It mostly just punishes your recklessness. Most ambushes are in plain sight from beforehand or implicitely hinted at. Taking it slowly, and assuming you manage the combat, you can traverse from bonfire to bonfire in a single run, assuming you didn't take a wrong turn.
This is very true. One of my favorite things about Dark Souls 1 (haven't played 3 so far but I definitely will!) was how it was punishing but never unfair. Every time you fell for an ambush, stepped on a trap or got caught unaware of your surroundings, it was on you. I have 2000+ hours played in Dks1 and, unless there was some sort of glitch or you encountered a hacker, I never once died where it wasn't on me.
+Marcelo Stöckle you`re right, although sometimes you know you`re stepping into an ambush but since the enemy type thats doing the ambush is new and you probably don`t know their moveset and behavior you might die once or twice learning it.
Dark Souls is about a universal skill set. The skill set Demon's Souls taught me has carried me through the entire Souls Series, to the point where Dark Souls 3 was actually a rather leisurely experience. You learn to approach *all* suspiciously placed items and sharp corners with caution and learn to approach *all* potential ambush locations with your shield up and an escape plan in your back pocket. I died *very* little (relatively) during my first blind play-through of Dark Souls 3, with the majority of said deaths caused by stupid mistakes, lazy play, and moments of experimentation. And I'm no Souls Series master; I can't parry consistently, I rely on leveling-up a bit too much (Dark Souls *true* "Easy Mode"), and I'm a bit to heavy on the Estus. But I do have one skill that keeps me alive in every Souls Series game: patience. Demon's Souls taught me patience, Dark Souls reinforced it, and I'll approach everything in the Souls Series with patience from now on. So that said, I respectfully disagree (and not in that snide, flippant way people on the Internet "respectfully disagree") that the Souls Series is about learning through repetition. I believe Souls is about taking what you learned before and applying it to every situation that follows.
Agreed. Learning from repetition is like a consolation prize in Dark Souls, "you failed to spot this ambush, but now you'll know for next time". Dark Souls isn't about throwing yourself against a brick wall until you succeed, it's (as you said) about patience and reading your environment. I don't want to sound like 'that guy', but I managed to avoid the ambushes that were featured in this video during my first playthrough due to my experiences with the previous games. Not to say I've never been caught out, of course, but I'd blame those times when I did get ambushed on my own failing to read the situation.
+Joshua Campbell the learning by repetition is what you get when you aproach to dark souls as a "hero ego-tastic empowerment" game... if you play dark souls like, let's say, you play at skyrim or dragon age, you'll die hard constantly.
I said it in a previous comment but it fits here just as well. In my 2000+ hours of playinf Dark Souls 1 I never once died, unless it there was some sort of glitch or I encountered a hacker, where it wasn't on me. Every ambush, every pressure plate or other kind of trap is avoidable.
+Joshua Campbell Yeah this was my biggest problem with the video. I really like the feeling in Souls games when you walk into a new room with your shield up, being somewhat afraid of what is to come yet fully certain that you can handle it. The devs almost always leave hints or set up vantage points to spot ambushes from miles away. There's rarely a situation you can't prepare for beforehand.
It's not even about learning. The trick, for me anyways, when it comes to Dark Souls is that I couldn't get into the game because I was afraid. I had a fear of death. Losing progress, losing my souls, was something that made me deathly afraid of actually playing the game. However, like anything worth doing, that fear was overcome by going a little further and further over time and choosing to face my fear rather than run from it. Once THAT happened, I never thought twice about the size or design of what enemy I was facing. By Dark Souls 3, long after the fear was gone, running around in Lothric and the various locales was the equivalent of wrapping a blanket around me and sipping on a cup of warm cocoa. What I mean is, Dark Souls became comfortable instead of frightening.
The concept of alienating "potential consumers" shouldn't be looked at as a villain. While creative choices remain up to the publisher/developer, like any other medium, some things just aren't for everyone. Narratives in film or novels with heavyhanded theology appeal to specific crowds and don't include sparknotes at the end in case things go over people's heads. Music that requires context and paying attention such as Kendrick Lamar's albums do their own personal thing with fewer tracks built for "pop-radio-play". Homogenizing a product so that it caters to everyone (and possibly appeals to no one) can make for a very bland and forgettable experience. And in an industry with such a wide diversity of games, Dark Souls doesn't need the onus of reaching out more. More games nowadays DO have difficulty options than the few that don't. Just like one can celebrate the noble ambition of games that lean heavily into narrative and abandon traditional gameplay, they're just as plentiful as games that rely entirely on the opposite. In both cases, they can exist without compromising the intent to "sell more".
+Truongasm However one can counter it with that games are a interactive experience that you, as a play can tailor that experience. You as a play is in a sense a co-creator. And so letting players have the option to tweak the game to there preference is something that generally do not hurt anyone else experience of that game. That being said. Dark Soul way of difficulty is so core to the experience of dark souls that adding a easy mode could harm it on a larger scale. Maybe. I am not sure. In general I however thing that players should get more options when it comes to tailoring there game. Far to often we see players be limited. Not only in how difficult the game is, but even more so how the graphics are presented or how controls . I know is often a part of the Aesthetic vision of the creator. But it can alienate people. Sometimes is just a minor thing like people not agreeing what looks good visually. I generally do not like ambient occlusion or blur. But sometime these effects can make it hard for people to physically enjoy a game. Blur can make sim sickness worse for example. So I say is better to actually let people have a bit more options to make them enjoy the game rather then force them to play a game in a certain way. Also like to add that people tend to go with what is present as default setting first to. People from my experience do not go looking after a way to change things if they do not happen to be power users from the start. So as a creator you have the option to present your vision first. Then let people decide on a what to tweak to fit them. So if Dark Souls would have a easy mode. Present the default mode first that is recommended. But again Dark Souls might be a game that should not have a easy mode. And you should defensibly not always try to capture the biggest potential consumer base. Specialization is good and you can have that and offer options. :)
The point I'm driving against the point being driven in this video (and others) is that villifying artist's intent for the sake of broadening horizons is regressive. Options are more than welcome, but that's a balance, not a moral black/white area and a different topic. The video postulates Miyazaki's intent is hypothetically damaging to the brand because of "anti-inclusiveness"; but in a market where this is the niche (not the status quo), and considering that DS3 has had the most successful launch in the franchise thus far, it hasn't been hampered by refining its selling points rather than dulling them.
***** Yeah I think what you have to weight the issue on is if adding this option would be harmful or not for the game. I can actually see that is possible that making the game have a easy mode to be harmful. At least for the brand. Even if it might not actually effect the players who wants the challenge. Just knowing that the game has a easy mode could be harmful it self from a marketing standpoint.
+Truongasm the difference with games is that no book, will refuse to open because you didn't get the last chapter... Some people (like me) are interested in everything about DS, except for the difficulty. (i'm one of those who failed utterly at the very beginning, even though i plan on rerolling someday and play smarter) I'm not asking for a game I can breeze through, but a game that is challenging to me, but that I can still traverse and learn at my pace. I'm not demanding, or feel entitled to anything either, but if some devs made a game with great art direction, cryptic and deep lore and why not, dynamic difficulty that assures everyone gets a suitably harsh challenge (thats kind of my obsession right now, as I am swarmed by hype towards DS3), I would be really interested.
+Maxime Teppe That's because games are a different medium. For the sake of the metaphor, the same thing happens when you don't finish it or don't understand concepts within. It's the player's inability versus an open ended system set up by the novelist. And in both situations, there's ways around it. Just like Sparknotes exist to understand themes on books better, the same exists for Dark Souls. You learn the lore through forums and wikis, you summon in help to make the game painfully easier, and you get a secondhand experience from earthing Let's Plays. If your pipe dream is for a game that meets every one of your qualifications perfectly, then there's thousands of other people that it wouldn't and still doesn't meet. I know you said you aren't entitled but realistically, every game isn't going to be an ace in the hole for everyone's requirements. So than rather then misfiring everywhere to appeal to an unappeasable target demographic, there's better craft in directional focus.
It's really neat to hear opinions about Dark Souls from a non-Dark Souls fan. The thing about Dark Souls is that mastering it forces you to internalize things so instinctively, you may not even be sure of what you learned.
At the cost of humanity, embers, or human effigies. Beginners end up using all of their multiplayer items because they're prone to dying easily (obviously). I helped several of my friends play Dark Souls: PtDE, and they ended up running out of humanity. So I would drop them half my stack. Bosses have increased HP (50% per person that enters boss fog?) You can be invaded.
Un-Metaphorical Grapevine Not to mention, the bosses on increase in health ONCE so the more people you add doesn't make the boss exponentially stronger. Regardless, bar Orenstein and Smough (the boss fight designed specifically to get you cooperating with other players) all the bosses and their attack patterns are built around 1 on one confrontation and bringing another player makes them far more manageable, if not easy
The "price" is all but meaningless. Increased enemy health doesn't compare to 3-4 people wailing at them from different directions and taking aggro to let others heal. Enemies are a joke after that, with only the most high burst damage ambushes remaining dangerous. You don't even have any real incentive to balance your defense and offense, as one can just tank, while others do the damage. Honestly, the most dangerous level hazard for a co-op squad is the hubris gained from such a fast power up. The summoner just kills himself while going forward full sprint. You get bonuses from all of those items, which the summons help you keep longer(and often drop more to you). You gain more of those items with co-op(it being the best way to get them, aside from optimized farm. Ironically), even though it's supposed to be the "price". Not to mention, that each of them is farmable, and that you need only one or two to get the ball rolling. Only DS2 had a slight scarcity of the humanity items(i you don't count DS1 needing you to dump them into covenants). Bosses have more health, but you put them into 1v3-4 match, for which they rarely have anything to counter it with. No need for windows to heal. No need to find openings. No(real) need for stamina management. During most bosses, even a single brain dead NPC summon can be enough to render a tough challenge into an inconvenience. So what can you do with 2-3 capable human players pulling aggro, carving it up and possibly even healing you in your place? Often you don't even have to move from the fog gate... Invasions. For two people aiding you, you _might_ get a single one to hinder you(even better with 6 people online). With limited time to do anything, as you can just hop a boss fog. With possible infinite amount of summons willing to throw themselves at them. Why exactly wouldn't you take that trade every day of the week? Summoning trivializes the entire game(series). I have a friend, who was lukewarm to DS. But as i heard, that he summoned at every possible point(why wouldn't you?), i challenged him to play it once more, but without any player summons. Now-a-days he loves the series as much as me, if not more. With many similar experiences, that i have either seen or heard of, it might even sabotage, or completely ruin it.
@@Khrene for me, summoning help feels like admitting defeat, and then I don't get that sense of triumphant joy and satisfied accomplishment when the boss falls. I seriously can't think of another game that makes me laugh aloud and praise the sun whey a big fight. I figure If there are people who can run all four of the souls games without taking damage, I can take the time to learn the moveset of the dancer of the boreal Valley and kick her ass inside out, you know? Plus it's all designed for one person to play alone, which is why summoning makes everything kinda easy. But that's just me.
The animations DO tween. Tweens are literally how all 3d animation is done. There's no way they couldn't tween unless they were animated frame by frame like Guilty Gear Xrd. You mean Cancel, not tween. And they DO cancel, like say Devil May Cry, God of War, and Bayonetta, unlike say Kingdoms of Amaleur or 2d Castlevania. The endings of the animation, the followthrough, cancel when you input another swing, or a dodge, or a block (though it will only cancel into block if you hit an enemy). The thing is unlike those other games, there are no mid-animation cancels, like jump cancels in DMC, block cancels in God of War, and Dodge cancels in Bayonetta. You are committed to your attacks, and the animations for the attacks have a longer startup time.
+D_West Unless you go for early Dancer... after that, you'll find no summons until the frozen city. :P edit: To explain myself without any spoilers, you can do one of the late game bosses early on (if you are good enough :P), which will give you access to a late game area, where you can get Large Titanite Shards, Titanite Chunks and Titanite Scales. This will allow you to start the game with +9 weapon. On the other side of the coin, you will not be able to summon anyone, since matchmaking is based on level and your most upgraded weapon. This works with invaders aswell, so you will get no summons and get invaded by people with end-game weapons and spells. So essentialy, the online part of the game will be a no-go, until you get to places where people get their weapons to +6-7 range, which is about the frozen area mid way into the game. :P
I definitely appreciate an outsiders view of the series. So many people, much like me, are so involved with it I often forget how it looked to me before I dove in. (Edit:) As for an easy mode, as most games understand it, in Dark Souls, I think its important to point out how much of the game leans on making you feel small and disempowered. To give players a consistency breaking switch that makes all enemies magically weaker because I said so, like in Skyrim which is demonstrably not about disempowerment, breaks that. I intuit that most people that ask for an easy mode are really asking for a version that doesn't feel as daunting but its Dark Souls express intention to be daunting. Thus, asking for that is like asking for a horror movies with no scares.
+Gonzalo Silva Not to mention, people ask for an easy mode, and yet they feel like it's somehow more unacceptable to co-op with a friend or have strangers help you with a particularly difficult area or boss. Multiplayer IS Dark Souls' difficulty settings, and there are interesting mechanics balanced around that idea with co-op/PvP. I'm guessing people think having someone join your game to help you is akin to handing over the controller to a friend and having them beat the boss for you. You're not actually playing the game at that point, however.. if you had an easy mode, you wouldn't actually be playing the game either, so it's a really bizarre argument in my opinion. I'm not ashamed to admit that when I first got into Dark Souls 1, I did summon my friend to help me with a few bosses that just seemed insurmountable (O&S), but later on when I understood the game better in general I replayed it and knew the mentality you needed to have to learn and progress, and even that felt incredibly rewarding.
+Gonzalo Silva IIRC, Miyazaki's intent for both Dark Souls and Dark Souls 3 was to make an environment where the player really felt the bleak and downtrodden universe that he wanted to create. In doing so, the perceived sheer difficulty of the series is indeed completely justified, and trying to change that aspect runs the risk of compromising what Miyazaki set out to do. In short, yeah, I definitely agree with you. And I really wish more main-stream developers took that same thing to heart; not the 'bleak and challenging' thing that Dark Souls is so good at, but a central concept that everything is funneled through. Or if one had to fit the above text within a nut-shell: "Focused, and not unfettered."
@@Shilag Which is why the community needs to stop telling people that coop (or turtling or ranged exploits or using guides) is the wrong way to play the game - no more "you owe it to yourself to ______" language.
Really glad you decided to look at Dark Souls and I would like to see this continued. The video was interesting, but I felt mostly touched on points that were fairly obvious. For instance, an easier difficulty for dark souls is a point that has already been talked about quite a bit. I think most people at this point understand why it wouldn't really work.
+Morgan Greene Mm, as someone who's never played a dark souls game but has long considered it, I actually found the discussion on the subject enlightening, partially because I'm always hearing how great and subtle the writing is. The gameplay has looked alternately needlessly imposing and oddly enticing, and a talk about how the difficulty is more "core" to the gameplay than in stuff like Doom or Baldur's Gate lets me know more about the franchise I'm making on-and-off eye contact with.
One aspect that you haven't talked about is multiplayer co-op. It might not always be relevant but it very much is in the grand majority of cases and does impact difficulty massively.
I think you're spot on about what you're saying, it actually goes farther than I think you know. I haven't finished Dark Souls 3 yet, so I can't speak too much on that and I'll focus on the first Dark Souls instead. It's easy for people to forget that Dark Souls is the second game in the series. Most of the gameplay was established in Demon's Souls. When it came time to make Dark Souls, the whole lore and aesthetic of the game world had to be remade from scratch. Already having made Demon's Souls and having a great feel for what the core of the gameplay and how that players react to that, the themes and world of Dark Souls are specifically built to comment on the player's experience with the gameplay. There were mobs in Demon's Souls, and they had their own plot device for being mindless zombies. But Dark Souls introduced the idea that all of the mobs in the game are hollows not because a curse was put on them, or because they died many times, but because they gave up and stopped trying. They're other players who gave up, and every bit of dialogue telling you not to turn hollow is the game talking to you and telling you to keep trying. Most of the NPCs are also commentaries on the different types of players I'm sure Miyazaki saw playing Demon's Souls, and a lot of them are embodiments of reasons why players give up. Big Hat Logan is obsessed with min/maxing his character to the point where he loses sight on everything else in the game. Siegmeyer relies on help so much that he eventually loses confidence in himself. Tarkus had a big heavy build in mind and refused to adapt his playstyle for new demands in the environment. The notion that an "easy mode" in Dark Souls would let people experience the great story and characters and settings completely misses the point that all of these things are just commentary on the core of what the game is about, which for an action RPG is pretty uniquely focused and specific. All of Dark Souls just serves to ask the player one question: how do you overcome struggle? And what's great about Dark Souls is that it makes so many different approaches viable and rewards any legitimate answer someone can have to that question. Do you go to friends for help? Good! Do you step back, study the situation, and try something new? Great job! Do you bash your head at the wall over and over and outlast whatever's in your way? Congratulations! Dark Souls as a game is really just a way for the player to question their own approach to struggle and test whether it can succeed in the face of daunting challenges. And nearly everything in it is just there to push that experience.
Basically, developers should just make the games they want to make and people should just play the games they want to play. Demanding that a developer makes a game for you or demanding that consumers like your product is the problem. Make what you want to make and if people like it they'll play it. Otherwise the art just gets distilled into a corporate product and you end up with Call of Duty or Michael Bay films.
As basically everyone else has said in the comments already, the reason Dark Souls doesn't need an easy mode is because that is what summons do. This enemy AI, especially the bosses, are not equipped to deal with multiple people. This was true of Demon's Souls, Dark Souls 1 & 2, as well as Bloodborne. There is also no shortage of summons on any platform while your maximum summon count is higher than it's ever been. When you mention "game literacy", that's why people sneer whenever someone asks for a Souls easy mode. It is quite literally already there, the fact that you are free to level up at any time is itself a selection of difficulty. Dark Souls 3 doesn't need an easy mode because it has already accommodated people who want one, just not in the traditional way people are expecting to get it. This is precisely what it does with many things including multiplayer, world-building and player interaction.
while the boss AI does have problems with summons it doesn't mean absolute victory. most of the time the AI summons have just as bad tactics. but there are things I think that could be done to make it less difficult. like maybe giving the player some kind of sensor or hearing vision ie the last of us. or perhaps lowering enemy life and raising player damage. plus there are things that need to be improved like wanting to play with friends or better camera controls for some of the big enemies.
+WayToTheGrave I think the flaw with this argument is that these alternate options are never explicitly communicated at the level at which an easy-mode-player would need.
Jonslam Lee You can easily connect with friends by setting a network password in the options menu. One of the biggest changes to the series overall, it's been that way since Dark Souls 2.
Josh Foreman Dark Souls explicitly communicates very little. If this is a flaw in the argument, I'd respond by saying you're probably interested in playing the wrong game. If level up health = more health = less dying isn't obvious enough, not sure what to say to that. The game doesn't explicitly tell you this, but your banker shouldn't have to explicitly tell you than more digits in your bank account means more dollars to spend.
+Jonslam Lee You mean X-ray vision? Enemies make a ton of noise usually. And the game 99% of the time will allow you to see the enemies if you actually look around. Dark Souls is all about suffering through trials and overcoming insurmountable foes through determination and grit. The satisfaction of these games would be lost if you did not make the game difficult, but fair.
I think there is also an argument to be made related to how the difficulty of the game is also a storytelling device. It draws parallels between your suffering as a character through the curse of the Dark Sign and of you as a player. With each death, your character slowly loses his humanity and sanity, whilst you also suffer. The correlation between lore and gameplay mechanics is very close in this game and the way they weave the story into your experience is part of it said storytelling. If you don't watch a movie, somebody can tell you the story or watch a brief summary of it online but the experience of being there in the cinema and watching is is vastly different and has a different value, even moreso with games which are an interactive medium. Player interaction has to be woven into the mechanics and storytelling, if you can get the same experience watching a game, then it's not a very good game.
+7thNoodle That reading of the game is only valid if you don't consider the possibility space outside of the game, i.e., the feelings of players who have rejected wanting to finish Dark Souls. Your character never loses their humanity beyond your readiness to keep playing despite the deaths, making the PC technically invincible within the game. In that case, Dark Souls is working as intended. If you decide that you don't want to play anymore, it would likely happen after a death, with your PC spawning at a bonfire. In that case, your PC is waiting for you to come back, not going insane or losing their sanity and Dark Souls cannot explain why you coming back after a long time (if you come back) does not render your PC unplayable. The limits of Dark Souls outside of the role of players, at least in terms of its lore, are built into the game.
+Gokul Sisir Yeah, but isn't that true in any game? In Call of duty if you quit after a death, your game stays there, and the story is that your character died, unless you pick it up again and start anew. Same with Dark Souls, your character lost his humanity. Thing is, because of the storytelling element of death and rebirth through loss of your own humanity, the story then adapts to your character losing his humanity when you quit until, once you return to finish the game, it turns out he still had some humanity left in him, which he then used to push on forward and (hopefully)finish the game. What I'm considering here is 99% cannon and in terms of game mechanics I'm not sure it was something built into the game as a mechanic from the start, it was most likely a "happy little accident". But, it is something that makes the game experience more complete. What I mentioned in my previous comment is the reason Dark Souls is my favorite game. I have never played a game before that transfered all of the story it had to say, about you, the world, the people in it, through gameplay. Every grueling death made sense, every bleak vista told a story and every person gone insane by losing their humanity was pitied upon. Nobody had to tell you anything about the game, you just understood it more and more as you played. And in that sense Dark Souls story-only mode is most likely the worst idea I've ever heard.
+7thNoodle Well, I don't think the hollowing mechanic is a good example of a narrative-mechanics parallel. Yes, you hollow and the game has mechanics within in it to mechanically represent a literary device, but it seems a bit surface. Hollowing is never involved in story progression so to speech. You can play the whole game through hollowed out, and the narrative progresses out just the same. Hollowing seems to be more a mechanic introduced to explain the multiple lives. Rather, a narrative integral mechanic changes some part of the story as it progresses. You can get the same experience from being hollow or ashen.
7thNoodle In Call of Duty, the PC's death is not part of the canon to begin with: it is, at best, negative reinforcement, if the player is paying attention. Call of Duty does not recognise that the PC has reached an area in the story-mode until they have crossed it and reached the next checkpoint. In Dark Souls, the PC's death is canonical: the souls and liquid humanities lost at the time of the PC's death are left at the place where the PC died in the game. Hence, Dark Souls uses death as both negative reinforcement and as proof that the PC advanced as far as it did in the game world, unlike Call of Duty. Quitting because of death in Call of Duty is not the same as that in Dark Souls because the two games fundamentally treat death differently. Call of Duty acts like the death didn't happen. Dark Souls clearly states that the death did happen, both because the PC is hollow, if it weren't already, has zero souls and liquid humanities, and has one chance to get them back. A game like Crusader Kings II is, if I may suggest, a better example of contextualising deaths of PCs, because, unlike Dark Souls, the PCs are not invincible. Death of the PC causes the successor of the PC, within the game, to become the PC. If there is no successor or if the successor does not belong to the original PC's dynasty, the game ends. There is an actual fail state in Crusader Kings II, which Dark Souls does not possess. Because the game's canon is open-ended, the player's action and the PC's death can become part of a campaign's story without needing to create a convoluted lore around explaining it. Requiring that the player interaction be explained within the context of a game's narrative is, certainly, a commendable accomplishment, but Dark Souls does not achieve it. That is not to say that Dark Souls is a "bad" game (whatever that is), just that the game is an achievement of good design despite (arguably) trying and failing to explain the role of the PC within its lore.
Gokul Sisir I think you named a better example with your Crusader Kings II example, but a failure state does not necessarily make a mechanic narrative pivotal. How much of the narrative changes with the death of the PC character other than a name change when the successor steps up? I think a more fitting example may be the kill count/chaos rating system from Dishonored. But the narrative does change if you kill all of ppl verses a more pacifistic run. NPCs will interact with the PC differently in the final moments of the game; the player will be offered choices which will affected the conclusion of the game. Now, granted many games have a similar mechanic of "full gauge to get good/bad ending," but I think the change in perception of your actions by the game based upon the amount of death you've caused signals a mechanic that is narrative pivotal. Simply put, you kill too much, you are a seen as a monster and the narrative changes to fit it.
"and all of this adds up to a game that feels punishing", the operative word being 'feels'. as much as people love talking about how unforgiving the game is, it's also extremely forgiving. while you lose your souls if don't get your bloodstain, you learn very quickly a) don't walk around with a lot of liquid souls, and b) souls doesn't really matter that much. while you can't 'savescum' darksouls, the bonfire mechanic gives you infinite lives, infinite xp, has no restrictive level cap, and lets you do suicide runs. you can run past almost everything that isn't bosses. compared to something with quicksaves, say baldurs gate, where you can't save or leave areas during combat, meaning you HAVE to take and win fights, dks is very forgiving. add to that the summoning system, where you 'get full credit' for having someone in your game beating it for you, within what the games provides you of tools, it's *very* forgiving compared to a lot of games. I'm not gonna be the tool that goes 'dks so easy', because it does punish mistakes swiftly and harshly, doesn't hold your hand, and expects you to put in the effort to learn its systems and world. but I think that what From truly excels at it playing peoples' heads. Dks is very good at *seeming* more intimidating that it actually is, which is great design if what you're going for is granting a sense of accomplishment in the player, just like it's very good at making the world *seem* deeper and more complex than it actually is by making the information about it sparse and vague. being alluring, vague and punishing is how seduction has been done for thousand of years, and dks does it very well, although I don't think they would've have gotten far if not for their extremely robust core combat system. I think Dks3 is the hardest in the series no question, because everything is faster and your windows are smaller. when vets are complaining that 3 is too easy, I think they want the experience they had on their first souls playthrough, which they can't simply because once you 'get' the core of the game(s), once you've learned the basic rules, it's not that hard to actually *play*, and they've forgotten that it was never *that* hard.
+dotanuki Yes that last part hits the nail on the head, i accepted it too and i still really enjoy my experience in the later souls games despite it not being as hard as my first play through (DS1). As much as I'd love to relive that first play-through i can't really blame the souls/borne games for that, it did its job well of teaching me.
Dark Souls 3 is more PvP focused anyway. So when you are embered you are going to get invaded. Worst you might end up Summoning a mad phantom, or a purple phantom. The has been left up to the Players now.
+dotanuki You mentioned the most important point of DS difficutly: It doesn't hold your hand. It gives you the means to figure out, what to do and how to progress and it gives you the feedback when you do semething right or when you do something wrong. But it desn't give you any more than that. And this makes it seem hard in an age where there seems to be more and more extremely learning resistant people. Even supposedly smart, educated and dedicated people. Example: Day9. He played DS1 on stream and it was just him running head long into the Undead Burg and dieing for hours. Without addapting his play style, without stopping and observing his surroundings, without learning from his mistakes. And this is the guy who for years tried to make people better SC2 gamers by tutoring his audience. As you said: DS absolutely has an easy mode in form of summoning, ranged combat, unrestricted leveling. But it doesn't present you with the button to switch the easy mode on. You need to find the easy mode yourself. And (and the acesability fetishists will wehemently disagree with me here) if that's too hard for you, if you just want to push a button and enjoy the story, than better put down the video games and go watch a movie.
+Leo DS And to think that all they have to do is press Square in a menu to know everything they need makes my smile even wider. God I love 0/10 Metacritic reviews.
wanadeena This gets even better actually, and I totally forgot to mention it: you dont even need to press Square to know what the item does! In fact, just selecting the item from your inventory makes a side window appear describing what the item does. Again, gotta love those 0/10 Metacritic reviews.
I never felt really "punished" by dark souls because of the large amount of content between bonfires, it helped me see each section as sort of a testing ground where death never really mattered because I was simply busy practicing. It's a lot easier than say, super meat boy, or superhot, or hotline miami, which are all games that are incredibly fast and frustrating to learn because they just keep smacking you over and over again without letting you gain a mental momentum. Dark Souls is drawn out and lets you experience the game at your own pace, it's a slow zenlike game, and it's more fun because of it. Dark Souls has it's momentum be a slow buildup where you roll further and further through the level until you confront a boss.
+Flailmorpho I feel like Dark Souls 3 is actually a pretty forgiving game. It has checkpoints closely-spaced, perhaps closer than any of the previous games. And you have unlimited lives. If you die you can generally get back to your location in a couple minutes and retrieve your souls. Also the bonfie warping makes things much easier, personally I would have preferred if there was no warping until mid or late-game, like in DS1.
Props for apparently making it at least to Irythyll Dungeon without burning any bones to make your flask heal more. I suspect you probably just didn't know about the mechanic, but that's still kind of impressive.
Can't entirely agree with your argument on the core of dark souls not being able to scale in a similar fashion to Doom. The new game+ feature present in every souls game in-fact serves as a sort of non-traditional difficulty scaling option in order to make the gamer harder by making enemy damage more severe, or even the presence of new enemies in different locations. It's an interesting sort of give and take however: A second playthrough eases up the difficulty in some ways since you'll have foreknowledge of traps and encounters, yet said encounters demand a greater degree of perfection, rising with each subsequent game on the same file. Even so, it's not a traditional "difficulty selection," as it can't be accessed without beating the game once, but I thought it was worth mentioning.
On making the game having an easy mode. They kinda do offer ways to make it eayier, like summoning, farming souls and running past bad guys or use 'cheap' builds like sorcery in DS2. The game also rewards players for exploring more by giving players more items to work with. Additional information and learning is very important as you pointed out. Players have the option of looking up guides which can help them learn with out having to die. Allot of these things are looked down on as not getting the true souls experiences, but they are offered. So making use of them does in a sense give the game an easy mode.
But that's the point, the experience you get is so closely tied to the perceived difficulty that people will call you out if you do take those measures in order to make it easier.
Damn Zodiak Well you can see there is no shortage of summoning sings. Most people don;t give a shit and don't discus games online, but they still benefit from the brilliant game design :)
+Eve Pigzy True that. The point is though, that the Souls experience is closely tied to the level of perceive difficulty and the satisfaction you gain from that. To make souls more accessible, be it gameplay wise or through making the story easier to access, you inherently alter the "true" souls experience. I think it's great that From software doesn't try that. I truly respect that type of feast or famine approach in todays gaming industry.
Not to state the obvious, but man, he's not kidding when he says this is from the point of view of someone who's not a Dark Souls fan. Fat rolling, no Estus Reinforcement, Thief starting class. I value your input though. Thanks for the video. My two cents is that Dark Souls is a game that would suffer from an actual easy mode. I agree with the assessment that a different experience isn't the same as a worse experience, but that doesn't mean that a different experience can't be a worse experience. Dark Souls without the demand for learning the systems and mechanics of the game wouldn't be Dark Souls, and it wouldn't really offer anything in its place to make it a game of equal stature. Since the story is tied to your exploration, and the exploration is so tied up in all the systems of the game, challenging or otherwise, I feel like a story-only mode would have to go all the way and be more or less a walking simulator. That might turn out to be a fine game for the that genre's demographic, but I doubt it. The story of Dark Souls has meaning because the player interacts in very meaningful ways, mechanically and narratively, with its characters. You kill them, you serve them, you fight alongside them, you save them, you always undertake some challenge involving them. Removing the challenge removes the meaning of the interactions with the characters. Compare it to Mass Effect. In Mass Effect, a story-only mode makes sense for certain people. Its story is driven by the player's choices, like a choose-your-own adventure novel. In many cases, the challenge of the combat or other systems of the game is nothing but "filler" in between the choices which actually advance the narrative. Because of this, the challenge that actually provides meaning to the narrative, that being the challenge of making choices and role playing, isn't lost when you remove the extraneous systems. With Dark souls, the meaning of your actions isn't as often in what you choose to do, but that you succeeded in doing it. A story-only mode can't work because it the story IS dependent on the other, not-very-extraneous systems.1
This game does have an easy mode. It's called co op. I'm not trying to sound like an ass, it's true. If you're having a hard time in an area or with a boss, there are always others readily available to help you in jolly cooperation.
I like what you said is that it is not always just "sadistic and punishing" but instead is satisfying and eventually areas feel easy, which is why I always felt it was so hyperbolic how people describe the difficulty, because I feel like I always get to a point where it isn't that hard but the initial entry into a new area feels really tense and satisfying when you succeed the first time and fun to learn the environment when you don't succeed the first time
Also the argument for lowering the difficulty, I understand. But the reason to play the game is because the of the core to the game is it is about overcoming what seems impossible
I'd agree that Dark Souls isn't really hard, but I think one of the core elements you didn't mention in this video is the multiplayer. Not just the PVP, that's a whole different can of worms, but the co-op. Everything in the lore and mechanics is pushing you to use the co-op. You can get summoned and help someone else take out enemies more efficiently while getting a preview of the area ahead before you take it on yourself. Virtually every fight is dramatically easier with co-op, and that's sort of what Dark Souls is about to me. It's about living in a harsh world that doesn't always explain itself. It's about stumbling, confused, trying to make your own way when it seems like everything is against you. Ultimately, it's about the realization that you don't have to take the world on alone, that there are other people like you. The way the story is slowly unearthed by the community, debated publicly until we get a working interpretation going reinforces these ideas. Really it's a nice little message about real life: If you try and do everything alone you'll just fail again and again, but by working together with others you can reach your goals and be happy, even in the most dreary of circumstances. Dark Souls is more about the value of companionship and community than anything else.
The thing with Dark Souls is not that the game is very hard. It's that it does not hold your hand, and does not spoon feed you all the systems within the game. If all the impatient players who keep charging headfirst into death would stop for a moment, and read the description on a white soap stone, they might figure out they can summon help to ease their travels. If these players did figure it out, there's no reason they can't make progress.
Hi Color Bars! I agree with your opinion but it kinda felt like dark souls 3 somehow held my hand. Like, there were messages on the ground (i mean official messages, not player written ones) that literally told me what to do or where to go.
Mert Erten Yea, which gives players that claim they need an easier mode or something less ground to stand on. This game mostly spelled it out for people, with the exception of some hidden mechanics/areas/ etc.
As I am for opinion pieces or deconstructions of games a first timers experience with dark souls has been done before, and its been done better. It's been done 5 years ago, repeatedly by nearly everyone, when the first game came out. Its been talked about by every videogame website, print newspaper and even talk show host. I get that ds3 is hot right now, and views are nice, but a completely fresh or even slightly unseen take on the experience will be nigh impossible to do. In the end it will really only serve to aggravate the people who know what dark souls is, as seen by the comments.
I am so glad that you really understand just what makes the game "difficult" but also how the game can be made incredibly easy through understanding enemies and game mechanics. I get so mad when i see charlatans to the series like Total Biscuit preach about how incredibly, unfairly difficult it is.
Tb,put Demons Souls in one of his goty lists,as well as Ds.(Even with the first one being a Ps3 exclusive and the second one having one of the shittiest ports in history.Hes far from hating the game.
I know, and i really like the guy, and i know he respects the series, but just the fact that big youtubers like him have a big viewerbase means he influences people through his statements. It is my love for the series speaking here, but i really dont think you should make any statements about the mechanics of these finely tuned games without fully understanding them, just because they can give off the wrong impression.
Another thing with these games is that once you master one, you pretty much master the rest, possibly with the exception of Bloodborne, as I've not played it and it's different enough from the rest of the Soulsborne games. Sure every game has it's differences from the rest that you need to pay attention to, but the general way you approach the games remains the same. After playing Dark Souls 1 and 2, there weren't all that many instances where 3 felt truly difficult. But the fact that even one certain midgame boss felt like a brick wall the same way as Ornstein and Smough felt on my first DS1 playthrough, is a huge plus for the game.
+Jontman42 To the point where I would like to see from soft experiment with dynamic difficulty, a la desident evil 4. If the game is about feeling the satisfaction of beating impossible odds, then some master players end up feeling DS3 is easy. I was one who was blocked very early on in DS1 (I also chose a bad character class to start with, and am a very, very occasional player on top of that. I have recently promised myself to try it again). One way to concile those two types of players would be to have a scalable difficulty, where everyone can be just desperate enough. What if the game decided that dying 6+ time on a boss meant it would need to soften a notch, and killing a boss on the first or second try means the player is ready fo a harde challenge. Spontaneously i would suppose enemy speed is one of the core elements of difficulty (or rather not speed, changing the speed of animation can mess with someone learning the attack timings) but the lengths of the respite moments between two attacks. The more obvious one is enemy damage. I believe that if you make the dynamic difficulty expect you to still die and starts getting hader when you stop dying, then allowing unskilled players to take more punishment might not be giving up on them learning. And that way, the only moment the game gets actually easy is the moment you are able to dodge every sing attack the game throws at you, and without a cap on damage, that means that at this point, every attack is an instant kill. Of course, such a system wouldn't allow for a fine tuned difficulty curve: the player would create the curve himself, so there is the risk of everything feeling the same, without picks and valleys, and designing a new difficulty system would take a lot of time and effort to the devs, a time that wouldn't be invested fine tuning other game features. But I believe it could be a way of spreading to new audiences without compromising the feeling of harshness of every single player. It could even throw some players back in the minset of when they discovered the series.
+Jontman42 You develop "dark souls vision." I haven't finished III yet, but when I saw him walking to pick up that item I immediately knew an ambush was coming.
+Maxime Teppe Not to sound memey or rude, but summoning is honestly dark souls easy mode. If you can't rely on your skill and memorization than you can rely on your friends and strangers, which in it self is a core part of dark souls design. There's even NPC summons though their usually harder to utilize and not as valuable as a veteran player
Reel18k I should try it out, but i fear that it can potentially rob you of the feeling of victory, whereas a well tuned dynamic diffculty system might allowa wider community of players to experience a suitable challenge that allows them to learn to get better at their own pace. Not that from soft should do that: they notoriously excell at handling difficulty for their core audience. But i still would like to see a developper experiment with that type of way of handling difficulty.
Maxime Teppe I'm not going to say summoning is perfect but its handled well. Enemies get more health, Summons have half he estus so when it comes to playing you have as a player need to still learn, but summoning acts as training wheels.
Great video! I always love your critiques, so I'm glad you've turned that critical eye toward souls. Spot on assessment. I'd like to say one thing though. I'm no hard core hard mode gamer, but I think that the difficulty of the souls games actually creates a space where its okay to fail. Most games ignore failure entirely; I feel like an I'm being told to do it again until I get it right, like I'm filming a movie scene. The souls games acknowledge my failure and invite me to try again. There's something freeing about that, when you stop thinking about failure as game over and start thinking about it as a process. And that little bit of wisdom, passed on to me from a game, has made me a far more relaxed and stress free person in real life. Surely that won't be the case for everyone, but I reckon a lot of people are afraid of trying these games out because they can't stop thinking about failure as purely negative. If you play these games you'll fail so many times that it won't even bother you anymore, and when you get to that point, that's when you'll be hooked. You won't become a glutton for punishment, instead you'll be searching high and low for games that treat you as a threat and a rival to best rather than as a consumer to be catered to. That's what people mean when they say souls "ruins" other games for them.
I agree with nearly everything you have said here expect that the game teaches through repetition. Sure It CAN teach you through repetition if you're a stubborn headed person but so can almost literally any game. When I first played Demon's Souls I was much more reckless and learned my lesson throughout my first playthrough there. With each New Soul/borne game I become much more cautious while progressing and analyse my options for nearly any given situation. Because of this way of playing and thinking, I die very little, pace myself properly to avoid unforeseen consequences, and can quickly read and react to new enemy types or encounter. I'm sure most Souls vets feel the same way. It doesn't take 10-20 tries to "memorize" attack patterns or level layouts. I mean I don't expect a newcomer to the Souls series to think like this but Demon's Souls released in 2009. It was a new experience for me and nearly everyone at the time but now that it's 7 years old people should come in with a little more caution then those who played Demon's Souls when it was first released. Also there are "easy" modes in a sense. Summoning for one, or you can try to opt for a build which allows for easier gameplay(which is essentially gone in DK3.) In the previous titles you can stack defense/poise or make a caster. These playstyles allowed you to experience the game in full while being much more forgiving. Taking too much damage or running out of Estus? Grab some armor and a 100% shield to protect yourself, or destroy your enemies from a distance with powerful magic one by one instead of taking them all on at once. This allowed you to play the same game as everyone else but could give you personally a much easier take on it using it core mechanics, making you feel just as accomplished as most others.
+SomethingCra2y A perfect example of this, for me at least while I was playing DS 3, was the area in the undead settlement. I just killed that saw wielding giant guy, walked forward a little bit. and saw the massive plot of arrows and stopped dead in my tracks to figure out what was the challenge of the area. then 2 seconds later a group of enemies further up got whailed on by an arrow. the challenge was visible for me so I responded by running through it as quickly as I could and it worked out. Shit like that could be said about all of the souls releases (with the exception of bed of chaos, stupid piece of shit boss, god damnit) Even bloodbornes chalice dungeons that don't give you the luxury of being a stone-set design you could just read a walkthrough about.
Like most people here, I feel the "click" hasn't happened to you yet. The online features (Co-op, messages etc.) are the helping hand of DS. They help a lot. Plus, watch Super Bunnyhop's Dark Souls analysis video. He didn't mentioned Dark Souls difficulty as much, but by the end, you'll realize that subtracting from the game as it is, nullifies so much that makes the game great.
+Hemang Chauhan But this is an essay about difficulty and breaking it down. SBH did a great analysis but it wasn't focused specifically on difficulty. Also Errant implied this is one of multiple essays.
Seth D Robertson By the end of his video, SBH made a point about difficulty by telling about the things like Lore discovery, combat satisfaction, etc, which implied why game get to be so challenging than an average videogame. But you are correct, ES's video mainly concerns difficulty
I guess that's why I never cared much for DS. I put that level of commitment as a PhD candidate already! Granted, I might finish all 3 Dark souls in less than 5 years, and the game world definitely seems more interesting than my research topic, and the game doesn't make me anxious about my future and... all right, I'll try the game again.
But... Dark Souls already has an easy mode. DkS3 especially so. You can have 3 PHANTOMS HELPNG YOU! There are videos of people just walking around, while those guys steam roll everything in the entire game. They already gave people ability to summon more partners than anything in the game can handle, regardless of all the stat boosts enemies get when you are coopearting.
I love almost everything about the Dark Souls series. The atmosphere, the variety of playstyles, the way its core death mechanic contribute to its immersion in the world. However, one thing that I always find myself avoiding is it's community. Just the overall smugness of a group of players that feel like they're better than others because they beat what is popularly known as a "hard game." And the fact that many criticisms of its difficulty can be reduced down to "well maybe you should get better at the game." It really is at odds with what I consider to be a beautiful and atmospheric artistic masterpiece when I see people online reducing the game's many faceted parts to "I beat this game and it was hard so now I feel good about myself." Not that that feeling's invalid, just a little reductionist.
making Dark Souls easy mode should not be taking out the lethality. maybe lessen the punishment, but mostly a "this is why you died" explanation. "this was an ambush that bumrushes you into a pit", "don't try to block THIS attack, the follow up will hit you if you do", "you locked yourself into an attack chain" stuff like that. a helping hand that explains what you should learn from observation, but maybe just can't. regular difficulty options would butcher the game's core, but that would be non-troll ingame message system, or something.
Are you kidding? The only way you could get that is from a seasoned vet watching you play. There's no way anyone could program that since the attacks and ways to get punished for idiotic actions is so vast.
This video is probably the best (and most evenhanded) approach to the difficulty discussion I've seen. My only issue with it is that you imply the only reason the combat is satisfying is because it requires you to master its systems; and I think that's a bit reductive. You mention early on how the combat in Souls is very different from most other action games, in that everything has weight and momentum to it. While this is certainly part of making system mastery interesting, I think it would be a mistake to discount the pure aesthetic value of that choice. It feels good to slam an opponent to the ground beneath the weight of a zweihander. It feels good summon fireballs to incinerate whole groups of enemies. It feels good to backstab, to parry, to sit behind a giant shield and watch arrows ping uselessly off of it. Just as there is enjoyment to experiencing the art, layout and story of the world, there is also enjoyment in experiencing the weapon variety and flow of the combat. Whether or not the aesthetic function of the combat is more pleasing than the mechanical function of the combat comes down to the type of player you are, of course. But to say that taking away the difficulty would remove what makes combat fun is not giving the design of the combat enough credit.
+StiltsTheGM that's because Dark Souls game are designed to "feel" physical. in fact every weapon make the enemies react to that weapon, the wound and the "pain" of the attack. it's not exaggerated, sure, but is there. this is ages ahead of most other videogame, where you see normal human tank on bullets and wounds that would at least make them feel pain or cripple them...
Re your point on easy mode (12:00 ish) : yes, it would be different. But crucially, the game is already different for different players. People who are excellent at Souls games will have a very different experience from people who play a bunch of games but not Souls-style games, and they will both have a very different experience from people who don't usually play many videogames. If From Software wants to deliver a specific "Souls experience" that strikes a specific balance between failure and progress, there needs to be difficulty options (or adaptive difficulty) to deliver that experience to the broad skill level of players approaching the game.
Great video. I would love a Dark Souls 1 video, it's world design will blow your mind, believe me. It's different than the DS3 or Bloodborne structure with warping from the get go.
The main problem with the easy mode comes from the fact that most enemies are not challenging because of their damage output but because of their move sets. Those are usually designed around stun locking the player so decreasing damage or increasing the player HP would only result in casual players still getting stun locked and dying anyway. A fine example of this is the beginning hollow enemy. those guys do almost no damage in one hit but they have these flailing attacks that can break through your shield and even take down a lot of your health. And editing entire moves sets aka AI of every enemy in the game is a much more difficult task then just applying a global debuff on them
Huh, a sense of accomplishment from the difficulty is something I always see brought up with DS, but it was never something I cared that much about. I mean, it was really fantastic on occasion, but moments of accomplishment were just a few fleeting high points, and I never cared that much when old difficulties became easy. Something about making my way through the tough, mysterious world, was really really....satisfying? like the guy said? The feeling of playing the game and pushing through it had an aesthetic that mirrored that of the world and art and such, and persevering through it felt good. Maybe 'empowering' in a way, kinda, but it feels wrong to describe it like that.
For me, if they added an easy mode it would have to be something that you chose at the main menu, not something that you could switch over to mid-playthrough - simply to negate the temptation to switch over to easy mode when a particular boss is kicking your ass. If it was done that way, I'd have no particular problem with it. I do also think the whole "Dark Souls Good Because Difficult" obsession people have is way overhyped though, and I'm glad you took the time to outline that the difficulty is actually very carefully considered and not simply 'for the sake of it'.
+Jim Bob i really don't get the concept of simply not changing your difficulty in mid-play, nor how it would affect you personally since you could simply make the choice of not exploiting it.
***** i just know myself and know that i would probably succumb to the temptation when the going got tough and then be annoyed at myself for doing so afterwards. sure other people have more discipline than me tho
+Jim Bob Same here. The difficulty setting always tempts me. Especially when i'm getting annoyed half way through by the generic levels and AI of some games. By then i'll be speedrunning carelessly just to see the end. Hopefully, some games have achievements that unlock only when you finish them without ever switching difficulty. That helps, if you care about them.
Dark Souls easy mode already exist, its watching a streamer or lets player play the game. Its an experience as different as night and day but you still get to see how the game look, how it plays, what the enemies are and some of the lore.
I'm always excited to see another video from your channel, great stuff as always, even if I haven't yet played a single Souls game I'm always interested in what people have to say about them.
Signal I have a question for you. You seem to agree with Hepler that we should be able to skip combat on story focused games for those who only want the story. Is that right? Now here's my issues 1) Games are a fundamentally different medium than say a book or movie. At what point is it worth to play a game if all you want to do is watch the cut scenes? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of it being a game? Games are fundamentally about game play so it seems illogical to do that. 2) If you cut out all the game play in favor of the story. You drastically reduce the "run-time" or "value" of the game. Games that take 10 hours to beat may now only have an hour and a half of cut scenes. Don't you think there is going be an issue with cutscenes-only players possibly complaining about having to pay 60 dollars for a game when they are only going to watch maybe 2 hours of cut scenes?
Dark Souls' difficulty slider is built into the game; just summon phantoms. You can have up to 3 people helping you out. You can win many first encounters by having good reflex and learning how to read enemy movement. With time, you can anticipate any attack's timing no matter if u've seen it before or not.
I'd argue that the core of Dark Souls is not dying a bunch, but being cautious. Oh, you died fighting a new enemy? Did you check their tells, did you learn their moveset? Did you dodge, block and parry them? If not, WHY not? If you did those things and weren't one-shotted, and were cautious, then you're learning. If you didn't do those things? It's entirely your fault. It's your refusing to learn from your mistakes that DS punishes. Putting an easy mode undermines the idea that, hey, maybe we should try *paying attention* and thinking critically about our next move.
As to a "how to we easy-ify a game about learning through death" question: The big way I would think to do it would be to increase the i-frames on dodge rolls, make the enemy less aggressive in their pursuit of the player when he/she attempts to run from a bad situation, increase the frequency of bonfires or slow down enemy attack animations. In all of these cases it preserves the "learn when things go bad" but then decreases the number of iterations of "ok, I have a plan" -> *plan fails* -> "so this time I'll" until the player finally gets to "my plan actually worked!" That said, I think even small changes to these values could have huge impacts to the point where someone might not be able to visually distinguish easy from hard mode without actually be the ones playing.
New subscriber! I'd argue that death, hollowing, coming back to life and harshness are vital to the game. Not because the " look at me, I'm a hardcore gamer!", but because of the atmosphere the gameis trying to convey: I find Dark Souls scarier than most horror videogame because the consumed world it present, traped in a destructive cicle of fire and darkness. The mechanics can be repetitive if you're not used to them, but they all contribute to the narrative.
So I like where you were going with your analysis on this one, but watching your gameplay I don't think you quite understand what the deeper implications of the games are meant to instill. Running into large groups of enemies with non-upgraded estus flasks and starter armor/weapons when you're halfway through the game seems to be a player choice or lack of awareness rather than the game "brow-beating" you to learn its systems. I see a lot of new players coming into the Souls/Bourne series recently, and quite a few of them have complained about the "difficulty" or how obtuse the games can be. However, if you were to take your time, explore the environments, and read the information given to you either through environmental cues or item descriptions, you'd be all the better for it. You're supposed to examine everything the game presents to you critically and with an air of respect, so running through the item pick ups, or ignoring their descriptions isn't really the game's fault, it's the player's. Everything is pretty straight forward if people took the time to actually look, rather than rushing past it like these were some bog-standard actions games, because they're not, and if you thought they were you're wrong.
A grand analysis, thank you VERY much for it! Personally I could never bear the series for one and only thing: the whole game boils down to attacking and blocking. You have to find an angle to attack and block, and evade, and choose the right path - those are your options. For me this is INSANELY shallow for 2016. Dark Messiah of Might and Magic happened 10 fucken years ago and people are hyped about the game where the entire mechanics boils down to walking attacking, evading and blocking. For fuck's sake we will never have nice things...
Imo, the core of Dark Souls is not dying a bunch to learn/progress. But about patient observing, exploration and utilizing everything you got in your inventory. Timely dodge rolls do help.
My issue with 'skip gameplay' and easy-mode is that these are fundamental regressions for video games as a whole. Especially the skipping gameplay thing. Part of this form of media is the *gameplay*. By putting in an easy mode, or making it possible to skip gameplay removes an intended part of the experience. To make a Dark Souls III specific example, your character is *unkindled*, a type of undead that couldn't hack it in 'becoming a lord'; you're a failure from the start; the opening cinematic even says "unfit even to be cinders". Hell, you're even referred to as 'unkindled ash' by some, which basically is the epitome of uselessness - you managed to burn out before even catching fire. You're not meant to be a badass. The only thing your character has going for him is that he never truly dies. You're downright *intended* to die. So you go on and bash your skull against an enemy until you win. The only way you really lose is by giving up. I'm all for more inclusive media, but making a game easier for a group of people doesn't make it more inclusive, it just compromises the creator's intentions. True, Dark Souls III is not a game for everyone, but since its alright for games to have niche appeal its also alright if a game doesn't work everyone. Part of becoming a more accepting society is accepting things that don't fit in our spaces, and that goes for *everyone*; just because some people don't like something doesn't mean it has to change.
at least in dark souls 1, you could set how "easy" you want the game to be, that be with using humanity to kindle bonfires, more estus and phantoms. Dark souls 3 reduced these, but you still can "set your difficulty" with an ass load of phantoms (up to 4), thats as easy as it ever fucking gets.
+wutevaidc It's true. There are many mechanics that can alter the difficulty. Choosing the knight class, for example, and ignoring the magic system. Using summons constantly and especially on bosses. Reading walkthroughs and guides to get good equipment early. There's even a miracle that allows you to do a death-save. Conversely players looking for a challenge can equip the calamity ring, they can start as Deprived class, or play a mage.
+Fenrick Marlowe Which I think is much better anyway. If anything, they should just go a better job of pointing players towards these options (not in a tutorial or anything but maybe the occasional NPC dialogue or menu text or whatever).
+Robert R I'll try and say this without sounding like a bragging douchebag, but I would have preferred if DS3 was a bit more challenging in certain respects. For example, there were too many bonfires spaced too-closely together. I also don't think the player should get warping until mid-late game. From Software have build this gorgeous world, it would be better if you had to fully explore it on foot, like in DS1. I wonder if there's any modding potential. .
+Torgo Even if you could mod teleportation out, it'd mean you also can't get to Firelink Shrine which would be pretty fucked up. Maybe it could be modded in that you can only teleport from firelink shrine to the last bonfire you rested at, but even then it would be a far cry from DaS1 as most of the vendors would be easily accessible wherever you are. It's a shame that they haven't re-attempted what they did with DaS1's world layout. It's still my favorite in the series for that exact reason.
Oh, and nice new intro! When you talked about it on Twitter I thought it'd be super flashy and shit, but it's actually pretty understaded, which I can appreciate.
Talking about the taming of the wild and the feeling of satisfaction with conquering previously unknown areas through trying and failing constantly reminds me of the way that Etrian Odyssey works. Interestingly, Atlus has been constantly making quality of life improvements and adding things to help ease the difficulty of the game. Some of them make sense, and others I think hinder the core of the game, like the ability to fast travel between floors of the dungeons that you've mostly mapped.
Great Video! I've never been much of a fan of Dark Souls but other From Software games such as Armored Core although they really could do so much more with the systems, especially for story telling, one of the reasons why I never felt like all the punishing of Dark Souls led to any result since I didn't find a compelling story in any of the titles. I loved the fact though that in times of regenerative health they continued to create satisfyingly difficult games. Looking forward to your next video as always!
Also, on some level. Dark Souls has a difficulty system, just not in the form of a slider or in a menu. Summoning help or using powerful spells are considered a built-in difficulty reduction, mirrored by "challenge" modes, where you impose rules on your play, by for example, not leveling up your character
i've been a bit of a lurker on this channel, but really think highly of your well thought out and often insightful analyses. so when I saw you had a video of dark souls, one of my favorite series, I got really excited (albeit a bit nervous about you criticizing it). although I enjoyed your discussion on the difficulty, I think the themes and ideas in these games(the thing you explicitly said you wouldn't talk about) are actually a much more interesting a topic. Hope you get around to doing something of that sort! also I'm curious to hear your opinions on dark souls' approach to story telling, and how it meshes with the gameplay, b/c I thought you hit the nail on the head in your critiques of games like bioshock infinite and the last of us.
Well as much as I've seen people say that Dark Souls needs to be easier to appeal to them, I don't agree that it needs it. As many other games like The Elder Scrolls have those options Dark Souls does not. As you said, Dark Souls is different than say TES. TES has a simple (And boring imo) combat system where changing the numbers of damage done/healed/taken, health etc does not affect the focus of the gameplay and it indeed feels too easy or too hard depending on the situation. The "too easy" doesn't really hinder the game when exploring is it's most prominent feeling but the "too hard" to the point where exploration becomes unfair and loses it's fun is also present. There are few cases where I think Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, Dark Souls 2, Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne were too hard. Only cases I can remember where the difficulty was truly brutal was in some of the Chalice dungeons where your HP was cut in half. (Mind you, I was playing solo and did beat it after some couple of hours). But my point is that to me the Souls games are fair in their difficulty. There are cases where it just plainly feels unfair but most of the time that comes from the camera man being squished into a box the size of my toenail. On the matter of: Could Souls have an easymode. I don't think so. The game has a steep learning curve to it but there are internal ways that the game can be made a lot easier. Pick up a bow at one of the first merchants or in a starting class and luring in enemies to one on one them. With some proper aim and a bit of dodging the ranged enemies can easily be out traded from range. The game gives enough measures to make players able to handle things. Alluring skulls could lure enemies into killing themselves like the Boar from Dark Souls' Undead Parish. Rings that increase your healing by Estus in Dark Souls 3. And most notably the summoning system where other players can help you out or just outright carry you. I am not a supporter of just summoning 3 people to carry the fuckle out of you because you miss the core experience that the game is going for. I'd even go as far as to say that only 1 summon is allowed just for that measure. Which would also improve the whole ganking problem that the Souls games have been dealing with since forever. The games way of teaching the player is making the player aware of how the world around them feels about your presence which in turn should make the player aware that they can do things to make their lives in that world a bit better. The game to me also reminds me of Monster Hunter games on the PSP back in the day. Monster Hunter Freedom Unite also had a pretty steep learning curve, sharing the reliance on the timing in combat. Wanna drink a potion? Be sure that nothing is trying to smash your head against the ground first and foremost, guess for how long that state will last and based on that, drink that potion. Predicting where the tail will be so your charged attack from the Greatsword hit's the hardest possible blow on it, etc. I think those two franchises share a lot of things when it comes to combat. Though the later MH games have been Casulized... Heard many fans not liking it after that. Putting in some shitty difficulty slider (And I say shitty because there are much cooler ways to decrease or increase the difficulty of a game by implementing some kind of interactive system that works closely together with the character building, Looking as Transistor's difficulty options, instead of just putting in a non immersive difficulty slider) would ruin the experience of the Souls games as well as a few other things: Having a difficulty slider would be really hard to work around with because there is a multiplayer going on at all times where people can invade you at any given time, so what would happen to them? Would the host still have boosted healing? More stats? Enemies less stats so that the Seed of a Tree of Giants wouldn't even be worth being in the game? That kind of difficulty slider in a Souls game would make it unfair for any invader. Plus, when would you be able to activate it? At all times like in Skyrim? That would make no sense since it could make any and all bosses obsolete at all times, it would mean that invaders were punished way too harshly because of a host being able to just switch to easymode at any given time and deal more damage and have more hp etc. Which would in turn lead to the current playerbase abandoning the game. Shit like that is beyond broken. I'd say that they should leave it like it is in terms of philosophy about difficulty and the "You gotta work to get better or rather "Git Gud"" attitude.
Sorry for the long story though, but I like to ramble and discuss things a bit more in depth than just "git gud" *end of comment*. But TLDR: Difficulty sliders could do more harm than help, don't do it and just learn how to get better at the game. It's about self empowerment through improving your own skills and not just some stats ingame.
I spent about two years bashing my face against Dark Souls before I got to a point where I was competent and excited to continue playing the game. You're right on the money about how learning is a much more important skill than technical skill. I strongly believe that anybody who wants an easy mode is looking for the instant gratification that most AAA games offer, especially given that DS3 allows for three summons and has removed poise to the point that you can just repeatedly smack your R1 button until everything in a ten mile radius dies, and you'll still have half a stamina bar that will replenish almost instantly because you probably found the grass crest shield or cloranthy ring. DS3 isn't easier because we're better, it's easier because the systems that made DS hard are now fundamentally different. I'd love to see you fire up DS and make a comparison between the two.
Great video as always. However, I think you're just a tad bit off base as far as Dark Souls difficulty goes. It's very true that Souls teaches through repetition and failure. But I think framing it as repetition of specific confrontations, so that you learn the ins and outs of those confrontations is incorrect. One can play it that way, for sure. And one can beat every Souls game by simply memorizing every single encounter. But I think the design intention is more... high concept than that. Dark Souls uses its ambushes, or surprise rare attack combinations, or boss transformations, etc., as a way to teach you core concepts of caution and strategy. An ambush from behind isn't supposed to get you to learn just the way that ambush works, but moreso that you can be ambushed, and that these ambushes can come from a multitude of angles, with a multitude of challenges. It's similar to learning fighting games in that way actually, where learning to perform long combos can lead to you doing better for sure; eventually someone will fall into your punch, and you can successfully combo them. But the true skill in a fighting game is in knowing how to use your whole arsenal to cause opponents to stumble. Knowing match ups, character strengths, when your anti-air might be more dangerous for you, the habits of certain people who use certain characters, etc. It's less rote memorization, and more conceptual understanding that will make you truly skilled at Dark Souls. I think Dark Souls is so difficult for people, because the skills it asks of you aren't skills most similar games usually ask of you. It requires a different type of thinking, and unlearning habits that - in the context of Dark Souls - are very bad habits. I always equate it to the difference between playing arcade racing games, and playing a simulation racer like iRacing or Gran Turismo. It's the difference between playing Call of Duty and Arma. Though the games are similar on the surface, the required skillsets are extraordinarily different. This catches people off guard, so for a while they have to rely on said rote memorization to get by. Until they pick up on what Dark Souls is truly asking of them, they'll struggle. I have yet to find a solution to this that eases people into the experience more. But I don't think any sort of easy mode is the answer. As with a survival horror game, a large part of the fear, respect for the lore, appreciation, atmosphere, immersion, and triumph comes from the game mirroring the cold nature of the world you're exploring. Without that, I think the games would lose some of their luster. While I do think it's often completely valid to allow people ways to completely ignore gameplay, or narrative, or any part of the experience, that's only when the two clearly don't need each other to achieve full (or near full) effectiveness. Mass Effect works as just a movie or a shooter, because the two really don't have anything to do with each other. They don't do much in terms of informing each other and adding weight to each other. In Dark Souls, I think one half would become distinctly less effective without the other, particularly in the case of the narrative. I think the narrative needs the gameplay trials, in order to be as effective as it is. So I think the focus needs to be more on teaching players these higher concepts as soon as possible, because the game already has quite a few options for making the gameplay easier. Most of these allow players a little leeway. They're still punished for mistakes, but it's done in ways that are more bearable for your average player. One example is the Ring of Sacrifice. This ring prevents you from losing your human form and your souls when you die. But the ring then breaks. In Dark Souls 1, it was gone forever. But in Dark Souls 2, it can be repaired indefinitely for 3000 souls. This eliminates two out of the three main punishments for death (those being loss of souls, loss of human form, and loss of progress). The only additional punishment is grinding for 3000 souls to get the ring repaired, but the amount of souls per kill goes up quick enough as you progress, that this punishment is eliminated within the first few hours. You'll eventually almost always have enough souls to repair the ring directly after you die; and even if you don't, you'll only be a handful of ten second fights away from having enough anyway. There are tons of little things like that, which can make a big difference for players who're really, really struggling.
+ZaXo00 Yesssss. I was actually pretty confused by the way ES was describing the difficulty in this video til I remembered that it was pretty much exactly how I finished Dark Souls. It was a painful playthrough and it took me a looong time to understand what the game was asking for me. Then I went back to Demon's Souls, which I'd given up on a while before picking up Dark Souls, and found it much easier than I had prior. It's because I'd learned how the games work, not from memorizing the ins and outs of every specific enemy, boss, ambush, and environment. I feel like in some ways your first Souls game playthrough serves as a tutorial in and of itself. The series definitely requires dedication. :P But the fact that so many Dark Souls veterans are claiming that Dark Souls 3 is the easiest in the series should be proof enough that "you need to memorize practically everything to succeed" is just...not an accurate statement. It's easier for us because we've learned what it's asking us to do. And I also really like the way the Souls games let the player choose their own difficulty in organic in-game ways, with stronger starting classes, NPC and player summons, and powerful ranged attacks like magic that should make it way easier for a beginner. Dark Souls II probably did this best, with all the healing items and stuff to restore spell uses and the ability to repair the aforementioned ring of sacrifice. In spite of the fact that I am...not a huge fan of Dark Souls 2, and in many ways find it pretty shitty and cheap, it may...simultaneously be the most accessible Souls game for newcomers?? though I... don't so much like the thought of it being their introduction to the series.
Steven Millett I generally agree, though I don't harbor near as much ill will toward DS2 as most people. A lot of the things it's criticized for are things that were/are also present in Bloodborne and Demon's Souls. I think DS2 gets an unfair reputation as being a poorly designed game, when in reality, it's just designed differently from DS1. Most important to me though, is that it made a lot of improvements. It was a lot more clear with what stats did. It did small things like allow you to see how many souls you need to level up, regardless of where you are. It simplified the upgrade system, which was sort of exhausting in DS1, and a total mess in Demon's Souls. Plus, people like to forget the issues DS1 has, or had, that DS2 does not. Curse in DS1 was originally just plain evil, since repeated curses continued to cut your maximum health in half. You could get down to 1/8 health. Plus, the Purging Stones were much more expensive, and finite. DS1 also had far too many places where you were required to take fall damage, and some horrible floor collision, particularly in areas of Blighttown and the Crystal Caves. Speaking of Blighttown... Blighttown. While for me personally, the terrible framerate there is endearing, because it fits with the scummy, horrible motif that Blighttown exhibits. But still, when you're shooting for 30FPS, anything below that (particularly when it's regularly in the low teens) is absolutely inexcusable. That's doubly so for a game like Dark Souls, where precise control is everything. DS2 meanwhile - at least for me on PS3 and PS4 - is buttery smooth all the way through. Many of the other decisions are just different, not really negative per-se. I enjoy both the dodge roll/weight class systems in DS1 and DS2 for different reasons. Same with the changes to the Estus system, and the equipment degradation system. People crap on DS2's linearity, but - aside from the fact that nobody complains in Demon's Souls - I don't feel it hurt the experience. It's just a different one. And it's not like they didn't plan for it. That's exactly why it allowed for bonfire fast travel immediately, because backtracking is much more grating without shortcuts. The new covenant ideas were great, as was the inclusion of new content in later New Game+ levels. Overall, I love DS2 just as much as DS1, and think they're both amazing games. They're just different. Once one stops expecting DS2 to be DS1, it's easy to see the good in it.
I don't think Dark Souls 2 is a terrible game or anything, and I wasn't expecting it to be Dark Souls 1 either. Dark Souls 2 is the only Souls game to date that I consider "just okay." I was just expecting it to be a really good game, and I don't think it was. It's pretty unfair a lot of the time, and while there are moments of cheapness in all of the Souls games (swamp in Valley of Defilement, Lost Izalith and Bed of Chaos, etc), but it seemed to be a part of the focus here. Forest of the Fallen Giants, which is the first area most players will ever go into, is full of ambushes, traps, places where you can't turn around and go back until you've fought through a pretty challenging area, and mobs of enemies far tougher than the hollows in Undead Burg. Made all the worse by the insane amount of enemy tracking on their attacks and the uselessness of dodging with low adaptability (Which I thought was also really poorly implemented). And I remembered finding far more places where fall damage was required in DS2 than the others on my latest playthrough in preparation for the 3rd game. Also I don't think "bonfire warping was required because of the laziness of the world design" is a great point in the game's favor. The world design, while the least of the game's problems, felt genuinely insulting at times. Like No Man's Wharf realistically being way below sea level, the infamous location of Iron Keep, and the fact that the player needs to kill 4 of the most powerful beings in the world to circumvent a small pile of rubble that I'd probably be able to climb over in Demon's Souls. That one being the worst offender in my opinion because...they could have easily just put Shrine of Winters where the rubble is. It didn't have to be like this From... Also, many of the linear levels in Demon's Souls also still felt more interesting to me than a lot of the ones in Dark Souls 2. Shrine of Storms part 2 and Heide's Tower of Flame are both basically one long line to the boss with very short divergences, but Shrine of Storms played more with vertical level progression, darkness, and narrow pathways that required caution. In that level I felt like I was descending deeper and deeper into a dark, scary, and intimidating place, not really knowing what I'd find ahead. In Dark Souls 2 I always knew exactly what I'd find ahead, I could see the boss from very close to where the bonfire is, as well as the many huge hard hitting enemies with a seemingly endless amount of stamina, some of which attacked in clumps. One level was really fun in an anxiety-inducing way to progress through, one was obnoxious and tedious. And don't even get me started on areas like Black Gulch. People always say things like "the other games were flawed too" and I would never deny that, but for me personally, the strengths of those games outweighed the flaws by a large margin. The worlds, NPCs, enemies and bosses all felt more interesting and made me want to know more about them, and the fact that (most) of my deaths taught me something that made me better at the game created for a very satisfying gameplay experience, even if I had to deal with some bullshit along the way. In Dark Souls 2 the world gave me very few reasons to care, and aside from a small number of NPCs, bosses, and locations, I didn't really want to know more about anything. (I will say that on my last playthrough, which was my first since they'd updated it to add Aldia's sporadic appearances, the story felt a lot more cohesive and interesting, and the new ending was very cool. what a difference one character can make!) It's an okay game for me, maybe even a good game, but with those select few exceptions, it never really reached the heights of Demon's, Dark 1, Dark 3, or Bloodborne. And Yikes, sorry for the essay. :P
Not trying to tell you you're wrong or anything for liking Dark Souls 2 as much as you do. I totally get why some people would (and am kind of jealous of them tbh), just wanted to lay out why I was personally disappointed by it. And I still left a lot of stuff out... I do think it has the best co-op by far. I don't get why Dark Souls 3 removed the benefits of engaging successfully in co-op?? Like the replenished estus and weapon durability?? It seems to give far less incentive to engage. Your weapon will be in even worse condition when you get back.
Steven Millett Nah, it's no worry at all. It's nice to even hear someone converse about the game in a way that isn't full of insults and rhetoric :) That's honestly my biggest issue, is just that people can't see the game as just okay, or good. They disrespect all of the hard work that real people did to make the game. These developers aren't a bunch of corporate suits trying to screw consumers. They're real, passionate individuals trying to create something great. So to see entitled 'fans' color the world in such black and white (DS1 is perfect, and DS2 is utter garbage) really gets on my nerves. I already have to deal with such tripe in the Final Fantasy fanbase, so it's disheartening when it starts to happen in other series' that really do try to make something great. That's a large part of the reason I started my own UA-cam channel, was to hopefully attract people that will give each and every game the chance it deserves. Most people just can't respect the hard work of others I guess. But I very much appreciate that you can. Not surprising I guess, since you're commenting on an Errant Signal video.
5:23 - 5:40 Errr, okay but as you said yourself, the game is teaching you, and you're supposed to have learned by now to check your corners and watch carefully where you're going. Every trap and ambush can be avoided on first try.
Easy mode for Dark souls? Never! Git gud or git gone. Seriously though you nailed it. Great vid. One of the most satisfying gaming experiences ever was overcoming Artorias in the first game. I actually ran around the room punching the air in joy.
Dark souls has slowly over the course of three games, forgotten to be hard. The difficulty has slowly gotten scaled back. Enemy attacks are easy to dodge, and read. I beat Dark Souls 3 blind in 23 hours, taking it pretty slow, dying on only about 4 bosses. (Old man voice) in my day we had to kill a boss in order to get 50% of our health bar back, and if we died, we didn't just lose our souls, and some of our life. We lost our souls, and 50% of our life. That's some hard shit, like after eating a mouth full of metamucil.
On defining terms: an easy mode to me in Dark Souls would be the ability to attempt a boss again - instantly. Not having to retread through an area again to make an attempt. I don't think this would compromise what people love about these games and it would allow more people to enjoy them since this would respect the players time a bit more.
I definitely agree that an easier mode would take away most, if not all, of Dark Souls' identity. The despair in the game world just doesn't hit you in the same way if you aren't afraid for your life. Just look at any speedrun and you'll see that. The difficulty is also woven into the narrative, even breaking the fourth wall and saying something about the actual player. In Dark Souls, as an undead dies and is reborn over and over, they lose humanity and become more "hollow" each time. As an undead hollows, they become more insane and unstable, eventually flailing wildly at any moving thing on sight. The coolest thing about this is that the same is true for the player. They play into the narrative perfectly without even knowing it. The more they die, the more reckless they become because they get impatient at having to replay what they've already beaten. They may run past enemies or fight with blind, wild offense to get back to where they died quicker, which increases the chances they'll die more. Anyone who has felt the mounting frustration with each successive death knows what hollowing is like for an undead. That's something no amount of exposition can do; it's only possible through difficulty. Obviously this was designed on purpose and with great care. Small, yet really cool details like that would be lost if the game were made easier.
i really appreciated the point you brought up in this video about the "difficulty" of the souls game being integral to their identity and core mechanics. there's no real way to tone down "situational awareness" to facilitate an easy mode. there's an older Russian cult classic semi-survival game called "Pathologic" that's well-known for its supposed ridiculous difficulty, and i feel the same concept applies where difficulty is integral to the experience and there's no real way to tone it down. the game's full of strange philosophical concepts and abstract thinking, and it struck me as a game you might have some interesting input towards if you're at all interested
Hmm...I get why people say they want an easy mode, but more than the sense of accomplishment, I feel like the series' difficulty needs to be there for the games' archeological storytelling style to work at all. When you die in Dark Souls, the game is inviting you to ask how and why you died, and how you could've prevented it. And it's in trying to answer this question that you end up discovering the ways that the games let you make it easier. Becoming acquainted with different kinds of equipments, weapon upgrades, how rolling or blocking with a shield works, magic - those are all tools that you can use to succeed. And the games' systems are so linked to the narrative and setting that, in understanding these tools, you also end up understanding the lore. Were the game easy, you'd have no reason to look at the small details, and those are really what make the series notable, I think.
One last thing. Something that really helped me view the series in another light is the idea that the first Dark Souls' slogan, "prepare to die", is not a threat, but advice. Mentally prepare yourself for in-game death, because it /is/ going to hapen, and how much enjoyment you get out of playing the game depends on wheter you view death as failure or not. This can also reframe the games as being about accepting death, which brings up some interesting philosophical ideas, but I'll leave that for another time!
i really feel like one of the important things to note is that not only is the difficulty of souls a part of the core mechanucs but it is essential to the tone. Lordran and Lothric (im pretending 2 doesnt exist) are part of a harsh world. the gods and heros ate all dead or mad, the world is decaying, and there are very few people who will even soeak to you. the chosen undead and the unkindled are insignigucant beings whose only true power comes from this memorization mechanic you are a tiny speck in a world once inhabited by gods and legends and the challenge reminds you of that. you arent a lord like gwyn or a legendary hero like artorias. you are a measly being battling armies, demigods, and gods
One way to make an "easy mode" would be to increase the amount of souls gained in combat (or reduce the leveling requirement). By allowing people to level faster and "over-level" they would be able to clear the game more easily. Extra Credit made a nice analysis that the easy mode of the game is embedded in the items you use, so in a way the easy mode already is in the game systems.
in regards to an easy mode, a lot of people think when "easy mode" is spoken that means a deep health pool for the player, or lighter attacks for the enemies. Let Platinum Games show you the light of how to do "easy modes". Where easier difficulties have longer telegraphs on enemy attacks. Dodges and/or parries have a wider window for success. In this case of Dark Souls itself, it could do things such as additional Estus, rather than just larger health pools, because it doesn't matter how much estus you have, a 1 hit kill trap will still kill you. Falls will still kill you, and if you are caught off guard by a flanked monster, if you couldn't use the estus fast enough, you still die. And to be further forgiving in it's "easy mode" it could reduce or outright remove the death limit before your previous souls despawn. This would help players progress faster to help them conquer whatever threat they have, though still requiring them to venture back to where they died. I think there is a way to still stick close to the original designers vision of the game while still being more inviting to newer players. It's a matter of thinking about it. If health is integral to the core experience, then how *ELSE* can the difficulty be altered that still doesn't undermine the core experience?
The thing that made me love Dark Souls is that it doesn't really treat death as a fail state the way other games do. Death is a setback, and there is a punishment for it, but the game's mechanics are designed with lots of dying in mind. Once I internalized that, I had endless fun exploring every nook and cranny of the world, which is really rich and deep. It's satisfying in all the right ways.
You said at the end roughly... "it wouldn't be the game they wanted to make" and "it's a fundamentally different game". Consumers don't need to care about what developers of game, or any other media for that matter, intended. There are countless games out there downed in grinding mechanics, many put in place purely to abuse the player into buying micro-transactions, or to act as a skinner box to keep player counts up. Developer intent is entirely relevant; what IS, in the eyes of each consumer individually, is the only thing that matters. Overemphasis of and harsh defense of such intent, is how you get the laughable examples of "modern art". Next, consider what makes a game. Even from your pool of favorite games, would you claim that not only they are all perfect, but that you play the game for and fully enjoy ALL of the aspects that make up each title? No one would make such an insane claim... While games are made up of many elements and keeping it all consistent is of some importance, the individual user plays for what they want and enjoy. Dark Souls is in a genre of it's own, only when you consider just the core combat mechanics and nothing else. It has a very specific feel that many find incredible. While that along with many other iconic design choices combine to what people refer to as "a souls game", most players pick and choose the elements they're drawn to, and those same elements transferred to another title would be something they'd want to play. Finally, you claim that because the dying repeatedly element is core to the experience, and not doing so would make it fundamentally different. How can you ignore player skill, when you said it yourself early in the video? I've seen even first runs of these games, brand new players to the genre, die anywhere between maybe 3 times and easily 1000 times. Then consider what the game lets you do. I didn't see you using every single weapon type available nor any of the magic in the video, and that has a tremendous impact on difficulty. Then consider the player and gear stat increases. Those systems are 100% optional, and utilizing it differently is more than enough to make it a fundamentally different game, within itself... Should Dark Souls have difficulty adjustment (ignoring the fact that it already does)? Yes and no. Changing the game in a way that effects really anything but stats could either be a ton of extra work and/or would potentially harm the game. So an in-game minimap for example; that's a tremendous undertaking, as would something like adding clearer questline dialogues, alternate enemy placements, etc. That stuff is bound to harm the base game even if it has no effect on users who don't choose the easy mode, simply because it's an investment of time that is being diverted. But you could also put in a basic cheat-code or menu option that say multiplies soul gain. A microscopic mechanical change that still gives less patient or talented players an easier time. You can already do that with real cheating or farming/exploiting, but there's no reason the game itself cant make that easier to prevent players wasting their time on workarounds.
The gameplay is not for me but I fell in love with the lore, the way its not gameplay then cut scene for story and lore rinse, repeat. Its about learning about the world through the lenses of the different characters. The perfect balance of leaving questions unanswered and events untold to allow people to discuss it and i'm happy to watch someone else play as long as I get to learn the lore through what I think have been great voice casting/ acting
I was cringing at the fat rolling and the fact that he got to Irithyll Dungeons without upgrading his flasks. That must have been torture to play.
Oh man, you got to Irithyll of the Boreal Valley with +0 Estus Flasks. Poor guy =(
+Keith Ballard He never upgraded from the armor that the knight class starts with either.
+Keith Ballard And possibly while fat rolling too if the footage at 3:45 is indicative of his playstyle up to and beyond that point!
maybe we was gimping himself on purpose
Sooooooo.... Dark souls is like my Junior year English teacher?
BrokenMikrofone You are one of the worst kinds of Dark Souls players, I hope you have matured since posting this comment.
It mostly just punishes your recklessness. Most ambushes are in plain sight from beforehand or implicitely hinted at. Taking it slowly, and assuming you manage the combat, you can traverse from bonfire to bonfire in a single run, assuming you didn't take a wrong turn.
This is very true. One of my favorite things about Dark Souls 1 (haven't played 3 so far but I definitely will!) was how it was punishing but never unfair. Every time you fell for an ambush, stepped on a trap or got caught unaware of your surroundings, it was on you. I have 2000+ hours played in Dks1 and, unless there was some sort of glitch or you encountered a hacker, I never once died where it wasn't on me.
+Marcelo Stöckle you`re right, although sometimes you know you`re stepping into an ambush but since the enemy type thats doing the ambush is new and you probably don`t know their moveset and behavior you might die once or twice learning it.
Dark Souls is about a universal skill set. The skill set Demon's Souls taught me has carried me through the entire Souls Series, to the point where Dark Souls 3 was actually a rather leisurely experience. You learn to approach *all* suspiciously placed items and sharp corners with caution and learn to approach *all* potential ambush locations with your shield up and an escape plan in your back pocket.
I died *very* little (relatively) during my first blind play-through of Dark Souls 3, with the majority of said deaths caused by stupid mistakes, lazy play, and moments of experimentation. And I'm no Souls Series master; I can't parry consistently, I rely on leveling-up a bit too much (Dark Souls *true* "Easy Mode"), and I'm a bit to heavy on the Estus. But I do have one skill that keeps me alive in every Souls Series game: patience. Demon's Souls taught me patience, Dark Souls reinforced it, and I'll approach everything in the Souls Series with patience from now on.
So that said, I respectfully disagree (and not in that snide, flippant way people on the Internet "respectfully disagree") that the Souls Series is about learning through repetition. I believe Souls is about taking what you learned before and applying it to every situation that follows.
Agreed. Learning from repetition is like a consolation prize in Dark Souls, "you failed to spot this ambush, but now you'll know for next time".
Dark Souls isn't about throwing yourself against a brick wall until you succeed, it's (as you said) about patience and reading your environment. I don't want to sound like 'that guy', but I managed to avoid the ambushes that were featured in this video during my first playthrough due to my experiences with the previous games. Not to say I've never been caught out, of course, but I'd blame those times when I did get ambushed on my own failing to read the situation.
+Joshua Campbell
the learning by repetition is what you get when you aproach to dark souls as a "hero ego-tastic empowerment" game...
if you play dark souls like, let's say, you play at skyrim or dragon age, you'll die hard constantly.
I said it in a previous comment but it fits here just as well. In my 2000+ hours of playinf Dark Souls 1 I never once died, unless it there was some sort of glitch or I encountered a hacker, where it wasn't on me. Every ambush, every pressure plate or other kind of trap is avoidable.
+Joshua Campbell Yeah this was my biggest problem with the video. I really like the feeling in Souls games when you walk into a new room with your shield up, being somewhat afraid of what is to come yet fully certain that you can handle it. The devs almost always leave hints or set up vantage points to spot ambushes from miles away. There's rarely a situation you can't prepare for beforehand.
+Joshua Campbell You nailed it. Everything you said pretty much applies to me. It's all about playing patiently and cautiously.
It's not even about learning. The trick, for me anyways, when it comes to Dark Souls is that I couldn't get into the game because I was afraid. I had a fear of death. Losing progress, losing my souls, was something that made me deathly afraid of actually playing the game.
However, like anything worth doing, that fear was overcome by going a little further and further over time and choosing to face my fear rather than run from it. Once THAT happened, I never thought twice about the size or design of what enemy I was facing. By Dark Souls 3, long after the fear was gone, running around in Lothric and the various locales was the equivalent of wrapping a blanket around me and sipping on a cup of warm cocoa. What I mean is, Dark Souls became comfortable instead of frightening.
I get what you mean. Even though I like it, I eventually stopped playing Darkest Dungeon for the same reason.
The concept of alienating "potential consumers" shouldn't be looked at as a villain. While creative choices remain up to the publisher/developer, like any other medium, some things just aren't for everyone.
Narratives in film or novels with heavyhanded theology appeal to specific crowds and don't include sparknotes at the end in case things go over people's heads. Music that requires context and paying attention such as Kendrick Lamar's albums do their own personal thing with fewer tracks built for "pop-radio-play". Homogenizing a product so that it caters to everyone (and possibly appeals to no one) can make for a very bland and forgettable experience. And in an industry with such a wide diversity of games, Dark Souls doesn't need the onus of reaching out more. More games nowadays DO have difficulty options than the few that don't. Just like one can celebrate the noble ambition of games that lean heavily into narrative and abandon traditional gameplay, they're just as plentiful as games that rely entirely on the opposite. In both cases, they can exist without compromising the intent to "sell more".
+Truongasm However one can counter it with that games are a interactive experience that you, as a play can tailor that experience. You as a play is in a sense a co-creator. And so letting players have the option to tweak the game to there preference is something that generally do not hurt anyone else experience of that game.
That being said. Dark Soul way of difficulty is so core to the experience of dark souls that adding a easy mode could harm it on a larger scale. Maybe. I am not sure.
In general I however thing that players should get more options when it comes to tailoring there game. Far to often we see players be limited. Not only in how difficult the game is, but even more so how the graphics are presented or how controls . I know is often a part of the Aesthetic vision of the creator. But it can alienate people. Sometimes is just a minor thing like people not agreeing what looks good visually. I generally do not like ambient occlusion or blur. But sometime these effects can make it hard for people to physically enjoy a game. Blur can make sim sickness worse for example. So I say is better to actually let people have a bit more options to make them enjoy the game rather then force them to play a game in a certain way.
Also like to add that people tend to go with what is present as default setting first to. People from my experience do not go looking after a way to change things if they do not happen to be power users from the start. So as a creator you have the option to present your vision first. Then let people decide on a what to tweak to fit them. So if Dark Souls would have a easy mode. Present the default mode first that is recommended. But again Dark Souls might be a game that should not have a easy mode. And you should defensibly not always try to capture the biggest potential consumer base. Specialization is good and you can have that and offer options. :)
The point I'm driving against the point being driven in this video (and others) is that villifying artist's intent for the sake of broadening horizons is regressive.
Options are more than welcome, but that's a balance, not a moral black/white area and a different topic. The video postulates Miyazaki's intent is hypothetically damaging to the brand because of "anti-inclusiveness"; but in a market where this is the niche (not the status quo), and considering that DS3 has had the most successful launch in the franchise thus far, it hasn't been hampered by refining its selling points rather than dulling them.
*****
Yeah I think what you have to weight the issue on is if adding this option would be harmful or not for the game.
I can actually see that is possible that making the game have a easy mode to be harmful. At least for the brand. Even if it might not actually effect the players who wants the challenge. Just knowing that the game has a easy mode could be harmful it self from a marketing standpoint.
+Truongasm the difference with games is that no book, will refuse to open because you didn't get the last chapter...
Some people (like me) are interested in everything about DS, except for the difficulty. (i'm one of those who failed utterly at the very beginning, even though i plan on rerolling someday and play smarter)
I'm not asking for a game I can breeze through, but a game that is challenging to me, but that I can still traverse and learn at my pace.
I'm not demanding, or feel entitled to anything either, but if some devs made a game with great art direction, cryptic and deep lore and why not, dynamic difficulty that assures everyone gets a suitably harsh challenge (thats kind of my obsession right now, as I am swarmed by hype towards DS3), I would be really interested.
+Maxime Teppe That's because games are a different medium. For the sake of the metaphor, the same thing happens when you don't finish it or don't understand concepts within. It's the player's inability versus an open ended system set up by the novelist. And in both situations, there's ways around it. Just like Sparknotes exist to understand themes on books better, the same exists for Dark Souls. You learn the lore through forums and wikis, you summon in help to make the game painfully easier, and you get a secondhand experience from earthing Let's Plays.
If your pipe dream is for a game that meets every one of your qualifications perfectly, then there's thousands of other people that it wouldn't and still doesn't meet. I know you said you aren't entitled but realistically, every game isn't going to be an ace in the hole for everyone's requirements. So than rather then misfiring everywhere to appeal to an unappeasable target demographic, there's better craft in directional focus.
It's really neat to hear opinions about Dark Souls from a non-Dark Souls fan. The thing about Dark Souls is that mastering it forces you to internalize things so instinctively, you may not even be sure of what you learned.
All Dark Souls games have an easy mode. It's called a white soapstone.
At the cost of humanity, embers, or human effigies.
Beginners end up using all of their multiplayer items because they're prone to dying easily (obviously). I helped several of my friends play Dark Souls: PtDE, and they ended up running out of humanity. So I would drop them half my stack.
Bosses have increased HP (50% per person that enters boss fog?)
You can be invaded.
Un-Metaphorical Grapevine
Explore the game by yourself, call in help for the bosses.
Un-Metaphorical Grapevine Not to mention, the bosses on increase in health ONCE so the more people you add doesn't make the boss exponentially stronger.
Regardless, bar Orenstein and Smough (the boss fight designed specifically to get you cooperating with other players) all the bosses and their attack patterns are built around 1 on one confrontation and bringing another player makes them far more manageable, if not easy
The "price" is all but meaningless. Increased enemy health doesn't compare to 3-4 people wailing at them from different directions and taking aggro to let others heal. Enemies are a joke after that, with only the most high burst damage ambushes remaining dangerous. You don't even have any real incentive to balance your defense and offense, as one can just tank, while others do the damage. Honestly, the most dangerous level hazard for a co-op squad is the hubris gained from such a fast power up. The summoner just kills himself while going forward full sprint.
You get bonuses from all of those items, which the summons help you keep longer(and often drop more to you). You gain more of those items with co-op(it being the best way to get them, aside from optimized farm. Ironically), even though it's supposed to be the "price". Not to mention, that each of them is farmable, and that you need only one or two to get the ball rolling. Only DS2 had a slight scarcity of the humanity items(i you don't count DS1 needing you to dump them into covenants).
Bosses have more health, but you put them into 1v3-4 match, for which they rarely have anything to counter it with. No need for windows to heal. No need to find openings. No(real) need for stamina management. During most bosses, even a single brain dead NPC summon can be enough to render a tough challenge into an inconvenience. So what can you do with 2-3 capable human players pulling aggro, carving it up and possibly even healing you in your place? Often you don't even have to move from the fog gate...
Invasions. For two people aiding you, you _might_ get a single one to hinder you(even better with 6 people online). With limited time to do anything, as you can just hop a boss fog. With possible infinite amount of summons willing to throw themselves at them. Why exactly wouldn't you take that trade every day of the week?
Summoning trivializes the entire game(series). I have a friend, who was lukewarm to DS. But as i heard, that he summoned at every possible point(why wouldn't you?), i challenged him to play it once more, but without any player summons. Now-a-days he loves the series as much as me, if not more. With many similar experiences, that i have either seen or heard of, it might even sabotage, or completely ruin it.
@@Khrene for me, summoning help feels like admitting defeat, and then I don't get that sense of triumphant joy and satisfied accomplishment when the boss falls. I seriously can't think of another game that makes me laugh aloud and praise the sun whey a big fight.
I figure If there are people who can run all four of the souls games without taking damage, I can take the time to learn the moveset of the dancer of the boreal Valley and kick her ass inside out, you know? Plus it's all designed for one person to play alone, which is why summoning makes everything kinda easy.
But that's just me.
The animations DO tween. Tweens are literally how all 3d animation is done. There's no way they couldn't tween unless they were animated frame by frame like Guilty Gear Xrd.
You mean Cancel, not tween. And they DO cancel, like say Devil May Cry, God of War, and Bayonetta, unlike say Kingdoms of Amaleur or 2d Castlevania. The endings of the animation, the followthrough, cancel when you input another swing, or a dodge, or a block (though it will only cancel into block if you hit an enemy). The thing is unlike those other games, there are no mid-animation cancels, like jump cancels in DMC, block cancels in God of War, and Dodge cancels in Bayonetta. You are committed to your attacks, and the animations for the attacks have a longer startup time.
The easy mode for Dark Souls 3 is summoning for help. There are dozens of people willing to help you at any time!
+D_West I agree. With shared aggro, the bosses are a walk in the park, all of them.
+D_West sunbro's, unite!
+D_West Unless you go for early Dancer... after that, you'll find no summons until the frozen city. :P
edit: To explain myself without any spoilers, you can do one of the late game bosses early on (if you are good enough :P), which will give you access to a late game area, where you can get Large Titanite Shards, Titanite Chunks and Titanite Scales. This will allow you to start the game with +9 weapon. On the other side of the coin, you will not be able to summon anyone, since matchmaking is based on level and your most upgraded weapon. This works with invaders aswell, so you will get no summons and get invaded by people with end-game weapons and spells. So essentialy, the online part of the game will be a no-go, until you get to places where people get their weapons to +6-7 range, which is about the frozen area mid way into the game. :P
+D_West and playing as a wizard.
+D_West thats what I was gonna say
I definitely appreciate an outsiders view of the series. So many people, much like me, are so involved with it I often forget how it looked to me before I dove in.
(Edit:)
As for an easy mode, as most games understand it, in Dark Souls, I think its important to point out how much of the game leans on making you feel small and disempowered. To give players a consistency breaking switch that makes all enemies magically weaker because I said so, like in Skyrim which is demonstrably not about disempowerment, breaks that.
I intuit that most people that ask for an easy mode are really asking for a version that doesn't feel as daunting but its Dark Souls express intention to be daunting. Thus, asking for that is like asking for a horror movies with no scares.
+Gonzalo Silva Not to mention, people ask for an easy mode, and yet they feel like it's somehow more unacceptable to co-op with a friend or have strangers help you with a particularly difficult area or boss. Multiplayer IS Dark Souls' difficulty settings, and there are interesting mechanics balanced around that idea with co-op/PvP.
I'm guessing people think having someone join your game to help you is akin to handing over the controller to a friend and having them beat the boss for you. You're not actually playing the game at that point, however.. if you had an easy mode, you wouldn't actually be playing the game either, so it's a really bizarre argument in my opinion.
I'm not ashamed to admit that when I first got into Dark Souls 1, I did summon my friend to help me with a few bosses that just seemed insurmountable (O&S), but later on when I understood the game better in general I replayed it and knew the mentality you needed to have to learn and progress, and even that felt incredibly rewarding.
+Gonzalo Silva IIRC, Miyazaki's intent for both Dark Souls and Dark Souls 3 was to make an environment where the player really felt the bleak and downtrodden universe that he wanted to create.
In doing so, the perceived sheer difficulty of the series is indeed completely justified, and trying to change that aspect runs the risk of compromising what Miyazaki set out to do.
In short, yeah, I definitely agree with you. And I really wish more main-stream developers took that same thing to heart; not the 'bleak and challenging' thing that Dark Souls is so good at, but a central concept that everything is funneled through.
Or if one had to fit the above text within a nut-shell:
"Focused, and not unfettered."
+Gonzalo Silva easy mode exits its called summon 2 phantoms and have them play teh game for you
@@Shilag Which is why the community needs to stop telling people that coop (or turtling or ranged exploits or using guides) is the wrong way to play the game - no more "you owe it to yourself to ______" language.
Really glad you decided to look at Dark Souls and I would like to see this continued. The video was interesting, but I felt mostly touched on points that were fairly obvious. For instance, an easier difficulty for dark souls is a point that has already been talked about quite a bit. I think most people at this point understand why it wouldn't really work.
+Morgan Greene Mm, as someone who's never played a dark souls game but has long considered it, I actually found the discussion on the subject enlightening, partially because I'm always hearing how great and subtle the writing is. The gameplay has looked alternately needlessly imposing and oddly enticing, and a talk about how the difficulty is more "core" to the gameplay than in stuff like Doom or Baldur's Gate lets me know more about the franchise I'm making on-and-off eye contact with.
One aspect that you haven't talked about is multiplayer co-op. It might not always be relevant but it very much is in the grand majority of cases and does impact difficulty massively.
+KOKOStern Give him time.
I think you're spot on about what you're saying, it actually goes farther than I think you know. I haven't finished Dark Souls 3 yet, so I can't speak too much on that and I'll focus on the first Dark Souls instead.
It's easy for people to forget that Dark Souls is the second game in the series. Most of the gameplay was established in Demon's Souls. When it came time to make Dark Souls, the whole lore and aesthetic of the game world had to be remade from scratch. Already having made Demon's Souls and having a great feel for what the core of the gameplay and how that players react to that, the themes and world of Dark Souls are specifically built to comment on the player's experience with the gameplay.
There were mobs in Demon's Souls, and they had their own plot device for being mindless zombies. But Dark Souls introduced the idea that all of the mobs in the game are hollows not because a curse was put on them, or because they died many times, but because they gave up and stopped trying. They're other players who gave up, and every bit of dialogue telling you not to turn hollow is the game talking to you and telling you to keep trying.
Most of the NPCs are also commentaries on the different types of players I'm sure Miyazaki saw playing Demon's Souls, and a lot of them are embodiments of reasons why players give up. Big Hat Logan is obsessed with min/maxing his character to the point where he loses sight on everything else in the game. Siegmeyer relies on help so much that he eventually loses confidence in himself. Tarkus had a big heavy build in mind and refused to adapt his playstyle for new demands in the environment.
The notion that an "easy mode" in Dark Souls would let people experience the great story and characters and settings completely misses the point that all of these things are just commentary on the core of what the game is about, which for an action RPG is pretty uniquely focused and specific. All of Dark Souls just serves to ask the player one question: how do you overcome struggle?
And what's great about Dark Souls is that it makes so many different approaches viable and rewards any legitimate answer someone can have to that question. Do you go to friends for help? Good! Do you step back, study the situation, and try something new? Great job! Do you bash your head at the wall over and over and outlast whatever's in your way? Congratulations!
Dark Souls as a game is really just a way for the player to question their own approach to struggle and test whether it can succeed in the face of daunting challenges. And nearly everything in it is just there to push that experience.
Basically, developers should just make the games they want to make and people should just play the games they want to play. Demanding that a developer makes a game for you or demanding that consumers like your product is the problem. Make what you want to make and if people like it they'll play it. Otherwise the art just gets distilled into a corporate product and you end up with Call of Duty or Michael Bay films.
Very well said.
As basically everyone else has said in the comments already, the reason Dark Souls doesn't need an easy mode is because that is what summons do. This enemy AI, especially the bosses, are not equipped to deal with multiple people. This was true of Demon's Souls, Dark Souls 1 & 2, as well as Bloodborne.
There is also no shortage of summons on any platform while your maximum summon count is higher than it's ever been. When you mention "game literacy", that's why people sneer whenever someone asks for a Souls easy mode. It is quite literally already there, the fact that you are free to level up at any time is itself a selection of difficulty.
Dark Souls 3 doesn't need an easy mode because it has already accommodated people who want one, just not in the traditional way people are expecting to get it. This is precisely what it does with many things including multiplayer, world-building and player interaction.
while the boss AI does have problems with summons it doesn't mean absolute victory. most of the time the AI summons have just as bad tactics. but there are things I think that could be done to make it less difficult. like maybe giving the player some kind of sensor or hearing vision ie the last of us. or perhaps lowering enemy life and raising player damage. plus there are things that need to be improved like wanting to play with friends or better camera controls for some of the big enemies.
+WayToTheGrave I think the flaw with this argument is that these alternate options are never explicitly communicated at the level at which an easy-mode-player would need.
Jonslam Lee You can easily connect with friends by setting a network password in the options menu.
One of the biggest changes to the series overall, it's been that way since Dark Souls 2.
Josh Foreman Dark Souls explicitly communicates very little. If this is a flaw in the argument, I'd respond by saying you're probably interested in playing the wrong game.
If level up health = more health = less dying isn't obvious enough, not sure what to say to that. The game doesn't explicitly tell you this, but your banker shouldn't have to explicitly tell you than more digits in your bank account means more dollars to spend.
+Jonslam Lee You mean X-ray vision? Enemies make a ton of noise usually. And the game 99% of the time will allow you to see the enemies if you actually look around. Dark Souls is all about suffering through trials and overcoming insurmountable foes through determination and grit. The satisfaction of these games would be lost if you did not make the game difficult, but fair.
I think there is also an argument to be made related to how the difficulty of the game is also a storytelling device.
It draws parallels between your suffering as a character through the curse of the Dark Sign and of you as a player. With each death, your character slowly loses his humanity and sanity, whilst you also suffer.
The correlation between lore and gameplay mechanics is very close in this game and the way they weave the story into your experience is part of it said storytelling.
If you don't watch a movie, somebody can tell you the story or watch a brief summary of it online but the experience of being there in the cinema and watching is is vastly different and has a different value, even moreso with games which are an interactive medium.
Player interaction has to be woven into the mechanics and storytelling, if you can get the same experience watching a game, then it's not a very good game.
+7thNoodle That reading of the game is only valid if you don't consider the possibility space outside of the game, i.e., the feelings of players who have rejected wanting to finish Dark Souls. Your character never loses their humanity beyond your readiness to keep playing despite the deaths, making the PC technically invincible within the game. In that case, Dark Souls is working as intended. If you decide that you don't want to play anymore, it would likely happen after a death, with your PC spawning at a bonfire. In that case, your PC is waiting for you to come back, not going insane or losing their sanity and Dark Souls cannot explain why you coming back after a long time (if you come back) does not render your PC unplayable. The limits of Dark Souls outside of the role of players, at least in terms of its lore, are built into the game.
+Gokul Sisir Yeah, but isn't that true in any game?
In Call of duty if you quit after a death, your game stays there, and the story is that your character died, unless you pick it up again and start anew. Same with Dark Souls, your character lost his humanity.
Thing is, because of the storytelling element of death and rebirth through loss of your own humanity, the story then adapts to your character losing his humanity when you quit until, once you return to finish the game, it turns out he still had some humanity left in him, which he then used to push on forward and (hopefully)finish the game.
What I'm considering here is 99% cannon and in terms of game mechanics I'm not sure it was something built into the game as a mechanic from the start, it was most likely a "happy little accident". But, it is something that makes the game experience more complete.
What I mentioned in my previous comment is the reason Dark Souls is my favorite game. I have never played a game before that transfered all of the story it had to say, about you, the world, the people in it, through gameplay. Every grueling death made sense, every bleak vista told a story and every person gone insane by losing their humanity was pitied upon.
Nobody had to tell you anything about the game, you just understood it more and more as you played.
And in that sense Dark Souls story-only mode is most likely the worst idea I've ever heard.
+7thNoodle Well, I don't think the hollowing mechanic is a good example of a narrative-mechanics parallel. Yes, you hollow and the game has mechanics within in it to mechanically represent a literary device, but it seems a bit surface. Hollowing is never involved in story progression so to speech. You can play the whole game through hollowed out, and the narrative progresses out just the same. Hollowing seems to be more a mechanic introduced to explain the multiple lives. Rather, a narrative integral mechanic changes some part of the story as it progresses. You can get the same experience from being hollow or ashen.
7thNoodle In Call of Duty, the PC's death is not part of the canon to begin with: it is, at best, negative reinforcement, if the player is paying attention. Call of Duty does not recognise that the PC has reached an area in the story-mode until they have crossed it and reached the next checkpoint. In Dark Souls, the PC's death is canonical: the souls and liquid humanities lost at the time of the PC's death are left at the place where the PC died in the game. Hence, Dark Souls uses death as both negative reinforcement and as proof that the PC advanced as far as it did in the game world, unlike Call of Duty. Quitting because of death in Call of Duty is not the same as that in Dark Souls because the two games fundamentally treat death differently. Call of Duty acts like the death didn't happen. Dark Souls clearly states that the death did happen, both because the PC is hollow, if it weren't already, has zero souls and liquid humanities, and has one chance to get them back.
A game like Crusader Kings II is, if I may suggest, a better example of contextualising deaths of PCs, because, unlike Dark Souls, the PCs are not invincible. Death of the PC causes the successor of the PC, within the game, to become the PC. If there is no successor or if the successor does not belong to the original PC's dynasty, the game ends. There is an actual fail state in Crusader Kings II, which Dark Souls does not possess. Because the game's canon is open-ended, the player's action and the PC's death can become part of a campaign's story without needing to create a convoluted lore around explaining it.
Requiring that the player interaction be explained within the context of a game's narrative is, certainly, a commendable accomplishment, but Dark Souls does not achieve it. That is not to say that Dark Souls is a "bad" game (whatever that is), just that the game is an achievement of good design despite (arguably) trying and failing to explain the role of the PC within its lore.
Gokul Sisir I think you named a better example with your Crusader Kings II example, but a failure state does not necessarily make a mechanic narrative pivotal. How much of the narrative changes with the death of the PC character other than a name change when the successor steps up? I think a more fitting example may be the kill count/chaos rating system from Dishonored. But the narrative does change if you kill all of ppl verses a more pacifistic run. NPCs will interact with the PC differently in the final moments of the game; the player will be offered choices which will affected the conclusion of the game. Now, granted many games have a similar mechanic of "full gauge to get good/bad ending," but I think the change in perception of your actions by the game based upon the amount of death you've caused signals a mechanic that is narrative pivotal. Simply put, you kill too much, you are a seen as a monster and the narrative changes to fit it.
"and all of this adds up to a game that feels punishing", the operative word being 'feels'. as much as people love talking about how unforgiving the game is, it's also extremely forgiving. while you lose your souls if don't get your bloodstain, you learn very quickly a) don't walk around with a lot of liquid souls, and b) souls doesn't really matter that much.
while you can't 'savescum' darksouls, the bonfire mechanic gives you infinite lives, infinite xp, has no restrictive level cap, and lets you do suicide runs. you can run past almost everything that isn't bosses. compared to something with quicksaves, say baldurs gate, where you can't save or leave areas during combat, meaning you HAVE to take and win fights, dks is very forgiving. add to that the summoning system, where you 'get full credit' for having someone in your game beating it for you, within what the games provides you of tools, it's *very* forgiving compared to a lot of games.
I'm not gonna be the tool that goes 'dks so easy', because it does punish mistakes swiftly and harshly, doesn't hold your hand, and expects you to put in the effort to learn its systems and world. but I think that what From truly excels at it playing peoples' heads. Dks is very good at *seeming* more intimidating that it actually is, which is great design if what you're going for is granting a sense of accomplishment in the player, just like it's very good at making the world *seem* deeper and more complex than it actually is by making the information about it sparse and vague.
being alluring, vague and punishing is how seduction has been done for thousand of years, and dks does it very well, although I don't think they would've have gotten far if not for their extremely robust core combat system.
I think Dks3 is the hardest in the series no question, because everything is faster and your windows are smaller. when vets are complaining that 3 is too easy, I think they want the experience they had on their first souls playthrough, which they can't simply because once you 'get' the core of the game(s), once you've learned the basic rules, it's not that hard to actually *play*, and they've forgotten that it was never *that* hard.
+dotanuki Yes that last part hits the nail on the head, i accepted it too and i still really enjoy my experience in the later souls games despite it not being as hard as my first play through (DS1). As much as I'd love to relive that first play-through i can't really blame the souls/borne games for that, it did its job well of teaching me.
Dark Souls 3 is more PvP focused anyway. So when you are embered you are going to get invaded. Worst you might end up Summoning a mad phantom, or a purple phantom. The has been left up to the Players now.
+dotanuki
You mentioned the most important point of DS difficutly: It doesn't hold your hand. It gives you the means to figure out, what to do and how to progress and it gives you the feedback when you do semething right or when you do something wrong. But it desn't give you any more than that. And this makes it seem hard in an age where there seems to be more and more extremely learning resistant people. Even supposedly smart, educated and dedicated people.
Example: Day9. He played DS1 on stream and it was just him running head long into the Undead Burg and dieing for hours. Without addapting his play style, without stopping and observing his surroundings, without learning from his mistakes. And this is the guy who for years tried to make people better SC2 gamers by tutoring his audience.
As you said: DS absolutely has an easy mode in form of summoning, ranged combat, unrestricted leveling. But it doesn't present you with the button to switch the easy mode on. You need to find the easy mode yourself. And (and the acesability fetishists will wehemently disagree with me here) if that's too hard for you, if you just want to push a button and enjoy the story, than better put down the video games and go watch a movie.
Oh man a +0 flask in catacombs of carthus... Hurts to look at
+Leo DS And to think that all they have to do is press Square in a menu to know everything they need makes my smile even wider.
God I love 0/10 Metacritic reviews.
+Leo DS press square in the menu/character stat and EVERYTHING is explained
if you don't read you're gonna have a hard time
wanadeena
This gets even better actually, and I totally forgot to mention it: you dont even need to press Square to know what the item does! In fact, just selecting the item from your inventory makes a side window appear describing what the item does.
Again, gotta love those 0/10 Metacritic reviews.
+Lennic
well, technically you can play dark souls games without leveling up or get any upgrade...
+DedAlex >giving a shit about metacritic scores in 2016
cmon man, that site is a joke and everyone knows it
I never felt really "punished" by dark souls because of the large amount of content between bonfires, it helped me see each section as sort of a testing ground where death never really mattered because I was simply busy practicing. It's a lot easier than say, super meat boy, or superhot, or hotline miami, which are all games that are incredibly fast and frustrating to learn because they just keep smacking you over and over again without letting you gain a mental momentum. Dark Souls is drawn out and lets you experience the game at your own pace, it's a slow zenlike game, and it's more fun because of it. Dark Souls has it's momentum be a slow buildup where you roll further and further through the level until you confront a boss.
+Flailmorpho
I feel like Dark Souls 3 is actually a pretty forgiving game. It has checkpoints closely-spaced, perhaps closer than any of the previous games. And you have unlimited lives. If you die you can generally get back to your location in a couple minutes and retrieve your souls. Also the bonfie warping makes things much easier, personally I would have preferred if there was no warping until mid or late-game, like in DS1.
+Torgo that and/or having only certain bonfires be warpable to
+Torgo Plus, if you were to get caught in the boss battle loop campster describes, you can just use a homeward bone to escape the situation.
That feel when you realize undead bone shards work on all bonfires.
Regarding Easy-Mode, it does exist via the mechanics of the game. Start out as a wizard and make your way to being a muscle wizard.
Props for apparently making it at least to Irythyll Dungeon without burning any bones to make your flask heal more. I suspect you probably just didn't know about the mechanic, but that's still kind of impressive.
Can't entirely agree with your argument on the core of dark souls not being able to scale in a similar fashion to Doom. The new game+ feature present in every souls game in-fact serves as a sort of non-traditional difficulty scaling option in order to make the gamer harder by making enemy damage more severe, or even the presence of new enemies in different locations. It's an interesting sort of give and take however: A second playthrough eases up the difficulty in some ways since you'll have foreknowledge of traps and encounters, yet said encounters demand a greater degree of perfection, rising with each subsequent game on the same file.
Even so, it's not a traditional "difficulty selection," as it can't be accessed without beating the game once, but I thought it was worth mentioning.
On making the game having an easy mode. They kinda do offer ways to make it eayier, like summoning, farming souls and running past bad guys or use 'cheap' builds like sorcery in DS2. The game also rewards players for exploring more by giving players more items to work with. Additional information and learning is very important as you pointed out. Players have the option of looking up guides which can help them learn with out having to die. Allot of these things are looked down on as not getting the true souls experiences, but they are offered. So making use of them does in a sense give the game an easy mode.
But that's the point, the experience you get is so closely tied to the perceived difficulty that people will call you out if you do take those measures in order to make it easier.
Damn Zodiak Well you can see there is no shortage of summoning sings. Most people don;t give a shit and don't discus games online, but they still benefit from the brilliant game design :)
+Eve Pigzy True that. The point is though, that the Souls experience is closely tied to the level of perceive difficulty and the satisfaction you gain from that. To make souls more accessible, be it gameplay wise or through making the story easier to access, you inherently alter the "true" souls experience. I think it's great that From software doesn't try that. I truly respect that type of feast or famine approach in todays gaming industry.
[Insert overused comment about summoning here]
Not to state the obvious, but man, he's not kidding when he says this is from the point of view of someone who's not a Dark Souls fan. Fat rolling, no Estus Reinforcement, Thief starting class. I value your input though. Thanks for the video.
My two cents is that Dark Souls is a game that would suffer from an actual easy mode. I agree with the assessment that a different experience isn't the same as a worse experience, but that doesn't mean that a different experience can't be a worse experience. Dark Souls without the demand for learning the systems and mechanics of the game wouldn't be Dark Souls, and it wouldn't really offer anything in its place to make it a game of equal stature. Since the story is tied to your exploration, and the exploration is so tied up in all the systems of the game, challenging or otherwise, I feel like a story-only mode would have to go all the way and be more or less a walking simulator. That might turn out to be a fine game for the that genre's demographic, but I doubt it. The story of Dark Souls has meaning because the player interacts in very meaningful ways, mechanically and narratively, with its characters. You kill them, you serve them, you fight alongside them, you save them, you always undertake some challenge involving them. Removing the challenge removes the meaning of the interactions with the characters.
Compare it to Mass Effect. In Mass Effect, a story-only mode makes sense for certain people. Its story is driven by the player's choices, like a choose-your-own adventure novel. In many cases, the challenge of the combat or other systems of the game is nothing but "filler" in between the choices which actually advance the narrative. Because of this, the challenge that actually provides meaning to the narrative, that being the challenge of making choices and role playing, isn't lost when you remove the extraneous systems. With Dark souls, the meaning of your actions isn't as often in what you choose to do, but that you succeeded in doing it. A story-only mode can't work because it the story IS dependent on the other, not-very-extraneous systems.1
To quote woolio from Super best friends "dark souls easy mode, just give the player a map"
This game does have an easy mode. It's called co op. I'm not trying to sound like an ass, it's true. If you're having a hard time in an area or with a boss, there are always others readily available to help you in jolly cooperation.
TopHatPangolin You should go to the Dark Souls subreddit. There's always people on there looking for folk to co op with.
I like what you said is that it is not always just "sadistic and punishing" but instead is satisfying and eventually areas feel easy, which is why I always felt it was so hyperbolic how people describe the difficulty, because I feel like I always get to a point where it isn't that hard but the initial entry into a new area feels really tense and satisfying when you succeed the first time and fun to learn the environment when you don't succeed the first time
Also the argument for lowering the difficulty, I understand. But the reason to play the game is because the of the core to the game is it is about overcoming what seems impossible
I'd agree that Dark Souls isn't really hard, but I think one of the core elements you didn't mention in this video is the multiplayer. Not just the PVP, that's a whole different can of worms, but the co-op. Everything in the lore and mechanics is pushing you to use the co-op. You can get summoned and help someone else take out enemies more efficiently while getting a preview of the area ahead before you take it on yourself. Virtually every fight is dramatically easier with co-op, and that's sort of what Dark Souls is about to me. It's about living in a harsh world that doesn't always explain itself. It's about stumbling, confused, trying to make your own way when it seems like everything is against you. Ultimately, it's about the realization that you don't have to take the world on alone, that there are other people like you. The way the story is slowly unearthed by the community, debated publicly until we get a working interpretation going reinforces these ideas. Really it's a nice little message about real life: If you try and do everything alone you'll just fail again and again, but by working together with others you can reach your goals and be happy, even in the most dreary of circumstances. Dark Souls is more about the value of companionship and community than anything else.
he said this was gonna be a series of sorts
You should burn those undead bone shards
+Greggy398 Yeah it's crazy how far he made it without using any of them. They make things a lot easier.
It's also pretty crazy how far he went while fat rolling. In fairness though, the game doesn't really explain that mechanic to the player very well.
The thing with Dark Souls is not that the game is very hard. It's that it does not hold your hand, and does not spoon feed you all the systems within the game.
If all the impatient players who keep charging headfirst into death would stop for a moment, and read the description on a white soap stone, they might figure out they can summon help to ease their travels.
If these players did figure it out, there's no reason they can't make progress.
Hi Color Bars!
I agree with your opinion but it kinda felt like dark souls 3 somehow held my hand.
Like, there were messages on the ground (i mean official messages, not player written ones) that literally told me what to do or where to go.
Mert Erten Yea, which gives players that claim they need an easier mode or something less ground to stand on.
This game mostly spelled it out for people, with the exception of some hidden mechanics/areas/ etc.
As I am for opinion pieces or deconstructions of games a first timers experience with dark souls has been done before, and its been done better. It's been done 5 years ago, repeatedly by nearly everyone, when the first game came out. Its been talked about by every videogame website, print newspaper and even talk show host. I get that ds3 is hot right now, and views are nice, but a completely fresh or even slightly unseen take on the experience will be nigh impossible to do. In the end it will really only serve to aggravate the people who know what dark souls is, as seen by the comments.
I am so glad that you really understand just what makes the game "difficult" but also how the game can be made incredibly easy through understanding enemies and game mechanics. I get so mad when i see charlatans to the series like Total Biscuit preach about how incredibly, unfairly difficult it is.
Tb,put Demons Souls in one of his goty lists,as well as Ds.(Even with the first one being a Ps3 exclusive and the second one having one of the shittiest ports in history.Hes far from hating the game.
I know, and i really like the guy, and i know he respects the series, but just the fact that big youtubers like him have a big viewerbase means he influences people through his statements. It is my love for the series speaking here, but i really dont think you should make any statements about the mechanics of these finely tuned games without fully understanding them, just because they can give off the wrong impression.
Another thing with these games is that once you master one, you pretty much master the rest, possibly with the exception of Bloodborne, as I've not played it and it's different enough from the rest of the Soulsborne games. Sure every game has it's differences from the rest that you need to pay attention to, but the general way you approach the games remains the same.
After playing Dark Souls 1 and 2, there weren't all that many instances where 3 felt truly difficult. But the fact that even one certain midgame boss felt like a brick wall the same way as Ornstein and Smough felt on my first DS1 playthrough, is a huge plus for the game.
+Jontman42 To the point where I would like to see from soft experiment with dynamic difficulty, a la desident evil 4. If the game is about feeling the satisfaction of beating impossible odds, then some master players end up feeling DS3 is easy.
I was one who was blocked very early on in DS1 (I also chose a bad character class to start with, and am a very, very occasional player on top of that. I have recently promised myself to try it again).
One way to concile those two types of players would be to have a scalable difficulty, where everyone can be just desperate enough. What if the game decided that dying 6+ time on a boss meant it would need to soften a notch, and killing a boss on the first or second try means the player is ready fo a harde challenge.
Spontaneously i would suppose enemy speed is one of the core elements of difficulty (or rather not speed, changing the speed of animation can mess with someone learning the attack timings) but the lengths of the respite moments between two attacks.
The more obvious one is enemy damage. I believe that if you make the dynamic difficulty expect you to still die and starts getting hader when you stop dying, then allowing unskilled players to take more punishment might not be giving up on them learning.
And that way, the only moment the game gets actually easy is the moment you are able to dodge every sing attack the game throws at you, and without a cap on damage, that means that at this point, every attack is an instant kill.
Of course, such a system wouldn't allow for a fine tuned difficulty curve: the player would create the curve himself, so there is the risk of everything feeling the same, without picks and valleys, and designing a new difficulty system would take a lot of time and effort to the devs, a time that wouldn't be invested fine tuning other game features.
But I believe it could be a way of spreading to new audiences without compromising the feeling of harshness of every single player. It could even throw some players back in the minset of when they discovered the series.
+Jontman42 You develop "dark souls vision." I haven't finished III yet, but when I saw him walking to pick up that item I immediately knew an ambush was coming.
+Maxime Teppe Not to sound memey or rude, but summoning is honestly dark souls easy mode. If you can't rely on your skill and memorization than you can rely on your friends and strangers, which in it self is a core part of dark souls design. There's even NPC summons though their usually harder to utilize and not as valuable as a veteran player
Reel18k I should try it out, but i fear that it can potentially rob you of the feeling of victory, whereas a well tuned dynamic diffculty system might allowa wider community of players to experience a suitable challenge that allows them to learn to get better at their own pace.
Not that from soft should do that: they notoriously excell at handling difficulty for their core audience.
But i still would like to see a developper experiment with that type of way of handling difficulty.
Maxime Teppe I'm not going to say summoning is perfect but its handled well. Enemies get more health, Summons have half he estus so when it comes to playing you have as a player need to still learn, but summoning acts as training wheels.
Welcome to 2011, Campster.
+Comrade Yui It's the current year!
+Jacket Um, no, it's five years ago.
Great video! I always love your critiques, so I'm glad you've turned that critical eye toward souls. Spot on assessment.
I'd like to say one thing though. I'm no hard core hard mode gamer, but I think that the difficulty of the souls games actually creates a space where its okay to fail. Most games ignore failure entirely; I feel like an I'm being told to do it again until I get it right, like I'm filming a movie scene. The souls games acknowledge my failure and invite me to try again. There's something freeing about that, when you stop thinking about failure as game over and start thinking about it as a process.
And that little bit of wisdom, passed on to me from a game, has made me a far more relaxed and stress free person in real life. Surely that won't be the case for everyone, but I reckon a lot of people are afraid of trying these games out because they can't stop thinking about failure as purely negative.
If you play these games you'll fail so many times that it won't even bother you anymore, and when you get to that point, that's when you'll be hooked. You won't become a glutton for punishment, instead you'll be searching high and low for games that treat you as a threat and a rival to best rather than as a consumer to be catered to.
That's what people mean when they say souls "ruins" other games for them.
I agree with nearly everything you have said here expect that the game teaches through repetition. Sure It CAN teach you through repetition if you're a stubborn headed person but so can almost literally any game. When I first played Demon's Souls I was much more reckless and learned my lesson throughout my first playthrough there. With each New Soul/borne game I become much more cautious while progressing and analyse my options for nearly any given situation. Because of this way of playing and thinking, I die very little, pace myself properly to avoid unforeseen consequences, and can quickly read and react to new enemy types or encounter. I'm sure most Souls vets feel the same way. It doesn't take 10-20 tries to "memorize" attack patterns or level layouts.
I mean I don't expect a newcomer to the Souls series to think like this but Demon's Souls released in 2009. It was a new experience for me and nearly everyone at the time but now that it's 7 years old people should come in with a little more caution then those who played Demon's Souls when it was first released.
Also there are "easy" modes in a sense. Summoning for one, or you can try to opt for a build which allows for easier gameplay(which is essentially gone in DK3.) In the previous titles you can stack defense/poise or make a caster. These playstyles allowed you to experience the game in full while being much more forgiving. Taking too much damage or running out of Estus? Grab some armor and a 100% shield to protect yourself, or destroy your enemies from a distance with powerful magic one by one instead of taking them all on at once. This allowed you to play the same game as everyone else but could give you personally a much easier take on it using it core mechanics, making you feel just as accomplished as most others.
+SomethingCra2y A perfect example of this, for me at least while I was playing DS 3, was the area in the undead settlement. I just killed that saw wielding giant guy, walked forward a little bit. and saw the massive plot of arrows and stopped dead in my tracks to figure out what was the challenge of the area. then 2 seconds later a group of enemies further up got whailed on by an arrow.
the challenge was visible for me so I responded by running through it as quickly as I could and it worked out.
Shit like that could be said about all of the souls releases (with the exception of bed of chaos, stupid piece of shit boss, god damnit) Even bloodbornes chalice dungeons that don't give you the luxury of being a stone-set design you could just read a walkthrough about.
Like most people here, I feel the "click" hasn't happened to you yet. The online features (Co-op, messages etc.) are the helping hand of DS. They help a lot.
Plus, watch Super Bunnyhop's Dark Souls analysis video. He didn't mentioned Dark Souls difficulty as much, but by the end, you'll realize that subtracting from the game as it is, nullifies so much that makes the game great.
+Hemang Chauhan But this is an essay about difficulty and breaking it down. SBH did a great analysis but it wasn't focused specifically on difficulty. Also Errant implied this is one of multiple essays.
Seth D Robertson By the end of his video, SBH made a point about difficulty by telling about the things like Lore discovery, combat satisfaction, etc, which implied why game get to be so challenging than an average videogame.
But you are correct, ES's video mainly concerns difficulty
You shall not forget Demon's Souls
I guess that's why I never cared much for DS. I put that level of commitment as a PhD candidate already! Granted, I might finish all 3 Dark souls in less than 5 years, and the game world definitely seems more interesting than my research topic, and the game doesn't make me anxious about my future and... all right, I'll try the game again.
+diegofloor Could you be any more stuck on yourself and your PhD?
There has always been an easy mode in the SoulsBorne games: Summoning.
+YelAmott
you are not wrong...
+YelAmott Or be those spellcaster...
+WFoong98 Spellcasting got a severe nerf in DS3 from what I've been able to hear.
UPGRADE YOUR ESTUS FLASK!
You seem him drinking 5 estus to get to full health. Thats why its so difficult for him. Hes not upgrading the flask.
+PKDeviluke25 Why? To make the game easier? :D
But... Dark Souls already has an easy mode. DkS3 especially so. You can have 3 PHANTOMS HELPNG YOU! There are videos of people just walking around, while those guys steam roll everything in the entire game. They already gave people ability to summon more partners than anything in the game can handle, regardless of all the stat boosts enemies get when you are coopearting.
I love almost everything about the Dark Souls series. The atmosphere, the variety of playstyles, the way its core death mechanic contribute to its immersion in the world. However, one thing that I always find myself avoiding is it's community. Just the overall smugness of a group of players that feel like they're better than others because they beat what is popularly known as a "hard game." And the fact that many criticisms of its difficulty can be reduced down to "well maybe you should get better at the game." It really is at odds with what I consider to be a beautiful and atmospheric artistic masterpiece when I see people online reducing the game's many faceted parts to "I beat this game and it was hard so now I feel good about myself." Not that that feeling's invalid, just a little reductionist.
Dark Souls with difficulty settings? Have you gone hollow?
Ps. I did finish the video before posting the first comment.
making Dark Souls easy mode should not be taking out the lethality. maybe lessen the punishment, but mostly a "this is why you died" explanation. "this was an ambush that bumrushes you into a pit", "don't try to block THIS attack, the follow up will hit you if you do", "you locked yourself into an attack chain" stuff like that. a helping hand that explains what you should learn from observation, but maybe just can't. regular difficulty options would butcher the game's core, but that would be non-troll ingame message system, or something.
Are you kidding? The only way you could get that is from a seasoned vet watching you play. There's no way anyone could program that since the attacks and ways to get punished for idiotic actions is so vast.
I didn't say it feasable, just that this is an easy mode that doesn't kill the core gameplay. thinking is hard. git gud.
This video is probably the best (and most evenhanded) approach to the difficulty discussion I've seen. My only issue with it is that you imply the only reason the combat is satisfying is because it requires you to master its systems; and I think that's a bit reductive.
You mention early on how the combat in Souls is very different from most other action games, in that everything has weight and momentum to it. While this is certainly part of making system mastery interesting, I think it would be a mistake to discount the pure aesthetic value of that choice. It feels good to slam an opponent to the ground beneath the weight of a zweihander. It feels good summon fireballs to incinerate whole groups of enemies. It feels good to backstab, to parry, to sit behind a giant shield and watch arrows ping uselessly off of it. Just as there is enjoyment to experiencing the art, layout and story of the world, there is also enjoyment in experiencing the weapon variety and flow of the combat.
Whether or not the aesthetic function of the combat is more pleasing than the mechanical function of the combat comes down to the type of player you are, of course. But to say that taking away the difficulty would remove what makes combat fun is not giving the design of the combat enough credit.
+StiltsTheGM
that's because Dark Souls game are designed to "feel" physical. in fact every weapon make the enemies react to that weapon, the wound and the "pain" of the attack.
it's not exaggerated, sure, but is there. this is ages ahead of most other videogame, where you see normal human tank on bullets and wounds that would at least make them feel pain or cripple them...
Id be down for a series of this. Theres a lot worth talking about with Dark Souls.
Dark Souls HAS an easy mode. It's called figure out how to summon. Summon three phantoms. gg.
Re your point on easy mode (12:00 ish) : yes, it would be different. But crucially, the game is already different for different players. People who are excellent at Souls games will have a very different experience from people who play a bunch of games but not Souls-style games, and they will both have a very different experience from people who don't usually play many videogames. If From Software wants to deliver a specific "Souls experience" that strikes a specific balance between failure and progress, there needs to be difficulty options (or adaptive difficulty) to deliver that experience to the broad skill level of players approaching the game.
The key to dark souls is to R1 spam as shown here in this video
+Daniel Lanagan dont forget the fatroll
+sotijas very very true
Great video.
I would love a Dark Souls 1 video, it's world design will blow your mind, believe me. It's different than the DS3 or Bloodborne structure with warping from the get go.
The main problem with the easy mode comes from the fact that most enemies are not challenging because of their damage output but because of their move sets. Those are usually designed around stun locking the player so decreasing damage or increasing the player HP would only result in casual players still getting stun locked and dying anyway. A fine example of this is the beginning hollow enemy. those guys do almost no damage in one hit but they have these flailing attacks that can break through your shield and even take down a lot of your health.
And editing entire moves sets aka AI of every enemy in the game is a much more difficult task then just applying a global debuff on them
"Listen Carefully."
Huh, a sense of accomplishment from the difficulty is something I always see brought up with DS, but it was never something I cared that much about. I mean, it was really fantastic on occasion, but moments of accomplishment were just a few fleeting high points, and I never cared that much when old difficulties became easy. Something about making my way through the tough, mysterious world, was really really....satisfying? like the guy said?
The feeling of playing the game and pushing through it had an aesthetic that mirrored that of the world and art and such, and persevering through it felt good. Maybe 'empowering' in a way, kinda, but it feels wrong to describe it like that.
For me, if they added an easy mode it would have to be something that you chose at the main menu, not something that you could switch over to mid-playthrough - simply to negate the temptation to switch over to easy mode when a particular boss is kicking your ass. If it was done that way, I'd have no particular problem with it.
I do also think the whole "Dark Souls Good Because Difficult" obsession people have is way overhyped though, and I'm glad you took the time to outline that the difficulty is actually very carefully considered and not simply 'for the sake of it'.
+Jim Bob i really don't get the concept of simply not changing your difficulty in mid-play, nor how it would affect you personally since you could simply make the choice of not exploiting it.
***** i just know myself and know that i would probably succumb to the temptation when the going got tough and then be annoyed at myself for doing so afterwards. sure other people have more discipline than me tho
+Jim Bob Same here. The difficulty setting always tempts me. Especially when i'm getting annoyed half way through by the generic levels and AI of some games. By then i'll be speedrunning carelessly just to see the end.
Hopefully, some games have achievements that unlock only when you finish them without ever switching difficulty. That helps, if you care about them.
Dark Souls easy mode already exist, its watching a streamer or lets player play the game. Its an experience as different as night and day but you still get to see how the game look, how it plays, what the enemies are and some of the lore.
I'm always excited to see another video from your channel, great stuff as always, even if I haven't yet played a single Souls game I'm always interested in what people have to say about them.
Err.. The souls games has always had an "easy mode". It's called *Jolly-cooperation*.
+Markes von Hinten
lucky us, sorcery is now completely useless
*****
check out infernoplus's video on it, it's just sad looking at him struggle to chunk a fifth off someone's hp
/watch?v=8E-BPcc4kWc
***** Huh? It has better scaling after 50?
***** interesting. Thanks
Signal I have a question for you.
You seem to agree with Hepler that we should be able to skip combat on story focused games for those who only want the story. Is that right?
Now here's my issues
1) Games are a fundamentally different medium than say a book or movie. At what point is it worth to play a game if all you want to do is watch the cut scenes? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of it being a game? Games are fundamentally about game play so it seems illogical to do that.
2) If you cut out all the game play in favor of the story. You drastically reduce the "run-time" or "value" of the game. Games that take 10 hours to beat may now only have an hour and a half of cut scenes. Don't you think there is going be an issue with cutscenes-only players possibly complaining about having to pay 60 dollars for a game when they are only going to watch maybe 2 hours of cut scenes?
Dark Souls' difficulty slider is built into the game; just summon phantoms. You can have up to 3 people helping you out.
You can win many first encounters by having good reflex and learning how to read enemy movement. With time, you can anticipate any attack's timing no matter if u've seen it before or not.
I'd argue that the core of Dark Souls is not dying a bunch, but being cautious. Oh, you died fighting a new enemy? Did you check their tells, did you learn their moveset? Did you dodge, block and parry them? If not, WHY not? If you did those things and weren't one-shotted, and were cautious, then you're learning. If you didn't do those things? It's entirely your fault.
It's your refusing to learn from your mistakes that DS punishes. Putting an easy mode undermines the idea that, hey, maybe we should try *paying attention* and thinking critically about our next move.
As to a "how to we easy-ify a game about learning through death" question: The big way I would think to do it would be to increase the i-frames on dodge rolls, make the enemy less aggressive in their pursuit of the player when he/she attempts to run from a bad situation, increase the frequency of bonfires or slow down enemy attack animations. In all of these cases it preserves the "learn when things go bad" but then decreases the number of iterations of "ok, I have a plan" -> *plan fails* -> "so this time I'll" until the player finally gets to "my plan actually worked!"
That said, I think even small changes to these values could have huge impacts to the point where someone might not be able to visually distinguish easy from hard mode without actually be the ones playing.
New subscriber!
I'd argue that death, hollowing, coming back to life and harshness are vital to the game. Not because the " look at me, I'm a hardcore gamer!", but because of the atmosphere the gameis trying to convey: I find Dark Souls scarier than most horror videogame because the consumed world it present, traped in a destructive cicle of fire and darkness. The mechanics can be repetitive if you're not used to them, but they all contribute to the narrative.
Good points on why the difficulty matters, I recommend Game Maker's Toolkit's video on it as well.
I feel awful that I inadvertently beat Chris to the punch on this. Luckily his video is still awesome - looking forward to the other essays!
+Game Maker's Toolkit
Game Maker's Toolkit watches Erant Signal.. man it's weird how your favorite UA-camrs watch eachother sometimes.
It's an interesting question that I'm always glad to see arguments for on either side
So I like where you were going with your analysis on this one, but watching your gameplay I don't think you quite understand what the deeper implications of the games are meant to instill. Running into large groups of enemies with non-upgraded estus flasks and starter armor/weapons when you're halfway through the game seems to be a player choice or lack of awareness rather than the game "brow-beating" you to learn its systems.
I see a lot of new players coming into the Souls/Bourne series recently, and quite a few of them have complained about the "difficulty" or how obtuse the games can be. However, if you were to take your time, explore the environments, and read the information given to you either through environmental cues or item descriptions, you'd be all the better for it. You're supposed to examine everything the game presents to you critically and with an air of respect, so running through the item pick ups, or ignoring their descriptions isn't really the game's fault, it's the player's. Everything is pretty straight forward if people took the time to actually look, rather than rushing past it like these were some bog-standard actions games, because they're not, and if you thought they were you're wrong.
A grand analysis, thank you VERY much for it! Personally I could never bear the series for one and only thing: the whole game boils down to attacking and blocking. You have to find an angle to attack and block, and evade, and choose the right path - those are your options. For me this is INSANELY shallow for 2016. Dark Messiah of Might and Magic happened 10 fucken years ago and people are hyped about the game where the entire mechanics boils down to walking attacking, evading and blocking. For fuck's sake we will never have nice things...
Imo, the core of Dark Souls is not dying a bunch to learn/progress. But about patient observing, exploration and utilizing everything you got in your inventory. Timely dodge rolls do help.
My issue with 'skip gameplay' and easy-mode is that these are fundamental regressions for video games as a whole. Especially the skipping gameplay thing. Part of this form of media is the *gameplay*. By putting in an easy mode, or making it possible to skip gameplay removes an intended part of the experience.
To make a Dark Souls III specific example, your character is *unkindled*, a type of undead that couldn't hack it in 'becoming a lord'; you're a failure from the start; the opening cinematic even says "unfit even to be cinders". Hell, you're even referred to as 'unkindled ash' by some, which basically is the epitome of uselessness - you managed to burn out before even catching fire. You're not meant to be a badass. The only thing your character has going for him is that he never truly dies. You're downright *intended* to die. So you go on and bash your skull against an enemy until you win. The only way you really lose is by giving up.
I'm all for more inclusive media, but making a game easier for a group of people doesn't make it more inclusive, it just compromises the creator's intentions. True, Dark Souls III is not a game for everyone, but since its alright for games to have niche appeal its also alright if a game doesn't work everyone. Part of becoming a more accepting society is accepting things that don't fit in our spaces, and that goes for *everyone*; just because some people don't like something doesn't mean it has to change.
at least in dark souls 1, you could set how "easy" you want the game to be, that be with using humanity to kindle bonfires, more estus and phantoms. Dark souls 3 reduced these, but you still can "set your difficulty" with an ass load of phantoms (up to 4), thats as easy as it ever fucking gets.
+wutevaidc Yes, agreed. There is an easy mode-it's just not a binary Easy/Hard option on the main menu.
+wutevaidc
It's true. There are many mechanics that can alter the difficulty. Choosing the knight class, for example, and ignoring the magic system. Using summons constantly and especially on bosses. Reading walkthroughs and guides to get good equipment early. There's even a miracle that allows you to do a death-save. Conversely players looking for a challenge can equip the calamity ring, they can start as Deprived class, or play a mage.
+Fenrick Marlowe Which I think is much better anyway. If anything, they should just go a better job of pointing players towards these options (not in a tutorial or anything but maybe the occasional NPC dialogue or menu text or whatever).
+Robert R
I'll try and say this without sounding like a bragging douchebag, but I would have preferred if DS3 was a bit more challenging in certain respects. For example, there were too many bonfires spaced too-closely together. I also don't think the player should get warping until mid-late game. From Software have build this gorgeous world, it would be better if you had to fully explore it on foot, like in DS1. I wonder if there's any modding potential. .
+Torgo Even if you could mod teleportation out, it'd mean you also can't get to Firelink Shrine which would be pretty fucked up. Maybe it could be modded in that you can only teleport from firelink shrine to the last bonfire you rested at, but even then it would be a far cry from DaS1 as most of the vendors would be easily accessible wherever you are.
It's a shame that they haven't re-attempted what they did with DaS1's world layout. It's still my favorite in the series for that exact reason.
Oh, and nice new intro! When you talked about it on Twitter I thought it'd be super flashy and shit, but it's actually pretty understaded, which I can appreciate.
Talking about the taming of the wild and the feeling of satisfaction with conquering previously unknown areas through trying and failing constantly reminds me of the way that Etrian Odyssey works. Interestingly, Atlus has been constantly making quality of life improvements and adding things to help ease the difficulty of the game. Some of them make sense, and others I think hinder the core of the game, like the ability to fast travel between floors of the dungeons that you've mostly mapped.
Great Video! I've never been much of a fan of Dark Souls but other From Software games such as Armored Core although they really could do so much more with the systems, especially for story telling, one of the reasons why I never felt like all the punishing of Dark Souls led to any result since I didn't find a compelling story in any of the titles. I loved the fact though that in times of regenerative health they continued to create satisfyingly difficult games. Looking forward to your next video as always!
Always enjoy seeing a video from you on my feed.
Also, on some level. Dark Souls has a difficulty system, just not in the form of a slider or in a menu. Summoning help or using powerful spells are considered a built-in difficulty reduction, mirrored by "challenge" modes, where you impose rules on your play, by for example, not leveling up your character
i've been a bit of a lurker on this channel, but really think highly of your well thought out and often insightful analyses. so when I saw you had a video of dark souls, one of my favorite series, I got really excited (albeit a bit nervous about you criticizing it). although I enjoyed your discussion on the difficulty, I think the themes and ideas in these games(the thing you explicitly said you wouldn't talk about) are actually a much more interesting a topic. Hope you get around to doing something of that sort!
also I'm curious to hear your opinions on dark souls' approach to story telling, and how it meshes with the gameplay, b/c I thought you hit the nail on the head in your critiques of games like bioshock infinite and the last of us.
I'm really liking the new visuals/intro! They look really slick!
Well as much as I've seen people say that Dark Souls needs to be easier to appeal to them, I don't agree that it needs it.
As many other games like The Elder Scrolls have those options Dark Souls does not. As you said, Dark Souls is different than say TES.
TES has a simple (And boring imo) combat system where changing the numbers of damage done/healed/taken, health etc does not affect the focus of the gameplay and it indeed feels too easy or too hard depending on the situation. The "too easy" doesn't really hinder the game when exploring is it's most prominent feeling but the "too hard" to the point where exploration becomes unfair and loses it's fun is also present.
There are few cases where I think Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, Dark Souls 2, Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne were too hard.
Only cases I can remember where the difficulty was truly brutal was in some of the Chalice dungeons where your HP was cut in half. (Mind you, I was playing solo and did beat it after some couple of hours). But my point is that to me the Souls games are fair in their difficulty.
There are cases where it just plainly feels unfair but most of the time that comes from the camera man being squished into a box the size of my toenail.
On the matter of: Could Souls have an easymode.
I don't think so.
The game has a steep learning curve to it but there are internal ways that the game can be made a lot easier.
Pick up a bow at one of the first merchants or in a starting class and luring in enemies to one on one them. With some proper aim and a bit of dodging the ranged enemies can easily be out traded from range.
The game gives enough measures to make players able to handle things. Alluring skulls could lure enemies into killing themselves like the Boar from Dark Souls' Undead Parish. Rings that increase your healing by Estus in Dark Souls 3.
And most notably the summoning system where other players can help you out or just outright carry you.
I am not a supporter of just summoning 3 people to carry the fuckle out of you because you miss the core experience that the game is going for. I'd even go as far as to say that only 1 summon is allowed just for that measure. Which would also improve the whole ganking problem that the Souls games have been dealing with since forever.
The games way of teaching the player is making the player aware of how the world around them feels about your presence which in turn should make the player aware that they can do things to make their lives in that world a bit better.
The game to me also reminds me of Monster Hunter games on the PSP back in the day.
Monster Hunter Freedom Unite also had a pretty steep learning curve, sharing the reliance on the timing in combat. Wanna drink a potion? Be sure that nothing is trying to smash your head against the ground first and foremost, guess for how long that state will last and based on that, drink that potion.
Predicting where the tail will be so your charged attack from the Greatsword hit's the hardest possible blow on it, etc.
I think those two franchises share a lot of things when it comes to combat. Though the later MH games have been Casulized...
Heard many fans not liking it after that.
Putting in some shitty difficulty slider (And I say shitty because there are much cooler ways to decrease or increase the difficulty of a game by implementing some kind of interactive system that works closely together with the character building, Looking as Transistor's difficulty options, instead of just putting in a non immersive difficulty slider) would ruin the experience of the Souls games as well as a few other things:
Having a difficulty slider would be really hard to work around with because there is a multiplayer going on at all times where people can invade you at any given time, so what would happen to them? Would the host still have boosted healing? More stats? Enemies less stats so that the Seed of a Tree of Giants wouldn't even be worth being in the game?
That kind of difficulty slider in a Souls game would make it unfair for any invader. Plus, when would you be able to activate it? At all times like in Skyrim? That would make no sense since it could make any and all bosses obsolete at all times, it would mean that invaders were punished way too harshly because of a host being able to just switch to easymode at any given time and deal more damage and have more hp etc.
Which would in turn lead to the current playerbase abandoning the game.
Shit like that is beyond broken.
I'd say that they should leave it like it is in terms of philosophy about difficulty and the "You gotta work to get better or rather "Git Gud"" attitude.
Sorry for the long story though, but I like to ramble and discuss things a bit more in depth than just "git gud" *end of comment*.
But TLDR: Difficulty sliders could do more harm than help, don't do it and just learn how to get better at the game.
It's about self empowerment through improving your own skills and not just some stats ingame.
I spent about two years bashing my face against Dark Souls before I got to a point where I was competent and excited to continue playing the game. You're right on the money about how learning is a much more important skill than technical skill. I strongly believe that anybody who wants an easy mode is looking for the instant gratification that most AAA games offer, especially given that DS3 allows for three summons and has removed poise to the point that you can just repeatedly smack your R1 button until everything in a ten mile radius dies, and you'll still have half a stamina bar that will replenish almost instantly because you probably found the grass crest shield or cloranthy ring.
DS3 isn't easier because we're better, it's easier because the systems that made DS hard are now fundamentally different. I'd love to see you fire up DS and make a comparison between the two.
Great video as always. However, I think you're just a tad bit off base as far as Dark Souls difficulty goes. It's very true that Souls teaches through repetition and failure. But I think framing it as repetition of specific confrontations, so that you learn the ins and outs of those confrontations is incorrect. One can play it that way, for sure. And one can beat every Souls game by simply memorizing every single encounter. But I think the design intention is more... high concept than that. Dark Souls uses its ambushes, or surprise rare attack combinations, or boss transformations, etc., as a way to teach you core concepts of caution and strategy. An ambush from behind isn't supposed to get you to learn just the way that ambush works, but moreso that you can be ambushed, and that these ambushes can come from a multitude of angles, with a multitude of challenges. It's similar to learning fighting games in that way actually, where learning to perform long combos can lead to you doing better for sure; eventually someone will fall into your punch, and you can successfully combo them. But the true skill in a fighting game is in knowing how to use your whole arsenal to cause opponents to stumble. Knowing match ups, character strengths, when your anti-air might be more dangerous for you, the habits of certain people who use certain characters, etc. It's less rote memorization, and more conceptual understanding that will make you truly skilled at Dark Souls.
I think Dark Souls is so difficult for people, because the skills it asks of you aren't skills most similar games usually ask of you. It requires a different type of thinking, and unlearning habits that - in the context of Dark Souls - are very bad habits. I always equate it to the difference between playing arcade racing games, and playing a simulation racer like iRacing or Gran Turismo. It's the difference between playing Call of Duty and Arma. Though the games are similar on the surface, the required skillsets are extraordinarily different. This catches people off guard, so for a while they have to rely on said rote memorization to get by. Until they pick up on what Dark Souls is truly asking of them, they'll struggle.
I have yet to find a solution to this that eases people into the experience more. But I don't think any sort of easy mode is the answer. As with a survival horror game, a large part of the fear, respect for the lore, appreciation, atmosphere, immersion, and triumph comes from the game mirroring the cold nature of the world you're exploring. Without that, I think the games would lose some of their luster. While I do think it's often completely valid to allow people ways to completely ignore gameplay, or narrative, or any part of the experience, that's only when the two clearly don't need each other to achieve full (or near full) effectiveness. Mass Effect works as just a movie or a shooter, because the two really don't have anything to do with each other. They don't do much in terms of informing each other and adding weight to each other. In Dark Souls, I think one half would become distinctly less effective without the other, particularly in the case of the narrative. I think the narrative needs the gameplay trials, in order to be as effective as it is. So I think the focus needs to be more on teaching players these higher concepts as soon as possible, because the game already has quite a few options for making the gameplay easier. Most of these allow players a little leeway. They're still punished for mistakes, but it's done in ways that are more bearable for your average player.
One example is the Ring of Sacrifice. This ring prevents you from losing your human form and your souls when you die. But the ring then breaks. In Dark Souls 1, it was gone forever. But in Dark Souls 2, it can be repaired indefinitely for 3000 souls. This eliminates two out of the three main punishments for death (those being loss of souls, loss of human form, and loss of progress). The only additional punishment is grinding for 3000 souls to get the ring repaired, but the amount of souls per kill goes up quick enough as you progress, that this punishment is eliminated within the first few hours. You'll eventually almost always have enough souls to repair the ring directly after you die; and even if you don't, you'll only be a handful of ten second fights away from having enough anyway. There are tons of little things like that, which can make a big difference for players who're really, really struggling.
+ZaXo00 Yesssss. I was actually pretty confused by the way ES was describing the difficulty in this video til I remembered that it was pretty much exactly how I finished Dark Souls. It was a painful playthrough and it took me a looong time to understand what the game was asking for me. Then I went back to Demon's Souls, which I'd given up on a while before picking up Dark Souls, and found it much easier than I had prior. It's because I'd learned how the games work, not from memorizing the ins and outs of every specific enemy, boss, ambush, and environment.
I feel like in some ways your first Souls game playthrough serves as a tutorial in and of itself. The series definitely requires dedication. :P
But the fact that so many Dark Souls veterans are claiming that Dark Souls 3 is the easiest in the series should be proof enough that "you need to memorize practically everything to succeed" is just...not an accurate statement. It's easier for us because we've learned what it's asking us to do.
And I also really like the way the Souls games let the player choose their own difficulty in organic in-game ways, with stronger starting classes, NPC and player summons, and powerful ranged attacks like magic that should make it way easier for a beginner. Dark Souls II probably did this best, with all the healing items and stuff to restore spell uses and the ability to repair the aforementioned ring of sacrifice. In spite of the fact that I am...not a huge fan of Dark Souls 2, and in many ways find it pretty shitty and cheap, it may...simultaneously be the most accessible Souls game for newcomers?? though I... don't so much like the thought of it being their introduction to the series.
Steven Millett
I generally agree, though I don't harbor near as much ill will toward DS2 as most people. A lot of the things it's criticized for are things that were/are also present in Bloodborne and Demon's Souls. I think DS2 gets an unfair reputation as being a poorly designed game, when in reality, it's just designed differently from DS1. Most important to me though, is that it made a lot of improvements. It was a lot more clear with what stats did. It did small things like allow you to see how many souls you need to level up, regardless of where you are. It simplified the upgrade system, which was sort of exhausting in DS1, and a total mess in Demon's Souls.
Plus, people like to forget the issues DS1 has, or had, that DS2 does not. Curse in DS1 was originally just plain evil, since repeated curses continued to cut your maximum health in half. You could get down to 1/8 health. Plus, the Purging Stones were much more expensive, and finite. DS1 also had far too many places where you were required to take fall damage, and some horrible floor collision, particularly in areas of Blighttown and the Crystal Caves. Speaking of Blighttown... Blighttown. While for me personally, the terrible framerate there is endearing, because it fits with the scummy, horrible motif that Blighttown exhibits. But still, when you're shooting for 30FPS, anything below that (particularly when it's regularly in the low teens) is absolutely inexcusable. That's doubly so for a game like Dark Souls, where precise control is everything. DS2 meanwhile - at least for me on PS3 and PS4 - is buttery smooth all the way through.
Many of the other decisions are just different, not really negative per-se. I enjoy both the dodge roll/weight class systems in DS1 and DS2 for different reasons. Same with the changes to the Estus system, and the equipment degradation system. People crap on DS2's linearity, but - aside from the fact that nobody complains in Demon's Souls - I don't feel it hurt the experience. It's just a different one. And it's not like they didn't plan for it. That's exactly why it allowed for bonfire fast travel immediately, because backtracking is much more grating without shortcuts. The new covenant ideas were great, as was the inclusion of new content in later New Game+ levels. Overall, I love DS2 just as much as DS1, and think they're both amazing games. They're just different. Once one stops expecting DS2 to be DS1, it's easy to see the good in it.
I don't think Dark Souls 2 is a terrible game or anything, and I wasn't expecting it to be Dark Souls 1 either. Dark Souls 2 is the only Souls game to date that I consider "just okay." I was just expecting it to be a really good game, and I don't think it was.
It's pretty unfair a lot of the time, and while there are moments of cheapness in all of the Souls games (swamp in Valley of Defilement, Lost Izalith and Bed of Chaos, etc), but it seemed to be a part of the focus here. Forest of the Fallen Giants, which is the first area most players will ever go into, is full of ambushes, traps, places where you can't turn around and go back until you've fought through a pretty challenging area, and mobs of enemies far tougher than the hollows in Undead Burg. Made all the worse by the insane amount of enemy tracking on their attacks and the uselessness of dodging with low adaptability (Which I thought was also really poorly implemented).
And I remembered finding far more places where fall damage was required in DS2 than the others on my latest playthrough in preparation for the 3rd game.
Also I don't think "bonfire warping was required because of the laziness of the world design" is a great point in the game's favor. The world design, while the least of the game's problems, felt genuinely insulting at times. Like No Man's Wharf realistically being way below sea level, the infamous location of Iron Keep, and the fact that the player needs to kill 4 of the most powerful beings in the world to circumvent a small pile of rubble that I'd probably be able to climb over in Demon's Souls. That one being the worst offender in my opinion because...they could have easily just put Shrine of Winters where the rubble is. It didn't have to be like this From...
Also, many of the linear levels in Demon's Souls also still felt more interesting to me than a lot of the ones in Dark Souls 2. Shrine of Storms part 2 and Heide's Tower of Flame are both basically one long line to the boss with very short divergences, but Shrine of Storms played more with vertical level progression, darkness, and narrow pathways that required caution. In that level I felt like I was descending deeper and deeper into a dark, scary, and intimidating place, not really knowing what I'd find ahead.
In Dark Souls 2 I always knew exactly what I'd find ahead, I could see the boss from very close to where the bonfire is, as well as the many huge hard hitting enemies with a seemingly endless amount of stamina, some of which attacked in clumps. One level was really fun in an anxiety-inducing way to progress through, one was obnoxious and tedious. And don't even get me started on areas like Black Gulch.
People always say things like "the other games were flawed too" and I would never deny that, but for me personally, the strengths of those games outweighed the flaws by a large margin. The worlds, NPCs, enemies and bosses all felt more interesting and made me want to know more about them, and the fact that (most) of my deaths taught me something that made me better at the game created for a very satisfying gameplay experience, even if I had to deal with some bullshit along the way.
In Dark Souls 2 the world gave me very few reasons to care, and aside from a small number of NPCs, bosses, and locations, I didn't really want to know more about anything. (I will say that on my last playthrough, which was my first since they'd updated it to add Aldia's sporadic appearances, the story felt a lot more cohesive and interesting, and the new ending was very cool. what a difference one character can make!)
It's an okay game for me, maybe even a good game, but with those select few exceptions, it never really reached the heights of Demon's, Dark 1, Dark 3, or Bloodborne.
And Yikes, sorry for the essay. :P
Not trying to tell you you're wrong or anything for liking Dark Souls 2 as much as you do. I totally get why some people would (and am kind of jealous of them tbh), just wanted to lay out why I was personally disappointed by it. And I still left a lot of stuff out...
I do think it has the best co-op by far. I don't get why Dark Souls 3 removed the benefits of engaging successfully in co-op?? Like the replenished estus and weapon durability?? It seems to give far less incentive to engage. Your weapon will be in even worse condition when you get back.
Steven Millett
Nah, it's no worry at all. It's nice to even hear someone converse about the game in a way that isn't full of insults and rhetoric :) That's honestly my biggest issue, is just that people can't see the game as just okay, or good. They disrespect all of the hard work that real people did to make the game. These developers aren't a bunch of corporate suits trying to screw consumers. They're real, passionate individuals trying to create something great. So to see entitled 'fans' color the world in such black and white (DS1 is perfect, and DS2 is utter garbage) really gets on my nerves. I already have to deal with such tripe in the Final Fantasy fanbase, so it's disheartening when it starts to happen in other series' that really do try to make something great. That's a large part of the reason I started my own UA-cam channel, was to hopefully attract people that will give each and every game the chance it deserves. Most people just can't respect the hard work of others I guess. But I very much appreciate that you can. Not surprising I guess, since you're commenting on an Errant Signal video.
I basically gave up on Mass Effect 2 because I couldn't stand the sight of another room full of chest-high walls.
5:23 - 5:40 Errr, okay but as you said yourself, the game is teaching you, and you're supposed to have learned by now to check your corners and watch carefully where you're going.
Every trap and ambush can be avoided on first try.
Easy mode for Dark souls? Never! Git gud or git gone. Seriously though you nailed it. Great vid. One of the most satisfying gaming experiences ever was overcoming Artorias in the first game. I actually ran around the room punching the air in joy.
Keep up the great work. Always appreciate the amount of insight your videos provide.
Dark souls has slowly over the course of three games, forgotten to be hard. The difficulty has slowly gotten scaled back. Enemy attacks are easy to dodge, and read. I beat Dark Souls 3 blind in 23 hours, taking it pretty slow, dying on only about 4 bosses.
(Old man voice) in my day we had to kill a boss in order to get 50% of our health bar back, and if we died, we didn't just lose our souls, and some of our life. We lost our souls, and 50% of our life. That's some hard shit, like after eating a mouth full of metamucil.
+Strat-Edgy Productions The games aren't getting easier, you're getting better at them, just like all souls players do.
On defining terms: an easy mode to me in Dark Souls would be the ability to attempt a boss again - instantly. Not having to retread through an area again to make an attempt. I don't think this would compromise what people love about these games and it would allow more people to enjoy them since this would respect the players time a bit more.
Great video. I really appreciate the quality, academic insight you bring to game criticism
I definitely agree that an easier mode would take away most, if not all, of Dark Souls' identity. The despair in the game world just doesn't hit you in the same way if you aren't afraid for your life. Just look at any speedrun and you'll see that.
The difficulty is also woven into the narrative, even breaking the fourth wall and saying something about the actual player. In Dark Souls, as an undead dies and is reborn over and over, they lose humanity and become more "hollow" each time. As an undead hollows, they become more insane and unstable, eventually flailing wildly at any moving thing on sight. The coolest thing about this is that the same is true for the player. They play into the narrative perfectly without even knowing it. The more they die, the more reckless they become because they get impatient at having to replay what they've already beaten. They may run past enemies or fight with blind, wild offense to get back to where they died quicker, which increases the chances they'll die more. Anyone who has felt the mounting frustration with each successive death knows what hollowing is like for an undead. That's something no amount of exposition can do; it's only possible through difficulty.
Obviously this was designed on purpose and with great care. Small, yet really cool details like that would be lost if the game were made easier.
i really appreciated the point you brought up in this video about the "difficulty" of the souls game being integral to their identity and core mechanics. there's no real way to tone down "situational awareness" to facilitate an easy mode. there's an older Russian cult classic semi-survival game called "Pathologic" that's well-known for its supposed ridiculous difficulty, and i feel the same concept applies where difficulty is integral to the experience and there's no real way to tone it down. the game's full of strange philosophical concepts and abstract thinking, and it struck me as a game you might have some interesting input towards if you're at all interested
Hmm...I get why people say they want an easy mode, but more than the sense of accomplishment, I feel like the series' difficulty needs to be there for the games' archeological storytelling style to work at all.
When you die in Dark Souls, the game is inviting you to ask how and why you died, and how you could've prevented it. And it's in trying to answer this question that you end up discovering the ways that the games let you make it easier.
Becoming acquainted with different kinds of equipments, weapon upgrades, how rolling or blocking with a shield works, magic - those are all tools that you can use to succeed. And the games' systems are so linked to the narrative and setting that, in understanding these tools, you also end up understanding the lore.
Were the game easy, you'd have no reason to look at the small details, and those are really what make the series notable, I think.
One last thing. Something that really helped me view the series in another light is the idea that the first Dark Souls' slogan, "prepare to die", is not a threat, but advice. Mentally prepare yourself for in-game death, because it /is/ going to hapen, and how much enjoyment you get out of playing the game depends on wheter you view death as failure or not.
This can also reframe the games as being about accepting death, which brings up some interesting philosophical ideas, but I'll leave that for another time!
The easy mode is called "Jolly Copperation."
i really feel like one of the important things to note is that not only is the difficulty of souls a part of the core mechanucs but it is essential to the tone.
Lordran and Lothric (im pretending 2 doesnt exist) are part of a harsh world. the gods and heros ate all dead or mad, the world is decaying, and there are very few people who will even soeak to you. the chosen undead and the unkindled are insignigucant beings whose only true power comes from this memorization mechanic
you are a tiny speck in a world once inhabited by gods and legends and the challenge reminds you of that.
you arent a lord like gwyn or a legendary hero like artorias. you are a measly being battling armies, demigods, and gods
Fascinating design is the battle against giants at the muddy water. The environment forces you to be as slow as the giants themselves.
One way to make an "easy mode" would be to increase the amount of souls gained in combat (or reduce the leveling requirement). By allowing people to level faster and "over-level" they would be able to clear the game more easily.
Extra Credit made a nice analysis that the easy mode of the game is embedded in the items you use, so in a way the easy mode already is in the game systems.
in regards to an easy mode, a lot of people think when "easy mode" is spoken that means a deep health pool for the player, or lighter attacks for the enemies.
Let Platinum Games show you the light of how to do "easy modes". Where easier difficulties have longer telegraphs on enemy attacks. Dodges and/or parries have a wider window for success. In this case of Dark Souls itself, it could do things such as additional Estus, rather than just larger health pools, because it doesn't matter how much estus you have, a 1 hit kill trap will still kill you. Falls will still kill you, and if you are caught off guard by a flanked monster, if you couldn't use the estus fast enough, you still die. And to be further forgiving in it's "easy mode" it could reduce or outright remove the death limit before your previous souls despawn. This would help players progress faster to help them conquer whatever threat they have, though still requiring them to venture back to where they died.
I think there is a way to still stick close to the original designers vision of the game while still being more inviting to newer players. It's a matter of thinking about it. If health is integral to the core experience, then how *ELSE* can the difficulty be altered that still doesn't undermine the core experience?
The thing that made me love Dark Souls is that it doesn't really treat death as a fail state the way other games do. Death is a setback, and there is a punishment for it, but the game's mechanics are designed with lots of dying in mind. Once I internalized that, I had endless fun exploring every nook and cranny of the world, which is really rich and deep. It's satisfying in all the right ways.
You said at the end roughly... "it wouldn't be the game they wanted to make" and "it's a fundamentally different game".
Consumers don't need to care about what developers of game, or any other media for that matter, intended. There are countless games out there downed in grinding mechanics, many put in place purely to abuse the player into buying micro-transactions, or to act as a skinner box to keep player counts up. Developer intent is entirely relevant; what IS, in the eyes of each consumer individually, is the only thing that matters. Overemphasis of and harsh defense of such intent, is how you get the laughable examples of "modern art".
Next, consider what makes a game. Even from your pool of favorite games, would you claim that not only they are all perfect, but that you play the game for and fully enjoy ALL of the aspects that make up each title? No one would make such an insane claim... While games are made up of many elements and keeping it all consistent is of some importance, the individual user plays for what they want and enjoy. Dark Souls is in a genre of it's own, only when you consider just the core combat mechanics and nothing else. It has a very specific feel that many find incredible. While that along with many other iconic design choices combine to what people refer to as "a souls game", most players pick and choose the elements they're drawn to, and those same elements transferred to another title would be something they'd want to play.
Finally, you claim that because the dying repeatedly element is core to the experience, and not doing so would make it fundamentally different. How can you ignore player skill, when you said it yourself early in the video? I've seen even first runs of these games, brand new players to the genre, die anywhere between maybe 3 times and easily 1000 times. Then consider what the game lets you do. I didn't see you using every single weapon type available nor any of the magic in the video, and that has a tremendous impact on difficulty. Then consider the player and gear stat increases. Those systems are 100% optional, and utilizing it differently is more than enough to make it a fundamentally different game, within itself...
Should Dark Souls have difficulty adjustment (ignoring the fact that it already does)? Yes and no. Changing the game in a way that effects really anything but stats could either be a ton of extra work and/or would potentially harm the game. So an in-game minimap for example; that's a tremendous undertaking, as would something like adding clearer questline dialogues, alternate enemy placements, etc. That stuff is bound to harm the base game even if it has no effect on users who don't choose the easy mode, simply because it's an investment of time that is being diverted. But you could also put in a basic cheat-code or menu option that say multiplies soul gain. A microscopic mechanical change that still gives less patient or talented players an easier time. You can already do that with real cheating or farming/exploiting, but there's no reason the game itself cant make that easier to prevent players wasting their time on workarounds.
The gameplay is not for me but I fell in love with the lore, the way its not gameplay then cut scene for story and lore rinse, repeat. Its about learning about the world through the lenses of the different characters. The perfect balance of leaving questions unanswered and events untold to allow people to discuss it
and i'm happy to watch someone else play as long as I get to learn the lore through what I think have been great voice casting/ acting