Soulsbornes cannot have an easy mode because it was stop being Soulsbornes. It would be like saying CAN you put a Pizza in a blender and you can but then its not a Pizza anymore so you cant. Same thing with Soulsborne the moment you add difficulty choice it stops being a Soulsborne. Having one set rules EVERYONE plays by is one of the tenets the entire franchise was built from. During arcade days you couldnt choose easy normal or hard when you heard someone say I beat M.Bison you didnt have to ask "was it on easy?" it was like "GTFO thats insane gz" that was one of the draws of Soulsbornes when you talked with people there was no barrier when talking about a boss you didnt have to preface anything. The game literally has already has difficuilty slider just go level up and come back stronger "it takes too long" is not an excuse you already have an option to make the game easier now you are complaining its not EASY ENOUGH or "it takes too long" so you just want to be pandered to then this entire discourse is unneeded why do these people who cant beat Soulsborne want to beat it so bad? They want to beat it because they want to say "I beat X" its their egos that cant take it but they try to mask it by flipping the question to "why cant it have an easy mode" or "Dont use it if you dont want to". How about you play the game like everyone else and either learn or leave.
The game is literally an RPG. It’s literally built on player choice not “one set rule”. The Souls series have never been about difficulty for difficulty’s sake and even if they were, developer vision is not all-mighty. Any work of art is not complete without the spectator’s input and even if we take the argument that the Souls game should be difficult, difficult means different things for different people. Magic and co-op are efforts taken by FromSoft for accessibility regarding difficulty. These features remain and are even more varied in Elden Ring because FromSoft doesn’t fetishize difficulty, the community does. These games offer so much more than difficulty or the feeling of overcoming, pattern memorization or twitch reaction stuff. The lore community is proof that FromSoft’s games appeal to other distinct gameplay loops and well it sure would be nice if more people joined. Deriving pleasure and pride from telling people they’re not good enough to play a video game is kinda why gamers get a bad rap.
@@gabisabrina8257 soulsbourn is built around the concept of everyone sharing their experience with the same game with the same rules, especially with summons.
@@F2t0ny I didnt know Jedi Fallen order was a souls game. All jokes aside You can have easy mode in other games thats not the problem. The issue with putting an easy mode into a Souls game is that the experience now has a "*" that you have to ask. Example someone says they beat Malenia you understand what that means but if there was lets say an easy mode where she shes just easier then saying you beat her doesn't hold the same weight we no longer have the connection to talk about we now have to have another talk about the difficulty at which she was fought which detracts from the game. Having everyone play the same game where there is no type of miscommunication is what makes Souls series special. To be fair there are also ways to make the game easier tactics online or literally just summoning more people so there kinda already is an "easy" mode in the game play with 3 buddies and youre good. Im not sure if im explaining this right but there is a video called "The Dark Souls Easy Mode Argument : Why it's bad" that encapsulates this issue pretty well.
@@gabisabrina8257 Why are you putting words in my mouth? I never said anyone wasn't good enough to play a video game. All Souls games have one set of rules everyone follows just because you cant understand that doesn't make it not there. All the options you listed are available for everyone to utilize its your choice to use them or not once again one set of rules. Everyone of the people who cry for an easy mode have obviously played the game therefore you can play without an easy mode. You can play the game just fine and if its too "hard" that's fine you still played the game you were able to enjoy the parts you could no one is stopping you if you quit that's literally designed into the games in Dark Souls that's you becoming a Hollow. What you want is the reward without the work you want to see the next boss or cutscene or area without having to earn it. Just go watch a lets play of the game if you just want to be on rails and have everything handed to you that seems more your speed. But the issue really is ego people don't want to admit that they cant beat something that in their mind they are entitled to "I bought this game therefor I should have access to all of it. You do you just have to "get good" like at the end of the day the original meaning for "get good" wasn't derogatory it was meant for people who kept looking for the cheesy way to beat boss how to glitch them out or find a super weakness one shot when some bosses just don't have it and you have to "get good" to beat them. Souls games really aren't even that hard at all the community literally doesn't fetishize any of the games difficulty you ask any good player they say the game is easy they aren't stroking their ego its literally not hard. 99% of the game is pattern recognition you see X you hit Y you win. TLDR: "You Cheated Not Only the Game, But Yourself"
Came here from AoGs video recommending the channel and this video. Minor point, the gag of 'dinging' every mention of 'difficulty' and 'accessibility' was alright for the first paragraph of it, but after that just got a little tedious with the constant 'ding' interruptions drawing attention away from what you're actually saying to the fact you said a specific word. Not that you can't do the gag, maybe just make it so each time it goes back to the vtuber with the TV, it has appropriately tracked them silently. Aside from that, really good. The only thing in terms of additions I could mention is maybe going more in-depth on the idea of 'soft difficulty' or player-imposed difficulty. Eg, summoning players. For instance, Dark Souls 1 has an easy mode, it's called the Black Knight Halberd and you can get it without having to a single enemy legit, along with Grass Crest, Rite of Kindling, Ring of favor and protection, Havel's set and ring, the game is your bitch, no mods needed, and many of those items are easy/free to get. I feel the stigma of the game being hard leads many people to treat when they die as "Well that's just this game being bullshit hard", and not actually think about the options and strategy more. It's easy to write off dying 30 times on a boss as bullshit if the game is infamously touted for it's difficulty, but in reality a playstyle change or kit change can mop the floor with many bosses. 4 kings deal magic damage? I'm wearing Havel's chugging 20 estus, bye. And in the spirit of the video I thought of designing a true easy mode for Dark Souls 1 and it's really as easy as just moving enemies around, most the time. Move the channeler from undead parish, move the bullshit parry knights out of stairwells, move the rightmost silver knight archer so you can sprint up the battlement and in without having to play balance beams, and you can live if the left one shoots you because you'll likely hit the wall. Give the option to back out of areas that were originally 1-way (anor londo before lordvessel and painted world). Maybe even just add an item like a homeward bone that sends you specifically to firelink, and remove lautrecs ability to kill the firekeeper. I have heard many people stop playing dark souls after getting down to blighttown, ringing the bell, and not knowing how to get back without going the really long way and dying a ton of times. The option to just reset yourself to somewhere safe and make your way back with new knowledge would be powerful. Sekiro also has a psuedo easy mode, at least when I played it. Spam whirlwind slash. The combination of it chipping through block and enemies posture regen slowing as their health decreases allowed me to cheese lady butterfly with no snap seeds. But it's really poorly explained how the chipping and posture regen works so people won't notice. Also headless count as 'apparitions', despite not being ghosts. So divine confetti murders them, myself and a lot of people didn't know that at first. I feel many of the difficulty complaints in many games is actually a communication issue, Dark Souls never communicates the cheese strategies so people don't know they exist and that they could be having a way easier time. The point of the target audience thing is one I don't see often but rings very true. I don't expect kirby's epic yarn (the other cliche mention when people talk about difficulty), to be all s-ranks dante must die mode, it's a kirby game, aimed at a younger audience, I theoretically could complain about it not being inclusive to a challenge seeking audience but it's a little insane to do so. It's obviously more common for a game too be too hard than too easy, but the point stands, people will complain about games in series they never played, cared for, or have interest in, because it's too hard for them. In a similar vein, I've seen people complain about online games being 'dead' or 'boring' since their opponents are too easy, especially with Overwatch and Pokemon Unite. The fix is simple, play a game with a more established and skilled playerbase in that type of gameplay you like. If you like MOBAs and are whining about Unite being too easy, just play DOTA or League. If you're complaining Overwatch is boring because your team is bad and dragging you down, play CS:GO. All the fun of clicking heads except people have had a million years of practice so Global Elite AWPers put public matched Widowmakers in a different league.
yes, the greatest barrier in dark souls is how the first run gives the player little information. you can't know about specific items until you see them mentioned somewhere, you might not figure out a cheese strat until it is pointed to you.
I grew up when games didn't have Difficulty modes, then they got "cheat codes" and then they got difficulty modes. Long story short difficulty has nothing to do with "children" and everything to do with journalists. Plenty of disabled gamers built their own work arounds to beat popular "difficult" games. You're right that dark souls has an easy mode baked in but they don't tell their players what they are which is part of the discovery aspect to it. The master key is one of those components that's a double edged sword it can make the game both easier and harder, so can being a pyro or a mage(the game gives you ranged attacks but you also lose total HP) conversely the Knight has the best HP and Strength giving you a baked in easy mode with good armor and quicker access to powerful Weapons (don't tell anyone you had to level some Dex though)
One thing I really appreciate about this video is how it delves into the fact that difficulty doesn't always hinge on enemy health, enemy strength or the amount of enemies - but where they are placed and who they are placed with. Seem fairly obvious maybe, but it shows how ironically difficult and complext it can be to make a challenging game (that is also good). And speaking of good, that's exactly what this video was. Very good!
"This, finally, brings us to dark souls. Wait we're how many minutes in!?!?" Considering Adam Millard directed me here, I'm used to it. That was a really fascinating video, and overall does, I think, a really great job of covering these topics. I really found the point how a game being difficult and it being accessable are not opposing forces to be great. To take you up on the offer of thinking of how changes to a game effect it, Lobotomy Corporation is a game I've fallen in love with. It's a game where you manage monsters to produce energy. One feature that I thought of after thinking about it for a moment is the ability to move where each monster in your facility is. This would make the game easier to an absurd degree for a seemingly simple change because of how some monsters will interact with each other, amongst other systems, like certain boss fights. This is just one minor thing that would have a massive effect the game that I only fairly briefly thought about. I can't imagine how much further the rabbit hole would go if I thought about it more. Thanks for opening my eyes to that. Final note: there should be a games journalist difficulty. If I wake up tomorrow and the sun is still there, I'm going to be disappointed.
"I want to see them make the best games, as difficult as they want, and as accessible as they can" I will be quoting this - this is the entire video's ideas summarized. I am glad you talked about it at length, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and it is always pleasing to see one is not alone in their school thought. Thanks for a pithy way to express my largely coinciding thoughts! :)
your video was absolutely lovely, and you treated the topic of accessibility with a lot of care and sensitivity. as a disabled person (and gamer) i really appreciate it!! i agree with a lot of your points. i'd like to add a few of my thoughts, as my disabilities aren't black and white or easy to accommodate with simple setting changes. there are a lot of nuances that blur the line between accessibility features and difficulty levels. my biggest hurdle is my hand dexterity-- i can only press a button or move a joystick so fast, and often it's not fast enough. as a ballpark for you: in breath of the wild, i've achieved a flurry rush only a handful of times in over 400 hours, it's near impossible with most enemies. a lot of games i'm barred from just because my hands can't move fast enough, and it's maddening! so sometimes the standard accessibility features that are in place today might help, but not if they enemy is just too fast. difficulty options are often my go-to for my accommodations because of this, as they usually lessen damage taken or something similar. it's all complicated! but the best experiences i've had are games with a large variety of playstyles and options for them. i play hades on god mode and ADORE it! i upgrade my armour and get temp hearts in BOTW. i can find a way, as long as the game lets me get far enough to find it.
Yes this is so true! I'm generally fast enough unless it's a platformer. My motor control issues will often get in the way of me being able to properly control a game. However so long as the game is slow and/or forgiving enough I don't have many issues. But our issues really stab at the heart of difficulty vs. accessibility. Because to accommodate slower reaction times etc. you automatically make the game easier for people without issues. It's something I've been thinking about a lot actually.
@@Siferiax yes, exactly!! it's such a grey area and not easy to define that i can't expect perfect accommodations for it. hell, it's so subtle that sometimes it takes a while for me to realize it's what's holding me back (in and outside of games)! i think the more options and toggles a game offers, the more likely i'll find something that works. :)
I think an easy way to resolve the "hand dexterity" issue without adding difficulty options for games that expect the player to perform multi-hit combo attacks/many button presses in succession (such as for a QTE) is to do what Uncharted 4 did and provide an optional setting that you can turn on or off at your discretion that replaces the "Press" requirements with "Hold" requirements instead. Basically, instead of having to mash the Triangle button repeatedly to do the QTEs, you can hold the Triangle button instead to do the QTEs. This helps not only people with limited hand dexterity, but also people with or who could potentially suffer from tendonitis or Gamer Thumb as a result of mashing buttons too much too often. Final Fantasy XV even does something similar; the combo system in that game is designed such that by default the player can just hold the Circle button to do their combos instead of mashing the Circle button, that way they only have to worry about moving the left analog stick to change which attacks they perform during their combos. This makes FFXV's combo system much more accessible to disabled and injured gamers, and it also makes the game far less likely to result in players getting physically injured because of its combat system. I think this sort of feature in mash-heavy games should become an industry standard, and that Devil May Cry's approach to combos/button mashing should fall out of favor as the currently existing industry standard. There's a reason that the DMC games have a reputation for having insane combos that murder your hands.
@@boyishdude1234 that would certainly help, yeah! i utilize stuff like that when i find it. it doesn't cover everything, though. like analog movement can't be fixed with that, and the d-pad is even harder! a lot of games expect you to dodge with the analog stick. dead cells added some great accessibility settings like easier parries, auto-hit (like you said), slower traps and turning down trap damage all together. with no boss cells (the base game setting), i barely touch the other damage sliders, when before the update i could not clear a run even after 200+ attempts. i can play hades without god mode now, though! not trying to shut you down or anything! you're absolutely right and that becoming industry standard would be awesome
@@tinycatfriend Oh I'm not talking about "auto-hit", but rather allowing the player to perform inputs that would normally require multiple button presses by just holding the button down instead. Games like Uncharted 4 and FFXV won't automatically complete QTEs or automatically attack enemies for you (respectively), those actions still require inputs from the player. The difference is that you can just hold those buttons down for a certain period of time instead of having to press those buttons repeatedly. When I think of "auto-hit", I think of stuff like the "EZ Code" (cheat codes with different branding) in Kingdom Hearts 3 where the game will occasionally use Guard to block an attack automatically _for_ the player with no input from them to block the attack in the first place, or the same thing for the Auto-Dodge panel in Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days (one of the two DS games), but with Dodgeroll instead of Guard. I don't think of "replace _Press_ with _Hold_ for certain types of inputs".
A great analogy I found (idk where its from) when comparing difficulty and accessibility was this : "If the game was carrying a rock, difficulty would be how heavy it is and the distance to travel, while accessibility would be the shape of the rock and how you carry it"
One of the things that bugs me as a disabled player is that a lot of difficulty modes go for making combat easier or removing it entirely. I enjoy combat! I want to fight things in my video games! But when the easy mode is still too hard for me to handle, then theres just story mode left...
Depending on the disability it might require a specialized difficulty level so i can see how it might often end up being pretty bad, game devs are often already rushes so trying to spend time properly designing difficulty to make it possible for different disablities beyond just colorblind or deaf/hard of hearing (both which arent even always there) isnt always option for them
For a game that I loved but had an interesting relationship with difficulty, I’d like to mention the Witcher 3. It was my first big open world game, so I started on the standard difficulty. I played for a while there (~50 hours) before then setting the difficulty to max, and enabling enemy scaling. While it did make the combat feel less free, it did pose a number of problems. For example, enemy scaling completely breaks a certain quest. You have to go through the sewers, and part of that involves beating up rats. Normally, this isn’t an issue, but since enemy scaling meant enemies took more hits and generally 2-3 shot you, the zone was literally impassable since the normally totally ineffective rats were completely unkillable. The mode did have its benefits though, like how the drawn-out bossfights really required you to understand the combat system and their mechanics rather than just instakilling them in a few hits, and made it so the enemies actually felt like the threats they were supposed to be rather than falling over in a stiff breeze. I could say more on this, but typing on mobile is slow and tediousz
Interesting, I didn't know enemy scaling was a thing? I don't remember setting that anyway. I did make a comment just now about going from story mode to death march lol. Boss fights really became a game of patience as well in my opinion. I'm really glad I changed it.
@@Darkfry The DS1 master key works on specific doors, and opens most areas in the first half of the game. It also opens a few secret rooms that have hidden keys elsewhere in the game. Master key isn't usually recommended for first time players because some of the areas it opens are just more difficult than the intend route.
Adding on to what Ben said, the master key allows the player to skip 2 areas completely, and provided an alternate route to another key (pun intended) location.
@@dr.gaming4860 adding on what Dr Gaming said the master key allows you to find almost 5000 souls around firelink shrine, a very strong shield and potentially the strongest weapon in the game in darkroot garden all in 10 minutes from the start of the game.
I may be posting this prematurely, but your point at managing Dark Souls' difficulty by tweaking enemy placement has a place in the series already. Kind of. In Dark Souls 2, infamously, each area you get stuck on gets easier over time because enemies you kill eventually fail to respawn. This is interesting because it has a downside - you no longer get those souls or drops, but the area is simpler to navigate over time. And, by using a specific rare item - the bonfire ascetic - you can bring them all back. *At the next NG+ level of life and damage.* Not to mention that the easier enemies stop spawning first by default because you'll kill them each time you die as opposed to the harder enemies failing to be killed more often... Not saying you were wrong, just an interesting angle I thought you might have forgotten.
DS2 has the best accessibility options in the seires. -Toggle run (on pc) -Ring of whispers, making stronger audio cues for enemy proximity -Repairable rings of life/soul protection (weaker penalty for dying) -Way of Blue and Rat covenants to make pvp easier in ways that aren't one-sided -Extra healing items to make sure you have the option to heal between fights (some are too slow for battle but still reduce the attrition aspect of exploring) -Easy access to reallocating stats -Plenty of upgrade materials (both these make changing builds way less time-consuming) -Bonfire ascetics making it possible to redo things and farm any item without going through the whole game again -a ring that makes enemies prefer to aggro you (so during co-op you can have a designated tank) -spell replenishing items (again for attrition) Tried to just mention things unique to it but it also has most of the things other entries have.
@@the_guiding_qui DS2 also has the most viable builds of any souls game, a NG+ that changes various bosses as you pass through loops, and the most healing outside of estus. It's a great entry, IMO. Not as strong as 3 or as iconic as 1, but great regardless.
I believe the Covenant of Champions, accessible in the hub, also makes enemies stop despawning. I think it raises their strength as well, but after a point that's not such a big deal. See Ymfah's channel for assorted tricks like an infinite Ascetic loop and grinding souls off of a certain miniboss indefinitely. Also, going back to the original point, Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin has both Pharros Lockstones and Fragrant Branches of Yore as keys to alternate progression. The game isn't laid out like a series of big loops like Dark Souls 1 is, but it's pretty interesting.
Obligatory fuck the iron passage here I literally had to grind out all enemies to death before even a single attempt in the boss, melee enemies with high stun, ranged enemies with area denial and spell that just literally slows you down, and even one hit when youre trying to enter the boss fog would likely cancel it
I love that you distinguished between difficulty and accessibility options. Rebinding of controls, subtitles for audio cues, and options that reduce button mashing/holding should become standard for all games where they’re applicable. There’s lots of other suggestions made by people way smarter than me as well. Allowing as many people as possible to play a game as it was intended has nothing to do with turning down the difficulty for people who have disabilities.
something this video made me realize is that adapting a game to be less difficult or more accessible is even more challenging when difficulty isn’t just part of the mechanics, but also part of the themes. Like, dark souls and bloodborne have narratives about characters who cycle between life and death constantly, so making it less difficult without also modifying the story is would feel off. I guess the more elements difficulty is coupled too, the harder it is to untangle. Great video 🙏
Yeah, this is why I think Dark Souls' difficulty is core to the experience. Humanity (in every sense of the word) is one of the story's main themes, and thus you CANNOT make the game easier by yourself. The only way to make the game easier on a first playthrough is by seeking HELP from other PEOPLE, either directly through co-op or indirectly through guides and wikis. That is completely intentional, and one of the game's most fundamental ideas according to its director. Dark Souls is a great example of a title where the gameplay and story are entwined and inseparable. If you could, say, turn on invincibility in the pause menu, you wouldn't be playing Dark Souls anymore. The story's themes and intent would be fundamentally altered past the breaking point. I know invincibility is an extreme example, but it's weirdly popular for "accessibility" nowadays. I have dev experience so I know adding accessibility features is never easy, and yet I think the more difficult route (for devs) is the superior one: options that allow more people to fully experience the game, NOT options that change what the experience is.
Very interesting video, definitely the best discussion I've seen of the subject. Though it is worth noting that Dark Souls Remastered has at least one accessibility option on the PC release: customizable controls. Guess they figured out that the abysmal keyboard control setup they included with the original option was not going to be viable for the vast majority of players, so they made the right call and gave us keyboard users the ability to decide how we wanted to keyboard. Sorry to hear that never made it over to the controller side of things.
I love the content you cover here, I love your humor too. I c o u l d do without the consistent *dings* throughout the video. I find it funny in principle! If it was just a running count on the screen that I could opt in and opt out of visually, that would be awesome, but I’m personally finding it hard to hear what you’re saying because I get distracted easily. That’s just my experience though, do us all a favor and keep making content my man
This was an excellent essay that really introduced me to new sides of this debate that I had kinda thought was thoroughly covered already. The distinction between making a game easier and making it more difficult is so important and Im glad I understand that on a deeper level now. I know how long and how much effort these kind of videos take so I also just wanna say you should really be proud of yourself for seeing such a big project through to the end :) (Btw the bell sounds after each instance of difficulty were funny at first but became a bit tiring by the end 😅)
I found the little noise of the counter quite obnoxious, but I am very pleased to have learnt about the various types of difficulty: you are right, Dark Souls is mechanically rather easy and its difficulty doesn't come from there.
12:30 You can't talk about shoddy accessibility in Metroid Prime 3 without mentioning that it absolutely requires motion controls, which I've recently found too physically effortful to allow any enjoyment due to health issues. (Shame too, it used to be one of my faves.) Thank god for emulation, otherwise this game would have been outright lost to me.
Yeah. Also, I was apprehensive towards Skyward Sword HD's button controls at first, since it was basically the game that most able-bodied gamers imagined playing when the Wii was first announced, but then I was reminded that such mobility issues exist, and... Yeah, the button controls were actually a great idea.
This is such a great video. Also, thank you for reiterating/explaining that mechanical difficulty and "you have to learn the pattern" difficulty are two different things! A lot of people (me included, lmao) do not really catch the differences between the two without external help.
I have to say, as a game developper myself, I really enjoyed your video as you do touch a lot of good points that many players simply don't realise about game design. One that stood out in particular, was at 37:50 : you have 2 types of players. Those you target with your game And those you don't. Those you don't can and will (especially today) come after you for NOT designing it from the get go with them in mind. I am NOT the target audience for dark souls. I don't like being frustrated when playing a game. I don't have the patience for it. That being said, i WANT to experience Dark Souls BECAUSE of its impact its had on the gaming world at large. And i WANT to understand it. The intent of the developers is important. Do you just want to show off a cool story in the end and the game is just a way to tell that story. So, you want as many people to experience that story you painstakingly crafted to as many people. Gatekeeping via difficulty is counter productive to this. While if you focus on the journey itself to tell the story and you're part of it, then the difficulty become intrinsic. The whole "fuck em if they think its too hard" doesn't fly as a developer. That gatekeeping mindset is something i would never, ever want someone to feel.
A lot of people make the boilerplate "I was trying my best, feel free to correct me" statement, but I wanna acknowledge that you did a really good job articulating why accessibility is important without devaluing either people who simply enjoy an easier, more leisurely gaming experience or arguing that nobody with disabilities could *possibly* enjoy a more difficult and challenging experience. I really thought your living example of your HoH friend was well-considered, and you choosing to focus on the social value of difficulty rather than arguing that enjoyment of difficulty is, like, an inbuilt quality of those worthy of playing video games or whatever? IDK. It's hard to describe what it is that you could have done wrong, because you didn't do it. So big props! I think I will in turn be referencing this video when discussing the topic of intended play experience.
i really liked this too! and it indirectly acknowledges that disabled people have a right to want to be included in games they want to play, and not relegated to "easy" games. i'm disabled and i WANT to play exciting games and kill things! Hades god mode works really well for me, and that was basically my first time feeling a flow state playing a game like that because i was finally included. i like animal crossing and pokemon as much as the next guy, but i wanna play other stuff too.
The Architect mentioned "Dark Souls", "video essay", and "content creator" in one sentence, so I was sold from the start. I've really enjoyed this video, and even though I hold most beliefs and points of view myself, it's nice to hear someone else's spin on it, especially when it comes to the design aspect of it all, since that's where my skills surely lack. Keep it up man, can't wait for the next video!
Really great video, a great breakdown. I loved the design analysis of the dark souls 3 encounter, it helped to illustrate how much of a tightrope the designers walk when balancing difficulty. If I can say though, I thought the counter was kinda funny initially but it dinging loudly every time got pretty frustrating. It just counting up on screen and maybe dinging occasionally for emphasis would have been fine, but that constant ring made it really difficult to keep watching
Also, it should be noted that difficulty is relative. If everyone wanted a game to be equally difficult, then you'd have one game difficulty for each player. Because of this, accessibility options *Are* maintaining the difficulty of the game. They're just individualizing the concept so that all people can appreciate what it means for the game to be difficult (not too easy, not impossible, as that is taking away from the intention of the game developers). To assume that all players, even those who don't want these sliders, experience difficulty in the same way is naive.
Hey there! I came here via Adam Millard's last video! Great content, bro! Your editing skills are awesome!! Those are some nice ideas for an easy mode in Dark Souls, hope some of them are actually implemented!
My ideal "easy mode" for a Souls-Like is a quick save. I played The Surge (my first Souls-Like ever) at launch when quick save was still a feature they had yet to remove. This one feature was the crutch I needed to meet this game on its terms at its base difficulty. In short, all I needed to complete the game was more checkpoints. The Megaman ZX collection added many more checkpoints for those who want to use them, and it made the game much more enjoyable for me as a result. Nioh on the other hand, has an overpowered magic system when applied correctly. This is an in-game way of applying an easy mode with a unique gameplay experience without having explicit difficulty settings. I think this is a great middle ground for having an easy mode without adding an "easy" difficulty setting.
Hey bro, loved the video, just a small advice, I thought the repeated words point was pretty funny but hearing the little ''ding'' everytime you said difficulty started getting hard on the ear by minute 10 Still nice vid!
I doubt anyone really cares, but this is something that personally matters to me and I just want to add my two cents to the conversation. Namely, just as you made some very useful distinctions between Difficulty and Accessibility, I'd like to also discuss Inclusivity as another, subtle element. My wife isn't a gamer. Never has been. But she fell absolutely in love with Hollow Knight (a Metroidvania with a lot in common with Dark Souls). She loves the art, the music, the vague Souls-esque storytelling, the neat fights, the exploration, all of that. She has no disabilities that Accessibility options would help with her-except that she hasn't spent her life gaming. She can get to a certain point in the game, then it becomes too frustrating to be worth it to continue. She COULD persevere and get good, but to do so would require many hours of doing parts of the game she finds no fun in at all. It's the game gatekeeping her from the parts she absolutely adores. All because she isn't a "real gamer." Celeste-style options would allow her to engage in this game, and potentially help ease her into the wider world of the gaming hobby. Simple things like not losing currency when you die, respawning closer to where you were when you died, a little extra health buffer, etc, would all bridge the gap and let her actually enjoy gaming. Without them, she is only allowed to be a spectator. She may not need Accessibility options, but it sucks that she isn't given the few minor tools needed to bring her into such a great hobby like gaming. I tried showing her other games in hopes of her trying them, but nothing catches her like Hollow Knight. It only would have take a few little options to let her tune the difficulty to her ability or interest. My son loves gaming, but is terrible at it. He's got a host of challenges-very weak hand strength and dexterity, he's on the autism spectrum, ADHD, and struggles with depression. All of that makes it not only difficult for him to play a game, but difficult to find the motivation or skill needed to get better. But he loves games. He likes to watch RUclipsrs and play along. Unfortunately, there are so few games he can really do this with. He plays Celeste with all the Assist options cranked up, and yeah he just flies through the level, but so what? He doesn't have to enjoy the game the same way I do. He wants to feel like he's playing along with his favorite personalities. Would it be great if he could use it as a chance to improve? Of course, I'd love to see that. But without some help, and the freedom to find what works for him, he'd never have the confidence to try. He'll just play the tutorial level a million times. There are so many games I wish I could share with my son, but the lack of options gatekeeps him too. I am a gamer, and have been my whole life. I'm down with difficult games. There are no physical or mental roadblocks prohibiting me from getting good, and in fact I have for many games. But my time is valuable. I don't have as much as I used to. When a game like Dark Souls has so many things I love, but bogs it down with tedium, I question if it's worth it. Hard boss fights are great, and if given the options I wouldn't make them easier for myself... but the run up to the boss? Slogging through the same group of enemies that only serve to punish me for losing by eating more of my time? That gets old. When I'm exploring new areas, or learning a new boss, or uncovering lore, Dark Souls is amazing. But replaying through areas I've already proven I can beat a dozen times just to search for what's next is neither fun nor challenging. Some people might enjoy it, and more power to them. But if I had the option to subtly tune it-maybe make it so enemies only respawn a certain amount of times, like Dark Souls 2-I'd be more likely to invest the valuable resource of my time in that world. Because there is so much more to enjoy about these games than just their difficulty. Sorry, I needed to vent that somewhere. I agree that options like this aren't "owed" to anyone, and of course game developers can do whatever they want. But I want to see continued social pressure to make games Accessible AND Inclusive, so more than just "real gamers" can enjoy them. I want to share my favorite hobby with my wife and my son. Nothing sucks quite like seeing a trailer for a game, thinking that looks like fun, spending your money and several hours of time, only to later realize you aren't a true enough gamer to experience the rest.
hey there!! i have very similar disabilities as your son, and i've found Hades, Breath of the Wild and the Skyward Sword remaster quite friendly for me, if you think he'd enjoy those. Pokemon could be good fun, too! lots of special interest potential in those games, that's for sure. i think a lot of what can hold us back is the shame of needing help, and that we can't do what others can do so much easier. i'm 24 and i'm just making headway on that now. it's a long road, but i think with a supportive parent like you, he'll get there too. lately i've been playing through a Half-Life remaster with my girlfriend ready to take over whenever i get stuck, and we have a blast! accepting that i can't do everything and that i'm not stupid for that is so freeing, but it takes a lot of work to get there sometimes. i hope my reply wasn't invasive or anything! take care :)
@@tinycatfriend awesome, thanks so much for the recommendations! I'm so glad to hear you've found some good inclusive options for you (and those are some top notch games in any light!) I'll check a few of those out with him. Another thing we use (which sounds like how you're playing Half Life) is Xbox's copilot mode. It lets us each use a controller, but the game registers both as controller 1. So we can "pass the controller" back and forth while still holding it the whole time. I think it makes him feel more like we're doing it together and less like I'm taking the control from him, you know? Awesome to hear your suggestions and input, and happy gaming! Good luck on Half-Life! What I've played of it before was a lot of fun.
@@EdisonCrux thank you! i've been using Parsec which is really useful for PC gaming! it's basically screen-sharing but you can give permissions to only using a gamepad, so you can either do local multiplayer or copilot a single-player game. if he has any friends he'd like to play with online, it could be a good option for him :)
This is the only analysis I've seen that actually takes this question seriously and comes up with a thorough and reasonable answer. Thanks for your excellent work!
i found you back during the death stranding video and im glad to see this video pick up a little steam... keep doing what you're doing and keep getting better, can't wait to see what other ideas you've got in store!
If DS would've had the damage tweaks you mentioned, i would've finished it when i played it back in the day. And DS3 too. I watched the video on 1.25 btw, and you got yourself a new sub
49:51 the problem with "summoning another player to fight for you" is that not everyone can afford proper internet connection, or is playing the game on the day WiFi is down, or any other connection problem. there are of course phantoms in most of the bosses, but oftentimes in my experience they were hindering my fight, or just being used as bait while I'm chipping away at the target. it's very much a so-so option, and I hope there would be a better alternative to it.
Great video! But I will admit the "PING" every time you said Difficulty and Accessibility was extremely distracting... Specially for an almost full hour video
Does he really keep it up for the whole video?! I seriously could only make it 8.5 minutes in before I gave up and just watched a different hour long video on the same topic from the sidebar. Honestly a shame, but between that obnoxious dinging and the ugly bright pink boring-ass animations this is just about unwatchable.
Love this video, but I do have a minor but important comment. The closed captions for this video cover the area of the screen where you have the word "accessibility" and part of the counter. Ironically, the lowers the accessibility of the accessibility counter, and the video, for those who need CC. Would love it if, where possible, you could keep in mind where the CC shows when deciding where to place things in your videos!
once upon a time you could drag youtube's captions to where you wanted and they'd damn well stay there for the rest of the video good old _progress_ ladies and gents ya gotta love it
I would say the last section, the one bringing up how for experienced Dark Souls players it's common to seek mods to make it even harder reveals an aspect that I think was largely overlooked. Difficulty is relative. Experience is relative. Maybe after playing it a lot you can come back and say "it's not that hard". But I don't think that this is universal. Someone who is less skilled and has less aptitude might still struggle more even with a lower difficulty, compared to a purist experienced long-time fan. So why are the veterans breezing through it having a legitimate experience, but anyone who can't get through it unless it's easier is not legitimate? Have you ever watched someone learning how to play games for the first time? Even among adults, and even through years of attempts, things that we take for granted as obvious conventions that we control reflexively are a huge challenge to many people. No matter how selective you are of a target demographic, people's baseline levels of skill and reflexes, and how much they can improve at a time or at all are varied. Just saying that anyone who is not within the scope of the only possible learning curve should be ignored because they are not the intended audience is circular reasoning, and I believe it weakens the argument why the game must and can only be like this. Sure, ultimately the developers may decide they don't want to make it different and they don't care about who gets excluded, which is their right. But that's a very different argument from the the importance of difficulty for the intended experience. Also, I think the overlap of difficulty and accessibility in aspects like reaction time requirements was a bit glossed over.
I mentioned in the video that it barely scratches the surface, despite being an hour long. There's so much more to explore with this topic, both when making games and analyzing them
But can’t an intended audience be as specific and tiny as the developer sees fit? I could release a game that specifically caters to my own interests in the game and literally no one else in the world could like it, and that’s great. They don’t need to like it. I agree that there needs to be open doors into gaming, but to be frank, there’s already loads of them. In fact I think the first dark souls is a fantastic example of one of those open doors. It’s really not difficult. Just takes time to learn. Like woodcarving or driving.
@@dexlovesgames_dlg Yes and no. Of cause the target group can be as small, as the developer wants it to be. But if it is "only people with two fully functional hands, 3D hearing, and neither colorblindness nor arachnophobia" there should be specific reasons for that. Otherwise the developer is either unfair, or (more likely) inconsiderate of the fact, that there are more people in this world, than them.
@@NerabossNeitluk I was mainly responding to you talking about people just getting into gaming. I don’t have any issue with accessibility options, but a game can be soul crushingly difficult (dark souls isn’t even close to what I mean) and still be very physically accessible with remapping and color filters, and audio visual adjustments to make the game possible to attempt. However it doesn’t even need to try to be mentally accessible. It’s souls crushingly difficult. Why alter that at all? I’m in the “give every game loads of audio visual adjustments and filters to make accessible game’s, but don’t change the design philosophy of the games to do it” camp.
@@dexlovesgames_dlg what about options like in Celeste's assist mode which arguably make the game easier, but might be necessary for someone with for example motor control issues. Is this changing the intent or is this making a game accessible? I don't think it's always so straightforward as you seem to be implying. Edit: "soul crushingly difficult" is also very subjective anyway.
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Just my two cents on the community talk at the end, there was a really big problem on PC where entire groups of hackers would specifically target new players, hack them on daily basis in the game and ruin their savefiles. I personally had to keep a lot of backups because of this. It does not help that From Soft will literally ban you if your savefile has been tampered with this way. Yes, From Soft would ban the person affected by a hacker, not the hacker. We literally had to use mods that would keep blacklists of people who were known for this behaviour. A player should never had to do something like this. There are also invader groups online that, for some reason, specifically attempt to lock down entire areas from new people, using the shoddy PvP system (basically being low lvl to fight new people, but having a ridiculously OP gear). This is the Dark Souls community I have interacted with and the reason I just turn off the online, never playing with my friends/coworkers cause I just do not wanna deal with toxic and straight up damaging people who just get pleasure out of hurting other peoples fun. It also does not help that when I was streaming my blind playthrough of Dark Souls 3, I would get my chat full of people seething at me about using a shield or using magic. Never had a similar problem with any other game or at least it was never the norm. Been streaming for five years now.
12:21 When I was in middle school I tasked myself with beating Metroid Prime 3 at every difficulty, and oh boy, the hardest part about those bosses was the fact that you had to spend more health to kill them. It didn't matter if you went hitless, you needed more health to kill them because you needed your phazon beam more. I don't exactly regret doing all those runs, but god was it infuriating.
The issue with implementing an easy mode in something like Dark Souls is naturally that no matter what, it's going to take away content from the base game to suit an audience that don't even play the series much to begin with. Development time is always finite, when project managers identify what is needed to be achieved in the project by the projected deadline they're going to have to select what content is going to make the cut, and what content they'll work on if they have time. Even in an instance where they take the lazy route and just amend health/damage values, that's more than an hours worth of work and can radically alter online play/the balance of factions. ...And should they take the route where they make something with care and effort like you've suggested, changing the amount or layout of enemies to still provide a challenge but provide an easier one? That's going to be a serious investment in terms of design, level planning and testing... If anything, it's as if they were making entirely different games using the same asset... Now, think of all that time they're working on something like that... That's time they aren't working on the base game. That's time they aren't working on the core experience that you or I play and enjoy these games for. The base game is going to suffer as a result, likely with less content than we would have had if they just... Made a game for the people who want it. It's naturally going to upset fans, especially when there's no shortage of easy and relaxing games for people who want that experience. I'm not out there demanding Animal Crossing have a Hell Permadeath mode, or Peggle consume your soul if you miss the bucket more than once a level.
43:30 it actually does, things like removing the zooming-in effect during critical attacks that can cause motion sickness, making it so "ultra great" classes of weapons cann be redirected mid-attack even when locked on, changing how the camera interacts with obstacles etc... ...though yeah, it still lacks a lot in accessibility. but to say it has none is a bit hyperbolic.
Part of the issue here are the two ways to interpret "accessibility": Being accessible to people with physical impairments and being accessible to casual players who aren't up to the challenge otherwise. A lot of the time, people argue over a word not realizing they are talking about completely different things. That's why it's important to actually listen and UNDERSTAND what the other side is saying before attempting to shoot it down.
This was a really good video. This is one of my kid's favorite games, and I have always been discouraged to try it because of the "monstrous difficulty" I kept hearing about, despite being the parent that taught the kid to play video games in the first place. I'm disabled, and I've never had the manual dexterity for hair-trigger complex move combos because my hands hate me and want me to suffer. Understanding that the difficulty is Affective and not Mechanical actually gives me hope that I will be able to enjoy it too. Does this also go for Bloodborne?
Bloodborne is between Dark Souls and Sekiro in terms of mechanical difficulty, it's more fast-paced and action oriented than Dark Souls. Its difficulty comes mainly from requiring very fast reaction time for parries. If you feel like you can enjoy Dark Souls then go for it! Also glad you enjoyed the video
Shortcut - 42:00 the main argument. I enjoyed this thoroughly, for the most part, and am glad that the difficulty dust settled. If you ever make another video like this, don't have a word counter be the main way of keeping the audience paying attention. It's hard even if you care about the topic.
Finally someone who shares in my struggle of fighting mogenar on hypermode difficulty. Doing the series of final bosses in prime 3 is hellish in this mode
I think whats actually missing is a more clear tutorial. The game should have locations in the beginning that trick you into learning how to do important moves, tips for fighting etc. I tried the game a bit, but failed to learn how to use move properly and which strategies to use. Also one easy area in the beginning could do wounders.
24:24 probably the best option would be guard break, not only is it relatively quick (with ss wa) but once you begin the crit youre immune to all damage thrown at you. Also only certain weapons bounce and even then only if youre one handing, two handing a weapon will prevent your weapon from bouncing from hitting blocking enemy (you got GCFB and profaned flame and run around one handing your weapon to keep pyro in other, you should two hand your weapon unless youre ready to cast a spell at that particular moment or if one handed moveset was favorable to the situation, which it is not in this one). You can also use stoneflesh from havels shield, iron flesh pyromancy or perseverance WA's to better tank while you spank to avoid staggers and all of which reduce incoming damage, heavy weapons hyper armor drives similar purpose, undead rapportcan turn few of the knights into temporary allies and regardless of if they die or kill someone you get less enemies to deal with, you can use hidden body and or slumbering dragon ring to avoid drawing multiple enemies at once, fire storm/wrath of the gods and similar AOE spells/miracles/pyros are great at dispatching crowds like these specially when paired with the stone/iron flesh. Alluring skulls can be used to move some enemies away from an area temporarily . . . . I still stand by the belief that ariandels first 2 areas specially are REALLY bad design in terms of introducing player to new enemies, i love these games and there are only handful of areas i always sneak/sprint past, lost izalith is one, iron passage is one, and ariandels first half is one (few more but those notable) But to simplify what you can do to counter this encounter to just circling and slapping isnt really fair when the game offers a ton of options for players, and also shows a lack of deeper mechanical understanding which if youre making a point of a new player is fine to an extent but by the time youre supposed to play ariandel you should have started to learn these mechanics
Fantastic discussion on difficulty and accessibility. I actually made a mod for Elden Ring that adjusts a bunch of gameplay features, and this video got me thinking about how it basically fits your definition of an easy mode that keeps the overall game intact but shifts the goal of the gameplay experience. Rather than changing damage numbers, my goal was to lower the barrier to trying different things in game, thereby reinforcing the exploration aspect of Elden Ring. If you ever have the time and interest, I'd love to get your opinion on the choices I made. It's called the Moxie Gameplay Mod on NexusMods (I'd link it but youtube wouldn't like that).
I checked out the mod and I really like the changes you made, they sound really cool and interesting to me! If I ever replay Elden Ring I'll be sure to give it a go
Dark Souls 2 actually has a mode that lets you remove enemies from encounters, basically every enemy that's not required for a puzzle has 12 lives and will be permanently gone once you exhaust them. (And for players that feel patronized by this, there's a challenge covenant that removes this tweak as well as a consumable that respawns both regular enemies and bosses in an area). The game does absolutely nothing to tell you about this (or telegraph your progress towards exhausting enemies) but once you're aware of it, it's nice to know that no matter how hard you fail, you're still making SOME sort of progress as long as you can kill at least one enemy per run.
Interested to see where this goes. I'm here from the "Fixing Crafting" video from Adam Milliard, of course. Two minutes in, one small criticism: if you ever find yourself using the "YOU DIED" font again, consider making it slightly brighter. It's a little difficult to read the "Part 1" text, it blends in with the dark background. One more minute in, I appreciate that the dings are mixed very low, but I'd prefer it if they faded out after the first few. They're somewhat distracting. Partway through the video, I'm noticing that some gameplay footage is way darker and more washed out than other clips. You may want to make sure footage played behind sections talking about exploring the Dark Souls world isn't under a filter, unless there was a particular reason for this choice. That bit talking about the sublime world was also mashed together with a discussion of your hacked playthrough, which I presume may have been the source of your filtered footage, so it may have just been an dissonant microcosm of topics and stylistic choices. Sorry for nitpicking, I hope some of it was useful. On a whole, the video was very good. This is an interesting subject, and you explored it very well. It is pretty ironic that these games that market themselves as difficult are more built around knowledge checks than skill checks. Hopefully, Elden Ring's sheer breadth of options will help alleviate this somewhat. I also agree that games, especially Japanese games, need more traditional accessibility options. Very good, subscribed, will probably work through the channel's videos.
Adam Millard - Architect of Games sent me here. Great video! About the "Why Darksouls?", I remember that the Megaman Zero games were seen as very difficuly and even some of the marketing made it clear and wonder why they didn't kick this trend off. When I first played DS1, I reacted just like many others and thought "This is just time based combat, where's the difficulty?". That is, until I reached Ornstein and Smough, and realized I had a lot to learn.
This video was fascinating as someone who has never felt rewarded by overcoming difficult things in games (either mechanical execution or abstract problem solving). All satisfaction for me comes from exploration, story, characters, lore and discovery. Made me think I may actually really really like the no enemies horrible existential dread version of the game honestly because people tell me the lore and atmosphere is great and I can get into that. Sucks liking games but seeing almost every mechanical challenge as an obstacle to my goal rather than the point of the game.
The hand in the 🤔 emoji is hard to read with it's placement on the outlines, and in the same color as the outlines. Also, reducing the glow and using more stepped gradients between the violet and black may maintain the neon look, but improve the readability of text written using that style, by increasing contrast at the borders of the lines, and making that region more defined.
Very good video! One thought about difficulty in games which are nonlinear; If a game uses difficulty to gate away content, and the game includes difficulty options you can change, it introduces ambiguity for the player when they are struggling at one challenge in the game - is this a call to reduce the difficulty, is this game too hard for me? Or have I stumbled early into a late game area and need to explore elsewhere? Or maybe I am just missing a tool of some kind that is intended to make this part easier. In some games, difficulty is one of the main ways the game indicates to you that youve strayed from the normal path. It becomes a very awkward tool in your set when difficulty levels are introduced. This makes difficulty options a tricky addition even in games that dont necessarily have difficulty as a core of their design intention, it can very much affect even games which have a more general audience approach to difficulty, if the game is nonlinear enough.
Yup! It's one of the reasons why scrutinizing/trying to change difficulty in games is such a rabbit hole. I could make a whole other video on what you're talking about for example. Super glad you enjoyed it!
I think part of "Why Dark Souls" in particular is the "git gud, scrub" meme that sprang out of the community. For as much as I've seen people say "the community is welcoming to newcomers" I've also seen people asking for help with mechanical questions (like how weight, or damage types, or certain stats work) getting told to just effectively bang their head against a wall until they work it out, or told "well figuring it out yourself is why it's fun". It might be better now but for a while there was a definite obsession with people going in completely blind and learning every single lesson the hard way. The community acting like that gave me a false impression of the game, and was one of the big reasons I didn't pick Dark Souls up until much later, when other people in my friend group played it and I saw that a game I'd written off as "clearly not for me" actually looked rad, and exactly up my alley. Dark Souls is an interesting game where a large amount of it's difficulty comes from an initial obfuscation of it's mechanics or of it's expectations of the player. When you not only know that weapons can be upgraded, but also the fastest way to reach the NPC that can do it, the entire game becomes a lot easier. (On top of having prior knowledge of enemy layouts, attack patterns, etc.). A new player might waste their starting gifts minutes into the game, or pick the one that does nothing, while a veteran can use it to not only good effect, but bypass a significant portion of the early game. It punishes ignorance as heavily as it rewards knowledge, and being told to just "get better" without any indication of how you might learn how to learn to improve was seriously offputting and gatekeepy to a lot of people. I watched 2 players in a friend group who are pretty equivalent in their skill at games (both fans of character action games, good reaction times etc.) play DS1, one going in completely blind and the other with tidbits and advice from their friend who had finished it, and the difference in length between their games was astounding. (And all of them are damn fast at beating the game now, one even played that "all Gwyns" version of the randomizer). Even basic advice like how weapon scaling works and interacts with upgrades (aka why Raw is bad outside specific cases), or "the pyromancy flame doesn't scale off stats, but by how much you upgraded it, so it's good for anyone" and "you'd need x more attunement for another spell slot", or "your i-frames are determined by your roll animation, also fastroll exists" are things that can make a huge difference not just in how well you can do, but also in how a player even approaches the game. The blind player, having no guidance or preconception other than being told by the general internet that "this game is punishingly difficult" ended up trying to go to the graveyard from firelink for a multiple hours after not seeing the door in the aqueduct, and only found progress after deciding to do a full sweep of the area again to see if they'd missed a secret path. After watching both, I can say that I think the gentle guidance and nudges in the right direction made for a much more enjoyable on-ramp to the series, and it confuses me why that "git gud" mentality caught on so hard. They both had to learn to overcome the challenges in front of them but one wasn't wasting hours learning the *wrong* lessons, which then had to be unlearned later "Needing to learn how to begin learning" is a problem a few other games I can think of have had, notably Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, which is a Platinum Games character action game based around parrying enemy attacks with a tight window (that gets tighter on harder difficulty settings). Parrying is a very fun, rewarding and immensely satisfying mechanic with one problem: a lot of players had absolutely zero idea how the mechanic worked, because even the tutorial specifically for it (which was optional) was hot garbage, to the point where ChipCheezum, notable LPer and fan of both Platinum and Metal Gear games, had to make his own tutorial about the mechanic so people picking up the game because of his playthrough would be able to have fun. The game also locks the dodge move (with s and everything) behind a confusingly named unlock, and doesn't tell you how useful it is, just expecting that you'll know "it's the dodge move therefore it's vital". I rambled a bit there, but the point is that players couldn't even begin to start learning how to perform the actions the game expected of them, because the game hadn't adequately taught them what those actions WERE, and the same is true of much of the DS series. Once you have a handle on the actual mechanics of the games, from looking them up, osmosis from watching the games like me, gradual explanation or just sheer trial and error, the games themselves aren't as demanding as a game like Revengeance on the harder difficulty settings, especially going for higher ranks (an often overlooked feature for games that leads to self-imposed difficulty and challenge, or achievement hunting, getting S-ranks in some of those stages is HARD). Dark Souls's difficulty isn't exactly the problem in my eyes, but it's onboarding definitely is (which is an kind of accessibility problem itself, people with different expectations or thought patterns, ways of approaching problems, neurodivergence etc.). And this is something that I think muddies the water a lot about talking about the difficulty of the series, actually
The mob that killed me the most in dark souls is probably "healing mapped on the usual hit things button". I had a fun ride but I also had to put the controller down. I truly loved the bossfights but the platforming that is hamfisted between them is just too much of a time waste. I don't care about running through set's fortress or anor londo another time. There's no getting gud at "not being bored going through the same map for the twentiest time". It feels liek reading berserk and suddenly "Gut's falled on the wet floor next to the obvious wet floor sign because he's wearing slippers made of soap. Here's a full chapter of re-used pages while he recovers."
Fantastic video! Although I do believe that the discourse about additional difficulty options is very different when it comes to games like Pathologic and Dark Souls as opposed to Celeste. (TL;DR at bottom) The whole point of Celeste is overcoming your own challenge. Madeline decides to climb the mountain of her own volition, not because the world is at stake or someone forced her to. It is entirely her choice and really she could have decided to just climb halfway up the mountain and end it there. The most important detail was that she felt like she was overcoming a self-set challenge. This perfectly parallels the actions of most players, who decide to complete the game despite its challenge on their own because they feel inspired to overcome that challenge. It is because of this that it only makes sense that some sort of assist mode makes sense because as long as players are deciding and overcoming something that is a challenge to them, they have satisfied the creative vision the developers have. If someone plays the game with as many "easifying" modifications as they can, if it feels like a challenge to them, they have had just as valid of an experience as the player who played on the base difficulty. This also explains the additional chapter sides and golden strawberries for players who would feel more accomplished with an even more difficult challenge. At the same time, even if players decide to make the game much easier than needed and coast through it without much challenge, it's also perfectly fine within the creative vision because they may not be ready, or feel the need to overcome any challenge. This mirrors the other major character, Theo, who climbs the mountain with no desire to reach the top, for reasons that have nothing to do with overcoming challenge. Theo may one day feel the same desire Madeline had to reach the summit, or he might not, just like each player. It would be completely counter-intuitive for one specific difficulty to be "forced" onto the player in a game like Celeste, both in terms of appealing to a larger audience and in terms of a creative vision. This is unlike Dark Souls and Pathologic whose characters and world is cruel and doesn't care what the player or characters within the world think. As such, I'm more forgiving of these games deciding not to include difficulty options whereas I applaud Celeste for its brilliant assist mode. TL;DR: Celeste's creative vision relies on a player overcoming a challenge set by them as opposed to a challenge they are forced into, so it makes more sense for Celeste to have an assist mode, as opposed to the other games featured in this video.
I tried Dark Souls Remastered on my switch, and hated the experience sadly not because of the challenge, that’s the point of Dark Souls. I hated it because of the button layout, having zero option to reconfigure the button layout, and lacking any other accessibility options certainly didn’t help. The Last of Us series is not a breeze in the park, but has wonderful accessibility options.
This might be a little late, but the Switch itself lets you remap buttons in the Home Screen settings menus, which might help a lot. Of course, by now you might have already found out about that feature. 😅
@@HighlandHellboy That's great! I wasn't sure if that feature existed back then since I've never used it. From what I've heard, Dark Souls on Switch has a weird control layout so I probably would if I tried that version!
I have a long attention span, you’re funny, well spoken and clearly do your homework thoroughly. But this probably took an absolute load of time, so shorter videos make sense haha Im curious to see where this channel goes from here :)
Beautiful video. Put down my proverbial pitchfork after around 15 minutes in you said "difficulty option would make it a different game experience entirely" (I'm paraphrasing, of course), after that I went and make some warm tea with a bit of honey for this bumpy ride trying to think of a neat 'easier' mode for Dark Souls. You convinced me to have bit of a higher standard for games to must always have accessibility options, I mostly play Japanese games and old games of the yesteryear so my standards are low when it comes to that aspect. However I just want to remind you of one *big* argument against Easy Modes specifically; it is because they take massive resources to be implemented well. Seeing as their past games _barely_ able to get finished at all (I'm looking at you Demon's Souls, Dark Souls 1 and 2), I would very much prefer that they spent their time, budget, and manpower on actually making the core intended game as good as possible rather than wasting any small precious resource they have on an easy mode.
Feels weird that you didn't mention Dark Souls 2 when it has the big examples you mentioned for accessibility options. Running has a toggle option (on pc) and while it has a different approach to ambushes than DS3, there's an item that gives you a noticeable audio cue that there are enemies close by.
So below I wrote out a point that irked me in response to the sentiment that including an "easy mode" is not a necessity, but I wanted to state a handful of caveats before I am misinterpreted: 1) I am also a game designer & actually generally above average in terms of skill & patience, but I am not a monolith. No one is. 2) I understand the idea that it shouldn't be a _requirement,_ even if I think artistic intent/vision is... Kind of a dumb argument in its favour. 2a) A deeper/more complex point is here, summarized with "Every copy of the game isn't shipped with you to explain your precious vision." 3) Saying that we should commend designers who _choose_ to include difficulty options for purposes of accessibility is [chef's kiss] 4) Agreed! Accessibility does not equate wholly to having Difficulty sliders in your game. You covered this well. 5) something something not actually mad, something something this video is well-crafted. *THE "NECESSITY" RANT* Saying that accessibility options (in regards to difficulty) is not a _necessity_ is a point in and of itself that feels like the foundation of a bad faith argument. Sure, it isn't a necessity... But neither is including various colourblind modes, if your "target audience" is folks that have a set of fully operational cones in their eyes. With this argument you can easily make the next step of "Therefore, we shouldn't put expectations on designers to put these options in their games, as a means to secure their artistic intent." Let's take the extreme of this argument and stretch it out: It isn't a necessity for FromSoft to include Xbox and Playstation control mappings for their games, so why should they if (in this hypothetical world) FromSoft believes their games should only ever be played on Mouse+Keyboard? Its not a necessity, so why do people expect it? Because doing so would make the game harder and less accessible to most, right? Ah, but it isn't a necessity, so we shouldn't ever include controller options for Dark Souls, everyone should have to use Keyboard and Mouse _AND_ they shouldn't be allowed to change the Keybinds (no matter how byzantine) because if you don't want that... Then clearly the game wasn't made for you. Oh, but you like the idea of Dark Souls yet don't have the time or capacity to memorize all these unintuitive mappings of controls which feel so unnecessarily obtuse and frustrating? Too bad, the game isn't for you! You don't deserve it, if you're not willing to invest that much into it. Look... I agree that most of the games made by FromSoft aren't "Difficult" in the way most people expect when regarding that word's definition within the cultural zeitgeist. It does indeed call upon more elements of patience and persistence, but the means in which it does that is often times ones that are infuriating for folks that don't have the means to invest a significant portion of their mental capacity and lifespan just to have a similar experience. An experience, might I add, that would likely be soured upon reflection due to feeling that a lot of the ways the game "challenged" them was through means which felt needlessly unfair, or extremely apathetic & obtuse. Patience isn't _always_ a virtue.
There are already easy modes in Souls games. - Play a mage - Summon a co-op partner - Overlevel - Run past hard encounters because you can literally outrun 99% of the enemies and they won't follow you far
I think another problem with giving players unlimited difficulty sliders ala Celeste is that players will literally optimize the fun out of their own experience, it's one of the biggest trappings of game design. Protecting players from themselves. And when it comes to difficulty, there's a number of experiences I could have seen myself missing out on because I wouldn't have been self-motivated to push myself to overcome the challenge. NKG in Hollow Knight is a good example; I was so frustrated fighting him that I almost certainly would have reduced the difficulty, but beating him gave me such a sense of accomplishment and triumph that I totally would have missed. Edit: to be clear, I know you address this with the Mark Brown and "should" segments. So idk why I wrote this but here's some engagement
Something to note is how non-gamers don't have the skill needed to press 2 buttons at the same time. They just can't. Ask your mom, dad, friends or co-workers who don't play games to play any non-casual game. For example - I once asked a friend to play Shovel Knight. They jumped THEN pressed and held down the forward button. Think of any casual game - Candy Crush, Angry Birds, Minesweeper, Patience. NONE OF THOSE GAMES REQUIRE 2 OR MORE BUTTONS TO BE PRESSED AT THE SAME TIME. It's a massive barrier gap between gamers and non-gamers. It's insane how restrictive this makes non-gamers to play games.
The arguments around (40:35) sound a lot like how new authors and poets talk about not dumbing down their writing style, just so more people can understand them. The counter is that: the less understandable a work's intent is, the fewer people will be able to engage with it; but that won't stop people from trying, and coming away with an incorrect or incomplete message. Also, there seems to me to be conflict between "players will play your game however they want to" and "the artist has complete control within the medium".
That character reminds me of a cross between Homestar Runner and it’s Teen Girl Squad. Diggin the nostalgia factor. And leave the difficulty alone. They saw a market and crushed it. Besides, for those who take a minute and think, there ARE ways to make easy modes. At least there are for PvE. PvP, you’re on your own. Best of luck.
Any conversation about the relative toxicity of the soulsborne communities is incomplete without mentioning the hellish plague of “git gud” and/or “skill issue” that they unleashed upon the world
You didn't ding on all of the "Difficulty" mentions and I have serious doubts that your counter is accurate, and this is at the forefront of my mind and distracted me. D:
I had no idea that animal crossing was going to turn up. But I remember thinking to myself how difficult animal crossing was compared to dark souls at the introduction to this video. 44.05
Was just minding my own business when I hit this video and snapped my neck. Otherwise pretty good video. Definitely got me to think about the topic very differently than I used to.
If you're promising not to make a video this long again because it took a lot out of you, that's perfectly reasonable. However, if you're worried about the length being an issue because no one wants to WATCH a video this long, I personally am quite fond of long-form video essays like this. And I'm sure everyone subscribed to Joseph Anderson would agree with me. You do you though. Just felt I should mention this. Nice video, good topic, everything you said made good sense.
hey, the Architect of Games pointed the way here I'm only 10 minutes in and already loving your work here edit: overall very meticulous video. I did previously think that designers can make games as difficult as they want and players should be able to play them however they want, and that accessibility is absolutely essential. I do think games in general should have a sort of sandbox/debug mode and mod support for people to absolutely mess everything up. I don't really see an issue with people short-circuiting difficulty by taking an easier route because IMO players will ALWAYS play in ways that adjust experienced difficulty, I think cheese strats and challenges are universal, I once heard someone claim that Miyazaki said there's no cheating in Dark Souls because everything is ok play. I think Dark Souls' message system does a great job of conveying useful information for said cheese strats for players who don't want or can't summon others.
Dark Souls 3 easy mode options: + Make hitboxes actually match graphics + Expand parry timing a bit + Perhaps make parryable attacks easy to identify (because why the hell do I need to trial and error that anyway) + Increase dodge speed slightly Because the answer to the question "Why is Dark Souls difficult?" boils down to "because the combat is unforgiving AND challenging to master". So difficulty can be reduced not just by making things less punishing (less damage, fewer enemies, etc.). It's also effective to make it easier to learn and master the mechanics. Make it more obvious what to dodge and what to parry, make it easier to figure out when to dodge/parry to avoid getting hit, so that the player can learn and develop to not need those training wheels anymore. Heck, plenty of challenging games work hard to train you early on just so you don't bounce off them before developing basic competency. There's a fine line between "Easy mode" and "Tutorial for normal difficulty" Often, when people complain about some part of a game being "too hard" - the response of "just do X" is met with "and how was I supposed to know that?" -- The issue was not that it was too unforgiving, but that mastery was locked behind a poorly communicated mechanic or technique. So, keep the mechanics, just make them less obtuse, and easier to learn/master.
![VENEZUELA vs. ARGENTINA [1-1] | RESUMEN | ELIMINATORIAS SUDAMERICANAS | FECHA 9](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/SJfoPdeOPCQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Soulsbornes cannot have an easy mode because it was stop being Soulsbornes. It would be like saying CAN you put a Pizza in a blender and you can but then its not a Pizza anymore so you cant. Same thing with Soulsborne the moment you add difficulty choice it stops being a Soulsborne. Having one set rules EVERYONE plays by is one of the tenets the entire franchise was built from. During arcade days you couldnt choose easy normal or hard when you heard someone say I beat M.Bison you didnt have to ask "was it on easy?" it was like "GTFO thats insane gz" that was one of the draws of Soulsbornes when you talked with people there was no barrier when talking about a boss you didnt have to preface anything. The game literally has already has difficuilty slider just go level up and come back stronger "it takes too long" is not an excuse you already have an option to make the game easier now you are complaining its not EASY ENOUGH or "it takes too long" so you just want to be pandered to then this entire discourse is unneeded why do these people who cant beat Soulsborne want to beat it so bad? They want to beat it because they want to say "I beat X" its their egos that cant take it but they try to mask it by flipping the question to "why cant it have an easy mode" or "Dont use it if you dont want to". How about you play the game like everyone else and either learn or leave.
The game is literally an RPG. It’s literally built on player choice not “one set rule”. The Souls series have never been about difficulty for difficulty’s sake and even if they were, developer vision is not all-mighty. Any work of art is not complete without the spectator’s input and even if we take the argument that the Souls game should be difficult, difficult means different things for different people. Magic and co-op are efforts taken by FromSoft for accessibility regarding difficulty. These features remain and are even more varied in Elden Ring because FromSoft doesn’t fetishize difficulty, the community does. These games offer so much more than difficulty or the feeling of overcoming, pattern memorization or twitch reaction stuff. The lore community is proof that FromSoft’s games appeal to other distinct gameplay loops and well it sure would be nice if more people joined. Deriving pleasure and pride from telling people they’re not good enough to play a video game is kinda why gamers get a bad rap.
@@gabisabrina8257 soulsbourn is built around the concept of everyone sharing their experience with the same game with the same rules, especially with summons.
They put an easy mode in Jedi Fallen order and it was fine.
@@F2t0ny I didnt know Jedi Fallen order was a souls game. All jokes aside You can have easy mode in other games thats not the problem. The issue with putting an easy mode into a Souls game is that the experience now has a "*" that you have to ask. Example someone says they beat Malenia you understand what that means but if there was lets say an easy mode where she shes just easier then saying you beat her doesn't hold the same weight we no longer have the connection to talk about we now have to have another talk about the difficulty at which she was fought which detracts from the game. Having everyone play the same game where there is no type of miscommunication is what makes Souls series special. To be fair there are also ways to make the game easier tactics online or literally just summoning more people so there kinda already is an "easy" mode in the game play with 3 buddies and youre good. Im not sure if im explaining this right but there is a video called "The Dark Souls Easy Mode Argument : Why it's bad" that encapsulates this issue pretty well.
@@gabisabrina8257 Why are you putting words in my mouth? I never said anyone wasn't good enough to play a video game. All Souls games have one set of rules everyone follows just because you cant understand that doesn't make it not there. All the options you listed are available for everyone to utilize its your choice to use them or not once again one set of rules. Everyone of the people who cry for an easy mode have obviously played the game therefore you can play without an easy mode. You can play the game just fine and if its too "hard" that's fine you still played the game you were able to enjoy the parts you could no one is stopping you if you quit that's literally designed into the games in Dark Souls that's you becoming a Hollow. What you want is the reward without the work you want to see the next boss or cutscene or area without having to earn it. Just go watch a lets play of the game if you just want to be on rails and have everything handed to you that seems more your speed. But the issue really is ego people don't want to admit that they cant beat something that in their mind they are entitled to "I bought this game therefor I should have access to all of it. You do you just have to "get good" like at the end of the day the original meaning for "get good" wasn't derogatory it was meant for people who kept looking for the cheesy way to beat boss how to glitch them out or find a super weakness one shot when some bosses just don't have it and you have to "get good" to beat them. Souls games really aren't even that hard at all the community literally doesn't fetishize any of the games difficulty you ask any good player they say the game is easy they aren't stroking their ego its literally not hard. 99% of the game is pattern recognition you see X you hit Y you win.
TLDR: "You Cheated Not Only the Game, But Yourself"
Came here from AoGs video recommending the channel and this video. Minor point, the gag of 'dinging' every mention of 'difficulty' and 'accessibility' was alright for the first paragraph of it, but after that just got a little tedious with the constant 'ding' interruptions drawing attention away from what you're actually saying to the fact you said a specific word. Not that you can't do the gag, maybe just make it so each time it goes back to the vtuber with the TV, it has appropriately tracked them silently.
Aside from that, really good. The only thing in terms of additions I could mention is maybe going more in-depth on the idea of 'soft difficulty' or player-imposed difficulty. Eg, summoning players. For instance, Dark Souls 1 has an easy mode, it's called the Black Knight Halberd and you can get it without having to a single enemy legit, along with Grass Crest, Rite of Kindling, Ring of favor and protection, Havel's set and ring, the game is your bitch, no mods needed, and many of those items are easy/free to get. I feel the stigma of the game being hard leads many people to treat when they die as "Well that's just this game being bullshit hard", and not actually think about the options and strategy more. It's easy to write off dying 30 times on a boss as bullshit if the game is infamously touted for it's difficulty, but in reality a playstyle change or kit change can mop the floor with many bosses. 4 kings deal magic damage? I'm wearing Havel's chugging 20 estus, bye.
And in the spirit of the video I thought of designing a true easy mode for Dark Souls 1 and it's really as easy as just moving enemies around, most the time. Move the channeler from undead parish, move the bullshit parry knights out of stairwells, move the rightmost silver knight archer so you can sprint up the battlement and in without having to play balance beams, and you can live if the left one shoots you because you'll likely hit the wall. Give the option to back out of areas that were originally 1-way (anor londo before lordvessel and painted world). Maybe even just add an item like a homeward bone that sends you specifically to firelink, and remove lautrecs ability to kill the firekeeper. I have heard many people stop playing dark souls after getting down to blighttown, ringing the bell, and not knowing how to get back without going the really long way and dying a ton of times. The option to just reset yourself to somewhere safe and make your way back with new knowledge would be powerful.
Sekiro also has a psuedo easy mode, at least when I played it. Spam whirlwind slash. The combination of it chipping through block and enemies posture regen slowing as their health decreases allowed me to cheese lady butterfly with no snap seeds. But it's really poorly explained how the chipping and posture regen works so people won't notice. Also headless count as 'apparitions', despite not being ghosts. So divine confetti murders them, myself and a lot of people didn't know that at first. I feel many of the difficulty complaints in many games is actually a communication issue, Dark Souls never communicates the cheese strategies so people don't know they exist and that they could be having a way easier time.
The point of the target audience thing is one I don't see often but rings very true. I don't expect kirby's epic yarn (the other cliche mention when people talk about difficulty), to be all s-ranks dante must die mode, it's a kirby game, aimed at a younger audience, I theoretically could complain about it not being inclusive to a challenge seeking audience but it's a little insane to do so. It's obviously more common for a game too be too hard than too easy, but the point stands, people will complain about games in series they never played, cared for, or have interest in, because it's too hard for them. In a similar vein, I've seen people complain about online games being 'dead' or 'boring' since their opponents are too easy, especially with Overwatch and Pokemon Unite. The fix is simple, play a game with a more established and skilled playerbase in that type of gameplay you like. If you like MOBAs and are whining about Unite being too easy, just play DOTA or League. If you're complaining Overwatch is boring because your team is bad and dragging you down, play CS:GO. All the fun of clicking heads except people have had a million years of practice so Global Elite AWPers put public matched Widowmakers in a different league.
yes, the greatest barrier in dark souls is how the first run gives the player little information. you can't know about specific items until you see them mentioned somewhere, you might not figure out a cheese strat until it is pointed to you.
Anor Londo doesn't lock you in, you can leave by going back to the beginning of the area and talking to the gargoyle.
Yeah I agree on the dinging part, got pretty distracting after a minute or two.
I grew up when games didn't have Difficulty modes, then they got "cheat codes" and then they got difficulty modes.
Long story short difficulty has nothing to do with "children" and everything to do with journalists. Plenty of disabled gamers built their own work arounds to beat popular "difficult" games.
You're right that dark souls has an easy mode baked in but they don't tell their players what they are which is part of the discovery aspect to it. The master key is one of those components that's a double edged sword it can make the game both easier and harder, so can being a pyro or a mage(the game gives you ranged attacks but you also lose total HP) conversely the Knight has the best HP and Strength giving you a baked in easy mode with good armor and quicker access to powerful Weapons (don't tell anyone you had to level some Dex though)
+1 for the dinging. I'm struggling to take in the content as it's so distracting. Would love a version uploaded without the ding sound.
One thing I really appreciate about this video is how it delves into the fact that difficulty doesn't always hinge on enemy health, enemy strength or the amount of enemies - but where they are placed and who they are placed with. Seem fairly obvious maybe, but it shows how ironically difficult and complext it can be to make a challenging game (that is also good).
And speaking of good, that's exactly what this video was. Very good!
That depends if the game has viable ranged attacks. Guns are superior for many reasons.
"This, finally, brings us to dark souls. Wait we're how many minutes in!?!?" Considering Adam Millard directed me here, I'm used to it.
That was a really fascinating video, and overall does, I think, a really great job of covering these topics. I really found the point how a game being difficult and it being accessable are not opposing forces to be great.
To take you up on the offer of thinking of how changes to a game effect it, Lobotomy Corporation is a game I've fallen in love with. It's a game where you manage monsters to produce energy. One feature that I thought of after thinking about it for a moment is the ability to move where each monster in your facility is. This would make the game easier to an absurd degree for a seemingly simple change because of how some monsters will interact with each other, amongst other systems, like certain boss fights. This is just one minor thing that would have a massive effect the game that I only fairly briefly thought about. I can't imagine how much further the rabbit hole would go if I thought about it more. Thanks for opening my eyes to that.
Final note: there should be a games journalist difficulty. If I wake up tomorrow and the sun is still there, I'm going to be disappointed.
Adam led me here as well
"I want to see them make the best games, as difficult as they want, and as accessible as they can" I will be quoting this - this is the entire video's ideas summarized. I am glad you talked about it at length, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and it is always pleasing to see one is not alone in their school thought. Thanks for a pithy way to express my largely coinciding thoughts! :)
walter jr
walter jr
walter jr
your video was absolutely lovely, and you treated the topic of accessibility with a lot of care and sensitivity. as a disabled person (and gamer) i really appreciate it!! i agree with a lot of your points. i'd like to add a few of my thoughts, as my disabilities aren't black and white or easy to accommodate with simple setting changes. there are a lot of nuances that blur the line between accessibility features and difficulty levels. my biggest hurdle is my hand dexterity-- i can only press a button or move a joystick so fast, and often it's not fast enough. as a ballpark for you: in breath of the wild, i've achieved a flurry rush only a handful of times in over 400 hours, it's near impossible with most enemies. a lot of games i'm barred from just because my hands can't move fast enough, and it's maddening! so sometimes the standard accessibility features that are in place today might help, but not if they enemy is just too fast. difficulty options are often my go-to for my accommodations because of this, as they usually lessen damage taken or something similar. it's all complicated! but the best experiences i've had are games with a large variety of playstyles and options for them. i play hades on god mode and ADORE it! i upgrade my armour and get temp hearts in BOTW. i can find a way, as long as the game lets me get far enough to find it.
Yes this is so true! I'm generally fast enough unless it's a platformer. My motor control issues will often get in the way of me being able to properly control a game. However so long as the game is slow and/or forgiving enough I don't have many issues. But our issues really stab at the heart of difficulty vs. accessibility. Because to accommodate slower reaction times etc. you automatically make the game easier for people without issues. It's something I've been thinking about a lot actually.
@@Siferiax yes, exactly!! it's such a grey area and not easy to define that i can't expect perfect accommodations for it. hell, it's so subtle that sometimes it takes a while for me to realize it's what's holding me back (in and outside of games)! i think the more options and toggles a game offers, the more likely i'll find something that works. :)
I think an easy way to resolve the "hand dexterity" issue without adding difficulty options for games that expect the player to perform multi-hit combo attacks/many button presses in succession (such as for a QTE) is to do what Uncharted 4 did and provide an optional setting that you can turn on or off at your discretion that replaces the "Press" requirements with "Hold" requirements instead. Basically, instead of having to mash the Triangle button repeatedly to do the QTEs, you can hold the Triangle button instead to do the QTEs. This helps not only people with limited hand dexterity, but also people with or who could potentially suffer from tendonitis or Gamer Thumb as a result of mashing buttons too much too often.
Final Fantasy XV even does something similar; the combo system in that game is designed such that by default the player can just hold the Circle button to do their combos instead of mashing the Circle button, that way they only have to worry about moving the left analog stick to change which attacks they perform during their combos. This makes FFXV's combo system much more accessible to disabled and injured gamers, and it also makes the game far less likely to result in players getting physically injured because of its combat system.
I think this sort of feature in mash-heavy games should become an industry standard, and that Devil May Cry's approach to combos/button mashing should fall out of favor as the currently existing industry standard. There's a reason that the DMC games have a reputation for having insane combos that murder your hands.
@@boyishdude1234 that would certainly help, yeah! i utilize stuff like that when i find it. it doesn't cover everything, though. like analog movement can't be fixed with that, and the d-pad is even harder! a lot of games expect you to dodge with the analog stick. dead cells added some great accessibility settings like easier parries, auto-hit (like you said), slower traps and turning down trap damage all together. with no boss cells (the base game setting), i barely touch the other damage sliders, when before the update i could not clear a run even after 200+ attempts. i can play hades without god mode now, though!
not trying to shut you down or anything! you're absolutely right and that becoming industry standard would be awesome
@@tinycatfriend Oh I'm not talking about "auto-hit", but rather allowing the player to perform inputs that would normally require multiple button presses by just holding the button down instead. Games like Uncharted 4 and FFXV won't automatically complete QTEs or automatically attack enemies for you (respectively), those actions still require inputs from the player. The difference is that you can just hold those buttons down for a certain period of time instead of having to press those buttons repeatedly.
When I think of "auto-hit", I think of stuff like the "EZ Code" (cheat codes with different branding) in Kingdom Hearts 3 where the game will occasionally use Guard to block an attack automatically _for_ the player with no input from them to block the attack in the first place, or the same thing for the Auto-Dodge panel in Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days (one of the two DS games), but with Dodgeroll instead of Guard. I don't think of "replace _Press_ with _Hold_ for certain types of inputs".
A great analogy I found (idk where its from) when comparing difficulty and accessibility was this :
"If the game was carrying a rock, difficulty would be how heavy it is and the distance to travel, while accessibility would be the shape of the rock and how you carry it"
One of the things that bugs me as a disabled player is that a lot of difficulty modes go for making combat easier or removing it entirely. I enjoy combat! I want to fight things in my video games! But when the easy mode is still too hard for me to handle, then theres just story mode left...
Depending on the disability it might require a specialized difficulty level so i can see how it might often end up being pretty bad, game devs are often already rushes so trying to spend time properly designing difficulty to make it possible for different disablities beyond just colorblind or deaf/hard of hearing (both which arent even always there) isnt always option for them
For a game that I loved but had an interesting relationship with difficulty, I’d like to mention the Witcher 3. It was my first big open world game, so I started on the standard difficulty. I played for a while there (~50 hours) before then setting the difficulty to max, and enabling enemy scaling.
While it did make the combat feel less free, it did pose a number of problems. For example, enemy scaling completely breaks a certain quest. You have to go through the sewers, and part of that involves beating up rats. Normally, this isn’t an issue, but since enemy scaling meant enemies took more hits and generally 2-3 shot you, the zone was literally impassable since the normally totally ineffective rats were completely unkillable.
The mode did have its benefits though, like how the drawn-out bossfights really required you to understand the combat system and their mechanics rather than just instakilling them in a few hits, and made it so the enemies actually felt like the threats they were supposed to be rather than falling over in a stiff breeze.
I could say more on this, but typing on mobile is slow and tediousz
Interesting, I didn't know enemy scaling was a thing? I don't remember setting that anyway. I did make a comment just now about going from story mode to death march lol. Boss fights really became a game of patience as well in my opinion. I'm really glad I changed it.
Second comment: I'm pretty sure Dark Souls 1 did have a starting item that was literally a masterkey. Speedrunners always choose this option
I think it was for one specific door though, not exactly a "masterkey"
@@Darkfry The DS1 master key works on specific doors, and opens most areas in the first half of the game. It also opens a few secret rooms that have hidden keys elsewhere in the game. Master key isn't usually recommended for first time players because some of the areas it opens are just more difficult than the intend route.
Adding on to what Ben said, the master key allows the player to skip 2 areas completely, and provided an alternate route to another key (pun intended) location.
@@Darkfry it was for a bunch of doors
most importantly, it let you go straight into Blighttown -and instantly regret your decision-
@@dr.gaming4860 adding on what Dr Gaming said the master key allows you to find almost 5000 souls around firelink shrine, a very strong shield and potentially the strongest weapon in the game in darkroot garden all in 10 minutes from the start of the game.
Darkfry: *Winks 200 times*
Me: *blushes every single time*
I may be posting this prematurely, but your point at managing Dark Souls' difficulty by tweaking enemy placement has a place in the series already.
Kind of.
In Dark Souls 2, infamously, each area you get stuck on gets easier over time because enemies you kill eventually fail to respawn. This is interesting because it has a downside - you no longer get those souls or drops, but the area is simpler to navigate over time. And, by using a specific rare item - the bonfire ascetic - you can bring them all back. *At the next NG+ level of life and damage.* Not to mention that the easier enemies stop spawning first by default because you'll kill them each time you die as opposed to the harder enemies failing to be killed more often...
Not saying you were wrong, just an interesting angle I thought you might have forgotten.
DS2 has the best accessibility options in the seires.
-Toggle run (on pc)
-Ring of whispers, making stronger audio cues for enemy proximity
-Repairable rings of life/soul protection (weaker penalty for dying)
-Way of Blue and Rat covenants to make pvp easier in ways that aren't one-sided
-Extra healing items to make sure you have the option to heal between fights (some are too slow for battle but still reduce the attrition aspect of exploring)
-Easy access to reallocating stats
-Plenty of upgrade materials (both these make changing builds way less time-consuming)
-Bonfire ascetics making it possible to redo things and farm any item without going through the whole game again
-a ring that makes enemies prefer to aggro you (so during co-op you can have a designated tank)
-spell replenishing items (again for attrition)
Tried to just mention things unique to it but it also has most of the things other entries have.
@@the_guiding_qui DS2 also has the most viable builds of any souls game, a NG+ that changes various bosses as you pass through loops, and the most healing outside of estus. It's a great entry, IMO. Not as strong as 3 or as iconic as 1, but great regardless.
I believe the Covenant of Champions, accessible in the hub, also makes enemies stop despawning. I think it raises their strength as well, but after a point that's not such a big deal.
See Ymfah's channel for assorted tricks like an infinite Ascetic loop and grinding souls off of a certain miniboss indefinitely.
Also, going back to the original point, Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin has both Pharros Lockstones and Fragrant Branches of Yore as keys to alternate progression. The game isn't laid out like a series of big loops like Dark Souls 1 is, but it's pretty interesting.
Obligatory fuck the iron passage here
I literally had to grind out all enemies to death before even a single attempt in the boss, melee enemies with high stun, ranged enemies with area denial and spell that just literally slows you down, and even one hit when youre trying to enter the boss fog would likely cancel it
I love that you distinguished between difficulty and accessibility options. Rebinding of controls, subtitles for audio cues, and options that reduce button mashing/holding should become standard for all games where they’re applicable. There’s lots of other suggestions made by people way smarter than me as well.
Allowing as many people as possible to play a game as it was intended has nothing to do with turning down the difficulty for people who have disabilities.
something this video made me realize is that adapting a game to be less difficult or more accessible is even more challenging when difficulty isn’t just part of the mechanics, but also part of the themes. Like, dark souls and bloodborne have narratives about characters who cycle between life and death constantly, so making it less difficult without also modifying the story is would feel off. I guess the more elements difficulty is coupled too, the harder it is to untangle.
Great video 🙏
Yeah, this is why I think Dark Souls' difficulty is core to the experience. Humanity (in every sense of the word) is one of the story's main themes, and thus you CANNOT make the game easier by yourself. The only way to make the game easier on a first playthrough is by seeking HELP from other PEOPLE, either directly through co-op or indirectly through guides and wikis. That is completely intentional, and one of the game's most fundamental ideas according to its director.
Dark Souls is a great example of a title where the gameplay and story are entwined and inseparable. If you could, say, turn on invincibility in the pause menu, you wouldn't be playing Dark Souls anymore. The story's themes and intent would be fundamentally altered past the breaking point. I know invincibility is an extreme example, but it's weirdly popular for "accessibility" nowadays.
I have dev experience so I know adding accessibility features is never easy, and yet I think the more difficult route (for devs) is the superior one: options that allow more people to fully experience the game, NOT options that change what the experience is.
“I want this video to be so clear a bird will fly into it and break it’s neck”
Yeah, alright you’ve got a new subscriber bud.
FINALLY! You are the first comment to appreciate that line, I'm very proud of it lol
Very interesting video, definitely the best discussion I've seen of the subject.
Though it is worth noting that Dark Souls Remastered has at least one accessibility option on the PC release: customizable controls. Guess they figured out that the abysmal keyboard control setup they included with the original option was not going to be viable for the vast majority of players, so they made the right call and gave us keyboard users the ability to decide how we wanted to keyboard. Sorry to hear that never made it over to the controller side of things.
I love the content you cover here, I love your humor too. I c o u l d do without the consistent *dings* throughout the video. I find it funny in principle! If it was just a running count on the screen that I could opt in and opt out of visually, that would be awesome, but I’m personally finding it hard to hear what you’re saying because I get distracted easily. That’s just my experience though, do us all a favor and keep making content my man
This was an excellent essay that really introduced me to new sides of this debate that I had kinda thought was thoroughly covered already. The distinction between making a game easier and making it more difficult is so important and Im glad I understand that on a deeper level now. I know how long and how much effort these kind of videos take so I also just wanna say you should really be proud of yourself for seeing such a big project through to the end :)
(Btw the bell sounds after each instance of difficulty were funny at first but became a bit tiring by the end 😅)
Meant to say "distinction between making a game easier and making it more accessible" lol whoops
I found the little noise of the counter quite obnoxious, but I am very pleased to have learnt about the various types of difficulty: you are right, Dark Souls is mechanically rather easy and its difficulty doesn't come from there.
12:30 You can't talk about shoddy accessibility in Metroid Prime 3 without mentioning that it absolutely requires motion controls, which I've recently found too physically effortful to allow any enjoyment due to health issues. (Shame too, it used to be one of my faves.)
Thank god for emulation, otherwise this game would have been outright lost to me.
Yeah.
Also, I was apprehensive towards Skyward Sword HD's button controls at first, since it was basically the game that most able-bodied gamers imagined playing when the Wii was first announced, but then I was reminded that such mobility issues exist, and... Yeah, the button controls were actually a great idea.
This is such a great video. Also, thank you for reiterating/explaining that mechanical difficulty and "you have to learn the pattern" difficulty are two different things! A lot of people (me included, lmao) do not really catch the differences between the two without external help.
I have to say, as a game developper myself, I really enjoyed your video as you do touch a lot of good points that many players simply don't realise about game design.
One that stood out in particular, was at 37:50 : you have 2 types of players.
Those you target with your game
And those you don't.
Those you don't can and will (especially today) come after you for NOT designing it from the get go with them in mind. I am NOT the target audience for dark souls. I don't like being frustrated when playing a game. I don't have the patience for it.
That being said, i WANT to experience Dark Souls BECAUSE of its impact its had on the gaming world at large. And i WANT to understand it.
The intent of the developers is important. Do you just want to show off a cool story in the end and the game is just a way to tell that story. So, you want as many people to experience that story you painstakingly crafted to as many people. Gatekeeping via difficulty is counter productive to this.
While if you focus on the journey itself to tell the story and you're part of it, then the difficulty become intrinsic.
The whole "fuck em if they think its too hard" doesn't fly as a developer. That gatekeeping mindset is something i would never, ever want someone to feel.
A lot of people make the boilerplate "I was trying my best, feel free to correct me" statement, but I wanna acknowledge that you did a really good job articulating why accessibility is important without devaluing either people who simply enjoy an easier, more leisurely gaming experience or arguing that nobody with disabilities could *possibly* enjoy a more difficult and challenging experience.
I really thought your living example of your HoH friend was well-considered, and you choosing to focus on the social value of difficulty rather than arguing that enjoyment of difficulty is, like, an inbuilt quality of those worthy of playing video games or whatever? IDK. It's hard to describe what it is that you could have done wrong, because you didn't do it. So big props! I think I will in turn be referencing this video when discussing the topic of intended play experience.
i really liked this too! and it indirectly acknowledges that disabled people have a right to want to be included in games they want to play, and not relegated to "easy" games. i'm disabled and i WANT to play exciting games and kill things! Hades god mode works really well for me, and that was basically my first time feeling a flow state playing a game like that because i was finally included. i like animal crossing and pokemon as much as the next guy, but i wanna play other stuff too.
The Architect mentioned "Dark Souls", "video essay", and "content creator" in one sentence, so I was sold from the start. I've really enjoyed this video, and even though I hold most beliefs and points of view myself, it's nice to hear someone else's spin on it, especially when it comes to the design aspect of it all, since that's where my skills surely lack. Keep it up man, can't wait for the next video!
Really great video, a great breakdown. I loved the design analysis of the dark souls 3 encounter, it helped to illustrate how much of a tightrope the designers walk when balancing difficulty.
If I can say though, I thought the counter was kinda funny initially but it dinging loudly every time got pretty frustrating. It just counting up on screen and maybe dinging occasionally for emphasis would have been fine, but that constant ring made it really difficult to keep watching
Also, it should be noted that difficulty is relative. If everyone wanted a game to be equally difficult, then you'd have one game difficulty for each player.
Because of this, accessibility options *Are* maintaining the difficulty of the game. They're just individualizing the concept so that all people can appreciate what it means for the game to be difficult (not too easy, not impossible, as that is taking away from the intention of the game developers).
To assume that all players, even those who don't want these sliders, experience difficulty in the same way is naive.
Hey there! I came here via Adam Millard's last video!
Great content, bro! Your editing skills are awesome!!
Those are some nice ideas for an easy mode in Dark Souls, hope some of them are actually implemented!
My ideal "easy mode" for a Souls-Like is a quick save. I played The Surge (my first Souls-Like ever) at launch when quick save was still a feature they had yet to remove. This one feature was the crutch I needed to meet this game on its terms at its base difficulty. In short, all I needed to complete the game was more checkpoints.
The Megaman ZX collection added many more checkpoints for those who want to use them, and it made the game much more enjoyable for me as a result.
Nioh on the other hand, has an overpowered magic system when applied correctly. This is an in-game way of applying an easy mode with a unique gameplay experience without having explicit difficulty settings. I think this is a great middle ground for having an easy mode without adding an "easy" difficulty setting.
I always enjoy a game more If I can find a way to 'back up' my saves
I get enough of real life consequences in real life
@@EggBastion exactly, I bought the Nintendo service exclusively because of cloud saves.
Hey bro, loved the video, just a small advice, I thought the repeated words point was pretty funny but hearing the little ''ding'' everytime you said difficulty started getting hard on the ear by minute 10
Still nice vid!
Dark Souls always had an easy mode: jolly cooperation.
Except in areas where it's not available.
I'd happily trade my gargoyle assistants for someone to have my back in Blighttown and Sen's.
I doubt anyone really cares, but this is something that personally matters to me and I just want to add my two cents to the conversation. Namely, just as you made some very useful distinctions between Difficulty and Accessibility, I'd like to also discuss Inclusivity as another, subtle element.
My wife isn't a gamer. Never has been. But she fell absolutely in love with Hollow Knight (a Metroidvania with a lot in common with Dark Souls). She loves the art, the music, the vague Souls-esque storytelling, the neat fights, the exploration, all of that. She has no disabilities that Accessibility options would help with her-except that she hasn't spent her life gaming. She can get to a certain point in the game, then it becomes too frustrating to be worth it to continue. She COULD persevere and get good, but to do so would require many hours of doing parts of the game she finds no fun in at all. It's the game gatekeeping her from the parts she absolutely adores. All because she isn't a "real gamer." Celeste-style options would allow her to engage in this game, and potentially help ease her into the wider world of the gaming hobby. Simple things like not losing currency when you die, respawning closer to where you were when you died, a little extra health buffer, etc, would all bridge the gap and let her actually enjoy gaming. Without them, she is only allowed to be a spectator. She may not need Accessibility options, but it sucks that she isn't given the few minor tools needed to bring her into such a great hobby like gaming. I tried showing her other games in hopes of her trying them, but nothing catches her like Hollow Knight. It only would have take a few little options to let her tune the difficulty to her ability or interest.
My son loves gaming, but is terrible at it. He's got a host of challenges-very weak hand strength and dexterity, he's on the autism spectrum, ADHD, and struggles with depression. All of that makes it not only difficult for him to play a game, but difficult to find the motivation or skill needed to get better. But he loves games. He likes to watch RUclipsrs and play along. Unfortunately, there are so few games he can really do this with. He plays Celeste with all the Assist options cranked up, and yeah he just flies through the level, but so what? He doesn't have to enjoy the game the same way I do. He wants to feel like he's playing along with his favorite personalities. Would it be great if he could use it as a chance to improve? Of course, I'd love to see that. But without some help, and the freedom to find what works for him, he'd never have the confidence to try. He'll just play the tutorial level a million times. There are so many games I wish I could share with my son, but the lack of options gatekeeps him too.
I am a gamer, and have been my whole life. I'm down with difficult games. There are no physical or mental roadblocks prohibiting me from getting good, and in fact I have for many games. But my time is valuable. I don't have as much as I used to. When a game like Dark Souls has so many things I love, but bogs it down with tedium, I question if it's worth it. Hard boss fights are great, and if given the options I wouldn't make them easier for myself... but the run up to the boss? Slogging through the same group of enemies that only serve to punish me for losing by eating more of my time? That gets old. When I'm exploring new areas, or learning a new boss, or uncovering lore, Dark Souls is amazing. But replaying through areas I've already proven I can beat a dozen times just to search for what's next is neither fun nor challenging. Some people might enjoy it, and more power to them. But if I had the option to subtly tune it-maybe make it so enemies only respawn a certain amount of times, like Dark Souls 2-I'd be more likely to invest the valuable resource of my time in that world. Because there is so much more to enjoy about these games than just their difficulty.
Sorry, I needed to vent that somewhere. I agree that options like this aren't "owed" to anyone, and of course game developers can do whatever they want. But I want to see continued social pressure to make games Accessible AND Inclusive, so more than just "real gamers" can enjoy them. I want to share my favorite hobby with my wife and my son. Nothing sucks quite like seeing a trailer for a game, thinking that looks like fun, spending your money and several hours of time, only to later realize you aren't a true enough gamer to experience the rest.
hey there!! i have very similar disabilities as your son, and i've found Hades, Breath of the Wild and the Skyward Sword remaster quite friendly for me, if you think he'd enjoy those. Pokemon could be good fun, too! lots of special interest potential in those games, that's for sure. i think a lot of what can hold us back is the shame of needing help, and that we can't do what others can do so much easier. i'm 24 and i'm just making headway on that now. it's a long road, but i think with a supportive parent like you, he'll get there too. lately i've been playing through a Half-Life remaster with my girlfriend ready to take over whenever i get stuck, and we have a blast! accepting that i can't do everything and that i'm not stupid for that is so freeing, but it takes a lot of work to get there sometimes. i hope my reply wasn't invasive or anything! take care :)
@@tinycatfriend awesome, thanks so much for the recommendations! I'm so glad to hear you've found some good inclusive options for you (and those are some top notch games in any light!) I'll check a few of those out with him. Another thing we use (which sounds like how you're playing Half Life) is Xbox's copilot mode. It lets us each use a controller, but the game registers both as controller 1. So we can "pass the controller" back and forth while still holding it the whole time. I think it makes him feel more like we're doing it together and less like I'm taking the control from him, you know?
Awesome to hear your suggestions and input, and happy gaming! Good luck on Half-Life! What I've played of it before was a lot of fun.
@@EdisonCrux thank you! i've been using Parsec which is really useful for PC gaming! it's basically screen-sharing but you can give permissions to only using a gamepad, so you can either do local multiplayer or copilot a single-player game. if he has any friends he'd like to play with online, it could be a good option for him :)
@@tinycatfriend oh I've used Parsec before, that's a great idea!
@@EdisonCrux good luck!! wishing you and your son the best!!
This is the only analysis I've seen that actually takes this question seriously and comes up with a thorough and reasonable answer. Thanks for your excellent work!
Really amazing video, really opened my mind about all of this, came from Adam Millard Architect of Games
i found you back during the death stranding video and im glad to see this video pick up a little steam... keep doing what you're doing and keep getting better, can't wait to see what other ideas you've got in store!
If DS would've had the damage tweaks you mentioned, i would've finished it when i played it back in the day. And DS3 too.
I watched the video on 1.25 btw, and you got yourself a new sub
49:51 the problem with "summoning another player to fight for you" is that not everyone can afford proper internet connection, or is playing the game on the day WiFi is down, or any other connection problem. there are of course phantoms in most of the bosses, but oftentimes in my experience they were hindering my fight, or just being used as bait while I'm chipping away at the target. it's very much a so-so option, and I hope there would be a better alternative to it.
Great video! But I will admit the "PING" every time you said Difficulty and Accessibility was extremely distracting... Specially for an almost full hour video
Does he really keep it up for the whole video?! I seriously could only make it 8.5 minutes in before I gave up and just watched a different hour long video on the same topic from the sidebar. Honestly a shame, but between that obnoxious dinging and the ugly bright pink boring-ass animations this is just about unwatchable.
Love this video, but I do have a minor but important comment. The closed captions for this video cover the area of the screen where you have the word "accessibility" and part of the counter. Ironically, the lowers the accessibility of the accessibility counter, and the video, for those who need CC. Would love it if, where possible, you could keep in mind where the CC shows when deciding where to place things in your videos!
once upon a time you could drag youtube's captions to where you wanted and they'd damn well stay there for the rest of the video
good old _progress_ ladies and gents
ya gotta love it
I would say the last section, the one bringing up how for experienced Dark Souls players it's common to seek mods to make it even harder reveals an aspect that I think was largely overlooked.
Difficulty is relative. Experience is relative.
Maybe after playing it a lot you can come back and say "it's not that hard". But I don't think that this is universal.
Someone who is less skilled and has less aptitude might still struggle more even with a lower difficulty, compared to a purist experienced long-time fan. So why are the veterans breezing through it having a legitimate experience, but anyone who can't get through it unless it's easier is not legitimate?
Have you ever watched someone learning how to play games for the first time? Even among adults, and even through years of attempts, things that we take for granted as obvious conventions that we control reflexively are a huge challenge to many people.
No matter how selective you are of a target demographic, people's baseline levels of skill and reflexes, and how much they can improve at a time or at all are varied. Just saying that anyone who is not within the scope of the only possible learning curve should be ignored because they are not the intended audience is circular reasoning, and I believe it weakens the argument why the game must and can only be like this.
Sure, ultimately the developers may decide they don't want to make it different and they don't care about who gets excluded, which is their right. But that's a very different argument from the the importance of difficulty for the intended experience.
Also, I think the overlap of difficulty and accessibility in aspects like reaction time requirements was a bit glossed over.
I mentioned in the video that it barely scratches the surface, despite being an hour long. There's so much more to explore with this topic, both when making games and analyzing them
But can’t an intended audience be as specific and tiny as the developer sees fit? I could release a game that specifically caters to my own interests in the game and literally no one else in the world could like it, and that’s great. They don’t need to like it.
I agree that there needs to be open doors into gaming, but to be frank, there’s already loads of them. In fact I think the first dark souls is a fantastic example of one of those open doors. It’s really not difficult. Just takes time to learn. Like woodcarving or driving.
@@dexlovesgames_dlg Yes and no. Of cause the target group can be as small, as the developer wants it to be. But if it is "only people with two fully functional hands, 3D hearing, and neither colorblindness nor arachnophobia" there should be specific reasons for that. Otherwise the developer is either unfair, or (more likely) inconsiderate of the fact, that there are more people in this world, than them.
@@NerabossNeitluk I was mainly responding to you talking about people just getting into gaming. I don’t have any issue with accessibility options, but a game can be soul crushingly difficult (dark souls isn’t even close to what I mean) and still be very physically accessible with remapping and color filters, and audio visual adjustments to make the game possible to attempt. However it doesn’t even need to try to be mentally accessible. It’s souls crushingly difficult. Why alter that at all? I’m in the “give every game loads of audio visual adjustments and filters to make accessible game’s, but don’t change the design philosophy of the games to do it” camp.
@@dexlovesgames_dlg what about options like in Celeste's assist mode which arguably make the game easier, but might be necessary for someone with for example motor control issues. Is this changing the intent or is this making a game accessible? I don't think it's always so straightforward as you seem to be implying. Edit: "soul crushingly difficult" is also very subjective anyway.
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The word "gamer" makes my toes curl and its my one of my major hobbies. Your intro nearly killed me.
Just my two cents on the community talk at the end, there was a really big problem on PC where entire groups of hackers would specifically target new players, hack them on daily basis in the game and ruin their savefiles. I personally had to keep a lot of backups because of this. It does not help that From Soft will literally ban you if your savefile has been tampered with this way.
Yes, From Soft would ban the person affected by a hacker, not the hacker. We literally had to use mods that would keep blacklists of people who were known for this behaviour. A player should never had to do something like this.
There are also invader groups online that, for some reason, specifically attempt to lock down entire areas from new people, using the shoddy PvP system (basically being low lvl to fight new people, but having a ridiculously OP gear).
This is the Dark Souls community I have interacted with and the reason I just turn off the online, never playing with my friends/coworkers cause I just do not wanna deal with toxic and straight up damaging people who just get pleasure out of hurting other peoples fun.
It also does not help that when I was streaming my blind playthrough of Dark Souls 3, I would get my chat full of people seething at me about using a shield or using magic. Never had a similar problem with any other game or at least it was never the norm. Been streaming for five years now.
12:21 When I was in middle school I tasked myself with beating Metroid Prime 3 at every difficulty, and oh boy, the hardest part about those bosses was the fact that you had to spend more health to kill them. It didn't matter if you went hitless, you needed more health to kill them because you needed your phazon beam more. I don't exactly regret doing all those runs, but god was it infuriating.
The issue with implementing an easy mode in something like Dark Souls is naturally that no matter what, it's going to take away content from the base game to suit an audience that don't even play the series much to begin with.
Development time is always finite, when project managers identify what is needed to be achieved in the project by the projected deadline they're going to have to select what content is going to make the cut, and what content they'll work on if they have time.
Even in an instance where they take the lazy route and just amend health/damage values, that's more than an hours worth of work and can radically alter online play/the balance of factions.
...And should they take the route where they make something with care and effort like you've suggested, changing the amount or layout of enemies to still provide a challenge but provide an easier one? That's going to be a serious investment in terms of design, level planning and testing... If anything, it's as if they were making entirely different games using the same asset...
Now, think of all that time they're working on something like that... That's time they aren't working on the base game. That's time they aren't working on the core experience that you or I play and enjoy these games for. The base game is going to suffer as a result, likely with less content than we would have had if they just... Made a game for the people who want it.
It's naturally going to upset fans, especially when there's no shortage of easy and relaxing games for people who want that experience. I'm not out there demanding Animal Crossing have a Hell Permadeath mode, or Peggle consume your soul if you miss the bucket more than once a level.
This. This is the good stuff right here.
Also petition to get Kings Queens and Themperors on a t-shirt.
Glad I delivered
43:30
it actually does, things like removing the zooming-in effect during critical attacks that can cause motion sickness, making it so "ultra great" classes of weapons cann be redirected mid-attack even when locked on, changing how the camera interacts with obstacles etc...
...though yeah, it still lacks a lot in accessibility. but to say it has none is a bit hyperbolic.
Part of the issue here are the two ways to interpret "accessibility": Being accessible to people with physical impairments and being accessible to casual players who aren't up to the challenge otherwise.
A lot of the time, people argue over a word not realizing they are talking about completely different things. That's why it's important to actually listen and UNDERSTAND what the other side is saying before attempting to shoot it down.
This was a really good video. This is one of my kid's favorite games, and I have always been discouraged to try it because of the "monstrous difficulty" I kept hearing about, despite being the parent that taught the kid to play video games in the first place. I'm disabled, and I've never had the manual dexterity for hair-trigger complex move combos because my hands hate me and want me to suffer. Understanding that the difficulty is Affective and not Mechanical actually gives me hope that I will be able to enjoy it too. Does this also go for Bloodborne?
Bloodborne is between Dark Souls and Sekiro in terms of mechanical difficulty, it's more fast-paced and action oriented than Dark Souls. Its difficulty comes mainly from requiring very fast reaction time for parries. If you feel like you can enjoy Dark Souls then go for it! Also glad you enjoyed the video
Shortcut - 42:00 the main argument.
I enjoyed this thoroughly, for the most part, and am glad that the difficulty dust settled.
If you ever make another video like this, don't have a word counter be the main way of keeping the audience paying attention. It's hard even if you care about the topic.
Finally someone who shares in my struggle of fighting mogenar on hypermode difficulty. Doing the series of final bosses in prime 3 is hellish in this mode
I think whats actually missing is a more clear tutorial. The game should have locations in the beginning that trick you into learning how to do important moves, tips for fighting etc. I tried the game a bit, but failed to learn how to use move properly and which strategies to use.
Also one easy area in the beginning could do wounders.
"i want to make this video so clear that a bird will fly into it and break its neck"
I've made it to the end!... Not sure I caught all the nuance, but I got the gist of it. One day I'll rewatch this.
:)
24:24 probably the best option would be guard break, not only is it relatively quick (with ss wa) but once you begin the crit youre immune to all damage thrown at you. Also only certain weapons bounce and even then only if youre one handing, two handing a weapon will prevent your weapon from bouncing from hitting blocking enemy (you got GCFB and profaned flame and run around one handing your weapon to keep pyro in other, you should two hand your weapon unless youre ready to cast a spell at that particular moment or if one handed moveset was favorable to the situation, which it is not in this one). You can also use stoneflesh from havels shield, iron flesh pyromancy or perseverance WA's to better tank while you spank to avoid staggers and all of which reduce incoming damage, heavy weapons hyper armor drives similar purpose, undead rapportcan turn few of the knights into temporary allies and regardless of if they die or kill someone you get less enemies to deal with, you can use hidden body and or slumbering dragon ring to avoid drawing multiple enemies at once, fire storm/wrath of the gods and similar AOE spells/miracles/pyros are great at dispatching crowds like these specially when paired with the stone/iron flesh. Alluring skulls can be used to move some enemies away from an area temporarily . . . .
I still stand by the belief that ariandels first 2 areas specially are REALLY bad design in terms of introducing player to new enemies, i love these games and there are only handful of areas i always sneak/sprint past, lost izalith is one, iron passage is one, and ariandels first half is one (few more but those notable)
But to simplify what you can do to counter this encounter to just circling and slapping isnt really fair when the game offers a ton of options for players, and also shows a lack of deeper mechanical understanding which if youre making a point of a new player is fine to an extent but by the time youre supposed to play ariandel you should have started to learn these mechanics
Fantastic discussion on difficulty and accessibility. I actually made a mod for Elden Ring that adjusts a bunch of gameplay features, and this video got me thinking about how it basically fits your definition of an easy mode that keeps the overall game intact but shifts the goal of the gameplay experience. Rather than changing damage numbers, my goal was to lower the barrier to trying different things in game, thereby reinforcing the exploration aspect of Elden Ring.
If you ever have the time and interest, I'd love to get your opinion on the choices I made. It's called the Moxie Gameplay Mod on NexusMods (I'd link it but youtube wouldn't like that).
I checked out the mod and I really like the changes you made, they sound really cool and interesting to me! If I ever replay Elden Ring I'll be sure to give it a go
Dark Souls 2 actually has a mode that lets you remove enemies from encounters, basically every enemy that's not required for a puzzle has 12 lives and will be permanently gone once you exhaust them. (And for players that feel patronized by this, there's a challenge covenant that removes this tweak as well as a consumable that respawns both regular enemies and bosses in an area). The game does absolutely nothing to tell you about this (or telegraph your progress towards exhausting enemies) but once you're aware of it, it's nice to know that no matter how hard you fail, you're still making SOME sort of progress as long as you can kill at least one enemy per run.
Doesn't help with bosses too much though.
Dark souls already has an easy mode: summoning phantoms👻
As an aspiring game developer, and a souls fan that wants to see everyone succeed, this video is 👌 just what I needed today
Interested to see where this goes. I'm here from the "Fixing Crafting" video from Adam Milliard, of course.
Two minutes in, one small criticism: if you ever find yourself using the "YOU DIED" font again, consider making it slightly brighter. It's a little difficult to read the "Part 1" text, it blends in with the dark background.
One more minute in, I appreciate that the dings are mixed very low, but I'd prefer it if they faded out after the first few. They're somewhat distracting.
Partway through the video, I'm noticing that some gameplay footage is way darker and more washed out than other clips. You may want to make sure footage played behind sections talking about exploring the Dark Souls world isn't under a filter, unless there was a particular reason for this choice. That bit talking about the sublime world was also mashed together with a discussion of your hacked playthrough, which I presume may have been the source of your filtered footage, so it may have just been an dissonant microcosm of topics and stylistic choices.
Sorry for nitpicking, I hope some of it was useful. On a whole, the video was very good. This is an interesting subject, and you explored it very well. It is pretty ironic that these games that market themselves as difficult are more built around knowledge checks than skill checks. Hopefully, Elden Ring's sheer breadth of options will help alleviate this somewhat. I also agree that games, especially Japanese games, need more traditional accessibility options. Very good, subscribed, will probably work through the channel's videos.
1:25. oh my stomach the pain the agony! GREAT PUN! ! !
btw i am here from Adam and i am already glad i came 1:31 into this video.
Adam Millard - Architect of Games sent me here.
Great video!
About the "Why Darksouls?", I remember that the Megaman Zero games were seen as very difficuly and even some of the marketing made it clear and wonder why they didn't kick this trend off. When I first played DS1, I reacted just like many others and thought "This is just time based combat, where's the difficulty?". That is, until I reached Ornstein and Smough, and realized I had a lot to learn.
"the true dark souls starts here"
This video was fascinating as someone who has never felt rewarded by overcoming difficult things in games (either mechanical execution or abstract problem solving). All satisfaction for me comes from exploration, story, characters, lore and discovery. Made me think I may actually really really like the no enemies horrible existential dread version of the game honestly because people tell me the lore and atmosphere is great and I can get into that. Sucks liking games but seeing almost every mechanical challenge as an obstacle to my goal rather than the point of the game.
The "Dark Souls" of Darkfry videos
NOT THE FUCKING WATER LEVEL MUSIC.
My fucking mind was not ready.
Two step process: remove the dogs from the Capra demon fight, O&S don’t don’t go into sicko mode when the other dies
The hand in the 🤔 emoji is hard to read with it's placement on the outlines, and in the same color as the outlines.
Also, reducing the glow and using more stepped gradients between the violet and black may maintain the neon look, but improve the readability of text written using that style, by increasing contrast at the borders of the lines, and making that region more defined.
The 🤔 expression used later (33:45) is much more readable
Having a constantly onscreen, yet unobtrusive counter, without any sound queues, would be much easier to ignore.
Very good video!
One thought about difficulty in games which are nonlinear;
If a game uses difficulty to gate away content, and the game includes difficulty options you can change, it introduces ambiguity for the player when they are struggling at one challenge in the game - is this a call to reduce the difficulty, is this game too hard for me? Or have I stumbled early into a late game area and need to explore elsewhere? Or maybe I am just missing a tool of some kind that is intended to make this part easier. In some games, difficulty is one of the main ways the game indicates to you that youve strayed from the normal path. It becomes a very awkward tool in your set when difficulty levels are introduced. This makes difficulty options a tricky addition even in games that dont necessarily have difficulty as a core of their design intention, it can very much affect even games which have a more general audience approach to difficulty, if the game is nonlinear enough.
Yup! It's one of the reasons why scrutinizing/trying to change difficulty in games is such a rabbit hole. I could make a whole other video on what you're talking about for example. Super glad you enjoyed it!
I think part of "Why Dark Souls" in particular is the "git gud, scrub" meme that sprang out of the community. For as much as I've seen people say "the community is welcoming to newcomers" I've also seen people asking for help with mechanical questions (like how weight, or damage types, or certain stats work) getting told to just effectively bang their head against a wall until they work it out, or told "well figuring it out yourself is why it's fun". It might be better now but for a while there was a definite obsession with people going in completely blind and learning every single lesson the hard way. The community acting like that gave me a false impression of the game, and was one of the big reasons I didn't pick Dark Souls up until much later, when other people in my friend group played it and I saw that a game I'd written off as "clearly not for me" actually looked rad, and exactly up my alley.
Dark Souls is an interesting game where a large amount of it's difficulty comes from an initial obfuscation of it's mechanics or of it's expectations of the player. When you not only know that weapons can be upgraded, but also the fastest way to reach the NPC that can do it, the entire game becomes a lot easier. (On top of having prior knowledge of enemy layouts, attack patterns, etc.). A new player might waste their starting gifts minutes into the game, or pick the one that does nothing, while a veteran can use it to not only good effect, but bypass a significant portion of the early game. It punishes ignorance as heavily as it rewards knowledge, and being told to just "get better" without any indication of how you might learn how to learn to improve was seriously offputting and gatekeepy to a lot of people.
I watched 2 players in a friend group who are pretty equivalent in their skill at games (both fans of character action games, good reaction times etc.) play DS1, one going in completely blind and the other with tidbits and advice from their friend who had finished it, and the difference in length between their games was astounding. (And all of them are damn fast at beating the game now, one even played that "all Gwyns" version of the randomizer). Even basic advice like how weapon scaling works and interacts with upgrades (aka why Raw is bad outside specific cases), or "the pyromancy flame doesn't scale off stats, but by how much you upgraded it, so it's good for anyone" and "you'd need x more attunement for another spell slot", or "your i-frames are determined by your roll animation, also fastroll exists" are things that can make a huge difference not just in how well you can do, but also in how a player even approaches the game. The blind player, having no guidance or preconception other than being told by the general internet that "this game is punishingly difficult" ended up trying to go to the graveyard from firelink for a multiple hours after not seeing the door in the aqueduct, and only found progress after deciding to do a full sweep of the area again to see if they'd missed a secret path. After watching both, I can say that I think the gentle guidance and nudges in the right direction made for a much more enjoyable on-ramp to the series, and it confuses me why that "git gud" mentality caught on so hard. They both had to learn to overcome the challenges in front of them but one wasn't wasting hours learning the *wrong* lessons, which then had to be unlearned later
"Needing to learn how to begin learning" is a problem a few other games I can think of have had, notably Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, which is a Platinum Games character action game based around parrying enemy attacks with a tight window (that gets tighter on harder difficulty settings). Parrying is a very fun, rewarding and immensely satisfying mechanic with one problem: a lot of players had absolutely zero idea how the mechanic worked, because even the tutorial specifically for it (which was optional) was hot garbage, to the point where ChipCheezum, notable LPer and fan of both Platinum and Metal Gear games, had to make his own tutorial about the mechanic so people picking up the game because of his playthrough would be able to have fun. The game also locks the dodge move (with s and everything) behind a confusingly named unlock, and doesn't tell you how useful it is, just expecting that you'll know "it's the dodge move therefore it's vital".
I rambled a bit there, but the point is that players couldn't even begin to start learning how to perform the actions the game expected of them, because the game hadn't adequately taught them what those actions WERE, and the same is true of much of the DS series. Once you have a handle on the actual mechanics of the games, from looking them up, osmosis from watching the games like me, gradual explanation or just sheer trial and error, the games themselves aren't as demanding as a game like Revengeance on the harder difficulty settings, especially going for higher ranks (an often overlooked feature for games that leads to self-imposed difficulty and challenge, or achievement hunting, getting S-ranks in some of those stages is HARD). Dark Souls's difficulty isn't exactly the problem in my eyes, but it's onboarding definitely is (which is an kind of accessibility problem itself, people with different expectations or thought patterns, ways of approaching problems, neurodivergence etc.). And this is something that I think muddies the water a lot about talking about the difficulty of the series, actually
I don't really know what to say about the video, but I do want to feed the algorithm. Well done!
The architect of games sent me.
This video isn't a mistake. Is a good company for my daily commute
The mob that killed me the most in dark souls is probably "healing mapped on the usual hit things button".
I had a fun ride but I also had to put the controller down. I truly loved the bossfights but the platforming that is hamfisted between them is just too much of a time waste. I don't care about running through set's fortress or anor londo another time. There's no getting gud at "not being bored going through the same map for the twentiest time". It feels liek reading berserk and suddenly "Gut's falled on the wet floor next to the obvious wet floor sign because he's wearing slippers made of soap. Here's a full chapter of re-used pages while he recovers."
Fantastic video! Although I do believe that the discourse about additional difficulty options is very different when it comes to games like Pathologic and Dark Souls as opposed to Celeste.
(TL;DR at bottom)
The whole point of Celeste is overcoming your own challenge. Madeline decides to climb the mountain of her own volition, not because the world is at stake or someone forced her to. It is entirely her choice and really she could have decided to just climb halfway up the mountain and end it there. The most important detail was that she felt like she was overcoming a self-set challenge.
This perfectly parallels the actions of most players, who decide to complete the game despite its challenge on their own because they feel inspired to overcome that challenge. It is because of this that it only makes sense that some sort of assist mode makes sense because as long as players are deciding and overcoming something that is a challenge to them, they have satisfied the creative vision the developers have. If someone plays the game with as many "easifying" modifications as they can, if it feels like a challenge to them, they have had just as valid of an experience as the player who played on the base difficulty. This also explains the additional chapter sides and golden strawberries for players who would feel more accomplished with an even more difficult challenge.
At the same time, even if players decide to make the game much easier than needed and coast through it without much challenge, it's also perfectly fine within the creative vision because they may not be ready, or feel the need to overcome any challenge. This mirrors the other major character, Theo, who climbs the mountain with no desire to reach the top, for reasons that have nothing to do with overcoming challenge. Theo may one day feel the same desire Madeline had to reach the summit, or he might not, just like each player.
It would be completely counter-intuitive for one specific difficulty to be "forced" onto the player in a game like Celeste, both in terms of appealing to a larger audience and in terms of a creative vision. This is unlike Dark Souls and Pathologic whose characters and world is cruel and doesn't care what the player or characters within the world think. As such, I'm more forgiving of these games deciding not to include difficulty options whereas I applaud Celeste for its brilliant assist mode.
TL;DR: Celeste's creative vision relies on a player overcoming a challenge set by them as opposed to a challenge they are forced into, so it makes more sense for Celeste to have an assist mode, as opposed to the other games featured in this video.
Beautifully said, I completely agree
I tried Dark Souls Remastered on my switch, and hated the experience sadly not because of the challenge, that’s the point of Dark Souls. I hated it because of the button layout, having zero option to reconfigure the button layout, and lacking any other accessibility options certainly didn’t help. The Last of Us series is not a breeze in the park, but has wonderful accessibility options.
This might be a little late, but the Switch itself lets you remap buttons in the Home Screen settings menus, which might help a lot. Of course, by now you might have already found out about that feature. 😅
@@Solibrae Yeah ever since those came out I’ve actually been meaning to try Dark Souls with it!
@@HighlandHellboy That's great! I wasn't sure if that feature existed back then since I've never used it. From what I've heard, Dark Souls on Switch has a weird control layout so I probably would if I tried that version!
I have a long attention span, you’re funny, well spoken and clearly do your homework thoroughly.
But this probably took an absolute load of time, so shorter videos make sense haha
Im curious to see where this channel goes from here :)
Beautiful video. Put down my proverbial pitchfork after around 15 minutes in you said "difficulty option would make it a different game experience entirely" (I'm paraphrasing, of course), after that I went and make some warm tea with a bit of honey for this bumpy ride trying to think of a neat 'easier' mode for Dark Souls.
You convinced me to have bit of a higher standard for games to must always have accessibility options, I mostly play Japanese games and old games of the yesteryear so my standards are low when it comes to that aspect. However I just want to remind you of one *big* argument against Easy Modes specifically; it is because they take massive resources to be implemented well. Seeing as their past games _barely_ able to get finished at all (I'm looking at you Demon's Souls, Dark Souls 1 and 2), I would very much prefer that they spent their time, budget, and manpower on actually making the core intended game as good as possible rather than wasting any small precious resource they have on an easy mode.
Hi got here from Adam Millard and he was right your videos are great. You do a great job to sum it up.
Feels weird that you didn't mention Dark Souls 2 when it has the big examples you mentioned for accessibility options. Running has a toggle option (on pc) and while it has a different approach to ambushes than DS3, there's an item that gives you a noticeable audio cue that there are enemies close by.
So below I wrote out a point that irked me in response to the sentiment that including an "easy mode" is not a necessity, but I wanted to state a handful of caveats before I am misinterpreted:
1) I am also a game designer & actually generally above average in terms of skill & patience, but I am not a monolith. No one is.
2) I understand the idea that it shouldn't be a _requirement,_ even if I think artistic intent/vision is... Kind of a dumb argument in its favour.
2a) A deeper/more complex point is here, summarized with "Every copy of the game isn't shipped with you to explain your precious vision."
3) Saying that we should commend designers who _choose_ to include difficulty options for purposes of accessibility is [chef's kiss]
4) Agreed! Accessibility does not equate wholly to having Difficulty sliders in your game. You covered this well.
5) something something not actually mad, something something this video is well-crafted.
*THE "NECESSITY" RANT*
Saying that accessibility options (in regards to difficulty) is not a _necessity_ is a point in and of itself that feels like the foundation of a bad faith argument. Sure, it isn't a necessity... But neither is including various colourblind modes, if your "target audience" is folks that have a set of fully operational cones in their eyes. With this argument you can easily make the next step of "Therefore, we shouldn't put expectations on designers to put these options in their games, as a means to secure their artistic intent."
Let's take the extreme of this argument and stretch it out: It isn't a necessity for FromSoft to include Xbox and Playstation control mappings for their games, so why should they if (in this hypothetical world) FromSoft believes their games should only ever be played on Mouse+Keyboard? Its not a necessity, so why do people expect it? Because doing so would make the game harder and less accessible to most, right?
Ah, but it isn't a necessity, so we shouldn't ever include controller options for Dark Souls, everyone should have to use Keyboard and Mouse _AND_ they shouldn't be allowed to change the Keybinds (no matter how byzantine) because if you don't want that... Then clearly the game wasn't made for you. Oh, but you like the idea of Dark Souls yet don't have the time or capacity to memorize all these unintuitive mappings of controls which feel so unnecessarily obtuse and frustrating? Too bad, the game isn't for you! You don't deserve it, if you're not willing to invest that much into it.
Look... I agree that most of the games made by FromSoft aren't "Difficult" in the way most people expect when regarding that word's definition within the cultural zeitgeist. It does indeed call upon more elements of patience and persistence, but the means in which it does that is often times ones that are infuriating for folks that don't have the means to invest a significant portion of their mental capacity and lifespan just to have a similar experience.
An experience, might I add, that would likely be soured upon reflection due to feeling that a lot of the ways the game "challenged" them was through means which felt needlessly unfair, or extremely apathetic & obtuse. Patience isn't _always_ a virtue.
PLEASE DO MAKE VIDEOS AS LONG AS THIS ONE THEY BANG
it's hard...
There are already easy modes in Souls games.
- Play a mage
- Summon a co-op partner
- Overlevel
- Run past hard encounters because you can literally outrun 99% of the enemies and they won't follow you far
I think another problem with giving players unlimited difficulty sliders ala Celeste is that players will literally optimize the fun out of their own experience, it's one of the biggest trappings of game design. Protecting players from themselves. And when it comes to difficulty, there's a number of experiences I could have seen myself missing out on because I wouldn't have been self-motivated to push myself to overcome the challenge. NKG in Hollow Knight is a good example; I was so frustrated fighting him that I almost certainly would have reduced the difficulty, but beating him gave me such a sense of accomplishment and triumph that I totally would have missed.
Edit: to be clear, I know you address this with the Mark Brown and "should" segments. So idk why I wrote this but here's some engagement
I don't mind when difficulty options are there but I HATE it when the game allows you to change it anytime midgame.
Something to note is how non-gamers don't have the skill needed to press 2 buttons at the same time. They just can't. Ask your mom, dad, friends or co-workers who don't play games to play any non-casual game. For example - I once asked a friend to play Shovel Knight. They jumped THEN pressed and held down the forward button.
Think of any casual game - Candy Crush, Angry Birds, Minesweeper, Patience. NONE OF THOSE GAMES REQUIRE 2 OR MORE BUTTONS TO BE PRESSED AT THE SAME TIME. It's a massive barrier gap between gamers and non-gamers. It's insane how restrictive this makes non-gamers to play games.
The arguments around (40:35) sound a lot like how new authors and poets talk about not dumbing down their writing style, just so more people can understand them.
The counter is that: the less understandable a work's intent is, the fewer people will be able to engage with it; but that won't stop people from trying, and coming away with an incorrect or incomplete message.
Also, there seems to me to be conflict between "players will play your game however they want to" and "the artist has complete control within the medium".
That character reminds me of a cross between Homestar Runner and it’s Teen Girl Squad. Diggin the nostalgia factor.
And leave the difficulty alone. They saw a market and crushed it. Besides, for those who take a minute and think, there ARE ways to make easy modes. At least there are for PvE.
PvP, you’re on your own. Best of luck.
It already has an easy mode: the co-op summon system.
incredibly fantastic video! I really enjoyed how you addressed both sides effectively
Any conversation about the relative toxicity of the soulsborne communities is incomplete without mentioning the hellish plague of “git gud” and/or “skill issue” that they unleashed upon the world
You didn't ding on all of the "Difficulty" mentions and I have serious doubts that your counter is accurate, and this is at the forefront of my mind and distracted me. D:
Wow that was a long, well structured and objective essay. I'll check out other videos and consider subscribing if the topics are interesting to me
Thanks for the shoutout Dark! This video also kicks a lot of ass.
I had no idea that animal crossing was going to turn up. But I remember thinking to myself how difficult animal crossing was compared to dark souls at the introduction to this video. 44.05
Awesome video, didn't think it would go into the direction it did but I'm glad it did.
The good ole bait & switch
Was just minding my own business when I hit this video and snapped my neck. Otherwise pretty good video. Definitely got me to think about the topic very differently than I used to.
The video was too clear for you
@@Darkfry Yeah maybe next time use some more jargon, or if you wanna on the safe side: abbreviations
If you're promising not to make a video this long again because it took a lot out of you, that's perfectly reasonable. However, if you're worried about the length being an issue because no one wants to WATCH a video this long, I personally am quite fond of long-form video essays like this. And I'm sure everyone subscribed to Joseph Anderson would agree with me.
You do you though. Just felt I should mention this. Nice video, good topic, everything you said made good sense.
the dinging every time was so hard to listen to :pensive:
hey, the Architect of Games pointed the way here
I'm only 10 minutes in and already loving your work here
edit: overall very meticulous video. I did previously think that designers can make games as difficult as they want and players should be able to play them however they want, and that accessibility is absolutely essential. I do think games in general should have a sort of sandbox/debug mode and mod support for people to absolutely mess everything up.
I don't really see an issue with people short-circuiting difficulty by taking an easier route because IMO players will ALWAYS play in ways that adjust experienced difficulty, I think cheese strats and challenges are universal, I once heard someone claim that Miyazaki said there's no cheating in Dark Souls because everything is ok play. I think Dark Souls' message system does a great job of conveying useful information for said cheese strats for players who don't want or can't summon others.
Yay! Hope ya stick around
Just make a peaceful mode where you can look at the enemies and NPCs and bosses without having to fight anyone. For game tourists.
Dark Souls 3 easy mode options:
+ Make hitboxes actually match graphics
+ Expand parry timing a bit
+ Perhaps make parryable attacks easy to identify (because why the hell do I need to trial and error that anyway)
+ Increase dodge speed slightly
Because the answer to the question "Why is Dark Souls difficult?" boils down to "because the combat is unforgiving AND challenging to master". So difficulty can be reduced not just by making things less punishing (less damage, fewer enemies, etc.). It's also effective to make it easier to learn and master the mechanics. Make it more obvious what to dodge and what to parry, make it easier to figure out when to dodge/parry to avoid getting hit, so that the player can learn and develop to not need those training wheels anymore. Heck, plenty of challenging games work hard to train you early on just so you don't bounce off them before developing basic competency. There's a fine line between "Easy mode" and "Tutorial for normal difficulty"
Often, when people complain about some part of a game being "too hard" - the response of "just do X" is met with "and how was I supposed to know that?" -- The issue was not that it was too unforgiving, but that mastery was locked behind a poorly communicated mechanic or technique. So, keep the mechanics, just make them less obtuse, and easier to learn/master.