the thing i find so funny about the from software difficulty mode argument is that because it became this weird gamer shibboleth no one ever makes it from the other side. no one ever says dark souls needs a hard mode.
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Tried that, and now he's growing a crap load of corn and leading to things like colony collapse in bees, and over polution of rivers, and all sorts of problems. Maybe teach man a lesson in not living in excess.
I mean, there *kind of* is in the sense that people say every souls game before the current one is too easy now and want the next game to be harder so they continue to be challenged. (Which I think has become the worst thing about the series but no one cares about that)
i guess because its already a feature, there are oftenly special items that increase game difficulty. calamity ring in ds1, covenant of champions in ds2, demon bells in sekiro...
I’ve always felt like Fromsoft games implement playstyles as a form of difficulty selection. Magic and summons don’t require you to engage as directly with a lot of obstacles, albeit the game really doesn’t communicate these options well to the majority of new players.
That being said, I totally support them adding an easy mode if that’s something they ever decide upon. It’s incredibly cringe when people act like that would destroy the integrity of their accomplishments or whatever.
Oh, and as a side-note Sekiro does actually have multiple difficulty modifiers like you mention. Demon bell and going charmless in NG+ are highly intentional ways of ramping up the challenge.
I feel like people say this about all of FROMsoft but this really stops being true after DS2. Bloodborne's only magic build is difficult and clunky, DS3 & Elden Ring's bosses have tons and tons of way to even the playing field against casters, it is not the easy mode button.
Yeah this is valid. Magic in those early titles was especially broken and now bosses actually have gap closers to stop you from just sniping them. I think in general though, magic still makes mob encounters tremendously easier and can allow you to engage with a lot of bosses in a generally safer way
I’ve done a FTH only run for Elden Ring and it varies by boss lol. There are certainly a few that are just super relentless and don’t give tons of casting opportunities.
The only reason why Miyazaki hasn’t added a hard mode to Souls games yet is because around 80% of his customer base would collectively shit themselves to death over sheer excitement
Fun fact - Ds2 and sekiro already did have hard modes, but you needed to go to a particular location in game to trigger it. Sorta like how easy mode in the game works with different items - it takes a little work to get said item. It's not a toggle in a menu ui
Yea, I feel ya. It feels like some of the newer Pokémon games are only worth it if someone is into competitive. At least there's really good rom hacks for the old ones ig
It is an undeniable fact of the universe that there are gamers out there so obsessed with difficulty that they won't be happy until a permadeath mode that reformats your hard drives, but not before posting your porn folder/views to your social media and tagging your parents
The way I see it is: is it needed? Not really, try as hard as you can and If you can’t then so be it. Would it be nice to add it? 100%. Extra difficulties/features are never gonna hinder the game experience. You choose how hard you want it to be, and if you want to use those features or not.
Scholar of the First Sin is arguably a hard mode version Dark Souls 2 and people comeplain about that but that could also be a DS2 thing
But like people understand the game isn't designed to have a difficulty setting
if you can't choose it on first playthrough then it's not really what the conversation is about imo. nobody's out there complaining that hell or hell in DMC3 is too hard for first time players.
That’s where mods come in! Randomizers make things a hell of a lot more interesting, but there are also complete overhauls to the series. Ascension for DS1 is the 1st to come to mind
I think it is because what makes souls games difficult is not easy to scale, if you change the damage or the hp of the bosses it won't be more fun. You will need to change the movements, attacks, etc and that would be another boss.
I always mention now, when I talk about difficulty settings, that it would allow gamers to do harder modes easier.
If there’s an invincibility mode, there should be a one hit mode. There could be a capped level 1 setting. It can and should go both ways if the devs are really aware of the settings
Dark Souls has a hard mode, it's called having kids lmao. My brother recently got into the games finally, and I have to say, after playing those games with a baby and a puppy in the room... that's truly hard mode.
i'd say DaS1 has plenty of hard modes:
- daggers
- whips
- not knowing how scaling works
it doesn't need hard/easy bc the difficulty is just not designed at all and is a consequence of the design being kinda half assed, it's a game about avoiding its friction, not dealing w/ it
I don’t think they need easy or hard mode. One purposely crafted difficulty level is better for these types of games. The difficulty modifier is the weapon/build you use.
Dark Souls does have a hard mode. You just have to “be a sinner” or whatever and not be forgiven. It makes the game functionally more difficult and isn’t considered a challenge run.
Lacking a pause function isn't "difficulty". The fact you can tumble off every ledge isn't "difficulty". The fact you're actually playing against the BY DESIGN incredibly bad combat system, not enemies, isn't "difficulty".
It's inconvenience. And this hurts the games even as it helps them.
It just reflects the intentionally throwback design philosophy, intentionally creating limitations to the player's options for them to then design around. The "inconvenience" is also the thing that makes it engaging, as is the case with literally any game meant to be more than a mere distraction
But also, the likes of DMC, Horizon, and...almost every single game made in the past 30 years BESIDES the Souls games proves you don't need to do this to be engaging.
Ignoring decades of development is a choice, and it DOES harm Souls games in really obvious ways even as it makes them so good.
Also, for what it's worth, my favorite Souls in particular is 2, because I think it's the one that distinguishes itself the most from every other game in that franchise and the larger meta-franchise, by de-emphasizing the action parts in favor of the RPG ones so much more
It just means that there can be no "universal" strategy of game design to please everyone, that's all. For my part, I would never have expected Dark Souls to become more than a niche cult classic, and I'm rather surprised it did.
I'm not (if disappointed in some of its fans), but that's because I remember what those old Mario games felt like to play when you had no frame of reference for that experience.
Classics are classic for a reason, and Fromsoft understood what they were doing pulling them into the modern world again.
You don't need to do it to be engaging, no, but it means that the engagement will be of a different nature, and given that engagement and friction are two sides of the same phenomenon in the same way inertia and momentum are, no matter what kind of engagement you choose it will come with drawbacks
I agree Bloodborne was the best, and I suppose I can't argue with the rest of your point because I agree on the premise and simply disagree in terms of taste
Well personal taste is extremely valid. It's what has me arguing since like 2013 that no single game has hit the environmental peak they did in Demon's Souls. Even its own remake didn't manage that.
but like. think of how much more interesting challenge runs could be if there were more universally designed difficulty options or modifiers, rather than purely making you restrict your level or toolset. what if they put the draconian quest system in elden ring
All of which is to say I think there would have to be some absolutely nonsense obscure npc called the "Architect of Scales" who can gradually and incrementally adjust the "properties of reality" or some shite
What always gets me is the implication that making an "easy" version of Dark Souls would be simple to make and that the resulting game experience would still be good. Never any concern or thought to the artists making the game or their reasons for making it.
artist intent doesn't matter when they take money for the product, which in this case is fascinating because they'd get more money out of adding accessibility features.
I'm not sure how charging money for a product rids it of artistic intent. Are movies not art because we charge money for them? I'm not understanding your view.
As an old man with arthritic hands who doesn’t play video games except for Elden Ring, I think the in game features are great for difficulty sliders. And I’ve beaten pre-patch consort Radahn, Malenia, and base game pre-patch Radahn, with summons, of course. Hard mode is the speed run community.
Easy Mode / Accessibility Ideas: -Boss has an indicator for when they (FINALLY) attack.
-Adjusted Health Bars
-A JOURNAL
-Sound indicators for D/deaf and Hearing Impaired players.
-Extra Hard Mode where FromSoft sends an employee to smack your forearm with a ruler every time you get hit/die.
What's interesting with From Software games is that, by not trying to appeal to everybody, they ended up doing just that. And now they have a much wider audience than most modern games.
There is clear lessons to learn here.
Its probably because essentially the same argument that can be used to say it doesn't need an easy mode still applies, difficulty can be tweaked by how the player uses the mechanics (IE, SL1 runs).
I think hard modes make a lot more sense than easy modes, anything an easy mode does it's done better by a cheat system like in celeste but a hard mode it's like a replay value thing
But also hard modes for Dark Souls don't need to exist since people impose that upon themselves by like cutting off their finger or whatever, so the market doesn't need to be satisfied
Which yes is what makes the argument a shibboleth since people who like the game don't ask for a hard mode, whereas outsiders ask for an easy mode. Great word btw.
Doesn’t going into new game+ up the difficulty? There are plenty of things gamers can do to make the game harder but only a few to make it easier. A know level 1 clears were a bit popular with hard core gamers. Can’t get much harder than that.
Minecraft is kind of a bad example, but it's such a ubiquitous experience that it translates well enough to each other game out there and most gamers get what I mean.
What’s funny is that NG+ doesn’t really even get tougher than NG until you’re like 6 runs deep. NG+1/2/3 are walks in the park mostly compared to NG due to the amount of tools and stats you have the whole way through.
I already took the screenshots but i'd reword "keep up" to something like "it asks you learn faster" or "it's stricter about you needing to learn these lessons"
this is more or less because people mostly argue from an accessibility standpoint. Nobody needs a challenge mode because you can already just do that. It would be nice ig but it's not something that's really needed by anyone.
So much of the difficulty of the Soulslikes is in working out patterns and exploiting them that literally any encounter can just be brute-forced until you get the prompts right. And pretty much the only change has been making the prompts faster/harder to anticipate.
I’ve seen takes like this before and I’ve always found them reductive. A ton of games can be described as working out patterns through repetition until you succeed. Souls games just place a greater thematic focus on the failure aspect. I’m not sure what the solution being proposed here is.
The core boss design across Demons’ Souls, Dark Souls 1, Bloodborne, Dark Souls 3, Sekiro, and Elden Ring reflect their respective games. The bosses have gotten faster yes, but it’s really not charitable to suggest that’s either the only prominent change or a change to create artificial difficulty
That *is* true, they ramped up the AOE/pit trap stuff in a big way in Erdtree/Scadutree, that's my bad.
But even fighting Mohg or Friede isn't like trying to beat a Splatoon player before it paints you into a corner or anything. Plenty of room for further growth and complexity.
Elden Ring as a whole moves towards making the bosses closer to something like Sekiro, which I appreciate. I think the biggest issues I would currently present are that jumping attacks aren’t always very readable and that stance damage really needs to be shown somehow with how essential it is.
Yeah, that's one thing you really start to feel in the later games as it moves away from that whole "win by knowing where things are" deal in King's Field and toward more standard action-RPG "Ow, my elemental weakness!" stuff.
Just add a poise meter! It could be silver or something, it's fine.
I’d agree with some specific examples in Shadow of the Erdtree. Final boss was god awful at launch but that fortunately got fixed a fair deal afterwards. Most of them are fairly overblown though imo.
I'm thinking mainly of bosses like Gaius or that centipede woman, who could really benefit from more dimensions to their fights but can't get them since it's all tied up in timing your dodges.
Yep, and this only feels hard because most bosses are so lethal that you can only learn a little each time.
The way I would make it easier while still being fun is giving both the player and the boss a lot more health. So the required efficiency is the same, but you get more practice per iteration.
I personally liked how Jedi Survivor allowed me to tweak the parry timings and health of my opponents.
Playing on Jedi Master the game felt challenging, but I could manage by using different approaches.
I had to tune it down to Knight once you fight in the Library, since your toolset is so limited.
Seeing how people describe the Grandmaster difficulty in line with Soulsborne, I'd say options like that should be in more games. Making enemies more or less spongy is easy and boring, but adjusting reaction times or parry windows while still being deadly is a nice solution.
i remember seeing someone say that the ftc should make fromsoft implement an easy mode. idk if they were being serious but at least someone's suggesting action
Idk I had a way harder time with Elden ring bosses than just about anything else in their entire catalogue. My top 10 difficulty list is the sekiro last boss, bloodborne fish man, and then like 8 Elden ring bosses.
I did an entire SL1
No Running/Rolling/Items/Shields/Sorceries/Pyromancies/Miracles/Summons/Backstepping/Sliding 2Handed Reinforced Club run in Dark Souls 1 and never had an issue with boss runbacks the entire time until the Kiln of the First Flame. Got any in mind?
Yeah, that's a good point. It's not the game's fault if you don't utilize what it offers. The argument bothers me because it just sounds like people don't want to learn how to play the game.
A good amount of non-Souls players would just want to play Elden Ring Walking Simulator and not interact with the combat system at all and instead just enjoy the world building and exploration.
I agree on the whole though an issue with it is how little info the game actually gives you on these sorts of things. I usually advise players who wouldn't give it a go due to difficulty to use a guide, not for the levels but just for anything that is confusing them!
Honestly, that's one of the things they should have brought over from Dark Souls 2.
a)There was a covenant you could join that made the whole game harder as long as you were in it.
b)You could burn a bonfire ascetic at any bonfire to move that area + 1 on new game plus. (And NS+ was better in DS2.)
as someone whos disabled and struggles with hand mobility and coordination + having slow reaction timing i really struggle playing the souls games but i really like them which sucks because i want to play as much as everybody else who isn't physically impeded but i have to mod the game to do so...
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There's always challenge runs too lol
But like people understand the game isn't designed to have a difficulty setting
https://darksouls2.wiki.fextralife.com/Company+of+Champions
Likewise bloodborne new game plus is the hard mode, new game is the easy mode.
If there’s an invincibility mode, there should be a one hit mode. There could be a capped level 1 setting. It can and should go both ways if the devs are really aware of the settings
- daggers
- whips
- not knowing how scaling works
it doesn't need hard/easy bc the difficulty is just not designed at all and is a consequence of the design being kinda half assed, it's a game about avoiding its friction, not dealing w/ it
Souls games are not, by and large "Hard". They're inconvenient.
They're all barely more mechanically complex than Super Mario with modern graphics. That's what makes them engaging.
It's inconvenience. And this hurts the games even as it helps them.
Ignoring decades of development is a choice, and it DOES harm Souls games in really obvious ways even as it makes them so good.
It's a shame it ran into so much development trouble, some of the cut content in there looks like it could have been amazing.
Classics are classic for a reason, and Fromsoft understood what they were doing pulling them into the modern world again.
Or more accurately Symphony of the Night.
Demon's Souls was the most honest of them. Bloodborne was the best.
Dark Souls 2 basically has two "just make it harder options" but you have to be in the game first and they're not labelled as such.
I play games to de-stress not add more.
-Adjusted Health Bars
-A JOURNAL
-Sound indicators for D/deaf and Hearing Impaired players.
-Extra Hard Mode where FromSoft sends an employee to smack your forearm with a ruler every time you get hit/die.
There is clear lessons to learn here.
Like Minecraft but you have 1 heart at all times, the mob speed is increased by 2x and you can never sleep so phantoms swoop you constantly.
PS4 is Bloodborne and DS3.
But even fighting Mohg or Friede isn't like trying to beat a Splatoon player before it paints you into a corner or anything. Plenty of room for further growth and complexity.
Just add a poise meter! It could be silver or something, it's fine.
The way I would make it easier while still being fun is giving both the player and the boss a lot more health. So the required efficiency is the same, but you get more practice per iteration.
Playing on Jedi Master the game felt challenging, but I could manage by using different approaches.
I had to tune it down to Knight once you fight in the Library, since your toolset is so limited.
No Running/Rolling/Items/Shields/Sorceries/Pyromancies/Miracles/Summons/Backstepping/Sliding 2Handed Reinforced Club run in Dark Souls 1 and never had an issue with boss runbacks the entire time until the Kiln of the First Flame. Got any in mind?
Just farm a few levels, upgrade your gear, buy new spells...
In these games I love to become OP and rofl-stomp everything
Having a hard time? Give yourself more health and defense. Upgrade your damage. There's your difficulty slider.
Stop acting like someone is forcing you to play like a streamer doing challenges😬
a)There was a covenant you could join that made the whole game harder as long as you were in it.
b)You could burn a bonfire ascetic at any bonfire to move that area + 1 on new game plus. (And NS+ was better in DS2.)
On the other hand, more options never hurt anyone.