Current Events > "Dark Souls needs an easy mode!!!"

(+) Yeah! (+)

L0Z posted...

It does have easy mode. Its the parry button

that isnt easy

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skermac posted...

Garioshi posted...
"More options can only improve a game."

Agreed

"It's just an option, having more options is never bad. If you don't like it, just ignore it. It won't make playing the game on your difficulty any less enjoyable for you!"

This article, https://indiewatch.net/2016/06/08/why-difficulty-settings-are-bad-design/ , addresses all of these assumptions.

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andri_g posted...

This article, https://indiewatch.net/2016/06/08/why-difficulty-settings-are-bad-design/ , addresses all of these assumptions.

That's just a tl;dr of that "you cheated yourself" rant.

lol i got soft banned from dark souls.

I didnt even do anything! The only mod i have is to make the game ultrawide for my monitor. This sucks :(

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So far no one has said why an easy mode would be bad? It would be an option that no one is forced to use, the game would stay the same on normal difficulty, nothing changes, more options is a good thing

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Gen5_AppleJack posted...

Easy mode is playing offline.

trying to be funny

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lol i got soft banned from dark souls.

did you disconnect.
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Pancake posted...

lol i got soft banned from dark souls.

did you disconnect.

not in the middle of anything. But i usually ALT+ F4 out of the game but its usually at a bonfire or something

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you know i was under the impression that you'd get hit harder for mods but i am in the wrong.

i've had people who chain-disconnected on me come back and say they couldn't get back on for a day.
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andri_g posted...

This article, https://indiewatch.net/2016/06/08/why-difficulty-settings-are-bad-design/ , addresses all of these assumptions.

Shit article

Rabi Ribi and Ys are proof that proper implementation of difficulty modes can only make a game better

MarthGoomba posted...

Shit article

Untrue.

However, a few games do have difficulty settings "baked-in" to their design, not just tacked-on as an after-thought.

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Maybe Im just old school, but I like that there are still a few games where saying I beat X is in and of itself a cool moment, without needing to say I beat X on super turbo ultra death mode! Especially when so often difficulty levels just mean a bump up or down in raw numbers. Beyond the bragging rights, its nice to not have to agonize over what difficulty to choose when you start up a game and do a bunch of research... what you see is what you get, the intended designer experience.

Not everything is made for everybody. I think Hollow Knight and later Soulsborne games already did a pseudo-easy mode move by making the toughest bosses optional.

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The first play through is easy mode, after that the difficulty goes up everytime to ng6 or 7. Games are already dumbed down enough, and Dark Souls not doing that is why it has the great reputation that it has earned among the gaming community.

Pancake posted...

you know i was under the impression that you'd get hit harder for mods but i am in the wrong.

i've had people who chain-disconnected on me come back and say they couldn't get back on for a day.

i looked up the mod again and apparently it did cause bans. So i had to delete my mod and apparently my save and hope they remove the ban.

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what does the warning say?
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Pancake posted...

what does the warning say?

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Blackstar110 posted...

... what you see is what you get, the intended designer experience.

Not everything is made for everybody. I think Hollow Knight and later Soulsborne games already did a pseudo-easy mode move by making the toughest bosses optional.

Which bosses? Knight Artorias? Sir Alonne?
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Miyazaki didn't create Souls games thinking "Now, only elite players will succeed!", he made them thinking "Now, any player can find different ways to overcome this challenge."

IMO, Hunter Hopeful's responses in this video, and positive attitude to his challenges, sums-up how Miyazaki believes any player should react to each Souls game challenge.
https://youtu.be/eliwvn0N5b4?t=284

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andri_g posted...

Which bosses? Knight Artorias? Sir Alonne?

Even within the main game itself, Nameless King, (Sekiro spoilers) Owl (Father), Sword Saint, and Ebreitas come to mind.

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Blackstar110 posted...

Even within the main game itself, Nameless King, (Sekiro spoilers) Owl (Father), Sword Saint, and Ebreitas come to mind.

Ebreitas wasnt even close to being the hardest boss in bloodborne

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Garioshi posted...

More options can only improve a game.

Agreed

makes the game accessible

for me, if I keep dying I lower the difficulty. Or delete the game

I4NRulez posted...

Ebreitas wasnt even close to being the hardest boss in bloodborne

She sure gave me a hard time. Not THE hardest, but Id say she stacks up to any of the other required bosses off the top of my head.

The ones that strike me as definitely harder than or on par with Ebreitas are Logarius, Gehrman, several chalice bosses, and basically all of the DLC bosses, but those are all optional too.

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I personally think the bosses like Gehrman, Logarius, and Maria were too easy to parry to make them top-tier difficulty-wise. YMMV though
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i've never actually seen that warning, despite how often i am accused of being a big hacker.
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Garioshi posted...

More options can only improve a game.

Only if--a giant-sized "IF"-- those options are implemented so that players cannot break the game as they are used.

[ Btw, look at LIMBO: It has few options, but it is so well-made and balanced that it won Game of the Year from some game review outlets (even over AAA titles from 2010). ]

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More options can only improve a game.

first off, i love this guy and everything he writes is worth reading:

http://www.sirlin.net/articles/subtractive-design

second, this quote:

Its easiest to get people to agree on vague concepts. The game were making is a platformer with exploration, but also with fast action and time pressure. It has an epic story of course, but also a personal story. The game is really challenging, but its for everyone to enjoy. It has 20 enemy types and 20 weapons including a kazoo and a kitchen sink. Whats not to agree with? Theres something for everyone.
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Pancake posted...

http://www.sirlin.net/articles/subtractive-design

Dave Sirlin can do wrong.

...apart from failing to mention Tetris in that article.

LinkScorbunny posted...

Agreed

makes the game accessible

for me, if I keep dying I lower the difficulty. Or delete the game

people that say this never used mass effect andromedas crafting system. It had so many options it became a huge gross mess

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...apart from failing to mention Tetris in that article.

oh man. that's really an amazing example too.
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There is an easy mode. It's called YouTube.

Look, I get accessibility as an option should be considered, and From would probably make more money if they included a baby mode, but the entire souls brand is that it's supposed to be punch in your dick difficult with intermittent moments of respite where you can look around in awe or disgust. Let one small genre not be about you.

That being said, an optional easy mode would probably make souls fans butthurt for inexplicable reasons, too.

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well you could always summon tarkus.

https://streamable.com/kokv9g

hee hee
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Pancake posted...

first off, i love this guy and everything he writes is worth reading:

http://www.sirlin.net/articles/subtractive-design

Neil Peart (Rush) spoke of writing music this way: "Fill every available space with 'notes' then remove the ones that get in the way of the music."
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Re: Post-design added features, a Dragon's Dogma update (pre-DA) included Easy mode. Anyone here played it?

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i have not played dragon's dogma and rush is cool
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Dragon's Dogma is dope

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TerrifyingRei posted...

Dragon's Dogma is dope

Is this also true for Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen on Easy mode difficulty?

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andri_g posted...

Is this also true for Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen on Easy mode difficulty?

I dunno I play it on normal. Probably still dope, it's Dragon's Dogma

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The_Scarecrow posted...

As I said, it's worth talking about but reach a consensus on the original question first.

In no Souls topic in the last decade has a group of people reached a consensus on whether or not Souls games should have an easy mode. If you want a consensus, youre going to have to convince people who dont want it why it wont affect their experience. Reminder: this is an online game with online interactions. This is not Skyrim, where you play in a bubble and affect no one else. If you want to be convincing, youre going to need something more concrete than its an easy mode.

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you know, i started watching a ds2 playthrough and they have a difficulty option right at the start known as the champion's covenant.

what if they did something like that? walk the difficulty back a little bit but then give the player the choice to increase it?
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The one repeated point: "Easy mode can/not be bolted-on to a Souls-design base game without breaking it."

Capcom did exactly this (though, we don't know how carefully...) with a bolt-on Easy mode update for Dragon's Dogma released *before* the Dark Arisen expansion. A first-hand impression from someone who has played the original DD on Normal mode and then played it using the Easy mode update would be good to know. [DD on Easy] shows the challenges of adding bolt-on difficulty modes to completed games in a game already considered to be a Souls-style game.

[ Especially for Bitterblack Isle, where enemy encounters/configurations can go hard-to-brutal with zero warning. ]
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Can Souls-design games do it? How well did DD manage to do it, and at what cost/trade-off? Who knows?

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Bolting an easy mode onto a single-player game is not the same as a game with online interactivity, though.

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meralonne posted...

Bolting an easy mode onto a single-player game is not the same as a game with online interactivity, though.

I presume that there would be no changes to PC stats for PvP. PC levels might be put into narrowed ranked ranges for phantom/invader visibility (e.g., host level +/-10).
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[ Before any "too narrow" posts, I beat everything in DS II SOTFS NG by SL.52 except the Heide Knights and Ancient Dragon (non-aggro reasons) with few NPC/no PC summons. ]

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andri_g posted...

I presume that there would be no changes to PC stats for PvP. PC levels might be put into narrowed ranked ranges for phantom/invader visibility (e.g., host level +/-10).

Okay, but one of the biggest complaints around the so-called difficulty of this game is the player invasions. Is the pro-easy mode crowd really okay with this?


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andri_g posted...

in a game already considered to be a Souls-style game.

Considered by who? It feels more like monster hunter.

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meralonne posted...

Okay, but one of the biggest complaints around the so-called difficulty of this game is the player invasions. Is the pro-easy mode crowd really okay with this?

I completely disagree. I very rarely see invasions brought up as a difficulty issue with the series. You can play entirely through any of the games and never get invaded - either through playing offline or using whatever mechanic in each game that prevents invasions.

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MC_BatCommander posted...

I completely disagree. I very rarely see invasions brought up as a difficulty issue with the series. You can play entirely through any of the games and never get invaded - either through playing offline or using whatever mechanic in each game that prevents invasions.

My experience with discussion boards on this very website leads me to the opposite conclusion.

Sure, you can play offline or hollow and not risk invasions, but then you cant summon other players to help... and if you can summon, you can be invaded. You cant tell me that you havent seen people complain on this very website about how they should be able to summon without having to be invaded. Or the players who form gank squads to punish the meanie invaders.

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onedarksoul posted...

Considered by who?

https://www.darkstation.com/reviews/dragons-dogma-dark-arisen
https://www.digitaltrends.com/game-reviews/dragons-dogma-dark-arisen-review/ **
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-04-22-dragons-dogma-dark-arisen-review
https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/07/05/truth-and-consequences-in-dark-souls-dragons-dogma-and-the-witcher-2/#720f8ba82b11

** "The Easy [mode] difficulty, which was actually introduced last year as a downloadable, also makes [Dragon's] Dogma far more approachable."
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meralonne posted...

Sure, you can play offline or hollow and not risk invasions, but then you cant summon other players to help... and if you can summon, you can be invaded.

I suppose that any such Easy mode also could include "social distance on-premises" limits. :P

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It does have an easy mode

It's called sorcery

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If they were going to add one it'd have to be really patronising because once you know what the enemies can do and will do in each position, a lot of them are basically moving in slow motion.

The score these people give it would also go down because if they could actually beat it without putting any time into it, they'd just turn on the ol "this is not a hashtag epic emotive immersive cinematic sony exclusive experience and after my first playthrough I didn't attempt to get any more mileage out of the gameplay so it's not very good"
No point watering it down when the audience you'd be doing it for would rather drink paint.

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andri_g posted...

** "The Easy [mode] difficulty, which was actually introduced last year as a downloadable, also makes [Dragon's] Dogma far more approachable."

Im not entirely sure what is meant by this, because it assumes that Dogma wasnt terribly approachable in its original state. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Having played hundreds of hours of that game as well, I feel that it was very unjustly compared to Souls. But it did have one thing in common: the enemies were placed such that you could go anywhere you wanted given the proper skill but those creatures were placed in such a manner as to say, newbies shouldnt be here yet.

Dogma also had baked-in difficulty adjustments that really had nothing to do with selecting a mode. The default setting/design was player, players pawn, two random pawns of the same level as the player. To make things easier, simply summon a higher level pawn from your friend list; to make things more difficult, dismiss pawns entirely. It was a very organic difficulty adjuster.

I would argue that Capcoms implementation of easy mode and hard mode in that game was actually a bad idea. All Capcom did was buff/debuff enemies depending on the mode, but only for the player and not the pawns. Quite frankly, it was exactly the kind of lazy, tacked on easy mode that the interwebz complains about.


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meralonne posted...

To make things easier, simply summon a higher level pawn from your friend list; to make things more difficult, dismiss pawns entirely. It was a very organic difficulty adjuster.

I agree. For difficulty, soft modifier changes (add/remove pawns) are less likely than hard modifier changes (increase/decrease enemy stats) to throw gameplay out-of-balance.

[ And, like DS, DD:DA has several encounters where more "summons" in a party can make winning, or even surviving, a lot more difficult. ]

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Delevel enemies in a room based on deaths.
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