Is Dark Souls TOO HARD? not really theres just an obvious learning curve that alot of gamers dont have the time or energy to really sit down and try and understand.
its not about wasting your Life its about just understanding its not a hack and slash game like most jrpgs or action games. theres a little more to it then SMACK THE GUY AS HARD AS YOU CAN TILL HE DIES. dark souls is basically high lvl fighting game mechanics in a rpg
9:00 Absolutely nailed it James! It's the same with music. If I was worried that people would misinterpret my music then I should just keep it for myself. My dad is a composer, and he told me the same thing. "Once your music has reach peoples hears, it's not just yours anymore"
I have to disagree. If a creator puts any form of art out there without explanation as to the intent or meaning then obviously it's up to interpretation. But, the moment he or she states exactly what it's supposed to mean that becomes canon. You can continue to believe whatever you want but at that point you're simply wrong. This is different with games and the intended experience though. That's not something you can decide as a creator. Everyone experiences something differently. You can only control your creation, not what people feel from that creation.
i actually agree with letting games have a super easy mode. sometimes people dont want to try hard, sometimes people just want to relax and have fun and as long as they arent hurting anyone i dont see the problem. plus it would make the gaming community more of a thing that disabled people can join and be a part of. for instance, I have ADHD inactive type and it's really easy for me to get worked up in game. I get confused because my attention is in millions of places at once and my reaction is often "mash those damn buttons!" and while usually the easy-normal level is just perfect for me in most games, there are people with more severe illnesses that could really benefit from an easier level. and I would love to welcome more people from more walks of life into the world of gaming! its a really fun hobby to have and theres no good time quite as good as talking to your friends about your favorite things. those of you that are upset about it, you still have your super crazy hard modes that you can beat it on if that's what matters to you. having easier levels doesnt making gaming less respected, but rather provides for a larger audience.
One clear artistic choice in Dark Souls was to have no difficulty slider.....and certainly part of that decision was just to make the game hard. But another part of that decision was all about preserving the intentionality of their design. The areas in Dark Souls are really intricately made with really specific enemy placements in mind, and they were able to have this huge amount of care in the level design because they weren't making four different maps for four different difficulties. A lot of careless mistakes get made when devs are forced to rebuild everything multiple times, and you'll get areas on hard mode that require near-savant abilities to complete or comically huge item surpluses on easy that preclude the necessity of solving the problems the game is supposed to set out. Dark Souls eliminates that issue outright by ensuring that everyone has the same game on their Xbox that the devs were looking at in the office. Rather than using a blunt instrument like a difficulty setting to offset the challenge, they just allow you to use the tools in the game to either make it easier (by gearing up, grinding, and using phantoms) or make it harder (by going through it nude and armed with a sword hilt). I really admire the intentionality in this game's design, and I don't think it would be possible if there were an easy mode......or a hard mode, for that matter.
+Jessica Breeden agree you would have to change the design so that an easy mode would not just mean higher player stats and lower enemy stats which is something I dislike about most easy or hard mode have nothing to do with enemies AI but just stats changes
+Jessica Breeden ...until Lost Izalith and the tomb of the giants when they said FUCK IT; darkness here, and dragon butts and eye-melting bloom lighting there, and rows of some old bosses here and there. Some attacks in NG+ (basically hard difficulty) are pretty OP btw. Gotta know how 2 parry, dodge, toggle escape, and be scummy with ranged weapons and items.
+Mister Mannperson oh lord....don't ever mention Tomb of the Giants in my presence. My first experience of the place was after killing the boss in the Catacombs, 24,000 souls on me, and I stepped off a fucking ledge with the text 'Tomb of the Giants' over me.....and - of course - I get killed by the damned wagon wheel skeletons on the way and lose everything. Fuck that place - it makes me cry.
+Jessica Breeden Praise the sun there's a secret path that turns it into a few seconds of parkour. I always have a hard time explaining the shortcuts of the tomb tho. But that's the only good thing about the tomb other than the view of ash lake: That you can skip all of it. If you ever want hardcore challenge, tho: Try climbing out. It's like they were meant to be normal-sized skeletons but they changed it at the last minute.
Bruce is so right. I've the same age of the guys, and he is right. When I was young, I didn't care of being alone, even I was happy when I was alone. Now I have 33 year old, and being alone is really sad. Glad to see is not just me
I did a double take at 7:30 since James brings up exactly Adam's point in a different context. In a different podcast James and Bruce were ragging on Adam for having the "illegitimate" experience of watching movies 20 minutes at a time on his phone and now James is completely backtracking on his earlier views.
Why are people getting buttmad about modes that are optional? Its all silly. Here's a compromise for the whole difficulty debacle. This option already exists and seems to be neglected by a whole lot. You have the option to use cheats, in this case: invincibility mode, but all achievements and extras are disabled the moment you opt for that mode. You don't get any technically non existent badges or shiny virtual trophies that serve absolutely no practical purpose except for self affirmation for your lack of self esteem.
+StringStorm I believe another reason why people are upset about the invincible thing is that the resources should have went into putting more content into the game, or just beating the game and getting satisfaction out of it from what these dudes are talking about.
+StringStorm As a student game developper and a video game passionate, i'm kind of in the middle of that argument. In order to make profit but also to have an impact on most people, video games need to pander to more and more people. On a side note, people tend to use Dark Souls as an example of game that doesn't need to speak to everyone in order to be profitable and have a great impact, but that's just because the target of Dark Souls and Souls-Like are actually a small niche of people that tend to spend a decent amout of money to play games and are driven by the need to play games like these. StarFox's target audience in this case is no one really in particular and tries to pander to the greatest audience by shoving game modes that can speak to every single type of players out there. This is why modes like this one can be implemented to remove the "Hard" part of the game (The challenge of the gameplay) and experience the story, game mechanics (Even if a part of it may be missing) and progression along the way. On the other side, I understand why people may be flustered or even angered by this desicion, but i'm maybe on a different path than other people. I worry that being influenced by that trend, other developpers will start to jump aboard and pander like StarFox does and by multiplying the number of games which in some mode or way, don't require for players to complete a challenge in order to access progression, the number of players that actively research that type of experience will grow thin. And I worry that in the end, the number of games and gaming experiences that are actively trying to target players like these will grow thin aswell and eventually dissapear, which for me would be a great loss since I believe to be part of this group of players.
I've been running through Fire Emblem on Phoenix mode, and I've been loving it. Phoenix mode is basically super easy mode, where instead of classically your units dying permanently when they're defeated(or dying until the next scenario on "normal" mode), your units revive after each turn. I started playing Fire Emblem back when it was available on the Game Boy Advance, and I loved playing it. But with the newest one, all I really wanted to do was get through the story and still enjoy the battles without feeling like my units were hindered. I still play somewhat tactically, but there are definitely moments where I see that my team would have been slaughtered had I not opted for Phoenix mode, or taken a completely different strategy. I'm having old problems creep up on me while playing the old Pokemon Red game on my 3DS. I want to catch all 151 so I can have that in my "collection," but I'm struggling to level everyone up while still keeping a team that's not underleveled for the next area. I ended up having to put the collection part on hold and stick to my six main Pokemon, and even then it's still really grindy in some places. Part of that I feel has to do with experience distribution among each wild Pokemon, but I sometimes have to take a break from the grindy aspects of the game and just do something else.
No there should not be an easy mode. It's Dark Souls. The difficulty is part of what makes it unique. Just because some people are having a hard time doesn't mean that there should be an easy mode. This game requires patience and is not a hack n' slash game. It takes practice. If you buy this game and put it down because you couldn't learn how to deal that's on you. People can be such babies when they can't just blast through something and actually requires some thought.
What i love about these podcasts is that i come here to hear them talk about video games, and i leave with a degree in philosophy. Thats some profound bowl of soup that you guys serve here!
FOR THOSE INTERESTED IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF WHAT HAS BEEN DISCUSSED: -About authorial/creative intent read Roland Barthes "The Death of the Author" and "From Work to Text" -about individuals and society read Foucault's treatise on Mettray prison. They're all only 5-20 pages long! Enjoy!!
I grew up in an orphanage in Russia where I shared everything and nothing was ever mine. The bed I slept in was not mine, and even when I got adopted the bed I slept in was the worst thing ever, springs sticking up in all the wrong places. However, I didn't know any better...until I got a freakin Casper mattress. I own it now and forever and something about sleeping on something that is 100% yours is amazing. You sleep so much better and the mattress helps even more by being like a cloud essentially, or at least in comparison to what I used to sleep on.
This podcast is an A+. I wish I could've hear what Elyse had to say. Maybe it was just my headphones, but it was barely audible. But, still one of my favorite dude soups in recent memory.
Adam Kovic looks like he's actually a happy person when he's playing Day of the Tentacle. There's a childlike wonder and innocence on his face today. It scares me, make it stop.
Honestly I didn't expect this podcast to delve so in depth into stuff like audience/creator relationship, intent, interpretation of art - etc. It could be because I'm a relatively new fan, but I was surprised! I appreciate that this crew is so genuinely funny but I'm really hoping for more discussions like this, and I'm probably going to go back watch all the podcasts now! Super cool, Funhaus.
Though I know part of this is all just jokes and stuff, and I also especially know that it's what the game is known for, but can we not acknowledge that Dark souls (and every other of the series) isn't just good because it's hard? They're all full of great writing, fighting mechanics and great level design, as well as some pretty great game design overall. Again, I don't really think that it's that terrible to think of the game as difficult, it can be, especially to new players, but that's not it's only quality, in fact the games have some of their best moments in it's easier moments, and not as much cause it's easy, because it's really really well done.
What I remember fondly about difficult games as a youngster, was that you could pass the controller to a brother/friend/cousin who was in the room whilst you played watching. I remember always having a support group when playing Sega or Nintendo. Awesome times. We no longer have that support group unless the game has co-op.
Big_Potato_dad i have played them, i still play ds2 every day. but most of the time i get games a month later so people have a huge advantage over me. now i pre-ordered it so i can witness the start.
Extra Credit made what I thought was a very good take on the difficulty of Dark Souls (more specifically Dark Souls 2). In a way, the game does have difficulty settings. You have the Covenant of Champions and Bonfire Aesthetics if you want to play hard mode. Utilizing summons and using sorceries/pyromancy/miracles creates an easy mode for the game. If you ignore those things, you get the normal mode.
To me the difficulty or challenge of Dark Souls is an integral part of not just the experience of the game, but you could say the story of the game. The idea is that you're just a useless weak undead with an iron will to go against gods towards whatever prophesy you're fulfilling. If the game has the proper amount of difficulty to it, the gameplay experience mirrors that. You start clueless of what to do, but slowly and surely after numerous deaths you learn the game to a point where it becomes challenging but not impossible, and ultimately almost easy. Why doesn't your character hollow to insanity after hundreds of deaths like everyone else in the game? Because it's the player that loses its will to play after too much, and that's when you go hollow. Also Dark Souls isn't really just an individual experience even if you played it 100% by yourself never looking up anything. There's the obvious option of co-op, but more importantly all the ghosts of other players you see as you play are there to remind you that don't worry, even if it's difficult there are others who are stuck on the same boss and others who beat it. Then there's the message system that's an in game way of "looking it up", since players can leave hints towards secrets and so on. The communal experience is built in to the game itself.
Advertisement is 17:55 to 20:20 and 45:50 to 47:00, thats 3:35 of commercials or 6% of the video. Other than that , good talk guys. Especially Bruce today. Good job!
kylecomplains Its not as simple as that but yes, you could say that part of their salary comes from ad revenue. But their paychecks wont decrease if you skip this parts of the video. Only one who potentially loses is that mattress company but that is just a part of advertising so i feel okay with that.
I used to play Red Orchestra Ostfront a lot, it was a brutally difficult WWII multiplayer shooter. I loved it because it was so unforgiving, there was a lot of recoil on weapons, no crosshairs, no aim zoom, there were no enemy indicators, hit indicators or anything else besides a magazine count. Because of all of this and also because it wasn't very polished and buggy the game wasn't all that popular but for me that game was perfect and because the community was rather small it was also fun to talk to fellow players because we would often know each other from play it so much. On top of that killing an enemy was pretty difficult without zoom and with a lot of recoil but at the same time it also meant you stayed alive for a pretty long time sometimes. When Red Orchestra 2 was in development a lot of us were allowed to beta test the game and while at first a lot of us enjoyed the game the fact that this game did have aim-zoom, low recoil and the whole game was smoothed out a lot of the fans of the original didn't really like it over time and our requests to change the game while it was still in beta didn't help much as the developers were trying to reach a wider audience. Killing an enemy was easier but you also died more often. RO2 is a popular game but for a lot of fans of the original RO2 felt like an easier COD-ified game. Then they even decided to add an "action" mode with crosshairs which pissed a lot of people off, meanwhile the fans of the second game kept saying "if they don't like it they shouldn't play it" , they were right to say it but because the original was so dear to a select few people seeing the sequel trying to reach a wide audience by basically selling its own soul disappointed quite a few of us.
My brother and I tag teamed Dark Souls on PS3 the day it came out. It was painful, his wife kept getting angry at us for getting so frustrated, we took PTO from work, my eyes felt like lava, and it was one of the best video game experiences of my life.
in the case of Fire emblem, its more than just creepy Japanese stuff. The localization gutted the dialogue. There were some themes on death and differing morals that were simply removed.
I am a big fan of alternate or 'true endings' depending on difficulty. It helps protect the exclusivity of 'truely' beating a game while also bringing the experience down to a more common level for those who would prefer that.
This has been one of my favorite podcasts of theirs in a while, specifically Bruce I really enjoy him and the others talk about philosophies and profound things. It's nice and different from the usual video game controversy talks.
20:09 Lawrence: "And Jesus Christ you should try it out" Jesus: "Damn Lawrence, you're right, this is way better than that time I spent sleeping on a cross"
Great point on individualism and being apart of a group. You guys are totally right I'm young and ignorant in thinking being alone is okay. Someday I'll grow up but today...witcher by myself
In my opinion, Dark Souls is a community game only in the sense that you can summon help from other players, but NOT in the sense that you should help or get help online. The most wonderful thing about Dark Souls, and why I love it so much, is the sense of discovery I get while wondering the game world (which I know barely nothing about) and the sense accomplishment I get after I died a ton of times and I finally get to the beat the boss! It's a truly wonderful experience, but again, this is what I take from the Souls series.
I'm just 21, so barely an adult, but I don't think individuality or wanting to be in a group need to win out over one another. I like who I am as an individual but I also like sharing myself with others and getting to know those around me. I think you can both be proud of who you are while also accepting your place in a larger group, especially if it's a group of people you value.
Dark Souls is the perfect difficulty for what it's trying to achieve. Tough at times, and you'll struggle. It's hard enough to get a sense of accomplishment but not so hard you'll give up. It's only particularly tough on your first playthrough though.
+Dan the Joke Man Just like any game that wasn't made for idiots, like Halo. Pls remember what kind of games Funhaus crew likes the most - the EASY ones
+Dan the Joke Man Unless you're like me who just has one boss who, for whatever reason, gives you all the trouble in the world. That part get's rather obnoxious each time I go through another NG+, but it's still the most satisfying thing in the world to beat.
On the topic of whether art was meant to be enjoyed the way the creator intended it, or if one should be allowed to enjoy it in the way that one wants, I would highly recommend reading the essay "The Death of the Author" by Roland Barthes. It's a very insightful argument on this exact topic. Barthes' main argument is that once a piece of literature is published and allowed to the public, the reader should think of the author as having died. This way, the reader will not be so concerned with what the author meant and will interpret the text in a way that is unique to them. I think this same point can be applied to the topic of games, and especially that of games as art.
Anyone who says "Dark souls is too hard, its not fair!" Has either A) never played it. B) Played 2 minutes of it and got mad because they didn't see the door open in the undead asylum. Why is this still a question... Play the fucking game and you will see it is tough but fair.
My brother plowed through Dark Souls like it was nothing, he'd never played something like it before. After he beat it, he walked into my room and told me he was confused by why everyone said it was so difficult. Now, I've never played it, that's just him.
+Lightningranger24 Yeah.. but anyone who does that is just shooting themselves in the foot so why would you care? If I heard a load of people just flicked to the last page of a book I liked I wouldn't give a shit, its their loss, not mine
+Lightningranger24 I agree. I'm terrible at video games, but I am still drawn to the Dark Souls franchise because I know I'm going to get destroyed by the game.
It's even more pointless due to the fact that the DS games already have an "easy mode." All you have to do is look up an "overpowered early" guide, and bam, easy mode.
Nah, it's more like adding another sauce to the menu. Pointless for you? Sure, because you only eat hot sauce with your chicken. Which is fine but what about that guy who wants ketchup? Ask yourself this, is this going to effect how you play the game? It really isn't. It doesn't change anything excepts now, we have ketchup on the menu. Your metaphor would mean that the player skipped the entire game in turn for the last level. That or you think difficulty is what makes up the novel. How about the lore, characters, world, and just about everything else? They still have to experience that.
Okay, so in elementary school, I did actually have a friend who was absolutely obsessed with Sonic the Hedgehog. Like she owned all of the games (that were out at the time- like early 2000s) and she would write what was essentially fanfiction, we would 'play' sonic on the playground and anytime I went to her home it was like all about Sonic. At the time I was like, "oh yeah this stuff is so cool, yada yada." But like she was legit obsessed with it. As soon as they James and Bruce said nobody actually likes sonic, I was just like oh shit, what about that one girl. Crazy stuff man..
"Blindrunning" the Dark Souls games with friends over some kinda chat program(skype,ts,mumble) is the best way to play it IMO. You kinda have the support for bosses you can't figure out, and you can also theory craft with them & talk about different strats/routes etc. But just jumping on to a stream or speedrun looking up the most effective strats/weapons/armors is just taking away the whole experience.
You guys should try doing a one dollar one hour during the next pod cast. Or a demo disc pod cast. Just an idea. Great video Funhaus team. Keep em' coming!
FINALLY, a Sonic themed podcast! What are your opinions on Sally vs Amy? Should Sega bring back Hyper Sonic? What about Nack the Weasel? An we must discuss Super Metal Sonic...hello?
Podcast of the year, this is why I've been a supporter since inside gaming. Enlightened insights with a reserved and grounded perspective. Toppy Tip lads.
every games hardest difficulty should be painfully hard. even the hardest difficulty isnt hard enough in most games. I want my games hard. games are too soft and flaccid these days.
Why does every single game need to have a easy and hard mode? Why cant some games just be hard, and some games just be easy? I see no problem with games being made for one group of people.
+Cohort thde problem is people complaining when they put those modes in. people don't realize games need to be soild to make money so AAA games need to be for as most people posible
+Hey Joe I can think of examples from some games (it doesn't apply to all genres or games): Because developers don't have resources to make two different AI. You either get smart and advanced intelligence which will outflank you, cooperates with other NPCs and is challenging on tactical level. Which means you have to think to beat it. Or you get AI which will just run towards you in narrow corridor. Which means you have to just aim and push trigger. With AI goes also level design. Maze vs. straight line. Because you don't need advanced AI if you are just shooting in corridor. Difficulty is then set not with smarter opponent, but with more hit points for enemies, and more damage for their weapons. Which means that kind of hardmode is just repeating shooting more times than in easy mode and going slower because you have to take more cover. Most of the time you don't have to think, you just have to die bunch of times to remember pattern.
Guys the serious chat about whatever people are complaining about is a little boring compared to talking about movies and games. Rather than talking about people talking about games. Just a shout, up to you guys, I'll still watch. Thanks for the entertainment
It's about status. Modern life is easy. Few aspects of life in developed nations are difficult except being bored. Gamers want something like Dark Souls to be objectively difficult so they can strut and talk trash and act dominant like soldiers returning from a battle. Easy modes remind them of the truth. That all they're doing is playing a video game and that their accomplishments are narrow in scope and do not exist in the "real world".
Dude! I'm right there with you. Souls is so boring to me. Wait for telegraph, parry, strike. Wait for telegraph, roll, strike. That's the whole damned game. It isn't a bad game. It's just not for me. I got way more into Binding of Isaac which is probably an easier game, but still challenging and much more dynamic.
+Maurice Webb Dark souls is not difficult. Most people play it and stay because the game is very well designed. You have to understand, it gets really annoying when you have to slog though every fucktard trying to throw their crappy uninformed opinions on people with tons of experience with the game. This is exactly what happened with the roguelike genre, and "modern" roguelikes do not even remotely resemble original or "classical" roguelikes. It isn't a matter of objectivity but taste. Let people actually enjoy their niche for once, it's incredibly unfair right now for people who are into those kinds of games.
I don't disagree, but calling "Souls" niche is like saying the band Tool is niche. They're intelligent and cerebral and not exactly mainstream, but not really niche. Anything that sells as well as Souls games or Tool albums isn't really niche. I'm grown-up enough to say I don't like Souls. Not necessarily that it's bad, and I think that's a fine place to end the discussion. People can like whatever they wish and praise or criticize whatever they wish. It's kind of an inherent quality of being people. Where this type of thing tends to get dark is when one person or group of people tries to control one another. People can say whatever they want. And well, I don't like Dark Souls. That's not a personal attack. And I'm sorry if I somehow offended you. Obviously Souls is something very important to you, and I wish you continued success and enjoyment with your very "niche" hobby.
Maurice Webb And you single in on one insignificant part of my comment as if that were my main point. Clearly it was a mistake to actually bother giving my point of view. The main point of my comment was to explain why people get upset over those opinions - people can have opinions, but it is perfectly fine to be upset over those opinions, especially if those opinions are misinformed in some way. Namely, a lot of opinions attempt to support themselves by objective "facts" such as technical proficiency and design, but end up being wrong because they never bothered to give it a chance.
To speak about people just want games to be hard for bragging rights, I don't play Dark Souls because I think its hard, I don't think its hard, I think its fair to the gamer. The game expects you to learn and adapt, and thats what the people who love the Souls games do. If there was an "easy" mode in these games, players who choose this option are no longer being treated fairly. They are being treated as if they are dumb. And to touch on the thing Funhaus said about Dark Souls is beaten as a community, I completely disagree. Many people play and beat these games as a blind playthrough, which is something I do as well. No guides, no internet help, the game gives you the tools, you just have to use them. And the community comes into play when discussing lore and playing the online aspects such as the PvP and co-oping.
+saithvenomdrone I do the same, until my second playthrough. I beat ds1 twice, and bloodborne 7 times. After my first or second play through, I go online for any NPC interactions or any item's I may have missed.
Ok, just going to say. Some people do beat Souls games to say they beat it but the majority of the fan base play it because of the full experience. It's a world. It has an interesting world design, interesting art direction, cool enemies and characters. It has secrets to be discovered. It has all of this locked behind a wall and the only way to get to it is through one's own effort and skill. We earn everything we get in the game and what we get is satisfying. That's what keeps so many of us coming back and why I love the games. It isn't for everyone but that's ok. I just get angry when people talk shit talk the series I love so much.
I'm cool with optional difficulty under the condition that it doesn't subtract from the work it is in. Fire Emblem Awakening had cheap difficulty where variables were adjusted to give enemies more/less stats and skills. It's an easy fix, but it only meant that pointless busy work was inevitable for those that wanted an actual challenge. Awakening was necessary though because it saved the franchise financially. Fates is out and I think they did a good job at appealing to both sides. If you want to play a visual novel you have Birthright. If you want a traditional Fire Emblem actually designed to challenge someone you have Conqest. Both have difficulty options ranging from easy-lunatic but the core design is very different. That is the important distinction.
+Henny Zhi How do you feel about the Final Fantasy VII re-release that lets the player turn off all random encounters and instantly refill all HP with a single button press? To me, using these features defeats the purpose of playing the game in the first place. If someone just wants to "experience the story" without playing the game, they can read a wiki or watch a let's play.
That's what I'm getting at. Sometimes it goes too far and people aren't really interested in a game anymore which can even spread to the developers. It has to do with allot of things culturally that are making us lazier people that want instant gratification. I have come to terms with it because we are headed that way.
to this day I have had a really hard time with hand eye coordination and I always end up runing into things so I watched my sisters play games and when they moved out I started to watch UA-cam's and I feel a genuine experience even though I am not the one playing the game
My kid is 3 and loves playing the New Mario Bros games, mostly because he cant die. But thats fine, it has him testing the waters of the older games. Invincibility mode does not cheapen the experience, it allows those who couldnt usually enjoy the content the ability to pick it up and play.
Bruce's Wild Things rant made me tear up. So philosophical with humans needing community. P.S. Adam played weird ass games as a kid. Solid podcast guys.
There's a difference between being challenging and being plain unfair/sadistic. I love a good challenge when the game is fair about it. When the difficulty is predicated largely on chance or things like the AI being god-like, then it can get annoying fast. I want to feel challenged playing a game, not fatigued.
The no dying thing makes sense for Nintendo because a lot of kids play their games and I remember playing the original Starfox over and over again because I couldn't beat the first few levels. This will let kids experience what it is like to finish a game and give them an incentive to actually want to finish other games when they grow up
Uh... I don't think making them finish games for free is gonna make them wanna finish games that require effort. If anything, it'll turn them off from trying to beat games.
+Mistah Misses I think letting them play on a super easy mode will hook kids into wanting to play on a harder difficulty, kind of like t-ball as an intro to baseball.
I have seen every dude soup so far and most of previous podcasts that will go unnamed. Always great conversation. This one seemed a bit rough on the audio edit from what I guess is the noise gate? Sounded like it was sucking the air out at the beginning and end of every sentence. Still watched/listened to the entire thing. Hope the office noise becomes less so it's not an issue anymore. Cheers!
so about the darksouls subject. since we have agreed on that it is a community thing and since cleared out that humans want to be in a community i think we are safe to say that darksouls' community in terms of gameplay needs to be equals. what i mean by that is, if you put an easy mode to your game ,which is thouroughly built on players own experiences shared with other players expericences of the said game, it will diverge this community into two: ones who played in easy mode (i am just assuming here) where the developpers of the game help the players and guide them through the whole thing, explaining whole of the plot points and showing them the secret rooms or weapons or sth, and ones who play the traditional one where a group of people must come together in order to solve pieces of mystery and speculate over the plot points. ofcourse we cannot know if the spark of the 1st dark souls will be carried here by the community or the game will be good enough to worth the whole ordial or not but i can understand that why anyone wouldnt wanted to lose something like that. creating something special like dark souls is a hard thing and gathering a fan base as explorative as this is even harder so if all this gones in the wind just to appeal to more "casual" audience it would be horrible
19:57 Lawrence: Terms and conditions apply - It's a little ominous, not sure what that means but it's probably nothing to worry about... " RIP Lawrence.
I recently completed all of the Dark Souls games and in no way did i find it too hard. Suggesting a game is too hard is saying it's unfair. While i did find the mechanics of DS1+DS2 infuriating, i didn't blame the game for being too hard but i blamed myself for being to bad at the game.
at first it was kinda awkward, the transition in the beginning of the video with the talk of mattresses but god damn Lawrence you turned that into something prophetic. Props man props.
I know it's probably ass-backwards, but I played Bloodborne first and then started playing Dark Souls, and found it much easier to learn and play. I actually learned how to accept repetitive deaths and cruelly difficult fights and not destroy my controller in the process. This respect and understanding actually allowed me to appreciate the Soulsborne games much more.
Is Dark Souls TOO HARD?
not really theres just an obvious learning curve that alot of gamers dont have the time or energy to really sit down and try and understand.
preach
Nikki Noir Very true. I would not waste mu life on a video game
+James R Rude
its not about wasting your Life its about just understanding its not a hack and slash game like most jrpgs or action games. theres a little more to it then SMACK THE GUY AS HARD AS YOU CAN TILL HE DIES.
dark souls is basically high lvl fighting game mechanics in a rpg
+Nikki Noir yea its not for ppl who uses cheats on serious sam..
Is there anything better than starting your day off with Funhaus?
Drugs
Figgle tree touché
VR porn...WITH Funhaus!
+Figgle tree Actually Funhaus + Drugs, but you were very close.
+Troys R Us A 13 year old girl with a huge rack.
Holy Crap. This Funhaus was good. This actually was a pretty enlightened conversation. ....do more of this.
agreed.
+Mike Baker "I like Furries now"
+Mike Baker yeah! we want more funhauses!
they've been doing that lately, where have you been
They're going to have some strange tan lines...
+Meneer You're joking right?
+Meneer You're must have never lived in California or Florida.
+Meneer You're can get a full blown tan in a matter of hours in Florida. That's if you don't turn into a lobster first.
+Cole Cooper You're not going to get a tan through glass very quickly because most of the UVB light is reflected back by the window.
+Cole Cooper I was in Florida 2 weeks ago and I look like a cooked lobster still lol
9:00 Absolutely nailed it James!
It's the same with music. If I was worried that people would misinterpret my music then I should just keep it for myself.
My dad is a composer, and he told me the same thing. "Once your music has reach peoples hears, it's not just yours anymore"
I have to disagree. If a creator puts any form of art out there without explanation as to the intent or meaning then obviously it's up to interpretation. But, the moment he or she states exactly what it's supposed to mean that becomes canon. You can continue to believe whatever you want but at that point you're simply wrong. This is different with games and the intended experience though. That's not something you can decide as a creator. Everyone experiences something differently. You can only control your creation, not what people feel from that creation.
i actually agree with letting games have a super easy mode. sometimes people dont want to try hard, sometimes people just want to relax and have fun and as long as they arent hurting anyone i dont see the problem. plus it would make the gaming community more of a thing that disabled people can join and be a part of. for instance, I have ADHD inactive type and it's really easy for me to get worked up in game. I get confused because my attention is in millions of places at once and my reaction is often "mash those damn buttons!" and while usually the easy-normal level is just perfect for me in most games, there are people with more severe illnesses that could really benefit from an easier level. and I would love to welcome more people from more walks of life into the world of gaming! its a really fun hobby to have and theres no good time quite as good as talking to your friends about your favorite things. those of you that are upset about it, you still have your super crazy hard modes that you can beat it on if that's what matters to you. having easier levels doesnt making gaming less respected, but rather provides for a larger audience.
One clear artistic choice in Dark Souls was to have no difficulty slider.....and certainly part of that decision was just to make the game hard. But another part of that decision was all about preserving the intentionality of their design. The areas in Dark Souls are really intricately made with really specific enemy placements in mind, and they were able to have this huge amount of care in the level design because they weren't making four different maps for four different difficulties. A lot of careless mistakes get made when devs are forced to rebuild everything multiple times, and you'll get areas on hard mode that require near-savant abilities to complete or comically huge item surpluses on easy that preclude the necessity of solving the problems the game is supposed to set out.
Dark Souls eliminates that issue outright by ensuring that everyone has the same game on their Xbox that the devs were looking at in the office. Rather than using a blunt instrument like a difficulty setting to offset the challenge, they just allow you to use the tools in the game to either make it easier (by gearing up, grinding, and using phantoms) or make it harder (by going through it nude and armed with a sword hilt). I really admire the intentionality in this game's design, and I don't think it would be possible if there were an easy mode......or a hard mode, for that matter.
+Jessica Breeden agree you would have to change the design so that an easy mode would not just mean higher player stats and lower enemy stats which is something I dislike about most easy or hard mode have nothing to do with enemies AI but just stats changes
+Jessica Breeden ...until Lost Izalith and the tomb of the giants when they said FUCK IT; darkness here, and dragon butts and eye-melting bloom lighting there, and rows of some old bosses here and there.
Some attacks in NG+ (basically hard difficulty) are pretty OP btw. Gotta know how 2 parry, dodge, toggle escape, and be scummy with ranged weapons and items.
+Mister Mannperson oh lord....don't ever mention Tomb of the Giants in my presence. My first experience of the place was after killing the boss in the Catacombs, 24,000 souls on me, and I stepped off a fucking ledge with the text 'Tomb of the Giants' over me.....and - of course - I get killed by the damned wagon wheel skeletons on the way and lose everything. Fuck that place - it makes me cry.
+Jessica Breeden Praise the sun there's a secret path that turns it into a few seconds of parkour. I always have a hard time explaining the shortcuts of the tomb tho. But that's the only good thing about the tomb other than the view of ash lake: That you can skip all of it.
If you ever want hardcore challenge, tho: Try climbing out. It's like they were meant to be normal-sized skeletons but they changed it at the last minute.
Bruce is so right. I've the same age of the guys, and he is right. When I was young, I didn't care of being alone, even I was happy when I was alone. Now I have 33 year old, and being alone is really sad.
Glad to see is not just me
+Kyle Spry I don't know what happened to your comment, but I read it. Thank you for your words
This Dude Soup episode was fucking deep as shit.
If Elyse is going to pass around love-notes at 9:18 I think she should share it with the whole class.
I did a double take at 7:30 since James brings up exactly Adam's point in a different context. In a different podcast James and Bruce were ragging on Adam for having the "illegitimate" experience of watching movies 20 minutes at a time on his phone and now James is completely backtracking on his earlier views.
They were ragging on him but I'm pretty sure it wasn't as serious as it sounded. It sounded more like they kept going at it cause it was funny.
Why are people getting buttmad about modes that are optional? Its all silly.
Here's a compromise for the whole difficulty debacle. This option already exists and seems to be neglected by a whole lot. You have the option to use cheats, in this case: invincibility mode, but all achievements and extras are disabled the moment you opt for that mode. You don't get any technically non existent badges or shiny virtual trophies that serve absolutely no practical purpose except for self affirmation for your lack of self esteem.
+StringStorm I believe another reason why people are upset about the invincible thing is that the resources should have went into putting more content into the game, or just beating the game and getting satisfaction out of it from what these dudes are talking about.
"Buttmad"
Filthy casual
+StringStorm As a student game developper and a video game passionate, i'm kind of in the middle of that argument. In order to make profit but also to have an impact on most people, video games need to pander to more and more people. On a side note, people tend to use Dark Souls as an example of game that doesn't need to speak to everyone in order to be profitable and have a great impact, but that's just because the target of Dark Souls and Souls-Like are actually a small niche of people that tend to spend a decent amout of money to play games and are driven by the need to play games like these. StarFox's target audience in this case is no one really in particular and tries to pander to the greatest audience by shoving game modes that can speak to every single type of players out there.
This is why modes like this one can be implemented to remove the "Hard" part of the game (The challenge of the gameplay) and experience the story, game mechanics (Even if a part of it may be missing) and progression along the way.
On the other side, I understand why people may be flustered or even angered by this desicion, but i'm maybe on a different path than other people. I worry that being influenced by that trend, other developpers will start to jump aboard and pander like StarFox does and by multiplying the number of games which in some mode or way, don't require for players to complete a challenge in order to access progression, the number of players that actively research that type of experience will grow thin. And I worry that in the end, the number of games and gaming experiences that are actively trying to target players like these will grow thin aswell and eventually dissapear, which for me would be a great loss since I believe to be part of this group of players.
Everyone who plays Dark Souls is just a casual gamer trying desperately to be a real gamer.
Being a masochist doesn't make you a real gamer though.
I've been running through Fire Emblem on Phoenix mode, and I've been loving it. Phoenix mode is basically super easy mode, where instead of classically your units dying permanently when they're defeated(or dying until the next scenario on "normal" mode), your units revive after each turn.
I started playing Fire Emblem back when it was available on the Game Boy Advance, and I loved playing it. But with the newest one, all I really wanted to do was get through the story and still enjoy the battles without feeling like my units were hindered. I still play somewhat tactically, but there are definitely moments where I see that my team would have been slaughtered had I not opted for Phoenix mode, or taken a completely different strategy.
I'm having old problems creep up on me while playing the old Pokemon Red game on my 3DS. I want to catch all 151 so I can have that in my "collection," but I'm struggling to level everyone up while still keeping a team that's not underleveled for the next area. I ended up having to put the collection part on hold and stick to my six main Pokemon, and even then it's still really grindy in some places. Part of that I feel has to do with experience distribution among each wild Pokemon, but I sometimes have to take a break from the grindy aspects of the game and just do something else.
No there should not be an easy mode. It's Dark Souls. The difficulty is part of what makes it unique. Just because some people are having a hard time doesn't mean that there should be an easy mode. This game requires patience and is not a hack n' slash game. It takes practice. If you buy this game and put it down because you couldn't learn how to deal that's on you. People can be such babies when they can't just blast through something and actually requires some thought.
What i love about these podcasts is that i come here to hear them talk about video games, and i leave with a degree in philosophy. Thats some profound bowl of soup that you guys serve here!
FOR THOSE INTERESTED IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF WHAT HAS BEEN DISCUSSED:
-About authorial/creative intent read Roland Barthes "The Death of the Author" and "From Work to Text"
-about individuals and society read Foucault's treatise on Mettray prison.
They're all only 5-20 pages long! Enjoy!!
I appreciate that you guys try to talk about these topics objectively. That's rare to find on UA-cam these days.
I grew up in an orphanage in Russia where I shared everything and nothing was ever mine. The bed I slept in was not mine, and even when I got adopted the bed I slept in was the worst thing ever, springs sticking up in all the wrong places. However, I didn't know any better...until I got a freakin Casper mattress. I own it now and forever and something about sleeping on something that is 100% yours is amazing. You sleep so much better and the mattress helps even more by being like a cloud essentially, or at least in comparison to what I used to sleep on.
This podcast is an A+. I wish I could've hear what Elyse had to say. Maybe it was just my headphones, but it was barely audible. But, still one of my favorite dude soups in recent memory.
Adam Kovic looks like he's actually a happy person when he's playing Day of the Tentacle. There's a childlike wonder and innocence on his face today. It scares me, make it stop.
Honestly I didn't expect this podcast to delve so in depth into stuff like audience/creator relationship, intent, interpretation of art - etc. It could be because I'm a relatively new fan, but I was surprised! I appreciate that this crew is so genuinely funny but I'm really hoping for more discussions like this, and I'm probably going to go back watch all the podcasts now! Super cool, Funhaus.
Though I know part of this is all just jokes and stuff, and I also especially know that it's what the game is known for, but can we not acknowledge that Dark souls (and every other of the series) isn't just good because it's hard? They're all full of great writing, fighting mechanics and great level design, as well as some pretty great game design overall.
Again, I don't really think that it's that terrible to think of the game as difficult, it can be, especially to new players, but that's not it's only quality, in fact the games have some of their best moments in it's easier moments, and not as much cause it's easy, because it's really really well done.
What I remember fondly about difficult games as a youngster, was that you could pass the controller to a brother/friend/cousin who was in the room whilst you played watching. I remember always having a support group when playing Sega or Nintendo. Awesome times. We no longer have that support group unless the game has co-op.
i really hope ds3 will be fucking hard. i need to git gud again.
Wat r u casul?
+Banter incarnate fuken casul
Big_Potato_dad i have played them, i still play ds2 every day. but most of the time i get games a month later so people have a huge advantage over me. now i pre-ordered it so i can witness the start.
Extra Credit made what I thought was a very good take on the difficulty of Dark Souls (more specifically Dark Souls 2). In a way, the game does have difficulty settings. You have the Covenant of Champions and Bonfire Aesthetics if you want to play hard mode. Utilizing summons and using sorceries/pyromancy/miracles creates an easy mode for the game. If you ignore those things, you get the normal mode.
To me the difficulty or challenge of Dark Souls is an integral part of not just the experience of the game, but you could say the story of the game. The idea is that you're just a useless weak undead with an iron will to go against gods towards whatever prophesy you're fulfilling. If the game has the proper amount of difficulty to it, the gameplay experience mirrors that. You start clueless of what to do, but slowly and surely after numerous deaths you learn the game to a point where it becomes challenging but not impossible, and ultimately almost easy. Why doesn't your character hollow to insanity after hundreds of deaths like everyone else in the game? Because it's the player that loses its will to play after too much, and that's when you go hollow.
Also Dark Souls isn't really just an individual experience even if you played it 100% by yourself never looking up anything. There's the obvious option of co-op, but more importantly all the ghosts of other players you see as you play are there to remind you that don't worry, even if it's difficult there are others who are stuck on the same boss and others who beat it. Then there's the message system that's an in game way of "looking it up", since players can leave hints towards secrets and so on. The communal experience is built in to the game itself.
finally a non-movie fucking podcast thank god
James' face for most the middle of the video is basically my face all the time.
Sociopathic?
+Bruce Wayne stare of a thousand suns.
Advertisement is 17:55 to 20:20 and 45:50 to 47:00, thats 3:35 of commercials or 6% of the video. Other than that , good talk guys. Especially Bruce today. Good job!
James Culton Im not really. When it starts i just keep pressing "L" until Lawrence stop looking on his cellphone or someone else start talking.
+Divine Linker Without those adverts these guys wouldn't have this job.
kylecomplains Its not as simple as that but yes, you could say that part of their salary comes from ad revenue. But their paychecks wont decrease if you skip this parts of the video. Only one who potentially loses is that mattress company but that is just a part of advertising so i feel okay with that.
I never said they would get less money if you skip the ad lol.
14:10 "Well, we're not Romans anymore, and they're all dead." Adam Kovic 2016
+2nd3rd1st Kovic for president 2020
Man, I forgot how they still get humor into these hour long podcasts too alongside the discussion. It's great.
i don't really watch Dude soup but seeing as some people like it i kinda just click on the video and like it so it doesn't get cancelled
How considerate of you.
Evan Saltare
thank you kind sir
I used to play Red Orchestra Ostfront a lot, it was a brutally difficult WWII multiplayer shooter. I loved it because it was so unforgiving, there was a lot of recoil on weapons, no crosshairs, no aim zoom, there were no enemy indicators, hit indicators or anything else besides a magazine count. Because of all of this and also because it wasn't very polished and buggy the game wasn't all that popular but for me that game was perfect and because the community was rather small it was also fun to talk to fellow players because we would often know each other from play it so much. On top of that killing an enemy was pretty difficult without zoom and with a lot of recoil but at the same time it also meant you stayed alive for a pretty long time sometimes.
When Red Orchestra 2 was in development a lot of us were allowed to beta test the game and while at first a lot of us enjoyed the game the fact that this game did have aim-zoom, low recoil and the whole game was smoothed out a lot of the fans of the original didn't really like it over time and our requests to change the game while it was still in beta didn't help much as the developers were trying to reach a wider audience. Killing an enemy was easier but you also died more often.
RO2 is a popular game but for a lot of fans of the original RO2 felt like an easier COD-ified game. Then they even decided to add an "action" mode with crosshairs which pissed a lot of people off, meanwhile the fans of the second game kept saying "if they don't like it they shouldn't play it" , they were right to say it but because the original was so dear to a select few people seeing the sequel trying to reach a wide audience by basically selling its own soul disappointed quite a few of us.
hey thats me on the cover
Bruv
My brother and I tag teamed Dark Souls on PS3 the day it came out. It was painful, his wife kept getting angry at us for getting so frustrated, we took PTO from work, my eyes felt like lava, and it was one of the best video game experiences of my life.
in the case of Fire emblem, its more than just creepy Japanese stuff. The localization gutted the dialogue. There were some themes on death and differing morals that were simply removed.
I am a big fan of alternate or 'true endings' depending on difficulty. It helps protect the exclusivity of 'truely' beating a game while also bringing the experience down to a more common level for those who would prefer that.
And the cries where heard from across the land;
* *_muffled Git Gud in the distance._* *
You know what sucks? I've been trying to catch up to these guys in age, but no matter how long I wait... they're always ahead of me.
Theres already an easy mode in these games, it's called co-op
This has been one of my favorite podcasts of theirs in a while, specifically Bruce I really enjoy him and the others talk about philosophies and profound things. It's nice and different from the usual video game controversy talks.
20:09
Lawrence: "And Jesus Christ you should try it out"
Jesus: "Damn Lawrence, you're right, this is way better than that time I spent sleeping on a cross"
Or in a cave for two nights.
Great point on individualism and being apart of a group. You guys are totally right I'm young and ignorant in thinking being alone is okay. Someday I'll grow up but today...witcher by myself
I see wheelhaus being edited in the background.....I know what vid is coming this weekend!!! :)
In my opinion, Dark Souls is a community game only in the sense that you can summon help from other players, but NOT in the sense that you should help or get help online. The most wonderful thing about Dark Souls, and why I love it so much, is the sense of discovery I get while wondering the game world (which I know barely nothing about) and the sense accomplishment I get after I died a ton of times and I finally get to the beat the boss! It's a truly wonderful experience, but again, this is what I take from the Souls series.
Maximilian is today's strategy guide
I'm just 21, so barely an adult, but I don't think individuality or wanting to be in a group need to win out over one another. I like who I am as an individual but I also like sharing myself with others and getting to know those around me. I think you can both be proud of who you are while also accepting your place in a larger group, especially if it's a group of people you value.
Dark Souls is the perfect difficulty for what it's trying to achieve. Tough at times, and you'll struggle. It's hard enough to get a sense of accomplishment but not so hard you'll give up. It's only particularly tough on your first playthrough though.
+Dan the Joke Man Just like any game that wasn't made for idiots, like Halo. Pls remember what kind of games Funhaus crew likes the most - the EASY ones
elitist
Oops, typed the wrong thing. Dumb auto correct. Don't know why it made me type that, sorry.
Sean Mckenna How am i an elitist for saying i enjoy a challenge in games?
i wasn't saying anything bad about those who don't
+Dan the Joke Man Unless you're like me who just has one boss who, for whatever reason, gives you all the trouble in the world. That part get's rather obnoxious each time I go through another NG+, but it's still the most satisfying thing in the world to beat.
Best thing about having Wednesday afternoon's off work, Podcast Wednesdays.
72$ FOR 3 PAIRS OF UNDERWEAR?! JESUS FUCK THAT'S EXPENSIVE.
On the topic of whether art was meant to be enjoyed the way the creator intended it, or if one should be allowed to enjoy it in the way that one wants, I would highly recommend reading the essay "The Death of the Author" by Roland Barthes. It's a very insightful argument on this exact topic. Barthes' main argument is that once a piece of literature is published and allowed to the public, the reader should think of the author as having died. This way, the reader will not be so concerned with what the author meant and will interpret the text in a way that is unique to them. I think this same point can be applied to the topic of games, and especially that of games as art.
Anyone who says "Dark souls is too hard, its not fair!" Has either A) never played it. B) Played 2 minutes of it and got mad because they didn't see the door open in the undead asylum.
Why is this still a question... Play the fucking game and you will see it is tough but fair.
My brother plowed through Dark Souls like it was nothing, he'd never played something like it before. After he beat it, he walked into my room and told me he was confused by why everyone said it was so difficult. Now, I've never played it, that's just him.
Some of my favourite moments with Dark Souls wasn't playing the game, but rather researching and finding out more about the game.
Bruce everyone dies alone
This has probably been their best podcast ever. I thoroughly enjoyed the discussion. Cheers, Funhaus!
Laurence, fresh kicks fam.
This podcast has been helping me get through all the down time of jury selection
Having an easy mode in Dark Souls is kind of pointless. It's like reading the last page of a novel before you read the whole book.
agreed
+Lightningranger24 Yeah.. but anyone who does that is just shooting themselves in the foot so why would you care? If I heard a load of people just flicked to the last page of a book I liked I wouldn't give a shit, its their loss, not mine
+Lightningranger24 I agree. I'm terrible at video games, but I am still drawn to the Dark Souls franchise because I know I'm going to get destroyed by the game.
It's even more pointless due to the fact that the DS games already have an "easy mode." All you have to do is look up an "overpowered early" guide, and bam, easy mode.
Nah, it's more like adding another sauce to the menu.
Pointless for you? Sure, because you only eat hot sauce with your chicken. Which is fine but what about that guy who wants ketchup?
Ask yourself this, is this going to effect how you play the game? It really isn't. It doesn't change anything excepts now, we have ketchup on the menu.
Your metaphor would mean that the player skipped the entire game in turn for the last level. That or you think difficulty is what makes up the novel. How about the lore, characters, world, and just about everything else? They still have to experience that.
Okay, so in elementary school, I did actually have a friend who was absolutely obsessed with Sonic the Hedgehog. Like she owned all of the games (that were out at the time- like early 2000s) and she would write what was essentially fanfiction, we would 'play' sonic on the playground and anytime I went to her home it was like all about Sonic. At the time I was like, "oh yeah this stuff is so cool, yada yada." But like she was legit obsessed with it. As soon as they James and Bruce said nobody actually likes sonic, I was just like oh shit, what about that one girl. Crazy stuff man..
I think bearded Adam and shaved Adam are two different people
Bearded Adam is your dad. Shaved Adam is your baby brother.
"Blindrunning" the Dark Souls games with friends over some kinda chat program(skype,ts,mumble) is the best way to play it IMO. You kinda have the support for bosses you can't figure out, and you can also theory craft with them & talk about different strats/routes etc.
But just jumping on to a stream or speedrun looking up the most effective strats/weapons/armors is just taking away the whole experience.
James really doesnt like being told what to believe. So much so I feel he is biased.
Totally.
+epicever who does though?
he also doesn't like to be told that maybe he's just bad at video games and that's why he enjoys being a casual and like things better on easy.
Everybody is biased. Saying someone is biased is biased.
epicever heres a clue for you EVERYONE IS BIASED
You guys should try doing a one dollar one hour during the next pod cast. Or a demo disc pod cast. Just an idea.
Great video Funhaus team. Keep em' coming!
Alone not lonely.
FINALLY, a Sonic themed podcast! What are your opinions on Sally vs Amy? Should Sega bring back Hyper Sonic? What about Nack the Weasel? An we must discuss Super Metal Sonic...hello?
Just saying, title only describes like 20 mins of the podcast
+Kizzar Sunlfex Thank you for saving me time.
Podcast of the year, this is why I've been a supporter since inside gaming. Enlightened insights with a reserved and grounded perspective. Toppy Tip lads.
every games hardest difficulty should be painfully hard. even the hardest difficulty isnt hard enough in most games. I want my games hard. games are too soft and flaccid these days.
but why do you enjoy that
breakfast, lunch, dinner and Funhaus - the only times in a day I feel genuinely happy.
Why does every single game need to have a easy and hard mode? Why cant some games just be hard, and some games just be easy? I see no problem with games being made for one group of people.
I.e. Mario
+Cohort But if you're one of those people that is going to play it on hard anyway what does it matter if there is an easy mode.
+Cohort It allows game companies to cater to both groups of people so they can make more money
+Cohort thde problem is people complaining when they put those modes in. people don't realize games need to be soild to make money so AAA games need to be for as most people posible
+Hey Joe
I can think of examples from some games (it doesn't apply to all genres or games):
Because developers don't have resources to make two different AI.
You either get smart and advanced intelligence which will outflank you, cooperates with other NPCs and is challenging on tactical level. Which means you have to think to beat it.
Or you get AI which will just run towards you in narrow corridor. Which means you have to just aim and push trigger.
With AI goes also level design. Maze vs. straight line. Because you don't need advanced AI if you are just shooting in corridor.
Difficulty is then set not with smarter opponent, but with more hit points for enemies, and more damage for their weapons. Which means that kind of hardmode is just repeating shooting more times than in easy mode and going slower because you have to take more cover. Most of the time you don't have to think, you just have to die bunch of times to remember pattern.
Guys the serious chat about whatever people are complaining about is a little boring compared to talking about movies and games. Rather than talking about people talking about games. Just a shout, up to you guys, I'll still watch. Thanks for the entertainment
It's about status. Modern life is easy. Few aspects of life in developed nations are difficult except being bored. Gamers want something like Dark Souls to be objectively difficult so they can strut and talk trash and act dominant like soldiers returning from a battle.
Easy modes remind them of the truth. That all they're doing is playing a video game and that their accomplishments are narrow in scope and do not exist in the "real world".
Dude! I'm right there with you. Souls is so boring to me.
Wait for telegraph, parry, strike. Wait for telegraph, roll, strike.
That's the whole damned game. It isn't a bad game. It's just not for me.
I got way more into Binding of Isaac which is probably an easier game, but still challenging and much more dynamic.
You'd like it. It's the closest thing I've played in years that captures the feel of a coin-op arcade game.
Tons of fun ^_^
+Maurice Webb Dark souls is not difficult. Most people play it and stay because the game is very well designed. You have to understand, it gets really annoying when you have to slog though every fucktard trying to throw their crappy uninformed opinions on people with tons of experience with the game. This is exactly what happened with the roguelike genre, and "modern" roguelikes do not even remotely resemble original or "classical" roguelikes. It isn't a matter of objectivity but taste. Let people actually enjoy their niche for once, it's incredibly unfair right now for people who are into those kinds of games.
I don't disagree, but calling "Souls" niche is like saying the band Tool is niche. They're intelligent and cerebral and not exactly mainstream, but not really niche.
Anything that sells as well as Souls games or Tool albums isn't really niche. I'm grown-up enough to say I don't like Souls. Not necessarily that it's bad, and I think that's a fine place to end the discussion.
People can like whatever they wish and praise or criticize whatever they wish. It's kind of an inherent quality of being people.
Where this type of thing tends to get dark is when one person or group of people tries to control one another. People can say whatever they want.
And well, I don't like Dark Souls. That's not a personal attack. And I'm sorry if I somehow offended you. Obviously Souls is something very important to you, and I wish you continued success and enjoyment with your very "niche" hobby.
Maurice Webb And you single in on one insignificant part of my comment as if that were my main point. Clearly it was a mistake to actually bother giving my point of view. The main point of my comment was to explain why people get upset over those opinions - people can have opinions, but it is perfectly fine to be upset over those opinions, especially if those opinions are misinformed in some way. Namely, a lot of opinions attempt to support themselves by objective "facts" such as technical proficiency and design, but end up being wrong because they never bothered to give it a chance.
Love the deep conversations you guys have in this podcast. Great work, keep em coming!
Deez casuls asking if Dark Souls is too hard. xD
Git gud.
You represent everything that is wrong with modern gaming.
To speak about people just want games to be hard for bragging rights, I don't play Dark Souls because I think its hard, I don't think its hard, I think its fair to the gamer. The game expects you to learn and adapt, and thats what the people who love the Souls games do. If there was an "easy" mode in these games, players who choose this option are no longer being treated fairly. They are being treated as if they are dumb.
And to touch on the thing Funhaus said about Dark Souls is beaten as a community, I completely disagree. Many people play and beat these games as a blind playthrough, which is something I do as well. No guides, no internet help, the game gives you the tools, you just have to use them. And the community comes into play when discussing lore and playing the online aspects such as the PvP and co-oping.
+saithvenomdrone I do the same, until my second playthrough. I beat ds1 twice, and bloodborne 7 times. After my first or second play through, I go online for any NPC interactions or any item's I may have missed.
Bruce and James your comments at 16min~ mark have changed my outlook on life.
Ok, just going to say. Some people do beat Souls games to say they beat it but the majority of the fan base play it because of the full experience. It's a world. It has an interesting world design, interesting art direction, cool enemies and characters. It has secrets to be discovered.
It has all of this locked behind a wall and the only way to get to it is through one's own effort and skill. We earn everything we get in the game and what we get is satisfying. That's what keeps so many of us coming back and why I love the games. It isn't for everyone but that's ok. I just get angry when people talk shit talk the series I love so much.
This is a great podcast, I love the discussion of art and experience. I like when the guys show us how actually smart they are.
I'm cool with optional difficulty under the condition that it doesn't subtract from the work it is in. Fire Emblem Awakening had cheap difficulty where variables were adjusted to give enemies more/less stats and skills. It's an easy fix, but it only meant that pointless busy work was inevitable for those that wanted an actual challenge. Awakening was necessary though because it saved the franchise financially. Fates is out and I think they did a good job at appealing to both sides. If you want to play a visual novel you have Birthright. If you want a traditional Fire Emblem actually designed to challenge someone you have Conqest. Both have difficulty options ranging from easy-lunatic but the core design is very different. That is the important distinction.
+Henny Zhi How do you feel about the Final Fantasy VII re-release that lets the player turn off all random encounters and instantly refill all HP with a single button press? To me, using these features defeats the purpose of playing the game in the first place. If someone just wants to "experience the story" without playing the game, they can read a wiki or watch a let's play.
That's what I'm getting at. Sometimes it goes too far and people aren't really interested in a game anymore which can even spread to the developers. It has to do with allot of things culturally that are making us lazier people that want instant gratification. I have come to terms with it because we are headed that way.
to this day I have had a really hard time with hand eye coordination and I always end up runing into things so I watched my sisters play games and when they moved out I started to watch UA-cam's and I feel a genuine experience even though I am not the one playing the game
listening about comfy mattresses whilst sitting on a matress where pretty much every spring has popped out
My kid is 3 and loves playing the New Mario Bros games, mostly because he cant die. But thats fine, it has him testing the waters of the older games.
Invincibility mode does not cheapen the experience, it allows those who couldnt usually enjoy the content the ability to pick it up and play.
Hour early videos are the best! Thank you US daylight saving time!
Bruce's Wild Things rant made me tear up. So philosophical with humans needing community. P.S. Adam played weird ass games as a kid. Solid podcast guys.
The game sound was perfectly lined up for talking about the opening of a Casper mattress at 19:37 Hilarious
The movie Bruce was talking about around 34 minutes, was Into The Wild, great movie.
I love how this started with games difficulties and ended with sonic and obviously Adam's worst present........i just love this channel and Adam
There's a difference between being challenging and being plain unfair/sadistic. I love a good challenge when the game is fair about it. When the difficulty is predicated largely on chance or things like the AI being god-like, then it can get annoying fast. I want to feel challenged playing a game, not fatigued.
The no dying thing makes sense for Nintendo because a lot of kids play their games and I remember playing the original Starfox over and over again because I couldn't beat the first few levels. This will let kids experience what it is like to finish a game and give them an incentive to actually want to finish other games when they grow up
Uh... I don't think making them finish games for free is gonna make them wanna finish games that require effort. If anything, it'll turn them off from trying to beat games.
+Mistah Misses I think letting them play on a super easy mode will hook kids into wanting to play on a harder difficulty, kind of like t-ball as an intro to baseball.
Mario Mario That's not how kids function, unfortunately. A spoiled child will not seek challenges in general.
I have seen every dude soup so far and most of previous podcasts that will go unnamed. Always great conversation. This one seemed a bit rough on the audio edit from what I guess is the noise gate? Sounded like it was sucking the air out at the beginning and end of every sentence. Still watched/listened to the entire thing. Hope the office noise becomes less so it's not an issue anymore. Cheers!
so about the darksouls subject. since we have agreed on that it is a community thing and since cleared out that humans want to be in a community i think we are safe to say that darksouls' community in terms of gameplay needs to be equals. what i mean by that is, if you put an easy mode to your game ,which is thouroughly built on players own experiences shared with other players expericences of the said game, it will diverge this community into two: ones who played in easy mode (i am just assuming here) where the developpers of the game help the players and guide them through the whole thing, explaining whole of the plot points and showing them the secret rooms or weapons or sth, and ones who play the traditional one where a group of people must come together in order to solve pieces of mystery and speculate over the plot points. ofcourse we cannot know if the spark of the 1st dark souls will be carried here by the community or the game will be good enough to worth the whole ordial or not but i can understand that why anyone wouldnt wanted to lose something like that. creating something special like dark souls is a hard thing and gathering a fan base as explorative as this is even harder so if all this gones in the wind just to appeal to more "casual" audience it would be horrible
19:57 Lawrence: Terms and conditions apply - It's a little ominous, not sure what that means but it's probably nothing to worry about... "
RIP Lawrence.
I recently completed all of the Dark Souls games and in no way did i find it too hard. Suggesting a game is too hard is saying it's unfair. While i did find the mechanics of DS1+DS2 infuriating, i didn't blame the game for being too hard but i blamed myself for being to bad at the game.
Number 1 podcast is Stuff You Should Know as of like last week
This is my favorite podcast you guys have ever done! Really great work guys and I love the topic you guys discussed. :)
I like how Bruces hand continues in the gameplay at 9:08
at first it was kinda awkward, the transition in the beginning of the video with the talk of mattresses but god damn Lawrence you turned that into something prophetic. Props man props.
Absolutely loved your discussion today. You all are modern day philosophers.
I know it's probably ass-backwards, but I played Bloodborne first and then started playing Dark Souls, and found it much easier to learn and play. I actually learned how to accept repetitive deaths and cruelly difficult fights and not destroy my controller in the process. This respect and understanding actually allowed me to appreciate the Soulsborne games much more.