Should Hard Games Have An Easy Difficulty?

[MT 900]

The popular discussion going on everywhere right now is the question of whether or not Sekiro (and games of that ilk) should include an Easy difficulty.  So what does everyone think?

[Eizan 126]

No, not really. 

 

I haven't played Sekiro myself, but I've played Demon Souls and Bloodborne and to go back even more I played all the King's Field games. For these type of games the difficulty adds to the feel and atmosphere of these games. I don't think they would be much fun if you could just run through most if not all of the game in a few hours. 

 

I've played a few games that the low difficulty ruined the game for me. (I'm looking at you Fable!) 

[MT 900]

I don't mean making them easier in general, I mean having the original difficulty, but then a way to lower it somehow. You can still play the game the way the developers intended, and for anyone who doesn't give a shit and just wants to play the game, there's a way around that.

[Hornet 114]

I think dude realizes what you're saying, but he's arguing against having an easy option because it encourages people to ruin their own experience, rather than having the intended experience which included being like... Terrified of the models of the monsters because not only do they look scary, they are a threat to your progress through the game, & that Easy mode will just mean that people will be inclined to squash their own experiences, and the monsters will never represent threat.

 

Makes sense to me, but I'd argue that the entry barrier to computer games... Like, if you don't know what certain colours of bars and numbers are typically symbolically coded to mean (Red bar is health, blue bar is shield, yellow means invincible, -0 means no damage,) from past experience you are absolutely Boned if you ever want to get into videogames. Having an easy mode in a computer game means that the bar to getting into videogames as a new player is lowered. And once you're familiar with typical mechanics of games and the tropes of a typical HUD you will probably become a "Normal" player.

[MT 900]

23 minutes ago, Hornet said:

I think dude realizes what you're saying, but he's arguing against having an easy option because it encourages people to ruin their own experience, rather than having the intended experience which included being like... Terrified of the models of the monsters because not only do they look scary, they are a threat to your progress through the game, & that Easy mode will just mean that people will be inclined to squash their own experiences, and the monsters will never represent threat.

Well, hearing a game is super difficult would potentially turn off people interested in a game for other reasons, like style or story or whatnot. It seems odd to me to limit a game to a specific set of people, and potentially alienate the chance of growing the audience for said game. Like, if Sekiro was my first Souls style game, and it was too hard so I just gave up and was never interested in even trying other games in the series, isn't that a bad thing? There's nothing saying I need to play every game out there or anything like that, but there's potential for a game finding a new audience with people who might not normally give it a go. Who's to say someone playing through a game like this on Easy doesn't make that person want to try it again on a harder difficulty? Or for them to give the next game of a similar style a go at the normal difficulty? The player is responsible for how they choose to experience a game. If they want to have an easier time of it, what's the issue? Having the option to make a game easier doesn't run it for anyone else, normal mode is still there. 

[Lucy 108]

 

48 minutes ago, Hornet said:

Having an easy mode in a computer game means that the bar to getting into videogames as a new player is lowered. And once you're familiar with typical mechanics of games and the tropes of a typical HUD you will probably become a "Normal" player.

 

Exactly this! No one's saying that hard modes shouldn't exist; if you want to play something on Terror Mode with a zillion handicaps because that's what gets your rocks off then you should 100% be able to do so. However, everyone has different abilities and skill caps, and it seems silly that a game would lock itself away from a potentially bigger audience by having Terror Mode Only as the default setting. A game can still be scary or challenging and fun on 'Normal'- or even 'Easy'- if that's where the player's skill cap is, and as they get better at that game or games in general, they may even move up a difficulty level or two!

 

Anecdote mode:

Spoiler

This has been me before. I'm not the most skilled gamer in terms of hand-eye coordination (yay dyslexia), and I was almost defeated by The Last Of Us about halfway through the game... on Normal Mode. If there hadn't been an Easy mode for me to turn it down to, then I wouldn't have finished an AMAZING game with a fantastic storyline and direction, and I feel I would have missed out on a lot. 

 

[Vic Boss 610]

Absolutely should have easy modes. There's nothing more ruinous to your enjoyment of a game than not being able to progress past a certain point.

[Hornet 114]

I'd say "let the user choose the experience they would prefer" is valid; but the challenge to that is "It's more important to preserve the artistic integrity of the game".

 

Outside of gameplay difficulty, a game narrative I really respect is MGS2's. Kojima repeatedly messes with the player's expected, anticipated enjoyment in order to make some weird-ass postmodern statement. It's commendable that he chooses not to give the player what they think they want in favor of something arguably better.

 

Games like Dark Souls, I figure, are intended to scare the shit out of you via a rollercoaster effect of heightening monster grossness = AAAAAA FUCK FUCK FUCK I gotta marshal myself to beat this guy otherwise I am going down hard. The problem with an easy mode in such games is like; what if playing on Easy becomes the norm and the effect is ruined? It's a little like putting "easy mode" into a rollercoaster where at the flick of a switch the drops are smaller or the ride is slower. 

 

That's not to say difficulty can't Ruin a game, Far Cry 5 introduced a superhard difficulty mode for New Game+ that, because they didn't bother to balance the scripted sections (Such as mandatory vehicle turret sections) didn't give the player challenge but basically made those sections into a savescumming craps game where you might die or else luck the hell out.

I'm going to completely hedge and say "Some...times... an easy mode in a game is a good idea?" 

[Psycho666Soldier 271]

Nah.

[Hornet 114]

 

(BTW I switched from Normal to Easy on Bioshock Infinite to clear the final boss, fuck that boss... If you haven't focused on DPS the whole game and instead finesse, and the last part of the game is a TIMED boss with a shitload of health? You fucked up.)

 

(haha "specced for DPS... how do you do fellow kids)

[webhead 518]

I like how Ninja Gaiden and some other games unlocked an easy mode after you died enough times (Ninja Dog mode).  That one is like okay you've been at this a while and it's just not happening.  You could continue to hit your head against the wall forever and eventually just get frustrated and leave or they could just let you play the damn game if you suck at it.

[MT 900]

1 hour ago, Hornet said:

but the challenge to that is "It's more important to preserve the artistic integrity of the game".

While I completely agree, I don't think the option of an easier difficulty negates that in any way. Having that option for less skilled players in no way effects (affects?) the people that don't want any of that. I'm all for turning the difficulty down in a game like Sekiro because I think that world is super interesting, and what little story i've encountered already is enough to make me want to keep playing, but if it just gets to a point where i'm dying constantly and getting zero fun out of it, i'm going to stop playing and never go back.

[Vic Boss 610]

The tricky thing about video games is that not everyone will play the same game for the same reason, and forcing the player to play the game how you specifically want it to be played narrows down how many people are going to keep playing it.

 

If I'm into a game's story, then being stopped by gameplay is the most aggravating and least fun thing the game can do, because story to me is not the reward for good gameplay and that's what high difficulty turns it into. I want to see what happens next, stop getting my way etc

 

If I'm into the gameplay or even feel like I accomplish something in the game, then higher difficulty is fine (ex: I don't think I ever had fun playing the Last of Us even when I beat it on hard mode, but it felt do-able after beating it on easy and I wanted my trophy statistics to look better than beating it on Easy looked).

 

I did beat Dark Souls and did experience the "OHFUCKOHFUCKOHFUCKOHFUCK." I killed the giant wolf a lot earlier than I should've due to learning the pattern and executing, shit was heart-pounding, but when I look back at it (Ddrat, da-da-da-um-da), all the hours of stress didn't feel worth the 30ish minutes of feeling accomplished at the end of it because dying in an open world like that was so punishing (I probably "quit" at least 20 times not counting Ornstein and Smough).

[webhead 518]

10 minutes ago, DeJaPon said:

The tricky thing about video games is that not everyone will play the same game for the same reason, and forcing the player to play the game how you specifically want it to be played narrows down how many people are going to keep playing it.

 

I cannot possibly agree with this sentiment enough.  Make the game.  Push me in a direction but don't FORCE me to play the way you want me to.  That's the kind of shit everyone complains about Bungie doing all the time.

[Galeigh 283]

Depends on the game to be Honest.

 

When the difficulty is one of the games appeals then absolutely not. Ex: Any Fromsoft game. The reason is that those type of games are so finely tuned for their difficulty that they cannot be simply "tweaked" for easy modes, you'd have to break the whole design of the game for them. Just look at Dark Souls 2 with those fucking healing stones, broke the whole balance to make it "more accessible"

 

Outside of that though, sure why not, as long as you leave the harder difficulty in and dont sacrifice the quality of the gameplay to accomodate the easier difficulty.

[Jane 100]

 

I'm not a capital-G Gamer. I'm also prone to stress and (like most of us I guess) have limited time to play, so although a challenge is often part of playing a game, I have 0 desire to pay £50+ to play something that I have literally 0 chance of finishing and that will be actively not-fun and just function as a reminder that I'm not good at video games. If there was a game that looked like it was totally my aesthetic but looked a bit too difficult, if I knew there was a softy babey mode then it'd definitely increase the chances of me buying and enjoying it. Any threat from monsters etc would just be relative to my lower gaming skill/experience.
 

Re: the artistic integrity thing - I can kind of understand the argument, but with e.g. a novel that some people might find intimidating, there are options; I personally wouldn't want an abridged version of a book (ugh), but they exist, or you can flick through and skip/skim bits (hello, Paris sewers chapters of Les Miserables ). Also, an eBook of Anna Karenina is probably 99p as opposed to £59.99. If you buy a game that is simply too difficult, you're down a lot of money for something that it just isn't worth your time to try and finish, which is a surefire way to destroy any artistic appreciation of it.

[Galeigh 283]

I just don't think games should have to cater to everyone mostly. Don't like hard games? Dont buy em. Wanna see the story in said game though? Youtube. That's your option. 

[Lucy 108]

Yeah, that's not a very friendly way of conducting a hobby though. It amounts to gatekeeping and with hobbies that are supposed to be fun, isn't the whole point to introduce more people to them and share that enjoyment? Video games are something you buy, and everyone can buy them, so why can't they cater to everyone? Someone with colour-blindness or slow reaction times due to a neurological condition absolutely deserves to be catered to, especially if- as has been previously mentioned by almost everyone in this topic including yourself- it doesn't interfere with/take away from the game's normal/hard/mega hard difficulty settings.

 

Using a non-videogame example, that'd be like saying "Don't know how to draw? Don't do it. Wanna experience said crafting experience though? Speedpaints on YouTube. That's your option".

[webhead 518]

You can make a game easier by giving more health, giving enemies less health, adjusting the AI some, etc.  You have to put effort into it of course but it can be done without compromising the normal difficulty.  They shouldn't cater to people though if it's going to compromise the main game.  I just don't think that, if they give a shit, it will do that.

[Jane 100]

 

Yeah, it's not gonna break my heart if they don't make an easier version of e.g. Cuphead (which I love the look of but from the sound of it it'd be a pointless purchase for me )... not everything's for everyone, there are plenty of other games out there to try after all. But if it's a big-budget game then it seems in the developer's best interests as well as the consumer's to have a couple of different difficulty settings. More potential customers for the developer, and if someone wants a hard game they don't have to play the easier settings if they don't want to (as web says, there are almost always going to be plenty of ways of making an easier playthrough without changing the game as a whole).

[Psycho666Soldier 271]

58 minutes ago, Lucy said:

Yeah, that's not a very friendly way of conducting a hobby though. It amounts to gatekeeping and with hobbies that are supposed to be fun, isn't the whole point to introduce more people to them and share that enjoyment? Video games are something you buy, and everyone can buy them, so why can't they cater to everyone? Someone with colour-blindness or slow reaction times due to a neurological condition absolutely deserves to be catered to, especially if- as has been previously mentioned by almost everyone in this topic including yourself- it doesn't interfere with/take away from the game's normal/hard/mega hard difficulty settings.

 

Using a non-videogame example, that'd be like saying "Don't know how to draw? Don't do it. Wanna experience said crafting experience though? Speedpaints on YouTube. That's your option".

I think this is a bad example because there's not really an easy way to draw.

I have a hard time with this argument because I play games for the overall experience.  A big part of that is the gameplay.  I feel a sense of accomplishment from achieving something difficult, and if I play something that's too easy, it completely sucks the fun out for me.  So part of me wonders what enjoyment do you get out of playing a game that poses absolutely no challenge to you?  If it's the story, what enjoyment do you get from walking through if it's not a game specifically designed as an interactive novel type?

 

I don't really care if they don't dumb down the core mechanics of the standard game to make it easy.  But some games easy modes make it so there is virtually no difficulty, which, to me, seems like destroys the argument of "relative difficulty" for people who aren't at that skill level.  Do people who play on those easy modes still enjoy the game despite there being no semblance of challenge, or do they actually experience some challenge relative to what they're used to?

[Vic Boss 610]

There's not an easy way to draw well but anyone can draw.

 

And you also don't have to draw well to like doing it.

[Psycho666Soldier 271]

That's true, but I still think it's a bad comparison.  If you're playing a game on easy mode, you're "drawing well" in your relative skill level.  You ultimately get the same experience as someone playing on a higher difficulty.  Whereas someone drawing with no skill vs. someone who's a natural will get vastly diffferent results.

 

If you like making crude drawings because you get a kick out of it, then go for it.  I'm very much guilty of that.  But I'm also someone who actually tried to draw for real and got increasingly frustrated at how awful I was at it.

 

That said, I guess tracing would be drawing done easy, but that only works to draw things that don't come from your own head.

[Vic Boss 610]

14 minutes ago, Psycho666Soldier said:

You ultimately get the same experience as someone playing on a higher difficulty.

 

You get the story and the progression, but the stress-levels and skill necessary to do something on a higher difficulty is different from mostly breezing through a game on a lower difficulty.

 

Like I beat Uncharted 2 two or three times on various difficulty levels. Easy/normal was a breeze, never felt stressed at all, never worried about running headlong into a firefight unless the game was programmed to auto-kill me or something, and I got to enjoy the story and how it worked into the gameplay without having my relative skill level hold me back from seeing it. Hard/Crushing changed how I played the game, how often I progressed, and how satisfying it was to beat a level.

 

Quote

 

That said, I guess tracing would be drawing done easy, but that only works to draw things that don't come from your own head.

 

 

The video game isn't coming from your head either, though. Tracing or copying someone else's drawing is arguably when you're doing on easier-modes, it's a shortcut to getting the results you want without needing the full skillset to do it yourself, and generally with achievements and trophies, you know who's actually accomplishing the hard stuff these days, so it's not like they're passing it off as if they beat the game on hard mode/passing off the tracing as their full skillset.

[Psycho666Soldier 271]

3 minutes ago, DeJaPon said:

 

You get the story and the progression, but the stress-levels and skill necessary to do something on a higher difficulty is different from mostly breezing through a game on a lower difficulty.

 

Like I beat Uncharted 2 two or three times on various difficulty levels. Easy/normal was a breeze, never felt stressed at all, never worried about running headlong into a firefight unless the game was programmed to auto-kill me or something, and I got to enjoy the story and how it worked into the gameplay without having my relative skill level hold me back from seeing it. Hard/Crushing changed how I played the game, how often I progressed, and how satisfying it was to beat a level.

 

 

The video game isn't coming from your head either, though. Tracing or copying someone else's drawing is arguably when you're doing on easier-modes, it's a shortcut to getting the results you want without needing the full skillset to do it yourself, and generally with achievements and trophies, you know who's actually accomplishing the hard stuff these days, so it's not like they're passing it off as if they beat the game on hard mode/passing off the tracing as their full skillset.

Fair enough on the tracing part.  I'm not really the type to look at people trophies and such, though, because I don't care for other people's sake whether they're playing the game on hard mode or not. 

 

But the first paragraph kinda misses the point I was getting at, I think.  For people who want to play hard modes, the stress doesn't take away from the game.  So for the different skill levels, it's the same experience, just with a different degree of intrinsic challenge.

[webhead 518]

That's not really an argument against HAVING easier difficulties.  If you enjoy the harder stuff....play the harder stuff.  Why would the existence of an easier option ruin anything whatsoever for you who likes to play on hard?

[Psycho666Soldier 271]

1 minute ago, webhead said:

That's not really an argument against HAVING easier difficulties.  If you enjoy the harder stuff....play the harder stuff.  Why would the existence of an easier option ruin anything whatsoever for you who likes to play on hard?

That's not really an argument for or against difficulty levels.  I just thought the drawing comparison was a bad one, and then I was clarifying my statement to DeJapon.  I concede that the way he explained it, the comparison makes sense.

[MT 900]

41 minutes ago, Psycho666Soldier said:

So part of me wonders what enjoyment do you get out of playing a game that poses absolutely no challenge to you?

How do you know it's no challenge to them? If it's someone who's never played a game of that type of difficulty, an easier difficulty may be just as tough for them as the normal difficulty may be for you.

[Psycho666Soldier 271]

3 minutes ago, MT said:

How do you know it's no challenge to them? If it's someone who's never played a game of that type of difficulty, an easier difficulty may be just as tough for them as the normal difficulty may be for you.

That's why asked at the end of my post if they do experience that challenge.

[webhead 518]

More to the point, who says a challenge in a video game is what's fun?  Maybe they just want to experience it and that's what it sunf.  Video games are escapism just like movies, books, comics, etc.  You don't have to be hitting your head against a wall to have fun, right?

[Vic Boss 610]

8 minutes ago, Psycho666Soldier said:

But the first paragraph kinda misses the point I was getting at, I think.  For people who want to play hard modes, the stress doesn't take away from the game.  So for the different skill levels, it's the same experience, just with a different degree of intrinsic challenge.

 

Further using the Uncharted 2 example, I beat it on Crushing but they added Brutal to the Remaster collection. I tried Brutal, got shot in the head and died immediately a few times because the mode is basically one-hit-and-you're-dead, and decided that was my limit, I didn't have the patience or desire to develop the skills to keep playing the game at that difficulty.

 

If the game originally released with that difficulty level as the only one, I never would've progressed past the first area or so and just would've played something else instead of it becoming one of my favourite cinematic-style action/adventure games. The decision of what kind of experience I wanted out the game would've been removed from me and then I just wouldn't have had one.

 

I may not have even bothered playing through it on Crushing if that was the only difficulty level because having the story withheld because of gameplay skill is more annoying to me, I don't consider story a reward for good gameplay (it's not the PS1 era anymore). I beat it on an easier mode, loved it, figured "Hmm, this might be do-able on a higher difficulty", did that and then I think I did it again on Crushing after that. I got the same story experience each time but different gameplay experience and skill progression, different feeling of victory on higher difficultly after overcoming each challenge (I was expecting to get stopped on Crushing difficulty at some point and wasn't expecting to beat the final boss on crushing at all).

[Psycho666Soldier 271]

Just now, webhead said:

More to the point, who says a challenge in a video game is what's fun?  Maybe they just want to experience it and that's what it sunf.  Video games are escapism just like movies, books, comics, etc.  You don't have to be hitting your head against a wall to have fun, right?

Again, my question is what is the joy in it if there's no challenge?  And when I say challenge, I'm not talking about God Mode difficulty.  I'm talking the most minimum of challenge.  If it's the story, why not watch or read something?  I'm not saying people can't enjoy games however they want, I just want to know what they get out of it.

3 minutes ago, DeJaPon said:

 

Further using the Uncharted 2 example, I beat it on Crushing but they added Brutal to the Remaster collection. I tried Brutal, got shot in the head and died immediately a few times because the mode is basically one-hit-and-you're-dead, and decided that was my limit, I didn't have the patience or desire to develop the skills to keep playing the game at that difficulty.

 

If the game originally released with that difficulty level as the only one, I never would've progressed past the first area or so and just would've played something else instead of it becoming one of my favourite cinematic-style action/adventure games. The decision of what kind of experience I wanted out the game would've been removed from me and then I just wouldn't have had one.

 

I may not have even bothered playing through it on Crushing if that was the only difficulty level because having the story withheld because of gameplay skill is more annoying to me, I don't consider story a reward for good gameplay (it's not the PS1 era anymore). I beat it on an easier mode, loved it, figured "Hmm, this might be do-able on a higher difficulty", did that and then I think I did it again on Crushing after that. I got the same story experience each time but different gameplay experience and skill progression, different feeling of victory on higher difficultly after overcoming each challenge (I was expecting to get stopped on Crushing difficulty at some point and wasn't expecting to beat the final boss on crushing at all).

I still feel like this is kind of answering a different question, as my example was strictly pertaining to the drawing comparison, not for or against having different difficulty levels.  But it's a semantic argument that I've already conceded to, so I'll just leave it at that.

[webhead 518]

32 minutes ago, Psycho666Soldier said:

Again, my question is what is the joy in it if there's no challenge?  And when I say challenge, I'm not talking about God Mode difficulty.  I'm talking the most minimum of challenge.  If it's the story, why not watch or read something?  I'm not saying people can't enjoy games however they want, I just want to know what they get out of it.

 

Interactive story.  Choose your own adventure.  You're still playing the game, easy difficulty doesn't literally play it for you. You're exploring the world, using the gameplay elements, and you know, playing the game.  It's just not particularly difficult.  Or maybe you just suck and easy is still a challenge.  Lots of different reasons here.

[MT 900]

An easier difficulty is also a way of easing new players into the genre. Who's to say that someone wouldn't beat a game like Dark Souls 2 on an easier difficulty and then want to try a harder one after the fact?

[Psycho666Soldier 271]

7 minutes ago, webhead said:

 

Interactive story.  Choose your own adventure.  You're still playing the game, easy difficulty doesn't literally play it for you. You're exploring the world, using the gameplay elements, and you know, playing the game.  It's just not particularly difficult.  Or maybe you just suck and easy is still a challenge.  Lots of different reasons here.

Don't you give me that sass, mister!

 

As for the actual argument, my personal preference will always involve not compromising the intended creation of the game, and I think a game like Dark Souls is a bit harder to create a proper easy mode that doesn't transform the game.  But in general I'm in support of people being able to play games how they want and allow for different difficulty levels.  As long as the whole game isn't watered down in an attempt to make it accessible to everyone(i.e. sticking with one difficulty but making it easier, shoehorning tutorials, auto-targeting, etc.).

 

[MT 900]

I fail to see how adding an easier difficulty compromises anything, except maybe pushing the release date back. It's not removing the default difficulty.

[webhead 518]

12 minutes ago, Psycho666Soldier said:

As long as the whole game isn't watered down in an attempt to make it accessible to everyone(i.e. sticking with one difficulty but making it easier, shoehorning tutorials, auto-targeting, etc.).

 

Yeah I agree.  When an entire game gets watered down because it is "too complicated" or whatever shit that generally just makes the game more bland and boring.  Difficulty in gameplay can be toned down.  Getting rid of meaningful systems in a game just makes it suck (that doesn't include stupid things that were not necessary in the first place like fucking stamina systems).

[Hornet 114]

Replay value, replayability probably has a lot to do with whether games ought have an easy mode. If ur game is enjoyable on a second playthrough, easy mode is probably a better idea, because you get to like... Get good at the game, and have fun playing it on a higher difficulty the second time through as a norm, and the third time through as HaRdCoRe

 

idk, there's a line in the Simpsons that was Lisa responding to the teech saying; "I thought you said you wanted a challenge!" and she is like... "Yes but a challenge I can DooOoOooOo..."

That.

[Lucy 108]

@Psycho666Soldier

Regarding your question about challenges etc, not every easy mode has "no semblance of a challenge", or is a cakewalk; that depends on the game, and also depends on the player's skill. Everyone's version of "hard" is subjective, so catering more freely to help it be challenging but playable to even more people is something that should be a given.

 

I normally play on "Normal" mode, but the one time I had to drop a game to "Easy" the baseline was still challenging enough for me between the controls and the atmospherics scaring me silly! If I went back on a replay (and hopefully with the sequel when it comes out), I figure I'd be able to play the whole way through on "Normal", and perhaps even move up to "Hard" someday.

 

And yes, the storyline is a big hook; with a good chunk of games acting like interactive action movies these days, people are going to want to see the plot, especially if people who've already bought the game rave about how good it is; easier modes can allow people to enjoy that fully! Since the story is part of the artistic creation and it's out there to be seen, it makes sense to make it more accessible.

 

Jane also brings up a good point: Money. It's not like spending a tenner on something you might not be able to finish; most console games are £30 minimum, and more like £50+ for the big name games. That's a LOT of money to drop on something and be dissatisfied with it.

 

 

[Hornet 114]

@Lucy you bring up a valid point bringing up coordination difficulties and var. disabilities, conditions and impairments as reasons to make a game include an "Easy" mode... But I feel like "Easy mode" is a copout. Microsoft have made hella cool steps towards accessible controllers, a lot of games now have HUD and skin adaptations towards making games more accessible to the colorblind... Making the game softer rather than adapting the user experience in such a way that disabled people can smoke ablebodied players on their own merits is in some sense Cheap, y/k?

 

I have some limited experience, though, of adaptations towards disabled use of a computer, being a) being dyspraxic enough that I can still type good, and b) once breaking a collarbone and learning to play CS against bots one handed, c) Spilling a glass of wine on a keyboard to the point that it constantly typed full stops and adapting to using microsoft On Screen Keyboard to the point i could type 70wpm d) playing videogames w/ disabled adults on the reg. e) having a wife that LOVES farcry but gets simulated motion sickness so bad she borks. 

"Hard" is definitely subjective though, at The Bad Place, there was a dude laughing at the idea that games around emotional intelligence should be a thing, and that games purely about twitch reflex is kind of underselling the medium... and I listed about twelve games that had an Emotional Intelligence route that was done very well... One in particular being LA Noire.

 

(As someone with shit memory, LA Noire made me better at finding things btw... I search my house for dumbshit like my keys now in a systematic way that is like, walk in a repeating line search for the thing, looking at every point in the house once in a big ol sweep.)

[Lucy 108]

10 minutes ago, Hornet said:

Making the game softer rather than adapting the user experience in such a way that disabled people can smoke ablebodied players on their own merits is in some sense Cheap, y/k?

Why does it have to be a competition that way though? Why does it have to be "not fair" to other players, if the modes are completely separate? How does a game having an easy mode tacked on so that a beginner or someone with less skill can play it take away from the experience of someone playing on Normal/Hard/Nightmare mode?

 

I'd fully get your point for like... an MMORPG for example, where the entire world is a baseline; if you're making it easy for everyone it does alter the entire game, but even then most MMOs have ways of making the baseline content accessible to everyone but adding several "modes" of dungeons etc for people who need/want more of a challenge.

[Hornet 114]

Even the singleplayer experience benefits from the Lisa Simpson "Challenge you can do" effect tho w/r/t adapting controllers, accommodating colour blindness.

 

Nah, you're right, games accommodating easy difficulty is good in some sense, but Winning feels best when it was Hard to get there. I say this as someone who is not good at videogames lmao

 

Except sometimes. Idk. I think everyone deserves the "Omg I can't believe I actually managed to do that!" feelie.

[Lucy 108]

Yeah, I love that feeling too! I just think that there need to be different levels so that more people can get that feeling, it needs to be you know... feasible if hard. The one drop to easy I did is because I died SO MANY times on just this one zone; I had managed the rest of the game fine on Normal so far, quite a few deaths but par for the course I thought.. but this area just wrecked my arse. I couldn't progress no matter how hard I tried, so after about 12+ deaths I set it to easy and went on from there. It still gave me some sort of challenge but it wasn't insurmountable any more, and that game went on to be a firm favourite in my top 10. Without the easy mode, I wouldn't have finished it ever.

[Downshift 54]

I personally would never choose an easier difficulty for a game designed to be difficult.

Therefore, I don't think anyone should have that choice.

[Mera'din 306]

90% of games I play, I will play purely for the story or some aesthetic that has nothing to do with gameplay. There's nothing wrong with having lower difficulties to give more people the option of that experience. There are ways to do it that isn't just "you basically can't die" and maintain some form of challenge without completely alienating people. Despite my preferences for games, I have no problems with challenging myself. I also have a fondness for going for trophies/achievements in games, and playing on higher difficulties for that purpose (otherwise I've always been a "default setting and done" type of person with most games). However, I have never gone anywhere near a 'Souls' purely because of what I hear about them from literally everyone. Have even got a couple for free through PS+ and never touched them because I ligitimately don't want the headache no matter how much I am interested in some of the story elements and things like that. If there was a difficulty option I might actually consider it and then push into the higher difficulty based on how I felt from there.

 

It's entertainment software. There are (at least) dozens of different ways and reasons people enjoy this medium. It's stupid to limit the audience for something purely because of a "git gud scrub" mentality.  

 

Also, thinking about this topic reminds me of the video series Jim Sterling did where he would read elitist gamer comments as an 18th century french nobleman or whatever it was:

 

[Eizan 126]

6 hours ago, webhead said:

 

Yeah I agree.  When an entire game gets watered down because it is "too complicated" or whatever shit that generally just makes the game more bland and boring.  Difficulty in gameplay can be toned down.  Getting rid of meaningful systems in a game just makes it suck (that doesn't include stupid things that were not necessary in the first place like fucking stamina systems).

Didn't Mega Man 10 do something like this? Where it had platforms over spikes and stuff. 

 

I find the Soul games hard, but they have relatively close save points or it didn't take much effort to get to where you were so it wasn't much of a pain. There are really hard NES/SNES games that gave me more fits than any of the soul type games I've played. One of these days I'll replay Super Ghouls 'N Ghosts. 

 

How would you dumb down a Souls game though? Have a boss AI just sit there and attack very little? I mean I guess you could take less damage and deal more damage and stuff, but technically you could grind to do that as well. 

[Galeigh 283]

9 hours ago, Lucy said:

Yeah, that's not a very friendly way of conducting a hobby though. It amounts to gatekeeping and with hobbies that are supposed to be fun, isn't the whole point to introduce more people to them and share that enjoyment? Video games are something you buy, and everyone can buy them, so why can't they cater to everyone? Someone with colour-blindness or slow reaction times due to a neurological condition absolutely deserves to be catered to, especially if- as has been previously mentioned by almost everyone in this topic including yourself- it doesn't interfere with/take away from the game's normal/hard/mega hard difficulty settings.

 

Using a non-videogame example, that'd be like saying "Don't know how to draw? Don't do it. Wanna experience said crafting experience though? Speedpaints on YouTube. That's your option".

That's not what I am saying. If you don't like hard games then don't buy them, but if you want to then there are massive communities that give real and solid advice on how to approach the game from every skill level. Example: I was originally really against Dark Souls due to its rep for difficulty and as someone who, at the time, didn't care for that sort of thing gave it a hard pass. My curiosity got the better of me though after the pc version was on a steam sale for 5 bucks. I tried it, got my ass beat then went to YT for tips. I found a video that could be summed up like this "Yo, you new to this thing? Can't deal enough damage? Ok, go here and get these items then run back to start and easily over power the early game stuff to get used to the mechanics" and then it clicked. I followed the vid and tried again and felt like a god sweeping through the beginning and as the game got harder going in I slowly adapted to the dodging, parrying, and backstab mechanics. That was my "Hard games ARE fun" moment. 

 

Not everyone will have that though, and it's ok not to, but to call it gatekeeping is insincere to the community who WANT more people to experience the games they love as they are. 

 

It's nothing like implementing color blind modes (which all games 100% need).

[Mera'din 306]

There is absolutely zero change to ANYTHING in a games given experience at one difficulty by adding an alternate difficulty mode. Nothing is changed about your experience or preferences. AT ALL. 

 

You saying you had to go and look at guides and stuff could be argued with the same things that are being used to defend not having a lower difficulty. You had to seek outside help to improve at the game. How is that better than the game providing a tool to teach how the game is played in a less strenuous environment?

 

A difficulty difference doesn't have to be "lol press X to win". There are good ways to implement it and retain the integrity and feel of a game. Maybe gear upgrades are a bit more plentiful or stat increase happens at a sharper upward trend. Maybe the enemies attack a little slower, or leave themselves open to an attack or counter attack for a little longer. Maybe there's a few ridiculous attacks they can do that they won't on a lower difficulty or they animate more clearly before doing them. Even a difficulty setting like the "auto" one in Hellblade has potential. You start out at the default difficulty, and if you perform well, it shifts the difficulty up. If you start dying a lot it starts to shift the difficulty down. Therefore no matter where you are on the spectrum it will adjust to it and proceed to challenge you from there.

 

Or even if they don't do something intuitive or interesting and it's just "do more damage, take less damage, enemies have less health" stuff, it doesn't matter. YOUR EXPERIENCE WITHIN THE GAME WILL NEVER CHANGE FROM WHAT IT IS AT THE DIFFICULTY YOU PLAY AT. Someone being able to enjoy and be challenged by the game at a lower difficulty does not take anything away from you except some weird need to feel superior to someone else in a fucking PvE video game.

 

You can still urge a person to try it the "true" way with no change to such communities. It would just shift from "You should totally play this, here's how to make the attempt" to "You've experienced one level of this and understand the basics, now here's how to get the 'full' experience (for lack of a better qualifier)".

 

The kind of gaming where this is even a thing is a goddamn recreational activity. You found the grind to "git gud" to be fun? Congratulations. There are a lot of people that never will. That isn't a good reason to cut them off from experiencing a game they have an interest in for a different reason. And "Watch videos on Youtube" is not a good answer to that. Some people do though I'm sure, but that's not for everyone either. More ways to experience something without affecting other peoples experience of the same thing is unequivocally a good thing.

[Galeigh 283]

First: people have been using outside sources for video games since the dawn of video games. (first it was magazines, then official/unofficial guides, then FAQs, and now YT). Difficulty be damned for this one. Easy and hard games have em and players have used em for both. 

 

Second: I flat out said it's not something everyone was going to have, and that it was ok not to. 

 

Third: Tuning for difficulty is not just tweaking health and damage in hard games. It's a total rework in spawns, difficulty curve, and enemy abilities. This stuff take up a lot of time and since most hard focused games are done by small teams it's not viable even if they wanted to. 

 

Fourth: Gaming IS a recreation activity like movies or books. You don't see people who don't like horror movies demanding that they be made less scary so they can experience it do you? No. Because it's stupid. 

 

A lot of games can have multiple difficulties. And that's great. Like the recent God of War had a fantastically designed  difficulty variations. It was also a heavily story based game, so you could glide through on normal or easy for the story or grind that hard mode (I played second highest difficulty to beat it for context) if you want. It was never designed to focus on that hard mode so it needed those difficulty variations and benefited from having them. 

 

The closest a souls game ever had to an easy mode was DS2. They stripped out the labrynthian level design for a linear experience, game fast travel immediately, introduced a heal over time item that could be used functionally limitlessly, and pulled back on the traps and ambushes. The game suffered (in comparison to the others) as a result. All these features to promote more people to play turned off the core fanbase. The whole "but you dont have to use the stones" is a fallacy (people will always choose the quickest and easiest route in gaming, it's a fact) and was only one part of the problem. DS3 took out the healing stones, brought back the labyrinthian level designed, upped the traps and ambushes, but kept the fast travel (the only feature everyone agreed was worth keeping) and the game shined as a result. 

 

The point is, a game designed from the ground up to be hard suffers when an attempt to add an easy mode or tweaked for more accessibility. 

 

It's ok not to like hard games, but that doesn't mean it's ok to demand they change for you. I like Digital Extremes (warframe devs) design philosophy: They understand and accept that the type of game they make isn't for everyone, but instead of trying to appeal to people who won't like their genre, they doubled down on what made people like their game instead. As a result they have a solid, stable user base. They would have failed if they had tried to make those appeals because then they wouldn't have such a committed group of players keeping the game going. 

[Revolver 26]

Yeah, it is definitely possible to fuck up multiple difficulties. There are plenty of games that do it. In fact a lot of people’s responses in here about giving monsters more health is one typical way they do that.

 

There are series like MGS which have multiple difficulties and I think are great because of that. There are series like Pokémon which I wish had more difficulties and there are others that have many difficulties but I wish they went with just one because they watered all the modes down. There is no one right way to do it.

 

I think it’s also fine to be a Souls game and cater to a niche audience.