's "Easy" or "Hard" XD
I still think its funny that the only reason why dark souls is always at the center of this type of discussion is because of its marketing.
It DS1 isn't a hard game, its what I would call middle of the rode difficulty (plenty of options, once you know how the game works you win). It just happened to come out in a time that easy games were the main thing.
Imo the game doesnt hold your hand and it came out in a time when every game was being SUPER handholdy. It hit different back then. But all you gotta do is like slow down, grab a shield and look around. It will still get you sometimes but that will safe guard you against most of it.