Current Events > why is wanting an easy mode so controversial

(+) Yeah! (+)

i guess my argument is that easy modes are somewhat artificial in their approach to difficulty - if adding HP/damage to enemies is artificial difficulty, surely so is taking some away - it needs to be natural. it needs to be an in-game way for the player to opt into an easier path.

i don't know if i mentioned this before but the dark souls community used to tell all its new players to not level vit because that means they were bad at the game and you shouldn't take hits anyway, which is notoriously stupid advice. i wouldn't call a build with less than 30 vit a PVP build. that's a little off-topic, but i want to point out that you can have 40 vit at level 35, and i'm convinced that the best possible build at that level includes exactly that. dude had mostly-giants and the furysword too, it was truly gruesome.

my point is the game needs to give the player tools to handle things, not just soften the things arbitrarily. kindling bonfires off of a resource that you get naturally by clearing the area over and over is really smart, and a little smarter than 'keep EXP on death' from something like a FF6.
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The other perspective I can understand is, if for whatever reason the dev/pub is just hardcore anti-accessibility, not a bit of marketing should fail to point this out.

Some kid sees a trailer, runs out to buy it, gets stuck on the third level, welp. Better luck with the next three months' allowance.
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some games I think the difficulty of the gameplay is a big selling point and I can understand why the devs wouldn't want to add an easy mode to them. Others I feel like there's a lot more beyond just difficulty and in those cases it starts to become a little more questionable to me if they're very steadfast about not having easier difficulty modes

also gotta keep in mind that different people find different things difficult. I have a friend who's probably one of the better video game players (lol) I know but he mostly just plays 2D platformers. He's really good at them. But he's said before that he finds it really hard to process and recognize 3D animations and thinks it's probably impossible for him to ever beat dark souls, he's put hours into it and says more than half the time in combat he still has no idea what's going on
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To use cuphead as an example, that game probably never would have been as popular as it was without the difficulty. The difficulty was a huge reason why it got as much attention as it did.

And here I thought most of the attention it was getting was for its art style and direction.

An easy mode in a game where the point of it is to overcome the difficult challenge just seems odd to me. If the appeal of the game doesn't appeal to you... why are you playing it to begin with?

Because players don't necessarily agree on what the "point" of a game is. They may not even agree with the developers on what they think it is.

Pretty much every game could potentially have it said that the "point" of it is to overcome a challenge. Not everyone will agree with that. Not everyone wants to be challenged when they play a game.

Butterfiles posted...

cause dark souls has an awful fanbase

If you think dark souls needs an easy mode then you just don't understand the allure of the game and the nuances behind this stance.

Besides, there are plenty of ways to make the game easier if you're having a tough time. You just have to use your brain a little and maybe even get creative. Or, if that doesn't suit you, Google the problem and the internet shall bring forth thousands of cheeses to your knowledge.

If you think dark souls needs an easy mode then you just don't understand the allure of the game and the nuances behind this stance.

I mean, I've beaten BB, DS3 and plat'd Sekiro. An easy mode doesn't really ruin the allure of the games.

It's cool that the games are super duper challenging but that's not their main allure, imo.

The real draw of a Soulskiroborne game is the exploration of the world and making discoveries. Going off the beaten paths to find new NPCs and questlines, exploring the environment to try and match it up with the lore.

The games are very rich in many other aspects.

From has come out though and explicitly said that it doesn't want other players to have a different gameplay experience which imo is justifiable. They want everyone to play on the same difficulty which is smart considering their already toxic fanbase.
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Easy mode is awesome.
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