All difficult games should have an easy mode for accessibility.
Signed, a Dark Souls enjoyer.
Honestly… I disagree. What is accessibility? Every souls game has been beaten with dance pads, rock band drum kits and guitars. They’re also frequently beaten by people with serious disabilities using specialized controllers. Input speed is not an issue here, Souls has always been about carefully choosing your moves to manage the end lag and stamina cost of your actions. It’s about making the right move, not about moving quickly or pressing a lot of buttons at once.
IMHO, accessibility is frequently cited as an excuse for lower difficulties here, when in reality the difficulty isn’t a serious part of the barrier for disabled players. It could use better accessibility options, like configurable colourblind modes, audio indicators, more configurable text size, some kind of clear colour indicators on attacks for low vision, but difficulty? No.
There are also lots of good reasons not to add explicit difficulty options, which is y’know, why From Soft haven’t done it yet.
Accessibility isn’t just a case of ‘accessible to the handicapped’, man.
That’s a fair argument then, but… this is literally what accessibility means, whether or not you can “access” the thing.
If someone isn’t willing to invest the time or frustration into Souls, then fair enough, but that’s a matter of priorities/convenience, not a matter of accessibility.
Also, frankly, the difficulty of Souls for regular people is insanely overblown. Stuff like “Prepare to Die” is just a marketing gimmick, and the games have become substantially easier and more flexible over time. Like in Elden Ring, where you can leave bosses for later, and can frequently just bypass them entirely, experiment with an insane variety of builds, use effective ways to grind ridiculous amounts of souls, and just generally become ridiculously powerful. They’ve done essentially everything but creating an explicit “easy mode” to make the game playable for as many people as possible. If you want an easy mode, basically every souls game has builds or guides that function as that easy mode.
Difficulty counts as an access barrier. You always have to consider that there are people who, for whatever reason, have a skill capacity that is lower than required for the game in question. And for those people the game will be inaccessible.
Time is also an accessibility factor. If a person with a disability or lower skill has to grind and extend the playtime for 3-4x what a normal player would have, that’s not inaccessible but it’s less accessible comparatively. Especially if that kills the fun.
That being said obviously these things can be tweaked within reason and the problem can’t be solved for every player unfortunately. And they don’t need to be. Some games can just be too hard for some players.
The ultimate point for me just seems to be that the community needs to be listened to. You shouldn’t ever be in the positions as a dev where you are telling disabled or low skill gamers to get good or no dice. If a large portion of people are saying “I’d love to enjoy the art you’ve made, but I can’t. My disability/inability is stopping me” then I’d change my approach.
I think there is a balance that can be struck, grinding is one of the balances and you’re right there are ways to make those games easier that way. But the other people are also right, the games need to be hard sometimes. I just want people to stop being dismissive of people who want to enjoy the same entertainment and art but can’t just because of difficulty.
Apologies in advance for the essay lol, Souls is one of my favourite franchises, and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking and talking about these games.
You always have to consider that there are people who, for whatever reason, have a skill capacity that is lower than required for the game in question.
I don’t think Souls requires any amount of skill beyond just… basic understanding of how to control a 3D character. They even tutorialize that, actually. Everyone starts somewhere, I personally got thrashed immediately after the tutorial in Dark Souls 1, and it took me hours to beat the first proper boss, with many deaths to regular enemies. Like any good video game, Souls teaches you the skills you need progressively, and gets gradually harder and asks more of the player over time. It’s not like just starting Guitar Hero on the highest difficulty, the game is balanced for anyone.
Time is also an accessibility factor.
I don’t actually think these games require an excessive time investment. Howlongtobeat puts Dark Souls Remastered’s Main Story at 30 hours. Even if you’re somehow spending 4x that time, that still only puts it at 120 hours, which isn’t unreasonable, lots of games have runtimes around that length.
I also take issue with the idea that you can consistently take 3-4x longer than most. In reality, you only get seriously walled a handful of times learning the game, and surpassing those tough challenges teaches you how to play. For example, in Sekiro, I got walled for hours on one of the games earliest minibosses, but once I got a solid enough grasp on the game to beat him, I wasn’t seriously walled like that again for several hours of gameplay. Getting stuck just means there are lessons you’re learning, and you tend to remember what you struggled hard to learn.
The ultimate point for me just seems to be that the community needs to be listened to.
A key part of developing anything for millions of people is that you have to learn what feedback to take and how to implement it properly. From Soft absolutely has listened to their community. First of all, there’s a vocal community that doesn’t want difficulties, which is what this whole post is joking about. I’d argue From Soft have done a phenomenal job of listening to their audience, and catering to the niche of people that want a tough, unyielding experience is how they’ve slowly built themselves into the multi-GotY juggernaut they are now.
But second of all, they’ve put a ton of effort into introducing ways to make the game easier. In Sekiro, if you’re hard stuck on a boss, tough luck, that game is mostly linear, and has key story moments that leave you no alternatives but to “git gud”. In Elden Ring, you can go elsewhere to learn the game more against a different boss, level up, and come back. In most cases, you don’t even need to come back. You can also explore different builds, respec your character, try a different weapon or spell or summon, summon a friend in multiplayer, go find more equipment, anything.
And personally, I really preferred Sekiro, it’s my favourite game they’ve ever made. I got stuck for hours on every key boss, and that game absolutely wiped the floor with me. It has barely any buildcraft, you truly do just have to “git gud”. And the purity of that experience really speaks to me and what I want out of a game. There’s no “questioning if I’m doing it wrong”, I just need to get in there and learn the required skills head on.
Ultimately, I’m really just tired of being villainized (not that your comment is doing that, to be clear) for wanting some games to pursue a single well-crafted and balanced hard experience that challenges me to push myself, when basically everything else on the market is pursuing the widest audience possible, with aggressive hints telling you how to do puzzles before you can even think, and several difficulty options that make things incredibly easy, at the cost of the harder difficulties usually being poorly balanced and uneven. I’m not going around saying every Mario game needs to be a Kaizo, with no way to tone it down, but it feels like many are coming to my favourite games and telling me they’re bad for being what I love.
Especially when I feel like From Soft is hitting that balance you’re talking about, and giving the player lots of options, but some people will seemingly just never be satisfied until they can choose “Easy” from the start screen. I don’t feel like me or From Soft is being dismissive when there are an abundance of accommodations and options to make things easier, you just need to actually engage with the game to use them.
I don’t think Souls requires any amount of skill beyond just… basic understanding of how to control a 3D character.
That’s obviously not true. Try playing an FPS with a mouse and keyboard vs controller and you’ll see understanding how to do something theoretically is less than half the battle. Say someone is missing arms so plays with their feet, it is far far more difficult to get a higher level of precision, and some people just won’t be able to no matter the amount of practice. People have a peak of reaction time no matter the amount of practice, and its different for different people. People have a peak of ability to move with precision no matter the amount of practice(see dyspraxia). People have shakes that cannot be controlled no matter the amount of practice.
I also take issue with the idea that you can consistently take 3-4x longer than most. In reality, you only get seriously walled a handful of times learning the game, and surpassing those tough challenges teaches you how to play. For example, in Sekiro, I got walled for hours on one of the games earliest minibosses, but once I got a solid enough grasp on the game to beat him, I wasn’t seriously walled like that again for several hours of gameplay. Getting stuck just means there are lessons you’re learning, and you tend to remember what you struggled hard to learn.
Ignoring that that experience just isn’t fun for a lot of people, you’re using your own experience of your own ability.
Ultimately, I’m really just tired of being villainized (not that your comment is doing that, to be clear) for wanting some games to pursue a single well-crafted and balanced hard experience that challenges me to push myself,
… It doesn’t detract from your experience at all to add an optional mode for quick save or other similar features.
Accessibility is literally how this thread started. I also disagree that the game requires a high degree of precision. Dark Souls originally came out with only 8-directional rolling, which you could do on a D-Pad, Fight Stick, or any other accessible controller. There’s no FPS-style aiming or anything, and again, you can find challenge runs of people beating the game while wearing oven mitts and other such shenanigans. The series main difficulty is in making the right decisions with the committed attack animations, end lag, and stagger mechanics, not quick reactions or precise inputs, although I’ll absolutely grant that the combat has become faster over time. Not that you can’t conquer the game with good buildcraft anyway, check out an “all hit run” for ways to beat Elden Ring while literally not dodging any attacks.
Ignoring that that experience just isn’t fun for a lot of people, you’re using your own experience of your own ability.
Sure, but skills and muscle memory are skills and muscle memory. Unless you’re referring to learning disabilities, people improve at things with practice, and time spent practicing the combat will make you better at the combat.
… It doesn’t detract from your experience at all to add an optional mode for quick save or other similar features.
I’ve also replied to that in this thread. But I’ll also add that something like a quick save is very different from adding a new scaled difficulty option, and Souls already implements a wealth of options to make the game easier. Adding another option in that same vein is a separate conversation from adding an Easy Mode.
P.S. I don’t mean to be snarky by linking my own comments. It’s understandable that you wouldn’t constantly be re-reading every comment I’ve made on this thread before replying, but I am getting a bit fatigued after debating this all day with Lemmy, and don’t feel a need to re-hash the same arguments here.
Accessibility also includes time constraints. You say yourself, it took you hours to get to a point where you could get through the game, let alone the hours it takes to just pass through the game with that aside. I personally missed out on a lot of Fromsoft’s stuff because, at the time, I was working 70+ hours a week, with 3 hours of commuting. I would have loved to spent some of the little free time I had putzing around in those games, an experience their art. However, I never had the time to spend double digit hours honing skills, just to get through the game in a reasonable time frame. Sure, now that I don’t work like that, I prefer games with high difficulty, doesn’t mean that when I play those games, now that I have time, I still don’t wish I had that access back then. If you can access a broader audience by offering a selected difficulty, why not? Many games with the highest skill ceilings have, traditionally, had difficulty modes, no on talks shit on all the boomer shooters for having easy/hard/harder/nightmare modes.
Mmm, I feel like under heavy time constraints like that, there are worse barriers than difficulty to a game’s experience. For example, it’s hard to appreciate a narrative and big reveals when you’re spreading your play out so much that it’s hard to remember who characters are. It’s also hard to enjoy exploring a large space, and feeling like you’ve covered it well.
Elden Ring, for example, is a massive game. I soared through Elden Ring, as I played the whole franchise (besides what’s locked to PlayStation) first, and happened to stumble into an extremely powerful build. The game still took me 140 hours, including the DLC.
I also still don’t think it’s an accessibility constraint. I’d totally understand why you don’t want to commit to a 150hr experience when you’re playing less than 3hrs a week, you’d be stuck on it for a whole year. But learning over time in little pieces is totally viable. Stuff like muscle memory and skill sticks with you, I could put down Souls for the next few years and when I came back I’d still be much better at it than when I first sat down.
Also, I actually find small time slots one of the best ways to conquer a tough challenge. When I get hard stuck, like I did on the final boss of the ER DLC, I chose to play like, 20 minutes of attempts a night, and then go to bed and sleep on it. We know from academia that studying something right before you sleep helps, since your brain can lock that fresh experience into memory better. You’re also starting each attempt “fresh”, in that you aren’t already frustrated and annoyed by the boss. And this worked great, it took a boss that I couldn’t beat with a whole free evening, and I beat it after only a few days. It’s a technique I’ve used repeatedly.
All that to say, I don’t think difficulty is the best reason to not play a Souls game while working 70+ hour weeks. And I don’t think it’s exclusive to Souls, I’d also avoid story-heavy JRPGs, and massive open worlds in general. Not that you couldn’t sacrifice the time to play any of those things, but frankly, I’d recommend a game that’s better consumed in bits and pieces, such as GotY nominee Balatro, a competitive multiplayer game with constrained matches, or a roguelike experience such as Hades. And that’s not that odd, I also wouldn’t recommend reading an epic novel like Dune, or trying to binge Game of Thrones or something.
My honest take on your story, is that I’m really glad Souls didn’t have an easy mode for you at that time. As you say, you prefer games with high difficulty now. I would hate for you to have played a compromised version of what From Software carefully designed here, when the intended experience ultimately really worked for you. It’s the same reason I avoid trailers for games I know I want to play, that is, if you would’ve even came back to replay a game you’d already “beaten”.
In other comments, I’ve already talked about my friend who only played games on easy before playing Souls, which made him realize how much he enjoyed hard games and the rest of beating a tough challenge. He fell in love with the experience From Software set out to make. If DS1 had had an easy mode at that time, I’m not sure he would’ve ever learned that about himself, because he would’ve played it on easy. He might’ve enjoyed the art, and the visual design of the creatures, but it’s only because From Software had the confidence to assert their intended vision that it’s his favourite game and franchise ever made.
Your first point about spreading out the narrative in such a way… that is how most media worked until very recently. I grew up waiting upwards of months for the next installment, if those are large installments, years. Also, Elden ring came out after I stopped working those hours, I am mostly having this experience, in terms of Fromsoft games, with Demon’s Souls - Sekiro, but that doesn’t change the argument, just putting up my time frame.
I am more likely to not retain the patterns of attack, etc., when I have to break it up, in such a fashion, unlike the experience of seeing the new things, and partaking in the world, and its lore.
The reason I was unable to get through the souls games was that I had time to learn things like the attack patterns of the monsters, or time to experience the world and its lore in a way the memorization part was getting in the way of. When I learned something, and returned to it weeks later, I had to relearn a lot of the rote aspects of the game play. This blocks access to me experiencing the art, and lore, which is more important to me, in such games, than the mechanics of it. So, yes, I lost access.
Having now played the games, I do not wish it had this barrier back then, as I still would have preferred to experienced and easier version, so that I could participate in the larger zeitgeist, of the pop culture of the time, and then got to enjoy it how it is, now that I have time. Let me repeat that, I would have preferred to have had an easy mode, back when it was new, to experience my preferred part, when it was most culturally relevant. Now that I have played them, I STILL would have preferred that, even if I never got to experience it otherwise.
You are basically telling me how YOU would prefer to do something, and you are glad I had to conform to YOUR preferences. Meanwhile, having the option for and easier mode, would not have changed YOUR experience at all, unless YOU choose to. While my suggestion would not have affected your experience, it would have allowed me to have experienced the games when they was at their relevance peak. Meanwhile, what you ask for affects me in a negative way. To say that an option for an easy mode, on the screen, when you start, that you do not have to select, would damage your experience, is wild. That is very, very, weird. You are adamant the idea that someone could have a variant in preferences, that affect you in no way, would damage your experience because what? Because you had to see the option on the screen? Because people you deem lesser gamers would have played it? Is this some weird ideological axiom? Because people are simply doing something different than you? What is it that bothers you so much about other people having a different choice, you don’t need to make, or experience?
Well alright, I’m choosing to disregard the fact that this is 90% insults and calling me a weirdo freak. Thanks for that, btw, I’ve put a lot of effort into expressing myself clearly across a lot of different comments here.
In the latter half of this comment, I articulated why I feel an easy mode actually does make playing the game worse, even if you don’t select it. I also articulated why a simple scaling difficulty wouldn’t really work.
And in the latter half of this comment (start at “But I also think games are art”), I expressed why I think an Easy mode hasn’t been added, and wouldn’t be the same experience.
To add to that final point, the reason I don’t want others to play an easy mode isn’t because I’m a loser and beating Souls is the only way I know I’m a real man. I just think Souls is an amazing and unique offering, and it would be a real shame for someone to play the game on easy (which would “break the game itself” in Miyazaki’s words) and think that’s all there was.
I want more people to give it a try and experience it, and hopefully love it, not less. But just like it’s frustrating to watch a movie you love with someone who’s on their phone the whole time, it would be frustrating to see a ton of people play a kneecapped version of one of my favourite things and end up not “getting it”. And it would be more of a loss for them than me. It’s just the same Miyazaki quote over again, both me and him love what has been made here, and want more people to experience it, but not at the expense of compromising it. To paraphrase the end of his quote, would we even be talking about it if From Soft hadn’t had the confidence to stick to their intended vision?
“If we really wanted the whole world to play the game, we could just crank the difficulty down more and more. But that wasn’t the right approach,” he said.
“Had we taken that approach, I don’t think the game would have done what it did, because the sense of achievement that players gain from overcoming these hurdles is such a fundamental part of the experience. Turning down difficulty would strip the game of that joy - which, in my eyes, would break the game itself.”
Ok, hang on. I replied to this initially while annoyed, and blew past some of the key points. But I do actually want to talk about the whole “participating in the zeitgeist” thing.
A large part of the reasons Dark Souls doesn’t have difficulties is to create that social element. Gonna stick with Elden Ring for my examples here, because I missed most of the online discussion around Sekiro. But from what I saw, the majority of the discussion online was about how hard certain bosses were, shared experiences like getting your ass kicked by Tree Sentinel, or Margit “putting your foolish ambitions to rest”. If Elden Ring really did have an easy mode, that was easy enough for someone to beat the game without “learning the attack patterns of the monsters”, and to keep up with the diehard playerbase while working 70+ hour work weeks, would they really have felt included in those conversations? Would they have been able to share the excitement at beating a boss that they struggled with for hours, without actually struggling for that time? There’s an intentional design decision here. To quote Miyazaki from when Sekiro released:
We want everyone to feel that sense of accomplishment. We want everyone to feel elated and to join that discussion on the same level. We feel if there’s different difficulties, that’s going to segment and fragment the user base. People will have different experiences based on that [differing difficulty level]. This is something we take to heart when we design games. It’s been the same way for previous titles and it’s very much the same with Sekiro.
If all you really wanted was to just… experience the art and story, and see the cool enemy designs, you could always watch a youtube let’s play or something as well. The ultimate easy mode, with a defined length of how long it will take. But if you wanted to commiserate about tough challenges and the experience you went through, then you kinda need to actually have that experience.
I’ll also add, that stuff doesn’t go away. I was excited by the hype around Elden Ring too. It’s what pushed me to start Dark Souls 1, and then play 2, 3, Sekiro, and finally Elden Ring. I missed the initial hype around all of those games, but that cultural stuff is still there. I built up a youtube playlist while playing each game and once I finished them I would catch up on Illusory Wall, Zullie the Witch, Vaati, and challenge runs and Lockout Bingos from the likes of Lil’ Aggy or Ymfah. My friends were also excited to see me play the games. I may not have experienced the Anor Londo archers until years after they did, but it was still fun to talk to them about it, and they were excited to reminisce and replay the game alongside me.
I eventually did get to participate in the fun that was Shadow of the Erdtree releasing soon after I beat Elden Ring. And that was great, and special. It was fun to see that final boss get nerfed soon after I beat it, for example. I do feel sorry that you missed the moment of Sekiro releasing. But ultimately I don’t think your anecdotal experience is more important than say, my friend who always picked easy and didn’t realize how much he loved a tough challenge. Or any of the “Dark Souls saved my life” people, who might’ve picked easy if it was offered and not had that experience. Or the designers at From Software who worked hard to create something special and have the right to not offer a way to half-ass it and “fragment the user base”.
For mechanically difficult games, definitely agree. Celeste is an example I usually bring up - it’s a platformer that can get pretty tough at times, especially in the after-story optional levels. But it also has one of the most flexible and useful accessibility modes I’ve ever seen. It allows you to adjust basically every aspect of the game a player might struggle with (game speed, additional jumps, timed mechanics, you name it). And the game itself is very good as well.
It also has a different sort of difficulty. It’s all in bite size chunks, and you can try again immediately. It never feels punishing in the way Souls games do.
I see where you’re coming from, but when a game’s message is that meaning and purpose is born through hard work and struggling against impossible odds then that message is kinda undercut by a button that turns the struggle off, even if it’s there for a good reason.
I would say that the number of games where that message is core and is reliably reinforced through the gameplay is small.
Getting Over It, for example, would not need an ‘easy mode’, but the vast majority of games should be accessible to as wide an audience as possible - not by compromising the devs’ vision, but by simply allowing players the tools to handle the game at their own pace.
Granted, but I’d argue that dark souls and Elden ring, the typical subjects of this debate, are exactly that. There’s no way to add an easy mode without compromising the dev’s vision. And based on fromsoft’s reticence to add an easy mode, I think they agree.
There’s no way to add an easy mode without compromising the dev’s vision.
It would be as easy as putting a slider to reduce damage taken/increase damage inflicted.
If people want to go experience they can play the og game.
Take Celeste for example. Celeste is a game meant to be hard, beating Celeste is supposed to be a trial for the player, it’s their mountain to conquer.
And yet, Celeste gives so many accessibility options you can trivialize the game. The people that need it get to play the game and the people that don’t need it, play the game as intended.
That’s not to say that Dark Souls should have an easy mode. Just saying that it could, easily, have one. They don’t because they’d rather maintain the image of being a hardcore™ game than help people with less time/skill/capabilities play the game.
I agree. It’s a good think FromSoft doesn’t make difficult games. They make challenging games. Their games can be trivialize by meeting it on its own terms. If you pay attention to what things are weak to, it’s often pretty easy. Also, you always have the option to level up and improve your situation. Outside of secondary content, everything is easy, but it wants to challenge you to see if you’re paying attention. The issue is this is abnormal for modern games, so it’s seen by some as being hard. Modern gamers expect to have their hands held, which I don’t think developers should always oblige if it weakens the intended experience.
I recently noticed the accessibility settings in Brotato, which are a great example of this. In addition to the normal difficulty setting, in accessibility they give you access to sliders for enemy health/damage/speed and some toggles for other visual and difficulty features.
The only option I use is being able to restart a wave after a death rather than losing the whole run, and it’s kept me occasionally playing the game and enjoying what the devs have created.
Sucks for console users. On PC there are trainers.
It’s one of the reasons I got my grandparents to transition from consoles to PC. I knew how to fiddle with PC games to make things easier on them.
Still, oftentimes I would end up sending an email of thanks to a dev of some sort, usually along the lines of “I know this isn’t your target audience, but thank you so much for putting in native controller support/UI scaling/story mode/etc in, being able to get this working for my grandparents is a big joy in their lives.”
It’s one of the reasons I got my grandparents to transition from consoles to PC.
The most unexpected sentence I expect I’ll run into today.
My grandparents were the ones who taught me how to play games! It skipped a generation - my mother was never a gamer, but she remembers them always having the latest consoles when she was growing up in the 70s and 80s. I grew up on my grandparents’ laps, watching them pass the PS1 controller back and forth on a dozen different genres. Shooters and horror for my grandfather, puzzles and platformers for my grandmother, and RPGs for both.
My grandparents were poor, so they were always trading in their games down at Gamestop, and then kicking themselves when they had a hankering for it again. And god, having an original copy of Final Fantasy Tactics too scratched to play, and then finding out the only place you could get it in the mid-2000s was on Ebay for 100$? When I learned how emulators and less than legal rom acquisition worked, they were delighted to suddenly have every game they ever traded away back in their hands.
But another problem was that they just couldn’t keep up with modern console gaming. The 360 was the last console they got, and most games were just… not friendly enough for them, especially since their reflexes were in decline (not that grandpa’s were ever great, as he himself would have been first to admit; he was a perpetual cheater with DOOM and Duke Nukem). Being able to transfer them over to PC gaming entirely, and difficulty adjustments as an increasingly standard feature of RPGs in the early 2010s, went a long way towards letting them play modern games again.
My grandfather passed away earlier this year. It’s been weird without him on call every weekend. Miss him terribly.
That’s really awesome. I’m very sorry your grandfather is gone, but at least you have all of those great memories! My dad was a film historian, so I think I feel the same way about classic movies like it sounds like you do about games and how they’re so much a part of not just me, but my family history. Similarly, there are so many times where I see a movie I hadn’t seen before but he would have or just learned a fact about a movie he wouldn’t have known and would have loved to have heard that I think about how great it would be to talk to him about it and miss him. He’s been gone since 2016 but I still think about him a lot. The hurt gets less but it never goes away.
Yep, I’ve been trying my best to also say thank you to devs that go out of their way when they don’t have to. (And also to musicians since I mainly listen to metal and 99.9% of those guys don’t get the recognition they deserve)
This is extra funny because Elden Ring’s diverse player build options means that it has the most adjustable difficulty curve of any FromSoftware game. Holding up Elden Ring completion specifically as any kind of bar to surpass is laughably naive.
yess harderrr
You must have misunderstood me. I’m saying Elden Ring SHOULD have an Easy Mode. Modern Souls games are designed to be accessible.
People who gatekeep FromSoftware difficulty have a fundamental misunderstanding of what the games are about
I think the point of the post is that one way or another, it’s a topic where everyone has an opinion and it can be exhausting to listen to the debate.
I thought the point of the post was ridiculing fragile masculinity, but okay
That’s the key. If you:
- summoned
- used spirit ashes
- used ashes of war
- used sorceries
- used incantations
- levelled up
- drank a flask
- opened the map
- used a weapon
- used a controller or a mouse/keyboard
- opened the menu
- used your hands
You didn’t beat the game.
Thank god I play with my butt cheeks. The different tones of my farts get interpreted as input. To attack I have to fart in G#.
Oh please, that’s the easiest key to fart in. Casual.
I actually beat the game at level 1, no weapons, no items, controlling the character via brainwaves. And every time I died, I resetted the game.
So you didn’t even turn on the setting that kills you in real life when you die in the game? Casual.
As a man who has never played Elden Ring and really knows nothing about it beyond it being the name of a game, the people getting all het up in these comments are very amusing. I think you guys proved her point.
I say stupid shit on purpose all the time but I don’t pretend it’s anything but.
As evidenced by this comment, but I fail to see the relevance to the op
OP is about disparaging a passionate community that likes the experience they’ve gathered around and doesn’t want it to change. Asking these people to change without a good reason is stupid. Claiming it isn’t stupid makes it even worse.
As evidenced by this comment
Did you at least give me a tip of the fedora while hitting me with that sick Reddit burn?
I dislike how people use game completion as a method to gloat
Like bro, don’t we all play games to have fun?
I’m currently playing Elden Ring for the first time and I’m note sure if I’m not just doing it for self-flagellation instead of fun
You’ve found one your kink.
How am I supposed to have fun if I’m not better than you???
Edit: ???
League of Legends energy
Absolutely not! I play games to be the best! To dunk on those losers who can’t defeat evey boss with only their fists and a dream. This is what it means to be a real gamer, ignoring my family, friends, and calls from my boss.
All you can do is look up at me on my pedestal from your lowly lesser-gamer chair.
I separate people into two camps.
People who beat THE Sega Genesis classic Sonic 3 with lock-on Technology with Sonic and Knuckles and achieved all 12 Chaos Emeralds, and LOSERS.
Oh my god when i was a kid it took me like two YEARS to get all the chaos emeralds in Sonic 1! That’s an eternity in kid time.
There were no save states or anything like that. I failed so many times…but one day I finally did it, i finally got all of them, and on that day I was a god.
Some people see videogames as a legitimate art medium that generates experiences. Not all experiences have to be fun. Some can be scary, somber, or introspective.
Easy mode ftw. I’ve only got so much free time. I wanna chill when I’m gaming.
Counterpoint: not every game needs to be chill
It’s a choice. You don’t have to take it
The choice existing would impact how players play, which may also go against the artistic vision. You don’t have to play a non-chill game.
You can also choose to play a game designed to be easy. A game like hotline Miami on “chill mode” is not the same as the actually hard hotline Miami.
If you want to just walk from cut scene to cut scene just watch someone else play the game.
You don’t want to spend twenty hours trying to beat one boss, and being told to git gud whenever you ask for advice on the internet? But think of the sense of pride and accomplishment you’ll feel when you finally beat it! The best part is you get to go through this like 10 times
/s
I am playing Sekiro with a easy mode mod.
Even with being able to kill everything with 1-4 hits, I was getting TRASHED by bosses. People play this without the mod? 😭
You need to understand the absolute bliss of finnally beating that fucking ape, after hours of trying only for you to decapitate him, then the arm reaches over and picks up the head for the second health bar. Do you know what the reward is after days of attempts? 20 minutes later, you fight two at once, and you’ll do it like it was stomping a goomba in Mario Brothers.
It’s a difficult game for sure. Probably the most difficult out of the FromSoft games. Not to feed into the meme but the game does click once you get to a certain boss in the game. The combat feels natural, you know what to do and how to do it usually etc. It’s a really difficult game and the final boss might just be the most difficult I’ve ever had the displeasure of fighting against (they get a lot easier once you know what you’re doing)
Git gud casul?
Otherwise…
Finger but, whole.
I’ve never had vitriol spewed at me quite like when I argue in favor of easy mode for soulslike games. I’m at a point where I hate soulslike games, half because I don’t want to spend ten hours on a boss that I can’t beat, and half because I don’t want to associate with soulsborne players
I’m vegan btw
I use Arch
I have no idea what it is, please enlighten me in depth! Preferably in a closed setting where any bystanders cannot leave .
I will also need an explanation why Windows is bad and why I should care about online privacy.
I’ve heard that hackers use Linux, will that make my printer be susceptible to hack so China or CIA can see my bills that I print out every month?
I have nothing against prosthetizing vegans, because vegans make me think of food and I’m always hungry
I once made the mistake googling easy mode for Elden ring that someone gifted to me. Once I saw the gatekeeping on Reddit, I decided it’s not a game for me and uninstalled. I’m sorry that I suck at video games
it gets much easier when you start treating it like a rhythm game where you get into dance offs with the enemies:)
and no need to interact with a game’s community when it’s shite, it’s a single player game you can enjoy it however you want! (or don’t, i’m not pressuring you, just don’t want you to miss out on a good game because its fanbase is made of out assholes)
I don’t want to redo the same thing a dozen times just to experience the story and world
fair
Aren’t you still forced to see other people’s insane / spoiler messages even in “single player”?
No, you can disable those too.
Hmm, I might have to take another look at this game then… Thanks!
The messages are very limited and are almost entirely people congratulating you or saying something dumb like fort night
alternatively
dog!
Whoop, I mixed up dark souls 3 with Elden ring. Though, the same applies. I did like the gritty atmosphere and lore. The main issue I had was the learning curve and when trying to playing co-op there was no way to turn off strangers joining what I recall. But I bet by now there’s mods for all of that like you said.
I have gotten all achievements for the game and this is the way. I am not even particularly good, just determined. It is a very good game, just dont read the comments on fextralife.
I bought Rain World recently, having heard a lot of good things about it, and I found it hard to get into because I didn’t really see a point to what I was doing, whether I was doing it right, etc, so I put “how to enjoy Rain World” into my search engine of choice and found an article with some beginner tips, one of which being that the bleak, helpless feel is intentional and part of the experience. I respect it as an artistic decision, but my private and work lives are stressful enough as it is, which is probably partly why I was bouncing off the game, so I just got a refund, and I’m fine with that decision.
I loved every bit of Rain World! But I ended up quitting it mid play through when it became too hard. I found a way to gather stacks of berries to have enough reattempts for the hard parts, but then got lost where I was even supposed to go and gave up after ~25 hours playtime
There are probably some mods that make it easier if you want to play.
And yeah game communities suck sometimes.
If you ever want to give it a shot, everything in the souls games can be trivialized if you just farm a little extra between the next fight.
That’s not to say it won’t be difficult at times, but if you prepare yourself well enough you can take just about anything.
Honestly just ignoring the YouTuber meme builds and pumping vitality to 40 right away makes all the souls games pretty approachable.
All of the Souls games kinda have an easy mode baked in. Ranged weapons/Sorceries generally provide an easier experience. Honestly though, I just find I don’t really care if there is an easy mode or not. I enjoyed the challenge and if a difficulty slider was added, it would not have detracted from my experience in the slightest. I played through the games for the challenge and I enjoyed it immensely. If someone else doesn’t enjoy the challenge, then that’s okay. I’m not going to gatekeep them. We’re all SunBro’s at our core and I will always drop my Summon Sign for others in need to find
Praise the Sun, my friend
I was getting frustrated in the first dark souls playing a dex melee character because I wanted to be able to dodge quickly and do quick in and out attacks. Making a mistake was so punishing.
But then I tried a heavy build instead and have been surprised at how well it works. Yeah, it’s harder to avoid mistakes but you do so much more damage and take so much less that your can afford it. I’ve even gone kinda barbarian by using heavy weapons and little armor so I’m not stuck with the slowest roll and the fact you can one or two shot most trash mobs still means I was able to progress farther on that character than on my dex one in way less time.
It’s not easy but it’s easier.
Those gargoyles are rough though.
Hey, look, I found one of those posts where it OK to be sexist.
Edit: Saying “Hey, look, I found one of those posts where it OK to be sexist,” in a room full of virtue signallers just to feel something.
le edit, the second: I guess based on the downvotes in the thread Lemmy.ml is refederated.
DAE male gamers are the real oppressed ones.
Thanks for telling your truth.
Gamers aren’t oppressed, but they should be
…in a comment section where the OP’s gender hasn’t even been mentioned?
Or is it this old meme?
The “OP”, if you are referring to the screenshot, is presenting feminine, and talks about walking into a room full of men and doing something that they believe intentionally trolls men.
I think you missed the point. Many games have toxic communities that attack women and tell them they’re no good enough, along with much more unsavoury shit. Playing into that, you can get a very aggressive response and “feel something”. It’s less about trolling men and more the attacks many women get from elitist male gamers.
Do you think women aren’t allowed to talk about sexist gaming communities?
So, the equal rights movements aren’t about bringing certain people up to the level of everyone else, but instead bringing all others down to the oppressed’s level?
I just want to make sure I am on the same page as everyone else moving forward.
Joking about men over-explaining a difficult game is not oppressing them
So all the comedians that tell sexist jokes about women are a-ok in your book? Good to know.
Not what I said but nice try. Groups that are systemically oppressed joking about those that aren’t is in no way equal to the reverse
It is about bringing people to the same level. In this case, when women can go into gaming circles and not get snide, sarcastic comments about their perceived lack of skill, or overtly sexualized unsolicited comments, then we are there. We are not yet.
The fact you’re getting triggered by women not being happy about this is a little odd.
Surely you’d want young women relatives of yours to not have a shitty environment like this?
Right, and what the commenters are saying, along with yourself, is that it is ok to degrade others as long as it’s “their turn.” The patriarchy has been in power for too long, we better hate all men just to be safe. Wouldn’t want to miss any of the bad ones, so we’ll blame all of them for our problems.
That’s generalization. That’s the enemy. If you want to hate against exclusivity in gaming, you can’t generalize by saying something like the op screenshot. Instead, you would replace “men” with “soulsbourne gatekeepers.” If that doesn’t have the same weight as what the screenshot originally said, then you should look at what was changed and why it made you feel a certain way. Bias is a bitch, and it goes hand in hand with generalization. When you generalize, as the screenshot did, it’s bringing a shotgun to an archery range. Sure, you’ll hit the target, but you aren’t doing it right.
screenshot OP: “lol don’t Gamers get so heated when you talk about difficulty modes is soulslikes”
the Gamer in question: “I SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO BE SEXIST FOR THIS!!!”
also i don’t think you know what virtue signaling means
Hey, look, this one is misrepresenting easily verifiable information.
Technically you re right that’s sexist (if you gender swap the post that’s weird) but in reality I didn’t even noticed it and probably don’t care
Equality isn’t a buffet.
Yes, we get it. You and your Y chromosome feel very oppressed. I’m glad I’m not this sensitive about my own possession of a penis.
remember, as a man on the internet you’re not allowed to have opinions on something, even if they’re formed by your own experiences and you clarify them as such. your opinions exist to be mocked and ridiculed for sport.
oh, but it’s also a real mystery why far right incel groups have seen a massive upsurge in membership, no way to logically connect the two.
I’ve never touched any game of this series. If I need to replay a section or fight in a game more than 3 times it annoys me so much, I need to take a break. This often led to me never playing that game again, because only thinking about being stuck at that spot again kills all the fun for me.
In Cyberpunk for example my car got stuck in the middle of nowhere by a glitch and I would have needed to walk for god knows how long to find another vehicle. Needless to say I never played that game again, even though I was not nearly even half way through and liked it up until that point.
Can’t you just summon a new vehicle?
As I just wrote in another comment, I know that I was aware of that featured. Either it didn’t work or I don’t remember it correctly why I got stuck there. It’s been a few years now.
Lmao yeah. I’m kinda like him but even I knew you could summon your rides in Cyberpunk. I stopped playing that game because it was getting repetitive af.
Did you not just hit the “summon a vehicle” button that the game gives you to summon one of the many cars the game gives out for free? Cause it’s there. I believe they tell you about it during the prologue and it’s enabled before then.
Did you just skip all tutorials or something? I’m struggling to understand how on earth you got stuck so bad you ended up quitting the game. Plus, if you’re half way through, you have a minimum of 2 vehicles, the starting car and Jackie’s bike, if not even more. Wtf were you even doing?
Now that you mention it, I know that I was aware of that featured. Either it didn’t work or I don’t remember it correctly why I got stuck there. It’s been a few years now.
i stopped after 10-15ish hours for different reasons. no idea what you’re talking about, either it’s not that obvious or something about the game has changed, and hopefully for the better bc it was downright awful when i played.
I think the whole “Elden Ring is hard” is overrated.
I’m a garbage player. And I manage to cheese my way through the game. It has classic NES/SNES energy where you can absolutely leave and come back when you’re way stronger. The game is so massive, you will always find something else to do.
Then again, if cyberpunk made you rage quit, maybe you won’t like Elden Ring. I found that game to be really straightforward.
I’m willing to replay a section as many times as it takes, as long as I consistently feel a sense of progression and improvement. The problem is that it can take dozens of attempts before I realize I’m plateauing, and I have to give up.
I cannot tell you how much I want to play Remnant: From the Ashes. In between boss fights, I’m in love with the game. The story is deeply fascinating, and I love the gameplay. There is exactly one boss in that game that I was able to beat without going online and waiting for some random to join and carry. Eventually I got to a point where in order to upgrade gear, I had to kill bosses, and in order to kill bosses, I had to upgrade gear. Uninstalled it after I made no story progress for like 10 hours.
Contrast that with Outriders. Considered by many to be an awful game, it was my favorite game that I’ve played this year. The story is deeply fascinating, I love the gameplay, and there is exactly one boss in that game that I couldn’t beat at the highest available difficulty. So I turned the difficulty down, breezed through it, and turned it back up afterward, and there was no penalty for doing that.
Saying that it shouldn’t just to feel something (I.e. a smug sense of superiority)
Yes.
Also just generally better accommodation in general. If a paraplegic guy with control over one finger wants to play Elden Ring, there should be settings to accommodate that. That’s not even making it easier; they’re already facing much more difficulty in the first place. It’s just leveling the playing field.
How would you even expect the developers to accommodate every possible combination of disabilities?
Not the OP but i think these would still be “making it easier” settings but to their point it is just leveling the player field since people without disabilities already have an easier time playing.
You could adjust things like hitbox size (yours and enemies), the i-frame duration (amount of time invincible after rolling), a game speed setting, setting that adjusts the pacing of fights (such as delays between enemies moves are increased by this setting), damage multipler (yours and enemies), or straight up handicapping player level or attribute scores. Thats just off the top of my head, I’m sure there are plenty of other ways.
The bonus to this is that it could also make the game harder. A lot of people like doing challenge runs and this would add depth to that.
The damage multiplier is my favorite option. I don’t care if the opponents can kill me in one hit, I just don’t want a fight with a single enemy to take 15 minutes. I want to spend my time in a fight fighting, not dodging.
I used to disagree with this concept, but then I discovered how Control implements difficulty. The game is hard, and that cannot be changed, but at any time one can pause the game, turn on assist mode, and become unkillable. And the key to this is after one gets past that really frustrating section, they can turn off the “cheats”.
That would work for Elden Ring.
That’s basically what Another Crab’s Treasure does too, as with a few other hard games. Their accessibility modes let you basically become god, and skip the combat if the way it’s set up isn’t working - and that could just be something you do for a single particular encounter if needed. I’ve never used them, and don’t mind them being there, because a good hard game is satisfying to play without such things.
Every game should copy Another Crabs Treasures easy mode - just hand the player s gun!
Basically how I beat Moloch in Outriders. He has way too much health and deals way too much damage, so you turn the world tier down to one and obliterate him at the cost of one quest reward being low level, then turn it back up to get better gear again
Souls games just require patience, you can get better. It’s the stupidly complex games I have trouble with. Games like BG3 are like taking freshmen chemistry again. Too much effort trying to figure out whats going on.
