The Best Reason Why Some Games Shouldn't Have An Easy Mode
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- Опубліковано 30 чер 2024
- There's a reason "the intended experience" argument is so often brandished by one mode fundamentalist. Because it's their best and most important argument. The whole argument gets decided here.
0:00 Recap
2:02 The Problem
3:40 The Intended Experience
12:51 Counter Argument
17:38 The Shared Experience
21:26 Artists Should Be Free - Ігри
I misremembered the Hypogean Gaol thing. You're stuck until you find the lantern but the lantern is not broken until later.
Fake Bloodborne fan.
They should have done that like they did in the painted world
The fact that Bloodborne has fast travel through the lanterns kind of muddles the Gaol section imo. The lantern being broken (even if you hadn't seen or used it before, which is always the case) would actually have been a cool additional symbol of "boy, you're in trouble", especially because the lantern isn't all that far off the prison cell, which weakens the section quite a bit in my opinion. In addition to the tension being rather short-lived because of it, it also becomes an incredibly convenient farming spot for a while. If the lantern was somewhere else, both of these things could have been avoided
@@justsomejojo I'll be frank, my first time in the Gaol I completely walked by the lantern and didn't realise it existed until I'd already fought my way through the road area quite a bit, vastly underleveled at the time.
This calls back to that "different experiences within a band" thing though, as because it is relatively easy to find if you know it's there, or decide to go exclusively up instead of through the small doorway or across the grated room to the road, you're having your own experience that you can share with others.
Idk I know Ratatoskr said "please argue in the comments" but he did go on a long shpiel about shared experiences and why he likes that idea, and it's interesting to me I guess.
Like, knowing it's there makes it a utility rather than a problem.
If you know that you can get teleported by the enemy type, and know the loot there is better (blood echoes+shards+assortment of other items that I forget as I'm stuck on pc now), then it allows for more creativity and a wider scope for the player to express themselves within the game.
But if you don't know, you can easily go off the path through the other two shown ways to go that come before the lantern, and easily give yourself a very hard and spooky time.
I do think the fact that it is so easily found by accident is a bit problematic, but I also think that anyone playing with a guide will want the quick way out, and anyone without a guide is more likely to not even think to keep adventuring that way because it's dangerous (or likely dangerous, as the music is designed to fill you with a sense of fear or instability).
I just thought it was neat how something could be both a problematic situation, or a very handy way to grow your strength, depending on how you view the game at the time.
@@justsomejojo Imagine if you had to kill Paarl to get out of there.
Paarl can be super easy or pretty tough depending on your build and how far you've gotten in the game before you reach the Gaol.
On your first play through, when you have no idea what you're doing, that'd be a real nightmare.
I think another problem with difficulty settings is how poorly a lot of games handle it. A lot of times its just making enemies damage sponges and you die in two hits. For players that want challenge, that's not really interesting and very quickly becomes a chore.
THIS. "Difficulty" is such a nebulous term. Are we talking monster damage outputs? Player damage outputs? Navigation ease? Ability to digest information? Puzzle complexity? Reaction times? There are so many ways to slice this pie, I think we need to articulate more clearly what "difficulty" or "ease" truly means. "Difficulty Mode" discourse needs more careful articulation to really get somewhere fruitful instead of the usual stalemates.
This happens so often in Dynasty Warriors games. Making enemies tankier does make things more difficult, but it's such a lazy and cheap way to accomplish difficulty....
@@ShinAk1raSama Precisely. Are we talking about difficulty in how l9ng an encounter lasts? Then if we pause the main fight to add a sodoku minigame that takes hours to solve, then it MUST be harder! 🙄 Difficulty is more context dependent and requires a careful calibration
*cough DMC5 DMD *cough
@@Castigar48 At least Vergil gets new moves in that difficulty. Also enemies die really quickly in normal so you can't really build style. Personally, I think son of Sparda of the most balanced mode or Very hard for DMC 3. You can wail on the enemies for a while and build style. DMC5 is actually not that bad but DMC3 devil triggered enemies take forever to kill.
This is the last one for a while. The point is to focus on a single topic and elaborate on it as much as it deserves. This is the topic that I explained most poorly in the past and I hope this video is more clear.
Thank God your videos are terrible too little too late and focus on the wrong aspects of the wrong games. You can’t talk about difficulty with Eldon ring you should’ve used Sekiro or some NES games out there. Super soft gaming gen we have.
@@nicholasnajibi3082 The thing is, if you use retro games as an example, people will bring up the argument that they were only hard to maximize their short playtime or to steal your money in arcades
Unfortunelately there are not so many modern examples anymore you could use and are well known. I mean I would luckily bring up "Volgarr the Viking" as an example where the lack of difficulty enriches the experience, but people wouldn't know what i'm talking about because they don't know the game.
I'm disappointed a bit myself with Elden Ring, because it was designed too lenient and all these meta playstyles disctract from the message such a game could have on the broader audience. I think it kinda failed in some kind of regard making relentless videogames more alluring to a modern audience. Maybe next time...
@@Ageleszly I think a lot of people are snared by the belief that everyone else would enjoy things the way they do, if they were only [insert characteristic here] enough. Yes, if everyone else were you, they would like the things you like. That's not the way any of this works, though. I do remember Volgarr. I played it, and even enjoyed it, but iirc it was one of those games where you have to run through the whole thing in one go, no saves, no checkpoints. However far I got was precisely as far as it seemed worth bothering to get, no farther. It was a decent game, but it wasn't a game worth playing.
Excellent video! I wish I could subscribe twice.
The most crisp writing advice I've ever read: "Entertainment is just emotional experiences."
That can be wildly misinterpreted as "make everything an over-dramatic setpiece".
@@insensitive919 I don't think so because you can still make a boring over-dramatic set piece that doesn't manage to elicit any emotional reaction.
@@castor9683 Quite. But the reason we are even having the "easy mode" conversation is because a vocal minority is either very easily manipulated by such things, or they believe that any attempt at making such works needs to be lauded at all costs. Back in the day you would hear the phrase "Games need to grow up" a lot, the current conversation seems to be an extension of that.
@@insensitive919 Ya know I agree, but I think this point only is only what people who would want the EZ mode side.
One argument that comes up with people wanting difficulty options is that they don’t have time.
“I have kids, work, a life I have to attend to… I don’t have the time I did have as a kid to play and master these games. I just want to have a less stressful time while I play. An easy mode would help a lot.”
To me, it always seemed like these games need to essentially “grow up” with them. Accommodating them as well.
@@insensitive919 Not quite, because most developers would know that if everything is an over dramatic setpiece then nothing is. If there are quiet moments, then the more dramatic moments are intensified and thus we are more entertained. Emotional experiences are just your brain signals firing, but if the same stimulus is being given over and over then the firing slows down and stops as we are desensitized.
The Noah Caldwell-Gervais video really crystallized it for me. It's not that Souls games don't have an easy mode. It's that the *obstacle* stays the same, but you decide how to overcome it on your own terms. With friends, with a +5 Black Knight Halberd, with some Magic Missiles in the corner-it's all cool and all righteous. You still beat it, and what "it" is didn't have to change for you to do it.
Could you share the link to that video please?
@@fernandozavaletabustos205 It's a big one ua-cam.com/video/O_KVCFxnpj4/v-deo.html
@@rohiogerv22 Watching it right now! Thanks.
I think arguments of the form, "I don't want easy mode because I might be tempted to switch" frankly aren't going to be very compelling, even if there is truth in it. It's not the temptation per se that is bad, it's that an easier version of the experience is a vastly different experience, and the game creators don't want you to have that experience.
To me the more convincing arguments are:
1. Any art you consume is going to be a curated experience. You're buying something that you hope will make you feel a certain way - the way the creator intended. I don't go to the theater and demand alternate movie endings that I think I'd enjoy more. I don't call up my favorite musicians and demand an extra chorus at the end of a song.
2. Difficulty is an important component of the experience From wants you to have, the two are not separable.
The marketplace for games, like other forms of art, is vast. I don't argue that From games should have more kart racing elements, and easy mode aficionados should leave difficulty in games well enough alone.
Always enjoy these, keep 'em coming
been making the music argument, specifically, for a long time
good points Amish!
Except a movie, unlike games is a passive experience. In games you are the agent, you have an intended experience, but you can choose how to experience it! As for difficulty, that is very subjective! My dad was an amputee, and he couldn't stand up on his own, something so "easy and trivial" was very difficult to him... you can still have an easy mode and make it difficult for some people! The 1st time I killed the Valkerie queen in GoW, I lowered the difficulty and it was still hard! It's Miyazaky's game, so he does what he wants with it! I won't support "forcing" him to create another difficulty level in his games... however, I wouldn't oppose to something t that would never affect my experience and could benefit others... and lastly, ER would have been far more balanced if there was difficulty selection... summons were put to make it more accessible and yet it broke the game...
@@AyraNunes OK you raise a lot of good points, let me try to respond to each:
Yes, games aren't passively consumed like music or movies but I'm not sure it matters vis-à-vis the experience the creator wants you to have. For folks like your Dad, accessibility options matter a lot, but this is one reason I like to carefully distinguish between accessibility options vs. difficulty.
Yes, the Valkyrie queen is really tough, one of the hardest bosses in a game I've fought outside of the Souls series.
You bring up a great point about summons acting as a difficulty adjuster - there are some others, like continuing to level your character. I don't object if game creators want to add an easy mode, or if they don't - it's about what they're trying to create. My point is not necessarily, "Souls games shouldn't have an easy mode", it is more, "I understand why Miyazaki doesn't seem to want to add one"
@@iamamish I understand why he chooses not to, even though I don't agree with it, cause like I said you can still make difficult bosses on easier levels... you can also do just like give me god of war, if you select this difficulty, you can't change it throughout the game! And you're gonna wanna! Hahaha! My biggest beef is that whenever this subject is brought to the table, people go crazy, in defense of the "essence" of the game... idk, maybe it's a personal thing, but the difficult mode would be there, and adding an easier one, would zero affect my experience, so I can't seem to wrap my head around people being SO against it!
As for the accessibility features, I didn't really feel game difficulty would affect it, until I saw some gamers with disabilities raise some really good points... and tbh, and I go back to my argument, because they wanted to make ER more accessible and not add another difficulty level, they added mechanics that broke the "essence" of the game... again, I'm not pro forcing him to insert another difficulty level, but I just can't understand why people opposite to it so much
@@AyraNunesif having an easy mode wouldn't affect your personal experience, good for you. But that's not the case for everybody. For some people it would affect their experience, that's why they're against it.
You don't need to understand exactly how it would affect their experience, really. Experiences are subjective, they happen inside people's minds. It's not just difficulty, any aspect of a game can change someone's experience. And people have the right to want a certain experience.
Of course, you can't expect every game to cater to you in particular. I don't go around demanding every game remove easy mode because it would improve my experience. But I will be vehemently against people demanding the games that are for me to change to suit someone else, and I will defend the existence of a game that suits me better than it suits someone else. So that is why some people are so against it.
One part of the argument regarding intended experience that people who rebuke it often forget is that even people who give up on a difficult game with no difficulty settings have an experience with the game that they then share with others. If you quit DS1 on the gargoyles or O&S, there are others who have done the same with whom you share that experience. They talk about it with each other. That's part of the shared experience too.
Exactly. But of course, these people won't appreciate your / our argument no matter what. I feel like today, more than ever in the modern age, people have become utterly unwilling to entertain any notion beside the one they already have. In other words, you either agree with me, or you're evil. That's what it boils down to, these days. Now, I admit I too tend to be a bit stubborn, but at least *I* don't go out calling people sexist, racist, or in the case most often with this topic, insensitive and ableist. None of which is, of course, correct, but if they paint me in that way, the public opinion sways in their favor, and that's what they all truly care about. They don't think the truth matters; only that their perception is accepted.
That is a weak argument though. The shared experience of having wasted money? Those people won't have much to talk about that is worth it.
Yeah I don’t think this argument holds up. Like yeah… it’s a shared experience, but not a pleasant one. Nobody is happy they quit a game, at best they don’t care and at worst they’re bitter about it.
@@ADHDkid321 I'm pretty sure he's not arguing it's a good experience; rather, he's arguing that even if they quit the game, hell even if they utterly hate it, it connects them with people who have a similar experience / opinion and that such a thing wouldn't happen if there was an easy mode.
Yeah... I'll have to disagree with you on this one, Dickard. There are ways to have multiple difficulty settings while making sure the player knows which one is "intended." Halo 3 is a perfect example of this.
People who quit a game early on may share the same experiences, but they're often negative experiences, and do not do the game justice. Not only that, but talking about "intended experience" in something like the souls series is kind of pointless, because the difficulty is modular based on your build. There is no intended way to play such games.
For maybe the first time ever - the statement "don't like it don't play it" actually works. if you can't figure out how to play these games within the confines of the rules the devs imposed, the game is not for you, and you don't have to play it. Doesn't mean the game should change for you. Ridiculous narcissistic world we are living in.
Ironic that the easy mode crowd are the ones calling us narcissists
Pathologic 2 is a great example of selectable difficulty ruining a game. It released without one, everyone I’ve ever heard who played easier mode says it completely ruined the game. The difficulty is part of the story, you’re suppose to be hanging by a thread all the time. I had to restart twice because I locked myself into a death loop I couldn’t get out of. I loved it. I felt so stressed the entire time playing. Truly a unique and experience
Delicious EGG
I fell victim to that. I lowered the durability damage to items, thinking "Oh, it's just a QoL change, it won't impact the intended difficulty.". By the late game, I had no inventory space to hold all my tools and weapons and I no longer feared about being attacked by hostiles since I had plenty of knives to spare.
This is such a nonsense argument. Saying a selectable difficulty ruins the experience for everyone is like saying adding super light weights at a gym ruins the workout for everyone. Games are interactive experiences, not one size fits all passive entertainment. Neither you nor the developer gets to decide how someone else enjoys a single player game. Just because you like the stress level on offer doesn't mean every other gamer in the world does, and in no universe does adding a "low stress mode" ruins the experience for you, anymore than adding 1lb weights at a gym ruins the experience for a regular gym goer who loves intense workouts with much heavier weights. The reverse is also true, there are gamers who find the "intended experience" not remotely stressful enough and want a even more unforgiving difficulty to get their jollies off. Who are you to deny them such enjoyment?
All the dev has to do is clearly label the various difficulties and make sure gamers know going in which is/isn't the intended experience, boom, problem solved without all this BS gatekeeping.
@@haitianxu have you played Pathologic 2?
@@haitianxu you are right games are interactive, but they very much can be a “one size”, maybe that size won’t fit everyone, but it doesn’t need to. Not every game is for every person. Just like not every movie, book, show, anything, is for everyone
Another way to view the more options vs fewer options dichotomy is from a Toy vs Game perspective. Video games are practically always some part toy and some part game (and some third part content). How much varies from game to game and so does personal preference. Players who want every option available so that they can have the experience they think they want - they want a toy. Players in the other camp that value a lack of difficulty settings are wanting a game. No judgement either way, but this perspective has helped me personally piece more of this topic together.
This is great
I can get behind most of these arguments somewhat, but the one that always bothered me was that last one where they should be able to experience the game however they want because they bought it. That's like me buying Elden ring and saying that I deserve for it to be a turn based card game because I paid $60 for it and that's how I want to experience the game. I also want to be able to fly cuz that would be pretty neat. See it just doesn't work like that and it has never worked like that ever. Yes some games bend over backwards to make sure everybody and their Grandma can play it, but people these days expect every game to cater to their every need and criticism
That sounds more like a apple to oranges comparison right there. I understand if some people cannot get a grasp and want it easier for them to play the game.
They should have that mode for them to enjoy the game, for some people easy mode is just as hard as normal mode and some people normal mode is as hard and hard mode.
They should just add the easy mode and just put on the side like souls mode and a line that says that it's the intended way to play the game or something.
The shared experience is something I noticed a couple times over the last few years. A friend of mine generally likes the worlds and animations of Souls and Souls like games, but she often enables mods or cheats if she really can't get past something. She has less time to play, so I understand why she does it, but whenever we'd talk about our experiences with certain bosses and I'd gush how I finally beat one (Enma something from Nioh 2 was a big one, the fire guy) she'd usually say that she enabled invincibility after a couple tries. It kinda stifled the discussion because at that point, she didn't really engage while I couldn't help but talk about how I engaged the boss. It was a bit sad everytime.
See, that's the issue, anyone playing on a lower difficulty will know that your experience was harder, and will likely not want to hear about it, as the difficulty is what turned them off about it.
Also, talking about your struggles to someone who's bypassed said struggles tends to make the bypasser feel a bit guilty, even if that wasn't the intention, as they know they didn't deal with the challenge, so as you said, it causes the conversation to be stifled.
Genuinely feel for you, and it's a shame she didn't have the time to progress naturally, as I honestly think that's half the magic of these games.
I actually only beat my first Souls game about a month before Elden Ring came out despite having played all of FromSofts "Soulsborne" titles already, I'd just simply gotten 90% of the way through each game and then moved onto the next, or returned to a previous one.
I have to say, beating Gwyn for the first time, even if it was as an experienced player, I summoned two strangers not because I wanted it to be easy, but because I wanted someone to share my glory.
Yes, we aced him in like a minute or less
Yes, it was easy
But it was never about the end boss, it was about saying that I finally beat a Souls game.
And it was only easy because I had well over 1000 hours already in the souls games (and they were likely not far off in playtime either tbh), which if anything is a sign of a shared sense of empowerment.
We prevailed that fast because all knew our builds, had all either had the fight or seen the fight in youtube videos a bajillion time, and were just... capable.
Besides, as most DS1 players will mention, Gwyn isn't even the hardest boss in that game, in fact his parriability could actually make him easily considered one of the easier ones.
Sorry for lots of text, the video got me soppy on the topic of striving to overcome hardship
@@moosecannibal8224 Enabling cheats isn't even comparable to switching difficulty, because even then it's the same boss, bringed down to your level. We're talking about invicibility.
She should look for more adapted cheats that will significantly ease the game without winning it instantly.
I don't know if she use invicibility out of ease of use or disinterest for a bit of struggle, but she is indeed cutting her experience significantly if she use instant win cheats at ever wall.
I am sure there are cheats for gear and character stats. Get it for her or tell her about it.
@@thegk-verse4216 I'm trying to not be a judgemental asshole because of my own interpretation, HINTHINT
@@thegk-verse4216 in practice, it's the boss with all percieved frustrating bits cut off.
To me, a large part of the debate around this issue is that people are so entitled and have crippling FOMO that even entertainment options need to be shoehorned to their sensibilities. Games are a form of entertainment. Like other forms of entertainment (books, movies, etc.), games should not, are not, and cannot cater to everyone. It is impossible. So if a game has certain innate qualities that are a turn off for you, then DON'T PLAY IT. "But I spent $60 or $70 for this!" Yeah, and I also spent around $10 to watch Prometheus in a movie theater, and it really sucked. But I don't demand to have aspects of it to change to suit my tastes; I accepted that the movie really was not for me and moved on. So people who are interested in playing Elden Ring, for example, and find it too difficult, that is akin to people not liking certain books, movies, etc. that are too deep, too high-faluting, etc. This is why reviews exist - to inform people of what they are potentially getting into. Games are not obligated to be enjoyed by everyone. Their makers may aspire to be enjoyed by a large portion of the population, or just segments of it, but really, they cannot please everyone.
And this is why I liked the video, because you really focused on the importance of developer intentions. It is because games, I think, are also a form of art (an issue for another day?). The developers have a creative vision for a certain work they want to put out to the world - who is anyone to say that they are wrong for that vision? If Miyazaki says that his vision will be ruined by including difficulty options, then that is his prerogative to not include them in his game. If people do not like that, then they are welcome to enjoy other games. Simple as that. If Miyazaki says that the next Armored Core will have difficulty options, then I'll see if that is OK or not. I may or may not like it. But I won't demand that it be changed to no difficulty options because it is his intention. I won't demand a Taylor Swift album to have distorted guitars and guttural singing, because obviously that is not her intention with her music.
So why did I say something about entitlement and FOMO earlier? It is simply because the issue is not brought up for difficult games that are not so famous or mainstream. Some people just badly want to become part of the conversation that it translates to demanding difficulty options for FOMO. Part of the appeal of Souls-like games is their inherent relative difficulty, and that is what drew people in. Like it or not, the difficulty is treasured by its fans. So for people that want to play these games but want them to be easier, why play in the first place? Because of the art, music, story, etc.? Anyone can enjoy these aspects by watching videos or streams. There are other medieval or dark fantasy action games. The real reason is that they just want to enjoy something mainstream or "cool", to be part of something big. Games that are difficult, have no difficulty options and are more obscure are not brought up in this difficulty issue, but for some reason the Souls-like games always are.
Sorry for the long comment. TLDR: great video Ratatoskr!
Very well said, and a good improvement on the original video!
(as a minor thing relating to the Bloodborne example, wouldn't Ash Lake be the first time they had music in a non-hub or boss area?)
Damn it you're right.
Although ash lake is a pretty similar gimmick. You emerge from blighttown, a swampy horrible disgusting area and then emerge to this uniquely open area with a giant hydra, a non hostile dragon, and vast open dunes unlike anything seen before. In this case however the difficulty highlights the brief solace of sorts that ash lake gives.
I love how Ash Lake gets pretty comical how you enter. Feels like a monty Python skit.
I didn't even remember while I was watching the video, frickerdang my dude
does the tower of latria in demon souls count? i mean thats not so much soundtrack bc its an NPC singing but i think its also notable for the discussion
I do find it highly amusing that in an interview, Miyazaki freely admits that while he is very good at making games he is very, very bad at playing them. He has no talent for it what so ever. So when he plays a game, even 'easy' ones, he struggles. A lot. So he decided to share that suffering with his players, because he knew from personal experience just how good it felt to finally get over that wall. He also enjoys watching people suffer as they try to beat what he has built. lol.
lel
I mean, hey, it works.
I love the tonal heel turn at the end outright stating, “If I haven’t convinced you at this point, then I have nothing left to say to you.”
This is an appreciated deliberate attempt at reaching out to those that have issue with this message.
I want an easy mode for recognizing Ratatoskr's easy mode videos based on the thumbnail
It's so interesting to me HOW Elden Ring managed to maintain some of what made the series challenging, while still being more welcoming of new players. Some of my friends for whom ER was their first Fromsoft game held nothing sacred, looked stuff up, used builds that were being discussed and plowed through certain parts of the game. Meanwhile, I had a much harder time as an experienced player because I trusted the devs to make every challenge one that I could overcome whenever I wanted. Banged my head against a bunch of stuff and kind of ignored the open world for a bit! I think there are some balancing issues that prevent ER from being the perfect version of this vision, but the LIMITLESS freedom to tackle challenges in any order, at any power level and with any amount of help is essentially an immersive difficulty slider. I don't understand why this fact keeps being overlooked, but I'm glad you get to keep making videos because of that :p
Elden Ring is a great example of how to make a game simultaneously easy and incredibly difficult. The problem is you still have people saying stuff like “you haven’t actually beat the game until you don’t use bleed/spirit ashes/summoning/sorcery etc.”
That’s the kind of gatekeepy bullshit that sparks the conflict in this debate honestly.
I agree mostly still though I think the spirit summons were overtuned, hope they improve that concept in later games so you won't feel bad using them or they just ditch them, if they can't make satisfying many vs 1 bossfights
@@Ageleszly oh for sure. I’ve done play throughs with and without and there’s a noticeable difference, to the point where summoning was clearly intended to be a balancing point for a fight, but actually using spirit ashes also makes the same fight too easy.
@@yugdaBretsiM Had a friend like this, who I actually rationalised out of that mindset.
The "soulsborne" games have always been about using everything in game that's viable and at your disposal to overcome the hardship, and never about "beating the game naked with nothing but a melee weapon" to give yourself an arbitrarily harder experience.
Yeah, sure, content creators make those videos and skilled players can pull that kind of thing off, but I'm not about to ruin my experience with a game just because someone who didn't make the game thinks I'm not good enough for them because I didn't make it even harder on myself. (funnily enough I actually am about 80% sure I COULD beat one of the games naked with nothing but a melee weapon, maybe even SL1, but it would take a lot of practise, and that's not something I'm willing to do.)
I beat the game my way, using the toolkit the game provided me, and there's nothing wrong with that.
@@yugdaBretsiM Agree wholeheartedly! A part of the souls community (the part that as of now constantly makes the entire souls community look bad) are the gatekeepers that gets mentioned in EVERY review of Elden Ring...! But I also feel that many who usually not "gatekeep" are complaining that ER is unbalanced and there shouldn´t be any "OP" weapons, and I feel we should be very careful with this. I believe this also is part of Miyazaki´s artistic view. ER has an opportunity to be a power fantasy for those who wish it to be, and not by lowering a difficulty slider, but by finding these OP weapons or ashes of war or spirit ashes... It´s as close to an optional easy mode you can get while still immersed in the game, and I feel it´s fine that there exists these kinds of tools for those who want to use them.
For me the answer is quite simple: Expecting the developer to cater to your wishes at the expense of their artistic vision as well as their intended audience is selfish.
I love difficult games like the ones fromsoft makes. I also love cozy games like stardew valley. I'm glad both games have committed so much to their experience because as a player that means I have a wider variety of things to enjoy depending on my mood. I love pizza, but some days I'd rather have roast beef.
I used to think implementing an easy mode was a good idea. Until I played and beat Bloodborne. It was so satisfying and that feeling has only been matched by Soulslike games. I was never so happy and relieved to beat a game I liked before then. If it had an easy mode, while I still would’ve loved the game, it’s impact would’ve been reduced dramatically. Bloodborne is my favorite game of all time and if I switched it to an easy mode (which I definitely would’ve done) then it still would be a favorite of mine but it wouldn’t be number 1.
Anyone that struggles with these games, please keep trying. It literally took me like 6 hours to get down the first street in Bloodborne. After some time of grinding you will get better and the grinding will make you stronger. It’s worth the pain and struggle to beat a FromSoftware soulslike.
Something I'd be interested in hearing you talk about is the effect of the the mind set of "play the game the intended way" has on accessibility options. To be clear this is for true accessibility for people with actual disabilities, I don't think difficulty is an accessibility option. For example Elden Ring doesn't have color blind settings or even something as simple as support for Sony Button UI on PC. Adding these things has no impact on the artists vision so why would it be omitted?
Can't you just custom bind your buttons for that? As for color blind mode... The devs probably just didn't think about it when designing the areas.
@@Patrick-bn5rp You can use a Sony Controller but there is no option to change the UI on PC to the Sony Buttons for things like interact or any other button promt in game.
I'd except them missing the color blind option if it was their first game. I don't think anything Fromsoftware has made has had color blind settings. It's a pretty common setting to have in most games.
@@ymihere538 As for color blind mode... You gotta consider that from games are built different. Their environments are built with very specific colors in mind and a color blind mode would require a LOT of extra work. (And in general, jrpgs just don't have color blind modes) As for there not being Sony UI buttons... I had no idea that was what you were talking about. Yeah, since steam already gives you PS4-5 controller support, it is kinda weird. I thought you were talking about that accessability controller that Microsoft made. You should be able to get that one to work, is what I was saying.
It could just be that they don't think the extra work would be worth it for what would be a vast minority of the playerbase, and would rather spend their resources on things that benefit the majority.
This is a legitimate complaint. I'm a die hard fromsoft fan boy but two things they're bad at is accessibility (again, as in actually helping disabled people play their games) and representation. Elden Ring made a couple of steps to address the later, but the absence of a colour blind mode is just bonkers.
I'm glad you included the carbot and NCH. Both really great animators
Something that many designers have missed out, emotions. You can mimic the best UIs and push for the best user experience, but at the end of the day the question lies whether the players could feel. Emotions can never be replaced by machines.
I think all games have an "intended experience" in mind, it's just that the vast majority have a more broad one in mind. It's a different intended experience to what From intend, we saw that when many devs were complaining about Elden Ring's HUD, quest design etc. Their intended experience was often just player engagement with content. How they did that and how they felt about it was irrelevant, just that they experienced it. That's why their games lead players to everything, handholding and not gating content behind skill.
I've been thinking a lot about the things you talk about in this video and the first one about univeral easy modes. It's a fascinating topic and you covered it better than anyone I've encountered here on YT. Years ago I tried beating Kos from Bloodborne. I wanted to beat him before completing the main game. It probably took 80-100 tries and I tried to summon muliple times but nobody ever came to help. I can't tell you how happy I am that it turned out the way it did. Had there been an easy mode I definitely would've used it.
The frustration of lowering the difficulty at a moment of weakness is real. I went through the whole Eldem Ring basically solo, except when summoning jelly on some fights just for fun, but after being stuck at Radagon for days, I changed my build to use rivers of blood and summoned the mimic. Result: I first tried Radagon and Elden Beast without any struggle. The feeling of guilt was real, for robbing myself of overcoming a fight that I was actually enjoying, but the frustration and availability of an "easy mode" made me do what I don't like. I immediately started NG+, rushed through the game and when I got to Radagon I even unleveled myself to replicate my level in the original fight.
When I finally killed them on my terms it was one of the best feelings I had playing games.
Sorry you have no willpower, chump. That's not a reason for a million other different people to coddle your own inability to even value the difficulty you want so bad enough to stick with it.
Like, your working with a serious clown tier argument, seriously saying other people should be deprived of additional options because YOU don't even have the willpower to value the difficult you won't shut up about claiming to value.
Lol... like, I'm not gonna make this about "gamers" and "guys" and "yt" people... but my fucking God, if anyone ever needed a starting point for the argument that gamers are a bunch of manchildren who feel like they can compel everyone else to bend over backwards and coddle them because they are literal children who lack willpower, this is fuckin it. Need an example that (gamers)(men)(probably a white dude) feel like it's their privilege to bend everyone over to protect THEIR precious experience? This is it.
Jesus christ. Just have an intended mode for you, a couple options where reasonable for others, and clean up your room, put your shoulders back, and develop some God damn willpower, fucko.
I had a similar experience with Malenia. I killed her by respecing to use that cheap Rivers of Blood katana and Mimic Tear. When she died I felt bad for cheesing her. But last month I started a new character. One who only uses Greatswords and cannot summon. Last weekend I spent five gruelling hours fighting her over and over, but eventually I did it and it felt incredible. I then went on to beat the game with all bosses defeated without summons, cheese or respecing. And it felt so satisfying to know that I had conquered the entire challenge on my own terms.
When a game is challenging it creates an aura of mystery. When I was a little kid, the very first difficult game I played was Ghosts n' Goblins at the arcade. When I started, I could maybe get to the second level, but seeing all those potentially cool areas when the map scrolled on the screen made me want to persevere. Eventually I beat it after many, many attempts. Dark Souls and Elden Ring provided a similar experience. I bet a lot of people could beat a difficult game if they fell in love with the experience enough and didn't take their failures personally, but even if they didn't beat it, the experience could still be great. I loved Ninja Gaiden for the NES but I never got past those damned birds on the last level.
There are times I like to play easy games. Then there are times I like to play fromsoft games. You go into it knowing whatever you get done is an accomplishment. It's a piece of art made by the artist. No one is required to buy or view said art.
I think the intended experience in these games is to overcome a wall/boss in your own way. And it is only possible if you have many tools to try out. I would say in Eldenring you have more tools to change your difficulty and experience than in the most AAA-Games.
My first was dark souls 2. I used every tool I could find to beat the next boss or I chose to go a different way. I had always options in the game to change my difficulty without changing a difficulty-option.
And it was always my choice and my experience.
To me the whole discussion boils down to two major points:
1) Difficulty and game balance should be considered on the same level as the art style: we don't police how a game should look and sound, you shouldn't require a game dev to appease to your gameplay preferences. Specifically because the challenge and difficulty level is a crucial part of the experience, as well as of the design, that responsibility should rest on the developer's shoulder, instead of being a choice of each player.
2) People wrongly believe that because they have spent money on a product, they have a RIGHT to reach the credits, whatever their level of competence with the game they are playing. It's wrong because you shouldn't play a game to reaach the credits. you should play it to entertain yourself, to have an experience whether you win or lose, to appreciate the vision of a developer, and as Miyazaki said, to find joy in overcoming the obstacles. Reaching the credits is a collateral effect of you being able to navigate through the challenges, to "play the game" in the most literal sense (which is accepting the rules of a given context and find answers to the problems you encounter). not a given right everyone can claim.
As you described, both Ash Lake and the Gaol were so impactful to me personally due to the environmental dissonance the music provided. They were both outliers among dozens of other environments, so it made you stop, appreciate, and ponder their significance moreso than other locales.
If everyone faces an objective experience such as running into Mohg, the fun part is how you solve it. Did you grind 50 levels for comet azur and azur staff? Did you get the tear? Did you master jumping? Did you get a summon? How about a friend? Or what about missing him entirely? This is what I love about intended experience difficulty. I loved gimmick bosses with multiple ways of beating them such as Executioner's Chariot, Duke's Dear Freja, Phalanx, O and S, and Tower Knight. I like longer runbacks and limited heals in Ds1 and Ds3 to the point of where you could adjust your healing. I liked the slower healing of ds2 rather than the input reading of Elden Ring. All these little things contribute to a more personal journey, not just in souls, but in other video games that I have not played yet.
Glad you said “some” games. Holy smokes am I grateful the new Wolfenstein games have multiple difficulties. Those games are incredibly hard, even at default difficulty, especially your first time through.
The most fun way to play through The New Order and The New Collossus your first time through is to turn the difficulty way down and just mow down Nazis and enjoy the crazy set pieces and plot. I can’t even imagine playing the games on hard the first time through; the higher difficulties basically expect you to already know the level layouts.
Yeah, you're right. With those games, I feel like the difficulties *are* the intended experiences. In a way, like NG+ for souls games. You're, assuming you're new or just not all *that* skilled, probably meant to start of on easier, or even the easiest difficulty and then ramp it up as you please. In those games, it makes sense, for multiple reasons, but most importantly because that's what the developers envisioned. I know it's dumb to do it, but I'll compare it to food; I like eating food exactly as its given to me, unless I'm meant to season it myself, because that's how the cook intended me to experience his meal. I might think that the food in the region I'm currently in is overall less spicy than in my home region, but I'm not gonna spice anything and everything any more than it is when served to me, out of respect for the chef and out of respect for what he intended to do with the meal. Of course, there's exceptions, but I try my best to adhere to such behavior. I certainly wouldn't demand the chef to change their entire recipe just to accommodate *me.* What about everyone else? Patrons who frequent the place for exactly the thing I'm eating, just the way it is? If I absolutely *have* to change stuff, I'll do it privately, and I certainly won't be proud of it, as if my way is inherently better just because *I* find it better.
I hope this is coming across correctly.
I think that can be said for most shooter games. The idea of a shooter game being as difficult as a souls game is awful as the difficulty would be artificial. Just unrealistic amounts of health on enemies and getting one shot urself
I agree as well with “some” games.
Halo is another good example, and I’d also say something like Guitar Hero is another good example.
They have multiple difficulties because they’re anticipating a wide variety of players.
Some guy who hasn’t player Guitar Hero before certainly shouldn’t be selecting Expert mode from the beginning.
Somebody who has never played an FPS before should probably not choose Legendary.
Despite that, there are still situations where Legendary mode in Halo means something.
When my wife mentioned that she played through Halo 1, 2, 3, ODST, and 4 with me to a coworker, they thought that’s was neat and asked what difficulty.
She said Legendary, and her coworker who had tried unsuccessfully to beat Halo on Legendary back in the day was blown away by that answer.
And then she proceeded to explain what LASO was (Legendary with all skulls active) and how we beat the first level in Halo on LASO and how I had been grinding out levels in Halo 1 solo and had beaten at least half the levels at this point and her coworker was dead LOL
But it’s fun. That’s why I think these difficulty modes can matter in these instances. Sometimes you want to have fun in a Halo campaign and sometimes you want to be extra sweaty.
The Souls franchise is meant to feel like an RPG world. This is the game and the world, here are the basic mechanics… now go figure out how to conquer the world.
Having multiple difficulties breaks the immersion. This is a difficult and brutal world that Miyazaki presented to us, and we either fight or die.
I also think that’s the point of a lot of these games with their references to how there are many like you seeking to achieve the thing- (Link the fire, become a Lord of Cinder, become the Elden Lord) but they all keep failing. It’s meant to tie in to the real intended experience.
Many people will try to link the first flame, but many of them will lose sight of their goal and become Hollow (they turn their console off and never come back to finish Dark Souls).
Many players will try to become Elden Lord but many will lose the sight of Golden Grace.
I think it's also important to note that from my experience, a lot of people who want an easy mode believe that every game should be for everyone. Of course this is a deeply flawed view as no game can truly be for everyone, I simply hope that everyone can find a game they can enjoy.
Yeah, and they think they’re right because big companies are led by ppl who think like this. And then they wonder why the big companies make shitty games.
ah yes, the more you tenderize the horse flesh, the easier it is to digest.
I love these video's. Got excited when I saw this in my notifications.
Challenge accepted, still here waiting to be alienated.
Great video at the very right time for me. I was just having an unironically fantastic discussion over on the Outward subreddit touching the topic of developer intentions. It was more revolving around the topic of exploits and what we can understand as such, but it was nice having your video to link to as some more additional food for thought for everyone.
It took me 53 tries over two weeks to beat Sword Saint Isshin. It was a tough and unforgiving experience where a single mistake meant back to phase one. You know what though, I loved every second of the struggle, when I took him down I felt like a god who perfected every in game system! If I could of put on an easy mode it would of felt cheapened, that's why fromsoft games should not have an easy mode. If you can't beat these games that's fair but severely disabled people have and your admitting your will is weaker than theirs if you refuse to adapt...
i would disagree with the last part of this that's basically mocking someone who gets mad at not being able to beat him by comparing them to disabled people and being weak willed. I just think it's a bit unnecessary to the point you were making, which is that the experience is cheapened. I agree with the rest though
Entertainment is not essential to living. Paying money for entertainment does not entitle you to x amount of entertainment. When you go to a movie theater and see something you've never experienced, you take a risk of liking or not liking it.
Even if you pay $60 for a game, that's a choice YOU make. You're responsible for spending x amount of time and effort researching what you're paying for. You 100% have the option to wait for a price drop or decide against the purchase altogether. When you hand someone money for entertainment, you're making the conscious decision that the purchase is worth the price.
This is why I always go back to souls games. They target me as a 35 year old who’s been playing for 30 years. Experiencing a souls game the 3rd time is better than most games the first time
Cool video. Both sides are a bit twatty and I don't care about the intended experience anyway but love that y'all do. It's cute hearing people talk about their interests.
Games with multiple difficulty options are less accessible to me because I never know which difficulty to choose. The question of which difficulty to choose is too difficult for me. Fixed difficulty makes it more accessible to me.
Why restrict a game to having a single intended experience?
For example, with God of War for the PS4, I first played it at the second highest difficulty. I got the cinematic experience, the puzzle experience, and a pretty challenging combat experience that I, by and large, enjoyed. Then I wanted to really push myself to the limit and started a new game at Give Me God of War difficulty (which you cannot change once you've started the new game). Each combat encounter was intense and I had to rethink my strategies and how I used my tools to maximize my combat effectiveness. Overcome these challenges on the highest difficulty felt satisfying and also felt different to me than doing a NG+ cycle in a Soulsborne game. The only boss I was unable to beat was the last valkyrie (which was optional).
As another example, Assassin's Creed: Valhalla was a mid game to me, BUT I really like all of the accessibility options that game provided. One of my frustrations with its preceding title was that higher difficulties just made enemies into HP sponges. With AC: Valhalla, however, I could customize the difficulty through various parameters to combat, exploration, and stealth. I could change the percentage of damage I dealt and enemies dealt or I could adjust parrying windows, for example. With that game, I wanted to feel the same lethality as I did with Ghost of Tsushima and I was largely able to replicate it (though I could've done a better job by not upgrading my equipment).
With the recent release of God of War: Ragnarok and the PC release of God of War, I am afforded more accessibility options, separate from and in conjunction with the game's difficulty modes. I like that I can tailor my gameplay experience like that. The same goes with Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night's randomizer mode.
I would like for the player base to be able to do these things in Elden Ring without the use of mods so that continue enjoying Elden Ring for a longer period of time. Make it so that those tweaked gameplay modes can only be played offline without having Easy Anti-Cheat ban you for breaking the terms of service. Yes, this will ultimately take away from the PvP population from the base game, but that's already happening. Heck, if Bandai Namco wanted to be real sharks about it, sell these features as optional DLC (though I'd rather they didn't).
And that's the gist of my argument.
this is one of my favs of urs
Good analysis my man. Love the channel. Hope you are well
Another reason is because game development doesn’t grow on trees. Game budget is finite. Adding another game mode requires it to be coded, for that code to tested, and recoded when errors appear. Anyone who has coded anything knows how time consuming it is.
Spending time on one thing means you can’t spend it on another. There is always the road you never traveled.
The saga continues...
it´s year 2066, Ratatoskr is at it again.
A shame that Miyazaki kinda forgot about his quote when designing elden rings difficulty and spirit ashes.
The spirit ash system really does demonstrate why more explicit easy modes damage the experience of the game as well as the health and unity of the community. During the Dark Souls days the community really did feel united in the shared experience the game created for us (granted with slight variations for how hard you decided to try and cheese) but now there is a very significant divide between the newer, pro spirit ash groups and the more experienced pure solo players. Ashes as also so poorly balanced against the ability of boss AI to deal with multiple opponents that they do completely trivialize the fights and destroys whatever intended experience From had. I sincerely hope that in a future DLC/update that From overhauls and significantly nerfs the spirit ash system in order to preserve the integrity of the game and better unite the community’s shared experience.
@@sebastianoliver7108 You are absolutely right. I think the spirit summons are the biggest spine to that philosophy and it clearly observable, that most players used them, while deeming players who willingly ignore them as posers or tryharders. While some of these "posers" struggle to see the accomplishment in the game, if every fight could be ultimatively cheesed with spirit summons.
But to be more clear that is less a problem of an choice, and rather a balancing problem as long they just didn't include spirits ashes so you purposely can make the game easier, some claim you are meant to summon them. Not sure about that topic. Let's see if the next game copies it and then we know for sure if Miyazaki still holds true about his original quote.
@@Ageleszly I sincerely hope spirit ashes do not make a return in future games. At least not without completely changing how the system works (introduce significant costs, actual downsides, extremely reduced effectiveness, make it a character build requiring stat investment to make them viable, etc.) and fixing their enemy AI and design to be able to effectively deal with multiple opponents more effectively. Even then I think it would ultimately be better to not have the system at all. At most I think it should be like the souls games where the only AI help you got were specific summons for bosses. That way the summons could be designed around their specific boss encounters as to just be good enough to take a little heat off of you and not give massive advantages that trivialize the fights.
Honestly some spirit ashes really aren't that bad.
My issue is that the strongest ashes were a bit too strong and honestly kind of boring in how they were used.
The weaker ashes feel fine because they are not a one-size-fits-all all solution you have to put effort into how they are used to properly get the most out of them (I love the suicide jars).
Like Latenna basically being free dps might have been more interesting if instead of just doing damage as her main thing had her damage reduced and instead had a unique debuff that was not universally applicable or even always a good debuff for every enemy.
Or the rotten strays who had an interesting role by being a source of rot, should have been a bit weaker so that the player would need to aggro for the strays so that they can inflict rot. While also being prone to dying quickly if the player messed up.
Amazing videos on this subject.
I know you said it'll be a while, but I hope you'll return to this topic for a broader look. Talking only about whether games like Dark Souls, Monster Hunter and Outward should have selectable easy _modes_ is just a small part of the discussion, and focusing on it does a disservice to both sides of the debate. The reality is these Action RPGs all do let the player control the difficulty of their experiences, and they (usually) do it in ways that give the best of both worlds.
All three of these games have intended experiences beyond mastery of real-time combat. They are Action RPGs, and the RPG side is part of the experience too. By letting players change how difficult their encounters are with the RPG and multiplayer mechanics instead of a menu they avoid giving the player freebies just as Guillaume said. Players have to engage with the diegetic game systems to overcome their obstacles, ensuring the shared experience like Miyazaki wants.
Some games are better at this balance than others. Like you, Outward is my darling for this because it has such a focused intended experience and it's very tightly designed around that. Its difficulty is great at forcing you to think outside the box and explore early on while rewarding you with a power fantasy once you've acquired more abilities and equipment. Traps are the only mechanic that borders on being so easy it can compromise your odyssean self control, but the prohibitive costs prevent them from being abusable early on except for the very determined.
Monster Hunter does just as good a job with a broader intended experience: it doesn't have such a traditional power fantasy approach, but the armor skill system and the balance between weapon types makes for difficulty adjustment driven entirely by player preference and experimentation. You don't have to use Blast Resistance to beat Raging Brachy, but you don't feel like you took the easy way out if you did, and if you don't you have a cool and impressive experience to share that even the players who did will still relate to! Palicoes are the weakest link in MonHun's difficulty suite, since many players don't realize the difference it would make if they dismissed their cute companion, and they actually make some fights less fun.
Unfortunately, I think Fromsoft's games go about diegetic difficulty selection with the least grace. They've been doing it for the longest, since King's Field had many of the Action RPG elements that survive to this day in Elden Ring, and they've used multiplayer co-op since Demon's Souls. However they have the most mechanics that are able to compromise odyssean self control (spirit summons) or unintentionally make fights too easy (levelling up). Sekiro made me think that Fromsoft is the most in its element when they emphasize pure combat mastery and a more focused intended experience.
I should reiterate none of this refutes the arguments you've used in general, only how they apply to these games specifically. There is absolutely demand for uncompromisingly difficult games, especially in the action and strategy genres. Even if there wasn't high demand, I would want to see developers make difficult games anyways because games should be explored as an artistic medium, not just as a marketable product. However, discussing Souls and Monster Hunter games in the context of difficulty selection without including the diegetic mechanics they use is a disservice to both the players and the developers, and if anybody thinks these games should forego such mechanics and be uncompromisingly difficult then I believe they have misinterpreted the true intended experience of these games. Of course, there is _absolutely nothing wrong_ with playing any game for the player's preferred experience (death of the author, yadda yadda) but arguing that the actual design of the games should reflect your preferred experience is just narrow minded and flies in the face of your final, most important point: artists should be free.
Could you credit Wolfheart FPS somewhere for using his footage of the interview? Great work as always btw, very entertaining.
I come back to this video on occasion because I agree with it so heavily and would argue that mimic tear and summoning is an easy mode in and of itself that seperates the player bases joint experience and divides the community.
Excellent video! I wish I could subscribe twice.
The point about the intended experience being an emotional reaction, rather than the gameplay itself, doesn’t actually rebut the argument that different people will experience the same game differently. People can and do have wildly different emotional reactions to the exact same events. If the intended experience is narrow, then by definition only a narrow range of people will be able to have that experience. And it’s absolutely the developers’ right to make their games to appeal to a narrow range of players, but to someone who values board accessibility over narrow appeal, this is never going to be a compelling argument against multiple difficulties.
13:00
@@Matt-dn5jc Yes, that would be “the point about the intended experience being an emotional reaction, rather than the gameplay itself,” to which I was responding.
People need to understand that changing the difficulty to satisfy their taste can be something like changing the plot of a novel or a movie. As this great video says, difficulty is a central part of a game, and changing it coul lead to a complete different game.
If you don't want to play a hard game, try anything else, nowadays we have a huge catalog of games to choose, and let the other people to have fun with that game.
The worst part of this video is that you convinced me.
Great video!
Completely agree. As someone that thought I would never get into souls games, I’m amazed by how much I’m enjoying them now despite how challenging they can be. Not too long ago I beat Dark Souls 1. Now I’m in the middle of playing Elden Ring, Demon’s Souls, and Bloodbourne. Elden Ring has proven one of the most challenging for me so far with fighting the Crucible Knight which took me well over 10, maybe 15 tries to finally beat. It felt good to finally nail him. Challenging games for sure but definitely not insurmountable, and there are advantages you can exploit in some circumstances if you know to look for them.
Action Button Reviews once said "No, Dark Souls shouldn't have an easy mode, no game should." I agree with the sentiment, but not the statement. I feel like some games/genres should pretty much always have difficulty settings, stuff like rhythm games or shmups. The skill sets you need for those are very specific and the basics are hard for most people to pick up if they're just getting ass blasted right off rip, at the same time cultivating those skills would feel unfulfilling if there was no way to ramp things up and you were stuck playing an easy or middling challenge forever.
As always great video. Wanted to ask you what's the music you use in the background? At around 12:00
i just wanna expand on the idea of "the intended experience" by saying that in subtle and not so subtle ways, difficulty sliders having varying degrees of affect on the actual design of the entire game, maybe in some good ways, but id argue mostly bad ways and im not just saying that because i enjoy "hard" games, there are plenty of games that arent dark souls and elden ring that dont have difficulty sliders and are better for it
and on the other hand, there are games that have difficulty sliders that suffer because of it
at the end of the day i think fromsoftware is an incredibly talented team when it comes to getting players to engage with their games in a deeper way than just button mashing all the way to the end just watching cutscenes, and maybe thats not everyones cup of tea but it doesnt need to be
Yeah I can agree with that.
My go to comparison in Risk of Rain and Hades.
In risk of rain the artifacts felt right because it felt like a progression command makes things easy but gets boring quickly almost by design as the entire game is designed around pushing the odds to your favour and command gets rid of the odds.
Players by the very nature of the game becoming more stale are encouraged try playing without command to spice things up and it works because command built them the knowledge base required for progression.
The other artifacts then expand on this by most of the time causing notable changes that make players play differently creating more variety. The nemesis one is one of my favourites for forcing you to keep attention to the time because the spawned enemy gets stronger the stronger the player gets so you have to be very careful in how you deal with it.
By comparison Hades difficulty options never felt meaningful, things became harder but the game felt mostly the same to play, to the point I was discouraged from playing as I already had played quite a bit.
The best option is to have just a single "intended experience" and have accessibility options *and* optional handicaps on the side. With trophies/achievements only available on the "intended experience" mode. That would give everyone the option to adapt the game to their abilities, but without excluding any type of player.
This is so obvious. But this dude threw that out the window right at the beginning with his bullshit "but hawdcowe gamews don't want the temptation of options so everyone else must put up with it."
That's his fucking point. These people have no will power so everyone must coddle them
@@michaelwerkov3438 So angry 🤣
"No souls had ever put music outside of boss rooms and hub areas"
There is one exception to that: Ash Lake. That's why that location is so awesome.
I always liken it to chess. If I am paired against a really tough opponent, I either have to fight to win or lose. If I resign I lose. I can’t handicap them. They want to win just as much as I do. It’s war without blood. That’s how I see these games. The enemy wants to survive, too. It’s more realistic to the experience of life where you can’t always choose the challenges you want to overcome. But when you do it’s sooooo much more powerful. Thanks!
Even chess has handicaps when needed, dude
Comparing video games to the challenges and life and using it to decrease the options for other players is both peak laugable but also so on brand for shitheads who way overvalue their experiences while demanding other people do exactly what they did for no reason other than wanting to force other people to prioritize your experience
@@michaelwerkov3438 some chess matches have handicaps, some don't. Is it a crime if a difficult player chooses not to go easy?
Someone doesn’t play much chess and clearly didn’t like Elden Ring either. Or just really hates when someone resonates with a content creator. Sheesh.
You didn't alienate me. I play the soulsborne games as a vacation from my real life. Using binoculars as a camera to take screenshots feels like making a scrapbook, and I draw scenarios of my journey after cause of the fun I'm having with my character/traveling companion.
I only defeat the bosses so I can get a good look at the arena after, it's almost like being Indiana Jones/Alan Quartermaine in a way.
I kind of don’t believe Miyazaki actually feels apologetic about anything. I think he was just trying to be nice, and represent the company in a polite way. And not sound like a jerk.
I don't really think you understand the other side of the argument. It has less to do with whether or not an easy mode has detrimental effects to their experience or anyone elses, and more about not being locked out of anything; it's comparable to the feeling of people who dont want a paywall to content. Their time is worth something too. I personally agree that dark souls, monster hunter etc... should not have an easy mode and there is something to be gained from the experience, and it is up to the developer to decide what experience they want their game to have.
They aren't locked out of anything, that would require that they totally are inable to proceed due to external factors they have no influence about. You always have the opportunity to overcome the next hurdle, even if it means you let someone else play for you.
To >some< videogames that's exactly the point, earning the progress and unlock more of the game due to proving your effort and skill. That was the allure of so many arcade inspired games due to the 80s and 90 and early 2000. It shaped my viewpoint of videogames and why I fell in love with them in the first place.
I'm pretty aware that the gaming landscape has changed and now experiencing a story like in a book has become the main driving factor for many. What was back then the standard, has become a niche. But that's why I think there should be still a place for that sort of niche. That's the reason why a lot of people react so heavily with critique when a game which was born out of a niche, suddenly becomes popular. They feel like they are entitled to bring their beliefs, who are true to other popular games in these niche games too.
But no game does and should handle certain matters the same way, what would be a boring and barren landscape that undermindes the potential of the medium to excite you.
Great video, glad to see one of my favorite directors in this (Yoko Taro).
Personally I'm not a fan of Souls-like or stuff like Monster Hunter but I do respect their decision to make them like this.
I just don't play them. I had my few moments of "intended experience" with both franchises (one week of DS1 on PS3 and couple of times with MH4U's first missions or the demo of MH World) but they didn't clicked with me, so I dropped them.
I don't need them to change because I have so much other stuff that I can play instead.
Another case for the Intended Experience™ and Shared Experience™ is something like the Dead Money DLC. It wouldn't have been the same if your equipment and items weren't taken away from you at the start, and without those Ghost People, as well as the hazardous environment and traps like the radios and speakers, it just wouldn't be the same.
Most important here: wouldn't be the same.
Babe wake up
16:00 There was music in Ash Lake in DS1, if I remember rightly? But yeah it's still super rare
Yes, there is music in a few other areas outside of bosses. What I think he's trying to say is that the Souls series only uses music outside of bosses when it wants to make you feel something emotionally.
Hub areas want to make you feel safe and at home.
Ash Lake wants you to feel the giant expanse that is the bottom of the world.
Gwynevere's Bedroom wants you to feel a giant, almost fake feeling sense of grandeur.
I may have missed a few, but there were all the ones I could think of off the top of my head.
This video like so many before it only talks about the negatives of having an easy mode, but never thinks of the benefits of a hard mode, the joy of mastering a game at it's intended difficulty and the game (through the use of a difficulty slider) still has more to give, can still step up to the players newly gained experience on completion. *ell why not go further, give the game a Custom difficulty mode like Rimworld or Invisible Inc (no doubt many others too) allow the players to keep pushing while the game has the ability to push back. For example Rimworlds max difficulty is Losing Is Fun, which is 220% Threat Scaling, but with Custom difficulty you can crank that bad boy up to 500%, not to mention the dozen or so others difficulty options you can also mess with
My opinion is, give the casuals and game journos easy mode, give the devs their standard difficulty which they balance for and label as intended, and give the hard core players hard modes, or even better custom difficulty sliders. This may initially segment players experiences, BUT ... "have you beaten it in hard mode" and so players can step up and give that a try :)
-Edit i know most Souls-likes have hard mode items, but that's really not the same or enough
hell yeah for more optional extra difficult and permadeath modes in games. everybodys a "souls veteran" until fromsoft adds a 1 hit kill permadeath mode lol. and like the best part is that loads of ppl would play the hell out of that because ofc they would that would fucking rule lmao.
and good point about customizable difficulty! more games should just straight up let u fuck with all their systems if u wanna imo. ppl are gonna just do it with mods whenever possible anyways.
This reminds me of the early 2000s when games had text cheat codes you could just type in the console. As soon I did that I had fun for an hour but lost interest in the game hereafter entirely.
"Allue" is the magic word, when you already explored all the unlockable content, reached the highest power level, not much allure is left, nothing to strife for. I believe cheats are able to spoil you the game for an longer time, while getting stuck at some point always creates an incentive to return to eventually.
It doesn't bother me at all if I am talking to someone who cheated in a single player game. I only care if they cheat in multiplayer, as that can make my experience worse. People can do whatever they want with single player games. There is something wrong with someone who gets angry with people using mods that make a game more accessible (color blind and others) or just plain easier.
I agree, but using "easy mode" or the path of least resistance in an single player game isn't cheating in the first place. Yes people can & should cheat as much as they want, but it's the developers responsibility to not make it that easy or possible at all. It's the developer i'm argumenting about, not the player who will go out their way and do what they will always do, breaking things.
A player using mods will not affect the game I play, these changes only apply to their modified game.
But a player demanding changing the game that it suits their casual expectation (and having success) will affect the game I play, doesn't matter if it's a option, it's available for everyone and as such will affect the game for everyone.
As a developer for an gameplay- and challenge orientated game you should fight that urge of players seeking the comfort zone by design.
I myself have not beaten ER yet, and possibly I never will, but I'm satisfied with what I have experienced and I would gladly give From Software my money again.
I never play games on the easy setting. Not because I'm good, but for the reason you stated: it's not satisfying. I can think of only one exception. I played Alan Wake on easy because very early in the game I realized I liked the story, but I hated the combat and got no satisfaction from overcoming its challenges.
Can't we just say 'Normal Mode' is the standard mode intended by the developers to play?
That said, I don't think it will ruin the hardcore gamers' experience if some people play on an easier difficulty as hardcore gamers can still play on the difficulty intended by the developers, that is Normal Mode or even Hard Mode.
Is this a Re-upload? I swear I remember watching this video months ago...
I think the real issue is, a lot of gamers might not know how to express their actual grievances with a game, or just don't care to. In the Souls' series case, that basically means all the complaints get boiled down to "why isn't there an easy mode?" because it's a "good enough" shorthand to get the larger idea across.
As such, I would guess that in many of these cases, the real problem isn't the general difficulty level, it's some specific mechanic, or way the difficulty is implemented. Like, how many players critical of the difficulty might've felt differently if runbacks to bosses weren't ridiculous at times? Or if they knew what s were? Or maybe they just don't like losing souls upon death?
And it's not always the player's fault they can't express this either. For example, one of my gripes in Elden Ring is that I'm not fond of how bosses sometimes input read you and basically force you into damage AFTER you've started an attack... but I also wouldn't realistically expect the majority of gamers to even know what "input reading" is. It's such an invisible, behind the scenes process that isn't directly mentioned or pointed out by the games themselves that many people might not even know it's a thing that actually exists.
And well... I guess that's something all sides of this debate need to work on. Devs could stand to make a lot of their mechanics more transparent. And the pro/anti sides of this "only one difficulty" argument could stand to try and meet each other halfway a bit more, the former by asking WHY the latter have such complaints, and the latter maybe trying to be more nuanced with their complaints than "it needs easy mode."
I feel like summons/farming/certain spells and weapons kind of make the "not wanting difficulty option" point completely inapplicable to FromSoft games. In my playthroughs of ds, ds3, and elden ring I could always just obliterate any boss if i summoned and got a decent guy to help. The biggest reason I like not having an easy mode like you and others have said, is I dont have that pervasive feeling of "i could turn on easy mode to beat this guy" when I keep losing to a hard boss, but i feel like the summons/etc. do exactly that. Summons and certain builds can make From games genuinely not challenging very quickly. I think this made my experience somewhat significantly worse in those games, and also one of many reasons I love Sekiro and think its their best game.
I agree, they really stretched it too hard in some aspects.
The thing is that there is a myriad of summons and a myriad of spells.
You don't have to use the absolute strongest thing every time.
A weak summon (shield only units or weird ones like my boys the suicide jars) can give you a tiny bit of assistance while not demolishing the fight or a not so broken spell/ash of war can be all you need to make up the difference while keeping the majority of the fight the same (like how the kick ash of war gives new options against shielded enemies).
I agree with this video in its entirety as it applies to From Software games. However take a Pathfinder game, they are inherently extremely complicated and I find and I've seen many other youtubers say the same thing. That for games like Pathfinder, it's better to start on a lower or custom difficulty and to spend a playthrough learning the game. Then ramp it up as you understand it better and that feels really good to. Like I play on Core but turn off deaths door cause I just don't like how it works and fiddle with the settings to make a death system like Pillars of Eternity Deadfire. Which is the more fun system. Pathologic 2 also introduced difficulty sliders but even if you turned them all the way down. People would still die if you failed to understand what was going on around you. I definitely think that a discussion about the effects of sliders and settings to difficulty beyond easy, intended and hard is worth having. Darkest Dungeon is another good example, I'm sure there are people who play without corpses to this day.
Well said. More games ( big budgeted i mean ) should have that particular focus of brand. This is why we dont really see them making strategy games, Visual novels, turn based games or roguelites and why those genres never reach their true potential since not even AA have the kind of resources to put that effort into their game in a reasonable amount of time to reach that potential. Or at least this is true of the West. Capcom making Ace Attorneys ( visual novel ), Atlus making Megaten games ( turn based ) must seem insane to the big Western companies or they do not care.
Also i would add that: Not creating more difficulty modes just makes sense anyway. People chastize companies making horribly unbalanced difficulty mods where on higher difficulties some strategies, skills maybe even classes just become almost if not entirely useless. Might as well save some money and not implement a difficulty since they already have the intended experience and not want to spend energy into more creatively increasing difficulty ( new boss moves for example )
Bruh COD and Battlefield they are on brand for being shit for years now
Definitely made your point here. Great job! The part that I had been advocating is that developers are free to do what they please. They're making a product, and not rendering you service to make you happy.
Ahhhhh it was nice to resub for this video, I was starting to miss your content; will def sub again for your next Elden Ring video 😎💯
Me: tapping the Dragon Roost Island theme on my wallet after groceries because it's stuck in my head
Also me: taps on the video notification when I notice it
Finally me: surprised_pikachu.jpg
I enjoy these all the same. Good on you for being thorough.
Didn't see this video. Let's goooo!
Do not make the Sardaukar mistake. In Dune, the Emperor’s elite troops are feared and yet they eventually fall to the rag-tag Fremen because they didn’t know how to adapt. The reason they didn’t know how to adapt is because they never lose. Difficulty is required for loss, and loss is a great motivator for adaptation.
@11:40 what’s that song ??
Ultimately it's just so important to have developers who don't cater to the masses. All the people who hate hard games have so many options available to them. While those of us who enjoy a specific experience have very little. I don't understand why people have to complain about fromsoft games being hard when they have so many easy games to play. It's like if I was lactose intolerant and got mad if somebody else liked milk.
if i could go a day without seeing a bad take from souls fans i would be a happy man
I really do miss cheat codes in games, they served an interesting function. And their labelling as "cheating" very clearly conveys they are not part of the intended experience and you are side stepping the developer's intent
Are you by any chance based in Quebec ?
That podcast studio looks awfully familiar.
very nice video as always, I'll continue to be baffled that you don't have more subs
We are beating a dead horse here. Nothing new under the sun from either side of the discussion
Weird, you can summon, a player or an npc as an easy mode that allows you to not engage with some of the game mechanics and you can play baby mode in ER with summon and ranged spells
There's something that I think you missed, and honestly could really support your larger point about how the games are an artform using difficulty as a tool.
These games DO have an easy mode, just not in a traditional sense. For example Co-op. It's been a mainstay of most of the games, and makes the encounters drastically easier, often times trivial if you summon more than 1 other player and they are very experienced. While yes this opens up invasions (another conversation) invasions come after you've made progress (usually) and don't happen during boss fights. Co-op does make the game easier and does lead to a very different experience than the solo one, to the point where it sometimes feels a bit like they're 2 different games.
There's a classic interview where Miyazaki said the transient co-op was inspired by an experience of strangers on a highway helping pull someones car back onto the road, then going there separate ways. Within the gloom of Dark Souls much like how seeing ghosts adds a sense of community and closeness of realizing your not alone, co-op does this to a much higher degree. Despite it making the game much easier it's consistent with the emotions he wants to game to be able to evoke.
From the quote you featured about his stance on easy mode 2 things stood out to me. "We are always looking to improve" and "we are not willing to abandon it at this time". The sense is that there isn't a problem with an easy mode in and of itself, but any easy mode that is implemented needs to be done with purpose and intention. If he figures out a way to include an easy mode that fits within the vision he has for the game, we're likely to see it.
I'd argue that to an extent we have seen it a bit with Elden Ring. More so than in past games you have key items that make bosses easier, players have access to tools that trivialize bosses in ways that makes sense in the lore (Rot, I'm talking about Rotting Radahn and other Demigods). They implemented spirit ashes, and while myself and plenty of veteran players didn't use them for the same reason we tend to not co-op first playthrough, other players rallied around the shared experience of using them and developing strategies to take advantage of them. Being an open world game you can use torrent to run away from tough situations and explore and come back later when you're more powerful, the Tree Sentinel at the first step teaches you to do this. Elden Ring has a lot of "easy modes" but they're all things found in game without breaking the experience by going into a menu, and they're also FUN and INTERESTING. This is something you don't get when you just change an option in the menu.
The games also have the reverse available. Just like how the game gives you tools to make it easier, you can simply not use those. There are also spells and weapons that the developers know are bad, and leave them there intentionally to open avenues of play for players who want to challenge themselves further.
I feel like Elden ring might be From’s first souls-like that doesn’t nail this shared experience nor an intended experience that is similar to the previous titles. I see the spirit summoning system as essentially the same thing as an in-menu easy mode. As a consequence of this and the general balancing issues that so much of the games equipment has I don’t find I’ve had a similar experience with the game as a whole lot of other people and the game certainly didn’t provide me with the same triumphant victories that previous instalments have.
I don’t see any other way of viewing the spirit summoning system than simply as an easy mode given that it has little to no opportunity cost to use and, at the very least, provides extra bodies with which to distract the boss and depending on the summon used can even contribute a significant amount of damage to the fight. The only thing using a spirit summon costs the player over not using one is a bit of FP during the fight and some souls to upgrade the summon, with such little opportunity cost equipping a spirit summon comes down to a menu option that makes the game easier, and thus if I decide not to use it the challenge with which I am being presented is no longer something I am being faced with which I must learn to overcome but instead a self imposed restriction that I am dealing with out of stubbornness. This has detracted heavily from the experience of playing Elden ring both with and without spirit summons for me, when I use spirit summons the game is a breeze and I feel no sense of accomplishment having beaten any of the games obstacles, when I don’t use them I no longer feel accomplished in having persevered in the face of this challenge because the challenge is something I put in my own way.
The games general lack of balancing player choices has also compounded the experience that the spirit summoning system has given me. For example I beat Malenia, Mohg, Maliketh and Godfrey all on my first try, and not out of any skill on my part mind you. My build was power stanced bleed rapiers with seppuku in the offhand and bhs in the main hand. I had relatively heavy armour and a lot of vigor. A chimpanzee could have swallowed my controller and it’s digestive tract would have had the skill necessary to beat the game in the fashion that I did with such a build. The fact that the game even allows you to create a character so ridiculously, hilariously overpowered so easily is insane. My first play through of the game is lost to that build but it’s not just that build that provides a similar issue. So many of the options in this game suffer from similar balancing issues, everything is spammable and everything does a ton of damage and it seems no matter what build I use, unless I go out of my way to equip deliberately sub-par equipment relative to my level, the game is incapable of presenting enemies who are capable of dealing with the over powered weapons that I’ve got.
I cannot seem to find the same experience that the souls games have given me in Elden ring and these are the main two reasons I have come up with as to why. I am confused to not have heard more people speaking on a similar issue which does give me hesitancy in regard to the validity of my assessment so if you feel I’m wrong please let me know why.
Yup summons basically have little to no downside but i nvr felt the need to use vs a boss, just out in the world, and there are still alot of things needing to be balanced. Id point out that bloodhound step was OP and has been nerfed as of 1.06 i think. Still kinda wish bhs wasnt a thing tons of streamers used it then called the game EZ . I do think the dlc should have enemies that resist bleed and the like but im happy my lil bro could get through the game he needed every advantage. Also if you look up the mightiest build on the internet for a 1st playthrough you robbed yourself, not saying you did but many others did
@@claymore2323 ya I will say I did come into Elden ring with pretty expansive knowledge on From’s previous games particularly DS3 so I did have a considerable advantage with regard to finding what was good, or in my case what was overpowered, to make my first build out of compared to the larger player base.
15:50 Ash Lake just fyi